Читать книгу This Footstool Earth - John Zeugner - Страница 6

The bullet from nowhere entered through his spleen and exited shoving segments of his stomach, intestine, pancreas and duodenum out into the rice field’s still, grey water. He thought, I’ve been gut shot, the worst of all prospects. Shot by an unseen unrecognized enemy as alone in this special place as I am. Perhaps I wasn’t the target at all. Maybe a rifle went off somewhere, having been tossed by someone ignorant of the effect, until the firing happened.

The force of the wound tossed his innards away from him, bobbing in the rice water like a cat avoiding embarrassment. His blood streamed out as if to lasso his fractured insides floating away. For a moment he imagined he could collect them still, but that attempted movement sent pain swelling through his shock and he collapsed into the water, finding only at the last minute the strength and coordination to turn his head up and aside for air. Water and gasping mixed in his bobbing search to survive.

She only opened the door about three inches. The chain lock was not visible, but he sensed she had wedged her foot against the door’s edge, keeping just three inches for them to exchange slow looks. Lewis thought, I must not let my guts get away. I must gather them up and keep them close, so that repair and revival can occur. If they get away I’m lost. “You’re all growed up,” she said with a sweetness that reminded him of so very much. “I suppose so,” he answered with what he knew she’d find suaveness, worldly mastery, true maturity. But he knew she didn’t really care about that, only about him. He’d come to see her because he knew she cared only about him. “And how did you find me?” she said. “By looking and looking, and asking and asking,” he answered, leaning closer into their three inches, trying to see her better, smell her closer. Yes, she was not open to the world. He knew that, sensed that when she left so quickly. Why did he want so much to see her now? Because she cared about him, was that truly it? Yes, truly that was it. He knew it was now the purest moment for certainty. No time, absolutely no time for obfuscation. No time for calculated response, no time for strategy. I can’t reach out now to grab my guts. They’re floating away, almost over the horizon.

“I’m glad you’re growed up.”

“So am I.” He thought, why did I seek her out now? Why now? Because he knew at some level that he would die soon, could that be it? As his guts swam away he knew beforehand their outer drift well beyond seeping blood lasso; and therefore what was most precious in the future must be recovered, reaffirmed, re-celebrated, re-lived, re-stamped with indelible accent, indelible belief. So of course, he sought her out. He wanted her to know beforehand how she had shaped him, and, besides, when he thought about departure who else really mattered to him?

-§-

B interrupted him: “Who the hell are you talking about?”

A answered for C: “Annie May. Doesn’t that click something for you?”

“Of course not. Why should it. A name I’ve never heard before.”

“So, you didn’t read the play. You’re way behind. Naughty lad who didn’t do his homework.”

“What a lot of horseshit. Who has time to read a play?”

-§-

Was there someone else with her that she wouldn’t let him in? He might have asked but realized it was not someone else that kept them fixed on their three inches of seeing one another. He realized her memories hardly converged with his, and that terrible separation of fulfillment kayoed any communication. She was at least 45 years old; he was 20. He was white, she was black. She had held him since he was one and one-half years old. “I wanted to see how you were. How you were getting along. And I wanted to say goodbye.”

“That’s good,” she answered.

“You never said goodbye, but I wanted to say goodbye.”

“It’s been some time. Your folks didn’t want me to say goodbye. Just get out I guess.”

“I never understood.” He said slowly not looking at her. Shame flooded in. “I’m sorry for whatever.”

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t turn his head aside and up again. Sudden chill. Retching ache spiraled after his drifting insides slowly losing their pink tinge in the brown, still water. There she was rocking him in mewling pain, holding him softly in that cramped vertical striped room, rocking, creaking in the polished maple chair. He thought but was too wracked or embarrassed to say (he couldn’t tell which)—you were the one I wanted to see, wanted to say goodbye to, because I doubt I’ll come back, doubt I’ll need to come back, or want to come back. You meant so much to me, put safety in my hands—your hands. I wanted to know you were still in this world, available in this world and here I am three inches away spreading my leaking blood lasso around whatever it was that meant so much to me. I cannot tell you, cannot say. So, I found you, after nights of looking, listening, waiting. Here I am nudging my stupidity through your door and relieved you’re not letting me in. Beyond her was a gleaming light blueness, shimmering in his mind. I can speak through all embarrassment now. Yes, I can speak straight out in a way I couldn’t, or wouldn’t ever before. But now, but now. Now it’s truly irrelevant any restriction on my saying anything. The freedom of last moments—maybe you don’t feel it. But in soft grey water and drifting pain one can speak only honestly, think honestly. So here I am. Didn’t biblical figures say as much? Addressed in extremis, all that could be acknowledged was Here I am, Lord. Here I am.

“It’s so nice Louie for you to come by. So very nice, but I’m not in a good place just now. Not now. I sees what’s troubling you, and I have saw it often, but not now.”

“Saw it often,” he repeated, smiling. “Saw it off, and I get it. I just wanted to see you and say goodbye. I won’t come again. You don’t have to worry about that. I absolve you from that worry.”

“Don’t say that, Louie. Don’t be mean, Louie. Don’t.”

“What’s mean about the truth?

“Don’t be mean, Louie.”

It’s truth. I have been mean. I see that, feel that now. How cold it feels how watery cold. So let me gather back all my meanness, take it up and gather it in again, pull it toward me, ensnared in my bleeding come back to me. Healing at last as the pain drains off, spiraling elsewhere in the quiet grey pool all around. All around.

