by Mike Bond
The neighbor’s poodle was barking. He finished the espresso, filled the mug with water, opened the bathroom window; the dog heard him and sprinted for its doghouse but the water hit it as it reached the door.
He grinned at himself in the half-steamed mirror, looked again, shocked by his rangy thin frame, the bony chest, skinny thighs with the long skinny pecker hanging down, the white puffy shrapnel stars across the gut and ribs... Touch them, honey, feel the metal move... The right arm looked funny, too thin, the discolored bullet scar like a hole left by a burning spike.
He rolled two joints, lit one and put the other in his right shirt pocket. He removed the innersole from one running shoe, took a razor-slim knife from the drawer of his bedside table, slipped it into the shoe and replaced the innersole. He found thirty-seven dollars and some credit cards in a drawer, and went down to the garage. You did right to come back, he told himself. This is the life for you.
The battery was dead and he pushed the car up the driveway and down the street, running alongside, jumped in to pop the clutch in second. It caught, spitting black exhaust, the engine running ragged all the way across Golden Gate Park and up past the Haight and over the top of Divisadero. By the time he drove out along Castro to Noe Valley it was running smooth, the streets half-bright with sun through the fog.
Number 729 Diamond was a tall narrow Victorian house with leaded glass and three-color trim. He picked the Chronicle off the bottom step, rang the bell. There was city scum on the Welcome mat. She smiled as she opened the door then her face turned hard and pale.
“Let me in, Diana.”
“Oh Christ, oh please. You can’t mean it.”
He brushed past her down the hall into the parlor with its couches and doilies, its jade-colored marble mantel with the black marble clock, soft reflections of ferns and wall fabrics, the distant KGO – “your Bay Area news station” − she’s like a lily, he thought, tall and pale and ready to bow at the first touch. “Don’t give me that, Diana. You guys were split, you’ve got a new old man.”
“How did you kill him?”
“We crashed. Hit a pine bough coming in. He never knew.”
“You bastard. You fucking lousy pilot. You’d risk anyone to make more money.”
“It was his life, Diana. His business. I didn’t ask him.”
“You don’t have to ask people. They’re drawn to you. You feed off them one by one.”
“You want me to tell the kids?”
“You think you’re going to tell my kids their father’s dead?”
“Johnny had his own life. That’s why you didn’t love him.”
“What the shit do you know about love?”
“Or that’s why he didn’t love you.”
She gave him an upright look, coming out straight from deep inside, deeper than love or hate. “Don’t assume you understand anything, Murph.”
“You going to tell his folks? And he had a friend in LA −”
“Sarah Oldfield. The actress. He told me about her. You’ve probably had her too...”
He realized he was still holding the Chronicle and dropped it on a sofa and took her in his arms. “Don’t be like this, Diana. Just feel the pain. That’s all we can do, is feel the pain.”
He sat in the car thinking of all the places he could go. He drove back down Market amid the traffic and the trolleys, white and black skyscrapers blocking off the Bay, through Chinatown to North Beach, parked on Grant, went into the Trieste, ordered Italian pastries and cappuccino. Sun beamed through the tall windows onto faces and chrome table rims, while the espresso machine rumbled and hissed through fermate in La Donna e Mobile and the wandering words of twenty conversations:
“He promised me Sri Lanka but we never got past Daly City.”
“That’s Bachelard’s mistake, subsuming dialectics in pure phenomenology...”
“After one night with her she was out on the street again.”
“I told him, ‘Darling, the standard deviation’s just the square root of the variance.’”
At the pay phone he called the Chronicle and asked for Melissa Maslow.
“I remember,” she said. “It was at a party somewhere. You’re the guy who races motorcycles.”
“I used to, just for fun. Listen, Melissa, I’ve got a story. Something you could use.”
“Everybody tells me that. It’s why I hate this job.”
“I’ve seen the most horrible massacre.”
“You must’ve been on the Bay Freeway.”
“Central America.”
“People don’t really care about Central America, Joe. Not like San Diego. But it’s better than Africa. Nobody cares about massacres in Africa.”
“The Army wiped out a whole village.”
“Don’t they do that all the time down there?”
“With American help.”
“What kind of help?”
“American officers.”
“Now that’s interesting. You have pictures?”
“No. It was night. But I was there.”
“Come see me.”
“Now?”
“Can’t.”
“Lunch?”
“I’ve got a lunch thing. Two thirty?”
“Fine. But not at the Chronicle.”
“Across the street, then. The Rathskeller.”
“Till then who can I talk to?”
“You could try Cyndi Wheaton at BACCA.”
“What’s that?”
“Bay Area Committee for Central America.”
He waited till the espresso machine stopped steaming milk and called the BACCA. Cyndi had a strong friendly voice. He imagined her in white tennis shorts, a racket in her hand. “I don’t doubt what you’ve told me,” she said. “It happens all the time.”
“But the American soldiers −”
“What do you think our advisers do down there? Teach knitting?”
“I’m going to the Chronicle, the television.”
“Before you do you’d better come see me.”
