“And you want to get out of it,” Bob Jr. said.
It was coming now and Ryan knew it. Every time he had ever been in a fight since he was little, he knew this time when his stomach tightened and he could see in the other guy’s eyes they were going to go through with it. He had thought about it a lot, this moment, and he had come to realize that the other guy must be feeling and thinking the same thing, and no matter how big the other guy was, he would probably be afraid or tightened up or nervous, because nobody could ever be a hundred percent sure. This moment, Ryan had decided, when they weren’t quite ready, was the time to hit them. Hit first and hit hard and maybe end it right there.
Bob Jr. made it easier. He took a couple of steps back just as Ryan was ready to move and half turned to reach into the pickup bed. He had to look in to locate the tire iron or a wrecking bar and as he glanced around again to check on Ryan he would never have thought a man could move so fast; Ryan was rushing him, steps away, and the goddamn staff or club or whatever it was, up in the air, was coming down on him.
Bob Jr. rolled against the side of the pickup box, getting his head behind a shoulder, and took the first blow hard and solid against his forearm as he brought it up.
His arm felt numb and he must have closed his eyes. He didn’t see the club come at him again, he was guarding his head, and the goddamn thing whacked solid against his left knee. There was nothing to do then but rush the son of a bitch and he took another good one, stinging across his left shoulder, before he got in close and got both hands on the heavy tree branch and felt it hard and round and the bark coarse in his hands, straining against it to take it away from Ryan and then seeing Ryan’s face right in front of his, the face tight and straining, looking right into his eyes.
“You’re through now, boy,” Bob Jr. said, and barely finished saying it as Ryan’s left fist came off the tree branch and jabbed straight into his face.
For Ryan it was right now—as Bob Jr. went back and his face was raised and open—take it right now quick was all he could think of, now while he was pressing and had him, and he jabbed his left straight into the face again, staying with the guy as he went back, jabbing with the left and jabbing a right to the face, setting it up and now, right now, coming in with the long left hand from behind his shoulder, hitting solid, feeling it all the way up his arm and seeing the guy stumble back with blood coming out of his nose, but God—and it was an awful feeling, the worst feeling you can have—the guy didn’t go down.
He let go of the tree branch and stood there, his face bloody, looking at Ryan, breathing, getting his breath, wiping his hand across his mouth. Ryan brought up his guard as Bob Jr. came at him, his arms already heavy and tired.
Nancy took time to pour herself a little Cold Duck and she sipped it while she watched them hit each other. Bob Jr. was bigger, in fact Jackie looked sort of frail next to him, but he had drawn blood first and Bob Jr. was a mess, blood all over his mouth and down the front of his checkered shirt. He didn’t seem to care, though. She watched him move in, taking Ryan’s jabs on his shoulder, then another good one—wow—right in the mouth, but this time he didn’t stop, he came in swinging that big right fist and slammed it into Ryan’s face. It must have stunned him; he hesitated and Bob hit him again and again until Ryan dropped to his knees.
That’s it, Nancy thought. Pretty good while it lasted. She was surprised when Ryan came up, very slowly at first; then, before Bob Jr. knew it, Ryan was swinging at him. He got him hard in the face and for a moment they stood close, both swinging at each other with everything they had. Until Ryan dropped.
He went to his hands and knees, his head down, and this time he didn’t try to get up. God, his hands hurt, and his mouth. He wanted to touch his mouth and his jaw, but he was afraid if he raised either hand from the ground, he’d fall on his face. The guy could stand there if he wanted; Ryan decided he wasn’t getting up anymore.
But the guy wasn’t standing there. Ryan turned his head to the side and the guy was sitting down just a few feet away with his head back, looking up at the sky with his eyes closed and pressing a handkerchief to his nose.
Ryan rolled over to a sitting position. God, his shoulders hurt too. He sat there looking at the guy and finally he said, “That’s not the way to do it.”
Bob Jr. opened his eyes and looked over at Ryan.
“That doesn’t stop it,” Ryan said.
“Yeah,” Bob Jr. said in his handkerchief. “You put your head back.”
“That’s a lot of crap,” Ryan said. “You blow your nose and then hold it, pinch it, with your head forward.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Everybody thinks you put your head back,” Ryan said, “but you don’t, you put it forward. Go on.”
Bob Jr. leaned forward and the blood dripped out on the ground as he took his handkerchief away.
“Go on, blow it,” Ryan said. He watched him to see if he did it right.
After about a minute Bob Jr. said, “I never seen so much blood since I dressed a buck I shot right here last fall.” His voice was nasal and muffled in the handkerchief.
“There’s a lot of deer in the woods here?”
“A lot? You go look at the game trails going down to that lake where they water.”
“I never been hunting.”
“This buck I got, I walked up from the road and he was standing here waiting.”
“What’d you use?”
“I use different guns. That time I had me an old O-three, I mean old, but the son of a bitch’d shoot from here to Holden.”
“This guy Walter Majestyk,” Ryan said, “he was talking about a lodge up here.”
“You know him?”
“I work for him.”
“Hey,” Nancy said. She was still in the car. “Is this the intermission or what?”
