Hearts In Atlantis (34 page)

“So how do you feel now that you see us?” the low man asked. “Would you like to come with us so you can be close to good old Ted? Perhaps see him on the odd weekend? Discuss
literature
with your dear old
teka?
Learn to eat what we eat and drink what we drink?” The awful fingers again, caressing. The buzzing in Bobby's head increased. The black specks fattened and now
they
looked like fingers—beckoning fingers. “We eat it hot, Bobby,” the low man whispered. “And drink it hot as well. Hot . . . and sweet. Hot . . . and sweet.”

“Stop it,” Ted snapped.

“Or would you rather stay with your mother?” the crooning voice went on, ignoring Ted. “Surely not. Not a boy of your principles. Not a boy who has discovered the joys of friendship and
literature
. Surely you'll come with this wheezy old
ka-mai
, won't you? Or will you? Decide, Bobby. Do it now, and knowing
that what you decide is what will bide. Now and forever.”

Bobby had a delirious memory of the lobsterback cards blurring beneath McQuown's long white fingers:
Now they go, now they slow, now they rest, here's the test
.

I fail
, Bobby thought.
I fail the test
.

“Let me go, mister,” he said miserably. “Please don't take me with you.”

“Even if it means your
te-ka
has to go on without your wonderful and revivifying company?” The voice was smiling, but Bobby could almost taste the knowing contempt under its cheery surface, and he shivered. With relief, because he understood he was probably going to be let free after all, with shame because he knew what he was doing—crawling, chintzing, chickening out. All the things the good guys in the movies and books he loved never did. But the good guys in the movies and books never had to face anything like the low men in the yellow coats or the horror of the black specks. And what Bobby saw of those things here, outside The Corner Pocket, was not the worst of it either. What if he saw the rest? What if the black specks drew him into a world where he saw the men in the yellow coats as they really were? What if he saw the shapes inside the ones they wore in this world?

“Yes,” he said, and began to cry.

“Yes what?”

“Even if he has to go without me.”

“Ah. And even if it means going back to your mother?”

“Yes.”

“You perhaps understand your bitch of a mother a little better now, do you?”

“Yes,” Bobby said for the third time. By now he was nearly moaning. “I guess I do.”

“That's enough,” Ted said. “Stop it.”

But the voice wouldn't. Not yet. “You've learned how to be a coward, Bobby . . . haven't you?”

“
Yes!
” he cried, still with his face against Ted's shirt. “
A baby, a little chickenshit baby, yes yes yes! I don't care! Just let me go home!
” He drew in a great long unsteady breath and let it out in a scream. “
I WANT MY MOTHER!
” It was the howl of a terrified littlun who has finally glimpsed the beast from the water, the beast from the air.

“All right,” the low man said. “Since you put it
that
way. Assuming your Teddy-bear confirms that he'll go to work with a will and not have to be chained to his oar as previously.”

“I promise.” Ted let go of Bobby. Bobby remained as he was, clutching Ted with panicky tightness and pushing his face against Ted's chest, until Ted pushed him gently away.

“Go inside the poolhall, Bobby. Tell Files to give you a ride home. Tell him if he does that, my friends will leave
him
alone.”

“I'm sorry, Ted. I wanted to come with you. I
meant
to come with you. But I can't. I'm so sorry.”

“You shouldn't be hard on yourself.” But Ted's look was heavy, as if he knew that from tonight on Bobby would be able to be nothing else.

Two of the yellowcoats grasped Ted's arms. Ted looked at the one standing behind Bobby—the one who had been caressing the nape of Bobby's neck
with that horrible sticklike finger. “They don't need to do that, Cam. I'll walk.”

“Let him go,” Cam said. The low men holding Ted released his arms. Then, for the last time, Cam's finger touched the back of Bobby's neck. Bobby uttered a choked wail. He thought,
If he does it again I'll go crazy, I won't be able to help it. I'll start to scream and I won't be able to stop. Even if my head bursts open I'll go on screaming
. “Get inside there, little boy. Do it before I change my mind and take you anyway.”

