Three Days Before the Shooting ... (36 page)

I approached her, feeling a mounting confusion.

“Doll,” she said, “would you believe it, I had a private spook for a while, and I swear, he was the damndest man who ever kicked off a pair of shoes and punished a bed. That spook was simply awful. Not that he didn’t know his business, he did. He spook-handled everything—the cops, the johns, the bellhops, madams, and everything. And he took care of me fine. But that’s not what I mean. My point, Dad, is that the spook didn’t have any rules or laws. That’s what the problem was, doll. Damned spook would do anything just because people
said
a spook will do anything. ‘N when I say anything, I mean anything! He jived a society broad into setting him up in a penthouse, then he went for her seventy-year-old sister and messed it up. The sister’s husband didn’t like the idea, you see. That spook was a true phenomenon, doll.

“Why, one day I came home and discovered that he had killed my pet canaries and parakeets because they wouldn’t let him sleep—which although brutal was understandable, doll; but then the spook went on to bake them in a pie with pigtails, sweetbreads, and bell peppers. Doll, that spook was an ee-nig-ma!”

She yawned, then studied me with a mocking expression. “Know what else he did, doll?”

“No, Miss Duval.”

“Well, I’ll tell you; just bend down, doll; with those clowns over there listening, I have to whisper what that crazy spook did.”

I leaned toward her now, seeing Tillman’s jacket slip as she raised herself and as her face wavered up to mine. I hesitated.

“Doll, are you a damned faggot or something? You want me to tell you or not? Hell, you act like you’ve never been close to a real woman before.”

And then, as I bent closer, reaching out to grasp the chair arm, Miss Duval threw her arms around my neck and pulled me toward her. Whereupon a quite unbelievable thing occurred: She kissed me. First my lips and then my eyes, and as I turned my head and tried to get away, she giggled and ran her tongue into my left ear, and I felt the hot, moist shock of it as she released me and fell back into the chair, laughing.

“
That’s
what that crazy spook of mine used to do, doll. What do you think of that?”

I backed away, repelled for reasons that I couldn’t admit, even to myself. I was speechless, her action causing a sudden disarray of my senses. Someone else seemed to look out from behind the face of Miss Duval, and now I was aware of sounds coming from elsewhere in the building—music, voices. And as I backed away from the laughing woman, the articles in the room became extremely vivid, each creating in some strange way its own visual space, offset by a throbbing glow.

“Listen, you!” a voice shouted, and I whirled seeing the sergeant pointing his finger in McMillen’s face, while high on the table old Jessie Rockmore seemed about to hurl some stern and outraged judgment down upon us all.

I had passed through the door then, closing it upon Miss Duval’s bubbling laughter. As I moved through the cluttered room I noticed a large dark man standing with his face turned toward the blazing wall, gazing through the stereopticon. Then I was past the policeman and the Negroes huddled in the vestibule and upon the stairs, into the hot darkness of the street.

Sometimes, as I say, this American scene tries to outdo itself in the extremes which it throws up to us. And it usually selects precisely those moments when we are least prepared to confront or even make sense of them. And, in fact, when we are least prepared to be attentive. Perhaps when such events occur we’re too relieved to get away, to make tracks for a more tranquil territory of place or mind, that we fail even to consider the possibility that these events might be far more than simple occurrences in themselves but tame forecasts of more tortuous puzzles, of more drastic revelations. Even of disasters of tragic proportions. Of one thing I am certain, I was so relieved to be out of Jessie Rockmore’s house and into the sultry rationality of the nighttime street that I felt a certain sense of innocence, thankful that I had been born to a stable level of society in which such chaos had been eliminated, tamed, filtered out. It had difficulties, true, but at least there was ORDER. Oh, yes, I was relieved, but how was I to know that after those confounding moments of night I was yet to face a more terrible day?

CHAPTER 13

L
OOKING DOWN THE CORRIDOR
toward Bates, I wondered what would have happened had I tried to describe what I’d seen and observed in Jessie Rockmore’s house to Tolliver. He probably would have rushed me upstairs to join McMillen—whom I can’t believe to be a murderer—and LeeWillie Minifees. And now I asked myself if it was not one more cryptic foreshadowing of more chaos to come, with the old Negro in his coffin chair–judgment bench but one more arrow pointing to the bringing low of a powerful senator.

But there was no time for further speculation, for now the elevator opened and a young nurse hurried past me and entered the Senator’s room. Then, hardly had the door closed than one of the men carrying a machine gun came out and hurried down the corridor to speak with Bates and then disappeared around the corner. All this occurred swiftly, without a stir from old Hickman. But now, as the nurse came out again, she spoke to him and he seemed immediately alert. I could see him smile and nod his head and the nurse hurrying down the corridor where the guard had disappeared. My nerves tightened as I watched him, his eyes closed again, and I fought down an impulse to ask if she’d given him some word of the Senator’s condition. And where was Tolliver, I wondered, and would he remember his promise to alert me to any new development? I got up and walked back and forth before the bench, waiting. I thought of Miss Duval, my mother, Laura, of the Holy Family as sepia-tinted Negroes. What a mishmash of images! What a nutty blend of values! The world had become a Mr. Badbar of nutty contradictions…. I was starving, my gut growling.

I was about to sit down when the nurse returned with a tray and handed Hickman a glass.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, clearing his throat, then nodded to me and I watched her smile, come toward me.

“That gentleman thought you might be thirsty,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I am.”

I took the glass and drank, returning it to her slender fingers.

“How is the Senator?” I said.

She shook her head. “Still critical, I’m afraid. Would you care for more water?”

