Authors: Eugene Burdick
The Ninth Wave (8 page)
Then it came to him. He stopped. A girl drove by on a bicycle and he was
only aware of the spinning wheels, the clank of the chain, the flash of
her plaid skirt.
The important part of the afternoon's experiment was this, Mike ,thought,
and the words went like a written sentence across his mind: one person
can make a decision faster than a group.
That's it, he thought. That's Freesmith's First Principle of Human Behavior:
One person can make a decision faster than a group. That's exactly,
perfectly, precisely, absolutely it.
He walked on toward Encina Hall. He was almost there when he thought of
Bill Evans and another principle crossed his mind. Freesmith's Second
Principle of Human Behavior: The weak person wants to be delivered from
the superior person.
Delivered to what? he asked, as if the principle had been stated by
another person.
It doesn't matter, he said. Deliverance is enough.
CHAPTER 5
Close to Vest
The first quarter Hank did not go to three of his classes. He stayed in
his room and read anatomy, physiology and biology. Two nights before an
examination he would read over Mike's notes on the course. Then Mike
would ask him questions on the course. The night before examinations
they did not sleep at all. They went over the notes endlessly.
in the morning they would leave Encina and walk out for breakfast. Dawn
turned the hills across the Bay a soft suede texture. The big sandstone
buildings around the Quad had a queer ugly unity and often there was the
salt smell of fog in the air. They walked through the lonely world like
men about to make a conquest. Their eyes glittered from too much coffee
and too little sleep. When, finally, they picked up their bluebooks and
sat down to answer the questions it seemed incredibly easy and simple.
At the end of the first quarter, they received their grades. Mike put
the cards on the table in their room and studied them.
"Not good enough, Hank," he said. "My grades are good enough to get a
scholarship next year. I've got three A's and one B. You've got two A's
and two B's. You'll have to do a little better. Right now you're on
the borderline."
"I'm happy," Hank said. He was reading his Gray's and had it open to a
diagram of the delicate, intertwined, complex muscles of the ankle. "I'll
get three A's next quarter and I'll be qualified for a scholarship.
Don't worry about me."
"The old cigar box is getting low," Mike said. He walked to his bureau
drawer and took out a battered White Owl box. He opened it and took out
a stack of wrinkled bills and poured a mound of coins onto the table. He
counted it rapidly. "Two hundred and sixty-seven bucks left. That's all."
He scooped the money back into the box and threw the box in the drawer.
"We can get through the winter quarter, but we'll be broke by spring
quarter," Mike said. "It's the incidentals that run up. Laundry,
haircuts, books."
Hank looked up from his book.
"I eat too much,," Hank said apologetically. He kept his finger on a
plate in the book. It was squarely over the long thick purple sweep of the
aorta through a skeletonized neck and down into a yellow muscle-streaked
chest. "I'll cut down."
"You can't cut down," Mike said. "You're hungry so you've got to eat. You
don't get any fatter so it must be going into energy or some damned thing.
But you can't eat less."
Hank was vaguely ashamed of his appetite. He would eat the huge starchy
meals they served in Commons, take seconds, and then two hours later he
would feel a sharp pain in his stomach and in a moment he was ravenous. A
Hershey bar, a huge handful of peanuts, a few apples, almost anything,
would blot out the appetite and in a moment he had forgotten it completely,
could work absorbedly until the next attack of hunger. But if he did
not have the food at once he became dizzy, his attention dissolved
and he felt a sharp anxiety. Sometimes he even woke up at night and
staggered around the room, half asleep, looking for a candy bar or a bag
of peanuts or anything. If there was nothing in the room he would put on
his clothes and half sick with embarrassment and anger would walk down
to the all-night restaurant and eat a mass of fried potatoes and toast
and then walk back to the campus.
Hank worried because the enormous amount of food never made him any
fatter. His face was thin, his ribs stuck out. He longed for a layer of
fat over his bones.
"I know, I know," Hank said. "But maybe I could cut down on the food
between meals."
"You can't," Mike said flatly. "We've just got to get more money."
Hank's face went hard and tough and defensive.
"Look, Mike, I told you no crap about money. We made an agreement."
"But we need money for the next quarter."
"You said we had two hundred and sixty-seven bucks."
