DIXIE DINER
WHERE ALL THE RIGHT AND THE SMART FOLKS EAT
OPEN 24 HOURS
The Ferrari screeched off the pavement and slid to a stop in front of the diner. Baby Doll turned back the mirror and drew a lipstick across her mouth-a mouth that was already swollen with red coloring. Then she slipped the lipstick back in its jeweled silhouette case and-with the fingers of one hand splayed before her face like a Fire-and-Ice nail polish ad-she slicked her eyebrows with a little spit. Odin held the door open for her. She slid her short-shorts across the leather seat and turned on the ball of her buttocks, swinging her long brown legs out of the car to stand beside him. He slammed the door, walking into the diner. She was right behind him.
"I don't mind you following in my footsteps, baby," he said. "Just let me get out of them first, will you?"
"I'm sorry-" She stepped on his heels again.
"Christ."
The diner was empty. A waitress tip-tapped out from a room in back on high heels She was a plain girl, almost homely and too young to work alone at night. They sat down at a table near the glass door of the place and she tip-tapped over with a menu. A sign above an old Crosley TV set in the corner said the kitchen closed at 10 P.M. Weekdays and 12 P.M. Saturdays. But she told them that there were a few things like coffee and cold-cuts she could fix behind the counter. Then she tip-tapped away with their order.
Odin looked out the window. A cat jumped down on the tin roof of a sorry and ill-balanced shed between the diner and a cypress tree. The torn brown body of a mouse was clutched in its jaws as it trotted onto the far end of the roof and stood black and slope-spined on the edge, studying the emptiness below. Then it sat on its fat haunches and stared with phosphorescent jungle eyes at the small, yellow square of light that fell on the shed from the diner's open window. Its head swung up and the two glowing points of eyes stared at Odin. It hissed at him-ears laid back flat against its head-the dead body still in its jaws, sticking out from each side, and stretching its mouth in a deadly bewhiskered smile. Then, slowly lowering its forequarters, it laid down on the corrugated roof, letting claws curve out over soft pads, its tail whipping sinuously but gently. After a while it got up and trotted a few feet back along the edge of the tin roof, until it reached a corner where it crouched-then leaped to the ground and disappeared.
"Don't leave me," said Baby Doll.
He looked at her. "What?"
"Sign," she said, pretty-smiling, "right behind you. Says 'Not responsible for ladies left over 30 seconds.' "
He glanced over his shoulder at the sign.
"What makes you think I want to be responsible for you?"
"Oh, because-" she said. "Because, what, tille ven."
"Why do you call me that."
"What?"
" 'Li'l ven' What you just said."
"Because I don't know your name, baby."
"What does it mean?"
"Means 'friend.'"
"You're my friend?"
"Sure."
"I'm your friend, too."
"How old're you?" he asked. "Twelve?"
"Maybe."
"Got any folks?"
"No."
"Go to school."
"She-it," she said.
"What do you do? Spend all your time in motels with old men. . . ? "
"I want to be a Princess," she said.
"That's going to be your occupation."
"Yes."
Her honey-colored hair was brushed back, high off her neck in a pony tail that was secured with a rubber band. Freckles crossed her nose. There was about her an insidious charm, a fey grace and the air of a baby femme du monde. He went into the lavatory. He glanced in the mirror. The golden stubble of beard on his face looked almost like grain stalks in wet black soil after a long rain. So dark had the hot sun of Florida summer burned his skin that his blonde hair was brilliant in contrast to it and it was skin so dark that the metallic blue and bloodshot white of his eyes actually looked grotesque against it. The light from a single bulb screwed into the wall beside the mirror splintered on the stiletto's razor-sharp blade when he raised it and scraped the stubble from his chin and jaw. A few deadly-fast strokes trimmed his heavy sideburns and cut the long female-soft hair over his ears, almost man-short. The red silk shoulders and front of his sports shirt now gleamed with gold bristles, and he brushed them off over the bowl, before he slid the stiletto back in his boot and shoved the dirty-picture and name-scratched door that swung open silently into the diner.
Baby Doll was not alone.
She was still sitting at the table with a glass of ice water in front of her. But a two-hundred pound truck driver whose end did not justify his jeans was leaning on the table. Outside the diner a big diesel tractor and thirty-four foot aluminum trailer was parked under the cypress tree. On the side of the trailer a sign painted in black and yellow letters said EXPLOSIVES.
The truck driver shifted his fat behind. "You got nice little titties, honey. I bet you can..."
She struck his hand off. "Go 'way," she cried. "Lea' me alone, can't you!"
He laughed and grabbed her arm. "Now, honey chile, that ain't no way to speak to Big Daddy-"
'"Lo," said Odin.
"-well, well, well." The big man turned. "If it ain't the hot bird in the Fart that couldn't hold his water for a place to pass us back there on the road a piece. Well, well-" He stopped. The waitress was standing at the counter, grasping herself by the elbows and hugging herself as though she was cold. Beside her, swung halfway around on a stool, sat a small, wasted and almost Sinatra-thin man who was sipping coffee from a steaming cup out of which a spoon stuck in his eye. He had a creased, cheese-like face and hair that was slicked over a bald spot on his head. He said something to the other trucker as he set his cup down in his saucer. But it was so thick with Tennessee that Odin missed it completely.
"Yeah; I knowed of a cocksucker like that," the big man said. "Oncet you lets...."
"What?"
Odin shoved his way past him and sat down opposite Baby Doll. The red print of a thumb-the only mark anywhere on her arm-was fading slowly. There came the clink of a spoon against a saucer and the truck driver with the bald spot on his head made a heavy, ugly, old man's belch. A jet whined across the sky and far away a whippoorwill shrieked, then ceased and in a while, from farther still, shrieked again. A sparrow swept down on the shed outside the window, landing in the square of light that reflected in the tin roof. It strutted around rustling its feathers, chirping as though it alone had found the sun there in the darkness and roaring silence of night. Over on the counter a swarm of random and blue-shiny flies buzzed around an apple pie, some hairy bodies even crawling in the V cut-resembling not flies as much as field raisins.
The big trucker leaned on the table again and leered at Baby Doll. "That's a real flippin' pony tail you got there, honey," he said. He reached over and fondled her hair while she, appealing to Odin with frightened eyes, sat still and endured the hand that moved slowly down her neck to squeeze her shoulder. A tiny insect fluttered about a wet and shapeless patch of sweat on the woman-broad seat of the truck driver's jeans.
Odin stretched his left foot forward, with heel on the floor, studying the bright tan shine on the tip of his boot
"Move your fat ass out of my face," he said flatly, but with unmistakable intent
"Don't sound me, boy," the other said. "Don't say nothin' to me. 'Cause ef you do, I'll jest natch'ally be fo'ced to pick up that chair you're sittin' on and throw it and you both from amazin' grace into a floatin' opportunity."
Then he turned back to Baby Doll, towering over her while she sat and stared surprised at Odin who was stolidly silent. He (the truck driver) grabbed her pony tail and twisted it in his fingers, pulling her face up to his. "No! No!" she said, trying to throw her head aside.
"You little beauty," he murmured. "I'd like your kind of...."
Then he leaned over her, his face bending to hers, his hot, harsh whisky breath on her closed eyes. A tear squeezed out from under an eyelid and filtered through the long, fawn-colored lashes that were curled up on her cheeks like baby fingers. It slid down her snub nose and clung to the corner of her lips-lips that were wet and soft across her mouth. The big mouth was almost on hers when Odin picked up a fork and, raising it over his head, drove it deep into the red splay-fingered hand that rested on the table between him and the girl. It took the hand just above the knuckles, spitting it to the table, the prongs passing completely and precisely through its center.
The big man screamed and his body sprang up stiff and quivering as though a spring had exploded and sent a steel rod up his rear, through his spine. He did not scream again. He was rigid with pain and the hand jerked and twitched on the table as if it was not even connected to his arm. He turned and seized the fork handle. He screamed. He tore at it and pulled the fork out of the table, then drew the prongs slowly, gently, painfully, up through the flesh that now had the look of freshly ground hamburger meat. Small gleaming white splinters of bone came up with a bent prong and dark blood gushed from the wound. Then the fork came out completely and he threw it across the room and collapsed.
The man at the counter slammed his cup down and came off his stool with a hoarse shout-But Odin sat in a half-crouch and he reached his hand backward and took up his chair. He swung it in a wide arc and let it fly. It smashed across the man's face and he fell down on one knee and kept pushing his hair back over the bald spot on his head. The whole rotten, termite-weakened chair crumbled and fell apart, clattering on the red floor tiles. Odin caught the man by the two heavy turfs of hair on his temples and dragged him erect. He flat-handed him across the face ... crack crack ... crack, crack, crack. The steady splitting sounds echoed in the diner, sharp like pistol shots, while blood smeared between mouth and palm. The man's head hung down, making guttural distorted noises that were gruesome to hear, and Odin twisted the turf of hair with strong fingers until the head went back with a snap. He dragged his hand across the beaked nose (while the man mumbled for him to stop) and then drew back his heavy fist, slamming it into the nose as hard as he could, breaking it with a sodden smack of bone on bone. The man slid to the floor, blood running down his shirt, his eyes closed, unconscious.
Again there was that roaring silence of flies buzzing in the pie on the counter and the bird's chirping as it strutted around in the yellow square of window-shaped light that lay outside the diner, on the shed's tin roof. From the big truck driver, lying face-down at Baby Doll's feet, there came a tremendous fart.
"Speak to me, sweet lips," Odin muttered and wiped his hands on a napkin.
From out on the shed there came the sound of a bird startled into flight and a buckling thud as a cat leaped from the cypress tree and landed on the tin roof, running its claw-ends down the sloping surface in wiggling lines, struggling furiously to get a footing on the wavy silver-white metal, as it slid backwards toward the roofs edge. It was a sound that touched the nerves in a man's spine, like chalk scratching on a blackboard. Then came a thin, well-fading cry as the cat fell tail-first to the ground.
"You-" the waitress began and ceased, unable to go on.
"Umm?" Odin looked at her.
"You-" she began again. "You-"
He turned to Baby Doll. "You all right, pussy?"
She nodded her head quickly.
"Want something to eat?"
She shook her head. Her face turned white under the dark tan. "C'mon," he said. "Let's go."
There was a sign at the side of the highway that said, "You Are Now Entering Fern Park. Pop. 407," then a blur of buildings and another sign, almost front to back with the first: "You Are Now Leaving Fern Park. Pop. 407." Trees flashed by them-ahead a melon-shaped Ford was moving down the highway-and the RPM on the big tachometer climbed as the Ferrari's speedometer shot up to 120 m.p.h., then held at a steady 130, not rising or falling an inch. They roared along the dark highway mile after mile, their headlights growing from tiny white points to great whirling circles in the rear window of the car in front. Then they floated up behind the Ford, the r.p.m.'s dropping and their motor growling angrily as they slowed down to seventy miles an hour.
The Ford had a long antenna on its rear fender but it was a nothing-car compared to the Ferrari. So Odin swung to the left and pulled ahead, drawing up fast and then past to cut in front with a rush of speed. He glanced in his mirror. The other driver's face was only a white-green blur bathed in dash lights. A siren screamed and a red signal flashed on the roof of the car. It tried to match wheels with the Ferrari, but the blue dots of tail lights on the big F quickly grew smaller and dimmer in the distance, as it stretched out and flew low, with pipes blatting back over the pavement. A slow-moving manure truck was climbing a hill with a clashing of bearings and the Ferrari came up fast behind, giving it the horn. The green-smelling wind now carried the thick, hot odor of cows back at them. The bed of the truck was heaped high with a dark pile that glowed softly at the edge, shimmering a little with heat, and droppings spilled out on the highway-leaving a smoking brown trail behind it. Under the Ferrari the soft matter slushed around the tires, but the hard was mashed into a wake of flat cakes. The long, bull-nosed hood of the car moved slightly to the left. Odin looked up the rushing strip of asphalt that stretched over the moonlit hill. Then he pressed down on the accelerator and his scarred right hand went far over on the wheel. They swung to the other lane and roared ahead on the dim ribbon of road, the wind whistling around them as they whipped by the no-passing signs and started past the manure truck. Then another truck, a huge iron and steel monster, came suddenly over the top of the hill from the other side. The diesel smoke hung motionless in the air above the cab, and, for a moment, it stood at the summit, immobile, silent and towering against the last stars of night, with a thin shimmer of exhaust rising from its stack.
Then suddenly the big truck meshed gears and nosed down the grade with a high-pitched laboring of the engine. The Ferrari was moving past the slow-paced manure truck and there was only a split-second in which to make a decision because the big rig bearing down upon them could not brake that twenty-ton inertia on the roll or pull over without jack-knifing in a ditch-like depression that ran alongside the highway. To push the brake pedal down hard enough to lock their wheels and try to drop back into their own lane behind the slower-moving manure truck would be suicidal. But to pull ahead at over a hundred miles an hour and try to cut back in front of the truck was like racing into the arms of the old man in the cowl with the hourglass and the scythe riding on his shoulder. "An eee-seee riiii-der-STRUCK this turd to-day-eee!" he sang and shoved the gas pedal to the floor. He swung his wheel sharply to the right, and they shot past the steaming radiator-cap on the nose of the manure truck, rocking crazily-cutting back in front of it with a wild burst of speed, rolling into their own lane just in time to avoid a head-on collision. The big trailer truck was a blur of metal hurtling past The air exploded in a thunderclap as the backwash struck the Ferrari a terrific blow on the side.
" ... Fidel es un animal!" a voice screamed on the radio.
There was the sharp roaring crack of a .45 revolver and a solid chunk as a bullet hit soft flesh. No scream came, just a gasp and a faint rustling sound as if someone had grabbed a microphone, hung on, and then slid slowly to the floor. Then a shout: "Caramba!" The radio screeched; squawked. Silence. An orchestra played the Cuban danzon.
Odin crossed himself.
Two dirty white mules flicked their stubby tails, dropping occasional soft patches of hot brown onto the pavement as they walked along, intent on their own important business.
"Shit shit here and shit shit there, shit here shit there, everywhere shit shit!" he sang.
Baby Doll stared at him. "What?"
"Never mind. You're too young and cute to understand," he said.
Beyond the mule wagon the road was empty. They drove past a billboard showing a ten foot tall kid in trap-door pj's with feet on them. The kid had a twelve foot tall rubber tire over his shoulder and carried a lit candle in his hand. Underneath the sign there was the legend, "TIME TO RE-TIRE ... GET A FISK..."
Odin yawned and rubbed his eye.
TWO
A Jaguar XK-E Coupe sounded the traditional ta-ta-ta-ta; turn turn, at the edge of the field, and a sling-shot roadster let out a WOW wow wow wow ... as it roared past with a dragster in hot pursuit. "Piss like a cow; Fuck like a duck; Mama wants a dick in the ass-hole!"
Odin looked at the two girls on the hood of his Ferrari, they crossed their legs, he looked at Baby Doll, she picked her nose-he looked at Daddy-O. "Look, Pops," he said. "If you're not just a rattler, we'll race you..."
Daddy-O flushed slightly. "Rattler?"
"Big talker."
"Oh," Daddy-O took out a bankroll. A Spade Cat moved an arm through the air and grinned. "Stickm?" he said. A gravity knife dropped into his hand from his sleeve. With a flick of his wrist a six-inch blade came leaping out of the handle. "Stickm?" Odin shook his head without taking his eyes off Daddy-O. On the field a Corvette Sting Ray made a fade test: accelerating to 100 m.p.h. in a few seconds, then skidding to a stop and accelerating again. A souped-up Studebaker Avanti drove up to la linea and stopped next to a Porsche 2-liter Carrera.
"Five hundred dollars," said Daddy-O. "I can beat any freebie on this track."
Odin watched a dog sniff around the Porsche and raise a leg against it. The driver cursed and got out. He took a flying kick at the dog and fell flat on his ass. The dog ran on a few feet-then stopped to watch him. The driver jumped up and ran after it, throwing rocks and gesturing his arms savagely. The dog took off across the field, howling.
"I knew a guy who drove under a stud horse in a Jaguar," said Daddy-O. "You shoulda seen what happened to him."
"Rained, huh?" said the Spade.
"No. He gave birth to a half-Jaguar and half-horse. When it ran out of gas, he could ride it to a garage."
The starter came over to them. She was a beautiful bitch who wore her white hair long over her ears, brushed back with Command. Her skin was pale and under the white brows her eyes, although actually colorless, appeared pink because blood vessels were visible in her retinas.
"You run off from a standing start," she said. "OK?"
Odin nodded and put on a blue fibre-body crash helmet.
"Winner takes all," said Daddy-O. Then: "He-y-" He grinned at the albino. "Do me a favor, willya, chick?"
"Sure," she said.
He gestured. "Spit on me."
"Whaaaaaa...? "
"Spit on me!" He gestured again.
The girl looked at Odin and shrugged her shoulders. Then she threw her head back and spat squarely in Daddy-O's face. Strings of saliva ran down his cheeks.
"Thanks," he said. "Thanks ever so much."
"What'd you want me to do that for?"
"What for?" Daddy-O exclaimed in surprise. "You're an albino, ain't you? You bring good luck!"
The girl looked at Odin again. He shrugged and slid into the Ferrari, buckling on his shoulder harness and safety belt.
"Here they come!" someone shouted excitedly.
A deep rumble of exhausts rent the air as the other cars came up to the line. Pimples poured his Rag-Top into the narrow space between the Ferrari and Daddy-O's AC Cobra. The Cowboy drove his deuce up along the other side of the Ferrari and two freebies put then sports coupes on the outside positions, bracketing and holding the line-up like a pair of matching book-ends.
"Watch out for that Uncle Daniel," the albino told Odin, jerking a thumb toward Daddy-O's AC Cobra. "It don't look like nothin' but it's got one of them big Ford V-8's inside."
"Um." Odin gave her a knowing smile. "Sure, chick; but quit coming on like that. Don't you think I've been around?"
The albino winked.
Baby Doll came across the field from the woods, running heavily but fast. She stuck her head through the Ferrari's window and pulled his face up, her fingers under the jawbones at either side of his throat. Then she kissed him, not quickly and not softly-but slowly and roughly, as a lover would. His throat worked hard and steady, drinking in the sweetness and dew from her lips. His hands moved around her neck and down her back to where his fingers found her buttocks, though there was not much to find. He cupped each little mound, making a crevice in the back of her shorts.
"AH right, you freebies. La linea!"
The albino walked into the glare of headlights, drawing an enormous shadow along the ground. READY. She raised her hands over her head and stood with legs wide apart, giving the starter's signal. Flame-throwers exploded; roars and growls echoed and re-echoed across the meadow, then faded to throb with waiting power. AIM. Toes stabbed the gas pedals, restlessly gunning the motors. FIRE! She jumped into the air like a cheerleader and the line of cars leaped forward with head-snapping jerks, the dust from their spinning wheels tossing and whirling in clouds around her.
The sixth car, the Ferrari, let the others get off the starting line before it growled after their bouncing tail-lights. Odin knew that Pimples and the Cowboy had expected to sandwich him between them. Up ahead the two cars slammed into each other with a dull thud of metal against metal: like garbage cans-or two palms smacking together, expecting to smash a fly. Through the showers of dirt and gravel Odin saw the Deuce and Rag-Top sideswipe again and spurt swiftly down the field. One of the coupes tried to cut off Daddy-O's Cobra but he spun his wheel sharply to the left and burned rubber-ramming furiously across the ruts in the field. A second later he poured on the power and the white Cobra sputtered and roared, outrunning the coupe. Behind Daddy-O and the freebie Odin got into a dog fight with Pimples and the Cowboy. Jockeying for positions the three cars boomed down the straight when suddenly the Ferrari put all its horses to work and shot between them-its speedometer inching past 115, past 120, hit 140, then 145. A minute later the Cowboy crashed into a coupe and went flying over the hood, screaming-his Deuce skidding around, spinning sideways, then rolling across the field like a toy, coming to a stop upside-down, its wheels turning. The coupe balanced on two wheels for a time-its tires smoking as the driver pumped his brakes. Then it bounced back on all fours and went howling after the pack. Ahead of the Ferrari Daddy-O was having a battle royal with the Rag-Top driven by Pimples. In a dead heat with one coupe, and hot on the tail of another, the Cobra rolled back and forth across the field, trying to find a place to pass. At the end of the track the cars slowed down, hitting their brakes for the ditch-turn and the long race home.
This was when Odin made his move. Spotting an opening he shoved the Ferrari alongside the Cobra and between the coupes, heading straight for the ditch at a hundred and fifty. Then suddenly his foot jumped off the accelerator and hit his brakes. Straining against the safety harness he spun the big white steering wheel to the right, slamming his foot back on the gas pedal. The front wheels skidded around-sending spray upon spray of gravel banging against the underside of the car. A row of furrows gouged into the ditch as the rear end skidded sideways and around in a wild U-turn. Digging gravel his wheels tore into the dirt and leaped forward. There was a sudden wail of hot tires behind him, and then the ditch exploded. A rock churned up by another car struck his window, running a spider-web across the glass. A second explosion followed and a great ball of solid red flame reflected in his rear-view mirror. One of the freebies had crashed-like a bomb exploding. Suddenly a bolt of lightning hit his eyes and the Rag-Top's blazing headlights careened toward him. For a moment he was blinded; then his vision returned. He cut to port sharply, his tires squealing as he raced by the car with his speedometer needle on the peg: too fast to see anything, except a blur of Pimples' face. The Rag-Top had become sick near the edge of the ditch.-A slimy black wake of oil spread across the track. He fought his wheel and went into a spin: ending up backward near the trees at the side of the field. Shifting quickly into low he stepped on the gas and made a hairpin turn as a charging car-the Cobra-slid slowly onto its side in the oil-slick and big Daddy-O flew low, scraping along in a shower of sparks and flames. Then, jumping the Ferrari into high, he looked down the straight. Over the ditch a gigantic ball of smoke rose into the sky. He shot by the Rag-Top's oil vomit and raced past the coupe where one of the freebies lay on one elbow, staring with empty eye-sockets towards la linea. The coupe's gas tank had exploded and cremated the boy on the spot.
With its pipes blatting powerfully across the battlefield the Ferrari went into a turn and swung around the deuce that lay like a dead horse with all four legs in the air-one front wheel slowly spinning. Sliding up to la linea with a squeal of brakes, and rear wheels dragging, he skidded to a stop six inches in front of the albino.
Everybody was drunk and yelling around. A covey of Fords and MG Midgets were already starting to pull out. Odin unbuckled his shoulder harness and belt, removed his crash helmet and went over to the albino who sat on the nerf-bar of a '65 Chevy. The albino reached into her tight dungarees and produced the pot: $I,500.00.
"Winner takes all," she said. "Maybe I can help you spend it?..."
"No thanks," he said.
"I live in Kissimmee, just down the road a ways," she shouted as the cars whanged past. "Stop by for the Rodeo, why don't you?"
"Some other time," he said.
The dust and the noise rose thick and heavy. He went back to the idling Ferrari and sat under the steering wheel, shifting into low. Then he swung the car about and raced down to the ditch. The crackling of burning oil and an occasional whuff-ff or plopp-pp when flames found a new pool of gasoline were the only sounds. The number Two coupe was a mass of seared and twisted steel, half submerged in the slick, oil-smeared water. Black smoke rose from the wreck and the rubber-smell was overpowering. Odin cursed and was out and walking toward the ditch when two freebies brought up their buddy. The boy resembled a mammy singer-all black except around the eyes and mouth. Then his charred smoking clothes came into view over the ditchedge, and in the brief second he stood against the flames and great dirty cloud of smoke, someone giggled and the others, seeing him stand there like a comic firecrackered cat-thing in a Tom-and-Jerry movie cartoon, began to giggle also. And when he took a goose step and fell flat on his face the crowd roared with laughter. A Looney Tune. Odin started to laugh too, although he knew the boy was hurt bad. The boy thrashed furiously on the ground and his penis erected through his torn pants as he suddenly let out a bubbling scream of pain. One of his fellow freebies called for a first-aid kit and a battered metal box with a red cross on its lid was relayed through the eager hands of the gang, as if it were the elixir of life itself.
The man with the first-aid kit dropped down on one knee beside the Burn and opened the metal box. He looked inside. It was half empty with junk-flat tubes of nothing, rusty razor blades, strips of soiled bandage, a roll without adhesive, empty bottles, bits of blackish cotton and a six-inch screwdriver. In a corner he found a partly squeezed out green-and-white tube, and he unscrewed the cap and let a ribbon of light yellow ointment curl and loop across his fingers. Then he gently rubbed it on the Burn's cheek and the horny black skin slipped away, sticking to his fingers, exposing sickly white bone, slick raw flesh and small drops of red-streaked suppuration that ran down the burnt face. For a stupefied second the man sat with his hand still out. Then he jerked it back and tried to snap the sticky black flesh from his fingers. But it would not come loose. "OhmiGod, the son of a bitch is fallin' apart on me!" he said. He got up stumbling, snapping his fingers, cursing with that stupefied expression, saying, "OhmiGod.-OhmiGod!" He stooped; picked up a stick and scraped the foul black slime out from between his fingers. Then vomiting, he flung it and the stick both in the ditch. Behind him the Burn clawed at the ground and moaned, "Oh Jesus. Oh God. Oh Christ," then, "Help me, sweet Jesus. Ooooh! Jesus help me. Kill me. Kill me. Kill me. Oh, oh! Jesus, oh Jesus stop it. Stop it! Let me go. Oh God wonderful wonderful God let me ... Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus, don't! Oh oh oh don't! Somebody kill me oh Jesus shoot me. KILL MEEEEEE-" and then he died.
The night was very quiet. Odin looked down at the Burn. He felt nothing. "Banzai," someone said softly. "Banzai, you mother-fucker. May you live ten thousand years!" He did not look at the Burn again. He walked on past him and followed the skid marks on the ground. They were easy to read. The weird flames played across their shadows, burning them into the earth at the edge of the ditch. They spelled Kamikaze. like a Japanese pilot making a suicide attack with his plane the driver of the coupe had made a dive at the AC, striking it amidships, attempting to ram it into the water. But the smaller car bounced off and accelerated away from trouble-so it was the coupe that plowed into the ditch and met its doom in the "Divine Wind"-Kamikaze. The AC had continued on a wavering course along the edge and Odin followed the wheel ruts.
In the eerie light, about twenty-five yards from the burning coupe, he saw the AC balance motionless in the mud: rear wheels up in the air, nose buried in the dark water of the ditch. Daddy-O was sitting with his chest wrapped around the metal-rimmed steering wheel, his head wedged hat-deep in a jagged windshield hole. The engine had been driven back through the frame of the car, making a fatal spear of the steering column, the red shaft passing completely through him. It stood out from his back, naked and pointing at the starlit sky, encircled by the white-red splinters of shattered spine bones. A frothy river of hot blood rolled along his back, soaking his shirt, running down and away from his ribs to clot in the cold channel water. Two hyena-like creatures were hunched over the body. One was a husky boy with a harelip and hair cropped so close that it was only black fuzz on the bullet shape of his skull. The other was Pimples. They stood waist-high in the red water, and they were working on the dead man's mouth. The Harelip had his thumbs sunk to the knuckles in the talcum-powdered cheeks, forcing the mouth open while Pimples knocked the gold teeth loose with a ball peen hammer and pulled them out, one by one, with a pair of pliers.
An owl hooted nearby, and, from farther down the ditch came the booming and grunting of frogs. Somewhere, far away, a calf blatted.
Odin stood for a moment studying the stars. It was past midnight, maybe one, and he would have to get the hell out of there. From the furrows in the soft earth along the ditch edge he could see that the sports car had leaped forward completely out of control after being hit by the coupe. The car had been traveling at more than ninety miles an hour when it went flying over the edge and nosed into the bottom of the ditch. The AC's forward motion was stopped instantly, but Daddy-O kept flying forward at ninety miles an hour, until the steering shaft speared him.
Odin raised his hands, cupping them at the side of his nose, like a hog-caller, and made a blood-curdling Heehee-heehee whoop! sound. "Come on up outta there you goddamn hyenas," he shouted.
They straightened with a start, then turned and stared up at him, standing there at the top of the ditch, with his long shock of blonde hair whipping in the wind.
"Fuckth you!" It was Pimples, shouting in that sick voice of his. They turned back to the dead man and the hammer sounds continued, tapping away in the night-silence.
Odin walked slowly along the edge and picked up a rock and a half brick as he crossed in front of them. "Come on, move!" Rocking back on his feet he threw with the same fast, effeminate flip of the wrist he used when throwing a knife. The stone hit the Harelip with a sodden smack. Then there was a solid whack when the brick struck Pimples and splitting; crumbling it sprayed a faint cloud of dry, pallid dust into the pus-filled papules on the side of his face.
They came toward him, wading waist-deep but fast: their thick overalled thighs working awkwardly through the water, arms waving and bodies swaying. Then they clambered up the side of the ditch, sliding and slipping, ankle-high in ooze and black slime and rotting vegetation. Pimples, who reached the top first, was covered with soil and slime. He carried a dank smell with him. Climbing heavily over the edge after him, the Harelip followed, soaked and foul-stained. Pimples was leering. His colorless lips stretched to show one yellow tooth in the worm rot mouth that had somehow escaped Odin's stomping boot earlier in the night. He was swinging the ball peen hammer against the palm of his hand and water drops kicked up little puffs of dust by his feet. The ugly Harelip was at his shoulder, looking at a stag-handled hunting knife, feeling its edge on his thumb, stropping it on a leather sheath that hung wet and dripping from his jewel-studded cowboy belt.
Pimples tossed the ballpeen hammer from one hand to the other.
"Ah don't lak a pretty boyth," he said. "But bah Galid, Ah'll lak yuh, boyth, aftah Ah gets thru wid yuh." His mouth bared in a sunken grin. " 'Cause yuh won't be so galidam pretty den."
The Harelip looked up from his knife and laughed idiotically.
"Pritty," he haw-hawed. "Why, dollink, he's bee-yoo-teeful!"
Odin said, "Thank you, Zsa-Zsa."
For a moment there was only the drowsy insect murmur, the distant booming of frogs, the drifting fireflies and the sounds from Pimples' mouth, laden with mouth reek.
"Ah'm gawnta whup yuh good," he said. "No gal's evah gahn ta look at yoah face again, boyth!"
"Yair." The Harelip moved forward a step. "And I'm a-goin' to stick this here shiv into your pouch and pop out your nuts-" he said softly, with pleasure. "Then we'll shove them on a stick and roast 'em. Ever taste roasted nuts, mahn? They're the most. Swell up in the heat, see?
Get kinda dark like marshmallows. I dig them the most, mahn ... all them male hormones."
They began to walk slowly toward him while he, just as slowly moved back.
Pimples leered at him. "Tell him 'bout the niggah."
"Yair, mahn," said the Harelip. He smiled at Odin. "This-a niggah come down from Noo Yawk to visit his cousin, lives in Orlando, Dicty-lookin' sonofabitch. Skinny boy, but tall, more'n seven feet and black as a mule's ass-hole..."
"An' he lakt tuh mess wid white meat," Pimples broke in..
"Smelled o' Palmolive and his hair was flattened down with a pound of pomade," the Harelip went on to Odin. "Wore re-al catty clothes too and walked around lookin' bad-you know, de diddley-bop strut?"
He demonstrated the Negro's knee action.
"Spent all summer hanging around that ice cream stand outside the bus station in Orlando, calling after the white girls. So we got a leetle blonde chick to give him a tumble. Mahn-oh-mahn, you shoulda seen that black sonofabitch grin when he got into the car with her in front of all them local niggahs. Them big white teef showed in his mouth lak sugah lumps."
Stealthily, step by step, they moved forward and, in a couple of more steps they would have him pinned against Pimples' car.
"So she done brung the niggah out to this very field and he was tryin' to get into her when we come out of the woods over there and ax him what he was doin' to the po' little innocent uncolo'd chile. Well, mahn, up he jumps pullin' at his trousers, tryin' to get 'em over his pecker. He was an awful tough niggah ... but only when he was with other niggahs. They're like that. Alone niggahs act like angels, but when they get together, they change. Well, this niggah wasn't so tough no mo' because he was alone and there was twelve of us. So he starts running up the road leads to the highway with his black ass stickin' out while he's tryin' to tuck in that six inches of pecker and hold up his pants at the same time."
Odin kept backing off, slowly, slowly, until the car was at his back and his progress away from the ditch was blocked.
He never took his eyes off their hands. The Harelip smiled and turned the knife in his fingers. "Well, we done caught up with him," he said, "and threw him down like some durn calf and castrated him. Goda-mighty, could that niggah scream! Hee hee hee. We roasted his nuts and served them like mystery meat on a fig leaf. Made him eat 'em, too!"
"Dum ... dum ... dum ... dum . . dum," hummed Pimples.
"But you're a white man," the Harelip went on. "You won't have to eat your own nuts . . we'll eat 'em for you!"
Odin slowly brought up his right leg to wrap a hand around the wooden hilt of his stilletto, but suddenly let his leg drop and drew back his hand. The sheath in the top of his boot was empty.
"This what you're lookin' for?" said the Harelip, smiling. He took out the stiletto and nicked it contemptuously at Odin. Then, throwing it at his head, he missed and the blade sank hilt-deep into the Rag-Top, as though into sawdust or sand.
"You lost it in the rumble, mahn."
"Not so braveth wif-out yoah shiv, eh, boyth?" said Pimples. The pale, bloodless lips stretched over his yellow gums and the ballpeen hammer swung in lazy arcs from his hand; just waiting to come down, hard, on the back of Odin's head if he made a lunge for the stiletto. "Yuh all alone, boyth," he said.
Far away, on the road leading through the woods to the highway, the powerful sound of exhaust pipes were quickly fading to pianissimo as the last cars left the field.
The Harelip took a step forward-so he stood with a foot on each side of Daddy-O's half-burnt cap-and he slowly turned the hunting knife in his hand, cutting edge up. "Mahn," he grinned. "We're gonna have a real swingitf one..."
Odin stood before them silently, watching them close in and smile when he suddenly crouched forward. The Harelip's fingers tightened around the handle of his knife and Pimples raised his hammer. Creeping toward him inch by inch they thought they had him like a hog on a hook. But just as they got set for the big slaughter he dragged a frontier-model Derringer out of his left boot. Both of them stopped short. The hole in the end of each barrel was big enough to stick a finger into and the stubby gun shone with a deadly dull silver in the light of the stars as he slowly brought it up and let them look down those two black finger-holes of death, mounted one atop the other.
"You crazy?" gasped the Harelip. His voice went high, the words coming out thin and juvenile. "We're just kid-din'! "
Odin snarled, "Shaddup!" and the short, stubby gun jerked suddenly in his fist. There was a splitting crack and a spurt of flame blasted the night to pieces. A metallic ping followed, then a high-pitched girlish scream. The bullet had struck the hunting knife, snapping the blade off near the handle, and then smashed through bones in the Harelip's hand before it went screaming into the air.
Pimples lisped, "Yuh bathtard! What raht yuh got tuh..." Then his voice petered out as Odin pointed the Derringer at his head and said, "So tell me more," very softly.
The ballpeen hammer hit the ground with a thud and Pimples stared down the loaded lower barrel of the gun. Then he looked at the Harelip who stood beside him, moaning, holding his hand.
"Yuh hand ith bleedin', Harryth," he said.
"Motherfucker," the other said. Then he began to moan again and Odin grabbed Pimples by the front of his T-shirt. "OK," he said. "Let's have it."
"What?"
The Derringer moved toward the ditch. "What you stole from him," he said.
Pimples looked away down the ditch where Daddy-O slept dead and pig-speared. Then he dug into the back pocket of his overalls and brought out a handful of gold teeth-yellow-green with bile, some half-white with bloody roots still on them. Cursing, Odin lashed out with the Derringer and Daddy-O's teeth rocketed from Pimples' hand, flying off to one side where they scattered over the field. Then he shoved the Harelip aside and pulled the stiletto out of the Rag-Top. He swept it in a long arc over his head and brought it down fast across Pimples' face, cutting him open from forehead to chin, splitting his nose.
"AIIIIIEEEEEEEE!"
Pimples collapsed and buried his face in his hands-blood bubbling from between his fingers.
Odin reached over and pulled Daddy-O's bankroll from a tool pocket on the thigh of Pimples' overalls. The bills were water-soaked and smeared with blood. He squatted on his heels and wiped the roll on a turf of saw grass. Then he wrapped it in a handkerchief and put it in his side pocket while the Harelip, like a starving hyena, slinking and high-shouldered, approached him slowly, circling him as a hyena circles a wounded lion, watching for an opening. He did not move and the Harelip came up behind him, not moaning now but breathing heavily-so he could be heard even though he placed each foot on the ground gently, moving no stones or making any sound at all. Then-turning sharply on his heel, actually roaring and his tawny mane tossing, Odin was on his feet and a long tongue-red flame leaped from the Derringer's lower muzzle and licked across the darkness: ripping off half the Harelip's ear. The Harelip threw his arms over his head and screamed, screamed again and again, each scream higher than the one before and higher than any scream should be. Blood washed down the side of his face and he fell to the ground. His eyes showed the whites like a frightened horse as, still screaming, his coward-constricted sphincter muscle slipped and a great surge of shit came slushing into the seat of his pants.
"From the boys in Harlem," muttered Odin. He broke the custom-made gun, shook out the exploded cartridges and blew through the barrels, clearing them of smoke. Then he slated the gun forward, his thumb on the hammer, and forked two fresh, brass-cased .38 S&W Specials into the barrels before snapping them in locked position. Then sliding the gun into the holster in his left boot top he carefully wiped the stiletto on another turf of dry grass and slid it into the sheath in his right boot-lowered his pants leg and walked back along the ditch to the Ferrari.
The field was dark and deserted. The flame in the ditch was drowning. The fire-eaten boy still lay where he fell and died.
Odin stopped.
A small dark animal shape stood with its forefeet on the Burn's stomach, shoulders up, head down and depressed in the black human flesh as it fed tin dung and pink guts. The slobbering sounds and gurgling grunts as it gorged itself, drifted across the field along with the smell of roasted flesh and burned cloth. Odin ran up and kicked it. The thing caught on the toe of his boot and it sailed sideways to fall in a heap six feet away. It hissed at him. Then it was up and back: ribbing and tearing into the Burn's guts with sharp teeth and dirty claws. But it was unaware of his presence until he actually kicked it again, his boots sinking deep in the stinking wet fur. Squealing with pain it scurried for a foothold on the ditch edge before it slipped and disappeared into the black oil-smeared water.
Odin took out a book of matches he had picked up in Miami. He struck one of the red-tips. By its light he saw the ragged opening in the Burn's abdomen. It was a small hole about the size of a baby's fist, extending through the flash-burned skin and fat beneath, exposing a loop of small intestine that had been pulled up through the transparent serous lining membrane of the abdomen and through the reddish-brown muscle fibers, its slick pinkness slimy with saliva and defiled with dirt where the thing had torn it and ribbed it with teeth and claws. Beside the Burn lay the squeezed out green-and-white ointment tube and Odin read part of the printing on it before the match went out. VASELINE, it said. A SOOTHING DRESSING FOR BURNS AND SKIN IRRITATIONS . ...
A great horned owl swooped silently overhead, then dived into the ditch. Away somewhere, on the tree-bordered meadow, a bobcat growled like a buzz-saw hitting a wooden knot. Then the stub tail started spitting and snarling. Suddenly there was the infant-like cry of a possum. From away down the ditch came a terrible neek-neek-ugh-eek-neek-neek sort of sound, and the owl flew off with a frantic kicking and screaming thing in its deadly talons. Far in the night a hound called, and the call was answered from miles away. Then there was the chirruping of the crickets and the booming and grunting of frogs. The fireflies winked and drifted noiselessly against the darkness, a fox used his voice away off somewhere and suddenly, strangely, the night grew silent again.
The wind changed and rats, attracted by the smell of roasted flesh, rustled in the saw grass, scrabbling among the stones as they started to ring around the Burn. Walking slowly back to his car and sliding behind the wheel, thinking, They'll eat him. So what? What's the difference? Who gives a shit anyway, Odin slammed the door, shifted into low and took off easily, turning the car around to head for the Highway-road at the other end of the field.
He swung around the oil slicks where the Rag-Top had become sick and shifted into second. Up ahead a heavy Hudson barreled along-its tail-lights beady red eyes going like hell. The Harelip was at the wheel. Suddenly Odin pictured him sitting there with hands on the wheel-Pimples in the back seat puking, holding his face together with warty fingers-his head thrown back, his hyena eyes wild and scared as the crazy screams came thinly hoarse from his throat and blood ran out dark and thick and hot from his half-torn ear. The screams grew fainter, and then the heavy car disappeared in the black solidity of trees around the Highway-road. Then even the screams were gone.
"Good-bye, Motherfuckers," Odin muttered half aloud. Still in second gear he growled past the corpse and the burning coupe, his hopped-up engine whining crazily before he shoved the stick down into high gear and then suddenly yanked his wheel to cut around Baby Doll who leaped out from behind the dark bulk of the deuce that lay upside-down in a shattered mass of glass and mangled steel, both doors open, one smooth dual-dragster tire dangling from a smashed and twisted wheel. The speeding car was almost on top of her and she made a frightened sideward leap like a small, golden, Florida Key-deer. He jammed on the brakes: beneath him the Goodyear Blue-Streaks dug dirt and sent out a shower of stones and gravel as the big car bumped crazily on canted springs over ruts and holes and occasional black patches of saw grass on the field. The left front fender missed her by a cock's length and he slewed around, tires burning, the outside tire rims digging into the dirt as he hit the brake pedal again like a pile driver and slid to a skidding stop several hundred yards away-the soft, thick dust slowly settling around him.
Baby Doll had lost her shoes in the leap and she was on her hands and knees in the dirt, searching for them under the snapping stars. Then she rose. Balancing on one foot and then the other, she put on a pair of white-and-brown saddle shoes, hurrying, not taking the time to put them on properly, her heels not getting inside but resting on their backs as she shuffled along trying to keep them from falling off.
THREE
They arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, the next afternoon. The southeast section of the city, between King Street and the waterfront, was deserted. On Cumberland Street the little old powder magazine, constructed more than two hundred years before of oyster shells and tapia lime, stood museumed in the hot sun. Then suddenly Baby Doll had to get out. Odin sped the car over to the St. Johns Hotel and stopped in the shadow of its wrought-iron balcony. Then he sat hunched over the wheel, listening to the strong Atlantic sea wind as it thrashed among the plants and trees in a garden beside the building. After a while Baby Doll came out of the front entrance, dangling by an arm from a bellboy who held her firmly at the elbow. "She pissed on the floor in the ladies' parlor, boss," he said, releasing her. "Yes, suh. Right in the middle of all that new Eighteen-Sixty furniture in the Robert E. Lee room." Odin grinned. He gave the bellboy a dollar and told Baby Doll to get in. Then he swung the car out from the curb and drove down the winding street.
Five minutes later, they drew up before a big three-story house on Church Street, a few blocks from number 87 where President Washington had a gay night in 1791. Somewhere, above the tinted buildings, the bells of St. Michael's chimed the quarter hour. There was a brass knocker on the door in the effigy of a closed fist, and Odin pounded it steadily until the door opened and a tall Negress stood framed in the hallway.
"Well, well, well," she said. "So you ain't dead yet. That old Woden's sure lookin' out for you."
"Somebody is," said Odin. He smiled at her. "How you makin' it, Fanny?"
"Right well," she said. "Is you well?"
"Yes. I'm all right."
"You look a little tard," she said. Then she stepped aside. "C'mon in. Miss Molly's havin tea in the drawin' room."
The drawing room looked across a piazza and a garden to the fence. The garden was full of white rose-shaped flowers, mostly camellias apparently, and through the curtained windows, sunlight fell in long yellow bars, swirling with dust-motes. On a horsehair sofa before the windows sat Miss Molly: seventy-seven years old and weighing two-hundred and eighty-nine pounds. She wore a black maternity dress and a pair of red mules. A cup and saucer were balanced on her fat knees and a half dozen rings lay burned in the flesh of her fingers. There was a bottle of cognac and a lit cigar on the table beside a tea service.
"So you finally decided to stop by and see Miss Molly," she said in a voice like Sophie Tucker's. "Well, you're too late for supper. We eat at two-thirty."
Odin smiled. "Yes," he said. "Why do you do that?"
"Comes from the plantation days," she said. "We eat at two-thirty and have afternoon tea." She looked at Baby Doll. "Kind of young," she said. "What you doing, Odin? Pickin' them before they're ripe?"
Odin smiled. He nodded.
"You'll get a belly-ache," she said.
"Um."
Baby Doll flopped into a chair and stuck a finger up in her nose. After a while she found something and looked around for a place to wipe it.
"Honey," Miss Molly said. "Why don't you run out and see Fanny in the kitchen. Tell her to fix you a dish of ice cream and scuppernong grapes. Or maybe a piece of that black-bottom pie with molasses. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
Baby Doll shrugged and wiped her finger under the chair. Then she glanced at Odin. "Yes, you would," he said, jerking his head toward the door. Baby Doll got up sullenly and left the room.
"Such a sweet girl," Miss Molly gasped, reaching for her cigar. Odin slouched into one of the rump-sprung chairs. He crossed his legs. "I'm glad you like her," he said seriously, "because I'm leaving her here."
Miss Molly coughed violently and brushed ashes from the front of her dress. She clutched her breast. "Whaaaaaa--? "
"She has nowhere else to go," he explained.
Miss Molly coughed again and laid the cigar in a saucer. Then she poured herself a stiff cup of cognac.
"Odin, honey," she said, "don't scare me like that.'
She took a quick slug and set the cup down empty.
"You owe me a favor, Miss Molly," he reminded her.
She belched, her hand to her breast. "And you won't let me forget it, will you?" she said, and then: "I'm retired ... Ain't you heard? All my girls is workin' on the circuit now."
He smiled. "I thought you told me you was in the cotton and indigo trade."
"Oh, that collapsed," she said, "Long time ago."
"Well, anyway, I didn't bring her here to work. I want her to go to school..."
"Now what can I teach her that you haven't already taught her every night between here and Gomorrah?" asked Miss Molly.
"We came from Kissimmee."
"That's even worse" she said.
He leaned forward, touching her knee.
"Think of her as a daughter, Miss Molly."
"A what?"
"Isn't that what you've always wanted."
"What I want with a piece of jail-bait."
"Come on, Miss Molly..."
"No, sir. I ain't going to."
"Buy her some clothes. A dress."
"Now look here-"
"Show her how to sit with her knees together."
"What do you think I am?" He smiled.
"Don't answer that!" she said.
"Come on, Miss Molly. Give her a home."
"I can't look after a kid."
"Yes you can."
"Can't."
"Can."
"I can't-"
"Can-Can."
"All right," she said. "I'll take her in. But only cause you're such a cute little prick, Odin."
In the evening they had fried chicken and cream gravy and a dish of hot bread and another of vegetables and bacon, and a Brunswick stew and sweet potatoes and grits and yams, and corn and biscuits, and black-bottom and pecan pies, oozing with molasses. At ten o'clock Odin left Church Street in the Ferrari.
Baby Doll cried when he said good-bye.
FOUR
The roads through Connecticut and Massachusetts were covered with wet dead leaves. Outside Brattleboro, on the Vermont-New Hampshire border, a fat blonde woman in a Cadillac drove into a German shepherd at eighty miles an hour. The impact knocked the dog over the car's fender and sent it flying off to one side, where it landed with a solid smack on the concrete. The blonde pumped her brakes hysterically and craned her head out through the window. But when she saw the dog lying on the ground, in a pool of blood, she jammed her foot back on the gas pedal, and the Cadillac leaped forward and shot down the road like a bullet.
Odin cursed and hit his brakes hard. The Ferrari slewed around in the leaves and slush and skidded to a stop at the side of the road. Then suddenly a horn blattered and a giant GRAND UNION tractor and trailer roared past. The backwash struck him a terrific blow in the face as he got out of the car, and the water and leaves from the spinning wheels tossed heavily across his boots. The dog howled and tried to drag itself out of the way by its front feet, but the truck's dual tires ran over its legs and buttocks and severed its spine above the hind quarters.
The wheels gouged furrows in the dog, and blood and shit spurted from its anus, like juice from a pistol. Odin pulled off his jacket and belt as he ran through the slush, and when he reached the shepherd he dropped down on one knee and tried to touch its throat. It snarled and snapped at his hand, but he made a loop with his belt and slipped it over the nose and jerked it tight. Behind him a big Trailways bus came roaring down the straight and he slid his jacket under the dog like a stretcher, and pulled it across the road to his car. The red-and-silver bus roared past with a tail of fumes whirling along behind its exhaust pipe, and after a while it disappeared over a hill and then the sound died away.
The earth was silent. Beyond the concrete, the road, the fields lay empty and gray under a salt-colored sky. There was a church steeple between two hills and a thin shimmer of smoke rose above a clump of trees on the horizon. On the other side of the road a crow was circling around the chimney of a small, one-story house, built like a saltbox. The rain was cold and gray, a soft slow drizzle that soaked his shirt and hair as he squatted on his heels behind the car.
On the ground the dog lay twitching and nerve-jumping. A long trail of blood led across the concrete to end in a greenish-black mass of shit between its hind legs. Around its jaws the belt was tight in a muzzle. Odin pulled out his Derringer and cocked it. He aimed it at the dog's head, but changed his mind and put the gun back in his boot. There was a small bottle of poison in the Ferrari's first-aid kit and, breaking the seal, he screwed it open and squatted once again in the slush. On the car-radio a woman named Duncan MacDonald was talking about maple syrup and johnnycakes, and the dog watched his hands wildly as he pulled out the corner of its mouth and tilted its head upward. Then, tickling its throat to make it swallow, he poured the liquid into the pocket between its lips and teeth.
It was a gray day. The rain sprayed cold and gray on the windshield and ran down the hood in tiny gray trickles. Where the road crossed a wooden bridge there was a clatter of planks and a whirr of tires as the Ferrari drove over the leaf-strewn floor. Four miles later he crossed a covered bridge and began a long climb into the grim hills of Vermont and New Hampshire.
* * *
The Hollybrook Falls High School was a weathered old two-story brick building covered with dead ivy and a profusion of neo-classical decorative paraphernalia. Beneath the gargoyles and fretwork and the crumbling egg-and-dart moldings the doors and windows were made of white wood in need of paint. Far out on the front lawn there was a circle of shrubs and a flagpole. On the second floor Jim Gamble sat at his desk and watched the old, white-haired man who stood beside a piano in front of the music room. All about him there were laughter and shouts.
" ... ladies and gentlemen," the old man was saying, "Will you please give me your attention!" He pounded his forefinger on one of the keys. "Our subject today will be Richard Wagner..."
The class ignored him. At the back of the room a gang of boys were shooting crap. They shouted to the dice and snapped their fingers as the cubes rolled against the wall. The girls laughed and talked among themselves. One of them-an enormous fat one-was leaning across the seat in front and tickling her girl friend in the armpit. The other girl was a skinny little mama string bean who squirmed in her seat and said, "Eeeeeeeh," as the fat one chewed her gum excitedly and clapped her thighs together under her skirt. Aah, Jim thought disgustedly, as he tried to listen to the old man, it almost sounds like somebody is applauding under that damn skirt.
"Richard Wagner was a German composer with great literary talent," the old man said loudly, above the noise. "The operas he wrote were immense both in concept and length. In fact, it has been said that a Wagnerian opera has more notes in it than there are words in all the plays by William Shakespeare..."
"Up your ass!" a voice shouted from the rear.
The old man fumbled at a phonograph with his shaking fingers. After a while he got the round hole of a record through the axle on the turntable.
"You will now hear The Evening Star, he told them, and stood quietly for a time, watching his big age-splotched hands tremble on the record. Then he cleared his throat.
"The ... eh ... Evening Star is taken from Tannhauser which had its first performance at the Dresden Opera in 1845."
"Hey, Charlie!" someone shouted. "Didn't Wagner write the Cock-Sucker's Blues?"
The old man started the phonograph.
"Tannhauser was never a great success," he said, "but it contained two great works. The Evening Star is one of them and the other, which I will play later, is The Pilgrims' Chorus..."
The music started and a rain of pennies showered over the old man. There were catcalls, whistles, even shouts. A book struck the old man's shoulder as he wrote the date 1845 on the blackboard. The chalk dropped from his hand and, when he bent to pick it up, a dusty eraser hit the seat of his pants. Then suddenly a phonograph record from his own collection flew over the piano and crashed against the wall above his head.
In the principal's office Edward Holt sat at his desk and drew circles in a comic book. EDWARD HOLT he printed in large letters, thinking: Yes, by God, Edward Holt, good old Hollybrook Falls high-school principal sitting on his ass drawing circles in a comic book. He flipped the ballpoint off to one side and picked up a switchblade knife. The boys who stood in front of his desk were all sporting ducktail hair-dos and black leather jackets with heavy zippers in the sleeves and braided epaulets on the shoulders. They all wore narrow blue jeans tucked into shiny black boots and a few had motorcycle caps slanted across their foreheads.
On the desk there was a half-dozen switchblades, assorted straight knives, a fourteen-inch lead pipe filled with cement, a sawed-off shotgun, a bailing hook, a meat cleaver, two brass knuckles, a gravity knife, four zip-guns, a handful of .22 caliber cartridges, an ice-pick, two machetes, a bicycle chain, a couple of beer-can openers, a garrison belt, six bayonets, ten automobile radio antennas, a heavy metal pipe flattened at the end and sharpened, a sling shot, a roll of dimes, two straight razors, a converted starter's pistol, a BB gun, eight darts, a hunting knife, five blackjacks, a cap pistol with drilled cylinders, the handle of a garbage pail, a cestus, two filed-down belt buckles, a raw potato studded with razor blades, a cable, four bolos, a kris, three commando daggers, a half dozen crude pipe-like barrels with triggering devices, a rifle, a club with a twelve-penny nail at the end, a butcher knife, two Colt .45s, and a six-foot section of rubber hose used for street fighting.
One of the boys rubbed his nose. "I'm sorry, Mr. Holt."
" 'I'm sorry,'" the principal mimicked. " 'I'm sorry.' Is that all you can say? 'I'm sorry.' Yes!" he shouted, "you're sorry. You're the sorriest goddamn generation in history!"
In the school's furnace room a single light burned from a cord in the ceiling. Beneath the dusty fly-specked bulb a half dozen boys stood in a circle facing a girl-their pants unzipped. The boys had pointed pillowcase-hoods over their heads like the Ku Klux Klan and the girl wore a cheerleader's outfit complete with sweater and short skirt. The girl's wrists were held behind her back and one of the boys had his hand up under her skirt.
