“You gonna take the Mongol, Heintz?” Jimmy asked breathlessly.
Heintz struck a dangerous pose. “Yeah. I’m gonna take that fuckin’ Mongol. I’m gonna waste that motherfucker. Somebody get my gear.” He tucked his thumbs into his belt and puffed out his chest. “Anybody that ain’t got the guts for real war better split now, ’cause there’s gonna be blood, man, blood!”
Flood was breathing rapidly. Suddenly he stood up.
“Where are you going?” Raphael demanded.
“I thought I-” Flood broke off.
“What in God’s name is the matter with you, Damon? You don’t really care, do you? All they’re going to do is ride around looking tough, and then they’ll all get drunk and spend the rest of the night telling each other how mean they would have been. Don’t be childish.”
Flood stared at him, hard-faced, and then he suddenly laughed. “Shit,” he said, sitting back down. “This goddamn place is turning me into a ding-a-ling. You know? I was actually going down there. We’ve got to get out of this town, Raphael. It’s starting to percolate our goddamn brains.”
Two of the women came out of the house carrying Heintz’s implements of combat. He stood very straight while they solemnly put his nail-studded leather vest on him. Then they wrapped his thick waist several times around with a long length of heavy, tinkling chain. One of the women knelt reverently and tucked a long, sheathed knife into his right boot while the other attached a heavy length of taped pipe to the chain around his waist.
“I want you women to take the kids inside and bolt all the doors,” Heintz instructed. “Put stuff in front of the windows and don’t turn on no lights. Them bastards might try to come here an’ mess you up while we’re gone.”
With mute, almost worshipful respect Jimmy handed Big Heintz a can of beer. The big man tipped back his head, drained the can, and then threw it away.
“All right!” he roared. “Let’s go!”
With a clatter of chains and clubs the Angels piled into their battered cars or aboard their motorcycles. Their engines roared to life, and with smoking exhausts and screeching tires they blasted off, grim-faced, to that last and final war their leader had promised them. Their women, equally grim-faced, gathered the shouting children and retreated to the house, slamming the door behind them.
Big Heintz, his meaty arms proudly crossed, stood in splendid solitude on the now-deserted front lawn. Then slowly, majestically, girt in steel and leather, he strode to his bike, mounted, and tromped savagely down on the starter crank.
Nothing happened.
He tromped again-and again-and yet again. The big Harley wheezed.
“Come on, you bastard,” Big Heintz rasped hoarsely. “Come on, start!”
For ten minutes Big Heintz tromped, and for ten minutes the big Harley stubbornly refused to start. “Son of a bitch!” Heintz gasped, sweat pouring down his face. “Come on, please start!”
Finally, in desperation, he grasped the handlebars and pushed the heavy machine into the street. Running alongside, he pushed the balky bike along the empty street in the long-vanished wake of his departed warriors. At the end of the block he pushed it around the corner and was gone.
The street was silent again except for the strangled sound of Flood’s muffled laughter drifting down from the rooftop.
iv
“I’m not the least bit sorry for her,” Denise said. “It’s her own fault.”
“Come on, Denise,” Raphael objected.
“Come on, my foot. There’s a little pill, remember? If a girl gets pregnant these days, it’s because she wants to get pregnant. It’s just a cheap ticket to an early wedding. I’m glad it didn’t work. Next time she’ll know better.”
“She isn’t that kind of girl.”
“Really? Then how come she’s got a big belly?”
“Don’t be coarse.”
“Oh, grow up, Rafe,” she said angrily, slapping her dwarfed hand down on the table in irritation. “If she’s such a nice girl, why didn’t she keep her legs crossed? Why are you so concerned about what happens to some dim-witted trollop?”
“She’s not a trollop. That kind of thing can happen. Young men can be very persuasive sometimes. Don’t be so Victorian.”
“You haven’t answered my question.” Her pale face was flushed. “Why are you so interested in her?”
