Tree of Smoke (29 page)

“Till I get back.”

“How long is that, man?”

“Corporal Jollet,” said Fisher, “please. We just came from the States. We don’t know where we are.”

“I know where you are. So just stay where you are till I get back.”

The woman returned carrying four bottles by their necks, two in each hand. Jollett intercepted her, took one, said, “Thank you very much,” and disappeared.

And here they sat while the woman wiped the sweat off their beers with a bar rag. She was very small and wore a lot of makeup too white for her dark complexion.

“This beer tastes like pimple medicine,” Fisher declared.

Evans said, “What was the name of this town again?”

James tipped his beer to his mouth and guzzled and tried to think. He drank half of it down, but no thoughts came. The beer tasted like any other. “We didn’t need them Yankees anyway,” he said.

“
I
needed them. I’m
lost
,” Fisher said. “I’m a Yankee too,” he pointed out.

The woman said, “You want floor show?”

“Beer now,” Evans said. “Floor show later. Okay?”

She leaned down and said directly to James, “You want bo-jup?”

“What did she say?”

“’Scuse me,” James said, “did you mean to say, you know,
blow
job, are you saying?”

“Bullshit.”

“That’s what she said.”

“Oh, holy Jesus God,” Fisher said.

“How much is it?”

“One time right now two dollar.”

“Can you believe this?”

“Somebody loan me two dollars,” James said.

“You’re the one with the money.”

“I ain’t got it,” James said.

“What’s your name?” Evans said.

“My name Lowra,” she said.

“That means Laura, right?”

“I give you good bo-jup.”

“Beer now, bo-jup later,” Evans said. He looked pale and amazed.

Rapidly James finished his 33 beer, the only thing in this environment he felt qualified to deal with. In a corner at several tables shoved together sat a gang of youngsters in white uniforms, sailors from a foreign land, all holding or wearing berets of a color indeterminate in this dimness, most of them with whores in their laps. Nearby the famous jukebox throbbed redly like a forge. In a central spot three couples slow-danced, hardly moving, to “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.” A tall GI kissed his partner in an endless, terrifying kiss, enshrouding her in his arms, hunched over her and devouring her face. The couples continued in exactly the same fashion while the machine stopped its music, while it whirred and deliberated. When the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann” came on, the foreign sailors sang along sloppily. James felt like joining in, but he was too shy. Whatever the rhythm, the dancers stood like zombies grappling in a trance. “I think those sailor-looking guys are French,” Evans said. “Yeah, they’re French.”

The three men of the infantry sat watching the dancers while the jukebox played some woman singing “Makin’ Whoopee” and then another doing “The Girl from Ipanema.”

When Laura came around and asked again about a floor show, Fisher said, “Voulez vous coucher avec moi?” and she said, “Mais oui, monsieur, boo-coo fuck-you,” and the three broke down in hilarious embarrassment, and she left them with a quick, dismissive air.

“Buy me a beer, Houston.”

“I done bought you one. Buy me one now.”

Evans said to James: “You dildo-sniffer.”

“What’s that? What’s a dildo-sniffer?”

“I think it’s fairly obvious.”

James thought not. “What’s a dildo?” he asked Fisher.

“You got any money?”

“Where’s my two dollars?”

“Ask them.”

“Don’t I get no change back?”

“Ask them.”

“I ain’t asking anybody anything.”

“Shut up,” Evans said, “let me count. You know what? In this room there’s more women than guys. There’s fifteen women.”

“Would you fuck one?”

“What do you mean? Of course I would. I’d fuck all of them.”

“They’re kind of ugly,” Fisher said.

“Kind of, yeah,” James said, “but not exactly.” He stared at one across the room—pug-nosed, sexy-lipped. Her flat, noncommittal gaze provoked him.

“I’ll buy, and then you buy,” Evans told Fisher.

“Deal.”

“Deal.”

“So go get them.”

“You go get them.”

“You’re buying, so you get them.”

“Fine, fucker,” Evans said. “Is everybody twenty-one? Can I check your ID?”

“Are you gonna get them beers or not?” James said.

“Yes.” Evans crossed into the smoky gloom as if moving forward out of the trenches, as if this were finally the war.

When he got back he seemed happy with himself. “One more beer and I’m ready to dance. But really. Houston. Hey. How old are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? You don’t know? I’m nineteen. There, I told you, so you tell me.”

“Eighteen.”

“Eighteen?”

