Savage Night

didn't..

I put a little more steam into it, just a little. And then a little more… and a little more.

And then suddenly I wasn't pushing, hard or any other way. I was throwing myself at it, giving it every thing I had. And I was still holding onto those mixes, why the hell I don't know, and they were slopping all over me and the floor. And I hit that door like I was going to drive straight through it. And I bounced and skidded and slipped. And I did a belly whopper to the floor.

The wind went out of me like a popped balloon, I gagged and retched but nothing came up. I lay on the floor, writhing, squeezing my head between my hands, trying to squeeze the pain away. And after a while I could breathe again, and I could get my eyes to focus.

I looked. The door was closed tight.

The scraper wasn't there, and it hadn't slipped inside. Someone had taken it away.

15

I laughed. I got ahold of the table and pulled myself up. I laughed and laughed, brushing at the crap on my clothes, feeling it cling and stick and stiffen against my fingers.

Because what was the sense to it anyway? How in the hell could you win? You were right on the beam-playing all the angles, doing things twice as well as you thought you could and getting some breaks thrown in. Everything was swell, and you were a bright boy and a tough boy.

And a punchy booze-stupe without enough guts to string a uke could come along and put the blocks to you.

He could do it because he didn't have anything. Nothing to lose. He didn't need to be smart, to cover his tracks. You had to cover them for him. He could make one dopey move after another, and all you could do was duck and keep your mouth shut. He didn't need guts. He could run from you, but you couldn't run from him. He could pick you off any way, any time, and if he got caught…? I had to choose between times and ways, and if I got caught…? Not responsible? Not a chance. If you beat the law there was still The Man.

I laughed and choked and coughed. It was such a hell of a good joke, me feeling sorry for Jake.

That was my first reaction-that it was the damnedest funniest thing in the world and it was a relief to get it all over. It hadn't made any sense from the beginning. I'd go right on looking for whatever I was looking for, and I wouldn't stand any better chance of finding it than I ever had.

So it was funny. It was a relief.

Then that cold really began to gnaw into me, and I stopped laughing and I wasn't relieved any more.

It was too simple, too clear-cut and easy. I'd been swimming in muck all my life, and! could never quite sink in it and I could never quite get to the other side. I had to go on, choking to death a little at a time. There wouldn't be anything for me as clean and easy as this.

I looked at my watch. I got up and started walking back and forth, stamping my feet, rubbing my hands and slapping them against my body.

Four-thirty. It seemed like it ought to be hours later than that, I'd done so much that day and got started so early, but it was only four-thirty… Kendall would knock off at a quarter of six to go to the house for dinner, and he'd come in after me. And then I'd get out of here.

No one would come in before then. There wasn't any reason for them to, and-and they just wouldn't. And Kendall wouldn't dress out without me, and go on to the house by himself.

Either way, see, would make it easy for me, and that was against the rules. I wouldn't be found soon enough to really help, or late enough to… to do any good.

Four-thirty to five-forty-five. An hour and fifteen minutes. That would be the score. No more, no less. Not enough to kill me; too much, a hell of a lot too much, to leave me unharmed, Just the right amount to knock me on my ass.

I should have given up, just relaxed and stopped trying to do anything about it. Because whatever I did or didn't do, I wasn't going to change a thing. I'd still be just so sick, almost completely screwed up, not quite stripped of everything I had. Right at the time when I needed everything I had and! couldn't be screwed up at all.

No, I couldn't change a thing. But I had to try.

Relaxing, giving up, those were against the rules, too.

I walked back and forth, stamping and slapping and pounding, hugging my arms across my chest, sticking my hands between my crotch and clasping my legs on them. And I kept getting colder and stiffer, and my lungs began to feel like I was breathing fire.

I climbed up on the table, trying to warm my hands against the light in the ceiling. But there was a wire guard around it, and it was just a little globe, and it didn't do any good.

I climbed back down and started walking again. Trying to think… A fire? Huh-uh. Nothing to burn, and it wouldn't do anyway. It wouldn't even be smart to smoke. The air wasn't too good now.

I looked along the rows of shelves, looking-for anything. I studied the labels on the thick jugs: Extract of Vanilla, Extract of Lemon… Alcohol 40 per cent… But I knew better than that, too. You'd feel warmer for a few seconds, and then you'd be colder than ever.

I began to get sore. I thought, for Christ's sake, what kind of a dope are you, anyway? You're suppose to be smart, remember? You don't just take things. You don't like something, you do something about it. Locked up, not locked up. It's still the same, isn't it, except for the air. Suppose.

Suppose you were riding that manifest out of Denton, the fast meat train that balls the jack all the way into El Reno. It's November and all the goddamned reefer holes are locked, so you're riding the top, in the goddamn cold wind. And you can't die, and you'd better not get down. Because you remember that kid in the jungle at St. Joe, the color of the weeds he was lying in,' taking on the boesfora dime ora nickelora cart of coffee or… So?

I remembered. I didn't invent the trick but it's a good one:

You crawl down inside your cotton sack, the sack you pick cotton into. It's nine feet long and made out of canvas, and you kind of flap the end over itself so that just a tiny bit of air comes in. And you breathe practically the same air in and out, but you warm up fast. After a while your lungs start itching and smarting and your head begins to hurt. But you stay there, keeping your mind on warm things, warm and soft, and safe…

I didn't have a cotton sack now, of course, or anything in the way of a big piece of cloth. But if I could get inside of something, pull something over me, and put my breath to work… well, it would help. I took a long careful look around the room.

Egg can? Too small. Lard barrel? Too big; it would take too long to dig the lard out. Mincemeat…?

The keg was only about a fourth full. I squatted down, trying to measure myself against it, and it was pretty small-not really what! ought to have. But it was the only thing I did have.

I turned it upside down, then got my arms around it and banged it up and down, dumping the sweet-smelling, semifrozen slush on the floor. I scraped the inside with a scoop, and I knew! could scrape all night and not get it completely clean. So I gave up and got it over me.

I sat down on the floor with my arms at my sides, and stuck my head and shoulders into it. Then, I sat up and let it slide down over me. It only came down to my hips, and little gobs of that goo kept letting go and trickling down onto me. But that had to be it-it and me was all I had. So I breathed hard and tried to concentrate on… on warmness and softness, comfort and safety.

I got to thinking about the farm that guy had up in Vermont, where he grew all those things. And I remembered how he'd said that he didn't have any demand any more except for just the one thing. I closed my eyes, and I could almost see them, the long rows of them. And I grinned and laughed to myself, beginning to feel kind of good and pretty warm. And then I thought, I began to see: