“Here,” Francis said, unwrapping one of his turkey sandwiches and handing Mac a half, “take a bite, take a couple of bites, but don’t eat it all.”
“Hey all right,” Mac said.
“I told you he was a good fella,” Andy said.
“You want a bite of sandwich?” Francis asked Andy.
“I got enough with the onion,” Andy said. “But the guy in the piano box over there, he was askin’ around for something awhile back. He’s got a baby there.”
“A baby?”
“Baby and a wife.”
Francis snatched the remnants of the sandwich away from Michigan Mac and groped his way in the firelight night to the piano box. A small fire was burning in front of it and a man was sitting cross-legged, warming himself.
“I hear you got a kid here,” Francis said to the man, who looked up at Francis suspiciously, then nodded and gestured at the box. Francis could see the shadow of a woman curled around what looked to be the shadow of a swaddled infant.
“Got some stuff here I can’t use,” Francis said, and he handed the man the full sandwich and the remnant of the second one. “Sweet stuff too,” he said and gave the man the plum pudding. The man accepted the gifts with an upturned face that revealed the incredulity of a man struck by lightning in the rainless desert; and his benefactor was gone before he could even acknowledge the gift. Francis rejoined the circle at Andy’s fire, entering into silence. He saw that all but Rudy, whose head was on his chest, were staring at him.
“Give him some food, did ya?” Andy asked.
“Yeah. Nice fella. I ate me a bellyful tonight. How old’s the kid?”
“Twelve weeks, the guy said.”
Francis nodded. “I had a kid. Name of Gerald. He was only thirteen days old when he fell and broke his neck and died.”
“Jeez, that’s tough,” Andy said.
“You never talked about that,” Old Shoes said.
“No, because it was me that dropped him. Picked him up with the diaper and he slid out of it.”
“Goddamn,” said Old Shoes.
“I couldn’t handle it. That’s why I run off and left the family. Then I bumped into one of my other kids last week and he tells me the wife never told nobody I did that. Guy drops a kid and it dies and the mother don’t tell a damn soul what happened. I can’t figure that out. Woman keeps a secret like that for twenty-two years, protectin’ a bum like me.”
“You can’t figure women,” Michigan Mac said. “My old lady used to peddle her tail all day long and then come home and tell me I was the only man ever touched her. I come in the house one day and found her bangin’ two guys at once, first I knew what was happenin’.”
“I ain’t talkin’ about that,” Francis said. “I’m talkin’ about a woman who’s a real woman. I ain’t talkin’ about no trashbarrel whore.”
“My wife was very good-lookin’, though,” Mac said. “And she had a terrific personality.”
“Yeah,” said Francis. “And it was all in her ass.”
Rudy raised up his head and looked at the wine bottle in his hand. He held it up to the light.
“What makes a man a drunk?” he asked.
“Wine,” Old Shoes said. “What you got in your hand.”
“You ever hear about the bears and the mulberry juice?” Rudy asked. “Mulberries fermented inside their stomachs.”
“That so?” said Old Shoes. “I thought they fermented before they got inside.”
“Nope. Not with bears,” Rudy said.
“What happened to the bears and the juice?” Mac asked.
“They all got stiff and wound up with hangovers,” Rudy said, and he laughed and laughed. Then he turned the wine bottle upside down and licked the drops that flowed onto his tongue. He tossed the bottle alongside the other two empties, his own whiskey bottle and Francis’s wine that had been passed around.
“Jeez,” Rudy said. “We got nothin’ to drink. We on the bum.”
In the distance the men could hear the faint hum of automobile engines, and then the closing of car doors.
o o o
Francis’s confession seemed wasted. Mentioning Gerald to strangers for the first time was a mistake because nobody took it seriously. And it did not diminish his own guilt but merely cheapened the utterance, made it as commonplace as Rudy’s brainless chatter about bears and wizards. Francis concluded he had made yet another wrong decision, another in a long line. He concluded that he was not capable of making a right decision, that he was as wrongheaded a man as ever lived. He felt certain now that he would never attain the balance that allowed so many other men to live peaceful. nonviolent, nonfugitive lives, lives that spawned at least a modicum of happiness in old age.
He had no insights into how he differed in this from other men. He knew he was somehow stronger, more given to violence, more in love with the fugitive dance, but this was all so for reasons that had nothing to do with intent. All right, he had wanted to hurt Harold Allen, but that was so very long ago. Could anyone in possession of Francis’s perspective on himself believe that he was responsible for Rowdy Dick, or the hole in the runt’s neck, or the bruises on Little Red, or the scars on other men long forgotten or long buried?
Francis was now certain only that he could never arrive at any conclusions about himself that had their origin in reason. But neither did he believe himself incapable of thought. He believed he was a creature of unknown and unknowable qualities, a man in whom there would never be an equanimity of both impulsive and premeditated action. Yet after every admission that he was a lost and distorted soul, Francis asserted his own private wisdom and purpose: he had fled the folks because he was too profane a being to live among them; he had humbled himself willfully through the years to counter a fearful pride in his own ability to manufacture the glory from which grace would flow. What he was was, yes, a warrior, protecting a belief that no man could ever articulate, especially himself; but somehow it involved protecting saints from sinners, protecting the living from the dead. And a warrior, he was certain, was not a victim. Never a victim.
In the deepest part of himself that could draw an unutterable conclusion, he told himself: My guilt is all that I have left. If I lose it, I have stood for nothing, done nothing, been nothing.
And he raised his head to see the phalanx of men in Legionnaires’ caps advancing into the firelight with baseball bats in their hands.
o o o
The men in caps entered the jungle with a fervid purpose, knocking down everything that stood, without a word. They caved in empty shacks and toppled lean-tos that the weight of weather and time had already all but collapsed. One man who saw them coming left his lean-to and ran, calling out one word: “Raiders!” and rousing some jungle people, who picked up their belongings and fled behind the leader of the pack. The first collapsed shacks were already burning when the men around Andy’s fire became aware that raiders were approaching.
“What the hell’s doin’?” Rudy asked. “Why’s everybody gettin’ up? Where you goin’, Francis?”
“Get on your feet, stupid,” Francis said, and Rudy got up.
“What the hell did I get myself into?” Old Shoes said, and he backed away from the fire, keeping the advancing raiders in sight. They were half a football field away but Michigan Mac was already in heavy retreat, bent double like a scythe as he ran for the river.
The raiders moved forward with their devastation clubs and one of them flattened a lean-to with two blows. A man following them poured gasoline on the ruins and then threw a match on top of it all. The raiders were twenty yards from Andy’s lean-to by then, with Andy, Rudy, and Francis still immobilized, watching the spectacle with disbelieving eyes.
“We better move it,” Andy said.
“You got anything in that lean-to worth savin’?” Francis asked.