Rage (7 page)

Chapter 19

   "How was your military obligation fulfilled?"

    "In the Army, Charlie. This isn't going to accomplish anything."

    "In what capacity?"

    "As a doctor. "

    "Psychiatrist?"

    "No. "

    "How long have you been a practicing psychiatrist?"

    "Five years."

    "Have you ever eaten your wife out?"

    "Wh… " Terrified, angry pause.

    "I… I don't know the meaning of the phrase. "

    "I'll rephrase it, then. Have you ever engaged in oral-genital practices with your wife?"

    "I won't answer that. You have no right."

    "I have all the rights. You have none. Answer, or I'll shoot someone. And remember, if you lie and I catch you in a lie, I'll shoot someone. Have you ever engaged in-?"

    "No!"

    "How long have you been a practicing psychiatrist?"

    "Five years. "

    "Why?"

    "Wh… Well, because it fulfills me. As a person."

    "Has your wife ever had an affair with another man?"

    "No."

    "Another woman?"

    "How do you know?"

    "She loves me."

    "Has your wife ever given you a blow job, Don?"

    "I don't know what you-"

    "You know goddamn well what I mean!"

    "No, Charlie, I-"

    "Ever cheat on an exam in college?"

    Pause. "Absolutely not."

    "On a quiz?"

    "No."

    I pounced. "Then how can you say your wife has never engaged in oral-genital sex practices with you?"

    "I… I never… Charlie… "

    "Where did you do your basic training?"

    "F-Fort Benning."

    "What year?"

    "I don't remem-"

    "Give me a year or I'm going to shoot somebody down here!"

    "Nineteen-fifty-six. "

    "Were you a grunt?"

    "I… I don't-"

    "Were you a grunt? Were you a dogface?"

    "I was… I was an officer. First lieu-"

    "I didn't ask you for that!" I screamed.

    "Charlie… Charlie, for God's sake, calm down-"

    "What year was your military obligation fulfilled?"

    "N-Nineteen-sixty."

    "You owe your country six years! You're lying! I'm going to shoot-"

    "No!" He cried. "National Guard! I was in the Guard!"

    "What was your mother's maiden name?"

    "G-G-Gavin. "

    "Why?"

    "Wh… I don't know what you m-"

    "Why was her maiden name Gavin?"

    "Because her father's name was Gavin. Charlie-"

    "In what year did you do your basic training?"

    "Nineteen-fifty-sev-six!"

    "You're lying. Caught you, didn't I, Don?"

    "No! I - I - "

    "You started to say fifty-seven."

    "I was mixed up."

    "I'm going to shoot somebody. In the guts, I think. Yes."

    "Charlie, for Jesus' sake!"

    "Don't let it happen again. You were a grunt, right? In the Army?"

    "Yes-no-I was an officer… "

    "What was your father's middle name?"

    "J-John. Chuh-Charlie, get hold of yourself. D-D-Don't-"

    "Ever gobbled your wife, my man?"

    "No!"

    "You're lying. You said you didn't know what that meant."

    "You explained it to me!" He was breathing in fast little grunts. "Let me go, Charlie, let me g-"

    "What is your religious denomination?"

    "Methodist. "

    "In the choir?"

    "No."

    "Did you go to Sunday school?"

    "Yes."

    "What are the first three words in the Bible?"

    Pause. "In the beginning."

    "First line of the Twenty-third Psalm?"

    "The… um… The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."

    "And you first ate your wife in 1956?"

    "Yes-no… Charlie, let me alone… "

    "Basic training, what year?"

    "Nineteen-fifty-six!"

    "You said fifty-seven before!" I screamed. "Here it goes! I'm going to blow someone's head off right now!"

    "I said fifty-six, you bastard!" Screaming, out of breath, hysterical.

    "What happened to Jonah, Don?"

    "He was swallowed by a whale."

    "The Bible says big fish, Don. Is that what you meant?"

    "Yeah. Big fish. 'Course it was." Pitifully eager.

    "Who built the ark?"

    "Noah. "

    "Where did you do your basic?"

    "Fort Benning."

    More confident; familiar ground. He was letting himself be lulled. "Ever eaten your wife?"

    "No."

    "What?"

    "No!"

    "What's the last book in the Bible, Don?"

    "Revelations. "

    "Actually it's just Revelation. No s. Right?"

    "Right, sure, right."

    "Who wrote it?"

    "John. "

    "What was your father's middle name?"

    "John."

    "Ever get a revelation from your father, Don?"

    A strange, high, cackling laugh from Don Grace. Some of the kids blinked uneasily at the sound of that laugh. "Uh… no… Charlie… I can't say that I ever did."

    "What was your mother's maiden name?"

    "Gavin."

    "Is Christ numbered among the martyrs?"

    "Ye-ess… " He was too Methodist to really be sure.

