Authors: Thomas Pynchon
“Well somebody blew the whistle,” the pig mutters, looking really hurt.
“Stand by,” whispers Albert. To the MP: “Excuse me,” moseying straight over to the
wall switch, which he flicks off, Slothrop at once dashing through all the shouting
past Birdbury’s desk
wham
into a tall rack of medicines his straw stomach bounces him off of, but which then
falls over on somebody else with a stupendous glass crash and scream—on down a pitchblack
aisle, arms out to guide him, to the back exit, where he meets Krypton.
“Thanks.”
“Quick.”
Outside they cut eastward, toward the Elbe and the docks, pounding along, skidding
in mudpuddles, stumbling over lorry-ruts, wind sweeping among the Quonsets to bat
them in the face, cocaine falling in little white splashes from underneath Krypton’s
left bellbottom. Behind them the posse are hollering and shining flashlights, but
don’t seem to know where they’ve gone. Good. “Follow the yellow-brick road,” hums
Albert Krypton, on pitch, “follow the yellow-brick road,” what’s this, is he actually,
yes he’s
skipping. . . .
Presently, out of breath, they arrive at the pier where the
Badass
and its division, four haze-gray piglets, are tied up, to find the runcible spoon
fight just under way at the center of a weaving, cheering crowd of civilian and military
drunks. Stringy Avery Purfle, sideburns slick as seal’s fur in the pallid light, Adam’s
apple working in and out at a nervous four or five cycles a minute, shuffles around
his opponent, the serene and oxlike St. John Bladdery, both with runcible spoons in
the on-guard position, filed edges bright.
Krypton stashes Slothrop in a garbage bin and goes looking for Seaman Bodine. After
a number of short, glittering feints, Purfle dodges in, quick as a fighting-cock.
With a high slash that Bladdery tries to parry in third, Purfle rips through the Commando’s
blouse and draws blood. But when he goes to jump back, it seems thoughtful Bladdery
has brought his combat boot down on the American’s low dress shoe, nailing him where
he stands.
Promotor Bodine and his two combatants are burning crystals of awareness in this poisoned
gray gathering: a good half of the crowd are out in the foothills of unconsciousness,
and the rest are not exactly sure what’s going on. Some think that Purfle and Bladdery
are really mad at each other. Others feel that it is meant to be comedy, and they
will laugh at inappropriate moments. Now and then the odd beady eyes will appear up
in the night superstructures of the warships, staring, staring. . . .
Purfle and Bladdery have made simultaneous thrusts and are now
corps à corps
—with a scrape and clank the runcible spoons are locked, and elbows tense and set.
The outcome rests with scrawny Purfle’s gift for trickery, since Bladdery appears
ready to hold the position all night.
“Rocketman’s here,” Krypton tugging at Bodine’s damp wrinkled collar, “in
a pig suit.
”
“Not now, man. You got the, ah—”
“But but the heat’s after him, Bodine, where can we hide him?”
“Who cares, it’s some asshole, is all. A fake. Rocketman wouldn’t be
here.
”
Purfle yanks his runcible-spoon hand back, leaning to the side, twisting his own weapon
to keep its tines interlocked with those of Bladdery’s, pulling the commando off-balance
long enough to release his own foot, then deftly unlinking the spoons and dancing
away. Bladdery recovers his footing and moves heavily in pursuit, probing in with
a series of jabs then shifting the spoon to his other hand and surprising Purfle with
a slash that grazes the sailor’s neck, missing the jugular, but not by much. Blood
drips into the white jumper, black under these arc-lights. Sweat and cold shadows
lie darkly in the men’s armpits. Purfle, made reckless by the pain, goes flying at
Bladdery, a flurry of blind wild pokes and hackings, Bladdery hardly needing to move
his feet, weaving from the knees up like a great assured pudding, finally able to
grab Purfle’s spoon hand at the wrist and twirl him about, like jitterbugging a girl,
around in front of him, his own knife-edge now up and bisecting Purfle’s Adam’s apple,
ready to slice in. He looks up, around, wheezing, sweaty, seeking some locus of power
that will thumb-signal him what to do.
Nothing: only sleep, vomiting, shivering, a ghost and flowered odor of ethanol, solid
Bodine counting his money. Nobody really watching. It then comes to Bladdery and Purfle
at once, tuned to one another at the filed edge of this runcible spoon and the negligible
effort it will take to fill their common world with death, that nobody said anything
about a fight to the finish, right? that each will get part of the purse whoever wins,
and so the sensible course is to break it up now, jointly to go hassle Bodine, and
find some Band-Aids and iodine. And still they linger in their embrace, Death in all
its potency humming them romantic tunes, chiding them for moderate little men . . .
