Loving Women (56 page)

“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe I am.”

Now Madame Nareeta moved her hand behind her back again and the crowd roared and then she unhooked the bra and I wished that Dixie would slide under the table and open my fly.

“You got woman trouble on your face, boy,” she said. “And somethin’ else …”

“A friend of mine died.”

“I heard that.”

“He was my best friend, I think.”

“And what was the woman?”

The crowd roared as Madame Nareeta bent forward, shaking and shuddering, letting the unhooked bra hang loose, then wriggling out of it.

“I don’t know
what
the woman was,” I said.

“Then you’ll never get over it,” Dixie Shafer said.

Staring at Madame Nareeta I felt like crying. She had little red plastic stars pasted over her nipples, and was dancing with more movement, writhing and bending, while someone yelled from the dark: “What color is your
hair
, honey?”

And I turned to Dixie and kissed her on the mouth, running my hands through her piled hair, wanting to get lost in her abundance, my cock so hard I thought I would come. She whispered, “Happy Sal’s birthday, sailor,” and the crowd roared as Madame Nareeta stepped out of her panties, wearing only a G-string now, all glittery and promising more.

I glanced over at the bar and my hard-on vanished. Red Cannon
was talking to a sailor in uniform. And I saw the man’s face as he turned. Jack Turner. From that first long lonesome bus ride from New York. They watched Madame Nareeta in a clinical way. She was now down on the floor, her legs bent back under her, her crotch aimed at the audience. I finished my fourth beer. And as Madame Nareeta played with her G-string, teasing the roaring crowd about the color of her hair, I got up.

I eased between the packed tables. A lot of sailors and Marines were standing along the back wall. I headed for the bar. Maybe this was foolish. Maybe it made no sense. But it was time for me to do something about Miles.

Jack Turner saw me first.

“Well, hello there, sailor. Long time. How
are
ya?”

I shook his hand and said hello at the moment that Madame Nareeta flipped the G-string aside. The roar was gigantic. Sailors and Marines stomped on the floor, beat hands and glasses against tables. I leaned past Turner.

“Red,” I said, “I want you outside.”

He didn’t even blink. “Get outta here, boy,” he said, “ ’fore I call yore momma.”

Turner put a hand on my forearm.

“Hey, what’s this all about?”

“It’s none of your business, Jack. This is strictly between me and Red.”

“What you mean?”

“Red killed a friend of mine.”

Red said, “You mean that damned
queer
?”

He sipped a drink casually and watched coldly as Madame Nareeta did a farewell bump for the crowd, which was standing and pleading from the hot darkness “more, more, more.” I wished I had words to use against Red Cannon, some amazing set of arguments and lines. I didn’t. So I reached over and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. Turner muscled his way between us, his face next to mine, and said in a hard way: “You better
leave
, sailor.”

Red smiled thinly and put a hand on Turner’s shoulder.

“Leave ’im be, Jack,” he said. “I think mebbe I’d better kick his gahdam ass.”

Then we were bumping our way through the crowd and out past the bouncer to the parking lot. I was suddenly afraid and feeling weak. But it was too late. I led the way. When I turned around to
face Red Cannon, he hit me and knocked me down. I felt no pain. Just a whiteness. I rolled, expecting a kick and a stomp and I wanted to protect my balls. The kick never came.

“Better git up, boy,” Red said calmly, “an’ take yo beating.”

I got up and faced him and saw a short, hard-muscled man, his hands held at chest level, his face blank. He looked as if he knew what he was doing, and was going to enjoy it; if I let him, he was sure to give me that beating. I moved away from him, feeling lightheaded, and raised my hands and tried to remember everything I’d ever learned in Brooklyn. I was going to need it all.

He came in a rush and threw another right hand and I bent at the knees to go under it and the punch glanced off the side of my head. I hooked hard to his belly, threw a right that missed, then hooked again and heard him grunt. That one hurt. Now I heard shouts and saw Turner’s anxious face and about six Marines coming from a car and then I got knocked down again. One of the Marines shouted, “Go
Navy
! On you
ass
.” And Red said, “Get the hell out of here, jarhead.” And then I was up and feeling panicky, afraid not of pain but embarrassment, and the fear drove me at Red and I got punched hard in the belly and bent over and punched in the upper arms and heard a voice say: “
Kick
his ass,
kick
his fucking niggerloving ass.” And was punched again and felt nauseated and hit again and then saw Gabree.

