Tales of the Out & the Gone

by Imamu Amiri Baraka

  Johns now howled too, a little cooler. But at least Laffy hadn’t started pointing at the dude and hollering, Cut that motherfucker too short to shit!

  The farm boy was apparently sitting with friends, and Laffy and Ray were the only ones from their own group, so after another second or two of acid kibitzing, including, “You should thank Grego, motherfucker, that scar at least makes your face interesting. Shit!” there was an abrupt about-face by the two laughers, as First Sergeant Barfell called out at our two heroes, and they got in the wind.

  They cut around the corner and crossed a vacant lot, and presto, they were standing close by the Estrella Negra. Actually, it was simply Estrella, “Star”—The Star Bar. (The Negra had been added by both the black and white troops.) It was the big hangout for the blacks and the Latins and the white soldiers that swung with the Bloods.

  White (who was not), Perkins (who was), and Yodo (who was from outer space) were sitting and standing at the bar, arguing whether Fats Navarro or Miles Davis played the most shit to the background music of Lloyd Price singing, “Lawdy, Lawdy, Miss Clawdy.” This place was jammed up tight with uniformed and civilian-slick airmen, also shouting and laughing at the top of their voices. And while Estrella was a predominantly black bar, there were white and Latin troops hollering with the Bloods, insulting each other, bullshitting each other, sympathizing with each other, trying to make it and do their various hitches.

  “How the fuck you get Ray to come into town, Laffy?” White was standing tall and dour as usual, slightly tipsy and bending toward the new arrivals. “How the fuck you get …” he trailed off, giggling. “Yodo, buy Ray a drink for coming off the base.”

  Yodofus T. Syllieabla (Carl Lawson’s chosen moniker to evade the constant depression of being an Air Force medic for seven years of his life and having still only one stripe) was a very yellow-colored fellow, and with the booze in him he had colored slightly red, blinking his eyes. “You want Yodofus T. Syllieabla, the High Priest of Swahili and the Czar of Yap, to do what?”

  “Buy them a drink, silly nigger!”

  “Yeh, Ray, why you out here in this dirty town? And in this dirty bar?” This was Bill Perkins, an aspiring photographer from a suburb of Boston. His name wasn’t really Perkins, but his parents had changed it in order to get in the suburbs, and Perkins felt guilty about that when he got loaded. So he tried not to get loaded, but it didn’t stop him. He got loaded, then guilty, all the goddamn time. “You said you didn’t need to come into Aguadilla, but here you are. And with that Groucho Marx–lookin cat. Stand up straight, Laffawiss, goddamnit. You’re standing in a hole.”

  Laffy half-turned immediately. “Hey, Johns, let’s get the fuck outta here. I’m not gonna be insulted by guys named Perkins whose names ain’t really Perkins. Hey, I wouldn’t sell you a pickle on the Lower East Side, my friend. Not even a herring, Perkins. Shit!”

  “Shut up, Laffawiss, I wasn’t talking to you. Johns, why are you in town with this guy?”

  “Aha!” Yodo was pointing the umbrella stick he always carried. “Aha, I know. And Anachronobienoid knows too.”Anachronobienoid was the name Yodo had given to his stick. His “all-purpose stick,” he called it. The stick had once cursed out a warrant officer who had been staring too long and hard at Yodo. The stick leaped to the fray, making horrible nigger curses that sent the W.O. scrambling down the dusty road outside the PX in Ramey.

  “I know, I know. You two are on a secret pussy mission. That’s all this Groucho Marx sucker is searching these streets for … What?” Yodo held his stick up as if it was talking. “Yes, yes. Anachronobienoid says he’s surprised at you, Airman Johns. Didn’t know you was into these SPM’s. Aha.” Yodo’s humor always cracked Yodo up the most, and he howled.

  “Shut up and buy them a drink, Yodo, goddamnit,” White persisted.

  “Why are you guys concerned about what I’m doing? You’re the kinda guys that give SAC a bad name. That’s why Ramey’s got the highest venereal disease rate in SAC too. Hey, man, even my AC got the clap.”

  “In his ear, probably.” Laffy was pacing back and forth without moving, Groucho Marx style. “Hey, Ray, I think we got to go before these creeps influence you against sin!”

