Bullet Park (22 page)

Nailles turned and saw that Hammer was in the back row. Hammer left the room. “Mr. Hammer,” the secretary said, “lives on Powder Hill and seems to be the sort of man who would fit into the company all right but when we asked about his experience he said that he’d been the member of a fire department in a place called Ashburnham. It’s outside Cleveland. So we wrote for his papers and the letter was returned. There isn’t any fire department in Ashburnham. There never was. I don’t like to accuse a man of lying but at the same time we don’t want any phonies in the outfit, do we?”

“How do we know there isn’t a fire department in Ashburnham,” Nailles asked.

“The letter was returned.”

“It could have been a slipup in the post office. Why don’t we take him in? The roster isn’t full and even if he doesn’t have any experience he could help with the truck wash.”

“Do you want to put that in the form of a motion?”

“I move that Paul Hammer be elected a member of the fire department.”

“I second the motion.”

“All those in favor say aye.”

“Aye.”

“Contrary-minded?”

“Everything’s been ready for twenty minutes,” Charlie Maddux shouted up the stairs, “and if you don’t get your arses down here now it will all be spoiled. I don’t mind cooking but I don’t like to see everything get cold.”

The meeting was adjourned. Eliot joined Hammer at the bar and asked if he was a fisherman. He was motivated entirely by kindness. Hammer said that he was. “There’s a little stream in Venable that I sometimes go to on Saturday morning,” Eliot said. “If you’d like to try it I’ll pick you up at around eight o’clock. This time of year I use bait.”

On Saturday morning Eliot, with Tessie in the back seat, picked up Hammer and they started north on Route 61. Route 61 was one of the most dangerous and in appearance one of the most inhuman of the new highways. It had basically changed the nature of the Eastern landscape like some seismological disturbance, forcing it to conform, it seemed, to some parts of Montana. At least
fifty men and women died on its reaches each year. On a Saturday morning the mixture of domestic and industrial traffic was catastrophic. Trucks as massive and towering as the land castles of the barbarians roared triumphantly downhill and labored uphill at a walking pace. Passing them and repassing them made this simple journey seem warlike. Nailles remembered the roads of his young manhood. They followed the contours of the land. It was cool in the valleys, warm on the hilltops. One could measure distances with one’s nose. There was the smell of eucalyptus, maples, sweet grass, manure from a cow barn and, as one got into the mountains, the smell of pine. There were landmarks—abandoned farms—a stone tower and a blue lake. In the windows of the houses one passed one saw a cat, an array of geraniums, the face of a child or an old man. He remembered it all as intimate, human and pleasant, compared to this anxious wasteland through which one raced the barbarians.

They turned off 61 at Venable, bought some bait in the village, and started into the woods. It was a walk of about two miles and Tessie limped along gallantly although it was a struggle for the old bitch. Coming down into a valley they heard the sound of the stream. It was explicitly the sound of laughter—nothing else. Giddy laughter, the laughter of silly girls and nymphs, rang through the bleak spring woods. The stream was shallow—this would account for the asinine and continuous laughter—and they walked upstream until they found a deep pool. “I’ll go further up and fish down,” Nailles said.
“Why don’t we plan to meet here at around noon. I want to get back for lunch.” Off he went with Tessie.

When they met at noon Nailles had taken two trout. Hammer had caught nothing. They both carried flasks of bourbon and they sat on the banks of the stream—immersed in the sound of watery laughter—and had a drink. They were about the same weight, height and age, and they both wore a size-eight shoe. Nailles’s hair was dark and long enough to fall over his brow. He had a habit of combing it or pushing it up with his fingers. His father had criticized this gesture and he may have clung to it as a sign of rebelliousness and independence. Hammer’s hair was brown and cut very short. Nailles’s face was the broadest and most open. Hammer’s face was thin and he frequently touched it with his fingers—a sort of groping gesture as if he were looking for something he had lost. His right hand moved over his face from time to time as one’s hand moves over a shelf in a dark closet where a key has been left. His laughter was sharp—three harsh, explosive sounds. He had a nervous way of shifting his head, setting his teeth and bracing his shoulders as if his thinking consisted of a series of resolves and decisions. I must cut down on my smoking. (Teeth-setting.) Life can be beautiful. (Shoulder bracing.) I am often misunderstood. (A sudden lifting of the head.) Nailles’s manner was much more serene.

