Fields of Fire Read online

  She was still smiling. She leaned forward in anticipation. “So you punched his lights out.”

  He laughed a little. “Well, I thought about it. You know John Wayne woulda dropped him with a poke between the eyes. But I figured the motherfucker would break my hand. Nigger heads are like that, you know? So the next time he gave a whoooeee I kicked him right between the eyes. Pow!” He checked her face out. She was ecstatic. It was the high point of her day. “Kept my toe pointed so I wouldn't put my foot between his eyes. Don't need no murder rap from a junkie dead inside a toilet. Popped his nose like a light bulb. He had twenty bucks and four bags on him. Took the bucks. Left the bags.”

  She stared at him curiously. “So how'd you get fired?”

  He squinted, sipping coffee. The coffee was almost gone. “Well, I had to report it. Everybody knew it was me inside the girls’ room. Found Mister Baum and told him a dude got pushy with me when I tried to make him leave the girls’ bathroom. Told him the dude looked a little drunk and started shoving me, so I poked him in the face.”

  She squinted back. “Sounds like a pretty good story to me.”

  “I thought so, too. But you know them hebes. Always worrying about getting sued. He tells me, ‘Snake, you can't just go round hitting people when you work in a place like this.’ I says, ‘Mister Baum, you know I never started a fight in my whole life, but I just can't let people push me round, no matter where I work. What kind of a man lets people push him round?’ And he says, ‘Snake, I think you done a good job for us but I gotta can you.’ And he fires me and gives me full pay for the week. Plus I got the nigger's twenty bucks. Not bad, huh?”

  She nodded approvingly: not bad. “What happened to the nigger?”

  Snake stacked the coffee cup in the sink. “Who cares?” His face showed a moment of sparkle. “If he's got a hair on his ass he'll sue Mister Baum.”

  She leaned back in her chair, laughing. Not a bad story. Then she smiled and he could tell she was remembering again. She shook her head a little. “You're so bad, Ronnie. And so young to be so bad. Doesn't anybody scare you? Don't you like anybody?”

  He did not answer. The question was rhetorical. He stifled the retort that once was commonplace, that she was not one to be lecturing anyway. She continued, though, in a rare moment when the emotion of the memory overwhelmed the reality of the present. “And you were stupid to quit school. You always did so well.”

  Again he did not answer. She's talking about history, he mused. Don't do no good to talk about it. Won't change it. And it was nothing but a hassle, anyway. Rules rules rules.

  She gave him an acquiescent smile and floated those pillowed, remembering words again. “Well, I guess you'll be out job-hunting tomorrow morning, huh?”

  “I don't know. I'm getting sick of it.”

  She shrugged, avoiding his eyes. She had already said too much. Or perhaps it would have been one of the rare days when her memories mounted until they drove him back into the street. Who knows. There was a measured clomping on the stairs then, and the door burst open. No knock.

  A reddened face peered expectantly into the room as if it were his personal possession. The red face was meaty, heavy-bearded, framed by thinning black hair. The nose was mashed and grainy and the eyes seemed dull, unfocused. The man had huge hands and a belly that hung over his belt.

  Snake understood immediately. He felt humiliated, but mostly he was embarrassed at being in the way. She's going to do it, he thought, starting for the door, there's no way I can ever stop that. Her life, anyway. She wants it and I got no right to get pissed. But he looked at the animal that had just entered his home for the purpose of smothering his mother underneath his rolls of fat and muscle, stroking that most special part of her insides, and his neck crawled with a rage that did not delude him as to its depth.

  He knew that he could kill this fat man whose only pertinent fault was that he wanted to fill Snake's mother with the one thing she desired more than anything else. He could kill him and laugh for weeks about it. For one pulsing, heated flash he seriously considered using his knife. Then he became embarrassed at his own rage. I got no right, he decided. Don't do no good, anyway. It's what she wants. Hell with it.

