Nightmare said: “Come on you guys, will you? You heard the Kid. Break it up! Get out of here! Go on!”
Somebody asked: “What happened?”
Somebody else: “What did he do?”
“I didn’t see. Did you see what happened? Is it all right now?
“No, I just came in. I guess it’s all right…?”
“Hey, Kid?”
That was Bill.
“When you got a chance, can I…” but somebody moved between them.
Which was just as well.
Kid held Dollar by one arm. Glass held him by the other. Kid dug a finger into Dollar’s armpit. “Didn’t I tell you if something went wrong, you come to me?”
“I didn’t get no chance,” Dollar said. “I told ’em, I told ’em just like you said, if they messed with me, I was gonna tell the Kid? Just like you said.” He looked over his smudged shoulder at Glass. “Were you there? Did you hear me tell ’em?”
Glass’s head-shake showed more frustration than anything else.
“But I didn’t get no chance to, you know? Them colored guys was all over me.”
Frank leaned over the rail and called down. “Hey, Kid, is everything all—?”
Glass glanced up. Kid didn’t.
“I just don’t think them guys—” Dollar’s voice took on an echo beneath the bridge—“you know?—like me too much. I guess, you know, some people just don’t like other people.”
“I don’t exactly love you,” Kid said.
“I just wish—” Dollar rolled his head forward and spoke down at his chest—“somebody would tell me what to do.”
“You don’t have it too easy, huh?” Glass said, and didn’t even bother to glance at Kid.
“Oh, man!” Dollar said. “Oh, man, I just don’t know, sometimes, you know? I’m half sick all the God-damn time. I can hardly eat the fucking food. Because of my stomach, you know? I can’t drink nothin’ except wine, or I get sick. I don’t get drunk, I just get sick. Unless it’s wine. I mean half them God-damn niggers are—” he looked at Glass—“the colored guys…” then he looked at Kid. “Well, that’s what they say, I mean—”
“Say your thing,” Glass said.
“…half the God-damn colored guys are drunk already. That’s why they jumped me, I bet. They wouldn’t of jumped me if they wasn’t drunk. They’re nice guys; even the girls. I was just kiddin’ anyway…I wasn’t drunk. I didn’t drink nothing here except some wine, ’cause I didn’t want to get sick at your party. I just wish somebody would tell me what to do.”
They came from beneath the bridge.
The path bent like a boomerang into the rocks.
“You know? If somebody would just tell me…”
“Why don’t you just keep from bothering people who’re gonna beat you up?” Glass said.
“Now that’s what I mean,” Dollar said. “Everybody’s always tellin’ me what not to do. Keep away from this. Get out of that. Don’t bother the other. If somebody would just tell me what I should do, I’d work my fuckin’ ass off.”
“Right now you would,” Glass said, “’cause somebody just scared the shit out of you.”
“I would,” Dollar said. “I really would.”
“You just come on with me,” Glass said. “All right?”
By the edge of a black railing above, among small trees, Copperhead, Spitt, and the girl in maroon levis waited.
Dollar blinked at Kid and rubbed at the flaking corner of his mouth with his thumb. He looked sad and scared.
“We ain’t gonna hurt you,” Glass said. “We already got our licks in, too. All we gonna do is make sure you don’t get in no more trouble here at the Kid’s party.”
Kid, doubting, let go of Dollar’s arm.
“I just wish somebody would tell me what I was supposed to do.”
“Go on with them,” Kid said.
Glass and Dollar climbed up the slope among the brush and saplings.
Kid turned before Dollar reached the top.
I want, among all these people who are here because of me, one to come up and tap me on the shoulder and ask me if I’m all right, if I feel okay, say come on, let’s go get a drink, after that you must need one. And, God-damn it, I don’t want to go all hangdog looking for some person who’ll oblige. I just want it to happen. Sometimes the pressure of vision against the retina or sound against the drum exhausts. Where have I lost myself, where have I laid the foundation of this duct? Walking in these gardens, it is as if the nervous surface of the mind registering the passage of time itself has, by its exercise, been rubbed and inflamed.
Did I write…?
Finding the thought was like looking down again at a pattern of tiles he’d been walking over for hours.
Did I…?
The sublimest moment I remember (Kid pondered) was when I sat naked under that tree with the notebook and the pen, putting down one word then another, then another, and listening to the ways they tied, while the sky greyed out of night. Oh, please, whatever I lose, don’t let me lose that one—
“Hey, Kid!”
“Huh?”
But the Ripper had only called in passing, with a wave, and was walking on.
Kid nodded hesitantly back. Then he frowned. And for the life of him could not remember what he’d just been thinking. The only word in his mind was…artichokes.
Spider, alone in October, sat on the ground, half in darkness, beside the floodlight, swabbing at his belly with a bunched piece of newsprint. It kept flapping, bloody, in front of the glaring glass.
“Are you all right?” Kid asked.
“Huh? Oh, yeah.” Spider mashed the paper smaller. “You just scratched me, you know. It didn’t bleed too much.”
“I’m really sorry,” Kid said. “You feel okay? I didn’t see you.”
Spider nodded. “I know.” He crumpled the paper some more. “I’m a fuckin’ mess—” he pulled his boot heels under him and got to his feet—“but it was just a scratch.” He held back his vest and brushed himself with the paper, pressed it to himself. “It was only really bleeding bad at one end.”
Kid looked up at the black youngster’s lowered face. “You sure it’s okay now?”
“I guess so. Now. Man, you scared me to death, though. I was expecting to see my guts come out all over the grass.”
“I’m sorry, man. Lemme see?”
Spider stared down.
His stomach looked like someone had smeared the teak flesh with paint. From one end of the cut, red threaded down toward his belt. The left side of his pants lap was black maroon. He blotted his belly again.
“You’re bleeding like a pig!” Kid said.
“It’s just a cut.” Spider touched his stained stomach with his fingertips (He bites his nails, too, Kid thought), felt the taut skin over the top of his navel, pulled the waist of his pants out to unstick it. “It don’t hurt none.”
“Maybe they have something inside, some bandages or something. Come on—”
“It’s stopping,” Spider said. “It’s gonna stop soon.”
He turned the stained paper around, examining it.
Blood is a living tissue, Kid thought, remembering his high school biology teacher’s glasses knocked from the edge of the marble lab table, one lens smithereening over the mustard tiles. “Look, come on. Let’s go get a drink, then. After that, you look like you could use it.”
“Yeah.” Spider smiled. “Yeah, come on. A drink. I’d like that.” He grinned, balled the paper, flung it noisily into the brush. “Uhnnn…” he said after three steps. “Maybe I should go inside and wash it or something.”
“I’m sorry, man,” Kid said. “I’m really sorry.”
“I know,” Spider said. “You didn’t do it on purpose.”
When they were halfway across July, Ernestine Throckmorton looked up and said, “Oh! I mean my…God!”
In the following confusion, Denny and Lanya (purple, purple blooming blue) found him while Ernestine and several others tried to get Spider to go inside.
“I wanna…drink,” Spider said, hesitantly.
Ernestine asked Spider: “Do you feel all right? Are you okay?”
“He wants a drink,” Kid said.