God's Pocket - Pete Dexter (40 page)

"They didn't like your column out in the
neighborhoods," T. D. said. Shellburn pried Billy's hand away
from his mouth. A front tooth and the one next to it were sheared
right down to the gum, the lips were cut where teeth had gone through
them.

"You ought to get that stitched," Shellburn
said,

"He went over to where you ought to have been in
the first place," T. D. said.

Shellburn said to Billy, "How'd it happen?"

Billy shrugged. "I bought a round of drinks, and
one of them hit me in the face. Then another one picked up a beer
bottle and hit me in the mouth. I saw that one, but there wasn't
anything to do."

"You wrote the column," T. D. said, "and
sent Billy-boy out to fix it."

Billy shook his head. "That wasn't it," he
said.

T. D. said, "That's what happened."

Billy said, "It wasn't on purpose."

“
How'd you get out?" Shellburn said.

"They pushed me out," Billy said. "After
they'd hit me with the beer bottle, that was all they wanted me for."
He looked up at Shellburn. "I know it wasn't on purpose,"
he said. Shellburn had to remind himself that Billy was thirty-seven
years old. He looked maybe seventeen now, like he'd just seen what
was out there for the first time. Shellburn pushed the ice and the
handkerchief back, gently, to his mouth. He had a soft touch.

“
You ought to go down to the emergency room now,"
he said, "get some stitches." Billy nodded. Shellburn was
trying to remember what they'd said earlier, about nothing was ever
clean. He was wondering if this wasn't close to it, what he was
feeling now. More than wanting the woman, or the place in Maryland.

"There was 134 calls today," T. D. said,
over the teacup.

"You should of been here to answer them,
Richard."

Shellburn said, "I'll take care of it now."

"I ain't tellin' you to go down there," T.
D. said. "I'm not sayin' you ought to go .... " He looked
at Billy, to make sure he'd witnessed that, and the lookhe got back
reminded him of somebody a long time ago, in New York. Billy Deebol
would need watching.

Billy pulled the ice away from his mouth to talk.
Part of the lip followed it half an inch, and then unstuck itself and
began to bleed. "Stay away from there, Richard," he said.
"They aren't listening right now, and there's too many of them
to talk to anyway."

Shellburn smiled at him. He seemed like such a kid.
"They aren't going to do anything to me," he said.

Billy shook his head. "That ain't the Germantown
Woman's Association you can make a speech to," he said. "Who
you are doesn't count down there now." He looked from Richard to
T. D. Davis, and Davis saw that expression again, and thought of
Jimmy White coming into his office with a chain saw.

"You probably ought not to go down there,"
T. D. said.

"Let it cool off . .
." But Shellburn was already going out the door. He almost
seemed happy.

* * *

Mickey was sitting in a booth with Ray when Shellburn
came in. Ray was getting ready to pass out. The kids at the bar had
beat up somebody from the newspaper earlier, they were still bragging
about who did what. Mickey had moved over to the booth because he
didn't want to hear it.

Not that anybody was talking to him anyway. Ever
since the funeral, things had changed. It was like he'd done
something worse than anybody ever did before. Even McKenna—wasn't
the same to him. Mickey spent most of his time at the bar, and slept
on the couch or in the Monte Carlo. And Ray had started to make sense
to him. In fact, it worried him that he might be going that way
himself. He might of got comfortable with it, being an outcast.

Shellburn stopped at the door, looked around,
squinting, and then found himself a stool somewhere near the middle
of the room. The whole bar went quiet, and Mickey smiled at that.

"Give me a beer," Shellburn said.

McKenna put his arm on the bar and leaned toward the
reporter. "Mr. Shellburn, nothin' personal, but I think I better
ask you to leave, for your own good."

Shellburn looked left and right, then in back of him.
Then he looked at the bartender and shrugged. "Schmidt's,"
he said. He had some balls, Mickey gave him that. More balls than the
fighters and stompers of the Hollywood Bar.

Mickey had never appreciated Shellburn's intentions
with his wife, but he'd quit blaming him. It was like when the pipes
froze and they came and dug up the street in front of your house. You
don't blame somebody for looking in your hole.

He knew by now that her idea of things was an Esther
Williams movie. Million-Dollar Mermaid. She was the kind that could
smile underwater. And she could be nice to you, and fuck you and
marry you, but the camera was always rolling.

"What the fuck you writin' about us in the paper
for?" somebody. said. “What's it your bi'niss what we do?"
Somebody else said, “Who the fuck you callin' guineas? You ain't
even from here, makin' us look like assholes .... " Then half
the bar was shouting at Shellburn, but the ones next to him, the ones
he could see, were quiet. It was always the scaredest ones that you
had to watch. The kid sitting next to him at the bar—a fat kid with
a wide pink-and-white face—got up, nodded at Shellburn, almost
friendly, and walked out the door.

Mickey noticed Shellburn seemed to be turning gray. I
didn't make you assholes," Shellburn said to the bar. "I
said the opposite."

Mickey closed his eyes. Explaining was the worst
thing you could do when it was all against you.

"We ain't that simple," one of them said,
and then they all seemed to drink at once.

Shellburn looked at the bartender again.
'°Schmidt's," he said. McKenna sighed and gave him a beer.
"Let's everybody calm down," he said.

"Fuck calm down," one of them said. "What
the fuck's he doin' down here now?" Shellburn sat over his beer,
like it was none of his business. They all came off their stools
then, and  when Shellburn turned around to face them he was
flushed and sweating. Mickey never saw anybody change colors so fast.

