Harry was alone when I walked in the little knotty-pine tavern which had a pool table, a few sad booths, and a dozen bar stools. The neighborhood business was never very good. It was quiet and cool and dark in there and I was glad.
“Hi, Bumper,” he said, drawing a draft beer in a frosted glass for me.
“Evening, Harry,” I said, grabbing a handful of pretzels from one of the dishes he had on the bar. Harry’s was one of the few joints left where you could actually get something free, like pretzels.
“How’s business, Bumper?”
“Mine’s always good, Harry,” I said, which is what policemen always answer to that question.
“Anything exciting happen on your beat lately?” Harry was about seventy, an ugly little goblin with bony shoulder blades who hopped around behind the bar like a sparrow.
“Let’s see,” I said, trying to think of some gossip. Since Harry used to own a bar downtown, he knew a lot of the people I knew. “Yeah, remember Frog LaRue?”
“The little hype with the stooped-over walk?”
“That one.”
“Yeah,” said Harry. “I must’ve kicked that junkie out of my joint a million times after you said he was dealing dope. Never could figure out why he liked to set up deals in my bar.”
“He got his ass shot,” I said.
“What’d he do, try to sell somebody powdered sugar in place of stuff?”
“No, a narco cop nailed him.”
“Yeah? Why would anybody shoot Frog? He couldn’t hurt nobody but himself.”
“Anybody can hurt somebody, Harry,” I said. “But in this case it was a mistake. Old Frog always kept a blade on the window sill in any hotel he stayed at. And the window’d be open even in the dead of winter. That was his M.O. If someone came to his door who he thought was cops, Frog’d slit the screen and throw his dope and his outfit right out the window. One night the narcs busted in the pad when they heard from a snitch that Frog was holding, and old Froggy dumped a spoon of junk out the window. He had to slit the screen to do it and when this narc came crashing through the door, his momentum carried him clear across this little room, practically onto Frog’s bed. Frog was crouched there with the blade still in his hand. The partner coming through second had his gun drawn and that was it, he put two almost in the ten ring of the goddamn bull’s-eye.” I put my fist on my chest just to the right of the heart to show where they hit him.
“Hope the poor bastard didn’t suffer.”
“Lived two days. He told about the knife bit to the detectives and swore how he never would’ve tried to stab a cop.”
“Poor bastard,” said Harry.
“At least he died the way he lived. Armload of dope. I heard from one of the dicks that at the last they gave him a good stiff jolt of morphine. Said old Frog laying there with two big holes in his chest actually looked happy at the end.”
“Why in the hell don’t the state just give dope to these poor bastards like Frog?” said Harry, disgustedly.
“It’s the high they crave, not just feeling healthy. They build up such a tolerance you’d have to keep increasing the dose and increasing it until you’d have to give them a fix that’d make a pussycat out of King Kong. And heroin substitutes don’t work with a stone hype. He wants the real thing. Pretty soon you’d be giving him doses that’d kill him anyway.”
“What the hell, he’d be better off. Some of them probably wouldn’t complain.”
“Got to agree with you there,” I nodded. “Damn straight.”
“Wish that bitch’d get here,” Harry mumbled, checking the bar clock.
“Who’s that?”
“Irma, the goofy barmaid I hired last week. You seen her yet?”
“Don’t think so,” I said, sipping the beer, so cold it hurt my teeth.
“Sexy little twist,” said Harry, “but a kook, you know? She’ll steal your eyes out if you let her. But a good body. I’d like to break her open like a shotgun and horsefuck her.”
“Thought you told me you were getting too old for that,” I said, licking the foam off my upper lip, and finishing the glass, which Harry hurried to refill.
“I am, God knows, but once in a while I get this terrible urge, know what I mean? Sometimes when I’m closing up and I’m alone with her. . . .I ain’t stirred the old lady for a couple years, but I swear when I’m with Irma I get the urge like a young stallion. I’m not
that
old, you know. Not by a long shot. But you know how my health’s always been. Lately there’s been this prostate problem. Still, when I’m around this Irma I’m awful randy. I feel like I could screw anything from a burro to a cowboy boot.”
“I’ll have to see this wench,” I smiled.
“You won’t take her away from me, will you, Bumper?”
