The Damned Page 16

  John struggled up out of sleep, and the knowledge that Mamma was dead fell in on him, like the crashing of a tall white room. He sobbed aloud.

  “Move over, boy,” Danton said gently. “I’ll run it aboard.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  PHIL DECKER walked up the road, through the night, away from the river, away from the cars, lifting his knees high with each stride, swinging his arms briskly. He walked away from the singing of the twins until there was no sound in all the world but the clip-tamp of his steps, the brush of fabric as the legs of the maroon shorts rubbed together.

  No need to get excited about it. World’s full of them. Kids with stars in their eyes and a little talent and a lot of ambition. God, if all the young babes with a yen for show business were laid end to end—it would probably get them someplace. Whose joke was that? Manny’s? Sounded like him.

  No need to think it was the end of the world. There were a lot of creeks and he’d been up most of them, spoon-less as usual, and landed on his feet. But it was the interruption that mattered this time. Damn it, a man gets old. How long to pick up more partners and shape them up for the assault on TV? Two years? Not much less, certainly. They say, “Where have you played?” and you got to have an answer. And by that time he’d be over fifty.

  The twins were soft in the head. What could they do all alone? Go back to that corn-fed routine they were doing first time they were booked? Or maybe go into one of those showcase jobs? That isn’t an act. It isn’t talent. Just walk around slow in a thousand bucks’ worth of costume, giving the ringside baldies a glassy smile, and wagging those things God gave you, in a genteel way, and praying that one of the baldies wants to get closer than ringside, and the price for that is marriage. And backstage those big lovelies pop on the shell-rimmed glasses and read Proust or something, so that maybe if the baldie they get ever wants to talk, they can Proust the hell out of him.

  It isn’t an act, damn it. Now that strip, that’s it. The only twin strip act on the road. The others can do it under water, or with birds, or with a tambourine, but I got the only strip twins in the business. I mean I had the only twins.

  Talk them out of this craziness. The heat did it. The heat and this waiting. But I know them too well. They’re sort of bright, and they’re both stubborn. Hard as hell to make them change their minds. And this time they’re like iron. You can feel it.

  Every time the breaks come along, the timing is bad. Hell, a few years back we could have booked on that Keith merry-go-round and made a million bucks and they wouldn’t have been unhappy.

  Maybe they just can’t take that strip. They seemed to be getting used to it. That can’t be it. Just like old Billy Moscow. Remember how he picked up that lassy in Trenton? Dear Lord, how she was stacked! Ten days we spent, the two of us, trying to get her to do a strip. No, sir. Not that girl. Undress in front of people? she kept saying. And then a year later old Billy goes to Miami and what does he see but the same girl, calling herself Dixie Ravel, and not only is she doing a strip, but one with tassels that she gets spinning in opposite directions. A real talent. Billy was fit to be throat-cut over that.

  I didn’t ask for no bumps and grinds out of those girls. That’s cheap stuff. Just a good dignified strip, and who the hell is going to fit into all those terrific expensive costumes now?

  This next couple of years was going to be the good old days, for sure. Figured I had them coming to me. Thirty-three years of learning the timing. Thirty-three years. Gets so you can’t remember what happened where. Twenty years with Manny. Decker and Malone. Songs and frolic. Top billing at the Orpheum three times. Paid one little girl fifty bucks a week and all she ever had to do was walk across the stage twice. That was with the gag where Manny follows her lugging that forty pounds of ice in a pair of tongs and then come weaving back out with one little bitty ice cube in those tongs.

  A lot of years and a lot of happening. Never forget the yell that went up that night in Kansas City. We were to come on next. That was when that Austrian was acting funny. He had good reason to. One of the acrobats had been getting to his wife and the Austrian had a good hunch. So with her out there against the board he throws the knives fine, and he throws two of the hatchets fine, and with that last hatchet he cuts her in half, right from the eyebrows up. Got away with it, too. Told the cops the night was so hot his hand got sweaty. Sobbing and carrying on. We all knew the score, but nobody would snitch to local cops. That acrobat was pretty irritated, and he got even in a way only an acrobat could think up. He waits until the Austrian gets himself another wife and target, and then he gets to her too. Last I heard, the Austrian cut his throat with one of his own knives.