-§-

But B interrupts, “I think you’re drifting off target—setting up your own hang-ups and not Lewis’s. And why does she call him Louie?”

“That’s what she always called him.” C answers.

“Artistic license,” B says brusquely. “We don’t know anything about Lewis. Why should we care about his expiration in the rice paddy—itself pretty much a trite turn of events.”

A says, “From the play you should have a good idea of the failure of Lewis’s life. Ah, but then you haven’t read the play, and not having read it, you must remain ignorant of all his motivations.”

“So, tell me about the play. Maybe I can be spared the delight of plowing through it.”

“It’s not much delight,” A says. “But it does explain a good bit. But I wonder if you really want explanation. The story is involving, or it isn’t. I don’t see how context or background helps anything.”

“Well, I raised a question and it seems no one can answer.”

“I can answer,” C says, “the play details the family dysfunction that leads Lewis to join the Army—in particular it lays bare, so to speak, the peculiar way the family has of creating and buttressing and utterly inhabiting a completely bogus reality, a projection of family as might be imagined by a third rate sit-com writer who had nonetheless memorized Hallowell’s Guide to Upper Class Imitation, and who passionately longed to have children able to carry milk glass rectangles of menthol cigarettes for invited guests.”

“Pretty bitter . . . and dated. Nobody passes cigarettes now. Nobody,” B says, smiling. “So, the negress behind the chained door—”

“Not chained,” C insisted, “merely foot wedged at about three inches open.”

“My mistake,” B continued, “and doubtless a crucial element. So, the Negress—”

“Annie May,” C said.

“All right, Annie May, refuses to let Lewis in, and to explain that we need to have the play in hand. So why not put the play in before the Lewis’s death account?”

“I’ll take that under advisement. I had asked you to read the play beforehand.”

“Requesting is not structure,” B answered.

“I wanted the sweetest moment of his life to continue,” C said. “The absolute sweetest, as if we could only summon that sweetness at the crucial end.”

“He is a pathetic child,” A interjected. “But we’re pulling for him, while lamenting the lack he suffered in extremis. Can I say that?”

“You can say it, but it’s a distancing I was really trying to eliminate.”

“What saves us you cannot eliminate.”

“Understood, but not accepted,” C said. “Understood. I’ll rework his death.”

-§-

Later in Meguro, at the Cat Hospital, C said to Madame Vincouvier, “They rejected Lewis’s death utterly. Were unmoved by it. And now I’ll have to rework it entirely. So much energy for such disappointment.”

“You poor boy,” she answered. “You failed, didn’t you? And not for trying hard. Indeed, you tried very, very hard, but your energy was unfocused, almost useless. Useless. You need discipline, don’t you, my disappointed boy. Shall I discipline you?”

“Yes, please.”

“With no easing off?”

“Yes, please, no easing off this time.”

“No safety phrase stopping everything?”

“No safety phrase. Just the punishment I deserve.”

“But only if you pass on your stories of Lewis’s background, as well as your half-plays.”

“They have them already, but already isn’t all read.”

“For a lame pun, punishment is all red.” And Mne Vincouvier ran her tongue slowly across her upper lip.

-§-

The Riches of This World, Part A

Lewis’s Back Stories in 2.2. Chapters

(Chapter One: The Toughest Bar in Worcester)

In the last, most profitable act of his Brahmin life Walter Jelliffe convinced his son, Waldo, to marry Suzan Corcoran, the slightly unhinged daughter of Worcester’s richest family. That union brought Waldo the one enterprise he could fathom and embrace: publisher of Worcester’s “alternative” weekly newspaper, The New Worcester Spy. Thus did Mayflower power fuse with the apparently limitless acquisitions flowing from Corcoran Abrasives. The linkage generated a certain amount of friction, and the titular Walter had been characteristically blunt with his son: “Anyone who marries for money earns every penny of it, but let’s face it, there’s sweat-earnings versus suck-up earnings. And from what I’ve seen of you, Waldo, the latter seems more natural, more in line with your tastes.” There was a wondrous gentleness in the squeeze the old man applied to his son’s shoulder and mind.

“I’ll work at it, Daddy,” Waldo replied. And he did. In the early years of the marriage Waldo spent hours on the fifth floor of Worcester Memorial Hospital’s psych ward, listening to Suzan explain how she had made him rope sandals, and beaded leather wallets. He kept her on her lithium and constantly reassured her that given her situation she could have married almost anyone in Worcester–that he was in fact only the best of a long line of suitors. He worked hard to get her admitted to his luncheon club, The Worcester Club. It was largely through his efforts that women were eventually permitted even in the smoking rooms.

Waldo also worked hard at his publisher position–though he easily understood–as did all Jelliffes, that real work must be accomplished by others; his position and ownership was –and the phrase was his proudest editorial achievement–“residually iconic”. He symbolized the sanctification of achievement by the “old line” in town. It was Walter Jelliffe himself who reiterated, after sufficient sherry, what he called John Keats’ finest declaration: “A gentleman is one who is not wholly preoccupied with getting on.” So Waldo, following Walter’s lead, left actual actions, decisions, rewrites–in short, “getting-on” to others. He enjoyed being the final voice, never invoked, the absolute ruler whose only task was to meet the public and every now and then come up with a “brilliant feature proposal.” The job left him gobs of time for slow luncheons at the club, side trips to Bermuda, early dinners with Suzan, month-long stays with her at various installations of sound mind and body. Waldo immensely enjoyed the latitude he had with The Spy’s staff. He was at once the daffy uncle on the premises and the Zeus of certain death if you didn’t play along. He was at The Spy, as in life itself, to be indulged. Indulgence came certainly with the Jelliffe name enforced with Corcoran monetary muscle.

