His name was Rambo, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody knew, standing by the pump of a gas station at the outskirts of Madison, Kentucky. He had a long heavy beard, and his hair was hanging down over his ears to his neck, and he had his hand out trying to thumb a ride from a car that was stopped at the pump. To see him there, leaning on one hip, a Coke bottle in his hand and a rolled-up sleeping bag near his boots on the tar pavement, you could never have guessed that on Tuesday, a day later, most of the police in Basalt County would be hunting him down. Certainly you could not have guessed that by Thursday he would be running from the Kentucky National Guard and the police of six counties and a good many private citizens who liked to shoot. But then from just seeing him there ragged and dusty by the pump of the gas station, you could never have figured the kind of kid Rambo was, or what was about to make it all begin.
Rambo knew there was going to be trouble, though. Big trouble, if somebody didn't watch out. The car he was trying to thumb a ride with nearly ran him over when it left the pump. The station attendant crammed a charge slip and a book of trade stamps into his pocket and grinned at the tire marks on the hot tar close to Rambo's feet. Then the police car pulled out of traffic toward him and he recognized the start of the pattern again and stiffened. 'No, by God. Not this time. This time I won't be pushed.'
The cruiser was marked CHIEF OF POLICE, MADISON. It stopped next to Rambo, its radio antenna swaying, and the policeman inside leaned across the front seat, opening the passenger door. He stared at the mud-crusted boots, the rumpled jeans ripped at the cuffs and patched on one thigh, the blue sweat shirt speckled with what looked like dry blood, the buckskin jacket. He lingered over the beard and the long hair. No, that's not what was bothering him. It was something else, and he couldn't quite put his finger on it. 'Well then, hop in,' he said.
But Rambo did not move.
'I said hop in,' the man repeated. 'Must be awful hot out there in that jacket.'
But Rambo just sipped his Coke, glanced up and down the street at the cars passing, looked down at the policeman in the cruiser, and stayed where he was.
'Something wrong with your hearing?' the policeman said. 'Get in here before you make me sore.'
Rambo studied him just as he himself had been studied: short and chunky behind the wheel, wrinkles around his eyes and shallow pockmarks in his cheeks that gave them a grain like weathered board.
'Don't stare at me,' the policeman said.
But Rambo kept on studying him: the gray uniform, top button of his shirt open, tie loose, the front of his shirt soaked dark with sweat. Rambo looked but could not see what kind his handgun was. The policeman had it holstered to the left away from the passenger side.
'I'm telling you,' the policeman said. 'I don't like being stared at.'
'Who does?'
Rambo glanced around once more, then picked up his sleeping bag. As he got into the cruiser, he set the bag between himself and the policeman.
'Been waiting long?' the policeman asked.
'An hour. Since I came.'
'You could have waited a lot longer than that. People around here don't generally stop for a hitchhiker. Especially if he looks like you. It's against the law.'
'Looking like me?'
'Don't be smart. I mean hitchhiking's against the law. Too many people stop for a kid on the road, and next thing they're robbed or maybe dead. Close your door.'
Rambo took a slow sip of Coke before he did what he was told. He looked over at the gas station attendant who was still at the pump grinning as the policeman pulled the cruiser into traffic and headed downtown.
'No need to worry,' Rambo told the policeman. 'I won't try to rob you.'
'That's very funny. In case you missed the sign on the door, I'm the Chief of Police. Teasle. Wilfred Teasle. But then I don't guess there's much point in telling you my name.'
He drove on through a main intersection where the light was turning orange. Far down both sides of the street were stores squeezed together - a drug store, a pool hall, a gun and tackle shop, dozens more. Over the top of them, far back on the horizon, mountains rose up, tall and green, touched here and there with red and yellow where the leaves had begun to die.
Rambo watched a cloud shadow slip across the mountains.
'Where you headed?' he heard Teasle ask.
'Does it matter?'
'No. Come to think of it, I don't guess there's much point in knowing that either. Just the same - where you headed?'
'Maybe Louisville.'
'And maybe not.'
'That's right.'
'Where did you sleep? In the woods?'
'That's right.'
'It's safe enough now, I suppose. The nights are getting colder, and the snakes like to hole up instead of going out to hunt. Still, one of these times you might find yourself with a bed partner who's just crazy about your body heat.'
They passed a car wash, an A&P, a hamburger drive-in with a big Dr. Pepper sign in the window. 'Just look at that eyesore drive-in,' Teasle said. 'They put that thing here on the main street, and ever since, all we've had is kids parked, beeping their horns, throwing crap on the sidewalk.'
Rambo sipped his Coke.
'Somebody from town give you a ride in?' Teasle asked.
'I walked. I've been walking since after dawn.'
'Sure am sorry to hear that. Least this ride will help some, won't it?'
Rambo did not answer. He knew what was coming. They drove over a bridge and a stream into the town square, an old stone courthouse at the right end, more shops squeezed together down both sides.
'Yeah, the police station is right up there by the court¬house,' Teasle said. But he drove right on through the square and down the street until there were only houses, first neat and prosperous, then gray cracked wooden shacks with children playing in the dirt in front. He went up a rise in the road between two cliffs to a level where there were no houses at all, only fields of stunted corn turning brown in the sun. And just after a sign that read YOU ARE NOW LEAVING MADISON. DRIVE SAFELY, he pulled off the pavement onto the gravel shoulder.
'Take care,' he said.
'And keep out of trouble,' Rambo answered. 'Isn't that how it goes?'
'That's good. You've been this route before. Now I don't need to waste time explaining how guys who look like you have this habit of being a disturbance.' He lifted the sleeping bag from where Rambo had put it between them, set it on Rambo's lap, and leaned across Rambo to open the passenger door. 'Take good care now.'
Rambo got slowly out of the car. 'I'll be seeing you,' he said and flipped the door shut.
'No,' Teasle answered through the open passenger window. 'I guess you won't.'
He drove the cruiser up the road, made a U turn, and headed back toward town, sounding his car horn as he passed.
Rambo watched the cruiser disappear down the road between the two cliffs. He sipped the last of his Coke, tossed the bottle in a ditch, and with his sleeping bag slung by its rope around his shoulder, he started back to town.
2
The air was sticky with frying grease. Rambo watched the old lady behind the counter peer out the bottom of her bifocal glasses at his clothes and hair and beard.
'Two hamburgers and a Coke,' he told her.
'Make that to go,' he heard from behind.
He looked at the reflection in the mirror behind the counter and saw Teasle braced in the front doorway, holding the screen door open, letting it slam shut with a whack. 'And make that a rush job, will you, Merle?' Teasle said. 'This kid's in a powerful hurry.'
Only a few customers were in the place, sitting at the counter and in some of the booths. Rambo watched their reflection in the mirror as they quit chewing and looked over at him. But then Teasle leaned against the juke box by the door, and it seemed like nothing serious was going to happen, so they went back to work on their food.
The old lady behind the counter had her white head cocked to one side, puzzled.
