I was going to say hello but John overtook him, now, ruffling at the boy’s hair, and said, “Kid, I haven’t seen you around for a long time.” His hands were just as clean, but his blanket-vest looked like he’d actually done something in it since the last I’d seen.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
John gave a tepid grin. “About as well as it can, I guess.”
I felt something was wrong; as if I was looking at a place I didn’t recognize but should—or did recognize, even though I’d never seen it.
“Kid!” which was Milly.
They went on talking without giving me a chance to introduce the others, which I thought was silly, but Milly and John did things that way. Talking the most, Milly stepped forward over a sleeping bag where an older guy sat up and began to rub his glasses on the tail of a Sweet-Orr workshirt.
Then I figured, fuck it, they better know who everybody was so I just said, loud enough to make them stop talking: “This is Cathedral. And this is…” going down the line. While I was doing that, I saw this guy walk into the clearing with a gun under one arm—which was what started the fight.
And which, after going through all this, I don’t really feel like describing again because I’ve been over it with so many people at the bar and at the nest already. Lady of Spain was all enthusiastic and kept asking where the guy was from. John and Milly I think were going to say they didn’t know, but Jommy said he was from the Goddamn downtown department store, and Milly said, “You don’t know he’s from the Emboriky for certain” and Jommy said, Shit, he knew, and that they’d already run them from one side of the damn park to the other; which I didn’t even know about.
“Man,” John said, beating my shoulder and grinning, “You’re really crazy, Kid; you’re really crazy…” He shook his head, laughing like something was very funny. “Man!”
“You want the carton?” Milly was saying. “We should give that food to them. John. We used to give food to Nightmare.”
“Shit,” Priest said. “We got a whole cellar full of food.”
“Come on,” I said. “Come on, let’s get out of here and leave these poor-ass motherfuckers alone!” Which I delivered right at John (and it went right over his shoulder to Frank who was sitting on the table beside the food carton as if he was guarding it. And you know, all the bastards kept grinning right through). So we left.
Angel kept prancing around and started tugging on me just like John (Priest was carrying the rifle and had started examining it, and I said: “Man, throw that fucker away! You hear me? Throw that fucker away—break it on something, nigger, or I’ll break your black head!” He smashed the stock on a stone, “Yeah!” grunting, and twisted up the firing chamber so it was pretty much beyond use. I said: “That’s no scorpion weapon! A scorpions got a fucking sting! and lifted up my orchid. They liked that) just like John and saying, “Man, you’re something else!”
Second thoughts: Since there’ve been so many repercussions, I should go into it once more just to clear it up for myself. A few things stick with me: like, they had the box of food all ready for him, sitting up on the end of the picnic table (like it used to be for Nightmare). And he was wearing very high-waisted khaki pants, a khaki shirt (army? marine? I don’t think so), and orange construction boots—shirt, pants, and boots all looked brand new. But I couldn’t tell you the color of his hair. Also: the rifle, which I mentioned right off, didn’t strike me as odd at the time. Until he started talking and waving it around and once pointing at the guy still sitting in the sleeping bag. I was going through something about maybe he was some loner friend of theirs like Tak, and had I seen him before; and where? I’ve told a couple of people since that he was somebody I’d met before, to sort of explain that feeling away. I’m not sure now; but for one moment I was certain it was the guy who’d sat in the balcony that night at George’s. But now I’m just as certain (however certain that is) it wasn’t. Cathedral actually moved first—something no one mentions when they talk about it. I thought he was going to take the food carton for himself. I guess the guy did too; that was what made him raise the gun.
What were the dozen people standing around thinking?
What was I thinking?
I grabbed the barrel with one hand and hammered the heel of the other against the stock so hard I thought my wrist had green-sticked. Thinking (all part of the first feeling of displaced familiarity): I’ve done this before…No…I’ve never done this before, but if I’m ever going to, I’ve got to do it now! And if I didn’t get shot in the chest, it was because the guy was too scared or just not used to killing people. For which I’m very glad. I twisted, with my arm on fire, and watched his face go from surprise to pain as his fingers wound in the trigger guard.
The gun cracked! I thought the explosion had happened in my mouth. But the barrel was pointing over my right shoulder. (If you’d asked me then, I would have said I felt the bullet tip my ear—but that’s impossible, I guess.)
The gun dropped/fell/slipped(?) from him; I swung it away, swung it back and wopped it against his hip. He staggered, grunting. He started to come at me, but Lady of Spain grabbed him; then Cathedral.
I hit him again in the stomach with the butt of the gun.
Afterward, John kept saying: “Kid, you’re crazy, man! Man, you’re crazy, Kid!” in a paroxysm of gleeful hysteria, while Cathedral et the five other al kept their shoulders near mine. My thoughts were carbonated (Yes, I shouted after the guy, when he got up and limped away, “Get the fuck out of here and get your own food!” because it was the easiest thing to say that would give what I did a reason; but while everyone was standing there yakking about how tough it was getting hit up for food all the time, and maybe they wouldn’t come back for a while and leave them alone, I kept thinking I should just take the carton of food with me [with the stash under the house we didn’t need it] because we didn’t need it.) but the detritus was: Take it; because that was the only way to make them understand why my reason for doing it was.
I forgot it—the carton.
I was halfway back to the nest with Cathedral and the others going on loudly about how cool the whole thing was when I remembered three times (and forgot) what I’d decided to do. I told them about it, which took a lot of energy to start. But they didn’t understand (“Yeah! Yeah, that’s what we should have done!” from Tarzan; and from Lady of Spain: “That would’ve been all right. They wouldn’t of minded.”) and kept yelling.
I’m not a poet.
I’m not a hero.
But sometimes I think these people will distort reality in any way to make me one. And sometimes I think reality will distort me any way to make me appear one—but that’s insanity, isn’t it? And I don’t want to be crazy again.
I don’t.
“I should have taken their fucking carton.”
“Yeah,” Lady of Spain said. “Yeah. That’s what we should have done.”
Tarzan said: “Yeah. That would have been all right. They wouldn’t have minded.”
“You’re too much,” Priest said again, and Cathedral laughed and shook my shoulder.
They kept it up all the way into the nest. Tarzan and Priest came in with me. Cathedral, Lady of Spain, and Angel got stopped outside where they began to tell the story. Well, I guess that was all right. There were enough people around drunk—a bunch of nonmembers who were apparently friends of Devastation or something, I didn’t care—to absorb it.
I was going down the hall when Denny swung out of the living room and grabbed my arm. “Hey—!” He was really excited.
I thought he was going to say something about what happened in the park. “Hey what?”
He just blinked.
So I started down the hall again.
He followed and said, “Lanya’s in the room, in the loft but—” I looked like I was about to go in—“I think she’s busy.”
So I stopped.
Denny said: “You probably shouldn’t go in.”