Ed McBain - Long Time No See

HARRIS: Yeah.

LEMARRE: Yet in the dream you’re a teenager watching him decorate the tree.

HARRIS: Well, it’s a dream, right?

LEMARRE: There was a carpet on the floor, you said.

HARRIS: A green carpet.

LEMARRE: In the living room.

HARRIS: Yeah.

LEMARRE: Is it a thick carpet?

HARRIS: Yeah.

LEMARRE: But when the Christmas ornaments fall, they break, don’t they?

HARRIS: Yeah.

LEMARRE: On the thick carpet.

HARRIS: Yeah.

LEMARRE: And they make a loud noise.

HARRIS: Yeah.

LEMARRE: What kind of a noise?

HARRIS: Crashing. They’re Christmas balls crashing, that’s the noise.

LEMARRE: Uh-huh.

HARRIS: Drums. Like drums, you know.

LEMARRE: Is that what they sounded like? Drums?

HARRIS: Yeah. On the record player.

LEMARRE: What record player?

HARRIS: There was a... Somebody was playing the drums.

LEMARRE: Where?

HARRIS: On the record.

LEMARRE: What record?

HARRIS: There was a record playing.

LEMARRE: In the living room?

HARRIS: No, the...

LEMARRE: Yes.

HARRIS: The clubhouse. Oh, Jesus.

LEMARRE: What?

HARRIS: Oh, Jesus Christ.

LEMARRE: What is it, Jimmy?

HARRIS: He...

The door opened.

“Hi,” Janet said. “I got waylaid, I’m sorry.” She was carrying a cardboard container of coffee in each hand. She put them both down on the table, and then sat beside Carella and crossed her legs. “I hope you like it sweet,” she said.

“I like it sweet,” he said.

“Good. Did you find anything?”

“A major breakthrough.”

She took the lids off the coffee containers, and then moved her chair closer. “Mind if I read with you?” she asked, and her knee touched his.

“No, that’s... fine,” he said, and reached for one of the coffee containers and almost knocked it over. His hand was shaking when he picked it up. He sipped at the coffee, and then began reading again. He was very much aware of Janet sitting beside him, her head close to his, her knee brushing his under the table.

HARRIS: The clubhouse. Oh, Jesus.

LEMARRE: What?

HARRIS: Oh, Jesus Christ.

LEMARRE: What is it, Jimmy?

HARRIS: He...

LEMARRE: Go on.

HARRIS: It was Lloyd.

LEMARRE: Who’s Lloyd.

HARRIS: The president.

LEMARRE: The president of what?

HARRIS: Our club.

LEMARRE: What club?

HARRIS: The Hawks. In Diamondback. Before I got drafted.

LEMARRE: What about Lloyd?

HARRIS: He was dancing with her. In the clubhouse, down in the basement. We was sitting on the floor, the five of us. There was drums goin on the record, lots of drums, sounded like... lots of drums.

LEMARRE: Who was he dancing with?

HARRIS: His woman. Roxanne.

LEMARRE: And you and four other boys—

HARRIS: Was sittin on the couch watchin them. They was dancin fish, Lloyd turn to us, he say What you lookin at, get yo asses out of here. Roxanne say They don’t got to go if they tired. Lloyd say They got to go cause I tell them to go. She turn to us, she say You goin let him tell you what to do? The boys say Hell no, they get up off the couch and grab him.

LEMARRE: Where did he want you to go?

HARRIS: Upstairs.

LEMARRE: Why?

HARRIS: Cause we was just sittin there listenin to the drums.

LEMARRE: What did Roxanne mean? About your being tired?

HARRIS: We was tired, man. We been rumblin all the past month.

LEMARRE: Rumbling?

HARRIS: Gang-busting. With the enemy, man.

LEMARRE: When was this, Jimmy?

HARRIS: Just before I got drafted.

LEMARRE: How old were you?

HARRIS: Eighteen.

LEMARRE: And you belonged to a gang called the Hawks?

HARRIS: Yeah, a club.

LEMARRE: And you’d been fighting with another gang?

HARRIS: Started in December.

LEMARRE: And when did this happen in the clubhouse? Was this still December?

HARRIS: Just before Christmas.

LEMARRE: You’d been fighting with another gang all that month—

HARRIS: Heavy fighting, man.

LEMARRE: And now you were resting.

HARRIS: Yeah, and Lloyd told us to go on up.

LEMARRE: What did he mean by that?

HARRIS: I told you. Upstairs.

LEMARRE: But Roxanne said you didn’t have to go if you were tired.

HARRIS: Damn straight, man. The boys told Lloyd to shove it up his ass. Then they all grabbed him, you know, pulled him away from Roxanne where they were stand in there in the middle of the floor. Record still goin, drums loud as anything. Guy banging the drums there.

LEMARRE: Who grabbed him?

HARRIS: All of them. I was just watchin is all.

LEMARRE: Then what?

HARRIS: There’s this post in the middle of the room, you know? Like, you know, a steel post holdin up the ceiling beams. They push him up against the post. I got no idea what they fixin to do with him, he the president, they askin for trouble there. I tell them. Hey, cool it, this man here’s the president But they... they...

LEMARRE: Go on, Jimmy.

HARRIS: They don’t listen to me, man. They just... they keep holdin him up against the tree, and Roxanne’s cryin now, she’s cryin, man.

LEMARRE: The tree?

HARRIS: The post, I mean. Roxanne’s cryin. They grab her. She fightin them now, she don’t want this to happen, but they do it anyway, they stick it in her, one after the other, all of them.

LEMARRE: They raped her, is that what you’re saying?

HARRIS: I tried to stop them, but I couldn’t. They carried her outside afterward, they picked her up and took her out.

LEMARRE: Why?

HARRIS: Cause she bleeding. Cause they hurt her when they were doin it.

LEMARRE: Where did they carry her?

HARRIS: The lot.

LEMARRE: What lot?

HARRIS: In there, man.

LEMARRE: In where?

HARRIS: On the corner, there. Full of weeds. They throw her there.

LEMARRE: Then what?

HARRIS: Ain’t no... ain’t no... shit, ain’t no way to...

LEMARRE: All right, Jimmy.

HARRIS: What I ’ m cryin for? I didn’t hurt her, I didn’t do nothing to her.

LEMARRE: It’s all right, Jimmy. You can cry.

HARRIS: Why God take my eyes, man? Was the other four hurt her. Why God punish me?

LEMARRE: Jimmy, what happened a long time ago has nothing to do with your getting blinded.

HARRIS: It got everything to do with it, man.

That was the end of the session and the end of the transcript. Dr. Lemarre’s notes indicated that at this point Jimmy Harris broke down and began sobbing uncontrollably for the next half-hour. The doctor finally had him taken to the ward and sedated.

At their next session Jimmy refused to discuss the incident again, or to name the members of the gang who had held Lloyd against the basement post, and later raped Roxanne. It was the doctor’s opinion that the horror of the day — the irreversible set of circumstances that Jimmy had been unable to control or stop — was causing him to dream over and again of his father being killed. Lemarre couldn’t quite understand why, in the nightmare, Roxanne had become Lloyd’s father. He suspected that this was the reason a penis was attributed to the dream-mother: an attempt of the unconscious to explain the symbolism, a not unusual occurrence. But in addition, the unconscious mind was trying to tell Jimmy something else as well. It was saying, rather blatantly, that the symbolic death was in reality a rape. The woman in the dream had a penis under her skirt; in the actual event, there had indeed been penises under Roxanne’s skirt. When Lemarre asked Jimmy what had happened to Roxanne after the boys carried her to the lot, Jimmy said he didn’t know.