Mama's Boy Read online

  “I hear someone killed that AP hardleg. I hope it wasn’t you, Gate.”

  Gus looked away. “They’re saying town boys did it,” he said. “But he’s not dead. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Town boys, huh?” Springer said.

  “Poetic justice,” Gus said.

  “There’s no poetry in getting your head bashed in, Gate.”

  Gus looked at Springer’s hands. “Where’s your ring?” he said, glad for the chance to change the subject.

  “Right here, airman,” Lieutenant Dorio said. The self-devouring shrapnel snake was on the third finger of her left hand. “We’re sort of engaged.”

  “No lie?” Gus said. “You’re actually thinking about marrying this old dog?”

  “Stranger things have happened, airman. I married my first husband in Reno on a bourbon-fueled bet. I don’t recommend that approach.”

  “How’d you pull it off, Ray?” Gus said.

  “I didn’t yet. She’s reckless and a little crazy. That works in my favor. But don’t get too excited. We’re just trying out the story, see how it plays out in our heads.”

  “Like it’s a game?”

  “Like that, with some serious smooching and hanky-panky thrown in. So far, so good. I think the old girl’s ready to settle down.”

  “I like the heck out of this little bugger,” Lieutenant Dorio said. “I think I could stand hanging out with him for a few years, maybe longer.”

  “My job is to prove she isn’t wrong,” Springer said. “She also thinks I’m cute as a bug’s ear. I won’t hold that against her.”

  “We’re going out tonight for a trial celebration,” Lieutenant Dorio said. “Nothing too fancy. The Officer’s Club is serving filet mignon tonight. They’ll let you in as my guest. Want to join us?”

  “This is really a kind of game with you two?” Gus said.

  “A game with a possible jackpot,” Springer said.

  “Excuse me for saying so, but I think you’re both bullshitting me.”

  Lieutenant Dorio leaned down and kissed Springer on the mouth. It lasted long enough for Gus to walk to the end of the ward and back.

  Later, in the Officer’s Club, after stuffing himself with filet mignon, lobster tail, and several glasses of red wine, Gus said, “I’m getting kicked out of the air force.”

  “No shit?” Springer said. “What’d you do, piss on Major Darling’s shoes?”

  “Something like that, I guess. I don’t know for sure.”

  “We’re all getting out,” Lt. Dorio said. “You can come live with us. You can be our number one son—on a trial basis. You can earn your keep by feeding the chickens and milking the cow. We’re going to farm a few hundred acres outside of Big Sandy while land is still cheap. You find yourself a nice girl, then you and Ray can build a little cabin behind our house for you and your bride. How does that sound, flyboy?”

  It sounded like a dream. And Gus knew that’s exactly what it was.

  36

  FDR and Flora decided to go back to La Jolla. FDR paid the remaining five months of the lease then sold the furniture and appliances by placing ads in the Milk River newspaper. Flora packed up Gus’s high school memorabilia in a cardboard box. Gus set the box out for the garbage truck to pick up—next to the Christmas tree Flora had bought but never decorated. The memorabilia, like the tree, meant nothing to Gus. He thought: It’s part of the trumped-up past.

  Flora looked at the naked tree and cardboard box and wept. She swallowed a Milltown and packed their clothes. FDR got the Buick washed, serviced, and gassed up. He also bought new tires for the long trip home.

  Then they all said goodbye.

  “Mommy can’t take it anymore,” FDR said. “To be honest with you, neither can I.”

  Gus knew FDR meant more than the emptiness of the Great Plains. Gus also knew the thing they were running from would follow them to La Jolla, like an abandoned dog with a keen homing instinct. Lock it out, it would scratch at the door and howl at the sills.

  I’m sorry, Gus wanted to say, realizing at the same time the fault did not lie in him, or them, or anyone else. Fault was part of the scenery. It was hidden in the grab bag you started with. Surprise!

  By pulling out and leaving him behind, FDR and Flora were banishing Gus from his former position as beloved son and heir. FDR and Flora seemed to realize this; neither had the nerve to give it voice.

  Gus had become a dark mystery masked in a familiar face. He was sorry about that, too, but had no reason to apologize for the changes. He was what he was and what he’d always be—a mistake, a blood and bone symbol of betrayal, a by-product of vagrant lust: Gus Gunlocke.

