Then, on a tray this time, she brought out three beers and also a tin basin of warm water and a scrap of rag. And slowly she put down the glasses, arranged the rag and basin next to the GI and sat close beside him. We drank to each other—dark eye on mine, little silver dog huddled between her breasts—and still holding her glass and without taking her eyes from mine she reached out her free hand, took a chubby fistful of black curly hair and pulled the GI upright, let his head loll over the back of the chair.

  “Is he OK?” I whispered, “is he alive?”

  She nodded, drank another sip of beer. Then she showed me the back of her small shapeless hand, held her hand up like a club.

  “You did it?” I whispered and pushed aside my beer, leaned away from the two of them. “You mean you did that to him yourself?”

  More nodding, more sipping, a soft shadow of pride passing over the greasy brown contours of her round face, more searching looks at me. And then suddenly she finished off her beer and, softly talking all the while to the dog and now and then glancing at me, she cradled the GI’s head and dipped the rag and went to work on him. With age-old tenderness she ran the rag over the lips, under the eyes, around the nose, again and again dipping the rag, squeezing, returning with heavy breath to the gentleness of her occupation. The white face began to emerge and already the water, I could see, was a soft rich color, deep and dark.

  When the dog tipped its tiny nose over the edge of the basin I stood up. And quickly, without commotion, I left them there, the preoccupied fat woman bent over her task and the soldier moaning in the crook of her arm—he had begun to moan at last—and I groped my way outside and knelt at the nearest pile of rubble and upchucked into the rubble to my heart’s content, let go with the tortillas, the hot tamales, the champagne, nameless liquor and beer, knelt and clung to a chunk of mortar and gooseneck of rusted pipe and threw open the bilge, had a good deep rumble for myself.

  Anyone who has gotten down on his knees to vomit has discovered, if only by accident, the position of prayer. So that terrible noise I was making must have been the noise of prayer, and the effect, as the spasms faded and the stomach went dry, was no doubt similar to the peace that follows prayer. In my own way I was contrite enough, certainly, had worked hard enough there in the rubble to deserve well the few moments when a little peace hung over me in the wake of the storm that had passed.

  I breathed, I smeared my face in my handkerchief, I climbed to my feet. It was a job done, and now the night, I knew, was going to fly away fast. Too bad for them, I thought, too bad for me. It hadn’t ended well but it had ended.

  And now I was wandering and the opera house was like a decapitated turret or the remains of a tiny and monstrous replica of a Rhine castle. A few curtain wires flapping loose in the wind, a couple of sandbags and a little gilt chair upside down in the entrance hall, a pile of handbills. Another house of pleasure for the men in the drifts. And how many performances did my Mexican love attend? How many with some other little hairless rat-shaped dog tucked under her arm? How many with a mouthful of pepitas and a heavy hand on her rolling thigh and bright candles lit all the way across the little stage? I would never know. But there was life yet in that miniature lopsided castle of bygone scratching orchestras and flouncing chorus girls and brawling applause. So I began to feel my way up the narrow stairs. I climbed as high as the first balcony, climbed up into the fading night and could go no further, for the second balcony, the roof, the stage, all of it was gone and there was only a scattering of broken glass, the wind in my face, the feeling of blackness and a good view of the pitiless gorge and hapless town. I could make out the squat deeper shadow of the far-off Packard, I could hear the guitar. The dawn was rising up to my nostrils.

  And then I saw those two enormous soft rolls of faded tickets which—by what devilish prank? what trick of time?—had been printed up for a movie that had starred Rita Hayworth, I remembered, as the unfaithful mistress of a jealous killer who escaped from prison midway through the first reel of the film. Shotguns, touring cars, acid in the face, long hair soaking wet in the rain— it was a real find, that memory, those rolls of tickets, and I scooped them up and tore them into ten-foot lengths and tied them to the broken railing, to upright twists of iron, to the arms of ravaged chairs, and watched all those paper strips snapped out onto the wind and listened to the distant sounds of my little son-in-law shouting at my poor daughter and beating on the neck of the guitar, and emptied my pockets, threw my remaining handfuls of confetti out onto the wind. It was a fete of mildewed paper and wild sentiment, a fete for three.

