Hamilton Stark (25 page)

It was a Friday in November, Alvin’s senior year in high school. He was a football star and a good student, “especially in math.” Everyone said so. He had driven to Ausable Chasm this day for an interview with the dean of admissions of the little-known engineering institute located at the edge of the
small town. Feeney had gone along to keep him company and “for laughs,” he’d said, and while Alvin was being interviewed, he’d taken the car and had driven around the town looking for a bar that he thought, from its appearance, would serve them without asking for IDs. “I got a sixth sense for these things,” he had explained as he drove off in Alvin’s Ford.

It was a raw, rainy day, blustery and dark, and Alvin wore only a lightweight cloth raincoat over his charcoal gray flannel suit, and he carried no umbrella, so by the time he had located and entered the brick, armorylike administration building, his clothes, hair and shoes were soaked through. Miserably uncomfortable and smelling like a wet, long-haired animal, he sat through a painful fifteen-minute interview with a blond crew-cut young man who never once smiled as he asked Alvin questions about the size of Pittsfield High School, the percentage of the graduating seniors who went on to college, and the range of courses offered there. “We’ve never had an applicant from your school before,” the somber young man explained.

“Oh, I see,” Alvin said.

A few minutes later, when, in answer to the dean’s inquiry as to the possibility of Pittsfield’s football team winning the state championship, Alvin had laughed and said, “Never!” it was the dean who said, “Oh, I see.”

It had gone on like that, the two of them saying soberly, “Oh, I see,” perhaps half a dozen times each, ending with Alvin’s pointing out that he would need a scholarship, a full scholarship, to go to college, because his parents were unable to help him financially. “My father’s a plumber,” he added helpfully.

The dean had said, “Oh, I see,” one more time and then, “Yes,” and then, “Well, yes,” and had ushered him back to the
outer office, where they shook hands and grimly parted.

By the time Alvin reached the coffee shop near the campus where he’d arranged to meet Feeney, he was again soaking wet and he was growling. He was still growling when he sat down across from Feeney in the plastic-seated booth, and Feeney laughed.

“Let’s get the hell outa here,” Alvin said. “I gotta get
plowed!”

Feeney went on laughing. He always laughed when Alvin started growling. That Alvin Stock, what a crazy guy! He gets pissed at something, he starts growling like some kinda mad dog or something. Really growling, and loud. Anybody can hear it. Like he was gonna tear somebody up with his teeth. What a crazy guy!

The growl was new—or rather, it had only recently been noticed by others. Alvin himself was still not quite aware of it, not even when it was timidly pointed out to him. He wasn’t sure what people heard when they laughed and said, “Hey, man, calm down! You’re
growling
, for chrissake!” But he knew what he felt—a knot, at first tightening in his chest, high up, and then slowly loosening as it rose in his throat and finally, between clenched teeth, squirted from his mouth. For him, the sound was merely that of his breath exhaling under pressure from below, scraping against resistance from above, the physiological opposite of a sigh.

But what others heard was a frighteningly literal growl. For them it began with a deep rumbling from Alvin’s chest that thinned, tightened, and rose in pitch as it moved up his throat. Then, finally, after resonating in his mouth, the noise would flow like a metal ribbon between his teeth, usually driving anyone near him back a step or two in surprise and, for a second, fear. Then, when it was apparent that Alvin was not conscious of his noise, came the nervous laughter, the light
mockery. In turn, his response was usually one of irritation and slight embarrassment—irritation that he was being distracted from expressing his anger, embarrassment that he was not fully aware of how he was being perceived. And too, from some corner of his mind, embarrassment that he was angry at all and had been found out, betrayed, almost, by a noise his body seemed to make involuntarily.

The Valley Café was a neighborhood tavern located in a row of wood tenements south of the center of Ausable Chasm at the edge of the Ausable Chasm River, which, a few miles downstream, emptied into Lake Champlain. It was a small place, a storefront, actually, with a dark bar along one side of the room and a dozen or so red plastic-seated booths along the other. At the back were three doors, one leading from behind the bar to the small kitchen, the second leading to a pair of filthy, unventilated restrooms, the third, marked by an Exit sign, leading to an alley. At the front there were two large plate glass windows painted dark green from the low sills to eye level, with a small red neon sign in each pane that rapidly blinked
VALLEY CAFÉ.

