The Tommyknockers

  Arberg grabbed him suddenly. The man was big and flabby but quite powerful. Gardener's shirt pulled out of his pants. His glass tumbled out of his fingers and shattered on the floor. In a rolling, carrying voice--a voice which maybe only an indignant teacher who has spent many years in lecture halls could muster--Arberg announced to everyone present: "I'm throwing this bum out."

  This declaration was greeted by spontaneous applause. Not everyone in the room applauded--maybe not even half of them did. But the power guy's wife was crying hard now, pressing against her husband, no longer trying to get away; until Arberg grabbed him, Gardener had been hulking over her, seeming to menace her.

  Gardener felt his feet skim over the floor, then leave it entirely. He caught a glimpse of Patricia McCardle, her mouth compressed, her eyes glaring, her hands smacking together in the furious approval she had refused to accord him earlier. He saw Ron Cummings standing in the library door, a monstrous drink in one hand, his arm around a pretty blond girl, his hand pressed firmly against the sideswell of her breast. Cummings looked concerned but not exactly surprised. After all, it was only the argument in the Stone Country Bar and Grille continued to another night, wasn't it?

  Are you going to let this swollen bag of shit just put you out on the doorstep like a stray cat?

  Gardener decided he wasn't.

  He drove his left elbow backward as hard as he could. It slammed into Arberg's chest. Gardener thought that was what it would feel like to drive your elbow into a bowl of extremely firm Jell-O.

  Arberg uttered a strangled cry and let go of Gardener, who turned, hands doubling into fists, ready to punch Arberg if Arberg tried to grab him again, tried to so much as touch him again. He rather hoped Arglebargle wanted to fight.

  But the beefy sonofawhore showed no signs of wanting to fight. He had also lost interest in putting Gardener out. He was clutching his chest like a hammy actor preparing to sing a bad aria. Most of the bricklike color had left his face, although flaring strips stood out on each cheek. Arberg's thick lips flexed into an O; slacked; flexed into an O again; slacked again.

  "--heart--" he wheezed.

  "What heart?" Gardener asked. "You mean you have one?"

  "--attack--" Arberg wheezed.

  "Heart attack, bullshit," Gardener said. "The only thing getting attacked is your sense of propriety. And you deserve it, you son of a bitch."

  He brushed past Arberg, still standing frozen in his about-to-sing pose, both hands clutched to the left side of his chest, where Gardener had connected with his elbow. The door between the dining room and the hallway had been crowded with people; they stepped back hurriedly as Gardener strode toward them and past them, heading for the front door.

  From behind him a woman screamed: "Get out, do you hear me? Get out, you bastard! Get out of here! I never want to see you again!"

  This shrewish, hysterical voice was so unlike Patricia McCardle's usual purr (steel claws buried somewhere inside pads of velvet) that Gardener stopped. He turned around . . . and was rocked by an eyewatering roundhouse slap. Her face was ill with rage.

  "I should have known better," she breathed. "You're nothing but a worthless, drunken lout--a contentious, obsessive, bullying, ugly human being. But I'll fix you. I'll do it. You know I can."

  "Why, Patty, I didn't know you cared," he said. "How sweet of you. I've been waiting to be fixed by you for years. Shall we go upstairs or give everyone a treat and do it on the rug?"

  Ron Cummings, who had moved closer to the action, laughed. Patricia McCardle bared her teeth. Her hand flickered out again, this time connecting with Gardener's ear.

  She spoke in a voice which was low but perfectly audible to everyone in the room: "I shouldn't have expected anything better from a man who would shoot his own wife."

  Gardener looked around, saw Ron, and said: "Excuse me, would you?" and plucked the drink from Ron's hand. In a single quick, smooth gesture, he hooked two fingers into the bodice of McCardle's little black dress--it was elastic and pulled out easily--and dumped the whiskey inside.

  "Cheers, dear," he said, and turned for the door. It was, he decided, the best exit line he could hope to manage under the circumstances.

  Arberg was still frozen with his fists clutched to his chest, mouth flexing into an O and then relaxing.

  "--heart--" he wheezed again to Gardener--Gardener or anyone who would listen to him. In the other room, Patricia McCardle was shrieking: "I'm all right! Don't touch me! Leave me alone! I'm all right!"

