First blood, p.3
First Blood, page 3
“If that’s all then, I’ll be a few minutes yet coming back.”
This kid was a nuisance, waiting for him. He wanted to get back to the station and phone her. She was gone three weeks now and she had promised to write at the most by today and here she had not. He did not care anymore about keeping his own promise to her not to call; he was going to phone anyway. Maybe she had thought it over and changed her mind.
But he doubted that.
He lit another cigarette and glanced to the side. There were neighbor women out on porches looking to see what he was up to. That was the end, he decided. He flipped the cigarette out the cruiser window, switched the ignition and drove down to the main road to find out where the hell the kid was.
Nowhere in sight.
Sure. He’s gone and left and that look was just to make me think he was coming back.
So he headed toward the station to phone, and three blocks later when all at once he saw the kid up on the left sidewalk, leaning against a wire fence over the stream, he slammed on his brakes so hard in surprise that the car following crashed into the rear end of the cruiser. The guy who had hit him was sitting shocked behind the wheel, his hand over his mouth. Teasle opened the cruiser door and stared at the guy a second before he walked over to where the kid was leaning against the wire fence.
“How did you get into town without me seeing you?”
“Magic.”
“Get in the car.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You think a little more.”
There were cars lined up behind the car that had struck the cruiser. The driver was now standing in the middle of the road, peering at the smashed taillight, shaking his head. Teasle’s open door angled into the opposite lane, slowing traffic. Drivers blared their horns; customers and clerks came sticking their heads out of shops across the street.
“You listen,” Teasle said. “I’m going to clear that mess of traffic. The time I’m through, you be in that cruiser.”
They eyed each other. The next thing, Teasle was over to the guy who had hit the cruiser. The guy was still shaking his head at the damage.
“Driver’s license, insurance card, ownership papers,” Teasle told him. “Please.” He went and shut the cruiser door.
“But I didn’t have a chance to stop.”
“You were following too close.”
“But you slammed on your brakes too fast.”
“It doesn’t matter. The law says the car in back is always wrong. You were following too close for an emergency.”
“But—”
“I’m not about to argue with you,” Teasle told him. “Please give me your driver’s license, insurance card, and ownership papers.” He looked over at the kid, and of course the kid was gone.
5
Rambo stayed out walking in the open to make it clear that he was not trying to hide. Teasle could give up the game at this point and leave him alone; if he did not, well then it was Teasle who wanted the trouble, not himself.
He walked along the left-hand sidewalk, looking down at the stream wide and fast in the sun. Across the stream was the bright yellow, freshly sandblasted wall of a building with balconies over the water and a sign high on top: MADISON HISTORIC HOTEL. Rambo tried to figure what was historic about a building that looked as if it had just been put up last year.
In the center of town, he turned left onto a big orange bridge, sliding a hand along the smooth warm paint on the metal rail until he was half across. He stopped to peer down at the water. The afternoon was glaring hot, the water fast and cool looking. Next to him, welded to the rail, was a machine with a glass top full of gumballs. He took a penny from his jeans and reached to put it in the slot and held it back in time. He had been wrong. The machine was not full of gumballs. It was full of grainy balls of fish food. There was a small metal plate stamped onto the machine. FEED THE FISH, it read. 10 CENTS. PROCEEDS BENEFIT BASALT COUNTY YOUTH CORPS. BUSY YOUTH MAKE HAPPY YOUTH.
Sure they do, Rambo thought. And the early bird gets the shaft. He peered down at the water again. It was not long before he heard somebody walk up behind him. He did not bother to see who it was.
“Get in the car.”
Rambo concentrated on the water. “Will you look at all the fish down there,” he said. “Must be a couple of thousand. What’s the name of that big gold one? It can’t be a real gold fish. Not that big.”
“Palomino trout,” he heard behind him. “Get in the car.”
Rambo peered further down at the water. “Must be a new strain. I never heard of it.”
“Hey, boy, I’m talking to you. Look at me.”
But Rambo did not. “I used to go fishing quite a bit,” he said, peering down. “When I was young. But now most streams are fished out or polluted. Does the town stock this one? Is that why there’s so many fish down there?”
That was why all right. The town had stocked the stream for as long as Teasle could remember. His father often used to bring him down and watch the workmen from the state fish hatchery stock it. The workmen would carry pails from a truck down the slope to the stream, set them in the water, and ease the pails over to let the fish slide out, the length of a man’s hand and sleek and sometimes rainbow colored.
“Jesus, look at me!” Teasle said.
Rambo felt a hand grab on his sleeve. He tugged loose. “Hands off,” he said, peering down at the water. Then he felt the hand grabbing at him again and this time he swung around. “I’m telling you!” he said. “Hands off!”
Teasle shrugged. “All right, play it tough if you want. That doesn’t bother me none.” He unhooked the handcuffs from his gun belt. “Let’s have your wrists.”
Rambo kept them at his sides. “I mean it. Let me be.”
Teasle laughed. “You mean it?” he said and laughed. “You mean it? You don’t seem to understand I mean it too. Sooner or later you’re getting in that cruiser. Only question is, how much force I have to use before you do it.” He rested his left hand on his pistol and smiled. “It’s such a little thing, getting in the cruiser is. What do you say we don’t lose our perspective?”