The place was quiet, dimly lit, almost empty. In its own toughly cynical way, the bar was friendly. It worked hard at seeming to be no more than what it was, a neighborhood bar. Anything that was deliberately atmospheric, as if to attract strangers, would not have made sense, no more to the patrons than to the owners. A juke box was allowed, was not thought pretentious or, worse, naïve, but only if the songs were the type of melancholy love songs that celebrated stoical loss, songs ten years out of date sung by middle-aged crooners who’d broken in with the big bands in the thirties and forties.

Alvin and Feeney walked up to the bar and ordered Seven-and-Sevens from the beefy, T-shirted bartender. He
was a chinless, balding man in his fifties, his thick arms covered with faded red and blue tattoos. His T-shirt was stretched tightly across a belly that clung to the front of him like a tortoise shell, below which he had tied a white apron like a bib. He served the boys quickly and went back to his post at the front of the bar, where he had spread his newspaper. Planting both elbows on the counter, his chin resting against his knuckles, he resumed reading, slowly moving his lips as he read.

In a few seconds, having grown accustomed to the semi-darkness of the room, the boys took a look around them to see where, in fact, they were and who was there with them. At the far end of the bar, in a bank of shadows, hunched a man in his late sixties, a serious afternoon drinker with a shot of blond whiskey and a glass of flat draft beer arranged precisely in front of him. In one of the booths, with his back to the bar, a young man in khaki work clothes was arguing in a hissing voice with a tubby, bleached-blond, middle-aged woman who was barely listening, but now and then making a low-voiced comment that would set the young man off and hissing again. He chain-smoked from a pack of Camels in front of him, and she affectionately studied her pink-painted fingernails. For a minute Alvin wondered why the young man was haranguing her. Were they married to each other? Lovers? Brother and sister? He gulped down the last of his drink and called for another.

Maybe she was a prostitute and he was her pimp. Naw, impossible. The guy’s wearing work clothes. Besides, she’s too old and fat to be a prostitute. What’s it like, he wondered, to fuck a woman that old and that fat?

She was looking across at him then, not quite staring, but openly, undeniably, looking at him. Alvin returned her gaze. Feeney, staring down into his glass, went on chattering, something
about California, L.A., swimming year-round, beautiful cars, a ‘49 Olds 88… Alvin noticed that the woman’s face was not unattractive. She had bright, dark, heavily made-up eyes that were wide apart and low on her face, and a full mouth that she had painted pink, to match her fingernails. Her hair was short and curly, fluffy almost. The color of vanilla ice cream, Alvin thought. She was wearing a maroon short-sleeved sweater and a navy blue wool skirt, both of which clung tightly to her bulky, round torso. Her arms and breasts, though exceptionally large, looked firm to Alvin. Maybe she’s not really that old, he thought. In her late thirties, maybe. And the guy is her brother-in-law and he’s complaining about something that his wife, her sister, did to him, and she really doesn’t give much of a shit because she doesn’t like the guy much in the first place and he’s constantly whining in the second place. And anyhow, what she’s really interested in is
me
. Finishing off his drink, he ordered another.

Feeney ordered another too. “Gimme a coupla Slim Jims, will ya?” he said to the bartender.

Other people, mostly men, came into the bar, drank awhile, and left. It grew dark outside, and the bartender turned on a set of rose-shaded lights. Alvin played the juke box, half a dozen Frank Sinatra songs, and while the records played, Alvin, back at the bar, snapped his fingers to the beat. He drank, ordered again, and drank again.

Feeney started talking about the drive home, four hours, and Alvin said, “Yeah, yeah, sure. Later, later,” and because it was Alvin’s car, Feeney forgot about it. What the hell, he could always sleep in the back and let Alvin worry about the driving. He was only along for the laughs, he explained—but Alvin didn’t seem to hear him.

A pair of sailors, quite cheerfully drunk, wandered into the place and took stools next to Alvin and continued their
drinking. The young man with the woman in the booth started to get up to leave, but as he rose from his seat, he saw that the woman was looking intently at Alvin, who was leaning off his stool in her direction, like a tower about to fall, and the young man quickly sat down again.