Raphael took a deep breath. “All right,” he said finally. “There’s a disease on my street. It’s a combination of poverty, indifference, stupidity, and an erosion of the will. You could call it the welfare syndrome, I suppose. The people are cared for-they get a welfare check and food stamps. After a while that welfare check is the only important thing to them. They live lives of aimless futility-without meaning, without dignity. Society feeds them and puts them in minimal housing, and then it quite studiously tries to ignore the fact that they exist. But people are more than cattle. They need more than a bale of hay and a warm stall in some barn. The people on my street turn to violence-to crisis-in an effort to say to the world, `Look at me. I’m here. I exist.’ I’d like to salvage just one of them, that’s all. I’d like to beat the system just once. I’d like to keep one of them just one-out of the soft claws of all those bright young ladies you warned me about-the ones who smother lives with welfare checks like you’d smother unwanted kittens with a wet pillow. That’s what my interest is.”
“You’re trying to save the world,” she said with heavy sarcasm.
“No. Not the world just one life. If I can’t salvage just one life, I don’t see much hope for any of us. The social workers will get us all. That’s what they want, of course-to get us all-to bury us all with that one universal welfare check-to turn us into cattle.”
“And she’s pretty, of course,” Denise said acidly.
“I hadn’t really paid that much attention.” That was not entirely true. “She’s a human being. Frankly, I wouldn’t give a damn if she looked like Frankenstein.”
“But she doesn’t look like Frankenstein, does she?” Denise bored in.
“I didn’t notice any bolts sticking out of her neck.” Raphael was starting to get tired of it.
“Why don’t you marry her then?” she suggested. “That’d solve everything, wouldn’t it?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“It’s a perfect solution. You can marry her, and you can save her from the goblin social workers. You legitimize her bastard, and then you can spend the rest of your life looking for the bolts. I wouldn’t worry too much about that-” She pointed at his missing leg. “After all, a girl in her situation can’t afford to be too choosy, can she?”
“Why don’t we just drop this?”
“Why don’t we just drop the whole damned thing?” she said hotly. “Why don’t you get back to work? We’re not paying you to sit around and drink coffee and philosophize about saving the world; we’re paying you to fix shoes.”
His face tightened, and he got up without saying anything. He grabbed his crutches and stumped back toward his workbench.
“Rafe!” Her voice was stricken. He heard her feet, quick and light on the floor behind him, and then she had her arms around him and her face buried in his chest. He fought to keep his balance. “I’m sorry,” she wailed. The tiny hand, twisted and misshapen, clutched the fabric of his shirt at the shoulder, kneading, grasping, trying to hold on. He was surprised at how strong it was.
Denise cried into his chest for a few moments, and then she fumed and fled, her face covered with her normal hand.
Raphael stood, still shifting his weight to regain his balance, and stared after her, his face troubled and a hollow feeling in his stomach.
He was still profoundly troubled when he got home that afternoon. He sat for several minutes in his car, staring vacantly out the window.
Hesitantly, old Tobe came out of the house across the street and walked over to Raphael’s car. For once he did not seem particularly drunk. “Hello, Rafe,” he said, his foghorn voice subdued.
“Tobe.”
“You think you could come over to the place for a minute, Rafe?” Tobe asked, his tone almost pleading. “Old Sam’s took sick, an’ I’m awful worried about him. I don’t know what the hell to do.”
“How do you mean sick?” Raphael asked, getting out of his car.
“He’s just layin’ on that couch in the dinin’ room there,” Tobe said. “He can’t get up, an’ he talks funny-like he can’t quite get the words put together right.”
“Let’s go.” Raphael started across the street.
“I don’t think it’s nothin’ very serious,” Tobe said hopefully. “Old Sam’s as strong as a horse. He just needs some medicine or somethin’ to get him back on his feet.”
“You guys drinking again?” Raphael asked, carefully going up the steps onto the porch.
“Not like before. We cut way back. We don’t even really get drunk no more.”