Pete Hamill - Loving Women

“You don’t know his music.” McDaid paused. “Why not?”

“I’m not from the South, sir.”

“And where, pray tell, are you from ?”

Cannon interrupted. “He’s from New York.”

“I see,” McDaid said. He looked at the stenciled name on my shirt pocket, then at me. The tan was perfect. I could smell aftershave lotion. “Are you a New York wise guy, Mister Devlin?”

“I’m a sailor in the United States Navy,” I said.

“You didn’t answer my question, boy.”

“No, sir. I’m not a wise guy.”

“Good,” McDaid said. “You’d better not be.”

Then he turned to the others.

“Where’s Donnie Ray Bradford?”

“Out at the hangars, Chief,” Jones said.

“You tell him to call me as soon as he gets back.”

“Yes, Chief,” Jones said.

McDaid separated himself from us and then coiled tightly and addressed us and the customers.

“Now all you sorry-ass son-of-bitches get back to work,” he said. “This is the United States Navy, not an amusement park. If the President of the United States dies, you still must perform your duties. You certainly don’t stop your work because some banjo player dies. I hope you understand me clearly.”

With that he strode ahead through the swinging door and out into the morning light, with Cannon behind him. Everybody at the counter breathed hard in disgust and started mumbling.

“Fuck you, pal,” I said.

“Forget it,” Becket said. “Dat’s da way he is.”

“Hey, the man’s right,” Jones said casually. “We don’t get paid to hang around and listen to the radio.”

Becket gave him a look. “You know, sometimes, Jonesie, you are a real sorry son of a bitch.”

He walked away and Jones shrugged. Away off, I could hear Bobby Bolden playing his horn.

“Cold, Cold Heart.”

A slow blues.

Just before lunch that day, three more storekeepers returned from the Mainside run. One was a big, blond, muscle-bound guy named Larry Parsons, who always seemed to be two beats behind the rest of the world. He came in and shouted: “Did you hear about Hank Williams?” And didn’t understand why everyone laughed. The second was Charlie Dunbar. He was a small, precise man whose clothes were nattily tailored and perfectly faded to make him look more of an Old Salt. He had a quick smile, white teeth, a tanned face. He was the first man I’d ever met who’d actually gone to college and the only Republican. We didn’t see much of either breed in Brooklyn. Later, he told me that he only had one ambition: to become president of the United States.

The third man was Miles Rayfield, and he would become my closest friend, although I didn’t know it then. His face was blocky, with a long upper lip, thick, black-rimmed eyeglasses, deep lines around his mouth. His head was too large for his body and his fingers looked like tubes. He groaned, sweated, cursed as Becket and I helped him, Dunbar and Parsons move some heavy crates into the back room. We all stopped to looked down at the unconscious Boswell.

“Do you think we should take his pulse?” Miles said.

“Hell, no,” Becket said. “He might be alive.”

When we were finished, they scattered to the head, the gedunk, the barracks and I went to my desk. After a while, Miles came over. He told me his name and said he was twenty-three years old and from Marietta, Georgia and he didn’t know why he joined the Navy, so I shouldn’t ask.

“That’s the essential Navy intro, isn’t it?” he said. “I also have to say that I truly don’t give a flying fiddler’s fabulous fuck about Hank Williams either.” He smiled. “Welcome to Anus Mundi , the asshole of the earth.”

I laughed and told him my name and where I was from, saying New York instead of Brooklyn. His desk was directly in front of mine and he moved papers around in a busy way and opened his window to let in the breeze.

“They’re going absolutely completely apeshit over at Mainside about this Hank Williams,” he said. “Mencken is right. The South is the Sahara of the Bozart. You can see what passes for art down here: the cheapest, most maudlin, most sickeningly disgusting sentimental crap.”

I wasn’t sure what some of the words meant. I certainly didn’t know who Mencken was or even how to spell a Bozart. But I got the drift.

“You got in last night?” he said.

“Yesterday afternoon. I was on the midnight to four last night. Post three.”

“The dumpster !” Miles laughed. “So you must have met that great American intellectual, Wendell the Red Cannon. He sends everyone out to that dumpster the first night. I think he must have a former wife in there, chopped into bits.”

“What’s his problem, anyway?” I said.

“His problem is that he’s a reptile. A cretin. A disgusting red-necked toad. With the brains of an oyster. He’s a pig sticker and a turd, an arrogant simple-minded ignorant little lowlife despicable son of a bitch bastard.” He ran out of breath and paused. “In other words, he’s a Navy lifer.”

He sat down at his desk and gazed out the window. His large hands seemed to be operating on their own, lifting pencils, playing with paper clips.

“How do I handle him?” I said.

“Just tell yourself he’s got bubonic plague and act accordingly.” He rolled a sheet of blank blue paper into his Royal typewriter. He typed one word. Then turned to me. “But you know something? If Wendell Cannon ever did get bubonic plague, he’d probably thrive .” I rolled a sheet of paper into my Royal. Miles said: “Maybe we could turn him in to the McCarthy committee. If anybody on this base is converting people to the Communist cause, it’s Red Cannon.”

I’d never heard anyone talk like this, with all the sentences perfectly formed, and words rolling around in a rich crazy obscene way. Miles had a southern accent, too, a softness in the vowels that made the consonants sound even harder when he started firing his sentences like bullets. He looked at me through the thick glasses. Deadpan all the way.

“You think I’m kidding, don’t you, Devlin?” he said. “Well, I’m not. I’m just stating a fact that’s as obvious as a tit on a cow.”

Harrelson switched on the radio again. Hank Williams began to sing. Miles turned to the music and then to me.

“Let’s get some lunch,” he said. “If that’s what you can call that vile slop at the mess hall …”

As we got up to leave, I glanced at the sheet of paper in his typewriter. The single word was Help .

“Let’s scrape this disgusting crap into a garbage can and go to the gedunk for some tea,” Miles said. He looked down at the gnawed remains of his hamburger steak and mashed potatoes. I had eaten most of mine. “Why not?” I said.

On the way out, I saw Bobby Bolden. He was just ahead of us, scraping his tray into a can and shoving it at the faceless sets of arms and hands on the other side of the slot. When we went outside, I called his name and he turned. His hands were jammed in his pockets. Miles kept walking. Bolden looked at me warily.

“Hey, I loved the way you played ‘Cold, Cold Heart,’ ” I said. “This morning …”

“Do I know you?” he said.

“No, I just got here.” I told him my name and offered my hand, but he ignored it. “I heard you playing all day yesterday. ‘Jumping with Symphony Sid,’ that was great. I used to listen to Sid every night back home in New York. WEVD. Is that an alto or tenor you’re playing?”

“Tenor.”

“I thought so. You dig Charlie Parker?”

“He’s an alto player.”

“I know, but—”