High Hunt (12 page)

“They're perfectly safe,” I said. “Hang up now so I can call my brother and tell him you want to go to his little clambake tomorrow.”

“Bye now.” She hung up, then she called right back.

“What time tonight?”

I told her.

I opened myself a beer and sat down at the kitchen table. What in the hell was I mixed up in anyhow? This whole damned situation had all the makings of a real messy blow-up. Christ Almighty, you needed a damned scoreboard just to keep track of who was screwing who—whom. When they all caught up with each other, it could wind up like World War III with bells on it, and I was going out in the woods with these guys—every one of them armed to the teeth. Shit O'Deare!

I didn't belong in this crowd. But then I didn't belong with a guy like Stan either, with the chic little gatherings and the little drama groups. Nor probably with my little Bolshevik sweetheart with her posters and pamphlets and free love. Nor with the phony artsy crowd with the paste-on beards and the Latvian folk-music records. Maybe for guys like me there just aren't any people to really be with. Maybe if they were really honest, everybody would admit the same—that all this buddy-buddy crap or “interaction” shit was just a dodge to cover up the fact that they're all absolutely alone. Maybe nobody's got anybody, and maybe that's what we're all trying to hide from. Now there's an ugly little possibility to face up to in the middle of a cool day in August.

Finally Lou left. I waited a while longer and then took the
cleaning up to Jack's trailer. Marg pulled a real bland face. She'd be a tiger in a poker game. We talked a few minutes, and then I drove back over to Mike's place and went back to work on the rifle. At least that was something I could get my hands on.

I picked up Clydine about three thirty the next afternoon, and we drove on out to Milton for the combination Gl-party-sex-orgy Sloane had cooked up. I was still a little soured on the whole thing, but Clydine seemed to think it would be a kind of campy gas to watch a couple of Establishment types and what she persisted in calling “their sordid little affairs.”

“You're beginning to sound like T. S. Eliot,” I told her.

She ignored that.

“What kind of a cat is your brother?” she asked me. “Is he anything like you?”

“Jack? Hell no,” I snorted. “He's a couple years older than I am. He was in trouble a lot when he was a kid. Then six years in the Navy right after high school. Married three times. Works in a trailer lot—part-time sales and general flunky. Drinks beer most of the time because he can't afford whiskey. Chases women. Screws a lot. He can charm the birds right out of the trees when he wants to. Something of an egomaniac. I guess that covers it.”

“Typical Hard Hat, huh?” she said grimly.

“Look, my little daffodil of the downtrodden, one of the things you'll learn as you grow older is that group labels don't work. You say Hard Hat, and you get a certain picture. Then you close your mind. But you scream bloody murder when some fortyish guy in a suit looks at you and says ‘Hippie' and then closes
his
mind. These goddamn labels and slogans are just a cop-out for people who are too lazy to think or don't have the equipment. Your labels won't work on my brother. He's completely nonpolitical.”

“You know,” she said quietly, “I wouldn't take that from anybody but you. I think it's because I know you don't care. Sometimes it gives me goose bumps all over—how much you don't care.”

“Come on,” I said, “don't get dramatic about it. I'm just at loose ends right now, that's all.”

“You'd make a terrific revolutionary,” she said. “With that attitude of yours, you could do anything. But that's inconsistent, isn't it? To be a revolutionary, you'd have to care about something. Oh, dear.” She sighed mightily.

I laughed at her. Sometimes she could be almost adorable.

“I'm
serious
,” she said. “What about the other guys?”

“Sloane? A hustler,
Petit-bourgeois
type.”

“That's a label, too, isn't it?” she demanded.

“Now you're learning. Calvin Sloane is a very complex person. He was probably fat, unloved, and poor as a child. He went right to the root of things—money. He's a pawnbroker, a used-car dealer, a part-owner of several taverns, and God knows what else. Anything that'll turn a buck. He's got it made. He uses his money the way a pretty girl uses her body. As long as Sloane's buying, everything's OK. Maybe he's accepted the fact that nobody's really going to like him unless he pays them for it. He can't accept honest, free friendship or affection—not even from his wife. That's why he takes up with these floozies. They're bought and paid for. He understands them. He can't really accept any other kind of relationship. Don't ever tell him this, but I like him anyway—in spite of his money.”

“You sure make it hard to hate the enemy,” she said.

“Walt Kelly once said, ‘We have met the enemy, and he is us.'”

“Who's Walt Kelly?”

“The guy who draws
Pogo
.”

“Oh. I prefer
Peanuts
.”

