by Oakley Hall
“That’s what I mean.”
“I don’t know enough to write a novel.”
“But as you said, you know about parents divorcing, and the shocks of the Depression, and you will presently, no doubt, know about war.”
I said I was only twenty.
“I believe you will be maturing very fast soon, Daltrey.” And he said solemnly, “It is the talent it is death to hide.”
I got to my feet. I felt as though I were watching myself from about ten feet off, a gawky college junior with a big head.
“I am very impressed with your ideas, Daltrey.” Professor Chapman said. “I am also impressed that you are striving to perfect the writing skills that will be necessary to them. I only suggest that you widen your reading to discover what contemporary novelists are achieving. I will be very pleased to advise you on your reading.”
No point in telling him I didn’t have time to read anything but what I had to read, what with Perry’s and the brand and school and Bonny.
“You’ve read Hemingway,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“‘Big Two-Hearted River’?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It is a textbook of writing. I suggest you look at it again.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
4
There was racketing in 3rd Street outside the window of the printshop, swabbies and gyrenes out in force, hurrying past the window. Los Angeles’s riots had spread south.
“Noisy out,” I said to Tully
“A good night for Mexicans to stay home,” he commented.
A good night for civilians to stay home also. I’d had to ignore a couple of cracks about not being in uniform on my way to work, and I’d parked Ol Paint in the alley to keep out of trouble. The servicemen out tonight were not ones I wanted to quarrel with over the issue of the pachucos, nor the rights of the Coast Japanese, either.
10,000 JAPANESE TO BE EVACUATED IN 3 WEEKS. That meant Stan and his brother, Ben, in LA, and his sister and Mr. and Mrs. Takahashi in San Diego, and nine thousand and some others.
I didn’t know what to do about outrages. I couldn’t seem to get the essence to come out in the tots column, and I didn’t know what to do with the idea of Normal Heights that Mr. Chapman had thought so important. I could always go out to Mission Beach and quarrel with Weezie about the Japs who were Americans and those who were the enemy, but my father would say something commonsensical and pompous that would infuriate me, and there was still that letter from the Post 5 asshole that I had to remind myself was not my father’s fault.
Just now it seemed the better part of valor to be the spectator Tully thought writers ought to be.
Tully handed me the proofs, and I studied the right-hand column, with its head TEACHER EXPOSED. A third-grade teacher in Bakersfield had been arrested for “abusing” his students, boys. I was finding it more and more difficult to write the tots column. My brain shrank away from it; I could hardly make myself focus. I had managed to fill this particular column with almost nothing specific. I had looked up Bakersfield weather in the WPA guidebook and got a bullshit paragraph out of that.
From the pressroom came the sounds of Charlotte starting up and immediately stalling.
A gang of sailors surged past the window, looking like a crowd scene from a movie. Two Marines halted to light each others’ cigarets, wearing green caps, their sharpshooter medals glinting on their chests. One of Bob-O’s letters had expressed satisfaction at his successes on the rifle range at Parris Island.
On Tully’s desk was the San Diego Union, with an editorial on the front page:
ACT NOW—OR RESIGN AND COME HOME
The United States forces in the Pacific have participated in several engagements, bravely and courageously.
But they have lost each one, and along with the forces of the United Nations, they are retreating steadily …
“Rugged!” I said. I had a feverish feeling, like coming down with the flu. I hoped Bonny hadn’t seen this paper.
Tully scrubbed his nose. A fringe of curls protruded beneath his leather cap. “Those poor devils in the Philippines are sunk, but once we get rid of some incompetent generals and admirals we’ll win it.” He looked at me anxiously, as though it were important that I believe that.
Maybe the anger of the servicemen in the streets was frustration at incompetence. Maybe because the war was being lost to Japs, they had to take it out on anyone with a different skin color.
Shouting revved up outside, and sailors hurried past the window again. The eagerness on their faces reminded me of a boys’ game of Capture the Flag.
“Chasing some poor Mexican kid,” Tully said. They’d beaten up on fourteen-year-olds in LA. What happened in LA was always worse than what happened in San Diego.
