Love Ain't Nothing but Sex Misspelled (11 page)

Kitty screamed insanely, over and over again, and her face was white as maggot's flesh. She grabbed at Feathertop's sleeve and shrieked in his ear, "Help him! Help him! Do something!"

Do? Do? Feathertop Ernie Cargill was plastered to the cotton bales with fright. He wasn't gonna do a thing. It was the kid's fight. He should of known better than to bring a girl on the freights. It was his own--

The kid grabbed the wrist as it came down, bringing the rusty death with it, and he twisted the arm back back back as far as he could. The big man was off-balance, and at that instant the train hit a curve. The big man fell over, and the kid was on top of him. In one flashing, lightning movement Cappy had the knife in his own hand, and he did not hesitate.

He brought it up and down and up and down again, and there was red on the blade, and red on the big man's shirt, and red on his chest, and red on the floorboards.

Kitty shrieked maddeningly, and fainted.

The kid got off the corpse, and dropped the knife with stunned disbelief. "He--he's d-dead.

"OhmiGod ..." the kid murmured. "Who'll believe me? I been in trouble before, but never like this. What'll I do?"

Kitty moaned, and the kid rushed to her side, cradling her head in his lap. "Kitty, we--we gotta get outta here ... we gotta get away before we get to a town or someth--"

"We're in a town now." Ernie pointed to the rail yards that had taken form around them. His hand froze where it was pointing. It was aimed dead at a railroad switchman who was staring in at them through the open door of the boxcar, who was cupping his hands, who was screeching at a group of gandy dancers farther down the tracks. The men glanced at the freight train slowing to a stop, and they began hopping the tracks, running for the boxcar in a group.

"Rail dicks!" Ernie screamed, and leaped to run.

The kid was rocking back and forth with Kitty's head in his lap, whispering, "Good-bye, honey, good-bye ..."

Ernie stopped as he pulled open the sliding door on the other side of the boxcar. He stopped, and a strange feeling came over him. He looked at the kids, and memories crowded in on him. He remembered Midge, and the child, and the years in the bands, and all the freights and all the booze, and there was a choking in his throat.

He bent down and lifted the knife from the floor. He wiped the handle--but not the blade--clean on his jacket, and then gripped it firmly.

Stooping, he lifted the boy by his underarms, and stood him on his feet. Then he helped Kitty to rise.

"Go out the other door, and don't stop running till you're a long ways from here. You understand?"

"But I--" Cappy began, looking from Ernie to the body of the big man.

"Go on!" Ernie hit him in the arm. "Go on, and be good to her! You stupid son of a bitch!" He shoved them toward the open door on the opposite side of the boxcar, and as the train came to a shuddering halt, they leaped free, and ran off across the rail yards.

The yard bulls and linemen were running up to the boxcar as Ernie sat down on the cotton bales.

It wasn't so bad. He could holler self-defense. It might be okay. But either way, his time had passed. He was a young man, but so old, and so tired. It wouldn't of been right for them kids. Not right at all.

Some people are meant to ride the dark train out, and others not. That's the way it's got to be.

He pushed the feathery hair from his eyes.

He was tired, and the dead guy had polished off the last of the Sweet Lucy, damn him. And he smelled of pig shit. But not permanently.

--Elizabethtown, Kentucky, 1959

VALERIE: A TRUE MEMOIR

Here's one I think you'll like. In this one I come off looking like a schmuck, and don't we all love stories in which the invincible hero, the all-knowing savant, the omnipotent smartass is condignly flummoxed? It's about Valerie.

Begins around 1968: I knew this hanging-out, El-lay photographer named Phil. He wasn't the world's most terrific human being (in point of fact, he was pretty much what you'd call your garden-variety creep), but he somehow or other wormed his way into my life and my home--I believe wormed is the right word--and occasionally used my residence as the background locale for sets of photos of young ladies in the nude. Phil would show up at my house in the middle of my workday, all festooned with lights and reflectors and camera boxes... and a pretty girl, whom he would usher into one of the bathrooms and urge to divest herself of her clothing, vite vite!

