The Drifters (99 page)

DR
.
J
.
LOOMIS
CARGILL
Practice limited to the treatment
of psychiatric disabilities.
By appointment only

‘First of all, no city is named, so they can’t send an investigator. Now 1283 Cadwallader sounds especially impressive. You notice that for both the address and the telephone I use four-syllable names. In America a ringing four-syllable name is as good as money in the bank. But I’m told by fellows I’ve helped that what really makes them pause is those three telephone numbers. In America, a sure signal of success. They see that and they think, “This guy must be important. Better not try to push him around.” But I personally think it’s the name J. Loomis Cargill that does the trick. Because every town in the United States has its Joe This or Jim That, who was born a very ordinary fellow and continued to be very ordinary until that pregnant day when he had the brilliant idea of calling himself J. Worthington Scalier. This single act puts the entire community on notice: “I intend to be taken seriously!” And since we tend to accept a man on his own terms, we help him to become J. Worthington Scalier, man of substance. America is full of appalling drips who would have remained that way if they’d been known in their community as plain Jim Scalier, but let that good old J. Worthington step forth, and the drip is transformed into a community leader, if you like. I figure that as J. Loomis Cargill, I’ve kept more than a hundred young fellows out of the draft. If I’d submitted my letters as Joe Cargill the draft boards would have snorted, “Get his ass in here.”

‘The real clincher is that notice in smaller type.
Practice limited.
Magic words. They mean you’re not just some family dope, working sixteen hours a day, making house calls, saving lives. Once you put that sign in your window, you escalate into a whole new orbit. You have arrived,
son. You are in. You sit on your fat tail and haul in big fees without doing disagreeable things like delivering babies. Now what draft board would dare to ignore a letter that comes from a man whose practice is limited, whose name is J. Loomis, and who has three phones?’

‘How about the doctor bit?’ Joe asked.

‘I am a doctor,’ Big Loomis replied, ‘Physical education, Central Texas State Teachers. That’s a Negro football college. A professional outfit in Chicago wrote my thesis for me. I played guard … for seven years … under three different names. We played a different set of teams each three years so they wouldn’t recognize me … or the other clowns on our team.’

‘Were you any good?’

‘Pretty good. Weighed in at two-forty and could have played with the pros … the Rams drafted me. I told our coach I’d been in the pros for the past seven years, but he didn’t think that was funny. I objected to the draft, but my family were all atheists, so I couldn’t plead conscientious objection. So I got out the hard way.’

‘How?’ Joe asked.

‘Eating. In a few months I put on a hundred pounds.’

‘How?’

‘On your frame you couldn’t hack it. I did it by eating bananas and cheese cake and gallons of milkshakes.’

‘Hurt your health?’

‘I suppose so. Doctors tell me I’ll die a couple of years earlier than I would have otherwise. But that’s better than dying age twenty-two in Vietnam.’ He hesitated, then added. ‘Of course, once I’ve got this draft thing licked, I’m gonna slice this weight off as fast as I put it on. That’s why I live on the top floor. Good exercise going up and down. You know, I used to do the hundred in ten-three, and when this craziness is over, I’ll do it it in ten-four. Now your problem.’

He listened carefully as Joe outlined his various confrontations with the draft board in California and told about the letter of warning in Moçambique and his discussions with Harvey Holt. ‘A classic case,’ Loomis said. ‘No religious excuse. No disabling infirmity. No cowardice. No mental derangement. Just another clean-cut man who doesn’t want to louse up his life in Southeast Asia. I think we better try Little Casino. Have you considered what it means?’

‘Yes.’

‘You engaged to that attractive girl in your room?’

‘No, no!’ Joe spoke as if being engaged to the girl you were living with was unthinkable. ‘I think she’s in favor of Little Casino. She had a rough time with the fuzz.’