Bobby stumbled toward The Corner Pocket. The door stood open but empty. He climbed the single step, then turned back. Three of the low men were clustered around Ted, but Ted was walking toward the blood-clot DeSoto on his own.

“Ted!”

Ted turned, smiled, started to wave. Then the one called Cam leaped forward, seized him, whirled him, and thrust him into the car. As Cam swung the De-Soto's back door shut Bobby saw, for just an instant, an incredibly tall, incredibly scrawny being standing inside a long yellow coat, a thing with flesh as white as new snow and lips as red as fresh blood. Deep in its eyesockets were savage points of light and dancing flecks of darkness in pupils which swelled and contracted as Ted's had done. The red lips peeled back, revealing needly teeth that put the alleycat's to shame. A black tongue lolled out from between those teeth and wagged an obscene goodbye. Then the creature in the yellow coat sprinted around the hood of the purple DeSoto, thin legs gnashing, thin knees pumping, and plunged in behind the wheel. Across the street the Olds started up, its engine sounding like the roar of an awakening
dragon. Perhaps it
was
a dragon. From its place skewed halfway across the sidewalk, the Cadillac's engine did the same. Living headlights flooded this part of Narragansett Avenue in a pulsing glare. The DeSoto skidded in a U-turn, one fenderskirt scraping up a brief train of sparks from the street, and for a moment Bobby saw Ted's face in the DeSoto's back window. Bobby raised his hand and waved. He thought Ted raised his own in return but could not be sure. Once more his head filled with a sound like hoofbeats.

He never saw Ted Brautigan again.

•   •   •

“Bug out, kid,” Len Files said. His face was cheesy-white, seeming to hang off his skull the way the flesh hung off his sister's upper arms. Behind him the lights of the Gottlieb machines in the little arcade flashed and flickered with no one to watch them; the cool cats who made an evening specialty of Corner Pocket pinball were clustered behind Len Files like children. To Len's right were the pool and billiard players, many of them clutching cues like clubs. Old Gee stood off to one side by the cigarette machine. He didn't have a pool-cue; from one gnarled old hand there hung a small automatic pistol. It didn't scare Bobby. After Cam and his yellowcoat friends, he didn't think anything would have the power to scare him right now. For the time being he was all scared out.

“Put an egg in your shoe and beat it, kid. Now.”

“Better do it, kiddo.” That was Alanna, standing behind the desk. Bobby glanced at her and thought,
If I was older I bet I'd give you something. I bet I would
. She saw his glance—the quality of his glance—and looked away, flushed and frightened and confused.

Bobby looked back at her brother. “You want those guys back here?”

Len's hanging face grew even longer. “You kidding?”

“Okay then,” Bobby said. “Give me what I want and I'll go away. You'll never see me again.” He paused. “Or
them
.”

“Whatchu want, kid?” Old Gee asked in his wavering voice. Bobby was going to get whatever he asked for; it was flashing in Old Gee's mind like a big bright sign. That mind was as clear now as it had been when it had belonged to Young Gee, cold and calculating and unpleasant, but it seemed innocent after Cam and his regulators. Innocent as ice cream.

“A ride home,” Bobby said. “That's number one.” Then—speaking to Old Gee rather than Len—he gave them number two.

•   •   •

Len's car was a Buick: big, long, and new. Vulgar but not low. Just a car. The two of them rode to the sound of danceband music from the forties. Len spoke only once during the trip to Harwich. “Don't you go tuning that to no rock and roll. I have to listen to enough of that shit at work.”

They drove past the Asher Empire, and Bobby saw there was a life-sized cardboard cutout of Brigitte Bardot standing to the left of the ticket booth. He glanced at it without very much interest. He felt too old for B.B. now.

They turned off Asher; the Buick slipped down Broad Street Hill like a whisper behind a cupped hand. Bobby pointed out his building. Now the apartment was lit up, all right; every light was blazing.
Bobby looked at the clock on the Buick's dashboard and saw it was almost eleven
P.M.

