After that, what was there to do but drink more? The boys found more wine and then a bottle of some kind of spirit. Ray drank and shouted until he was sick, leaning his forearms against a wall as he retched again and again, exhausting heaves that lifted one foot off the ground, a burning rope slowly hauled out of his guts and leaving him clean and empty, his face wet with saliva and tears.
7
Ray sat staring at the table top, sipping coffee with sugar, remembering snatches of the ghost train ride of the night before. He didn’t know what to make of it all. It was just more, more stuff, more of all of this. He’d fucked a girl; that was a fact. That had happened. Now he knew that at least he wouldn’t die a virgin.
Mail arrived. For Ray there was the moral prod of a parcel from home. Inside was a letter, a bit of an envelope with a Cuban stamp on it and a movie fan magazine called Screenland. The letter was really a short note written by his father entirely in capital letters. It didn’t have much to say. YOUR MA SHE’S WORRIED SICK AND MISERABLE EVERY NIGHT I TELL HER HER SONS A HERO SHE SHOULD BE PROUD. There was news about a dying uncle Luigi (still alive) and he explained about getting the stamp from a neighbour with a cousin in Cuba. Ray’s father was under the impression that Ray collected stamps. This wasn’t true. He had collected them, half-heartedly, for about six months when it seemed that everybody was. Ray’s father must have noticed at the time and this was now a thing he remembered about his son who was away fighting in the war. Ray looked closely at the stamp, its image formed from delicate lines of ink finer than hairs. It showed a woman in flowing clothes holding a baby aloft in front of a double cross. ‘Republica de Cuba’ was printed across the bottom. Beneath the stamp was the carefully torn square of envelope. His father’s fingers had done that. The stamp had travelled the unimaginable distance from home. Ray felt the reality of that suddenly. Somehow, it was like the moment of seeing the prostitute inside her eyes looking out at him. He blushed, heat curdling in his face, and picked up the magazine.
Keep ’Em Smiling! Bob Hope Tells How. Coyne read it aloud over his shoulder and commented, ‘Looks like Claire Trevor’s got some better ideas.’ The actress was pictured on the cover with her neat small breasts snugly defined by a winter jersey. Standing by a white fence with blue sky behind her, she smiled encouragingly at the reader. ‘And would you look at that,’ Coyne went on. ‘Gene Tierney’s Honeymoon Home! Scoop photos! Ain’t that a thrill. I didn’t know you were into these sissy mags, Marfione.’
‘I don’t read ’em.’
‘Evidence is stacking up the other way.’
‘I don’t. My folks know I like movies is all.’
‘Movies and sweet, sweet American titties.’
Later, George saw Ray with the magazine and said, ‘Planning your future.’
‘What?’
‘The movies. Last night we were talking and you were talking about movies. You had a whole theory going about how movies should look more like photos in newspapers. And that thing about the air. Remember?’
‘Drunk is what I was.’
‘Made sense to me. What else are you gonna do when you get back?’
‘Come on.’
‘I’m serious.’
Ray didn’t know what to say. Those words and ideas coming out of another person, coming out of George, made them seem real, seem possible. Ray’s scenarios, the boxer and the lovers unfolded afresh in his imagination, full of light and life.
8
Ray looked out through the back of the truck at the cold white rain, the road shining into mud and the snarling face of the truck behind. They were in foothills on an uncomfortable twisting drive. Either side there was forest, dark and inward, loud under the rain. Actually, through the gasoline and wet uniforms the world smelled good. The main thing was not to jump out of the truck, not to try and escape into the woods. Ray concentrated on not moving and allowing himself to be safely carried to his death. Thoughts kept coming to him, convulsions of his mind that showed bodies, explosions, Wosniak and Floyd ripped and dead, their eyes empty.
They shouldn’t have had that time off. It made it so much harder to go back to running and killing, to a world of possible annihilation from three hundred and sixty degrees at any split second in time. Strangely, one of the hardest things was pulling the trigger, to open fire. Ray had only ever had to do it at a distance, his bullets flicking forwards into so much empty space it seemed they could only land harmlessly. Not like Randall and Carlson who had fired point blank through hair, skin, bone and blood, men swaying and falling, no longer men. ‘Point Blank Range’ was maybe a good name for a movie. Ray would hesitate at such a moment and maybe that is what would kill him, soon, up there in the mountains. He smiled to himself. Going up into the mountains to die.
That night, before the dawn attack, under a tarp drumming with the rain, George spoke seriously to Ray. They were standing together. Ray could tell from the way they were breathing and not saying anything that they were both thinking about the fighting to come and how things had been in the desert. He could tell because there wasn’t much else they could be thinking about. When he said slowly to himself, ‘Yep, yep,’ George answered, ‘Oh, yes, indeed.’
Ray went on. ‘Hell of a …’
‘Sure was.’
‘I’m pleased that part’s over.’
‘Oh, it’s over. Came and went.’
‘Came and fucking went. Boom.’
‘I’ve been thinking, though.’
‘Not sure you ought to be doing that,’ Ray said.
‘Things got awful clear for a while out there. Couldn’t help it, I suppose. I’m going to tell you, Ray.’
‘What?’
George pressed his palm against his forehead then looked at it. ‘It’s about the fighting.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m thinking if it’s a straight out question of you against another man.’
‘Yes?’
‘Then you shouldn’t do it. You should let yourself be killed. I mean me. I don’t want to kill the other guy.’
‘Holy crap, George. Don’t fucking say that. In a fucking war?’
‘You can shoot, I’m not saying that, only above them or to the side. Take them prisoner. But I don’t want to shoot the man. It’s not right. Like I said, it came clear.’
‘George, you son of a bitch, don’t say this. What do you think that does to your chances?’
‘Really? Ray, statistically what do you think it does to your chances, killing or not killing? Do you think it makes a blind bit of difference? And anyway, chances, fuck ’em. You can’t steer by chances.’
‘George, come on,’ Ray pleaded. ‘I think you should change your mind. We’ll be out there in a couple hours.’
‘Change it. Just throw a switch and change it. I can’t.’
‘Goddammit George, I don’t want you …’
‘I know, I know. But what are we gonna do?’
9
The gull lifted its wings, leaned into the wind and floated up from the harbour wall.
Will watched it adjust its angles and move, sliding away, rising up and backwards on a gust. With its pale, shallow eyes, its long yellow bill switching from side to side, it scanned the scene. Its breast feathers flickered as it hung there, thinking, then it planed down, raced low over the water, circled around and settled back on the wall, folding its grey wings away. It tilted its head back and called at nothing.