Free Live Free

The Retreat

“You too, huh?” Barnes asked.

Stubb looked around at him. “Yeah, me too.”

It was night, and snow clouds hung over the city; there was no light anywhere that was not mankind’s. It might have been a city of clouds, with a few stars peeping through. They might have been in some vast, dark, rolling country, a land of hills and black pines.

“I thought they’d have more down.”

“It was almost quitting time when they got Candy out.” Stubb chuckled.

“What was that gunk under her robe?”

“Baby oil, I think.”

“I’m the one who’s supposed to know about novelties. If I had greased the floor in the hall …”

“They probably would have dropped her and broken her neck.”

“Or she would have gone through to the basement. How much does she weigh?”

“How the hell should I know? Two hundred, maybe.”

“Two hundred and fifty, at least. Maybe three hundred.”

“Maybe three hundred,” Stubb conceded. “Who gives a damn?” He tossed his cigarette into the snow. “It’s God-damned cold out here, Ozzie. You got a new place to stay?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Not me. They let me put my bag behind the counter in the Sandwich Shop up the street, and I’m still looking around.”

“Yes,” Barnes said again.

“We kind of worked together this afternoon, right? And it didn’t go too bad. Hell, with Candy it almost went good enough.”

Barnes nodded.

“Ozzie, I was wondering whether I could bunk with you. Just for tonight. I’ll get a place of my own in the morning.”

There was an instant’s silence, then the soft voice of the witch said, “Ozzie has no place to stay, Mr. Stubb.”

Both men whirled. “Where’d you come from?” Stubb asked.

“I fear he lied to you. He is here, staring at this ruined house, for the same reason you are. He wonders if he might not occupy his room one night more. Do not do it, gentlemen. It is very cold tonight. You would freeze.”

Stubb asked, “What about you, Madame S.?”

“I am here because I was forced to leave behind certain belongings. I have returned to fetch them.”

Stubb said, “We’ll help you carry ’em. Where are you going?”

“What is the nearest hotel of good quality?”

“The Consort. It’s only about four blocks.”

“From such a neighborhood as this? I am amazed. Then I go to the Consort. And yes, you may carry my things for me. You will save me the price of a taxi. Ozzie, you are a man and know about such matters. How may I pass through this fence?”

The barrier the wrecking crew had erected was not actually a fence, but a pack-train of yellow sawhorses carrying indolent orange lights, harnessed with an orange cord. Stubb cut the cord with his penknife, and Barnes moved one aside.

Not even the front wall of the house that had been Free’s was entirely gone as yet. Its outline remained, bricks hanging from their mortar to make a crazy arch that framed the dollhouse interiors of the front rooms. Under drifted snow, the hall was still recognizably the hall, with its stair vanishing upward into blackness. On its right, the parlor was changed mostly by the dying of the fire and the absence of the stuffed bird, its glass bell, and the table they had burned. To the left, Free’s bedroom seemed to bare all its poor secrets; his rumpled sheets cowered on the bed under a thin blanket of snow. Above, Candy’s room and the witch’s were only half exposed.

“Look!” Barnes pointed. “I saw something.”

“Where?” Stubb craned his neck and lifted his small body on tiptoe.

“Up there. Something moved.”

“Probably just the light.”

“Or Free. It could have been Free. I never saw him after this morning. Did you? Did anybody?”

The witch glanced back, her face half buried in the fur of her coat collar. “Free is dead.”

Stubb grunted. “You see the body?”

“I walk into it now.”

“Without a flashlight. Ozzie, you got a light?”

Barnes took out what appeared to be a small chromeplated pistol and pulled the trigger. A blue flame an inch long burned at the muzzle. “Butane,” he said. “You like it?”

“I’m crazy about it.” In the dim, blue light, Stubb examined the trampled snow. “Kids been in here. See that little sole with the hole in it? Neighborhood kid. Madame S., I hope you hid whatever you got, or it won’t be there now.”

“My things are here still. I feel them.”

Barnes hurried to catch up with her. “Hold onto the rail, please, Madame Serpentina, or you’ll fall.”

“Not on this. Not even without your light, Ozzie. I do not require it, nor would I if this place were entirely dark.”

Something creaked.

No one spoke; but there was in the air the almost palpable agreement not to speak, to ignore whatever it had been. The old house seemed to sigh. Perhaps there was no wind—the snow never stirred. Perhaps there was no sound.

“We’d better hurry, Madame Serpentina. The butane won’t last long.”

“I have told you I do not need light.”

Stubb muttered, “Well, we do.”

The door of the witch’s room was locked. She took her key from her purse and opened it to reveal one wall half dissolved in space and streetlights.

“I’m surprised the kids didn’t break in,” Barnes said.

“They were in fear, my Ozzie. They did not venture to the top of the stair, I think.”

“Tracks?”

“I do not need to look at tracks.”

Stubb said, “Somebody came up here. Big feet. Probably the wrecking crew.”

“No one has entered my room. That is all I care about. Ozzie, my bags are beneath that bed. Will you get them for me?”

One was an old suitcase, the other a bag in actual fact, a sack of hairy goatskin as big as a laundry bag. Its knotted thongs were sealed with a lump of wax that looked black in the faint light.

“‘Now I am done.’ So speaks the poet. If you will carry these for me, gentlemen? Mr. Stubb, it would perhaps be better if you were to take the suitcase. Ozzie, you may have the honor of the other. That is somewhat heavier, I think.”

Stubb was already maneuvering the suitcase through the narrow doorway. After a final, lingering glance around the room, the witch followed him, leaving Barnes to bring up the rear.

“What a day has this been, and what a time in my life! You say, Mr. Stubb, that it is not far to this hotel?”

