As we started for our room, he told me, “Shut your eyes, Bucky. You want to be doing something, then start memorizing where the furniture is. Never know when we might have to move in the dark.”
I followed him to our room, keeping my eyes open. He closed the secret “door,” then snapped on the light. We stretched out on our cots. I picked up the paper while Doc went to sleep. But I couldn't read—the pictures of us already looked like mug shots. I dropped the paper on the floor. There were a few spots of Molly's blood. Despite stomach wounds she really hadn't bled much. Would she have tried to kill us, take the dough, like Doc said? Seemed to me she would have gone for a possible reward, blown the whistle on us.
I got up and opened the “door.” There was a tiny John next to the kitchen. If this was such a hot hide-out, why didn't they think to build a toilet in the room? I washed up—there never had been any hot water—dampened some toilet paper then soaped it up, returned to our room. I was down on my knees trying to get rid of the bloodstains when I heard Doc chuckling. He said, “When the F.B.I. shot Dillinger down in front of a theater, they say people were sopping up his blood with handkerchiefs and newspaper for souvenirs.”
I didn't bother answering. Sometimes Doc's pearls of wisdom gave me a stiff pain. I couldn't get much of the blood off and when I went back to the bathroom I tried walking in the dim light with my eyes shut. I banged my knee.
Doc was sleeping again when I closed the “door,” snapped on the light. I sat on my cot, far too tense to sleep. I didn't like the idea of going out; it frightened me silly. But Doc was right, we had to eat—right now I wanted a drag, wanted it badly—and it had to be me. I didn't want to think about going out, tried to think of anything else. I glanced at the suitcases, but couldn't even concentrate on the money.
I stared at Doc's skinny back, envious of the way he could pound his ear. He wasn't asleep. He must have felt my eyes on him; he suddenly rolled over, told me, “Maybe that kid's watch of yours will come in handy after all. Wake me when it's eight o'clock. You have to leave before the stores close. I could go for a shrimp salad sandwich—on good German rye.”
Then he turned over again and really went to sleep.
I cursed him, to myself, for no reason. Stretching out on the cot, I glanced at the fighter on the watch face. The paint on his left shoe was peeling. It wasn't even seven o'clock. Crazy, how the watch upset Doc, or maybe amused him. Like Elma, he was always after me to buy a new one—had tried to give me an expensive, self-winding job.
I never told him why I had to keep wearing it. I guess I couldn't have put it in words. But I wanted to wear it. Judy never noticed it and Betty thought it was cute. Elma was mad because I... What was Elma doing now? How was she taking all this? Probably wishing she could get her mitts on me—and the money.
Elma knew about Nate giving me the watch, but she kept nagging me to throw it away. But then nagging was her way of life. Elma the lump. Would it have worked out okay if she hadn't had her insides taken out—that lousy operation?
Or was our marriage all wrong from the jump?
4—Elma
My marriage to Elma worked out fine, at first. I did a lot of thinking about Elma while I was in Korea. She used to write me regularly, dull letters but the only mail I received. I don't know if Nate knew my A.P.O. address or not. Anyway, every letter would make me wonder why I'd been in such a rush to marry Elma, and what I'd do about it if I came back.
It wasn't much of a worry because for a time I didn't think I was coming back. I guess I wanted to die; you know, kid stuff—felt it would spite Nate. But dead or alive, I wanted to be a big hero. Again, it might have been to prove to Nate I could make it on my own, didn't need him. I still felt nameless, and I suppose I thought if I became a hero, even a dead one, at least I'd be a somebody.
Okay, it sounds childish now, but then I considered myself the toughest thing out, and I guess I was. I was anxious to fight anybody or anything. I kept going up to sergeant and being busted back to private over some brawl. The weird part was that although I saw more than my share of combat and shooting, kept volunteering for patrols—and once I was the only guy who came back—in actual combat I never got a scratch. They gave me two Purple Hearts but both of them were phony.
There was an Italian hick from Maine I got to be kind of pals with. Perhaps because I'd considered myself an Italian for so long I couldn't stop. Most of my fist fights were over some slob making a crack about Carmen Brindise's name. Carmen was a little guy who spoke with a nasal twang, smart and tough. He knew all there was to know about hunting and fishing. In his wallet he carried fish hooks and a line and any time we were around a river, the ocean, even the damn rice paddies, he had a line over. Not that I ever saw him catch anything, either.
