Ungoodness

Chapter 17 of Carnival

Carnival

Chapter 17

Ungoodness

Kevin gingerly lifted the cup to his lips. His hands were trembling so hard the coffee appeared to be violently boiling. Deep brown streaks laced the rose patterns on the porcelain. He sucked the hot coffee down as if it were cool, clear water.

“I only wish you’d relax,” he said for the umpteenth time. Janet blew into her own cup and glared.

They were in a nearly deserted diner on Clayton.

Kevin had been on tenterhooks for the past ten minutes--Janet’s aura was scaring the hell out of him.

It was her second cup, Kevin’s third. He didn’t really care for coffee all that much, especially black and unsweetened, but little by little the brew was calming him.

“You feel okay now?” he asked after a while.

“Do you have to keep asking me that? Do you have to keep telling me to relax? Can you for five f*****g minutes mind your own f*****g business?”

Kevin groaned. “Sorry.” He could feel another tantrum coming. “What I mean is, I was only being conversational, Janet. I’m glad you’re feeling better. Really I am. And I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Because maybe it never occurred to you that other people, real people, might have feelings and thoughts of their own. How would you like it if every time you tried to think for five crummy minutes some creep stuck in his big fat face--‘How are you feeling, dear’?” she spat. “--‘Is everything all right now?’ Calm down, calm down, calm down!” She stood up.

“You’re right, of course,” Kevin gabbled. “Me, I’ll shut up for real, this very minute. You won’t even know I’m here, I promise. I mean, you can just ignore me if I start to get on your nerves, but I won’t, ’cause I’m gonna keep a lid on it beginning right now; you’ll see, you’ll see. And really I’m just like so super sor--”

“I’m sick of it!” she shrieked, and smashed her cup on the table. “And I’m sick of you!” She stormed past him and out the door.

“I promise!” Kevin called. “Not another word, I mean it!” He pushed himself to his feet and made after her. The waitress jumped in front of him, her mouth working, pointing at the table. Kevin pulled a five from his wallet and stuffed it in her hand. He raced outside, catching hold of Janet’s arm even as she was straddling her bicycle. “I’ll shut up!” he wailed. “I won’t say anything else. Ever again. You can count on me because--” She launched herself on him furiously, swinging, kicking, biting. The boy wrestled her arms behind her back, wanting desperately to calm her, trying to be gentle.

“Janet, I’m sorry, please…wait, just let me explain.”

She spat in his face, stamped on a foot, kneed him right in the balls. “Get your hands off me, you b*****d! Get your f*****g hands off me!”

“Please, Janet,” he managed. “I’m really sorry. I mean really. I promise I won’t--”

“TAKE YOUR F*****G HANDS OFF ME!”

Kevin released her and dropped to his knees in slow motion, fighting for air.

The girl immediately pushed off and tore down Page Street, muttering the vilest obscenities she could muster. Kevin watched blearily for half a minute, at last heaving himself on his bike. He chased her down Page all the way to Pierce, where a mob of screaming freaks forced her to stop. Kevin caught up just in time to pull her clear of a sudden rush of flailing bodies. Janet, blown away by the crowd’s emotional tempest, for the moment forgot her own crazy anger in the protective enclosure of Kevin’s strong arms. A dozen longhairs broke from the mob with expressions of outrage. Others were flinging themselves into the thick of it.

Just as Kevin was melting in the embrace there came an explosive surge. Behind that blew a harsh scream, the squeal of rubber on asphalt, and the sound of a store’s front window being smashed. A girl stumbled from the thrashing bodies with her fists clenched. She whirled and screamed at the top of her lungs, “You f*****g pigs! You f*****g pigs!” and burst into tears.

A young man leaped out of the melee and pulled an empty beer bottle from a trash container. He hurled it without aim into the mass of waving arms.

Kevin and Janet goggled one another, and just like that one flank of the crowd burst on them like a wave. Kevin shoved Janet out of the way. He plunged back in to retrieve their bicycles.

“Wow!” He ducked his head to avoid flying debris. “What’s happening?”

Janet pointed at an open space near the crowd’s hub, where adrenaline-crazed policemen in riot gear, just like the rabid animals Eddie once described, were swinging their riot sticks indiscriminately. Kevin saw a Chinese student, bespectacled, confused, come staggering into the storm. Immediately a cop grabbed this passive young man by his shirt’s collar and cracked him across the forehead with his trusty stick. The student’s books and papers went flying, the papers all showering around like snowflakes. Thrilled camera buffs were popping up, jacks out of boxes, recording the event, crouching and whirling to catch some more.

