Dr. Bloodmoney (25 page)

“You had no experience,” she interrupted. “It was just your goddam guilty conscience catching up with you. Let’s go; I want to hear Dangerfield. At least when he talks it’s fun to listen.” She put on her coat, walked quickly to the front door and opened it.

“Will Edie be all right?” Barnes asked as they started down the path.

“Sure,” she said, unable at the moment to care. Let her burn up, she said to herself. Gloomily, she plodded down the road, hands thrust deep in her coat pockets; Barnes trailed along behind her, trying to keep up with her strides.

Ahead of them two figures appeared, turning the corner and emerging into sight; she stopped, stricken, thinking one of them was George. And then she saw that the shorter, heavier man was Jack Tree and the other—she strained to see, still walking as if nothing were wrong. It was Doctor Stockstill.

“Come on,” she said over her shoulder, calmly, to Barnes. He came, then, hesitantly, wanting to turn back, to run. “Hi,” she called to Stockstill and Bluthgeld; or rather Jack Tree—she had to remember to keep calling him that. “What’s this, psychoanalysis out in the dark at night? Does that make it more effective? I’m not surprised to learn it.”

Gasping, Tree said in his hoarse, grating voice, “Bonny,
I saw him again
. It’s the Negro who understood about me that day when the war began, when I was going into Stockstill’s office. Remember, you sent me?”

Jokingly, Stockstill said, “They all look alike, as the saying goes. And anyhow—”

“No, it’s the same man,” Tree said. “He’s followed me here. Do you know what this means?” He looked from Bonny to Stockstill to Barnes, his eyes rubbery and enlarged, terror-stricken. “This means that it’s going to start again.”

“What’s going to start again?” Bonny said.

“The war,” Tree said to her. “Because that’s why it began last time; the Negro saw me and understood what I had done, he knew who I was and he still does. As soon as he sees me—” He broke off, wheezing and coughing in his agony. “Pardon me,” he murmured.

To Stockstill, Bonny said, “There’s a Negro here; he’s right. I saw him. Evidently he came to talk to Gill about selling his cigarettes.”

“It couldn’t be the same person,” Stockstill said. He and she went off to one side slightly, talking now between themselves.

“Certainly it could,” Bonny said. “But that doesn’t matter because that’s one of his delusions. I’ve heard him gabble about it countless times. Some Negro was sweeping the sidewalk and saw him go into your office, and that day the war began so he’s got them connected in his mind. And now he’ll probably completely deteriorate, don’t you think?” She felt resigned; she had been expecting this to happen, eventually. “And so the period,” she said, “of stable maladjustment is drawing to a close.” Perhaps, she thought, for us all. Just plain all of us. We could not have gone on like this forever, Bluthgeld with his sheep, me with George… she sighed. “What do you think?”

Stockstill said, “I wish I had some Stelazine, but Stelazine ceased to exist on E Day. That would help him. I can’t. I’ve given that up; you know that, Bonny.” He sounded resigned, too.

“He’ll tell everyone,” she said, watching Bluthgeld, who stood repeating to Barnes what he had just told her and Stockstill. “They’ll know who he is, and they will kill him, as he fears; he’s right.”

“I can’t stop him,” Stockstill said mildly.

“You don’t particularly care,” she said.

He shrugged.

Going back to Bluthgeld, Bonny said, “Listen, Jack, let’s all go to Gill’s and see this Negro and I’ll bet he didn’t notice you that day. Do you want to bet? I’ll bet you twenty-five silver cents.”

“Why do you say you caused the war?” Barnes was saying to Bluthgeld. He turned to Bonny with a puzzled expression. “What is this, a war psychosis? And he says the war’s coming back.” Once more to Bluthgeld he said, “It isn’t possible for it to happen again; I can give you fifty reasons. First of all, there’re no hydrogen weapons left. Second—”

Putting her hand on Barnes’ shoulder, Bonny said, “Be quiet.” She said to Bruno Bluthgeld, “Let’s go down, all of us, together, and listen to the satellite. Okay?”

Bluthgeld muttered, “What is the satellite?”

