The Daredevils (46 page)

When she finally did she looked surprised. “Your face is dark red!”

“I can hardly see,” Charles gasped.

“Calm down, calm down.”

“I want to kill them,” he whispered, choking.

“No, you can't do that, you can't even want that, calm down now.”

They sat there breathing and after a while the food came. It seemed like a miracle and they ate greedily.

“All I'm saying is that just because you once thought something was a good idea doesn't mean you always have to think it's a good idea.”

Vera now chose to laugh. “You
are
getting old.”

Charles got up and came around the table to her. “Maybe you ought to think about growing up. Listen to me. Did you not hear what I just said? My head is going to blow off my neck and I want to kill one or more of these assholes before it's too late. Warren and Tom stink of dynamite,
but so do I, Vera.
And so do you, and so does anybody else who's near enough, because
dynamite stinks.
It gets into your blood and your blood stinks and all you want to do is explode, and if you're around later, pray to the sleep-givers.”

“All right, all right, just . . . calm down, Charles, please.”

Neither spoke for some minutes. Then Charles said that they should leave now but come back with money and men. Somehow the mention of “men” made them realize, just as the mention of “murder” made them realize that they could be murdered, that “men,” from the NPL or the IWW or the MCPS or wherever, a crack squad of socialist commandoes from
the office of the mayor of Minneapolis, were long overdue. The mention of “missing men” and the echo of the mention of “murder” made them think that there had in fact been some killing already, perhaps a lot of it.

Now was the time to see Rejean Houle and find out whose side he'd chosen for the day.

They chose the train station, and that was where the big man found them. “No one seems to know who you are. I've spoken to a number of organizations, both fair and foul, and nobody claims you. So you either got someone big pulling for you, or someone big pulling against you. Or possibly someone big not giving a shit about you, if they ever did. I guess I should say that you've got both, which is why you are standing so still and nervous-like in my town. So I'm going to treat you like I treat all strangers, and tell you plainly you better get the hell out of here, and I mean now.”

“I have documents, asshole,” Charles said.

“Is that French for asshole documents? That would be wiping paper?”

“I have documents from Teddy fucking Roosevelt. I—”

“No, no, no, I don't care who you are now. I just want you—”

“Don't show him the documents, honey,” said Vera. “He doesn't deserve them. They'll just confuse him. Let McGee and the MCPS deal with him later.” She laughed artificially but persuasively, and Charles helplessly admired it.

“Okay,” chuckled the big man. “Show me ‘the documents.'”

“No,” said Charles, “second thought, I don't have to prove who I am to you, whoever you are, you big fat fucking asshole, or to anybody else. This is the United States of America, you goddamn thug. We've got plenty of money, we're not vagrants. You can't kill us. Even if you are confused.”

Charles supposed that was when it became clear that he could.

“And look,” said Vera, “look around you, you simpleton. Are we not at the train station?”

“My, my, my,” said the big man. “Guess I'll see you later.” He started to walk away, then stopped. “When are you people going to realize that we
are making do here. We are facing up to the mysteries of life and the hard obstacles of making a living and we have nice little village here that you are interfering with. You are not making things better, see? You are making things worse.”

When he was gone, Vera said she would wait to see if anyone from the NPL or, long shot, the IWW, showed up. If they did, she would try to give the speech; if they did not, she would not. Charles silently acquiesced, making a strong simple gesture with his head.

Night fell. A man whose name Vera did not recognize, but who seemed not merely authoritative in his argument but concerned for her well-being too, had reached them via telephone at the hotel, to which they had returned as if in a traveling spotlight. He'd made it clear the NPL would have nothing to do with her as a stand-in for Daisy, who had been quickly rearrested and remained in jail as a flight risk, no bail allowed. They would in fact disavow her; and, as there was evidently no longer an IWW presence in the town, she would find herself in a pickle. He wanted to know what the hell the IWW was thinking of anyway. “If they are around somewhere, are they just looking for a fight? Like in the good old days? Because this isn't the good old days anymore.”

“I'm doing this on my own,” Vera said, mouthing her words exaggeratedly into the little megaphone atop the candlestick, the awkward artificiality of the act making her feel even more secretive, even deceitful, causing her to make exaggerated faces and use her hands more than she would have were she face to face with the man.

