Mama's Boy Read online

“There’s something else you should know,” Walters said. “This part of Montana is packed with Commie spies.”

  Because this was too crazy to believe Gus felt better about Walters’ warnings: The man was nuts.

  Walters read Gus’s smile. “You don’t think so? You think I make this shit up, Reppo?” he said. “I’m telling you what a lot of people already know. We’re headquartered at Malmstrom, right? But do you know why Malmstrom was built in the first place? I’ll tell you why. They built it during the war as a base to ferry equipment to the Soviets! Planes, trucks, jeeps, guns, ammo—you name it. Malmstrom to Russia via the north pole. The Vladivostok Express. Ask anyone who’s lived around Great Falls for any length of time. The Russians planted agents all around the base knowing that one day we’d be their worst nightmare.”

  “Thanks for the info,” Gus said, unable to restrict his smile.

  “And fuck you too, you ignorant piece of shit!” Walters said.

  Gus put his parka on. He left Walters sitting there adjusting the dials of the Hammarlund with his trembling hands.

  13

  Gus caught a ride into town that night with Lyle Dressen, an off-duty radar operator. Dressen was a big, friendly kid from LA. He combed his hair in a duck’s ass held in place by a gel thick as transmission grease. His dad owned a Cadillac agency in Studio City, and his mother was a former showgirl and actress. Lyle had been a football star for North Hollywood High.

  “You want to go to LA for a few days, Reppo?” Lyle said.

  “What are you talking about?” Gus said.

  “Major Darling is taking a C-47 from Malmstrom to LA. He’s going to pick up some brass in LA and ferry them to Texas. It’s his chance to kiss some important ass. A one-star general from NORAD and a couple of bird colonel desk jockeys from the Pentagon. Darling’s already been passed over twice for light bird. If he’s passed over again, he’s finished. They call it the three-strike rule. He’ll have to retire as a major. So he’s going to kiss the ass of anyone he thinks can help his cause. Here’s what I’m saying, Reppo: We can go with him as far as LA.”

  “How do you know this, Dressen?”

  “Anyone can catch a hop anywhere, any time, just so long as there’s space on the plane and we have time off. I’ll use a few days of leave. You could do the same.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Gus said.

  “Don’t think too long. There’s only room for a few more hitchers.”

  It was snowing by the time they reached the viaduct and the bridge was icy. Once he reached the crest of the bridge, Dressen slowed down for the descent into Milk River. There was a traffic jam at the bottom of the bridge. Cars were blocking access to Main Street.

  “There’s been a wreck,” Dressen said.

  “Look, they’re dancing,” Gus said.

  The dancers were clumsy in their heavy parkas and boots. Some dancers fell together in a heap then rolled around in the snow. Dressen hit the brakes and yanked the wheel, and the car slid sideways all the way to the bottom of the bridge. The car stopped inches away from a parked pickup truck.

  “They’re not dancing,” Dressen said. “It’s a brawl.”

  Gus got out of the car. Someone punched him in the face before he could find his footing on the ice. Someone else threw him down and kicked him. Gus’s parka absorbed most of it but the impact still knocked the wind out of him. Lyle Dressen came around the car and blindsided the kicker with a forearm shiver to the side of his head. “How about picking on someone your own size, turd knocker,” Dressen said.

  Gus got up wheezing. “What’s going on?” he said.

  “It’s the town boys,” an airman said. Gus didn’t know him. His nose and mouth were bloody. He was looking at a tooth in his hand, one he had just spit out. “They blocked the viaduct to stop airmen from coming into town. They outnumbered us at first but now we outnumber them. We’re about to fuck some people up.”

  Gus saw half a dozen cars with squadron stickers on their windshields parked sideways on the bridge. All of them had braked hard, coming to rest against the barrier of town boy cars.

  Gus sat on the hood of Dressen’s car, handkerchief held against his bleeding nose, and watched the fight. An airman from Mississippi, Jimmy Rails, was clubbing town boys with the steel shaft of a foot-long torque wrench. Willie McFee, a kid from Chicago who’d been a regional Golden Gloves champ, was fighting a huge town boy, popping him with snappy lefts and slashing rights. The town boy’s head looked like it was on a hinge. Most of the fighters had stopped to watch the boxing skills of Willie McFee. Their interest switched to the wrestling skills of the town boy when he grabbed Willie in a bear hug.