Now in his fiftieth year Waldo Jelliffe had not given up the khakis of his swell collegiate life, nor the thin sweaters or cashmere blazers. He wore, as if in anticipation of his retirement years, and in recollection of his golden youth, New Balance running shoes or Timberland high tops in reverence for his New England roots even if, he noted at the club bar one night, the labor was not exactly Brahmin on Batam Island (where the shoes were made) perhaps a little swarthy even, and certainly dirt cheap. He was proud of his trip to Batam Island off the Malaysian coast, prouder still of his one single byline feature: “The Worcester/Batam Connection” in which he lovingly recorded the barracks lives of those exploited Southeast Asian laborers who sent everything they earned back home to China, India, the Philippines or wherever. Waldo had liked the spicy food and hammering Malaysian sun; he admired the way things ran so promptly and cleanly in Singapore. Worcester could learn a lot from ASEAN his one article maintained. And Kuala Lumpur was the one city on the planet he could emigrate to, he told the younger staffers and interns at The Spy, if circumstances should ever require him to leave Worcester. It interested him sometimes to wonder what those circumstances might be. Could he be a secret serial killer, filleting young women with one of Chef Tony’s lifetime knives? He saw the knives advertised often enough on T.V., and once he had called the 800 number to inquire which of the knives would be best for gutting girls. “Be serious,” the operator replied. “You want one set or two?” Most of all he liked the strange liberation he felt on Batam. It was almost as if he had lost weight or was wearing weirdly bouncing sneakers launching him farther up into the soft, mucid air. Every step seemed to radiate “Yes!” in his confident striding. There was always a troubling collapse in the return flight, as if the seat, the cramped air, the sour food was pressing down on his buoyancy, returning him to a heritage of empty strangulation. “I swear to God I’m taking you back with me, LP, (his nickname for the Vietnamese in charge of the workers barracks) just to feel alive again.”

Lately he spent more and more time with the younger staffers and interns since they only imperfectly understood his irrelevance. He was for them, the owner, the publisher, the ultimate authority, who merely husbanded his power by never displaying it. They did not understand what lineage could and could not do. And they responded enthusiastically to his rare proposals. And a few of them grasped that it was through Waldo that their own ideas could percolate in The Spy’s system.

Thus it was not exactly clear who thought the feature up but Waldo certainly embraced the great pub crawl search for “The Toughest Bar in Worcester.” And he began the deliberations with what he knew was the central point: “Look, you have to have a standard, a comparison point on toughness. You’ve got to have a clear idea of what you mean by ‘toughest’. What is the essence of ‘toughness’ and where do you find it? If you can point to one bar as ‘tough’, then you can say X or Y exceeds that standard by such and such a factor and therefore it is not yet, ‘The toughest Bar in Worcester.’ And surprise of surprises, I can give us the standard: the old Valhalla Bar on Summer Street.”

“It’s gone–they built the new police station on the site,” someone answered.

“I know that, but its perishing makes it the perfect standard. No one can really say what it was on the scale of toughness. We can establish one ourselves. Besides, when I taught at the old jail, inmates told me it was the toughest bar in town. You could always be guaranteed a fight if you went in. That’s toughness. Maybe we should put a time factor into the equation. Whadya think?”

“Art’s Diner on West Boylston street. The Huns hang out there.”

“The Brass Helmut on Main Street–--Hispanic gangs.”

“Any place on Green street. Vietnamese gangs all over the place there.”

Waldo objected, “We need more work on the standard. On criteria. Give me criteria.

Something to sink our teeth into. Something the lunchpails will understand.”

Waldo tended to regard those who worked for a living as “lunchpails,” although the term disappointed and discouraged Walter Jelliffe.

“I still think we need a time constraint,” Waldo said. “You have to engage in actual fisticuffs within, say, nine minutes of entry. How does that sound?”

“You’ll need a time keeper,” Lewis Walling said, the most senior of the interns. There was a trace of whining sarcasm in his tone.

Waldo looked carefully at him, then finally said, “And a nifty stop watch, I suppose.”

“And a hostility quotient,” Walling continued, “maybe made up of equal parts rage, envy, insecurity, belief God is on your side.”

“Lunch pail,” Waldo answered.

“And we’d need bodyguards, people to do the actual fighting–either that or a year of combat training before we start the crawl.”

Waldo and Suzan had no children, and Waldo had the habit of adopting one of the interns as the son he was convinced he didn’t want. Lewis Walling was the latest in his adoptions–three previous adoptions had migrated to graduate school or Rhode Island papers. One became an editor in New Haven.

“Look, Walling, you like to throw log jams on the fire. I know that, but we can easily find a few thugs to back us up in testing the hostility. You probably know some yourself–-football players or Rugby freaks.”

“I do.”

“Good, then let’s not lock down over trivia. We need criteria–perfect criteria. A fight in nine minutes is a good start, but just a start.”

