Killdozer! (31 page)

Bette said goodbye, but Joe couldn’t answer. He took Sara Nell’s arm and hurried her out. “Joe! Your change!”

“Skip it. I got plenty of money.”

Outside it was red and dark, red and dark with the neon, and the cool air took the hot fuzziness that filled him and compressed it into a fiery ball.
“You!”
he gritted. “What’d you want to rush me out like that for? You want that guy to think I was afraid of him?”

Sara Nell made a strange little sound and snatched her arm away from him. They stopped walking. Joe said, “One more crack outta him and I’d’a had to paste him one.”

“Joe!” she cried as if she had been stabbed, “don’t talk out of the side of your mouth!”

“What’s the matter with you?”

She placed her hands carefully together and looked down at them. Her bag swung from her left wrist, and from its wide gilded clasp. The neon letter B, reversed, appeared and disappeared. B for Bar. B for Backwards. B for Bette. She spoke to him carefully, and at last in her own full voice again. “Joe … I don’t want you to be mad at me. I have no claim on you, and you can do what you want. But—”

“What are you talking about?”

“Please don’t throw your money away. You work too hard for it.”

“For God’s sake, I told you. I got plenty.”

“All right, Joe. But … ten dollars is a lot for a drink you didn’t even have.”

“Ten—did I put ten dollars on that table?”

“That’s what you took out of your wallet.”

Joe whipped out his wallet and fanned through it. “Holy smoke.” he looked up at the pulsing glare, and back at his wallet.

Sara Nell said, probably to herself, “Those awful people …”

“Aw, they’re okay,” Joe said. He put away his wallet. “He just talks too much for his own good, that’s all.… Well,” he demanded suddenly, “we just going to stand here?”

She just stood there.

“Come on,” he growled.

“All right, Joe,” she said. They walked away from the bar. After a while she said, “Let’s walk all the way.”

“I got enough mon—”

“I want to,” she said.

They walked in too much silence after it had been normally dark for a time, and he lashed out, “All right, so you didn’t like them! So they’re not your type, that’s all. So forget them!”

“All right, Joe.”

All the time, all right Joe. And watching him. She had always been watching him, ever since he met her. She watched him eat. She watched him walk. Did she … did she
think
while she watched? She never said. He had such an abrupt vision of the crooked golden ring on blue pupils that he blinked; the vision jagged along with him, fading no faster than the afterimage of a flash bulb. Oh God, no matter what, this Mousie would never do that to him, or anything like it.

He found, after a while, that she had his arm again. He had not been aware of her taking it. She said, “Joe. Did I ever tell you about my brother Jackie and the noon gun?”

“What about it?”

“We used to live near the fort. Every time they shot that cannon at noon Jackie would start to cry, even when he was a baby. Everybody knew about it. Everybody used to laugh at him, to kid him out of it. They used to look at their watches and hang around him waiting. And sure enough when the gun went off he’d jump and start to cry.

“Well, one summer when he was about thirteen, my uncle John and Aunt Helen were visiting, and Jackie cried like that, and Uncle John gave me two dollars but he said to Jackie he was ashamed they had the same name. I—I guess he was only trying to help. But anyway, at night Jackie told me he would never cry at the noon gun again. The way he said it, Joe, he scared me. I was so worried, the way he acted, I kept my eye on him all the next morning.

“Well, about eleven-thirty he sort of slid out of the yard without saying anything and I waited a second and went after him. He took the hill road and went right up to the fort, and jumped over the road wall at the top and went on around the side of the building and sat down on the grass with his back to the wall. And there right over his head was that cannon.” She was quiet for so long that he nudged her.

“What’d he do?”

“Nothing. He just sat there looking out at the sea. At five minutes to twelve he could hear the voices of the gun crew. I could too, where I was hiding. Then he sort of squinched up his face and dug his fingers into the dirt. And he started to cry. He didn’t try to wipe his face. He kept his hands in the dirt. It must have been to keep him
from putting his fingers in his ears. Finally the gun went off—
blam!
—and he jumped like a jack-in-the-box. Afterwards, he sat there for a minute until he stopped crying, and he wiped off his face with his handkerchief and wiped his hands on his pants.

“What’d you say to him?”

“Oh—nothing. I ran home. He never did know I saw him.”

