Pete Hamill - Loving Women

“Let’s walk back,” I said.

She looked at me, puzzled. “How come?”

“I know those guys up ahead. I don’t really want to have to talk to them.”

“Okay,” she said, “we’ll go to the shrimp place.”

I ate one morning in March, Sal burst through the double doors into the Supply Shack, leaned forward on the counter and sobbed: “ Joe’s dead! ” His laid his forehead flat on the counter, pounded with balled fists, said “First Hank , and now Joe ! Long live the proletarian revolution!”, then whirled and hurried out. That’s how we learned that Stalin had died.

Harrelson got out the radio and Jonesie said, Good, I hope the son of a bitch suffered , and Becket said, Gee, dat makes Choichill de only one left outta da Big Tree . The news bulletins were somber, but not sad. The words were all virtually the same: Stalin, the ruler of the Soviet Union, ferocious dictator, killer of millions, once an ally and then our most implacable enemy, was dead. To which Donnie Ray shrugged and said This is all fine, but we still gotta swab down at four . After a while, he took a phone call at his desk, nodding, grave. He talked a long time. A Marine pilot at the counter said Maybe now we can get the goddamned thing in Korea settled .

“This is sho nuff big shit,” Harrelson said. “The whole damn shootin match could fall apart.”

“Or start,” Jonesie said. “Goddamn Commie bastards.”

Then we saw Captain Pritchett hurrying around outside in a jeep, with a Marine driving and Chief McDaid and Red Cannon in the back. Donnie Ray finally put down the telephone.

“That’s it, boys,” he said gravely. “We’re on full alert. The base is being secured right this minute . All liberty and leave is canceled.”

And all I could think, while a near-panic swirled around me and the telephones started ringing crazily, was: How am I going to tell Eden? I’m sure now that men thought the same things at Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima and the Battle of Hastings. She was supposed to pick me up at the locker club at six and we were going to the Warrington Drive-In to see Moulin Rouge . Miles had described the movie as pure hokum, full of lies and mistakes and stupidities about this French painter Toulouse-Lautrec, but even so, it was still the best Hollywood movie ever made about an artist. I wanted to see it badly, wondering if I was anything like Toulouse-Lautrec; Eden said she wanted to check out this José Ferrer, find out if he was anything like me. But now all leaves were canceled and we’d have to wait. I was eighteen and I didn’t want to wait. Besides, there was no telephone at the trailer and no way to call her at Sears. I hoped someone in the store’s appliance department would turn on a radio and she’d discover that all the bases in Pensacola were secured, so we could hold off the expected assault of the vengeful Russians. She would know that I was joining all the other brave American boys who would protect the country from a dead man.

“Are they kidding?” I said to Donnie Ray.

“Fraid not. Our troops are on alert all over the world.”

“But why? The guy’s dead .”

“Maybe he was murdered, sailor. Maybe there are some guys worse than him, want to blow up the damn world . Maybe they’ll blame us. Who knows?”

“You mean there’s a bunch of guys in the Kremlin saying, ‘Okay, now’s our chance. We can get Ellyson Field .’ ”

Donnie Ray laughed. “Could be.”

All through the day we saw jets screaming high across the sky. We heard that there were plans to move the American government to Cuba if the Russians invaded. We heard that SAC bombers were in the air over Europe so they couldn’t be destroyed on the ground. All of them were carrying hydrogen bombs. Everybody talked about the death of Stalin. Uncle Joe, some of them called him. Worse than Hitler, a few said. A monster. Becket said Stalin was a Catlick who started out to be a priest and then saw the light and became a bankrobber and a Bolshevik and someone else said he was born in Georgia, and Harrelson said, Yeah, near Macon. We drank a lot of coffee. Customers arrived in a stream because the sky was dense with helicopters, and that meant that parts were breaking, failing, wearing out. Becket said he was glad that Miles Rayfield was off at Mainside with Dunbar because if he was at Ellyson when the Russian bombs started dropping that would really piss him off.

“He’d prob’ly throw his skirt in the air,” Harrelson said.

And I thought of Miles Rayfield and Freddie Harada walking alone on the beach beside Perdido Bay. And that made me think of Eden Santana.

At lunchtime, Bumper was serving at the messhall and Harrelson was behind me on line. Bumper looked at me, his eyes twinkling in his round black face, laid some extra French fries on my tray, then reached under the counter and found me a piece of coconut pie. Harrelson stared at Bumper.

“How bout some of that pie?”

“Last piece,” Bumper said, deadpan.

“You sure of that?”

Bumper held up an empty pie plate.

We moved on.

“Gahdam uppity niggers,” Harrelson said.

“Is there anybody you like , Harrelson?” I said.

“Yeah. Americans .”

We sat together at one of the tables. Boswell came over and joined us. He didn’t have any pie either.

“Captain’s runnin around like a duck without a dick,” he said.

“Ducks have dicks?” I said.

“Sure,” Boswell said, “but they ain’t what they’re quacked up to be !” He slammed the table and Harrelson laughed, shaking his head, and then Boswell said: “Where’d you get that fuckin pie?”

“Why you even ask, Bos?” Harrelson said. “The boy’s a damn Yankee niggerlover and the niggers love him back.”

“Ah, fuck you,” I said.

“It’s the truth, ain’t it? You upstairs in the slave quarters every other day.”

“Maybe he likes the smell up there,” Boswell said.

“Or the spearchuckin music.”

“You guys just take your asshole pills, or what?” I said.

“Maybe he goes to town with em to get some a that dark meat,” Harrelson said. I thought of Winnie standing at the jukebox, one foot curled around the other.

“Nah, he got his own stuff,” Boswell said. “Everybody knows that.”

“She ain’t stuff,” I said.

“Shew,” Boswell said, “you touchy today, ain’t you, boy?”

“Just lay off,” I said. I was poking at the pie, then slid the plate toward Boswell.

“Want some?” I said.

Boswell grinned. “Nah. I don’t even like coconut pie.”

Harrelson reached over with a fork and clipped off a piece of the pie. “I do.”

“Taste like creosote to me,” Boswell said.

“If it ain’t got grits with it, Bos don’t eat it,” Harrelson said to me. “What we gone do after the alert’s over, Bos?”

“Jackson, Mississippi,” Boswell said.

Harrelson turned to me. “He bin tryin to get me to go to Jackson Mi’sippi since last September.”

“Do the ducks have dicks there?” I said.

“Five fuckin hours in the car,” Harrelson said.

“We gotta go there,” Boswell said.

“Why Jackson, Mississippi ?” I said.

Boswell’s eyes brightened. “ ’Cause it’s the insurance capital of the whole damn South !”

The words hung there for a long moment.

“So?” I said.

“ Insurance companies, boy,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“What does that mean?” Boswell said.

“I don’t have a fucking clue.”