'Oh yeah, Merle, and while you're fixing that stuff, how about a fast coffee,' Teasle said.
'Whatever you like, Wilfred,' she said, still puzzled, and went to pour the coffee.
That left Rambo looking at the mirror at Teasle looking at him. Teasle had an American Legion pin opposite the badge on his shirt. I wonder which war, Rambo thought. You're just a bit young for the second one.
He swung round on his stool and faced him. 'Korea?' he said, pointing at the pin.
'That's right,' Teasle said flatly.
And they went on watching each other.
Rambo shifted his eyes down to Teasle's left side and the handgun he wore. It was a surprise, not the standard police revolver but a semi-automatic pistol, and from the big handle Rambo decided it was a Browning 9 millimeter. He had used a Browning once himself. The handle was big because it held a clip of thirteen bullets instead of the seven or eight that most pistols held. You couldn't slam a man flat on his back with one shot from it, but you could sure hurt him bad, and two more would finish him, and you still had ten more shots for anybody else around. Rambo had to admit that Teasle carried it awfully well, too. Teasle was five foot six, maybe seven, and for a smallish man that big pistol ought to have hung awkward, but it didn't. You have to be pretty large to get a grip on that big handle though, Rambo thought. And then he looked at Teasle's hands, amazed at the size of them.
'I warned you about that staring,' Teasle said. Leaning against the juke box, he unstuck his wet shirt from his chest. Left-handed, he took a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket, lit it, snapping the wood match he had used in half, then snickered, shaking his head in amusement as he walked over to the counter and smiled strangely down at Rambo on the stool. 'Well, you sure put one over on me, didn't you?' he said.
'I wasn't trying to.'
'Of course not. Of course you weren't. But you sure put one over on me just the same, didn't you?'
The old lady set Teasle's coffee down and faced Rambo. 'How do you want your burgers? Plain or dragged through the garden?'
'What?'
'Plain or with fixings?'
'With lots of onion.'
'Whatever you like.' She went off to fry the hamburgers.
'Yeah, you really did,' Teasle said to him and smiled strangely again. 'You really put one over.' He frowned at the dirty cotton bulging from a rip in the stool next to Rambo and sat reluctantly. 'I mean, you act like you're smart. And you talk like you're smart, so I naturally assumed you got the idea. But then you come dragging back here and fool me, and that's enough to make a man wonder if maybe you're not smart at all. Is there something wrong with you? Is that what it is?'
'I'm hungry.'
'Well, that just doesn't interest me at all,' Teasle said, drawing on his cigarette. It had no filter and after he exhaled, he picked off bits of tobacco that were stuck to his lips and tongue. 'A fellow like you, he ought to have brains to carry a lunch with him. You know, for when he has some emergency, like you have now.'
He lifted the cream pitcher to pour into his coffee, but then he noticed the bottom of the pitcher, and his mouth went sour at the yellow curds that were clinging there. 'You need a job?' he asked quietly.
'No.'
Then you already got a job.'
'No, I don't have a job either. I don't want a job.'
'That's called being a vagrant.'
'Call it whatever the hell you want.'
Teasle's hand slammed like a shot on the counter. 'You watch your mouth!'
Everyone in the place jerked his head toward Teasle. He looked around at them, and smiled as if he had said something funny, and leaned close to the counter to sip his coffee. 'That'll give them something to talk about.' He smiled and took another draw on his cigarette, picking more specks of tobacco off his tongue. The joke was over. 'Listen, I don't get it. That rig of yours, the clothes and hair and all. Didn't you know when you came back down the main street out there you'd stand out like some black man? My crew radioed in about you five minutes after you got back.'
'What took them so long?'
'The mouth,' Teasle said. 'I warned you.'
He looked like he was ready to say more, but then the old lady brought Rambo a half-full paper bag and said, 'Buck thirty-one.'
'For what? For that little bit?'
'You said you wanted the fixings.'
'Just pay her,' Teasle said.
She held onto the bag until Rambo gave her the money.
'O.K., let's go,' Teasle said.
'Where?'
'Where I take you.' He emptied his cup in four quick swallows and put down a quarter. Thanks, Merle.' Everybody looked at the two of them as they walked to the door.
'Almost forgot,' Teasle said. 'Hey, Merle, one more thing. How about cleaning the bottom on that cream pitcher.'
3
The cruiser was directly outside. 'Get in,' Teasle said, tugging at his sweaty shirt. 'Damn, for the first of October it sure is hot. I don't know how you tolerate wearing that hot jacket.'
'I don't sweat.'
Teasle looked at him. 'Sure you don't.' He dropped his cigarette down a manhole grate by the curb, and they got into the cruiser. Rambo watched the traffic and the people going past. In the bright sun after the dark lunch counter, his eyes hurt. One man walking by the cruiser waved to Teasle, and Teasle waved back, then pulled away from the curb into a break in traffic. He was driving fast this time.
They went down past a hardware store and a used car lot and old men smoking cigars on benches and women pushing children in strollers.
'Look at those women,' Teasle said. 'A hot day like this and they don't have the sense to keep their kids indoors.'
Rambo did not bother looking. He just closed his eyes and leaned back. When he opened them, the cruiser was speeding up the road between the two cliffs, up onto the level where the stunted corn drooped in the fields, past the YOU ARE NOW LEAVING MADISON sign. Teasle stopped the car abruptly on the gravel shoulder and turned to him.
'Now get it clear,' he said. 'I don't want a kid who looks like you and doesn't have a job in my town. First thing I know, a bunch of your friends will show up, mooching food, maybe stealing, maybe pushing drugs. As it is, I've half a notion to lock you up for the inconvenience you've caused me. But the way I see it, a kid like you, he's entitled to a mistake. It's like your judgment's not as developed as an older man's and I have to make allowances. But you come back again and I'll fix you so you won't know whether your asshole's bored, bunched, or pecked out by crows. Is that plain enough for you to understand? Is that clear?'
Rambo grabbed hold of the lunch sack and his sleeping bag and got out of the car.
'I asked you a question,' Teasle said out the open passenger door. 'I want to know if you heard me tell you not to come back.'
'I heard you,' Rambo said, flipping the door shut.
'Then dammit, do what you hear you're told!'
Teasle stomped on the gas pedal and the cruiser lurched off the road shoulder, gravel flying, onto the smooth hot pavement. He made a severe U-turn, tires squealing, and sped back toward town. This time he did not sound his car horn going past.
Rambo watched the cruiser get smaller and disappear down the hill between the two cliffs, and when he could no longer see it, he glanced around at the fields of corn and the mountains in the distance and the white sun in
[?missing page 15?]
and then he was decided. He grabbed the rope on his sleeping bag, slung it around his shoulder and started hiking into Madison again.
At the bottom of the hill into town, trees lined the road, half-green, half-red, the red leaves always on the branches that hung over the road. From exhaust fumes, he thought. Exhaust fumes kill them early.
