1968. Part 25

There was a grungy-looking place across from the bus station that had a faded sign advertising twenty-five-cent drafts. Why not?

It was cold inside, smell of stale beer and nicotine, and so dark he could barely make out the bar, illuminated by a single red bulb. A pool table bulked in the darkness.

The barmaid was half again as large as Spider, with huge swaying b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "What'll it be, Coach?" she said in a scratchy baritone.

"Draft and a Polish sausage. And one of those pickled eggs." Health food for lunch.

She peered at him. "You old enough?" Spider reached for his wallet and she waved a meaty hand at him and went to pull the beer. She put the egg and sausage on a saucer with a stack of saltine crackers and set it out with salt, pepper, and Tabasco. "Wanna fork?" she said.

"Say no," someone said from the dimness on the other side of the circular bar. "Hold out for a b.l.o.w.j.o.b."

The barmaid grabbed her crotch. "Hold out forthis, motherf.u.c.ker." Nice place.

She gave him a fork and a napkin and then lit up a nonfilter Camel. The smell made Spider's heart hammer with narcotic nostalgia. There was a cigarette machine in the corner.

No. That was the only good thing he'd gotten out of his hospital stay.

"So you just get off the bus?" the barmaid said.

"Uh huh. What, I sound like a Yankee?"

"Naw. Just most of the dorks come in here are regulars."

"Regularsomethings," the other voice said.

The bartender clicked a switch and a jukebox lit up. The fluorescent lights over the pool table blinked on.

Spider could suddenly see. The other three customers in the bar were wearing dresses, like the bartender.

The bartender had cut her chin shaving.

Spider paid close attention to his egg. He sliced it in two carefully and applied salt, pepper, and Tabasco.

Everybody watched him in silence.

He was carrying the copy ofPlayboy he had bought in the Jacksonville station. He opened it up and studied the pictures. He ate rapidly.

One of the customers came around and looked over his shoulder. "Oh, myG.o.d. She's so beautiful. Look,Henry."

The barmaid scrutinized the Playmate of the Month, who was well endowed. "Ah. No t.i.ts."

Spider looked around and made a decision. "Any of you guys shoot pool?"

A man in a paisley frock squeezed Spider for fifteen bucks at a quarter a ball. During the course of play he told Spider that he was not h.o.m.os.e.xual, but just liked wearing women's clothing. Two other denizens said the same thing. Spider didn't believe any of them, but didn't care one way or the other, so long as n.o.body made a pa.s.s at him. He didn't really understand why a man would want to have s.e.x with another man, but after his treatment at the hands of Captain My Captain, he had a certain amount of sympathy for them.

Anyhow, the beer was ice-cold and the company was congenial. The paisley guy didn't hustle him; he was just a better pool-player. It was an enjoyable afternoon, and Spider was feeling no pain as he ambled out of the bar to go get his stuff and start looking for a place to stay.

"Hey, f.a.ggot." Two cliche hard guys lounging on a white '57 Chevy, nosed and decked, chopped and channelled. The one who spoke was sitting on the trunk, long and skinny, deeply tanned, toothpick balanced on his lower lip and a box of Marlboros rolled up in the left sleeve of his white teeshirt.

Spider looked back at the door to the bar. "You. f.a.ggot."

"You talkin' to me?"

The other one stepped forward. He was a head shorter than Spider but solid with weightlifter muscles.

Sleeveless teeshirt and cut-offs. Like Robert Mitchum inNight of the Hunter, he had l-o-v-e tattooed on one set of knuckles and h-a-t-e on the other. He hustled his b.a.l.l.s. "Want some, f.a.g?"

Spider didn't know what to say. He just shook his head.

"Let ya blow me for twenty-five bucks." He was standing right in front of Spider. He unzipped his fly.

"Come on. Just get in the back of the car."

"Look," Spider managed to croak, "I don't swing that way."

"Sure you don't." The little man smiled and hit Spider in the solar plexus with stunning force. Spider bent over, retching, and the man pulled down his head by the ears and his knee jerked up to smash Spider's mouth and nose. He staggered sideways and the man kicked him in the side of the head. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

When he woke up it was dark. His mouth was full of blood. When he spit it out, it carried a fragment of a front tooth. His nose felt broken.

He was lying behind a line of garbage cans. His wallet was gone and his pockets were turned inside out.

