Cervantes took a hit and passed the bottle back to Daniel. Both of them lipped the neck. Brian had tried to pour his directly to the back of his throat without touching glass.
"You wouldn't know I just come out of the hospital, would you?"
Daniel looked like his best move would be to check right back in, but Brian let it ride. "Nope."
"I mean, do I look like a dyin man? I just been in intensive care three months, fell down the stairs over to the Hotel Sutter and fractured my hip. Lost forty pounds up to the VA, drippin chemicals into my veins from a bottle. You believe it? Lemme tell you, New York, it was pretty much touch-and go. Thought my number was up. They called my next of kin, my sister-in-law, and explained how I shouldn't never drink again or it'd kill me." He snuggled the bottle in his lap. "So here I am trying to commit hairy Carey. Don't have the guts to jump off that pier, so I'm taking the slow boat." Daniel Boone smiled his metal smile.
"You know Misser Carey Misser Carey, he ron a boosher chop? Many many meats ohyesohyes."
"Not that Carey, Cervantes. Take it easy."
Brian could feel the sun on the back of his head now. It gave a golden edge to the wheeling gulls. Cervantes grinned next to him. For a wino he didn't smell bad at all, probably better than Brian with his road-funk. The ocean breeze, maybe.
"It blows through the palm trees," the old man used to say, swaying gently over a stein of beer or sitting in a booth as far from the jukebox as possible, "blows warm, so warm, and you can smell the fruit trees of the Polynesian islands in it. Sweet and warm." The old man smelled thickly sweet, smelled of oranges gone to mash. The watch shack he manned each night at the freight yard had originally been the stall where they held all the fruit that shipped in, in the days before the trucks took it over. The smell was part of the wood, it had gotten into the work jacket the old man always wore. When he walked into the Hibernian the regulars would wince and shake their heads. "Good Lord if it isn't McNeil," they used to say, "with our daily dose of vitamin C."
"You vote, young fella?" asked Daniel.
Brian shook his head. "Not old enough. I'm eighteen next month."
"Well, you didn't miss much. It's a bitch, Election Day, always has been. For starters, they don't let the liquor stores open till the polls close. So unless you scored a lot on Monday you got to go dry most of the day. And you can forget pan- handlin, there's so many jokers out with pamphlets and flyers and buttons, vote this, vote that, send some thief to the statehouse. Everybody just fixes their eyes straight ahead and clamps their hands shut in their pockets and won't stop for nothin. Poor scufflin wino don't have a chance, all that competition. Took us all day to make this little quart here and if Cervantes hadn't walked off with a six-pack of beer from the campaign headquarters in the Sutter it would have been an awful cold night."
Daniel sent the bottle down again. They seemed to be taking smaller pulls to stretch out the little that was left. Brian didn't like what it did to the roof of his mouth. Cervantes took out a round tobacco tin and some papers and began to roll a cigarette. His fingers were the same color as the tobacco. He worked quickly and didn't spill a flake.
A patrol car cruised up on the street behind them and stopped a couple hundred feet away. Daniel hid the Thunderbird between his legs.
"You see who that is, Cervantes? That Price? I can't make him out with the sun off the windshield there."
"Doan know Donnydonny, the sun he big doan see."
"Price works mornings, usual. He'll pinch you for havin an open bottle in view. We shouldn't of thrown the bag away."
The car started up again, eased past and out of sight.
"Last time they had me up on the hill they were talking about Price. Man almost blasted him away with a shotgun. Fellas in the station said it wasn't for a bum shell we'd have a new bull rainin on our parade every morning."
Cervantes handed Daniel a cigarette and began to roll another.
"You do beautiful work, buddy. Just as neat as a tailormade and twice as deadly."
"Tonkyou, Donnydonny, tonkyou."
Daniel turned to face Brian only when he had a question. The rest of the time he talked staring out over the ocean.
"I never messed with no shotgun," he said. "I'm a knife fighter. Killed three men with a knife, one at Iwo, two at Tarawa. Demolition. I'd go in before the beach assaults. You believe it?"
Daniel Boone looked down to Brian and he had to nod. It was possible, just barely possible.
"Brooklyn, my friend, I detect an air of misbelief. Well lookit here."
Daniel rose and pulled up his pants-leg. There was a round, reddish mark on his pale calf. "Punji stick," he said. He pulled up the front of his shirt. There were puckered scars on either side of his sagging belly. "Jap round," he said. "Got me from the side, went in here, came out there. Lots of blood but it didn't puncture my stomach." He turned to show another souvenir over his kidney. "Shrapnel. A short round from our own artillery. I called in the coordinates and some greenhorn laid one in behind me." Daniel tucked in his shirt and sat back down.
"We'd swim in, all you could carry was demolition equipment and a knife. Cut their throats, all three of em, didn't think a thing of it. Wouldn't figure I'd be such a long time doing away with myself, would you? Hairy carey."
"He got steaks an bacongs an sosage an rose-biff an — "
"Settle down, Cervantes, you'll drop your smoke all over."
an homborger Donnydonny."
"I can still outswim anybody in this town," said Daniel Boone. "I had asthma when I was a kid."
It was too obvious a setup, there was no way he'd ask what the connection was. Hitching across the country had left Brian tired of playing straight man.
Daniel leaned back and dragged reflectively on his cigarette. He sighed. He crossed his legs. He picked at his nose hair.
Cervantes smiled steadily, like a sideman in a countrywestern band. From time to time he would run his hand through his hair, still holding the lighted cigarette, and leave a streak of ash in it.
"So this fella from the neighborhood," said Daniel finally, "was like an uncle to me, he said he'd give me a five-dollar — " he screwed his eyes shut to think hard "scholarship? To the Y?"
"Membership."
"Membership. See what the booze'll do to you? Give me a five-dollar membership to the Y if I'd promise to swim underwater every day, as far as I could go. Cured the asthma. God, I could swim. Still can, I bet."
Daniel looked like he'd drown in a footbath. Brian smiled. "Could you swim out to the end of that pier?"
"No sweat, Manhattan, no sweat."
"Ohyes Donnydonny, you con swim ober honrid, tree honrid bee-yon feets, m'hmn m'hmn Donnydonny yes you con."
"Three hundred billion feet is a lot of water, buddy. Don't get me in over my head." Daniel turned to Brian. "Say, Philly, you know what ESP is?"
Brian groaned inwardly. He had ridden with a half-dozen astrology freaks on the way out, including one guy who was convinced he was the reincarnation of Stephen Foster. Sang spirituals the entire Indiana Turnpike.
"I guess," said Brian. "Mind waves and all that stuff?"
"You believe it?"
He shrugged.
"I do," said Daniel Boone. "I got it."
Brian had figured as much. "What's it do to you?"
"Well, you see, most people only got three dimensions. You got ESP, then you got four dimensions. Brain power is your fourth dimension."
Daniel got up to spit over the wall. He looked out on the beach.
"Sumnabitch. Lookit all the squirrels."
"Yuh."
"No shit, Philly, there's thousands of em, see for yourself. This aint no DT's. DT's I get lizards. Never seen so many squirrels, not even in the park. Beach is just covered with em. Wonder what they're eatin?"