My Present Age (30 page)

This is it, then. This is Sam Waters’s first appearance. One thing at least is cleared up. Three years after I had written this I sat down to write again in that other bad time shortly after Victoria left me. And Sam had sprung on to the page without hesitation, without my taking thought. I had described it to myself as a case of automatic handwriting. That was how it felt, I felt something had taken possession of me. I didn’t realize I was writing about a man I knew. Sam Waters hadn’t been obliterated by electricity, by shock treatment. He had just gone deeper into me, into hiding.

What I am reading has to be the final copy. There are no alterations, no scratchings out, nothing added. The drafts which I scribbled in solitude, day after day, are gone, destroyed. I can only guess what was in them, for what I finally arrived at has the appearance of being willed, of being strait-jacketed into a familiar pattern. This is the cherished western of my childhood, homage to the cold-eyed hero. And despite the ironic winks to myself in the prose, I must have followed Sam Waters without hesitation when he turned away from the hash house and crossed the street to the Diamond Saloon.

Sam walked to the bar. His spurs sounded loud as church-bells in the hollow quiet.

“What’s your pleasure, mister?”

“Beer.”

The bartender drew it. “You look like you come a ways.”

“Far enough.”

“That’ll be a nickel to oblige. Some pays before service. I seen you warn’t sich, though.”

Sam fished in his waistcoat, put the coin carefully on the countertop. Out of the corner of his eye he was watching the barfly sidling up to him. You never knew. He might be laying for you. He might be somebody’s brother.

“Darn’d if I hain’t done,” the juicehead informed the barkeep.

“Corners too?”

“I allow so.”

Sam watched the man beside him as his drink was poured out. Younger than Sam expected, not above thirty-five, he was got up in a long grey coat, broken shoes, and pants stiff with mud. Under a week of ginger stubble his skin was the colour of buttermilk. He had bad teeth. When he smiled he looked like the keyboard of an old whorehouse piano.

The drunk had trouble getting the first one of the day to his mouth. If it had been a glass of cream instead of whisky he’d have been lapping butter when he got it to his lips. But he got a bit noisily down, licked his wrist clean of slops and turned to Sam. “A fambly weakness,” he explained. “Pop was jest sich as me. Always a-havin’ tremors and visions when he went to a-drinkin’. Often I rec’lect how he’d scare up the Angel of Death when in a parlous state.”

Waters nodded and looked in his glass. His neighbour gave off a thin, tired stench.

“Oh,” he said, “I know what you’re a-thinkin’: You’re a-thinkin’ I hain’t fittin’ for conversation. You’re a-thinkin’
you’d like as soon shake hands with a hog as me.” The man leaned closer and said confidentially, “I warn’t always as you see me now, pore and pitiful. I warn’t always a-smashed to flinders. It was the war between the States done me down. I come here to Kansas in Territory days afore the War. Even then every kind of fool was set on a-killin’ one t’other. Jayhawkers and Kickapoo Rangers and Doniphan Tigers a-murderin’ and a-burnin’: Missouri men a-shootin’ fools so’s they could keep a-holt their niggers, and John Brown a-murderin’ Pottawatomi innocents to make them lose a-holt their niggers. Sure as God made little green apples they was jest a-gittin’ primed for the big blow-out, and I seed it so from the beginnin’. Jest ast me.”

Sam did not oblige him by asking.

“And then it come, jest as I knowed she would,” he continued. “Well, sir, a frien’ of mine writes me a letter to Kansas. He was a-raisin’ a regiment fur Jeff Davis and the Good Ole Cause. This frien’, he had his heart a-set on a plume and bein’ a Colonel. ‘The South needs her sons in her hour of travail,’ he writes, ‘and I call on you to join with the Flower of Chivalry and scotch the Serpent of Tyranny.’ And I done so ’cuz I was right partial to that man and never could stand agin what he wanted. So I a-joined and me and a passel of other fools marched arter him and he was kilt at Vicksburg a-ridin’ back ’n forth in the enemy fire, his hair a-blowin’ ever’ which way, a-wavin’ his sword and a-singin’ out, ‘Give Us Liberty or Give Us Death’ and Death obliged and fetched him off his horse, a Yankee minie ball plumb dead centre in the head, and he was done in and stretched out cold and white as alabarster.”

“If he’s botherin’ you,” said the bartender to Sam, “give him a shove with your boot.”

“I was a-took captive at Vicksburg,” said the barfly, “and my health and spirits was a-broke in a Yankee jail and this
here is my fate.” His hand steady now, he finished off his drink and pushed it toward the barman in a way that suggested he expected it filled again.

“Don’t go shovin’ at me. You had your drink.”

“This territory has a-changed,” said the barfly. “It went civilized and nat’ral good manners went by the by. And me as dry as a powder horn.”

“Fill it up,” said Sam, putting money down.

“Thanks aplenty.” The man thrust his face closer to Sam’s, covered his mouth with a grimy hand and whispered, “That one back there,” he said, motioning with his head to the woman dealing cards, “is a dollar. But I kin rec’mend better. There’s a high yaller girl I know’ll do it fur two bits. I’ll take you ’long to her direckly fur a nickel, mister.”

“Obliged, but I’ll pass,” said Sam, draining his glass and turning to the door.

“I know this here town,” the man called out after him, “I know this here territory. You want sump’n, a woman, or any sich thing, jest ast fur me. Ever’body a-knows me. I kin scare up a good time. Ever’body knows me. Jest ast arter Huck Finn.”

“A
re you sure, are you positive you haven’t heard anything from Anthony Peters? Are you absolutely certain, Marsha?”

When Marsha thrusts up the bar, the row of little muscles that lie between her breasts and her collarbone leap exuberantly under the skin. “Gruunph!” The metal plates clink.

