Authors: Vin Packer
Then Charles wadded up the stationery and tossed it into the wastebasket.
Dan Thorpe said, “I wonder what Hagerman is dreaming up for us right now.”
“Maybe it’ll be a welcome relief.” said Charles.
“Now what the hell does
that
mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know what the hell that means either.”
But Charles Shepley knew. He meant what it was like that summer when what had happened to Billy really began to hit home, after the doctors stopped skirting around the plain fact that Billy was and would always be a vegetable, and there was no Princeton in Charles’s future anymore, no more point to cracking the books the way he did, nor to dreaming the dreams he did, the corny ail-American shiny-faced own his-own-sports-car fantasies, wear a cap and run down to P.J.’s with a girl and be like Billy bigshot bubbles … that summer would have been impossible had Charles not had all the trouble with his teeth, because the deeper the dentist drilled into his nerves, the more he scraped at the rawness of his gums, the greater the physical pain, the less the gnawing hatred of Billy, the really murderous hatred of Billy, always just below the surface, then spilling over the top, leaving him awake nights to confront ghostly Billys in the dark of his bedroom, with a switchblade sprung and ready in his hand; in the dentist’s chair it was a welcome relief.
One letter like that from his mother could do it, start it up again, even make Hagerman’s idea of hell seem less like hell.
When Bud Burroughs came back from lab that afternoon, he was busting to tell someone about it, but Hagerman was his only confidant in Pi Pi, and Hagerman was in a bad mood.
“I am goddam sick and tired of that mother-loving thing on the wall,” said Hagerman, after Burroughs had tossed his books on the bed, and begun to change his pants; “goddam fed up seeing it day after day.”
“Jesus, Peter, it was your idea in the first place.”
“Jesus Peter is tired of it, Burroughs!”
“Then take it down.”
Hagerman was talking about the life-size Ursula Andress poster over Burroughs’ desk. Hagerman was sitting on the floor in a silk blue-and-white Pi Pi robe, cross-legged with his clipboard propped against his knees, staring up at it.
“You take it down, Burroughs!”
Burroughs stepped out of his pants and crossed the room in his stocking feet and gave a yank forceful enough to jolt his spectacles to the end of his nose and bring the poster crashing to the floor.
“Okay now? Okay now, Peter?”
“Well, what the hell is eating
you,
Burroughs?”
“Wasn’t that an order? It sounded like an order.”
“Goddam it, I’ve got enough trouble without your prima donna scenes!”
“Jesus, Peter, I come home pretty excited about something that happened today, and I’m not in the room ten seconds before you start chewing me out! I didn’t even have my pants off before you started in on me!”
“What got you so excited, Burroughs? Did your old man let you play with his gun?”
“Get off my back about my old man. You don’t like your old man — okay — but I like mine.”
“I know you do, Burroughs. You’re a cop-lover.”
“Knock it off, Peter! I mean it.”
“You ought to live at home, Burroughs. You could play with your old man’s gun every night … Hey,
that’s
a thought!”
“Every time you’re in a lousy mood, you start on my old man!”
“Wait a minute! That’s a thought!”
Burroughs didn’t care to hear the thought. He was sore at Hagerman now. He went across to the closet and pulled a pair of old khakis from a hook. Peter was right about one thing: Burroughs
ought
to live at home. It was costing Burroughs’ father a hundred dollars extra a month for Burroughs to live at Pi Pi, and that spelled s-a-c-r-i-f-i-c-e on a policeman’s salary. Burroughs’ father was making this sacrifice so Burroughs could consort with the likes of Peter Hagerman, a little rat-faced New Yorker who smoked foreign cigarettes and wore cuff links. Whenever Burroughs was angry with Peter, he began to think about Peter as his father would, which was not the way he liked to think, nor was it the way he really felt. He liked the smell of Gauloises; he liked cuff links too, but Peter’s meanness often made Bud Burroughs revert to the kind of thinking he had been brought up on. Anything foreign was suspect; men,
real
men, didn’t wear jewelry. There
was
a God, and J. Edgar Hoover was a good guy. The law, and not the man, was right. Bud Burroughs had been sixteen years old before he had ever even remotely entertained the idea that his father was less than perfect; he had gone a long way in three years. He had been taken part of the way by law books, when he had thought of becoming a lawyer. His literal, exacting mind had been alarmed at the capriciousness of the law; his righteous approach to justice he soon saw was grandiose, really self-righteous, even laughable. He devised a mathematical formula for getting away with murder:
OA = ?M
X
SL;
the opportunity for acquittal equals a plethora of money times a smart lawyer…. He decided on chemistry for a career.
Peter Hagerman had taken him the rest of the way. Peter was the perfect leader for Bud — cynical but rigid, sophisticated but conforming, rebellious but Republican. Burroughs, at the end of three years, saw his father objectively as an honorable, well-meaning, good-natured man overburdened with lower-class prejudices; subjectively he saw him as a clod; he happened to love him, but that could not alter the fact he
was
a clod.
