Run With the Hunted (12 page)

“SLACKER!”

As each truck in the convoy passed, the next truck picked it up:

“GET YOUR ASS OFF THAT BENCH!”

“COWARD!”

“FUCKING FAGGOT!”

“YELLOW BELLY!”

It was a very long and a very slow convoy.

“COME ON AND JOIN US!”

“WE'LL TEACH YOU HOW TO FIGHT, FREAK!”

The faces were white and brown and black, flowers of hatred.

Then the old bum rose up from his park bench and screamed at the convoy:

“I'LL GET HIM FOR YOU FELLOWS! I FOUGHT IN WORLD WAR I!”

Those in the passing trucks laughed and waved their arms:

“YOU GET HIM, POPS!”

“MAKE HIM SEE THE LIGHT!”

Then the convoy was gone.

They had thrown things at Harry: empty beer cans, soft drink cans, oranges, a banana.

Harry got up, picked up the banana, sat back down, peeled it and ate it. It was wonderful. Then he found an orange, peeled it and chewed and gulped the pulp and the juice. He found another orange and ate that. Then he found a cigarette lighter someone had thrown or dropped. He flicked it. It worked.

He walked down to the bum sitting on the bench, holding the lighter out.

“Hey, buddy, got a smoke?”

The bum's little eyes fastened upon Harry. They had a flat quality as if the pupils had been removed. The bum's lower lip quivered.

“You like Hitler,
don't ya?
” he said very quietly.

“Look, buddy,” Harry said, “why don't you and I take off together? Maybe we can score for a drink?”

The old bum's eyes rolled in his head. For a moment all that Harry saw were the whites of his bloodshot eyes. The eyes then rolled back. The bum looked at him.

“Not with …
you!
”

“O.K.,” said Harry, “see you around …”

The old bum's eyes rolled again and he said it once again, only louder:

“NOT WITH … YOU!”

Harry walked slowly out of the park and up the street toward his favorite bar. The bar was always there. Harry
moored
at the bar. It was his one haven. It was merciless and exact.

On the way Harry came to a vacant lot. A bunch of middle-aged men were playing softball. They were out of shape. Most had pot bellies, were small of stature, had large butts, almost like women. They were all 4-F or too old for the draft.

Harry stood and watched the game. There were many strikeouts, wild pitches, hit batters, errors, badly hit balls, but they kept playing. Almost as a ritual, a duty. And they were angry. The one thing they were good at was anger. The energy of their anger dominated.

Harry stood watching. Everything seemed a waste. Even the softball seemed sad, bouncing about uselessly.

“Hello, Harry, how come you're not down at the bar?”

It was old thin McDuff, puffing his pipe. McDuff was around 62, he always looked straight forward, he never looked
at
you but he saw you anyhow from behind those rimless glasses. And he was always dressed in a black suit and blue necktie. He came into the bar each day about noon, had two beers, then left. And you couldn't hate him and you couldn't like him. He was like a calendar or a pen holder.

“I'm on my way,” Harry answered.

“I'll walk with you,” said McDuff.

So Harry walked along with old thin McDuff and old thin McDuff puffed on his pipe. McDuff always kept that pipe
lit
. That was his thing. McDuff
was
his pipe. Why not?

They walked along, not talking. There was nothing to say. They stopped at traffic lights, McDuff puffing at his pipe.

McDuff had saved his money. He had never married. He lived in a two room apartment and didn't do much. Well, he read the newspapers but not with much interest. He wasn't religious. But it wasn't out of non-conviction. It was simply because he hadn't bothered to consider the aspect one way or the other. It was like not being a Republican because one didn't know what a Republican was. McDuff was neither happy nor unhappy. Once in a while he became a bit of a fidget, something would appear to bother him and for a tiny moment terror would fill his eyes. Then it left quickly … like a fly that had landed … then zoomed away for more promising territory.

Then they were at the bar. They walked in.

The usual crowd.

McDuff and Harry found their stools.

“Two beers,” good old McDuff intoned to the barkeep.

“How ya doin', Harry?” one of the bar patrons asked.

“Gropin', shakin', and shittin',” Harry answered.

He felt bad for McDuff. Nobody had greeted him. McDuff was a blotter on a desk. He didn't make an impression on them. They noticed Harry because he was a bum. He made them feel superior. They needed that. McDuff just made them feel bland and they were already bland.

Not much happened. Everybody sat over their drinks, nursing them. Few had the imagination to simply get piss-assed drunk.

A stale Saturday afternoon.

McDuff went for his second beer and was kind enough to buy another for Harry.

McDuff's pipe was red hot from six hours of continuous firing.

He finished his second beer and walked out and then Harry sat there alone with the remainder of the crew.

It was a slow slow Saturday but Harry knew if he could hang in long enough he could make it. Saturday night was best, of course, for bumming drinks. But there was no place to go until then. Harry was ducking the landlady at the roominghouse. He paid by the week and he was nine days behind.

It got very deadly between drinks. The patrons, they just needed to sit and be somewhere. There was a general loneliness and a gentle fear and the need to be together and chat a bit, it eased them. All Harry needed was something to drink. Harry could drink forever and still need more, there wasn't enough drink to satisfy him. But the others … they just
sat
, talking now and then about whatever they talked about.

Harry's beer was getting flat. And the idea was not to finish it because then you had to buy another and he didn't have the money. He had to wait and hope. As a professional bummer of drinks Harry knew the first rule: you never asked for one. His thirst was their joke and any demand by him subtracted from their joy of giving.

