James Crumley - One to Count Cadence

Gallard gave another drinking bout, promising to behave if I would. Morning stayed sober longer this time, and he and Gallard argued about the Chinese Communists while Abigail got drunk and I stayed drunkenly sober. When Gallard and Morning walked and rolled to the Main Club for another bottle of gin, together so they could continue the argument, Abigail asked why everyone was ignoring her. I kissed her slack mouth, and said I wasn't. I fucked her on the bamboo couch before she had a chance to protest while one of the maids peeked around the corner of the porch. Abigail, afterward, said I wasn't very nice. I said I wasn't a boy scout, if that was what she meant. Then I fucked the Filipino maid on the kitchen floor while Abigail cried in the doorway. I didn't get any merit badges. When Gallard and Morning came back, I had both maids and Abigail naked in Gallard's big bed. Although Morning had to act crippled, we all jazzed and drank until daylight, then slept until five o'clock. Morning and Abigail argued over breakfast, and it was over between them. She called me a bastard as she left and threw a plate at me; but she missed. Morning and Gallard drank some more, but I followed Abigail home. The next day, I lifted twice, morning and afternoon.

When I had four days left, Morning asked me downtown for a farewell drink. I waited until we were in The New Hollywood Star Bar again before I asked him why farewell drinks now when I had four days left.

"Man," he said, "there has been so much shit between us, and so much good stuff too, that somehow I want to get it straight before I leave."

"No," I said, then pulled on a beer, "before I leave."

He drank, then said nothing. One of the students opened the face of the jukebox, punched some songs, then wandered back to the bar. Marty Robbins came on singing "El Paso" on a scratchy old record, obviously around since the late fifties. When he groaned about "a deep burning pain in my side," Morning nodded, but still kept silent.

When the song finished dying, he said, "No, man, it's me who's leaving first." He waved for more beer. It came, room temperature from a case behind the bar, timid white heads poking over the tops.

"Why?"

"Well, I guess if I can't trust you, man, I can't trust anybody." He looked up very seriously. "I'm joining the Huks."

"So am I," I said, trying to smile.

"Don't joke. I'm not."

"Oh, shit, Morning, get off my ass." But I knew by the sickness in my guts that he wouldn't.

"Man, I know you don't think that the world is worth saving, and in a way, I agree, but I have to do something, I have to try. And this is the only way for me. I can't go back and march in peaceful parades and sing about freedom, man. I can't help register voters for elections that I think are meaningless. I can't work in the slums because I want to tell the people to arm, to burn the fucking country down, to screw the New Frontier and get what they can. Get their guns and run for the hills. But it isn't time for that yet. America is hopeless, and I don't know that this is going to be any better, but it is what I am going to do.

"Man, it is going to take fire for the world to start over again. People have to learn, property has to burn, blood has to run… that's all."

"Peace through war," I said.

"That doesn't sound like you." He had stopped trying to convince me that he was going because he knew he was, and he had stopped trying to convince me that he was right because he didn't care. "Shit, man, you taught me about war and about doing what you think is right, so I'm doing it."

"I never said anything about joining the Huks."

"You didn't have to," he said, taking off his glasses. He cleaned them slowly, then handed them to me. "There. I only need them to read, really, and I'm through with that, with reading and talking and thinking, I'm tired of all that. Give them to Gallard and tell him I'm sorry."

"Well, no sweat," I said, drinking and shaking it off, "they probably won't take you."

"They've already taken me. That's funny. Remember that old man you talked to at the wedding down at Blue Beach. He is a Huk. Sometimes you're pretty smart, Krummel, sometimes. Anyway, they'll use me as a pack-mule till they are convinced, and I will convince them."

"I don't doubt it," I sighed, "but I wonder how long you'll last."

"Long enough."

"Yeah. Think about this. You're not a soldier, Morning. Maybe you're tough and smart, but you don't know anything, you haven't…"

"I know as much as you knew," he interrupted.

I had to smile. "Maybe so. Shit, I don't know. I just hate to see you go."

"No other way for us," he said.

"What about your folks?" I asked.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "It doesn't matter at all."

I stood, then wandered to the latrine, peed, wondering how I might stop him, but when I went back to the table, he was gone, the phony wheelchair sitting empty, his glasses gleaming from the tabletop. There was nothing to say. For an instant I wished that he had died in Vietnam, but I knew I didn't. I sat for a moment in the wheelchair, slipped on his glasses, and drank his beer, but it just didn't fit, so I drank my own.

Two, maybe three hours passed, and I thought nothing, said nothing, and drank very little. The Filipino, the student with the dirty mouth walked up to me, and in not an unfriendly voice said "Hello."

I hit him in the mouth and he tumbled backwards into the latrine.

I sat and the music and talk went on for perhaps fifteen seconds, then stopped. I took an easy drink of beer and when the student nearest behind me swung at the back of my head, I ducked, and elbowed him in the ribs. You could hear them break like a bow snapping. He lay on the floor, out of it, and I moved into the corner by the jukebox. There were seven of them, but only two miners, and they were all moving toward me, but I wasn't waiting.

I went for the nearest miner, catching half a dozen punches on my head and shoulders as I went. I had my neck tucked inside my chest and I wasn't waiting. I blocked the miner's roundhouse with a left and his foot with my knee, then hit him in the throat. As he went down, a wave of bodies hit my back, but I rolled as I fell, and came up with my back to the door. The other miner came first and I took two good shots to the forehead before I grabbed his arm and swung him out the door. He rolled over the hood of a car (and a taxi ran over his arm and the driver went for the police).

The bodies again flew at my back and forced me to the wall, but my foot came down on a shin with the edge of my shoe and I caught an inquisitive nose with the back of my head and smashed it like a tomato, and I rolled out again.

They had me in the middle now, swinging, kicking. I missed with a right, hit the top of a lowered head, and felt the bones give way. Kick one inside the thigh, miss another's kneecap, and fall under their hands and shoes. I know I was down and up at least twice, because I remember, and then there was just reeling darkness and spinning lights and sunbursts and darkness. Once, crouched against the bar, I felt broken glass under my hands and knees and wondered why it wasn't cutting. Then someone kicked my head against the bar and the black whirlwind fire blew again.

I came back as the sirens approached, but when I stood, the room tilted and I stumbled across the room to the far wall, then rolled back to the bar. The barroom looked like hell, furniture splintered, blood, glass, a tooth shining in a puddle of beer, an empty shoe under a broken table… I closed my eyes, reeled again, then opened them. I felt my face: nose, somehow, intact; a lump as big as my nose on my right cheek; a gap in my lip up through my moustache for my tongue to tiddle; teeth, traditionally strong, still there, but loose; another lump with the skin split across it like a splintered mirror; lumps on my head. Second and third knuckle of the right hand pushed halfway back to the wrist. Half an inch of my left ear disconnected from my head. Flesh on palms and knees sliced. Blood all over. In the mirror behind the bar, I looked as if I had already bled to death, but I was alive, and able to walk now.