King of the World

by Thomas Berger

“Now, listen! That’s enough of the foul language. You’re disgustingly drunk already.” Diplomatically he added: “A fine girl like you.”

  Glug-glug. “What’s fine about me? I’m a flop, Cornell.”

  “So am I. That doesn’t have anything to do with being fine.”

  “I don’t think you’re fine. I think you’re an asshole. I want you to take a drink!” She shoved the bottle at him again. “I order you to take a drink, you man you.”

  Cornell accepted it by the neck and threw it out the window.

  She studied him for a while in the light from the dashboard, and then said, slowly, thickly: “Somewhere you got the erroneous idea I’m afraid of you.”

  He continued to drive, but ever more slowly owing to his worry about the fuel.

  She said: “I’m going to have to cut you down to size, Cornell. No man is gonna push me around.” She climbed onto her knees on the seat, and faced him.

  He shrugged. “Let’s talk about that later.” From the corner of his eye, he saw her cock a fist and begin a swing at his head. While maintaining control of the wheel with his left hand, he raised his right shoulder to take the blow. It was sharper than he expected, given her condition.

  “Are you crazy?” he shouted. “I’m driving.”

  “C’mon,” she said. “Fight like a woman.” She threw another punch at him. It glanced off his shoulder cap and struck the base of his head, not hurting him really but shaking his skull in an ignobling way. He slammed on the brakes, and she fell hard against the dashboard. He pulled her up, none too gently, but then, she being limp, was anxious: “Are you hurt?”

  His arms were under her slender shoulders. In a moment he became aware that his hands had of their own volition descended to enclose her breasts. The oddest sensation in the world. He had been wont, before the dressing-table mirror, to cup his own bosoms, when he had had them, to try out alternative profiles with a new brassiere in mind. The current experience was similar but different. He had never touched a woman’s breasts before fondling and sucking Lieutenant Aster’s. These were smaller, firmer, and warmer, even through the blouse.

  The girl had not answered his question. However, she was breathing regularly: in fact, a bit faster than that. He should probably search her head for cuts or bumps, but he could not move his hands—hers were covering them.

  Her phobia against being touched had apparently been diluted by the alcohol—as in fact had Cornell’s own inhibitions against wearing women’s clothes, that night so long ago at Charlie’s, and look where that had led.

  He was suddenly desperate to get free, and tore his hands from under hers. She groaned, became conscious at once, lurched away, opening the door. She stumbled out into the night, and he heard her throw up. He waited considerately until the sounds ended, and then was sliding across to aid her when she returned. He gave her the handful of Kleenexes.

  After using them, she said: “I didn’t eat anything all day.”

  “I know.”

  “I never could hold my liquor.”

  “Neither can I,” he said.

  She was shivering. “It’s freezing out there.”

  Cornell closed his window and turned the heater to maximum.

  She said: “And these clothes are so thin.”

  He got out of the senator’s jacket and draped it around her. He began to drive again.

  “Look,” she said. “There’s a clearing!”

  So there was. The trees swung away from the shoulder, leaving a semicircular patch of low bushes and weeds several car-widths wide. He drove in, with a noise of crushing vegetation, and some small furry thing went bounding through the headlight beams and plunged into the forest.

  “Did you see that?” he cried.

  “What?”

  “Some awful animal. I just hope it’s not a rat.”

  “This far from a city?”

  “Are there wild rats?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I’d think this big car would scare them.”

  He switched off the ignition. “Well, this is it for tonight, I guess. I think I’ll just leave the lights on.”

  “You’ll run down the battery.”

  “Hey, the heater’s stopped.”

  “Of course. It’s electric.”

  “No light and no heater all night?”

  She shook her head. “We don’t have any choice.” She was showing no effects from her recent performance. Cornell found himself wondering, strangely, whether it had been all it seemed. She had got drunk in a second, and sobered almost as quickly. For a moment he was afraid of her. Perhaps she intended to violate him in some fashion while he slept.

