“I don’t know,” said Doc softly.
He got up from the bed and disengaged a wire from the dry cell. “No point in wasting juice,” he said. “I’ve been tearing myself down like a Model T Ford in a backyard. Got the pieces all laid out. Still don’t know why it won’t run. Don’t even know whether I can get it together again.”
“I could help,” said Hazel. “I know about Model T’s.”
“It might turn out you know about people too,” said Doc.
Hazel looked shyly down at his feet. No one had ever accused him of knowing anything before.
Doc chuckled, “That’s my good Hazel!”
“Say, Doc, what you think is the matter with you?” Hazel was appalled at his daring, but he had asked. And Doc seemed to find the question reasonable.
“God knows,” he said. “Some kind of obscure self-justification, I guess. I wanted to make a contribution to learning. Maybe that was a substitution for fathering children. Right now, my contribution, even if it came off, seems kind of weak. I think maybe I’ve talked myself into something, and now maybe I have to do it.”
Hazel groped among his bits and pieces. “Mack’s sorry about what him and Fauna done. He’s just sick.”
“He shouldn’t be,” said Doc. “I’m the one who messed it up.”
“You mean you would of took Suzy on?”
“I guess so. I’ve thought about it ever since. For a couple of days there I felt different and better than I ever have in my life. A kind of built-in pain was gone. I felt wide open.”
“About Suzy?”
“I guess so. I’m supposed to have this wild free brain without conventional barriers. And what did I do? I balanced a nasty ledger. I weighed education, experience, background, even probable bloodlines. Some of the worst people I ever knew had the best of all those. Well, there it is. Saying it has made it even clearer. I guess I’ve thrown it away.”
“Why don’t you give it one more try, Doc?”
“How?”
“Why don’t you take a candy bar or a bunch of carnations and knock on her door?”
“Right from the beginning, huh? Sounds kind of silly.”
“Well, dames is all dames,” said Hazel.
“You may have made a discovery. Have you seen her?”
“Yeah. She got that boiler fixed up real pretty. She got a job down at the Golden Poppy.”
“How is she? What did she say?”
Hazel cast about again among his broken pieces. Her vehemence came back to him. “When she was a kid she made an ashtray for her papa and mama—” Hazel let it hang there because it sounded ridiculous.
“Well, what about it?”
“They didn’t need no ashtray,” said Hazel.
“She told you that?”
“Yep.”
“Let’s have a drink.”
“I can’t, Doc. I got one more—I mean, I got to see a guy.”
“This late at night?”
“Yeah.” And then Hazel confessed. “You been good to me, Doc. I wouldn’t do no bad thing to you.”
“Of course you wouldn’t.”
“But I done it.”
“What!”
“Remember you always said you liked me ’cause I didn’t listen?”
“Sure I remember.”
Hazel’s eyes were shy and ashamed. “I listened,” he said.
“That’s all right.”
“Doc—”
“Yes?”
“Joseph and Mary’s hanging around the boiler.”
Hazel couldn’t remember ever having been so tired. He had put his mind to unaccustomed tricks, and it was just as he had been afraid it would be. He had got nothing. He had started out hoping to find some kind of light to guide him. What he had got reminded him of Henri’s painting in nutshells. He wanted to sleep a long time, perhaps never to awaken to a world in which he now felt himself a stranger. He had made a mess of it. He wondered if he would make as bad a mess in Washington.
He walked wearily through the vacant lot and up the chicken walk to the Palace Flop house. He wanted to slip into bed in the dark and hide his failure in sleep.
Mack and the boys were waiting up for him.
“Where the hell you been?” said Mack. “We looked all over for you.”
“Just walking around,” said Hazel listlessly.
Mack moved and groaned. “Jesus! You hit me a crack,” he said. “Damn near killed me.”
“I shouldn’t of did it,” said Hazel. “You want I should rub it?”
“Hell no! What you been up to? When you get making plans, the sky is falling on my tail, said Henny Penny.”[118]
Whitey No. 2 asked, “Who you been with?”
“Everybody. Just walking around.”
“Well, who?”
“Oh, Joe Elegant and Fauna and Suzy and Doc.”
“You seen Suzy?” Mack demanded.
“Sure. Went down to the Poppy for a cup of coffee.”
“Look who’s buying coffee!”
“It was on the house,” said Hazel.
“Well, what did she say?”
“She says in the third grade she made an ashtray.”
“Oh, Jesus!” said Mack. “Did she say anything about Doc?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“You guess so!”
“Don’t ask me if you’re going to be mean to me. That’ll just get me mean.”
Mack shifted painfully to his other buttock.
Hazel felt ringed with hostility. “I guess I’ll go outside,” he said miserably.
“Wait! What’d she say about Doc?”
“Said she didn’t want no part of him, except—I’m going to go on out.”
“Except what?”
“Except he got sick or bust a leg.”
Mack shook his head. “Sometimes you get me thinking the way you do. God Almighty! I shouldn’t of let you out alone.”
“I didn’t do no harm.”
“I bet you didn’t do no good either. I bet right now you’re trying to figure out germ warfare—how to get Doc sick.”
“I’m tired,” said Hazel. “I just want to go to bed.”
“Who’s stopping you?”
Hazel didn’t even take off his clothes before he went to bed, but he didn’t sleep either; at least not until the dawn crept out from Salinas. His brain was blistered and his responsibility rode him with surcingle and spurs.
33
The Distant Drum
Doc sat for a long time after Hazel left him. His chest rustled with feeling and his throat was dry. His top mind looked at him—a scientist, a thinker trained, conditioned to method, to exactness. No single thing could be permitted in unless it could be measured or tasted or heard or seen. The laws of science were Doc’s laws, and he sought to obey them. To break these laws was not only a sin to him but a danger, for violation would let in anarchy. He was frightened and cold.
His middle mind screamed with joy at his discomfiture. “I told you! All through the years I’ve told you you were fooling yourself. Let’s see you get back to analysis, I dare you!”
And the low-humming mind in his entrails was busy too, aching and yet singing that the ache was necessary and good.
Middle mind had its way. Doc thought, Let’s look at this. Here is a man with work to do. The girl—what is she? Let’s suppose every good thing should come of a relationship with her. It still would be no good. There is no possible way for this girl and me to be successful—no way under the sun. Not only is she illiterate, but she has a violent temper. She has all of the convictions of the uninformed. She is sure of things she has not investigated, not only sure for herself, but sure for everyone. In two months she will become a prude. Then where will freedom go? Your thinking will be like tennis against a bad player. Let’s stop this nonsense! Forget it! You can’t have it and you don’t want it.
Middle mind hooted, “You can’t not have it too. What ever happens, you’ve got her. Take a feel of your pulse, listen to your pounding heart. Why? You just heard the iron door of the boiler clang, that’s why. You haven’t even thought what that means yet, but you’ve got a pain in your gut because of that clang and because it’s three-thirteen in the morning.”
118
Henny Penny: English fairy tale of undetermined origin and variable plot, sometimes called “The Sky Is Falling,” “Chicken Little,” “Chicken Licken,” or “Henny Penny.” In one version Henny Penny is hit on the head by a falling acorn and believes that “the sky is falling” and that she must tell the king. The moral of the tale varies from version to version but certainly can be interpreted to mean that danger is imminent.