The force of friendship—a force that Nailles had never seen described—was nearly as important to him as love although there was no resemblance at all between the two. Love with its paraphernalia of sexuality, jealousy,
nostalgia and exaltation was easier to recognize than friendship, which seemed to have (excepting athletic equipment) no paraphernalia at all. Nailles had enjoyed a large number of friends for as long as he could remember. Most of his friends were partners in games—skiing, fishing, cards or drinking. He was intensely contented in the company of his friends—in which he would now count Hammer—but it was a contentment in which there was no trace of jealousy, sexuality or nostalgia. He could remember as a boy—and as a man—friends who were both jealous and possessive but he could not honestly recall having experienced this. In the clubs that he belonged to there was some vestigial, adolescent jockeying for popularity—or perhaps love—but Nailles was innocent of this. This was not insensibility. To ski a mountain in tandem with a friend was, for Nailles, close to bliss but his happiness frustrated analysis. He was genuinely delighted to meet an old friend but there was no sorrow when they parted. His friends played a practical role in his dreams but no role at all in his longings. When they were apart he did not correspond—he scarcely remembered them—but his happiness when they were reunited was absolute. Here was an affection, stripped of all the sentiments that make an affection recognizable. Nailles was very happy, drinking bourbon in the woods with Hammer.

That Hammer planned to murder his fishing companion did not, at this point, strike him in any way as unnatural. Looking at his victim Hammer thought that he would like to leach from his indictment all the petulant
clichés of complaint. He knew that Nailles merchandised Spang and he had heard the worst of the commercials on TV. (
If you were ashamed of your clothing, wouldn’t you change it? If you were ashamed of your house, wouldn’t you improve it? If you were ashamed of your car, wouldn’t you turn it in? Then why be ashamed of your breath when Spang can offer you breath-charm for periods of up to six hours
…) It was infantile to rail at this sort of thing, Hammer thought. It had been the national fare for twenty-five years and it was not likely to improve. He wanted change and newness but he wanted his wants to be mature. Why despise Nailles because he loved the gold cigarette lighter that he now took out of his pocket. The economy was frankly capitalistic and who but a child would be shocked to observe that its principal talisman was gold? The woman who dreamed of a mink coat—Hammer thought—had more common sense than the woman who dreamed of heaven. The nature of man was terrifying and singular and man’s environment was chaos. It would be wrong, he thought, to call Nailles’s religious observances a sham. He guessed they were vague and perhaps sentimental but since Christ’s Church was the only place in Bullet Park where mystery was professed and since there was much that was mysterious in Nailles’s life (the thighs of Nellie and his love for his son) there was nothing delinquent in his getting to his knees once a week. Hammer had chosen his victim for his excellence.

“Didn’t I see your son directing traffic at the Browns’,” Hammer asked.

“Yes,” Nailles laughed. “He directs traffic at cocktail parties. He’s been terribly sick.”

“What was the matter?”

“Mononucleosis.”

“Who’s your doctor?”

“Well we had Mullin until they shut him down and then we went to old Dr. Feigart but neither of them really cured Tony. It was a very strange thing. He’d been sick for over a month when someone told us about this guru. He calls himself Swami Rutuola. He lives over the funeral parlor on River Street. He came to the house one night and I don’t know how he did it but he cured Tony.”

“Is he a holy man?”

“I really don’t know. I don’t know anything about him. I don’t even know what he did. I wasn’t allowed into the room. But he fixed up Tony. He’s fine now. He plays basketball and directs traffic at cocktail parties. I must remind him that the Lewellens are having a party on Friday. Well, shall we go?”

They walked back through the woods, the executioner and his victim, trailed by the old setter. Nailles stowed their tack in the back of the car and then opened the door for Tessie. “Jump in, Tessie,” he said, “jump in, girl.” Tessie whined. Then she made a lurch for the seat and fell to the ground. “Poor old girl,” Nailles said. He picked her up, an awkward armful with her legs sticking out, and laid her on the back seat of the car.

“Why don’t you do something about her,” Hammer asked.

“Well I’ve done everything I can or almost everything,”
Nailles said. “There is a kind of serum you can get, a distillate of Novocain. It’s supposed to prolong a dog’s life but it costs fifteen dollars a shot and they have to have it once a week.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Hammer said.

“What did you mean?”

“Why don’t you shoot her?”

The contemptible callousness of his new companion, the heartless brutality involved in the thought of murdering a beloved and trusting old dog, provoked a rage in Nailles so towering and so pure that for a moment he might have killed Hammer.

