Norwood (11 page)

They talked. He edged closer to her through a series of leg crossings and body adjustments. Soon he had his arm over her shoulder. No resistance. He let it slide down a little and began squeezing the soft flesh of her upper arm. It was wonderful. The way he was doing it, with just a thumb and finger, giving a thick pinch here and there, was like a witch testing a captured child for plumpness. Rita Lee couldn't decide whether she liked it or not. She had been grabbed and wrenched about in many different ways but this was a new one. She stiffened.

“I was afraid of this,” she said. “I was afraid the minute I sat down here you would think I was looking for love on a bus.”

Norwood didn't stop, nor did he answer, not liking to have attention called to what he was doing when he was at this kind of thing. He nuzzled her. “I mean it now,” she said, but not with any firmness, and he cleared his throat and kissed her and she relaxed, Wayne the Marine out of mind. He went back to the arm business, still not saying anything or acknowledging in any way that anything was going on.

After a time she said, “Norwood?”

“What?”

“Tell me something.”

“What?”

“What is your all-time Kitty Wells favorite?”

“I'd have to think about it.”

“Mine is ‘Makin' Believe.'”

“Yeah, that's mine too.”

“Listen.”

“What?”

“I'd like to hear you sing sometime.”

“Okay.”

“Why don't you sing something now? I'd like to hear something now.”

“Not on the bus.”

“You could do it soft.”

“Naw, not on the bus.”

“What is your singing style like?”

“I don't know.”

“Yes you do. Who do you sing like?”

“Have you ever heard Lefty Frizzell sing ‘I Love You a Thousand Ways'?”

“No, I never even heard of Lefty Frizzell.”

“I don't guess I can explain it then.”

“You got a scar back here on your neck. It looks awful. There's not any hair growing on it.”

“I fell off a water truck in Korea.”

“Did you do any fighting over there?”

“I got in on the tail end of it.”

“Did you kill anybody?”

“Just two that I know of.”

“How did you do it?”

“I shot 'em.”

“I mean but how?”

“Well, with a light machine gun. They were out there in front of the barb war and one of 'em hit a trip flare. It was right in front of my bunker and they just froze. My gun was already laid on 'em, except I had to traverse a little and I cranked off about thirty rounds and dropped'em right there.”

“Did they scream?”

“If they did I didn't hear 'em. A bunch of mortars come in and when that let up me and a old boy from South Carolina name Tims went out there and throwed a plank acrost the war and brought their bodies back.”

“I bet you got a medal.”

“For that? Naw. The skipper didn't even like it much. He wanted a prisoner. He thought I should of run out there with my .45 and said ‘You two gooks are under arrest.' ”

“You should of got a medal.”

“You don't get medals for things like that. Unless you're a officer. They give 'em to each other.”

“If I had killed anybody I don't think I could sleep at night.”

“That's what we was there for.”

“I know that but still.”

“It didn't bother me none. It wasn't no more than shooting squirrels. Naw, it wasn't as much because squirrels are not trying to kill
you.
With big one-twenty mortars.”

“I never even seen anybody dead close up and I don't want to either.”

“Them two needed killing anyway. If they had dropped down flat when that flare went off I couldn't of depressed my gun down far enough to hit 'em.”

“Come on now, hon, and sit up a minute. I'm about to fall off this seat.”

Norwood sat up and moved over to his side and lit a cigarette. Rita Lee didn't exactly want this, a total disengagement, and she snuggled up against him and put his arm, dead weight, across her shoulders.

“You're a lot heftier than Wayne is,” she said. “He's tall and stringy. His best friend in the Marines is a nigger. What it is, he likes nigger music and nigger jokes. He can talk like one pretty good. After he got his car him and Otis Webb robbed every Coke machine in the county. People commenced rolling 'em inside at night. Otis had to go to reform school because he was sixteen and a nigger and the judge told Wayne he could either go to the pen or the Marines. Wayne took me out to eat at Otis's house one time and their floor was as clean as any shirt you got in your drawer. You're not even listening to me.”

