I Sailed with Magellan (7 page)

Read I Sailed with Magellan Online

Authors: Stuart Dybek

BOOK: I Sailed with Magellan
6.15Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
He can't control his night dreams, but during the day, Zip makes it a practice not to think about the war. Today, he wishes for a customer to come in and give him something else to think about. Where's Teo, that odd Mexican guy who stops by in the afternoon and sits with a beer, humming to himself and writing on napkins? The pounding in his temples has Zip worrying about his blood pressure. He has the urge to take a dump but knows his bowels are faking it. The symptoms of stress bring back Peleliu—the way his bowels cramped as the amtrac slammed toward the beach. They lost a third of the platoon on a beachhead called Rocky Point to a butchering mortar barrage that splintered the coral rock into razors of shrapnel. Zip stands wondering, how does a man in a place so far from home summon up whatever one wants to call it—courage, duty, controlled insanity—in the face of that kind of carnage, and then say nothing when two goombahs from across Western Avenue come into
his
place, the Zip Inn, and tell him it would be good business to rent a new jukebox from them? Instead of throwing those parasites out, he said nothing. Nothing.
Only a two-hundred-dollar initial installation fee, they told him.
The two of them smelling of aftershave: a fat guy, Sal, the talker, and Joe—he'd heard of Joe—a psycho for sure with a Tony
Curtis haircut and three-day growth of beard, wearing a sharkskin suit and factory steel-toes. The two hoods together like a pilot fish and a shark.
“Then every month only fifty for service,” fat Sal said, “and that includes keeping up with all the new hits. And we service the locked coin box so you won't have to bother. Oh yeah, and to make sure nobody tries to mess with the machine, we guarantee its protection—only twenty-five a month for that—and believe me when we say protection we mean protection. Nobody will fuck with your jukebox. Or your bar.”
“So you're saying I pay you seventy-five a month for something I pay fifteen for now. I mean the jukebox don't net me more than a few bucks,” Zip told them. “It's for the enjoyment of my customers. You're asking me to lose money on this.”
“You ain't getting protection for no fifteen bucks,” Sal tells him.
“Protection from what?” Zip asked.
The hoods looked at each other and smiled.
“Allora.”
Sal shrugged to Joe, then told Zip, “A nice little setup like you got should be protected.”
“I got Allstate,” Zip said.
“See, that kind of insurance pays
after
something happens, a break-in, vandalism, theft, a fire. The kind we're talking here guarantees nothing like that is going to happen in the first place. All the other taverns in the neighborhood are getting it too. You don't want to be the odd man out.”
“A two-hundred-dollar installation fee?” Zip asked.
“That covers it.”
“Some weeks I don't clear more than that.”
“Come on, man, you should make that in a night. Start charging for the eggs,” Sal said, helping himself to one. “And what's with only six bits for a shot and a beer? What kinda businessman are you? Maybe you'd like us to set up a card game in the back
room for you on Fridays. And put in a pinball machine. We're getting those in the bars around here, too.”
“Installation was fifty for the box I got. Service is fifteen a month.”
Joe, the guy in the sharkskin suit, rose from his barstool and walked over to the jukebox. He read some of the selections aloud: “Harbor Lights,” “Blue Moon,” the “Too Fat Polka,” “Cucurrucucu Paloma,” “Sing, Sing, Sing.”
“These songs are moldy, man,” Joe said. “Where's Sinatra, where's Elvis the Pelvis? Your current jukebox dealer's a loser. They're gonna be out of business in a year. Their machines ain't dependable. Sallie, got a coin?”
“Here, on me,” Zip said, reaching into the till.
“No, no, Sallie's got it.”
“Yeah, I got it,” Sal said, flipping a coin to Joe.
“Requests, Mr. Zip?” Joe asked.
“I hear it anytime I want.”
“So, what's your favorite song?”
“Play, ‘Sing, Sing, Sing,'” Sal said, yolk spitting from his mouth. “Did you know Benny Goodman's a yid from Lawndale? Lived on Francisco before the
tutsones
moved in.”
Joe dropped in the coin and punched some buttons. Zip could hear from the dull
clunk
that the coin was a slug.
“Goddamn thing ate my quarter!” Joe exclaimed. “I fucken hate when machines snitch from me. Newspaper boxes are the worst. Selling papers used to be a job for blind guys and crips. No offense, Mr. Zip, I'm just saying a paper stand was decent work for these people, and then they put in newspaper boxes. I'm trying to buy a
Trib
the other day and the box eats my quarter. Know what I did to that newspaper box?”
“Here,” Zip said. “Here's a refund.”
“But, see, Mr. Zip, it's bad business to be covering for these lousy fucking jukes. You know if you whack them just right it's