A voice out of the darkness asked, “Did somebody say hotel?” There was a flicker of light on the opposite side of the stairwell.

“Candy, is that you?”

“Jim?” The fat girl’s face appeared as the moon appears with the passing of a cloud. She struck a match and held it up.

“Candy, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Getting some stuff. Celebrating.” She smiled, and despite its unfocused quality, the smile made her pretty. “This is where it was, right? I thought,” (she belched softly) “that maybe before they tore down the stadium I’d go stand on the mound again.”

“Yeah,” Stubb said. “You had them going.”

The witch added, “And we should be going.”

“To a hotel, you said.” The fat girl still wore her white plastic raincoat, but her lost white plastic boots had been replaced by enormous black ones. She carried a flight bag and brought the malty odor of beer with her. “I met this guy I know, and he said sorry I’d like to but I don’t have the bread, right? And I said tonight he didn’t need it—just let me sleep over. So we went up to his place, and then he said come on, I know where there’s a party tonight.”

The witch pushed past Stubb as he stood listening; Barnes followed her.

“So we got in his beater and drove way the hell out. Shadylawn. Sounds like a graveyard, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Stubb said.

“And then he said give me a cigarette, and I said I didn’t have any. I’d been smoking his on the way out. So we went by a drugstore, and he stopped and dug out a buck and said here go in and get us a pack.” A tear splashed on Stubb’s hand.

“And he split while you were inside.”

“Buh huh.”

“Jesus Christ. No wonder you feel down. How’d you get back?”

“Hitched.”

“Jesus Christ,” Stubb said again.

“It wasn’t so bad, except I was afraid I was going to get picked up by the smokies.” The fat girl swallowed and snuffled. “Jim, we’d better go. We’ll lose them.”

“Sure we will. I got her suitcase here. Can you make it down the steps okay?”

“I made it up. You don’t have a drink on you?”

“I got two cigarettes, and that’s it.”

“Up at Harry’s, I knocked down six or eight beers, and now I can feel them dying in me. You know what I mean?”

“Sure.”

She was going down the stairs beside him. There was just enough room for the two of them with the suitcase between them. At the bottom, she asked, “Let me have one of those cigarettes?”

“Sure,” Stubb said. Barnes and the witch were already some distance down the street. Stubb put down the suitcase, took out his last two Camels, and crumpled the pack and tossed it into the gutter. He lit their cigarettes from a paper match, as he had before.

“This lady picked me up. She was about forty, I guess. Her husband was out of town and she was going downtown to have dinner with another lady she’d gone to college with. Hey, let me carry part of that—see, I can just hook a couple fingers in the handle.”

“All right.”

“Now we kind of walk in step. I told her I was on a date and he wanted me to come across, and when I wouldn’t, he shoved me out of the car.”

“Happens a lot, I guess.”

“Not to me. Anyway, she bought it. At first, you know, I thought she was just pretending to make it easier for both of us, but she really did buy it. I was kind of messed up.”

“Like now,” Stubb said.

“I guess. I didn’t give her any big act. Just what I told you. I asked her about this college she and the other lady went to. It sounded great. When I got out, she said how far, and I said oh, ’bout eight blocks, but you wouldn’t want to go down there, and she gave me a couple of bucks for a cab.”

“You can’t hardly open the door of a cab for two bucks.”

“I don’t think she gets downtown much.”

“Tell me about coming back to Free’s.”

The fat girl belched again, letting out the air with a puff of smoke. “Jim, am I walking all right?”

“Good enough.”

“She knew I was a little—you know. Tippy.”

“Tipsy.”

“I didn’t laugh or do anything crazy, but she must have smelled it on me. I think I cried a little.”

“She’d expect you to.”

“Uh huh. Do we want to catch up with them?”

“No. Let’s just keep them in sight.”

“Then we ought to slow down a little. This thing’s heavy anyhow.”

“Sure.”

“I was all messed up, see? I’d spent the whole damn evening, and all I had was three bucks to show for it. I didn’t have anywhere to stay.”

“Yeah.”

“And I remembered—you know? Once in my life I had come over everybody. You remember when they came in and I was sitting there all slicked down with Johnson & Johnson’s? They just about went bananas. You remember, Jim?”

“Sure I remember.”

“One time eight of them tried to pick me up and they couldn’t do it. Then that captain, that smart fucker, said to put me in the rug. And the rug tore.”

The fat girl began to giggle, and for a time it seemed she might never stop. Her chins jiggled as if each knew some joke of its own, and her belly, to which she pressed the flight bag and a hand like a plump, pink starfish, jerked up and down uncontrollably.

“They finally got me out—did you see it? They handcuffed my hands and feet so they could stick their arms through without them slipping out. It hurt like hell. How many were there?

“Carrying you? Six.”

“And that captain threw the rug over me. It was a good thing he did. The benches in those paddywagons are metal, and I put the rug down and sat on it.”

“They must have brought your clothes,” Stubb said.

“Uh huh. Except my boots, because I lost them last night.”

“You didn’t have them when you got back to Free’s.”

“I don’t remember seeing you, Jim. I don’t even remember going home.” Her merriment faded.

“I heard you on the steps. I went out to see if you had cigarettes.”

“Did I?”

“Yeah, you gave me one.”

“How was I?”

“Okay. Pretty tight, sure, but okay except for not having shoes.” Stubb tried to shrug. “Hey, how about changing sides with this thing? My arm’s giving out.”

They set down the witch’s suitcase, walked solemnly around it, and picked it up again. Barnes turned to look back at them, waved, and hurried on.

“This morning I wore those open-toed pink straw things I had. They got soaked. I put them in the closet.”

“You should have got them a minute ago.”

“To hell with them. They were coming apart.”

“This isn’t too heavy for you, is it?” They said it together, then looked at each other and laughed.