Edward Lee - Ghouls

Midday now, though it could’ve been rush hour. South Gay Street didn’t proceed—it crawled. Half the stoplights were malfunctioning, others seemed to remain red forever. Constantly he was forced to stop again and wait to shift lanes for road repairs. MEN WORKING, the fluorescent orange signs warned. Pile drivers and barricades boxed him in. Grime-coated Blaw Knox road pavers sat aside, unused, like squashed tanks. He looked dismayed at a city ad, SUPPORT BALTIMORE’S ADOPT A POTHOLE PROGRAM, and then heard his own teeth clack from the jolt of still another pothole. What killed him was that, in spite of so many work crews, no one seemed to be working. Men just stood there in overalls and tar boots, leaning on shovels, smoking and chewing, pissing away time. It seemed criminal that millions could be unemployed while these lazy, sluffing shammers earned top dollar for doing nothing. MEN NOT WORKING, the signs should say, Sanders thought. Even better, MEN JERKING OFF.

He threaded a maze of side roads and at last turned right onto East Baltimore Street. Here he was dumbstruck; the street was a vanishing point of adult bookstores and bottomless bars, colored lights in every window flashing insanely like Christmas in Babylon. PEEPS 25¢, one sign buzzed. HOLMES, SCAT, FISTING, THE HOT WET BEST OF SHAUNA GRANT. Fisting? Sanders thought. Thin teenage prostitutes strode back and forth, waxen-fleshed. One smiled as if to beckon, a mouth full of cracked teeth. At the corner a potbellied door hustler barked, “Tits, clits, and ice-cold Schlitz!”

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” Sanders recited, amused. But he’d seen much worse. “What a garbage heap.”

Baltimore Police Headquarters occupied the end of the block, the entire end. It shadowed the whole street, a huge Bauhaus square of polished granite and gun-slit windows. This was the ultimate irony, that the city’s nerve center for law enforcement existed on the same block as the porno-tenderloin drag. Sanders stretched the irony further, by parking his stolen car in the police visitors’ lot.

In the lobby a female admin cop smiled up from the other side of a long, curved counter. The grip of her sidearm had a notch.

“I’m looking for a guy named Jack Wilson.” He positioned himself so to hide his bad side. “He still works here, doesn’t he?”

“Sergeant Wilson runs the property office. He’s on duty till three o’clock.”

“I’d like to see him, if it’s all right.”

“Is this police business?”

“Well, no. We’re friends from the Army. I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

She picked up a phone. “Name?”

“John Sanders.”

Vivid, brightly colored paintings caught his eye; they were mural-sized, huge. She hung up the phone. Had she spoken to Wilson directly? He produced two articles of identification, then she signed him in and pinned a visitor’s pass to his collar. Her smile turned crooked when she saw the left side of his face.

He descended to the basement in an Otis elevator with a security camera in it. Caged light bulbs led him through several angles of corridors. Block letters over an arrow on the wall read, PROPERTY DISPOSAL. When he turned, he saw a figure in a doorway at the end of the corridor. The figure stood at parade rest.

It was a chilling, emotional moment.

“Somebody tell me I’m dreaming,” echoed a wiry, nasal voice. “I must be seein’ things.”

They shook hands in the darkness. Sanders said, “Good to see you, Jack. It’s been too long.”

“Yeah, it has. I thought maybe you’d bitten it. Come on in, check out my new PDY.”

Sanders saw that the years had not touched his friend. Wilson’s compactness still held the same scary qualities; Sanders had never known the man to be afraid, even the day he’d saved his life. Wilson’s hair was shiny dark blond and still service-short. His mustache, as it had always been, was much darker than his hair.

“Some things never change,” Sanders said. He seated himself on two banded cardboard cartons. “When are you going to shave off that soldier-of-fortune mustache?”

“When my harelip goes away. At least I can grow one. Haw, haw. Say, you still off the joy juice?”

“Not a drop since TuDo Street. Throwing up gets old fast. But I’ll rip the shit out of a case of soda water.”

Wilson sat behind a surprisingly clear desk. “Coffee’s my new deal. You know, I just read somewhere that the Vietnamese used formaldehyde to keep their beer from rotting. Fifty p a glass. We drank enough of that shit to fill a fuel gore.”

“At least we won’t have to be embalmed when we die.”

“You know it… So how long’s it been?”

Sanders looked to the ceiling lights. “Shit, I don’t know. ’75? ’76?”

“That’s it!” Wilson exclaimed and slapped the desk. “’76. Beautiful beautiful Bamberg in the snow. That was my last FTX.”

“Yeah, I remember now. The Canadians beat the shit out of everybody, 1st AD included. I couldn’t hit an elephant’s ass with a bass fiddle that day. Some war games they turned out to be.”

“Haw haw,” Wilson erupted. “And those crazy German pilots in their F-105’s; they’d fly so low they’d knock the balls off our antennas. You got it, some things never change . . . After that, I went to Aberdeen Proving Grounds, and you went to…bumfuck Saudi Arabia?”

“That’s right. And bumfuck’s the word.”

“You’re not still in the pickle, are you?”

“With a haircut like this, are you kidding? I was medically retired, a couple shy of twenty.”

“Medical, huh? What for?”

“Bad back,” Sanders lied. Only because the truth wouldn’t work.

“Yeah, me, I put in my twenty and blew. Battalion CO at Aberdeen offered me E-9 to re-up for four more, but I said fuck no. When the Army went from starch to permanent press, I figured it wasn’t worth being in anymore. My record and MOS got me this job. Between my retired pay and the bread they give me here, I’m sitting on a fair pile. Got myself a house in Glen Burnie, too. Paid for.”

“Sounds like you’re doing all right,” Sanders said. Finally, “Aren’t you going to ask what happened to my face?”

Wilson squinted at him, then shrugged. “Hell, you and me always were a pair of ugly sons of bitches. Let me guess. You blew a cherry-juice line in an M60? Or did that C-4 get the best of you?”

Again he had to lie. It bothered him to lie to a friend. He couldn’t very well tell Wilson about the ghala. “Neither,” he said. “Though I did know a guy who got his lower lip sheared off on a 105 breechblock. No, I got mugged by some ’Rabs in Riyadh. When they took my wallet, I told them Saudi Arabians were proof that humans fuck camels. Guess the fellas couldn’t take a joke, ’cause then they gave me a little quick cosmetic surgery. With switchblades.”

“Yeah? But if I know this John Sanders, a couple of ’em went home minus cock and balls.”

Wilson poured two cups of coffee from a thermos that had Smurfs on it. “Police coffee’s the worst,” he said. “You’ll love it. Now if I remember right, your hometown is somewhere in Florida. I can’t believe you came all the way to Maryland to trade old times with me.”

Sanders looked down at open hands. “You’re right, Jack… I need a favor.”

“Name it. Money?”

“No, no. I’ve got five years of fifty-percent base pay in the bank, and I’m drawing more from VA than I would from straight retirement.” He paused. His face felt tight. “I need a weapon.”

Wilson understood instantly. Weapon here didn’t mean pistol, gun, cannon, or knife. It was the universal code to anyone who’d been in the Army. This is your weapon, the senior drill instructors would say on day one. This is an M16A1. You will know it, you will love it. You will be able to take it apart and put it back together, blind. It will be part of you, as vital to you as your brain. It is not a rifle. It is not a gun. It is your weapon.