“Now why did he want to do a thing like that?”

Sara Nell looked up at him. “He was a funny kid. You know, he never did cry at that noon gun any more. For a couple of weeks he’d sort of tighten up when it went off, but after a while he stopped doing that even. And then he’d just grin.”

They reached her gate. Joe said, “That’s the craziest story I ever heard.”

She reached behind her, opened the gate, slid through and closed it between them. “Well … goodnight, Joe. Thanks for the show and all.” She turned and went up the steps. At the top she looked back and saw him still standing there. She said good night again and when he didn’t answer she went into the house.

At the click of the door Joe started, took a step toward the gate. There was something so very final about the click; it left him alone, and it told him what he hadn’t known until then—that he didn’t want to be alone. He stared at the lighted windows for a moment, and finally shrugged. “That dame,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. He turned and started downtown.

“I guess I shoulda pasted that guy one,” he muttered. He put his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders. In the back of his mind, a most intimate possession of his, a sort of private movie projector, began reeling off a new feature, in technicolor. He saw himself in the bar, striding up to the table, a thin smile on his merciless lips. Gordon looked up and turned pale. “Well, wise guy?” said Joe out of the corner of his mouth. Gordon said, “Now, looka, a joke’s a joke, huh?” Joe slowly extended his hand. Gordon said, “Okay, okay,” and put the change from Joe’s ten into it. Joe put the money in his pocket and stood there rocking on the balls of his feet, -staring Gordon down. “Punk!” he spat. Bette rose and ran to him and threw her arms around him. “Don’t hit him, Joe!” Joe gently
disengaged her and shoved her carelessly aside.

Fadeout.

Joe took his hands out of his pockets and walked a little faster.

Another reel. Joe and Gordon standing toe to toe, slugging it out. Bette shouting, “Come on, Joey!” A right, a left, another right, and Gordon was down, blood streaming from his nose and mouth. “Oh, Joe, my Joe …” and as he turned to face her and the hot promise of her parted lips, he saw too late that the coward on the floor had a gun.
Blam!
But with the explosion, Bette’s tear-filled face was blanked out by the superimposed picture of a kid sitting in a swirl of smoke under the muzzle of a cannon, digging his hands into the dirt and crying.

Joe shook his head in annoyance. He tried to get a close-up of Bette, whose dress was torn somehow, saying, “You’ve killed him, you rat! You’ve killed my Joe!”—flinging herself down beside him as he gasped his life out; but it couldn’t jell.

Gordon, he thought bitterly. Gordon is the guy who grins when he fights. A tough guy. Smack him one in the nose. He grins. When the noon gun goes off, he grins. Pump him full of lead, and he cracks wise with the Army nurse. The blonde Army nurse.

I’ll get him out on the fill where I’m working, Joe thought. I’ll be up on my dozer, and I’ll run him down. I’ll slap her in sixth gear. Just a touch on the steering clutches. He can’t dodge
me
. I got twenty-one tons at my fingertips. Blade him under. Lock a track and spin him into the dirt and spread him out and backblade him into nothing but a stain in the mud. In technicolor again, he pictured himself up on the machine, approaching the bar. He dropped his blade and swung into the front of the building.
Blam!
But instead of people running and screaming, instead of chrome-pipe chairs bouncing and scattering off the blade, instead of a sweaty Gordon crying, “He brought his bulldozer!” there was just the kid under the gun again, crying without trying to wipe his face.

“I got to do it,” Joe said suddenly in a strained voice. He thought, what right have I to horn in on them? and replied instantly, I can just ask for my change.

Ahead of him the lurid neon over the bar made the street and
housefronts alternately blood and black, blood and black. He crossed over toward it and stumbled on the curbstone. His heart was pounding so hard that he had to catch his breath in between beats. He went in.

There were not many people left. He thought suddenly, maybe they’ve gone. He craned his neck toward the booths and instantly saw Bette’s beacon of hair.

He wiped his palms on the sides of his trousers. The waitress was behind the bar. Maybe she’d have the change. Maybe he wouldn’t have to ask Gordon at all. He went over to her. She looked tireder than she had before.

“I gave you ten dollars for a Cuba libre and a Coke a while back,” he said. “I was sitting over there. Have you got the change?”