Dead animals lay here and there along the roadside, likely hit by cars, bloated and speckled with flies in the sun. First a cat, tiger-striped - looked like it had been a nice cat too - next a cocker spaniel, then a rabbit, then a squirrel. That was another thing the war had given him. He noticed dead things more. Not in horror. Just in curiosity of how they had come to end.
He walked past them down the right side of the road, thumb out for a ride. His clothes were filmed yellow with dust, his long hair and beard were matted dirty, and all the people driving by took a look at him, and nobody stopped. So why don't you clean up your act? he thought. Shave and get a haircut. Fix up your clothes. You'll get your rides that way. Because. A razor's just one more thing to slow you down, and haircuts waste money you can spend on food, and where would you shave anyhow; you can't sleep in the woods and come out looking like some kind of prince. Then why walk around like this, sleeping in the woods? And with that, his mind moved in a circle and he was back to the war. Think about something else, he told himself. Why not turn around and go? Why come back to this town? It's nothing special. Because, I have a right to decide for myself whether I'll stay in it or not. I won't have somebody decide that for me.
But this cop is friendlier than the rest were. More reasonable. Why bug him? Do what he says.
Just because somebody smiles when he hands me a bag of shit, that doesn't mean I have to take it. I don't give a damn how friendly he is. It's what he does that matters.
But you do look a little rough, as if you might cause trouble. He has a point.
So do I. In fifteen goddamn towns this has happened to me. This is the last. I won't be fucking shoved anymore.
Why not explain that to him, clean yourself up a bit? Or do you want this trouble that's coming? You're hungry for some action, is that it? So you can show him your stuff?
I don't have to explain myself to him or anybody else. After what I've been through, I have a right without explanation.
At least tell him about your medal, what it cost you.
Too late to stop his mind from completing the circle. Once again he returned to the war.
4
Teasle was waiting for him. As soon as he drove past the kid, he had glanced up at his rearview mirror, and there the kid had been, reflected small and clear. But the kid was not moving. He was just standing there at the side of the road where he had last been, watching the cruiser, just standing there, getting smaller, watching the cruiser.
Well, what's the holdup, kid? Teasle had thought. Go on, clear out.
But the kid had not. He had just kept standing there, getting smaller in the mirror, looking toward the cruiser. And then the road into town had sloped sharply down between the cliffs, and Teasle could not see him reflected anymore.
My God, you're planning to come back again, he had suddenly realized, shaking his head and laughing once. You're honestly planning to come back.
He turned right onto a side street and drove a quarterway up a row of gray clapboard houses. He swung into a gravel driveway and backed out and parked so the cruiser was aimed toward the main road he had just left. Then he slumped behind the steering wheel, lighting a cigarette.
The look on the kid's face. He was honest-to-God planning to come back. Teasle could not get over it.
From where he was parked, he could see everything that passed on the main road. The traffic wasn't much, it never was on Monday afternoons: the kid couldn't walk along the far sidewalk and be hidden by the passing cars.
So Teasle watched. The street he was on met the main road in a T. There were cars and trucks going both ways on the main road, a sidewalk on the far side, beyond that the stream which ran along the road and beyond that the old Madison Dance Palace. It had been condemned last month. Teasle remembered when he was in high school how he had worked there Friday and Saturday nights parking cars. Hoagy Carmichael had almost played there once, but the owners hadn't been able to promise him enough money.
Where's the kid?
Maybe he isn't coming. Maybe he really left.
I saw that look on his face. He's coming all right.
Teasle took a deep drag on his cigarette and glanced up at the green-brown mountains lumped close on the horizon. There was a sudden cool wind that smelled of crisp leaves and then it was gone.
'Teasle to station,' he said into the microphone of his car radio. 'Has the mail come in yet?'
As always, Shingleton, the day radioman, was quick to answer, his voice crackling from static. 'Sure has, Chief. I already checked it for you. Nothing from your wife, I'm afraid.'
'What about from a lawyer? Or maybe something from California that she didn't put her name on the outside.'
'I already checked that too, Chief. Sorry. Nothing.'
'Anything important I ought to know about?'
'Just a set of traffic lights that shorted out, but I got the works department over there fixing it.'
'If that's all then, I'll be a few minutes yet coming back.'
This kid was a nuisance, waiting for him. He wanted to get back to the station and phone her. She was gone three weeks now and she had promised to write at the most by today and here she had not. He did not care anymore about keeping his own promise to her not to call, he was going to phone anyway. Maybe she had thought it over and changed her mind.
But he doubted that.
He lit another cigarette and glanced to the side. There were neighbor women out on porches looking to see what he was up to. That was the end, he decided. He flipped the cigarette out the cruiser window, switched the ignition and drove down to the main road to find out where the hell the kid was.
Nowhere in sight.
Sure. He's gone and left and that look was just to make me think be was coming back.
So he headed toward the station to phone, and three blocks later when all at once he saw the kid up on the left sidewalk, leaning against a wire fence over the stream, he slammed on his brakes so hard in surprise that the car following crashed into the rear end of the cruiser.
The guy who had hit him was sitting shocked behind the wheel, his hand over his mouth. Teasle opened the cruiser door and stared at the guy a second before he walked over to where the kid was leaning against the wire fence.
'How did you get into town without me seeing you?'
'Magic.'
'Get in the car.'
'I don't think so.'
'You think a little more.'
There were cars lined up behind the car that had struck the cruiser. The driver was now standing in the middle of the road, peering at the smashed taillight, shaking his head. Teasle's open door angled into the opposite lane, slowing traffic. Drivers blared their horns; customers and clerks came sticking their heads out of shops across the street.
'You listen,' Teasle said. 'I'm going to clear that mess of traffic. 'The time I'm through, you be in that cruiser.'
They eyed each other. The next thing, Teasle was over to the guy who had hit the cruiser. The guy was still shaking his head at the damage.
'Driver's license, insurance card, ownership papers,' Teasle told him. 'Please.' He went and shut the cruiser door.
'But I didn't have a chance to stop.'
'You were following too close.'
'But you slammed on your brakes too fast.'
'It doesn't matter. The law says the car in back is always wrong. You were following too close for an emergency.'
'But-'
'I'm not about to argue with you,' Teasle told him, 'Please give me your driver's license, insurance card and ownership papers.' He looked over at the kid, and of course the kid was gone.
5
Rambo stayed out walking in the open to make it clear that he was not trying to hide. Teasle could give up the game at this point and leave him alone; if he did not, well then it was Teasle who wanted the trouble, not himself.
He walked along the left-hand sidewalk, looking down at the stream wide and fast in the sun. Across the stream was the bright yellow, freshly sandblasted wall of a building with balconies over the water and a sign high on top MADISON HISTORIC HOTEL. Rambo tried to figure what was historic about a building that looked as if it had just been put up last year.
In the center of town, he turned left onto a big orange bridge, sliding a hand along the smooth warm paint on the metal rail until he was half across. He stopped to peer down at the water. The afternoon was glaring hot, the water fast and cool-looking.
