What Comes Next

FOUR

THE MAN in the hat is making love to an old lady, her bones snapping under his weight. When he is done he cuts off her bombs and tacks them on the wall. Puts the rest of her in the bathtub. (I was watching from under the couch.) Then rode away, whistling to himself, on a bicycle.

He had the mask on, which made him dangerous. Standing in front of the bike, I told him it would be best for everyone if he stopped. No one would help me — the others hiding behind windows. “One of these days, schmuck,” he said, “you’re going to die.” He had friends, he said, assassins in high places. I stood my ground but the bicycle turned into a plane and he got away.

I woke five minutes before the alarm. Left him a note: “Have to move out. Don’t worry about me.” Then, two blocks away, decided he didn’t need to know. I couldn’t trust him. They were talking in their room, a dull buzz, the door closed. The idea to get out without facing them. I had the feeling someone was in my room so I went back to look.

No one was there. Only pieces of me. Accumulations like mold. Stamp collection, chess set, box of records, player, three speakers, comics, slide rules, gun models, Monopoly set, investigation files. The room like a corpse hugging me. I wanted to burn it. The dead should be burned. Saw myself in the mirror, The Human Torch, turning on. Burning whoever got in my way. The clock had twenty after six. Move your ass, Christopher. Took a briefcase from the closet, one that used to belong to my father, and packed some stuff in it. It would serve as cover. A man with a briefcase has business to do. What is my business? My business is to go about my business until I find out what it is I have to do. What I’m here to do. Your larger purpose, as Parks says.

Who do you think you are, Christopher, not knowing who you are?

Police cars roaming the streets looking for something, anything. I took the subway to pass the time, read the News and Times. Nothing in either on the Cripple Killer.

SOLDIER SMOTHERS MINE WITH OWN BODY

TO RECEIVE COUNTRY’S HIGHEST AWARD

A graduation picture of this baby-faced Negro in a black gown.

A family in Brooklyn was found murdered, two adults, two children, the house looted. They were dead two days, said the police, who broke into the house after neighbors complained of the silence. The President says he values constructive dissent as much as any American but those who protest the war are giving aid and comfort to the enemy. “How would you like to be a soldier in battle, giving your life for your country, and people back home saying you have no business being there?”

The teller at the bank kept me waiting twenty minutes. Came back empty-handed. His mouth like a buttonhole.

“I can’t do anything for you until you talk to Mr. Hedges. Please do as you’re told.” His nervous eyes prodding at something over my shoulder. A guard behind me, a large, angry-looking Negro, his hand alongside his gun.

“Henry,” the teller said, “will you take this young man to Mr. Hedges.”

I went with the guard to the office of the vice president, T. M. Hedges, Jr., a pink-faced fat man. My passbook and a yellow card, alone on his fat desk except for a glass paperweight (with snow in it) on the right corner. And a red telephone.

“Will you have a seat, sir,” he said, peeking at me. “This will only take a few minutes.” “What will?”

“Sit down, please.” He adjusted his glasses, his face smiling like a mask.

The guard standing by the door, his hands behind him.

“Do you have any identification with you, Mr. — uh — Steinwall? A driver’s license. Something like that.”

I said I didn’t drive, and the name was Steiner, neither of us drives.

“Uh huh.” He took off his glasses and, as if I weren’t there, concentrated on cleaning them. “Where did you get this passbook, son?”

“From this bank, sir. When I opened my account they gave it to me.”

“I see,” he said. “I’d like to show you something that’s very interesting. Will you look at the signature on the withdrawal slip? Compare it with the signature on this yellow card. I’d like to know your opinion. Were these made by the same person?”

“It’s a fact. They were made by the same person.”

Him inside the paperweight, it snowing on him.

“I’ll tell you how I know they weren’t. It happens that I’m something of an expert on handwriting. A hobby of mine. A signature is made distinctive by its characteristics. The characteristics of these two signatures, the slants of certain letters, are to my eyes absolutely different.” He tapped his fingers together. “What do you think I ought to do about it?”