I thought at first he was kidding and then I saw the desperate look on his face. “No, of course not, Harry.”
“I really think I could make it with her, Bumper. I been depressed lately, especially with this prostate, but I could be a man again with Irma”
“Sure, Harry.” I’d noticed the change coming over him gradually for the past year. He sometimes forgot to pick up bar money, which was very unusual for him. He mixed up customers’ names and sometimes told you things he’d told you the last time he saw you. Mostly that, repeating things. A few of the other regular customers mentioned it when we played pool out of earshot. Harry was getting senile and it was not only sad, it was scary. It made my skin crawl. I wondered how much longer he’d be able to run the joint. I laid a quarter on the bar, and sure enough, he absently picked it up. The first time I ever bought my own drink in Harry’s place.
“My old lady can’t last much longer, Bumper. I ever tell you that the doctors only give her a year?”
“Yeah, you told me.”
“Guy my age can’t be alone. This prostate thing, you know I got to stand there and coax for twenty minutes before I can take a leak. And you don’t know how lovely it is to be able to sit down and take a nice easy crap. You know, Bumper, a nice easy crap is a thing of beauty.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“I could do all right with a dame like Irma. Make me young again, Irma could.” Sure.
“You try to go it alone when you get old and you’ll be rotting out a coffin liner before you know it. You got to have somebody to keep you alive. If you don’t, you might die without even knowing it. Get what I mean?”
“Yeah.”
It was so depressing being here with Harry that I decided to split, but one of the local cronies came in.
“Hello, Freddie,” I said, as he squinted through six ounces of eyeglasses into the cool darkness.
“Hi, Bumper,” said Freddie, recognizing my voice before he got close enough to make me through his half-inch horn-rims. Nobody could ever mistake his twangy voice which could get on your nerves after a bit. Freddie limped over and laid both arthritic hands on the bar knowing I’d bounce for a couple drinks.
“A cold one for Freddie,” I said, suddenly afraid that Harry wouldn’t even know him. But that was ridiculous, I thought, putting a dollar on the bar, Harry’s deterioration was only beginning. I usually bought for the bar when there were enough people in there to make Harry a little coin, trouble is, there were seldom more than three or four customers in Harry’s at any one time anymore. I guess everyone runs from a man when he starts to die.
“How’s business, Bumper?” asked Freddie, holding the mug in both his hands, fingers like crooked twigs.
“My business’s always good, Freddie.”
Freddie snuffled and laughed. I stared at Freddie for a few seconds while he drank. My stomach was burning and Harry had me spooked. Freddie suddenly looked ancient too. Christ, he probably was at least sixty-five. I’d never thought about Freddie as an older guy, but suddenly he was. Little old men they were. I had nothing in common with them now.
“Girls keeping you busy lately, Bumper?” Harry winked. He didn’t know about Cassie or that I stopped chasing around after I met her.
“Been slowing down a little in that department, Harry,” I said.
“Keep at it, Bumper,” said Harry, cocking his head to one side and nodding like a bird. “The art of fornication is something you lose if you don’t practice it. The eye muscles relax, you get bifocals like Freddie. The love muscles relax, whatta you got?”
“Maybe he is getting old, Harry,” said Freddie, dropping his empty glass on its side as he tried to hand it to Harry with those twisted hands.
“Old? You kidding?” I said.
“How about you, Freddie?” said Harry. “You ain’t got arthritis of the cock, have you? When was the last time you had a piece of ass?”
“About the last time you did,” said Freddie sharply.
“Shit, before my Flossie got sick, I used to tear off a chunk every night. Right up till when she got sick, and I was sixty-eight years old then.”
“Haw!” said Freddie, spilling some beer over the gnarled fingers. “You ain’t been able to do anything but lick it for the past twenty years.”
“Yeah?” said Harry, nodding fast now, like a starving little bird at a feed tray. “You know what I did to Irma here one night? Know what?”
“What?”
“I laid her right over the table there. What do you think of that, wise guy?”
“Haw. Haw. Haw,” said Freddie who had been a little bit fried when he came in and was really feeling it now.
“All you can do is read about it in those dirty books,” said Harry. “Me, I don’t read about it, I do it! I threw old Irma right over that bar there and poured her the salami for a half hour!”
