Saint Jack (24 page)

 

Mr. Loy Hock Yin holding a huge Thanksgiving turkey on a platter.
Fellers with napkins tucked in at the throats of their shirts. I was at the head of the table, and the feller next to me said, “How'd you get all those tattoos, Jack?” The fans were going, the table was covered with food, I had a bottle of gin and a bucket of ice beside my glass. “What I'm going to tell you is the absolute truth,” I said, and held them spellbound for an hour. At the end I showed my arm to Betty.

“What's underneath that flower?” I asked.

She squinted: “
Whore's Boy.
”

 

Me as Santa Claus, with a sack.
Late Christmas afternoon we ran out of ice. I drove downtown in Shuck's Toyota with four uproarious soldiers and some squealing girls. I was still wearing my red suit, perspiring in my cotton beard, as we went from shop to shop saying, “Ice for Santy!” On the way back, in traffic, we sang Christmas carols.

 

Gopi with an armful of mail.
He said, “Nice post for you.” Postcards of Saigon I taped to my office wall. Messages: “It's pretty rough here all around—” “When I get back to the world—” “Tell Florence my folks don't care, and I'll be down in September—” “We could use a guy like you, Jack, for a few laughs. This is a really shitty platoon—” “The VC were shelling us for two days but we couldn't even see them—” “Richards got it in Danang, but better not tell his girl—” “What's the name of that meat on sticks Mr. Loy made—?” “I had a real neat time at Paradise Gardens—How's Jenny?” “It's fucken gastly or however you write it—I know my spelling is beyond the pail—”

 

A Malay orderly in a white smock tipping a sheeted stretcher into the back of an ambulance.

“Fella in de barfroom no come out.”

I knocked. No answer. We got a crowbar and prized the lock apart. The feller had hanged himself on the shower spout with a cord from the Venetian blind. A whiskey bottle, half-full, stood on the floor. He was nineteen years old, not a wrinkle on his face.

“It was bound to happen,” said Shuck. What certainty! “But if it happens again we'll have to close this joint.”

No one would use the room after that, and later the door grew dusty. All the girls played that room number in the National Lottery.

 

Flood.
When a strong rain coincided with high tide the canal swelled and Bukit Timah Road flooded; muddy water lapped against the verandah. The photograph was of three girls wading to Paradise Gardens with their shoes in one hand and an umbrella in the other, and the fellers whistling and cheering in the driveway.

 

The theaterette.
Audie Murphy in a cowboy movie. “He's a game little guy,” I said. “He won the Medal of Honor.” A feller to my right: “Fuck that.”

 

A group photograph: Roger Lefever, second from the left, top row.

“What's the big idea, Roger?”

“I didn't mean it.”

“She came down crying and said you slugged her.”

“It wasn't hard. Anyway, she pissed me off.”

“I got no time for bullies. I think I could bust you in the mouth for that, Roger. And I've got a good mind to write to your C.O. You wouldn't do that back home, would you?”

“How do you know?”

I slapped his face.

“Smarten up. You're on my shit list until you apologize.”

 

A group photograph: Jerry Waters, on the end of the middle row, scowling.

“You're lucky, Jack. You were fighting the Nazis.”

“I didn't see any Nazis in Oklahoma.”

“You know what I mean. It helps if the enemy's a bastard. But sometimes we're shooting the bull at night, tired as shit, and a guy comes out and says, ‘If I was a Vietnamese I'd support the VC,' and someone else says, ‘So would I,' and I say, ‘That's for sure.' It's unbelievable.”

 

The curio shop.
After a while the carvings changed. Once there had been ivory oxen and elephants, teakwood deer, jade eggs, and lacquer jewelry boxes. Then we got bad replicas, and finally obscene ones—squatting girls, heavy wooden nudes, carvings of eight-inch fists with a raised middle finger, hands making the
cornuto.

 

The Black Table.

“I'd like to help you, George, but it's against the rules to have segregated facilities.”

“We don't want no segregated facilities
as such
, but what we want's a table to sit at so we don't have to look at no Charlies. And the brothers, they asked me to spearhead this here thing.”

