“I say, if you aren’t drunk you’re fucking crazy.”
“Then I’m fucking crazy, Frank.” Lew lifted his bottle in a toast and swigged half the remainder.
“What makes you so goddam cheerful?”
“I’ll tell you, Frank,” Lew said, and pointed with his free hand. “You see that sign?”
“Ellen’s Road. I’m sorry I put the fucker up.”
“Don’t be.” Lew turned to give his happy grin to the remaining cars of the train, sliding down now into position for the next four to be unloaded, then looked back at Frank. “I’ve been with these guys all day,” he said. “Every time I look up I see that sign and I wonder what went wrong, and then I look around at what I’m doing, shlepping coffee sacks, and I wonder why I’m so happy.”
“Beer.” Frank said.
“Maybe.” Lew was plainly cheerful enough to agree with anything: that the world is flat, that the end justifies the means, that this is the Pepsi Generation, just any damn thing at all. “What I think it is,” he went on, “more than the beer, I think I’ve figured out who I am.”
“An asshole,” Frank said. “Trying to be a dead asshole.”
“Maybe that, too. But something more.” Within Lew’s merry madness, seriousness lurked. He said, “You know, Ellen isn’t a one-man woman any more than I’m a one-woman man. I’m not gonna put on a tie and go down to the office, and she’s not gonna stay home and sort the laundry. We’re absolutely perfect for each other, and it’s a great relief to me to know that.”
“I’m glad for you.”
“Thank you, Frank. Why Ellen and I are so perfect for one another is because we’re so alike. And because neither of us wants the other one to be anybody but who we are.”
“And who the fuck are you?” Frank asked, feeling more sour by the minute.
“I’ll tell you who I am.” Lew was really very excited. He said, “It came to me in a revelation, this afternoon. That sign, this train, that cliff. I’ve accepted my destiny, Frank. I’m the hero!”
Frank stared at him. “You’re the what?”
“The hero. That’s what I was born to be. And that’s why I can go up on top of those cars and take a couple chances.” The bastard had the effrontery to pat Frank on the cheek. “The hero doesn’t get killed,” he explained.
PART SIX
56
It was with the next group of cars that the first man went over. He’d made an error of judgment, that’s all; it was a simple mistake and therefore hilarious. “Ai! Ai!” the others all shouted in shocked delight, and crowded to the edge of the cliff to watch their comrade drop.
“Jee-sus!” Lew cried, but he couldn’t take it seriously either, and stared down the cliff face as though it was some silent two-reeler comedy he were watching instead of the death of a man. The cars fell, the man stood on the last roof gaping upward, and the last thing he saw in this world was three dozen men laughing at him. Then the cars hit the bay, the water boiled over full of slashing strips and shards of wood, and when the surface settled there was nothing on it at all.
The men at the cliff edge laughed till they staggered; they held their sides from laughing; they mimed for one another the round-eyed round-mouthed look of astonishment on that fellow’s face when he’d scrambled to the end of the fourth car’s roof only to find nothing beyond it but a widening carpet of air. But Lew lost the comedy of the thing the instant it was over, and when he turned and saw the expression on Isaac’s face he was sorry he’d ever been amused at all. Stepping quickly from the edge, he strode over to solemn Isaac and said, “It’s getting out of control.”
He’d made such a comment only because he wanted Isaac to think he was a responsible individual and not one of the people laughing, but Isaac shook his head and corrected him. “No, it’s been out of control. This will calm them for a while.”
The workmen were drifting back from the cliff, undoubtedly remembering it was beer time, but they still mugged and mimed and expressed their pleasure at the unanticipated spectacle. Watching them, Lew said, “Are you sure?”
“They’ll have an hour to think about it,” Isaac said as Young Mr. Balim strolled over to join them. “Next time they’ll remember, and they’ll all be a little more careful.”
“I thought,” Young Mr. Balim said rather tentatively, “I might go up to the road, relieve the man on watch there.”
Isaac frowned. “Why?”
“Because he’s probably asleep.” Young Mr. Balim smiled wistfully. “Also, I don’t think I like the entertainment here.”
Lew said, “Isaac says it won’t happen again.”
“Well, there’s a great lesson in it,” Young Mr. Balim said, “which I don’t need repeated.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s it’s dangerous to play hero,” Young Mr. Balim said, “if you aren’t one.”
The echo of his earlier braggadocio remark to Frank made Lew uncomfortable, which made him aggressive. “How do you know?” he demanded. “How do you know if you’re a hero?”
Young Mr. Balim shrugged. “You survive,” he said.
Isaac had been both right and wrong about what would happen next. When the sixth group of freight cars was dropped off the cliff, the men were much more careful; barely half rode the cars, and those who did were much brisker about jumping to the ground. Nevertheless, a man died.
Lew didn’t ride this time, but stayed on the ground as a good example. It had become evening, already dark under the trees, with bars and tunnels of pink light angling down through the open spaces. Lew watched the empty cars against the pink sky, rolling away, and when he saw the motionless man on the last roof, he cried, “Not again!”
But it was again. The man was short and chunky, with very heavy shoulders, who before this had been noticeable only because he was one of the very few workmen who wore a hat; a kind of tattered baseball cap, with no team designation. Now he stood on the freight-car roof, facing the cliff, both hands pressed to his heart as if he were a character in a Victorian novel, and leaned forward slightly, as though impatient to be gone.
There was no laughter. A few voices tried to raise a cheer, but it didn’t take, and in silence everybody watched the madman ride his freight car down through the empty pink air, never changing his posture, not even when his hat blew off. And when the great black mouth of the water opened for him, showing its white-foam teeth, a general sigh went up, quickly dissipating in the trees.
The men were silent as they turned away, their faces inward-looking, and though everybody was fairly full of beer there was none of the usual roughhousing during the break before returning to work. Friends of the departed man explained that he had been unhappy in love; when this word reached Lew he said, “Shit, so am I! That’s no reason!”
Isaac was the one who’d told him. Spreading his hands, he said, “It seemed like a reason to him.”
Lew left for the lake with the next group of trucks, taking with him the engineer and fireman they’d hijacked with the train. Those two, having sworn they wouldn’t try to escape, had much earlier been given their parole and had sort of been hanging around ever since, drinking beer with the boys and generally having a good old time. However, when they saw Lew make preparations to depart, they both came over and said they would like please to come along to Kenya. Lew shook his head at them. “What for? You aren’t in trouble. When we’re gone, you just go back and tell the truth.”