Thinner

Chapter Nineteen. In the Camp of the Gypsies

He paused in back of the camper with the unicorn and the maiden on the side, a narrow shadow among other shadows, but more constant than those thrown by the shifting flames. He stood there listening to their quiet conversation, the occasional burst of laughter, the pop of an exploding knot in the fire.

I can't go out there, his mind insisted with utter certainty. There was fear in this certainty, but also intertwined in it were inarticulate feelings of shame and propriety – he no more wanted to break into the concentric circles of their campfire and their talk and their privacy than he had wanted to have his pants fall down in Hilmer Boynton's courtroom. He, after all, was the offender. He was …

Then Linda's face rose up in his mind; he heard her asking him to come home, and beginning to cry as she did.

He was the offender, yes, but he was not the only one.

The rage began to come up in him again. He clamped down on it, tried to compress it, to turn it into something a little more useful – simple sternness would be enough, he thought. Then he walked between the camper and the station wagon parked next to it, his Gucci loafers whispering in the dry timothy grass, and into their midst.

There really were concentric circles: first the rough circle of vehicles, and inside that, a circle of men and women sitting around the fire, which burned in a dug hollow surrounded by a circle of stones. Nearby, a cut branch about six feet tall had been stuck into the earth. A yellow sheet of paper. – a campfire permit, Billy supposed – was impaled on its tip.

The younger men and women sat on the flattened grass or on air mattresses. Many of the older people were sitting on lawn chairs made of tubular aluminum and woven plastic strips. Billy saw one old woman sitting propped up on pillows in a lounger, a blanket tucked around her. She was smoking a home-rolled cigarette and sticking S&H Green Stamps in a trading-stamp book.

Three dogs on the far side of the fire began to bark halfheartedly. One of the younger men looked up sharply and drew back one side of his vest, revealing a nickel-plated revolver in a shoulder holster.

'Enkelt!' one of the older men said sharply, putting his hand on the young man's hand.

'Bodde har?'

'Just det – han och Taduz!'

The young man looked toward Billy Halleck, who now stood in the midst of them, totally out of place in his baggy sport coat and city shoes. There was a look not of fear but momentary surprise and – Billy would have sworn it – compassion on his face. Then he was gone, pausing only long enough to administer a kick to one of the hounds and growl, 'Enkelt!' The hound yipped once and then they all shut up.

Gone to get the old man, Billy thought.

He looked around at them. All conversation had ceased. They regarded him with their dark Gypsy eyes and no one said a word. This is how it feels when your pants really do fall down in court, he thought, but that wasn't a bit true. Now that he was actually in front of them, the complexity of his emotions had disappeared. The fear was there, and the anger, but both idled quietly, somewhere deep inside.

And there's something else. They're not surprised to see you … and they're not surprised at how you look, either.

Then it was true; all true. No psychological anorexia; no exotic form of cancer. Billy thought that even Michael Houston would have been convinced by those dark eyes. They knew what had happened to him. They knew why it was happening. And they knew how it would end.

They stared at each other, the Gypsies and the thin man from Fairview, Connecticut. And suddenly, for no reason at all, Billy began to grin.

The old woman with the trading stamps moaned and forked the sign of the evil eye at him.

Approaching footsteps and a young woman's voice, speaking rapidly and angrily: 'Vad sa han! Och plotsligt brast han dybbuk, Papa! Alskling, grat inte! Snalla dybbuk! Ta mig Mamma!'

Taduz Lemke, dressed in a nightshirt which fell to his bony knees, stepped barefoot into the light of the campfire. Next to him, wearing a cotton nightgown that rounded sweetly against her hips as she walked, was Gina Lemke.

'Ta mig Mamma! Ta mig -' She caught sight of Billy standing in the center of the circle, his sport coat hanging, the seat of his pants bagging to almost below the coat's hem. She flung a hand up in his direction and then turned back to the old man as if to attack him. The others watched in silent impassivity. Another knot exploded in the fire. Sparks spiraled up in a tiny cyclone.

