The Rabbit Factory: A Novel (31 page)

There was a small color TV with a remote in the old barracks and he turned it on the first afternoon and sat on his rack and flipped it over to CNN. Henderson had gone over to the PX for a while. They were still talking about all the whale shit, speculating about this, speculating about that. A few groups were outraged and somewhere were carrying signs. One said “U.S. Navy: Baby Whale Killers.” He just wanted to get back to Memphis. He knew what he ought to do was go back to Bowling Green and see his mother and father and their two dogs, Georgie B. and Big Mama, for Christmas. Spend some time on the farm with them. Go hunting with his dad maybe. See all his friends. Hit all his old hangouts. But he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He was almost sick with love for her. There was a yearning in him he’d never had. He didn’t know how much longer he could go without seeing her again. She was all he was thinking about.

Then somebody from the XO’s office brought over a message from his captain, who had sent him a fax on his personal stationery. He sat there on his rack and read it.

Dear Petty Officer 2ND Class Stubbock:

Sincerely,

Louis B. Goode, Captain, USN, Commanding

On the second day at LeJeune, they were just waiting on their leave to start the next morning. After lunch they walked around for a while and got bawled out for not saluting some second-lieutenant marine officer because they just thought he was some kid. They watched some marines standing in formation while two officers went through their ranks inspecting them. They went to the movie theater and saw, with popcorn,
Pearl Harbor.
They went over to the base post office so Henderson could mail a few letters he’d written. When they got back outside and stood on the marble steps, it had turned windy and some sand was blowing. There was sand all over this place. It was full of pine trees and deer.

“So what you up for this evenin’, Wayne?” his buddy said.

“I don’t know. Maybe go get a beer. What about you?”

Henderson stuck his hands in his pea-coat pockets and looked up and down the street.

“I’m talkin’ about supper, bro. I mean what we gonna eat?”

Wayne shrugged.

“Go to the mess hall, I guess. What we always do.”

Henderson stood there and rocked back and forth from his heels to his toes. It would be dark in about another hour.

“I’d like to get me a real civilian meal tonight.”

“Where you gonna find a real civilian meal around here?” Wayne said.

“Anyway, I like all that stuff in their mess hall. The marines eat good.”

Henderson wasn’t having any of that. He burrowed his neck down in his pea coat.

“Aw come on, Wayne, shit. We get the same stuff seven days a week. All comes out of the same government bunghole, baby. Look here. Why don’t we catch us a cab into town and find us a steak house? You know they got to have a Sirloin Stockade or somethin’ in that town, as many marines as they got here. Sink our choppers in a prime porterhouse. You up for that?”

Wayne stood there nodding. It was probably exactly what he needed to do. They could go into town, find a bar somewhere, have a few drinks, then find a restaurant, and over the course of the evening he could tell Henderson about Anjalee. He had to tell somebody. And it didn’t matter what Henderson thought. He could think he was crazy if he wanted to. He just wanted him to listen to him. Just listen to him.

“Cool,” he said.

“You know where the cabstand’s at?”

“We’ll find it.”

And they stepped off, walking side by side.

“We’ll ask one of these jarheads,” Henderson said.

They went on down the street and jeeps and Humvees sometimes came by them. They saluted one once in a while just to be safe.

They crossed the street just ahead of a platoon of young marines in green T-shirts and camo pants who were sweating heavily and running in step. Henderson turned his head when they went by with their boots slamming.

“Check out that shit, man. Them boys is hard-core.”

“Aw hell, they ain’t got nothing on the Seals.”

“I wouldn’t want to be one of them neither. Man, you know them dudes can kill you with their bare hands?”

“Yeah,” Wayne said, but he wasn’t listening very closely because he’d just seen something that interested him. There was a small brown building set off the road and it had a plywood plaque over the front, painted red, the letters etched in yellow:
USMC BOXING
.

He stopped and nodded toward it.

“Hey. Look at that.”

Henderson stopped with him and rubbed at his nose.

“Aw yeah. I guess that’s where their guys practice.”

Wayne stood there and thought about it. Vehicles kept going up and down the street and the wind was getting colder.

“Yeah. It’s probably where Johnson practices.”

“Yeah. Probly so. You want to go in there and ask ’em where the cabstand is?”

“We might as well.”

There was a path through worn grass and it had pea gravel scattered over it. The door was open and when they got closer, Wayne could hear the
rat-a-tat-tat
of four-ounce gloves on a speed bag, and when they stepped through the door and stopped, the smell of all of it hit him again: sweat and leather and the taste of something like brass in your mouth when a hard fist wrapped in a padded glove slammed into your face, and pain and jumping rope and slamming a heavy bag until your arms were worse than dead and every inch of your body was dripping with sweat, and running in the cold mornings in the fog with the dogs barking and the lights coming on in the houses, and the ring lights and the people in the rows out there yelling and the smoke hanging up in the roof of an aircraft hangar.

He missed it. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it the whole time he’d been on the ship. He’d been thinking so much about a life with her.