Litter baskets were blazing all along the sidewalks. Kevin saw a middle-aged beatnik-type, morphing out of the smoke, leap atop a battered automobile and heave a cinder block at a busy policeman. The cop spun and plunged into the shrieking crowd in pursuit. In a moment he reappeared with blood trickling down his face, manhandling a different individual than the offender. This man was windmilling his arms in desperate retaliatory punches, but the policeman had him by the shirttail, pulling him face down and forward. Another cop jumped in and tackled the helpless captive. The crowd roared hatefully as the policemen beat their prisoner senseless. He was dragged away by the collar.

There were whistles, shouts, repeated bullhorn commands. At least a dozen more policemen breached the mob’s center.

Kevin and Janet didn’t wait to catch the score. They zigzagged the streets, dazed and confused. Every intersection was a pocket of unrest.

“Man!” Kevin gasped. “Was that ever hairy!”

Eventually their luck turned. They began choosing streets that were calmer and calmer still. On Fulton it was nice and peaceful. They dismounted and sat trembling together on the curb, like waifs.

“Listen,” Kevin panted, “I think we should head for the park. I don’t know what everybody’s all uptight about, but my friend Eddie once told me it’s always totally together at the park, no matter what.”

Janet draped an arm over his knee and rested her head on his shoulder. “You were so brave. Just like Clint Eastwood.”

“John Wayne, at least!”

“Okay, okay. John Wayne, then. Kevin, I think it’s my turn to apologize. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so rude to you. And back there, when you were protecting me, I started feeling really bad about how I’ve acted lately. I know I’ve been a b***h, but please don’t ask me to explain.” She smiled impishly. “It’s a chick thing. I guess when you start to really care for somebody you overreact, and you end up hurting that somebody when you don’t mean to. Thanks for putting up with me.” She gave him a maidenly kiss on the cheek.

For no reason at all they both laughed. The spontaneity struck them as funny and they laughed again, mounted their bicycles and began to idly roll along, not realizing they were, by choosing their turns indiscriminately, gradually describing a rough square and so, bit by bit, heading right back to the hot spot. But Kevin couldn’t take his eyes off her.

He almost spilled. Turning his head, he saw he’d collided with a crazy-looking long-haired man, a man who reminded him strangely of a speed freak he’d met at Perky’s, millennia ago. The man looked at him angrily.

“Gosh,” Kevin said. “I’m sorry.”

The man grimaced. “Do you know we’ve got pigs in the White House? They’re drafting our brothers to go shoot poor Vietnamese mothers and children right now! For what? Can you tell me that?”

Kevin shook his head.

“To stuff their fat wallets, that’s why! To stop the Movement, that’s why! To stamp out peace and love; all we’ve worked for, slaved for, busted our sweating butts for! Would you like to see your kids sent overseas to get shot up? Huh? Is that what you want?”

Kevin recoiled, not comprehending or caring. He looked around wildly. Janet was unseen in the crowd. A gargling sound rose in his throat. He pushed off frantically.

The man grabbed him by the arm. “Huh?” he shrieked. “Do you wanna see your f*****g kids get shot to pieces?”

Kevin jerked his arm away. “I don’t have any kids,” he gasped. “For Pete’s sake, I’m only sixteen!”

“Sixteen! Sixteen! Then you’ll be seventeen, before you know it eighteen, and the pigs’ll snatch you!”

Kevin broke away, the man scrambling after him, still grabbing. And as Kevin penetrated the crowd’s perimeter he could hear the anguished screams--

“Go ahead! Run! Run, coward! Run to mama’s skirts! Run and hide behind your Auntie Sam! You traitor, you fiend, you pervert, you f****t!” Then a haunted, bloodcurdling wail, issuing from a familial gap left unsuccored somewhere between infancy and puberty, “You lousy motherfucking Commie-loving murdering son of a b***h!”

Ahead a flash flood of faces turned to check out the murderer. Faces became elbows, became backs, became a whole army of legs and arms as Kevin plunged deeper and deeper. He plowed into people, vaguely registered their curses, but was deaf to their grievances.

She was gone; that was all he knew. A minute ago she’d belonged to him, and now she was his life’s most acute memory. He began screaming her name, his eyes afire. But his was only one of hundreds of voices now, and he was being shoved and jostled by a nearly impenetrable sea of humanity, all crying out their empty threats and demands, their voices mingling as one universal, youthful plea for guidance.