The Bay Area Committee for Central America was one flight up over the Chevy dealer on South Van Ness. The receptionist was Latina but when he spoke to her in Spanish she answered in English.
Cyndi was beautiful, about thirty-five, long golden-reddish hair curling in at her neck, slender high cheekbones and appraising blue eyes. She wore a long pleated plaid skirt and a pink mohair sweater and had little pearl earrings. “It’s too bad you don’t have proof,” she said.
“That’s what Melissa said.”
“But I’m going to get you together with our executive committee. And maybe some TV. Can you be back here at four o’clock?”
He drove home, dug through drawers in the dressing room and study, went down to the basement to a closet off the pool room and opened boxes till he found a worn brown address book. Under “Cunningham, Willard and Mary,” was a 207 area code number. An old woman’s strong voice answered on the second ring.
“Mrs. Cunningham?” he said.
“Who’s there?”
“My name’s Joseph Murphy. I was a friend of Clint’s.”
“I remember you. He used to write about you. He was very fond of you.”
“I’m sorry I never got in touch.”
“There was nothing you could’ve done.”
“How’s Mr. Cunningham?”
“We’re getting along.”
“Clint’s wife... Wasn’t she going to have a baby?”
“How’d you know that? He never knew.”
“Somebody must’ve told me. Is she OK?”
“The wife? I suppose she’s fine. She got married again, some trucker. The daughter, Sherrie, we don’t see much of her.”
“Where is Sherrie?”
“Out in San Francisco. At least she was when we last heard. That was a while. Two years, maybe.”
“You have her number? An address?”
“Sherri
e’s? Probably not. Not one that works.”
“And Clint’s wife?”
“Lucy? She’s over in Westbrook. Her name’s Amato now. Married to this trucker.”
“You have a phone book?”
“Just a minute.” The phone clunked to the floor, grinding as it swung back and forth on its cord. “There’s three Amatos in the Westbrook phone book. Got a pencil?”
He wrote them down. “If I get in touch with her I’ll phone you.”
“Clint was very fond of you. We have all his letters. We go over them. The time you landed in that lake, the time you boys went to Thailand... He always said he never would’ve made it through Fort Rucker without you.”
Lucy Amato was at the second number. “Oh, hi,” she said. “I remember ‘bout you. That was a long time ago.”
“I guess we’ve both kind of forgot about Clint.”
“I’m married again. Been a long time. Prob’ly Clint’s mom told you.”
“I heard Sherrie’s out in San Francisco. That’s where I am. Would you mind if I gave her a call sometime?”
“Wouldn’t mind at all. If I only knew her number.”
“You got an address, anything?”
“Tell you the truth, Murph − that’s your name, right, it’s coming back to me now, that’s the name Clint called you in his letters − tell you the truth, we had no end of trouble with that girl. She always hated her new dad, even though she never even knew the old one, ain’t that something for you?”
“Happens.”
“Hold on − I may have an address. It’ll be an old one.” She put down the phone. In the background he could hear the wet hum of a dishwasher and an Eric Clapton solo, the pure music making the moment a lesson, forever. “You still there?” Lucy said. “One fifty-four Alabama Street. That’s all I got. Must’ve been six months ago, this. She wanted me to send some money.Said she was calling from a booth.”
“Other than this, Lucy, how you doing? I’m sure Clint’d like to know.”
“Not as if you could tell him, huh? God, what a time. But I’m fine now, me an’ Mitch we got three kids. Good ones, not throwaways like Sherrie. I don’t like to say it, Murph, she’s my own daughter. But that’s all she is. A throwaway.”
35
154 ALABAMA was a tilting, unrenovated Romeo near the projects, Spanish names on the mailboxes. “Hey, niño,” he said to a boy playing marbles in the dank hall, “Donde vive la inglésa?”
“Four,” the boy said. “But she’s got someone.”
It was up one flight of sticky stairs with broken linoleum, a white door gouged by dog claws. The jamb had been split and repaired with tin. From other apartments came canned laughter and children’s screams. He knocked, then again.
A creak of floor, a woman’s sleepy voice, “Yeah?”
“Sherrie?”
“Who?”
“Sherrie Cunningham, I’m...”
“She’s gone. I don’t know where.”
“I’m a friend of her dad’s.”
“She don’t have no dad.”
“She did.”
The deadbolt opened, another lock shifted back. The door thunked against its chain. The girl had a long slender face with her father’s palomino hair, a little freckled nose and wide lips in a wide mouth. “She didn’t never have a dad.”
“I’ve got something for her. From him.”
Her face neared the door. “What was his name? Her dad?”
“Clint. Clint Cunningham.”
She undid the chain, tugged her faded brown kimono tighter. The kitchen smelled of leaking gas, ashtrays, crack, and heat. She shoved beer bottles and dirty plates to one side of the table, motioned at a chair and sat. “I can tell her for you.”
“Cut the shit, Sherrie. What the fuck you doing to yourself?”
Her hand searching for a cigarette among the dirty coffee cups was like a blind creature on the ocean floor. “Who’re you to tell me that! I don’t know you from nothing, asshole.”
“I’m Clint’s friend. He asked me to come back.”
