Prologue
In those days they didn’t have jobs; they lived on checks they got at the post office from the Federal Government.
Whatever made him run away from Oakland to the Wild West seemed to have been taken care of, one way or another. Maybe what he wanted was freedom. Maybe he looked around and saw that everybody was imprisoned by Oakland, by their own small neighborhoods; everybody was breathing the same air, inheriting the same seats in school, taking the same stale jobs as their fathers and living in the same shabby stucco homes. Maybe it all looked to him like a prison or a trap, the way everybody expected him to do certain things because they had always been done a certain way, and they expected him to be good at doing these strange, meaningless, lonely things, and maybe he was afraid—of the buildings, the smoke, the stink of the bay, the gray look everybody had. Maybe he was afraid that he too would become one of these grown people whose faces were blank and lonely, and he too would have to satisfy himself with a house in the neighborhood and one of the girls from high school and a job at one or another factory and just sit there and die of it. So he ran for the only frontier he ever heard about and became a cowboy. But of course he brought it all with him when he ran, and it kept at him, jabbing, destroying, murdering, until he himself was all gone and nothing was left but a man’s body doing work.
Part One
There were worse things than being broke, but for the moment Jack Levitt could not think of any of them.
Already he felt better, just making a list of his desires. That put limits on them.
He went off toward the bar, and Billy waited a moment and then sat down and watched the nine-ball game. There was nothing else for him to do. For eight hours on the bus he had been preparing himself for this entry into Portland, this triumph, and it had come and gone so quickly that it did not seem to have happened at all. It should have been more dramatic; somebody should have yelled about a nigger in the joint, people should have taken sides, and he should have silenced it all by his brilliant play.
“I don’t want to play no snooker,” Billy said. He did not know why; there was something in his mind about being the best, but he did not want to face that. Because, he thought, it’s not the truth. I don’t want to be the best. I aint the best. I’ll never be the best. But he did not want to play snooker, take the sucker’s money, while all the time the really good players were laughing at him.
What a mark! Playin a machine! To Billy that was like throwing the money out a window.
Billy was on the other side of the table, chalking his cue, and he looked up with unveiled surprise into Jack’s eyes. “You bettin on me?”
“Sure. You gonna win, aint you?”
Mano was strange; people had hinted that he was a drug addict, a queer, lots of things, but Jack didn’t know anything about it; he only saw Mano as a very cool man who never seemed to be too far from the money.
Just because he had been to the Model Hotel the day before and again that very afternoon meant nothing. He wanted a girl very badly. Some were even pretty, and he decided he wanted the prettiest one for himself.
“No,” Billy said. “I know it’s gonna be tough, me bein colored an all that; but I figure I can take it, cause I got the skill, see? An that makes all the difference. My old man, shit, he’s got no skills or nothin, so when they layin off all the colored people he goes out of his head, runs around the house drunk an cryin over himself. An there’s a lot of us to feed, man, so I just cut out, you know? I mean to make it.”
He got up, his joints already rusty, and moved back toward the house. He could still hear them talking about their future plans as he went into the house. It was not a significant moment for any of them, but later on, when Jack had plenty of time to think, the moment took on significance: it was the last time he was to see either of them for years. He thought about them, both of them, often, as he sat in darkness and dreamed away his past; thought of Denny’s friendliness, his openhearted kindness; blew it up all out of proportion, made Denny into a kind of saint in his memory; effectively destroyed the real Denny—thought about Billy and about his talent, his courage, exaggerated him as he did with Denny, so that both boys became almost symbolic of what he lacked, or what he dreamed, in darkness, that he lacked. Then he forgot about them as he forgot about almost everything. But that was later.
Part Two
Jack nodded and drank some of his beer. He did not add that he had also bucked logs, worked in a cannery and a furniture factory, robbed gas stations, rolled drunks, and lived in half a hundred arid furnished rooms, pretended the vacuum was freedom, wakened almost daily to the fear that time was a dry wind brushing away his youth and his strength, and slept through as many nightmares as there were nights to dream. He just sat and smiled at Denny and saw what time had done to him and wondered, now comfortably, why he was so bothered by time. It happens to everybody this way, he thought, we sit here and get older and die and nothing happens.
