Dressed Like Summer Leaves

  MICKEY DOLAN WAS eleven years old, walking up Main Street on a spring afternoon, wearing green camouflage-colored trousers and tee shirt with a military web belt. The trousers had large pleated pockets at the front of his thighs; they closed with flaps, and his legs touched the spiral notebook in the left one, and the pen and pencil in the right one, where his coins shifted as he walked. He wore athletic socks and running shoes his mother bought him a week ago, after ten days of warm April, when she believed the winter was finally gone. He carried schoolbooks and a looseleaf binder in his left hand, their weight swinging with his steps. He passed a fish market, a discount shoe store that sold new shoes with nearly invisible defects, a flower shop, then an alley, and he was abreast of Timmy’s, a red-painted wooden bar, when the door opened and a man came out. The man was in mid-stride but he turned his face and torso to look at Mickey, so that his lead foot came to the sidewalk pointing ahead, leaving him twisted to the right from the waist up. He shifted his foot toward Mickey, brought the other one near it, pulled the door shut, bent at the waist, and then straightened and lifted his arms in the air, his wrists limp, his palms toward the sidewalk.

  “Charlie,” he said. “Long time no see.” Quickly his hands descended and held Mickey’s biceps. “Motherfuckers were no bigger than you. Some of them.” His hands squeezed, and Mickey tightened his muscles. “Stronger, though. Doesn’t matter though, right? If you can creep like a baby. Crawl like a snake. Be a tree; a vine. Quiet as fucking air. Then zap: body bags. Short tour. Marine home for Christmas. Nothing but rice too.”

  The man wore cut-off jeans and old sneakers, white gone gray in streaks and smears, and a yellow tank shirt with nothing written on it. A box of Marlboros rested in his jeans pocket, two-thirds of it showing, and on his belt at his right hip he wore a Buck folding knife in a sheath; he wore it upside down so the flap pointed to the earth. Behind the knife a chain that looked like chrome hung from his belt and circled his hip to the rear, and Mickey knew it was attached to a wallet. The man was red from a new sunburn, and the hair on his arms and legs and above the shirt’s low neck was blond, while the hair under his arms was light brown. He had a beard with a thick mustache that showed little of his upper lip: his beard was brown and slowly becoming sun-bleached, like the hair on his head, around a circle of bald red scalp; the hair was thick on the sides and back of his head, and grew close to his ears and beneath them. A pair of reflecting sunglasses with silver frames rested in the hair in front of the bald spot. On his right bicep was a tattoo, and his eyes were blue, a blue that seemed to glare into focus on Mickey, and Mickey knew the source of the glare was the sour odor the man breathed into the warm exhaust-tinged air between them.

  “What’s up, anyways? No more school?” The man spread his arms, his eyes left Mickey’s and moved skyward, then swept the street to Mickey’s right and the buildings on its opposite side, then returned, sharper now, as though Mickey were a blurred television picture becoming clear, distinct. “Did July get here?”

  “It’s April.”

  “Ah: AWOL. Your old man’ll kick your ass, right?”

  “I just got out.”

  “Just got out.” The man looked above Mickey again, his blue eyes roving, as though waiting for something to appear in the sky beyond low buildings, in the air above lines of slow cars. For the first time Mickey knew that the man was not tall; he had only seemed to be. His shoulders were broad and sloping, his chest wide and deep so the yellow tank shirt stretched across it, and his biceps swelled when he bent his arms, and sprang tautly when he straightened them; his belly was wide too, and protruded, but his chest was much wider and thicker. Yet he was not as tall as he had appeared stepping from the bar, turning as he strode, and bowing, then standing upright and raising his arms. Mickey’s eyes were level with the soft area just beneath the man’s Adam’s apple, the place that housed so much pain, where Mickey had deeply pushed his finger against Frankie Archembault’s windpipe last month when Frankie’s headlock had blurred his eyes with tears and his face scraped the cold March earth. It was not a fight; Frankie simply got too rough, then released Mickey and rolled away, red-faced and gasping and rubbing his throat. When Mickey stood facing his father he looked directly at the two lower ribs, above the solar plexus. His father stood near-motionless, his limbs still, quiet, like his voice; the strength Mickey felt from him was in his eyes.