  A town boy yelled, “Squeeze the grits out of that coon, Vuko!”

  “Thumb his eyes, Willie!” an airman yelled.

  Gus slid off the hood and walked through the crowd toward town. No one challenged him, much of the fight having gone out of both sides.

  He walked up Main Street to the Milk River Hotel. The hotel had the nicest bar in town. It was frequented mainly by businessmen and professionals. Gus went into the men’s room and washed up. He combed his hair with his fingers.

  “You ignorant proletarian bastard,” he said to the mirror.

  “Capitalist war loving swine,” the mirror said back.

  He sat at the bar and ordered a pint of tap beer and wondered if he’d ever see Tracy Winshaw again. But then, why wouldn’t he? She seemed to like him a little. He’d been a good audience for her ideas. He didn’t think she found him dull or stupid. He looked forward to using the word “proletariat” in conversation with her.

  “Maybe a dictatorship of the proletariat wouldn’t be a totally bad thing, if the top people were decent human beings and knew what they were doing. Apparatchiks like yourself could make it work.” He enjoyed the thought of saying apparatchik to her.

  “Yes,” she’d reply, impressed by his unexpected seriousness, “the changeover might involve some hardship at first, but in the end we—I mean the intelligentsia—would reorganize society to maximize cooperative freedom, limiting, of course …”

  Limiting of course what? Alcohol consumption? Religious holidays? The major league baseball season? Sex on bingo nights? Non-cooperative freedom?

  And what was cooperative freedom, anyway? Professor Gordon had used the phrase in his lecture, and Gus didn’t understand it then, either.

  Inventing this conversation with Tracy was not helpful. Gus couldn’t extend it beyond these few lines. His was a half-pint intellect with a thimble full of knowledge: a working definition for a fool. Instead, he thought of how she might look naked. Tiny but perfectly shaped breasts. Like scoops of ice cream topped with cherries. Thin but well-shaped legs. Ribs showing, yet the torso nice to look at and hold.

  Tracy looked nothing like Beryl Lenahan. No one looked like Beryl. Beryl Lenahan probably didn’t look like Beryl Lenahan. Memory and need exaggerated her beauty. But that didn’t have the effect of making Tracy less desirable, or Gus less needy.

  It was not a good idea to think of either girl naked. He had enough money to find relief but didn’t want to go to the whorehouse behind the Moomaw Dairy to get it.

  “I want love, not just sex,” he crooned into his beer.

  “That’s because you’re still wet behind the ears, son.”

  A heavy man in a wrinkled suit had taken the stool next to Gus. An ebony cane with an ivory handle leaned against the bar next to him. The man’s nose was mapped with gin blossoms. His doughy ears sagged from his fleshy skull like chewed biscuits. One eye was blue the other milky gray. The milky eye seemed more startled than blind, as if its sole purview was impending calamity.

  “You put a premium on romance because you lack vital experience,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” Gus said.

  The man leaned close to Gus. He had the sickroom smell of a man indifferent to personal hygene. “No offense, laddy buck. But regarding the situation you were referring to, I am the voice of experienc
e.”

  “Glad to meet you, Voice,” Gus said.

  “No need to be rude, young man. I was about to offer you the benefit of what I, Solomon Coe, have learned in fifty-odd years of dealing with the weaker sex.”

  “And to think I almost blew it,” Gus said.

  “First of all, my vitriolic young friend, they are not the weaker sex. Stop thinking of them as weak. It will improve your chances for a sane life. Secondly, none of them believe in love. Or rather, their notion of love is far different than that of a lad such as yourself, who no doubt was brought up on sentimental movies and lugubrious novels, as well as the absurd opinions of the poorly informed. Your notion of love, you see, is an idealistic fantasy while theirs is practical. Their foremost requirement is security, not knights-errant in chain mail atop noble steeds.”

  As he spoke, the man’s voice changed without warning from basso to alto and back again, as if each intonation signified an alternate meaning.

  “Love is love,” Gus mumbled.

