The Gulf

by David Poyer

  Enough, God damn it, Bernard, enough. About to scream, he hoisted himself to his feet and began hiking up the narrow strip of beach that lay in back of the airport.

  But he couldn’t stop what was happening inside his skull. The invisible biting bugs had gotten inside it. The single joint he’d allotted himself and the three beers he’d chugged didn’t seem to help. He scratched at his back. It felt as if sand was sticking to it. He scratched and scratched, till he saw bits of bleeding skin on his fingernails, but it wouldn’t come off.

  He glared around, wincing as a passenger jet roared over, low enough that he could see the people laughing down at him.

  Danny Quint, Golden, Orr, and the other guys were standing around the trash can they’d ferried over in the whaleboat. The ice had gone slushy before they even got here, and the water he plunged his hand into was tepid.

  He came up with a Miller’s and popped the tab like the pin of a grenade. His eyes searched the sky as he sluiced his throat. It was a fierce and cloudless blue-white, knife-scarred with contrails. Christ, if it was cooler, they could have some fun. But no one had touched the footballs and Frisbees. He slapped his neck suddenly, but missed. Only the flies were really partying down.

  The warm beer left his mouth tasting like cardboard. Not really thinking, he fished out a cigarette. Only when it was lit did he realize it was one of the specials. But then it was too late to put it back.

  Quint, staggering past, winking at him. Phelan’s irritated gaze followed his erratic course down the beach. The Salems Danny was smoking weren’t exactly regulation, either.

  A patch of shadow detached itself from under a palm tree. He quickly dragged the butt to a lip-scorching end, dropped it, and scraped oily sand over it. It was the black lieutenant, the missile officer. He was in charge of the beach party.

  Phelan didn’t want to talk to him. He didn’t like officers, didn’t like blacks, and this black officer had something more than the sand fleas eating him. For a second, he wondered whether Pensker needed a supplier. He’d never known an officer who used. Though there had to be some. But, shit, why should they? They had it all. Special food, plush staterooms, lifers like Fitch sucking up to them all day. Shit, if he had all that, he wouldn’t need to get high, either.

  The sand was too hot to stand on, the air too hot to breathe, his skin too hot to wear. He wanted to shuck it off and leave it lying behind him. I should of gone into town, he thought. The scuttlebutt was the Arabs cut guys’ hands off for dealing. But there had to be something, with all these ships and planes zipping in and out.

  The ship. That was what was eating him. The ship and on it the safe. The safe with the neat blocks of pure morphine, stacked and numbered. Wrapped snugly virgin in their foil seals. Tamperproof, they were supposed to be, but he’d spent hours thinking about them. He almost wished now Fitch hadn’t given him the combination. Because even worse than the blocks were the syrettes. Little tubes with needles attached, designed for self-administration by wounded men. Quick. Easy. Disposable. Sitting there watching him every time he swung the steel door open.

  He lit another cigarette, scowling up the beach to where Pensker had stopped to talk to a chief. He wanted out of here. He wanted to go back to the ship. The pills were there. The morphine was there, too. But he didn’t want to go back. For the same reason.

  You are getting to be one fucked-up coyote, Newekwe. No, I’m doing all right. I haven’t touched the syrettes. Or the blocks. The waiting neat little blocks. And I won’t. All I need is to get out of the sun.

  There was no way out, though. Not till the brass decided the party was over.

  He sucked the can empty and hefted it, waiting till Golden turned his head. There was a hollow clunk as it hit. By then, he was already running for the water.

  The Gulf boiled around his ankles, heated by the black bottom, flecked with mustardy scum like old vomit. They were only about four miles from the anchorage. If he cared to look, he could see Van Zandt, riding to anchor like a gray wolf among the tankers and freighters. Straight out was nothing but sea, shimmering like madness, and two hundred yards out the motor whaleboat, rolling casually as two gunner’s mates smoked under a tarp, their rifles propped against a thwart.

  A bigger wave than the rest rippled in. Phelan heard splashing behind him. He hesitated, then dove in as it reached him.

