Loving Women

by Pete Hamill

  Neither of us asked if what we were doing was right or wrong. We just did it. Music always seemed to be playing somewhere, even when the radio was off, even deep into the night when no sounds drifted across the lake; the music of sin, of crossing frontiers, of changing ourselves by what we imagined and what we did. We listened to that music and moved to it, invented to it, made love to it. I asked her to sit at the table, looking prim and reading a newspaper, a proper housewife, my little sweet Doris Day Blondie wifey, with Bing Crosby singing nice wholesome songs on the radio, and then I would get under the table and slide my head between her thighs until she lost all control. But music wasn’t always there. We made love once in the trunk of the car, in the parking lot of the Federal courthouse, with her panties keeping the trunk from locking. Once we found a small Catholic church out in the Alabama wilds, a building seemingly abandoned in the Protestant sea; we whispered in the emptiness of the nave and then went behind the rotting velvet drapes of a confessional, where she took me in her mouth. That was sin. And yet it didn’t seem wrong. Sin was made up of violation, license, the breaking of the rules; but with Eden it never felt wrong. It just felt.

  Sometimes, of course, sin wasn’t easy for me. I would glimpse my mother’s face and her austere Sunday morning Catholic piety and I would pause. A small fight would break out in my head; the child accused the man: would you do this in front of your mother? Invariably the man would win, arguing with vehemence: she had her life and she’s dead and gone and this is my life and I’ll do with it what I want. But sometimes the child was the temporary winner. The first few times we made love to Roberta, I was more upset than I let on. I thought (or the child did): Would I be doing this if Roberta was a man named Robert and we were both fucking Eden Santana? Suppose Mercado and I had Eden between us on this bed and came in her together? And what really was going on in Eden’s mind? Why did she seem to enjoy it so much? Going to Roberta’s house was one of the few things we did more than once. She truly did make our visits seem like corporal works of mercy, the healing of the sick, where flesh, tongue, cock and come closed all psychic sores in a churning of flesh. But back in the barracks, surrounded by men to whom I could confide nothing, I would think: Suppose Eden was some sort of a lesbian? How would I feel if she and Roberta made love when I wasn’t there?

  But after we’d gone to Roberta’s a few more times, all those questions disappeared. It began to seem natural for the three of us to slide together into that bed. Roberta was dumb, but I liked her; she was a woman born to be lavishly fucked until she got fat and swamped with kids and could then cast sex into the past. There was no way I could fall in love with her, and I was sure that Eden didn’t love her either. For me, there wasn’t any mystery; she was what she appeared to be, all good-natured flesh and a sad sweet smile.

  But I loved seeing Eden’s dark skin stretched against Roberta’s shimmering whiteness and the paler areas of both bodies that had been covered with bathing suits. There were 150 million people in the United States and I was one of the few people who had seen those parts of their bodies. I never asked Eden or Roberta why they allowed me to do the things I did with them. We never used condoms, and sometimes I came in each of them, each holding my ass tight when I started to pull out, silently insisting that I should finish what I had started. I knew there were secret things they did to avoid getting pregnant but I didn’t ask what they were. They just went separately to the bathroom and I would hear water running for a while and then we’d be dozing together in the cool Gulf dark until a hand touched a thigh and we’d begin again. I knew just one thing for sure: they felt safe with me and I felt safe with them.

  They were not, however, mere interchangeable bodies that gave and took heart-stopping pleasure. I enjoyed Roberta’s plump coarse whiteness, and the open way she let me use it. I got even hotter when she urged me on in that little girl’s voice. But in my eighteen-year-old arrogance I was sure there was nothing to know about Roberta beyond that bed, the hot shower, the light-blue veins on her breasts. There were a million things yet to learn about Eden Santana. And the challenge of that mystery, that place in her without maps, that undiscovered country, was what love was about. I was sure of that. Loving her was the name I gave to the process of unraveling her secrets. And as we moved around from one evening place to another, with feverish stops at Roberta’s, I began to tell Eden that I loved her.