“Haw. Haw. Haw,” said Freddie. “It’d take you that long to find that shriveled up old cricket dick. Haw. Haw. Haw.”
“What’s the sense of starting a beef?” I muttered to both of them. I was getting a headache. “Gimme a couple aspirin will you, Harry?” I said, and he shot the grinning Freddie a pissed-off look, and muttering under his breath, brought me a bottle of aspirin and a glass of water.
I shook out three pills and pushed the water away, swallowing the pills with a mouthful of beer. “One more beer,” I said, “and then I gotta make it.”
“Where you going, Bump? Out to hump?” Harry leered, and winked at Freddie, forgetting he was supposed to be mad as hell.
“Going to a friend’s house for dinner.”
“Nice slice of tail waiting, huh?” said Harry, nodding again.
“Not tonight. Just having a quiet dinner.”
“Quiet dinner,” said Freddie. “Haw. Haw. Haw.”
“Screw you, Freddie,” I said, getting mad for a second as he giggled in his beer. Then I thought, Jesus, I’m getting loony too.
The phone rang and Harry went to the back of the bar to answer it. In a few seconds he was bitching at somebody, and Freddie looked at me, shaking his head.
“Harry’s going downhill real fast, Bumper.”
“I know he is, so why get him pissed off?”
“I don’t mean to,” said Freddie. “I just lose my temper with him sometimes, he acts so damned nasty. I heard the doctors’re just waiting for Flossie to die. Any day now.”
I thought of how she was ten years ago, a fat, tough old broad, full of hell and jokes. She fixed such good cold-cut sandwiches I used to make a dinner out of them at least once a week.
“Harry can’t make it without her,” said Freddie. “Ever since she went away to the hospital last year he’s been getting more and more childish, you noticed?”
I finished my beer and thought, I’ve
got
to get the hell out of here.
“It happens only to people like Harry and me. When you love somebody and need them so much especially when you’re old, and then lose them, that’s when it happens to you. It’s the most godawful thing that ever could happen to you, when your mind rots like Harry’s. Better your body goes like Flossie’s. Flossie’s the lucky one, you know. You’re lucky too. You don’t love nobody and you ain’t married to nothing but that badge. Nothing can ever touch you, Bumper.”
“Yeah, but how about when you get too old to do the job, Freddie? How about then?”
“Well, I never thought about that, Bumper.” Freddie tipped the mug and dribbled on his chin. He licked some foam off one knotted knuckle. “Never thought about that, but I’d say you don’t have to worry about it. You get a little older and charge around the way you do and somebody’s bound to bump you off. It might sound cold, but what the hell, Bumper, look at
that
crazy old bastard.” He waved a twisted claw toward Harry still yelling in the phone. “Screwing everything with his imagination and a piece of dead skin. Look at me. What the hell, dying on your beat wouldn’t be the worst way to go, would it?”
“Know why I come to this place, Freddie? It’s just the most cheerful goddamn drinking establishment in Los Angeles. Yeah, the conversation is stimulating and the atmosphere is very jolly and all.”
Harry came back before I could get away from the bar. “Know who that was, Bumper?” he said, his eyes glassy and his cheeks pale. He had acne as a young man and now his putty-colored cheeks looked corroded.
“Who was it,” I sighed, “Irma?”
“No, that was the hospital. I spent every cent I had, even with the hospital benefits, and now she’s been put in a big ward with a million other old, dying people. And still I got to pay money for one thing or another. You know, when Flossie finally dies there ain’t going to be nothing left to bury her. I had to cash in the insurance. How’ll I bury old Flossie, Bumper?”
I started to say something to soothe Harry, but I heard sobbing and realized Freddie had started blubbering. Then in a second or two Harry started, so I threw five bucks on the bar for Freddie and Harry to get bombed on, and I got the hell away from those two without even saying good-bye. I’ve never understood how people can work in mental hospitals and old people’s homes and places like that without going nuts. I felt about ready for the squirrel tank right now just being around those two guys for an hour.