"It'll be gone next quarter when we pay tuition. What about the spring
quarter?"
"We'll worry about it when the money's gone," Hank said.
His bleached thin features relaxed. He murmured a word softly, looking
down at the book. "Aorta, aorta, aorta," said with the bemused repetition
by which a child chants a word into meaninglessness or twists it into
a special emphasis.
"Hank, why don't you get into the poker game Hollis has in his room
every night?" Mike said. "If you can play like you said you can you'd
win plenty."
Hank turned the page, read a few words and then looked up at Mike. Mike
knew he had not heard him. He was repeating another word, worrying it
to death.
"Poker, Hank," Mike said. "Get in the poker game in Hollis' room. A lot
of those eastern prep school boys play there. They've got money. They
play for big stakes."
"Phagocyte, phagocyte, phagocyte," Hank murmured. Then he heard what
Mike was saying. His odd blue eyes snapped open, he swung his feet to
the ground. "No. Don't mention it again. I hate poker. No more crap
about money. Understand? And especially not about poker money."
Mike left the room and walked down to Hollis' room. Hollis had money.
Everyone in Encina knew it. Hollis never mentioned it, but they could
tell. They could tell from the framed photograph on his wall which
showed him with his arm around the shroud of a very large yawl and
wearing shabby sneakers. They could tell also from the blazer he wore
which had an intricate little device over the heart and a Latin motto
stitched in white. They knew also from the thick white envelopes on his
desk which contained invitations to debuts in San Francisco and Boston
and New York. It wasn't until years later that Mike knew that the soiled
white buckskin shoes and the slipover Brooks Brothers shirts and the use
of the phrase "Nanny used to say . . ." were also signs. Mike thought
that Nanny was a nickname for his grandmother.
Hollis looked up wheh Mike came in the door. He had a thin, very tan
face. He seldom smiled.
"Hello, Freesmith," Hollis said. "No openings, but there might be later.
Make yourself at home." Hollis looked at the six men sitting around the
table and his voice became harsh. "Osborne, you can take your shirt off
if you want, but you can't stay in this room if you do."
Osborne, a big muscular boy from Ohio, stopped with one hand still in
a shirt sleeve.
"Hell, Hollis, it's hot in here," Osborne said. "All this smoke and
stuff."
"No one sits around in my room in an undershirt or naked to the waist,"
Hollis said. "Take your shirt off if you want, but get out if you do. Go
ahead, Holloway, deal the cards."
The cards spatted on the table. Osborne hesitated, his face anguished.
Hollis looked at the first card. Osborne slowly put his arm back into
the sleeve. He left his shirttail out as if to defy Hollis, but Hollis
did not even notice.
"How much are the chips worth?" Mike asked.
Hollis looked up from the table and found Mike's face in the dim light
ringing the table. He smiled.
"Not much," Hollis said. "White chips are a half dollar, red chips a
dollar and blue chips two dollars. Of course we could always sweeten
it up a bit if anyone wanted to. But we just try to keep it friendly."
The other boys at the table smiled, but they did not look up from their
cards. Mike guessed that they found it expensive to play. Most of the
pots wound up with around fifty or sixty dollars on the table. No money
changed hands, for Hollis acted as bank and merely made a notation on
a slip of paper when players bought chips. At the end of the night he
calculated what everyone had won and lost.
Hollis won the hand and while the cards were being shuffled he looked
up at Mike again.
"I understand that you Los Angeles people do things in a big way though,"
he said. "You probably wouldn't want to play for little old stakes like
these."
The men around the table laughed. Some of them pushed back from the table,
gave Hollis soft encouragement.
Mike smiled at Hollis, but he had made a decision. He waited until the
laughter died away.
"Those stakes are rich enough for my blood," Mike said. "But I'm not
the poker player in our room anyway. I'll tell you, though, you won't
get Hank to play for those stakes."
"A pity," Hollis said. "All these run-down Easterners could stand a
transfusion of real red Southern California blood."
He did not look up from his cards. Mike knew he did not want to go on
with it. Mike slipped it in softly.
"Not Hank," Mike said. "He won't play for chickenshit stakes like
this. That Hank is a real poker player. He plays poker for really
big money."