  “These motherfuckers getting ready to sin. I knew it. Lemme in on that shit or I’ll squeal!” White had to steady himself on Perkins, who was no more sober but since he was normally stiffer he could play sober better than White.

  Pulling Ray Johns by the arm, and exchanging putdowns and jokes and repeated laments, Laffawiss turned and grunted at the weight of dragging Johns out of the bar. But now with wobbly White in less-than-hot pursuit and Yodo waving his “all-purpose stick.” White was saying, “Hey, if you guys are gonna start sinning and shit, don’t leave me out, you greedy motherfuckers. Don’t leave me out, goddamnit.”

  “Anachronobienoid knows. He will see what you do, no matter where you go!” Yodo shouted, as Laffawiss and Johns hotfooted it out of the Black Star and up the narrow alley street, deeper toward the section known as Mondongo. This was the heavy whore area, and was, of course, strictly off-limits. But in reality, about as off-limits as the day-room candy machine.

  * * *

  It was night now, and although the low starry skies over the enchanted island were bright and clear, still the lights of Aguadilla did not make for very much illumination, and so the streets as they wound also got darker, it seemed, the deeper into Mondongo the two adventurers got.

  Johns had on a pair of khaki pants that could have been his class-A khakis, but also a blue-striped Ivy League button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, plus the usual dark glasses. Laffy had on his class-A khakis, with his cap tipped on the back of his head. To the question, “Why you wanna wear your goddamn uniform if we gonna go off-limits, asshole? You just wanna get arrested.”

  “Why should I disguise myself? What am I gonna do, pass for Puerto Rican? Hey, man, people can look at me and tell I’m a Jew from the Lower East Side. I’m telling you.”

  “Look, man, you got me to leave the perfectly comfortable barracks for some kind of flesh chase. Now you wanna get me busted. Laffawiss, I do not want to get busted. I don’t want no Article 15. I don’t want no extra duty, no KP, no double guard duty shit. Why did I go for this bullshit, is what I want to know.”

  And while this was being said, the two wound further and further away from the USAF-sanctioned center of Aguadilla, back down into the center of the off-limits prostitution and gambling sector, Mondongo. Laffawiss was an old hand at winding through these semi-lit, sometimes unlit streets, in search of a little distraction from the day-to-day (and night-to-night) madness of the “war cats.”

  For Ray Johns, it was a little too exciting, though no one unfamiliar with his generally calm, even taciturn manner would know anything out of the ordinary was happening— he could drive polygraph interpreters crazy. But his heart was actually stepping a little faster, the darker and narrower the streets got. The further away from military tourist unreality they got, another Aguadilla emerged, with even fewer stone and clay houses and more and more low tin-roofed wooden shacks.

  It was darker, but probably not as dark as Ray Johns’s souped-up senses had it. The streets at first seemed strangely empty, but then as the two soldiers’ eyes adjusted to the tightening light, they could see occasional figures sweep past them or just beyond them. They could see people sitting on steps and porches. They could see one or two people stop and turn to regard them as they passed.

  “Come on, Johns. Don’t get scared. It’s just people walking up and down like they do all over the world. No need to get psyched out!” This was Irv Laffawiss, AF 133 75 9011, Airman Second Class, radio operator, 73rd Strategic Bomb Command, unassigned, speaking. He was urging Airman Second Class Ray Johns, AF 125 60 8040, weather-gunner, 73rd Strategic Bomb Command, Crew N45, to keep marching through the menacing night toward the Golden Bowl.

  “No need to get psyched out? I’m not psyched out. I just don’t feel I need to get
busted. ‘Release tension,’ he says. Hey, and I didn’t even go for it. I was just humoring you, old man. I just thought you needed some company down here in the boonies.”

  Laffawiss kept on trucking, head poked forward and tilted a little downwards, a modified street-Groucho. “Oh, man, you can lie. Don’t panic. Just don’t panic.” And they kept moving into darker Mondongo.

  “You mean you have so little self-discipline …”

  A few people scattered out of their way as they pushed on. They saw a couple of tall, red-faced obvious G.I.s in loud “civilian” clothes poke their heads from behind a shack and wave at them. Though if they’d stopped to talk to those two troops, the four of them would have been rolling in the dust after exchanging a few paragraphs as to the nature of reality in general.

  “You mean you have such little control over your pecker,” Johns picked up, “that it can demand that you trail around back alleys all night?”

