“Well, his niece is in it. She made it.”
“I don’t understand. Now you …”
The door rattled. The lock was old and the door-facing around it was splintery and rutted, and I was thinking about this because the door was being kicked, once, twice, and who could’ve expected this? Fleece crawled into the closet in a low swift silhouette. I didn’t have the guts to release the safety on my automatic and just quavered, standing up, pulling on the dead trigger, the gun aimed at the floor. The door broke and swung in.
“Hi, weasel fuckers. I knew I heard you in here. I have something very, very damn happy for us!” It was Silas. “Is that a gun?”
Some explanation had to be made. Fleece came out of the closet. Silas turned on the light and closed the broken door. I told Silas the complete history of it. He really caught on fire with the story. He demanded to see the letters. Fleece cursed. But I felt very safe with big Silas in the room. Fleece, of course, detested Silas and squirmed and smoldered, and sat in a rage the whole while. I went to the cigar box to get the letters. He told me to keep my filthy hands off his possessions, but I took them out, reminding him that I had stolen my share of the letters and it wasn’t my fault that we didn’t have the hundreds of them that went up in the fire behind his house. Silas sat there three-quarters of an hour, reading. Every once in a while, he’d look up and stare like a bursting demon at Fleece, who looked away.
“Have you men ever seen ten actual inches?” he wanted to know, standing up with the last three or four envelopes in his hand. He unsnapped his pants. I looked out the window. Then I glanced at Fleece. He was looking right at me, wagging his head in sick dismay. I agree it was a very perverse surprise.
“You people ashamed of the human body? Thinking I’m a faggot? You poor prig-trained people. I wanted you to see a real phenomenon, in and for itself — what letters! what letters! — and now it’s gone. Never have it like that again. Oh my, you two people. You read these letters in your dark little dirty minds. Giggling, I bet. Won’t look at the flesh of a man who loves both of you! Never wanted to see the actual red flesh, did you? Couldn’t bear it! All your little rules say I’m queer. You’d love for me to be queer, wouldn’t you? I’m all dressed now. You can look at me.”
“I get ill enough looking at you with your pants on,” said Fleece. “Who are you, anyway? You look like somebody who’s taken exercises all his life so he could finally bend down enough to suck himself off.” Fleece was such a frail animal to be saying this to Silas.
“You expect me to haul off and hit him for saying that, don’t you?” Silas asked me. “That was honest, that was brave, what he said. I like him for it. I mean more. I know he’s a genius, I already respect him and like him for that. You people just can’t stand being liked, can you?” Well, there were some more friendly accusations from Silas.
He told us what he came down for. He had found us a cheap but extraordinary boarding house off North State in Jackson. Its landlady was Mother Rooney, an old Catholic widow who didn’t cook badly and stayed out of your way. He wanted us to move immediately; he meant tonight. Over at Mother Rooney’s, we’d have a separate room apiece, the rent was near nothing.
“We’ll be citizens of the world and not pigeons in this goddam roost,” he said. “I’ve got most of my stuff in my car already. This has to be fast, because these medical students want the rooms; Mother Rooney said she’d give us till midnight. I can get a trailer for all your stuff.”
I began getting my stuff together. Silas left. Fleece watched me packing and sorting. He was still snaky and sour. I told him we did need a new address, away from the college and Dave, and I was for it; told him that the place seemed fairly close to the medical school. I told him that, after all, Silas was not so bad. He’d made it so easy for us, he’d found the place.
“You son of a bitch. You know I won’t stay here by my-self,” said Fleece. He packed his clothes. Silas came back to help us with all of the cargo of artifacts and books which Fleece owned. It was five in the morning when we got it all in the trailer, which was hitched behind Silas’s Pontiac. Fog was all over the road to Jackson. Fleece hadn’t said a word for six hours. This was almost a shock to the ears. One thing to Silas’s credit: his presence caused long spells of silence in Fleece.
The house was on a little dead-end alley full of weed clumps. The alley was named Titpea; we passed the apartment house where Patsy Boone used to live. Our house was situated over the state fairgrounds. It leaned a little off its foundation, this house, toward the back yard, which didn’t amount to much and ran to a high cliff all grown over with kudzu vines that saved the back yard from further erosion. Nobody ever promised me or any of the other boarders that the house wouldn’t fall and crack apart as it tumped farther over the lip of the cliff. It was a preciously weird house, anyway. It amounted to two high silo-like towers attached to both ends of a two-story bungalow. The towers had yellow wood shingles; the middle bungalow had the same sort of shingles, but they were chocolate-colored; it had a porch with a banister, steep steps, glass doors, and white Victorian edging — grills and windows — like a fudge whorehouse. We would room in the southern tower. The old lady was already up when we got there.
“Now let’s get this straight. You do allow private nookie in the rooms. And we could practice music without fear of complaint,” said Silas to Mother Rooney.
“Music? Of course! I love music. I had hoped someone would room here who could play—”
“Never mind going on and on about it. Listen, I don’t want you even close to the south tower, don’t be dragging around when we’re over there. Leave this door open. We’re moving in.”
“Silas, God knows!” I implored.
“Now this is Sunday morning,” he continued. “We’re going to be sleeping all day, probably. Don’t wake us up making the sign of the cross or knocking your beads around and don’t slam the door leaving for Mass. You be a good girl and tonight Monroe here might take you down to the Royal for a movie and kiss your neck.”
“Lookahere,” I said. Mother Rooney was seventy.
“The movies? I love the movies,” she said, gazing at me fondly, which made me think she only heard certain hard nouns you said to her, especially the ones she wanted to hear and cherished.
“Let’s move in, men. Mother Rooney, you grab Fleece’s trunk. Watch the old arthritis. It weighs a ton.” I grabbed the trunk up quickly myself. The thin old lady was actually moving toward it.
On the way over to the tower, Silas, with his arms full of clothes, turned back to us.
“She loves me.”
“What is this place?” said Fleece.
“You just keep a smile on your face and. peer into her eyes with concern. She puts her hand on your shoulder. Let her do that. She loves that most of all.”
Silas went straight to bed. Fleece began yammering.
“What are we doing here? What is this place? We’re in the inside of a three-story tube. He forced us over here. We came over yanked along like damn puppets. He’s smooth. He’s mean. You heard him talking to that old woman. We have to pay extra money. How’s your old man gonna like that? You have to write a letter home just like me. But not that rich bastard up there!” Silas was in the top room, me in the middle, Fleece below. The rooms were perfectly round, and there was a light and double bed in each of them. I asked Fleece why didn’t he go down and enjoy his big bed like I was fixing to do. He went down the unpainted wood planks which were his stairway. The stairway to Silas’s room was planted in the north corner of my room. It was a narrow thing, had a wrought-iron banister, and hugged the wall.