Hollis looked up from his cards. The other boys stopped talking. The
dealer paused with a one-eyed jack about to drop from his fingers. Mike
went on reflectively.
"No, these stakes wouldn't interest Hank. Not him."
"I think we could make it interesting for Mr. Moore," Hollis said. "Why
don't you just step down the hall and invite him to play? He can . . . "
"He won't," Mike said. "Not for stakes like these. He's heard of these
stakes. I don't think he'll play with you."
"Tell him he can name the stakes," Hollis cut in sharply. "Whatever
he wants."
"No, no," Mike said as if Hollis were being very dense. "You don't
understand. Once you play for really big stakes, kid stuff like this is
out. You're bored. I wouldn't want to ask him."
Mike walked to the door and opened it. As he closed it behind him he
had a diminishing, angular, smoke-obscured view of the room . . . the
overflowing ash trays, the blank faces of the boys, the white shirt
fronts, the hands holding the fans of cards. Then he heard a collective
exhalation of breath and Hollis said, "I'll be damned." Then the door
closed.
Hollis stuck his head in their room the next night.
"Moore, would you like to play some poker tonight?" he asked. "Nice
bunch tonight. They can probably play for any stakes you want."
Hank looked up, startled.
"No. I don't want to play poker, he said.
When Hollis had left Hank turned to Mike.
"Who was that?" he asked.
"Hollis. He is the guy I told you about. He has a poker game every night
in his room."
Hank had already lost interest and was turning over the pages of Gray's.
The next day at lunch in Encina Commons, Osborne and Hollis sat at the
same table with Mike and Hank. There were eight men at each table. The
food was brought in big white porcelain bowls and each man helped himself.
Hank ate quickly, neatly and fiercely. He seldom talked at the table
and he seldom listened to what was said. He was on his second helping
of creamed chicken over biscuits before he knew something was wrong. He
noticed everyone except Osborne and Hollis was silent. Hank looked at
the boy across from him and at once the boy glanced away. Hank turned
and looked down the table at Hollis.
"It's simple, Osborne," Hollis was saying. "I'll repeat it. Only a crude
anti-Semite would believe that the Jews have all the money because they
are greedy. The fact is that the Jews have all the money because they
never take a chance on losing it. They just hold on. If you hold on
long enough to all the little bits you can collect pretty soon you've
got a big wad. It's just that simple. The Jews just freeze the money
when they get ahold of it."
Hank felt his fork break through the crisp crust of a biscuit. Without
looking down he scooped the food into his mouth. He looked at Hollis'
tweed coat, the striped tie and the coarse, expensive-looking Oxford cloth
shirt. A pinpoint of hunger started up somewhere in Hank's stomach. He
reached out and quickly spooned more chicken onto his plate.
"Go on, Hollis," Hank said. "Tell us more."
"That's all there is to it, Moore," Hollis said. "You heard it. It was
plain enough."
Hank nodded. His mouth was full and a bit of biscuit hung from his
chin. He added some lima beans to his plate, spread butter on a
biscuit. His teeth bit into the lima beans; reduced the soft pulpy
substance to liquid and felt it go down his throat. He felt a necessity
to cram more food down his throat.
He looked at the red embarrassed faces of the other people around the
table and the hunger grew until he knew that he could never ease it. He
took two more gigantic bites of biscuit, scooped up some chicken on his
last biscuit and pushed it into his mouth. He chewed slowly. When his
mouth was empty he looked down the table at Hollis.
"Hollis, I know you're trying to be tough," Hank said gently. "But you
don't understand. I don't care one way or another about being a Jew. I
just don't react to it. I'm a Jew, but I'm not a patriotic Jew. But
I don't like you. Not because of what you said about the Jews. Just
because you're a pretty crude guy. I guess you were trying to be tough
so that you could shame me into playing poker with you. O.K., I'll give
you your choice. I'll play poker with you or I'll take you out behind
Encina and pound the shit out of you. Which will it be?"
Hank turned back to the table and began to eat the bread pudding
dessert. Hollis' face turned a slow red that gleamed through the tan.
He looked at Osborne, but there was no help there. Everyone at the table
sensed how neatly Hank had trapped him. If he picked the poker it looked
as if he were afraid to fight Hank. If he picked the fight Hank wouldn't
have to play poker and the whole conversation between Osborne and Hollis
was a silly stunt.
only aware of the spinning wheels, the clank of the chain, the flash of
her plaid skirt.
