The Man Who Lost the Sea (37 page)

When they stopped swinging, Smith freed his hand from the boy’s biceps. It took a concentrated effort, so clamped, so cramped, was his hysterical hand. “Now rest,” he said to both, for both of them. The boy kept whimpering, a past-tears meaningless, habitual kind of sound, dry and probably unfelt. Some measureless time later he helped the boy get his other leg into the little twisted square of chain, so that he sat and whimpered, while Smith stood and panted, for however long it took to be able to think again. Then Smith had the boy stand up inside the circle of his arms, and climb until his buttocks were at the level of Smith’s chest. Then they climbed together, Smith urging the boy to sit back on him when he had to, half-lifting him when they got the strength and the courage, each interminable time, to try another rung. And when at last the boy tumbled up and over and was, by Gorwing, snatched back from the edge, Smith had to stop achingly and wearily ponder out what had happened to the weight and presence of him, before he could go on.

Gorwing snatched him, too, away from the edge, where he lay laughing weakly.

“You,” said Gorwing darkly, “you real gutsy.”

“Me?”

“I coudn’. Not ever, I could never do that.” He made a sudden vague gesture, startling in its aimlessness, a jolting contrast to his vulpine appearance and harsh voice. “I never had much guts.”

Smith held his peace, as does one in the presence of evidence too great for immediate speculation. He thought of Gorwing standing up to him about the hundred-dollar fare, and of Gorwing ravening, tearing, lashing out at the hitchhiking dope addict. Yet there was no mistaking his sincerity in what he said—nor in this frank compliment to him, Smith—a man who had, up until now, stimulated only open disgust. He promised himself he would think about it later. He said to the boy, “How do you feel, kid?”

“Gee, all right.” The boy shuddered. “Ain’t going to do that again.”

“What were you doing?”

“Aw. Bunch of Nyack kids, they bet nobody could climb the cliff. I didn’t say nothing, but I thought I could, so I tried it.”

Smith stood up, held gingerly to the tree trunk and peered over. “Where are they?”

“Oh gosh, I wouldn’t try it when anyone’s around. I just wanted to see if I could before I opened my trap about it.”

“So no one knew you were there!”

The boy grinned shakily. “You did.”

Gorwing and Smith shared a glance; to Smith it meant nothing, but Gorwing rose abruptly and barked, “Let’s get out of here.” Smith sensed his sudden desire to change the subject, just as he sensed the impact of the boy’s refusal to change the subject: “Hey, how
did
you know I was there?”

Gorwing half turned; Smith thought he sensed that glance again, but when he tried to meet it it was gone. “Heard you yellin’,” Gorwing said gruffly.

“I live right here,” said Smith. It satisfied the boy completely, but for the very first time Smith saw Gorwing look astonished. Yes, and in a way pleased.

They stopped at his house for something cool to drink, and then got in the car to return to Nyack; the boy said he lived on Castle Heights Avenue. There was surprisingly little talk. Neither Gorwing nor Smith seemed to know how to talk to a thirteen-year-old—a rare talent, at best, rare even among thirteen-year-olds—yet what occupied Smith’s mind could hardly be discussed in his presence.

Gorwing. This rough, mad, strange, unpredictable Gorwing … you couldn’t like him; and Smith knew he did not. Yet through him, with him, Smith had shared something new—new, yes, and rich. He had … it was as if he had had a friend for a moment there, working so dangerously together … and the work was for someone else; that had something to do with it …

Friend … Smith knew many people, and he had no enemies, and so he had thought he had had friends; but for a moment now he got a glimpse of the uncomfortable fact that he had no friends. Never
had. Even … even Eloise. Husband and wife they were, lovers they had been—hadn’t they?—but could he honestly say that he and Eloise had ever been friends?

He sank for a moment into a viscous caldron of scalding loneliness.
Eloise
 …

“Hey.” Gorwing’s harsh note crashed into his reverie. “How we get this young feller to keep his mouth shut?”

“Me?” said the boy.

“You better keep your mouth shut, that’s all,” said Gorwing ominously.

Smith had no experience in talking to boys, but he could see this was the wrong tack. The kid was edging away from Gorwing, and his eyes were too wide. Smith said quickly, “He’s right. I don’t know your mother, sonny, but I’d say she’d be worried sick if you told her the story. Or maybe just mad.”

