The Patron Saint of Liars (22 page)

"Betty," she said to Perry and shook his hand. She shook hands with all of us and asked us where we were from. Then someone put a song on the jukebox and she got up to dance with Dee, even though there wasn't really a dance floor. Jim and Sam and Perry and I watched them like they were a movie. We were all drunk, but Dee was drunk and dancing.

Then a guy around sixty came over and sat down with us and bought everyone a round of drinks. "I was a marine myself," he said when we raised our glasses to him. "The Great War. Hell of a war." We nodded.

"What's that on your hand?" Perry said. He probably wouldn't have asked that way, except that we were all so drunk whatever came to our minds came out of our mouths.

The man, who said his name was Louder, rolled up his shirt sleeve and showed us a snake that went all the way around his forearm. I could tell by the yellow and brown on its back and the diamond shape of its head that it was supposed to be a cottonmouth. Its red tongue was out, lying on the top of his hand. I wondered why anyone would want a cottonmouth on his arm. "This one's basic training," he said, tapping the snake on the head. "I got plenty others, but I'm not going to take my shirt off. It's too damn cold in here. You know what they say, can't be a marine without a tattoo."

And that was all we needed to hear, because nobody was going to tell us we weren't marines. We were all out of our chairs and on our feet. I went to get Dee. "We're going for tattoos," I said. "Come on."

But Dee only pulled Betty closer and pushed his face into her hair. "You crazy?"

"Marines have tattoos," I said. "Are you a marine or what?"

"I'm a dancing marine." They did a sloppy half turn so that all of the sudden I was facing Betty. She gave me a wink. I wasn't sure what it was supposed to mean.

"We'll go without him," I said to the others.

"Without Dee?" Sam said.

"It's either that or no tattoos." I downed the last of my drink and then the last of Dee's drink, which he had left sitting on the table. It served him right.

"You boys know where to go?" Louder said to us when we were almost to the door.

We stopped, looked back, shook our heads.

He pulled himself into his coat and got to the front of the line. "Come on, I'll take you down there, but I'm not going to stay and watch. I never watch a tattoo. Not even my own."

It was nearly midnight, but Louder said the place stayed open late. "I oughta get a commission," he said. It wasn't too far from the bar, and I was glad since the cold was starting to creep up under my coat. There was a sign in the window that said,
TATTOOS WHILE YOU WAIT
. It was lit up like a soda shop, full of guys I knew and guys from other companies, all as drunk as me. They all said hello and tried to make room for us on the edges of chairs. The place smelled like rubbing alcohol, like gin.

"None of you planning on throwing up, are you?" a small, burly man said to us when we came in. We shook our heads. "Well if you are, go outside." He took a silent count of heads. "It's gonna be awhile."

"We've got until midnight," Jim said.

The man handed us books so we could pick out what we wanted. When his sleeves rode up above his wrist we caught sight of the edge of a world, the tails of things hanging down beneath his cuffs. He called for the next fellow in line to come behind the curtain. Louder looked around.

"Just like the old days," he said.

I was more sure than ever that this was the thing to do, what with so many of the guys there doing it. A fellow named Pinsky whose bunk was near the front of the Quonset hut stepped out from the back, buttoning up his shirt. "They've got three guys working back there," he said. "You won't have to wait too long."

"Hurt much?" I asked him, and then was sorry because the question didn't sound very marine.

He looked at me, his eyes glazed over from bourbon or something else. "You bet," he said, and stepped through the door without a coat.

Jim and Perry went back first, Jim for an eagle with a flag twisted in his talons and Perry for a snake like Louder's, which seemed to make Louder happy. He stayed with us after all and talked about something that I couldn't quite hear. I was thinking about my tattoo, which would say Cecilia. I picked out the kind of letters I wanted. I thought of how happy she would be to see her name there, on my arm like it was on most every tree and park bench in Ashland City. I had carved it in so many places that it was almost a joke in town, every tree named Cecilia. When a very short man with smooth black hair and a careful little mustache called me back I told him what I wanted.