  “I know, I know,” Laffawiss shot out. “You may prefer Merry Fist. You keep pullin on that thing, Johns, it’s gonna fall off.”

  “You keep messin with these nasty whores, yours is gonna turn green and rot off.” The two G.I.s laughed, too loud for their purposes. “And I’m speaking,” Johns added quickly, “as a noted microbiologist!”

  “Don’t make so much noise.” Laffawiss slowed a bit. It seemed there was no light at all. Some flickering matches, muffled laughter close and fading, unknown movement. Overhead, the moon and the stars and some scattered clouds, and somewhere, the hint of ocean.

  Laffawiss came to a full stop, with Johns bumping into him in the dark like in a Charlie Chaplin film. Laffy stood stock-still for a few seconds, till Johns pulled at his sleeve, whispering sweatily, “What the fuck is going on? Do you have any idea where we are?”

  “Hey, I know this routine cold, Johns. Don’t worry, it’s OK.”

  “OK, my ass. What the fuck’s going on?”

  Another few seconds, and a man appeared in Johns’s eye who was already talking in hurried whispers to Laffawiss. Johns jumped inadvertently as the image came in, but he poked his head toward the two to try and hear what was going on.

  Laffawiss reached back for his friend, smacking him on the shoulder. “Come on. This guy’s taking us to the women. See how quick that happened?”

  “Who’s this guy, Laffy?” Johns tried to look in all directions, but it was totally black except for indistinguishable shapes and noises. “What’s he, a pimp or something?”

  “Yeh, yeh. Now shaddup before you scare the flesh away.”

  The three men walked perhaps a hundred yards, up one alley and down another. In a minute or so, Laffawiss was leading Johns up three steps and across the short porch of one of the wooden tin-roofed shacks, completely sheathed in darkness. Laffawiss knocked at the door and almost immediately it swung open.

  There was a candle or oil lamp lit, and it amazed Johns how much light was in the room that could not be seen from the street. He could not be sure that there were windows. The walls were pasted up with pinups from various Puerto Rican rotogravure sections. But it looked like the New York Daily News, with open-legged blondes, &c., though modest by today’s standards.

  In the room was a table with chairs, a few notches below your local corner ghetto “furniture” store. A woman had opened the door. And she stood now, in some hopeless, colorless cotton housecoat-like garment, without shoes. As Johns’s eyes adjusted to the dim lamp, the hair on his neck rose and shivered in stiff formation. The woman was old and hideous. She was like some kind of “witch.” The word slid uneasily out of Johns’s mouth and punched his comrade in the back. This was followed by Johns’s actual hand poking Laffawiss in the small of his back as he leaned forward to half-whisper in half- Spanish pidgin the desired relationship.

  “What?” Laffawiss was showing fingers to the woman, indicating the market value of the chocha. He was trying to complete the deal, in a fairly circumspect way. He did not need to be bothered by his stuttering friend. So at the next poke, he half-wheeled around. “What?”

  “That witch is ugly as shit, Laffy.”

  “Two dollars, short time.” Laffwiss was talking to the old woman again. “Three dollars, long time.” The woman was nodding her head vigorously and making the two- and three-finger signals back to Laffy.

  “Hey, Laffawiss.” Johns was still trying to whisper, but not really succeeding. “You bring me all the way down here through the goddamn AP’s for this, you fucking pervert?”

  “This ain’t the woman, Johns. Jesus H. Christ, you think I’m sick?”

  “Yeh, I think that.”

  The old woman now had her hand extended. She was speaking most of the English she knew. “Two dollar, short time. Three dollar, long time.”

  “Short time, long time?” Johns looked at the woman and shuddered very openly.

  “Mi amigo no comprende. Que es corto vez?” Laffawiss felt he was speaking good Spanish, but he sounded as illiterate to the woman as she sounded to him. “Y largo vez?”

  The woman squinted, trying to understand the Lower East Side gibberish. Then she said, “Short time, very short. Long time is till you come.” She laughed at the idea. There was nothing in her mouth but memory.

  “Laffy, I don’t like this a hell of a lot. Where are the god-damned women? If this ain’t the one we supposed to lay with—”

  “OK, OK, unbeliever. Good chocha coming up.” Laffawiss was grinning, but the old woman simply stood her ground with her crippled hand extended in the traditional collection position.