  And in that flapping dawn—sky filled with rose, silver, royal blue—I opened the Edgeworth tobacco tin, for a long while stared at the razor blade inside. Then slowly, can and all, I tossed it over the edge of the first balcony. And seven and a half months after that flapping dawn in the mountains Pixie poked her little nose into the world—premature, an incubator baby—and sixteen months after that same rose and silver and royal blue dawn they were putting Gertrude’s poor body into the ground. Thank God for the old PBY’s and for a captain who did not interfere when I left the ship to be on hand back home as needed in City Hall or maternity ward or cemetery. Thank God for the boys who flew those old PBY’s straight to the mark.

  “That’s all you are, Papa Cue Ball. The father of a woman who produces a premature child. The husband of a woman who kills herself. I renounce it, Papa Cue Ball. I renounce this family, I renounce this kind of a man. Can you explain? Can you defend? Can you speak to me with honor of your own Papa? No. So I renounce, Papa Cue Ball, I will escape one of these days. You may take my word. …

  “If you don’t wish to come, Fernandez, then you may stay behind.”

  “That’s what I wish. I do wish it, Papa Cue Ball, now that you put the words in my mouth! And believe me, I will follow my heart. …”

  In front of the mirror in the little room stacked knee-high with the cardboard cartons which I had half-filled with poor Gertrude’s clothing, I was having trouble with the sword. Our limousine was waiting, scheduled to depart from the U-Drive-Inn, while the hearse was scheduled to depart, of course, from the mortuary. Or rather our limousine was scheduled to rendezvous with the hearse at the mortuary, the two black vehicles to proceed on from there together. And we were late and I was having trouble with my sword. Poor Gertrude. In the mirror I saw the smart dark blue uniform—it was Christmas, after all, the Christmas of ’44 and time for blues—saw the polished brass buttons, the white shirt still open at the neck since the baby was playing with my black tie, saw my bald head, freshly shaven cheeks, furrows over the bridge of my nose, and the unhooked and unwieldy sword. It was not my sword, it was the old man’s sword, and I had borrowed it late on that last night on the Starfish. I had thought a sword necessary for Gertrude’s funeral and now a couple of hooks were giving me trouble and the black scabbard was growing heavy in my hands.

  “Cassandra,” I said into the mirror, “I wish you’d cry. And Sonny,” leaning forward, looking around for him in the mirror, “can’t you give me a little help with the captain’s sword?” Sonny was beginning to mourn, grief was beginning to overtake him in this ransacked room in the U-Drive-Inn, and he was scowling at Fernandez and holding Pixie on his lap. It was Sonny who had given the baby my black tie.

  “All’s you got to do is speak up, Skipper. You knows that. I’ve helped the old man with his sword, and I can help you with it. You knows that.”

  Sleeve of her camel’s-hair coat dangling from one of the boxes. Odor of gin. A scattering of small change, cuticle sticks, keys, all gleaming in the far corner of the room where I had been going over them, sorting things out. And on a fluffy beribboned hanger hooked to the top slat of the Venetian blinds her negligee, her pink negligee—I had rinsed it in the bathroom sink the night before, hung it to dry—now doing its long empty undulating dance in the cool currents of the air freshener that was humming low on the west wall. Poor Gertrude. I could never hold a grudge against Gertrude. No matter the motorcycle orgies with members of my own crew, half a season on a nearby burlesque stage, the strange disappearances, insinuating notes to Washington, and bills, bruises, infidelity here at the U-Drive-Inn, and even a play for faithful Sonny, no matter how she had tried to injure me or shame Cassandra, still I could never despise the early wrinkles, the lost look in the eyes, the terror I so often saw on the thin wide mouth, the drunken floundering. She was a helpless unpretty woman with dyed hair. She got a rash from eating sea food. She gave a terrible ammunition to those young members of my crew with whom she managed to have her little whirlwind affairs. And her early V-letters were always the same: “I hope they sink you, Edward. I really do.” She said she was going to drink up my insurance money when I was gone. Poor Gertrude. “You are going to hate me, Edward,” she wrote, “at least you won’t deny me hate, will you?” But she was wrong. Because the further she went downhill the more I cared. And Gertrude was no match for my increasing tolerance.

