Run With the Hunted (4 page)

He used a different line each time. Sometimes he came back with the money, sometimes he didnt.

Then I saw him enter a court of bungalows. A door opened and a woman stood there dressed in a loose silken kimono. She was smoking a cigarette. “Listen, baby, I've got to have the money. You're into me deeper than anybody!”

She laughed at him.

“Look, baby, just give me half, give me a payment, something to show.”

She blew a smoke ring, reached out and broke it with her finger.

“Listen, you've got to pay me,” my father said. “This is a desperate situation.”

“Come on in. We'll talk about it,” said the woman.

My father went in and the door closed. He was in there for a long time. The sun was really up. When my father came out his hair was hanging down around his face and he was pushing his shirt tail into his pants. He climbed into the truck.

“Did that woman give you the money?” I asked.

“That was the last stop,” said my father. “I can't take it any more. We'll return the truck and go home …”

I was to see that woman again. One day I came home after school and she was sitting on a chair in the front room of our house. My mother and father were sitting there too and my mother was crying. When my mother saw me she stood up and ran toward me, grabbed me. She took me into the bedroom and sat me on the bed. “Henry, do you love your mother?” I really didn't but she looked so sad that I said, “Yes.” She took me back into the other room.

“Your father says he loves this woman,” she said to me.

“I love
both
of you! Now get that kid out of here!”

I felt that my father was making my mother very unhappy.

“I'll kill you,” I told my father.

“Get that kid out of here!”

“How can you love that woman?” I asked my father. “Look at her nose. She has a nose like an elephant!”

“Christ!” said the woman, “I don't have to take this!” She looked at my father: “
Choose
, Henry! One or the other! Now!”

“But I can't! I love you both!”

“I'll kill you!” I told my father.

He walked over and slapped me on the ear, knocking me to the floor. The woman got up and ran out of the house and my father went after her. The woman leaped into my father's car, started it and drove off down the street. It happened very quickly. My father ran down the street after her and the car. “EDNA! EDNA, COME BACK!” My father actually caught up with the car, reached into the front seat and grabbed Edna's purse. Then the car speeded up and my father was left with the purse.

“I knew something was going on,” my mother told me. “So I hid in the car trunk and I caught them together. Your father drove me back here with that horrible woman. Now she's got his car.”

My father walked back with Edna's purse. “Everybody into the house!” We went inside and my father locked me in the bedroom and my mother and father began arguing. It was loud and very ugly. Then my father began beating my mother. She screamed and he kept beating her. I climbed out a window and tried to get in the front door. It was locked. I tried the rear door, the windows. Everything was locked. I stood in the backyard and listened to the screaming and the beating.

Then the beating and the screaming stopped and all I could hear was my mother sobbing. She sobbed a long time. It gradually grew less and less and then she stopped.

—
H
AM ON
R
YE

death wants more death, and its webs are full:

I remember my father's garage, how child-like

I would brush the corpses of flies

from the windows they had thought were escape—

their sticky, ugly, vibrant bodies

shouting like dumb crazy dogs against the glass

only to spin and flit

in that second larger than hell or heaven

onto the edge of the ledge,

and then the spider from his dank hole

nervous and exposed

the puff of body swelling

hanging there

not really quite knowing,

and then
knowing
—

something sending it down its string,

the wet web,

toward the weak shield of buzzing,

the pulsing;

a last desperate moving hair-leg

there against the glass

there alive in the sun,

spun in white;

and almost like love:

the closing over,

the first hushed spider-sucking:

filling its sack

upon this thing that lived;

crouching there upon its back

drawing its certain blood

as the world goes by outside

and my temples scream

and I hurl the broom against them:

the spider dull with spider-anger

still thinking of its prey

and waving an amazed broken leg;

the fly very still,

a dirty speck stranded to straw;

I shake the killer loose

and he walks lame and peeved

towards some dark corner

but I intercept his dawdling

his crawling like some broken hero,

and the straws smash his legs

now waving

above his head

and looking

looking for the enemy

and somehow valiant,

dying without apparent pain

simply crawling backward

piece by piece

leaving nothing there

until at last the red gut-sack splashes

its secrets,

and I run child-like

with God's anger a step behind,

back to simple sunlight,

wondering

as the world goes by

with curled smile

if anyone else

saw or sensed my crime

I was eleven and my two buddies, Hass and Morgan, they were each twelve and it was summer, no school, and we sat on the grass in the sun behind my father's garage and smoked cigarettes.

“Shit,” I said.

I was sitting under a tree. Morgan and Hass were sitting with their backs against the garage.

“What is it?” asked Morgan.

“We gotta get that son of a bitch,” I said. “He's a disgrace to this neighborhood!”

“Who?” asked Hass.

“Simpson,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Hass, “too many freckles. He irritates me.”

