Shiva and Other Stories (9 page)

Tap-Dancing Down the Highways and Byways of Life, etc.

H
E CAME OUT OF THE HEDGES
with an angrily uncertain expression, a hesitancy in his gestures. The gun, however, looked quite positive as he shoved it in my ribs. “Give me all your money,” he said, “right now.”

“This isn’t very nurturing of you, Cecil,” I said. “It also isn’t legal.”

“Don’t give me ‘nurturing,’ ” he said in a tortured whine. “Just give me the money.”

Carefully I put my hand in my pocket, fumbled for my wallet. “You’ll regret this, Cecil,” I said. “I know your parents. They’ll be ashamed of you—”

He reversed the gun and slammed me across the face with the butt. I do not mind saying that it hurt, but I took it with frozen expression, resolved not to show emotion. As he shifted the gun back to firing position, I could feel the blood crawling down a cheekbone. How humiliating, I thought. But of course, humiliation is part of the package here.

“Just shut up and hand it over now,” he said. The gun shook in his hand. Overhead a helicopter prowled, rattling the sky. I could smell the gasoline fumes, leaching onto the pastoral, deserted suburban street. This civilization guards at all times against the illusion of beauty.

I opened the wallet and stroked the bills, took out the clumped hundreds. “Now,” I said, “you should understand remorse—”

“Fool!” he said, snatching the wallet from my hand. “The whole thing!” He backed away two paces, clawed through it. “Three thousand dollars,” he said at length. “You’re holding out on me. Where’s the rest of it?”

“I gave you all I had, Cecil—”

“You’re a liar!” he said. His face clutched in petulance, he looked as if he were going to cry, a most embarrassing posture for a man of his age and history. “I want it all!” He seized me by the throat, squeezed. The impact made me groan, and I could feel a fresh wave of blood cascading. “Give it to me!” he said.

I struggled in my pocket, removed the ten hundreds I had folded away separately. “Here,” I said, suffocating in his grasp, barely able to articulate. “As if it will do you any good.” He released me, pushed me away, counted the money frantically. “There’s
still
another hundred,” he said. “You’re holding out on me.”

“That’s all of it,” I said. I stood shaking by the fence, the helicopter clattering overhead, feeling the pain now. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Cecil. A man of your background, your opportunities. Your parents will be horrified when I tell them—”

He looked at me with fury, and then, suddenly, centered the gun. “I told you to shut up!” he said. “You mention my name or my parents again, and I’ll blow you away!”

“It’s the truth, Cecil!” I said angrily, touched, felt the pain in my injured throat. “You’re a disgrace to your heritage, and everyone should know about it. I’ll tell—”

He fired the gun.

The bullet caught me squarely in the forehead, and I fell. His receding footsteps mingled with the sound overhead.

I lay near the tangled bushes for a good fifteen or twenty minutes this time. I must have been dead when they finally pulled me up with the ropes, took me inside, returned me to the all-purpose institute, and performed the standard procedures. At length, cleaned up and given fresh clothing—the cuts on the face were superficial, but they had to do painstaking work on a bruised larynx—I was hauled in front of them and roundly chastised. “I know,” I said, hoping to forestall more of it after the initial onslaught. “I shouldn’t have done it.”

“You’re a fool,” the examiner said. “You did
everything
wrong. You were even worse than the first time.”

“Sometimes I have to be given a little more time,” I said—rather sullenly, I suppose. “I may not be the quickest learner, but once I know, I really know—”

“You mentioned his name, you invoked a personal relationship, you mentioned his
parents
. You held out on him, not once but twice. That’s really stupid—”

“I got angry,” I said.

“You
can’t
get angry if you want to survive, you fool. How many times must you be told that?”

“I’ll be better,” I said. The cut still stung. I ran a finger over it lightly. “I don’t want to go through much more of this.”

“Then get it
right
,” the examiner said. “We have only so much time for each of you, you understand.”

“All right,” I said. I knew that I should be submissive, cooperative, but a tiny core of revulsion still persisted. “These are our streets, you know. It was my neighborhood.”

“You
cannot
get ideological. That is the last thing—”

“All right,” I said. “I know.” I sat there quietly, nodded with agreement to everything that was subsequently said to me, and at length they let me go. It was agreed to run the circumstance immediately: the best lessons are not assimilated to be reenacted in the morning.

* * *

As soon as he came from the hedges, I knew I was in trouble. His eyes looked desperate, and the gun was shaking in his hand—probably because this was his first robbery. “Oh my God,” I said, “please don’t shoot! I’ll give you everything.”

