Battle Cry - Leon Uris [53]
We were on liberty, making a round of the slopshutes in Dago and had just entered the Porthole. I was half tanked and trying to make time with a barfly when Gomez poked me in the ribs and said, “I’m gonna have me some fun, Mac. Pick out the biggest swab jockey in the joint.” I pointed to a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound sailor bending over a beer a few feet away. Spanish Joe edged his way next to him. “Got a match, mate?”
The unconcerned and unsuspecting victim slid a light down the bar. Joe lit up and put the lighter into his pocket.
“Hey, my lighter.”
Joe looked amazed. “What lighter?”
“I said give back my lighter.”
“I ain’t got no lighter of yours. You accusing me of stealing?”
“You looking for a beef, Marine?”
Gomez was aghast, then sheepish. He fumbled through his pockets and handed the lighter over.
“I oughta bust you one in the teeth,” the sailor sneered.
“Gee…I…I’m sorry, mate. I ain’t looking for no trouble.”
“I oughta bust you in the teeth,” he repeated loudly.
Three bouncers moved up quickly to the scene of trouble.
“This here swab jockey accused me of stealing his lighter,” Joe pleaded.
“I oughta…” The sailor cocked his fist. A flying squad caught him quickly and moved him toward the door. Spanish Joe shoved his way through the drinking mob after him. Outside, he approached the very irked gob.
“Say, deck ape. I’m really sorry….”
The sailor turned purple. “I ain’t looking for no fight,” Joe begged, backing away. The gob wound up and let a right hand fly from the boondocks. Joe deftly dodged the punch a quarter inch from his jaw, the momentum of the swing sending the man in blue whirling to the deck. Gomez bent over and assisted him to his feet, brushing him off. “I ain’t looking for no fight.”
Enraged, the sailor lurched out again, missing again, again falling down. Joe picked up the man’s little white hat. “Gee, you’ll get it all dirty.”
Again and again he swung, each time catching nothing more solid than the evening air, after coming tantalizingly close to his tormentor’s jaw. At last he gave up. “Let’s shake, mate, so’s there ain’t no hard feelings,” Joe offered. Realizing the futility of his attempts, the bewildered sailor extended his hand.
At this point Spanish Joe unleashed a lightning pair of punches, knocking the man senseless to the sidewalk. “Imagine the nerve of that guy—accusing me of stealing his lighter. Just for that I’m going to take it.” And he did.
It is said that on a good night, Spanish Joe left a trail of ten or perhaps a round dozen prostrate bodies of sailors and dogfaces littered about San Diego.
We were catching up on sack drill and letter writing after evening chow, having knocked off a stiff ten-mile hike with full combat pack. To my surprise, not one of the squad had fallen flat on his face.
In a far corner, by himself, Marion Hodgkiss lay on his sack engrossed in a book by some fellow called Plato. Speedy Gray, the Texan, slowly shined up his battle pin with a blitz cloth and mournfully sang:
“Send me a letter
Send it by mail,
Send it in care of,
The Birmingham jail.”
Now this Hodgkiss fellow was one for the books. I had never quite met a guy like him in four hitches in this lash-up. He did his work well, but he was the only Marine in captivity who neither smoked, drank, gambled, cursed, or chased the broads. On liberty call, when the rest were champing at the bit, Hodgkiss just lay there poring through those books and listening to classical music on his record player. In a gang of sex-mad gyrenes, it isn’t easy to stick to stuff like that. But they all had to admire Marion. When the nightly arguments came and bets were on the table, Marion proved himself to be a walking encyclopedia. He was final authority on whatever subject we happened to differ about—the population of Kalamazoo in 1896, or the number of hairs on the human head. Marion knew everything. And he was sweet, polite, and as decent as Spanish Joe Gomez wasn’t.
Joe, having stolen a skivvy shirt from L.Q. Jones