by Pete Hamill
I couldn’t stop myself. The words just kept coming, the foolish and pathetic words. The words of an eighteen-year-old boy who was far from home. She listened in silence, never moving; if anything, her body seemed slowly to stiffen. Then at last I ran down and finally I stopped talking. I turned to kiss her and saw that her face was wet with tears.
Nobody ever said things like that to me before, she whispered (she who had once forced me to tell her I loved her, in the woods beyond the railroad track). You damn crazy child.
I love you, I said, as if maybe she didn’t yet understand me completely, and as if that ancient phrase explained everything. I love you …
She was silent. The insects droned. A loon made a crazy laughing sound.
I said, When your hair grows back—down there—it’ll be mine. That hair, that new hair, that fresh-grown hair: nobody in the whole world will ever see it except me.
And she laughed.
Oh, Michael, child, of all the people in the whole wide world, only you would ever think such a thing.
I smiled, trying to be cool. But I was embarrassed, pleased only that it was too dark for her to see me blush. She had laughed at me!
But it’s true, isn’t it? I said. Nobody else will ever see it.
As soon as I’d said it, I was sorry. It was as if I were forcing her to say what I wanted so much to hear.
Who knows? she said casually.
I want it to be true, I said.
Then maybe it will be.
She was up on one elbow now, staring at me.
You ain’t a man yet, she said. But you’re gettin there, child.
I love you, I said one final time.
She sighed and touched my mouth with cool fingertips and said, I guess I love you too.
Chapter
54
From The Blue Notebook
She lets me enter everything except her mind.
Red Cannon was in a fight somewhere. When I saw him in the chow hall this morning, his hands were raw and skinned, but his face was untouched. Whoever the guy was, he never laid a hand on Red. Sal said the gouge on the base was that Red beat the shit out of some cracker down at Trader Vic’s. After Red finished beating him senseless, the Shore Patrol came. They were all friends of Red’s, so when the cracker came around, the SPs beat the shit out of him too. Will I have to fight Red some day? I have to admit, it scares me; Red is a man, tough and hard, and there’s something dead in his eyes, like he’s seen too many people die. I don’t know if I can go up against that kind of man knowing I might have to kill him if it looks as if he’s going to kill me. I guess if I ever fight him, I have to get off first; can’t give him time to get set, to gather up all his craziness and anger and hatred. Take it out of him real fast. Still, it’s scary.
E.: a stubble returns. She says it’s itchy.
Stories about Dodgers going to Los Angeles in newspaper clippings sent by my father. Horace Stoneham is mumbling about taking the Giants. The majors won’t let one team go because it wouldn’t be worth all the cost of flying out there on the road to play one team. So the Giants gotta go with the Dodgers. Possible, they could both be gone: just like that. Next year, year after. O’Malley wants the big television bucks, the papers say. Can’t believe it. In the papers here, the sports news is all stuff from Associated Press (that’s where Caniff worked when he first came to NY, drawing cartoons). The Los Angeles Dodgers? Sounds ridiculous.
But …
Great pictures by a guy named Titian in a book MR owns. You can see the figures glow. All old cardinals and popes, with cruel faces; but the glow, like gold, comes off them. How does he make that happen with just paint and oil and turpentine? Gotta ask M.
I made 46 bucks this month drawing pictures. MR suggested I switch to chalk and charcoal, so the women’s faces would be softer. He’s right. I love smearing the chalk with my hands, grading it. It’s almost as if you were rubbing your hand on a woman’s face. With the money, I bought two more shirts, and a book called The Great Gatsby for E. I read the book when Dunbar told me about it and it’s a great book, even though I don’t understand people like that, except Wolfsheim, the bootlegger. I was going to buy E. some earrings, but I couldn’t do it at the end, because I didn’t trust my own taste. Actually ran out of the store …
The comics go on, but I don’t care much about them anymore. I’d rather see red shoes.
Chapter
55
The Navy went on like a lumpy road beside a swift river. Routine and habit made it easy; my true life took place at night. I still visited with the blacks, doing their portraits for free and eating when I wanted. I even made a point of entering the chow hall with them, knowing it would drive Harrelson nuts. But I didn’t go into town with them very much anymore. I made excuses about being too busy with my drawings or needing to see my girl or having the duty.
But the truth was I didn’t want to see Winnie.
The truth was I didn’t want to hear that she was pregnant, or in love with me, didn’t want her to start hanging around the gate, the knocked-up black girl crazy for a white man. Most of all, I didn’t want her confronting Eden. I didn’t want her to throw a scene, didn’t want to have to sit down with Eden later and explain what happened that one night when she was in New Orleans. I was also afraid of my own feelings.
The truth was that sometimes, making love to Eden, Winnie’s syrupy body came into my head. I was on the floor again in her little house, betraying Eden while Winnie betrayed her husband. I could hear her furry innocent voice, the sense she gave me of being abandoned. At least once, making love to Eden, I came again in Winnie. And I was afraid that if I saw her I would want her again, in some powerful way that seemed to transcend my feelings for Eden. I loved Eden, I was sure, but Winnie’s hot desperate body wouldn’t leave my mind.