"Big or small?" he said. There was no interest in his voice. There was talk that they'd done more than a hundred and fifty tattoos since liberty began that afternoon. He was tired and didn't care about my love life.

"Pretty big," I said, "from about there to there." I marked out the place on my arm and he started to wash it off.

"Write it down," he said, and gave me a pencil and paper. "I don't want to make a mistake. My spelling's not so good."

So I wrote down her name on a piece of paper and held it up with my other hand while he worked. After every letter he finished, he checked it again.

His hand shook a little while he worked the electric needle, probably just from being so tired. When it was done I looked at it and for the first time I felt married, like the whole ceremony was done and Cecilia was mine. "That's good," I said to the tattoo man.

My voice seemed to startle him, almost like I woke him up. "Yeah?" he said. "You think?" He looked at my arm like he'd never seen it before. "It's not bad, really."

I tipped him a dollar over the price and went back out into the waiting room.

Jim and Perry were finished, but Sam was still getting worked on, so I sat down and waited with the rest of them. I was starting to sober up a little and was sorry for it. I could feel a sting in my arm that I hadn't before. Then Sam came into the waiting room with his shirt off. He was still as drunk as he'd been in the bar. He was smaller than the rest of us, but he'd kept up. It must have hit him harder. "Look at this," he said, and turned his shoulder toward us. That tattoo was a little red, but it was clear enough from where we sat. Jim and Perry started to howl. It said Cecilia.

"You son of a bitch," I said, and I went for him across the waiting room. All the chairs, the black and white tile floor, the pictures of tattoos taped to the wall, turned into a blur. There was just no stopping me, though I guess a few people tried. I was a fullback and I moved through the room of would-be marines like water and got to Sam. It was like somebody just handed him to me, and I had him by the shoulders and up in the air. I can still see his face above my face. It was pale and red and a little broken out. His blue eyes were rimmed with water and there was a pain and fear I hadn't seen before. "My arm," he said, crying. "My arm. Put me down."

But I didn't put him down as much as throw him down, through the curtain and onto the table where someone I didn't know was having the word
America
carved into his chest. The tattoo man I'd tipped five minutes before looked at me like someone he'd never seen before in his life.

"I'll call the Shore Patrol," the burly man said. "Stupid, drunk bastards."

So then I went for him, hating him exactly the way I had hated Sam a minute before. All I wanted to do was fight, that quick I'd gone crazy, seeing her name like she was the one who put it there. Jim took hold of my arm and so I turned to go for him, but when I saw his face he said, "Son, hey. Son," and I heard him. "We need to get out of here now," Jim said.

Perry went and picked up Sam and helped him into his shirt. We were all so good at getting dressed quick in those days, and the four of us were out the door, and it was all forgotten. We were running together, stumbling half blind and laughing at what, I can't imagine. I never saw Sam's tattoo again.

The next morning was a hell that nobody accounted for, 'cause the day went on same as ever, four-thirty wake-up, four-forty-five run. Each beer and whiskey was with us as we went through our course. And nobody's arm felt like lifting a field pack either. It's the day
after
liberty that folks should talk about, but I guess it doesn't make as good a story.

It was that day I got my assignment to stand guard duty, midnight to four
A. M.
I wasn't any too pleased, seeing as how all I was thinking about was the night's sleep I'd be having, but there was no arguing with the marines. At eleven-thirty I got up and got dressed in the dark, careful not to wake up Dee in his bunk, took my rifle, and headed out into the night. I was lucky, since it wasn't as cold as it had been the night before and it wasn't raining. Actually, it was a pretty night, and standing guard wasn't too bad as long as you could stay awake. It was the first time I'd been alone and so I walked back and forth in front of my post and thought about Cecilia. With all that time I could think of her as long as I wanted to. It felt like a luxury, like a bath, to remember whole conversations we'd had without anyone interrupting. I'd tried to do it at night, but I was always so tired I just fell asleep after a minute or two. I imagined our wedding, the Lighthouse Baptist Church done up in flowers. Magnolias were her favorite, but there'd be no way of getting them that time of year. In the summer I'd go around cutting off magnolia branches. I took so many I had to start doing it at night. I tried to get them mostly out of the woods, but a lot of the good trees are the ones growing in people's yards. Then I would go and leave them on Cecilia's doorstep, their stems bound together with twine, so many flowers they made their own tree.

