The Ninth Configuration (9 page)

“Come down here!” Cutshaw shouted. “Come on down here with your wire!”

Then there was sobbing and the wrenching cry: “I needed you!”

Vincent Kane stared numbly. The blood was beginning to drain from his face. His brother got up and moved quickly to the window. He saw Cutshaw running off. He cupped his hands and shouted after him, “Tell your mother to send you some mix!” He went back to the bed and sat by Vincent. As he took his wrist to check the pulse, he said, “That California panther piss will kill you. I heard it grew hair on a clam once. Honest.”

His brother’s gaze was upon him, unblinking. “He was angry,” Vincent said. “That’s so strange.”

Outside they heard a motorcycle engine revving up. Someone shouted, “Cutshaw!” Groper. The motorcycle roared away.

Vincent Kane got up from the bed and went to the window in time to see the motorcycle break through the wooden barrier at the sentry gate. His brother came up behind him.

“He crashed through the sentry gate,” said Vincent, alarmed and confused.

“Just another part of life’s rich pageant.”

“Why would he do that?”

“It’s Saturday night.”

Vincent Kane looked deeply troubled. He touched the pad of a finger to the edge of a jagged spear of glass in the window. His brother watched with tragic eyes and murmured softly, “No. No memories. No laughs.”

Vincent turned with a questioning stare. He said, “What?”

“Get some rest.” The psychiatrist moved toward the door. “I’ll send a couple of the orderlies to pick him up.”

“But they won’t know where to find him.”

“He can’t go far.” He opened the door and said, “Don’t worry.”

The psychiatrist stepped out into the hall. He decided he had better go and find Cutshaw himself. He would bring Gilman along and see if the astronaut accepted the change in Gilman’s story. If he did not, the psychiatrist decided, he would have to risk taking Cutshaw into his confidence. He hurried down the stairs.

Vincent Kane sat down on the bed and stared at the broken glass in the window. His head was throbbing. Something was awry. Something wrong. What was wrong? He’d experienced somnambulistic lapses before. That wasn’t it. What was it? Cutshaw. Cutshaw. His breathing came shallower and faster. He felt a weight in his stomach, an unfocused feeling of guilt. He stood up.

He must look for Cutshaw himself.

Cutshaw had roared through the town of Bly and come upon a seedy roadside tavern six miles beyond. There he stopped. Soaking wet, he went inside and sat at a cramped little booth at the rear. Within half an hour he was drunk. Around him, boisterous laughter drowned in the hard-rock music from a jukebox. A motorcycle gang held control of the tavern, filling it with shouts and murmured obscenities, with worn black leather jackets, the words “The Chain Gang” emblazoned on their backs. Some slouched at the bar. Some danced, matted hair and dirty fingernails jerking through the cigarette haze in the dimness of the wood-paneled room. Cutshaw did not notice. He lifted a shot glass to his lips and gulped its contents, a finger of Scotch; he grimaced and chased it with a gulp of beer, and then stared blearily at the five full shot glasses aligned on the rough wooden table in front of him. He looked up as the waitress walked by. She was young. “Hey, hold it!” Cutshaw reached out and took her hand; he could feel a simple wedding band. “How about another Scotch?” he asked slurrily.

The girl’s smile brought a wholesome brightness into her face.

“Sir, there’s five right there in front of you,” she said with good humor. Disengaging her hand, she moved on toward the bar. Cutshaw looked down at the table, disconsolate. “I wanted six, “ he murmured thickly.

Two cyclists leaning at the bar were darting glances at the astronaut. One slurped his beer and stared. His face was thick with a stubble of beard and he wore large-lensed yellow glasses. “It’s him, Rob,” he said. “I know it’s him.”

“You’re nuts,” drawled the other cyclist. He wore an open leather vest over a short-sleeved T-shirt that showed off his enormous muscular arms. He had degenerate good looks and thick blond hair pomaded into waves. Arrogance smirked out of his eyes. Stenciled on the front of his T-shirt were the words “I Love To Fuck.” He was the leader of the gang. “You’re seein’ things, Jerry.”

“Up yours. I’ve seen his picture in the papers.”

“Since when have you ever read a paper?”

“Okay! TV!”

