John Hawkes - The Lime Twig

Moments later, back through the oppression: “Go down on your knees if you have to, Sparrow. …”

And the steam lay on the body of Jimmy Needles, and Cowles looked dead away. He thought he saw shadows through the puffs and billowing of the whiteness and he longed more than anything for a towel, a scrap of cloth to clutch to himself, to wipe against his eyes. In the anonymity of the Baths, amidst all those naked and asleep, he heard again the sounds and now he tried to rouse the trainer: “Cowles,” whispering, “Come awake now, Cowles.”

But then there was the ice blow of the water, and he heard the grunt of the child and pail’s ring even before the sharp splash covered him from head to foot. He froze that moment and the skin of his shoulders, legs, back and buttocks pained with the weight of the cold more shocking than a flame. When he bolted upright, finished wiping the water from his eyes, he found that Cowles was gone and in a glance saw nothing of Needles except a small hand losing hold of the flat boards as the jockey shimmied down and away.

So he followed and several times called out: “Cowles, Cowles!” But he got no answer. He crouched and crept down the length of one wall, made his way in blindness and with the floor slats cutting into his feet. He moved toward the center and was guided by the edges of the tables.

And then there were three separate holes in the steam clouds and in one he saw the stooping figure of the man with the beret; in another he saw Thick scratching his chin; and in the last, the nearest, the broad tall body of Larry fully dressed, and his dark-blue suit was a mass of porous serge wrinkled and wet as a blotter. The cloth hung down with steam. The shirt, at collar, cuffs, and across the chest, was transparent as a woman’s damp chemise and the chest was steel. He carried a useless handkerchief and the red was quickly fading from his tie, dripping down over the silken steel. Thick was wearing a little black hat that dripped from the brim, and Sparrow’s battle trousers were heavy with the water of the Baths.

Banks squatted suddenly, then spoke: “What are you after now? Three beggars, isn’t it?”

Without answering or looking down at him the men began to fade. Not gone suddenly behind the vapor’s thick intrusion, but merely becoming pale, more pale as shred by shred the whiteness accumulated in the holes where they stood. A sleeve, a hand, the tall man’s torso, a pair of wet shoes — these disappeared until nothing was left of the trio which, out of sight, continued then the business of hunting despite the steam.

“Go on,” he heard himself saying, “go on, you bloody beggars. …”

Slowly he crawled under the braces of the table and after them. The steam was heavy and his eyes began to smart. He tore his calf on a splinter. Once more, and for the last time in the Baths, he came upon the toe of Larry’s black boot, followed the trouser leg upwards to the lapel where a yellow flower was coming apart like tissue, saw the crumpled handkerchief thrust in his collar, the sheen of perspiration on the high cheeks, the drops of water collected around the eyes. But still there was the casual lean to the shoulders, one hand in one wet pocket as if he had nothing better to do than direct this stalking through a hundred and ten degrees and great dunes of steam. The boot moved, turned on the toe leather so that he saw the heel neatly strengthened by a bit of cobbler’s brass, and the man was gone again, saying: “… Found him, Thick? Have a go under the steam pipes then.”

And he himself was creeping off again, feeling his foot drag through a limpid pool, feeling the sediment on his skin. His hair was paste smeared across his scalp. He felt how naked he was, how helpless.

Then, still on all fours, he came to the comer. Under the wooden shelving, lying half-turned against a stretch of soapstone, bent nearly double at the angle of meeting walls, crowded into this position on the floor of the Baths was Cowles’ body with the throat cut. Banks crept up to him and stared and the trainer was a heap of glistening fat and on one puffy shoulder was a little black mole, growing still, Banks realized, though the man was dead. And though this Cowles — he had had his own kill once, kept dirty rooms in a tower in the college’s oldest quad, had done for the proctor with a fire iron and then, at 4 A.M., still wearing the gown darned like worn-out socks, had stolen the shallow punt half-filled with the river’s waters and, crouched heavily in the stem with the black skirts collected in his lap, had poled off under the weeping willow trees and away, lonely, at rest, listening to the fiends sighing in nearby ponds and marshes — though this Cowles now lay dead himself his blood still ran, hot and swift and black. His throat was womanly white and fiercely slit and the blood poured out. It was coming down over the collar bone, and above the wound the face was drained and slick with its covering of steam. One hand clutched the belly as if they had attacked him there and not in the neck at all.

Just as Banks caught the lime rising at the odor of Cowles’ blood he felt flesh striking against his flesh, felt a little rush of air, and Jimmy Needles lunged at him in passing and fled, hunting for the door. Before he himself could move he heard a sound from the wood above Cowles’ corpse, glanced up, and peered for several moments into the congealed blue-tinted face of the constable: an old man’s naked face reflecting cow and countryside, pint-froth and thatch in all the hard flat places of its shape.

“Here now, what’s this deviltry. …”

But then Banks too was gone, no longer crawling but running, with the unhelmeted head of the constable and the sight of Cowles’ freshly cut throat before him, reaching the door as he heard the hiss and exhalation of new blinding steam and the cry of the old nude member, only member, of the constabulary showered that moment from the small boy’s icy pail.

His hand slipped on the knob but it shut finally against the pushing of the steam, and the jockey handed him a towel. He covered himself, leaned back, stared at the bench upon which, shoulder to shoulder, were seated the three of them — Sparrow and Thick and Larry — with pools at their feet. Banks held the towel with both hands under the chin, looked at the dark men on the bench and the row of clothes hooks curling from the wall behind them. There was water about his own feet now.

“What did you kill him for?” Watching Larry in the middle but seeing the silks fluttering over the hump at the peak of the jockey’s spine: “Whatever for?” It was little more than a whisper above which he could hear the water falling from three pairs of hands, dropping from three sets of trouser cuffs. The flower had disappeared altogether from the blue lapel.

“Oh, come on,” said Sparrow, getting up, wringing the beret, “let’s have a dash to Spumoni’s!”

In the dusk surrounding the Baths the bees swarmed straight off the klaxon and made a golden thread from the bicycle to a nearby shrouded tree.

It seemed hardly more than teatime but it was dusk, fast coming on to nightfall when there’s a fluttering in steeples and the hedgerow turns lavender, when lamps are lit on ancient taxis and the men are parading slowly in the yards of jails. Castles, cottages and jails, a country preparing for night, and time to set out the shabbiness for the day to come, time for a drink.

Sparrow felt the mood: “Give us another liter of that Itie stuff,” he said. The waiter filled their glasses and Larry heaped the plates with second servings of the spaghetti and tomato sauce. The waiter could see the blue butt and shoulder holster inside his coat. “Cheers,” said Sparrow, while Jimmy Needles drank his health.

And between the tables: “You dance divine,” said Sybilline, “just divine. …”