Slow Learner (8 page)

"What's wrong," Flange said, lugging the mattress up the slope to stand next to him and peer out over the junk pile. "You have prowlers at night?"

"Something like that," Bolingbroke said, uncomfortable. "Come on." They trudged back, retracing their steps, no one speaking. At the place where the truck had stopped they angled off to the left. Above them towered the incinerator, its stacks tall and black against the last sky-glow. The three entered a narrow ravine which had garbage scattered twenty feet up its sides. Flange got the feeling that this dump was like an island or enclave in the dreary country around it, a discrete kingdom with Bolingbroke its uncontested ruler. The ravine ran on for a hundred yards, steep-sided and tortuous, until at length it opened out on a small valley completely filled with cast-off rubber tires from cars, trucks, tractors and airplanes; and in the center on a slight eminence stood Bolingbroke's shack, jury-rigged out of tar paper and refrigerator sides and haphazardly acquired wooden beams and pipes and shingles. "Home," Bolingbroke said. "Now we play follow the leader." It was like running a maze. Sometimes the stacks of tires were twice as high as Flange, threatening to topple at the slightest jar. The smell of rubber was strong in the air. "Be careful with them mattresses," Bolingbroke whispered, "don't step out of line. I got booby traps set up."

"For what," Pig said, but Bolingbroke either had not heard or was ignoring the question. They reached the shack and Bolingbroke unlocked the door, which was made from the side of a heavy packing case and was secured by a large padlock. Inside was absolute blackness. There were no windows. Bolingbroke lit a kerosene lamp and in the flickering yellow light Flange could see the walls covered with photographs clipped out of every publication, it seemed, put out since the Depression.

A brightly colored pin-up of Brigitte Bardot was flanked by newspaper photos of the Duke of Windsor making his abdication speech and the
Hindenburg
going up in flames. There were Ruby Keeler and Hoover and MacArthur. Jack Sharkey, Whirlaway, Lauren Bacall and God knew how many others in a rogues' gallery of faded sensation fragile as tabloid paper, blurred as the common humanity of a nine-day wonder.

Bolingbroke bolted the door. They threw down their bedding and sat, and drank wine. Outside a small wind had risen, which rattled the flaps of tar paper and blundered baffled and turbulent into and around the jutting corners and irregular angles of the shack. Somehow they started telling sea stories. Pig told about how he and a sonarman named Feeny had stolen a horse-drawn taxi in Barcelona. It turned out neither of them knew anything about horses and they wound up driving full tilt off the end of Fleet Landing, pursued by at least a platoon of Shore Patrolmen. While they were floundering around in the water it occurred to them that this would be a good time to swim out to the carrier
Intrepid
and stomp hell out of a few airedales. They would have made it had it not been for the
Intrepid's
motor launch, which caught up with them a few hundred yards out. Feeny managed to throw the coxswain and the bow hook over the side before some wise-assed ensign with a .45 stopped all the fun by shooting Feeny through the shoulder. Flange told about how one spring weekend back in college he and two comrades had swiped a female cadaver from the local morgue. They took it up to Flange's fraternity about three in the morning and deposited it next to the president of the house, who was lying passed out on his bed. Next morning bright and early all the brothers able to ambulate marched
en masse
to the president's room and began banging on the door. "Yes, just a minute," a voice groaned from inside, "I'll be right with. Oh. Oh, my god." "What's the matter, Vincent?" somebody called. "You got a broad in there?" And they all laughed good-naturedly. About fifteen minutes later Vincent, ashen and trembling, opened up and they all trooped in noisily. They looked under the bed and moved the furniture around and opened the closet, but no corpse. Puzzled, they began pulling out dresser drawers, when suddenly there was a piercing scream from outside. They rushed to the window and looked down. A coed had fainted in the street. It turned out Vincent had knotted together his three best neckties and hung the body outside the window. Pig shook his head. "Wait a minute," he said. "I thought you were gonna tell a sea story." By this time they had killed the gallon. Bolingbroke produced a jug of home-made Chianti from under his bed. "I would have," Flange said, "only I couldn't think of any offhand." But the real reason he knew and could not say was that if you are Dennis Flange and if the sea's tides are the same that not only wash along your veins but also billow through your fantasies then it is all right to listen to but not to tell stories about that sea, because you and the truth of a true lie were thrown sometime way back into a curious contiguity and as long as you are passive you can remain aware of the truth's extent but the minute you became active you are somehow, if not violating a convention outright, at least screwing up the perspective of things, much as anyone observing subatomic particles changes the works, data and odds, by the act of observing. So he had told the other instead, at random. Or apparently so. He wondered what Geronimo would say.

