Three Days Before the Shooting ... (38 page)

Wow,
I thought
, I am drunk. Imagine imagining a piece of iron speaking of its humanity! Sam the waiter must have Finned the drinks. Wake up, McIntyre.

“Did you say
iron,
baby?” the voice said. “If so, you’re wrong. Mine is a human figure. Keep holding me and you’ll fiind out. This indicates clearly enough that you find me repulsive. Well, I’ll admit that I’m repulsive—but so are you, baby. We both are. As repulsive and as noxious as crows. That’s how it is: black crows and white crows. But you love it, baby; or you
will
love it, just as soon as you admit it. Face up to reality, baby. Because that’s the way it is. It’s a simple equation. Repeat after me, and it’ll do you worlds of good. Indeed, it’ll allow you to achieve humanity:

I am contemptible
You are contemptible
They are contemptible
She is contemptible
We are contemptible
He-she-it is contemptible
.

The black face smiled mockingly as it spoke and despite myself, I found my lips silently forming the words. I felt unclean
.

“See,” he said, “that’s the way it is, only you won’t admit it. And because you refuse to admit it, you’re the most contemptible of all!”

Whereupon, at the sound of wild laughter, the hot fumes of old tennis shoes or Limburger cheese filled the air, and I released my hold, watching him land on the floor with a deafening thud
.

“McIntyre?” McGowan’s voice arose once more behind me, plaintive and tired
.

“Did you get him to go away, McIntyre? Did you get rid of that little nigra?”

Suddenly furious, I yelled, “Shut up, you indecent bastard,” looking around for him
.

The street was empty, without shade
.

“I’ll get rid of this thing if it’s the last thing I do,” I said. Then, squatting in the recommended manner for lifting heavy objects with the least danger of ruptures, strains, or
slipped disks, I lifted him chest-high and began taking short shuffling steps toward the right side of the doorway
.

As I did so, the groom cleared his throat in my ear. “Oh, so you’ve returned,” the voice said blandly. “Are you becoming used to my repulsiveness, baby? No? Well, just keep holding me and you will. You have my permission to squeeze me if you like. And don’t be upset if I speak to you; eloquence is eloquence, no matter how we attain it, and I am nothing if not eloquent. Nor should you confuse irony with iron, baby.”

“Listen,” I exploded, “I’ve had enough—”

“No, you listen, McGowan; or I’ll step on your toes. I’ll bump you! Do you know, McOldcowhand, that I’m really very beautiful? You refuse to see it because you are not. You aren’t and neither are most hitching-post boys. In fact, they’re quite ugly. What’s more, they
act
ugly. You made them act ugly, McGowan, even to me. And before I learned to defend myself, they used to chase me and treat me something awful. Through vacant lots and under stairways and through empty hallways, all foul and filthy, McGowan. And they did awful things to me, baby. Terrible things. Things so terrible that I had to accept them. They were, I grew to believe
, preordained
for me. And I tell you, baby, they did happen to me. Now of course I know that they happen to everyone. It’s
la condition humaine,
baby—
nez
pas? Everyone is thrown into the alley like choice pieces of airmail garbage. So why should I complain?

“And I’ll tell you something else. Do you know that now, after having lived this long and having seen and done so much, I’m willing to concede you any and everything you might think about me? That’s because I’ve put you down, baby. You don’t really matter to me anymore. And now you’ll learn that little wisdom which has escaped you for so long: You never miss your water until your well runs dry, you’ll never miss your wise man ‘til your fool gets shy. And if you doubt me, look at the details. I never entered your head before, did I? Yet, here I am in all the factual details you pretend you love so much. ‘Significant details,’ I believe you call them. But what’s significant, baby? Am I? Is the cloud on the horizon, the pimple on the nose, the missed tick in the tock, the Snicker in the chocolate box?”

I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the spell and feeling the weight bearing me down as I moved again
.

“Oh, no, none of that,” he said. “None of that! Obviously, you wish to convince yourself that I’m not here. You’d rather pretend that I’m simply a ‘figment of the imagination,’ a trace of the ‘irrational’ which has seeped in with your liquor. You’d rather plead insanity than deal with me honestly, such is your McGowan pride. But don’t cliché me, baby. I’m real and there’s nothing simple about me. I’m here and very much myself. Do you still doubt me?”

