Juice (10 page)

Now memories came, and were confused with the event: he had left Sunday school to practice with a new air rifle; he had stolen a jackknife; he had drunk under age, cheated on his income tax, pulled his rank on a Negro sergeant and the sergeant had naturally misunderstood—it was all ambiguous anyway, something about ammunition; it was not there when they needed it, and he was not calling anybody lazy, but he had never cleared that up later; he had never been able to find the man, and one day he had thought, maybe he's dead, and was depressed to find that he hoped so. Against this there was a prisoner he had dragged in when he might have left him—should have left him to die; he had almost died himself, losing blood as he crawled in, but they had both lived, and now the man—a private, then about sixteen—would be running a souvenir shop in the Ginza, or a fishing boat: he might have been one of the tuna-boat men, the fallout men. Or he might have been hit by a trolley, like—like—

Like Storch, of course. It came back to Storch. There was only one sort of remorse, but it came in different sizes, and this was the large. The family size. One wife, two children. How old were the children?

“How old are Storch's children?” he asked.

Pearson said, “Five and two. Both boys.”

Five and two. When Dave was five he had had scarlet fever, and Joe remembered: fear of death, fear of deafness, blindness, debility; and nothing had happened. He had recovered. You play the black, and the black comes up. It had been a long streak. Now it was broken. Now the red was up; now they were all up against him: it was rouge, impair, et manque. It was the only wheel in town, the only life he had. He wondered what would become of his own wife, his own children.

Helen came. She burst in, found him, and clung to him. The bondsman discussed the matter with the judge. The bondsman was hushed and dignified; he might have doubled as undertaker.

Helen stroked Joe's face and was silent. When the bondsman had finished, Joe thanked the judge. He turned to Pearson. “I'll see Mrs. Storch,” he said. “But not now. I can't. She—I—I can't.”

“You want me to tell her you're coming?”

“Only if you think she could stand it. Wait. Tell her tomorrow.”

Pearson nodded.

Joe and Helen walked out. His arm was around her waist; his knees were still weak.

She drove; he sat in his own corner, huddled, feeling old and small, trying to tell her. “It's like being doped. I know something's happened, I can even name it. I can say it: I killed a man. But it's like so many things—the first cigarette, the first woman, the first baby: there are forms; you
ought
to feel a certain way because it seems to be the way most people feel, so you delude yourself; but you know all along that the cigarette made you dizzy, and you don't love the woman, and the baby is a stranger.”

“Don't talk if you don't want to,” she said.

“I do want to. I never wanted to as much as I do now. Then you go around feeling different; other people react but you don't. But then later, much later sometimes, you realize that they didn't either, at least not the way legend said they would; but they were ashamed to admit it, so they kept the legend alive. So now I know what I've done and I ought to be on my knees and crying. You know what Jews do when somebody dies? Somebody in the family? They rip their clothes. I like that. You take hold of your lapel and you pull, you tear, and you've torn the universe apart, you've ripped God limb from limb, you've protested everybody's troubles everywhere; the physical act, you
do
something—and I can't feel it that way. Not yet. I can't even believe it happened. I keep thinking, this afternoon I was at my desk, I was with people, up to a given moment my life was mine; and now it's not mine. But I still can't feel it. I'm going home now to you and Dave and Sally, and that's wrong too, the pattern isn't being followed. I should be in jail, or they should be throwing stones at me. But I don't want that either, because I can't feel it yet. Do you mind my talking? You have tears in your eyes. I haven't. I was thinking before about that prisoner I brought in, the one I told you about; I could have left him to die. But it doesn't balance. There is no balance. Immanent justice is a fraud. Immanent justice is the—what is it?—the Manichaean heresy. That good and evil balance. We had a bad winter, so we'll have a warm summer. I heard a priest say that once. No. It doesn't work. I remember I wanted to tell him it was heresy; he was in danger of excommunication, because he had made a remark on the weather. I'm excommunicated, from myself. I'll wake up tomorrow and I'll be in hell. Or maybe I won't. The morning after the first girl: do I look different? And I didn't even feel different. I'm running off at the mouth. Why don't you stop me?”

“Because I love you,” she said. The tears were on her cheeks; one had reached the corner of her lip.

“That's good,” he said.