“The first thirty seconds is crucial. True toughness signals itself right out of the gate. If you can’t find a hostile phrase, look, gesture in 30 seconds, the place fails. We need a play book of gestures and phrases–that can be part of the article.” Walling said, warming to the task.

“What about ethnicity?” Waldo asked.

“Meaning what?” Walling answered.

“Meaning should we stipulate a certain homogeneity as key to hostility. It’s a Latino bar and we walk in and there’s looks and so on. Does that qualify? Does the toughness have to go beyond resentment of outsiders? Isn’t that natural? And therefore discountable?”

“So it has to be a WASP bar?”

“Don’t be stupid.” Waldo said. “We’re looking for an add-on factor – something that can begin in ethnic resentment but quickly boils over into generalized hatred, a pure viciousness aimed out of the soul of bile.”

“The soul of bile,” Walling repeated. “The soul of bile. Something that comes out of generations of repression? The end product of remembering that this town once was the center of New England, a palace of wire manufacturing –the barbed wire kingdom of the world and then, and then, the ugly descent as Swedes gave way to Italians and Irish and then to southeast Asians–wire to plastic, to gutted factories, abandoned mills, thence to boutiques and finally to plywood–so that everybody carries around a longing for some imagined time of prosperity. What begins as resentment for skin color ends as boiling rage and blame for loss of autonomy–all over some local IPA or Miller lites? Is that it?”

“You catch on quick,” Waldo laughed. “And always measured against the imagined slugfests at the old Valhalla.”

“We seek the new Valhalla,” Walling answered.

“Exactly!” Waldo said, “That’s our title–‘Seeking the new Valhalla’. Get us gladiators.”

“I can get Singleton, Navy ROTC cadet commandant at Holy Cross–lots of rage just below the bellowing surface, and five or six Rugby players Singleton knows.”

“Not five or six. One. One from the scrum. One large one from the scrum. Singleton plus one. Just adequate to get us out alive.” Waldo smiled.

2.

The Spy’s offices were on the sixth floor of a restored building on Front Street overlooking Worcester Commons. The freshly sand blasted facade of the building was directly across from the parched earth commons, grassless and flecked with grey scraps of winter snow. There was a large reflecting pool, utterly empty save for residue clumps of ice/snow and several half- crushed soda cans. Beyond the empty pool was a small graveyard with slightly twisted or turned headstones from the 18th century. And beyond the graveyard was a mammoth horse and soldier statue for the Spanish American war, prancing upward, kicking its hooves toward the plywooded and abandoned downtown aptly named Commons Fashion Outlet Mall.

When Walling and Singleton entered the Spy Building, along with Ralph (the one from the scrum) they all hurried past the little lobby area with its matching leather loveseats. Singleton had honed in on the marble sheathing over the three elevators beyond the lobby and seemed intent on reaching the seventh floor before anyone else. Walling admired Singleton’s focus in this and all matters–no time to lose, no enemy too strong to be confronted, the perfect protector on any search for the toughest bar anywhere.

But Waldo from his leather loveseat headed Singleton and the rest off: “We’re here ready for the charge, way ahead of you,” he said, standing up and motioning to the woman still on the loveseat. “Suzan, meet our bodyguards.”

Singleton, a gangly fellow probably 6 ‘2” or 6’ 3”, with a military brush cut and very thick black rimmed glasses was non-plussed by Suzan’s appearance. How could you find boxing action with a woman in the entourage? The new Valhalla, a term Singleton cherished when Walling told it to him, might not have even a spot for visiting women. And on a mission women would only prove more vulnerable and difficult–didn’t all his commanders acknowledge as much, although publicly they might speak quite contrarily about the admission of women into combat.

Suzan Jelliffe stood up, a delicately coiffured woman of 50, still quite thin with a longish face, too large a nose, and disturbingly vacant look to her face as if she were constantly imagining something beyond the apparent focus point of her eyes. A doorway perhaps through which would come something more interesting than things at hand. Waldo took her hand and said, “She’s brought the camera.”

“The camera?” Walling asked.

“Of course,” Suzan said, suddenly present, “to record these events that alter and illuminate our time, together. Our little voyage into places where no one else has ever gone.”

“The frolic spaces for the lunch pails,” said Waldo, taking Suzan’s hand.

“I thought we were hitting bars,” Ralph the rugby player said.

“You’ll do,” Waldo said to him. “You’ll do nicely. Solid, and can take a punch. He can take a punch. See Suzy, he can take a punch.” And Waldo slapped him on the arm.

Walling said, “So we don’t have to go upstairs?”

“Nope,” Waldo said, “She’s got the camera right here.” He took a dark thick glasses case out of Suzan’s fabric bag. “I had a hole cut for the lens–takes digital pictures–we’ll get everything and nobody will notice.”

Singleton said, “I hope it’s not too valuable.”

“The publisher will pay.” Waldo answered. “Now let’s head over to the Brass Helmut and see if we can stir something up.”

“This will be exciting,” Suzan said, and she took Walling’s arm.

But the Brass Helmut was not exciting. It was nearly vacant–a smallish brown rectangle with a bar along the outside edge and only two very elderly fellows on stools near the door. The bartender was a young Latino woman who seemed to recognize Ralph.

“This place smells terrible,” Suzan said, loud enough.

“Maybe we’re too early,” Walling said.

“Look, I can get something going, “Singleton said. “I know I can. If that’s what you want.”

Waldo answered: “It’s not what we want –it’s what the venue offers. Don’t you get it? We’re here just to evaluate what the ambience is.”

