The Hair of Harold Roux Read online

  In Harold’s room they still surrounded Harold with their earnest care for him, touching him, loving him back to life. Little by little Harold overcame the conviction that his life had been ruined by their betrayals. Naomi turned in his mind from harlot to doubtful person, just as Mary, in time that heals all, or nearly all, resumed something of the status of angel. Fallen angel. She, after all, had been betrayed by Allard—seduced and then again betrayed. Angela, whom Harold had always admired for her class, seemed to have lost none of it despite her shocking admission. As for Allard and Nathan, they were the brutal seducers of innocence—men, their filthy minds in the sewer. Yet they had been kind to him in the past and were trying to be kind even now. A great gray curtain seemed to descend between him and their force, their ability to threaten him. All right, they were all merely men and women, imperfect sinners. What matter that they had torn away his faith in them as well as the secret from his head? He would quit school and spend a calm life here at Lilliputown with Colonel Immingham and Morgana, who did live with grace and dignity. He would read, yes, great books that spoke with gravity and honor. Goodbye to these false friends who had once seemed so charming and good. Goodbye, goodbye; he no longer needed any of them.

  He was very calm now. He took his toupee from his lap and placed it back on his head, smoothing it down as best he could without comb and mirror.

  “I’m all right now,” he said. He got up and went to the door. “I just don’t want to see any of you again.” His mouth trembled at this momentous declaration, but he meant it.

  “I’m so sorry, Harold!” Mary said. She was crying.

  Harold said nothing. He stood at the door waiting for them to leave, his gray face set by pride and justification, his hair slightly askew.

  They walked quietly out of Harold’s room, through the foyer and out into the night, where they stood looking at each other in the moonlight. “Do you think he’s okay now?” Nathan asked no one in particular.

  “I don’t know,” Mary said. She still wanted to cry and Allard put his arm around her. She moved her shoulders and stepped away from him.

  “We’d better go collect Hilary and the bottles,” Nathan said. “God knows about Knuck and Vera.”

  “You’ve got to change out of your bathing suit,” Naomi said to Mary, who didn’t answer but started walking up the path along the railroad tracks. They followed.

  When they passed through the line of Lombardy poplars they became aware, one by one, of a muted sense of motion within Lilliputown, as if the town were a ship moving at anchor, its timbers making deep, half-heard noises. Small creaks, a shutting door, muffled laughter? A clink. People moved among the small buildings—people or animals or things, but they could not pick out, in the elm-shaded moonlight, any single entity. They stopped, close together, watching and listening.

  “What the hell is it?” Nathan said in a hushed voice.

  “Lilliputians?” Allard said.

  “I saw someone earlier,” Angela whispered. “I thought it might have been Hilary.”

  “Weren’t the streetlights on when we came down?” Naomi said. Now the town was dark between islands of moonlight. Across the park and the brook with its narrow bridges, somewhere near the Little Brown Church in the Vale, a bottle smashed, the secondary noise of its shards proving its reality as they sprayed along the cement sidewalk.

  “I doubt if it’s Knuck or Hilary,” Allard said.

  “We ought to tell Harold,” Mary said.

  “What did you see earlier?” Allard said to Angela.

  “A tall man without any pants on, urinating.”

  “You thought it was Hilary?”

  “Yes, but now I don’t think it was Hilary. There was something peculiar about his neck, the way he was looking down at himself.”

  “Peculiar?”

  “Freaky, rather. Anyway, I didn’t mention it because I thought at first it was Hilary and I didn’t want to embarrass him.”

  Allard looked at Nathan, who was looking back at Allard —the same odd surmise. Nathan said, “Were his pants off, or just down around his ankles?”

  “What? I don’t know. He was standing way over by the First National Bank or whatever it is. A long way, you know.”

  “If it was the Piss Poet I suspect the fine Armenian hand of Boom Maloumian,” Allard said.

  “Did he know about the party?” Nathan said.

  “God knows. Knuck was in Litchwood with Maloumian tonight. Maybe he let out where he was going.”

  The girls were frightened. Allard and Nathan were not too calm either, and the girls had heard it in their voices.

