The Drifters (107 page)

He lingered on because of Joe. He suspected that Joe was planning some new, hideous move to escape the draft, and he even went so far as to interrogate Gretchen, who forestalled his questions by stating, ‘I approve whatever he decides to do in this stupid business,’ so Holt found no ally there, but still he hung around, maintaining an uneasy surveillance of Big Loomis and telling Britta each day, ‘We ought to get out of here.’

His indecision reminded me of two notable passages in literature. In
The Eve of St. Agnes
, the best story-poem I know, Keats has that wonderful sentence, ‘So purposing each moment to retire, she lingered still.’ In
Death in Venice
, Thomas Mann had elaborated this concept with those telling scenes in which the learned narrator, even though aware of the impending plague, tarries in the doomed city in order to remain close to the golden boy, Pribislav Hippe. Why would Pribislav Hippe sweep into my consciousness in Marrakech, especially since the relationship involving Holt was entirely different? I suppose because educated men are doomed to carry burdens like this, depending upon them for illumination in times of crisis. Keats and Mann would have understood Holt; even if
I
could not, and the little comprehension I did acquire stemmed from them.

Holt’s confusion mounted when the United States embassy in Rabat forwarded a cable to its consulate in Casablanca, which dispatched a special messenger to deliver it in Marrakech. The messenger, looking for Americans, came naturally to the Mamounia Hotel, where he inquired how he might best locate Joe. The desk clerk grabbed at Holt, who happened to be in the lobby. He signed for the cable, and when he had it in his hands, became suspicious, ripped it open and read it—then stalked through the alleys to the Bordeaux.

The cable said that the California draft board was determined to make a test case of Joe’s refusal to cooperate.
The board had rejected the opinion of Dr. J. Loomis Cargill, whose name they could find on no medical roster, that Joe was a drug addict. Let Joe present himself to a convenient United States military base—in this case Wheelus in Libya or Morón in Spain—for their doctors to inspect him, and then let him report for immediate induction, it being assumed that the military doctors must find Cargill’s diagnosis fraudulent.

At the Bordeaux, Holt demanded crisply, ‘Where’s Joe?’ and was told, ‘Up in his room with Gretchen.’ Bounding up the stairs, he kicked open the door, snapped Joe to his feet, and said, ‘Cable from the government.’

‘I know what it is,’ Joe grumbled, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with one hand and trying to fasten a towel around his middle with the other.

‘What the hell were you thinking of when you announced yourself as a dope addict?’

‘Give me the cable and get out of here.’ He grabbed for the torn envelope, but Holt evaded him.

‘How dare you imperil your whole career, with such an admission? Thank God, the government had sense enough to know it was a phony. Joe, you’ve got to come to your senses.’

Now Joe got angry: ‘Why don’t you get out of here? I don’t need you and Gretchen doesn’t want you.’

Holt directed his attention to the girl, and said, ‘You have some influence on him. Keep him from doing these shameless things.’

But Gretchen said, ‘You forget. I happen to agree with him about Vietnam’

‘Who’s talking about Vietnam?’ Holt thundered. ‘I’m talking about a human life—a precious human life—and if you had any womanly instinct, you’d want to protect it too.’

‘I do want to. I want him to stay out of Vietnam.’

‘Damn it all, life is something more than shacking up with some broad! Life is also self-protection … and honor.’

‘Please,’ Gretchen said, ‘go away. We’ll never understand each other.’

‘You can say that again. How a woman in love can allow her man to do the things this miserable son-of-a-bitch is contemplating is beyond my understanding. Lady, for me you represent a new low.’ He had started stomping from
the room when Gretchen said quietly, ‘If you had read Aristophanes, Mr. Holt, you would know that the revolt of women against war is very old—one of the oldest themes in history.’

Holt went to the bed, grabbed her by the shoulders, and said, ‘I read Aristophanes when you were sucking a bottle … and not a gin bottle either. For your information, Aristophanes was writing comedy … anything for a laugh. I’m talking deadly serious. Joe, I’m not going to let you do what you have in mind.’

He stormed from the room and they could hear him rampaging down the stairs, an ex-marine on fire. He left the hotel, and as soon as he got out of sight of the Bordeaux, ducked into a doorway and signaled to one of the numerous boys who infested that part of the city, hoping to pick up a tip here or there. ‘Get me Jemail,’ he said, giving the boy two dirhams.