  Sixteen that year I started. A singer, yet. Serious about it. Trying too hard. Then with the rose-colored spot on me, and singing something about somebody’s mother, I swung my arm and knocked the prop loose on the baby grand and it came down and damn near broke my wrist. My God, the yuk that went up! Did something to me. So we put it in the act, and from then on I’m a comic. Had a big leather thing under my sleeve so that lid could come down with a real bang.

  Billed with the best. Cantor and Berle’s mother. Mickey Rooney when he was a three-year-old squirt stealing the stage from his whole damn family. All the vaudeville, and then the burlesque years, and then, with Manny gone, doing the singles in clubs.

  Bert Lahr and that damn n-guh, n-guh, n-guh noise of his. All he had was the right break. Like Ed Wynn. And Joe Brown. Hell, I’m only forty-nine. That Lahr is right up there and he must be older than God. There’s a lot of years left. Manny and I, and that thousand a week for damn near eight years. Half a million bucks and where did it go? We lived good because it was going to last forever, and Manny kept needling me for saving up dough and he was right, because as soon as I had fifty thousand bucks that bitch Christine busts in on me with two witnesses when I’m with that little girl—can’t even remember her name or how it was. I hope it was good, because the settlement on Christine was fifty thousand bucks, a considerable amount to pay for one little tumble. Manny laughed so hard he couldn’t hardly stand up and he told me that’s what I get for saving money.

  It was going to last forever and somehow it didn’t. I got my health and the car and fifteen hundred bucks and a load of costumes. No time to give up, Phil boy. But you can wonder about that health angle. I know I ought to see a doc. The way my left arm keeps going numb every once in a while, and when it’s numb, I can’t seem to get enough air in my lungs when I take a breath. Hell, that isn’t enough of a symptom to bother a doc with. No pain. I’m as tough as I ever was.

  Say, I must have walked a mile and a half. Stop and take a breather. Lot of stars in the sky. Makes you feel tiny, like you’re on stage in the biggest damn theatre in the world. Stars always make me think of backdrops, of the ceiling of clubs. Funny how all the time they want to go making decorations that look like stars.

  Make jokes out here and you don’t get much of a laugh, that’s for sure.

  Why did they have to do it to me?

  Well, I let them know I can get along fine without them. Fine and dandy. Hard to find twins for an act, though.

  Doesn’t pay to be alone. Makes you gloomy. Making me wonder just what in the hell I’ll do if I can’t whump up another act. Nobody to go to. No trade but the one I got. Some tired costumes and a car that needs a motor overhaul, and a headful of jokes and lyrics. A million of them. Name any object and I can give you three gags on it, clean or blue. Fountain pen, post office, mallard duck. Any object. Can’t remember where the gag came from. Got a hundred ways to squelch hecklers. Please, mister, do I come over to where you work and keep joggling your shovel? Lady, please, we both got professions. Yours is just a little older than mine.

  I’ll kill ’em in the old men’s home. They’ll rock and cackle, rock and cackle, all day long. That Decker feller, he’s sure a card.

  I’ve slept in ten thousand beds, drunk a thousand barrels of liquor, bounced more hundreds of women than
I want to think about. I’ve made a half million bucks and spent all of it but fifteen hundred. I’ve never cheated a friend, or chiseled a buck, or kicked over a baby carriage. Why do I stand here hitching? Just because a pair of stacked blondes double-crossed me. Couple of years from now I won’t even remember their names or what they look like. Couple of years from now they’ll see this ugly puss on magazine covers and know they pulled the craziest stunt in the world. My pattern can’t miss. It can’t miss. It’s what people want. A little music, a little skin, a touch of the blue. They want visual gags, and that’s perfect for TV. Maybe I can get a single on TV. Wouldn’t take much practice to work up that thing I used to do years ago. Leon Errol, God rest his soul, used to do it better. Old rubber legs.

