Chapter 78

 And the men would laugh. And Teddy would ripple away in his buoyant shoes with a sixty-cent tip and a weak smile drawn like a curtain over a mouthful of hate, to the far end of the bar, where he would stand sulking and hurt and furious, waiting for the healing light of his neons to give him relief. Here was his peace and his sanctuary, the only comfort in his solitary and friendless world. And lately, while his business was better than ever, and although his belief in his superiority in a world of terrified nincompoops was beyond doubt, he had needed an increasing amount of this hissing comfort: there were nights, after standing, head bowed and humble before the drunken spray of one of his funnyman patrons, when he found himself forced to convalesce for half an hour or more at this end of the bar, smiling, with one hand lightly on the bartop, like something needing the protection of a shell—for half an hour before the throbbing lights could massage away the outrage. During these periods he would seem quite unchanged, greeting each new arrival with his usual formal manner, fiddling with the long key-chain that looped across the round bulge of his apron, calling out the hour when asked ...and even if any of the customers had chanced to observe him closely, as he stood there with different hues of red and orange and magenta fluttering across his blank face— “Teddy, goddam you little octopus, could you come down here outa your cave and pour some of that clear-looking stuff out of that Gilbey’s gin bottle into this glass of mine? There’s a good boy . . .”—even so, they would have attributed the color to nothing more than the pulsing neons. But this night, in spite of an uncommon collection of bruising insults, Teddy spent very little time recuperating under the light of his neons. In the first place he was too busy: the disheartening news of the Stamper lumber-mill crew’s move up to the woods had kept him pumping liquor almost as fast as had the Stamper-Newton fight a week before; and this time he hadn’t called in the waitress from the Sea Breeze to lend him a hand. So he was far too busy scurrying after orders to afford himself the luxury of pouting under his lamps whenever one of the morons made some remark. In the first place. And, in the second, didn’t really need the balm of his lights as much as usual: not only was he especially soothed by the muted pitch of worry that rose from each of the tables blending with the rising smoke—“Teddy, goddammit, I tell ya ...somethin’ is haywire here. . . .” “Yes sir, Mr. Evenwrite.” “Somethin’ terrible wrong . . .”—rose blending to hang congealed and blue all over the room...but he was already in a delicious state of thrilled anticipation owing to a phone call he had received that afternoon from Jonathan Draeger: after telling him that he was calling long distance from Eugene and asking that he do him a favor—“I’ll be there this evening; would you please see if you can keep Floyd Evenwrite indoors and out of trouble until I arrive?”—Draeger had put Teddy in a heart-thumping swirl by adding, “We’ll show these muscleheads just what a little thoughtful patience can accomplish, won’t we, Ted?” All the rest of that afternoon and evening that tiny intimacy had glowed in Teddy’s chest. We, Draeger had said; we! Such a word, coming from such a man, could outshine all the neons in Oregon! Evenwrite had come in after supper, a little before seven, with his face redder than usual and his breath laced with the sweet smell of brandy. “Yeah, somethin’ wrong . . .” he announced again, knotting his features terribly. “What’s that, Mr. Evenwrite?” “Haw?” Evenwrite looked up, blinking stupidly. “You said something about something being wrong . . .” “Hell yes, somethin’ wrong. With this drink, I was talkin’ about! What’d you think I was talkin’ about?” In response Teddy lowered his lashes and gazed at the wienie-fingered, rusty-knuckled paw resting on the richly grained surface of the bar. Beside this monstrosity his own curled hand— eternally bluish from so many hours in the wash-water cleaning glasses, the flesh appearing to approach transparency the way meat does after pickling—looked even bluer and smaller than usual. He waited timidly, face bent in an attitude of abject and persevering embarrassment. “What about it, sir? the drink ...?” “Well, right this minute it’s empty is what about it. You could fill it back up for a start. That’d help some.” Teddy brought out a bottle and refilled the glass; Evenwrite picked it up and started to walk back to his table. “Oh. That will be fifty cents, Mr. Evenwrite.” “Fifty cents! You mean to tell me you’re askin’ money for this stuff? Teddy, I wasn’t planning to drink it, I was goin’ into the head and give myself a shampoo with it.” Teddy looked back down. The men at Evenwrite’s table laughed, always welcoming the comic interlude Teddy brought to their serious, grim, down-to-business