The Angry Dream (6 page)

“Who told you my name?”

“Lew Welch.” I told her who I was and what I wanted.

“Oh,” She took her leg off the stool, touched my arm with her hand, leaned against me, then turned and walked over to one of the booths. She sat down heavily and glanced toward the archway as a man stepped into the room.

The man came to the bar and stood there in his greasy shirt sleeves, clean-shaven, middle-aged, paunchy and sleepy-eyed. He glanced once at me, then at Jeannie. Then he turned his back, selected a bottle of Gordon’s Gin, and drank it off the neck, straight, several long swallows.

The other woman with the stringy black hair came into the room and looked at him. He saw her, holding the bottle to his mouth.

“Now, Helen,” he said softly.

“Don’t Helen me!” she yelled. Then she leaned down and picked up a hammer from behind the bar and threw it at him. He ducked and the hammer slammed against the cash register and fell into the sink.

I went over to Jeannie and looked at her.

“We can go upstairs,” she said.

“All right.”

She stood up and I followed her through the archway. The woman was cursing the man. He stood there holding the bottle of gin, saying, “Yes, Helen—yes—yes—”

I followed her up a narrow, dark stairway. We came to a landing and she opened a door and we were in a small room heated by another oilstove. There was a bed and a washstand in the room, nothing else save an electric cord with a bare bulb at the end of it.

She went over and sat down on the broad window sill. “That poor fool,” she said. “Always after me—all the time paying. I tried to hold him off, ‘cause she’s his wife and she loves him.”

“Uh-huh.”

“All hell’s going to burst loose,” she said. She stood up and moved over to the bed. “I’ll probably have to get out, now. Maybe not, though.” She shook her head, the tight brown curls jouncing. “What do you want?” Then she laughed.

I took out a five dollar bill and handed it to her. Then I gave her another five. She crumpled them in one hand and grinned at me. Then she began to talk. She told me all that Lew had told me. “So it was a good job, too, being his secretary. But after he killed himself, I couldn’t get another job. They said I’d been sleeping with your old man, see? Well, for your information, I didn’t.”

I went over to the window and stared outside. I put my hands on the pane. The glass was cold.

“Your old man held a mortgage on my father’s place. Then he got my old man to invest in some stock just so he could get our house.” She lay back on the bed. “But I don’t care what they say—you didn’t get it. And I’ll tell you something else. I worked a long time with your old man, Harper. I got to know him pretty well. He wasn’t the type who’d take that money. I don’t care what they say!” She got up and came over to me. “He never took that money out of the bank vault. There’s something you don’t know about your home town—something nobody knows.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Never mind.” She stepped in close and jammed the bills into my topcoat pocket. I tried to give them back to her. She shook her head, ran over to the bed, flung herself on it and began bawling. Then she stopped. “Go away,” she said softly. “I’ve told you all I know. I’ll see what I can do—I can try to help.”

I went over to the washstand and laid the money by a cake of strong-smelling soap. Then I went back to the door. “Thanks, Jeannie. Thanks a lot.”

“Take my word,” she said, talking into the pillow. “Your old man never stole that money.”

I saw the stalled sedan up ahead in the middle of the road. A man in an overcoat and hat stood beside the car, flagging me with both arms. I was about two miles outside of Pine Springs and it was starting to snow heavily.

I brought the coupé to a slippery halt.

“Yeah? What’s up?”

“You know anything about engines? Mine’s conked out. Just quit without any warning. I’m freezing.”

I climbed outside, slammed the car door, and walked over to him. He was a medium-sized guy and he looked worried. He led me around to the front of the sedan. When he came abreast of the driver’s seat, he turned fast and slugged me across the face with a jack-handle.

I got my arm up and took some of it. The jack-handle struck across cheekbone, eye socket, and forehead and my wrist. I got down on my knees and started crawling in circles, trying to escape the pain and trying to bring consciousness back.

“All right,” somebody said. “Grab him. Get him off the road. Augie, you take care of his car.”