Ryan looked at Bob Jr. “I’m going to get in that car and drive out of here. You got any objections?”
Bob Jr. said, “What do I care what you do?”
He was still sitting there when they left.
Neither of them spoke until they were down out of the woods and moving along the back road to the migrant camp. He could feel her watching him and finally he said, “You got what you wanted, didn’t you?”
“That wasn’t very nice, trying to blame me.” Nancy sat against her door, watching him. “How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been hit in the face.”
“You don’t look so bad. Here.” She handed him her glass and watched him finish it, holding the wine in his mouth and letting it burn before swallowing it. His teeth felt sore and loose in his jaw; when he worked it, he could hear a clicking sound close to his ear. His hands hurt and they looked awful from hitting the guy in the face after he’d started bleeding. Nancy took the glass from him and he held the steering wheel low with one hand. Up ahead he saw a group of pickers coming out of the field, several of them walking along the side of the road and looking back as they heard the car coming.
“It settles one thing,” Ryan said.
“What?”
“I’m not going in that hunting lodge. I don’t care how much is in there.”
Nancy stared straight ahead through the windshield; she was in no hurry. Looking at Ryan finally, she said, “I knew you were going to say that. I didn’t know when or how you’d say it, but I knew you would.”
“Well, you’re smarter than I am,” Ryan said, “because I just found out.”
“No, you didn’t. You might have thought you were going to rob the place,” Nancy said, “but you never would. I thought you might change, but you haven’t. You’re a small-time breaking and entering man, Jackie. That’s all you are. You can dream about taking fifty thousand, but you’d never do it.”
“Look,” Ryan said, “he saw us up there. The police say to him, ‘Did you see anybody around the place the last few days?’ And right away he remembers us. He remembers me and he starts to put things together.”
“You’re a lit
tle upset,” Nancy said.
“You bet I am.”
“You’re mad because you think I provoked the fight.”
“That’s something else,” Ryan said.
“But the point is, Bob seeing us doesn’t prove anything.”
“I’m not going to give it a chance to,” Ryan said.
“We’ll talk about it later, after I’ve cleaned you up. How does that sound?”
“I don’t see there’s anything to talk about.”
They were coming up on the pickers now, who were edging back from the shoulder of the road to let the car pass. As they approached them Ryan said, “Put the glass on the floor.”
Frank Pizarro came into the light of the shed doorway after the car had passed and stood looking at the dust hanging in the air. Billy Ruiz was on the other side of the road; he had come out of the field, crossed the ditch and stood at the edge of the road gazing after the car; now he crossed over to the shed.
“That looked like Jack,” he said.
“Sure it was,” Pizarro said. “Showing us his car and his little chickie.”
“I wave to him,” Billy Ruiz said, “but he was already by me.”
“He saw you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“He saw you,” Pizarro said. “He saw all of us.”
“Then, why didn’t he wave?”
“He’s Mr. Jack Ryan in the car now.”
Billy Ruiz shook his head. “No, he didn’t see us. He would have waved.”
“Christ, shut up with the waving! He don’t care about you. He don’t see you anymore.”
Pizarro turned from the doorway into the darkness of the shed. He found a cigarette and lit it and then went down on his blanket to get away from Billy Ruiz and the rest of them so he could think about Ryan and the girl with no clothes on and get something straight in his mind.
All right, he had sold the beer case of wallets to the girl. Last night was something he couldn’t stop thinking about: the girl coming out of the swimming pool and drying herself in front of him, not trying to hide herself, while they discussed Jack Ryan and the wallets. She put on the blouse and the shorts and he told her again, five hundred, that was the price. Then the girl going in the house and coming out with eighty dollars, with her blouse still unbuttoned. He should have kept the beer case until she got more money, but there was the eighty; it wasn’t any five hundred, but she was offering it to him.
He should have sold her the wallets one at a time. Go back once a week and she would have to pay him without any clothes on.
He should have taken her in the house or put her down on the grass. She had been asking for it and it would be something to do it to her, Mr. Ritchie’s girl; but because she was Mr. Ritchie’s girl, he had not touched her, because he couldn’t believe it—the not having any clothes on—and because he had been afraid if he touched her, something would happen. He didn’t know what. Something.
All right, he should have done a lot of things it was too late to do. But he still had one thing left, if he could get it straight in his mind how to say it to her and make her believe it. He still knew about Ryan and he could still call the police and tell them it was Ryan that robbed the place Sunday.
So the idea was to go to her at night when Ryan wasn’t there and tell her how much it would cost for him not to call the police, sticking to the five hundred this time and not coming down to any lousy eighty bucks.
He began to put words together, the way he would say it to her. Like: “If you don’t have the money, have your boyfriend steal you some. I don’t care where you get it.”
The important words: “Get me five hundred or I call the police.”
But as he lay on his blanket smoking the cigarette, in this dim oven of a place with its tin-shed roof and smell of mold, Frank Pizarro said to himself, Wait. What are you talking about the police for? Why the police. Man, you see it? There’s somebody better than the police.
Tell her, she don’t pay, you write a letter to Mr. Ritchie.