  The man had lit a cigarette and was smoking it fast, looking at the cars passing; Mickey watched the side of his face. Below it, on the reddened bicep of his right arm that brought the cigarette to his mouth and down again, was the tattoo, and Mickey stared at it as he might at a dead animal, a road kill of something wild he had never seen alive, a fox or a fisher, with more than curiosity: fascination and a nuance of baseless horror. The Marine Corps globe and anchor were blue, and permanent as the man’s flesh. Beneath the globe was an unfurled rectangular banner that appeared to flap gently in a soft breeze; between its borders, written in script that filled the banner, was Semper Fidelis. Under the banner were block letters: USMC. The man still gazed across the street, and Mickey stepped around him, between him and the bar, to walk up the street and over the bridge; he would stop and look down at the moving water and imagine salmon swimming upriver before he walked the final two miles, most of it uphill and steep, to the tree-shaded street and his home. But the man turned and held his shoulder. The man did not tightly grip him; it was the man’s quick movement that parted Mickey’s lips with fear. They stood facing each other, Mickey’s back to the door of the bar, and the man looked at his eyes then drew on his cigarette and flicked it up the sidewalk. Mickey watched it land beyond the corner of the bar, on the exit driveway of McDonald’s. The hand was rubbing his shoulder.

  “You just got out. Ah. So it’s not July. Three fucking something o’clock in April. I believe I have missed a very important appointment.” He withdrew his left hand from Mickey’s shoulder and turned the wrist between their faces. “No watch, see? Can’t wear a wristwatch. Get me the most expensive fucking wristwatch in the world, I can’t wear it. Agent Orange, man. I’m walking talking drinking fucking fighting Agent Orange. Know what I mean? My cock is lethal. I put on a watch, zap, it stops.”

  “You were a Marine?”

  “Oh yes. Oh yes, Charlie. See?” He turned and flexed his right arm so the tattoo on muscles faced Mickey. “U S M C. Know what that means? Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children. So fuck it, Charlie. Come on in.”

  “Where?”

  “Where? The fucking bar, man. Let’s go. It’s springtime in New England. Crocuses and other shit.”

  “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean you can’t? Charlie goes where Charlie wants to go. Ask anybody that was there.” He lowered his face close to Mickey’s, so Mickey could see only the mouth in the beard, the nose, the blue eyes that seemed to burn slowly, like a pilot light. His voice was low, conspiratorial: “There’s another one in there. From ’Nam. First Air Cav. Pussies. Flying golf carts. Come on. We’ll bust his balls.”

  “I can’t go in a bar.”

  The man straightened, stood erect, his chest out and his stomach pulled in, his fists on his hips. His face moved from left to right, his eyes intent, as though he were speaking to a group, and his voice was firm but without anger or threat, a voice of authority: “Charlie. You are allowed to enter a drinking establishment. Once therein you are allowed to drink non-alcoholic beverages. In this particular establishment there is pizza heated in a microwave. There are also bags of various foods, including potato chips, beer nuts, and nachos. There are also steamed hot dogs. But no fucking rice, Charlie. After you, my man.”

  The left arm moved quickly as a jab past Mickey’s face, and he flinched, then heard the doorknob turn, and the man’s right hand touched the side of his waist and turned him to face the door and gently pushed him out of the sun, into the long dark room. First he saw its lights: the yellow and red of a jukebox at the rear wall, and soft yellow lights above and behind the bar. Then he breathed its odors: alcohol and cigarette smoke and the vague and general smell of a closed and occupied room, darkened on a spring afternoon. A man stood behind the bar. He glanced at them, then turned and faced the rear wall. Three men stood at the bar, neither together nor apart; between each of them was room for two more people, yet they looked at each other and talked. The hand was still on Mickey’s back, guiding more than pushing, moving him to the near corner of the bar, close to the large window beside the door. Through the glass Mickey looked at the parked and moving cars in the light; he had been only paces from the window when the man had turned and held his shoulder. The pressure on his back stopped when Mickey’s chest touched the bar, then the man stepped around its corner, rested his arms on the short leg of its L, his back to the window, so now he looked down the length of the bar at the faces and sides of the three men, and at the bartender’s back. There was a long space between Mickey and the first man to his left. He placed his books and binder in a stack on the bar and held its edge and looked at his face in the mirror, and his shirt like green leaves.

