The Bell Tolls for No One (26 page)

“All right, take care of him.”

They grabbed Norman and pulled him through a doorway.

Big Bernie moved back to the couch, sat down. He turned his head a bit toward Blanche.

“Listen, baby, fix me a double whiskey.”

“Whiskey and water, Dad?”

“Straight.”

Big Bernie sat looking at the last burning of the logs in the fireplace. He was going to miss the ivory Caddy. But then he had four Rolls. Or was it five? It was just that the ivory Caddy made him feel like some kind of hot-shot pimp. He felt a bit tired. Running an empire was rewarding yet wearing. Each day for each man was filled with little problems that needed settling. Fail to attend to those and the walls came down. A monotonous attention to trivial detail was the secret of the grandest victories. Fail at small things, when the large ones arrived you'd lose your ass.

Blanche brought him his drink. He smiled, said, “Thank you.”

A double whiskey was good for the soul.

He slammed it down and winter came to an end.

A Dirty Trick on God

H
arry was in the bathtub and there was a bottle of beer on the ledge behind him. It was a bad place, an awkward place, but it was the only place to set it down. He reached around, grabbed the bottle, had a hit, and put it back down behind him.

Harry liked to drink beer in the tub. He never told anybody about it. Not that he knew too many people or even fucking wanted to. He saw enough people down at the factory every day. He was a packer. The crap came off the assembly line and he packed it. It came off the assembly line all day long and he packed it all day long. He guessed he could drink beer in the tub if he wanted to and it wasn't anybody's fucking business. He liked to get the water hot, quite hot, and then he got in and it burned a bit and he ran the cold beer down himself and it was really a relaxer—the factory dropped away and he felt almost real again.

Harry shared the apartment with Adolph, a very old man. Adolph just sat around talking about the WAR with this slight German accent. Fuck Adolph. But with the two of them paying rent Harry could have a nice apartment. Harry was tired of rooming houses. And the few times Harry picked up a woman, say in a bar, and brought her on in, Adolph understood: he vanished for a couple of hours. He'd met Adolph at a racetrack urinal. He'd pissed on one of Adolph's shoes. Adolph had been very gracious about it.

“Forget it,” he had said, “it's nothing from what I've been through.”

Harry had suggested a drink to make amends for his error and Adolph had accepted.

“I'm Harry Greb,” he had said.

“Adolph Hitler,” Adolph had said.

One drink led to another and then Adolph had mentioned the vacancy at his apartment. His buddy had died and he needed another to share the rent. And Harry had gone to see the apartment and it looked like a deal for his share of $195 and that had been it . . .

Harry washed under the armpits and under the balls, had another hit of beer. Adolph was in the other room watching cable TV. He always played it too loud. And he always watched the newscasts. The only other thing he liked was the Archie Bunker re-runs.

“HEY DOLPH! TURN THAT FUCKING THING DOWN!”

“Oh, ya, sorry . . . ”

Adolph turned it down. Harry stretched out in the water. Maybe he'd get another fucking job. That fucking job was killing him. The next job would too but at least it would be a change.

Then Harry felt a fart coming on. He loved to fart in the bathtub. The bubbles would rise up and really stink. It gave him a great sense of accomplishment. Strange and good things sometimes happened in life. He remembered the morning after the big beer drunk he had shit a turd that seemed to be about two and one half feet long. Nothing like that ever. He had looked at it for some minutes. He had to take a butcher knife and cut it up so it would flush down.

The fart was too much. The bubbles shook and rattled. Harry reached around and took a good pull of beer to celebrate. Then a curious thing happened: the spot on the water where the fart had risen—that spot was becoming a brown-grey area.

“I've shit myself,” thought Harry.

But it wasn't so. As Harry watched, the area began to rise slowly. It poked upward. It began to take form.

Harry was fascinated. Then fascination altered into fear—as out of the rising moil the forming became more definite. Harry's fear accelerated as a small head formed. Then arms. Little spindly arms. Then legs.

The thing bobbed up and down in the water looking at Harry. It was brown grey with tiny blue eyes and dirty blond hair.

Harry and the thing stared at each other. “I'm crazy,” Harry thought. “Too many factory days, too many drunken nights. This thing isn't real. It's a spin-off from my mind. It's not real.”

Harry reached his right hand out to push it through the vision. He got closer and closer to the thing with his hand. Then he extended his index finger and pushed it toward the face of the thing.

