Tough Guys Don't Dance (21 page)

Well, in winter it was still crowded, but you could sit down and take a taste of the marrow of the mood of what was coming down in the town
that day. A lot of commercial fishing boats would return by afternoon and the crews would be drinking. The carpenters and the dope dealers and the narcs and some of the handymen for summer cottages, and unwed young mothers on Fridays with their welfare checks, and others generally scuffling for bread or looking for a friend to buy them a glass were also downing our good urine. I knew most of these people in varying degree and would speak of them if they figured in what was happening to me now, since they were all most individual no matter how much they looked alike, but in winter, as I say, we looked alike. We were sallow, and everybody dressed in Army surplus clothes.

Let one story suffice. I live in a Portuguese town, after all, and have no natives in my story but Stoodie, who is a disgrace to the Portuguese. One afternoon in winter when The Brig was unnaturally empty, a Portuguese fisherman about eighty years old was sitting at the bar. He was as bent over and twisted from a life of work as a cypress growing out of a boulder on a rocky coast. Into the bar walked another fisherman as arthritic as himself. They had grown up together, played football together, graduated from high school together, worked on fishing boats together, got drunk together, probably seduced each other's wives, and now at eighty didn't like each other any more than when they used to have fist fights in recess. The first, nonetheless, got off his stool, stood up, and bellowed across the bar in a voice
as hoarse as the March wind, “I thought you was
dead
!” The other stopped, glared back, and out of a larynx shrill as a gull, replied, “
Dead?
I'll go to
your
funeral.” They had a beer together. It was merely another exercise in dispelling the spirits. The Portuguese know how to bark when they speak.

We imitate them. In other places, they measure the acid rain, or the index of air pollution, or the amount of dioxin in the soil. Here, where we have no industries but fishing, and room renting, and no farming, the air and sand are clean, but it is a rare day when you cannot feel the weight of spirits in a bar, and when I walked in full of my sleepless nights with the wraiths of Hell-Town, I could feel everybody's awareness of me. I might just as well have been a spill of ink in a pool. I was about as welcome as a sullen log on a slow smoldering fire.

All the same, each bar, like each hearth, had, as I had observed through working a few, something like the same hitches to their habits. The log that smokes up one fireplace gets another ablaze, and the mixture of my depression, my good store of adrenaline at being followed, plus the company of manic, anxious haunts I doubtless carried in my hair soon put The Brig in a roaring mood. People who had been expiring at their own tables got up and moved to others. Dudes and their old ladies who had hardly been speaking began to feel the rosy itch. And I, who in this hour may have been closeted with horror more
than anyone there—winters in Provincetown can be named by whose year it is for that—took the credit to myself for such kindling, although I did no more than nod to a face in my path and take up an insular position by the bar.

Pete the Polack was the first to approach, and we had a short conversation that came near to twisting my neck on its bearings. “Hey,” he began, “I been talking to your wife.”

“Today?”

He took a while replying. My dry throat had a little difficulty managing to ask the question, and by then he was in the middle of slugging down his beer. Besides, his mind had already disconnected as well. That happened often in The Brig. People would start conversations, and their brains, particularly on beer and speed, would veer off like waterbugs.

“Today,” said Pete, “no. Couple of days ago.”

“When?”

He waved his hand. “Couple of days.” He could as well have said, “A couple of weeks ago.” I had noticed that winter people kept constant intervals for time. Something could have happened two weeks ago, or two nights ago, but if it was your habit to say, “Five days ago,” then that was how you would remember it. So I pushed him no further. Instead I returned to the topic.

“What did Patty want to talk to you about?”

“Oh, yeah. Hey. She wants me to look after the big house on the hill in the West End.”

“The one she's thinking of buying?”

“That's what she said.”

“Wants
you
to look after it?”

“Well, me and my brother.”

It made sense. The brother was a good carpenter. In effect, Pete was saying that his brother would take care of the place. Patty might have asked Pete to contact him.

I knew it was stupid, but I had to ask. “Can you remember if you talked to her before or after the Patriots game?”

