Read Online Bear and His Daughter by Robert Stone - Free Book Online Page B

poet,” Willie told him. “But all by himself in that there hotel room
he wailed.
He set his consciousness on fire! That was life I was witnessing, Fletch, at my peephole. So when I meet guys like you…”
    Fletch stared wide-eyed at the telegraph wires outside. Twelve minutes … Eleven minutes.
    Willie Wings had raised both arms above his head like a bouzouki dancer and was waggling his thick fingers over the reddened dome of his head.
    “Then I think, Wow, man, how groovy it is to be human! What a beautiful thing to be alive and conscious. And I think of that summer night in the shadow of Lookout Mountain—the cat on his own self and me on my peephole—the two of us there, human and conscious, the perceiver and the perceived, man, and I think that’s the most beautiful night of my life spiritually.”
    He turned to look at Fletch, but seeing only the rear window he cried out in alarm. “Fencer! Where’s Fletch?”
    Fletch had sunk to the floor and was gripping the tire with both hands.
    “Fletch!” Willie called and leaned over the seat to discover him. “You once-born emptiness, you better hide.” He bent himself double over the back to shout in Fletch’s ear. “In spite of you, man, the world is rich!”
    Fletch twisted on the thought. He pulled himself upright and took a drink.
    Fencer watched him in the mirror. “Stay in it, Fletch. Everything’s gonna be groovy.”
    “You fucking repulsive baldheaded rat,” Fletch said to Willie. “Who wants to hear about your lousy life?”
    Willie Wings stared in astonishment.
    Fencer looked concerned.
    “Don’t be an asshole,” he cautioned Fletch. “Don’t overreact.”
    The world is rich in spite of me, Fletch thought furiously.
    “You creepy bastards! All I know is creepy bastards!” Fletch could not contain himself. “My life is poisoned!”
    Willie Wings recovered himself.
    “Nobody sounds me,” he declared violently. “No literary poet abuses me! It’s love me—love my thing! I got my own thing, Fencer. I got friends that love me and revere me and protect me from the literary poets that want to destroy me because the literary poets have always wanted to destroy me. I don’t know how many times I been bum-tripped and burned by poets and I hate the bastards!”
    “You…” Fletch began.
    “You think I can’t protect myself from you?” Willie shouted. “You think I’m defenseless?” He laughed derangedly. “I got a hard desperate side for my own protection,” he told them. “I got a piece!” He began to claw at the inside of his leg, which was where he strapped his pistol.
    “Yeah,” Willie Wings said. His eyes were fixed as though confronting some inevitability; his hand was on the concealed holster.
    Fencer began to slap at him blindly with his free arm.
    “Willie, Willie, that ain’t the way.”
    “Whaddaya mean it ain’t the way, Fencer? What’s the way then?”
    “The way,” Fencer said, “is to go up the mountain and make it all complete.” He sought Fletch in the mirror again. “Right, Fletch?”
    Fletch stared glassy-eyed at the bulge along Willie’s calf where the gun was.
    “Let me out,” he said dully. “I get out here.”
    They were in the
zócalo
of Corbera. On the left Fletch saw the veranda of the Hotel Volcánico, on the right the Azteca Cinema was playing
Sangre y Plata
with Errol Flynn.
    “No,” Fencer said. “We got to finish it.”
    Willie Wings had regained his composure. “I’ll go along with that,” he said. “Fletch stays.”
    There was a wall of peanuts on the north end of the square where the vendors had set up their stalls outside the municipal market. Fletch was suddenly inspired. He thrust himself over the seat and seized the wheel. Fencer hung on and decelerated.
    “Let me out,” Fletch told him. “I’ll run us on the peanuts.”
    A vendor approached them with a basketful of nuts.
    “
Cacahuetes
,” he moaned. “
Cacahuetes
?”
    Fencer and Willie Wings sat in silent