Hearts in Atlantis(149)

' 'Sixty-nine and seventy were the hard years,' the graying man says. He speaks in a slow, heavy voice. 'I was at Hamburger Hill with the 3/187, so I know the A Shau and Tam Boi. Do you remember Route 922?'

'Ah, yes, sir, Glory Road,' Blind Willie says. 'I lost two friends there.'

'Glory Road,' the man in the open coat says, and all at once he looks a thousand years old, the bright red ski sweater an obscenity, like something hung on a museum mummy by cut-up kids who believe they are exhibiting a sense of humor. His eyes are off over a hundred horizons. Then they come back here, to this street where a nearby carillon is playing the one that goes I hear those sleighbells jingling, ring-ting-tingling too. He sets his bags down between his expensive shoes and takes a pigskin wallet out from an inner pocket. He opens it, riffles through a neat thickness of bills.

'Son all right, Garfield?' he asks. 'Making good grades?'

'Yes, sir.'

'How old?'

'Fifteen, sir.'

'Public school?'

'Parochial, sir.'

'Excellent. And God willing, he'll never see Glory Fuckin Road.' The man in the open topcoat takes a bill out of his wallet. Blind Willie feels as well as hears Wheelock's little gasp and hardly has to look at the bill to know it is a hundred.

'Yes, sir, that's affirmative, God willing.'

The man in the topcoat touches Willie's hand with the bill, looks surprised when the gloved hand pulls back, as if it were bare and had been touched by something hot.

'Put it in my case, or my ball-glove, sir, if you would,' Blind Willie says.

The man in the topcoat looks at him for a moment, eyebrows raised, frowning slightly, then seems to understand. He stoops, puts the bill in the ancient oiled pocket of the glove with GARFIELD printed in blue ink on the side, then reaches into his front pocket and brings out a small handful of change. This he scatters across the face of old Ben Franklin, in order to hold the bill down. Then he stands up. His eyes are wet and bloodshot.

'Do you any good to give you my card?' he asks Blind Willie. 'I can put you in touch with several veterans' organizations.'

'Thank you, sir, I'm sure you could, but I must respectfully decline.'

'Tried most of them?'

'Tried some, yes, sir.'

'Where'd you VA?'

'San Francisco, sir.' He hesitates, then adds, 'The * Palace, sir.'

The man in the topcoat laughs heartily at this, and when his face crinkles, the tears which have been standing in his eyes run down his weathered cheeks. '* Palace!' he cries. 'I haven't heard that in ten years! Christ! A bedpan under every bed and a naked nurse between every set of sheets, right? Naked except for the lovebeads, which they left on.'

'Yes, sir, that about covers it, sir.'

'Or uncovers it. Merry Christmas, soldier.' The man in the topcoat ticks off a little one-finger salute.

'Merry Christmas to you, sir.'

The man in the topcoat picks up his bags again and walks off. He doesn't look back. Blind Willie would not have seen him do so if he had; his vision is now down to ghosts and shadows.

'That was beautiful,' Wheelock murmurs. The feeling of Wheelock's freshly used air puffing into the cup of his ear is hateful to Blind Willie - gruesome, in fact - but he will not give the man the pleasure of moving his head so much as an inch. 'The old f**k was actually crying. As I'm sure you saw. But you can talk the talk, Willie, I'll give you that much.'

Willie says nothing.

'Some VA hospital called the * Palace, huh?' Wheelock asks. 'Sounds like my kind of place. Where'd you read about it, Soldier of Fortune?'

The shadow of a woman, a dark shape in a darkening day, bends over the open case and drops something in. A gloved hand touches Willie's gloved hand and squeezes briefly. 'God bless you, my friend,' she says.

'Thank you, ma'am.'

The shadow moves off. The little puffs of breath in Blind Willie's ear do not.

'You got something for me, pal?' Wheelock asks.

Blind Willie reaches into his jacket pocket. He produces the envelope and holds it out, jabbing the chilly air with it. It is snatched from his fingers as soon as Wheelock can track it down and get hold of it.

'You ass**le!' There's fear as well as anger in the cop's voice. 'How many times have I told you, palm it, palm it!'

Blind Willie says nothing. He is thinking of the baseball glove, how he erased BOBBY GARFIELD - as well as you could erase ink from leather, anyway - and then printed Willie Shearman's name in its place. Later, after Vietnam and just as he was starting his new career, he erased a second time and printed a single name, GARFIELD, in big block letters. The place on the side of the old Alvin Dark glove where all these changes have been made looks flayed and raw. If he thinks of the glove, if he concentrates on that scuffed place and its layer of names, he can probably keep from doing something stupid. That's what Wheelock wants, of course, what he wants a lot more than his shitty little payoff: for Willie to do something stupid, to give himself away.

'How much?' Wheelock asks after a moment.

'Three hundred,' Blind Willie says. 'Three hundred dollars, Officer Wheelock.'

This is greeted by a little thinking silence, but Wheelock takes a step back from Blind Willie, and the puffs of breath in his ear diffuse a little. Blind Willie is grateful for small favors.