I came to my feet and started running. I ran right into somebody and he swung something across my head and I heard voices and I was being dragged across ground.

“Get him over this damned fence!”

They quit dragging me. I lay there and I could feel the cold snow-wet ground. Something tore at my shoulder. For some reason my head was a lot clearer and there wasn’t so much pain.

I heard somebody breathing. I looked up and there were two of them standing there in overcoats. Then I heard somebody walking.

A hand reached down and grabbed my hair and jammed my face into the ground. Somebody kicked me in the side.

I worked one knee under me and came up running again. I ran straight at them, working my fists. One dodged and swung, catching me in the stomach. Snow fell on my face.

“All right,” one of them said, “well fix him right, then.”

I got up, lurched around, trying to see them, trying to make out where I was. The snow came down thickly and there was a strong wind howling.

“Take his coat off.”

Hands grabbed me from behind, a knee caught me in the groin. I bent over and something hit my head again and my coat was ripped off.

“Take his shirt off.”

It seemed as if I should know that voice. I tried to think but I couldn’t.

They began, coming in at me with everything they had. Somehow I stood there. I couldn’t lift my arms. The first blow with the jack-handle had done something to my head. I wanted to do something, but my arms wouldn’t move. And then I was on the ground again, on hands and knees.

“Give it to him good,” the voice said.

A foot landed in my face. The foot struck again and again and I couldn’t seem to move my head out of the way. It smashed into my jaw and something cracked in the back of my neck. Hands grabbed at my arms and stood me up. I couldn’t hold my head up. They started hitting me again. Then I knew they weren’t hitting with fists—they had clubs.

“Haul him over to the gully.”

“In the water?”

I ran. I thought I was running fast across the valley.

They laughed.

“Will you look at that? Ever see anything like it?”

“He thinks he’s running away. Kick him in the gut, he’ll quit.”

Somebody kicked me and I became very sick, with my face in the hard cold ground.

They were dragging me. Things ripped and tore at my bare back, then I went through the air, rolling downhill, hitting things. A tree stopped me.

It was very quiet. I lay there, every part of me a big blinding ache. Then it began to be cold and I started shaking and being sick again, wrapped around the tree. I lay there panting, trying to listen. There was no sound, just falling snow.

“You’re all right, Harper. You’re not dead.”

A man was standing above me, fifteen feet away on a rim of earth, outlined against whirling snow and pale sky. A large man with his hands jammed into the pockets of his coat, shoulders hunched.

“Can you listen to me now?” he said.

I started shaking again.

“Know who I am?”

“Yes.” I suddenly knew who he was, standing up there against the flying snow. “Sam Gunther.”

“That’s right, Al. That’s right.”

“Thanks for telling me.”

“It’s all over with, Al. You’re finished. Understand?”

“You’re going to a lot of trouble.” I tried to move but couldn’t. I hung onto the tree. I couldn’t stop shaking; it came in waves now, my teeth chattering and the shaking deep in my bones. I kept thinking how Sam Gunther wasn’t going to get away with whatever it was he was doing. I didn’t want any help now—not from anybody.

“You were a fool to come back here,” he said, standing up there. I could see his face now, a little gray—the flat planes, the narrow eyes, the straight line of the lips. He was smiling. “A fool,” he said. “Come poking around here, like you have. Nobody wants you here, Harper. Somebody had to see that you realized that. I was appointed.”

“You’re lying like hell.”

The pain was very bad inside me. I tried to rise again, but I couldn’t.

“We don’t want you around.”

“Why?”

“Because we don’t like to be reminded of what Cy Harper did to us. He was an evil man, and we’ve been making out all right in the town since he died. It’s taken time. We’ve been getting on our feet again. We’ve pulled together.”

“How you lie.”

“Maybe you think it’s all right, coming back and living there in that house. But you remind us all of something we want to forget. Hardly a man in our town went untouched by your father. People hold it against you, Al. They can’t help it. Pine Springs is a small place and that makes you loom very large, you see? It makes the whole thing a big thing. So you’re going away now.”