“Oh, yeah, that game.” He nodded profoundly. The speed was taking him somewhere deep. He pondered—whatever it was—the game, the date, the money in his back pocket, then he shook his head. “About two days ago.”

“Yeah,” I said, “figures.”

Beth Nissen slipped up to us. She was drunk, which was rare for her, and she was animated, which was even more unusual.

“What did you do to Spider?” she asked me.

“Hey, honey,” Pete said, “old hassles is old hassles. I got to move on.” He bent over, kissed her sweater where her nipple ought to have been and took his beer down the road to a table.

“Is Spider truly hassled?” I asked.

“Who knows?” Her eyes turned starry. “Spider is crazy.”

“Well, we all are,” I said.

“Don't you believe that you and I are crazy in a special way?” she said.

“How?”

“We've never fucked each other.”

That was par for winter. I made a point of laughing and put my arm around her waist, and her pale eyes stared out from behind her eyeglasses with a far-gone electric glow.

“Spider lost his knife,” said Beth, “and claims you stole it.” She giggled as if Spider without his knife was like another man without his pants. “He lost his motorcycle, too,” she said. “Did you tell him the Patriots were going to win?”

“At half time.”

“Well, they did win,” said Beth. “But at half time, he decided to reverse his bet. Said he was going against you. Now he says it's your fault he lost his motorcycle.”

“Tell Spider to stick it up his giggie.”

She giggled. “In the Midwest,” she said, “we used to say ‘giggie.' I think I'll send a letter to my parents and tell them their daughter can no longer distinguish her pussy from her giggie.” She hiccuped. “I'm not going to tell Spider anything,” she said. “He's in a terrible mood. After all, why not?” she asked. “The worst are filled with a passionate intensity,' right?” She gave me an outsize lewd look.

“How's Stoodie?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said, “watch out for Stoodie.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said, “I tell everybody to watch out for Stoodie.”

I could not decide whether it was due to the constant flashes I kept having of a blonde head in a dark plastic bag, but every word I heard
seemed connected to my own situation. Was there a real fever in the air? No one but myself and—I must pray—someone else knew what had been buried in my marijuana patch, yet this thought was all but shrieking out of every cry for beer from every table. I suppose the spirits were tugging at the beer-drenched sponge of whatever collective mind was here.

Beth saw my look wander away from her. “Is Patty Lareine still split?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I hear she's been around.”

“I think she is. Bolo is back in town.”

“You saw him?” Bolo was Mr. Black, although indeed his name was Green. Joseph “Bolo” Green. He got the name Bob on the first day he walked into a bar here. “There are bad niggers,” he announced to a table of ten of us, “but I am
baaaaad
,” and everybody was silent for a moment as if paying respect to the dead he had left behind—we are the Wild West of the East!—but Patty Lareine began to laugh and said, “Stop waving your bolo. Nobody is going to steal your
black
.” By the look of pure happiness in her eyes, I could see that the next Mr. Black had just been anointed.

“Yes,” said Beth, bringing me back to her—I, too, had a mind that could veer like a water-bug—“Bolo is certainly back in town. He was in and out of The Brig ten minutes ago.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“He propositioned me.”

I would have been certain she was lying if she had not looked so happy.

Now the bartender was signaling as well. He pointed to the phone behind his service sink.

My extrasensory attainments failed me on this occasion. I thought I was going to hear Patty's voice, but it was Harpo.

“Mac,” he said, “I've been trying to get you. I had to force myself to call you.”

“Why?”

“Because I betrayed you.”

“How could you do that?”

“I lost my nerve. I want to warn you.”

Harpo's speech had a metallic anxiety. He sounded as if he were speaking out of a mechanical diaphragm. I tried to decide what he might be on, but there must have been many chemicals in his brain.

“It's Laurel,” he now said.

“The tattoo?”

“The woman.
Laurel
. I called up Police Chief Regency and told him about her
and
the tattoo.”

That could have no significance for Regency, I decided. Not unless Patty Lareine, when in his company, spoke of Madeleine as Laurel.

“Great,” I said, “Alvin now knows I have a tattoo. Where's the treachery?”

