"Go out the other door, and don"t stop running till you"re a long ways from here. You understand?"
"But I--" Cappy began, looking from Ernie to the body of the big man.
"Go on!" Ernie hit him in the arm. "Go on, and be good to her! You stupid son of a b.i.t.c.h!" He shoved them toward the open door on the opposite side of the boxcar, and as the train came to a shuddering halt, they leaped free, and ran off across the rail yards.
The yard bulls and linemen were running up to the boxcar as Ernie sat down on the cotton bales.
It wasn"t so bad. He could holler self-defense. It might be okay. But either way, his time had pa.s.sed. He was a young man, but so old, and so tired. It wouldn"t of been right for them kids. Not right at all.
Some people are meant to ride the dark train out, and others not. That"s the way it"s got to be.
He pushed the feathery hair from his eyes.
He was tired, and the dead guy had polished off the last of the Sweet Lucy, d.a.m.n him. And he smelled of pig s.h.i.t. But not permanently.
--Elizabethtown, Kentucky, 1959
VALERIE: A TRUE MEMOIR.
Here"s one I think you"ll like. In this one I come off looking like a schmuck, and don"t we all love stories in which the invincible hero, the all-knowing savant, the omnipotent smarta.s.s is condignly flummoxed? It"s about Valerie.
Begins around 1968: I knew this hanging-out, El-lay photographer named Phil. He wasn"t the world"s most terrific human being (in point of fact, he was pretty much what you"d call your garden-variety creep), but he somehow or other wormed his way into my life and my home--I believe wormed is the right word--and occasionally used my residence as the background locale for sets of photos of young ladies in the nude. Phil would show up at my house in the middle of my workday, all festooned with lights and reflectors and camera boxes... and a pretty girl, whom he would usher into one of the bathrooms and urge to divest herself of her clothing, vite vite!
Now I realize this may ring tinnily on the ears of those of you who spend the greater part of your off-hours lurching after your gonads, but having edited a men"s magazine in Chicago some years ago, the sight of a lady in deshabille does not cause sweat to break out on my palms. What I"m saying is that after two years of examining transparencies framed in a light-box, while wearing a loupe to up their magnification, all saidtransparencies of the world"s most physically-sensational women, all stark naked ... one develops a sense of proportion about such things. One begins looking for more exotic qualities--such as the ability on the part of the ladies to make you laugh or cry or feel as though you"ve learned something. (As an aside: nothing serves better to kill ingrained s.e.xism than an overdose of flesh in living color; very quickly one differentiates between images on film and living, breathing human beings. I commend it to all you gentlemen who still use the words broad and chick.) Consequently, it was not my habit to skulk around the house while Phil was snapping the ladies. When they"d take a break, I"d often sit with them and have a cup of coffee and we"d enter into a conversation, but apart from that I"d generally sit in my office and bang the typewriter. This may seem to have been the wrong thing to be banging, but, well, there you are. (Because of this att.i.tude, Phil drew the wholly erroneous conclusion that I was gay, and had occasion, subsequently, to pa.s.s along his lopsided observation, sometimes to young ladies with whom I had become intimate. What a nasty thing to say, particularly from a man who lures six-year-old boys into the bas.e.m.e.nts of churches and then defiles, kills and eats them, not necessarily in that order. Isn"t idle gossip a wonderful thing!) This use of my home and myself by The Demon Photographer went on for about a year, and I confess to permitting the inconvenience because on several of these shooting dates I did meet women with whom I struck up relationships. One such was Valerie.
(Of course I know her last name, you fool. I"m not giving it here out of deference to her family and what comes later in this saga.) The Demon Photographer--squat, ginger-haired, insipid--arrived one afternoon with her, and I was zonkedfrom the moment I saw her. She was absolutely lovely. A street gamine with a smile that could melt Jujubes, a warm and outgoing friendliness, a quick wit and lively intelligence, and a body that I would have called dynamite during my chauvinist period. We hit it off immediately, and when Phil slithered away at the end of the session, Valerie stayed on for a while.
It didn"t last all that long, to be frank. I can"t recall all the specifics of disenchantment, but attrition set in--it"s happened to all of you, so you know what I mean--and after a short while we parted: as friends.
Over the next few years, Valerie popped back into my life at something like six month intervals, and if I wasn"t involved with anyone we"d get it on for a few days, and then away she"d fly once more. There was always a kind of bittersweet tone to our liaisons: the scent of mimosa (and mimesis, had I but known), dreams half glimpsed, the memories of special touches. There was always the feeling that something lay unspoken between us, and a phrase from Sartre"s THE REPRIEVE persisted: "It was as if a great stone had fallen in the road to block my path." In a way, I believe I was in love with Valerie.