The waitress came up to the service bar. “Two beers, two bourbon rocks,” she ordered. She glanced at the cyclists nervously. The gang was not local, and she felt a disquiet at their presence.

“Look at him!” said Jerry. “Look at his face! That’s him! The astronaut!

The one who lost his marbles!”

The waitress turned her head to look at Cutshaw.

“What’s he doin’ in a dump like this?” Rob demanded.

“Oh, who the fuck knows,” Jerry answered. “But it’s him. I swear it! I’m positive!”

“Yeah? For how much?”

“For a beer.”

“And a blow job from either your old lady or mine.” Rob was grinning.

Jerry rubbed at his chin as he glanced toward Cutshaw again. Then he downed his drink and said, “Okay.”

The two cyclists wove through the crowd to Cutshaw and stood by the table looking him over. The astronaut was lifting a shot glass when he saw them. He paused, eying one and then the other.

“Yes?” he said.

“What’s your name, mac?” asked Rob.

“Rumpelstiltskin.”

Rob snatched the shot glass away from Cutshaw and looked sideways at Jerry. “Wise ass,” he said.

As if oblivious, Cutshaw picked up another shot glass. Again the cyclist snatched it away from him, this time roughly. “I said, what’s your name?” An ugly menace had crept into his voice.

“My maiden name or married?” Cutshaw looked past the two cyclists and called out, “Waitress!”

Jerry made a sudden move, pulling back a fold of Cutshaw’s cardigan to disclose the initials “U.S.M.C.” stitched above the chest pocket of his fatigues. He pointed in triumph. “See? U.S.M.C-that’s Marines!”

“No, no, no, my dear boy,” drawled Cutshaw. “That’s Unbridled Sex for the Masses Club.”

Rob tossed the contents of a shot glass into Cutshaw’s face.

“It is something I’ve said?” asked the astronaut mildly, licking out his tongue for a taste of the Scotch.

The waitress appeared. “Yes?” she asked Cutshaw. She was frowning, puzzling over his identity. She noticed the wetness on his face and darted an apprehensive look at the cyclists.

“One Scotch and two spittoons, love,” Cutshaw ordered. “Fill the

spittoons with caterpillar blood. It’s for our friends here. Maybe they’ll—”

Jerry grabbed Cutshaw’s fatigue shirt, jerked him up and forward and savagely cuffed his face.

The waitress looked alarmed. “Hey, cut that out!” she cried.

“You mean this?” Rob said to her, smirking. He quickly reached a hand beneath her dress and squeezed her buttocks. She whirled around with a cry and knocked his arm away. The cyclist grabbed her wrist and pressed his body against hers. Moaning with exaggerated, mocking eroticism, he backed her into the end of the booth divider. “Much better.” He grinned. “Better position.”

The waitress grimaced in pain and loathing. She pushed at his chest.

“Oh, my God, get away!”

Cutshaw lurched to his feet. “Cut that out!” he said, moving to help her. Jerry shoved him back down in the booth so that Cutshaw’s head struck against the wall. “Jesus Christ,” he moaned. He was dazed.

“Move it, baby,” said Rob, leering. Light gleamed from a silver cap on his tooth and he undulated forcefully back and forth.

“I’m pregnant! Get away from me!” cried out the waitress. “Stop pressing! Stop it! Please! You’re hurting me!”

Jerry ripped Cutshaw’s dog tag from his neck. He examined it quickly, then called to Rob: “Hey, it’s him! It’s really him! I got his dog tag, Rob! It’s him!”

Rob looked over at Jerry, amazed. He reached for the dog tag. The waitress wriggled away.

“You’re kidding!” Rob grunted, examining the dog tag. He looked down at Cutshaw. The astronaut was holding his head. “I can’t believe it!” Rob moved a few steps to the jukebox. He pulled out the plug. In the sudden silence there were groans and complaints.

“Hey, quiet! Quiet!” Rob stood up on a chair. “Hey, guess what we got here! A goddam celebrity, folks! A chicken, wigged-out astronaut!” There was a mixed reaction from the crowd. Rob pointed to the booth where Cutshaw was pinned in his seat by Jerry. “That there is Captain Billy Cutshaw, gang!”

