“Tell me.”
I told her my long goofy tale.
She giggled. “You drunk as drunk can be, Joe?”
“The one guy I ever met who got drunker than I was that night was a lifer I knew at Fort Ord, an old mess sergeant. After his last hitch, he’d gotten out of the army. For good, he claimed. He’d had a bellyful. But
him
and his separation pay went on a bender. He woke up two weeks later on a bunk in the Fort Leonard Wood,
Missouri
reception barracks. He recalled zilch, but he’d taken a Burst of Six, what we call a six-year reenlistment.”
“Silly man,” Mai said, resuming staring at the fan. “I no see you when you
fini
Vietnam
?”
“You might hate
America
and hate me for taking you there.”
“Statehood.
We
be
America, too, Joe.”
Bierce and his wild-ass rumor.
I was a heel for leading her on. I veered from the subject by telling her more about Ziggy and his Martians.
“He
seem
nice man. I think he no frighten people on purpose. He
believe
in Mars man?”
“The first flying saucer that touches down, Zig will be at the LZ, handing out coffee and doughnuts to the little green men.”
“I study Mars in school.”
“In the north?”
“In north.”
“Where in the north?”
“You say you read much, Joe.
You and Ziggy.”
I gave up on her north.
“Yeah.”
“What you read?”
“What haven’t I read?
Even poetry.
At least I recently tried.”
She looked at me.
“You and poem?”
“Yep.
For five minutes.
Paradise Lost
is a poem and a big fat book too.”
“A book?”
“Actually more than one book.
I didn’t get far. I checked it out of the library. In a nutshell,
Paradise Lost
was how Adam and Eve screwed up and we’ve been paying through the nose ever since. Poetry is the art of arranging words so you can’t understand them. I looked over a book by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Her most famous poem is ‘How do I love you, let me count the ways.’ I wish I’d memorized it all for you.”
Mai said I was sweet and wanted to know why I was snickering.
“I do remember this poem I learned in Basic Training.”
“Yes?”
“You were not
to call your rifle a gun. It was a weapon or a rifle. If the drill sergeant overheard you say ‘gun,’ he’d have you recite over and over, ‘this is my rifle, this is my gun, this is for fighting,
this
is for fun.’”
I showed her the required hand motions, in which you alternated between pretending to aim a rifle and to masturbate. I went to the fridge for a cold
Ba- mi- ba
while Mai recovered from laughing.
We shared the bottle, and then I said I’d like to write her a poem if I managed to think one up as lovely and wonderful as her. I was stammering when I finished and was rewarded with a lip lock. We had the gold dollar choreography down pat this time, using the second and last I had.
We were long and loving, loosening every nail and screw in Mai’s bed. A happy, soggy, sticky mess, we climbed in her shower together. Her hot water was supplied by sunlight on rooftop pipes. We didn’t even mind when the water cooled.
Exotic didn’t come within a mile of describing tonight. Terry Lee’s Dragon Lady, by comparison she was the Little Old Lady from Pasadena. Tonight wasn’t
Paradise Lost
, it was
Paradise Gained
.
“I can’t stay the night, Mai.”
“Statehood is why no can stay?”
“Martial law is why.”
“Joe.”
“Uh-huh?”
“I lie. Friend
me
no say Vietcong blow up
Saigon
power plant. He say 803rd secret building, it do bad things to Saigon electricity.”
“Smart friend.
Anybody I know?”
“CAN-DO ready, Joe?”
Bingo. Dreaded suspicions confirmed. Let’s amend tonight to
Paradise Sort of Gained
.
“My Mata Hari.”
“Who?”
I whipped a biographical sketch of the slippery Dutch courtesan on her.
If she was insulted, she didn’t say so. “Cerebrum 2111X ready, Joe?”
“Honestly, you know as much about it as I do, Mai.
Probably more.”
“Statehood?”
“Same same.”
It was daylight. I got up and peeked outside. I saw my Lee Harvey Oswald. CWO R. Tracy leaning on a lamppost by a corner
phỡ
shop, arms folded, looking in our direction, voluntarily or involuntarily smirking.
