by Mike Bond
Lovejoy got up, squeezed Murphy’s wrist and stepped across the terrace out into the sun, across the blazing grass to the shade of a papaya clump. “Beer go right through you, on a hot day,” he said coming back. “What he tell you ‘bout this fighting pain?”
“He said you can’t hold it back, gotta let it take you. That sometimes you can change it a little by moving yourself or breathing or forcing yourself to think of something else. Said he’d lain for three days on a little hill with a neck wound... I’d never known what happened to him, we could never find them. And during the third night their position got hit by B52s. Thousand-pound bombs.” Murphy looked out over the terrace to the line of shore all green against the blue and white. “I used to get so full of hatred about what had happened. I wanted to go back to the States, take all the people who voted for that war, the politicians and the people who voted for them, wanted to kill them one by one, have them feel what my friends felt.”
“And now?”
“I still hate them for being stupid. But now I think war’s like an earthquake or something. There’s no way we can control it.”
“We jes’ prefer war to other things, thet’s all.”
“Clint’s daughter, she’s twenty-one now, she was born after he died. I got wounded again at the end, never went to Maine, where Clint came from, never saw his wife. Years later, I never called his kid. So he asked me to.”
“You going to?”
“Said I felt like one of those lousy fathers who never sees his own kid after a divorce, then suddenly when she’s grown up he reappears, wants to claim her. He said it wasn’t like that, that what keeps people apart is pain, not meanness. He said all meanness just comes from pain.”
“I’M VERY PISSED you brought me back up, Curt.”
“It’s not your business to have emotions.”
“How you expect a guy to do his best when you keep cutting his cojones?”
“I been behind you all the way, here. In this Agency, Howie, you got me to thank.”
“I got me to thank, Curt. I got me where I am.”
“With some help from your friends. Just like when I was coming up, I had people looking out for me. And what you got to remember is, afterwards you got to treat them well...”
The yellow of Lyman’s fingernails irritated him, against the light chocolate skin, the fingers splayed out over the knee of his blue pinstripe. Spread fingers a sign of weakness, he thought, brought them together. Under the desk Lyman could see Merck’s little feet hanging down from the chair, not touching the carpet. Little penguin feet.
“You got to accept when we wanted you out, down there, it’s for good reason.”
“You mean Latinos just don’t like blacks.”
“That too. But that’s why I always pushed you down there, pushed you in their faces, because you’re better than anyone else and I wanted them to have to admit it. Now instead you screw up and get a whole buncha guys killed.”
“Six, Curt. Just six guys killed. And the reason the Guats don’t take so many casualties is they’re chicken. They’ll burn a village, kill women and children, no problem. Just like us in Nam, the napalm raids. But at least we had the guts to go out in the boonies and hunt Charlie down. Blow his fucking ass off.” Lyman realized his arms were quivering, made them stop. “You ask these Guats to get down on the ground, out in the bush, off the fucking trail? Never! A little recon? Never!”
Merck sat back, smoothed down one eyebrow, propped his elbows up on the chair arms. “Howie, there’s policies being decided,” his little hands came up and out, like a man rendering himself, Lyman thought, “far above my head. Like you, I got to deliver...”
“Don’t pull duty on me, Curt.”
“What you using your head for, Howie? Think real politik.”
“OK, I think it’s fine we jacked down the crude oil price and pushed up the ante on defense technology and forced the Commies under. And like you’ve said, we got a different ballgame now in Latin America because now, without the Soviets to turn to, the poor don’t have any recourse but to eat shit. But bringing the Colombians into Guatemala − I don’t see what it brings us.”
“That’s why I’m where I’m at, Howie, and you’re going to stay where you’re at. Until you learn to see.”
26
“SOON’S Miss Pru and Desirée come home I’ll cook up thet conch. You want fritters?”
“Do I want fritters? What kind of question’s that? But we’re gonna need more beer.”
“Tecate he be all gone. Got to go back Mexico. They be jes’ Libertad.”
“Jesus!”
“You have’n too much anyways, mon. You been beat up, got to rest easy.”
