Moving On (112 page)

“You should have kept in touch with us, honey,” Melissa said. “We didn’t know where you were living. We had to ask the guys.”

“It’s not really ours,” Miri said. “We just borrowed it for a few days from a guy who’s out of town. We were gonna move across the park when we got some bread.”

Stone turned when she began to speak and looked at her with the same look of hostility he had given her at the door.

“Listen, tell these cunts to get out,” he said. “They’re your people, you tell them to go. We don’t need two bad cunts in here criticizing where we at and how we live. They think you’re too fuckin’ good for me an’ that’s all they’ve got to say and we already heard that, didn’t we?”

Miri was still crying. “I’m not too good,” she said pathetically.

“You sleazy bastard,” Melissa said, furious suddenly. She went over to face him. “Anybody human’s too good for you the way you act. I wouldn’t let you keep my cat. This is her sister—do you know what a sister is?”

“I don’t care what a sister is,” he said, looking back out the window. “I know what a bad cunt is and that means you. And her in the green too.”

Patsy felt at a loss. She knew what she meant to do but not how to accomplish it. Miri simply looked sick. Her eyes were strange, and though she was clearly reacting to a great strain, she seemed barely aware of what was happening. The cigarette had burned itself out and the room smelled of ash. What she wanted most was to get her sister out of the room where Stone was, so she could try and talk to her. But there was no other room, only a small bathroom. There was no kitchen. A carton of soft drinks sat by the mattress.

She decided the best thing to do was to join Melissa in the verbal fray. Perhaps they could drive him out, at least for a while.

“Look, Mr. Stone,” she said, “I don’t know how good or how bad you are but I have a friend coming in a little while and if you call me names like that when he’s here there’s apt to be trouble. I just thought I’d warn you.”

“There you are, now,” Stone said, looking down at Miri. “Didn’t I tell you? They got the marines right outside. They going to take you right back to Dallas, and it don’t matter what you want and it don’t matter what I want. And they didn’t have no trouble finding us. You told those motherfuckers on Clay Street right where we’d be.”

“No, listen,” Patsy said. “All I have outside is one middle-aged friend, and I’m perfectly willing to listen to what you and Miri want. There are plenty of things I’d like to know about this but I don’t see why I can’t talk about them without being slapped and called names.”

“Well, ask your little sister,” Stone said oversweetly. “Just ask your little sister.” And with a scowling glance at Melissa he turned and went quickly out the door. He didn’t look at Miri at all.

“He left,” she said vaguely. “Why did you make him go?”

She got up suddenly and began to rummage in the pile of clothes near the mattress. Melissa quickly came to Patsy and began to whisper.

“That bastard left just to panic her,” she said. “She’s high as the hills. We better just go with her and not try to stop her from looking for him. She might really tear loose if we try to stop her. Maybe we can ease her off a little if we walk.”

Miri was muttering to herself as she searched in the clothes. She pulled a thick black sweater on over her sweatshirt and dropped her skirt and struggled into a pair of jeans, but she stopped before she got them buttoned and ran to the window to look out. The terror in her face and the bulge of her abdomen over the cheap cotton panties shook Patsy and she tried to talk to Miri calmly.

“We’ll go with you to find him,” she said, but Miri had become oblivious to them. She rummaged in the clothes until she found a heavy chain with a medallion on it and she put that on her neck and then hastened to the door, wearing no shoes.

“She’s barefoot,” Patsy said. Melissa looked around quickly, but she didn’t spot any shoes, and shrugged. “Won’t hurt,” she said.

Miri was two or three doors ahead of them when they got to the street. They could hear her, still muttering.

“I just didn’t want us to lose her,” Melissa said. “If she got away from us and ran into Stone she’d really be gone. He’d hide her but good. As long as we stay with her we’re all right.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Patsy said.

Miri stopped at the first corner and looked around indecisively. They caught up with her and she seemed quite friendly toward them, but Patsy saw that she was without a sense of who they were. Her sense of who they were had grown dimmer and dimmer since the moment of the slap. She had hit her sister as hard as she could and then ceased to notice that she was her sister. Patsy was aware that she didn’t know how to talk to Miri and was content to let Melissa do it.