"I'm gonna fuck you," he said.
The girl tried to twist away from him, but he grasped her buttocks with both hands and slid his thumbs under the elastic of her panties. Then he pushed them down.
"I'm going to fuck you," he said. "God, I'm going to fuck you. I'm going to fuck you in the ass. I'm going to fuck you in every hole you got. I'm going to fuck you so goddamn hard! I'm going to hear every sound you can make ... "
The girl whimpered as he forced the fabric over her shoes and crushed it against his face, under the hood. Then suddenly she began to struggle again and saliva drooled from between the fingers that covered her mouth.
"Oh, I'm going to fuck you," he said. "Oooh, I'm going to fuck you."
He slid his hands inside the sweater and shoved her back, jerking off her brassiere. Then he worked the sweater up over her head and pushed it back over her arms.
"Ooooooooooh!" he said. "Oooooooooh!"
With a sudden onrush of passion he seized her in his arms and drew her to him, burying his face in her warm belly. Then he pulled up the hood and kissed her breasts, taking the erect turgid nipples between his teeth and biting them.
"Aw!"
The girl threw her head back and screamed behind the hand that covered her mouth. She struggled to free herself, but it was no use. Suddenly she was tipped up and thrown savagely to the floor.
"Hold her head down!" he shouted. "Get her legs!"
The other boys squatted excitedly on their heels and held her pinned to the floor with their hands on her arms and legs. She rolled her head from side to side and tried to scream, but a hand clapped over her mouth.
"Pull her legs apart!" someone panted. "Spread 'em!"
They opened her thighs and pulled off her skirt, exposing the soft female hair that hung down to a point in the V of her crotch. The boy slid his hand up his fly and took out a long, bluish, hot-looking penis.
"Wait," one of the other boys said; "Wait. Let me eat her first ... "
The penis was stretched as hard and stiff as an iron bar, but he shoved it aside like a subway turnstile and got down on his knees in front of the girl. Then he kissed the inner side of her thighs and rubbed his face against her belly. He stuck his tongue in her navel and squeezed her breasts, and suddenly and without warning he buried his face in the V of her crotch.
"You sonofabitch," the other said. "Don't eat the grass!"
The boy on the floor grunted like a rooting pig and moved around on his hands and knees, sucking off the mound of Venus as though it was an orange in which he had inserted a lump of sugar.
"You prick!" the other roared. "Get off!"
He placed his foot on the boy's shoulder and shoved him off to one side. Then he dropped down on one knee and flung himself on top of the girl.
"Spread 'er legs!" he shouted. "Spread 'em!"
The boys pulled her legs further apart and she felt the long iron bar as he came into her. There was no lubrication, no secretion of fluid in her vagina, and his hairy penis now forced its way toward the mouth of her womb. He puffed like a locomotive and pressed his toes against the floor and suddenly he began to move back and forth, his narrow black rump butting furiously as the friction started.
"Ooooooooooh!" he cried. "Ooooooooh!"
He plastered himself against her stomach and screwed her like a boy scout trying to start a fire with a stick of wood. Then, suddenly, his orgasm came, and she could feel his semen as it sprang in her, touching her cervix and leaving her limp and sticky inside. But then his orgasm was over and the iron bar turned soft and withdrew from her body-pulling out small and soft and wilted, like a flower.
"All right," one of the others said. "Now it's my turn."
The girl stared at him from behind the fingers that covered her face, but she saw only the dark eyes in the slits of his hood. Suddenly the boys flipped her over on her stomach, spreading her cheeks, and upstairs-in the biology class-the teacher marked her absent
* * *
The spire of the Congregational Church caught the last ray of the evening sun as Odin drove into Hollybrook Falls. In the sky-above the spire-a star was shinning. The rain had stopped in the late afternoon but now the wind was blowing so hard that even the birds had to walk around on the ground carrying stones for ballast. At the intersection of Elm Street and Forest Avenue the trees clashed furiously in the wild black wind, and far away, in the bowels of the high school, there was the roar of a mob. Basketball, he thought bitterly, spitting out the window and goddamn basketball game. He rolled up the window and stopped the car in front of the school. The only light anywhere in the building was in the gym, and he could see the shadows dance and leap inside as the players scored. She-it, he thought, hunching over the huge steering wheel, all the balls I want to play with are between the legs of those broads at Vassar.
The crowd roared again and he yawned and reached his hand under the dashboard to turn on the radio, but at that moment a door opened at the dark side of the building and a blonde girl stumbled out and ran naked across the lawn, holding an old rag between her legs. He watched her as she ran past the flagpole and jumped down on the sidewalk, her feet encased in socks and saddle shoes. A fat black cat was moving along a picket fence with its tail in the air and its hole exposed, but saving this the street was deserted. The girl looked over her shoulder at the lighted school windows and then, still holding the rag between her legs, she ran down the street and disappeared around a corner. Odin cursed and raced his engine. Then he switched on his headlights and shifted the stick into low. The Ferrari leaped forward and swung around the corner, following the girl as she ran with the rag between her legs, her round white buttocks working furiously, her chest, her breasts leaned forward in flight. The street was dark except for an occasional lamp-post and when she heard the car she jumped into the shadows of an elm tree. Odin skidded to a stop next to the tree and when she ran to another tree he followed.
"Get in," he said, opening the door.
She shook her head and backed away until her buttocks hit a fence post. And when he got out of the car she gestured her hands frantically in front of her, as though she was trying to calm him down.
"Come on," he said. "I'll take you home."
She covered her breasts and tried to keep the rag between her legs, but he yanked her hands away and put his coat around her shoulders. Then he led her back to the car.
"No, no," she whispered. "I can't-I'll spoil the seat!"
"You're bleeding?" he said. He looked down at her thighs for a moment, then up at her face again.
"Well, you can't use that rag. It's filthy. Where'd you pick it up anyway?"
"Down in the cellar," she said, "The basement. It was on some pipes."
"What happened to your clothes?"
"They took them," she whispered. "They-"
"All right." He opened his belt and pulled down his zipper. Then he took off his pants and his new B.V.D.'s.
"Next to myself I like B.V.D.'s best," he said. Then he smiled and gave her the shorts. "Here-put 'em on."
She stepped into the shorts and put her arms through the sleeves of his coat. His pants' legs were turned wrong-side-outward and she watched him struggle to pull them up over his boots. Then the hairs of his groin got caught in the zipper.
"Oh shit," he said. "Get in."
She got into the car and sat on the edge of the seat with her legs drawn under her, clutching the coat over her breasts.
"Relax," he said. "Take it easy." Then he slammed the door and went around the car and slid behind the wheel. "Where do you live?"
"I-I can't go home," she said. "Not like this"
"Where do you wanna go, then?"
"I ... I don't know," she said. She clapped a hand to her mouth and began to cry.
"All right," he said, "Look. I'll take you to a motel and get you some clothes."
She shook her head.
"You can't," she said. "The motel's closed. They close it for the winter."
"What about a hotel? Don't you have a Hollybrook Hilton, or something?"
"Yes," she sobbed. "But we can't go there."
"Why not?"
"It's a small place. We'd have to go through the lobby."
"Maybe there's a back door," he said. She dried her eyes with her fingers. "I don't know," she said. "I've never been there..."
"Well, we can't sit here all night. I'll rent a room and get you in through the back. Nobody'll see you."
"All right," she whispered.
He glanced at her legs and shoved down the clutch, shifting into low. Then he stepped on the gas and the car took off with a roar and headed for the business section and Main Street two blocks away.
"The town looks deserted," he said, shifting into second. "I haven't seen anybody on the streets since I came here."
"They're all at the basketball game," she said.
"Basketball!" He spat out the window.
"Don't you like to play basketball?"
"Hell, no," he said.
He shifted into high and glanced at her. She smiled.
"What do you like to play," she said. "Baseball."
"No. I don't play with balls."
"Oh," she said.
He turned on the radio. Clooney was singing Baciami ...
"Where can we park?" he asked.
"Behind the hotel."
"O.K. Tell me when to turn."
"You'd better slow down now."
"We're there already?"
"Yes-"
"For Christ's sake," he said.
"Turn up this street...."
'That's the hotel."
"Yes, turn in here."
He swung the car into a parking lot surrounded by trees.
"How're the B.V.D.'s holding out?"
"Fine," she said. "It's stopped running..."
He opened the door. "O.K. I'll go in and register."
"Try and get a room on the first floor."
"What for?"
"Maybe I can climb in the window."
"All right." He got out of the car and slammed the door.
"I don't think all the rooms have bath," she said.
"Um?"
"There's a bath down the hall."
"O.K. I'll get one with bath."
"Do you have any luggage? You better carry some luggage."
"O.K." He took a two-suiter out of the trunk.
"I'll wait for you," she whispered.
"All right."
"Be careful ... "
"Uh-huh."
He went around the hotel on a flagstone walk, feeling for each stone in the darkness like a blind man. Then he went inside.
The Waldorf of Hollybrook Falls was a three-story wooden building with a rusted screen porch and a small lobby containing a sofa and a potted rubber plant. There was a blotter and a bent pen on the desk, and the clerk said Wild? with interest as he watched him sign his name in the register. Then he gave him a strange, sidelong glance and showed him up to his room.
"No visitors," he said dryly, "after ten." He closed the door and went back downstairs.
Odin said, "Fuck you, hairy," and looked around the room.
There was an old-fashioned dresser with a mirror, a washstand set, a washstand set reflected in the mirror, a deacon's bench, a four-poster bed, a flowered quilt, a mahogany closet, a farmhouse dry sink, a picture of Whistler's mother, a butter tub table, a schoolmaster's desk, a ladder-back chair, a black Franklin stove, a wrought-iron coat hanger saying "Be a Dear, Hang It Here," an empty spoon rack, four electrified hurricane lamps with chimneys and matching shades in hobnail milk glass, a hutch table, a hand-hooked rug in a wedding band pattern, an old sewing bucket and a Nantucket rocker with a worn tapestry-upholstered foot-stool.
"Shit," he said. "It's a fuckin' museum..."
He opened the closet and looked at the headline of a 1927 newspaper that covered the bottom shelf. Lindy Has Landed In Paris, Hurray."
"For Christ's sake," he said.
The stove had the legend Portland Foundry Co., stamped on its side, and he vaguely remembered a joke about ass-holes and closed dampers.
But then he walked over and pulled the curtains aside and tried to open one of the windows. Outside the night was black and twinkling with stars, and as he jerked at the window frame he noticed that it had been sealed tight and weather-stripped. There was a stale odor in the room, like the clean musty smell of a hope chest in which a spinster aunt kept her faded nightgowns and linen. In the bathroom a woman's hair lay curled in the basin and in the yellow water of the bowl a brown turd was floating on top of a cigarette butt. He ripped a piece of paper from a roll on the wall and wrinkled his nose as he picked up the hair between his thumb and forefinger and threw it into the bowl. Then he flushed the toilet and went down to get the pussy.
* * *
In a big white house on Maple Street two blocks from the hotel, John Sopis was sitting in front of his twenty-four inch television set, watching Zsa Zsa Gabor The sound was off and he worked his hands furiously in his lap as she moved her lips and leaned forward, exposing the deep shadowy cleavage between her bulging white breasts. In his mind he took her time after time, in every way that a man can take a woman, and as he took her he made her say one unprintable epithet after another. He ravished her in his mind and placed his words in her mouth and buried his face in her warm soft flesh and pressed her breasts together over his ears, shutting out the world.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!" he screamed. "Aaaaaaaaa-ahhhhhh!"
Then, suddenly, the sound was turned on and he opened his eyes and stared at a naked blonde who stood in front of the TV set with her hands on her hips and her feet apart, leaning toward him, her tongue sticking out.
"Turn the sound off," he pleaded. "It's better that way-"
"I'll bet it is," she agreed testily, then: "I can't even go and take a crap before you start jerking yourself off, eh?"
She walked over to his chair in her high-heeled shoes and stuck her rump up in his face, letting out a loud fart.
"You bitch!" he shouted, fanning the air. "Lemme get hold o' you ... "
"Go ahead, " she laughed. She stuck her behind toward him again and let out a scream of pleasure when he laid one on it.
"I'm sorry," he said immediately. "Here; lemme kiss it."
He gathered her firm young mounds in his hands and kissed them, one at the time.
"Hey!" She turned around. "I wanna show you some-thin'. " She opened her fist and dumped three quarters in his hand. He rolled the warm coins in his fingers, like Queeg with his ball-bearings. "Now, put one here," she said. He placed a quarter between her knees. "And, a nice warm one here," she said. He placed another between her thighs. "Uuh!" she said. "Now, one here." He put the last quarter between her calves.
"There!" She posed with one hand on her hip, stark naked except for the spike-heeled shoes on her feet.
"So?" he said. "What does that prove?"
"It proves I got perfect legs, baby."
"Hell," he said. "You don't need quarters to prove that!" He pulled her down on his lap. "Just swing your legs round my neck, honey-"
"You want me to?"
"Yes. Come on..."
"I'll have to stand on my head!"
"Yes. Do it!"
She lay back on his lap and swung her legs up around his neck, her ankles crossing behind his head, holding him tight.
"Kiss me, stupid," she said.
"Like this?"
"Yes."
"And like this?"
"Uuuh!-Yes. Again-"
"Here?"
"Yes!"
"Again?"
"Yes," she said. "God, yes." Then slowly, "No-ooooooo!"
After a while he got up from the chair and turned off the TV set.
"Where you going?" she asked.
"Oh, I think I'll take a nice cold shower."
"I'll break your neck!" she said.
The bedroom was modern-teak and walnut-with a reproduction of Grant Wood's American Gothic on the wall.
"Did I scratch you, daddy?"
"Yes!" he breathed. "I'll have to put rubber tips on your fingers."
"I'll put a rubber tip on your finger!" she said.
There was a laugh, the sound of a kiss: the bed was moist with semen.
"Did I ever tell you the story about the farmer who found a 'rubber balloon' full of spit after the traveling salesman's visit to his daughter?"
"Yes. He found it behind the couch."
"What about the one where the bride nuts her wedding ring on the groom's pecker?"
"Ha!"
"Tell us that one."
Time passed. A clock-radio made a whirring noise on the night table. Somewhere, a church bell tolled.
" ... so this drunk sees a whore lying naked in the gutter and he takes off his beaver and puts it over her pussy to keep her warm. Fifteen minutes later another drunk comes along and sees the hat on the pussy and he thinks that some poor guy has fallen in!"
Time passed. The bedspring creaked faster and faster and the headboard crashed in a jazzy rhythm that shook the wall.
"What was that?" she said.
"I think the picture fell down."
"Where is it?"
"Behind the bed."
He turned on the light. Then, twisting around in the bed, he leaned over the side and groped for the painting.
"Here it is. The glass is broken."
He pulled back with Grant Wood's American Gothic.
"What a horrible picture," she said. "Why do you keep it?"
"Why?-Don't you like it."
"It gives me the creeps."
"It's just an old couple."
"Well, she's all right. It's that guy with the pitchfork I can't stand. He's always looking right at you."
"So, I'll get another picture. What do you like."
"Something crazy. like Klee!"
"He's the one that draws people with stovepipes sticking out of their heads."
"Arrows."
"Stovepipes."
"You want me to bite your prick."
"Ouch!"
"You'd better be good!"
"Hey! Let go my pecker!"
"Tell me what he draws..."
"Stovepipes!"
"I'll rip it off..."
"He-draws-stovepipes!"
"All right. You asked for it."
"Help!"
"Now, what does he draw?"
"STOVEPIPES!"
"I swear I'll rip it off."
"You'll be sorreee!"
"Oh no I won't."
"Oh yes you will!"
"You think you got the only prick in the world."
"I got the only one ten inches long."
"That's what you think."
"Oh yeah? Who do you know with a ten-inch pecker?"
"Plenty."
"Name one."
"Jimbo-"
"Who's that?"
"A Negro in Key West."
"How do you know he's got a ten-inch pecker?"
"I measured it.-It's twelve!"
"You what?"
"I measured it with a ruler."
"You measured? Where was this at? A circus."
"Oh shut up."
"No I won't shut up. What were you doing measuring nigger's dick."
"Let's skip it."
"I won't skip it! Tell me."
"You're hurting me."
"What were you doing measuring his dick."
"I wanted to see how long it was."
"Did you sleep with him."
"Go to hell."
"Did you."
"Yes!"
"Did he fuck you in the ass?"
"Let me go!"
"Did you suck him?"
"YES!"
"Better'n me."
"It was different."
"How different."
"Just different."
"Tell me how it was different!"
"I can't tell you! It was different. That's all."
"How can it be different? He's got ten and I got ten!"
"Don't shout at me!"
"You're damn right I'll shout at you! Was he better' me?"
"Please, darling. You're hurting meeee."
"Was he? Was he better."
"Oh please!"
"Was he better? Tell me."
"Please ... "
"TELL ME!"
"No he wasn't better than you."
"You're lying!"
"He wasn't better I tell you!'
"LIAR!"
"What do you want me to say."
"Tell the truth."
"He wasn't better..."
"LIAR!"
"Please darling-my arm."
"I'll break your goddamn arm."
"Aw-www!"
"What did he do to you."
"The usual things."
"WHAT things."
"Things."
"Tell me what he did to you."
"Aw!"
"Did you French him? Did he go Italian?"
"Aw-w! I just told you-"
"Did he? Did he?"
"Oh, God! You got to stop this!"
"Did he dump you?"
"You're dumping me you sonofabitch!"
"Did you lick his ass-hole?"
"Let me go!"
"TELL ME!"
"Get you hands offa me-eeeeee!"
"Whore!" he screamed. "You stinking little cunt!"
He knelt above her and threw a large hairy leg across her belly mounting her sitting astride her as though on a mare. Then he struck her across the mouth. Slut!" he said. Cunt!" He hit her again first on one cheek, then the other, slapping her rhythmically now, backhanded and with his fist.
* * *
Meanwhile, back at the hotel, Odin was bent over the girl who lay on the edge of the bed her legs spread wide apart.
"Christ," he said. "You got a scum bag stuck in here..." She raised her head and looked down at him. "Can you-"
"Yes. Lie down." He dilated the vaginal orifice with his two fingers probing into the dark crack with a long wood and cotton Q-Tip, and then slowly he pulled out a rubber tube that resembled a deflated balloon.
"Q-Tips are sure handy" she said.
He glanced at the blue box. "In a hundred ways it says." Then he turned it over and read from the back: "Little pillows of plumper cotton give Q-Tips the loving touch ... "
She sighed.
"Ad agency creeps" he muttered.
He tossed the box aside and reached his hand to the hutch table lifting a cracked pitcher from the washbasin. Then he poured warm water into the bowl.
"That's about a pint" he said. He placed the pitcher on the floor and took a metal can from the first-aid kit. "Let's see now." He studied the label mumbling to himself. Then he opened the can and dissolved a teaspoon of powered boric acid in the water. "All right" he said. "Go take a douche."
"How?"
He stared at her. "What do you mean, 'How?'. "
"How do I take a douche without a douche bag."
"Can't you use the bowl?"
"Sure I can just see myself doing a handstand while you pour it down between my legs."
"O.K." he said. "I'll get a syringe."
"He reached into the first-aid kit and brought out a long narrow tube with a rubber bulb at the end.
"Use it in good health, me laydee."
She took the syringe and tapped him on the head with the rubber bulb. Then she picked up the washbowl and walked into the toilet, her hips swinging.
Tweedledee ... tweedledum.
He crushed an empty box of Johnson & Johnson and threw it from one hand to the other. There was a Band-Aid on the floor but the rest had been plastered over the scratches and cuts on the soft insides of her legs and buttocks.
"UH-Ha!" she said in the bathroom.
He threw the box in the stove and kicked the door shut.
"How you doing baby?" he asked.
"Fine. Come in and help me."
"O.K."
"Hand me a towel, please." He gave it to her. "What's that on your ass?" She raised her arm and then twisted her body and tried to look down her back. "A bruise?" she said.
"No. Looks kinda green. Didn't see it before."
"Oh?" She disjointed her hip. "I think that's some kind of paint. Maybe I got it on when we crawled through that window downstairs."
"Um. I shoulda taken you to the hospital."
"Gosh no" she said. "You couldn't!"
He winced at the "Gosh." It was like "Fudge" and "Heck" and "Holy Cow!"
'Why not?" he said.'
"Because bay-bee the mothers in this town are not going to do anything that will hurt their precious dah-lings if they know it. Why they'll just as soon have you arrested for rape and ride me down to Concord on a fence post."
"You're not going to tell on those punks."
"What good would that do."
"The law-"
"I didn't see their faces. Anyway it's just my word against theirs."
"You know who they were?"
"Sure. They're seniors in the high school."
"Well" he said. "Maybe we can give them a dose of their own medicine ... like with a sawed-off broomstick."
"You mean beat them with it?"
"No baby. Shove it up their ass."
The bed was soft. He watched her knees sink into the red flowered quilt as she crawled over the mattress. In the light of the hurricane lamps her buttock twinkled with flesh-colored Band-Aids.
"You can sleep here" she said. "There's plenty of room."
"Uh-uh." He sat down in the rocker. "I'll stay here and have wet dreams about Whistler's mother."
"Did you turn the night latch?" she asked. "Um-No. Why should I."
"The maid might try to get in."
"I hung out a sign."
"Oh ... I think you'd better turn the latch."
"All right."
He got up and locked the door.
"Good-night" he said.
"Nite, Sir Galahad."
He switched off the lights.
"Sir Galahad?" he said.
For a moment there was no sound in the room.
Then she said "UH-H, baby!"
FIVE
It snowed again the next morning, a fast white flurry of giant flakes that melted and turned to water as soon as they hit the ground. In the corridor outside the room Odin met an old bowlegged hag in a maid's uniform who watched him suspiciously as he picked up a sign lettered Do Not Disturb and hung it on the doorknob. When he tried to walk past her she stepped in front of him with her keys jangling and for a while they moved back and forth like in a dance. "For Christ's sake" he said irritably, "why doncha do it right?" He grabbed hold of her waist and undulated his hips languorously shuffling sideways. Then he did the conga and the bouncing fuck. "Excuse me, sir," she gasped, but he waltzed her around in the hallway, swinging his hips like a yo-yo. Then suddenly he let her go, and she staggered out of his way and stood flat against the wall, her hand to her breast.
"You'd better watch out" he said "or somebody'll glide the Peabody on you." Then he went down the stairway.
The hotel lobby was empty and outside in the street the gutters were running with snow-water. There was a restaurant, a diner next to the hotel and he half expected it to be named Ye Olde Rustick Englishe Taverne on Ye Greene, but the sign on the window said Joe's Place.
In the fluorescent interior the chairs were turned upside down on top of the tables, and behind the modern chromium and Formica-finished counter the proprietor was making coffee in a percolator. Odin swung his leg across a stool and watched the water as it bubbled up through the tube and then filtered back to the bottom through a perforated sack that held the grounds. After a while the proprietor turned around and wiped his hands on his apron.
"Kawfee?" he said. "What?"
"You wanna kupakawfee?"
"No.-What else you got?"
"Kawfee."
"Anything else?"
"Snow Crop."
"What's that?"
"Juice."
Odin said, "Um," and looked at him speculatively, fingering his knife.
"You got milk."
"Yes."
"What else."
"Corn flakes."
"Buenos dias, you all."
"You want Corn Flakes."
"No."
They looked at one another solemnly, like two children in a sandbox.
"I could fix some ham and aigs," the proprietor volunteered.
"O.K."
"Or pancakes with syrup."
"All right."
"You wanna kupakawfee?"
There was a loaf of Anadama bread on the counter and Odin buttered a slice while he waited. Then his teeth bit into the cinnamon raisin, corn-meal mush and molasses-grinding it to a soft gray mass before he swallowed it with a half glass of ice water.
"Ain't got much ham left, let 'lone aigs," the proprietor explained, placing a dish in front of him. "Delivery man ain't been here yet."
"All right," he said, but the ham was so hot that he spat it out on the counter and knocked over the half-empty glass of ice water in his hurry to cool his mouth.
"Motherfucker" he spluttered. "Get the milk!"
The proprietor opened the icebox with deliberate slowness and reached for a milk carton. But by the time he started to life the carton, Odin leaped over the counter and poured a cup of Coke from the Coca-Cola machine.
"That'll cost you a dime" said the proprietor.
"Um," he said. He leaned a hand against the Coke machine and drank the cup in two gulps, quickly drawing another.
"Twenty cents," intoned the proprietor.
He said "Um," again, and let the frosty chill of the Coke pour around his tongue and the roof of his mouth.
"Come on, come on," the other said impatiently. "Get finished, willya? I don't like folks behind my counter."
Still leaning his hand against the Coke machine and still holding the cup rattling between his teeth, Odin slowly filled his mouth until his cheeks bulged. Then he puckered his lips, as though in a kiss, and squirted the brownish liquid out with the force of a water pistol. The Coke splashed on the proprietor's face and ran down inside his shirt. He cursed and wiggled, scrabbling at a shelf under the counter.
"You punk!" he shrieked. 'I'll killya!"
Suddenly his hand came out from under the counter with a butcher knife. Odin took the first blow on his forearm as he flung it up to protect his face. The cup flew over his head landing with a crash on the floor. He caught the man's wrist and twisted it around behind him, shoving him forward against the wall. Then he wrapped his arm under his neck and plucked the knife from between his fingers, bringing his knee up hard in the base of his spine.
"Aw, my butt!" the proprietor wailed.
"I'll 'Aw' your ass," said Odin, kneeing him again.
"AW!"
Then, realizing that the other had piles, he brought his knee up again and again, hard like the joints of a threshing machine.
"Aw aw aw aw!"
The proprietor kept screaming like a woman, but, after a while, Odin stopped and sat down on a stool at the far end of the counter. Then he ate the ham and eggs and drank the milk as the proprietor lay moaning and slobbering on the floor behind the counter, grasping his bleeding buttocks with his two hands.
Across the street there was a barbershop with a red and white-striped pole above the door, and, as he wiped his mouth on a paper napkin, a Rag-Top and two hot rods drove up and Al Cross and a couple of ducktails got out and entered the shop.
"Shit!" he said. Figuring rapidly from the menu he took a handful of coins from his pocket and counted out the change and laid it on the counter next to the empty plate. Then he left the diner and walked across the wet street, entering the barbershop where big Al was leaning back in a chair and blowing his head off as usual.
"Ey, Perry Como!" Al demanded of the barber. "What's the fuckin' idea of your fuckin' hands being so fuckin' dirty?"
"Nobody's been in for a shampoo lately," the barber said. He smiled. He was a little, bald-headed man with liver-spotted hands and a face like Mr. Magoo's.
Al raised his head from the chair's paper-roll and looked at him. "A comedian," he said. "Ho ho ho." Then: "Can the crap, Como. Gimme a fuckin' haircut."
"Yes, sir." The barber peered closely at the long black sideburns that were slicked down and shining with pomade like the rump-hair on Rudolph Valentino. "You want me to give you an oil change first?" he asked.
Al looked at him again. "What the fuck is this?" he said. "A fuckin' service station?"
One of the ducktails was combing his hair in front of the mirror, as unselfconscious as a woman performing her toilette in a bedroom. "All right if I use this, daddy-o?" he asked in a fruity voice, picking up a bottle of alcohol.
The barber shrugged. "Sure," he said. "If you want happy hair..."
"Ho ho ho," said Al. "A Jonathan Winters!"
"Hey!" The ducktail turned around. "Did any of you see that creep on the Tonight Show last night? His name is Woody and he says, 'No I ain't never played with peckers He flapped his wrists like a fugitive from an ad agency.
"No," said Al. "I don't watch that kind of crap. It ain't wholesome!"
"Oh, you're just an old fogy." The ducktail giggled and raised a big farmer's hand to pat the hair at the nape of his neck. "You are, you really are! You old fogy, you!"
Al opened his mouth crookedly to answer, but then he saw Odin standing framed in the mirror.
"Yaaaahoo!" he hollered, leaping out of the chair. "What the fuck took you so long, you crazy fuckin' sonofagun?"
He danced around Odin in an ecstasy of yipping joy, like a big puppy with its tail waggling.
"What took you so long?" he repeated.
"I got hung up" said Odin. "Couldn't find the place."
"Yeah," Al agreed. "This cunt's laid well out of the main arteries, all right. Fact is, it ain't even near the friggin' capillaries!"
"Um."
Odin looked at the two ducktails. They stared back with interest.
"This is Chilli God, Jr., Al said, introducing the duck-tail who sat in the rear of the shop. "He's a Georgia boy. Won the 'Southern 500' in Ca'lina on Labor Day."
Odin nodded and Chilli God, Jr., nodded back, without saying anything.
" ... and this," Al continued, jerking his head toward the other ducktail, "is Ivory Baby. He can fart twenty times in a row and lift a Johnson Rod with his pecker."
"I've been tampered with," giggled Ivory Baby.
Odin nodded again. He had heard about Ivory Baby. Crazy in a slush car and deadly fast with a switch blade, they said.
"Eeeeeyow!" Al slapped his hands against his thighs. "I thought you'd never show up, you wild bastard! You in Sebring?"
"Um." Odin leaned a hip against the counter. "What's the action?" he said.
Al shrugged. "Nothin' much. Jim Gamble went back to school and our little Joy baby is gettin' the living daylights screwed out of her by that Mr. Sopis fella. Man, I'd sure like to take a flying fuck into that big sonofabitch..."
"Ooo, la, la!" laughed Ivory Baby.
Odin frowned. "Where you-all staying at?"
"The sonofabitch's got us cooped up on a stud farm nine miles from here," Al said, leaning on the chair. "He won't even let us come into town for a fuckin' blow job."
"Who else is out there?"
"Everybody-Lusonne from Baton Rouge, Kitt Oglethorpe from Savannah, Chinchilla Jones and Bermuda Swartz from Miami, Yazoo Ix from Alabama. Whole buncha crazies. I don't remember their names..."
"Kitt Oglethorpe," said Odin. "Wasn't he the one who won a date with Marlon Brando?"
"Yeah, that's the one. They thought he was a broad."
"WOOM!" said Ivory Baby. "Vaa, Vaa, WOOMl"
Al looked at the barber who stood beside the chair, watching them with open amazement.
"Hey, Perry Como," he drawled. "Do you have a large bottle of Pinaud?"
"Yes, I do," said the barber.
"Well, shove it up your ass!"
Ivory Baby flopped into a chair and drew his legs up under him. He smiled at Odin. "You have breakfast yet?"
Odin nodded. "Across the street."
"Oh. I was hopin' to invite you out to the fawm. They serve shit-on-a-shingle every morning."
"And mush," growled Chilli God, Jr.
Al raised himself from the chair and let out a juicy fart.
"Baked beans and Indian puddin', " he said. "That's what it gives you-"
"-gas. In the ass."
"Not to mention quahogs-"
"-and Boston cream pies."
"Brown bread..."
"Listen," said Ivory Baby. "Did you know that if a man is left-handed, his right ass is heavier than the other..."
"The other what."
"Ass."
"I don't think about a man's buttocks," Al said indignantly. "I'm a clean-cut American boy. I like to see a woman's ass wobble like jelly on a plate, is all."
Ivory Baby smiled, but his soft pink cheeks turned red and hot, like a child's bottom recently spanked.
Behind them the barber guffawed. "Ever hear the joke about the elephant in the spinster's garden?" he said.
Al turned his head slowly and looked him up and down.
"Suh?"
The barber snickered and rubbed his nose. "Well," he said, "there was this spinster who saw an elephant out in her garden. So she calls the sheriff and says, 'Sheriff, there's some kinda big monster out in my garden,' and the sheriff says, 'What's it doing out there?' and she says, 'It's pullin' up all my flowers with its tail!' so the sheriff says, 'What's it doin' with your flowers?' 'Sheriff,' she says, 'You won't believe me if I tell you!'"
The barber cackled and slapped his knee, holding on to the chair as though he was about to fall. Al looked at Chilli God, Jr., and Odin, shrugging his shoulders.
"Sounds like the same spinster who sewed a fly on the ass of the G.I.'s pajamas..."
"That's her!" the barber roared. "You know her, too?"
"Yeah. But then she made a pee-hole so he could wear them ass-backwards because she knew he was the Major's boy-friend."
The barber stopped cackling. "That ain't the way she goes ... "
In the rear of the barbershop, Chilli God, Jr., pulled down his zipper and leaned a hand against the wall as he urinated in a sink.
"Why doncha use the toilet?" shouted the barber.
"The bowl's too low," said Chilli God. "I don't like water splashing up my legs."
"Whaddya think them signs says? Defense de pisser ici."
Odin opened the door and put his hand out, palm up. Snow was falling in smaller flakes now, and he pulled his hand back with snowflakes on it.
"Couple a weeks up here," said Al, "and you'll be glad to get back to that mean ol' Southlan', boy."
The barber chuckled. "I hear the Knights of Columbus are playin' the Ku Klux Klan for the benefit of the Jewish Welfare down there."
"Yes, suh," Al agreed. "And Earl Long and Governor Faubus are runnin' for President and Vice President on an Independent ticket."
Odin shut the door and wiped his hands on his trousers.
"This Sopis guy," he said. "What's he like?"
"Oh, he's terribly good lookin'!" gushed Ivory Baby.
Al snorted. "He's a big fat Greek with a mouth like a ass-hole," he said. "I don't see how a girl can stand to kiss him."
"Oh, you're just jealous," giggled Ivory Baby.
Al stared at him. "Who, me?" he said, pressing a hand to his chest. "What I got to be jealous about? I don't wanna kiss no ass-holes like some people I know."
"Oh, you're just-"
"She-it! You don't know from nothin', punk!"
Ivory Baby smiled one of his superior smiles, as though he knew something Al didn't.
"You're jealous because he's rolling Joy Barnes in the hay every night," he said.
"Like shit I am!" Al exploded. Then, quietly: "What's with you, anyhow, faggy? Well, I mean, what's with you?"
"Oh-oh," murmured Chilli God, Jr. He moved out of the way. "Here's where it hits the fan."
Ivory Baby got up slowly from his chair.
"Whatcha say, ya lousy mother-fucker?" he asked harshly, in a New York accent.
Al closed his fist and held it up in front of Ivory Baby's nose.
"One more word from yuh, yuh cocksucker," he warned. "POW! Right in the kisser."
"Oh, yeah--? "
Ivory Baby let a switchblade slide down from a holster on his arm. The knife dropped out of his sleeve and into his hand like a snake. "Whatcha say, punk?" he snarled, and flicked his blade open with a quick, effeminate flip of his wrist.
Al reached a hand behind him and took up a straight razor. His smile was like a shark's. "Ah sayth-Faggy!" he lisped.
Ivory Baby crouched forward and held the knife rigidly in front of him, palm upward, the fingers on top, the blade sideways-so it could run between Al's ribs without getting stuck.
"Whatcha say?" he repeated.
Al dropped his smile. He studied the long, lethal blade. "Faggy!" he spat.
Ivory Baby slashed out with the knife, powerfully, but Al jumped back and cut him across the wrist with the razor. Then he lunged forward with the razor aimed at Ivory Baby's throat. "Aiiii!" Ivory Baby jerked his head aside. The razor whizzed past his face and cut off part of his ear. Blood gushed redly from the wound and ran down his white, Ivory-soap complexion.
"Ninety-nine, fawty-fawr, one-hund'ed percent pure," Al hollered, trying to grab the knife hand. "I'm gonna float yuh right out of here in yo' own li'l blood bath, Baby!"
Ivory Baby slashed out again, viciously, with the switchblade. Al leaped aside, and the knife sank hilt-deep into the leather barber chair.
"Hah!" he shouted. "Now I got yuh, Baby!"
He swished the razor at Ivory Baby's throat, but the Baby blocked the slash with his arm and wrenched hard at the knife, twisting it free. Then he feinted at Al's face and cut him in the belly when he brought his hands up to protect his eyes. A dark blood stain appeared on Al's shirt and spread like ink on a blotter. He grunted and caught the knife blade in his hand. "Sonuvabitch!" Ivory Baby hissed. He twisted the thin, razor-honed blade, right and left, hard, in Al's bleeding palm until the hand jerked in reflex and lost its grip. "Goddamn Faggy!" Al screamed. He kicked Ivory Baby's legs from under him. The barber squealed as though he had seen a mouse and jumped up on a chair when Ivory Baby crashed to the floor and Al leaped upon him, swinging the razor.
"Watch out, Baby! " Chilli God shouted.
Ivory Baby raised his knife defensively but Al whipped the razor above his head and brought it down with a powerful swish! The Baby turned his head away just in time, and the razor shaved the back of his head and buried itself in the floor. Aiming a quick stab at Al's chest he swung the knife up, but Al caught his hand by the wrist and forced it away from his breast. Then he carried the hand around behind him and twisted it hard until the knife dropped to the floor. Ivory Baby screamed at the top of his lungs and started to toss from side to side, clawing and biting and thrashing his legs like a woman.
"Hey, look out! " Chilli God exclaimed. "He's havin' a fit!"
Without warning Ivory Baby began to foam at the mouth. He twitched and jerked, and then he started to writhe and bang his head on the floor in epileptic convulsions.
"Jee-sus!" said Al. He rolled off the boy like a personnel manager caught with his pants down.
Ivory Baby's convulsions became more and more violent. He tossed and thrashed like a butchered chicken on the floor. The foam dripped faster from his lips and, as he banged his head against the hard linoleum, his eyes were two red points of light fixed on the ceiling.
"Wrap a handkerchief around that knife handle," Chilli God commanded.
"What?" Al said belligerently. The other thrust him aside and picked up the knife.
"He's got to have something to bite on," he explained. He closed the knife and locked the keeper, wrapping a handkerchief around the handle. Then he dropped down on one knee and opened Ivory Baby's mouth by pressing his fingers into the side of his jaws. "Hold him down!" he shouted, struggling to place the bit between the teeth. "He'll bite his fucking tongue off!"
"It don't make no difference to me," Al told him sullenly. "I don't give a shit." But he got down on his knees and shoved Ivory Baby's shoulders to the floor.
"Hell," Chilli God muttered. "He's swallowing his tongue."
He held the jaws open with his strong fingers and reached into the mouth, seizing the tongue. Then he pulled the tongue out of Ivory Baby's throat and placed the knife handle between the teeth.
"Now just hold him down," he ordered. "I don't want him to crack his skull."
"It's already cracked," Al panted, struggling to hold the Baby on the floor.
"They say Hitler had fits," the barber told them, looking down at the contorted face, with interest and disapproval. "He used to bite the rugs at Berchtesgaden."
"Hitler wa'nt no epileptic," Al corrected stiffly. "He was ;ust wild. Ain't that right, Odin?"
Odin looked up from a copy of The Saturday Evening Post he was reading.
"What?" he said.
* * *
Outside, on the street, the dark northern wind was howling through the tree-tops and shrieking around the buildings, driving the snow in front of it in sheets. Odin looked up and down the empty sidewalk and buttoned his jacket, holding it together around his throat. Al and the others hunched into their thick, sheepskin-lined coats and when they spoke, their breaths vaporized in the harsh cold air.
"Listen," Al drawled. "You got to get yourself a coat like this, Odin ... You'll freeze your fuckin' ass off in that Florida beach jacket."
"There's an Army-Navy store down by the bus depot," Chilli God suggested. "He could get one of them, whatcha call 'em? Air Force coats ... like they use in the Arctic."
Ivory Baby said "Hah!" and leaned against his car. Then he buried his hands in his coat pockets. "Odin don't want to wear no surplus shit like that," he said. "Do you, Odin?"
"Um ... "
"Of course, you don't," Ivory Baby agreed. "I'll drive you over to Hotone Springs. There's a little place on Main Street. They sell devine material..."
"Um." Odin turned to Al. "What I need is a dress and two or three other girl-things, like panties and a brassiere. Where can I get 'em?"
"Joy's got some," Al said. Then: "Brassiere? What in hell you need that for?"
"I got a chick up in the hotel here," he explained. "She's got no more drag on her than a plucked duck."
"Well-fuck the duck!" said Chilli God, Jr.
"Oh, my sweet young butt!" laughed Ivory Baby.
"A naked chick?" Al said incredulously. "What you do, man? Bring her up here from Sebring?"
"Shit, no. She's from around here."
"A blue-nosed bean-eater? A Hollybrook broad?" Al raised his eyebrows, one higher than the other. "I've been tryin' to make out with these broads for weeks! How'd you do it, dad?"
Odin smiled and shaped his lips for a two-word answer, but Ivory Baby cut him off.
"How big is this chick?" he asked. Odin looked at him appraisingly. "About your sizeWhy?"
"Oh." Ivory Baby blushed. "A friend of mine left a dress and a couple of bras in my trunk..."
"And I know what friend," Al told him. "She works in the 82 Club in Greenwich Village and her name is Johnny Cocks." He turned towards Odin. "The 82 Club specializes in female impersonators," he said.
"So do you," Ivory Baby retorted.
Al took a step towards him but Odin held him back.
"Let's look at it," he said.
Ivory Baby shrugged and opened the car trunk, showing him a black cocktail dress labeled Saks Fifth Avenue.
"Here's a Playtex girdle and a pair of stockings," Chilli God said. "Maybe she can use 'em?"
"Just the stockings," Odin directed. He picked up a pair of spike heeled shoes and a nylon slip. "Why do queers always dress like whores?" he mused.
"What you want 'em to dress like?" Al demanded. "The First Lady?"
"Hey, look at this," Chilli God exclaimed. "It's a little whatdoyoucallit?" He held a G-string by his forefinger.
"Gimme that!" Ivory Baby snatched the G-string and put it in his pocket. "Why the fuck don't you, guys let-"
"Here's a pair of panties," Al interrupted. "Get a load of this cunt they got painted on the front!"
"So-o? Ain't you never seen a cunt before?"
Al gave Ivory Baby a double-O and grinned idiotically.
"Not like this, I ain't!"
"Aaah," Chilli God said. "A cunt ain't nothin' but a piece of meat with hair on it. A fuckin' crack, that's all."
"Yeah. But this is art, Chilli-O."
"Well, fuck Art, then."
Odin threw the shoes and the slip back in the trunk.
"I can't use any of this stuff," he said. "What I need is a sweater and a skirt ... bobby socks ... shit like that."
"Sure, man," Al agreed. "You ain't takin' this broad to no night clubs. Let's cut out and head for the stud farm. Ever'body's drunk out there and laying each other in the stables and horse troughs. We'll strip Bermuda Swartz and..."
"Shh-hh, cheese it!" Chilli God whispered. "The Bull-" Ivory Baby slammed the trunk down and said "Cheese!" turning around to meet the approaching policeman with a smile.
"Good morning, Offisah," Al said in an affected voice.
The sheriff ignored him. He was a big man, six foot four, with a head like a Concord grape.
"What're you guys doing in town?" he thundered. "I thought I told you to stay out on that farm!"
"Why, Sheriff!" Ivory Baby coquetted, fluttering his eyelashes. "How're you gonna keep us ... down on the fawm ... now that we've seen ... yo' can?"
"Oh, my little ass-hole," said Chilli God, Jr. "It's round like a cherry!"
The sheriff looked at Odin.
"I suppose yo're the big warlord they've all been waiting for?" he said. "Um ... "
"Odin don't speak to strangers," Al explained. "His mother told him not to."
"Well, suppose you tell him to get on out to that farm and stay there!" the sheriff rumbled. "I just talked to Mr. Sopis."
"Odin's got other things to do," snapped Ivory Baby.
"Oh, he does, does he? Well, he'd better get the hell out of here before I run him in for assault and battery!"
"What he do Offisah? ... Batter somebody?"
"He's busted Joe's hemorrhoids!" the sheriff stormed. "Joe is up at the hospital now. He's been bleeding for half an hour ... "
"Oh, my aching ass-hole!" said Chilli God, Jr.
Ivory Baby giggled. "What's that joke about piles and the Englishman?"
"What you mean 'busted? hemorrhoids?" Al said indignantly. "This is a clean-cut American boy. He only goes around bustin' cherries."
The sheriff looked at Ivory Baby.
"What's that you got in your trunk?" he asked.
"Why, Sheriff ... "
"What you got in there?"
"A jar of Vaseline and a rubber dick," said Al.
The sheriff: "Open it!"
Ivory Baby shrugged and opened his fly.
"Sa-ay, now," said Chilli God, Jr.
The sheriff shoved them out of the way. "You damn punks!" he said.
Then he opened the trunk and stared at the panties and the G-string.
"What's that?" he demanded. "That's a pair of panties and a G-string, Sheriff."
"I know that! What're you doing with them."
"Te-hee," said Ivory Baby.
* * *
In the big house on Maple Street-two blocks from the barbershop-John Sopis sat on the bed and watched the girl as she inserted a diaphragm between her legs. "Pessary," he said. "I think that's what they call it." She shrugged and picked up a small tube of vaginal jelly, squeezing it gently. "For Pete's sake!" he exploded. "Do you have to use that shit again?" She give him an odd look and moved her hand down her back. "You're the one with imagine cravings," she said, squeezing the tube. He reached for a metal Conception Days Indicator on the table and spun the dial to her rhythm cycle. "It's so sticky!" he said. "I'll have to use a towel afterwards." He read the numbers on the cylinder and spun the dial back and forth between her fertile and her sterile days. "Anyway," he said, "it doesn't melt like a real suppository." She stared at him over her shoulder and dropped the tube. "A real what? Speak English, daddy-o."
He looked off at her buttocks and placed the CD. Indicator on the table. "While you were in the bathroom the sheriff called," he said. "Some of the boys are in town this morning."
"Well, la-di-da."
"There was a fight down at Joe's diner," he continued. She shrugged her shoulders. "That cow's discotheque."
"A-Ha." He watched her breasts as she added two drops of French perfume to her armpits.
Then he exploded his bomb. "The Viking is here..."
"You're kidding!" she said.
"Nope. The sheriff says he jumped off the bus and kicked Joe twenty times in the ass right off the bat."
"Bus? What bus?"
"I don't know. The sheriff didn't see any car around."
"A Ferrari?"
"Nope."
"Then how do you know it's him?"
"Fits your description."
"And what's that?"
"A magnificent blonde beast," he mimicked.
She laughed. "Come on, daddy-o. Let's bitch."
"Well, I'm not blonde. But I can sure-"
"C'mon," she said. "I want you naked in the ass..."
Their bodies crumbled into each other and joined together on the bed. "Aaaaah!" he squealed. "When you get me like this I could fuck a dead sheep!" She laughed wildly and spread her legs apart, raising her hips from the sheet. Then she pressed her heels against the mattress and moaned softly as he entered her body. "Ahhhhhhhhh!" he groaned, digging his toes into the sheet between her feet. "Ahhhhhhhhhhh!" But soon he could get into her no further and then he started to thrust and withdraw with a rhythmical beat. "Faster!" she shouted. "Faster!" His rump butted furiously, in time to the hard frenzied heaving of her loins, and suddenly his semen sprang hot and heavy in her, once, twice, three times-like squirts from a water pistol. A moment later he rolled off her body and they lay panting, side by side, thinking of nothing.
Later, after he had propped her up in a new position on a pillow, he took her again hard and fast like an animal.
There was a loud POP! like a cork withdrawn from a bottle.
"Oh God, Mr. Sopis. John!"
Then, in the sudden silence of spent lust, she found that she could hear her wrist watch tick. "What time is it?"
"I don't know," he said. "Maybe nine."
She turned her head on the mattress and watched him as he wiped himself with a towel.
"Do you want to try it the other way now?" he asked.
She looked at his phallus as it rose and grew hard, towering over her from a forest of curly black hairs.
She swallowed. "John, don't-"
"Come on."
"No, please-"
"Goddamn you!"
"Don't, John-please, don't-"
He seized her head in his two hands and held her firmly by the ears. Then he kissed her full on the lips, forcing them open. "No, no," she whispered; please. Mr. Sopis!" He struck her hands down and placed his knees on either side of her face.
"Mr. Sopis," she gasped. "Mr. Sopis-"
He grabbed her hair and jerked her up.
"It's a lollipop, baby ... don't bite it."
She tried to shove him away. "Mr. Sopis-please-"
"Suck it!"
"M-m-m-m ... "
"Harder!"
"M-m-m-m-m-m-m-m."
"Say 'Further.. "
"M-m-m-m ... further."
"Again."
"Fuuuuur-ther!"
She choked. He was huge. She felt the tears coming into her eyes and she fought them back. The pig ... pi ... a pig's squeal rang in her ears, and suddenly she remembered a picture she had seen in LIFE Magazine of a Python swallowing whole the bloated body of a pig.
"Oink!" He expelled a sharp explosion of breath and fell to the sheet beside her, gasping for air.
"You pig!" she cried.
"Whassamatter? You like black meat better?" She spat in his face.
"You bitch!" He grabbed her wrist, but she twisted loose and got off the bed.
"Go on!" he shouted. "Run down to your black daddy in Key West. Your black daddy'll give you some fish!"
"You're damn right he will!" she said.
He jumped off the bed and slapped her across the mouth in two motions of his flat hand. She cursed and slapped him back hard with her palm, and for a time they stood naked and toe to toe, slapping each other viciously in the face.
"All right, all right," he howled, "for Pete's sake! Lay off will you!" But she beat her two fists on his chest until he caught her wrists and pulled them apart holding her in the first position of a dance.
"You bitch!" he wheezed. "You lousy nigger-lovin' bitch!"
She struggled and let out a fart and, suddenly, his penis stirred and rose like a snake. He waltzed her across the room and slapped her up against the wall, trying to get it into her fast, butting her hips furiously like a billy goat.
"You bitch!" he panted. "You bitch!"
Letting out another fart she leaped up and swung her legs around his waist, her ankles crossing behind and gripping each other tightly as he walked over and stood in front of the mirror. "You can't do it this way!" she gasped.
Clinging to him like a monkey she buried her face in his chest and pressed her groin against his belly. "You're damn right I can!" he panted and slipped his hand down and grabbed her twat, staring in the mirror at the long, shapely blonde legs that squeezed his body with the force of a nutcracker. Then, pinching her crotch, he said "Dick!" and shoved it into her, dancing back and forth in front of the mirror.
"Twist, baby, twist! Twist-O twist-O, twist! Come on, TWIST, baby, TWIST! Let's twist, oh twist, oh twist. Twist! Twist, oh twist. Twist, oh twist, oh twist. Come on, Twist! baby, Twist! Twist 'n' twist 'n' twist. TWIST! baby, TWIST! Twist you li'l ol' twist. Twist-O, twist-O twist! Come on, TWIST, twist 'n' twist, Twist! baby, twist ... "
Still holding her like a Siamese twin joined at the belly and still dancing back and forth in front of the mirror he suddenly dashed into the bathroom and turned on the shower.
"Don't! For God's sake, stop it!"
She screamed but he swung her under the needle spray and held her there, letting the cold water steam on her until she smoked like a lobster.
"Twist, baby twist! Twist 'n' twist 'n' twist---"
SIX
It was the night of the Viking: Crazy Wild. Out in the blackness the wind was clashing the branches of invisible land-driving the snow in front of it in clouds. In the circle of hot rods that were parked around the culvert a trees and howling across the fields of northern New Eng-half dozen boys of either sex danced furiously in the yellow glare of the headlights, swinging their hips in time to the music.
" ... I never fuck a duck, I never kiss an ass, but I can shake a cherry in the middle of a glass!"
In the cars everybody was singing and waving bottles. A girl stuck her large meaty buttocks out the window of an Uncle Daniel. "Hey, dad! Look at the moon!" The dancers jumped and shuffled, swinging their hips like yo-yos. They all had broad shoulders and flat bottoms: from behind they looked like Esther Williams.
" ... Vicky Wacky Woo, is knockin' on the doh, let 'im in an' knock 'im down an' lay 'im on the floh . ... "
Near the road's edge a girl jumped up in the air, like a cheerleader, and at this signal four cars leaped forward and roared down the straight. As they shifted into second, Ivory Baby and Chilli God, Jr., took the lead. Oglethorpe followed close behind them in a Screamer-Yazoo Ix was last in a Draggin' Wagon.
"Shoot low, daddy-o. They're ridin' Shetlands!"
"The joke was funny," said Al. "It was about a preacher who complained that he couldn't tell the boys from the girls. 'Men become women and women become men. Just look at that one over there,' he said, 'the one with the cigarette and the blue jeans. What is it? A boy or a girl?' 'It's a girl,' somebody told him. 'She's my daughter.' 'Oh, forgive me, sir!' the preacher cried. 'I didn't know you were her father!' 'I'm not,' the other said. 'I'm her mother!' "
" ... two little chicks, shaving with a Schick..."
" ... Crazy Wild in the U.S.A...."
" ... plat, plat, plat with Mississippi Mud..."
" ... I want you naked in the ... ask ... I want to lay you in the ... cask ... I wanna kiss you in the--. . . "
" ... ne-ver let it go! OH OH OH OH..."
" ... Jack-i-ty ass, why don't you get some Gas..."
The cars roared past like a flash of lightning and their backwash hit the hot rods with solid blows. Chilli God, Jr., still had the lead, but Ivory Baby was dropping back fast and Kitt Oglethorpe was gaining on him and taking his place. Yazoo Ix was last
"Go, man, go!"
"Chadada."
"Baggie jaggie."
"Skooky-do"
"Yaba-yaba."
"Fubar"
"Faberstate."
"Frapnot."
"Weft!"
"Kill it, dad, before it spreads."
"Hey, Odin!"
Al threw a bottle out the window and nudged Odin with his elbow. "You sleepin', man?"
Odin straightened up in his seat. The ruby taillights of the racers were diminishing fast in the night. The windshield wipers on the Ferrari worked hard to pull back the torrents of snow that pelted against the glass.
"Look at that crazy Bermuda Swartz," Al said, nodding off at the Uncle Daniel. "Still mooning it. She'll get icicles on that ass."
"Miss Winterbottom."
"Cold Ass for short."
On the back seat Lusonne was down on one knee in front of Chinchilla Jones. He kissed the base of her throat the swell of her breasts, the flat of her stomach, the balls of her buttocks, the softness of her inner thighs, her hair. Chinchilla Jones was naked.
"Why don't you quit that back-seat bingo," Al said, turning around. "Shove it dad!"
Lusonne looked at him over his shoulder. "Who rattled your cage, big man?" Al reached down and smacked him hard across the head with his flat hand. "Don't razz my berries," he said.
Outside, in the circle of headlights, the dancers stopped and stood immobile on the ground, like snowmen. Then suddenly a horn bleated and a covey of jalopies came down the road from the direction of town.
