Absence of the Hero (4 page)

I never knew I'd be one.

And I still don't feel like one. Or maybe I do. I don't know how they feel. I only know how I feel.

You know, I'd read about them in the newspapers now and then, and that was it.

I'd get to thinking, for just a minute, now why in the hell would a guy do anything like that? There's so much of it walking around.

But I never tied
myself
in with it at all.

I guess that's the way it is: one minute you are walking around just being a person and then all of a sudden you, yourself, are accused of being a rapist, an attacker, a ravisher, and people everywhere are opening up newspapers and reading about you.

And somebody's thinking, now why in the hell would a guy (meaning
me
, this time) do anything like that?

There's so much of it walking around.

I guess they just figure that a rapist is some guy who has been running around peeking into windows with a bunch of dirty pictures in his pants pocket. Then he gets some kind of chance he has always been waiting for, and he goes ahead with the rape.

That's what
I
thought.

Now, I only know myself.

Well, all this talk is not telling the story of how I got into this jam.

I don't know exactly how to begin. If you just list down what happened and what you did, it doesn't come out right. By that, I mean the question and answer sort of thing that goes on in courts. It isn't right. They make you wrong. They just add up a set of question and answer figures and you flunk out on the total. It's too automatic.

Hell, they ought to let a man lean back in court and explain every­thing at his leisure, if he is able to.

You know as well
as I do, there is all that stiffness, and the
judge, and the look of the place. You sit there
just a minute or two—not even that, maybe 30 seconds—and
you can feel where your shoelaces are tied across your
feet and the way your collar runs around your neck.

You can't breathe right and are nervous as hell.

And why?

Because you know that justice has nothing to do with it. Maybe you'll see a couple of guys marching around with paper in their hands. They are nervous too. Even the judge is nervous, even though he tries not to be and goes through with it every day.

Some of them even try to smile and joke a little, especially in cases of minor concern. Those, I feel most sorry for, even if
I
am the case of minor concern.

Yes, I'll have to admit I've been in plenty of courts.

But mostly only on drunk and vag raps.

But listen, what I'm getting at is that there is nothing you can say, don't you see?

You were drunk?—O.K., guilty.

You were a vag?—also, O.K., guilty.

They don't ask you
why
you were drunk or
why
you were a vag. A man gets drunk for a damn good reason and a man is a vag for a damn good reason. There's nothing “guilty” about it.

No more than being guilty because you've got brown hair or 8 fingers and two thumbs.

O.K., they say I'm a rapist.

An attacker.

A ravisher.

In fact, they've got me up for two counts of rape, child molestation, breaking and entering and everything else.

Well . . . as they say. . . . I'll begin at the beginning.

The whole mess started like this: I was in the cellar picking up the old cardboard Mrs. Weber (she is the woman I am wrongfully accused of raping) said I could have.

I knew where I could sell it for a little money, maybe for a little wine—which was mostly what a little money meant, anyhow.

I saw the cardboard one time when the cellar door was open and I was walking down the alley.

One time later when I saw Mrs. Weber (the woman who I am accused of ravishing) I asked her if I could have this cardboard that was laying around unused in her cellar.

She said, “O.K., Jerry boy, anytime you want it, it's O.K. with me. It's not doing me any good the way it is.”

Mrs. Weber said it just like that, without even hesitating.

It took a lot of nerve to ask her. You see, I am pretty nervous from drinking and run down from living in that shack on the lot. I'm all alone and do a lot of thinking. All this thinking has sort of pressed into my mind and I'm not relaxed anymore. I feel so dirty; my clothing is old and torn.

I don't feel like I used to some years back. I'm only 32 now but I feel like some sort of animal outcast.

Christ, it seems not like too long ago when I was going to high school in a clean blue sweater, carrying books on geometry and algebra, economics, civics, and all those things.

I sort of thought of that when I asked Mrs. Weber for the cardboard and it helped a little. She was a big woman, a clean, big woman just this side of being fat. She had on a different dress every day, bright new colors, and she made me think of soap suds and soft, cool things.

I thought of when I had been married, of the four years with Kay, the various apartments, the lousy factory jobs.

Those factories got me down and I began hitting the bottle at night—at first now and then, and after a while, most of the time.

I lost job after job and then I lost Kay, and I thought of it all as I asked Mrs. Weber for the cardboard.

I hadn't always been a wino and a vag.

As Mrs. Weber walked away I looked at the backs of her legs, the sunshine hugging the nylons. Her arms, and the hair like something to make you sing.

Don't get me wrong. I know what I'm accused of. But I'm honest, and also I think I'm innocent of this rape charge, and I know I'm getting this mixed up but I'm trying to get it down so you can see what I mean. I don't want to miss out on anything.

A rapist, that's what they call me.

After Mrs. Weber went into the house, I looked down on my dirty and stained hands.

The neighborhood was used to me in my paper shack, a little sorry for me and a little amused with me.

But I was harmless.

I am harmless.

I'm no rapist, on the bible or anything you want.