T
EN MINUTES LATER
I was driving my Ford north on the Golden State Freeway and I started getting hungry for Socorro’s enchiladas. I got to Eagle Rock at dusk and parked in front of the big old two-story house with the neat lawn and flower gardens on the sides. I was wondering if Socorro planted vegetables in the back this year, when I saw Cruz in the living room standing by the front window. He opened the door and stepped out on the porch, wearing a brown sport shirt and old brown slacks and his house slippers. Cruz didn’t have to dress up for me, and I was glad to come here and see everyone comfortable, as though I belonged here, and in a way I did. Most bachelor cops have someplace like Cruz’s house to go to once in a while. Naturally, you can get a little ding-a-ling if you live on the beat and don’t ever spend some time with decent people. So you find a friend or a relative with a family and go there to get your supply of faith replenished,
I called Cruz my old roomie because when we first got out of the police academy twenty years ago, I moved into this big house with him and Socorro. Dolores was a baby, and Esteban a toddler. I took a room upstairs for over a year and helped them with their house payments until we were through paying for our uniforms and guns, and were both financially on our feet. That hadn’t been a bad year and I’d never forget Socorro’s cooking. She always said she’d rather cook for a man like me who appreciated her talent than a thin little guy like Cruz who never ate much and didn’t really appreciate good food. Socorro was a slender girl then, twelve years younger than Cruz, nineteen years old, with two kids already, and the heavy Spanish accent of El Paso which is like that of Mexico itself. They’d had a pretty good life I guess, until Esteban insisted on joining the army and was killed two years ago. They weren’t the same after that. They’d never be the same after that.
“How do you feel,
oso?
” said Cruz, as I climbed the concrete stairs to his porch. I grinned because Socorro had first started calling me
“oso”
way back in those days, and even now some of the policemen call me “bear” from Socorro’s nickname.
“You hurting, Bumper?” Cruz asked. “I heard those kids gave you some trouble at the demonstration today.”
“I’m okay,” I answered. “What’d you hear?”
“Just that they pushed you around a little bit.
Hijo la
—. Why does a man your age get involved in that kind of stuff? Why don’t you listen to me and just handle your radio calls and let those young coppers handle the militants and do the hotdog police work?”
“I answered a radio call. That’s how it started. That’s what I get for having that goddamn radio turned on.”
“Come on in, you stubborn old bastard,” Cruz grinned, holding the wood frame screen door open for me. Where could you see a wood frame screen door these days? It was an old house, but preserved. I loved it here. Cruz and I once sanded down all the woodwork in the living room, even the hardwood floor, and refinished it just as it had been when it was new.
“What’re we having?” Cruz asked, brushing back his thick gray-black hair and nodding toward the kitchen.
“Well, let’s see,” I sniffed. I sniffed again a few times, and then took a great huge whiff. Actually I couldn’t tell, because the chile and onion made it hard to differentiate, but I took a guess and pretended I knew.
“
Chile relleno, carnitas
and
cilantro
and onion. And . . . let’s see . . . some enchiladas, some guacamole.”
“I give up,” Cruz shook his head. “The only thing you left out was rice and beans.”
“Well hell, Cruz,
arroz y frijoles
, that goes without saying.”
“An animal’s nose.”
“Sukie in the kitchen?”
“Yeah, the kids’re in the backyard, some of them.”
I went through the big formal dining room to the kitchen and saw Socorro, her back to me, ladling out a huge wooden spoonful of rice into two of the bowls that sat on the drainboard. She was naturally a little the worse for wear after twenty years and nine kids, but her hair was as long and black and shiny rich as ever, and though she was twenty pounds heavier, she still was a strong, lively-looking girl with the whitest teeth I’d ever seen. I snuck up behind her and tickled her ribs.
“Ay!” she said, dropping the spoon. “Bumper!”
I gave her a hug from the back while Cruz chuckled and said, “You didn’t surprise him, he smelled from the door and knew just what you fixed for him.”
“He’s not a man, this one,” she smiled, “no man ever had a nose like that.”
“Just what I told him,” said Cruz.
“Sit down, Bumper,” said Socorro, waving to the kitchen table, which, big and old as it was, looked lost in the huge kitchen. I’d seen this kitchen when there wasn’t a pathway to walk through, the day after Christmas when all the kids were young and I’d brought them toys. Kids and toys literally covered every foot of linoleum and you couldn’t even see the floor then.