“Oh—you’re the feller ordered and then went out. Was that your ten? I give the change to your friend there. Ask him about it.”

“Thanks.” Joe swallowed. “I—I guess I will.” He looked at the waitress. She was numbly mopping the bar with a grey towel. “I’ll go ask him about it right now.” It didn’t seem to make any difference to her; she just went on mopping. “Yes,” said Joe. “Well, thanks.”

He walked away from the bar. Maybe he ought to have a little drink first. As the thought occurred to him it was canceled by a reaction against any more stalling that jolted him to his ankles. He was trembling ever so slightly, all over, when he walked back to the booths.

I’ll just say “Hi,” easy-like, he told himself. But when he got there he couldn’t say anything at all. He put his hands down on the table and leaned on them. He looked at Gordon and wished that little muscle in his cheek would stop twitching.

“Well, will you look what crept in!” said Gordon. “What do
you
want?”

“My money,” whispered Joe. He cleared his throat. “My money,” he said.

“You lose some money?” Gordon nudged Bette. “He lost his money.”

“Better forget it, kid,” said Bette.

Joe said, “I left ten dollars here to pay for drinks.”

“That’s your hard luck,” said Gordon. “I don’t know nothing about it. Why’n’t you save yourself some bad trouble and beat it?

“Give it to me.”

“Look, son—ain’t it worth ten bucks to you to keep me from feeding you your teeth? How’re you gonna prove anything?”

Joe was suddenly certain that his mouth would form just one more statement before it dried up altogether. He said the only thing that would come into his mind. “Give it to me.”

Gordon carefully and ostentatiously adjusted his heavy signet ring. Joe became fearfully aware of what that big ring could do. “I guess I gotta give it to him,” said Gordon. He got up and stepped so close to Joe that Joe could smell the liquor on his breath. “Now get outta here,” rasped Gordon. He put his open palm against Joe’s face and shoved.

Joe stepped backwards, his arms flailing for balance, until his knees brought up against a chair, and he fell over it backwards and crashed to the floor on his head and shoulders. He rolled over and tried to get up. Gordon stepped over and kicked him in the stomach, and when he put his hands down, kicked him in the head.

It made a noise inside his head like nothing he had ever heard. Just
blam!
and then the whole world was full of roiling smoke. It began to clear, and he became conscious of a bleating noise—the waitress. He raised his head and looked past the thick columns of Gordon’s legs, and saw Bette’s face. She was not saying, “Oh, Joe, my Joe …” She was smiling, with her mouth half open. He could see almost all her upper teeth. She was smiling at Gordon.

Gordon stepped back as he got to his knees and then to his feet. “You kicked me,” he said inanely, and then rushed.

He felt his hands close around Gordon’s forearms. They felt almost squashy in his grip. He forgot all about dream-fights, movie and TV fights, the one-two, the feint and duck and right cross. He bent Gordon’s arms until the square hands were fluttering under the baby chin, and he bore down with all the power that ten hours a day pulling steering clutches can give. Gordon went to his knees. “Money,” said Joe. He pulled Gordon back on his feet, released his arms, grabbed a handful of hair and hauled Gordon’s head back until he could see
the skin on the pink throat stretching. Holding him like that, he swung at Gordon’s jaw, cheek, nose, eye, mouth, jaw. He kept swinging until Bette screamed. Then he let go, and Gordon came down and over and around his feet like something dumped out of a truck.

The waitress was saying, “Stop it! Stop it!” Joe said, to his own astonishment, “You stop it. You’re making all the racket,” and went over to Bette. “I want my money,” he said.

“I got it,” she said. “Gosh, Joe, we were only having fun with you.” She opened her pocketbook and took out a ten, the whole ten, and put it on the table. Joe picked it up and slid it into his wallet, and took out a dollar and gave it to the waitress. “Throw some water on him,” he said.

Bette looked at the feebly stirring figure on the floor. “You didn’t need to get mad like that,” she said. “Now when he comes to he’s going to take it out on me. I’m gettin’ out of here.” She walked off.

Joe found his hat, picked it up, dusted it off, put it on. Bette was waiting for him outside on the sidewalk. The blinking neon did strange things to the color of her hair.

“Are you going my way?” she asked him, holding his arm.

“What’s your way?”

She pointed. He shook his head. She said, “I could go the other way.”