  Fat Man looked dully at his mother, seemingly too unfocused to understand. Maybe he's jealous, Snake mused. That's a laugh. He decided that he must leave the apartment, get out of their way. Fat Man was still standing in the door, half in and half out, trying to figure the whole thing out. Snake reminded himself that he would have to laugh about Fat Man once he escaped the apartment. Christ, is the bastard dumb. Where does she find 'em? But I bet he has a big one.

  He turned to his mother and said, for the benefit of Fat Man, “Well, I'm cutting out, Mom. Catch you later.”

  She looked at him and he knew she could read the rage in him and she seemed burnt-out behind the eyes, as if she were fighting with a part of herself that she did not really care for but could not overcome. She touched his arm lightly, trying to hold him a reassuring moment, and said with that sad voice, “You don't know about love, Ronnie. What love does to people. You're too young to know about love.”

  He smiled thinly, conscious of Fat Man, who had heard his words and finally stepped inside the door. “Yeah. That must be it.” He reached the door. “Later.”

  “When will you be home?” Just the tiniest effort, like a last particle of hope. He glanced at Fat Man staring dully at him and gave him a tight grimace of a smile, knowing his hate was futile, and accepting that.

  “I don't know.”

  Then Fat Man, whose frayed nerve-wires had finally managed to pulse enough electricity to turn a dim light on in the back of his bruised brain, peered dimly at Snake and spoke with a mashed, gravelly voice. “Nice to meet ya.” He spoke slowly, and smiled a half-witted grin.

  Now how can anybody hate a dude as dim as that, thought Snake. He probably has to have somebody figure out traffic lights for him so he can cross the street. But Snake still clung to the warm emotion that the thought of cutting Fat Man's balls off gave him.

  “Yeah.” He slammed the door.

  CONCRETE wasteland, beaten by the years and by neglect into crumbling uselessness. Unpainted fences and gates and little brown squares of yard, cold reminders of more vibrant days. Grass choked out by trash and bottles. Piles of garbage and broken appliances on the sidewalks. Clumps of people gathered in age groups like schools of fish. Women watching him pass with bored but cautious eyes.

  He walked onto a wider, more active street. Cars flowed more thickly, constant streams of unstopping, terrified transients. Old business buildings, dying, scarred with signs. Old signs, rain-washed and yearworn, marked candy stores and delicatessens and car clinics and pharmacies. New ones advertised porno shops and liquor stores and bars and grills and pawnshops. Boards over windows. Lighthouse For The Blind, Interdenominational Church, and purveyor of free coffee. Come back to the seed of civilization to save us from what we've become.

  Zombie people, regurgitated by the gluttonous monster. Hostile young, running and hunting in wild packs, like the dogs that owned the alleyways. Dudes and chicks, brightly dressed, looking for action. Stolid, broken groups outside liquor stores. Addicts in their twos and threes, many younger than Snake, scratching and sniffing, searching for the bag man.

  Snake walked quickly, saturated by it, his face hard with its challenging smirk. He was restless, afraid that some hit man would Just Know that fifty dollars bulged inside his wallet. His eyes constantly swept the sidewalks and the doorways as he walked.

  He kicked a page of newspaper that the wind whipped past him and as it rose he caught it in his hand. It was yesterday's front page and there was a large picture of a man swaddled in bandages being hurried down a rubbled road on a stretcher. The men who hauled the stretcher seemed somber and determined. Above the picture the headlines read “Marines Retake Citadel at Hue.”

  Snake stopped walking and stared almost enviously at the picture. There's some mean motorsco
oters for you. Uh huh. Well, I'm gonna get me some of that. Bring me home a medal. No more mopping up other people's pee. That's right.

  An old man swaddled in dirty wool noticed that Snake had stopped moving, and approached him cautiously. Snake caught the movement, threw the newspaper away, and put his shoulder into the man as he strode past him.

  “Fuck yourself, you old fart.”

  He found Zimmerman's Candy Store, more recently Diamond Jim's Entertainment, now boarded up and gutted by human vultures. On the other side was Mack's.

  Gonna taste Mack's needle one more time before I blow.

