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But never the same thing twice, Novotny explained as we caught a jeepny to go for a steak at the Esquire. Cagle had been scaring hell out of Morning since Basic, when he had crawled into Morning's tent one night on bivouac. Morning had torn up the tent pegs and run ten yards in his sleeping bag before Cagle calmed him down. Another time, after they had gotten to the Philippines, Cagle had hidden under Morning's bunk, waited until he was asleep, then reached up and grabbed his throat. Morning had gasped and stiffened, then didn't move for several minutes. Worried, Cagle crawled out, turned on the light and found Morning wide-eyed and white, his breathing so deep it shook the bunk, and his pulse so furious, his hands fluttered on his chest. Cagle had to pour cold water on him to bring him around.
I wondered what Morning had thought during that time, then realized that he had thought nothing. He had been turned off as completely as if he were dead. I reminded myself to ask him about it someday. He sat in the front seat of the jeepny, alone with the driver, apparently relaxed, smoking and watching the road as we hurried out of Town. Nipa huts flashed into walls, and Morning's smoke whipped around my head. He seemed to have regained his calm by the time we reached the Esquire, halfway between Base and Town, and laughed about it over a bleeding steak and a beer.
Later that night, drunk again, Novotny and I were laughing and stumbling our way down a street unfamiliar to me on our way to the apartment, which I still hadn't seen. It was nearly midnight, and people were moving: some home after work, airmen back to the Base or into hiding until 0600 the next morning, and those Filipinos who seemingly wandered the streets at all hours. I was trying to tell Novotny something, I don't remember what, when I looked around and he was gone. His face, his brilliant teeth masked in a leathery grin, had been assimilated into the random movement of the ill-lit night. In turning to search for him, I forgot which way we had been walking. I could see in the alcoholic fog around my head, but I couldn't remember what I had seen. I pushed through the crowds along the side of the street, forced there by the increased traffic of jeepnys and cabs heading for Base, but I didn't see anything I recognized, then realized that I didn't know where the fabled apartment was anyway. As I decided to return to Base, and turned to hail a jeepny, they were all gone. Zip. The rocking street was empty except for a few stragglers hurrying underground and listless whores stretching their backs after another night's labor. An old woman's cardboard hand fluttered against my arm and her hesitant, fluting voice said something. I thought her begging, and shook my head. She was insistent with those stiff fingers on my elbow, and I understood she was selling. Not me, old hag of a woman, I thought, Not rich, creamy all-American me. But I let myself be led into an alley, saying to myself that it would be at least a safe place to sleep as she guided me over obstacled darkness, over rough ground threatening to rise at me with each step, into a small black cauldron of a room.
(But no sleep is safe: it all echoes death.)
I let her unresisting flesh ply its trade under me, added my load to those long never-remembered other ones which filled her crinkly skin. As I labored, I dimly heard rats gnawing at the rafters, the sound of their teeth on the wood and their squeaking voices a calliope above us. I asked why? and answered with abstractions like "responsibility to contracts made in good faith" and "be polite to old ladies and children" and the other rules by which I thought I lived. But I must have already known how the rules were failing me, the ordered forms gone in the rip that began with the rupture of my marriage and proposed career (how silly that word sounds now). Or perhaps with the rupture of my mother's maidenhead. Or, God knows, before. I hadn't learned about poetry and war yet. I still believed in salvation – and here I was seeking order and saving grace as my castle tumbled into the rising seas, searching with that fu
Cagle was drunk. He walked straight down the sidewalk, but he half-faced the street, drifting like a Piper Cub in a high wind. Morning was in a foul mood, sulking about the fourteen ladies' drinks he had lost to Bubbles at the Hub. Three days in Town had flayed the skin from my body, and I was already making those familiar resolutions never to come back. We were walking up to the main street, looking for a jeepny to take us back to Base. As we passed the door of a foul den known as Mutt & Jeff's, three airmen burst out the door. The first and largest one was talking to the two behind him, and humped into Cagle. Cagle rebounded two steps, then went forward again before the airman could move. He elbowed Cagle out of the way, and snorted something about "Lookin' where the hell you're walkin' " and started back down the street in the direction from which we had come.
Morning, without a word, ran back to them, grabbed the airman's shoulders, spun him around and shoved him against his two buddies.
"You want to push somebody, mother-fucker, you push me," Morning said, anger quivering like a wind-tossed flame in his voice. "Don't push, man."
The airman had been openly attacked, was slightly larger than Morning, and probably felt himself in the right. He and his two pals charged just as I ran back to make peace. I tried to say something about not needing to fight to the other two guys, but one was already throwing a roundhouse right at me. I covered up, ducked and pushed the first one back into the second. When he rushed again, I stepped back and kicked him in the chest. He staggered backwards into the street and sat down in a puddle to get his breath. I asked the other guy if he wanted any of me, and he agreed that he didn't.
"Let's break this up before the APs arrive." He agreed again.
Morning, for all his anger, was boxing. He had the guy against the wall, stepping in and out, ringing the airman's ears with combinations of body punches and open-handed slaps. Morning's body was turned, his chin tucked and his right protecting his face in a nearly classic stance. The slaps smacked loud and arrogant. Morning played with the guy, nearly letting him out, then driving him against the wall with the blinding, deafening slaps, but without hurting him badly enough so he could quit with some semblance of honor.
I stepped between them, peeled them apart, and held them off. Morning's chest was trembling so fast under my hand that I wondered if he was going to hit me. But the other guy did. It was only a blind slap from a dazed and confused kid trying to beat off a nest of hornets, but it glanced off my tender twice-broken nose. I shoved him against the wall, set him up with a poking jab to the head, layed two right hooks under his heart, then dropped him with a forearm slam to the face when he bounced off the wall. He slid to a squat at the base of the wall, head in hands. I whirled back – Morning was gri
"Boy, you really broke up the fight," he sneered at me. "A real fucking peace-maker."
"I'm sorry…" I started to say, but realized he neither understood nor cared to understand, and besides was right, I suppose. He had to say something to cover his guilt for not helping his friends.
"I'll… I'll remember your ugly fucking face," the other one shouted as Morning and I walked to where Cagle leaned patiently against the wall. "We'll catch your ass some night, son of a bitch. In a dark alley, by your-god-damned-self!" I walked back to them, thinking, What a long eighteen months it was going to be.