JOE WOKE HER EARLY. Sometime during his midnight deliberations he had decided he wanted to drive to San Francisco. “It’s a nicer drive than the one from here to the airport,” he said. Patsy was in her bathrobe, still half asleep, having coffee. But when she succeeded in showering herself awake she found that she felt rather good. Joe was putting the top up on the Morgan. She protested, but he put it up, anyway. “You’d get wind-burned,” he said.
At times, as they zipped north in the fast morning traffic, Patsy was a little frightened. Joe was a silent, intense driver, and the traffic around them was intense without being silent. Sometimes they shot into valleys between two huge trailer trucks, and Patsy could look out and see huge tires looming higher than her head, only a yard or two away. It seemed to her that a sudden gust of wind could blow the Morgan right under such a truck and she was always relieved when they slipped ahead and were back among ordinary cars.
They stopped and breakfasted in Santa Barbara, debating how much time to give to the drive. Joe wanted to drive the coast highway. Patsy had never been on it and had no objection. At San Luis Obispo Joe got out and took the top down, and they spent the day driving slowly up the beautiful coast. Joe regaled her all day with Hollywood stories while the curves of the coast unfolded themselves before her. At midafternoon they stopped and ate cheese and crackers and wieners, parked on a little point that looked down on the sea. Before they reached Big Sur it was evening. They saw the last of the sun, and the country and the sea turned gray. Before they reached Monterey they were driving in a thick fog. Joe became an intense driver again. By the time they were back on 101, Patsy was asleep. Joe shook her awake almost two hours later as they were passing South San Francisco. “We’re nearly there,” he said. “Sit up and look.”
Patsy got her eyes open but found that sitting up was not easy. Sleeping in a Morgan was not as comfortable as sleeping in the Ford, and as she tried to uncramp herself she was for a moment lonesome and homesick for Texas and her house and her car and her son. She was cold as well. “There’s no place quite like it,” Joe said sentimentally as the city of San Francisco appeared before them. He obviously loved it. Patsy felt that he had made the drive for that moment, when the lights of the city came into view. For herself, she felt little, though the lights had a certain beauty in the fog, and the way they were grouped together on the cluster of hills was more appealing than the millions of lights in the sprawl of L.A. She was cold and rumpled and in no mood to appreciate the singularity of San Francisco.
A little later, when Joe drove them up to a very formidably posh hotel off a large square, with a cable car running in front of it, it was her rumpledness that worried her the most. She was not comfortable until the door of her room was shut behind her. Joe had offered to show her the town, but she felt far too exhausted.
When she had bathed and was warm again she sat at her window looking down on the thronged streets; she watched the cable cars and called Miri. A message said that the number was no longer in use. It scared her. Where could Miri be? How could she be found? She lay awake a long time worrying about it, hearing the muffled clang of the cable cars.
When she awoke the city was gray and she felt rather gray herself. Miri was going to seem a stranger, she was sure, and it might not even be possible to find her. All she had was the address where the phone had once been. She had a vision of herself having to hire a private detective to find her sister, a grubby detective, of the sort one saw on late TV. She called Joe, and after a time he answered, in a voice indicating that he had been asleep.
“I’m sorry. I guess you were out late.”
“Um.” His tone reminded her of Teddy Horton.
“Do you mind if I wake you up?”
“No,” he said gallantly.
“You sleep awhile,” she said. “I just wanted to be sure you got in safely. I’ll call you if I really need you.”
“Be awake in a minute,” he mumbled, but she quietly hung up. She was a little irritated with him for having picked such a splendid hotel. Whatever she wore that would look good enough to get her through the lobby was going to look awfully haut monde wherever she came upon Miri. Fortunately her choice was limited. She wore her dark green suit and had an expensive breakfast, with good marmalade, in the hotel coffee shop.
The house where the phone had been was in the center of a steeply sloping block between Fillmore and Van Ness. It was a gray three-story house, amid a block of gray and light green and white three-story houses. There were six mailboxes outside the door but Miri’s name was not on any of them and she felt a growing distress. Miri was indeed gone. She tried the door but it was the sort that had to be opened either by a key or a buzzer, and she turned back, very discouraged. She was about to go down to the street when she noticed that the name on one of the mailboxes was Melissa Duffin. She hesitated again, conscious that it was little too early to be ringing doorbells in California—particularly the doorbells of people one hardly knew. But she was there and Melissa was the only person she could think of in the whole city who might know where Miri was. She rang the bell. Almost immediately the buzzer sounded and she pushed open the door, realizing only after it had closed behind her that she had forgotten to check the number of the apartment. Fortunately Melissa came out almost as soon as Patsy was in. She looked down the stairwell from the third floor and Patsy saw her.
“Oh, hi,” Melissa said. “You’re Patsy. Come on up. I thought you were the postman bringing me a package from Momma. Today’s my birthday.”
“No, it’s only me, empty-handed.”
“And I bet I know why you’re here,” Melissa said. “I was wondering when her folks were going to show up. I’m glad it’s you instead.”
“Did I get you up?”
“Oh, no.” Patsy could believe it. Melissa looked lovely and wide awake and fresh. She wore a long loose black dress. It surprised Patsy for a moment, but once they were inside the apartment the dress seemed ideal. It was a clean, light white-walled apartment, very pleasant, and Melissa’s dark hair and the dark dress were perfect for it. The floor was bare and instead of furniture there was a profusion of cushions and a mattress covered with a nice orange spread.
“We love cushions,” Melissa said. “Won’t you have some oranges? I was having some for breakfast.”
Patsy was taking in the room, looking at the three or four drawings on the wall and out the little bay window. There was a chair near the bay window, the only chair in the room, small, done in a smooth unpainted wood, with a rope bottom. “A friend of ours made that for us,” Melissa said. “He’s a carpenter of sorts.”
“A good sort, I’d say. I will have an orange, if I may.”
The morning paper was spread out in the middle of the floor. Melissa was reading it while she ate oranges. Patsy got a blue cushion and joined her. “I see you put your seeds on the want ads,” she said. “I was always slovenly with mine. Your boy friend must have you well trained.”