Next to him, welded to the rail, was a machine with a glass top full of gumballs. He took a penny from his jeans and reached to put it in the slot and held it back in time. He had been wrong. The machine was not full of gumballs. It was full of grainy balls of fish food. There was a small metal plate stamped onto the machine. FEED THE FISH, it read. 10 CENTS. PROCEEDS BENEFIT BASALT COUNTY YOUTH CORPS. BUSY YOUTH MAKE HAPPY YOUTH.
Sure they do, Rambo thought. And the early bird gets the shaft.
He peered down at the water again. It was not long before he heard somebody walk up behind him. He did not bother to see who it was.
'Get in the car.'
Rambo concentrated on the water. 'Will you look at all the fish down there,' he said. 'Must be a couple of thousand. What's the name of that big gold one? It can't be a real goldfish. Not that big.'
'Palomino trout,' he heard behind him. 'Get in the car.'
Rambo peered further down at the water. 'Must be a new strain. I never heard of it.'
'Hey, boy, I'm talking to you. Look at me.'
But Rambo did not. 'I used to go fishing quite a bit,' he said, peering down. 'When I was young. But now most streams are fished out or polluted. Does the town stock this one? Is that why there's so many fish down there?'
That was why all right. The town had stocked the stream for as long as Teasle could remember. His father often used to bring him down and watch the workmen from the state fish hatchery stock it. The workmen would carry pails from a truck down the slope to the stream, set them in the water and the ease the pails over to let the fish slide out, the length of a man's hand and sleek and sometimes rainbow colored. 'Jesus, look at me!' Teasle said.
Rambo felt a hand grab on his sleeve. He tugged loose. 'Hands off,' he said, peering down at the water. Then he felt the
hand grabbing at him again and this time he swung around. 'I'm telling you,' he said. 'Hands off!'
Teasle shrugged. 'All right, play it tough if you want. That doesn't bother me none.' He unhooked the hand¬cuffs from his gun belt. 'Let's have your wrists.'
Rambo kept them at his sides. 'I mean it. Let me be.'
Teasle laughed. 'You mean it?' he said and laughed. 'You mean it? You don't seem to understand I mean it too. Sooner or later you're getting in that cruiser. Only question is, how much force I have to use before you do it.' He rested his left hand on his pistol and smiled. 'It's such a little thing, getting in the cruiser is. What do you say we don't lose our perspective?'
People walking by looked curiously at them.
'You would draw that thing,' Rambo said, watching Teasle's hand on the pistol. 'At first I thought you were different. But now I see I've met crazy ones like you before.'
'Then you're one up on me,' Teasle said. 'Because I've never met anything quite like you before.' He stopped smiling and closed his big hand around the grip of his gun. 'Move.'
And that was it, Rambo decided. One of them was going to have to back down, or else Teasle was going to get hurt. Bad. He watched Teasle's hand on the bolstered pistol, and he thought, You bloody stupid cop, before you pull that gun, I could snap off both your arms and legs at the joints. I could smash your Adam's apple to sauce and heave you over the rail. Then the fish would really have something to feed on.
But not for this, he suddenly told himself, not for this. Just thinking about what he could do to Teasle he managed to satisfy his anger and control himself. It was a control he had not been capable of before, and thinking about his control made him feel better too. Six months ago when he finished convalescing in the hospital, he had been unable to keep hold of himself. In a bar in Philadelphia some guy had kept pushing ahead of him to see the go-go girl take off her pants, and he had broken the guy's nose for him. A month later, in Pittsburgh, he had slit the throat of a big Negro who pulled a knife on him when he was sleeping one night by a lake in a park. The Negro had brought a friend who tried to run, and Rambo had hunted him all through the park until he finally caught him trying to start his convertible.
No, not for this, he told himself. You're all right now.
It was his turn to smile. 'O.K., let's have another ride,' he said to Teasle. 'But I don't know what the point is. I'm only going to walk back into town again.'
6
The police station was in an old schoolhouse. And red yet, Rambo thought as Teasle drove into the parking lot at the side. He almost asked Teasle if painting the schoolhouse red was somebody's idea of a joke, but he knew that none of this was a joke, and he wondered if he should try talking himself out of it all.
You don't even like this place. It doesn't even interest you. If Teasle hadn't picked you up, you would have gone straight through on your own.
That doesn't make a difference.
The cement steps leading up to the front door of the station looked new to him, the shiny aluminum door was certainly new, and inside there was a bright white room that took up the width of the building and half the length and smelled of turpentine. The room was checkered with desks, only two of which had anybody at them, a policeman typing, and another policeman talking into the two-way radio that was along the right back wall. They both stopped when they saw him, and he waited for it to come.
'Now that's a sorry sight,' the man by the typewriter said.
It never failed to come. 'Sure,' Rambo told him. 'And now you're supposed to say, What am I, a girl or a boy. And after that you're supposed to say, If I'm too poor to get a bath and a haircut, you'll take up a collection for me.'
'It's not his looks I mind,' Teasle said. 'It's his mouth. Shingleton, have you anything new I ought to know about?' he asked the man by the radio.
The man sat tall and solid. He had an almost perfectly rectangular face, neat sideburns down to slightly below his ears. 'Stolen car,' he said.
'Who's handling it?'
'Ward.'
'That'll be fine,' Teasle said and turned to Rambo. 'Come on then. Let's get this over.'
They went across the room and down a corridor to the rear of the building. Footsteps and voices were coming out open doors on both sides, office workers in most of the rooms, policemen in the rest. The corridor was glossy white, and the turpentine smelled worse, and down at the end there was a scaffold under a dirty green part of the ceiling that had been left unpainted. Rambo read the sign that was taped to the scaffold: OUT OF WHITE PAINT BUT WE GOT MORE COMING IN TOMORROW AND WE GOT THE BLUE PAINT YOU WANT TO COVER THE RED OUTSIDE.
Then Teasle opened the door into an office at the very end of the hall, and Rambo held back a moment.
Are you absolutely sure you want to go through with this? he asked himself. It's still not too late to try and talk your way out.
Out of what? I haven't done anything wrong.
'Well, come on, get in there,' Teasle said. 'This is what you've been working for.'
It had been a mistake not to go in there right away. Holding back at the door looked like he was afraid, and he did not want that. But now if he went inside after Teasle had ordered him, it would look like he was obeying, and he did not want that either. He went in before Teasle had another chance to order him.
The office ceiling came down close to his head, and he felt so closed in that he wanted to stoop, but he did not allow himself. The floor had a rug that was green and worn, like grass that had been trimmed too close to the earth. On the left behind a desk, there was a case of handguns. He centered on a.44 magnum and remembered it from Special Forces training
camp: the most powerful handgun made, able to shoot through five inches of steel or bring down an elephant, but with a kick so great that he himself had always disliked using it.
'Sit down on the bench, boy,' Teasle said. 'Let's have your name.'
'Just call me boy,' Rambo said. The bench was along the right wall. He leaned his sleeping bag against it and sat down extremely straight and rigid.
'It's none of it funny anymore, kid. Let's have your name.'
