My god, I thought, I am in the wrong place! We stood and took the pledge, but I stopped after "I pledge allegiance…" I didn't say to what.
We sat down. Larry started talking from behind the desk. He explained that since this was the first meeting, he would preside. After two or three meetings, after we got to know one another, a president could be elected if we wished. But meanwhile…
"We face here, in America, two threats to our liberty. We face the communist scourge.and the black takeover. Most often they work hand in hand. We true Americans will gather here in an attempt to counter this scourge, this menace. It has gotten so that no decent white girl can walk the streets anymore without being accosted by a black male!"
Igor leaped up. "We'll kill them!"
"The communists want to divide the wealth for which we have worked so long, which our fathers labored for, and their fathers before them worked for. The communists want to give our money to every black man, homo, bum, murderer and child molester who walks our streets!"
"We'll kill them!"
"They must be stopped."
"We'll arm!"
"Yes, we'll arm! And we'll meet here and formulate a master plan to save America!"
The fellows cheered. Two or three of them yelled, "Heil Hitler!" Then the get-to-know-each-other time arrived.
Larry passed out cold beers and we stood around in little groups talking, not much being said, except we reached a general agreement that we needed target practice so that we would be expert with our guns when the time came.
When we got back to Igor's house his parents didn't seem to be about, either, Igor got out a frying pan, put in four cubes of butter, and began to melt them. He took the rum, put it in a large pot and warmed it up.
"This is what men drink," he said. Then he looked at Baldy.
"Are you a man, Baldy?"
Baldy was already drunk. He stood very straight, hands down at his sides. "YES, I'M A MAN!" He started to weep. The tears came rolling down. "I'M A MAN!" He stood very straight and yelled, "HEIL HITLER!" the tears rolling. Igor looked at me. "Are you a man?"
"I don't know. Is that rum ready?"
"I'm not sure I trust you. I'm not so sure that you are one of us. Are you a counter-spy? Are you an enemy agent?"
"No."
"Are you one of us?"
"I don't know. Only one thing I'm sure of."
"What's that?"
"I don't like you. Is the rum ready?"
" You see?" said Baldy. "I told you he was mean!"
"We'll see who is the meanest before the night is ended," said Igor.
Igor poured the melted butter into the boiling rum, then shut off the flame and stirred. I didn't like him but he certainly was different and I liked that. Then he found three drinking cups, large, blue, with Russian writing on them. He poured the buttered rum into the cups.
"O.K.,"he said, "drink up!"
"Shit, it's about time," I said and I let it slide down. It was a little too hot and it stank.
I watched Igor drink his. I saw his little pea eyes over the rim of his cup. He managed to get it down, driblets of golden buttered rum leaking out of the corners of his stupid mouth. He was looking at Baldy. Baldy was standing, staring down into his cup. I knew from the old days that Baldy just didn't have a natural love of drinking.
Igor stared at Baldy. "Drink up!"
"Yes, Igor, yes…"
Baldy lifted the blue cup. He was having a difficult time. It was too hot for him and he didn't like the taste. Half of it ran out of his mouth and over his chin and onto his shirt. His empty cup fell to the kitchen floor.
Igor squared himself in front of Baldy.
"You're not a man!"
"I AM A MAN, IGOR! I AM A MAN!"
"YOU LIE!"
Igor backhanded him across the face and as Baldy's head jumped to one side, he straightened him up with a slap to the other side of his face. Baldy stood at attention with his hands rigidly at his sides.
"I'm… a man..,"
Igor continued to stand in front of him.
"I'll make a man out of you!"
"O.K.," I said to Igor, "leave him alone."
Igor left the kitchen. I poured myself another rum. It was dreadful stuff but it was all there was.
Igor walked back in. He was holding a gun, a real one, an old sixshooter.
"We will now play Russian roulette," he announced.
"Your mother's ass," I said.
"I'll play, Igor," said Baldy, "I'll play! I'm a man! "
"All right," said Igor, "there is one bullet in the gun. I will spin the chamber and hand the gun to you."
Igor spun the chamber and handed the gun to Baldy. Baldy took it and pointed it at his head. "I'm a man… I'm a man… I'll do it!"
He began crying again. "I'll do it… I'm a man…"
Baldy let the muzzle of the gun slip away from his temple. He pointed it away from his skull and pulled the trigger. There was a click.
Igor took the gun, spun the chamber and handed it to me. I handed it back.
"You go first."
Igor spun the chamber, held the gun up to the light and looked through the chamber. Then he put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. There was a click.
"Big deal," I said. "You checked the chamber to see where the bullet was."
Igor spun the chamber and handed the gun to me. "Your turn…"
I handed the gun back. "Stuff it," I told him. I walked over to pour myself another rum. As I did there was a shot. I looked down. Near my foot, in the kitchen floor, there was a bullet hole. I turned around.
"You ever point that thing at me again and I'll kill you, Igor."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
He stood there smiling. He slowly began to raise the gun. I waited. Then he lowered the gun. That was about it for the night. We went out to the car and Igor drove us home. But we stopped first at Westlake Park and rented a boat and went out on the lake to finish off the rum. With the last drink, Igor loaded up the gun and shot holes in the bottom of the boat. We were forty yards from shore and had to swim in…
It was late when I got home. I crawled over the old berry bush and through the bedroom window. I undressed and went to bed while in the next room my father snored.
53
I was coming home from classes down Westview hill. I never had any books to carry. I passed my exams by listening to the class lectures and by guessing at the answers. I never had to cram for exams. I could get my "C's." And as I was coming down the hill I ran into a giant spider web. I was always doing that. I stood there pulling the sticky web from myself and looking for the spider. Then I saw him: a big fat black son-of-a-bitch. I crushed him. I had learned to hate spiders. When I went to hell I would be eaten by a spider.
All my life, in that neighborhood, I had been walking into spider webs, I had been attacked by blackbirds, I had lived with my father. Everything was eternally dreary, dismal, damned. Even the weather was insolent and bitchy. It was either unbearably hot for weeks on end, or it rained, and when it rained it rained for five or six days. The water came up over the lawns and poured into the houses. Who'd ever planned the drainage system had probably been well paid for his ignorance about such matters.
And my own affairs were as bad, as dismal, as the day I had been born. The only difference was that now I could drink now and then, though never often enough. Drink was the only thing that kept a man from feeling forever stunned and useless. Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and careful, all alike. And I've got to live with these fuckers for the rest of my life, I thought. God, they all had assholes and sexual organs and their mouths and their armpits. They shit and they chattered and they were dull as horse dung. The girls looked good from a distance, the sun shining through their dresses, their hair. But get up close and listen to their minds running out of their mouths, you felt like digging in under a hill and hiding out with a tommy-gun. I would certainly never be able to be happy, to get married, I could never have children. Hell, I couldn't even get a job as a dishwasher.