"Here's the Jelly Tots," Al said, jerking his head toward the jalopies. "That guy in the '32 Ford-he's the Hub Cap."
Odin glanced at the Deuce without interest "Copasetic."
Lusonne pulled himself up to the rear window-one knee in the stomach of Chinchilla Jones-watching the line of jalopies as they parked along the side of the road.
"I know that Hub Cap," he said. "He's crazy but his chick is real wild."
"Cool, dad. Coo-ool."
Chinchilla Jones jack-knifed her legs and shoved Lusonne away from her belly.
"C'mon, Lu," she said. "Let's do the mess-arounds ... "
There was a sudden bolt of lightning and for a moment they were blinded when Chilli God's blazing headlights seared out of the snow and into their eyes. Then there was another flash and a rush of air as Kitt Oglethorpe swept by. After a while Ivory Baby and Yazoo Ix came out of the snow with their feet down and skidded to a stop behind the others.
Chilli God rolled down his window-with the snow of twelve miles of racing plastered onto the glass-and shouted something wind-shattered to Ivory Baby.
"Yaaaa-ah!" Ivory Baby retorted. "Yer mudder drives a beer truck!"
In the line of jalopies the door of a Plymouth coupe swung open and a fat townboy in a snow suit got out.
"That's Chlorophyll George," Al said. "He's got the bread."
Lusonne threw a blanket over Chinchilla Jones.
"Give him a pinch in the wazoo when he sits down," he said. "He won't mind it. All these town boys are queer."
Al wiped the steam off the window. Chlorophyll George was leaning down and talking to someone in the Uncle Daniel.
"What the fuck is he doing?" Al said. The he rolled down the window. "Hey, Jelly Tot!"
The boy turned around and came over to the Ferrari. Al opened the door. "Come on in, kookie," he said. "Lay on me some bread."
Chlorophyll George squeezed into the car. "Dad," he said. "Let's put it in orbit."
Al took out a roll of bills and threw it on the dashboard.
"Fifteen hundred smackers." he said.
Chlorophyll George leaned forward and looked across Al at Odin. His fingers trembled on the dashboard.
"We can put up seven," he said.
"Seven hundred?" Al roared. "Why ya lousy-Whatcha think Odin is? A fuckin' ankle-biter?"
Chlorophyll George grinned slyly at Odin. The lights from the dashboard made his face turn green and evil-looking, like a devil's mask.
"Hey, man, " he said. "What's your mob adjustment?"
Odin turned his head and looked at him. The other blushed and avoided his eyes. They were too deep and blue for comfort.
"Well; if you ain't with it, you ain't nowhere nohow..."
"Lissen," snarled Al. "Odin don't drive no chickie-run for no lousy seven hundred. Go tell that to yo' Hub Cap."
Chlorophyll George dropped back in the seat and started to open a flip-top box of marijuana cigarettes.
"What's that?" Al demanded. "Left-wing Luckies?"
"You know it, dad. Want one?"
Al shook his head.
"Well." Chlorophyll George lipped a cigarette and reached for the lighter. "If you guys don't wanna make no chickie-run, then you're chicken. Not us."
Odin looked across at Al, then at Chlorophyll George for a moment. He frowned.
"You light that shit in here," he said, "and you'll regret it boy."
"What the hell? It's only tea..."
Chlorophyll George raised the lighter to his cigarette but Lusonne leaned over and tickled him in the throat with a switchblade.
"Shoot, whyn't you sock'm, man?"
Al moved his arm, like a man swinging a sledge hammer. He swung-a hard, hammer-like blow, and sank his fist to the wrist into the other's belly. "SMACK, Dad, in the middle. BACIAMI" Chlorophyll George said "UGH" and slid down on the floor, gasping for air like a poisoned rat Al picked up the lighter and shoved it into the dashboard. "Maybe the creep's got the bread with him," he said. He turned the boy's pockets inside out. "A lousy silver jeff," he snorted and tossed the nickel on the dashboard.
"Christ," said Chinchilla Jones. "What're you doing?" She sat up and held the blanket about her. "I thought we came here for a chickie-run," she said. "Pretty soon you'll have to do it in a snowplow, Odin."
Lusonne looked out the window. The snow was a solid white curtain that billowed and flapped in the cold black wind.
"You wanna make a chickie-run for seven hundred, Odin?" he said. "I've seen you do it for no more'n Abe's Cabe down in old Louisiana ... "
"Um." Odin looked at his watch. "That time I needed five bucks," he said.
"Sho," Al agreed. "Look what that cock-teaser Marilyn Monroe did when she needed fifty. Betcha she wouldn't do it again...! "
Chinchilla Jones let the blanket drop and crossed her arms, her hands clutching her nude shoulders.
"I've got to split" she said, leaning her elbows against the front seat. "Let's make the scene in Hollywood, Odin. I'm tired of all this New England horseshit You'll freeze my ass and your balls both off up here."
Lusonne gave her a shove. "Quit cornin' on like that," he said. "You know Odin don't dig that kinda jazz."
"He swings, man."
Al grinned crookedly at Odin and when Odin smiled back at him he winked. "When do we cut out for California, dad?"
"After I'm through in Key West," said Odin. "What's in Key West."
"Earla..."
Al whistled two notes and leered.
"Built like a brick shithouse." He used both hands to make a curving hourglass shape in the air. "She's alreet man!"
"Dark meat?" asked Lusonne.
Al made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, and waggled it beside his ear. "Like wow!" he said.
Cinchilla Jones dropped back in the seat. "They are good dancers," she said. "Lying on their backs."
"Horizontal, dad-"
"-that's the wizard thing to do!"
"She sings, too," said Al. "Real low and sexy."
Odin said, "Husky."
"Why, sholy." Al grinned at him.
Lusonne ran the tip of his tongue over his lips.
"I know a dark chick like that," he said. "Her voice goes down a pitch during her menstrual periods. like cool, daddy-o."
On the floor Chlorophyll George was holding his belly with his two hands, gasping, his mouth opening and closing like that of a fish.
"He's gonna puke any minute," said Lusonne.
"Blaze, man, it's gonna splash!"
Al opened the door and put a foot on the other's buttocks, shoving him out into the snow.
"It's been real," he said, slamming the door.
A boy in a black leather motorcycle jacket with a fur collar got out of the Deuce and walked over to Chlorophyll George.
Outside, in the snow, the Hub Cap hooked his thumbs in his belt and prodded Chlorophyll George with the toe of his boot.
"That's a cool set of stompers," said Lusonne. "Lookit all them little brass chains he's got on."
Al snorted violently. "That ain't no set o' stompers," he said. "Them's baby-booties!"
The Hub Cap leaned down and rapped on the window. He wore his hair brushed back on either side, meeting in a ridge at the neck in "Detroit" style. He was a good-looking boy if you didn't get too close. With his face pressed against the window he was just a plain mess of beard and pimples and oily blackheads.
Al opened the door. "C'mon in and get laid, Fream."
"Lissen, Cube. I don't take nothin' from nobody!"
"Marlon Brando." Lusonne tittered. "Don't he sound just like him?"
Chinchilla Jones clasped her hands to her breast and fluttered her eye falsies. "My He-ro!" she squealed.
Al opened the door wider. The wind howled around the corners and clawed at the windows. The snow piled up on the seat.
"Come on in," he said again. "I wanna give you a blow job, about fifty times."
"Listen, you-" But Odin interrupted:
"You chicken?" he said. "Or you wanna make a run?"
The Hub Cap blew into his hands and held his ears. He did a double take. "Jine me," he said, jerking his head.
Odin smiled.
"O.K., " he said. "Winner takes all. We're putting up one G. You put up seven hundred and that '32 Ford."
"That Deuce is worth three Gs, man! It's a custom job!"
"Sure," Odin agreed. "But I thought you were fixin' to win this race."
The Hub Cap did a double take again.
"Who holds the bread?" he said.
"Well ... Al's a big boy. Let him hold it."
"I got a coupla big boys, too, man."
"So?" Odin shrugged. "All three can hold it. It's only a couple of Gs."
"One thousand seven hundred, and the Deuce," corrected the Hub Cap.
Odin smiled. "I ain't had your educational advantages, sir."
The Hub Cap blushed. "I was shot down, dad."
"For Christ's sake," Chinchilla Jones exploded. "Shut that fuckin' door, Al! You wanna freeze my goddamn balls off?"
"Scuse me," he said. "I didn't know you had 'em."
Odin reached his hand over to the dashboard and picked up the roll of bills.
"Come on, Al," he said. "Let's go."
He opened the Ferrari's door and got out. As though at a signal, the doors of the other cars opened and a small army of ducktails got out and followed him to the culvert. There were two heavy machines parked on the bridge with their motors running. Below the rear bumpers, exhaust gasses whirled and spun in the snow.
"Right off the old assembly line," Al said proudly, slapping the fenders. "A '39 Merc and a '40 Continental. You takes you choice, boys."
Odin frowned.
"A '39 Mercury?" he said. "Why, that's the first one they made!"
"Continental, too ... duh-duh."
"Where'd you get 'em?"
"There's a whole garage full of antique stocks out on the farm."
"You stole 'em?"
"She-it. Sopis can afford it. He's got a 1903 Ford and a 1920 Lincoln. Whole buncha first-run bombs like that."
The Hub Cap stroked the Continental Can with his hand and patted it tenderly, as a man might stroke and pat the buttocks of a woman.
"Ipsipipsi," he said. "Good proportions, man."
"They don't hardly make 'em like that no more," said Al.
The Hub Cap agreed. "You can say that again..."
"Kinda like never."
"Look here," Odin said to the Hub Cap. "You want the Continental."
"You want it."
"I don't give a shit."
"Makes no diff."
"Dad," said Al. "Did you ever hear the joke about the polite broad who was gonna have a baby? Well, man, here she was pregnant for more'n fifty years and when she died they cut her up for a friggin' autopsy and found two little old men sittin' in her belly, sayin' to each other, 'After you, suh,' and 'No, you're ahead of me, suh,' and 'Please, suh, I'll go after you, suh.'"
Odin smiled.
"That's like the Deuce and the Uncle Daniel that met on a mountain road, each coming to a complete stop and neither proceeding until the other had passed."
Al stared at him.
"Huh?" he said.
"Lissen, Al," the Hub Cap told him. "Why doncha go screw yourself?"
Al made a hole with his right fist. "Put it in there if you got one, Fream."
"So bend over, why doncha."
"Aaah! Go buy a banana..."
"Like cold cream in a pear, dad."
"She-it. You don't have the dick to do it with!" Odin put the roll of bills in Al's hand.
"Come on," he said. "Let's go." Al looked at the Hub Cap. "Lay on me some bread, Fream."
The Hub Cap spat on the ground between Al's feet and from his hip pocket he drew a wad of fifty dollar bills.
"You don't have to count it," he said. "It's all there."
Al snorted and pulled off the rubber band.
"Why you cheap mother-fucker," the Hub Cap began, but Odin stopped him.
"You got a silver wing?" he asked. "I'll flip you for the Can."
The Hub Cap pulled up his black motorcycle jacket and dug his hand into the pocket of his skin-tight dungarees, bringing out a handful of change.
"I've got a thin one and a brown Abe," he said. "A couple of silverjeffs and a big George..."
"Big George," said Odin. He shoved aside the nickels and the dime and penny with his fingers and picked up the quarter.
"Heads: Continental. Tails: Mercury. What'd you want."
"Heads."
Odin flipped the coin into the air and caught it, slapping it down hard on the back of his hand.
"Heads," he said. "You get the Can."
"Crazy, man. I'm Edsel Ford a second time!"
The Hub Cap shook Odin's hand in drag-strip style, taking him by the thumb and reversing the grip.
"Later, man..."
"Until we meet."
A hand in a corduroy sleeve was extended and Odin shook it as he got into the 1939 Mercury. The hand was soft and smooth, like a girl's, and a silver name-bracelet dangled from the limp wrist under the sleeve.
"I read you the most," said Ivory Baby.
Odin slammed the door and rubbed his hand on his trousers. The car was immaculate. He placed a fist on the gear shift and watched as Kitt Oglethorpe and Chilli God, Jr., shoved snow off the windshield. 1939. A war startedhe wasn't even born yet. Kitt Oglethorpe rapped on the window and gave him the "GO" signal. He shifted into low and made a "drop dead" sign with four of his fingers. The snow sprinkled on the glass like sugar. A storm was ending. He felt the flow of blood through the lining of his stomach-its decrease, its gastric fluid, the empty bag. The road stretched out ahead of him across the countryside: its surface straight, invisible.
Suddenly the Hub Cap swung the Continental around, and for a moment the two cars stood back to back-the first position in a duel. There was a sharp crack of a zip-gun. Odin cursed and stabbed the gas pedal. The sedan took off with a spastic jerk: the snow from its spinning wheels tossing into the air. Behind him the Continental leaped forward and boomed down the straight in the opposite direction like a jet-propelled airplane picking up speed for a take-off. The night was starless. He reached a hand under the steering wheel and fumbled around among the dark instruments, turning on the radio and the windshield wipers before he found the switch to the lights on the dashboard.
The dial-type speedometer and the oil pressure gauges came on dark green and bloody in the red. He glanced at the culvert in his rear-view mirror and shifted into second. The sedan accelerated smoothly without hesitation or loading of the engine. In the ammeter he saw his own blonde reflection and suddenly the long, aristocratic legs and high little boy's buttocks of a new Hollywood actress named Grace Something-or-other flashed before his mind. A portable woman: a handful of cream. He ground his teeth and jumped the Mercury into third. Then, holding the car on the road, he worked his right hand furiously in his lap. In less than a minute she had been taken, like a thousand nameless broads before her, though she never knew it. He wiped his hand on the edge of the seat and swore when the teaspoonful of spent lust curdled and stuck between his fingers.
Up ahead the headlights of a Buick and DeSoto flashed on bright, then back to dim and on bright again. A tall, chicken-breasted boy in a windbreaker was standing in the middle of the road, flagging him down with a torch. He cursed-his foot came off the accelerator and hit his brakes hard. The Mercury kicked and slewed around in the snow, skidding backward six hundred feet before it came to a stop in front of the boy with all four wheels dragging.
"Jesus H. Christ!" The boy jumped up in the air and flapped his arms like a chicken.
"Take off, shit-bird!"
"Zoom! Zoom!"
"Hey, Dodo!"
A door in the DeSoto opened and a girl in pink Capri pants and a lumber jacket got out. For a moment she stood in a magazine pose-one leg thrust forward, a hand on her hip. Then she came over to the Mercury in a slinky, slow-motion kind of walk. Her pants were skin-tight and stretching at the seams. Painted on, he thought.
She smiled slowly. "Hi, man," she said. He looked at his watch. Four minutes more. She jerked a thumb toward the skidmarks in the snow. "Ochin khorosho, man. Now you don't have to swing this Hack around."
"Um." Odin nodded. The sedan was now facing the culvert, its motor throbbing. A mile and a half away, on the other side of the culvert, the Continental would be doing the same.
"What's this ochin khorosho jive?" he said.
"Russki, man. You dig?"
He looked at his watch again.
"You a Communist?"
She winked at him.
"Hi, man."
The chicken-breasted boy came over and leaned an elbow on the sedan's roof.
"Mmmmmmm-an!" he said. "That's wild."
Odin revved up the engine. At 70 m.p.h. there had been a certain roughness in its performance, but he had been too busy with the blonde movie star to check further. A slow acceleration test, beginning at 30 m.p.h. would have shown whether the setting in the high speed circuit of the carburetor was right.
"Mmmmm-an!" the boy said again. "When you swung them wheels around and started to spin like a top, I thought you was gonna strike this bird in the ass!"
"A bird in the ass is worth two in the bush." said Odin.
"Crazy ... craaa-zy!"
"That's out," the girl said. "The outest."
"Like cool, man."
Odin opened the door and slammed it shut again. Christ-the doorhandle was tight as a virgin. He looked at his watch. Then suddenly he threw himself against the door and rolled out onto the snow, where he landed on his shoulder like an acrobat and made a complete forward revolution with his body.
"Crazy, man," the boy said. "But we gotta watch the ticks now." He stooped and helped Odin up, brushing off his jacket.
The girl made a plopping sound with her tongue, and said: "Hi, man."
"She's a nympho', " the boy told him. "All she knows how to say is 'Hi, man.'"
Odin buttoned his coat and looked around as though searching for something. On the road the dry powder-like snow whirled and drifted under the full sweep of the wind. There was a moon now. Somewhere out on the fields a dog barked.
"Hey, Sinatra," the girl said. "Why don't you go and sniff a horse saddle?"
The boy laughed, in undertone. "Not if you've been on it."
Odin looked at his watch. Thirty seconds. He slid behind the steering wheel and slammed the door shut
"Wait a sec-" The boy pulled his hand up into his sleeve and wiped off the windshield.
Behind the wheel Odin sat immobile, gazing across the hood at whatever it was he watched. The girl leaned her arms on the roof and looked down at him between her breasts.
"I French, too," she said.
"They all do."
He stared straight into the sky, seeing nothing. Suddenly a star shell burst in mid-air over the culvert, sending a shower of sparks flying across the countryside.
"Chickie-run!"
"Roll them snowballs, dad!"
Odin let the clutch out and stepped on the gas. The sedan leaped forward, its rear wheels sending out a cloud of snow and slush. At the end of a quarter mile it was turning 65 m.p.h, and he quickly forced the gas pedal into the floorboards. A sudden sluggishness between 80 and 85 m.p.h. indicated that the acceleration pump was adjusted too rich, but at 90 m.p.h. the sluggishness disappeared and he held the throttle wide open through the rest of the speed range.
Up ahead, in the lesser dark of the night, two solid black lines of hot rods were parked along the side of the road, leading the culvert Beyond the culvert two small white dots of light grew larger and larger as the Continental shot out of the darkness at 100 m.p.h. There would be a head-on collision on the bridge over the culvert unless the Hub Cap turned "chicken" and swerved his car at the last minute.
The Big M roared along the straight with the speed of the cold black wind. Odin reached a hand sideways and opened the door. Below him there was a whirr of tires on asphalt-a ripping sound like the tearing of cloth. The motor whined and the windows in the door rattled. He could feel the wheel as it vibrated furiously in his hand and suddenly the car tried to pull off the road. Skidding wildly, he let the brake alone and kept his foot on the accelerator, wrestling his wheel in the direction of the fields. The rear end skidded around toward the snow-choked ditch, and for a moment it looked as though the Big M was going to overturn. Then, suddenly, the skid was checked and he swung the car back in the middle of the road.
Beyond the solid black mass of the culvert the Continental drew steadily nearer, its headlights growing from tiny discs of light to tremendous hypno-spirals that circled with vertiginous speed around a point in the center. The race was too fast-too fast for any race-faster than any race had ever been. Outside the Mercury's windows the trees, the telephone poles, rushed by like walls in a tunnel. Beneath the wheels the white ribbon of the road shot backward and away behind the ruby taillights, its borders quickly growing narrower and narrower until they seemed to meet and fade away in the distance, like a railroad track.
Faster and faster, the back-rushing trees the empty spaces the telephone poles blended in streaks of dark and lesser dark against the fleeing countryside. Above the black tree-tunneled road the moon rushed along, its silvery wash of light drawing a shadow at terrific speed across the ditch, juxtaposed to the car. Then suddenly a rabbit scudded in front of the headlights and struck the right fender, blundering heavily beneath the wheel until it was squashed and sucked away behind the exhaust pipe. He looked down at the dashboard. The speedometer quivered at a hundred and three. A blur of cars whirled by on both sides of the road. In the sky over the culvert the North Star flickered brightly in memory of Jesus, the cunt, the ruptured hymen. The storm was moving south. He pressed his foot to the floorboards. The needle jumped to a hundred and eight: a loud Vfhirrrrrrrrrrr set up in the engine. Faster and faster and faster, down the long tunnel of the road, beneath the moon and across the bridge, the loose planks clattering and dancing under the tires. Then asphalt again, a sound like the tearing of silk-a bolt of lightning!
The Continental roared out of the night at a hundred miles per hour, its headlights shooting straight into his eyes, like battery acid. He cursed and spun his wheel to the right-then left: aiming the car at the circles of light and holding it upon them until they swerved and the Continental whirled past so close that the paint scraped off the fenders. For a moment he saw a white blob of a face. The Hub Cap. Then the Big M shot off the road-between two trees-the branches crashing against its hood and windshield. The motor roared and the rear wheels spun furiously, like a wound-up toy lifted off the ground. He felt himself flying through the air-in a sudden elevator-drop as the car plunged over the ditch and sailed across the field, like a plane coming in for a landing. Then there was a sudden backward dip and the wheels hit the frozen plow scars with all four tires exploding. The Mercury rolled over on its side and skidded around, coming to a sliding stop at the far end of the field, its lifted right wheels spinning slowly.
On the road the Continental hurled across the culvert and smashed into the line of parked hot rods at a hundred miles an hour. The impact was so great that one of the engines hurtled 40 feet into the air and exploded like a Fourth of July aerial bomb. Then there was a giant whooshh of gasoline as a searing mass of flame and smoke shot up from the cars. A second and a third explosion followed, throwing the Continental back across the culvert where it spun like a top upside-down with all four wheels in the air. At the side of the road the pile of crushed and twisted hot rods burned in a gigantic ball of smoke. A girl in tights and foam rubber buttocks staggered out from the tangle of metal and shattered glass and stood lifting her feet in turn, her legs, her hair a mass of flames. The snow hissed and spluttered under the streams of thick, blazing oil, and on the road the asphalt rose in bubbles, like sauce on a skillet. The Continental's engine had been driven back through the body of the car and into the trunk compartment, where it ground and whined with a terrific gnash of metal against metal.
Then, suddenly, there was a tremendous whuff-ff of flames and the gas tank exploded. A fender rocketed end over end 100 feet straight up in the air, and bits of human flesh and metal flew from the trunk compartment, like feathers from a chicken.
Away down the road there was a cymbal-like sound hub cap danced over the asphalt. But saving this there was only the roar of flames.
SEVEN
The invasion of Hollybrook Falls took place at two-thirty on a Saturday afternoon. On Main Street-between the piles of iron hard snow shoved there by the town's garbage trucks-a herd of steaming hot rods and motorcycles roared and blasted their way across the frozen wheel ruts, coming around a corner suddenly, first one, then two more, then thirty and a hundred more, like bulls in the streets of Mexico. In front of the courthouse Al swerved his car back and forth across the shovelled sidewalks, holding it straight upon the motorcycles until they were inches away-then whipping it past them expertly, as a bullfighter whips his cape to turn a bull's charge.
The music was wild: Crazy Wild. Electric guitars slapped and twanged to the beat of Night Train-blaring metallically from a dozen car radios. Outside the bank a gang of ducktails jumped off their motorcycles and surrounded the sheriffs car. On the pillion seats the girls in black, sheep-lined coats and dungarees balanced the machines between their legs and shouted obscenities at one another as the ducktails opened the door to the front of the car and seized the sheriff by the ankles. The sheriff held on to the steering wheel but they dragged him out feet first and pulled him across the snow-choked gutter. Then, strapping his feet together with chains, they fastened them to a couple of motorcycles and swung their legs over the saddles. The music roared. They kicked the starting pedals and put the machines into gear. Without so much as a backward glance they careened off among the madly racing hot rods, dragging the old man along, his head ramming across the wheel ruts and bounding into the air, leaving a long slick trail of blood in the snow.
Crazy . ...
It was like the Pubic Wars in CinemaScope and Stereophonic sound. {Firestone tires struck the body. Red blood soaked the snow. Sirens wailed. Women screamed. Zip-guns cracked. Slush cars backfired. Stilettoes flashed. Ducktails leaped upon one another from behind like dogs. Horns tooted. Showers of stone and brick battered the windshields. Windows shattered. Motorcycles sputtered. Hot rods crashed. The sheriff's car fell on its side and rolled over like a dead bull with all four feet in the air. Girls shrieked. Statues tumbled. Gasoline exploded. Shots. Screams! Pandemonium. Fire!) The Ferrari came on the scene so fast its tires hardly touched the ground.
WILD!
Odin jumped out of the Ferrari, as furious as a wild boar. Shouting a war-cry he danced up and down the street, moving his head backward and forward like a male pigeon. He was Beserker, the warrior, working himself into a frenzy before the battle. A block away a switchblade pierced Al's cheek and ran between his teeth, cutting his tongue in half. He screamed and choked on a river of blood that rushed backward into his throat. Then suddenly he fell flat on his gut onto the iron ground, biting hard on the razor-sharp blade. On the sidewalk beside him a dog lay thrashing in a stream of blood and urine, its head twisted completely around and hanging from its body by a string of flesh.
In front of the Congregational church four motorcycle debs caught an old fat white tomcat and stretched it between them by its neck and hind legs. The cat fought and screamed in terror, but they held it between themone moment all balled up and the next one I o n g as a rubber band. Then-twisting off its head-they sent it rolling across the sidewalk, kicking it furiously between their booted feet.
"Not in my ass you creep!" A blonde girl staggered along, drunk and stripped to the waist. Behind her a ducktail rotated his genitals clockwise and counterclockwise, his penis swinging one way and his balls the other. The townboys were running along the street in twos and threes, hot for a fight. Up on the courthouse steps the Judge was lying flat on his back as Chilli God straddled him and pissed on his upturned face. Then a girl in toreador pants zipped open her fly and bent forward, pulling them down. She leaned a hand against the courthouse facade and spread her legs apart like a cow, watering him in the eyes. On the lawn in front of the Catholic Church a priest lay face down in the snow with a green banana stuck in the black, hairy crack between his buttocks.
Suddenly the ducktails broke out of their cars and charged forward in a body, with Odin in the lead. The townboys lumped together in the middle of the street and the two mobs collided, smashing motorcycle chains against crash helmets and automobile antennas against garbage pail covers. With blood-curdling battle screams the ducktails surged completely over the townboys, their onrushing impetus sending them crashing against the piles of iron-hard snow that lines the street. Turning quickly, they surged back again and went straight through the townboys, mowing them down in the ruts. The air was rent with screams. One of the boys drove a knife into Ivory Baby's shoulder and twisted it viciously. Blood spurted from the wound and ran down his breast. Chilli God stabbed the boy in the ear with a stiletto. The point went through the canal and punctured the eardrum-his bones broke-he screamed and rolled his eyeballs white. Chilli God was then cut across the face from behind with a switchblade so that his mouth was open from ear to ear. The blood shot out in red squirts through his cheeks. He fell and thrashed on the ground like a headless chicken. Odin grabbed the boy and pulled him around, shoving a gravity knife into his right testicle. The blade ran under the penis and into the scrotum. He twisted and dragged the knife so that the nuts popped out. A boy came up behind him and slashed him with a bayonet. The dagger-like blade went through his jacket and pierced through the ribs into his chest. The boy placed a foot against his spine, jerking out the blade and blood together. He staggered forward, grasping his back with his two hands. The boy followed him with the bayonet raised high, but a ducktail knocked it out of his hands and brained him with a sawed-off baseball bat that swung from a chain around his wrist. The boy fell to the ground and clutched at the bloody wheel ruts. Then suddenly a bullet struck the ducktail in the rectum and laid him flat. He bit the earth and screamed like a woman in labor. Behind him, on the courthouse lawn, John Sopis was slowly hoisted to the top of the flagpole: feet first-naked-and upside down.
EIGHT
". . .AND NOW LIVE AND IN COLOR! EARLA CARROLL!" She came out on the night club's dance floor and stood in the blazing spotlight, holding a microphone, one leg thrust forward and her weight on the other. She was the image of Ekberg cut in ebony-hot jazz in living color, all red and black and tan and beautiful. The palms of her hands, her heels, the soles of her feet were white. She was of the earth, earthy, her big black breasts rose like twin watermelons from the bodice of a tight velvet gown that clung to her hips and stuck in the crevice of her buttocks. She opened her mouth and a row of square white teeth glistened brilliandy in contrast to her dark, purple-black skin.
"I'm glad to be ... yes, Indeed! ... where all the right and the smart folks're free..."
At a ringside table an old fat white businessman jerked himself off in a handkerchief. The others stared at Earla's breasts and buttocks, using their napkins for fig leaves.
"I don't know ... May-be so! ... but that's all right...'cause I like 'em white..."
She liked them white all right. Nine inches with the foreskin pulled back. Over at the bar a man was masturbating into a piece of cold meat. Everybody was jerking away for dear life under the tables and now and then a violent erection sent a spurt of seed shooting across the tablecloth, where it landed with a splash among the plates of roast beef and caviar.
Odin sipped an apricot milk shake and watched the men jerk themselves off in the dark bowels of the night club. Then he looked at Earla. He smiled. Her long black legs balanced on high-heeled gold slippers. The edges of her feet were white. Further up, where the curve of her thighs pressed against the velvet gown and swept into her stomach, his sperm still swam inside her pussy-searching for the womb. He had been a long time with that woman. The bed was rumpled. She lay flat on her back and looked up at him with smoldering brown eyes that seemed to be floating in seed. His balls were drained. Outside the hotel room the seawind clashed among invisible palms and hissed in the saw grass along the shore.
"Fuck me," she said.
"I just did."
"Fuck me again."
"I'm dry, baby."
"What?"
"D-r-y."
"I thought you never went dry."
"Well; I'm dry now."
"Can't get it up, eh."
"It's up."
"So-o?"
"Nothing left, baby."
"Let me suck it, then."
"No."
"Why not? You sucked me off last night."
"Sure, but-"
" ... and stuck your tongue up my twat."
"Um."
" ... and licked me."
"Yeah."
"Let me blow on it."
"No."
"You never let me do anything."
"What you wanna do."
"Suck your cock."
"No."
"Let me blow you..."
"No," he said.
She rubbed her knees together. "Come on, boy! Come on! I'm up like a straw ... '
He laid his hand over her pussy and squeezed it hard. Then, threading his fingers in the soft heartshaped twat of hair that hung down between her bulging thighs, he buried his face in her shaved armpit and took a deep breath.
"Aaaaaaaaaaah!"
The body-heat steamed out of her until she smoked. He ran a hand over the immense globes of her buttocks and slid it up her crotch, fingering the two openings to her body. Moving his face down her throat he knelt beside her and kissed her huge pointed breasts, taking the nipples between his teeth and biting them. She moaned. He moved further down and rubbed his cheeks on her belly, kissing the soft black maiden-hair faintly scented with soap and urine. Then he tickled her mound of Venus with his lips and blew into her. She tossed her head from side to side on the pillow and groaned loudly. He kissed the softness of her inner thighs and moved down her legs, kissing the flat, whitish soles of her feet and sucking her toes, one by one. Then, rolling her over, he went back up her legs and kissed the heavy black melons of her ass. "I-want-you." she groaned.
She felt his penis as he came into her and moved back and forth with savage piston and cylinder regularity. He screwed like a Playboy rabbit. The bed knocked against the wall in short steady skidding jerks. She was Bess-he was a three-legged Porky. The act without a hymen. "Ooh!" she screamed. "You gotta bone in that cock!" The world spun around-love made it-around and around. "I've got yuh by the short hairs now, baby!" He pulled them hard. She tightened her bottom and shoved his foreskin down. "That's skin-poppin', dad!"
Later, after he had wiped himself off on the bed sheets, she kissed the tip of his penis.
"I thought it'd go right up through my throat!" she said.
He chuckled and brushed a drop of moisture from her lips.
"Sweet Georgia Brown..."
"Well; it's brown all right," she said. "I used to keep a picture of a naked white boy in my dresser under the bras and panties. Some nights I'd take it out and look at it and goose myself with a brush handle..."
"Brown is down. And cunt is up. But hindsight is better 'n foresight. That's what the queen says."
"What queen?"
"Of England."
"I had a lesbian roommate in college," she said. "A blonde chick. Just crazy about black meat. Sometimes I let her suck me in bed. Christ. She brought herself off against my thighs six or seven times a night."
A picture of Earla and the blonde girl, naked and together in bed, unreeled across his mind. He groaned softly and his penis stirred, without rising.
"She sure had small tits," she said. "I've seen men hung heavier'n her. Good-lookin' legs, though."
"Um."
"Did you ever fuck a man."
"Shit, no," he said. "Never."
"Never."
"My brother did. He was in the Air Force and he hadn't seen a woman in six months. Then one night this guy cruised him on the base. He said he was out to get some fish, so my brother took him to a hot-bed-barracks and did it off on him behind. Felt just like a woman he said. Then, later on, he let the fag take it in his mouth..."
"Yeah?"
"Sure. The fag was gone on the stuff. My brother told me he said it tasted like salmon."
"Does it?"
"Shoot ... it don't taste like nothin', man!"
A spurt of white semen hit a beer glass and ran down its side. On the night club's dance floor Earla took her bow and walked out backwards with the microphone in her hand. If she had been sitting down the men at the tables would have fought each other for a chance to sniff and wallow their faces along the spot where her buttocks had been. Odin watched a man run after her with his ly open, only to be held back at the exit by four husky bouncers. The man struggled furiously in their grip, screaming"Lemme fuck her! Lemme fuck her! I got money, I tell ya! Lemme fuck her!"-but the bouncers locked the door and dragged him back to his table.
It was a hot night. Odin spread his legs. Sweat stuck to his balls and ran down between the cheeks of his buttocks. He cursed and raised himself from the bar stool, shoving the cotton of his boxers into the wet crevice. Then he sat down. Does he or doesn't he? Only his right hand knows for sure. A fag in Capri pants swung a cocked hind leg over a stool next to the wall and seated himself, smiling. If there ever was a fag who looked like a man, this was it. Six-foot four, black hair, two-hundred and ten pounds, and handsome. His eyes moved over Odin light and quick as finger tips. He licked his pinkie and smoothed his left eyebrow with a little spittle.
"Mighty hot," he said.
It certainly was. Odin felt the sweat sticking under his hair. He watched the fag quietly. Their eyes locked and held.
"Your fly is open..."
The man looked down quickly. He blushed. He had left it open on purpose. How very Gay!
"Oh dear!" he said. "How careless of me!" He zipped up his pants to half mast.
"Why don't you wear 'em ass-forwards?" said Odin.
"What?
"With the zipper in back-"
The fag raised his eyebrows, the left one higher than he other.
"Is that a new style?"
"For you it should be."
They regarded one another soberly.
"Get your tongue outta my hole," said Odin.
The fag opened his mouth in a perfect O, like a fish. He started to say something, but Odin cut him short.
"Blow, Josephine..."
"Well!" The fag stood up and walked majestically towards the men's room, his nose in the air and his ass wobbling heavily in his tight pants.
"Hincty sonofabitch..."
Odin swung around in surprise. Earla was standing behind him, leaning an elbow against the bar. "Hello, man," she said.
"Hello, woman." He looked her over slowly. She had on a tight knit wool dress that showed off all of her curves.
"All right?" she said. Her white teeth flashed in a smile.
"Copesetic." He put an arm around her waist and explored the shape of her buttocks.
"I like your dress," he said. "It must be wool."
She grinned. "What're you? The American Sheep Council?"
"Yes," he said. "I wanna ram you."
The night was dark. On the outskirts of town an old barn rose gaunt and stark above a grove of moss-hung oaks and rusted bathtubs. In the knee-high weeds that surrounded the trees crickets cheeped and gnats spun and whirled madly among myraid drifting fireflies. A colored albino with kinky white hair as tightly knotted as a sheep's coat held a lantern over his head and grinned at them.
"Show's jest about to begin, folks," he said.
Earla strained on Odin's arm like a leashed panther. Inside the blacked-out barn a circle of bug-swirled gas lanterns hung from nails in the ceiling. As they walked into the light half a hundred male eyes followed them.
"Over here, daddy!" whispered Earla.
"Um."
They moved through a cluster of men with yellow halfmoons of sweat under their armpits and large straw hats on the backs of their heads. Earla leaned her hip on a fowlcrate and Odin placed a foot on the crate's rungs and leaned on his knee.
"Bill yo' birds!"
The referee was a big fat Negro man in a collarless shirt complete with collar-button and gold-plated diamond studs. He waved a hand ringed with sapphires towards the darkness beyond the circle of light. Two handlers came forward and met in the center of the floor, each holding a rooster in front of him at arms length.
"Pit yo' birds!"
The cocks slashed out viciously at each other's eyes, but the handlers pulled them back and placed them on the floor behind two chalk lines-facing one another.
"Pit!"
The handlers let go and backed away, to stand outside the glare of light, watching. The two birds approached each other slowly. Their small heads strained forward with neck feathers ruffled and tails held stiffly erect. One of them was a young black rooster-the other was an older white bird, a "blinker": with one eye and an empty socket full of gray, scarred tissue. Both birds had sharp, inch-long steel gaffs tied to their legs with leather straps.
Earla looked up at Odin excitedly. Her enormous pointed breasts rose and fell within her dress like Briinne-hilde's bubs-the soft mammalian udders.
"Let's pick the white one, daddy!" she said.
"Why?"
"He looks like he's had plenty of experience. That dark one's just a punk."
"Um," he said. "That old cock is full of shit."
A slender mulatto with gold teeth came over and leered at Earla. He wore a white linen suit, a black tie, but no shirt.
"You layin' down some bread, baby?" he asked. Earla looked at Odin. "Are we."
"The black one," he said.
The mulatto sucked his teeth and printed laboriously in a child's blue-ruled school book. Then he pulled his tongue out from between his teeth and licked the end of the pencil.
"How much?"
"Fifty bucks."
He wrote that down and closed the book on his forefinger. Bugs spun about them. Suddenly there was an explosion of dust and feathers as the two birds came together on the floor. The blinker flailed and slashed at the black bird's chest with its metal spurs. The black bird squawked and jumped back-just as one of the gaffs shaved its breast. A fine line of blood bubbled out through its feathers. The blinker came down hard and its spurs hacked splinters from the floor. Without waiting it lunged forward again and pecked at the other bird's eyes. The black bird kicked out with its feet and crushed down on top of the blinker's wing. There was a sharp crunch-the wing broke. The black bird stabbed furiously at the empty eye socket. The blinker thrashed on the floor, blood spurting thickly from its hole. Then suddenly it was up again, its broken wing flapping at an angle from its side as it slashed at the black rooster's throat with its steel gaffs.
"C'mon cock!" Odin jerked his head forth in his collar.
The black rooster bit into the blinker's face and dug out its single eye with the point of its beak. The white bird was blind. It slashed out again and again. Blood gushed from the socket and washed down its front. The crowd roared. Suddenly, the black bird was on the floor with its legs in the air. The blind rooster jumped two feet off the ground and landed on the younger bird's chest, sinking its gaffs deep into the heart.
"Cock--! "
Odin bit into his tongue and tasted the salty blood. The mulatto was doing the Italian mano morta bit. Having placed a dead hand on Earla's hip halfway through the fight, he was now moving it slowly and appreciatively over the rounded curves of her butt.
"Take your hand off my ass!" she said. "Odin!" He looked over at her in surprise. "This man has been bothering me ever since the cockfight started. I don't think you should pay him that fifty!"
Odin took his foot down from from the chicken coop. He curled his toes and stamped his shoe in the bird droppings. His foot was sleeping. Stinging needles.
"What you doin', man?" he said.
The mulatto backed off and made small, placating gestures with his hands.
"Take it easy, mister. I didn't mean nothin'! "
Odin followed him through a mass of black and white faces that gleamed with sweat. In a corner of the barn a toilet was improvised by a bucket and a plastic shower curtain. Over the curtain a pair of pliers hung from a nail in the wall and Odin took them down and opened them with a squeaking, rusty sound. The he picked the mulatto up by his black tie and pinched him hard in the ass.
"Pizzicotti!" he said. "How you like that, buddy?"
He opened the pliers and pinched him again. The mulatto screamed in pain like a woman.
"Pizzicotti!" said Odin. "Pizzicotti!"
He pinched the man again and again. First the right buttock, then the left. Then right, then left. Then left, then right. Then right again.
"Aw Aw Aw Aw Aw Aw Aw Aw Aw Aw Aw Aw Aw!"
The man screamed like Joe E. Brown. Then the blind cock started to crow. Crow on crow, its head stretched toward the roof as it stood on top of the dead bird's breast and flapped its wings. After a time, the referee walked over and casually twisted its neck.
Odin gave the mulatto a final pinch and tossed the pliers into the John. Then he walked back to Earla where the referee stood holding the dead white bird in his black hand.
"We got a nice Cheshire Pile comin' up," the referee told them, "and one Irish Gilder that just-"
"No." Odin shook his head. "It's too hot. I'm going to take a drive."
"Battle Royal tonight," the referee said. "Twenty birds."
"Some other time."
The referee shrugged and threw the dead bird into the garbage pail.
"Come on, baby." Odin took Earla's arm and led her out of the barn. "Where we goin', daddy."
"For a swim."
"I don't have no bathin' suit."
"That's why."
She laughed as he slapped her bottom and shoved her into the Ferrari. Up ahead a black cat miaowed and ran across the road with its tail erect.
Their world was deserted.
On the beach a rowboat lay on its side, half buried in the sand. Over the water the moon stood full and pale, casting the boat's shadow a tremendous distance along the shore. The ocean was dark and flat like a mirror-its mooned path narrowed to a point on the horizon. In the sky a sea gull drifted motionless beneath the stars.
"Sure is quiet out here," Earla whispered.
She held on to Odin's shoulder and stood on alternate legs, removing her high-heeled slippers. Then she dipped a foot into the greenish-black water that surged among the rocks and lapped at the shore.
"Uuuuuuuuh!" She shivered.
He put a hand over her left buttock, squeezing it.
"C'mon. Take off your dress."
"I will not!" she retorted.
He massaged and patted her gently.
"Come on."
"What if somebody sees us?" she whispered.
"NobodyTl see us."
She picked up a shell and examined it.
"Do you like oysters?"
"No."
"Why-y?"
"Slimy.-like something an old man coughed up."
"Oh."
He bent forward and kissed her on the shoulder. "Take off your dress."
"N-No."
"Come on."
He buried his face in the base of her throat, his hand up her back, searching for the zipper. "No," she said. "No-"
He jerked her dress down and unhooked her brassiere. Her huge, pointed breasts burst free and knocked against his chin.
"Yes!" he murmured. He moved down quickly and kissed the hard brown nipples, wallowing his face against them, embracing the hot black breasts and sucking them off until she moaned.
Suddenly he leaped up on her like a gorilla, wrapping his legs around her waist-climbing her.
"Oooooooooh!"
She staggered and fell backwards in the sand, with him on top.
"Wait!" she cried. "Wait!" She mounted an elbow. He worked furiously, tearing her nylon step-ins down her thighs-pulling off his own pants-goosing her. "Wait!" she cried. "I got my Kotex on!"
"Christ!"
He ripped the napkin from between her legs and shoved her back on the sand, holding her pinned beneath his body with her arms stretched above her head, his hands on her wrists.
"C'mon," he panted. "C'mon."
She spread her thighs and raised her hips toward the root of his belly. Then, digging her heels into the sand, she held her cunt open with her two fingers and felt his erect penis as he came into her.
He straddled her, on hands and knees, shoving his phallus into her black hole with a sudden stallion-like surge.
She moaned and her knees began to quiver. His penis went further and further up her hole. God how he shoved it in her! It was as though he could not get it far enough up in her womb-her uterus, the place where men grew and came out oil
He started to withdraw-then suddenly he shoved it forward. Then back again, then forward. Back-and-forth. Back-and-forth. She moaned at each thrust and withdrawal. The sand ground into her buttocks. The ocean surged. Waves rose and fell. She saw stars. Palm fronds clashed. The moon! She felt his deep-sunk manhood-the springing seed. Black water slapped and whispered at her feet.
"That's what I like about you." he said to her afterwards. "You always act like a virgin getting her cherry copped."
She moved her fingers down his belly and grasped his penis in her black hand, jerking it upwards.
"What've you got in that cock?" she said. "Arch-supports?"
Later, after he had chased her down along the beach, nude and with his balls swinging like a cock's wattles, he flung an arm around her waist and threw her into the sand, mounting her from behind like a stud, while she, wild as a black mare, drew up her legs and kicked at him, her rump letting out a terrific fart against his stomach.
"You remind me of Mr. Clean," she told him, later. "With the other studs I always feel so dirty..."
"GREEN GIANT," he said, "Hump! Hump!"
"Green pecker!" she laughed.
"I wonder what happens to all those little green peas."
"Up the Giant's," she said, shoving her forefingers into the air.
He glanced down at himself.
"Christ. It's smeared all over!"
She wiped her hand on the blonde hairs of his crotch.
"Better go wash it off," she said.
He took a handful of sand and trickled it into her hole.
"Within this limit is relief enough. Sweet bottom-grass and high delightful plain. Round rising hillocks, brakes obscure and rough..."
She shoved his hand away.
"What the hell you doing?" she said. She brushed the sand off the soft maiden-hair that hung to a point between her legs.
He leaned over and tickled her nipples with his tongue.
"Her breasts, like ebony globes circled with blue. A pair of maiden worlds unconquered...."
"She-it!" she said. "You trying to suck me off with Shakespeare now?"
She held her breasts with her two hands and shoved the big brown nipples into his mouth, one after the other.
"U-m-m-m," he said. "U-m-m-m-m!"
He worked his finger up her rear.
"Cornhole me!" she said.
"Wait."
He stood her up, flat against the rowboat, like a swimmer getting her stomach pumped over a barrel. "Giddy up!" she cried. She whinnied like a horse. He jumped in the saddle. "Ride me down, cowboy!"
She bucked like a bronco. He grabbed her around the middle and pulled her heavy posteriors against his chest Whoaa! She laughed and kicked back at him. He stood her on her head. She doubled up. He inserted his .45 into her rectum and Bang! cocked the hammer between the cheeks of her butt.
"That ain't no .22, daddy-o!"
He ejaculated. She farted. His penis came out limp and brown and rested on the boat. She tried to do a handstand as he held her ankles. He leaned forward and kissed her between her legs. She laughed and collapsed in the sand. He dragged her up again by her ankles and made her walk toward the water on her hands-pushing her along like a wheelbarrow.
"Let's do it like the goldfish," she said. "Under water."
He turned her over and lay in the surf with his head between her legs, burying his teeth in the soft black cunt. She moved down and kissed his feet and thighs, running her tongue up his legs and under his balls and around his penis. Then she pushed her tongue up into his anus and he climbed halfway out of the water. "Christ!" he said. She took his penis in her mouth and moved her head back and forth, sucking it, carressing the eye with the tip of her tongue. Then suddenly she rolled on top of him, her feet twined around his neck, her wet crotch pressed against his face. She moved her head up and down on the end of his erect organ. He shoved his tongue in and out of her hot pussy.
Her voice was penis-smothered.
"You got sand on your dick-"
"U-m-m-m."
"It's gritty!"
"U-m-m-m-m-m-m-m."
"It's a gritty dicky!"
"U-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m."
He came off in her mouth. She coughed and swallowed the semen. He pushed his penis against her ear. She gave him a tongue bath around the testicles. He rubbed his penis in the cleavage between her breasts. She sucked his thighs. He licked her vulva. She turned him over on his belly and gave him soft intra-buttock kisses. He groaned. She got on her knees and spread his legs apart. He looked back over his shoulder. She stuck her tongue deep into his rump. He ejaculated. She tickled his scrotum. He shot off like a string of firecrackers. She moved her tongue around in his anus. He crawled forward like a turtle. She followed him. He panted. She fastened her lips to his hole. He let his tongue hang out. She shoved it in "AAAAAIIIH" up to her teeth.
* * *
The loose folds of skin became engorged with blood and his penis slowly rose under the water and snapped to attention as a sudden constriction of the veins cut off the circulation. She stood upright, treading water, holding his long erect organ in her hand.
"Ooooooooooh!" she said.
She pulled the foreskin back and a little drop of lubricating fluid came out of the uretha and slipped between her fingers.
"Your eye," she said, "it's underneath your dick! I can feel it!"
"Ummm." She fingered the little hole in his glans.
"Shouldn't it be at the tip?" she said.
A spurt of sticky white fluid shot into her hand. She closed her fist and brought it over the surface of the water. She opened her hand and sniffed it.
"M-m-m-m-m-m," she said. "Fish!"
She let the little drop of semen float on the water.
"Just think!" she said. "There are MILLIONS of cute little sperms swimming around in there!"
"All lookin' for your little pussy," he said.
She picked up a piece of seaweed and hung it on his pecker.
"A hatrack!" she cried.
"You got a dirty little ass I'm just crazy about," he whispered.
Their shadows were monsters in the water. They kissed.
"I think you're the nicest white liar I know," she said.
She spat a stream of water into his ear. He cursed and leaned his head over to the side, tapping it with the heel of his hand. A pelican came out from the shore, floating through the sky with no motion of its wings. Suddenly it stopped in mid-air and plunged downward, hitting the water with a tremendous splash. A moment later it climbed into the sky again, the tail of a fish hanging from its enormous beak.
Earla grasped his arm and her fingers dug into his flesh.
"There's a shark right under us!" she said.
He looked down at a long dark shadow that drifted motionless in a stream of phosphorescent fire bubbles six feet below their legs. The great pectoral fins moved lazily in the queer blue light that loomed up from the bottom.
"Start swimming towards the beach," he said calmly.
He watched the shark move under his legs, its jaws slowly opening and closing-its small cat-like eyes white and gleaming with phosphorus. It was so close that he thought he could see the lice and sucker fish that clung to its sides like leeches.
"It's your white skin," she whispered. "The moon is shining right on it!"
"Shhh!" he said. "Get away from here!"
"I'm not going to leave you," she said. "We'll swim back together..."
"You crazy cunt!" he hissed. "Get away from meeee!"
The shark moved up and nudged his legs. Earla screamed and slapped her cupped hands on the water. He kicked the fish in the snout and shoved Earla towards the beach as she flailed her feet up and down on the surface.
"Shout under the water!" she screamed.
"Get up on that fuckin' beach!" He shoved her ahead of him and turned as the shark came head-on, protruding its upper jaw so that its entire head rose up into an ugly Reaper's hood above an open grave bristling with row after row of flashing white teeth.
"ODIN!"
He drew back his knees and kicked at the shark. His toes caught the hard ridge above its nostrils and he gave himself a powerful push with his legs, leaping two feet into the air and landing with a terrific smack on its back, as the jaws snapped shut. Earla was in the shallows now, crawling and clawing her way across the slimy rocks and deep patches of sand, her large buttocks shining in the moonlight. The shark tried to wriggle after her on its belly until it was almost out of the water-but Odin grabbed is fins and pressed his heels into the sand, holding it back. The shark lashed out with its tail and shook its head furiously, as though tearing fifteen or twenty pounds of meat from her ass. His fingers bit into the tough skin and the cords of his neck stood out like steel wires. Earla was on the beach now. His eyes bulged and his breath whistled through his throat. He pulled his fingers out of the shark's snout and slipped and plunged across the shallows to where she was standing.
"God!" she said. She pulled his arm around her neck and caught his waist, helping him across the last few steps to the beach.
His blonde hair was glued to his skull. Hers hung limply around her face in black waterlogged tendrils. They collapsed in the sand and lay side by side, gasping for breath.
"That mother-fucker came after your ass like a buzz-saw," he said.
"Daddy!"
She rolled over on top of him and put her arms around his shoulders. Her mouth enveloped both his lips and her tongue pushed between his teeth and went halfway down his throat. She forced his mouth open and sucked him off with the soft insides of her lips. "M-m-m-m!" He ran his forefinger over the tip of her erect, nipple-like clitoris until a slippery secretion seeped from between her thighs. The fluid was thick, viscous, and he tested it with his fingers. Then he spread the lips of her vulva and inserted his penis in her vagina. She moved to the left on top of him and the walls of her canal adjusted his organ to a better position. He tickled her in the crotch and suddenly thrust his manhood deep into her vagina and held it there, revolving it slowly inside her canal with a circular motion. She dug her nails into his shoulders and fastened her teeth in the side of his neck, straining her hips against his to draw him even deeper into her body. "Now," she said. "Now!"
The deep thrust of his penis had shoved his foreskin back so that it bunched at the base of his glans like a Goodyear tire around a Python. But now, as he started the in-and-out rhythm, his foreskin pulled back and forth across his glans, covering and exposing it as the skin bunched in folds and stretched out flat, rippling the walls of her pussy, softly, exquisitely, like a tickler.
"Oh daddy! Oh daddy!"
She was an ocean of dark waves rising and falling, her womb throbbed, her sea-grass trembled, foam rose about her outer lips. Then without warning her sphincter muscle gripped and milked his penis, clenching it hard, expanding and contracting. She pulled her legs back and suddenly flung them forward-as if trying to draw his whole body into hers.
"Fuck me, daddy! Fuck me!"
He rolled her over on her right side with her right leg between his thighs and her left leg lying knee bent across his hip. For a moment they lay motionless, panting, his penis deep in her body Then he rolled her over on top of him, his legs clasped around her thigh. '"No-ooo!" She groaned. He shoved it in, hard! up to the hilt A tickling sensation started in the head of his penis and ran up towards his scrotum. Suddenly it burst in a series of convulsive jerks and spurts as his seed sprang deep into the mouth of her uterus.
"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh!"
She screamed and bit his neck, raking his back with her fingers. Her eyes rolled upward and closed. A hot little brush of fire started in her clitoris and continued to burn, the flames running up higher and higher into her vagina, skyrocketing until suddenly it burst in her womb-explosion following explosion, a fiery pain of pleasure lifting her-up, up-out of her body, and then dropping her down as the shower of sparks fell on the sand, spluttering-cooling-leaving her spent.
"Daddy!"
They lay panting, a striking contrast in black and white-both lost, thinking of nothing, not even each other. Her vagina was around and surrounding his ivory, holding him tight as blood drained from the erectile tissue and left his penis shrunken and soft-inside her body.
"Earla..."
He withdrew his penis slowly. There was a little smack of her lips as he left her. The lollipop that made the world go around: red at the tip. He panted softly against her breast and rolled off and lay beside her, placing his hands behind the back of his neck.
"Now, who says a nigger can do that better'n a white man?" he said.
"Whoo-eee!" she said. "Ah sho don't!"
They both laughed.
She looked at him. "How much you got there, sweet man."
"Sixteen inches."
"Sure doesn't look like it now," she said. She stroked his groin firm and close. The soft penis stirred in her hand like a live eel, but did not rise.
"I guess it's about twelve feet now," he said, looking down at his blonde body in the moonlight. She laughed.