"I came down here because somebody hit my friend
in the face with a beer bottle," Shellburn said. "It's a
misunderstanding. . . ." Then the door opened and the fat kid
with the pink-and-white face came back in, carrying a bat. He came in
and stopped by the door, and then a dozen more of them came in. Some
of them had crowbars, and some of them had reinforcement steel off
construction sites. They'd put tape around the bottom for handles.
They stood at the end of the bar and waited, and before long there
were at least twenty. Bats, crowbars, steel. Babies, most of them not
old enough to drink, all watching each other to see what to do.

"This is my city,” Shellburn said.

"The motherfucker come down here to get fucked
up," the fat skid said. He was holding the bat in both hands,
close enough to the door to be the lirst one out in case Shellburn
was carrying. Mickey saw Shellburn trying to find who it was talking,
trying to find somebody to talk to him. It was the wrong time for
that.

The others moved closer and Shellburn turned to
McKenna.

Mickey saw the look on McKenna's face then, like
Shellburn wasn't even there. "Take it outside, Dick," he
said to the fat boy. The fat boy said, "He come down here,
McKenna. It's his own fault. He come down here to get fucked up."

Shellburn stood up, the ones closest to him moved
away. "I came down here because somebody got hurt," he
said.

"Fuck him up," the fat boy said.

Mickey looked across the table at Ray, whose head was
beginning to drop. "What the fuck?" he said. "Over
something he wrote?”

Ray shook his head. "Nothing to do with it,"
he said, and then he crossed his arms for a pillow and went to sleep.

McKenna didn't want to see it either. When Mickey
looked again, Shellburn was trying to tell him something was wrong.

"I'm sick," he said, and, shiny with sweat,
he bent at the waist and choked. A thin line of yellow spit was all
that came out. McKenna walked away.

The fat boy said, "Ain't as sick as you going to
get."

McKenna pointed at him. "Take it outside,"
he said again, and then three or four of them had Shellburn by the
back of the collar and they pulled him outside. Mickey saw
Shellburn's eyes were closed and that he didn't fight it. Ray began
to snore. Mickey got out of the booth, and on the way out he looked
at McKenna and said, "What the fuck's wrong with you?"

"Yu ain't from here," he said.

He went through the door and pushed through the
circle around Shellburn. Nobody pushed back. What it came to, he
thought, was they'd had a reporter to beat up earlier and the ones
that missed out wanted this one.

He found Shellburn in the middle of the circle. His
eyes were still shut tight and he seemed to have some kind of spasms.
The kid holding onto his collar let go and backed away. "What
the fuck?" Mickey said. "What are you going to do out here,
thirty of you against one old man? For somethin' in the newspaper?"

"It ain't your fuckin' business, Mickey,"
one of them said.

"You ain't from here either, so stay the fuck
out of it." It was the fat boy talking, but Mickey couldn't find
his face.

"I don't give a fuck," Mickey said. "Not
this . . ." He moved a step toward them, they moved back. He
turned back toward Shellburn to tell him to get in his car and leave,
but when the re porter opened his eyes, Mickey could see something
was wrong, that he was losing track of it. And then Shellburn smiled
at him and said, "It's all light and dark." Still trying to
explain.

 
Something in that spooked Mickey, but before he
could ask Shellburn what he was talking about, the reporter was
falling backwards; into the window of the bar. The glass held and
Shellburn fell to the sidewalk, and once he was down, there wasn't
anything that could help him.

One of them kicked him in the head, and when Mickey
pushed him away the others went at him with the bats and iron.

Four or five times he pulled them away from the
reporter, but as soon as he stopped one, somebody else took his place
working on Shellburn's head. They hit him fifty or sixty times before
Mickey gave up.

He left them out there with what they'd done and went
back in the bar. McKenna shook his head. "I'm closed," he
said.

Mickey walked back to the booth where Ray was
sleeping and sat down. He finished his beer, wondering what it was
worth, belonging somewhere, if it ended up like this. He thought it
must of been worth something, or he wouldn't of felt so bad leaving
it.

By the time he got back
outside, the street was as empty as three o'clock in the morning. A
wedge of light went from the window to the sidewalk, Shellburn was
under that, lying against the wall, something dark on the ground
beneath a rainbow, painted a long time ago across the window of the
Hollywood Bar.

* * *

The police came by early the next morning, and the
three mornings after that. One named Eisenhower had been there
before, after Leon died. He took Mickey outside and said, "I
heard you were the one that knocked him down."

· Mickey said, "Where'd you hear that?"

Eisenhower shrugged. "If I was you, I could
understand that, knocking him down. I know you didn't have nothing to
do with kicking his head in. That's kids."

"McKenna tell you it was me?" Eisenhower
shrugged again. It had to be McKenna, of course. He was the only one
talked to the police, because they could shut him down. And the name
he'd given up was Mickey's, because he wasn't from the neighborhood.

"Well," Mickey said, "I don't know
nothin' about it."

Eisenhower said, "Sooner or later, somebody's
going to tell it, give everybody up. That's the way the place is."

"Yes it is," Mickey said.

"When it happens, it'll rain shit in God's
Pocket. That wasn't some bum got beat to death in the middle of the
street, it was Richard Shellburn. We got the
Daily
Times
, the
New York
Times
, CBS, ABC, UPI and Jesus knows who else
calling every day, wanting to know what's happening about Richard
Shellburn. He ain't going to go away."

The second time Eisenhower came, Mickey noticed
Jeanie looking at him. The next morning, he saw Eisenhower was
looking back. He heard her tell him, “My first husband was a police
officer."

Later that day, a couple of the neighborhood kids
stopped him in the street. He didn't know if they had been at the
Hollywood that night or not. "Yo, Mick," one of them said,
"we want you to know we 'preciate you not talkin' to the cops.
You stood up, like you was part of the Pocket."

“
Don't include me in nothin' about the Pocket,"
he said. He walked through them, and when he was about a block past,
he heard them back there, shouting.