She squinted: “Whore’s Boy.”
Me as Santa Claus, with a sack. Late Christmas afternoon we ran out of ice. I drove downtown in Shuck’s Toyota with four uproarious soldiers and some squealing girls. I was still wearing my red suit, perspiring in my cotton beard, as we went from shop to shop saying, “Ice for Santy!” On the way back, in traffic, we sang Christmas carols.
Gopi with an armful of mail. He said, “Nice post for you.” Postcards of Saigon I taped to my office wall. Messages: “It’s pretty rough here all around—” “When I get back to the world—” “Tell Florence my folks don’t care, and I’ll be down in September—” “We could use a guy like you, Jack, for a few laughs. This is a really shitty platoon—” “The VC were shelling us for two days but we couldn’t even see them—” “Richards got it in Danang, but better not tell his girl—” “What’s the name of that meat on sticks Mr. Loy made—?” “I had a real neat time at Paradise Gardens — How’s Jenny?” “It’s fucken gastly or however you write it — I know my spelling is beyond the pail—”
A Malay orderly in a white smock tipping a sheeted stretcher into the back of an ambulance.
“Fella in de barfroom no come out.”
I knocked. No answer. We got a crowbar and prized the lock apart. The feller had hanged himself on the shower spout with a cord from the Venetian blind. A whiskey bottle, half-full, stood on the floor. He was nineteen years old, not a wrinkle on his face.
“It was bound to happen,” said Shuck. What certainty! “But if it happens again we’ll have to close this joint.”
No one would use the room after that, and later the door grew dusty. All the girls played that room number in the National Lottery.
Flood. When a strong rain coincided with high tide the canal swelled and Bukit Timah Road flooded; muddy water lapped against the verandah. The photograph was of three girls wading to Paradise Gardens with their shoes in one hand and an umbrella in the other, and the fellers whistling and cheering in the driveway.
The theaterette. Audie Murphy in a cowboy movie. “He’s a game little guy,” I said. “He won the Medal of Honor.” A feller to my right: “Fuck that.”
A group photograph: Roger Lefever, second from the left, top row.
“What’s the big idea, Roger?”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“She came down crying and said you slugged her.”
“It wasn’t hard. Anyway, she pissed me off.”
“I got no time for bullies. I think I could bust you in the mouth for that, Roger. And I’ve got a good mind to write to your C.O. You wouldn’t do that back home, would you?”
“How do you know?”
I slapped his face.
“Smarten up. You’re on my shit list until you apologize.”
A group photograph: Jerry Waters, on the end of the middle row, scowling.
“You’re lucky, Jack. You were fighting the Nazis.”
“I didn’t see any Nazis in Oklahoma.”
“You know what I mean. It helps if the enemy’s a bastard. But sometimes we’re shooting the bull at night, tired as shit, and a guy comes out and says, ‘If I was a Vietnamese I’d support the VC,’ and someone else says, ‘So would I,’ and I say, ‘That’s for sure.’ It’s unbelievable.”
The curio shop. After a while the carvings changed. Once there had been ivory oxen and elephants, teakwood deer, jade eggs, and lacquer jewelry boxes. Then we got bad replicas, and finally obscene ones — squatting girls, heavy wooden nudes, carvings of eight-inch fists with a raised middle finger, hands making the cornuto.
The Black Table.
“I’d like to help you, George, but it’s against the rules to have segregated facilities.”
“We don’t want no segregated facilities as such, but what we want’s a table to sit at so we don’t have to look at no Charlies. And the brothers, they asked me to spearhead this here thing.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said.
“I ain’t asking you if you think it’s a good idea. I’m telling you to get us a table or we’ll waste this house.”
“You only have three more days here. Is it too much to ask you to simmer down and make friends?”
“We got all the friends we want. There’s more brothers coming next week, so if you say no you’ll have to negotiate the demand with a real bad ass, Baraka Johnson.”
“Haraka-haraka, haina baraka,” I said. “Swahili. My ship used to stop in Mombasa. Nataka Tusker beer kubwa sana na beridi sana.”
“Cut the jive, we want a table.”
“What if everybody wanted a table?”
“That’s the nitty-gritty, man. Every mother got a table except us. You think them Charlies over in the corner of the big bar want us to sit with them? You ever see any brothers sitting along the wall?”
“Maybe you don’t want to.”
“Maybe we don’t, and maybe them Charlies and peckerwoods don’t want us to. Ever think of that?”
“What you’re saying is there are already white tables, so why not have a table for the colored fellers?”
“What colored fellers?”
“Years ago—”
“We are black brothers and we wants a black table!”
“The point is I didn’t know there were white tables. I would have put my foot down.”
“Go ahead, mother, put your foot down, you think I care? I’m just saying we want a table—now—and if we don’t get it we’ll waste you. Dig?”
It was true. Yusof said so: we had a wall of “white” tables. I gave in. Sung’s photograph showed smiling and frowning faces, all black, and the girls — the only ones they would touch — long-haired Tamils, because they were black, too.
“Give them what they want,” said Shuck.
“Up to a point,” I said, “that’s my philosophy.”
Me, in my flowered shirt, having a beer with three fellers. A middle-aged sentence recurred in my talk. “That was a lot of money in those days—”
A group photograph: Bert Hodder, fifth from the end, middle row. He got tanked up one night and stood on his chair and sang,
“East Toledo High School,
The best high school in the world!
We love East Toledo,
Our colors are blue and gold—”
Neighborhood kids from the block of shophouses around the corner. They were posed with their arms around each other. They lingered by the gate, calling out “Hey Joe!” Ganapaty chased them with an iron pipe. The fellers chatted with them and gave them errands to run. They came to my office door.
“Ten cents, mister.” This from one in a clean white shirt.
“Buzz off, kid, can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Five cents.”
“Hop it!”
Edwin Shuck. His blue short-sleeved shirt, freckled arms, and narrow necktie; clip-on sunglasses, sweat socks, and loafers.
“Got a minute?” he asked.
I was with Karim. “The cooler’s on the fritz. I’ll be with you in a little while.”