“You leggo of my beach ball.”
“You tell ‘im, Rob!”
“Call the M.P.s!”
“The S.P.s: that’s the Shit Patrol, man. He’s their leader!” Kane turned his head and looked at Cutshaw. The astronaut was staring at him, a thin, bitter smile on his face. “Here’s your goodness in man,” he challenged ironically; yet his voice cracked as he said it. He looked away.
The leader looked at Cutshaw in mock astonishment. “Did you say somethin? Huh? Did you talk?” He looked at Jerry. “Jesus, Jer, I think this beach ball here just talked! I swear to Christ!” He slapped Cutshaw in the face. “Did you talk?”
“This man is ill,” said Kane. “Please let us go.” Rob saw the pleading in his eyes, heard the meekness, the quaver that shook Kane’s voice. One of the girls said, “Let ‘em go.” Rob glanced at her, a blonde with pigtails, and he put his smirking face close in to Kane’s. He said, “Don’t say ‘Please.’ Say ‘Pretty please.’ I wanna know you mean it. Now go ahead and say it.”
Kane could not fathom his own reluctance. He swallowed hard. “Pretty … please,” he said at last, and started to walk forward with Cutshaw; but Rob kept his grip on the astronaut’s arm and yanked him back.
“I’ll bet he sucks,” said a cyclist with a wisp of beard in the cleft between his mouth and his chin.
The leader looked suddenly inspired. “Say ‘Marines all suck,’ ” he instructed Kane gleefully. There were giggles and hoots from the crowd. “Let ‘em go,” said the girl with the pigtails again. She was staring at Kane. The leader grinned at her cockily. She was his girlfriend. “Cool it, there, sugar,” he told her. He returned his attention to Kane. “Come on, come on, let’s get it over with; say it and you can go. Just say the words and you can split. Now whaddya say? You gonna say it? What’s the harm? Then you can go.” He put on a comically sincere expression.
Kane’s body began to tremble slightly. He turned to look at Cutshaw. The astronaut’s gaze was on the floor. There was no expression on his face. He listened. Kane turned and fixed Rob with wide shining eyes. His mouth had fallen slightly open.
“Come on, come on-you gonna say it?”
Kane tried to move his tongue, to form words. He could not. He mounted a massive effort of will. “Marines … Marines … all … suck.”
A sighing murmur went up from the crowd.
The girl with the pigtails moved away from the group.
“Now just one more thing,” said the leader. “I swear it; this is it, then you go. Jesus, this is an easy one. Really. Just say you’re a beach ball. Simple. That’s it. Go ahead. ‘I’m a beach ball.’ ”
Kane’s eyes had not moved from the leader’s. They were wider now, shinier. His tongue was thick and dry as he uttered, “I … am a beach ball.”
“Just in time!” Rob crowed. “We needed a new one!” Jerry stuck his leg out in back of Kane and Rob shoved him in the chest. Kane went sprawling to the floor. The gang cheered. Rob’s girlfriend watched from the bar.
Kane rose slowly to his feet and the gang began shoving him back and forth. He was passive, unresisting. He kept seeking Cutshaw with his eyes, even after the astronaut averted his face. The howling and cheering slipped the knife of headache into his skull. A plumpish girl with a mole on her chin stuck out her foot in front of Kane and tripped him. He fell down. He rose to his knees and did not move, his eyes fixed on the floor, disoriented. The leader approached him with a beer and poured most of it over his head. “Another baptism, folks. Praise the Lord.” “Praise the Lord!” they shouted. “Hallelujah!” Jerry stuck a boot in Kane’s back and kicked him forward. Kane’s face hit the floor. Rob moved over and poured the remainder of the beer on the floor in front of Kane. His lips parted wetly in a sneer. “Fuckin’ slob,” he said. “Now clean up the mess!”
Kane stared up at him numbly. Jerry came over and shoved on his head until his face was almost touching a foaming puddle of beer on the floor. Rob sank down to one knee beside Kane. “Now lick it,” he told him. “Lick it up.” Rob’s eyes were gleaming. His face gleamed excitement. “Lick and we’ll let you guys go. This time I mean it.”
Forgotten for the moment and dazed, Cutshaw had stumbled over to the bar. Now he turned in sudden anxiety. “Hey, knock that off!” he called out. He lurched forward, but two cyclists quickly pinned his arms.
“Lick it!”
