First Blood

The old lady behind the counter had her white head cocked to one side, puzzled.

'Oh yeah, Merle, and while you're fixing that stuff, how about a fast coffee,' Teasle said.

'Whatever you like, Wilfred,' she said, still puzzled, and went to pour the coffee.

That left Rambo looking at the mirror at Teasle looking at him. Teasle had an American Legion pin opposite the badge on his shirt. I wonder which war, Rambo thought. You're just a bit young for the second one.

He swung round on his stool and faced him. 'Korea?' he said, pointing at the pin.

'That's right,' Teasle said flatly.

And they went on watching each other.

Rambo shifted his eyes down to Teasle's left side and the handgun he wore. It was a surprise, not the standard police revolver but a semi-automatic pistol, and from the big handle Rambo decided it was a Browning 9 millimeter. He had used a Browning once himself. The handle was big because it held a clip of thirteen bullets instead of the seven or eight that most pistols held. You couldn't slam a man flat on his back with one shot from it, but you could sure hurt him bad, and two more would finish him, and you still had ten more shots for anybody else around. Rambo had to admit that Teasle carried it awfully well, too. Teasle was five foot six, maybe seven, and for a smallish man that big pistol ought to have hung awkward, but it didn't. You have to be pretty large to get a grip on that big handle though, Rambo thought. And then he looked at Teasle's hands, amazed at the size of them.

'I warned you about that staring,' Teasle said. Leaning against the juke box, he unstuck his wet shirt from his chest. Left-handed, he took a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket, lit it, snapping the wood match he had used in half, then snickered, shaking his head in amusement as he walked over to the counter and smiled strangely down at Rambo on the stool. 'Well, you sure put one over on me, didn't you?' he said.

'I wasn't trying to.'

'Of course not. Of course you weren't. But you sure put one over on me just the same, didn't you?'

The old lady set Teasle's coffee down and faced Rambo. 'How do you want your burgers? Plain or dragged through the garden?'

'What?'

'Plain or with fixings?'

'With lots of onion.'

'Whatever you like.' She went off to fry the hamburgers.

'Yeah, you really did,' Teasle said to him and smiled strangely again. 'You really put one over.' He frowned at the dirty cotton bulging from a rip in the stool next to Rambo and sat reluctantly. 'I mean, you act like you're smart. And you talk like you're smart, so I naturally assumed you got the idea. But then you come dragging back here and fool me, and that's enough to make a man wonder if maybe you're not smart at all. Is there something wrong with you? Is that what it is?'

'I'm hungry.'

'Well, that just doesn't interest me at all,' Teasle said, drawing on his cigarette. It had no filter and after he exhaled, he picked off bits of tobacco that were stuck to his lips and tongue. 'A fellow like you, he ought to have brains to carry a lunch with him. You know, for when he has some emergency, like you have now.'

He lifted the cream pitcher to pour into his coffee, but then he noticed the bottom of the pitcher, and his mouth went sour at the yellow curds that were clinging there. 'You need a job?' he asked quietly.

'No.'

Then you already got a job.'

'No, I don't have a job either. I don't want a job.'

'That's called being a vagrant.'

'Call it whatever the hell you want.'

Teasle's hand slammed like a shot on the counter. 'You watch your mouth!'

Everyone in the place jerked his head toward Teasle. He looked around at them, and smiled as if he had said something funny, and leaned close to the counter to sip his coffee. 'That'll give them something to talk about.' He smiled and took another draw on his cigarette, picking more specks of tobacco off his tongue. The joke was over. 'Listen, I don't get it. That rig of yours, the clothes and hair and all. Didn't you know when you came back down the main street out there you'd stand out like some black man? My crew radioed in about you five minutes after you got back.'

'What took them so long?'

'The mouth,' Teasle said. 'I warned you.'

He looked like he was ready to say more, but then the old lady brought Rambo a half-full paper bag and said, 'Buck thirty-one.'

'For what? For that little bit?'

'You said you wanted the fixings.'

'Just pay her,' Teasle said.

She held onto the bag until Rambo gave her the money.

'O. K., let's go,' Teasle said.

'Where?'

'Where I take you.' He emptied his cup in four quick swallows and put down a quarter. Thanks, Merle.' Everybody looked at the two of them as they walked to the door.

'Almost forgot,' Teasle said. 'Hey, Merle, one more thing. How about cleaning the bottom on that cream pitcher.'

3

The cruiser was directly outside. 'Get in,' Teasle said, tugging at his sweaty shirt. 'Damn, for the first of October it sure is hot. I don't know how you tolerate wearing that hot jacket.'

'I don't sweat.'

Teasle looked at him. 'Sure you don't.' He dropped his cigarette down a manhole grate by the curb, and they got into the cruiser. Rambo watched the traffic and the people going past. In the bright sun after the dark lunch counter, his eyes hurt. One man walking by the cruiser waved to Teasle, and Teasle waved back, then pulled away from the curb into a break in traffic. He was driving fast this time.

They went down past a hardware store and a used car lot and old men smoking cigars on benches and women pushing children in strollers.

'Look at those women,' Teasle said. 'A hot day like this and they don't have the sense to keep their kids indoors.'

Rambo did not bother looking. He just closed his eyes and leaned back. When he opened them, the cruiser was speeding up the road between the two cliffs, up onto the level where the stunted corn drooped in the fields, past the YOU ARE NOW LEAVING MADISON sign. Teasle stopped the car abruptly on the gravel shoulder and turned to him.

'Now get it clear,' he said. 'I don't want a kid who looks like you and doesn't have a job in my town. First thing I know, a bunch of your friends will show up, mooching food, maybe stealing, maybe pushing drugs. As it is, I've half a notion to lock you up for the inconvenience you've caused me. But the way I see it, a kid like you, he's entitled to a mistake. It's like your judgment's not as developed as an older man's and I have to make allowances. But you come back again and I'll fix you so you won't know whether your asshole's bored, bunched, or pecked out by crows. Is that plain enough for you to understand? Is that clear?'

Rambo grabbed hold of the lunch sack and his sleeping bag and got out of the car.

'I asked you a question,' Teasle said out the open passenger door. 'I want to know if you heard me tell you not to come back.'

'I heard you,' Rambo said, flipping the door shut.

'Then dammit, do what you hear you're told!'

Teasle stomped on the gas pedal and the cruiser lurched off the road shoulder, gravel flying, onto the smooth hot pavement. He made a severe U-turn, tires squealing, and sped back toward town. This time he did not sound his car horn going past.

Rambo watched the cruiser get smaller and disappear down the hill between the two cliffs, and when he could no longer see it, he glanced around at the fields of corn and the mountains in the distance and the white sun in [?missing page 15?] and then he was decided. He grabbed the rope on his sleeping bag, slung it around his shoulder and started hiking into Madison again.

At the bottom of the hill into town, trees lined the road, half-green, half-red, the red leaves always on the branches that hung over the road. From exhaust fumes, he thought. Exhaust fumes kill them early.