“He does,” Melissa said. “Hey, Barry, get up. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Outside, the morning mist had just broken and the sun shone on the houses across the street. The room, which was already light, became even lighter and more pleasant. While Patsy was peeling her orange there was the sound of a male dressing in the room past the little kitchen, and in a minute in walked Barry, an amazingly tall, lanky young man with a nice red beard and a shy grin. He was barefooted, in chinos and a blue tee shirt. He stood scratching his head.
“I was determined to get someone taller than Daddy,” Melissa said. “You want oranges or not?”
“Is there any coffee?” Barry asked politely.
“No, because I didn’t know I was going to wake you up so soon,” Melissa said. “Have an orange and I’ll make some.”
Barry sat down and peeled his orange, grinning shyly at Patsy now and then. “Gee,” he said, “I’m not usually up so early. I’m a nut for all-night movies.”
“I’m afraid I’m responsible,” Patsy said. “If it’s any consolation, I like your beard.”
“Thanks,” he said, his face lighting up. “Melissa’s nuts for it too.”
“Now that he’s up you can come in and see the bedroom,” Melissa said. “That’s our real view.”
Patsy went in, and agreed, for the bedroom window looked out over the southern part of San Francisco, over thousands of slanting roofs and white buildings, with churches in the distance. She looked down into the tiny yard below and saw a calico cat walking along a fence. The bedroom was like the living room, furnished with a mattress and cushions, a bookcase with a vase of yellow flowers sitting on it, and a small TV on the floor. There was a tiny balcony just off the bedroom. “It’s a great place for smoking pot,” Melissa said, indicating the balcony. “It’s just great on foggy nights.”
Melissa’s dark hair had been loose, but as they walked back to the living room she gathered it and hastily bound it with a rubber band. Watching her move, it struck Patsy how like Lee she was, although she was tall. She moved like Lee; and the rooms, for all that they were expressive of Barry and Melissa, were like Lee’s rooms in their cleanness and colors and receptivity to light. Even Barry brought Lee to mind—as tall as Bill, as gentle and shy as Peter.
She found, as she sipped a cup of Melissa’s coffee, that she liked Melissa and Barry very much and enjoyed being at breakfast with them. They were clearly happy, and very sweet to each other, Melissa chattering, Barry mumbling and looking at her mischievously and shyly. Patsy felt odd and old and not quite normal. It had been so long since she had been with people who seemed fully happy with each other that it was hard to get used to. Melissa ate more oranges than anyone she had ever known, and Barry became hungrier as he grew wide awake and soon went to the kitchen to make himself a peanut butter sandwich. “Don’t put the peanut butter knife in the honey jar,” Melissa said. “It gloms up the honey.”
“I never do,” Barry said mildly.
“You do every time I don’t mention it,” Melissa claimed.
Barry came back eating his sandwich and trying to keep the honey from dribbling onto his beard. “Hard to eat,” he said. “Only bad thing about beards.”
Patsy would have liked just to sit and visit with them and perhaps find out what they did or ate or worked at that made them both look so healthy; but the morning was passing and she was no nearer to her sister. When she finally brought her up, Melissa and Barry looked at each other a little guiltily.
“We don’t really know where they are,” Melissa said, “but I’m sure I can find some guys who can find them. I guess it was that girl friend of Miri’s who told about her being pregnant. Last week she got very paranoid and was sort of expecting her folks to show up any minute and drag her back to Texas. They moved somewhere over near the Hashbury. She really doesn’t want to go back to Texas.”
“They?”
“That’s kind of the bad part,” Melissa said. “I don’t know if you know it, but Miri doesn’t have much sense about guys. The guy she’s living with is a very hostile person.”
“Negro.”
Melissa nodded. “We don’t know that he’s the father, though. He’s been around long enough, but some others were around too.”
“He might not be the father,” Barry said quietly. “She was fucking lots of guys, for a while.”
“How pregnant is she?” Patsy asked, suddenly quite depressed by the prospect before her.
Melissa and Barry looked at each other indecisively. “Four or five months,” Melissa said. “It’s hard to say.”
“Not to put down Miri or anything,” Barry said, “but we were sort of glad when they left. Stone was bad to have around.”
“Stone?”
“That’s his name. He was always hitting us for money. Or trying to. I think your folks must have cut her off, or something, to try and get her to come back—I don’t know. They were pretty broke. Then he tried to come on with me one day and Barry was going to beat him up, but Stone was gone and I managed to cool Barry off before he got back. It was just a deteriorating scene.”
“I can imagine,” Patsy said. “How did Miri get mixed up with him?”
“He found her at a party, probably. I always thought it was more a hate thing than a love thing. Stone needs a white chick to hate and Miri was glad to have someone hate her, for a while. She was very down on herself, and she stayed high a lot.”
Patsy’s depression deepened. She went into Melissa’s kitchen and rinsed the orange juice off her hands.
“I should have come a year ago,” she said. “My folks should have come eighteen months ago, it sounds like. I better go find her, if you can tell me where the boys live.”
“Sure. The guys are over on Clay Street. They’re really nice, and I think a couple of them were pretty hung on Miri, but Stone scared them off.”
Barry stood up and scratched his head and looked pained. “Listen, maybe we better go with you,” he said. “That guy’s rough. He beat the crap out of Miri two or three times that I know of. I think he’s got her scared to leave him. You want me to come along?”
“I’ll go with her,” Melissa said. “You have to go to work.”
Barry, it turned out, worked part time in a bookshop on Polk Street. Melissa worked part time in a laundry. “It ticks my folks off, but it’s not bad,” she said. “Neither of us wants to work all the time.” She disappeared into the bedroom and came out shortly, clad in jeans and a heavy sweater. Barry was still looking pained.
“It’s not so important to go to work on time,” he said. “I can call and tell them I’ll be late. I don’t want you two getting into it with that guy.”
“Look, I can handle Stone,” Melissa said. “I did, didn’t I?”
“Once,” Barry said. “This time he might handle you. Set him off and he’s liable to beat the piss out of all three of you.”
Though she had never seen him, Patsy was beginning to be distinctly frightened of the man named Stone, and for all Melissa’s assurance, she was for having a man along. She remembered the one time she had almost been beaten up, the night Sonny Shanks had abducted her in Phoenix, and she thought how nice it would be if her old menacer could be there to take her into the Hashbury. When it came to violence he was the one person who came to mind who could be put up against anybody. Barry, for all his height, looked too basically gentle, and Joe Percy had sounded in no shape for trouble.
