Pete Hamill - Loving Women

But after we’d gone to Roberta’s a few more times, all those questions disappeared. It began to seem natural for the three of us to slide together into that bed. Roberta was dumb, but I liked her; she was a woman born to be lavishly fucked until she got fat and swamped with kids and could then cast sex into the past. There was no way I could fall in love with her, and I was sure that Eden didn’t love her either. For me, there wasn’t any mystery; she was what she appeared to be, all good-natured flesh and a sad sweet smile.

But I loved seeing Eden’s dark skin stretched against Roberta’s shimmering whiteness and the paler areas of both bodies that had been covered with bathing suits. There were 150 million people in the United States and I was one of the few people who had seen those parts of their bodies. I never asked Eden or Roberta why they allowed me to do the things I did with them. We never used condoms, and sometimes I came in each of them, each holding my ass tight when I started to pull out, silently insisting that I should finish what I had started. I knew there were secret things they did to avoid getting pregnant but I didn’t ask what they were. They just went separately to the bathroom and I would hear water running for a while and then we’d be dozing together in the cool Gulf dark until a hand touched a thigh and we’d begin again. I knew just one thing for sure: they felt safe with me and I felt safe with them.

They were not, however, mere interchangeable bodies that gave and took heart-stopping pleasure. I enjoyed Roberta’s plump coarse whiteness, and the open way she let me use it. I got even hotter when she urged me on in that little girl’s voice. But in my eighteen-year-old arrogance I was sure there was nothing to know about Roberta beyond that bed, the hot shower, the light-blue veins on her breasts. There were a million things yet to learn about Eden Santana. And the challenge of that mystery, that place in her without maps, that undiscovered country, was what love was about. I was sure of that. Loving her was the name I gave to the process of unraveling her secrets. And as we moved around from one evening place to another, with feverish stops at Roberta’s, I began to tell Eden that I loved her.

How can you say you love me, child? she’d say. You don’t even know me.

Maybe that’s the point, I’d answer. Maybe I love you cause I don’t know you. Maybe won’t ever know all of you.

She’d shake her head and say, That’s damfool talk.

No, it’s not , I said one night. If I don’t know you— all of you — maybe I can spend the rest of my life finding out about you.

She looked at me for a long time. Then she lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, and said (not to me, but to the room and the night and the past):

One thing I sure done learned about life. Don’t plan on anything.

Late one afternoon I decided to walk all the way from the locker club to the trailer. The day was ripe with early summer.

I was on the bridge over the River Styx when I saw the pickup truck: pale blue, with a toolbox across the back behind the cab, Alabama plates. It was parked in front of a bait shop that was built on a hummock of scrubby land overlooking the river. Behind the bait shop a path led through swamp grass down to a boat dock. Three men were standing beside the pickup, drinking beer. One of them looked familiar. I hadn’t seen him since the great brawl outside the Baptist church during my first week in Pensacola.

It was the one called Buster.

For a moment, I was afraid. That January night had been quick and violent and for Buster and his friends, humiliating. But it was months ago (I told myself), hundreds of days behind both of us. I was living a different life now, centered on Eden. Buster couldn’t possibly remember me. But then, tensing, nervous, I wondered if I remembered him , why wouldn’t he remember me ?

I paused, looked casually down at the river without seeing it, my back to the pickup and the bait shop and Buster. I glanced up and saw a hawk wheeling in the sky. And when I turned, Buster was coming across the road.

One of the others was reaching into the cab of the truck.

I froze.

“Hey, you!” Buster shouted. “ Sailor boy!”

I started to run.

Back down the road to Ellyson Field.

“We gone git you Yankee ass!”

I was running flat out now along the shoulder of the empty road. I turned and saw the pickup backing away from the bait shop and Buster climbing on the running board like a guy in a gangster movie. I passed a small launderette, its doors already locked, and a closed shop advertising mufflers. I stared around for a weapon: a board, a brick, any goddamned thing to use against Buster and his boys.

And then I went down, falling forward, scraping my left hand as I tried to break the fall.

Brakes screeched. I rolled over and looked up, expecting Buster and a beating.

Buddy Bolden was there in the Merc. He pushed open one of the back doors.

“Get in!” he shouted. “Come on , man …”

I dove through the open door onto the floor. Bolden pushed me down and pulled the door closed.

“ Stay down!”

I could hear him breathing in short pulls, a truck roaring by.

“They just went by,” he said. “Don’t know if they seen you. They’re up higher in a truck so maybe they — Shit! They hangin’ a U. Fuck ! Hold on!”

He floored the accelerator, turned, then turned again, then went speeding down a smooth hardtop road, ripped suddenly to the right, passed under trees I could see from the floor, whipped around again, the road going from smooth to rough, stones and pebbles hammering at the bottom of the car.

“The gun’s under the front seat. You can reach it from back there …”

The.45, cold and wrapped in oilcloth, was heavy in my hand.

“I don’t see the mothafuckas any more but—”

The gun felt cool and solid. I might have to use it . That came to me then: I might have to shoot these fucking guys . I might have to blow this Buster’s head off.

Jesus Christ.

Then I was hurled against the opposite door and twisted around, and then we were moving very fast.

Yeah, I could kill one of the bastards.

And hey (I thought but didn’t say) if it’s Buster or me, it’s gonna be Buster.

I got a woman to live for .

Then we were in a damp cool place, the sky blocked by trees, moving slowly. Bolden stopped the car. I listened in silence for the pickup truck, and heard only insects chirring and the sound of startled birds. Bolden turned off the engine. I sat up.

“Gimme that thing,” he said. “I think we lost them.”

I handed him the gun. We were on the far side of the lake in a dense grove of magnolias. The smell was thick and sweet, almost sickening. Bolden was very still, listening to the evening sounds like a hunter, trying to sort out one from a million others.

“We’re okay now,” he said softly.

“Thanks, man. I mean it.”

“Now you know why I have a car.”

“Down here, we need tanks.”

“Who were those mothafuckas?”

I gave him a short version of the dance back in January and what Sal and Max and I did to Buster and his friends and why. When I finished, he grunted.

“It’s the dancin that did it,” Bolden said. “When white folks try to dance , they’s always trouble.”

He got out of the car, still holding the gun, and I looked out across the lake to where he and Catty had their little house and Eden and I had our trailer.