  How can you say you love me, child? she’d say. You don’t even know me.

  Maybe that’s the point, I’d answer. Maybe I love you cause I don’t know you. Maybe won’t ever know all of you.

  She’d shake her head and say, That’s damfool talk.

  No, it’s not, I said one night. If I don’t know you—all of you—maybe I can spend the rest of my life finding out about you.

  She looked at me for a long time. Then she lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, and said (not to me, but to the room and the night and the past):

  One thing I sure done learned about life. Don’t plan on anything.

  Chapter

  52

  Late one afternoon I decided to walk all the way from the locker club to the trailer. The day was ripe with early summer.

  I was on the bridge over the River Styx when I saw the pickup truck: pale blue, with a toolbox across the back behind the cab, Alabama plates. It was parked in front of a bait shop that was built on a hummock of scrubby land overlooking the river. Behind the bait shop a path led through swamp grass down to a boat dock. Three men were standing beside the pickup, drinking beer. One of them looked familiar. I hadn’t seen him since the great brawl outside the Baptist church during my first week in Pensacola.

  It was the one called Buster.

  For a moment, I was afraid. That January night had been quick and violent and for Buster and his friends, humiliating. But it was months ago (I told myself), hundreds of days behind both of us. I was living a different life now, centered on Eden. Buster couldn’t possibly remember me. But then, tensing, nervous, I wondered if I remembered him, why wouldn’t he remember me?

  I paused, looked casually down at the river without seeing it, my back to the pickup and the bait shop and Buster. I glanced up and saw a hawk wheeling in the sky. And when I turned, Buster was coming across the road.

  One of the others was reaching into the cab of the truck.

  I froze.

  “Hey, you!” Buster shouted. “Sailor boy!”

  I started to run.

  Back down the road to Ellyson Field.

  “We gone git you Yankee ass!”

  I was running flat out now along the shoulder of the empty road. I turned and saw the pickup backing away from the bait shop and Buster climbing on the running board like a guy in a gangster movie. I passed a small launderette, its doors already locked, and a closed shop advertising mufflers. I stared around for a weapon: a board, a brick, any goddamned thing to use against Buster and his boys.

  And then I went down, falling forward, scraping my left hand as I tried to break the fall.

  Brakes screeched. I rolled over and looked up, expecting Buster and a beating.

  Buddy Bolden was there in the Merc. He pushed open one of the back doors.

  “Get in!” he shouted. “Come on, man …”

  I dove through the open door onto the floor. Bolden pushed me down and pulled the door closed.

  “Stay down!”

  I could hear him breathing in short pulls, a truck roaring by.

  “They just went by,” he said. “Don’t know if they seen you. They’re up higher in a truck so maybe they—Shit! They hangin’ a U. Fuck! Hold on!”

  He floored the accelerator, turned, then turned again, then went speeding down a smooth hardtop road, ripped suddenly to the right, passed under trees I could see from the floor, whipped around again, the road going from smooth to rough, stones and pebbles hammering at the bottom of the car.

  “The gun’s under the front seat. You can reach it from back there …”

  The .45, cold
and wrapped in oilcloth, was heavy in my hand.

  “I don’t see the mothafuckas any more but—”

  The gun felt cool and solid. I might have to use it. That came to me then: I might have to shoot these fucking guys. I might have to blow this Buster’s head off.

  Jesus Christ.

  Then I was hurled against the opposite door and twisted around, and then we were moving very fast.

  Yeah, I could kill one of the bastards.

  And hey (I thought but didn’t say) if it’s Buster or me, it’s gonna be Buster.

  I got a woman to live for.

  Then we were in a damp cool place, the sky blocked by trees, moving slowly. Bolden stopped the car. I listened in silence for the pickup truck, and heard only insects chirring and the sound of startled birds. Bolden turned off the engine. I sat up.

  “Gimme that thing,” he said. “I think we lost them.”

  I handed him the gun. We were on the far side of the lake in a dense grove of magnolias. The smell was thick and sweet, almost sickening. Bolden was very still, listening to the evening sounds like a hunter, trying to sort out one from a million others.