discussions. Then Evenwrite guffawed himself and slapped a four-bit piece down on the bartop as though squashing a bug. Teddy picked it up gently and carried it to the cash register, relishing an exquisite and curious new fear just garnered from the emotional clutter of Evenwrite’s face, This is one thing, Mr. Draeger, that sets you apart from me and the muscleheads both: carefully rolling the new specimen over and over with a connoisseur’s studied appreciation. . . . I can just escape fear; you can create it. At all the tables grouped about the table where Evenwrite was holding forth, the conversation followed essentially the same lines, starting with they’d never thought it of Hank Stamper, double-crossing his neighbors like he’s done—“Old Henry,  maybe, but Hank’s always been a pretty good ol’ boy himself ”— on to “What the devil? You can’t expect to get a peach offn a thorn-apple bush, can you? Just because Hank ain’t all the time juiced out tellin’ about how you got to have a armor-plated hide to make a go of this business, like the old man all the time is, don’t mean he ain’t blood of blood and flesh of flesh.” And eventually on to “There’s no two ways about it that I can see: Hank Stamper’s indicated where he stands and he’s just got to be showed the error of his ways.” Evenwrite led the charge in this last maneuver. “And I for one say,” he shouted, jumping to his feet, momentarily enlisting the room’s attention with eyes glazed and red as hard candy and a nose plugged near to bursting, “say that a bunj of us go out there and put Mister Hank Stamper straighd!” He wiped his nose on his sleeve and added, “Right by god gnow!” There was a brief flurry of agreement, “Yeah, straight . . . right now . . .” but Teddy knew the bar was too comfortably warm and bright and the night outside too miserably cold and wet for this flurry to flare into action. It would take a lot more talk and drink before Evenwrite could lead any sort of mob out into the rain. Still, the ways things were going, he did wish— The door opened and, like an answer to Teddy’s unfinished wish, Draeger entered. Hardly anyone but Teddy noticed, the others devoting attention to Evenwrite’s bloodshot eyes and plugnosed speech. Draeger removed his overcoat and hat and hung them by the door, then seated himself at a small empty table close to the oil heater. He held up a finger and said, “One,” silently to Teddy, then turned to watch Evenwrite’s neck heave and swell in his plea for action. “We been beatin’ too long around the bush with them, tryna be legal, and fair . . . well, I ask you, they been fair with us? They treated us ride?” There was more yelling and some scraping of chairs. But Teddy, carrying whisky and water, peeked from beneath his lashes at Draeger’s pleasant, understanding face and saw that Draeger was no more worried about being trampled in a riot than he was. If anybody here is going to whip up a riot, it is not going to be Floyd Evenwrite. He placed the glasses on the table; Draeger tasted the liquor and smiled up at Teddy. “My old man,” Evenwrite was shouting, “always said that if the workingman wants something in this world then the workingman has to get it.. . . Ride? Goddab ride...” Draeger swallowed the rest of his drink, then sat, studying the facets of colored light in the shot glass while Evenwrite banged about the tables, cursing and taunting the men, red-faced with diluted liquor and imagined power. “So whadya say? Who says we get with it? Huh? Huh?” Most of them said yeah, get with it, but none of them moved. “Whadya say! Whadya say! Ride on out there and we’ll—” He blinked, concentrating fiercely, damn it all, he had for a shake there had his finger on it. “And we will just the whole bunch of us we’ll—” “Swim across the river like a pack of beavers?” The heads turned from Evenwrite to Draeger. “Stand on the bank and throw rocks? Floyd, you sound like you caught a cold somewhere.” Evenwrite refused to turn to the voice. He wanted to ignore it now, just as he had been expecting it all evening. He snatched up his empty glass and glared at it as though the calm, deep words were issuing from its crystal mouth. “Use your head, Floyd,” Draeger continued. “You can’t stir up these people into running out to that house like a bunch of fools out of a cowboy movie, even if we could find a legal way, because in the first place—” “Legal again!” Evenwrite shouted at the glass. “What the shit’s legal got to do?” “—because,” Draeger went on, “in the first place we couldn’t get across the river as a group. Unless you think Mr. Stamper would ferry us across two or three at a time. Now, I don’t really know the man”—he smiled about at the room—“but from all I’ve heard I don’t think I’d care to go across as an emissary and request that he bring enough of us across to make up a mob. Of course, Floyd may be so inclined. I hear he’s more skilled at this sort of thing than I am.”