Slow Learner (19 page)

"
He
is," Tim said.

Then something seemed to happen to Mr. McAfee's face. "Oh," he said. "Well, that's pretty funny. They almost as funny up here as they are in Mississippi. OK, you done

your bit now? You can go."

"I thought you wanted help," Hogan said, looking puzzled.

Mr. McAfee stood aside. "You're right about that. Yeah. You really want to come in?" He looked like he didn't care. They went in, and Hogan put his milk on the little writing desk in the corner. It was the first time either of them had been in any of the hotel's rooms or spoken to anybody colored.

Mr. McAfee was a bass player, but without his instrument. He'd been over in Lenox at some music festival. He had no idea how he'd got over here.

"It happens sometimes," he said. "I get these blank periods. One minute I was in Lenox. Next thing I know, I show up in — what do you call it? — Mingeborough. That ever happen to you?"

"No," said Hoge. "The worst I ever got was sick."

"You off it now. Alcohol."

"Forever," Hogan said. "Now it's strictly milk."

"Well, that makes you a milko, man," said Mr. McAfee, with a wan smile.

"What am I supposed to do," said Hogan, "exactly?"

"Oh, talk," said Mr. McAfee. "Or I'll talk. Till I can get to sleep. Or somebody — Jill — can get here, come get me, you know?"

"Is that your wife?" Tim said.

"That's who went up the hill with Jack," Mr. McAfee said, and he laughed a little. "No, no kidding, that really happened."

"You want to talk about that?" Hogan said.

"No. I guess not."

So, instead, Tim and Hogan told Mr. McAfee about things like school, and the town, and what their parents did for a living; but soon, because they trusted him, they were also telling him the more secret things — Étienne messing up the paper mill, and the hideout, and the sodium stockpile.

"Yeah," cried Mr. McAfee, "that sodium. I remember.

I threw some in a toilet once — flushed the handle first, you know, then dropped in that sodium. Soon as it hit the water down there,
wham!
That was in Beaumount, Texas, where I used to live. School principal comes walking in the room, very straight face, holding a busted piece of a toilet bowl, like this, and he says, 'Which one of you gentlemen — is responsible — for this outrage?"

Hogan and Tim, giggling, told him about the time Etienne had sat up in a tree with a slingshot, shooting little pea-size sodium balls into the swimming pool at one of the estates during a cocktail party, and the way people scattered at the first explosions.

"Very fancy crowd you run with, there," said Mr. McAfee. "Estates and everything."

"Not us," Tim said. "We just sneak in at night, and swim in the pools then. The one up at Lovelace's estate is the nicest. You want to go there? It's warm enough."

"Yeah," said Hoge. "We could go there now. Come on."

"Well, you know," Mr. McAfee said. He looked embarrassed.

"Why not?" Hoge said.

"Well, you guys should be old enough to know why not," Mr. McAfee said, starting to get mad. He looked at their faces and then shook his head and said, even angrier, "I get caught and that's it, baby. I mean that's all."

"Nobody ever gets caught," Hogan said, trying to reassure him.

Mr. McAfee lay down on the bed and looked at the ceiling. "If they're the right color, nobody gets caught," he said quietly, but the kids heard him.

"So you're a better color than we are," Tim said, "for getting away at night. You're bigger and faster. If we can do it you can, Mr. McAfee, no kidding."

Mr. McAfee looked over at them. He lit another cigarette from the butt of the one he was smoking, never taking his eyes off the two kids. It was hard to tell what he was thinking. "Maybe later," he said after he'd squashed out the old cigarette. "Tell you why I'm nervous about that. It's the water in that pool, see. If you any kind of an alky, it can have a funny effect on you. Ever have that happen, Hogan?" Hogan shook his head no. "Well, I did once, while I was in the army."

"Were you in during World War II ?" Tim asked. "Fighting the Japanese or anything?"

"No, I missed that," Mr. McAfee said. "I was too young."

"We missed it too," Hogan told him.