I went back to reading proof, dull stuff.
The door burst open and a man in a fawn-colored suit flung himself inside, panting like a locomotive. One of the lapels of his jacket was torn off, and a splash of blood stained his brown cheek. Calvin King.
“Need help, child!”
Two sailors crowded in the door after him, and Calvin spun away into the pressroom. Tully rose, white-faced, as more sailors jammed into the doorway. The door whacked against its stop.
I sprinted after Calvin, yanked the fire axe off the pressroom wall, and turned to face the sailors in the pressroom doorway.
I swung the axe in hard feints. More white caps and flushed faces congealed behind those in the doorway. If I let them past the opening, they’d surround me! I couldn’t look to see where Calvin was. Tee-John gaped, inky-faced, from Charlotte’s pit. I feinted with the axe, outrage surging in high-octane energy in my arms.
One of the sailors stared at me as though I were crazy.
“We want that fucken pachook back there!”
Milk-chocolate-brown Calvin in his zoot suit had been taken for a Mexican. I slashed out with the axe, panting like Calvin.
“Out of the way, punk! We’re comin through!”
The swabbies crowding the doorway looked no older than I was, except for the leader, who was short and broad, with a mean squinting face. Beside him, another brandished a length of two-by-four. Outside a horn honked insistently. I couldn’t see Tully past the crowd of black-and-white uniforms.
“Fuckin pachuco-lover!” one of them yelled.
“Four-F shit!”
The leader advanced half a step. I swung the axehead at his outstretched hand, which he snatched back with a yell. It shocked me almost into taking a step back that I had tried to hit his hand. All at once my arms were exhausted. Tee-John was beside me, black-stained face and glaring white-rimmed eyeballs. He held a big black revolver pointed.
“Get out of here you fockin pieces shit!” he shouted. He cocked the revolver noisily. Holding it in both hands, he jammed the muzzle at squinch-face. In a general retreat, Tee-John forced the door shut and jammed his shoulder against it. I threw the bolt.
Beyond the door a commanding voice was raised. “Out! Out of here! Move along, you people!” The Shore Patrol had arrived.
“Where’s Calvin?” I panted.
Tee-John jerked his head toward the back door.
“Goal-line stand!” I said.
A flash of white split his stained face. “No pasarán!”
There was a single rap on the door, and Tee-John unbolted and opened it. Tully stood there pasty-faced in his leather cap, round-shouldered in his loafer jacket. I understood the contempt of the combatant for the noncombatant. Past him, through the window, the street was empty in the darkness.
Tully scowled at the revolver. “I told you not to bring that down here!”
Tee-John spun the gun by its trigger guard.
“Heard them telling the SPs you had a gun in here, and a German accent. The SPs will tell the cops. You’d better get going, Tee.”
Tee-John spat. I glared at Tully. Just then the window behind him exploded. A length of two-by-four flopped onto the floor. Tee-John
started for the door, but Tully caught his arm.
“Get going right now!”
While the printer changed his clothes, Tully and I carried half a sheet of beaverboard from the pressroom to cover the broken window, nailing it in place. If the sailors were coming back to beat us up, I didn’t have the strength to pick up the fire axe again. Courage had swarmed through my veins in my outrage, but dribbled away when I had time to think.
“I told him not to bring that gun down here,” Tully said. “He’s got an indictment against him in Utah.”
It occurred to me that Tee-John might have actually shot one of the sailors, as I had tried to hit one with the fire axe. Pale cast of thought!
“We’ll have to do the pressrun by ourselves tonight,” Tully grumbled.
* * *
I was trying to coax Charlotte into action when Tully called from the office that someone was here to see me. Dessy stood against the counter in a clinging brown dress and high heels, her mouth bloodred in her pasty face. Tully stood beside his desk.
“Can you come?” Dessy said in a low voice. “Cal’s hurt.”
My jacket hung on a hook behind the door, and I armed into it. I exchanged a glance of communication with Tully, who liked Calvin.