His voice was very level, explanatory. He moved down a few steps, clutching at saplings. The sky was clotted with snow now, violent and giddy. I could hear him breathing, his breath rasping.

I said, “I’m not going away. For a long time I’ve been coming home, and now I’m here. I should have come before this, but I didn’t. Now I’m here, I’m staying.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

“Where are they?”

“Who?”

“Your bloody apes?”

“They’ve gone away, Al.”

He came down the slope and clutched at a slim white birch.

“Listen, Al,” he said. “Listen carefully. You are going away, tonight. You’re not coming back. If you try to get help, it’s not going to work.”

“I can go to the law outside.”

“Go. See what happens.”

I said nothing.

“You’ve been warned in every possible way,” he went on. “I regret the death of your dog. He wasn’t really your dog, though—just a stray hound.”

I got to my knees, hunched against the tree. He did not move. I took hold of the tree and finally rose to my feet, leaning against the tree.

“You said something back there,” I said. “Poking around, you said.”

“We don’t like you poking around.”

I laughed.

“Listen, Al,” he said. “Your father stole our money from the vault of the town bank. It was all the savings of the people in this valley. All they had. Everything.”

“Two hundred thousand is a lot of money here,” I said.

“That’s right. Your family ran that bank ever since God only knows when, Al. Your father’s father before him.”

“You’re talked out,” I said.

“Yes?” he said. “That was our money and it’s gone.”

I watched him.

“Good night, Al,” he said. He made his way up the slope, then he strode off.

I started up the slope. I was a sheath of bright pain.

Weaving through the fields, I plowed back toward the highway. I stepped on a white mound that turned out to be my topcoat. It was dry. I put it on and in a moment began shivering again, trembling in every bone.

There was no sign of Gunther.

The Maples. That was where they had spotted me and planned the waiting, the ambush. It was ridiculous, yet it was probably true.

I climbed a tight wire fence and tripped and got hung up, one foot jammed in the wire, head down.

Finally I managed to free my foot. I staggered across a cornfield, across a ditch and stood on the hard-packed, windy snow and ice of the highway.

There was no sign of my car.

I had no idea what time it was. The car had to be around here somewhere. If Gunther was so set on my leaving, he wouldn’t go off and take my transportation with him. That was why they hadn’t wrecked the car when they smashed the house.

My legs didn’t act right, and the pain was bad all over. I started down the road toward Pine Springs. I knew I would never make it, walking.

There was a clump of willows at the side of the road by a small frozen spring. I wandered over there and saw the top of the car behind the willows. They had hidden it from passing motorists, knowing I would find it. I got the door open and climbed in, started it and drove out onto the highway.

I remembered nothing on the way back to the house, just gripping the wheel, guiding the car, trying not to black out again.

Warmth from the cookstove began to bring me around. I was on the mattresses, bundled in the blankets and a rug. Several times I’d come to, then dozed off again—realizing it was cold, that I had to get the fire started, but I couldn’t seem to do it.

“How long have you been like this?”

Lois stood in the kitchen doorway. She wore a suede jacket zippered to the throat, her black hair thick on her shoulders. Her skirt was fawn-colored, and she wore nylons and small black galoshes. I began to smell coffee.

“What day is it?”

“It’s Thursday morning,” she said.

“I came in Tuesday night.”

“Were you drunk?”

“Do I look it?”

“You look as if you’d had a fight. You’re a mess.”

I rolled over and stared at the wall. I heard her return to the kitchen, and pans clinked and clanked and there was a sizzling. I began to smell that coffee again, and pretty soon bacon.

I heard her galoshes thump on the kitchen floor.

“It’s a good thing I finally came over here,” she said from in there. “A darned good thing.”

“Why?”

“You’d have frozen to death in those thin blankets.”

I reached out and touched the floor beyond the mattresses.

“You would have just lain there and frozen to death.”

She came into the dining room and I turned back and looked at her again. I didn’t ache at all. I felt pretty good, with the warmth getting to me.

“You going to get up?” she said.

“Sure.”