I glanced behind. The guard, leaning against the door, was thinking of what it would be like to shoot us both, dreaming the opportunity. Hedges’ death an accident.

“I think we better get the police.” His pink hand on the phone.

“No.”

“Well, what’s your story? Is the passbook yours or isn’t it?”

When I didn’t answer he said it was a great truth that he who hesitates is lost.

I asked him, still polite, if I could write my signature again for him.

He took a yellow card and a pen from his top drawer. “Put your name where it says ‘Signature.’” He pointed his finger at the spot in case I couldn’t read. I wrote:

Christopher Steiner

He studied the two yellow cards and the slip, rotating the order. Then he took a magnifying glass from the breast pocket of his jacket and studied them again. “Hmm,” he said. “Hmm.”

I signed another card for him and, with a magnifying glass, the ring on his finger glistening, he compared the four. “If someone found your passbook and tried to empty your account, you wouldn’t want us to give your money to someone else.”

He said that he wanted to study the signatures at greater length and if no one with my name had reported a missing passbook — ha ha — he would let me close the account tomorrow.

When I left, I knew I would never get it. A police car parked in front of the bank.

The sky heavy, glistening — a lifeless sky. The temperature in the nineties. “Is God dead?” someone had written on the wall. “I’m just not well,” it said underneath.

“I’ll take the daughter, you take the mother,” Parks said.

Two women silting on the next bench, neither mother nor daughter.

“Where do you want to take them?”

At lunch — we went to a German place on Eighty-sixth Street — he asked how “our friend Rosemary Byrd” was getting along.

I said I didn’t know how she was.

“I’m glad there are no hard feelings, Chris. On my part, I want you to know I bear you no ill will. I want you to know that.”

“I’m thinking about getting married,” I said.

“To whom?” Pinpoints of sweat on his forehead.

“Just thinking about it as an idea. What would be your advice on something like that?”

“If you’re asking seriously — I think you’re putting me on — under the best of circumstances marriage is a difficult proposition. How can you be thinking about it without someone in mind?” His mind on something else. “Living with another person is one of the hardest things there is.”

“Is it hard with your wife?”

He pretended not to hear me. “How did you make out?”

“Make out?”

“In school. You said you were worried that you might not have enough credits to graduate.”

I said it didn’t matter since I was going in the Army anyway. He said if there was something he could do to convince me not to go, if it was in his power, he would do it.

“Is true,” a man in a black suit at the next table was saying, “that in nineteen thirty-six eighty percent of Jews in Germany was Communists. Is true.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t true, Hans,” the other said. “I just said it was a mistake to try to kill them all. A matter of faulty calculation. Don’t make enemies you don’t need to make. A first rule of good business practice is not to make enemies.”

“A matter of faulty calculation. Never start a job you can’t finish.”

“Best to kill people you can trust.”

Parks was staring at my briefcase, saying that the war would go on and on, getting larger and larger, unless something was done to stop it.

I told him about having moved out. He stopped his lecture about the war, said he was interested to know my reasons.

I said I couldn’t stay there anymore.

A policeman, sitting at the bar, was watching us.

He said what I had done was a necessary stage of development. I wanted to keep him talking until the cop left so I asked him if he thought it was worth acting queer to stay out of the Army.

He looked at his watch. “We’ll talk about it another time, Christopher. There are better ways. I have to take off.” Smoothing his hair with his hand, his eyes burning. “Look, if you don’t have a place to stay, I can put you up in the spare room until you find something.”

I said maybe I would come. The cop talking to the bartender, staring, pointing at us.

He paid the check and returned. “I’ll tell Carolyn to make up a bed for you. OK?”

I said it depended on certain other things.

“Whatever you decide,” he said, waving.

I got up to see where he was going, when the cop at the bar grabbed my arm. “What’s his name, the guy you were with? I could swear I’ve seen him somewhere. Isn’t he on television? I have a bet with Happy here. Isn’t he the one that plays the double agent on that new combat series?”

