Incident at Port Royal

It was early July and already humid, with a three-quarter moon. They had gone out in Dutch's Plymouth convertible with the top down and ended up at Port Royal, a little roadhouse across the New York border popular with the young Jersey crowd who could drink there before they turned twenty-one. They had a pitcher of beer on the table and the one named Murray was doing shots on the side.

Charlie was sipping his beer slowly and quietly, slouched in his chair with his legs crossed, looking down the long smoky room at two girls seated over by the wall. The jukebox played "Old Cape Cod." But Dutch knew Charlie was thinking of something else.

"They're just lousy rumors, Charlie," Dutch said. "Don't listen to them." Even though Dutch, like everyone, was starting to believe the rumors now.

"I wouldn't let them get to me," Murray said. "I would be cool."

"I guess they can say whatever they want," Charlie said.

"Your old man was OK," Dutch said, his voice strangely light for someone so big. "Don't listen to them."

"Sure," Charlie said. "And I'm OK, my mom's OK, the whole goddamn world's OK."

"Take it easy," Dutch said. He put his large hand on Charlie's shoulder, but Charlie shrugged it off.

"It's OK for you, Dutch, you've got your football scholarship," Charlie said. "In a month, you'll be out of here." There wasn't any bitterness to it. He said it like a fact. But Dutch was stung by it.

"That's not fair," he said.

"That's right, it's not fair."

"We'll get through this," Dutch said. But he knew well enough that things had ended up about as bad as they could for Charlie and that now he was stuck with no sure ticket out of his mess.

"Hey, what do you guys think of those girls?" Murray said. "I think we've got something there." The small blonde had been glancing over at them every few minutes. "I'll take the little blonde, Dutch, you take the other." The other was tall and thin and plain as a post.

"You take the blonde and you can take them both," Dutch said.

"Well, don't get sore about it. I just feel like dancing for chrissake," Murray said. "You guys can sit here all night if you want. I'm getting some dancing in." He threw down a shot and walked across the floor to the girls. Murray was a good-looking guy, but he had seen too many John Wayne movies. He sauntered like a cowboy across the room, pigeon-toed and wiggling his ass. Good looks had gone to his head. The jukebox was playing some lady singing "Blue Moon" and Murray and the little blonde did some slow dancing.

"Remember last year when we had to play Lyndhurst?" Dutch said. "Remember those two hotshot running backs? Remember how scared we were?" This made Charlie smile. But only with his eyes.

"I remember the week before, when Hawthorne had to play Lyndhurst. Poor Hawthorne."

"You mean when Coach came running into our locker room at half-time?" Dutch said, grinning at him and then booming out in his big positive coach voice, "Guess what, guess what, Flanagan was over at Hawthorne and saw the scoreboard. Hawthorne's holding Lyndhurst to 13-6. Just get past these guys today, we can win the league."

"Made sense. We'd already romped past Hawthorne. Everybody figured we had it made."

"Until we found out the scoreboard wasn't big enough to go over a hundred and the real score was Lyndhurst 113, Hawthorne 6."

"Scared the hell out of us."

"Yeah, but we got through it, is what I'm saying. I remember you at defensive half. You put the crack on that boy. You took him down hard."

"That was once, maybe twice. The rest of the time he zipped past like I was standing still." Charlie seemed happy as he said it and Dutch figured he had worked the trick.

"You see, we're laughing about it now."

"OK, Dutch. But this isn't a goddamn game," Charlie said. He just wanted to get off it, to go on. But they wouldn't let it alone. The papers. The rumors. They kept kicking at it again and again, instead of letting it die.

"I really liked going to your house when we were kids," Dutch said, because he wanted to say something positive. "It was a warm place. Your mom liked baking bread. I think that's what made it warm. It always had a warm smell to it."

"Too damn small, was what my mom said."

"You know what I remember? That little stain-glass window where the stairs turn."

"Yeah," Charlie said, looking at the bubbles rising in his beer.

"I don't know why, but I loved that window."

"You loved the white lady by the tree. You thought she was naked."

"Maybe."

"She wasn't naked," Charlie said. "She was just dressed in white."

"Didn't you like that house? That was a great little house."

"You know what my dad said? He said the house was a trap."

"Your dad said everything was a trap."

"Yeah. You're right. House was a trap. Job was a trap. Marriage was a trap. Then when my mom got tired of hearing about it and ran off, I was the trap. He had to take care of me on his own, he said. I guess he meant well, it just didn't feel that way."

"You seen your mom?"

"Naw."

"Who was that guy she ran off with?"

"Connelly, the goddamn roofer. My dad's guarding the bank, making sure everybody's money's safe, and the guy he's got fixing his roof's home stealing his wife."

"It's a tough nut," Dutch said.

"It's his own goddamn fault," Charlie said. The jukebox was onto something faster now, something with Frankie Lane and Jo Stafford. Murray was shaking it with the tall one. He had it all worked out all right. He danced slow with the little blonde and fast with the tall one. That way everybody was happy. "Dad was ashamed of being just a guard at a bank. He was so ashamed he didn't even wear his uniform to work. He put it on after he got to the bank."

"So why'd he stay there?"

"God knows, maybe that's all he could do. But he was ashamed of it, I know that. When anybody asked what he did, he just said he worked at the bank. They probably all thought he was counting the money."

"It's a tough nut," Dutch said again and shook his head.

The college crowd had drifted into Port Royal and the place was starting to cook a little. A couple of more people went to the dance floor. Dean Martin was singing about "Amore!" And Murray was running his hands down the little blonde's rear-end.

