Dixie City Jam

'Dave, the sub we want had the number U-138 on the conning tower. It also had a wreathed sword and a swastika on the tower,' he said. 'Is that the one you found? Can you tell me that much?'

A floor fan vibrated in the silence. I saw him try to suppress the twitch of anger that invaded his face. He put his thumb on a spot south of Grand Isle.

'Is this the last place you saw it?' he asked.

The red, black, and white flag puffed and ruffled against the cinder-block wall in the breeze from the fan.

His hand slipped over the top of my skull like a bowl. I could feel the sweat and water oozing from under his palm.

'You going to be a hard tail on me? Are the Jews and Negroes worth all this?' he said. He slowly oscillated my head, his mouth open, his expression pensive, then wiped his palm on the front of my shirt. 'Do you want me to let Hatch and Freddy play with your hands?'

He waited, then-said, rising to his feet, 'Well, let's have one more spin with army surplus, then it's on to Plan B. Freddy and Hatch don't turn out watchmakers, Dave.'

He walked past the corner of my vision and opened the door.

'It's going to be daylight. I need to get 'ome to me mum, Will,' Freddy said.

'He's right. We're spending too much time on these guys,' the man named Hatch said. 'Look at my pants. The burrhead was swallowing the rag I put in his mouth. When I tried to fix it for him, he kicked me. A boon putting his goddamn foot on a white man.'

'We're not here to fight with the cannibals, Hatch,' Buchalter said. 'Dave's voted for another try at electro- shock therapy. So let's be busy bees and get this behind us.'

I hear the rotary gears gain momentum, then the current surges into my loins again, vibrating, binding the kidneys, lighting the entrails, but this time the pain knows its channels and territory, offers no surprises, and nestles into familiar pockets like an old friend. The hum becomes the steady thropping of helicopter blades, the vibrations nothing more than the predictable shudder of engine noise through the ship's frame. The foreheads of the wounded men piled around me are painted with Mercurochromed M's to indicate the morphine that laces their hearts and nerve endings; in their clothes is the raw odor of blood and feces. The medic is a sweaty Italian kid from Staten Island; his pot is festooned with rubber spiders, a crucifix, a peace symbol, a bottle of mosquito dope. My cheek touches the slick hardness of his stomach as he props me in his arms and says, 'Say good-bye to Shitsville, Lieutenant. You're going home alive in 'sixty-five. Hey, don't make me tie your hands. It's a mess down there, Loot.'

But I'm not worried about the steel teeth embedded in my side and thighs. My comrades and I are in the arms of God and Morpheus and a nineteen-year-old warrant officer from Galveston, Texas, who flew the dust-off in through a curtain of automatic weapons fire that sounded like ball peen hammers whanging against the fuselage, and now, with the windows pocked and spiderwebbed, the floor yawing, the hot wind sucking through the doors, the squares of flooded rice plain flashing by like mirrors far below, we can see green waves sliding toward us like a wet embrace and a soft pink sun that rises without thunder from the South China Sea.

Oh, fond thoughts. Until I hear the bucket filling again under a cast-iron tap and the water that stinks of gasoline explodes in my face.

'Time I had a go at 'im, Will,' Freddy said.

Then the door opened again, and I could hear leather soles on the concrete floor. The three men's faces were all fixed on someone behind me.

'Give me another hour and we'll have it resolved,' Buchalter said.

'E's a tight-ass fouker,' Freddy said. 'We give him a reg'lar grapefruit down there.'…

'It's all getting to be more trouble than it's worth, if you ask me,' Hatch said. 'Maybe we should wipe the slate clean.'

The person behind me lit a cigarette with a lighter. The smoke drifted out on the periphery of my vision.

'You want to call it?' Buchalter said.

'AH I ask is ten fouking minutes, one for each finger,' Freddy said. 'It'll come out of 'im loud enough to peel the paint off the stone.'

'I've had a little problem in controlling some people's enthusiasms,' Buchalter said to the person behind me.

'You've got a problem with acting like a bleeding sod sometimes,' Freddy began.

'You're not calling me a sodomist, are you, Freddy?'

'We're doing a piece of work. You shouldn't let your emotions get mixed up in it, Will. That's all I'm trying to get across 'ere,' Freddy said.

I heard the person behind me scrape up a steel ruler that had been lying on a workbench. Then the person touched the crown of my skull with it, idly teased it along my scalp and down the back of my neck.

'I think Dave'll come around,' Buchalter said. 'He just needs to work out some things inside himself first.'

Whoever was behind me bounced the ruler reflectively on my shoulder and pushed a sharp corner into my cheek.

Buchalter kept staring at the person's face, then he said, reading an expression there, 'If that's the way you want it. But I still think Dave can grow.'

I heard the cigarette drop to the floor, a shoe mash it out methodically against the cement; then the door opened and shut again.

Freddy smiled at Hatch. His skin was so white it almost glowed. He shook a pair of pliers loose from a toolbox. Hatch was smiling now, too. They both looked down at me, expectant.

Will Buchalter bit a piece of skin off the ball of his thumb. He crouched down in front of me, removed his Panama hat, and rested it on one knee. His blond hair was as fine as a baby's and grew outward from a bald, spot the size of a half-dollar in the center of his scalp. He lifted up my chin gently with the wood baton.

'Last chance. Don't make me turn it over to them,' he said.

I lifted my eyes to his and felt my lips part dryly.

'What is it, Dave? Say it,' Buchalter said.

My lips felt like bruised rubber; the words were clotted with membrane in my throat.

'It's all right, take your time,' Buchalter said. 'You've had a hard night… Get him a drink of water.'

A moment later Buchalter held a tin cup gingerly to my lips. The water sluiced over my chin and down my throat; I gagged on my chest.

'Dave, I understand your pain. It's the pain of a soldier and a brave man. Just whisper to me. That's all it takes,' Buchalter said.

Hatch was bent down toward me, too, his hands on his knees, his face elfish and merry. Buchalter leaned his ear toward my mouth, waiting. I could see the oil and grain in his skin, the glistening convolutions inside his ear.

I pushed the words out of my chest, felt my lips moving, my eyes blinking with each syllable.

A paleness like the color of bone came into Buchalter's face. One hobnailed boot scratched against the cement as he rose to his feet.

'What'd 'e say?' Freddy asked.

'He said Will was a cunt,' Hatch answered, his grin scissoring through his beard. He and Freddy rocked on the balls of their feet, hardly able to keep their mirth down inside themselves.

Then Hatch said, 'Sorry, Will. We're just laughing at the guy. He hasn't figured out yet who's on his side.'

'That's right, Will,' Freddy said. ''E's a stupid fouk for sure. Go have breakfast. Me and Hatch'll finish it up here.'

But the insult had passed out of Buchalter's face now. He began pulling on a pair of abbreviated gray leather gloves, the kind a race driver might wear, with holes that allowed the ends of the fingers to extend above the webbing. He dried each of his armpits with a towel, then positioned himself in front of me.

'Stand him up,' he said.

'Maybe that's not a good idea, Will,' Freddy said. 'Unless you've given up. Remember what happened out in Idaho. Like an egg breaking, it was.'

'I say tear up his ticket, Will,' Hatch said. 'He's in with Hippo Bimstine. You're gonna trust what he tells you? Rip his ass.'