Joe Burke's Last Stand

by John Moncure Wetterau

  9

  The following Saturday, Joe was on Alison's couch again. Her need to be coupled was stronger than his need to be alone. She must have known that a future together was unlikely, but she didn't care. She was in love. Joe couldn't bring himself to disappoint her. Besides, he enjoyed her company and the small mole below her left ear and her smell which reminded him of a field after rain.

  They began eating dinner together every other night, but Joe continued to go home afterwards, often in the early hours of the morning. It was a compromise. He wanted to wake up in his own bed, stick to his habits, take his notebook to a coffee shop and keep at his writing.

  The weeks sped by as he wrote a longer story based on Mike, the cat burglar. It was not successful. When he strayed from the facts as he remembered them, he felt false and uncertain. He had the uneasy feeling that he didn't know what he was doing. One afternoon toward the end of August, he and Alison rode the Nuuanu bus to the end of the line and walked to the bamboo grove that Mo had shown him. They stood on the bridge and listened to the rhythmic hypnotic knocking.

  “It's so romantic, Joe.” Alison leaned against him.

  “Yes.”

  She said, “You know I've got to go home.”

  “Mmm.”

  “My flight is Wednesday.”

  He sighed. “So soon?”

  “Are you going to stay in Honolulu, Joe?”

  He sensed the proposal behind the question. It was tempting to follow her, to merge lives, to be a normal husband and give up his frustrating search for something he didn't understand. He spoke slowly. The words formed themselves. “For the time being,” he said. “This damn story I'm writing isn't any good.”

  “You mustn't give up.” She looked at him seriously, a hint of tear in each eye.

  “I can't,” he said. “I think it's who I am.” He meant: I'm not going to come with you and be your man.

  “Oh, Joe.” Her tears came and she put her arms around him. They held each other as the bamboo played. “Won't you be lonely?”

  “Yes.” He squeezed her. “I'll miss you.”

  On Wednesday, a version of “Aloha Oe” poured down from invisible airport speakers. Joe placed a pikake and ginger lei around Alison's neck. “I love that song,” he said, pulling away. “Even Muzak can't ruin it. Did you know it was written by Queen Liliuokalani? Can you imagine any of our politicians leaving anything as good?”

  “Joe, will you come see me in Wisconsin? You'd like it. Madison is very cultural.” Alison was going to try until the end.

  He hesitated.

  She bit her lower lip. “Don't say no, Joe. Just don't say no.”

  He hung his head. “Take care, Alison.” It had been a good time. Sex had continued between them as straightforward and trusting as the rest of their relationship. But Alison needed to be in Wisconsin taking care of her mother, and she needed a husband, not his part time attention. “You aren't sorry, are you?” he asked.

  “Oh, no. You are my lover man. And . . . “ She smiled because it was a joke between them, “In the light of eternity, what difference does it make?” She threw her arms around him, then turned quickly and left for her departure gate. He went directly to the Moana.

  “I need a drink, Gilbert.”

  “You in the right place.”

  For the first time since he'd landed in Hawaii, Joe was lonely. Alison had given him something, and he missed it already. What was it? Her directness. It was how to be, a gift. He watched the young and the not so young prowl along the beach, bodies glistening with tanning oil. None were for him. Morgan was coming through for a night, he remembered. And Mo was due back soon. He could talk to them, anyway. He trudged home anesthetized, wished Batman a good sleep, and lowered himself onto his mattress.

  The next day his poem was returned in the mail, rejected without comment. The day after that, he reached Mo on the phone.

  “Hi, there.”

  “Oh. Hello, Joe.”

  “Welcome back. How was your trip?”

  “Exhausting. Got some good shots of the boundary waters area, though. And my parents' anniversary—what a scene.”

  “Alcohol consumed?”

  “Lord! It was touching, really, my folks and their old friends toasting each other and their fallen comrades.”

  “Ah,” Joe said.

  “What's new with you?” she asked.

  “Oh, you know—rejection and solitude.” Alison's face flashed before him; he apologized silently.

  “Why don't I believe you?” Mo asked.