"No, I was in during Korea. Only I stayed Stateside all through it. I was in this band - army band, you know -at Fort Ord, California. All around there, up in the hills around Monterey, you have these little bars; anybody can just walk in, if they want to, and start playing. You have a lot of union guys, used to play around L.A. — you know — they get drafted and sent to Ord. Guys been in studio bands, most of them, so you're sitting in with some fine talent, a lot of times. One night we're in this kind of a roadhouse, four of us, and we're playing, and it's sounding pretty good. We're all juiced a little, drinking wine, there's a lot of wine — you know — from over in that valley there, whatever you call it. We just drinking wine and doing some - oh, some blues or something -and this lady comes in. White lady. Kind that sits out by the swimming pool and drinks cocktails at cocktail parties — right? — yeah. You got it. She's a very stout lady, not big fat, just stout, and she says she wants us to come play at a party she's having. So it's like a Tuesday or a Wednesday and we all kind of curious as to how come she's having a party such a funny time of the week, well she says it's been going on since the weekend — nonstop, you know - and we come to find out when we get there she's not putting nobody on, man. There it is — whooping, hollering, you can hear it for a mile. This baritone sax, some Italian kid, Sheldon somebody, he not halfway in the door there's two or three little chicks all over him, telling him — well, never mind about that — but we set up and get going, and the juice keeps coming on like a bucket brigade, people keep handing it up to you. You know what it is? Champagne. Solid champagne. All night long we drink this stuff, and about the time the sun comes up everybody's passed out, and we quit playing. I lay down next to the drums and go to sleep. Next thing I know I hear this girl, and she's laughing. I get up, the sun's in my eyes, it's only about nine or ten in the morning. I ought to feel horrible, man, but I feel great. I go walking out on this kind of little terrace, it's cold and outside there's fog, not all the way down to the ground, just hiding the tops of the trees, pine trees I guess, the trunks are these - you know - very straight. There's this white fog and downhill there's the ocean. Pacific Ocean, and from up the coast you can even hear that artillery practice back at Ord, wrapped up in the fog,
whoomp, whoomp.
That's how quiet it is. I go on out by the swimming pool, still wondering about this chick I heard laughing, all of a sudden here comes old Sheldon, running out around a corner, with this girl chasing him, and he slams into me, and the girl can't stop in time neither, and we all three of us fall in the pool with all our clothes on. And all I had to do was swallow a little bit of that water and you know what? I'm high all over again, just as high as I was during the night, on all that champagne. How about that?"

"It sounds great," Hogan said. "Except for the alcohol part of it, I mean."

"Yeah, it was great," said Mr. McAfee. "It's the only morning I remember that ever was." He didn't say anything for a while. Then the telephone rang. It was for Tim.

"Hey," said Grover on the other end, "can we come over there? Etienne needs a place to hide tonight." Having, it seems, got second thoughts about his attack on the paper mill earlier that day. It was dawning on him that he'd done something serious, and that the cops, if they got hold of him, would find out about other jobs he'd pulled, and be merciless. Grover's house would be the first place they'd think of to look. It would have to be someplace like the hotel if he wanted to stand a chance of escaping the dragnet. Tim asked Mr. McAfee, who said he guessed so, but reluctant.

"Don't worry," Hogan said. "Etienne's just scared. Like you are."

"Don't you ever get scared?" said Mr. McAfee. His voice had gone funny.

"Not about alcohol," said Hogan. "I guess I was never really that bad."

"Oh, you just passing. I see." He lay still on the bed, his face very black against the pillow. Tim realized that Mr. McAfee had been sweating a lot. It was running off the sides of his neck and soaking into the pillowcase. He looked sick.

"Can I get you anything?" Tim asked, a little worried. When the man didn't answer, he repeated it.

"Just a drink," Mr. McAfee stage-whispered, pointing at Hogan. "See if you can talk your buddy there into letting me have something to relax with. No kidding, I really need something now."

"You can't," Hogan said. "That's the whole point. That's what I'm here for."

"You think that's what you're here for? You wrong." He stood up slowly, as if his stomach or something hurt, and picked up the telephone. "Can you send up a bottle, a fifth, of Jim Beam," he said, "and" — making an elaborate count of the people in the room —"three glasses? Oh.

Right. OK, only one glass. Oh, there is one glass already here." He hung up. "Cat don't miss a trick," he said. "They right on the ball in Mingeborough, Mass."

"Listen, what did you call us up for?" Hogan said. He was talking in an obstinate, rhythmic way that meant he was going to bust out crying any minute. "Why did you get in touch with the A.A. at all, if you were just going to get drunk anyway?"

"I needed help," explained Mr. McAfee, "and I thought they would help me. And they really helped, didn't they? Look at what they sent me."

