West of Rome Page 11

  “Stupid’s missing,” Harriet said. “He ran away.”

  “How lucky can you get?” he smiled, snaking his arm around her and leading her toward his bedroom.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Peace.

  What is peace?

  She lives in the east wing and I live in the north wing. We have three bedrooms apiece. I mow the lawn. I start a new novel. My style has changed. I don’t like it. She makes pottery. She studies the occult. I play golf. I have these nightmares. Some blacks roasting Dominic in a pot. She has nightmares. Jamie courtmartialed, blindfolded, shot. I change bedrooms. She changes bedrooms. We sleep together. She snores. She claims I snore. We shift bedrooms. The novel collapses. I start a new one. What happened to my style? She gives me a Tarot reading. The cards are sinister. She cannot finish the reading. The Tower. The Hanged Man. My cards, Death, Catastrophe, Ruin.

  Jamie writes daily, phones weekends. His voice is weak, pathetic. He has a severe cold. He hiked eighteen miles. How’s my dog? He’s okay. Don’t worry about your dog. How’s the food up there? Awful. He vomits all the time. Are you warm at night? No. They don’t give us enough blankets. They made him crawl through a field on his belly, shooting live ammo over his head. Look, Jamie, do you want me to write the post commander? No. It will only increase the persecution. He has a temperature. Go see the medic. No. Absenteeism will mean doing the whole thing over again.

  I mow the lawn. Harriet weeds the flower beds. We call the real estate people. They put up a sign. Hordes of strangers arrive. They troop through the house. They hate the place. The kitchen is old-fashioned. The closets too small. The ceilings need paint. The windows need screens. You hear them sneering as they leave. You see the real estate man agreeing with them. We take down the sign. We are alone again. I hear strange footsteps at night. I put a pistol at my bedside. I give Harriet a pistol. I clean and oil my rifles. The place is an armed fortress. There was a time when every door was open day and night. Not anymore. I check the doors, the windows. Harriet paints Easter eggs. She goes on an egg kick. She puts tiny animals inside the eggs. She makes little scenes inside the eggs, a deer at a waterfall, a rabbit under a bush. The living room fills with strange eggs. Friends congratulate her. She has plans with larger eggs. I play golf. We are a little crazy, unravelled, flaky. Not ashamed to admit it.

  Denny writes from New York. He is a waiter, he is at acting school. Send a hundred. Tina phones from New Hampshire. She is pregnant. Rick is a carpenter. They are buying a house. Send a hundred. Jamie phones. Send some cookies. Still has a temperature. Hiked twenty miles today. Sergeant is out to break him. Must get up at four to clean every latrine on the post. I’ll take care of everything, I tell him, I’ll write to Tunney and Cranston and Reagan. Don’t. It’ll only make things worse. How’s my dog?

  Let’s have a party, people around, old friends, we should entertain more now. We throw a party, people come. Writers and wives. Knives drawn. Booze. Screenwriters versus television writers. Bad scene. A woman calls me a fascist pig. I hit her. Her husband belts me. Big rumble on the patio. Neighbor calls the Sheriff. A drunken actress runs to the edge of the cliff, threatens to jump. Jump, you bitch! A deputy grabs her. Party breaks up. Broken friendships, broken glasses, spilled booze, vomit on the lawn. In the dining room some beast has pissed against the wall. We vow no more parties.

  I remember the day Rocco was murdered. The day stands out as unforgettable as the tragedy itself, a day for whales and porpoises, for sails and powerboats, the azure sky so sparkling Michelangelo might have painted it, and one searched the rim of fleecy clouds for cherubs blowing golden trumpets. July and the promise of sweet summer, the tide low and melodic, sleek tanned girls in bikinis, their asses like fresh-baked bread, the soaring gulls, the swift sandpipers, the perched patient surfers, the candy-striped umbrellas, and an explosive white bull terrier romping after the gulls, barking with joy.