So far and no farther, is that it? You call that living?
An MP car, horn and siren and lights all going, approaches. Reluctantly, Purfle and
Bladdery do relax, and, sighing out of puffed cheeks, part. Bodine, ten feet away,
tosses over the heads of the awakening crowd a fat packet of scrip which the Commando
catches, riffle-splits, and gives half of to Purfle, who’s already on route to the
gangplank of his gray mother the
John E. Badass
, where the quarterdeck watch are looking more lively, and even a card game in the
ship’s laundry breaking up so everybody can go watch the big bust. Drunkards ashore
begin to mill, sluggish and with no sense of direction. From beyond the pale of electric
light comes a rush of girls, shivering, aroused, beruffled, to witch St. John Bladdery
away under cover of pretty-pastel synthetics and amorous squeals. Bodine and Krypton,
hipwriggling and cursing their way through the crowd, stumbling over wakers and sleepers,
stop by the dumpster to collect Slothrop, who rises from a pile of eggshells, beer
cans, horrible chicken parts in yellow gravy, coffee grounds and waste paper spilling
or clattering off of him, raises his mask, and smiles howdy at Bodine.
“Rocketman, holy shit, it really is. What’s happening, ol’ buddy?”
“Been double-crossed, need a ride to Putzi’s.” Lorries have been showing up, into
whose canvas shadows MPs are beginning to load everybody slower-moving than they are.
Now two civilians, one with a beard, come charging down the pier, hollering, “A pig
suit, a pig suit, there, look,” and, “You—Slothrop—stay where you are.”
Not about to, Slothrop with a great clank and crunch rolls out of the garbage and
at a dead run follows Bodine and Krypton, chickenfat flowing away, eggshells flying
off behind him. A Red Cross Clubmobile or canteen truck is parked down at the next
nest of destroyers, its light spilling neatly square on the asphalt, a pretty girl
with a Deanna Durbin hairdo framed inside against stacks of candy bars, cigarettes,
chock-shaped sandwiches in waxed paper.
“Coffee, boys?” she smiles, “how about some sandwiches? We’re sold out of everything
tonight but ham,” then seeing Slothrop, “oh, dear, I’m sorry. . . .”
“Keys to the truck,” Bodine coming up with a Cagney sneer and nickel-plated handgun,
“c’mon,” cocking the hammer.
Tough frown, shoulderpadded shrug. “In the ignition, Jackson.” Albert Krypton climbs
in the back to keep her company while Slothrop and Bodine jump in front and get under
way in a tight, screeching U-turn just as the two civilians come running up.
“Now who th’ hell’s zat,” Slothrop looking back out the window at their shouting shapes
diminishing, “did you check that one bird with the ace of spades on his cheek?”
Bodine swerves past the disturbance around the
John E. Badass
and gives everybody the obligatory finger. Slothrop slouches back in the seat, putting
the pig mask up like a knight’s beaver, reaching over to pry a pack of cigarettes
out of Bodine’s jumper pocket, lighting one up, weary, wishing he could just sleep. . . .
In back of him suddenly the Red Cross girl shrieks, “My God, what’s that?”
“Look,” Krypton patiently, “you get some on the end of your finger, right, then you
close off one half of your nose, a-and—”
“It’s cocaine!” the girl’s voice rising to an alarming intensity, “is what it is!
It’s heroin! You’re
dope fiends!
and you’ve kidnapped
me!
Oh, my God! This is a, don’t you realize, it’s a
Red Cross Clubmobile!
It’s the property of the Red Cross! Oh, you can’t
do
this! I’m with the Red Cross! Oh, help me, somebody! They’re dope fiends! Oh, please!
Help! Stop and let me out! Take the truck if you want, take everything in it, but
oh please don’t—”
“Steer a minute,” Bodine turning around and pointing his shiny pistol at the girl.
“You can’t shoot me,” she screams, “you hoodlum, who do you think you are, hijacking
Red Cross property! Why don’t you just—go somewhere and—sniff your dope and—leave
us alone!
”
“Cunt,” advises Seaman Bodine, in a calm and reasonable tone, “you are wrong. I
can
shoot you. Right? Now, you happen to be working for the same warm and wonderful organization
that was charging fifteen cents for coffee and doughnuts, at the Battle of the fucking
Bulge
, if you really wanna get into who is stealing what from who.”
“Whom,” she replies in a much smaller voice, lower lip quivering kind of cute and
bitchy it seems to Slothrop, checking it out in the rearview mirror as Bodine takes
over the wheel again.