    "How was he martyred?"

    "By the cross. Crucified."

    "What did Christ ask God on the cross?"

    " 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' "

    "Don?"

    "Yes, Charlie."

    "What did you just say?"

    "I said 'My God, my God, why…' " Pause. "Oh, no, Charlie. That's not fair! "

    "You asked a question."

    "You tricked me!"

    "You just killed someone, Don. Sorry."

    "No!"

    I fired the pistol into the floor. The whole class, which had been listening with taut, hypnotic attention, flinched. Several people screamed. Pig Pen fainted again, and he struck the floor with a satisfying meat thump. I don't know if the intercom picked it up, but it really didn't matter.

    Mr. Grace was crying. Sobbing like a baby.

    "Satisfactory," I said to no one in particular. "Very satisfactory."

    Things seemed to be progressing nicely.

    I let him sob for the best part of a minute; the cops had started toward the school at the sound of the shot, but Tom Denver, still betting on his shrink, held them back, and so that was all right. Mr. Grace sounded like a very small child, helpless, hopeless. I had made him fuck himself with his own big tool, like one of those weird experiences you read about in the Penthouse Forum. I had taken off his witch doctor's mask and made him human. But I didn't hold it against him. To err is only human, but it's divine to forgive. I believe that sincerely.

    "Mr. Grace?" I said finally.

    "I'm going outside now," he said. And then, with tearful rebelliousness: "And you can't stop me!"

    "That's all right," I said tenderly. "The game's over, Mr. Grace. We weren't playing for keepsies this time. No one is dead down here. I shot into the floor."

    Breathing silence. Then, tiredly: "How can I believe you, Charlie?"

    Because there would have been a stampede.

    Instead of saying that, I pointed. "Ted?"

    "This is Ted Jones, Mr. Grace," Ted said mechanically.

    "Y-Yes, Ted."

    "He shot into the floor," Ted said in a robot voice. "Everyone is all right." Then he grinned and began to speak again. I pointed the pistol at him, and he shut his mouth with a snap.

    "Thank you, Ted. Thank you, my boy." Mr. Grace began to sob again. After what seemed like a long, long time, he shut the intercom off. A long time after that, he came into view on the lawn again, walking toward the enclave of cops on the lawn, walking in his tweed coat with the suede elbow patches, bald head gleaming, cheeks gleaming. He was walking slowly, like an old man. It was amazing how much I liked seeing him walk like that.

Chapter 20

    "Oh, man," Richard Keene said from the back of the room, and his voice sounded tired and sighing, almost exhausted.

    That was when a small, savagely happy voice broke in: "I thought it was great!" I craned my neck around. It was a tiny Dutch doll of a girl named Grace Stanner. She was pretty in a way that attracted the shop-course boys, who still slicked their hair back and wore white socks. They hung around her in the hall like droning bees. She wore tight sweaters and short skirts. When she walked, everything jiggled-as Chuck Berry has said in his wisdom, it's such a sight to see somebody steal the show. Her mom was no prize, from what I understood. She was sort of a pro-am barfly and spent most of her time hanging around at Denny's on South Main, about a half-mile up from what they call the corner here in Placerville. Denny's will never be mistaken for Caesar's Palace. And there are always a lot of small minds in small towns, eager to think like mother, like daughter. Now she was wearing a pink cardigan sweater and a dark green skirt, thigh-high. Her face was alight, elvish. She had raised one clenched fist unconsciously shoulder-high. And there was something crystal and poignant about the moment. I actually felt my throat tighten.

    "Go, Charlie! Fuck 'em all!"

    A lot of heads snapped around and a lot of mouths dropped open, but I wasn't too surprised. I told you about the roulette ball, didn't I? Sure I did. In some ways-in a lot of ways-it was still in spin. Craziness is only a matter of degree, and there are lots of people besides me who have the urge to roll heads. They go to the stockcar races and the horror movies and the wrestling matches they have in the Portland Expo. Maybe what she said smacked of all those things, but I admired her for saying it out loud, all the same-the price of honesty is always high. She had an admirable grasp of the fundamentals. Besides, she was tiny and pretty.

    Irma Bates wheeled on her, face stretched with outrage. It suddenly struck me that what was happening to Irma must be nearly cataclysmic. "Dirty-mouth!"

    "Fuck you, too!" Grace shot back at her, smiling. Then, as an afterthought: "Bag!"

    Irma's mouth dropped open. She struggled for words; I could see her throat working as she tried them, rejected them, tried more, looking for the words of power that would line Grace's face, drop her breasts four inches toward her belly, pop up varicose veins on those smooth thighs, and turn her hair gray. Surely those words were there someplace, and it was only a matter of finding them. So she struggled, and with her low-slung chin and bulging forehead (both generously sprinkled with blackheads), she looked like a frog.