One of the sailors, a thin, red-headed boy with freckles swarming across his face, elbowed Alvin in the side and, grinning good-naturedly, said to him, “You got somethin’ goin’ with Blondie over there, ain’t you?”

Slowly Alvin turned and looked at the sailor. All he could see was the red-headed boy’s huge grin, a tooth-filled half-moon, and to Alvin at that moment the sailor’s great, goodhearted grin was the silliest, weakest thing he’d ever seen, so he said, “Whyn’t you mind your own fuckin’ business?” and watched with pleasure the collapse of the grin.

“Fuck you,” the sailor quietly offered, and he turned away.

Satisfied, Alvin resumed watching the woman in the booth, who had now placed herself so that Alvin could see her legs, crossed, halfway up her thighs.

By this time Feeney, too, had realized that Alvin’s attention was focused solely on one person, and also that the person’s attention seemed to be focused on Alvin as well. “Go easy, Al,” he warned. “We’re a long ways from home, y’know.”

Alvin brushed his friend’s warning aside with a crooked smile, and the next thing he knew he was standing beside the booth, staring down at the blond woman. “Buy you a drink?” he asked, flashing the same crooked smile he had given Feeney a moment before.

The woman looked up at him, her face wide open and pleased, but before she could answer, the man seated opposite her snarled, “Screw, kid. Get fuckin’
lost
, will ya?”

In a dead voice Alvin said, “I didn’t offer to buy
you
a drink.” And for the first time he saw that the man was actually
quite a bit older than he’d thought, was in fact the same age as the woman, probably in his late thirties. Up close, Alvin could see that the man was large, and muscular too, red-faced from working outside, with large tanned hands crossed with pencil-thick veins.

The man jammed an unlit cigarette between his thin lips, and with one motion he snapped open his lighter and lit the cigarette while with his free hand he pointed first his index finger at Alvin’s chest and then a hooked thumb at the barstool Alvin had just left. Inhaling deeply, blowing the smoke from flared nostrils, the man repeated his instructions: “Screw, kid. The lady’s with me. Now get fuckin’
lost
, will ya!”

The woman smiled helplessly up at Alvin and remained silent.

Alvin looked coldly into the man’s pale blue eyes. “Shut up,” he said evenly. “I’m talkin’ to her, not you.”

“Lissen, honey, maybe some other time, okay?” the woman said to him in a husky voice. She was still smiling up at him.

“I’m from outa town, I’m leavin’ tonight, so whyn’t you let someone who’s just passin’ through buy you a drink? Whaddaya drinkin’, anyhow?” Alvin peered down into her glass, as if peering down a well.

“Gin and tonic.”

“Gin and tonic!” Alvin called to the bartender. “An’ another Seven-an’-Seven!” He started to sit down next to the woman, who quickly slid over to make room, when suddenly the man reached across and clamped onto Alvin’s wrist, stopping him.

“Kid,” he hissed, “if you don’t turn around an’ get the hell outa here I’m gonna take you apart.”

Swinging his other hand around in front of him, Alvin wrenched the man’s hand free of his wrist and threw it against the table. “You ain’t takin’ anybody apart tonight, pal.”

Alvin felt wonderful. Like a tractor or bull or tree. And fast, like a cobra or lariat or chain saw. And fearless, like a block of ice or a surgeon or the wind. Here was a big man who was older than he, a tough, wiry man facing him with threats and anger, yet to Alvin the man was like a curtain that could easily be brushed aside. So he turned all his attention to the woman, asking her name and did she live around here.

The man stood up and grabbed Alvin’s right shoulder. “Let’s go. Out.” His voice was hurried but low and smooth, almost pleasant, as if he were putting his cat out for the night.

At the bar, Feeney, the sailors, the bartender, and three or four other customers, all older men, were watching intently. Only Feeney looked frightened. He got off his stool and took a step toward the booth, then a sideways step toward the door that led out to the street and Alvin’s car. From the juke box at the back Frank Sinatra was singing “On the Road to Mandalay,” but otherwise the place was silent, still, and waiting.