Street of No Return (7 page)

And the pain was there in his cracked-whisper voice as he said, "I won't say what I was doing on that street. It's got nothing to do with why I'm hiding from the law."

Jones Jarvis was quiet for some moments. He was studying the pain-racked eyes of the small white-haired man. When Jones finally spoke, his voice was very soft and almost tender. Jones said, 'All right, Eugene. We'll let it ride."

"But I want you to believe me. I'm giving it to you straight."

"Yes," Jones said. "That's the impression I get. Even though it's kind of blurry at the edges."

"It'll have to stay that way. I can't trim it down any closer."

"I guess you can't," Jones said. "But all the same, you got me sidetracked. You tell me it was past midnight and you're out for a stroll. In the Hellhole. You're just taking a stroll down here in the Hellhole. Where no man in his right mind walks alone after midnight. Unless he's looking to get hurt. Or do some hurting."

"I said I can't tell you--"

"All right, Eugene, all right." Jones smiled soothingly. "Let's leave it at that. Go on, take it from there."

Whitey took it from there and told the rest of it just as it had happened. He said it matter-of -factly, looking levelly at the old man, who sat there on the three-leg stool looking at him and into him and nodding slowly at intervals. When it was finished, he leaned back on the cot, resting on his elbows, waiting for the old man either to accept the story or to start looking for loopholes in it.

Jones Jarvis did not indicate whether he was buying it or doubting it or wondering how to take it. It seemed that Jones was thinking about something else. Now his eyes were aimed past Whitey, like lenses fixed for a wider-range focus.

Finally Jones shook his head very slowly and said, "I feel sorry for the Captain."

"It he ever gets hold of me," Whitey said, "I'll feel damn sorry for myself."

"He's really got his hands full," Jones said.

Whitey shrugged. "I don't care what he's got in his hands. Just so long as it ain't me."

But Jones was thinking above that and far beyond that. "I've lived in this neighborhood a good many years," he said. "It's always been exactly what they call it, a hellhole. But lately it's been worse than that. Like a furnace that can't hold the fire and all the flames are shooting out. It puts a certain smell in the air. Sometimes I walk outside at night and I can smell it. The smell of men hating each other. The rotten stink of race riot."

Whitey was only half listening. He was concentrating on the necessity of remaining hidden from the law. He wondered whether the old man would allow him to stay here for a day or two.

But the old man was thinking about the race riots and saying, "It's a pity. It's a terrible pity. I wonder what started it."

Whitey looked around at the four walls of the small wooden shack. The boards were loose and splintered and in places the wood was decaying. But somehow the walls seemed very secure and there was the comfortable feeling of safety. It was nice to sit here on the cot with the four walls around him and he hoped he'd be permitted to stay for a while.

Then he heard the old man saying, "What do you think started it?"

He looked at the old man. "Started what?"

"These riots. These race riots."

"Damned if I know," Whitey said without interest. And then, shrugging, "Anyway, it don't concern me."

"No?"

"Why should it? I got no ax to grind."

Jones Jarvis took off the rimless spectacles. His naked eyes, narrowed and glinting, drilled into the face of the small white-haired man and he said, "You sure?"

'Absolutely," Whitey answered. It was an emphatic word and he tried to say it with emphasis. Rut it didn't come out that way. It came out rather weakly.

He heard the old man saying, "Every man has an ax to grind. Whether he knows it or not."

Whitey didn't say anything.

