The Second Coming (43 page)

Presently
Kojak
came on.

He felt an urge to get away from the silent white enveloping cloud and to go inside to the cheerful living room with its screen of lively sparkling colors and watch the doings of Kojak.

He rose carefully, taking care not to excite the gyroscope inside his head, then sat down with a thump.

Jesus Christ, he thought. I'm in the old folks' home.

5

The friendly atmosphere of St. Mark's was marred by two fights which occurred within the space of half an hour. He found himself embroiled in both of them. Remarkable! It had been years since he'd been in a fight or even seen a fight.

Kitty came to St. Mark's and assaulted him. Then Mr. Arnold and Mr. Ryan, his roommate for two years, got in a fistfight. Kitty must have found his suite empty and tracked him all over St. Mark's because she burst into the small room where he was visiting the two old men. It was clear when she came through the door that her rage had already carried her past caring who heard or saw her.

“You bastard,” she said. Her eyes showed white all around like a wild pony's. “You—” She broke off.

“What?” he asked, noticing that he felt scared, and wondered if this natural emotion were not another sign of his return to health.

“What my butt,” she said. “Now I know why—” she said and again her voice broke off, with a sob. Then with a grunt of effort as if she had to fling down a burden, she raised her woman's fists, thumbs straight along the knuckle, and, leaning across Mr. Ryan, began to beat him on the chest.

Later Mr. Ryan told him, “It looked like that lady was put out with you about something.”

“Now I know why you didn't come to Dun Romin' or the summerhouse or anywhere at all, you—” Again her breath caught as she shoved past Mr. Ryan's bad knee to get at him. “You—you dirty old man!”

“Why?”

“Because you were shacked up in the woods with Allison, you—”

Mr. Arnold and Mr. Ryan were lying in bed and watching
Hollywood Squares
as if nothing unusual were going on three feet above them.

“Shacked up?”

“You—snake in the grass! Taking advantage of a psychotic girl. You—you—”

“Dirty old man?” said Mr. Ryan, looking up for the first time.

“You shut your mouth, you old asshole,” said Kitty, without looking down.

“Yes ma'am,” said Mr. Ryan.

“Well, I'm here to tell you one damn thing, old pal. I hope to God you're pleased with yourself. She is now hopelessly regressed. She won't say a word. And I'll tell you something else. I'm fixing it so you'll never get your filthy hands on her again, you—snake in the grass. That's exactly what you are, a snake in the grass!”

“You mean she won't talk to you?” he asked her.

“I mean she won't talk period, won't eat period, won't live period—unless I do something about it. You bastard,” she said softly. “You knew where she was all along.”

He had spied Mr. Arnold in the hall hopping along on his crutch. There was no mistaking that peeled-onion head and the one bright eye in his shutdown face. Then, after Kitty left, flung out, jammed her fist into her side and flounced her hip with it—it's amazing, he reflected, how trite rage is: enraged people in life act exactly like enraged people in comic books: there were stars and comets and zaps over Kitty's head—then Mr. Arnold and Mr. Ryan had a fight.

Mr. Arnold was sitting on the foot of his bed, fisted hand cradled like a baby in his good arm. Though it was his bed and his right to sit there, he was blocking Mr. Ryan's view of
Hollywood Squares.
Mr. Ryan began shifting his head back and forth in an exaggerated way to see around Mr. Arnold. He asked him to move but Mr. Arnold either didn't hear or pretended not to hear.

“You may be a pane, Erroll,” he said to Mr. Arnold with an angry laugh, “but I can't see through you.”

Mr. Ryan had a neat white crewcut, a youthful face, its skin smooth and pink-creased like a baby waking up. But his eye had a cast in it. One leg was gone from the hip and the other freshly amputated and bandaged below the knee. Diabetes and arteriosclerosis, he explained, watching Will with a keen and lively eye to see how he would take it, and apparently was satisfied, for he, Will, took it as he took everything else, attentively and without surprise. They had got the infection in time, Mr. Ryan said, and this time he could keep his knee. He explained, watching Will Barrett closely, that it was better to chop off a good piece the first time than nibble away as they had done with the other leg. I could have told them from the beginning, he said, that it's exactly like pruning back boxwood with the blight.

