Tornado Pratt (12 page)

But I gazed straight down into the canyon. Streams of insects crawled along its bottom, oblong ones in the middle going faster than the dots at the sides. And something was wrong with the flow. The streams weren’t moving evenly as they should be.
Immediately
below me was a disturbance, a little vortex, and I could guess at the red, shapeless thing that marked its centre.

So why? I can fit this or that explanation to the facts but none of them are snug. About five years later, I heard by chance that Roach had been Vasari’s boy-friend and that the big man, trying to go erotically straight as he did from time to time, had given the little man the push. Fits—to some extent—but it’s not snug. Always there are pockets at the edges and the only thing I’ve had to fill them with is guilt. Did I, in some crazy, American way, murder
Pony Roach? Okay, Horace, I admit I never lost a lot of sleep over it. For maybe five years, after the initial shock, I never even thought about it much. But nothing gets lost and a lifetime is long enough to chew out all the juices, bitter and sweet, of every mouthful of living.

So then—something was going on and—there was—something—Give me a boost, boy! I—yeah, it’s coming back. Those hard years. Did I—yeah, I did, didn’t I? Tell you about Wheatear? This tramp I knocked about with—that’s not true, Horace. It was more than that. When I walked out of Chicago—and I
walked
out—after having my eschatological revelation—look it up—I was
death-bound
. I was heading for the lip of night, seeking my slab because I had concluded that I was pollution. Nat had turned into an angel in my recollection and although the living girl had been sunshine and wings, she’d been human too, Horace. With faults. Not a bright nucleus decked in human form. But when I
contemplated
Tornado Pratt, making money and squeezed dry of love, I wanted to escape him. And hand me this, boy. I’ve got guts because I stuck it for several years and I never did go back to my fortune. I made another one—but that was later.

When I walked out of Chicago, the only plan I had was to stay away for at least a year. I figured that would be long enough to atone. I walked out through an endless slum, with cats sniffing in the garbage. Grey-faced wrecks were clustered around steaming barrows, fingering dimes and gazing hungrily at the knishes and hot dogs. Jubilant kids danced around with slabs of pizza and orange sodas, kicking out at smaller kids who begged for a share. I saw one girl of about twelve, in a red dress, clutching a popsicle and spitting repeatedly at a grimy infant trotting hopefully beside her. Junkies, coke-heads, every kind of mind-twisted derelict was milling in that crowd. Winos were stretched puking in the gutter with rats tugging at their fly buttons. In second-floor windows grim black whores, in low-cut dresses, sat clucking invitations. Hustlers and hoods breasted the throng, trawling with outstretched claws for graft. And from that maggot heap of American citizens issued unending yells of: “dirty Kike!” “lousy Mick!” “stinking Polack!” “goddamn Wop!”

A week later I was sitting in the town square of a little place in Kentucky and down to my last five bucks. Just then a guy asked me for five bucks. He was a strong, good-looking man with a
brown, bushy beard, buckskin pants and blue t-shirt and he just said:

“Could you spare five dollars?”

Hell of a funny thing, Horace, but when he said that I felt a flicker of panic. Five bucks! All the money I had in the world. I saw myself stretched in a ditch while the rain drummed down. I saw myself reduced, by hunger, to crawling along the highway, too feeble to dodge traffic. I asked:

“Why five dollars?”

“Oh, I can give you a receipt for it. I can prove my address. It’s up in Massachusetts.”

“Why’d you ask for five dollars? Why that amount?”

“That’s what I need to make up my bus fare.”

He explained that he worked on a farm up North and some family concern had brought him spinning down South and he hadn’t left himself enough to get back. He just wanted a loan of five bucks. My panic abated and a light-hearted feeling infused me. This was the chance to take the plunge.

“It so happens I can oblige you, stranger.”

And I handed him my last five bucks. I gave him a phoney name and address for the IOU but I took down his real address, figuring it just might come in useful. Besides, I had a feeling of respect for that guy, even after ten minutes conversation. Perhaps, one day I’d offer him a job—then I smiled, Horace, because the businessman inside me just wouldn’t lie down.

But he took quite a beating over the next week. I didn’t exactly starve and I didn’t quite get drowned in a ditch but I lived pretty rough. I ate yams, tugged from the fields, and bread bought with the odd quarter I earned chopping wood and sweeping.

