Loving Women

by Pete Hamill

  “Reverend, reverend, with all due respect, dear boy, I think I’d better explain some of the theological ramifications and deep secular philosophical roots of the discussion between this barbaric young man and this lovely Christian lady.”

  He touched the side of his nose, as if raising spectacles. Everyone looked at him.

  “You see, it wasn’t, ahem, a discussion of phenomenology or epistemology they were engaged in, old chap.”

  He cleared his throat. “Nor were they involved in the historical roots of the Hebraic-Christian traditions and the shared tenets of all Mediterranean civilization including Christianity.” He pursed his lips. “You see, dear reverend, what they were actually discussing was—” a pause—“pussy.”

  For one long moment, nobody moved. Buster’s jaw dropped. The preacher’s nose wilted. Sue Ellen widened her stance, as if trying not to swoon.

  And then Sal turned, grabbing Max and me with each of his hands, and we were running and laughing through the hall, with Buster and the football team after us. Chairs went flying, a table toppled over with a crash, there were shouts and screams while the band blasted harder than ever. We burst into the cool night air, Sal laughing and leaping, and Max turning, raising both muscled arms at the sky, shouting at the doors of the hall: “I’m a Jew, I’m a Jew, I’m a Jew Jew Jew!”

  And then we were running and I could feel my blood pulsing and the muscles bunching in my legs and pain spearing my side as we raced for the highway. We could see the bus pulling around from the base to the bus stop and Sal started yelling for it to stop, as we went over a low fence and across a lumpy field. We could make it! We’d get on board and ride away to town and finish our night at the Dirt Bar, with Tons of Fun arriving in the van and Dixie Shafer telling me tales of the vanished hills. Yeah. Simple. And then I turned and saw Max fall and four of the rednecks coming over the fence, Buster leading the pack.

  “Max! Come on, man! We can make this goddamned bus!” Sal shouted.

  But Max got up and turned to the oncoming rednecks and planted his feet. It was as if he were saying, to us and to the world, that he was a tough proud Jew and he just wasn’t going to run. Not from these morons. Not from anyone. So we stopped running and let the bus leave and joined Max. The first man came in a rush and Max bent low, twisted, let the right hand fly and the man went down. A second one came at me, a guy who looked like an auto engine in a shirt, and I threw the right hand hard and straight and felt the impact all the way up in my shoulder and the man’s face seemed to explode in blood and he fell to his knees. I kicked him over on his side.

  But then Buster was there, his rage ferocious, and I wasn’t so lucky this time. I threw a punch and it glanced off Buster’s head and then I was slammed, and lifted, suddenly without breath or bone or strength, and then was on my back. Time stopped. And sound. I saw the sky. Black, with pinwheeling stars. And thought: I’m knocked out. He knocked me out.

  And then sound came rushing back in and I heard grunting and then a phwocking sound and a man’s wordless high-pitched voice yelping in pain. And started to get up, and saw Sal on my left, swinging a gnarled tree branch like a club, hitting Buster on the arms and elbows and hips, while Max grappled with a fourth man, and still another came on a run, to leap on Max’s back.

  I got up, my heart pounding wildly, and dived for the man on Max. I grabbed his jacket, which tore down the middle, and then I stepped to the side and punched as hard as I could to the man’s ear. He let go of Max’s neck, holding his ear in pain, and staggered away. I bent him in half with a kick in the balls and then Sal came up, slowly and deliberately, Buster now on his face in the dirt, and hit the big man with the three-branch club and finished him off. We looked at Max. He had another man above his head now, like a strong man at a circus. And he ran forward and rammed the man against a tree.

  It was over.

  We stood there, panting, dirty, battered, and looked at what we’d done. Five huge men were unconscious on the dark field.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said.

  “Don’t start,” Sal said.

  We could hear the sounds of insects again, filling the night, and the band still playing a way off. Nobody seemed to have left the hall; the preacher must have held them back. And there was no sign of Sue Ellen.

  Max said, “You know something? These guys might be dead.”

  Sal looked at him and then at the tree branch in his own hand. His eyes were still wild, as if he wanted more, and I thought for a moment that he looked like Alley Oop. He swung the branch like a bat and hurled it into the trees and then began to laugh wildly.