13
* * *
AT FIRST, opening his eyes and moving, feeling the soreness in his shoulders, Ryan didn’t know where he was. Settling again, stretching his legs and moving his hands over the cool aluminum arms of the lounge chair, he had a good feeling from the soreness, a feeling of having worked and finished something. He was glad he had fought the guy and it was over. He was glad the guy had seen them.
Maybe he was never going in at all and it had been just talk. Maybe if Bob Jr. hadn’t showed up, he would have thought of some other excuse. Or maybe when the time came he would have taken off. He wasn’t sure.
Or maybe he was just tired. No, that wasn’t it. He was tired all right, and sore; but that didn’t have anything to do with it. It was something else.
It was a feeling of relief. He could come right out and say to himself, You don’t have to break into the place. You don’t have to take the money and go through all that. You don’t have to get involved and worry about her bragging about it to somebody. You don’t have to be waiting for something to happen. You don’t have to even think about it anymore.
He felt like a cigarette. He touched his shirt pocket; it was flat. He couldn’t see if there were cigarettes on the umbrella table; it was too dark over there. Turning to look at the table, he turned a little more to look at the house. The room off the patio was dark, though a faint light was coming from somewhere in the back part of the room. The upstairs windows were dark. He wondered if she had gone to bed. He didn’t know what time it was. After ten anyway. He must have slept about three hours. He thought about going for a swim to loosen up but decided it would be too much trouble and it wouldn’t help much. Tomorrow when he woke up, he’d be so stiff and sore it would hurt to move and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He wondered why she hadn’t left a light on.
Nancy heard him on the outside stairs and now, sitting in the oversized chair in the dark, she saw him on the sun deck; she watched him slide open the glass door and come in; she watched him pause, getting his bearings, then start for the den. When he was within a few feet of her chair, Nancy said, “Hi.”
He didn’t answer right away. She had surprised him and it took a few seconds for him to locate her and think of something to say.
“I was going to surprise you,” Ryan said.
“I don’t sleep in the den.” Nancy waited.
Ryan leaned close to her chair to turn on the lamp.
“Where do you sleep?”
“Upstairs.”
“Show me.”
“After,” Nancy said. “I brought up everything we’ll need.”
“Like what?”
“From the bar.” Nancy watched him, her head slightly lowered, her eyes raised. Ryan stared back at her. It was her half-assed Ann-Margret look, but it was all right.
“The beer’s in the fridge,” Nancy said. She didn’t move.
“I don’t think I feel like anything.”
“I do,” Nancy said.
“I didn’t think you drank beer.”
“Sometimes. Will you get me one?” She watched him go to the kitchen and in the corner of her eye saw him reach in and turn on the light. She heard the refrigerator door open and, after a moment, close.
From the kitchen he said, “There isn’t any beer.”
Nancy stared at the sliding glass door, at the darkness outside, and the dim reflection of the room. She could see herself sitting in the chair. “Look in the cupboard next to the fridge. Bottom shelf.”
“What’re you English, you like warm beer?”
“Put a couple of bottles in the freezer. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
“Maybe we should have something else.”
“I don’t want something else, I want beer.”
Ryan looked in. “I believe you.”
She waited. She heard him open the cupboard. There were faint sounds. Then silence. She counted a thousand and one, a thousand and two, a thousand and three, a
thousand and four—
“You don’t have any beer,” Ryan said.
She looked over her shoulder, past the corner of the backrest, to Ryan in the doorway.
“You’ve got a bunch of old wallets, but you don’t have any beer.”
Nancy twisted around, leaning on the chair arm. “Do you recognize them?”
He stared back at her. He stared thoughtfully, taking his time. Finally he came into the living room. He drew up the ottoman of Nancy’s chair and sat down.
“I have never been mean to a girl,” Ryan said. “I have never talked loud to a girl or ever hit a girl.”
“There’s beer downstairs,” Nancy said.
“Maybe I’ll have something else.”
“Help yourself. Behind the bar. The beer’s in the fridge underneath.”
“Do you always say that?”
“What?”
“Fridge.”
She frowned a little. “Not always.”
“It’s a dumb word,” Ryan said. He got up and went down the circular stairs to the activities room. A lamp at one end of the bar spread a soft pink light over the polished wood. He found a bottle of bourbon and poured some of it into an Old Fashioned glass. He took ice and beer from the refrigerator, put two cubes into the glass, and opened the beer. He lit a cigarette from a dish of filter-tipped cigarettes on the bar; he blew the smoke out slowly and took a sip of the bourbon.
Nancy had not moved. She waited as Ryan placed the beer and a glass and the bottle of bourbon on the table next to her and sat down on the ottoman.
“All right,” Ryan said. “Tell me the name of the game.” He watched her patiently.
“You sound different,” Nancy said, “at different times. I’ll bet you’re moody.”
“Tell me the game, okay?”
“Being moody is all right if you have something to be moody about, but I think most people pretend, like a pose.”
Ryan drank the rest of his bourbon and stood up. “I’ll see you.”
“The game,” Nancy said, “is called unless you’re a nice boy and do what I tell you, I’ll go to the state police with the wallets. It’s sort of a long name for a game, but it’s fun.”