by James Jones
“A likely story.”
“You dont believe me? Look at my eyes. Are those the eyes of a liar? Hey, pizon,” he yelled down the bar, “snap up! You ask the pizon,” he said, “are those the eyes of a liar. Me and him fought with Garibaldi.”
“That pizon aint even old enough to have fought with Mussolini, let alone Garibaldi. And you’re cock-eyed.”
“So what? What has them got to do with this? Shut up, here he comes.” He nodded at the barman, “This pizon is a pizon,” he said loudly to Prew, as the barman set down the drink. “Hi, pizon,” Prew said. “You threwn out any more queers lately?”
“Oh, no. No, no,” the barman said. He spread his arms to include the jam at the bar. “No queer today. All queer busy like hell Payday. All queer fodder here, see?”
“Pizon,” Angelo said, “it is a beautiful statue. A statue of an incredible loveliness.”
The barman shook his sweating head. “Sure like to see him.”
“How can I describe it to you?” Angelo said, “the loveliness. When I work in Gimbel’s Basement I use to put a wreath on this statue ever payday on Sataday, thats how lovely.”
“Garibaldi,” the barman grinned. “Fine man. My grandfather fight with Garibaldi.”
“There,” Angelo said to Prew. “You see?” He turned to the barman and pointed at Prew. “So did this pizon.”
“When you put on the wreath,” Prew said, “did you wash off the pigeon shit, too?”
“No,” Angelo said. “My assistant did that.”
“Garibaldi fight for liberty,” the barman said.
“Thats right, pizon,” Angelo nodded. “Shut up,” he said to Prew, as the barman moved away. “You want to spoil it? I’m trying to induce this pizon for some preparation on the house.”
“To hell with that pizon. I got thirteen-fifty we can use for preparation. Induce him with that.”
“Thats diffrnt,” Angelo said. “Why didnt you say so?”
“All I got to save out is four bits cab fare home is all. If I miss Reveille any more, now, it’ll be my ass.”
“Your bloody ass,” Angelo corrected. “Man, you are not kidding either. This Army makes me sick, you know it? Look at Garibaldi. Look at George Washington; and Abraham Lincoln. Look at F D R; and Gary Cooper. Then look at this Army.”
“Look at General MacArthur,” Prew said. “And his son, General MacArthur. Look at old Chief of Staff George C.”
“Thats right,” Angelo said. “Look at the Magna Charta. Look at the Declaration of Independence. Look at the Constitution. Look at the Bill of Rights. Look at the Fourth of July.”
“Look at Christmas,” Prew suggested.
“Thats right,” Angelo said. “Look at Alexander the Great. Then look at this fuckin Army. Dont talk about it any more. I cant stand it.”
“Not without inducing some more preparation,” Prew said.
“Thats it. Now you got it. Whynt you come out to Waikiki with me later on? This thirteen-fifty will not last forever.”
“Maybe I will, after we induce some more. I never did like queers. Every time I get around them I want to punch them in the head.”
“Aw, they all right. They just peculiar is all. They maladjusted. Besides, they’ll buy you preparation all night long. Just to get to blow you. ‘Ats a lot a preparation, friend.”
“I dont like to be blowed.”
Angelo shrugged. “Oh, sall right. I admit its nothing like a woman. But its something. Besides, old Hal treats me swell. He’s always good for a touch when I’m broke. Five bucks. Ten bucks. Comes in handy the middle of the month.”
“Comes in handy payday,” Prew said.
Angelo laughed. “This the first time I been down payday.”
“But still don’t like to be blowed.”
“Okay. You dont have to. I’ll have old Hal find one for you and then just lead her on, for the preparation. Then when you are fully prepared you just get up and stagger home, that’s all. Only reason I let Hal blow me is because I got a good thing there. If I turned him down I’d blow it sky high. And I want to hang onto that income, buddy. Hell, I never smoke nothing but tailormades now. Whynt you come on and go?”
“You think you could find me one?” Prew said, hesitating, yet knowing all the time that he would go.
“Sure. Old Hal’ll find one for you. Whynt you come on and go?”