He said nothing and they drove back to Bullet Park.

H
ave you ever committed a murder? Have you ever known the homicide’s sublime feeling of rightness? Conscientious men live like the citizens of some rainy border country, familiar with a dozen national anthems, their passports fat with visas, but they will be incapable of love and allegiance until they break the law. Have you ever waked on a summer morning to realize that this is the day when you will kill a man? The declarative splendor of the morning is unparalleled. Lift up a leaf to find a flaw but there will be none. The shade of every blade of grass is perfect. Hammer mowed his lawns that day. The imposture was thrilling. Look at Mr. Hammer cutting his grass. What a nice man Mr. Hammer must be.

Marietta had gone to Blenville for the weekend. Hammer was kept busy with his lawns until noon when he had a drink. He drove to the supermarket and bought a can of Mace and a loaded truncheon from the Self-Defense counter. Everything was ready, everything but
the gasoline. He shook the can with which he had refueled the lawn mower. It was empty. He had this filled and then sat on his terrace. At three o’clock the mailman drove his truck down the street, stopping at the mailboxes that stood at the foot of every walk and drive. There was no mail for Hammer but from every house but his someone appeared—a cook, a mother-in-law, an invalid—and opened their boxes in a way that seemed furtive, intimate, almost sexual. It was a little like undoing one’s trousers. They groped inside for some link to the tempestuous world—bills, love letters, checks and invitations. Then they returned. It was a cloudless day. The birds in the trees seemed, to Hammer, to be singing either an invitation list or the names of a law firm.
Tichnor, Cabot, Ewing, Trilling
and
Swope
, they sang. He went into the pantry, smiling at the bottles. He did this three times and on his fourth trip to the pantry poured himself a stiff drink. He drank, he thought, not for courage or stimulation but to make the ecstasy of his lawlessness endurable. He drank too much. Hammer was not the sort of drinker who repeats himself, staggers and drives dangerously; but the inflammation of his thinking was hazardous. Towards dusk he wanted to tell someone his plans; he needed a confidant.

He settled on the holy man over the funeral parlor and settled on him so decisively that he must, unconsciously, have made the decision earlier. He drove into the slums and pounded on the door of the Temple of Light, “Come in,” said Rutuola. He sat in a chair with his right hand covering his bad eye.

“Are you the holy man?” Hammer asked.

“Oh no, no indeed. I’ve never claimed to be that. You must excuse me. I am very tired tonight.”

“You cure the sick?”

“Sometimes, sometimes. I help with prayers but I am so tired tonight that I cannot help myself. I have said a hundred times that I am sitting in a house by the sea at four o’clock and that it is raining but I know that it is half past five and I am sitting in an old chair over a funeral parlor.”

“You remember Tony Nailles?”

“Yes.”

“I am going to kill him,” Hammer said. “I am going to burn him on the altar of Christ’s Church.”

“Get out of here,” the swami said. “Get out of the Temple of Light.”

   The Lewellens’ guests had been invited for seven thirty. Tommy Lewellen stood on his terrace. His idea of a party was a day and a night he had spent in West Berlin with three Kurfürstendamm whores. That was a party. Things were different in Bullet Park, he thought, as he watched the caterer’s waiters set tables for fifty under a tent lighted with paper lanterns. “The Amalgamated Development Corporation and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Lewellen cordially request the pleasure …” The business name on the invitation was put there so Lewellen could claim the party as a tax exemption. If the claim was accepted the party would cost him nothing and he would net a thousand. Lewellen was more interested in
the financial arrangements of his wife’s parties than in anything else. He sometimes got so bored that he seemed to see straight through the display of elegance to the bills, canceled checks, even the nails in the floor. What was wrong with friendly talk and well-dressed men and women eating ham and chicken? Nothing, nothing, nothing at all except that the blandness of the scene would be offensive. No one would get drunk, no one would fight, no one would likely get screwed, nothing would be celebrated, commemorated or advanced. If the gathering he awaited stood at the brink of anything it stood at the brink of licentiousness. Sheer niceness, he thought, might drive a man to greet his guests wearing nothing but a cockwig. Gross and public indecencies would cure the evening of its timelessness and relate it vigorously to death. The waiters were setting out bowls of flowers. The flowers looked fresh enough but Lewellen guessed they had spent the afternoon at a wedding reception and would, after a night in the refrigerator, wilt during a fund-raising lunch in Greenwich, Connecticut.