T. Boyle - World's End

It was at that point that Truman came into the picture. Like Hesh, he’d been out of the service for nearly four years now — but unlike Hesh and most other veterans, he’d never abandoned the habit of regular physical exercise. He kept himself in trim with the daily regimen of calisthenics, cross-country running and weight-lifting he’d begun when he was with Army Intelligence in England. At thirty-one, he’d barely lost a step on the eighteen-year-old dynamo who’d led Hendrick Hudson to the county championship in two sports. When Hesh realized that someone had to get out, he knew Truman was his man.

Instructing his troops to hold out at all costs, he doubled back down the road to the meadow, passing the forlorn cars and buses of the concertgoers and skirting the stage where a thousand folding chairs stood unoccupied. Hurrying, he caught a glimpse of Christina, white-faced and glum, sitting at the table with her pamphlets, and of the other women gathered in clusters before the empty stage. Here and there children were playing, but in hushed voices and with movements that might have been choreographed for an underwater ballet. One of the unlucky ushers — a girl of sixteen — sat alone beneath the stage, a bright carnation of blood flowering at the neck of her blouse.

He found Truman leaning against a tree that commanded a view of the meadow all the way out to the road at the far end of the property. Piet was with him, and they were conferring in low tones like a pair of military strategists surveying a battlefield — which wasn’t far from the truth of the matter. Their squad had caught two of the patriots out in the open and driven them back, but otherwise things were quiet. Hesh explained the situation and asked Truman if he would try to slip out and get to a phone. It would be dangerous, and he’d have to leave Christina behind, but if he didn’t get through it looked as if the worst was going to happen.

Truman shrugged. Sure, he’d give it a try.

“Good,” Hesh said. “Good. If the troopers know we’ve called out, if they know we’ve got to the papers, they’ll have no excuse — they’ll have to bail us out.”

Truman was staring down at his feet. He glanced up at Hesh and then away again. In the distance, they could hear the mob roaring. “Yeah,” he said, “I’ll go. But I want to take Piet with me.”

Hesh glanced at Piet. His face was expressionless and pale, and his ears seemed unnaturally large in proportion to the rest of him. He couldn’t have been taller than four-eight or — nine, and if he weighed eighty-five pounds, half of it must have been in the funny old-fashioned buckled boots he always wore. “What the hell,” Hesh murmured. “Take him.” Piet wasn’t in this anyway — he’d come on a lark — and he probably couldn’t have held back one of the rednecks’ grandmothers if he’d wanted to. “You sure he won’t slow you down?”

Truman replied that Piet could take care of himself, and then he turned and started off across the field, the little man jogging to keep up with him, all but lost in the high stiff grass. It was the last Hesh — or anyone else — would see of them that night.

Lola paused. She’d lit another cigarette and let it burn itself out. The coffee cup was empty. The first time Walter had heard the story he’d interrupted here to ask what had happened to them; now he wanted to hear it again. “So what happened?”

No one knew for sure. It was as if he and Piet had simply vanished. There was no record of any call to the police or newspapers, Hesh’s knock sounded hollowly on the Dutch door of Piet’s furnished room in Peterskill next morning, and none of the injured at the local hospitals answered to their descriptions. Hesh was afraid they’d been killed, beaten to death by the mob and dumped in a gully along the road. Though he had a headache that was like a mallet inside his skull, though he’d taken ten stitches in his forearms and half a dozen over his right ear, and though he was haggard from stress and lack of sleep, he was up at first light on the morning following the riot, beating the bushes on either side of Van Wart Road. He found nothing. Little did he realize it at the time, but it would be nearly fifteen months before either he or Lola would lay eyes on Truman again. And Piet — Piet was gone for good.

Two days after the riot, Truman turned up at the bungalow out back of the Rosenberg place. By that point, Christina was in shock. Walter was three. He clung to his father’s knees, chanting “Daddy, Daddy,” but Truman ignored him. Truman gave Christina a weak grin and began to pack his things. “We thought you were dead,” she said. “What happened? What are you doing?” He wouldn’t answer her. Just kept packing. Sweaters, underwear, books — his precious books. Walter was crying. “Did they hurt you, is that it?” Christina screamed. “Truman, answer me!”

A car stood in the driveway. It was a Buick, and they say it belonged to Depeyster Van Wart. Piet, barely visible over the dash, was sitting in the passenger seat. “I’m sorry,” Truman said, and then he was gone.

It was nearly a year after the funeral when he turned up again. Unshaven, drunk, sorrowful-looking, in clothes that hung from him like a beggar’s rags, he showed up at Lola’s door, demanding to see his son. “He was abusive, Walter,” Lola said. “A changed man. He called me names.” This wasn’t the man she knew — this was some crazy on a street corner in Times Square, some bum. When Hesh came up from the basement to see what the commotion was about, Truman tried to shove past him and Hesh hit him, hit him in the face and then in the gut. Truman went down on his hands and knees on the front porch, gasping till the tears came to his eyes. Hesh shut the door.

By then, people were certain that Truman had betrayed them, that his sympathies had always been with the “patriots” and that he’d turned his back on family and friends in the most calculating and callous way. Rose Pollack, who hadn’t been able to get into the concert grounds that night, had seen him on the road with Depeyster Van Wart and LeClerc Outhouse just before a criminal put a brick through her windshield, and the day he turned up in the Colony to break the heart of Walter’s mother and pack up his books and underwear, Lorelee Shapiro had seen him driving Van Wart’s car. Or so she said. Lola didn’t know what to think — or Hesh either. They’d loved him, this jubilant and quick-smiling man, their comrade and friend, husband of Christina Alving, father of their godson. After the riots people were hysterical — they were looking for scapegoats. Lola — and Hesh too, Hesh too — had wanted to believe in him, but the evidence was against him. There was the way he’d disappeared, for one thing. And then there was that terrible fateful night of the riot itself.

Truman never called the state police; he never called the Times. And twenty minutes after he started off across the field, a hundred patriots swarmed in from the same direction — unchecked, and shouting filth. “Was it a coincidence, Walter? Was it?” Lola was asking the questions now. Walter said nothing.

It was getting dark, and out on the road the mob had begun to pelt Hesh and his defenders with rocks — fist-sized and bigger, hundreds upon hundreds of them, thudding against the flank of the camp truck, striking men in the face, in the chest and legs and groin. One of the seminary students was knocked flat, his nose smashed to pulp; the stevedore, a huge black man who made a conspicuous target, was already bleeding from a scalp wound when a barrage of stones brought him to his knees.

The patriots were thirty feet away now and closing. Their arms whipped forward, stones boomed off the truck, skittered across the road, hit home with a dull wet thump. Hesh heard that sound, the sound of the butcher’s mallet on a slab of meat — thump, thump, thump — and knew they were finished. He saw the stevedore go down, and then felt himself hit in both legs; in the same instant a stone glanced off his cheek, and when he raised an arm to shield his face, a beer bottle caught him in the ribs. This was ridiculous. Useless. Suicidal. He was no martyr. “Break!” he suddenly roared. “Break and run!” Bleeding, battered, their suits and sportshirts torn to rags, the defenders dropped back, skirted the truck and flung themselves headlong down the darkened road. Behind them, the patriots surged forward with a shout.