“Never use a glass in Mexico — and open ’em yourself.”
They tapped bottles, drank icy beer. The Red Arrow was crowded with cowboys in high-heeled boots and off-shift roughnecks with permanently crude-blackened fingernails. The rest of the men were of assorted ages but all wore parrot-bright sport shirts hanging outside khaki pants, black shoes, and hair cut so short above their ears that their heads looked white.
Some of the girls were dusky-skinned, others obviously Anglo, some almost ugly, some pretty, two almost beautiful. All of them, whatever their configuration or race, were blond and wore low-cut blouses above tight skirts.
Dunc fired down his beer, he’d been really thirsty, nodded at the bartender to set up two more, unopened, on the bar, then jerked his head at the crew-cut men scattered through the crowd.
“Soldiers from Fort Bliss?”
“Yeah. If they came over in uniform the MPs’d get ’em.”
Falkoner bit the caps off these beers.
On the jukebox, chapel bells were ringing and Little Jimmy Brown was getting married. Falkoner was getting divorced after two months. A couple went upstairs. The chunky Mexican girl’s skirt was so short Dunc could see the curve of her buttocks. He felt a stirring in his groin and looked quickly away.
A buddy who’d joined the navy after high school had written him at Notre Dame, “Jesus, you should of seen the bitch I nailed in a cathouse in Yokohama! Jesus, could she fuck!”
That’s when Dunc, jealous but superior, had sworn he’d never pay for it. Nor had he. In Fairbanks the old-fashioned parlor houses had been the only decent places to drink. Red plush on the walls, a bar, a couple of couches, rooms upstairs, girls coming through not wearing very much — but even there, he hadn’t paid for it. He’d just gone without, as it were.
His second bottle was empty, he was into his third. Hell, who was he kidding? He’d been a virgin until he was a junior in college, had screwed only four girls, once each, none in bed.
The alcohol was hitting his empty stomach. He slid off his stool, leaving the change from his final ten for another round.
“I gotta tap a kidney.”
“Yeah, you don’t buy beer — you just rent it.”
Dunc wove his way into a tin-sided box with a wet concrete floor and a trough along one wall. The reek of urine was sharp as smelling salts. Scrawled above the trough was WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING UP HERE FOR? ARE YOU ASHAMED OF IT? Underneath, a different hand had scrawled, NO, IT SCARES ME.
In the middle of the room was a wooden cubicle without any door; inside was a brown-stained ceramic toilet. As he buttoned up, one of the bar girls went in and hiked up her skirt and stood bent-kneed over the toilet pissing cowily, like the whore in Joyce’s Ulysses.
Back in the bar there was a fresh beer beside his half-finished one, and his change was gone. An Anglo woman with slightly buck teeth but big breasts barely concealed by a loose white blouse had her hand up the inside of Falkoner’s thigh to his crotch. She was making her eyes round as if in amazement.
“Olé, mucho homhre, no?"
“No tengo the lingo, girlie,” said Falkoner. “And I shouldn’t have to with somebody as blond as you.”
“Blond all the way down, sugar.” Her fingers were busy. Falkoner’s pants were beginning to bulge.
“How much?” he demanded.
“Twenty dollars.”
“What?"
“Ten dollars.”
“I’ll give you two.”
“I’ll take it.”
Falkoner slid off his stool, leaving beer, money, cigarettes, and lighter behind. “Keep my place, Dunc.”
Chapter Seven
Dunc tried to spread himself across two stools, keeping his elbows wide to protect Falkoner’s place. Six drunken soldiers wearing their off-duty uniforms of khakis and bright shirts bellied up to the bar. One, with a sweaty red face and master sergeant written all over him, started to slide his fat butt onto Falkoner’s stool despite the beer, cigarettes, money and lighter.
“Hey, sorry, pal,” said Dunc, “that’s my buddy’s place.”
The soldier wore his khaki pants down under his paunch, and a black short-sleeved sport shirt with yellow flowers on it. A pack of Camels was partially rolled up in the left sleeve.
“He can tell me this is his stool when he gets back.”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Well, Jesus, that scares the livin’ shit outta me.”
He poured beer into his face; sweat gleamed on his jowls, he had to be over forty, had to have his twenty in. What was he doing trying to pick a fight in a Mexican whorehouse? What was Dunc doing letting him pick a fight in a Mexican whorehouse?
“I’ve got no fight with you, Sarge,” he said reasonably.
“Gutless fuck, ain’t you?” He turned to his pals. “We got us a PFC here, men.”
“What’s a PFC, Sarge?”
“A poor fucking civilian.”
The sarge finished Falkoner’s beer, shook a cigarette out of Falkoner’s pack, lit it with Falkoner’s lighter, and stuck that in his shirt pocket along with Falkoner’s cigarettes. He then put Falkoner’s folding money into his pants pocket.
“Now your buddy ain’t sitting here no more.”
“Well, shit,” said Dunc.
He slid his wristwatch into his pocket. His heart was pounding wildly. From his years of football he knew he could take a lot of punishment and could dish it out, but knew he was just barely a good enough brawler to still have all his teeth.
They started for the alley to the incongruous “Song from Moulin Rouge” on the jukebox. The squat fat soldier walked with a rolling gait; a beer keg would be easier to knock over.
“Age before beauty,” he said with a sly and nasty grin.
So he could jump Dunc from behind. Dunc said nothing. He went through the back door fast, grabbing the two-by-four he’d seen there, spun around swinging for the fence. Tom Nieblas had saved their butts with that trick one night up in Alaska.
The beer keg sergeant was already rushing him from behind, clasped hands swinging to club the back of Dunc’s neck, so the makeshift bat hit him in the face with a meaty sound, ripping open his forehead and spreading his nose from cheek to cheek.
Kathwuck!
He flew backward, smashed into the door frame, spun around to crash face-first into the garbage pails. They went over, showering him with filth, landing on top of him. A three-quarter eggshell rolled unevenly across the alley floor.
Dunc dropped the two-by-four and fell to his knees beside the downed warrior. Sluggish blood seeped out from under the sarge’s face. Dunc felt suddenly very sober indeed.
Dunc gingerly rolled him over, expecting at the very least to sec an eyeball hanging out on his cheek. No. The flattened nose was pouring blood and he made a long harsh sound. A snore. Knocked down by the two-by-four, passed out from the beer.
Dunc dipped trembling fingers into the soldier’s shirt pocket, found Falkoner’s cigarettes and lighter, then dug his hand into the trouser pocket for the sheaf of folded bills Falkoner had left on the bar.
Feeling sick to his stomach, he went back into the Red Arrow to face the sarge’s buddies. But Falkoner was back on his stool and arguing pro football with them.
“Hell, Joe Perry is the greatest running back ever played the game. Three thousand-yard seasons and he isn’t done yet. And with Hurricane Hugh in the lineup...”
One of the soldiers saw Dunc, blurted out in surprise, “What the fuck?”