“I told him that Laurel was waiting for you in the car downstairs.”

“But why do you think the name is Laurel?”

“You spoke to her. Through my window.”

“I did?”

“That's what you shouted. ‘I'm going to win this bet, Laurel.' That's what you said.”

“I may have said Lonnie. I think I was yelling to a man.”

“No, it was Laurel. I heard the name. I believe that Laurel is dead.”

“Who told you?”

“I was up on the roof. I heard it. That's why I called the Chief. I knew I shouldn't have given you the tattoo. People do terrible things after a tattoo.”

“What else did you tell Regency?”

“I said I thought you killed Laurel.” He began to cry.

“How can you believe that?” I asked.

“I saw Laurel dead. When I stood on the roof last night, I saw her on the horizon. She said you did it.” I heard him blowing his nose at the other end of the phone. “I wrestled with my conscience. Then I called Regency. It was the wrong thing to do. I should have spoken to you first.”

“What did Regency say?”

“He's an asshole! He's a bureaucrat. He said he wanted to take it under consideration. Mac, I don't trust him.”

“Yeah,” I said, “it's me you trust.”

“Well, I realized you didn't do anything. I could tell by the sound of Regency's voice. It wasn't right.”

“I'm happy to hear that.”

His breathing got heavy. Over the wire, I could feel his senses rattling. “I may not have the right
to say who killed her,” he added, “but now I know.”

“It's Nissen,” I said.

“I hate Spider's knife,” said Harpo. “A vicious instrument.” With that, he hung up.

A hand was tapping me on the shoulder. I turned around to stare into Bolo's golden-brown eyes blazing into mine with all the light of a lion. He was deep-black in color, purple-black like an African, so his eyes were disconcertingly golden. I had known from the moment I first saw him that he was going to be no good news for my marriage. I was right. There had been three earlier models, but Mr. Green proved to be the definitive Mr. Black. After all, Patty Lareine had never left me before.

The worst was that now I could not feel any hatred for him, not even some rage at my drear and cuckolded state. The proof was that he could come up to me while I was on the phone, even lay his hand on me, and I, in reply, merely gave a nod.

Of course, I might as well have been lifted by a helicopter from the summit of one peak to the next. I had none of the bother of descending through the scree to the canyon floor and up the other ridge, no, I had gone directly from a number of remarks by Harpo (each capable of blasting me off my mind) to the lights in Bolo's eyes, and by now I might as well have been stuffed with Novocaine, just so far did I feel removed from this overabundance of stimulations—yes, it had
all caught up, and I was one candidate who could call himself Mr. Marble Eyes, totally zonked and zombied by the quick turns of the race course this evening, except that at this moment Mr. Green put his hand on my shoulder again and dug his fingers in—viciously, I tell you—and said, “Where the fuck is Patty Lareine?,” all of his fury passing into me. With that, I woke up and shook off his hand with an equally violent move, and replied, “Get your filthy lunch hooks off of me,” words that came right out of an old high school fracas. But for the first time, I was not afraid of him. I didn't care if we went out to the street and had a fight. The thought of being knocked cold was an anodyne dear as nepenthe.

Let me say there was little doubt in my mind what he could do to me. If you have ever been in an interesting penitentiary, you come to know that there are blacks and blacks, and a few you never mess with. Mr. Green was not on that high shelf, or I would have been dead. But he could fit on the second level: mess with him under few circumstances. Now his eyes glared into mine and I looked back, and the light in the room turned red between us—I mean it literally—I do not know if his rage on meeting mine was so intense that the nerves which reflect color to the brain were strained by the voltage passed through or if all the firebrands of Hell-Town raced toward us, but I had to stand in the considerable wrath of all that had happened to him over his last twenty-five years (from the first cuff in the cradle)
and he stood in the maniacal disproportion of all that had been happening to me. I think it was dazzling to both of us to endure for even a little while in such a hellish red light. Indeed, we both stood there looking at each other for so long that I had time to remember the sad tale of his life as he told it to Patty Lareine and me on the night we met: it was how he lost his boxing career.