He grabbed her ankle and tried to bite her big toe but she broke away and kicked sand in his face. He cursed and got up as she ran down the beach, laughing and calling him names. He went after her-running hard-galloping, as madly as a wild stallion, his eyes fixed on her twinkling black buttocks-his testicles swinging from side to side between his legs, like dinner bells.
"Yaaaaaaah!" she taunted. "You can't catch me!"
She bounded along like a gazelle, leaping into the air, He panted and leaned forward, running hard with his phallus lifted. Suddenly she turned and plunged into the water, her heavy female thighs working furiously, a streak of scum breaking on each side of her body. There was a steamerfar out at sea-moving across the mooned path, its screw kicking up a ball of glittering white foam. He plunged face-down into the ocean and grabbed her legs, pulling her down. She laughed and kicked loose of him, swimming away. He paddled after her like a dog. Suddenly she disappeared. He treaded water and looked around, confused. A little fish darted between his legs and nibbled at his penis with soft teeth. "Aiiiiih!" Below the surface her head was grotesquely distorted. He grabbed her by the ears and pulled her up. She spat a stream of salt water straight into his face. Then she laughed. "Wheel" He drew her towards him and she clasped her legs about his waist. "On the road to Mandalay-ay ... Where the flyin'-fishes play-ay!" Bubbles slid from between her legs and floated up to their chins. "Mothah!" he yelled. "It's a long, long way to Tipperary!" Yet-water did not enter her body where his member sealed it like a 4 centimeter cork in a champagne bottle.
* * *
They stood side by side in the shallows, water running down their naked bodies-a study in ebony and white. He touched the dying shark with his foot. "Ugly bastard, isn't he?"
She put her arm around his waist and leaned her head on his shoulder.
"Now we know what it feels like," she said. "Under water."
He picked up a piece of driftwood and shoved the pointed end into the shark's mouth. CRUNCH! The branch splintered to matchsticks between six rows of ivory teeth that lay in a bed of soft, pink tissue.
"Granny," he said. "WHAT BIG TEETH YOU GOT!"
He picked up another piece of driftwood and struck the shark across the nose hard, with his closed fist. There was a click of teeth as it slashed at him but he reached his hand into its mouth and wedged the plank lengthwise between its upper and lower jaws: holding them open. Then, taking his penis between forefinger and thumb, he urinated into the huge yawning orifice.
"Christ!" she said. "It could have bit your hands off at the wrists!"
He laughed and shook the last drop of urine into the gaping hole.
"There's a Porki in a pool back there," he said, jerking his head toward the beach. "Let's get 'im."
"Porki?" she said. "Here.-I'll show you."
They walked back to a pool of moonlit water that lay between slimy rocks in the shallows. He squatted on his heels and picked up a small porcupine fish with two pieces of wood. Then, holding the little fish in front of him, he carried it back and thrust it into the shark's mouth forcing it past the six rows of teeth and then shoving it down its throat with the sticks.
"What you do that for?" she asked.
He knocked the plank from the shark's mouth and the enormous jaws snapped shut-like a steel trap.
"That Porki'll make his insides so full of holes he'll think he's a cancelled check," he told her.
She embraced him from behind and rubbed her clitoris against his left buttock. "It's going to die anyway," she said, flicking his ear with her tongue.
"You can't tell with this spring tide," he said equably. "It might wriggle out to deep water again, "So what?"
He smiled. "I once caught a hammerhead shark in the Gulf of Mexico. It had a big bulge on its side, and when I cut its belly open, a man's head fell out."
She laughed. "I don't believe you."
"You don't believe nothin'! " he bellowed. "I might've had to slit this mother-fucker open and pull you and your black ass both out!"
She bit his shoulder and he turned around, facing her.
"Did you ever get laid on a shark?" he asked.
She stared at him, her eyes wide.
"Well," he said. "You're going to now."
He picked her up in his arms and carried her-struggling, around the shark, dropping her onto its blue back. She mounted an elbow and tried to rise, but he swung her legs over his shoulders and sank down on one knee before her.
"I-I'll stink like a fish!" she stammered. "You already do."
He pressed his face into her dripping black crotch and moved his lips over and around her knob-like clitoris: tracing the letter O in the soft, buried parts below with the tip of his tongue.
"ODIN!" she screamed.
His tongue entered her vagina, withdrew, re-entered quickly, moved around in a circle, ran over her inner lips and tickled the tip of her clit
" AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaH!"
Her flesh trembled in the perineal area between the anus and the vaginal entrance. He moved up on her-still on his knees and still holding her legs raised over his shouldersthe back of her buttocks juxtaposed to his belly.
"Odin!" she groaned. "Oooooh-din!"
The shark thrashed beneath her as it got its first taste of death. She stared up at him from between the reddish-brown nipples of her breasts, her eyes half-closed and floating in sperm. Then her mouth curled-showing the underside of her lips, like a monkey.
"You white mother-fucker!" she gasped.
He thrust himself against her, using the weight of his body to drive his penis into the glossy black crack between her legs. She groaned and raised his hips and suddenly he went all the way into the crimson center of her vagina. They ground together and burned their flesh into each other, furiously, soldering hilt to sheath until her sphincter muscle cut off the circulation at the base of his penis-like a rubber band-preventing the blood from leaving his flooded organ. He tried to pull out again and start the to-and fro-going, but she held him locked painfully between her thighs, like a dog with a knot in its engorged phallus.
"Let go!" he panted.
She laughed and squeezed his manhood hard with a milkmaid's cruel grasp, choking him at the root of his belly. He shoved at her hips and humped his buttocks, but she held him tight between her legs. There was a furious tug of War. "Lemme outta here!" He rolled his eyeballs like the colored chauffeur in the Charlie Chan movies. "Whooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeee!" She laughed so hard that she almost let him go.
"C'mon, baby," he said.
"No!"
Her legs and arms tightened around him. Suddenly the shark tossed onto its back throwing them both ass over appetite along the rocks.
"Christ," he moaned. "You broke my pecker!"
He pulled out of her gingerly and examined himself with the tips of his fingers.
"Aha ha ha ha!" She lay back on the rocks and rolled from side to side, laughing. "Let's put a splint on it, baby ... A mothahflippin' tourniquet!"
He sat up and gave her a reproachful look.
"It's nothing to laugh about," he said, rubbing his crotch. "I might be crippled for life!"
"Oh, you poor baby!" She got up and crawled toward him on her knees. "Let mama kiss it. Mama knows just how..."
"Keep your goddamn liver lips offn me!" he shouted.
She took his phallus in her hand and brushed the underside of the glans with her tongue. Beneath the skin blue veins rose and bulged as blood poured into the erectile tissues-like meat shooting from a machine into a factory-made sausage. His penis filled and surged in her hand, rising up, stretching toward her lips like a live fish. She kissed and bit the pink head, pulling the foreskin back completely and scrubbing her teeth up and down its surface. Then, pressing her lips together, she slowly withdrew his organ. There was a little smack when he left her.
"She eats and wipes her mouth and says I ain't done nothin' wrong!'" he said.
She kissed him on the tip of his penis. "Every Black will have its White, mother-fucker." She grinned.
Suddenly she thrust half the organ into her mouth and took his balls in her hand. She pressed the flat of her tongue hard against his urethra, touching him everywhere with her hot lips. Then, slowly, she shoved him all the way in, sucking the sharf. His breath came out in a long, low whistle. Sperm shot halfway down her throat, she swallowed hard. Suddenly he changed position, still in her mouth but turning slowly ilke a wheel on its axle until they lay in a French 69-performing lip service on one another. After a while she pulled away from him and raised her head, her lips dripping. "See..." she laughed. "It wasn't broken at all."
"Um.-After what it's been through tonight, it should be."
"Sugar," she said. "When it went down my throat like that-I thought it was going to come out of my ass-hole."
"Well; it ain't that long."
"Felt like it, though."
She moved around until they lay cradled, spoon-fashion, he with his legs drawn up and she behind him, fitting herself into the contour of his body. Her chicken-tongue clitoris protruded downward between her thighs and she rubbed it moist against the cheeks of his ass. Then her arms went around his waist and her long dark fingers stroked his phallus.
"That fish sure is wild," she said.
"Yeah. The Porki's stickin' him fulla holes all right."
She slipped the foreskin back and forth across the head of his penis.
"Your cute imcfrcumcised cock."
She grasped his entire organ in her two hands and started the rhythmic motion of intercourse.
"You can't squeeze another drop outta that thing," he warned her.
"What thing?"
'This thing!" He grabbed hold of her black hands and shook his shaft like a joy stick. "Odin!" She tickled the velvet tip of his glans and he ejaculated but weakly, a drop of clear spermless fluid oozing out between her fingers.
"You can do better than that, honey." She rolled his erect penis furiously between the palms of her hands, like a girl scout trying to start a fire with a stick of wood.
"Christ!" he said. "What're you tryin' to do? Reshape it?" He looked down at his milk-white shaft in her black hands. The head was dry and shining. Flaming red. Less than a quarter of an inch from the tip his eye stood wide open-gaping, like the mouth of a fish. Dying.
"Your hole is further down than other men's," she said and touched his eye lightly with the tip of her forefinger.
"You complainin'? " he asked.
"No." She ran her fingernail into his urethra. "The head is split," she said. "I like it that way. It's like a built-in feather at the tip. A tickler! Real crazy, man."
"It's a groovey dick..."
She looked at him. "You better take me home now, you dumb shit."
"What for?"
"So I can get a nigger to pump some sperm into me!" T pumped enough sperm into you for a hundred white babies."
"That's what I mean," she said. "A Negro's sperm and a white man's sperm will fight each other inside a woman's pussy like crazy. They kill each other off."
"What?"
"Sure," she said. "Didn't you know that? I always take on a black stud after I've had a white man..."
"And vice versa."
"Exactly."
He shaped his mouth to say liberal black ass-hole, then got up and looked at the ocean. "What the fuck is that?" he said.
"What?" She turned around and followed his gaze. The water was boiling furiously in the shallows behind the shark. Suddenly a long black whip slashed across the surface and a pair of enormous black wings glinted in the moonlight.
"A devilfish!" he breathed. "Look at those fins!"
"That thing must be twenty feet across!" she gasped.
"Ma-a-n!" He walked along the shore and rubbed his hands on his thighs. "That sonofabitch will come down on top of a diver and hold on to him with its fins. Eating him! It won't let him go. It'll drop down to the bottomenveloping him-still eating him. Kee-rist! I can still see that boy bubbling and screaming behind his face mask!"
He picked up a piece of driftwood and tested its point with his thumb. Then he ran towards the water.
"I can still see that sonofabitch lying on top of the boy-watching me-and eating him. Eating him!"
The manta ray moved out of the moonlit shallows, its wings flapping and the snake-like tail striking and slashing in every direction. He ran after it and dived into the water-fantastic shades of deep brown, greenish-black and purple surrounding him as he blew two air bubbles from his nostrils and gently pressed them into his eye-sockets, for use as goggles. All around him, between the strands of staghorn coral, red squirrel fish darted in and out among the reefs and spoon-shaped parrot fish grazed on the ledges. The enormous manta ray swam steadily ahead, its huge, shadow-like wings moving up and down with slow regularity above a forest of swaying yellow and purple sea fans.
On the beach Earla staggered to her feet and ran after him.
"ODIN!" she screamed. "YOU CRAZY WHITE MOTHERFUCKER! COME BACK HERE!"
NINE
Los Angeles lies like a whore with her legs spread wide apart, unkempt-on a filthy mattress stained with urine and human feces. In the middle of it all is the city's Glasshouse and the L.A. County Jail-the front door and the back door of excreta: the stink-holes of the world....
At ten-thirty that night the Hollywood pussy-squad drove up to the Glasshouse in downtown L.A., and Odin got out, wearing nothing but a pair of handcuffs and a great big smile. In the fluorescent interior of the Glasshouse he was booked on a charge of white slavery: the interstate transportation of women for immoral purposes. He pleaded "Not Guilty." How could he be guilty of the Mann Act if she was a woman? he asked. And how the hell could it be white slavery if the chick was a high-yellow?
"The guy's cuhrazyl" screamed the pussy-squad lieutenant. "CUHRAZY! I tellya. Oh!" His hand fluttered in the air like a broken wing. "I could just smack him one!"
"Hold it, Willie!" A sergeant grabbed hold of his wrist "Keep a tight ass-hole," he said.
"A tight ass-hole, shit!" the lieutenant squealed furiously. "He's just mean. Mean, mean mean! I hate him! Cuh-razy! He's been driving us cuhrazy..."
"All right, Nancy" a detective said quietly "He's booked. Pull the Tampax out of your ass-hole. Hollywood is waiting..."
"Don't you dare call me Nancy!" the lieutenant shrieked.
"G'wan back to Cahuenga," the desk-sergeant told him.
"Well!" the lieutenant walked majestically out of the door, followed by the Hollywood pussy-squad, their noses in the air and their fat behinds waggling indignantly under their coats.
"You can tell the Hollywood pussy-squad a mile away," the sergeant observed, "just by the way they wiggle their ass."
"Creeps!" The detective spat on the floor.
"Well, at least you don't have to give their fish a finger job," the sergeant snickered. "They lo-ove to do that out there in Hollywood. 'Probing the ultimate hiding place for weapons,' they call it."
"Probing for shit!" the detective snorted.
"Captain!" A patrolman unlocked Odin's handcuffs. "Where do you want him? In the tank?"
"No." The detective lit a Monte Carlo and blew a cloud of marijuana smoke across the room. "Put him in the show-up first. We've got a late one tonight."
"Dum du dum-dum!"
"I thought Dragnet went off the air years ago."
"This is some other creep show," the detective said. "They got a couple of fairies from Muscle Beach playing in this one."
"Bikini boys?"
"Yeah. Brown as a turd and flexing their muscles all over the fucking place. Real tough and masculine looking. The kind with withdrawal cords hanging out of their ass-holes."
"The red-blooded American male," the sergeant mused sourly. "What do they want?"
"Friends of the Chief, I guess. They want to see A real live line-up!"
"Well, la-de-da!"
The patrolman and a plain-clothes cop began to lead Odin along the Glasshouse corridor, but the captain stopped them.
"Put some Levi's on him," he said. "We ain't running no peep show for no Hollywood Tee Vee freaks."
"O.K., Cap'n."
They passed a small caged area where a lonesome queen stood with her penis hanging limp between the iron bars. The corridor was lined with drunk-tank gates on one side and the "Glasshouse" windows on the other. Beyond the windows was a neon-lit view of downtown Sodom. "Hey, look!"
"He's stark naked!"
"Delicious-"
"What's your name, big boy?"
"Look at that cock, girls."
"He's blonde all over . ... "
"Is he comin' in here, Ossifer?"
"Wooo-woooo!" The queens gathered around the queer-tank gate, their hands clasping the bars and dangling effeminately from their wrists. suckity suckity suckity suck suckity suck suck
They walked steadily along the corridor, toward a stairway, Odin in front and the policemen following. There was a room at the top of the stairs with benches along the wall and a door at either end. In each door there was a small pane of dirty, shatterproofed glass, with chicken wire inside. The half dozen men sitting on the benches along the wall looked up as Odin entered, and one of them, a young Negro, said Sa-ay! with interest.
Odin sat down on a bench. The patrolman went out but came back almost immediately with a pair of dungarees and a T-shirt.
"Here," he said, tossing them at Odin. "Put 'em on."
"Um-m."
Odin pulled the T-shirt over his head and drew it down past his shoulders, sticking his arms through the holes. Then he put on the dungarees.
"How you makin' it?" the Negro said wistfully, as though he really wanted to know.
Odin frowned and looked at him. For a moment they sat and stared at one another. Then the Negro blushed and ducked his head.
"Copesetic," said Odin.
The Negro grinned.
"You'd better watch your step, boy," one of the others told him. "I know this guy. His name is Odin, and he's all man ... I saw him race a Ferrari up near Fresno once, and he don't take no shit from nobody!"
Odin looked at him.
"You sold that Ferrari Berlinetta yet, Odin."
"No."
"Hundred and seventy miles an hour," the man said. "I swear to God!"
"Ain't no car ever done no hunnert 'n' seventy near Fresno," snorted a Main Street hustler.
"A Ferrari Berlinetta did! Ain't that right, Odin?"
"Um."
The Negro suddenly jumped to his feet and leaped across the room, crashing his skull against the steel door. No sound came from his lips, only the crack of his head against the door and a rustling of clothes as he slid to the floor.
"He does that all the time," one of the others said. "I saw him stick his head in the big gate at the County Jail. It works with air brakes. Cracked his head wide open-"
"All right, you guys!" The door at the other end came open and a Mexican turnkey craned his neck into the room. "Pull your cocks outta each other's ass-holes, and wipe 'em good now..."
He started to read their names off a sheet of yellow paper.
"What're you doing in here, Odin?" the Ferrari man asked as they moved into the corridor. "Speedin'? "
Odin's eyes washed over him sour and sharp as stomach acid.
"Um?"
The man winced and looked away.
The turnkey prodded the Negro with his toe.
"Come on, Sammy. That ain't no Swedish movie star you're layin' on!"
"His name's Sidney," a jazzcat told him. "He's part of the Nairobi Trio. He plays the drum."
"I don't give a shit if he's Taps-Tippi-Toe!" the turnkey shouted. "Git up, Sambo! Tote dat bale!"
He kicked the Negro hard in the buttocks.
"You goddamn spick-" the Ferrari man called the Mexican's name now "-can't you see he's got his cock stuck in the floor?"
"A hole in the floor," one of the others said, "is as good as any Swedish movie star's!"
"All right, you pricks! Get a move on!"
"Shit don't stink," the jazzcat said, "until it's exposed to air."
"Come on! Come on! Down the hall."
"Two male forefingers in an ass-hole has the same diameter as a prick-"
"Move on! Move on!"
"-one and a half inches. And if you want to see how long a prick is, then bring the middle finger down as far as it will go on the palm on the hand. Mark the spot with a lipstick, then raise the finger and measure the distance. That's how long the prick is, girls!"
"Dear Abby," the Ferrari man said. "Why the fuck don't you shut up!"
They walked in single file, along the hall and onto a (Stage, stopping in a sudden glare of klieg lights, like burlesque queens or victims of a firing squad.
'Turn around, you creeps! Line-up!"
One by one they turned to stand squinting and shading their eyes against the lights. On the wall behind them parallel lines ran up to measure their height in feet and inches.
"Straighten up there ... put your hands down!"
The voice screeched and squawked as a microphone was adjusted. From the black hole in front of the stage there rose a cloud of pungent tobacco smoke. Tiny ruby eyes pulsated where each Camel-sucking mouth in the audience would be.
"I said, 'Put your hands down!'" The voice of the invisible policeman squawked in the microphone.
A Cuban effeminado wearing square shades started to walk off the stage, but the loudspeaker stopped him.
"Where the hell you think you're goin', Castro?"
The effeminado was shoved back in line by a plain-clothesman.
"Take off his sunglasses!" the microphone ordered.
"No, no!" the effeminado shrieked. "E-e-e-e-e-e! Noe-e-e! E-e-e-e-e! No! E-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!"
They strugged furiously, the effeminado standing on the big man's toes as they shuffled back and forth across the stage, like partners in a dance.
The detective caught the effeminado's hands as they flicked at his face, and carrying them around behind the other's back he held them in one of his and jerked off the sunglasses. Nude.
"E-e-e-e-e-e! Give eet to me-e-e-e! Give eet me-e-e-e!"
"Oh, for Christ's sake," a Captain said. "Let him keep 'em!"
"Yes, Sir!" The detective showed the effeminado back in the line and walked off the stage, his ass bouncing beneath his coat.
"Now, there, you!" the microphone squawked. "The first one from the left Step forward!"
The jazzcat jiggled forward, as if doing a dance. His high crested hairdo glistened with brilliantine and reverse combings.
"What's yer name?"
"Huh?"
"Your name!"
"Philip."
"What's your last name."
"Morris."
"Philip Morris."
"That's right."
The audience rattled with laughter.
"What's your real name, boy?"
"Oliver."
"Oliver what?"
"Twist."
The line-up snickered and shifted their weight from one foot to another. In the front rows of the audience someone started to whisper loudly.
"It says here you robbed the Highland branch of the Bank of America," the loudpseaker continued. "Is that right?"
The jazzcat stared down into the black hole in front of him. "Huh?"
"The note you gave the teller said, 'Look at my gun. Don't signal or press the alarm. Start with the big bills in the left side of your cash drawer. I'll shoot if you make me!' "
The jazzcat shaded his eyes and tried to see past the klieg lights.
"Where'd you get that wording, boy."
"Huh?"
"The FBI says the same kind of note was used in four other holdups!"
"Well, look man. Maybe I just need a good talking to." The audience roared with laughter. "All right, you. Step back!"
The jazzcat moved back into the line again with a stoop and a shuffle. "Next!"
The Ferrari man took a step forward.
"Up to the line!"
He took another step.
"Your name's Frangipani?"
"Yessir."
"Is that your last name."
"No, it's my first."
"Frangipani's your first name."
"Yessir."
"What's your last name."
"Sonatra."
"Frangipani Sonatra?"
"Yessir."
The audience howled.
"All right, Frankie. What kinda car you drive."
"A Corvette."
"A Sting Ray Sports Coupe."
"Yessir."
"How much horsepower, Frankie."
" 'Bout three-hundred V sixty."
"Fuel-injected."
" 'Course."
"What's the top speed of a Sting Ray, Frankie."
"Well-uh-I guess about a hundred sixty..."
"A hundred and sixty miles an hour."
"Yessir."
"It says here you were doing a hundred and fifty miles per hour on Santa Monica Boulevard last night, Frankie."
"Oh, well, I wouldn't say that-I..."
"Did you watch your speedometer."
"I couldn't."
"Why couldn't you?"
"I was busy pourin' a cup of coffee with my right hand."
The audience screamed with laughter.
"You sure it was coffee, Frankie?"
"Yessir. I had to have something to keep me awake!"
More laughter.
"What color was the squad car?"
"The Holsteins?-Black 'n' white."
"All right, Frankie. You can step back now."
The man took two giant steps backwards, struck the wall with a terrific crash, bounded back and plunged face-down on the floor.
"Next men. Odin Wild!"
"ODIN WILD!" the loudspeaker bellowed. "You there! The one with the blondeIs your name Odin Wild?"
"O-d-i-n W-i-l-d," it shouted. "Step forward!"
"Sergeant! Make that punk step forward..."
"Yes, Sir!" The sergeant walked across the stage and took Odin's arm but Odin struck the hand off.
"Oooh!" the TV fairy lisped excitedly. "I like that one!"
"He's adorable!" his partner whispered. "Look at his hair!"
"Positively Savage!" the first fag shuddered deliciously.
Up on the stage, Odin looked at the sergeant.
Again the hand caught his arm, but this time he lashed out suddenly and knocked the big sergeant assover mouth-hole halfway across the stage. A plain-clothes man ran up but presently skittered along the floor on his belly and shoulder blades-the Mexican turnkey caught a terrific blow across the bridge of his nose and flew ass-first into the audience.
"RI-OITTTT!" the loudspeaker screeched. "Heeeeeelp."
"Get some men in here. Quick!"
A half dozen men in dark uniforms struggled with each other in the doorway-caught. "Get him! Get him!"
The first patrolman had his legs kicked out from under him and the next two went sailing headlong into the audience. Then a detective tried to sneak up from behind with a pistol butt reversed in his hand but Odin, sensing him, whirled around on his heels and knocked him flat.
"STOP! STOP!" the loudspeaker screamed. "STOP! You'll get twenty years for this. Heeeelp! Heeeelp!"
Odin picked up the snub-nosed revolver and with a backhanded toss hurled it against the klieg lights. There was a flash-a crash! A tremendous explosion, and a shower of glass fell into the audience.
"Wa-aaaaaaaa!" the masculine TV fairies in the front row let out a squeal. "Police! Police!"
Odin grabbed two trusties by their collars and flung them together with all his might-skull against skullletting them go as they suddenly collapsed on the floor. Then, jumping off the stage, he landed on a seat in the black hole where the audience sat.
"Wa-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
The Hollywood TV fairies climbed onto their chairs, like maiden ladies with a mouse in the room. Odin leaped over and knocked their heads together with a dry, clicking sound-like billiard balls.
"Wa-a aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa a!"
Suddenly he whirled and sprang off the chair. With both feet he sfuck a fat detective in the chest. The man staggered backwards, lost his balance and fell flat on his ass.
"Give eet to heem!" the effeminado screamed. "Give eet to heem!"
He danced back and forth across the stage in his elevator shoes.
Odin picked up a seat and swung it above his head, splintering it over the fat man's skull.
"Give eet to heem, muchacho! Give eet to heem!"
"WATCH OUT!" screamed the Ferrari man.
Odin jerked his head to one side, and a night-stick grazed his cheek. His left hand shoved aside the patrolman's arm and his right hand tore into his belly. The patrolman bent forward but Odin's knee caught him in the groin, a right uppercut tore his jaw open, and a swift kick in the side of his head sent him sprawling when he hit the floor.
"Help!" The loudpseaker squawked like a parrot. "Help!"
Odin grabbed the microphone and caught the speaker's wrist, spun him around and caught his other wristbringing them both behind his back and kneeing him in the spine.
"Oh, sir, that hurts! AW-please stop. Oh! I can't stand it-Aw! desist, you really mustO-O! I can't take this kind of ... AAAIIIIIIIIII! Aw! Aw! Aw!"
The speaker cried like a baby but Odin jerked up his wrists and threw him forward-flat on the floor.
"Give eet to heem! Kill the mother-fucker!"
Odin kicked the soft, red-blooded American ass as it lay on the floor, drumming its toes against the linoleum.
"AAAAAIIIIIIIim!"
The speaker shrieked in high falsetto.
BEE-YOWWW! A bullet whipped past Odin's head and ricocheted off the wall. BEE-YOWWWW! BEE-YOWWWWWW!
"Get him!" the jazzcat shouted.
Odin somersaulted across the floor and grasped the man's foot, twisting it hard as he jack-knifed up and threw him off balance. The man pitched forward and his head rammed against a seat. Unconscious.
"Behind you, Odin!" the Ferrari man screamed.
Something struck him on the back of the head and hands-it seemed like thousands of hands-fought to get hold of his shirt and trousers. Arms wrapped around his neck and a huge, hammer-like fist crashed into his right eyesocket. Something exploded against the base of his skull for the second time and whiteness burst inside his brain, like star shells. He gasped for air as he went down in a wild scramble of bodies-the rubber sole of a shoe leaving a CAT'S PAW imprint on his left cheek. Other feet crushed into his ribs and kidneys and someone pinned his ankles to the floor. A blackjack's familiar iron-hard leather shocked against his skullbones. Another club beat a frenzied tattoo along the back of his legs as a dozen hands held him down. The world was spinning. He felt the torrent of blows less and less as they rained down upon him ... and yet, the entire Glasshouse police force was there, stamping up and down along his body and hammering away at his head with clubs and gun butts. The turnkeys were shouting and jostling one another, each trying to get close enough to kick his ribs. On the littered platform behind and above them the line-up stood quietly, watching . ...
TEN
"Hey, Oscar! Do you have the L.A. TIMES."
"Yes, I do."
"Well, shove it up your ass!"
The Los Angeles County Jail-back door of human excreta-stink-hole of the world. In the caged area directly in front of the booking desk four queers were trying to suck each other through the metal wire. Behind them, on the white-washed wall, stained with grease and hair oil, the legend HO-tel Biscalez, downtown Sodom and the post office ZIP Code 90052 was scratched in ballpoint. Beneath the legend and the words sheriff Biscailez prop, sat a Marilyn Monroe-type beauty in high drag. The door of the cage suddenly clanked open and Odin staggered in-slumping to the bench beside the queen.
"Menstruating babies!"
He cursed softly, holding his head.
The queen in drag clothes sat with her legs crossed, singing Balling the Jack in a voice like Tallulah Bank-head's. On the wall behind the shake-down desk a clock moved slowly toward midnight-the witching hour.
"He-y!" The queen's high-heeled slipper stopped swinging on her toes. She clapped her hand to her moutlistaring at him with wide eyes.
"The back of your head is all full of blood!" she exclaimed. "It's simply pouring down your back!"
"Christ."
"They musta give you a awful time, honey!"
Odin nodded his head.
"Just awful," he lisped sarcastically.
"Here. Let me wipe it for you!" She pulled a Kotex napkin from the taped young-man's cleavage under her falsies. "You're lucky they didn't give it to you in front, baby! It would have simply ruined your face!"
"What the fuck you doin'? " he said angrily.
"Wiping you!" She pittypatted him across the back of his neck with the soft cellulose fluff filler.
"Oh! This'll absorb all that nasty blood!" she gushed.
Odin reached up and took the sanitary napkin from her hand. Then he leaned his head back against the wall.
"Hair of the ass-"
"Don't you go cursing now!" she warned him. "I'm just trying too help!"
"Blood on the prick," he said. Then: "I'm not cursing vou. I'm cursing those motherfuckers..."
"Well, I don't blame you, honey!"
The queen's left hand cupped his crotch, squeezing it gently. Her mouth formed a perfect little O.
"I could just suck all night!" she whispered.
He turned his Wad and looked at her.
"Oooh-h!" She covered the red oval of her mouth with her long fingers-round as her ass-hole. She avoided his eyes.
On the floor in front of them the masculine-looking queers were taking turns now, squatting before a colored deputy-their heads bobbing rhythmically up and down between his thighs, like workhorses'.
"Come an' get it, you cocksuckers!"
The Negro stood grinning in front of the cage, his uniform shoved down around his knees, his long Black Muslim sticking in between the bars.
"Christ." Odin watched the glossy red-brown glans and the blackness of the shaft disappear inch by inch, until the deputy and the queer came together-lips buried in a spreading thicket of unkempt steel wool. The nail was driven up to the head-the cheeks sucked like pistons-the lilywhite throat swallowed with measured pumpings of its Adam's apple.
"Would you believe it?"-the queen in high drag re-crossed her legs and wagged the right one in time to the rhythm-"that big cocksucker on his knees is ackchewly a football player with the Warns!"
"Blondie!" The clerk behind the shake-down desk motioned for Odin to come over.
"Got any personal property?" he asked.
"No."
"Nothin'? No watch or jewelry or."
"No."
"Shake 'im down, Jean!"
A big sheriff's deputy with a pattern of acne scars across his cheeks and forehead came up behind Odin and started to run his hands down his legs, then up between them. "Chingar, mother-fucker!"
Odin spun around and swung sideways, but the clerk grabbed his fist before he could belt the deputy.
"Take it easy, Blondie! This ain't no Glasshouse!"
Odin struck the hand off. "Lea' me alone," he said.
"Who d'ja think ya are, buddy? Greta Garbo?"
The deputy advanced slowly but Odin brought back his right fist until the knuckles touched the wall behind him.
"Watch out, mother-fucker!"
"Aaah," the clerk waved the deputy aside. "Leave him alone. He's craaa-zy!" His forefinger circled his right temple.
"Humph!" The deputy looked Odin up and down. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he left the cage, his fat ass wobbling like that of a middle-aged housewife.
"J-E-L-L-O!" said a queer.
"Harrumph!"
"Egad!"
"Kaff! Kaff!"
"Major Hoople, sir!"
"Hee hee hee hee."
"Major Hoople. Hee hee hee hee."
"There he goes!"
"Hee hee hee hee."
"Heigho! Heigho!"
" ... and off to work she goes!"
"Hee hee hee hee."
The crewcut cocksuckers cackled like a bunch of hens.
"You can make a phone call if you got the money," the clerk said, digging a yellow phlegm-like clot from his left nostril and wiping it under the desk.
Odin looked at him. "You know I don't have any money."
"Well, then I guess you can't make no phone call," the other replied happily.
"You stupid sonofabitch!" said Odin.
The queen smoothed the platinum wig at the nape of her neck with a feminine gesture and made a fish mouth as Odin sat down.
"Oh. It's a good thing you're so nice and blonde, baby!" she gushed.
Odin looked sidelong at her.
"Why?"
"Well! If you'da been a spick or a niggah they woulda beat the shit out of you, honey!"
"Hinky, dinky, parlay vous!" sang the queers. "Hee hee hee hee."
"Don't pay attention to those creeps, honey!" she said impatiently, her legs crossed and one foot swinging back and forth like a pendulum. Then, with a shitty smile, "My name's Frenchy! What's yours?"
Da Dum Da Dum
Da Dum Da Dum
His head was jerking to the beat of Night Train, though no one else could hear it. He looked above her head and stared at a black pay-phone on the wall.
"Gimme dime," he said.
"Whaaaa?"
"A dime!" he said sharply.
She pursed her lips and made her litle French ass-hole moue at him as she started to reach into her pants pocket. Then, remembering suddenly that she was in drag, she quickly jerked down the skirt and reached instead into the cut of her blouse.
"I'm rawthuh short of cash, honey," she said. "Reely I am!"
She pulled a small snap-purse from her left falsie, turning her shoulder away so that he could not see her take out the dime.
"Here, honey. I reely..."
He stared at her lips. Cleopatra and the rest of the cocksuckers were the first to use mouth rouge because they wanted to make their lips look like a pussy.
"Now Revlon's in on it, too," he said.
"Whaaaa?"
"Gimme that fuckin' dime!"
He went over to the telephone and dialed the weather bureau.
Burr-r-ring! Sunny and warm, in the high nineties. Relative humidity ... smog...
Crash! He slammed the receiver down and looked at the drag queen. She fluttered her long, dark eye-falsies at him and her hand went up to the wig again, patting it coyly.
"I like my chicks with three holes," he told her. "Your ass and your mouth only adds up to two."
"Two holes!" the football player shrieked. "One plus one equals TWO! Don't tell me I ain't learnin' nothin' in college!"
"He's a two-wayer," one of the others told them. "He's getting his Bachelor's degree in Browning and Cornholing."
"A Bachelor's degree in Browning. Hee hee hee hee."
The queen's eyes looked into Odin's-then looked away.
"Why don't you quit coming on like that?" he asked her.
"Oh yeah?" The queen leaned forward on the seat, her hands dangling between her legs. "An' why doncha go fuck yerself, ya lousy mother-fucker!" she growled in a deep man's voice.
"Go fuck yerself! Go fuck herself! Hee hee hee hee!"
Odin moved into the visitor's room behind the cage. It was a hundred and ten in the shade the day before. Now the temperature was around ninety-nine. And it was midnight! Sweat poured down his armpits and ran into his shoes. In front of the double screens in the visiting room a group of Mexicans squatted on the floor, singing "Cher-ry; cher-ry pi-ee ... cherry, cherry, pieee...! "
"Ya should'n'a told Frenchy off like that," a wino told him, pressing a forefinger against his left nostril and blowing out a stream of yellow snot.
Odin looked at him. The bridge of the man's nose was bound in soiled adhesive tape where a night-stick had smashed it flat.
"You're on French's shit-list now," the wino said, blowing his other nostril on the floor.
"T.s., " said Odin. Tough shit.
"Betcha gonna have trouble with her," the wino said ominously as he followed him through the visiting room. "Betcha!"
"Yeah?" Odin said off-handedly. Their shadows were monsters on the wall. He rolled a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other with his tongue.
"Well, look who's here!" someone shouted.
A spade jazzcat came into the room with a hippy, light-footed walk, his feet moving quickly, like a cat walking on something hot.
"How you makin' it?" he said.
Odin looked at him. "Great," he said "great." For a moment they stared at one another. The jazzcat grinned.
"I saw them carry you out of the Glasshouse," he said. "Man! That show was terrific!"
"Um." Odin looked at a six-foot Chinese across the room and at once the man averted his eyes.
"Yaaaaiiiiih!" the wino next to him suddenly began to shake and slap at his face. "Aaaaaaaiiiiiiii!" He pitched backward and fell over in a fit, his legs thrashing on the floor, his eyes rolling-foam streaming from his lips. "Watch out!" he screamed. "The bugs'll getcha!" He slapped furiously at his hands and legs as foam flew from his mouth and his body bucked and jerked across the floor. "Watch out! DA BUGS! DA BUGS!" His eyes rolled upward and disappeared in his skull. "Yaaaaaaaaiiiiiiii-yaaaaiii!"
"He's got the d.t.'s," the jazzcat said.
"Lemme see! Lemme see!"
A legless beggar with lumps of Goodyear tire strapped to his hands shoved himself forward on a wheeled platform-like a Porky without a Bess.
"Sterno," he said. "He's been drinkin' that shit for eight or nine days now. Hair-oil, too."
"Bay Rum is pretty good," a creep called Bicycle-Seat Sniffer told them. "But I like Sneaky Pete for economy's sake. Thutty-fi' cents a bottle. An' you can sniff model airplane glue in a bag at the same time." He smiled, showing a toothless hole in the bottom of his face.
"Go sniff a bicycle seat, ya damn geek!"
The sawed-off, cut-down stud on the platform with the roller-skate wheels shoved the other men aside.
"C'mere," he cried. "Somebody he'p me hold 'im down. I gotta push this rubber 'tween his teef so's he won't swallow his goddamn tongue!"
"Dam'f I will!" said Bicycle Sniffer.
The others stood in a circle, watching the wino as he lay mewing on the floor, his mouth foaming-body writhing in convulsions.
"C'mon, somebody; for Christ's sake!" the beggar wheedled in his professional voice, "he'p me. I ain't got no laigs!"
"Sure, sure." Odin dropped down on one knee and his arm hit the wino's throat like a crowbar.
"Somebody 'old 'is laigs!" the beggar hollered.
"Why don't you open his mouth and say, 'Ah,'" a Pachuco asked him.
The wino's back arched and for a moment his body stiffened against the men holding him down. Then he thrashed his legs wildly again and a couple of Mexicans each put a foot on his ankles. The beggar forced a corner of the rubber tire into the mouth, depressing an abnormally long, grayish-looking tongue.
"Shaddup, will ya!"
"Don't kick against the pricks, Rummie!"
"Let 'em take ya in the ass..."
"I tol' ya guys to SHADDUP!"
Prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrht! There was a loud floor-smothered explosion and then an overpowering odor of mustard gas drifted up from the wino.
"That's right, Rummie! Give it to 'em!"
Prrrrrrrrrrrrht! Plop! The wino uncorked himself again and the men staggered back, holding their noses.
"Jesus H. Christ!" The beggar swiveled his platform into a corner, the wheels spinning crazily. "When he farts like that-it's worse'n a stink bomb!"
"Kinkel, dinkel, parleyvoo!"
"Hah hah hah."
The Sniffer danced around the wino, clapping his belly with his two hands.
"Bicycle's the only one who can stand it!"
"Ah-haaaaaaaa!"
"Yippee yi yi!"
"Sniff that seat, Bicycle!"
"Lookit 'im go!"
The playground creep called Bicycle Sniffer was down on his hands and knees, sniffing-his nose pressed in between the floor and the wino's pants seat.
"Didja ever see anything like it?"
"Crazy..."
"Ma-a-an!"
In the room within a room-behind the thick mesh screen of the visitor's gallery-another sterno-drinker was having a case of screaming meanies.
"Muscatel boilermakers!" The hammered-down beggar spat a stream of speckled mucus on the floor. "When Ah still had mah laigs befo' the Second Worl' Wo', Ah used to sit and watch mah calf-muscles move to'ards mah shin-bones. B12 an' Antibuse was the only-"
"Before the Second World War?" A six-foot creep wearing harlequin sunglasses came up and dropped ashes on top of the beggar's head from a cheap, diamond-studded cigarette holder. "Skid Row, you lyin' son-of-a-bitch. You lost both them legs in fifty-three or fo' when you was havin' the d.t.'s in a gutter on Spring Street!"
"Whadda ya mean, ya stinkin' Cat-Licker? I lost both mah laigs on Iwo lima!"
"Kiss my ass. You lyin', Skid Row. You was flat on your back in a gutter outside a dive on Spring Street and a car run you over! Beer'n, wine's what done it. Muscatel boiler-makers!"
"Ya dirty Cat-Licker!" the beggar screamed. He turned to the others. "You know what he's in for? He's a Ass Licker! A filthy ASS LICKER! He goes around in all the alleys an' picks up cats and holds 'em wrong-end-to, nuzzlin' their..."
Smack! The creep called Cat-Licker gave the beggar a terrific rabbit-punch across the back of his neck.
"Look out!" the beggar shouted. "He's got a knife on him!"
Sweat loosened the oil that slicked down Cat-Licker's hair and his underarms stank like a woman's napkin rotting in a garbage pail.
"You damn nigger!" he hollered. "Keep away from meeeee!"
Cat-Licker was a Beatnik. His rope-soled shoes sucked in the slime where the wino had puked. His unwashed feet were so dirty that licorice seemed to be sticking in lumps between his long-boned, monkeyish toes, and now green and yellow vomit was squishing around his heels.
"I'll razor-cut ya!" the beggar shouted.
He thundered across the floor on his platform and grabbed Cat-Licker's jacket where it was held together with a piece of string.
The beggar gave him a shove and Cat-Licker skidded across the room and fell backwards, his arms and legs flying in every direction, comically, like a silent picture star slipping on a banana skin.
Slam! Bang! Crash! Cat-Licker hit the floor like a frozen douche bag and the beggar's ape arms sent the dolly rumbling across him, its roller-skate wheels climbing his groin and gouging bloody furrows in his chest.
"French-fries wiff ketchup!" a bindle-stiff hollered. "Give it to him, Skid Row!"
The begger opened a book of matches and exposed a Gillette razor blade inside the cover. Then a wild, black-howling madness made him leap mentally out of himself and he slashed away at the face beneath him-cutting and slashing again and again, hacking away the eyebrows and one of the ears, striking harder and harder, chopping away until there were holes in the cheeks and the left eyeball hung limply from its socket by a shred of skin and vitreous humor The screams ceased after the eye was cut out, but Cat-Licker's body was still twitching and jerking as blood flooded down his face and the beggar sat on his chest like a monkey, slashing and cutting, cutting and slashing---
CRACK! A night-stick struck the beggar a tremendous blow on the back of his neck. For a moment he sat staring straight ahead, seeing nothing. Then suddenly his pupils rolled upward like the weights on a doll's eyes and disappeared in his head. He plunged forward and fell flat on his face, the platform and the roller-skate wheels skidding crazily across the floor.
"I once fucked a one-legged woman," the jazzcat told Odin as he handed the night-stick back to a deputy through the iron bars. "That stump of hers kept beating me in the ribs. Warump! Warump! She just couldn't keep that damn thing still!"
"When you eat Gillette blue blades you get ptomaine poisonin', " Bicycle Sniffer told them. " 'Specially if they're rusty!"
"Birth control could do away with this kind of creep," the jazzcat said and looked over his shoulder at Odin.
"I was born through artifishul insemination," Bicycle hollered. "Mah faddah was a syringe in Bellevue!"
"Yeah, and yer muddah was a...."
"All right, boys!" The drag queen called French came into the room and did a slow, spread-legged grind with her hands behind her head. Then she groaned and threw an oriastic bump at them. "Ssssssssssssufferrrrrrrrrrrrr ... "
"Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm, boy!"
"Take it off, French!"
"Not yet, dahlings." She tip-tapped past Odin on her high heels and gave him the old double-O, looking back to see if it had been effective.
"Rondyvoo!" laughed Bicycle Sniffer.
"Come on, now," a football player shouted, excitedly. "We're all going upstairs and get undressed! Isn't it marvelous!"
"Oh, marvy!" A queer wiggled his ass in delight.
"Coming, dear?" Odin did not look at Frenchy-though he knew she was there. Somehow, at the back of his mind, he had a feeling that he had been through all this before.
"What's the use of runnin' when you're on the wrong road?" the six-foot Chinese asked Frenchy-the long distance runner.
She made a pretty moue at him. "Like Dante, baby, I'm going to hell!"
"Why go?" he said. "You're already here."
"Hee hee hee hee."
Bicycle Sniffer's beer commercial: "Eef you wan' a' exhilaratin' new thrill ... try Miss Rheingold's rear."
"Hee hee hee hee."
"What's Frency in fer this time?"
"She's done refused to shoulder her responsibilities in a strapless evenin' gown."
"Hee hee hee hee ... Ho!"
Frenchy: "I was born in the men's room, dahling."
"Yeah, you're just a little fart!"
Frenchy never looked at anyone she wasn't interested in-her brown eyes constantly moved around the room, searching for that certain masculine Someone.
Without looking at the stud called Chinee, she leaned towards him and said in a lisping whisper:
"Yellow cocks have great influence on their own ass-holes, sugah!"
" Whoooooooooppeeeeeeeeeeeee!"
There was a clash of keys-a clang of metal as the gate opened. In came a trusty pushing a wheel-chair.
"We shoulda brought a stretcher," he said.
"Nah." The fat-assed deputy with the Clearstill acne scars grabbed the beggar by the collar and dragged him like a sack of tomatoes along the floor. "This friggin' cripple ain't but half a man," he said. Then his huge, freckled farmer's hand grabbed the beggar by the seat of his legless pants and tossed him onto the wheel-chair.
"What about this one?" The trusty touched Cat-Licker distastefully with the tip of his toe. "He's bleedin' like one o' them butchered-"
"Agh!" The deputy picked up Cat-Licker's body like he was pitching hay and tossed him onto the wheel chair, on top of the beggar. "Get a mop detail in here," he ordered.
"Yass, yass."
The trusty wheeled the dripping slabs of flesh towards the elevators, his skinny legs mincing across the floor as if they were handcuffed at the knees, taking four steps to the deputy's one.
"In, damned prick! In, I say! ... With apologies to Willie Shakes'. " The Negro deputy came into the room, shoving a sixty-year-old St. Vitus dancer ahead of him with a key halfway up his ass.
"Eisenhower," he said. "We got you by the short hairs this time." He goosed the old man hard in the ass with his skeleton key.
"Eeeeeyow!" Eisenhower jumped two feet off the ground and jiggled across the room with one hand held against his chest.
"Here. I got somethin' forya.-Catch!" He threw a sack of Bull Durham into the air and Eisenhower dragged himself after it, his claw-like hands doubled against his breast.
"No 'strings' attached, Eisenhower," the deputy said. "All I want from you is respect for your superiors..."
Eisenhower grinned idiotically and his bald head bobbed on his shoulders with an expression of alcoholic hallucinosis. The gaping toothless hole-his mouth.
"That niggah depity kaint git enough white men to swing on his joint," a Pawnee Indian said in a loud voice. "But he won't let me her Chinee suckle it, even if'n we wanted to. Won't let no niggah do hit, neither. Anybody know why?"
"Huccome you won't let me swing on yor black prick, spote?" the jazzcat asked him.
The uniformed Negro was still looking at the cripple named Eisenhower.
"Two holes in one, Ike," he said. "How you play it?"
"Mmmmmm. Delicious!" Bicycle Sniffer was squatting behind the deputy, his nose pressed flat against the seat of the dry-cleaned trousers.
"Dar she blows!" someone yelled. "Hole-in-one! Forgot to iron out them farts, I betcha!"
"O.K., you creeps," the deputy shouted. "Let's go test the tension in your nelly white ass-holes. TO THE SHOWERS! MOVE!"
"We're still thinkin' 'bout your nookie," the jazzcat told him.
"Lookit the knockers on that niggah," the Pawnee said. "We got squaws back on the reservation ain't hung half as heavy as he is!"
"All you guys wanna go inna Hole?" the deputy shouted, his gleaming eyeballs rolling in his head like that of a frightened mule.
For a moment the circle of prisoners tightened around him, ominously, united against the common enemy. Then the man called Chinee shoved his way towards the gate.
"For Christ's sake," he said. "Let's go up to the showers.
If we get to the tanks before two o'clock we can still get four hours of sleep. Nobody gets no sleep in this joint after six."
"Whu-I NOT?" hollered Bicycle, the TV comedian. "Lights-on, ya fugups."
"Le's go!"
The ring of men became a single file as they moved out the gate and followed the deputy through the empty corridors of the enormous jail.
"Fuggin' li'l piss-ass jail," the jazzcat grumbled disgustedly as they walked past a tank. "Look at them guys sleepin' on the floor like a buncha sardines!"
Odin glanced at the prisoners who lay side by side in blue work shirts and dungarees-hundreds of them, sleeping shoulder to shoulder-lining the tank, the floor, stretching out in what seemed to be an endless line of filthy, urine-stained mattresses.-Hotel Biscailez. Downtown Sodom.
"Um. At least they don't make 'em sleep spoon-fashion," he said.
Groin to rump, belly to back-one man slept with his knees drawn up while his partner faced him, fitting his body close to the other's contours, his arms around his chestspoon-fashion!
"There's always about three thousand more creeps here than they got room for," the jazzcat told him. "Sheeeeit! You gotta be a fuckin' Caryl Chessman before you get a bunk in this joint. . . ! "
"Um," said Odin, without interest.
"Figure it out, man," the jazzcat continued "You get in a tank with eighteen cells. Each cell has two bunks. Thirty-six guys with senority sleep in the bunks. Eighteen guys with less senority sleep on the floor with their feet against the shitter-one to each cell. Dig?"
"Um."
"But they got ten or eleven guys assigned to each cell besides the three cocksuckers with senority who're already sleepin' there!" The jazzcat ran a hand along the bars as though it was a picket fence "SheiX, man. Ninety percent of the tank's population sleeps on the motherfuckin' floor in the runway outside the cells!"
"Um."
Walking in single file they entered the receiving and discharge room "All right, girls!" the deputy lisped poisonously as they slouched onto rows of wooden benches. "You can put your sweet li'l money-makers down, now!"
The dull, acid smell of tea-weed-was floating in the air and Odin looked around at a trusty who stood rubbing his ass against the steel door. The trusty was a beatnik with a goatee. He saw Odin looking at him and winked.
"Mary-Jane," a Hipster whispered, "Wish I had some."
Odin frowned. The trusty took another drag on his butt and grinned at them. Then he blew out a doughnut of marijuana smoke and aimed a "Fuck-you" symbol through its hole with his finger.
"You know, I won second prize for havin' the best legs in Alcatraz," the jazzcat said as he started too take off his pants.
"Who won first prize?"
"The warden."
At the other side of the room a skid-row ass sat naked on an ash can, complaining bitterly, like a chicken waiting to lay an egg.
"That's Turd-Bug," a man said on Odin's left. "He had some kinda operation and they took nine feet o' guts outta him. Now he's gotta run to the shitter ever' five minutes."
The colored deputy came over to Frenchy. "I'm gonna fuck you in the ass, baby," he said, grinning his shit-eating smile. "Now, what do you think of that?"
Frenchy's eyes which had been watching him disinterestedly suddenly lit up like a neon sign.
"Delighted, Ah'm sure!" she said.
"Hi-di-ho!" An ass-hole picker called Knott's Berry Fawm came out of the shower and pinched a big, sexy redheaded queen on the bottom.
"Eeeeeeeek!" she squealed. "Glad ta meet'cha!"
She turned sideways towards him, wiggling an appendix scar on her belly.
"My Caesarean," she said.
"All right, you worthies!" the deputy yelled at the men on the benches. "Get'cha rags off!"
They started to undress-slowly. The redhead was bent forward now, her buttocks expanded as a trusty sprayed her ass-hole with DDT.
"Stick your finger up there and she'll whinny like a fuckin' pony," the Hipster shouted.
"Um." Odin pulled the T-shirt over his head. "It's a free country," he said. The slender red-haired ass choked with dying sperm, trapped in brown. They couldn't tell whether he was looking at the queen or not.
"I heard she won a 'Date With Sal Mineo Contest' in one of them fan magazines," mumbled a sterno-drinker called Kaintucky.
"Yeah, Man," said the Hipster. "But she had to stay in the fuckin' hospital after that abortion attempt. She took ecbolic drugs for nine monhs and stuck a knittin' needle up her ass to let the air in and kill the baby!"
Odin glanced at the queen. She had turned around now. The trusty was spraying the curly red hairs of her crotch.
"Oh-o-o-o-o-o!" she squealed. "That tickles!"
She swung her ass north and south, wiggling it a little to show what she meant. Between her legs a small sack hung limply where she had unsexed herself by cutting out the testicles with a razor blade. From behind she looked like her mother-in front she was still a man.
Plop! Plop! ... Plop! The ass called Turd-Bug flapped his hands and crowed like a rooster. Then he left a long stream of his brown esteem for the sheriff in the ash can.
Plop!
In a steel bird cage across the room where they served baloney sandwiches and coffee "strong enough to put hairs in your little ass-hole, dear" Frenchy was doing a strip tease in front of Gasson-a maitre d'-expert in both Italian entrees, and the French tongue.
"Ah-haaaada!" Frenchy walked across the floor in her high heels and posed in front of them like a cowgirl-all skirt and counterpoint bra.
"Boys!" she lisped. "Ah dreamed Ah was WANTED in mah Maidenform Brah!"
Then she closed one eye and pointed a thumb and forefinger at them, s'xgun fashion.
"BANG!"
Odin's head bobbed to some unheard Beatle music. The .45 between his legs began to rise-to grow hot and hard. Queens! he thought. You had to be real weird not to dig them sometimes. They were more feminine than real women. Absolutely no inhibitions!
"Yippeeeeeeee!"
Frenchy walked back and forth in front of the men, her long shaved legs balanced on high heels. Then she placed a foot on a bench and her fingers moved up under her skirt to the top of her stockings. She unwound the sheer nylon and rolled it down along her slender thigh and down the calf, pulling it off.
"Here, boys!" She tossed it over their heads. The jazzcat caught it and tied it around his ears like a muffler.
"Turn it loose, Frenchy!" Go!
Go!
Go!
"Flip that gay wig, baybee!"
Frenchy rolled off the other stocking and tossed it to the Hipster. Then she unzipped her skirt and let it fall towards her knees before she caught it with one hand and stepped out of it, holding it up-then tossing it casually after the stockings.
"Oh, take it off! Oh, take it off!" The men stomped their feet and clapped in time to the rhythmic beat.
"Ah-haaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
Frenchy grinned as she held her falsies with her two hands, shaking them at her audience.
"Show us a liiiiiiiittle ... baybee!"
Her hands went up behind her back and the bra fell off one shoulder as she squeezed a small male breast with her fingers-showing them a tiny nipple surrounded by a brown aureole.
"Jayne Mansfield!" hollered a panhandler.
On the floor behind Frenchy, Holy Moses-a Pershing Square character with Christ-like hair hanging to his elbows-sat sucking on his big toe.
"Jesus was a Beatnik," he said. Then he lay down with his fly open and fingered himself. "Cool and Crazy for Christ!" he shouted.
"Somebody give me a prostate massage," said a small man who looked like Edward G. Robinson. "I can't take any more of this."
