anything! He was restless, when he wasn't interested in lessons, a future, but maybe in girls, his own “importance.” Interest in girls [as sex objects] came the year after sitting on the dunce stool in the fifth grade: stuck his tongue out at teacher when her back was turned: made the other kids laugh: Mason liked the attention: wanted to grow up to be a comedian. He threw chalky erasers at girls, jerked their pigtails to hear them squeak, shriek; tripped fat boys in halls and in the cloakroom, peed in pockets and ate other students' lunches. He stole money, too: it was fun: everybody noticed him: he was at the center of the camera-eye: All he needed was a cast of thousands: Cecil. He screwed his first girl in an alley — Chicago type: felt like His Satanic Majesty. Other boys still virgins looked up to him (“How'd it feel?”) and followed him around on the playground. Then high schooclass="underline" here a thousand-watt spotlight was not focused on his curls, no sky panning behind him with overhead reflector. He couldn't stand it: he spat at the truant officer and quit before he could be formally suspended. He wanted to knock up a nun like that French boy in that French novel; wanted to run off to Malta or Delfi or… do interesting things. But that was sort of out of character for a ghetto kid. Damn character. Yet he managed to run no farther than the Air Force draft board. The sergeant promised him Europe and he got Texas — San Antonio. Hot dry dusty. Basic training was a blip: falling in mud holes, dodging blanks, hiding in bushes, jumping in and out of shacks freshly sprayed with deadly gas, drills, bland food, more drills, itchy wool blankets, swimming for non-swimmers once a week. Phew! Then the boys got their first town pass and went into San Anton'—being boys they got hungry as hogs on the way and the first thing they did was find a lunch counter called Blinkies Hamburgers and Hotdogs. Mason, two other Afro-Americans and three Polish kids from Chicago's West Side. Mason noticed right away the walls contained blowups of electric stars, heavenly bodies and cinema lasses: Shirley Temple, Tex Ritter, Lana Turner, Roy and Trigger. They sat at the counter. The napkin holder had an embossed head of a roaring lion. The toast-thin waitress — blonde, wearing pink rimmed cateyed specs — came. She asked the white boys what they wanted, then said to Mason and the other two, “We don't serve Negroes here.” Mason noticed the salt and pepper shakers were not C-shaped. The fat sloppy owner came over scratching his red neck. “All right, I want you niggers to get. Y'all must be from up North some whah. Well, dis is Texas, by God. You white boys can stay.” No hostility in his voice: only annoyance. “Niggers from ‘round heah'd know better'n t' come in a rest'rant and sit down wid white folks.” Celt CuRoi whispered in his ear: “You are not yet the casting director: save your energy, honey. You got a future. Don't blow it on this fly-speck in the shitpile.” Yet Mason could not resist: “You got catsup on your chin. Mustard on your T-shirt.” The Fat man swung at Mason but missed. They all jumped up and ran out. A couple of blocks left of shooting they stopped. The pink boys sheepishly went off in one direction — toward white-town and the brown boys pointed their noses toward black-town. Mason wondered if the rest of them felt the sour something coming up the throat. Now, he and the other two found Mama Minnie's Chili and Tripe Parlor in the black section next door to The Camelback Shoeshine and Barbershop (that day he started smoking Camels). It was midmorning and sunny. While they ate, three fat prostitutes came in from their gigantic Buick parked out front. And so it went: there was Mason soon in motion again. Texas was no picnic: a couple of days later he had guard duty from late afternoon till midnight. Here his motion was slow. Not even Celt came to keep him company. A kid named Rubinstein from Chicago relieved Mason at twelve. The full moon was Hollywood Boulevard on opening night for Gone with the Wind. Mason was upstairs undressing when he heard the voices. Careful not to wake the bigot who slept above him, Mason looked out the window. The moonlight showed Rubinstein down there on guard duty between the two barracks — but who were these three other guys? Drunken voices. Ah! One was, you bet, their Tactical Instructor, Airman Gimbal — a warlock with tangled hair and insanity in his eyes. He was holding Rubinstein by the front of his shirt and repeatedly slamming his back against that barracks over there. Saying, “You sonofabitching Jew! You kike, you money-hoarder… we should stomp your ass into the ground! Hitler was right—” He went on, as the other two drunk TI's watched and giggled and swayed at the end of their high-hat-shadows while holding beer cans in yellow-lighted