“I don't understand,” said the tiny squawky voice in its boiling ocean of static.

“Nobody does,” said Vera. “That's okay.” She smiled at the megaphone and hung the speaker in its cradle. It was hard to imagine herself as tiny and squawky in an ocean of boiling static, but she knew that it must have been so from the caller's perspective.

The men from the IWW hall, five of them, quietly appeared at the door of their hotel room. From a distance they passed for calm, serious men, but this illusion was quickly dispelled: they were in the late stages of crippling panic, either groggy with it as one would be when saturated by any chemical, dull and dopily indifferent to any kind of stimulation—a smile and a kind word as well as a threat or a loud noise—or bound by it so tightly they might have been in straitjackets, able to move only their eyes. Only one of them seemed able, or willing, to follow one thought with another, and he was dumbfounded: he could not understand the false affiliation with the MCPS—“It's not false,” Charles said, “I am merely using it under false pretenses”—the purpose it served, nor their unwillingness to appeal to that organization immediately.

“That would remove us from danger, possibly,” Charles said.

“Well, why the hell don't you do that?”

“We sorta came up here to be in danger.”

“Nobody here gives a damn about that!” the man shouted too loudly. “We're already dead!”

“Ditto that,” said Vera, who had been staring out a window at the tracks.

“This is not our home!” cried one of the silent Wobblies. “The world is not our home, you can understand that when you're left alone for a while. These, these people here . . . they've banded together so they can feel like this is their home. They're not afraid.”

“Oh, they're afraid,” Charles said.

“Not like we are.”

“We aren't afraid,” said the first Wobbly to talk. “We're dead. Nothing to be afraid of when you're dead. I've learned that.”

“If there has been a little doubt sown in the minds of the big men around here, then maybe they won't act so recklessly,” Charles said. “They won't act like such nasty bullies when all people are trying to do is feel at home for a while. Of course the happy functioning of the little village is in jeopardy. People they don't even know are suffering so they can have a happy little village. I could excuse them if they didn't act like they'd earned the right to
their happy village. Of course I'm intruding. Intrusion is just as much a part of their happy little world as ignorance is. Doesn't matter what they
prefer
.”

Nevertheless he went downstairs and persuaded the clerk to let him place a call, slapping coins down as hard on the desk as he had done at the saloon some days in the distant past. He spoke for a very long time to someone he did not know, who could not or would not connect him to anybody he knew. He was told that his concern for his personal safety was noted with emphasis, that steps would be taken, and that he was not to worry. He could leave if he wanted to, or he could hang in there and see what happened next. He was working, wasn't he, for the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety, and had something of a duty, did he not?

Charles trudged up the steps to his room. Did he in fact want to be safe? Wasn't it closer to the truth to say he wanted “revenge”? Against the greedy unprincipled arrogant assholes who had killed Father and all those poor players who were blown to pieces mid-strut, mid-fret, a beautiful, moving speech about what it meant to be human just beginning to flow in its strange and awful way from the brain to the vocal cords, the palate, the tongue, the teeth, the lips—most of all the oxygen-rich lungs? Which would soon be shredded and bubbling on the floor of the stage?

“They're going to have a parade tomorrow,” said the Wobbly who was most able to speak.

“Oh dear,” said Vera.

“I hate fucking parades,” said Charles. He looked up. “I mean, I always have. Regardless of any bombing.”

“They're going to kill us at the end of the parade,” said a man who hadn't yet spoken.

“Nobody's going to kill anybody,” Charles said. “I work for the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety.”

“We're going to go back to the hall,” said Vera, “and make it comfortable again, and we're going to watch the parade go by. That's all we have to do. Sit back and say, “There goes a parade.” If we can see it's just a parade, then all we have to do is watch it. We don't have to fight them, we don't have to
hate them, we don't have to fear them.” Then perhaps she betrayed the coil of panic that had just begun to turn in her stomach, along with the swiftly growing, metamorphosing foetus. “Not one fucking little bit do we have to be afraid of these shit-sucking bullies.” She caught herself and pulled herself back. “There's nothing they can take away from us. We give it all gladly because we are not afraid of anything.”