The important part of the afternoon's experiment was this, Mike ,thought,
and the words went like a written sentence across his mind: one person
can make a decision faster than a group.
That's it, he thought. That's Freesmith's First Principle of Human Behavior:
One person can make a decision faster than a group. That's exactly,
perfectly, precisely, absolutely it.
He walked on toward Encina Hall. He was almost there when he thought of
Bill Evans and another principle crossed his mind. Freesmith's Second
Principle of Human Behavior: The weak person wants to be delivered from
the superior person.
Delivered to what? he asked, as if the principle had been stated by
another person.
It doesn't matter, he said. Deliverance is enough.
CHAPTER 5
Close to Vest
The first quarter Hank did not go to three of his classes. He stayed in
his room and read anatomy, physiology and biology. Two nights before an
examination he would read over Mike's notes on the course. Then Mike
would ask him questions on the course. The night before examinations
they did not sleep at all. They went over the notes endlessly.
in the morning they would leave Encina and walk out for breakfast. Dawn
turned the hills across the Bay a soft suede texture. The big sandstone
buildings around the Quad had a queer ugly unity and often there was the
salt smell of fog in the air. They walked through the lonely world like
men about to make a conquest. Their eyes glittered from too much coffee
and too little sleep. When, finally, they picked up their bluebooks and
sat down to answer the questions it seemed incredibly easy and simple.
At the end of the first quarter, they received their grades. Mike put
the cards on the table in their room and studied them.
"Not good enough, Hank," he said. "My grades are good enough to get a
scholarship next year. I've got three A's and one B. You've got two A's
and two B's. You'll have to do a little better. Right now you're on
the borderline."
"I'm happy," Hank said. He was reading his Gray's and had it open to a
diagram of the delicate, intertwined, complex muscles of the ankle. "I'll
get three A's next quarter and I'll be qualified for a scholarship.
Don't worry about me."
"The old cigar box is getting low," Mike said. He walked to his bureau
drawer and took out a battered White Owl box. He opened it and took out
a stack of wrinkled bills and poured a mound of coins onto the table. He
counted it rapidly. "Two hundred and sixty-seven bucks left. That's all."
He scooped the money back into the box and threw the box in the drawer.
"We can get through the winter quarter, but we'll be broke by spring
quarter," Mike said. "It's the incidentals that run up. Laundry,
haircuts, books."
Hank looked up from his book.
"I eat too much,," Hank said apologetically. He kept his finger on a
plate in the book. It was squarely over the long thick purple sweep of the
aorta through a skeletonized neck and down into a yellow muscle-streaked
chest. "I'll cut down."
"You can't cut down," Mike said. "You're hungry so you've got to eat. You
don't get any fatter so it must be going into energy or some damned thing.
But you can't eat less."
Hank was vaguely ashamed of his appetite. He would eat the huge starchy
meals they served in Commons, take seconds, and then two hours later he
would feel a sharp pain in his stomach and in a moment he was ravenous. A
Hershey bar, a huge handful of peanuts, a few apples, almost anything,
would blot out the appetite and in a moment he had forgotten it completely,
could work absorbedly until the next attack of hunger. But if he did
not have the food at once he became dizzy, his attention dissolved
and he felt a sharp anxiety. Sometimes he even woke up at night and
staggered around the room, half asleep, looking for a candy bar or a bag
of peanuts or anything. If there was nothing in the room he would put on
his clothes and half sick with embarrassment and anger would walk down
to the all-night restaurant and eat a mass of fried potatoes and toast
and then walk back to the campus.
Hank worried because the enormous amount of food never made him any
fatter. His face was thin, his ribs stuck out. He longed for a layer of
fat over his bones.
"I know, I know," Hank said. "But maybe I could cut down on the food
between meals."
"You can't," Mike said flatly. "We've just got to get more money."
Hank's face went hard and tough and defensive.
"Look, Mike, I told you no crap about money. We made an agreement."
"But we need money for the next quarter."
"You said we had two hundred and sixty-seven bucks."
"It'll be gone next quarter when we pay tuition. What about the spring
quarter?"
