Dan Wakefield - Going All the Way - A Novel

The Marines had shaved off Wheels’ curly blond hair, and even though he’d been out for almost a year, he still kept it shaved, just as he kept wearing his old Marine fatigues and T-shirts that said, “Camp Lejune,” the way some guys wore their old athletic gear even after they got out of college. There was another guy with Wheels, a guy who Sonny liked a lot, even though he hardly knew him, a guy called Sparky Mackenthorpe. They called him Sparky the way you would call a fat guy “Slim,” because he was the most relaxed, easygoing guy you could ever meet. He never went out for ball, but everyone liked him. He was the sort of guy people asked for advice and went to when they were in trouble. It was soothing just to be around him, his easygoingness calmed other people down. He was always dressed nicely, not sharp or fancy, but casually right, like his personality. He had on some plaid bermudas and loafers and a nice-looking blue T-shirt, one of the kind with an alligator on the tit.

The newcomers gave a big greeting and clapping on the shoulders to Old Man Beemer and then came over to Gunner and Sonny. Gunner gave the quick introduction-reminder he always did—the “You remember Sonny Burns,” said so the person would think he should remember the guy, and they always said, “Yeh, right, sure, man, wha-say.” Wheels and Sparky didn’t have any place lined up to stay, and Gunner told them to come on over to the Sargent with him and Sonny.

The Sargent was an old hotel that used to be hot stuff on the lake a long time ago, but it had gone to seed and the summer before they took all the beds and crap out and it was just standing there, so you could go over with a sleeping bag and pry open one of the windows and have a room at the lake, even though it was an empty dilapidated old room, dusty as hell, decorated with spiderwebs and peeling paint. They said the owners were trying to sell it and in the meantime they evidently didn’t give a damn if people sacked out on the floors. Some of the windows were broken out, by guys who couldn’t pry them up and get in any other way. It wasn’t exactly vandalism, no one threw rocks to break the windows for the hell of it, they just couldn’t get into the room they wanted any other way.

They found an empty room and then Wheels went out to the car and brought in a couple of six-packs and a fifth of Echo Springs bourbon.

“Don’t you wanta go back to Beemers and hit the water?” Gunner asked. “Before the sun goes down.”

“It’ll be there tomorrow,” Wheels said and cracked open a can with a churchkey he had hanging from his belt on a little chain.

“Ole Wheels,” said Sparky with a little chuckle, “he puts first things first.”

Everyone got beers and Wheels opened the Echo Springs and offered it to anyone who wanted to take some jolts from the bottle, but he was the only one who felt like it, at least yet. He would take a little gulp and then chase it with some beer.

“So what’s up with you, Wheels?” Gunner asked. “You been out long?”

“Almost a year. Already lost three jobs.”

“No shit?” said Gunner.

Sparky clapped Wheels on the back, affectionate like, and said, “You’ll be O.K., buddy. You’ll do ’er.”

“Fuckin Sparky.” Wheels grinned. “He believes in any body.”

“What is it?” asked Gunner. “Getting back to civilian life?”

Wheels took a gulp of the bourbon and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Fuckin Marine Corps,” he said. “They ruin ya for anything, except for them . They only teach ya one thing, and then, goddam it, you can’t forget it.”

“What’s that?” Sonny asked.

“ Kill ,” Wheels said.

“Time,” Sparky said. “It takes time, ole buddy.”

“No, man. It’s not like the Army. Or the Air Force, or anything normal. I mean, they don’t just teach you how to do it, they put it in your goddam brain to kill. They put it in there deep, so it’s what you think about doing, and you can’t stop thinking about it. I remember in boot camp at Lejune, some guys couldn’t take it, and the DIs spit on ’em and kicked their ass and told us they were fags and goddam mama’s boy queers. Maybe they were the goddam healthy ones.”

“I’ve heard guys say that,” Gunner said. “About the Marines. I knew some guys.”

“It’s great for combat,” Wheels explained, “’cause they make you good at it. You want to kill and know how to do it good. But what the fuck do you do when you get home? It doesn’t just go out of your head, when you get back home. It’s in there, all the time, man. I wake up with it at night.”

“Jesus,” Gunner said. He reached over and took the Echo Springs bottle and had him a slug.

“Well, now,” Sparky said in his drawl—not the Southern kind but the special Indiana kind, slo-o-o-o-w and nasal twangy—“you can’t just brood on it all the time, you gotta get your mind off it, little by little.”

“Sure, Sparks,” said Wheels, like it wasn’t so easy, like he didn’t believe it would go away.

“Hey, Sparks,” said Gunner real bright, trying to change the subject for Wheels’ sake, “I heard they made you a fly-boy.”

Sparky said, yeh, he had enlisted in the Air Force, a four-year hitch, and he was about to go to some isolated place in Alaska, some base stuck up there in the middle of nowhere.

“Where it is,” Sparky said, “they don’t even have any Es kimos.”

“What’ll you do for snatch?” Wheels asked.

“Penguins, I guess.”

“That’s shitty, putting guys up there like that,” Gunner said.

“Well, they try to make it up to you in advance, before you go. I just got back from my three weeks of it.”

“Of what?” Sonny asked.

“Well, just before they send you up to nowhere to freeze your ass for a year, they send you to what’s supposed to be this special flight training in Florida. You get extra pay for the three weeks, and what it’s really for is so you can have a ball down there, live it up real big, to sort of tide you over.”

Sonny noticed that although Sparky had a good tan, he had the deepest, purplest circles under his eyes he had ever seen.

“Great,” Gunner said. “How was it?”

Sparky made a little chuckle and took the Echo Springs bottle himself and nipped some. “You really wanna know?”

“Sure, man.”

“Well, I tell you. And I’d only tell my friends. I was there for three weeks. I spent seven hundred dollars. And I never got laid.”

Wheels let out a shriek, and Gunner clutched at his head.

“That’s terrible, Sparky, that’s terrible,” Gunner said.

Sparky just grinned philosophically, and he said with resigned acceptance, “Gunner, it’s the American Way.”

Hearing other guys’ troubles made Sonny feel a little bit better, though that made him feel ashamed and guilty, feeling better because other people were in bad shape. He didn’t really wish anything bad on anyone, but it was nice to know he wasn’t the only miserable bastard. Another shitty thing, though, was that he still secretly felt he was the most miserable.

That night everyone went over to Beemers, but the Sargent Hotel group waited till after dinner because the Beemers already had three guys there, one on a spare cot and two sacked out on the porch in a hammock and a wicker couch, and Gunner said he didn’t want to give Old Lady Beemer four more mouths to feed, so they got some ham and cheese and four quarts of milk and a couple loaves of Wonder bread and made sandwiches. They ate in Wheels’ car and then rolled over to the Beemers. Even if you weren’t actually staying there, it was headquarters, and Old Man and Old Lady Beemer didn’t mind at all; in fact, they liked it that way, having a mob of young people coming in and out all the time. Old Lady Beemer had gray hair, but you could tell she’d been a great-looking girl, she had that sweet-pretty kind of face, and damned if her legs weren’t even too bad, except the old veins were beginning to show up on them, violet-colored and crawling.