Hot Springs (5 page)

Earl nodded slightly.

“Earl,” said D. A., “you was born for this job like no man on earth.”

“So it seems,” said Earl, looking around at all the bright young gay things sipping champagne, dancing the jitterbug, laughing brightly, squeezing flesh, and thinking, Goddamn, I am home again.

West Virginia flowed by; or maybe it was Ohio. It was hard to tell at night, and the train rattled along forcefully. Earl sat in the private compartment watching America pass in the darkness, feeling the throb of the rails on the track. His head ached, but for the first time, after a day of heroic drinking, he felt as if he were more or less sober.

The private compartment was a last kindness from his country for one of its heroes. No lumpy seats for the Medal of Honor winner, no sitting upright, unable to sleep because the metal in the ribs still hurt and his back ached. But he wasn’t drinking.

Junie slept in the lower berth. He could hear her breathing steadily. But he just sat in the leather seat before the little round table, feeling the rhythms and flowing onward toward what would be his new destiny. Then she stirred.

“Earl?”

“I thought you were asleep, honey. You should sleep some.”

“I can’t sleep when you can’t sleep, Earl. Are you all right?”

“Yes ma’am. I’m fine.”

“Earl, you were drinking, weren’t you? I could smell it on you.”

“I stopped for drinks while I was walking, yes. I was celebrating. I was happy. I met the president. I was at the White House. I got the big medal. I got my picture taken. Won’t have many days like that.”

“Earl, the medal. It was in the pocket of your uniform slacks. The ribbon got all wrinkled. I put it back in the jewelry case. You should take care of it. Someday you will give it to a son.”

“Well, honey, if I ever have a son, I don’t think I’ll say to him, ‘See what a big man your father was.’ So I think if I ever have a son, I’ll just let him grow up without me telling him how great I was, since I never felt great one damn day in my life.”

“Earl, you are so angry these days.”

“I will put it aside, I swear to you, Junie. I know this ain’t been easy for you. I know I have become different than the man you married.”

“That Earl was handsome and proud and he looked so beautiful in his uniform. He looked like a movie star. All the girls loved him. I fell so hard in love with him, Lord, I didn’t think I’d live till sunrise. Then he asked me to dance with him. But this Earl is more human than that one. This Earl is more man, more real man. He does his work, even though he hates it, and he never yells at anyone. He’s a real man, and he’s there every night, and some letter won’t come telling me he got killed.”

“Sweetie, you are some peach. You are the best.”

He leaned over in the dark and gave her a kiss.

She touched him, in a way that let him know that tonight would be a very good night for some intimacy. But he sat back.

“I have to tell you something first.”

“Earl, I don’t like that tone. What is it? Is it those two men who came to see you?”

“Yes, it is.”

“That showboaty fellow in the nice clothes? And that sad old man. I didn’t like the showboaty fellow.”

“I didn’t really like him either, but there you have it. Becker is his name, and he’ll be important someday. He’s actually an elected official, a politician. Them two fellows offered me a job.”

“Did you take it?”

“It means some more money. And it means I won’t get my fingers chopped off by the band saw. They’ll be paying me a hundred a week. That’s more than $5,000 a year before taxes. There’s a life insurance plan too, plus medical benefits from the state of Arkansas, so there won’t be no worrying about having enough money for a doc. They even gave me a clothing allowance. I’m supposed to buy some suits.”

“But it’s dangerous.”

“Why would you say that?”

“I can tell it from your voice.”

“Well, it could be dangerous. It probably won’t be. Mainly it’s training.”

“Training?”

“Some boys. I’ll be working with young police officers, training them in firearms usage, fire and movement, generalized tactics, maybe some judo, that sort of thing.”

“Earl!”

“Yes ma’am?”

“Earl, you’ll be training them for war.”

“Well, not exactly, honey. It’s nothing like a war. It’s for raiding gambling places. This fellow is the new prosecuting attorney down in Garland.”

“Hot Springs!”

“Hot Springs. Yes. He’s going to try and clean up the town.”

“We’re moving to Hot Springs?”

Well, damn him if he didn’t just let it sit there for a while. He let her enjoy it: the idea of moving out of the vets village at Camp Chaffee, maybe getting a place with a real floor instead of wood slats that were always dirty, and that had walls that went straight up to a ceiling, and didn’t arch inward or rattle and leak when it rained. The refrigerator would be big, so she wouldn’t have to shop every day. The shower would be indoors; there’d even be a tub. The stove would be gas.