  "Hey. You."

  Gardener turned toward the voice and Ted's fist struck him high on one cheek. Gardener stumbled most of the way down the hall, clawing at the wall for balance. He struck the umbrella stand, knocked it over, then hit the front door hard enough to make the glass in the fanlight shiver.

  Ted was walking down the hall toward him like a gunfighter.

  "My wife's in the bathroom having hysterics because of you, and if you don't get out of here right now, I'm going to beat you silly."

  The blackness exploded like a rotted, gas-filled pocket of guts.

  Gardener seized one of the umbrellas. It was long, furled, and black--an English lord's umbrella if there had ever been one. He ran toward Ted, toward this fellow who knew exactly what the stakes were but who was going ahead anyway, why not, there were seven payments left on the Datsun Z and eighteen on the house, so why not, right? Ted who saw a six-hundred-percent increase in leukemia merely as a fact which might upset his wife. Ted, good old Ted, and it was just lucky for good old Ted that it had been umbrellas instead of hunting rifles at the end of the hall.

  Ted stood looking at Gardener, eyes widening, jaw dropping. The look of flushed anger gave way to uncertainty and fear--the fear that comes when you decide you're dealing with an irrational being.

  "Hey--!"

  "Caramba, you asshole!" Gardener screamed. He waggled the umbrella and then poked Ted the power man in the belly with it.

  "Hey!" Ted gasped, doubling over. "Stop it!"

  "Andale, andale!" Gardener yelled, now beginning to whack Ted with the umbrella--back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The strap which held the umbrella furled against its handle came loose. The umbrella, still closed but now loose, slopped around the handle. "Arriba, arriba!"

  Ted was now too unnerved to think about renewing his attack or to think about anything but escape. He turned and ran. Gardener chased him, cackling, beating the back of his head and the nape of his neck with the umbrella. He was laughing . . . but nothing was funny. His earlier sense of victory was leaving fast. What victory was there in getting the best of a man like this in an argument, even temporarily? Or of making his wife cry? Or of beating him with a closed umbrella? Would any of those things keep the Iroquois plant from going on line next May? Would any of those things save what was left of his own miserable life, or kill those tapeworms inside him that kept digging and munching and growing, eating whatever was left inside that was sane?

  No, of course not. But for now, senseless forward motion was all that mattered ... because that was all there was left.

  "Arriba, you bastard!" he cried, chasing Ted into the dining room.

  Ted had his hands up to his head and was waving them about his ears; he looked like a man beset by bats. The umbrella did look a little batlike as it lashed up and down.

  "Help me!" Ted squealed. "Help me, man's gone crazy!"

  But they were all backing away, eyes wide and scared.

  Ted's hip struck one corner of the buffet. The table rocked forward and upward, silverware sliding down the inclined plane of the wrinkling tablecloth, plates falling and shattering on the floor. Arberg's Waterford punch bowl detonated like a bomb, and a woman screamed. The table tottered for a moment and then went over.

  "Help? Help? Heellllp!"

  "Andale!" Gardener brought the umbrella down on Ted's head in a particularly hard swipe. Its trigger engaged and the umbrella popped open with a hollow pwushhh! Now Gardener looked like a mad Mary Poppi
ns, chasing Ted the Power Man with an umbrella in one hand. Later it would occur to him that opening an umbrella in the house was supposed to be bad luck.

  Hands grabbed him from behind.

  He whirled, expecting that Arberg was over his impropriety attack and was back to have another go at giving him the bum's rush.

  It wasn't Arberg. It was Ron. He still seemed calm--but there was something in his face, something dreadful. Was it compassion? Yes, Gardener saw, that was what it was.

  Suddenly he didn't want the umbrella anymore. He threw it aside.The dining room was silent but for Gardener's rapid breathing and Ted's harsh, sobbing gasps. The overturned buffet table lay in a puddle of linen, broken crockery, shattered crystal. The odor of spilled rum punch rose in an eyewatering fog.

  "Patricia McCardle is on the telephone, talking to the cops," Ron said, "and when it's Back Bay, they show up in a hurry. You want to bug out of here, Jim."