He tried to stand up and sat down hard, almost losing it. He waited for the world to stop spinning and stood up again, carefully.

He saw the neon Greyhound sign and oriented himself. He was behind the bar. He staggered around and into the front door.A couple of dozen people suddenly fell silent. Then the bartender Henry recognized him. "Oh my G.o.d.

It's Spider."

Two men helped him to a chair. Henry came over with a mug of beer and a wet rag. "Hold still." He dabbed at the blood caked on his face. "G.o.d, you're amess! What did you get into?"

"s.h.i.t. I got jumped. Right outside of the bar." Spider's voice sounded strange to him. His tongue was swollen and the new gap where his front tooth was chipped made his sibilants whistle. "Two guys. Called me a f.a.ggot and beat the s.h.i.t out of me."

"Areyou a f.a.ggot?" a stranger asked.

"Oh, can it, John," Henry said. "He just came in for a beer."

"Gotta call the police," Spider said. "They got all my money, got my wallet."

"Maybe you don't want to call "em." Spider recognized the voice but not the man. It was the one who had looked at hisPlayboy, but he'd traded in the dress for Esso coveralls. "You might get beat up again, they find out where you were."

"That's right," Henry said. "Use the phone over at the bus station."

Spider slapped his pockets. "s.h.i.t. I don't even have a dime."

Henry pulled a bunch of change out of his pocket and put it in Spider's hand. "Look, how much did Taylor take you for this afternoon?"

"Fifteen bucks. But that was fair and square."

"Yeah, I'll fair-and-square him tomorrow." He selected a ten and five from his wallet and stuffed them into Spider's shirt pocket. "Coop, you go with him. Don't let anybody f.u.c.k with him."

"Right." The Esso coverall had COOPER sewn into the breast. Coop looked pretty tough when he wasn't wearing a dress. "You want to drink that beer first?"

"Yeah. 'Scuse me." Spider went to the men's room and rinsed the blood out of his mouth. He looked bad in the mirror, black eye as well as everything else. Big purple bruise over his solar plexus. He stood over the toilet for a minute but didn't puke, thank G.o.d for small favors.

He went back out and drank the beer. Henry offered him a shot to go with it, but he declined, thinking about facing the police with whiskey on his breath.

"You were in the Nam," Coop said, pointing at his bracelet.

"Yeah." Spider laughed, a grunt. "I know all about ambushes. Just didn't expect one here, in broad daylight."

"What these guys look like?" Coop asked.

"Coupla JDs. Mutt and Jeff. One guy over six feet, skinny; the other, I don't know, five-four. Little guy's the one who got me; looked like a G.o.dd.a.m.n prizefighter.""Tattoos on his knuckles?"

"That's right. You know him."

"s.h.i.t," Henry said. "Everybody knows him. Name's Sonny. You don't f.u.c.k with him."

"Speak for yourself," someone said.

"Yeah, youf.u.c.k with him. You just don't f.u.c.k with him."

"I'm gettin' lost," Spider said. "You mean he's a fa-he's a h.o.m.os.e.xual?"

"Ah, he ain't h.o.m.o or hetero," a black man said. "He just f.u.c.k anything don't move fast enough. He stick you with a knife and f.u.c.k the f.u.c.kin'wound."

"Jesus."

"And can't n.o.body f.u.c.k with him because he's f.u.c.kin' Family."

"That's what he says," Henry said. "I think he just has an overactive imagination."

"And a gun, man. I seen his f.u.c.kin' gun."

"What, n.o.body here has a gun?" Henry pulled up enough skirt to show the derringer strapped to his calf.

"Hold it," Spider said, rubbing his face. "Is all of Tampa like this? Might as well go back to Vietnam."

"This thenice part of town," the black man said.

"Oh, bulls.h.i.t," Coop said. "This is the same kinda part of town you always find the bus station. Drink the beer and let's go over there."

"Good idea," Spider said. He finished the mug and stood up.

Crossing the street, Cooper told Spider he had done a tour in Vietnam. "That was '65, though," he said.

"Not much goin' on. Just teach the gooks about M14s and such."

"You were an advisor?"

"Green Beret, all the way. f.u.c.kin' crock 'a c.r.a.p. Shouldn't of been there then and double shouldn't now."