“Beer, Bumper?” asked Cruz, and opened two cold ones without me answering. We still liked drinking them out of the bottle, both of us, and I almost finished mine without taking it away from my mouth. And Cruz, knowing my M.O. so well, uncapped another one.
“Cruz told me the news, Bumper. I was thrilled to hear it,” said Socorro, slicing an onion, her eyes glistening from the fumes.
“About you retiring right away and going with Cassie when she leaves,” said Cruz.
“That’s good, Bumper,” said Socorro. “There’s no sense hanging around after Cassie leaves. I was worried about that.”
“Sukie was afraid your
puta
would seduce you away from Cassie if she was up in San Francisco and you were down here.”
“Puta?”
“The beat,” said Cruz taking a gulp of the beer. “Socorro always calls it Bumper’s
puta.
”
“Cuidao!”
said Socorro to Cruz. “The children are right outside the window.” I could hear them laughing, and Nacho yelled something then, and the girls squealed.
“Since you’re leaving, we can talk about her can’t we, Bumper?” Cruz laughed. “That beat is a
puta
who seduced you all these years.”
Then for the first time I noticed from his grin and his voice that Cruz had had a few before I got there. I looked at Socorro who nodded and said, “Yes, the old
borracho
’s been drinking since he got home from work. Wants to celebrate Bumper’s last dinner as a bachelor, he says.”
“Don’t be too rough on him,” I grinned. “He doesn’t get drunk very often.”
“Who’s drunk?” said Cruz, indignantly.
“You’re on your way,
pendejo
,” said Socorro, and Cruz mumbled in Spanish, and I laughed and finished my beer.
“If it hadn’t been for that
puta
, Bumper would’ve been a captain by now.”
“Oh sure,” I said, going to the refrigerator and drawing two more beers for Cruz and me. “Want one, Sukie?”
“No thanks,” said Socorro, and Cruz burped a couple times.
“Think I’ll go outside and see the kids,” I said, and then I remembered the presents in the trunk of my car that I bought Monday after Cruz invited me to dinner.
“Hey, you roughnecks,” I said when I stepped out, and Nacho yelled, “Buuuum-per,” and swung toward me from a rope looped over the limb of a big oak that covered most of the yard.
“You’re getting about big enough to eat hay and pull a wagon, Nacho,” I said. Then four of them ran toward me chattering about something, their eyes all sparkling because they knew damn well I’d never come for dinner without bringing them something.
“Where’s Dolores?” I asked. She was my favorite now, the oldest after Esteban, and was a picture of what her mother had been. She was a college junior majoring in physics and engaged to a classmate of hers.
“Dolores is out with Gordon, where else?” said Ralph, a chubby ten-year-old, the baby of the family who was a terror, always raising some kind of hell and keeping everyone in an uproar.
“Where’s Alice?”
“Over next door playing,” said Ralph again, and the four of them, Nacho, Ralph, María, and Marta were all about to bust, and I was enjoying it even though it was a shame to make them go through this.
“Nacho,” I said nonchalantly, “would you please take my car keys and get some things out of the trunk?”
“I’ll help,” shrieked Marta.
“I will,” said María, jumping up and down, a little eleven-year-old dream in a pink dress and pink socks and black patent leather shoes. She was the prettiest and would be heartbreakingly beautiful someday.
“I’ll go alone,” said Nacho. “I don’t need no help.”
“The hell you will,” said Ralph.
“You watch your language, Rafael,” said María, and I had to turn around to keep from busting up at the way Ralph stuck his chubby little fanny out at her.
“Mama,” said María. “Ralph did something dirty!”
“Snitch,” said Ralph, running to the car with Nacho.
I strolled back into the kitchen still laughing, and Cruz and Socorro both were smiling at me because they knew how much I got a bang out of their kids.
“Take Bumper in the living room, Cruz,” said Socorro. “Dinner won’t be ready for twenty minutes.”
“Come on, Bumper,” said Cruz, taking four cold ones out of the refrigerator, and a beer opener. “I don’t know why Mexican women get to be tyrants in their old age. They’re so nice and obedient when they’re young.”
“Old age. Huh! Listen to the
viejo
, Bumper,” she said, waving a wooden spoon in his direction, as we went in the living room and I flopped in Cruz’s favorite chair because he insisted. He pushed the ottoman over and made me put my feet up.