Time pa.s.sed. In mid-May of 1972 I was scheduled to speak at the Pasadena Writers" Week, and early the day of the appearance, I received a call from Valerie. I hadn"t heard from her in almost a year.
After the h.e.l.los and my unconfined pleasure at hearing her voice, I asked, "What are you doing tonight?"
"Going out with you," she said.
(Witness, gentle readers: the desiccated ego of The Author, suddenly pumped full of self-esteem and jubilation, merely refractions of adoration at the perceptivity and swellness of a bright, quick lady saying, "You"re fine." What a.s.ses we machis...o...b..ffoons can be.) "Listen, I"m slated to go out and speak in Pasadena to a gaggle of literary types. Why don"t you go with me and watch how I turn the crowd into a lynch mob."
"That"s where I am," she said. "In Pasadena. At my mother"s house. You can pick me up and I"ll stay with you for a couple of days."
"I"ll buy that dream," I said, and we set up ETA and coordinates.
That evening, in company with Edward Winslow Bryant, Jr. (dear friend, sometime house guest, outstandingly talented young writer and author of the Macmillan collections, AMONG THE DEAD, CINNABAR and co-author of PHOENIX WITHOUT ASHES), I drove out to Pasadena to pick up Valerie. When she answered the door she paused momentarily, framed in the opening, wearing a dress the shade of a bruised plum. I said: a body that should have been on permanent exhibition in the Smithsonian. Wearing nothing under it.
Oh, Cupid, you pustulant twerp! One of these days some nether G.o.d is going to jam that entire quiver of crossbow bolts right up your infantile a.s.s!
I went down like a bantamweight in an auto cha.s.sis crusher.
Carrying her overnight case, her hair dryer and curlers, her suitcase, her incredibly sweet-smelling clothes on wire hangers, I took her to the car, and was rewarded by the sight of Ed Bryant"s eyes as they turned into Frisbies. Not to mention the unsettling memories of the hugs and kisses and liftings off the floor and spinnings around I"d just received inside the house.
We did the speaking gig, and Valerie sat in the front row displaying a thoroughly unnerving expanse of leg and thigh. I may have fumfuh"d a bit.
Afterward, Valerie, Ed and I went to have a late dinner at the Pacific Dining Car. Sitting over beefsteak tomatoes and the thickest imported Roquefort dressing in the Known World,Valerie started whipping numbers on me like this: "I"ve always had a special affection for you. I should have moved in with you three years ago. Boy, was I a fool."
I mumbled things of little sense or import.
"Maybe I"ll move in with you now ... if you want me."
The next day, a girl from Illinois was to have flown in for an extended weekend. "Give me a minute to make a phone call," I said, and sprinted. I made the call. Bad vibes. Harsh language. Dead line.
"Yeah, why don"t you move in with me," I said, slipping back into the booth. Everyone smiled.
When she went to the loo, Ed--whose perceptions about people are keen and reserved--leaned over and said, "Hang onto this one. She"s sensational."
Opinion confirmed. By a sober outside observer.
So I took her home with me. The next day, Ed split for his parents" home in Wheatland, Wyoming, beaming at Harlan for his good luck and prize catch. That left, in the household, myself, Valerie, and Jim Sutherland: young author of STORMTRACK, occasional house guest and ex-student of your humble storyteller at the Clarion Writers" Workshop in SF & Fantasy.
Later that day, Valerie asked me if she could use the telephone to make a long distance call to San Francisco. I said of course. She had told me, by way of bringing me up to date on her peregrinations, that since last she"d seen me she had been working in San Francisco, mostly as a topless waitress at the Condor and other joints; that she had been rooming with another girl; that she had been seeing a guy pretty steadily, but he was into a heavy dope scene and she wanted to get away from it; and she loved me.
After the call, she came into my office in the house and said she was worried. The guy, whom she"d called to tell she was not coming back, hadgotten rank with her. The words b.i.t.c.h and c.u.n.t figured prominently in his diatribe.
She said she wanted to fly up to San Francisco that day, to clean out her goods before he could get over there and rip them off or bust them up. She also said, very nicely, that if she went up, she wanted to buy a VW minibus from a guy she knew. It would only cost $100 plus taking over the payments, and she"d need a car if she was going to come back here to live. "I want to work and pay my way," she said.
Or in the words of Bogart as Sam Spade, "You"re good, shweetheart, really good." Remember, friends, no matter how fast a gun you are, there"s always someone out there who"s faster. And how better to defuse the suspicions of a cynical writer than to establish individuality and a plug-in to the Protestant Work Ethic.
She asked me for the hundred bucks.
Unfortunately, I didn"t have the hundred at that moment, even though I said credit-card-wise I"d pay for her plane ticket to San Francisco.