“Good lord,” Barnes said. “He doesn’t know what you’re talking about. He’s mentally ill.” To Stockstill he said, “Listen, Doctor, isn’t schizophrenia where a person loses track of their culture and its values? Well, this man has lost track; listen to him.”

“I hear him,” Stockstill said in a remote voice.

Bonny said to him, “Doctor, Jack Tree is very dear to me. He has been in the past very much like a father to me. For God’s sake, do something for him. I can’t stand to see him like this; I just can’t stand it.”

Spreading his hands helplessly, Stockstill said, “Bonny, you think like a child. You think anything can be obtained if you just want it badly enough. That’s magical thinking. I can’t help—Jack Tree.” He turned away and walked off a few steps, toward town. “Come on,” he said to them over his shoulder. “We’ll do as Mrs. Keller suggests; we’ll go sit in the Hall and listen for twenty minutes to the satellite and then we’ll all feel a good deal better.”

Once more Barnes was talking with great earnestness to Jack Tree. “Let me point out where the error in your logic lies. You saw a particular man, a Negro, on Emergency Day. Okay. Now, seven years later—”

“Shut up,” Bonny said to him, digging her fingers into his arm. “For God’s sake—” She walked on, then, catching up with Doctor Stockstill. “I can’t stand it,” she said. “I know this is the last of him; he won’t survive past this, seeing that Negro again.”

Tears filled her eyes; she felt tears dropping, escaping her. “Goddam,” she said bitterly, walking as fast as possible, ahead of the others, in the direction of town and the Foresters’ Hall. Not even to know about the satellite. To be that cut off, that deteriorated … I didn’t realize. How can I stand it? How can a thing like this be? And once he was brilliant. A man who talked over TV and wrote articles, taught and debated…

Behind her, Bluthgeld was mumbling, “I know it’s the same man, Stockstill, because when I ran into him on the street—I was buying feed at the feed store—he gave me that same queer look, as if he was about to jeer at me, but then he knew if he jeered I’d make it all happen again, and this time he was afraid. He saw it once before and he knows. Isn’t that a
fact
, Stockstill? He would know now. Am I correct?”

“I doubt if he knows you’re alive,” Stockstill said.

“But I’d have to be alive,” Bluthgeld answered. “Or the world—” His voice became a blur and Bonny missed the rest; she heard only the sound of her own heels striking the weedy remains of pavement beneath her feet.

And the rest of us, we’re all just as insane, she said to herself. My kid with her imaginary brother, Hoppy moving pennies at a distance and doing imitations of Dangerfield, Andrew Gill rolling one cigarette after another by hand, year after year … only death can get us out of this and maybe not even death. Maybe it’s too late; we’ll carry this deterioration with us to the next life.

We’d have been better off, she thought, if we’d all died on E Day; we wouldn’t have lived to see the freaks and the funnies and the radiation-darkies and the brilliant animals—the people who began the war weren’t thorough enough. I’m tired and I want to rest; I want to get out of this and go lie down somewhere, off where it’s dark and no one speaks. Forever.

And then she thought, more practically, Maybe what’s the matter with me is simply that I haven’t found the right man yet. And it isn’t too late; I’m still young and I’m not fat, and as everyone says, I’ve got perfect teeth. It could still happen, and I must keep watching.

Ahead lay the Foresters’ Hall, the old-fashioned white wooden building with its windows boarded up—the glass had never been replaced and never would be. Maybe Dangerfield, if he hasn’t died of a bleeding ulcer yet, could run a classified ad for me, she conjectured. How would that go over with this community, I wonder? Or I could advertise in
News & Views
, let the worn-out drunk Paul Dietz run a little notice on my behalf for the next six months or so.

Opening the door of the Foresters’ Hall she heard the friendly, familiar voice of Walt Dangerfield in his recorded reading; she saw the rows of faces, the people listening, some with anxiety, some with relaxed pleasure … she saw, seated inconspicuously in the corner, two men, Andrew Gill and with him a slender, good-looking young Negro. It was the man who had caved in the roof of Bruno Bluthgeld’s fragile structure of maladaptation, and Bonny stood there in the doorway not knowing what to do.