  “If it is him, he’s after Harold,” Nathan said.

  “But what will we do?” Mary said, her voice breaking. “Poor Harold! Should we call the police?”

  Allard thought they should find out a little more about the situation first, suggesting that the bluecoats, for Harold’s sake, be avoided if possible. Anything of that sort might offend the Imminghams and hurt Harold’s position here. They decided that Nathan would take the girls to the Livery Stable and get Mary’s clothes, then get Hilary and try to find Knuck and Vera. The girls, following Nathan, walked away with quick, fearful steps.

  Allard would scout out the noises over by the Little Brown Church in the Vale. He waited until the others were out of sight and hearing. He stood quietly for a while, listening, trying to see across the park in the pale light that was deceptively bright but could hardly penetrate the blue-black shadows. Lilliputown was not his creation but it was a creation, another’s idea of perfection, or near perfection. And of course Harold, having renounced his friends, had nowhere to be but here.

  He wished, thinking it dangerous and stupid and yet still wishing it, that he had his Nambu. He seemed such a frail instrument to try to stop whatever evil menaced Lilliputown. And it was evil; the sound of the bottle when it smashed over there, the glass cascading, was evil. He experienced in the center of his body fear of Maloumian, and the fear brought anger. What would happen would be too complicated for that fear and anger. There would have to be words, arguments and threats. He thought with nostalgia of the war, when he was in the infantry in Georgia, how the pop-up silhouettes of German soldiers were driven violently back on their hinges at each jump of his Garand. He might go back to the Colonel’s workshop and pick out a well balanced open-end wrench, or a ball-peen hammer, or maybe the Colonel had a gun … Maybe it wasn’t Maloumian over there after all. Except for the smashed bottle. How evil was Maloumian, really?

  His cold center told him very evil, very big. He needed troops. Even if Knuck could be found and apprised of the situation, he didn’t know if Knuck would oppose Maloumian; they were in their separate ways both such heavy men, and they always seemed to have an agreement, or treaty, between themselves in which Maloumian was to Knuck a clown whose japes and escapades should not be taken too seriously. Nathan would fight but he was so small. Hilary seemed in his bland good nature made of paper-mache. And poor Harold had been destroyed once already on this disastrous evening. If only he had Nathan with him and they were both armed.

  He knew he had to go over toward the Little Brown Church in the Vale no matter what waited for him, so he moved as quietly as he could through the shadows, keeping the trunks of elms between himself and whatever unknown watchers might be there. Partly on his hands and toes he went through the park to the brook, where he could make a transverse approach in its depression, crossing it on stones and moving along its bank. When he thought he was across the railroad track from the Little Brown Church in the Vale he rose up, a barberry hedge identifying itself painfully to his fingers. He raised his head slowly, hearing stifled laughter and giggles from quite close by. Many bodies—too many of them, at least eight or nine—sat or lay on the lawn of the church, large forms some of which passed bottles or drank, glass glinting sharply in the moonlight, followed by coughs and throat-clearings. “Quiet!” someone whispered. Was it Short Round? “Quiet! You want to queer it?” It was
Short Round, from somewhere near the door of the church.

  The church door opened upon glaring light which, after whispered curses, was turned off from inside, but Allard had seen a man standing next to a bureau zipping up his fly—a large jock he knew slightly whose specialties were football and lacrosse. Whalen, his name was, a mediocre athlete who made very professional-looking moves, gestures and remarks on the field.

  “Okay, who’s next?” Short Round was exasperated. “Come on, damn it, and get your goddam money out!” One of the lounging figures got up, unsteadily it seemed to Allard, while the others laughed into their hands. The bulk that must have been Whalen collapsed into the general shadow of the lawn and asked for a drink. “Hoo, boy,” he said.

  “Keep it down!” Short Round said from the doorway. “Jesus Christ, will you?”