  “Hey Fletcher,” the man said. “I thought you’d hit the deck. When old Charlie came walking in.” Mickey looked to his left: the three faces turned to the man and then to him, two looking interested, amused, and the third leaning forward over the bar, looking past the one man separating him from Mickey, looking slowly at Mickey’s pants and probably the web belt too and the tee shirt. The man’s face was neither angry nor friendly, more like that of a professional ballplayer stepping to the plate or a boxer ducking through the ropes into the ring. He had a brown handlebar mustache and hair that hung to his shoulders and moved, like a girl’s, with his head. When his eyes rose from Mickey’s clothing to his face, Mickey saw a glimmer of scorn; then the face showed nothing. Fletcher raised his beer mug to the man and, in a deep grating voice, said: “Body count, Duffy.”

  Then he looked ahead at the bottles behind the bar, finished his half mug with two swallows, and pushed the mug toward the bartender, who turned now and took it and held it slanted under a tap. Mickey watched the rising foam.

  Duffy. Somehow knowing the man’s name, or at least one of them, the first or last, made him seem less strange. He was Duffy, and he was with men who knew him, and Mickey eased away from his first sight of the man who had stepped onto the sidewalk and held him, a man who had never existed until the moment Mickey drew near the door of Timmy’s. Mickey looked down, saw a brass rail, and rested his right foot on it; he pushed his books between him and Duffy, and folded his arms on the bar.

  “Hey, Al. You working, or what?”

  The bartender was smoking a cigarette. He looked over his shoulder at Duffy.

  “Who’s the kid?”

  “The kid? It’s Charlie, man. Fletcher never saw one this close. That’s why he’s so fucking quiet. Waiting for the choppers to come.”

  Then Duffy’s hand was squeezing Mickey’s throat: too suddenly, too tightly. Duffy leaned over the corner between them, his breath on Mickey’s face, his eyes close to Mickey’s, more threatening than the fingers and thumb pressing the sides of his throat. They seemed to look into his brain, and down into the depths of his heart, and to know him, all eleven years of him, and Mickey felt his being, and whatever strength it had, leaving him as if drawn through his eyes into Duffy’s, and down into Duffy’s body. The hand left his throat and patted his shoulder and Duffy was grinning.

  “For Christ sake, Al, a rum and tonic. And a Coke for Charlie. And something to eat. Chips. And a hot dog. Want a hot dog, Charlie?”

  “Mickey.”

  “What the fuck’s a mickey?”

  “My name.”

  “Oh. Jesus: your name.”

  Mickey watched Al make a rum and tonic and hold a glass of ice under the Coca-Cola tap.

  “I never knew a Charlie named Mickey. So how come you’re dressed up like a fucking jungle?”

  Mickey shrugged. He did not move his eyes from Al, bringing the Coke and Duffy’s drink and two paper cocktail napkins and the potato chips. He dropped the napkins in front of Mickey and Duffy, placed the Coke on Mickey’s napkin and the potato chips beside it, and then held the drink on Duffy’s napkin and said: “Three seventy-five.”

  “The tab, Al.”

  Al stood looking at Duffy, and holding the glass. He was taller than Duffy but not as broad, and he seemed to be the oldest man in the bar; but Mickey could not tell whether he was in his forties or fifties or even sixties. Nor could he guess the ages of the other men: he thought he could place them within a decade of their lives, but even about that he was uncertain. College boys seemed old to him. His father was forty-nine, yet his face appeared younger than any of these.

  “Hey, Al. If you’re going to hold it all fucking day, bring me a straw so I can drink.”

  “Three seventy-five, Duffy.”

  “Ah. The gentleman wants cash, Charlie.”

  He took the chained wallet from his rear pocket, unfolded it, peered in at the bills, and laid four ones on the bar. Then he looked at Al, his unblinking eyes not angry, nearly as calm as his motions and posture and voice, but that light was in them again, and Mickey looked up at the sunglasses on Duffy’s hair. Then he watched Al.

  “Keep the change, Al. For your courtesy. Your generosity. Your general fucking outstanding attitude.”