Big Loomis went to his typewriter and after a while handed Joe a crisp sheet of paper, accurately spaced and typed, which said among other things:

I was working in Geneva when Gretchen’s letter arrived telling me that they had reached Marrakech. I had some apprehension as I visualized them exploring the Djemaá. I wished that Monica could have avoided a place like that, but being too busy with my own affairs, dismissed the matter. Then Holt and Britta stopped by on their way from Lausanne to the airport for their flight to Ceylon, and when I showed them the letter, Harvey scowled and said, ‘Last place in the world Joe should be is Marrakech,’ and on the spur of the moment he decided to fly to Ceylon via Morocco. Britta, of course, was delighted at the prospect of
seeing Gretchen and Monica again, so the detour was quickly arranged.

Holt then said, ‘Fairbanks, your company has big holdings in Morocco. Why not join us?’ and I proved as mercurial as they: ‘Sounds like a good idea.’ And within an hour we had picked up a Lufthansa plane and were on our way. I’m sure there must be people in this world who plan trips in advance and then have to obtain their passports, but I know none of them; the people I know keep their passports viable at all times and leave for the airport within the hour of deciding to visit Asia or Africa or Australia.

We landed in Marrakech in the late afternoon and caught a taxi to the Mamounia Hotel, one of those fine old palaces like the Raffles in Singapore or the old Shepheard’s in Cairo. It stood not far from the Koutoubia in the center of gardens that would have graced a palace. Since I was well known from earlier visits during which I had explored the economy preparatory to our extensive investments, the manager had good rooms waiting for us. I telephoned the three government engineers in Casablanca with whom I would be working, then asked the doorman how to get to the Hotel Bordeaux. He shrugged his shoulders and asked the taxi drivers, but they said a taxi couldn’t manage the alleys. ‘What you do,’ he then suggested, ‘is walk down to the Djemaá. Someone there will surely know.’ He sniffed as if the Bordeaux were a hovel.

So Holt and Britta and I set out for the Djemaá, and we had scarcely entered the vast plaza when I was accosted by the young Arab of whom Gretchen had written. He was everything she had described: fox-faced ragamuffin in a baseball cap from Waco, Texas. He came directly to me and said, ‘Mr. Fairbanks, World Mutual, Geneva, Switzerland.’ Bowing to Holt, he said, ‘This got to be Harvey Holt, builds airports. And this the Norwegian girl.’ I asked him how he knew our names, and he said, ‘I mail their letters. If you need anything Mamounia …’

‘How did you know I was at the Mamounia?’

‘Where else?’ he asked. Then dropping his voice to a low basso, he leered at Britta and said, ‘Come wiz me to ze casbah.’

‘To the Bordeaux,’ I said, and he started across the Djemaá, but our progress was slow, for Britta wanted to stop at every circle to watch the clowns or listen to the
storytellers, so after a much retarded transit we reached the area where the autobuses parked—scores of them headed to all parts of the High Atlas—and after negotiating the alleys we reached the doorway to the Bordeaux. It was now night, and for a moment as we stood there in the darkness, with light shining from the interior of the hotel, and the sound of guitars coming from one of the rooms to the left where voices harmonized an old ballad, I could appreciate what such an adventure must mean to a young girl from Brisbane, Australia, or a young man from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and I noticed the flush of excitement on Britta’s face as it emerged from shadow.

‘The action is over here,’ Jemail said, but before he could lead us to the big room where the Swedish couple stayed, he whistled and cried, ‘I better be going,’ for he saw coming down the stairs the gigantic form of Big Loomis, moving like a black mountain covered with flowers, and it was apparent to us that the boy and the man were enemies, for the former fled and the latter growled in a deep voice as he rumbled past, ‘That little bastard is a good one to keep clear of.’

We went to the door that Jemail had headed for, knocked and were admitted by a soft-spoken Swede who introduced himself as Rolf, but he had barely spoken his name when Gretchen, who was playing her guitar, spotted us and leaped across the room, followed by Cato and Joe. There were warm greetings and many kisses and much admiration of Joe’s handsome new appearance, but the enthusiasm was marred by Holt, who sniffed the heavy air and asked, ‘What in God’s name is that smell?’ Gretchen gave his arm a little hug and whispered, ‘Pot. Most of the kids are smoking, but there are no problems.’