A stream of sweat was running into my right eye now, and I wished to wipe it away but kept inching silently toward the door frame
.

“Very well, baby, since you wish to act rude, I shall commune with myself—in ironic, as it were; and now you’ll consider me a ‘hard case.’ Very well, I am indeed a hard case. You might even say that I’m a rough case, but what I tell you about yourself is nonetheless
true. You’re no good, McGowan! You suffer from the puritan chill; that is, pure tan chills you—which is worse, to my mind, than a compounded case of VD—or déjà vu. You drug yourself with easy answers, and you probably think that I’m taking horse. Well, allow me to suggest this, baby: I ride horses, they don’t ride me. I’m in the saddle and I’ve sharpened my spurs. It’s you who’s on the needle, baby, on the very point. So coo-coo cock-a-doodle-do to you, McGowan. Now shall we talk crow?”

Straining, inching sideways again, I held my peace. For some reason I seemed to make little progress. My arms ached. I felt breathless
.

“You have no feeling for my suffering, McGoldinhand, and you deliberately refuse to understand. And that’s why you have so little insight into yourself. You fail to grasp your own nature. You insist upon a stance of innocence and …”

Where,
I thought
, does one’s human obligation end? Here an iron monster is demanding—

“Iron? IRON?” he shouted. “Why, mine is a human figure, McFoldedhand! Ask your mother, she’d know. Women have fine perceptions in these matters. Yes, and a capacity for telling the truth—if only those like you would let them! Now put me down!”

And despite my determination to hold on, he fell, landing squarely in the doorway
.

Thank God that we’re alone,
I thought, looking wildly around me. Down near the corner of the block a flag fluttered high from a pole, its colors translucent in the sunlight. Then a burst of yellow butterflies swirled up and around the little porch. How-when-where had I learned that they were once regarded as symbols of the soul?

“Look down this lonesome road a moment, baby,” the voice said, as he gestured floorward with his head. “And don’t go dreaming off, you might miss your cue, your train, your ‘flang,’ as the old-fashioned colored say. Remember the famous cartoon of the old man and his grandson watching Indians dancing in the smoke from a pile of burning leaves? You should, it was fall in the spring and all you know is what you read in the newspapers. But now ask yourself seriously what it was you saw. Under the bare trees beyond the fence and the fading bush beyond, the old man and the boy saw ‘Indians’— so you saw Indians. But did you see them truly? Think now on those Indians, baby. And on that smoke. Oh, you had a ball!

“War bonnets!

“Smoke signals!

“Bare bucks buck-dancing with tomahawks!

“Braided scalp locks!

“War paint!

“Battle chants!

“Ghost Dancers going, ‘Woo-woo-whoo-whooo-whoo, whah-whah, whah-ha!’ Are you recalling? Are you with it? Because now comes the question, baby: Was the smoke from an Indian tribe? Really?

“Mohican?

“Seneca?

“An Algonquin round-robin?

“Rubber-tired moccasins burning on a Pontiac?

“Was that it, baby? Or were those ‘Indians’ a tribe of smokes slow-dragging a jubajumping, boondoggling, tea-dumping hoedown in the land of rum, four masters, and molasses? Don’t blink, just tell me what you saw. Was the grandfather the son of the son? Did he raise up the smokes Lazarus-like, or put out the fire when he saw them burning for the shore? When your heart’s on fire there are smokes in it, baby. And even when he smoked tea in the bay? Yes, and was Finny more of a cooper than he knew? Killdeers no kill deer, so what did dearslayer slay? And when you’ve answered, baby, then tell me where are the smokes of yesteryear. Think on it, baby. Think on it
hard
!”

Suddenly he was silent, his face frozen once more into its fixed, ingratiating smile
.

I stepped over his body, circling him slowly, as one does a sculpture displayed in a museum, noting the Italianate suit, the thyroid eyes. He lay rigid, silent. I shook my head, laughing quietly at myself. Obviously, I was drunk. Yes, and just as obviously, McGowan and the others were playing a clever joke on me. They’d had the boy wired for sound, that was it. That explained it. Somehow they’d gotten a transmitter-receiver inside the peaked iron head, or into the chest, and somewhere along the citizen’s broadcast band there were some jokers giving it taunting voice, bugging me. Very well, to hell with them. I’d play along and bide my time. Let them keep fighting the war if they chose, my time would come to retaliate. Besides, it was possible that they were actually after McGowan rather than me. Perhaps that’s why he’s made me the goat. They’d simply scared hell out of him…
.