“That's because you're politically immature,” I told her.

She socked me on the shoulder. I think our popcorn-root-beer-drive-in-movie date the night before had caused us both to revert to adolescence. She'd been almost breathtaking in a skirt, sweater, and ponytail, and without those damned glasses; but I'd stuck to my guns—we'd only necked. Both of us had gone home so worked-up we'd been about ready to climb the walls. She'd made some pretty pointed threats about what she was going to do to me at the orgy.

“What about the women?” she asked. “The concubines?”

“Helen—that Sloane's trollop—is a pig. She's got a mind like a sewer and a mouth to match. Even in the circles she moves in, she's considered stupid since she does all of her thinking, I'm told, between her legs. Her husband's in the Air Force, and he's maniacally jealous, but she cheats on him anyway. I think she cheats just for the sake of cheating. I've about halfway got a hunch that this little blowout today was her idea. She likes her sex down and dirty, and probably she's been thrilled by orgies in some of the pornography she's always reading—undoubtedly moving her lips while she does—and she figures diddling in groups has just got to be dirtier than doing it in pairs. Maybe she figures to get a bunch-punch out of the deal.”

“Bunch-punch?”

“Multiple intercourse—gang-bang.”

“Oh. What about the other one?”

“Sandy? You got me, kid. She's good-looking, but she never says anything. You think
I'm
cool? She's so cool, she's just barely alive—or just recently dead, I haven't decided which. If you can figure her out, let me know.”

We drove on across the Puyallup River bridge and on out toward Fife and Milton.

The house Sloane had out in Milton was a little surprising. I'd half-expected one of those run-down rabbit hutches that are described euphemistically as “rental properties”—not good enough to live in yourself, but good enough to house former sharecroppers or ex-galley-slaves—always provided that they can come up with the hundred and a quarter a month.

Sloane's house, on the other hand, was damned nice. It was an older frame place with one of those deep porches all across the front, and it nestled up to its eaves in big, old shrubbery. There was about a half acre of lawn in front and probably more in back. A long driveway went up to the house and along one side of it to the garage behind the house. On the other side of the driveway was a garden plot that had pretty much gone to weeds.

I ran my car on up the driveway and pulled up just behind Sloane's Cadillac.

“Nice place,” Clydine said, looking out at the white-picket-fence-enclosed backyard.

“Well, well, well,” Jack said, bustling out of the house with a bottle of beer in his hand. “What have we here?”

Clydine and I got out of the car.

“My”—Jack grinned, coming through the gate—“she's a
little
one, isn't she?” He was giving her the full benefit of the dazzling Jack Alders' smile, guaranteed to melt glaciers and peel paint at a hundred yards.

“Jack,” I said, “this is Clydine.”

“
Clydine
? How the hell'd you ever get a name like that, sweetie?”

“I won it in a raffle,” she said with a perfectly straight face.

“She won it in a raffle!” Jack chortled with a forced glee. “That's pretty sharp, pretty sharp. Come on in the house, kids. Fuel up.” He waved the beer bottle at us and led the way toward the house.

“Far out,” Clydine murmured to me.

“Hey, gang,” Jack announced as we went in the back door, “you all know my brother Dan, and this is his current steady,
Clydine
. Isn't that a handle for you?” He pointed to each of the others standing around in the kitchen and repeated their names. “Tell you what, sweetie,” he said to Clydine, “I'm never gonna be able to manage that name of yours, so I'm just gonna call you
Clyde
.” He winked broadly at the rest of us.

She smiled sweetly at him, and then said very pleasantly but very distinctly, “If you do, I'll kick you right square in the balls.”

Sloane shrieked with laughter, almost collapsing on the floor. Jack looked stunned but covered it well, laughing a little hollowly with the rest of us. His jaws tightened up some though.

We had a couple of beers, got the girls organized, and then Jack, Sloane, and I went outside to tackle the yardwork.

I fell heir to a scythe and the chore of leveling the jungle that had been a garden. Once I got into it, I discovered that in spite of the weeds, there was a pretty fair amount of salvageable produce there. By the time I got through, I'd laid a couple bushels of assorted vegetables over on the grass strip between the garden and the driveway—radishes, carrots, lettuce, onions, cucumbers, and so forth. I hauled great armloads of weeds and junk back to a brush pile behind the garage. The place looked a lot better when I was done.

I washed off my produce at an outside faucet and put it on the back porch. Then I grabbed another beer and went to see how Jack and Cal were doing. I found them sitting on the front porch, staring down at the half-mowed lawn.