After a while he did not even hate them for it.
The State Senator sent one of the guards for the punishment records, and Jack for the first time learned how long he had been in there, the State Senator saying in an amazed, almost hushed voice, that according to these records, this boy has been in this cell for 87 days, and with shock making his voice tremble, the State Senator demanded that the cell be opened and the boy brought out, and Jack did not know whether the State Senator was planning to free him or just wanted to see what kind of animal could live in total darkness for 87 days without dying, because when the door opened and the faint light blazed against Jack’s eyes, something dark and joyful exploded inside him and he hit the State Senator, grabbed at him, and tried to murder him, out of control, feeble, fumbling, helpless, nevertheless with his hands on the State Senator’s throat and his fingers squeezing, odd noises in his ears, almost drowned out by a roaring sound from within; and then the guards pulled him off the Senator and threw him back in his cell, and the State Senator went back to Salem and the investigation went into file thirteen, and that was the end of that.
He worked in eastern Oregon, bucking logs for a wildcat outfit in the mountains between Oregon and Idaho, for half a year, letting the sun and the hard work burn strength and calm into him, and when at last he got fired for fighting, it was all right, because he was not trying to kill the man; the man had gotten drunk and started bothering Jack, and so they fought, but as men fight, not animals, and after they both got fired they went to Boise together and got good and drunk together, and Jack knew that he was going to be all right.
By little things he said, by his attitude of pretended boredom and suavity in front of the girls, Jack knew that Denny was having a high old time, that this life of girls, clubs, comic books, and whiskey was all Denny wanted out of life, and that the mystery of where and how he got his money enhanced his own sense of importance. This was not like the Denny Jack remembered from Portland; the old Denny had not done any faking at all. This was one of the things that time had done to him. This, and the thickening, and the wariness around his eyes.
Jack was on the verge of saying, “All right, let’s do it,” but something stopped him; not fear, certainly not the illegality—he had done much worse things—but perhaps the very cheapness of it. Robbing a liquor store, was that what he was cut out for? He had come to the city to think, and now he was being offered a proposition that again would make thinking unnecessary—but it all seemed so endlessly dull; an infinite series of holdups, parties, girls, bad dinners, and worse hotel rooms—he could not see any difference between this and working for a living, and with working there was not that nagging anxiety about being braced by the police.
No, that was not true. He had them, and he didn’t want to be without them, but they didn’t work. They didn’t make him feel better. They just helped him stay alive.
But it palled; everything finally got old if you dreamed about it to much; everything but drinking, and with drinking you could always throw up and start over. Eventually, he passed out.
Just as we were coming out of my room, the bigger of the cops put his hand on my shoulder and asked me if I wanted another drink, and I said yes, and he went back and got one of my bottles and I took a long one, and then he took one, put the bottle back, and said to me, ‘Boy, we’re going to kill you.’
“I felt glad. I really liked that cop. He told me the truth, that cop did, and I really liked him for it. I wanted to reach out and kiss him, or at least shake his hand. He was a good cop.”
This particular citizen was very popular while he was in the tank. He played shrewd poker and won a lot of money, marveling that the men got to play cards all day and saying he wouldn’t mind coming here every so often just to get in the game. He appeared before the sanitary court, took his few token whacks and fines with good humor, obeyed the rules of the tank, was friendly to everybody and did not act superior, and at the end of his ten days went downstairs to the cafeteria and left money and orders for packs of cigarettes to be delivered in his name to “the boys on the top floor.” He was a chemist by profession and everybody admired him for his education, breeding, and good manners.
