V. (53 page)

The captain, having seen this element of the crew at every mast, came to look on them fondly as His Boys. He pulled strings and indulged in all manner of extra-legal procedure to keep them in the Navy and on board the Scaffold. Pig, being a charter member of the Captain's (so to speak) Own Men, got off with no liberty for a month. Time soon hung heavy. So it was of course toward the crab-ridden Groomsman that Pig gravitated.

Groomsman was the agent in Pig's near-fatal involvement with the airline stewardesses Hanky and Panky, who along with half a dozen more of their kind, shared a large pad out near Virginia Beach. The night after Pig's restriction ended, Groomsman took him out there after stopping by a state liquor store for booze.

Well, it was Panky Pig went for, Hanky being Groomsman's girl. Pig after all had a code. He never did find out their real names, though did it make any difference? They were virtually interchangeable; both unnatural blondes, both between twenty-one and twenty-seven, between 5' 2" and 5' 7" (weights in proportion), clear complexions, no eyeglasses or contact lenses. They read the same magazines, shared the same toothpaste, soap and deodorant; swapped civilian clothes when off duty. One night Pig did in fact end up in bed with Hanky. Next morning he pretended to've been drunk out of his mind. Groomsman was apologized to easily enough, having it turned out hit the sack with Panky under the same misapprehension.

Things cruised along all idyllic; spring and summer brought hordes to the beach and Shore Patrolman (now and again) to chez Hanky Panky to quell riots and stay for coffee. It came out under incessant questioning by Groomsman that there was something Panky "did" during the act of love which turned Pig, as Pig put it, on. What this was nobody ever found out. Pig, not normally reticent in these matters, now acted like a mystic after a vision; unable, maybe unwilling, to put in words this ineffable or supernal talent of Panky's. Whatever it was it drew Pig out to Virginia Beach all his liberty and a few duty nights. One duty night, Scaffold bound, he wandered down to C&O compartment after the movie to find the quartermaster swinging from the overhead whooping like an ape. "After-shave lotion," Groomsman yelled down to Pig, "is the only thing that gets to the little bastards:" Pig winced. "They get drunk on it and fall asleep:" He descended to tell Pig about his crabs, having lately developed the theory that they held barn dances among the forest of his pubic hair on Saturday nights.

"Enough," said Pig. "What about our Club." This was the Prisoners-at-Large and Restricted Men's Club, formed recently for the purpose of hatching plots against Knoop, who was also Groomsman's division officer.

"One thing," Groomsman said, "that Knoop cannot stand is water. He can't swim, he owns three umbrellas."

They discussed ways of exposing Knoop to water, short of throwing him over the side. A few hours after lights out Lazar and Teledu joined the plot after a blackjack game (payday stakes) in the mess hall. Both had been losers. As were all the Captain's Men. They had a fifth of Old Stag conned from Howie Surd.

Saturday Knoop had the duty. At sundown the Navy has this tradition called Evening Colors, which around the Convoy Escort Piers in Norfolk is impressive. Looking at it from any destroyer's bridge you would see all motion - afoot and vehicular - stop; everyone come to attention, turn and salute the American flags going down on dozens of fantails.

Knoop had the first dog watch, 4 to 6 P.M., as OOD. Groomsman was to pass the word "Now on deck attention to colors." The destroyer tender U.S.S. Mammoth Cave, alongside which the Scaffold and its division were moored, had recently acquired a trumpet player from shore duty in Washington, D. C., so tonight there was even a bugle to play retreat.

Meanwhile Pig was lying on top of the pilot house, a pile of curious objects beside him. Teledu was down at the water tap aft of the pilot house, filling up rubbers - among them Pig's French ticklers - and passing them to Lazar who was putting them next to Pig.

"Now on deck," said Groomsman. From over the way came the first note of Taps. A few tin cans down the line, jumping the gun, started lowering their own flags. Out on the bridge came Knoop to supervise. "Attention to colors." Splat, went a rubber, two inches from Knoop's foot. "Oh, oh," said Pig. "Get him while he's still saluting," Lazar whispered, frantic. The second rubber landed on Knoop's hat, intact. From out of the corner of one eye Pig saw that great nightly immobility, dyed orange by the sun, grip the entire C.E. Piers area. The bugle knew what he was doing, and played Taps clear and strong.