“Janet!” Kevin croaked. He was bounced from person to person, was rammed and jammed and caromed about. He’d instinctively kept his grip on his bike’s handlebars, and the continually hammering frame was badly bruising his legs.

Then he saw, like a beacon in the night, his deliverance. Not thirty feet away the long chestnut hair beckoned, waving with the heaving human sea. He swam hollering through the arms and heads. Suddenly afraid the current would sweep him off, Kevin lifted his bicycle as an offensive weapon and began smashing his way.

Faces looked at him in terror and pain, in disgust and surprise, but he just kept bashing and bashing until he was a few feet from his goal. But she was looking in another direction, was also being swept away.

“Janet!” he screamed, in the confusion not even sure he heard himself. Panicking, he made a frantic snarling lunge and grabbed a shoulder. The chestnut hair flashed across his eyes, and he was looking into the angry face of a young man with long chestnut hair and a fine, sweeping chestnut mustache.

“Hey man,” the guy demanded, “what the f**k’s your trip?” Instantly he was sucked away, and Kevin was again being pummeled by countless young people, people shoving in all directions.

The passion out of him, he numbly allowed himself to be elbowed along, driven like a bough into a maelstrom. Dozens of faces rushed by him strobe-wise; shouts and cries came as in a dream. The angry sea claimed him, engulfed him, made him a nondescript drop in a wave.

And all at once the sea parted.

Twenty feet away, in the partial shelter between two parked cars, Janet was leaning against a handsome, blond, athletic young man. Did she know him? Or were they strangers, finding each other in the whirling madness? There was no time to tell, no time. For his great brown arm was around her shoulders, and her eyes were shining in response to his amorous gaze, and now, and now she was looking up into his half-closed eyes as his handsome face came down and their open mouths met…

Lingered.

The fat boy stood there, gripping his bicycle, paralyzed. An excruciating pain began at the inner corners of his eyes and worked its way up his forehead, feeling like it was cracking his skull in two. Everything went black for a few seconds; the longest few seconds of his life. His jaw dropped to his chest. His eyes glazed over and his heart contracted. Then, in retarded time, the sea closed in and the bodies came crashing down. But he was rooted; he was fixed. He couldn’t be budged.

An hour passed, and still the fat boy stood there, paralyzed. Young people plowed into him again and again, bounced away, and gradually the sea shrank until there were only a few people moving by in the mob’s wake, and voices were quite far away.

And still the fat boy stood there, paralyzed.

Throughout the barrage he’d clung instinctively, tenaciously, to his bicycle--the only meaningful thing left. As a consequence there was hardly a square inch of flesh between the ankle and hip of his right side that hadn’t been deeply bruised. His vest and shirt were now tattered rags; the big felt hillbilly hat, still secured by its choking leather chin strap, was flattened and jammed down around his ears. One curious result of the battering was that the arms of his glasses had become so fouled in this strap that the glasses had not been dislodged; rather, the apparatus had become virtually implanted in his face, creating a raccoon-like visage of pallid cheeks and brow surrounding the broken red flesh about his eyes. Both lenses were veined with fine cracks from direct and indirect concussions. The bridge had cut his nose badly.

A hilly, littered street stretched before him, but he couldn’t see it. His mind would admit only one event:

A handsome young man was moving his head with extreme slowness. A sweetly pretty girl with chestnut hair was, also in slow motion, parting her red, red lips.

It took ages for the lips of each face to meet, and when they did the picture froze. A perfect snapshot. Adam and Eve. And, beneath the photograph, an inscription containing a word he’d once heard and not fully understood. His mind, unbeknownst, had filed the word for future application, for a time when unbearable pain would make precision vocabulary particularly useless. That word made perfect sense now. The inscription beneath the photograph read:

SO FICKLE

The boy kept repeating it to himself in his mind.

So fickle.

So false.

So fickle and false and fragile.

Somebody was speaking to him. Somebody was shaking him.

The photograph, fragile, shattered like glass, splintered and spiderwebbed and was replaced by a figure wearing a blue suit and blue cap.

“I said ‘can you hear me’?” a voice was saying, clearer now. “Jesus, son, what are you high on?”

“So fickle,” Kevin mumbled.

“What?”

The blue-suited figure had something bright on his chest which dazzled the boy.

“Here. Look up here at my eyes,” said the voice.

Kevin tilted back his head and stared at a similar bright light on the speaker’s cap.

