Dagon (8 page)

He wiped his mouth and drank. It was too warm, almost hot, and his stomach surged in an effort to reject the stuff, but he made it stay down. He clenched the jar tightly with both hands and a few drops sloshed on his soiled shirt, a shirt stiff and filthy. The ridges of the edge of the jar rattled against his teeth. He felt better now, but had cleanly forgot the whole day, ev­erything that had happened. It was gone from him immediately and silently, so that he sat drinking blankly for a time with no sense of loss. He was very tired. And then the feeling of hav­ing forgot something important began to gnaw in his mind and he became uneasy. He set the jar on the floor and began to rub his face with his hot palms. His chest and legs began to itch too and he scratched energetically. He shifted his feet about and tipped over the jar. He looked at it stupidly for a moment and then jerked down to set it upright. The oily liquid oozed slowly over the worn floor, and the odor of it rose all about the chair, surrounding him entirely, a heavy invisible curtain. There was only about an inch of it left in the jar and he swallowed it down quickly, as if it too might be lost to him. Then he held the jar languidly, and empty tears came into his eyes and rolled down his face. He was motionless, not sobbing, but hopelessly weeping and weeping, without sign of surcease. He was so stupid, so stupid. She wouldn't bring him more after he had wasted it; she was implacable. Maybe he could keep her from knowing about it. And as soon as he thought, he was getting his shirt off. He was on his knees, trying to soak up the liquor with his shirt, which became black and smelly instantly. He turned to wring it out in the fireplace.

“Now what is it? What do you think you're doing now?”

He jumped to his feet, dropped the wet shirt on the chair. He shook his head mutely.

“Get that goddam thing off the chair,” she said.

“What kind of a mess have you made now?” She was calm as ice, her voice expressionless.

“Nothing,” he said.

“You ain't been getting sick, have you? Is that the kind of a mess you're trying to clean up?”

“No,” he said. “It's nothing.”

She came closer. “Oh. You've went and spilled that shine I brought you. What did you want to do that for? You was the one wanted it yourself. I got no call to go hauling liquor around for you.”

“It was an accident.”

“You don't make no sense to me, did you know it? I can't hardly get no sense out of you at all.”

“I'm sorry about it. I didn't mean to spill it.”

“It ain't hardly the craziest thing you ever done, now is it? You ain't been doing nothing but crazy things around here. It's enough to drive ever' one of us crazy. And look how you was mopping it up. What are you going to wear for a shirt now? Or didn't you think about that?”

He was still holding the soaked smelly shirt. He looked at it mournfully. “I don't know.”

“I don't think you got anything to know
with,
” she said. “You ain't got no brains, that's all.”

He grew sadder; it was clear she wouldn't let him have any more to drink.

“Let me tell you what I want you to do with that shirt. You take it in there in the kitchen and put it in the stove. I don't want to see no such of a mess as that around here. You go on and do it.” When he got to the kitchen door she said, “I guess we'll just have to put you on a water ra­tion.”

He went on in. He couldn't find the handle to insert into the stove eye to lift it. He opened the high shelf on the range and took out a table fork; reversed it so he could lift with it.

“Now what do you think you're doing?” She had come to the doorway.

“I couldn't find the handle for it.”

“What? I can't hear for you mumbling like that.”

“I couldn't find the handle,” he said.

“It's right there on top,” she said.

“Oh.” He put the table fork back and got down the handle and lifted off the eye. A few coals were live in the bottom of the firebox. He stuffed the shirt in—it didn't seem likely that it would burn—and set the eye back. He got the handle out and held it, a curious warm cast-iron thing, the tip of it shaped like a square-toed shoe. He imagined hitting Mina with it; he would put blue and red streaks on her face, he would make blood come.

“You just better not, buddy boy,” she said. “You better not even think about it. You just put that goddam thing down and come on back here. I sure would like to know what's got into you. You're the craziest damn thing I ever seen. Go on, I said, and put it down.”

He hesitated no longer, put the handle on top of the shelf and came to the door.