"We'll worry about it when the money's gone," Hank said.
His bleached thin features relaxed. He murmured a word softly, looking
down at the book. "Aorta, aorta, aorta," said with the bemused repetition
by which a child chants a word into meaninglessness or twists it into
a special emphasis.
"Hank, why don't you get into the poker game Hollis has in his room
every night?" Mike said. "If you can play like you said you can you'd
win plenty."
Hank turned the page, read a few words and then looked up at Mike. Mike
knew he had not heard him. He was repeating another word, worrying it
to death.
"Poker, Hank," Mike said. "Get in the poker game in Hollis' room. A lot
of those eastern prep school boys play there. They've got money. They
play for big stakes."
"Phagocyte, phagocyte, phagocyte," Hank murmured. Then he heard what
Mike was saying. His odd blue eyes snapped open, he swung his feet to
the ground. "No. Don't mention it again. I hate poker. No more crap
about money. Understand? And especially not about poker money."
Mike left the room and walked down to Hollis' room. Hollis had money.
Everyone in Encina knew it. Hollis never mentioned it, but they could
tell. They could tell from the framed photograph on his wall which
showed him with his arm around the shroud of a very large yawl and
wearing shabby sneakers. They could tell also from the blazer he wore
which had an intricate little device over the heart and a Latin motto
stitched in white. They knew also from the thick white envelopes on his
desk which contained invitations to debuts in San Francisco and Boston
and New York. It wasn't until years later that Mike knew that the soiled
white buckskin shoes and the slipover Brooks Brothers shirts and the use
of the phrase "Nanny used to say . . ." were also signs. Mike thought
that Nanny was a nickname for his grandmother.
Hollis looked up wheh Mike came in the door. He had a thin, very tan
face. He seldom smiled.
"Hello, Freesmith," Hollis said. "No openings, but there might be later.
Make yourself at home." Hollis looked at the six men sitting around the
table and his voice became harsh. "Osborne, you can take your shirt off
if you want, but you can't stay in this room if you do."
Osborne, a big muscular boy from Ohio, stopped with one hand still in
a shirt sleeve.
"Hell, Hollis, it's hot in here," Osborne said. "All this smoke and
stuff."
"No one sits around in my room in an undershirt or naked to the waist,"
Hollis said. "Take your shirt off if you want, but get out if you do. Go
ahead, Holloway, deal the cards."
The cards spatted on the table. Osborne hesitated, his face anguished.
Hollis looked at the first card. Osborne slowly put his arm back into
the sleeve. He left his shirttail out as if to defy Hollis, but Hollis
did not even notice.
"How much are the chips worth?" Mike asked.
Hollis looked up from the table and found Mike's face in the dim light
ringing the table. He smiled.
"Not much," Hollis said. "White chips are a half dollar, red chips a
dollar and blue chips two dollars. Of course we could always sweeten
it up a bit if anyone wanted to. But we just try to keep it friendly."
The other boys at the table smiled, but they did not look up from their
cards. Mike guessed that they found it expensive to play. Most of the
pots wound up with around fifty or sixty dollars on the table. No money
changed hands, for Hollis acted as bank and merely made a notation on
a slip of paper when players bought chips. At the end of the night he
calculated what everyone had won and lost.
Hollis won the hand and while the cards were being shuffled he looked
up at Mike again.
"I understand that you Los Angeles people do things in a big way though,"
he said. "You probably wouldn't want to play for little old stakes like
these."
The men around the table laughed. Some of them pushed back from the table,
gave Hollis soft encouragement.
Mike smiled at Hollis, but he had made a decision. He waited until the
laughter died away.
"Those stakes are rich enough for my blood," Mike said. "But I'm not
the poker player in our room anyway. I'll tell you, though, you won't
get Hank to play for those stakes."
"A pity," Hollis said. "All these run-down Easterners could stand a
transfusion of real red Southern California blood."
He did not look up from his cards. Mike knew he did not want to go on
with it. Mike slipped it in softly.
"Not Hank," Mike said. "He won't play for chickenshit stakes like
this. That Hank is a real poker player. He plays poker for really
big money."
Hollis looked up from his cards. The other boys stopped talking. The
dealer paused with a one-eyed jack about to drop from his fingers. Mike
went on reflectively.