Which of course was the moment they realized they were very afraid. The serene and undivided self was divided again. It took so little: some angry talk, some shoving and pushing, jail cells, phone calls that made both speaker and spoken-to feel as if the attenuation they felt was about to become terrifying, thoughts of killing and being killed . . . of course they felt they'd forced their way into a dangerous place thinking like the fools they truly were that a dangerous place was where they could best bring their serene and undivided self to bear. Images of the carnage in San Francisco played in loops in their imagination.

Then, strangely, during the course of this communal, unspoken confession, the daredevils found themselves feeling serene and undivided again. Perhaps something truly good might after all be accomplished. By the fearless ones, the ones who refused the Devil admittance.

They walked together to the hall and cleaned it up to the extent that they could. A fire was started in the Franklin stove that heated the two rooms, and bread and cheese were eaten around the stove. The town, counter to expectations, grew livelier. Someone came by and asked them what they were doing. Charles said he worked for the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety, which had come to the conclusion that a functioning IWW office was temporarily necessary. Wobblies, he said, had changed their minds and were all in favor of war now, so everybody had to work together. In this bubble he felt free and happy with these odd little lies. Gas lamps came on, a number of
saloons did ominously brisk trade. A man with piercing blue eyes and a red puffy face sat down on a broken chair on the sidewalk outside the hall. Its one good leg wobbled, then snapped. The man held his quart bottle of whiskey high as he fell. Pushing the chair out of his way, he slid his back up against the storefront wall so that his head was visible at the bottom of the window. He sighed with pleasure, then began checking his pockets for something he did not find. Lurching to his feet, he dashed off, leaving the bottle on the sidewalk. Charles went outside, wiped the mouth of the bottle with his sleeve, and drank a long drink. Then he came in with the bottle and everyone drank from it. After a while, Vera got up with some difficulty and excused herself, saying she was tired. Charles's happiness became bolder in its expression as he contemplated the cause of his true love's fatigue, his sense of freedom more able to withstand attack. So much so that he welcomed it. He became quickly so bold and fierce in the defense of his bold serene freedom that he failed to note it when he slipped away from it again, when he realized that what he wanted was to stomp the shit out of the big man and his little men.

Just like that is it lost. The small good act, the idea of it, the serene contentment and true freedom inhering in it, is lost in the roar of the fire. The brain becomes white hot. The servant of the brain can no longer see around the flames in his eyes. The inferno's fuel is mistakenly assumed to be bravery when it is in fact fear. The Devil stands there as if he had been there all along. Vera pushed a bench against the wall in the back room and lay down on it.

“‘I'm tired of you being tired,'” said Charles quietly. He was fixing himself. He continued to drink until the bottle was empty, the others quickly succumbing to the effect of alcohol on their shredded nerves. They assumed foetal positions in corners and were asleep instantly, in the way that people do whose nerves had taken more than they could stand.

Charles stood at the big window.

He went outside.

It might have been a carnival scene he entered. Men women children, couples, young lovers, families strolled and gawked at the ordinary street
life of their snug town after dark. For every drunk there was a child eating ice cream. Groups of children darted and toddled about. Gangs of boys huddled, some of them perhaps nearly as old as himself, but seeming freckled and stupid even as they took on the air of important men discussing investment opportunities—only to dissolve in loud sneering honks of laughter. It was hard to say what was going on; sometimes people would look at him with menacing hostility and sometimes they would not. He even thought he saw a few guilelessly friendly winks and smiles and waves. What he thought was a firecracker went off not too far away. Then another and another. Then as if in a dream a horse stepped heavily against him and he fell to his knees. He looked up in the garish darkness but saw only the great head of the horse dropping swiftly toward him, and he rolled away. He must have taken a blow to the head as well because he was dopey. Where was Amelia? he wondered. Why could she not control her horse? He got to his feet awkwardly and wondered for the length of time it takes lightning to strike what his sister—now that he knew she was not there—was doing at that moment. He ached for her, because surely she was lost. He felt very heavy, as if knowledge had been dropped like a millstone around his neck: the firecrackers he knew now were guns, and the parade had begun, in torchlight.