The Damned (18 page)

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.

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 the 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?

No, behind the façade of the unlettered drawl and the torn T shirt there’s a sensitive, educated, understanding guy. I responded to that, plus the maleness. And I responded because I had no fear.

She walked slowly to the car. Bill was behind the wheel, easing the Buick down to the car ahead. John had slid over onto the passenger side of the front seat. She opened the door and got into the back.

Bill said, “Driven this road a hundred times, Gerrold. Glad to drive if you want me to.”

“Go ahead. It doesn’t matter.”

She could tell by the fusty sound of his voice that he had napped. He always seemed cross and dull when he awakened, as though sleep took him to a place where he spent his dreams on a witness stand, lying to tireless examiners. She thought she had known him, and yet she had not. She had often watched him sleep, looking at him as though to memorize every detail of him. A man of her own. And today she had found out that it was not a man at all, but rather a precocious, clever child, masquerading in a man’s body—willful, petulant, and very bright.

She had given herself to the man body, tried to teach it a litany of ecstasies, only to find the inner child convulsed with shyness. Love had become a stilted dance with each step in proper order, leading, in the end, to the graceful formal bow and the end of the music.

And even as she sat there, in the space where her mother-in-law had been taken ill, she thought that deep within her, against the womb wall, an ovum might be beginning that miracle of cell division, progressing from formlessness, moving up the slow ladder of evolutionary stages, becoming at last a human being with 50 per cent of its heredity coming from John Carter Gerrold.

She pressed her hand hard against the smooth swell of her abdomen under the linen. Poor little beastie. But there would be enough love in the world so that it could have some. Love from her. Love from Bill.

She smiled wryly in the darkness. Her subconscious was taking off with seven-league boots. Marrying her up with Bill without the slightest qualm. Assuming his willingness to take on the responsibility of the child, and love it too, merely because it happened to be half hers.

In effect it was like having two husbands sitting side by side in the front seat of the car. Step right up and compare them, folks. Here we have Exhibit A. And this one is Exhibit B. Note the configuration of the skulls, the shape and placing of the features. One is a man and one is an imitation. Can you tell which one is Mr. Famous Man and which one is smiling, popular salesman Jack Peterson from the Bronx? If you guess correctly, we shall send you, without obligation, one slightly worn wife. A little gloss has been rubbed off the edges, and the item is slightly flawed by tear stains, but it is guaranteed to function with all the efficiency you have come to expect from any product of this reliable firm.

As the wheels reached the planks the front end of the car began to lift. She closed her eyes. Life had begun again. Life and movement. And she could sleep, knowing that somehow, someday, that movement would take her to a good place. A good place to be. When you stopped believing that, you stopped believing anything.

FORNO, ferryman, could not remember ever having been so tired. He was so weary that it frightened him a bit. At noon, after hours of the senseless, infuriating shovel work in the muddy river, when he and the others had decided to quit until the beast of a river established itself at one level, the passengers on both sides of the river had made up a bonus of pesos and given it to the aged official in charge of the ferry.

Vascos, may his ears rot, had doled the pesos out with extreme cleverness. Had he given out too little, they would all have quit working anyway. Had he given out too much, the result would have been the same.

So it was body-racking work, hour after hour, with the pesos suspended just a little way in front of you, like a carrot suspended in front of a goat. What a vast feat of the intellect, to procure a ferry too large for the river it was to service! A typical maneuver of the bureaucrats in the capital city of the state. No, he would not work like a burro. Either the ferry goes, or Manuel Forno goes. Ah, the old ferry! The old scabby darling that would float in a single cup of water. This was indeed progress.

Every time he tried to stand still, his legs began to tremble. He felt as though his arms hung from red-hot wires laced through the flesh of his back and shoulders.

Never had there been, in all memory, such a day.

Why was it so essential in the vast scheme of the universe that so many vehicles should wish to cross the Río Conchos in one small day?

He was a brown, slant-shouldered man, taller and thinner than average. He had fierce brows, wicked-looking eyes. He was a very mild man.

The night was better than the sun, at least. Yet he could have wept of a broken heart when that monstrous fool from Victoria tumbled his truck into the waters, directly in the way of the ferry. It meant ceaseless grubbing in the mud, bracing of jacks, planting of blocks, prying with timbers before the evil thing regained its feet and sat fat and gloating over the trouble it had caused.

Back in the wonderful days of the aged ferry, Manuel Forno had taken much pleasure in the work. It was amusing to inspect the tourists, pleasant to chat with familiar passengers from the nearby towns. And there were many hours when no traffic appeared and it was possible to do exactly nothing. The only flaw at that time had been the incredible stubbornness of all vehicles. If they were at the west bank of the river, invariably the first car to appear would be on the opposite shore. It was then possible to pretend to be blind and hope that one would appear on the west bank, but soon the car would grow impatient and begin to yelp loudly for attention.

On this day the only passenger he noticed with any interest was Atahualpa. Ah, how the shovels flew then! There were black stories of Atahualpa. Of his long memory, of persons punished and rewarded, without cause.