    She finally sprayed out: "They ought to shoot you, just like they'll shoot him, you slut!" She worked for more; it wasn't enough. It couldn't yet express all the horror and outrage she felt for this violent rip in the seam of her universe. "Kill all sluts. Sluts and sluts' daughters!"

    The room had been quiet, but now it became absolutely silent. A pool of silence. A mental spotlight had been switched on Irma and Grace. They might have been alone in a pool of light on a huge stage. Up to this last, Grace had been smiling slightly. Now the smile was wiped off.

    "What?" Grace asked slowly. "What? What?"

    "Baggage! Tramp!"

    Grace stood up, as if about to recite poetry. "My mother-works-in-a-laundry-you-fat-bitch-and-you-better-take-back-what-you-just-said!"

    Irma's eyes rolled in caged and desperate triumph. Her neck was slick and shiny with sweat: the anxious sweat of the adolescent damned, the ones who sit home Friday nights and watch old movies on TV and also the clock. The ones for whom the phone is always mute and the voice of the mother is the voice of Thor. The ones who peck endlessly at the mustache shadow between nose and upper lip. The ones who go to see Robert Redford with their girlfriends and then come back alone on another day to see him again, with their palms clutched damply in their laps. The ones who agonize over long, seldom-mailed letters to John Travolta, written by the close, anxious light of Tensor study lamps. The ones for whom time has become a slow and dreamy sledge of doom, bringing only empty rooms and the smell of old sweats. Sure, that neck was slimy with sweat. I wouldn't kid you, any more than I would myself.

    She opened her mouth and brayed: "WHORE'S DAUGHTER!"

    "Okay," Grace said. She had started up the aisle toward Irma, holding her hands out in front of her like a stage hypnotist's. She had very long fingernails, lacquered the color of pearl. "I'm going to claw your eyes out, cunt."

    "Whore's daughter, whore's daughter!" She was almost singing it.

    Grace smiled. Her eyes were still alight and elvish. She wasn't hurrying up that aisle, but she wasn't lagging, either. No. She was coming right along. She was pretty, as I had never noticed before, pretty and precious. It was as if she had become a secret cameo of herself.

    "Okay, Irma, " she said. "Here I come. Here I come for your eyes."

    Irma suddenly aware, shrank back in her seat.

    "Stop," I said to Grace. I didn't pick up the pistol, but I laid my hand on it.

    Grace stopped and looked at me inquiringly. Irma looked relieved and also vindicated, as if I had taken on aspects of a justly intervening god. "Whore's daughter," she confided to the class in general. "Missus Stanner has open house every night, just as soon as she gets back from the beerjoint. With her as practicing apprentice." She smiled sickly at Grace, a smile that was supposed to convey a superficial, cutting sympathy, and instead only inscribed her own pitiful empty terror. Grace was still looking at me inquiringly.

    "Irma?" I asked politely. "Can I have your attention, Irma?"

    And when she looked at me, I saw fully what was happening. Her eyes had a glittery yet opaque sheen. Her face was flushed of cheek but waxy of brow. She looked like something you might send your kid out wearing for Halloween. She was blowing up. The whole thing had offended whatever shrieking albino bat it was that passed for her soul. She was ready to go straight up to heaven or dive-bomb down into hell.

    "Good," I said when both of them were looking at me. "Now. We have to keep order here. I'm sure you understand that. Without order, what do you have? The jungle. And the best way to keep order is to settle our difficulties in a civilized way. "

    "Hear, hear!" Harmon Jackson said.

    I got up, went to the blackboard, and took a piece of chalk from the ledge. Then I drew a large circle on the tiled floor, perhaps five feet through the middle. I kept a close eye on Ted Jones while I did it, too. Then I went back to the desk and sat down.

    I gestured to the circle. "Please, girls."

    Grace came forward quickly, precious and perfect. Her complexion was smooth and fair.

    Irma sat stony.

    "Irma, " I said. "Now, Irma. You've made accusations, you know."

    Irma looked faintly surprised, as if the idea of accusations had exploded an entirely new train of thought in her mind. She nodded and rose from her seat with one hand cupped demurely over her mouth, as if to stifle a tiny, coquettish giggle. She stepped mincingly up the aisle and into the circle, standing as far away from Grace as was possible, eyes cast demurely down, hands linked together at her waist. She looked ready to sing "Granada" on The Gong Show.

    I thought randomly: Her father sells cars, doesn't he?

    "Very good," I said. "Now, as has been hinted at in church, in school, and even on Howdy Doody, a single step outside the circle means death. Understood?"

    They understood that. They all understood it. This is not the same as comprehension, but it was good enough. When you stop to think, the whole idea of comprehension has a faintly archaic taste, like the sound of forgotten tongues or a look into a Victorian camera obscura. We Americans are much higher on simple understanding. It makes it easier to read the billboards when you're heading into town on the expressway at plus-fifty. To comprehend, the mental jaws have to gape wide enough to make the tendons creak. Understanding, however, can be purchased on every paperback-book rack in America.