"I've been on this earth a long time," Jones Jarvis said. "I'm eighty-six. That makes me too old to grind the ax. But the Lord knows I did it when I was younger. Did it with all the strength in my body. And don't think I wasn't scared when I did it. So scared I wanted to turn and run and hide in the woods. Much safer that way. Much healthier. But there's some things more important to a man than his health. So I stayed there and saw them coming to grab me and I didn't move and when they got in real close I looked them straight in the eye. I talked back to them and said I hadn't touched that white girl and I gave them the facts to prove it. They moved in closer and I pulled the blade from my pocket and showed it to them. And I told them to come on, come on, come and get me. They stood there and saw that blade in my hand. Then one of them said, "You swear to it, Jones? You swear you didn't do it? On your mother's life?" I looked at this man who had the rope in his hand all ready for me and I said, 'How'd you like to kiss my black ass?' So then all they did was turn and walk away. I waited until they were gone, then made for the woods, and later that day I hopped a freight going north. But it wasn't no scared weasel running away. It was a man. It was a man going on a trip."

Whitey was looking at the floor. He was frowning slightly and his mouth scarcely moved as he said, 'All right, you've made your point. You're a man. And I'm just a scared weasel ."

"You really believe that? You want it that way?"

"Sure," Whitey said. He looked up. "Sure. Why not?" Again it sounded weak and he told himself he didn't care how weak it sounded. He put a very weak grin on his lips and he said loosely and lazily, "I lost my spinal column a good many years ago. There ain't no surgery can put it back. Even if there was, I wouldn't want it. I like it better this way. More comfortable."

"No," Jones said. "You're telling a fib and you know it."

Whitey widened the grin. He said joshingly, "How can you tell?"

"Never mind," Jones said. "I can tell, that's all. It shows."

"What shows?" The grin began to fade. He pointed to his shaggy mop of prematurely white hair. "This?"

"That's part of it," Jones murmured. 'And your eyes. And the way your mouth sets. And something else." He leaned forward and let the pause come in and drift for a long moment, and then he said, "Your voice."

"Huh?"

"Your voice," Jones said. "The way you can't talk above a whisper. As if you got a rupture in your throat. As if it's all torn apart in there."

Again Whitey looked at the floor. The grin was gone now and he didn't know what was on his face. He opened his mouth to say something and he tried to get the sound past his lips and nothing came out.

"Or maybe it ain't the throat," the old man said. "Maybe it's the heart."

"It's the throat," Whitey said.

"Maybe it's both."

Whitey lowered his head and put his hand to his eyes and pressed hard. He was trying to deepen the blackness of the dark screen that ought to be very black because it was only his closed eyelids, but something was projected on it and he was forced to look and see. It was a memory he didn't want to see and his hand pressed harder against his closed eyes. On the screen it showed clearly and vividly, and he thought: Now, that's queer, it oughta be foggy. After all, it's an old-time film, it's seven years old.

He heard Jones Jarvis saying, "I'm prone to think that maybe it's both. Ruined throat. Broken heart."

"Let it ride," Whitey mumbled. He still had his hand pressed hard to his eyes. "For Christ's sake, let it ride."

"Eugene Lindell," the old man said.

No."

"Eugene Lindell." And then the loud crisp sound of snapping fingers. And the old man saying, "Now I get it. It's been coming slowly and now it's really hit me and I got it. Eugene Lindell."

"Please don't."

But the old man had it started. And he had to go on with it. And he said aloud to himself, "First time I heard that name I was listening to the radio. The announcer said, 'And now the lad with the million-dollar voice. Here he is, folks, Gene Lindell, singing--"

"Stop it," Whitey choked.

"Singing--"

"Will you stop it?"

"Singing from 'way up high on the moon and 'way down deep in the sea. High and low and high again, and it was a voice that made you high when you heard it, happy high and sad high, and you hadda close your eyes, you didn't wanna see a goddamn thing, just sit there and listen to that singing. You knew you'd never heard a voice like that in all your born days. And then them bobby-soxers started yelling and screaming and you felt like doing the same. That voice did things to you, went into you so deep it made you get the feeling you hadda come out of yourself and fly up and away from where your feet were planted. So next day I walked into a music store and all the loot I'd saved that week was shoved across the counter. 'Gene Lindell,' I said. 'Gimme his records.' The clerk said, 'Sorry mister. We're sold out' A few days later I tried again, and this time he had just one in stock. I took it home and played it and played it, and for weeks I went on playing that record and the jitterbugs would come in and forget to chew their bubble gum, only thing they could do was stand there with their mouths open and get hit between the eyes with that voice. They'd forget to move their feet. They were jitterbugs but they couldn't jitter because that voice took hold of them and paralyzed them. That was what it did. It was that kind of voice."

