Then Draeger said, "Let's go" and Floyd Evenwrite said, "Yeah, back where there's still some brotherhood in this world," and they picked their way in the dark back along the plank. Behind them Evenwrite heard a choking laugh start up again--"Break our contract to meet your contract so we can sell"--and heard Hank join in the laughter. "The toplofty cock-sucker," he said. "He don't know it yet, but he's real due to be brought down a few pegs."
"Uhuh," Draeger agreed, but his thoughts were obviously elsewhere.
At the boat Evenwrite snapped his fingers. "Damn. We should've asked him--" Then stopped cold. "No, no, I'm goddammed if I will."
"Should have asked him what, Floyd?"
"Never mind. Nothing."
"Nothing?" Draeger seemed amused and in even better spirits than before they had made this dumb-ass trip. "Ask him nothing?"
"I guess nothing. I knew better. I knew it was like talkin' to a signpost. We shouldn't of come. We should of knew better. That's exactly correct: we should of asked him nothing."
Evenwrite untied the back rope with blind, frozen fingers and climbed into the launch. "Darn," he muttered to himself, feeling his way to the back of the boat. "I should of asked him anyway; he couldn't of said more than no. And he might of come through, just out of contrariness. Then at least the trip wouldn't been a complete goose-egg. . . ."
Draeger returned to his seat in the front of the boat. "The trip wasn't a goose-egg, Floyd," he mused aloud, "not a goose-egg by any means." Then, as an afterthought: "Should have asked them what?"
Evenwrite gave the motor rope a furious yank. "For smokes! We should have asked him for smokes is what."
He got the motor started and swung the little running light away from the dark into the murky fume of rain, turning down river, he realized with a groan, just in time to buck the incoming tide.
By the time Teddy saw Evenwrite and Draeger crossing the street back to the Snag, all the other men had gone home. From his lair of colored light near the front window he watched the way the two men moved after they entered the bar, studying them with veiled intensity: Floyd is uncomfortable. Evenwrite examined the wet ruin of his clothes with irritated and jerky pluckings. He is changed some since he came out of the woods and into the white-collar world, like a molting chicken that longed terribly to pluck at the annoying itch of its feathers, yet feared just as much to be naked. Floyd used to come in from work like the animal he is, wet and weary and not worried about it; a stupid animal, but a comfortable one . . . He finally sighed and loosened his belt so he could sit without having his wet slacks cut him in half . . . Now he is just stupid. And scared. Floyd has added to the normal fear of the dark a worse fear: the fear of falling. After folding his pudgy hands across his stomach to try to conceal the bulge that had been building steadily since he had been voted into that white-collar world, Evenwrite sighed again with discomfort and disgust, and frowned across the table, where Draeger was still carefully hanging his overcoat. "All right, now, Jonathan . . . all right." And worst of all, he is too stupid to know he isn't high enough to fall very far.
Draeger finished with his coat, then unhurriedly brushed the rain from his slacks; when he was satisfied he pulled out a chair and sat down and placed his hands on the table, one on top of the other. "All right?" he said, This Mr. Draeger, though, he's up in a position of some height, looking as neat and composed as Evenwrite looked disarranged. "All right what, Floyd?" So why doesn't he act afraid of falling?
"What? All right what the fuck are we gonna dammittohell do is all right what! I mean to say, I'm waiting, Jonathan. Christ, I been waiting a week for you to show up around here an' go to earnin' your pay. . . . I waited yesterday when you said hold off until you looked over the situation, an' I waited today while you took a little joyride up to the Stamper house, an' now I want to know what you aim to do!"
Draeger reached into the breast pocket of his jacket for his tobacco pouch. "Do you suppose you can hold off until I fill my pipe?" he asked pleasantly. "And order a drink?" Floyd rolled his eyes and sighed again. Teddy came gliding out of his lair to wait beside the table. "I'd like a whisky if you don't mind," Draeger said, smiling up at him, "to take off the chill of that little joyride. You, Floyd?"
"Nothing, no," Evenwrite answered. Draeger said "one" with his lips adding, "I. W. Harper's," and Teddy melted backward into the throbbing light. Not any fear of dark, not any fear of falling . . . like he knows something the rest of us don't.