The Marine from the Mainside gate.

From the night I took Bobby Bolden to the hospital.

From the night Eden Santana got scared right out of my life.

He was leaning against the hood of a car, watching me take my beating.

I decided not to take the beating. I shoved Red off me and stood up behind a jab and speared him with it. Once. Twice. Again. Backing him up. Then as he came at me I slammed home a right hand, hitting him between the eyes. Blood spurted from his nose. He looked surprised. I stepped to the left and drove a hook to his body, stopped, twisted inside with an uppercut and hit him on the chin and knocked him down.

I wanted to finish him off right there, end my own fear by stomping him into the gravel. But he’d let
me
up; I had to let
him
up. There were more Marines watching us and they cheered as Red got up slowly, a small tentative smile on his bloodied face. He came at me and I hit him, knowing now that I had to time my punches
to his rush, and then he paused, turned as if quitting, then suddenly rushed again. I stepped aside and he plowed past me into the group of Marines.

That’s when the fight changed.

One of the Marines shoved him. Then another. They formed a circle around him, trapping him, punching him on the shoulders and back, shoving him. He seemed suddenly small and bedraggled and sad. I saw blood leaking from his brow and dripping from his nose.

I looked at Turner.

We didn’t wait.

We rushed at the Marines, and I went crazy, a roar coming from inside me, fighting now without rules, a sailor leaping on jarhead backs to break the circle around another sailor named Red. I ripped an elbow across Gabree’s face, bent him over with a knee in the balls, then kicked him hard on the side of the face. Someone knocked me down with a punch from my blind side. I grabbed a thick-soled boot and pulled and a Marine went down and I stood up and stomped him hard. Red Cannon was fighting two of them, his face a ghastly smear, his shirt torn off his back and I knocked one of them down and then saw Turner on his belly on the ground, not moving, and then there were more Marines coming at me and Red, and I was heaved through the air and bounced off the hood of a car.

I got up slowly.

Everything hurt.

I leaned on the car and saw three Marines trying to hammer Red Cannon into the gravel. I couldn’t move. It was as if I were watching some movie. Red stood with his legs spread apart and his hands up, refusing to let them knock him down. Then they stopped for a moment. One of them stared at him, measuring. Another slipped off his garrison belt, wrapped it around his hand. They started taking shots at Red. First one. Then the other. Red sneered.

Finally I moved, climbing up on the car hood. I screamed and jumped toward the nearest Marine and brought him down. Suddenly Gabree was coming at me, swinging his belt too, the buckle huge, and then behind him I saw Sal.

And Max.

Maher and Dunbar and Parsons.

And Dixie Shafer too, reaching for something in her bag.

The cavalry.

Gabree turned. I got up. And saw more Marines and other sailors coming out of the Miss Texas Club and then we were fighting all over the parking lot.

I trapped Gabree between two parked cars and grabbed him by the hair and beat his head against a fender until he fell away. Thinking:
for Bobby Bolden
. Thinking:
for Miles Rayfield
. Thinking:
for Eden Santana
. Until I was spun around and whacked in the head by a tall freckled Marine and then saw him pulled back, turned, and hit by Sal. The freckled Marine went down. Sal stomped on his ankles and went back for another Marine, looking joyous, laughing like a maniac. I saw Max about forty feet away, holding a Marine by the wrists and whirling him around and around, faster and faster, as if playing a kids’ game. Then he let him go. The man sailed about ten feet and made a sick thumping sound against the side of a pickup truck.

Sailors and Marines were fighting everywhere. Dixie was cracking fallen Marines on the head with a short blackjack. There were sailors down too. Jack Turner hadn’t moved yet. I started for him and then a Marine sergeant pulled me around. I felt as if I couldn’t lift my hands.

“
Freeze
there, sailor,” he shouted. “Don’t
move
.”

I threw a punch at his face, and he blinked, and then he threw a punch, and I went under it and took a deep breath and ripped a punch into his belly and he went down to a sitting position, his hands out on either side of him as if looking for something to grab on to, and I kicked him in the face.

Then I heard Sal yelling, his voice wild and urgent.

“Here they
come
!”

The Shore Patrol.

Three jeeploads of them were racing down the highway, heading for the parking lot of the Miss Texas Club.