He felt a slash of pain.

The thing had bitten him!

Harry looked at his finger. The blood dripped into the water.

“You son of a bitch!” Harry yelled.

He didn't like being bitten by his own fart. He doubled his fist and swung. The thing saw it coming, leaped into the air, and Harry missed. Then the thing flipped into the water, swam around behind Harry and bit him on the ass.

Harry jumped out of the tub.

The thing was swimming about the tub on its back. Its little blue eyes seemed to be merry. Then it settled, relaxed in the center of the tub. It had a little cock and balls.

Suddenly it sent a thin spiral of water out of its mouth.

It hit Harry in the face.

“ADOLPH!” Harry yelled.

“What is it?”

“Come in here!”

The door opened and Adolph was there.

“Look,” said Harry, “My goddamned fart has turned on me! LOOK AT IT!”

Adolph dropped to his knees. He looked at the thing in the tub and began weeping a rather joyful weeping.

“Oh my God, mine gut . . . ”

“What is it, Adolph?”

“It is . . . a little man . . . just as we planned . . . ”

“As
who
planned? What the fuck you talking about?”

“Oh, my friend, we must celebrate . . . dis is dere beginning!”

“The beginning of what?”

“Come. Come, we celebrate!”

Adolph got off his knees and went into the other room. Harry toweled off while watching that goddamned thing floating there. Then he got into his skivvies and went into the other room where Adolph had uncorked some champagne he had gotten from somewhere.

“My friend, this is one of the greatest moments of my life! Here's mud in your eye!”

Adolph lifted his drink in a toast. Henry lifted his. They clicked glasses.

They drank them down.

Then the bathroom door opened and the thing walked out. It looked like a sponge with tiny seaweed appendages. It walked across the floor and jumped into Adolph's lap.

Adolph cuddled whatever it was, then looked at Harry.

“My friend . . . you have seen here . . . one of the greatest inventions . . . greater than the atom . . . the hydrogen bomb . . . you have seen something to even make God Himself tremble, ya?”

“Hey, man, this thing came out of my ass! I can't give birth! I'm no woman!”

“Oh no, my friend, you are not a woman. But look . . . the blue eyes, the blond . . . Some baby, ya?”

The thing sat on Adolph's lap, looked steadily at Harry with those small blue eyes which seemed to loom just upon the edge of doom . . .

The next day at work, badly hungover, Harry wondered about the thing. The other workers just worked away, talking about sports, bragging about imagined exploits; others were silent, immersed in their work, beaten-down.

Harry had sat up most of the night drinking with Adolph as Adolph talked and raved about the creature.

What was that thing? Was it real? How could such a thing occur? If it were real it would seem to be a dirty trick against God.

Adolph had claimed that it was his “invention,” that he and others had been working on the matter for decades . . . But how could anything be created out of a fart? A fart was a poison gas, an expelling of something bad. How could anything be created out of that? Maybe Adolph had worked some trick on him? Some illusion? He was a strange old guy, Adolph's eyes were mad, they glowed madly.

Stevenson, the foreman, walked up to Harry.

“Hey, Harry! You look like you're daydreaming! You're falling behind! Better pick it up! We got a basketful of phone numbers of guys who want your job! And maybe it's not much of a job but for a guy like you it's all there is! Now, get to it!”

“Sure. I'll pick up the pace. Don't worry.”

Stevenson strolled off to see who else he could jump. The son of a bitch was right. Harry was 46. The line between Harry and skid row was a thin one, indeed. In deed and in fact. He forced himself to set a faster pace. The other packers had heard him get chewed. They loved it. With Harry as the target it made their own sorry jobs all that more secure.

But he couldn't help thinking about that “thing.” What did Stevenson know? Had
he
seen that sponge thing with seaweed arms, blue eyes, blond hair? A greater invention than the atom bomb, Adolph had said . . . And now they had the hydrogen bomb and then all the nukes, nukes everywhere, stacked up and ready. Would the “thing” develop further? Harry had seen movies about “things” but this was the first one he'd ever seen in
real
life. And, it had come out of his goddamned ass!

He stopped packing a moment, reached around, touched his behind. It was rather a nervous reaction . . . all the confusion of everything.

Joe, the packer to his right, saw him.

“Got the old hemorrhoids, Harry? Go on, reach up and give them a good scratch! I won't tell anybody!”

“Kiss my ass,” said Harry.

