I crawled to the rail and leaned over and looked down at him. Something scraped against the deck. It was my left hand. It still held the neck of the broken bottle.
I stared down at Maas. He stared back, his mouth making little round O shapes as he tried to make his arms lift his weight. They refused. His head twisted from side to side. His shoes scraped against the barge. He couldn’t pull himself up, but he could hang there all night.
“Drown, damn you,” I said, and raised the bottle and brought it down on his hands again and again until they were bloody and they didn’t clutch the rail anymore.
CHAPTER 21
The attendants were putting me in a strait jacket and chattering away like magpies about what kind of knots they should use when the pain came back and I could taste its bitterness far down into my throat.
But it wasn’t a strait jacket, it was only a life preserver, the Mae West type, and Symmes and Burchwood were struggling to get me into it.
“He’ll bleed to death,” Symmes said severely.
“Well, there’s no rowboat and I don’t go to all those summer camps without learning something.” That was Burchwood.
“I know what you learned,” Symmes said, and giggled.
“What town is this?” I said.
“He’s awake,” Burchwood said.
“I can see he’s awake.”
“We’re going to swim you ashore, Mr. McCorkle.”
“That’s nice.”
“That’s why we’re putting this life preserver on you,” Symmes said. “Russ used to be a lifeguard.”
“Good,” I said. “Have you got one for Padillo? He’s hurt.” I knew it was a stupid thing to say before I said it, but it came out anyway.
“Mr. Padillo isn’t here,” Symmes said. His voice was apologetic.
“Gone, huh?”
“Everybody’s gone, Mr. McCorkle.”
“Everybody’s gone,” I said dreamily. “Weatherby gone. Bill-Wilhelm gone. The blond kid on the wall a long time ago. He gone, too? The captain gone, and Maas is gone, and Ku is long gone. And the Albanians gone. And old partner Padillo gone. Goddamn, that’s something. Old partner Padillo.”
The water woke me up. Someone had me by the neck and was swimming somewhere. I was on my back. My left leg throbbed and I felt lightheaded. I leaned back into the life jacket and looked up at the stars. The water must have been cold because my teeth chattered. But I didn’t notice. I was too busy counting the stars.
They dragged me up the bank of the Rhine and flagged down a truck that was bound to the Bonn market with a load of chickens. I had to talk to the driver, because he spoke only German. I was standing there, supported by Symmes and Burchwood, sodden and scraggly, and trying to make up a reasonable lie about how my friends and I had been walking by the river and had fallen in. Finally I gave up and fished out all the money I had from the ruined billfold Wolgemuth had given me. I pressed it on the driver and gave him my address. For $154 he let us sit in the back of the truck with the chickens.
Burchwood and Symmes dragged me out of the truck and up the twelve steps to the front door of my house. “There’s a key under the mat. My clever, clever hiding place.”
Burchwood found it and opened the door. They half carried, half pushed me in and dumped me into my favorite chair so I could bleed on it for a while.
“You need a doctor,” Symmes said. “You’re bleeding again.”
“Whiskey,” I said. “At the bar. And cigarettes.”
Symmes went behind the bar and came back with a half-tumbler of whiskey and a lighted cigarette. I clutched the tumbler and managed to get it to my mouth, where if started to play a tune on my teeth. I sloshed some of it down. It was bourbon. I got some more down and then reached for the cigarette and took a long, grateful drag. Then some more whiskey and another lungful of smoke.
“Hand me the phone,” I told Burchwood.
“Who are you going to call?”
“A doctor.”
He handed me the phone and I dropped it. Burchwood picked it up and said, “What number?” I told him and he dialed it.
It rang for a while and a sleepy voice answered it. “Willi?”
“
“McCorkle.”
“You drunk again, you and that no-good partner?”
“No. Not drunk yet. Just shot. Can you help?”
“I’ll be right there,” he snapped, and hung up.