"Bring your rags in here!" the deputy barked.
The men got up slowly and went into a caged area where the civilian clothing was kept.
"Leave your shoes and everything else on the benches," the trusty with the goatee told them. "If you got money on ya, keep it in your mouth while you shower."
"I've been in this joint a dozen times," said a man with a nose like W.C. Fields', "but I've never seen 'em book transvestites with the rest of us guys."
"Guysssss..." said a gangster with a half dozen s's hissing through his teeth. "Guysssssst"
"That's one of Mickey Cohen's men."
"Shh-eee-it!"
"I'm tellin' ya..."
"Ah say, shh-eee-it!"
"Six thousand dollars and/or twenty years," said the jazzcat. "Look out, fella. That's a real tough gangster. He's done stole twenty-five cents worth of valuable merchandise."
"Oh, Christ," said the man who looked like Edward G. Robinson. "Somebody: give me a prostate massage!"
"Yeah ... with my fresh red tongue."
"I was once buggered with a banana," said Bicycle Sniffer.
"Pray tell, dear Schizoid!"
"Lie down, you bitch!" someone shouted in the bird cage across the room. "Spread yo' legs!"
"I will not!" French cried indignantly, stamping her foot.
"Frenchy's gonna get fucked," whispered the jazzcat "Look!"
Odin looked over his shoulder and saw her standing naked in her high-heeled shoes under the downglare of a light bulb. On a bench beside her lay the skirt with beads and sequins and a foam rubber panty girdle from Frederick's of Hollywood-padded in the hips and buttocks.
"Hip falsies!" Kaintucky spat disgustedly. "Ah thought they was her'n!"
A man in blue work shirt, his arms tattooed with red hearts pierced by arrows, swung Frenchy around and now they saw a beautiful white ass with dark hairs growing wild in the furrow. She screamed and drummed her heels, but the big man straightened her out on the bench, her arms bent and raised over her head so they could see the black hairs of her armpits.
"Sieg heill" The Hipster jumped up on a bench and saluted: Hitler-mustached, a black comb under his nose.
"Shee-it. The only place Adolf had Aryan hairs was in his ass-hole," said the jazzcat.
"Teutonic," corrected a man called Putzi.
"Teutonic ... Nordic!" said the jazzcat. "Wa'nt none of 'em blonde. Himmler, Goebbels..."
"What about Goring?"
"Goring!" The jazzcat spat on the floor. "That fat pig."
"Nordic's like this one-" a choirboy named Murphy jerked a thumb towards Odin "-tall, blonde and blue-eyed. Hitler wasn't no Nordic."
"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeh!" shrieked Frenchy.
"That's whatcha call the Penguin 'Trial-'n'error' method," said Kaintucky. "Them crazy Penguins can't tell each other's sex without ... " Nobody listened to him.
In the bird cage across the room Frenchy and the man struggled furiously with each other-the man holding her down on the bench as he battered his big dry rod against her only entrance.
"That cat's got a steel plate in his skull," muttered Choirboy Murphy.
"Fuck-im!"
The big man had Frenchy bent over double now, the soft warm globes of her buttocks presenting a brown mark, a bull's-eye to his cannon.
"Plug 'er up!" haw-hawed Kaintucky. "Plug up the bitch!"
The big man suddenly shoved Frenchy flat on her stomach against the bench and held her down with the weight of his body. She squealed and thrashed beneath him like a wild little animal as he pushed across her and entered the brown-centered cleft of flesh, seeking shelter in the secret sweetness between her slim white thighs. "Aw-w-w-w!" she screamed. He grasped her around the hips and made her take every inch of him, widening the hole thrust by thrust and stretching the lower end of her alimentary canal until the wrinkle reamed out and nothing was left between them except the black hairs interwoven on either side.
"Ride 'er cowboy!"
The big man took hold of Frenchy's genitals with one hand, jerking them sideways like the bridle of a horse. She whinnied and tried to stand on her hind legs with him in the saddle, but he jerked the reins and turned her in the other direction. The mare was broken-he galloped the long way home.
"Like a cow," said Choirboy Murphy. "Look at the way she's usin' them muscles ... Milkiri him!"
"Frenchy once did it with a Doberman pinscher at a man-root, she lay on her stomach biting the panty girdle, her big sphincter muscle gripping his sex and squeezing it, pumping and sucking it, as though eating spaghetti.
"Frenchy once did it with a Doberman pinscher at a Christmas party," observed Choirboy Murphy. "That dog had a big knot in the middle of his prick. Once he got it in, he couldn't get it out again, as long as he had a hard on."
"What happened?" asked Putzi.
"You won't believe this," said Kaintucky. "But it's true ... ever' word of it."
"What didn't happen?" sighed Chairboy Murphy. "Christ. The dog was on top of Frenchy and Frenchy was down there kneeling on her elbows and knees like a bitch in heat. Suddenly she changed her mind-that's a lady's prerogative-and tried to get up again (I guess she was afraid it would ruin the shape of her ass-hole) but that damn dog was already in there and the knot in its prick kept it from pullin' out. Him and Frenchy was locked together!"
"They really was," said Kaintucky. "Hit's true. Ever' word of it."
"I once tried a masturbating machine in a men's room," said Putzi. "You put in a quarter and your prick."
"How'd it feel?"
"Real crazy. like putting it into a pound of fresh meat or maybe an orange with cold cream in it"
"Ah had mah honeymoon in my raht hand," said Okie.
"Americaningenuity," mused Bicycle Sniffer. "Where will it all end?"
"Oh, well," said Choirboy Murphy. "What the hell. Anyway, there she was-runnin' around the house naked with a Doberman pinscher locked in her ass-hole and Kon-Tiki, the Hawaiian stud with a dick like a pineapple, running after her, trying to grab the dog's tail and pull it loose..."
"When I was a kid I had a German shepherd that used to eat dishrags," Kaintucky said suddenly, and they all looked at him. "Couldn't digest the damn things but they went right on through his guts and hung out behind after he was finished squatting."
"What'd you do, Kaintucky?"
"Wee-ll; there wasn't much I could do except run after him and try to pull it out. Chased that damn dog all over the yard..."
"SHOWERS!" the deputy hollered. "You wanna go inna Hole?"
"Naw, suh," they agreed in chorus. "Not dat!"
They moved down a short hallway between the showers and the clothing room. The man who looked like Edward G. Robinson looked back over his shoulder.
"What's Frenchy gonna do?" he said. "Stay on that bench all night?"
"Why? ... you jealous?"
"They're all going to fuck her while we're in the showers!" shouted a football player.
"Yeah!" screamed another. "We're the only buncha guys that don't get no pussy to-night!"
"Lookit them two-hundred pound cocksuckers," JCain-tucky said disgustedly. "They're more girls than Frenchy." He pointed at a yellow furrow between the buttocks of a football player who bent down to scatch his athlete's foot.
"See how his ass-hole opens up when he bends down," he said. "See? It's got a ring of flesh around it ... Lips! Christ, it's not even round! It looks like a slit ... a Pussy!"
The football player straightened up quickly and turned away from them, clenching his sphincter ani to hide it
"Oh, yeah?" He punctured the air with a finger. "Up yours, Oakie!"
"Ah ain't Okie. I'se Kaintucky!"
Behind them, Bicycle Sniffer was wallowing his face against a long wooden bench-still hot with body heat and the watery imprint of a pair of buttocks.
"Ain't you ashamed?" admonished Okie. "Ain't you ass-hamed!"
Bicycle Sniffer looked up with a toothless grin.
"No," he said. "I ain't."
Then he went back to wallowing his face against the bench-his hips writhing in an orgasm of lust as he held himself like a schoolboy and made muffled animal sounds against the brown wood.
"Bicycle is impossible," said Kaintucky. "He eats paper and razor blades-any damn thing he can get his hands on."
"He even shits in his food," said Okie. "And eats it!"
"And asks folks to piss in his milk."
"He's worse'n a catlicker."
"I knew him when he thought long streams of shit was comin' outta his pecker like toothpaste," said Putzi.
"That's why women prefer family-size tubes of Colgate," one of the others interjected. "It's like squeezin' a six-inch dick."
"The reason I drink so much," said the man who looked like Edward G. Robinson, "is because I have a bad case of amnesia and I'm trying to forget it."
"What you in fer this time, Kaintucky?"
"Highway mopery-wif intent to gobble."
"Oh, God!" said the man who looked like Edward G. Robinson. "Give me a prostate massage!"
"God is Love," boomed Kaintucky. "He ain't got no time for ass-hole-diddling!"
"Mmrommmmmmmm, Christ!" Putzi jerked off into a catatonic trance. "Mah little Jesus! Sweet Savior! Ah sees the Dildo and de Blood of de Lamb!"
Kaintucky: "Walk slow an' drink plenty of cold water."
Turd-Bug: "Give that sonofabitch some phenobarbital."
Okie (smacking his lips): "You mean, paraldehyde!"
"Hey, Man," said Holy Moses. "Drop a G for Jesus!"
"GET INNA FUCKIN' SHOWERS...! "
They moved in single file past a foot-bath for scabies and athlete's foot and entered the showers where a half dozen football players were having a sexual smorgasbordeach man trying everything once, then coming back for more.
"When I get out of this joint," a collegiate said over the sex-noises. "Man! I'm gonna suck my way to China!"
"Wooo! Woooo!" In the last stall against the wall, Bicycle Sniffer was struggling with a bindle-stiff, trying to get him to turn his ass around, while singing, "The Midnight Special:"
Eef you ever go to Dallas You better walk right You better not gamble An' you better not fight!
Then: the football players in high falsetto...
"Yass! yuh gotta go in-de doh, boy! Yass, yuh gotta go in de doh! ... DE BACK DOH!"-To the tune of "A Woman is a Sometime Thing!"
"Me-me-me-me-meme!" sang a Jap called Fu Manchu.
Bicycle Sniffer looked out the corner of his eyes, his big nose pointed at the ceiling-like Jimmy Durante's.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
"Sing it, Jo'nny one-note!"
In chorus: "Oh, Johnny, oh, Johnny, how you can ... FUCK!"
The six-foot two-hundred pound "red-blooded American" ass-holes danced in a daisy-chain under the showers. Along the wall a second line of masculine-looking, all-American "Tall, dark and handsomes" were having intrafe-moral intercourse with one another (chain-reaction style): the thighs of one man pressed tightly around the errect penis of the man shoving against him from behind-and grinding it, like cigarette butts.
"The only guy in that line that has to beat his own meat is the one in front," sniggered Putzi.
Kaintucky spat. "They're all girls."
"That's whatcha call a snake dance," said Okie. "After the football game the college creeps put their hands on the hips of the guys ahead of them and dance around in a line twenty queers long..."
"Like the fuckin' Rockettes!" sniffed Choirboy Murphy.
"Rub-a-dub-dub!" Bicycle Sniffer pressed his face against a Negro's armpit and took a deep, sex-moaning breath-as though smelling peach blossoms in a gas chamber.
"Satinhead, suh-sweetie!" he cooed in the sick accents of a Southern white girl. Then, looking around, he grinned at everybody with an expression of complete idiocy.
"Yoo-hoo!"
"Anybody here seen mah Swedish Pussy? Pee you double ss wy!"
In a corner at the back of the shower a Mexican had tied a towel around his hips like a diaper. He undulated his hips languorously and shuffled sideways in the merengue, shoving a thumb in and out of his mouth.
"Man!" said the jazzcat. "OF Siggie Freud woulda full-ipped if he'dda seen these guys..."
"Hel-lo." A Negro looked up at Odin from what he had been eying with interest between Odin's legs. "Let's ball," he said.
"Shag, man!" hissed the jazzcat.
The Negro grinned a brown, turd-eating grin and ducked his head. Then he leaned one hand against the stall and piddled on the floor-his warm urine splashing up around their ankles. He avoided Odin's pale gaze.
"Cool it," the jazzcat said. He caught Odin by the shoulder and tried to stop him-but Odin flung the hand off with a motion of his arm and knocked the Negro flat on his ass against the drainpipe.
"Yoo-hoo!"
"All these Muslim niggers grin like a toothless ass-hole," said the jazzcat. "Real shitty. They think they're su-periorl" Odin looked at him in surprise. "Superior?" he said.
"Yeah," said Putzi. "They're worse'n the Nazis. 'Specially them X turds. They think they're..."
"Nation of Islam! Allah an' His prophet!-All that crap!" The spade jazzcat spat on the Muslim. "You know what that crazy Father Divine does with dead bodies?"
"Bury 'em," said Odin.
The jazzcat gave him a pained, astonished look. Then he avoided Odin's eyes. They were too cold and blue for comfort.
"Man," he said. "Don't look at me when you talk. Can't nobody look you in the eye for more'n two seconds at the time."
"Father Divine wa'nt no Muslim," said Kaintucky. "Mebbe not," agreed Okie. "But he's one o' them crazies."
"Yoo-hoo!"
"For Christ's sake," said the man who looked like Edward G. Robinson. "Gimme a prostate massage."
Christ don't give a fuck about no finger-job," said Kaintucky. "He's got enough troubles with them holes in His hands."
A castrated Cuban with a bush of thick black hairs covering the slit in his groin, handed Odin a lump of yellow jail soap.
"Forty-fo," ninety-nine, one hundred percent Pure," he said. "It stinks!"
Odin smiled and rubbed the soap under his armpits. A small amount of yellow scum came off in his hairs.
"Does it float?" said Okie.
"Ma-a-n. like a rock!"
"La la la la la," sang Bicycle Sniffer. like most of the bums his hands and his face and neck were suntanned and filthy. The rest of his body was milk white.
"I have made a study of the American male behind," said a six-foot football player, "but I have never seen one so pretty as the ass in Michelangelo's Creation of Man."
"GOD created Man," said Sniffer. "Frenchy made 'em!"
"Yeah," the football player continued dreamily. "I always got a hard-on lookin' at that picture. And I had another one of that statue of the nude slave-boy scratching himself. Man-O-man, I'd take out that picture ten times a day and jerk off."
"Jerk off while lookin' at a statue!" sniffed Bicycle. "I use a male physical culture magazine!"
"Class..."
"Hoity-toity!"
"That Sniffer has claaasss."
"Ass..."
The football player stood with both hands on his cock. "Ever see that statue of Bacchus?" he asked. "Man, I get an erection just thinkin' about it."
"Yoo-hoo!"
The bathroom itself was like Dante's Inferno-a melee of hotdogs and pubic hair.
"Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate," lisped a collegian as he squeezed through the thirty odd bodies packed together around the showers. "Entree!" he called in a lilting falsetto. Then he elbowed his way between the naked men in the middle and stood under the nozzle, letting the water spray across his body until it smoked with steam.
"You crazy fuck, you!" Kaintucky yelled at Bicycle Sniffer. 'Take yo' hands off man pecker an' git that finger outta myass-hole!"
Bicycle grinned and walked backwards, sniffing his finger.
"La la la la la la la la!"
"Go take a shit, ya old goat!"
"Don't tell him that!" cried Okie. "He'll do it right here on the flo'! Bicycle's a high-class BM eater."
"No," said Kaintucky. "He-likes Green Giant corn. Him and me was in Tank 12-C-2 last Christmas-an' he knows I can't digest no corn..."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Well, I can't digest no corn. Hit goes right through me, right through mah body. But ever' time I turns around to flush that goddamn toilet, here's Sniffer diggin' in mah business and eatin' it! Eatin' that gawdamn shitty corn!"
"Oh, Sniffer!" moaned Okie. "Whatevah can we dew wif yew?"
Bicycle Sniffer grinned idiotically and squatted buttocks in a corner.
"La la la la la la."
"Yoo-hoo!"
Odin looked through the exit A six-foot deputy stood in front of a mirror, squeezing blackheads from the wings of his perspiring nose. Behind him, in the bird cage, a convict took hold of Frenchy's left leg and raised it. Then he rubbed the inside of a banana skin between her buttocks, in lieu of Vaseline.
"Did'ja ever see the notebook sketch by Leonardo da Vinci where he's got a man and woman cut in half from head to crotch and the guy's dick is inside her pussy?"
Odin didn't look at the football player, but he shook his head. On the bench in the bird cage three men plunged to the depths of Frenchy's bottom, turn and turn about, each satisfying his lust in a hundred and forty-five pounds of crazy "flesh.
"Aristotle-all those guys were queers," said the jazzcat. "Plato, Julius Caesar, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde..."
"What about-" the football player named two dozen famous politicans, athletes, TV and motion picture stars.
"QUEERS!" screamed Kaintucky. "Ever' one o' them!"
"I once saw a fag jump out of a twelfth floor window back in New York," said Putzi. "He was the personnel manager of one of those 'blue-chip' companies. Somebody walked in and caught him with his prick in a male applicant."
"Bent over a desk..."
His head cracked open like a watermelon on the sidewalk-the police carried the fruit away in a gunny sackgarbage men flushed the pavement with a sprinkler truck-the fruit's hair, his brain-the blood-everything washed down the sewer.
"Including his University degree in Personnel Management," said Putzi.
"Cowabunga!" exclaimed a college graduate called "Pig-meant."
"Cow-a.-bunga!" He had a vocabulary of twenty words, eighteen of which were "Cowabunga." The other two were "Oi-weh!" and "Motherfucker."
"Still creaming yo' ass-hole 'bout that Princess Summer-fall-Winterspring on the How-dee-do-dee Show, eh?" said Okie.
"Cowabunga!" cried Pigmeat. "Yoo-hoo!"
Kaintucky craned his neck into the air and looked around.
"Who's that crazy fuck yellin' Yoo-hoo alia time?" he said.
Odin closed his eyes and stepped under the shower.
Putzi, Kaintucky, the jazzcat and Okie linked hands, forming a protective circle around him.
"Take you time, Masta," sneered the Muslim. "Ain't nobody's goin' to interfeah with you lily-white pee hole."
The jazzcat looked back over his shoulder.
"Shut your mammy-suckin' mouth!" he said.
The Muslim bowed and grinned like a TV musician.
"Yas suh, Uncle Tom! Yas, suh!"
"Yoo-hoo!"
The spade jazzcat made a round circle with his lips like an ass-hole and blew a long, yellowish, filthy spurt of phlegm into the Muslim's face.
"Frottage!" he said. "That's what you're in for. Frot-tage!"
"What the hell is frottage?" asked Kaintucky.
"Rubbin' your dick against other people's behind," said the jazzcat. "Muhammad here don't smoke or drink. But he sure-likes to get on a crowded bus and press against the white devil's ass!"
"GOD IS BLACK!" shouted the Muslim. "The NATION of ISLAM-"
"Islam's all right," said Odin.
Their heads swung towards him as though they were watching a tennis match. The jazzcat did a double take and stared at him with open astonishment.
"Islam's all right," said Odin, "and the world is good ... It's the people in it that makes it rotten."
"That's right!" said Kaintucky. "Without people-this wort' wouldn't have no trouble at all."
Odin closed his eyes and let the water splash over his face. It was the same dream again-a beautiful young girl dressed in a white gown walked along the beach, far, far away. Sack-like, the gown fell in a straight line from her small breasts to her hips, then tightened upon her crotch and wound translucently about her legs, the wind ballooning it out behind. Her face was tilted up and her eyes fixed on the horizon. She walked lightly, stepping across the sand dunes with a soft, measured grace, her long legs and small feet very sure and purposeful in their movements. She did not notice Odin as he stood in a morass of black swamp water, knee-deep and struggling, his throat caught in a greenish tangle of leper vines.
"Yoo-hoo!"
"There's that crazy fuck again!" said Kaintucky.
Kaintucky wiped his hands on his flanks, then cupped them around his mouth, forming a megaphone.
"You yell 'Yoo-hoo' once more you goddamn son-of-a-bitch ... and I'll knock your head off!"
"Yoo-hoo!"
"Ah wanna 'old your 'and!"-Beatles.
"It's one o' them college boys," said Okie. "Wouldn't nobody else act like that!"
"Yair," Kaintucky agreed contemptuously. "Most of 'em need a Playtex girdle around their chests to get that flat look!"
"The only place these guys have ever been good-lookin' is in their own minds," said Putzi.
"You said it. Why, this country is just crazy about its six-footers! What it doesn't know is that most of them has a tampon up his ass and a waterproof withdrawal string hanging between his legs."
"Like a tail!"
"-yeah, and I've seen how they put 'em in, too. They got a cardboard tube that looks like a telescope-with a plunger in it. The naked guy puts his foot up on a stool or squats down, spreadin' his cheeks. Then he screws the cotton end of the 'telescope' into himself and shoves the plunger. When the cotton is up there and the telescope's closed, he pulls out the empty tubes and lets 'em flush down the shitter!"
"How does he get the cotton out?" asked Putzi.
"You damn fool! He's got the withdrawal string!"
"Oh."
"Yoo-hoo!"
"A woman's menstrual flow only comes to about half a cupful," said Okie. "A few teaspoons.-I've measured it!" Proudly.
"Well, them guys would need Super absorbency."
"The jazzcat nodded. "Yeah, man. Two tampons up their ass!"
"How big is a tampon?"
"Like the joints of your little finger," said Kaintucky, his pinkie up in the air.
"That ain't very big," said Putzi.
"Well-" Kaintucky looked around at the others. "-I figger you and me's got a one-inch ass-hole. But college graduates's got two and a quarter!"
They nodded their heads in approval, all except Odin that is, who was washing his hair.
"Yeah," said Putzi. "Ignorance is the momma of prejudice."
"You said it," said Kaintucky.
Okie looked down at the Muslim.
"Hit's a sad burden to carry a black man's child."
"Yoo-hoo!"
The white girl sobbing to the stud in the hotel corridor: It doesn't matter anymore! I'm lost; we're both lost! We were lost the moment we took up with each other!
"Yoo-hoo!"
The long black stud running water into a sink and pissing in it. Then-in front of a bed-rolling a yellow condom onto his erect organ, allowing a half-inch pouch to remain at the tip. And later-much later-the brown finger turning the rubber inside out, cleaning it-under the cold water.
"Yoo-hoo!"
"Shit can only be defended by shit!" sneered the Muslim. "She-it!" said Okie.
"A round peck in a pussy-hole!" boomed Kaintucky. "If it was meant for the ass, it would be shaped like a thermometer!"
"I went to college," said the jazzcat. "Every Saturday night they put on a show in the dormitory. One guy could pick a cigarette off the edge of a table and smoke it with muscles in his ass..."
The cold wind on a deserted beach. Loneliness. Odin opened his eyes. "If I put a chalkmark on the Empire State Building every time you say ass-hole, we would have a snow-white building."
"Sorry, dad."
"Yoo-hoo!"
An old man with an erection and a bubo the size of a duck's egg lurched through the mass of naked bodies. He grabbed Odin's arm. "Where in hell have you been?" he gasped.
Odin looked at him. "I don't know," he said. "What part of hell you been in?"
The old man scratched his head to make his brains work. He was confused. "You's Jesus, ain't You? Ain't You Jesus? Sweet Savior! I been lookin' for You all my life!"
"That's London Fog," said Okie. "He's se-nile."
"A sex fiend."
"Yeah," said Kaintucky. "He runs around in tennis shoes and a overcoat, exposin' his old gray-haired prick to school girls."
"Yair!"
"He's got that tnornin' erection twenty-four hours a day because his ass is fulla shit and hot air."
"Yair!"
"London Foggy, you're naughty!" A eunuch shook a tiny fist at the naked old man and berated him in a shrill, thin voice ... like a child's. "Naughty, naughty, Foggy! We'll have to punish you for this. Somebody give me a brush handle!"
"Yair!"
Odin looked with amusement at this shruken little creature who stood beside him, expecting to be given a brush handle. The tip of a peanut-like penis was visible between the eunuch's heavy female thighs. There was not a hair on his body.
"Yoo-hoo!"
"What you laffin' at, you damn Okie?" asked the eunuch.
"I ain't no Okie," said Okie. "Ah jes' been sick a few days-that's why I look like this."
Spinal Tap, a metatrope with a girl's head on a man's body, came over and grabbed London and the eunuch by the back of their necks.
"Back to work!" he shouted. Then he shook them until their heads wobbled on their shoulders and their false teeth rattled.
"Sorry about this in-trusion, gentlemen," he said in a deep, male voice. His young girl's face dimpled as he smiled at Odin. "Ta-ta." He marched Foggy and the eunuch back to their corner-a circle of venereal warts dancing ring-around-a-rosie about his anus as he walked.
"Spinal Tap," mused Kaintucky. "Now, there's a real weirdo! You wouldn't believe what he makes those creeps do here and out in the Free world!"
"Well, he couldn't be worse'n Bicycle Sniffer."
"Nobody's worse'n Bicycle Sniffer!"
"Spinal Tap is," said Kaintucky. "He's worse'n anybody!"
"Cause he's mean."
"Yeah, cause he's mean," said Kentcky. "And loony. He's as loony as they come. Dangerous! That kind of creep should be locked up. Tain't right he should be around decent, sex-abidin' folks like us!"
"Hee hee hee hee."
"You know what it's like to be loony?" said the jazzcat. "A schizo?-It's like havin' a glass wall between you and the rest of the cats-"
"The only thing that can get close to that boy is a bullet," said Kaintucky.
"-like standin' on a stage full of actors, in front of an audience ... forgettin' what to say, what to dot"
"All the world's a stage. We're just fuckups on it," said Kaintucky. Then: "Give that man some phenobarb'. "
"You mean paraldehyde," said Okie.
"No, I don't mean paraldehyde, you damn wino."
"Who's a wino?"
"You are! You got KarsakofFs syndrome in your brains and Wernicke's disease Tiind your eye-balls!"
"Wernicke's disease is in the legs, you idiot!"
"Blind staggers!" roared Kaintucky. "Give this hillbilly a cupa phenobarb'! "
"Who you callin' a 'Hillbilly'? " Okie jumped back and his left hand shadow-boxed in the air as his right thumb brushed his nostril. "FIGHT, you coward!"
Kaintucky took one giant step forward and knocked him flat on the floor.
"Mohammed, Schiller, Paganini, Mozart-all those cats were epileptics," said the jazzcat. "And Bacon's mamma was a loony."
"So was mine," said Putzi. "That just goes to show genius can come outta any crazy old bitch."
"Genius-Insanity ... There's a thin line between 'em!"
"If Jesus's prick had been a foot longer or shorter," said the football player, "all history woulda been changed!"
The jazzcat: "That's another one of them craziesPascal!"
"Look for God with binoculars," said Kaintucky, "or try to find your own fruit mind with a miscroscope ... You can't do it!"
"La la la la la la la!"
The man with prostate trouble stood with his penis between his fingers, waiting for his urine to rise. Finally a thin jet of water splashed against the pipes and ran down the wall, leaving a trail of beery droplets on the floor.
"Did you ever try to piss on a cold sidewalk in New York?" the football player asked Putzi.
"You mean, in the winter?"
"Yeah. When the snow is yellow with dog piddles. Man, that heat comes right up at'cha like steam from a hotdog wagon..."
"Yoo-hoo!"
"Ever see a prostate?" said the man who looked like Edward G. Robinson. "Looks like a chestnut with a hole through it."
"What's the hole for?"
"I don't know. What's any hole for?"
"You lyin' sonuvabitch," said Okie. "It looks like a crabapple!"
"No it don't," snapped Kaintucky. "Crab apples are used by fruits who want apple cheeks."
"How?"
"They stuff 'em up their ass-holes."
"Hee hee hee hee."
The man with prostate trouble shook his penis regretfully.
"Good to the last drop," he said. Then: "I got to go every five minutes. But when I get to a toilet, I can't do nothing!"
"Won't run, eh?"
"Hell, no. And the bladder won't even empty. Sometimes I wish I was one of those little old society ladies with lax muscles in their pee-holes. They can't sit down without dribbling warm piss between their legs!"
"Granny Jazzcat was like that. She wo' a Kotex an' a sanitary belt tell she was 96."
"Your grandmother was menstruating at 96?"
"She-it." The spade jazzcat looked at Putzi with disgust. "She peed in her drawers and the napkin soaked it up. But that ol' lady wouldn't use no rag or sponge. No sir, it had to be a Kotex!"
"Why? She own stock in Kimberly-Clark?"
"Listen," said the man who looked like Edward G. Robinson. "If my mother had been a lesbian employment manager, she wouldn't have met my father and he wouldn't have fucked her and then they wouldn't have had no children. He woulda married somebody else and she would be sucking pussy in the personnel office-"
"And you wouldn't have no prostate trouble."
"Exactly! She got the dirty end of the prick. It's all a matter of luck. Accident. Everything happens by chance. Dick meets Pussy. If she'd stayed home that night she wouldn't've met him, he'd be up somebody else's stairs, and she would be in bed, balling some other guy!"
" 'The best laid scheme o' mice and men,'" said Okie. "Gang aft a-gley. There ain't no plan to nothin' in life. Life's a tale told by a' idjit, full of sound and fury, signifyin' nothin'. An' outta nothin' comes nothin'. That's life. Nebbish!"
"Life's a cock full a shit," agreed Kaintucky, "ever'thing shows it. Ah thought so once and now Ah knows it!"
"College graduates," said Putzi, "quotin' Shakespeare and Gay!"
"Sure," said Kaintucky. "Why not? Can't a Queen be a Phi Beta Kappa."
"Most of 'em are!"
"Yes, sir." Okie pulled himself up and sat with his skinny legs crossed, tailor fashion, on the floor. "Real education starts after we graduate." He examined a soft venereal chancre on the tip of his penis, the base of which was filled with pus. "You think I'm a high school drop-out? You're wrong. I got my degree at Harvard."
"Ha!" Putzi looked around triumphantly at the others, then down at Okie again. "If you went to Harvard, maybe you can tell us who was the first president of that glorious institution?"
"Henry Dunster," said Okie, without batting an eye. "1640."
"Huh?" Putzi's jaw fell open.
"The best lookin' prick I ever saw was on a statue of Hercules," said the football player. "And another prick that makes my mouth water is on the Praying Youth by Boethus."
"Bes, lookin' pussy I evah saw," said Bicycle Sniffer, "was in a sun-bathin' magazine."
"Rodin could put a real shaved cunt on a statue," said the jazzcat. "Not just one of those cracks or rosebushes you see in the nudist mags."
"What about that Titian picture with a naked broad lyin' on her side?" said Putzi.
"Venus Of The Violets? She's got her hand over her pussy!"
"No, I mean the one with the lute player."
"A big blonde-nekkid except for earrings and a bracelet?"
"Yeah, that's the one!"
"Shit," said the football player. "Who gives a fuck about some broad? I get wet dreams thinkin' about that Friendship statue by Haig Patician. It's got two nude guys standing back to back, holdin' hands..."
"La la la la la la la la."
A six-foot queen with flat hips and That Thing hanging between her legs, looked Odin up and down.
"Bee-yoo-tiful!" she lisped, pronouncing the "y." She went down on her knees and reached for his balls. The jazzcat tried to stop her, but she cupped them in her hands and kissed the prepuce before Odin kicked her in the face. "O!"
"Kick 'er again, man."
"O! I love youuuu! O!"
The queen was lying face down in front of him, her stomach flat on the floor and her hips grinding as she licked his feet, giving him a bath between the toes with her tongue.
"Kick 'er again!" laughed Kaintucky. "She loves it!" Putzi placed a foot on top of the queen's head. "Robinson Crusoe!" he shouted. "An' there's yer gal Friday!"
Odin cursed and jerked his feet away, rinsing them one after the other under the shower. "C'mon, le's go." They walked out of Dante's Inferno in single file, but the queen crawled in Odin's footsteps on her belly"Lak a snake," said Kaintucky.
"Yessuh," said Okie. "Nothin' lak gettin' sprayed fur crab lice 'n' scabies. Crabs the worst. Hairy little sons of bitches's got big pincers on their hind legs."
"Scabies worse," said Kaintucky. "They dig right under the skin and lay eggs there. Then they die and the babies started to dig out again. That's how you get the itch."
"That's the Seven Year Itch?" asked Putzi. "I've seen Marilyn Monroe in it, but I didn't know she had crabs."
"Ever'body's got crabs. Even Charles de Gaulle."
"Yeah. That's the only guy I've ever seen with two pricks," said Putzi. "One between his legs and another one just like it in the middle of his face."
"Hee hee hee hee."
Odin held his arms over his head and a trusty sprayed him under the armpits. Then he was sprayed in the pubic hairs and a deputy told him to bend over and spread his cheeks, for contraband inspection.
"I knew a guy who had a hack saw in there," said Okie.
Putzi: "I thought they came in birthday cakes!"
Kaintucky: "Shit, ever'body's got a little brown ass-hole. Even the Queen of England."
"No?! I thought they sewed 'em up on Royalty!"
"Hee hee hee hee."
"Royal puddin'. "
"Pu-Pu, Pi-Du."
"Next!"
"You know," said Putzi as they tried on the blue L.A. Jail work shirts and dungaries, "the only difference between the Army and a County Jail is that in the jail you have a little more freedom."
"This shirt fits me," said Okie. "Does that mean I'm a deformed freak or somethin'? "
"Look." The football player held out the back of a gigantic pair of jailhouse trousers. "I got room for a pal in here!"
"Don't mind eef I do!" Bicycle Sniffer stuck his head into the opening and took a deep breath. "Black as a elephant's ass-hole down there. Man, that's enough to make a body's head spin!"
"Grab a hole, ya old ostrich!"
"You plucked chicken, you!"
Putzi looked disgusted. He was the kind of man that if his picture was placed in a rogue's gallery it would be picked for a pervert every time.
"You know," he said to Odin as they laced their shoes. "I'm a movie director. I met my wife through a telephone number on a toilet wall. Plaza 6-0000, in New York. She's terrific. A big sexy brunette with class. Her cheek bones stick out too far and her eyes're too big, her tits too small, her legs too long. But she's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. On our honeymoon she used to rush down to the Ranch Market at five o'clock in the morning to buy protein-loaded foods and No-Doze pills to keep me awake. She's a nymphomaniac. Wild! She-likes Dateburgers with chili sauce and apricot milk shakes. Sometimes I'd find her and her girl friends injecting vodka into my oranges with a surgical syringe. Screwdrivers in the rough, they call it. What they do is cut a hole in the middle and suck it like a pussy. My wife's a lesbian. I came home early one afternoon three weeks after we were married and found her in bed with a nineteen-year-old girl. The blood went out of my stomach and I got that old down-rushing elevator feeling. I'll never forget it. Here's my wife flat on her back with her ass on a pillow and this apple-cheeked college girl is lying on her belly with her head between my wife's legs, looking directly up into her pussy. Then-when she's kissing my wife on the inside of her thighs-she sees me standing framed in the door and says: "Whoor you?" I felt like Alex-in-Wonderland! My wife turns her head and stares back at me, over her shoulder. She looks like a wild Indian. Hating me. I can feel it. Right from her eyeballs. She's the oldest in that family. Her mother had three children-one of each sex. A boy, a girl, and her! I don't know what to do. Suddenly they start giggling. This long brown college girl pulls herself up and starts kissing my wife's breasts. I'm going crazy, but what can I do? My wife-likes it, they start rubbing pussies..."
"Um." Odin sat like a statue, looking straight ahead. Nobody could tell whether he was listening. Putzi continued:
"Complete lesbianism would do away with a lot of bad things in this world. We wouldn't have a juvenile delinquency problem, there'd be no population explosion-no butches or femmes like my wife. Nobody! It's better'n birth control. When I came out to Hollywood a lot of other directors said 'If you don't like it here in this country, why don't you go back to where you're from, you sonofabitch,' but I've always thought it would be hard for a man to make his way back to his mother's womb. I don't like the way they make films in this country. The real gangsters are the BIG businessmen, and the closest they have been to a real gun is the one on a traffic policeman. And what about the West and the BIG, virile oudaws? Most of them were young punks with pimples and pinched orgasms. Delinquents! Cowards! Unbalanced by sex-poisons running wild in their bodies and by the crazy notions of puberty. Four gals-one buck-may we suggest Ethyl? I made one picture where the outlaws used trailer-trucks and sold cows to a cattle 'fence' who was a crooked butcher. The rustlers just did it for kicks. Instead of a noose they got a maximum sentence of ten years, but do you think the public would take it? No! They want the old stereotyped Western where the hero rides into town, ties up his horse, enters a saloon and orders a sarsaparilla. I can't understand the American public. Are you tough because you carry a gun and speak out of the side of your mouth? Is a man a fle-man because he's six feet tall! Why are all Jewish women 'Jewesses' when there are no Germanesses? no Italianesses? What's all this talk about the BIG nigger when statistics show that the average Negro is smaller than the average white man! There's no freedom in this country. If a man comes on television and gives a speech for religion, then another man should have the right to give a speech against religion. But the networks won't let him. There's no freedom from religion..."
Odin said nothing. He stared across the room at a window-a blank wall, at whatever it was he was watching.
Putzi continued:
"The only thing I like to watch on television is Reggie Van Gleason and the Poor Soul. They can show everything else upside down for all I care. The American TV audience has a lemming instinct. In obedience to a blind instinctive impulse they commit mental suicide seven night a week. Millions of them! There is nothing that will stop them from making a straight line for that glassface. Nothing! They sit there and soak up the crap. They wallow in it. They swim towards some less complicated eternity. They drown in it. They float! Their brains are bloating. It's an escape from the 'good American life' which is corrupt at both ends. New York and California. The Statue of Liberty and Alcatraz. The twin holes of life and death, the front and the back. Corrupt! Filthy! Inhuman! The American politico hoists up his pin-striped trousers and sits down on a chair, crossing his legs like a woman. Then he throws twenty dollars on the bed and four naked Negroes put on a show. Sody pop inna icebox. They got to have something to eat! One hundred years ago, Senora Valdez sold the Rancho de Las Azuas for thirteen hundred dollars. Five hundred down and the rest in fifty payments. That's Beverly Hills: bought on the installment plan! Peter Minuit buys Manhattan for twenty-four dollars. Ulysses S. Grant drops his dentures in San Francisco and DuPont Street is renamed Grant Avenue. Pete Giannini, founder of the Bank of America, shoved two million dollars in cash through the streets of Frisco in a pusha-cart during the earthquake in 1906. That's our glorious history. Our heritage! Money! M-O-N-E-Y! Money! Wheeee! We're Crazy about it! Wild about it! I'm just wild about moneee! Ha Ha! And when we talk about Dos Passos and all those guys, we're talking about another time, another age! LIFE was just starting out then. A magazine was a magazine-not a CORPORATION! Editors were creative people willing to take a chance on a new writer. Not the fat 9 to 5ers like we've got today! They discovered new writers, they discovered new writers! They weren't afraid of losing a meal ticket: a paycheck! They were editors-building circulations on controversy. They weren't afraid of losing a Jew textile ad and they didn't give a damn about a German four-color beer advertiser who didn't like their new writer. And they didn't give a fuck about their Negro circulation. They were magazines-not catalogues of advertising!"
Odin buttoned up Ins shirt without looking at Putzi.
"He who can, does," he said. "He who can't, preaches."
"Yeah," said Okie. "And LIFE is a picture magazine!"
"That Putzi's crackin' up," said Kaintucky. "He's done more talkin' than I do in a year."
"Oh, year?"
"All right, you Fish!" A trusty came over with a tray load of factory-made baloney sandwiches. "Compliments of L.A. County Jail. Straight from the Hollywood Hilton."
He poured out a dozen tin cups of black coffee.
"Like old socks and flowerwater," said Okie.
"Take it or leave it."
"Wa-ll," said Okie. "You got to have some nourishment."
"Who you kiddin', old man. This is more'n you'd get in the Free world!"
"These skid-row bums are always complainin' about the food as soon as they get in here," a deputy said. "They never had it so good on the outside."
"I came here in a Cadillac," said Kaintucky. "Wiff a blonde on mah lap."
"Kim Novak, no doubt."
"Offisah ... Why don't you go straighten yo' penal seams?"
The deputy looked at the men who sat or squatted on the big wooden benches.
"Which one of you is Odin Wild?"
Odin didn't say anything, but everyone looked at him.
"You Wild?" asked the deputy.
"Um"
"Pull up you cuff!"
Odin raised his arm and shook it toward the ceiling as if a knife was dropping up his sleeve. The deputy took his wrist and attached a plastic bracelet with his name and offense written on it. "Don't loose that," the deputy said. "Keep it in good shape and see that it stays on..."
"Um." Odin looked at the bracelet.
Frenchy and the other drag queen were gone and now the jazzcat was led away to the "colored" tank.
"Ah shilly shally," he said to the deputies. Then to Odin: "See you, man."
"Until we meet..."
"At Jesus's feet, dad."
"I'll be there."
The football player stretched. "I'm soooosleepy!" He yawned. "He-y, look at that!"
Three husky sheriffs deputies came out of the elevator and dragged a struggling, tough-looking young man into the room.
"Get a load at that schnozzle!" whispered Kaintucky. "Looks like Caryl Chessman's son!"
The beaked, twisted nose-the protruding lips, the jaw, the heavy eyebrows-it was all Caryl's. Even the hair was the same.
"Here's a shy one," a deputy said to the Officer-in-Charge of the shower room. "We found him on the stairs. He don't want to take his pants off in front of all these big bad mans..."
"Oh, the poor little thing! Maybe we'd better help him-"
They struggled furiously to pull off the hoodlum's clothes but after a while the Officer-in-Charge of the bathroom gave it up.
"Take him to the Hole," he said. "They can make him do it."
"We can make him do it here," said one of the deputies and kicked the young man's legs out from under him. "We'll make him lick the inner son of a bitch, all right!"
The four deputies pounced upon their victim, three of them holding him down as the fourth seesawed a heavy, wooden clothes hanger across his throat until he lost consciousness.
"Wet towels and telephone books are much better," said the football player. "They use 'em upstairs. Don't leave no marks, and beats the shit out of a guy."
"The nut cracker's worse," said Okie. "They soak yo' balls in hot V cold water. Then tap 'em with a ruler."
"Cold weather makes your balls shrink up full of wrinkles," said Putzi. "Heat expands them and makes them hang down loose."
"Yeah," said Okie. "An' the left nut always hangs down more than the right..."
" 'Cause it's heavier," said Kaintucky.
"And bigger."
"Yeah. Same thing wif yo' pecker," said Okie. "In weather like this, it hangs down. But when it's cold, yo' pecker gets smaller. It contracts!"
"JESUS!" The deputies jumped up from the floor and backed away as if seeing the Resurrection. "It's a GIRL!"
"A cunt?"
"Pussy?"
"Lemme see!"
Kaintucky craned his neck to see the furry rat between the girl's legs, and the rest of the men stood on top of the benches, looking over each other's shoulders.
"A real pussy!"
"Get a load o' that slit!"
"She's got hair all the way up to her belly button."
"It's a Persian rug!"
"I'll bet she's even got hair between her tits."
"Look ... it's growin' down the inside of her legs'tween her thighs!"
"She's a fuckin' bull-dike."
"A butch."
"A Big Diesel!"
"A P-U-S-S-Y!" screamed a man named A.S.S. Taylor. "Puss, puss, puss, puss!" called Crazy-tit Burton. "Get 'er outta here!" screamed the Officer-in-Charge. One of the deputies threw his shirt over the bull-dike. "Out! Out! Out! Out! Out!"
The Officer-in-Charge jerked up the girl's legs. The other men took hold of her feet. Then-with the shirt hanging across her naked hips-they swung her back and forth, a-One, a-Two, a-Three. Hup! The body went sailing through the air and landed on top of a laundry cart.
"Out! Out! Out! Out! Out!"
The deputies and trusties fell all over themselves in the rush to get the laundry cart out of the receiving room and into the elevator.
"Can you beat that!" said Putzi in amazement and delight. "She even wore B.V.D.'s!"
"And a jock strap!"
"Yeah, man!"
"Aaaah," said Kaintucky. "Who'd wanna lay a butch."
"I would!"
"With a face like that?"
"Sure. Throw a Cuban flag over her head and screw for Old Glory!"
"She looked like Castro between her legs-a big beard and a mouth..."
"With a cigar in it!"
"Numero Uno!"
"I have always thought there was something infantile about smoking..."
"Yeah. You lose your teef and get cancer in yo' throat.-lak from sucking dick."
"But Listerine is good..."
"All right, you creeps!" The colored deputy swung his ass down the hall. "Follow me!"
"That deppity, he let's me sniff the farts in his pants. I loves that niggah bastid like crazy.-We such good friens!"
"Hey, Bicycle," said Putzi. "Quit walkin' with your prick in my ass, will you?"
They walked after the deputy in single file, up the stairs and into the hospital, though they did not go further than the outward rooms.
"Fo'teenth flo," said Kaintucky. "We're in a mother-fuckin' skyscraper!"
"Hit's the thirteenth," said Okie.
"Don't matter. It's still a skyscraper!"
"AMERICA, AMERICA..."
"Lan' o' the Free an' Home o' the Brave!"
"Meltin' Pot o' the Worl'! "
"I have but one cherry to loose for my country!"
The deputy shoved them into one long uneven line.
"Shake the stools outta your pants. Let's see them cocks!"
A tubercular young doctor with black hair sticking out of his nose and other holes came down the corridormincing along, carrying a stethoscope as though it was a tight-rolled umbrella and he was a gay young Ivy League executive walking along Madison Avenue in his green, ass-fitting suit
"That's Brother Brooks," said Okie. "He's the cock inspector."
"Yeah." Kaintucky spat on the floor. "It's just like the Army. They're more interested in that little peter between yo' legs than anything else. You can have KarsakofFs syndrome for all they keer!"
"Sssh!" said Putzi.
The doctor stopped in front of a row of Mexicans. "Pull back your foreskins!" he commanded crisply, as if he were holding clothespins in his mouth and chewing rubber at the same time.
"Watch this," whispered Kaintucky. "Wetbacks. Ever' one o' them's got Spanish collar!"
"Pull back-back!" The doctor used sign language in front of his fly.
"Hee hee hee hee."
"Yoo-hoo!"
The wetbacks looked at one another and shuffled their feet in embarrassment. "Back! Back!"
"They can't pull it back, you stupid mother-fucker," said a Jew who looked like Gogol's plucked chicken in a cupboard. "The foreskin's too tight!"
"Oh." The doctor frowned at the Jew's penis and went down the line. Suddenly Frenchy came out of a room with a blue work shirt knotted around her bare midriff so that 2-inches of flesh showed-like on Harry Belafonte. She gave Kaintucky a sheet of browned toilet paper. "For my blonde friend here," she said and jerked her head towards Odin. Then, looking at him: "Something to remember me by, dear!"
Her hand went up to her wig and patted it. Then she turned and tip-tapped down the hall in high heels and dungarees. Kaintucky stared after her, then down at the piece of browned county owned toilet paper. "Jesus!" he said. He tossed it away quickly and wiped his hand on his ass.
"Gik gik gik gik!" Bicycle Sniffer picked it up immediately and crushed it against his face, his nose pushing through the browned tissue as he groaned and held himself.
"Oh, my God!" the doctor squealed shrilly. "You back again, you dirty old man!" He grasped Bicycle Sniffer by the hair and snatched him up from the floor and shook him, like a dog shakes a filthy rag.
"I'm not going to let you defecate on my floor this time!" he shrieked, shaking him.
Bicycle Sniffer looked up at the doctor and grinned. Then he took out his circumcised prick and watered the doctor's legs up and down from waist to feet.
"Eeep!" The doctor danced across the hall like Taps-Tippi-Toes. "My new shoes!"
"Get 'em outta here!" roared the Officer-in-Charge.
"MOVE!"
The deputies herded the line of men down the hall to a big storage room where each was told to pick up a thin urine-stained mattress, impregnated with the stink of human excreta-the sweat, the vomit, the dead sperm of a thousand ejaculations and hand-wipings: the transient thousands, the nameless, the guests of The Hotel Biscailez in downtown Sodom-the murderer, the wino, the thief, the traffic offender.
"All right, you guys," a turnkey said languidly, leaning against the wall. "Roll 'em up!"
They rolled the filthy mattresses around an equally filthy blanket and an occasional pillow. "And don't forget your spoon and your tin cup," said Kaintucky. "You wanna eat, doncha?"
"Um." Odin rolled a battered tin cup and a spoon into his mattress.
The turnkey stood with his big rump and breast-like shoulder blades pressed against the wall, scratching them. "Shake your ass," he said.
Odin brought back his right arm like a baseball pitcher and took a step towards the turnkey-but Kaintucky stopped him.
"C'mon, boy."
On the 12th floor he was assigned to a large tank of cells located near the Hole-a disciplinary tub also known as Siberia or solitary confinement. Each tank was a rectangular enclosure made of steel bars, containing a gallery and rows of cells with sliding doors, operated by air brakes. The cells were the size of a small bathroom in a city apartment, just big enough for an upper and lower cot hanging from chains in the wall, a seatless toilet, a cold-water face bowl-and a man sleeping on the floor. The rest of the tank's population-about eighty-five percent-slept on the stone floor outside the cells on what was known as the gallery or "front porch."
"It'll take you two or three weeks before you get seniority for a cell," said Okie as they unrolled their mattresses beside the line of snoring men, packed like sardines into a can. "I'll be going up to the Road Camp in Malibu and Kaintucky's going to the Farm. The Feds are payin' L.A. County three bucks a day to feed you mush and prune juice in this joint-so I guess you'll be stayin' a-while."
"Um." Odin lay down on his mattress and locked his hands behind his head. A dirty fly-specked MARVEL 15-watt watt 2,500 hour bulb sat cupped to the ceiling behind a screen of wire netting. Somewhere-close by-a man farted, loud enough to blow the guts out of his ass.
"Speak to me, sweet lips," mumbled Odin.
The man on his right turned over on his side and looked at him, trying to see his face.
"Would you like me to cut you with my shiv?" he said.
Odin didn't answer. Instead he drew his right armalmost labored-across his chest and swung it, quickly, as though on a spring-giving the man a terrific judo chop across the throat.
"Well, we're here," sighed Kaintucky.
"We're here," echoed Okie.
ELEVEN
The Hotel Biscailez sucked in heat like a stink-hole. There was an endless stirring and grunting along the gallery. Every half hour a guard came down the corridor outside the tank and shined a flashlight into the cells. The air was as tight as a freshman's cherry. The odors were overpowering. Along the floor of the gallery the sardined prisoners uncorked themselves one after another-in several different keys-with muffled explosions of backgate hairs. LIGHTS ON!
"Let go you cocks! Grab you socks!" That tank's number One trusty banged a tin cup on the steel bars and a loudspeaker out in the corridor played Tangerine. "Rise'n shine! Rise'n shine!"
Odin blinked his eyes against the artificial glare. It was 6:00 A.M. Lights on! He felt as though he had just closed his eyes.
"Roll 'em up! Let's go, men! Get the mattresses into your cells!" The number One trusty strutted around like a cock on a dunghill. Then the air brakes released the doors and the cells slid open with clangs of metal. "You new Fish that came in after the night lock-up, stay here. I'll assign you cells..."
"That fuggin' li'l dago," one of the new man said sourly. "I know him. He's an adagio dancer in Hollywood. A fuggin' ballet creep. What's he doin' as Numero Uno?"
"He's a kiss-ass," one of the others told him. "It's like workin' for M-G-M. You got to suck your way up."
"Yeah." Okie rolled his mattress into a cylinder and sat on it. "So many executive pricks to suck. A creep just ain't got time to suck that many pricks in a seven-hour day."
"That's why they work overtime," said Kaintucky.
"Sure. All the guys in the first three cells on la linea sucked their way in..."
"You said it, man."
"Come on, get up!" The chorus boy who was in charge of the tank prodded Odin with his toe. "Get up! I said."
Odin turned over on his mattress. "Lea' me alone."
"Greta Garbo," sniggered Kaintucky.
"What's the matter?" said the chorus boy. "Is he sick?"
"Naw. He just come in. He's sleepy."
"Well, he can't sleep here after the lights are on. It's against the rules. Get up!" The trusty shoved Odin's shoulder with the heel of his shoe.
"I wouldn't do that if I was you," said Kaintucky. "He can get real mean when he wants to."
"And so can we," said Okie.
The trusty took a step back and carefully fingered the Sal Mineo spit lock that was plastered across his forehead. Then he shrugged and glanced nervously over his shoulder.
"It's the deputies," he said, trying to ally them against the common enemy. "They see him sleepin' here and they'll send him to the Hole!"
"That's right," the number Two and Three trusty agreed in chorus. "And they ain't got no mattresses in that place!"
"Sho' 'nough," said Kaintucky. "Can't let 'em put Odin in the Hole. He's too young and pritty for that!"
They all laughed and looked down at Odin who was sleeping on his side-one hip in the air-like a cheesecake queen.
"Come on, boy," said Okie. "Up and at 'em!"
Squatting, his knees creaked as he went down. Then he sat on his heels beside the mattress and shook Odin's shoulder.
"Come on, boy. Wake up. Don't you want no mush or prune juice?"
He said it with such motherly concern that Odin opened one eye and looked at him. "Um?"
"Sometimes they even give you bread and jelly," Kaintucky voiced enthusiastically.
"Yeah!" said Okie. "An' a sweet roll wif sugah on it!"
"And on Sunday you get a meat loaf with mashed potatoes!"
"An' macaroni!"
Odin raised himself on an elbow. "What the fuck you want?" he said.
"Roll up your mattress," said the number One trusty, "and shove it under the bunk in cell 12."
"What for?"
"That's the way the screws want it," said Okie. "Nice and tidy ... in case we get visitors."
"Christ."
Odin rose and walked toward cell 12 as Okie quickly rolled the mattress into a cylinder and shoved it under the lower bunk. On the toilet a man sat reading a paper and picking his nose as water piddled below and the stink of excreta drifted around his hips, like steam from a kettle.
"What'cha want?" he snarled, without looking up.
Odin opened the faucet over the face bowl and threw scoops of cold water against his eyes, snorting into it like a bull as he rubbed it about his mouth and the back of his neck. Then he reached for a towel and dried his face.
"Hey, that's mine!" The man on the top bunk tried to grab the towel but Odin jerked it sideways. "AIIIIIIIIIIII!" There was a terrific smack of flesh on rock as the man lost his balance and plunged face-down onto the floor.
"Whadda ya think ya doin'? " said the man on the toilet.
Odin looked at him. Somewhere-far away-the wail of a police siren was sinking to a low groan. He slammed the knuckles of his fist against the wall. Crash!
"Don't speak to me, mother-fucker," he said. "Don't say one fuckin' word. Understand?"
"You wouldn't talk like that, punk, if you knew what I'm here for!" the other warned.
