‘So who’s Johnny?’ Sam began.
‘My kid brother,’ Harper answered. ‘He was born deaf and dumb. Mom and Dad and the rest of us had to learn how to sign so we could talk to him.’
‘The rest of us?’
‘I’m a mid-Western boy. From Illinois. My Dad has a farm a few hours out of Chicago. I’ve got two older sisters, Gloria and June, much older than me. But Mum wanted boys, so poor old Dad had to keep on trying until it happened. I came along twelve years after June, and then Johnny a couple of years later to keep me company. I got to know how to sign so well that in the end Mum and Dad gave up on it and whenever they wanted to talk to him they’d say to me, “Cliff, tell your brother this,” or “Cliff, tell your brother that.” By that stage, however, we were in our teens and he had learnt how to read their lips. But we loved talking together in our own way and it got so bad that it used to annoy the hell out of everyone. “What are you two boys talking about?” Mom would ask. Or June would say, “Are you talking behind my back, Johnny Harper?” I tell you, we had such fun, Johnny and me.’ Harper’s face creased into an expression halfway between happiness and yearning. ‘I miss talking to Johnny. I miss talking to him in our secret language. Sometimes, like back there in the bar, I forget myself and sign as if he’s there. Instead, it was you.’
Harper ran his fingers through his hair. Gleams of gold scattered through the night.
‘I don’t usually shoot my mouth off like this,’ Harper continued. ‘So how about you? How did you learn how to sign?’
‘You know those Mormon elders? One of them, Elder Crowe, coached us in basketball and American gridiron —’
‘You mean you were serious? You’re kidding me!’
‘Kidding you? Man, if you and your helicopter mates want to try to take me, George and Turei out in football you’ll be wasted again — and you’ll be my bitch.’
Cliff Harper spat on his hands. ‘You’re on. But what about the signing?’
‘Well, Elder Crowe was partially deaf and dumb. You know how it is. His words were sometimes kinda thick and knotted, and difficult for the guys in the team to understand. Because I was captain of the team, I learnt to sign and was able to pass on the instructions. Sometimes, just to get Elder Crowe going, I didn’t pass on what he wanted. I remember one game I told the guys what I wanted them to do! Only I made out it had come from him. I sure got it in the neck when we lost.’
Cliff Harper roared with laughter. He leaned back and breathed out.
‘God it’s good to laugh. I mean, really laugh. This war takes it all away and before you know it you’ve forgotten so many things. Like, I’ve suddenly remembered, you know it’ll be the end of Fall right now at Back of the Moon —’
‘Back of the Moon?’
‘The name of the farm,’ Harper answered. ‘The trees that were a blaze of orange and red will have lost their leaves. The cold wind will be coming down slow and easy from the north, just cold enough to snap the steam of your breath as it leaves your mouth. My Dad and Johnny will have taken the cattle to their winter feed in the high country. Soon the snow will come and the blizzards and sleet. We had a grizzly killed some of our cattle last year. I had the sights on it but, wouldn’t you just know it, the rifle froze up on me and jammed. By the time I got the bolt working again that grizzly had gone. I put the dogs on it, but they couldn’t make any headway through the snow. The snow gets to pile up higher than a man. It’ll be up to Johnny to get that grizzly if it comes again. Thank God he missed the draft because of his disability —’ Harper swallowed hard. ‘But there I go again,’ he said ruefully, ‘talking up a storm.’
There was a loud burst of noise from inside the bar, cheers and whistles, and the sound of applause. Harper turned to Sam.
‘Hey! You gotta see this. It’s the floorshow. Madame Godzilla.’
Harper put his right arm around Sam’s shoulders and began to pull him to a window. It happened so easily, this physical pulling in, the weight of Harper’s right arm over Sam’s shoulders, that Sam simply allowed his body to flow into the friendliness of the embrace. When they reached the window, because Sam was shorter, Harper pushed him forward and stood behind him so that Sam could get the best view.
‘Can you see?’
‘Sure.’
The stage was empty, but the pianist was waiting to start up.
‘Why is she called Madame Godzilla?’ Sam asked.
‘You’ll see,’ Harper said.
Inside the bar the patrons were beginning to thump on the tables, setting up a drumming rhythm that reminded Sam of the natives of Skull Island, calling on King Kong to come for the sacrificial maiden. Except that instead of banging three massive strokes on a moon-sized cymbal, somebody held up a little triangle: ting, ting, ting. The deflation of the image made Sam snort with hilarity.
‘Here she comes,’ Harper said.
The bead curtains parted on the stage. Madame Godzilla appeared. She — or was it he — was a big girl. She had poured herself into a black dress way too small and way too high above the knees where a suspicious bunch of coconuts bounced and swung. She was carefully made up and wore an astonishing platinum-blonde wig which obscured one eye. When she smiled several gold teeth flashed inside her betel-stained mouth. She looked vaguely, gruesomely, familiar.
With a kick at the pianist, Madame Godzilla went into her routine.
‘You wanna have luv, soldier boy?’
Bump, grind, swing them pearls, bat those eyelids, Girl, and wink.
‘Introducing the Marilyn Monroe of Vung Tau,’ Cliff said. He was so close, his breath cooled on Sam’s neck.
Madame Godzilla stepped off the stage to mingle with the patrons, and four GIs scrambled to get out of her way. No such luck. She hauled them back with her massive arms, sat one of them on her suspiciously bumpy lap and began to sing:
‘(You lucky son of a beetch!) I wan’ you to luv meee —’
Madame Godzilla was really working her butt, wriggling and rotating and making deep lascivious moans. She dug her fingers, with their three inch nails, into the GI’s crutch — and ouch. Yow. He paled as, to great laughter, she pulled a face and made out that what he had was very difficult to find.
‘I know a trick I do to your stick (if you got one) —
‘I can take you high-ah, fill your desire-ah!’
With a push she sent the GI sprawling and went after bigger fish. But they — bigger or not — weren’t having anything to do with her. Disappointed Madame Godzilla finished her song —
‘I be the best hot love-ah girl in all Vung Tau!’
She fixed the audience with a beady stare. Nobody dared not clap.
Sam turned to Harper.
‘Hey, you were right! I wouldn’t have missed that for the world —’
They were like two boys, hip to hip, hugging each other in a paroxysm of mirth. It was as if they had stolen a watermelon out of Farmer Brown’s garden and escaped his wrath by jumping over the fence and scooting down the road. Or had managed to sneak past the ticket collector at the circus and were watching the aerialists swinging above the crowd in the big three-ring tent. Or were playing hookey from the war and running up a snowy slope with a sled, ready to come zooming down, the cold snapping their laughter into tiny syllabic fragments.
But somebody, Turei, grabbed Sam and pulled him away.
‘There you are, bro! We gotta go!’
‘No wait —’
Turei wasn’t taking no for an answer.