The Hair of Harold Roux Page 38

  Vague, fierce, shiny, the faces turned toward them, some with wonder. O’Brien, Harorba, Morrow, Oilman—he knew most of them and they all had certain common characteristics, such as slightly humped backs from holding up their freakishly thick arms and the weight of their menacing struts, the forward lean of their manliness. They had imitated each other for so long, in so many ways, that only minor differences in shape or texture indicated their separateness; somewhat as with identical twins, Allard always found himself examining each of them carefully for a shorter brow or a barely different cast to the eyes.

  “Hey! Broads!”

  “White meat!”

  “Shaddup, dumbhead!”

  “Don’t step in the puke!” Advice, laughter. “Don’t step in the gism—it’s coming out the scuppers!”

  “At ease! At ease!”

  The last said by Boom Maloumian, his black slits wet with laughter as he appeared at the church door. In an excess of hilarity he had to put his head down upon the wrought-iron railing for a moment as all turned to watch him. The men turned their appreciative faces toward this larger exemplar of themselves as if they were his devotaries, created smaller, like commoners surrounding royalty in a primitive painting. Maloumian (Moloch—the word came into Allard’s mind) had all the time he wanted, command of time for his ponderous dance of amusement. At first he did not notice the newcomers, or seem to hear Mary’s shrilling voice.

  “Where is Harold?” she cried. “Where is Harold?”

  “Where is Harold?” answered several falsetto voices. “Where, oh where, is Harold? Have you seen Harold? No! Have you? Who the fuck is Harold? Harold? Harold? Are you there, Harold? Oh, Harold, where are you?” In their falsetto voices had been an accidental harmony that sent them into laughter—even, from one of them, a near-hysterical, effeminate shriek.

  It was all a question, now, of how much collusion, or loyalty, there was between Maloumian and these morally stunted jocks, and how much they wanted what was going on to go on. This sort of calculation kept working in Allard’s mind, though it seemed hopeless. At least Whalen wasn’t here, although he might be inside the church. There was something he ought to remember about Whalen that was either dangerous or merely irritating, but he couldn’t bring whatever it was to mind.

  Maloumian, who now deigned to recognize them, took all of Allard’s attention. The massive head, iron-colored shiny skin, hair like wires bent into place by pliers and painted black—all turned on the invisible neck. The hilarity, which Allard had recognized as if he had been coldly informed of it, changed now into amazed, voracious delight.

  “Aha!” Maloumian said with the expansive joviality of power. “The party! We all came to the party but we couldn’t find the party.” Deep disappointment: the assumed expression fit Maloumian very well, as if it were that easy to change all that muscle into the configurations of a child’s hurt face. “So we decided to have our own party! While we waited, so to speak!” He looked at Angela, imitating her upper-class diction. “You see, ladies and gentlemen, we all felt rather left out. Our feelings were hurt. But never mind, we decided to make the best of it even though we did think to bring Harold a present and it seemed so … so rather … not nice of him not to welcome us!”

  “Where is Harold?” Mary cried.

  Maloumian ignored her and went on speaking words Allard couldn’t understand because the terror in the voice of this girl he himself had hurt was sending him beyond, where the cold white-out would make him forget his helplessness, ignore all the possible legal and argumentative powers they might have left to use. Now he was sliding over toward rage. He and Maloumian were now at the place where expression became the length of exposed fang, the constriction of eyelids and the laying back of ears, and Maloumian of course saw it at once.

  “Now, now, Benson,” he said, comfortably safe, interested.

  “Hey, Allard,” Nathan said. “Wait a minute.”

  Words were not really words. They meant nothing, even though Allard found them coming from his own head. But he had always been a fountain of words. He listened to his own sounds, but the combinations, though familiar, meant nothing but intent. Yet he was full of distant thoughts, an odd detachment, as he moved up the steps toward Maloumian.

