The Clarinet Polka (61 page)

We didn't say good-bye or wish each other luck or any damn thing. I had a little bit of gin left in my glass, so I knocked it back, and then I just stood up and walked out.

*   *   *

During my pleasant sojourn in the Floss, I'd managed a conversation now and then with some of the other regulars, and I had it on good authority that the best bang for your buck is port wine, and if you can fortify it with a pint of grain alcohol, then you're in heaven. Well, where I was didn't feel much like heaven, but I figured maybe I could get there.

The next few days are a blur. I kept trying to stay mad at Connie, but I couldn't do it. I ran the self-loathing number for a while, but the more juice I got in me, the more I shifted into the self-pity number. Port wine mixed with grain alcohol does not produce the world's most profound thoughts, so I'm just lurching along inside my head like— Shit, I wasted four years in the air force. That's when my drinking got bad. Shit, things would have been different if Dorothy Pliszka had married me. Shit, I never should have come back to the Ohio Valley, what a mistake that was. Shit, it's not my fault Connie turned out to be totally crazy. Shit, it's not my fault I fell in love with a high school girl.

*   *   *

I stayed drunk till my money ran out, and then it was, like they say, harsh reality time. I pawned every damn thing I owned that was worth anything—my tools, my watch, my only pair of cufflinks—and I started looking for some dumb-ass job that even a drunk can do. I had a lot of faith in America, so I knew it had to be out there somewhere.

Eventually I found it—an Esso station out on Route 70. Yeah, so work was tight in the valley, but there's not a huge number of guys who'll drive out into the middle of nowhere to pump gas for minimum wage from midnight till eight in the morning. This was back before self-serve stations, right? So there had to be somebody on duty, and they didn't give a shit how drunk I was just so long as I showed up and managed to get a gas cap off and a nozzle shoved in.

But the money never lasted long enough. It's amazing how much you can drink if you put your mind to it. Well, all my life I'd seen these guys hanging around the State Store with their little routines—“Hey, buddy, I haven't had anything to eat for three days” or whatever the hell it is. I've always been an easy mark for those guys. “Hey, Sarge,” they'd say. Back in the fifties they were Korean War vets, or if you saw an older guy, he was probably a vet from the big one.

So anyhow I'm outside the State Store in Staubsville, and I'm about a buck short of a bottle. And there's this suit and tie coming by, and I say, “Hey, buddy, sorry to bother you, but I'm a Vietnam vet, and I'm having a little trouble—” He doesn't even look at me, but he reaches in his pocket, and all of a sudden I've got enough for the bottle, and I think, well okay, that wasn't so bad, was it?

You've got to be Polish to know how heavy this is. A Polish guy will do anything—shovel out furnaces, sweep railroad tracks, dig ditches, clean toilets, you name it—before he'll take anybody's charity. Living off Connie made me the lowest of the low, the scum of the earth, but begging on the street? That's not even in the realm of possibility. So you can imagine how much I was liking myself. But hell, when you ain't got the scratch, they don't give you the bottle.

Hanging around outside the State Store was pretty good, but so was hitting the bars. I'd find some place where I was sure nobody would know me, and I'd always have enough change for a beer or a boilermaker, and I'd nurse it along and get to talking to whoever was in there, and when the time was right, I'd launch into my little story—“Hey, buddy, I did two tours in Nam, you know, and things have been kind of rough since I got stateside,” and I'd throw in a few details I'd heard from Georgie, like all the thorns they've got on the plants over there. And guess what? Pretty soon there's drinks sliding down the bar at me. On a good night, there's lots of drinks. So I could get myself pretty well pissed before midnight when I had to drive out to the Esso station.

So, let's see here—you've got your small but steady income supplemented by your brilliant entrepreneurial activities, so how are you going to deal with the essentials of life? Like food, for starters? Yeah, well, first you got to get your priorities straight. Booze is number one, gas in the car is number two, smokes is number three, your flop is number four, and that puts food down there at the bottom of the list.