The third rubber missed completely, going over the side. Pig had the shakes. "I can't hit him," he kept saying. Lazar, exasperated, had picked up two and fled. "Traitor," Pig snarled and threw one after him. "Aha," said Lazar from down among the 3-inch mounts, and lobbed one back at Pig. Bugle blew a riff. "Carry on," said Groomsman. Knoop brought his right hand smartly to his side and with his left removed the water-filled rubber from his hat. He started calmly up the ladder on the pilot house after Pig. The first person he saw was Teledu, crouching by the water tap, still filling rubbers. Down on the torpedo deck Pig and Lazar were having a water fight, chasing each other among the gray tubes now highlighted vermilion by the sunset. Arming himself with the stockpile Pig had abandoned, Knoop joined the struggle.

They ended up drenched, exhausted and swearing mutual fealty. Groomsman even named Knoop to honorary membership in the PAL and Restricted Men's Club.

The reconciliation came as a surprise to Pig, who'd expected to get the book thrown at him. He felt let down and saw no other way to improve his outlook but to get laid. Unfortunately he was now afflicted by contraceptivelessness. He tried to borrow a few. It was that horrible and cheerless time just before payday when everybody is out of everything: money, cigarettes, soap, and especially rubbers, much less French ticklers. "Gawd," moaned Pig, "what do I do?" To his rescue came Hiroshima, ET3.

"Didn't anybody ever tell you," said this worthy, "about the biological effects of r-f energy?"

"Wha," said Pig.

"Stand in front of the radar antenna," said Hiroshima, "while it is radiating, and what it will do is, it will make you temporarily sterile."

"Indeed," said Pig. Indeed. Hiroshima showed him a book which said so.

"I am scared of heights?" said Pig.

"It is the only way out," Hiroshima told him. "What you do is, you climb up the mast and I will go light off the old SPA 4 Able."

Already tottering, Pig made his way topside and prepared to climb the mast. Howie Surd had come along and solicitously offered a shot of something murky in an unlabeled bottle. On the way up, Pig passed Profane swinging like a bird in a boatswain's chair hooked to the spar. Profane was painting the mast. "Dum de dum, de dum," sang Profane. "Good afternoon, Pig." My old buddy, thought Pig. His are probably the last wards I will ever hear.

Hiroshima appeared below. "Yo, Pig," he yelled. Pig made the mistake of looking down. Hiroshima gave him the thumb-and-index-finger-in-a-circle sign. Pig felt like vomiting.

"What are you doing in this neck of the woods," Profane said.

"Oh, just out for a stroll," said Pig. "I see you are painting the mast, there."

"Right," said Profane, "deck gray." They examined at length the subject of the Scaffold's color scheme, as well as the long-standing jurisdictional dispute which had Profane, a deck ape, painting the mast when it was really the radar gang's responsibility.

Hiroshima and Surd impatient, started yelling. "Well," said Pig, "good-bye old buddy."

"Be careful walking around on that platform," Profane said. "I robbed some more hamburger out of the galley and stowed it up there. I figure on sneaking it off over the 01 deck." Pig, nodding, creaked slowly up the ladder.

At the top be latched his nose over the platform like Kilroy and cased the situation. There was Profane's hamburger all right. Pig started to climb on the platform when his ultra-sensitive nose detected something. He lifted it off the deck.

"How remarkable," said Pig out loud, "it smells like hamburger frying." He looked a little closer at Profane's cache. "Guess what," he said, and started backing quickly down the ladder. When he got level with Profane he yelled over: "Buddy, you just saved my life. You got a piece of line?"

"What are you going to do," said Profane, tossing him a piece of line: "hang yourself?"

Pig made a noose on one end and headed up the ladder again. After a couple-three tries he managed to snare the hamburger, pulled it over, dragged off his white hat and dumped the hamburger in it, being careful all the time to stay as much as he could out of any line-of-sight with the radar antenna. Down at Profane again he showed him the hamburger.

"Amazing," Profane said. "How did you do it?"

"Someday," Pig said, "I will have to tell you about the biological effects of r-f energy." And so saying inverted the white hat in the direction of Hiroshima and Howie Surd, showering them both with cooked hamburger.

"Anything you want," Pig said then, "just ask, buddy. I have a code and I don't forget."

"OK," Profane said a few years later, standing by Paola's bed in an apartment on Nueva York's 112th Street and twisting Pig's collar a little "I'm collecting that one now."

