James Crumley - One to Count Cadence

Because of an unseasonable fog I had to take the train from Angeles to San Fernando and a limousine from there, a bottle holding my hand all the way. I bought another one at the Main Club before I went to find Abigail. She wasn't at home, nor in the ward, and Morning's bed was empty. I limped to Gallard's office, waited until he could, or would, see me, drinking.

"You want to hang one on me?" he asked as I walked in.

"Ah, forget that shit," I said. "Where's Abigail?"

"I don't know. I want you to understand that I am sorry."

"Sure," I said, "Sure."

"You don't sound as if you understand it," he said.

"Well just wait a while, man. I'll get over it."

"I am sorry. I'll even tell you why. She wouldn't have me, and here she was…"

"Just forget it, will you? Just forget it," I interrupted. I stopped in the door as I left. "I guess I really mean that," I said.

"I hope so," he said.

"Me too." I left.

The unseasonable fog had thickened while I had talked to Gallard. A Pacific front the dispatcher had said; weather in terms of war. Cold heavy fog curling round corners after me. Down the road, up past the Nineteenth Hole, and in the dimness I hear angry golfers curse the visibility, the weather, the unseasonable fog. "Kismit," I shout at them, and my voice disappears in the vapors. Past the Main Club, standing under the damp limp flag, drinking to see through the mists below me. Just the other side of a three-foot stone wall, a bluff dropped away to the same valley Gallard's house clung to the side of. Just three feet up, then seventy feet down to the first ledge, then bounce through the wet green trees, laugh, bounce, fall, laugh again, ringing across the misty valley.

It took four pulls on the bottle before I saw where they were. I ran up the hill by the Main Club, through the trees on a graveled path, then down into the depression among rows of flowers sleeping with wet drooping heads. At the bottom they both waited in the fog so still that they might have been statues waiting years for my return. He lay on the blanket, propped on one elbow; she leaned against the stone stage, arms folded before her.

"How nice," I said, stopping before them to lay my bottle in his wheelchair.

"What did you expect?" she asked, her lips barely moving.

"This, I suppose. That's why I came here. I believe in betrayal."

"He believes in things, love, for instance, and you believe in nothing. It's different," she said, her face still etched in stone.

"You better believe it. Catch the pun. Tell the truth," I said. "You'd rather scratch your own pussy, have a man for a handmaiden, a legal contract, a toy… You talk a good game, baby, but you can't run with the ball. Well, you've got yourself another cripple. Be sure to convince him that he can't walk; he might want to stand up someday. You couldn't stand that. You gotta have the hurt ones, the drunks, the deserters, the murderers, the slaves, the…" Suddenly I was sitting on my butt. The punch had missed my jaw, but his forearm had pushed me down.

"You don't talk to her like that," Morning said standing over me. "Get up, you bastard, get up."

I rubbed my eyes and face, trying to wipe the whiskey fuzz away. "What you doing, Morning? Shit, you're walking man." I smiled at him.

"You're fucking-A right I'm walking."

"Jesus, that's great. How come you didn't tell me?" I asked.

"You going to fight or not?"

I looked at Abigail; her eyes said please no; I said no.

"Well, get the hell out of here then."

"Jake, he had a right to say those things," Abigail said. "I deserted him at Dick's that night. I should have waited until he got back. Now you stop it."

"Yeah," I said. "Stop it and have a drink and tell me why you can walk."

"Oh, piss on both of you," Morning said, trying not to grin. "I'm sorry I hit you, Krummel, but you shouldn't talk to her like that."

"That's okay," I said; "you missed." I stood up and got the bottle. "Have one on me."

The three of us finished the bottle, then Morning climbed back in his wheelchair, and we took a cab downtown to The New Hollywood Star Bar to drink more. It was a small place, a bar and jukebox on the left, five small tables on the right. We sat at an empty table next to the jukebox. The other four tables were filled by young students wearing faces that glowed with revolutionary ardor and surly middle-aged unemployed gold miners with thick wrists and knotted forearms. Several of both had spoken warmly to Morning as I rolled him in, but more stared at me with hate dark on their faces.

"Hello, Comrades," I said to some of the more sullen ones. They started to rise, but Morning raised his hand and said, "He's just joking. He's all right. He's a friend of mine." To me he said, "Don't mock them, Krummel. They take their politics seriously."

"That's nice," I said, "Let's go some place where they take drinking serious." But Morning didn't answer. I could tell from Abigail's face that she had been in the bar with Morning before, several times.

As we were drinking our third or fourth beer, one of the students walked to the jukebox, which had just stopped playing, lifted the face of the machine, reached inside, and punched off half a dozen songs. Neither of the barmaids even looked up. He walked back past our table, stopped, said hello to Morning, then spoke to Abigail. "How are you tonight American pig cunt? Does it take two of these soft American queers to satisfy you now? You should come to my house sometimes. I fuck two American whores before breakfast, so long they ask me to stop."

"You have a dirty mouth, gook," I said, standing up. Chairs scraped behind me. Abigail and Morning both grabbed at me, saying, in effect, that he didn't mean anything, that he was harmless, but I didn't sit down.

"You don't just fight me, American pig, you fight the party," the Filipino said.

"Oh boy," I snorted. "Well, shit, man, I got God on my side."

"There is no God, capitalistic pig."

"Jesus, son, I hate to tell you that the first thing a revolutionary must do is stay away from clichés."

"Well, you watch it," he said walking away, a superior smile twisting his mouth.

I sat down. "Morning," I said, "You are probably crazy. How come you let him talk to her that way?"

"He didn't mean anything," Abigail interjected.

"That's just his way of telling her he likes her," Morning said.

"You could have fooled me," I said, but let it go at that.

Morning rolled over to the other tables to make peace, but he stayed longer than necessary.

"What's he up to?" I asked Abigail, but the throbbing music covered her answer.

"What?"

"I don't know," she said, louder now. "Trying to get out of the Army, I guess. I don't know."

"You know he's more of a dead-end than even I was?"

"Yes," she said. "Maybe you were right awhile ago. I don't know. I'm just sorry. I've always wanted too much; now I have lost everthing. I'm sorry."

"So am I," I said. "I thought I was going to ask you to marry me tonight."

"Don't say that," she said.

"Okay," I said, so we drank on through swirling smoke and music, silence our only bond.

The hospital began processing my papers one day, then suddenly I had just two weeks left in the Philippines. I was alone now; little to do but drink more in the evenings and limp around nine holes of golf in the mornings and lift weights in the afternoons. Morning still feigned his paralysis, Abigail, her love, and me, indifference. I lifted three hours every afternoon now, hefting weights like a longshoreman on overtime, poisonous sweat squeezed out by the expanding, bursting, exploding muscle cells. My body grew quickly hard again, competent, hard, ready; my limp disappeared. On a quick overnight pass to Manila, I had a fake Swiss passport made, got a Mexican and a South African visa, and called my father to tell him to sell my share of the Santa Gertrudis herd. He didn't ask me why, but he did say he wished I wouldn't. I said I wished I didn't have to. The name on the passport was Robert Jordon; it was a joke; nobody laughed.