'I'm known as kid too. You can call me that too if you want.'
'You're right I will,' Teasle said. 'I'm at the point where I'm ready to call you any damn thing I feel like.'
7
The kid was more damn nuisance than he could tolerate. All he wanted was to have him out of the office so he could phone. It was four-thirty now, and figuring the time shift, it was, what, three-thirty, two-thirty, one-thirty in California. Maybe she would not be in at her sister's now. Maybe she was out having lunch with somebody. Who, he wondered. Where. That was why he was spending so much time with the kid - because he was impatient to call. You did not let your troubles interfere with your job. You kept your life at home where it belonged. If your problems made you start to rush through something, then you forced yourself to slow and do it extra well.
In this case, maybe the rule was paying off. The kid did not want to give his name and the only reason people did not give a name was that they had something to hide and were afraid of being checked out in the fugitive files. Maybe this was more than just a kid who would not listen.
Well, he would take it slow and find out. He sat on the corner of his desk opposite the kid on the bench, and calmly lit a cigarette. 'Would you like a smoke?' he asked the kid.
'I don't smoke.'
Teasle nodded and leisurely drew on the cigarette. 'How be we try this again. What's your name?'
'None of your business.'
Dear God, Teasle thought. In spite of himself he pushed away from the desk and took a few steps toward the kid. Slowly though, he told himself. Make it calm. 'You didn't say that. I can't believe I actually heard that.'
'You heard me all right. My name is my business. You haven't given me a reason to make it yours.'
'I'm the Chief of Police you're talking to.'
'That's not a good enough reason.'
'It's the best damn reason in the world,' he said, then waited for the heat to drain from his face. Quietly, 'Let me have your wallet.'
'I don't carry one.'
'Let me have your I.D. cards.'
'I don't carry them either.'
'No driver's license, no social security card, no draft card, no birth certificate, no -'
'That's right,' the kid cut him off.
'Don't pull that with me. Get out your I.D. cards.'
Now the kid was not even bothering to look at him. He was turned toward the guncase, pointing at the medal above the line of shooting trophies. 'The Distinguished Service Cross. Really gave them hell in Korea, did you?'
'O.K.' Teasle said. 'On your feet.'
It was the second highest medal he could get, ranking above the bronze star, silver star, Purple Heart, Distinguished Flying Medal, and Distinguished Service Medal. Only the Congressional Medal of Honor ranked above it. To Marine Corps Master Sergeant Wilfred Logon Teasle. For conspicuous and valiant leadership in the face of overwhelming enemy fire, his citation read. The Choisin Reservoir Campaign, December 6, 1950. That was when he was twenty, and he was not about to let any kid who didn't look much older mock it.
'Get on your feet. I'm sick of telling you everything twice. Get on your feet and pull out your pockets.'
The kid shrugged and took his time standing. He went from one pocket of his jeans to the other, pulling them out, and there was nothing.
'You didn't pull out the pockets in your jacket,' Teasle said.
'By God you're right.' When he pulled them, he came out with two dollars and twenty-three cents plus a book of matches.
'Why the matches?' Teasle said. 'You told me you don't smoke.'
'I need to start fires to cook on.'
'But you don't have any job or money. Where do you get the food to cook?'
'What do you expect me to say? That I steal it?'
Teasle looked at the kid's sleeping bag against the side of the bench, guessing where the I.D. cards were. He untied it and threw it out unrolled on the floor. There was a clean shirt and a toothbrush. When he started feeling through the shirt, the kid said, 'Hey, I spent a lot of time ironing that shirt. Be careful not to wrinkle it.' And Teasle was suddenly very tired of him.
He pressed the intercom on his desk. 'Shingleton, you had a look at this kid when he came through. I want you to radio his description to the state police. Say I'd like him identified the quickest they can. While you're at it, check if he matches any description we have in the files. He has no job and no money, but he sure looks well fed. I want to know why.'
'So you're determined to push this thing,' the kid said.
'That's wrong. I'm not the one who's pushing.'
8
The Justice of the Peace had an air conditioner. It hummed a bit and rattled every so often and made the office so cold that
Rambo had to shiver. The man behind the desk was bundled in an oversized blue sweater. His name was Dobzyn, the sign on the door said. He was chewing tobacco, and as soon as he took a look at Rambo coming in, he stopped chewing.
'Well, I'll be,' he said and rolled his swivel chair squeaking back from the desk. 'When you phoned, Will, you should have told me that the circus was in town.'
Always it came, some remark. Always. This whole business was getting out of hand, and he knew that he had better give in soon, that they could make a lot of trouble for him if he did not. But here the crap was coming his way again, they would not let up, and Jesus, he was just not going to take it.
'Listen, son,' Dobzyn was saying. 'I really have to ask you a question.' His face was very round. When he spoke, he slipped his chewing tobacco against one cheek, and that side of his face bulged out. 'I see kids on the TV demonstrating and rioting and all, and -'
'I'm no demonstrator.'
'What I have to know, doesn't that hair get itchy down the back of your neck?'
Always they asked the same. 'It did at first.'
Dobzyn scratched his eyebrow and thought about that answer. 'Yeah, I suppose you can get used to just about anything if you put your mind to it. But what about the beard? Doesn't that get itchy in this heat?'
'Sometimes.'
'Then what possessed you to let it grow?'
'I have a rash on my face and I'm not supposed to shave.'
'Like I have a pain in my rear-end and I'm not supposed to wipe it,' Teasle said by the door.
'Now wait a second, Will. It may be he's telling the truth.'
Rambo could not resist. 'I'm not.'
'Then what did you say all that for?'
'I get tired of people asking me why I grew the beard.'
'Why did you grow the beard?'
'I have a rash on my face and I'm not supposed to shave.'
Dobzyn looked like he had been slapped in the face. The air conditioner whirred and rattled. 'Well, well,' he said quietly, extending the words. 'I guess I walked into that one. Didn't I, Will? The laugh's on me.' He tried a brief chuckle. 'I walked right into it. I surely did. My, yes.' He chewed on his tobacco. 'Just what's the charge, Will?'
'There's two of them. Vagrancy and resisting arrest. But those are just to hold him while I find out if he's wanted anywhere. My guess is theft someplace.'
'We'll take up the vagrancy first. You guilty, son?'
Rambo said he wasn't.
'Do you have a job? Do you have more than ten dollars?'
Rambo said he didn't.
'Then there's no way around it, son. You're a vagrant. That'll cost you five days in jail or fifty dollars fine. Which will it be?'
'I just told you I don't have ten, so where the hell would I get fifty?'
'This is a court of law,' Dobzyn said, leaning suddenly forward in his chair. 'I will not tolerate abusive language in my court. One more outburst and I'll charge you with contempt.' He was a moment before he settled back in his chair and started to chew again, thinking. 'Even as it is, I don't see how I can keep your attitude out of mind when I'm sentencing you. Like this matter of resisting arrest.'
'Not guilty.'
'I haven't asked you yet. Wait until I ask you. What's the story on this resisting arrest, Will?'
