Джо Горес - Cases

That’s when Dunc, jealous but superior, had sworn he’d never pay for it. Nor had he. In Fairbanks the old-fashioned parlor houses had been the only decent places to drink. Red plush on the walls, a bar, a couple of couches, rooms upstairs, girls coming through not wearing very much — but even there, he hadn’t paid for it. He’d just gone without, as it were.

His second bottle was empty, he was into his third. Hell, who was he kidding? He’d been a virgin until he was a junior in college, had screwed only four girls, once each, none in bed.

The alcohol was hitting his empty stomach. He slid off his stool, leaving the change from his final ten for another round.

“I gotta tap a kidney.”

“Yeah, you don’t buy beer — you just rent it.”

Dunc wove his way into a tin-sided box with a wet concrete floor and a trough along one wall. The reek of urine was sharp as smelling salts. Scrawled above the trough was WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING UP HERE FOR? ARE YOU ASHAMED OF IT? Underneath, a different hand had scrawled, NO, IT SCARES ME.

In the middle of the room was a wooden cubicle without any door; inside was a brown-stained ceramic toilet. As he buttoned up, one of the bar girls went in and hiked up her skirt and stood bent-kneed over the toilet pissing cowily, like the whore in Joyce’s Ulysses.

Back in the bar there was a fresh beer beside his half-finished one, and his change was gone. An Anglo woman with slightly buck teeth but big breasts barely concealed by a loose white blouse had her hand up the inside of Falkoner’s thigh to his crotch. She was making her eyes round as if in amazement.

“Olé, mucho homhre, no?"

“No tengo the lingo, girlie,” said Falkoner. “And I shouldn’t have to with somebody as blond as you.”

“Blond all the way down, sugar.” Her fingers were busy. Falkoner’s pants were beginning to bulge.

“How much?” he demanded.

“Twenty dollars.”

“What?"

“Ten dollars.”

“I’ll give you two.”

“I’ll take it.”

Falkoner slid off his stool, leaving beer, money, cigarettes, and lighter behind. “Keep my place, Dunc.”

Dunc tried to spread himself across two stools, keeping his elbows wide to protect Falkoner’s place. Six drunken soldiers wearing their off-duty uniforms of khakis and bright shirts bellied up to the bar. One, with a sweaty red face and master sergeant written all over him, started to slide his fat butt onto Falkoner’s stool despite the beer, cigarettes, money and lighter.

“Hey, sorry, pal,” said Dunc, “that’s my buddy’s place.”

The soldier wore his khaki pants down under his paunch, and a black short-sleeved sport shirt with yellow flowers on it. A pack of Camels was partially rolled up in the left sleeve.

“He can tell me this is his stool when he gets back.”

“I’m telling you now.”

“Well, Jesus, that scares the livin’ shit outta me.”

He poured beer into his face; sweat gleamed on his jowls, he had to be over forty, had to have his twenty in. What was he doing trying to pick a fight in a Mexican whorehouse? What was Dunc doing letting him pick a fight in a Mexican whorehouse?

“I’ve got no fight with you, Sarge,” he said reasonably.

“Gutless fuck, ain’t you?” He turned to his pals. “We got us a PFC here, men.”

“What’s a PFC, Sarge?”

“A poor fucking civilian.”

The sarge finished Falkoner’s beer, shook a cigarette out of Falkoner’s pack, lit it with Falkoner’s lighter, and stuck that in his shirt pocket along with Falkoner’s cigarettes. He then put Falkoner’s folding money into his pants pocket.

“Now your buddy ain’t sitting here no more.”

“Well, shit,” said Dunc.

He slid his wristwatch into his pocket. His heart was pounding wildly. From his years of football he knew he could take a lot of punishment and could dish it out, but knew he was just barely a good enough brawler to still have all his teeth.

They started for the alley to the incongruous “Song from Moulin Rouge ” on the jukebox. The squat fat soldier walked with a rolling gait; a beer keg would be easier to knock over.

“Age before beauty,” he said with a sly and nasty grin.

So he could jump Dunc from behind. Dunc said nothing. He went through the back door fast, grabbing the two-by-four he’d seen there, spun around swinging for the fence. Tom Nieblas had saved their butts with that trick one night up in Alaska.

The beer keg sergeant was already rushing him from behind, clasped hands swinging to club the back of Dunc’s neck, so the makeshift bat hit him in the face with a meaty sound, ripping open his forehead and spreading his nose from cheek to cheek.

Kathwuck!

He flew backward, smashed into the door frame, spun around to crash face-first into the garbage pails. They went over, showering him with filth, landing on top of him. A three-quarter eggshell rolled unevenly across the alley floor.

Dunc dropped the two-by-four and fell to his knees beside the downed warrior. Sluggish blood seeped out from under the sarge’s face. Dunc felt suddenly very sober indeed.

Dunc gingerly rolled him over, expecting at the very least to sec an eyeball hanging out on his cheek. No. The flattened nose was pouring blood and he made a long harsh sound. A snore. Knocked down by the two-by-four, passed out from the beer.

Dunc dipped trembling fingers into the soldier’s shirt pocket, found Falkoner’s cigarettes and lighter, then dug his hand into the trouser pocket for the sheaf of folded bills Falkoner had left on the bar.

Feeling sick to his stomach, he went back into the Red Arrow to face the sarge’s buddies. But Falkoner was back on his stool and arguing pro football with them.

“Hell, Joe Perry is the greatest running back ever played the game. Three thousand-yard seasons and he isn’t done yet. And with Hurricane Hugh in the lineup...”

One of the soldiers saw Dunc, blurted out in surprise, “What the fuck?”

“He’s sleeping it off in the alley.”

A black-haired skinny bespectacled soldier laughed as he scooped up the greenbacks strewn across the bar.

“Told you the sarge was gonna get took!” he crowed. “We’d better get him outta that alley before he gets rolled.”

It felt good to slide the cigarettes and lighter onto the bar in front of him, then slap the folded money down beside them.

“He took your stool.”

Falkoner laughed, riffled his money, stuffed some of it into Dunc’s shirt pocket.

“Hey, that’s not—”

“Not mine, either,” said Falkoner. “Let’s blow this joint.”

“I gotta give it back to the sarge.” But all they found in the alley were the overturned garbage pails and a patch of blood-soaked dirt. Dunc got into a laughing jag. “I just rolled a guy for the first time in my life, and I didn’t even know it!”

It got drunk out. The night was a purple-black bruise, hot and sweaty, chilly, loud and raucous, silent, frantic with neon in the middle of a narrow dusty Mexican street, serene in the desert with a billion uncaring stars overhead. A kaleidoscope of images with only fragments of memory clinging to them like flesh to shards of bone on a slaughterhouse floor.

Another bar, an incongruous shuffleboard in back. Soldiers in uniform playing it, shouting and drinking beer. Somebody grabbing Dunc’s arm. “Your buddy over there says he’s too drunk to fight but that you’re lookin’ for trouble.”

Dunc shook his head. “I’ve already had mine, thanks.”

The lanky cowboy sighed sadly. “Shit, can’t get nobody to give me a fight. Lemme buy you a beer.”