Yes, but what if the groom was actually speaking to me, actually knew that my name was McIntyre, and his insistence on calling me “McGowan” was deliberate? Or was it that I had in fact
become
McGowan? Whatever the case, there he was, lying in the doorway and as clear and present a danger to anyone trying to enter the house as I could imagine. So it was still my obligation to remove him, for I was still under the conditioning of my Boy Scout days not to leave such items as carpet tacks, broken glass, banana peels, roller skates, and the like in the path of the myopic and/or drunken citizenry—so why not this voluble piece of iron? In such situations one has to be true to something, so what is more suitable than to be constant to the ideals of one’s early youth? Therefore, there’s nothing to do but pick up McGowan’s burden and walk…
.

And for a moment it seemed to work. I handled him gently and managed to take four short steps before I heard him yawn lazily and address me again
.

“Well, baby, so here you go waltzing me around again—and so roughly!”

This time I kept silent, looking out into the empty vista of the street as I inched him along. The sun was high, the shadows near nonexistent. High on the pole the flag still fluttered beneath a cloudless sky in which a faded three-quarters of a pale moon still showed. Then, when I lowered my eyes, the porch seemed to have narrowed
.

I’ll have to set him in the yard,
I thought—whereupon his voice shrilled up in protest
.

“Not out there, dammit! There’s a dog around here who likes to take liberties with my leg—the canine sonofabitch!”

I paused, holding my breath
.

He laughed. “Shocked you, didn’t I, McGowan? So now you don’t know what to do. It’s always the little things that matter with you, McGowan. All I did was call a dog his bitch’s son, and your teeth are on edge. Such facile identifications make for confusion, baby; learn to call a spade a spade! I’m sorry for you, baby. I am indeed. I speak of a bitch and the cat gets your tongue. Very well, be quiet for a while, it’ll be good for you. Don’t talk. Make like Pete the rabbit, who had the habit of eating turnip tops and Welsh rarebit—the gummy kind. You make too much noise anyway, filling the air with static and double-talk. In fact, you live a life of noisy desperation, McCoolhand; with your tintin-timbulating anti-dialogue way of speaking. You sound the brass and tinkle the symbols all over the place, but in the clinches you’re as silent as the proverbial mouse taking advantage of the mythical cotton. Only the nose knows you’re there. You’re a fraud, McGowan. You went over the cliff with the swine a long, long time ago, but you pretend to yourself and to the world that you’re as white as the driven snow. But I’ll tell you something, baby: You’re driven but you’ve only had a snow job. Imagine giving
oneself
a snow job! And what’s more amazing, baby, is that you’re insensitive to those who can never be snowed. You believe it to be a natural phenomenon. Yes, that’s the way it is with you, McGobback. And you feel definitely superior to me because I will not be, cannot be, snowed! Isn’t it true? Why don’t you confess, McGee? Why don’t you try for once in your life to be a man!”

Suddenly, standing there holding all that cumbersome weight, I felt awful. It was as though it was three o’clock in the morning, and all the anxieties of the day, freed now of the qualifications of the light, had taken me over in the dark. And yet the street showed with the brightest of suns
.

“Listen,” I said quietly, “my name is McIntyre. I am a newspaper man. I was born in Massachusetts. My Social Security number is 15- 100- 369. My dogtag number is 1234567983, and according to the Geneva Convention this is all I have to say. Besides, what have we here, an immoral equivalent for warfare?”

“Very good, McGoahead,” he said. “Very good, indeed. Watch it, though, you almost slipped that time. But you can’t get out of it so easily. I know you too well, baby. You’re one of those who love humanity real good, like a proper Christian should. You help the poor and the needy and you contribute to the care and feeding of the unknown heathen hordes abroad. You love everybody and anybody until you see their faces, or hear their voices raised in passionate description of the truth of their own condition. But then, baby, your love goes limp. Your sterling ‘integration of personality’ tarnishes and cankers, and then Uncle Sugar grabs the scatological imperative and hides himself like foxes in holes. At the first sound you tell yourself, ‘Oh, oh, they’re suffering so hugely that they must hate me! Why can’t they be more
considerate
? That’s what you do
.