  We hurried back across the highway to the locker club and were changing clothes when we heard the distant sound of a siren. “Jesus, it’s just like the movies,” Sal said. “The killer’s in the building and he hears the cops coming, the sirens and all, and he starts to yell down at them—at Charles Bickford, who always has the fuckin bullhorn—and he says, ‘Up your hole with a Mell-o-roll, coppers, you ain’t takin’ me alive!’ ” Max laughed, pulling on his whites, and said, “Why do they do that in the movies anyway? To warn the bad guys? The cops must be amazing schmucks …” I said it might just be an ambulance out there. “Those guys are pretty fucked up,” I said. And Max said again that they might even be dead. Sal didn’t want to wait around to find out. “Come on,” he said, and with Sal leading the way, we slipped out of the locker club in our dress whites. The sirens went past the locker club toward the church, but we were out back, walking in the shadows of the palm trees to the main gate of Ellyson Field. Then a car pulled into Copter Road and Sal jumped out and waved at it.

  “Hey, we need a ride, man.”

  The car stopped. A shiny new red Mercury. Max and I hurried over. Mercado was alone behind the wheel. He looked at us and smiled.

  “Get in,” he said.

  Chapter

  27

  In the early sixties, after my first wife died, I went out for a while with a red-haired stripper who loved to see me fight. She did an act at the Hudson Theater, undressing herself in a giant wine-glass filled with dirty pink water. She believed in Rosicrucianism and lived like the guy in the Rosicrucian ads, who slept each night on the edge of a cliff. To her, danger was a religious experience. Wherever we went she caused trouble, giving various men the eye, then getting indignant when they came on to her, and stepping back to watch me fight for her outraged honor. I got so mad at her one night on the East River Drive, my hands raw and my suit ruined, that I pulled the steering wheel right off its shaft while screaming at her and had to grab the naked top of the shaft with both hands to keep from dying. As I sat there panting, she just laughed and then started to play with me. That was the last time I saw her and I heard later that she’d been shot to death by a female lover in a hotel room in Baltimore. There are women like that, and when I look back, I realize that little Sue Ellen was surely one of them.

  All through the next day I hung out in the barracks, expecting the imminent arrival of the Shore Patrol. They would take me off to the Pensacola jail and little Sue Ellen, prim and clean, would breathe hard, making all the cops look at her breasts, and pick me out as the man who said that Jesus was a Jew. Then she would leave for Buster’s funeral and I would spend the rest of my adult life in Portsmouth Naval Prison, or take a shorter trip to the Florida gas chamber.

  But the Shore Patrol never came for me, and on Saturday evening I went out and changed clothes at the locker club and took the bus to town, slouching low as we passed the Baptist Church. It was too early for my date with Eden Santana, but I didn’t want to be late, so I sat for almost an hour on a bench on Garden Street. I was uneasy: I didn’t know where I would take her or what we would do; she’d just smiled and told me she would meet me. I said her name out loud: Eden Santana. Then whispered it: Eden. San. Tana. A beautiful name, I thought, shuddering at the hard ending of the first name and its promise of paradise. The second name was made of all those female vowels (for surely consonants are male) and
rolled in a wave when you said it, like the name Pensacola itself. I wished I had a hundred dollars to spend without care for tomorrow or next week or the rest of the Navy month. Then, if I could sort out the words, I’d ask her to go with me to the San Carlos. To sleep with me between silk sheets. I’d whisper her name at midnight. First name and last, paradise and vowels. Eden Santana, Eden Santana. Like a decade of a wicked rosary.

