Pete Hamill - Loving Women

“Twenty years from now, we’ll all be old men and there’ll be houses and supermarkets on the lake and a bunch of assholes flyin around in speedboats,” Max said. “And we’ll remember this night.”

“They’ll pave the road,” Sal said.

“They’ll get rid of the niggers.” Bobby Bolden laughed.

“They ain’t gonna wait twenty years for that .”

“They’ll have to bring guns,” Bobby Bolden said.

“They will,” Max said.

“They got them,” Sal said.

“So do we,” Bobby Bolden murmured. “So do we.”

Back inside, we drank some more and took turns dancing with Catty and played more records. Catty wanted to know why I was so quiet and I said it was because I was so full of good food and Sal said, no, it wasn’t that, it was because I was in love, and then he shifted to a Stan Laurel voice and said, “You can tell by the silly sloppy grin on his face.” And I laughed and wondered if he could really tell from my face. I poured another drink.

Then there was a sharp single knock on the door.

We all stopped talking and Bobby Bolden put his hand up to quiet us, reached under the bed and came up with a big.45 caliber automatic. His face completely changed. The looseness turned hard. The green eyes were wary. He tiptoed to the door, motioning all of us to get down low and away from the windows. Sal picked up a carving knife.

Then Bobby positioned himself to the side of the door, the gun ready. I put myself in front of Catty, crouched down near the sink. Max picked up a chair. My heart was pounding.

Bobby Bolden unlocked the lock, then flicked off the lights, squatted and jerked open the door.

There was nobody there.

We hurried through the woods and saw nobody and checked the car engine for bombs and went down to the edge of the lake to see if there were any boats speeding away in the moonlight. Whoever had knocked on the door was gone. But when it was time for Bobby to go back with us to the base, he wouldn’t let Catty stay alone at the house. “ Some mothafucka was out there,” he said. “Maybe a kid. Maybe someone playin trickster. But maybe somebody else, too.” So he locked up the house and we all crowded into the Mercury. He’d drop us off at the locker club, take Catty on to Mainside, where she could stay in the bachelor women’s quarters. “Just can’t take no chances.”

For a moment, I thought maybe Bolden was putting us on, that he’d arranged for someone to knock on the door, just to let us know that he had the gun and was ready to use it. And to show off for his white woman. But that didn’t make any sense; wouldn’t he rather spend the night with Catty Wolverton? The whole thing felt unreal. What was real was the gun. Bolden slipped it under the front seat. I asked him what he’d do if the cops stopped us and found the gun and he said he’d tell them it was Sal’s. “They believe anything about a wop,” he said. Sal said, “Except that he had a gun in a car with a spade and didn’t use it on him.” Catty giggled. We pulled out onto the gravel road. Max said, “Hey, we never had dessert.”

Bobby drove quickly past the silver trailer, throwing up gravel. And when I looked, the world tilted. Eden’s car was gone.

Bolden dropped us in front of Billy’s and drove on to Mainside. I suggested a nightcap. Sal said, “Why not?”

There were about a dozen men in the place being tended by a middle-aged blond barmaid. Seated on a stool in his dress whites was Red Cannon. McDaid was gone. Cannon’s head turned when we came in, but his body didn’t move. He stared at us, but we ignored him, laid our dollars on the bar and ordered beers.

“Jesus Christ, that was spooky,” Sal said, turning his back to Red Cannon. “Someone knockin’ on the door like that.”

“The guy’s nuts,” Max said.

“She’s worse,” I said. “The blacks could do her in, the rednecks could—”

“What you say, boy?”

I turned and looked at Red Cannon. He was very drunk, but holding himself still.

“You call me a redneck?” he said in a surly way.

“I didn’t say anything about you,” I said.

“I heard you say redneck, boy.”

“He wasn’t talking about you,” Sal said, “or to you. So cool it, Red.”

“Don’t tell me to cool it, sailor,” Cannon said, sliding off the stool. The barmaid moved down to him. She didn’t say anything, just touched his hand and stared. He turned to her. And never said another word.

“She must be a fuckin hypnotist,” Max murmured.

“I hope she makes him forget our names,” Sal said.

“He never knew them,” I said. “All he knows is our numbers.”

“That’s all he needs.”

Then Sal started doing his version of Senator Claghorn. If Cannon was going to listen to our conversations, Sal was going to give him something to hear. “Well, FRANKLY, I think the future of NATO is a question of STRATEGIC priorities. The Mediterranean must be CONVERTED into an AMERICAN LAKE. We can’t allow the damn RUSSIANS to THREATEN OUR NATIONAL SECURITY!”

