The Hair of Harold Roux (47 page)

He wished, thinking it dangerous and stupid and yet still wishing it, that he had his Nambu. He seemed such a frail
instrument to try to stop whatever evil menaced Lilliputown. And it was evil; the sound of the bottle when it smashed over there, the glass cascading, was evil. He experienced in the center of his body fear of Maloumian, and the fear brought anger. What would happen would be too complicated for that fear and anger. There would have to be words, arguments and threats. He thought with nostalgia of the war, when he was in the infantry in Georgia, how the pop-up silhouettes of German soldiers were driven violently back on their hinges at each jump of his Garand. He might go back to the Colonel’s workshop and pick out a well balanced open-end wrench, or a ball-peen hammer, or maybe the Colonel had a gun … Maybe it wasn’t Maloumian over there after all. Except for the smashed bottle. How evil was Maloumian, really?

His cold center told him very evil, very big. He needed troops. Even if Knuck could be found and apprised of the situation, he didn’t know if Knuck would oppose Maloumian; they were in their separate ways both such heavy men, and they always seemed to have an agreement, or treaty, between themselves in which Maloumian was to Knuck a clown whose japes and escapades should not be taken too seriously. Nathan would fight but he was so small. Hilary seemed in his bland good nature made of paper-mache. And poor Harold had been destroyed once already on this disastrous evening. If only he had Nathan with him and they were both armed.

He knew he had to go over toward the Little Brown Church in the Vale no matter what waited for him, so he moved as quietly as he could through the shadows, keeping the trunks of elms between himself and whatever unknown watchers might be there. Partly on his hands and toes he went through the park to the brook, where he could make a transverse approach in its depression, crossing it on stones and moving along its bank. When he thought he was across the railroad track from the Little Brown Church in the Vale he rose up, a barberry hedge identifying itself painfully to his fingers. He raised his head slowly, hearing stifled laughter and giggles from quite close by. Many bodies—too many of
them, at least eight or nine—sat or lay on the lawn of the church, large forms some of which passed bottles or drank, glass glinting sharply in the moonlight, followed by coughs and throat-clearings. “Quiet!” someone whispered. Was it Short Round? “Quiet! You want to queer it?” It was Short Round, from somewhere near the door of the church.

The church door opened upon glaring light which, after whispered curses, was turned off from inside, but Allard had seen a man standing next to a bureau zipping up his fly—a large jock he knew slightly whose specialties were football and lacrosse. Whalen, his name was, a mediocre athlete who made very professional-looking moves, gestures and remarks on the field.

“Okay, who’s next?” Short Round was exasperated. “Come on, damn it, and get your goddam money out!” One of the lounging figures got up, unsteadily it seemed to Allard, while the others laughed into their hands. The bulk that must have been Whalen collapsed into the general shadow of the lawn and asked for a drink. “Hoo, boy,” he said.

“Keep it down!” Short Round said from the doorway. “Jesus Christ, will you?”

A cloud, crossing the moon, turned silver at its edges while the town went dark. No sign of Maloumian, who might be inside the church. He must be here somewhere, standing or moving, maybe moving through the darkness. Allard shivered, as though eyes observed him from behind, and tried to tell himself that this was not, after all, a deadly situation. Though all of these men had been in the war they were now civilians, college students, not authorized to wound or kill. But he knew that even though the war had ended the animal was the same, and this engagement was the one he was in. His anger grew reckless and frightening; one always had the option to introduce violence, but he must forsake that seductive fantasy and think.

He took advantage of the cloud to move back down the brook, crossing back over the way he’d come. Just before he reached the open glades of the park, where he would be exposed
to the moonlight, from straight ahead of him, from the direction of the poplars and the Town Hall, came a scream that in its hoarseness was identifiably male, though it shrilled in its high ranges like the voice of a caught rabbit.

It was prey in the teeth of its hunter, that scream of useless terror, and it struck him through his own hunting memories as well as through dreams of having been pursued and caught. He wanted to hide and also to charge with the right of a hunter toward the place of the kill. Listening so intently he was not aware of himself in either role, he didn’t move, then heard a distant scuffling, drumming sound, like the hooves of horses. It was not coming toward him, but going off to his right along the poplars. Somewhere over there, near the Barbershop and the Saloon, glass shattered, not a bottle this time but the xylophonic chords of window glass.

