Carrying

by Theodore Weesner

  She kisses a smile my way, as if to say she is happily intoxicated and has no wish to entertain a problem, wishes only to drink, and to drink some more. Juiced or not, I attempt to keep an eye on things, including my back, though when I glance again DeMarcus is glaring my way with even greater intensity.

  “You are a clever young man, is true,” Magda has me know.

  “You’re a sweet lush, is what you are,” I say. “I’m guessing he’s your boyfriend. At least he thinks he is.” Her eyes may be difficult to read but nothing keeps her fingers from slipping around the stems of fresh glasses of white Riesling.

  “I have no boyfriend,” she declares. “I have friends who are boys, yes. Friends who are men. Women friends. I do not believe in boyfriend. I find the idea preposterous!”

  My tipsy notion is that I’m not that tipsy. My drunken guess is that she is baiting me again, matching my blather with her own. Still, when she leans my way and confesses, “…only sexual weakness is for black soldiers, black skin, that black ‘ting.’ You say no baloney…that is no baloney.”

  I can only howl, thinking she’s uttering the truth because, as she said, I’ve been clever with her. Her confession is one, however, that I won’t soon forget. This is Europe, as the orientation NCO warned. Nor is she ragging me with her arrogance, but enticing me, engaging my mind with something–as drunk as we both may be–that may alter my humanity.

  “Black guys but never white guys?” is my question.

  She has no reply, except as she uses her eyes and the faintest of smiles in taking an added sip of wine.

  “You have room in your heart only for the brothers? What of the damage that does to my foolish confidence?”

  She laughs and I’m pleased to have made her do so. “I do not lie, not since a long time ago,” she says.

  “Why me?”

  “Oh…a corporal who is so young, I don’t know. Wizz blue eyes. How can you be so young and are already a corporal?”

  When I look at her, not knowing how to reply, she says, “I wish to know. It is because your superiors are also white?”

  Yet again she’s punched me below the belt. “As a matter of fact I’m good at what I do,” I tell her. “You’re like my roommate, you know. He’s jealous but never does anything except moan and whine. Like what you’re doing now.”

  She grins, appears to enjoy my sass, sips her wine, gazes at me with one eye closed in inebriation.

  “You’re a booze hound,” I tell her.

  “Boose hound?”

  “I like you,” I add. “I like the smartass way you carry on. But what you are is a lush. You’re using me to make DeMarcus over there jealous, aren’t you? Why don’t I go over there and tell him what this is all about? Maybe he’ll back off with the dagger stares? We’ll make peace all the way around, what do you say? Wanna make peace all the way around? Or do you get off acting superior with U.S. soldiers…calling them racist, acting like you’re better than they are?”

  Drunk or not (okay, drunk) I find myself staggering to DeMarcus Owens’s table, of a mind to have him know that carrying in the army is a mistake, that I’m not against him if he’s able to not be against me and himself, that the reason I’m sitting with the beautiful lush for whom he seems to have a thing is that she finessed me into picking her up and buying her drinks, tricked me into thinking I was doing the choosing, led me here to drink as much for her sake as to make the brothers jealous by saying, presto! I go vizz white guy if going vizz white guy is what I wish to do! Eat your hearts out, you double-A soldiers vizz whom I have always comported.

  The jukebox is thumping gangsta rap, pounding within my intoxicated skull. I don’t like rap (propaganda with rhythm) and disparage the way black dudes say the reverse racism in their music is the passion of the streets. Yeah, right. Passion this, you hustling phonies.

  The rare white guy entering Club Miami Beach by then is a Bahnhof thug or a German wigger, not unlike–I think–the blond wigger whose company I’ve been enjoying more than I would have guessed. “When’s the last time you went with a white guy?” I ask in a drunken slur with drunken affection. “You know, my paper at home editorialized that if we go to war in Iraq, white guys alone should have to go into combat. You see how dumb that is? How bad it would make black guys feel? How it’s like you only going to bed with black guys? See what I’m saying?”

  She’s sort of laughing, maybe getting what I’m trying to say…maybe more than I think. “You wish me to lie?” she blurts. “I tell you I have not lied, not since long ago when all of Germany is lying.”

  “Whatever,” is my reply. And: “Why pick me up if not to make DeMarcus and the brothers jealous? You know what a heartbreaker you are? You go to bed with me, you’ll really give them something to be jealous about.”