  It seemed that Al had not heard him, and that nothing Mickey saw and felt between the two men was real. Al took the money, went to the cash register against the wall behind the center of the bar, and punched it open, its ringing the only sound in the room. He put the bills in the drawer, slid a quarter up from another one, and dropped it in a beer mug beside the register. It landed softly on dollar bills. Mickey looked at Al’s back as he spread mustard on a bun and with tongs took a frankfurter from the steamer, placed it on the bun, and brought it on a napkin to Mickey.

  “Duffy.” It was Fletcher, the man in the middle. “Don’t touch the kid again.”

  Duffy smiled, nodded at him over his raised glass, then drank. He turned to Mickey, but his eyes were not truly focused on him; they seemed to be listening, waiting for Fletcher.

  “Cavalry,” he said. “Remember, Charlie Mickey? Fucking guys in blue coming over the hill and kicking shit out of Indians. Twentieth century gets here, they still got horses. No shit. Fucking officers with big boots. Riding crops. No way. Technology, man. Modern fucking war. Bye-bye horsie. Tanks.” He stood straight, folded his arms across his chest, and bobbed up and down, his arms rising and falling, and Mickey smiled, seeing Duffy in the turret of a tank, his sunglasses pushed-up goggles. “Which one was your old man in? WW Two or—how did they put it?—the Korean Conflict. Conflict. I have conflict with cunts. Not a million fucking Chinese.”

  “He wasn’t in either of them.”

  “What the fuck is he? A politician?”

  “A landscaper. He’s forty-nine. He was too young for those wars.”

  “Ah.”

  “He would have gone.”

  “How do you know? You were out drinking with him or something? When he found out they didn’t let first-graders join up?”

  Mickey’s mouth opened to exclaim surprise, but he did not speak: Duffy was drunk, perhaps even crazy, yet with no sign of calculation in his eyes he had known at once that Mickey’s father was six when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

  “He told me.”

  “He told you.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And he was too old for ’Nam, right? No wonder he lets you wear that shit.”

  “I have to go.”

  “You didn’t finish your hot dog. I buy you a hot dog and you don’t even taste it.”

  Mickey lifted the hot dog with both hands, took a large bite, and looked above the bar as he chewed, at a painting high on the center of the wall. A woman lay on a couch, her eyes looking down at the bar. She was from another time, maybe even the last century. She was large and pretty, and he could see her cleavage and the sides of her breasts, and she wore a nightgown that opened up the middle but was closed.

  “Duffy.”

  It was Fletcher, his voice low, perhaps even soft for him; but it came to Mickey like the sound of a steel file on rough wood. Mickey was right about Duffy’s eyes; they and his face turned to Fletcher, with the quickness of a man countering a striking fist. Mickey lowered his foot from the bar rail and stood balanced. He looked to his left at Al, his back against a shelf at the rear of the bar, his face as distant as though he were listening to music. Then Mickey glanced at Fletcher and the men Fletcher stood between. Who were these men? Fathers? On a weekday afternoon, a day of work, drinking in a dark bar, the two whose names he had not heard talking past Fletcher about fishing, save when Duffy or Fletcher spoke. He looked at Duffy: his body was relaxed, his hands resting on either side of his drink on the bar. Now his body tautened out of its slump, and he lifted his glass and drank till only the lime wedge and ice touched his teeth; he swung the glass down hard on the bar and said: “Do it again, Al.”

  But as he pulled out his chained wallet and felt in it for bills and laid two on the bar, he was looking at Fletcher; and when Al brought the drink and took the money to the register and returned with coins, Duffy waved him away, never looking at him, and Al dropped the money into the mug, then moved to his left until he was close to Duffy, and stood with his hands at his sides. He did not lean against the shelf behind him, and he was gazing over Mickey’s head. Mickey took a second bite of the hot dog; he could finish it with one more. Chewing the bun and mustard and meat that filled his mouth, he put his right hand on his stack of books. With his tongue he shifted bun and meat to his jaws.

  “Fletcher,” Duffy said.

  Fletcher did not look at him.

  “Hey, Fletcher. How many did you kill? Huh? How many kids. From your fucking choppers.”