Mort, the cynic scriptwriter from Hollywood was there with his companion, Vera the single woman with a lot of money who had a weight problem. Reverend Bosworth had just turned away from the buffet table where as the true suffragist he liked to play he was encouraging the others.
“Eat all you like,” he said, “there’s plenty more where that came from. The worst scenario would be that any food goes to waste.” Of course it wouldn’t have. The Salinas
free store
volunteers, who handed out food as well as clothing to the homeless, were standing by and would’ve taken it in a jiffy, served it that night and by tomorrow morning it’d all be gone. Matter of fact a group of homeless some of whom Sandy’d known and given handouts to had gathered themselves in one corner and were stuffing what they couldn’t eat into their pockets for snacks later on.
“So, in essence this was a charitable exercise as well,” said Hammond.
“Call it what you like,” I replied, “the mother (Sandy’s) was paying for it even though she wouldn’t deign to attend.”
The priest too charged for his services. I won’t say how much the sum was, but plenty. Enough for Bosworth and his family to live comfortably off of for several months. No, everything in life you seem to have to pay for even funerals. There’s no free ride anymore. Grave plots have become affordable only to the ultra-rich. But what’s one crime among others. Like a horse with blinders you look only straight ahead. Day by day.
When I saw Mort call the priest aside to express himself I deliberately put myself in a position to eavesdrop. Mort, whose freckled face was redder yet from the wine he’d been putting away, had been burrowing through the crowd with his own sense of injustice at the turn of events that had led to the tragedy He wanted an answer. He launched right into Bosworth who in his shroud like cassock looked down upon the director with his beatific expression. Mort’s dark red eyes seemed to pierce the priest’s light blue orbs.
“What I want to know is,” said the writer. “Why did any of this have to happen?” In his own way he’d loved Sandy, she’d provided him with no little sincere amusement and she was someone he sincerely missed. Grievously missed.
“Why yes,” said Bosworth, “in his typical querying manner. “Why did this have to happen? God’s ways are mysterious.”
“Really,” said Mort turning to me a total stranger but apparently sensing I was on his side. “To hell with all that God stuff. The man (Brochowitz) was in your care. You saw what he was. Why didn’t you have him locked up, forever’d’ve been preferable.”
Bosworth thought for a minute. “I helped the boy (as he referred to Brochowitz). He seemed all right. One never knows about such things and how they occur. That’s why we pray to the Lord that they don’t.”
Thinking he’d given a satisfactory answer Bosworth shifted his little blue eyes to me, seeking my confirmation, I suppose. I noticed a group of children playing with their dog on the little hill we’d just left. Then Mort launched into him again as Vera held one of his arms.
“The only way to appraise someone like that,” said Mort, “is behavioristically through science. When they’re that screwed up you don’t pray they’re going to reform. You assume they’re not and you lock them up permanently. Sacrifice the maniac’s freedom for the well-being of the rest of us. Case closed.” The little man stood up to the priest.
“But how can you know?” Said Bosworth. “No one knows. Why God, of course, but who knows his will?”
“I do,” said Mort angrily. “One look at the freak tells you that. Tests aren’t needed. Certainly not prayers.” It was as though he wanted to break the clergyman in two, an enormous task for the tiny writer to undertake with a large man like that, priest or no priest.
As Bosworth turned to the others of his flock I told Mort I thoroughly agreed with him.
“After they’ve shown their hand those sorts should either be locked up or supervised to the point they can’t do anyone else harm. In this case you don’t let the man run free with no wherewithal, no place to go and no supervisor to make sure he takes his medicine. A madman can’t understand a simple prohibition let alone ingest a moral cue from prayer that’ll lead him to do
good
. He wants his hard-core hallucinogen and to follow the wild dictates of his nature. Why he doesn’t even know what
good
is. If, of course, any of us do.” I waited for a response. You’ll never believe what it was.
“What?” said Hammond.
