Jimmy Wing looked directly into Elmo’s eyes for a long moment. “Thanks,” he said.
“What for?”
“I wasn’t sure I was getting to you. How can you be sure I’m not out of my mind, Elmo? Your friends kicked me in the head that first time. How do you know I give a damn who you rough up?”
Elmo tilted his head and stared straight up in helpless exasperation. “What do you want from me? Just get off my back, will you?”
“Can’t you figure out what I want?”
“I would be humbly grateful to know.”
“I had to come back from Jacksonville to fight you, Elmo. I’ve been fighting you. I’m wearing the marks of it. But I’d rather fight you in a way I know more about. I had my gun taken away from me, so I have to use rocks and sticks.”
Elmo’s mouth hung open for a moment. “You want me to get you back onto the paper!”
“I think we’d both be happier.”
“But I couldn’t swing that, Jimmy boy. Not now.”
“Not alone, but you can push the people who can. Shannard, Lander, Lesser, Cable, Killian... want more names?”
“But they’d figure me for a damn fool!”
“You aren’t looking too good lately anyhow, Elmo. You heard any of those little verses people have learned by heart? I make them very simple, very easy to remember. ‘A man in a house built by Bliss/Has one comfort he surely will miss./When the rain starts to come, he...’ ”
“I had an idea you were making those up.”
“If I was back on the paper, I wouldn’t have time.”
“Hell, they don’t bother me. They’re good advertising.”
“Got a lot of new contracts lately?”
“Honest to God, Wing, you got more brass than sense. How can you expect me to get you back into a spot where...”
Jimmy Wing opened the truck door and got out. He held the door open and turned and said, “I don’t expect a thing, Elmo. You gutted me, like a trash fish. But I got over it. I healed up. You had no way of knowing I would. So I’ll be on your back as long as we both shall live. And I’ll be thinking of new ways to turn you into a clown. So play it your way or my way, whichever you think will work out best for you. You’re half the size you were last summer. And one day it will be half that, and then halved again. And it’s too late now to have me killed because the whole county will know it’s because you couldn’t stand having people laugh at you. People never forget that kind of weakness.”
He slammed the truck door and began walking toward the corner.
On the evening of February tenth, at twenty minutes after nine, Jimmy Wing drove to Kat Hubble’s house in a borrowed car, marched to the front door and knocked. The entrance light went on. She opened the door and stared out at him through the screen.
“Jimmy! Won’t... won’t you come in?”
“Just for a minute.”
As he moved into the light he saw her expression change, saw her bite her lip. “Children no longer scream and run,” he said, “so it must be improving.”
“I heard about the times it happened. But I didn’t know it was...”
“They like to mark you. It’s an expression of outraged opinion.”
“Will you sit down? Can I fix you a drink?”
“No drink, thanks.”
“People say you... went down there expecting to be beaten.”
“Let’s say I didn’t expect to win any fights down there.”
“Wasn’t that... a little childish, Jimmy?”
“Of course. A child has to find out if it is brave. It has to find out if it can cling to the things it wants to believe in. So I have a restyled nose, and some lasting lumps and a partial bridge and a slight impairment of vision in the left eye. But the childishness is intact.”
“You’ve changed in other ways.”
“Maybe. I can’t tell yet.”
“And you sit looking at me as if you’re sort of defying me.”
“That isn’t the impression I want to give. It wasn’t easy to come here. Maybe that’s what shows. Anyhow, you know about the paper.”
“That’s all I heard all day, Jimmy. It’s truly fantastic.”
“I saw you a dozen times. But I went around corners and ducked across streets. Once you were at the Burger Den with the kids. In a booth at the left. I was supposed to bring a rack of glasses out of the kitchen and stow them under the counter, but I saw you through the porthole in the door and I didn’t want to have you see me. Pride, I guess. I wanted to wait until I could see you on my terms. Like now. Like being back on the paper.”
“How could it happen? Everybody was making guesses today. Some of them were wild.”
“Sometime maybe I can tell you about it, about how it happened. If you want to know. If you have any interest in knowing. But I can’t tell you now. Not because it’s a secret. There’s another reason. If I tried to tell you now, I might start to cry. That’s pretty silly, I guess. I told myself I didn’t give a damn. Then when it worked out, I realized today just how much I wanted it. I was on the edge without knowing it.”
“Some day I’d like to know, Jimmy.”
“All I want you to know, as of now, it isn’t any kind of a deal.”
“When I heard, I wondered about that. But I don’t wonder any more. You... belong to yourself, don’t you?”
“I think so. I hope that’s the way it is. A funny thing. I understand Brian Haas better. I’ve got the same disease in a different form. So neither of us are going to be totally sure, ever. My escape routes were less obvious, that’s all.”
He stood up abruptly. “I just wanted you to know I got straightened out, Kat.”
“I’m glad to know.”
“But I don’t want you to think it’s like the last time I talked to you, asking you if there was any new place for us to start, asking because I’d bitched it so badly I wanted a chance to repair my own self-esteem.”
“Neither of us did very well.”
She had gone to the door with him. He looked at her with a speculative expression. “But it was two other people. Or is that just a rationalization?”
“I... I don’t think so. Two other people, Jimmy.” She walked out toward the car with him, hugging herself against the night chill, her shoulders slightly hunched.
“But even so, Kat, your good opinion is important.”
“You have it, for goodness sake! I can’t set myself up as a judge. I try to sometimes. But I shouldn’t.”
“Well... I’ll see you around. How come you didn’t rent the house?”
“I got a small raise and figured I could swing it this year.”
“I guess the kids are glad of that.”
“Oh yes.”
“Say hello for me.”
“I will.”
He got into the car and rolled the window down. She looked in at him. “I’ve got a late lunch hour now, so I take the coffee break about eleven-fifteen.”
“Same place?”
“Yes. Anytime you happen to be downtown...”
“Thanks, Kat.”
“Good night, Jimmy.”
On the way back toward town he pulled the borrowed car off the road and parked near the bay-fill project. He walked down to the bay front and stood by the water and looked out at the dredges. Both of them were working, both brilliant against the black night in the glare of their floodlights. They made a vast wet gnashing grinding roar. He lit a cigarette. He could see tiny figures moving through the lights on the furthest one.