Ok, So I'm a Cookooboo

It was a gas on the beach: no brawls, no squalls, nary a problem, a cool pad, seagulls, fishing, the mild California weather, a full icebox, hi-fi, seals being washed up on the shore to die gracefully, a rest from the bottle to keep dem ole debbils away, a book or two, regular trips to Madam Jesus' drop on 14th Street, a silent phone, and enough moola in the bank from that salvage job in the Gulf to hold out for a year or more. A real gas: on good days you could sprawl on the warm sand like a crucified ox and almost believe in immortality.

I was sitting on the crumbling sea wall, watching the early horizon heading out toward Japan, when the Professor joined me, hawking and scratching, his eyes yellow with mischief. Nudging me, he said:

"Seen the new girl yet, neighbor?"

I shook my head and pretended to count the pelicans on the breakwater.

"Brother," the Professor said. "Wow." His eyes burned hot little holes into my neck. "OK," he said, "so I'm a cookooboo, but I'll bet my bottom dollar this chick'll get you off that Gandhi kick. Wow, yes."

I stuck a plastic inhaler up my left nostril and breathed menthol and counted pelicans. The Prof squatted beside me, still hawking. He sure was loaded with phlegm. The old goat patted his pockets till I handed him a nickel cigar and a book of matches.

"Thanks, son." He bit on the cigar. "Oh, brother, wait'll ya see her."

The pelicans looked good and mad, like starlets sitting on high stools in Schwab's drugstore, banging their cavities about the latest Louella Parsons.

"Well, son -- ya hear me?"

I gave up. "OK, Professor, let's have it. What's so special about this broad? She malformed or something?"

You'd think I'd said something witty, the way that old seadog doubled up.

"Mal-formed? Wait'll I tell the old lady. Mal-formed, by gar." He went blue, laughing. "That's one for the book, son." He lit up, hawked, spat. "Jest you keep your eyes open." His yellow old hands traced an hourglass. "Redhead. Stacked like a brick lighthouse. Moved into the Green Chalet yesterday."

"I don't sound you, Prof. Romeo and Juliet live there."

"Not any more. They flitted, skipped owing a munce rent."

"Oh, no. Hell, they were up there. That crummy little pad was like Shangri-La to them." I glared at the Prof, who just sat there grinning. "They once told me they were the happiest couple on the beach."

"They must've bin high when they said it."

"Isn't there any honest-to-god, old-fashioned, one-and-one-makes-two loving left in the world?"

The Prof just scratched and hawked and grinned.

"Come down off that cloud, son. Shoot, they wusn't even married. Not that you'd know it, the way they belted each other around. Some kind of a religious deal. Juliet'd two, three ay-bortions the last eighteen munce. Shucks, Mary knew all along." Mary, the Professor's wife, was the beach Louella. "Every now and then they'd make a sashay up to the church and have a pow-wow with the Father, but it never done no good. Hee, hee, coupla hours later they'd be beating the holy hell out of each other again. But who needs them? It's the redhead I want you to size up and inwardly digest. Wow-ee."

"The hell with redheads."

"Jest wait -- --"

"Don't worry about me, dad. I'm on a Schopenhauer kick, I root strictly for yin and yang."

"Shucks, son, if I didn't know you was off the sauce I'd say you was pie-eyed."

The pelicans must have switched to Mike Connolly, they looked even more mad. I stared at the theatrical backdrop of the Santa Monica Mountains, then watched a whole slew of seagulls bruising the crisp sky with pink-tinted wings. They looked hip and free, unlike the pelicans. The Professor creaked upright and hitched his frayed Levis.

"Reckon I'll be gittin' along. Got to put another lick of paint over that skiff I bought last week at Balboa." The Prof runs a charter service from off the pier. "Watch out now. lad. Oh. Brother; yes-sir."

And he shambled away on loose, whiskey legs, cackling like he'd busted a gut at Strip City.

• • •

I slipped off the wall and stretched out on the sand. My first stogie of the day was burned halfway down when Joe joined me. The vet's hard, hairy belly bulged over his tartan trunks, his tartan cap tilted over the top part of his gold-bearded face. His artificial leg shone like a bone in the sunlight.

"Ain't this something?" He squinted into the glare. "Real groovy."

"Yeah, but tell me something, Joe. I've often wondered: don't you ever get homesick for Korea?"

"You want me to part your hair with my leg?"

"No, I mean it. You've been around, kid, you shook hands with the President -- --"

"Lay off, will ya? I got enough troubles. That job I had, part time, I was saving to go on a hunting trip in the Sierras. Hell, there's nothing like killing and eating something you've bin stalking for hours. Well, that's gone fuzz. Know what that lousy manager did? Ordered me to shave my beard off, for crud. Shave my beard, man."

"So what happened?"

"What happened? What d'ya think happened? I told the creep what to do with his lousy gasoline pumps. Then I went downtown and drank beer and listened to Brubeck. Man, my head." The vet's eyes bulged. "Wow," he said. "Wow."