The tiny freckle faced man with the curly red hair looked at me and said,
“What do you do?” Then. “Ah, yes, but think of the story it’ll make.” He … he, evidently, was all ready to begin writing the script or screenplay of the incident. Being caught off guard and not knowing what to say, I remarked,
“Be sure if you do it to make it a good one.”
And I realized I’d lost a grip on the situation myself. It was like through media contrast you hear (or see) what’s going on around you in the world but you have no idea of what it realistically entails. Therefore you content yourself by letting it continue and consider it beyond your responsibility. That was exactly how I felt.
As the crowd in the little church yard began to thin in the late afternoon, the five of us walked down the road and across the street to the bar leaving the double hatched cross on the small chapel behind us to face the wind. Our greatest concern or rather question of interest at that point was, ‘where was Hartwig’ and ‘why hadn’t he shown’, although upon retrospect one could easily see why he’d chosen not to. Who, in fact, would have wanted to see him there after what’d happened? Whether he was actually at fault by then wasn’t even the point. Like ‘The Stranger’ he’d be condemned as though he had been. There are some test situations in life, which we are better to avoid entirely. This was one of them, at least for him.
“Yes, said Hammond. “That tells me what I’ve been suspecting about him all the time. Courageless. Tries to appear tough but when it comes right down to it he’s the first to walk out.”
“Not only walk out,” I said. “It’s lucky we ended up celebrating only one funeral that day instead of two. The other’s was damn near Hartwig’s.”
‘”You’re kidding,” said Hammond preposterously. “What’d he do, kill himself mourning over his loved one? Like Romeo now. He and Sandy, Romeo and Juliet. I’m starting to think it’s you who’re going a little crazy. Ha, ha, ha…”
“No,” I said. “You may think it’s funny but listen.”
After having had quite a few drinks at the bar among the more hearty revelers, who’d been at the funeral, the conversations just became more and more heated about revenge, what else. They (a number of them) wanted to kill a man that was already dead.
“I seen the freak around town. If I’d’ve known anything like that would’ve happened to the little lady,” the man, a vet who was wearing a beret and must’ve known Sandy, sniffled. “I’d’ve whacked him.”
“Me too, brother. They’d’ve found him floating face up in the lagoon. Up or down it wouldn’t matter.”
As they continued to comfort themselves by thoughts of violence I realized we’d better leave. While the wake’d been one thing for Hartwig to’ve attended this’d certainly be another. No good’d come of it. So we left feeling we’d run into him on the road and warn him of the Martian atmosphere.
It was a peaceful night as we emerged from the stuffy bar. Its smoky mass expanded momentarily as we opened the door. The cloud cover of the afternoon had vanished and the autumn stars were out in full splendor as the five of us piled into Dracula’s old black diesel sedan and began the tortuous journey home. I sat in front beside the driver while our companions had the back seat.
After winding around the lagoon and going through Ocean View I noticed Harper took the coast rather than the mountain route back. I said nothing as he remarked.
“It’s a nice night. The moon’s coming up. The view’ll do all of us good after what we’ve just seen.”
I didn’t know exactly what he was referring to except perhaps the general malaise of a funeral that could’ve been anyone’s. I did note, however, that he might’ve equally chosen the other route. And by the flip of a coin, no more, we were on this one for the three drunken souls in back had already nodded off and couldn’t’ve appreciated anything. One of them was snoring.
Although the road directly follows the long coast ridge, from Ocean View it climbs and follows numerous switchbacks that veer into dark tree-lined defiles then out so that one had the pleasant feeling of an amusement park ride. I was trying hard to keep awake myself to talk to Harper so as to keep him alert for one misstep up there or a drowsy spell could wreak ruination on the shoreline rocks two hundred feet or so below. I was saying absurd things such as,
“We can stop for coffee once we get over the hill,” to induce the prospects of sobriety as perhaps a desirable state of the moment only to receive no answer. I’d glare over at Harper who appeared to be doing all right. He was the sort who didn’t like suggestions as to his integrity and he considered ‘testing you’ to be his reward. I had no problem with that.