  “I tell you,” she says, her head weaving in inebriation. “I tell you: Dat black ting is so BIGG!”

  She explodes with laughter, and I can’t help laughing with her. “You’re one bad lady,” I say. “You pick me up to do the buying and you say you only go to bed with black guys because dat black ting is so BIGG!”

  I howl drunkenly, as does she.

  “Black man,” she slurs. “Is what I know vizz husband one, and husband two, who are bose white. With black soldier in Germany…I know freedom only vizz black soldier in the bedroom. I tell you what is true.”

  I can’t help liking her for her drunken candor, nor can I help thinking she’s crazy in ways I don’t understand. Everybody said we’d make friends on our first assignment, but no one said it might be with an aging German woman in a black soldier’s hangout called Club Miami Beach!

  “You know what this is like to me?” I say. “Like getting down funky with one of the best teachers ever…having the hots for her besides!”

  “To you I am sorry I do not know you sooner. My dear Jimmy, you are special.”

  “One thing I think you’ve got wrong is blaming everything on white guys,” I tell her. “That crossing-the-street stuff when you see black guys? Prisons in the U.S. are filled with black guys out to hurt white guys who don’t cross the street! It’s a stupid charge. You have to be a moron to put yourself into a situation like that. What’s ironic is the charge coming from Harvard guys who ride taxis and avoid the streets! Chance of getting cut, or shot, having your life ruined so some creep can steal five bucks for crack cocaine is fifty-fifty at best. Big joke where I come from is pols and preachers getting all worked up when some cab driver doesn’t wanna pick them up in Roxbury at night. Problem is, cabbies get robbed all the time! Get their throats cut for a few dollars! What the hell…don’t be racist and guard your life! As if the pols would go driving cabs in Roxbury themselves!”

  “Now you are angry?”

  “Yeah. But not like you’re saying. I don’t like being called racist. White guys alone going into combat? Are you kidding me? Not even the dumbest of black guys is that dumb!”

  “You have black friends?”

  “I did, in school. Stablemates at the gym. Had a sorta girlfriend who’s black. But it never went beyond a kiss in the basement under the stairwell.”

  For reasons hardly known to me in my weaving intoxication, I find myself standing behind DeMarcus Owens where he’s sitting with his friends. “HEY!” I call, knowing in my drunken heart that however much I may be grinning, I’m too close to being beyond control to be doing what I’m doing. “Asked how you’re doing!” I say as DeMarcus is twisting around to take me in. “You can’t answer?”

  His brow is furrowed and for the moment, confused, he says nothing. “Live and let live,” I say. “I know plenty a’ brothers. Grew up with brothers. Live and let live, is what I say. That woman thinks–”

  “Fuck outta my face, man!” DeMarcus says, interrupting my pitch.

  I keep smiling, giggling, feeling confident, daring, fearless. “That woman. We’re friends. Just met. She’s making you jealous by picking me up and bringing me here. She’s as drunk as I am. Live and let live.” On a g
lance, I see that Magdalena is no longer at our table. Turning to DeMarcus, I say, “Les make peace. Don’t like having somebody after me.”

  “Man, outta my face!” he snaps. He’s hot with fresh anger and his friends grip his arms to contain him.

  “Whattaya gonna do, come after me with a shank? What’re you doin’ in the army with a shank, anyway? You fucking stupid? Tell me, ’cause I’d like to know. Think they’re Nazis you gotta fight off?”

  “Lookit the motherfucker shakin’ and shit,” one of DeMarcus’s friends–a skinny PFC–says while laughing.

  “You givin Dee some shit?” another brother is asking. “Talkin’ racist shit to our man?”

  “Lookit the motherfucker shakin’ and shit,” the skinny soldier repeats.

  “You know, you’re kinda skinny to be running off at the mouth,” I say to the skinny soldier with my fearless grin. “Should be careful, might get hurt.”

  “Hey, somethin’ goin’ down here?” an older brother wants to know, edging in from near the bar’s pick-up station.

  “I get at the motherfucker, won’t be messin’ with nobody,” the skinny kid says.

  I chortle laughter. “What’re doing, talkin’ street in the army in Germany? Talkin’ stereotype? Don’t think you’re street at all, any a’ you. Phonies puttin’ on an act! Enough gangsta shit! Grow the fuck up! Talkin’ street to me? Talkin’ stereotype to me? Who you think you’re talkin’ to, some fuckin’ hayseed?”

