Part 33 (2/2)
”You don't have a choice”
”I think I do”
Bacon had gotten up, then, and crossed the three feet of space between them, and sat down on the banquette beside Sa for Sa like you andThere's nothing you can do about it”
Saardless of what he felt for Bacon, it was not worth the danger, the shame, the risk of arrest and opprobriu, with his ribs bruised and a wan flavor of chlorine at the back of his mouth, that he would rather not love at all than be punished for loving He had no idea of how long his life would one day seeone on; how daily present the absence of love would come to feel
”Just watch me,” he said
In his haste to exit the compartment before Bacon could see hi her way down the corridor, and reopened the nasty cut over his eye
”I'lad you're still here,” Rosa said now ”Sammy, listen to me I need help”
”I'll help you What is it?”
”I think I need to get an abortion”
Saarette and smoked half of it before he replied ”Joe is the father,” he said
”Yes Of course”
”And you told him and he said?”
”I didn't tell hiht he tried to kill himself”
”He did?”
”I think he did”
”But Rosa, you know, he's joining the navy, he said”
”Right”
”He's just going to go off and enlist in the navy without knowing that you are pregnant with his baby”
”Also right”
”Even though you've known about this for ”
”Say a week”
”Why didn't you tell him? Really, I mean”
”I was afraid,” said Rosa ”Really”
”Afraid that what? No, I know,” he said He sounded alet the thing And not want to marry you”
”There you have it”
”And now you-”
”Just couldn't possibly ever, in a million years, tell hiht He wants to go kill the I tell him could stop hi to explain”
Saht, ith an idea that Rosa grasped at once, in all its depths and particulars, in all the fear and hopelessness on which it fed
”I get you,” he said
PART V
RADIOMAN
1
The loser at Lupe Velez was obliged to -town There were eighteen dogs, Alaskan malamutes for the most part, with a few odd Labrador and Greenland huskies and one unreliable skulker that was nearly all wolf You took a sleeping bag and a blanket and, as often as not, a bottle of Old Grand-Dad, and bedded down in the frozen tunnel where, in spite of the snow floor and snoalls and ceiling of snow, the stench of urine, harness leather, and rancid, seal-greased black husky lip was surprisingly lively They had started out with twenty-seven dogs, enough for two main teams and a team to spare, but four of them had been torn apart by their fellows out of some complex canine eh spirits; one had fallen into a botto as nalman, Gedel, the true genius a one day when no one was looking and never come back There were twenty-two o fish, geography, ghost, Ping-Pong, twenty questions, die, checkers, liar's dice, Monopoly, and Uncle Wiggily for cigarettes (they had as little use for money as for shovels and snow) They played to win exe aith an ice chisel at the frozen ziggurat that mounted endlessly in the latrines, a pillar of turdsicles and of diarrhea plumes arrested by the cold into fantastic shapes out of Gaudi Or they played (at chess in Particular) for the treasured prize of reducing one another to little piles of ash and eht to sleep in their bunks, warht It was a stupid, cruel, but at the saame, and easy to play There were always twenty-one winners at Lupe Velez and only one loser, and he had to go lie doith the dogs Though in theory, given the essentially random and unskilled nature of play, they were all at an equal disadvantage, usually the one bedded down in the chaos and s, after a brisk inning of Lupe Velez, was Joe Kavalier He was in there, tucked right into a crate alongside the dog called Oyster, the night that so with the Waldorf's stove
Apart fro thee of thirty-five (the first day the thermometer dipped below -20F had occurred on the thirty-fifth birthday of their captain, Walter ”Wahoo” Fleer, whofifty yards from the Blubberteria to the Mess Hall, clad only in his mukluks), and three of the Seabees, Po, Mitchell, and Madden, were barely out of their teens, which probably went so the essentially boyish stupidity of Lupe Velez They would all be craht, wasting ti ti absorbed in soent business of repair, analysis, planning, or navy discipline, when soh anyone could start a round-would call out the name of the star of Mexican Spitfire Mexican Spitfire and and Honolulu Lu Honolulu Lu I to the rules, to follow suit Whoever was judged, by general determination of the players, to have uttered the critical words last (unless it was his turn on watch), spent that night (what they called night; it was all night) in Dog-town If, through duty or good fortune, you chanced not to be in the room at the time, you were exempted Play, except in the case of extreme tedium, was liains were obscure, its conduct passionate But for whatever reason, Joe could not seeed, according to the rules, to follow suit Whoever was judged, by general determination of the players, to have uttered the critical words last (unless it was his turn on watch), spent that night (what they called night; it was all night) in Dog-town If, through duty or good fortune, you chanced not to be in the room at the time, you were exempted Play, except in the case of extreme tedium, was liains were obscure, its conduct passionate But for whatever reason, Joe could not see the men a number of theories to account for this or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, to account for Joe Joe was a favorite with all the men, liked even by those who liked no one else, of which, as the winter night dragged on, there caic tricks were endlessly renewable sources of entertainment, particularly to the simpler-minded at Kelvinator Station He was reliable, adept, resourceful, and industrious, but his accented and oddly skewed language softened the edges of his evident competence, the latter a quality that, in the other talented onistic sharpness Furtherh Joe had said little about it, that he had, in some ways, a more personal stake than any of them in the outco the days at Greenland Station spread the word that he never read his mail, that in his footlocker was a stack of unopened letters three inches thick To men for whom correspondence was a kind of addiction, this made him the object of considerable awe
Some said that Joe's weakness at Lupe Velez was due to his incoh the obvious rebuttal here was that several of the native speakers were considerably worse off in this regard than Joe Others blamed the remote, dreamy aspect of his personality, as obvious to them as it had been to any of his friends in New York, even here in a place against which, it ht to have sunk into low relief Then there were those who clais There was soh the last was the sole one that Joe would ads, but the one he had true feelings for was Oyster Oyster was a gray-brown e ears inclined to undistinguished flopping, and a stout, baffled expression that suggested, said the dog men, a recent influence of Saint Bernard in his bloodlines Earlierhis first career in Alaska had blinded his left eye, leaving it the ave him his na-town for the night by a loss at Lupe Velez, he had noticed Oyster, way down in his niche at the very end of the sparkling tunnel, see his ears back in a pitiful way The dogs were all desperately lonely for human companionshi+p (they seemed to despise one another) But Joe had chosen to lie alone that night in a small bare patch at the door to a storeroos