  He had been given the thesis constantly, ever since he could begin to understand, that he must think the best of mankind, believe in an essential goodness that should never be violated. Of course he knew how innocently ridiculous this thesis was, but perhaps it was responsible for his rage against those who did not conform to his expectations, as he didn’t himself. Sengurt durnful lama sinis: You were born out of your mother’s asshole. In other words, fight me as your grandmother, who was raped and dismembered, would have called upon you to do with her last scream. He always meant the unforgivable, invited his enemy to go for his jugular, and yet he himself had never quite killed. It all seemed exceedingly dangerous that he was ultimately deficient in this motivation. But maybe he was not this time.

  Perhaps he hadn’t said the Turkish curse out loud, or hadn’t remembered it right.

  He didn’t know whether Maloumian was here to make money, essentially, or for research—to amass additional raw data for one of his great tales. Whatever the reason, this evening was Maloumian’s creation. Allard might alter events somewhat but he knew that Boom Maloumian would be the master of the coming ceremonies.

  Words still came out of his mouth; he was no doubt telling Maloumian all sorts of things. Something physical but insubstantial kept getting in his way and it was Nathan, probably, whom he pushed aside. Then it was Naomi, and Hilary was there, too, and then not there. Then some brilliant strategical center of his lower brain pointed him not directly at Maloumian but toward the door of the church. This threw Maloumian off just a little—power can be fooled, but not for long—and Maloumian instead of hitting him grabbed his arm. That contact at once gave Allard power; the moment Maloumian’s fingers encircled his arm he did what he could never do through empty air. He had to be touched before he could fight, as though he were blind and knew the other’s anatomy only through touch, seeing clearly now in his mind all levers, lengths, vessels and nerves. Maloumian fell back down the steps, his fingers or knuckles playing a dull, harplike thrum along the metal columns of the railing. Now was the time to shoot Maloumian with the Nambu, but he didn’t have the Nambu so Maloumian would be back very soon. Meanwhile, since he had little else to do, Allard opened the church door. He had time to see two men—Short Round and another he didn’t know—holding Harold’s arms behind his back. From the bed rose a black figure which turned white, a dark bird with white wings now seen as a chenille bedspread enfolding the dark body. Then he was taken from behind and hit so many times on his head he began to count the blows, as though he’d been asked to count his way into anesthesia. Nothing hurt, but it took too long before the blows, or his knowledge of them, stopped, and he was again at the bottom of the steps, on his knees, feeling the loss of a short but totally unaccounted for passage of time.

  He was weak, partly through delayed fear; while his head was being hammered by fists—on the back, sides, top, front, anywhere—he had wondered if they knew enough not to kill him. His scalp was bruised, pulpy. His arms felt as if they had been removed. The two men who held him seemed to be doing something they didn’t have to do. He still observed this place, shaking away a tendency toward diplopia. He had acted perhaps honorably, if stupidly—what was the difference? Mary’s crying, now that he had lost his strength, made him distantly sad. Angela had her arm around Nathan, her square hand gently wanting to support, but not quite daring to touch, his jaw.

  “You’ve broken his face,” she said to Maloumian, “and I’ll see that you pay for it.” She was not fazed by these unruly peasants, and for a moment her dignified outrage seemed to be having an effect.

  Naomi then said the wrong thing: “You miserable pricks!”

  Oh, Naomi, Allard thought. Laughter, whiskey fumes and a hint of distant urine surrounded
him. To them that was the language of a whore, an outlaw, and one of them began to wrestle with her, laughing and blocking her fists with his shoulders. References were made to kosher meat. Mary cried out for all this to stop, while Hilary tried to comfort her.

  “You’re in trouble, Maloumian,” Allard said.

  “Benson?” Maloumian’s voice stilled them, not so much because of its deepness but because of its sad forgiveness, almost plaintiveness. “Benson? Why’d you have to come up here and get all feisty like that? You ought to know we don’t mean no harm. We’re good boys, just havin’ a little fun. Just funnin’ around now.”

  Just a folksy fella, a good old boy, trying to comprehend. So it was a movie now, a Western, and they would wait, knowing the coming turn to nightmare: the rope slithers up and over the cottonwood branch, and suddenly the mask of friendliness is removed.

  Angela spoke of the police, and Maloumian laughed good-naturedly. “We’re all friends here,” he said. “We just came to the party. Just a little beer-and-whiskey bust among old school friends. All this talk about the cops seems mighty unfriendly, in fact downright inhospitable. Ain’t that right, boys?”