Prew was looking around the bar. “I already said I’d go, dint I? Shut up on it. Drop it, for Christ’s sake. Matter of fact, I meant to go all along. I was goin out to Waikiki to look you up, after I left here. What is this slop we drinkin anyway?”
“Gin and ginger.”
“A goddam woman’s drink. Whynt we get whisky? We got money.”
“You want whisky, you drink whisky. I’m drinkin this because I got to go to work. I get out to Waikiki I be drinkin champagne cocktails. Hell, thats all I drink out there. Champagne cocktails, buddy.”
They left Wu Fat’s at ten-thirty. Prew still had two dollars left, besides his cab fare home. They decided to take a taxi out. They dodged catty corner across Hotel to the GI taxi stand in front of the Japanese woman-barber shop and fell in at the end of the mob that was jamming the cab stand almost as badly as the other mob had jammed the bar. Everything was jammed, even the Japanee woman-barber shop had a waiting line.
“Its a lot of crap,” Angelo said drunkenly. “Pay fifty cents a head to ride three miles to Waikiki when you pay the same price to ride thirty-five miles to Schofield. But its better than them goddam buses. Especially Payday. But ever fuckin body robs the soljers.”
The cab they finally got already had the back seat and the two folding seats filled with Waikiki passengers. They climbed in front with the driver and slammed the door. The driver pulled away expertly quickly to let the cab behind pull in. He eased into the steady traffic, going over to Pauahi Street, moving slowly through the alternating light and dark patches that were bars and whorehouses, on around the block and back to Hotel.
Angelo sighed drunkenly. “I might as well brief you now. Its a good thing you aint in uniform,” he added.
“Oh, yeah? How goddam so? Whats wrong with the uniform? I like the uniform.”
“But they dont like it,” Angelo grinned. “They high-toned friends might get the wrong idea about them and think they was queer, runnin around with uniforms.”
“Hell, they never use to mind that in Washington or Baltimore.”
“But them are cities. Honolulu is really a small town. Everybody knows everybody else. I dint know you been out with them before?”
“A couple times is all. Me and another guy rolled some rich ones in Washington. They wont go to the law. We carried a GI Irish spud in a GI sock. It worked swell.”
“Thats sounds okay,” Angelo said, grudgingly admiringly. “Back home we used a sock full of sand, but trouble with that is the sock’s liable to bust first time you sap him.”
The cab was moving slowly in the traffic up Hotel Street that was lit up like a carnival. They passed the arcade two doors down from the Army-Navy Y, where a mob was shooting electric eye machineguns at lighted planes or waiting to get their picture taken with their arm drunkenly around the big titted Japanee hula girl against a canvas backdrop of Diamond Head and palms. Something to Send Home, the sign on the photograph booth said.
“But you cant roll them in this town,” Angelo said. “They never carry money. Too many dogfaces.”
“I know all that,” Prew said.
“You got to play them like a fish, see? Hell,” Angelo growled, “the cruisers dont even have to buy you drinks, because the market’s glutted. I use to play the cruisers, before I got experience. Its like everything else in this world, you got to pay for what you get. You can pay for it by learning, or you can pay for it with experience once you learnt it, or you can pay for it with friendship. But you got to pay. Thats my philosophy. I read it in some book once.”
The cab moved at a walking pace past the crowded hotdog stand next door t
o the Y where a bunch waited to use the dime automatic photograph machine, their mass overflowing onto the already jam-packed sidewalk. Then on past the dark palm studded lawn of the Y itself, with the Black Cat across the street and also overflowing. A number of drunks lay passed out on the Y lawn.
“But these tonight aint cruisers,” Angelo said. “Tonight is regulars. They carry checkbooks and pay for everything by checks.”
Prew was looking out the window at the Y. “Payday at the mines.”
“Thats it. And its really a racket, buddy, I mean. Any more. Us honest queer chasers aint got a chance no more. Half the Compny hang out there at the Tavern any more. You’ll see. You’d think the Tavern is a bivouac for George Compny. Harris hangs out out there, and Martuscelli, Knapp goes down, and Dusty Rhodes . . .”
“The Scholar?” Prew grinned fuzzily. “Him too?”