“Takin' a beer break, hey, Dan?” Sloane said.

“No. I finished up.”

“No shit?”

They had to come out and inspect the job. Then they looked at my haul on the back porch, and then we went back to the front porch to sit and stare at the lawnmower some more.

Sloane sighed. “Well,” he said, “I guess it's my turn in the barrel.” He walked heavily down the front stairs and cranked up the mower.

“That tomato of yours has got kind of a smart mouth, hasn't she?” Jack said sourly, lighting a cigarette.

“She just says what she thinks,” I told him.

“If she was with me, I'd slap a few manners into her.” He was still stinging from the put-down.

“You'd get your balls kicked off, too,” I told him. “She meant what she said about that.”

“A tough one, huh?” he said. “Where'd you latch onto her anyway?”

“She's the one I met at that Italian movie, remember?”

“Oh,
that
one. You sure got a weird taste in women, is all I can say.”

“She's a human being,” I said, “not just a stray piece of tail. As long as you treat her like a human being, fine. It's when you come on like she was a cocker spaniel that you run into trouble.” I knew there wasn't much point in talking to him about it. He wasn't likely to change.

“I'd still slap some manners into her if it was me,” he said.

“I don't hit women much,” I said, looking out toward the sunset.

He grunted and went down to spell Sloane on the mower.

Sloane came back up the steps, puffing and sweating like a pig. “Man,” he gasped, “am I ever out of shape. I'm gonna have to start jogging or something before we go up into the high country.”

“You said a mouthful there, buddy,” I said. “We probably all should. Otherwise one of us is going to blow a coronary.”

“Hey”—he giggled—“I like that little girl of yours. She's cute as a button, isn't she?”

“She's a boot in the butt,” I agreed.

“Boy, did she ever get the drop on old Jack. I thought he was gonna fall right on his ear when she threatened to bust his balls for him.”

“I think he's still a little sore about it.”

“He isn't used to havin' women react that way to his line.”

“She just doesn't buy the glad-hand routine,” I said, “and Jack doesn't know any other approach.”

“How'd you manage to latch onto her?”

“You'd never believe it,” I said.

“Try me.”

I told him about it.

“No kidding?” he said, laughing. Then a thought flickered across his face. “Say, she isn't a user, is she? I mean, a lot of those kids are. She hasn't got any stuff with her, has she? I can square the beef if the cops come in here because we're makin' too much noise or something, but if they come in and find her stoned out of her mind on something, that could get a little sticky.”

“No,” I told him. “No sweat—oh, she blows a little grass now and then, but I've told her that I don't particularly care for the stuff, and I don't get much kick out of talking to people when they're stoned. It's like talking into a wet mop. She stays away from it when she's with me. We've got a deal; I tell all her friends I'm an ex-con, and she stays off the grass when I'm around. What she does on her own time is her business.”

“Sounds like you two have quite an arrangement going.”

“For the most part, we don't try to tell each other what to do, that's all. We get along pretty good that way.”

“There, you lazy bastards!” Jack yelled, killing the lawnmower. “It's all done.”

“You do nice work,” Sloane said. “Let's go get cleaned up. I brought towels and soap and stuff. I get firsties on the shower.”

The girls had finished the inside cleanup and had already bathed and changed clothes. Sioane, Jack, and I all showered and changed while they cooked up the steaks and whipped up a salad out of some of my produce. We all had mixed drinks with dinner and a couple more afterward. Along about sundown things started to loosen up a bit.

“Hey,” Helen said, her hard, plastered-on face brightening, “let's play strip poker.”

“I didn't bring any cards,” Sloane said.

“Oh, darn,” she pouted. “How about you, Jack? Dan? Haven't one of you guys maybe got a deck of cards in your car?”

We both shook our heads.

“Maybe the people who lived here—” She jumped to her feet and ran into the kitchen to start rummaging through the various drawers.

“Je-sus
Christ
!” Clydine said, “if she wants to take her clothes off so goddamn bad, why doesn't she just go ahead and take her clothes off?”

Sandy smiled slightly. It was the first time I'd ever seen her do it.

“Come on, you guys,” Helen called, “help me look.”

“We cleaned out all those drawers this afternoon,” Sandy said, her voice seeming very far away.

“Damn it all, anyway,” Helen complained, coming back into the living room. She plunked herself back down on the couch beside Sloane, sulking.

The orgy wasn't getting off the ground too well.

“Jeeze,” Helen said, “you'd think somebody'd have a deck of cards. Myron
always
has a deck of cards with him. All the sergeants do. They play cards all the time.”