“My name is Hade. Eddie Hade. Order anything you want. Everybody.” He swept us all into a wave of his gaudy arm; a cuff link glared. “Made it hard. Spend it easy. Right?” We nodded. “Money’s a powerful thing, it’s like a good-looking woman,” he snorted. “You can’t shut it up in a vault and stare at it. You got to treat it right. Take it out and flash it around.”
A chorus of toadies standing near him echoed:
“You’re damn right!”
“Can’t take it with you, that’s for sure.”
“Might as well.”
“Damn government will grab it if you don’t.”
The manager whispered to Mittie and me, “He can afford to throw it around. That’s Ed Hade. Owns the biggest car dealership in the state. Listen to them suck up to him. He could paper the Grand Canyon with dollar bills if he wanted to.”
“He reminds me of my father,” Mittie said sorrowfully.
“Me,” Menelade went on, “I gotta be careful. If I didn’t stick it away, where would I end up? You gotta think of the future.”
“You remind me of my father too,” Mittie told him.
On the other side of Mr. Hade, leaning away from him, was a Marine, Black, about six-foot-four, who turned, gave Hade one long evaluative look, and then stepped sideways, smoothly, and put more distance between them. Hade was sucking the ice cubes from his glass into his mouth and noisily chewing them. As more drinks were pushed onto the counter, he swept a chunky wallet of alligator tan from his breast coat pocket. He flipped it open and spilled out a long streamer of credit cards. Then he fanned a semicircle of fifty-dollar bills at his guests like a card dealer. Everyone gasped their admiration. He squeezed them closed with a grin and stuffed them back in the wallet.
There was a smirk from the toady standing immediately to the left of Mr. Hade, a smirk of rebellion, or presumption of his host’s good humor, or support of the surrounding toads. “How far did you have to chase a nigger for that Harlem billfold, Ed?”
Before we had a chance to see how Hade would respond to this question, the Black man reached across him and laid his huge hand firmly on the toad’s arm, at the same time asking, very quietly, “What did you say?”
Hade laid his hand on the Black man’s hand, which he removed from the toad’s arm. “I don’t think I heard anybody talking to you, Roscoe.”
The Black guy flicked Hade’s hand away and shoved him backward into the toadie. The toadie fell down. At this point the manager tried to mediate by offering advice to both parties: “Let it go. He didn’t mean it,” and “Come on, Hade, he’ll kill you.”
Hade didn’t listen. Instead he lunged, swung, caught the Black man in the stomach with his first blow, glanced a soft jab off his shoulder with the second. That was all. The Black Marine knocked Hade full in the face three times and full in the paunch four. Hade sank down in a lump. Meanwhile, the toadie had clambered up the Marine’s back in order to get a chokehold around his neck from the rear. The Marine reached behind him, the way you would pull off a shirt, grabbed the toadie, lifted him over his head the whole long length of his arms, and pitched him sideways into the bar window. The crash started people screaming.
By this time Hade had stumbled back to his feet. He came at the Marine, head down, his face red, his hair flat with sweat, and the Marine slammed Hade’s skull five or six times into the side of the bar. When three other toadies began taking swings, Mittie and I went for them. Mittie jerked at someone’s arm; the guy ploughed into his stomach and flattened him. I tackled someone beneath his knees, was kneed in the chin.
Tony Menelade ran around in front of the bar. “Okay, okay,” he yelled. “Cool off. That’s enough. Get the hell out of here. All of you. I’m calling the sheriff. I’m calling Booter, Hade!”
It was quiet for five seconds. Hade grabbed his wallet out of his pocket, his face on fire, his mouth open panting. He took five of the fifty-dollar bills out, stuffed them in the manager’s shirt pocket, pushed him aside, and swung a wide left hook at the Black man, who side-stepped it. Half the people in the bar started in, kicking, cursing, spitting, grunting, and swinging at each other. The other half rushed to the exit. I pulled Mittie to his feet, and we were swept outside in the stampede, shoving and slipping our way through the mud.
Just then a bolt of lightning sharked down the sky with a clipped retort of thunder. It startled Mittie, and he lurched backward into the man who was pushing at him from behind. It was fat Bobbie the Shriner. Mittie had inadvertently elbowed him in the nose.
“Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” snarled Bobbie. “Dumb Jew.”
Mittie whirled, his nostrils flared open, but Bobbie stiff-armed him into the side of the building. Mittie cracked his head against the wall, slumped to the ground, and Bobbie passed on with the rest of the crowd. Mittie and I were left alone. The rain hurt, hitting hot sweat, and a rancid smell steamed from my jacket.