“You’re just a little late.”
“It was in an old letter. I was supposed to read it if he died. But I got wounded and the letter disappeared and I just found it. I just talked with your grandmother in Portland, Mary Cunningham, and your Mom, Lucy Amato...”
“You some dick?”
“My name’s Joe Murphy and I live here in San Francisco. I was in the 101st Airborne with your Dad in South Vietnam and Cambodia.”
“How’s my grandma?”
“I think they all miss you. Want you to come back.”
The girl smiled and shook her head, hair rasping on the kimono. She tipped cigarette ashes into a cup. “You got anything on you? Coke, anything?”
He shrugged. “A little weed.”
“Give me a few hits?”
He gave her a joint and she lit it keeping her hair back from his Bic, sucking down and holding in the smoke. She held it out to him but he waved it away. “Your dad and me, we used to smoke that stuff all the time in Nam. They called our unit Celestial Airlines.”
“That’s where it got him.”
He sat back. “So it did.”
She waved the joint. “This is good stuff. I could sell some for you.”
“It’s my own. Not commercial.”
“Everybody... should have their own... victory garden...” Her pale lemon eyes canvassed the wall above the sink, yellow paint with big curling blisters showing a greasy brown beneath, the ventilator gummed black, a black cord hanging down, the single shelf with a rusty can of Raid and three empty Colt 45 malt liquor bottles. The eyes drifted back to him. “What was he like?”
“He had hair like you and a small nose and broad shoulders. Kind of an awkward, muscular build.”
“He was a runner, Mom said.”
“Yeah. In college.”
“I seen a picture of him and you standing in front of a helicopter, that place where you trained...”
“Fort Rucker.”
“Yeah. You don’t look too much like you.”
“Reconstructive surgery by an Army intern. He had good intentions.”
“It’s not that bad. You’re cute. You got class. Normally I’d charge a guy like you a hundred bucks.”
“Because I’m white?”
“Because you look like you can pay it.” She nodded at his Levis, the old shirt, the black jacket. “Not your clothes. You just look it.” She fixed him with the yellow tiger eyes. “How you think my dad’d feel about me doing tricks?”
“I think he wants you to realize the magic of being alive before it’s over.”
“That’s how he was?”
“That’s how he was. But he’d want you to give up the needle.”
“Who are you, cocksucker, coming into my house, criticizing me?”
“I had a friend who shook it. Took her three months. I’ll help you.”
“Jesus. You walk in here, total stranger, tell me how to live?”
“I’m close as you’re ever going to get to your dad.”
She stood, knocking back the chair. “Well just fuck off!”
The door was greasy from generations of hands. “Think about it. I’ll come see you.”
“Get out before I wake Reno, in there, and he cuts you up real bad.”
Murphy glanced at the black man face-down on the bedroom floor. “Reno needs his sleep.”
Down the hall the TV was roaring for breakfast cereal, or was it toilet paper? Over the screaming children he couldn’t tell. He held his breath till he reached the street.
Lila, was that her name, the one who’d kicked heroin? Dark hair, so slender, purple bruises up the pale insides of her arms. Who three months later jumped off the Golden Gate.
He turned left on Bryant and parked on Fifth. The Rathskeller was dark inside after the bright street and smelled of bourbon. There were bronze cups and photos of report
ers on a shelf behind the bar, a few people still eating in the booths. He sat at the back with a double whiskey till Melissa came in. She was wearing a red and white checked suit and a white silk blouse with an open collar. “You don’t look like the same you,” she said.
“Everybody tells me that.”
“When was it, last spring? Why were you at Lily Tucker’s party?”
“Friend of the bride.”
“That’s what I heard. But gossip’s not my beat.”
“I enjoyed talking with you. Would’ve called earlier, but like I said I’ve been gone.”
“So what happened?”
He motioned to the waitress for another double Irish. “That’s what I came to tell you.”
FROM THE MOUNTAIN Dona watched Concepción but there was no sign of soldiers. She lay in the shadow of a broad pine tree on the soft scented mattress of its needles, the empty Galil beside her, her throat burning with rocket fumes and the singed stink of her hair.
In the village an old woman she didn’t know carried a basket of clothes down to the stream and began scrubbing them against the rocks. A boy ran from the jungle with a dead wood rat and ducked into a hut. A little girl squatted on the bank; her pee trickled, glistening, into the water. On the hill above the houses a tan burro trotted in a circle, jerking at its tether.
Over her face a small brown spider had linked three pine needles with cables and was spinning a web between them. When the wind blew, shifting the needles, the cables tautened and relaxed, not breaking.
The spider did not know about the battle. She did not care about la lucha, the needs of the campesino. She was building a web so she could kill other animals to feed her children.
CYNDI WHEATON’S office was full of people. There was a television camera in the corner; its red eye flicked on when he walked into the room. She beckoned him into the hall. “This is for now, the evening news.”
“I wanted to talk to your people first, decide the best way to find out...”
“Find out what?”
“What I keep telling you: who the Americans were!”
“That we’ll never know. The best we can hope for is a little exposure, the best for Guatemala.”