Then one day, I was hungry and hot and there was nothing to be seen but fields and trees and I thought to myself: what the hell am I trying to prove? I can get by. I’ve already proved that. So why stick it for a year and maybe get some skin disease (as a kid I’d seen a horrible picture of lepers) and ruin my life? And then I thought of the house in Chicago and a whole cascade of enticing memories followed: of Paris and London, of good friends who’d welcome me to their opulent estates and ranches, of glamourous restaurants, of sleek swimming pools and—I started to walk faster. I figured I’d make it to the next town, phone Harvey collect and get him to cable me a thousand bucks and then I’d head for home.

I walked so fast, breaking into a run now and then, that I wore myself out and by the time I came in sight of the town, I was
bushed. So I sat down for a minute, under a tree, to get my breath and after I’d been sitting there a spell I heard a funny sound. It made me jump because it was so weird, and I reached down for my stick. I imagined that it was the panting of a wild animal. What animal? Wolf? Wildcat? But there was nothing savage in this neck of the woods. Maybe it was a big mad dog—I backed away easy and when I could see between the bushes I saw that it was a man. He was laid face down on the ground and sobbing. The whistle of his breath had made me think of an animal panting. What the hell!

I eased up to him. He was a big guy, nearly as big as me but maybe five years younger. He looked like a bum with long, matted brown hair and that’s all I could see. I asked:

“Anything wrong?”

And that made him freeze. He stopped sobbing and he stopped breathing. For what seemed a long time he just lay there still as a corpse. I squatted down beside him, reached out and touched his shoulder, saying:

“Hey—”

And he turned into a wildcat. He rolled over and, in the same movement, jack-knifed his legs and propelled himself at me. It was so sudden, I went down on my back with him on top and the next minute we were struggling like enemies. I saw trees whipping past and then I was eating dirt. I heaved and felt him give. I squirmed round and jumped on him. Then, hugging like lovers, we rolled into some weeds. Soon, I realized something. He was fighting like a machine but he wasn’t trying to hurt me. He’d had a couple of chances to swing hard but instead he’d just shaken me. I, on the other hand, had connected solidly with his face, squirting a moan out of him. It was clear that I had a big edge. I was heavier and stronger so I just settled for gradually working him beneath me until finally I was crouched on his chest, my knees on his biceps and my hands pinning his lower arms and, very wisely, he yielded and his body relaxed. I looked down on a very winning face,
tanned
, intelligent, somewhat lined but youthful. In spite of his long hair, he was clean shaven. I asked:

“Are you crazy?”

He shook his head.

“If I let you up, will you jump me again?”

Again he shook his head. So I waited a moment, to see if he’d tense up, and then I jumped to my feet ready for any further
attack. But he kept his word. He sat up and shrugged. But he didn’t seem as if he was going to speak. So I asked:

“You always greet people like that?”

“I never done that before.”

“Then what was it all about?”

“I guess I meant to hurt you—for once.”

“How do you mean ‘for once’? I’ve never seen you before.”

“I wanted to hurt someone. I got mad. I guess maybe that’s the first time I ever really got mad. You know something—that’s the first fight I ever had.”

That seemed pretty incredible. He continued:

“I mean, normally I just get picked on. I’m always getting picked on.”

He started to breathe deep again and I could see that sobs were near. I suddenly sensed what a gentle spirit this was. I said soothingly:

“Tell me about it.”

“I was just—I guess—desperate. I think maybe I was hoping you’d kill me.”

“Now, look here, youngster, don’t blaspheme. The gift of life is not something to be treated lightly.”

“Maybe not for you.”

“Not for anyone. Why I’ve never known a man who was talked out of committing suicide and who didn’t live to thank the Lord for the happiness that later came to him. So you see, son, even when things seem blackest—”

Which must be some kind of horseshit out of a movie.
That
wasn’t how I met Austin Turner. Then how did I meet him? What the hell does it matter? If I say that’s how I met him, then that’s how it was. Who can contradict me? And if someone did contradict me—say, maybe, Austin is still around and finds out I said I met him in a particular way and contradicts it in public—so what? Suppose he claims I met him on the back of a truck, that doesn’t make it true. It’s just words. Even if we did meet on the back of a truck, when he says we met there it’s just an invention exactly the way it is when I say we met having a fight. Except that I know we didn’t meet that way. What does it matter how we met? Suppose I said I saved him from a mad dog—shit! That’s how we
did
meet! Except it wasn’t a mad dog, but just a mutt. Now I’ve got it straight.

