The Writing on the Wall: A Novel (19 page)

I handed him his fifth beer.

And as much fun as it was out in the field that was nothing compared to how enjoyable the leaves were and when you saw how enjoyable the leaves were you wondered why you had wasted so much time back in the States. There were bars in Saigon three blocks long and behind every stool stood a gook waiting to take your order or fix you up with some weed or find you a girl all you had to do was ask and ten seconds later it was yours. Not just any booze either but the finest whiskey in the world and not just any weed but the purest money could buy and not just any girl but Eurasian ones meaning their father was a Frenchman and their mother was a gook and there was no better way to mix races at least not when it came to a bar girl’s looks.

I handed him his sixth beer.

Sure they were a little small on the boob side but that was more than compensated for by their asses which were tight enough to strike a match on and just a little bit bigger than a man’s palm. You could control them like a puppet just by putting your hand on a cheek and they would smile for you and make a fuss over you and if you kept squeezing you could generate just about any expression you were in the mood for and if their smiling got boring you could always squeeze a little harder and make them wince. After that it could be anything and that included having two girls suck you off at the same time which was the sweetest thing a man could hope for in life it was worth going over there just to experience.

“All that I’m describing is for a black man,” he said real amazement on his face. “You double the pleasure if your boy is white.”

I’d had that done to me before where a man starts being crude and waits for you to slap him down and keeps getting cruder if you don’t. But the longer he went on that way the safer I felt especially with him downing those beers. The sun sliced in on us through the porch rail but it didn’t have the power it had earlier in the summer and all it did was turn his Budweisers copper.

I gave him another one wondered how he could drink so much and not have to pee. For all he rambled on about Vietnam it turned out what he really wanted to talk about was China.

“Shit ma’am, that’s where the real peril lies. You think a piss ant country like Vietnam can cause us any peril?”

China was out to get us Vietnam was just a sideshow before the real battle commenced. He learned that back in Korea when he was just a rookie watching those hordes come streaming over the ridges and okay it was just a word people used hordes but it was one thing to throw the word around and another thing to actually be crouching in a frozen foxhole watching hordes come at you hordes upon hordes you could machine gun all you wanted and the hordes kept coming.

Next time they would beat us. They were waiting for Russia and America to blow each other up then they would move in with their garbage trucks and sweep up the debris. World dominion had been their goal all along he had made a detailed study the truth was plain as day. Had I ever read the writings of Dr. Sun Yat Sen? Hell, people always talked about Chairman Mao but he was nothing he was only following the strategy set out by Sun Yat Sen in 1913.

I handed him his eighth beer but instead of opening it he leaned forward in the rocker and looked me right in the eye.

“You ever read old Sunny Yat Sen? You should, you’d be surprised at how he had history all planned. You think we influence anything? You think the Soviets do? You think the Germans caused trouble or the Japs? It’s all there in his books, how the Chinks plotted and schemed, and now those peanut pissers have us right where they want us, all it will take is a few more years. Mean bastards, too. Who would you want your sister to marry, your basic Hebe or your basic Chink? Personally, I’ll take the Hebe every time.”

He burped belched staggered to his feet. “Scuse me, missus,” he said in his southern drawl voice. I thought I had him then just another drunken good old boy soldier. He stumbled around to the bushes and I could hear him against the house and when he came back all the beer was hosed out of him and he was sober again sucking his stomach in bracing his shoulders back jutting his chin out like he was on parade.

“And now Andy’s mom, I’ll take that little tour you promised.”

He held the door open pointed for me to go in first. I think he must have been bored with our game because he didn’t bother trying to bullshit me anymore but walked through each room looking things over touching the walls picking up lamps and ashtrays like he was searching for evidence or secret panels or fingerprints. I did okay downstairs but once we got to Andy’s bedroom my heart beat so fast I was sure he could hear it. Andy’s old Boy Scout badges lay on the dresser and he picked them up and twisted them to the light.

“Fine soldier. Very proud.”