‘Smells like a problem to me,’ Holt said as we met the crowd, but soon we were seated on one of the beds, and Gretchen resumed singing a Child ballad which told of a girl who had been saved from the gallows just as the rope was being put about her throat. ‘Child 95,’ she called it, and the chorus was so winsome and so simple that by the end of the second verse we were all singing.

Britta kept looking around for Monica, and after the ballad Cato explained, ‘She’s upstairs. I think she’s sleeping.’ Britta suggested that we new arrivals go up to surprise her, and it seemed to me that Cato was against the idea and that Gretchen, strumming her guitar, looked apprehensive,
but I wasn’t sure, so with Cato leading the way, we left the room and climbed the stairs. Pushing open a door, we walked into darkness, but in the shadows we could see a bed on which lay the figure of a young girl. It was Monica, and even when we entered the room and turned on the light, she did not move. Completely stoned, she lay with her lovely mouth agape, her eyes rolled far back into their sockets.

Britta ran to the bed to embrace her, but Monica was incapable of recognizing us. When Britta shook her, she mumbled something, then lapsed into total unconsciousness. We looked at Cato, standing against the wall, saying nothing. ‘What the hell is this?’ Holt demanded.

Cato pointed to her arm and said, ‘The needle. And she insists on eating those goddamned cookies.’

‘What cookies?’ Holt asked. Cato kicked at a greasy bag made of folded newspaper, and Holt stooped to pick it up, feeling the greenish crumbs and smelling them. ‘Is this hashish?’ he asked, and Cato nodded.

‘She looks dreadfully sick,’ Britta said, looking sick herself at the appearance of her friend.

Cato offered no comment; the anguish in his eyes spoke for him. I sat on the side of the bed to check the unconscious girl more closely, and noticed something which I was often afterward to recall, but which at the time I dismissed: Monica’s complexion was noticeably sallow. This should have forewarned me, but it didn’t, because I was even more struck by her extreme loss of weight. ‘She must have dropped fifteen pounds since the last time I saw her,’ I said.

‘Maybe more,’ Cato agreed. ‘She won’t eat. But when she comes to see you tomorrow, she’ll be as bright as ever.’

‘You mean she’ll be able to get up?’ Holt asked.

‘Sure,’ Cato said, and next morning about eleven o’clock when I was standing in the lobby of the Mamounia with the three engineers from Casablanca, the oldest, who had graduated from Yale, cried, ‘Whew! Who’s that dish?’ and we turned to see that Monica had come to greet us.

I can see her now—slim, very black hair, very pale face, radiant with a remnant of childhood charm, yet as enticing as a grown woman, she moved toward us with that subtle grace which such women command and which reverberates in a room like a sound of flutes. I forgot her appearance of the night before and hurried across the lobby to accept
her kiss. The three Moroccans were close behind me, for they saw the same exquisite quality that I did, so I introduced them before they regretfully left the hotel, pausing frequently to stare back at Monica.

We talked of Moçambique and Marrakech, and Monica was so witty in her observations about Cato and the love affair between Joe and Gretchen, so utterly amiable, that I found it impossible to visualize her as the same girl I had seen only a few hours before; then slowly I realized that within the hour she must have given herself a booster shot of heroin, brought to her by Jemail, and we were seeing the apex of her euphoria. It was, I suppose, the apex of her loveliness too, and my heart expanded, as a man’s should, when I saw how charming she was.

That night Holt and I invited our five young people and the Swedish couple to dinner at one of the French cafés in the business district. I suggested that we include Big Loomis, but Holt objected: ‘I don’t trust any fat slob that advises young men how to beat the draft.’ I argued, ‘He understands young people. We may need his help with Monica.’ Grudgingly Holt assented, but during the meal he kept a close eye on Loomis and listened closely any time the fat man spoke to Joe.