  It was like diving into boiling soup. The water was so hot and salty, he had to close his eyes. He coasted along beneath it, suddenly yearning for the icy freshness of Nutria No. 2. He wanted the cold slickness of a woman’s flesh against his, slippery and urgent as mating eels, and the stars, watching as they’d watched his ancestors making love on these same rocks for as long as there’d been Indians. He’d gone in the water to piss, but now he couldn’t. His cock had gone suddenly steel-hard under his trunks.

  A few feet out he came up. But whoever it was was still behind him, splashing and calling his name. He turned, letting his feet down gingerly, feeling for bottom.

  It was Golden, the geek he’d beaned. But the other corpsman didn’t seem bent on revenge. He called out again, something jolly Phelan didn’t catch.

  They swam along the shore together for a few yards. Then he yelped as a paintbrush of acid wiped his side. He tried to claw it away, but its invisible burning clung like a spiderweb. He paddled for shore, cursing through clenched teeth.

  “Bernie,” said Golden in a low voice as they waded through the last few inches of Gulf.

  “I told you before, dickhead, don’t call me that.”

  “Sorry. Bernard.”

  “Ah, shit, that hurts!” He touched his belly delicately. The welts were already puffing up. “Something fucking bit me. What the fuck you want, Golden?”

  “Is that grass you and Quint’re smoking?”

  “Grass? Grass?” He laughed, then coughed. The harsh smoke made his throat itch. “You’re fucking clueless, man, you know that?”

  “Can I bum one, then?”

  “No. I’m fresh out, I hadda borrow that jay myself.”

  Golden’s sallow face peered up and down the beach as another jet roared over. A hundred yards away, a wall of great jumbled rocks ended the world. “Grab us a couple beers. Let’s go over there,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “Cause I wanna talk to you! That all right?”

  He considered this as he fished around in the tub. Nothing left but warm Pabst and Fresca.… Somebody must of made a million selling fucking Fresca to the Navy.… Pensker was zonked under his private palm tree.… The other guys knelt glassy-eyed and swaying around a blanket, betting shells and coins on five-card stud. Beyond them shimmered the shark guard, the gunners leaning back motionless, caps tipped over their eyes.

  He decided Golden wanted to get high. He hadn’t expected that. But another buddy in Van Zandt’s medical department could only make things easier. As long as it was clear who was in charge. Soon, the next port they hit, he’d find better merchandise than grass, cough syrup, and poppers. There wouldn’t be any more problems then. Shit made money, money made shit, till you were shitting money. He toweled off slowly and pulled his dungaree shirt on. The chambray felt like steel wool on his shoulders.

  “Got the beer?” said Golden, coming up behind him. “Where’s mine?”

  “Go climb yourself, Golden. You want beer, get it yourself.”

  Heat came up in slow waves as they struggled toward the jetty. As they neared, Phelan saw it wasn’t really stone. It was concrete, great blocks of it tumbled into a labyrinth of caves and crevices. In the merciless glare, the flat cast faces were crumbling and stained with lichen. As they approached, a faint scratching began, like leaves stirred by the wind, and for a moment he thought he’d done too much Mexican, or maybe should have eased off on the beer. Then he realized the tiny spider shapes were real: crabs, retreating into their aeries. Birds fluttered up from within the maze, swallows and sea gulls, and the fleet shadows swirled over them.

  Golden jum
ped up on the first block. “Hey, where we goin’?” said Phelan, hanging back.

  “Inside.”

  “Inside where? What for? We can talk here.”

  He took the pack out of his shirt, shook one free for himself, then held it out. Golden said, looking at it, “That looks like a regular cigarette. But you’ve got something else in it. Marijuana, or something. Am I right?”

  Phelan frowned. What was the game? He couldn’t figure it. So he didn’t answer. Sweat crawled down his back. He flicked his Zippo and turned to shield the flame, staring over it at the placid, glittering Gulf. It was pretty today. But far too hot. Even going in the water hadn’t done much good. Just got him stung. He drew in a lungful of hot smoke and held it. What was this, his third? He’d stretch this one.

  He stared in tranced wonder at a sea that was dissolving into the soundless golden roar of atoms and void.

  “Come on,” Golden’s voice floated down. The seaman was scaling a tilted slab like one of the crabs. As Phelan watched, blinking in the steadily increasing brightness, he disappeared.

