Libra - Don Delillo [167]
His room was eight by twelve. Bed, dresser, clothes closet. He spent hours there reading the Militant and the Worker. One night he took the 22 bus back downtown. He walked the streets, looking into bars. He walked all the way down South Akard and stood outside Gene’s Music Bar. Two men brushed past him, entering, and he followed them in. He stood near the door. The place was crowded. There were hard benches along the walls, rough-hewn benches. He could easily clear the room with an AR-15, which is what they use to guard the President, firing full auto. The idea was to stand here as long as he could without being noticed, just to watch, to see how queers work out their arrangements.
Somebody said, “It’s none of my business but . ”
He tried to pick out a person he might want to talk to, an understanding type. He drew some glances, then straight-out looks. It was either go to the bar and order something or walk out the door. He decided this was a visit just to see. He could come back with a surer sense of things, not feeling so watchful and odd. Hidell means don’t tell. He went out into the cool air, where he realized he was sweating. When he got to the rooming house he read every word of the week-old Militant. He also read between the lines. You can tell when they want you to do something on behalf of the struggle. They run a message buried in the text.
Three days after Rachel was born he went to a rally at Memorial Auditorium. The main speaker was Edwin A. Walker. Lee stood at the rear of the hall, watching people come in. The secret he carried with him made him feel untouchable. He was the one, the man who’d fired the shot that barely missed. It was a secret and a power. And he was standing right here, among them, among the Birchers and States Righters, wearing his . 38 under a zipper jacket.
Crowd of about a thousand. Walker stood up there in his tall Stetson and moaned and groaned about the United Nations. Clap clap. The UN was an active element in the worldwide communist conspiracy. Clap clap. Lee slipped into a seat about midway down the aisle. He felt the smallness and rancor of these people. They needed to knock someone to the ground and stomp him for fifteen minutes. Feel better now? Walker went on about something called the Real Control Apparatus. He spoke in a clumsy way that engaged nothing, compelled nothing. There was a Lone Star standard on one side of him, a Confederate flag on the other. Lee moved farther down the aisle, stooped over so he wouldn’t block anyone’s view, and found a seat near the stage. Walker was a tired man. His face was like some actor’s made up to show fatigue and aging. Lee saw a picture of a bright-red splotch on Walker’s shirtfront just below the heart.
Outside the hall people crowded around the general, trying to touch him, show him their faces. He moved slowly to a waiting car. Lee pushed through the crowd. People thrust their faces into Walker’s line of sight. They called to him and reached across bodies. Lee caught the general’s eye and smiled as if to say, Bet you don’t know who I am. Untouchable. He had his hand inside the jacket, gripping the stock of the .38, just to do it, to get this close and show how simple, how strangely easy it is to make your existence felt. He saw a picture of the crowd breaking apart, crying out as they scattered, No, no, no, and Walker on the pavement, hatless now, a front-page photo in the Morning News.
He took the bus to his rooming house. He sat on the bed, holding the revolver. Shooting Walker was a dead-end now. He had no means to get to Cuba. They probably wouldn’t take him even if he shot the man and managed to escape. History was closed to Edwin Walker. He put the gun in a dresser drawer. He went to the kitchen and drank some milk, standing in the dark.
What would he have to give Fidel before they let him live happily in little Cuba?