Then they were home. Dogs clamored a fanfare. It was ten-thirty; Joe went upstairs to see the children, and looked at them without seeing them, and came downstairs, and took off his jacket and tie and sat numbly in a chair. Helen brought him a chicken sandwich and a whisky-and-water; the cats gathered and glared at him. Death was not in the room with them; death was still a stranger, inhabiting the world of the others; death was a word, a necessary noun, of value to newspapermen, novelists, and theologians. Death was alien to this hilltop, and Joe Harrison ate his chicken sandwich, observed his desirable wife, imbibed his soothing drink.

“What did Rhein say?” he asked.

“At first he didn't say anything,” Helen said. “I had to ask him if he was still there. Then he said, ‘Yes, yes; this is incredible. Impossible. I'll call that Davis.' So I asked who Davis was, and he told me, and I remembered. I told him to go ahead; that I'd try to take care of tonight, and we'd call him in the morning. ‘You'll need a bond,' he said. I could feel him taking charge. I said yes, and I asked him what I could put up for bail—cash, a check, securities, what. Then he said he'd send a bondsman. That was all.”

“I'm surprised he didn't laugh,” Joe said. “We had an argument this afternoon. It seems like a couple of months ago.”

“He wouldn't have laughed. He was panicky at first, in his own puzzled way.”

“Sure he was.” Joe sighed, and Helen's eyes softened again; the sigh had been almost a groan.

“Can you sleep, do you think?”

“I'm afraid so,” he said. “I'm too calm. There's something wrong. Any minute now I may have hysterics.”

“No.” She went to him. “Come with me. Upstairs. Right now. We have pills.”

“Pills,” Joe said. “Poppy and mandragora. All right. In the midst of death—”

“Stop it. Don't let it build up.”

“Build up? That's it. It's building up now. Don't let it build up. Squeeze it down.”

“Joe.”

“Throttle it, let it go, save it for a rainy day, no tears now. Walk do not run. Next week will be all right: emotion recollected in tranquillity.” He stood up and frowned. “The neat's foot oil. I knew there was something. Unforeseen consequences: the baseball glove dry and cracked—”

“Joe!” Helen tightened her arms around him. He was rigid again, his arms imprisoned in hers. “Stop talking now and come with me.”

She released him, took his hand, and led him to the stairway. “The lights,” he said. “Economy.” She extinguished the downstairs lights.

They went upstairs together and into their room. She helped him to undress and wrapped him in his robe. She took him to bed in the darkness and let her warmth cover him, her softness appease him, and when he trembled she stroked him. The night sounds were neutral, but the night itself was hostile. He fell asleep; she lay staring, still stroking him, defending him, staring fearfully at days and weeks and months to come. He woke, with a jerk and a moan; she went on stroking him, and the incredible happened, naturally, thoughtlessly, primitively; his strength rose to her solace, and entered her warmth, and another moment was stolen from eternity: In the midst of death, she thought, in the midst of death, in the midst of death, in the midst of death …

The morning was much like other mornings—one injustice more, Joe thought. The Harrisons trooped to breakfast in normal order: Helen in her housecoat, not yet made up, her fatigue absorbed by health, the signs of it by her tan; Joe in khaki pants and a gray sweatshirt, Joe dulled by the hour, which was usual, and by emotional exhaustion, which was not; Sally in yellow blouse, green jumper, wheaten braids, tan sandals; Dave laughing, talking to himself, skipping steps, sliding to his chair, drumming on the table. Juice, sausage, eggs, rolls, coffee were set before them. Their menagerie had also preceded them, a restless and envious audience: forest murmurs rose in the breakfast nook. The juice was tasteless, but it was orange, which was something; he remembered the night before in black-and-white: a newsreel. Waking, he had experienced an undefined disquiet, the dimmed and diffuse memory of an evil. Helen had furled the roller blinds, and with the sun, knowledge had struck Joe. He had reacted classically by desiring to roll over, hide his face, and find sleep again. Instead he had gone to his shower. He had run it hotter, and then colder, than he liked: not expiation, not punishment, but the wish to waken fully, the wish to be aware, to shock himself to clarity. He had not succeeded. He had not shaved; there was no need; and the release from his customary barbering cheered him momentarily. When the shame and irrationality of that cheer broke upon him he frowned, angry and desolate. His mirror showed him nothing of unusual value: the same hard features, the same clear eyes, the same stern self-sufficiency in his expression, the same seasoning of gray in the hair. He wondered what he had expected: to turn white overnight? To age twenty years through horror? To hate himself in the morning? Must he die himself before he knew what a life was worth?