'Ta mig Mamma! Va dybbuk! Ta mig inte till mormor! Ordo! Vu'derlak!'

'Sa hon lagt, Gina,' the old man replied. His face and voice were both serene. One of his twisted hands stroked the smooth black flood of her hair, which fell to her waist. So far Taduz Lemke had not looked at Billy at all. 'Vi ska stanna.'

For a moment she sagged, and in spite of the lush curves she seemed very young to Billy. Then she wheeled toward him again, her face rekindling. It was as if someone had thrown a shot of gasoline onto a dying fire.

'You don't understand our lingo, mister?' she screamed at him. 'I say to my old-papa that you killed my old-mamma! I say you are a demon and we should kill you!'

The old man put a hand on her arm. She shook it free, and rushed at Billy, barely skirting the campfire on flying bare feet. Her hair streamed out behind her.

'Gina, verkligen glad!' someone cried, alarmed, but no one else spoke. The old man's serene expression did not change; he watched Gina approach Billy as an indulgent parent watches a wayward child.

She spat on him – an enormous amount of warm white spittle, as if her mouth had been full of it. Billy could taste some of it on his lips. It tasted like tears. She looked up at him with her enormous dark eyes, and in spite of all that had happened, in spite of how much he had lost of himself, he was aware that he still wanted her. And she knew it too, he realized – the darkness in her eyes was mostly contempt.

'If it would bring her back, you could spit on me until I drowned in it,' he said. His voice Was surprisingly clear and strong. 'But I'm not a dybbuk. Not a dybbuk, not a demon, not a monster. What you see . . .' He raised his arms and for a moment the firelight shone through his coat, making him look like a large but very malnourished white bat. He slowly lowered his hands to his sides again, *is all that I am.*

For a moment she looked uncertain, almost fearful. Although her spittle was still trickling down his face, the contempt had left her eyes and Billy was wearily grateful for that.

'Gina!' It was Samuel Lemke, the juggler. He had appeared beside the old man and was still buckling his pants. He wore a T-shirt with a picture of Bruce Springsteen on it. 'Enkelt men tillrackligt!'

'You are a murdering bastard,' she said to Billy, and walked back the way she had come. Her brother attempted to put an arm around her, but she shook him off and disappeared into the shadows. The old man turned to watch her go, and then at last he turned his gaze on Billy Halleck.

For a moment Billy stared at the festering hole in the middle of Lemke's face, and then his eyes were drawn to the man's eyes. The eyes of age, had he thought? They were something more than that … and something less. It was emptiness he saw in them; it was emptiness which was their fundamental truth, not the surface awareness that gleamed on them like moonlight on dark water. Emptiness as deep and complete as the spaces which may lie between galaxies.

Lemke crooked a finger at Billy, and as if in a dream, Billy walked slowly around the campfire to where the old man stood in his dark gray nightshirt.

'Do you know Rom?' Lemke asked when Billy stood directly in front of him. His tone was almost intimate, but it carried clearly in the silent camp, where the only sound was the fire eating into dry wood.

Billy shook his head.

'In Rom we call you skummade igenom, which means “white man from town.”'

He grinned, showing rotted tobacco-stained teeth. The dark hole where his nose had been stretched and writhed.

'But it also means how it sounds – ignorant scum.' Now his eyes finally let Billy's eyes go; Lemke seemed to lose all interest. 'Go on now, white man from town. You have no business with us, and we have no business with you. If we had business, it is done. Go back to your town.'

He began to turn away.

For a moment Billy only stood there with his mouth open, dimly realizing that the old man had hypnotized him – he had done it as easily as a farmer makes a chicken go to sleep by tucking its head under its wing.

That's IT? part of him suddenly screamed. All of the driving, all of the walking, all of the questions, all of the bad dreams, all of the days and nights, and that's IT? You're just going to stand here without saying a word? Just let him call you ignorant scum and then go back to bed?

