Chapter TWENTY-NINE
Even though by most measures it wasn’t much of a scuffle, Bill Warrington judged it to be one of the more satisfying fights he’d ever been in. All right, it wasn’t really a fight. It was a mugging. A near mugging, actually. But it would have been real mugging if he hadn’t taken action, if he hadn’t fought back. But fight back he did. Got in a good jab, too.
Maybe it was the mountains that surrounded the city that reminded Bill of Korea. Strange how one minute he remembered what he was trying to do and who he was trying to find and then, the next minute, the next second, not so sure. The mountains threw him off. Korea? Colorado? He had to admit he was confused. Like the incident that had started the fight in the first place. He had been crossing the street looking for Marcy . . . no, April . . . and there on the other side was Clare. He was sure of it, even as he knew it could not be true. The staggering possibility, however remote, had made it impossible for him to move. He was sure it was her. The way she had given her head a shake as she walked, moving the strands away from her face as her hair billowed out behind her—how could it be anyone else? He’d reached his hand out in front of him, as if to touch, caress, and he saw the dark spots and the swollen knuckles and he was jerked back to . . . Utah! Yes, Utah.
So it couldn’t possibly be Clare, any more than those bent fingers and yellow nails were his. But they were his, so why couldn’t it be Clare? Things were upside down in this goddamned crazy world. Maybe he was a young man having a nightmare instead of an old man reliving a dream.
That’s when the gook had suddenly started talking to him, his breath foul enough to kill a horse. “You can’t stand here, mister,” he said. No trace of an accent, Bill noticed. Pretty goddamned smart. “Let me help you. You’re gonna get yourself killed.”
Bill heard car horns and a few shouted obscenities, but he was focused on the drunk gook. Or if he wasn’t drunk, he had been drunk not too long ago. Maybe he was on his way to get drunk . . . or drunker. Maybe he needed money to get drunk. He wasn’t about to fool Bill. Bill knew gooks. And Bill sure as hell knew drunks.
“Lemme help, lemme help,” the man said, and now he was starting to sound more like he should. That’s the thing: They’d nod and smile and say yes yes yes but all the while they are wondering how they can rip your heart out. He’d seen it. He knew. Some of his buddies fell for the smiling, the subservient posturing, the irresistible stuff they said they had for the GI to buy. Women to buy. Cheap, velly cheap. They’d draw the sailor or GI or marine or flyboy into an alley, promising porn or liquor or a young girl, and then kick the crap out of the fool, leaving him with little more than his boxers and his balls. Bill never fell for it. His buddies should have known better.
Bill started walking. One foot in front of the other. Just start walking. He made it to the sidewalk and stopped. He looked around him, searching for a familiar building or landmark.
“Where you going, man?”
The gook again. Flies on turds, these guys, trying to sound cool, sound American. Bill knew the game.
But the question still knocked him off track. Where was he trying to go? For a moment he was thinking, Back to my unit, back to my barracks. But that wasn’t right, couldn’t be right. He looked at his hands again.
He was nothing but an old man. But at least he wasn’t like this guy behind him: drunk, homeless. Kicked around every day like the old dog he’d probably eaten yesterday for lunch.
Dog—that was it! Greyhound. That’s where he was going.
Bill looked around him for the sign. The sign of the dog. The Greyhound dog: elongated, leaping. There it was: right above him. He was here.
“Are you lost, man? Whatcha lookin’ for?”
Bill needed to get away from this guy. Clare was waiting.
“Wait, man, maybe I can help.”
He’d turned and thrown the first punch only after he felt a hand on his shoulder, but he missed wide and nearly lost his balance. The gook broke his fall, holding on to his right arm with both hands. Bill knew the drill. First the arm, then the legs got kicked out from underneath you, next thing you knew you were on your back. Chink meat. No thinking needed here, just action. He cocked his left arm and let fly.
From the gook’s yell of surprise, Bill knew he’d connected. So why was he on the ground? Must’ve slipped at that point and knocked his head. He was sitting, and he touched his finger to a spot on his forehead that suddenly seemed on fire. He brought his hand away and saw blood on his fingers.
As the ringing subsided, he heard people yelling, “Leave him alone” and “Get outta here.” Bill thought at first they were yelling at him, but then he heard his assailant cry out, “I was trying to help him, motherf*ckers!”
People were helping Bill to his feet.
“Where are you going?”
“Do you need help?”
“Is there someone we can call?”
Bill felt dizzy. All these questions, all these people. He needed to focus. “I’m fine,” he muttered, even though he wasn’t sure he would be able to keep his knees from buckling. “I’m fine.”
Someone put something against his forehead. A handkerchief.
“You’re bleeding. We should get you to a hospital. Let’s get you to a hospital.”
“Hospital, no,” Bill said. “I’m okay. Just let me . . .”
Someone—several people—led him to a bus stop bench and helped him sit. Out of the noise of the traffic and the people talking to him, he heard a girl’s voice cry out.
“Grandpa!”
He was looking in Clare’s face—no, not Clare’s . . . April’s. She was crying and asking what happened and then she was talking to the strangers and one of the strangers said the bleeding had stopped and April was saying thank you and she thought everything would be okay and no it wasn’t necessary to call the police or an ambulance. A man’s voice asked if she was sure and she said she was sure and Bill had closed his eyes until he felt her in front of him.
“Grandpa, you absolutely scared the shit out of me,” April said.
Bill wanted to laugh, but a flash of pain across his forehead made him wince.
“Where did you go?” April continued. “You dropped me at Amtrak but never showed up. I finally realized you might be here, but then I got here and you weren’t. Then I walk out here to find you bleeding and everything. What is going on with you?”
Bill wondered if this would be his last coherent thought, this realization that he was sitting at a dirty bus stop; that he didn’t even know the name of the city he was in; that he was not with Clare or with Mike or with Nick or with Marcy; that he was about to break yet another promise, this one to his granddaughter, who was now begging him to say something, to open his eyes.
Bill hadn’t realized he’d closed them. A hot wave—an ocean of pins and tacks and broken bottles—scraped across his forehead, across his temples, and across the back of his head. The pain actually felt pretty good; cleansing, in a way. He waited to be lifted up, he expected to be lifted up so that he could look down on the scene: an old man, a young girl, indifferent life bustling about and around them. Up and up he would go, he knew, until their two figures became small and melted like snow as he rose higher and higher into white.