Joe Burke's Last Stand Part 15

"How wonderful," Edie said. "I am talent-less." One corner of Morgan's mouth twitched. Mo sipped her Lillet.

"Me too," Joe said. "I paid twenty-five cents for biology drawings in high school. My worms looked like accordions."

"I understand you are a builder and a writer," Mo said, turning to Morgan.

"I suppose so," he said.

"d.a.m.ned good one," Joe said.

"What is your book about?"

"Houses of the Hudson Valley." Mo smiled broadly. That's Morgan, Joe thought. He states the t.i.tle of his book, a simple fact, and manages to imply that the universe is a lunatic misunderstanding, that we are all waiting at the wrong bus stop.

"Have you been working on it long?" Mo asked.

"Nine years."

"I could eat a mahi-mahi," Edie said.

They ended up at the restaurant, John Dominis, at a table with too many gla.s.ses, sea ba.s.s, snapper, and mahi-mahi, salads, desserts . . . No one wanted to stop. Morgan told a long story that began with a knock on his door one winter afternoon. A Jehovah's Witness had wandered up the mountain to proselytize. Morgan was so glad to see someone that he invited him in and had a conversation about the Bible.

"Given their a.s.sumptions," Morgan said, "I thought I might discuss their conclusions." The following week the witness returned with help.

Pots of tea, hours later, the witness and his help left, baffled, promising to return with an elder. By spring, much of the church's energy was directed at reb.u.t.ting the doctrinal challenge from the mountains. Morgan was invited to headquarters where an informal truce was reached. "They are an efficient organization in many ways," Morgan said grandly.

"Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," Joe said. "Morgan is difficult in debate, Mo. He got out of the draft by writing so many complicated letters questioning selective service procedures that they finally figured it would be easier to cla.s.sify him, 1Y."

"A successful campaign," Morgan said.

"Better than mine," Joe said.

"Could have been worse," Morgan reminded him.

"True." Joe explained to Edie and Mo that he'd enlisted in the Air Force and decided, midway through his. .h.i.tch, that war was wrong, that people shouldn't kill each other. "Vietnam was heating up. The colonel at my courts-martial listened to my speech, smiled at two lieutenants who were doing on-the-job legal training, and said, 'Airman Burke, you may persist in your att.i.tude and I will sentence you to one year at Fort Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary and a bad conduct discharge, or, you can keep your mouth shut, serve the rest of your enlistment, and I will sentence you to thirty days in the stockade, a five hundred dollar fine, and reduction in rank to Airman Basic. What will it be?'

"He raised the gavel, the son of a b.i.t.c.h. I was twenty; I was stubborn; I had no idea what a federal pen was like. I opened my mouth for another statement of principle, and a voice sounded in my head--that's only happened to me twice. It said: 'you a.s.shole, people kill each other. They have always killed each other. What do you think you're doing?' The voice saved me. 'Thirty days,' I said. The colonel smacked his gavel and read the sentence for the record.

"'Yes, sir.' I said. 'My car is at the BX; I'll just park it behind the barracks.' Two AP's took me by the elbows and marched me to the stockade."

"A near thing," Edie said. "It was a senseless war."

"It sure was," Joe said. "And it was the poor boys from Kentucky who died in it."

"And the Vietnamese," Mo added. They were silent.

"It wasn't so bad in the stockade," Joe said. "We got to watch TV for an hour each afternoon--Perry Mason. The guys were always yelling for longer sentences at the end of the show. One of the guys was doing ninety days for swearing at an officer's wife. Stockwell, his name was.

He was a bag boy, and she used to give him a hard time at the commissary. He called her a b.i.t.c.h one afternoon and she complained to her husband. Ninety days! They add it to the end of your hitch, too."

"So you had to serve thirty extra days?" Mo asked.

"Twenty-five. I got five days off for good behavior. It cooled me down.

I got through the rest of my hitch without any problems."

They settled the bill. Joe put half on his credit card, and Morgan asked what he was doing for money. "Nothing," Joe said.

"You can't spend more than you earn, forever, you know."

"Good point. I'm not quite broke; I'll figure something out."

"Morgan says you're a computer expert," Edie said helpfully.

"Was, Edie. The technology changes every couple of years and I'm sick of learning languages. It was something I did just to get by. I've given it up."

"Oh, good!" she said.

He drew them a map of Lihue showing the way to Hamura's Saimin. "Don't miss it!" They made their way back to the Moana and said goodbye. Mo dropped Joe off at Liholiho Street. Just before they parted, he thought he saw her hesitate. He went to bed and dreamed that she was naked, turning away from him in bed to another man. He touched the base of her back where it curved toward him and rubbed a few small farewell circles.

10

Morgan was right, of course. Sooner or later he was going to run out of money. Things weren't going well. He wasn't satisfied with the cat burglar story, and he was lonely. He decided to write a story about Alphonse and the cannery.

Alphonse was a slim, dark, middle aged Filipino with a thin straight mustache. He had watched Joe stack empty pallets with a yellow Hyster and then he'd motioned Joe out of the seat. The forklift engine roared; his hands blurred; pallets leaped into perfect piles, ten feet high.

Alphonse cut the engine and climbed down, eyes bright. He was somewhere between ten and a hundred times faster than Joe. The cannery whistle blew. Coffee break. Alphonse smiled, nodded, and turned for the cafeteria. Joe followed.

Alphonse was Joe's trainer. Wherever they went in the cannery, people called to him. He lifted a hand, smiled, and kept going. He was universally popular, but he rarely spoke to anyone; he focused on the work--how to do it better, how to do it faster. Joe was in a welfare job training program. He hated the whistle that told them when they could stop and when they must start. He hated the gray industrial paint and the numbing future--less work for someone else's profit.

Alphonse had no future. Not only that, he was twenty years older than Joe. He worked Joe into the ground every day, and when he waved with a small smile and walked away at the end of the shift, his head was high and he seemed untouched. Alphonse had his own standards, his own integrity, and somehow he was stronger than the whole gray clanking cannery. Stronger than profit, stronger than loss, Joe wrote.

But the story wasn't any good. It was true, as far as it went, but it wasn't--a story. What is a story, anyway?

Joe realized that he didn't know.

When Maxie was about fifteen, Joe used to quiz him on "Joe's Maxims."

Joe: "Women?"

Maxie: "Uh, women, women . . . All women are pear shaped!"

Joe (handing Maxie a quarter): "Very good, very good. And now, for a dollar, grand prize--an educated man?"

Maxie: "d.a.m.n. An educated man--umm--knows what he doesn't know."

Joe: "Right!"

Joe's position was that educated people know at least one subject well enough so that they realize (by comparison) when they don't know another. This was heavy for fifteen, but Max was game. "The idea is to know when you don't know what you're doing; then you can go ask someone or buy a good book and find out," Joe explained. Maxie nodded agreement, winnings crumpled firmly in one hand.