"No, these stakes wouldn't interest Hank. Not him."
"I think we could make it interesting for Mr. Moore," Hollis said. "Why
don't you just step down the hall and invite him to play? He can . . . "
"He won't," Mike said. "Not for stakes like these. He's heard of these
stakes. I don't think he'll play with you."
"Tell him he can name the stakes," Hollis cut in sharply. "Whatever
he wants."
"No, no," Mike said as if Hollis were being very dense. "You don't
understand. Once you play for really big stakes, kid stuff like this is
out. You're bored. I wouldn't want to ask him."
Mike walked to the door and opened it. As he closed it behind him he
had a diminishing, angular, smoke-obscured view of the room . . . the
overflowing ash trays, the blank faces of the boys, the white shirt
fronts, the hands holding the fans of cards. Then he heard a collective
exhalation of breath and Hollis said, "I'll be damned." Then the door
closed.
Hollis stuck his head in their room the next night.
"Moore, would you like to play some poker tonight?" he asked. "Nice
bunch tonight. They can probably play for any stakes you want."
Hank looked up, startled.
"No. I don't want to play poker, he said.
When Hollis had left Hank turned to Mike.
"Who was that?" he asked.
"Hollis. He is the guy I told you about. He has a poker game every night
in his room."
Hank had already lost interest and was turning over the pages of Gray's.
The next day at lunch in Encina Commons, Osborne and Hollis sat at the
same table with Mike and Hank. There were eight men at each table. The
food was brought in big white porcelain bowls and each man helped himself.
Hank ate quickly, neatly and fiercely. He seldom talked at the table
and he seldom listened to what was said. He was on his second helping
of creamed chicken over biscuits before he knew something was wrong. He
noticed everyone except Osborne and Hollis was silent. Hank looked at
the boy across from him and at once the boy glanced away. Hank turned
and looked down the table at Hollis.
"It's simple, Osborne," Hollis was saying. "I'll repeat it. Only a crude
anti-Semite would believe that the Jews have all the money because they
are greedy. The fact is that the Jews have all the money because they
never take a chance on losing it. They just hold on. If you hold on
long enough to all the little bits you can collect pretty soon you've
got a big wad. It's just that simple. The Jews just freeze the money
when they get ahold of it."
Hank felt his fork break through the crisp crust of a biscuit. Without
looking down he scooped the food into his mouth. He looked at Hollis'
tweed coat, the striped tie and the coarse, expensive-looking Oxford cloth
shirt. A pinpoint of hunger started up somewhere in Hank's stomach. He
reached out and quickly spooned more chicken onto his plate.
"Go on, Hollis," Hank said. "Tell us more."
"That's all there is to it, Moore," Hollis said. "You heard it. It was
plain enough."
Hank nodded. His mouth was full and a bit of biscuit hung from his
chin. He added some lima beans to his plate, spread butter on a
biscuit. His teeth bit into the lima beans; reduced the soft pulpy
substance to liquid and felt it go down his throat. He felt a necessity
to cram more food down his throat.
He looked at the red embarrassed faces of the other people around the
table and the hunger grew until he knew that he could never ease it. He
took two more gigantic bites of biscuit, scooped up some chicken on his
last biscuit and pushed it into his mouth. He chewed slowly. When his
mouth was empty he looked down the table at Hollis.
"Hollis, I know you're trying to be tough," Hank said gently. "But you
don't understand. I don't care one way or another about being a Jew. I
just don't react to it. I'm a Jew, but I'm not a patriotic Jew. But
I don't like you. Not because of what you said about the Jews. Just
because you're a pretty crude guy. I guess you were trying to be tough
so that you could shame me into playing poker with you. O.K., I'll give
you your choice. I'll play poker with you or I'll take you out behind
Encina and pound the shit out of you. Which will it be?"
Hank turned back to the table and began to eat the bread pudding
dessert. Hollis' face turned a slow red that gleamed through the tan.
He looked at Osborne, but there was no help there. Everyone at the table
sensed how neatly Hank had trapped him. If he picked the poker it looked
as if he were afraid to fight Hank. If he picked the fight Hank wouldn't
have to play poker and the whole conversation between Osborne and Hollis
was a silly stunt.
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