“Ambience?” Ralph said.

“How fast we get into combat,” Walling said.

“The smell is just awful,” Suzan said. “Has someone thrown up? I don’t think we should stay here.”

“We’ve got to wait the nine minutes,” Singleton said, “to make the experiment valid.”

“Fuck validity,” Waldo shouted. “We’re outta here!”

They went out back onto Main Street, past the Beacon pharmacy and on toward some Irish bars further south.

“I really couldn’t drink in there. I really couldn’t” Suzan said. “I know the experiment won’t be valid, and I’m sorry, really sorry about that, but I just couldn’t stay there a minute longer. The smell was ghastly, just ghastly.”

“No worries, pet, “Waldo answered.” The place didn’t measure up. That was clear from the minute we entered.”

“We didn’t give it enough time,” Singleton said. “We need to stick to the plan.”

“Shut up,” Waldo said. “I’m running this operation.”

“And I can’t really do much walking. It’s too cold. I should have brought a heavier coat,” Suzan said. “I’m sorry but I can’t really walk much more.”

“No worries, pet.” Waldo said. “We’ll go back to the garage and get the van. I’ve got the best place in mind.”

“It’s got to have people in it. We’re too early,” Walling said.

“Maybe,” Waldo conceded, “but that can’t be helped now. We’re launched. Let’s get the van.”

“We’re not thinking clearly,” Singleton said. “If we need the van we’re going beyond the periphery of our experiment. You can’t drive to the toughest bar–that means it could be anyplace. We’re trying to establish the toughest bar in Worcester, a specific place.”

“Yes,” Suzan said slowly, “a very specific place. With boundaries of possibility.”

“Nonsense,” Waldo said. “Within the city limits, just too damn far to walk. The van will be okay.”

“I don’t think so,” Singleton insisted.

“You’re not being paid to think.”

“Are we being paid?” Ralph said.

“One way or another,” Waldo said, “now tell him to shut up.” Waldo pointed to Singleton, who had taken off his heavy glasses and was rubbing the sides of his nose.

Waldo drove them in the van up Belmont Street to the very edge of Worcester’s limits. Then he turned left, went up another hill and parked behind a large house, the first floor of which was labelled, ‘Bronzino’s Bar.’”

“I’ve heard of this place,” Walling said.

“It’s too close to the outskirts, “Singleton said.

“Ralph, tell him to shut up.” Waldo said.

Suzan said, “I feel nauseous. Let’s stay outside a while, in the cold. That helps. “

”Maybe we should have walked here,” Singleton said.

“Walling, where did you find this clown?” Waldo asked.

“How can we measure hostility out there,” Walling pointed to Bronzino’s, “if we’re coming at each other here?”

“We don’t need internal antagonism,” Suzan, “we certainly don’t need that.”

“We need a goddamn challenge, so let’s go get one,” Waldo said, pushing ahead of the group.

3.

Inside Bronzino’s, dirty green wall-to-wall carpet gave way to grey linoleum in the expanse of space that must have been living room, dining, room kitchen shotgunned together. There were five round, heavily varnished walnut tables with thick heavily varnished chairs in the space. Three of the tables were filled with patrons–overweight women and men, pitchers of beer, smudged glasses, peanut bowls half empty, shells littering the table tops.

“This could be a Knights of Columbus Bingo party,” Waldo said quietly, disappointed.

“I’ll get us a pitcher of beer, “Singleton said, as if in expiation. “Sit here.” He pulled out a hefty dark chair for Suzan.

“This seems like a family bar,” Waldo said, sitting down and apparently irritated that Singleton had taken charge of the next minutes.

“I wonder if there’s such a thing as a family bar?” Walling said.

“In London, at the better pubs, you can sit with your family,” Suzan said. “Sometimes it so nice to sit with your children in the back garden area of the pub or in a side room away from the noise.”

“You have children?” Ralph asked.

“No,” Waldo answered. “Only staffers.”

“I went with my father to pubs in Highgate and Hampstead. They were lovely.” Suzan continued.

“I’m looking at these people and I can’t see hostility at all. In fact I’m wondering why I was given the name of this place. It’s like a low class, lunch pail bridge convention or something. Strictly lunch pail. And now we have to wait through a pitcher of beer. Probably crappy beer too.”

Singleton came back with the beer and six small glasses. He poured a round and said, “Here’s to the memory of the Valhalla. Maybe Worcester no longer has a toughest bar.”

Waldo countered: “In KL –that’s Kuala Lumpur—” he paused looking at Ralph, then added. “That’s Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. The capital city. You can’t get any bacon. It’s a Muslim country. You can’t get pork. Course, you can, but only in the Chinese sections of KL. But on the breakfast menus you’ll find a reference to ‘bacon substitute’. You know what that is?”

Ralph said immediately, “No.”

“Well, it’s thin strips of veal, strips fried up like bacon. And delicious, but more expensive than bacon.”

“Not many things more expensive than bacon lately,” Suzan said.

“Right you are, pet. Right you are. This place shows me nothing. Who recommended this place?”

“We’ve got to finish our beer and wait our nine minutes,” Singleton said.

“The hell we do,” Waldo said.

“Well, we ought to,” Singleton continued. “The experiment has to be fully done and completely replicable.”

“I like that word, replicable,” Suzan said, savoring the syllables. “Rep lick ah bull.”