She said that was okay, she"d work it out somehow. Then she went to pack an overnight bag, leaving all the rest of her goods behind, and promised she"d be driving back down the very next day.
Jim Sutherland offered to drive her to the airport--I was on a script deadline and had to stay at the typewriter--and she left with many kisses for me and deep looks into my nave eyes, telling me she was all warm and squishy inside at having finally found me, Her White Knight.
It wasn"t till Jim returned, young, innocent, a college student with very little bread, that I found out she had asked him for the hundred bucks, too. And he"d loaned it to her, with the promise of getting it back the next day.
The worm began to gnaw at my trust: Valerie, the Golden Girl, the Little Wonder of the Earth, having fun-danced her way into my life again, had now cut out for San Francisco with a hundred dollars of Jim"s money. Butshe"d said she could manage somehow without the hundred ...
If she"d needed it that badly, after I"d said I didn"t have it, why didn"t she ask me again, rather than come on with a kid she"d just met a day earlier? How the h.e.l.l had Jim come up with that much bread on the spur of the moment?
"We stopped off at my bank on the way to the airport," he said. I was very upset at that information.
"Listen, man," I said, "I"ve known her a few years and she"s not even in the running as the most responsible female I"ve ever known. I mean, she"s a sensational lady and all, but I don"t really know where she"s been the last few years."
Jim suddenly seemed disturbed. That hundred was about all he had to his name. He"d earned it a.s.sisting me in the teaching of a six-week writing workshop sponsored by Immaculate Heart College, along with Ed Bryant; and he"d worked his a.s.s off for it. "She said she"d borrow it from a friend in San Francisco and get it back to me tomorrow."
"You shouldn"t have done it. You should"ve called me first."
"Well, I figured she was your girl, and she was going to live here. And she said there wasn"t time to call if she was going to make the plane, so ..."
"You shouldn"t have done it."
I felt responsible. He"d been trusting, and kind, and I had a flash of uneasiness. The old fable about the Country Mouse and the City Rat scuttled through my mind. Valerie had been known to vanish suddenly. But ... not this time ... not after her warmth and protestations of love for me ... that was unthinkable. It would work out. But if it didn"t ...
"Listen, anything happens, I"ll make good on the hundred," I told him.
And we settled down to wait for Val"s return the next day.
Two days later, we reached a degree of concern that prompted me to call her mother. The story I got from her mother did not quite synch with what Valerie had told me. Valerie had said she"d told her mother she was moving in with me; the mother knew of no such thing. Valerie had told her she was working in Los Angeles; Valerie had told me she would try and get a job when she returned from San Francisco. The worm of worry burrowed deeper.
Using the phone number of Valerie"s alleged apartment in San Francisco, I got a disconnect. No word. No Valerie, no word of any kind. Had her ex-boy friend murdered her? Had she bought the VW bus and run off the road?
Students of the habit patterns of the lower forms of animal life will note that even the planarian flatworms learn lessons from unpleasant experiences. I was no stranger to ugly relationships with (a few, I a.s.sure you, a very few) amoral ladies. But h.o.m.o sapiens, less intelligent than the lowest flatworm, the merest paramecium, repeats its mistakes, again and again. Which explains Nixon. And also explains why I was so slow to realize what was happening with Valerie. It took a sub-thread of plot finally to shine the light through my porous skull. Like this: In company with Ray Bradbury, I was scheduled to make an appearance at the Artasia Arts Festival in Ventura, on May 13th. That was the Sat.u.r.day following Valerie"s leavetaking. Ray and I were riding up to Ventura together, and though I"m the kind of realist who considers cars transportation, hardly items of sensuality or beauty, and for that reason never wash my 1967 Camaro with the 148,000 miles on it, I felt a magic man of Bradbury"s stature should not be expected to arrive in a s.h.i.twagon. So I asked Jim to take my wallet with the credit cards, and the car, and go down to get the latter doused. I was still chained to the typewriter on adeadline, or I would have done it myself.
Jim took it to a car wash, brought it back, and returned my wallet to the niche in my office where it"s kept at all times. Aside from this one trip out of the house, the wallet (with all cards present) had not been out of my possession for a week.
The next day, Sat.u.r.day, Ray came over and I drove us up to Ventura. After checking in, we went to get something to eat. At the table, I opened my wallet to get something--the first time I"d opened the wallet in a week--and suddenly realized some of the gla.s.sine windows that held my credit cards were empty. After the initial panic, I grew calm and checked around the table, covered the route back to the car, inspected the map-cubby where I always keep the wallet, looked under the seats ... and instantly called Jim in Los Angeles to tell him I"d been ripped off.
Since the wallet had only been out of the house once in the last week, the cards had to have been boosted at the car wash. Do you see how long it takes the planarian Ellison to smell the stench of its own burning flesh?