Odin didn't answer. Instead he reached a hand between the man's thighs and grabbed him by the short hairs. Then, jerking him up, he spun him around and shoved his head into the toilet.
"Naaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" screamed the man.
Odin flushed it. The man pulled his head up, dripping.
"Next time I kill you, mother-fucker," said Odin.
"GRAB A HOLE!" shouted a deputy.
The men on the gallery rushed into the cells and the doors slammed shut. From the front of the tank there came the sounds of garbage pails as breakfast was shoved through the steel gate.
"I wonder if we'll get aigs this mornin'? " said Okie.
The others in the cell were staring at the man who stood in front of the toilet, dripping excretions.
"Lissen-" Kaintucky called two or three of them by name. "-Odin don't take no shit from nobody. So don't mess with him, you hear?"
"Who's messin'? " said one of the others.
The man with excretions on his face flushed the toilet and wiped himself on his shirt front, browning it
"If we get aigs," said Okie. "Let me have 'em. Sweet rolls, too. I can sell the aigs for a nickel apiece and get fifteen or twenty cents for the rolls."
"What you wanna sell my sweet roll for?" asked Kaintucky.
"To buy a deck of Bicycle cards, you damn fool," said Okie. He turned toward Odin. "Once I get my hands on a deck of cards, I'll suppo't both of you."
"In style," winked Kaintucky.
"You betcha!"
Ihe man on the lower bunk examined a soft venereal chancre on his thigh. Then he said:
"It's a good thing you got yourself a bodyguard, Okie."
The man opened his mouth to say something, then snapped it shut. He shrugged. "You betcha!"
"I'm an old bust-out man myself," said Kaintucky. "My momma done tol' me how to shave 5/1000 inch from the corners of my dice to favor a point. And I can deal myself almost any card I want at a blackjack table."
"Yeah?" The man on the lower bunk clutched his right knee with his hands and rocked back on the mattress. "Maybe you can tell us what 'The Edge' means, you being such a big gambler?"
" 'The Aidge' is psychological," said Kaintucky. "You lay a late bet down after the dice has stopped or maybe you add a few chips to your pile. When I go for the aidge I start arguin' about chip counts and sich. Any damn thing I can think of. You got to be sharp to get the croupier's eyeballs away from a game..." The man's mouth dropped open.
"Ever hear about the gambler who died at a roulette wheel?" said Okie. "Nobody noticed, and his bet still stood on I..."
He looked around and grinned. " ... the lucky stiff won!"
"The best place for gamblin' ain't Las Vegas," said one of the others. "It's St. Petersburg, Florida. There's a couple of joints in an alley behind the Soreno Hotel that just ... "
"St Pete?" said Okie. "Ain't that the place with them old futzers sittin' on the green benches, playin' with each other's peckers."
"Yeah."
"How gear!"
Old men sitting in the sun, thinking about the past. They can't get it up any more-no girl can make that micky rise. An old geezer can't even get rid of his water-sometimes he has to stand with one hand on his cock and wait for hours! What's the matter with seventy-five? We're the boys that's alive! Shouting in cracked, quavering old men's voices and tottering around in Waterfront Park, throwing bowling balls among the palm trees. And in the east the long municipal pier extends 2,400 feet into the bay like a phallic symbol-the large yellow building at its tip-the venereal chancre!
"Soreno Hotel," said Kaintucky. "I worked as a bus boy in the Soreno dining room. Fifty bucks a month and room 'n' board. Casey Stengel and the Yankees were there. Ol' Casey, he wouldn't eat with them players. Used to sit behind some flowers an' them rookies et in back like a buncha Li'l Abners-slobberin' their food and giggling like a girl's softball team."
"Oh, you big bad mans!" Okie slapped at him.
"That millionaire fella, the one that owns the Yankees. Ha! He never give the help nothin'. I went around with a sterno box fulla warm muffins and rolls, servin' his table mornin' noon and night. But d'ya think the old fart ever give me a dime?"
"Maybe that's how he got to be a millionaire!"
"You know," said Okie. "Them flamingoes they got down there, they're real pretty. Some of them are pink all over and some're scarlet with black quills on their wings and red on the coverts."
Kaintucky sneered and gave Okie a dirty look, exposing the long yellow teeth in his horse face.
"What you mean, coverts?"
"Our ignorant friend's phraseology is a little off," laughed Okie. "What he intended to ask was, 'What does coverts mean?'"
"I know damn well what it means," said Kaintucky. "I wanted to see if you knew. And there's nothing wrong with my ... uh ... phras-oh-gee."
"Suck my ass...'"
"Let's face it, Okie. You're a filthy piece of white trash that don't know nothin' but four letter words."
"Crap!"
"That's what I mean ... xah-raslit"
The door slid open with a heavy clashing of steel and the men hurried out with tin cups and spoons in their hands. Back in the cell the man who had fallen from the top bunk still lay unconscious on the floor.
"That was a smart thing you done, boy, pushin' that guy's head into the shitter," whispered Kaintucky.
Odin looked back at him over his shoulder. The chow line moved another step forward.
"What do you mean?"
"As if you didn't know!"
"Well; I don't."
"Sure, you do," Kaintucky said in an undertone. "Fronti nulla fides."
"What?"
"Appearances, boy. Ever'body here is gonna judge you by how you look ... until they get to know you better."
"So?"
"So now they know you better. Ain't nobody gonna mess around with you now..."
Odin frowned. The long, upcurling eyelashes came down on his chiseled face. Shy? Maybe could. A young girl's whisper on a deserted beach. Thinking of Lesbos. The woman looked at him with a speculative sobriety, as a businessman would. It's a shame, she smiled, that someone like you should look so good when there are so many ugly girls in this world. The ghost of Rome: It's a misfortune to be too handsome a man. Greece: But no one blames you for being ugly. Ovid: So long as he is rich even a barbarian is attractive. The Call Girl: Out of bed I'm hoity-toity-In bed I'll suck his yoni. Beast: Ugly men copulating with beautiful young girls. Beauty: The fatal gift.
Okie smacked his lips. "What's for breakfast?"
"Food." The number Two trusty threw a scoop of mush and a couple of prunes on Okie's tray. "Next!"
"What the hell is this?" said Okie, peering at his tray. "Don't we get no aigs or sweef rolls?"
"Move on, move on!"
"What's for lunch?"
"Bean juice! Let's go. You're holdin' up the line."
Still rumbling Okie accepted a slice of soft white bread and a cup of county-owned coffee.
"There's a dead cockroach in this bread!" he said.
"That's all right. We won't charge you extry. Move on!"
"Ya know," Kaintucky said thoughtfully as they stood side by side at the counter that ran along the bars of the gallery. "Next time I steal a car I'm gonna barrel it across the Nevada line. Make it a Federal rap. The Feds know how to feed a man..."
"Nigger in the hunk." Okie mixed the bread with the mush and prunes on his cafeteria-style tray and spat on it. "Odin, here, he's a Federal prisoner. You don't see him eatin' toast 'n' scrambled aigs!"
"No; but he will. Soon's they put 'im in the Big House."
Okie looked across Odin at Kaintucky. "Who says they're puttin' 'im in the Big House?"
"Oh, shit, man." Kaintucky threw his spoon onto the mush in disgust and dipped the slice of soggy bread into his coffee. "He's in the skin trade, ain't he?"
"You already got him convicted and sent to Alcatraz!"
"No, I ain't. They'll send him to Leavenworth or McNeil Island ... Joliet ... one o' them places."
"Joliet's a State Penn, ya damn fool!"
"No, it ain't. It's a Federal Prison."
Kaintucky swung his arm around to ally the other men with him against Okie. "Ain't Joliet a Federal joint!"
"It's a State Penn," said Okie.
The other men at the counter ignored Kaintucky and continued to shove mush and stewed prunes inside their faces.
"IT'S A FEDERAL PRISON!" screamed Kaintucky. "You stinkin' goddamned rotten son of a fuckin', fartin' whore!"
Smack! Okie's tray of mush hit Kaintucky in the face like a custard pie. "You son of a bitch!" Kaintucky made a flying leap for Okie and the two of them crashed to the floor and rolled back and forth across the gallery, like a couple of lesbians practicing tribadism.
"GRAB A HOLE!"
A turnkey bellowed at the end of the tank.
Odin grabbed Okie and Kaintucky by the collar and dragged them across the floor and into cell 13 just as the doors slammed shut
"Who's fighting down here?" The deputy walked along the corridor outside the tank and looked across the empty gallery into the cells. "Anybody caught fighting goes to Siberia..."
The prisoners stared back at him like dogs in a kennel. "SUBMARINE!" a trusty shouted from the front of the tank.
"All right, open the doors. Let's get them dishes out!"
The deputy walked back to the tank's front gate and pulled the lever that operated the cell-door mechanism. "STAND CLEAR!" The doors slid open with a clash of steel and prisoners emerged from the cells like rats and roaches, coming out on the gallery and looking around suspiciously, then moving towards "the line" carefully, placing their heels on the ground first and bringing their toes down afterwards. Cool.
"C'mon, boys..."
Okie, Odin and Kaintucky made their way back to cell 12 as the other prisoners in the tank brought their empty trays up to the trusties.
"What's this, Submarine?" asked Odin.
"Oh. That's just a big bucket on wheels," said Kaintucky. He pared off a piece of another prisoner's apple and put it into his mouth with his spoon and thumb. "They splash water all over the front porch and mop it up again. Crazy."
Okie took out a dirty Bull Durham sack and pulled it open. He let out a low whistle.
"Must be fifteen or twenty bucks in here!"
"Where'd you get it?" asked Odin.
"In the cell you dragged us into. Damn fool had it under his mattress."
"Quick!" Kaintucky jumped off the lower bunk and grabbed the sack from Okie's hands. Then he pulled out the silver and paper money, dividing it unequally between the three of them. He glanced over his shoulder at the door and flushed the empty Bull Durham sack down the toilet as though it was a stillborn baby. "Whew!" he said.
"Wait a sec." Okie reached up among the old milk cartons on a shelf and brought down a handful of clean tobacco sacks. "Here ... we can each have one."
They put the money into the sacks and stowed them away in their dungaree pockets. Okie continued to rummage around among the milk containers, some of which were cut in halves and quarters, containing L.A. County jelly and bars of Lifebuoy soap.
"Look at this," he said. "They got a whole carton full of aspirins up here. What's this?"
He pulled a small object from a sticky jelly container and held it against the light.
"Hee hee hee hee," he laughed up his sleeve. "A hop-head."
Kaintucky looked up from the lower bunk. "What."
"A hophead," said Okie. "Fix-fiend, junkie ... get with it, man."
"Ya mean we got a addict in here?" Kaintucky was shocked.
Okie held out his big farmer's hand. In it lay a hypodermic syringe made from an eyedropper attached to a clumsy needle device.
"What's he take in that?" asked Kaintucky.
Okie grinned and tugged at his left ear lobe.
"Horse, of course."
"Horse?"
"Heroin."
"Oh."
"Yeah," said Okie. "I'll bet he does a lot o' skin-poppin' with this when the rest of us are jerkin' off at nigh."
"What's that?"
"Skin-poppin' ... under the skin, ya old goat."
"Oh."
Okie rolled up his left shirt sleeve. "Main-liner, I betcha!" Kaintucky stared at him. "What?"
"A junkie who shoots it into the main line ... that's this here." Okie pointed the syringe to the large vein in his arm.
"Put it away," said Odin. "They'll be back any minute."
Okie slipped the syringe back in the jelly carton and sat down on the seatless toilet.
"That guy you pulled down from the top bunk, he looks like he's hard up for a fix," he said.
"How can you tell?"
"Oh, when a junkie's hopped up he's floatin' on cloud seven. He's content. Don't give a fuck about money, sex or nothin' else. You don't see no loaded junkie goin' around fightin' over no towels."
"TV's always yellin' about hopped up dope fiends shootin' and knifin' folks," said Kaintucky. "You jest talkin' shit."
"Ha! If a junkie does somethin' crazy it's when he's not hopped up. That's the time he's busy figgerm' way to get the stuff he's got a yen for. I know a guy needs fifty bucks ever' day for Horse..."
"Of course."
"You see-" Okie turned toward Odin "-these guys start smokin' reefers, get hooked, then sniff Horse for a while, and when they don't get enough kick outa that they sart skin-poppin' and ma'am-linin'. "
"How thrilly-dilly!" said Kaintucky.
Okie climbed up on the top bunk and started to rummage around among the milk cartons. "Where does he keep the stuff?" A tin cup with a bent spoon threaded through its handle swayed on the edge of the shelf, like a man holding onto a cliff with one finger. Then it fell and clattered across the floor. "Ah, that's the spoon he cooks shit in. See? It's all black on the bottom!"
"Cheese it!" said Kaintucky. "Here they come!"
"Tengo dolor de cabeza." The dark-haired man who had the top bunk came into the cell followed by the others. He stared at Okie.
"Get off my bunk, Rummy!"
Okie grinned at him. "I'm gonna conk you on the cabeza," he said. "You get that, senorita la douche? Conk you on your li'l cabeza?"
"What's the matter with these guys?" The dark-haired man looked around for support among the others.
"No entiendo," said Okie, "No entiendo, senorita."
Kaintucky looked up at him.
"How you say shiv in that fuggin' language?" he asked. "El cuchillo..."
Kaintucky's left hand reached out and his fingers twisted in the black hair. "El cuchillo," he said. "You dig? El cuchillo? El cuchillo?"
The man moaned as the strong fingers twisted unmercifully in his hair. In a hoarse whisper he said, "Si. El cuchillo."
Kaintucky's fingers twisted the hair tighter and tighter. "You unnerstan', el cuchillo? You'd better unnerstan', el cuchillo, you little sonofabitch. You unnerstan' el cuchillo . . .El cuchillo?"
Suddenly his big fist shot out and clubbed the man flush in the face. The man gagged, his teeth were knocked into his throat and blood spilled out of his mouth. Kaintucky kept it up. His big fist split the lips open, smashed the eye closed and collapsed the nose with short, bone-crushing blows. Okie jumped up and down on the top bunk, clapping his hands like a madman. All the hate-all the pent-up fury in Kaintucky came out. In a few seconds more he would have killed the man, but Odin stepped in quietly behind him and struck him a terrific rabbit-punch across the base of his neck. Kaintucky plunged forward but one of the men grabbed his body before it reached the floor.
They waited in silence.
"You punk!" said Kaintucky, his voice choked in outrage. "If you wa'nt mah frien', I'd-I'd."
"You'd what?" Odin prompted.
Kaintucky started to get up but the men held him back.
"I'd cut off your balls!" he said.
Odin threw his head back and laughed at him.
"I'd cut yo' balls," Kaintucky said thickly. He slammed one blood-streaked fist into the palm of his hand.
Odin looked at Okie. Okie grinned and closed one eyelid slowly. Then he made a disemboweling motion with his finger.
"GH-H-H-KK!" he said.
Odin-the whipped-cream complexion, the honey-gold hair, the dark brows, the pale eyes, the moist pouty lipsthis was the Viking. Cool, slender, calm. The male Monroe. He looked more like a beautiful woman dressed up as a man.
"W-w-what's go-going on in t-t-t-there?" stammered one of the deputies. He craned his neck to look into the cell.
"Dope fiend in here goin' onna cold turkey. Fell down 'n' broke his nose" said Okie.
"C-c-cold t-turkey?"
Okie perched on the edge of the bunk and took off his big shoes. He sighed wearily and stretched his legs out in front of him, wiggling his toes. Then he hooked a heel on the edge of the bunk, rested a hand on the raised knee and leaned back against the wall. "Shit. What I need is Outgro on this toe."
"Epsom salt is better," mused Kaintucky, getting up from the floor. "Stick a little piece o' cotton between yo nail 'n' the flesh."
That fella's face ain't-likely to get infected. Hit's bleedin' good now and cleanin' hitself out."
"Yair, it ain't like no laceration or stab wound," said Kaintucky. "But when it's m-cised with a cuchillo the blood vessels are cut across nice and soff. That's why them knife wounds bleed so much."
"Oh oh ooohhhh! Mah sweet young butt!" Okie tapped his buckteeth thoughtfully with a GIANT GEM paper clip he'd found on the mattress. Then he untwisted the metal and scratched a dirty word on the wall with the straight wire.
"Ah wanna be a Playboy Bunny!" Ears erect. Cottontail.
"Is this joint recommended by Duncan Hines?"
The turnkey stood in the passageway on the other side of the bars, his heavy body shaking from head to foot, as though from the ague.
"W-w-what t-t-the hell is go-go-going on in th-th-there?"
"Cold turkey," Okie replied equably. "I already tol'ja."
"Attaboy-"
"Set 'em wild, Willie!"
"Sniff that Horse good, now. You hear?"
"Ah'm joltin', man. Ah'm joltin'. "
"All them dope fiends should be tied to their bunks. This one tried to knock hisself out on the wall, bangin' that thick skull o' his against it-knockin' loose paint an' ever'thin'. "
"Yeah, that's right, Ossifer. We tried to gag 'im 'cause he wuz makin' so much noise an' all, but then we hadda take it off again 'cause he started pukin' ...."
"Yellin' his head off too 'bout needles prickin' him inna dick. Then he got them hot 'n' cold spells-"
"All over..."
"-hit wuz terrible, Ossifer. Made Pu-Pu in his pants."
"De pest vat nookie can make, yair!" Kaintucky squatted on the seatless toilet.
"The Harrison Act keeps poor shits like this in jail when they should be inna hospital," said Okie. "Dope fiends're sick people. Immature. They can't solve problems like the rest of us. Life's too rough for them. They're weak. What they need is a way out. An escape. Junk. Something like TV that makes life seem easier. Simpler. Yeah! The cowboy rides inta town an' ties up his pony. He don't work no place. Don't need no driver's license and social security card. No identification. Why, he don't even go to the shitter! All he hafta do is ride around shootin' Injuns all day."
"Back to the simple life," said Kaintucky. "No problems."
"Here's Chessman's name on the wall." Okie ran a finger across the scratched obscene doggerel that covered all four walls of the cell. "Wonder if he slept here?"
"Hell, no," said Kaintucky. "He was in the High Power tank."
"I once saw him back in fifty-six or-seven, walkin' around in the corridor just like you and me. No chains on him or nothin'. Had a big buncha papers under his arm. I think he was going to the Attorney Room. You know-the visitin' room with the two-way mirrors?"
"What he need chains for? Can't nobody get outta this pad. Hit's a fuckin' skyscraper!" Kaintucky lit a cigarette.
"Well, I know some guys that broke out through a window on the eleventh floor and made their way down the air shaft. Used a long rope made outta blankets ... "
"They got away?"
"I don't remember. I think one got kilt and the others had some kind a trouble with a window on the sixth flo'. "
"Oh, s-s-s-shit!" The deputy walked up to the front of the tank. "G-G-GRAB A H-H-H-HOLE!"
The men on the gallery scurried into their cells like rats, and the doors slammed shut. Then the big gate to the tank swung open and the deputy walked down the empty gallery and stopped in front of cell 12.
"W-w-who's t-t-that on the f-f-floor?"
They ignored him.
"You know," said Okie. "That fuckin' Chessman had a petition so long it took six typewritten pages just to index the constitutional violations. That's what kept Hm alive. Red tape and paper work. The Gunimint loves it."
"Fifty-six?" said Kaintucky. "Wasn't that the year when they had that big stink in the papers about the L.A. County Jail sweet rolls bein' made in a hallway where folks went to the shitter?"
"It wa'nt the sweet rolls. It was the bread. They baked it in a dirty loft someplace. Bugs and mice all over, gettin' baked into the bread."
"That's right. I remember breakin' open a loaf of bread and findin' a dead mouse inside. All sliced to pieces by the slicin' machine."
"Delicious!"
"Yeah. There's nothin' I like more than the legs of a mouse in my bread."
"Wif jelly."
"L.A. County jelly."
"There ain't nothin' like it!"
"Oh, man. It's almost as good as a dead mouse floatin' in a cup of coffee!"
"Gummint inspected."
"Yeah!"
"It's a racket," said Kaintucky. "Somebody's makin' a lot of money out of this place. AND the farm. The biggest crooks ain't in jail. They're runnin' it!" .
"You said it, man..."
"Jail full o' winos 'n' bindle-stiffs. Coupla thousand hoi' up guys and rapists. But there ain't nobody here made crime pay-'cept the politicians. And they ain't in jail."
"No. They're runnin' the joint."
"Along with the county employees."
"You said it, man."
"Oh, d-d-d-damn!" The deputy ran up to la linea and slammed the gate shut from the outside. Then he jerked a couple of knobs on the control board and the doors to cells 12 and 13 slid open.
"You g-g-guys in c-c-cell twelve ... go into c-cell thirteen!"
"What he say?"
"Wants us to go into cell 13," said Okie.
"Yeah. I reckon they wanna pick up this hophead."
Kaintucky dropped his cigarette butt and ground it into the floor. Then he leaned over and grabbed one of the Latins by the shirt front.
"El cuchillo," he said. "Unnerstan'? You didn't see nothin'! " . .
"Si, senor. El cuchillo."
Okie perched on the edge of the top bunk and took a swallow from an old milk container. Then he jumped down and stood juxtaposed to the man on the floor-L.A. County jelly dripping from the corners of his mouth.
"Ah eats the shit and don't even like it. Something's wrong..."
"I'm glad you finally realized that," said Kaintucky. "Kiss mah ass, willja."
"Don't git romantic, honey."
In cell 13 a body-builder was lying on the top bunk, exercising by bicycling his legs in the air. The first name of his lover was tattooed on his left buttock-the last on his right.
"Wally Miller," said Okie. "I used to know a fella by that name. He could put his dick in the neck of an empty bottle and fart into a tin can at the same time."
"Then he sold it as caviar, right?" said Kaintucky.
The men in the cell watched the body-builder as he pedaled his powerful young legs madly in the air. In the unkempt region of his crotch a soft white penis bobbed up and down as though it was in a bathtub filled with water. His smile was a brown hole: a mousetrap. The great little white fish had a mustache. Hairs grew wild around it.
"A circle jerk!" whispered Kaintucky. "I ain't seen that in years!" He watched the men who stood in a half-circle around the nude body-builder, beating their meat into paper towels.
"Used to be a punk in here who had a real cunt tattooed on the outside of his hand," said Okie. "Hair and everything. The slit was between his thumb and his index finger. He could move it just like a girl's pussy. I used to go crazy lookin" at it"
"Thrilly-dilly, you're my boy!"
Kaintucky raised his arms over his head and began an oily, undulating dance, twisting his undercarriage kind of swishy but keeping the top half still.
"Little trick I picked up from George Raft at a party," he said. "Like it?" He shuffled sideways.
"Ooooh!" Balled and Socketed.
The last men squeezed in subway-style and the door to cell 13 slammed shut
"You know," said Okie as they sat down on the bottom bunk, "Twenty years ago I was known as Pisser Daniel of the Ozarks. I could pee into a shitter from eight feet away."
"Beastie!" said Kaintucky, and then: "Tvobody can piss into a shitter eight feet away. They'd be lucky to make it at two!"
"Two? Why, I can shoot scum farther than that! I'd do it right here if I could get my prick out. Yessir! I'm a reg'lar sperm factory. Mass Production-assembly line. Old Henry Ford ain't got nothin' on me. Five hund'ed million sperms a shot! I could knock up every broad on earth with that. Ain't but three or four hund'ed million broads in the world right now who could have kids. I'd knock up ever' one of them, yessir!"
"On the basis of their abilities and qualifications, without irrelevant restrictions as to race, color, creed, national origin and other factors not related to fuck performance," said Kaintucky.
"You said it kiddio!"
"Liar! You can't even get it up, let alone shoot with it! You'd need one o' them erector sets to get it inside a woman's washboard..."
"Ha!" said Okie. "I'd straighten out every inch of a cunt's washboard, and I'd piss Os and figure-8s around a guy like you!"
"The victorious Hillbilly sperm penetrates ... the aig-"
"Ya old goat!"
"Ever'body stand back!" shouted Kaintucky. He shoved twenty odd men away from the toilet in the little two-bunk cell.
"All right, Pisser Daniel," he said. "You got six feet to the stutter. Let's see you shoot that seed!"
Okie narrowed his eyes to judge the distance. Then he got up from the bunk and opened his fly.
"Gimme a minute to think o' Jayne Mansfield or some-thin', " he said. He spat a long stream of jelly-colored spit into the toilet
"Come on, come on. Ten seconds already and you ain't even got it up."
"Lea' me alone, willja?"
"It takes time in public," said one of the others. "I know a guy who can't even piss if there's somebody else in the men's room...."
"Stage fright."
"First-night jitters."
"Shaddup", willja?" Okie fingered his lingam, tickling the underside of the glans and rubbing it with his hand. Nothing happened. "I'm timin' ya," said Kaintucky. "Neatness counts!"
"For Christ's sake," Okie growled irritably. He looked around the cell-then under the top bunk. "Ain't you creeps got nothin' to look at in here?"
"Oscar don't sell no Playboy, daddy-o!"
"I don't need no Playboy. Lemme see one o' them magazines with movie stars. Doris Day-Natalie Wood. Little piece lak that ... "
"Hey, I got somethin'! "
One of the men on the too bunk reached under his pillow.
"Jane Russell in French Line," he said, pulling out a sex picture ripped from a magazine. "I have a honeymoon every night ... "
Okie looked at the picture and immediately got a hard-on.
"Man-oh-man ... look at that!" Okie's shaft suddenly shot out all the way like a stallion's-its head swelling: the eye opening wide.
"Tussle with Russell! Thrilly-dilly, ya old goat!"
'Tit for tat, daddy-o!"
A long spurt of thick milky sperm shot towards the toilet. Then it hit the floor three feet away with a splash of fluid on cement.
"Three feet!" exclaimed Kaintucky. "Didn't think you had it in you!"
"Go eat a banana, ya old goat!"
"Whange-pooh!"
"Mangoooooooooooo!"
Pruitt PLOP!
"Sing wiff yo' weeny, thrilly! Pipe Ave Maria through the shitter!"
"Echo chambers and tape reverb. That's how Elvis got his start."
"Fartin'. "
"Over-dubbin'..."
"Listen," said Okie. "I'll put down five bucks against any punk here who can shoot straighter'n me."
"Bull's-eye, baby!"
"Yeah, man. But he couldn't do it again!"
"That's right. You'll be shootin' blanks next time, Okie."
"Let's see if I will. Here's my five bucks. Anybody here man enough to take a shot at it?"
"Shit. Ain't nobody here got five bucks," said Kaintucky.
"That's O.K. I'll put my five against anything they got in their pockets."
"I got fifty cents," said one.
Another: "Two bits."
"Make it a big kitty," said Kaintucky. "Winner takes all."
"Hell, nobody can shoot more'n three feet."
"Okie can do it-we can do it." The money rained like sand into a pile on the mattress. "Here's two bucks says you can't do it again, Okie!"
"Oh, yeah? I'll shoot it right in the shitter this time," said Okie. "This is only number two. I once did a fiver with Jean Harlow in Celluloid City!"
"You never went five times with nobody," drawled Kaintucky. " 'Cept maybe in yo' dreams."
"I never had no wet dreams. I was a stud for all them big stars back in the 'thirties. Jean was crazy about me."
"Ah thought all them movie actresses had black studs that fucked them Italian style in white bedrooms and then laid them on all the tables and chairs," said Kaintucky.
"That's in Washington, D.C., " said Okie. "The niggers all got white nineteen-year-old secretaries in that place."
"What about that blonde? ... You know, the one with the-"
"You talkin' all day-he's buildin' up sperm. That's what he wants you to do!"
"Yeah." A big convict unbuttoned his fly and pulled out a sawed-off shotgun. "Don't laugh," he said. "It could happen to you!"
"Uh-hu. I put a towel under her so she wouldn't strain the seat of my car and grabbed her boobies. Then I pinched her and slapped the shit outta her until she was all bloody."
"So how'd she bit off half your prick?"
"Oh. That was later-when I locked my legs around her head and rolled her over, sittin' on top of her. I still had red lipstick all over it from that other bitch we kidnapped that night. But this one wouldn't let me do it. I forced her jaws open and shoved it down so far I thought it would go all the way through her body and come out the other end. But then she bit into it, Christ! like a bull dog. Wouldn't let go! I had to kill 'er before I could pull'er off. She had real big teeth and they was sunk to the gums in my prick!"
"Ya poor boy!" said Okie.
Tweedledee, tweedledum.
"Ah read about that in the papers," said Kaintucky. "Ain't you the crime-against-nature guy? The depraved animal the judge was talkin' about?"
"That's me!" The big man's chest almost burst with pride. "I got all the clippings right here in my mattress. Front-page stuff. Wanna see it?"
"Shut your mouth."
As though at a signal, they all turned and looked at Odin.
"What you say?" asked the big man.
"Shut your mouth." Odin shoved the man aside and stared at the money on the mattress. "How much you got there? Twenty or thirty..."
"Thutty-two," said Kaintucky. "Ah counted it."
Odin picked up the French Line picture and frowned at the big sexy brunette who stood in front of a velvet stairway with her arms wide apart and her hips thrown forward. A skimpy costume clung to the sharp rise of her pubis (a hairless peach!), and the smooth curves of her thighs swept into her belly where an open three-leaf clover design exposed her soft, milky-white skin beneath the black material of her costume. As she leaned back the curve swept on up in a trail of rhinestones, sweeping up and up around the proud beauty of her tits-then into her shoulders where long black gloves covered her arms. Beautiful Diamonds dangled from her ears, her long shadowy legs balanced on high-heeled shoes.
"LUmmmmmmmmmmm. She's got a BIG one!" Okie grinned over Odin's shoulder.
"Ever see the one with Gypsy Rose Lee in a bathtub?" Kaintucky asked generally. "She's got one leg up out of the water?"
"Yeah ... and soap-bubbles covering up everything good!"
"Wa-ll; Ah lak her legs..."
"Jayne Mansfield don't mind showin' her ass!"
Odin put the French Line picture into his shirt pocket.
"For this picture and the kitty I'll shoot into the toilet from six feet away," he said. "OK?"
They stared at him in amazement Okie grabbed his arm.
"Hey, wait; I was only kiddin' 'em, boy. Nobody can shoot that far!"
Odin shrugged the hand off.
"The picture and the dough," he said. "I shoot six feetO.K.? "
"Sure. But you ain't gonna make it."
"Um."
Odin reached a hand down and opened his trousers. Then he took out his cannon and pulled the foreskin back.
"It's crazy, boy. You'll lose all our money!" said Okie.
Odin didn't answer. He took out the picture and looked at it Then suddenly a long spurt of milk-white sperm shot across the cell and splashed against the wall behind the toilet.
"He did it! Eight feet."
"Aim lower, boy! Lower!"
A second spurt shot through the air. The men jumped back. It plopped into the toilet. There was complete silence.
"I'll be damned," Kaintucky said at last. "I didn't think anybody could do that!"
Odin picked up the money and stuffed it into his pocket.
"Just in since last night and already he's the richest guy in the joint!" said Okie. "How about that?"
"Pssssst!" A man on the top bunk jerked his head at Odin. "How'd you like some Mexican Red Beans?" he whispered.
"No."
"Kola? Cubeb Pepper? Pot? I'll get you anything you want."
"Odin don't eat no beetle bonbons, dad," said Kaintucky.
"He don't?" The man looked confused. "Then how about a little mescaline?" He held out his hand and opened it. In it lay a half dozen strips of tough plant fiber, looking somewhat like slivers of rhubarb stalk. "Peyote," he said. "Chew one o' these and you'll see green, pink an' yella tits floatin' all over the place. Fireworks in slow motion, castrated dicks with hard-ons..."
"He ain't interested," said Okie.
Odin leaned against the bars and looked out at the gallery. A couple of trusties were loading the junkie from cell 12 into a wheel-chair.
"What'd I tell ya?" whispered Okie.
Odin shrugged. "Shit for sale."
"Yeah. You get a little bread-folks always wanna sell ya somethin'. "
"Um."
"You don't smoke, do ya."
"No."
"I didn't think so. You know, you're too nice a guy to be in a joint like this. How'd you ever get mixed up in that skin-trade caper?"
"I don't know nothing about it," said Odin.
"No. 'Course not. But that Mann Act's a tough rap to beat. What'd you do? Bring some broad over the Nevada line?"
Odin looked across the gallery at the window. The women's lockup was on the other side of the air shaft. Sometimes a man could see shadows over there, if he stretched his neck.
"I was sleeping with a chick in one of those new motels on Santa Monica Boulevard," he said slowly. "It was near La Brea. I parked my car outside the United Artists Studios,"
"Yeah. I know that area. It's around Melrose 'n' Fairfax."
"Um."
Okie waited but Odin didn't say anything else. "So what happened? The cops bust in on ya."
"Yeah. They took me to the Hollywood Police Station."
"Crummy joint. What'd they do? Give you a third-degree 'n' try to make you 'fess to all their unsolved crimes."
"Yes. Something like that."
"They got a million of 'em," said Okie. "A quadrillion. A motherfuckin' vigintillion and a sexdecillion."
"Um."
"Then they took you downtown to the Glasshouse for a seventy-two hour line-up, eh?"
Odin smiled. "I don't think I stayed there that long."
"Good thing you didn't. They don't give you nothin' 'cept hot garbage in that city clink."
"I didn't eat it."
"Ha! Then you was tranferred over here, eh? To the County Jail?"
Odin did not reply.
"Well I guess they got something on ya, then. Otherwise they wouldn't keep you more'n three days."
"I was busted yesterday," said Odin.
"Jesus-that was fast! Most guys hafta spend seventy-two hours in the Glasshouse Fish-Tank before they get moved to the County..."
"Um."
"Didn't you get mugged 'n' fiingerprinted, all that shit."
"No."
"You didn't?" Okie stared at him in frank amazement Then he asked. "You a V.I.P. or something'? "
Odin didn't answer. His eyes gazed across the empty gallery at the window. It was as though he were floating outside of himself, watching his body behind the bars.
"I studied Law at home," said Okie. "I got a LL.B. Degree from LaSalle."
"That's a correspondence school," said Kaintucky.
"Sure it's a correspondence school, you damn fool. Why'd you think I studied at home?"
" 'Cause you was in Folsom Prison at the time!"
"Wif your peg-legged, syphilitic mama..."
"Listen-your mama was screwed through a hole in a horseblanket"
"Yeah, and your daddy's got a forked prick-he can fuck 'em in the front yard and in the back at the same time!"
"SUBMARINE!" hollered a turnkey. "Everybody stay in their cells!"
"Where the fuck we gonna go?" hollered Kaintucky. "You got the doors locked!"
There was a rumble of wheels as a black bathtub was rolled down the gallery floor.
"Submarine," said Okie. "Now they gonna splash water all over the stinkin' joint"
"I once made my daughter blow me under the showers," a man said in the corner of the lower bunk. They all turned and looked at him. Odin remained motionless-his back towards the cell.
"What you say?" said Kaintucky.
"My daughter," the man said dreamily. "Pretty little girl." He stared at the wall with remembered lust. "She's got a black mole on her right ass."
The men looked at one another. Odin stood leaning against the door, his small hands dangling between the bars.
"What'd you do to her?" Kaintucky asked in a sly voice.
"Oh, everything." The man looked down and examined a syphilitic sore under the head of his penis. "She had a real tight little hole. I used to spread her legs and rub it with Noxzema."
Okie opened his mouth to say something ... then he paused. The man on the lower bunk grinned and stretched his legs out in front of him. "First time I did it I said, 'Take off your little panties, dear. Daddy wants to rub your pee hole.' Ho. Ho." He scratched his left elbow with his fingernails and a cloud of white scales rained to the mattress.
"Tight," he said. "I was sore of days afterwards." The cell was silent. Outside, the submarineand mop-brigade splashed water across the gallery floor. "Ho ho ho!" The man's leg went rigid with lust, as though in a dentist's chair. "That little mole on her ass still gives me a hard-on, just thinking about it "Ho. Ho.
"I used to stick my finger up there and tell her it was a little worm or somethin'. "Ho. Ho.
"Sometimes I'd lie behind her and slip my arms around her chest, squeezing her little titties"Ho. Ho.
"Then I'd shove it up-Up that little-Yes! and her ass would be pressed flat against my body-And would she scream!
"Ho. Ho and-
"Oh! that little mole! When my hair met it. Christ, she was so tight. I could feel the insides of her guts pushing against the tip of my cock..."
"Ho ho," said Odin.
He turned and looked at the man.
"You think it's funny?" he asked.
The man grinned but his eyes rolled about like a terrified animal's in a frantic search of an escape.
"Little Pu-Pu wants to play." Okie snatched a dirty piece of paper from the man's shirt pocket. The man cursed and tried to snatch it back but Kaintucky shoved him down on the mattress. "Well well well," said Okie. He opened the finger-splotched indictment and read it slowly, his lips forming the words without sound.
"Suffer li'l children," he said, almost gently. He handed the paper to Odin.
Father of four children. Neglect. Maltreatment. Concussion. Broken bones. Scoldings. Rape. Beatings. Child-abuse. Battered. Three-year-old burned with a cigar. Son died. Older daughter raped orally-anally. Fissures. Organs abrased...
Odin's face was a mask-chiseled in steel. His cold, pale eyes ran over the words. Then he quit looking at the paper and looked at the man.
"Suffer little children," said Okie, quoting from the 10th Chapter of St. Mark. "Come onto me."
"I will lift up my eyes unto the hills..."
"The Lord is my shepherd ... I shall not want."
The man stared from face to face like a frightened animal.
"'Take off your little panties, dear,'" said Odin. " 'Daddy wants to rub yo' little pee hole..."'
Without warning he grabbed the man by the shirt-front and slapped him four times across the mouth, the blood smearing between his palm and the back of his hand. A couple of convicts on the lower bunk held the man's arms as Kaintucky pulled down the dungarees and Okie brought a mop handle through the bars.
"Do it to him!" whispered a wino. "Do like he done to her! Make him wish he'd never been born!"
"Watch for the screws!" hissed Okie.
A lookout stuck a mirror through the bars and watched the gallery. One of the other convicts picked up a pair of filthy socks and stuffed them into the man's mouth. Then they turned him over on his stomach.
"All the way up, Okie!"
"Make it come out his mouth!"
"Hurry, ya bastards!"
Okie pointed the mop handle down like a pile driver. Then suddenly he shoved it in-entering him. The man straightened out like a ramrod. He screamed with the sock in his mouth and by writhing and twisting he tried to move away from the wooden handle. Okie was using it mercilessly-like a toilet plunger.
"Further, you cunt! Straighten out his guts good, boy!"
"Ah got it up seven inches, already."
"Further! Shove it up all the way!"
"Give him a mop cotton-tail."
"Kill the mother-fucker!"
"That's enough," said Odin. "You want to kill him, you do it yourself."
"Yeah, do it! It's easy enough to tell some other guy to do it, like you was a general or somethin', " said Kaintucky.
Okie pulled the mop handle out of the wound-then shoved it back again, rending and tearing until russet-brown blood mixed with shit bubbled up like a geyser and ran down the crack between the white skinny thighs.
"Where'd he burn that three-year-old baby with a cigar?" a convict asked, lighting a White Owl.
"Screw's coming'! " The man on lookout jerked in his window mirror and slipped it under the mattress.
"Sheeeit!" The convict hesitated, then he leaned over and pressed the tip of his cigar against the man's genitals. There was a sudden fire and the pubic hairs burned down to a clump of ash.
"What you guys up to in there?" a deputy shouted.
"Whatcher say, Ossifer?"
"Why the hell haven't you submarined that cell like you're supposed to!"
"We did, Officer. Splashed watter all ovah the flo'! "
"Yeah!" Okie and the others moved up to screen the naked man on the bunk. "Hit's all dry," said Kaintucky.
"How could you wash it with all those guys standing on the floor?"
"Wa'n't nobody on the flo', " said Kaintucky. "Ever'body on the bunks. I done mopped it and wrung the water into the shitter. Then I dry-fucked it, I mean, mopped it. Didn't I boys?"
"You sho' did," said Okie. The others voiced agreement in a loud chorus.
"Don't lie to me, you damn hillbilly!"
"Ah ain't no hillbilly, Ossifer. I'se from Kain-tuckyi"
"It's a loooooooooooong ways home!" sang Okie.
"All right. Cut out the crap. Get that cell submarined!"
"Again?"
"Officer. I already done tol' ya..."
"And I'm telling you. GET THAT FUCKING CELL SUBMARINED!"
"Now, don't git excited, Offisah."
"You guys wanna go in the Hole? Do you?" The deputy dragged out the word 'Hole' for dramatic effect.
"We already been there," grinned Okie.
Somebody said, "Ficky-fick," in a low voice that ended in a snigger.
The deputy looked around helplessly. Then he saw the only honest face in the cell. He looked at Odin, they looked at one another.
"Is it true?" he asked. "Did they submarine this cell?"
Odin said, "Yes."
"We even got the mop to prove it!" Okie shook the dripping rags between the bars, keeping the bloody handle out of sight.
"All right." The deputy turned. "One of you trusties come down here and get the mop!" he shouted.
* * *
Sick call. The doctor stood outside the bars, distributing aspirins from a night club cigar and cigarette tray strapped to a hospital-frocked fairy.
"Doc, I got gangrene in my prick. I need some sulfa drugs to-"
"Aspirins," said the doctor. "Next!" lisped the fairy.
"There's a big tumor on the rim of mv ass-hole, and I-"
"Aspirins," said the doctor.
"Next!"
"I'm in the dryreaches, Doc. Got the shakes bad. I been retchin' all night, and I soaked that damn mattress fulla sweat. If you don't send me up to the hospital, I'll get the D.T.'s-"
"Aspirins."
"Next!"
"Doctor. The vomer bone in my nose-"
"Aspirins."
"Next!"
"Gimme two 5-grain aspirins," said Okie.'I'm turnin' into a woman. Man hips are roundin' out, mah tits are swellin', and ass-hole is openin' up lak a man-eatin' flower...."
"Aspirins."
"Next!"
"I have a headache," said Odin.
The doctor looked at him suspiciously. "Where?"
"Here." Odin touched the back of his head.
"Muscles pull?"
"Um."
"Give this man some chlorpromazine," ordered the doctor.
"Yes, sir!" lisped the fairy. He snapped to attention.
"How you lak that?" said Okie as they walked down the gallery. "This guy's got a headache and they give him Rauwolfia ... Ah'm on the aidge of turnin' into a woman-they gi' me aspirins..."
"Odin's a V.I.P., " said Kaintucky. "Anybody can see that!"
"Yeah!" Okie gave Odin an odd look. "You a movie star or somethin'? "
Odin didn't answer. In one of the cells a man had covered the lower bunk with a couple of blankets, screening out the inside like a hut or covered wagon. There was a small round hole waist-high in one of the blankets. For twenty-five cents a man could insert his lingam in the hole and have it sucked off.
"Anonymously," said Okie.
"Yeah." Kaintucky glanced at the cell. "Out on Road Camp they got a Trojan horse with a naked kid inside. You push your cock through the wooden ass-hole and the kid jerks you off. For a dime more he'll suck it. Fifteen cents and he'll turn around inside the horse and put his ass up against the wooden ass-hole."
"READY FOR THE SHAKE DOWN!" shouted a turnkey.
"What the fuck we need a shakedown for?" said Kaintucky.
Okie shrugged. "I heard somebody say this tank goes to the showers today."
"Christ, we just had a shower last night!" Kaintucky turned to Odin. "Each tank gets a bath and a change o' clothes once a week," he explained. "It's just our goddamn luck to get into a tank where they got shower-day this mawnin'. "
"One shower a week ain't much," Okie agreed. "In the summer a man sweats a stink in them starched shirts 'n' dungarees."
"You said it, man."
They stopped and leaned their elbows back against the metal counter, watching the men in the cells as they spread their personal belongings on newspapers on the floor.
"I wonder where that dope-fiend mothah stashed his syringe while the shakedown was goin' on," mused Okie.
Kaintucky: "Up the shitter, most likely."
Odin looked at the milk cartons full of L.A. County jelly: the old socks and razor blades, the paper and pencil stubs, the torn magazines, the commissary pies and candy, the dirty combs, the mirrors, the Bull Durham sacks, the cigarettes, the bars of Lifebuoy soap-all the essentials of Good Cellkeeping.
"When Mark Twain was a young ass-hole a friend of his saw him one day with a cigar box under his arm," said Okie. "So the guy says, 'Sam, you're gonna smoke yourself to death,' and Mark Twain says: 'Oh this ain't cigars. I'm just movin' again.'"
Kaintucky turned to Odin. "You believe half of that, suh, and I'll believe the other half."
"Consider yo'self slapped in the face and challenged to a fuck-match," said Okie.
"Suh! Consider yo'self fucked fo' times through the nose-hole..."
Odin stared into the distance, as though seeing beyond the walls and looking at something, far away. Behind him
Oscar the newsboy pushed his truck along the corridor outside the bars.
"Hey, Oscar!" shouted Kaintucky. "You got the L.A. Times?"
"Yes, I do," said Oscar.
"Well, shove it up your ass!"
"Ha ha ha!"
"Don't give Oscar a hard time," said Okie. "He's a good kid..."
"Kid? He's fifty-two years old."
"Ha ha!"
"Listen," said Kaintucky. "We better stock up on pies when that commissary truck comes around. It don't come ever' day an' we can make money on 'em!"
"Sho'. And get some milk and a deck of cards. We'll need it over the week-end."
"Yeah. In this joint starches take the place o' pro-teins. I remember the Ol' Perfesser used to have two fried eggs, toast 'n' coffee in the mawnin'. For lunch he had cottage cheese 'n' crackers, celery 'n' carrot sticks, a hard boiled egg, and soupe du jour! Then in the evenin' he'd sit behind them damn flowers and eat shrimp cocktail, steak well-done, apple pie 'n' coffee."
"Who's that? ... Ol' Casey?"
"Hell, yes," said Kaintucky. "I used to eat his garbage."
"Fuck garbage," said Okie. "I'm so hungry I'd eat his shit. Wish I had some."
"C'mon. Showers!"
* * *
At noon they got a cup of bean juice and a slice of bread. Kaintucky washed his socks in the toilet bowl. Okie scrubbed a couple of white "goin'-to-court" shirts and hung them up to dry on a string suspended from the gallery bars.
"Ah always wanted to keep house for a man," he grinned. "If somebody'd just give me a chance, I'd be the greatest lady since Irma La Douche."
Kaintucky hung his socks on the top bunk and plastered his handkerchief to the wall.
"You got the girlish figgah, all right," he said. "But do you piss sittin' down?"
"Sho', " said Okie. "And I shit standin' up!"
"A real woman!" yelled Kaintucky. "Where you been all mah lahf, suguh?"
In the smaller tank across the corridor a man was down on his knees, sucking a seventeen-year-old's banana. In his left hand he held a shaving mirror and watched himself from the corners of his eyes.
"What you lookin' at, boy?" said Okie.
Odin shrugged and leaned against the bars. The man in the other tank pulled away and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Then-pressing his lips against the mirror's surface-he kissed and tongued his own reflection.
"SmackO!" Kaintucky was saying. "I remember this Chink who stuck his head in the door just when it was closin'. His skull cracked open like one o' them rotten eggs they're always eatin'. Scrambled brains all ovah the flo'. "
"Wasn't he the guy who sent all them letters to the President's wife, asking her to send him some of her pubic hairs?"
"Yeah. And the crazy Chink traced the outline of his cock on the bottom of the letters and signed 'em Chiang Kai-shek!"
"J. Edgar Hoover knew it was a Chinese cock right away..." Okie explained to Odin. "It was four and a half inches long and looked like a monkey's tittle."
"Hiroshima, Mon Amour ! " yelled Kaintucky.
"Yeah. Frenchwomen love 'em. A Chinee cock can fit into a frog's ass real good. I hear Mao Tse-tung-likes to hold a duck between his legs and make it bleed in the rectum. Then when he gets close to the climax, he wrings its neck..."
"HAEMORRHOIDS?' shouted Kaintucky.
"Sho' gives that of sphincter a lotta suction at the last minute..."
"Ah-haaaa!" sang Kaintucky. "There's nothin' lak the grippin', suckin' power of a young frog!" The number One trusty stopped outside the door. "You guys taking over this cell?" he asked. "What's it to you, wop?"
"There's thirty guys with seniority ahead of you-"
"Now, wait a minute!" said Okie. "We bought this cell from the hophead who was in here before!"
"You can't buy a cell from anybody-you know that. You've got to wait your turn. I assign 'em!"
"Sure," said Kaintucky. "But these other guys done give Up their seniority to let us have it. Ask 'em if you don't think it's true."
"I don't have to ask 'em," said the trusty. "You guys probably told 'em you'd give 'em a blanket job if they didn't!"
Okie grinned. In a blanket job three or four boys threw a blanket over a man's head at night and beat the shit out of him with socks full of coins and hard yellow soap.
"There is honor among thieves! Thieves are never rogues among themselves! A plague upon it!" thundered Kaintucky.
Okie held out three one-dollar bills between his foreand middle finger.
"Why don't you buy a dildo," he said, "and go fuck yourself like a good li'l dago?"
The trusty glanced over his shoulder toward la linea. Then he snatched the money and stuffed it into his pants pocket.
"All right, but don't make no trouble down here. The screw won't like it."
"We won't even sing the St. Louis Toodleoo Blues," promised Kaintucky in a hoarse whisper.
"All right, Satchmo. And don't shit in any empty tin cans." The trusty walked down the gallery with his hips swinging.
"Li'l wop ass-hole," muttered Kaintucky. "You guys got any eggs for sale?" A toothless paper hanger stuck his head through the door.
"What the fuck you want aigs fur?" asked Okie. "I-likes to suck 'em!"
Kaintucky: "Go lay one yourself, you damn leghorn!"
The paper hanger's head disappeared.
"What he think?" said Okie. "We run a poultry sto'? "
A Pachuco with a d.a. haircut greased in place walked into the cell and leaned a hand against the wall, straddling the toilet.
"What the fuck you think you're doin'? " boomed Kaintucky.
The punk looked over his shoulder. "Pissin', " he said.
"Oh no, you ain't!" Kaintucky grabbed him by the shoulder and threw him out through the door.
"Delinquents!" he spat. "Imagine walkin' into a man's cell and passin' in his shitter?"
"He's one o' them Eyetalian vitelloni," said Okie. "Means fat calves..."
"In Africa they call 'em tsotsies," said Kaintucky.
"Li'l Mambo Boys in Japan-give their siff to mama san!"
"You'll regret that!" the boy with the d.a. haircut shouted from the gallery. "You don't know what I'm in for!"
"The sixteen-year-old killer who thinks he's tough," chuckled Kaintucky. "I'll shove a glass straw up his prick and hammer it to pieces!"
"All these punks are tough on the outside," said Okie. "In a gang with fifteen other guys backin' 'em up, they're tough-"
"Tough shit," said Kaintucky.
"-but when they're alone they're chicken. Ha! I've seen 'em sit in here discouraged and beaten like some old con. They got no beliefs, no ambitions, no future. Nothin'. Weaklings-ever' one o' them. Impotent. Desperate for security. Afraid. Yeah-aggravated! They know damn well they're inferior!"
'To kill and rob-to be bad-that's normal human behavior," said Kaintucky. "To be good, that's abnormal. Ever'body should strive for the abnormal-the unnatural!"
"Hey, here's the commissary truck! Getcha money out, boy!" Okie and Kaintucky shoved murderers and traffic offenders out of the way and Odin walked up to the bars, like a movie star. "Get ten apple pies and five cherries," advised Okie. "We'll need two or three quarts of milk, about twenty-five candy bars, a deck of Bicycle cards, a coupla hair combs, and a dozen-"
"Take it easy, willja?" said Kaintucky.
Odin reached for the miniature yellow pies through the bars and handed them back to Okie along with the milk cartons and the candy. Then he bought combs, a mirror, razors, blades, Lifebuoy soap, playing cards, a nail clipper, toothpaste, brushes, talcum powder, cigarettes.
"Ain't it nice to be rich!" Kaintucky said to the convicts around him. "Ain't it nice?"
Okie: "Don't make 'em jealous, you nasty!"
The men scowled and opened their old tobacco sacks, taking out dimes and nickels.
"I been robbed!" a man screamed from one of the cells. "In here-under the mattress! Full of money. A Bull Durham sack!"
Kaintucky grinned a shitty grin at Odin and Okie. Then he said in a loud voice:
"Thieves are never rogues among themselves! A plague upon it!"
* * *
Four o'clock. "When I was sixteen-years old I killed a man..." Okie wiped cherry pie from his lips and elevated his head, letting milk run into his gullet straight from the carton. "The guy was principal of our school. Big guywouldn't let us play ball on the front lawn. I had this metal tube about three-feet long like the barrel of a baby bazooka. In one end I had a big heavy spring and a trigger device..."
"What'd you do?" asked Kaintucky.
Okie took another swallow of milk. "When I pulled down the spring and put a baseball in the barrel I could shoot it like a gun. The trigger released the spring and the spring would send that baseball shooting into a pillow, folding it up in the middle and sinking it deep into a chair. Powerful."
"Ha!"
"So one day I took it to school-the barrel was like one o' them telescopes pirates use. You could fold it up. Anyhow, nobody was lookin' so I shot the principal. The ball smashed him on the lower left side of his ear. POW! He kinda staggered on the top of the stairs and dropped to the ground."
"Hurt bad?" asked Kaintucky.
"The Doc said he was dead when he reached the bottom step. They never found the baseball kids that did it."
"Well," said Kaintucky. "Accidents will happen."
* * *
Dinner. Baloney, soggy bread, a scoop of macaroni, a small orange. Rotten. Okie spat his hot chocolate into the toilet.
"Not if I was dyin' in the desert," he said.
Kaintucky sat down on the seatless toilet and balanced the mess-hall tray on his knees. He glanced at the three empty milk containers regretfully.
"We shoulda saved some of that cow juice," he said. "But," he frowned, "what the hell."
"You want some o' this macaroni, Odin?" asked Okie.
"No thanks."
They ate in silence for a while.
"That crazy Bicycle Sniffer," Okie said at last "I wonder what tank they put him in?"
"Nigger tank," said Kaintucky. "He's wild about them black farts."
"I once saw him shit on his plate. Then he put his pecker on top of it and jerked off-"
"Puddin' and whipped cream, they call it."
"-yeah, and he ate it too. I'll never forget time he got a sweet tooth for a spick's prick."
"Tres chic," said Kaintucky. "Le Cloaque. Eau de Cologne. Lak the pissoirs of Paris."