“Sure. And old Readall Treadwell, and Bull Nair, and Johnson. Bloom and Andy’s down together most every night. Christ, I dont know who-all. It looks like a Compny convention, out there.”
“That son of a bitch Andy,” Prew said. “I told him to keep away from there, especially if he with Bloom.”
Angelo shrugged. “They all there anyway. Hell, there aint enough queens to go around, any more. I’m thinkin of organizin a union, by god. Got to pretect us professionals from the steadily encroaching amatoors and scabs.”
The cab turned the corner out of the light into the dark tunnel of Richards Street between the Von Hamm-Young garage and the Palace Square grounds on the left with the light of King Street ahead of them down at the end of the block.
“Thats me,” Prew said. “I’m a scab. You and Petrillo.”
“Naw. You aint no scab. I’d get you in. Hell, pay your dues myself. You know, they’re funny things, queers. This Hal is really a pretty good joe, if he dint hate everything so much. He hates everybody. Everybody but me. I guess he’s bitter about being a queen. I spent a lot of time, tryin to figure out what makes them tick. Lots of guy’ll tell you if you even talk to them you’re queer yourself, that you ought to beat them up all the time. I dont figure like that. I figure those guys just hate them.”
“I dont like them,” Prew said thoughtfully. “But I dont hate them. I just dont like to be around them.” He paused. “Its just that they, well for some reason they make me feel ashamed of something.” He paused again. “I dont know what of.”
“I know,” Angelo said. “Me too. I spent a lot of time trying to figure it. They all say they was born like that. They say they been that way ever since they can remember.”
“I wouldnt know,” Prew said.
The cab driver turned his head slightly and for the first time spoke. “Thats a lot of bull,” he said. “Lissen, let me give you joes a tip. I’m a ex-serviceman myself. You steer clear of them queers. You keep runnin around with them long enough and you’ll be queer too. Thats what they want. They like to take young guys like you and make them queer too. They get a charge out of that. I hate the cocksuckers. I’d kill every one I seen.”
He swung the cab viciously out of the tunnel into the light of King Street, turning left past the Post Office and the gilded brown-faced statue of Kamehameha in his feather cape and helmet. The street was very wide here with two bus islands in the middle and the traffic was thinner and the driver speeded up a little.
“Yeh, I’ve heard that,” Angelo said to him. “But this guy never tried nothing like that with me.”
“Dont it make you sick?” the driver said.
“No. I dont like it so much, but it dont make me sick. I feel kind of sorry for them. If they was born that way, they can’t help it, can they? Christ! it must be tough, man, not to be able to stand goin to bed with a woman at all. Jesus! I’d hate to be like that.”
“I hate them,” the driver said.
“Okay,” Prew said. “So you hate them. You go right ahead and hate them, Mack. But dont tell us what we ought to do. We aint tellin you what you ought to do.”
“Okay,” the driver said, “okay. Dont get huffy.”
“I wonder if they really are born that way?” Angelo said. He was looking out the window tranquilly, held by the quiet peacefulness of the cab ride that, sitting on the inside and looking out as an observer, divorced them momentarily from the wild bottle-swinging ritual of Payday and helped sober them.
Prew felt it too. The big polyhedral square here that held most of the civic buildings was comparatively serene under the unaugmented streetlights, after the frenzy of Hotel Street and the Y. They passed the darkling dim shapes of the Federal Building and the Judiciary Building, the Palace on the left hidden behind its screen of trees, then the Territorial Office Building and Kawaiahao Church on the right as the street began to narrow again, and the Library and then the City Hall on the left, all of them shut up for the night as they ran on out King, into the gradually deepening dark away from town.
“I dont know,” Prew said. “I know that on the bum a lot of good guys went queer, though, because they just wasnt any women. Some of the old timers would take the young kids and train them to be ringtails. Thats what I hate. A kid dont know his own mind. Thats what that fuckin Chief Bugler Houston was—a regular Mister Brown. Thats one reason I got out of the Corps, him and that Angelina of his.”
“Yeah,” the driver said. “And they’ll all do you like that, you give them a chance, dont think they wont, the queer bastards.”
