Tide King

by Jen Michalski

  “Vadim.” The flat-faced man nodded. He wore a sleeveless undershirt that looked like it had been dipped in cooking oil. On his arm was a tattoo of an owl with raised wings, a top hat, and bowtie. He nodded toward the other man, who was wearing a vest but no shirt. “Nicolai.”

  “Stanley.” He sat down at the table and bent over to tie his shoe. He could see the gun, straight and clean, in Vadim’s waistband. A TT Tokarev.

  “You boys in the war?” Stanley picked up his cards. They were worn to felt, greasy on the edges.

  “Why you need to know?” Nicolai smudged his cigar into an ashtray, brought his glass to his lips.

  “I’m a vet myself.” Stanley shrugged. It occurred to him the money he planned on winning could be put to good use. He could take the train to Ohio, find Johnson’s parents, and let them know how Johnson died, not honorably for his country as they probably thought, but because of his own foolishness, his vote to go back along the ditch. On the other hand, it seemed a stupid thing to do, to snatch whatever veil of delusion lay like gauze over their eyes just to heave an anvil off his own chest. But maybe it would be of some comfort to them that their son had not died alone, in pain, that Stanley knelt before him and mourned his ascent into the afterlife.

  “We are all brothers here.” Vadim cupped Stanley’s shoulder with an open palm, stirring the soup of his murky plans. Stanley rubbed his eyes, cleared his throat. “We all on same side. To victory, eh? Here, I give you a shot.”

  Vadim brought an unmarked bottle from under his seat and poured it into Stanley’s glass. They raised them, and Stanley watched the fluid rise to the rim before ebbing. He opened his mouth and the liquid went hot, icy, down his throat.

  “Spasiba.” Stanley nodded. “Thank you.” He looked at his cards. It occurred to him suddenly that the Russians would not let him win, and that if he somehow did, perhaps they would kill him.

  The war had made him many things—alcoholic, apoplectic, apathetic—but if they were going to try to plug him in the alley later, he was going to win the dingy, greasy shirts off their backs first. He tossed aside two cards as Vadim dealt him three more. Nicolai raised a modest sum, and Stanley saw him. Vadim folded.

  “Two pair.” Nicolai laid down two fours and two eights

  “Three pair.” Stanley tossed three sevens over top. “Are we gonna start betting real money, or what?”

  He wondered how the Russians got so quickly to the States after the war, if they were in the Red Army. Their faces were pebbled with scars and sunburn. Nicolai’s nose was fleshy, an older man’s. Vadim’s palms were roped with burns and creases. Stanley sipped at his vodka, spitting every other sip back into the glass. The light, dim above him, hummed against his ears, along with the voices in the bar. The air was so wet and hot that he could eat it. He hoped he would not go places in his head when he needed to stay here, think about the game, think about how he was going to get out of the bar, winnings or not.

  “I’ve seen things,” he slurred as his winnings grew. His fear grew, too. He had not expected to win so easily. “I’ve seen some shit.”

  “You know what this is?” Vadim pointed at the owl on his arm. “Is tattoo I get in prison.”

  “He kill three men.” Nicolai lit another cigar. “Is tattoo you get if you murderer.”

  Stanley tried to remember his Latin. He repeated his multiplication tables. But the room still carouseled slowly. And the Russians did not seem to get any drunker. He did not want to be pushed off his seat by Vadim, on top of the stinking carcass already there. He lit a cigarette and picked up his cards.

  “You like prop-ert-y, Mr. Soldier?” Vadim ran his ringed fingers through his greasy hair and touched his cards. Stanley squinted, trying to see if the smudges on Vadim’s cards were new or old. The boys in First Division used to mark the cards in any way they could—tobacco spit, dirt, blood. Stanley had played with cheaters, even won. But those boys had never tried to kill him later.

  “What kind of property?” Stanley breathed through his nose. The sour, onion smell of the men cleared his head a little. Nicolai burped. Flecks of something dotted his lips.

  “Is farmhouse on other side of bay.” Vadim patted his pants pocket, emerged with a yellowed title. “A man I take from instead of money in card game last week. But I stupid. I should have just make him get me money, you say?”