"What's the name o' that actress who pan only make it with spicks, niggers 'n' Japs? You know, the blonde with the two big ones?"
"Oh, yeah." Kaintucky munched on his baloney. "I know the one you mean. Can't think of her name, though."
"She's a case, ain't she?-likes to rim those guys-she'll be down there lickin' their ass and pushin' their cheeks apart. Moves her head around in a circle, they tell me."
"Them Spicklickers're all the same," said Kaintucky.
"Yeah, and sticks that old tongue right up there. Wheeee! Guy told me she makes the niggers lie on their backs with their legs over their head. They gotta clasp their arms behind their knees to stay that way."
"It's a matter of position," said Kaintucky. "Wet farts."
"And then there's that other one. The brunette bull-dike. She's got this six-inch dildo made outta Indian rubber, and all the li'l starlets are just creamin' their pussies when she's around. Just thinkin' about her makes their sex open and close. I watched them knockin' their knees together and clappin' their thighs. Man, you never seen leg-rubbers and sex-squeezers like that!"
"Ob-sean," said Kaintucky. "Disgustipating!"
Odin ate his macaroni.
"Yeah." Okie poured his cup of county-owned chocolate into the sink and flushed it down the drain with cold water. "In her dressing room she fucks the girls with the dildo. Homogenized milk shoots out of the shaft when she squeezes it. Shoves it into their ass like a corkscrew. The future brides of America! Mothers of the World!! Unite!! ! You got nothin' to lose but ... a fart!! ! ! "
"The beast with two backs," said Kaintucky. "The boys play it with ten toes down ... the girls with ten toes up!"
"Except the lesbians. They do it with twenty toes down!"
"When they're fuckin' each other in the ass."
"Yeah!"
"But what about when they're bumpin' pussies?"
Odin closed his eyes. The freeway wound along behind his lids at terrific speed. Cahuenga Boulevard-Hollywood-Sunset-Santa Monica. Darkness. Night. The whine of tires. Great circles of headlights. Rivers of red-eyed bugs. The backwash from a truck, wind: like the blow of a fist. Speeding! Faster and faster. His right leg trembled against his trousers.
"What the hell's the matter with your leg, boy? It's goin' up and down a mile a minute," said Okie. Then: "You got it on a nerve or somethin'? "
Odin opened his lids and stared straight at the wall, his eyes distended. It was as if he were listening to a beat they couldn't hear.
"If a guy don't keep pace with ever'body else, maybe it's because he hears a different trumpet," said Kaintucky. "Didn't you ever read Thoreau, you damn hillbilly?"
"Sho'. And yo' head do grow beneath yo' shoulders-"
"Ya old goat!"
Okie gave Odin the O-sign and said, "Anybody collsja nuts, just consider the source, boy!"
"Ah never called him nuts!" shouted Kaintucky.
"Yes you did. You said Odin is-"
"Different!" Kaintucky jumped up, waving his fist threateningly in front of Okie's nose. "I know what you're up to you damn hillbilly. You're tryin' to set Odin against me! But you won't get away with it. He's too smart for you, rummy. He can see right through you-"
"Who you callin' a rummy?" Okie sprang up like a jack-in-the-box and grabbed Kaintucky's shirt front.
"Look out, fella!" shouted Kaintucky.
"Shut up," said Odin.
They both looked at him. Then, slowly, Okie let go of the shirt and Kaintucky sat down on the toilet.
"You act like a couple of fourteen-year-olds," Odin said-and then: "How old are you, Okie?"
Okie sat down on the bunk and hung his head in shame like a small boy. He looked over at Odin without lifting his face.
"Old enough," he mumbled.
"Why'n't you smack 'im one?" Kaintucky advised Odin. Odin looked at him and Kaintucky ducked his headjerking it uncomfortably as though his collar was too tight
"You guys innarested in pictures?" a jailhouse lawyer asked from the doorway.
"What kinda pictures?" said Kaintucky.
The man looked around furtively and slipped into the cell. He fanned out a dozen white cards in his hand.
"The best," he said. "Men with women. Boys with men. Men with men. Women with girls. Girls with monkeys. You name it. Every position and every perversion in the book."
"What book? The Bible?" Kaintucky took one of the cards. He turned it over. "There's two layers of paper," he said.
"Sure. Jerk the bottom card back and forth and you'll see action..."
"I'll be damn!" Kaintucky stared at the picture and moved the bottom layer back and forth. The figures went into action. There were four men and a woman on a bed. One had her in front while another took her from behind. The third man employed her mouth and the fourth lay in an inverted order with his head towards her feet, practicing coitus inter mammae.
"Christ," said Kaintucky. "What won't they think of next!"
Okie took one of the cards and whistled through his teeth.
"Picasso draws dirty pictures," he said. "But not as good as this. I've always thought he was an over-rated artist."
"What you mean, 'dirty pictures?'" Kaintucky reached for the one Okie had. "Picasso draws women with square tits!"
"No, I mean what he does on the side. There's one with a guy on his hands and knees, kissin' a broad between the legs."
"Yeah?"
"Sho. And there's another one with a snake on the ground that's got a hat on. He's stickin' a pointed tongue into some broad's ass while she's lyin' on the ground."
"That's right," said the lawyer. "I've heard about that."
"Picasso can't draw worth a shit," said Okie. "Looks like some li'l kid did it."
"Yeah. He sure done fooled the public into thinkin' he's a genius..."
"Some o' the public you can fool all o' the time," snorted Okie. "You draw these?" Kaintucky asked the lawyer.
"No, I just sell 'em for a guy in another tank."
"A real artist!" Okie said admiringly. "Look at this one!" Odin looked at a picture of a blonde white woman and a big purple-assed baboon. "Makes a guy want a honeymoon in his hand." 'Whose hand?"
"Here's a funny one," said the lawyer. "The broad's got a mousetrap between her legs and the guy is getting ready to-"
"That's a cartoon," said Kaintucky. "I like these artistic ones better."
"This reminds me of the time I got my dick stuck in a beer bottle," said Okie, holding up a picture. "I was at a party out in Hollywood and I had to piss. Unfortunately, there wasn't no shifter around so I tried to do it in a bottle in the kitchen."
"What happened?"
"Well, I don't know how it happened, but suddenly I got a hard-on and I couldn't get my prick out. I swear to God, that son-of-a-bitch was all the way down in the neck of that fuckin' bottle. So when the hostess comes into the kitchen with three or four other girls ... Christ, I almost shit in my pants!"
"I can imagine," said the lawyer.
Kaintucky: "What you do?"
"Nothin' I could do 'cept shove the bottle inside my pants and button up the fly."
"Didn't they notice the bulge?"
"Shit, yeah. One o' them got me into a corner and started feelin' me through my pants. T never knew a man with one that hard!' she said. I nearly died!"
"A beer bottle fulla piss," Kaintucky repeated. Then: "Ah pissed in a milk bottle once. A whole quart. And Ah still had piss left over. Didn't know what to do with it."
"Same thing happened to me once," the lawyer told them. "I was in my room and my mother didn't want me to leave it because the ladies in the bridge club were there. So when I hadda piss I did it in a empty Coke bottle I had under my bed. But I sure underestimated the amount of piss I had in me. That old bottle was full in a couple of seconds and I still had four bottles of piss left in my bladder."
"Ttttttttttttt," said Kaintucky. "Tttttttttttttttt."
"I once shot it in a water pistol," said Okie. "Boy-oh-boy, did them li'l girls get mad!"
"Talkin' 'bout beer." Kaintucky licked his lips. "I sure would like a tall cool one now. Did you ever try Carlsberg...? Thirty-nine cents a bottle, in a frosty glass, ice cold. Oooh! Ooooooooooh! Ooooooooooh!"
Okie shuddered and closed his eyes.
"A big frosty bottle with moisture runnin' down the sides," he said. "I can just see it now. It's standin' onna table with ice-cold drops of water-"
"Will you stop it!" said the lawyer. "You guys could drive a man nuts!"
"Ever go fishin' with a case of beer?" Okie asked dreamily. "Jes let that ol' anchor down and drift a little befo' the iron takes hold. Then you lie back and throw the empty bottles over your shoulder-"
"-into the bilge," Kaintucky finished. "Man, this fella's bilge is nothin' but a black hole fulla beer cans, oil, watter, gas 'n' dead fish. It just swirls around yo' feet and smells so nasty!"
"Ah keeps ever'thin' ship-shape!" snapped Okie.
"Shoe, yo' do. Who save yo' lahf when yo' was three miles out and the fuckin' rudder fell off?"
"All right," sighed Okie. "You won't ever let me forget it, will ya?"
"This guy was in a panic," Kaintucky continued delightedly. "'Oh, we gonna die!' he moaned. 'What'll we do? What'll we do! Just like a woman. And here we was five miles out and driftin'. Man, I jes take that ol' moorin' line and ties a couple o' seat cushions to it, plus a bucket and the tackle box. Then I throw it overboard and let the line play out, easy like. The motor's still goin' chuck-chuck so I just stand in the stern and pretty soon the drag's good as a rudder. Move the line a li'l to port and the boat moves over. Move it a li'l to starboard, shit, it moves that way. I done steered that fucker right into harbor."
"You genius," said Okie. "Tell them about the time you was buildin' a car." He turned to Odin and the lawyer. "He took a motor from a Jaguar, the body from a Studebaker Avanti, and the bumpers from a T-bird..."
"What'd he get?" asked the lawyer.
"Ninety days," said Kaintucky. "On the County Road Camp."
* * *
Count-Time. The men lined up on the gallery in threes as a deputy walked down the corridor outside the tank, counting them. Inside the tank the number One trusty kept pace with the deputy until they reached the end of the block where they tallied up.
"Everyone's present and accounted for," said the deputy.
"COUNT'S OVER!"
The lines of men outside the cells disintegrated. One of the bindle-stiffs dropped down on his knees and shuffled after the trusty, his face level with the wobbling behind.
"J-E-L-L-O! That spells puddin', boy!"
"Royal Puddin'! "
"You little punka, you!"
Okie and Kaintucky went into cell 12, followed by Odin. A homosexual on the gallery bit off a piece of orange and held it between his teeth. One of the tank's fifty-five year old girl-boys bit off half of it at the homo's lips and kissed him. The two men giggled like a couple of lesbians. In the corridor the loudspeaker played Tangerine.
"I wish the Christ we could close that doh," said Okie. "I shouldn't even be lookin' at dat kinda thing. Hit mought spile mah morals."
"You sweet young ass-hole, you!"
"Yair! ... Thrilly-Dilly!"
"They should set the po-lice atter them," agreed Kaintucky. "Hit's disgustipating."
Okie sat down on the bunk and shuffled the Bicycle cards.
"I jes' don't feel I belong in this kinda place," he said. "Ob-sean," agreed Kaintucky.
At the door a traffic offender stood staring at Odin while stroking a hand along the metal bars.
"Git outta here, you damn cocksucker!" Okie threw a spoon at him and the scofflaw disappeared.
"Call," said Kaintucky.
"Three of a kind." Okie put down three aces, a seven and a trey.
Kaintucky scowled at the cards. "Kiss my ass," he said. "Now, don't git romantical, honey!" In the next round Kaintucky looked at his hand and folded on the first draw.
"Shit," he said. "Wish it was Sunday."
"What for?" asked Okie. "Meat loaf, you damn hillbilly."
"And taters!"
Odin sat on the toilet, immobile, like a fisherman carved out of wood.
"When you think you're goin' to court, boy?" asked Okie.
"Um." Odin stared across the cell at whatever it was he was watching.
Kaintucky: "He'll go on Monday." Then: "You'll be listenin' at the hearing, won't you, boy."
"Um."
"Hee hee."
Okie: "One thing you got to remember. When they give you that oath and put your hand on the Bible, it means if you tell a lie, you got to stick with it."
"Yessir," said Kaintucky. "And don't tell 'em your name's Wild. They'll never believe it. Tell them you're Henry Cabot Lodge and the Judge'll say 'That's better; don't try that Wild stuff on me!"
"Matildy," sang Harry Belafonte on the loudspeaker, "done run Venezuela ... "
"Oh, ya had plenty money back in '62!" Kaintucky sang off key. "Ya let women make a fool outta yoou! ... Why don'tcha doo right? Lak some other creeps dooooo!"
"The D.A. put fo' guys on the stand to testify they seen me do it," Okie said to Odin, "so I got eight guys to testify they didn't see me do it."
"Who won the case?" asked Kaintucky.
"I did! Eight witnesses to four! It was a preponderance of evidence!"
"Song of the talkin' ass-hole," said Kaintucky. Then, in falsetto: "Mah face, Ah don't mind it. 'Cause I is behind it It's folks out in front that I jar!"
Okie spat a stream of brown juice into the sink.
"Dropped my terbaccer inna shitter. Don't taste right no mo'. She-it!"
"I know a fella in Oklahoma lost all his teef chewin' tobacco," said Kaintucky. "Yet that crazy li'l fucker could play a five string banjo better'n anybody!"
"Ol' Dan Tucker ... yo' too late ta git yo' suuupperrr!"
"Tell 'em yo' crazy," Okie advised Odin. "The defense has one doctor who says the guy is nuts. The D.A. gets two doctors who say he ain't nuts. Then the defense raise him two doctors like in a poker game. The side with the most doctors wins! ... Hit's a preponderance of expert testimony!"
"Expert's the fella long ways from home," said Kaintucky. "Anybody can fool 'em."
"Sho," said Okie. "Just tell 'em you think you're a sheep and say Ba-a-a to ever'thin'. What's yo' name? Ba-a-a. What you in fer? Ba-a-a-a ... "
"And when it comes time to pay 'em their fee," said Kaintucky. "Just tell' em Ba-a-a-a-a!"
"That's supposed to be my line, ya old goat!"
"Objection, Your Honor! I don't think you have no patent on no old jokes ever'body's tellin'. "
"Ever'body's tellin'! " shouted Okie. "You ever hear about The Kaintucky Cardinal? Customer says to the guy in the bookstore 'No, I don't want to read about no preacher,' so the guy says 'But this Cardinal is a bird, ma'am,' and the woman says, T don't give a shit what his private life is!'"
"I heard it!" hooted Kaintucky. "I heard it!"
"WHEN?"
"Thutty years ago."
"FUCKER!" screamed Okie. "FUCKER!"
"You crazy son of a bitch! That joke's fifty years old!"
"FUCKER! FUCKER!"
Kaintucky turned towards Odin.
"Can't you make 'im shut up?" he whined. "The screws'll be here any minute!"
Odin looked at the prehistoric, moronic scribblings etched into the green wall. My name is Candy. My telephone number is Sunset 77. I want a long hot dick up my ass tonight. Pictures of cocks and balls. Open ass-holes. A woman's breast squeezed into a cunt with hair on it Coitus per anum. Qinnilingus. A big prick inside a boy's mouth. More notes: I like to suck. I want to lick your ass. Beat me-throw me on a bed and fuck me. Oh' you BIG daddy, you! Then in pencil: "Sammy eats shit." No he don't "Yes, I do!" Soixante-neuf. Drawings of men in the 69. Women with bananas between them. Two girls using a curved cucumber-one half inside the "butch" and the other half inside the "femme." Daughters of Bilitis. Unite! You got nothing to lose ... but ... a fart!
"AAAAAAAGH!"
Okie broke an iron bar off the top bunk and waved the edge in front of Kaintucky's face.
"Ya want me to knock ya eyeballs out?" he said "Ya want a crack across the skull, ya old goat!"
Kaintucky flapped his arms like a rooster.
"Get away!" he shouted. "A-waaaaaaaaaaay."
"Kiss it!" Okie held the jagged edge closer. Kaintucky stared at him. "Kiss it! Lick the mother-fucker!"
Kaintucky stared at Okie with unspoken terror in his eyes. Then he leaned forward and ran his tongue up and down the dirty edge of the bar.
"Hah!" Okie cracked the iron across Kaintucky's skull and knocked him cold.
"What you do that for?" asked Odin.
"Give 'em hell when they need it. That's what Harry said. Best damn Pres'dent we ever had!"
Odin looked at a picture of a ventriloquist talking into a vagina. The vagina looked like Fidel Castro's mouth with a cigar in it.
Bearded Pussy:-I took a sample of Brand X tee vee beer to a chemist for analysis.
Ventriloquist: "What happened?"
Bearded Pussy:-The chemist told me my dog's got diabetes.
"Piss like a cow, fuck like a duck ... mama wants a dick in the ass-hole!"
In the U.S. of A. In the U.S. of A. In the motherfuckin' U. S. A.
-O' Lay!
* * *
Lights out. The men who slept on the gallery floor dragged their filthy urine-streaked mattresses out of the cells and unrolled them-sardine fashion-along the corridor bars. In cell 12 Odin took the top bunk, Okie took the bottom. Kaintucky lay unconscious on the floor.
"Lookit that," said Okie. "Sleepin' lak a baby. Sure wish I could do that."
"You can," said Odin. Then: "Hand me that iron bar."
"Ah'm only kiddin'! " said Okie.
He quickly slipped the bar into place beneath Odin's mattress.
"There your are, boy. Just like new."
"Um."
Odin lay back on the mattress and put his hands behind his head. He stared at the ceiling. It was a hot summer afternoon. He was lying in a corn field, looking at the sky. Clouds drifted by overhead. The corn was a yellow sea, swaying in the wind. Birds whistled: crickets were chirping. Somewhere, far away, a cow bellowed.
"Thinkin' 'bout girls?" asked Okie.
Odin glanced at him. "Get Kaintucky's head out of that bowl."
"Sho. Okie pulled Kaintucky up by the shoulders and then unrolled him on the mattress. "Wanna wash yo' socks?" he said.
Odin glanced at him again. "No."
Okie shrugged his shoulders and laid Kaintucky out like a corpse. He hummed "In the Sweet Bye and Bye" and finally broke into "Cha-ri-ooo-ot...
" ... comin' fer to carry me hooooooooooome!"
"For Christ's sake." Odin reached down and smacked him across the head. "Shut up, can't you?"
"Sho, boss."
Okie folded Kaintucky's hands on his chest and looked down at him like an undertaker.
"Another stiff ready fer the graveyard," he said. "Lak the man said, 'Do folks die here often?' and the deppity says, 'No, only once.'"
"Ha. Ha." The door slammed shut and a wino on the gallery looked in through the bars. "Put one o' them brown LA. County paper suits and a dickey on him. Okie. Coupla cardboard shoes. That's all you need for a two-dollar L.A. funeral."
"Sho 'nuff," said Okie. "And who gits that two bucks?"
"Somebody gits it. Dat's for sure. Them suits don't cost more'n two bits a piece. Ain't no back to 'em. Just the front..."
"Well, that's all you need. They don't bury you ass up!"
"No. They stuff old rags and cotton into the stiffs ass-hole and tie his prick up double with a string. That way nothing'll run out."
"Stuff rags in his mouth, too," said one of the others. "I seen 'em do it!"
"Why, sho," said Okie. "Up in San Quentin when somebody's knocked off in the gas chamber, they got big needles they stick in a guy's heart. Then they tie his toes together and toss him on a shelf in the ice box."
"Yeah." The wino scratched his crotch. "I knew a Chinese fag with a prick so small he was afraid it would contract right up into his body. You know-in the cavity where the balls come from?"
"Sho," said Okie. "Befo' they drop into the sack."
"That's it! Man, this Chinese fag thought his prick would slip right up there and he wouldn't have nothin' left. Ha. Ha. He used to tie his prick to his leg with a tie-down thong, like the strings cowboys pass through the 'toe' of their holsters and tie around their legs. Ha. Ha."
"I knew a guy with three balls," said another convict. "He didn't have no balls till he was seventeen years old. Then the doctor had to give him a operation in the canal. That old doc' was sure surprised when all them balls dropped into the sack."
"Ha!"
"Ain't nobody got three balls," said the wino. "Musta been some kinda freak."
"You know what a gynandromorph is?" asked Okie.
"Sho," said the wino. "It's a guy with no corpuscles. His blood don't clot."
"No it ain't," said one of the others. "It's a dame with a beard in her ass."
"Shit." Okie sat down on the toilet. "A gynandromorph is a critter that ain't a he or a she. I seen one down in Mehico."
"It's gotta be one or the other!"
"The hell it does. This one had a dick and a pussy between its legs."
"Could it fuck itself?"
"No; but it could fuck or get fucked. Either one."
"What was its name."
"Nikita Banana," said Okie. "Ha. Ha."
"Oh, Christ!"
Odin closed his eyes. A Ferrari in the middle of nowhere. The dust on the fender was streaked with dog piddle. There was a girl lying on the road with her dress pulled up. A Negro was kneeling beside her, fingering the blonde sanctuary between her legs. Odin's face was dusty. He raised his sunglasses and two white saucers circled his eyes. Behind the Ferrari a big blue-and-silver Greyhound bus came to a stop, its air-brakes letting out a long, mournful sigh.
TWELVE
The next day was Sunday. "What a Frien' we have in Jeeeee-sus! La-la, la, la, la, la, la!" Kaintucky stuck his hand between the gallery bars and pinched one of the Salvation Army girls in the ass. She dropped her tambourine and jumped three feet into the air, squawking like an outraged hen.
"Whaaaaaaaaaaa a Frien' we have in Jeeeeeeeee-sus ... "La-la, la, la, la, la, la!"
The other homely schizoids from the Army plunked their guitars and rattled their tambourines as though in a trance. A man playing an accordion stepped in front of the tank's bars to give The Word. He had a piece of his shirt tail sticking out of his fly.
"I was a Sex Fiend!" he boomed. "I took drugs and drunk bad likker! I was no good! I was like you guys in there!"
The prisoners moved closer to the bars-the Sunday preacher took a step backwards.
"I was a ass!" he shouted. "I was no good! I was just like you! I lived in sin! I done horrible things!"
His shabby trousers were stiff with urine. Hairs stuck out of his ears and nose holes. He had halitosis. Yellow crescents of sweat were rotting his shirt under the armpits.
"I was a mess!" he screamed. "I was behind them bars you're behind now! I never seen the light! I never had nobody tell me God is Love! I never had nobody tell me Jesus Saves!"
"Sweet Jesus!" hollered Okie.
"Oh, yeah!"
"Sing it, 'Bertha..."
One of the Salvation Army homelies stepped forward and sang off key: "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat a Frien' we have in Jeeeeeee-sus!" and the prisoners followed up with-"La-la, la, la, la, la, la!..."
There was a tremendous black wart on the tip of the girl's nose from which long hairs were sprouting. She was fantastically ugly.
"La-la, la, la, la, la, la!"
"Why doncha shave yo' nose?" hollered Okie from cell 12. Then-against all the Sunday regulations-he opened his trousers and put two fingers up his ass, whistling like a mockingbird.
"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaa a Frien' we have in Jeeeeeeeeee-sus! "La-la, la, la, la, la, la!"
"Give her a thrill," haw-hawed Kaintucky. "That's what they come in here for!"
"Christ," said Okie, sitting down on the toilet. "Shouldn't nobody be forced to listen to that!"
"Better not let the screws catch you on that shitter," said a statutory rapist "You'll end up in the Hole and you won't get no meat loaf."
"Fuck meat loaf," said Okie. "They can serve it with tutti-frutti for all I ker. When I gotta shit, I gotta shit. I don't hold it back for nothin' or nobody!"
"Not even the Army of The Lord?"
"Fuck the Army of the Lord! Shit on it! If they had some good-lookin' gals out there. ... Ah might reconsider."
PLOP!
Okie spread his legs and looked down at a brown turd floating in the water. "Hello, baby," he said.
"Ain't that sweet!" A wino gazed tenderly into the basin. "How old is it?"
"Jes' bown," said Okie. He puffed out his chest, bursting with pride.
"Looks like its mama!"
"Yeah. But it got your expression on its sweet li'l face."
"DADDY!"
Somebody handed the wino a cigar. Okie emptied his bladder.
"Hey, don't pee on it!" shouted the wino. "That's my baby!"
"I'm its mother," said Okie. "I reckon I knows how to bring up a child!" The rapist: "Don't piss on His offspring, Mary."
"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat a Frien' we have in Jeeeeeeeeee-sus! "La-la, la, la, la, la, la!"
* * *
In the late afternoon they had meat loaf, a scoop of Jell-O and mashed potatoes. Most of the winos and bindle-stiifs immediately sold their food for money or cigarettes. The meat loaf was expensive-it was sold and resold. Kaintucky bought eight.
"What the fuck're you gonna do with all them turds?" asked Okie.
"Eat 'em!"
"She-it. Cain't nobody eat eight o' them horse patties."
"I can."
"Sho," said Okie. "And you'd eat nigger shit, too, if they give it to you."
"Nigger shit 'n' Jell-O. Shake that money-maker, honeyl"
Kaintucky sat down on the toilet and spooned meat loaf into himself. Okie and Odin sat on the bottom bunk. Outside the cell the winos ate mashed potatoes along the long metal counter that was fixed to the gallery bars.
"Nigger gals' got nice wobbly asses," Kaintucky corn-holed through a mouth full of food. "Way they walk they shake 'em lak Jell-O."
"Sho," said Okie. "Some nigger gal's got nice asses. Tits too. But it ain't ever'body. There's some real freaks walkin' around..."
"There's white freaks walkin' around, too," said Kaintucky.
"Yeah, but even if a nigger's got a nice ass and tits, she don't always have good-lookin' legs. Most of 'em got legs that look like match-sticks. Same thing with the Chinee's. There's something wrong with the calf. Too skinny and the muscles are knotted."
"Whut you mean, knotted?"
"Knotted-you ever seen them skinny legs on wadin' birds."
"Um."
"A ass on toothpicks," Kaintucky mouthed through his Jell-O. "Wish I had one..."
"I had a nigger gal once," said Okie. "Made her pose in all them po-sitions you see in Playboy ... while beatin' my own meat..."
"Shit. Back home we jes' walked into the Trailways station and put a note in the colo'd ladies room. For five or six bucks in cash we could have any piece o' black meat in town for a all night mouthand ass-hole date."
"Ha. Ha. Nigger buck I know used to walk around with a big sawed-off shotgun down his right pants' leg. Always limpin' lak that when he was out lookin' for his fat-assed wife. She'd open that pee hole for any white man who'd pay her."
"Shit. White meat is worse. No wonder all them sanitation men call their garbage trucks 'Big Sue' and 'Rosie.' They paint them names on the rear end-over the disposal hole."
Kaintucky glaced at Odin.
"What's the matter, boy? Can't you eat yo' meat loaf?" Odin looked at him.
"'Moms' Mabley," he said. "Why the fuck don't you shut up!"
* * *
Ten o'clock-Sunday night. The loudspeaker in the corridor was playing Tangerine. In cell 12 Odin lay on the top bunk with his arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling. Kaintucky and Okie sat on the bottom bunk, marking a deck of cards with razor blades.
"When Ah was fo'teen," said Okie. "Mah daddy was so goddamn stupid Ah could hardly stand to have him around. But when I got to be twenty-fo', I was surprised at how much the old futzer had picked up in ten years."
Kaintucky: "Mark said the reason Okie is called a Okie is because he sounds more like a damn Okie than anything else."
"Yeah," said Okie. "I know jest as good stories as Mark did-but he writ his down."
"Amazin' Grace!" sang Kaintucky. "How sweet Yo' Ass Is!"
Okie: "You can't sing-you ruined yo' voice yellin' fer tit when you was a child."
"Playboy milk comes in such cute containers."
"Wooo wooo!"
You know what a Kentucky breakfast is, man."
"No. What's a Kaintucky bre'kfas'. "
"It's Mamie Van Doren, a quart of moonshine and a bulldog."
"What's the bulldog for."
"Oh, that's for Mamie Van Doren."
"Hee hee."
"Ol' Dan Tucker."
"-Yo' Too Late."
"-To Git Yo' Suuuuuuupperrrrrrr."
"Up in the Hole."
"-Ol' Dan Tucker."
"-Up in the Hole."
"-Ol' Dan Tucker."
"-Up in the Hole."
"-Ol' Dan Tucker."
"-Yo' Too Laaate."
"-To Git Yo' Suuuuuuupperrrrrrr!" Kaintucky picked a tin cup off the shelf and filled it with water.
"Shit," he said, putting it back on the shelf. "I can't use this cup."
"Why not?"
"The durn spoon will get in my eye."
"Hee hee."
"La Cucaracha! La Cucaracha! La-la la la la la la!"
"My gran'pappy once went to a funeral at Forest Lawn," said Okie. "The undertaker asked him how old he was. 'Eighty-eight,' said gran'pappy. So the undertaker told him, 'It's hardly worth while for you to make the trip home, is it, old chap?'"
"Hey!" A juvenile stuck his head into the cell. "They are fuckin' a guy in the ass up in cell seventeen. Wanna watch it?"
Kaintucky glanced at him without interest.
"Come in here," he said. "We'll fuck you in the ass."
The punk disappeared.
"Shit," said Okie. "They was takin' turns fuckin' that guy all last night. Got him face down on a mattress, squirmin' lak a speared fish."
"Impaled," said Kaintucky. "I saw one fella shove his cock up the guy's ass this mawnin'. Next man in line grabbed him by the shoulders, pullin' him down on his prick till it was buried all the way up to the hairs. Third fella took him by the ankle and flipped him over on his back. Then he shoved his legs over his head and give him a blow job."
'They got the poor bastid so scared he don't know whether he's comin' or goin', " said Okie. "Like a finger goin' into a warm glove, dad."
"Scared the shit outta him, I betcha."
"Yeah," said Kaintucky. "He's just in for traffic tickets.
Never been in no jail befo'. So they play all them fish tricks on him and he thinks they're real bad-murderers and holdup men-all that crap. Why, they ain't nothin' but a buncha winos."
"You know what they used to pry his ass-hole open with?"
"No-what?"
"This."
Okie held up a crudely made zip-gun. The barrel was a four-inch piece of car aerial taped to a wooden handle. Inside the barrel there was a small .22-caliber bullet. The firing device consisted of a sliding-bolt lock and two powerful rubber bands.
"Hell, that tube ain't rifled," said Kaintucky. "It'll explode right in yo' face if you try to shoot it."
"No it won't."
"Sho." Kaintucky took the Luger-like zip-gun and studied the barrel. "Piece of junk," he said. "What you buy it for?"
"I'm gonna sell it to the nigger tank. Make money on it."
"Yeah. Stud it with brass nails and them purple-assed baboons might go for it," said Kaintucky.
"Hell, they'd go for a water pistol fulla white man's shit if you'd let 'em!"
"White man's shit is nigger colo'd," said Kaintucky. "What the fuck you in for this time, Okie?"
"Ass-hole diddlin'. "
"Ah figgered that much," said Kaintucky. "What you say you and me change identification bracelets? Tomorrow when we go to court and my name is called, you say 'Here' and when they call 'Okie!' I'll answer. There's ten bucks in it for you if you'll do it."
"Sho," said Okie. "And what are you in for this time, man? Robbin' the Bank of America?"
"Shit. Take my place, Okie. What you got to lose?"
"Twenty-five years on McNeil Island."
"Hell, I didn't do nothin'. Just tried to break into that juke box in the 4-6-8 Integration Club..."
"Yeah, and you probably done broke into the 4-6-8 Club too ... "
"Shit," said Kaintucky. "You wouldn't have to spend more'n sixty days on the County Road Camp.-I'd send you money!"
"Sho." Okie looked up at Odin and jerked his head toward Kaintucky. "He'd send me money."
"Hee hee," said a wino.
" 'Cause I would," said Kaintucky. "Don't I always keep mah word?"
"No," said Okie.
"Tell me one single time I didn't keep it!"
"I can tell you a hundred, ya old goat. After twenty-four hours on the outside, they'll pick you up again, and we'll both be on Road Camp!"
"Shit, I got things to do out there in the Free World, and you're goin' to the County Farm for ass-hole diddlin', anyhow!"
"Yeah-but not for no sixty days!"
"How do you know? Maybe the Judge'll give you ninety!"
"No, he's a pederast from way back..."
"Ha. Ha."
"That's the worst kind," said Kaintucky. "Them kinda guys love to throw the book atcha for the same kinda things they do in private ever' night."
"Fuckin' hypocrites!"
"You said it, hillbilly."
Odin didn't say anything. He lay on the top bunk with his arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling. Far awaybeyond the green walls of the County Jail, a young girl walked along a deserted beach. The moon stood round and pale overhead.
THIRTEEN
Monday morning. Breakfast was a cup of milk, a perforated box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes, a slice of white bread and a scoop of L.A. County jelly.
"How I detest this shit," said Kaintucky. "It tastes like two fingers of K-Y jelly."
"Prune juice is a good lubricant for the ass-hole," observed Okie.
"Yeah-I wish I had some."
"Hee hee."
Kaintucky looked at Odin.
"Where's all your color, boy? You look like a hant!"
"Um." Odin drank his cup of milk and left the rest of the food untouched on his tray.
"Jes' tell 'em yo' crazy," advised Okie. "All them lawyers are college-trained fools. And don't accept no jury! No, sir. Let the Judge try you. Nobody knows what a jury will do and it got no special trainin' to make informed judgments in psychological cases. Shit, man. In the good of U.S. of Ass-hole, you ain't tried by intelligence and common sense-you're tried by a buncha housewives and taxicab drivers. That's democracy, boy!"
"Don't be afraid to tell 'em you're crazy," said Kaintucky. "The whole world's crazy. Look at that dumpy li'l housewife in England that ever'body's helpin' make-believe she's a Queen!"
"Now, don't you go talkin' against Eliz'beth," warned Okie.
Odin looked around as though searching for someone. After a while his eyes stared straight ahead, watching something they couldn't see.
"What you lookin' at?" asked Okie.
Odin hesitated for a moment.
Then he said, "Earla.". .
Kaintucky and Okie glanced at one another. Then they looked back at Odin.
"Tell 'em you see a long pair of nutcrackers shaped like a nigger woman's legs," said Okie. "That'll get 'em!"
"Hell, no," said Kaintucky. "He's gotta pretend he's sane! If a guy don't wanna go in the army, he's gotta make them think he really wants to join. Then they'll give him the exact opposite of what they think he wants. That's psychology."
"Sheee-it. What's wrong with a pair of nutcrackers shaped like a nigger woman's legs."
"ODIN WILD!"
His name was bellowed by the sheriff's deputy at the other end of the tank and re-echoed along the gallery by the trusties.
"Well, take it easy," said Okie.
"Walk slow and drink plenty of cold water," counseled Kaintucky.
Odin walked up the gallery to the front of the tank. Turning, the deputy's hom-rimmed glasses looked like swirling automobile headlights.
"Odin Wild?" he said. "Let's see your wristband!"
Odin pulled up his left sleeve and the deputy examined the plastic identification bracelet.
"O.K." The gate swung open and Odin stepped out and stood looking at the control panel that operated the tank's doors. A handle on the far left selected the cell dooranother jack unlocked and locked it. A third lever opened and closed it while a row of yellow and red lights indicated whether the doors were open or shut.
"You're going to court," growled the deputy. He bent down and give Odin a quick shakedown between the legs. "All right," he said, straightening up. "Go down to the bathroom 'n' get your clothes."
Odin nodded and walked down the big jail's corridors until he got to the stairway. On the tenth floor a group of punks in the pussy tank set up a racket the minute they saw him.
"Hey, look! There she is Mr. America."
"Where you goin', Her-cules."
"C'mon, big boy. line us."
"Fuck us in the nose, why doncha?" At the end of the tank a sixteen-year-old wino lay flat on his back, his arms and legs spread wide apart. There was a man bending over him on hands and knees. The man's face was buried in the young wino's zipper.
"Hey, li'l Dadd-O!" A long brown mama stringbean followed Odin along the inside of the gallery bars as he walked past the Negro tank. "Don't you have no patriotism? Drop that fly to half-mast when you walk by this place!"
"Hey, Miss Cherry!" shouted a CORE man. "Quit givin' that white man a hard time. What you want him to do, anyhow? Turn brown?"
"Miss Cherry is a Black Muslim," said one of the other Negroes. "She wants to be queen of a separate State!"
"The ass-hole state."
"Ha. Ha."
"Ho."
"Miss Cherry, you won't be nothin' but Queen for a Day ... Mr. Charlie ain't gonna give up no white States-let alone take his finger out of the nigger's ass-hole!"
"Yeah," said the CORE man. "The nigger is so used to havin' that white finger up his ass, he can't do without it. What you think would happen if we shipped your black ass back to Africa?"
" 'We!'" shrieked Miss Cherry. "You mammy-suckin' Uncle Tom! You talk about you and Mr. Charlie like you was Jesus Christ!"
"Christ was white..."
" ... and God is Black!"
"That's right."
"ALLAH..."
" ... and Malcolm X-"
"-is His prophole."
"LIAR!" screamed Miss Cherry. "The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is..."
" ... a second Father Divine."
"NO!"
"And Malcolm X was a prophole."
"Fuck Malcolm X!" said Miss Cherry. "The Honorable Elija-"
"What's that 'Honorable' in front of his name mean?" asked one of the others.
"Nothing!" said the CORE man. "It's like that 'Honorable' in front of Earl Warren's name-it don't mean a fuckin' thing!"
In the bathroom two actors with long hair sat on the wooden benches, discussing a Jean Harlow-type Hollywood whore.
"I've had her on her back, upside down, in front, from behind, lying on her stomach, squatting, sitting on my lap, sucking, standing up, on hands and knees, sideways-any fucking way you can think of," said one of the actors.
"Yeah," said the other. "She's a gasser, all right, Didja ever see that picture she autographed for Rikkie? 'Dickie-bird: You get the lastest. I hates you. Me.'"
"Straight out of Harlow."
"You said it."
The sergeant-in-charge of the showers came out of the discharge room.
"You guys going to Federal Court?" he asked.
"Yeah." One of the actors glanced up at him. "What's it to you, screw?"
"Don't gimme none o' your lip, you swishy hophead!"
"Up yours, Myrtle."
"Get in there and get your fucking clothes on!"
The actors got up with elaborate casualness and swished by the deputy with a great show of indifference. In the receiving and discharge room they resumed their affected gaiety and phony sophistication.
"I have all my suits sent out here from the British American House on Madison Avenue in New York City!" gushed one as a Mexican trusty threw him his civilian clothing-a pair of jeans and a dirty T-shirt. "And all my ties come from Countess Mara!"
"Yass," said the other. "She's simply Marvelous. Divine!"
"I just adore the feeling of raw silk against my breastsuh-I mean, my chest, It's soo masculine. Exhilarating!"
"Yass. And with two drops of Queen's Fag under my armpits. I'm ready for anything. And I do mean anything!"
"Oh, my dear! You don't really use that horrid stuff, do you?"
"What'd you expect me to use? Old Spice, and smell like a sailor?"
Odin watched the Mexican trusty. As soon as he turned his back, he reached over and unpinned the identification tags on a black Italian silk suit. Then quickly he removed the tag from the dungarees they had given him in the Glasshouse and switched it over to the suit. He was just finishing the switch when the trusty turned around.
"What you doing with them dungarees?"
Odin smiled at him.
"The tag fell on the floor. I'm just putting it back."
"Well, let me do it. You ain't supposed to touch nothin', 'cept what I give you."
"Sorry."
"Let's see your wristband."
Odin held out his arm. The trusty compared the numbers on the identification bracelet with the numbers on the black suit.
"O.K., " he said. "That's a nice suit. Real silk."
"Um."
The trusty took the suit off the rack and gave it to Odin. "How come you ain't got no shirt to go with it?" he asked.
"Somebody stole it," said Odin. "Up in the tank."
"Uh-hu."
"Bunch of thieves up there," said the trusty. Then: "I'll sell you a nice B.V.D. shirt and throw in a tie for ten bucks."
"Um-m. How about a pair of black shoes. Size 10-D."
"Cost you twenty."
"All right."
"You got that much?" the trusty said incredulously.
Odin opened the bulging tobacco sack and gave him the money. The trusty grinned and ducked his head, disappearing under the racks of civilian clothing. After a time he came back with a pair of shiny black Florsheims, a new tie, a white shirt, and a pair of socks.
"You're the best customer I've had in days," he said. "Too bad you already got a suit. I coulda sold you a Botany '500' I got back there. Nice. Kinda green color."
"Um. How much for the socks?"
"Oh, the socks are on the house. 'Course, you could gimme couple bucks for 'em, if you wanna." Odin gave him a dollar.
"Anything else you need?" asked the trusty. "A tie clip or maybe some cuffs? I got some nice ones. Real Swank!"
"Don't need them. There're buttons on these cuffs." Odin put on the shirt and tie, the silk trousers, the socks, and the dark Florsheim shoes. The suit jacket itself was a perfect fit except for the left sleeve which was longer than the right. He jerked up his right arm.
"Beautiful," said the trusty. He stood back to admire the spectacle. "All you need now is a nice tan straw hat by
KNOX. I got one just your size. Seven and a quarter. Real Milan."
"No."
The two Hollywood swish-fags in jeans and T-shirts watched with open-mouthed astonishment. Then, as the small room slowly filled with bindle-stiffs, mad-dog killers and child rapists going to city courts, they followed Odin down a twisting stairway that led to the County hold-over tank.
"And a big kiss on the ass of J. Edgar Hoover who has made all this possible for us," said one of the actors, sitting down next to a urinal.
Across the tank an Italian ape-man squatted on a bench and put his thumb behind his yellow front teeth, flicking it out at them in Mafia sign-language.
"I think he's trying to tell you something," said the other actor.
"Fuckim," said the first.
The big tank soon filled up with court-going misfits. One of the homosexual winos showed a young boy the points of interest.
"Caryl Chessman was standin' right where I'm standin' now, back in 1956," he said. "I remember he had a big stack of legal papers under his arm. Right here in this tank. Ugly man, with a face like a horse. 'Bout five foot eleven."
The teen-ager was starry-eyed as he leaned over and stared at the holy place on the floor. He quietly maneuvered his feet into the same position that Chessman's feet has assumed in 1956 and asked deferentially: "Did he really do all those things? I mean, kidnap all those women who were parked in cars with their boy friends?"
"Sure," said the wino. "He had a Ford with a red spotlight and a police radio. Used a .45 automatic to scare the boys off with and drove the women away to some lonely place in the woods and fucked 'em."
"They say one girl went crazy from what he did to her."
"Well, she musta been crazy to begin with," said the wino. "What could he do to her that was so terrible? Fuck her in the ass, make her suck his cock? She'd do that with her boy friend anyway. If she can do it with one, she can do it with anybody. What the hell. Meat is meat."
The iron door to the tank swung open and a deputy bellowed Odin's name and those of a dozen others. Outside in the corridor six United States Marshals handcuffed the prisoners in twos and ran a long dog leash "chain-gang style" between them.
"Can't beat you Feds outta nothin', " growled a bank robber.
"So why try?" said a Marshal.
Odin watched as a handcuff was snapped on his right wrist. One of the actors had his left wrist locked into the other half of the cuff. The steel chain ran back to the couple behind.
"Straight ahead to the elevators," said the Chief Marshal.
The prisoners walked slowly ahead, adjusting their gait to one another. The actor on Odin's right appeared to be the only one who couldn't walk straight.
"Come on!"
Odin yanked the cuff hard to the left and the man went off balance, plunging face-down onto the concrete.
"What's going on here?" demanded the Marshal.
"That swishy fag is mincing along with his hand on his hip like he was promenading along Sunset Boulevard or something," a man said behind Odin. "This blonde fellow just give him a yank."
The Marshal looked at Odin.
"Don't start any trouble like you did in the Glasshouse," he said. "We're prepared for you."
Odin looked at the Marshal. They looked at one another.
"I'm warning you," said the Marshal. He pulled his jacket aside, exposing a .38 caliber snub-nosed revolver.
"Let's go," he said.
The actor got up from the floor and the line of prisoners proceeded along the corridor to the elevators.
"All right, men. Turn around! Make it quick, now."
"Whoa, Hoss! Haw! Git up!" shouted the bank robber.
The Chief Marshal took the first two men by the cuffs and swung them around like a team of horses. The others followed, stumbling over one another. The Marshal then backed the whole line into an elevator.
"Ex-press!"
The elevator door slammed shut. There was a slow clanking and downrush of metal. At street level they walked into a dark passageway beneath the building and followed the Marshal across the exit and into a parking lot full of ambulances, patrol cars and paddy wagons. On the street a covey of T-birds roared past with horns honking and long, multicolored streamers flying from their windows and radio antennas. Odin hailed a taxi and amazingly enough it stopped next to him at the curb. He opened the rear door and started to get in, dragging the actor along after him. "Eeeeeeeeeeekl"
The Marshal jumped forward like a kangaroo and grabbed his right shoulder.
"Oh no, you don't!" he shouted.
Odin shrugged and let himself be dragged out of the taxi.
"Well, you can't blame a fella for tryin', " said a man who had been night auditor of a bank in San Bernadino.
The Marshal cursed and herded them across the street to the Federal Building in downtown Sodom.
* * *
"Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye!" the bailiff's voice echoed in Irish brogue as he hammered a miniature croquet mallet on a big block of wood. "The District Court for the Southern District of California, Central Division, is now in session. The Honorable Josephus C. Eastback, presiding..."
Then: "Please be seated."
The prisoners sat down in the jury box on the left side of the courtroom. Two Federal Marshals watched them carefully. A female prosecutor from the Attorney General's office sat at one of the tables before the judge's bench. Behind her sat the audience: males, females and in-betweens.
" ... the United States of America vs. Vincent D'Amico ... indictment number 98978 ... criminal court ... for the offense of Robbery of a National Bank ... 18 U.S. Codes 2113(a) ... by the Grand Jury ... said offense being alleged to have occurred on or about June 6th..."
Odin listened to the heavy drone of voices. He yawned and looked up at the man in black robes who sat behind the enormous pulpit-like Bench. The judge looked straight into Odin's eyes. For a while they stared at one another. Then the judge blushed and looked down at his papers.
" ... arraigned before the Honorable John P. Q. Wain-wright, then the presiding judge of the Criminal Division of the United States District Court, at which time the defendant entered the plea of Guilty as charged in the indictment..."
Odin looked at the bank robber, D'Amico, who stood leaning against the stand before the judge's bench, exarnining his nails. At the prosecution table the female assistant from the Attorney General's office sat tugging at the panty girdle under the seat of her dress.
" ... the defendant ... by his attorney ... moved the court that the defendant be permitted through his counsel to withdraw his plea of Guilty entered on June ... said motion granted, and a plea of Not Guilty ... entered on behalf of said defendant."
Odin watched the young U.S. Attorney's legs as she crossed them at the knees beneath the prosecution table. The muscle at the base of his groin began to grow long and hard. It quivered with delight in his left trouser leg.
" ... defendant thereafter confined to the Federal Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas ... pursuant to ... of Title 18 U.S. Codes ... for a period of twenty years..."
The bank robber, D'Amico, shifted his weight from one foot to another and let out a tremendous fart. The pungent odor of LA. County jelly and bean juice drifted through the courtroom: overpowering-like mustard gas.
" ... by a petition for a writ of habeas corpus..."
Odin undressed the U.S. Attorney in his mind. Kissing her on the throat, he kneaded her buttocks and stuck a finger up in the perennial divide. She choked and whimpered. He picked her up and threw her nine feet across the room onto a table. There was a smack of soft flesh on wood. She bounced. He ran across the room and pounced upon her. She screamed. He rolled her over on her stomach and spread her young cheeks. She cried Uke a baby. He worked his member up her ass like a vet's right arm in a cow. She whimpered. He ran his hands over her breasts to her belly, jerking her down onto his muscle until it was buried to the hairs. She screamed and whistled through her teeth. He moved back and forth against her ass like a pile driver. Locked together, and fucking like crazy, they rolled off the table.
" ... WHEREFORE, the premises considered ... the petitioner prays that the Court make its order dismissing the sentence ... that the defendant be granted such other ... and further relief ... as to the Court may seem just and proper in the premises."
The writ was ordered discharged on the ground that D'Amico had no new evidence to produce after all.
" ... and commit the said prisoner to the custody of the U.S. Marshal ... thereafter to be transported to the Federal Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas ... and be incarcerated at the said Institution for the remainder of his sentence."
Odin looked at the U.S. Attorney's ass. D'Amico, the bank robber, put his thumb behind his front teeth and flicked it out at the judge in Sicilian sign language: We'll get you! The next case on the docket was a paper-hanger who pleaded "Not Guilty" to a charge of passing checks in thirty-two States.
"Do you understand the indictment?" the Judge inquired.
"Baaaaaaa!" hollered the paper-hanger. "CraZEE!"
"Do you have an attorney present or do you wish this court to appoint you counsel?"
"CraZEE!" screamed the paper-hanger. "Baaaaaaa! Fuck you!"
The judge appointed him counsel from the indigent panel, a young college-trained fag just out of U.C.L.A. "Baaaaaaaaa! CraZEE!"
The fag dragged the paper-hanger off into a corner for legal discussion. The next half dozen cases involved drugs, tax evasion and draft dodging. Odin was indicted for white slavery.
The lawyer assigned to him by the Court to insure a "minimum" protection of legal rights was an old deaf (and dumb) geezer of ninety-two, called Uncle Willy.
"CraZEE!"
Uncle Willy was a former D.A. (vintage 1905), retired, who spent his time hanging around the Federal Court and its adjoining bars and left-handed peg houses because he had nothing else to do. He wouldn't listen to anything Odin had to say, but examined his hands for calluses to see whether he had been "working."
"Smooth," chuckled Uncle Willy. "Like a young gal's ass!"
On the basis of this hands-up examination, he advised Odin to enter a plea of Guilty as charged in the slavery indictment. Odin hesitated, but only for a second. Then he nodded his head and smiled, staring across the courtroom at the young female U.S. Attorney. The Honorable Jose-phus C. Eastback frowned at his calendar as the plea was entered, and then continued the matter to the following Tuesday at 2:00 P.M. for sentence " ... and for the hearing of the probation officer's report and for such other and further relief as to the Court may then seem just."
* * *
During the hour-long interrogation period that followed in the Federal hold-over tank behind the courtroom, Odin sat stiff and uncommunicative in his stolen Italian silk suit, facing two elderly agents of the FBI.
"Now look, son. You transported this woman across the California-Nevada line and set her up in a Hollywood motel. That's white slavery. The Mann Act. Illegal. Pro-hi-bited!"
"She's a Negro," said Odin.
The FBI agents glanced wearily at one another and shrugged their shoulders.
"Can't you say anything but She's a Negro'? "
Odin remained silent. The FBI agents shook their heads and got up from the table. One of them paused at the steel door.
"Look son. I'll give you a little advice. You're youngnot even twenty-one yet. You got your whole life ahead of you. Don't waste it"
"That's right," said the other. "The Government is going to give you every chance it can. Cooperate with the Judge and the Probation Officer. They're not interested in seeing you spend a lifetime on McNeil Island or some other place like that."
Odin opened his mouth slowly-shaping it for words. The FBI men leaned forward expectandy. "She's black," said Odin.
"Christ!" The FBI agents slammed the door from the outside and trotted their fat behinds down the corridor to the elevators as though gone with child.-Nursing their big beer bellies.
"Shouldn't treat them like that," said one of the Marshals. "They can give you a lot of help ... if they want to."
"Sure," said the draft dodger. "Make friends and influence people. Positive thinking and all that crap."
Odin leaned a hip against the table's edge and sat quietly watching in his black silk suit. They couldn't tell whether he was listening to them or something else.
"What's'a matter him?" The ape-man jerked his head toward Odin.
"Baaaaaaaaaa!" shouted the paper-hanger. "CraZEE!"
* * *
Back at the County Jail, Odin was called down to the ante-room off the Attorney Room. Through the mesh screen separating the rooms he saw Uncle Willy sitting in front of the long, two-way mirrors.
"You watch out," said a Mexican. "The Cops they sit behind the mirrors with all kinda witnesses, lookin' at you."
"Um." Odin nodded.
"Shh-eee-it!" said another wetback. "Don't you know Odin-de smartest, toughest hombre een de worl'? One night he reach through de bars and tweak de Sheriff's nose. Call heem a sonabeech!"
The prisoners in the ante-room stared at Odin with respectful admiration.
One of them asked, "What'd the Sheriff do?"
"Oh," said the wetback. "The Sheriff he shoot Odin's balls off!"
"Oh, meester."
"Ha. Ha."
"Shh-eeee-it!"
A colored turnkey with a face like the granny of all gorillas stuck his bullet head through the door and bellowed Odin's name.
"Ooooooooooo-din!" shrieked a mass-murderer. "Din din!"
"Ooooooooooooooooh-din!" echoed a rapist. "ODIN!"
"Hey, Odin! How's the pussy?"
Odin took two steps across the room and grabbed the rapist by his shirt front. Then-jack-hammering the yellow teeth down his throat with short, vicious punches-he turned to the killer.
"No, no!" The man backed off into a corner, his hands making frantic motions in front of his body.
Odin kicked him in the groin.
There was a crunch of cartilage-the man went down on both knees, grasping his testicles.
"Ooooooooh!" Blood dribbled from his pants leg.
"Ooooooooooooh!"
"OoooooooooooooOOOOH"'
"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!" The colored turnkey and a lieutenant came running into the room.
"What the hell's going on in here?" shouted the lieutenant.
"These two guys hadda fight," said the Mexican, indicating the mad-dog killer and the rapist. "This-a-one, he kick the big one's teeth in, and the other guy hit him in the nuts!"
"All right, send them both to the Hole," said the lieutenant He looked at Odin. "Your lawyer wants to see you."
"Thanks."
Odin walked into the Attorney Room and stopped in front of the two-way mirrors, combing his hair.
"I once saw a fella who was razor-cut across the throat so fast he didn't even know it happened," said Uncle Willy. "Later on when he turned to look over his shoulder, his head fell off."
"Um." Odin sat down and leaned his elbows on the table.
"What time is it?" he asked.
"Well, if I was a spick sleeping against a wall in the old Town Square down in Mehico, I'd pull back my sombrero, lift the donkey's balls and look at the clock on the building across the Square. Then I'd let the balls drop and tell you, 'Two-thirty, senor.'" Uncle Willy looked at his watch. "Pre-cisely!"
"I'm going to change my plea from Guilty to Not Guilty because of insanity," said Odin. "As the attorney, you'll move in open Court for the appointment of a psychiatrist to examine the defendant as to his mental condition. You have noticed his irrational behavior, et cetera. Understand?"
Uncle Willy stared at him with open astonishment.
