Tales of the Out & the Gone (8 page)

His barracks room, which he shared with a giant country boy from Long Island (now, thank god, on leave), had, despite the pressures of would-be military standard operating procedures, begun to take on the look of a second-hand bookstore.

Every week, Johns had to hear something from one of the non-coms about the room and its unmilitary look. You were only supposed to have “pictures of loved ones,” and as many books as the dresser top would allow to sit “in a military manner.” But then he had to hear about the weak little fuzz he had sprouting out the edge of his chin, which the “war cats” insisted was a beard. Or the “boot salute,” which many of the black troops threw in lieu of the war one, viz, this was where the head was bent down to meet the reluctant right hand, producing a “blood salute.” Especially them Southern white officers didn’t dig this. Johns once had to stand and salute about forty times in the hot sun, “until he got it right.” And he did, “by god,” as the game started to tire him and the hot sun had got all in the young blond lieutenant’s uniform, wetting him to the skin.

Between Laffawiss, the scrawny humpbacked Groucho “Jew bastard,” as some of the quainter Southern boys called him, and Johns, “a fuckin nigger snob,” many incorrect and backward dudes did they light up with their wild antics. Both were young men sufficiently turned around by their younger lives and what they were learning now in “this war shit” (although it was peacetime, between the Korean and Vietnam Wars). Both had the beginning of the stiff self-identification of themselves as intellectuals, whatever that meant to them. And it didn’t mean too much, except both liked to read, both were mostly quiet and inner-directed, and they both hated most of the assholes that passed for non-coms and officers in the error farce, plus a whole lot of them “farmer motherfuck-ers” who would batter at their sanity with endless hours of “In the Jailhouse Now,” which was the top country-and-western hit of the period. Either that or Patti Page singing, “We’ll Be Together Again.”

They were dragged away from civilian life by their own confusion, Johns being tossed out of school for making his studies secondary to his social education, and Laffawiss because he didn’t realize (either) that school did have some merit—even though you couldn’t learn a hell of a lot around those people. But shit, Laffy found out he was learning a hell of a lot less around Curtis LeMay’s (SAC C.O.) relatives and friends.

Both hung around a large group of full, semi, and closeted intellectuals, all now lamenting their being trapped and martyred in the Air Force, when, hell, all had joined voluntarily. They figured they were escaping the “malaise” of post-adolescence, but now they were in the real fucking malaise with not much white bread either.

A few nights a week, Johns worked as the evening librarian; and the old career special-services librarian, seeing Ray was a book nut, let him have run of the place, including being in charge of ordering books and records. So a few nights a week, Ray, Laffy, and the rest of the crowd would ease into the library, draw the blinds, break out the cheap rum and vodka, and play music most of the night—in both luxury and captivity at the same time.

But Johns almost never left the base. Only sometimes by himself would he catch the
gua gua
and end up in San Juan, preferably
viejo
San Juan, to wander around the wild and pretty streets, lamenting his fate. And Laffawiss, though not altogether gregarious, still occasionally wanted his on-base walking buddy to dare the wilds of the island with him. Shit, at least Aguadilla.

But Ray, most times, just rolled over and flipped a page, or maybe he’d just turn up the box and check what Beethoven or Bird might have to say. Or maybe just wonder what Monk was thinking behind those weird blue glasses.

“Johns, are you masturbating?” Laffy could get rude like that. Matter of fact, that was his standard tone.

“Why, you bottling jerk-off come?” Neither laughed, though they were amused.

“Naw, I just wanna find out how come you don’t have a go into town and release your tension.” Laffy made a lurid leer with the Groucho face on, swiveling his hips.

“Why, you think my tension needs to be released? Shit, my tension can do anything it fuckin want to. Can’t you, tension?” He looked down at his fly, but there was no immediate answer.

Laffy snickered at this, picking up a water glass as if it was a microscope. “Aha, now we are entering the area of microbiology,” he said, as he squinted in the same area Ray Johns made believe he was talking to. A perfect comedy team, though a trifle avant garde and abstruse for some of their buddies and anti-buddies.