“In the barracks on Batam Island the workers sleep in hammocks, sometimes four tiers high,” Waldo said.

“Tiers?” Ralph asked.

“Tears indeed,” Suzan answered. “You should hear him and see his tears over the exploited workers of Batam Island.”

“Okay,” Waldo said, getting up. “We’re outta here.”

“I paid for the beer,” Singleton said.

“Tell me at the end of the evening,” Waldo said.

“Tell you what?”

“How much you shelled out to keep this crew fat and happy.”

“We’re not so happy,” Walling said.

“We’re outta here,” Waldo said again.

“Maybe we should try some place with Huns around,” Singleton suggested.

“Maybe you should wait for your orders,” Waldo said.

“Yes!” added Ralph, draining the beer pitcher.

In the van Waldo said, “I’ve got one more place recommended. On Park Avenue. Maybe a kind of immediate ‘post-college’ place. Called the Foo Bar.”

“I know it,” Singleton shouted.

“Oh, he knows it,” Waldo echoed. “But I’m worried we’re losing our focus. We’re not just going to bars. We’re trying to find the toughest bar in Worcester. Isn’t that what we’re trying to do?”

“Who cares?” said Suzan.

“Our readers, pet. The ones who keep us in Bermuda when we need it most.”

“Like now,” said Walling.

“Oh, not like now,” Suzan continued, “certainly not now, when we’re collecting all this important data about tough bars in Worcester.”

“Yes,” said Ralph.

“I like you,” Suzan said. “You’re affirming.”

“One from the scrum is always affirming.” Walling said.

The Foo Bar had a dark red glow. The bar stools were filled, but the occupants seemed too well dressed for toughness, and too pre-occupied with the Red Sox game on the two large television screens bracketing the bar. The noise level, however, was promising. Demi shout filled the low ceilinged room and the red lamps with their translucent red shades supplied the proper motivation for fisticuffs.

“We can get something going here,” Singleton said, drawing extra chairs to the tiny round table beyond the left end of the bar.

“You’ve got it backwards and I’m getting tired of pointing that out,” Waldo said.

Suzan said, relaxing back into the chair Singleton pushed further under her, “Tell us about Batam Island. You know about the sleeping arrangements.”

“Don’t get cute,” Waldo said. “It’s not you.”

“Oh, but it’s you,” Suzan sing-songed back to Waldo.

Walling brought over gin and tonics. “Imagine it’s summer,” he said.

“Beer and gin doesn’t work,” Singleton said.

“Let’s see,” Suzan said. She took a long drink. “Yes, it can work.”

Ralph finished his drink in one long swig, and went to the bar to get another.

“Let’s go back over the criteria,” Waldo said, slumping a bit in his chair, scuffing a bit his Timberlands along the chocolate, stained and worn carpet.

When he got back and before he sat down, Ralph said a bit too loudly, “I hate the Red Sox.”

Singleton smiled and nodded at Waldo.

“You’ve got to remember the criteria.” Waldo said.

“If it’s not around, you’ve got to make it happen,” Singleton answered.

“The Red Sox suck,” Ralph said, again too loudly. A few bar stools spun slowly at the sentiment, turning away from the spring-training, pre-season game.

4.

A distant segment of the bar lifted up and a burly fellow in a grey sweatshirt slowly walked through the opening.

“Here it comes,” Singleton said, joyous at the prospect.

He came to within a foot of their table. “You nice people see Roadhouse with Patrick Swayze?” the burly fellow asked, taking off his baseball hat and holding it politely with both hands in front of his waist.

“Yes,” Walling answered.

“Then you remember Patrick’s little suggestion to his bouncers–‘be --nice’. So I’m in my Patrick Swayze ‘be-nice’ phase, just asking you to tone it down. Keep it down, since there happen to be a lot of Red Sox fans here, as you might expect, wouldn’t you? Anybody might expect that.”

“Yeah, there are dicks everywhere,” Ralph said, smiling.

“I’m going to be ‘be-nice’ and overlook that disappointing observation.”

“Up yours,” Ralph said.

“I can tell you want me to leave my ‘be-nice’ persona and become mother-fucking Steven Seagal, is that it?”

“Sure,” Ralph answered.

“In Out for Justice mother-fucking Seagal puts a cue ball in a handkerchief and slugs teeth all over the pool table. And I like that a lot. All the time he’s shouting ‘This is your trophy,’ holding up his badge. I like that mother-fucking Seagal.”

“Hey,” Ralph suddenly shouted, “Why don’t you curb your foul mouth. Don’t you know there’s classy cunt here?” He looked at Suzan.

The bar, the game on the television, the announcers in their booths suddenly fell silent at Ralph’s proclamation. Red glow grew a notch. Singleton eased up from his chair. The baseball hat fell quietly to the floor. For a very long time, it seemed, no one could think of anything to say, and later Waldo would note the presence of what he called “the very ambivalent pause,” the stop-time sequence in which violence or retreat could weigh the balance and flop one way or the other. “That has to be factored in somehow–that moment, the propensity of that moment one way or the other. That’s the damn criterion we’ve been looking for. Some settings, some ambiances stir things one way or another. We’ve got to break that down, itemize its factors and provide some quantitative measure. That’s what we mean by the toughest bar in town.”

Ever the deflectionist Walling interceded with an offer, “Here let me pick up your hat.” He eased out of his chair, dropped to his haunches and reached for the hat just covering the bouncer’s left shoe.