“Yeah, maybe.” He looked warmly at Smith, then timidly at Gorwing. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.… Can’t I tell
nobody?
”

“I’d as soon you didn’t.”

“Well, anything you say,” said the boy. He swallowed and said again, “Anything …” and then, “That’s my house. The white one.”

Smith stopped well away from the house. “Hop out, so no one sees you in the car. So long.”

“So long.” The boy walked away a slow pace, then turned back. “I don’t even know your names.”

“Delehanty,” said Smith. And Gorwing said solemnly, “Me, too.”

“Well,” said the boy uneasily, “well, thanks, then,” and moved toward the white house.

Smith backed into a nearby driveway and headed back toward the shop.

Gorwing said truculently, “How come you covered for me like that?”

“I had the idea you wanted it that way. Up on the cliff I got that idea.”

“Yeah.… You know all the time what people want?”

“I don’t think,” said Smith slowly, with a frankness that stung his eyes, “I ever tried before.”

They rolled along for what seemed a long, companionable moment. Then Smith added, “You don’t always help people out for money, do you?”

Gorwing shrugged, rolled down his window, and spat. “Only when I can get it. Oh man, could I use some about now.”

“This,” said Smith bitterly, “is my taxicab this time.”

“Oh, I wasn’t asking you for nothing. You watch yourself, Smith. I’m no panhandler.”

Smith drove self-consciously, carefully. He knew his face was pink, and he hated himself for it. He wondered if he could say anything to this madman without making him angry. Angrier. He asked, without malice, “What would you do with money?”

“Get drunk,” said Gorwing, and immediately glanced at Smith’s face. “Oh my God,” he said disgustedly, “he believes me. I never drink anything … What would I do with money?” he mused. “ ’Pends how much. Now there’s a couple, the old man is dying. I mean, he can’t last, not much more. The woman, she stays by him ever minute, don’t go out even to buy food. Somebody don’t go to the store for ’em, throw ’em a couple skins now and then, they … oh, you wouldn’t know.”

No, Smith wouldn’t know. He had never been in need … or in danger, before today. Turning into Midland Avenue, he glanced down a side street toward the river, where the wide-lawned pleasant houses gave way to the shabby-decent, the tenement, the shack. He had never done that before, not to
see
them. And then, the need you could see, starting with the shacks, was, when you came to think about it, surely not all the need there was; need comes in so many colors and kinds. He brought the thought back up to the crisp-tended, tree-shaded homes on the Avenue and wondered what it was like to live in this world instead of—of whatever it was he had been doing.

He stopped in front of the Anything Shoppe, and they got out. “Here,” Smith said. He took out his wallet and found a twenty-dollar bill. He looked at Gorwing and suddenly took out the ten, too—all he had with him.

Gorwing did not thank him. He took the money and said, “Well, all right!” and marched off.

Smith was still wagging his head as he entered the shop.

“I know how you feel,” said G-Note, grinning.

“What is he?”

G-Note grunted. “I never did really know, myself.”

“I never thought I’d say this, but I sort of like him.” Smith was feeling very warm inside about all this.

Oddly enough, the remark brought no smile this time. “I don’t know if you can really
like
Gorwing,” said Noat thoughtfully. “He sometimes … but anyway, tell me what happened.”

Smith related his afternoon. Noat nodded sagely. “Junkies,” he nodded at one point. “He can’t stand ’em. Runs ’em out of town every time.”

At the end of his story, Smith told him about the money. “Is that on the level, Mr. Noat? Or will he just go on a toot?”

“No, it’s on the level. If he keeps out any for himself, it’ll be what he barely needs.”

“Doesn’t he have a job or something?”

Noat shook his big head. “No job. No home, not what you might call a place of his own. Moves around all the time, furnished rooms, back of the poolhall, here in the shop sometimes. I don’t think he ever leaves town, though.”

“Mr. Noat, how does he do it?”

Noat cocked his head on one side. “Didn’t you ask him?”

Smith laughed weakly. “No.” Then, with a sudden surge of candor, “Tell you the truth, I was afraid to.”

“Tell you the truth, I’m afraid to, too,” said Noat. “He … well, between you and me, I think he thinks he’s some sort of freak. Or, anyway, he’s afraid people will think that. He never lets anybody get close to him. He always does what he can to hide how he does what he does. Usually by blowing up in your face.”