I held my breath while he searched the closet but like the state police he didn’t look any deeper than the clothes rod. There was only my bedroom after that and I said to myself search it yourself if you want to I’ll be downstairs but just as I turned away I felt his hand grab my arm not so hard it hurt but pretty close like he was telling me he knew where the border was for pain and if he wanted to he could take me across.

My bedroom was in the same sorry state it’s always in but it seemed to amuse him the unmade bed my pajamas on the sheets my bra and panties. “Pink, I like that,” he said making his voice go husky and for a moment I thought he was going to lick his lips.

I never saw a man switch moods so fast. “Thank you for the tour, ma’am,” he said when we went downstairs. He shook my hand very formally. “And now I’ll be parting, but I appreciate your hospitality very much.”

“Do you need a ride somewhere?” It was dark out now and the moon swirled the porch with silver cream.

“Bus station would be fine.”

He didn’t say anything on the drive but sat with his face pressed against the window like he was still hoping to see bears.

“I don’t think there’s a bus until morning,” I said when we got to town.

“I’ll wait.”

“I should tell you something, Sergeant. This can be a pretty rough town on Saturday nights. Farm boys drive around looking for trouble. I’m not sure what they would do seeing someone like you.”

He looked over at me now. “You mean a nigger?”

He laughed with that really laughed so it was like his back teeth went rolling over the front ones pushed on by his tongue. Nigger. Tough town. Farm boys. Night. Nothing funnier! He opened the door came around to my side waited until I rolled down the window and he could say one last thing.

“A lonesome journey for a man like me, going back to Louisiana. A long and lonesome journey.”

There it was the line I’d been expecting ever since he first stepped off the bus. “Buy yourself a magazine,” I said.

He smiled straightened back up waved his arm around in a big circle. “I can perish happy, having seen it here now. Yes sirree ma’am, I can perish happy.”

I’d been mostly scared until then but that changed to anger pretty fast. So Cobb was tough enough to relish fighting farm boys but not brave enough to get through the night without getting laid! That was so typical it was the way Perry had been and it always made me want to laugh and scream thinking of their egoism thinking of them thinking that three minutes inside you was enough to do away with loneliness like it was a fluid they could pump into somebody else. Okay your problem now woman. Wasn’t that what they were saying when they came? Cobb or Perry I could have screamed at them both. Loneliness? You have the nerve the arrogance the balls to use that word? I can tell you what loneliness is and I don’t need a stubby little cock to illustrate my point.

I found Andy in the kitchen puffing on a cigarette which wasn’t something he did very often. A Red Sox cap was pulled low over his forehead and when I came in he tried hiding his face.

“What happened?”

He shrugged. “Got bonked.”

His cheeks were scratched one eye looked black and blue and when I lifted the cap back I found a cut nearly deep enough for stitches. I fetched some bandages a bowl of water sat him down under the light went to work.

“You going to tell me more?”

He winced under the iodine.

“I heard you bring him upstairs into my bedroom and then the closet. All along I figured he’d be the one to come find me. Seemed better if he found me outside so I pulled back one of the ceiling panels, dropped down into the mudroom and ran out the back door.”

“You were hiding in the yard?”

“Kept going all the way to the woods. Pretty dark in there, pretty scary. Scratched myself on some branches then I tripped against a rock and got bonked. Finally decided to just sit down. What I thought about was how Danny used to take me back there and we’d balance along that old stone wall seeing who could get farthest without falling off. He always found things I didn’t know about like arrowheads and moose antlers and woodcock nests.”

I had the gauze all the way around his forehead now but I added on another wrap just to make sure.

“We sat on a stump and Danny told me, not bragging or anything, that he was smart and ambitious enough to be anything he wanted. He’d been thinking about it, too. The best thing in the world to be was a Hollywood producer. That’s why he watched so many Westerns, to learn how. Then he laughed at himself the way he always did. ‘I’ll probably work in a garage like Dad,’ he said. ‘But you know what? It’s damn well got to be my own garage.’”

“Is that why you’re not in the mood to shoot anybody? Because of what happened to Danny?”

I said that casually like it just occurred to me though I’d been wondering about that all along. He shrugged his Andy shrug seemed really considering the idea then slowly shook his head.