Now I realize this may ring tinnily on the ears of those of you who spend the greater part of your off-hours lurching after your gonads, but having edited a men's magazine in Chicago some years ago, the sight of a lady in deshabille does not cause sweat to break out on my palms. What I'm saying is that after two years of examining transparencies framed in a light-box, while wearing a loupe to up their magnification, all saidtransparencies of the world's most physically-sensational women, all stark naked ... one develops a sense of proportion about such things. One begins looking for more exotic qualities--such as the ability on the part of the ladies to make you laugh or cry or feel as though you've learned something. (As an aside: nothing serves better to kill ingrained sexism than an overdose of flesh in living color; very quickly one differentiates between images on film and living, breathing human beings. I commend it to all you gentlemen who still use the words broad and chick.)

Consequently, it was not my habit to skulk around the house while Phil was snapping the ladies. When they'd take a break, I'd often sit with them and have a cup of coffee and we'd enter into a conversation, but apart from that I'd generally sit in my office and bang the typewriter. This may seem to have been the wrong thing to be banging, but, well, there you are. (Because of this attitude, Phil drew the wholly erroneous conclusion that I was gay, and had occasion, subsequently, to pass along his lopsided observation, sometimes to young ladies with whom I had become intimate. What a nasty thing to say, particularly from a man who lures six-year-old boys into the basements of churches and then defiles, kills and eats them, not necessarily in that order. Isn't idle gossip a wonderful thing!)

This use of my home and myself by The Demon Photographer went on for about a year, and I confess to permitting the inconvenience because on several of these shooting dates I did meet women with whom I struck up relationships. One such was Valerie.

(Of course I know her last name, you fool. I'm not giving it here out of deference to her family and what comes later in this saga.)

The Demon Photographer--squat, ginger-haired, insipid--arrived one afternoon with her, and I was zonkedfrom the moment I saw her. She was absolutely lovely. A street gamine with a smile that could melt Jujubes, a warm and outgoing friendliness, a quick wit and lively intelligence, and a body that I would have called dynamite during my chauvinist period. We hit it off immediately, and when Phil slithered away at the end of the session, Valerie stayed on for a while.

It didn't last all that long, to be frank. I can't recall all the specifics of disenchantment, but attrition set in--it's happened to all of you, so you know what I mean--and after a short while we parted: as friends.

Over the next few years, Valerie popped back into my life at something like six month intervals, and if I wasn't involved with anyone we'd get it on for a few days, and then away she'd fly once more. There was always a kind of bittersweet tone to our liaisons: the scent of mimosa (and mimesis, had I but known), dreams half glimpsed, the memories of special touches. There was always the feeling that something lay unspoken between us, and a phrase from Sartre's THE REPRIEVE persisted: "It was as if a great stone had fallen in the road to block my path." In a way, I believe I was in love with Valerie.

Time passed. In mid-May of 1972 I was scheduled to speak at the Pasadena Writers' Week, and early the day of the appearance, I received a call from Valerie. I hadn't heard from her in almost a year.

After the hellos and my unconfined pleasure at hearing her voice, I asked, "What are you doing tonight?"

"Going out with you," she said.

(Witness, gentle readers: the desiccated ego of The Author, suddenly pumped full of self-esteem and jubilation, merely refractions of adoration at the perceptivity and swellness of a bright, quick lady saying, "You're fine." What asses we machismo buffoons can be.)

"Listen, I'm slated to go out and speak in Pasadena to a gaggle of literary types. Why don't you go with me and watch how I turn the crowd into a lynch mob."

"That's where I am," she said. "In Pasadena. At my mother's house. You can pick me up and I'll stay with you for a couple of days."

"I'll buy that dream," I said, and we set up ETA and coordinates.

That evening, in company with Edward Winslow Bryant, Jr. (dear friend, sometime house guest, outstandingly talented young writer and author of the Macmillan collections, AMONG THE DEAD, CINNABAR and co-author of PHOENIX WITHOUT ASHES), I drove out to Pasadena to pick up Valerie. When she answered the door she paused momentarily, framed in the opening, wearing a dress the shade of a bruised plum. I said: a body that should have been on permanent exhibition in the Smithsonian. Wearing nothing under it.