“Where’d you learn to play that bugle?” Angelo asked, “like you do? I never heard no guy could play a goddam bugle like that.”
“I dont know,” Prew said. “I just always could I guess. I always liked it.” He was looking out at the sudden deeper darkness that was Thomas Square.
“Thats where all the cruisers hang out,” the driver said.
“I sure like to hear you play it,” Angelo said. “Its a shame.”
“Lets drop it,” Prew said. “Lets forget it, what do you say?”
“Okay,” Angelo said. “If you say so.”
They lapsed into silence then, the cool tranquillity that was the ride, feeling the driver beside them aching to talk, to advise them, but hating to start it again on his own hook, for fear he would seem anxious to talk about it. They did not give him an opening.
They got out in front of the Moana and were suddenly back inside and part of the heated excitement of Payday.
“We’ll walk down from here,” Angelo said. “We dont want to look too well heeled, ridin up to the door in a cab.” He stopped on the sidewalk to look back at the driver as he swung out from the curb. “Now thats funny,” he said.
“Whats funny, Angelo?”
“If I hadnt of heard that guy talk so, I’d swear that driver was a queer. I can spot them a mile away.”
Prew laughed. “Maybe thats why he hates them. Maybe thats what he’s afraid of.”
“I dont know. But I can sure spot them any more.”
The Waikiki Tavern was crowded, too. A little less raucously, a little more refinedly, but crowded just the same.
“I’ll wait out here,” Prew said. “Till you seef they there.”
“Hell. You been here before, aint you? Come on in.”
“Sure I been here. But I aint goin in broke.”
“You aint broke.”
“I aint got enough to buy a drink, have I? To just walk in and walk through and walk right back out, if they aint there. Not me. I’ll wait out here.”
“Okay. Have it your way. You know what? That cab ride sobered me almost up.”
Angelo went on in through the crowded door. Prew stood out on the sidewalk and leaned against a lamp post, his hands in his pockets, watching the people pass. In the lounge next to the bar proper, under colored light and conversation and clinking glass, the lushhead piano player was playing something classical. It was something he had heard before. He had never heard the name. Several well dressed, cool looking white women passed him, talking excitedly to obviously younger men who looked like doggies.
&
nbsp; Thats what you ought to have, Prewitt, he told himself. One of them rich tourist dames. Thats better than these tight-fisted queens. All the money in the world they’ve got. And dont mind spending it. The thought made a small hard excitement in his belly. Then he remembered Lorene down at the New Congress. The small hard excitement turned into a small tight sour knot. I guess that cab ride sobered you up too, he thought, goddam it.
He was considering the question of whether it was legitimate to step out on a woman you loved if she was a whore, provided you only went with tourist women for their money, and if not, whether going out with a queen would be considered the same as going out with a woman—theres one for you, Prewitt, you must look that up in a etiquette book some time—when Angelo came to the door and motioned for him.
“He’s here,” he said. “And he’s already got one for you.”
Prew followed him inside, into the subdued atmosphere of richness with the pyramids of glasses doubling themselves in the mirror and the smooth-spoken barmen that always made you feel low class, and on through out onto the terrace.
The two men were sitting in a booth for four with the sea rising dark behind them, beyond the light. One was tall and very slender with a tiny grey moustache and close clipped grey hair and very bright eyes. The other was a big man, over two hundred, with the beginning of a double chin and shoulders almost as wide as the table.
“This is Prewitt,” Angelo said, “that I been telling you about. My buddy. And thats Hal,” pointing to the thin one, “about whom I’ve been telling you about. And this is Tommy.”
“Hello,” Hal said, in a clipped voice that sounded foreign.
“Hello, Prew,” Tommy said, in a deep bass voice from down in his barrel chest. “You dont mind if we call you Prew?”
“Thats all right,” Prew said. He put his hands in his pockets. Then he took them out. Then he leaned against the booth. Then he stood up straight again.
“Come on, you dears,” Hal said in his accented voice. “Sit down.”
Here it comes, Prew thought. He sat down beside the big man, Tommy.
“You know Tommy,” Angelo said to Prew. “He’s the one I told you about was Bloom’s girl friend.”