Loving Women

  Soon I could see the trailer, small and silvery in the dim light. And my heart pounded. The car wasn’t there. I began to run. A few feet from the trailer, I stopped, listening again, afraid. And then tried the door. It was open, but when I flicked on the switch, nothing happened; there was no electricity. But I didn’t really need light.

  From the moment I stepped inside, I knew that everything was gone and so was Eden Santana.

  PART

  FIVE

  Chapter

  61

  From The Blue Notebook

  Nothing matters.

  Chapter

  62

  So it had happened to me, as it had happened to Turner and Sal and Maher, to all the other poor lost sailors I’d come to know: the thing I feared most: suddenly, after sickening violence, she was gone. The boy I was then went down to Sears and talked to some counter girls, and was told they hadn’t seen her, no, they’d seen no sign of Eden Santana. The boy I was then went to see the store manager, a fat pig-eyed man named Rudolph. “Damn woman never even called,” he said. “Just stuck me with her counter. Never called. And I got her pay check here for her too. Well, she comes to get paid, I’m gone to give her a nice fat piece of ma mind …”

  On those nights in the fifties, when people all over America were sitting in their safe little houses talking about Gorgeous George and Howard Unruh, Miss Hush and pyramid clubs, I was searching the streets of a city that was not my own, trying to find a woman I was sure I loved more than anyone on earth. On the third night, I took a bus over to Roberta’s and told her what had happened. We sat together in the living room in the fading light. She cried twice. I comforted her. Then she put my hand on her breast and started to move to the bedroom. I shook my head no.

  “You helped me when I was hurting,” she said. “Now I want to help you.”

  “Only thing could help me, Roberta, was if she walked in that door.”

  She started sobbing again.

  “Me too,” she said. “Me too.”

  She looked suddenly old, and now the trouble, the loss, the departure was all about her and no longer about me.

  “My friend is gawn,” she said. “My sweet friend Eden is gawn.”

  She was still sobbing when I left.

  I drifted through an agony of days, desperate for a letter, a note, some proof that Eden Santana had existed, was not conjured or invented by the boy I was then. I wanted something that said at the end “love always,” like the picture of Captain Pritchett’s wife. In bed, in the woods, in rivers and on beaches, she had made me almost a man. And then, through the simple act of departure, she’d broken me down again into a child. Not a word arrived from her. Some sick bastards had come out of the swamp and scared her and she had run. And I couldn’t run after her. She had the car and the open roads of the great wide country. But I was trapped in the Navy, the prisoner of an easy oath.

  And so, after those first few days, I went back to what I was before I met her. I didn’t have to explain to Sal and Max and Maher and the others. I just showed up one evening at the gate and then all of us were racing to O Street. And once again, Webb Pierce was singing on the juke and Tons of Fun showed up with their van and then Hank Williams was singing about how he was so lonesome he could die.

  While Dixie Shafer laughed and opened bottles.

  The whole gang was there and nobody asked where I’d been and why I was back. But I was sure they knew. I drank beer and talked about Bobby Bolden and the Navy’s great cover-up and drank more beer and said Harrelson had to be the finger man and then we all talked about what we should have done to save Bobby Bolden and then we chug-a-lugged more beers and then I was leaning against the concrete blocks outside, throwing up in the dirt while the night sky whirled around and the ground pitched and Dixie Shafer told us all it was time to go back to the base.

  O Eden.

  The next morning, my tongue was thick and slimy. My brains felt diced. I stood in the shower for a long time and when my brain started working again I still wanted Eden Santana. Instead of eating lunch, I went to the barracks and lay down on my bunk and tried to sleep and still I wanted Eden Santana. I went back to the Supply Shack and filled out forms and swabbed the deck and tried jokes with Becket and talked about college with Charlie Dunbar and still I wanted Eden Santana.

  She had changed me. All those secret things we had done had changed me. A thousand images flooded through me and I was filled with such longing, such desperation, such need for flesh and hair and teeth, that I thought about going down to the black bars to find Winnie, to fuck her real good while my brain flooded with Eden’s face and Eden’s hair and Eden’s hoarse morning voice.

