Once before in his life, in Suwon, immediately after its recapture and before the Military Government people had begun to clean up, Randy had seen degradation such as this. But this was America. It was his town, settled by his forebears. He said, “We’ve got to do something about this.”
“Yes?” Dan said. “What?” “I don’t know. Something.”
“Torches and gasoline,” Dan said, “except there isn’t enough gasoline. Anyway, these poor devils are as well off in their own houses as they would be in the woods, or in caves. No better off, mind you. But they have shelter.”
“In four months,” Randy said, “we’ve regressed four thousand years. More, maybe. Four thousand years ago the Egyptians and Chinese were more civilized than Pistolville is right now. Not only Pistolville. Think what must be going on in those parts of the country where they don’t even have fruit and pecans and catfish.”
As they approached the end of Augustine Road the houses were newer and larger, constructed of concrete block or brick instead of pitch-sweating pine clapboard. Between these houses grass grew shin-high, fighting the exultant weeds for sunlight and root space. There was less filth, or at least it was concealed by greenery, and the smell was bearable. In this airier atmosphere lived the upper crust of Pistolville, including Pete and Rita Hernandez and Timucuan County’s Representative in the state legislature, Porky Logan.
“How long has it been since you’ve seen Rita?” Dan asked. “Not since before The Day-quite a while before.”
“Does Lib know about her?”
“She knows all about it. She says Rita doesn’t bother her, because Rita is part of the past, like Mayoschi’s in Tokyo. You know who worries Lib? Helen. Imagine that.”
They were at the Hernandez house. Dan stopped the car. He said, “I can imagine it. Lib is an extremely sensitive, perceptive woman. About some things, she has more sense than you have, Randy. And all rules are off, now.”
Randy wasn’t listening. Rita had stepped out of the doorway. In Hawaii Randy had seen girls of mixed Caucasian, Polynesian, and Chinese blood, hips moving as if to the pulse of island rhythm even when only crossing the street, who reminded him of Rita. She was not like a girl of Fort Repose. She was a child of the Mediterranean and Carribean, seeming alien; and yet certainly American. Her ancestors included a Spanish soldier whose caravel beached in Matanzas Inlet before the Pilgrims found their rock, and Carib Indian women, and the Minorcans who spread inland from New Smyrna in the eighteenth century. She had not gone to college but she was intelligent and quick. She had an annulled high school marriage and an abortion behind her. She no longer made such foolish errors. Her hobby was men. She sampled and enjoyed men as other women collected and enjoyed African violets, Limoges teacups, or sterling souvenir teaspoons. She was professional in her avocation, never letting a man go without some profit, not necessarily material, and never trading one man for another unless she thought she was bettering her collection.
Under any circumstances Rita was an arresting woman. Her hair was cut in straight bangs to form an ebony frame for features carved like a Malayan mask in antique ivory. She could look, and behave, like an Egyptian queen of the Eighteenth Dynasty or a Creole whore out of New Orleans. On this morning she wore aquamarine shorts and halter. Cradled easily under her right arm was a light repeating shotgun. She was smoking a cigarette and even from the road Randy could see that it was a real, manufactured filtertip and not a stubby homemade, hand- rolled with toilet paper. She called, “Hello Doctor Gunn. Come on in.” Then she recognized the passenger and yelled, “Hey! Randy!”
Dan put the car keys in his pocket and said, “Better bring the whiskey and honey, Randy. I never leave stuff in the car when I make a call in Pistolville.”
As he walked to the house, Randy noticed the Atlas grocery truck and a big new sedan in the Hernandez carport and a Jaguar XK-150 sports car in the driveway. A latrine had been dug behind the carport and partly shielded from the road by a crude board fence.
Rita swung open the screen door. “You’ll pardon the artillery,” she said. “The goons down the street are envious. When I hear a car or anything I grab a gun. They killed my dog. She was a black poodle, Randy. Her name was Poupee Vivant. That means Livin’ Doll in French. Cracked her skull with an ax handle while Peter was lying sick and I was off fetching water. I found the ax handle but not the body. The goddamn cracker scum! Ate her, I guess.”
