Hard Rain Falling (15 page)

Because the children of the orphanage were taught, all week long every week of their lives, that the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, was purely a question of feeling: if it felt good, it was bad, if it felt bad, it was good. The food at the orphanage did not taste very good, and the children were taught, told, that this food, this unappetizing oatmeal or dish of prunes or boiled-to-death vegetable, was nourishing and good for them and would make them strong and capable of much hard work; and that the candy they got from the ladies who visited was at once a treasure and a sin, because while the candy tasted beautiful, it did them no good and after they ate their candy and thanked the ladies, they had to go in and brush their teeth and get rid of the last traces of flavor, because candy, that delicious rarity, rotted everything it touched. And they were told that presents were not good, because presents were possessions, and possessions were fought over and caused bad feeling, not that the authorities would take their presents away from them, only that the authorities had a way of making the children feel guilty about possessing them. And of course the pleasures of the body—running, jumping, laughing, masturbating—were sins, particularly the last, but all the others were too because they disrupted the routine, were contagious and threw things off schedule, and were not to be permitted except under certain well-defined circumstances. And Jack could remember particularly the feeling of near-rage at being told that for the next hour they could go out into the yard and have fun and jump and run and play, and remembered his desire to stand stock still and refuse to enjoy himself. And then, unable to control himself, running, skylarking a little desperately, a knot of anything but joy in the center of him, under the approving eyes of the authorities. And work, they were taught that work was good, especially hard work, and the harder the work the better it was, their bodies screaming to them that this was a
lie
, it was all a terrible, God-originated, filthy lie, a monstrous attempt to keep them from screaming out their rage and anguish and murdering the authorities. But they did not, because they knew that nobody, not the ministers, not the ladies who visited, and least of all the authorities themselves, believed it, any of it, because they did not act as if they believed it. They acted as if they believed only one thing: that force and force alone governed. And this the children believed too, in their hearts, and most of them dreamed of the time when the power of force would be in their hands.

The trouble was, it was intangible. It was not in the hands of anyone. While Jack had been there, most of the boys had blamed the man who was in charge of the orphanage as the center of power; they had believed that all that happened to them and all that did not happen to them originated with this one tall, heavy white-haired man. But then one day, during the middle of Jack’s wing’s play period, they saw the man walking across the yard, his hands behind his back, his head tilted forward—the way he always walked when he was angry and determined—saw him suddenly stop and look straight up in the sky and give a grunt and fall backward, saw him fall with a thump onto the frozen ground and saw him carted away, and learned the next day that what they had seen was the death of this man, taken by a heart attack and dead before they got him indoors and got his clothes off. And that night all the boys in Jack’s wing nourished a secret joy at the man’s death and many of them thought in their hearts that they would be set free now that the center of power was gone, or at the very least that their lives would change in some magnificent way and they would be free at last of the man’s mechanical tyranny; some of them even thought that candy would be passed out to them. But they learned. Very quickly there was another administrative head to the orphanage and he was different in appearance only. So it was an intangible; not a man, a set of rules. It would not even do any good to steal the rules away from the office and burn them, because there wasn’t even a book in which the rules were kept. It was just that the authorities knew the rules. You could kill them all and the rules would remain. This was the great virtue of rules, they were told in somewhat different context.

But, and this is what puzzled Jack now, once you grow out of this, once you learn that it is all nonsense, that what you thought as a child was nothing more than the excuses of selfpity, what did you replace it with? You had a life, and you were not content with it; where did you aim it?

The whole idea of a good life was silly. Because there was no such thing as good and bad, or good and evil. Not the orphanage way, with good equaling the dull and painful and stupid, and evil the bright and delicious and explosive; and certainly not the simple reverse of this—it would be all very well to live purely to have fun, but what did you do after you had had all the fun you wanted? It would be like aiming your whole life at getting a sandwich, and then getting it, eating it, and having nothing left. It was just as stupid to spend your whole life avoiding pain, because you could see right away that this would logically mean locking yourself up in a room and letting the authorities take over, bring your food, take away your excrement; even if the authorities provided entertainment for the senses, you would still be a prisoner....

