I rode with The Goose in Jack's roadster and tried to make a little conversation.
"You known Jack long?"
"Yeah," said Murray, and then nothing for about three miles.
'"Where'd you meet him?"
"'Th'army," said Murray, not spending two words where one would do.
"You've been working with him since then?"
"No, I did time. Jack, too."
"Ah."
"I got nine kids."
Murray looked at me when he said this, and I guess I paused long enough before I said, "Have you?" to provoke him.
"You don't believe me?"
"Sure I believe you. Why shouldn't I?"
"'People don't believe I got nine kids."
"If you say it, I believe it. That's a lot of kids. Nobody lies about things like that. "
"I don't see them. Once a year. Maybe, maybe not. But I send 'em plenty."
"'Uh-huh."
"They don't know what I do for a living."
"Oh?"
Then we had another mile or so of silence, except for the thunder and lightning and the heavy rain, which kept Murray creeping slowly along the snaky road down the mountain. I judged him to be about forty-five, but he was hard to read. He might've seemed older because of the menace he transmitted, even when he talked about his kids. His mouth curled down into a snarley smile, his lone eye like a flat spring, tightly coiled, ready to dilate instantly into violent glare. He was obviously the pro killer in the gang, which I deduced as soon as I saw him. Oxie may have had some deadly innings in his career, but he looked more like a strongarm who would beat you to death by mistake.
Murray's clothes were a shade too small for him, giving him a puffy, spaghetti-filled look. I thought I detected tomato sauce stains on his coat and pants and even his eyepatch. I choose to believe he was merely a slob rather than inefficient enough to walk around with bloodstains from his last victim. I doubt Jack would have approved of that sort of coarseness.
"You workin' for Jack now?" Murray asked me.
"Tentatively," I said, wondering whether he understood the word, sol added, "for the time being I guess I am."
"Jack is a pisser."
"Is he?"
"He's crazy. "
"Is that so?"
"That's why I work for him. You never know what'll happen next."
"That's a good reason. "
"He was crazy in the Army. I think he was always crazy."
"Some of us are."
"I said to myself after he done what he done to me, this is a crazy guy you got to watch out for because he does crazy stuff. "
"'What did he do to you?"
"What did he do to me'? What did he do to me?"
"Right."
"I was in the stockade at Fort Jay for raping a colonel's wife, a bum rap. I only did her a favor after she caught me in the house and I rapped her one and she fell down. Her dress goes up and she says, 'I suppose you're gonna strip and rape me,' and I hadn't figured on it, but you take what comes. So I'm in for that, plus burglary and kickin' an MP when Jack comes in to wait for his court-martial.
" 'Whatcha in for?' I asked him.
" 'Desertion and carrying a pistol.'
" 'That's heavy duty.'
" 'I figure I'll do a little time,' he said. 'They want my ass.'
" "Likewise,' I said and told him my story.
" 'What'd you do before you got in'?' he asks me and I tell him, 'I was a burglar.' He got a kick out of that because he done a bit for the same thing when he was a kid. So we talk and Jack gets a pint of whiskey from the corporal who made bedcheck. I don't drink that shit, so Jack asks me if I wanna drink some rain instead. It's raining out just like now, and Jack puts a cup out the window. Took about five minutes to fill it up part way, and by that time Jack's whiskey is most gone and he gets the cup of rain and gives it to me.
" 'I don't want no rain,' I says to him. 'It's dirty.'
" 'Who says it's dirty'?'
" 'Everybody says.'
" 'They're wrong,' he says. 'Best water there is.'
" 'You drink it,' I says, 'I don't want no part of any dirty, shitty rain.'
" 'Goddamn it, I told you rain wasn't dirty. You think I'd drink rain if it was dirty?' And he takes a drink of it.
" 'Anybody who'd drink rain'd shit in church,' I says to him.
" 'Did you say shit in church'?'
" 'Shit in church and then kick it out in the aisle.'
" 'That's a goddamn lie. I'd never shit in church.'
" 'If you'd drink rain, you'd shit in church all right.'
" 'Not me. I'd never shit in church. You hear that, goddamn it? Never!'
" 'All them rain drinkers. They all shit in church.'
" 'Not me, no sir. Why do you say that'?'
" 'I never knew an Irishman wouldn't shit in church if he thought he could get away with it.'
" 'Irishmen don't shit in church. I don't believe that.'
" 'I seen four Irishmen at the same time, all taking a shit in church.'
" 'Polacks shit in church.'
" "I once seen an Irishman shit right in the holy water fountain.'
" "That's a goddamn lie.'
" 'Then I seen two Irishmen takin' shits in the confessional boxes and about a dozen more takin' shits up on the altar all at once. I seen one Irishman shit during a funeral. Irishmen don't know no better.'
"I was layin' on my cot while this was going on. Then Jack got up and punched me in the right eye so hard I lost the sight of it. Jesus, that was a crazy thing to do. I didn't even see it comin'. I had to kick him all over the room, broke ribs and stuff. The guards pulled me off him. I woulda killed him if I knew the eye was gone, but I didn't know it then. When I saw him a week later he got down on his knees and asked me to forgive him what he done. I said, 'Fuck you, Jack,' and left him on his knees. But we shook hands before I left and I told him 'Okay, don't worry about it.' But I was still sore about it. I done six years because the MP I kicked died, and when I come out I looked Jack up because I figure he owes me a job. He thought he did a tough thing about the eye, but shit, once you get used to one eye it's just as good as two. And workin' for Jack, you get to do everything you got to do, so I got no complaints."
We were about halfway down the mountain when Murray hit the brakes, but not soon enough, and we skidded into a rock slide and smashed into a boulder that must've just landed because other little rocks kept bouncing off the car. Both of us hit the windshield, and I got a hell of a bump and a four-day headache out of it. Murray's forehead was cut, a horizontal gash like a split seam.
"We better haul ass before another one falls on top of us," Murray said, a thought I hadn't had yet since I was preoccupied with my pain. He tried backing up, but the car made a weird noise and was hard to move. He got out in the rain and so I got out after him. There was about one foot between me and about a four-hundred-foot drop, so I got carefully back inside and out Murray's door. He was pulling on the front left fender, which was smashed and rubbing against the wheel. Murray was a small man but a strong one, for the fender came almost straight at this tug. He cut his right hand on the edge of it, and when I offered him my pocket handkerchief, he shook his head and scooped up a handful of earth and grass and patted it on his forehead and then globbed a wad into his sliced right palm. "Get in," he said, his face and hand smeared and dripping with bloody mud.
"I'll drive," I told him.
'"No, I'll handle it."
"You're in no shape to drive. "
"This is not your car, mister," he said in a tone that was unarguably the last word.
"All right, then, back up and turn around. I'll direct you. You're damn near over the edge right there, and it's one hell of a long way down."
It was dark now and I was wet to the underwear, standing in the middle of desolation, maybe about to be buried in a landslide, giving traffic directions to a bleeding, one-eyed psychopath who was, with one hand, trying to drive a mythic vehicle backwards up an enchanted mountain. I'd come a long way from the K. of C. library.