  “Now give me my tie, Sonny,” I said, and there was the empty camel’s-hair sleeve, the sword at my side, my own uneasy look of consternation in the mirror. “The baby will have to play with something else. On the double, Sonny, we’re late already.”

  “What about the child, Papa Cue Ball? You don’t intend to leave the child with me?”

  “Yes, Fernandez. That’s the plan. Exactly.”

  Then Sonny helped me with the knot and gave me his arm and Cassandra found my hat in the bathroom. Gertrude’s finger-prints were everywhere, her smell was everywhere—sweet lemon and a light haze of alcohol—and in the wastebasket a crumpled tissue still bore the lipstick impression of her poor thin lips stretched wide in the unhappiness of her last night alive.

  And Sonny: “Look at that baby there, Skipper. She sure misses her Grandma!”

  I nodded.

  So I leaned on Sonny and Cassandra preceded us—bright sun, black limousine, bright shadows in the empty driveway—and so at last, and only twenty-five minutes late, we pulled away from the U-Drive-Inn and headed east in fairly heavy traffic to keep our rendezvous with Gertrude’s hearse. I could tell they had vacuum-cleaned the inside of our limousine. The upholstery was like gray skin and the sun was hard, brilliant, silent through the clear glass.

  “Them swords are the devil to sit down with, Skipper. Ain’t they?”

  I agreed with him. And then: “If we used the jump-up seats we could be carrying six instead of three. Did you notice that, Sonny? Wonderful room in these limousines. But I wonder why there aren’t any flowers?”

  The traffic was heavy and all the other cars were filled with children. I could see them through the sealed glass, the smooth bright silence of our slow ride. Faint brand-new automobile smell, hard light, subtle sensation of new black tires humming gently through the perfect seat—gray skin, foam rubber, a bed of springs—and rising like a thin intimate voice into the receptive spine. And of course the driver. Something familiar about the driver—charcoal chauffeur’s jacket, white collar, charcoal chauffeur’s cap, dark glasses—a curiously muffled and familiar look about the driver. But I couldn’t place him and went back to stroking the warm handstrap and staring at the tints that were beginning to appear in the curves and along the edges of our shatterproof glass.

  “Ask him if he has his lights on, Sonny. Funeral cars always have their lights on, don’t they, Sonny? We’d make better time with lights, I’m sure.”

  We were only forty-eight minutes late, exactly, when we drifted to a marvelous stop beneath the bright green caterpillar awning and waited while the driver climbed the smooth white marble steps to report inside. The place looked empty. No sign of the hearse. No attendants in black swallowtails. Nothing. Then Sonny went in after the driver—grief riding his shoulders, dreading the interior of this establishment which was like home to me—and in close conversation, stooping, black shoes making startled noises on the marble, they returned together. Sonny opened the car door, stuck his head in, and Cassandra and I—Cassandra in her trim black dress, hair drawn tightly under the little hat—leaned forward as one. The black face was wet and the long black cheeks were more hollowed out than ever. His panther hand was trembling.

  “Been some mistake, Skipper,” shaking his head, fanning himself with his black chief’s cap, “hearse gone on ahead without us. The man inside couldn’t tell us a thing. Anyways, we got to get a move on now.”

  “Well, hop in, Sonny,” I said. “Let’s go.” Then leaning forward, touching the stiff driver’s charcoal arm and wishing I could see his face, “Listen,” I said, “it’s a matter of life and death. Do you understand?”

  “Got his lights on now, Skipper,” nudging me, peering down into my face, staring at me with those hard-boiled eggs of his, “and them lights ought to help for sure.”

  “That’s good, Sonny,” I said. “I’m glad.”

  Then suddenly the highway was wide open, clear, a long rising six-lane concrete boomerang with its tip driven into the horizon and all for us. Soft gray seats and chrome and the sunlight standing still on the ebony dashboard, and only the highway itself took my attention away from the chrome, the felt padding under our feet, so that for a moment I saw the lemon trees, the olive groves, the brown sculpted contours of the low hills.