    "Now, " I said. "I would like a minimum of physical violence here. We already have enough of that to think about. I think your mouths and your open hands will be sufficient, girls. I will be the judge. Accepted?"

    They nodded.

    I reached into my back pocket and brought out my red bandanna. I had bought it at the Ben Franklin five-and-dime downtown, and a couple of times I had worn it to school knotted around my neck, very continental, but I had gotten tired of the effect and put it to work as a snot rag. Bourgeois to the core, that's me.

    "When I drop it, you go at it. First lick to you, Grace, as you seem to be the defendant. "

    Grace nodded brightly. There were roses in her cheeks. That's what my mother always says about someone who has high color.

    Irma Bates just looked demurely at my red bandanna.

    "Stop it!" Ted Jones snapped. "You said you weren't going to hurt anyone, Charlie. Now, stop it!" His eyes looked desperate. "Just stop it!"

    For no reason I could fathom, Don Lordi laughed crazily.

    "She started it, Ted Jones," Sylvia Ragan said heatedly. "If some Ethiopian jug-diddler called my mother a whore-"

    "Whore, dirty whore," Irma agreed demurely.

    "… I'd claw her fuggin' eyes out!"

    "You're crazy!" Ted bellowed at her, his face the color of old brick. "We could stop him! If we all got together, we could-"

    "Shut up, Ted," Dick Keene said. "Okay?"

    Ted looked around, saw he had neither support nor sympathy, and shut up. His eyes were dark and full of crazy hate. I was glad it was a good long run between his desk and Mrs. Underwood's. I could shoot him in the foot if I had to.

    "Ready, girls?"

    Grace Stanner grinned a healthy, gutsy grin. "All ready."

    Irma nodded. She was a big girl, standing with her legs apart and her head slightly lowered. Her hair was a dirty blond color, done in round curls that looked like toilet-paper rolls.

    I dropped my bandanna. It was on.

    Grace stood thinking about it. I could almost see her realizing how deep it could be, wondering maybe how far in over her head she wanted to get. In that instant I loved her. No… I loved them both.

    "You're a fat, bigmouth bitch," Grace said, looking Irma in the eye. "You stink. I mean that. Your body stinks. You're a louse."

    "Good," I said, when she was done. "Give her a smack."

    Grace hauled off and slapped the side of Irma's face. It made a flat whapping noise, like one board striking another. Her sweater pulled up above the waistband of her skirt with the swing of her arm.

    Corky Herald went "Unhh!" under his breath.

    Irma let out a whoofing grunt. Her head snapped back, her face screwed up. She didn't look demure anymore. There was a large, hectic patch on her left cheek.

    Grace threw back her head, drew a sudden knife-breath, and stood ready. Her hair spilled over her shoulders, beautiful and perfect. She waited.

    "Irma for the prosecution," I said. "Go ahead, Irma. "

    Irma was breathing heavily. Her eyes were glazed and offended, her mouth horrified. At that moment she looked like no one's sweet child of morning.

    "Whore," she said finally, apparently deciding to stick with a winner. Her lip lifted, fell, and lifted again, like a dog's. "Dirty boy-fucking whore."

    I nodded to her.

    Irma grinned. She was very big. Her arm, coming around, was like a wall. It rocketed against the side of Grace's face. The sound was a sharp crack.

    "Ow!" someone whined.

    Grace didn't fall over. The whole side of her face went red, but she didn't fall over. Instead, she smiled at Irma. And Irma flinched. I saw it and could hardly believe it: Dracula had feet of clay, after all.

    I snatched a quick look at the audience. They were hung, hypnotized. They weren't thinking about Mr. Grace or Tom Denver or Charles Everett Decker. They were watching, and maybe what they saw was a little bit of their own souls, flashed at them in a cracked mirror. It was fine. It was like new grass in spring.

    "Rebuttal, Grace?" I asked.

    Grace's lips drew back from her tiny ivory teeth. "You never had a date, that's what's the matter with you. You're ugly. You smell bad. And so all you think about is what other people do, and you have to make it all dirty in your mind. You're a bug."

    I nodded to her.

    Grace swung, and Irma shied away. The blow struck her only glancingly, but she began to weep with a sudden, slow hopelessness. "Let me out," she groaned. "I don't want to any more, Charlie. Let me out! "

    "Take back what you said about my mother," Grace said grimly.

    "Your mother sucks cocks!" Irma screamed. Her face was twisted; her toilet-roll curls bobbed madly.

    "Good," I said. "Go ahead, Irma."

    But Irma was weeping hysterically. "J-J-Je-Jesusss… " she screamed. Her arms came up and covered her face with terrifying slowness. "God I want to be d-dd-dead… "