  But I never did go after Winnie. I just went back and back and back to O Street and sometimes down to Trader Jon’s and after those first few nights we stopped talking about Bobby Bolden because we knew it was just talk, knew we couldn’t do anything, knew we couldn’t save him or Catty or anybody else, not even ourselves.

  So we talked about ball games and fighters and the peace talks at Panmunjon and the shitheads from Washington whose pictures were in the papers. I never mentioned Eden Santana. And one of those nights, someone mentioned that Friday was Sal’s birthday and it was payday too and why didn’t we have a party? I don’t know who suggested the Miss Texas Club. I’d never been in the place. All I knew about it was that it was a strip joint out on the edge of Pensacola on the highway heading east. We’d chip in some money. We’d get through the door with the Navy ID, which meant we had to wear uniforms.

  Yeah.

  And we’d get one of those strippers for Sal. Pay her some money to pinch his nose with her twat.

  O yeah.

  And drink and shout and sing. On a summer night in the year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Fiftyfuckinthree.

  Yeah, yeah.

  And the next morning, Becket came into the Shack waving a letter at me and said, “Got something for you.” I trembled, thinking Eden. I stood there, thinking At last. And took it from him, looking out the window, until he moved away, and then stared at the writing.

  It was from my father.

  Christ.

  A letter from the world I’d left behind when my heart was in a world I could not even prove had existed. I opened it slowly.

  My son,

  It’s hard for me to write a letter. You know I was never much for “words.” They always say the Irish have the gift of the “gab” but I just never had it. My father was that way too, may he “rest” in peace.

  But your last letter made me proud of you. I know you are doing your part for your country. And even though the Korea war seems about to be over, we really need men like you. The “commies” are everywhere, son. Listen to this McCarthy. He’s wise to them. You might not ever get to Korea but I bet the “Reds” are down there too in the south of “good old” USA.

  Your brothers are fine. Danny has your gift with “words.” He got two strate A’s on his compositions at Holy Name. Isn’t that hot “stuff”? I don’t understand his stories. They are sort of “crazy.” But he sits up all night and writes them like he was hipnotized. Something for a boy 11. He says he wants a typewriter for his birthday, in order to be a sportswriter, like “Dick” Young. He’s a real dreamer like you.

  Rory seems to have your gift for “art.” He draws all the time. He loved the drawings you sent him from the Navy. He’s not as good as you but I think he has the gift from his mother and “then” he’s only nine.

  Well I better finish this up. You sound happy son. How is the girl you “mentioned” in your last letter? You sound like your very serious about her. She sounds swell. I saw that girl you used to keep company with at church. Sad to say she looked fat. No “bargain” if you ask me.

  Well try to write when you have time. Everything here is the same. We all hope you will come home soon.

  He signed it “love always, Your Father.”

  I put it down, folding and unfolding it. I had my “love always.” br />
  And I suddenly wanted to be with him. I wanted to be in New York. I wanted away from the Navy and from people who broke the hands of a man who made music. I didn’t want to see any of the places where I’d been with Eden Santana. Not alone. Never again. I wanted to be in the third floor right at 378 Seventh Avenue, Brooklyn 15, New York. In a place without orders or oaths or Red Cannon, without swash plates or palm trees or duty.

  I wanted to be home.

  The night before Sal’s birthday, I woke from a dream to hear voices out in the street. The barracks were empty. The night was very hot. One of the voices belonged to Miles Rayfield.

  “Please,” he was saying. “Don’t do it this way.” I heard panic and fear in his voice. “Please, can’t you—”

  I hurried to the door in my shorts and paused behind the screen. Across the street, Miles Rayfield was pleading with Red Cannon while two young sailors carried Miles’s things out of the Supply Shack and into a waiting panel truck. Paintings. Brushes. The palette and the tin water cans and the tubes of casein. The sketchbooks. Everything that had been a part of Miles’s secret studio, everything that made his life a life. I went back to my bunk and pulled on dungarees and shoes and a T-shirt and then crossed the street.