  “It's chromosomal; you can't help it. Anyway, I was rejected. By Manoa. They didn't like my poem. They didn't even say they didn't like it, just sent it back.”

  “Builds character,” Mo said.

  “Listen, Mo, now that you feel sorry for me, how about dinner next week? An old friend of mine is coming with his new lady; I think it would be a good time.”

  “Hmmm . . . what day? I'm free Thursday and Friday.”

  “Good, they're coming Thursday.”

  “Fine,” Mo said. “Give me a call. If I'm out, leave a message telling me where to meet you.”

  “Will do.”

  The following Thursday, the lei stands at the airport were busy. Joe made it to the arrival gate just in time. There was Morgan with a new haircut, looking somewhat larger than life in a short sleeved shirt, wearing chinos rather than jeans, striding along with a small blonde woman. She saw Joe approach and flashed a thousand watt smile. “Aloha,” Joe said, hanging leis around their necks.

  “Aloha,” Morgan said. “Edie, this is Joe.”

  “Edie Rowantree,” she said through the dazzle, extending her hand.

  “Joe Burke. How was the flight?”

  “I hate flying,” she said. “We encountered turbulence in the middle of the ocean. I asked Morgan if there was any hope. `There is always hope,”' she imitated.

  “Baggage claim,” Morgan said. A short time later they were in a cab speeding toward Waikiki.

  “I thought we might have dinner with a friend of mine, if you aren't too tired.”

  “Oh, good,” Edie said. “We spent last night in San Francisco to break up the flight. We aren't tired, are we Morgan?”

  “Certainly not. Where are we?”

  “Passing the old cannery,” Joe said. “That's where Alphonse showed me the right way to drive a fork lift.”

  Morgan explained, “Joe was too—what was it—delicate?”

  “Careful,” Joe said.

  “Maybe you could write a story about it,” Edie said. She made it sound completely possible, like—why not have it done by dark?

  “Maybe I will. Good choice, the Moana, by the way.”

  “A friend told me that they have windows that actually open,” Edie said. “I want to hear surf. Then we're going to the other islands.”

  “Some of the other islands,” Morgan said.

  “Molokai, and Kauai, and Maui.” They swept up to the front of the hotel and arranged to meet at the banyan bar in an hour and a half. Joe called Mo.

  “The eagle has landed. Can you make it, 6:30 at the Moana? I'll probably be there a bit before.”

  “See you there.”

  He went over to the International Marketplace and lost himself in wandering groups of tourists. A balding caricaturist with rimless glasses bantered with a line of haoles waiting to be drawn.

  “Hobby? What do you do on weekends?”

  “Golf.” A few pen strokes and a driver curled around the subject's neck, the ball untouched on the tee.

  “Tennis.” A racquet appeared with strings burst by an opponent's serve. Two or three minutes and he was done, asking each person's name, titling the drawing beneath its over-sized head, signing it and wrapping it in clear plastic. He was magician and entertainer, eyes blue and shrewd, working hard, keeping the crowd alive. It was six o'clock before Joe realized it. He scooted back to the Moana.

  “Glenlivet and water, please, Gilbert.”

  Joe ra
ised his glass in Gilbert's direction. “Here's to friends.”

  “Oh, you have some?”

  “Yok, Gilbert.” Mo appeared. “See?”

  “See what?” she asked.

  “Sorry, I was talking to Gilbert. You are my friend, aren't you?”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Two minutes.”

  “Very pretty friend,” Gilbert said. “Too good for you. May I get you a drink?”

  “Lillet on the rocks, please.” Mo was wearing linen slacks and an open weave cotton sweater. She rarely used make up; touches of eye shadow made her seem especially dressed up. Morgan and Edie walked down the wide back steps of the hotel and across the courtyard beneath the banyan tree. Joe waved.

  “More friends,” he said. They moved to a table. “Did your window open?”

  “Oh, yes,” Edie said, nodding. “It was very satisfying.” Her face was open and cheerful; her eyebrows curved; her cheeks curved; her mouth curved widely around and up at the corners. Beneath the curves she had a strong head.

  “So, Morgan . . . Waikiki, Diamond Head . . . “ Joe stretched out his arm.

  “Yes,” Morgan said in his most approving manner.

