“Doug.”
My eyes were closed. I did not want to open them.
“Doug.”
A draft coming in the window made me cold and I shivered. The floor felt cold.
“Doug. Look at me. Doug,” the voice said. And I could hear the dog again, barking. The dog sounded frightened and far away. He could just as easily have been close. I felt a hand touch my shoulder, and I looked up and saw that it was Spooner leaning over me, gazing down toward me. His face wore a troubled expression. He spoke into my ear. “Let go of Hiram’s foot.”
“Spooner, it’s you. Thank God. Give me a drink, man. Please, give me a drink.”
Then Hiram’s shoe kicked and squirmed. I held on but the shoe kicked my face, and Hiram exclaimed, “Get him off me! He’s a dangerous person!”
“Hang on a minute, Hiram,” Spooner said, and saying this, he knelt on the floor beside me; he reached out, closed his hand around my wrist, and began gently tugging me away. “Doug, you can’t be grabbing people’s feet. It’s not right.”
“Give me a drink, Spooner. Come on, man. I know you’ve got some on you.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Doug.” He gave my wrist a yank but I was holding on tight. “You know what happens when you drink,” he said, straining hard against me.
“Nothing’s going to happen. I just want a taste. Nothing’s going to happen.”
“That’s what you always say, Doug.”
“I mean it.”
He seemed to consider this. “If I give you a taste, will you let go of Hiram’s foot?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
He stopped tugging. He released my hand and reached into his inside coat pocket. That’s where he carries his handsome pewter flask filled with cognac. I felt so happy when I saw Spooner’s flask. He keeps this with him at all times. It is as if the flask is a part of the man. It wears a cork stopper secured inside a glass cap appended from a delicate, silver hinge. It holds a half-pint. It’s antique.
“Pull him off me! Hurry up down there! I want my dinner!” Hiram’s voice commanded. I was aware, now, of other brothers looking on, clean shirt collars and their shaved faces luminous beneath dim chandelier light. I could make out Pierce and Jacob, Allan and Ralph, Nick and Saul, and, a little ways off, directly behind Hiram’s walker, Joe, holding, at his side, that eighteenth-century French erotic drawing on brown paper.
“Just a taste, Doug,” Spooner said.
“Only a taste,” I agreed. My face where Hiram’s shoe had kicked me felt sore. I had numbness and tingling around one eye. The hypodermic needles in my pocket were biting into my chest. I heard a voice in the crowd explaining the situation to someone. “He’s locked onto Hiram’s foot. He won’t let go.” And another voice said, “He got hold of me like that once. I was wearing hiking shoes. Doug got tangled up in the laces and I couldn’t shake him. It was terrible.” This second voice went on to report other details. I did not pay strict attention. The pewter flask had made its appearance from Spooner’s coat and Spooner was unscrewing its glass top and pulling the cork all in one artful motion. Would it be going too far to say that this was what I had been waiting for since nightfall? To nurse from my brother’s flask! — here was a happiness in life. I took the metal spout in my mouth and sucked hard at it, the way a young calf sucks, to feel safe in his world and warm inside himself, and to become strong.
I got a fair swallow considering the size of the spout and was therefore pleased with myself.
“Pick him up, gentlemen,” Spooner said to those standing closest, and I felt arms around me and men’s hands clasping my arms and then the spout went away as I was hoisted from the rug. A bell was ringing in the distance. This was the dinner bell. After standing, I surprised my brother Ralph with a hug for helping me. There was a general movement toward the oak table, and merely by standing erect I seemed to become swept up in this movement, brothers making their way to seats. Of course it was late and everyone had had a lot to drink and nothing to eat but peanuts. For this reason there was a fair amount of swaying from side to side as men smelled food rolling in through the library’s northern doors, on trolleys pushed by Jason and Joshua. Up ahead, over the horizon of swaying heads, fortunate brothers arrived at the oak table and stationed water glasses in preferred places, or draped jackets casually on chair backs to claim spots not named as theirs on Jeremiah’s seating plan. Brothers in the rear had to step over Virgil to get in line. Feet shuffled and the floorboards groaned and groaned. No one was talking in that solemn progression that advanced over Virgil. Several men were smoking, and at intervals along our line small clouds of cigarette smoke drifted or were blown upward out of mouths toward the ceiling.
Now it turned out that Donovan, while I had been resting, had kindled the fire in the hearth. His blaze was really up. Dry logs were catching, the flue was drawing, and everything seemed grand except for the fact that bats tenant the chimney. This was not a new problem. It never fazed anyone particularly when three or five bats flapped out of the hearth and turned figure eights around the chandelier cords above our heads. We keep nets on long poles expressly for this event.
That night it was the triplets, Herbert, Patrick, and Jeffrey, who grabbed nets on poles and went hunting bats. The triplets are professionally trained dancers, so they can do this sort of thing.
“Pork chops for dinner,” I said quietly to the back of the man in front of me. This was Rex. He answered gruffly, “Nothing ever changes around here, does it?” and I asked him if he had by any chance noticed Spooner in the crowd. He told me he hadn’t. He then said, “Stop bumping into me, Doug.” I hadn’t realized I had been and I apologized and moved away. Milton, Pierce, and Fielding were strolling along in a clique behind me. I asked if they’d noticed Spooner anywhere, but no one had. Fielding was carrying his broken camera’s parts in his hands. A triplet shouting, “Heads up!” raced by, enormous net trailing, after a bat that apparently had touched down on the underside of an elk’s antler. Everyone turned to watch, but when the triplet arrived at the elk, the bat had flown. Milton said, “That was Patrick.”
“It was Jeffrey,” Pierce said.
“No,” said Milton. “It was Patrick.”
“Jeffrey.”
“Patrick.”
“I don’t know how you can think such a wrong thing. That was obviously Jeffrey,” said Pierce.
“Bet?”
“Bet.”
“It might have been Herbert,” suggested Fielding, who was awkwardly trying, as he walked, to join his fractured movie camera’s pieces together in his hands.
“That wasn’t Herbert,” said Pierce, and he went on to explain, “Herbert’s fat.”
Silence followed this. After a moment Fielding announced, “Well, they’re all fat.”
“They quit dancing,” I chipped in. “One of them injured his knee and they all retired, the idiots.”
There was silence again. We were approaching the dinner table, but a crowd blocked the way. Some had sat and others were milling around with their water glasses. I could see Zachary ahead and made a mental note to stay away from him. Jason and Joshua were striking matches, igniting flames underneath food trays. Fielding said, “I’ve got twenty that says that was Herbert. We’ll each put in twenty and winner takes all.”