* * *

Now they stalked the streets of Aguadilla, in which thousands of restless, sex-starved, largely ignorant troops were released during the evening. And there were always incidents, always unpleasantness (which included drunkenness, fighting, and sometimes cutting and shooting). And, of course, most of the people of Aguadilla just tried the best they could to do the shit they had to do to survive. But imagine being just outside the gate, and being invaded each evening by about 5,000 screaming crazed American airmen. Jeez, what about releasing them, this evening, into Darien? What about Scarsdale or Palo Alto or Basking Ridge? Yeh, yeh. I’d like to film that, boy. Or hire somebody to film that shit. Like a military-suburban
Animal
House
, if you catch my sniff.

This Friday evening it was already a little late, as it had taken Laffy an hour or so to convince Ray Johns to come on in and play cowboy. Assorted airmen of all shapes, sizes, and colors were staggering, dragging, heaving, and spinning past them, the number increasing each half-hour or so as that Friday wound its way out. Most of the troops were in little groups with their buddies, some stumbled alone, and the lucky ones were already with some local women.

Laffawiss swiveled his head around on his neck, leering his Groucho leer. “That’s one, Johns. That’s one. A woman, ya see?”

“Yeh, I see. Very interesting.”

“There’s another one. You see, they got different features and all.”

“Very interesting. So what happens now? My tension ain’t been released. Not a bit. Is this all you have to do, twist your head off at the neck? Somehow, I thought it was going to be more complicated than this.”

“Wow, first you don’t even wanna leave the base and stop your meat-pulling, now you wanna turn into the original flesh fiend.”

“Yeh, yeh.” Johns whooped a little weakly, in celebration of some of those “farmer motherfuckers” who could be heard, even now, up and down the street whooping cowboy and confederate war cries.

Walking in the direction the way they were headed brought them face to face with
The American
, the first of the near-base bars for mainly white soldiers. Harry Truman had already desegregated the Armed Forces alright, but just as in the rest of American life, the separation still existed. So there were white bars and colored bars and a few fairly mixed. But most, even there in Puerto Rico, were either one or the other.

The American
was notorious, anyway. Black and white soldiers had frequently locked asses inside its doors. And a few times, the place had been closed with
Off-Limits
signs put up. Laffy got to the door first and pushed it open, peering in.

“Why you come to this joint, Laffawiss? You gotta meet some old Klan buddies in there? Jeez, Laffy, let’s not get into no abstract shit.”

Laffawiss looked over his shoulder. “Hey, we’re stalking our prey, man. I thought you were trying to release your tension.”

“In
The American?
Ain’t nothing in there but farmhouse motherfuckers. And they got all them bitches in there sick as them.” Johns meant that the more backward of the white soldiers would try as quickly as possible to infect the local women with their own anti-black views. First, because they themselves had been long-shaped by the sickness of racism, but also, more practically, they were trying to protect their choice pieces of
chocha
from getting “pulled” by the aggressive black troops. Hence, fights in and around
The American
and a lot of other places, in this “neutral zone” outside the U.S. mainland, where the “bitch pulling” competition was conducted by a slightly different set of rules.

“I ain’t goin in that lousy joint.” Johns stepped back from the doorway as two obvious “farmer cats” stumbled by, tossing him a death look. They pushed past Laffawiss, who was still peeping in the door, seeing what he could see and talking to Ray over his shoulder.

“Hey, they’re all dogs in here anyway.” Then, in response to being slightly shoved by the drunken duo, Laffy added, “Creeps, you’ll probably die with clap of the mouth.”

“Laffawiss, let’s go. I ain’t in no goddamn boxing mood, man. You don’t want to release tension—you want to build the shit up.” Johns turned now as if he was going to leave Laffawiss in front of the bar.

“Hey, Ray—shit! Shit, Ray. Look who’s in this joint.” The sight of
whoever
was cracking Laffy up. “Hey, look. Come on, it’ll do you good. Come on, look!”

Reluctantly, Johns crept up toward the pushed-open bar door and peered in. There were two white airmen in uniform, or mostly in uniform, their “cunt caps” or other class-A visorless caps sliding all the way to the back of their heads. Or else there were those in what was supposed to be “civilian clothes,” which included “Hawaiian”-inspired obscenities as shirts, loud trousers, jeans, some pants high-styled with contrasting “pistol pockets” and seams. Bottles, mostly beer, being raised. Loud profane talking and shouting, confederate whoops, and spaced appropriately throughout the joint, on the stools and at the tables, different sizes, shapes, and colors of Puerto Rican women—some prostitutes, some not. The soldiers in the bar didn’t care too much one way or the other, as long as they got over. (If they could still get it up after falling down and throwing up on each other.)

