The Kill-Off

He walked around the room, grunting that there were too damned many throats in need of cutting, without bleeding some dull-witted son-of-a-bitch like me who ought to have a guardian looking after him.

'Nope,' he said, turning back around. 'I ain't that bad off. If I was, I just wouldn't have signed up for you this year.'

'Maybe you shouldn't have,' I said. 'And look, Pete. You can't break that contract, but if I should refuse to play-'

'Nope. No, now listen to me,' he said. 'I wouldn't do it, even if I didn't like to listen to that damned pounding of yours. I got to keep the pavilion open. Once I closed it, it'd be kind of a signal. I might as well paint a bullseye on my butt, and tell 'em all to start kicking.'

We went on drinking and talking. Talking of things in general, and nothing much in particular. He said that when Kossmeyer came down the three of us ought to get together some night and have us a bull session. I said I'd like that-some time when I was feeling good and didn't have anything on my mind.

'I like him,' I said. 'He's a hell of an interesting little guy, and a nice one. But sometimes, y'know, Pete, I get a feeling that he ain't where I'm seeing him. I mean, he's right in front of me, but it seems like he's walking all around me. Looking me over. Staring through the back of my head.'

Pete laughed. 'He gives you that feeling too, huh? Ain't it funny, Mac? All the people there are in the world, and how many there are you can just sit down and cut loose and be yourself with.'

I said it certainly was funny. Or tragic.

'Well, hell,' he said, finally, 'and three is seven. Daddy's gone and went to heaven. Guess you and me ought to be getting some sleep, Mac.'

We said good-night, and he went off toward town, his chunky body moving in a straight line. I went to my cottage, feeling conscience-stricken and depressed by my failure to help him. By my failures period. Bitch and botch, that was me. In common honesty I ought to start billing myself that way: Bitch And Botch And His Band And Bitch. I could work up a theme song out of it, set it to the melody of- well, Goodie Goodie. Let's see, now. Tatuh ta ta turn, tatuh… I worked on that for a minute, and then swore softly to myself. I couldn't do anything right any more. Not the simplest, damnedest ordinary thing.

Take tonight, for example. My people were new here; there are rows and rows of cottages, all exactly alike. Yet I hadn't bothered to see that they got to the right ones, to see that they were comfortably settled. I'd just gone my own merry way-thinking only of myself-and to hell with them.

It didn't matter, of course, about Danny Lee. She could sleep on the beach for all I cared. But my men, poor bastards, were a different matter. They had enough to bear as it was-those sad, sad bastards. Just barely squeaking by, year after year. Working for the minimum, and tickled to death to get it. Big-talking and bragging, when they know- for certainly they must know-that they were unfitted to wipe a real musician's tail.

It must be very hard to maintain a masquerade like that. I felt very sorry for them, my men, and I was very gentle with them. They had no talent, nothing to build on, nothing to give. There can be nothing more terrible, it seems to me, than having nothing to give.

I unpacked my suitcases, and climbed into bed.

I fell asleep, slipping almost immediately into that old familiar dream where everyone in the band was me. I was on the trumpet, the sax-and-clarinet. I was on the trombone, at the drums, and, of course, the piano. All of us were me-the whole combo. And Danny Lee-Janie was the vocalist, but she-they were also me. And it was not perfect, the music was not quite perfect. But it was close, so close, by God! All we-I needed was a little more time-time is all it takes if you have it to work with-and…

I woke up.

It was a little after twelve, noon. The smell of coffee drifted through my window, along with snatches of conversation.

It came from the boys' cabin-they were batching together to save money. They were keeping their voices low, and our cottages, like the others, were thirty feet apart. ('Don't like to be crowded,' Pete told me, 'and don't figure anyone else does.') But sound carries farther around water:

'Did you hear what he said to me, claimin' I had a lip? Why, goddammit, I been playin' trumpet…'

'Hell, you got off easy! What about him asking me if I had rheumatism, and I needed a hammer to close the valves…?'

'The wild-eyed bastard is crazy, that's all! I leave it to you, Charlie. You ever hear me slide in or off a note? I ever have to feel for 'em? Why…'

They were all chiming in, trying to top one another. But the drummer finally got and held the floor. I listened to his complaints-the bitter low-pitched voice. And I was both startled and hurt.

Possibly I had seemed a little sharp to the others, but I certainly hadn't meant to. I had only been joking, trying to make light of something that could not be helped. With the drummer, however, I had been especially gentle-exceedingly careful to do or say nothing that might hurt his pride. He had nothing at all to feel bitter about that I could see.

It was true that I had joked with him, but in the mildest of ways. I had not so much corrected him as tried to get him to correct himself.

I had tossed him a bag of peanuts on one occasion. On a couple of others I had suddenly held a mirror in front of him, at the height of his idiotic, orgiastic contortions. I had had him look at himself, that was all. I had said nothing. It was pointless to say anything, since English was even more than a mystery to him than music, and I saw no necessity to. It seemed best simply to let him look at himself-at the man become monkey. And how that could possibly have made him sore, why he should blame me for the way he looked…

Well, the hell with it. He wasn't worth worrying about or bothering with. None of them were. Only Danny Lee- Danny Lee's voice. I wished to God I could have gotten hold of her a couple of years sooner. By now, she'd have been at the top, so good that she wouldn't have been caught dead in a place like this.

I shaved and bathed and dressed. I walked over to her cottage, and told her to show at the pavilion at two o'clock sharp.

Then I dropped in on the boys.

They saw or heard me coming, for their voices rose suddenly in awkward self-conscious conversation. I went in, and there was a stilted exchange of greetings, and a heavy silence. And then two of them offered me coffee at the same time.

I declined, said I was eating in town. 'By the way,' I added. 'Can I do anything for you guys in town? Mail some letters to the local for you?'

They knew I'd heard them then. I looked at them smiling, one eyebrow cocked; glancing from one sheepish, reddening, silly face to another.

No one said a word. No one made a move. They almost seemed to have stopped breathing. And I stared at them, and suddenly I was sick with shame.

I mumbled that everything was Jake. I told them they'd better get out and have some fun; to rent a boat, buy some swim trunks- anything they needed-and to charge it to me.

'No rehearsal today,' I said. 'None any day.'

I got out of there.

I ate and went to the pavilion, and went to work with Danny Lee.

After a while, Ralph Devore showed up.

Ralph's the handyman-janitor here. Also the floorman- the guy who moves around among the dancers, and maintains order and so on. He's a hell of a handsome guy, vaguely reminiscent of someone I seem to have seen in pictures. He has a convertible Mercedes, which, I understand, he got through some elaborate chiseling. And dressed up in those fancy duds he has (given to him by wealthy summer people) he looks like a matinee idol. But he wasn't dressed up now. Now, when Danny Lee was seeing him for the first time, he looked like Bowery Bill from Trashcan Hill.

She was so burned up when he gave her a hand-and I kidded her about it-that she flounced her butt at him.