“Prove what?” Corky asked.
“That you’re not responsible.”
“How?”
“Easy. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll ask you to do a little something that anyone ought to be able to do, and if you can do it, we’ll forget the whole thing, and if you can’t, we’ll think about you seeing somebody fast, is it a deal?”
“Name it,” Corky said.
“Make Fats shut up for five minutes,” the Postman said.
Corky couldn’t help but laugh. “Five minutes? I can make him shut up for five years.”
“Good. You sit in the chair with Fats and I’ll sit here on the couch and we can pass the time.”
Corky sat in the chair. “I feel like a jerk if you want to know,” he said.
The Postman got out an Individuale.
“Is it okay if we talk?” Corky wanted to know. “Or does it have to be like we’ve locked our mouths and thrown away the key?”
“At your service.” The Postman lit his cigar, blew a stream of smoke.
Corky asked, “How long so far?”
The Postman looked at his watch. “Thirty-five seconds.”
“Gosh,” Corky said, “that gives me four minutes and twenty-five seconds to go, think I’ll make it?”
The Postman tried to smile.
Corky said, “You don’t happen to have another one of those?” He pointed to the cigar.
The Postman handed over the package.
“Take two, they’re big,” Corky said. He laughed a little. “Remember when you said that?”
“A pro never forgets his good lines,” the Postman said.
“How long now?” Corky asked.
The Postman looked at his watch again. “Over a minute.”
“Do you think we’ll laugh about this someday? If the special works and I get a series, we could give a big article to TV Guide.”
“Maybe,” the Postman said.
Corky said, “I wonder what we’ll call it?”
The Postman shrugged.
“How long?” Corky said. “Two minutes yet?”
The Postman shook his head.
Corky smiled, sat back, inhaled deeply on the cigar.
The Postman drummed his fingers.
Silence.
Silence.
Corky smiled again.
The Postman flicked some ashes.
“This is very cruel of you, you know that,” Corky said.
The Postman said, “I don’t mean it to be.”
Corky went on: “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive you.”
Quietly, the Postman said, “We’ll just have to see.”
Corky explained, “It’s the principle—there’s only trust, and once that’s gone, what else is there?”
The Postman flicked some more ashes. “Not a whole lot. But we never signed, remember? On account of principle. I got no hold on you, kid. You’re free.”
“How much longer?” Corky wondered.
The Postman glanced at his watch again. “Two minutes or a little more to go.”
Corky closed his eyes. “I can’t make it.”
The Postman answered softly back: “I didn’t think you could.”
“Hello everybody, this is Mrs. Norman Maine,” Fats said. “My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you and I thank you,” Fats said. “You have nothing to fear but fear itself, nothing to give but blood sweat and tears, nothing ventured nothing gained, nothing to lose but our souls. Here I am boys—here I am world—here’s Fats!”
The Postman stood slowly.
“Where the fuck you think you’re going?” Fats said. He turned to Corky. “You’re not letting him the hell out of here?”
“No more games,” the Postman said.
“I think you better sit down,” Corky said.
“Kid, I lived through Tallulah Bankhead and the death of vaudeville, I don’t scare easy.” He stared at the door.
“I’m not gonna let you out of here until you promise not to tell,” Corky said.
The Postman started walking.
“I need my chance,” Corky said.
“The only chance you got is to get help, kid, and that’s what’s gonna happen.”
Corky grabbed for the old man, spun him back toward the couch, but the Postman never lost his balance and then he was screaming at Corky, louder than Corky had ever heard from him before, screaming, “Don’t you ever raise a hand to me again.”
Corky sagged.
The Postman resumed his journey to the door.
“You’re taking my one chance,” Corky pleaded.
“Not taking, giving,” the Postman replied, and then he was out the door with Corky standing in the middle of the room, slumped, watching the outside night, and before the door was even shut Fats was on him, going, “He’s right, he’s goddam right, you’re some crazy fuck,” and Corky said, “I tried” and Fats shouted, “Tried? Tried? You failed!”
Corky started pacing while Fats blasted on—“Ever since we got together we knew one thing—one thing—we were special—different, sure, to them, to all those pissant drones who make up the western world but not us—and they’ll never understand us special ones, they never have, the world’ll look level before they ever do—and—and—Goddammit look at me—”
Corky stopped the pacing.
“You know it’s the hatch for you.”
“Maybe not. He only wants to help, you heard—”
“Dream on—”
“There’s nothing wrong with me—”
“—I know that and you know that but those pissants, they hate the special ones—they don’t know what to do with us—so they hide us—they put us somewhere deep and lonely—and keep us there till they kill us or we die—”
“—don’t talk that way—it’s not true—”
“—I don’t understand you anymore—truth is all I’m talking—why does it bother you to hear it, don’t you care about anything anymore?—Jesus, don’t you even care about the girl?—”
“—Peg?—I love Peg—”
“—well maybe if she really loves you back she’ll bring you Crayolas on visiting day and you can color together—” Corky covered his ears. “Oh that’s good, that’s helpful, that’s gonna accomplish a lot—Peg’s gonna see it all, gonna see them come for you here and put you in your nice white jacket and cart you off to the hatch and that’ll make her feel swell, you’ll both have a lot to be proud of, you can face the future great that way, you in your padded cell, her outside trying to mouth words like ‘How do you feel this week, Corky? Are they treating you nice, Corky, well I’m glad, Corky because I can’t take it anymore, Corky, I’m not coming back to see you ever, Corky, good-bye, good-bye, good-byeeeeeee.’ ”
“What do you want from me?”