“Maybe so,” he finally said. “Maybe in a bit. We’d get a nice house, out of town, away from the commotion. It can get plenty hectic in that place.”

“I’m not coming, am I, Earl?”

“No ma’am. Not at first. I have it worked out, though-You’ll be fine. The paycheck will come straight to you. You can put a certain part of it in a state bank account, and I’ll write checks from that for my spending money. You’ll get a list of the benefits, and it won’t be no time before we can move.”

Junie didn’t say anything. She stirred, seemed to roll over and face the bunk atop her, and when she finally settled she seemed further away.

“See, it won’t work out, having you down there,” he said. “Not at first. I’m going to be in Texas for a while, where we’re going to train these kids, then we move up to Garland. But I ain’t even going on the raids. I’m more the trainer and the sergeant. I have to ride herd on the younger fellows, just like in the Corps, that’s all. And there’s a security issue, or so they say, but, you know, it’s just being careful.”

“I can tell in your voice. You’ll go on the raids. It’s your nature.”

“That’s not the plan. They don’t want a big fancy hero type like me getting shot.”

“That may not be the plan, but you have a nature, and you will obey it. It’s to lead other men in battle and help them and prevent them from getting hurt. That is your nature.”

“They didn’t say a thing about that. The reason we don’t want the women down there is just some precautions. It’s very corrupt in Hot Springs. Has been for years. All the cops are crooked, the newspapers are crooked, the courts and the judges are crooked.”

“I heard they have gangsters there, and whores. That’s where A1 Capone went and Alvin Karpis and Ma Barker went to relax and take hot baths. They have guns and gangsters. It’s where your father got killed.”

“My father died in Mount Ida, and he could have died anywhere on earth where there’s men who rob other men, which is everywhere on earth. He didn’t have nothing to do with Hot Springs. All that other stuff, you can’t believe a lick of it. It’s old hillbilly boys with shotguns.”

“Oh, Earl, you’re such a bad liar. You’re going off to a war, because the war is what you know best and what you love best. And you’re going to leave me up in Fort Smith with no way to get in contact with you and I’ll just have to wait and see if somebody doesn’t come up with a telegram and say, Oh, Mrs. Swagger, the state of Arkansas is so sorry, but your husband, Earl, is dead. But it’s okay, because he was a hero, and this here’s another nice piece of plated gold for your trouble.”

“Junie, I swear to you nothing will happen to me. And even if it does, well, hell, you got $5,000 and you’re still the most beautiful gal in Fort Smith and you don’t have to stay in the hut, you could probably find an apartment by that time, when this housing mess is all cleared up. It’ll all get better, I swear to you.”

“And who raises your son?”

“My— I don’t have a son.”

“No, maybe it’s a daughter. But whatever it is, it sure is getting big in my stomach.”

“Jesus,” said Earl.

“I wasn’t going to tell you until after the ceremony, because I wanted the ceremony to be all for you. But then you went off and you didn’t show up all afternoon.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie. I never would have guessed.”

“What do you think happens? You can’t grab me four times a week without getting a baby out of it.”

“I thought you liked it when I grabbed you.”

“I love it. You didn’t ever hear me saying no, did you?”

“No ma’am, guess not.”

“But it doesn’t make a difference, does it?”

“I promised them. I said yes. It’s more money. It’s a better life.”

“Think about your boy, Earl.”

But Earl could not. Who’d bring a kid into a world where men fry each other with flamethrowers, machine-gun each other or go at it hand-to-hand, with bayonets and entrenching tools? And now this atom bomb tiling: turn the earth into Hiroshimas everydamn-where. He looked at her, indistinct in the dark, and felt her distance. He thought of the tiny being nestled in her stomach and the thought terrified him. He never asked to be a daddy, he didn’t think he was man enough for it.

He was scared. He had a sudden urge, almost overwhelming, to do what he’d never done in the Pacific: to turn, to run, to flee, to leave it all behind him.

He saw his own melancholy childhood, that weary cavalcade of fear and pain. He didn’t want that for his boy.

“I— I don’t know what to say, Junie. I never thought about no boy or girl before. I just never figured on it.”