  Gardener looked around and saw knots of partygoers standing against the walls and in the doorways, looking at him with those wide, frightened eyes. By tomorrow they won't remember if it was about nuclear power or William Carlos Williams or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, he thought. Half of them will tell the other half I made a pass at his wife. Just that good old funloving wifeshooting Jim Gardener, going crazy and beating the shit out of a guy with an umbrella. Also dumping about a pint of Chivas between the teeny tits of the woman who gave him a job when he had none. Nuclear power, what did that have to do with it?

  "What a Christless mess," he said hoarsely to Ron.

  "Shit, they'll talk about it for years," Ron said. "The best reading they ever heard followed by the best party blowoff they ever saw. Now get going. Get your ass up to Maine. I'll call."

  Ted the Power Man, eyes wide and teary, made a lunge for him. Two young men--one was the bartender--held him back.

  "Goodbye," Gardener said to the huddled knots of people. "Thank you for a lovely time."

  He went to the door, then turned back.

  "And if you forget everything else, remember about the leukemia and the children. Remember--"

  But what they'd remember was him whacking Ted with the umbrella. He saw it in their faces.

  Gardener nodded and went down the hallway past Arberg, who was still standing with his hands clutched to his chest, lips flexing and closing. Gardener did not look back. He kicked aside the litter of umbrellas, opened the door, and stepped out into the night. He wanted a drink more than he ever had in his life, and he supposed he must have found one, because that was when he fell into the belly of the big fish and the blackout swallowed him.

  6.

  GARDENER ON THE ROCKS

  1

  Not long after dawn on the morning of July 4th, 1988, Gardener awoke--came to, anyway--near the end of the stone breakwater which extends out into the Atlantic not far from the Arcadia Funworld Amusement Park in Arcadia Beach, New Hampshire. Not that Gardener knew where he was then. He barely knew anything save for his own name, the fact that he was in what seemed to be total physical agony, and the somewhat less important fact that he had apparently almost drowned in the night.

  He was lying on his side, feet trailing in the water. He supposed that he had been high and dry when he had waltzed out here the night before, but he had apparently rolled over in his sleep, slid a little way down the breakwater's sloped north side . . . and now the tide was coming in. If he had been half an hour later in waking up, he thought he very well might have simply floated off the rocks of the breakwater as a grounded ship may float off a sandbar.

  One of his loafers was still on, but it was shriveled and useless. Gardener kicked it off and watched apathetically as it floated down into greeny darkness. Something for the lobsters to shit in, he thought, and sat up.

  The bolt of pain which went through his head was so immense he thought for a moment that he was having a stroke, that he had survived his night on the breakwater only to die of an embolism the morning after.

  The pain receded a little and the world came back from the gray mist into which it had receded. He was able to appreciate just how miserable he was. It was what Bobbi Anderson would undoubtedly have called "the whole body trip," as in Savor the whole body trip, Jim. What can be better than the way you feel after a night in the eye of the cyclone?

  A night? One night?

  No way, baby. This had been a jag. The real fucking thing.

  His stomach felt sour and bloated. His throat and sinuses were caked with elderly puke. He looked to his left, and sure enough, there it was, a little above him in what must have been his original position, the drinker's signature--a great big splash of drying vomit.

  Gardener wiped a shaking, dirty right hand under his nose and saw flakes of dried blood. He'd had a nosebleed. He'd had them off and on ever since the skiing accident at Sunday River when he was seventeen. He could almost count on the nosebleeds when he had been drinking.

  At the end of all his previous binges--and this was the first time he had gone whole hog in almost three years--Gardener had felt what he was feeling now: a sickness that went deeper than the thudding head, the stomach curled up like a sponge filled with acid, the aches, the quivering muscles. That deep sickness couldn't even be called depression--it was a feeling of utter doom.

  This was the worst ever, even worse than the depression that had followed the Famous Thanksgiving Jag of 1980, the one that had ended his teaching career and his marriage. It had also come close to ending Nora's life. He had come to that time in Penobscot County Jail. A deputy was sitting outside his cell reading a copy of Crazy magazine and picking his nose. Gardener learned later that all police departments are aware that jag-drinkers frequently come off their binges deeply depressed. So if there happens to be a man available, he keeps an eye on you, to make sure you don't highside it ... at least not until you post bond and get off county property.