“We had a deal, Marsha,” I remind her. She is lying on a long, narrow padded bench upholstered in black vinyl. Bolted to its head is a chrome-plated rack.

“Whoosh! Whoosh!” goes Marsha, hyperventilating. Her lips are puckered in a crinkled white o. Her face is flushed and sweaty, loose strands of hair adhere damply to her jawline. She tenses, heaves again. “Grrnph!”

“Remember we had a deal, Marsha,” I repeat for emphasis. I am dismayed to find she is producing mildly erotic sensations in me, lying there on her back, legs splayed out on either side of the bench, bare feet planted in the nap of the carpet. She is dressed in a white body-stocking over which she has pulled a blue bikini bottom. When she jerks the bar off her chest her pelvis tilts upward and her buttocks snap off the vinyl, making an unsticking sound
like adhesive tape being pulled loose. I can see the vague swirls of darkness on the body-stocking that mark her nipples.

“I think you know where she is,” I say, taking off my parka and slinging it over my arm. Here in the steamy exercise room of Marsha’s apartment building the temperature is kept at a level sufficient to produce heatstroke. I had the misfortune to buzz her just as she was off to her daily work-out. The sacred ritual apparently cannot be postponed, so here I am.

“Whoosh! Whoosh!”

This is the perfect setting for a revival of the myth of Sisyphus. The glum smell of effort that produces little reward pervades it. The sour failed dreams of weight loss, flat tummies, firm thighs, haunt the room. Off in a corner a grey-haired retiree pedalling morosely on a stationary bicycle might be the fabled Greek himself, condemned to the present age’s equivalent of boulder-rolling up mountain slopes. The old boy’s gristly legs are doodled all over with bright blue veins.

Marsha interrupts these thoughts by settling the barbells in the rack above her head with a clank. She sits up, twists her torso to give me a view of her back, tenses her muscles, and forces back her shoulders. “Can you see definition in my back?” she asks.

“Pardon?”

“My muscles, do they stand out? Are they well-defined? I always check for myself in the bathroom mirror but I can’t tell if it’s just shadows or real definition. The light is so poor.”

I study the crescent of fast-fading Arizona tan, the toffee-coloured skin revealed by the low-scooped back of her body-stocking. “Why don’t you answer me?” I demand. “Does Peters know where she is?”

“No he doesn’t. I told you that already.” She wriggles her shoulders. “How are my delts?”

I don’t even know what they are. “Lovely. What did he say to you?”

“He hasn’t heard from her,” says Marsha, uncoiling her body and beginning to pat her arms dry with a towel, “and quite frankly I think he’s come to the end of his patience. He doesn’t care for emotional blackmail. It’s gone too far now. Victoria has badly misjudged Anthony. She ought to have acted like an adult.”

“How does an adult act in these circumstances?”

“Not a surprising question from you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, in your case you might refrain from prowling the streets looking for her. That’d be a start.”

“I have.” I don’t explain that this is not by choice. Rubacek won’t let me have the car because I don’t have a driver’s licence – a piece of criminal sophistry on his part – and I can’t get him to leave his writing. He claims his memoir is on the verge of completion; it’s a question of mere hours. “This is the big push, Ed,” he tells me. “Do or die.”

“I am glad to hear it. And to see you’ve finally crawled out of that grungy apartment. What’s-his-name must be thrilled.”

“Rubacek.”

“Yes. Stanley, isn’t it? Is he still cluttering up the premises?”

“Yes.”

“What interesting little friends you make.”

“He’s no friend of mine. He’s driving me nuts. He
drove
me out of my apartment. And he’s
driving
me nuts. When he’s not reminding me not to be depressed he’s asking me how to spell words that don’t belong in the English language.”

“Throw him out.”

“It’s not that easy. I’ve hinted rather strongly a number of times he should get out but he says he couldn’t leave me when I’m depressed like this. If I did anything foolish he’d feel responsible, he says. I can’t make him go.” This is not entirely the truth. I could make anybody go. Let’s face it, I’ve never had any problem driving people away. But just at the moment I can’t summon up the
necessary will and energy, and to tell the truth, this heart condition is never out of my mind. I think I’d be afraid to stay alone. Rubacek is better than nothing. I’ve made him memorize the phone numbers of all the ambulance services in town.

“Maybe Stanley is your karma,” says Marsha with a wicked smile. “He who imposes shall be imposed upon.”

“Marsha, I’m constantly amazed at your compassion and depth of understanding.”

“Lighten up, Ed. You keep trying this hard to win some sympathy and you’re going to start believing you’re as badly off as you pretend to be. I’m warning you – it’s a dangerous game you’re playing. I was talking to Benny and he sees you’re developing problems too.”

“Sees what? What does that son of a bitch see? Go on, say it. There’s too many walnuts showing in the fruitcake. Is that what he was getting at?”

“Let’s just say this business about your heart isn’t healthy. We both agree on that. It’s obvious there’s nothing wrong with your heart. If there was, you wouldn’t have been let out of the hospital.”

“I’ll let you know I have a history of high blood pressure.”

“You’ve got a history of crawling around inside your own head. That’s what you’ve got a history of. Everybody who knows you knows your history.”

“All right, so you’re the expert. Go on, what’s my history?”

“Let’s just leave it at that.”

“You ought to review your own history, Marsha. Studded as it is with successes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s just leave it at that.”

“Oh, gamesmanship. All right. Okay, Ed. If you
have
to hear it. You want to know what everybody knows? This is what everybody knows. You’re a fuck-up, an infantile jerk. We’ve always been embarrassed for you, the way you act. What did you need? A
telegram informing you Victoria was missing in action? Do you think she was only gone when you separated? She was gone years before that. Believe me, people are losing patience with you.