  “We’re okay now,” he said softly.

  “Thanks, man. I mean it.”

  “Now you know why I have a car.”

  “Down here, we need tanks.”

  “Who were those mothafuckas?”

  I gave him a short version of the dance back in January and what Sal and Max and I did to Buster and his friends and why. When I finished, he grunted.

  “It’s the dancin that did it,” Bolden said. “When white folks try to dance, they’s always trouble.”

  He got out of the car, still holding the gun, and I looked out across the lake to where he and Catty had their little house and Eden and I had our trailer.

  “You can’t go walkin on no roads alone no more,” he said. “Not while you down here. No more than I can. You do, you go talking shit about this being a free country an all that shit, they gonna grab you some night and drop you in a fuckin swamp.” A pause. “Max and Sal too.” He wrapped the gun carefully in the oilcloth. “These cracker mothafuckas ain’t dumb. Now they know you still around Pensacola, prob’ly right there in Ellyson Field, and so they gonna watch for you. Watch the roads. The bars. The base. So if you don’t have no car to carry you where you going, then don’t go …”

  I pictured myself sneaking through the woods for the rest of my time in Pensacola. And then I got angry. Three of us had fought Buster and four of his friends and kicked the shit out of them. That should’ve been the end of it. I was so young that I still thought the world had rules, that men fought and someone won and someone lost and then it was over. And Bobby Bolden was saying it wasn’t the end of it. That some things in this world didn’t end until someone was dead. That down here, anyway, they’d come to you in the night, memory as fresh as morning, and take back the blood they shed. That year, Bobby Bolden knew this better than I did. He knew where we were.

  In the South.

  The goddamned South.

  “They try that, we can do the same,” I said, almost bitterly. “We can go chasing after them too, man.”

  He looked at me in a sad way. “Wise up, kid. This is their country. Not yours. Definitely not mine.”

  “Well, we’ll see what happens,” I said.

  He shoved the gun in his belt. “You better hope nothin happens at all.”

  Chapter

  53

  The light was on behind the blinds when I finally reached the trailer. I knocked and heard Eden’s muffled voice telling me to come in. She hadn’t given me a key and never would. I pushed the door open and she was facing me, a faint smile on her face, her back to the sink. She had never looked so beautiful. Her hair was pulled straight back and her face was scrubbed clean of makeup. She was wearing a black turtleneck and a short white apron. Her legs were bare and she was wearing the red shoes. I locked the door behind me.

  You’re late, she said in a husky voice.

  She was smoking and flicked ashes behind her into the sink without taking her eyes off me.

  Had a little trouble, I told her, but I’ll tell you about it later. You look good, child.

  So do you, I said.

  This too was part of the dance: the soft words and compliments, all part of saying hello. Tonight was different. Her eyes were unfocused as if she were thinking four moves ahead of me. I started to get hard, and reached for her and pulled her to me, kissing her. I ran my unscraped hand down her body and discovered that, except for the turtleneck, all she was wearing was the apron.

  Gotta surprise for you, she whispered hoarsely.

  Yeah?

  Hope you like it.

  She dropped the cigarette in the sink, and then she pressed both hands on my shoulders, pushing me down. I kissed her breasts, taking each in my mouth with the cloth of the sweater between me and her nipples and breathed hotly on her. Her voice sounded choked and she pressed again more firmly and then I was on my knees in front of her and she lifted her apron delicately and there in front of me was the surprise.

  She had shaved.

  Every last hair was gone and I was facing her beautifully formed cunt, which was very pale, looking like those perfect pubic mounds I’d seen on the classical statues in the art books. Except that this wasn’t art made by hand from marble, bronze or polished wood. This was packed with muscle and blood, and it was in front of me now as I kneeled before her, and I thought the word cunt, and saw the crevice clearly defined and tightly shut, thought cunt again, saw no evidence of clitoris or entry to the dark channel within and whispered loudly, like a prayer for mercy from the position of worship: Cunt.