The fight was over.

I looked at the woods beyond the parking lot and started to run. Then I heard a voice on a bullhorn.

“Everybody stop where they are. You are all under arrest. Don’t move or you’ll be shot!”

Nobody obeyed. Sailors and Marines started running in various directions. I stayed low, moving between the parked cars, heading for the woods. I heard a gunshot. Then another. I was very scared
now but kept moving. There was a third gunshot, far behind me. Muffled shouts. A trace of music from the Miss Texas Club. And then I was in the woods.

I stopped behind a tree and looked back. Two Shore Patrolmen were leading Maher to a waiting jeep. Jack Turner was up, looking hurt, a Shore Patrolman talking to him. Dixie was shaking her fists. I had a stitch in my side from running and my hands hurt and there was a dull throb at the base of my skull. I heard sirens in the distance. An ambulance or more Shore Patrol. I moved deeper into the woods. The others would find their way back to Ellyson. I’d have to do it too.

Soon everything was dark. I could smell salt on the light breeze. The night was cooler. The ground rose and the woods thinned, the trees more frail and the earth sandier beneath my feet. Up ahead, through the thin stands of trees, I could see the sky brightening. I climbed up a sandy ridge and stopped.

Before me lay the sea.

The empty beach was silvery under the quarter moon. I stood there for a long moment, gulping the salt air, listening for pursuers. My nose was tender, clogged with blood. My side teeth were loose. My hands throbbed. I started walking toward the sea, pulling my jumper over my head, stripping away my T-shirt. I wanted everything off me, the clothes, the dirt, the blood. And by the time I reached the sea, I was naked.

I made a pile of the uniform, my shorts and T-shirt, socks and shoes. I had seventy-eight dollars in my wallet, the great payday haul. I pushed the wallet into the sand under the uniform. And then I turned, walking quickly, and plunged into the cold waters of the Gulf.

Weightless now, turning in the sea, feeling it against my balls and back, the pain seemed to leave me. I dove under the surface, where there were no Marines and no Red Cannon, no musicians with broken hands, no painters with broken necks, no sailors with broken hearts, except me. I wanted to stay there forever. And realized suddenly how easy it would be to die. To just stay there until everything turned black and I was gone too. I would be at peace. There would be no scandal, as there was with Miles Rayfield, and no shame either; they would all just believe that I drowned. Exhausted from the great fight at the Miss Texas Club. Sad. A tragedy.

Good-bye. It would all be over. And then, plunging deeper, my lungs hurting, I panicked.

I didn’t want to die.

Not in the dark of the roadless sea.

I wanted to see Eden Santana at least one more time. Just once. To say what I’d never had a chance to say. A final plea. Or a proper good-bye.

I kicked and pushed against the sea, and felt a current dragging at me, and pushed harder, and felt my lungs bursting, and a whiteness blossoming in my brain; kicked harder, pushed, heading for the surface, panicked again when I thought I was going the wrong way, that I was plunging deeper, suddenly afraid that I’d never make it, that I would die without choosing, without saying good-bye, and then burst to the surface, gulping air, treading water, staring up at thick clusters of stars.

I lived.

And living, floating on the water, eyes closed, hearing the roar of the surf and a distant foghorn, I wanted to be finished with the Navy. I had two years to go. More. An endless time. And I didn’t want to go back. I wanted to float here, weightless, naked, forever. Thinking of dying and how easy it was, I was no longer afraid of the Navy. If I went to find Eden, what could they do?
Kill
me?

Suddenly I was exhilarated and began to swim to shore. I came up on the beach and clasped my knees and sucked in air. I could feel the sea salt drying on my naked skin. I stood up straight and then immediately crouched low. There was someone about fifty yards down the beach standing where my clothes were piled.

For a moment I was full of fear. It could be the Shore Patrol, tracking me from the woods and the parking lot. Maybe some Marine was dead. Stomped to death between parked cars. I considered slipping back into the sea. I thought about running. But I was naked. I wouldn’t last long on a highway trying to get back to Ellyson Field. And my money was there, tucked into the sand under the uniform. I had no real choice. If it was the Shore Patrol, my ass had had it. But it could be just a beachcomber, some rummy washed up on the Gulf. Either way, I had to get my clothes and money. Whatever the risk. I started walking through the sand toward the person who was standing beside my clothes.