“Yes I am.”

“Let me have a drag off that.”

“This Wayne don't sound like much to me.”

“Well, he's sorry in a lot of ways, I never said he wasn't, but he's got a kind heart. I'll say this, the world would be a better place to live and work in if everybody was as nice to niggers as Wayne.”

“I guess you got your mind set on marrying him.”

“I don't know if I do or not and that's the gospel truth. I don't know if I'm coming or going, my heart is so mixed up.”

“What do you aim to do if he don't want to get married?”

“Well, I thought some about going and stay with my sister in Augusta and get in beautician school. She teaches at Mr. Lonnie's School of Hair Design. But she's so funny about people staying with her. She gets to where she sulls up and won't talk and slams doors. It's pure d. meanness is what is it. She needs somebody to just slap the snot out of her.”

“You could go with me.”

“Go with you and do what?”

“Just go with me. Go to Shreveport with me.”

“You mean get
married?
”

“You don't have to get married to go to Shreveport with somebody.”

“Boy, that's a good one.”

“Well, you don't.”

“Rita Lee Chipman does, hon.”

“Maybe we'll get married then. When we get to Shreveport.”

“You're just saying that.”

“Naw I'm not.”

“Yes you are.”

“Naw I'm not. Really.”

“I can't tell if you're serious or not, Norwood. I don't even know you. You meet somebody on a bus and ask them to marry you right off. You must think I'm just a plaything of love.”

“Naw I don't.”

“You don't even know me.”

“I know you well enough.”

“What do you like about me?”

“Well. A lot of things. I like the way you look.”

“I'll tell you this, I don't like to have tricks played on me. I read a true story the other day about a girl that fell in love with a good looking novelties salesman and he took her to Lewisville, Kentucky, and then run off and left her there at a motel that had a little swimming pool out front. She didn't know a soul in Lewisville, Kentucky. She didn't hardly have a change of clothes. She was just walking around the streets there thinking every minute somebody was gonna jump out and get her.”

“Did she go in that pool any?”

“Some woman from the courthouse come and got her and put her in a home. That's where she wrote the story from, it said.”

“Well. I told you what I would do.”

“I'd have to tell Wayne.”

“You could write him a card.”

“That wouldn't be right. Either way I'll have to go down there and talk to him.”

“You want me to go with you?”

“You better just do what you want to do.”

“I'll go down there with you then.”

“I was wondering if you would say that.”

“Right here is where your novelties salesman would back out.”

“Norwood, I think I'm falling in love with you. If you were sick I would look after you and bathe you.”

“Yeah, but don't talk so loud.”

“I wonder if you really love me. Do you?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think you can say it?”

“I will sometime. Not on the bus.”

“You don't mind saying it in a song, why can't you say it talking?”

“A song is different. You're just singing a song there.”

“It's not hard for people who really mean it to say it.”

“It is if somebody's trying to make you say it. When somebody gets your arm around behind you and wants to make you say ‘calf rope,' well, you don't want to say it then.”

They reached Jacksonville in the very early morning. The sun was not hot yet but it was bright and painful to their grainy eyes. A dozen or so Marines in limp khaki and with ruined shoeshines were hanging about the station waiting for the last liberty bus back. Fatigue and unhappiness were in their faces, as of young men whose shorts are bunching up. A city cop and an MP sat together in a squad car outside, slumped down in the seat, not talking, and too bored or tired even to go to the trouble of looking mean. Inside the station on a bench some mail-order baby chicks were cheeping away in a perforated box. Bargain chicks. No guarantee of sex, breed or color. Did anybody ever get fifty little roosters? Norwood and Rita Lee passed on through to the café and had an unpleasant breakfast.

