James Burke - Dixie City Jam

But I'm not worried about the steel teeth embedded in my side and thighs. My comrades and I are in the arms of God and Morpheus and a nineteen-year-old warrant officer from Galveston, Texas, who flew the dust-off in through a curtain of automatic weapons fire that sounded like ball peen hammers whanging against the fuselage , and now, with the windows pocked and spiderwebbed, the floor yawing, the hot wind sucking through the doors, the squares of flooded rice plain flashing by like mirrors far below, we can see green waves sliding toward us like a wet embrace and a soft pink sun that rises without thunder from the South China Sea.

Oh, fond thoughts. Until I hear the bucket filling again under a cast-iron tap and the water that stinks of gasoline explodes in my face.

'Time I had a go at 'im, Will,' Freddy said.

Then the door opened again, and I could hear leather soles on the concrete floor. The three men's faces were all fixed on someone behind me.

'Give me another hour and we'll have it resolved,' Buchalter said.

'E's a tight-ass fouker,' Freddy said. 'We give him a reg'lar grapefruit down there.'…

'It's all getting to be more trouble than it's worth, if you ask me,' Hatch said. 'Maybe we should wipe the slate clean.'

The person behind me lit a cigarette with a lighter. The smoke drifted out on the periphery of my vision.

'You want to call it?' Buchalter said.

'AH I ask is ten fouking minutes, one for each finger,' Freddy said. 'It'll come out of 'im loud enough to peel the paint off the stone.'

'I've had a little problem in controlling some people's enthusiasms,' Buchalter said to the person behind me.

'You've got a problem with acting like a bleeding sod sometimes,' Freddy began.

'You're not calling me a sodomist, are you, Freddy?'

'We're doing a piece of work. You shouldn't let your emotions get mixed up in it, Will. That's all I'm trying to get across 'ere,' Freddy said.

I heard the person behind me scrape up a steel ruler that had been lying on a workbench. Then the person touched the crown of my skull with it, idly teased it along my scalp and down the back of my neck.

'I think Dave'll come around,' Buchalter said. 'He just needs to work out some things inside himself first.'

Whoever was behind me bounced the ruler reflectively on my shoulder and pushed a sharp corner into my cheek.

Buchalter kept staring at the person's face, then he said, reading an expression there, 'If that's the way you want it. But I still think Dave can grow.'

I heard the cigarette drop to the floor, a shoe mash it out methodically against the cement; then the door opened and shut again.

Freddy smiled at Hatch. His skin was so white it almost glowed. He shook a pair of pliers loose from a toolbox. Hatch was smiling now, too. They both looked down at me, expectant.

Will Buchalter bit a piece of skin off the ball of his thumb. He crouched down in front of me, removed his Panama hat, and rested it on one knee. His blond hair was as fine as a baby's and grew outward from a bald, spot the size of a half-dollar in the center of his scalp. He lifted up my chin gently with the wood baton.

'Last chance. Don't make me turn it over to them,' he said.

I lifted my eyes to his and felt my lips part dryly.

'What is it, Dave? Say it,' Buchalter said.

My lips felt like bruised rubber; the words were clotted with membrane in my throat.

'It's all right, take your time,' Buchalter said. 'You've had a hard night… Get him a drink of water.'

A moment later Buchalter held a tin cup gingerly to my lips. The water sluiced over my chin and down my throat; I gagged on my chest.

'Dave, I understand your pain. It's the pain of a soldier and a brave man. Just whisper to me. That's all it takes,' Buchalter said.

Hatch was bent down toward me, too, his hands on his knees, his face elfish and merry. Buchalter leaned his ear toward my mouth, waiting. I could see the oil and grain in his skin, the glistening convolutions inside his ear.

I pushed the words out of my chest, felt my lips moving, my eyes blinking with each syllable.

A paleness like the color of bone came into Buchalter's face. One hobnailed boot scratched against the cement as he rose to his feet.

'What'd 'e say?' Freddy asked.

'He said Will was a cunt,' Hatch answered, his grin scissoring through his beard. He and Freddy rocked on the balls of their feet, hardly able to keep their mirth down inside themselves.

Then Hatch said, 'Sorry, Will. We're just laughing at the guy. He hasn't figured out yet who's on his side.'

'That's right, Will,' Freddy said. ''E's a stupid fouk for sure. Go have breakfast. Me and Hatch'll finish it up here.'

But the insult had passed out of Buchalter's face now. He began pulling on a pair of abbreviated gray leather gloves, the kind a race driver might wear, with holes that allowed the ends of the fingers to extend above the webbing. He dried each of his armpits with a towel, then positioned himself in front of me.

'Stand him up,' he said.

'Maybe that's not a good idea, Will,' Freddy said. 'Unless you've given up. Remember what happened out in Idaho. Like an egg breaking, it was.'

'I say tear up his ticket, Will,' Hatch said. 'He's in with Hippo Bimstine. You're gonna trust what he tells you? Rip his ass.'

Then, as though he had given permission for his own anger to feed and stoke and fan itself, Hatch's hands began to shake, his teeth glittered inside his beard, and he wrenched me under one arm and tried to tug me upward against the wood post, his breath whistling in his nostrils.

'You know what's lower than a Jew?' he said. 'An Aryan who works for one. You think you're stand-up, motherfucker? A punk like you couldn't cut a week on Camp J. See how you like the way Will swings.'

Freddy grabbed my other arm, and they raked me upward against the post like a sack of feed. I could feel splinters biting into my forearms, my ankles twisting sideways with my weight.

'Get your fouking head up,' Freddy said.

'Strap his belt around his neck,' Hatch said.

'Step back, both of you,' Buchalter said.

Strands of hair were glued in my eyes, and a foul odor rose from my lap. I heard Buchalter's boots scrape on the cement as he set himself.

'I'm going to hit you only three times, Dave, then we'll talk again,' Buchalter said. 'If you want to stop before then, you just have to tell me.'

'Your juices are about to fly, Mr. Robicheaux,' Freddy said.

Then the three men froze. The Nazi flag rippled along the cinder blocks with pockets of air from the floor fan.

'It's glass breaking,' Freddy said.

'I thought you said the Negro was tucked away,' Buchalter said.

'E was, Will. I locked 'im in the paint closet,' Freddy said.

'The paint closet? It's made of plywood. You retard, there're upholstery knives in there,' Buchalter said.

'Hatch didn't tell me that . Nobody told me that . You quit reaming me, Will,' Freddy said.

But Buchalter wasn't listening now. He ripped Hatch's Luger from a holster that hung above the workbench and moved quickly toward the door behind the post where I was tied, the muscles in his upper torso knotting like rope. But even before he flung the metal door back against the cinder blocks, I heard more glass breaking, cascading in splintered panes to the cement, as though someone were raking it out of window frames with a crowbar; then an electric burglar alarm went off, one with a horn that built to a crescendo like an air-raid siren, followed by more glass breaking, this time a more congealed, grating sound, like automobile windows pocking and folding out of the molding, while automobile alarms bleated and pealed off the cement and corrugated tin roof.