The Last Bender, Chapter 30

CHAPTER THIRTY

          The voice answered the phone with a terse, trebly sound somewhere between a ‘yeah’ and a ‘hey’, suggesting hello by brightness and proximity. It was a busy, grease-covered sound conveying none of the contempt for manners implied by its timbre. In response I tried to imitate it.

          No one in my family answered the phone in this way, though my father on occasion uttered a deep ‘yellow’ instead of ‘hello’, especially if he was working on the car. In certain pissy moods my grandfather was known simply to say, “Speak.” My mother saluted the party on the other end with hale good mornings and husky good evenings. No one ever answered the phone in the afternoon.

          My sister and I adopted thoroughly conventional manners. These were installed by our father’s sister, Math, a dancer by trade. She had no illusions about the world and always said we should be taught right, since manners were all we’d ever have. Even in the army I was known to thank and please people at the most unusual times.

          No matter what had happened to that programming, when Math came to dinner, I went through the paces, like a nine year old. She was the one who wrote me when my mother died in the fire. I was overseas. One of the chemical vats at the factory caught fire and it spread in minutes. They say a fireball raced through the halls. There was no time to escape. They say the smoke got them first but I all I ever see is that ball of fire, rolling down the hall and over her.

          I never thought that anyone back home could die. That was something I would do first, and they would lose a son to the war. Meanwhile, over there, where we were fighting, entire families died. That’s the attrition. And it never works. People get pissed off when everyone knows someone who’s been tortured, shot or burned by a bunch of freaks in visors who smell bad and eat strange food. I was into the Tranzidene, her death didn’t matter. Not in a normal way. Not till I had sweated out the last molecule of bravery did I finally feel the sadness in me.

          My first reaction to the letter was an anger I don’t even understand now. I don’t remember ever being so angry before, unless someone was shooting at me. I couldn’t stand the tent. It smelled like shit. There was always the coal stove going, a big livid hunk burning on the grate. I had to walk the anger off, it was taking over from the inside. So I walked out of my tent to get some air, and a little exercise. I could go look at the trucks, or head out to the dump. It was raining, like always, and cold, with little ice pellets mixed in. Lumps of frozen snow lay about collecting dirt. We were in a base camp close to the line, in disputed territory. And all around, nothing but mustard colored mud.

          An old truck pulled up the hill. Seated in the back were a dozen or so farmers. My neck bristled. The driver took them off the back. A bunch of women, a few old men in overalls and three kids grabbing at their mother’s dresses. Rugged people, strong and squat, but getting mean in the face from hunger.

          I walked up to the driver. I had no idea at first what I was going to say. I was going on impulse. I asked him what he was doing.

          He said,  “What do you think? I’m takin’ ’em off the truck. They’re enemies. They got tunnels in the barn.”

          “Full of what, food?”

          “And guns. Plus I found two schtoonz hidin’ out. They’re in the sacks.” He pointed to a couple of bloody sacks on the floor of the truck. The people had been forced to put their feet up on the dead men.

          “What are you going to do with them?”

          “What are you, new? I’m bringing them in for interrogation, by local police.”

          I looked them over. Their clothes were filthy, their eyes and noses runny with apathy and terror. “Let them go,” I said.

          “We just captured them.”

          “How about sir.”

          “Sir? I can’t do that.”

          “If I order you to you can.”

          “But that would be crazy, sir.”  

          Something welled up in me. It was overwhelming. I had never felt such a thing before. Everything suddenly seemed absurd. We faced down over it. I was ordering him to commit a crime, and he had every right to refuse the order. Except I saw this glimmer of complicity in his eyes. He wanted to release them too, and neither of us really understood it.

          He said, “If I let them go, sir, what’ll we say?”

          “Who cares? I’ll shoot the first person who asks.”

          He laughed. “Yeah, me too, even if it’s Armstrong, sir.”  

          Fighting the enemy had become boring. And with Tranzidene, we weren’t afraid to mutiny. Once it didn’t matter, we were free to fight for ourselves.

          A Superior Officer came riding up on his horse, one of those office sadists in a pressed uniform and polished riding boots. He looked down at us from the saddle. By now a small crowd of soldiers had gathered to watch.

          “What’s the trouble?” he asked. He had the real Prussian manner.

          The driver looked at me. “This guy, this lieutenant, sir, he ordered me to let these people go.”

          “And who are these people?”

          I said nothing so the man continued. “Like I was telling him, sir, they’re prisoners going in for police interrogation.”

          The Superior Officer was an enthusiastic prick. He looked at the people and he looked at us. “And what do you think of his plan?”

