Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (32 page)

She threw the liquid at his mouth. But he ducked and leaned forward. Their movements worked together, and surprisingly the glass shattered over his eye. He gasped and they jumped apart. Kristin dropped the broken handle as a line of dark red bulged, then flowed down over his nose. Almost instantly she cried his name and burst into tears. Gnossos sitting on the floor from the force of the blow, waiting for the blood to run down his face and off his chin before getting up with exaggerated dizziness.

“Oh no,” she said, rising with him, terribly alarmed, looking for a handkerchief to stop the bleeding, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

He waved her aside casually and wandered into the kitchen, testing the semisweet trickle with his tongue as he went. She followed at first, then ran ahead to turn on the cold water. Let her do the Nightingale, fall into your stricken arms. Try limping.

She dampened a dishtowel and made him sit on a stool as she sponged away the blood and gently patted the gash. “Does it hurt you, Gnossos? God, I’m terribly sorry.”

He shook his head stoically and tried to look at nothing.

“Oh dear, it’s deeper than I thought. Now wait right there, don’t go away.” She ran to the bathroom and returned with a vial of merthiolate, unscrewing the dropper. “Hold still. Does it sting?”

He winced despite himself, but shook his head, and she blew on it softly.

Within ten minutes the tepid evening breezes were puffing quiet gusts across their bodies. Kristin wearing only her summerweight gray knee-socks and a pair of high heels he’d insisted she keep in the closet for just such emergencies. Gnossos wearing only a bandage over his eye. Fingers of penitent passion made tunnels in the tangle of his curls. Atoning lips traced the hairline down his belly.

When she was more than ready, he selected the altered Trojan from his rucksack, rolled it on where she couldn’t see the insidious hole, and climbed on from behind. He wanted it good and deep. As the semen left his loins he bucked with disquieting force and wished it Godspeed, helping it on its way home.

That night he wrote an explanatory note and left it with the sign-in girl at the dorm. Since Fitzgore had had the audacity to demand his car keys back, he hot-wired the Impala with Pamela’s stiletto and drove directly to Heff’s.

“Call the whole gang, baby, see if you can get them to the student union in half an hour.”

“Half an hour?”

“Bags packed.”

Heff went to the phone as Gnossos lit a straight Chesterfield and picked up an old copy of
Ebony
. He leafed through it and was in the middle of an article on the mulatto model in America when the last call was finished. “What’s up, Paps?” came the question, “you’re looking a little weird.”

“You got any shit, man?”

“Yeah, quarter ounce maybe.”

“I want it all.”

Heff watched his eyes. “All right.”

“Any lush?”

“Some Irish whiskey left, Powers, I think.”

“Lovely, let’s go to Cuba.”

“You’re
coming?
”

“I’m coming, man.”

“Oh wow.”

“I’m also coming back, but let’s say I need a change of view.”

“Don’t explain, man, it’s all cool. Rosenbloom even said something about a
credit
card. What about the chic?”

“Fuck her. For the time being, so to speak.”

“Right. You got any luggage?”

“You’re looking at it.”

Heff sat between Jack and Judy Lumpers in the back seat, Juan Carlos took the first driving shift, and Gnossos put away the remaining paregoric, Mixture Sixty-nine, and Irish whiskey, in that order. He did not wake up until Delaware, and he said to Heff, “Hey, baby, where are we?”

Heff was driving by then. “Delaware, man,” he said.

“That’s pretty funny.”

“It’s even funnier when you look at it.”

“Oh yeah? You got any shades?”

“Jack, give Paps the shades.”

“And hey, man, when I finish digging it, wake me up in Washington. I gotta make a call.”

In Washington, Kristin’s father was in conference with the President of the United States. But Gnossos got him on the line by telling them that Mrs. McCleod had just been machine-gunned by the Soviet cultural attaché.

“My God,” said Mr. McCleod at the other end of the phone, “how did it happen? Have you notified the Pentagon?” He had a voice like a radio announcer’s.

“It didn’t happen, baby, just get yourself a glass of milk and sit down.” It was eight o’clock in the morning and Gnossos was standing in a gas station booth, watching the others stretch by the side of the car. The breeze already had a foreign, exhilarating odor.

“Who is this? What’s happened to my wife?”

“I already told you, man, nothing, but I had to talk to you, dig? You cats are difficult to reach.”