I was suddenly achingly exhausted. I wanted more than anything to go home, any home, and fall in any bed. I had been in Floren Park less than thirty-six hours. And too much had happened, too much to worry over, deal with, see, too much food and drink. Too many people.
But Mittie refused to get in the Red Bus or even to step inside the theater to be out of the rain. He had the keys to both so I was handcuffed, especially since Spurgeon’s Great Dane still guarded the other end of the parking lot, and any retreat back to the Red Lagoon was cut off by a patrol car that had screeched up unbearably loud and bright to the entrance of the bar; two policemen were standing in the doorway pushing people out.
So I walked over and sat beside Mittie on the bank of the creek, where he had decided to lie down for a while. The black water was rushing past us, furious, insane, slapping at the rocks and siding, almost up to the edge of the bank, so high that it hit against the bottom of the wooden bridge that spanned the creek about twenty feet up from where we were sitting.
“Look how high that water is! The bridge is going to go,” I said, hoping to arouse him.
Mittie didn’t answer. A cut on his cheek had opened, and rain washed the blood down, red-black through the caked mud, into his mustache. My mouth tasted salty; my tongue hurt from where I had bitten it. My head ached, so did my neck, arms, legs, and back and heart. I stared at the water.
Finally Mittie sat up and spoke. “What’s the use?” he said. I agreed. He went on, “Everything I touch turns to shit in my hands. Did you see what that guy did to me?”
“Which one?” I asked. The toadie who had flattened him in the bar, or Bobbie who had slammed him into the wall outside, or Spur, or me?
“Does that to me, and what do I do? Take it! Lie down and suffer. The suffering tribe! I hope he burns in hell. Shit.”
Listening to Mittie talk embarrassed me, made me ashamed for him and of him and of myself.
Suddenly a car with one headlight screeched into the lot behind us. It was Wolfstein’s Austin Healy, now the shorter for a crushed front end. Leila got out of it. How did she know we were there? Spur? The manager? Oracles, visions, crystal balls? She had on a beat-up raccoon coat over her robe and some silver boots, probably relics of old majorette days. I stood up and called to her. Mittie grabbed my arm.
“Why did you do that?” he hissed at me. “I don’t want her to see me.”
He pushed up off my shoulder, digging into a bruise, vaulted to his feet, and started running along the bank, away from Leila’s approach, toward the bridge.
“STOP HIM!” Leila called, and I obediently took off after him. He got to the bridge, ran halfway across, then climbed the side rail, poised himself, and just as I caught up with him, jumped. I threw myself at his back, but missed him.
“Oh, Christ, Mittie, for Christ’s sake,” Leila called.
Straddling the side rail, I leaned over to get a closer look at the foaming chum I was going to have to dive into in order to rescue my employer, my drinking pal, my rival. But before I jumped, Mittie’s head appeared. Then his shoulders. Then his gleaming belt buckle. The water was only waist high.
We could see that he was clutching his left arm, hugging it with his right. “YUH-OWWWHH!” he cried.
Scrambling back from the bridge, I rushed to the point on the bank closest to Mittie. There I skidded down and out into the current. From shore, Leila tugged at me, and I stretched out to tug at Mittie. Slowly we landed him.
“I think I’ve broken my arm,” he screamed.
“Well, Mittie,” Leila said softly. She looked at the arm, felt it, moved it, “It looks like you’ve broken your watch too.”
This time we did not ask Dr. Ferrell to make a house call, but drove to wake him up at his office-home instead. We found he had not been sleeping.
“I hate life,” Mittie mumbled as we helped him up onto the examining table. His arm was not, after all, broken—merely bruised. He had, however, pulled a muscle, jammed a finger, and crisscrossed his legs with nicks and cuts. We told Dr. Ferrell that Mittie, slipping in the mud, had accidentally fallen into the creek. But he must not have believed us, for when we were leaving (cleansed, braced, and bandaged), he put his hand on Mittie’s shoulder and spoke to him cheerfully, “I know it’s enough to make you think it’s not worth it, to drive you mad. I mean, if the world’s that crazy, then nothing makes any sense. Kind of puts our problems in a sort of perspective, though.”
We looked at him puzzledly. “What do you mean?” Leila asked.
“Kennedy.” He rubbed his forehead with his hand.
“Did Bobby lose the primary? Oh, he couldn’t have!” Leila moaned. The Kennedys received from her a fidelity unwavering; more absolute, it struck me, than more immediate passions.
Ferrell stared at each of us. “Where have you been? I thought you’d heard. Some maniac shot Bobby a couple of hours ago. He’s not expected to live.”