“—you know—”
“—I don’t—”
“—liar—”
“—tell me—”
“—weakling—”
“—I’m not, I’m not, tell me—”
“—stop him—”
“—I can’t—”
“—stop the Postman—”
“—I tried—”
“—gutless fuck—”
“—I did try—”
“—stop him—”
“—how—”
“—stop him—”
“—How? How? With what?” and before the words were barely spoken Fats was going “MEE-MEE-MEE-MEE-MEE—” and before the Postman was barely halfway up the path the first blow sent him backwards but not down and he looked amazed, managed. “Huh?” before Corky swung again, holding Fats by the feet, swinging him like an ax, and this time Fats’ heavy wooden head crashed into the Postman’s nose and it cracked and now there was blood as the Postman started staggering, tried raising his ancient arms but Fats penetrated the defense as if it wasn’t there and this blow started blood from the right eye and the Postman was on his knees now and Fats smashed the top of his bald head thi
s time and now the Postman could only crawl giving Fats a chance at the back of his neck and now they were off the path in the trees and brush and Corky swung again and again and the blood was spraying now but Fats kept crying “A-gain, a-gain” and each time he connected there was less from the Postman and when there was nothing left from the Postman, nothing at all, Corky dropped the dummy beside the old man and fell to his knees in the underbrush until he could control his tears …
Groaning. Intense and continual. Corky jumped up. The night was dark enough so that even though he wasn’t far from the Postman, Corky couldn’t make him out clearly. He scrambled back.
The Postman lay silent. The sound came from Fats. “… Laddie … Laddie …”
“What?”
“… my head … you broke it …”
Corky grabbed Fats, tried to see. It wasn’t light enough to see so he put his hands beneath Fats’ wig. The skull was starting to splinter.
“What’ll I do?”
“… can’t think … help me, Laddie …”
“I will, I will,” and he ran the distance back to the cabin, lay Fats down on the sofa. He stripped Fats naked, carefully took off his wig.
“… hurry …”
“I’m trying.”
Corky went to Fats’ special fitted case, took out a change of clothes, some extra canvas strips. He ripped the strips into thin pieces, like long shoelaces, deftly bound them around the skull, knotting them tightly until the fit was right. Then he replaced the wig, went back to the case, got out a railroad cap that matched the overalls outfit Fats would now have to wear, pulled it down tight. “Better?” He picked Fats up.
“Oh Christ, I guess so. Does it show?”
“Not with the cap down tight. Let me get you into these other clothes.”
“Get off that shirt first. You’re blood all over. I don’t want to risk getting it on the new clothes.”
Corky nodded, tore off the bloody shirt, threw it in the closet, grabbed the sweater Peg had brought down earlier in the evening, pulled it on. Then he went back to Fats, made sure none of his levers had been damaged, began getting him into his clean outfit.
“We’ll have to dispose of the body,” Fats said.
Corky said “How?”
“I’m not sure yet, I can’t think straight yet, but I’ll eome up with something.”
“I know you will, you’ve got to.” He buttoned Fats into his kid’s-sized coveralls. “I think maybe the best thing would be to bury him—there’s millions of acres of woods around here.”
“Oh that’s good,” Fats said. “That’s a humfucking-dinger of a notion—why don’t you just amble on up to the house and ask for a shovel—Peg would never think that was a strange request or anything—hell, everybody goes around here digging in the middle of the night.”
“Please don’t be sarcastic.”
“Just go get the goddam Postman and let me do the thinking, all right.”
“Anything,” Corky said, and he carefully propped Fats back into his overstuffed chair and then ran back out into the dark. It was getting colder, or maybe it had always been and he hadn’t noticed it earlier, but even with the sweater on he was shaking terribly. He hurried up the path and moved into the brush where the Postman was, only the Postman was gone …
9
When Corky had touched her nipples with his index finger and then gone out the door, at that moment Peg felt, no pun intended, snowed. The barrage of affection he had, no pun intended, laid down, well, it wasn’t the kind of thing you listened to every day.
And he meant it.
Didn’t he? Peg went into the main room and got the fire going, sat in front of it, stared. Well he would have to be some kind of creature from the black lagoon if he was lying, since the whole point to b.s.ing women was to get them to put out and he’d done most of his after the deed was done.
Twice.
And I don’t even feel guilty, she decided. I feel ter-rific. For years she had wondered about the aftereffects of unfaithfulness and to her horror, there weren’t any. You could have been doing this for years, she told herself. Would probably have been good for your complexion.
But leave her husband? Leave Duke? For a wandering magician she hadn’t seen in fifteen years? People just didn’t do things like that.
