two or three years after Bert was born, she changed. At first I thought it was the mother versus father grab for the kid’s affection, but it wasn’t that. Right off the bat she started acting as if she was the greatest piece of ass in the world, like she could lay back and eat an apple while you were knocking it off, and that you should rave about it for a week afterwards. Then the great withdrawal act, the suffering heroine putting up with all the crap in the world and keeping a stiff upper lip even though she had a bastard for a husband.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t figure it out. I thought maybe I wasn’t cutting the mustard in bed. Half the troubles of the world start there. But when this thing came up, I was hitting on all eight cylinders and she was jumping around and yelling like it was the greatest thing she ever knew.”
He drew the shawl tighter around his shoulders. “Maybe it was because I wasn’t earning all the money in the world. Gloria considered herself a pretty high class article.”
Brighton took out a pack of cigarettes, then self consciously shoved it back into a pocket.
“Go ahead, smoke,” said Masters. “I get the willies as bad whether you smoke or not.”
Brighton lit one up. “I was never able to understand,” he said, blowing smoke away from Masters, “why you were content to stay on a debit for so many years before I could persuade you to take an assistant manager’s job.”
Masters picked up a piece of hard rock candy and popped it into his mouth. “Maybe not all of us are big, determined men. I just never had the gumption to do anything but ride around and collect the three bucks each month. I was content. The only reason I took the assistancy was to get a few more dollars. I’ll tell you straight, George, there were a couple of hundred times I wanted to shove it right back. It was worse than digging ditches.”
Brighton stood up. “Well, I’ve got to be going. Glad to see you’re back to normal. How about coming in and having lunch with me when you’re able to?”
Once the door closed behind the gray haired man, Masters rose from the chair, switched off the group still singing Christmas carols, drew back the covers on the sofa, and lay down.
He folded his hands behind his head and thought back. I’m forty five-years-old now. At age zero, I am a red ball of meat in a skinny woman’s belly. The fellow that put me there was a railroad conductor. He had also started my brother two years before. Then he walked smack in front of a beer delivery truck and exit a father. At five years old, I have a step father, a barber. It wasn’t too bad until he blew the claim money my mother got from the beer company, then he started cutting hair elsewhere. At age ten, my brother, Ed, and I are out peddling papers on the streets of windy Chicago, and my mother is working in a shirt factory. At age fifteen, I screw what the hell was her name? Margot? Margaret? Well, it doesn’t make much difference, except that I got scared afterwards thinking I might have caught the clap, so I put alcohol on my pecker. It hurt worse than the clap I think. At twenty, I have already buried my mother, who is dead from a crummy pair of lungs. The skinny woman. I guess that’s what saints must have looked like, for she certainly was one. At twenty five, I have killed maybe fifteen or twenty men, all legally, and they even gave me medals for it. I also received the medal they awarded posthumously to my brother, Ed, who was scattered somewhere over the French countryside. At thirty, it is Gloria, and my son, Bert. At thirty five, I have been recalled by the army for duty in Korea, am back out of the service, and Gloria has her tail up in the air. At forty, it is...
“Keith,” said Cathy. “I don’t see any reason why we can’t get married.”
“For Christ’s sake,” he replied, putting down the newspaper. “Are we going to go all over that again? I’m paying every dime I earn for alimony to Gloria. I haven’t bought a goddamn shirt in two years. How the hell can we get married?”
“It doesn’t make any difference. We’re getting along now, aren’t we? If we can get along now, we can get along the same if we’re married.”
He eyed her with irritation. “Do you know something? You’re probably the best piece of ass in Chicago and most certainly the dumbest. I don’t know how the fuck I’ve put up with you for two years.” He mimicked her. “If we can get along now we can get along the same as now.” He threw the newspaper to the floor. “Can’t you get it through your thick, Polack skull that I just got rid of one wife and I don’t want another.”
Her lips trembled. “You don’t love me,” she wailed.
He jumped to his feet, his face flushed with rage. “No!” he shouted. “I don’t love you. You’re just an orgasm, a crying, nagging, smothering nobody who isn’t worth a shit ten minutes out of bed.” He stamped out of the apartment.
When he returned, hours later, reeling from too much beer, she was gone bag and baggage.
Masters turned over onto his side. Now forty five and a half dead man. God Almighty, what is wrong with me? Why can’t I find just a little of the peace I’ve searched for all my life? It’s as if a rot has been placed inside me, that I have been condemned to unhappiness.
And then, for the first time in twenty years, he forced himself to admit it. Yes, I knew Schneider was going to raise his rifle and shoot that Jap sergeant. I knew it the moment he came up and aimed and fired. I could have stopped it. I could have said, “Do not fire.” I could have even pushed up his weapon. But I didn’t. Because I wanted him to shoot!
God Almighty! I’ve murdered a man!
CHAPTER 2
In the morning, Masters made his way slowly down the three flights of stairs to the basement and unlocked the small, storage room provided for each tenant of the old, apartment house. Inside were two battered footlockers, a dust covered Valapack, and a Samsonite suitcase. He sat on a footlocker for a few minutes to rest, then kneeled and opened one. Among the folders of army orders, certificates, Veterans Administration letters regarding his pension for wounds, and personal papers, he found the wallet and the thousand stitch belt.
Back in his one roomed apartment, he opened the wallet. It was mildewed, cracked, and heavy with the odor of the sands, cliffs and volcano ash. The small amount of Japanese money was gone. Bert had swiped it when he was six or seven years old to show round the neighborhood. It had then disappeared casually, as if it had been placed in a clothes drawer and had fallen to the floor while the clothing was taken out, then carelessly laid on top of the bureau to be swept up during a periodic housecleaning.
Directly in the center of the wallet and its contents was a jagged hole, bored out by one of his submachine bullets on its way through the pocket of the Japanese sergeant’s shirt before thundering into his chest. Master lifted the leather flap and took out a picture and a small, white name card.
The picture and the card were stuck together. He sat in a chair next to the single lamp in the room and peered closely at the photo. It was of a short, slim man of twenty two or so, seated on a bench in a photo studio and wearing a khaki uniform and visored cap. Master strained to see if he had stripes of rank on his collar or sleeves, but the picture was too distorted by the passage of time. On his lap was a child. It would have to be a boy, for he wore a little visored cap similar to that of the soldier. The features of the man and child were blurred. He tried to guess the boy’s age. Perhaps six months old.
Standing slightly behind and to one side of the soldier was his wife, a slender woman, straight as a reed, dressed in a kimono, her hair piled high on her head and perfectly arranged. He could not see her face, for the bullet had torn squarely through it. In her left