  He thought: I should have been stillborn, kept in a brine-filled jar in a whore’s crib, an emblem of everyone’s mistakes.

  Flora looked at him sidelong, as if sneaking peeks at an unsavory stranger whose eyes were too terrifying to meet straight on.

  You’re not one of us, Gus.

  There were no hugs or kisses. Only nervous murmurs and verbal twitches.

  We won’t make a fuss, Gus.

  FDR shook Gus’s hand and wished him well. FDR’s good wishes were stiff and formal.

  Flora, as she got into the car, burst into tears. She got back out and gave Gus a quivering forceless hug.

  “Now that you’re going to be free of the air force you’ll come see us?” she said.

  Gus noted that this was not an invitation to move back in. He could come home as a guest, for a limited stay. Which was fine.

  “I will, Mommy,” he said. “This isn’t the end of the world.”

  But it was the end of their world, and they all knew it.

  Flora got back into the car.

  The Buick idled away from the house.

  Gus waved at it.

  37

  While Gus waited for his discharge orders to be cut and teletyped to the squadron, he continued to work his shifts. No one had much to say to him. He felt avoided, as if his bad luck was contagious. Reppo, the squadron leper. He began to feel invisible.

  Invisible was good. He did not want to be seen. His separation from the air force was unjust. Even so, he felt shame. A medical discharge was nowhere near as bad as a Section 8, but Gus felt stigmatized just the same. He was content to be shunned. The only people on base who didn’t shun him were Lamar Harkey, Lyle Dressen, and Jeff Sparks. Sparks looked at him with suspicion and contempt.

  Gus hadn’t been relieved of his duties but he didn’t spend much time in the radio shack. Now that the air force had turned its back on him, he performed maintenance checks in a perfunctory way. In the end it was a pointless exercise. What did it matter if a vacuum tube lost its glow or if a sealed electrolytic capacitor leaked oil? What did it matter if the American Scorpions couldn’t defend the country against the Russian Bears? Life would go on, one way or the other.

  Better Red than dead? he asked himself more than once. It was a perplexing question. He didn’t like it. There seemed to be only one acceptable answer: Absolutely not. Sometimes this softened to Probably not. On other occasions he thought: What is Red, anyway?

  Dead, he knew. Dead was dead was dead—a final unchangeable state—the country a radioactive ember, a memory. No more chances to set things straight. White picket fences, children playing in the yard, Dad mowing the lawn, Mom packing the car with picnic goodies, grampa dozing in his rocker—all of it gone. And look, here comes the Good Humor man! Mister! Mist … Poof. Gone in a flash. Did any of it ever exist? No one left now to prove that it did. The intricate and fabulous dream of the unknown dreamer, evaporated. Splat.

  These thoughts didn’t depress him. They made him, as his evaluation papers said, indifferent.

  He’d become indifferent to his job. Why? Was he just a spiteful self-centered reject? Had he lost his sense of patriotic duty? Is this what his medical discharge was all about? Is this what Colonel Makepiece meant? Was indifference the outward sign of a warped and defeated character? Could you fake enthusiasm, a sens
e of purpose, and loyalty? Could you really lead a productive life without the gift of companionability?

  He climbed the VHF mast to check on the double-fishbone antenna he’d made for Harkey, but he also climbed for the sense of isolation and peace he found one hundred and twenty feet above the radar squadron’s complex of buildings and all-weather domes.

  On clear nights he stood on top of the mast without safety harness or lanyard and studied the star-printed sky. The stars were fixed in permanent clusters, from horizon to zenith—extravagant decorations on an infinite tree. The immense gravity of the glowing astral mass urged Gus out of himself, as if his positive physical weight had flip-flopped into negative physical weight. He felt an upward tug.

  When this happened the giddy impulse to leap free of the mast and sail away in an anti-Newtonian upward fall made him tremble and he knew this was not the time or place to entertain that level of insanity.

  “Whatcha aim to do when you get out?” Lamar Harkey asked.

  “Don’t know,” Gus said.

  “My cousin Maynard? He’s a pipe fitter in Mobile. That’s a real good job, and they always need a extry man. You want me to get a hold of him and recommend you?”

  “I’m thinking of joining the marines under another name.”

  “They let you do that?”

  “Why not? A name’s just a name.”

  “What name you thinking of?”

  “August Gunlocke.”

  “That sounds like a marine name, all right. Where’d you come up with a moniker like that, Reppo?”