She was back in the living room, regarded him with cold amusement. “There ain't nobody in the world would be afraid of you no more. You couldn't hurt a cat, and you can just go on pretending all you want but all you can do is just make trouble, make a little mess here and there. That's all. Nobody is going to take you serious.” Again she came to him and put her fingertips on his bare thin chest and pushed him lightly back­ward. “I guess the best way I can think of to keep you from making trouble is just to put you in bed and let you drink. I don't guess you can bother anything there but yourself.” She pushed him again. “You go on and get in the bed. I'll be there in a minute and baby you.”

He went. He sat on the bed and stripped off his shoes and socks and pants, and then lay back wearily, wearing only his soiled underpants. He lay on his side and tried to go to sleep, but his nerves were acrawl with tiredness and un­released anger, and he didn't want to close his eyes. He breathed hoarsely. Then she came in, carrying another of the endless jars of corn whiskey. “Here,” she said, “and if you spill this or make a mess it's the last of it you'll get to drink in this house, I can tell you. I got more things to do than keep putting up with you.” She set the jar on the floor by the side of the bed, and as she straightened she looked flat into his eyes. “I mean it,” she said. Then she left, closing the door firmly behind her.

He waited a few moments, until his breathing had slowed. He tried not to think how much Mina had begun to frighten him. Why was she like that? He had done nothing to her, not re­ally. He leaned and took up the fruit jar. Gray and white, but slightly tinged with yellow, Sheila's pert face looked at him through the whiskey. She was smiling: a fixed stiff smile. His hand shook; her face wavered. He was doing well, only a few large drops splashed on his belly. She was smiling. He turned the jar around and peeled the wet photograph off the side, where Mina had stuck it. She had taken it from his wallet. Now he wished he had hit her, that he had made the blood come. Sheila's face was draped between his fingers, the paper all limp, wet. He felt that no one had ever been so ab­jectly miserable as he; and he let his head roll on his chest from side to side. The photograph wouldn't come loose from his fingers; he shook his hand hard again and again. But he was still extremely careful. He didn't spill any more of the liquor, he had to preserve himself somehow. Finally he wiped the photograph off on the quilts, as if it were a sort of filth which soiled his fingers. Then he leaned and set the jar down carefully, and then lay back, still, his arms along his sides. He began to moan, and it got louder and louder. It got louder, and it didn't sound like a moan any more. He was moaning like a cow gone dry; moo upon moo, and he couldn't stop it. He might have gone on for hours.

But Mina came back in, came straight to him. “Hush up,” she said. “Hush up that goddam noise.” She slapped his face hard. “Just hush up now.” She slapped him again, harder this time, and he heard mixed with his own hollow fear a tinny ringing sound. He began to breathe more steadily, and the noise subsided to a moan. She slapped him once more, not so hard now, and turned away. “I'm goddam if you just wouldn't drive anybody plumb wild with all of your crazi­ness.” She went out.

He lay moaning for a while, and then managed to collect himself. The photograph was in wet bits, tangled in the quilt. He began to console himself with the jar.

Or there were times he would be gently mel­ancholy, even rather humorous; would smile sadly but not bitterly and speak in a calm even voice. “The
lachrimae rerum
,” he would say. “There's something in the part of a landscape you can see from a window that gives you the clearest idea of what Virgil's phrase really means. The way the window limits the land­scape, you know; it intensifies the feeling of being able to see the universe in miniature. Which is what you do when you think of those two words, though I don't think you do it con­sciously at all. But in the back of your mind somewhere there's a real picture of the small­ness of physical existence, of its real boundaries; and there's a corresponding sense of the immen­sities of the void, of nothingness, which encloses physical existence and to which it really belongs. And then to include the human personality, oneself, in this small universe is to see oneself really minuscule.” He chuckled softly. “It's all a question of proportion, you know.”

“You're as full of shit as a Christmas turkey,” Mina said.

He nodded and smiled gently. He felt very old. “I don't mean to bore you, he said, “but I know I am. But you can see—can't you?—how hard it is for me to keep my mind alive, to keep it going. With the weight of the circumstances, well, with the way I am now, I feel I've got to keep my wits about me somehow. I know these are nothing but foolish empty speculations, but it begins to seem more and more that my mind won't operate on the material that's given it. The things that happen more and more don't mean anything, and I can't make them mean anything. And as limited as my life has been—and it's always been severely limited—I was al­ways able to make something useful out of a few events. By ‘useful' I guess I mean intellectually edifying or…or morally instructive. That's what I mean, in fact: every event that happened to me was a moral event. I could interpret it. And now I can't. It seems to me that a morality just won't attach any more; events won't even attach to each other, no one thing seems to pro­duce another. Things are what they are them­selves, and that's all they are. Or maybe I'm just troubling myself to no end. One of my troubles always, too many useless scruples.”

