Out on the Cutting Edge

I walked toward him, and his head swung around at my approach.

His face was pitted like weathered

granite, and there were patches of broken blood vessels on his cheekbones, and across the bridge of his nose. His eyes were a surprising green, and there was a lot of scar tissue around them.

"You're Scudder," he said.

"Yes."

"I don't know you, but I've seen you. And you've seen me."

"Yes."

"You were asking for me. And now you're here." He had thin lips, and they curled in what might have been a smile. He said, "What will you drink, man?"

He had a bottle of Jameson on the bar in front of him, the twelve-year-old. In a glass beside it, two small ice cubes bobbed in an amber sea. I said I'd have coffee, if they happened to have any made.

Ballou looked at the bartender, who shook his head.

"The draught Guinness is as good as you'll get this side of the ocean," Ballou said. "I wouldn't carry the bottled stuff, it's thick as syrup."

"I'll have a Coke."

"You don't drink," he said.

"Not today."

"You don't drink at all, or you don't drink with me?"

"I don't drink at all."

"And how is that?" he asked. "Not drinking at all."

"It's all right."

"Is it hard?"

"Sometimes. But sometimes drinking was hard."

"Ah," he said. "That's the fucking truth." He looked at the bartender, who responded by drawing a Coke for me. He put it in front of me and moved off out of hearing range.

Ballou picked up his glass and looked at me over the top of it. He said, "Back when the Morrisseys had their place around the corner.

Their after-hours. I used to see you there."

"I remember."

"You drank with both hands, those days."

"That was then."

"And this is now, eh?" He put his glass down, looked at his hand, wiped it across his shirtfront, and extended it toward me. There was something oddly solemn about our handshake. His hand was large, his grip firm but not aggressively so. We shook hands, and then he took up his whiskey and I reached for my Coke.

He said, "Is that what ties you to Eddie Dunphy?" He lifted his glass, looked into it. "Hell of a thing when the booze turns on you.

Eddie, though, I'd say he never could handle it, the poor bastard. Did you know him when he drank?"

"No."

"He never had the head for it. Then I heard he stopped drinking.

And now he's gone and hanged himself."

"A day or so before he did it," I said, "we had a talk."

"Did you now?"

"There was something eating him, something he wanted to get off his chest but was afraid to tell me."

"What was it?"

"I was hoping you might be able to answer that."

"I don't take your meaning."

"What did he know that was dangerous knowledge? What did he ever do that would weigh on his conscience?"

The big head swung from side to side. "He was a neighborhood boy. He was a thief, he had a mouth on him when he drank, he raised a little hell. That's all he ever did."

"He said he used to spend a lot of time here."

"Here? In Grogan's?" He shrugged. "It's a public house. All sorts of people come in, drink their beer or whiskey, pass the time, go on their way. Some have a glass of wine. Or a Coca-Cola, if it comes to that."

"Eddie said this was where he used to hang out. We were walking one night, and he crossed the street to avoid walking past this place."

The green eyes widened. "He did? Why?"

"Because it was so much a part of his drinking life. I guess he was afraid it would pull him in if he got too close."

"My God," he said. He uncapped the bottle, topped up his drink.

The two ice cubes had melted but he didn't seem bothered by their absence. He picked up the glass. Staring into it he said, "Eddie was my brother's friend. Did you know my brother Dennis?"

"No."

"Very different from me, Dennis was. He had our mother's looks.

She was Irish. The old man was French, he came from a fishing village half an hour from Marseilles. I went there once, a couple of years ago, just to see what it looked like. I could see why he left. There was nothing there." He took a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket, lit one, blew out smoke. "I look just like the old man," he said. "Except for the eyes.

Dennis and I both got our mother's eyes."

"Eddie said Dennis was killed in Vietnam."

He turned the green eyes on me. "I don't know why the hell he went. It would have been nothing at all to get him out of it. I told him, I said, 'Dennis, for Christ's sake, all I have to do is pick up a phone.' He wouldn't have it." He took the cigarette and ground it out in an ashtray.

"So he went over there," he said,

"and they shot his ass off for him, the dumb bastard."

I didn't say anything, and we let the silence stretch. For a moment I had the thought that the room was

filling up with dead people— Eddie, Dennis, Ballou's parents, and a few ghosts of my own, all the people who'd passed on but still lingered on the edge of consciousness. If I turned my head quickly, I thought, I might see my aunt Peg, or my own dead parents.