16

Kane leaned his head forward, squinting to see through the rain-flooded windshield of the staff car. He had been through Bly. At each public place where he’d seen a motorcycle parked, he stopped, went inside and looked for Cutshaw. Once he thought he passed another staff car, but he could not be sure. Now he followed the road that spurted northward past the town. He had made no conscious decision to do so; the action was intuitive, automatic. A neon light was blinking ahead of him. He pulled off the road and lowered his window. It was a tavern. He saw the motorcycles parked. They were all of the chopper type, high-handled. All but one. Kane got out of the car and went into the tavern.

The cyclists were in a circle. They were singing “Fly Me to the Moon” in a slow waltz rhythm, and in time to their singing they were passing Cutshaw back and forth along the circle, shoving him, laughing, Cutshaw a limp rag doll, unresisting, unheeding, uncaring.

Kane paused at the entrance to the tavern. He stared at the cyclists. Then he caught a flashing glimpse of Cutshaw before he tripped and fell to the floor, disappearing from view.

“Get your ass up, moon boy!”

“You lookin’ for rocks?”

Amid laughter, Kane slipped sidewise through the circle and quickly knelt beside the prostrate Cutshaw. Kane slipped a hand behind his back and propped him up.

“Hey, look at this shit,” said a cyclist.

“I think we just got us another beach ball,” said another one, a girl with a nasal voice.

Cutshaw stared at Kane. A purplish bruise commanded his cheekbone and blood smeared his lips from a cracked front tooth. “Been meeting your family,” he said sardonically. The remark made no sense to Kane. He pulled the astronaut to his feet and began to move him toward the door, but Rob intercepted them, grabbing the astronaut’s arm and squeezing. “Hey, that’s my beach ball, man,” he told Kane. “Put him down.”

“Let him go, please,” Kane said softly.

“You leggo of my beach ball.”

“You tell ‘im, Rob!”

“Call the M.P.s!”

“The S.P.s: that’s the Shit Patrol, man. He’s their leader!” Kane turned his head and looked at Cutshaw. The astronaut was staring at him, a thin, bitter smile on his face. “Here’s your goodness in man,” he challenged ironically; yet his voice cracked as he said it. He looked away.

The leader looked at Cutshaw in mock astonishment. “Did you say somethin? Huh? Did you talk?” He looked at Jerry. “Jesus, Jer, I think this beach ball here just talked! I swear to Christ!” He slapped Cutshaw in the face. “Did you talk?”

“This man is ill,” said Kane. “Please let us go.” Rob saw the pleading in his eyes, heard the meekness, the quaver that shook Kane’s voice. One of the girls said, “Let ‘em go.” Rob glanced at her, a blonde with pigtails, and he put his smirking face close in to Kane’s. He said, “Don’t say ‘Please.’ Say ‘Pretty please.’ I wanna know you mean it. Now go ahead and say it.”

Kane could not fathom his own reluctance. He swallowed hard. “Pretty … please,” he said at last, and started to walk forward with Cutshaw; but Rob kept his grip on the astronaut’s arm and yanked him back.

“I’ll bet he sucks,” said a cyclist with a wisp of beard in the cleft between his mouth and his chin.

The leader looked suddenly inspired. “Say ‘Marines all suck,’ ” he instructed Kane gleefully. There were giggles and hoots from the crowd. “Let ‘em go,” said the girl with the pigtails again. She was staring at Kane. The leader grinned at her cockily. She was his girlfriend. “Cool it, there, sugar,” he told her. He returned his attention to Kane. “Come on, come on, let’s get it over with; say it and you can go. Just say the words and you can split. Now whaddya say? You gonna say it? What’s the harm? Then you can go.” He put on a comically sincere expression.

Kane’s body began to tremble slightly. He turned to look at Cutshaw. The astronaut’s gaze was on the floor. There was no expression on his face. He listened. Kane turned and fixed Rob with wide shining eyes. His mouth had fallen slightly open.

“Come on, come on-you gonna say it?”

Kane tried to move his tongue, to form words. He could not. He mounted a massive effort of will. “Marines … Marines … all … suck.”

A sighing murmur went up from the crowd.

The girl with the pigtails moved away from the group.

“Now just one more thing,” said the leader. “I swear it; this is it, then you go. Jesus, this is an easy one. Really. Just say you’re a beach ball. Simple. That’s it. Go ahead. ‘I’m a beach ball.’ ”

Kane’s eyes had not moved from the leader’s. They were wider now, shinier. His tongue was thick and dry as he uttered, “I … am a beach ball.”

“Just in time!” Rob crowed. “We needed a new one!” Jerry stuck his leg out in back of Kane and Rob shoved him in the chest. Kane went sprawling to the floor. The gang cheered. Rob’s girlfriend watched from the bar.