I turned, knowing what to expect. The Prof had not exaggerated. She was a big bouncy redhead, rising 30, vibrant, green-eyed, with a mobile torso between whisps of bikini. "Wow" was an understatement.

Joe tipped his hat. "Welcome to the beach, lady. I was just telling my buddy, there's no other place on earth like it."

She inclined her head, smiled.

"Where you from, honey?"

The smile froze. She nodded briefly and began to pick her way over the sand toward the ocean. Joe grunted.

"Shoot, she's as wound up as a mountain lion."

"She's just another dame."

"You think so? I'll spell it out for you, kiddo. She's tee ahr oh you bee el ee."

"Relax, man. Have a cigar."

"Uh-uh, can't face one after last night. Dig her running into the sea. Trouble, man, trouble. She's a vampire on wheels. Don't you ever start getting sentimental about her, kiddo."

"I won't."

"Worst thing you can do. I started reading a book, last week, written by an old guy called Hemingway. Man, did he get sentimental about broads. We've made a lot of progress since the olden days he was writing about."

"We sure have."

"Getting sentimental like that. Shoot, I couldn't finish the book. There were some good bits about fighting in it, but, shoot, he ruined them with all them sentimental bits. What a square."

"Don't worry, Joe. I won't get sentimental."

"Atta boy. Well, I better see if I can force a late breakfast down me. You wouldn't care to trade heads, would ya?"

• • •

The day built warmly, little ripples of heat making the beach shimmer. I thought about Garbo, but it gave me the shakes to think of her growing old and somber behind those big sunglasses, and passing through the change of life, and bumming around the Mediterranean with rich Greeks, so I goofed off into a state of not thinking, and almost hit zero, when a voice like a warm mint julep squirted across the morning.

"Cottonpicker." Mississippi Jim clapped a hand to his forehead. "Whah don't yuh join me for a bracer?"

"No thanks, Jim. I prefer to contemplate other people's hangovers, these days."

"It's a crahing shame, a scholar and a gentleman lahk yuh refusin' a drink from a brother officer."

"That's the way the bongo bingles, Colonel."

"Sure I cain't tempt yuh? Not even to a small one?"

"Not today, General."

"Bastard," Jim said amiably.

He shuffled away, thong sandals flapping. The beach was still again. Quiet and peaceful, like Forest Lawn before a funeral.

• • •

After lunch, I flopped onto my day bed and dug into a paperback which sent me to sleep. A knock wakened me around four. I hollered for them to come in, and Joe stomped in on his dead leg. He gave me a disapproving look and eased himself into a soft chair.

"People die in bed," he sniffed.

"I could think of worse places."

"Well, get the lead out. We're going fishing."

"We are?"

"Me and Moose and Jim got a boat cheap from the Professor. Thought you'd like to chip in."

"OK. When?"

"Sundown. Dress warm. It can git mighty cold out there." Joe picked a record album off the floor. "Fidelio by Beethoven. What's it about?"

I yawned. "Freedom, I guess. Like not shaving your beard to suit some sawn-off Hitler at a gas station."

"That so?" The vet placed the disc gently on the record rack. "Better start getting ready," he said, and stomped back out the door.

I was pulling a blue knitted sweater over a Canadian lumber shirt when there was another knock. When I opened up, the redhead pushed in like a galleon in full sail. She smelled of that corny French perfume they were plugging everywhere, that year. She looked great.

"Sorry to bother you," she said, and I discovered that her voice was husked and breathless. "But do you have an egg-whisk?"

"A wut?"

"An egg-whisk. I'm making a cake."

"Sorry, no egg-whisks."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure. Now, if you'll forgive me----"

"Oh, sorry. Guess I'd better try Mary."

"Yeah, do that."

She hovered in the doorway a moment, the heavy artillery of her breasts booming away in all directions. Then she shrugged and left. I closed the door so fast I almost sliced her heel.

Egg-whisks. Wow.

• • •

We had a great night of fishing, really working at it, dragging our catch into the beat-up Monterey till our backs screamed and the stars faded. We dumped our haul on the pier, selling most of it to the illegal Mex fish brokers, just stuffing what we needed into gunny sacks. We breakfasted in the all-night hash joint for fishermen, then walked back to our row of beach shacks as the sun slipped up over the damp mauve ridges of the distant Sierras. We stopped outside my drop, yawning and grinning.

"Shoot, am I tired," Moose said.

"I'll sleep like a stuck pig," Joe said.

"It was a ball, though," Jim said. "A cottonpickin' ball."

We remained there a few more moments, enjoying the growing sunlight and clean air. Our tackle was snarled, our clothing damp, the sacks were heavy on our shoulders. But we felt good, and when, at last, I got into my shack, it seemed to be waiting for me to reoc-cupy it. It was a sort of home. So I put my catch into the icebox and walked heavily into my small bedroom and stripped raw and fell into my cot. As I plunged into sleep, I thought:

The hell with egg-whisks.