“Damn, Cruz.”
“Got to give you extra special treatment tonight, Bumper,” he said, opening another beer for me. “You look dog tired, and this may be the last we have you for a long time.”
“I’ll only be living one hour away by air. You think Cassie and me aren’t gonna come to L.A. once in a while? And you think you and Socorro and the kids aren’t gonna come see us up there?”
“The whole platoon of us?” he laughed.
“We’re gonna see each other plenty, that’s for sure,” I said, and fought against the down feeling that I was getting because I realized we probably would
not
be seeing each other very often at all.
“Yeah, Bumper,” said Cruz, sitting across from me in the other old chair, almost as worn and comfortable as this one. “I was afraid that jealous bitch would never let you go.”
“You mean my beat?”
“Right.” He took several big gulps on the beer and I thought about how I was going to miss him.
“How come all the philosophizing tonight? Calling my beat a whore and all that?”
“I’m waxing poetic tonight.”
“You also been tipping more than a little
cerveza
.”
Cruz winked and peeked toward the kitchen where we could hear Socorro banging around. He went to an old mahogany hutch that was just inside the dining room and took a half-empty bottle of mescal out of the bottom cabinet.
“That one have a worm in it?”
“If it did I drank it,” he whispered. “Don’t want Sukie to see me drinking it. I still have a little trouble with my liver and I’m not supposed to.”
“Is that the stuff you bought in San Luis? That time on your vacation?”
“That’s it, the end of it.”
“You won’t need any liver you drink that stuff.”
“It’s good, Bumper. Here, try a throatful or two.”
“Better with salt and lemon.”
“Pour it down. You’re the big
macho
, damn it. Drink like one.”
I took three fiery gulps and a few seconds after they hit bottom I regretted it, and had to drain my bottle of beer while Cruz chuckled and sipped slowly for his turn.
“Damn,” I wheezed and then the fire fanned out and my guts uncoiled and I felt good. Then in a few minutes I felt better. That was the medicine my body needed.
“They don’t always have salt and lemon lying around down in Mexico,” said Cruz handing me back the mescal. “Real Mexicans just mix it with saliva.”
“No wonder they’re such tough little bastards,” I wheezed, taking another gulp, but only one this time, and handing it back.
“How do you feel now,
’mano
?” Cruz giggled, and it made me start laughing, his silly little giggle that always started when he was half swacked.
“I feel about half as good as you,” I said, and splashed some more beer into the burning pit that was my stomach. But it was a different fire entirely than the one made by the stomach acid, this was a friendly fire, and after it smoldered it felt great.
“Are you hungry?” asked Cruz.
“Ain’t I always?”
“You are,” he said, “you’re hungry for almost everything. Always. I’ve often wished I was more like you.”
“Like me?”
“Always feasting, on
everything
. Too bad it can’t go on forever. But it can’t. I’m damn glad you’re getting out now.”
“You’re drunk.”
“I am. But I know what I’m talking about,
’mano
. Cassie was sent to you. I prayed for that.” Then Cruz reached in his pocket for the little leather pouch. In it was the string of black carved wooden beads he carried for luck. He squeezed the soft leather and put it away.
“Did those beads really come from Jerusalem?”
“They did, that’s no baloney. I got them from a missionary priest for placing first in my school in El Paso. ‘First prize in spelling to Cruz Guadalupe Segovia,’ the priest said, as he stood in front of the whole school, and I died of happiness that day. I was thirteen, just barely. He got the beads in the Holy Land and they were blessed by Pius XI.”
“How many kids did you beat out for the prize?”
“About six entered the contest. There were only seventy-five in the school altogether. I don’t think the other five contestants spoke any English. They thought the contest would be in Spanish but it wasn’t, so I won.”
We both laughed at that. “I never won a thing, Cruz. You’re way ahead of me.” It was amazing to think of a real man like Cruz carrying those wooden beads. In this day and age!
Then the front door banged open and the living room was filled with seven yelling kids, only Dolores being absent that night, and Cruz shook his head and sat back quietly drinking his beer and Socorro came into the living room and tried to give me hell for buying all the presents, but you couldn’t hear yourself over the noisy kids.