          “I told him he was crazy sir.”

          “And what did you say, when he said that?” he asked me.

          “Sir, I said something like, who cares, I’ll shoot the first person who asks.”

          He smiled. “I’m contravening your order. Driver, shoot a few and hand the rest over to the police.”

          “Excuse me sir, but that’s pointless,” I said.

          “Pointless? Pointless?”

          “We just wanted to not shoot any of these twelve people, sir. It’s not a lot to ask.”  

          “Just do it and quit your bellyaching.”

          Fuck this I thought; I’ll just do what I said I’d do, and shoot him instead. So I took out my gun and pointed it at his chest. The horse blew its nose and gave me a hard look.  

          “Put the gun down,” he said, irritated, like he’d had a class in fragging at the academy.

          “Let them go, sir, or I will kill you.”

          “Lieutenant, you’ll be court marshaled and shot. This is an order. Stand down.”

          “O.K., sir.” I said, and shot him off the horse, which staggered back on its hind legs and made a hideous whining noise. I stood over him to make sure he was dead. He was just a pile of smoking clothes and blood. For a while, no one looked directly at me. The smoke and steam rose past their dirty, wasted faces. I slopped through the mud back to my tent, where I warmed my fingers at the coal stove and wrapped them up in towels to stay warm.

          “I was told to call this number,” I said. “I’m calling from a pay phone. My name is Jack Bartell.”

          “Just a minute,” said the voice.

          “Jack, meet me uptown.” It was Juice.

          “Where?”

          “Remember the recruiting office? It’s a bar now. It’s called The Veteran’s Memorial. In the back is a pool table. Shoot a rack and when a man challenges you to a game of zipper, tell him you don’t play twosome in public. He’ll know the rest.”

          I went back to the cubicle to check for messages. Wanda Watts had called confirming the Barca Langousto date, seven o’clock. She said to dress right. The woman took me for a two-bit chiseler, a rumpled dick like Braque. Well, that was fine with me. Better that they underestimate you. She’d see what I was made of when I showed up in the charcoal grey Marinetti with flared pants, wing tips and tangerine cravat. When Jack Bartell hits the snooty chow every ferret in the place shits itself with envy. By curtain time I’m gone, chinchilla draped on one arm and leopard on the other.

          I called Evalyn St. Claude and left a message with the maid that I’d be by later on, in the afternoon. Then I called Clara Turback. She answered the phone nervously. “It’s Bartell,” I said.

          “Mr. Bartell. I need to see you.”

          “I’m kinda busy Ms. Turback.”

          “Please,” she said. “I’m afraid.”

          Yeah, who isn’t? “I’ll come by in the afternoon.” Maybe Watts’ muscle had come in her house and hosed her down.

          On the way out I stopped in on Stronghole. He was poring over the small print at the back of the newspaper and taking notes on a little note pad of sky blue paper. He wasn’t aware of me. There was such discipline and concentration in the way he turned his big square head from paper to pad. It was a precise, conservative move. His fingers were blunt and muscular but produced a neat, elegant script. I wondered if he had any idea what this was about now. I wanted him to jump up and kill me. I wanted him to run off to Champa. But what if Stronghole had received identical orders? Wasn’t that how Laraby would work it? No matter what, he stays on top, like one of those lead bottomed clowns you can’t knock over. “Find a good horse yet?” I asked. He continued as before with the precise head movements, back and forth.

          “Don’t do that Jack. You scared the hell out of me.”

          “Sorry. I forgot about your hairpin trigger.”

          “All kinds of dead folks who startled me. Looks like there are Watts ships berthed right here in the city. But they arrived after the murders. Then there’s a ship out in Pine Point called TetAteT. It put in there two weeks ago. Cham registry. It was due to sail out two days later after putting on rag bales and scrap metal but the engine’s bad and it’s been there ever since. Maybe St. Claude’s on that ship.”  

          After a pause I said, “Have you met with Laraby yet?”

          “No, later.”

          I twitched for a few seconds and then, just to say something, said, “Shit is hitting hard. Let’s go for a drive.”

          The city was weird, on edge. There were a lot more cops out than usual, and they didn’t look happy. I spoke while he drove. “The cops are onto Watts. Laraby told me to hit Braque and Helen Stark.”

          He weaved a little. “What’s going on?”

          “He’s cleaning house. His plan is to sic us on each other.”

          “I’m gonna clear out,” he said. “I’ll meet you later.”

          “Meet me in front of Clara Turback’s at 4:30,” I said.

          “I never would waste a friend.”

          “No, neither would I.”