  “Red, don’t let them slam the paintings around,” Miles said. Then he saw me and his eyes were a plea. They said Save me please save me now save me. He was trying to sound reasonable. “Come on, Red.”

  “Shut up, sailor,” Cannon said. “You are already on report. Don’t make it worse.”

  I said, “Hey, Red, what did he do that’s so wrong?”

  “You shut up too. Or you’ll join him in the court martial.”

  “Court martial?” I said. Miles looked ashen. “For what?”

  “You seen them sketchbooks, sailor?” Cannon said. “If you have, then you could be a witness. All you artistes, you’re the same way, ain’t you? If you haven’t seen em, then you’ll never know what I mean.”

  Miles leaned a hand on the wood frame around the door. His jaw hung loose. I went over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. He pulled away. I turned to look at Red Cannon. He smiled tightly and got in the truck, and pulled away. Miles Rayfield’s life and work bumped loosely in the back.

  “I’m dead,” Miles whispered.

  He sat down hard on the ground and leaned back against the wall in a heavy ruined way. I squatted and faced him.

  “What’s he got on you?” I said.

  Knowing the answer.

  He didn’t say a word. He just shook his head slowly, then hopelessly, and then began to sob. The pain and grief rushed out of some scary place.

  I sat down beside him and put an arm around him and pulled him close and hugged him for a long time.

  Chapter

  63

  That night, I went to the chow hall with Miles. He didn’t eat. Later, we walked in the long summer evening, while I tried to get him to talk. But the brackets that framed his mouth had gone loose, making him look younger and more helpless, and words, which had been his defense against the world, had abandoned him. He stopped and wept three separate times. I waited until he was finished and then nudged him along and we walked some more. We even passed the hole in the fence, which I showed to Miles. He didn’t react. Near the end, he said again, as he’d done a million times since I’d known him, This goddamned Navy. Nothing else. Then I walked him back to the barracks in the dark and waited while he undressed and stood there while he fell heavily and without words into his rack. He closed his eyes and slept.

  I thought about him for a long time as I lay without sleep in my own rack. In the morning I’d have to find Freddie Harada and warn him. Make certain that he didn’t say anything that would hurt Miles or himself. Tell him that Red Cannon and Chief McDaid were probably coming to interrogate him. Using guile or threats to get Freddie on the record, to nail Miles to the fucking cross. Sodomy, they would call it. Another word I’d looked up in the dictionary. I imagined them giving the news to the wife in Atlanta: Your husband’s a faggot, lady. And then to the mother: Your son’s problem is dick, ma’am. Whatever had gone on between them, Freddie had to deny everything. If he did, I couldn’t believe that Captain Pritchett would call a court martial for the monstrous crime of having a painting studio on United States government property. Sure, it was against the rules. But it wasn’t like Miles was selling secrets to the goddamned Chinese communists. This was strictly minor crap. Housekeeping. That’s all. Except for those sketchbooks. And later I thought that even if they court-martialed Miles and booted him out of the Navy, there would be some good in it. Miles would be free. He’d be out of the goddamned Navy, out of Anus Mundi, free to roam the world. He could just go.

  He would, in fact, be freer than I was, because I couldn’t go anywhere. And then the notion blossomed in my mind: I wanted to go. Not simply home, to the safety of the third floor left. I wanted out of that place, out of the goddamned rules and regs, out of the boring prison of Ellyson Field. I wanted to find Eden. I didn’t care who she had been and what color she was and where she came from. I didn’t care where she was living or even what she was doing now or wanted to do for the rest of her life.

  I wanted to be with my loving woman.

  When I woke in the morning, Miles was already gone. His bunk was neatly made up, the sheets and blanket crisp in the lemon-colored morning light. I showered and dressed quickly and walked to the chow hall. Sal and Max were already there, full of plans for the party that night, already spending the payday money. But Miles wasn’t around. I saw Freddie Harada behind the servers in the kitchen and waved him outside. He slipped out the side door.