As the Buick pulled to the curb Len Files found his tongue again. “Who were they, kid? Who were those
gonifs?
”

Bobby almost grinned. It reminded him of how, at the end of almost every
Lone Ranger
episode, someone said
Who
was
that masked man?

“Low men,” he told Len. “Low men in yellow coats.”

“I wouldn't want to be your pal right now.”

“No,” Bobby said. A shudder shook through him like a gust of wind. “Me neither. Thanks for the ride.”

“Don't mention it. Just stay the fuck clear of my felts and greens from now on. You're banned for life.”

The Buick—a boat, a Detroit cabin-cruiser, but not low—drew away. Bobby watched as it turned in a driveway across the street and then headed back up the hill past Carol's building. When it had disappeared around the corner, Bobby looked up at the stars—stacked billions, a spilled bridge of light. Stars and more stars beyond them, spinning in the black.

There is a Tower
, he thought.
It holds everything together. There are Beams that protect it somehow. There is a Crimson King, and Breakers working to destroy the Beams . . . not because the Breakers want to but because
it
wants them to. The Crimson King
.

Was Ted back among the rest of the Breakers yet? Bobby wondered. Back and pulling his oar?

I'm sorry
, he thought, starting up the walk to the porch. He remembered sitting there with Ted, reading to him from the newspaper. Just a couple of guys.
I wanted to go with you but I couldn't. In the end I couldn't
.

He stopped at the bottom of the porch steps, listening
for Bowser around on Colony Street. There was nothing. Bowser had gone to sleep. It was a miracle. Smiling wanly, Bobby got moving again. His mother must have heard the creak of the second porch step—it was pretty loud—because she cried out his name and then there was the sound of her running footsteps. He was on the porch when the door flew open and she ran out, still dressed in the clothes she had been wearing when she came home from Providence. Her hair hung around her face in wild curls and tangles.

“Bobby!” she cried. “Bobby, oh Bobby! Thank God! Thank God!”

She swept him up, turning him around and around in a kind of dance, her tears wetting one side of his face.

“I wouldn't take their money,” she babbled. “They called me back and asked for the address so they could send a check and I said never mind, it was a mistake, I was hurt and upset, I said no, Bobby, I said no, I said I didn't want their money.”

Bobby saw she was lying. Someone had pushed an envelope with her name on it under the foyer door. Not a check, three hundred dollars in cash. Three hundred dollars for the return of their best Breaker; three hundred lousy rocks. They were even bigger cheapskates than she was.

“I said I didn't want it, did you hear me?”

Carrying him into the apartment now. He weighed almost a hundred pounds and was too heavy for her but she carried him anyway. As she babbled on, Bobby realized they wouldn't have the police to contend with, at least; she hadn't called them. Mostly she had just been
sitting here, plucking at her wrinkled skirt and praying incoherently that he would come home. She loved him. That beat in her mind like the wings of a bird trapped in a barn. She loved him. It didn't help much . . . but it helped a little. Even if it was a trap, it helped a little.

“I said I didn't want it, we didn't need it, they could keep their money. I said . . . I told them  . . .”

“That's good, Mom,” he said. “That's good. Put me down.”

“Where have you been? Are you all right? Are you hungry?”

He answered her questions back to front. “I'm hungry, yeah, but I'm fine. I went to Bridgeport. I got this.”

He reached into his pants pocket and brought out the remains of the Bike Fund money. His ones and change were mixed into a messy green wad of tens and twenties and fifties. His mother stared at the money as it rained down on the endtable by the sofa, her good eye growing bigger and bigger until Bobby was afraid it might tumble right out of her face. The other eye remained squinched down in its thundercloud of blue-black flesh. She looked like a battered old pirate gloating over freshly unburied treasure, an image Bobby could have done without . . . and one which never entirely left him during the fifteen years between that night and the night of her death. Yet some new and not particularly pleasant part of him
enjoyed
that look—how it rendered her old and ugly and comic, a person who was stupid as well as avaricious.
That's my ma
, he thought in a Jimmy Durante voice.
That's my ma. We both gave him up, but I got paid better than you did, Ma, didn't I? Yeah! Hotcha!