Whitey was sitting bent very low on the edge of the cot. He had both hands covering his face. It seemed he was trying to shut himself away from the living world.

But he could hear the old man saying, "You had it, Gene. You really had it."

He took his hands away from his face. He looked at the old man and smiled pleadingly, pathetically. His crackedwhisper voice was scarcely audible. "Why don't you stop it? What do you want from me?"

"Just a simple answer," Jones Jarvis said. He had leaned back and now he leaned forward again. "Tell me," he said. "How did you lose it? What happened to you?"

The smile widened and stiffened and then he had it aimed past the old man, his eyes glazed and fixed on nothing in particular. It all added up to a sort of crazy grimace.

"Won't you tell me?" the old man asked very softly and gently. And then, plaintively, "I think I got a right to know. After all, I was one of your fans."

Whitey sat there and tried to look at the old man. But he couldn't look. And he couldn't get the grimace off his face. He was trying very hard but he couldn't do anything but just sit there and stare at nothing.

Jones watched him for some moments. Then Jones's expression became clinical and he said, "Maybe you could use a drink."

Whitey tried to nod. But he couldn't move his head. It felt very heavy and sort of crushed, as though steel clamps were attached to his temples and pressing against his brain.

Jones got up from the three-legged stool and moved toward the row of gallon jugs filled with colorless liquid. He picked up a jug, took it to the table, and began pouring the liquid into the half-filled bottle. He poured until the bottle was completely full. Then he put the jug back in its place among the others. He set it down very carefully, moved some of the other jugs to get them exactly in line along the wall, then nodded approvingly like a show-window expert satisfied with the display.

"It's high-grade merchandise," Jones said, as though he were talking to a potential customer. But his tone was sort of forced. He was trying to get Whitey's mind away from Whitey. He made a stiff-armed gesture, pointing to the gallon jugs, and went on: "I manufacture it myself. Know everything that goes in it, and I guarantee it's a hundred per cent pure, it's really high-grade. Just alcohol and water, but the way it's mixed is what gives it the charge. So it ain't no ordinary shake-up. It's a first class brand of goathead. Real fine goathead. The finest goddamn goathead ever made in any cellar."

He glanced at Whitey, hoping for a comment or any reaction at all. But there was nothing. Whitey just sat there with his glazed eyes staring fixedly at empty space, the wide-smile grimace now wider and crazier, way out there in left field, very far away from Jones Jarvis and the goathead and everything.

The old man gave it another try. He pointed to a hinged arrangement on the floor that indicated a floor door and he said, "That goes down to the cellar. All day long I'm down there making it, mixing it, tasting it so's I'll be sure it's just right. Sometimes it tastes so good I forget to come upstairs. Wake up a day later and wonder what the hell happened. But never sick. With Jones Jarvis' goathead it just ain't possible to get sick. That junk they sell in the stores can make a man sick as hell, he'll pay two, three, three-and-a-half a pint and wind up paying five to get his stomach pumped out. But that won't happen when he drinks my brand. No matter how much he drinks, he'll never get sick. And it sells for only six bits a pint.

"That's value, man, that's real value," he went on, trying very hard to get Whitey's mind away from Whitey. "Them big whisky people oughta be ashamed of themselves, charging what they do for that stuff they advertise. They give it a fancy name and a fancy label, with pretty pictures in the magazines, a big-shot businessman sitting there in the big fine room with all the books and a couple of highpriced hunting dogs and he's holding the glass and saying it's real good whisky and he drinks it and you oughta drink it too. What he should do is come here and buy a bottle of Jones Jarvis' goathead. He'd never touch that other junk again. He'd--"