Finalizing his dossier for my firing squad.
“Really gotta go, gotta scoot,” I said, putting on my clothes, planning to hustle out there and wrap my hands around Tracy’s neck until he spit out some answers. I gave Mai a lunging smack on the cheek, just as a suburban hubby would do when he was late for the commuter train to his office.
I was buttoning my shirt and zipping my zipper when I reached the sidewalk. Lee Harvey had vanished.
I spotted the 803rd’s rattletrap Jeep approaching from the next block. I ducked into a doorway and watched Colonel Lanyard pull up to 421. He dismounted and went through the gate. Since Mai hadn’t pushed me out the door, her Jakie’s visit was probably impromptu, his need for an ass-paddling fervent.
I made a mental note to leave a container of talcum powder on his desk for his inflamed heinie, to make him aware his dirty little secret was out.
Nah.
I changed my mind. Mai would take the rap.
The key was in the ignition. I hopped in the Jeep and accelerated from the curb. Stealing it provided lesser satisfaction than a talcum powder stunt, but it did provide a ride home.
MY ONE and only dream in The Great Beyond has come true.
In the form of a nightmare.
I’m fixing lunch, improvising a pulled pork sandwich, remembering when I was cutting my culinary teeth at a faux Cuban restaurant.
Black rice and beans, plantains, shredded beef in a tomato-based
criollo
sauce.
Yum.
The pork part is easy. I’m shredding one of Smitty’s pork loins I’d cooked. From the TV dinners I hadn’t traded to him, I find a barbecue something and use the sauce. I have no bread or buns to wrap the meat in, so from another TV dinner, I take bread crumbs and layer on each side of the pork. The “close enough for government work” saw is apropos. I remove cooked mixed vegetables from another dinner and have a balanced meal.
A piano rendition of “Shake, Rattle & Roll” plays at half speed.
It’s a normally abnormal day in The Great Beyond.
Until I smell the cologne. Remember Hooverville? It’s the same potent stuff that stung my eyes there. It overwhelms my cookery.
I hold my nose, yet I can still follow my held nose to the front drapes and see the source. He’s outside, hand on chin, checking out his new home, Madge’s former home.
I recognize him. Seeing him jogs my memory; I will recognize his voice too. He is every voice calling out from the Hooverville hovels but one.
As I approached the end in The Land of the Living, when pain would not permit me to sleep at night, I’d go downstairs and watch the tube. Infomercials reigned in post-midnight programming and my new neighbor was on often. He sold everything that the Hooverville voices sold. I came to think of him as the King of Paid Programming, the Mother of all Slicky Boys. I don’t recall his real name, but to me on the nocturnal tube he was Slick.
Slick is casual in slacks and pullover. He has a ready smile and clean-cut face that makes him easy to trust if you don’t know better. He’s in his 40s and has the countenance of a former big man on campus.
“Do you like corn dogs?”
I’m used to the cologne now. “Not my all-time favorite,” I say.
“Tater Tots?”
“Likewise.”
“My freezer compartment is crammed to the gills with them. Where do I get something decent to eat?”
No hello, goodbye, kiss my ass. Slick has no interest in anything or anybody but himself and his problems.
“How did you get here?”
“Here?
Where’s here?”
“The Great Beyond.”
He’s quiet for a few seconds, probably a first. “Yeah, where the hell
am
I?”
“What’s your last memory?”
Hand on chin again, he says, “Let’s see
. I was in the parking garage. I live in a top floor condo.”
“
Lived
in a top floor condo,” I happily interrupt.
“I’m getting into my SL500 and out of nowhere there’s a gun against the side of my head. This deranged old boy said my investment seminar people took him for every cent he had. That’s the last I remember.”
A pot-bellied guy with a buzz cut and a pockmarked neck comes out the door and says, “Sir, I found some more chow in the pantry and on shelves in the garage.
MREs and C-rations.”
He’s the owner of the other voice I heard in Hooverville, the recruiting sergeant.
“Sarge, keep looking. I can’t eat that military shit.”