And he ate. He shamed himself again. To be alive today was shameful: to watch his hands manipulate knife and fork, to feel the wizardry of focusing eyes, hinged jaws, simple digestion.

“You going to take a day off?” Dave asked him.

His motions slowed, and then stopped. He looked helplessly at Helen. Sally glanced up inquisitively.

Helen tried to speak. For a moment instinct held them all; motion and sound ceased.

Joe said, “I'm in trouble.”

“Ta-da, ta-da,” Dave trumpeted. “We stand behind you.”

“Dave,” Helen said.

Joe had winced.

Sally was silent; a gathering worry crossed her face.

“Don't, Dave,” Joe said. “I'm in real trouble.”

“What kind?” Dave scooped yolk from his plate.

“An automobile accident,” Joe said.

“A bad one?” Dave looked up and was still again.

“Very bad,” Joe said, with difficulty. “The worst.”

Communication was achieved, briefly and silently. Dave became serious and awkward. Sally said, “Oh, Daddy,” and Helen touched his hand.

“Who was it?” Dave said. “Was he hurt bad?”

“It was a man from Ashford,” Joe told him. They waited; he could not go on.

“Do you want us to stay home?” Sally asked.

“No. But I'd better tell you.”

“Joe—” Helen began.

Joe went on: “The newspapers will have it, and the radio may carry it.”

Dave looked ferocious. “What happened?”

Words were only words; any tongue could form them; they could issue from any mouth. “He died.”

“Oh, my gosh,” Dave said, and ate sausage. Joe marveled bitterly.

“It was a stupid accident,” Joe said, “and it was my stupidity. I'm in trouble. It's bad for all of us. I can't keep it from you, and I can't make it sound like less than it was.” These, my children, he thought, Noah, naked and drunken.

Sally was frightened. “Will you go to jail?”

“Don't worry about that,” Joe said. “We have to see lawyers and judges, and we won't know for a while. Helen and I'll be busy. We want you to do what you always do, and try not to worry about it. When you get home from school we'll talk about it some more. Meanwhile don't talk to anyone else about it.”

“Anyone,” Helen said. “All right? Don't go rushing around to all your friends.”

“What do you think we are?” Dave said. “Gee.”

Helen smiled at him. “I know. But you love excitement. Please. This time, not a word to anybody.”

“All right,” Dave said.

“And you mustn't worry,” Joe said softly. “We'll be all right.”

“Will the cops come here?”

“No. The police don't have much to do with it. It's for the courts.”

Sally was looking forlornly at Helen. Joe realized that his wife was close to tears; he caught his breath. He was suddenly weak, watery. He reached for his coffee cup. “We won't talk about it now. Finish up and go down to the bus, and don't say anything.”

“Nothing,” Sally said.

“A secret's a secret,” Dave said.

Helen covered her face with both hands.

Joe cut into his second egg; the motion was automatic. He wondered when, or whether, he would cease to be numb.

That morning Joe read his newspaper. He looked first for news of himself and found none. He studied unrest on four continents. He saw “Argentina” misspelled in a 36-point head, and he winced. Weinstein would sigh bitterly, shrug finally, and surfeit himself with corned beef in an animal protest against the failure of the intellect. He read the editorials, which of course were funny, and the funnies, which of course were not. He glanced coldly at the market report. He merged two oil firms, sold France short, bought a hundred thousand shares of South African Mineral Development (it was not listed, of course) at a sixteenth, waited six months for a diamond strike, and sold at eleven, clearing a million before capital gains. Comfortable for the rest of his life, he turned to the sports pages. It was another market report: athletes were bought and sold, advanced and retreated in value. One, a baseball player, quoted at .235 a week before, was now at .310: it was early in the season, and the board fluctuated. A twenty-two-inch golden trout had been killed in the northern part of the state. At one racing meet the handle (a word he liked; the handle was the sum of all the flutters, was it not?) had exceeded a million dollars for the ninth consecutive day. He studied the bridge problem uncomprehendingly and decided, in a further burst of regression, to work it out, and discovered that success depended on an unlikely finesse, the drop of a queen, and a squeeze at the tenth trick. He was not offended.