I called Credit Card Sentinel, the outfit that cancels missing or stolen cards, advised them of the numbers of the cards (I always keep a record of this kind of minutiae handy), and asked them to send the telegrams that would get me off the hook immediately. There"s a law that says you can"t get stuck for over fifty bucks on any one card, but there were five cards missing--Carte Blanche, BankAmericard, American Express, Standard Chevron Oil and Hertz Rent-A-Car--and that totaled two hundred and fifty dollars right there; with Sentinel, the effective lead time for use of the cards is greatly reduced.
Having deduced a la Nero Wolfe that the thief had to have been the dude who swabbed out the interior of the car at the washatorium, I called the West L.A. police, detectivedivision, the area where the car wash was located, and put them on to it. I called the owners of the car wash and relayed the story, and tried to coordinate them with the detective who was going to investigate, advising them that they should check out the guys who"d worked interiors that previous Friday, noting especially any who hadn"t shown up for work.
My detective work was flawless ... aside from the sheer stupidity of my emotional blindness.
You all know what happened.
But I didn"t, until five days later, when I received a call from the BankAmericard Center in Pasadena asking me to verify a very large purchase of flowers sent to Mrs. Ellison in the Sacramento, California Medical Center. I a.s.sured them there was no Mrs. Ellison, I was single, and the only Mrs. Ellison was my mother, in Miami Beach.
The charge, of course, was on my stolen card.
Then the light blinded me.
The next day, I received a bill for forty-three dollars from the Superior Ambulance Service in Sacramento, a bill for having carted someone from a Holiday Inn to the Sacramento Medical Center on May 13th. The name of the patient was "Ellison Harlan" and the charge had been made to my home address.
In rapid succession came the BankAmericard reports of huge purchases of toilet articles, men"s clothing, women"s sportwear, hair dryers, and other goodies. Of course, I knew what had happened. At this point, pause with me, and join in a Handel chorus of O What a Schmuck is Thee!
Care to relive with me the last time you were f.u.c.ked-over? The feeling that your stomach is an elevator, and the bottom is coming up on you fast. That peculiar chill all over, approximated only by the morning after you"ve stayed up all night on No-Doz and hot, black coffee. The grainy feeling in the eyes, the uncontrollable clenching of the hands, the utter frustration, thewanting to board a plane to ... where? ... to there! ... to the place where something that can be hit exists. It"s one thing to be robbed, it"s quite another to be taken. Okay, no argument, it"s all ego and crippled masculine pride, but G.o.d it burns!
I pulled my s.h.i.t together and dropped back into my Sam Spade, private eye, mode. First I called the Sacramento Medical Center and checked if there was a Valerie B. checked in. There wasn"t. Then I asked for a Mrs. Ellison Harlan. There wasn"t. Then I asked for Mrs. Harlan Ellison.
There was.
Then I called the Security station of the Sacramento Sheriff"s Department, there at the Medical Center. I spoke to the officer in charge, laid the entire story on him, and asked him to coordinate with Officer Karalekis of the West L.A. Detective Division, as well as Dennis Tedder at the BankAmericard Center in Pasadena. I advised him--and subsequently advised the Administrative Secretary of the Center--that there was a fraud in progress, and that I would not be held responsible for any debts incurred by the imposter posing as "Ellison Harlan," "Harlan Ellison," or "Mrs. Harlan Ellison." Both of these worthies said they"d get on it at once.
Then I called Valerie. She was in the orthopedic section. They got her to the phone. Of course, she answered: the only one (as far as she knew) who had any idea she was there was the man who had purchased the flowers.
Is the backstory taking shape finally, friends? Yeah, it took me a while, too. And I"m dumber than you.
That was May 23rd, ten days after the ambulance had removed her from the Holiday Inn and she"d been admitted to the Center.
"h.e.l.lo?"
"Valerie?"
Pause. Hesitant. Computer running on overload.
"Yes."
"Harlan."
Silence.
"How"s San Francisco?"
"How did you find me here?"
"Doesn"t matter. I get spirit messages. All you need to know is I found you, and I"ll find you wherever you go."
"What do you want?"
"The cards, and the hundred bucks you conned off Jim Sutherland."
"I haven"t got it."
"Which?"
"Any of it."
"Your boy friend has the cards."
"He split on me. I don"t know where he is."
"Climb down off it, Princess. If I"m a patsy once, that makes me a philosopher. Twice and I"m a pervert."
"I"m hanging up. I"m sick."
"You"ll be sicker when the Sacramento Sheriff"s Department there in the hospital visits you in a few minutes."
No hangup. Silence.
"What do you want?"
"I said what I wanted. And I want it quick. Jim"s too poor to sustain a hundred buck ripoff. I can handle the rest, but I want it all returned now."