"Maybe you shouldn't drink so much," I said.
"Maybe I should drink more," he answered. "Particularly with lovely, sweet little girls. 'Joe Morning,' she said when I left, 'How come you GIs all-a-time drunk?' I think I love her."
"Yes, Pfc Morning, we've noted your interest in the younger members of opposite sex," I said, mocking Dottlinger's dry whine. In my own voice, I asked, "How many packages of gum did she sell you?" Dottie's kid was one of the better con artists among the horde of gum and flower girls with bare feet and scraggly hair who were constantly in bars, day in day out, constant reminders of poverty and want, a constant whine at your sleeve, "You buy gum, joe?"
Morning was silent for a second, then said, "You don't believe in shit do you? Well, fuck you, golden-hearted cynic."
"Don't sweat me, jack; I won't be sitting on the board. They can't make me tell about that twelve-year-old girl in Chew Chi's hotel – at least she said she was twelve, didn't she?" The night I had shared that black, rat-ridden room with the old woman, my first night in Town, digging, as it were, into the past, Morning had asked Dominic for something young and tender, and received, he discovered the next morning, a twelve-year-old girl in a red crepe-paper party dress with clumsy white valentine hearts stitched around the skirt.
"I was drunk."
"You're drunk now. Don't snarl at me just because Dottlinger is after your ass. You made your own bed," I said. (God, he could make me angry, and I, him.) "You didn't tell me how much gum she stuck you with."
A sleepy grin wavered about his eyes as he emptied the pockets of the baggy light-blue pants he wore to Town. "I ain't counted 'em, yet." He smiled. Twenty-six shiny green packages of Doublemint. "It was worth it; I love her. I think I love her."
"I think you ought to go to bed."
"No, sir. Benzedrine and sex don't mix."
"To sleep."
"I can't sleep; I'm too tired." He paused, fingered his ribbon. "I'm too short to sleep; might miss my plane."
"Don't sweat that. You can beat this thing," I said. "Easy."
"Shit, man, you ought to read Slutfinger's instructions to the board. 'Subjects may show superficial intelligence and verbal ability, and attempt to make philosophical justification for immorality, but the board must keep the good of the service in mind rather than some vague good-of-man ideal that allows certain types of immorality, usually sexual, as long as the higher principles are followed. The board must remember that immorality is immorality.' God, he loved reading it to me. I think he wrote it for me. Jesus, he's crazy. It's not me he's putting out of the army 'for the good of the service,' it's the whole twentieth century. Morning, Joseph J., unsuitable, sir, for duty in the service of God and Country because of a lewd and lascivious character established by the prima-facie evidence of three contractions of the vile disease of gonorrhea, an article fifteen company punishment for being caught off-limits in one of the most notorious dens of prostitution in the whole Philippines, if not the whole world, naked and, we can assume, having had subjected himself to carnal intercourse with these low women, and keeping constant company with a reputed pander and black-marketeer and an admitted homosexual, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera."
"Did he say all that."
"No, but he will. He wants to, but he can't spell all the words." He stood up, walked to the screen, leaving a trail of dirty footprints across the canvas mat. "He's gonna have my ass, like you said, one way or the other. Who gives a shit, really? They can't hurt me."
"You can beat it. I'll testify, Tetrick will, maybe even Capt. Harry if we push him."
"I'm not going to try. I'm tired, man. I told you that. I want to get out of this fucking, stupid, dirty country and the dumb goddamned army. I'm going back to the States." He leaned his forehead against the screen. "Home for a while, then maybe back to Phoenix, maybe back to school…"
"Not this way, for Christ's sake." I picked up a dumbbell and began doing one-handed curls. "We can beat it."
"… maybe Mississippi. I've got a friend with SNCC there." He mumbled on, but I wasn't listening.
"Ellen's in Mississippi," I said absently. Mississippi looked as if it were going to once again take its toll on me. First Ellen and Ron Fowlers, now Joe Morning, I thought. Then an odd picture intruded, Joe and Ellen in bed. Somehow I knew if they met, and in Mississippi they must, she would fuck him with all that wonderful, religious, rebellious ardor she once spread for me. After long nights of talk, she had to have me, as if the words caressed her, a long flickering tongue of talk, and have me she did, a mount and a sudden charge. Even now the stale cigarette breath ripened by cheap beer, the dry lips, the sticky tongue, the hot, hot breath of a woman talking close and intense in your face… I was suddenly sorry I hadn't gone with her to Mississippi that summer; but no – she had said, love me, love my cause – no, I said. But that pale hot face, pale mouth cuddling like a sleepy kitten against mine… "Huh?" I said as Morning poked me. My arm still curled absent mindedly, the muscles tight and hard and bitter now. "What?"
"Go take a shower," he muttered, turning back to the night. "You stink."
As I showered, he came down and we talked, but he seemed resigned, and refused to fight Dottlinger. (I recognize it now: The victim by falling may rise; one vanquished without a fight isn't vanquished at all.) Afterwards we strolled to the Flight Line for a sandwich. Lightning skittered across the clouded face of Mount Arayat, silent flashes, then distant afterthoughts of quiet thunder. The walks and the streets and the grass gleamed wetly in the mist, the mist like tiny balls of light suspended in the cool night, the heart and coming of the rainy season delicately foretold. In spite of the threatening rain, the hesitant thunder, we walked quite slowly, speaking of home, of girls once touched, once known, of friends half-forgotten, drunken rides and football games. Once again Morning spoke of the girl from Madison. His face, drawn in fatigue, echoed the longing in his voice:
"God, man, I miss her sometimes. Nights like this, sometimes in my rack just at dawn when the light is soft and the air… so much I don't think I can stand it." He shook his head. "But, Christ, I'd probably just treat her the same way again. Shit. You know what I did once. I was drunk again, always, and we'd fought, always, but had half made-up and were making love on her couch, covered with tears and recriminations, but then she whispered something desperate about love – we'd prom… I'd made her promise never to say "love" – then all the anger came back, and I jerked out, then sat on the side of the couch, jacking off. She started crying again, moaning, and asking me "why? why?" in this goddamned sad little whimper. So I told her why, good old Joe Morning told her why: 'Less complicated than fucking you, bitch.' Isn't that lovely. You know, I wonder why she took so long to leave me." He looked up, waiting, it seemed, for me to speak. When I didn't, he seemed embarrassed by the confidence, and quickly walked on.
"Some of my best friends are bastards," I said as I caught up to him.
He smiled, then poked me on the arm, and said, "Yeah. Mine, too."
After eating sawdust hamburgers, we went back to the barracks and drank a fifth of Dewar's he had been saving for the market, sipping straight from the bottle, then dashing to the water fountain for a chaser, but by the time a sullen grey daylight floated like fog out of the dawn, we were chasing Scotch with Scotch, dreams with whiskey, laughter with tears.
At noon Novotny found Morning sleeping under my table, his head on the Lattimore translation of the Iliad that Ellen had given me for Christmas the third year we were married. It might have been a more suitable pillow for me, but I was on guard, crouched in the corner, asleep but not dreaming, the empty bottle cradled in my arms, a dead soldier.