Sweet Sunday

by John Lawton

  ‘I don’t have to think about it. Fuckit. I won’t go because I don’t want to go. I won’t go because they can’t make me. They don’t have that right.’

  ‘Yes they do.’

  ‘The fuck they do!’

  ‘Huey—a right is not something natural like sunshine or cattle shit. It’s something the system grants you or doesn’t grant you. And it hasn’t granted you the right to duck out of military service just because you want to.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Johnnie. Screw that shit. What about the Declaration of Independence? We hold these truths to be self-evident . . .’

  He was thrashing around for the words, arms waving in the air, beer in one hand, joint in the other, as though trying to conjure them up like Mickey Mouse bringing the broomstick to life. When I was a kid every last one of us could have recited at least the first ten lines of it without having to think about it.

  ‘. . . That all men are endowed by God . . .’

  ‘By their creator.’

  ‘With inalienable rights.’

  ‘UN-alienable.’

  He’d got to the bit you could sing along to, poetry by George Mason, publicity by Thomas Jefferson.

  ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.’

  We chimed neatly on that one. Almost raised a smile on Huey’s face. What trace there was of it I wiped away.

  ‘That’s not in the Constitution. Nor in the Bill of Rights. Nor in any amendment since.’

  ‘It’s not? Then fuck the Constitution, fuck the system, fuck Amerika!’

  We had gotten, in so few words, to the heart of the matter. Fuck the system, and fuck Amerika with it if needs must. If this was how he talked to my father, then the old man must be bursting blood vessels on a regular basis. You didn’t fuck Amerika while my dad was around.

  ‘Huey. I didn’t come here to fight with you.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Why did you come here?’

  I saw the opportunity to pull the fuse out and took it.

  ‘As a matter of fact I came to see Mouse Kylie.’

  Huey thought for a second, the redness of anger beginning to drain from his face.

  ‘Yeah. Right. It’s all set up. Mouse’ll be in Chucky’s bar tomorrow night. I said you, me and Gabe would meet him there.’

  ‘Chucky’s. I don’t know Chucky’s, do I?’

  ‘I guess not but you know Chucky, Sweet Chucky Bunker. You were in high school with him. He has a bar downtown on Avenue H now. Just a block away from the old railroad depot. “Pig Heaven” he calls it. Beer an’ pizza. He’ll have a good night tomorrow. He has this tape recorder thing that records right off of the TV. I’m thinking of getting one myself.’

  ‘Tomorrow. What’s happening tomorrow?’

  ‘God, you are out of sight. It’s moon night. Apollo 11 lands tomorrow sometime in the afternoon. Chucky has this gadget set up to play it back to the guys in his bar in the evening, just before the moonwalk. Those assholes love that kind of shit.’

  He was right. I was out of it. I had completely forgotten. Moon night. Men on the moon.

  ‘Why do you need to see Mouse?’

  I told him. I had this odd notion that letting him see how ‘real’ things could get beyond the limitations of his own bedroom and his shallow, callow imagination. I was wrong. He said, ‘Guys following you? Like in the movies? Cool.’

  §

  It was more time than I wanted to kill. I rode again with my father in the morning. He opened up a little, my muscles stretched some. If I’d stayed a week he might have told me everything that was on his mind. He told me how he felt about Huey. Lois had it right. He loved the kid and just wanted him to do something and not let events roll over him. If he could do the decent something, all the better, but he wasn’t about to force him in one direction or the other.

  We ate lunch—again without Huey stirring from his room—and Sam took his siesta. About three in the afternoon, Sam reappeared, banged on Huey’s door, called me and Lois in from the deck and flicked on the TV set. Huey stayed put. Sam watched Apollo 11’s lunar module touch down on the moon, and I watched Sam. Watched him wipe tears of pride from his eyes, so quickly he was hoping neither his son nor his wife would notice.

  In the evening Huey got up and got out his shiny 1969 red Jeep—roller bars, floodlights, eight-track stereo—like I said, rich kid—and drove me into town.