  “The Chesapeake Bay?” Stanley fondled the paper. He did not have anywhere to be. He imagined working his body to exhaustion on some farm somewhere, falling into bed every night, not thinking. No boss to tell him not to come to work still dank with whiskey.

  “Yeah yeah.” Vadim nodded. “Es worth something, if you like farming. We left Russia so we not have to farm, you know? So I win all my money back from you, then I sell stinkin’ farm and open leather shop.”

  “Why didn’t you sell the farm first, before you gamble all your money away?” Stanley pondered aloud, stroking the blond stubble that never quite thickened into a beard.

  “Why not you shut up?” Vadim leaned over. His eyes were ravines of red meeting the dark brown iris. Their focus wavered slightly. Stanley smiled, and dragged his cigarette.

  “All right.” Stanley fingered the title disinterestedly before cutting the cards. “I guess it’s legit; throw it in.”

  Vadim shuffled the cards, grinning like an ogre. Nicolai began to giggle, holding his belly. Stanley reached to pick up the title again, half expecting see Cracker Jack written at the bottom, but stopped. He picked up his cards and bet modestly, even though he was a four of clubs shy of a straight flush. He wondered if he should blow the game, if the Ruskies were letting him win, setting him up with the money just so they’d have a chance to kill him later. The Ruskies in the Red Army were the lowest bastards he’d ever seen; the villages the Army went through after the Reds were decimated, full of disemboweled men, raped and carved women, children with slugs between their eyes.

  But it was possible that they were just really drunk and stupid. If that were the case, they were trumping his drunk and paranoid. Vadim chewed on the end of his cigar and pushed some more bills into the pot. Stanley sat for a long time, trying to throw them off. He rubbed his forehead and sighed before he added his own money.

  He studied the crowd, looking for an opening to beat it the hell out of there. Vadim dealt Stanley a four of clubs. He wondered whether to excuse himself, go to the bathroom, give them a chance to substitute his cards or theirs. But something in him had stirred when he saw that title. He saw a chance to be alone, to sort out whatever the hell had happened to him, to right his ship. He would quit drinking. He would be a good son. He’d be a good American.

  “Well, look who wins the big pot,” Vadim laughed when Stanley laid down his flush, and he knew the fix was in. Vadim had lost too much money, too much face, to be such a gracious loser.

  “It’s been a pleasure playing cards with you fine gentlemen of the Red Army.” Stanley held out his hand to Vadim, then Nicolai, as he scanned the bar with his eyes. “Give a big salute to Stalin for me.”

  Just then a seaman staggered forth from the bathroom. Stanley stood up just before he reached their table, stuffing title and money in his pants pocket. Nicolai stood up just as the seaman walked between him and Stanley, and Nicolai pushed at him. Stanley began to squeeze his way to the front. Bodies multiplied between him and the door, perhaps because of his drunkenness. He pulled his Colt from his back pocket and tucked it in his right shirt sleeve, above his hand. Nicolai pushed the seaman onto the floor and began to pursue, but Stanley was halfway through the bar. A hand grabbed him as he pushed his way ahead.

  “Ten cents?” A man the color of liver asked him. His yellowed eyes floated on a fifth of liquor, if not more, by Stanley’s estimate. “Lend a guy ten cents?”

  Nicolai was only one man from him now. Stanley hooked liver man’s barstool with his boot and pulled it hard, sending him tumbling to the floor behind him. He could smell the cool, salt air from the open door, glimpse the cobb
lestone and the night harbor before Vadim filled it from the outside.

  “Some of us, we take back door,” he grinned as Nicolai cuffed Stanley’s shoulder from behind. “What, you think we come to this country yesterday?”

  “Come on, Mr. Soldier.” Stanley felt Nicolai’s gun in his back. He had survived Europe only to get killed by a bunch of greasy dumb Ruskies.