Harry let his eyes drift down the bar. There were four or five patrons in there. Not many and not much. One of the not much was Monk Hamilton. Monk's biggest claim to immortality was that he ate six eggs for breakfast. Every day. He thought that gave him an edge. He wasn't good at thinking. He was huge, almost as wide as he was tall, with pale steady unworried eyes, oaktree neck, big knotted hairy hands.

Monk was talking to the bartender. Harry watched a fly crawl into the beer-wet ashtray before him. The fly walked around in there between the butts, pushed against a sotted cigarette, then it made an angry buzz, rose straight up, then seemed to fly backwards, and to the left, and then was gone.

Monk was a window washer. His bland eyes saw Harry. His thick lips twisted into a superior grin. He picked up his bottle, walked down, took the stool next to Harry.

“Watcha doin', Harry?”

“Waiting for it to rain.”

“How about a beer?”

“Waiting for it to rain beer, Monk. Thanks.”

Monk ordered two beers. They came along.

Harry liked to drink his right out of the bottle. Monk dumped some of his into a glass.

“Harry, you need a job?”

“Haven't thought about it.”

“All ya gotta do is hold the ladder. We need a ladder man. It doesn't pay as good as upstairs work but you get something. How about it?”

Monk was making a joke. Monk thought Harry was too screwed-up to know that.

“Give me some time to think about it, Monk.”

Monk looked down at the other patrons, let his superior grin loose again, winked at them, then looked back at Harry.

“Listen, all you gotta do is hold the ladder steady. I'll be up there cleaning the windows. All you gotta do is hold the ladder steady. That's not too hard, is it?”

“Not as hard as a lot of things, Monk.”

“Then you'll do it?”

“I don't think so.”

“Come on! Why don't ya give it a try?”

“I can't do it, Monk.”

They all felt good then. Harry was their boy. The excellent fool.

Harry looked at all those bottles behind the bar. All those good times waiting, all that laughter, all that madness … scotch, whiskey, wine, gin, vodka and all the others. Yet those bottles stood there, unused. It was like a life waiting to be lived that nobody wanted.

“Listen,” said Monk, “I'm going to get a haircut.”

Harry felt Monk's quiet thickness. Monk had won something somewhere. He fit, like a key in a lock that opened to somewhere.

“Why don't you come with me while I get a haircut?”

Harry didn't answer.

Monk leaned closer. “We'll stop for a beer on the way and I'll buy you one afterwards.”

“Let's go …”

Harry emptied his bottle easily into his thirst, put the bottle down. He followed Monk out the door. They walked down the street together. Harry felt like a dog following his master. And Monk was calm, he was functioning, everything fit. It was his Saturday off and he was going to get a haircut.

They found a bar and stopped there. It was much nicer and cleaner than the one Harry usually bummed at. Monk ordered the beers.

How he sat there! A
man's man
. And a comfortable one at that. He never thought about death, at least not his own.

As they sat side by side, Harry knew he had made a mistake: an 8 to 5 job would be less painful.

Monk had a mole on the right side of his face, a very relaxed mole, a non-self-conscious mole.

Harry watched Monk pick up his bottle and suck on it. It was only something Monk
did
, like scratching his nose. He wasn't
hungry
for a drink. Monk just sat there with his bottle and it was paid for. And time was going by like shit down a river.

They finished their bottles and Monk said something to the bartender and the bartender answered something.

Then Harry followed Monk out the door. They were together and Monk was going to get a haircut.

They found the barbershop and entered. There were no other customers. The barber knew Monk. As Monk clambered into the chair they said something to each other. The barber spread the sheet and Monk's head loomed out of there, mole steady on right cheek, and he said, “Short around the ears and not too much off the top.”

Harry, in agony for another drink, picked up a magazine, turned some pages and pretended to be interested.

Then he heard Monk speaking to the barber, “By the way, Paul, this is Harry. Harry, this is Paul.”

Paul and Harry and Monk.

Monk and Harry and Paul.

Harry, Monk, Paul.

“Look, Monk,” said Harry, “maybe I'll go down and get another beer while you're getting your hair cut?”

Monk's eyes fixed on Harry, “No, we'll get a beer after I'm finished here.”

Then his eyes fixed on the mirror. “Not
too
much off around the ears, Paul.”

As the world turned, Paul snipped away.

“Been getting much, Monk?”

“Nothin', Paul.”

“I don't believe that …”

“You better believe it, Paul.”

“Not from what I hear.”

“Like what?”

“Like when Betsy Ross made that flag, 13 stars wouldn't have wrapped around
your
pole!”

“Ah, shit, Paul, you're too
much!
”

Monk laughed. His laugh was like linoleum being sliced by a dull knife. Or maybe it was a death-cry.

Then he stopped laughing. “Not
too
much off the top.”

Harry put the magazine down and looked at the floor. The linoleum laugh had transferred into a linoleum floor. Green and blue, with purple diamonds. An old floor. Patches of it had begun to peel, showing the dark brown flooring beneath. Harry liked the dark brown.

He began counting: 3 barber chairs, 5 waiting chairs. 13 or 14 magazines. One barber. One customer. One … what?

Paul and Harry and Monk and the dark brown.

The cars went by outside. Harry started counting, stopped. Don't play with madness, madness doesn't play.

Easier to count the drinks on hand: none.

Time rang like a blank bell.

Harry was conscious of his feet, of his feet in his shoes, then of his toes … on the feet … in his shoes.