“Where are you going, son?” asked the voice sympathetically.

Kevin dropped his head. “So false,” he said.

“Son, you’re going to have to move along. There’s an awful lot of angry kids roaming around, and you could get killed standing here. Can you ride?”

“Fickle, fickle, fickle.”

“Look, I want you to get on your bike and ride over to that café there. Can you do that? Get yourself a cup of coffee and something to eat. Do you have any money?”

Kevin felt rough paper being pushed into his hand and two gentle-but-firm hands turning him so that he and his bicycle faced east. Obediently he mounted, and soon found himself awkwardly moving forward. His body got into the easy rhythm of pedaling, and for a while he rode up and down the streets in a trance, unfeeling, wondering only how she could be so fickle and false, how love could be so fragile and finite and feeble and finally he coasted to a stop, exhausted, played out.

Along the sides of this street were endless chains of old and colorful shops. On the opposite side, one of the little shops had the word CAFÉ snarled on its front window in flaking red paint. Kevin, fulfilling some obligation he did not understand, stumbled over to it, dragging his ten-speed. He leaned the bicycle against the building’s side and, one at a time, removed his aching, swollen hands. In his right fist was a sweat-stained five dollar bill.

He pitched through the door. Chimes tinkled. He staggered into a counter stool and his body melted onto it.

An exceptionally ugly old woman was scowling in his face. A half-full glass of dark water was smacked down before him, and a greasy rag went through the motion of swabbing the hopelessly filthy counter with one sweep of a deformed hand.

“Well, if yuh jus’ come in here t’ gawk at me, yuh kin git yer a*s back out the door.”

“Huh?” Kevin said.

There was a bark of laughter from the shadows in the back of the café. Somebody said “S**t”, and spat.

“What’ll it be, guru?” said the exceptionally ugly old woman.

“Coffee,” Kevin muttered, “coffee.”

“Thet it?”

“Coffee and…and something to eat.”

The woman slapped the scummy rag on the counter and turned her stumpy body away. “Hank!” she bawled. “Coffee an’ a hamburger fer the daffydil.” She whirled and glared at him suspiciously. “I’m jus’ supposin’ yuh got money.”

“Money,” Kevin parroted, unclenching his fist. The tortured bill dropped to the counter and writhed briefly. He heard the woman curse, the ringing of a cash register, and the sound of a few coins being slapped down.

At length a rancid smell reached his nostrils, made his stomach turn. Time passed and his food and coffee went cold.

Little by little he became aware of voices across the room. One, that approaching and receding cackling voice, he dimly recognized as belonging to the exceptionally ugly old woman. The others were unfamiliar.

“If any of my kids turns out like that fat son of a b***h I’ll whip the s**t out of him.”

“Aw, leave ’im be, Ernie. Can’t yuh see he’s flyin’ high?”

“Say hey there, hippie! You meditatin’ on Flo’s hamburger? Whaddaya see?”

“Yeah, hippie. You’re supposed to eat it, not bless it.”

“Hyaw-haw.”

“Looks to me like he don’t appreciate Hank’s cooking none. Now I call that just plain bad manners. What do you boys think?”

“Now, Ernie. Don’t be startin’ no trouble. C’mon now.”

“No trouble, Flo. No trouble at all.”

It now occurred in a matter-of-fact way to Kevin’s crippled consciousness that at least a couple of the voices were approaching.

“Okay, loverboy. Just take your dope and your fat a*s out of here before I lose my temper--now, look: I’m not playing around. I said I’m not playing around! MOVE!”

“Oh, Ernie, don’t hurt him overmuch.”

Heavy footsteps. “Now what’s going on?”

“Hank, this groover’s giving us trouble.”

“What kinda trouble?”

“Look at him. All doped up. Insulted your cooking. Won’t leave after we asked him polite.”

“Yeah? Listen, kid. You been served, nobody asked you in here. Go on, beat it. Damn you! Go on!”

“Hank, yuh think we should call a cop?”

“Hell no.” Two pairs of hands now heaved Kevin off his stool. He heard the door chimes ring a merry ta-ta, a burst of laughter, and his face hit the street. The chimes rang again, followed by the slamming of a door.

Kevin lay stunned for the longest while. Somehow he picked himself up. He wasn’t aware of any real pain, nor of any sense of humiliation. And he really wasn’t surprised to find that his sleek ten-speed Peugeot, his pride and joy, had been stolen--that the last of his treasures was history. Now the world had just about picked Kevin clean.

Yet the web was still becoming.