  But this wilderness was obviously genuine, and she was stuck in it as hopelessly as he. Anyway, now that the engine was off, he was suddenly too exhausted for apprehension and opened the door and started to climb out, regardless of the animal.

  “Did you say I could have the back?” he asked when he had already claimed it, tucking his legs in and lying on his side.

  She looked over the seat. “Sweet dreams.”

  “Same to you.”

  She stayed there for a while, silhouetted against the light from the dashboard. “Are you warm enough?”

  “Yes, thanks.” He closed his eyes. “You keep the jacket.”

  When he looked again she had disappeared, and in a moment the dashboard lights went out. He turned onto his back and immediately felt constricted in those clothes. He opened the collar of the shirt and loosened the tie. The trousers were also uncomfortable, cutting into his crotch. He considered slipping them off in the dark, but he might not awaken until after she did next morning, and he wore no underwear.

  A brighter morning light than he had ever seen woke him up. He looked through the window at the brilliant, moist greenery of the world outside. For a moment he thought of himself as alone in a new, fresh existence, but then he remembered the girl and looked for her over the seat.

  His jacket was there, but she was gone. He left the car. There she came, emerging from the forest. She held her skirt well above the calves to avoid the clutching underbrush, and was barefoot.

  “How’d you sleep?” he asked.

  “Great. And you? Were you cold?”

  “I guess I was too tired to know.”

  She had reached the car and put a hand on the fender to support herself, lifting a foot and exploring its undersurface. “I’m not used to this.” She plucked at something. “Thorn.” She put her foot down and tested it. Her bright hair was irradiated by the sun. She looked so fresh though having spent the night in a car. He realized that the remains of the makeup, including the purple eyeshadow, were gone. So were the navy-blue textured stockings.

  “Did you wash your face somehow?”

  “There’s a brook back there. It’s ice-cold, though, I’m warning you. But you feel great when you’re out.”

  “Were you in? I mean, a real bath?”

  “I went for broke.”

  “Mary.” Cornell was impressed.

  She pointed. “See that fuzzy tree? Well, you go back that way, between that tree and the big boulder, and before very long you’ll hear the sound of the water.”

  He supposed he would have to meet the challenge, but there was little in the world that Cornell loathed more than cold water. He daintily picked his way through the woods. Most of the trees were fuzzy, and there was more than one boulder. He could always claim he couldn’t find the brook.

  But in all honesty, you couldn’t miss it once you got back in there a way. The gurgling could not be ignored. It was very pretty, like a painting on a calendar. He sat down on a rock and watched the stream run enthusiastically wherever it was going.

  At last he knelt, scooped up a double handful of the icy liquid, paralyzing his fingers, and stunned his face in it. Wow. He sputtered and blew. After a deep breath, he wet a finger and rubbed his teeth.

  On the way back he peed in a bush. He might have done the other had he something with which t
o wipe, but he was probably constipated anyway owing to yesterday’s diet. Zipping up, he thought he saw a snake nearby and caught some hair in the fastener, but the serpent was just a stick on which the sun, filtering through the foliage, had made a moving pattern.

  Back in the clearing he told the girl, who sat in the sun on the fender of the Rolls, “You’re right. It Was certainly, invigorating. Now how about breakfast? The rest of the bread and liverwurst is in the glove compartment.” He raised his shoulders. “I know you don’t like liverwurst, but that’s all there is.”

  “Then it’ll have to do.” She had mellowed, perhaps because of the sun. She put her arms behind her and leaned back, her nipples marking the blouse front.

  He made two sandwiches. She ate hers without complaint. He had not been hungry until he bit into his, and then instantly became ravenous and even finished the crusts, something he seldom did in civilization.

  The girl’s eyes were closed and the sun was brilliant on her fair face. She had pulled the long skirt above her knees. He now saw that her legs were not completely hairless, but showed a fine golden down.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “Do we start driving again and look for gas as long as the car keeps going?”

  “It might stop in a worse place,” she said. “And then where would we be?”

  “What about food?”