The crowd was incredulous, gleeful. A few of the cyclists applauded. One drawled, “Big fuckin’ deal.”

Rob stepped down and went back to the booth, where he and Jerry jerked the astronaut to his feet. “Yeah, I know,” muttered Cutshaw, his eyes half closed. “Resistance is useless. My friends have confessed.”

“Wanna join our club?” Rob grinned.

“Fuck you.”

Rob’s grin curled away to a sneer. He could not identify what he hated about the astronaut; he felt it as a pain when he breathed. He cuffed him viciously with the back of his hand and Cutshaw’s head snapped back. “Okay,” Cutshaw muttered. “Don’t fuck you.” Rob grabbed him by the front of his fatigues and then dragged him to the center of the room, where most of the cyclists gathered around them. One of the couples continued dancing even though there was no music.

Rob snapped his fingers at Jerry. “Beer!”

“One beer comin’ up,” retorted Jerry. He went to the bar to fetch it.

“Beer,” he told the barkeep, a man in his sixties who owned the tavern. He filled up a stein and as he set it on the bar he flicked a glance toward a telephone on a wall outside the rest rooms. Jerry followed his gaze and shook his head at the bartender. “Uh-uh,” he warned him. “Don’t fuck with the party.” He picked up the stein and took it to Rob.

The cyclists were gathered around in a circle, murmuring, chuckling, throwing questions at Cutshaw: “Wha’dja do, lose your nerve?” “Hey, whadda they feed you in the nut house?” “Where’s your keeper?” “You got any grass?” Cutshaw stood meekly, with his head bowed down. He did not answer.

Rob took the beer from Jerry. He flourished it around, and then loudly announced, “First we baptize the chicken mother!” An ugly tension, an unmotivated spite masquerading as playfulness, moved through the crowd like a malevolent sheepdog, touching them, nuzzling, herding them
together. “Now I wanna hear a countdown!” shouted Rob. “Let me hear it!

Ten!” he began. The cyclists joined in with him, shouting, their eyes bright as they counted down to “One!” And then Rob added “Zero!” and slowly poured the contents of the stein over Cutshaw’s head. Rob grinned. He said, “Everything A-O.K. there, fuckup?”

Kane leaned his head forward, squinting to see through the rain-flooded windshield of the staff car. He had been through Bly. At each public place where he’d seen a motorcycle parked, he stopped, went inside and looked for Cutshaw. Once he thought he passed another staff car, but he could not be sure. Now he followed the road that spurted northward past the town. He had made no conscious decision to do so; the action was intuitive, automatic. A neon light was blinking ahead of him. He pulled off the road and lowered his window. It was a tavern. He saw the motorcycles parked. They were all of the chopper type, high-handled. All but one. Kane got out of the car and went into the tavern.

The cyclists were in a circle. They were singing “Fly Me to the Moon” in a slow waltz rhythm, and in time to their singing they were passing Cutshaw back and forth along the circle, shoving him, laughing, Cutshaw a limp rag doll, unresisting, unheeding, uncaring.

Kane paused at the entrance to the tavern. He stared at the cyclists. Then he caught a flashing glimpse of Cutshaw before he tripped and fell to the floor, disappearing from view.

“Get your ass up, moon boy!”

“You lookin’ for rocks?”

Amid laughter, Kane slipped sidewise through the circle and quickly knelt beside the prostrate Cutshaw. Kane slipped a hand behind his back and propped him up.

“Hey, look at this shit,” said a cyclist.

“I think we just got us another beach ball,” said another one, a girl with a nasal voice.

Cutshaw stared at Kane. A purplish bruise commanded his cheekbone and blood smeared his lips from a cracked front tooth. “Been meeting your family,” he said sardonically. The remark made no sense to Kane. He pulled the astronaut to his feet and began to move him toward the door, but Rob intercepted them, grabbing the astronaut’s arm and squeezing. “Hey, that’s my beach ball, man,” he told Kane. “Put him down.”

“Let him go, please,” Kane said softly.

“You leggo of my beach ball.”

“You tell ‘im, Rob!”

“Call the M.P.s!”

