Loving Women (32 page)

We got close to Hagaru on December third. That was a pretty good-size town. It was snowing like a bitch and we stop on a hill just outside the town. Then, through the snow, we see planes on a runway and an American flag and tents and trucks and so we know, shit, we fuckin
made
it, we might actually fuckin
live.
And then those crazy mothafuckin Marines got in
drill
formation. All shot up and hurt and frozen. And they march into that town, countin fuckin
cadence.
One captain had most of his fuckin jaw shot off. He had so many bandages around his head he looked like a mummy. But he
walked,
man
. Marching.
In step. Proud. The crazy mothafuckin Marines
.

I dint even know I was shot till then. Frostbite, dehydration, shot in the left thigh, the hip. I don’t remember nothin about how that happened. I for shitsure wunt trying to be no hero. I was just trying to live, even that real bad coldass night I was sure I died. Yeah, I killed some guys. I must of. I don’t know how many. I dint take no names. I was just shooting, like every other poor mothafucka on the hill
.

You think that changed me? Bet your sweet ofay ass it did. I come home knowin I wunt ever gonna take shit again. Never gonna be the white man’s nigger. Even if that meant everybody makes me to be a troublemaker. I went to Korea. I did my so-called fuckin duty to America. Nobody gonna tell me how to live anymore. No cracker. No bowin an scrapin Uncle Tom black man. Nobody. Whether they like it or not, whether
you
like it or not, I’m an American and I’m gonna start livin like one. I got six months to go in the Navy. In September I go to school somewhere, on the GI Bill, a free man. Music school
.

Somewhere warm
.

Somewhere hot
.

Chapter

34

T
he rain was over when I went out into the night to find my way to the barracks. I felt gorged: with food and with Eden; with this newer, raunchier, dirtier, music; with the intimate opening into the lives of what I still called Negroes. I was full of images of the frozen dead in Korea too. And with the rich loamy smell of the wet earth.

I walked along the footpaths and as the clouds moved on, I could see the stars. Men my age had died because plasma froze in bottles, but I was alive. Men slept here in these barracks, wifeless and womanless, but I had found Eden Santana. I felt as if I could reach out and gather the stars in my hand, pack them loosely like some cosmic snowball and release them again into the universe.

“Come over here, sailor,” a voice said.

A figure in officer’s suntans was squatting down at the side of the gedunk. His back was to me, but I knew it was Captain Pritchett. He looked up.

“Give me a hand, here,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” I said, and wondered if I should salute and decided not to. He was digging in the earth around a bush. There was a large empty earthenware pot beside him. He handed me a small digging tool.

“Now dig on that side, see? But don’t hit the roots. I’m gonna save this baby.”

I started digging carefully in the dim light, feeling with my hand for the roots of the bush.

“This is oleander. The goddamned snowstorm practically killed her.”

Then he started talking to the bush. “But I’m gonna save you, ain’t I, honey? You been such a good girl. You been so
put
upon.” His voice was crooning, as if directed at a baby. “We gonna get you up and into a pot and up to the control tower, where there’s lots of sun. Give you lots of water to drink and keep your ass warm. You gonna
live
, honey. You ain’t gonna die next to no brick wall.”

We finished clearing the roots. He picked up a small paper bag and poured pebbles into the bottom of the pot.

“Now throw some of that dirt in there,” he said, the voice abruptly full of authority. He went back to the bush.

“Yes, sir.”

“And bring it over here, close to me. Yeah. That’s it. Okay … Now, while I hold her up straight, pack some dirt in there. Not too
hard
now. Easy. The dirt from the top, the real black stuff, not that sandy clay crap at the bottom. Yeah. Okay, that’s it. Good!”

He stepped back and gazed at the plant, looking happy. Then he was suddenly aware of me again, and fixed on my face.

“What’s your name, sailor?” he said curtly.

I told him.

“Well, thank you, Devlin. What are you doing
out
anyway? After the base has been secured?”