  Now, Sweet Chucky is not called Sweet Chucky on account of his disposition. He is, truth to tell, a sonuvabitch. He got called Sweet Chucky when we were in high school and Chucky’s idea of a mid-morning snack was a two pound bag of sugar, and a hefty slab of white butter, sliced into strips. He’d dip the butter in the sugar and suck till both were gone. Used to make you want to puke just to watch him do it, but plenty of us did—stood around in the schoolyard and watched Chucky swell from one hundred to three hundred pounds over a couple of years. At twenty he’d been a colossal oaf of a man—for Chucky to be running his own bar and grill was like an alcoholic getting his own distillery. Pig heaven.

  We got there mid-evening. Still light, still hot and still sticky. The blast of Chucky’s air-conditioning hit me like icy mountain air—if mountain air could ever smell of stale tobacco and unwashed denim. It was all too low, too dark and too much fake knotty pine. Sawdust was real though. It was a guys’ hangout, the only women in the place were behind the bar, and according to the sign they went topless on Fridays and Saturdays. Missed it by a day, thank God. Never could see why tits and beer went together.

  A skinny black kid waved at Huey and he led me across to a table in the middle of the room. I would not have known Gabriel Kylie. He was skinnier than Huey and as tall as me, and he was stuffing his face from a pizza the size of a cartwheel.

  Huey offered no introduction. Gabe just struck out an oily, cheesy hand and said, ‘John? We ain’t met since Cousin Mouse went into th’ army.’

  ‘And how old were you then?’

  ‘Eight. I sat on Aunt Lula’s stairs and watched you and Mouse get out of your heads.’

  So we did, so we did.

  Huey went up to the bar for beer. There was a half-empty Lone Star on the table next to Huey’s bottle of Bud.

  ‘Mouse about?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure, he’s just getting me some more pizza.’

  ‘More?’

  ‘I know what you’re thinkin’. But I hear they don’t draft the fat guys. Like there’s kind of a medical limit for bein’ fat and if you’re over it they can’t get you. I aim to beat it. They didn’t get Chucky. And Chucky says it’s bein’ fat did it for him.’

  ‘Gabe, Chucky was three hundred pounds the last time I saw him. You’ve a ways to go.’

  ‘You ain’t seen him lately then. He’s bigger’n that now.’

  He pointed to the bar. Two young women were pouring beer, and between them, scarcely hidden by the cash register, was the biggest human butter mountain I’d ever seen. Sweet Chucky ten years on. Not a pretty sight. But ahead of him, weaving his way between the tables, with a pizza held aloft like a magician’s spinning plate, was another man-mountain, but this one was black, six feet four at least, but there wasn’t an ounce to spare on him, and every one of his two hundred and fifty pounds was solid muscle. Mouse.

  He slapped the pizza in front of Gabe. I stood up, meaning to shake him by the hand, and got bear-hugged instead.

  He held me off, just the way my dad did, at let-me-get-a-look-at-you length.

  ‘Man, you is one skinny motherfucker. Don’t folks eat out East?’

  ‘Aw, Mouse, we’s too polite. We don’t fart neither.’

  Mouse hooted.

  Huey brought beer.

  We reminisced.

  Gabe ate.

  When the small talk got whittled down to nothing—and I’d already declin
ed several offers of him driving me over to Carolyn Tucker’s house—Mouse said, ‘Gabe says you was askin’ for me, Johnnie.’

  I reached into my bag and put the blow up of the New Nineveh Nine on the table in front of him. Mouse picked it up, angled it to the light and said, ‘Yeah, me and my boys. What was it botherin’ you then, Johnnie?’

  I used Carrie Fawcett’s words, ‘Something happened, Mouse. I just wondered if you knew what? If like maybe they’d written to you, or you’d see any of these guys on leave or whatever.’

  ‘No. I ain’t seen none of them. Where d’you get the photo?’

  ‘Marty Fawcett’s mother.’

  ‘And how is ole Marty?’

  ‘He died, Mouse.’

  Whatever front it was that Mouse had thrown up since I first put the picture in front of him cracked a shade. This hit him. I knew he was holding it all in, but there was a flicker.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Cancer. About six weeks back. His mother blames it on the chemicals they use over there.’

