Bless the Beasts & Children by Glendon Swarthout Read Free Book Online Page B

by night as it was depressing by day. Cotton told Teft to turn off, away from the ratrace, and onto a side street. It was now 1:51 a.m.
    Against a transient parental environment, which was overstimulating and unpredictable as well, Billy Lally's defense was to withdraw into a world of fantasy, self-created, into an isolation to which he admitted no one. His case was complicated by his discovery that the more completely he regressed, the greater advantage this gave him over Stephen, his older brother, so that withdrawal became for him both a necessity and a device. It was habitual now, with attendant infantile practices. Besides wetting his bed and sucking his thumb he had bad dreams and suffered night terrors. His parents twice enrolled him in special schools, only to take him out to travel with them. At various times he began treatment with four different therapists, one of them in Switzerland, only to have his father and mother reconcile and pack their suitcases. At twelve he was the youngest camper, and underage by restrictions, but his parents could not have gone to Kenya without disposing of both sons somewhere and the Director was persuaded to make an exception. Cottons cabin was his second. When, in the first, he withdrew under his bed with the foamrubber pillow from home and curled into a ball in his sleeping bag, the other boys hauled him out, screaming as though ripped from the womb. He burrowed back in. They hauled him out again. The sport went on till Cotton came by and offered to take Billy Lally in with him. With him, Cotton asserted, he could hide under his bed whenever he needed to, or up a tree, or in a cave for all he cared, or any damn where .
    "Hold it," Cotton said. "Over there. Park and I'll make a recon."
    He got out and crossed the dim street and spied into a yellow window, then returned and said to come on, this would do, and they piled out, leaving the engine running and stowing the rifle on the cab floor.
    The place was an allnight beer and beanery with a griddle behind the counter and a mechanical bowling alley crowded between rickety chairs and tables. Two young men were drinking beer and bowling and on the floor, his head against the wall, an elderly Navajo snoozed in silver hair and a green velvet shirt. The Bedwetters lined up on stools and shortordered from the limited menu on the wall, two hamburgers each and a pint of milk. The counterman was bony and ketchupeyed and his chin had the contours of a spatula. On the wall beside the menu was this notice, flyspecked: "Our Credit Mgr. Is Helen Waite. If you Want Credit Go to Helen Waite." Balls trundled on the alley and pins clattered and bells rang, but when the game was over, the only sounds in the beanery were the hiss of grease and the caterwaul, issuing from two jacket pockets, of Grandpa Jones, and from three, of Gladys Knight and the Pips.
    Glasses in hand, the two bowlers came up behind the six boys at the counter. They were young men of twenty or so in tight jeans and sassy western shirts and big belt buckles and long sideburns.
    "What you milkdrinkers doin' out so late by your ownselves?" asked one.
    Waiting for their hamburgers, the Bedwetters strawed milk from the cartons.
    "How's come you listen to all them radios?" asked the other.
    "We're musicians," Shecker said. "A rock outfit. Drums, four guitars, and a front singer. From L.A."
    "Musicians, huh. You got a name?"
    "Group Therapy," said Teft.
    "Then we changed to After Death," said Goodenow, "but that was too morbid."
    "So what're you now?"
    "The Before Christ," Shecker said.
    "Before Christ?"
    "Dig our backs, man."
    The sideburns studied the BC's on the backs of jackets. Then they studied the miscellany of headgear along the counter.
    "Want an autographed picture?" asked Lally 1.
    "Give us a listen on the Groovy label," said Goodenow.
    The sideburns were not amused. "I asked what you doin' out so late," said one. "Now less hear, you hear?"
    "In the West," said Teft, apropos of