“Sir, this is really good chow if you give it a chance.”
“Goddamnit, I said keep looking!”
The old sergeant’s face droops. He backs inside.
I ask, “How’d you and him hook up?”
Slick looks at me. He’s afraid. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Please tell me what’s going on.”
“Why is the sergeant here?”
“That I don’t know. He’s just
here
. He told me he was fragged in Afghanistan by a soldier he’d recruited. He’d promised the trooper he’d have stateside duty if he signed on the dotted line.
Please
tell me what’s going on.”
Before I walk away, I say, “I’ll explain all in my free seminar, lunch on the house, choice of chicken or fish.”
I hear Smitty screaming inside his house.
What now?
***
MPs swarmed outside the Annex, a platoon of them in fatigues, wearing pistol belts and steel pots, carrying M-16s. They’d formed a perimeter, checking and redirecting traffic.
Serious business.
A routine day was shaping up at The Fighting 803rd.
No PFC A. Bierce. When had I last seen him? If morning reports fail to go out daily, it isn’t long before red flares go up. Captain Papersmith was out too. Big surprise there, too, so I took the opportunity to rummage through the papers on and in Bierce’s desk.
Nary a scrap of
Jesus of Capri.
His manuscript had gone with him.
Bierce kept file copies of recent morning reports in a basket. The latest was several days ago. In the text, PFC A. Bierce had reassigned himself to the 802
nd
Liaison Detachment at
Fort Huachuca
,
Arizona
.
If I recall correctly, my research on the 803rd had proven that there were no liaison detachments, including the 803rd. PFC Bierce, the rumormonger extraordinaire, the rascal had disappeared himself via his typewriter. Bon voyage, Ambrose III.
At the doorway, Ziggy and I watched the MPs. Their jaws were set as if they were guarding
Fort
Knox
. Last night’s steady vibration on the Annex windows had powered up to an audible purr. Since juice in the immediate neighborhood hadn’t been restored, the Annex had no electrical noise competition.
We watched Colonel Lanyard get out of a taxi, slamming the door hard enough to rock the little Renault. He went into the Annex. A moment later, Captain Papersmith slunk out and hailed a motorcyclo. I told Ziggy about my evening with Mai.
“This romance shit, you love her, Joey?”
“Yeah.
I guess so.”
“Is she Catholic?”
“Don’t know.”
“Buddhist?”
“Don’t know.”
“She VC?”
“Don’t know.”
“She a spy?”
“Don’t know.”
“Them technical books of hers, what’re they for?”
“Don’t know.”
“She sharp at math?”
“Not as sharp as you, Zig. What’s 49,271 times 1104?”
“Up your nose with a rubber hose, Joey.
Your commie girlfriend, where
her
and her sis, Quyen, come from, how come she won’t open up to you?”
“Don’t know.”
“How many guys is she banging besides you and the captain and the colonel?”
“Jesus H. Christ, Zig. You make her sound like the town pump.”
“How many?”
“Don’t know.”
“You don’t pay her shit and you don’t tell her nothing and you don’t promise to take her home to
America
like Papersmith does. What’s in it for her?”
I almost said she loves me, too, but that’d be stupid, even after last night’s unparalleled intimacy. I still didn’t
have a clue what motivated her, what she felt about me or anybody else.
“Don’t know.”
“You’d give her the H-bomb recipe if you had it, wouldn’t ya?”
“If she asked nicely while unclothed or in her Dragon Lady outfit.
Either, or and anything in between.”
“You got my blessing, Joey. Ain’t
nobody
perfect.”
I’d parked the Jeep around the block. If it wasn’t stolen already, we planned to drive it in to Singh and see what he’d give us for it. But curiosity was killing us two cats.
We walked across to the Annex. The MP at the door raised his rifle to port arms. He had a bowling ball gut, buck sergeant stripes (three chevrons), and a strawberry of a nose.
“No admittance.”
“You’re accusing us of being the enemy? We look like Vietcong to you, Sarge?” I said cordially. “We’re assigned permanent party here at the 803rd.”