“That’ll be enough, thank you.”

She left and I watched her return to the Senator’s room. I sat then, determined to control my impatience. I would rest until Tolliver came and alerted me, or until I saw old Hickman called into the room. I thought of Minifees. Where were they holding him? And what was his role, if any, in this rotten fudge of a day? It was growing hotter. I rested my head upon the hard back of the bench, closed my eyes. I thought of my tally of birds, the sound of mating and nesting songs, the flicker of swift wings.
I came out of the woods into a strange street which looked as though it had been recently bombed. There was a hushed air of mystery over all. The houses seemed mere façades. Bricks, broken glass, and charred timbers were scattered about. Train rails were twisted like cables around the trunks of charred and splintered trees. And to one side I saw a billboard from which a huge Bull Durham Tobacco sign on which the once-proud bull, now ripped partially from its frame, swayed gently back and forth in the sunlight. Rust and blistered paint powdered his sides, his torn right horn revealing rusted tin behind. Then above, on the sun-shrunk frame, I saw a small conclave of buzzards engaged in furious argument. I was halted in the full rush of a running stride, my senses whirling as the question WHEN WILL YOU EVER LEARN MODERATION? sounded in my head as a voice cried:

“Modernize! Sophisticate the techniques! Pollute the controls!”

“No, no, I insist,” one of the buzzards said. “The best way is the traditional way. First you wait until he’s properly ripened, and then hit him in the eyeball, and, after making sure that the coast is clear, after making certain that there are no intruders lurking around the edges to interrupt, you proceed just as the buzzards have always done. The first blow to the eye, however, is most important. Only then, after delivering the stroke with precision, should one proceed.”

“Ah, tradish, tradish!” one of the younger buzzards said, “I’m sick to the stomach of all this tradish!”

“I agree, I quite agree,” another small buzzard said, thrusting out his beak to the first speaker. “But how have the honorable old-timers gone about it, Altercocker?”

“Sneer if you like, you little unsanitary son-of-a-cuckoo-clock,” the old buzzard said, “but my method is tried and true. Just as I’ve said, first you hit him in the eyeball, and then, taking your time so as to preserve your strength and steady your aim, you march around to the backdoor and there, with the proper dignity and decorum attuned to the delicacy of our dedicated task, you march straight up through his vast passage. That is the way! Proceed in this manner; taking your time and working him
thoroughly, you’ll come out refreshed and reinvigorated. And, you’ll be strengthened in heart and mind, sharpened in insight and lifted aloft in your morale down to the last frolic and—”

“Yes,” another old fellow said, “and with your appetite absolutely satisfied.” “That’s absolutely correct,” the first buzzard said. “You’ll preen with satisfaction, gleam with the sheen of a job well done. And that’s the only proper manner in which it should be done. So don’t bore me with your modern methods with their utter disregard for ceremony and good taste. I don’t even wish to contemplate them. They are a virtual rape of proper procedure. An assault upon our past and repast! I’ve had too much vivid experience to think otherwise. Indeed, my boy, if one could arrange all the horses that I’ve worked my way through and place them in a straight line, one could march three times around the world without encountering the necessity of touching the earth! That’s right: I know. I have done the state some service. Indeed, quite a bit of service. And all with this tried-and-true method!”

And suddenly his bald head came around, his ruff rippling greasily in the sunlight as he looked straight at me, “Isn’t that true, friend?” he said. And without a word I turned and ran, hearing the buzzard laughter arising behind me as they sang:

See Mac run!

See Mac run!

He’s a running son-of a-gun!

He’s a running son-of a-gun!

He’ll outrun the sun—yeah!

And then right out of gas, oh, yas!

He’ll run right out of gas!

Oh, see Mac run!

Oh, see Mac run!

Can anyone tell us why he fled?

Y’all heard what the man just said

Oh, I’ll tell you just what Papa said

He’s running for where the living don’t

Bury the living dead, my son
,

Don’t bury the living dead!

See Mac run!

See Mac run!

He’s a running son-of a-gun!

He’s a running son-of a-gun!

Man, he’ll outrun the sun—yeah!

And then right out of gas, oh, yas!

Lawd, see Mac run! Ah say
,

See Mac run!

Can anyone tell us why he fled?

Ah said, who knows just why he fled?

Now y’all heard what the man just said

Yas, I can tell y’all what old Pappy said

He’s running for where the living don’t

Don’t bury the living dead!

I ran now in earnest, sailing past broken houses and scenes of great devastation. And yet, off to my right, I could see a thriving field in which an odd-shaped machine rested like some strange and satiated Moloch, while beyond the field the roofs and smoking chimneys of a thriving city showed
.

God,
I thought
, I must be as drunk as a coot!

Then, just as I was passing a burning automobile, I saw McGowan leaning wearily against a lamppost. Obviously, he was waiting for me, and I thought
, Oh, hell, here comes another lecture on the fourth dimension,
and tried to hurry past as though I hadn’t seen him—only to have him reach out and grab my sleeve
.

And when I looked at him, I immediately felt guilty; he looked strangely transformed and extremely weak
.

“Look, McIntyre,” he said, “I’m having terrible trouble with a nigra, and I don’t know what to do about him. Man, I need some HELP!”

“You?” I said. “What’s he doing to you? Where is he?”

“Why, the bastard’s blocking my doorway, McIntyre, and I can’t get him to leave.”

I watched him warily, expecting a trick. “That’s rather odd, isn’t it?” I said. “What’s the matter with him? Who is he?”

“I don’t know,” McGowan said. “McIntyre, I really don’t know.”