Robert Adams - The Clan of the Cats

“But I’ll also be leaving you a card on which will be some telephone numbers and a couple of addresses for me. When, if, you ever need me, need any help I can give, call or wire or write me, Please promise me, Milo.”

Milo was vouschafed less than a week to enjoy wearing the silver eagles of his full-colonelcy before they were replaced with the single stars of a brigadier general, and within yet another week he was officially retired. After a brief trip to New York City and a few days spent with the aging attorney who had handled most of his affairs for a quarter century, he purchased a new automobile and drove back down through New Jersey, Maryland and the District of Columbia into northern Virginia. In no rush to get anywhere for any purpose, he drove in a leisurely manner, enjoying the sights of a peaceful, undevastated countryside, roads that might own a few potholes here and there but no shell craters, streets with green lawns upon which well-fed children played children’s games.

Lulled by the steady throb of the big automobiles powerful eight-cylinder engine, he rolled along highways between fields of growing crops and pastures on which grazed sleek cattle or leggy, well-bred horses, with nowhere a rusting carcass of a tank or APC or SP-gun, no burned-out trucks or shattered jeeps hulks.

It was an intensely soothing trip for him and he deliberately strung it out, made it last, driving only so far as he wished each succeeding day, then finding a place to stay each night—tourist court, motel or real hotel, whatever was available at the time and the place and took his fancy of the moment.

He dined simply or elegantly or not at all in the same mode as he lodged, dependent mostly upon what facilities were there, were available wherever he decided to stop—Nabs and Cokes, hot dogs or hamburgers with french fries and malteds, chow mein and beer, Chateaubriand and vintage wines, all were the same to him and all were equally enjoyed in an unhurried manner, for he felt—to use the old-army expression—that he had the rest of his life to do this in … though he could not then have imagined just how long the rest of his life was to be.

Other than the various potables consumed with his meals, Milo drank very little on the protracted trip down from New York to Virginia. Nor was his near-abstinence because he did not like spirits or lack a head for them, he just felt a need to see and feel what he saw and felt unaffected by drugs or stimulants.

Benighted somewhere on the road from Baltimore to the District, he found himself seated in a bar enjoying a preprandial couple of whiskies before walking next door for dinner. While the paunchy bartender slowly polished glasses, most of the other patrons—clearly locals—sipped draft beer and watched the news on the television fitted into the paneled wall above the bartender’s bald head.

Concentrating on enjoyment of the pleasant burn, the smoky fumes of the alcohol in mouth and gullet, Milo did not at first hear the man who stood before him, beyond the shiny bar.

“Ready for another’n, sir?” smiled the bartender, with a real diffidence, for damned few of his customers were in the habit of ordering double Chivases, much less tipping handsomely with the service of each drink.

Milo glanced down at the small swallow or so of whiskey left in the old-fashioned glass and shrugged. “Why not? Yes, one more, please.”

As the bartender approached with the fresh drink, the outer door opened and a slight young man entered and limped up to the bar a few feet down from Milo, at whom he smiled and nodded in a polite manner. The man appeared to be in his twenties. In addition to the limp, his face and the backs of his hands were covered with shiny scar tissue. Milo had seen that kind of scarring before, over the years, and could make a pretty shrewd guess as to just what had caused it.

Spying the newcomer, the bartender’s thick lips moved in an almost soundless “ Oh, shit. ” and he hurriedly glanced back at the knot of locals grouped before the television, but as they were rapt by the medium, he set the glass before Milo with a flourish, accepted the payment and tip with a smile and a nod, then passed swiftly down to lean as far as his belly would let him across the bar toward the scarred man.

“Gawddammit, Billy,” Milo heard him urgently whisper, “won’t what Bubba done to you the lastest time enough? He ain’t seed you yet, so get to hell out, ’fore he does. Mist’ Chamberlin, he ain’t over here to drag Bubba and them off of you t’night, an by the time I could get the cops out here, you’d be dogmeat, and you knows it, too. Please, just leave, huh?”

But it was too late.

“Hey!” Milo heard a nasal voice ring from up the bar. “Hey, yawl, look who’s here. The fuckin’ baby-burner’s done come back to finish gettin’ his lumps. I got dibs on bashin’ the fucker first. Who wants to hol’ him for me, huh?”

Rocking slightly from the amounts of beer he had poured down his throat since he had gotten off work at the sand and gravel quarry, the big, rawboned man stalked up the bar, his fists clenched and cocked, the light of joyful sadism shining from his pale, bloodshot eyes.

“Now, goddammitall, Bubba,” the bartender half-shouted, “you and them leave Billy alone, you hear? He’s a disabled vet’run, he cain’t fight you even was you to fight fair, one on one, and you knows it, too.

“You jest tend to your own fuckin’ bizness, Chester,” said the big man, echoed by the two now coming in his wake. “ ’Lest we hev to whup your fat ass, too. Thet lil gal I useta fuck down in D.C., she tol’ me all bout these fuckin’ baby-burners and all. And I ain’t gone have none the fuckers drinkin’ in any bar I drinks in, hear?

“You know how poorly I was for a long time, how plumb bad I felt when the fuckin’ jarheads wouldn’t take a big whole man like me, but took that gawdam little skinny pissant of a fuckin’ half-breed injun, there? The fuckers, they said I was soniethin’ like moshunly unstable or suthin’. But I’m fuckin’ glad them bastids didn’t take me, now, ’r the fuckin’ army neither, too, ’cause then they’d be calling me a fuckin’ baby-burner, too.”

The bartender headed purposefully toward the far end of the bar, one hand in a pocket that jingled with change. But one of the two following the instigator turned, anticipating, and ripped the wire of the coin phone’s handset loose from the box. Grinning at the thus-stymied bartender, he headed back toward the helpless victim awaiting them.

Standing, Milo stepped into the path of the trio of toughs. “If you’re so anxious to use those knuckles, you overgrown ape, why not try them on a man closer to your size, a man who isn’t crippled and can fight you back? Or do you lack the guts? No wonder the army and the marines wouldn’t accept you, you oversized, gutless cretin,” he remarked in a conversational tone, smiling the while.

“You git the hell out’n my way, mister,” ordered Bubba, his face reddening with anger. “I’ll stomp you soon’s I’se done with this fuckin’ baby-burner. I’ll stomp your ass good, too.”

“Just what is your moronic definition of ‘baby-burner,’ you pig?” demanded Milo. still smiling and seemingly friendly, “Or have you ever troubled your pea-brain enough to define it?”

The big man stopped then, still red-faced and with clenched, cocked fists, but now with his forehead wrinkling up. “Wal, it’s like thet gal I useta fuck down ta D.C. useta say, anybody as was in the in … naw, unjust war over to Vietnam was bound to be one them damn baby-burners, what burnt up lil babies alive jest for fun.”

“And you never once wondered at whether or not this nameless woman was telling the truth or even was of sound mind? Consider, any woman who would willingly have sex with such a thing as you would have to be a mental basket case, as emotionally unstable as the Marine Corps and U.S. Army found you to be, you hulking lunatic,” said Milo, ignoring what sounded like a low moan from the fat, trembling bartender.