People walking by looked curious at them.
“You would draw that thing,” Rambo said, watching Teasle’s hand on the pistol. “At first I thought you were different. But now I see I’ve met crazy ones like you before.”
“Then you’re one up on me,” Teasle said. “Because I’ve never met anything quite like you before.” He stopped smiling and closed his big hand around the grip of his gun. “Move.”
And that was it, Rambo decided. One of them was going to have to back down, or else Teasle was going to get hurt. Bad.
He watched Teasle’s hand on the holstered pistol, and he thought, You bloody stupid cop, before you pull that gun, I could snap off both your arms and legs at the joints. I could smash your Adam’s apple to sauce and heave you over the rail. Then the fish would really have something to feed on.
But not for this, he suddenly told himself, not for this. Just thinking about what he could do to Teasle, he managed to satisfy his anger and control himself. It was a control he had not been capable of before, and thinking about his control made him feel better too. Six months ago when he finished convalescing in the hospital, he had been unable to keep hold of himself. In a bar in Philadelphia some guy had kept pushing ahead of him to see the go-go girl take off her pants, and he had broken the guy’s nose for him. A month later, in Pittsburgh, he had slit the throat of a black kid who pulled a knife on him when he was sleeping one night by a lake in a park. The kid had brought a friend who tried to run, and Rambo had hunted him all through the park until he finally caught him trying to start his convertible.
No, not for this, he told himself. You’re all right now.
It was his turn to smile. “O.K., let’s have another ride,” he said to Teasle. “But I don’t know what the point is. I’m only going to walk back into town again.”
6
The police station was in an old schoolhouse. And red yet, Rambo thought as Teasle drove into the parking lot at the side. He almost asked Teasle if painting the schoolhouse red was somebody’s idea of a joke, but he knew that none of this was a joke, and he wondered if he should try talking himself out of it all.
You don’t even like this place. It doesn’t even interest you. If Teasle hadn’t picked you up, you would have gone straight through on your own.
That doesn’t make a difference.
The cement steps leading up to the front door of the station looked new to him, the shiny aluminum door was certainly new, and inside there was a bright white room that took up the width of the building and half the length and smelled of turpentine. The room was checkered with desks, only two of which had anybody at them, a policeman typing, and another policeman talking into the two-way radio that was along the right back wall. They both stopped when they saw him, and he waited for it to come.
“Now that’s a sorry sight,” the man by the typewriter said.
It never failed to come. “Sure,” Rambo told him. “And now you’re supposed to say, What am I, a girl or a boy. And after that you’re supposed to say, If I’m too poor to get a bath and a haircut, you’ll take up a collection for me.”
“It’s not his looks I mind,” Teasle said. “It’s his mouth. Shingleton, have you anything new I ought to know about?” he asked the man by the radio.
The man sat tall and solid. He had an almost perfectly rectangular face, neat sideburns down to slightly below his ears.
“Stolen car,” he said.
“Who’s handling it?”
“Ward.”
“That’ll be fine,” Teasle said and turned to Rambo. “Come on then. Let’s get this over.”
They went across the room and down a corridor to the rear of the building. Footsteps and voices were coming out open doors on both sides, office workers in most of the rooms, policemen in the rest. The corridor was glossy white, and the turpentine smelled worse, and down at the end there was a scaffold under a dirty green part of the ceiling that had been left unpainted. Rambo read the sign that was taped to the scaffold: OUT OF WHITE PAINT BUT WE GOT MORE COMING IN TOMORROW AND WE GOT THE BLUE PAINT YOU WANT TO COVER THE RED OUTSIDE.
Then Teasle opened the door into an office at the very end of the hall, and Rambo held back a moment.
Are you absolutely sure you want to go through with this? he asked himself. It’s still not too late to try and talk your way out.
Out of what? I haven’t done anything wrong.
“Well, come on, get in there,” Teasle said. “This is what you’ve been working for.”
It had been a mistake not to go in there right away. Holding back at the door looked like he was afraid, and he did not want that. But now if he went inside after Teasle had ordered him, it would look like he was obeying, and he did not want that either. He went in before Teasle had another chance to order him.
The office ceiling came down close to his head, and he felt so closed in that he wanted to stoop, but he did not allow himself. The floor had a rug that was green and worn, like grass that had been trimmed too close to the earth. On the left behind a desk there was a case of handguns. He centered on a .44 Magnum and remembered it from Special Forces training camp: the most powerful handgun made, able to shoot through four inches of wood or bring down an elephant, but with a kick so great that he himself had always disliked using it.
“Sit down on the bench, boy,” Teasle said. “Let’s have your name.”
“Just call me boy,” Rambo said. The bench was along the right wall. He leaned his sleeping bag against it and sat down extremely straight and rigid.
“It’s none of it funny anymore, kid. Let’s have your name.”
“I’m known as kid too. You can call me that too if you want.”
“You’re right I will,” Teasle said. “I’m at the point where I’m ready to call you any damn thing I feel like.”