“I was visiting with the messcooks, sir.”

“Visiting with the
mess
cooks? You’re
white
, sailor!”

“I know, sir.”

“Well, what the hell you doin up there with that crazy bunch of galley slaves?”

“Listening to music, sir.”

He looked suddenly interested. “No kidding? What are they playing these days? I bet it’s not Glenn Miller or Bing Crosby anymore.”

“No, sir.”

“So what do they listen to?”

I smiled. “Well, there’s a group called Professor Longhair and the Shuffling Hungarians, and a guy named—”

He guffawed. “Professor Longhair and the Shuffling
Armenians
?!”

“Hungarians, sir.”

“Jesus Christ. What else?”

I told him the names of the other singers and groups, while he asked me to grab one side of the pot and help carry it to his office.
He repeated every name I gave him, as if memorizing them for a test. I told him about Bobby Bolden and how he should be given a band to play at the EM Club. He grunted, and repeated Bolden’s name, as we carried the pot together up the three steps of the Administration Building, grunting and straining. A Marine private snapped to attention at the door.

“Open all those doors to my office, Private,” Captain Pritchett said. The private led the way down a corridor to a corner office. He flicked on the lights, saluted again, and backed away as we entered the office with the plant. The room was very clean and sparsely furnished, except for the plants. They were everywhere. And I thought of all the flowers at Eden Santana’s trailer.

“Over here in the corner, Devlin. We’ll leave her until the morning and then I’ll have her moved to the tower.” We laid the plant down next to a window. He started crooning to it again. “Now you get a good night’s sleep, you hear me? And tomorrow you’re gonna live in the sunshine. Tomorrow, and for the rest of your life on this planet. You hear me, honey? You can bet on it.”

I gazed around the office. There was a bookshelf with framed photographs of the captain on the deck of a ship, the captain with a woman, the woman alone, the captain and the woman coming under an arch of swords held by midshipmen. There were a couple of books:
The Ops Officers Manual, The Bluejackets’ Manual
, various books of rules and regs from Bupers,
How to Win Friends and Influence People
, by Dale Carnegie. He glanced at the woman’s picture.

“That’s my wife,” he said in a flat voice. “She died.”

“Sorry to hear that, sir.”

“I was in love with her from high school and we got married during the war and after all that, all that damned worrying and me being torpedoed and all the rest of it, she went and died on me.”

He shook his head and turned to look again at the plant.

“She got me started on this stuff, the gardening,” he said. “When I came home from the war, she had the goddamnedest garden waiting for me. So I guess maybe, in some way, if I keep these things living, then she’s alive too. See that plant over there?” He pointed at a large green plant with leathery leaves. “That’s from our garden in Sausalito. After I sold the house, I took it with me. I
know
she’s alive in that one.”

He looked at me as if suddenly aware that he had revealed
himself to me, that he was vulnerable. He saluted smartly. I returned the salute.

“Thank you, sailor,” he said.

It was a dismissal.

“And, sailor? If you say a word about any of this to anyone, I’ll ship your ass to the Fleet Marines.”

“I understand, sir.”

I started to leave.

“Professor Longhair and the Shuffling Albanians,” he said and chuckled. “Jesus Christ …”

“Hungarians, sir,” I said, and saluted again and went out into the night.

PART

THREE

Chapter

35

T
hen began the time of my education. Miles Rayfield taught me the secrets of drawing. Bobby Bolden taught me about music. And Eden Santana taught me about everything else. Sitting here now, on a motel balcony facing the enormous Gulf evening, I try to reconstruct those hours, and although many have vanished into the blur, all seem accounted for, too. I know that I worked every day at the Supply Shack and stood my watches at the dumpster and was soon trusted with being the duty storekeeper. I know I did what I could to be a four-oh sailor and keep out of the way of Red Cannon. But I don’t have a series of sharp pictures of all those moments: What I saw and what I did are still at war with the way I felt.