It was a long time before the boy could find the little gangster, for Jemail was in the business section of town trying to unload his two twenty-dollar traveler’s checks in the black market for more than their face value. When he did arrive he asked in a whisper, ‘What’s up, bud?’

‘When Big Loomis has a special job with a draft dodger …’

‘You mean, the photograph?’

‘Yes, who does he use?’

‘You ever seen Ugly Abdullah?’

When Holt shook his head, Jemail said, ‘Well, I know him,’ and it was agreed that for a price Jemail would wait with Holt to see if Abdullah was summoned to the Bordeaux.

He was. After Holt stormed out of the hotel, Joe had immediately climbed the stairs to consult with Big Loomis. ‘They didn’t buy the dope addict bit,’ Joe reported.

‘I didn’t think they would, but it gave us time.’

‘The cable said they were sure you were a fake.’

‘Sometimes I think so myself.’ There was an embarrassed pause during which Big Loomis was obviously reluctant to speak, but when the silence became prolonged he said, ‘So you’ve decided to take Big Casino?’ When Joe nodded, Loomis asked, ‘You know what it entails? It’ll be in your file for a long time.’

‘I know.’

During this conversation Big Loomis had been furtively
whipping through his papers, and now, with a quick thrust of his huge right hand, he pushed a photograph at Joe. It was intended to shock, and he watched Joe’s face closely to see the effect. It showed two nude male figures—one a young American boy on his knees, the other a large, muscular Arab standing with his legs apart in order to display a huge erect penis which the boy was about to take into his open mouth. Joe, expressionless, said nothing. Big Loomis said, ‘When they get this through the mail, they drop you from the draft rolls. It’s very final.’

‘I’m ready,’ Joe said, and the big man directed one of his tenants to go fetch Ugly Abdullah.

When the Arab came down the alley, ready to be photographed again, Jemail whispered to Holt, ‘That’s our man.’ It was a phrase he must have learned in the movies.

They trailed the big Arab into the Bordeaux, waited till he ascended the stairs, then dashed up the four flights to where Joe waited while Big Loomis prepared his camera. There was a moment of shocked dismay, broken when Holt dived headfirst at the huge Negro, butting him hard in the belly with his head and knocking him backward. ‘You bastard,’ Holt shouted. ‘Not with this boy!’

A silent, grunting brawl ensued, with Holt lashing out indiscriminately at Big Loomis, at Joe and at Ugly Abdullah. As occasion permitted, Jemail darted in like a viper to attack his permanent enemy, Big Loomis, who took ineffectual swings at his little tormentor.

At first rush it looked as if Holt would subdue all three, for he quickly immobilized Joe and Ugly Abdullah, but he had sorely underestimated flabby Loomis, whose football training now manifested itself. With deft footwork and ham-handed swipes from left and right, he first defended himself, then started driving Holt back. Two effective wallops to the side of the head stunned Holt momentarily, but he recovered and swarmed over Loomis like a one-man typhoon.

The preliminaries over, the main bout now began, with the fat Negro dancing about the room on his toes, seizing every opening to slam Holt against the wall. Occasionally Loomis would shake one leg or another to drive away Jemail, who was kicking at his shins.

Now Joe and the big Arab regained control of themselves and vectored in on Holt, the former trying to grab his arms, the latter to knee him in the testicles. Surrounded
by three such able adversaries, one might have expected Holt to call it quits, but the idea never entered his mind. Swinging with silent and dreadful force, he put into practice all the low tricks Sergeant Schumpeter had taught him in boot camp, clubbing first one, then the other of his three enemies until blood began to appear on their faces. One powerful blow rocked Big Loomis, who retaliated with a vicious swipe at Holt, knocking him clear across the room, but the engineer was up swiftly, butting his head into Ugly Abdullah’s gut and knocking him out of the fight momentarily. Then he turned to face Joe, launching a violent blow which caught him on the side of the head, spreading him on the floor.

Loomis used this diversion as an opportunity to assault Holt from the blind side, and with a powerful slap of his open hand, knocked Holt down, but the ex-marine did not stay down. He was up and flailing in all directions, taking a moment’s time out to knee fallen Abdullah in the face as he tried to rise. Two teeth splattered to the floor and for the first time one of the brawlers spoke. ‘Get his photograph with no front teeth,’ Holt gasped.

