My Amputations (Fiction collective ;) by Clarence Major Read Free Book Online Page B

on guard duty between the two barracks—but who were these three other guys? Drunken voices. Ah! One was, you bet, their Tactical Instructor, Airman Gimbal—a warlock with tangled hair and insanity in his eyes. He was holding Rubinstein by the front of his shirt and repeatedly slamming his back against that barracks over there. Saying, “You sonofabitching Jew! You kike, you money-hoarder . . . we should stomp your ass into the ground! Hitler was right—” He went on, as the other two drunk TI's watched and giggled and swayed at the end of their high-hat-shadows while holding beer cans in yellow-lighted paws. Rubinstein was crying. Mason felt helpless—rage—as Airman Gimbal punched Rubinstein in the stomach again and again the way you'd sock a punching bag. The other two drunks now held Rubinstein's arms. The plump kid took one finisher, corker, sleeping potion, slogdollager after another. He had to be biffy-batty by now but he hadn't yet reached out for hearts and flowers. Though he whimpered and puffed in a wham-whoozy voice, that victim of the washboard blues, the hammer, refused to be creamed. Losing control of himself, Mason dashed downstairs—a cyclone in the stairway—and ran outside, skipping the steps, hitting the grass, feeling the sting in his spine and knees, his teeth banging together. He saw them over there. The blow-by-blow report kept up a bonebending racket in his ear. Grunt-and-groan response: Rubinstein. The TI's were growling and . . . Celt suddenly tapped Mason on the shoulder. He ignored her. Then it happened: he started gagging, vomiting up his guts, stewed potatoes, boiled chicken, spam, Wheaties, milk, potato chips, ice cream, cobwebbed fears. And now they saw him, on his knees, in the moonlight. Holyshit! So guilt and shame were following Mason like mad hound dogs tracking an escapee from rock-splitting “justice.” Ah, yes: he was riding the delivery bike back tothe Edward Hopper drugstore. Headlights, like swacks in the dark that made the floaters fly, came at him. A wind machine on stage behind him? Stage? Hush yo mouth! Motion on Mason! The dirty slush of a recent snowstorm was good for deep, thin tracks—you could even write words with the tires. But now rain. The car came at him. Fast. Getting out of the way of this lefthander, he fell between two cars, losing the bicycle—as it flopped, hit by the swooping fender. Mason looked up from the wet, oily gutter. It was night. The car's side window was lined with gray menacing faces; griffins, buzzards, sharptoothed rats. What North Side gang was this? Maybe it wasn't wise working up here near Loyola University. He thought Jewish boys were more human than this. He ate his humiliation and rage, as he lifted himself and his bike, up: they did not taste like strawberries, cornflakes and milk. It was enough to make one realistic. And that time in Cheyenne after basic with the Spanish exchangees. Christ, those guys! sitting around the barracks flipping through their Merriam-Websters pathetically in search of “fuck” and “cunt” and “cock”—how could they have so misread Henry Bosley Woolfs intentions? These hombres, from Madrid, from Barcelona, old enough to remember their fathers' talk about the Spanish Civil War, and still feeling South/North antagonism, knew those words existed in the wallop, smell and cheesecake of America, so why weren't they in your everyday, honest-to-goodness dictionary. Mason nor the others could answer. And why was it so important to find those words? Still Life with Dirty Words. Did they really scratch the itch? They called the real one Miss Cunt. She was brought in a truck every Friday night. The driver of the pickup said he was her husband. Guy obviously had a deal with the guard at the gate? Miss Cunt was not handsome, nothing to write home about: over forty, bleached hair, lots of veined fat. She and her husband were a couple of rednecks from around Laramie where, they said, they had a few