The Losers (26 page)

“I grew up in a pretty vacant place, remember?”

“You’re wrong. I saw Port Angeles. At the end of his life a man there can say, I cut down some trees and made some lumber. They

took the lumber and built some houses with it.’ That’s
something,
for God’s sake! What the hell can a man say about his life here? I buried my grandpa in 1958, my mother in seventy-two, and my old man in eighty-five; I contributed about eight tons of shit to the sewage-treatment plant; and they’re going to bury me right over there in that dandy little graveyard on the other side of the river.’ Fertilizer—that’s all they’re good for, fertilizer.” He turned to Raphael suddenly. “Well, by God, I decline to be a fertilizer factory for the greater glory of the shit capital of America. I’ve had it with this place.”

“When do you think you’ll be leaving?” Raphael asked, his voice neutral.

Flood grinned at him suddenly. “Gotcha again,” he said.

“Damon,” Raphael said in annoyance, “quit playing games.”

“Oh no, Raphael,” Flood declaimed. “You won’t escape me so easily. I will hound you; I will dog your footsteps; I will harry you out of this vacuum and deliver your soul to the Prince of Darkness, who sits expectant in steamy hell. Double-dipped in vilest corruption shall I send you to the eternal fire and the loathsome embrace of the Emperor of the Inferno.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Raphael said admiringly. “I thought you’d lost your touch for a while there. That was particularly fine.”

“I rather liked it,” Flood admitted modestly, and then he laughed, the mocking laughter that Raphael remembered so well, and his eyes glittered in the ruddy glow of the dying sun.

ii

And then in mid-July it turned suddenly hot. With no apparent transition from pleasant to unbearable, the temperature soared to the one-hundred-degree mark and stuck there. The streets shimmered like the tops of stoves, and lawns that were not constantly watered wilted and browned under the blasting weight of the swollen sun.

Sleep was impossible, of course. Even long past midnight the interiors of the houses on Raphael’s block were like ovens. The losers sat on their porches or on their lawns in the dark, and the children ran in screaming packs up and down the streets. Fights broke out with monotonous regularity. Since they lived in continual frustration anyway, always on the verge of rage, the added aggravation of the stunning heat made the smallest irritation a
casus belli.

Raphael’s tiny apartment on the roof was unprotected from the sun for the largest part of the day, and the interior heated up like a blast furnace. The rooftop was unbearable under the direct weight of the sun. He lingered at work, finding refuge in the dim coolness of the barnlike store, and he helped Denise with the volumes of paperwork that were a part of her job.

The heat added a new dimension to his discomfort. Perspiration irritated the relatively new scar tissue on his hip, and he sometimes writhed from the phantom pain of the missing leg. The swimming that was a part of his therapy helped, but ten minutes after he had pulled himself out of the pool, he was sweltering again.

Only at night, when there was sometimes a slight breeze, could he find any kind of comfort. He would sit on his rooftop stupefied by lack of sleep and watch the streets below.

“Hello? Are you up there?” It was the girl from downstairs. She stood one midnight on the sidewalk in front of the house, looking up at the roof.

“Yes,” Raphael said, looking over the railing.

“Would it be all right if I came up? I’m suffocating in there.”

“Sure. The stain are on the side.”

“I’ll be right up.” She disappeared around the corner of the house. He heard her light step on the stairs, and then she came out onto the roof. “It’s like a stove in my apartment,” she said, coming over to where he sat.

“I know. Mine’s the same way.”

“I’ve got a fan, but all it does is move the hot air around. If I take off any more clothes, I’ll get arrested for indecent exposure.” She wore a light housecoat and kept her arms crossed tightly in front of her body.

“It’s brutal,” Raphael agreed, “and it’s probably not going to get any better for a while.”

Up the street one of Heck’s Angels was fighting with his girlfriend. They stood on the lawn, screaming obscenities at each other.

“Does that go on all the time?” the girl asked.

“More or less.”

“Aren’t there an awful lot of them living in that house?”

“Fifteen or twenty. It varies from week to week.”

The young man up the street got into his car, slammed the door, and roared away. The girl on the lawn screamed at him until he turned the corner. Then it was quiet again.