I said I didn’t have to answer his questions and got out in time to see Parks getting into a cab.

I followed him to her aunt’s place. Like old times. Thought of ringing the bell, saying “Surprise” when she answered the door, my fly open. “He thinks, your friend, he’s above it all,” Parks was saying. “There are no atheists in my foxhole,” she said. They were arguing. Parks down in an hour, looking grim, went directly to the subway. I had the idea that he had killed her but when I phoned she answered.

“Curt,” she said. “Curt?” I didn’t talk.

I called a guy who was on the math team with me. Asked him if he could put me up. He said he wouldn’t mind normally but since last week he was living with a girl. He had a key to another place, he said, if I was interested. He couldn’t talk now. She was coming in. To call him back.

A woman in the park accused me of following her, said she was going to call a cop. I knocked her down, ran. Went to a movie to get away. The feature: What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? The place full of queers.

I counted nine of them. They were standing in a row, a vertical column in black uniforms, at motionless attention. A command was given. The first soldier in the line took two running steps to the right and then, pivoting in the air, flung himself face down to the ground. The second soldier took three steps to the right and then executed, with the same remarkable precision, the same complicated movement as the first. The third soldier took four steps to the right … And the fourth. And the fifth. I thought I was watching some kind of exhibition — the bodies about to arrange themselves into words — but I discovered, a bullet knocking off my hat, that they were firing live ammunition at some enemy behind me. “Hey,” I called, “cut it out. I’m a civilian.” Holding up my draft card. The firing continued.

I was surrounded, the trees revealing themselves as soldiers in camouflage. “Throw down your arms and put up your hands, or we’ll come in shooting,” a voice yelled. “We’ll hit you with everything we’ve got.”

“I’m not armed,” I said.

The order came again. “Throw down your arms.”

I looked around to see who it was they might be after, but I saw no one — no one else — soldiers pointing rifles on all sides of me.

“I’m a civilian. There’s been some kind of mistake.”

For a moment I had the sense I had gotten through to them, then the voice came again. “Throw down your arms. Throw down your arms. You must show us, by diminishing your capability, that you want peace.” A bullet blistered by, taking a button off my shirt.

“I want peace. I come in peace.”

“We want deeds, not words,” said the voice, which seemed to be coming from a loudspeaker some distance away. “Yield your arms.” A shot grazed my finger.

I looked in my pockets for something to yield to them — it seemed my only chance. I found an old boy scout knife, one that I had used when I was a kid, grateful that I had it with me. I threw it underhand on the ground in front of me, hoping somebody would notice. “That’s all there is,” I said. “It s not really a weapon.”

“The enemy is trained to fight with all the means at his disposal,” someone said. “It’s in the Manual of Enemy Arms.”

A soldier stepped forward, prodded my knife with his bayonet as though it might be alive, then fired a round of shots into it. At the fourth or fifth shot, the knife exploded.

“This will go hard on you,” I was told. “Your ass has had it.”

I thought the best thing for me to do was not to say a word until I learned what the charges were. Two guards in black were taking me to the orderly room. I thought of making a break for it, of making a sudden dive into the brush, which might be thick enough to conceal me.

“It would be good shit if he tried to run,” one of the guards said in a Southern drawl, “’cause then I could make a few holes in his back and get transferred off this mother-forsaken post. You don’t kill a prisoner, you spend the rest of your time on this post.”

“You’ll be doing him a favor,” the other said. “You go ahead and shoot him if you like, Schuyler. If anyone asks, I’ll say he looked to me like he was about to run.”

“I couldn’t do it unless he actually made a motion to run,” the first one said. “I go by the book, man. I don’t do nothing without consulting the book.”

“Hey, buddy,” the second guard whispered to me, “listen ass carefully what I tell you. I’m your friend, buddy. When I say to Schuyler, ‘Look what shit’s coming from the supply room,’ you take off and run for your life. It’s your only chance, old buddy. Trust the old man.”