But Melissa carried the day. They left Barry standing in the kitchen looking pained and trying to decide if he wanted another sandwich. “He’s overprotective of me,” Melissa said as they went down the steps. “He’s got to learn sometime.” They walked over a street and into a little park that just covered the top of a hill. From it they could see the bay and one end of the Golden Gate. The edges of the fog had not yet receded from the hills to the north of the bridge. The bay was very blue in the sunlight and the houses sloping down all around the park were white and gray.
“I see why people like this city,” Patsy said.
“Oh, it’s great,” Melissa said, as if they were discussing the value of air.
They walked down the hill, along Clay Street and across Fillmore, and up a slope beside another little park, one that seemed to be terraced and flat on top. Miri rang at a brown house and they went in and woke up an apartmentful of boys. They all had long, long hair and the same friendly slightly sheepish air that Barry had. Some remained in sleeping bags and smiled out at Patsy from beneath their hair, but two dressed and wandered around looking pained at the sudden invasion of girls. One devoted himself at once to getting a record on the phonograph. They approached the question of Miri’s whereabouts delicately, as if they had to feel their way to it, and one boy named Martin finally told Melissa that Miri was living somewhere near Clement Street. A good bit of mumbling went on while Patsy stood by feeling awkward. Martin finally located an actual address, and Melissa thanked him.
“What a lot of nice-looking boys,” Patsy said, once they were on the street again. “Why do they all act so shy?”
Melissa shrugged. “A lot of guys are like that out here,” she said. “They don’t quite know what to do about girls. Some of them try to come on but most of them just sort of hang around being brotherly. Barry was even that way with me, for a while. It’s great, though, once you get them trained not to be scared of you.”
They walked back to Fillmore, Melissa brooding. “He wasn’t so much scared of me,” she elaborated. “I think he was just scared I’d leave him, for a while. I had been hung up with this anthropology professor at Cal and the guy was a lot older than Barry and more experienced and I guess Barry thought I’d go back to him.”
“From what I’ve seen of Barry, he needn’t worry,” Patsy said.
“Isn’t he great?” Melissa said, coloring. “He’s six five.”
The address Martin had given them was several blocks off Clement Street, near the neck of Golden Gate Park. The apartment was in a drab two-story house on a very unadorned street of drab two-story houses. “The flat parts of town just aren’t as nice,” Melissa said. But Patsy had passed beyond aesthetics into a state of shaky apprehension at the thought of suddenly coming face to face with Miri—and possibly her lover as well. She knew she must look like the most WASP of WASPs and almost wished she had borrowed some less middle-class clothes from Melissa. She felt strange in her stomach, and very uncertain as to what she must say or do. Again, Miri’s name was not on the mailbox, but the address said apartment five, and they went in.
Melissa too looked a little apprehensive. “Maybe Stone won’t be here,” she said.
But Stone opened the door of apartment five. Patsy had been expecting a large man, someone heavy. Stone was medium height and thin and rather light. He wore a green fatigue jacket with the collar turned up and dirty Levi’s. He had a thin straggle of mustache and a Ho Chi Minh goatee, and he looked no less threatening for being thin. He focused on Melissa, not Patsy, and his look was one of instant resentment. Behind him Patsy could see the edge of a green couch, a pulled-down windowshade, and a cigarette smoking in an ashtray.
“Who you want?” Stone asked.
“I want Miri,” Patsy said, and meant it. Few certainties had ever come to her as quickly. Stone turned his resentful eyes toward her, but Miri had heard her and stepped into view behind him. She wore a thin gray sweatshirt that showed the slight bulge of her pregnancy, and her hair had grown very long. Her face, which Patsy remembered as rounded and girlish, was pale and very thin. She was very surprised, and for a moment her face opened and betrayed a quick delight at the sight of her sister, but then Stone turned and looked at her with hard hostility and the look turned Miri’s face into a mirror of his, so that even before Stone spoke his hostility was reflected in Miri’s gray eyes.
“Just go away,” Miri said. “I don’t want you and I don’t need you.”
But Patsy was not to be put off. She stepped past Stone into the room and Melissa followed her.
“You’re not invited in here,” Stone said, but Patsy didn’t look at him. Miri repeated what she had said, her lips trembling. She had drawn very tight.
“Then get some manners and invite me in here,” Patsy said, looking at the room. It was rugless and wretchedly furnished, with a sofa and a mattress and a small white portable TV. “I’m your sister and I’ve come a long way to see you,” she went on. “Why shouldn’t I be invited in?”
She turned to face Miri, and before anyone could speak or move Miri unwound. She hit Patsy in the face, a wild hard slap that rocked her back two steps and left her momentarily stunned and dizzy. Patsy sank onto the green couch, holding her cheek and looking at her sister in disbelief. The slap had connected squarely, and it took a minute for her head to clear. Miri had drawn tight again. Melissa looked worriedly at Patsy. Stone turned and walked to the other end of the room, quite impassive, as if he had decided to pretend the two women weren’t there.
“What did I say to deserve that?” Patsy asked. But the feeling that welled up in her as she looked at the cheap dusty room and at Miri’s legs, a bruise on one shin, and at her dingy black skirt, was that the slap should have been for Garland and Jeanette, who had fiddled and worried for two years and been afraid to do anything; and for her too, for forgetting her sister for so long, for pretending that Miri could take care of herself, just because she was nineteen. The slap was for all of them, for not having come sooner.
“Oh, baby, I’m sorry,” Patsy said tearfully.
“I won’t go back,” Miri said, still fierce. “I won’t live in Texas. I’m staying with Stone. I won’t live with them. They don’t want me.”
It was true enough. As she stood, Garland and Jeanette would not want her. She was not the daughter they loved, or thought of themselves as loving, whichever it was. She was thin, bedraggled, pregnant, and defiant.
“No, I don’t want you to live with them,” Patsy said. “I want you to live with me, in Houston. I have a house now. Jim’s gone.”