“That’s a nice gesture.” The fellow said, slowly. “It puts me in the mind of tolerating this asshole,” he gestured toward Ralph, who in rising up tossed the table directly at the knees of the bouncer and over Walling’s ducking head. The edge of the table cracked directly into the bouncer’s kneecaps sounding as if a truck had run over chicken bones. The large center leg of the table drove into Walling’s backbone with such force that Walling threw up on the shoes of the bouncer. Not content with this mayhem, Ralph grabbed the bouncer’s short hair and slammed his head into the top of the tilted table, not once, not twice, but four machine-gunned times. Teeth spilled out, blood flowed down the table top and into the vomit on the floor. The sound of teeth skittering and Walling gagging , coughing and retching filled the room.

Waldo shouted with delight, “One from the scrum delivers. And how! “

Suzan began taking digital pictures of the cascaded table.

“Jesus!” Singleton said, “Someone call an ambulance. For God’s sake call an ambulance.”

The young woman behind the bar screamed, “They’ve killed Eric.”

“Not yet,” said Ralph. “Not yet, but soon!” He kicked the table over so that it came to rest atop the bouncer’s unconscious body, two feet beyond Walling, still kneeling and retching.

“Wait a minute,” Waldo shouted. “We’re done. It’s over. We’re done. No more. Nothing more!”

The bar stools emptied as patrons ran for the front door.

“You’ve killed Eric.” The woman insisted again, to the vacant room.

Singleton dragged the table off. “No he’s breathing fine, just bloodied. He’ll be fine

But, Mr. Jelliffe, I’m not sure how we’ll put all this back together.”

“Yes, how will we assemble it,” Suzan said cheerily. “How does it go back to the way it was?”

“Walling, you okay? “ Waldo asked.

“It will take a lot of lawyers to make everything right again,” Suzan said, taking more pictures.

“Pet, put away the digital. We need to address the problems at hand,” Waldo said evenly.

“Walling, can you speak?”

“Yes, but no wind, no breath.”

“Take it easy,” Singleton said. “You’ll get your breath back. Can you move your arms?”

Walling lifted his arms.

“You’ll be fine,” Singleton said.

“A whole floor of lawyers,” Suzan said. “Maybe more. But maybe we can sue . . . ”

“Now you’re thinking, Pet. Of course we can sue. How damn aggressive can a bouncer get, coming directly at us? Shouting obscenities. Challenging us. Over some stupid game. Calling us out over some innocent, completely innocent observation aimed at no one. No one at all.”

“It smells bad in here,” Suzan said.

Waldo said, “Ralph, take Mrs. Jelliffe back to the office and wait there for us. We’ll manage everything here, Pet. Don’t worry. It’ll make a helluva feature.”

5.

That night Waldo dreamed of Batam Island. In khaki shorts and mint Teva sandals he walked among the sleeping hammocks of barracks 21-7 and counted for his own collection of possible feature material the rather low number of mosquito nettings surrounding some of the hammocks. The air was dense, mucid, sweat-inducing, so that the polyester of his Guayabera shirt (in French blue) clung to his back. Waldo thought, “These are my people–young, brown, breathing easily in the hot night.” Arms were flung out to him; he had to swivel by several just to reach the far end of the barracks. In the morning they’d each eat a bowl of rice topped by a raw egg. They didn’t give a damn about The Spy, had no longings for any part of the Worcester Club, envied him nothing of Suzan’s largess. Instead, The Spy had given him a translator, a wiry forty-year-old with thick black hair somehow knotted in back. In baggy canvas pants and with a lemon colored T shirt the fellow was, Waldo convinced himself, the very personification of Lunch Pail. He promptly dubbed him that and was doubly pleased that the fellow took no insult from the nickname—apparently assumed it was an American term of endearment.

Waldo heard the fellow say from a corner of the barracks, “Captain, what are you doing here?”

“Checking on the troops, LP. Just checking.” Waldo answered.

“Checking for what?”

“For conviction, LP, for conviction. I can measure who will get out, who will blossom.”

“Blossom?”

“Grow, LP, grow. Enlarge, marry well, acquire, maybe, maybe only acquire.”

“Acquire?”

“Buy stuff . . . own stuff. Not flip-flops, LP, but real sandals. Real leather, or maybe real Velcro.”

“I know Velcro.”

“I’m sure you do, LP. I’m sure you do. It’s what keeps us attached, isn’t it?”

“Attached?”

“It was a joke, Lunch Pail, just a joke. “

”You’re always joking, and I don’t like joking. I don’t like it. I don’t understand it.”

“LP, if you can’t laugh, you can’t live.”

“I don’t like joking.”

“Get over it, Lunch Pail. It makes the world go round.”

But LP, drawing closer, had brought up a small mallet from behind him. He tapped it on his palm. Then inverted it so that he held the rubber end, the handle extending toward Waldo. He jabbed it into Waldo’s chest.

“Hey what are you doing?”

“I don’t like joking.”

“Good, LP. I understand that.”

“I don’t like it.” He jabbed the handle harder into Waldo, shifted downwards toward his sternum. Then in a savage strike drew back and rammed the end into Waldo’s stomach. Waldo doubled over, heard something snap in his lungs, saw a flash camera go off, heard Suzan say, “Oh my! That’s not good. That’s bad,” felt his knees buckle, was aware that the wide boards of the barracks floor had risen strangely to embrace him. LP neatly flipped the handle in his hand so that the mallet end was now in striking position. Waldo cocked his head and presented his left temple for the fatal blow, but woke up before Lunch Pail could bludgeon him. Waldo thought, “God! I love ASEAN.”