The girl from downstairs sank down onto the small bench Flood had brought up to the roof a few weeks ago and laid her arm on the railing. “This is a fun neighborhood,” she said dryly.

“That it is.” Raphael thought briefly of telling her about the losers—simply to pass the long hours until things cooled down enough to allow two or three hours of sleep just before dawn—but he decided not to. He didn’t know her that well, and he didn’t want to take the chance of offending her.

They sat in the silent darkness on the roof, watching the children loitering on corners or creeping furtively around the houses.

“Is your husband out of town?” Raphael asked finally.

“I’m not married.”

“I’m sorry. I just assumed—” He stopped, embarrassed.

“Because I’m pregnant? You don’t have to be married to get pregnant. It happens in the best of families these days.”

“I’m not being nosy. It’s none of my business.”

She laughed. “In a few months it’ll be
everybody’s
business. It’s a condition that’s pretty hard to conceal.”

“Things’ll work out.”

“Sure
they will. Nothing like a little unwed pregnancy to add spice to a girl’s life.”

A police car cruised by, and there was the usual scramble out the back doors of the neighborhood.

The night wound on, still hot and close, and, as the losers began to seek their beds for a few hours of restless sleep, the crickets and tree frogs began to sing the raspy song of summer.

Lulled by their song, Raphael caught himself half dozing in his chair a few times.

The girl talked about many things—mostly about the little town near the Canadian border where she had grown up. Her voice was soft, almost dreamy, and in his weariness Raphael listened not so much to her words as to the soft murmur of her voice.

“It’s all so trite,” she said. “It’s almost like a bad soap opera. Poor little girl from Metalline Falls comes to the big city to go to college. Girl meets boy. Boy seduces girl. Girl gets pregnant. Boy runs away. I feel like the heroine in one of those gloomy nineteenth-century novels we used to have to read in high school. I guess I’m supposed to drown myself or something.”

“I don’t particularly recommend it. That river over there’s got a fierce current to it. You could get yourself pretty thoroughly beaten up by all the rocks in the process.”

“You’ve got a point there.” She laughed. “Drowning yourself in the Spokane River could be a pretty hectic experience. I checked out a couple of those homes they have, but I don’t think I’d Eke that. The girls all looked kind of pale and morning-sicky, and the nuns are very kind and maternal, but you can see that they disapprove. I just don’t feel like being disapproved of right now.”

“Do you plan to keep the baby?”

“Of course. I’m not going to go through all of this and then not have anything to show for it.” She fell silent again.

Quite clearly, almost like the obvious plot of a piece of bad fiction, Raphael could see the girl’s life stretched out in front of her. The baby would come at its appointed time; and because there was no alternative and a baby must be clothed and fed and suitably housed, the girl would turn to those social agencies that even now lurked on the horizon waiting for her. The agencies were very kind,

very understanding, but they demanded of their clients a certain attitude. First of all there must be no pride, no dignity. The girl would have to learn to grovel. Groveling is one of the most important qualifications for welfare recipients. Once she had been taught to grovel in front of the desks of superior young ladies with minimal degrees in social science, she would almost be ready to join the ranks of the losers. With her pride and self-respect gone, she would be ready to accept the attentions of one of the horde of indolent young men who can smell a welfare check the way a shark smells blood. Her situation would quickly become hopeless, and her humor and intelligence would erode. She would begin to court crisis out of sheer boredom, and any chance for meaning or improvement would be blown away like dry leaves in the first blast of winter.

“Not
this
one,” Raphael murmured more to himself than to any blind, impish gods of mischance.

“What?” the girl asked.

“Nothing. Do you have to stay here—in Spokane, I mean?”

She shrugged, and Raphael almost ground his teeth at the futility of the gesture. Indifference was the first symptom of that all-prevalent disease that infested the streets below. If she was to be salvaged, that would have to be attacked first.

“The hospitals are good,” she said, “and I’m going to need a hospital before the year’s out.”

“There are hospitals everyplace, and it’s not like you were going to be going in for brain surgery, you know.”

She shrugged again. “Spokane’s as good as any place—certainly better than Metalline Falls. I couldn’t go back there.”

“Why not?”

“I just couldn’t. You don’t know small towns.” “I know big ones,” he said grimly.