“I don't think it's a good idea,” I said.

“I ain't asking you if you think it's a good idea. I'm telling you to get us a table or we'll waste this house.”

“You only have three more days here. Is it too much to ask you to simmer down and make friends?”

“We got all the friends we want. There's more brothers coming next week, so if you say no you'll have to negotiate the demand with a real bad ass, Baraka Johnson.”

“
Haraka-haraka, haina baraka
,” I said. “Swahili. My ship used to stop in Mombasa.
Nataka
Tusker beer
kubwa sana na beridi sana.
”

“Cut the jive, we want a table.”

“What if everybody wanted a table?”

“That's the nitty-gritty, man. Every mother
got
a table except us. You think them Charlies over in the corner of the big bar want us to sit with them? You ever see any brothers sitting along the wall?”

“Maybe you don't want to.”

“Maybe we don't, and maybe them Charlies and peckerwoods don't want us to. Ever think of that?”

“What you're saying is there are already white tables, so why not have a table for the colored fellers?”

“What
colored fellers?
”

“Years ago—”

“We are
black
brothers and we wants a
black
table!”

“The point is I didn't know there were white tables. I would have put my foot down.”

“Go ahead, mother, put your foot down, you think I care? I'm just saying we want a table—
now
—and if we don't get it we'll waste you. Dig?”

It was true. Yusof said so: we had a wall of “white” tables. I gave in. Sung's photograph showed smiling and frowning faces, all black, and the girls—the only ones they would touch—long-haired Tamils, because they were black, too.

“Give them what they want,” said Shuck.

“Up to a point,” I said, “that's my philosophy.”

 

Me, in my flowered shirt, having a beer with three fellers.
A middle-aged sentence recurred in my talk. “That was a lot of money in those days—”

 

A group photograph: Bert Hodder, fifth from the end, middle row.
He got tanked up one night and stood on his chair and sang,

 

“East Toledo High School
,

The best high school in the world!

We love East Toledo
,

Our colors are blue and gold—”

 

Neighborhood kids from the block of shophouses around the corner.
They were posed with their arms around each other. They lingered by the gate, calling out “Hey Joe!” Ganapaty chased them with an iron pipe. The fellers chatted with them and gave them errands to run. They came to my office door.

“Ten cents, mister.” This from one in a clean white shirt.

“Buzz off, kid, can't you see I'm busy?”

“Five cents.”

“Hop it!”

 

Edwin Shuck.
His blue short-sleeved shirt, freckled arms, and narrow necktie; clip-on sunglasses, sweat socks, and loafers.

“Got a minute?” he asked.

I was with Karim. “The cooler's on the fritz. I'll be with you in a little while.”

“That can wait,” he said. “I've got to see you in your office.”

“Okay,” I said, and wiped my greasy hands on a rag.

Shuck poured himself a drink at my liquor cabinet. He closed the door after me.

“I spent yesterday afternoon with the ambassador.”

“How's his golf game?” I took a cigar out of the pocket of my silk shirt.

“He spent yesterday morning with the army.”

“So?”

“I've got some bad news for you.”

“Spill it,” I said. But I had an inkling of what it would be. A week before, a Chinese feller named Lau had come to me with a proposition. He was from Penang and had twenty-eight girls up there he wanted to send down. He expected a finder's fee, bus fare for all of them, and a job for himself. He said he knew how to do accounts; he also knew where I could get some pinball machines, American sports equipment, a film projector, and fittings for a swimming pool, including a new diving board. I told him I wasn't interested.

“They're closing you up,” said Shuck.

“That's one way of putting it,” I said. “Who's
they?
”

“U.S. government.”

“They're closing
me
up?” I snorted, “What
is
this?”

“It's nothing personal—”

“You can say that again,” I said. “This isn't my place—it's
theirs!
So I suppose you mean they're closing themselves up.”

“In a manner of speaking,” said Shuck. “Officially the U.S. Army doesn't operate cathouses.”

“If you think this is a cathouse you don't know a hell of a lot about cathouses!”