“Don’t talk about it!” Miri yelled, almost screaming. “I won’t talk about it.” She drew back her hand as if to slap Patsy again but then stopped and began to bite her lips.
Stone was standing across the room looking sullenly away from them all. Melissa stood behind Miri and was trying to tell Patsy something with her lips, but Patsy couldn’t make it out.
Patsy’s head had quit swimming and she stood up looking at her sister. “Listen,” she said, “if you think I’m going back and leave you in this mess just because you cut loose and walloped me one you better think again. Have you been to a doctor yet?”
“Just to see if I was,” Miri said sullenly. She kept glancing at Stone, but he wouldn’t look at her.
“You could introduce me to your lover, at least,” Patsy said. “He doesn’t have to stand in the corner just because I’m here. My glance doesn’t turn men to stone, or anything, no pun intended.”
Stone turned and gave her a look that would have turned her to ash, could it have been converted into heat.
“His name’s Stone,” Miri said.
“Which name? Is it the fashion just to have one these days?”
Stone didn’t leave his place near the corner. “Who the fuck are you to come in here?” he said.
“I’m Patsy Carpenter,” she said, deciding to treat it as an introduction. “I’m Miriam’s sister. I’m sorry, but I didn’t get your first name, Mr. Stone.” She saw Melissa smile slightly, but Miri looked embarrassed and scared.
“We never asked you,” he said. He had a low voice, with a touch of college in it. “You’re not going to come in here and bust up our life. You’re not taking her back to Texas.”
“Why not?” Patsy asked, facing him. “I can’t see that you want her. You don’t even look at her.”
Stone crossed in front of her with a sullen shrug, as if to say all conversation between them would be automatically irrelevant, and raised the windowshade and stared resentfully into the street. Two Italian children were attempting to learn to skateboard on the sidewalk across the street. Patsy saw that Miri was crying. Streams of tears wet her thin face. Melissa put her arm around her and was trying to get her to sit on the couch. Miri resisted but Melissa kept murmuring to her and pulling her toward the couch and finally Miri sat down. Her arms were trembling. Melissa went over and rummaged near the mattress; she came back with a shawl, which she gave to Miri.
“You should have kept in touch with us, honey,” Melissa said. “We didn’t know where you were living. We had to ask the guys.”
“It’s not really ours,” Miri said. “We just borrowed it for a few days from a guy who’s out of town. We were gonna move across the park when we got some bread.”
Stone turned when she began to speak and looked at her with the same look of hostility he had given her at the door.
“Listen, tell these cunts to get out,” he said. “They’re your people, you tell them to go. We don’t need two bad cunts in here criticizing where we at and how we live. They think you’re too fuckin’ good for me an’ that’s all they’ve got to say and we already heard that, didn’t we?”
Miri was still crying. “I’m not too good,” she said pathetically.
“You sleazy bastard,” Melissa said, furious suddenly. She went over to face him. “Anybody human’s too good for you the way you act. I wouldn’t let you keep my cat. This is her sister—do you know what a sister is?”
“I don’t care what a sister is,” he said, looking back out the window. “I know what a bad cunt is and that means you. And her in the green too.”
Patsy felt at a loss. She knew what she meant to do but not how to accomplish it. Miri simply looked sick. Her eyes were strange, and though she was clearly reacting to a great strain, she seemed barely aware of what was happening. The cigarette had burned itself out and the room smelled of ash. What she wanted most was to get her sister out of the room where Stone was, so she could try and talk to her. But there was no other room, only a small bathroom. There was no kitchen. A carton of soft drinks sat by the mattress.
She decided the best thing to do was to join Melissa in the verbal fray. Perhaps they could drive him out, at least for a while.
“Look, Mr. Stone,” she said, “I don’t know how good or how bad you are but I have a friend coming in a little while and if you call me names like that when he’s here there’s apt to be trouble. I just thought I’d warn you.”
“There you are, now,” Stone said, looking down at Miri. “Didn’t I tell you? They got the marines right outside. They going to take you right back to Dallas, and it don’t matter what you want and it don’t matter what I want. And they didn’t have no trouble finding us. You told those motherfuckers on Clay Street right where we’d be.”
“No, listen,” Patsy said. “All I have outside is one middle-aged friend, and I’m perfectly willing to listen to what you and Miri want. There are plenty of things I’d like to know about this but I don’t see why I can’t talk about them without being slapped and called names.”
“Well, ask your little sister,” Stone said oversweetly. “Just ask your little sister.” And with a scowling glance at Melissa he turned and went quickly out the door. He didn’t look at Miri at all.
“He left,” she said vaguely. “Why did you make him go?”
She got up suddenly and began to rummage in the pile of clothes near the mattress. Melissa quickly came to Patsy and began to whisper.
“That bastard left just to panic her,” she said. “She’s high as the hills. We better just go with her and not try to stop her from looking for him. She might really tear loose if we try to stop her. Maybe we can ease her off a little if we walk.”
Miri was muttering to herself as she searched in the clothes. She pulled a thick black sweater on over her sweatshirt and dropped her skirt and struggled into a pair of jeans, but she stopped before she got them buttoned and ran to the window to look out. The terror in her face and the bulge of her abdomen over the cheap cotton panties shook Patsy and she tried to talk to Miri calmly.
“We’ll go with you to find him,” she said, but Miri had become oblivious to them. She rummaged in the clothes until she found a heavy chain with a medallion on it and she put that on her neck and then hastened to the door, wearing no shoes.
“She’s barefoot,” Patsy said. Melissa looked around quickly, but she didn’t spot any shoes, and shrugged. “Won’t hurt,” she said.
Miri was two or three doors ahead of them when they got to the street. They could hear her, still muttering.
“I just didn’t want us to lose her,” Melissa said. “If she got away from us and ran into Stone she’d really be gone. He’d hide her but good. As long as we stay with her we’re all right.”
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Patsy said.
Miri stopped at the first corner and looked around indecisively. They caught up with her and she seemed quite friendly toward them, but Patsy saw that she was without a sense of who they were. Her sense of who they were had grown dimmer and dimmer since the moment of the slap. She had hit her sister as hard as she could and then ceased to notice that she was her sister. Patsy was aware that she didn’t know how to talk to Miri and was content to let Melissa do it.