It was this opinion of his father which led Burroughs to alternately worship and despise Hagerman, for Hagerman had been most influential in crystallizing this truth, so Hagerman was to be thanked for the emancipation it carried with it, and blamed, too, for the ensuing flashes of guilt.
“That’s it! That’s it!” Hagerman was muttering behind Burroughs. “Burroughs, you are a genius!”
Burroughs turned around and glared at Hagerman, furious at Hagerman’s unrelenting self-absorption. Here was Burroughs on top of something really impressive, something he had been so eager to tell Hagerman about that he had half-run and half-walked the three miles from the lab, and there was Hagerman dancing around with his silly felt-backed clipboard, to which he attached his plans for Pi Pi’s pledges.
Peter really was an adolescent; the irony was Peter thought of himself as the mature, cool member of this partnership; he thought of Bud as the wide-eyed, artless disciple.
Peter said, “Your father’s gun.”
“What?”
“I’m really out to get Shepley tomorrow. Thorpe, too, but Shepley has priority. Shepley’s at the top of the list.” “Is
that
right? I had no inkling.”
“Listen, Bud, neither of them knew their Divine Comedy responses. I was just down there to give them their itineraries, and neither one could get out one goddam word of the response.”
“No!”
“Burroughs, don’t get on your mother-loving high horse! I’ve got a bug up me, Burroughs, so don’t horse around with me.”
“Isn’t it ever going to end? Shepley’s just another guy. He’s just another guy, Peter.”
“Oh. Is he, Burroughs? How many other guys got their fathers to promise the house a set of silverware if we initiated them?”
“Like Blouter said, we need the silverware, and Shepley isn’t a pig, and he
is
a legacy. So what the hell?”
“Pi Delta Pi, Burroughs, is not reduced to having to take legacies!”
“Like Blouter said, if they come bearing gifts and they’re not pigs, what do we have to lose?” “Our honor.” “Come
off
it, Peter!”
“Shepley bought his way in, and he knows it!” “He does
not
know it, Peter! His father made that damn clear; his father wouldn’t want him to know it! Jesus!” “He knew it, Bud! He was a smug bastard at Rush!” “Shepley’s an aloof type guy.”
“And why, Bud? Because that mother-lover knows he can buy his way in places.”
“Okay, Peter What do you have up your sleeve?” “Your father’s gun, Bud.”
“Sure. Sure, Peter. I’ll run over to the house and get it. It’ll only take me a minute. Be sure and hold your breath while I run that little errand.”
“You could get it.”
“Sure. Now I’ll tell one.”
“Buddy, listen — this is important. I want to scare the bejesus out of Shepley. A little game of Russian roulette ought to do it, Buddy. Buddy, I don’t mean we’d really leave a bullet in, but we’d make that fuckface think there was a real bullet in that gun, and Buddy, I’ll bet my bird that fuckface will get down in the mud and pray for mercy. I’ll bet my bird he will!”
Burroughs sighed and flopped down on his bed. He said, “In the first place, Peter, my father is never without his gun. Never! He sleeps with it under his pillow. That’s a fact. You talk about
your
bird, my father would cut his off before he’d part with his gun!”
Hagerman pulled a chair up to Burroughs’ bed. “Bud, never say never. When your old man takes a bath, where’s his gun?”
“Peter, there are penalties for every misstep a policeman takes, and one of the biggest is the one for losing his gun.”
“We’d just borrow it for a few hours.”
“Be realistic, huh? You’re talking about something that isn’t feasible. You know me. I like to deal in facts.”
“Doesn’t he have more than one gun?” “No! Now get off it!” “I can see that I’m pushing you too far.” “I hope you can see that.”
“Yeah. That’s too much to ask. I can see that.” “It really is!”
“I
said
it was … You know me; I’m a compulsive hothead.”
“I also know you’re sitting there trying to dream up a new approach to the same plan, Peter. The soft-soap approach.”
Hagerman laughed. He pulled out a pack of Gauloises. “Smoke?”
“No, thanks.”
Hagerman lit one for himself, sucked in the smoke, and blew out three perfectly shaped rings. After a few seconds of silence, he said, “Hey, what excited you? You never did tell me.”
“My old man let me play with his gun.” “I’m serious, Bud. What was it?”
“Are you really interested, or still practicing strategy?”
“Mother-lover, you know me. It’s probably a combination, but at least I’m honest.”
“At least it’ll change the subject, which is all I’m interested in.” Burroughs sat up and faced Hagerman. “I’ll take that cigarette, okay?”
Hagerman passed him one and lit it for him.
Burroughs said, “I’ve been experimenting at the lab, Peter. A couple of days ago I got some ergotamine tartrate and some lysergic acid. You know what I have today?”
“I hope to God you’re going to say Spanish fly.”
“Seriously, Peter — I’ve got a very good facsimile of LSD.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No. I have.”
“Where? Let’s see it.”
