Hornets and Others

'Come on,' Bill continued, 'don't you remember? It was one of the biggest things we ever did. We found the guy in the chair. We must have been in third, no, fourth grade. Mrs. Johnson was our teacher. She still at the school, Paul? You ever see her?'

'She's Vice Principal,' Paul said flatly.

'You see? I remember it was fourth grade because we had Mrs. Johnson for our teacher and because that was the year we all fooled Benny Lakeland into asking his old man for a box of rubbers for Christmas. You remember that? The poor dumb bastard didn't know what a box of rubbers was.'

Jimmy was smiling, and suddenly Paul broke into a laugh. 'I remember that.'

'Don't you remember the other thing? The guy in the chair?'

'Do you?' Jimmy asked, oddly.

'Sure I do!' He stopped, racking his memory. 'Somebody told us all about this guy who did nothing but sit in a chair in a little room somewhere in Greystone Bay, and the three of us went looking for him, and we found him.'

'And?'

'And nothing! That's all there is. What's the big deal? The point was, we found the guy and nobody else did.' He pulled the bottle up to his mouth and kept it there a long time. 'Jeez, you guys are bastards all right.'

'I remember,' Paul said, almost in a whisper.

'There, you see!' Bill's eyes brightened.

Paul took the bottle from him and they all looked out over the Bay. There wasn't much to see now, but they had never needed eyes here anyway. The ears and the nose did all the work, with the salt in the air and the good dampness that was always there, especially in the summer, and the squawk of gulls and the tiny splash they made when they dived to snare a shiner from just below the surface of the water. The foghorn wept again, out somewhere in the loneliness, and now, close by, they heard that tiny splashing sound and then the triumphant sound as a gull reared blackly up away from them, its prize in its mouth.

'This is a beautiful place,' Bill said quietly.

The others nodded, and then Paul used the bottle before Bill took it back.

The night closed in on them, and they walked on. South, still, along the boardwalk that creaked in places like the steps in a haunted house. 'You remember the time we went to that haunted house near South Hill?' Bill began, but then he said, 'Forget it.' He was awash in alcohol, and the red and white neon lights stabbed at his eyes painfully, making him shield them. Everything was too bright, surrounded by too much darkness. He heard Paul and Jimmy walking beside him, but had to reach out his hands to clutch their coats to make sure they were really there. He wanted to throw up, but instead, took the bottle to his mouth again, as a baby might take a nipple.

'Where are we?' he said, not sure if the words had made it to his lips, but he nodded when Jimmy answered, 'Harbor Road still, down near the end.'

'Ah,' he said, once more wanting to throw up and then suddenly, from far away, he heard a vomiting sound but was surprised to find that it wasn't himself but Jimmy who was bent double.

'Never could hold your liquor,' Bill said, slurring out a laugh. 'One drink in his whole friggin' life and he barfs up. Here, have another.' He held the bottle under Jimmy's nose but Jimmy pushed it gently away, rising up slowly.

'Where are we now?' Bill asked, and then he stared at the front of the building they stood before.

'This is it. Goddammit, this is it!' There was drunken victory in his voice. He turned to his two companions, who only stared at the front glass window, a small square cutout with a neon-scripted Bud sign that was not lit.

'This is where the guy in the chair was!'

Suddenly he heaved over, throwing the acidy contents of his stomach onto the small stoop in front of the bar. He stood, cleaning his mouth with his sleeve, and then found that the hand within the sleeve still held a bottle with a half-inch of bourbon in it. His stomach protested loudly, but he took it down anyway, closing his eyes momentarily before focusing them again on the building before him. He dropped the empty bottle and it spun once on the sidewalk before settling, label down, next to the stoop.

The liquor, all-encompassing as it was, had now deposited him in a place that was crystal-clear. He saw the door, the brass handle on the door-

'We're going in.'

His leg lifted, and he was up on the stoop. Without looking, he knew that Paul and Jimmy were with him. He could feel their bodies beside him, their wordless rapport.

'You don't remember anything?' Paul asked; his voice was low and Bill couldn't locate Paul's face to go with the voice.

'Dammit, this is the place!' he said in answer.

His hand was on the door—old, notched wood, a lock that had been replaced more than once; he pressed his hand, his body, against it.

The door opened inward easily. A push of tobacco smoke, thick as dust, greeted him, along with the stronger smells of any old bar: urinals long uncleaned, their towel machines empty, soap dish empty, a run of gurgling water in the brown-bleached sink, and a protesting squeal followed by nothing when the hot tap is turned; and beer, sour, run into every corner, dried but never gone, spills on the floor, green tiles rubbed nearly black with cigarette filters and the detritus from a thousand heavy shoes. There was a jukebox flat against one wall, in the shadows, its lights out save one faint amber bulb that pulsed like a retreating heartbeat. Pegs set into the warping paneled walls, dark as the floor, stained, another leak of water running silently from one ceiling corner to meet an ancient pool on the ground that never grew and never receded. The bar was not long but filled, smudged wood polished by coatsleeves, tarnished footstools with torn red leatherette seats. A bowling machine off in another corner showed no lights at all, a rug of dust covering its alley, the plug draped across the top.

The seats were filled with old men who turned as they entered; it was as if a nest of old birds had been disturbed, swiveling their hooded eyes to see what sort of animal approached. The bartender looked like one of them, perhaps elected to lift his aging body from his barstool, worn topcoat and all, and serve his fellow passengers. There was a glass in his hand, clouded, and he paused only a moment as they entered before turning his back on them to refill it from a bottle under the smoky mirror in back of the bar. His eyes turned up to the mirror, watching them there.

Someone at the bar snorted; swallowed phlegm.

'North Hill boys,' someone grunted in dismissal, and the old men turned back to the bar, but all the eyes in the mirror, between the whiskey bottles, stayed on them.

'Dammit, this is it,' Bill said too loudly. The world pendulumed up away from him, came to a standstill, pendulumed back the other way. He wanted to sit down. Once again his eyes hurt, and the world was divided into glowing blobs of light and surrounding darkness.

'We sneaked in and went right over there,' he got out, pointing crookedly to an indistinct dark corner next to the jukebox.

'Follow me,' he said, stumbling toward the dark corner.

His feet would not work properly, but suddenly he was there, falling onto the jukebox, his face bumping flush with the scratched dusty glass. 'NIGHT AND DAY' —A-4, he saw, and then, mercifully, there were hands under his arms and he was pulled away. He expected to be taken to where damp sea air would greet him, but instead, there was a shuffling and his feet were on steps leading upward. He had never been so drunk. His boots scraped leadenly but then he remembered how to use them and he lifted one, then the other. He felt like a marionette, his feet flailing out and up in an approximation of climbing and yet smoothly supported by the arms that held him.

'Up?' he said, slurring his word horribly so that it sounded like the cry of a baby. He tried hopelessly to right his head and bring his eyes to focus, and then abruptly he could see for a moment. There was a steep up-sloping bank of steps ending in a wall. The wall got closer and then turned, and he looked up to see another series of steps ending at a huge—

'Paul? Jimmy?' A trapdoor dropped open in his mind, and he remembered it. He remembered where he had been. He heard giggling and he turned to see Paul beside him, his nine-year-old face stifling a laugh; Jimmy was on the other side and now Paul reached out, poking a finger into Jimmy's ribs and Jimmy threw his hands over his mouth, his eyes wide, trying not to cry out, and then turning to tell Paul in a severe whisper to shut up. They heard