And there was one further truth: I was afraid that if Eden found out about Winnie, she would use the knowledge like a permit, and would go out and play around with other guys the way I had with Winnie. I had convinced myself that there was an unspoken agreement binding me and Eden Santana. I didn’t want it to break. I told myself that I needed her the way I needed food and sleep and air to breathe.
Meanwhile, the war in Korea was grinding down and so was the activity at the base. The Navy had stopped all new enlistments, so there were no new arrivals among us, no sudden transfers to sea duty in the waters of Asia. We were trapped at Ellyson Field: officers and enlisted men, Yankees and Shitkickers. Each of had to deal with the increasing boredom. Max and Sal applied for sea duty and were told they’d have to wait. Dunbar filled out the forms for an early discharge. I started going to the gym each afternoon with Max.
My hair filled out. I did a lot of drawing and some awful painting (the colors muddied up and I could never get the light right). I read more books. I weighed myself one afternoon in Bobby Bolden’s office in the infirmary and was certain the scale was wrong; I’d gained twelve pounds without getting fat. At night sometimes, Eden would dig a thumb into my biceps, and when it began to hurt, I’d grit my teeth and harden the muscle and pop her thumb out of my flesh. I even grew a half inch taller.
Late one afternoon, I was walking with Miles Rayfield along Copter Road on the base. He started talking about his wife. I remember feeling that I had a part in some play and Miles was really an actor reading some other guy’s lines. He talked about her in a bitter way. She hadn’t written to him in two weeks, he said, maybe three, he wasn’t ever sure anymore; maybe he should just get a divorce. It was as if he were asking me to support him, to advise him. I was trying to sort this out, when we heard someone tap a car horn. It was Mercado, in the tan full-dress uniform of the Mexican Army. He was behind the wheel of his convertible, the top down, the back seat full of suitcases.
“Hey, I’ll see you guys,” he said, smiling widely, waving. “I’m off.”
We went over and Mercado told us that he’d finished the helicopter training and he had his certificate, signed by Captain Pritc
hett and the Secretary of Defense. Now he was going back to Mexico.
“But stay in touch,” he said, and handed us each a business card, with the name of a company printed on it in Spanish, an address, a phone number. “You can get me here most of the time, if you ever come to Mexico. Actually, it’s my father’s company. But they always know where I am. Mi casa es su casa, as we say. My house is your house …”
Miles said, “If everybody you’ve invited comes to Mexico at the same time, you’ll have to rent a stadium.”
“My father owns a stadium,” Mercado said, and smiled. “So what the hell …”
We shook hands and he waved and drove on to the gate. I felt sad. Mercado was decent. He wasn’t one of those officers who acted like pricks. And then I felt a different emotion. Relief. Relief that began shifting into happiness.
Mercado was gone at last.
Now I’d never have to worry that Eden Santana was off somewhere with Mercado on the nights when I was a prisoner of the United States Navy.
He was gone.
And I was happy.
For about thirty seconds. Then a small commotion arose in me. Suppose Mercado was making one final stop in Pensacola before vanishing into Mexico and the future? Suppose the friendly goodbye was just an act, to make me relax before he went off for a few hot hours with Eden Santana on the silk sheets of the San Carlos Hotel? She might do it for one reason: curiosity. A tempting word from Roberta, who had slept with Mercado. A look at him in the passing convertible. He would be gone by nightfall anyway, and I would never know, so why not?
“Jesus Christ, what’s with you?” Miles said. “Your face is jumping all over the place.”
“Nothing. Nothing. I was thinking about something else.”
“It must have been a bitch.”
“Yeah.”
That night, Miles had the duty in the Supply Shack. Eden was working late. I knew if I lay around the barracks my head might fill with still more unhappy visions, so I decided to work. I owed drawings to almost a dozen sailors and I needed the money. I took a nap after dinner, to store up strength for a long night’s work. I awoke in the dark. And then, my face freshly washed, I took my chalk, pad and photographs over to the Supply Shack. A soft rain was falling but there were a few helicopters in the sky. The lights burned warmly in the shack. Miles was probably busy; his bitching would be good company. Between Miles Rayfield and the work, I wouldn’t think about Eden Santana.
But when I walked into the Shack, Miles wasn’t there. Nobody was. I went to his desk and saw cigarette butts in an ashtray and a Navy white hat plunked on the chair, with Rayfield stenciled inside the brim. But there was no Miles Rayfield. I went to my desk, stared at the vapid face of a young blonde and started drawing. Then the front door opened and a mechanic walked in waving a requisition slip.
I took the slip, exchanged some small talk, and then walked to the back to find a swash plate, wondering where the hell Miles was. As soon as I stepped into the storeroom, I heard voices. Low, murmuring. Coming from the secret studio beyond the wall of packing crates. One of them belonged to Miles Rayfield. The other was the voice of Freddie Harada.
I gave the mechanic the plate and had him sign the forms, but when he was gone, I decided not to stick around. I left the signed slip on top of Miles’s hat and then packed my stuff and hurried through the soft rain to the barracks. I worked there in the dim light, sitting on my bunk, trying to draw what I could see and not what I could imagine.