“Bend over, let me see what you got?”

“What you want, Joe, is hanging in front here! One big mouthful to rattle your tonsils!”

Stevenson came swinging back. “All right, you guys, knock off the shit! If you worked your hands like you did your mouths we'd get some goddamned PRODUCTION around here!”

I'll get both these guys some day, Harry thought. They make each minute like an hour and each day like a week. I'll get their balls in a paper sack and take them over to the punch press.

Well, somehow the day went, it got done without too much further ugliness, just the standard grind ended as they went to their racks and got out their cards and rang out.

Ring out, thought Harry, ring out the old and the fucked and the weary again.

On the way back Harry stopped at a chain restaurant for dinner. He found a table alone. The waitress arrived. She was indifferent yet false, a bit fat and a bit unhappy. The fat and the unhappy fought each other for supremacy. She had no chance either way.

She took his order and walked off.

Then Harry began thinking about the thing again. It was surely alive. It moved. Blinked its eyes. And the teeth worked, he knew that.

He hoped Adolph knew how to housebreak the thing. What would it eat? Dog food? He hoped it wasn't cannibalistic.

Harry looked around at the people. They all looked ugly and tired. They were ugly and tired. They were losers. Where were the winners? Where were the beautiful people? All these around him: it seemed to be a crime to be alive. And he was one of them.

Harry sighed and looked down at his work-beaten hands. Hell, he was tired but it wasn't a good tiredness. It was like he had been gypped. Well, he had plenty of company: a world-full.

The waitress brought his plate. She slammed it down, smiled a horrible false smile, said “ENJOY!” with a rasping voice, began to walk off.

“Waitress,” Harry said, “please don't forget the coffee.”

She stopped, turned. “Oh yeah . . . Cream and sugar?”

“Straight,” Harry answered.

“Like an arrow?” she forced a smile, thinking of her tip.

Harry answered, “Like an arrow.”

The food was greasy and sad. The plate had a crack which ran in from the edge and looked like a long hair. The coffee was bitter and doomed. Well, there was nothing to do but consume the mess. You couldn't live on air. Not that air out there. Harry worked away. All about him the people consumed their food in a dark surrender.

The waitress arrived to refill his coffee cup.

“Everything all right, sir?”

“Yeah,” said Harry . . .

Then he was in the tub again, the water steaming hot, the beer cold. For Harry, that was as close as he could get to a peaceful mood. Stevenson was far away. These moments were his, entirely. Not that he really did anything with his moments. But at least somebody else wasn't using them. He took a great gulp of beer. Now we was equal to anybody, a president, a king, a movie star, a TV comedian.

Harry relaxed, noticed the cracks in the ceiling. He'd never noticed them before. The cracks formed a pattern. He could make it out. Quite strange and beautiful. Or maybe only nice: a great bull charging.

Then Harry felt like farting. He let it go. It was a good one. It boiled up out of the water. The bubbles almost rang.

As long as man could fart he stood a chance.

It really stank.

Harry reached around for a beer to celebrate. He got it, took a good hit.

Then he noticed the brown pool on the water. Then . . . the brown turned a brown-grey. Then . . . the area began to rise . . . slowly. It poked upwards . . . and began to take form.

A small head formed. Then arms. Little spindly arms. Then legs.

The hair was long and dark, the eyes green. The mouth formed a tiny smile and it began to swim around the tub.

Harry noticed the small breasts. It was a little woman, a woman-thing with the same sponge-like body and seaweed arms. It swam about the tub.

“ADOLPH!” Harry yelled.

“What is it?”

“Come in here!”

The door opened and Adolph was there.

“Look,” said Harry, “look what happened to my fart! It happened again! Why? What the hell's going on here? I can't even fart without this stupid thing happening!”

“Ah, my God in heaven, WE HAVE DONE IT!”

“Done what? Get that goddamned thing out of the tub!”

Adolph reached out his arms. “Come, my darling!”

The little bitch leaped out of the water and onto one of Adolph's arms and up that arm and then jumped up onto his shoulder.

“Listen, Adolph, what's going on here?”

“It's just a little bit of something I put in your beer.”

“Listen, man, I want you to stop fucking with my beer!”

“Oh, no more now! These two are all we need now . . . ”

He smiled at the little woman on his shoulder. “Come, my darling, I want you to meet a friend . . . ”

And he walked away with the little woman . . .