  Let me see, I’m carrying the glass like this, and I do the rubber-leg deal, coming on, drinking what’s in the glass and leaving that big chunk of glass that looks like ice. I get the hiccups. I get them so bad, like this, while I’m staggering around, that the ice goes way up in the air, and each time I get the glass in the way and it falls back in. Then comes a big hiccup and the ice goes up and I turn around and it drops right into that gap at the back of my pants. Now let’s see…

  There in the starlight, in the middle of the empty road, in the middle of the empty burned land, the little man staggered and weaved and hiccupped, holding an imaginary glass. After a big hiccup he stood very still, his face showing wonderment. He looked into the glass, then looked around the TV stage. No ice. Wonderment turned slowly to shock, and then to consternation. He did a wild, gesticulating dance, and quite suddenly stopped.

  He shook his left arm as though trying to flip water from the fingertips. He massaged his left hand hard, breathing deeply. He rubbed his arm for a time and then turned toward the river and walked back.

  He walked lifting his knees high and swinging his arms briskly, and in the night was the clip-tamp of his steps and the faint rasp of fabric, and the long, long rain sound of that kind of applause that stops the show, every time.

  Chapter Fifteen

  LINDA walked beside Bill Danton, grateful for his silence, grateful for the understanding that caused his silence. A faint night breeze was cool on her shoulders.

  “What do they call it?” she said at last. “A swing and a miss, I guess. That’s the way I feel.”

  “Get yourself all readied up to make a big decision, and he makes it for you.”

  “I ought to feel relieved. I just feel empty.”

  “He was rough.”

  “He’s not the same John. Not the same as yesterday.”

  “Linda, he hated you yesterday, and shows it today.”

  “But he didn’t, really. I know he didn’t.”

  “O.K., then it was like something balanced in his mind. A big round boulder on the top of a hill. It was going to roll down one side or the other.”

  “That makes more sense. I can understand that better, Bill. But what’s going to become of him? He needs me.”

  “Give him a few years if you want to throw yourself away. Anyhow, I don’t think you could if you wanted to. That boy is done. He’s through.”

  “And here we are?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Linda.”

  She stopped and faced him, looking up at him, the hair paler in the starlight than the honeyed tan of her face.

  “Bill, I’m not a great brain. I haven’t been alive long enough to learn much. But there’s a funny kind of knowledge in me. I don’t like pat answers. I don’t like neat, hemstitched little endings on my stories. Life doesn’t come out that way. There’s never exactly the right amount of string to tie up a package. Always too much or too little. Pat endings are from O. Henry and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Edgar Guest. I can’t have my marriage blow up in my face and give a big contented sigh and fall into your arms and we walk away into the sunset with violin music. No, Bill. Life doesn’t work that way.”

  “I can see what you’re trying to say. But maybe this time it does work that way. Maybe this is the one time when there’s just enough string for one package.”

  “I don’t want a rebound job. Neither do you. You’d be a wonderful shoulder to cry on. A nice big wall for my tears. But I can’t see myself doing it. No doubt you’re a sweet guy, a find, something every girl should have. But I’m a girl with a lot of cat in me. Ever see a hurt cat, Bill?”

  “Can’t say as I have.”

  “They go away. They go off by themselves, Bill, and they tend to themselves and the hurt gets better or it kills them. So I’m not going to fall in your arms, though God knows I want to. I don’t want to be alone. I wasn’t made to be alone. I was made for one man. John doesn’t seem to be the one. Maybe you aren’t, either. I’m in no condition to even guess about you.”

  “Let me do all the guessing.”

  “No. Write out your address and give it to me. I’m going to get a Nevada divorce. And when it’s final, I’m going back to New York and use what contacts I still have to get back into modeling work. And once I’m all set, Bill, if I’m still thinking about you and still wondering, I’ll write and you come up to my environment where I can get a look at you. I can’t see anything clearly here in Mexico. Then there won’t be any question of a rebound. And there won’t be any strings on me, and maybe I’ll have stopped feeling so empty.”