  Assenting laughter. Then, except for desperate retching off in the shrubbery somewhere, came an expectant silence as the church door opened and the white chenille bedspread appeared like bodiless wings. It was occupied by a Negro woman with a young, battered-looking face—black eyes, tan in the whites, swollen lids, thick, blue-black lips inverted as if pushed out from inside the mouth, mussed straightened hair as slick in places as polished onyx or grease.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Boom Maloumian said, bowing with a barker’s flourish, “may I present Miss Betty Bebop!”

  Applause, which she did not bother to acknowledge.

  “Gimme my money,” she said to Maloumian, holding out a palm that shone flower-pink above her hand’s smoky black, its demanding surface bright in the streetlight.

  Harold Roux, no longer held from behind, came out then, followed by Short Round and the other one Allard now recognized as McLeod. Harold’s stiff back and pursed lips revealed that he was trying to assume a posture of unassailable dignity. Maloumian looked down upon him, ignoring the outstretched hand of Betty Bebop. Harold looked defiantly up at Maloumian’s breadth of muscle that was thinly encapsulated by a university T-shirt, black hair curling at his chest and along the thick forearms. Maloumian grinned down at him. At a gesture Short Round handed Maloumian a pint bottle from which he took a swig and then offered it to Harold, who made no answer.

  “Sixty dollah,” Betty Bebop said.

  Maloumian continued to ignore her. “Harold, Harold,” he sighed. “Sometimes I get the feeling you’re so unfriendly. And after all the trouble and expense I’ve gone to! At great trouble and expense I’ve brought you this dusky maiden as a gift, free, just for you, and now I’m informed that you cannot be induced to partake of her voluptuous charms!” His virtuosity overcame him and he laughed, hitting his chest with the sloshing pint bottle, roars of helpless hoarse laughter reverberating among the trees. “Perhaps …” He laughed some more and then gained control, sighing at his wit. “Perchance one of these nice young fellows over here would be more to your taste? How about Allard Benson, there? I’m positively certain he’d be more than willing to let you have your way with him. Hmm?”

  Harold spoke, his voice unsteady but his dignity still pathetically wracking his body, making him look like a toy soldier at attention. “Is this what you want?” he said. He put his hand to his head, pulled off the toupee whole, revealing the naked bone of his skull, and tossed it at Maloumian’s feet. Suddenly he was old, adult, deathlike.

  Maloumian was, for an unforgivable moment, astounded. Something had gone wrong; the tale was out of control. His eyes retreated into their muscular slits as if into the embrasures of a turret, and he began to chew the gristle on the inside of his cheek. Whoops of pleased amazement from the jocks did not alleviate his disappointment. He drank from the bottle again, still scowling at Harold, looking at him all the time he drank.

  “Sixty dollah,” said Betty Bebop.

  “Take down his pants,” Maloumian ordered Short Round, who stepped forward to obey.

  “Sixty dollah!” Betty Bebop said.

  “You ain’t finished yet,” Maloumian said, slapping her hand away.

  “I is finish!”

  “You is finish when I say you is finish!”

  “That boy crine! I ain’ gon do nothin’ with that boy.”

  Short Round had undone Harold’s roller belt buckle and pulled his pants and shorts down around his ankles. His skinny white legs were hairless. He had a little pot, pale as a honeydew melon, pure above the sudden dark smear of his pubic hair, where his genitalia hung shyly, raped by this exposure yet revealed to be the same as any man’s.

  “Sixty dollah!” Betty Bebop said.

  Maloumian ripped the bedspread away from her and she stood naked, shaking a broken fingernail in pain. A tiny bulb of red blood grew on it and she sucked it. Her body was rich chocolate, too large an expanse of warm brown, yet almost not naked under all that smooth creamy pigment. They all looked and looked at her, at her black bush, at the shadings of brown where at armpit or groin the brown grew condensed, gummy, grayish black, then stretched to near amber on the tight skin of her belly and breasts. Her thighs gleamed of water or slime. When she turned back toward the doorway her buttocks stood out from her body like heavy balloons, round repositories of power and energy. Maloumian scooped his hand up into her from behind, his thumb and fingers entering her body with a thrusting solidity that justified her scream of pain and rage.