Murphy crossed the veranda and the grass underfoot now cooler in the late afternoon sun, stood barefoot in the water warm like warm tea. He stripped his clothes and waded in, sat letting the sea wash up against his chest. His head was spinning and he put it under the water and swam out underwater, the light pearly blue above and cool purple below, the rolling bay waves bubbling sunlight. You could drown like this, he thought.
NANCY took Lyman’s coat and hung it in the hall closet. She glanced across the living room then came up to him, hands against his chest. “I’m sorry about your face.”
“I know you don’t love me. I know it and accept it.”
“You don’t need to hate me the way you do.”
“I don’t hate you, Nan. You’re all I’ve got.”
“You’ve got the kids.”
“Yeah, and they come from you.”
“They come from you too! Can’t we live with some affection, till they grow up?”
“They don’t need me.”
“They’d need you if they had you. They just don’t have you. And if you had them you’d need them, too. But you never spend any time with them.”
“I been too busy, Nan. Trying to make things easy for them. For you.”
“Let’s make a new beginning?” She took his hand. “Pretend we like each other, like friends? Pretend we’re just living together, two friends?”
“How many times we made new beginnings, Nan? You’re just saying that now ‘cause Kit’s dead, you got nobody to fuck.”
She twisted his wrist, nails in the skin. “You’re the bastard that started that. You wanted me to!”
“Because I knew it’s the only way you’d come alive. That you couldn’t get it from me!”
“I married you, didn’t I? What more do you want?”
He caressed her cheek, realized it was a slow slap and pulled his hand away. “We got married too many years ago.”
“THE ONLY THING that counts is a man love a woman.” Miss Pru put a big chunk of conch fritter from her fork into her mouth. “Don’ matter ‘bout nothin’ else. Not to her.”
“She’s got to love him too,” Lovejoy said.
“Of course. Otherwise she don’ care if he love her or not.”
“I don’t want any man to love me!” Desirée said. “Who wants to have kids and everything? Horrible! When instead you could be free?”
Pru was cutting more conch. “Matters someday, honey. When you find you tired o’ that ‘ol freedom. When it wearin’ you down. But you got years to go. You git to finish your school first.”
“Then I’m going to be a doctor,” Desirée told Murphy.
He almost dropped his fork, bit his lip, raised his Libertad to her, a mock salute.
She shook her head. “I’m serious.”
He watched the thatch, watched nothing; the pain went away. “I’m sure there’s nothing better you could do.” It sounded false. “I mean it, honey.”
Pru leaned forward, big black sweaty elbows on the table. “So I don’ think you’re right, Love, tellin’ him forget her. He should go back there, make her come out here, to civ’lization, not live in the jungle like a monkey, like that gorilla!”
“He can’t go back in there’n get her! They never l
et ‘im back. They kill ‘im if he try thet!”
“She won’t go with me anyway, Pru.”
Pru put down her fork. “Then she jes’ a stupid gir’l.”
“No, she’s right.”
Pru grasped the fork, shook it at him. “She right not to love you when you love her?”
“No, not that. She’s got another love, that came first.”
“You mean thet gorilla?” Lovejoy put in. “Thet one she said she loved?”
“No,” Murphy laughed. “She loves what she does, what she does for people, making things better.”
A wide incredulous moue creased Pru’s face. “What she doin’ for you?”
“I’VE BEEN THINKING we should buy the McCormack house,” Nancy said.
Lyman poured the whisky into the octagonal glass and placed the one ice cube carefully so it wouldn’t splash. Wait twenty seconds, just enough for it to cool the whisky not dilute it. The taste was like smoke, like fire, burning on the tip of his tongue then cooling backwards, oak fire flaring to ice up through his sinuses. He thought of hash in Vietnam, how the taste of it, the feel of it, had come up through his nose and into his brain. “We can’t stand each other. You want us to buy a house?”
“You’re exaggerating, Howie. I agree, it’s been hard. But maybe if we shared in something new, something bigger, an improvement? It would say something about us.”
“It would say we’re out of our fucking minds.”