“You two been eating lately?” Melissa asked. “Maybe Stone went off to eat a meal.”

Miri shrugged, as if it were irrelevant. “We had a pizza,” she said but didn’t say when. Once or twice they met hippies as they approached the park. Miri stopped and asked them if they’d seen Stone. Both looked as if they had either just got up or else were looking for a good place to lie down. Neither had seen Stone.

Soon they angled into the park, Miri walking ahead. Patsy worried about what they would do if they found Stone. She had called earlier to give Joe the address, and was wondering what would happen if he and Stone arrived at the same time. She also wondered what had happened to all the things Miri had taken to college with her, clothes, phonograph, records, and such. There had been practically nothing in the tiny apartment. She had on heels, because of the St. Francis, and once they got in the park was hard put to keep up with Melissa and Miri. The grass was damp and in spots fairly long. Then they bumped into a couple of guys the girls knew. One had a serape and the other a sheepskin jacket and both had shoulder length hair and mustaches. Melissa, by a few snaps of her fingers, enlisted them in the cause, and they reversed their directions and joined the troupe.

One whose name was Frank dropped back and walked with Patsy. “Hi,” he said conspiratorially. “I understand we’re chasing Stone but why do we want to find him? I’d just as soon lose him.”

“I’m with you,” Patsy said. “We’re just trying to hold Miri together, actually. She was threatening to fly apart.”

“Yeah,” Frank said sagely, as if he knew all about it.

Then, as they were almost across the park, they passed a scene which for a time took Patsy’s mind off her sister. Fifteen or twenty motorcycles were there, and their riders were there too, and their riders’ women. Patsy glanced at them without much curiosity, for she had seen motocycle gangs before. But what she saw hit her almost as hard as the slap Miri had given her. Most of the cyclists were drinking beer and talking with what seemed to be the instrument man of a rock band; at least he was uncoiling wires and fiddling with a large pile of electronic gear. He seemed nervous and apprehensive and straightened up occasionally to whip his hair out of his eyes. But it was three cyclists somewhat to the side that gave Patsy the start. They were no hairier or dirtier or more disagreeable-looking than the others, but they had their pants down and were quite exposed. One thin one was leaning back against his cycle, a can of beer in one hand, while his woman, a hefty-looking creature in a black shirt and jeans leaned across the cycle and languidly pumped his penis with one hand. Another woman, whose back was to Patsy, was kneeling on the grass in front of a large cyclist who had a hairy stomach and a penis that was half erect. As Patsy looked, the woman reached up and grasped it, pulling it down. Patsy stumbled and looked away, dreadfully shocked, so stunned she felt weak for a moment. Neither Miri nor Melissa seemed to take more than glancing notice of the scene, or to think it unusual, but both the boys looked over cautiously.

“What in the world?” Patsy said, unable to keep from looking once more to be sure she had seen it. Several more of the cyclists had wandered over and partially blocked her view of the kneeling woman, but there was no doubt that she had seen it. The thin cyclist was still leaning against his cycle and the hefty girl still held his penis.

Frank noticed her confusion and seemed to have some sympathy for it. “New scene?” he asked, smiling pleasantly at her. “It’s the Angels. I think, I don’t know, they’re warming up for some birthday party or something. They won’t bother us if we go on. Those guys over there are taking their lives in their hands.” He nodded at a straggle of younger hippies, four boys and a girl, who were standing near a tree staring at the Angels.

“You don’t want to just stand and watch them,” Frank said. “It makes them want to do their thing, which is to beat the shit out of people.”

“But how can they get away with that?” Patsy asked, confused. “In the middle of the day. In
public?”

“Well, it’s the park,” Frank said, shrugging. “Nobody bugs you in the park, much.”

Soon they crossed out of the park into a section of old houses and small grocery stores. Most of the houses were iron gray, but on some the paint was peeling. Some had psychedelic posters in the windows and a few of the cars parked along the street were weirdly painted. At the first corner a teenager of fifteen or sixteen asked Frank if he could spare some change. The boy wore a good corduroy coat and black new-looking knee boots. Frank turned him down. “Fifty-dollar boots and he’s scrounging change,” he said disgustedly.

