This bud of wellbeing was threatened momentarily by a near-encounter with Wesley Edwards, the Presbyterian minister, out dispensing his crinkly-smile consolations, but luckily Edwards didn’t see him, turned into somebody’s room. Actually, the man Edwards, while unimaginative and soft-souled, was no worse than the rest of the West Condoners — no, what rankled was his goddamn presumption. All his breed galled Miller, but especially the complacently doubtful types like Edwards — he blanked out this town’s small mind with his codified hand-me-down messages, and when you pushed him he would slyly hint he didn’t believe it himself, goddamn ethical parable or some crap of the sort. Well, you’re still the old fundamentalist at heart, Miller accused himself. Miller had noticed that Edwards, awkward among ailing men, spent most of his time giggling with the hospitalized women. They were prone and all but naked, yet safe, and so was he. Maybe the bastard got a buzz out of their bedpans. The thought made Miller smile, and it was this smile he carried into the third-floor convalescent lounge, where Marcella Bruno awaited him.
He arrives, in crushed light, bringing with him the air of old storybooks, things wanted, things with a buried value in them. As a child, she watched him run, a man to her, though they called him a boy, a man with long legs and strong shoulders. He ran for them and was praised, he leapt and was loved. And now it is for her he comes smiling, a man to her still, long and strong, with something about him of forest greenness and church masonry and northern stars. They speak of her brother, of her family, he asks about her. A man to be praised, yes, a man to be loved.
Back in, the cartoon town had fuzzed once more into lumpy solids, and the cartoon man was singing. A healing was happening. Sore, worn, he had found a young girl’s affection and had plunged in wholly. Where would it end? He didn’t care, he would see her again. The lumps glided recognizably by, and he found he hated them less. “You arrogant shit!” he said out loud, and laughed.
Still high, he left the Chevy in the plant lot and went straight to Mick’s. Hadn’t had anything but Cokes and a doughnut. He found Lou Jones at the big round table near the bar, apparently into some story, and he thought of some Jones could be telling that put him ill at ease. With Jones were the hotelman Wally Fisher, the lawyer Ralph Himebaugh, and Maury Castle, who had a shoestore in town, three of Mick’s most dependable klatchers. Although Fisher had a coffeeshop and bar in his own hotel, he was always in here afternoons. “Two with onions, Mick, and a beer,” Miller said, and damn if it didn’t sound like a feast to him.
Jones, disgruntled at having his story interrupted, leaned back and lit a cigar. The others cheered, reluctantly but sincerely, yesterday’s special edition, and exulted once more in the Father Jones escapade. Castle rattled tonight’s paper and read Miller’s “inexplicable lapse” box aloud for laughs, then Wally Fisher rumbled, “So, come on, Father, tell us what the sonuvabitch did.”
“Lou was just describing one of the gentlemen at your newspaper,” Himebaugh said by way of explanation. His quaint precision tinkled discordantly in the dark plain bar. “He has a rather, shall we say, individual manner of demonstrating his passions.”
Castle heehawed.
“Who’s that?” asked Miller.
“Carl,” said Jones.
The pressman. Miller grinned. “I should have guessed. Schwartz is the world’s most disturbed cocksman. What now?” Mick passed a glass of beer over the counter and Castle slid it across the formica tabletop to Miller. It was well after lunchtime, and the place was quiet. Only the sizzle of hamburgers in the yard-square kitchen off the bar. Mick had the television on as always, but the volume was off. Grand gestures of a bigmouthed guy pushing deodorant.
Jones drank off his beer, nodded at Mick for another. “Says he was worldweary after his unusual Sunday labors yesterday, so to restore the spirit he toted body and soul over to Waterton to Mrs. Dooley’s. He meets with this—”
“Mrs. Dobie’s,” interrupted Miller. “You can see how often Jones gets over there!”
Jones didn’t share in the laughter, chose to relight his cigar instead. His eyelids slowly drooped the table to silence. “He meets with this pigeon he has in the past plucked, and he flaps over to bicker with her the tariff. But this birdie is grounded. Very down in the beak. Just slopping up a drink or two, she says. Carl inquires what can the matter be, and she informs him tearily she has lost a brother in the mine accident.” Miller glanced up, winced inwardly. That bitter breath again. Had to be her. “She has decided she is gonna take a week off from the ranch, fly the scene, try to forget. She’s sniffling blowsily, and Carl is afraid she’s gonna break into some noisy lament and ruin his whole fucking night. He scans the club, but the others are all paired, have eggs aplenty.”
“You would think they would do less business on such a night,” Himebaugh interposed softly, but they ignored him.
“So finally he says to her, let’s go to your room, have a quiet drink there, you can tell me all about it, I’ll buy the bottle. She’s a sorry-looking red-eyed droop, but, as I say, he has no choice. She shrugs and says okay. She leads the way, and at this juncture in the narration, Carl consecrates a quarter hour or so to the immortalizing of her butt as it joggles up the stairs a few inches in front of his face, her skirt rucking and rippling, and bringing on, in Carl, a certain agitated enlargement.”
While Castle hollered about that, Miller asked, “Hey, Mick, what about those hamburgers?”
“Hunh? Oh, Jesus, Tiger! Hold on!” Mick ran to the kitchen, called out, “Just in time!” Which meant they were black, not white, ash.
“Round of beers, too, Mick.” The bigmouth guy on television, who had earlier been urging fragrant armpits, now spun a large wheel, while a muss of little mousy women stood by mockbreathless, clutching their handbags. Whole goddamn American populace was becoming a bunch of actors.
Mick handed the hamburgers, fresh from cremation, over the bar to Castle and went to work on the beers. Jones puffed on the cigar, took a long swallow of beer, continued: “So they get to the room. He, she, and her prize wazoo. Carl pours out two tumblers. There’s only one chair in the room, and, just his luck, while he’s dispensing whiskey, she’s planting her buns on it. Carl seeks a scheme to decoy her off the chair and onto the bed. He puts her drink on the dresser, thinking she’ll come and get it. No. She sits there looking run-over and commences to stare at her feet. He suggests she go lie down, as she looks a mite peakèd. She hears nothing. He finally concludes he will have to use force, and that is just the which he does not care yet to do.” Jones drinks to the rapt silence.
Mick hung over the bar with a big foolish grin on his broad Italian face, finally came around and joined the others at the table. “What do you mean?” he asked incredulously, without dropping the grin. “You mean he aims to lay this miserable broad?” Mick was a large guy, but he had a funny high nasal voice.
“Well, so he’s thinking about this and he is just about to screw the gentility act and go heave her off, when the goddamn whore herself gets blithely up and humps off to weewee. Carl hastily claps her whiskey down on the night table aside the famous scene of action and appropriates the chair for himself. And, true to form, she staggers back in, still out of the plot, and plumps down on the bed. She picks up the glass, drinks it off like it was water, sets it down again. Still, she hasn’t looked once at our hero, hasn’t let a peep.”