  “That sort of blind faith will lead you into the sloughs of emotional despond,” the man said. “A woman can become a harridan overnight. Married in June, young men become ruined suicidal puppets by Christmas. When the bride says, ‘I love you,’ what she means is, ‘I possess you and now will shape you to my special requirements.’ You see, my boy, women alone bear the downside consequences of sex. Thus, their day-to-day state of mind is governed by practicality. They can be ruthless when it comes to redirecting the heat of passion into a cool plan for survival. They may not be conscious of this age-old process but they carry out its demands nonetheless.”

  “Nice talking to you, sir,” Gus said. He swiveled away from the man. The man put his large hand on Gus’s knee and swiveled him back.

  “Hear me out, son. You won’t regret it.” His voice gave way abruptly to a musical alto singsong. “There’s a further problem with your notion of romantic love, a problem you, as yet, have no inkling of. Consider this: It is well-known that a woman takes nine times the pleasure from sex as does a man. Nine times! This is a proven fact! The Greeks established this ratio three thousand years ago. Small wonder, then, that the Greek male was not averse, in intimate locker-room encounters, to playing the part of the female. Pythagoras himself determined this radical nine-to-one differential. He was good with ratios. He would have invented the calculus had it not been for Zeno’s paradox, which remains unchallenged to this day.”

  “I’ve got to go,” Gus said.

  The commanding basso held him back. “Here’s the upshot, laddy buck! Romance has the half-life of a housefly! It’s a moneymaking concept deliberately foisted upon the public through movies, magazines, popular song, and the chocolate candy industry. The reality is rather different. And it is this: You either can please the ladies or you cannot. If you cannot, it’s bye-bye Charlie. Some will stay with the unsatisfactory man for family, religious, or security reasons, but these ladies, even though the matress they lie on is stuffed with money, will eventually turn away and face the wall, if you get my drift. You will not enjoy them, nor they you, and life goes on, a dull and dismal pantomime making one wish for early death. But hark! Beware the man who can turn the key in her ignition! The one who can unlock the door to her soul!”

  “But hark?”

  “In some cases you can deal with them through discipline. Regardless of your feelings about such things, you must bite the bullet and spank her. And no, I do not mean a playtime spanking. No sir! Nothing of the sort! You will need to make those rosy cheeks glow in the dark! Warm up her little scooter! Does she refuse to beg for mercy? You must make her beg for mercy. Spanking, you see, is more than a preliminary erotic exercise, it is man-to-woman communication of the most basic kind. It establishes the polarities of submission and control. Some will appreciate the wisdom in this harmless practice, some will not.”

  “Jesus Christ! Leave the kid alone, Sol,” the barkeep said.

  “There you go again, James,” Coe said. “Imposing yourself rudely on my conversations. Fascist swine that you are, would you nonetheless have the courtesy to allow the unencumbered exchange of ideas and opinions?”

  “How about you having the courtesy of not annoying the bejesus out of my customers,” James the barkeep said. James was a slow-moving giant who, in spite of himself, looked amused.

  “The old fruitcake comes in here two, three nights a week and lectures my clientele,” he said to Gus. “Boys like you mostly. You don’t have to listen to his bullshit, kid. Take your beer over to a booth. Sol can’t fit in a booth.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t characterize me in that unfortunate way, James,” Solomon Coe said.

  He turned his wounded alto persona to Gus: “My boy, I have been married five times. I know whereof I speak.” He held his fist up and extended his fingers one at a time starting with the thumb. “One, two, three, four, five,” he said. “Five wonderful and dismal and enlightening times. Should you find value in this remarkable history, I’d be glad to take you to my home where we can explore the many vicissitudes of the female sex, in more—ah—isolated and therefore friendlier circumstances.”

  “Don’t go with him, kid,” the barkeep said. “Sol’s got more vista-a-tudes than you want to know about.”

  “I’ll take my argument a step further,” Solomon Coe said. “I contend that all love, whether romantic, carnal, or spiritual, is nothing more than self-interest. The religious martyr, for example, who so publicly suffers the slings and arrows of persecution for love of his God, is merely ensuring his place in the celestial city. What could be more steeped in self-interest than that? Especially if he covets and enjoys pain.”

  “You’re making a martyr out of this kid, Sol,” James said.