He had another feeling, one he felt so often: that he was once again failing someone who loved him.

He wished desperately he had a gift for her, something that would make it all right, some little thing.

And then he thought of it.

“I will make you one promise,” he said. “It’s the only one. I will quit the drinking.”

The kid was hot. The kid was smoking. His strawberry-blond hair fell across his pug face, a cigarette dangled insolently from his lips, and he brought the dice, cupped into his left hand, to his mouth.

“Oh, baby,” he said. “Jimmy Hicks, Captain Hicks, Captain Jimmy Hicks, Jimmy Hicks, Sister Hicks, Baby Hicks, Sixie from Dixie, sexy pixie, Jimmy Hicks, Baby Hicks, Mamma Hicks, oh, baby, baby, baby, you do what Daddy says, you sweet, sweet baby six!”

A near religious ecstasy came across his face as he began to slowly rotate his tightly clutched fist, and sweat shone brightly on the spray of freckles on his forehead. His eyeballs cranked upward, his lids snapped shut, but maybe it wasn’t out of faith, only irritation from the Lucky Strike smoke that rose from his butt.

“Go, sweetie, go, go! said his girlfriend, who hovered over his shoulder. She looked about ten years older than he, had tits of solid, dense flesh, and her low-cut dress squeezed them out at you for all to see. Her lips were red, ruby red, her earrings diamond, her necklace a loop of diamond sparkle, her hair platinum. She touched the boy’s shoulder for good luck.

With a spasm he let fly.

The dice bounded crazily across the table and Earl thought of a Jap Betty he had once seen, weirdly cart wheeling before it went in. The Betty had settled with a final splash and disappeared; the dice merely stopped rattling. He looked back at the kid, who was now bent forward, his eyes wide with hope.

“Goddamn!” the boy screamed in horror, for the cubes read three and four, not the two and four or the three and three or the five and one he needed, and that was the unlucky seven and he was out.

“Too bad, sir,” said the croupier with blank professional respect, and with a rake, scooped up what the kid had riding, a pile of loose twenties and fifties and hundreds that probably amounted to Earl’s new and best yearly salary.

The kid smiled, and pulled a wad of bills from his pocket thick as Dempsey’s fist.

“He crapped out,” Earl said to D. A., who stood next to him in the crowded upstairs room of the Ohio Club, watching the action. “And he’s still smiling. How’s a punk kid like that get so much dough to throw around? And how’s he get a doll off a calendar?”

“There’s plenty more where that came from,” said D. A. “You don’t go to the pictures much, do you. Earl?”

“No, sir. Been sort of busy.”

“Well, that kid is named Mickey Rooney. He’s a big actor. He always plays real homespun, small-town boys. He looks fourteen, but he’s twenty-six, been married twice, and he blows about ten thousand a night whenever he comes to town. I hear the hookers call him Mr. Hey-kids-let’s-put-on-a-show!”

Earl shook his head in disgust.

“That’s America, Earl,” said D. A. “That’s what y’all was fightin’ for.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Earl finally said.

“Sure. But just look around, take it all in. Next time you see this place, you may be carrying a tommy gun”

The club was dark and jammed. Gambling was king here on the upstairs floor, and the odor of the cigarettes and the blue density of the smoke in the air were palpable and impenetrable. It smelled like the sulfur in the air at Iwo and the place had a sort of frenzy to it like a beach zeroed by the Japs, where the casualties and supplies have begun to pile up, but nobody has yet figured out how to move inland. And the noise level was about the same.

At one end of the room a roulette wheel spun, siphoning money out of the pockets of the suckers. A dozen high-stakes poker games were taking place under low lights. In every nook and cranny was a slot and at each slot a pilgrim stood, pouring out worship in the form of nickels and climes and silver dollars, begging for God’s mercy. But craps was the big game at the Ohio, and at even more tables the swells bet their luck against the tumble of the cubes and piles of cash floated around the green felt like icebergs. Meanwhile, some Negro group diddled out hot bebop licks, crazed piano riffs, the sound of a sax or a clarinet or some sad instrument telling a tale of lost fortunes, love and hope.

Earl shook his head again. Jesus Christ, he thought.

“We got to keep moving, Earl,” said the old man. “They don’t like baggage in a joint like this. You play or you leave.”