Bedlam and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF

wouldn’t have any lunch and for breakfast there’d only been that coffee.
    â€œArmy got installations in Florida, you know,” the driver said later. By this time they’d pulled over to the side of the road. They sat under some powerful flowers, like morning glories on spiralling vines, and were sharing a bottle of Catawba Pink. Hot pebbles dug into Hartley’s behind.
    â€œNow I can cover for you with any kind of story you like,” the driver said. “Army won’t mind. A war hero like y’self, you can bend the rules a little.”
    â€œThat’s not true .” Hartley felt he had to stand up. “The Army”—he groaned and made it—“expects a man to be where he says he’s going to be.”
    â€œAhowoo, Soldier-boy.”
    â€œHey, I’m not kidding, I’m not kidding. The Army, I know just where I’d be if it wasn’t for them. I’d be up in those woods living out of some two-bit mobile home, working on the heat, working on the car, working every goddamn minute of the weekend. Breaking my back not to get laid off. Half the time I’d be scared of my own children. I’ve seen it. I know .”
    â€œI got granchillen, myself,” the driver said.
    But Hartley went on pacing, back and forth along the unshaded road. Every step in his heavy boots seemed to send the point of a spear poking through the top of his head.
    â€œWhat you’re talking about,” he said, “is just the kind of thing they show on TV. They think they can tell any lie they want to. Right out there on TV !”
    â€œThat’s right, Soldier-boy,” the driver said. “Be fifty, sixty million see it anyway. So why not—”
    â€œNever mind Louisiana.”
    â€œNow you talking.”
    â€œWe’re going to find that shooting site.”
    The driver’s grin dropped fast. His whole sloppy middleaged face seemed to shrink while he argued that, man you gotta know, the site moved on different days. And he’d never been any too clear on Everglades roads, especially halfway in the bag like he was now. And then also , Soldier-boy couldn’t do much except maybe mess up their timetable a little. Hartley wouldn’t hear it. Finally he promised to let the driver go home as soon as they found the place. Deal. Hartley performed isometrics in the back seat as they moved into the jungle. He did up another joint, smoking almost all of it himself, when he felt his thoughts get foggy. He ordered the driver to keep the air conditioning off and the windows open; he wanted to hear what was going on outside. From bigger roads they pulled onto smaller, muddy even this late in the year. The smaller roads ended soon in blank swamp walls. Insects would fill the halted car. The fourth time they came to one of these dead ends, just as the driver had started to shout that Soldier-boy didn’t scare him, he’d been in the service himself, the Coast Guard just like Alex Haley, and a deal was a deal but he sure didn’t need no ofay Yankee asshole racist Soldier-boy comin’ down here tellin’ him to drive with the damn windows open—just then they found something. Hartley was outside before the car had stopped rolling. On the wet ground lay a clipboard with a yellow legal pad attached.
    â€œ Ahowoo .” The driver scowled.
    Hartley turned the thing over in his hands. The paper was blank and the lines had run. The clip hinges were dark with rust.
    â€œMan,” the driver called from behind the wheel.
    â€œShut up.”
    â€œDon’t you be giving me no more orders, Soldier-boy. You don’t know what I’m cap’ble of.”
    â€œThey’re here. I can smell em.”
    â€œAll right Tarzan, you just go find ’em then.”
    Without a word, Hartley dropped the clipboard and headed into the bush. Another half-dozen ducking steps, holding his hands before his chest as if cradling a rifle, and