  Two years earlier, when he was christened Snake, he had gone to Mack, who provided him an inerasable baptism. It began at his wrist and curled up his forearm, an angry black flecked with bits of deadly chartreuse wrinkles and a crimson mouth. Snake wore his symbol proudly, much as the rich flaunt jewelry. It was a display of his tastes and beliefs, a symbol that spoke for him. He loved his full forearm of Snake. He wanted another one.

  Mack was burning a huge orange spider onto the shoulder of a sailor. The sailor had his jumper off and was studying a rivulet of blood that was trickling down the back of his arm from the needle. The sailor nonchalantly gripped a towel, soaking up the blood as it leaked down from the spider. Mack stopped now and then, wiping blood delicately from the area he was cutting, careful not to erase the template outline. Snake watched briefly and nodded to the sailor. Good choice. Boss tattoo. Orange. Truly heavy color for a spider.

  The designs were on the walls, hundreds of them. Snake studied them, searching for the one that would announce him to the world. At last he found it. Lost in the middle of a hundred designs on the center wall at one moment, it jumped out at him and filled his senses at the next.

  There was a skull perched atop crossed daggers. Around the daggers twined two snakes, their heads staring fiercely at the skull. Above the skull, in wide letters, was U S M C. Underneath the daggers it read Death Before Dishonor. He stared at it. All the right colors. Black and orange-red and a green that matched the other snake on his left arm. Oh, heavy. There it is.

  Mack gauzed up the sailor and he pulled his jumper on and paid Mack. He came from behind the counter and nodded affably to Snake, his brother in ink, and departed. Snake pointed to his choice and moved behind the counter. Mack nodded curtly and found the proper template in a drawer.

  He took Snake's arm and shaved and washed it, spraying the forearm with a soap solution kept inside a Windex bottle. Then he wiped the arm down with a towel wet from other brandings. Snake nodded approvingly. Very sanitary.

  The preliminaries thus completed, Mack pressed the template onto Snake's forearm, marking the outline of the New Him in black powder, and cut the gun on. Snake watched the gun move slowly along the outline, blue spark jumping from the tip into him, cutting snakes and daggers and words into his skin. He gritted and bled a little and dug it. Deep burn. Boss tattoo.

  Mack worked carefully, expertly, his baggy eyes protruding from his face. He was covered with his own choices, arms and neck and chest saturated with four decades of brandings. A man who put himself into his work. Finally he spoke, with slow, bored words, his eyes still intent on Snake's forearm. “You in the Marines?”

  Snake watched the skull being shaded in. “Nope. Not yet.”

  The skull was finished. Green wrinkles brightened the snakes. Mack cocked his head. “Ain't this kind of ass-backwards? None of my business. I'll put general stars on yer shoulders if you want. But most guys wait till they been in awhile. Like that swab was just in here. Gave him a goddamn anchor two, three weeks ago.”

  Snake shrugged. “What the hell. When I make up my mind I make up my mind. Know what I mean? Felt like getting it today.”

  Mack colored the words. “What if they don't take you?”

  Snake laughed, watching the needle. Here comes Dishonor. “You shitting me, Mack? I walk. I talk. I'm crazy as hell. They'll take me.” He considered it for another moment. “If they don't I'll come back and you can put a rose over the whole thing and put ‘Mom’ under it. All right?”

  Mack grinned slowly. “Yeah, you're crazy enough. They'll take you.”

  The tattoo was finished. Mack gauzed and taped it. In two days the tape could be removed and the snakes and skull and daggers and words would be forever Snake. He pushed down his sleeve and paid Mack and walked into the street once again.

  He walked for an hour, bored and freezing. He passed a famous restaurant, one of those places that yet survived in the wasteland as a gathering place for the neat and elite. He stopped and stared through the large plate-glass window that bordered the sidewalk, gazing at the Beautiful People in their stylish clothes, languishing over their just-right meals. He became seized with scorn. He banged on the window and most of them looked curiously back at him and he mashed his face against the pane in a grotesque gargoyle stare and flipped two birds at them. Fuck you. All of you. Then he laughed hilariously for one short moment and scrunched his shoulders and continued on his undirected journey.