  “What do you do here?” Edie asked Mo.

  “I have a small photography business.”

  “How wonderful,” Edie said. “I am talent-less.” One corner of Morgan's mouth twitched. Mo sipped her Lillet.

  “Me too,” Joe said. “I paid twenty-five cents for biology drawings in high school. My worms looked like accordions.”

  “I understand you are a builder and a writer,” Mo said, turning to Morgan.

  “I suppose so,” he said.

  “Damned good one,” Joe said.

  “What is your book about?”

  “Houses of the Hudson Valley.” Mo smiled broadly. That's Morgan, Joe thought. He states the title of his book, a simple fact, and manages to imply that the universe is a lunatic misunderstanding, that we are all waiting at the wrong bus stop.

  “Have you been working on it long?” Mo asked.

  “Nine years.”

  “I could eat a mahi-mahi,” Edie said.

  They ended up at the restaurant, John Dominis, at a table with too many glasses, sea bass, snapper, and mahi-mahi, salads, desserts . . . No one wanted to stop. Morgan told a long story that began with a knock on his door one winter afternoon. A Jehovah's Witness had wandered up the mountain to proselytize. Morgan was so glad to see someone that he invited him in and had a conversation about the Bible.

  “Given their assumptions,” Morgan said, “I thought I might discuss their conclusions.” The following week the witness returned with help. Pots of tea, hours later, the witness and his help left, baffled, promising to return with an elder. By spring, much of the church's energy was directed at rebutting the doctrinal challenge from the mountains. Morgan was invited to headquarters where an informal truce was reached. “They are an efficient organization in many ways,” Morgan said grandly.

  “Poor bastards,” Joe said. “Morgan is difficult in debate, Mo. He got out of the draft by writing so many complicated letters questioning selective service procedures that they finally figured it would be easier to classify him, 1Y.”

  “A successful campaign,” Morgan said.

  “Better than mine,” Joe said.

  “Could have been worse,” Morgan reminded him.

  “True.” Joe explained to Edie and Mo that he'd enlisted in the Air Force and decided, midway through his hitch, that war was wrong, that people shouldn't kill each other. “Vietnam was heating up. The colonel at my courts-martial listened to my speech, smiled at two lieutenants who were doing on-the-job legal training, and said, `Airman Burke, you may persist in your attitude and I will sentence you to one year at Fort Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary and a bad conduct discharge, or, you can keep your mouth shut, serve the rest of your enlistment, and I will sentence you to thirty days in the stockade, a five hundred dollar fine, and reduction in rank to Airman Basic. What will it be?'

  “He raised the gavel, the son of a bitch. I was twenty; I was stubborn; I had no idea what a federal pen was like. I opened my mouth for another statement of principle, and a voice sounded in my head—that's only happened to me twice. It said: `you asshole, people kill each other. They have always killed each other. What do you think you're doing?' The voice saved me. `Thirty days,' I said. The colonel smacked his gavel and read the sentence for the record.

  “`Yes, sir.' I said. `My car is at the BX; I'll just park it behind the barracks.' Two AP's took me by the elbows and marched me to the stockade.”

  “A near thing,” Edie said. “It was a senseless war.”

  “It sure was,” Joe said. “And it was the poor boys from Kentucky who died in it.”

  “And the Vietnamese,” Mo added. They were silent.

  “It wasn't so bad in the stockade,” Joe said. “We got to watch TV for an hour each afternoon—Perry Mason. The guys were always yelling for longer sentences at the end of the show. One of the guys was doing ninety days for swearing at an officer's wife. Stockwell, his name was. He was a bag boy, and she used to give him a hard time at the commissary. He called her a bitch one afternoon and she complained to her husband. Ninety days! They add it to the end of your hitch, too.”

  “So you had to serve thirty extra days?” Mo asked.

  “Twenty-five. I got five days off for good behavior. It cooled me down. I got through the rest of my hitch without any problems.”

  They settled the bill. Joe put half on his credit card, and Morgan asked what he was doing for money. “Nothing,” Joe said.

  “You can't spend more than you earn, forever, you know.”

  “Good point. I'm not quite broke; I'll figure something out.”