Oh, Cupid, you pustulant twerp! One of these days some nether god is going to jam that entire quiver of crossbow bolts right up your infantile ass!

I went down like a bantamweight in an auto chassis crusher.

Carrying her overnight case, her hair dryer and curlers, her suitcase, her incredibly sweet-smelling clothes on wire hangers, I took her to the car, and was rewarded by the sight of Ed Bryant's eyes as they turned into Frisbies. Not to mention the unsettling memories of the hugs and kisses and liftings off the floor and spinnings around I'd just received inside the house.

We did the speaking gig, and Valerie sat in the front row displaying a thoroughly unnerving expanse of leg and thigh. I may have fumfuh'd a bit.

Afterward, Valerie, Ed and I went to have a late dinner at the Pacific Dining Car. Sitting over beefsteak tomatoes and the thickest imported Roquefort dressing in the Known World,Valerie started whipping numbers on me like this:

"I've always had a special affection for you. I should have moved in with you three years ago. Boy, was I a fool."

I mumbled things of little sense or import.

"Maybe I'll move in with you now ... if you want me."

The next day, a girl from Illinois was to have flown in for an extended weekend. "Give me a minute to make a phone call," I said, and sprinted. I made the call. Bad vibes. Harsh language. Dead line.

"Yeah, why don't you move in with me," I said, slipping back into the booth. Everyone smiled.

When she went to the loo, Ed--whose perceptions about people are keen and reserved--leaned over and said, "Hang onto this one. She's sensational."

Opinion confirmed. By a sober outside observer.

So I took her home with me. The next day, Ed split for his parents' home in Wheatland, Wyoming, beaming at Harlan for his good luck and prize catch. That left, in the household, myself, Valerie, and Jim Sutherland: young author of STORMTRACK, occasional house guest and ex-student of your humble storyteller at the Clarion Writers' Workshop in SF & Fantasy.

Later that day, Valerie asked me if she could use the telephone to make a long distance call to San Francisco. I said of course. She had told me, by way of bringing me up to date on her peregrinations, that since last she'd seen me she had been working in San Francisco, mostly as a topless waitress at the Condor and other joints; that she had been rooming with another girl; that she had been seeing a guy pretty steadily, but he was into a heavy dope scene and she wanted to get away from it; and she loved me.

After the call, she came into my office in the house and said she was worried. The guy, whom she'd called to tell she was not coming back, hadgotten rank with her. The words bitch and cunt figured prominently in his diatribe.

She said she wanted to fly up to San Francisco that day, to clean out her goods before he could get over there and rip them off or bust them up. She also said, very nicely, that if she went up, she wanted to buy a VW minibus from a guy she knew. It would only cost $100 plus taking over the payments, and she'd need a car if she was going to come back here to live. "I want to work and pay my way," she said.

Or in the words of Bogart as Sam Spade, "You're good, shweetheart, really good." Remember, friends, no matter how fast a gun you are, there's always someone out there who's faster. And how better to defuse the suspicions of a cynical writer than to establish individuality and a plug-in to the Protestant Work Ethic.

She asked me for the hundred bucks.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the hundred at that moment, even though I said credit-card-wise I'd pay for her plane ticket to San Francisco.

She said that was okay, she'd work it out somehow. Then she went to pack an overnight bag, leaving all the rest of her goods behind, and promised she'd be driving back down the very next day.

Jim Sutherland offered to drive her to the airport--I was on a script deadline and had to stay at the typewriter--and she left with many kisses for me and deep looks into my na·ã·ve eyes, telling me she was all warm and squishy inside at having finally found me, Her White Knight.

It wasn't till Jim returned, young, innocent, a college student with very little bread, that I found out she had asked him for the hundred bucks, too. And he'd loaned it to her, with the promise of getting it back the next day.

The worm began to gnaw at my trust:

Valerie, the Golden Girl, the Little Wonder of the Earth, having fun-danced her way into my life again, had now cut out for San Francisco with a hundred dollars of Jim's money. Butshe'd said she could manage somehow without the hundred ...

If she'd needed it that badly, after I'd said I didn't have it, why didn't she ask me again, rather than come on with a kid she'd just met a day earlier? How the hell had Jim come up with that much bread on the spur of the moment?