“Clerk typists,” Ziggy added, digging at an armpit.
He stared at Ziggy. “You’re a typist?”
“This man has the nimblest fingers in the United States Army,” I said.
The MP laughed.
“‘Accuse.
To affirm another’s guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged him,’” Ziggy droned.
The MP looked at me.
“You two drinking this time of the morning?”
“We’re teetotalers. Ambrose Bierce the First and my partner speak in tongues. I have a gift in there I have to get. Be a pal, Sarge.”
“Sorry, boys.
Officers only.
Big powwow.”
“We’re in civvies. We could be captains or colonels. You don’t know.”
“You two?
Whip some ID on me.”
“Left it in my other pants.
A big powwow on what?”
The MP said, “Me and Westmoreland are tight. He usually clues me in. Not this time. My feelings are hurt. They must’ve accidentally
forgot
me. Get lost and go ask Westy your own self.”
Once you say I cannot go into X, naturally I need to snoop in X in the worst way. I said, “It’s my kid sister’s birthday. I forgot her present. It’s in there on my desk. A good buddy in there, Chief Warrant Officer Ralph Buffet, wrapped it for me. If I don’t mail if off today, it won’t make it home in time.”
The MP grinned. “She got terminal cancer and won’t see another birthday, right?”
“How’d you know?” I said.
“Five minutes and only you, wiseass,” he told me. “Retrieve your present and no dinking around. Otherwise, my tit’ll be in a wringer. I got ten days and a wakeup before going to the Land of the Big PX, and getting my discharge to boot. They’ll cut me some slack if I lose my concentration just this one time. It’s no secret I got me a ferocious short-timer’s attitude.”
“Congratulations on your walking papers, Sarge. How long’ve you been in?”
“Nine long years.
Got a deputy sheriff job lined up in my hometown.”
Shades of my former colleague who’d had the same intentions,
who
woke up two weeks later at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
Him
and Sarge here were birds of a lifer feather.
“Outstanding. I envy you, man.”
“Five minutes and one second, I lock and load, and sashay on in for you.”
I hustled through the door and heard hooting and hollering and clapping. It seemed to be an impromptu gathering, the oddballs facing General Whipple, who stood at the main console.
“Hip-hip-hooray,” the research botanist said, lifting a paper cup, followed by more hooting and hollering. “It is a record harvest. We have brought in a bumper crop.
Kudos to each and every one of you men.
You who have toiled so diligently in this fertile field.”
Colonel Lanyard was at the general’s side, hairy tree-trunk arms folded, not a happy man. If he was brutally pissed regarding the Jeep, too pissed to savor this special occasion, whatever the hell it was, he’d made my day.
Evidently, Cerebrum 2111X and CAN-DO had hatched its golden egg much earlier than expected. I advanced cautiously. Nobody paid me the slightest attention. They were drinking PX champagne. I was tempted to crash the party, which was growing even louder and happier. They were talking computer jargon. I couldn’t make out a word of their Swahili.
Not a total loss. I’d flimflammed myself into the Annex, honing my
hornswoggling
skills. Practice makes perfect, you know.
I swiped a bottle of the bubbly and walked out. The MP checked his watch and said, “In thirty seconds, you were a dead man. Where’s your sister’s present?”
I gave him the bottle and slapped my hip.
“In my pocket.
It’s small, an engagement ring.”
The MP took a swig and laughed.
“Pervert.”
“Best of luck as a civilian, man, you lucky son of a bitch.”
He hoisted his rifle. “Take care. Your day will come too.”
Ziggy and I went to the corner
phỡ
shop and had breakfast.
“The captain,” Ziggy said after we’d eaten.
“What about him?”
He said, “Me and you, Joey, we oughta go shake the lowdown truth outta him is what we oughta do.”
“Excellent plan, Tonto. Head ’em up, move ’em out,” I said, leading the way to the Jeep, discordantly humming the
Rawhide
theme song until Ziggy said he’d hurt me if I didn’t quit.
We drove to the GiGi Snack/Snatch Bar. Lo and behold, the captain was at his favorite table.