By recapitulating the past Billy was in a sense getting out of the present, getting back into the world outside, as if by the magic of speech and memory he could for a few hours free himself from the cell, and as far as Jack was concerned, it worked. It not only drew Billy out, it took Jack with him, by the very simple fact that Jack could not think about Billy and think about himself at the same time. So, for a few hours each evening, the two of them wandered around the northern parts of the United States, living, reliving, the life of a small-time gambler. Those things Jack thought he would miss most, the colors and tastes of life on the outside, came back to him as he tried to picture the things Billy talked about, and often afterward he would lie on his bunk and wonder with some inner excitement if he wasn’t developing a hidden resource in his imagination; if there weren’t, after all, ways of beating the joint without actually leaving.
I didn’t want to go to college; that was a bunch of shit. It was okay for some of them guys; hell, they was gonna end up runnin the country, you know? College is okay for them an for the cats who want to find some nice safe hole and crawl in it, but that wasn’t me. I know, because I wasn’t there three months before I had me a poker game goin in my room, an I was pushin benny at final time; taught them college athletes how to play nine-ball at the rec hall an was just rollin in money. Sure I studied. All the goddam time I’d be up all night hittin the books, but it didn’t make any difference; the only courses I got anywhere with were biology and algebra; the rest were Cs and Ds, an you know me, daddy, I got to be up in the top or I don’t play. So, shit. After a while, I felt like an asshole. You know, the worse thing in the whole fuckin world is to wake up in the middle of the night, when you’re helpless, man, an think to yourself, Billy, you’re a phony. You went to college because your heart ached, an now your heart aches still! What’s the matter, you sick? You lonely?
I’m thinkin about all that shit, you know, there aint no God and the world is the worse fuckin place there is an we’re all out to eat each other up and everything goes, an I’m just a speck in a universe full of specks an one of these days there’s gonna be one less speck an nobody will know
He often dreamed of running away, and several times he did go out on the road, but he always knew he would be back.
It was really over before the game started. Billy knew it, he knew he had defeated the fat man’s spirit, and all that was left was to win the actual game. The fat man won the toss and broke safe, as one always does one-pocket, and then Billy sized up the lay of the balls very carefully, his whole body burning with a kind of calm ecstasy, shot what would have been a safety even if he had missed, a two-rail bank that dropped into his pocket without even touching the side rails. Then he made two more balls and left the cue ball frozen to the far rail. The fat man shot safe, and Billy made another bank, this time three rails and the cue ball safe anyway, made the shot, and ran out. The game was over. Billy took all the money, counted it, put his thousand dollars back in his shirt pocket and the rest in his pants pocket. Then he went back to the counter and began tipping another cue. He did not even see the fat man and his friends leave.
The fat man burst into the bowling alley a little after midnight, his two friends with him. He walked right up to Billy, who was seated in the customer’s chair of his shoeshine stand watching a game of nine-ball on the number one table.
“Come on down out of there, my friend,” the fat man said. “We got to talk.”
Billy grinned down at him. “I’se comfy,” he said.
“What would you like to play tonight?”
“You rob a bank or somethin?”
The fat man smiled coyly. “I got money. What do you want to play?”
“What makes you think I want to play at all? I’m tired. I worked all day, mon.”
“Shee. You’ll play. Come on, what’s your best game?”
“One-pocket.”
“Never. You’re the best one-pocket player in the world.” The fat man reflected for a moment, and then said, as if it had just occurred to him, “How about some eight-ball?”
“Not in this life; you’re the best eight-ball player in the world.” Around and around, Billy thought.
“Well, I brought the money, I’d like to gamble.”
“Where you goin, Billy?” the kid asked him.
He smiled. “Out to win that money back, boy. You think I like to lose?” But he knew it was a lie, and he was leaving out of shame. Outside, it was raining hard. Conscious of the deliberate irony, he took a cab to the Greyhound bus depot. He did not telephone his wife. The shame included her. I am a child, he thought. When am I going to grow up?
Jack wept that night, bitterly. He could find no thought to comfort himself. He could not even be enraged, only desolated, and more lonely than he had ever been in his life. There was nothing for him to do but weep, and he wept.
Part Three
After the death of Billy Lancing, Jack broke down and cried only once more, when the news arrived that Claymore had escaped from Alcatraz.
Somehow, it did not sound true. It was all too easy. Yet, such things did happen, he supposed.