  We rounded the promontory of the cliffside, danced over the high pile of rocks and came upon the stretch of beach known as Little Dume, a small bay, saucer-shaped, crowded with bathers. Something dark and gigantic held their attention near the shore, and they gathered around it in a semicircle. It looked like the hull of an overturned ship, but as we drew nearer the shape of a great blue whale took form in the shallow low tide. He was on his side, his belly yellowish, his vast back ebony and blue. Later the papers stated that he was ninety feet long and weighed a hundred tons. God knows how he got there, marooned in two feet of water, the blow-hole on his back emitting painful squeaks, his tail feebly flapping, his eyes exuding greasy tears, the cave of his mouth half-open and sucking up the waves of the incoming tide.

  In a solemn hush the crowd looked on compassionately as the fallen giant of the deep wheezed and flapped his ponderous tail. Brazen gulls landed on his dark back. Bits of seaweed and debris floated in and out of his open lips.

  I seized Rocco’s collar and we made our way to the rim of the crowd. The dog growled when he saw the flapping tail. He strained at the collar, his paws churning sand. He wanted to attack the whale. His utter fearlessness amused me. What harm could come to a hundred-ton whale from a sixty-pound dog? It amused me a great deal. I turned him loose.

  He charged as the tide went out. With a leap, fangs bared, he hit the whale’s belly. He clung there, his teeth embedded. You could hear him growl as he hung on. A murmur of distress rose from the crowd. A fresh wave slammed ashore. The whale rolled. Rocco lost his grip and fell into the water.

  Someone snarled, “Whose dog is that?”

  Rocco floundered to his feet as the wave receded. The great tail flopped. Rocco rushed it, seized it, and clung tenaciously to an object twenty times his size. The crowd grumbled. The dog was making a mockery of the whole damn thing.

  A woman said, “He’s killing her!”

  The whale’s mouth widened as he gasped for air. He appeared in great pain, seaweed draping his bluish lips. The crowd’s hostility to the dog increased. Cries of, “Get that dog! Kill the son-of-a-bitch!” The tail flapped again, throwing the dog to the shore. He rolled over twice and landed on his feet, his little eyes sparkling with the joy of combat. He streaked the length of the whale at full speed and charged the open mouth, but the incoming tide washed him toward the shore. A kid threw driftwood at him. A man rushed out and kicked him. But to a bull terrier a whale is nothing more than a large dog. He charged again, became caught up in seaweed and rolled under the whale’s mouth, lost in gurgling water and debris.

  Then, crack! I looked to see a fisherman in the stern of a motorboat, holding a smoking rifle. I saw the red of my dog’s blood in the water. I saw his white body rolling out with the tide. I rushed to where he lay in the wet surf. Half his head was blown off. He was still warm as I lifted him into my arms and carried him through the crowd that opened a path for me. A teen-age girl with a wrinkled nose looked at my beautiful, dead Rocco, and said, “I’m glad!”

  The high tide carried the dead whale to deep water. I carried my dog all the way home and buried him out by the corral.

  One morning in September I woke up with the sun attacking my window as if to break the glass. It hit my face and my eyes and all but rolled me out of bed. “What the hell do you want?” I said. I got up and closed the drapes and lay down again in the semi-darkness. The truth was, I could not face another day. I was fed up with that big house. What good are empty rooms and a big yard like a park that nobody walks in? What good are trees without dogs to piss on them? I couldn’t write a line in that house anymore. I was fed up with the other tenant too, the one over on the other side of the house. Who was she to say I could not own a bull terrier?

  Show-down. Bare-assed and bellicose I walked into the kitchen where I found her behind reading glasses, looking at the morning paper.

  “What have you got against bull terriers?”

  She was so startled she nervously lit a cigarette. “Are you serious? After Mingo and Rocco? You know everybody in the neighborhood hates us.”
r />   “If they can have dogs, why can’t I?”

  “A bull terrier is not a dog, he’s a wild beast. Besides, he’d fight with Stupid.”

  “Stupid’s been gone for five weeks.”

  “For Jamie’s sake, we mustn’t give up hope.”

  I shaved, brushed my teeth, combed my hair, did some thinking. Then I went back to the kitchen.

  “I’ve come to a decision.”

  She lowered her glasses. “Really?”

  “Either I get a bull terrier, or I leave the country.”

  Her smile was not pleasant. “Rome?”

  “The Eternal City.” It had a great sound.