  “Hey, man, I’m busy,” he said. “What you want?”

  I told him about Miles Rayfield and warned him that Cannon and McDaid were sure to come looking for him. He looked scared. I asked him where Miles was.

  “He was here when we opened,” he said, his eyes darting everywhere. “About six. He just had coffee and a roll and sat ’way in the back for a long time, writing letters.”

  “He look okay?”

  “Same as always.”

  We went back inside. Sal was talking about a girl Max had met in the Dirt Bar the night before. Six foot three and ninety pounds.

  “You could open a letter with her and Max falls right in love,” Sal said.

  “It was lust, Sal, not love.”

  “It must have been like banging a pair of scissors.”

  “Worse,” Max said.

  I asked if they’d seen Miles Rayfield.

  “Yeah, matter of fact,” Sal said. “He was out on the steps of the barber shop. Oh, half an hour ago. Writing letters. Why? What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Boswell came over and sat down and told us that Harrelson had been transferred to the U.S.S. Saratoga. “Out of Pearl,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Oh, my, how I’d like to get one of them Hawaiian leis.”

  “That’s a truly terrible joke, Bos,” Sal said.

  “Yeah,” Max said. “Leave the jokes to the Jews.”

  “Well,” Boswell said, “he’s gone.”

  I thought: Good riddance, you rat stool pigeon.

  After breakfast Sal and Max said they’d see us tonight and headed for the hangars, while Boswell and I walked together to the Supply Shack. Donnie Ray called muster. Everybody was there except Miles Rayfield.

  “He was just at breakfast,” I said. “Let me go find him.”

  “Make it snappy,” Donnie Ray said, sounding annoyed. “The man’s technically over the hill.”

  I hurried out. But Miles wasn’t at the barber shop or in the barracks, the chow hall, the infirmary or the post office. Yeah, he’d been at the post office, all right, the civilian said. Bought two dollars worth of stamps. Quite a while ago. Nobody’d seen him at the other places. I went back to the Supply Shack and told Donnie Ray.

  “Goddamn, I’ll have to mark him AWOL,” he said with a sigh.

  “Why don’t you alert t
he infirmary first?” I said. “Maybe he got sick somewhere and they’ll find him.”

  Donnie Ray sighed. “Yeah, and maybe he’s halfway to Mobile right now.” He glanced at his watch and chewed the inside of his mouth. “Well, you better start swabbin down, sailor. It’s your turn.”

  He stared at the telephone. The aroma of fresh-cut grass drifted through the screened windows. Insects buzzed. Helicopters started chugging into the sky. I walked down to the closet where we stored the mops and buckets and soap, and opened the door.

  Miles was hanging from a length of gray clothesline tied around a water pipe. His neck was bent at a right angle, the rope digging deep into his flesh. His face was blue.

  Chapter

  64

  I guess Becket cut him down. Or maybe it was Donnie Ray. I don’t know for sure. I do know that Boswell and Parsons and Donnie all were shouting for an ambulance, for medics, for someone who could do mouth-to-mouth: Hurry now still a chance that’s it easy boy okay hold him soft. I remember hands reaching, then all lifting, then tearing open a shirt; rubber heels on the concrete floor; an empty wash bucket going over and men grunting. Jesuschrist now what in the fuck would he wanna do that for? And more shouts and doors slamming and the incessant ringing of a single telephone. All that happened: the logistics of death.

  I remember staring at the gouged skin of Miles’s neck. I remember him lying on the painted concrete deck that he would never walk again or curse again or swab down again on a Friday afternoon. I cursed the Navy. And I cursed God. And I cursed Red Cannon. I cried too, cradling my dead friend’s head, feeling the heat drain away; just sobbed like a boy, until the medic came at last and tried to thump the dead heart back into life before saying that it was too late, the man was dead and hey, sailor, what was his service number?