Mr. Ryan was lying on top of the bedclothes. He pulled up his hospital gown to show his stump. “Ain't that a pistol?” His thigh too had the same pink and white baby skin.

The watchful, almost angry look, he saw, was Mr. Ryan's way of asking him if he thought he would keep his knee. Is it such a bad thing, he mused chin in hand over Mr. Ryan's remaining knee, to have a knee to think about day in and day out? Even if both knees were well and all was well, what would you do here? “They going to keep chopping on me till I'll fit on a skateboard,” said Mr. Ryan, watching him.

“It looks very healthy,” he said. “It looks fine to me.”

“Yes, it does,” said Mr. Ryan instantly. “I believe they got it this time. We can't see the show, Erroll,” he said to Mr. Arnold.

But Mr. Arnold didn't move.

After a while Mr. Ryan said, “Like I said, Erroll, you may be a pane but we can't see through you.”

Still Mr. Arnold didn't move.

“You want to know what Erroll does?” Mr. Ryan asked Will Barrett with a smile, but his eyes were glittering.

“What?”

“He knows I can't move yet he sits his ass right there on the end of his bed between me and the TV, Erroll you shit!” said Mr. Ryan, laughing, then with a sob but still laughing lunged out between the two beds and, propping himself on the floor with one hand, grabbed Mr. Arnold's crutch with the other. When, with difficulty, veins pounding in his neck, glossy eye bulging, he got himself back in place, it appeared he meant only to steal Mr. Arnold's crutch, but no. Gripping the crutch at the small end in both hands like a baseball bat and giving himself what purchase he could by gathering his knee stump under him, he swung the crutch with all his might and caught Mr. Arnold a heavy glancing blow on his onion dome, cursing all the while.

“You no-good peckerwood son of a bitch!” he cried, his voice going suddenly hoarse.

Mr. Arnold, suddenly on the move, turned, his good eye winking at Barrett, grabbed the crossbar of the crutch with his good hand, yanked it, and kicked out at Mr. Ryan with his good leg, but fell off the bed. Mr. Ryan flew through the air like a doll and fell on top of him. Three fists rose and fell.

“You covite cocksucker,” said Mr. Ryan.

“Cornholer,” said Mr. Arnold clearly. He had got on top, and though he could only use one arm, the curtain of his face had been lifted by rage. His whole mouth formed curses. Cursing cures paralysis.

“Wait, hold it, okay okay,” said Will Barrett, jumping clean across the bed and landing astraddle the roommates in time to catch the crutch on his shin. “Shit,” he said. The two old men were grunting and embracing and cursing like lovers. “I mean for God's sake stop it!” Picking up Mr. Ryan, who, truncated, was no bigger than a chunky child, he set him in place on his pillows. Mr. Arnold was already back on his perch at the foot of the bed, once again blocking Mr. Ryan's view of
Hollywood Squares.
The fight might never have occurred. Instead of moving Mr. Arnold, Will Barrett moved the TV arm so Mr. Ryan's view could not be blocked. He looked at them. They were gazing at Paul Lynde in the middle square as if nothing had happened.

“How often does this happen?” he asked them.

“Ever' damn time they chop me down to size, Erroll sits his bony ass right where I can't see the TV,” said Mr. Ryan.

“It's the onliest place I can see it good,” said Mr. Arnold. “It's too little to see from back there.”

“You speak very well,” Will Barrett told Mr. Arnold. “The last time I saw you at my house, you didn't have much to say.”

“There wasn't much to say.”

“He's too damn mean to talk,” said Mr. Ryan. “But knock him upside the head like a mule and he'll talk your ear off.”

“How long have you been here?” Will Barrett asked Mr. Ryan.

“Two years.”

“How about Mr. Arnold?”

“Ask him.”

“Three years,” said Mr. Arnold clearly. The curtain of his face had not yet shut down.

Strange: even during their rages they seemed to be watching him with a mute smiling appeal. They wanted to be told that no matter what happened, things would turn out well—and they believed him.

He discovered that it was possible to talk to them and even for them to talk to each other, if all three watched TV. The TV was like a fourth at bridge, the dummy partner they could all watch.

