Oh, there goes Violet like a yard full of peacocks, and now Braden’s howling like a villain wrestler with his foot being twisted. Marvelous, yes. When I was in the navy for several days, I made the acquaintance of another recruit who showed me a photo of his baby and said, I made that baby the night I pushed the wall with both feet, man.
Now it seems like they’ve withdrawn to reorganize their forces, and Mother Pearce’s coming back downstairs. Whose deal is it? Oh, mine, and I’ve already dealt while you all were paying no attention to my wandering reflections.
Mother Pearce came back into the room, saying. Well, well, well, in a loud cheerful tone at total variance with the sharpshooter blaze in her ¿yes.
What was going on. Mother? asked Gewinner.
Why, nothing at all to speak of, they were just romping and cutting up like a couple of kids when school lets out.
Oh, now, isn’t that sweet, said the widow from next door, in a toneless voice.
Partner, have we finished a rubber? Yes? inquired Mother Pearce. Well, why don’t we settle the score and have a round of nightcaps for the road.
Mother, suggested Gewinner, why don’t we all trot over to the drive-in for a basket of chicken and French fries, since it’s so close, so handy?
Now, Gewinner, said Mother Pearce, you‘ll have to get used to the drive-in when you’re home from your travels. It’s going to be on that corner for ninety-nine years, at least.
You mean barring a premature blast at The Project, Gewinner murmured. Then he added, louder: Mama, we beat you again, so before you make those nightcaps, shell out eighty-six in greenbacks, and fortyseven in quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies, since my partner and I will not accept your check or an IO U.
He had already risen from the card table and tossed about his shoulders a white silk scarf that was almost the size of a bed sheet and as flawlessly smooth as his skin, and now he was putting on a black topcoat which his bridge partner, the next-door widow, touched with incredulous fingers, and said. Why, that coat is—
She was going to say “moiré” when there came a call at the door, a voice calling out. Delivery from the Drive-in!
Gewinner said. Speak of the devil.
This delivery from the drive-in was, as always, two orders of chicken-in-the-basket with French fries. That’s what Braden always called for when he and Violet had chalked up one more vigorous assault on the huge and dark siege of inertia that can be said to hang about the dynamics of existence—to put it in a somewhat or more than somewhat rhetorical fashion. Just what Braden felt when he had completed one of these furious assaults on the siege of inertia is a question that would have to be put to Braden, and it is doubtful that he would come up with a coherent answer if he tried to give one. The likeliest guess is that he felt like a rooster on a back fence at the sign of daybreak. Anyway one thing is certain. While Braden was still panting from his orgasm, he would pick up the bedroom phone and call the drive-in. Hey, Billy, the same, he would say. Violet would always say. No French fries for me, but Braden would ignore this interjection since a double portion of French fries had never fazed him. At his end of the line, Billy would say. Right over, man, right over!
This delivery from the drive-in was always delivered personally by the proprietor himself. The Laughing Boy, Billy, would carry the two piping-hot baskets straight up to the Braden Pearces’ bedroom and he would often stay up there about an hour, having nightcaps with Violet and Braden and reminiscing with Braden about the spectacular tricks and pranks of their boyhood days and nights, such as the Halloween they went in the colored graveyard and dug up a preacher buried the day before and put him and his coffin side by side on the steps of his church along with a big printed sign nailed onto the coffin which said THEY WOULDN’T LET ME IN HEAVEN SO I COME BACK TO PREACH SOME MORE ABOUT HELL TO YOU SINFUL NIGGERS NEXT SUNDAY!
Oh, those were real fun days and nights in their boyhood, and Braden and Billy would assure each other that they were not over yet, no sir, not by a long shot, you could bet on that.
One time Braden said to Billy, I’ll tell you something. Buddy, but you forget I told you. Buddy, there’s a big Halloween yet to be, but the pranks and the jokes are such classified information, as they call it, that I wouldn’t dare even talk about ‘em to you, and that’s no shit. But this I can say. We’ve got color TV and on this color TV, Buddy, the blacks and the yellows are coming in so loud and clear that they’re burning our eyeballs over at The Project. That much I can tell you because you’re not a heavy drinker that repeats whatever he hears like a goddam parrot. I can tell you this big Halloween’s coming up, it’s necessary like breathing, and after this Halloween, what we’re dreaming of at The Project, man, is a white Christmas, and that white-hot snow is gonna fall out of heaven and be as hot as all hell. That much I can tell you and I tell you no lie, and I want you to remember I told you something I wouldn’t tell my wife unless she was lying there sleeping dead to the world. Do you dig me?
On that particular night, when the privileged boyhood chum of Braden’s went back to close up the drive-in, he had a religious feeling. He felt like he’d been to church and God had delivered the sermon…
This boyhood chum of Braden’s, who was still such a chum despite the widely different positions to which fate had assigned them, was named Spangler, Billy Spangler, a lively-sounding name which suited the bearer.