“He must … he seems to do a lot of good.”

“Yes …” There was a reservation in the ugly man’s voice.

“Well, doggone it, what
is
it he does?”

“He, well, hears when somebody needs something, or maybe you might say smells it. I don’t know. I don’t know as I care much, except it works. Heck, you don’t have to know how everything works—
by the time you did, you’d be too old to work it.” He turned away, and Smith thought for a moment he had closed the subject, but he said, without turning around, “Only thing I’m sure of, he knows the difference between wanting something and needing it.”

“Want … you asked me that!”

“I did. I asked Gorwing, too, although maybe you don’t remember.”

“Eloise … you mean he’d know whether I—need her, or just want her? Him?”

Noat chuckled. “Feels like a sort of invasion of privacy, doesn’t it? It is and it isn’t … what he knows, however he knows it, it isn’t like anyone else knowing it. That Gorwing … but he does a lot of good, you know.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Calla Pincus, she thinks he’s some sort of saint.”

“Who’s she?”

“Girl he—well, she was going to kill herself one time, and he stopped her. She’d do anything for him. So would the Blinker—he’s kind of a poolhall rat—and there’s old Sarge, that’s a track walker for the West Side Line … I mean, he has sort of a raggle-taggle army, all through the town, that’ve learned to ask no questions and jump to do what he says. Sometimes for pay. And Doc Tramble, and one of the teachers at the high school and … and me, I guess—”

“And me.”

Noat laughed. “So welcome to the fold.”

“All these years in this town,” Smith marveled, “and I never guessed this was going on. Mr. Noat … does he know where my wife is?”

“Did you ask him?”

Smith shook his head. “Somehow I … I was afraid to ask him that, too.”

“You better. You need her—you know that and I do and he does. I think you should ask him … Now can I ask you something?”

“Oh, sure.”

“You never went to the police or anything. How come?”

Smith looked down at his hands and closed them, then his eyes.
He said in a low voice, “I guess because … You know, she said to me, whatever had happened, she still wanted me to be happy. I imagine I wanted the same thing for her. It was something she had to do; I didn’t think I should stop her.”

“But you’re looking now.”

“Not with police.”

“Hey, he’s coming. Ask him. Go ahead—ask him.”

Smith turned eagerly to the door as Gorwing banged in. “Hi!” He felt warm, friendly—pleasurably scared—anticipatory. Gorwing utterly ignored him.

Noat frowned briefly and said, “Hey boy. Smitty there, he’s got something to ask you.”

“He has?” Gorwing did not even look around.

Smith hesitated, then caught Noat’s encouraging nod.

Timidly, he asked, “Mr. Gorwing … do you know where my wife is?”

Gorwing flicked him with a black glance and showed his white teeth. “Sure.” Then he turned his full cruel smile on Smith and said, “She don’t need you.”

Smith blinked as if something had flashed before his eyes. His mouth was dry inside, and outside shivery. He wanted to say something but could not.

Noat growled, “That ain’t what he asked you, Gorwing. He says do you know where she is.”

“Oh sure,” said Gorwing easily, and grinned again. “She got a cold-water walk-up over on High Avenue, ’long with the guy she’s livin’ with.”

Smith had never in his life physically attacked anyone, but now he grunted, just as if he had been kicked in the stomach, and rushed Gorwing. He struck out, a wild, round, unpracticed blow, but loaded with hysteria and hate. It never reached Gorwing, but planted itself instead in the region of Noat’s left shoulder blade, for Noat, moving with unbelievable speed for so large a man, had vaulted the counter and come between them. He came, obviously, not to protect anyone, but to launch his own attack. “You lousy little rat, you didn’t have to do that. Now you get out of here,” he rumbled, as
with one hand he opened the door and with the other literally threw Gorwing outside. Gorwing tried to keep his balance but could not; he fell heavily, rolled, got up. His face was so white his black hair looked almost blue; still he grinned. Then he was gone.

Noat closed the door and came to Smith. “So now you know.”

“El-Eloise is …” and he began to cough.

“Oh, not that! I mean, now you know about Gorwing. How can you figure it? All he does is take care of what people need … and there’s no kindness in him.”

“Eloise is—”

“Your wife is taking care of an old sick man who’ll be dead any time now.”

“Who?” Smith cried, agonized. “
What
old man?”

“That you just gave the money for.”