He ran back past the poplars to the Town Hall. The front door was open, the foyer empty. Harold’s lights were on but he was not there. He thought of a weapon but couldn’t think of anything short of a gun that would be effective at all. A quick look into the Imminghams’ living room, peacefully quiet, waiting in its comfortable chintzy clutter, revealed no weapons. The door to the Colonel’s shop was locked. He turned off a bridge lamp, nearly knocking it over, steadying its parchment shade, and ran back out of the building, up the path again. He had thought of the police but couldn’t make himself call them. It would not be right, not understood by them. This microcosmic war was between known adversaries, and his own guilt might make him guilty of everything in their stern distant eyes. Of course he should have called the police. But what police? He wasn’t even sure what town this was. The operator, of course, could have told him. When he was just about out of breath he nearly tripped over a body whose long legs stuck out into the path, its thin trunk propped against an elm. Bare ankles in sneakers, baggy dress pants with cuffs: Gordon Robert Westinghouse. In a rage, Allard hauled him to his feet and banged his bony back against the tree.

“All right, you useless son of a bitch, tell me all.”

All! Would he ever have rage or any intensity of emotion in which he did not hear strange words, odd insincere constructions?

Melifulous Aponatatus smiled and drooled. “Erk,” he said.

No amount of banging him against the tree changed his expression toward awareness, and Allard saw that though he was actually drunk he was going beyond that and playing glorious, romantic drunk, letting himself descend under the pale eye of the moon into magnificent dissipation.

“You can’t act, you shit-for-brains,” Allard said. “The likes of you can’t act. Come out of it or I’ll break your ass.”

“Balaforuh. Narpaluff.”

Allard let him fall.

“Allard! Allard!” Naomi called as she came running up to him. Mary, Angela and Nathan followed, Hilary stumbling along behind.

“So it was the Piss Poet,” Nathan said.

The poet lay on his side trying to breathe.

Allard sensed some disapproval of his violence and said, “He’s being drunk and won’t talk. I think Maloumian’s got Harold. Did you hear the scream?”

“Yeah, we heard it,” Nathan said.

“What are we going to
do
?” Mary said.

“He’s got a bunch of frat jocks over by the church, about eight or nine of them, and Short Round’s charging them for whatever attraction he’s got inside there.”

“Like what?” Naomi said.

“Like a whore, 1 suppose.” His anger and fear made him go on. “Or a chicken or a Chinaman or eighteen queer midgets or his hairy grandmother or whatever his joke is for tonight.”

“But what’s he going to do with Harold?” Mary said.

In the silence following this unanswerable question they heard the growing intensity of the sounds of invasion. Laughter and thumping, even growls and barks, as if wolves
prowled through Lilliputown. They thought one screaming voice must be Harold’s, and its pathetic desperation came from somewhere near the Little Brown Church in the Vale.

Allard asked if they’d found Knuck and Vera. They hadn’t.

“You don’t suppose it’s Vera he’s got in the church?” Nathan said.

“I doubt it, unless Knuck’s unconscious or something.”

“What are you
talking
about?” Mary cried. “What do you mean? That’s Harold
crying
. I can hear him!”

“I say,” Hilary said groggily, “what’s going on?”

“They’re killing Harold!” Mary cried.

“Oh, I say! That’s too violent,” Hilary said, alarmed. He peered down at Gordon Robert Westinghouse, fast asleep at their feet. “Oh,” he said, “is it Maloumian then?”

“I haven’t seen him yet, but Short Round’s over there so there’s not much doubt,” Allard said.

“Why are we just talking?” Mary said. “We’ve got to get Harold!”

“I think maybe you girls ought to go home,” Allard said. Nathan and Hilary agreed. Angela could take them back in Nathan’s car.

“I’m not going anywhere until I find Harold,” Mary said, and began to run through the moonlight toward the church, her light skirt fading into the dark. Allard ran and caught her around the waist. She fought him, crying and still trying to run. Her sobs were voiced, frantic; she mewed like a cat.

“Mary!” he said, pulling her against him so hard she had trouble breathing.

