stench, you know. I feed them on the finest grade grain alcohol, and they have their own private cesspool to bathe in. But nothing does any good. You should see them at night when they stand on their heads, howling.'
I grinned, wondering why I didn't give it to him. 'I didn't know goats howled,' I said.
'They do if they're wild enough,' he said.
'Is that all you grow?' I said. 'You don't have bodies on any of-of those things?'
'Jesus Christ!' He turned on me like I'd called him a dirty name. 'Ain't! got things tough enough as it is? Even butts and breasts are becoming a drug on the market. About all there's any demand for any more is you know what.' He passed me the bottle, and had a drink himself, and he calmed down a little. 'Oh,! used to grow other things,' he said. 'Bodies. Faces. Eyes. Expressions. Brains. I grew them in a three-dollar-a-week room down on Fourteenth Street and I ate aspirin when I couldn't raise the dough for a hamburger. And every now and then some lordly book publisher would come down and reap my crop and package it at two-fifty a copy, and, lo and behold, if I praised him mightily and never suggested that he was a member of the Jukes family in disguise, he would spend three or four dollars on advertising and the sales of the book would swell to a total of nine hundred copies and he would give me ten per cent of the proceeds… when he got around to it.' He spat out the window and took another drink. 'How about driving a while?'
I slid over him, over behind the wheel, and his hands slid over me. 'Let's see the shiv,' he said.
'The what?'
'The pig-sticker, the switchblade, the knife, for Christ's sake. Don't you understand English? You ain't a publisher, are you?'
I gave it to him. I didn't know what the hell else to do. He tested the blade with his thumb. Then he opened the pocket of the car, fumbled around inside and brought out a little whetstone.
'Christ,' he said, drawing the blade back and forth across it. 'You ought to keep this thing sharp. You can't do any good with a goddamn hoe like this. I'd sooner try to cut a guy's throat with a bed slat… Well'-he handed it back to me-that's the best! can do. Just don't use it for nothing but belly work and it may be all right.'
'Now, look,' I said. 'What-what-'
'You look,' he said. He reached over and took the Lueger out of my belt. He held it down under the dashlight and looked at it. 'Well, it ain't too bad,' he said. 'But what you really need is a rod like this.' And he reached into the pocket again and took out a.32 Colt automatic. 'Like to try it? Come on and try it on me. Stop the car and try them both.'
He shoved them at me, reaching for the switch key, and- and, hell, I don't know what I said,
Finally, he laughed-different from the way he'd laughed before, more friendly-and put the Lueger back in my belt and the Colt back into the car pocket.
'Just not much sense to it, is there?' he said. 'How far you want to ride?'
'As far as I can,' I said.
'Swell. That'll be Vermont. We'll have time to talk.'
We went straight on through, taking turns about driving and going in places for coffee and sandwiches, and most of the time he was talking or I was. Not about ourselves, nothing personal, I mean. He wasn't nosy. Just about books and life and religion, and things like that. And everything he said was so kind of off- trail I was sure! could remember it, but somehow later on it all seemed to boil down pretty well to just one thing.
'Sure there's a hell… 'I could hear him saying it now, now, as I lay here in bed with her breath in my face, and her body squashed against me… 'it is the drab desert where the sun sheds neither warmth nor light and Habit force-feeds senile Desire. it is the place where mortal Want dwells with immortal Necessity, and the night becomes hideous with the groans of one and the ecstatic shrieks of the other. Yes, there is a hell, my boy, and you do not have to dig for it…'
When I finally left him, he gave me a hundred and ninetythree dollars, everything he had in his wallet except a ten-spot. And I never saw him sagain, I don't even know his name.
Fay started snoring again.
I got the whiskey bottle and my cigarettes, and went into the bathroom. I closed the door, and sat down on the stool. And I must have sat there two or three hours, smoking and sipping whiskey and thinking.
I wondered what had ever happened to that guy, whether he was still in Vermont growing those things. I think about what he'd said about hell, and it had never meant more tome than it did right now.
I wasn't an old man by a hell of a long ways, but I got to wondering whether the way I felt had anything to do with getting older. And that led into wondering how old I really was, anyway, because I didn't know.
About all I had to go on was what my mother told me, and she'd told me one thing one time, and another thing another time. I doubt that she really knew, offhand. She might have figured it out, but with all the kids she'd had she didn't get much figuring done. So.
I tried to dope it out, a screwy thing like that. I added up and subtracted and tried to remember back to certain times and places, and all I got out of it was a headache.
I'd always been small. Except for those few years in Arizona, it seemed like I'd always been living on the ragged edge.
I thought way back, and if things had ever been very much different or I'd ever been very much different, I couldn't remember when it was.
I sipped and smoked and thought, and finally I caught myself nodding.
I went back into the bedroom.
She was sleeping in a kind of loose ball, now, with her rear end way over on one side of the bed and her knees on the other. That left some space at the foot of the bed, so I lay down across that.
I woke up with her feet on my chest, feeling like my ribs had been caved in. It was nine o'clock. I'd had less than four hours' sleep. But I knew I wasn't going to get any more, so I slid out from under her and got up.
I went to the toilet and took a bath, being as quiet about it as I could. I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, fitting the contact lenses into place, when I saw her looking in the doorway.
She didn't know that I saw her. It's funny how people will watch you in a mirror without thinking that you're bound to be watching them. She was looking at the lower part of my face, my mouth, and I saw her grimace. Then, she caught herself, catching on to the fact, I guess, that I might be able to see her. She moved back into the bedroom, waited a moment, and headed for the door again, making enough noise for me to know that she was up.
I slipped my teeth into place. I guess my mouth did look bad without them-kind of like it belonged in another location. But I didn't give a damn whether she liked it or not.
She came in yawning, drowsily scratching her head with both hands. 'Gosh, honey,' she said. 'What'd you get up so early for? I was sleeping sooo-ahh-'scuse me-so good.'
'It's after nine,' I said. 'I figured I'd been in bed long enough.'
'Well, I hadn't. You woke me up with all your banging around.'
'Maybe I'd better go stand in the corner.'
Her eyes flashed. Then she laughed, half irritably. 'Grouchy. You don't have to snap me up on everything. Now, get out of here and let me take a bath.'
I got out, and let her. I dressed while she bathed and started brushing her teeth-washing her mouth-out a thousand and fifty times, it sounded like, gargling and spitting and hacking. I began getting sick at my stomach; rather, I got sicker than I already was. I threw down the rest of the whiskey fast, and that helped. I picked up the phone and ordered breakfast and another pint. And I knew how bad the whiz was for me-I'd been told not to drink it at all-but I have to have it.
