"You take me to raise?" he asked as I stood above and behind him.
"You came so I would follow," I said. "You all right?" I asked, climbing into the ditch with him.
"I'm always all right. Or I would be if you'd stop following me around like a maiden aunt worried about my virtue."
"I'm a member of the Dottlinger spy organization." I sat down, but he said nothing and his silence hung as close as the clouds about us. Out of the American tradition of male comradeship I offered him a cigarette as I might have a wounded soldier, but the rain killed my match and he threw it away. We sat for a long time in the stolid mists before he spoke.
"You know," he said, "I've done this about once every six months for the last five or so years. Stupid, crazy drunk. And I never know what starts it, never know why.
"It wasn't always like that. I remember the first time I got drunk. It was down in Georgia. At a lake. You know, one of those sad places high school boys go because there are supposed to be, everybody says there are, millions of chicks, and there usually are, but they are as scared and stupid as you are, so nobody gets a tumble. But this trip I did. Girl named Diane, blond, sweet, lovely girl named Diane. I remember we danced and danced to two pop songs that summer, ah, 'Love is a Many Splendored Thing,' and something called, let's see, yeah, 'Gumdrop.' Danced like we were made for each other and all that shit. My first taste of summer love and, man, I was dizzy and stupid with it. I got such a hard-on just dancing with her, nuzzling her cheek, that I thought I'd blow up or something. Long, thick, curly blond hair…"
"Back in the days when broads had curly hair?"
"… Yeah, a thousand years ago. It was kind of like custard, I guess. You know, thick and creamy and looped and it shook when she moved her head. I was in love, man.
"But then it was time to go home. I stayed over when the guys I was with left. I slept in the bushes, bathed in the lake, collected pop bottles, and mooched meals off everybody I met, and all this time I had a pint of Four Roses burning a hole in my AWOL bag, saving it for my last night, the ace up my sleeve. And all this time I never heard her talking about this guy Smokey from home. Then he showed up, a big guy, home from the service, driving a '32 Ford rod and wearing combat boots with his Levi's. There went old Joe Morning, shot out of the saddle before he gets his foot in the stirrup. Jesus Christ, you know, she even introduced me to him. Told him I was the nice kid that had been dancing with her – she didn't say anything about wrestling in the bushes though, and he was so damned big, I didn't really mind. So he thanked me, said I was a good kid, then they cut out for a beer joint outside the park, The Rendezvous, a den of lust and drunkenness where they did the dirty bop.
"So much for Diane. But I still had the pint and was still as horny as an old goat. So I began a new campaign, fought a single skirmish – saw a girl who looked vaguely familiar, asked her to dance, she said no; I remembered, she had said no the year before too – then I dashed down to where I had the bag stashed and sat down by the lake in some goddamned Doris Day moonlight, drinking, feeling sorry for myself, listening to the music and laughter from up at the pavilion. I got half a pint down, more than enough, lit a cigarette, stumbled, giggled, and walked – walked hell, strode, man – back up that hill. Ten fucking feet tall, man, fulla piss and vinegar. Boy, it was great. I can't forget it. Somehow I could feel the whole earth through my loafers. You know how you always feel sort of apart from the works, sort of a piece of a puzzle packed in the wrong box, like maybe the whole world is playing a joke on you, laughing at you? Well, I didn't feel that way any more. I wasn't just me any more, I was part of the lake and the moon and the grass growing under my feet, part of the hill tilting up toward the stars, and most of all part of that dancing and lights and music up above; and the lights were brighter, the music louder and wilder, and me itching to be scratched all over. I guess you might say I was cool for the first time in my life.
"Shit, I went back to that chickie who had turned me off two years in a row and I didn't ask this time, I told her, and grabbed her and danced off before she could say no. She couldn't say no all night; 'course I lied a lot, told her I was bumming around the States on my way to Mexico where I played the guitar in a whorehouse. The pint worked; I just didn't understand that you were supposed to drink it; I thought the girl was supposed to drink it. Love struck again. She followed me around for days, buying my meals, pestering me with hungry hands until I finally had to sneak off from her to hitch home.
"That's the way it usually is. Being drunk is good for me. Give me a pinball machine sober and I'll tilt every time, but drunk I'm lights and cold steel balls and action. A car, the same thing. Conversation: I talk better, know more what I'm saying. I'm all together, I belong. Like now…" He paused. "… Yeah, like now." He remained still for a while, holding his tongue like a man who has just realized what he has said. I tried another cigarette that lit, and we cupped it in our hands like a jewel till it was a butt, then lit another from it. Leaden swirls of smoke surrounded us, cold and damp as the air. Morning hunched over the cigarette, wrapped in his blanket like a Comanch' medicine man, his face in the flow a gaunt amulet worn by his soul, portentously warding off vague evil, clear virtue. I lay back against the sallow cement, my face swathed in gray mist and smoke.
"Yeah, it's wonderful to be drunk that way. Great," he said. "But then there is the other kind, like tonight. Just like a storm or something.
"The first one came in high school. My senior year, I think. Yeah, the Sunday after we had lost the state football championship. One of my more brilliant games; I ran seventy-five yards in the last minute of the game, then dropped the damned ball on the three-yard line, nobody around, I just dropped the damned ball, so we lost 10-7. The football team was drowning our sorrow, those of us who drank, in a wood outside town. Somebody had brought two kegs – more beer than we could drink in a year – in back of a pickup, and by dark I was really wiped out. I'd puked all over my clothes, had a fist fight with my best friend, and passed out twice. Before dark, mind you. A social drunk, you know.
"Then some little white-trash girls showed up. Two fat ones who were the local punches, gang-bang Southern belles, and a little skinny one who wanted to be. They got the fat ones drunk, then they got the skinny one drunk and naked in the back of the pickup where she was going to make her social debut on some old mattress ticking while everybody watched. But, you know, she drew the line there; no watching, she said. That's about the last thing I remember: her sitting in the back of that pickup, both hands up tight against her crotch, little-bitty-bird titties pinched between bony arms, crooning, 'un-uh, un-uh, un-uh,' like a little kid who's fixing to get whipped.
"After that I sort of lost things, blacked out I guess, but didn't pass out. But the others told me about it, told me what I did, what happened. Like tonight. I won't find out till you tell me. Anyway everybody argued with her about watching. You know how drunks get one thing in mind and the rest of the world can go to hell. We argued with her till dark and somebody built a bonfire, but she kept shaking her head, hiding her face in her stringy hair. Finally they gave up, and everybody except the guy who was first walked off down the road, then ran back and hid in the bushes next to the pickup. The first guy, a real cockhound lover boy, couldn't get a hard-on. He just stood there in the firelight, banging on his pecker and cussing and – by God, I just remembered her name, Rita Whitehead – Rita kept saying 'what's wrong, what's wrong' and he kept saying 'shut up, shut up.' You couldn't see Rita except for one naked foot up over the side of the pickup bed with one of those dime-store ankle chains and a little green track underneath it where the plate had come off and tiny, chipped, painted toenails. We laughed lover boy out of the scene. What the hell was his name? Dick something, Wilber, Willard, something like that. Then two big cherry farm boys, brothers, were next, but they both blew their rocks before they even got in, and remained cherries.