“Me too,” Fisher said.

The jukebox started playing “Walk on By” by Dionne Warwick.

A fat whore who seemed to be dancing all by herself nearby turned slowly, and in doing so revealed a short man almost dangling in her embrace, his head on her breast. Two-inch heels on his cowboy boots made his rear end jut like a woman’s. Fisher started laughing at the couple and showed no ability to restrain himself.

The man disengaged himself from his partner and came to their table. He was smiling, but when Fisher stood up, the little man said, “Do you want to get knocked down?”

“No.”

“Well, don’t stand so tall-up and so bloody fucking close, then. How tall are you?”

“Tall enough.”

“Tall enough to get knocked down,” the man said, mainly to the others. He wore jeans and a madras shirt. He was short, wide, round-headed. “How tall?”

“I don’t know.”

“How many feet and inches, Yank?”

“Six feet five inches.”

“Jesus bloody hell.”

“You couldn’t knock me down,” Fisher said.

“He’s just being friendly,” James put in.

“I’m just saying what I think,” Fisher said, “about knocking me down.”

“Sounds like you’ve grown your beer muscles now, mate.”

“I’m just stating a fact.”

“Oh, yeah, he’s got his beer muscles right big all over him!”

“Who
are
you?”

“I’m Walsh of the Australian merchant marine. I’m nine stone in weight and one hundred fifty-two centimeters tall, and I’ll fight all four of you all at once, or one at a time. Let’s start with the toughest. Who’s the toughest? Come on. You the toughest?”

“I don’t think so,” said James.

“You don’t want to be taking me on, if you’re the toughest or not,” the Aussie said. To Fisher he said, “How about you, big fella? Think you can just throw me up on the roof, big fella?”

“You’re a ornery li’l shit, but I’ll throw you up on the roof,” Fisher said, laughing.

Little Walsh was outraged. “You’ll throw me up on the roof? Get out here. Get out here. Come and throw me up on the roof, come on outside.” He wheeled and headed for the door.

Fisher followed him, somewhat baffled. “Oh, shit,” he said, “I’m going to get beat on by a midget wrestler.”

Houston and Evans went too. Outside in the muddy street, where they got no light except what fell through the doorway, Walsh primed himself for battle by working his shoulders, flexing his hands, arching himself backward, bending over forward, touching his palms to the dirt. “Come on.” Fisher stooped with his arms outstretched, as if preparing to lift a child. His opponent weaved left and right, bobbed his head, dropped his left shoulder in a quick feint, shot out his right hand, and apparently threw dirt in Fisher’s eyes. Fisher stood upright, blinking, squinting, open-mouthed. The Aussie kicked him in the groin, ran around behind him, and lashed out with the bottom of his foot twice, rapidly, first at the crook of Fisher’s knee and then at his spine, and sent the big boy sprawling on his face with his hands wrapped around his crotch.

The Aussie bent over him and shouted, “Wake up, ya lazy bastid!”

By this time the French sailors and their girls had come out to watch, but it was already over.

Walsh helped Fisher to his feet. James and Evans lent a hand. “Come on, get up, get up. Enough of our shenanigans, it’s time for a hefty lager amongst us boys.”

Inside, he joined the youths at their table, pulling his fat whore onto his lap. “Don’t fight the little fella. Never fight the little fella. We’re here amongst you giants because we’ve survived, and we’ve survived because we’re tougher than God. All right, then! Beers for everyone! Christ!” he suddenly shouted. “I smell cherry! Who’s cherry here?” He looked around among their blank faces. “Have none of ya never had a fuck? That’s all right. The beer’s on me, boys. I bullied you, I snookered on ya shamefully, and I’m a bastid of the low degree. But Christ, I only weigh nine stone. And I’m hung like a hummingbird. Right, honey? Tiny-tiny!”

His girl said, “I like tiny-tiny. I don’t like bick dick.”

Girls surrounded them. A girl sat in Fisher’s lap. A girl stood beside James’s chair, playing with his ear. She leaned down and whispered, “Let’s go fuck.” The one in Fisher’s lap said to him, “I like bick dick.” Her zoris dangled from her toes above the floor. She had a funny face. Huge slanted cheekbones. She looked like an elf. He told her, “Get off me. My balls hurt. I don’t love you.”