(How could he expect me to trust him?) We were walking along what must have been a parade grounds, goal posts on both ends, a rocket launcher in the center, the two guards joking about something that made no sense to me. A major came by and stopped us. “Why are you men out of uniform?” he bellowed at the guards. “What do you think this is, a tea party we’re running here? Let’s see your authorization, soldier.”

“We ain’t got any authorization, sir,” Schuyler said. “We’re intelligence men, we go by the book.”

“When I ask for authorization,” the major said, his face a deep red, swelling, “you better shit some if you don’t have any. I don’t care if the general himself gave you your orders; nobody goes by here without I say so. Am I making myself clear, gentlemen?”

Schuyler held out his gun for the major to inspect. The second guard saluted. Their attention diverted, I took off for the woods, head down, running as fast as I knew how, the distance deceptive. The woods a fake, another open field on the other side. I kept on, any progress better than the risk of standing still. If the world is round, I reasoned, in the long run it doesn’t matter which way you go. Night now. The cries of birds. My chest hurts from running. An officer calls to me to stop. I can’t now even if I want to — the mechanism self-perpetuating, outside the authority of will. I trip on something, fall. There are men, bodies, around me — asleep or dead. Someone hands me a rifle. I am told to fire a round every five seconds. “I’m a pacifist,” I tell them. “A pacifist and a civilian.” “We’re all just men here,” the chaplain says. “The ways of war are mysterious.” The piece kicks back as I fire, punishing my shoulder. “Squeeze softly,” the chaplain whispers, “like a lover.” There is no light. How beautiful it is to fire at what can’t be seen. Somewhere I have been wounded. I have the sense that if I fall asleep, I will not wake up. I am too tired to care — past caring. Fight to stay awake. Will kill anyone who gets in my way.

The inspection has started. The team of inspectors (1 major, 1 captain, 1 lieutenant, and the first sergeant) are studying the display of the man whose bed is closest to the door; my bed, the third in the row, is separated from his by one other bed.

“Captain,” the major said, “do you have a copy of the latest inspection manual in this barracks? It is my impression that this year the item Α-five tent pegs are to be displayed to the right and not to the left.”

“Lieutenant,” the captain said in a voice a shade louder than the major’s, “it is my distinct impression that the item Α-five, to wit, tent supporter pegs, are to be displayed to the right and not, as in the display of Private Komanski, to the left.”

“Sergeant,” the lieutenant bellowed, “in the latest Manual of Field Display, Article Twenty-four, paragraph sub one, it is stipulated that when there are more than two inspecting officers, the item Α-five, to wit, tent supporter and maintainer pegs, are to be displayed to the right and not, as in the display of Private Komanski, to the left.”

“Private Komanski,” the sergeant whispered in a mock-gentle voice, “your fucking Α-five tent pegs are pointing in the wrong asshole direction. Disciplinary action will be taken.” He turned and, stiffening to attention, saluted the lieutenant. “It has been verified that Private Komanski’s tent supporter pegs are in violation of Article Twenty-four, paragraph sub one, sir,” he chanted. “Disciplinary action, as deemed proper and necessary, will be taken.”

(I suspected, unable to see without turning around, that my tent pegs were facing in the same direction as Komanski’s.)

The captain saluted the major. “The violation has been duly noted, sir. Correctionary action will be taken.”

“Then let’s go on, gentlemen,” the major said. “By all means, let’s go on.”

They lined up, in order of descending rank, in front of Private Gatchel’s bed, the second bed in the row. “This is what I like to see,” the major said. “This man is to be commended, captain.”

The word was passed back through the chain of command to the first sergeant. “You’re shaping up, soldier,” the sergeant barked at Gatchel.

And then they were in front of me. I prayed, superstitious about my fate, holding my breath, that nothing was wrong.

“Hmm,” I heard the major say. “Hmmm.”

“Uh huh,” the captain said. “Uh huh, uh huh.”