But Laffawiss was pointing now, almost frantically, at a fat, stoop-shouldered, red-faced white Airman Second with his “cunt cap” cocked way over on the side of his head. But not far over enough to hide the screaming red knife scar dug into a white valley down his cheek. Laffawiss could not contain himself. He was laughing out loud and jiggling from one foot to the other.

“What?” Ray Johns stared into the now fully lit bar. “Oh, it’s that goddamn farmer that Grego cut. Wowee, first time I seen that sucker since Jack the Ripper got his ass.”

Grego was a Mexican-American airman who hung with Laffy and Ray and the others in their little lightweight intellectual gang. Grego was blond and you couldn’t tell he was Chicano until he opened his mouth. Or unless you spotted the tiny cross tattooed between his thumb and forefinger, which marked him
pachuco
and a member of one of the hardass Chicano youth gangs that littered the Southwest and L.A.

The fat farmer had made the mistake of saying something about “spics,” and lickity-split, before you knew it, light caught for an instant in a blue blade passing through the air on the way to slash the man’s puss, and unless he got plastic surgery, it remains so slashed until this moment.

Johns now howled too, a little cooler. But at least Laffy hadn’t started pointing at the dude and hollering,
Cut that
motherfucker too short to shit!

The farm boy was apparently sitting with friends, and Laffy and Ray were the only ones from their own group, so after another second or two of acid kibitzing, including, “You should thank Grego, motherfucker, that scar at least makes your face interesting. Shit!” there was an abrupt about-face by the two laughers, as First Sergeant Barfell called out at our two heroes, and they got in the wind.

They cut around the corner and crossed a vacant lot, and presto, they were standing close by the Estrella Negra. Actually, it was simply Estrella, “Star”—The Star Bar. (The Negra had been added by both the black and white troops.) It was the big hangout for the blacks and the Latins and the white soldiers that swung with the Bloods.

White (who was not), Perkins (who was), and Yodo (who was from outer space) were sitting and standing at the bar, arguing whether Fats Navarro or Miles Davis played the most shit to the background music of Lloyd Price singing, “Lawdy, Lawdy, Miss Clawdy.” This place was jammed up tight with uniformed and civilian-slick airmen, also shouting and laughing at the top of their voices. And while Estrella was a predominantly black bar, there were white and Latin troops hollering with the Bloods, insulting each other, bullshitting each other, sympathizing with each other, trying to make it and do their various hitches.

“How the fuck you get Ray to come into town, Laffy?” White was standing tall and dour as usual, slightly tipsy and bending toward the new arrivals. “How the fuck you get …” he trailed off, giggling. “Yodo, buy Ray a drink for coming off the base.”

Yodofus T. Syllieabla (Carl Lawson’s chosen moniker to evade the constant depression of being an Air Force medic for seven years of his life and having still only one stripe) was a very yellow-colored fellow, and with the booze in him he had colored slightly red, blinking his eyes. “You want Yodofus T. Syllieabla, the High Priest of Swahili and the Czar of Yap, to do what?”

“Buy them a drink, silly nigger!”

“Yeh, Ray, why you out here in this dirty town? And in this dirty bar?” This was Bill Perkins, an aspiring photographer from a suburb of Boston. His name wasn’t really Perkins, but his parents had changed it in order to get in the suburbs, and Perkins felt guilty about that when he got loaded. So he tried not to get loaded, but it didn’t stop him. He got loaded, then guilty, all the goddamn time. “You said you didn’t need to come into Aguadilla, but here you are. And with that Groucho Marx–lookin cat. Stand up straight, Laffawiss, goddamnit. You’re standing in a hole.”

Laffy half-turned immediately. “Hey, Johns, let’s get the fuck outta here. I’m not gonna be insulted by guys named Perkins whose names ain’t really Perkins. Hey, I wouldn’t sell you a pickle on the Lower East Side, my friend. Not even a herring, Perkins. Shit!”

“Shut up, Laffawiss, I wasn’t talking to you. Johns, why are you in town with this guy?”