“Don't get excited,” said Shuck, and now I began to hate his lisp. “It wasn't my decision. The army's been kicking this idea around for ages. I've got my orders. I'm only sorry I couldn't let you know sooner.”

“Do me a favor, Ed. Go down the hall and find Mr. Khoo. He's just bought the first car he's ever owned—on the strength of this job. He's got about ninety-two more payments to make on it. Go tell him the Pentagon wants him to sell it and buy a bike. See what he says.”

“I didn't think you'd take it so hard,” said Shuck. “You're really bitter.”

“Go find Jimmy Sung. He's paying through the nose for a new shipment of Jap cameras. Tell him the ambassador says he's sorry.”

“Sung's a crook, you said so yourself.”

“He knew what he was doing,” I said. “I shouldn't have stopped him. I was getting bent out of shape trying to keep this place honest, and then you come along and piss down everyone's shoulder blades.”

“Everyone's going to be compensated.”

“What about Penang? You screwed them there.”

“That's classified—who told you about Penang?”

“I've got information,” I said. “You're ending the R and R program there. They're all looking for jobs, and you know as well as I do they're not going to find them. It's not fair.”

“Jack, be reasonable,” said Shuck. “We can't keep half of Southeast Asia on the payroll indefinitely.”

“Why put them on the payroll in the first place?”

“I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time,” Shuck said. “I don't know. I don't make policy.”

“I can't figure you out,” I said. “You're like these fellers from the cruise ships that used to come to Singapore years ago, dying to get laid. Money was no object, they said. Then when I found them a girl they'd say, ‘Got anything a little less pricy?' And you! You come in here with an army, making promises, throwing money around, hiring people, building things, and—I don't know—
invading
the frigging place and paying everyone to sing “God Bless America.” And then you call it off. Forget it, you say, just like that.”

“Maybe it got too expensive,” said Shuck. “It costs—”

But I was still fulminating. “Play ball, you say, then you call off the game! You call that fair?”

“I never figured you for a hawk.”

“I'm not a hawk, you silly bastard!”

“Okay, okay,” said Shuck. “I apologize. What do you want me to say? We'll do the best we can for the people here—compensate them, whatever they want. You're the boss.”

“Oh, yeah, I'm the boss.” I was sitting behind my desk, puffing on the cigar, blowing smoke at Shuck. Briefly, it had all seemed real. I had a notebook full of calculations: in five years I would have saved enough to get myself out, quietly to withdraw. But it was over, I was woken.

Shuck said, “You don't have anything to worry about.”

“You're darned tootin' I don't,” I said. “I had a good job before you hired me. A house, plenty of friends.” Hing's, my semidetached house on Moulmein Green, the Bandung.
There's Always Someone You Know at the Bandung.

“I mean, I've got a proposition for you.”

“Well, you can roll your proposition into a cone and shove it. I'm not interested.”

“You haven't even heard it.”

“I don't want to.”

“It means money,” said Shuck.

“I've seen your money,” I said. “I don't need it.”

“You're not crapping out on us, are you?”

“I like that,” I said. “Ever hear the one about the feller with the rash on his arm? No? He goes to this skin specialist who says, ‘That's a really nasty rash! Better try this powder.' The powder doesn't work. He tries ointment, cream, injections, everything you can name, but still the rash doesn't clear up. Weeks go by, the rash gets worse. ‘It's a pretty stubborn rash—resisting treatment,' says the doc. ‘Any idea how you got it?' The feller says he doesn't have the foggiest. ‘Maybe you caught it at work,' the doc says, ‘and by the way where
do
you work?' ‘Me?' the feller says, ‘I work at the circus. With the elephants.' ‘Very interesting,' says the doctor, ‘What exactly do you do?' ‘I give them enemas—but the thing is, to give an elephant an enema you have to stick your arm up its ass.' ‘Eureka!' says the doc. ‘Give up your job and I guarantee the rash on your arm will clear up.' ‘Don't be ridiculous,' says the feller, ‘I'll never give up show biz.'”