"Hey," said Tim, and Hogan started to cry.

"OK," said Mr. McAfee. "Out, you guys. Go on home."

Hogan quit crying and got stubborn. "I'm staying."

"The hell you are. Go on. You're the big jokers in town, now you ought to know a joke when you see one. Go back to the A.A. and tell them they really put one over on you, man. Show them you can be — you know — just a gracious loser." Then they all stood looking at each other in the tiny room, with its four-color print of a bowl of chrysanthemums on the wall, its framed list of rules next to the door, its empty, dusty water pitcher and glass, its one armchair, its three-quarter beige-covered bed and its disinfectant smell, and it began to look as if none of them would ever go anyplace, just stand and turn into a kind of wax-museum scene; but then Grover and Etienne showed up, and the other kids let them in. Mr. McAfee made fists at his sides and went to the telephone again. "Get these kids out of here for me," he said, "would you? Please."

Étienne looked as if he were in a state of shock, and about twice as fat as usual. "I think the cops saw us," he kept saying. "Grovie, didn't they?" He was carrying all his skin-diving equipment, which he had an idea would be damning evidence if it were found at his house.

"He's nervous," Grover said. "What's wrong here — you having trouble?"

"We're trying to keep him from starting drinking," Hogan said. "He called A.A. for help, and now he says get out."

"I assume you are aware," Grover addressed the man, "of the positive correlation that exists between alcoholism and heart disease, chronic upper respiratory infection, cirrhosis of the liver - "

"There he is," said Mr. McAfee. In the door, which had been ajar, now appeared Beto Cufifo, the bellboy and town rum-dum, who would have been retired and living on Social Security except that he was Mexican and wanted back there for something like smuggling or auto theft — the charge varied depending on who he was telling it to. How he had first found his way into Berkshire County nobody would ever know. People were always mistaking him for the only kinds of probable outlander -French Canadian or Italian - and you felt he enjoyed that easy ambiguity and that's why he stuck around Mingeborough.

"One bottle of booze," Beto announced. "That's six-fifty."

"What is it, six-fifty, imported from someplace?" Mr. McAfee said. He had out his wallet and snuck a quick look inside. Tim could only see one bill, a single.

"Tell them at the desk," Beto said. "I just carry."

"Look, put it on my room bill, right?" Mr. McAfee said, reaching for the bottle.

Beto put the bottle behind his back. "He says you got to pay now." There were so many lines in his face you couldn't make out the expression too well, but Tim thought he was smiling; a nasty smile. Mr. McAfee took out the dollar and held it up to Beto.

"Come on. Just put it on my tab." Tim could see sweat pouring off him, though nobody else in the room even looked warm.

Beto took the dollar and said, "Now that's five-fifty. I'm sorry. You talk to him down at the desk, sir."

"Hey, you guys," Mr. McAfee said, "any you kids got any bread? I mean I need five and a half— you think you could lend that to me?"

"Not for whiskey," said Hogan, "not even if I had it." The rest of them took out their loose change and held it in their hands and looked to see, but it only came to maybe a dollar and a quarter.

"That still leaves four-twenty-five," announced Beto.

"Oh, you a regular adding machine," yelled Mr. McAfee. "Come on, boy, come on, let's see that bottle."

"You don't believe me," said Beto, gesturing at the telephone, "they'll tell you. Ask them."

For a second it looked like Mr. McAfee might call down. But finally he said, "Look, I'll split it with you, OK? Half that fifth. You must be pretty dry, all that work you do."

"I don't drink this stuff," said Beto. "I'm a wine man. Good night, sir." He started to close the door. Mr. McAfee jumped at him and made a grab for the bottle. Beto, taken by surprise, dropped it. It fell on the rug and rolled a foot or two. Mr. McAfee and Beto had hold of each other's arms and were struggling around, both very clumsy. Hogan picked up the bottle and ran out the door with it and Mr. McAfee saw him and said something like "Oh my God" and tried to get untangled from the bellboy. But by the time he could get to the door, Hogan had too good a head start, and Mr. McAfee must have known that. He just stood with his head on the doorjamb. Beto took out a comb and combed what there was of his hair. Then, hitching up his belt and glaring at Mr. McAfee, he walked around him and out into the hall, and backward all the way to the elevator, watching the colored man as if daring him to try it again.