It was just a couple of weeks after Gewinner’s return to the bosom of his family, so to speak, that he had his first encounter with Billy. It came about in this way. Gewinner did not have wheels of his own at this time but Violet had graciously turned over to him her Caddy convertible which was violet-colored to go with her name, and one fine autumn morning Gewinner impulsively entered the drive of the drive-in for which he had an almost obsessive distaste. He drove into the drive-in without any conscious purpose. He didn’t acknowledge to himself that he was intensely curious about Braden’s boyhood chum who had that optimistic ninety-nine-year lease on a corner practically facing the Pearce castle.
Gewinner nearly always came on like a cool one despite having a nervous system that kept spitting off hot sparks under his skin as though constantly celebrating a Chinese festival. The late Dr. Horace Greaves had taught Gewinner the secret of outward serenity but his pupil had surpassed the good doctor who would have to go into a state of samadhi when passing through customs in foreign air-or sea-ports. The good doctor’s samadhi (a trancelike condition known to Hindu mystics and their disciples) was probably only synthetic since he could enter a customs shed with apparent, dreamlike composure but was apt to go to pieces if a customs officer inquired into the nature of certain pills and vials that were tucked away in his luggage. Then he would come out of samadhi and go directly into something close to hysteria, but Gewinner would lean across the customs counter and say to the officer. My uncle is a saintly man not long for this world, so please don’t excite him.
No, Gewinner was not a cool one and yet he could do things that were very disturbing to him and do them with apparent serenity, and so he was able to drive directly up to the entrance of the Laughing Boy Drive-in as smoothly as if he lived there. Violet’s Caddy convertible had three silver trumpets for announcing itself in traffic, the trumpets had three different musical notes. Gewinner blew them and Billy Spangler heard them. He recognized the car at once as Violet Pearce’s violet-colored Caddy and noticed at once that there was, at the wheel, a young man he had not seen before. He thought he ought to step out of the drive-in to have a closer look at this young man who looked like a boy. He no sooner had this thought than he put it into action and stepped out a pace or two from the door. Then Gewinner had a look at Billy while Billy had a look at him. What Gewinner saw was a young fellow more than ordinarily good-looking with a figure that was lean except for the shoulders which were so heavily muscled that they seemed cramped by the mess jacket of his snowy white uniform. It was a fair-weather day and Billy Spangler seemed to be matching part of the weather. His eyes,
looking at Gewinner, had a totally open, aboveboard and straightforward look. He looked like a young man who had never had an arriere-pensee in all his life, a young man who started performing an act a second or two before it consciously occurred to him, a young man whose appearance seemed still to reflect, joyfully, the tricks and pranks of his boyhood.
Gewinner was not disarmed by the glowing fair-weather artlessness of Billy’s appearance, no, not at all. In fact there was something in the way Billy looked and smiled at him that set off sparklers and spit devils in Gewinner’s nervous system, a scorching reminder of various irreconcilables in his nature. And just then the screen door sprang open and out rushed a girl carhop with such momentum that she collided with the back of Billy, let out a screeching laugh and stumbled back against the screen door, exclaiming. Well, I’ll be! Excuse me!
Gewinner paid no attention to that little accident, but leaned a bit out of Violet’s car and said to Billy, as slowly and precisely as if he were speaking to a retarded child, I would like to have a cup of black coffee, please, just black, no cream and no sugar and no toast or pastry with it.
O.K., said Billy. Then he turned to the girl who was still against the screen door as if impaled there, and said. Did you get that, honey. She gasped. Yes, and scrambled back into the drive-in.
Billy looked up and about him and shouted. Fine day!
Gewinner made no comment on it.
Then the girl exploded back out of the drive-in with an aluminum tray on which were a cup of piping-hot coffee, a china creamer, two little fluted-paper sugar containers and a glass of ice water. As she brushed past Billy on her way to the car, she let out another little hysterical cry. Billy followed behind her toward the car, walking behind her leisurely and observing her hips in her skintight gabardine slacks, the color of “white coffee.” She got to the car and couldn’t attach the tray to the door because her fingers shook so, but Billy came up tolerantly beside her and fastened the tray himself. And then he looked down into Gewinner’s face and smilingly inquired. Ain’t that Mrs. Braden Pearce’s new Caddy you’re driving there, son?
He did not say it exactly as though he were accusing Gewinner of stealing the car but it was apparent that he was one of the many people who sucked up to Braden. Gewinner’s first dislike of the drive-in owner was a reflection of his dislike of his brother, and he ignored the question, coolly disregarded the amiably inquiring eyes and said to the girl. How long has this place been here?
The girl answered nervously, feeling his hostile vibration. She answered in the heavy drawl of the back-country. She was freckled, all her features were too small and she had on too much eye pencil and lipstick but her breasts, under the cream-colored silk blouse, and the plushiness of her bottom made it disgustingly plain to Gewinner why this new young buck who owned the drive-in had hired her.
She said. About six months, I think, and her hand shook as she set the ice-water glass down again after removing the napkin underneath it and giving it to Gewinner.
Well, said Gewinner, it’s really a shame to put up a thing like this in a residential district!