There was confused muttering at the other end of the line, extensions being clicked in, delicate whispers, then: “Would you mind telling me—”

“I probably knocked up your daughter is all. I wanted you to know.”

More whispers. “What did you say?”

“But I’m planning to be big about it, and you shouldn’t lose your cool.”

“What?”

“Ought to be a good-looking kid, actually, Greek, lots of curly hair, dark. My name is Pappadopoulis.”

“How do you do. What’s this all—”

“I can’t talk much longer, man, I’m low on coins and we’re off to Cuba.”

“To where?”

“Later, right? Tell the President we’re all pulling for him.”

He hung up and returned to the car, climbing in with Judy Lumpers. “You got any Clorets or anything, baby, my breath is a little swampy.”

In Maryland he found a postcard that showed a girl in a polo shirt and short shorts, having trouble with a cocker spaniel. The dog had run circles around her and the leash was tangled on her thighs. Her mouth was open in a sensuous oval of surprise and she wore a sailor hat. Gnossos sent copies to everyone he could think of, including Louie Motherball at the old Taos address, with a Please Forward on the front.

God, they say, is love.

And someone’s got to pass the word.

When his head was straight, Gnossos drove. Once he got the rhythm he couldn’t lose it and no one could take it away. The Impala did 111 miles
an hour on the straight, 120 coming out of a downhill grade. He took them from the gas station on the perimeter of the city, over the freeway, across the mall, to the Washington monument. He stopped the car and asked them each to pay homage. Crowds of tourists strolled on the grass and ate ice cream, gazing myopically at the towering obelisk.

“Look at it, man,” he said. “It’s George Washington.”

Jack was being trusted alone with Judy in the car. Juan Carlos stood at his side with Heff. “Where?” they asked.

“I’m not exactly sure, but around here somewhere. I feel him.”

“He’s all yours, Paps baby. Fat white father.”

“Now now, Heff, mustn’t be bitter.”

“General Washingtons,” said Juan Carlos militantly, placing his cowboy hat over his heart. “I salute him.”

“Phooey,” said Heff. “He was a fascist.”

“Notice the architecture, good Heffalump. The clever lines. The way they travel—how shall we say—up. And down as well. The devilish simplicity.”

“Stuff it.”

“Our spiritual heritage? You can’t be serious. So proud. So erect.”

“He had holes in his face.”

“But he walked on the water, chopped up cherries, something like that.”

“He wore a wig, man.”

“Façade, old sport. Fox the Tories, that was his ploy.” Gnossos shielded his eyes from the spiritual light, turning away speechless, in humility.

“Hey come on, man, let’s split, we got a boat to catch.”

“The valor. Do you dig the valor part?”

“Valors,” echoed Juan Carlos, again nearly weeping.

“Martha Washington, wife and mother.”

“Ecch,” said Heff.

“Only Batman is closer to the heart of an American boy.”

The girls were calling from the car but he went on. “Only Mark Trail has more cool.”

In Richmond, Virginia, they wandered optimistically into Mother Fischer’s Kountry Kitchen for hush puppies and shakes, but no one came to offer service. Gnossos pounded on the table. After breathy whispering behind the counter Mother Fischer herself placed a sign under their noses, which said in effect that Heff was a nigger. Gnossos went and sat on top of the refrigerator and had to be carried to the car by a deputy sheriff.

In Emporia, Virginia, they tried again and this time the waiter, a blond weight-lifter type, laughed until he drooled.

“Let’s go, man,” said Heff, “it hurts.”

“Just like that? You serious?”

“Let’s just go.”

Judy Lumpers looked at her watch for diversion. “God, is it eight-thirty already?”

Gnossos stole two sugar jars, full to the brims, and dropped them heavily into his rucksack. Later, while the others nibbled salami and cheese in a Safeway parking lot, he sat under the Enter sign and studied the incoming drivers. He picked a teenager with a long grocery list and a U. S. Olympic Drinking Team sweatshirt, stole his yellow Lincoln, drove past the restaurant, and lobbed both jars gingerly through the plate-glass window. He went back to the parking lot, ate a piece of block provolone, and eased away in the Impala just as the police arrived, located the Lincoln, and arrested the bag-carrying, surprised-looking teenager.

In Fayetteville, North Carolina, Judy Lumpers awakened to find Jack semiconsciously massaging her toes, and the hairy undersized hands of Juan Carlos Rosenbloom exploring the area where the hem of her bermudas joined her thighs. The experience left the poor girl distracted.