I followed Dessy out into the chilly night, clear black sky, pale stars, a salt breeze off the Bay. At the corners right and left, streetlights spread pale halos. Men lounged along the walls of the buildings down toward the White Castle and the Fremont Bar like fungus growing there. Nearer, a sailor leaned against a telephone pole. It was like a stage set. Dessy took my arm. I smelled her flower scent spiced with something bitter, maybe fear.
“Where is he?” I whispered.
“At the Benford. They beat him up.”
I remembered the Hemingway story of the bullfighter whose legs refused to move him closer to the bull. I put one foot in front of the other, straight ahead, Dessy on my arm, hoping no one recognized me as the pachuco-loving 4-F from the printshop. We headed catercorner across toward the Benford with its high, suspended rectangles of windows. The pattern of light and dark was like some diagram signaling Japanese bombers.
In the next block were two MPs, white caps, belts, leggings, and nightsticks. I whispered to Dessy to ask how badly Calvin was hurt.
“He thinks broken ribs.”
The watching sailors must think I was headed for the Benford to get laid. Dessy’s beringed hand clutched my arm. The quiet was punctuated with the small clatter of her heels. In the Benford she led me down a corridor and opened a door on pit darkness. I trailed her down stairs. Another door opened on light. Calvin was spread-eagled on a cot, coatless, torn fawn trousers, ripped shirt, an adhesive pad on his cheek, the eye above it swollen shut.
“Can you take me up to LA, child? My Uncle Red’s outta town, and I can’t get to Chrysie-car.”
A hundred and thirty-five miles and back on Ol Paint’s two fair tires, two bald ones, and a terrible spare. And Tully counting on me for the pressrun.
Calvin struggled to raise himself on an elbow, wincing. “Got to get outta town, child. I knifed a swabbie.”
“Is he dead?”
“He was sure as hell trying to kill me. Thought I was a fuckin pachook, for Christ sake!”
Standing beside the cot with one hand pressed to her breast, the other to her mouth, a scarf tied over her hair, Dessy looked like a tiny peasant woman.
“Can you make it upstairs if I go get my car?” I said to Calvin.
“Got to.”
Outside a siren wailed, others joining it in a muffled swelling of sound. The light went out.
Calvin crowed. “My luck is holdin! It’s a blackout.”
5
The clusters of men were visible in the pale moonlight as I slanted Ol Paint to the curb by the side door of the hotel. Calvin groaned as he tucked himself inside, Dessy leaning in to kiss him while I searched the mirror for anyone coming up behind.
I drifted on down the street in the blackout with my list of worries: Tully, who had an adversarial relationship with Charlotte, making the press run alone; driving in the blackout without an E gasoline sticker; tires.
I turned north on Coast Highway. Pencils of searchlight beams switched across the sky above the Bay.
“You said your uncle could get tires,” I said.
“I’ll give you his number and you call him up and tell him you’re my pal.” Calvin sounded as though he was hurting.
Lights were coming on. All clear! A false alarm as always. I switched on my headlights, to encounter oncoming beams. Soon we were heading up Rose Canyon, three and a half, four hours to Los Angeles: Del Mar, Solana Beach, Encinitas, Oceanside, San Clemente, Corona del Mar, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Signal Hill—
Calvin moved carefully to test one position after another, cursing. He smelled sour. Ol Paint’s engine rumbled, quiet clinking of the key ring against the steering post.
“If that fucker croaks I’ll probly have to enlist in their fucken war,” Calvin said.
You joined up when it was too dangerous, or dull, or complicated, to remain a civilian; or because you wanted to go kill Japs or Germans. Why had Richie joined up when he had a terrific studio job, a Cord car, and two women? Because one of them had drowned herself?
“I thought you were 4-F.”
“I got two names. I registered under Calvin Goodrich, and my momma sends back draft notices, she don’t know any Calvin Goodrich. But if they start payin attention I’m up shit creek.”
Headlights descended the canyon toward us. I turned on the radio, Billie Holliday singing: “But when he starts in to love me/ He’s so fine and mellllow!”
Calvin said, “I’m not sayin Dessy can’t take care of herself, but if you’d just be around for her? Case she gets down the way she does.”