  On the street it was black and cold and he walked hurriedly, shivering. Concrete walls hovered close to him, filled with predatory animals, creatures of the night. He was their prey. He fondled his knife tentatively and walked closer to the street, on the very edge of the sidewalk. He passed a few bored streetwalkers and a half-dozen bars. Dim melancholy lights and jukebox music and brackish odors surrounded him near every bar, inviting him to stop and die a zombie death.

  Three blocks. Four. A car braked hard and pulled over next to him. He walked more quickly, not acknowledging the car's arrival. It crawled along beside him. A window rolled down. He glanced and saw a heavy-lidded face peering at him with stupored, hating eyes.

  “Cocksuckin’ dicklickin’ mohfucka.”

  He looked behind him and ahead of him on the street. No cops. Yuh-oh. Bad news. There were four hating figures in the car. The heavy-lidded face mumbled at him again.

  “Hey. Cocksuckin’ dicklickin’ mohfucka.”

  He jogged along the sidewalk and became enveloped by new brackish minglings. To his right was the No-Name Bar and Grill. He ducked inside, shaking his head.

  What the hell. I was hungry anyway.

  He bought two hamburgers and a cup of coffee at the No-Name, eating quickly at the counter. On one wall there was a jukebox. Its music cut through the barriers of Snake's subconscious. All the people going places, the singer moaned. Smiling with electric faces. What they find the glow erases. What they lose the glow replaces. Behind him a middle-aged couple was dancing. There was no dance area. They groped each other tightly, the dance an excuse to discover carnal parts of each other. The couple turned and a chair fell over. Someone swore at them. Someone else chided loudly, “It must be love.”

  The dancers did not hear. They were off in stupefied Nirvana, riding on each other's flesh. The chair was up-righted and the jukebox once again pervaded. You can live without direction. And you don't have to be perfection. And life is love—in a neon rainbow.

  Snake ordered another coffee and drank it slowly, listening to the jukebox. He did not like the No-Name but there was no better place to go. He sat alone at the counter, watching people absently. They were all the same to him: dead. They'd merely forgotten to stop breathing.

  Finally he could no longer stand it. He paid the tab and left a ten-dollar tip, rationalizing that it was Smack-man's money anyway, and grooving on the rise he provoked from the apathetic bartender. Then he walked quickly, half-jogging through the streets. It was late and bitter cold. The air attacked him and he shivered nakedly in its crispness. He reminded himself that he must get a coat. Then he remembered that he would not need one. In a few short days he would be gone.

  THERE was a recruiting station at the wasteland's edge. It fed on creatures from the run-down rowhouses. They were vital sustenance.

  The next morning Snake awoke early and walked to the recruiting station. He wore his father's coat. His father had not returned from his paint
job of the day before. Old Bones, mused Snake, snatching the jacket, is in bed with about five bottles somewhere.

  At the recruiting complex he contemplated the signs that advertised each service. Each sign promised to fill some void in his experience. “Tradition.” “See the world.” “Fly with us.” He was not impressed. He had already chosen the Marines for one reason: everybody talked about how bad they were. And I'm ba-a-ad, he laughed to himself. We belong.

  The complex had not yet opened. He sat on the steps near the Marine Corps office, huddled inside his father's coat, watching the wind whip trash along the sidewalk. By the time the first recruiter came he was raw from the wind.

  Snake checked the recruiter out, grooving on the bright blue trousers underneath the green overcoat, digging the shaved head and face reeking with discipline. He chuckled to himself. Only a Marine would dare to look like that around here. He must be a bad-ass dude.

  He stood when the recruiter reached the steps and began to follow him through the door. Only then did the Marine seem to realize that Snake had been waiting for him. He turned and gave Snake a devouring glance.

  “Need something?”

  Snake nodded, anxious to get inside the building. He was freezing. “Yup. Wanna enlist, man.” He followed the man inside, tapping his forearm. “Already got my tattoo.”

  The Marine suppressed a grin. “That was your first mistake.”

  THEN down there in the knee-deep sand, inside the sweatbox that was boot camp, underneath the roofs of endless gray tin buildings and the canopy of sultry southern sky, something happened. He found a way to win.