  “Oh, my God!” Mary cried. “Oh, my God! My God!”

  With his other hand Maloumian grasped Betty Bebop’s brown neck from behind and held her up in the air. “Now, you nigger bitch, I got you in the bowlin’ ball grip, hear? You do jus’ what I say or I’ll tear out the partition!” His laughter, strained by effort, boomed out over her screams of impalement. Her brown legs ran in the air.

  Then they heard the steam whistle, and after a bronchial huff, huff, chug, chug, the slowly increasing rumble and iron clatter of wheels. At that moment Allard knew what it was about Whalen he had tried to remember earlier. Engine Whalen, he was sometimes called. Submerged within the synthetic toughness Whalen had assumed as a member of his group was an odd, uncharacteristic interest, something held over from his boyhood, and it had to do with steam locomotives; before he’d gone into the Navy he’d worked summers on the Mt. Washington Cog Railway.

  Winding out of the dark at the end of the village came the train, backwards, the red caboose jerking back and forth on the narrow tracks. It came up Main Street between the Saloon and the First National Bank of Lilliputown, across from the Barbershop. Turning between the Jail and the Pharmacy, it fed itself out of sight behind trees and buildings, then came out again toward them and rumbled past the Little Brown Church in the Vale. Everyone paused to watch it except Betty Bebop who, freed from Boom Maloumian’s thick fingers, had run back into the church. The Prussian State Railways 0-4-2T locomotive came last, backwards, gleaming brass and oily spurts of steam and smoke, alive and moving. Whalen, if it were Whalen, could be seen as a smudged blond head within the tender, staring into bright light. The apple-sized head of the permanent engineer grinned his fixed, forward-looking grin, now back toward where he had come from, as the train turned and departed for the poplars and the Lilliputown Railroad Station. The whistle screamed again, with a departing swoop of sound, as the train disappeared into the darkness and shadow of the trees. But they could hear it and feel its real weight through the ground beneath their feet, its mass thumping and moving even if out of sight. Shortly it appeared again, going faster, the huff-chuff blending into one panting breath, the red caboose jarring back into their sight with the frantic vibrations of a child’s model train on a curve—too fast, yet still huge, as though the picture in their eyes had been speeded up by the camera. No one thought to try to c
orrect what was happening; they could only watch it on the long curve across the park, again feeding itself out of sight down behind the Barbershop and around the shorter curve by the roundhouse-tunnel and then coming at them again, the red caboose lightly jumping from side to side, tilting, its trucks hammering against the tracks as it disappeared again between the Jail and the Pharmacy, only to shoot into sight again and go by the Little Brown Church in the Vale too fast, seeming closer this time, the clickety-clack part of a rumble that even contained the sound of wind. Too fast, iron wheels clanking and jumping, the caboose and passenger cars turned across the viaduct over the brook followed by the steady frantic breathing of the engine. The engineer still grinned at where he had been, but Whalen’s head was not visible this time. Smoke fell over them, its oily richness dimming the brass of the departing engine as the train rolled on toward the Lilliputown Railroad Station and its curve that had too small a radius for such speed.

  They could only wait, hearing the distant busy sounds of wheels and tracks and the thumping breath of the engine. Muted but not made less momentous by distance, first came the tearing of sheet metal, the ferrous squeal of iron on iron, then various crunches logical in their orchestration, a fugue of deep and falsetto bangs and shrieks followed by one last more wooden-sounding crash that was somehow climactically satisfying—the end of a nightmare of momentum. Flames somewhere over there grew quickly until they outlined the narrow tops of the Lombardy poplars. Allard ran toward the crash, choking with apprehension, out of breath before he had even started. If Whalen were in the tender he might well be dead, and immediately he resented having to pull Whalen’s burned, broken and possibly dismembered body from the wreck. Others ran alongside him; he could hear feet pounding across the bridge and on the turf behind. Everybody ran to see the extent of the disaster, and the run seemed to last forever. Down along the tracks that had lately held the train on its course Allard ran and ran, running out of breathless terror and resentment toward what he didn’t want to see or touch.