  “I saw some berries back in the woods.” She opened her eyes slowly and looked at him with a hint of derision. “And also what I suspect you called a rat. It was a rabbit.”

  “I know what a rabbit looks like. It’s got big ears.” He squinted. “But what were you suggesting, anyway?”

  “We kill it and eat it.”

  “Oh, come on.” He rolled his eyes.

  “Would you rather starve?”

  “What about those berries? I don’t care that much for meat anyway.”

  She shook her head. “How do we know they aren’t poisonous? Anyway, you’d have to eat gallons of those little things to fill your belly.”

  “Sorry I brought up the matter,” he said. “You were so happy there in the sun. Go back and sit there again. I’ll try and think of something. It’s my responsibility.”

  “Why?”

  “Men are traditionally responsible for food, aren’t they? I was once a pretty good cook.” Suddenly he felt the perverse urge to confess he had been Pauline Witkovsky’s mattress as a young man, but in resisting it, he went too far. “And I hijacked the car and drove all the way up here and got you into this.”

  Her hitherto friendly expression chilled. “You make it sound as if I’m so much baggage.”

  He had offended her again. She tossed her head and climbed onto the fender. Before he had decided what to do, she cocked an ear.

  “Hear that?”

  “What?”

  “It’s a car.”

  He heard nothing, then the drone of a distant insect.

  “Get your ass out on the road,” she cried.

  “Don’t give me orders!”

  She cried out in desperation. Actually, it did sound like a car now, and very close. In fact, before he got halfway to the road, the vehicle went by.

  It was a battered green pickup truck, driven by someone with a profile of hatbrim, long nose, short pipe, and pointed chin. She looked straight ahead and did not seem to see them or the Rolls Royce.

  Cornell ran onto the road to chase the truck. It was a futile act, but served to postpone the moment when he would have to face the girl. When he reached the asphalt, the truck had disappeared. The reason was that scarcely fifty yards beyond the clearing the road descended a hill, which he had not seen in last night’s darkness.

  He ran to the beginning of the slope and looked down. At the bottom, less than a quarter mile away, the woods gave way to a village. He watched the truck enter it, then trudged back to the clearing.

  After accepting the girl’s glare, he jerked his thumb at the Rolls. “Come on. I’m not going to starve here. Let’s take our chances on the road.”

  Sullenly she climbed down and got in. He pulled onto the asphalt, drove fifty yards to the declivity, and began to roll down.

  The village consisted of little more than everything they needed: a general store with a gas pump in front of it. The pickup truck was being refueled by its driver, the crusty-looking old character Cornell had seen speed past him. Apparently she was the storekeeper. He left the Rolls and walked all the way up to her before she saw him. She must have had a sort of tunnel vision.

  But then she smiled briefly and said, in an unusual accent: “Maanin’,” which he was pleased to identify as “Good morning” and responded to in kind. She kept the gas hose in the filler hole and sucked away at the black pipe that fortunately was not lit.

  “You sell food as well as gas?”

  She took the pipe out of her mouth and pointed at the store. “I don’t, but she does.”

  “Excuse me,” said Cornell. “I thought you were the proprietor.”

  “Nawp.” She put the pipe between her ill-fitting false teeth. “I’m the game warden.”

  He started towards the store, then turned and went back to the car. “You come along this time,” he told the girl. “I don’t want to hear again that you don’t like what I bought to eat.”

  At the entrance she stepped in front of him, opened the screen door, and held it for his passage. She had very nice manners when she wanted to show them.

  He had never seen such an establishment as this store, with its huge wheel of cheese, rackful of axes, bins of dried beans, coils of rope, whole hams, and a full-sized canoe, all cheek by jowl. Behind the counter was a wide but not really fat woman, her cheeks naturally as red as if she had used men’s rouge. The sleeves of her plaid shirt were rolled up to her meaty biceps, and on the right one she had a tattoo: “U.S. Marines,” on an elaborate scroll.

  “Maanin’,” said she.