“You’ll never try, will you, darling? It’s always got to be Howie just the way he is, he never tries to be better.”
“I try to be who I am, Nan. That’s hard enough.” He took another swig of the whisky but it wasn’t the same, too much water now. The thought of a cigarette made his lungs ache. “No, come to think of it, I don’t try to be who I am. I never even know.” If he had a cigarette in front of her she’d think he was weak, that he couldn’t shake it. Nine weeks now, down to five a day. He could get up and go into the bathroom, or say he had to see something in the garage, have a quick one. But she’d figure out. Smell it. He went into the kitchen, dumped the ice cube, came back and took another, filled the glass up. The whisky was like piss, yellow and oily. He thought of all the Scotch bottles in all the stores in the world, all the wine, the beer, champagne. All waiting to be piss. All the fine pastries and steaks and gourmet foods, caviar at fifty bucks an ounce, waiting to be shit. “I bet if you try to learn about yourself, if I try to learn about myself, I bet I can.”
She took his wrist that earlier she’d clawed. “I know you can, Howie. You do, and we can be together again. All the way.”
THE THICK AIR was musky with star jasmine and citrus, the indolent breeze off the Bay, the sweet-smelling cane fields. “Coupla drinks at Mother Teresa’s, Murph, then I’m takin’ you home.”
“I know the way back.”
Lovejoy took his arm, as if holding himself up. “You liable to fergit.”
“You don’ have any fuckin beer. Here I come to see you and you don’ even have any fuckin beer!” Each time I think of her, Murphy decided, it’s easier.
“I didn’t know you was comin’.”
“Neither did I.”
At the end of the street a white house with wide steps. “Them belly full but we hungry,” sang the music inside. “A hungry mon is a hungry mon ...”
They climbed the stairs, weaving between the men sitting with beers on the steps. Lanterns reflected inside off spilt beer on the table tops. Lovejoy got a cloth from the bar and wiped a table. Murphy sat; the table stuck to his elbows. Lovejoy took the cloth to the bar and came back with two beers. “Belikan?” Murphy said.
“Belikan.”
“Jesus! The English ruined you people.”
“Not me, mon. I’s from Jamaica.”
“I know that.” Murphy drained his glass and watched the dancing bright-eyed slim-dressed girls clapping cheap gold heels and bare feet on the beer-spilt floor. “Going back, Stateside, I won’t need a driver’s license. Just lend me money for the ticket.”
“How the fock you gettin’ through the border?”
“Fly up, Monterrey, walk across.”
“You crazier’n shit, mon. Border patrol going to have yo’ ass. Then they going to start discussin’ with you where you been...”
“You’re afraid of the cops, Love. I really think you are.”
“Course I am. When you livin’ fine and easy why should’n you be? When any time they kin take it all away?”
“You’ve got good distance. You’re not in it.”
“The minute I stop paying I am. Or when they want to make an example. You always try to make sure they make an example of somebody else, but nobody ain’t perfect.” Lovejoy leaned forward clasping his beer. “How much you shoulda made, thet trip to Guatemala?”
“Bout fifty.”
“You’ll make more’n thet, driving it up.”
“It’s too dangerous. I told you.”
“You’s like I used to be, after twenty years at sea. I thought everything on land was dangerous. You been flyin’ too long...”
“I don’t want to go through no border with no half ton of weed.” Murphy realized he was talking like Lovejoy. It’s just the beer, he decided.
“It’s ‘emetic, mon, all welded in. The dogs can’t smell it and even if they strip down your rig they can’t find it. You cross at El Paso, like I said, with some Protestant missionary types, you ain’t ever got a worry.”
27
“JASON!” Lyman yelled. “This yours?”
The boy watched the transparent film canister in Lyman’s hand. Inside the canister a golden butterfly, crumbles of wing at the bottom.
“I found it one day. On a hike.”
“Well goddammit keep it in your room. Stuff like this all over the house, no wonder we’re all going crazy.”
“We’re not all going crazy, Howie,” Nancy said.
“C’mon!” Lyman yelled at the boy. “Hustle! Hustle!”