Kane rose slowly to his feet and the gang began shoving him back and forth. He was passive, unresisting. He kept seeking Cutshaw with his eyes, even after the astronaut averted his face. The howling and cheering slipped the knife of headache into his skull. A plumpish girl with a mole on her chin stuck out her foot in front of Kane and tripped him. He fell down. He rose to his knees and did not move, his eyes fixed on the floor, disoriented. The leader approached him with a beer and poured most of it over his head. “Another baptism, folks. Praise the Lord.” “Praise the Lord!” they shouted. “Hallelujah!” Jerry stuck a boot in Kane’s back and kicked him forward. Kane’s face hit the floor. Rob moved over and poured the remainder of the beer on the floor in front of Kane. His lips parted wetly in a sneer. “Fuckin’ slob,” he said. “Now clean up the mess!”

Kane stared up at him numbly. Jerry came over and shoved on his head until his face was almost touching a foaming puddle of beer on the floor. Rob sank down to one knee beside Kane. “Now lick it,” he told him. “Lick it up.” Rob’s eyes were gleaming. His face gleamed excitement. “Lick and we’ll let you guys go. This time I mean it.”

Forgotten for the moment and dazed, Cutshaw had stumbled over to the bar. Now he turned in sudden anxiety. “Hey, knock that off!” he called out. He lurched forward, but two cyclists quickly pinned his arms.

“Lick it!”

Kane stared down at the beer. He trembled as a darkness surged through his bloodstream, a powerful secret calling his name, now in whispers, now louder, asserting, demanding. It held his tongue in place in his mouth. Kane fought it. The name. What name? He suppressed it, repelled and afraid. He opened his mouth, and his tongue slipped out in fractions, then in jerks. He licked at the beer.

An astonished sigh went up from the crowd. “Holy Christ,” breathed the girl with the mole. “He did it!”

Rob smiled contemptuously, looking down. Kane drew himself up on his hands and knees and Jerry knocked him to the floor again from behind with a kick of his cleated boot. He sneered, “That’s for disgracin’ the fuckin’ uniform.”

Cutshaw struggled to free himself. “You bastards!” he cried. “You fucking sons of bitches!”

Rob walked over and cracked both sides of Cutshaw’s face with a vicious hand. “Get him down,” he told the men who were pinning his arms. Cutshaw was shoved to the floor on his back and the two held him down as Rob now mounted him, his crotch in close to his face. He unzippered his fly and removed his penis. He placed two fingers beneath it and flopped it up so that it touched the astronaut’s lips. “Okay, fly me to the moon, now, pal,” Rob leered. “One way or another, you’re blastin’ off!” He grinned around at the crowd, who were murmuring and giggling. A few came closer, their faces excited. Cutshaw grimaced and jerked his head aside. “If he does it, I’ll be famous,” Rob exulted. He drew a switchblade knife from his boot; its gleaming long blade clicked out into place. Rob held the point to Cutshaw’s neck. “Come on, let’s go, or I swear to Christ, I’ll cut you! I mean it!”

Kane pulled himself to his hands and knees again and stared at Cutshaw and Rob. At first the scene did not register; then his eyes became separate hells. He looked up at Jerry, who was standing above him with another full stein. “I think this schmuck needs another beer,” drawled Jerry. He poured it over Kane’s head. He smirked at the crowd. He did not see the lip curling up, the fury.

Kane reached up a hand and clasped it over the fingers that Jerry had cupped around the stein. Jerry looked around, and in a mocking, babying tone he said, “Ahhh, I think he wants some more.” Suddenly his mouth flew open in a quick small gasp of horror. He tried to scream but could not as Kane’s hand squeezed against his own with unthinkable force. Jerry’s eyes were popping. Then at last came the scream as the stein shattered inward and Jerry’s fingers were crushed bloodily into shards of glass. The scream became a wordless exhalation of air and he crumpled to the floor unconscious.

The room was stunned. “Jesus Christ!” someone murmured. Rob scrambled to his feet and faced Kane, who had risen to a crouch. Rob held the switchblade knife out to the side. For a moment he was fearful, undecided. Then the reasonable order of his universe asserted itself: a flaw in the beer stein, a fluke. He stuck the knife point-first in a wooden pillar near him, reached into his pocket, slipped out brass knuckles and put them on. Then he held out both hands from his sides, palms upward, confident, smiling, promising punishment. He swaggered toward Kane. Kane’s fist drove into his stomach with a pile-driving force, and when Rob doubled over, Kane’s knee shot up and broke his jaw with a crunch of bone. The girl with the pigtails let loose a hysterical, horrified scream. Then chaos. The girl with the mole pulled the knife from the pillar and a cyclist came at Kane with a tire chain. Kane side-stepped low, seized the man with the chain in a jujitsu hold, applied traction and broke his arm with a crunch, then turned as the girl came at him with the knife. He broke her wrist with a powerful chop and then raised clenched hands above his head; and as she bent and held her drooping wrist, he pounded his fists down onto her head and shattered her skull.

The other cyclists rushed at Kane.

Groper was pacing. Hudson Kane gazed out a window. They had been keeping watch in the adjutant’s office ever since the psychiatrist had returned from Bly without finding Cutshaw. The time was 1:23 a.m. The telephone rang. Kane answered it as Groper abruptly stopped pacing and walked to the window: the lights of a car were shining at the sentry gate. “Here comes someone,” said Groper. He went out to unlock the front door of the mansion. The psychiatrist followed him with his eyes as he talked to the highway patrolman on the phone. His face turned ashen. He listened. He looked shocked.