It seemed so bleak. He swallowed a sip of the warmish whiskey and continued to stare out the window. The quality of the light had been changing and now everyone on the street seemed identical. He could see them out there, obsessed not with their destinies but by some simple problem of today: to do a piece of business, to finish shopping, to catch a bus, to bum a cigarette. Nothing important, except to themselves. The only difference is that I am in here, and they are out there. What do we want?

He searched his mind very carefully, and could find nothing he wanted. It seemed as if he had never wanted anything in his whole life. But that was not true. As a kid he had wanted lots of things. In the orphanage it had been simple. When he had wanted something, he took it. If he got caught, he accepted his punishment. He had always known that what he had wanted most was freedom, escape from the orphanage, and when he was ready, he escaped. That was all. Then he no longer wanted his freedom, because he had it.

In Portland, before they threw him into reform school, he had wanted things, too. Very simple things, that you could buy with money. Such as whiskey. Or women. A fast car. Well, he had all those things now, except the fast car, and he did not want any of them. No, that was not true. He had them, and he didn’t want to be without them, but they didn’t work. They didn’t make him feel better. They just helped him stay alive.

For a moment he felt a drifting nausea as his mind helplessly moved toward the idea of suicide. He steadied himself and faced it, as he had known all the time he must: I am going to die. Why not now? He felt cold and sick. Well, why not? What the fuck have I got to live for?

The whiskey bottle was in his hand, and he lifted it, holding it up before his eyes. Do I want some of this? Do I want another drink? Suddenly it was very important to know. If he did not want a drink, he did not want anything. If he did not want anything, he might as well die. Because he was already dead.

“Bullshit,” he said aloud. “Bullshit. I’m just in a bad mood.” He tilted the bottle to his mouth and drank, his eyes closed.

He ran out of whiskey about six in the evening, and started to get up to go after some more. But he could not move. He was on the bed and he could not find the right nerves to activate to swing himself off the bed. He decided to take a nap instead. He kept his grip on the neck of the empty fifth as an anchor, and began to drift off into dizzy dreams, among them a dream in which the girls came into the room and hovered over him, their faces white and cruel, and then vanished before he could sit up. Later on, when he awakened, he remembered that dream and checked his pockets and knew it had been real. He was still groggy and drunk, and it all seemed very funny to him. The girls had gotten away with more than a hundred dollars. But he had more stashed in the closet, the last of the money Castelli had saved for him, and he got it all out and put it in his pocket and went down and bought three fifths of Canadian Club and carried them back to the room. He was not hungry, but he got it into his head somehow that he would like a piece of ass, and he decided to sit there on the edge of the bed and wait for Mona to come back. Very slowly he undid the first bottle and took a drink. He remembered how bad he had felt earlier in the day, and how he had secretly known, all the time he had been thinking those bad silly angry thoughts, that sooner or later he would feel better. He giggled to himself. Every time it happened he got drunk and felt better. Even the hangovers were good, because they made him think clearly but without agony. He wanted Mona. That was a good thing.

He knew she would be back; the room was still littered with her things. When she came back he was going to fuck hell out of her and throw her out. He felt cruel and mean. He would not let her take her stuff. He was going to tell her it was his stuff, since he had paid for most of it, and he was going to keep it for the next two-bit whore he shacked up with. That was a laugh. Mona was so prudish. To call her a whore was so accurate; the burr would hit the nerve and she would screech and hit him. He wouldn’t mind. He would laugh at her and rip off her clothes and screw her once again, and then throw her out in the hall naked. That would be a good lesson for her. And maybe she would finally be a good lay if he could just get her mad enough to thrash around.

