Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [27]
Jack did not feel any regret. After all, what else could you do with twenty dollars?
Four
Billy got the full force of his lonesomeness that night, back again at Ben Fenne’s, half-waiting for Denny and the others to come and get him for the party. There were only a few games going, nothing for Billy—at the keno table some college boys were playing for ten cents a game—and so he sat at the counter back of the keno table and near the pinball machines, nursing a cup of coffee, waiting, trying to pretend that he was not waiting; trying to pretend that he did not want the other boys for friends, only opponents. He felt like a fool.
It was odd how he had dreamed about it, when he had gone back to his room to stash most of his money and then lie down for a rest. He remembered parts of the dream vividly: he had given Denny twenty dollars to guarantee that he wait for him; how he had said to someone—it wasn’t really Denny, in fact, Billy thought it might have been a Negro kid—exactly the same words he told Denny, “Now you don’t have to sweat me out.” Only in the dream everything had been so mixed up. He had been playing pool, all right, but out in a wide green field, with white clouds above. The grass was like a golf green, and he had been lying down, shooting the pool balls. The sun had been hot on his back, and there were other kids around. They seemed to be all about ten years old, and he thought that maybe in the dream he had been a kid, too. He was the only one playing pool; the rest of them were on the edge of the field, picking flowers. Then it got confusing. One of the kids came up to Billy, holding a bunch of flowers up to his face—Billy could see him again, grinning through the flowers—and for some reason, Billy handed the kid some money and said, “Now you don’t have to sweat me out.”
He sipped at his coffee, and then glanced at the clock. It was twenty after seven. He shrugged to himself. Something was bothering him, and he was certain that it wasn’t just Denny. Something about the dream. Was it money he had handed the kid? He tried to focus the picture in his mind. There was something.... Then he got it. But it was even crazier. It wasn’t money, it was his right arm the kid took. Billy could now remember thinking with mild amazement that it hadn’t hurt to take off his right arm. Right is might, he thought; no, that’s bassackwards. And what had he said? “Now you don’t have to let me out.” His aunt at home had a couple of dream books which she used to consult regularly; maybe she could explain it to him. He tried to laugh, but the memory of the images still bothered him. The wide field, a place he had been before, as a kid. Probably a football field. Clouds, sure, you could always expect some clouds in Seattle; the funny part was the warmth on his back, which he could still almost feel. “Now you don’t have to let me out,” it seemed in his recollection, because all the other kids finished picking flowers and then ran down the street; but they weren’t going home. He was the one that had to go home, up over all those hills; they were all going downtown to sell the flowers or something.
“Your name’s Billy, isn’t it?”
Billy looked up into the white face, startled, and said, “That’s right.”
The man was obviously a plainclothes cop; big, beefy, hard mouth. But he seemed friendly enough. “Could we talk back here?” he asked Billy.
“Sure.” Now thoroughly frightened, Billy followed the cop to the back of the poolhall, where they sat down next to each other. Billy sat forward, letting his hands fall between his legs. He wanted to press his hands together, to keep them from trembling, but he didn’t. “What’s up?” he said. He smiled at the cop weakly.
“Got a guilty conscience?” the cop said.
“Don’t everybody?”
The cop didn’t like that. Billy noticed something strange about his field of vision; he could see the cop’s face clearly, but around it