“You two been eating lately?” Melissa asked. “Maybe Stone went off to eat a meal.”
Miri shrugged, as if it were irrelevant. “We had a pizza,” she said but didn’t say when. Once or twice they met hippies as they approached the park. Miri stopped and asked them if they’d seen Stone. Both looked as if they had either just got up or else were looking for a good place to lie down. Neither had seen Stone.
Soon they angled into the park, Miri walking ahead. Patsy worried about what they would do if they found Stone. She had called earlier to give Joe the address, and was wondering what would happen if he and Stone arrived at the same time. She also wondered what had happened to all the things Miri had taken to college with her, clothes, phonograph, records, and such. There had been practically nothing in the tiny apartment. She had on heels, because of the St. Francis, and once they got in the park was hard put to keep up with Melissa and Miri. The grass was damp and in spots fairly long. Then they bumped into a couple of guys the girls knew. One had a serape and the other a sheepskin jacket and both had shoulder length hair and mustaches. Melissa, by a few snaps of her fingers, enlisted them in the cause, and they reversed their directions and joined the troupe.
One whose name was Frank dropped back and walked with Patsy. “Hi,” he said conspiratorially. “I understand we’re chasing Stone but why do we want to find him? I’d just as soon lose him.”
“I’m with you,” Patsy said. “We’re just trying to hold Miri together, actually. She was threatening to fly apart.”
“Yeah,” Frank said sagely, as if he knew all about it.
Then, as they were almost across the park, they passed a scene which for a time took Patsy’s mind off her sister. Fifteen or twenty motorcycles were there, and their riders were there too, and their riders’ women. Patsy glanced at them without much curiosity, for she had seen motocycle gangs before. But what she saw hit her almost as hard as the slap Miri had given her. Most of the cyclists were drinking beer and talking with what seemed to be the instrument man of a rock band; at least he was uncoiling wires and fiddling with a large pile of electronic gear. He seemed nervous and apprehensive and straightened up occasionally to whip his hair out of his eyes. But it was three cyclists somewhat to the side that gave Patsy the start. They were no hairier or dirtier or more disagreeable-looking than the others, but they had their pants down and were quite exposed. One thin one was leaning back against his cycle, a can of beer in one hand, while his woman, a hefty-looking creature in a black shirt and jeans leaned across the cycle and languidly pumped his penis with one hand. Another woman, whose back was to Patsy, was kneeling on the grass in front of a large cyclist who had a hairy stomach and a penis that was half erect. As Patsy looked, the woman reached up and grasped it, pulling it down. Patsy stumbled and looked away, dreadfully shocked, so stunned she felt weak for a moment. Neither Miri nor Melissa seemed to take more than glancing notice of the scene, or to think it unusual, but both the boys looked over cautiously.
“What in the world?” Patsy said, unable to keep from looking once more to be sure she had seen it. Several more of the cyclists had wandered over and partially blocked her view of the kneeling woman, but there was no doubt that she had seen it. The thin cyclist was still leaning against his cycle and the hefty girl still held his penis.
Frank noticed her confusion and seemed to have some sympathy for it. “New scene?” he asked, smiling pleasantly at her. “It’s the Angels. I think, I don’t know, they’re warming up for some birthday party or something. They won’t bother us if we go on. Those guys over there are taking their lives in their hands.” He nodded at a straggle of younger hippies, four boys and a girl, who were standing near a tree staring at the Angels.
“You don’t want to just stand and watch them,” Frank said. “It makes them want to do their thing, which is to beat the shit out of people.”
“But how can they get away with that?” Patsy asked, confused. “In the middle of the day. In public?”
“Well, it’s the park,” Frank said, shrugging. “Nobody bugs you in the park, much.”
Soon they crossed out of the park into a section of old houses and small grocery stores. Most of the houses were iron gray, but on some the paint was peeling. Some had psychedelic posters in the windows and a few of the cars parked along the street were weirdly painted. At the first corner a teenager of fifteen or sixteen asked Frank if he could spare some change. The boy wore a good corduroy coat and black new-looking knee boots. Frank turned him down. “Fifty-dollar boots and he’s scrounging change,” he said disgustedly.
The day had clouded over again, at least in the part of the city they were in. Once in a while Patsy caught a distant glimpse of white buildings with the sun on them, but the clouds over the Haight-Ashbury were as gray as the houses. Miri had slowed a little. Whenever she passed a cluster of hippies she stopped to ask about Stone, always with negative results. She stopped and went into a little poster shop. Patsy and Frank caught up with Melissa and the other boy, whose name was George. They had a consultation. George wore the serape and had not perceived that the true object of their quest was to avoid Stone, not to find him.
“Why are we looking here?” he said. “He’s no head. He’s probably down Fillmore somewhere.”
“What do you think?” Patsy asked Melissa.
“She’s awfully zingy,” Melissa said. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. I don’t think she even knows where she is. She knows Stone doesn’t like this part of town. He hates hippies. You really going to take her to Texas?”
“I sure am.”
“Why?” George asked. “Isn’t it a bad place? Half the heads I know come from there. They all say it’s a bad place.”
“It may be a bad place for heads but it’s a nice place for expectant mothers,” Patsy said. “I’m taking her back. The only question is how to go about it.”
“I’m glad I’m not you,” Melissa said. “If you’re going to do it, I guess you ought to do it quick. Once you get her on a plane there’s not much she or Stone can do about it. We can stick with you until you get her to the airport, if you want us to.”
“I want you to,” Patsy said.
When Miri came out of the store she noticed Patsy again and they walked together back through the park, the other three behind them.
“Did you see Momma and Daddy?” Miri asked. “When are they going to send me some money? We can’t even buy grass. We’re going to have a party when we get some more money.”
“You should have called me. I’d have sent you money.”
But Miri seemed not really concerned about that or about anything. She walked along looking restlessly one way and another. The thought that she was going to have to bear a child when she was only a thin bewildered child herself hurt Patsy and made her all the angrier at her parents. When they got back to Miri’s street Joe Percy was there, sitting under the wheel of the Morgan. He was wearing a sports jacket and a tweed cap and was looking worried. “Is Stone here?” Miri asked him quickly.
“Well, somebody’s in apartment five. All I got was his attitude.”