(Chapter Two)

A week after the tempest at the Foo Bar Lewis Walling went home to New Canaan, Connecticut because his younger sister was celebrating her 18th birthday. He spent most of the drive worrying about that celebration, or more properly the heavy drinking bound to surround the effort. He was certain at some point the buffet at the Wee Burn Club in Darien would be a centerpiece of the event, and that meant Martinis beforehand, wine during and Stingers afterwards, all topped off with what his father called a “rammer”—a final double Martini to force home all the little alcoholic strays into the cage of life in New Canaan. And his sister Janice would be the most obvious drunk in the long room of absolute satiety. He figured he’d have to guide her over the maroon carpet of the Club away from the huge curved windows overlooking the endless brownish greens of the 18 hole golf course, bordering the flagmented, empty patio area with its tables and their collapsed and bound umbrellas–sentinels of proffered booze if you knew the proper number to enter on the tiny pad the waiter offered, but, of course, only when the weather was better.

The buffet was its own reward, Lewis understood, to be savored in recollection and anticipation—especially the overlarge green stuffed olives, “hand massaged,” his father always remarked, “by Greek peasants on sun-flecked islands.” Shrimp as large as Lewis’s third finger curled on the lips of thick crystal dishes filled with fiery scarlet sauce or once, he remembered, not with scarlet but rather orange remoulade —for the start of Lent. A grotesquely large rack of beef ribs, so that he could watch the overlong rounded edge spatula knife work its squirming, swift way through the glistening fiber and out onto his overlarge plate. And everything savored through a Martini haze. “Here you are, Master Lewis,” the phony, jovial black chef, Robert, always said lifting a slab onto his plate. “Here YOU are,” he repeated with a trace of alarm and menace in his voice, as if he had taken a portion of Lewis’s spleen and transferred it onto his plate. Then Robert chuckled quietly, glimpsing into Lewis’s startled eyes, as if to say “You’re damn right I could gut you like a fish, if I had a mind to, and some proper reward.” Instead of rising to that implicit challenge Lewis invariably replied, “Thank you,” watching the blood swim across the huge, square plate. He added rice pilaf, roasted broccoli, currant jelly, a few extra shrimp, and, naturally enough, six stuffed green olives.

When he finally got off route 95 and turned into the not quite gated circle of homes in the highest part of New Canaan, Lewis realized it was almost time to meet the train bringing his father home from New York. He’s have just enough time to say hello to his mother, if she weren’t napping, which he knew she would be, greet the latest servants in the house, a Swiss couple that now occupied what had been his suite above the garage–Susan and Frank, both overweight, accented, strangely formal and apparently ill at ease or menacing in their behavior and wearing too many layers of clothing. He wondered if Janice would be napping too.

But she wasn’t. She was at the kitchen booth seated beside Susan and Frank looking through a large white cook book.

Susan said, “Ver looking for ah the best birthday cake for tomorrow. I’m going to make it.

“But I’ll help too,” Janice added. “You can get Daddy, so Frank can stay here with us.”

“Nice to see you, too,” Lewis said.

“That’s not what I mean. I think you know that.”

“Mom up?”

“Not yet,” Frank answered. “But shortly.”

Lewis noticed there was a tall glass of what might be cream sherry in front of Janice. He remembered a scene in the movie of Fat City: Stacy Keach and Vera Miles at a bar and ordering eight oz. glasses of cream sherry. That was supposedly the bottom of alcoholism.

Cream sherry, or was it Muscatel?

Janice picked up on his noticing and said, “It’s just diet Coke. I forgot the ice.”

At first he thought it a good defensive joke, but then decided there was an edge of anger in her remark, real offense. It worked well enough, he thought, silencing him. Frank shook his head.

He heard his mother shouting from upstairs. “Someone go and get your father.” Her voice sounded tired and muffled by the swinging door to the dining room.

2.

As always his father came jauntily out from the tiny colonial station, on to the asphalt that led across the road to the parking lot. As always, Lewis parked back-in so that he stood now outside the car. His father liked to make a clean getaway, ahead of the exiting traffic, shouting “Let’s go,” as he got into the Buick Lewis had swapped for his dusty Toyota. “You just get home?”

“No. A while ago.”

“And they made you come here right off?”

“I didn’t mind.”

“Well, take Ridgefield. Let’s avoid downtown, unless you want to refresh your memory.”

“I don’t.”

“Neither do I. And there’s nothing new to see. Your mother up?”

“Getting there.”

“Good. Susan and Frank are good for her.”

Did that mean Janice wasn’t? Rather than explore that thought, Once on Ridgefield, with overarching trees forming an arcade out of New Canaan , Lewis said, “I was in a bar fight in Worcester.”

“In one, or saw one?”

“Kinda in one. A fellow at my table slugged the bouncer. It was pretty scary. The table fell on me.”

“You were under the table?”

“Yes, but because I was trying to pick something up.”

“Maybe it’s better to stay under the table.”

“Not when it falls on you. I threw up.”

“What were you drinking?”

Lewis regretted getting into details. “Beer.”

“It took rum to get me puking, when I was your age.”