“Howie,” Nancy sat on the edge of the couch, hands clamped between her knees, “what’s eating you?”
“You’re eating me. He’s eating me. You’re all eating me.”
She patted the couch beside her. “Sit.”
Despite himself he sat. There was an ache between his shoulder blades, all the way up his neck. He wanted to say he was sorry but wouldn’t.
She put her hand on his knee. “I meant what I said, Howard. We’re going to start a new beginning. I’m going to understand the stress you’ve been under and I’m going to make it better for you. And you’re going to stop seeing me as some bitch, and instead as the person you love, the mother of your children.”
He snickered. “I’m not even sure of that.”
Her hand clenched. “You’re going to stop saying things like that, Howie. That’s part of our new beginning. If I have to, I’ll do this all by myself. But I’d rather do it with you.”
“You can’t make me love you, Nancy.”
“You already love me. I know that. The one you don’t love is yourself.”
“GOT IRISH WHISKY?” Murphy yelled over the reggae at Mother Teresa behind the bar.
She reached up a gold bottle. “Black Bush.”
“That’s Protestant whiskey, Bushmills.”
“You prayin’ or drinkin’?”
He took the bottle and two glasses to the table. “You goin’ have a bad headache in the morning,” Lovejoy said.
“Wouldn’t feel right without one.” He poured the glasses full. “Don’t make no sense.”
“It don’ make any sense to me either, mon. So I jes’ lets it alone.”
Murphy drank a second glass, not tasting it. “You jes’ love who you got,” Lovejoy said, “an’ you don’ try to change the worl’, ‘cause the worl’ been screwed up longer than you know.”
Four men in uniforms came in and sat by the door, waving at the bar. “Those guys,” Murphy said.
Lovejoy screwed round in his chair. “They’s got a right to come in, get laid, jes’ like anybody. On leave, prob’ly, from Honduras.”
“They’re Airborne.”
“They’s what? Hee, hee, I know they’s born. Otherwise how they be comin’ in here?”
“Like the ones who burned my village.”
“Those was Guatemalans, you said.”
“There was Americans with them.”
The four Americans rolled up their sleeves, nodding and talking, the black girls gathering round them in the roaring reggae. One soldier, blond and broad-shouldered, beckoned to a girl in a lilac blouse and black shimmery slacks; she sat open-legged in his lap, drinking beer from his bottle as he bounced her loosely on his crotch, a cigarette hanging sideways from his red lips.
“Forget your troubles, and dance,” Lovejoy sang with the music. “Forget your sorrows, and dance.”
Murphy walked softly across the noisy crowded floor to the four soldiers. “Where you guys stationed?”
“Hi!” one grinned. “Have a beer.”
“Where you stationed?” he said to the blond one.
“What’s it to you?”
“I wouldn’t have asked, motherfucker, if I didn’t want to know.”
The soldier watched him, chewing his cigarette. Murphy flicked it from his mouth. “Ever been in Guatemala?”
The soldier slid the girl from his lap and stood. “Well look at this. I come in here to get laid and I get some asshole in my face.”
Murphy hit him square, the satisfying crunch of front teeth, agony snaking up his bad arm. The soldier went down in crashing tables and chairs, another’s fist slammed into Murphy’s chin and he flew backwards sliding on his back across the floor, tables and beer bottles tumbling. He got up and with a red flash of pain a bottle exploded over his head and he spun to hit the soldier who had the bottle, wondering is it blood or whiskey running down my neck, another soldier swinging a chair but it caught on a toppled table and Murphy kicked him and the blond one grabbed him and they fell, Murphy twisting to grind him backwards in the shattered glass, the others kicking his ribs and a boot hit his bad arm and he screamed, rolled free, grabbed a table, a single still-upright Belikan bottle on it ricketing absurdly as he threw the table and the other soldiers backed away swearing. The blond one got up and Murphy hit him again, under the ear, and he fell face down in the broken glass. “Get out!” Murphy screamed, a man behind the soldiers laughing white teeth, and suddenly Murphy saw everyone was staring at him, at the mess on the floor.