“The S.P.s: that’s the Shit Patrol, man. He’s their leader!” Kane turned his head and looked at Cutshaw. The astronaut was staring at him, a thin, bitter smile on his face. “Here’s your goodness in man,” he challenged ironically; yet his voice cracked as he said it. He looked away.

The leader looked at Cutshaw in mock astonishment. “Did you say somethin? Huh? Did you talk?” He looked at Jerry. “Jesus, Jer, I think this beach ball here just talked! I swear to Christ!” He slapped Cutshaw in the face. “Did you talk?”

“This man is ill,” said Kane. “Please let us go.” Rob saw the pleading in his eyes, heard the meekness, the quaver that shook Kane’s voice. One of the girls said, “Let ‘em go.” Rob glanced at her, a blonde with pigtails, and he put his smirking face close in to Kane’s. He said, “Don’t say ‘Please.’ Say ‘Pretty please.’ I wanna know you mean it. Now go ahead and say it.”

Kane could not fathom his own reluctance. He swallowed hard. “Pretty … please,” he said at last, and started to walk forward with Cutshaw; but Rob kept his grip on the astronaut’s arm and yanked him back.

“I’ll bet he sucks,” said a cyclist with a wisp of beard in the cleft between his mouth and his chin.

The leader looked suddenly inspired. “Say ‘Marines all suck,
’ ”
he instructed Kane gleefully. There were giggles and hoots from the crowd. “Let ‘em go,” said the girl with the pigtails again. She was staring at Kane. The leader grinned at her cockily. She was his girlfriend. “Cool it, there, sugar,” he told her. He returned his attention to Kane. “Come on, come on, let’s get it over with; say it and you can go. Just say the words and you can split. Now whaddya say? You gonna say it? What’s the harm? Then you can go.” He put on a comically sincere expression.

Kane’s body began to tremble slightly. He turned to look at Cutshaw. The astronaut’s gaze was on the floor. There was no expression on his face. He listened. Kane turned and fixed Rob with wide shining eyes. His mouth had fallen slightly open.

“Come on, come on-you gonna say it?”

Kane tried to move his tongue, to form words. He could not. He mounted a massive effort of will. “Marines … Marines … all … suck.”

A sighing murmur went up from the crowd.

The girl with the pigtails moved away from the group.

“Now just one more thing,” said the leader. “I swear it; this is it, then you go. Jesus, this is an easy one. Really. Just say you’re a beach ball. Simple. That’s it. Go ahead. ‘I’m a beach ball.
’ ”

Kane’s eyes had not moved from the leader’s. They were wider now, shinier. His tongue was thick and dry as he uttered, “I … am a beach ball.”

“Just in time!” Rob crowed. “We needed a new one!” Jerry stuck his leg out in back of Kane and Rob shoved him in the chest. Kane went sprawling to the floor. The gang cheered. Rob’s girlfriend watched from the bar.

Kane rose slowly to his feet and the gang began shoving him back and forth. He was passive, unresisting. He kept seeking Cutshaw with his eyes, even after the astronaut averted his face. The howling and cheering slipped the knife of headache into his skull. A plumpish girl with a mole on her chin stuck out her foot in front of Kane and tripped him. He fell down. He rose to his knees and did not move, his eyes fixed on the floor, disoriented. The leader approached him with a beer and poured most of it over his head. “Another baptism, folks. Praise the Lord.” “Praise the Lord!” they shouted. “Hallelujah!” Jerry stuck a boot in Kane’s back and kicked him forward. Kane’s face hit the floor. Rob moved over and poured the remainder of the beer on the floor in front of Kane. His lips parted wetly in a sneer. “Fuckin’ slob,” he said. “Now clean up the mess!”

Kane stared up at him numbly. Jerry came over and shoved on his head until his face was almost touching a foaming puddle of beer on the floor. Rob sank down to one knee beside Kane. “Now lick it,” he told him. “Lick it up.” Rob’s eyes were gleaming. His face gleamed excitement. “Lick and we’ll let you guys go. This time I mean it.”

Forgotten for the moment and dazed, Cutshaw had stumbled over to the bar. Now he turned in sudden anxiety. “Hey, knock that off!” he called out. He lurched forward, but two cyclists quickly pinned his arms.

“Lick it!”