"Now, Floyd." Draeger puffed his pipe to life. "Exactly what is it you expect me to do? You talk as though you expect me to hire a gang of labor goons and go back up there and burn the Stampers out." He laughed softly.
"That don't sound like such a bad idea, for my money. Burn his whole by god business, mill, trucks, an' everything."
"You're still thinking in the thirties, Floyd. We've learned a few things since then."
"Yeah? Well, I've yet to see them. Leastways in the thirties they got results, those old boys did. . . ."
"Oh? I'm not so sure. Not the desired results, anyway. Those old boys' tactics quite often tended to make the opposition set its jaw and dig in firmer than ever--ah, here we are. . . ." He moved his arm to allow Teddy to place the shot glass of whisky in front of him. "Thank you--and, oh, Teddy--could I have a glass of water?" He turned back to Evenwrite and went on. "And, in this particular case, Floyd--unless I'm completely off base about Hank Stamper--I can think of nothing that would make the opposition set its jaw any firmer than burning his 'whole by god business.' . . ." He picked up the shot glass and smiled into its amber contents reflectively. "No, I don't think one could choose a worse method against this man. . . ."
"I don't follow you."
"I think you do. You know this man better than I do. If you wanted him to travel east when he had it in his mind to go west, would you get behind him with a whip and try to drive him your way?"
Evenwrite thought a moment, then slapped the table. "By god yes, I would! If he was heading toward walking all over me coming west. Yes! Even if it meant--even if it might mean him raising a fuss . . ."
"Raising quite a fuss, too, in all likelihood, isn't that right? A long and costly fuss, you could be sure. Even if you finally got your way. Because this man obviously thrives on physical opposition. He can understand it. He's oriented to react like a boxer. If you hit him, he'll hit back."
"All right, all right! I'm tired of hearin' what Hank Stamper'll do. I want to know what you aim to do now that you got him figured so good."
Teddy slid a small glass of water onto the placemat in front of Draeger and stepped back, unnoticed, watching. What is it you aim to do? "To be perfectly frank, Floyd, I think all we need to do is wait," he said--What is it you know we don't?--and tossed down the shot of whisky.
"Screw that!" Evenwrite shouted. "We been waiting, like I said, for too damn long as it is! Oh me, Draeger, don't you under stand? What I been saying about this rain? We can't wait much longer or there won't be no work no way goddammit, can't you see?"
Evenwrite's face looked as though he might explode in tears of rage and frustration. He'd never had to deal with a man like this! What is it, Mr. Draeger? In all the years of woodsbulling drunk riggers and lazy bushlers and government scalers who cheated you blind and owners who wanted done yesterday what was humanly impossible to have done tomorrow--What is it you have over poor stupid Floyd, Mr. Draeger?--in all them years foremanning all them sonsabitches, never one of them as unreasonable as this! What is it you know? Or leastways never one of them who frustered him so. "I mean can't you see?" Maybe it was the surroundings; hadn't he always managed dealing with sonsabitches out in the brush?
Draeger took a small swallow from the water glass and set it down. "I understand the weather problem, Floyd; I'm sorry if I implied doing absolutely nothing; I know you have your back against the wall so to speak . . . but when I said wait, I meant only to hold off taking any action that would only make Mr. Stamper more obstinate."
"Hold of
f till when? Till spring? Summer?"
"Until we find some way to make clear to him just how his stand is harming his friends." He had taken a ball-point pen from his pocket and was studying the tip of it.
"Hank Stamper don't have any friends," Evenwrite muttered; then, trying to resume his old woods-bossing manner, demanded scornfully, "You mean you don't even have some kind of plan for straightening this out?"
"Not exactly a plan," Draeger answered. "Not yet, anyway."
"Nothing but wait, huh? Is that it? Just wait?"
Draeger was doodling on the placemat, absorbed in his thoughts: "For the time being, yes," he said.
"Well, what do you know about that. Like we couldn't wait ourselfs, without any help from a college graduate making ten thousand a year of our goddam money . . . what do you think of that?" When Draeger gave no indication that he had heard, Evenwrite went on. "Anyhow, if it's all the same to you, I think me and the boys will get our horsewhip and tend to making this horse turn around and go our direction, while you're waiting."