  A cloud, crossing the moon, turned silver at its edges while the town went dark. No sign of Maloumian, who might be inside the church. He must be here somewhere, standing or moving, maybe moving through the darkness. Allard shivered, as though eyes observed him from behind, and tried to tell himself that this was not, after all, a deadly situation. Though all of these men had been in the war they were now civilians, college students, not authorized to wound or kill. But he knew that even though the war had ended the animal was the same, and this engagement was the one he was in. His anger grew reckless and frightening; one always had the option to introduce violence, but he must forsake that seductive fantasy and think.

  He took advantage of the cloud to move back down the brook, crossing back over the way he’d come. Just before he reached the open glades of the park, where he would be exposed to the moonlight, from straight ahead of him, from the direction of the poplars and the Town Hall, came a scream that in its hoarseness was identifiably male, though it shrilled in its high ranges like the voice of a caught rabbit.

  It was prey in the teeth of its hunter, that scream of useless terror, and it struck him through his own hunting memories as well as through dreams of having been pursued and caught. He wanted to hide and also to charge with the right of a hunter toward the place of the kill. Listening so intently he was not aware of himself in either role, he didn’t move, then heard a distant scuffling, drumming sound, like the hooves of horses. It was not coming toward him, but going off to his right along the poplars. Somewhere over there, near the Barbershop and the Saloon, glass shattered, not a bottle this time but the xylophonic chords of window glass.

  He ran back past the poplars to the Town Hall. The front door was open, the foyer empty. Harold’s lights were on but he was not there. He thought of a weapon but couldn’t think of anything short of a gun that would be effective at all. A quick look into the Imminghams’ living room, peacefully quiet, waiting in its comfortable chintzy clutter, revealed no weapons. The door to the Colonel’s shop was locked. He turned off a bridge lamp, nearly knocking it over, steadying its parchment shade, and ran back out of the building, up the path again. He had thought of the police but couldn’t make himself call them. It would not be right, not understood by them. This microcosmic war was between known adversaries, and his own guilt might make him guilty of everything in their stern distant eyes. Of course he should have called the police. But what police? He wasn’t even sure what town this was. The operator, of course, could have told him. When he was just about out of breath he nearly tripped over a body whose long legs stuck out into the path, its thin trunk propped against an elm. Bare ankles in sneakers, baggy dress pants with cuffs: Gordon Robert Westinghouse. In a rage, Allard hauled him to his feet and banged his bony back against the tree.

  “All right, you useless son of a bitch, tell me all.”

  All! Would he ever have rage or any intensity of emotion in which he did not hear strange words, odd insincere constructions?

  Melifulous Aponatatus smiled and drooled. “Erk,” he said.

  No amount of banging him against the tree changed his expression toward awareness, and Allard saw that though he was actually drunk he was going beyond that and playing glorious, romantic drunk, letting himself descend under the pale eye of the moon into magnificent dissipation.

  “You can’t act, you shit-for-brains,” Allard said. “The likes of you can’t act. Come out of it or I’ll break your ass.”

  “Balaforuh. Narpaluff.”

  Allard let him fall.

  “Allard! Allard!” Naomi called as she came running up to him. Mary, Angela and Nathan followed, Hilary stumbling along behind.

  “So it was the Piss Poet,” Nathan said.

  The poet lay on his side trying to breathe.

  Allard sensed some disapproval of his violence and said, “He’s being drunk and won’t talk. I think Maloumian’s got Harold. Did you hear the scream?”

  “Yeah, we heard it,” Nathan said.

  “What are we going to do?” Mary said.

  “He’s got a bunch of frat jocks over by the church, about eight or nine of them, and Short Round’s charging them for whatever attraction he’s got inside there.”

  “Like what?” Naomi said.

  “Like a whore, 1 suppose.” His anger and fear made him go on. “Or a chicken or a Chinaman or eighteen queer midgets or his hairy grandmother or whatever his joke is for tonight.”

  “But what’s he going to do with Harold?” Mary said.

  In the silence following this unanswerable question they heard the growing intensity of the sounds of invasion. Laughter and thumping, even growls and barks, as if wolves prowled through Lilliputown. They thought one screaming voice must be Harold’s, and its pathetic desperation came from somewhere near the Little Brown Church in the Vale.

  Allard asked if they’d found Knuck and Vera. They hadn’t.

