David Eddings - High Hunt

Maybe I was human after all.

THEY weren’t ready to start processing us yet, so they filled in the rest of the day with the usual Mickey-Mouse crap that the Army always comes up with to occupy a man’s spare time. At four-thirty, after frequent warnings that we were still in the Army and subject to court-martial, they gave us passes and told us to keep our noses clean. They really didn’t sound too hopeful about it.

I walked on past the mob-scene in the parking lot—parents, wives, girlfriends, and the like, crying and hugging and shaking hands and backslapping—and headed toward the bus stop. I’d had enough of all that stuff.

“Hey, Alders,” someone yelled. “You want a lift into town?” It was Benson naturally. He’d been embarrassingly grateful when I’d given him back the watch, and I guess he wanted to do something for me. His folks were with him, a tall, sunburned man and a little woman in a flowered dress who was hanging onto Benson’s arm like grim death. I could see that they weren’t really wild about having a stranger along on their reunion.

“No thanks,” I said, waving him off. “See you tomorrow.” I hurried on so he wouldn’t have time to insist. Benson was a nice enough kid, but he could be an awful pain in the ass sometimes.

The bus crawled slowly toward Tacoma, through a sea of traffic. By the time I got downtown, I’d worked up a real thirst. I hit one of the Pacific Avenue bars and poured down three beers, one after another. After German beer, the stuff still tasted just a wee bit like stud horsepiss with the foam blown off even with the acclimating I’d done on the train. I sat in the bar for about an hour until the place started to fill up. They kept turning the jukebox up until it got to the pain level. That’s when I left.

The sun was just going down when I came back out on the street. The sides of all the buildings were washed with a coppery kind of light, and everybody’s face was bright red in the reflected glow.

I loitered on down the sidewalk for a while, trying to think of something to do and watching the assorted GI’s, Airmen, and swab jockeys drifting up and down the Avenue in twos and threes. They seemed to be trying very hard to convince each other that they were having a good time. I walked slowly up one side of the street, stopping to look in the pawnshop windows with their clutter of overpriced junk and ignoring repeated invitations of sweaty little men to “come on in and look around, Soljer.”

I stuck my nose into a couple of the penny arcades. I watched a pinball addict carry on his misdirected love affair with a seductively blinking nickle-grabber. I even poked a few dimes into a peep-show machine and watched without much interest while a rather unpretty girl on scratchy film took off her clothes.

Up the street a couple girls from one of the local colleges were handing out “literature.” They both had straight hair and baggy-looking clothes, and it appeared that they were doing their level best to look as ugly as possible, even though they were both not really that bad. I knew the type. Most of the GI’s were ignoring them, and the two kids looked a little desperate.

“Here, soldier,” the short one said, mistaking my look of sympathy for interest. She thrust a leaflet into my hand. I glanced at it. It informed me that I was engaged in an immoral war and that decent people looked upon me as a swaggering bully with bloody hands. Further, it told me that if I wanted to desert, there were people who were willing to help me get out of the country.

“Interesting,” I said, handing it back to her.

“What’s the matter?” she sneered. “Afraid an MP might catch you with it?”

“Not particularly,” I said.

“Forget him Clydine,” the other one said. That stopped me.

“Is that really your name?” I asked the little one.

“So what?”

“I’ve just never met anybody named Clydine before.”

“Is anything wrong with it?” she demanded. She was very short, and she glared up at me belligerently. “I’m not here for a pickup, fella.”

“Neither am I, girlie,” I told her. I dislike being called “fella.” I always have.

“Then you approve of what the government’s doing in Vietnam?” She got right to the point, old Clydine. No sidetracks for her.

“They didn’t ask me.”

“Why don’t you desert then?”

Her chum pitched in, too. “Don’t you want to get out of the country?”

“I’ve just been out of the country,” I objected.

“We’re just wasting our time on this one, Joan,” Clydine said. “He isn’t even politically aware.”

“It’s been real,” I told them. “I’ll always remember you both fondly.”

They turned their backs on me and went on handing out pamphlets.

Farther up the street another young lady stopped me, but she wasn’t offering politics. She was surprisingly direct about what she was offering.

Next a dirty-looking little guy wanted to give me a “real artistic” tattoo. I turned him down, too.

Farther along, a GI with wasted-looking eyeballs tried to sell me a lid of grass.

I went into another bar—a fairly quiet one—and mulled it around over a beer. I decided that I must have had the look of somebody who wanted something. I couldn’t really make up my mind why.

I went back on down the street. It was a sad, grubby street with sad, grubby people on it, all hysterically afraid that some GI with money on him might get past them.

That thought stopped me. The four hundred I’d won was in my blouse pocket, and I sure didn’t want to get rolled. It was close enough after payday to make a lone GI a pretty good target, so I decided that I’d better get off Pacific Avenue.

But what the hell does a guy do with himself on his first night back in the States? I ticked off the possibilities. I could get drunk, get laid, get rolled, or go to a movie. None of those sounded very interesting. I could walk around, but my feet hurt. I could pick a fight with somebody and get thrown in jail—that one didn’t sound like much fun at all. Maybe I could get a hamburger-to-go and jump off a bridge.

Most of the guys I’d come back with were hip-deep in family by now, but I hadn’t even bothered to let my Old Lady know I was coming back. The less I saw of her, the better we’d both feel. That left Jack. I finally got around to him. Probably it was inevitable. I suppose it had been in the back of my mind all along.

I knew that Jack was probably still in Tacoma someplace. He always came back here. It was his home base. He and I hadn’t been particularly close since we’d been kids, and I’d only seen him about three times since the Old Man died. But this was family night, and he was it. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have driven a mile out of my way to see him.

“Piss on it,” I said and went into a drugstore to use the phone.

“Hello?” His voice sounded the same as I remembered.

“Jack? This is Dan.”

“Dan? Dan who?”

Now there’s a great start for you. Gives you a real warm glow right in the gut. I almost hung up.

“Your brother. Remember?” I said dryly.

“Dan? Really? I thought you were in the Army—in England or someplace.”

“Germany,” I said. “I just got back today.”

“You stationed out here at the Fort now?”

“Yeah, I’m at the separation center.”

“You finishing up already? Oh, that’s right, you were only in for two years, weren’t you?”

“Yeah, only two,” I said.

“It’s my brother,” he said to someone, “the one that’s been in the Army. How the hell should I know?—Dan, where are you? Out at the Fort?”

“No, I’m downtown.”

“Pitchin’ yourself a liberty, huh?”