  Eden took a small step to the right, braced against the sink, gripped my head with both hands and pulled me to her.

  It was as if I’d never been there before, the hairless lips suddenly parting, slippery under my tongue, the opening at once tighter and wetter. I put my brow against her pelvic bone and pushed hard, pressing her now against the cold metal sink, while playing delicately with my tongue in this new bald place. Almost from the start she was trembling and moving, her legs straight out, drawing up on the heels of those red shoes, the legs hardening and locking, then loosening, then hard again. She eased away, then squatted hard against my tongue, pulling fiercely on my hair, as if trying to suck me up into her, the nude wet cunt demanding more and more tongue, her voice rising and shuddering, until she was suddenly completely crazily coming: tearing away the apron with both hands, then yanking again at my hair, pumping forward, then slamming her hard hot bottom against the sink, standing on the heels of her shoes, until she seemed to rise over me, twisting straight up and screaming. And then flopped forward.

  Exhausted.

  Panting.

  Limp. With her belly pressing against my head, her hands holding the back of my belt, her cheeks spread loosely against the sink. I blew gently against her hairless curves and clefts. And then she shuddered again and slid away and rolled onto her back on the polished floor. She lay there with her eyes closed. I entered her without undressing.

  I never want this to end, she said, bathing my raw left hand in Epsom salts, as I lay on the bed where she had placed me, drained and empty. Never. Never, never.

  Neither do I, I whispered.

  And I know, she said, I shouldn’t oughtta be saying that. We’re here. We could be here lots of nights. I want it never to end. Even though, well, you know …

  Don’t say even though, I said.

  She said nothing.

  I want us to last forever, I said.

  She rubbed my hand in the warm water, but she was looking at the wall.

  We won’t last forever, you know, she said gently. One fine day, you gonna meet a girl your own age. Probly younger. And she’ll want to go to Paris with you and help make you a painter, and all that stuff, like you say you want. And she’ll want to have kids and so will you. And she’ll want to meet your friends and read the books you’re rea
ding and see you at breakfast every day of her life. You’ll see her like she just came into this world, all beautiful and sweet and fresh and new. And you’ll fall in love with her. And then you’ll feel bad because you won’t know how to tell me. You’ll walk around in a fog, you’ll pick fights with me, you’ll see the lines in my face for the very first time and the way my titties are droppin and you’ll see my kids go off and have kids of their own and you’ll think that it’s very strange, you being with a damn grandmother, and so you’ll screw up your courage and come to me and tell me you love another woman. And maybe you will love her and maybe you won’t, but in the end, you’ll go away.

  I won’t, I said (the words still clear and fresh in my ears now). I swear it, Eden. I won’t ever go away. I won’t ever leave you.

  Please don’t say those words, she said. I hear them words in every rotten movie.

  I said, my voice rising with the panic, I don’t know any other words. But I gotta say them. Especially to you. I mean them.

  You mean it now, she said calmly, but you won’t even remember what you just said to me … When it’s time to move on.

  Then the words came pouring out of me, she lying beside me now, her head on my chest, my hand playing with her hair, the smell of soap and cunt in the air, mixed with the thick scent of magnolias from the lake. I wanted her beside me for the rest of my life, I said, the two of us, Eden and Michael Devlin, and her kids too, and so what if she became a grandmother, what the hell difference would that make? I knew I couldn’t be a father to her kids, they had a father, a real father, but I could be good to them, and maybe teach them a few things, and show them good books and take them to museums and if we all went to Paris, they could learn French while we were learning French and we’d all be happy. If I couldn’t make money as a painter, and couldn’t live on the GI Bill, I’d get a job, any kind of work to bring in the bucks, lots of them, and feed the kids and Eden and clothe them too and raise them up right and save what was left and … I could paint at night and on the weekends. And then, hey, sooner or later I’d have a breakthrough and I could give up the job and paint all the time. I knew I could do it, with Eden beside me, helping me make my way in the world while I was learning my craft. I needed her (I told her). I wanted her. Now. And later. When we both were old.