“You really will want some new stuff in there,” she agreed. “Nelsons lived in there before, and Eileen wasn’t the neatest person in the world.” Now that I wasn’t going to move in with them Margaret seemed to think better of me. I could see her point though.
“Neat?” Jack snorted, lighting a cigarette. “She was a slob. Not only was she a boozer, she was the court punchboard besides. Old Nels used to slap her around every night just on general principles — he figured she probably laid three guys a day just to keep in practice, and usually he was guessin’ on the low side.”
“How would you know about that, Mister Alders?” Margaret demanded.
“Just hearsay, sweetie, just hearsay. You know me.”
“That’s just it,” she said, “I do know you.”
“Now, sweetie —”
There was a heavy pounding on the side of the trailer. I jumped. “OK, in there,” a voice bellowed from outside, “this is a raid.”
“Hey,” Jack said, “that’s Sloane.” He raised his voice. “You’ll never take us alive, Copper!” It sounded like a game that had been going on for a long time.
A huge, balding man of about forty came in, laughing in a high-pitched giggle. His face was red, and he wore a slightly rumpled suit. He looked heavy, but it wasn’t really fat. He seemed to fill up the whole trailer. His grin sprawled all over his face and he seemed to be just a little drunk. He had a half-case of beer under one arm.
“Hi, Margaret, honey,” he said, putting down the beer and folding her in a bear hug. “How’s my girlfriend?”
“Sloane, you drunken son of a bitch,” Jack said, grinning, “quit pawin’ my wife and shake hands with my brother Dan. Dan, Cal Sloane.”
“Dan?” Sloane asked, turning to me. “Aren’t you Alders’ college-man brother?”
“He went in the Army after he got out of college,” Jack said. “He’s out at the separation center now.”
“You on leave?” Sloane asked, shaking my hand.
“I told you, Cal,” Jack said, “he’s at the separation center.
He’s gettin’ out. Why don’t you listen, you dumb shit?” The insults had the ring of an established ritual, so I didn’t butt in.
“Hey, that’s a reason for a party, isn’t it?” Sloane said.
“Isn’t everything reason enough for you?” Jack demanded, still grinning.
“Not everything. I didn’t drink more than a case or two at my Old Lady’s funeral.”
“Dan here’s been drinkin’ German beer,” Jack boasted. “He can put you under the table without even settlin’ the dust in his throat.”
“Didn’t we meet a couple times a few years back?” Sloane asked me, pulling off his coat and settling down in a chair.
“I think so,” I said.
“Sure we did. It was when Alders here was still married to Bonnie.” He loosened his tie.
“Yeah,” I said, “I believe it was.”
We talked for about an hour, kidding back and forth. At first Sloane seemed a little simple — that giggle and all — but after a while I realized that he was really pretty sharp. I began to be very glad that I’d called Jack and come on out here to his place. It began to look like I had some family to come home to after all.
About eleven or so we ran out of beer, and Sloane suggested that we slip out for a couple glasses of draft. Margaret pouted a little, but Jack took her back into the hallway and talked with her for a few minutes, and when they came back she seemed convinced. Jack pulled on a sport shirt and a jacket, and Sloane and I got ourselves squared away. We went outside.
“I’ll be seeing you, Margaret,” I said to her as she stood in the doorway to watch us leave.
“Now you know the way,” she said in a sort of offhand invitation.
“Be back in an hour or so, sweetie,” Jack told her.
She went back inside without answering.
We took Jack’s car, a slightly battered Plymouth with a lot of miles on it.
“I won’t ride with Sloane when he’s been drinking,” Jack said, explaining why we’d left Sloane’s Cadillac. “The son of a bitch has totaled five cars in the last two years.”
“I have a helluva time gettin’, insurance.” Sloane giggled.
We swung on out of the trailer court and started off down South Tacoma Way, past the car lots and parts houses.
“Go on out to the Hideout Tavern,” Sloane said. He was sprawled in the back seat, his hat pushed down over his nose.
“Right,” Jack said.
“I hear that a man can do some pretty serious drinking in Germany,” Sloane said to me.
“Calvin, you got a beer bottle for a brain,” Jack told him, turning a corner.
“Just interested, that’s all. That’s the way to find out things — ask somebody who knows.”
“A man can stay pretty drunk if he wants to,” I said. “Lots of strange booze over there.”
“Like what?” Sloane asked. He seemed really interested.
“Well, there’s this one — Steinhager, it’s called — tastes kind of like a cross between gin and kerosene.”
“Oh, God” — Jack gagged —”it sounds awful.”
“Yeah,” I admitted, “it’s moderately awful, all right. They put it up in stone bottles — probably because it would eat its way out of glass. Screws your head up something fierce.”
We wheeled into the parking lot of a beer joint and went inside, still talking. We ordered pitchers of draft and sat in a booth drinking and talking about liquor and women and the service. The tavern was one of those usual kind of places with lighted beer signs all along the top of the mirror behind the bar. It had the usual jukebox and the usual pinball machine. It had the uneven dance floor that the bartender had to walk across to deliver pitchers of beer to the guys sitting in the booths along the far wall. There were the solitary drinkers hunched at the bar, staring into their own reflections in the mirror or down into the foam on their beer; and there was the usual group of dice players at the bar, rolling for drinks. I’ve been in a hundred joints like it up and down the coast.
I realized that I was enjoying myself. Sloane seemed to be honestly having a good time; and Jack, in spite of the fact that he was trying his damnedest to impress me, seemed to really get a kick out of seeing me again. That unholy dead feeling I’d been fighting for the last months or so was gone.
“We got to get Dan some civilian clothes,” Cal was saying. “He can’t run around in a uniform. That’s the kiss of death as far as women are concerned.”
“I’ve got some civvies coming in,” I said. “I shipped them here a month ago — parcel post. They’re probably at the General Delivery window downtown right now.”
“I’ve got to ran downtown tomorrow,” Jack said. “I’ll stop by and pick them up for you.”
“Don’t I have to get them myself?” I asked. “I mean, don’t they ask for ID or anything?”
“Hell, no,” Jack scoffed. “You can get anybody’s mail you want at the General Delivery window.”
“Kinda shakes a guy’s faith in the Hew Hess Government,” I said. “I mean, if you can’t trust the goddamn Post Office Department — say, maybe we ought to take our business to somebody else.”
“Who you got in mind?” Sloane asked.
“I don’t know, maybe we could advertise — ‘Deliver mail for fun and profit’ — something like that.”
“I’m almost sure they’d find some way to send you to Leavenworth for it,” Jack said.
“Probably,” I agreed. “They’re awfully touchy about some things. I’d sure appreciate it if you could pick those things up for me though. If you can, dump them off at a cleaner’s someplace. I imagine they’re pretty wrinkled by now.” I emptied my beer.
“Another round, Charlie,” Sloane called to the barman. “Put your money away,” he told me as I reached for my wallet. “This is my party.”
About a half hour later, a kind of hard-faced brunette came in. She hurried across to the booth and sat down beside Cal. She glanced back at the door several times and seemed to be a little nervous. “Hi, Daddy,” she said. She made it sound dirty.
“Hello there, baby,” he said. “This is Alders’ brother, Dan. Dan, this is Helen.”
“Hi,” she said, nodding briefly at me. “Hi, Jack.”
I looked carefully at her. She had makeup plastered on about an inch thick. It was hard to see any expression under all that gunk. Maybe she didn’t have any expression.
She turned back to Sloane with an urgent note in her voice. “Baby’s got a problem, Daddy.” It still sounded duty. I decided that I didn’t like her.
“Well, tell Daddy.” Sloane giggled self-consciously.