  ‘She could be right,’ Mouse said, soft as a whisper.

  ‘So you don’t know what it was that happened?’

  ‘Of course I know. I was there.’

  I thought he must have misheard me.

  ‘No. Mouse. I meant what happened over in ’Nam. Not back in Georgia.’

  ‘I went to ’Nam with the Nine.’

  My turn to crack a little. He’d surprised me now.

  ‘So you do know?’

  ‘I just told you I did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I can’t talk to you about this because you weren’t there. If you’d been there then it would be different. But Johnnie, you weren’t. Don’t blame you for that, but that’s the way it is. You were there or you weren’t.’

  He said it in exactly the way I’d heard people say ‘you’re either on the bus or off it.’

  ‘Why were you there, Mouse? You were a training sergeant at Nineveh. Why were you in ’Nam at all?’

  Mouse put the bottle to his lips and drained it.

  ‘Volunteered,’ he said at last.

  ‘Can you tell me why—or did I have to be there to know that too?’

  ‘Goddammit, Johnnie, you got no right to get snippy with me. But yes, I’ll tell you that. I’d been in the forces best part of ten years. I’d seen action just once, in the Dominican Republic. Another of LBJ’s excursions. By December ’67 I’d been a weapons instructor for close on a year straight. I’d sent God knows how many platoons of boys out to ’Nam. I realized I couldn’t go on doing it. It wasn’t any desire for more action. What I’d seen was enough for any man, and my momma didn’t raise no fools. But there seemed to me to be a moral dilemma here. I was sending boys out to die. Seemed wrong to me. I was asking them to do what no one was asking me to do. So when the last bunch got shipped I asked to go with ’em. They were a bunch of kids I got along with fine. The brass told me they’d already assigned a company sergeant, and for a while I figured I’d see out my time teaching more kids in Georgia how to shoot straight, but a couple of days later they said there was room for an Information Specialist and as I was qualified the job was mine.

  Well, you can imagine how I felt. Information Specialist is armyspeak for photographer. I’d owned a camera since the day your brother Billy taught me how to make a pinhole camera with a cookie box and a sheet of baking paper. If there’d been a college a black man could of gone to and learned the trade when I was a kid, I might’ve done it. If I’d graduated high school I might’ve done it. But there wasn’t and I didn’t. Enlisting was a way of earning a living for me and my momma and beating the draft. If I joined they couldn’t hardly draft me. Wasn’t the life I’d of chosen, but when did a black kid ever get his druthers? But I made what I could of it. Made sergeant and ’cause I was deadeye dick with a rifle, I made weapons instructor and marksman too. And along the way I took the US Army Information Specialist’s course. Never thought I’d get to use it. So—there was no way I’d turn this down. I wanted to be there, and if the army wanted me toting a Kodak rather than an M16 then that was OK too. That’s how I came to be in ’Nam.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing. That’s all you’re getting.’

  ‘Mouse. You signed on for twenty years. Three months in Vietnam and you’re out? What happened?’

  Mouse got up. Two hundred and fifty pounds of army-fit black man towering over me. But it was still Mouse, as likely to hit me as kick a lame dog. He just put a hand on my shoulder, shook it gently and said, ‘Good night, Johnnie.’

  The bar-room reappeared to me out of the self-contained world that had been me and Mouse for the last twenty minutes. Above the bar-room burble I could hear Gabe chomping on his pizza. He had melted cheese running down his chin and flecks of bell pepper spattered across his T-shirt. I was beginning to think dodging the draft might be turning into a labor of love.

  ‘You winning there, Gabe?’

  ‘Sure am.’

  I looked at Huey. He was grinning, holding in a laugh like he was fit to bust.

  ‘He’ll either get 4-F or a heart attack.’

  ‘Heart attack be damned. I mean to win this one. I ain’t get my ass shot off by no little yeller man. What I ever do to him?’

  I saw a flicker of light across the room. The TV came on over the bar. And Sweet Chucky roared above the hubbub.

  ‘Mah felluh ’Merikins. Are yoooooooo ready? Ten, nine, eight, seven, six . . .’