"I just wish I'd seen it coming," Charlie said.

"What could you do?"

"When I look back at it, I can see how he changed after the robbery."

"Well, anybody would. I mean, when there's a robbery and you're the guy who's supposed to be guarding the place."

"Everybody was over at the house. Neighbors, reporters. They all wanted to hear it right from the horse's mouth. Remember? Even at school kids were talking."

"Yeah, it was in all the papers. Masked men, sawed-off shotguns, big heist. You had to talk about it. Everybody talked about it."

"Neighbors were all asking, 'What did you do, Frank? Weren't you scared, Frank?' 'I just did what they told me,' he said. 'Laid on my belly with my face on the floor. Like everybody. What the hell you expect me to do?'"

"That's right," Dutch said. "What do they expect?" The crowd of college boys were at the far end of the long room, maybe sixty feet away. They must have been drinking before they came in, Dutch thought, because now they were getting really loud and obnoxious, laughing and shouting at each other.

"I can see now how he was different," Charlie said. "Sitting in front of the TV, chain-smoking, drinking beer."

"Yeah, but that's the way he always was."

"Not so much. I'd hear him up and down the stairs at night, opening the back door, wandering around the kitchen. I should have noticed."

At the other end of the room, they were singing college songs, loud and off-key. Murray was trying to dance to "Ebb Tide." But in the middle of a dip, the mood broke for him and he stopped, holding the tall girl halfway to the floor. He had lost his rhythm in the loud singing. So he quit and came back to the table.

"That's when the papers started saying it was an inside job," Charlie was saying. "That the robbers knew too much about just when and how to do everything."

"Jesus, those bastards are loud," Murray said. "I tried to get them to stop, but they just laughed."

"Idiots," Dutch said. One of them was up now, leading the others with a slice of pizza. They were shouting out, "We're poor little sheep who have gone astray."

"Where the hell's the bouncer," Murray yelled.

Dutch was looking at Charlie now, looking at the tightness of the skin around his mouth and the dullness of his eyes. He wondered if he was going to cry now. But instead Charlie picked up the shot glass beside the pitcher and fired it the length of the room. It was a quick unexpected move, like a snake striking, and it clipped the conductor cleanly behind the ear, so he stopped dead between the first "Baah" and the second "Baah," and fell forward across the table and onto the pizza pie.

They were all singing so loudly they missed the sound of the impact and looked down stupidly at the body of their friend. He might just have passed out cold from drinking too much. But then they looked up along the room and saw Charlie still standing, staring at them menacingly, his face white with anger.

"Damn," Murray breathed out. "Damn."

"Take it easy," Dutch said, reaching for Charlie's shoulder again. But he shook it off again.

"Bam!" Murray said, slapping his fist into his palm. "Like goddamn Rocky Marciano."

They were coming down the floor toward him, saying, "Hey, hey, hey." But they were not big or strong or looking as if they would attack. Behind them, the conductor was sitting up now, rubbing the sore spot on his head.

"What the hell do you mean?" the first college boy yelled. "You some kind of hoodlum? Nothing but a stupid hoodlum?"

"That's right," Charlie said. He took a step away from the table and bent his knees just a little, waiting for them. Dutch got to his feet beside him. Nobody would attack Dutch, not even the bouncer. But Charlie pushed him back. "No," he said. "I'll take care of it."

He had seen the second college boy before. He was someone he recognized. The others had fanned out around him now, but he was only looking at the one he knew. He felt the blood pounding up into his neck and head, he felt the heaviness in his arms.

"I know you," the college boy said. "Your father's that guy at the bank. Your father's a lousy crook."

Charlie ducked forward and just a little to the side and then back, throwing all his weight behind his fist hooking down and across in one quick movement, catching the boy high on the cheekbone before he could speak again, hitting him so hard Dutch heard the crack of fist on bone. His body went down as fast as his friend's and Charlie glared down at him.

"My dad's nothing to you. My dad's fucking dead." He said it slowly and stiffly. "He stuck his head in the goddamn oven and now he's fucking dead." The tears were starting in his eyes.

Everybody was gathering now to see. That was when the bouncer finally showed. He was shorter and lighter and no match for Dutch. But they knew each other.

"I think we better get him out of here," the bouncer said to Dutch.

"We'll leave after we go to the john," Dutch said and he led Charlie back to the men's room and then stood by the door for several minutes while Charlie was in there. When he came out his face and hair were wet and the color was back. "Were you sick?" Dutch asked.

"I'm OK," he said. "OK." And they went out the back way down the dark corridor, past the kitchen and into the parking lot.

That is where they found Murray. The moon was high above them lighting the chrome on the cars. On the hill behind them headlights cut through the trees. Murray and the tall girl were slow dancing to the silence of the night, his head resting on her chest.

"Hey, Murray," Dutch said. "What happened?"

"This girl's a dancer," he said, his face shining with sweat. "Isn't she some dancer?"

When the little blonde saw Charlie walk out, holding his sore hand, she said, "Hey, slugger, where you been? Don't you know I've been waiting for you to ask me to dance?"

It wasn't quite real there in the moonlight, Dutch was thinking. Like it never was or ever would be. He had known right along it was suicide, but he had never known how. Now he kept getting images. They wouldn't stop. They flooded in on him.

Did he turn on the gas first? Did he kneel down in front of the oven like at communion? Did he rest his head gently on the meat rack and wait? Did he think of the light from the window on the stairs or feel the warmth of baking bread?

Was he wearing his uniform?