"A code is a code," Pig choked. Off he got, and fled sadly.

When he was gone, Paola reached out for Profane, drew him down and in against her.

"No," said Profane, "I'm always saying no, but no."

"You have been gone so long. So long since our bus ride:"

"Who says I'm back."

"Rachel?" She held his head, nothing but maternal.

"There is her, yes, but . . ."

She waited.

"Anyway I say it is nasty. But I'm not looking for any dependents, is all."

"You have them," she whispered.

No, he thought, she's out of her head. Not me. Not a schlemihl.

"Then why did you make Pig go away?"

He thought about that one for a few weeks.

II

All things gathered to farewell.

One afternoon, close to the time Profane was to embark for Malta, he happened to be down around Houston Street, his old neighborhood. It was cooler, fall: dark came earlier and little kids out playing stoop ball were about to call it a day. For no special reason, Profane decided to look in on his parents.

Around two corners and up the stairs, past apartments of Basilisco the cop whose wife left garbage in the hallway, past Miss Angevine who was in business in a small way, past the Venusbergs whose fat daughter had always tried to lure young Profane into the bathroom, past Maxixe the drunk and Flake the sculptor and his girl, and old Min De Costa who kept orphan mice and was a practicing witch; past his past though who knew it? Not Profane.

Standing before his old door he knocked, though knowing from the sound of it (like we can tell from the buzz in the phone receiver whether or not she's home) that inside was empty. So soon, of course, he tried the knob; having come this far. They never lacked doors: on the other side of this one he wandered automatic into the kitchen to check the table. A ham, a turkey, a roast beef. Fruit: grapes, oranges, a pineapple, plums. Plate of knishes, bowl of almonds and Brazil nuts. String of garlic tossed like a rich lady's necklace across fresh bunches of fennel, rosemary, tarragon. A brace of baccale, dead eyes directed at a huge provolone, a pale yellow parmigian and God knew how many fish-cousins, gefulte, in an ice bucket.

No his mother wasn't telepathic, she wasn't expecting Profane. Wasn't expecting her husband Gino, rain, poverty, anything. Only that she had this compulsion to feed. Profane was sure that the world would be worse off without mothers like that in it.

He stayed in the kitchen an hour, while night came along, wandering through this field of inanimate food, making bits and pieces of it animate, his own. Soon it was dark and the baked outsides of meats, the skins of fruits only highlighted all shiny by light from the apartment across the courtyard. Rain started falling. He left.

They would know he'd been by.

Profane, whose nights were now free, decided he could afford to frequent the Rusty Spoon and the Forked Yew without serious compromise. "Ben," Rachel yelled, "this is putting me down." Since the night he was fired from Anthroresearch Associates, it seemed he'd been trying every way he knew to put her down. "Why won't you let me get you a job? It is September, college kids are fleeing the city, the labor market was never better."

"Call it a vacation," said Profane. But how do you swing a vacation from two dependents?

Before anyone knew it there was Profane, full-fledged Crew member. Under the tutelage of Charisma and Fu, he learned how to use proper nouns; how not to get too drunk, keep a straight face, use marijuana.

"Rachel," running in a week later, "I smoked pot."

"Get out of here."

"Wha."

"You are turning into a phony," said Rachel.

"You're not interested in what it's like?"

"I have smoked pot. It is a stupid business, like masturbation. If you get kicks that way, fine. But not around me."

"It was only once. Only for the experience."

"Once I will say it, is all: that Crew does not live, it experiences. It does not create, it talks about people who do. Varese, Ionesco, de Kooning, Wittgenstein, I could puke. It satirizes itself and doesn't mean it. Time magazine takes it seriously and does mean it."

"It's fun."

"And you are becoming less of a man."

He was still high, too high to argue. Off he rollicked, in train with Charisma and Fu.

Rachel locked herself in the bathroom with a portable radio and bawled for a while. Somebody was singing the old standard about how you always hurt the one you love, the one you shouldn't hurt at all. Indeed, thought Rachel, but does Benny even love me? I love him. I think. There's no reason why I should. She kept crying.

So near one in the morning she was at the Spoon with her hair hanging straight, dressed in black, no makeup except for mascara in sad raccoon-rings round her eyes, looking like all those other women and girls: camp followers.