Robert Alter - Carny kill

I was a little punchy.

When I started up the gangplank I remembered what Stevenson once wrote to a friend regarding the use of the Hispaniola in his immortal novel: "I was unable to handle a brig (which the Hispaniola should have been), but I thought I could make shift to sail her as a schooner without public shame."

Just shows you that the best of us have our limitations.

"Hey, Thax!" Mike cried. "C'mon in, man. My God, it's good to see you! You can help me pass the long night. I'm the king of the insomniacs, you know, now that Dashiell Hammett is dead."

I didn't doubt it, with his nerves and the way he slurped up black coffee. I noticed the pot was perking on the hotplate again. I nodded toward it and quoted Israel Hands: "Don't you get sucking of. that bilge, John. Let's have a go at the rum."

"A drink?" Mike looked at me brightly. "You want a drink?"

"Do you have anything aboard this scow, Mike? I could stand it. I just lost a decision to your old sparring partner." I tapped my mouth.

Mike looked at me with an expectant smile. "Who's that, Thax?"

"Bill Duff. He landed one in the dark when I wasn't looking. My own fault though. I should have known better."

"Duff!" He grinned delightedly. "No kidding? My God, Thax, you could take three like him."

"Not in the dark," I said. "How about that drink?"

Mike clapped his hands and looked around the cabin.

"Well, let's see. I'm a coffee man myself, but I did have something around here. Ah!" He went away energetically and started rummaging a locker under his bunk.

I sat down at the table. My goddam head was starting to hurt now.

"Ho-_ho!_" Mike waved a half empty quart of gin at me. "Knew I had something left over from the last shindig we threw out here." He fetched the jug over to the table and went away to find a clean glass.

"A pannikin to wet your pipe like," he said, misquoting Long John Silver.

As a rule I can't hack gin straight. But it was better than nothing, and right then nothing was what I didn't need. I picked up the jug and looked at it.

"Squareface," I said. "Remember London's South Seas stories?"

"Do I ever! And how about John Russell?"

"_Where the Pavement Ends?_" I said. "_The Lost God?_"

"That's it! Honest to God, Thax, for sheer mystery, suspense, exotic adventure-I don't think anything can beat _The Lost God_. In the short-story field, I mean."

"Um. You ever read Morgan Robertson's _The Grain Ship?_"

"With the diseased rats? Good Lord yes! Beautiful! Both of those tales have that _The Lady Or The Tiger_ ending, you know?"

"Yeah. Just like a murder mystery in real life. After all, who really gave Lizzie Borden's parents forty whacks with an ax? It's been seventy-some years and we still don't know."

"Or what about the Pig Woman case?" Mike said. "That was another one, wasn't it? Or was it called the Hall-Mills case? I can't remember."

Neither could I. All I could vaguely remember about it was that some preacher had been misbehaving with the young church organist. Something like that. I fed myself a shot of gin and it went down like a jackhammer. The trouble with gin is it tastes like cheap perfume. But I had another. It helped anesthetize my mouth.

"So what happened between you and Bill Duff?" Mike asked.

"It's an old beef. We used to work in carny years ago. Just a hangover grudge"

He grinned and got up and said, "Well, it's your business. Listen, I've got to run ashore. Late date."

I glanced at my wrist watch. It was after 2 AM.

"Barmaid, I take it," I said.

He was busy putting himself into a bright, severely-cut sports jacket that was a trifle fruity for my taste. He winked at me.

"I like 'em at this time of night. The longer they wait the hornier they are. Right?"

I don't like people to ask me to agree to a questionable decision just because they want to pretend they have the answer. I said um and let it go at that.

"Make yourself at home, mate," Mike told me. "Finish the gin and flop, if you want to."

I didn't want to. Not as long as someone else was living aboard the Hispaniola. But all I said was, "Thanks."

"Jesus, I hate to run off like this." He seemed quite sincere about it. "But she won't keep. You know what I mean?"

I was glad he had said She. I nodded.

"Go ahead, Mike. I know the rules."

He flashed another grin at me and made for the door.

"Next time, Thax, we'll have a real talk. That's a promise. There's so damn much literature I want to hash over with you. Thomas Mann, for instance." He pronounced it Thomas Mon.

"Would you mind awfully if we held it down to Kenneth Roberts and P. C. Wren?" I said. "I know my limitations."

Mike laughed and raised a hand, dramatically.

"_Aux armes! Les Arbis!_" he cried-which was a quote from Wren's _Beau Geste_. He slammed the door after himself with a laugh.

In a way I was kind of glad he was gone. He made me nervous. His youthful exuberance was a little too much for my weary thirty-two years.

That's a funny thing. I felt more or less like Mike Ransome did right up till two years ago. But the day I turned thirty they pulled the energy rug out from under me. No warning. One day bouncing along like a rubber ball-the next day Blaugh! Flat on my face.

"Well, well," I said. "Here's to the young and hard."

I hammered down another jolt of the pneumatic drill. Then I thought to hell with the glass and I took it straight from the bottle. And then I had to laugh. The young and hard! That was a good one. Dirty but good.

Could I, if I had it to do again tonight? I asked myself. With Billie? Hell yes! I wasn't that old.

"Here's to the thirty-two and hard!" I toasted the bulkhead.

"Here's to Thomas Mung!" That gave me another laugh. Thomas Mung! By damn, I had a million of them.

"Here's to Long John and why they called him Long!"

Ho-ho, Christ I was murder.

I finished off the gin and got up and started stumbling about the cabin.

"And to Billy Bones who pulled the boner of all!"

I threw open the door and staggered out on deck. The fog was completely gone and the moon waited in the rigging, fat and proud.

"-- the world!" I announced irrelevantly. "And the moon too. I smashed you in the water, you bastard moon. See how white your face is? You're a coward! You can't face the image of your final dish-dissolution in the water."

Then it all came to a roaring halt. I felt sick. Godawful sick. I wanted to go to bed.

I reeled down the gangplank and across the beach and bumbled into the boat. How I got those goddam oars shipped and managed to row myself across the lake will always remain a wonderful mystery.

The next thing I knew Jerry had me under the armpits and he was saying, "Thax-you all right, Thax?"

That peroxided stripper Bev was with him, and when I again made my grand announcement about doing it to the world, she threw back her head to laugh and her mouth looked like a big red fine bucket and that made me sicker than ever.

"Me and the water dish-olutioned the moon," I told them. "The water is the moon's slave but the moon is ashamed. I'm sick."

I threw up right where I stood.

"Jesus God my nylons!" Bev cried.

"Okay, okay, so I'll buy you another pair," Jerry said "Now shut up, huh? We gotta find him a bed."

"Let him lay in it, the filthy bastard," Bev said.

"Tree house," I told them. "Live in tree house with Cheeta, away away up in the rockyby blue. No You Jane in the bed. Just an ape. Like sodomy."

"What's he talking about for crysake?" Bev wanted to know.

"About diddling an ape."

"_Diddling an ape?_ Is he some kind of a nut or what?"

"Yeah, something like that. A dead drunk one. C'mon, Thax! Pull yourself together. You can't sleep in a tree."