  He took another drag and held it. His heart pattered, struggling in his chest like a caged bird. Then, Bogarting the roach, he scrambled slowly up after Golden.

  Just then, after teasing him all afternoon, the grass hit. All at once, the way it did sometimes. One moment he was straight; the next, deep, deep. The world disassembled into a bewildering complexity of infinite detail. He stopped, hanging by one arm, his eyes epoxied to the surface. A moment before it had been old concrete. A part of his mind remembered that. But now the close graining held pictures and stories and worlds.

  It took him long ages filled with history to cross it. The beach vanished, cut off by the blocky jumble. The sun dipped from sight and only a jigsawed space of blue showed directly above. Furtive skitterings and cheepings came from beneath the tumbled chunks. He was in a ruined city, a bombed city, a thousand years after the war.

  Golden sat in the shadow of an immense overhang of flaking concrete. He patted the sand beside him.

  Phelan squatted very slowly, coming to rest Indian-fashion. The rocks had gone translucent. This was why he used. This penetration to the magic behind everything you saw.

  Above him, swallows clicked across the sky. He could see each beat of their wings. Then, suddenly, he was flying high and cool and there down below him in a nest of rocks was a tiny face, squinting up in wonder.

  There was no difference. It was all one. Hadn’t his ancestors known that? Wasn’t it part of the Shalako festivals? He remembered seeing them from his mother’s lap. The twelve-foot figures, huge and horrible, their monstrous dancing attendants, the drums and chanting that lasted all the chill November night till dawn. The ceremony that renewed the world not just for the Zunis or even for the Indians but for everyone who lived in it, white, red, black, brown, or yellow, man animal fish bird or snake …

  Golden’s mouth was moving. Phelan stared at him. Through the peace, he smiled with infinite compassion. They were one, part of the same huge Oneness that was the world and whatever god or devil you wanted to make of it. And poor lost Golden was trying to communicate with words.

  “I said, you all right, Bernard?”

  He extended the pack once more. Again Golden looked at it.

  He reached out and took one.

  Phelan shook out another and lit it. The part of his mind that never stopped watching decided that it was all right. He had plenty more back on the ship. The Mexican was more potent than he’d expected. But he hadn’t been doing much grass. His tolerance was probably down. That didn’t mean he could smoke it all up at once, like he had with the brick. But he rated a party once in a while. Slowly, carefully, he blew smoke to the four corners of the earth, then the sky, and then downward, toward the sand.

  “What’s that all about?” Golden wanted to know.

  “It’s like an Indian prayer, Goldie. Like, saluting the spirits, saying you’re tight with them.”

  When he looked back at the seaman, he was dangling the unlit bone between his legs. Phelan searched his mind for a word and finally found one.

  “Light?” he said. It oozed out. He could see it crossing the space between them, see the other man blink as he took it in, watch his brain interpret it. It was a hoot. Just like talking to a robot.

  Golden took the lighter but didn’t use it. Instead, he said, “Man, did you see that oil rig burn? I went up topside to see it when we was steaming away. Wasn’t that something?”

  Phelan grunted. He didn’t give a shit about oil rigs. Or any of the other mind games they were playing out here. So he didn’t answer.

  “Where’d you get this stuff, Bernard?”

  “What?”

  “The grass.”

  “Mondo bizarro,” said Phelan. “It’s primo grass. Try some, Rich.”

  “Where … did … you … get … it, Bernard?”

  “Oh, where, who cares?” He laughed. “Go on. It’s a little old, Danny said—I mean, it’s a little old. But it’ll still kick your ass.”

  “Did you get it here?”

  “What, here? Change channels, Rich. When I been ashore? Besides, you heard what these people do to people who enjoy themselves.” He took a drag and whispered hoarsely around it. “Everything’s everywhere. You just got to look for it. I had some shit in Pakistan … well, that shit just blow you away.”

  “I know what you been doing,” said the seaman. His yellowish face was sweating, too. The heat, trapped among the rocks, was hellish, and there was no merest breath of wind. “You know that?”

  “What have I been doing, Golden?”

  “Selling drugs. On the ship.”