'I picked him up for hitchhiking and did him a favor and gave him a lift to outside town. Figured it would be best for everybody if he kept right on moving.' Teasle leaned one hip on the creaky rail that separated the office from the waiting-space near the door. 'But he came back.'
'I had a right.'
'So I drove him out of town again and he came back again and when I told him to get in the cruiser, he refused. I finally had to threaten force before he'd listen.'
'You think I got in the car because I was afraid of you?'
'He won't tell me his name.'
'Why should I?'
'Claims he has no I.D. cards.'
'Why the hell do I need any?'
'Listen I can't sit here all night while you two have it out with each other,' Dobzyn said. 'My wife is sick, and I was supposed to be home to cook dinner for the kids at five. I'm late already. Thirty days in jail or two hundred dollars fine. What'll it be, son?'
'Two hundred? Christ I just told you I don't have more than ten.'
'Then it's thirty-five days in jail,' Dobzyn said and rose out of his chair, unbuttoning his sweater. 'I was about to cancel the five days for vagrancy, but your attitude is intolerable. I have to go. I'm late.'
The air conditioner began to rattle more than it was humming, and Rambo could not tell if he was shivering from cold or rage. 'Hey, Dobzyn,' he said, catching him as he went by. 'I'm still waiting for you to ask me if I'm guilty of resisting arrest.'
9
The doors on both sides of the corridor were closed now. He passed the painters' scaffold near the end of the hall, heading
for Teasle's office.
'No, this time you go this way,' Teasle said. He pointed to the last door on the right, a door with bars in a little window at the top, and reached with a key to unlock it before he saw that the door was already open a quarter-inch. Shaking his head disgustedly at that, he pushed the door the rest of the way open and motioned Rambo through to a stairwell with an iron banister and cement steps going down and fluorescent lights in the ceiling. As soon as Rambo was in, Teasle came through behind him, locking the door, and they walked down, their footsteps scraping on the cement stairs, echoing.
Rambo heard the spray before he reached the basement. The cement floor was wet and reflected the fluorescent lights, and down at the far end a thin policeman was hosing the floor of a cell, water running out between the bars and down a drain. When he saw Teasle and Rambo, he screwed the nozzle tight; the water flared out in a wide arc and abruptly stopped.
Teasle's voice echoed. 'Galt. Why is that upstairs door unlocked again?'
'Did I…? We don't have anymore prisoners. The last one just woke up, and I let him go.'
'It doesn't matter if we have prisoners or not. If you get in the habit of leaving it open when we're empty, then you might start forgetting to lock it when there's some¬body down here. So I want the door locked regardless. I don't like to say this - it may be tough getting used to a new job and a new routine, but if you don't learn to be careful, I might have to look for somebody else.'
Rambo was as cold as he had been in Dobzyn's office, shivering. The lights in the ceiling were too close to his head; even so, the place seemed dark. Iron and cement. Christ, he should never have let Teasle bring him down. Walking across from the courthouse, he should have broken Teasle and escaped. Anything, even being on the run, was better than thirty-five days down here.
What the hell else did you expect? he told himself. You asked for this, didn't you? You wouldn't back off.
Damn right I wouldn't. And I still won't. Just because I'll be locked up, doesn't mean I'm finished. I'll fight this as far as it goes. By the time he's ready to let me out, he'll be fucking glad to be rid of me.
Sure you'll fight. Sure. What a laugh. Take a look at yourself. Already you're shaking. Already you know what this place reminds you of. Two days in that cramped cell and you'll be pissing down your pantlegs.
'You've got to understand I can't stay in there.' He could not stop himself. The wet. I can't stand being closed in where it's wet.' The hole, he was thinking, his scalp alive. The bamboo grate over the top. Water seeping through the dirt, the walls crumbling, the inches of slimy muck he had to try sleeping on.
Tell him, for God's sake.
Screw, you mean beg him.
Sure, now when it was too late, now the kid was coming around and trying to talk himself out of this. Teasle could not get over the needlessness of it all, how the kid had actually tried his damndest to work himself down here. 'Just be thankful it is wet,' he told the kid. 'That we hose everything down. We get weekend drunks in here, and come Mondays when we kick them out, they've been sick up the walls and all over the place.'
He glanced at the cells, and the water on the floor made them look clean, sparkling. 'You may be careless with that door upstairs Galt,' he told him. 'But you sure did a job on those cells. Do me a favor will you, go up and get some bedding and an outfit for this kid? You,' he told the kid, 'I guess the middle cell is fine. Go in, take off your boots, your pants, your jacket. Leave on your socks, your underwear, your sweat shirt. Take off any jewelry, any chain around your neck, any watch -. Galt, what are you looking at?'
'Nothing.'
'What about the gear I sent you for?'
'I was just looking. I'll get it.' He hurried up the stairs.
'Aren't you going to tell him again to lock the door?' the kid said.
'No need.'
Teasle listened to the rattle of the door being unlocked. He waited, then heard Galt lock the door after him. 'Start with the boots,' he told the kid.
So what else did he expect? The kid took off his jacket.
'There you go again. I told you start with the boots.'
'The floor is wet.'
'And I told you get in there.'
'I'm not going in there any sooner than I have to.' He folded his jacket, squinted at the water on the floor, and set the jacket on the stairs. He put his boots beside it, took off his jeans, folded them and put them on top of the jacket.
'What's that big scar above your left knee?' Teasle said. 'What happened?'
The kid did not answer.
'It looks like a bullet scar,' Teasle said. 'Where did you get it?'
'My socks are wet on this floor.'
'Take them off then.'
Teasle had to step back to keep from being hit by them.
'Now take off your sweat shirt,' he said.
'What for? Don't tell me you're still looking for my I.D. cards.'
'Let's just say I like a thorough search, that I want to see if you've anything hidden under your arms.'
'Like what? Dope? Grass?'
'Who knows? It's happened.'
'Well not me. I gave up that stuff a long time ago. Hell, it's against the law.'
'Very funny. Just take off your sweat shirt.'
For once the kid did what he was told. As slow as he could, of course. His stomach muscles showed tight, and there were three straight scars across his chest.
'Where did they come from?' Teasle said surprised. 'Knife scars. What the hell have you been up to anyway?'
The kid squinted at the light and did not answer. He had a large triangular patch of black hair on his chest. Two of the scars cut through it.
'Hold up your arms and turn around,' Teasle said.
'That isn't necessary.'
'If there was a quicker way to search you I would sure have found it. Turn around.'
There were dozens of small jagged scars across the kid's back.
'Jesus, what's going on here?' Teasle said. 'Those are lash marks. Who's been lashing you?'
The kid still did not answer.
That's going to be some interesting report the state police sends back on you.'
He hesitated: now came the part he hated.
'All right, pull down your shorts.'
The kid looked at him. And looked at him.