Miri ran in and up the stairs and the five of them stood on the sidewalk looking downcast and indecisive.
“We can’t all go up,” Melissa said. “I don’t know which of us would make him the least mad.”
“I’m going up,” Patsy said after a moment. “She’s my sister and if it makes him mad that’s tough. If I need any help I guess I can yell.”
Joe and Melissa looked uneasy, but neither of them said anything and Patsy went in and up the stairs. She was very scared, as scared as she had been the night Sonny abducted her in his hearse, but in a different way. She was afraid of Stone on the one hand and afraid too that if she mismanaged things her sister might have a serious breakdown, something far beyond her power to cope with. But going away without Miri had become unthinkable. She went up despite her fear and knocked on the door of apartment five.
“Yeah,” Stone said.
“I’m Mrs. Carpenter,” she said. “I’d like to come in.”
The door didn’t open. “What for?” he asked.
“To get my sister and her things,” Patsy said.
“You are fucking crazy,” he said. “You think I’m gonna let you come in here and walk off with my piece?”
The way he said it angered her uncontrollably and she kicked the door as hard as she could. It was a thin door and rattled loudly. “Open that goddamn door,” she said.
He did, immediately, with a little sardonic smile. “Is that the way you kick niggers down in Texas?” he asked. Miri had taken off the black sweater and the jeans and was fumbling in the clothes as if she were trying to put them in some sort of order. She didn’t look around when Patsy came in.
Patsy was quivering with tension and anger. She let the remark about niggers pass. “I’m trying not to hate your guts,” she said, “but you do make it hard.”
“Well, don’t try,” he said softly. “Just go at it.”
“I’m going to take my sister to Texas,” she said. “We’re leaving as soon as I can get her things together, if she has any things left. If you want to make a fight out of it, okay. I’ll get my friends and lawyers and policemen and the marines if I have to, and if that’s what you want, okay.”
But Stone had turned sullen again. He shrugged and resumed his stance at the window. Miri was pulling on a gray skirt. Stone was silent, closed up. Patsy did not believe she had ever seen a human being as hard to handle. It was incredible to her that Miri, who had always been completely open, should have taken as her lover a man who seemed completely closed.
She went over and knelt by Miri to see what should be salvaged of the garments there. They were mostly sweaters and jeans, with a few skirts and no bras and a pair or two of panties. Miri sat on the couch and looked at Stone. Patsy could find no shoes at all.
“My god,” Patsy said. “You must have some shoes. Where are her shoes?”
“She left ’em someplace,” Stone said. “We been living light.”
To Patsy’s great relief he seemed to have turned off his hostility. He suddenly looked totally apathetic. Miri, again reflecting him, seemed apathetic too. But in a way it confused the scene even more. She had come up the stairs prepared for any sort of wildness—blows, screams, curses, and police. She expected to have to drag Miri away inch by inch. But Stone stood at the window and Miri sat on the couch and they both looked as if they had forgotten what was happening and had no interest in it. Patsy was at a loss. There was nothing to gather up, no suitcases to pack, nothing. The few garments by the mattress were simply not worth bothering about. There seemed literally nothing else to do but take Miri by the hand and lead her out. Stone had shrugged it off and Miri, once she was in his company, seemed to be completely passive. Patsy didn’t know what to do. She sat down beside her sister.
“Is it your child?” she asked, looking at Stone. The problem had just occurred to her.
“Might be.”
“Oh, shit,” Patsy said. “What an incredible goddamn mess. I have a genius for screwing up and even I couldn’t screw up this bad.”
“No mess,” Stone said. “You just takin’ her away. I knew somebody would, sometime. It’s always happenin’. You get mixed up with some chick with redneck kinfolks ’n’ sooner or later some redneck gonna come and take her away.”
Patsy didn’t want to argue. She wanted to leave. “You think anything you want of me and I’ll think anything I want of you,” she said. “Since we don’t know one another, that’s what we’ll have to do. Could you at least tell me what my sister’s been taking to make her like she is? I might need to tell a doctor.”
He looked at Miri wearily, as if he wished they were both gone. “She takes this and that,” he said. “Little speed, little acid, smoke some grass, few pills—whatever we run into.”
“No wonder she doesn’t know where she is,” Patsy said. “Look, I’m not trying to banish you from her life forever. I don’t know what I think about the future. I just know she’s in wretched shape and needs to be healthier. I assume you had your chance to take care of her and now I’m going to have mine. But I’ll give you my address and phone number and you might give me an address where I could reach you. I don’t know what might come up.”
Stone shook his head, as if talk of addresses was completely senseless. “You leavin’, Miri?” he asked in the gentlest voice he had used, but the way he said it was ambiguous. Patsy could not tell if it was a question or a statement.
“Isn’t there going to be a party somewhere?” Miri asked.
“Come on, honey,” Patsy said, taking her arm. Miri stood up and looked at Stone briefly, but whatever impulse had caused him to speak gently had been only momentary and he was looking at both of them with clear hostility again, the same hostility that had been in his face when he first came to the door that morning.
“Goodbye,” Patsy said. Stone turned away and said nothing.
When they were in the hall, on the stairs, Miri looked at Patsy hostilely and said, “Why didn’t you invite him too?”
“Not now,” Patsy said.
Joe and Melissa were relieved to see them. The two young men were looking at the Morgan as if it were a beautiful piece of sculpture. But the Morgan was a problem. There were six of them. Since Stone had been no trouble, Melissa decided the young men were dispensable, but that still left four. Finally Patsy and Miri and Melissa took a taxi and Joe followed in the Morgan as a kind of rear guard. Miri was silent, but quite passive. They decided to go to Melissa’s house, where Miri could clean up a bit. Once in the taxi, Patsy relaxed—a little too soon, as it happened. Miri was sitting on the outside, and when the taxi stopped for a light on California Street she simply opened the door and got out. She was out before Patsy could move. It was very awkward, for the light changed just then. Miri got across ahead of it, and it was hard to pursue. Fortunately, though, she was not running, nor even trying to lose them. She wandered into a big grocery store, where they caught her, and once caught she was quite passive and went back with them to the taxi, talking about the grapefruit in the store.