"d.a.m.n straight." They went into the bus station. "Oh, s.h.i.t." Spider crossed over to where his locker was standing wide open.

Coop came up behind him. "Least they left your guitar."

"Yeah. Knew how much they could get for it." His suitcase was unzipped and the money was gone. They had takenThe War With the Rull Otherwise everything seemed to still be there.

Spider sat down on the suitcase. "s.h.i.t. I had over three hundred dollars.""So you gonna call the cops?"

"Yeah. Maybe get the wallet back."

"Maybe. I wouldn't finger Sonny, though, the knuckles. That Mafia stuff is probably bulls.h.i.t, but he's one hard case. Be back on the street in a week and lookin' for you."

"Yeah. I'll tell 'em I didn't get a good look at him." He stood up and stretched. "Big black guy. Jumped me in the men's room here."

"Okay. Then what? You call the cops and then? You got a place to stay, know anybody?"

"Huh uh. Sleep in a chair here, I guess. Go look for a job tomorrow."

"Spend a night here, you probablywill get mugged. You come on to the Esso station with me, you can sleep in my truck. Tomorrow. you got a tent and a bedroll, I know a place you can stay for free, pretty safe."

"That'd be okay. I wanted to camp out some anyhow."

"Yeah." He laughed. "This place is some kinda campin' out."

Winter The end of something Beverly kept running the ad for Spider until November, when she missed a period and decided it would be prudent to save the money. Lee was resignedly happy about the prospect of becoming a father. He took another part-time job, teaching guitar in Montgomery Mall. The manager wanted him to cut his hair, but he charmed her out of it.

School went well for Beverly. She decided she would take a full load next semester, then leave for a year after the baby was born, then continue part-time at least to the B.A. level.

On one wall of their converted wh.o.r.ehouse there were large pictures of Kennedy and King, of Chicago in riot and Washington in flames, of black athletes with their fists raised high in Mexico: a kind of 1968 in review. But when the ROTC building burned, they were not in attendance. Beverly walked through tear gas to get to cla.s.s, but she wasn't among those who threw the gas grenades back at the cops and wore football helmets against their clubs. When a news program came on television, she would turn it off or leave the room.

Sometimes she would sit alone and cry for no reason, or for reasons beyond counting.

John in the box Hooch City was a vacant lot near the railroad tracks where a floating population of forty or fifty men hung out: mostly young, mostly Vietnam vets, mostly not working. All of them f.u.c.ked up one way or another. Spider fit right in.

The police didn't bother them, probably because it was convenient to have them all in one place. Theykept the area pretty neat and didn't flagrantly break laws other than the obvious one of vagrancy.

Those who, like Spider, got disability checks or occasional money from home went in together on a post office box. Dinners were communal, fixed by two guys who lived together in a packing crate, Redeye and Deros. Their home was everyone's pantry, stocked with big sacks of rice and dry beans, which were the basic staple, along with odds and ends that people scavenged or shoplifted or sometimes bought.

When the VA checks came in, those fortunate enough to be disabled put together a monthly party of beer, wine, and whiskey. There was not much regularity to their lives other than 7:00 dinner and the first-of-the-month party. Some of them worked odd jobs or begged, and others just sat around, waiting.

Every now and then someone would tire of waiting and play a round of "Kiss the Train."

Spider lived in his tent for two weeks, and then inherited an eight-by-eight-foot packing crate when its owner, Radio Jon, got bitten by a scorpion and had such a severe reaction he had to be taken to the hospital. Spider paid the cab fare, so Radio Jon said he could have the hooch if he didn't come back. He did come back, two days later, but just to pick up the big j.a.panese radio on his way to Georgia, where he figured there wouldn't be any scorpions. Spider missed the radio but was glad to have a dry place to sleep.

The University of South Florida wasn't too far from Hooch City, so Spider went up there and got a set of catalogs and registration materials. He really ought to get back into school and start collecting the GI Bill money, but he had plenty of time before cla.s.ses began in January. He could use the P.O. box as an address; it would be funny to be living like a hobo and going to school at the same time.

He was actually in a kind of twilight zone between respectability and b.u.mhood. When he got his first disability check, he opened a bank account, mainly because he was afraid to carry a large amount of money. That put him so close to the economic mainstream that American Express sent him an application, which he thumbtacked up on the wall of his crate for everybody's amus.e.m.e.nt.