“Give me the money,” he said. With the cap pulled over much of his head and with the huge gun, he was a menacing figure, if one could look past the facts that I knew all so well. I allowed the terror to fill me. “Here,” I said, handing him my wallet. “Oh, here it is, just don’t shoot me.”

He clawed rapidly through the contents. “They told me you were carrying five thousand,” he said. “Where is it?”

“It’s all there,” I said, “just count it again.”

The clatter of the helicopter rattled the street; a shadow passed across us. I was careful not to look up, not to acknowledge the observation in any way.

He jammed the wallet into his pocket. “All right,” he said, “turn around and start walking. Don’t look back.”

“Can’t I just stay here?” I said. “You’ll shoot me in the back—”

“Stop complaining! Just turn around and start walking.”

“Oh Cecil,” I said, “these cheap theatrics, these little scenarios of intimidation—”

He stared at me. “Don’t use my name!” he said. “I hate my name!”

“Maybe if you stopped hating yourself, Cecil, you wouldn’t do things like this—”

The gun began to waver in his hand. “Goddamn you!” he said. “Start walking. Get away.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” I said. “What your parents will say when I tell them—”

I never saw him aim and fire this time. But I do remember the impact of the stones as, most heavily, I went down.

* * *

They must have been furious this time. It was hours later before I found myself restored, and then they had left both bruises I had taken on the knees when I went down so rapidly. The examiner stared at me with loathing. “You’ll never learn,” he said. “You just never learn!”

“I’m trying,” I said. “He got me angry. The business of turning my back to him and walking, it was humiliating—”

“Don’t tell me about humiliation!” the examiner yelled. He stood, only five and a half feet but intimidating on the podium, his mustaches flaring, his face diffused. “You people infuriate me. You don’t understand, you’ll never learn. But I’m going to make you learn because that’s our responsibility here.”

“All right,” I said, “I’ll say nothing. Whatever he says, I’ll accept. Whatever he orders, I’ll do.” I felt a sudden twist of pain coming from my legs. “I’m sick of being killed and killed, pistol-whipped and beaten up, you know.”

“Not sick enough,” the examiner said firmly. “We’re running out of chances, you know. One more failure and you’re going to fail altogether, we’ll have to send you back.”

“No,” I said. “No, I don’t want that.”

“Think of what your parents will say.”

“All right,” I said. I meant it, I could feel my own features flushing. “I’ll shut up. I won’t say anything.”

“It’s in your hands,” the examiner said. He was breathing hard, almost as hard as Cecil when he fired the gun. “Ultimately you have to accept the responsibility, don’t you see that?”

* * *

Stumbling down the street, I thought I did. I thought that I saw his point. His point was well taken, urban existence is impossible, one must learn at all costs how to survive. The sound of the observing helicopter, tracking me, made me ill; the fumes started me gagging. I was sick of it. The examiner was right: there was a time for student folly, but there was also a time to grow up. I had to grow up. He came from the hedges, extending the gun. “Give me all the money,” he said. He was nervous and uncertain, but the gun was convincing. Enormously convincing. I knew what it could do now. I handed him the wallet, the money protruding from it. He snatched it from me, backed away, clawed through it in both hands. “All right,” he said, “it’s all there. Now lie down and close your eyes and count to 250.
Slow.
Don’t move.”

I pointed to the sidewalk. “Right here?”

“No dummy. In the goddamned
mud
. Over there.”

I looked to the right, at the slimy substance, still drenched from the recent rain. “There?” I said. “It’s dirty—”

He waved the gun at me, his control breaking. “Down!” he said. “Down, down, down in the mud!”

The helicopter’s sound seemed to overwhelm us as it approached. We were completely in its shadow. Of course he never acknowledged its presence; he is programmed not to.
“Down!”
he screamed.

I looked at the filth, at the gun, toward the invisible, implacable observing eyes in the copter. “Oh, the hell with it,” I said. “Screw you, Cecil,” I said. “I won’t do it! I won’t cooperate.” I spat in his face. Even at distance, it landed solidly. He stared at me with fury, wiped at it, then raised the gun.
You fool,
I thought to myself. “Your parents will cry at your execution, Cecil!” I hurled at him.

He fired the gun. Flame from the muzzle, et cetera. Quite accustomed to the consequences by this time, I died quite neatly.

I wondered if they’d even bother to revive me this time. It seemed unlikely; I was hardly worth it to them. I’d never be able to live in their cities.

I just couldn’t be a victim.