like hitting the jackpot.” Joe kicked the jukebox knee high and its lights blinked out. From the crunch, Zip knew he'd kicked in the speaker. “No jackpot? Well, guess it ain't my lucky day.” Joe laughed. “So, listen, Mr. Zip, we got a deal to shake hands on?” Joe extended his hand. Then, eyeing Zip's clothespinned sleeve, Joe withdrew his right hand and extended his left.
“Let me think it over,” Zip said. He didn't offer his hand. He wasn't trying to make a statement. It was the only hand he had.
“No problem,” Joe said. “No pressure. Give it some careful thought. I'll come by next week, maybe Friday, and you can give me your answer.” He pulled out a roll of bills, snapped off a twenty, and set it on the mess of eggshells Sal had left on the bar. “For the egg.”
Big shots leaving a tip stolen from the pocket of some workingman. After they walked out of his bar, Zip snapped open his lighter and watched the burning twenty turn the eggshells sooty. In the war, he'd operated an M2 flamethrower. They must have figured a kid his size could heft it, lug the napalm-filled jugs, and brace against the backward thrust of the jetting flame. Its range was only thirty yards, so Zip had to get in close to the mouths of caves and pillboxes that honeycombed the ridges where the Japs were dug in ready to fight to the death. He had to get close enough to smell the bodies burning. A flamethrower operator was an easy target and always worked with a buddy, whose job it was to cover him. Zip's buddy on Pelelui was Dominic Morales, from L.A. They called him Domino. During a tropical downpour on a ridge named Half Moon Hill, Domino was killed by the same mortar blast that took off Zip's right arm. They were both nineteen years old, and all these years later that astonishes Zip more than it ever did at the time. Nineteen, the same age as kids in the neighborhood shooting each other over who's wearing what gang colors in some crazy, private war. He thought he'd paid his price and was beyond all that, but now Zip stands behind
the bar waiting for the days to tick down to Friday, when Joe Ditto comes back. Zip could call the cops, but he can't prove anything, and besides, hoods wouldn't be canvasing taverns if the cops weren't on the take. Calling the cops would be stupid. What if he simply closed down the bar, packed his Ford, drove north into the mist of sky-blue waters?
Zip recalls putt-putting out just after dawn in his aluminum boat into a mist that hadn't burned off the water yet. The lake looked like a setting for an Arthurian legend, the shore nearly invisible. Zip felt invisible. He'd packed a cane pole, a couple brews in a cooler of ice, and a cottage cheese container of night crawlers he'd dug the night before. He was going bluegill fishing. Fresh from the icy water of Lac Courte Oreilles they were delicious. Even in the mist, he located his secret spot and quietly slid in the cement anchor. But when he opened the container of night crawlers, he found cottage cheese. If he went all the way back for his bait, he'd lose the first light and the best fishing of the day. Defeated, he raised anchor, and the boat drifted into acres of lily pads, nosing sluggish bullfrogs into the water. Zip noticed tiny green frogs camouflaged on the broad leaves, waiting for the sun to warm them into life. He caught a few and put them in the ice cooler. He'd seen bluegills come into mere inches of water alongshore for frogs. Once they were paralyzed by cold, Zip had no trouble baiting a frog on a hook one-handed. Returned to water, the frog would revive. Zip swung his pole out, and his bobber settled on the smoldering water. He watched for the dip of the bobber, the signal to set the hook, while the mist thinned. Zip was wondering where the bluegills were when the bobber vanished. He'd never seen one disappear underwater. Before he could puzzle out what happened, the water churned and the pole nearly jerked from his hand. The bamboo bent double, and he locked it between his thighs and hung on. The fish leaped, and if Zip hadn't known it was a muskie, he might have thought it was
an alligator. It wagged in midair and appeared to take the measure of Zip, then belly-flopped back into the lake and torpedoed beneath the boat. Zip braced, tried horsing it out, and the pole snapped, knocking him off balance onto his butt, crushing the Styrofoam cooler, but he still clung to the broken pole. The fish leaped again beside the boat, swashing in water. It seemed to levitate above Zip—he smelled its weediness—and when it splashed down, the broken pole tore from his hand and snagged on the gunwale. He lunged for it, almost capsizing the boat, then watched the stub of bamboo, tangled in line and bobber, shoot away as if caught in an undertow. It was too big a fish for a cane pole. Too big a fish for a one-armed man.
Zip drains the last of his Hamm's, sets the bottle on the bar, and stares at his left hand, the hand Joe Ditto wanted to shake. Blood pulses in his temples and a current of pain traces his right arm, and the thought occurs to Zip that if he ever has a heart attack, he'll sense it first in his phantom arm.
 