Bolingbroke, however, had a sea story. He had spent some time bouncing around from port to port on a variety of merchantmen, all vaguely disreputable. He had spent two months right after the first war on the beach in Caracas with a friend named Sabbarese. They had jumped a freighter called the
Deirdre O'Toole
, sailing under Panamanian registry— Bolingbroke apologized for this detail, but he insisted it was true: back then you could register anything, a rowboat, a seagoing whorehouse, a battleship, anything that floated, in Panama — to escape from Porcaccio the first mate, who had delusions of grandeur. Three days out from Port-au-Prince Porcaccio had stormed into the captain's cabin with a Very pistol and threatened to turn the captain into a human flare unless the ship were turned around and headed for Cuba. It seems there were several cases of rifles and other light armament down in the hold, all destined for a gang of banana pickers in Guatemala who had recently unionized and desired to abolish the local American sphere of influence. It was Porcaccio's intention to take over the ship and invade Cuba and claim the island for Italy, to whom it rightfully belonged, since Columbus had discovered it. For his mutiny he had assembled two Chinese wipers and a deck hand subject to epileptic fits. The captain laughed and invited Porcaccio in for a drink. Two days later they came staggering out on deck, drunk, arms flung about each other's shoulders; neither had had any sleep in the intervening period. The ship had run into a heavy squall; all hands were running around securing booms and shifting cargo, and in the confusion the captain somehow got washed over the side. Porcaccio thus became master of the
Deirdre O'Tool
e. The liquor supply had run out, however, so Porcaccio decided to head for Caracas and replenish. He promised the crew a jeroboam of champagne each the day Havana was captured. Bolingbroke and Sabbarese were not about to invade Cuba. As soon as the ship docked in Caracas they went over the hill and lived off the proceeds of a barmaid, an Armenian refugee named Zenobia, sleeping with her on alternate nights, for two months. Finally something — whether homesickness for the sea or an attack of conscience or the violent and unpredictable temper of their patroness Bolingbroke had never quite decided — prompted them to visit the Italian consul and give themselves up. The consul was most understanding. He put them on an Italian merchantman bound for Genoa and they shoveled coal as if into the fires of hell all the way across the Atlantic.

By this time it was late and everybody was loaded. Bolingbroke yawned. "Good night, man," he said. "I got to be up bright and early. You hear any strange noises don't sweat it. That's a strong bolt."

"Wha," Pig said. "Who's gonna get in?" Flange began to feel uneasy.

"Nobody," Bolingbroke said, "only them. They try to get in every once in a while. But they ain't yet. And there's a hunk of pipe you can use if they do." He put out the lamp and stumbled over to his bed.

"Yeah," Pig said, "but who?"

"The gypsies," Bolingbroke yawned. His voice was drowsing off into sleep. "They live here. Here in the dump. Only come out at night." He fell silent and after a while began to snore.

Flange shrugged. What the hell. All right, there were gypsies around. He remembered back in his childhood thet they used to camp out on the deserted areas of beach along the north shore. He thought by now they had all gone; somehow he was glad they had not. It suited some half-felt sense of fitness; it was right that there should be gypsies living in the dump, just as he had been able to believe in the Tightness of Bolingbroke's sea, its ability to encompass and be the sustaining plasma or medium for horse-drawn taxis and Porcaccios. Not to mention that young, rogue male Flange, from whom he occasionally felt the Flange of today had suffered a sea change into something not so rare or strange. He drifted into a light, uneasy sleep, flanked by the contrapuntal snorings of Bolingbroke and Pig Bodine.

How long he slept was uncertain; he awoke in that total darkness with only the visceral time sense of its being two or three in the morning, or at least a desolate hour somehow not intended for human perception, but rather belonging to cats, owls and peepers and whatever else make noises in the night. Outside the wind was still blowing; he searched it for the sound he knew had awakened him. For a full minute there was nothing, then at last it came. A girl's voice, riding on the wind.