“It’s back in the lab refrigerator. There’s nothing to see. It’s in some sugar cubes. It doesn’t look like anything; it’s what happens when you swallow it, Peter.”
“Yeah. You go off your rocker.”
“Wrong.”
“Some guy murdered his mother-in-law when he was on the stuff, didn’t he?”
“That couldn’t be proved; that was a lot of yellow journalism. It’s a good drug, Peter. I’ve read all the literature on it.
Maybe two out of two thousand have a bad reaction. The hazards are minimal.”
“Life
magazine said it made people go nuts.”
“No, it
didn’t!
You show me that in print anywhere, and I’ll give you fifty dollars!”
“I read somewhere it makes a schizophrenic out of you.”
“It
can
produce a temporary schizophrenic state; that’s a slim possibility. But if you use it right, it’s worth the risk. Peter, the whole world changes. It really does!”
“Drugs give me the creeps. I like the world the way it is.”
“You
don’t have to try it.”
“But you
are
going to try it, hmm?”
“Yes.”
“It’s been nice knowing you, Bud.”
“Peter, I want your help. All you have to do is be with me while I do it.”
“That’s all, hmm? And if you should turn into a goddam nut? What happens then?”
“I won’t. That’s propaganda, Peter. You just feel differently, inside. Music has color and ordinary food tastes like ambrosia — it all happens inside.”
“What about that little kid they took to the hospital; she was laughing and crying, half out of her mind. Remember reading about her?”
“She didn’t know what was happening to her. That was an accident. Her parents didn’t know anything about LSD and they got panicky. If they’d known how to handle the situation, they could have reassured the kid. It was the worst thing they could do, add to her confusion by rushing her to some hospital to have her stomach pumped out.”
“Forget it, Bud. It spooks me.”
“Peter, remember when we smoked marijuana last year?” “Sure.”
“It was great, wasn’t it? Did it hurt us?” “No.”
“You know what the newspapers make marijuana seem like; they make it into something that sends people out to rape and steal. You know how they distort the truth. What’d we do when we had it? We sat around and giggled. Right?”
“Marijuana’s different.”
“So is LSD, Peter, and it’s just as harmless. Sure, if some kid got ahold of marijuana and ate it and didn’t know anything about it, he’d think he was off his rocker; his parents would think so, too. But when you know, you go with it, don’t you? It can’t scare you because you’re expecting a change. LSD is the same way.” “I don’t believe that, Bud.”
“Put liquor into somebody who’s never had any, who doesn’t know how liquor affects a person. The same thing would happen.”
“Marijuana can’t turn you into a schizophrenic, and neither can liquor.”
“Neither can LSD, Peter. The only way it can ever come close to doing that is with a particular type of person who’s already unbalanced. That type could just as easily become temporarily deranged smoking pot or having a few Scotches.”
“Count me out,” Hagerman said. “I just don’t like to mess with a drug.”
“You really surprise me, Peter. You disappoint me. Remember when we first roomed together, and you used to say, ‘Hey, Burroughs, take your nose out of your ass and look around. There’s a big world going on, and you shouldn’t miss it. You’re narrow, Burroughs. You’re operating with an archaic superego.’ Remember, Peter? I really thought you believed that.”
“I do believe that, but it’s not going to turn me into a goddam dope addict.”
“LSD isn’t addictive.”
“It spooks me, I said!”
“I’m not asking
you
to take it, am I?”
“I don’t want to be party to anyone else taking it, either, you infantile son-of-a-cop!”
“And what are you, Peter? What are you? Oh. I know. You’re the Pi Delta Pi Pledge Director at Far Point College. Big deal! The Pi Pi P.D. at F.P.C. Oh, that’s something to
be!”
Hagerman ground out his cigarette while his neck and face turned red. He stood up and went across to his desk, jerked out the chair and sat down with his back to Burroughs.
“Peter?”
Hagerman didn’t answer.
Burroughs stood up, a thin, long-nosed, redheaded boy with pale skin and myopic brown eyes hidden behind swirls of glass. “I didn’t mean that, Peter … It’s just that I thought you’d be excited too. I wasn’t at all sure I could make the stuff. It isn’t as easy to make as the newspapers say it is.”
Still Hagerman was silent.
Burroughs reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out a slip of paper. “Let me read you something, Peter. Just listen to this.” He unfolded the paper. “LSD cannot be used without caution. But you can say the same thing of household ammonia, the family car, a bottle of gin, a book of matches, an oven, a paring knife, a speedboat. There are risks in everything. But the risks involved in using LSD are thought to be greater than the gains only because we have insufficient knowledge of the drug. When our ancestors had insufficient knowledge about the universe, some were against exploration and investigation of it; more were just afraid of the unknown; a few were brave enough to think man did not have to live in a cave, or starve before daring to search unknown regions for food, or die of disease before attempting treatment. There will always be, thank God, a few brave souls in any time. If man can risk a trip to the moon, why is he afraid to risk a trip into his own being? Does he believe more in the moon than in himself?”