Why didn’t they?
Peg stretched out, watched the wood. They didn’t because a bird in the hand you could at least grab hold of and hang on. It was there. What if she decided okay, screw my life, I’ll zoom off into the wild blue etc. with Cork and it didn’t work out. Sure, he said they’d go off alone, just the two of them, but eventually he’d have to go to work, there’d be agents like that old guy from the afternoon, and workouts with Fats getting their routine honed and tension and maybe he wouldn’t make it, it was the iceberg era for magicians nowadays, so she’d end up stranded someplace maybe with a miserable Corky and some slobby dummy staring down from the mantelpiece.
Stay where you are, sister, Peg decided. Maybe you’re forlorn, lost, unnoticed, but at least the man selling you tv dinners knows your name. And that means something.
Don’t ask what.
She got up and went to the self-help section of her library. There was a time when The New You was kind of a bible to her, but that was a while ago, when she was considering going back to college, commuting to Rockland maybe twice a week, but Duke had ridiculed the notion and she had to admit it, he was more than probably right.
The truth was, she decided all on her own, that she was limited. Not such a terrible thing. Better than being bright but cruel. Better than a lot of things.
Limited.
Limited.
She bored people eventually. Or she would if she hung around them long enough. Corky she’d bore too. Oh for now she might make him happy. He dreamed she was fifteen, and when she was fifteen she was, and she knew it, something, and as long as he kept that old image fresh, they’d be fine.
Otherwise, forget it. Forget it, forget leaving, forget it all, keed.
She took down The New You.
She went back to the fire and thumbed around until she got to the chapter on men. The particular subsection that came as close as any to her situation was called “Two Is Less Than Half as Much as One,” and the point of it was simply that when you were torn you couldn’t give yourself to anybody the way. The New You wanted to. So what you had to do was make a list and add it up and make a choice. The book was very big on lists. You wrote your problems down, made script of your emotions, so you could judge them better. Lists of ten. And you put the lists side by side to compare. Peg got a large piece of scratch paper and on one half wrote CORKY in capital letters and on the other, DUKE. Then she scribbled down qualities. When she was done, she studied her work:
CORKY DUKE
1) I don’t love Corky. 1) I don’t love Duke either.
2) I like Corky a lot though. (From what I’ve seen of him.) 2) Duke’s okay.
3) Corky understands me. 3) Duke doesn’t give a shit.
4) Corky loves me. (Says he loves me.) (Means it?????) 4) Duke doesn’t give a shit.
5) Corky and I see things the same way. 5) Duke and I don’t talk so much. (Not to each other anyway.
6) Corky’s attractive. 6) Duke doesn’t look so much like Elvis anymore.
7) Corky is sweet and nice and kind and gentle. 7) Duke tries.
8) Corky is a good fuck. 8) Duke tries.
9) Corky is a success. 9) Sorry about that, Duke.
10) Corky is romantic. 10) Duke couldn’t spell “romantic.”
She was thumbing through to the List Analysis section when the phone rang. She got up and answered, knowing it was Duke, because when he was away on a selling trip or whatever, whenever he was coming home, he always called an hour before he got there, so if he was hungry she could have time to get something heated. “Finast Cabins,” she said.
“It’s the Duker on the horn.”
“Hi honey.”
“Be home
in ’bout an hour.”
“Be waitin’.” She could hear the jukebox going in the background. Probably he was with a woman, more than probably he was drinking. Just to hear him lie she asked, “Where you calling from?”
“Your friendly Standard station.”
“Sell lots of cutlery?”
“Never doubt the Duker.”
“Never have, never will. Hungry for anything special?”
“Thaw me out some chicken, maybe. No, wait—you got any of those ham steak dinners?”
“Better’n that—how would you like a real steak dinner? I bought a couple today.”
“Gettin’ awful fancy in our old age.”
“They were on special and I just wanted to surprise you; you’ve been working hard enough, you deserve it.”
“Aren’t you the smart one?” he said, and they hung up.
Peg went back to the List Analysis. Being a new you meant change. But the trick was to know when to do it. Because, the book said, the reason we were unhappy and wanted change was because we made ourselves unhappy on purpose, only we didn’t know it, and sometimes we made changes thinking we were making good changes only what we were really doing was making things that much worse, forcing the old you to stick around.
In a list of ten, if it was five-five or six-four, the advice: stay where you are. If it was seven-three: think hard about changing. Anything over seven-three the new you was calling and you had to go. Peg went back over her list, totaling it up.
Duke lost, nine-zero with one even, the first, she didn’t love, really love, either of them. My God, Peg realized, nothing’s supposed to be that high, the book doesn’t even have it listed. If something’s that onesided, you changed.
Go with Corky.
Leave with someone you haven’t seen for fifteen years and then for less than thirty-six hours.
Run away with someone who loves you.
Go with someone who remembers wnat you were.
Pray he never sees what you are.
Limited.
And don’t you dare ever grow old.
More confused than ever, Peg put the book back, got out Johnny Mathis’ Greatest Hits, had the record all cleaned and the needle in place before she realized her blunder.