Behind her came Barnes and Stockstill and with them Bruno; the three men started past her, Stockstill and Barnes automatically searching for empty seats in the crowded hail. Bruno, who had never shown up before to hear the satellite, stood in confusion, as if he did not comprehend what the people were doing, as if he could make nothing out of the words emanating from the small battery-powered radio.

Puzzled, Bruno stood beside Bonny, rubbing his forehead and surveying the people in the room; he glanced at her questioningly, with a numbed look, and then he started to follow Barnes and Stockstill. And then he saw the Negro. He stopped. He turned back toward her, and now the expression on his face had changed; she saw there the eroding, dreadful suspicion—the conviction that he understood the meaning of all that he saw.

“Bonny,” he mumbled, “you have to get him out of here.”

“I can’t,” she said, simply.

“If you don’t get him out of here,” Bruno said, “I’ll make the bombs fall again.”

She stared at him and then she heard herself say in a brittle, dry voice, “Will you? Is that what you want to do, Bruno?”

“I have to,” he mumbled in his toneless way, staring at her sightlessly; he was completely preoccupied with his own thoughts, the various changes taking place within him. “I’m sorry, but first I’ll make the high-altitude test bombs go off again; that’s how I started before, and if that doesn’t do it then I’ll bring them down here, they’ll fall on everyone. Please forgive me, Bonny, but my God, I have to protect myself.” He tried to smile, but his toothless mouth did not respond beyond a distorted quiver.

Bonny said, “Can you
really
do that, Bruno? Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. And he was sure; he had always been sure of his power. He had brought the war once and he could do it again if they pushed him too far: in his eyes she saw no doubt, no hesitation.

“That’s an awful lot of power for one man to have,” she said to him. “Isn’t that strange, that one man would have so much?”

“Yes,” he said, “it’s all the power in the world rolled together; I am the center. God willed it to be that way.”

“What a mistake God made,” she said.

Bruno gazed at her bleakly. “You, too,” he said. “I thought you never would turn against me, Bonny.”

She said nothing; she went to an empty chair and seated herself. She paid no more attention to Bruno. She could not; she had worn herself out, over the years, and now she had nothing left to give him.

Stockstill, seated not far away, leaned toward her and said, “The Negro is here in the room, you know.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “I know.” Seated bolt-upright, she concentrated on the words coming from the radio; she listened to Dangerfield and tried to forget everyone and everything around her.

It’s out of my hands now, she said to herself. Whatever he does, whatever becomes of him, it’s not my fault. Whatever happens—to all of us. I can’t take any more responsibility; it’s gone on too long, as it is, and I am glad, at last, to get out from under it.

What a relief, she thought. Thank God.

Now it must begin again, Bruno Bluthgeld thought to himself. The war. Because there is no choice; it is forced on me. I am sorry for the people. All of them will have to suffer, but perhaps out of it they will be redeemed. Perhaps in the long run it is a good thing.

He seated himself, folded his hands, shut his eyes and concentrated on the task of assembling his powers. Grow, he said to them, the forces at his command everywhere in the world. Join and become potent, as you were in former times. There is need for you again, all ye agencies.

The voice issuing from the loudspeaker of the radio, however, disturbed him and made it difficult for him to concentrate. Breaking off, he thought, I must not be distracted; that is contrary to the Plan. Who is this that’s talking? They are all listening … are they getting their instructions from him, is that it?

To the man seated beside him he said, “Who is this we’re listening to?”

The man, elderly, turned irritably to regard him. “Why, it’s Walt Dangerfield,” he said, in tones of utter disbelief.

“I have never heard of him,” Bruno said. Because he had not wanted to hear of him. “Where is he talking from?”

“The satellite,” the elderly man said witheringly, and resumed his listening.

I remember now, Bruno said to himself. That’s why we came here; to listen to the satellite. To the man speaking from overhead.

Be destroyed, he thought in the direction of the sky above. Cease, because you are deliberately tormenting me, impeding my work. Bruno waited, but the voice went on.

“Why doesn’t he stop?” he asked the man on the other side of him. “How can he continue?”