  “I won fair and square,” Stanley said, although he supposed the argument was more for his benefit, for God, than for theirs. They walked along the cobblestone streets, thick with the smell of fish and salt, Vadim in front, Nicolai behind, like a drunken marching band, until they found a narrow alley well off Thames Street, where the bums slept. Where Stanley would be sleeping forever, soon enough. They hadn’t gotten his gun, but Stanley didn’t see how he could shoot them both. At the very least, he needed to shoot Nicolai first, whose gun was nosed so far in Stanley’s back, he could feel it in his stomach. Vadim wheezed in front of him. He lurched left and right, and Stanley was hopeful for a moment that Vadim would pass out, making Nicolai pause, perhaps, loosen his grip. Stanley let his Colt slip from his forearm into his hand.

  “Not here,” Nicolai said, when Vadim stopped. “People live here.” Stanley looked at the open, second-story windows from the backs of brick rowhouses overlooking the alley. He couldn’t imagine who lived down here. But a woman sat in one, smoking a cigarette. Her blonde ringlets bounced as she leaned over the sill. Help me, Stanley mouthed.

  “I’m tired. Shoot him now.” Vadim turned and coughed, emptying his chest of yellow phlegm before spitting it on the ground. A shot whizzed by Stanley’s head, and it was enough of an opening. He turned and shoved his gun into the gut of Nicolai, who had crouched behind Stanley, intending to use him as a shield from the errant gunman, and fired twice.

  Stanley heard another shot, from Vadim’s direction, and then warmness in his left shoulder. He turned, on his knee, and fired three shots into the middle of Vadim’s shadow, which staggered back. Another bullet split the air from the window. It hit Vadim in the neck, and he slumped over.

  “Up here.” The girl in the window motioned to him. Stanley patted Nicolai’s pockets, pulling out some loose bills, before he went over Vadim. They had done it in the Army for years, stealing from dead soldiers. Only it wasn’t a crime then. Not that there was very much—a few tens, loose bullets, a button—on the Russians. Vadim and Nicolai were probably small peanuts, not part of any group. No group that would be hunting Stanley in the days and nights ahead, he hoped.

  But there was still the police. Stanley looked up at the window. The woman had retreated, but the light was still on. A stone wall, five feet high, separated the yard of the rowhouse from the alley. He scaled it and tried the back door. It opened, and he went inside.

  He stood in the kitchen. It was dark and sparse and clean. A teapot sat on a stove burner, an ashtray on the counter. Stanley moved through the living room, where a sailor snored on the couch, his back to Stanley. Ladies’ things, lipsticks and pantyhose, rouge brushes, laid scattered, along with cheap perfume vials, and Stanley wondered whether he was in some sort of brothel.

  “In the back,” a woman’s voice called down, and Stanley went up the stairs and opened the back bedroom door. She sat on the bed, a child with a grown-up’s face, drawn with lipstick and eyeliner. Or maybe she was a child with a baby’s legs. Stanley focused, squinting his eyes. She was a midget in hemmed lingerie, sewn to accommodate the squat trunk of her body. Her legs, plump and formless, swayed from where they hung off the bed. Her toenails were little red squares the size of confetti.

  “What’re you looking at?” She lit a cigarette that, compared to her, stretched like a javelin, and set it in the ashtray.

  “Nothing.” Stanley cupped his hand over his shoulder. It began to burn worse than anything he’d known. He could feel the blood running over his fingers and down his hand.

  “Christ—you’re bleeding all over my bedroom.” She hopped from the bed and waddled over. She stood to his waist, and Stanley had to crouch so that she could examine the wound. “Looks like a flesh wound.”

  “It wasn’t your bullet.”

  “Pfh—I know it wasn’t my bullet.” She went to the closet and pulled out a bed sheet. “You see that shot I put into ugly’s neck?”

  “Your first shot missed pretty bad.” Stanley let her peel the shirt off. He was in too much pain to do anything. The wood floor pressed into his kneecaps, and the whiskey still pressed on him like a boot heel on his neck.

  “I couldn’t get a clear aim on the guy, and I didn’t want to shoot you, neither.” She left the room and returned with a bowl of water and some soap. She dipped one end of the bed sheet in the water and wiped the blood from his shoulder. She soaped it a little and wet it and then dried it. She ripped a large swath from the other end of the bed sheet with her teeth and tied it tightly around Stanley’s shoulder while he grimaced, stared at the crucifix above the bed. A Catholic prostitute.