'No, that is not it,' Billy said in a rough, loud voice.

Someone drew in a harsh, surprised breath. Samuel Lemke, who had been helping the old man toward the back of one of the campers, looked around, startled. After a moment Lemke himself turned around. His face was wearily amused, but Billy thought for just a moment, just as the firelight touched his face, he had seen surprise there as well.

Nearby, the young man who had first seen Billy reached under his vest again to where his revolver hung.

'She's very beautiful,' Billy said. 'Gina.'

'Shut up, white man from town,' Samuel Lemke said. 'I don't want to hear my sister's name come oud your mout.'

Billy ignored him. He looked at Lemke instead. 'Is she your granddaughter? Great-granddaughter?'

The old man studied him as if trying to decide whether or not something might be here after all – some sound other than the wind in a hollow ground. Then he began to turn away again.

'Perhaps you'd wait just a minute while I write down my own daughter's address,' Billy said, raising his voice. He did not raise it much; he did not need to in order to bring out its imperative edge, an edge he had honed in a good many courtrooms. 'She's not as lovely as your Gina, but we think she's very pretty. Perhaps they could correspond on the subject of injustice. What do you think, Lemke? Will they'be able to talk about that after I'm as dead as your daughter? Who is able to finally sort out where an injustice really lay? Children? Grandchildren? Just a minute, I'll write down the address. It'll only take a second; I'll put it on the back of a photograph I have of you. If they can't figure this mess out, maybe they can get together someday and shoot each other and then their kids can give it a try. What do you think, old man … does that make any more sense than this shit?'

Samuel put an arm on Lemke's shoulder. Lemke shook it off and walked slowly back to where Billy stood. Now Lemke's eyes were filled with tears of fury. His knotted hands slowly opened and closed. All the others watched, silent and frightened.

'You run my daught' over in the road, white man,' he said. 'You run my daught' over in the road and then you have … you are borjade rulla enough to come here and speak out of your mout to my ear. Hey, I known who done what. I taken care of it. Mostly we turn and we drive out of town. Mostly, yeah, we do dat. But sometimes we get our justice.' The old man raised his gnarled hand in front of Billy's eyes. Suddenly it snapped into a closed fist. A moment later blood began to drip from it. From the others came a mutter not of fear or surprise but approval. 'Rom justice, skummade igenom. The other two I take care of already. The judge, he jump out of a window two nights ago. He is – . .'Taduz Lemke snapped his fingers and then blew on the ball of his thumb as if it were a seedling dandelion.

'Did that bring your daughter back, Mr Lemke Did she come back when Cary Rossington hit the ground out there in Minnesota?'

Lemke's lips twisted. 'I don't need her back. Justice ain't bringing the dead back, white man. Justice is justice. You want to get out of here before I fix you wit something else. I know what you and your woman were up to. You think I doan have the sight? I got the sight. You ask any of them. I got the sight a hundred years.'

There was an assenting murmur from those around the fire.

'I don't care how long you've had the sight,' Billy said. He reached out deliberately and grasped the old man's shoulders. From somewhere there was a growl of rage. Samuel Lemke started forward. Taduz Lemke turned his head and spat a single word in Romany. The younger man stopped, uncertain and confused. There were similar expressions on many of the faces around the campfire, but Billy did not see this; he saw only Lemke. He leaned toward him, closer and closer, until his nose almost touched the wrinkled, spongy mess that was all that remained of Lemke's nose.

'Fuck your justice,' he said. 'You know about as much about justice as I know about jet turbines. Take it off me.'

Lemke's eyes stared up into Billy's – that horrible emptiness just below the intelligence. 'Let go of me or I'll make it worse,' he said calmly. 'So much worse you think I blessed you the first time.'

The grin suddenly broke on Billy's face – the bony grin which looked like a crescent moon that had been pushed over on its back. 'Go ahead,' he said. 'Try. But you know, I don't think you can.'

The old man stared at him wordlessly.