“That's not it,” I said.

“Oh yeah?” said Morgan.

“Yeah. That son of a bitch claims he fucked a girl under my house last week. It's a god damned lie!” I said.

“Sure it is,” said Hass.

“He can't fuck,” said Morgan.

“He can fucking lie,” I said.

“I got no use for liars,” Hass said, blowing a smoke ring.

“I don't like to hear that kind of bull from a guy with freckles,” said Morgan.

“Well, maybe we ought to get him then,” I suggested.

“Why not?” asked Hass.

“Let's do it,” said Morgan.

We walked down Simpson's driveway and there he was playing handball against the garage door.

“Hey,” I said, “look who's
playing
with himself!”

Simpson caught the ball on a bounce and turned to us.

“Hi, fellas!”

We surrounded him.

“Fucked any girls under any houses lately?” Morgan asked.

“Nah!”

“How come?” asked Hass.

“Oh, I dunno.”

“I don't believe you've ever fucked anybody but
yourself!
” I said.

“I'm gonna go inside now,” said Simpson. “My mother asked me to wash the dishes.”

“Your mother has dishes up her pussy,” said Morgan.

We laughed. We moved in closer to Simpson. Suddenly I shot a hard right to his belly. He doubled over, holding his gut. He stayed that way for a half minute, then straightened up.

“My dad will be home any time,” he told us.

“Yeah? Does your dad fuck little girls under houses too?” I asked.

“No.”

We laughed.

Simpson didn't say anything.

“Look at those freckles,” said Morgan. “Each time he fucks a little girl under a house he gets a new freckle.”

Simpson didn't say anything. He just began to look more and more frightened.

“I got a sister,” said Hass. “How do I know you won't try to fuck my sister under some house?”

“I'd never do that, Hass, you've got my promise!”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I mean it!”

“Well, here's one just so you
don't!
”

Hass shot a hard right to Simpson's belly. Simpson doubled over again. Hass reached down, grabbed a handful of dirt and shoved it down the neck of Simpson's shirt. Simpson straightened up. He had tears in his eyes. A sissy.

“Let me go, fellows,
please!
”

“Go where?” I asked. “Wanna hide under your mother's skirt while the dishes fall out of her pussy?”

“You never fucked anybody,” said Morgan, “you don't even
have
a dick! You piss out of your
ear!
”

“If I ever see you
look
at my sister,” said Hass, “you're gonna get a beating so bad you'll be just one
big
freckle!”

“Just let me go, please!”

I felt like letting him go. Maybe he hadn't fucked anybody. Maybe he had just been day-dreaming. But I was the young leader. I couldn't show any sympathy.

“You're coming with us, Simpson.”

“No!”

“No, my
ass!
You're coming with us!
Now, march!
”

I walked around behind him and kicked him in the butt, hard. He screamed.

“SHUT UP!” I yelled, “SHUT UP OR YOU'LL GET WORSE! NOW MARCH!”

We walked him up the driveway and across the lawn and down my driveway and into my backyard.

“Now stand straight!” I said. “Hands at your sides! We're going to hold a kangaroo court!”

I turned to Morgan and Hass and asked, “All those who think this man is guilty of lying about fucking a little girl under my house will now say ‘guilty'!”

“Guilty,” said Hass.

“Guilty,” said Morgan.

“Guilty,” I said.

I turned to the prisoner.

“Simpson, you are judged guilty!”

The tears were really coming out of Simpson then.

“I didn't do anything!” he sobbed.

“That's what you're guilty of,” said Hass. “Lying!”

“But you guys lie all the time!”

“Not about fucking,” said Morgan.

“That's what you he about most, that's where I learned it from!”

“Corporal,” I turned to Hass, “gag the prisoner! I'm tired of his fucking lies!”

“Yes, sir!”

Hass ran to the clothesline. He found a handkerchief and dish towel. While we held Simpson he jammed the handkerchief into his mouth and then tied the dish towel over his mouth. Simpson made some gagging sounds and changed color.

“You think he can breathe?” asked Morgan.

“He can breathe through his nose,” I said.

“Yeah,” Hass agreed.

“What'll we do now?” Morgan asked.

“The prisoner is guilty, isn't he?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well, as judge I sentence him to be hanged by the neck until dead!”

Simpson made sounds from beneath his gag. His eyes looked at us, pleading. I ran into the garage and got the rope. There was a length of it neatly coiled on a large spike on the garage wall. I had no idea why my father had that rope. He had never used it as far as I knew. Now it would be put to use.

I walked out with the rope.

Simpson started to run. Hass was right behind him. He made a flying tackle and brought him to the ground. He spun Simpson over and began punching him in the face. I ran up and slammed Hass hard across the face with the end of the rope. He stopped punching. He looked up at me.