The Caveman's Valentine Read Online Free PDF

back on his fucking farm. He’s feeling so much better, thank you. The fucker. Scotty’s in some
drawer
somewhere in the city morgue but Leppenraub’s having a high old time.
    “And of course everybody just loves him.
    “I mean wherever you go now it’s Leppenraub. You see the bookstores last Christmas? Leppenraub coffee-table books and calendars and shit, and they had that big exhibit at some museum. The Whitman or something. Me, I never looked at any of it. I wanted to, you know, just to see what Scotty had been like before Leppenraub ruined him, but he wouldn’t never let me. All those pictures of him, they just
humiliated
him.”
    The tears kept washing silently down the Weasel’s cheeks. Romulus found a wadded-up tissue in a pocket, and he gave it to Matthew and Matthew wiped his face with it, but it didn’t do any good. The tears kept coming. He said:
    “I don’t know how Scotty made it before I found him. I took care of him best I could. But he was just crazy. He kept talking about revenge. He had evidence, he said. He said he had this videotape that Leppenraub had made at one of the torture sessions. He said he was going to go to the bastard and let him know he had it and get some money. He acted so crazy, he weirded everyone out in the squat. They threw us out.”
    “You got evicted from a
squat,
Matthew?”
    “Hard to fucking believe, huh? Hey, what can I tell you? They should have left me out on the hillside when I was born. But still, you know, I guess it was OK, ’cause I still had Scotty. We was on the street—but we still had each other. Till one day he says to me, ‘I called Leppenraub. He wants to meet me. He wants to negotiate.’ ‘You going to do it?’ I says. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I got nothing to lose.’ I says, ‘You got us. You going to lose us.’ And he smiles, you know, and he says, ‘You and me, we’re going to Key West. We’re going to buy a mansion, and a boat, and live happily ever after.’ I says, ‘He’ll kill you.’ He says, ‘Yeah, well if he does, you tell ’em. Matthew, you gotta tell ’em you saw me. You saw what they did to me. You tell ’em.’
    “And then he told me he loved me. And then he was gone. That was a week ago. That was the last time I saw him.”
    Romulus got up and threw the last of the wood on the fire. Sparks flying wildly. Any moment the curtains might catch. But when you lived in a cave and owned nothing and had the feeling you were not long for this world anyway, this was not an oppressive concern.
    He settled back down on his blanket again. It was warm enough that he could take off his saucepan hat. Underneath it he was three-quarters bald, and he took a minute to rub the bone of his head with his knuckles. Just did that, and looked at the fire. Now why is it, he wondered, after such a tale as this, such suffering and confusion, why did his thoughts feel so light and clear and sure-footed? It was as though the world had only to own up to its share of chaos and sham, for Romulus to peacefully acknowledge his share in the world—fair exchange.
    “So did you talk to the cops, Matthew?”
    “They—they came around.”
    “Did you tell them about all this?”
    “Rom. Oh, Rom, I
couldn’t
tell them. How could I have told them?—they’d have gone right to Leppenraub. And that’d be it for me. He’d a squashed me just like he’d squash a bug—and who’d give a damn? What I
ought
to do, I ought to kill that bastard myself. But I don’t have the guts. Oh Rom, for Christ’s sake, I’m scared. I got nothing to live for, so what am I scared of? But I’m scared to death. What am I going to do, Rom?”
    “I don’t know. Seems like you’re too small. Nothing you
can
do. Nor nothing I can do for you.”
    They sat for a long while watching the sparks.
    “Rom, you know what—one time I brought Scotty up here to meet you. It was like, back in October. I says, ‘I know this guy that’s got hisself clear of all this shit. He don’t