  There was a shadow in the front seat next to the driver, a dark amorphous shadow that swelled and tried to change its position and vague shape according to the curves in the road, black shadow that seemed to be held in its seat by the now terrible speed of the Caddy. The driver had both hands on the wheel and now the speed was whispering inside my spine. I noticed that the tints of the window and windshield glass had slid, suddenly, onto Cassandra’s black dress, were shining there in the black planes of her body, and that she was looking at me. The black shadow was snuggling up to the driver.

  “Hurry up,” I said as loud as I could, leaning forward and fighting against the sword at my side, “hurry up, will you? We haven’t got all day.”

  And then the turn-off, the gentle incline over gravel, a long sweeping glimpse of the lemon sky, the archway flanked by two potted palms—there was an angel floating between the palms—the still sunlit aspect of the cemetery at the end of the day. And a little sign which I saw immediately-speed six miles per hour—and far off, at the top of a dun-colored hill, a little activity which I tried not to see. Sonny was suffering now, moaning to himself, and doing a poor job of controlling his fear of graveyards.

  “Look, Sonny,” I said, “isn’t that the hearse?”

  “Appears to be the hearse, Skipper. Sure enough.”

  We crawled toward the hill and toward the green speck—it proved to be a tent for mourners—and toward the other elongated speck, black and radiant, which was the hearse. The sky was a pure lemon color, quite serene.

  “But, Sonny,” clutching his arm, reaching up quickly for a fierce grip on the handstrap, “it’s moving, isn’t it? It wasn’t moving before, but it’s moving now.”

  “Appears like you’re right, Skipper. That hearse just don’t want our company, I guess.”

  And then the stillness of the limousine, the grease and steel sound of the door opening—we left the car door open behind us, large and empty and catching the sun—and Sonny holding one of my arms and Cassandra the other, and we were walking across the carpet of thick green imitation turf in the gentle light on top of the dun-colored hill, and no one was there.

  “All right,” I said, “they can begin. Let’s get it over with.”

  But I knew better. There was no one there, the place was empty. The remains of flowers were scattered around underfoot, red roses, white carnations, the debris of real activity, I could see that. But I rushed to the tent, for a long while stood looking into the darkness of that warm tent. There was a shovel lying on the ground and the smell of earth. Nothing else.

  The flowers were heaviest where the digging had been going on. Piled up, kicked out of the way, crushed. And there were a few strips of the thick green turf lying more or less around the edges of what had been the hole, and the three of us, standing there together, gently touched the green turf with the toes of our shoes. They must have thought they were burying a piano, and judging by the width and depth of the new earth the hole must have gone down a hundred feet. There was the deep print of a workman’s boot right in the center and I squatted, kneeled, brushed it away.

  And kneeling, weighing a handful of the new earth in my cold hand: “So they went ahead without us,” I said. “They put poor Gertrude into the ground without us. You know,” looking up at the two black figures rising into the soft lemon sky, “I told them I wanted Gertrude to have a white casket. A white casket with just a touch of silver. But they might have put her into mahogany and gold for all we’ll ever know. How can we tell?”

  I stood up, raised my palm, straightened out my fingers: “Pretty sandy stuff, isn’t it, Sonny?” I said, and tossed it away, wiped my hand on the back of my pants. I turned to go.

  And then the whisper, the quick soft whisper full of love and fear: “Ain’t you got something for the grave, Skipper? Got to leave something for the grave, Skipper. Bad luck if you don’t.”

  I nodded, thought a moment, pointed. He understood. Sonny understood and unhooked the hooks and raked out a little trough about three inches deep in the loose skin-colored soil. He buried the sword about three inches deep in the loose soil, tamped it down. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps we would have had worse luck had we not left it there. At least it was no great loss.

  The driver took us the long way around the cemetery on our way out, drove us at six miles per hour along the gentle road that was like a bridle path through a hovering bad dream. At the far end of the cemetery there was a line of eucalyptus trees, and leaning forward, staring out of the tinted glass and between the trees, I saw a mountain of naked earth heaped high with flowers—dead flowers, fresh flowers, an acre-long dump of bright tears for the dead—and I knew that poor Gertrude’s flowers would soon land on the pile.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24