The end was inevitable. Big Loomis gave Holt a mighty cuff on the side of the head, and Joe, stung by the pain from Holt’s knock-down blow, staggered up and swung with all his force and caught Holt’s head as it was being snapped back. As if struck dead, Holt fell in a lump, and Big Loomis cried, ‘You next, you little bastard.’ He launched a blow at Jemail, but the little Arab was well down the stairs.

I did not enter the scene until two hours later. Jemail had run from the Bordeaux to the Mamounia, shouting, ‘Mr. Fairbanks! They going to kill each other!’ I hurried to the Bordeaux, but the battlers were gone and I surrendered my search. Late that afternoon Jemail came to inform me that they were all having hot soup together at the Terrace and sharing a bottle of whiskey which he had bought for them on the black market.

Where had they been? In a Turkish bath, salving their bruises and relaxing their muscles. When I reached the Terrace, they were drinking like old buddies and Big Loomis was explaining that in a brawl, he rarely used his fists: ‘I prefer that good old-fashioned football swipe. You get your arm swinging, you can knock a man clear across a room.’

‘I know,’ said Holt, and there was no more nonsense about Big Casino.

We stayed together most of that night, talking football and war and gang fights in Marrakech. Holt asked how an apparently decent man like Big Loomis, a man you could get to like when you saw him in action, could involve himself in a filthy deal like the photograph with Ugly Abdullah, and Loomis said, ‘Some of us believe the war in Vietnam is indefensible. We’re willing to do anything to escape it.’

‘But you and Joe are born brawlers,’ Holt said. ‘You obviously love fighting, yet you claim conscientious objection.’

‘I never claimed it,’ Joe said.

‘What I mean—how can you take a high moral stand against war and smear yourself with Big Casino?’

‘Anything’s permissible,’ Joe said.

‘But don’t you realize a photograph like that could ruin your life?’

‘With whom?’ Big Loomis interrupted. ‘Maybe years from now a photo like that dated 1970 will be a badge of honor. Certainly the people of our generation will understand and the others don’t count.’ He took a long swig of whiskey and pointed at Holt with the bottle: ‘Take Gretchen. Suppose next year Joe wanted to marry her. A photo like that would rip her old man’s head off. He’d go right up the wall and zoom around the ceiling like a dead chicken. But would it matter a damn to Gretchen? Wouldn’t she love Joe even more for his guts?’

This was a line of argument I did not want to follow, so I left them and wandered across the Djemaá to the Bordeaux and as usual drifted into the big room, where I found twenty-odd young people submerged in the sweet, heavy smell of marijuana and captives of the gentle lassitude which prolonged smoking of that weed induced, and this was one of the most instructive things I was to do in Marrakech, for late that night I was given a view of the future which I have never forgotten.

The crowd was indulging in their usual sport of how they would settle the world’s problems, and no one showed any rancor or strong conviction as he passed idly from one
gigantic confrontation to the next. Vietnam, Cuba, revolution in South America, the Sine-Russian conflict, the folly of having wasted billions of dollars on the moon shot, the California report proving that Negroes are genetically inferior—all these were discussed with charming sincerity, and dismissed in a cloud of marijuana.

After midnight, when the crowd thinned a bit, conversation centered on the hydrogen bomb, and again I witnessed the deep confusion produced by this ever-present threat, but with irresponsible grace the conversationalists drifted away from this hovering topic and went on to talk about the fact that in all nations a new breed was rising which simply would not go to war: ‘They’ll have to machine-gun us in the streets,’ one boy of nineteen said, and I suspected that this conclusion had not been idly reached; I regretted that Harvey Holt was not there to argue with him, for I was beginning to believe that the larger group of young Americans—the ones back home—would retain views somewhat like Holt’s and would support war if it was presented to them within the historical tradition. Consequently, between these two groups of war-resisters and war-supporters there would have to be a conflict.

It was not then, however, that I caught my glimpse of the future. During most of the evening Rolf and Inger had served merely as hosts, supplying marijuana for the various pipes that were being passed and going to the Djemaá for bread and cheese for their smorgasbord. Toward three in the morning, when the last of the crowd was departing, Rolf stopped me as I was about to leave and asked, ‘What do you think of the conclusions tonight?’ and I replied, ‘They reached a major conclusion every four minutes, and frankly, I’m dizzy.’ He laughed and asked, ‘I mean about the war bit?’