  I sort of know what I’m doing, am enjoying myself even as I know that fists will fly and there is no way out of this drunkenness without taking some damage and dealing damage, too, which–as on a playground in distant childhood–I’m longing to do.

  “I be at you, motherfucker!” the skinny soldier spittles as he, in turn, has his arms held in check by the others. “Talkin’ racist shit!”

  “What’re you guys, a street gang? Got shanks and shit?”

  There’s a pause as they weigh my in-your-face craziness, whereupon I say, “DeMarcus here is pissed ’cause I disarmed his dumb ass on the truck from Rhein/Main. Thas what this is about. Fucking banana shank in the shoe! Got nothin’ to do with racist, so don’t give me that crap, amigos. It’s bullshit you’d put down in a second you were real soldiers…which I don’t think any of you are!”

  “Man, you one fucking crazy cracker, better watch your mouf,” the tall soldier who joined from the bar is saying…his anger letting me know I’ve thrown up some doubt and scored a point.

  I offer another drunken smile, more gurgling laughter. “Got me shakin’ in my boots. I’ll take any one a’ you, any time, any place,” I say. “One at a time, face to face. Tell you this…gonna gang-jump my ass, better kill me, ’cause I will have all a’ you in the stockade, outta the army, conduct unbecoming, behaving like fucking street scum.”

  Their words come spitting as all are on their feet: “Motherfucking asshole!” “Dee, stomp his ass!” “Kill the mutha fucka!” “Honkyass mutha fucka!” “You don’t kill his ass, ah’m goin’ to!”

  “Honkyass I ain’t,” I say, taking in their faces. “You’re real soldiers you’d tell Dee he’s got no bidness carrying a shank in his shoe in the fucking army! That’s what this is about. Ain’t nothin racial…he’s humiliated I threw his shank on the highway! Whyn’t you turkeys grow up? Ain’t no answer, callin’ me racist, when it’s one a’ your own goin’ racial stereotype!”

  They’ve heard my words, which have given them pause, as I can see. Nobody wants to get kicked out of the army, as they well know, not for ganging up on a white soldier for challenging a brother who has brought the street into the army by way of a shank in his shoe! At the same time the half-dozen are caught between the river and the deep blue sea, spitting words while not going too far with a soldier, white or black, who may have a case.

  “Man, that yo dispute with this motherfucker?” the tall soldier is asking DeMarcus, letting me know that I’ve gained a principled if reluctant witness.

  “That yo argument?” the tall soldier repeats. “What you wanna do? Kill the motherfucker myself only he ain’t worth getting kicked out of the army. What you wanna do?”

  “Now you’re talkin’ like a man,” I say to the tall guy, who would seem (in civvies) to be a first-three-grader with no wish to lose his stripes and return to the street. “Reaffirms my faith,” I tell him.

  “Fuck you, honky, shut yo mouf talkin to me!” he replies.

  “Fight any of you, anytime, fair and square, man to man,” I say, gurgling more laughter, knowing in my bones that the tall soldier, despite his words, is grounded in fairness, intelligence, and common sense.

  “Man, what you wanna do wid this motherfucker?” he asks DeMarcus.

  “Duke the motherfucker for sure!” DeMarcus says.

  “You guys should work on your vocabulary,” I add with giddy and fearless madness. “Motherfucker this, motherfucker that. Sound like black scum talkin’ shit in an alley.”

  “Man…he don’t kill your ass ah’m gonna!” the tall boss soldier spits my way.

  I gurgle and giggle, knowing I nailed him where he lives on criticizing his vocabulary. “I’m so frightened,” I say.

  “Mean what I say! Don’t be testin’ me!”

  I keep grinning, raise my hands as if to say wow, I am so impressed.

  “I duke his ass!” DeMarcus says.

  “You duke his ass?” the boss soldier wants to know.

  “I kill the motherfucker!”

  “We take him outside, you kill the motherfucker?” the boss soldier asks.

  “Got me shakin’ like a leaf,” I say.

  “Move yo feet, honky,” the boss soldier says. “We goin’ outside.”