That's what I was thinking about when I heard the jeep drive up. I snapped up straight, worried at first that I'd been thinking so much and that my thoughts had taken me too far away. I felt like my thoughts of Cecilia were spread out on the ground, that I had been caught touching her clothes.

"Halt," I said, trying to make my voice sound like something a person would halt for. "Who goes there?" I pointed my rifle out toward the bright headlights of the jeep.

"Corporal of the guard."

"Advance and be recognized," I said. I still couldn't see him with the lights in my eyes.

He turned off the jeep and got out and I blinked, trying to adjust to the darkness. "What's your name, marine?" he said.

"Sir, my name is Wilson Abbott, 276559, sir."

"Abbott, what is the first general order?"

I was relieved, 'cause that was the one I could always remember. I told him I'd walk my post in a military manner. I told him the whole thing.

"At ease," he said.

They were the sweetest words in the language back then. It meant that things were going to be all right. I took a step to the side and looked at him.

"Corporal of the guard come to smoke," he said, and tapped a Camel out of his pack and lit it. "Not too bad out here tonight."

"Sir, no, sir."

"Anything to report?"

"Sir, no, sir."

He probably wasn't more than nineteen or twenty, but on that night he was so far my superior that I couldn't imagine we could have gone to high school together. He pulled on his cigarette, leaned back his head, and blew the smoke straight up. Bill Lovell was his name, I remember that. I waited and tried not to watch him, thinking he would finish his cigarette and go on, but he seemed to make it last and when he was finished, he lit another one off its end. He took the one that was done and field-stripped it, flicking off the burning end, scattering the tobacco, and rolling what paper was left into the smallest ball you could imagine.

"You smoke, Abbott?"

"Sir, yes, sir."

"Well then, have a smoke with me." He took a cigarette from his pack, lit it, and handed it to me. I can't describe this so that it would make any sense to someone who hadn't been there, but this was just short of a miracle; the corporal of the guard giving me a cigarette at my post. I took it and thanked him. "Where you from, Abbott?"

"Sir, Ashland City, Tennessee, sir."

"Never heard of it."

"Sir, no, sir," I said. I wanted to ask him where he was from, how long he'd been there, but I didn't want him to think that if he gave me a cigarette I'd take it as a sign that I could do anything I wanted, so I just kept quiet and enjoyed the smoke.

He looked around the camp. It must have been three in the morning. Nothing was moving, nothing awake. Then he looked at me. "It sure would be a shame if you had to shoot anybody with that weapon," he said. "Springfield was fine in the Great War, but you'll need better than that to fight Tojo. I hear his boys have weapons we haven't even thought about yet."

"Sir, yes, sir."

The corporal of the guard stripped his second cigarette. I did the same.

"Seems to me they should be giving everybody side arms, like this," he said, and pulled a gun out of his holster. ".45. Now there's a weapon to fight with."

It was a hell of a gun. If you didn't want to shoot somebody with it you could use it to hit him over the head and kill him just the same. I'd seen pictures of them, but I'd never been up close to one. Right there, in his hand, you could tell it would have nearly the kick of my Springfield. All the power without the size.

"You interested in weapons, Abbott?"

"Sir, yes, sir."

"I figured, you being from Tennessee. Tennessee and Texas, there're two states that know from firearms." He pulled the slide back and forth, ejecting four rounds. They popped out of the chamber and made a dull sound when they hit the dirt. "When you do this," he said, "you're taking off the safety and putting back the hammer. See? Now it's ready to go. Course, there's another safety here, in the grip. This weapon does all your thinking for you." He put the .45 flat in his outstretched hand. "I can't let you hold it," he said, "but it's heavier than you'd think it would be." He moved his hand up and down slowly, like he was a scale. "Nearly five pounds with the clip in. Just right, just enough to really give you something to hold onto."