But it palled; everything finally got old if you dreamed about it to much; everything but drinking, and with drinking you could always throw up and start over. Eventually, he passed out.

He awakened in the middle of the morning. Mona was not there, but her junk was still littered all over the place. He took a drink of whiskey and just made it into the bathroom in time to throw up. He felt light and empty, but there was only one thing to do; get another shot of whiskey into himself and keep it down. He finally made it, sitting very still to keep the nausea from bulging up into his throat, and in a few minutes he knew he would be all right. He stayed on the bed all day, drinking. His mind was utterly empty. Mona unlocked the door once and stuck her head in, and when she saw him on the bed the head disappeared. Jack did not even bother to wave.

A long time later, Jack told Billy Lancing all about what finally happened:

“I had been drinking for so long and not eating that everything was hollow and weird; I felt like some kind of crazy mystic who keeps seeing visions that his eyes can’t remember; I wasn’t really drunk any more after the third day, I was just living on alcohol and pissing pure sugar, and the whole world was sharp and blurred at the same time. I remember one of Mona’s comic books was on the floor by the bed and I sat there looking down at the cover. It had a picture of Batman and Robin on it, grappling with some dirty thugs on a city street at night, the most weirdly beautiful city I’d ever seen in my life. Batman was saying, `This looks like The Joker’s handiwork!’ and one of the thugs was saying, `What the!’ and Robin was saying, `Somebody wants us out of the way!’ and I was sitting there trying to figure out why all these beautiful people were arguing, even though everything they said made perfect sense to me. The comic book was upside down and so I was looking at the picture backwards, but that made it even more real, and I’d heard somewhere that we really see things upside down and then our mind turns them right side up, and I think I was trying to right everything in my mind when they knocked at the door. It was a terrible effort, and burned up a lot of my whiskey.

“I got up and stood in the middle of the room, trying to swing the door around so it would be upside down and she would come in walking on the ceiling with her skirt around her ears, and said something like, `Come on the fuck in,’ and waited a second and then the door exploded, just blew up in front of my eyes, and two guys came running in waving guns. I thought for one second that Mona had hired a couple of redhots to come and take the rest of my money and get her stuff, so I grinned at the guys and said, `Hi, fellas.’ They saw me standing there naked and put their guns back. When I saw the belt holsters I knew they were cops and so I headed out the door, but one of them got me by the ankle and I went down, out in the hall. A man and woman were coming down the corridor, and I looked up at them and they looked down at me, and I said as clearly as I could, `Excuse me,’ but it must have come out wrong and the woman screamed and the man did a funny thing; he was a mousy-lookin little guy with a mustache, I figure he must have brought the woman there to the hotel for a little side action, anyway, he wrinkled his little mouse nose at me, and stuck out his foot and kicked me on the shoulder. Then they both turned and went fast down the hall, and the cops dragged me back to my room, made me get dressed, handcuffed me, and took me down to the Hall of Justice. Just as we were coming out of my room, the bigger of the cops put his hand on my shoulder and asked me if I wanted another drink, and I said yes, and he went back and got one of my bottles and I took a long one, and then he took one, put the bottle back, and said to me, `Boy, we’re going to kill you.’

“I felt glad. I really liked that cop. He told me the truth, that cop did, and I really liked him for it. I wanted to reach out and kiss him, or at least shake his hand. He was a good cop.”

They took Jack down to the old Hall of Justice on Kearny Street and put him into one of the cells in the city prison. When they booked him down at the desk several hours later he was still sleepy and half-drunk, and beginning to feel the early tremors of a long illness. But even so, he heard the list of charges and began to understand that something had actually happened and he was not having a dream. He was not sure what the specific charges were but he knew there were a lot of them, all bearing different numbers from the penal code. What made it real for him was the way everyone was so distant and polite. He felt a gush of warmth for the detectives, the desk man, the deputies. When they took him back to his cell he fell asleep thinking about how nice everyone was.