Kane stared down at the beer. He trembled as a darkness surged through his bloodstream, a powerful secret calling his name, now in whispers, now louder, asserting, demanding. It held his tongue in place in his mouth. Kane fought it. The name. What name? He suppressed it, repelled and afraid. He opened his mouth, and his tongue slipped out in fractions, then in jerks. He licked at the beer.
An astonished sigh went up from the crowd. “Holy Christ,” breathed the girl with the mole. “He did it!”
Rob smiled contemptuously, looking down. Kane drew himself up on his hands and knees and Jerry knocked him to the floor again from behind with a kick of his cleated boot. He sneered, “That’s for disgracin’ the fuckin’ uniform.”
Cutshaw struggled to free himself. “You bastards!” he cried. “You fucking sons of bitches!”
Rob walked over and cracked both sides of Cutshaw’s face with a vicious hand. “Get him down,” he told the men who were pinning his arms. Cutshaw was shoved to the floor on his back and the two held him down as Rob now mounted him, his crotch in close to his face. He unzippered his fly and removed his penis. He placed two fingers beneath it and flopped it up so that it touched the astronaut’s lips. “Okay, fly me to the moon, now, pal,” Rob leered. “One way or another, you’re blastin’ off!” He grinned around at the crowd, who were murmuring and giggling. A few came closer, their faces excited. Cutshaw grimaced and jerked his head aside. “If he does it, I’ll be famous,” Rob exulted. He drew a switchblade knife from his boot; its gleaming long blade clicked out into place. Rob held the point to Cutshaw’s neck. “Come on, let’s go, or I swear to Christ, I’ll cut you! I mean it!”
Kane pulled himself to his hands and knees again and stared at Cutshaw and Rob. At first the scene did not register; then his eyes became separate hells. He looked up at Jerry, who was standing above him with another full stein. “I think this schmuck needs another beer,” drawled Jerry. He poured it over Kane’s head. He smirked at the crowd. He did not see the lip curling up, the fury.
Kane reached up a hand and clasped it over the fingers that Jerry had cupped around the stein. Jerry looked around, and in a mocking, babying tone he said, “Ahhh, I think he wants some more.” Suddenly his mouth flew open in a quick small gasp of horror. He tried to scream but could not as Kane’s hand squeezed against his own with unthinkable force. Jerry’s eyes were popping. Then at last came the scream as the stein shattered inward and Jerry’s fingers were crushed bloodily into shards of glass. The scream became a wordless exhalation of air and he crumpled to the floor unconscious.
The room was stunned. “Jesus Christ!” someone murmured. Rob scrambled to his feet and faced Kane, who had risen to a crouch. Rob held the switchblade knife out to the side. For a moment he was fearful, undecided. Then the reasonable order of his universe asserted itself: a flaw in the beer stein, a fluke. He stuck the knife point-first in a wooden pillar near him, reached into his pocket, slipped out brass knuckles and put them on. Then he held out both hands from his sides, palms upward, confident, smiling, promising punishment. He swaggered toward Kane. Kane’s fist drove into his stomach with a pile-driving force, and when Rob doubled over, Kane’s knee shot up and broke his jaw with a crunch of bone. The girl with the pigtails let loose a hysterical, horrified scream. Then chaos. The girl with the mole pulled the knife from the pillar and a cyclist came at Kane with a tire chain. Kane side-stepped low, seized the man with the chain in a jujitsu hold, applied traction and broke his arm with a crunch, then turned as the girl came at him with the knife. He broke her wrist with a powerful chop and then raised clenched hands above his h
ead; and as she bent and held her drooping wrist, he pounded his fists down onto her head and shattered her skull.
The other cyclists rushed at Kane.
Groper was pacing. Hudson Kane gazed out a window. They had been keeping watch in the adjutant’s office ever since the psychiatrist had returned from Bly without finding Cutshaw. The time was 1:23 a.m. The telephone rang. Kane answered it as Groper abruptly stopped pacing and walked to the window: the lights of a car were shining at the sentry gate. “Here comes someone,” said Groper. He went out to unlock the front door of the mansion. The psychiatrist followed him with his eyes as he talked to the highway patrolman on the phone. His face turned ashen. He listened. He looked shocked.
17
Outside, the staff car came to a halt by the mansion entrance. Cutshaw emerged from the driver’s side and opened the door for Kane. He said softly, “We’re here, sir.”