Draeger looked up from his doodling. "Pardon me?"
"I said me and the guys are gonna go ahead and handle this thing. Plain and simple. With our plain old dumb-ass head-on approach."
"That being?"
"Why, a picket to start with. Like we shoulda done the first thing . . ."
"You can't legally--"
"Legal be damned!" Evenwrite interrupted, momentarily losing his cool. "You think Hank Stamper's gonna call the cops in on us? Or that any of 'em would come if he did? Huh?" He felt his frustration mounting again, but this time he closed his eyes and drew a deep breath to try to stop his outbreak of anger; there wasn't no sense letting the sonofabitch know he was getting under his hide. "So we'll just . . . all right start off tomorrow . . . with a picket." No sense acting like a goddam heathen . . . he'd show them that Floyd Evenwrite could by god be poised and passionless too, in any sonofabitching surrounding! "Then we will see what we will see."
Draeger watched him for a moment, smiling his sad smile, then shook his head. "I suppose there's nothing I can say to--"
"To make me hold off any longer? No." He shook his head in turn, calm and self-contained as they come. "I suppose there ain't." Yessir, as self-possessed as the best of them . . . except, for a little itch troubling his throat, a cold picked up on that goddam cold-ass boatride, most likely. Hell!
"Do you think," Draeger wanted to know, "that you will be doing anything more than mollifying your natural punitive desires?"
Evenwrite cleared his throat. "I think by god--" and had started to let the sonofabitch know--in a completely self-contained and self-possessed fashion--just by god exactly what he thought, before he recalled that he could never remember for certain whether "punitive" meant weak and sick-looking or strong and sharp-smelling. "I think that"--and what in the living hell was "mollify"?--"that uh under the circumstances . . ."
Still, he kept his cool; he didn't panic. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath and launched a sigh that would reveal to all concerned how simply overcome he was with disgust for this whole conversation . . . but halfway through this sigh he was stricken by that old familiar tickle deep in his throat: oh no! Not here; not now! He couldn't sneeze now, just as he was getting such a good grip on the situation! He clenched his teeth. He clamped his lips tight. His face swelled out red and desperate from his wet collar, like a prewar inner tube bulging out through a split in the casing just before it burst . . . not now!
Because he hated to sneeze indoors. Ever since childhood Evenwrite had been afflicted with a sneeze of such magnitude that it could have turned every head for blocks in his direction by virtue of volume alone, but more than that--above and beyond their acoustical power--his sneezes distinguished themselves by carrying a message as well, always the same message, forceful and invariable: as though he had stopped whatever he'd been doing and shouted--at the top of his lungs--haw . . . haw . . . hot SHIT! In the woods this resounding declaration had been a cause for kidding and fun, and even a bit of unconfessed pride. In the woods. But somehow it didn't go over as well in other areas. In church, or at a meeting, when he felt a sneeze coming on, he was always torn between letting it--hoping those present would either miss the message or excuse it--and bottling it back in his mouth. Each method had its drawbacks, to be sure. That was to be expected. But this time he suffered the drawbacks of both: while he managed to stifle the first half, the "hot" half, behind his bulging lips, the second half, the "SHIT" half, exploded forth clearly and resonantly in a cloud of saliva that settled like a mist over the whole table.
Teddy, on his way back to the bar, paused to see how Draeger would handle this situation. The man looked quizzically across at Evenwrite, then returned his pen to his pocket and picked up a cocktail napkin to carefully wipe a place on his coat sleeve. "Of course," Draeger went on amiably, "every man to his own opinion, Floyd"--as though nothing whatsoever had happened.
Teddy nodded, impressed, and continued on around the end of the bar--What is it he has learned to put him so far out past the others?--and Evenwrite, wiping a watering eye with the knuckle of his thumb, wished he was out of there and home goddammit, where his clothes didn't bind him so and a man could sneeze without worrying about it.
