“Just set it on the table there, Albert,” DuBose instructed. The waiter did as he was told. All the gaiety he had displayed earlier had left his features; he looked like a man with an unpleasant duty to perform. He placed the object he was carrying very carefully on the center of the table, exercising the greatest of care in standing it upright and taking very great care indeed not to spill it.
It was a beaker, filled nearly to the brim with a liquid of some kind, a vaguely metallic bluish-gray in color. I could not for the life of me identify it.
“There’s a chemical shop built onto the back of this restaurant,” DuBose said. “An whenever I want t’test somebody I just ask Albert here t’go an git me m’testin tool.”
Pointing to the beaker, he said with deliberate, almost preternatural, calmness, “This here’s filled with molten lead.”
I did not say a word. I found it actually physically difficult to take my eyes away from the beaker and glance over at Landry. He was sitting staring at the beaker as though incapable of speech. What in the name of God, I wondered, is going through his head at this moment? The only thing I could think was. Let’s pack up and get the hell out of this place right now.
But Landry showed no signs of wanting to leave. He looked up from the beaker and said to DuBose, “What do you want me to do?”
The Texan smiled his crooked smile and said, “I want y’to prove t’me yer a man with the stuff. I want y’to earn those ten Gs.” Then, softly: “I want you t’put yer right index finger into that lead all the way up to the knuckle.”
I gasped. It was the natural reaction of one who has had as much of an emotional strain as he can stand.
J.J. DuBose glanced over at me and drawled, “You kin leave if you’ve a mind to, Mr. Gardner, though I’d think a man like Mr. Landry here’d want his friend t’stay with im when he does this.”
Landry had apparently not been fazed by the request. He abruptly asked, “If I do, what’s going to happen to me afterwards? I’ll need a doctor.”
J.J. DuBose smiled again. “Albert here’s had three years in the medical department at the University of Texas. I know, cause I paid for em. He’ll know what t’do; he’ll bandage you up as good as a hospital’d do, mebbe better. He’s been on hand ever time I get a volunteer. But we ain’t had need o’his services yet.” Again the wide crooked smile.
Landry glanced over at me. Our eyes met for just a second, and I gave him an impassioned look that I hoped said exactly what I was thinking: Let’s go, let’s get away.
Instead, he turned back to face J.J. DuBose and said, “Write out the check.”
It was clearly the moment the Texan had been waiting for. With a chuckle he slid a checkbook out of his coat pocket, laid it on the table in front of him, then produced a gold-plated fountain pen. With it he inscribed Landry’s name on the topmost check and, below it, the amount: TEN THOUSAND AND NO CENTS.
I stood up. “Maybe everyone around here is crazy but me,” I said, “but if you think I’m going to—”
“Sit down,” said Landry.
I glared at him. I wondered if he could feel the anger, and even the hatred, I felt for him at that moment for playing along with the old Texan, for playing the part in the old man’s fantasy that every other applicant had turned down before.
DuBose finished signing the check, tore it out of the checkbook, and held it up for Landry’s approval. “There. All signed and legal-like. Good in any bank in this state. If yuh like yuh kin phone the bank — any bank — an ask if J.J. DuBose’s credit is good. Yuh won’t find anyone that’ll turn y’down.”
“I don’t need to call the bank,” Landry said. He was still staring at DuBose. Now his eyes fell away from him and settled on the beaker. “That’s all I have to do — stick my finger in up to the knuckle, and the ten thousand’s mine?”
The Texan smiled. “That’s all, honey.”
Landry began nodding. It was the kind of unconscious head movement I have witnessed divers in Acapulco make just before launching themselves from the steepest cliffs into the waters far, far below.
Landry cleared his throat, and the sound echoed throughout the room, empty but for the four of us. He flexed his hand and clenched it in a fist, then unclenched it.
I held my breath and waited.
The hand arced slowly toward the beaker and then stopped, poised above it. With what seemed to me intolerable slowness it clenched once more into a fist, all the fingers but one. The right index finger.
J.J. DuBose leaned forward. He was making an unconscious noise somewhere deep in his throat, and his teeth were bared, as if he were a large animal about to pounce on one smaller.
Landry’s finger descended slowly, slowly, towards the bluish-gray liquid inside the beaker. The finger stopped abruptly, as if it had reached an impassable barrier.
Landry flinched.
And then the barrier was suddenly lifted, and he plunged his finger into the liquid.
I stood up, all my senses tingling, my nerves frayed to the breaking point. I was waiting for the inevitable scream of agony Landry was about the emit. No man, no matter how nerveless, could withstand having his finger burned to the bone without screaming himself hoarse and collapsing.
Yet Landry had done it. He did not even open his mouth, nor did his face register pain or shock or even discomfort. His only expression was one of mild surprise.
He raised his finger from the liquid. It was dripping wet, but was its normal pinkish hue. It was no more burned or singed than if he had dipped it in a glass of tap water.
J.J. DuBose let out a whoop of sheer joy, and at once he was out of his chair and shaking Landry’s hand, unmindful of his still dripping-wet index finger.
“Damnit!” the Texan was saying. “I knew I could count on you! I knew it when I spotted you first off. I kin judge character from a mile away, an I said to m’self. There’s a man with the guts of J.J. DuBose hisself. But I had t’be sure.”
“A trick,” was all Landry could say.
“Trick? Why, son, the world’s fulla tricks. I strung you along the same as everbody else. The difference was none o’the others was up to callin my bluff. You called it. An you earned yer ree-ward.” He picked up the check from the table and handed it to Landry. “Fer services rendered,” he said.
I had no idea how Landry felt, but at that moment I experienced a distinct sense of unreality. The characters and landscape had suddenly taken on the quality of a dream, and it was all I could do to turn to the waiter and say, “I’ll take that drink now. A double. Please.”
J.J. DuBose had begun to chuckle again, and, as before, his laugh turned into the same wracking cough. He sat back down in his chair and, when the coughing fit finally passed, managed to say, “What’-chall gonna do with that money?”
Landry shook his head. He had a blank expression, as though he still could not believe what had happened, as though the test of courage DuBose had spoken of still lay before him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “There are a lot of things I could do, but I don’t know...”
His voice trailed off. Just at that moment my drink was brought in, and I gulped it gratefully.
“Looky here,” the Texan was saying. “It’s early in the day yet. You boys look like y’could use a meal. Why don’t y’all come out t’my spread? It ain’t too far from here. I got a good Filipino cook’ll make you the best dang lunch y’ever had. Dinner, too, if y’like. How’s about it?”
I had not eaten in half a day, but there was something about the terrible eagerness the Texan had exhibited that prompted me to decline.
“I don’t think so. We should be pushing on. We’ve got to get back to California.”