When I saw him get out of that car, I knew he was drunk just pig drunk, and when he started that yelling I thought I’d better skedaddle. Now we know he was just back from that time he argued with the pastor on the street, down in Arden. I think the pastor was right in everything he said, next day, and he could have said it even stronger. Red was home from the police station by then — all shook by what he’d seen, of course — and he said, Ma, don’t you go back to that crazy man, I’ve got a few ideas of my own about him, but I said his dollars is as good as anyone else’s, isn’t it? I put that other two dollars under a lamp. Oh, I was going to come back, you can bet on that, he didn’t scare me any. I wanted to keep my eye on him.
We stayed there silently for a moment — oddly, she made me feel as though I was intruding on her. I could see her assessing my condition. To forestall any comment, I said, “I don’t like people in this room. It has to be kept private, mine. Other people louse up the atmosphere.”
“She said she wasn’t supposed to come in here. That’s why I did. It was the only quiet place to wait for you.” She stretched out her blue-jeaned legs. “I didn’t take anything.”
“It’s a question of vibrations.” At least I did not say “vibes.” Alcohol cheapens the vocabulary.
“I don’t feel any vibrations. What do you do in here, anyhow?”
“I’m writing a book.”
“On what?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m stuck anyhow.”
“A book about other books, I bet. Why don’t you write a book about something real? Why don’t you write a book about something fantastic and important that other people can’t even see? About what’s really going down?”
“Did you want to see me about anything in particular?”
“Zack wants to meet you.”
“Swell.”
“I told him about you and he was really interested. I said you were different. He wants to know about your ideas. Zack cares a lot about ideas.”
“I’m not going anywhere today.”
“Not today. Tomorrow around noon. In Arden. Do you know Freebo’s bar?”
“I suppose I could find it on a bright day. Did you hear about another of your pals getting killed?”
“It’s on all the news. Don’t you pay attention to the news?” She blinked, and I saw the fright beneath her pretended indifference.
“Didn’t you know her?”
“Sure I did In Arden you know everybody. Red Sunderson found her body. That’s why old Tula was so touchy this morning. He saw her in a field off Highway 93.”
“Jesus.” I remembered how I had treated her, and then I could feel my face begin to burn.
So the next day I found myself entering the scene of my second disgrace in the company of Alison Updahl. Underage though she was, she sailed through the door as if, given any resistance, she’d knock it down with an ax. By now I of course knew to what extent this was purely a performance, and I admired its perfection. She had more in common with her namesake than I had thought. The bar was nearly empty. Two old men in coveralls sat before nearly full glasses of pale beer at the bar and a man in a black jacket sat at the last booth The same fleshy grayhaired bartender who had been there yesterday leaned against the wall beside the cash register surrounded by the flashing sparkling lights and perpetual waterfalls of beer advertisements. His eves glided over Alison, but he looked at me and nodded.
I followed her to the booth, watching Zack as we went. His eyes flicked back and forth between us and his mouth was a taut line. He appeared to be charged with enthusiasm. He also looked very young. I recognized the type from my youth in Florida — the misfits who had gathered around gas stations, paying great attention to their hair, cherishing their own failure even then dangerous kids, at times. I didn’t know the type was still in style.
“This is him,” said my cousin’s daughter, meaning me.
“Freebo.” Zack said, and nodded to the bartender.
As I sat in the booth facing him I saw that he was older than I had at first taken him for; he was not a teenage but in his twenties, with those wrinkles embedded in his forehead and at the corners of his eyes. He still had that look of displaced, unlocated enthusiasm. It gave a sly cast to his whole character. He made me very uneasy.
“The usual Mr. Teagarden?” asked the bartender, now standing at the side of the booth. Presumably he knew what Zack wanted. He avoided looking at Alison.
“Just a beer,” I said.
“He didn’t look at me again,” said the Woodsman after the bartender had turned away. “That really slays me. He’s afraid of Zack. Otherwise he’d throw me out on my butt.”
I wanted to say: don’t try so hard.
Zack giggled in the best James Dean fashion.
The bartender came back with three beers. Alison’s and mine were in glasses. Zack’s in a tall silver mug.
“Freebo’s thinking of selling this place.” the boy said, grinning at me. “You ought to think about buying it. You could snap it up. Be a good business.”
I remembered this too: the ridiculous testing. He smelled of carbon paper. Carbon paper and machine oil. “For someone else. I’m about as businesslike as a kangaroo.”
The Woodsman grinned: I was proving whatever it was she’d said about me.
“Far out. Listen. I think we could talk.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re unusual. Don’t you think unusual people have something in common? Don’t you think they share things?”
“Like Jane Austen and Bob Dylan? Come off it. How do you get your seventeen-year-old girlfriend served in here?”
“Because of who I am.” He grinned, as though that were both Jane Austen and Bob Dylan. “Freebo and I are friends. He knows what’s in his interest.” I was getting a full dose of his sly enthusiasm. “But almost everybody knows what’s in his interest. The Big One. Right? It’s in our interest to talk, to be seen together, to explore our ideas, right? I know some things about you, Miles. People still talk about you up here. I was knocked out when she said you were back, man. Tell me something. Do people keep laying their trips on you?”
“I don’t know what that means. Unless it’s what you’re doing now.”
“Hoo,” Zack uttered softly. “You’re cozy, man. Make ‘em work, huh? I can see that, I can dig it. Make ‘em work, yeah. You’re deep. You’re really deep. I got a lot of questions for you, man. What’s your favorite book of the Bible?”
“The Bible?” I said, laughing, spurting beer. “That was unexpected. I don’t know. Job? Isaiah?”
“No. I mean, yeah, I can dig it, but that isn’t it. Revelations is it. Do you see? That’s where it’s all laid out.”
“Where what is all laid out?”
“The plan.” He showed me a big scarred palm, lines of grease permanently printed in it, as though the plan were visible there. “That’s where it all is. The riders on the horses — the rider with the bow, and the rider with the sword, and the rider with the scales, and the pale rider. And the stars fell and the sky disappeared, and it all came down. Horses with lions’ heads and snakes’ tails.”
I glanced at Alison. She was listening as if to a nursery story — she had heard it a hundred times before. I could have groaned; I thought she deserved so much better.
“That’s where it says that corpses will lie in the streets, fires, earthquakes, war in heaven. War on earth too, you see? All those great beasts in Revelations, remember? The beast 666, that was Aleister Crowley, you know Ron Hubbard is probably another one, and then all those angels who harvest the earth. Until there’s blood for sixteen thousand furlongs. What do you think of Hitler?”
“You tell me.”