The lieutenant cleared his throat. The sergeant belched. “Is this the best you can do, Steiner?” the sergeant said.

“Excellent,” the major said, “but not excellent enough. Is that in line with your observation, captain?”

“My feeling is that it’s good,” the captain said. “But that there is room for improvement.”

I stifled a belch.

“I want to go on the record and say that it’s not up to snuff,” the lieutenant said. “A little more effort and desire was needed here.”

The sergeant said nothing, looked at me with disappointment, with contempt.

“I’ll do better next time,” I said. A belch escaped.

The inspecting team went through the rest of the barracks quickly and disappeared into the john, where they remained for what seemed like days. Komanski made a joke about the major having to take a shit. In an agony of sickness, I threw up on the polished barracks floor.

“If I were you,” Gatchel whispered to me, “I’d make a run for it before they get back.”

“Where can I go?”

“If you can get over the border,” he said, “they can’t touch you. I’d go myself if I didn’t have a reputation to maintain.”

“Tennnnnn-shunnn,” someone yelled.

I rushed for the door, tripped, got up, crawled under one of the beds and through a loose floorboard into an underground tunnel, which was, Gatchel had told me once, the only way out of the fort. Though I was tired — it had been days since I had been to sleep — I crawled, using my elbows to propel me, with what seemed, under the circumstances, exceptional speed. Crawling through the tunnel, elbows, knees, arms, wounds, I wanted a woman — I began in the dark of the tunnel to lust for a woman. It was what one lacked in the Army: tenderness, sex, affection, the touch of a woman, softness, ease, the taste and smell of love, breasts, cunt, love — a good fuck. I tasted the possibilities of freedom, the exhaustive opportunities. I would go from woman to woman with the impartial grace of a dedicated soldier, making up for all the ascetic wasted years. As I crawled I imagined a woman crawling with me, underneath me. I pressed up against her. “Not here,” she whispered, coming to life. “Not here.”

“I’m tired of crawling,” I said, “Let’s screw.”

“You must learn to wait, baby,” she said, fondling me, my hard on so big it had become painful to crawl.

“I made you out of my head, and I want to make love now,” I said. “Here and now.”

“OK,” she said. “Though, sweetie, it will be better if we wait. I know how these things are. There’s hardly any room in here for anything.”

I couldn’t wait. I held her down and plunged, bleeding, into her dark cut, occupied her, an escaped soldier, desperate to the final extent. She sang in my ear: of what it is to dance on the head of a pin.

I went off without feeling it, a short wistful spasm, more smoke than flame, the dust of regret on my tongue.

And then I was too tired to move.

“Come on,” she said. “My lover, my love, I want you again.”

“I’m tired,” I said. “I want to rest for a while.”

“Don’t you love me?” she asked. “Tell me you love me.”

“I love you,” I said, unwilling to argue with an imaginary woman in the black of night (in an escape tunnel miles away from light and freedom). “I need to sleep for a few hours to regain my strength.”

“Sleep, my love,” she said. “Forget everything that worries you. Put your head on my breasts and sleep.”

So I did.

I had the idea someone was following me. After six blocks, ducking in and out of places, he was gone. Later, there were two others, incompetents, easy to get rid of.

QUEENS WOMAN KILLED IN BATHTUB — headline in the early News. No mention of the Cripple Killer. (Forgotten already?) On page three: MARRIAGE CRUMBLING, KILLS WIFE, MOTHER-IN-LAW, BYSTANDER.

A woman stabbed to death in Central Park in broad daylight. The assailant, according to observers, was dark, foreign-looking, and had long hair.

I have to stay out of the park.

Called home. When he answered I said, disguising my voice, that it was my painful duty to inform him that his son was missing in action.

“Don’t think I don’t know who it is,” he said.

It was after nine, turning dark, when I arrived at Parks’ place. The pacifist in the middle of a fight with his wife. They turned off when I came in, pretending it was all right, the smell of their heat in the air.

I come in peace, Parks.