I looked at the ceiling. It was a high ceiling, yellow plaster—darkening with age in places. I could recall this room from my early childhood, everything in it as it had been then. I could remember my mother in the kitchen, and Cy Harper coming home for dinner. We always had dinner at midday. A big dinner. He never talked much, but he ate a lot. In the summer he would drink great quantities of iced tea—pitchers full. Mother made it by the pail. I remembered how he had come home at noon one day and sat down and eaten a whole blueberry pie. I had waited all morning for a piece of that blueberry pie and when I came in, he had eaten the whole thing, sitting there, waiting for his mashed potatoes. He told me there were lots of blueberry pies, and Mother baked another that afternoon and I got a piece of that, anyway. But he hadn’t said he was sorry. He’d just grinned with his teeth all blue from that pie and said there were lots of them. Then he started on his mashed potatoes.

I remembered how I had thought up ways to kill him. You never do, but you think of them sometimes.

“Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“Sure. How’s things?”

She said nothing.

“He send you here?”

“What?”

“Forget it. Put it out of your sweet little mind.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“No, I don’t mean to be.”

“Are you going to get up?”

“Yes.” I threw the blankets off, or tried to. I finally got them off and sat up and sprawled back down again, hurting.

“Good Lord! What happened to you!”

“As if you didn’t know.”

“But I
don’t
know.”

“Come off that horse, Godiva.”

I sat up again, easy this time. I was still wearing the topcoat and it was stuck to me. I tried peeling a little of it away from my bare chest and it hurt like the devil.

“Al—lie down. I’ll get some warm water.” She hurried into the kitchen, her heels clicking on the linoleum.

It was warm now and it felt wonderful. I sat up, then stood up and grabbed the topcoat and ripped it off, yanked my arms out of the sleeves, dropped it on the floor and stood there. It burned, but that was all, bleeding a little in places. I was marked up, for a fact. I went out into the kitchen, walking stiffly.

“Good Lord!” she said again.

I went over to the sink and looked in the cracked mirror. I had a black blood-clotted beard and my hair was clotted with blood, standing up all over my head. My right eye was all right, but my left was a slit between brown dried blood and dirt. There was a gash across the side of my face, across the eye and the forehead. That was where the jack-handle landed—the one that had knocked my brain out of kilter. Half of one front tooth was gone, broken off very neatly. It felt like a cliffside when you put your tongue against it. I pumped a dishpan full of water from the creaky old pump and started splashing in it. I got most of the stuff off me to my waist, then got my razor and shaved. That was rough, but I did it anyway.

“Are you through being heroic?” she said.

“Yeah, I’m through.” I dried off with a towel and went in and found the rubbing alcohol in one of my bags and sloshed it all over me. There was still some bleeding. I used the towel again and then the alcohol again and stripped down. My legs were banged up. I put on clean socks, shoes, blue woolen trousers and a gray flannel shirt. I burned all over and I was stiff in every joint. I went out to the kitchen.

“There’s some food for you.”

She’d cooked eggs and bacon. There was bread and strawberry jam and coffee. She just stood there, leaning against the sink, watching me eat.

“Like an animal,” she said. “Just like an animal.”

I leaned back in the chair. “Got a cigarette?”

She found her purse and handed me one and lit it for me.

“Now, I want to know why you’re here, Lois.”

“I came inside to see if you’d left. Your car wasn’t out there. Where is your car?”

“I put it in the barn. Maybe they burned the barn down. Did they?”

“Will you
please
stop talking like that!
They!
Who
they?”

“Stop pretending.”

“Al—for goodness’ sake.”

“All right, then.” I rose from the table and stepped over to her and looked deeply into those dark eyes, trying not to remember again, and wanting to remember. I looked into her eyes and saw only a kind of shame, if shame was what it was. I went back to the table and sat down in the chair. “Tell me why this. You stood at a window up there at your place, the other day. I knew you were looking at something. And you were. You know you were. So I asked you and you said it was nothing. Only you saw them down here, the whole caboodle of them in the front yard. Didn’t you?”