7
The kid was more damn nuisance than he could tolerate. All he wanted was to have him out of the office so he could phone. It was four-thirty now, and figuring the time shift, it was, what, three-thirty, two-thirty, one-thirty in California. Maybe she would not be in at her sister’s now. Maybe she was out having lunch with somebody. Who, he wondered. Where. That was why he was spending so much time with the kid—because he was impatient to call. You did not let your troubles interfere with your job. You kept your life at home where it belonged. If your problems made you start to rush through something, then you forced yourself to slow and do it extra well.
In this case, maybe the rule was paying off. The kid did not want to give his name, and the only reason people did not give a name was that they had something to hide and were afraid of being checked out in the fugitive files. Maybe this was more than just a kid who would not listen. Well, he would take it slow and find out. He sat on the corner of his desk, opposite the kid on the bench, and calmly lit a cigarette. “Would you like a smoke?” he asked the kid.
“I don’t smoke.”
Teasle nodded and leisurely drew on the cigarette. “How about we try this again. What’s your name?”
“None of your business.”
Dear God, Teasle thought. In spite of himself he pushed away from the desk and took a few steps toward the kid. Slowly though, he told himself. Make it calm. “You didn’t say that. I can’t believe I actually heard that.”
“You heard me all right. My name is my business. You haven’t given me a reason to make it yours.”
“I’m the Chief of Police you’re talking to.”
“That’s not a good enough reason.”
“It’s the best damn reason in the world,” he said, then waited for the heat to drain from his face. Quietly, “Let me have your wallet.”
“I don’t carry one.”
“Let me have your I.D. cards.”
“I don’t carry them either.”
“No driver’s license, no social security card, no draft card, no birth certificate, no—”
“That’s right,” the kid cut him off.
“Don’t pull that with me. Get out your I.D. cards.”
Now the kid was not even bothering to look at him. He was turned toward the gun case, pointing at the medal above the line of shooting trophies. “The Distinguished Service Medal. Really gave them hell in Korea, did you?”
"O.K.," Teasle said. "On your feet." It was the second highest combat medal he could get. Only the Medal of Honor ranked above it. To Marine Corps Master Sergeant Wilfred Logan Teasle. For conspicuous and valiant leadership in the face of overwhelming enemy fire, his citation read. The Chosin Reservoir Campaign. December 6, 1950. That was when he was twenty, and he was not about to let any kid who didn’t look much older mock it.
“Get on your feet. I’m sick of telling you everything twice. Get on your feet and pull out your pockets.”
The kid shrugged and took his time standing. He went from one pocket of his jeans to the other, pulling them out, and there was nothing.
“You didn’t pull out the pockets in your jacket,” Teasle said.
“By God, you’re right.” When he pulled them, he came out with two dollars and twenty-three cents plus a book of matches.
“Why the matches?” Teasle said. “You told me you don’t smoke.”
“I need to start fires to cook on.”
“But you don’t have any job or money. Where do you get the food to cook?”
“What do you expect me to say? That I steal it?”
Teasle looked at the kid’s sleeping bag against the side of the bench, guessing that’s where the I.D. cards were. He untied it and threw it out unrolled on the floor. There was a clean shirt and a toothbrush. When he started feeling through the shirt, the kid said, “Hey, I spent a lot of time ironing that shirt. Be careful not to wrinkle it.” And Teasle was suddenly very tired of him.
He pressed the intercom on his desk. “Shingleton, you had a look at this kid when he came through. I want you to radio his description to the state police. Say I’d like him identified the quickest they can. While you’re at it, check if he matches any description we have in the files. He has no job and no money, but he sure looks well fed. I want to know why.”
“So you’re determined to push this thing,” the kid said.
“That’s wrong. I’m not the one who’s pushing.”
8
The Justice of the Peace had an air conditioner. It hummed a bit and rattled every so often and made the office so cold that Rambo had to shiver. The man behind the desk was bundled in an oversized blue sweater. His name was Dobzyn, the sign on the door said. He was chewing tobacco, and as soon as he took a look at Rambo coming in, he stopped chewing.
“Well, I’ll be,” he said and rolled his swivel chair squeaking back from the desk. “When you phoned, Will, you should have told me that the circus was in town.”
Always it came, some remark. Always. This whole business was getting out of hand, and he knew that he had better give in soon, that they could make a lot of trouble for him if he did not. But here the crap was coming his way again, they would not let up, and Jesus, he was just not going to take it.
“Listen, son,” Dobzyn was saying. “I really have to ask you a question.” His face was very round. When he spoke, he slipped his chewing tobacco against one cheek, and that side of his face bulged out. “I see kids on the TV demonstrating and rioting and all, and—”
“I’m no demonstrator.”
“What I have to know, doesn’t that hair get itchy down the back of your neck?”
Always they asked the same. “It did at first.”
Dobzyn scratched his eyebrow and thought about that answer. “Yeah, I suppose you can get used to just about anything if you put your mind to it. But what about the beard? Doesn’t that get itchy in this heat?”
“Sometimes.”
“Then what possessed you to let it grow?”
“I have a rash on my face and I’m not supposed to shave.”