“I’m fifty-nine and three-quarter inches tall. Survival is my chiefest consideration at this altitude. I’ve got to be aggressive.” Walsh pushed at his woman’s rump and said, “I want beers all around for these brave lads of the American Army. Did you brave lads see the sign out front? In the days of yesteryear this place was called Lou’s, and there was a big Coca-Cola sign that said ‘Lou’s,’ and the small sign out front said ‘Floor Show Any Time.’ But one night a drunken Aussie of the merchant marine karate-chopped the sign and broke it off. Me. Yeah! That was me gave this place the famous name. Where’s your home, big fella?”

“Pittsburgh. And I wish I was there.”

“You’re a game lad, Pittsburgh. Here’s my hand in friendship. Never fight the little man. He’s learnt to bring you down. I’ve been around the world in ships, and I’ve learnt to bring the victory home. I’m one hundred fifty-two centimeters in height, and shall never grow another. And the floor show’s on me.”

James tried dancing with his woman. She came close against him, soft and hot, and her hair was stiff and she smelled like baby powder. When he asked her name she said, “I make my name for you”—her ripe, sassy lips. The rhythm was driving, but they slow-danced together in the ruby light of the jukebox. Walsh paid for the beers. They sang songs with the French sailors, one of whom danced on the table in his underpants while the others shook up their beers and sprayed him with foam. Walsh arm-wrestled the table and beat them, every last one. He paid for the floor show, but they had to pay a man in a striped gangster suit two dollars extra, he said, “for the jukebox.” They went to a bedroom in the back of the establishment and sat on the floor and a woman came in, shut the door, pulled her dress off over her head without taking her cigarette from her mouth, and stood before them naked in red high-heeled shoes, puffing on her smoke. Her body was utterly perfect in every part. “What what WHAT is your name?” Evans cried out, and she said, “My name is Virgin.” Out in the bar the jukebox again struck up “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” and the naked Virgin began to move. “I’m horny tonight, so horny, so horny,” she wailed. James couldn’t feel his hands, feet, lips, or tongue. Standing less than one meter from his face she danced for a minute to the music, then sat on the bed, parted wide her knees, and inserted her cigarette’s filter tip between the lips of her vagina and puffed away, blowing smoke from her crotch while the jukebox in the next room played “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones. Now James felt as if his head had been chopped off and thrown in boiling water. Virgin lay back, the bed supporting only her head and shoulders, her high heels planted on the floor, her torso gyrating to the rhythms of “Barbara Ann,” and they all sang along…God almighty, some part of him prayed, if this is war let peace never come.

T
he three Kootchy Kooties came around for one of their consultations. They kept to themselves and hogged the shade beside Bunker One this sunny morning, and none of Echo Recon thought of crowding them. The black guy was especially scary. He’d done a tour with a Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol squad who traveled the nights completely jazzed on uppers taking the life of any man, woman, or child they encountered. His hair grew out in an explosion of savage curlicues and he painted his face like an Indian and went around with the sleeves of his uniform torn off. In comparison, the actual Indian among them, diminutive, wiry, bowlegged, from somewhere in the Southwest, appeared quite sane. The third guy was of Italian or even more foreign extraction, Greek maybe, Armenian. He never talked, not even to his operational superior, the colonel.

Meanwhile, at the moment, Colonel Sands wouldn’t shut up. And he wasn’t a real colonel, he was more like a Southern honorary fat-boy colonel, and the men called him “Colonel Sanders” behind his back and referred to these rare morning assemblies in the encampment on the west side of Good Luck Mountain as the “Hour of Power.”

But the colonel wasn’t a fool. He had an eerie sense for what you were thinking: “You men realize I’m a civilian. I confer with your lieutenant; I don’t pass orders to him. But I do direct our operations in a general sense.” He stood right in the crashing-down light of the tropical morning with his hands on his hips. “Twelve weeks ago, last November nineteenth, my alma mater, Notre Dame, played what should have been the bloodiest game in its history against Michigan State. Both superb teams. Both undefeated. Both raring for a fight.” The colonel wore canvas boots like their own, stiff new Levi’s, a fisherman’s vest with a lot of pockets. White T-shirt. Aviator sunglasses. From his back pocket jutted the blue bill of a baseball cap. “A week before the game the Michigan State students leafleted the Notre Dame campus from an airplane. The leaflets were addressed to the ‘peace-loving villagers of Notre Dame.’ They asked, ‘Why do you struggle against us? Why do you persist in the mistaken belief that you can win, freely and openly, against us? Your leaders have lied to you. They have led you to believe you can win. They have given you false hopes.’”