The cheapest thing you can get in a restaurant is either a bowl of soup or a bowl of chili. Be sure to get as many packages of crackers as they'll give you and throw in a little ketchup too. Pork and beans and corned-beef hash are two things you can eat straight out of the can. No matter how broke you are, you usually have a few cents to buy a doughnut. Try buttermilk. It's cheap, and it soothes the stomach and gives you a hit of protein.

In lots of places the Sally Ann lays out a feed for drunks. I liked the one up in Staubsville. Of course if you've got a car, you better park it a few blocks away because they don't like to see you driving up to get your free meal. The level of conversation ain't the greatest, but occasionally you'll meet some interesting characters, and you learn all kinds of useful things. Like one way to solve your smoking problem is find a public institution where they've got those big containers with sand in them—you know, sitting outside the door—and they don't let you smoke inside. The public library's your best bet. I used to hit three or four libraries, and I could pick up a dozen smokes with only a puff or two gone on them. If you think I enjoy telling you this shit, you're crazy.

*   *   *

No matter how different these stories start out, they always end up exactly the same, so you'll have to bear with me if this one is starting to sound like something you've heard before. I was losing weight fairly steady, and if I didn't keep the booze coming, I'd get the shakes—I mean, the serious shakes like a willow in a hurricane—and I was sick a lot of the time. Puking my guts out was getting to be a routine occurrence, and I was having those good old blackouts. But life was going on in that pointless way it does when you've given up completely. And from time to time I'd think, hey, the Pączki Ball must be about now; I wonder if the polka band's playing at it. Gee, I hope Mom and Dad and Linda aren't too worried about me. Oh, Christ, it's Janice's birthday. She's seventeen now. I sure hope she's okay. Memories, you know, of some other life going on somewhere else that used to really matter to me. And then I'd get this horrible sick feeling and the only thing that would fix it was another drink.

And you know what's the craziest thing? I drifted on toward spring, and sometimes I'd think it really wasn't that bad. There'd be long stretches of time when nobody stopped in the Esso station, and I'd sit in there and sip my port wine mixed with grain alcohol and watch their crappy little tube. I was really up on current affairs. I remember that poor son of a bitch Lieutenant Calley was on trial for the Mylai massacre, and I followed that with a kind of morbid fascination, thinking, yeah, well they've got to pin it on somebody, and one thing's for sure—they're not going to pin it on some
general
. But I didn't just watch the news. Hell, I'd watch anything. Old grade-B horror movies, reruns of Johnny Yuma, cooking along with Julia Child.

But even the best of times has got to come to an end, right? One night about four in the morning a car pulls in, and it's a couple young studs out catting around half loaded. One of them's Larry Dombrowczyk's little brother Eddie and the other one's Mike Sytek, and they're really amazed to see me. “Hey, Jimmy,” Eddie says, “what the hell you doing out here? I heard you was in Texas or Arkansas or some damn place.”

“Yeah, well I was,” I say.

I sold them their five bucks' worth of gas or whatever, and I watched them drive away, and I'm going, oh, shit, this is horrible. Mike Sytek's dad had worked with Old Bullet Head at the mill for years, and you remember the night I took Janice to the Japanese restaurant? Well, it was Sandy Czaplicki and Eddie Dombrowczyk who'd dropped her off at my trailer and then picked her up later.

I just felt sick. So that night I worked the rest of my shift and when the manager came in, I quit. I knew my sister really well, and Linda was perfectly capable of borrowing the old man's car and turning up at an Esso station out in the middle of nowhere at four in the morning. And the kind of kid Janice was, some night it could just as easily be her.

*   *   *

The funny thing about not working is that nobody's paying you, and panhandling only gets you so far, and one day I'm down to like thirty-seven cents and that's not even going to buy me a beer. So what can I do about it? The answer to that one, naturally, is to go hit Connie up for a couple bucks. So what about my pride or my self-respect or any of that other good shit? Well, screw that, man. We all know that the next drink's the only thing that counts.

So I drive over to Connie's, and there's a sign in front that says “FOR RENT, NICE SUNNY ONE-BEDROOM APARTMENT.” I walk around to the back and have myself a look, and I'm staring in through the clean shiny windows at a bunch of empty rooms. Naturally Connie left the place immaculate. Whew, I'm thinking, that was fast. She probably saw her chance to make her break, and she took it. I'm pissed off, of course, but I also can't help thinking, good for you, Constance. Good luck to you.