  “Where’d you learn to handle a gun?” He had seen the ladies, sometimes children, in the villages with rifles, discarded lugers, but their handling developed from necessity, and it showed. They were just as likely to hit a tree or even themselves as they were a soldier.

  “This ain’t exactly Sunday school, this side of town,” she answered. “If this don’t stop bleeding, you’re gonna have to walk up to Church Hospital on your own. I don’t want to get in no trouble.”

  “I should be going, anyways.” He stood up, and the room crashed against him in waves.

  “You’re not going anywhere.” she pushed him by the legs toward the bed. “Just sit down.”

  “What about the cops?”

  “You think the cops don’t have better things to do than to come here?” She laughed, and it was a pretty laugh. Stanley closed his eyes and imagined it coming from some other woman, a real one, before he felt terrible for thinking it. “Don’t you worry about the cops. I’ll probably have to call four or five times to get them to take away your friends from the alley, anyway.”

  “They’re not my friends.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” she said.

  “I’m sorry.” He leaned over on the bed, feeling sick. “I gotta get up for work tomorrow. I shouldn’t even be here.”

  “That’s what they all say.” She walked toward the door and threw the sheet out in the hallway before locking the door. “By the way, you owe me for that sheet.”

  “Of course.” He nodded, feeling in his pockets for his winnings.

  “Relax for now, all right?” She fumbled at a desk, a small desk, the type one would find in grade school, before turning around with something clear in a shot glass. “Have some vodka.”

  “No thanks,” he shook his head. “I couldn’t drink any more if you paid me. If you had a few aspirin…”

  “I’ll go up to the drug store when it’s morning,” she answered, climbing on the bed beside him. He felt his body stiffen. He had never been so close to a woman before, certainly not a midget. The combination, both alluring and off-putting, made him long for some known comfort, something that had eluded him since he enlisted.

  “Why are you crying?” She touched his knee. “Does it hurt real bad?”

  He began to shake, tears escaping in fistfuls. He missed Johnson. He missed his buddy and he shouldn’t be afraid to say it. He missed other things he didn’t have, whatever it was he was supposed to have after graduating from high school, returning instead from a honeymoon of death and rot and stink. Marriage? Children? The pictures in the paper of the men in their military dress marrying their high school sweethearts angered him. Why weren’t they as paralyzed as Stanley, not quite home, not quite anywhere else?

  Perhaps he was being a baby. Johnson wouldn’t have acted this way. It should have been Johnson who survived; that much he knew and wished.

  “I’m sorry.” He turned his head. The room was cool, pink-gray, as the rising sun slowly filled it. Stanley could see the
little desk and a vanity with the legs sawed in half. The only thing that was its true height was the bed. For customers, he imagined. “You’ve been real nice, and I don’t even know your name.”

  “Cynthia Meekins. But you can call me Cindy. What about you, baby doll?”

  “Stanley. Fish that piece of paper out of my pocket, will you?” His face pressed back against the mattress in a pool of his own sweat. If he wound up dying, which at some points he dismissed but other points, when he faded in and out of consciousness, when the walls began melting and the roses on the wallpaper began swirling into boars and coyotes, was convinced, he wanted to give her the deed to the farm proper. If it was really a farm.

  “Let’s see.” He felt her little hands moving in his pockets, fleshy spiders, but even so, he felt his erection press against the bed. “Looks like you got seventy-five dollars, a dried-up corsage, and, oh, here’s something”

  “Don’t throw that away.” He lifted up his head as high as he could. “The flower, I mean.” Although he did not know why he kept it, the stupid herb that didn’t do anything, didn’t save anyone. If his mother believed in it so much, why didn’t she take it herself, make sure she was alive for him when he returned from Europe? But, with it in his hands, fragile and crumbly, he relaxed, breathed easier.

  “Looks like some kind of property deed.” He heard Cindy unfold the paper. “To someplace in Fruitland. Where the heck is that?”

  “It’s on the other side of the bay, the Eastern shore. You ever been?”

  “Honey, I ain’t been more than twenty blocks outta this neighborhood in any direction.”

  “Well, listen, if I die, I want you to have it. The money too, of course. But this way, I’m giving everything to you proper, and you don’t have to worry about whether you feel like you’re taking it from a dead guy.”