  So it’s going to happen…as I can see. I feel an old rush of weak knees that occurs in moments of turning to fight for some belt or your life…if police or MPs don’t come on the run to break it up. It’s always this way with the knees, a wash of fear accompanying the screwing into place of doing it, the tucking of the chin, the hunkering unto yourself while reminding yourself to take the body before going for the head, that as strong as DeMarcus Owens may be, to take the ribs and lungs, the kidneys and pancreas, the spleen and intestines until his guard starts to lower and his elbows begin to sag, whereupon to take the head, to textbook-destroy the head, textbook-destroy the center of his being as I learned a hundred times over at the gym in Southie.

  Kenny Washington would seem to be with me as I allow myself to be guided through the Gasthaus to a rear door into cool autumn air: ‘Make the body pay. Make it think on its own. Let it know it is going to hurt if it doesn’t cover up. Watch for that elbow to sag by one half-inch to protect the kidneys, ’cause that is when you blast through peek-a-boo and hook to the head, left-right-left, right-cross to the head, bam bam, destroy the center of a man’s being. Thas when you win and the fight will be over, though your opponent may need more persuasion before going down.’

  Magdalena would be impressed, I’m thinking, had she not bolted. She would offer kisses and caresses, I tell myself as we circle into a courtyard in chilly autumn air and I hear DeMarcus hyping himself, hyping the gathering of black soldiers in civvies and uniforms: “Be dukin’ the motherfucker! Be killin’ the honky motherfucker!”

  “Kill the cracker!” someone shouts. “Duke his honky ass!” “Stomp the motherfucker!” another voice calls into the high hilarity/fear/excitement of a fight going down, while I’m sobered by the realization that I’m the only member of the visiting team.

  I scan for Magdalena in the half-lit air as I circle with the flow and assume pointed awareness, hoping the elegant lady is present and impressed with my speed, power, know-how, with what I can do almost automatically, drunk or sober, with my fists. The bracing air has the smell of Friday night football, while there is no ashen blond hair anywhere to be seen.

  “No knives or guns!” I call, keeping an eye on DeMarcus as I pull off my army tie and shirt to toss aside, getting no one to hoot at what I meant
to be a funny line.

  I’m less drunk already than I was five minutes earlier as I raise my arms and close my fists, take in autumn air as deeply as possible in a reach for sobriety, focus, control. I slide a toe over what feels like oily cobblestone while the mob keeps pressing to see as a voice cries out, “Do it to him, man!” And: “Lay it on him!” And: “Put some hurt on that motherfucker!” Also, like a voice in a congregation: “Kill the honky motherfucker!” which has me–looking once more for a laugh–saying aside, “Easy, man.”

  Then I’m circling and eyeing DeMarcus Owens. “Fair and square, man to man!” I say as I tuck my chin, each of us looking at once for ways to unleash our dynamite.

  “It be fair, motherfucker, don’t worry!” the boss soldier calls, into it enough to be circling like a referee.

  People keep hooting, laughing, pressing the circle of action. Light creates halos above heads and I feel a degree of safety and fairness in the crowd. “C’mon, gangbanger!” I say, spiraling my dukes to have them know I have some stuff…hearing a voice call, “Dude’s a fighter…dude is a fighter!”

  All at once we’re flicking fists. DeMarcus–not without experience–ducks in as we exchange snaps to opposing arms and faces, having me know he’s not going to be a pushover. As we circle, I roast myself: Get your head on! Get pissed! Take it to him! Make his fucking body pay admission!

  I feint, unleash a flurry moving after him, trying to read what he’s all about as he circles beyond reach. I try jabs and feints, looking to see what he’ll do while overhearing from another voice, “Dude’s quick!” which compliment has me thinking to offer a goofy bow.

  Do the work! Set him up! Throw a fake! Land a lethal blow, I tell myself, sucking in air and remaining in pursuit. Make the fucker pay, and Magdalena will reappear and award an A for talent! In these moments it’s as it was in arenas at home, when I would take the ghost of my father unto myself and imagine him reappearing in my moments of triumph! If I were tough enough, smart enough, fast enough, he would come alive like a ghost within the hazy Portland Arena, the Providence Civic Center, the Worcester DCU, and all would revert to what it might have been had he not been blown away in Vietnam. Now it’s a caressing of Magdalena’s lovely bones into the livelong night that is speaking to me, has me saying to myself: Take the body! Make it hurt! Do the body!