'Don't give me any bashful looks,' he said, disliking this. 'Everybody has to go through this, and everybody is still a virgin when I'm finished. Just pull the shorts down. That's enough. Stop right there at your knees. I don't want to see anymore of you than I have to. Hold yourself up down there. I want to see if there's anything hidden. Not two hands. One. Just your fingertips.'
Keeping a distance, Teasle stooped and peered at the kid's groin from several angles. The testes were bunched up close under. Now came the worst part of all. He would have told somebody like Galt to do it, but be did not like passing on dirty jobs. 'Turn around and bend over.'
The kid really looked at him. 'Get your jollies off somebody else. I won't put up with anymore of this.'
'Yes you will. Aside from what you might have hid up it, I'm not interested in your rear end whatsoever. Just do what you're told. Now reach back and spread your cheeks. Come on, it's not a sight I enjoy. There. You know, when I worked in Louisville, I once had a prisoner with a three-inch knife in a leather case shoved up himself. It always beat me how he could sit down.'
Upstairs Galt was unlocking the door and opening it.
'O.K., you're clean.' Teasle said to the kid. 'You can pull up your shorts.'
Teasle listened for Galt to close and lock the upstairs door, and then Galt came scraping his shoes down the cement steps. He was carrying a pair of faded denim coveralls, a thin mattress, a rubberized sheet, a gray blanket. He looked at the kid standing there in his shorts, and he said to Teasle, 'Ward just called in about that stolen car. He found it in the stone quarry north of here.'
'Tell him to stay put and tell Shingleton to call the state police for a fingerprint crew.'
'Shingleton already called them.'
Galt went into the cell, and the kid started to follow, his bare feet making a slapping noise in the water on the floor.
'Not yet,' Teasle told him.
'Well make up your mind. First you want me in there. Now you don't want me in there. I wish you knew what you wanted.'
'What I want is for you to go down to that shower at the end. And I want you to take off your shorts and wash yourself good before you put on the clean uniform. Be sure to wash that hair of yours. I want it clean before I have to touch it.'
'What do you mean touch it?'
'I have to cut it.'
'What are you talking about? You're not cutting my hair. You're not going anywhere near my head with any scissors.'
'I told you everybody has to go through this. Everybody from car thieves to drunks gets searched like you, and takes a shower, and gets any long hair cut. The mattress we're giving you is clean and we want it back clean without any ticks or fleas from where you've been sleeping in sheds and fields and God knows where.'
'You're not cutting it.'
'With a little encouragement I could arrange for you to spend another thirty-five days here. You wanted in damn bad enough. Now you're going through with the rest of it. Why don't you just give in and make things easy for the two of us? Galt, why don't you go up and get the scissors, shaving cream, and razor?'
'I'll only agree to the shower,' the kid said.
'That'll be fine for now. One thing at a time.'
As the kid walked slowly down to the shower stall, Teasle looked again at the lash marks on his back. It was almost six o'clock. The state police would be reporting soon.
Thinking about the time, he counted back to three o'clock in California, unsure now whether to call. If she had changed her mind, she would already have been in touch with him. So if he did phone, he would only be putting pressure on and driving her farther away.
All the same he had to try. Maybe later when he was done with the kid, he would call and just talk without mentioning the divorce.
Who are you fooling? The first thing you'll ask her is whether she's changed her mind.
Inside the stall the kid turned on the spray.
10
The hole was ten feet deep, barely wide enough for him to sit with his legs outstretched. In the evenings they sometimes came with flashlights to peer down at him through the bamboo grate. Shortly after each dawn they removed the grate and
hoisted him up to do their chores. It was the same jungle camp they had tortured him in, the same thatched huts and rich green mountains. For a reason he did not at first understand, they had treated his wounds while he was unconscious: the slashes in his chest where the officer had repeatedly punctured him with a slender knife and drawn the blade across, grating against his ribs; the lacerations in his back where the officer had crept up behind, suddenly lashing. Lashing. His leg was badly infected, but when they had opened fire on his unit and captured him, no bone had been hit, only thigh muscle, and eventually he was able to limp around.
Now they did not question him anymore, did not threaten him, did not even talk to him. They always made gestures to show him his work: dumping slops, digging latrines, building cook-fires. He guessed their silence toward him was punishment for pretending not to understand their language. Still, at night in his hole, he heard their conversations dimly and from the scraps of words he was satisfied that even while unconscious he had not told them what they wanted to know. After the ambush and his capture, the rest of his unit must have gone on to its objective, because now he heard about the exploded factories and how this camp was one of many in the mountains watching for other American guerrillas.
Soon they had him doing more chores, heavier ones, feeding him less, making him work longer, sleep less. He came to understand. Too much time had gone by for him to know where his team would be. Since he could not give them information, they had fixed his wounds so they could play with him some more and find out how much work he could take before it killed him. Well, he would show them a long wait for that. There was not much they could do to him that his instructors had not already put him through. Special Forces school and the five mile runs they made him run before breakfast, the ten miles of running after breakfast, heaving up the meal as he ran but careful not to break ranks because the penalty was ten extra miles for anyone who broke ranks to be sick. Climbing high towers, shouting his roster number to the jumpmaster, leaping, legs together, feet braced, elbows tucked in, yelling 'One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand' as he dropped, stomach rising to his throat, spring-harness jerking him up just before the ground. Thirty pushups for every lapse in the routine, plus a pushup shouted 'For the Airborne!' Another thirty pushups if the shout was weak plus another one 'For the Airborne!' In the mess hall, on the toilet, everywhere, the officers waited, abruptly yelling 'Hit it,' and he would have to snap down in a jumping pose, shouting 'One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand,' snapping to attention till dismissed, then shouting 'Clear, sir,' running off shouting 'Airborne! Airborne! Airborne!' Day-jumps into forests. Night-jumps into swamps to live there for a week, his only equipment a knife. Classes in weapons, explosives, surveillance, interrogation, hand-to-hand combat. A field of cattle, he and the other students holding knives. Bowels and stomachs strewn across the field, animals still alive and screeching. Hollowed carcasses and the order to crawl in, to wrap the carcass around him, to wash himself in blood.
That was the point of becoming a Green Beret. He could take anything. But each day in the jungle camp he grew weaker, and at last he was afraid that his body could not keep on. More work, more heavy work, less food, less sleep. What he saw went gray and blurred; he stumbled, moaning, talking to himself. After three days without food, they tossed a snake flopping into his hole to squirm in the dirt, and they watched as he twisted off its head and ate the body raw. He only managed to keep a little of it down. Not until later - a few minutes, a few days, the time was all the same - did he wonder if the snake was poisonous or not. That and the bugs he found in his hole and the chunks of garbage they occasionally threw down at him, that was all that gave him life the next few days - or weeks, he could not tell. Hauling a dead tree through the jungle back to camp, he was permitted to pick fruit and eat it, and by nightfall he had dysentery. He lay in a stupor in his hole, mired in his excrement, hearing them talk about his foolishness.