Barry was gone when they got to Melissa’s. Miri seemed to recognize the house and did not seem frantic. Melissa showed her the bathtub and she immediately wanted to take a bath. While it was running Melissa offered to run out and buy Miri some shoes and a decent sweater and skirt and Patsy gave her some money. Joe made plane reservations and went back to the hotel to check the two of them out. They were a well-functioning team; only Patsy had nothing to do. There was a plane to Dallas in four hours.
Once Joe and Melissa were gone, Patsy kept hearing the water running in the bathroom and became worried. Perhaps Miri was drowning herself. She peeked, very cautiously. Miri had filled the tub to the very top, and was sitting in it. All her clothes were stuffed in the bathroom wastebasket. Her hair was wet and she was fingering the medallion around her neck and humming softly. It was an old deep 1920s tub; the water covered Miri’s breasts.
Patsy was relieved and went and sat in Melissa’s quiet, bright room, in the rope chair by the bay window. She could see a corner of the little park where they had walked. She heard the tub draining, in the silence, and then heard it begin to fill again. She was puzzled, and peeked a second time. Miri was standing with her back to the door, her feet on a towel, waiting for the tub to fill again. Her hips seemed very slim.
She was still bathing when Melissa returned with the clothes. In the end she emptied and filled the tub four times. Melissa said let her, it was harmless enough. They put the clothes inside the door. Then they dropped their guard again and Miri almost got away. Patsy wanted to see the view from the bedroom again, and while she looked Melissa sat on the mattress sewing up a hole in one of Barry’s sweaters. They were chatting, not worried about Miri at all, when they heard the living room door shut. “Barry?” Melissa asked, surprised. But it was Miri leaving. She had slipped quietly out. They rushed out and caught her before she had gone a block, but it gave Patsy the jitters. She was glad when Joe returned. Miri sat in the living room plunking softly on Barry’s guitar, her black hair still damp from the several washings she had given it. Joe Percy sat down by her and began to talk to her as if they were old friends, and Miri warmed to him and began to chatter, still playing the guitar. They talked about Simon and Garfunkel, and about the Jefferson Airplane. Then Miri got up and began to walk restlessly around the room, carrying the guitar.
“Let’s go on to the airport,” Joe said. “We can walk around until the plane leaves.”
Melissa decided to stay with them until the end, and Patsy was just as glad. They called a taxi and just as it arrived Barry arrived too, carrying a sackful of vegetables and a paperback copy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He decided to come along and folded himself into the front seat of the cab while the four of them squeezed in the back. Miri was silent. She looked strained again, and a little wild. As the taxi curved onto the Bayshore freeway Patsy glanced back at the hills and white houses and wished for a moment that all was different, that she could walk around with Joe and Barry and Melissa and see the city. As it was, she could scarcely be conscious of anything but the troubled face of her sister. She could hardly believe that Miri seemed to know her so little, so intermittently.
At the airport they thought to pass the time by watching the planes come in, but Miri’s face was tightening. She looked wild and tense and scared of the crowds, and they were all worried. “Maybe we ought to feed her,” Joe suggested. Patsy was dubious, but it proved a good suggestion. The airport restaurant was not too crowded. Melissa ordered Miri some chicken noodle soup, while the rest of them had coffee. The waitress brought a little plate of crackers and Miri ate them all before the soup came. Then she ate all the soup and did not protest when Patsy asked if she would like a grilled cheese sandwich. Patsy ordered it and Miri ate it all.
It dawned on the four of them simultaneously that Miri was starving. They ordered her a salad and some milk and a hot roast beef sandwich. Miri ate the sandwich and asked for another. While it was coming, she asked Patsy what color Davey’s eyes were. “I couldn’t tell from the pictures you sent,” she said, wiping her mouth. Barry regarded her with wonder and a certain amount of envy. He was hungry but Melissa wouldn’t let him spend their money in an airport restaurant. “Could I have some ice cream?” Miri asked. She felt her hair to see if it was dry. She had ice cream and pie and coffee and leaned back in the booth, looking like a sane, clean, and somewhat somnolent girl who would like to take a nap. The rest of them, excepting Barry, felt almost slack with relief. Barry had not been tense. Patsy took advantage of the lull to call Jeanette. She told her to have Davey and Juanita ready. They were all going to Houston that night. Miri was okay but might react badly to Dallas. Jeanette was numb with gratitude and agreed to everything.
On the way to the loading gate Miri walked ahead with Barry, talking rapidly. Joe and Patsy and Melissa all felt bushed, although Melissa made a pretense of it being all in the day’s routine. Patsy felt so grateful to all of them that she feared she would start crying if she tried to express it. At the gate she thanked Melissa rather awkwardly and Melissa smilingly passed it over by giving her messages to Lee, messages which it would not matter if she forgot. Barry put his arm around Melissa as they were waiting. They made a great tall couple, Patsy thought. She resolved to sing their praises to Lee and Bill. Patsy had brought nothing to read and Barry pulled the Kesey book out of his jacket and pressed it on her, assuring her he could get another the next day at the bookstore. As Miri was quiet, and waiting awkward, they waved and wandered off to window-shop in the airport stores.
Miri was sitting comfortably in one of the seats in the waiting room yawning and looking out the window, and Patsy and Joe stood by the railing that separated passengers from guests, talking awkwardly about things that didn’t interest them. Joe looked a little ragged, and Patsy remembered that he had his love problem. She had wanted to talk to him about it, but she felt too odd and choked to want to do it there in the airport; she felt she had only a few threads of control left. Joe apparently felt somewhat the same way and they chatted without hearing each other and looked out at the blue sky over the brown hills of the peninsula. Tiny cars sped by at the foot of the hills. When the flight was called they were both glad, and they looked at each other finally. Tears started in Patsy’s eyes.
“Okay, thanks, buddy,” she said. “Please don’t get your dumb heart broken.”
Joe shrugged and grinned, as if to say such things were not in his power to prevent, and then he reached across the rail and hugged and kissed her. Patsy picked up her purse and got her ticket ready; Miri got in line with her, still yawning. Joe stood at the rail watching. “I’d know you for sisters anywhere,” he said. “What a pair of broads.” They both looked pleased.
“Hollywood to the end,” Patsy said, turning to wave goodbye.