Whitey calls in the middle of a dream:
Little Julio is supposed to be in his room practicing, but he's playing his flute in the bedroom doorway. Julio's mother, Gloria Candido, is wearing a pink see-through nightie, and Joe can't believe she lets Little Julio see her like that because Little Julio is not
that
little and he's just caught Joe circumnavigating Gloria's nipples with his tongue and Little Julio wants some, too. “He's playing his nursing song,” Gloria says. The flute amplifies the kid's breath until it's as piercing as an alarm. To shut him up, Joe gropes for the phone.
“Joe,” Whitey says. “What's going on?”
Drugged on dream, Joe wakes to his racing heart. “What?” he says, even though he hates guys who say
what?
or
huh?
It's a response that reveals weakness.
“Whatayou mean what? What the fuck? You know what. What's with you?”
What day is this? Joe wants to ask, but he knows that's the wrong thing to say, so he says, “I had a weird night.”
“Joe, are you fucken on drugs?”
“No,” Joe says. He's coming out of his fog, and it occurs to him that Whitey can't possibly be calling about Gloria Candido. A confrontation on the phone is not how Whitey would handle something like that. Whitey wouldn't let on he knew.
“Well, what's the problem then?” Whitey demands.
It's Johnny Sovereign that Whitey is calling about, and as soon as Joe realizes that, his heart stops racing. “Ran into a minor complication. I went to see him yesterday and—”
“Maronn'!”
Whitey yells. “Joe, we're on the fucking phone here. I don't care what the dipshit excuses are, just fucking get it done.”
“Hey, Whitey, suck this,” Joe says and puts the receiver to his crotch. “Who the fuck do you think you're yelling at, you vain old sack of shit with your wrinkled
minchia?
Your girlfriend's slutting around behind your back making a fucking
cornuto
of you. You don't like it I'll cut you, I'll bleed you like a stuck pig.”
Joe says all that to the dial tone. Telling off the dial tone doesn't leave him feeling better, just the opposite, and he makes a rule on the spot: never again talk to dial tones after someone's hung up on you. It's like talking to mirrors. Mirrors have been making him nervous lately. There's a dress draped over his bedroom mirror, and Joe gets out of bed and looks through his apartment for the woman to go with it. That would be April. She's nowhere to be found, and for a moment Joe wonders if she's taken his clothes and left him her dress. But his clothes are piled on the chair beside the bed where he stripped them off-shoes, trousers with keys and wallet, sport coat with the .22
weighting one pocket. He's naked except for his mismatched socks. The stiletto is still sheathed in the black-and-pink argyle.
Yesterday was supposed to have been a cleanup day. His plan was to pitch the trash, drop his laundry at the Chink's, and then stop by Johnny Sovereign's house on Twenty-fifth Street. The plan depended on Sovereign not being home, so Joe called from a pay phone, and Sovereign's good-looking young wife answered and said Johnny would be back around four. Okay, things were falling into place. Joe would wait in the gangway behind Sovereign's house for him to come home, and suggest they go for a drink in order to discuss Johnny setting up gambling nights in the back rooms of some of the local taverns. Once Joe got Sovereign alone in the car, well, he'd improvise from there.

Other books

A Garden of Vipers by Jack Kerley
Petrified by Graham Masterton
Cataphilia by Caitlyn Willows
Never Sleep With a Suspect on Gabriola Island by Sandy Frances Duncan, George Szanto
Bound to Seduction by Elisabeth Naughton