The day had clouded over again, at least in the part of the city they were in. Once in a while Patsy caught a distant glimpse of white buildings with the sun on them, but the clouds over the Haight-Ashbury were as gray as the houses. Miri had slowed a little. Whenever she passed a cluster of hippies she stopped to ask about Stone, always with negative results. She stopped and went into a little poster shop. Patsy and Frank caught up with Melissa and the other boy, whose name was George. They had a consultation. George wore the serape and had not perceived that the true object of their quest was to avoid Stone, not to find him.

“Why are we looking here?” he said. “He’s no head. He’s probably down Fillmore somewhere.”

“What do you think?” Patsy asked Melissa.

“She’s awfully zingy,” Melissa said. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. I don’t think she even knows where she is. She knows Stone doesn’t like this part of town. He hates hippies. You really going to take her to Texas?”

“I sure am.”

“Why?” George asked. “Isn’t it a bad place? Half the heads I know come from there. They all say it’s a bad place.”

“It may be a bad place for heads but it’s a nice place for expectant mothers,” Patsy said. “I’m taking her back. The only question is how to go about it.”

“I’m glad I’m not you,” Melissa said. “If you’re going to do it, I guess you ought to do it quick. Once you get her on a plane there’s not much she or Stone can do about it. We can stick with you until you get her to the airport, if you want us to.”

“I want you to,” Patsy said.

When Miri came out of the store she noticed Patsy again and they walked together back through the park, the other three behind them.

“Did you see Momma and Daddy?” Miri asked. “When are they going to send me some money? We can’t even buy grass. We’re going to have a party when we get some more money.”

“You should have called me. I’d have sent you money.”

But Miri seemed not really concerned about that or about anything. She walked along looking restlessly one way and another. The thought that she was going to have to bear a child when she was only a thin bewildered child herself hurt Patsy and made her all the angrier at her parents. When they got back to Miri’s street Joe Percy was there, sitting under the wheel of the Morgan. He was wearing a sports jacket and a tweed cap and was looking worried. “Is Stone here?” Miri asked him quickly.

“Well, somebody’s in apartment five. All I got was his attitude.”

Miri ran in and up the stairs and the five of them stood on the sidewalk looking downcast and indecisive.

“We can’t all go up,” Melissa said. “I don’t know which of us would make him the least mad.”

“I’m going up,” Patsy said after a moment. “She’s my sister and if it makes him mad that’s tough. If I need any help I guess I can yell.”

Joe and Melissa looked uneasy, but neither of them said anything and Patsy went in and up the stairs. She was very scared, as scared as she had been the night Sonny abducted her in his hearse, but in a different way. She was afraid of Stone on the one hand and afraid too that if she mismanaged things her sister might have a serious breakdown, something far beyond her power to cope with. But going away without Miri had become unthinkable. She went up despite her fear and knocked on the door of apartment five.

“Yeah,” Stone said.

“I’m Mrs. Carpenter,” she said. “I’d like to come in.”

The door didn’t open. “What for?” he asked.

“To get my sister and her things,” Patsy said.

“You are fucking crazy,” he said. “You think I’m gonna let you come in here and walk off with my piece?”

The way he said it angered her uncontrollably and she kicked the door as hard as she could. It was a thin door and rattled loudly. “Open that goddamn door,” she said.

He did, immediately, with a little sardonic smile. “Is that the way you kick niggers down in Texas?” he asked. Miri had taken off the black sweater and the jeans and was fumbling in the clothes as if she were trying to put them in some sort of order. She didn’t look around when Patsy came in.

Patsy was quivering with tension and anger. She let the remark about niggers pass. “I’m trying not to hate your guts,” she said, “but you do make it hard.”

“Well, don’t try,” he said softly. “Just go at it.”

“I’m going to take my sister to Texas,” she said. “We’re leaving as soon as I can get her things together, if she has any things left. If you want to make a fight out of it, okay. I’ll get my friends and lawyers and policemen and the marines if I have to, and if that’s what you want, okay.”

But Stone had turned sullen again. He shrugged and resumed his stance at the window. Miri was pulling on a gray skirt. Stone was silent, closed up. Patsy did not believe she had ever seen a human being as hard to handle. It was incredible to her that Miri, who had always been completely open, should have taken as her lover a man who seemed completely closed.