One night when we were resting between patrols, and supposedly in a rear area, we were sharing a pup tent. It was that cold winter when it seemed I'd never get real warm again. Carmen had made some rice wine and we were tanked up on the junk. Matter of fact, it was so freezing cold, the bottle broke and I got a nasty cut on my arm taking glass out of the rice mash. Carmen was telling me about how he used to go hunting up in Maine and Canada and on cold nights he'd stick a finger out of the tent and say, “Feels two dogs cold,” and take two hunting hounds in with him for warmth.
In the middle of the night we were high with wine and Carmen was doing his act, sticking a gloved finger out and announcing it was now “ten dogs cold.” Not that we had any dogs, you understand. The last time he did this, a rifle slug blew the top of his head off, splattering me with blood. When the medics reached us they put my bottle cut down as a wound and I got my first Purple Heart.
The second time, I was hitching a ride in a supply truck when a plane came in strafing, killing the driver. I got a bad cut on the head diving out the cab for the ground. When I came to in a base hospital I had another Purple Heart. I suppose that second one was legit.
I didn't pay much attention to the medals, but they helped me get home on rotation and by then the war was over. I figured I'd tell Elma it had been a quickie marriage, let her get a divorce. But Elma surprised me.
She had put away over a grand from my allotment checks and had been making good money working in an aircraft factory. So when I came home I found we had our own apartment, a three-room deal in a swank elevator house. The truth is, for the first couple of months I was nuts about Elma. There was a big sex business with us. She wasn't any beauty but was wonderfully curious about so many things, and we made up for the years I'd been away. It was terrific. I mean, we'd have these workouts and then in the morning she'd take off for work while I'd sleep until the middle of the afternoon, then lounge round the house, watch TV. Even the apartment was kicks then—compared to the tenement I'd known—and I'd often put in hours cleaning it up, waxing the floors, waiting for Elma to come home and make supper.
Her aircraft job folded a few months later; all the women were laid off, and Elma found an office job at half her former salary. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. I took a lot of civil service exams, my being a vet giving me extra points. In the meantime we needed dough and I went from one job to another, none of them really much. I was a restless sour ball, always socking the boss or a customer. Like I became a stock clerk in a big clothing house. Might have been a good deal; some of the clerks went on to become salesmen and store managers. My boss let everybody know he'd been a Marine and when I happened to mention I had a double Purple Heart, I was his boy. He put me on the floor, selling. The third day I was a salesman some crumb tried on a loud, checkered sport coat—something he'd picked out himself. When he looked in the mirror and said, “I look like a wop in this,” I flattened him before I realized I was swinging. He sued the company and that was very much that.
I worked in a supermarket; turned out I was good at displaying and selling vegetables. Only for some dumb reason I told them my name was Bucklin Laspiza, got screwed up on my Social Security and had to leave the job after a few months—when I was starting to know what it was all about.
Another time I became a truck helper. If I became a driver and got a union card, the pay would be high. But the fat-jawed dispatcher thought calling me “Fountain Penn” was such a witty remark that I had to break his nose after a few weeks.
Considering the way she acted later on, it was odd Elma never complained about my job turnover then. It was really her sickness that changed her, I guess. One of the reasons we got along so smooth then was, no matter how often I got the sack, she didn't nag about it. It was about this time she began to get tired easily and at first we thought she was pregnant. I think I wanted a kid; at least I kept telling myself he wouldn't have to worry about his name.
The doctor said Elma had a tumor, a big one, and needed an immediate operation. She had a hysterotony, or whatever they call it, where they cleaned her out. The doctor explained that he had left her sex roots in—and maybe I'm not using the correct terms—but actually I think he was wrong. It was a difficult operation and for a time they didn't think she was going to make it. It took every dime we had. Her folks didn't have a penny, and I doubt if they would have helped us anyway—they didn't look with favor upon taking a “bastard” into the family. I wired Nate, care of his local office, for three hundred dollars and got it within a week.