He said this in a voice that shook like the girl’s hand as she set the water glass down. She didn’t answer. She made a small noise in her throat and turned quickly away and started back to the little Colonial-style building. But Billy Spangler heard the remark as clearly as Gewinner had intended him to hear it, and he did not follow the girl back into the drive-in but stood leaning easily on the front fender of the new Caddy, glancing lazily back at the girl’s hips again as she entered the shiny copper screen door, but then returning his steady gaze to the reddening face of Gewinner. He took his time about responding to Gewinner’s attack on his place and the response that he made was quite moderate.
What, he said, is your objection to this drive-in?
It belongs on the highway, said Gewinner.
I thought about the highway, said Billy Spangler, but this is a lot more convenient for the people that work down there at The Project.
He nodded down the street which the Pearce residence was facing and which led directly up to The Project.
One of Gewinner’s great regrets was that intense anger always clouded his mind so that he seldom could think of an immediate and effectually cutting reply to a remark that angered him. Also at such times his voice was always unsteady. Sometimes he even stammered, and so he often had to hold his tongue, and boil inside while he held it. This anger was so intense that at times he felt as though he were on the verge of an epileptic seizure. Now he could not return the look of Billy Spangler nor answer his calm speech nor even lift the coffee cup from the saucer. He was altogether immobilized for possibly half a minute or more while Billy Spangler stared at him and leaned on the Caddy’s front fender. All he could do was boil and look down at the coffee while Spangler leisurely went on talking in the same unruffled voice about the advantages of the drive-in’s location.
You know, he said, they’re doing a mighty big and important job down there at The Project. I don’t pretend to know exactly what and I guess it ain’t a good thing to be too curious about it unless you’re actually in it. But I know from the little I’ve seen or heard that the whole future security of this country is mixed up with it. Naturally there’s got to be some changes in this town that don’t suit everybody, like business places cropping up where there used to be private houses and smoke in the air and crowded housing conditions and so many people at the movies you have to stand in line to buy a ticket and then wait again to get to a seat. But all in all, this here’s a fast-moving town with business booming. Like Mr. Pearce over there. He’s got more different jobs than you can shake a stick at, and not just jobs but the top executive positions. The most important is being in charge of personnel at the plant, but he’s sitting on practically every other board or organization in this town. And he’s a guy that anybody can talk to. Drops by here every day even if it’s just to smile and wave to somebody. And I know he don’t have no objection at all to this here drive-in, in fact I know that he likes it. I know he likes it because he told me so himself and he leased me the piece of land that the drive-in’s built on!
It was then, at this point, that Gewinner flew into action. He came unknotted all at once and he threw the car into gear and started it off before Billy Spangler could even remove his elbow from the fender, so that Spangler was almost knocked off balance and his shoulder was struck by the aluminum tray that was still attached to the rolled-down window of the convertible. He shouted. Hey! And Gewinner heard him running along the gravel as if he thought he might overtake the car, but Gewinner did not glance back, he did not even pause to properly remove the tray and its contents, just pushed them off the side of the car as he raced it around the corner on two wheels.
There were, of course, repercussions to the incident at the Laughing Boy Drive-in.
That evening Braden came storming up to Gewinner’s little apartment in the tower.
Billy Spangler just come over with some fried chicken for me and Violet and he told me his shoulder was sore. I asked him what was wrong with his shoulder and he said he didn’t want to tell me but he finally did. He said you went over there today to complain about the drive-in, you hit his shoulder with the tray when you drove out and pitched the tray and the crockery in the street. Now I’d like you to tell me what the shit is the meaning of a thing like this?
Oh, said Gewinner coolly, I believe that the Laughing Boy gave a reasonably accurate report on the incident at the drive-in this morning, but as for the meaning of it, perhaps it just means that Mother and you should not have reduced my travel allowance but kept it at the same level or even increased it.
Gewinner had his back turned to his brother and was ostensibly engaged in cataloguing his big collection of phonograph records, most of which were rare collector’s items.
Now look here, Prince!
Yes?
Listen to what I’m telling you for your own good. Nobody comes in this town, not even my broth
er, without being known and observed and classified by the security counsel at The Project. I mean all unfamiliar persons and types coming here are classified by the new automation system under three headings, “good,” “doubtful” or “bad” as security risks. The automation system and the intelligence office check and double-check and triple-check on every newcomer here or anywhere near here. And here’s something else for you to know for your own good. New legislation is being pushed through at high speed for the isolation of all you don’t-fit-inners, and that word “isolation” can mean several things, none of which things is pleasant for the isolated individual, Prince. There is too much at stake, too much pending, on a worldwide scale for the toleration of temperamental flare-ups and artistic hoopla, so here’s what you do tomorrow. When I go to The Project I’ll drop you by the drive-in. You go in there and offer an apology to my friend Billy Spangler, you apologize to him and shake hands with him and pay him for the crockery you broke up, that’s what you do in the morning, and face the fact right now that there’s got to be some of you don’t-fit-inners for a while only, just for a little while till they can be weeded out of society-in-progress, but you are overdoing that privilege which is pro tem only. Understand what I’m saying?
Perfectly, said Gewinner, still coolly, but I would suggest that you save yourself the possible embarrassment of having a brother named Gewinner in isolation, whatever, wherever that is, by arranging with Mother for the restoration of my traveling allowance to its former level or a little higher to meet the inflation problem.