*   *   *

After that, panhandling got to be my main occupation, and grim as it is, you can keep running on it a fairly long time. I'd drive ten or fifteen miles in any direction and find the State Store, and I'd work it for a couple hours, and then I'd hit all the bars. I had my act down real good by then, and I sure looked the part. Some nights it wasn't worth warm piss, but other nights I could really score.

So one night I'm working this bar in Staubsville, and I'm talking to this older guy—a machinist, I think he said he was—but anyhow a working stiff, so he's careful with his money. But I've almost got him reaching for his wallet—yeah, and I'm right at the clincher where I'm saying, “So we're humping the boonies, and there's not a sign of Charlie. And then, ka-BOOM—trip wire rigged to a Claymore, and all hell breaks loose—” and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I hear this quiet voice saying, “Come on, Jimmy. You was never in Nam.”

It was dark in that goddamned bar, but to this day I'll never know how I missed seeing him in there. Georgie Mondrowski. He wasn't supposed to be up in Staubsville. What the hell was he doing up in Staubsville? Why the hell wasn't he down in South Raysburg where he belonged? He's walked over to the end of the bar where I'm standing, and he's pretty damn drunk, and he's stoned out of his mind, and of course he hasn't seen me in months, and he's giving me this real puzzled look, like, hey, something's wrong with this picture, and if you give me a minute or two, maybe I can figure out what it is.

“What's the problem, Georgie?” I say. “You forget who you're talking to, or what? I did two tours in Nam. You know that.” And all the time giving him the old wink wink, you know, like, for Christ's sake man, can't you see what I'm doing here? This guy's about to sprout for a couple drinks.

Georgie is just not getting it. “No,” he says. “You was in the war, Jimmy, but you was never in Vietnam.”

“Oh, for God's sake,” I yell at him, “sure I was,” and he decks me. I mean just that fast. No warning. POW, he just punches me a good one.

I'm flat on my back and kind of, you know, stunned. I put my hand on my face, and it comes away bloody. And the bartender and some other gorilla have got Georgie in the old bum's rush, and whoosh, he's out the door. Then they're yanking me to my feet, and whoosh, I'm out the door.

When you've had the classic bum's rush slapped on you, they get you running real good, and the only way to stay on your feet is to keep right on running. So I'm lurching forward, trying to get my balance, you know, waving my arms, and I collide right into Georgie, and we sort of hang on to each other and go stumbling off, and he's crying like his heart's broke.

I've never heard anybody cry like that. Every time he tries to catch his breath, he just howls. He keeps trying to say something, but he can't get it out. We've got our arms around each other's shoulders, and we're staggering off somewhere, God knows where. I'm the one bleeding like a stuck pig, but he's the one who's crying. Finally he gets out what he's been trying to say—“I'm sorry, Jimmy.”

“Hey, forget it, asshole,” I say. “Don't worry about it.”

Where else can you go but the river? We end up down on the bank, and he can't stop crying. I keep patting his shoulder and saying, “Come on, man. Come on. It's okay. I don't give a shit. You want to hit me again? That make you feel any better?”

But nothing I say makes him feel any better. He keeps trying to catch his breath, and then he goes off into another crying jag. Finally he gets so he can talk—you know, in little bursts—and every horrible thing is coming out. We're down there in the jungle, and we're blowing away Gooks right, left, and center. In Vietnamese, they say, “
Xin loi
.” That means something like, “Sorry about that,” so you shoot first and think about it later, and if you've just wasted somebody like an old guy taking a crap by the side of the road, you go, “
Xin loi
, motherfucker.”

He's telling me about this buddy of his, or that buddy of his, and how they bought it. He's telling me about the sharpened bamboo stakes covered with shit and how easy it is to get yourself impaled on them. He's telling me about the trip wires and the mines set right at the level so you'd catch it in the balls. He's telling me that Charlie knows how GIs are suckers for little kids, so Charlie wires up a satchel charge to a two-year-old and sends him toddling over. He's telling me the horrible stuff Charlie does to his own people who are playing ball with the Yanks.