“Bobby, you’re so hard!” said Bet.
Silas and Fleece left for the med center together. Fleece had said he could purloin a tetanus shot and phenol. Bet stayed in the room with me. She took a seat in the wire drugstore chair beside my desk. Actually, she didn’t seem so huge when she sat down. She was put together well. Her face was that of a child actress whose looks might soon change to ugly. She had on a short skirt. One toe had plunged out the end of her left stocking; she put the shoes on.
“I saw you carrying your shoes in your hand. You realize how pretty that looked to Fleece.”
She made poo-pooing kisses toward me with her mouth.
“What are you, a whore?
“Could I see that?” she asked me. She wanted the wet pistol I’d gotten from Fleece when he left. I was still holding it.
“My mercy!” she sighed, turning the gun around naively. “Pow! Why didn’t Bobby use this one? It’s more cute.”
“He was sitting with me right here, hearing the two of you going at it on the bed up there. You knew I was here, anyway.”
“Oh, he did not. Jerry just took off his shirt and told me he wanted me to see this thing, that he was going to stand on the bed so that the street light caught his image in silhouette on the window. He wanted me to see if this was classic, as a pose. It seemed to be classic to me, so he jumped off the bed and was so relieved and happy. He put his shirt back on, and that was all that happened.”
“That wasn’t queer to you?”
“Well, you can tell whose side you’re on. Wasn’t it a tiny bit queer when Bobby shot Jerry?”
“Well—”
“But I love this place, this inside of an old tower. I love you boys in it. You could’ve called me. I would’ve gone out with you. Would you have had a gun too tonight?”
“I know some other guys I could call up. You could love them too. I’d tell them to bring over some firearms; we could have the Millsaps football team pose in silhouette on the bed up there.”
“What you mean?”
“I think you liked it.” She made those poo-pooing kisses again.
“I didn’t like it when it happened. I might like it a little now. Nobody was really hurt. I feel all drained, but it feels like I had fun. It does.”
“Look,” I said. I reached in the drawer and got the little automatic out. I came back and sat on the bed and knocked the safety back. “This is the really cute one.”
I shot it a couple of times at the stair wall. “Now how ‘bout a old kissy-kissy!” I came toward her all smoochy-mouthed. I really was interested in seeing how much gun-fire excited her.
“Harry!” She stood up.
“What? The thrill is gone, huh?”
“Yes. The thrill is gone. Stop.”
“When they get back I’ll take them both on. We’ll bust up the lamps and make awful hooks and preens out of them and hack at each other in the dark. The winner will climb up into the light of Silas’s room, and there you’ll be waiting for him. Would that get the thrill back?”
“No …” she was pouting. “Oh, Bobby Dove! I’ve lost him!” She put her hands to her face and really broke down, bawling.
For a week both Silas and Fleece spent the night some-where else. Then I got a phone call. Silas wanted to know if Fleece was there, and I told him no, and hadn’t been. He said he was coming over to pick up his stuff. When he got to the house, he was a very wary man; and a very sweet man.
“Bet and I are getting married,” he whispered. “Tonight I’m taking her up to Yazoo to meet the folks. They’re going to love her!”
“Speak out. Nobody’s here, not even Mother Rooney.”
“The night I hooked up with you, remember the night I had that cello and you on trumpet? I knew I was being led to a beautiful life. Thank you. Just thank you.” He wanted to shake hands.
“You are in love. Are you sure you want to marry Bet after Fleece has banged it going on six years?”
“Don’t… please.” He still looked at me sweetly, humbly, though he was making a sort of curled club with his hand. I followed him up and watched him pack the foot-lockers. Suddenly he nudged me.
“What?”
“London. The honeymoon. Then all the rest of Europe, with Bet this time.” He opened his jacket, revealing the ticket packet. I saw his wallet also.
“Silas. Could you give me some money?”
“For what?”
“For I don’t have any and I’m hungry. And me telling Fleece about this ought to be worth something.”
“You bet.”
“More than that, man. I’ve also got to tell Mother Rooney about the disappearance of her favorite lodger.”
“All right.” He looked at the barbells. “You can have those too. You could use this room for a gym.”
“Are you crying, Silas?” He was the biggest man I’ve ever seen weeping, huge freckled hands wiping at his cheeks.
“Listen, if you could write a poem right now for me, I’d pay. I’d pay a lot.”
“About what?” I confess I was greedy, instantly, and already I felt cunning watching him cry.
“God, I don’t know. About love, about leaving, about being shot … Ignore me. Here.” He tossed a couple of twenties on the bed. Soon, he was gone, with my poem.
The next week Fleece moved back in. He asked me where I thought that sad bastard Silas was living now. I told him Silas had been in long enough to pick up his clothes and leave. Fleece continued straightening his room below. I hadn’t actually seen him yet. He yelled up.
“What did he say?”
I was dreading this. “He paid me to write him a poem.”
“You wrote him a poem?” still yelling. “What kind of poem?”
“It was ‘Where the Bee Sucks.’”
He quit moving. Then I heard him on the stairs. He was narrowing his eyes, sneering a bit.
“Where the bee sucks?”
“He was in a rush. I came down here and cheated it. Changed a couple of words, maybe. The lit book was right on my desk. He liked it and ran.” Fleece began an uncertain giggle. I showed him, in the book.
Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch, when owls do cry:
On the bat’s back I do fly After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily, shall I live now.
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough!
“He bought that? ‘there suck I’? Why? What did this have to do with anything?”
“The man was weeping, Fleece. He wanted a poem.”
Fleece sucked in as if to begin a howl.
“Wait,” I said. “He and Bet are married and they are in London.” It seemed the perfect time to hit him with it.
He held his breath, and then it left him unnoticeably. I thought he might be very, very slowly dilapidating, taking his glasses off, rubbing his eyes; then the tears came out bright on his cheekbones, and he didn’t move his hands to-ward them at all. He put his glasses back on and drew his hand over his head to get the ropy, straggling hairs in place. His forehead shone bald and hot orange.
“I didn’t know she’d marry him. Missus Silas?”
“She was a strange lady.”
“Dear yes, she was.”
“She bawled about losing you, you know.” Fleece seemed to have resumed the slow, slow sagging again. He began commenting on himself.