The Music of Chance (19 page)

They walked through the woods together, guiding themselves by the beam of the flashlight. It was close to eleven o’clock, and the sky was overcast, obscuring the moon and whatever stars there might have been. Nashe kept expecting to see a light from the house, but all was dark over in that direction, and after a while he wasn’t sure if they would ever find it. It seemed to be taking a long time, and what with Pozzi tripping over stones and knocking into thorny bushes, the whole expedition began to feel rather pointless. But then they were there, stepping onto the edge of the lawn
and approaching the house. It seemed too early for Flower and Stone to be in bed, but not a single window was lit. Pozzi walked around to the front door and pushed the bell, which again played the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The kid muttered something under his breath, not half as amused as he had been the first time, and waited for someone to open the door. But nothing happened, and after fifteen or twenty seconds he rang again.

“It looks like they’re out for the night,” Nashe said.

“No, they’re in there,” Pozzi said. “They’re just too chicken to answer.”

But no lights went on after the second ring, and the door remained closed.

“I think it’s time to give it up,” Nashe said. “If you want to, we’ll come back tomorrow.”

“What about the maid?” Pozzi said. “You figure she’s got to be in. We could leave a message with her.”

“Maybe she’s a heavy sleeper. Or maybe they gave her the night off. It looks pretty dead in there to me.”

Pozzi kicked the door in frustration, then suddenly began to curse at the top of his voice. Instead of ringing a third time, he stepped back into the driveway and continued shouting at one of the upstairs windows, venting his rage at the empty house. “Hey, Flower!” he boomed. “That’s right, fat man, I’m talking to you! You’re a creep, mister, you know that? You and your little friend, you’re both creeps, and you’re going to pay for what you did to me!” It went on like that for a good three or four minutes, a belligerent outpouring of wild and useless threats, and even as it grew in intensity, it became progressively more pathetic, more dismal in the shrillness of its despair. Nashe’s heart filled with pity for the kid, but there wasn’t much he could do until Pozzi’s anger burned itself out. He stood in the darkness, watching the bugs swarm in the beam of the flashlight. Off in the distance an owl hooted once, twice, and then stopped.

“Come on, Jack,” Nashe said. “Let’s head back to the trailer and get some sleep.”

But Pozzi wasn’t quite finished. Before leaving, he bent down in the driveway, scooped up a handful of pebbles, and threw them at the house. It was a stupid gesture, the petty wrath of a twelve-year-old. The gravel splattered like buckshot off the hard surface, and then, almost as an echo, Nashe heard the faint treble sound of breaking glass.

“Let’s call it a night,” he said. “I think we’ve had enough.”

Pozzi turned and started walking toward the woods. “Assholes,” he said to himself. “The whole world is run by assholes.”

After that night, Nashe understood that he would have to keep a closer watch over the kid. Pozzi’s inner resources were being used up, and they hadn’t even come to the halfway point of their term. Without making an issue of it, Nashe began doing more than his share of the work, lifting and carting stones by himself while Pozzi rested, figuring that a little more sweat on his part might help to keep things under control. He didn’t want any more outbursts or drunken binges, he didn’t want to be constantly worrying that the kid was about to crack up. He could take the extra work, and in the long run it seemed simpler than trying to lecture Pozzi on the virtues of patience. It would all be over in thirty days, he told himself, and if he couldn’t manage to see it through until then, what kind of a man was he?

He gave up reading books after dinner and spent those hours with Pozzi instead. The evening was a dangerous time, and it didn’t help matters to let the kid sit there brooding alone in the kitchen, working himself into a frenzy of murderous thoughts. Nashe tried to be subtle about it, but from then on he put himself at Pozzi’s disposal. If the kid felt like playing cards, he would play cards with him; if the kid felt like having a few drinks, he would open
a bottle and match him glass for glass. As long as they were talking to each other, it didn’t matter how they filled the time. Every now and then, Nashe would tell stories about the year he had spent on the road, or else he would talk about some of the big fires he had fought in Boston, dwelling on the most ghastly details for Pozzi’s benefit, thinking it might get the kid’s mind off his own troubles if he heard about what other people had gone through. For a short time at least, Nashe’s strategy seemed to work. The kid became noticeably calmer, and the vicious talk about confronting Flower and Stone suddenly stopped, but it wasn’t long before new obsessions rose up to replace the old ones. Nashe could handle most of them without much difficulty—girls, for example, and Pozzi’s growing preoccupation with getting laid—but others were not so easy to dismiss. It wasn’t as though the kid were threatening anyone, but every once in a while, right in the middle of a conversation, he would come out with such schizy, crackpot stuff, it would scare Nashe just to hear it.