  “Didn’t come up with it. It’s who I really am.”

  “You give the air force a fake name when you signed up? That why they kicking you out?”

  “I didn’t lie. My name was a lie.”

  “You’re giving me a headache, Reppo. Or am I supposed to call you Gunlocke now?”

  “Take your pick, Lamar.”

  38

  Gus took the shuttle to town. He walked from the Milk River Hotel to St. Bonaventure’s, about a mile an a half away. He was nervous. Every so often he wanted to turn and walk the other way. His stomach was jumpy. He didn’t want to do this, didn’t know why he was doing it, but felt it needed doing just the same. Arctic weather had returned and it was below zero again. By the time he got to the hospital his face was burning from the freezing air.

  He found Mutt Runkle on the fourth floor. Runkle had just been moved out of Intensive Care. A nurse in starched whites showed him the way to Runkle’s room. Her whites made electric crackling sounds as she walked briskly down the hall. “The poor man doesn’t get very many visitors,” she said. “He’ll be glad to see you.”

  “He’s awake?” Gus said.

  “Came out of the coma three or four days ago. Did I say he doesn’t get very many visitors? What I should have said is you’re the second since he was admitted.”

  “Is he going to be all right?” Gus asked. His voice wobbled. He fought to get it under control.

  “Depends on what you mean by all right,” the nurse said. “There’s a subdural hematoma in the occipital region of his brain along with possible tissue damage. He can’t see color. He sees things in shades of gray, with considerable blurring. They’re sending him to Seattle for neurological tests and maybe surgery.”

  “You think they can they fix him?” Gus said.

  “Can’t tell yet,” she said. “You a friend of his?”

  “Not exactly,” Gus said.

  She left the room. Gus pulled a chair up to Runkle’s bed. “How you doing, Sergeant Runkle?” Gus said.

  Runkle, who had been staring at the ceiling, turned his head toward Gus. His eyes looked past Gus to the left, then to the right. He seemed unable to single out Gus from other objects in the room. His forehead creased as he tried to separate one thing from another. “Can’t see jackshit,” he said.

  “It’ll get better, Sarge,” Gus said.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  “Gus Reppo.”

  “Hey! Reppo the muff diver! How you doing, Reppo?”

  “How am I doing?”

  “A natural fuckup like you is bound to step on his own dick sooner or later. No offense.”

  “They’re kicking me out of the air force,” Gus said.

  “Sorry to hear it, Reppo.”

  Gus had expected Runkle to take the opportunity to agree with the wisdom of the air force, but instead he seemed genuinely sympathetic. Gus was uncomfortable with Runkle’s sympathy.

  “The air force is a good career,” Runkle said. “Put twenty years in and they give you a decent pension. Thirty years, you get a better pension. Looks like I won’t make either one. The fact that I got thumped outside a whorehouse probably means I won’t get disability pay when they turn me loose. Non-service connected injury, they’ll call it.”

  “That’s the shits, Runkle.”

  “It is, kid, it is. You see me begging on a street corner, drop a nickel in my tin cup.”

  The notion amused Runkle. Gus was amazed that Runkle could smile at a prospect that wasn’t all that implausible.

  “I’m really sorry, Loftus,” Gus said.

  He put too much sincerity in the sentiment. Runkle stared curiously in Gus’s direction as though sifting through a triptych of shadows. Then he relaxed back into his pillows.

  “Them’s the breaks, kid,” Runkle said. “Not your fault. Thanks for coming by to see me, though. You and Sparks were the only ones. Most everyone else thinks I’m a son of a bitch who deserves what he got.”

  “That’s not true,” Gus said, his voice faltering again.

  “No? You don’t think I’m a son of a bitch?”

  “I don’t think so,” Gus said.

  “After I worked you over, you think I’m a sweetheart? I’m a son of a bitch, Reppo. That’s my job description. It’s right there in my MOS file. If you don’t know that nobody does. Why’re you bullshitting me like this, anyway? Why’d you come here?”

  Gus got up to leave.

  Runkle detected movement. A gray shape sliding away from other gray shapes. “Wait a minute, Reppo,” he said. “You willing to do me a favor?”

  “Sure, anything.”