  “You don’t suppose it’s Vera he’s got in the church?” Nathan said.

  “I doubt it, unless Knuck’s unconscious or something.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mary cried. “What do you mean? That’s Harold crying. I can hear him!”

  “I say,” Hilary said groggily, “what’s going on?”

  “They’re killing Harold!” Mary cried.

  “Oh, I say! That’s too violent,” Hilary said, alarmed. He peered down at Gordon Robert Westinghouse, fast asleep at their feet. “Oh,” he said, “is it Maloumian then?”

  “I haven’t seen him yet, but Short Round’s over there so there’s not much doubt,” Allard said.

  “Why are we just talking?” Mary said. “We’ve got to get Harold!”

  “I think maybe you girls ought to go home,” Allard said. Nathan and Hilary agreed. Angela could take them back in Nathan’s car.

  “I’m not going anywhere until I find Harold,” Mary said, and began to run through the moonlight toward the church, her light skirt fading into the dark. Allard ran and caught her around the waist. She fought him, crying and still trying to run. Her sobs were voiced, frantic; she mewed like a cat.

  “Mary!” he said, pulling her against him so hard she had trouble breathing.

  “Let me oh! Let me go!”

  He had to pin her arms under his. “Mary! Listen! Those drunken bastards are dangerous! Listen to me! We’ll try to get Harold! I’ll kill that bastard Maloumian …”

  “Let go of me!”

  She would go directly to Harold no matter what lay before her. He couldn’t let her go; he had to hold her still in order to think.

  The others came up. Naomi put her arms around Mary, too, so that she and Allard had her captured between them, surrounded by arms, the three bodies locked together. Mary could not be calmed; she struggled, her bones and flesh harder than Allard had ever found them in his arms before. He and Naomi hushed her and spoke to her, trying with their voices to soothe her though they had nothing helpful to say except please be calm and everything will be all right. Her head, small and angular, turned against Allard’s chest. Her hair, because it was tangled and compressed, wet in places, was thinner, the silky growth common to the heads of children. He found that his arms, his
voice, the bulk of his body, all of his presence was useless against her determination. She cried, “Harold, Harold,” and soon they had all come under what seemed then the invincible logic of her desires and were walking with her toward the Little Brown Church in the Vale.

  Unarmed, they would also lose all the advantages of knowledge and surprise. He was being led into a position of weakness by this woman’s logic and he asked himself how it could be happening. She heard Harold’s cries and must go to him, though Boom Maloumian would most certainly be there. Not to mention Whalen and his probable companions whose thug values were so cruel it had always seemed odd to Allard that those animals had human names. Whalen, Morrow, Gil-man, McLeod, Likas, Schurz, Harorba, Manolo, O’Brien. He had played in their games—poker, pickup football—and knew how their crude superiorities were exacerbated by constant closeness and mutual agreement. Meanwhile he walked with his eccentric, vulnerable friends toward evil, believing that he was the only one who recognized its real dangers.

  The streetlights flickered and came on again, each above its little amphitheater of light. Scattered cheers, grunts and shouts of wonder or approval came from here and there across the town. They could see movement, the flicker of a broad, white-shirted back as a running figure appeared and disappeared down by the First National Bank, near the tunnel where the Colonel kept his train. Dark figures crossed between trees and buildings with seemingly aimless energy. From their left as they approached the church came a quick flurry like a dogfight—breathless snarling and a scraping of earth or wood that might have been done by frantic claws.

  The Little Brown Church in the Vale was softly illuminated by its own streetlight as if in a suburban evening, its brown gables and stained glass, its square bell tower giving it a look of staunch inviolability until, as they approached, it shrank into its real dimensions. Leaves whispered above their heads in a new wind. Then the raucous voices of men overcame all the natural sounds of the night. The men stood in a half circle in front of the church, one of them unable to stand without his arm around another’s neck and falling to his knees as his support turned with the others, seven of them, to see the strange group approaching. Little Nathan, stately Angela, pale Mary, dark Naomi and gawky Hilary—Allard’s odd forces of flawed righteousness walking straight into the hands of their enemies.