  She looked at him, waiting for his comment, knowing that this would, in a sense, be a measure of his maturity. If he kicked up a fuss, argued with her, criticized her plan, it could mean that he lacked a certain necessary quality of assurance. She wanted no more uncertain men in her life. The relationship with John had been odd and wrong. He had made all the little decisions. What dress she would wear, where and when they would eat. And yet, with the chips down, as in the matter of where to go for the honeymoon, she had made the decision. She wanted a man this time. She wanted to be able to wheedle and get her way in little things, and have him decide big things.

  He scuffed the sole of his sandal on the hard surface of the road. “Sure like to kidnap you and take you home and show you off and say, ‘See why I waited and see what I found.’ But I see what you mean. It would be moving too fast. Got to sweat it out a little. Got to work and pray for it a little. But one thing, Linda. You’re it. For me. Sure, it’s only one day, and not even a whole day at that. So what do I know, or maybe it’s better to say how do I know? Because you lived a long day. You’ve been through a lot. With me watching. More than if I’d known you for months and months when nothing was happening.”

  “You can’t be sure so quickly, Bill.”

  “Doesn’t make much sense, does it? Man goes around trying to make sense of what happens in his heart, he has a pretty hard time, I guess. I’m no kid. All I can say is this: Somewhere in the back of my mind I’ve been building me a woman. Doing it for years. Everybody does, I guess. Then you come along and I get what those art critics call ‘the shock of recognition.’ You’re like you walked out of my own head, like I built you myself.

  “I don’t expect you to have that same shock of recognition. I just want to be liked. And I’d be low-rating myself if I didn’t believe that liking is going to turn to love, if I work at it. I like to hoot and holler and stomp around. I need an earthy woman and a laughing woman and a loving woman. Pretty comes next, and you got that market pretty near cornered, and that’s like pure profit.”

  “I’m not all those things.”

  “Maybe not. But you’ll be them to me, and that’s where it counts. So I respectfully submit that your planning needs one other little thing.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like writing me your address as soon as you’re divorced and in New York. I won’t come roaring right up. I’ll give you time. But I want the chance to sell you a bill of goods, whether you want to listen to the salesman or not. And then I won’t feel as if you were gone.”

  “O.K., Bill. That’s fair. What if I said I wouldn’t give it to you?”

  He laughed softly. “I’ve got t
he license number of the Buick written down. Don’t imagine it would be much of a trick to trace you through Gerrold.”

  “Just for that I ought to make you do it.”

  “Had to use the pencil that Atahualpa gave me. Only thing I could think of at the moment.”

  “Bill, we won’t be able to say good-by in Matamoros. We kissed and I said a silly thing, and it leaves a bad taste. Could another one be sort of arranged?”

  “You’re putting me to a lot of trouble, but perhaps…”

  “I want the kind of kiss that’s for luck. A friendly kiss.” He pulled her over to where the shadows were deep, pulling her lightly by the wrist. She felt his big hands on her shoulders, saw the dark loom of his face over hers, tilted her face up to his. His lips were firm on hers, firm and warm. A short kiss and one that was very sweet. He still held her shoulders and then his fingers bit deep and his lips came down again as he made a small sound in his throat, half groan and half sob. She fought herself for one twisting moment and then returned his kiss with a crazy, unexpected kind of hunger. They parted and she stood, strangely dazed.

  “Good-by, Linda,” he said.

  “Good-by… Bill Danton.”

  “Looks like we’ll get across this trip.”

  “You go to the car. I’ll be along in a minute.”

  “Sure.”

  He disappeared, heading toward the car. She touched her fingertips to her lips. The kiss had shaken her more than she had let him know. A funny thing for a kiss, she thought, in this day and age. A kiss was something bestowed on a casual acquaintance without thought of implication or complication. Yet her response had been almost instantaneous. She had responded to his maleness, to the rude force of him, so gladly and so thoroughly that even now, minutes later, her breasts still tingled, her knees were not yet strong. John had never done that to her with a kiss, nor had anyone else.

  She thought, Am I being a stupid girl, responding to high square shoulders and a Texas drawl? Or just a bitch, made ready and willing in the space of one breath? Or is it this crazy day, working on me like an aphrodisiac, day heavy with death, eaten with tensions—cancerous, ulcerous day?