  “Morgan says you're a computer expert,” Edie said helpfully.

  “Was, Edie. The technology changes every couple of years and I'm sick of learning languages. It was something I did just to get by. I've given it up.”

  “Oh, good!” she said.

  He drew them a map of Lihue showing the way to Hamura's Saimin. “Don't miss it!” They made their way back to the Moana and said goodbye. Mo dropped Joe off at Liholiho Street. Just before they parted, he thought he saw her hesitate. He went to bed and dreamed that she was naked, turning away from him in bed to another man. He touched the base of her back where it curved toward him and rubbed a few small farewell circles.

  10

  Morgan was right, of course. Sooner or later he was going to run out of money. Things weren't going well. He wasn't satisfied with the cat burglar story, and he was lonely. He decided to write a story about Alphonse and the cannery.

  Alphonse was a slim, dark, middle aged Filipino with a thin straight mustache. He had watched Joe stack empty pallets with a yellow Hyster and then he'd motioned Joe out of the seat. The forklift engine roared; his hands blurred; pallets leaped into perfect piles, ten feet high. Alphonse cut the engine and climbed down, eyes bright. He was somewhere between ten and a hundred times faster than Joe. The cannery whistle blew. Coffee break. Alphonse smiled, nodded, and turned for the cafeteria. Joe followed.

  Alphonse was Joe's trainer. Wherever they went in the cannery, people called to him. He lifted a hand, smiled, and kept going. He was universally popular, but he rarely spoke to anyone; he focused on the work—how to do it better, how to do it faster. Joe was in a welfare job training program. He hated the whistle that told them when they could stop and when they must start. He hated the gray industrial paint and the numbing future-less work for someone else's profit.

  Alphonse had no future. Not only that, he was twenty years older than Joe. He worked Joe into the ground every day, and when he waved with a small smile and walked away at the end of the shift, his head was high and he seemed untouched. Alphonse had his own standards, his own integrity, and somehow he was stronger than the whole gray clanking cannery. Stronger than profit, stronger than loss, Joe wrote.

  But
the story wasn't any good. It was true, as far as it went, but it wasn't—a story. What is a story, anyway?

  Joe realized that he didn't know.

  When Maxie was about fifteen, Joe used to quiz him on “Joe's Maxims.”

  Joe: “Women?”

  Maxie: “Uh, women, women . . . All women are pear shaped!”

  Joe (handing Maxie a quarter): “Very good, very good. And now, for a dollar, grand prize—an educated man?”

  Maxie: “Damn. An educated man—umm—knows what he doesn't know.”

  Joe: “Right!”

  Joe's position was that educated people know at least one subject well enough so that they realize (by comparison) when they don't know another. This was heavy for fifteen, but Max was game. “The idea is to know when you don't know what you're doing; then you can go ask someone or buy a good book and find out,” Joe explained. Maxie nodded agreement, winnings crumpled firmly in one hand.

  So, go find out what a story is, Joe told himself. He began reading books on fiction, but they weren't much help. For a change of pace, he looked up Arthur Soule on the Internet and discovered that a book he'd written on Roman taxation was still available. Joe ordered it, and when it arrived he found it interesting and clearly written. There was a small picture of Soule on the book jacket—patrician with a large jaw and thinning hair. Mo was a chip off the old block.

  A few days before Kate's wedding, the phone rang as he was heading out the door.

  “Hi, Joe.”

  “Mornin', Mo . . . That's a snappy opening,” he said. “Maybe we should have a radio program.”

  “But it would have to be in the morning,” she said. “When I work.”

  “Me, too. Good point.”

  “O.K., that's settled, no show. I was wondering if you might want to come over for lunch.”

  “Sure.”

  “I have an ulterior motive—two, actually. Leaky faucets.”

  “Say no more. I was born to plumb.”

  “See you around noon, then?”

  “Yup. Wait a minute, where?” She gave him directions to a small street on the Ewa side of Manoa Valley. “No problem,” he said putting the phone down. “Trouble in Gotham, Batman. Lady needs help.” He rubbed his hands together. This was a test, no doubt about it, a dragon to slay.