Tough Guys Don't Dance by Norman Mailer Read Free Book Online Page B

“Yes, I fuck up with the best,” I told him.
    â€œI get the feeling,” he remarked, “that you can stand up when the trouble is brightest.”
    â€œBrightest?”
    â€œWhen it all slows down.” Now his eyes at last showed light.
    â€œRight,” I said.
    â€œRight. You know what I’m talking about. Damn right I’m right.” And he walked out. If he had been the kind to weave, I would have seen it then.
    He was more together when drinking at the VFW bar. I even saw him get into an arm-wrestling match with Barrels Costa, who got his name by flipping barrels of fish up from the hold to the deck, and at low tide, from the deck up to the wharf. When it came to arm wrestling, Barrels could defeat every fisherman in town, but Regency, to stake a claim, took Barrels on one night and was respected for not hiding behind his uniform. Barrels won, but had to work long enough to get a taste of the bitterness of old age, and Regency smoldered. I guess he wasn’t in the habit of losing. “Madden, you are a fuckup,” he told me that night. “You are a damn waste.”
    The next morning, however, as I was goingdown the street to get the newspaper, he stopped his squad car and said, “I hope I wasn’t out of line last night.”
    â€œForget it.” He irritated me. I was beginning to fear the end result: a big-breasted mother with an enormous phallus.
    Now, in his office, I said to him, “If the only reason you invited me here was to say you saw Patty Lareine, I wish you had told me on the phone.”
    â€œI want to talk to you.”
    â€œI’m not good at taking advice.”
    â€œMaybe
I
need some.” He said the next with pride he could not conceal, as if the true heft of a man, the brand mark itself, was in the strength it took to maintain this sort of ignorance: “I don’t know women very well.”
    â€œIf you are coming to me for pointers, it is obvious you don’t.”
    â€œMac, let’s get drunk one night soon.”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œWhether you know it or not, you and me are the only philosophers in town.”
    â€œAlvin, that makes you the sole thinker the right wing has produced in years.”
    â€œHey, let’s not get testy before the bullets are fired.” He started to show me to the door. “Come on,” he said, “I’ll walk you to your car.”
    â€œI didn’t bring it.”
    â€œWere you afraid I’d impound your heap?” That gave him the sanction to guffaw all the way down the corridor and out to the street.
    There, just before we parted, he said, “Do you still have that marijuana patch in Truro?”
    â€œHow do you know about it?”
    He looked disgusted. “Man, what’s the secret? Everybody talks about your home-grown. I sampled some myself. Why, Patty Lareine dropped a couple of rolled ones in my pocket. Your stuff is about as good as I used to get in Nam.” He nodded. “See, I don’t care whether you’re a Left-Winger or a Right-Winger, I don’t care what kind of fucking wing you fly. I love pot. And I will tell you. Conservatives aren’t right in every last item of the inventory. They miss the point here. They think marijuana destroys souls, but I don’t believe that—I believe the Lord gets in and wrestles the Devil.”
    â€œHey,” I said, “if you ever stop talking, we might have a conversation.”
    â€œOne night soon. Let’s get drunk.”
    â€œAll right,” I said.
    â€œIn the meantime, if I had placed my stash in a patch in Truro …” He paused.
    â€œI don’t keep a stash there,” I said.
    â€œI’m not saying you do. I don’t want to know. I’m just saying if I did leave something there, I would contemplate getting it out.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI can’t tell you everything.”
    â€œJust want to tickle my