“No doubt about it,” Max said.

“Make no MISTAKE! They are out for WORLD DOMINATION! They plan to CONQUER AMERICA and CLOSE THE BAPTIST CHURCHES! They will come in and make MISCEGE-NATION THE LAW OF THE LAND! Turn us into a NATION OF HALF-BREEDS! They will let the COLORED RACES go to school! There’ll be NIGGERS IN THE ORCHESTRA OF THE REX THEATER! Mark my words!”

Max rolled his eyes at me. Red Cannon stared at the bottles behind the bar, then stood up, holding himself very erect, and with a kind of wordless dignity walked straight to the door and went out. We all got very drunk. At closing time we slipped through the back fence onto the base. We found Maher on duty at the dumpster. He was drunk, too.

Oh, child, she said, what’d you let get in your head? I took the damned bike to work. When I come home last night, I needed to pick up some groceries; couldn’t do that riding the bike, could I? So I took the car. Went all the way back down the road to Sham’s and got some fresh milk and some bread for breakfast. Simple as that. You can’t let that crazy stuff get in your head. You won’t get me close to you that way, child. Just drive me off.

I’m sorry, I said.

Don’t you be saying you’re sorry , hear me? Just don’t let some devil eat your brain. You’re here now , with me , on a Thursday night in 1953. This ain’t some damn movie. This is us . This is here . We got this . You and me. I never thought I’d have this and here it is. And we don’t need to have evil stuff eating up brains. Not your brains. Not mine.

You’re right.

So come over here.

I went where there were always new things to learn. Maybe the only things that mattered. We lay side by side in the cool evening, and she kissed my neck and then sucked on it and pinched my skin and then pressed gently on my head, moving me to her breasts. She pushed them against my cheeks and then I had the wet tip of my tongue against the dry tip of a nipple, the aureole pebbling as I flicked it. But she pressed again, moving me away, and I was at her navel, kissing it, pushing my tongue into it, and her whole body writhed, her breath changing, the inhaling high pitched, the exhaling deeper, the sound beyond her control, and then my head was between her legs. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I thought if I was her what would I want me to do, and I kissed the inside of one thigh and came up to the great black hairiness, breathing on it, afraid, unsure, and then kissed the inside of the other thigh, nibbling at her skin with my teeth, my hands sliding under her bottom and squeezing. I was afraid of doing the wrong thing, of moving to the wrong place out of stupidity, and then she put both hands on my head and guided me to the crevice, and I inhaled the damp female smell, the earth smell, the tidal salt, and I placed my tongue in the center of it, and moved gently and uncertainly along the closed lips, down into the wetness and then lightly dragged my tongue gently upward until everything else opened like a dark flower. She made a deep moaning sound, a sound almost detached from her and yet most deeply from her, a pleasured sound but sad too, as if life itself were leaving for just that moment and I did it again, and felt for the first time in my life that hard hidden slippery little nipple under my tongue and she said there and I flicked it and she said Right there and I flicked it again and then again, and her voice dropped deeper than I’d ever heard it before, it came from some deep underwater canyon, and she said Oh Gawwwwwddddddddd there . Her hands leaving my body now, and gripping the side of the narrow bed, while I eased the flat of my tongue along the tiny tit, very lightly, then suddenly darting it into her as deeply as I could. My tongue become a cock: I glanced up once and saw her kneading her breasts, pulling them up to a point, and then I pressed my mouth on her and sucked the little tit as if it were a tiny cock, sucked her cock the way she’d sucked mine, doing it over and over, until at last a high-pitched plea came from her, all full of fear and resistance, saying do it, stop , saying don’t stop , followed by a trembling lost wordless sound, and I kept doing it in rhythm to her breathing and mine, to her sounds, to her deep flooding need, until she just came apart. Her legs shot out the length of the bed and locked and she grabbed my head with both hands and then pressed her muscled thighs together and started to scream, up and high and down and low, like a flamenco singer, all in one long uncontrolled sound, and she arched up from the bed and then slammed back down hard at the shoulders, doing it again and then more weakly and then one final quivering time. She rolled to one side, then the other, and then took my head and moved me up and kissed my face that was wet from her. Licking me. And crying. Just bawling. She cried as she guided my cock into her soaked center and cried some more as I pounded fiercely into her and cried when I came and cried until she fell asleep with my arms around her.