Kane stared down at the beer. He trembled as a darkness surged through his bloodstream, a powerful secret calling his name, now in whispers, now louder, asserting, demanding. It held his tongue in place in his mouth. Kane fought it. The name. What name? He suppressed it, repelled and afraid. He opened his mouth, and his tongue slipped out in fractions, then in jerks. He licked at the beer.

An astonished sigh went up from the crowd. “Holy Christ,” breathed the girl with the mole. “He did it!”

Rob smiled contemptuously, looking down. Kane drew himself up on his hands and knees and Jerry knocked him to the floor again from behind with a kick of his cleated boot. He sneered, “That’s for disgracin’ the fuckin’ uniform.”

Cutshaw struggled to free himself. “You bastards!” he cried. “You fucking sons of bitches!”

Rob walked over and cracked both sides of Cutshaw’s face with a vicious hand. “Get him down,” he told the men who were pinning his arms. Cutshaw was shoved to the floor on his back and the two held him down as Rob now mounted him, his crotch in close to his face. He unzippered his fly and removed his penis. He placed two fingers beneath it and flopped it up so that it touched the astronaut’s lips. “Okay, fly me to the moon, now, pal,” Rob leered. “One way or another, you’re blastin’ off!” He grinned around at the crowd, who were murmuring and giggling. A few came closer, their faces excited. Cutshaw grimaced and jerked his head aside. “If he does it, I’ll be famous,” Rob exulted. He drew a switchblade knife from his boot; its gleaming long blade clicked out into place. Rob held the point to Cutshaw’s neck. “Come on, let’s go, or I swear to Christ, I’ll cut you! I mean it!”

Kane pulled himself to his hands and knees again and stared at Cutshaw and Rob. At first the scene did not register; then his eyes became separate hells. He looked up at Jerry, who was standing above him with another full stein. “I think this schmuck needs another beer,” drawled Jerry. He poured it over Kane’s head. He smirked at the crowd. He did not see the lip curling up, the fury.

Kane reached up a hand and clasped it over the fingers that Jerry had cupped around the stein. Jerry looked around, and in a mocking, babying tone he said, “Ahhh, I think he wants some more.” Suddenly his mouth flew open in a quick small gasp of horror. He tried to scream but could not as Kane’s hand squeezed against his own with unthinkable force. Jerry’s eyes were popping. Then at last came the scream as the stein shattered inward and Jerry’s fingers were crushed bloodily into shards of glass. The scream became a wordless exhalation of air and he crumpled to the floor unconscious.

The room was stunned. “Jesus Christ!” someone murmured. Rob scrambled to his feet and faced Kane, who had risen to a crouch. Rob held the switchblade knife out to the side. For a moment he was fearful, undecided. Then the reasonable order of his universe asserted itself: a flaw in the beer stein, a fluke. He stuck the knife point-first in a wooden pillar near him, reached into his pocket, slipped out brass knuckles and put them on. Then he held out both hands from his sides, palms upward, confident, smiling, promising punishment. He swaggered toward Kane. Kane’s fist drove into his stomach with a pile-driving force, and when Rob doubled over, Kane’s knee shot up and broke his jaw with a crunch of bone. The girl with the pigtails let loose a hysterical, horrified scream. Then chaos. The girl with the mole pulled the knife from the pillar and a cyclist came at Kane with a tire chain. Kane side-stepped low, seized the man with the chain in a jujitsu hold, applied traction and broke his arm with a crunch, then turned as the girl came at him with the knife. He broke her wrist with a powerful chop and then raised clenched hands above his head; and as she bent and held her drooping wrist, he pounded his fists down onto her head and shattered her skull.

The other cyclists rushed at Kane.

Groper was pacing. Hudson Kane gazed out a window. They had been keeping watch in the adjutant’s office ever since the psychiatrist had returned from Bly without finding Cutshaw. The time was 1:23 a.m. The telephone rang. Kane answered it as Groper abruptly stopped pacing and walked to the window: the lights of a car were shining at the sentry gate. “Here comes someone,” said Groper. He went out to unlock the front door of the mansion. The psychiatrist followed him with his eyes as he talked to the highway patrolman on the phone. His face turned ashen. He listened. He looked shocked.