But he had not been foolish. In his delirium his mind seemed better than it had been since capture, and the dysentery was intentional. He had eaten just enough to catch it mildly so the next day when they hauled him up be could pretend his cramps were more severe than they were actually, so he could collapse while dragging the dead trees back to camp. Maybe they would not make him work for a while then. Maybe his guard would leave him in the jungle and go for help to carry him to camp, and by the time the guard returned, he would have been able to escape.
But then he realized that his mind was not better at all. He had eaten too much fruit, and the cramps were worse than he expected, and once he could no longer work, the guard would likely shoot him, and even if he did escape, how long could he last, how far could he get, starved and half-dead and diarrheic? He could not remember if he realized all this before or after. Everything became confused, and suddenly he was on his own, crashing through the jungle, collapsing into a stream. The next thing he knew, he was crawling through ferns up a slope, standing at the top, falling onto level grass, standing again and straining to get across the level, then crawling up another slope, at the top no longer able to stand, only to crawl. The mountain tribes, he was thinking. Get to a tribe, was all he could think.
Somebody was making him drink. The soldiers had caught him he was sure, and he fought to break away, but somebody was holding him down and making him swallow. It wasn't soldiers, it couldn't be: they let him break away, stumbling through the jungle. Sometimes he thought he was back in his hole, only dreaming he was loose. Other times he thought he was still dropping from the plane with the rest of his team, his chute not opening.
In two weeks the rain started, coming down forever. Mud. Wood rot. Showers streaming down so thick that he could hardly breathe. He kept on, dazed by the pelt of the rain, infuriated by the suck of the mud, by the wet bushes clinging to him. He could not tell which way was south anymore - the night clouds would break and he would take a bearing from a star, but then the clouds would close up and he'd have to travel blind, and when the clouds once more opened, he'd discover he had lost direction. One morning he found he had wandered in a circle, and after that he travelled only in the day. He had to go slower, more carefully, to keep from being spotted. When clouds obscured the sun, he aimed toward far-off landmarks, a mountain peak or a towering tree. And each day, every day, the rains came.
He fell out of the forest staggering across a field, and somebody shot at him. He stumbled to the ground, crawling back to the trees. Another shot. People running through the grass. 'I told you to identify yourself,' a man was saying. 'If it weren't I saw you didn't have a weapon, I'd have killed you. Stand the hell up and identify yourself.'
Americans. He started laughing. He could not stop laughing. They held him in the hospital for a month before his hysteria left him. His drop into the north had been at the start of December, and it was now the start of May they told him. How long he had been a prisoner he didn't know. How long he had been on the run he didn't know. But between then and now he had covered the distance between his drop area and this American base in the south, three hundred and ninety miles. And what had started him laughing was that he must have been in American territory for days, some of the soldiers he had heard in the night and hid from must have been Americans.
11
He put off going back out there as long as he could. He knew he would not be able to stand it when Teasle came touching the scissors to his head and cutting. The spray of water on him, he glanced out the shower, and Galt was suddenly at the bottom of the stairs, holding the scissors and a can of shaving cream and a straight razor. His stomach tightened. He watched frantically as Teasle pointed at a desk and chair by the bottom of the stairs, saying something to Galt that came muffled through the noise of the spray. Galt brought the chair around in front of the desk, took some newspapers from inside the desk and spread them under the chair. He was not long doing it at all. Directly Teasle came toward him in the stall, close enough for him to hear.
'Turn off the water,' Teasle said.
Rambo pretended not to hear.
Teasle came farther down. 'Turn off the water,' he repeated.
Rambo went on washing his arms and chest. The soap was a big yellow cake that smelled strongly of disinfectant. He switched to soaping his legs. It was the third time he had soaped them. Teasle nodded and walked out of sight to the left of the stall where there must have been a shut-off valve because in a second the water quit spraying. Rambo's legs and shoulders tightened, water dripping from him onto the hollow metal bottom of the stall, and then Teasle was in sight again, holding a towel.
'There's no sense in putting this off,' Teasle said. 'You'll just catch cold.'
Rambo had no choice. He stepped out slowly. He knew that if he didn't Teasle would reach in for him, and he didn't want Teasle touching him. He dried himself repeatedly with the towel. In the cold the towel made prickle marks on his arms. His testicles felt exposed.
'Dry yourself anymore and you'll wear out the towel,' Teasle said.
He went on drying himself. Teasle reached to guide him toward the chair, and Rambo side-stepped, keeping Teasle and Galt in front of him as he backed over to the chair. Without a pause everything built up in quick sequence.
First Teasle touched the scissors to the side of his head, snipping, and Rambo tried, but could not stop himself from flinching.
'Hold still,' Teasle said. 'You'll jerk against the scissors and maybe hurt yourself.'
Next Teasle snipped off a large clump of hair, and Rambo's left ear was cool and unprotected in the damp basement air. 'You've got more up here than I guessed,' Teasle said and dropped the clump onto the newspaper spread out on the floor. 'Your head's going to weigh a lot less in a minute.' The newspaper was turning gray, soaking up water.
Then Teasle snipped off more, and Rambo had to flinch again. Teasle stepped back of him, and Rambo tensed from not being able to see what was going on behind. He swung his head to see, and Teasle pressed him forward. Rambo slipped his head from under the hand.
But Teasle snipped the scissors to his head again and Rambo flinched again, and hair caught in the swivel of the scissors, yanking sharply at his scalp. He could not bear it anymore. He surged from the chair and spun around to Teasle.
'Get away.'
'Sit down in that chair.'
'You're not cutting anymore. You want my hair cut, you get a barber down here.'
'It's after six. There aren't any barbers working now. You're not putting on that uniform until your hair is cut.'
Then I'll stay like this.'
'You'll sit on the chair. Galt, go up and bring Shingleton. I've made as many allowances as I can. We'll cut his hair so fast it'll be like we used sheep shears.'
Galt looked happy to get away. Rambo listened to him unlock the door at the top of the stairs, the rattle echoing down. It was all happening even faster now. He did not want to hurt anyone, but he knew that was coming, he could feel his anger spreading out of control. Instantly a man was rushing down the stairs, Galt half a flight behind. It was the man who had been sitting by the radio in the front office. Shingleton. He seemed huge now that he was standing, his head up near the bright lights in the ceiling. The bones above his eyes and around the bottom of his face stuck out in the glare. He looked at Rambo, and Rambo felt twice as naked.
'Trouble?' Shingleton said to Teasle. 'I hear you have trouble.'
'No, but he does,' Teasle said. 'You and Galt sit him on the chair.'
Shingleton came right over. Galt hesitated, then he came over too.
'I don't know what this is all about,' Shingleton said to Rambo. 'But I'm reasonable. I'll give you a choice. Do you walk or do I carry you?'
'I think you'd better not touch me.' He was determined to keep control. There would be just the next five minutes and the continual touch of the scissors, and then it would be over, he would be all right.
He started toward the chair, his feet slick in the water, and behind him Shingleton said, 'Good God, where did you get all the scars on your back?'
'In the war.' That was a weakness. He should not have answered.
'Oh sure. Sure you did. In which army?'