He knew right away Johnson was the guy on the speed bag. He was too good to be anybody else at that weight in this place. He had on some long silver shorts and he was wearing red-and-white boxing shoes with tassels on the laces and a couple of USMC athletic shirts he had sweated through and he hammered and danced with the bag in a movement that Wayne knew well. His arms were thick with muscle and his black hair was cropped in a way that resembled a crew-cut Mohawk. Had to be Johnson.

Wayne had heard a little about him from one of the Seals on the ship in the armory one night when the Seal had been carefully cleaning the bolt of his M-60 with a toothbrush. Johnson had enrolled in OCS at Quantico to be a marine officer but had washed out like a lot of other people always washed out and had been sent to Parris Island with the enlisted slobs to goob around for a couple of months of recruit training in the sand fleas and graduate as a private and he was still pissed off about it, the Seal said. He’d also said he’d seen him fight and that he was bad news plus dirty but that Wayne could probably take him if he watched his balls.

Nobody was up in the ring, but a couple of guys with their shirts off were doing sit-ups and an older black guy in a sweatshirt and long pants who looked like he might be a trainer was doing something on a bench with some towels, and Wayne nodded toward him. They walked over. The speed bag kept rattling steadily in the back.

The guy in the sweatshirt looked up when they got close.

“Hey. How you men doin’?”

“Pretty good,” Wayne said. “We were wondering if you could tell us how to get to the cabstand.”

The rattling bag in the back stopped. Wayne looked over there and the guy was standing next to the bag, swinging his gloves back and forth across his belly in a sort of mindless way, twisting his hips, looking at him.

“Aw yeah. It’s right down here a couple of blocks.” He pointed over his shoulder. “Go right on past this buildin’ and turn left at the parade ground there? That big place looks like a parkin’ lot but they ain’t no stripes? And go on down here till you get to the—”

“You Stubbock?”

Wayne turned his head and the fighter was standing right next to him. Henderson was watching the dude with something that was near a scowl. Wayne could see tiny beads of sweat on the guy’s face. His nose had been broken and either hadn’t healed properly or never had been set correctly in the first place. He shook his head to sling some of the sweat off his face and Wayne felt a few drops land on his cheek. Asshole.

“Yeah,” Wayne said. “That’s me.”

The guy who’d been giving them directions stood up then.

“Aw hell,” he said. “You the guy we’s supposed to fight.”

“Yeah,” Wayne said. “This is my buddy Henderson.”

They shook hands with the trainer and Wayne could feel the guy watching him, so he turned his head and looked at him.

“How’d you know who I was?” he said.

The guy spit on the floor.

“We been watchin’ a few of your matches,” the trainer said. “On videotape. Look here, I’m Joe Montesi.”

“You got lucky, Stubbock,” the guy with the gloves said.

Wayne turned his head to look at him.

“So you’re Johnson,” he said. He looked him up and down.

“Well, I don’t know about lucky. Maybe just bad timing.”

The guy had cold eyes and a smile you couldn’t like.

“I meant lucky you didn’t get your ass whipped in front of all your navy buddies.”

“All right, now, that’s enough of that,” the trainer said, and made moves to get in between them, but it was already too late. The one thing Wayne had never been able to do was take any shit off anybody.

“Oh, were you gonna kick my ass?” Wayne said.

Henderson shoved his small and now belligerent face forward and said: “Whup his ass, Wayne. Smart son of a bitch.”

Maybe Johnson knew exactly what to do to push his buttons. Maybe Wayne was so sick of wondering if she’d still be there when he got back that when Johnson reached out and pushed his little buddy, it was only natural for Wayne to tap him on the shoulder and get his attention and then when he did get it pop his head back with a short right and maybe it was almost a sucker punch but the one he caught on his left ear was lightning quick in retaliation and even though the trainer was still trying to get between them it might have gone on right there on the floor if somebody hadn’t yelled: “Ten
hut
!”

And when Wayne saw Johnson stand still and lock his eyes he knew that an officer had entered the building. He went to attention as did Henderson, but not the old trainer, who was obviously a civilian.

“Evenin’, Colonel,” he said.

Wayne turned his head slightly and there was a full bird marine colonel in his winter greens, about fifty-five, shoes spit-shined to a gleam, tall and gray haired and looking hard as nails. Then he realized that he shouldn’t have turned his head since he was supposed to be at attention. Johnson had it locked up and was staring straight ahead when Wayne looked back at him. He heard quiet steps on the concrete floor. And then the colonel stepped in front of him.

“Hey, Joe,” he said, and reached out and shook hands with the trainer. Then he looked at Wayne. “I don’t know what attention means in the navy but in the marine corps it means attention.”

“Sorry, sir,” Wayne said.

“You men on assignment here?”

“Uh. Just temporary, sir,” Wayne said.

“This the guy we’s sposed to fight, sir,” the trainer said.

The colonel turned his head slightly. He looked like he had a poker up his ass. Maybe a broom handle.