'Because I helped do it to myself,' Billy said. 'They were right about that much, anyway – it's a partnership, isn't it? The cursed and the one who does the cursing. We were all in it with you together. Hopley, Rossington, and me. But I am opting out, old man. My wife was jerking me off in my big old expensive car, right, and your daughter came out between two parked cars in the middle of the block like any ordinary jaywalker, and that's right, too. If she had crossed at the corner she would be alive now. There was fault on both sides, but she's dead and I can never go back to what my life was before. It balances. Not the best balance in the history of the world, maybe, but it balances. They've got a way of saying it in Las Vegas – they call it a push. This is a push, old man. Let it end here.'

A strange and almost alien fear had arisen in Lemke's eyes when Billy began to smile, but now his anger, stony and obdurate, replaced it. 'I never take it off, white man from town,' Taduz Lemke said. 'I die widdit in my mout.'

Billy slowly brought his face down on Lemke's until their foreheads touched and he could smell the old man's odor – it was the smell of cobwebs and tobacco and dim urine. 'Then make it worse. Go ahead. Make it – how did you say? – like you blessed me the first time.'

Lemke looked at him for a moment longer, and now Billy sensed it was Lemke who was the one caught. Then suddenly Lemke turned his head to Samuel.

'Enkelt av lakan och kanske alskade! Just det!'

Samuel Lemke and the young man with the pistol under his vest tore Billy away from Taduz Lemke The old man's shallow chest rose and fell rapidly; his scant hair was disarrayed.

He's not used to being touched – not used to being spoken to in anger.

'It's a push,' Billy said as they pulled him away. 'Do you hear me?'

Lemke's face twisted. Suddenly, horribly, he was three hundred years old, a terrible living revenant.

'No poosh!' he cried at Billy, and shook his fist. 'No poosh, not never! You die thin, town man! You die like this!' He brought his fists together, and Billy felt a sharp stabbing pain in his sides, as if he had been between those fists. For a moment he could not get his breath and it felt as if all his guts were being squeezed together. 'You die thin!'

'It's a push,' Billy said again, struggling not to gasp.

'No poosh!' the old man screamed. In his fury at this continued contradiction, thin red color had crisscrossed his cheeks in netlike patterns. 'Get him out of here!'

They began to drag him back across the circle. Taduz Lemke stood watching, his hands on his hips and his face a stone mask.

'Before they take me away, old man, you ought to know my own curse will fall on your family,' Billy called, and in spite of the dull pain in his sides his voice was strong, calm, almost cheerful. 'The curse of white men from town.'

Lemke's eyes widened slightly, he thought. From the corner of his eye Billy saw the old woman with the trading stamps in her blanketed lap fork the sign of the evil eye at him again.

The two young men stopped pulling him for a moment; Samuel Lemke uttered a short, bewildered laugh, perhaps at the idea of a white upper-middle-class lawyer from Fairview, Connecticut, cursing a man who was probably the oldest Gypsy in America. Billy himself would have laughed two months ago.

Taduz Lemke, however, was not laughing.

'You think men like me don't have the power to curse?' Billy asked. He held his hands – his thin, wasted hands up on either side of his face and slowly splayed the fingers. He looked like a variety-show host asking an audience to end their applause. 'We have the power. We're good at cursing once we get started, old man. Don't make me start.'

There was movement behind the old man – a flash of white nightgown and black hair.

'Gina!' Samuel Lemke cried out.

Billy saw her step forward into the light. Saw her raise the slingshot, draw the cradle back, and release it all in the same smooth gesture – like an artist drawing a line on a blank pad. He thought he saw a liquid, streaky gleam in the air as the steel ball flew across the circle, but that was almost certainly just imagination.

There was a hot, glassy spear of pain in his left hand. It was gone almost as soon as it came. He heard the steel ball bearing she had fired thwang off the steel side of a van. At the same moment he realized he could see the girl's drawn, furious face, not framed in his spread fingers, but through his palm, where there was a neat round hole.