  “On another, but related subject,” Coe said, “what is mankind’s most destructive invention?”

  “Barroom bullshit artists,” James the barkeep said.

  “The H-bomb,” Gus said.

  “Both of you are wrong. It is the mirror!” thundered the irrefutable basso.

  Solomon Coe gave Gus his business card. He was a lawyer, with offices in Milk River, Chinook, and Box Elder. “You find yourself in a sticky situation vis-à-vis a young lady,” he said, “give me a call. I fight them mano-a-mano. I fight fire with fire, son. And I take no prisoners. You’ll see.”

  Gus slid off his stool and headed for the door.

  Coe, having found his second wind, boomed, “Beware of the crazy one, laddy buck! She is the one you’ll never figure out! She will take your mind apart screw by screw and leave you stuttering nonsense to the woodwork. Like Lupina Sissler, my third effort to achieve matrimonial bliss! Or Deena Jo Blackstone, my fifth, both odd numbers, both numbers prime! She will teach her insanity to you and once you’ve learned it you will descend with her into unplumbed depths of dissolution and misery! Watch out for her! Soul of a spider, she winds you in her web and offers no way out!”

  Gus was almost to the door when Coe shouted, “How will you know her? That’s just it! You won’t, not until it’s too late! You will have turned your hole cards face up, but suddenly she wins the day with a hidden royal flush! Game over, my friend! Game over!”

  Just as Gus reached the door Coe slid off his stool and stared at him. His milky eye shimmered in its socket like a gray lamp. “I wouldn’t go down that path, son,” he said, slipping into a third tone, a sympathetic tenor. “Though, in all probability, you have no choice.”

  “What path is that?” Gus said.

  “The one you’re on, my boy.”

  Gus got out the door into a stinging wind. He looked back. The wind momentarily stopped the door from closing. Coe, silhouetted in barroom light, was stooped over his cane. His legs and cane formed a tripod to hold up his bulk. Gus pulled his parka hood up and cinched it tight. Even after walking three blocks Solomon Coe’s rising and falling voice echoed in his head.

  14

  Gus walked to the Athenian. Before he went in he looked into the front window to see
who was there. He saw Tracy sitting in a booth with two other people. Next to her was a boy in a beret and turtleneck sweater. He wore a trim goatee and Elvis-style sideburns. A girl sat opposite them. Her short red hair looked liked combed fire. Their talk was animated in a way that made Gus feel out in the cold. Which he was. He took a deep breath and went in.

  “Well, now there, then,” he said, doing James Dean again and then feeling ridiculous now for doing it.

  “The airman!” Tracy said. “What’s the airman doing here?”

  The others looked at him with benign contempt.

  Gus thought: The airman. She’s forgotten my name.

  “Uh, coffee,” Gus said, his voice almost inaudible. “Need to warm up.”

  “Sandra, move over,” Tracy said. “Let the airman sit down. He might have something to contribute.”

  Gus, realizing that he’d been holding his breath, exhaled. The boy in the beret offered him a cigarette. Gus didn’t smoke, but accepted it. Sandra, the girl with the fiery hair, gave him a light from her butane Zippo. Gus drew in the hot smoke, held it in his mouth, then let it out.

  “So this is your airman, Trace?” Sandra said. Her saucy jokes-on-you laugh made Gus feel as though she’d spotted a flaw in his appearance—unzipped fly, a zit on his nose. She picked up her cigarette from the communal ashtray and took a deep drag. The ashtray was overflowing with cigarette butts, most of them with red lip prints.

  “So what’s your story, Peter Lorre?” Josh said.

  Josh smiled in a way Gus didn’t like. Gus didn’t like Josh calling him Peter Lorre, either. It was a public put-down. Gus remembered Peter Lorre whining like a whipped dog as Humphrey Bogart slapped him around in The Maltese Falcon.

  “This is Gus Reppo, Josh,” Tracy said. “He’s from the radar base.”

  “Aha,” Josh said, “a noble defender of the faith.”

  “And what faith would that be?” Sandra said.

  “The only faith we have,” Josh said. “We worship the great unholy trinity—Many, Much, and More. Gus is its disciple and defender. Right Gus?”