4
THE following Saturday I got out of the Army. Naturally, they had to have a little ceremony. Institutions always feel they have to have a little ceremony. I’ve never been able to figure out why really. I’m sure nobody really give a rat’s ass about all that nonsense. In this case, we walked in a line through a room; and a little warrant officer, who must have screwed up horribly somewhere to get stuck with the detail, handed each of us a little brown envelope with the piece of paper in it. Then he shook hands with us. I took the envelope, briefly fondled his sweaty hand, walked out, and it was all over.
“You sure you got my address, Alders?” Benson asked as we fished around in the pile for our duffle bags.
“Yeah, kid, I got it,” I told him.
“Les-ter,” a woman’s voice yodeled from the parking lot.
“That’s my mom,” Benson said. “I gotta go now.”
“Take care, kid,” I told him, shaking his hand.
“Be sure and write me, huh? I mean it. Let’s keep in touch.”
“Les-ter! Over here.”
“I gotta run. So long, Dan.” It was the only time in two years he’d ever used my first name.
“Bye, Les,” I said.
He took off, weighted way off-balance by his duffle bag. I watched him go.
I stood looking at the parking lot until I located Jack’s Plymouth. I slung the duffle bag by the strap from my left shoulder and headed toward my brother’s car. It’s funny, but I almost felt a little sad. I even saluted a passing captain, just to see if it felt any different. It did.
Jack was leaning against the side of his car. “Hey, man, you sure throw a sharp highball.” He grinned as I came up. “Why didn’t you just thumb your nose at the bastard?”
I shrugged. “He’s still in and I’m out. Why should I bug him?”
“You all ready? I mean have you got any more bullshit to go through?”
“All finished,” I said. “I just done been civilianized. I got my divorce papers right here.” I waved the envelope at him.
“Let’s cut out, then. I’ve got your civvies in the back seat.”
I looked around once. The early afternoon sun blasted down on the parking lot, and the yellow barracks shimmered in the heat. It looked strange already. “Let’s go,” I said and climbed into the back seat.
There was a guy sitting in the front seat. I didn’t know him.
“Oh,” Jack said, “this is Lou McKlearey, a buddy of mine. Works for Sloane.”
McKlearey was lean and sort of blond. I’d have guessed him at about thirty. His eyes were a very cold blue and had a funny look to them. He stuck out his hand, and when we shook hands, he seemed to be trying to squeeze the juice out of my fingers.
“Hi, Dogface,” he said in a raspy voice. He gave me a funny feeling—almost like being in the vicinity of a fused bomb. Some guys are like that.
“Ignore him,” Jack said. “Lou’s an ex-Marine gunnery sergeant. He just ain’t had time to get civilized yet.”
“Let’s get out of here, huh?” Suddenly I couldn’t stand being on Army ground anymore.
Jack fired up the car and wheeled out of the lot. We barreled on down to the gate and eased out into the real world.
“Man,” I said “it’s like getting out of jail.”
“Anyhow, Jackie,” McKlearey said, apparently continuing what he’d been talking about before I got to the car, “we unloaded that crippled Caddy on a Nigger sergeant from McChord Field for a flat grand. You know them fuckin’ Niggers; you can paint ‘Cadillac’ on a baby buggy, and they’ll buy it.”
“Couldn’t he tell that the block was cracked?” Jack asked him.
“Shit! That dumb spade barely knew where the gas pedal was. So we upped the price on the Buick to four hundred over book, backed the speedometer to forty-seven thousand, put in new floor mats, and dumped it on a red-neck corporal from Georgia. He traded us a ’57 Chevy stick that was all gutted out. We gave him two hundred trade-in. Found out later that the crooked son of a bitch had packed sawdust in the transmission—oldest stunt in the book. You just can’t trust a reb. They’re so goddamn stupid that they’ll try stuff you think nobody’s dumb enough to try anymore, so you don’t even bother to check it out.
“Well, we flushed out the fuckin’ sawdust and packed the box with heavy grease and then sold that pig for two and a quarter to some smart-ass high school kid who thought he knew all about cars. Shit! I could sell a three-wheel ’57 Chevy to the smartest fuckin’ kid in the world. They’re all hung up on that dog—Niggers and Caddies; kids and ’57 Chevies—it’s all the same.
“So, by the end of the week, we’d moved around eight cars, made a flat fifteen hundred clear profit, and didn’t have a damn thing left on the lot that hadn’t been there on Monday morning.”
“Christ”—Jack laughed—“no wonder Sloane throws money around like a drunken sailor.”
“That lot of his is a fuckin’ gold mine,” McKlearey said. “It’s like havin’ a license to steal. Of course, the fact that he’s so crooked he has to screw himself out of bed in the morning doesn’t hurt either.”
“Man, that’s the goddamn truth,” Jack agreed. “How you doin’ back there, Dan?”
“I’m still with you,” I said.
“Here,” he said. He fumbled under the seat and came out with a brown-bagged bottle. He poked it back at me. “Celebrate your newfound freedom.”
“Amen, old buddy,” I said fervently. I unscrewed the top and took a long pull at the bottle, fumbling with my necktie at the same time.
“You want me to haul into a gas station so you can change?” he asked me.
“I can manage back here, I think,” I told him. “Two hundred guys got out this morning. Every gas station for thirty miles has got a line outside the men’s room by now.”
“You’re probably right,” Jack agreed. “Just don’t get us arrested for indecent exposure.”
It took me a mile or two to change clothes. I desperately wanted to get out of that uniform. After I changed though, I rolled my GI clothes very carefully and tucked them away in my duffle bag. I didn’t ever want to wear them again—or even look at them—but I didn’t want them wrinkled up.
“Well,” I said when I’d finished. “I may not be too neat, but I’m a civilian again. Have a drink.” I passed the bottle on up to the front seat.
Jack took a belt and handed the jug to McKlearey. He took a drink and passed the bottle back to me. “Have another rip,” he said.
“Let’s stop and have a couple beers,” I suggested. I suddenly wanted to go into a bar—a place where there were other people. I think I wanted to see if I would fit in. I wasn’t a GI anymore. I wanted to really see if I was a civilian.
“Mama Cat’s got some chow waitin’,” Jack said, “but I guess we’ve got time for a couple.”
“Any place’ll do,” I said.
“I know just how he feels, Jackie,” Lou said. “After a hitch, a man needs to unwind a bit. When I got out the last time in Dago, I hit this joint right outside the gate and didn’t leave for a week. Haul in at the Patio—it’s just up the street.”
“Yeah,” Jack agreed, “seems to me I got all juiced up when I got out of the Navy, too. Hey, ain’t that funny? Army, Navy, Marines—all of us in here at once.” It was the kind of dung Jack would notice.
“Maybe we can find a fly-boy someplace and have a summit conference,” I said.