What if Dessy had to be bailed out of jail?
“Sure,” I said.
Now he seemed to be dozing, sharp profile pressed against the window glass. Seal Beach, Long Beach, up Lakewood to Firestone, up Firestone into the heart of heartless LA; grainy-eyed, neck muscles aching, left foot tapping to the beat of the radio.
Calvin’s destination was a two-story house off Central Avenue. He made a fuss of writing Red Goodrich’s phone number on the inside of a matchbook cover and eased out of Ol Paint, stepping slowly up a walk with his elbow tucked against his side. He moved like he was seventy years old.
When he had disappeared inside the house, I made a U-turn and started back for San Diego.
6
When I came in, Mr. and Mrs. Button were eating breakfast in the sunny kitchen. I’d hoped to sneak into my room without any conversation, but Mrs. Button called to me: “Payton, you are to phone Bonny!”
She bounced out of her chair to pour me a cup of coffee. She was a plump, redhaired woman with big teeth, Mr. Button dark and dour. He was a different kind of dark than Calvin, with a grayer coloration beneath the skin and around his eyes. He was half Navajo.
I sat on the chair Mrs. Button indicated. My eyes felt like burnt holes and my shoulders ached. The coffee seared my mouth in a good way. Time to get down to the brand for the newsstand deliveries.
Mr. Button gazed at me solemnly through his rimless glasses. “Iris didn’t tell her you were out all night, boy.”
I said I’d had to take a friend to LA.
It seemed that Bonny had confided in Mrs. Button that her brother was shipping out.
Mrs. Button’s gleaming teeth looked two sizes too large for her mouth. “I thought the Coast Guard was just for here!” she said.
“If I was a younger man I’d be out there,” Mr. Button said. “But I did my duty last time.”
Another hint that I ought to be in the service. I took my coffee into the living room to phone Bonny. It felt like a cat being stroked to know that someone was anxious about you. I promised to see her tonight.
In my room I trampled on the dirty laundry to sit at the typewriter and type out some dialog that had
come to me on the long drive back down the Coast. I cranked a sheet of newsprint into the machine:
“I can get your legs broken for a hundred bucks,” said the little man with the big nose.
“I can get yours broken for fifty,” Dodge said.
7
From Point Loma the Sirocco must be one of the dark shapes out on the moonlit Bay. With Bonny in my arms, I was the recipient of bad news. She was going to be a nurse’s aide two nights a week.
“I’ll be helping at Mercy Hospital.”
She would be doing something for the war effort, and I was jealous because there were two nights a week when I couldn’t be kissing her.
“Your mother thinks we’re seeing too much of each other,” I said.
She buried her face in my neck. She had worn Johnny Pierce’s pin because her mother hated him.
“It was Dr. Bailes,” she said finally. “He asked me, and I said okay. It makes me feel better about me. You know, I do know some nursey things from Daddy.” She laid her fingers against my neck. “That’s your carotid artery.”
I knew about carotid arteries. Jeff Dodge had stuck the muzzle of his automatic against Jake Gotch’s neck and told him, “If you move I’ll blow out your carotid artery and you’ll strangle on your own blood!”
“I can feel your heart beat,” Bonny said.
“Beats for you.”
She asked me if Liz and Richie did it.
Of course they did it, they weren’t kids like us.
Blues on the radio: “Hurry down sunshine/ See what tomorrow brings!”
“Liz was in some mess at State when I was at the Bishop School,” Bonny said. “Do you remember that?”
I didn’t.
“Daddy knows about it. That dance professor that was before Gilliam was fired.”
“I guess Captain Fletcher’s a real bastard.”
“There was something about a private detective,” Bonny said. “That’s funny, isn’t it? That’s what you write about.”
I didn’t want to talk about Liz. I wanted to resume kissing and fondling.
She said intensely, “I just hate that!”
“What?”
“Saying mean things about Liz because I’m afraid you like her. That’s so bad!” She tucked her knees up to her chest. “I don’t want to be like that,” she said. She sounded as though she were going to cry.