“I accompany you,” he said. “Call me if I can help.”
“Oh, Joe,” she said, and the line pressed her into the plane.
“Want to read?” Patsy asked when they were both settled, but Miri merely nodded. They were both silent as they waited for the plane to fill, and silent as it taxied out the runway. But their silence was pensive, not awkward or hostile. Both looked out the window at the hills with the cars speeding at their feet, or at the planes coming in one after another over the water. It was a pleasant silence, as if both were glad that for a few hours nothing would be expected of either of them except that they sit. They were flying first class and it was very comfortable. As they went up, the white bank of evening fog was just pushing at the line of hills; the sun shone on the fog and made it brilliantly white, white as a cloud. In a few minutes they were over the Sierras, very beautiful and rough and capped with snow. Patsy had never seen mountains so clearly from the air. They shone beneath the plane, and all California stretched beside them, brown and white and blue at the horizons. Joe and Melissa and Barry would scarcely be back in the city. And then Joe would be driving intensely down the freeways, most of the night probably, unless he chose to stay in San Francisco and drink. She hoped Melissa and Barry would ask him to dinner; she didn’t like to think of him drinking alone. It had been a hard day. She was tempted to have a gin and tonic but remembered that she had to drive to Houston. She could not afford to get too relaxed.
She was not allowed to relax, anyway, for as they were passing over Nevada, Miri, who had been sitting quietly, leafing through the Kesey book, opened her little purse and before Patsy noticed what she was doing took out a marijuana cigarette and lit it. Patsy caught the faint odor and looked around to discover to her horror that Miri was offering marijuana to the well-dressed middle-aged couple who sat across the aisle. The man looked startled for a second but immediately recovered his aplomb and he and his wife declined and spoke kindly to Miri, who offered the cigarette to Patsy. The stewardess came just at that time to take dinner orders; though she must have observed what Miri was smoking she treated it with the utmost cool and merely let down their trays. “Look, please put it out,” Patsy said. “Please. Wait until we get home. I don’t want you having your baby in jail.”
After one more draw Miri complied. “I guess I better save it,” she said, looking into her purse. “I don’t know anyone to buy it from in Texas.”
She ate her food when it came, but Patsy hardly touched hers. She was tight with apprehension. It occurred to her that the cool stewardess had probably told the pilot, who would probably radio the Dallas police. Narcotics agents would be waiting for them when they got off the plane. She thought of making a personal appeal to the stewardess, or of having Miri flush it, but she knew Miri wouldn’t want to and in any case her paranoia was accompanied by a kind of fatalistic lethargy. All she did was sit and worry. The land darkened; lights winked far below. Miri read in the Kesey book. “I met him,” she said, and talked in her light voice about a party, but Patsy was too glazed with worry to hear.
As they left the plane in Dallas Patsy tried to think of what to say to the agents, but no agents appeared. They left the airport unmolested, and the relief carried her through an awkward half-hour at her parents’. Miri was extremely uncomfortable there. She moved restlessly from one room to another; Patsy tried to pack the Ford and yet stay in the same room with her, because it was obvious she would leave if a chance arose. Garland and Jeanette had no idea what to do or say, and Miri shut within herself and would not say a word to them. Patsy made all the conversaton, to Garland, to Jeanette, to Miri, to Juanita. Davey had been asleep but woke as they were transferring him to the Ford. Patsy put Miri in the back seat with him, Juanita in the front with her, and they drove off, leaving Garland and Jeanette standing in their driveway, puzzled, awkward, and helpless. The best she had been able to do for them was to promise they could come and visit when things quieted down.
Davey had come wide awake and wanted in his car seat, and once he was put in it wanted to twist around and look at Miri. She seemed pleased with him and offered him a finger to hold. He held it solemnly. “Can I smoke pot now?” Miri asked.
Patsy was past caring. “I guess,” she said, glancing at Juanita to see how she would take it. Juanita was worried about car wrecks, not marijuana. “What if I get stopped for speeding?”
“I could swallow it.”
“Okay.” Soon Davey got in the back seat and lay on his back; Miri smoked pot and tickled his stomach and played with his feet and he gurgled and babbled and sang.
It made Patsy miss him; she glanced back at him much oftener than Juanita would have liked. “Maybe your sister would like to drive,” she said. “You can play with Davey.” She was not above needling Patsy.
“Listen,” Patsy said. “My sister is flying, can’t you tell? She’s high above us, in a marijuana airplane. You might as well get used to seeing her up there. She’s one of those people who get high.”
“I weel be high if I get to heaven,” Juanita said, yawning.
“Only my sister Patsy is going to heaven,” Miri said with a little giggle. “She’s the only one in the world who only does right things.”
“Give me peace,” Patsy said. “It used to be only Davey and Juanita against me. Now I’ll have to buck all three of you.”
“That’s right,” Juanita said, looking shyly at Miri. “We make you toe the line from now on. We run the house an’ you pay the bills.”
They bantered for a while and Davey babbled, and then they all went to sleep and gave her peace. It was almost too much peace, for she was tired too, and three long hours from Houston. The smell of marijuana lingered in the car. To keep awake Patsy turned on the radio and, as she could get nothing else very clearly, listened to a hillbilly station in Shreveport. It reminded her of Hank. She had not called him since they had seen each other. In only a few rapid days it had become strange again, and unreal. She had no sense, as she drove, that they would ever get together again. Her immediate future was in the back seat. She could not see a future through the windshield. Ahead was the back of a truck with many license plates on it. She could not give her attention to the dark country stretching west. What she wanted was to get home, and once she got back on the long wide stretch of Interstate she pushed the Ford to its top speed, which was seventy-five. There was a mushy fog when she arrived in Houston. The downtown lights were pink and green. Davey didn’t wake up as he was transferred into the house, and Juanita scarcely did. Miri woke up and was downstairs playing a record when Patsy had changed into her nightgown. She went down for a minute.
“I’m half dead,” she said. “I’m going to sleep. Please don’t run off.”
“I’m just playing your records,” Miri said. “We had to sell my phonograph.”
Patsy left it at that. The next morning Juanita found Miri asleep on the couch and covered her. Davey came and stared at her and babbled mightily, but Miri slept until noon.