“Scrooples,” she said.

She had got his checkbook from somewhere, and she got him to sign all the checks, blank. He didn't hesitate; it couldn't have mattered less. He felt a detached mild curiosity about the pur­poses to which she would put the money, but he didn't question her. He knew she wouldn't have told him, and anyway he had no use for it. What could he buy? He himself had been sold, sold out.

The days got hotter. The weedy field below was noisy with grasshoppers. The sun was white as sugar and looked large in the sky.

Sometimes he was very depressed, kept a strict silence. He thought of suicide, thought of slashing his wrists. He pictured his long body lying all white and drained. Perhaps there would be a funeral for him in the brick house, in the dark disused sun parlor there, his body lying in a soft casket beside the disordered piano. But he knew that that was all wrong. There was no doubt he would be cast just as he lay into an open field and left to ferment in the sun. Muskrat food. Yet this seemed appropriate; it was, after all, a proper burial, wasn't it? He wouldn't expect any more than this for himself. In fact, he would stop expecting. —It would take him en­tire hours to think through a daydream like this, and then he would be mollified but sullen. His body would feel too heavy.

And in the bed too she was relentless. He came away nerveless and exhausted, his face and neck and shoulders aching with the cold bitter hurt. Why, why? Whatever she wanted there finally, it was nothing his body could give, poor dispirited body. She was not satisfied; even blood, he discovered, would not satisfy her. What was it she wanted? How could such stolidness be so demanding? He burrowed against her, spent his last, came fighting for breath. His heart would feel ready to burst; convulsed, con­vulsed. And it was unhealthy, the whole busi­ness.—Or afterwards he would fall into a deep sleep and dream bad dreams which once again he could not remember; but felt in his sleep still the fishy breath of her and the oily taste of her skin.—Or he would have one of the blinding headaches, his mind riven like a stone with the pain. What was it she wanted? There was noth­ing left.—He would not admit that he cried out in her grip.

After dark the visitors would come again, every night of the week. This time he was drink­ing in the living room, and Mina let him stay there, didn't lead him through to the bedroom. She closed the kitchen door. He sat in a stupor in the soiled chair and heard without listening the shuffle and thump of the big shoes, the mut­tering. Finally he rose and went out on the back porch. It was cooler than he'd thought and stars of the deep summer were spread all over the sky; no moon. The night smelled good, snug odor of weeds and flowers and field earth and the cool smell of the running stream. It was the first night he had been outside, and going down the bowed wooden steps he felt slightly elated. He stretched out his arms; he felt he had forgot­ten until now the feeling of bodily freedom; it was as if a woolen musty coat had been snatched from him. He wandered about in the sparse lower yard, swinging his arms, and looked up at the stars, held still as if tangled in a net, among the small leaves of the wild cherry tree. A faint breeze moved the branches and the stars moved too, seemed to jiggle quietly.

He went round the right corner of the house, going up toward the roadbed. The light from the single small lamp in the living room—it sat on a small table next to the stuffed chair—fell on him as he passed the living-room window and caused him to appear pink and insubstantial. It was a queer sensation to stand here outside and look into the room he had just come out of. He could almost see himself sitting there in the chair, drawn and sullenly silent. Such a pitiable figure he made, or so contemptible a figure. The quart jar sat by the lamp; he had drunk half of it. He went up into the road, not walking stead­ily, but sliding his feet before him as if he moved on snowshoes. In the gravel of the road he found two small rounded stones and he held one in each hand, squeezing them slightly, reassuring himself of their solidity, their reality. Then he threw them high away into the field below. The kitchen window framed an irregular rectangle of orange light on the sloping ground, and once more he heard that unfathomable intense cry and was attracted by it to the bare kitchen win­dow.