understood. He didn't see how he could be comfortable in such a place. But there was the issue of family, too: if he could make a certain kind of success for himself and for them, if he could give his son opportunities, didn't he oweit to the boy? His old man had never given him shit for opportunities, and he wouldn't be like that. He'd die before he was like that. If nothing else, he would give the boy some opportunities.
He tried again, though it was too soon. Back in Arkansas it would have been about 6:00 P.M.; she should be back home now, making supper for herself and the boy. But it was summer. The boy was out of school. He'd been in school when all this had begun, now he was out, as it was getting into late June. Who knew where they'd gone? Maybe they'd gone out for a little picnic or over to the Blue Eye drive-in, where the boy had the hot dogs and root beer that he loved so much. Maybe it was a church gathering or a?
But she answered.
The operator explained to her that it was long-distance from overseas and clicking and snapping filled the wire and then it was just the two of them.
'Oh, hi,' he said, 'it's me,' as if it could be anyone else.
'Good lord, Earl, I jump six feet every time the phone rings. I was in the garden the last time and couldn't get here in time.'
'I'm sorry. It's these operators. She hung up too fast.'
'How are you? They called from the congressman's office and said you'd been hurt a little, but they didn't have any details. They said you were a hero and would get another medal. But they didn't say anything else. So I called Colonel Jenks and he didn't know either.'
'Sorry, I should have called. Yes, I was hurt some, but it wasn't a thing. I'm fine. I'm out of the hosp?'
'The hospital!'
'It's all better. I have a limp, but it'll go away.'
'Good lord, Earl, what happened?'
'Oh, it was a law-enforcement situation, there was a little shooting, and I got nicked. It's nothing.'
'Earl, you never learn. Now you are risking your life for less than nothing, meaning that braying toad Harry Etheridge, whom I wouldn't trust any further than I could throw the Frigidaire.'
'Boss Harry is nothing to take home, you are right on that score.'
'Earl, you get back here. Your boy misses you terribly. He just looks out the window like a sad sack. I can't get him to play ball or anything. The last time you were gone for so long, he was so young he didn't really understand. Now he knows you're gone and I can see him hurting inside. He's getting quieter and quieter.'
'Well, see, that's the thing. As you know, Congressman Harry's gone home. But see, I have an opportunity here.'
'Oh, lord.'
'It's with the government. There's some work they think I can do for them. They like me, they've made me what looks like a right fine offer.'
'Earl, you are happy in Arkansas and so am I. You don't need anything from the government. Last time you worked for the government, you were shot seven times, all over the Pacific. I thought that was over, but now you're with the government and you've been shot again. And all so soon after the last time you were away-and it took a full year before you were fully yourself on that one, and God knows what you did, and not even Sam will tell me a word about it. You just say, as you always say, 'It was nothing.''
'Junie, it's the boy I'm thinking about. If I got a big job in Washington we could live in a much nicer place, he could go to better schools and have a life we can't dream of.'
'Yes, that's wonderful, it's all for Bob Lee, but it involves some kind of helling around and there'll be more shooting and in your heart of hearts that's what you love. You're an old dog so used to blood sport you still go all slobbery at the thought. I know you, Earl, but I also know that as big a hero as you are, you will run dry on luck one time out. Maybe the next time out. That boy doesn't need a hero, he needs a father. No boy can live up to a hero. He'll die trying and you'll already have died being one.'
'Junie, I have to take this chance. I'd be no good to myself if I didn't, honey. I won't wait so long to call the next time.'
'Oh, Earl,' she said, 'you never change. Not a bit, not in all these years. I love you.'
'I love you too, Junie.'
She hung up and the click sounded loud and far-off at once.
He looked around, trying to chase the black dogs that nipped at him and made him hunger for a drink, because that was the sure thing that would chase them off. Only then they'd come back, meaner than ever. He knew he couldn't stay in the room, since it was still early and he could feel Havana somehow happening outside the walls.
So he told himself he needed some air. He took the elevator down, just a big crewcut American in an old khaki suit and a white shirt and old Marine Corps brogues, and walked through the lobby, filled up with louder duplicates of himself, and out into the streets. Across the way, the Parque Central was jammed up with people who mingled this way and that or argued baseball or drank beer. They sure seemed happy. The Cubans loved to talk and drink and hug and smoke. He never saw a people that knew how to have a better time. He wandered a bit through the crowds and under the trees, thinking he might mosey over there to that Hotel Inglaterra where a party seemed to be going on, but then the crowd seemed to push him in a different direction, he left the park, he wandered down busy streets drawn by the sound of the jivey, fast-stepping Cuban music. Who could deny the magic of that stuff? All kinds of little bars and clubs seemed jammed up and swinging hard, full of revelers, and he tried to pick a one that he'd feel comfortable in. He wandered along cobblestones and didn't feel like going as far as the Bodeguita del Medio, and after a while he found a clean, well-lighted place called La Floridita that looked less Cuban than the other places, more big-city America.
In he went, finding himself in a dark hall that was all bar at one side and all people everywhere else, while a mambo crew wandered about, paying out that blood rhythm of the Cubano music. Earl took a reading and divined that he liked the place, that it was too crowded for problems and that there were enough Americans here so he would feel pretty much at home. He slipped through crowds of merrymakers until he found space at the bar. Some kind of party was going on and the place was full of action; he could feel whatever it was pounding in the air, loud as the music, a hum of drama. It was as if ballplayers were here, but they couldn't be, because it was the end of June, the season had been running near to three full months. Maybe movie people, but Earl didn't know anything about movie people, so none of the faces were recognizable to him. He turned his back on it, and when the barkeeper came up, in his red jacket and black tie, so fancy, Earl tried out his brothel Spanish to get a gin and tonic with no gin, but plenty of tonic. The cooling of the liquid helped some, and he had another pretend-drink, just minding his own business. Everyone seemed to be drinking milkshakes in cocktail glasses and behind the curved bar there was some kind of highly idealized view of the harbor as it must have looked from a conqueror's ship heading inward. It was somewhere along in here when he became aware that a new person was next to him, and that she was staring at him.
He looked over.
Well, sometimes it happens. She was what the boys would call a knockout. She was dark and brown, and he saw not Cuban, but some sort of Asian-Filipina, maybe. But she had white in her too, and something fierce in her eyes that he'd only seen in Japanese field-grade officers, a kind of bravado and swagger that just drew you in.
'You're a big one,' she said.
'I happen to be, yes, ma'am.'
'Are you tough?'
'What?'
'I said, are you tough?'
'Not really.'
'Damn.'
'What's the problem.'
'I've got this big guy pawing me. He won't take no for an answer. Coming here was a big mistake, but I can't seem to get away.'
'Ma'am, I can't fight him for you. It doesn't work that way. I don't need the trouble and people get hurt bad in fights. Best bet is call a cab and walk fast for it and he's probably too drunk to come after. Or have the barkeep call the cops.'