  “Hey, look, we gotta get the chocha first,” Laffawiss said. “Let us get the women first, then we pay.” He winked over his shoulder to Ray.

  “Short time? Long time?” The old woman took a step back and turned toward what now seemed to be another door at the back of the shack, still squinting cynically.

  “Long time, yeh. You know me. You remember me, Irv?”

  “What are you, a fuckin nut, Laffy? Telling this bitch your name?”

  “Hey, I’m an old customer. I gotta see the merchandise before I shell out big bucks.”

  The old woman repeated Laffawiss’s first name. “Irv? Sí, Sí. You here before. OK, OK. Come on.” She beckoned the two to follow, and the gesture made Ray Johns think even more of witches.

  On the other side of the back door was a smaller room with one bed in it. The room was almost completely dark, but there was a small candle stuck in a bottle. On the wall was a gold and ivory plastic reproduction of Christ hanging on the cross, bleeding down into the bed. Because even in the dark, the spotted bed sheets, if they could be called sheets, could still be perceived.

  Sitting on either side of the bed were two women. They seemed younger than the old woman. But it was going to take a few seconds for the soldiers’ eyes to adjust. The old woman still had her hand out, but Laffawiss’s determination seemed to influence her.

  “Here, see,” the old woman said. “Beautiful!”

  Johns’s squinting eyes began to see the two women as more than vague shapes in the darkness. And no, they were not beautiful. As they became visible, Johns was trying to clear his throat so words could come out. “Laffy!” It was like a low, but sharply rising moan. “Laffy, Jesus Christ, man,” Johns was pretending to whisper. “Are you that hard up, man?”

  Laffawiss had succeeded in cooling the old woman out. Their prey was near. Why was this bastard, Ray, trying to queer the deal? “What? Hey, Ray, it’s about to happen, man. Don’t fuck it up.”

  “About to happen? Hey, man, they’re …” Johns wanted to say ugly, but he couldn’t bear to.

  “What’s the matter, Johns? You choosy? Goddamn, man. Once you get it in, you won’t know the difference. So they’re not bathing beauties. What the fuck you want for three bucks, man! Lena-fuckin-Horne?”

  “Jesus Christ, Laffy. Jesus Christ.” In reality, the women were not as ugly as the old woman, and they were a few years younger.

  “Don’t worry, Ray. Don’t worry. It
ain’t the looks, it’s the movement.” Laffy thought this was funny, and bent a little, Groucho-style, one arm hung at his side like he had a cigar. “It’ll be great, man. Great, don’t worry. I bet you anything you’ll fall in love.” And at this, Laffawiss almost fell down laughing.

  “OK?” the old woman asked, and she started to leave the room.

  “Say, man, there’s another room back here? Which woman you got and where’s the other room?” Johns turned beseechingly to the old woman and babbled the pidgin Spanish he knew. “Otra cuarto, por favor?”

  The old woman shook her head, about to back out of the room. “No, no,” still shaking her head, and pointing at the single nasty bed that straddled the shadows.

  “Hey, man, only one bed?” Johns howled. “How we gonna do that, Laffawiss? Shit, one bed? Man, you crazy!”

  “Oh, come on. Just lay on the bed sideways. You’ll have to let your legs dangle off.”

  “Let your legs dangle off? Goddamn, you ain’t even got the normal positioning and shit happening. I didn’t know you people from New York were some kind of freaks. Same bed, and let your legs dangle off? Man, how we gonna do anything in the same bed? Don’t you even want no privacy?”

  This would have cracked Laffawiss up, but he blew air through his teeth instead, moving toward one of the women, both of whom were still seated.

  “How you get that one?” Their eyes had now fully adjusted, and it did seem in the dark that Laffawiss was getting the best of the deal, but only by a whisker.

  “OK, Ray, you goddamn pest. You take this one. Gimme the other one. It don’t make too much difference in the goddamn dark, you know.”

  “It does to me.” They crisscrossed in front of the bed. Laffawiss was already unbuckling his belt as he moved forward, a wide shit-eating grin growing where his face had been.

  “Goddamn. Goddamn,” was all Ray Johns kept mumbling as he approached the woman who looked like she was in her hard thirties but who was actually only twenty-seven. Johns was twenty-two, Laffawiss twenty-four. “Goddamn. God-damn.”