“What is your problem, then?”
“I just told you. I want everything sometimes. And I’m not going to get everything. Ever.”
A month later they were married, and Sally supplied to him the two things he lacked: ambition and direction. She discovered he was really just a bum, whose only true love was sailing on the bay, and whose interest in acting stemmed from the fact that he knew he was good at it, and he knew people paid a lot of money to good actors. He hoped someday he would be discovered, but meanwhile he was content to live a marginal existence on borrowed money, unemployment, the GI Bill, or whatever presented itself. Another reason he liked acting, she discovered, was because actors worked at night, when you couldn’t sail anyway.
The tide was going out, and as they sat on the sand and ate their lunch, they could see the waves beginning to break dramatically over the long brown fingers of reef, and watched a calm lagoon form right in front of them. There was a kelpy iodine smell to the air, and Jack was overwhelmed by a desire to go out and wade in the lagoon, to get into the water. He took Sally by the hand and led her down to the edge of the sand and they waded out into the weed-filled, gently undulating water. She seemed to understand his mood and said nothing; she understood that he was discovering this immensity for the first time, and she did not want to spoil it for him by admitting that it no longer had the same attraction for her, that she had made the discovery when she was twelve and become bored with it by the time she was eighteen. But she followed Jack through the water, and climbed up onto the slippery reef with him, and watched him discovering the tide pools, squatting in fascination at the perfection of calm and beauty, the scuttling hermit crabs, the tiny green shrimp, the rock fish and snails and flowery anemones, such a peaceful community right there at your feet; listened to his exclamations of discovery and answered his questions about which animals were which, until needles of pain shot through the backs of her knees and her eyes smarted from the glitter of the sun on the water; but when she stood up and suggested that they get some coffee and have a cigarette he just gave her a dirty look and then went on staring down into the water, and she had to go back alone.
It made her feel so bitter she wanted to cry.
“We have to have kids,” he said stubbornly. “Or it’s all bullshit.”
“Maybe it’s all bullshit anyway,” she said. As if saying goodbye to something ineffable, something long gone anyway, she held her arms out to him, and they made what passed for love. Just to be sure, they made love fifteen nights in a row, and the irony was that these hurried matings were the least loving in their marriage. When Sally’s period was eight days late (and she was very regular), she disappeared and was gone for a week.
Jack went nearly crazy. He thought she might have jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, or done something equally dramatic and final. But he was stubborn, too, and he would not look for her. He did not have that right. They were only married, as she had once said, not sewn together.
Anyway, I don’t like the idea of murdering the possible. Of course, I can afford such ethics, now.
So he had finally admitted it, in the only possible set of words he could use. Still, he did not feel any better.
Gradually, through his books, his records, his long walks alone, the mere passage of time, he would begin to come to terms with his life as it was. He became an observer. He began to taste his food and to smell the air. He saw things and felt them. The earth became real, and at times he was capable of sensing the pleasure of existence. Other times were not so good. There were evenings when he would drink too much and get to feeling sorry for himself, and at such times he was easy to provoke. Among the regulars of North Beach he became known as a likable but unpredictable character, and it amused him to see the wariness in their eyes.
His life was temporary. He continued to park cars for a living, and he stayed in hotels and ate in restaurants, but for the time being, that was enough. Not that he planned to spend the rest of his life this way. He did not plan anything.
“Nobody’s fault again,” Jack said. “Nobody’s ever at fault. Not the way you see things.”
Epilogue
Bronson was sixty years old, and he was beginning to expect that he would die before Billy grew to manhood. He would sometimes wake up at night and feel it all slipping through his fingers. In all his life, he was beginning to understand, he had learned only two things: how to earn money, and how to enjoy himself. There had always been a cheap streak in him, a yearning for the fashionable, the flashy, the hip; and he had learned how to turn this to his advantage, to use it for his pleasure instead of as a source of guilt. Well, that was something. But it was not enough. What he really wanted was to endure, to live forever. It was the penalty you paid for living for pleasure, for yourself. You lived so beautifully that when you came to die...