“It was going along just the way I’d planned it,” Pozzi said to him one night. “You remember that, Jim, don’t you? Real smooth it was, as good as you could possibly want it. I’d just about tripled our stake, and there I was, getting ready to zero in for the kill. Those shits were finished. It was just a matter of time before they went belly-up, I could feel it in my bones. That’s the feeling I always wait for. It’s like a switch turns on inside me, and my whole body starts to hum. Whenever I get that feeling, it means I’m home free, I can coast all the way to the end. Do you follow what I’m saying, Jim? Until that night, I’d never been wrong about it, not once.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Nashe said, still not sure what the kid was driving at.

“Maybe. But it’s hard to believe that’s what happened to us. Once your luck starts to roll, there’s not a damn thing that can stop it. It’s like the whole world suddenly falls into place. You’re
kind of outside your body, and for the rest of the night you sit there watching yourself perform miracles. It doesn’t really have anything to do with you anymore. It’s out of your control, and as long as you don’t think about it too much, you can’t make a mistake.”

“It looked good for a while, Jack, I’ll admit that. But then it started to turn around. Those are the breaks, and there’s nothing to be done about it. It’s like a batter who goes four for four, and then the game goes into the bottom of the ninth, and the next time up he strikes out with the bases loaded. His team loses, and maybe you can say he’s responsible for the loss. But that doesn’t mean he had a bad night.”

“No, you’re not listening to me. I’m telling you there’s no way I can strike out in that situation. The ball looks as big as a fucking watermelon to me by then. I just step into the batter’s box, wait for my pitch, and then swat it up the gap for the game-winning hit.”

“All right, you hit a line drive into the gap. But the center fielder is after it like a shot, and just when the ball is about to go past him, he leaps up and snags it in the webbing of his glove. It’s an impossible catch, one of the great catches of all time. But it’s still an out, isn’t it, and there’s no way you can fault the batter for not doing his best. That’s all I’m trying to tell you, Jack. You did your best, and we lost. Worse things have happened in the history of the world. It’s not something to worry about anymore.”

“Yeah, but you still don’t understand what I’m talking about. I’m just not getting through to you.”

“It sounds fairly simple to me. For most of the night, it looked like we were going to win. But then something went wrong, and we didn’t.”

“Exactly. Something went wrong. And what do you think it was?”

“I don’t know, kid. You tell me.”

“It was you. You broke the rhythm, and after that everything went haywire.”

“As I remember it, you were the one playing cards. The only thing I did was sit there and watch.”

“But you were a part of it. Hour after hour, you sat there right behind me, breathing down my neck. At first it was a little distracting to have you so close, but then I got used to it, and after a while I knew you were there for a reason. You were breathing life into me, pal, and every time I felt your breath, good luck came pouring into my bones. It was all so perfect. We had everything balanced, all the wheels were turning, and it was beautiful, man, really beautiful. And then you had to get up and leave.”

“A call of nature. You didn’t expect me to piss in my pants, did you?”

“Sure, fine, go to the bathroom. I don’t have any problem with that. But how long does it take? Three minutes? Five minutes? Sure, go ahead and take a leak. But Christ, Jim, you were gone for a whole fucking hour!”

“I was worn out. I had to lie down and take a nap.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t take any nap, did you? You went upstairs and started prowling around that dumb-ass City of the World. Why the hell did you have to do a crazy thing like that? I’m sitting downstairs waiting for you to come back, and little by little I start to lose my concentration. Where is he? I keep saying to myself, what the hell happened to him? It’s getting worse now, and I’m not winning as many hands as I was before. And then, just at the moment when things get really bad, it pops into your head to steal a chunk of the model. I can’t believe what a mistake that was. No class, Jim, an amateurish stunt. It’s like committing a sin to do a thing like that, it’s like violating a fundamental law. We had everything in harmony. We’d come to the point where everything was turning into music for us, and then you have to go upstairs and smash all the instruments. You tampered with the universe, my friend, and once a man does that, he’s got to pay the price. I’m just sorry I have to pay it with you.”