She slingshotted me, he thought. Holy Christ, she did! Blood, black as tar in the firelight, ran down the pad of his palm and soaked the sleeve of his sport coat.

'Enkelt!' she shrieked. 'Get out of here, eyelak! Get out of here, killing bastard!'

She threw the slingshot. It landed at the edge of the fire, a wishbone shape with a rubber cup the size of an eyepatch caught in its fork. Then she fled, shrieking.

No one moved. Those around the fire, the two young men, the old man, and Billy himself – all of them stood in tableau. There was the slam of a door, and the girl's shrieks were muffled. And still there was no pain.

Suddenly, not even knowing he meant to do it, Billy held his bleeding hand out toward Lemke. The old man flinched back and forked the sign of the evil eye at Billy. Billy closed his hand as Lemke had done; blood ran from his closed fist as it had run from Lemke's closed fist.

'The curse of the white man is on you, Mr Lemke – they don't write about that one in books, but I'm telling you it's true – and you believe that.'

The old man screamed a flood of Romany. Billy felt himself hauled backward so suddenly that his head snapped on his neck. His feet left the ground.

They're going to throw me in the fire. Christ, they're going to roast me in it …

Instead he was carried back the way he had come, through the circle (people fell out of their chairs scrambling away from him) and between two pickups with camper caps. From one of them Billy heard a TV crackling out something with a laugh track.

The man in the vest grunted, Billy was swung like a sack of grain (a very underweight sack of grain), and then for a moment he was flying. He landed in the timothy grass beyond the parked vehicles with a thud. This hurt a good deal more than the hole in his hand; there were no padded places on him anymore, and he felt his bones rattle inside his body like loose stakes in an old truck. He tried to get up and at first could not. White lights danced in front of his eyes. He groaned.

Samuel Lemke came toward him. The boy's handsome face was smooth and deadly and expressionless. He reached into the pocket of his jeans and brought out something – Billy at first thought it was a stick and only recognised it for what it was when Lemke unfolded the blade.

He held his bleeding hand out, palm up, and Lemke hesitated. Now there was an expression on his face, one Billy recognized from his own bathroom mirror. It was fear.

His companion muttered something to him.

Lemke hesitated for a moment, looking down at Billy; then he refolded the blade into the knife's dark body. He spat in Billy's direction. A moment later the two of them were gone.

He lay there for a moment, trying to reconstruct everything, to make some sense of it … but that was a lawyer's trick, and it would not serve him here in this dark place. His hand was starting to talk very loudly about what had happened to it now, and he thought that very soon it would hurt a lot more. Unless, of course, they changed their minds and came back here for him. Then they might end all hurting in very short order, and forever.

That got him moving. He rolled over, slid his knees up to what was left of his stomach, then paused there a moment with his left cheek pressed against the beaten timothy and his ass in the air while a wave of faintness and nausea rode through him like a breaking wave. When it passed he was able to get to his feet and start up the hill to where his car was parked. He fell down twice on the way. The second time he believed it was going to be impossible to get to his feet again. Somehow -mostly by thinking about Linda, sleeping quietly and blamelessly in her bed – he was able to do it. Now his hand felt as if a dark red infection was pulsing in it and working its way up his forearm toward his elbow.

An endless time later he reached the rental Ford and scrabbled for the keys. He had put them in his left pocket, and so had to reach across his crotch with his right hand to get at them.

He started the car and paused for a moment, his screaming hand lying palm-up on his left thigh like a bird that has been shot. He looked down at the circle of vans and campers and the twinkle of the fire. A ghost of some old song came to him: She danced around the fire to a Gypsy melody/Sweet young woman in motion, how she enchanted me …

He lifted his left hand slowly in front of his face. Ghostly green light from the car's instrument panel spilled through the round dark hole in his palm.

She enchanted me, all right, Billy thought, and dropped the car in Drive. He wondered with almost clinical detachment if he would be able to make it back to the Frenchman's Bay Motel.

Somehow, he did.