Kane was staring ahead through the windshield. He did not move. Cutshaw put his head inside the car and for a moment he glanced at the gash below Kane’s cheekbone. Then he looked up at the colonel’s eyes. They were fixed on some infinite pain in the distance. “We’re here, sir,” he said again. Kane turned his head and looked at Cutshaw, numb, unseeing; then he climbed out of the car slowly and woodenly and walked into the mansion. Groper held the door open for him. He glanced at Kane’s uniform. It was torn and covered with stains. “I see you found him okay, sir,” the adjutant said in what he hoped was a normal tone. Kane walked by him without a word, and took no notice of his brother standing in the clinic doorway. He moved toward the stairs like a man in trance. The psychiatrist saw Cutshaw standing next to him, watching as Kane walked up the stairs and then into his bedroom, where he closed the door. Cutshaw turned and met the psychiatrist’s shattered gaze. “It’s time you understood a few things,” said Hudson Kane. “Come in.” He motioned with his head toward the clinic, then stepped back and made room for Cutshaw to enter. He followed him inside, closed the door, and told him everything.
Cutshaw was stunned. A heaviness fell upon his heart with the weight of a sudden loss of grace.
“You can help him,” the psychiatrist said.
Cutshaw nodded. His face was drained of color. He left the clinic, ascended the stairs and knocked on the door of Kane’s bedroom. There was no answer. He knocked again. He thought he heard a voice from within. It was indistinct. He turned the doorknob and entered. Kane was sitting in a chair near an open window, a khaki-colored blanket drawn up to his chest. He was staring into nothingness. Cutshaw closed the door quietly. Kane did not move. Cutshaw said, “Colonel?”
There was no response.
Cutshaw moved closer. “Colonel Kane, sir?”
“I would like my cocoa now,” said Kane. Again he fell silent for a time.
Cutshaw waited, disturbed. Then Kane said, “I’m cold.”
Cutshaw walked to the window and closed it. Cardboard had been taped over the broken pane. He looked out. The rain had stopped at last and the stars were bright.
“Where’s Gilman?” he heard Kane ask him. He turned. Kane was looking at him, a puzzled look in his eyes.
“He’s downstairs, sir.”
“Is he all right?”
“Yes, sir. He’s fine.”
Cutshaw’s eyes began to well up. He turned away and faced the window.
“Cutshaw.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why won’t you go to the moon?”
“Because I’m afraid,” Cutshaw answered simply.
“Afraid?”
“That’s right, sir.” Cutshaw fought to control the quaver in his voice. He looked up at the sky. “See the stars? So cold? So far away? And so very lonely-oh, so lonely. All that space, just empty space and so … far away from home.” Tears flooded down the astronaut’s cheeks. “I’ve circled round and round this house,” he said huskily, “orbit after orbit. And sometimes I’d wonder what it might be like just never to stop; just to circle alone up there … forever.” Reflected starlight broke against the wetness in Cutshaw’s eyes as the halting words sought their way from his soul. “And then what if I got there-got to the moon-and then couldn’t get back? I know everyone dies; but I’m afraid to die alone-so far from home. And if God’s not alive, that’s really-really alone.”
A police siren wailed. Cutshaw looked through the window and saw a flashing red light floating down the road. It stopped at the sentry gate like a beacon to warn away hope.
“Not … much time,” said Kane. His voice was anxious; labored. “Time.
No more time. But I’ll show you … God … exists.”
“Yes, that’s right, sir.” The patrol car was coming toward the mansion.
“And the others,” said Kane, his eyes shining. “Maybe help. Try to cure … try to cure them. I don’t know. No other way now. Time. No more time. Had to try … try … shock treatment.”
Cutshaw did not move. Then he slowly turned for a silent, scrutinizing look at Kane. He asked, “What was that, sir?”
“Tired.” Kane rested his head against the wing of the chair.
“Tired,” he repeated. He closed his eyes and in a soft, sleepy voice murmured, “One … example.” And said no more.
Cutshaw kept staring at him. “What, sir?”
Kane remained silent. Cutshaw watched him for a time, then walked to the chair. Kane seemed to be asleep.
Cutshaw caught a gleam of something at his neck. He leaned over to examine it more closely and stifled a sob. Kane was wearing Cutshaw’s medal.