Randy thought how he would feel if someone killed and ate Graf. He was revolted. And yet, it was a matter of manners and mores. In China men for centuries had been eating dogs stuffed with rice. It happened in other meat-starved Asian countries. The Army had put him through a survival course, once, and taught him that in an emergency he could safely eat pulpy white grubs found under bark. It could happen here. If a man could eat grubs he could eat dogs. Pistolville was meat starved and, as Dan had said, the rules were off. All Randy said was, “I’m sorry, Rita.”
Randy walked through the door and stopped, astonished. The two front rooms of the Hernandez place looked like show windows in a Miami auction house. He counted three silver tea services, two chests of flat silver, three television sets, and was bewildered by a display of statuary, silver candelabra, expensive leather cases, empty crystal decanters, table lighters, chinaware. Gold-framed oils and watercolors, some fairly good, plastered one wall. Table clocks and wall clocks raised their hands and swore to different times. “Great God!” Randy said. “Have you people gone into the junk business?”
Rita laughed. “It’s not junk. It’s my investment.” Dan said, “How’s Pete, Rita?”
“I think he’s a little better. He’s not losing any more hair but he’s still weak.”
Dan was carrying his black bag. It held little except instruments now. He said, “I’ll go back and see him.”
Dan walked down the hall and Randy was alone with her. She offered him a cigarette. Her perfume opened the gates of memory-the movies in Orlando, the dinners and dancing at the hotel in Winter Park, the isolated motel south of Canaveral, the morning they found a secluded pocket behind the dunes and were buzzed by a light plane and how the pilot almost side slipped into the sea banking around for a second look, and most of all, his apartment. It seemed so long ago, as if it had happened while he was in college, before Korea, but it was not so long, a year only. He said, “Thanks, Rita. First real cigarette I’ve had in a long, long time. You must be getting along all right.”
She looked at the bottle. “You didn’t bring me a present, did you, Randy?” The corners of her mouth quivered, but she did not quite smile.
He remembered the evenings he had come to this house, a bottle beside him on the seat, and they had gone tooting off together; and the evenings he had brought bottles in gift pack ages, discreet gratuities for her brother; and the nights in the apartment, sharing a decanter drink for drink because she loved her liquor. He realized that this is what she intended he remember. She was expert at making him feel uncomfortable. He said, “No, Rita. Trade goods. I’ve been in Marines Park, trying to trade for coffee.”
“Don’t your new women like Scotch, Randy? I hear you’ve got two women in your house now. Which one are you sleeping with, Randy?”
Suddenly she was a stranger, and he looked upon her as such.
Examined thus, with detachment, she looked ridiculous, wearing high heels and costume jewelry with shorts and halter at this hour of the morning and in this time of troubles. Her darkling ivory skin, once so satiny, appeared dry and mottled. Her hair was dull and the luster in her eyes reflected only spiteful anger. She looked used and tired. He said, calmly, “You can take your claws out now. I don’t feel them. My skin’s tougher.”
She licked her lips. They were puffed and brown. “You’re tougher. You’re not the same Randy. I guess you’re growing up.” He changed the subject. “Where did you get all this stuff?” He looked around the room.
“Trading.”
“I never see you in Marines Park.”
“We don’t go there. They come to us. They know we still hold food. Even coffee.”
He knew she wanted the bottle. He knew she would trade coffee, but he would never again trade with her, for anything. He said:
“You said this was your investment. Do you think three television sets is a good investment when there isn’t any electricity?” “I’m looking ahead, Randy. This war isn’t going to last forever and when it’s over I’m going to have everything I never had before and plenty besides, maybe to sell. I was only a kid after the last big war but I remember how my dad had to pay through the nose for an old jalopy. Do you know what that Jag cost me?” She laughed. “A case of beans, three bottles of ketchup, and six cans of deviled ham. For a Jag! Say, as soon as things