“You’re starting to sound like Flower, Jack. The guy wins the lottery, and all of a sudden he thinks he was chosen by God.”

“I’m not talking about God. God has nothing to do with it.”

“It’s just another word for the same thing. You want to believe in some hidden purpose. You’re trying to persuade yourself there’s a reason for what happens in the world. I don’t care what you call it—God or luck or harmony—it all comes down to the same bullshit. It’s a way of avoiding the facts, of refusing to look at how things really work.”

“You think you’re smart, Nashe, but you don’t know a goddamn thing.”

“That’s right, I don’t. And neither do you, Jack. We’re just a pair of know-nothings, you and I, a couple of dunces who got in over our heads. Now we’re trying to square the account. If we don’t mess up, we’ll be out of here in twenty-seven days. I’m not saying it’s fun, but maybe we’ll learn something before it’s over.”

“You shouldn’t have done it, Jim. That’s all I’m trying to tell you. Once you stole those little men, things went out of whack.”

Nashe let out a sigh of exasperation, stood up from his chair, and pulled the model of Flower and Stone from his pocket. Then he walked over to where Pozzi was sitting and held the figures in front of his eyes. “Take a good look,” he said, “and tell me what you see.”

“Christ,” Pozzi said. “What do you want to be playing games for?”

“Just look,” Nashe said sharply. “Come on, Jack, tell me what I’m holding in my hand.”

Pozzi stared up at Nashe with a wounded expression in his eyes, then reluctantly obeyed him. “Flower and Stone,” he said.

“Flower and Stone? I thought Flower and Stone were bigger than this. I mean, look at them, Jack, these two guys aren’t more than an inch and a half tall.”

“Okay, so they’re not really Flower and Stone. It’s what you call a replica.”

“It’s a piece of wood, isn’t it? A stupid little piece of wood. Isn’t that right, Jack?”

“If you say so.”

“And yet you believe this little scrap of wood is stronger than we are, don’t you? You think it’s so strong, in fact, that it made us lose all our money.”

“That’s not what I said. I just meant you shouldn’t have pinched it. Some other time, maybe, but not when we were playing poker.”

“But here it is. And every time you look at it, you get a little scared, don’t you? It’s like they’re casting an evil spell over you.”

“Sort of.”

“What do you want me to do with them? Should I give them back? Would that make you feel better?”

“It’s too late now. The damage has already been done.”

“There’s a remedy for everything, kid. A good Catholic boy like you should know that. With the proper medicine, any illness can be cured.”

“You’ve lost me now. I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Just watch. In a few minutes, all your troubles will be over.”

Without saying another word, Nashe went into the kitchen and retrieved a baking tin, a book of matches, and a newspaper. When he returned to the living room, he put the baking tin on the floor, positioning it just a few inches in front of Pozzi’s feet. Then he crouched down and placed the figures of Flower and Stone in the center of the tin. He tore out a sheet of newspaper, tore that sheet into several strips, and wadded each strip into a little ball. Then, very delicately, he put the balls around the wooden statue in the tin. He paused for a moment at that point to look into Pozzi’s eyes, and when the kid didn’t say anything, he went ahead and lit a match. One by one, he touched the flame to the paper wads, and by the time they were fully ignited, the fire had caught hold of the wooden figures, producing a bright surge of crackling heat as the
colors burned and melted away. The wood below was soft and porous, and it could not resist the onslaught. Flower and Stone turned black, shrinking as the fire ate into their bodies, and less than a minute later, the two little men were gone.

Nashe pointed to the ashes at the bottom of the tin and said, “You see? There’s nothing to it. Once you know the magic formula, no obstacle is too great.”

The kid finally pulled his eyes away from the floor and looked at Nashe. “You’re out of your mind,” he said. “I hope you realize that.”