I wouldn't
dare
touch Mrs. Weber—she was so far above me, such a different creature entirely, that the thought neither occurred to her or to me or to anybody else.

It was impossible. . . .

Well, one day I was moseying around and I noticed the cellar door open. I had a little hangover of a sort and nothing to drink, and I thought, well, might as well be doing something, might help me forget my sorrows. It was one of those cloudy days when it looked like rain but it never did and you almost went crazy waiting for it but it just hung there and your mind kept saying,
well, come on, come on, rain
, but it never did. It just hung there.

I went down there and found an electric light. Click, it went on, and it stank the cellar-stink down there. It made you think of wet gunnysacks and spiders or say a human arm buried somewhere in the mud, a human arm with some of the sleeve around it, and if you lifted it out of the mud, a bunch of water bugs would run up and down its side, scurrying past each other in direct line paths, with now and then a bug or two shooting out of the constellation.

Constellation!

You didn't know I knew a word like that! You see, I am not just an ordinary vag. It's just that the grape has me down.

Well, anyhow, the cardboard was very wet and I figured I wouldn't get anything for it at all, but I decided to drag it all up out of there because maybe Mrs. Weber would pay me just to get rid of a mess like that.

I was afraid of spiders, though. I have always been afraid of spiders. It's a funny thing with me. I've always been afraid of them and hated them. When I see a spider with a fly in the web, and the spider moving about swiftly, weaving like something mad and evil and dark, that movement there—I can't explain it. Oh God, I'm getting off the track. I am accused of this rape. I'm accused of raping a ten-year-old girl and I am accused of raping her mother, and here I am talking about spiders.

It all began in that cellar with the cardboard. You'll just have to believe me. I didn't know that Mrs. Weber's little girl was down there in the cellar with me. I didn't know until she spoke. When she did, I was so scared I jumped up into the air like a sand flea.

“What're you doing
down here in this cellar?” I asked her right away.
I could make out a red dress and white bloomers.
As I said, she was about nine or ten years
old. She was just like her mother: clean and plump,
a real little lady, an apple dumpling. But I was
scared of her almost like I was scared of her
mother, but I was more scared not to act like
an adult, and since I didn't know much about little
girls, I tried to act like an adult to sort
of fool her, you see.

She didn't answer my question. She
just sat there in her red dress and white bloomers,
looking at me. That's the way kids are, I guess.
I got kind of nervous then. The adult thing wasn't working.

“I asked you,” I repeated, “what you were doing down here!”

“Nothin'.”

“Nothing? Aren't you afraid of spiders?”

“Naw! I'm bigger'n they are.”

Well, I hadn't thought of that. People often make me feel silly like that: I'd say something I'd think was sensible and then they'd say something that would take all the sense out of my statement, and then I couldn't answer.

I couldn't answer the little girl either, so I bent over and went ahead with stacking my cardboard over by the steps so I could drag it out. I didn't want to stack too much of it against the steps, though, because then me and the little girl would be trapped down in that cellar together all alone. I didn't want that to happen on account of the spiders and things.

“You're a pretty man but you're awful dirty. Don't you have a place to wash?”

Well, I'm telling you, that made me feel sort of funny. It was the first time anybody'd said anything like that to me for a long time. It gave me a real lift, somebody saying something like that.

Of course, I'd always imagined I was handsome in my way, and the little girl had seen it too.

“I don't have any place to wash. I just live in a paper shack,” I told her.

“Why don't you use our house?”

“People don't do that, little girl. Everybody uses their own place and my place doesn't have any water.”

“But I'll let you use our
house. We got water upstairs. And soap. Green soap, pink
soap, white soap, towels, washrags . . . everything.”

“Well, thanks a lot little girl but I have to refuse your offer. And besides, your mother wouldn't like that.”

“My mother has gone downtown.”

“You mean, you're all alone by yourself, little girl?” I asked her.

Though I called her a little girl, she looked like a little woman. A little woman in a short dress with white clean legs and white clean bloomers. She was just like her mother.

“How long's your mother been gone?”

“She just left.”

“How long does she usually stay downtown?”

“She always stays all day.”

“And you're sure you're all alone?”

“Sure I'm sure.”

“Well, that's all right, but I got no right in your mother's place.”

“But she'd never know. And you're so dirty I feel sorry for you, mister.”

“And you'd never tell on me, no matter what happens?”

“No matter what happens.”

“Promise? Word of honor?”

“I promise. Word of honor.”

“You're a nice little girl,” I told her. “A real nice little girl. . . .”

Well, we went upstairs and I walked into the bathroom and took off my shirt and let the hot water run into the washbowl. It was real funny to see tile again. It made me feel sort of strong and good again.

There was no reason I couldn't have those things again. There was no reason I couldn't have anything I desired. Maybe it was my lucky day.

I began to sing the song “Happy Days Are Here Again.” The steam from hot water rose off the bowl and I let it float against and around my face like a big hand cleaning the dirt out of me, cleaning the misused life out of me. It wasn't too late. I was only 32.

Some people even considered me handsome.

“Say, why don't you
get into the bathtub?” the little girl asked me.