The night was still warm, and the hot reek of dust still rose from the sun-blasted street below, and the crickets and tree frogs sang endlessly of summer as Raphael for the first time began carefully to attack the disease that until now he had only observed.

iii

One night, several evenings later, Flood came by with some beer, and he sat on the rooftop with Raphael, talking dispiritedly.

“I thought you were a martini man,” Raphael observed.

“I’ve fallen in with evil companions. Most of these cretins don’t know a martini from a manhattan. Besides, it’s too hot. Unless you swill it right down, a martini turns lukewarm on you in this kind of weather.”

“Nothing like a belt of warm gin to fix you right up.” Flood shuddered.

Down at the corner a motorcycle snarled and popped as Big Heintz made his appearance. He pulled up onto the lawn of the house up the street and stepped off his bike. “The Dragons are in town,” he announced to the Angels and their women, who lounged in wilted discomfort on the porch.

“Dragons?” Raphael murmured. “What’s that big clown been smoking?”

“It’s a rival gang,” Flood told him, his voice tensing slightly. “They’re from Seattle. They come over here every so often, and there’s always a big fight.”

“Whoopee,” Raphael said flatly.

On the lawn Heck’s Angels gathered around Big Heintz, all talking excitedly. “Who seen ‘em?” Jimmy demanded.

“Leon was at the Savage House.” Heintz flexed his beefy shoulders. “He seen a couple of ‘em come in flyin’ their colon. The Mongol was one of ‘em.”

“Wow!” Jimmy said. “They mean business, then. The Mongol is one bad motherfucker. I seen ‘im a couple yean ago. He absolutely
creamed
Otto.”

“I ain’t afraid of that fuckin’ Mongol,” Heintz declared belligerently.

“Anybody know where they’re hangin’ out?” Little Hider asked.

“We’ll find ‘em.” Heintz said it grimly.

Jimmy ran into the house and came back out with a length of heavy chain. He swung it whistling around his head.

“This is it,” Big Heintz announced solemnly. “This is really it—the last and final war. Them fuckers been comin’ over here every summer. They find one or two of our guys and stomp ‘em, and then they all run back to Seattle. This time it’s gonna be different. This is gonna be the last and final war.” He strode up and down in front of the Angels, his beard bristling and his helmet pulled low over his eyes. “I sent out the word,” he went on. “Everybody’s comin’, and I mean
everybody.
This time them fuckers ain’t gonna find just one or two of us. They’re gonna find
all
of us, and it’s gonna be a
war!”

They were all talking at once now, their voices shrill and excited. Several of the others ran into the house for chains and lengths of pipe and nail-studded baseball bats.

“You gonna take the Mongol, Heintz?” Jimmy asked breathlessly.

Heintz struck a dangerous pose. “Yeah. I’m gonna take that fuckin’ Mongol. I’m gonna
waste
that motherfucker. Somebody get my gear.” He tucked his thumbs into his belt and puffed out his chest. “Anybody that ain’t got the guts for real war better split now, ‘cause there’s gonna be blood, man,
blood!”

Flood was breathing rapidly. Suddenly he stood up.

“Where are
you
going?” Raphael demanded.

“I thought I—” Hood broke off.

“What in God’s name is the matter with you, Damon? You don’t really
care,
do you? All they’re going to do is ride around looking tough, and then they’ll all get drunk and spend the rest of the night telling each other how mean they would have been. Don’t be childish.”

Flood stared at him, hard-faced, and then he suddenly laughed. “Shit,” he said, sitting back down. “This goddamn place is turning me into a ding-a-ling. You know? I was actually going down there. We’ve got to get out of this town, Raphael. It’s starting to percolate our goddamn brains.”

Two of the women came out of the house carrying Heintz’s implements of combat. He stood very straight while they solemnly put his nail-studded leather vest on him. Then they wrapped his thick waist several rimes around with a long length of heavy, tinkling chain. One of the women knelt reverently and tucked a long, sheathed knife into his right boot while the other attached a heavy length of taped pipe to the chain around his waist.

“I want you women to take the kids inside and bolt all the doors,” Heintz instructed. “Put stuff in front of the windows and don’t turn on no lights. Them bastards might try to come here an’ mess you up while we’re gone.”