"You're smarter'n I thought," he said. Then: "I don't make a nickel on these court appointments. If the fella they assign me is broke, I just let him plead Guilty and see to it that his legal rights are protected and that he gets a fair trial before they send him to the Big House. For fifty dollars I'll prepare a nice case for him and file his papers. For a hundred I'll even look up some law. But, honey, gimme five-hundred and I'll get down on my knees and wipe his ass with the order dismissing the indictment!"
"And whatta ya thinka that!" said a prisoner who had been listening further down the table.
"He's such a sweet ma-aa-n!" exclaimed Odin, a la Shirley MacLaine.
Uncle Willy ducked his head, blushing modesdy.
"I do the best I can," he said.
"For five hundred dollars," Odin reminded him grimly.
"Yes. Five hundred."
Odin leaned across the table and looked him straight in the eyes.
"What'll you do?" he asked.
"Do?" spluttered Uncle Willy. "Why, I'll change the plea to Not Guilty like you said and get you a court psychiatrist!"
"What else?"
"Nothing else. If you're crazy they'll send you to the bug house for a year and when you come back sane-you'll stand trial..."
"That's included in the five hundred?"
"Hell, no! What you take me for, anyway. Ha? A slimuck or something? The trial will cost you two thousand."
"One thousand," said Odin. "I'm indigent, remember?"
"One fifty. I couldn't do it for less."
"One," said Odin. "Take it or leave it."
"I'll take it!" Uncle Willy wiped his brow with a handkerchief. "That's the way I like to set my fees ... no haggling!"
* * *
The next morning he asked the Court to permit Odin to withdraw his plea of Guilty. The motion was granted, and a plea of Not Guilty was entered on behalf of the defendant. Uncle Willy then moved in open Court for the appointment of a psychiatrist to examine the defendant. The motion was granted after a whispered conversation between Uncle Willy and the Honorable Josephus C. Eastback. The matter was then continued by the Court to the following week for further proceedings.
* * *
"Ready or not-here I come!" The homosexual bugger jumped into the bottom bunk in cell 12, his erect penis shooting sperm with hot slaps against his partner's buttocks. There was a dry whisper of mattress stuffing, a groan of iron bedsprings.
"Oooooooooooooh!" The partner, a man of fifty, judging by his face, moaned and screamed like a canary. The springs creaked faster and faster. There was a jerking, a writhing, a bouncing of bodies. The iron wall-the chains-to which the bunk was attached, vibrated like a tuning fork. From the bugger's throat there came the sounds of a rooting hog. "Christ ... "
Above them, on the top bunk, Odin lay flat on his mattress, his arms behind his head as he stared up at the dark ceiling. A naked girl was lying on top of him in his dream. She said S and blew into his ear, running her tongue over his pinna and licking it, her small even teeth biting the" lobe. "Earla," he said. He stretched agonizedly on the mattress as he thought of her svelte young body, the sensuous hips, the lips, the luscious shoulders, her hair, the remembered pussy.
"Meew. Meeew." On the bottom bunk the fifty-year-old homo whimpered like a kitten. The young bugger on his back squealed like a slaughtered hog. There was a gasp-a sound of breathing.
"Christ!"
Odin rolled over on his side and stared at the wall. Okie and Kaintucky had left for Road Camp the day before. The L. A. County clink was the biggest transient hotel in downtown Sodom. There would be many more turnovers of prisoners before he left.
"Earla," he whispered. "Oh, God, Earla!"
* * *
The court appointed psychiatrist was a tall, crew-cut young man who wore horn-rimmed glasses. He towered a good eight inches above Odin as they shook hands and sat down at a small bridge table in the hospital corridor, located on the 14th floor of the County Jail.
"Smoke?" the young doctor smiled and offered Odin a cigarette.
Odin shook his head. "I haven't started yet."
"Then don't," advised the doctor. "It's a nasty habit. You can't stop after you start it."
He lit the cigarette and blew smoke into the air.
"Know what time it is?" he asked casually.
Odin glanced at the clock above the doctor's head. It was four in the afternoon.
"Oh," he said. "I guess it's about twelve o'clock. We had soup a little while ago and that's usually around eleven-thirty or so. I guess it must be around noon."
The doctor frowned and scribbled something in his notebook. Then he looked up and said, "My name's Eric von Comm. What day is this?"
"Tuesday," said Odin, "or maybe Friday. It's hard to keep track when you're in a place like this. It couldn't be Sunday, could it? I haven't heard singing or tambourines..."
'Tambourines?" The doctor crossed his legs like a Harvard graduate, placing one fleshy thigh over the other like a woman: indicating that there were no balls between them that could get squeezed. He studied Odin through the smoke.
"Do you often hear tambourines?" he said.
"No. Only on Sundays."
"Sunday?" said the doctor. "Why Sunday?"
"That's when they come."
" 'They'? ... Who are 'They'? "
"The tambourines."
Dr. von Coram leaned his elbows on the table and pressed the tips of his fingers together beneath his chin, like a coquettish young ass-hole.
"What month are we in?"
"August," said Odin. "Or SeptNo, wait. It's so hot, it must be August. I remember jimson weed sprouting from cracks in the sidewalk. Up South we-"
"Do you have any physical complaints?" asked the doctor.
Odin shook his head.
"I'm in perfect health. I could hit that wall with a spurt of jissom."
"What's that."
"Sperm."
"Oh." The doctor took his fingers away from his chin. "We better give you a checkup," he said. He reached down and picked up a cowhide attache case. "Do you know where we are?"
"Sure. The County Jail....Where else?"
"Take off your shirt."
Odin did so.
The doctor pulled out a stethoscope. He pressed it against Odin's back-then his chest.
"Breathe deeply," he said. "Like this-in out-in out." Odin expanded his chest-then relaxed it. "All right. Drop your pants." Odin dropped his pants.
The doctor pressed a finger under his right testicle. "Cough," he said.
Odin opened his mouth wide. Then he coughed a long, sticky spurt of saliva straight into the doctor's face. "Yikes!"
The doctor jumped up, drilling his ear with a handkerchief. "Turn your face away when you cough!" he said. Odin looked over his shoulder.
The doctor wiped his finger and pressed it under the balls.
"Now, cough..."
Odin coughed: "AAAA-HAGH!"
"Again."
"AAAA-H AGH!"
"All right." The doctor wiped his finger. "Were you ever in the army."
"No."
"Have you felt any pain recently? Has your body changed."
"No."
"Did you ever sleep with animals?" Odin suppressed a smile. The doctor looked at him. "Well?..."
"No."
"Do you have relations with men."
"Social."
"Do you have any close friends."
"No."
"Would you want to be my friend?"
Odin looked the doctor up and down, his eyes going back to the crossed legs, or whatever it was he was watching.
" 'Nature hath fram'd strange fellows,'" he said. "With you, Doc, I do desire we may be better strangers."
The young doctor blushed-his cheeks as red and round as apples. I do not love thee, Dr. Fell-the reason why I cannot tell. Mr. Dickshit knows! Ha. Ha.
"Do you like women?"
Odin nodded and said, "Yes." There was no question about that!
"If you were lost in the woods without a compass, but you had a map, how would you find your way out?"
"Well, at night I'd look for the North Star. In the morning I'd watch where the sun came up. You can tell a lot about directions from the way moss grows on the rocks.
"What's the difference between a cow and an elephant?"
"Different species."
"Hum-m."
The doctor gave Odin a brief written test-an apperception test-and then spent the next fifteen minutes trying unsuccessfully to invade his privacy.
The rest was silence.
* * *
"We made it!" shouted Uncle Willy, waving a paper excitedly as Odin walked into the Attorney Room the next afternoon.
"Um?" said Odin.
"You're crazy as a loon, boy! Cuckoo! Ready for the booby hatch! Ain't it wonderful?"
He shoved the paper into Odin's hand and watched proudly as Odin sat down at the table and read it.
Diagnosis, it said: Dissociative reaction, characterized by: amnesia for the first 19 years of his life-and a nomadic, restless existence for the past three years. In addition, there is a mild withdrawal-an avoidance of close relations-and a reluctance to express personal feelings.
Odin looked further down the page.
No evidence adduced to delusions or hallucinations . ... A diagnostic impression of ... dissociative reaction with amnesia as a symptomatic expression. Then, the JACKPOT: The respondent is now so mentally incompetent that he cannot understand the proceedings against him and hence is unable to assist in his own defense.
"Loony as they come!" said Uncle Willy. "I knew you had it in you, kid. Talent will out ... be it good or bad!"
Odin said, "Not so loud!"
"Eh? Eh?" Uncle Willy cupped a hand behind his hairy left ear. "What's that you say?"
"I said, 'When we were talking about money, you could hear all right!'"
"Oh, I can hear," said Uncle Willy. He studied Odin's lips for a time. "Acoustics ain't always so good, though."
"Acoustics, hell," said Odin. "Why don't you buy a hearing aid?"
"Well now," said Uncle Willy. He smiled. "When you come back from the booby hatch, I'll buy one with that thousand dollars you're going to pay me."
"Uh," said Odin. "Buy a good one."
FOURTEEN
The big Oldsmobile ate up U.S. 66 like a string of spaghetti ... Los Angeles, Hollywood, Glendale, Burbank, San Fernando, Lebec, Bakersfield, Tehachapi, Mojave, Barstow, Ludlow, Amboy, Needles, Topock, Oatman, Kingman, Seligman, Ash Fork, Williams, Flagstaff, Winslow, Joseph City, Holbrook, Sanders, Gallup, Grants, Laguna, Albuquerque, Moriarty, Santa Rosa, Cuervo, Newkirk, Tucum-cari, Adrian, Vega, Amarillo, McLean, Shamrock, Texola, Erick, Sayre, Elk City, Clinton, Weatherford, El Reno, Yukon, Bethany, Oklahoma City, Britton, Edmond, Chandler, Stroud, Depew, Bristow, Sapulpa, Tulsa, Claremore, Chelsea, Vinita, Afton, Miami, Commerce, Baxter Springs, Joplin, Webb City, Carthage . ... Odin was traveling east
"Oooooh, Joliet Atlanta, Terre Haute, I love you so!" sang the Jew, "-and Chillicothe, Chino, Folsom-and Road Camp number Two!"
Odin sat handand leg-cuffed in the back seat of the car, between two convicts called Ape Man and The Jew. A fourteen-foot length of chain ran about his waist through the cuffs-up around his neck-down his back-between his legs and around his ankles. Ape Man and the Jew were both handcuffed, and each had a three-foot length of steel restraining chain wound tightly about his waist to keep his hands doubled against his body. "So we can't reach over and strangle the Marshal," sneered Ape Man. He leaned his head down between his legs and lit a cigarette.
"Oooooh, Joliet, Atlanta, Terre Haute ... " the Jew sang in high falsetto, " ... and Chillicothe, Chino, Folsom ... and Road Camp num-her Two!"
"For Christ's sake," said Odin. "Shut up, will you!"
The Jew's nose was like the beak of a small hawk. He turned and stared at Odin. Now the nose looked like a limp phallus.
"Whatcher say, man?" he asked. "Shut up."
"Make me."
Odin cursed and struggled against the chains that held him wrapped up like a mummy. The Jew grinned and clicked his false yellow teeth. "Oooooooooh, Joliet-" he began, but the Ape Man stopped him.
"Odin's tied up right now," he said, "but he won't be like that always!"
"That's right, Jew," the Marshal said from the front seat. He winked at the guard beside him. "Remember-you boys'll have to share the same cell tonight."
The guard laughed uproariously and honked the Olds-mobile's horn at a long-legged Negro girl who crossed the boulevard with a rumpy canter.
"He-y!" said the Marshal. "You almost goosed that ass with your fender! Be careful, willja?"
The Oldsmobile spurted forward and swung into traffic. At the side of the road there was a gigantic billboard with a girl twenty feet tall on it. The back of her bathing suit was being pulled off by a small dog thirteen feet tall. The girl blushed and glanced over her shoulder as the dog pulled down the bottom half of her suit, exposing her little white cookie.
"American advertising," sighed Ape Man. "Ain't it won-derful!"
The guard slid the car in and out, jockeying for positions on the freeway. Suddenly they swept up behind a little Porsche 2-liter Carrera and cut sharply to the left at the last second. The Olds was in the clear. It roared past the other car in the outer lane and pulled back just in time to avoid a head-on-collision with a slow-moving bus. WAA-ROWWMM! WAA-ROWWMM! Busses and trucks shot by like freight trains, backwashing the wind in heavy blows. "He-y! Look out!" The Marshal tried to grab the wheel as the guard swung off the freeway and sent the Olds head on at a gun-metal Jaguar with a wrinkled old woman at the stick. The Olds skidded and floated in front of the screaming old lady for what seemed like an eternity-then it swung aside and pulled back into its own lane with a screech of rubber.
"Holy Mackerel," said the Marshal, the blood draining from his face. "What're you trying to do? Get us both killed?"
The Jew and Ape Man glanced significantly at one another.
There was a backward rush of billboards. The road writhed along behind. Odin leaned back. Relaxed. He closed his eyes. Behind his dark lids the blue waters of Lake Tahoe and the Reno Highway spread out below as though viewed from a helicopter. A truck roared by. They rushed down a green palm-tunneled street crisscrossed with shade.
"Mojave Desert ... here we come," said the Jew.
The car was like a furnace inside. They panted with heat. Up ahead a gigantic cement mixer on wheels crept along the road at twenty miles an hour. Black diesel smoke hung over the land in dirty gray clouds. On the truck's back a metal barrel slowly revolved, its insides rumbling like an elephant's belly.
"I'll be damned!" muttered the Jew.
They all watched with interest as a baby blue Triumph TR-4 convertible raced past with two naked girls in the bucket seats.
"Lesbians!" snorted Ape Man. "On a Krafft-Ebing wing-ding!"
Odin watched the Triumph and the two female heads with flying hair grow smaller in the distance. A blonde and a brunette.
"I once rode in a little car like that," said the Jew. "So I asked the driver, 'What's this long wall we're driving along? It's over thirty miles long!' That's no wall,' says the driver. That's the curb!"'
Ape Man: "I know a Spaniard who went four hundred miles on a galleon."
"Who?-De Soto?"
The Marshal twisted around in the front seat.
"Here's a good one," he said. Then: "Marlon Brando was on a motor scooter, slipping between lines of cars on the San Bernardino Freeway like a greased hot dog slipping out of its roll. He had his leather jacket on backwards because there was a head wind and his zipper was stuck. So here he is doing about sixty miles an hour on the Freeway when suddenly he sideswipes an old lady in a Jaguar and winds up in a ditch. Now, pretty soon the cops come along and one of them tries to help Marlon who's laid out flat as a whore on New Year's Eve. 'How's he doing?' one of the cops asks, and the cop who's helping Marlon shakes his head and says, 'It's a goddamn shame! This poor little prick's head was screwed backwards, and by the time I got it straightened around, he was dead!'" The guard roared with laughter, "Reminds me of a picture I once saw in a twenty-dollar Art Book," he said. "This Greek kid had the bottom half of his body screwed around so that his ass was in front, same as his mouth. Get it? Two holes in front ... same as a woman!"
He roared with laughter.
"I sure hope we'll stop at the Grand Canyon," said Ape Man. "I hear it's a terrific place to get rid of old scum bags."
. The guard pointed to a sign that said, "Soft shoulders and dangerous curves ahead." He screamed at the top of his lungs.
"When I was a kid down in Alabama, my daddy owned a heard of white horses and a herd of black horses," said the Marshal, "and we found that the white horses fucked more than the black horses..."
"How come?" said the Jew.
"Because there were more white horses than there were black horses!"
"Haw haw haw!" hawed the guard.
"Yeah," the Jew retorted, "and I have no doubt you also was counting their legs and dividing by four to find out how many!"
Odin looked out at the fleeing desert. It was like a backdrop painted for a Western movie. Trees rushed by and roads-an old man with a mule, cactus; one-horse towns, hamlets, villages; a gasoline station, dust clouds, more cactus, tumbleweed; yellow sand, mesquite, yuccas, creosote bush, dried-up lake beds-playas-alkali flats, dunes, greasewood, giant saguaros. The desert spread out before them, a sea of dead shit undulating in the sun like ocean waves.
" ... so the hostess asked the delegate from the NAACP if he preferred white meat or dark, and he says 'Well, ma'am, each has its advantages. De white meat am easier to see in de-'ho'-house at night but de dark meat shows up better on de bedsheet.' " The Marshal pointed ahead with a thumb and forefinger, sixgun style. "Let's eat up there," he said.
The guard howled like a coyote and swung the Oldsmobile off the highway, its wheels sliding to a skidding stop in front of a roadside cafe. Odin looked through the window at a Texas Ranger who stood with his elbow on the roof of a station wagon-tall in the dust.
"Man," whispered the Jew. "Get a load a' that butt-to-front gun-rig! He must think he's Sammy Davis, Jr. or something!"
"Um."
Odin looked at the big Buscadero rig, complete with flowery leather and Mexican silver studs. In the holster sat a .45 Colt Buntline special-the type used by Wyatt Earp on television.
"Hugo LaRoper, the TV cowboy, he caught a bank robber back in '61," said Ape Man. "It was out on Sunset Boulevard near the Laurel Canyon Branch of the Bank of America. I know the robber personally. Red-haired guy. Name's ... "
"Yeah, I've heard that story, too," said the Marshal. "But the fact is that LaRoper was in the bank to make a deposit with his TV dough. He didn't even know there had been a hold-up until the guy was brought back to the bank by a couple of carpenters . . "
"It was in the papers!" protested Ape Man.
"Sure it was in the papers. But the carpenters caught the guy when he was running past them two blocks away. This actor, LaRoper, he's a smart one. The minute he saw what was going on he jumps into the act. Publicity's his meat. So right away he takes a flying leap at the guy and starts hollering and shaking him down-looking for guns and 'sbivs' in his shoes. Why, that poor guy wasn't even armed! and here is LaRoper hollering about dangerous hoodlums and telling everybody that he's a MOVIE STAR and an ex-MARINE DRILL INSTRUCTOR who knows how to handle PUNKS carrying A5s!"
"Well, LaRoper didn't get much publicity out of it anyhow," said Ape Man. "All they did was put his name in with the carpenters'. "
The Marshal smiled. "Yes. And since you know the bank robber, you know why and what for. That bank robber was pretty, is all." He turned and winked at Odin. "Prettiest goddam son-of-a-gun you ever seen. Irish kidwith the face of an angel. Next to him LaRoper would'a've looked like the Bad Guy."
"-likeable sonofabitch, all right," said Ape Man. "They shipped him off to El Reno or someplace like that for a year. After that they dismissed his case."
"He wasn't a bank robber in the first place," said the Marshal. "He was sick and hungry, that's all. But this TV cowboy-LaRoper-he offered to testify for the prosecution. Wanted them to hold up the trial until he came back from a show-biz tour. I got the whole story from the FBI."
"Aaah," the Jew said disgustedly. "These movie and TV stars will stick a knife into anybody for two-cents worth of publicity..."
The guard opened the door and pinched his flat nose between his thumb and forefinger, blowing a tremendous clot of snot into the dust.
"LaRoper would screw his own mother in the ass and sell his sister to a Congo whore-house if he thought it would bring him a good write-up," said Ape Man. "All these actors are the same."
"Except Earla," said Odin.
"What...? " They all looked at him: the convicts, the two guards.
"Earla," he said.
"Oh," the Marshal said. Then he said, "Sure."
Ape Man and the Jew glanced significantly at each other as the guard got out of the car and opened the rear door.
"If you guys can behave yourselves, I guess we can let one of your hands free-so's you can eat," the Marshal said.
Ape Man and the Jew nodded eagerly and got out of the car. The guard removed the cuffs from their right wrists as the Marshall slipped a snub-nosed .38 S&W Special into his hip pocket.
"They're good boys," he said. "But we'll have to spoonfeed Odin."
"You mean we can't even loosen his chains a little?" asked the guard.
"That's right. The only place you do any loosening on him is inside a jail."
"C'mon, Odin. Let's get some chow!"
The guard stepped back from the car and placed his hand on a vest pocket automatic he carried.
Nothing happened. The Jew and Ape Man looked at one another.
"Let's go, Odin," the Marshal said. "They got air-condition inside."
"Um..."
Odin slid across the seat on the balls of his buttocks. He extended his chained lets through the door.
"Take the fetters off," he said. "I can't walk."
"You're not supposed to," countered the guard. "You'll have to shuffle off ... to Buffalo."-He demonstrated.
"Hee hee, hoo hoo, ha!" said Ape Man.
Odin looked at Ape Man and the Jew-they looked back at him. The Jew shrugged his shoulders up around his head-then let them drop. Odin cursed and jerked his feet into the thick, soft dust.
"That's better," said the Marshal.
There was a rattle of chains. Odin stumbled forward.
"Don't slip and break an ass-bone, now," someone said.
Odin stopped and glared at the Texas Ranger. The man wiped his boots on the back of his tan trousers. He met Odin's glare, remarking the hot, bloodshot eyes-like those of a gored bull.
"Howdy, gents," he said. He took off his hat and stood on alternate legs, striking the dust from his trousers. "I reckon that's a mighty horrible desperado you got there, with all them chains on."
"Yeah. He's horrible, all right. You've got toWhat?" The guard stopped. He watched as Odin suddenly thrust his head forward on his neck and began to shuffle towards the Ranger.
"Hey! wait; now-" The Ranger backed up, pawing furiously at his pearl-handled pistol. The Marshal jumped forward, grabbing Odin's shoulder and swinging him about. "Take it easy for Christ's sake ... BOY!" There was a Crack!-like bowling pins. The top of Odin's skull struck the Marshal a tremendous blow on the chin. "AAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" The Marshal's feet shot out from under him like a man slipping on a banana skin. "Po-liiiiice!" someone shouted. "HELP!" Odin whirled and rammed his head into the Ranger's belly-feeling the soft flesh envelope his skull right up to his ears. "OOOMP!" The Ranger crashed against the station wagon and slid to the ground, his pistol halfway out of its holster. "Get the gun!" screamed Ape Man. Odin lay on top of the Texas Ranger (upside-down): in a position like that of a French banana eater. "Soixante-neuf, you two!" Behind him the Jew sank his teeth deep into the guard's crotch, and his thighs closed over his ears. Four feet away the Ape Man rolled around in the dust with the Federal Marshal while his free hand groped furiously and desperately about on the fat buttocks and through the pants pockets for the snub-nosed revolver.
BEE-LAAAAAMMMMMI A charge of buckshot whipped past their heads and ricochetted off the station wagon's roof. BEE-LAAAAAMMMM! POW! CRAAASH! A thousand or more cracks branched out like a spider-web on the station wagon's windshield. Then the glass collapsed and fell tinkling onto the hot hood like a deck of cards.
"Ooh, my cyar!" screamed the Ranger. "My OTTOMO-BILE!"
Odin kicked him in the left nut, hard. "AAAAAAAAAAAW!"
The Marshal cracked Ape Man across the skull with the .38. Behind them a prospector who was wearing a patch on the seat of his pants as big as Texas climbed aboard a mule, swinging a new Mossberg 12 gauge pump-action shotgun over its shoulders. "Hey you old..." Crack! BROOOWWMM! The .45 Buntline special went off in Odin's handcuffed hand and sent a slug across the mule's ass, leaving a bloody red furrow beneath its tail. HEEE-HAWWW! The mule screamed and jumped six feet into the air, bucking and kicking so violently that a hind foot was caught in the stirrup.
"Man!" the Jew shouted to the prospector. "If that mule is going to get on ... you'd better get off!"
The mule did a three-legged version of the Hully Gully and the Bird. Then it crashed head-down into the dust and lay with all four hoofs in the air, struggling frantically on top of the prospector.
"Anybody moves ... I'll blast his head off!"
The Marshal got unsteadily to his feet, waving the .38. A blood vessel in his right eye had ruptured and the white turned red.
"Ca'lina-the nation's fa-vor-ite rice!"
"For Christ's sake turn that radio off!" said the Marshal.
The guard and the Jew lay in the dust, clasping each other like the last position in the Frug. "UMPH!" The guard drew up his knees and threw off the Jew's fat enveloping embrace. Over by the cafe an old Indian squaw sat on the steps, watching them with interest. On top of her head she wore a man's yellow felt hat, with a broken chicken feather in it.
"Geor-giaaaaa, Geor-or-or-giaaaa. Sweet Geor-gia Lee n
The guard got up and staggered across the lot-reaching an arm through the hole in the station wagon's window. He switched off the radio. On the ground the Texas Ranger panted on all fours like a bitch with bloody hindquarters, his big head hanging down between his shoulders.
"You know, you can kill a bloodhound's sense of smell with dried shit and cocaine spread out on the ground," said Ape Man. "I learned that little trick while escaping from Rock Quarry in sixty-two."
"Listen," said the Marshal. "Why doncha go cut your heel tendons or something?"
The Texas Ranger looked up from the dust, bellowing. When he tried to speak, he sounded like Tweety-Pie the Canary.
"Odin, you son-of-a-bitch," the guard said, with amazement and delight. "Now see what you've done!"
Odin cursed and struggled against the fetters and cuffs in the dust. For some strange reason he had on a morning erection.
* * *
The inside of the restaurant was air-conditioned. Ape Man put two fingers between his teeth and let out a loud shriek for the waitress. Outside the dust-caked window there was a sign:
C A F E
Nothing else. Beyond the sign was the desert.
"To keep our guests from carrying ash trays and menus away from the table," the Jew read aloud from a card, "there will be no menus or ash trays on the table."
Then: "We look upon our guests as the most Wonderful Folks on Earth. THE MANAGEMENT."
"How you like that?" said Ape Man. "They insult you before you even sit down!"
A fat waitress slid her ass off a bar stool and came trotting to their table with soft mammalian bouncing. She had long legs, a short trunk, her hair was black and straight-parted on the side like a man's-conked, smooth and shining as though she had painted it onto her skull, a marble rolled in oil.
"Now isn't that a little bit of fantastic?" asked the Jew.
Odin glanced at the big boobies loosely bound in a sagging brassiere. Behind her another waitress stood with thyroid popeyes, watching them. This one was a small bull-dike who parted her brown hair straight down the middle, like a bartender. The whole placed reeked with the Gillette shave lotion soused in her armpits.
"Man, oh man," said Ape Man. Then: "Did you ever hear the one about the masochist milk-maid?. ... She beat her tits so they would give whipped cream!"
The waitress with the big blouseful stood drying her hands on her apron. She eyed their guns and chains nervously.
"W-what you gents like to have?" she asked the Marshal.
"I want a piece of that goose Leda held between her legs," said the Jew.
"That was no goose," corrected Ape Man. "That was a swan."
"A fuckin' duck!"
"No, a swan-she had hair on her buttocks but the swan was between her legs and they pulled tightly together until his big dick plunged in up to his balls and his feathers were completely mixed up with her fur and she wound her legs around his neck and shoved her stomach out while he fluttered his wings and bit her breasts with closed eyes as her hole opened and shut like a mare's pussy and he twisted round and round without leaving her hot, sweet-dripping little honey-pot!"
"Aaah," said the Jew. He raised one leg and pressed it in coyly against the other. "That story is so naughty you have to rewrite it before you can throw it in the wastebasket!"
"Now, look here," the Marshal shouted. "You damn punks can eat a dollar and twenty-five cents worth each-no more. That's what the government allows you. And after what you did on that parking lot out there, you're lucky I'll give you that much!"
"So what you gonna do?" asked the Jew. "Pocket the dough?"
"You're lucky I didn't pump a bullet up your ass," the Marshal rejoined violently. "And you, What's-your-name? Odin. Ha! I'm going to write up a report on you, boy, that'll knock those head-shrinkers eyes out. You'll be in Springfield for the next thirty years!"
"Aah. Go fuck a duck, you old futzer," the Jew answered in a voice as violent as the other's. "The law says-"
"The law says shit!" snapped the guard. "You're in our custody, and what we say is-"
"Gents! Gents!" the waitress shrieked.
Odin shoved the table hard across the floor. The edge hit the Marshal and the guard in the stomach. They stuck out their chests with a look of bug-eyed astonishment, gasping helplessly for air as the wood dug in.
"Ah-" said the guard "ah-ah-ah-ah!"
"Yeah, man!" hollered the Jew. "Do unto him as he would do unto you ... and do it FIRST!"
"Watusi!" the Ape Man shouted. He reached his long, hairy arms across the table and knocked the two men's heads together, like bowling balls. "Snik! Snek! Snak! Snok! Snuk! HUMP!" he shouted. Then, pounding his breast, he screamed like Johnny Weissmuller: "Aimiiiiiiii-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii."
"Fricadellas," said the Jew. "I'll make meat balls with the shit in their pants!"
Odin shoved the table bone-deep into the two men's bellies. The Jew reached over and relieved them of their revolvers.
"Man," he said. "I awda shoot'm."
"Get the handcuff keys, you damn fool!"
Odin held the two men pressed tightly against the wall. A Negro cook whose apron struck him under the armpits and hit him a couple of inches below the stomach at the other end let out a nervous fart.
"F'Chrissake," the Jew said sharply. "You, Ape Man!"
The hairy convict reached an arm out like a sex-crazed gorilla and grabbed the nearest waitress. Then he threw her down on the floor, pulled her skirt up and fingered her dago-greased cunt. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" His erection suddenly became flaccid as he knelt between her thighs. He held his limp member in his hand and stared with saucer-eyed astonishment at her three-inch clitoris.
"Man," said the Jew. "That's too much!"
The waitress giggled and sat up on the floor in a pose of surprised lesbian guilt, as if she had been caught in bed with a man.
"They ought to make a better mousetrap," grumbled Ape Man.
He raised one of her meaty legs and took a boiled egg from a bus tray. Then he shoved it up her twat.
"That, Matilde, is a Spanish omelet for your prutter," he said. "Beat it up good, and add milk and water."
Odin smacked his chained hands on the table.
"Get the keys, you bastards!" he roared.
Ape Man and the Jew looked at one another-Ape Man pissing on the pussy and shaking his hairy blue cock in his hand like a visitor from outer space, the Jew gray-colored and almost hairless, his skin the odor of a dead fish, or a circumcised prick: ugly-with fingers squirming about the snub-nosed revolver like flesh worms.
"Snik! Snek! Snakl Snok! Snuk! ... HUMP! Booooyl"
The Negro cook watched them from the doorway. Then suddenly he hitched up his apron and disappeared around the corner. Ape Man grabbed a revolver and sent a couple of wild .38 slugs after him.
WHOW-OOWWWWWW! Snicksnicksnicksnicksnick. WHOW-OOWWWWWW! Snicksnicksnicksnick-the hammer clicked empty on the chambers.
"Ping-a-ling," said the Jew. "You musta hit every pot they got in that kitch-"
"-t!" said Odin. He called one of them by name and spat out something else, vicious and short, like a whiplash. In his neck his veins stood rigid. He strained against the 'cuffs. A juke box at the back of the cafe thundered with Mamie Smith and "Crazy Blues"-the first blues recording made.
"Now, take it easy, Odin," said the Jew. "You don't behave and we'll have to give you a frontal lobotomy right here on table."
"Odin's his own worst enemy," observed Ape Man.
"Not while I'm around," snapped the Jew.
Odin stared at him with his cold, blue gaze. The Jew looked back at him, blushed, then averted his eyes.
"Jew," said Ape Man. "You wanna die for a thing like this? Out here in the middle of nowhere?"
"No," said the Jew. "I wanna be shot by a jealous husband."
"Shhhhhhhh," said the bull-dike. "Shhhhhhhhh. Listen!"
They all turned and looked at her. From somewhere outside the cafe a high soprano was hollering "Hellaw. Hellaw.-Hellaw in there!"
"What the fuck is that!" said Ape Man. "Tee hee hee," said the hairy-assed waitress on the floor. "The sheriff."
"GOD'S ASS-HOLE IS BLOWING!" screamed the Jew.
Suddenly, as though at a signal, the Marshal and the guard came alive. Ape Man jumped back and clicked the empty revolver at them. Snicksnicksnicksnciksnick. A ketchup bottle whistled past the Jew's head and splattered in a mass of glass and tomato juice against the wall. Then the whole table lifted off the ground and rushed forward, crushing the waitress. They were in combat now, the guard flinging himself astride Ape Man and then falling over backward, him underneath, the Marshal hurling Odin three feet across the room in a clatter of chains while the Jew was grabbed from behind by the bull-dike, one hand gripping his nose, twisting his head half way around on his plucked turkey's neck. The guard suddenly came flying up from out of the whirling maelstrom of legs and bodies and went down fast again, in a wave of fists, like a fish diving, and then the entire interior of the restaurant exploded into wild roars and shouts and yelling faces, against which chair legs cracked and splintered into clouds of matchwood, and all of a sudden the Federal Marshal in shorts and with half his shirt torn off, came sledding down the bar on his back, with all four limbs in the air. The bull-dike drew her arm back and struck Ape Man a tremendous blow squarely between the eyes with her closed fist. Ape Man staggered back, one hand gripping the top of her blouse and tearing it off-exposing her boobies. The Jew whirled and slammed her across the buttocks with a buspan. Then the melee of legs and fists was on the floor again, the Marshal dropping off the bar-covering his head with his arms, screaming-bouncing once. The bull-dike at the bottom cried "Stop sucking me!" and suddenly she was on her feet, her breasts jumping up and down as she chased Ape Man into the kitchen. The Ape Man raced out of the kitchen almost at once, followed by the bull-dike swinging a meat axe. "HEEELP!" They crossed the cafe and ran up the stairs and into a bedroom, the Jew bellowing and the guard close behind, hitting at everything in sight with a broken beer bottle.
* * *
SHE KISSED THE HAIRBURSH ... BY MISTAKE ... SHE THOUGHT IT WAS ... HER HUSBAND ... JAKE ... Burma Shave.
The car roared down U.S. 66, the guard and the Marshal in the front seat, Odin and the two others chained together in the back. They watched the signs rush by:
BENEATH THIS STONE ... LIES ELMER GUSH ... TICKLED TO DEATH ... BY HIS ... SHAVING BRUSH ... Burma Shave.
Jew: "So when he was asked if he could read, he said, 'Yes, sorter. I can read flgurin' but not letterin'. On one of them there road signs I can tell you how fur, but not where from.'"
THE BEARDED LADY ... TRIED A JAR ... NOW SHE'S ... A FAMOUS ... MOVIE STAR ... Burma Shave.
Ape Man: "I remember driving through this desert in a sandstorm once and the wind blew so much sand under the hood it went and killed the engine. So all we did was open the car doors and sailed into town."
The guard suddenly swung the big car off U. S. 66 and rolled southward on an unnumbered back-country road outside Williams, Arizona. A flock of wild turkeys scattered in front of the hood in a whirl of feathers. The Marshal came awake with a start.
"What the hell're you doing?" he said.
"Going to Flagstaff by way of Jerome," answered the guard. "I always wanted to see that sliding ghost town."
"Hell, that'll take us eighty miles out of the way!" said the Marshal. "What you think this is, a sightseeing trip?"
"Yeah, but that sliding-"
"Shit," said the Marshal. "Those empty stores been sliding down that mountainside for the last fifty years. One inch every ten years. Five inches. No longer'n your prick."
"You should know," said the guard. "You been sleeping with your back to me in motels often enough."
"Up yours," said the Marshal. "I know a feller died in Oak Creek Canyon and went to hell. Next day, he wrote back for his blankets."
The guard's smile was a red hole in the rear-view mirror. He winked at Odin.
"Like the feller said, 'Partner, where in hell have I seen you before?' and the other replies, T don't know-what part of hell are you from?""
"Ha, ha," said the Jew. "Very funny."
"I hear there's a special operation that doctors will perform on Federal Marshals who want to quit the racket," grumbled Ape Man, "It makes ass-holes appear to be virgins ... "
"Shut up, you sonofabitch," the Marshal said primly. "You still got straw in your teeth from your mother's kennel."
"Well, so long as I don't have hair between them like you got, I ain't worried."
"Don't shit in the hay, boy. It may be your supper."
"Yeah? If the F.B.I, could find more fingerprints on your ass than they got in Scotland Yard."
The guard made a corkscrew turn at eighty miles an hour.
'Take it easy!" the Marshal gasped. "When you swing around curves like that, you scare the kiddies in back!"
"Let 'em do like I do," replied the guard. "I keep my eyes shut"
The car thundered ahead on the deserted road at ninety and a hundred miles an hour. A small bridge flashed by. Then they roller-coastered down a hillside overlooking Jerome-Verde Valley and the distant escarpment of the Coconino Plateau. At the side of the road, among the dump heaps of old mining operations, there was a square black sign and the white-lettered legend:
JEROME
Population
15,000
10,000
5,000
I,000
GHOST CITY
Then they raced down Mingus Mountain and through the ghost town itself-a backward rush of empty stores, stilt structures, school buildings, deserted homes and factories. U.S. 89A swung on down to the Verde Valley and a huge amphitheater of red rock formations, like those seen in cowboy movies. After a time the canyon narrowed and they raced along the twelve mile stretch of road winding past Oak Creek between towering walls of solid red rock. A while later they hit Pump House Wash and twisted on up the road through a forest of ponderosa pines, heading north towards Flagstaff, the San Francisco Peaks, and U.S. 66.
* * *
At six-thirty that afternoon the car stopped in front of a small courthouse jail. The jail itself was located in the rear of the building and the Marshal turned his three prisoners over to a fat, tobacco-chewing sheriff for safekeeping. Then he and the guard left in search of a motel for the night.
"This ain't much of a jail, is it?" the Jew said disgustedly as Odin and Ape Man stumbled into the darkness beside him. A huge, foot-long rat scurried across the floor and reared on its hind legs, squealing, its forefeet boxing the air furiously, as though it was a kangaroo.
"I bet Duncan Hines ain't been here lately," said Ape Man. "Talent will out ... even through a ass-hole."
"It's against the law to keep Federal prisoners in a joint like this!" the Jew shouted. "I'm going to write my Congressman about this. You see if I don't!"
The metal door slammed shut with a clash of keys. "Quiet, you sons-of-bitches!" the sheriff hollered. "One more peep outa you, and you won't get no supper!"
"Oh, yeah?" the Jew hollered back. "And what you gonna do, Piggy-O? Pocket that three dollars a piece the government pays you to feed us?"
"He's gonna do that anyway," said Ape Man. "Corruption's a prick, whose skin isOf immeasurable length."
They heard the Marshal and the sheriff talking outside the door-then the two pairs of footsteps disappeared into the outer rooms, the guard following with a clatter and clash of loose handcuffs and steel restraining chains.
"I hope they choke on each other in that motel bed tonight," grumbled the Jew. He sat down on a broken toilet without taking off his pants. "The six-inch Hairy Ape of Yuma, Arizona."
"It's a fucking dog-kennel," said Ape Man. "Look at this-what you call it?-chicken tin? I could cut my way out of here by midnight with a can-opener!"
"Well, we don't have no can-opener," said the Jew, looking up at a small barred window near the roof. "What in hell's that up there?" he said. "The Star of Bethlehem?"
They all looked at it. "Looks like it," said Ape Man. "Maybe we're the three Wise Guys ... "
"Holy infant so tender 'n' mild ... HICI" a voice sang sottishly from the other end of the tank. Ape Man and Odin went over and looked at a young Indian who lay on the floor, nursing a loaf of urine-soaked bread between his legs.
"Christ, even the fucking rat wouldn't eat that," said Ape Man, kicking the bread away. In the darkness behind the Indian there were two small cells without doors and with bunks in them. On the naked springs of one bunk covered with pages torn from a magazine-a red-haired creature lay on its side, watching them-its face turned sideways as it bit into a long yellowish object. "Christ," Ape Man said again. "That looks like mule-shit served on a napkin!"
From the door at the other end of the tank there was a sudden noise, like the scrabbling of a monstrous rat. Then a small flyspecked bulb in the ceiling went on and a bucket of soup plus one of coffee was shoved through a dog-trap at the bottom of the door. "I don't want to hear another word out of you cocksuckers tonight," the sheriffs voice boomed through the steel. After a time he quit waiting for an answer and his heavy footsteps faded and then disappeared from the building.
"The sonofabitch has gone home to watch TV," said the Jew. He went over and looked into the bucket. "This shit smells like they cut up a horsehead and boiled it in water," he said. "What the fuck you want us to do?" he suddenly yelled at the silence. "Eat this slop with chili sauce and a dash of Tabasco?"
Ape Man's knees cracked as the stooped and picked up a few loose pages of MAD Magazine from the floor. "How's the coffee..." he said, pulling down his trousers and squatting over the seatless toilet in the corner.
The Jew cursed and fanned one hand across his face at the sudden odors. "I'll bet that son of a bitch of a Marshal will pick us up at eight o'clock-after we've had a bucket of slop."
"Sure," said Ape Man. "That way he saves having to buy us breakfast."
"Saves is right! He'll put that dough in his pocket when he turns in his expense account to the government."
"How's the coffee?" Ape Man asked again.
"You taste it if you want to," answered the Jew. " 'Tain't going to touch it"
"HOly infant so tender 'n' mild ... " the Indian mumbled at the back of the tank.
"Who's that sitting in the cell back there?" said the Jew. "Some kind of New Mexico beatnik?"
"I don't know," growled Ape Man. "Looks like a young white fag with red hair halfway down to his shoulders."
"God's Ass-Hole, what a mess!" cried the Jew. "Mother, what have I done to deserve all this?"
"For Christ's sake, shut up, will you?" said Odin. He let his hand run through the bucket of steaming soup and pulled out a slimy white bone with a string of rotten flesh sticking to it.
"WHAT'S THAT?" the Jew screamed in horror. "A pig's bone?"
"Why, hell, that ain't even ort'odox," said Ape Man. "When you write Bopsy Kennedy about this, be sure and sign it 'A good cadicker.' "
Odin dropped the bone back into the soup with a splash and wiped his hand on the side of his trousers. On the floor there lay a small, carrot-shaped cactus, the top of which looked like a pin-cushion. It was the diabolic root itself-Peyote.
"Wig out, Daddy-O!" cried Ape Man, spotting the cactus the same moment Odin did. He rushed over and picked it up, holding the wad of his pants in front.
"There's another one!" The Jew scrabbled across the floor on hands and knees, snatching another carrot-shaped cactus from among the rat droppings.
"You two going to eat that shit?" asked Odin, his eyes enveloping them like cold acid-then letting them go, still looking at them but without seeing them at all.
"Sure," said the Jew, cleaning the cactus on the bottom of his shirt. "You want some?" He broke off the dirty white tufts of matted fuzz-the peyote buttons.
Odin shook his head.
"Why the hell not?" said Ape Man. "You above all this?"
"It ain't habit forming-"
"Yeah, and it ain't no worse'n coffee."
"Aurora borealis," said the Jew; "and the sun roaring like crazy. Fields of red paint and two-headed blue ducks squawking with spluttering firecrackers up their ass-holes. Come on, man. Let's swing!"
Odin shook his head.
"No."
"Oh, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that 'fing! Up de bop, up de bop, up de bop!" sang Ape Man.
"Suit you'self." The Jew popped a bitter, weed-tasting button of peyote into his mouth and began chewing.
"Cactus candy," sang Ape Man. "Up de bop, up de bop, up de bop!"
He sat down on the toilet again and wiped his ass with MAD Magazine.
"Hey, mister!" a harsh duck-like voice called from the rear of the tank. Odin turned and looked at the open cell where the red-haired fag lay on its side under the 15 watt bulb. "Ooh, mister man, come quick!"
Odin walked over to the cell and stood in the open doorway. "What's the matter?" he asked.
"Oh, mister man," the voice gasped. "Oh, mister man!"
Odin frowned, watching the startling white body tossing and thrashing on the naked, paper-covered springs. "Oh, mister man! I'm going to have a baby!"
"What?"
"A baby. Oh, I can't help it. Oooh! I don't even want to be a mother!"-crying now, biting into a page of LOOK Magazine.
Odin stared at the small balloon-tight, blue-veined growth that was the fag's belly. He could feel the sweat begin to run loose from his armpits. Suddenly there was a weird downrushing roller-coaster feeling in the pit of his stomach.
"You mean you, you mean...? " He stopped. "Oh, mister man! Oh, mister man!" Ape Man and the Jew came into the cell. "What the hell is going on here, Odin."
"She's going to have a baby," he said. "She? You mean 'He' don't you."
"How the hell can a He have a baby?" snorted Ape Man.
"Shh-eee-it," said the Jew. He dropped down on both knees beside the cot and unzipped the fly on the six-foot redhead.
"Ha! A man!" shouted Ape Man. "Didn't I tell you it was a man? Lookit that sweet circumcised dove lying on them eggs!"
"Shh-eee-it," said the Jew. He lifted the red-haired genitals, exposing a hole like a vagina halfway between the scrotum and the brown-rimmed anus.
"Well, I'll be damned!" whispered Ape Man.
The Jew placed his ear on the abdomen-below the navel-and counted aloud a hundred and twenty heartbeats per minute on his watch.
"How fast are the pains coming now?" he asked.
"Oh, fast, fast!" Then turning to Odin. "Oh, mister man. Oh, mister man!"
"Every half minute or so," the Jew told them. "We're getting close!"
His watch was suddenly kicked off the bump by an invisible force inside the belly. The Jew caught it in his hand before it could hit the floor.
"Better get that bucket of hot slop in here," he told Odin. "We might need the water."
"Um." Odin pushed his way past Ape Man and came back with the soup jar. "What do you need this for?" he said. "I thought ... "
The redhead suddenly let out a scream and bent over, fore-water gushing forth like a flood from the hole. A tiny lump of red flesh appeared. The Jew raised the balls with one hand and held them there. Placing his free hand beneath on the half-and-half s vulva.
"It's coming out ass first," he said. "See that foot sticking out? Man, it's all twisted around. We got to turn it over, now. Look at that arm! Christ, I hope the belly cord don't get twisted-" Wriggling the impacted baby with both hands now, the front of his shirt blotched with fore-water. "I got to get that head loose up there. Someting's holding it. Jesus, it'll suffocate! If that uterus would just-" He struggled with the leg furiously, pulling a long wet rabbit of an infant from the birth tract. "The umbilical cord's twisted around its neck," said Ape Man. "You better get something to cut it," though he made no motion to help. The Jew broke a Pepsi bottle against the wall and hacked the corkscrew-like umbilical cord in half near the throat. "Jesus," he said, sticking a forefinger into the infant's mouth: then scooping out a fistful of mucus. "Look at that stain across its forehead." They watched as he held the dead little creature upside-down by its legs and smacked it, hard, on its posteriors. "It ain't dead yet," he told them. "I felt its heart beat. Turn on that water in the bowl. I got to dump it." Odin flushed the old toilet and watched the cold rusty water run into the stuffed bowl. "Here we go," said the Jew, dipping the rabbit feet-first into the cold water-then jerking it up and submerging it to its nostrils in the bucket of hot soup. After a while he dumped it, screaming, into the ice cold bowl again, then reversed the procedure. "You're going to boil that thing like a lobster," Ape Man said, looking around for the afterbirth. The Virgin was resting.
On the floor outside the cell the Indian sang "Holy infant so tender n' mild...."
The Jew lay the skinned rabbit on the cover of MAD Magazine and joined in with a rendition of "O lit-tle town of Bethlehem!" Then he suddenly stopped and stared at Odin with mute horror. "I dipped that child into a bucket of pig's bone soup!"
Odin shrugged. "So what?"
"But don't you see...! "
"Shit," said Ape Man. "Just call that goy a knaidlach."
"Yes, and a big fat matzoh ball up yours too," said the Jew.
Odin straddled a chair and flipped through the pages of The MAD Reader-then another edition called Utterly MAD. He stopped at a chapter entitled Melvin of the Apes and Frank N. Stein.
"You read books?" asked the Jew, wiping embryonic membranes and bloody placenta off his lap.
"Um," said Odin, leafing through Little Orphan Melvin. "The Pulitzer Prize winners like Superduperman are very urbane..."
"Yeah?" the Jew said, dropping a twenty-inch umbilical cord into the toilet. "I've never been much of a literary gent myself ... "
"A WOMAN!" shouted Ape Man from the floor outside the cell. "I'm a WOMAN! I got tits swelling on my chest-I got a big empty pussy opening up between my legs! ... I WANT TO BE LOVED!"
The Jew watched Ape Man as he lay on his back and made the undulating movements of intercourse with his hips twisting into the air.
"Man," he said. "That peyote cat wants to be filled."
* * *
There was a full moon the next morning. It stood round and pale overhead, like a child's balloon. The three prisoners were shackled together under gun point and herded into the car by the guard and the Marshal. The sheriff stood framed in the doorway. Under his right arm he held a Mauser .250 Savage rifle with a 8X varmit scope.
"No, Sir!" he said, spitting a brown clot into the dust. "I never had no trouble with any of my prisoners. If you don't got nothin' else to do, kick 'em in the ass I always say."
"That's right, Piggy-O," the Jew yelled at him from the car. "You tell 'em, fatso. Treat 'em rough!"
"You hook-nosed sonofabitch," the sheriff said, still spitting. "You didn't talk like that when you was in my custody last night!"
"No, I was too busy with that one-fingered strait-jacket we had up your ass!"
The sheriff quit looking at him. He looked at the Marshal. "You bring these punks around here again, Dick," he said. "We'll teach 'em to mind their manners."
"That's all right, Fatso," the Jew broke in. "We left a little bundle behind in that can of yours.-A token of our esteem, Pruritus ani,"
"What you punks do?" the sheriff said suspiciously. "Shit on the floor?"
The guard laughed and slammed the doors. He and the Marshal got into the front seat of the car-pulled in their legs-slammed then re-slammed the doors.
"Man," said the Jew. "Quit givin' us a headache."
The car took off with a head-snapping jerk-its chassis leaping forward in a shower of dust and gravel. The guard waved good-bye to the sheriff.
"Tootle-restroom!" called the Jew. "See you in the funny-papers!"
Two miles out of town they stopped while the Marshal and the guard went into a gas station and experienced the cool shock of a Coke down their throats. Ape Man watched them from the dusty car windows with half-closed eyes.
"Don't we get no breakfast?" he asked.
"We've had breakfast," the Marshal replied, tilting his head back and winking at the guard. "Eggs and bacon, and the juiciest fruit you've seen this side of a California inspection station."
"I'm not talking about your joosey froots," growled Ape
Man. "I'm talking about ours. The government pays you to...."
"You had your breakfast," said the guard. "Back there in the jail."
"No we didn't."
"Sure you did," the Marshal told him righteously. "The Sheriff always feeds his prisoners."
"A bucket full o' pig's slop!" raged the Jew. "You call that breakfast?"
"I can't help about your religion," said the Marshal. "Mush-'n'-prune juice's all right. Don't be so particular, shlemiel-"
"You're keeping that money! The government's paying you to feed us and you motherfuckers are..."
"Now watch what you're saying," the Marshal warned him gently, "or you might not get lunch, either!"
"You can't beat corruption in City Hall, can you?" said Ape Man.
"It's your word against mine," the Marshal answered equably. "You punks better start seeing things our way."
"Yeah, why not?" said the Jew. "You're bigger crooks than we are!"
"Now, now; that kind 'a' talk won't get you no lunch ... nor Coke bottles neither," the guard retorted. "Crooks!" the Jew screamed. "CROOKS."
"Well, then there now..."
"CROOKS!"
"Take it easy, Schnozzle. You want us to"CROOK SI"
"You make him shut up," the Marshal shouted at Odin. "There's a hell of a long way to Springfield yet. You punks cooperate with us and we cooperate with you!"
"That's right," the guard interjected eagerly. "You treat us right and we treat you right..."
"You trying to sound me, screw?" Odin asked, his blue gaze moving over the Marshal sharp and biting as carbolic acid.
"I ain't jivin' you, Rifa," the Marshal said earnestly, trying to look at him for a moment-then averting his eyes. "We want to swing along with you cats. O.K.? "
"Don't bullshit us, you Federal ass-hole," snarled the Jew. "We're going to fuck you between here and the bug-house, and there is nothing you can do about it ... "
"Shut up," said Odin.
"What?" The Jew looked at him, surprised.
"Shut your mouth," Odin said, trying to straighten up under the load of chains.
"We could loosen 'em a bit-make you more comfortable," the Marshal suggested quickly. "There's no reason for you to sit all scrounged up like that."
"Why, that's right kind of you, Marshal, sir," Odin answered primly. The Jew and Ape Man looked at each other. Then they exchanged shitty grins and relaxed. The Marshal opened the door and got down on his hands and knees on the floorboards, fumbling with the shackles. After a while he solved the locks. Odin sat motionless, his eyes staring straight ahead, as though listening to something far away. "I guess you can pull up a little chain, now," the Marshal told him. " 'N' I'll lock it in again." Without a word Odin jerked up a three-foot section of chain and swung it across the Marshal's skull. There was a clatter-a sodden smack of metal on bone. The Marshal fell forward on the floorboards-breathing fast and moaning "Jesus. Jesus. Jesus," as he felt Ape Man's feet and the Jew's hands on his body. Outside the car the guard bobbed and weaved in the dust, screaming, "Let go of heem! Let go of heem!" his arms flapping like a chicken. Odin reached his hands down and pulled the snub-nosed revolver from its clip-on holster, located in the Marshal's rear pocket. He jerked the trigger and a bullet whipped past the guard's ear. EEE-Yowwwww! The guard jumped three feet off the ground and a brown stool of pu-pu dropped out of his trousers. Odin quickly jerked down the Marshal's pants and shoved the snub-nosed revolver up his rectum. "You make one move out there!" he shouted, "and I'll let'im have it!" The Marshal moaned and wiggled his ass. "Don't shoot!" he screamed. "For God's sake, Don't Shoot!" In his terror a steady stream of warm yellow piss began trickling down the soft insides of his thighs. "DON'T SHOOT! DON'T SHOOOOT! DON'T SHOOOOOOT!"
"Up yer mudder's nookie we're gonna shoot!" yelled the Jew. "Yer mudder's quim! Yer mudder's breadbox!"
"Pruttt!" said the Marshal. "Pruttt! Pruttt!"
His anal sphincter tightened and loosened its grip on the barrel of the snub-nosed revolver, rnilking it, as he let out another pop-gun sentence, loud and clear, in three words.
Odin raised his head to sniff at the air and look around suspiciously.
"Speak to me, sweet lips," he said. "Tell me 'bout Sinatra and that gasser..." thinking of, remembering, the diner: the truck driver and the bird that sang in a square of artificial sun.
Behind him a gas-station attendant stuck a shotgun through the open rear window and pressed the twin muzzles against the back of his head.
"Careful, son," he told him. "Anything you say now might be held against you."
Odin looked straight ahead, his eyes growing very wide. "Anita Ekberg!" he said quickly.