"Anglo," it said, "Anglo with the gold hair. Come out. Come out by the secret path and find me."

"Wha," Flange said. He shook Pig. "Hey buddy," he said, "there's a broad out there."

Pig opened one unfocused eye. "Great," he mumbled. "Bring her in and let me have seconds."

"No," said Flange, "what I mean is, this must be one of the gypsies Bolingbroke was talking about."

Pig snored. Flange groped his way over to Bolingbroke. "Hey man," he said, "she's
out
there." Bolingbroke did not respond. Flange shook harder. "She's out there," he repeated, starting to feel panicked. Bolingbroke rolled over and said something unintelligible. Flange threw up his hands. "Wha," he said.

"Anglo," the girl called insistently, "come to me. Come find me or I shall go away forever. Come out, tall Anglo with the gold hair and the shining teeth."

"Hey," Flange said to nobody in particular. "That's me, ain't it." Not quite, it occurred to him immediately. Closer to his
Doppelgänger
, that sea-dog of the lusty, dark Pacific days. He kicked Pig. "She wants me to come out," he said. "What do I do, hey."

Pig opened both eyes. "Sir," he said, "I recommend that you go out and obtain a sitrep. And if she's any good, like I say, bring her back in and let the enlisted men have a go at it."

"Aye, aye," Flange said vaguely. He made his way to the door, slid back the bolt and stepped outside. "O Anglo," he heard the voice, "you have come. Follow me."

"All right," Flange said. He began weaving his way out through the stacks of tires, praying that he wouldn't set off one of Bolingbroke's booby traps. Miraculously, he made it almost to open ground before anything went wrong. He was not exactly sure that he had misstepped but realized, suddenly, that he had goofed somehow, and looked up just in time to see a huge stack of snow tires sway and lurch, hanging for a moment against the stars before they toppled over on him, and this was the last thing he remembered for a while.

He awoke to cool fingers on his forehead and a coaxing voice: "Wake up, Anglo. Open

your eyes. You're all right." He opened his eyes and saw her, the girl, her face, floating wide-eyed and anxious over him, and the stars caught in her hair. He was lying at the entrance to the ravine. "Come," she smiled. "Get up."

"Sure," Flange said. He had a headache. He was throbbing all over. He finally managed to get to his feet, and it was only then that he had a good look at her. In the starlight she was exquisite: she wore a dark dress, her legs and arms were bare, slim, the neck arching and delicate, her figure so slender it was almost a shadow.

Dark hair floated around her face and down her back like a black nebula; eyes enormous, nose retrousse, short upper lip, good teeth, nice chin. She was a dream, this girl, an angel. She was also roughly three and a half feet tall. Flange scratched his head. "How do you do," he said. "My name is Dennis Flange. Thank you for rescuing me."

"I am Nerissa," she said, gazing up at him.

He had no idea what to say to her next. The conversational possibilities were suddenly limited. Though they might, it occurred to him insanely, discuss the Midget Problem or something.

She took his hand. "Come," she said. She pulled him after her into the ravine. "Where we going," Flange said. "To my home," she answered. "It will be dawn soon." Flange thought about this. "Well wait a minute hey," he said. "What about my buddies back there. I'm abusing Bolingbroke's hospitality." She did not answer; he shrugged. What the hell. She led him through the ravine and up the slope. On top of the pinnacle of bank run stood a human figure, watching them. Other shapes hovered and flitted in the darkness; from somewhere came the sound of guitar music, and singing, and a fight in progress. They entered the junk pile he had passed before on the way to get a mattress, and they began picking their path through a cast-off chaos of starlit metal and porcelain. Finally she stopped at a General Electric refrigerator which lay on its back, and opened the door. "I hope you'll be able to fit," she said, climbed in and disappeared. Oh Christ, Flange thought, I've been putting on weight, haven't I. He climbed in; the back of the refrigerator was missing. "Shut the door after you," she called from somewhere below, and he obeyed trance-like. A beam of light shot up, probably from a flashlight she was holding, to show him the way. He had not realized that the junk pile ran to such a depth. There were some tight squeezes, but he managed to worm his way between, around and down through various loosely stacked household appliances for about thirty feet until he reached the opening of a forty-eight-inch concrete pipe. She was there waiting for him. "From here on it is easier," she said.