  “In that case, you’d better buy two tickets. One for yourself, and one for your dog.”

  “You’ll live to regret that.”

  “Try me.”

  I hoped for at least four hundred for the guns, the chain saw and the golf clubs, but the most I could raise was two hundred and twenty-five. The tractor went to the garbage collector for three hundred. I held out for five hundred but he wouldn’t budge. He saw the power-mower in the tool house and took a shine to it. I let him make a test-run around the yard.

  “What do you want for it?”

  “Fifty,” I said.

  ‘Twenty-five.

  “Forty-five.

  “Thirty.”

  Harriet came to the window above us. “Ill need that mower,” she said. “Don’t you dare sell it.”

  “You want it you’ll have to pay for it.”

  “How much?”

  “Sixty,” I said.

  “I’ll take it.”

  She pulled down the shade, unworried and indifferent to my plans. Why not? She had an income of her own from an inheritance and with me off the property she would do nicely, thank you.

  With six hundred in my pocket I drove to Westwood to sell the Porsche. I had waxed and polished her and treated her red leather seats with saddlesoap until she gleamed like porcelain. If I could get eight hundred for my equity I’d have close to fifteen hundred for the trip. Subtracting the fare, I’d touch down in Rome with around nine hundred. I could live three months on that. If I failed to find work I’d simply write Harriet that the ulcer was bleeding again, and she’d take care of the plane fare home.

  The blonde man in the foreign car lot quickly offered me seven hundred for my equity, but I stood my ground for the extra hundred and he finally agreed. It took an hour to process the sale, clear the title, and sign the contracts. When everything was signed the cashier came into the office and handed me a check for five hundred.

  “You made a mistake,” I said. ‘The deal was for eight hundred.”

  “You’re two payments in arrears, and the current payment is due today.”

  “No deal.”

  I dropped the check on the desk.

  “Sorry,” he said, gathering the documents together.

  With eleven hundred in my wallet and the trip to Rome exploding in my face, I walked out of the trailer office and stood beside my beautiful Porsche. The blonde guy came to the door and called, “Hey, Jethro!”

  A Negro mechanic in greasy overalls appeared from behind a fence.

  “Rack her up and ream out her pussy,” the blonde guy said.

  The mechanic drove the Porsche away. I felt sick. I felt like Judas Iscariot. I loved that damned Porsche. It was a bull terrier on wheels. It had met every challenge, mowing down Corvettes and Jaguars as if they were mired in mud. Now it would go to somebody else and I was without wheels. My guns were gone. My golf clubs were gone. My chain saw was gone. My tractor was gone. I was wiped out, except for a few useless dollars and the old clunker Denny had left in the garage.

  I rode the bus home. It was a weary journey, but it gave me time to reflect on what I was going to say to Harriet. Sometimes the simple truth was very useful. A man need not lose face by a dignified, straightforward expression of honest facts. Harriet was not a vindictive person. She would understand.

  It was dark when I got off at the Point Dume bus stop. Too tired to walk the last mile home, I telephoned and asked her to come and get me.

  “Where’s your car?” she asked.

  “I sold it.”

  “What on earth for?”

  Just like that. She had forgotten everything. It made me furious.

  “Because I’m leaving for Rome, remember? Checking out. Leaving the country. Back to my origins, back to the cradle of civilization, back to the meaning of meaning, the alpha and omega. Goodbye to Point Dume, to kids and dogs and a wife who never understood me and never will.”

  She hung up. I walked home.

  She was locked in her bedroom. My dinner, baked chicken and scalloped potatoes, was in the oven. A salad was on the table. I opened a bottle of wine and served up the thigh of a chicken. It tasted just like Harriet. I ripped it apart with my teeth and washed it down with wine.

  My situation was absurd. I had painted myself into a corner with wild threats, and to save my honor I had to carry them out. I wanted no part of Rome on short money. Those cold marble hotel floors sent a chill through my feet. The Romans made bad American coffee. The streets smelled of stale Gorgonzola. The prosties were frowsy and depressing. I’d miss the World Series. The big event Sunday was standing under the Pope’s window. The lowest form of human life was the Italian writer. He walked around with unsold scripts under his arm, his ass showing through threadbare pants. He despised Italian-Americans, putting them down as cowards who had fled the beautiful national poverty while he, the true patriot, had remained in the fatherland surviving the tragedy of two wars. If you protested that you had no choice in the country of your birth he insulted your father or your grandfather for seeking a better life in another land.