  At five there was a rush to the front.

  ‘Four, Three, Two, One.’

  Chucky hit a switch on his VCR and grainy blips rippled across the screen and settled into an image. I got up and moved forward.

  ‘Hey,’ Huey said. ‘I thought you watched the landing with the old man?’

  ‘I did. I just want to watch it again. Don’t you want to see a man walk on the moon? I do.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Gabe, scooping up enough pizza to last him ten minutes away from the table.

  ‘What’s to see?’

  To answer Huey would have been to play his game. I was in two minds about the whole thing. I remembered, as anyone of my generation would, Jack Kennedy pledging to take us to the moon. And I saw it happen as one of the most uneasy, self-conscious pieces of myth-making imaginable. It was irresistible. Irresistible because it was complete kitsch.

  Huey preferred an audience when he wanted to grouch. We slyly inched into putting elbows on the bar. Huey stood between me and Gabe. Chucky slapped a beer in front of me.

  ‘Ah thought it was yew,’ he said without pleasure. Then he turned his back on us and craned his neck to see the screen.

  ‘We copy you down. Eagle.’

  ‘Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.’

  The eagle had landed. The whole bar cheered. A national ambition found its steel feet in the moon dust. Huey looked surly. I put a few dollars on the bar and ordered in more drinks. Chucky and his girls rushed around serving everyone, Chucky’s eyes darting between his cash register, his watch and the TV screen.

  ‘OK. Everybody stop. We goin’ live.’

  Chucky hit the volume just as the hatch came off the Lunar Module. It seemed to be dawn up there—a searing, horizontal light. We watched Neil Armstrong emerge in an outfit that looked clumsy till he started to move—big moon boots and that backpack kind of thing that kept him living and breathing. We watched him come down the ladder to stand on one of the big round pads resting in the dust. It took, I guess, no more than ten or fifteen minutes, but it seemed like an hour. How often can you go into a bar, anywhere in America, and hear yourself breathe?

  Armstrong stepped out, left foot first, half-walked half-floated to the surface and said the line. Now, it’s as famous as the Zapruder film and the grassy knoll. Then
it was new, as old as it took for a signal to get from the moon to Houston and into the world’s TV sets. And still it was corny. I thought so. God knows, maybe half the guys in that room did, but it had to be my little brother who said so.

  ‘Aw, this is just crap, man. Whitey’s on the moon. So fuckin’ what?’

  A dozen heads turned, Chucky too. Lookin’ straight at Gabe. Gabe did his ‘Rochester’ impression, wide-eyed and innocent.

  ‘Weren’t me, man,’ he said to them all.

  ‘Whitey’s on the moon. Big fuckin’ deal.’

  They knew now who was speaking, and he had not enough sense to shut up.

  ‘I mean, man . . .’

  To whom was he speaking? Was I ‘man’?

  ‘I mean. Space is like shit. I mean there’s nothin’ out there. Just rocks an’ shit. I mean, it’s not like there was little green men or Buck fuckin’ Rogers. It’s just crap. This is what matters.’

  Huey tapped his forehead, right where the third eye would be, and failed to use the two he’d got.

  ‘This is what matters . . . inner space. That . . . it’s just shit. Whitey on the moon. A zillion dollars to send three guys up in a tin can. Well, shit to it.’

  Chucky leaned in to me.

  ‘I hate to say this, after all, we ain’t met but a few times in a dozen years, but if this long-haired hippie kid you call your brother don’t start showin’ some respect real soon, I’m going to throw the three of yewz out. And if he calls me “whitey” one more time I’ll punch the little shit’s lights out.’

  That was good enough for me. It was good enough for Gabe. Gabe was gone fast as chicken fried lightning.

  ‘Come on. We’re leaving.’

  I pulled Huey away from the bar, but he shook me off and turned back to push his luck one more time.

  ‘You gonna let this sack o’ shit shove us around.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, cowardice being the better part of discretion.

  He turned to Chucky and he bellowed.

  ‘Ain’t no lardasses on the moon neither, fat boy!’