  Phelan grinned. There was something fascinating in the way Golden’s face moved. Could there be a mind behind it? Sometimes when you were high you could see people thinking, like it was that Max Headroom on TV. Golden didn’t worry him. He felt like he always did on grass. Everything was the way it was because. Nothing he could do was wrong and nothing bad could happen to him. He was immune. Safe. Not like the slaves and peons around him. He was part of something bigger.

  He said casually, “You’re way out of line, dude. I use once in a while. Who doesn’t? But I don’t sell nothing.”

  “Don’t shit me, Bernard. I seen the pharmaceuticals log. And I counted what we got left in the counter stores. You’re giving stuff out like M & M’s. Enough to space out half the ship.”

  “Everything’s covered, Goldie. Those guys are sick and I prescribe for ’em. Just the way it’s supposed to be.” He laughed. “It’s all kosher.”

  Golden, he noticed then, still hadn’t lit the joint. In fact, he was putting it away, in his shirt pocket. His long hairy legs shifted a bit closer to Phelan’s.

  “So, hey, what’s going down?”

  “I’m thinking about turning you in, that’s what’s going down,” said Golden.

  Phelan was tracing a finger through the sand. Back here it wasn’t oily, it was white, and he could feel each grain as it slid past his skin.

  “Well, Rich, you got to do what you got to do, I guess,” he said at last. To his faint surprise, the sand said denise. He tore his eyes off it and tried to find the seaman in the storm of color around him. It was so bright he had to squint or it would blind him. “If you got to turn some poor scum-suckin’ shipmate in because he gets high once in a while, I feel sorry for you, though.”

  He grinned again and took a deep hit. He could hear the wind sighing past the wings of the gulls. He could hear the faint clicking of the crabs, secreted among the rocks, hoping for their departure, or possibly their deaths. He looked at Golden’s sweating face through the smoke. Would crabs eat a body? Somewhere outside, apart from them, the sea hissed like a waiting snake.

  “Pensker’s right out on the beach, man,” he said. He could feel the smile still on his face. Eating it, like a crab. “You’ll probably get third-class out of it. Shit or get off the pot, Rich.”

  “You really don’t care?”<
br />
  “Doesn’t make a rat’s ass to me.”

  It’d taken him a while, but he understood now what was going down. But he could see his cool puzzled Golden. So he decided to play the hand out. If the other corpsman went through with his threat, he could always deny it. Ditch the pack in the water. What did one joint prove? All he had to do was say he bummed it from Quint.

  If Golden had one joint. If he was alive at all sixty seconds from now. Phelan watched him from beneath half-closed lids. He was too skinny to be strong. You could slip running over these rocks. Get banged up bad. Maybe even get your neck broke. It wouldn’t be like murder. It would just be changing Golden into something else.

  In the crevices the crabs clicked Morse like a thousand secret signalmen.

  Golden made a little circle in the sand with his bare toe. “Well. I don’t really want to do that. Not to you.”

  Phelan waited. The beer and the cannabis and the heat had turned his eyelids to lead. It was some time before he realized Golden was rubbing his back under the shirt. It felt good and he bent his neck. “I sort of thought we should be friends,” the seaman was saying from far away.

  “Yeah, they’re good to have.”

  “But you haven’t been acting friendly, Bernard. You’ve been real irritable. Throwing that can at me, for example.” His voice was a silky whisper.

  “So what.”

  “I mean, we could be close. If we were close, we could do things together. I’m not into drugs. But that’s not all there is to do.”

  Phelan considered, detached, lazy, but his skin thrilled as Golden’s fingers slipped down his shirt. It came down real simple. It was either let him do what he wanted or kill him.

  A whisper, almost lost in the hiss of the hidden sea. “We can be special to each other. I can do things you’d like. Better than you’ve ever had from women.”

  Phelan lay back, his eyes closed. The fingers moved over him like soft crabs. They rippled over him like the sea. He thought of Denise and the camp fire by the lake. He felt the tide rising, the waves rippling over his legs, his thighs, and reaching at last his rigid and suddenly voracious cock. He opened his eyes for just a moment, to see Golden’s yellow face close to his, shining with love.