Mr. Ryan was a contractor from Charlotte who had moved to Linwood to build condominiums and villas for Mountainview Homes until diabetes and arteriosclerosis had “cut him down to size.”

“Their joists are two foot on centers, the nails are cheap, and the floorboards bounce clean off in two years,” said Mr. Arnold to Peter Marshall of
Hollywood Squares.
How could anger raise the curtain of his face?

“You want to know what he wants to do?” Mr. Ryan asked Jonathan Winters. “Use locust pegs and hand-split shingles for the roof. So a locust peg lasts two hundred years. He still thinks labor is thirty cents an hour.”

“Are you a builder?” Will Barrett asked Mr. Arnold.

“He once built a log cabin,” said Mr. Ryan. “But now by the time he finished the cabin the owners would have passed.”

“Anybody can go round up a bunch of hippies and knock up a chicken shack that won't last ten years,” said Mr. Arnold. “What they do is punch on their little bitty machine and figure it out so the house will fall down same time as the people.”

He looked at the two old men curiously. “You can get hippies to work for you?” he asked Mr. Ryan.

“Sure you can. If you know which ones to pick. Some of them are tired of sitting around. I got me a real good gang. They work better than niggers.”

“You build log cabins?” he asked Mr. Arnold.

“I can notch up a house for you,” said Mr. Arnold to Rose Marie holding her rose.

“If you live long enough,” said Mr. Ryan. They all watched TV in silence.

“You give me my auger,” said Mr. Arnold suddenly and in a strong voice, “my ax, saw, froe, maul, mallet, and board brake and I'll notch you up a house that'll be here when this whole building's fallen down—though you and your wife done real good to pay for it, otherwise we wouldn't have nothing.”

“Tell him about using hog blood and horsehair in the red-clay chinking,” said Mr. Ryan.

“How much can you build a cabin for?” he asked Mr. Arnold.

“I built a four-room house with a creek-rock chimley for Roy Price down in Rabun County for two hundred and fifty dollars.”

“That was in nineteen-thirty for Christ's sake,” said Mr. Ryan.

“It had overhanging dovetailing. I don't use no hogpen notch, they'll go out on you. I ain't never made a chimley that never drawed. It's all in how you make the scotch-back.”

For a long time he sat blinking between the two beds, hands stretched out to the two men as if it were still necessary to keep them apart. Then he rose suddenly, too suddenly, for his brain twisted and he almost fell down.

“Look out, potner,” said Mr. Arnold, grabbing him with his good hand, which was surprisingly strong.

“You all right, Mr. Barrett?” said Mr. Ryan.

“I'm fine.”

“Sure you are. You gon be out of here in no time, ain't he, Erroll?”

“Sho,” said Mr. Arnold. “He's a young feller. And he's rich too.”

They both laughed loudly and looked at each other as if they had a secret.

“Yeah,” he said and left.

He was in the corridor, leaning against the wall. His head was clear but there was a sharp sweet something under his heart, a sense of loss, a going away.

He smiled to himself. It no longer mattered that he couldn't remember everything.

Later that night he heard Tom Snyder ask someone: “What is your sexual preference?”

While he leaned against the wall, Kitty assaulted him again. Either she had been waiting for him, or she had left and thought of something else she had wanted to say and had come back.

“I just wanted to be sure you got one thing straight, big buddy.” She swung a purse, a kind of shoulder bag with a short strap. Had she had it earlier? Did she intend to hit him with it?

“What?” he said. From nearby rooms came the soft babble of TV sets tuned to different channels.

“When Allison goes back to Valleyhead, you are not to visit her. Do—you—understand—me?” With each word she jabbed him in the ribs with two fingers. There was a conjugal familiarity between them. He felt as if they had been married and divorced.

“Yes.”

“I know all about you and what's wrong with you. You ought to be grateful you're alive. But that doesn't mean you're going to get your hands on my little girl or her property. And I don't mind telling you I'm grateful they're keeping you here.”

“They are?”

“Now hear this, mister. I'm making it my business to see to it that that child doesn't spend another night in that dump of a greenhouse. Alistair will be here late this afternoon. He and I are going to pick her up. If she won't go, the sheriff says all we got to do is call him and he'll deliver her to Valleyhead. And you better believe for her sake I'd do it.”