On the shores of the muddy Santee River they feasted on hush puppies, grits, corn pone, deep-fried shrimp, and chilled tap beer. The restaurant was Negro, the service was extraordinary, and during a dessert of lemon sherbet and honeydew melon, Heff went into the men’s room and wept quietly by a window. But only Gnossos saw him.

In Charleston they wandered out to dig Fort Sumter and Gnossos recited what he could of The Star-Spangled Banner.

“‘. . .  we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming . . . ’”

“He’d just better keep his hands off the material, that’s all,” from Lumpers, still in a snit. Juan Carlos Rosenbloom was bursting bombs in air and failed to hear.

“‘. . .  the rocket’s red glare . . . ’”

“Jack brings me down with that toe fetish, Paps.” Heff was trying to light a cigarette in the wind. “I mean, who needs her when she gets like that? Do I need her?” She slept in the front seat, wrapped in a blanket, withdrawing.

“‘. . .  gave proof through the night that—that’—somebody clue me, please, I always go to pieces in the tough parts—‘that . . . ’”

In Savannah, where the hibiscus was beginning to flower and the air grew tropically heavy, Jack, still sleeping, began to moan and caress the chrome door handle at her side. Now and again she lifted her spine free of the seat, arched her pelvis, and shuddered. Heff leaned over and whispered to Gnossos, “She’s in heat, man.”

“How can you tell?”

“I always know. Doorknobs, candlesticks, all that bouncing around. It’s seasonal, probably the warm weather.”

“Will she wake up?”

“She never wakes up,” he whispered intimately.

“You serious?”

“Never.”

“Not even—”

“Nope. It’s her thing.”

“It sure is.”

“But I love her.”

They stopped at a motel with beds that vibrated when you put in money, and Gnossos gave them a handful of change. Heff carried her in and told them to come back in half an hour.

In the meantime the keeper of the flame went down to look at the sea, where, alone, he was able to wonder about the ominous drawing pain in the lower part of his intestines.

In Woodbine, Georgia, Judy Lumpers went hysterical. The car was littered with bits of Oreo creme sandwiches, Burry’s chocolate chip cookies, empty beercans, stale-smelling laundry, used tissues, old Q-tips, rigid socks, crumbled paper bags, fudgicle sticks, salami rind, Snickers wrappers, sandals, sneakers, fractured hot dog rolls, cheese Danish crumbs, seashells, sand, a palm frond, hair, chicken bones, milkshake containers, peach pits, orange peel, two
Blackhawk
comic books, torn
Time
magazines, broken sunglasses, postcards, Juan Carlos’ maps, and a limp, nearly full, knotted Trojan which had belonged to Heffalump. It was the Trojan that touched her off. She had been trying for six hours to maneuver Rosenbloom into an inert position so she could curl up and get some rest. When she finally did, something tacky touched her cheek. She leapt up, and the unspeakable thing was sticking to her ear.

“What’ll we do with her?” asked Heff. She was giggling insanely and twisting her hair.

“Give her some provolone, man.”

Heffalump popped a piece of block provolone into her mouth and she wolfed it down compulsively.

In Jacksonville, Florida, her giggles subsided into whimpers and her eyelids looked heavy. In St. Augustine she fell suddenly asleep and dropped into Rosenbloom’s patiently waiting arms. To celebrate, he recited Ramón Pérez de Ayala:

“En el cristal del cielo las agudas gaviotas, como un diamante en un vidrio, hacen una raya.”

“St. Augustine, old Horralump, dig it.”

“Old people’s homes?”

“Right. Retirement schemes, shuffleboard tournaments.”

“
Nordeste y sol. La sombra de las aves remotas

se desliza por sobre el oro de la playa.
”

“MMmm,” said Jack, awakening to the sound of a foreign language and the smell of salt air. “Where are we, you guys?”

“She’s moving, man, just look at her.”

“She thinks we’re in Havana,” from Heff. “Speaking of which, I’ve got a little business on the boat. What’s the date?”

“¡
Oh tristeza de las cosas vagas y errantes
,

de todo lo que en el silencio se desliza!”

At Titusville they began to believe where they were.

At Vero Beach, Heff and Jack sang Peggy Sue.

At Fort Pierce they slept on the sand and woke up thirsty. Gnossos went creeping into an orange grove off the highway and returned, rucksack bulging.