“Oho, what’s this,” Krypton watching her ass, “what have we here,” shifting under
its khaki skirt as she stands with long legs braced for their rattling creaking 60
or 70 miles an hour and Bodine’s strange cornering techniques, which look to be some
stylized form of suicide.
“What’s your name?” Slothrop smiling, an avuncular pig.
“Shirley.”
“Tyrone. Howdy.”
“Tra-la-la,” Krypton now looting the cash register, gobbling Hershey bars and stuffing
his socks with packs of smokes, “love in bloom.” About then Bodine slams on the brakes
and goes into a great skid, ass end of their truck slewing toward an icy-lit tableau
of sentries in white-stenciled helmet liners, white belts, white holsters, a barricade
across the road, an officer running toward a jeep hunched up and hollering into a
walkie-talkie.
“Roadblock? What the shit,” Bodine grinding it into reverse, various goodies for the
troops crashing off of their shelves as the truck lurches around. Shirley loses her
footing and staggers forward, Krypton grabbing for her as Slothrop leans to take the
handgun off the dashboard, finding her half-draped over the front seat when he gets
back around to the window. “Where the fuck is low now? What is it, a Red Cross gearbox,
you got to put a nickel in someplace to get it in gear,
hey Shirley?”
“Oh, goodness,” Shirley squirming over into the front between them, grabbing the shift,
“like this, you drip.” Gunshots behind them.
“Thank you,” sez Bodine, and, leaving rubber in a pungent smoking shriek, they’re
off again.
“You’re really hot, Rocketman, wow,” Krypton lying in back offering ankle and taped
cocaine bottle to Shirley with a smile.
“Do tell.”
“No thanks,” sez Shirley. “I’d really better not.”
“C’mon . . . aw . . .”
“Were those snowdrops back there?” Slothrop squinting into the lampshine ahead, “GIs?
What’re GIs doing here in the British sector, do you know?”
“Maybe not,” Bodine guesses, “maybe only Shore Patrol, c’mon, let’s not get any more
paranoid than we
have
to. . . .”
“Look, see, I’m doing (snuff) it and I’m not growing (snuff) fangs or anything. . . .”
“Well, I just don’t know,” Shirley kneeling backwards, breasts propped on the back
of the seat, one big smooth country-girl hand on Slothrop’s shoulder for balance.
“Look,” Bodine sez, “is it currency, or dope, or what? I just like to know what to
expect, cause if the heat’s on—”
“Only on me, far as I know. This is nothing to do with dealing, it’s a whole different
drill.”
“She’s the rose of no-man’s laaaand,” sings Albert Krypton, coaxing.
“Why you going to Putzi’s?”
“Got to see that Springer.”
“Didn’t know he was coming in.”
“Why does everybody keep saying that?”
“Rebebber, dow,” Shirley talking with only one nostril here, “dot too
buch
, Albert, just a teensy bit.”
“Just that nobody’s seen him for a while.”
“Be inhaling now, good, good, O.K.,
now.
Umm, there’s a little still, uh, kind of a booger that’s blocking it . . . do it
again, right. Now the other one.”
“Albert
, you said only one.”
“Look, Rocky, if you do get busted—”
“Don’t want to think.”
“Jeepers,” sez Shirley.
“You like that? Here, just do a little more.”
“What’d you do?”
“Nothing. Wanted to talk to somebody at that SPOG. Find out what was happening. We
were just supposed to talk, you know, off the record, tonight in the dispensary. Neutral
ground. Instead The Man shows up. Now there are also these other two creeps in civvies.”
“You a spy, or something?”
“Wish I was even
that.
Oh boy. I should’ve known better.”
“Well it sounds pretty bad.” And Seaman Bodine drives along not liking it much, brooding,
growing sentimental. “Say,” presently, “if they do, well, catch up with you, I could
get in touch with your Mom, or something.”
“My—” A sharp look. “No, no, no . . .”
“Well, somebody.”
“Can’t think of a soul.”
“Wow, Rocketman. . . .”
Putzi’s turns out to be a sprawling, half-fortified manor house dating from the last
century, off the Dorum road and seaward down a sandy pair of wheel-tracks with reeds
and tough dune grass growing in between, the house perched like a raft atop a giant
comber of a sandhill that sweeps upward from a beach whose grade is so subtle that
it becomes water only by surprise, tranquil, salt-pale, stretching miles into the
North Sea like clouds, here and there more silver, long cell or skin shapes, tissue-thin,
stilled under the moon, reaching out toward Helgoland.