The astronaut hurried from the room, afraid of awakening Kane with his crying. Soon after he had gone, a knife slipped out from underneath the folds of the khaki blanket and thudded to the blood-soaked section of rug beneath the chair. Dark-red blood continued to drip from a corner of the blanket.
Cutshaw walked to the landing. He looked down. Some of the inmates had awakened. They had come out of the dormitory into the hall and were murmuring, huddling in robes and pajamas. Two highway patrolmen came through the door and stood talking quietly to Groper. The adjutant looked grim and he shook his head; then, reluctantly, he led them into the clinic. Cutshaw watched as the clinic door closed. He sat down at the top of the landing. Something was wrong. What was it? Something. He glanced at the door to Kane’s bedroom, frowning. When he turned back, he looked down at his feet and for a moment the substance on his shoe did not register. Then he reached down a finger and touched it. And was suddenly horrified: it was blood. “Oh, my God!” He leaped up and ran back into Kane’s room.
Groper, Christian, Krebs and Hudson Kane stood together in the clinic across from the patrolmen. “Where is he?” the taller patrolman demanded.
“I can’t let you have him,” Kane said crisply. “I’m sorry.”
“Come on, Colonel.”
“You admitted yourself he was provoked.”
“That’s right, but—”
“No, goddammit! He stays!”
The patrolman was weary. “Look, we’re taking him in, sir. Sorry. But we are. And if you won’t produce him, we’ll find him ourselves.” He looked at his partner. “Come on, let’s go, Frank,” he said; and together they started for the door.
The psychiatrist threw his back against the door. “Listen, figure the odds,” he told them coldly. “Every man in this room is a karate expert.”
For a fleeting moment, Krebs looked surprised.
“Go ahead,” Hudson Kane challenged the patrolmen. “You try to take him. And here’s tomorrow morning’s headline: ‘Highway Patrol Guns Down Marines!’ And just a little warning if you try me, boys: you’d better shoot to kill!”
For a moment the patrolmen looked uncertain. The taller one moved toward Kane, stopped abruptly and stared at his partner, then went to the telephone on the desk with a soft, inarticulate expression of disgust. Irritably he jerked the receiver off its cradle, then glared at Kane.
“Can I use your phone?” he growled.
“Yeah, go ahead.”
“You mean Cutshaw?”
“Yeah; just let us talk to him.”
“You promise no funny stuff?”
“No, sir, no funny stuff,” the patrolman said somberly. “Nothing too funny about quadruple homicide.”
As the group walked out of the clinic, curious inmates pressed in around them.
“What the hell’s going on?” demanded Bennish.
“Why the cops?” asked Fairbanks.
“It’s Fell,” said Reno archly. “Five hundred parking tickets outstanding.”
“There’s nothing wrong,” the psychiatrist told them. “Nothing. There’s been a mistake. Now, where’s Cutshaw?” he asked. “Have you seen him?” No one had. “Krebs, check in the dorm,” he ordered. “And Christian, see if he’s up there with—”
“Jesus!” Groper exclaimed. He was staring up over the psychiatrist’s shoulder. Hudson Kane turned to follow his gaze and the suddenness of loss took away his breath. Cutshaw was walking out of the bedroom carrying Vincent Kane in his arms. Silent tears poured down his face. He stopped at the balustrade. “He’s dead,” he wept. “He’s killed himself.” His drowning eyes looked down and embraced the face of the man in his arms. He shook his head. “He gave up his life.”
18
The pine and spruce trees ringing the mansion flashed with the dappled wings of birds that caught the rays of the April sunset. A Marine Corps staff car entered the deserted courtyard and came to a halt in front of the building. A corporal emerged briskly from the driver’s side and opened the door for his passenger. Cutshaw got out of the car. He wore Marine dress blues and the leaves of a major. It was almost three years after Kane’s death.
Cutshaw breathed deeply and then looked around. The air was sweet. When he glanced at the courtyard a tenderness warmed his face and memories flooded him, whispering voices, echoing, fading. For a moment he closed his eyes. “Simon says … Simon says …” The corporal watched him, wondering, puzzled, as Cutshaw shook his head, with a rueful little smile. Then he opened his eyes and gently instructed the corporal, “Wait here.” Cutshaw walked up to the mansion’s front door. He found it locked. The corporal watched him walking around and testing windows. One was open and Cutshaw climbed inside, disappearing from view.
The Ninth Configuration Page 10