  The man who saved me and robbed me phoned around ten.

  “Are you the party advertising for a lost dog?”

  “That’s right. Who’s calling?”

  “Brown and black Akita?”

  “It sounds like him. Who’s this?”

  “How much is the reward?”

  ‘Twenty-five.”

  The man laughed. “You’re dreaming.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I want three hundred.”

  “You’re out of your tree. He isn’t worth three hundred.”

  “He’s a thoroughbred. Valuable dog.”

  ‘That’s a matter of opinion.”

  “I want three hundred.”

  It was my way out. I knew Harriet was listening in the bedroom. I could hear her breathing through the extension.

  “Okay. It’s a deal.”

  His name was Griswold. He lived on Decker Road, halfway between the coast and the valley. I said I’d be there in the morning.

  As I hung up Harriet came flying down the hall in her nightie.

  “It’s extortion,” she said. “Don’t pay it!”

  We looked at one another and her eyes told me we had bypassed Rome for the moment. The tide had suddenly shifted in my favor.

  “What about Jamie?” I said.

  “What about him?”

  “I made a promise.”

  “He’ll understand.”

  “You want me to back away from a promise to my own son?”

  “You can’t afford three hundred dollars.”

  I pulled out my thick wallet and tossed it on the table. “Yes I can.”

  “But your trip to Rome!”

  “What’s Rome if you have to live with the betrayal of your own son? What’s Paris, or New York, or any place in the world? My duty is clear. God knows I have my faults, but I won’t stand accused of disloyalty to my children.”

  There was no hiding her admiration. It glowed in the warmth of her face and she stared as if she had discerned depths of gallantry she had never known before. Perplexed and thoughtful, she sat at the table and sighed.

  “It doesn’t seem fair. I wanted you to go. I wanted you to get Rome out of your system.”

  I poured her a glass of wine.

>   “Frankly, I’ve had some second thoughts about Rome. I’ve been selfish and unreasonable. What right have I to leave you here alone while I travel half way around the world? You’re the one who needs a trip. You’ve had a terrible year. All of your children gone, all your tasks fulfilled, and for what? You deserve a holiday more than I do.”

  “London,” she said wistfully, staring into her glass.

  “Whatever you want, but let’s do it together, man and wife. As soon as we can raise the money.”

  Her eyes embraced me in pools of blue above the rim of her glass as she smiled and swallowed a mouthful of wine.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Decker Road wound through the mountains like a snake slithering to escape the sea. It was a sparkling day on a deserted road, not a car passing me in either direction as I drove the fifteen miles to the top of Mulholland Drive.

  The sign read, “Griswold Auto Repairs.” I gentled the station wagon down the turnoff and into the hollow a hundred yards below the road. The place was chaos. Abandoned cars and refrigerators, rusting farm machinery, piles of lumber, stacks of tires, oil drums and car seats. Strolling cliques of chickens were all over the place, scratching the reddish ground. A couple of burros foraged the hillside weeds.

  I drew up before a trailer mounted on blocks, its front festooned with seashells, license plates, fishnets, gourds and starfish. Over the door a single word proclaimed Griswold’s feeling about war: Peace!

  He appeared as I stepped from the car, a man of forty, short, bullish, with a red beard, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He was chewing tobacco.

  “Yes sir.”

  “I’ve come to look at the dog.”

  “Are you the movie writer?”

  “Right.”

  ‘This way.”

  We walked twenty yards to a square enclosure made of odds and ends of tin and lumber, three feet high. Griswold shot a blast of tobacco juice over the short fence.

  “Is that him?”

  I stepped to his side and looked into the penned area. The red earth was skinned clean of vegetation. In the corner, lying on a bed of straw, was Stupid. A low overhanging roof protected him from the sun. He appeared to be asleep and when I called he raised his head slightly, his tail wagging in recognition. Then he sank into the straw again. “That’s my dog,” I said.