For a time it was even sort of tender fun nursing Elma back to health, but after that she was never the same. For one thing, she completely let herself go, became all soft and baggy, a regular heavyweight of lard. And she suddenly decided she couldn't work any more—hell, it took months before she would even get out of bed.
Things have a way of working—sometimes—and we were both happy when I was appointed a police officer, sent to the police academy for three months. I was nuts about the job. It did something to my—I suppose “ego” is the right word—to be sporting a badge and a gun. Maybe it was silly, but I was very pleased with myself, full of a deep feeling of satisfaction. You see, I was no longer a nameless nobody. I was now authority, with a gun to prove it, and until I met up with Doc, it was all very important to me. Especially that gun—I spent every free minute I could snag on the target range.
I got along okay in the academy, worked hard at it. Although I was still walking around with a ton of chips on my shoulder. If I wasn't one of the top ten students, I was a long way from the bottom ten, too. Here's something else. Around our block we always made a point of chasing any colored kids that happened to come by. Don't get me wrong, we weren't any lynch mob—we chased all kinds of kids—but a colored one was a sure target. So the only guy in the whole class I really got to be a buddy with was a dark brown fellow named Ollie Jackson. I suppose you'd call him “colored”; actually his face looked like the United Nations. His folks had come from the Hawaiian Islands and along with his mahogany-brown skin he had Oriental almond-shaped eyes, and an Indian's hooked nose. Ollie was one of these calm, easygoing types, and strong as a barrel of dead fish. At first look you'd take him for a short, fat joker. That was a mistake because he wasn't so short and he wasn't fat—it was all muscle, hard as steel. We got to be friends in the boxing class.
Most of the fellows took it easy, even with the heavy gloves on. But with my ring experience I had it all over the rest of them and I used to work over anybody I got into the ring with. Sure, I was going for mean then. I tangled with Ollie one day and had no trouble clouting him. He was so wild I could really tee off, but I couldn't floor him. He kept rushing me and finally managed to clinch, put those thick arms around me in a bear hug—and squeezed. When the ref parted us my arms were numb from the elbows down—I simply couldn't raise them. Ollie grunted with pleasure as he started pasting me with roundhouse swings, each feeling like a baseball bat across my face. I wanted to go down and end it, but I had to admire this cat: He'd taken everything I'd dished out, waiting for his chance.
I was so groggy I really didn't remember a thing until I woke up in the middle of the night, beside Elma. I had a headache for days. But the next morning when Ollie came over to ask how I felt, I said great and we were ace buddies—because I knew damn well his head was hurting him, too.
When we graduated, we were assigned to the same precinct house. It was a rough section of town and Ollie the first “colored” cop on duty there. He got hell the first few days—until I started hanging around his post on my off time and between us we walloped respect into a lot of would-be tough studs. Ollie was always calling me down for clouting first and asking questions later. The truth is, I was belting a lot of characters and there were plenty of complaints coming in about me. I didn't know this until the sergeant in charge of our platoon took me aside and told me, “Penn, you're new to the force and this is a deprived area, and tough. You'll come across provocations every tour of duty—but that's part of your job. You've got to stop being on edge all the time. I've been a police officer for a lot of years, so believe me when I tell you a tough cop always ends up a dead cop. You're making a name for yourself, but it's a lousy name. You look like an intelligent kid, so stop taking the easy out.”
“What easy out, sir?” I asked, the “name” bit making me tense.
“Use your head more and your fists less. I'm talking to you because I think you have the makings of a good cop. Only you got to relax, use your judgment more. Don't become a hoodlum with a badge.”
Of course, the troubles I was having on the job were nothing compared to what Elma was giving me. It seemed she had nothing to do but slop around the house and complain. I tried to be fair about it, remembering how she had catered to me when I got out of the Army. But Elma never wanted to get better. She let herself go to a shapeless ton, and whatever the sex thing was between us, it vanished. Actually I think the operation took all desire out of her. She got so big she was a freak—there simply wasn't room for the both of us in one bed. I began sleeping on the living-room couch, which wasn't any dream either. I was nice about it, explaining my changing tours would keep her awake. But not getting a decent night's sleep made me sour on the world most of the time.