“Nah, it’s just that I don’t really feel like it.”

“Sergeant Cobb says you’re a good soldier.”

He sucked his stomach in sat up straighter perfectly imitated his voice.

“A fine soldier. Makes us all proud.”

“He’s a complicated man.”

“I’ll say. He warned us if we ever messed up or crossed him he’d hound us all the way to our grave. We called him Hound after that or Hell Hound. He’ll drink too much, then go into town and beat up civilians.”

“Civilians?”

“Chinks.”

He took a drag on the cigarette then did something that surprised me. He brought his hand up through the smoke and gently patted my arm.

“Listen Andy. Mary Belcher from work has a going away party tomorrow afternoon and I have to go or people will be suspicious. You know the drill now, what to do if anybody comes?”

“Sure. Tomorrow night’s the next Uncle episode. Ilya’s temporarily gone over to the Russians so Napoleon Solo is on his own.”

We both slept late in the morning and after that we picked berries until our hands were blue but at four it was time for me to go. The party would have been sad anyway since I’d known Mary for twenty years and hated the fact she was moving but worrying about Andy made it torture. It was seven before I could make an excuse and leave and I think Mary was hurt that I left so soon.

The fog was so thick I couldn’t drive home as fast as I wanted. The first thing I heard when I got out of the car was Nat King Cole singing Lazy Hazy Days of Summer and it made me mad that Andy could be so careless with the radio but then the words stopped and there was a burping sound and when they started up again they were in a lower key. I walked from the barn around to the front of the house. Sitting on the porch under the bug light making his fingers wiggle like he was playing piano was Sergeant Cobb.

“I thought about you last night,” he said. “Your lips, your eyes, your fine evil ass. I hate skinny bitches, no meat on them. Full breasted, that’s what enamors me. Sweet Jesus Fuck, you’re full breasted.”

What startled me was the fact he had his army uniform on. Where had he gotten it? Yesterday he hadn’t even carried a bag. On his sleeve were his sergeant stripes and over his chest a row of medals hanging down like slack little penises spray painted in gold. The uniform made his waist seem even smaller than before so I thought of the term wasp-waisted and realized for the first time how repulsive a wasp can be.

“You had a long walk from town,” I said trying to keep my voice even.

He pointed toward the grass. Parked there under the locust was an Army jeep with a white star painted on the hood and an aerial looped over in a hoop.

“Andy’s not here,” I said. “You’ve wasted your leave or assignment or mission or whatever it was brought you here.”

He swung his arm around in his favorite gesture the one that seemed to take in all the world.

“I never lost one before which is really saying something the crap they send me. Greasers and retards and hoodlums and frat boys and mental defectives. They draft them and send them to me to whip into line and somehow don’t ask me how I do it. I embark them on that plane for Saigon and the government gives me another medal and my pay goes up ten dollars a month. I never lost one. Never lost one, goddamn one. But even worse would be losing that ten dollars.”

He pushed himself up from the rocker came over to where I stood on the furthest edge of the porch. Like he was hot or his collar had suddenly become too tight for him he unbuttoned the top of his tunic until I could see the olive colored t-shirt underneath.

“Know something? If I had someone to help with the lonely part I would leave tomorrow chop chop, no questions asked.”

He brought his hand up and I thought he was going to grab my arm but it kept going higher turned into a fist tapped me lightly on the chin. A love tap was that what it was supposed to be? I backed away but now his other hand grabbed my arm and like yesterday he squeezed just hard enough to let me know it could be a whole lot harder if he chose. He pulled me toward him very slowly enjoying every second in no hurry at all and then suddenly sensing the bargain had been struck sensing by who knows what sign that I had agreed to it initialed our contract given in he pulled much harder and brought his lips down and pushed his breath into my ear.

“You’re a prevaricating little cunt, but I like that.”

He took me in through the dark up to my bedroom. I heard a scraping noise and figured it was Andy crawling to his hiding spot but it didn’t seem high enough it seemed coming from downstairs. Cobb didn’t hear it he was way past the hearing stage now. For all his swagger he stripped off his uniform fast enough like it burned like it was hateful like it was poison.