“Let me
oh
! Let me go!”

He had to pin her arms under his. “Mary! Listen! Those drunken bastards are dangerous! Listen to me! We’ll try to get Harold! I’ll kill that bastard Maloumian …”

“Let go of me!”

She would go directly to Harold no matter what lay before her. He couldn’t let her go; he had to hold her still in order to think.

The others came up. Naomi put her arms around Mary, too, so that she and Allard had her captured between them, surrounded by arms, the three bodies locked together. Mary could not be calmed; she struggled, her bones and flesh harder than Allard had ever found them in his arms before. He and Naomi hushed her and spoke to her, trying with their voices to soothe her though they had nothing helpful to say except please be calm and everything will be all right. Her head, small and angular, turned against Allard’s chest. Her hair, because it was tangled and compressed, wet in places, was thinner, the silky growth common to the heads of children. He found that his arms, his voice, the bulk of his body, all of his presence was useless against her determination. She cried, “Harold, Harold,” and soon they had all come under what seemed then the invincible logic of her desires and were walking with her toward the Little Brown Church in the Vale.

Unarmed, they would also lose all the advantages of knowledge and surprise. He was being led into a position of weakness by this woman’s logic and he asked himself how it could be happening. She heard Harold’s cries and must go to him, though Boom Maloumian would most certainly be there. Not to mention Whalen and his probable companions whose thug values were so cruel it had always seemed odd to Allard that those animals had human names. Whalen, Morrow, Gil-man, McLeod, Likas, Schurz, Harorba, Manolo, O’Brien. He had played in their games—poker, pickup football—and knew how their crude superiorities were exacerbated by constant closeness and mutual agreement. Meanwhile he walked with his eccentric, vulnerable friends toward evil, believing that he was the only one who recognized its real dangers.

The streetlights flickered and came on again, each above its little amphitheater of light. Scattered cheers, grunts and shouts of wonder or approval came from here and there across the town. They could see movement, the flicker of a broad, white-shirted back as a running figure appeared and disappeared down by the First National Bank, near the tunnel where the Colonel kept his train. Dark figures crossed between
trees and buildings with seemingly aimless energy. From their left as they approached the church came a quick flurry like a dogfight—breathless snarling and a scraping of earth or wood that might have been done by frantic claws.

The Little Brown Church in the Vale was softly illuminated by its own streetlight as if in a suburban evening, its brown gables and stained glass, its square bell tower giving it a look of staunch inviolability until, as they approached, it shrank into its real dimensions. Leaves whispered above their heads in a new wind. Then the raucous voices of men overcame all the natural sounds of the night. The men stood in a half circle in front of the church, one of them unable to stand without his arm around another’s neck and falling to his knees as his support turned with the others, seven of them, to see the strange group approaching. Little Nathan, stately Angela, pale Mary, dark Naomi and gawky Hilary—Allard’s odd forces of flawed righteousness walking straight into the hands of their enemies.

Vague, fierce, shiny, the faces turned toward them, some with wonder. O’Brien, Harorba, Morrow, Oilman—he knew most of them and they all had certain common characteristics, such as slightly humped backs from holding up their freakishly thick arms and the weight of their menacing struts, the forward lean of their manliness. They had imitated each other for so long, in so many ways, that only minor differences in shape or texture indicated their separateness; somewhat as with identical twins, Allard always found himself examining each of them carefully for a shorter brow or a barely different cast to the eyes.

“Hey! Broads!”

“White meat!”

“Shaddup, dumbhead!”

“Don’t step in the puke!” Advice, laughter. “Don’t step in the gism—it’s coming out the scuppers!”

“At ease! At ease!”

The last said by Boom Maloumian, his black slits wet with laughter as he appeared at the church door. In an excess
of hilarity he had to put his head down upon the wrought-iron railing for a moment as all turned to watch him. The men turned their appreciative faces toward this larger exemplar of themselves as if they were his devotaries, created smaller, like commoners surrounding royalty in a primitive painting. Maloumian (Moloch—the word came into Allard’s mind) had all the time he wanted, command of time for his ponderous dance of amusement. At first he did not notice the newcomers, or seem to hear Mary’s shrilling voice.