  She was due to finish work at six and ten minutes before the hour I got up and crossed Garden Street and walked slowly down the street toward Sears. I stopped at the alley and felt a sudden attack of hopelessness. Her bicycle wasn’t there. And if her bicycle wasn’t there, she probably wasn’t there either. I dawdled past the store and glanced through the windows, as casually as possible. I didn’t see her inside. Maybe she’s gone, I thought, feeling lost and alone in a town that wasn’t mine. Maybe she’d realized it was ridiculous to be seeing a kid like me on a Saturday night in a town full of men. Men with money. Fliers. Officers. Men who’d been around the world and back, flown combat missions, faced death. Men like Mercado. Down the street I saw the neon blinking on outside Trader Jon’s, but in my mind, I imagined her waking up on Saturday morning, thinking, “Oh, that damned kid,” and lying there deciding to call in sick so she wouldn’t have to see me. Maybe there was a guy lying in bed beside her. Smoking a cigarette, while she phoned in her lie. Speaking to her in Spanish later. She touched his face and smiled, saying, “I can’t go to town today.” Then lighting a cigarette. Then adding, “I have to stay here.” And the man did not protest because the man, of course, did not want to leave her. He reached out, touched her nipples, whispered her name.

  I stopped at the corner just past Sears, and leaned on a lamppost, looking up and down the street. I hoped none of the gang would see me. I didn’t want them asking me what I was doing standing on an empty street in Pensacola. They’d think I was a degenerate or something. Or they’d drag me down the street to Trader Jon’s, or out to the Dirt Bar. And I didn’t want to go to either place; this little hour belonged to me. Most of all, I couldn’t tell them the truth. “I’m waiting for a woman named Eden Santana.” I couldn’t say that, admitting with my tone that I cared for the woman and was disappointed in her absence. We were sailors. Ah remember the days (the Old Salt said) when men were men and women were carpets and all the ships was wood. Anchors Aweigh, my boys. Bell-bottom trousers, suit of Navy blue, I love a sailor boy and— No. I couldn’t say anything to them.

  The clock on the Blount Building said it was ten after six. And I thought: I’ll wait five more minutes. If she’s not here in five minutes, then she’s not coming. Maybe the whole thing was stupid. She was telling me something. I should take the hint. Just get out of here. Hell, I’m freshly shaved and smell good and have money in my pocket. I don’t have to wait here like a goddamned fool.

  A car horn honked. Once. Then again.

  I looked across the street at the sound. Eden Santana was behind the wheel of an old dark-green car, smiling at me and waving. I felt like doing cartwheels, shouting, punching street signs. I went around to the passenger side and she leaned across and opened the door.

  “Get in,” she said. “You want to drive?”

  “No, no,” I said. Closing the door, trying not to slam it, to show I was anxious. “You drive.”

  She started driving again, making a left into a side street.

  “I’m sorry I’m so damned late,” she said. “Every girl in that place had a damned date tonight and the ladies’ room looked like a football stadium. Then I had to go get the car, out in the back, and all the streets go the wrong way, and … How are you, child?”

  “Great,” I said. “Just great.”

  I could smell her now, all flowers, fields in the spring. She had done something to her hair; it was a controlled pile of a million curls. She was wearing a lavender dress and stockings with a seam down the back and high-heeled white shoes, which I watched as she shifted gears and pushed the car down dark streets.

  “So, what d’you think?” she said.

  “You look amazing,” I said. “I love the dress. And your hair. And—”

  “Not me! The car!”

  “It’s—”

  “Cost me seventy-five bucks, up at Bargainville on West Cervantes. A 1940 Ford. Runs pretty good for a thirteen-year-old, don’t you think?”

  “It sounds good,” I said (thinking: When this car was new, I was four and she was nineteen). And then glanced at her, as she turned the wheel, straightened out, went down another street. “But you know something? I gotta tell you the truth.”

  “You hate Fords.”

  “Worse. I don’t know how to drive Fords or anything else.”

  “Say what?”

  “I can’t drive a car.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  I explained why, and she listened and nodded and then reached for her purse and her Luckies.

  “Anyway,” I said, “I feel dumb about it.”

  “Don’t feel dumb,” she said. “You got good reasons. Up in the country, folks all learn to drive young ’cause it’s so far from one place to another. Still see people walkin’ everyplace they need to go, and once in a while you see an old cart, like in the old days, a cart with a horse. Now they mostly got them cars. Have to. But you didn’t need to do that. So don’t feel dumb.”

