William Boyd - On the Yankee Station - Stories

She made no move to resist him. He gazed into her eyes.

“Whassa fuckin’ matter with you? Damn you,” he implored slurringly, “whyncha like the others? No-good chicken-shit …” His voice tailed off into a wet, whispering pant. He looked at her and saw why she wasn’t like the others. Beneath the stretched oblique lids her brown eyes stared out defiantly in candid, unalloyed hate.

Lydecker stepped back, suddenly dismayed and shocked. “Ach, no-good fuckin’ …” he grunted to himself and staggered off down the passage. The girl stood there, a grubby snowdrift of soiled sheets around her ankles, and watched him go.

During his last day of leave Lydecker took three cheery whores to bed. They giggled when he stared into their eyes.

“You like G.I.?” he would ask uncertainly.

“Sure, you number one,” they would smile. “U.S. number one.”

So, no hooker fell in love with her John, Lydecker reasoned, but where did that little bit of skinny ass get the right to condemn him like that, to look at him in that way? It troubled and nagged at him, her contempt. It marred his swaggering progress through downtown Saigon; it sapped his confidence and aloof reserve as he pushed his way through the pimps and beggars; it made his hurried sex with the other prostitutes more grimy and unsatisfactory. Nobody, he declared, knew more about hate than he did; surely no one had hated so intensely; but this chick … He was prepared, even willing, to accept the scorn and spite of the peasant for the armed invader, but the look in that girl’s eyes had seemed to mark him out personally for her wrath.

So on the last afternoon of his last day, Lydecker sat in the bar and studied her, his mind a jostling crowd of vague tensions, obscure guilts and unresolved lusts. He was due to pick up a helicopter in a few hours that would ferry him back to the fleet on the Yankee Station. He felt disturbed, hung over, sullen. Saigon had proved no release, no real solace. He felt immensely fatigued at the thought of returning to the catapult maintenance crew.

The bar was quiet in the afternoon’s torpor. The whores lounged in groups around the wall; some ARVN soldiers played cards in a corner. Lydecker stared at the girl as she swept the floor. Her hair was tied up with a scrap of pink ribbon; her chemise shone crisply white. Once her gaze passed over him as he sat there but there was no flicker of recognition, no revulsion or even acknowledgment in her motionless face.

As the time drew nearer for his departure, Lydecker was seized with a restless panic at the thought of leaving with so much uncertain and unfinished. He felt the sweat pool against his body, and his uniform chafed. He drank beer after beer in an attempt to keep cool.

With an hour to go, he beckoned one of the whores over. She had become something of a favorite with him and she now slid easily onto his knee. Her smile was wide and at once she started to whisper endearments and run her sharp fingers through his hair. Lydecker shrugged her hands away. For some reason the artifice and dishonesty repulsed him. He pointed to the thin girl.

“What about her?” he demanded hoarsely. “How much?”

The whore looked archly offended, hurt. “She no good. Not for G.I. She number ten, Johnny, she quick-time girl. No ficky-fick.” She made a contemptuous jerking with her hand.

With a sudden movement Lydecker brutally tipped her from his lap and strode across the room toward the girl. He dropped a handful of notes on the bar in front of the startled patron and, seizing the girl’s hand, dragged her out to the cabins at the back.

He pushed her into the first room. Solid slabs of sunlight beaming through the shutters sectioned the floor and the grubby coverlet on the bed. It was stiflingly hot. With a finger Lydecker sluiced perspiration from his forehead and upper lip. He stuffed the rest of his notes into the girl’s unresponsive hand.

“Okay,” he croaked. “Christ damn you. Let’s really give you something to get riled over. Take ’em off.” He pulled off his own clothes in a hasty flurry of movement, leaving only his shorts. The rough concrete of the floor cooled the soles of his feet. Sweat dampened the sparse black hairs on his pale chest. There was the distant sound of a Honda revving.

Very slowly the girl pocketed the money and tugged her hair free from the ribbon. She slipped the sandals from her feet and gently unwound the cloth from around her waist. The swish of material sent dust motes spiraling among the sun bars.

Without removing her chemise she went and lay on the bed. Lydecker stood, his chest heaving, his erection straining against his cotton undershorts.

“I said take it all off.” He spoke quietly, a tremble in his voice.

The girl did nothing, her hands clenched by her slim brown thighs.

“All of it, baby. That means the fuckin’ shirt.” Lydecker awkwardly slipped down his shorts and moved over to stand by the bed. The girl didn’t look at him.

“I’m waiting,” Lydecker said harshly.

In response the girl raised the hem of her chemise to her waist and spread her legs. Lydecker gulped. A blob of sweat fell from the tip of his nose.

Suddenly he grabbed the girl’s hand and jerked her roughly to her feet.

“Take it off!” he shouted. “I fuckin’ paid you.”

“No,” the girl said evenly. “No good.”

Lydecker seized her and crushed his mouth on hers, clashing their teeth together. Then Lydecker drew back. He had seen her eyes. On fire with disgust. Ashamed and angry, he wrenched at the chemise. It tore slightly at the shoulder. At the sound of the ripping cotton the girl’s eyes registered alarm.

“No, Johnny,” she said as though only half-remembering the unfamiliar whore’s argot. “No good.” She made vague passing movements with her hands in front of her face and soft explosion noises in the back of her throat. “Number ten. No lie G.I. Not good for you, Johnny.”

What the fuck was she talking about? Lydecker wondered in desperation, as her thin hands still swooped to and fro.

“Strip, damn you. Off. All of it,” he gasped.

She saw she could do nothing more. His purple swollen sex stood out from his belly like a clenched fist salute, an absurd symbol of his domination. Crossing her arms in front of her, she swiftly pulled off the chemise.

Lydecker looked at the firm, pubescent girl’s body. “That’s more like it, baby,” he said, trying to sound kind. “I ain’t gonna hurt you.” His gaze cautiously returned once again to her eyes, hoping to find some more amicable response. “What’s all the trouble been about, eh? C’mon, honey.” But then he was perturbed to see a look of almost contemptuous triumph cross her face. She turned abruptly to reveal her back. And as she turned, Lydecker’s beer-numbed mind grasped feebly at the reasons for her evasiveness. “It’s all right, baby,” he said reflexively, but it was too late by then.

When he saw her back, Lydecker’s brain screamed in silent horror. His hands rose involuntarily to his mouth. The girl looked at him over her shoulder.

“Nay-pom,” she said quietly in explanation. “Nay-pom, G.I.”

Lydecker wrenched his bulging eyes away. Her back was a broad stripe, a swath of purpled shiny skin where static waves of silvery scar tissue and blistered burn weals tossed in a horrifying flesh-sea.

Lydecker emptied his stomach into his cupped hands, and his vomit splashed over his naked body.

On the Sea King taking him back to the Chester B. , Lydecker sat slumped in white-faced, silent depression. The throb of the rotor’s beat sounded remorselessly in his head. He considered his hatred and the girl’s. Now he knew why he had been so fascinated by her. They were the same. Siblings. He looked into her eyes to find himself staring back. They were both burning up inside with their hate and it was wrong. Their hate had no consequences outside of themselves. It made them sick, ate them up. It accrued only inside of them, like a miser’s hoard, poisoning everything. Their bodies couldn’t nourish such a parasite for long. Lydecker saw that. He didn’t want to end up like that girl. Infernal decades of grief and agony beamed out from those eyes. Perhaps what he needed was to cast it out into the world and let it flourish there. Like Pfitz did.