Denis Johnson - The Resuscitation of a Hanged Man

“Turn around, turn around, turn around — Jambo, you hear me?” Louis said.

“What’s the matter?”

“You were almost off the road. Don’t you realize anything?”

“I’m driving, man. I’m driving this car.”

“Okay.”

“I’m driving.”

“All right!”

They drove for a long time down Route 6. Then the streetlamps revolved overhead as they turned into a town. A number of thoughts swarmed through English’s skull — as to his duty now to observe the scene and memorize landmarks, as future evidence — like wild horses over a hill and down and out of sight.

He felt carsick, but couldn’t stop watching as the light of streetlamps passed repeatedly over the driver’s chest and wide neck.

Jambo stopped the car on a tree-lined street in front of a building that might have been a church or a village hall.

The little town seemed locked down for the winter. Nothing moved on the street except the brittle wind. Jambo lit a cigarette and rested his forearm on the steering wheel, never letting go of the pistol.

“Whatsisfuck got hit right here, last winter. Dead,” he said. “He refused to look both ways.”

Louis rolled down his window. “You cold?” he asked English.

“I don’t have a shirt,” English said.

“That’s what caused me to ask,” Louis said.

“Louis,” Jambo said, stretching convulsively to dip his ash out Louis’s window, “don’t talk to the guy.”

“It was just about the temperature.”

“I mean it, man. You’re better off. Just be like a doctor. Surgical.”

Louis changed the subject. “Nobody’s here, man.”

“Give me a list of your other famous discoveries,” Jambo said with disgust, starting the car.

“Where are we going now?” Louis said.

Jambo turned off the car again. “Fuck if I know.”

English closed his eyes and counted to one hundred. He started over at one again.

“There was this nurse in detox?” Louis told Jambo with shyness, as if trying not to brag. “And when I got out of there she said, ‘Come on over.’ So I went there and they were having a party. So, I was feeling pissed off, because it’s like, when she said, Come over, I thought she meant, you know, come over, just me . But anyway …” He cleared his throat, and stopped talking.

Jambo laughed. “Me and this guy I was in the service with, Eddie Martin. We picked this whore up and I said, ‘Eddie, get in the back seat, she’s gonna blow me in the car.’ Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!” He imitated a vacuum cleaner.

English put his head between his knees. Louis pulled him back up by the hair.

“Whoosh! Whoosh! Oh, baby. ‘Five dollars,’ she says.” Jambo smacked his palm loudly with the pistol. “Bam! How’s that for five dollars? Out cold! And Eddie says, ‘What’d you do?’ He come around and starts jerking off right over her, she’s out cold: ‘Best I ever had!’” As Jambo tasted this memory again, bouncing up and down in the driver’s seat and repeating, “Best I ever had!” and miming the rapid hand flutter of masturbation, English started to cry, squeezing out his voice in a whisper so as not to be heard.

In a few minutes, the headlights of another car washed over them.

“That’s him,” Jambo said.

He turned around and nudged English upright with the gun. “This is a 9 millimeter Browning automatic.” He forced the barrel between English’s legs. “I don’t wanna hurt nobody,” he said.

“A pickup truck ran him down, man, and he died right there, right out front,” Jambo was saying, “died with over a thousand dollars in his wallet.”

In the light he turned out to be a wide-faced blond man.

English thought this must be a very old public restroom in what must be a basement. The floors were concrete. Mildew streaked the walls. The urinals were metal, and in a distant area of shadows there appeared to be shower stalls. Equipment hung from the walls — ropes, mops, brooms. A tang of cleanser.

English himself sat in a wooden cane-bottom chair talking to a man who wore a gigantic novelty hat of furry silver-blue velvet, nearly a yard in diameter.

“Am I on LSD?” English asked.

The man indicated Jambo, who stood over English. “Some items are missing. Why did you steal things from this person’s house?”

“I didn’t. You — there’s a big mistake,” English said, and Jambo came around with the flat of his automatic pistol on the side of English’s ear. “Tell me what to do,” English said. “I’ll do anything.” In the ringing of his head, the words sounded like fuzz.

He looked at Louis, who stood aside watching Jambo out of wounded, soulful eyes.

The man lifted the brim of his colossal hat and wiped the perspiration from his brow with the back of his hand. “Get me a chair,” he said, and Louis brought him a wooden chair.

He sat down in front of English, very close, and leaned forward into English’s face. “Some items are missing. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“I promise—”

“There is no mistake. Think back. Some items are missing. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“I swear to God, I swear to Christ,” English said, “I don’t know.”

“What did you take?” the man said.

For God’s sake, what did I take? he asked himself. If they said so, then he’d done it.

“Think.”

The dawn burst. “The passports?”

“The passports. That could be a part of it, the passports.”

“Oh, God, the passports.”

“Your word. Passports is your word.”

“This is a really — it’s a bad situation,” English said. “They’re gone.”

“That’s just what I told you to start with. We’re getting nowhere.” The man stood up. “Are we getting anywhere?”

“Yes,” English insisted, “yes, we are. You didn’t say anything about passports. I told you passports.”

“Who said anything about passports?”

“I — look — you’re not asking me anything. Just ask me and I’ll tell you. Anything.”

“Where are the missing items?”

“They’re down a sewer opening at Cutter Street and Bradford. Practically in front of Ray Sands’s house. I thought if they — I didn’t want to get in trouble. They were lying around. He died. I thought somebody, you know, lawyers — maybe I’d be an accessory.” He thought he should look higher than the man’s knees, that self-respect required it, but he couldn’t. “Did you know Ray Sands had a heart attack?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man said. “Ray Sands. Passports. It’s a mystery.”

“But you said—” English said.

“Items.”

“Right, you’re right. You didn’t say anything about anything. You’re right.”

“Items.”

“Right, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Are you a tough guy?”

“Me?” English said. “No, no.”

The man turned away and English was afraid he was readying something that would hurt.

“I was in a fight once,” English said, “in a bar. I got knocked off the stool, right off the stool, one punch. Not much of a fight,” he apologized. He longed to please these men, to amuse them. “How many cards are there in this deck, anyway?” he said, crying.

Louis was saying, “He dudn’ know nuthin. Can’t you see he don’t know fuck?”

And the man in the huge blue hat pointed at himself and said, “This individual thinks he knows something. The problem is you, the problem is your attitude.”

Louis punched English twice in the mouth, once with each fist.

“You’re like a kid who doesn’t want to wash his mommy’s car,” the man told Louis. “How can this person feel encouraged to share?”