I looked to my right. The rising moon, which was behind us had made a streak across the water. When suddenly as we rounded a turn the car screeched to a halt, my head hit the windshield and our rear passengers became momentarily glued to the front seat.
“What the f…?” Said an angry voice, but there before us on the road a man stood in the headlights waving. It was Hartwig and his dog. He didn’t appear to be shaken up but of all the unexpected places. Then what was he doing out here at this time of night all alone? Walking his dog? Hitchhiking?
“Christ,” said Harper. “We’d better get out and see,” which we proceeded to do as I rubbed my forehead from the bump I’d just received.
“Hartwig.” It was Harper who’d gone up and hugged him in the glow of the headlights.
“I knew you guys’d come along. I was certain of it but it certainly took long enough. Seems no one takes this road at night,” he said without hesitation, a statement I felt out of place for we might easily have taken the mountain road and missed him. As the coin’s toss, our chances had been fifty-fifty.
The dog had begun to bark and dance in circles as it often did when it became excited. It, evidently, was glad to see us too. I then took a turn in giving my friend a hug as the other three had just piled out of our car, which was parked on the shoulder. The man was steely calm as though it was the normal state of things for him to be out there like that. I couldn’t believe it.
As I stepped away, however, I noticed two things. Firstly, it wasn’t a man I’d greeted, it was more like a snowman for Hartwig stood there white as one, as though he’d just seen his
maker
. You couldn’t tell it from his voice or demean, however, just his pall. It was as though he hadn’t changed but something in him had flip-flopped that’d made him different. There was a sensitive spot in his nature after all if one could just peel off the layers. At least that was my interpretation, my moral judgment. Perhaps it didn’t apply to him.
The other thing I noticed was his car. My eyes had become used to the light. His red Volkswagen was lying on its side with its nose actually touching the edge of the cliff. A few feet more and it’d been over. As the others came over to greet our hero, Harper and I walked cliffside to inspect the old Beetle. Its motor had been turned off. It lay there as though dead. There was no dent we could see for the scraped side lay underneath.
“Christ,” said Harper with his Dracula like pose against the crepuscular backdrop. “I can hear it tumbling down there, can’t you?” From the bottom came the dim plash of the waves.
“I certainly can. And what happened to him? He seems calm. He always tries to appear that way. But did you notice how he looked, his color? Why that can’t fool anybody. He was trying to commit suicide because of all the grief he’s caused everyone.”
“Are you kidding, him, never. He doesn’t look at life like that. Remember to him everything’s a mere accident. No one’s responsible. He’s just a very sad man. And,” Harper went on mischievously, “he doesn’t even know it. There’re no
mirrors
around. I suppose he could always look at his hand.”
“But,” I remarked as we walked back to the others, “would he recognize it then? Or in a hall of mirrors? Like a monochromatic world that denies things themselves. I believe he’s just seen it.”
Before Hartwig could come over and show us what happened and tell us what he did, Harper hustled us all back into the car. Hartwig sat next to me with Stanley on his lap.
“We’ve got to get the hell out of here before a patrolman comes along, believe me, or he’ll take us all in for drinking,” said our driver.
“That’s fine with me,” came from our victim. “I don’t want that old wreck anyhow. Let’s head for home.” Harper drove off; we left the coastline and turned up the hill
Hartwig told us this. Half-drunk he’d been racing out to Salinas to meet us when he misjudged the turn, realized he was spinning out towards the precipice, he never could’ve braked in time to keep the thing from going over so he turned it on its side deliberately and the friction between the car and the road stopped it right where we saw it.
“I then opened the passenger door, put the dog out and followed him. It was like crawling out of a conning tower of a submarine,” he exulted as he ran his hand through his stringy blond hair.
“Benji,” I remarked, “certainly would’ve appreciated the story.” Hartwig didn’t comment. Obviously I’d hit a sore spot.