paws. Rubinstein was crying. Mason felt helpless — rage — as Airman Gimbal punched Rubinstein in the stomach again and again the way you'd sock a punching bag. The other two drunks now held Rubinstein's arms. The plump kid took one finisher, corker, sleeping potion, slogdollager after another. He had to be biffy-batty by now but he hadn't yet reached out for hearts and flowers. Though he whimpered and puffed in a wham-whoozy voice, that victim of the washboard blues, the hammer, refused to be creamed. Losing control of himself, Mason dashed downstairs — a cyclone in the stairway — and ran outside, skipping the steps, hitting the grass, feeling the sting in his spine and knees, his teeth banging together. He saw them over there. The blow-by-blow report kept up a bonebending racket in his ear. Grunt-and-groan response: Rubinstein. The TI's were growling and… Celt suddenly tapped Mason on the shoulder. He ignored her. Then it happened: he started gagging, vomiting up his guts, stewed potatoes, boiled chicken, spam, Wheaties, milk, potato chips, ice cream, cobwebbed fears. And now they saw him, on his knees, in the moonlight. Holyshit! So guilt and shame were following Mason like mad hound dogs tracking an escapee from rock-splitting “justice.” Ah, yes: he was riding the delivery bike back to the Edward Hopper drugstore. Headlights, like swacks in the dark that made the floaters fly, came at him. A wind machine on stage behind him? Stage? Hush yo mouth! Motion on Mason! The dirty slush of a recent snowstorm was good for deep, thin tracks — you could even write words with the tires. But now rain. The car came at him. Fast. Getting out of the way of this lefthander, he fell between two cars, losing the bicycle — as it flopped, hit by the swooping fender. Mason looked up from the wet, oily gutter. It was night. The car's side window was lined with gray menacing faces; griffins, buzzards, sharptoothed rats. What North Side gang was this? Maybe it wasn't wise working up here near Loyola University. He thought Jewish boys were more human than this. He ate his humiliation and rage, as he lifted himself and his bike, up: they did not taste like strawberries, cornflakes and milk. It was enough to make one realistic. And that time in Cheyenne after basic with the Spanish exchangees. Christ, those guys! sitting around the barracks flipping through their Merriam-Websters pathetically in search of “fuck” and “cunt” and “cock”—how could they have so misread Henry Bosley Woolfs intentions? These hombres, from Madrid, from Barcelona, old enough to remember their fathers' talk about the Spanish Civil War, and still feeling South/North antagonism, knew those words existed in the wallop, smell and cheesecake of America, so why weren't they in your everyday, honest-to-goodness dictionary. Mason nor the others could answer. And why was it so important to find those words? Still Life with Dirty Words. Did they really scratch the itch? They called the real one Miss Cunt. She was brought in a truck every Friday night. The driver of the pickup said he was her husband. Guy obviously had a deal with the guard at the gate? Miss Cunt was not handsome, nothing to write home about: over forty, bleached hair, lots of veined fat. She and her husband were a couple of rednecks from around Laramie where, they said, they had a few chickens, a hog, and got by. Well, the Spanish guys couldn't find cunt in the book but they got her in the cab. Mister Cunt just sat there in the driver's seat, on guard. Only two or three of the American guys — boys really — had her. The Spanish airmen'd get up there and sit her on their laps. One at a time, with their cocks up in her fat, she'd wiggle around till they found the speed of light through the sounds she made. Sometimes Mason lying way away in his bunk could hear her grunts. She had one kind for grinding and another for derby. As I said, hubby counted the wet loot and kept top eye opened, and this service was provided the Spanish men in search of “fuck” and “cunt” and “cock” for as long as they were in military records training. There was no way to avoid their bragging. Mason was still in motion but the camera wasn't on him. Then he got shipped (shipped?) to Valdosta where commanders laughed at him when he requested transfer; said he'd been promised Europe. It wasn't till a doctor treating him for an ulcerated stomach said racism was killing him that the commanders unpacked their sense of humor and gave him a screen test for another location: he won a deeper degree of South: was given a ticket to a base in northern Florida. Here he discovered rocks had souls: discovered ancient Greece. Books were not shot from guns. He lived in himself since there was not space worthy outside. Finally, honorably discharged, Mason made the mistake of returning to Chicago.