  Cornell answered, and the girl nodded. She then began to point: “One of those hams and an axe and ten pounds of those beans and a sack of flour and—” The woman seized a pencil and started scrawling the list on the end of a mounted roll of wrapping paper. Cornell was astounded.

  “Twenty feet of rope, a dozen cans of condensed milk, a sack of sugar, a side of bacon—”

  Cornell had never heard the like. He walked away from her obsessive litany, finding himself at a rack of cellophane bags of potato chips and Fritos. He loved the latter and had not eaten any since he went to the sperm camp. He unclipped a small bag and took it to the counter.

  The girl was saying: “And a jackknife, a shovel, a skillet, some pots and pans—” She saw Cornell’s bag of Fritos, and said: “Put that back.”

  The big woman raised her eyebrows. Cornell realized instantly how it looked—the girl had forgotten she was dressed as a man and he as a woman—and not wanting to complicate matters further, he responded: “No, dear, I know you love them, and you should get some reward for memorizing that grocery list.”

  He smiled brilliantly at the storekeeper, who asked: “Whereabouts is your camp? Loon Lake?”

  He was stopped momentarily by the implications of the question. So that was what the girl planned: camping out. He looked at her, but she had gone to the far wall and was examining the lanterns that hung there.

  “Actually,” he told the storekeeper, “we just came up from New York. We haven’t found a camping place yet.”

  “Loon Lake is your best bet. It’s a real nice place.” She threw up a big arm. “You go right out of town heading east. Twenty-eight and three-tenths miles, there’s a dirt road to the left. It’s an old logging road, is what it is. About seven miles in, there’s the lake. Full of bass and a lot of dead wood there for fires. I’d get me a saw, though, to cut it with. That axe will raise a few blisters if you ain’t used to handling one. And what aboudt clothes?” She pointed. “My dry goods department’s in the back That real nice suit of yours won’t do for campin’.”

  “True,” said Cornell.

>   “Work shirts and jeans. Also stuff for your boy friend.” She jerked her chin at the girl. “That finery’s for town. Pretty little thing, ain’t he?”

  The girl came back with a lantern. She had heard the comment, and Cornell was happy to note a change in her style.

  “We’ll need this, too, don’t you think?” she asked.

  The order when completed filled the trunk of the Rolls and the back seat as well. Finally the big woman filled the gas tank. Attached to the pump she found a note.

  “Huh,” said she, sticking it in a rear pocket of her corduroys. “That Mabel. She’s our game warden. You’d think she’d come in for a few words when she gasses up. Not her. She writes how many gallons on an I.O.U. and drives off.”

  “Are there many people up here?” Cornell asked.

  “Not many. There’s a lumber camp fifty-two miles to the northwest. They drive in a truckload of them lumberjacks every Saturday night. They’re eunuchs, you know, except for the forewomen. It’s a big treat for ’em to come in here. I got a lunch counter in back and a jukebox. They have their hamburgers and listen to the jukebox and think they’re having a big time. Pathetic. Still, I’m glad to see them. I’m glad to see anybody by the end of a week. Most of the few women who live around here are peculiar, like old Mabel.”

  The gas pump’s whirring stopped with a clunk. The woman read the amount on its face, got out a bill for the food and gear, computed with the pencil stub from behind her ear, and said: “All told, $3,382.76.”

  Cornell paid with four greenbacks from the senator’s stuffed wallet. The girl spoke up when the storekeeper was fishing for the change in her pockets.

  “Prices are as high up here as in New York.”

  “Higher, I would expect. Except for the gas, which Shell comes by with once a month, I truck in the rest of my merchandise from Boston twice a year. Used to go to Bangor years ago, but there’s nothin’ left there now. Everybody’s in Boston, like I guess everybody down south’s in New York.”

  “How do you make a living?” Cornell asked.

  “Them lumberjacks and a few old farts like Mabel. The occasional campers like yourself.” She gave Cornell his change and wished them good camping. The screen door slammed behind her wide, corduroyed rump.