I was walking along this poky street in a dust and clapboard town and I thought: I am going to have a beer! Not boozing.
No sir! I am thirsty. I have got a half a dollar and I am going to have a thirst-quenching beer and while I am slurping it
luxuriously
down I am going to debate with myself whether to can this cock-eyed project. So I was approaching this sign—not a neon sign but just blue paint on a shit-brown board saying BEER—when I heard this growling and yapping and there’s Austin backing away from a porch with this lousy mongrel cur crouched snarling at him. And I could tell Austin was jelly with fear. So I called:

“Take it easy.”

And I slipped the latch, went through the lath gate and spoke to the animal until I had that mutt wagging his tail and friendly. Then I grinned at Austin and said:

“Don’t let them see you’re scared!”

“But, Christ! I am scared. Anyway—thanks.”

Now we were on the sidewalk again. I asked:

“Why’d you go in there anyway?”

“Looking for work—or a handout.”

“Broke?”

“You said it.”

“Could you use a beer?”

He said “yeah” but I could tell he wasn’t enthusiastic. I caught on.

“Are you hungry?”

He nodded. So I took him into the joint and I had a beer and Austin ate some kind of corn pudding and hog meat and we hit it off. No doubt about it.

So then for the next few months we were buddies. We worked on farms and in lousy factories. We walked and hitch-hiked. We slept in flea-jumping rooms in one-horse towns and we slept rough out in the open and we talked about women and books, because he’d read a surprising amount for someone whose father had been a drunken truck driver who ended up crushed to whisky-scented gore in his cab. But the theme we always came back to was cowardice. Because I could not shake Austin’s conviction that he was a coward.

“Then how come,” he’d ask, bewildered, “I’m so scared?”

“Because you’re not a muscle-mad phoney, like most of them.”

“Like you.”

I had to admit that I didn’t share his shrinking from physical encounters. But it made me feel like a hypocrite, like I was
pretending
that qualities I had were negligible in order to comfort him. And, although I came to respect that guy as much as almost
anyone I ever met, I treated him badly in the end and perhaps I did despise him—just a little.

“Practically the first thing I can remember,” Austin explained, “is kids trying to pick fights with me. It’s funny how quick they caught on that I was mush inside.”

“Did your pa used to beat you?”

“No. He’d lash out sometimes but he was mostly too drunk to connect. I wasn’t scared of Pa—that wasn’t what started it. I’m just different.”

“You never had a fight?”

“Oh, sure—how you going to dodge them? But I never willingly had a fight and I always went to fantastic lengths to try and avoid them. And I never won a fight.”

“How come?”

“I dunno. Because I’m a coward, I guess.”

“Hell, you’re always saying that. Just what the hell do you understand by a coward?”

“Well, you saw me with that dog—that’s how I am about everything—everything threatening—every danger—makes me practically crap myself—”

But, you see, Horace, I’d already been ambling with Austin for a couple of weeks and I hadn’t been propping up a quaking jelly. He was just as bold as I was in our daily life and he’d do one or two things that made me hesitate. For instance, he shined up to the top of a pine to try and pick out a landmark we needed. I can climb too but I reckoned I’d have been a bit queasy way up on that flaky bole. Then he didn’t show any fear of machines. We worked for a spell in a real primitive little machine shop which was a kind of huge cat’s cradle of whizzing belts. I picked my way about with care but Austin skipped around.

So I said firmly: “Okay, let’s get this straight—let’s just break its back once and for all. Describe exactly—in detail—how you feel when some bozo muscles up on you.”

“It’s not—”

“Now come on—try!”

He sighed but then he went ahead and tried.

“I get gut-scared. I can feel his fist smashing into my eye and maybe crushing the eyeball, leaving me blind. I feel his knee jerking up into my balls, hammering the future out of me in a welter of sickening pain. I can practically see the tender things inside me—the liver, say, or the lungs—getting bruised and bleeding under the hammering. I hear the eerie snap of bones and imagine my
brain crashing back and forth against my skull. It just seems—crazy! It seems crazy to me, Tornado, to do that to someone. Hell, our bodies are amazing. They tell us it’s taken millions of years of evolution to build them and then we go and batter away at them as if they were sand-bags. I think we should revere the body and treat it gently.”