  “Write a letter to my ma. Tell her I got hurt falling off a horse or something. Just make up some shit. I don’t want her to know I’d been visiting the whores when I got rolled. She thinks I’m as religious as she is. At least that’s what she hopes.” He fumbled around in his nightstand drawer. He pulled out a letter. “Her address is on this envelope. Be convincing, okay? I don’t want her to get upset by anything that piss-poor excuse for a major might tell her. She’ll be going to Mass six nights a week, she finds out I been paying for pussy.”

  “I’ll tell her it was a hit and run accident,” Gus said.

  “Just make it convincing. Tell her you saw some drunk cocksucker run me down, but don’t say cocksucker in the letter, she can’t tolerate cuss words.”

  Gus, improvising quickly, said: “The guy was drunk. He ran a red light. You were crossing Main Street at Third Avenue. He hit the brakes too late and the car skidded on the ice. You went under the wheels. The guy took off and the cops never found out who he was. A witness identified the car as a 1957 red and white Plymouth Belvedere with out-of-state plates, possibly from Wyoming or maybe Alberta. The driver was a white male, around twenty years old, and back home safe by now in Boise, Laramie, Medicine Hat, or Calgary.”

  Runkle chuckled. “You got a real knack for bullshit, kid. I could almost believe it myself since I can’t remember dick about what happened. You sure it wasn’t you that ran me over with that Plymouth? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t of wanted to, right? You had plenty of reasons.”

  Gus paled. Runkle laughed. Then Gus laughed. Runkle’s laugh was genuine. Gus’s laugh was thin and lasted too long.

  “How about a game of checkers?” Runkle said.

  “Checkers?” Gus said. “How are you going to play checkers if you can’t see?�
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  “I’ll trust you to move my men. You tell me where you move, then I’ll tell you where I want to move and when to king me. Okay? I see good enough to catch you cheating. That goddamn Sparks wouldn’t play me one game. The board and checkers are in the bottom drawer of the nightstand.”

  They played three games. The effort exhausted Runkle. He sank back into his pillows. “Thanks, Reppo,” he said.

  Gus got up and stretched. His back ached from leaning over the checkerboard. Each game took almost an hour. He made sure Runkle won all three.

  Runkle dozed off. He began to snore. Gus wanted to leave but something held him back. He hadn’t said what he came to say, even though he knew now that when the opportunity to say it came he would have weaseled out.

  Gus confessed to the sleeping man:

  “I didn’t think I could do it, Runkle. I’m sorry I did.”

  Bullshit. You knew all along you could do it. Don’t lie to yourself. You can be a vicious little bastard, like the rest.

  “I’m not like that,” Gus said.

  You’re exactly like that. Most people are exactly like that. You’re no different than me, except you tend to weasel out, like you’re doing now. You claim the righteous high ground even though you didn’t earn a square inch of it.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Gus said to himself.

  39

  Gus went to the VFW club and had a shot of Lemon Hart and three beers. Then he went to the Milk River Hotel and sat at one of the writing desks in the lobby. The desks were provided by the hotel for the paying clientele. Gus looked at the desk clerk to see if he objected. He didn’t seem to care, one way or the other. Gus opened the desk and took out a sheet of high-quality watermarked writing paper. Pens were also provided. He lit a cigarette to help him concentrate, then wrote:

  Dear Mrs. Runkle,

  I am ashamed to write to you because I am the one who ran over your son with my 1957 Plymouth Belvedere causing him brain damage so bad that he is almost blind. I hope you can believe it was an accident. I admit I’d been drinking and, yes, I didn’t much like your son, but I didn’t plan on hurting anybody. Some will say it was no accident and that I did it for revenge since your son beat up a friend of mine. Come to think of it he once beat the stuffing out of me, too, only because I objected to the way he spoke of my girlfriend—foulmouthed. So I guess I had a good reason to run over him on purpose but it wasn’t on purpose. My friend was drunk and a little out of his head but that’s no reason to work him over with nightstick and boots so that he’s got to leave the service before he can collect his pension, right? Now your son, thanks to me, is in the same fix, and about to get a medical discharge short of his pension. Maybe they’ll be able to fix him and he can stay in the air force, I don’t know. Personally I hope so. I really do. The air force is a good career. I myself chose it over dentistry and would again. I guess you could say I love the air force and would like to be a jet pilot some day. Those Scorpions are something, aren’t they? But I don’t think I could qualify after all that’s happened. However, the air force and its many benefits is not what I’m writing about.