  "Where am I?" Gardener had asked.

  "Where do you think you are?" the deputy asked. He looked at the large green booger he had just scraped out of his nose and then wiped it slowly and with apparent enjoyment onto the sole of his shoe, squashing it down, smearing it along the dark dirt there. Gardener had been unable to take his eyes from this operation; a year later he would write a poem about it.

  "What did I do?"

  Save for occasional flashes, the previous two days had been totally black. The flashes were unrelated, like cloud-rifts which let through uncertain flickers of sunlight as a storm approaches. Bringing Nora a cup of tea and then starting to harangue her about the nukes. Ave Nukea Eterna. When he died, his final word on the whole fucking mess wouldn't be Rosebud but Nukes. He could remember falling down in the driveway beside his house. Getting a pizza and being so drunk runny clots of cheese went down inside his shirt, burning his chest. He could remember calling Bobbi. Calling and babbling something to her, something awful, and had Nora been screaming? Screaming?

  "What did I do?" he asked, more urgently.

  The deputy looked at him for a moment with a perfect clear-eyed contempt. "Shot your wife. That's what you did. Good fucking deal, uh?"

  The deputy had gone back to his Crazy magazine.

  That had been bad; this was worse. That depthless feeling of self-contempt, the grisly certainty that you had done bad things you couldn't remember. Not a few too many glasses of champagne at the New Year's Eve party where you put a lampshade on your head and boogied around the room with it slipping down over your eyes, everybody in attendance (with the exception of your wife) thinking it was just the funniest thing they'd ever seen in their lives. Not knowing you did fun things like punching department heads. Or shooting your wife.

  It had been worse this time.

  How could it be worse than Nora?

  Something. For the time being his head hurt too badly to even try reconstructing the last unknown period of time.

  Gardener looked down at the water, the waves bulging smoothly up toward where he sat, forearms on
his knees, head sagging. When the troughs passed he could see barnacles and slick green seaweed. No ... not really seaweed. Green slime. Like boogers.

  Shot your wife . . . good fucking deal, uh?

  Gardener closed his eyes against the sickening pulses of pain, then opened them again.

  Jump in, a voice cajoled him softly. I mean, what the fuck, you don't really need any more of this shit, do you? Game called in the bottom of the first. Not official. Rainout. To be rescheduled when the Great Wheel of Karma turns into the next life . . . or the one after that, if I have to spend the next making up for this one by being a dung beetle or something. Hang up your jock, Gard. Jump in. In your current state, both of your legs will cramp and it'll be over quick. Gotta beat a bedsheet in a jail cell, anyway. Go on, jump.

  He got up and stood swaying on the rocks, looking at the water. Just one big step, that's all it would take. He could do it in his sleep. Shit, almost had.

  Not yet. Want to talk to Bobbi first.

  The part of his mind which still wanted a little to live grasped at this idea. Bobbi. Bobbi was the only part of his old life that still seemed somehow whole and good. Bobbi was living down there in Haven, writing her westerns, still sane, still his friend if no longer his lover. His last friend.

  Want to talk to Bobbi first, okay?

  Why? So you can make a last stab at fucking her up too? God knows you've tried hard enough. She's got a police record because of you, and undoubtedly her own FBI folder as well. Leave Bobbi out of this. Jump and stop fucking around.

  He swayed forward, very close to doing it. The part of him that still wanted to live seemed to have no arguments left, no delaying tactics. It could have said that he had stayed sober--more or less--for the last three years, there had been no blackouts since he and Bobbi had been arrested at Seabrook in 1985. But that was a hollow argument. Except for Bobbi he was now completely alone. His mind was in turmoil almost all of the time, returning again and again--even sober--to the subject of the nukes. He recognized that his original concern and anger had rotted into obsession . . . but recognition and rehabilitation were not the same things at all. His poetry had deteriorated. His mind had deteriorated. Worst of all, when he wasn't drinking he wished he was. It's just that the hurting's all the time now. I'm like a bomb walking around and looking for a place to go off. Time to defuse.