96. The McFerrins had left a keg. . . .
The McFerrins had left a keg on ice out on the patio, and the barbecue was set up out there as well. The plan was, though the evening would be cool, to keep the party out of doors as long as possible. Dale’s father and mother—my maternal uncle and his wife—had come over before we arrived; Aunt Martha, a sharp-faced woman, was in the kitchen making deviled eggs, and Dale’s old man was already getting into the beer. Heavy-chested with a deep, deep voice, he was built for barroom fighting, larger-boned than his son. He always referred to me, for some reason, as “the Northerner.”
“Hey, it’s the Northerner,” he said when he saw me. He came across the patio to greet me, and I entrusted my right hand to his crushing grip. “What’s the news from the lake country?” He called the Sandhills the lake country because he only went there to fish.
“Haven’t been up there in a while,” I told him. “Pop’s doing OK, I guess.”
“Your mom’s still married to the Indian,” he said. “That’s as far as we know, anyway.”
“That’s good,” I said. “He’s outlasted one or two of ‘em already. I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Ellen?” My mother’s family had split along fault-lines of education; Aunt Ellen, who’d gone to the University, belonged to the opposite camp from Dale’s father, who earned his living reading meters for the gas company and spent his spare time rebuilding 30-year-old cars.
“Not since Christmas,” he said.
“Me either,” I said. “Spring Break’s next week. I’m probably going up to Palemon, so maybe I’ll see her then.”
“Let her know we’re alive,” he said. “You can tell her we still vote Republican.”
“I will if I see her,” I replied. “I’ll tell her you haven’t learned a thing.”
It wasn’t long until the cop couples began arriving. Married people like Dale and Toni have married friends; none of the wives was willing to talk to me, and what the men out by the keg wanted to talk about was automobiles, home repairs, the coming baseball season, fishing, hunting, and guns. I knew that the shock from a 20-millimeter cannon round splats the human body rather like a pin splats a water balloon, but it was nothing I felt I could use in a conversation. When I finally did see a face I recognized, I choked on my beer and ducked around the house on the side opposite the driveway, stepped over a fence, re-entered through the front door, and sought out Toni in the kitchen. “Do you see that tall blond guy out there?” I asked after taking her to the window. “What’s he doing at this party?”
“That’s Don Stinns,” she said. “He went to Lincoln Northeast with Dale. Do you know him?”
“Let’s just say I’m a friend of a friend of his,” I said. “I’m surprised to see him here. I thought he was, you know, not exactly on the L.P.D. side of the law.”
“Don’s usually out on parole for something or other,” she replied lightly. “I think he has some sort of relationship with the Department. You’ll have to ask Dale; he doesn’t always tell me these things.”
With The Goon was a red-faced bozo who wore a silver-colored nylon jacket that I’d seen before; a leaning shuffleboard table came to mind. As I watched, the two of them were joined by a third man whom I recognized from a number of the student demonstrations. He was always yelling and holding up a clenched fist, always on the edge of things, looking toward the center. I will call him the Man with the Black Moustache. These three formed a little island near the keg; the cops, I noticed, kept their distance, presenting their backs to the trio as they talked among themselves.
I could’ve stayed safely in the kitchen beside Toni, but cop parties are segregated by gender, and I was drawing curious stares from the policemen’s wives. The Goon didn’t really know me, I reminded myself; he’d seen me once at Lederer’s and maybe that earlier time at the Royal Grove. I’d be more likely to draw attention to myself by staying away from him. What I needed was a whiff or two of perspective; I left by the front door and went out to my truck, checking to make sure that the wind was blowing toward me from the house. It was not then fashionable for the LPD to smoke grass at their parties.
When I got back from my pickup, I was suffering an attack of marijuana-induced friendliness and candor, so that I practically had to throttle myself to keep from walking up to The Goon and blurting out, “I hear you’re going to Vegas.” I headed to the keg for a cup of beer, then looked around at the party as if I’d just arrived. I tried to join one of the policemen’s groups, but before I could start to babble, they dispersed and moved away, re-forming themselves on the other side of the patio. Probably I smelled like dope, or else I looked like I ought to smell like dope. I stood with my uncle for a few minutes, but could think of little to say across the generations and the drug warp. Finally, as if it were natural, I approached The Goon’s outlaw cluster, drifting in alongside Black Moustache. “Looks like a little different outfit over here,” I muttered. “These other people don’t seem to want to talk to me.”
Black Moustache gave me a wary, sidelong look. “I know you,” he said. “You’re with some kind of student group at the University.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I’m with the English group. What about you, what group are you studying?”
“I’m in Physics,” he said. “I do graduate work in Physics.”
“I’m a cousin to the McFerrins,” I blabbed. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be drinking beer with cops.”
Black Moustache shrugged. “Beer is beer,” he said. This was true, I felt; very scientific. “I’m just checking out the mentality,” he added. “Heh, heh.”
“Heh, heh,” I agreed. The Goon was looking me over with his deceptively clear blue eyes; his cold gaze made my scalp tingle. I wondered how much beer it took before he would attack somebody. I addressed the moustache man again. “What kind of physics are you interested in?” I asked him. “Nuclear physics? Physical astronomy? Quantum mechanics, that sort of thing?”
“I do work in gravitation,” he said. “My dissertation will address the theory of the graviton.” Up close, he was Dexter Coffey’s age at least. Old for a grad student, not too old for an FBI agent. Had done 20 years in the military, unless I missed my guess.
“You mean, like, whether there is any such thing?” I asked.
“I don’t usually discuss my theory with lay people,” he replied.
“Hey,” the third man of the group said. “Hey, I’m talking to you.”
“To me?” I looked across at him. His face was unnaturally flushed; not drunk, just red and hot. He looked uncomfortable.
“You,” he affirmed. He offered me a grin. “You owe me a pizza.”
I glanced at the logo on his silver jacket. It was from the ambulance company next door to Bertie’s. “Bullshit,” I said. “You forfeited.”
“We were fifteen points ahead,” he said. “No way you dumb hippiefreaks would’ve caught up.”
“Tough luck,” I said. “Rules of the game. Your team had to leave, so we won the pizza. We paid for it. We ate it. It was good. Pepperoni.” I glanced covertly at The Goon. He didn’t seem particularly interested in any of this.
“In Nam,” said the ambulance driver, “I would’ve fragged your ass.”
“I guess you’re an old ass fragger from ‘way back,” I responded. Already there were men whose method of cadging drinks was to act out the stereotype of the crazed Vietnam veteran. Real craziness is one thing; I had seen some of that. I suspected the ambulance driver was a phony, same as Black Moustache standing next to him.
“You’re queer,” the ambulance driver said. “I can see that.” I reached down and placed my cup of beer on the concrete; he did the same.
“You’re a thug who cheats your employer and endangers the public,” I said. “You’re a liar and a lousy shuffleboard player, and you never went to Viet Nam, and I really don’t think my mother wants me to play with you.” Because he was going to hit me anyway, I drew back my right arm—which was the wrong arm since the surgery—and punched him in the mouth as hard as I could. He wavered and grinned back at me with blood on his teeth.
“Tickles,” he said.
When you smoke marijuana, you can see things coming at you, but that doesn’t always mean you can get out of the way. He cocked his arm and swung at me with no particular skill or strength, but instead of moving easily to avoid the blow, I watched his fist creep steadily closer until it struck me full on the chest. The last thing I noticed was the dirt under his chipped fingernails. If I ever have to go to the hospital, I thought, please God don’t let this filthy bastard take me there. Then the lights dimmed out, and I lay down happily and comfortably on the patio’s cold concrete.
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