At lights out, I moved into the head and kept working, sitting on a toilet seat with the drawing pad in my lap. Various sailors came in and out, handling the usual ablutions before going off to sleep. They were used to me by now; they didn’t even bother to kibitz. Then I was alone for a long time in the quiet. I was working on my third dark-eyed blonde; she was too pretty to be interesting, and blonde hair was always harder to draw than black. But the chalk worked for me; I kept repeating the tricks I’d learned from Miles Rayfield and they were beginning to feel natural.
Then I heard a screen door open and close, followed by footsteps. I looked toward the sleeping bay and saw Captain Pritchett and Red Cannon staring at me. I started to get up. Cannon took a step into the head and held up both hands, palms out.
“Stay there, sailor,” he said, his voice soft but his eyes angry. It was as if he were making an arrest. “Captain wants to talk to you.”
Pritchett stepped into the head.
“Thank you, Cannon,” he said, his voice a dismissal.
“Good night, sir,” Cannon said, snapping off a salute. He walked out quickly but was careful not to slam the door. Ass kisser, I thought. Bullshit artist. The captain waited until Cannon was gone and then he turned to me.
“So you’re the guy doing those portraits I see everywhere,” he said, looking at the unfinished drawing on my pad.
“I guess so, sir,” I said.
“They’re in lockers, the damned pictures. They’re in the hangars. They’re even turning up in officer’s country.”
I wanted to say: Yeah, so what? But I kept my mouth shut.
“And they’re not half bad,” Pritchett said.
He looked closer at the blonde on the pad.
“You got a knack, Devlin. Maybe even a gift.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
“ ’Course, I been around so damned long now, I’ve seen all sorts of artists come and go and come again, in this man’s Navy. Usually they pick up a discharge and go out into the civilian world thinking they’re the next Picasso. They go to art school. They try to get jobs in their art racket. And then they find out they’re not all that good, or they gotta make a living, or worst of all, they get married. And you never hear about them again. And then, a lot of times, they even re-up, come back to the Navy, where they can be big wheels again. You understand what I’m saying, sailor?”
“I think so, sir.”
“No, you don’t. You’re too damned young to understand anything.”
He sighed and then took his wallet from the back pocket of his suntans. He started flipping through a plastic insert. He took out a photograph.
“But you do have a knack,” he said, handing me a photograph of his wife, the woman whose picture was in his office. “So try this. A nice big one, if you can do it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What do you charge?”
“Uh, well, any thing, sir. I—”
“Stop the crap, sailor. I’ll pay what the others pay. I don’t want a deal, just cause I’m your commanding office.”
“Five bucks.”
“Do a nice job and I’ll get you ten.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good night, sailor,” he said, and turned on his heel without saluting. He walked out to where his beds of flowers were drowsing in the soft Gulf rain.
I stared at the woman’s face. A round head, crisp features, the cheeks a little dimpled, clear eyes. She was younger in this picture than in the one at his office. On the back, she had written: “For Ensign Jack Pritchett, Love Always, Catherine.”
And I thought: I’ve made hundreds of drawings of Eden Santana, but I don’t have a single photograph, nothing at all, that says on it, “Love always.” All I had was her hurried note, scribbled before she left for New Orleans. That did say love but didn’t add always. And I wondered how I would feel if Eden died on me, the way Pritchett’s wife had died on him. What would I carry around for the rest of my days that would remind me of the way love for her once drowned my heart?
I slipped the picture of the captain’s wife inside the pad and finished drawing the girlfriend of a man named Schlesinger, who was stationed at Mainside. Then Miles Rayfield came in.
“I thought you were going to come over,” he said.
“I did,” I said.
“Oh.” He looked embarassed, and then walked quickly to the sleeping bay.
I gazed at myself for a moment in the mirror, remembering that first day so long ago when I showed up here, still
loving a woman in Brooklyn whose face I no longer clearly remembered. Now I wanted Eden to appear behind me in the mirror, her eyes out of focus. I would turn and she would be wearing the red shoes.
The screen door slammed. Then slammed again. Nobody came in. I walked to the door and slipped the hook and closed the main door too. Outside, the streets glistened with rain. I remembered standing at the door to the roof in the house in Brooklyn, watching the rain on summer afternoons. That rooftop seemed a million miles away. I thought: I’d better write to the boys, too. My little brothers. I’d better tell them what I’m learning about the confusions of the world. They should learn it too.
And then thought: No.
They’ll have to learn about it for themselves.
Chapter
56
The next night I tried to explain to Eden about Miles Rayfield. About his talent and kindness and generosity. About how much he’d taught me but how the other part of him made me uneasy. I told her about the wife Miles claimed to have. About Freddie Harada and the nude drawings I’d seen in the sktetchbook. I didn’t think that such talk would take me where it did. That night changed everything.
We were in the trailer, facing each other across the small table. She was smoking a cigarette, her eyes as blurry as the smoke.
She said, Say, this Miles really is, you know … funny.