"And look here, Floyd." Draeger put down the cocktail napkin and gave Floyd a neat, reassuring nod. "I hope you understand that I sincerely want you and 'the guys' to succeed with your head-on approach. Because, confidentially, there is nothing I would like better than to tie up this business here and get back down south; you see," he confided in a whisper of mock-intimacy, "I get athlete's foot up here. But, ah, in as I have already paid a week's rent on my hotel room, and in the event your approach does not prove completely successful, I believe I'll stay around. . . . Is this fine with you?"
Evenwrite nodded. "Fine with me," he answered flatly, making no attempt to regain his state of grim determination. The abortive sneeze seemed to have drained all Evenwrite's spirit. His eyes were watering, and he felt a cold building for certain now, far down in his lungs like a gathering volcano; he just wanted to get home to a hot tub and a bit of Vicks VapoRub in the water. That was all he wanted. He didn't want to fuss no more tonight. . . . "Yeah, that's fine, Draeger. An', like you say, if our approach don't work, well then, we'll just come over an' ask you for some of your help." . . . But just wait by god till tomorrow when he got his zip back; then he'd show the bastards!
Draeger stood up. He picked up the placemat he had been scribbling on and looked at it, smiling, then put it down and took his wallet from his pocket. "It's still raining; do you have a car here? I could run you out to your house in mine. . . ."
"No. Don't do that. It ain't but a few blocks."
"You're certain? I don't mind, really. And you look as if you could use--"
"Yeah, I'm certain."
"Very well, then." Draeger pulled on his overcoat and flipped up the collar. "I'll see you tomorrow probably?"
"Probably. If I got anything to report. Yeah, tomorrow."
On his way out Draeger handed Teddy a dollar bill for his drink and told him to keep the change. Evenwrite grunted a "G'night" and pulled the door closed behind him. Teddy moved to his end of the bar, near the window. He watched the two men walk their different directions, their backs glowing with the stain of his neons. When the glows faded, as dark rain washed the stains off, Teddy circled his bar and locked the door and pulled down the shade with "Sorry CLOSED" printed on it. He switched off the three smoky overhead lights and most of the neons, leaving a few for night lights. In this undersea gloom he made a silent round of his saloon, unplugging the pinballs and the bowling machine, switching off the bubbling juke-box, clearing tables, emptying ashtrays into a large coffee can. Back at the bar he untied his apron and dropped it in the laundry bag that Willard Eggleston's helper would pick up Monday morning. He removed all the bills from the cash register and added them to a roll in a large conch-shell lamp, where they would wait for bank
ing day a week from the coming Monday. He flicked the switch under the bar that put the silent sentinel of the burglar alarm on guard over all his doors and windows and grills. He dusted roach powder along the baseboard. He turned off the blowers on the oil heater and turned the oil down to a trickle. . . .
And only then, after he had looked all about him, turning in a circle in the red and amber light to be sure he had finished with all the chores he could think of, only then did he go to the table where they had been sitting to see what Draeger had written on the placemat.
The Snag's placemats were of corrugated paper, embossed with a silhouette of a topper just completing the saw-through of a spar tree, the top of the tree just beginning to tip as the topper reeled back, gripping his rope. Teddy held the mat to the light. Draeger's doodles seemed quite ordinary at first: The tree had been striped like a barber pole--how many times had he seen that one?--and the logger's eyes had been blacked out and a beard added; and a few crude popcorn-shaped objects had been placed about the paper sky to portray clouds. . . . Then, down in one corner he saw three lines of writing, in a sharp, precise hand so small Teddy almost missed seeing them:
Teddy: I'm afraid you mistakenly served me Bourbon De Luxe instead of I. W. Harper. I just thought you would want this called to your attention.
Teddy stared at the inscription in thrilled, unblinking wonder, What is it? what is it about you? until his eyes began to burn from the strain and the mat in his hand began to flutter in the light as though a red wind were blowing through the empty bar.
At home, in his bathroom, Evenwrite sat on the clothes hamper in his shorts and undershirt, waiting for the tub to trickle full. It took hours nowadays to pull a good hot bath. They needed a new water heater, had for a long time. In fact--he sighed, looking about him--they needed a lot of new things; even the bottle of Vicks had been empty.