Rita Lee was out of sorts. Her cheeks were red from all the nuzzling and she had rubbed them down with some powerful Noxzema. Norwood commented on the smell of that popular medicated cream.

“Maybe if you'd ever shave sometime I wouldn't have to use it,” she said.

“I don't have all that stiff a beard.”

“What happened to my face then?”

“I don't know. I can use a regular thin Gillette five times.”

The waitress was at the end of the counter filling sugar dispensers with a scoop. “Hey Red,” she called out, “is yall's sugar thing full?”

“Yeah, it's all right,” said Norwood. “We already too sweet as it is anyway.” This sally brought a chuckle from the waitress.

“I guess you'd like to take
her
to Shreveport with you,” said Rita Lee.

“She don't have enough meat on her bones,” he said.

Norwood's idea was to go through channels, to call the reception center at the base or the officer of the day and have this Wayne sent to the proper visiting place at the proper time. That was the way to go about it. Rita Lee didn't like the idea in that it alerted Wayne and gave him time to hide or flee. Her plan was simply to go out there and personally track him down and suddenly appear at his side. Norwood could not convince her that this was unrealistic thinking.

Yes, but that was the way she wanted to do it. And furthermore she didn't want him going out there with her now. Three exclamation marks appeared over Norwood's head. No, her mind was made up. He could wait on her here in town if he was of a mind to. She would be back whenever she got back.

“What time?” he said.

“How do I know? Why? You figuring on leaving?”

“Naw. I just wondered. So I could be here.”

“I don't know how long I'll be.”

“You ought to be back by dinnertime, don't you think?”

“I can't say because I don't know.”

“Well, I'll be here looking for you about one.”

“I wonder if you will be.”

“Yeah, well I know I'll be here. You worry about your own self being here.”

When the shuttle bus backed out of the dock Norwood waved bye to her with one finger. She looked at him but she didn't wave. He watched the bus until it was gone. She wouldn't be back and he had lost a day and $4.65 getting his ticket changed.
Take care of him and bathe him!
He would wait until one but no longer. Catch the first bus out.

He walked about town, down the long main street, but nothing much seemed to be open. The penny arcade was buttoned up tight. A long-armed Negro boy was squeegeeing the windows at Woolworth's, where they were having a Harvest of Values sale. The bargains were spilling out of a big gold foil cornucopia, and were artistically mixed in with one short ton of candy corn. Norwood's eye was attracted to the X-tra soft finespun cotton T-shirts with reinforced necks, three for $1.29.

“Will them T-shirts hold up?”

“Says whut?” said the squeegee boy.

“Them T-shirts you got on a special there, will they draw up on you after you wash 'em?”

“Uhruh, they'll all draw up some.”

“That ain't a bad price. I might be back and get me a half a dozen of them dudes. I'm always out of T-shirts.”

“You know you right? Man can't have too many of'em.”

Down the street a piece Norwood stopped at a hardware store, thinking he would go in and run his hand through the turnip seed and look at the knives and see how much shotgun shells cost in North Carolina. He shook the door but it was locked. So was the furniture store next door. There was a white card behind the door glass here with a phone number on it and it said call R. T. Baker in case of emergency.
Hello, Baker? I hate to bother you at home but I need a chair right now
. There was a tattoo parlor and Norwood looked at the dusty samples in the window. He had a $32.50 black panther rampant on his left shoulder, teeth bared and making little red claw marks on his arm. He had never been happy with it. Not because it was a tattoo and you couldn't get it off—so what?—but because it was not a good panther. Something about the eyes, they were not fully open, and the big jungle cat seemed to be yawning instead of snarling. Norwood complained at the time and the tattoo man in San Diego said it wouldn't look that way after it had scabbed over and healed. Once in Korea he sat down with some matches and a pin and tried to fix the eyes but only made them worse. Many times he wished he had gotten a small globe and anchor with a serpentine banner under it saying
U.S. Marines—First to Fight
. To have more than one tattoo was foolishness.