  She was talking very quickly, and it never occurred to me that night that she was throwing the words at me because she was nervous, too. I couldn’t imagine Eden Santana being nervous. Not over me. She put a cigarette in her mouth, but couldn’t strike a match without taking her hands off the wheel. I took the matches and tried to do it for her. The breeze blew out two matches and then she handed me the cigarette.

  “Light it up for me, will you, Michael?”

  The smoke tasted sour as I inhaled and handed the cigarette back to her.

  “And hey, what the hell,” she said, pausing to take a deep drag. “I can teach you how to drive. I used to—I’m a pretty fair driver, and I could teach you.”

  “I’d love that.”

  Thinking: I’ll be sure then to see you again. During the week and on weekends, too, maybe. You’ll explain gears and shifts, gas pedal and accelerator. You’ll place my hands on the wheel. I’ll smell your hair, hear you laugh. This night is not the end. We begin. There was water on my right, all the way to the horizon, and lights on small boats and a lighthouse away off. The sea was black.

  “Where we going?” I said.

  “The beach,” she said. “Out the causeway to Santa Rosa Island. There’s a little shrimp place there I found the other day. Just shrimp and beer. Nothin’ else. And cheap too. All you can eat for a dollar.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “You better like shrimp.”

  “All I can eat.”

  Then we were on the causeway, a long, narrow two-lane bridge out over the water. The breeze was cooler off the sea and I looked at Eden Santana, her brow furrowed slightly in concentration, her hair blowing, the lavender dress lifting and settling on her tan legs. And thought: My life right now, at this moment, with this woman beside me and the breeze blowing, riding over the sea, is truly beautiful. And I was right.

  We ate great mounds of boiled shrimp: dozens hundreds millions of them, sitting at a metal table beside screened windows overlooking the dark beach. We filled a bowl with the shells and drank Jax beer while I looked at her and she asked questions and I tried to answer. The lipstick came off her mouth. The sea air made her hair frizzier than ever. People came in and sat down and ate and left and we were still there. I drew pictures on napkins, and signed and dated them and wrote “Pop’s Shrimp Place” beneath the dates: pictures of a chief gunnery officer in uniform and a fat lady with a thin bearded man and a grizzled guy who looked like a fisherman. Then we ordered more shrimp and went on eating. When we were finished, Eden leaned back, a grin on her face, and rubbed her stomach.

  “Gotta walk some of this off, child,” she
said.

  I stood up, smothered a belch, and left a dollar tip, wondering if that was too much, and she would think I was showing off. But she took my hand and led the way out through the door to the beach. She took her shoes off and held them in one hand. Then she took my hand, lacing her fingers between mine, and we started to walk. The sand was very white, and the surf a long way off. Eden gazed up at the bunched thick stars. We left the lights of the shrimp place behind and soon were alone in a great emptiness.

  Then she saw a piece of driftwood, huge as a tree but bone white, and we sat on its trunk while she smoked a cigarette.

  “You said you had a husband,” I said, then wished I hadn’t.

  “Yes,” she said, without turning to me.

  “What happened to him?”

  “He’s home.”

  “But you’re not,” I said, trying to be light.

  She turned to me. “No, I’m not. I’m here, child. With you. Or didn’t you notice?”

  “I don’t mean to pry.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “It’s just … well, you said to me the other night that I didn’t know you. And that was true. That is true.”

  “The details, they don’t matter, do they? This is me. Right here, sitting on this piece of driftwood. Nothing else to me. Just what’s here.”

  “I’ve told you all about me,” I said.

  “Maybe there’s less to tell,” she said curtly.

  I was quiet then. She was right: I had less to tell. For a simple reason: I was a kid and she wasn’t. When I was two years old, she was sixteen. She was ready to fuck guys when I was learning to walk. She might even have been married then. At sixteen. Just a year younger than I was when I went in the Navy. They married younger than that down south. Yeah, she had a lot more to tell.

  She squeezed my hand.

  “Did I hurt your feelings, child?” she said softly.

  “No, no—”

  “I did, didn’t I? Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I hope you know that. Just, I got me some bad habits. Someone says somethin’ hard to me, I want to answer back. I wasn’t always like that. I was a nice quiet little girl for a long long time. But then it got so I had to answer back.”