• • •

The next few days the redhead really fractured me. She'd carry a portable radio around, and all the beach wolves would go sniffing after her, just as she intended them to, making like they really enjoyed the corny slime that dribbled out of that box. It was a gas to watch, though, seeing those cowboys running around, fetching cigarettes, bottles of pop, candies. But she never let any (continued on page 92)Ok, So I'm a Cookooboo(continued from page 50) one particular romance get too hot, and that way she kept the entire wolf-pack in tow.

One morning, I was sitting on the sea wall when she came over and asked if I would give her a lift into L.A. She pouted when I told her "no." Then, two days later, we went swimming together. There was nothing premeditated about it, we just happened to be setting out for the ocean at the same time. She swam like a champion, I had a job to keep up. Half a mile out we turned and floated on our backs. Suddenly she went tense, I grabbed her as she started going under.

"What happened?" I asked, holding her.

She gave a quick, pale smile. "Nothing, forget it."

But she started to cry. A minute later, she said:

"Do you ever feel like swimming out till you're so beat that you drown?"

"Hell, no."

"I felt like that just now." She snuffled. "Life can be lousy at times, can't it?"

"It's never that bad."

"Maybe not, for a man. But for a woman---- --"

We trod water. Then her mood switched again. Threshing up against me, she slipped her arms round my neck and kissed me. We both nearly went under this time.

"Salt kisses," she laughed. "Like them?"

Before I could answer she was off, heading shoreward. I followed, and we hit the beach on a big sandbuster. We retrieved our towels and dried in silence. Then she spread out her towel.

"Let's sit down," she said.

I sat. A minute passed. She trickled sand through her long fingers, smiling a sad faraway smile.

"I'm a widow," she began. "But let's not go into that now."

Let's not, I thought.

In that sudden way of hers, she gripped my arm, saying, "I'm in trouble. Real trouble. He keeps threatening me, following me. Well, not threatening, really. But -- you'll never believe me."

I didn't speak.

"He might be watching us, this minute, from the palisades. Through a telescope. That's the kind of thing he'd do. He's quite mad, of course."

I watched her dead, empty face without feeling a thing.

"He's a real gone cuckoo. Remember that time I asked you to give me a lift? I had to visit a girlfriend from my home state. Before coming here, I'd given her apartment as a forwarding address. That devil got hold of it and followed me out. He's trailed me to this beach. Yesterday I saw him, he was watching me have a coffee in a drugstore. He---- --"

She put her hands over her face.

I said: "There are such things as the cops---- --"

"You think I haven't tried them?" she exploded. "But he doesn't do anything. Just watch me, follow me. Sometimes he calls me on the phone, then doesn't say a word. The first time I ever met him, it was back in Kansas City, he---- --"

"I don't want to hear about it," I said.

"But I'm in a fix, I don't know what to do."

"Look, sweetie, tell your troubles to Jesus. There's nothing I can do about them."

"But I thought you'd understand, help -- --"

"Sorry, baby."

I stood up. She followed, picking up her towel. We headed back toward our pads. Near my gate she stopped and gave me a look of complete contempt.

"You're just another heel," she spat.

Before I could bounce that one back where it might hurt she was off and running. I watched her rush into the Green Chalet and slam the door. She was flaming mad, crazy as a hoot owl. And you know something? It didn't bug me at all.

• • •

But next day---- --

On the beach. It had crept into me like a germ overnight, making me restless and irritable. I saw her leave her shack and set up shop with her towel and radio, and it left me cold (I thought). I watched the wolf-pack surround her, and didn't feel a thing (I told myself). The hell with her and her corny line. So she'd given some moron the old come-on, like she was doing right now with those cowboys, like she had tried with me the previous afternoon. So the poor schmo was hooked. So why should I bother. Let her go peddle her cookies someplace else, huh?

But the irritability grew. I don't know exactly how it happened, but around noon the solution was firmly lodged in my skull. I needed a drink. What was wrong with having a couple of beers? Old Prof was right, get down off that cloud, son, and start living. You chicken, or something? The moment I decided to do something about it, the tension, the irritation, began to slip away.

I headed for the bar at the end of the pier, feeling like a yogi who has just hit the umpteenth beatitude.

• • •

"Welcome aboard, neighbor."

"Whah, yuh old cottonpicker, this is a surprise."

"Hey, whatever this guy's having, it's on me."

"And me---- --"

"He don't pay for a thing. You got that, bartender?"

They were all there, my buddies. Joe and Moose and Mississippi Jim. The first few beers went down like spring water in a desert. The bar became an oasis, a happy oasis. Then the Professor came in with a gentleman angler from Avalon, who insisted we all switch to highballs. The guy soon got nostalgic about the great fishing days off Catalina, when Zane Grey and Mack Sennett were still around, and we argued back that the fishing was just as good today, if you knew where to look for it, and we argued back and forth, and the drinks came and went, and the afternoon slipped by in a happy blur.

The sun was eating into the horizon when we left the bar, weaving back to our pads through a haze of gaudily colored tuna and marlin that made wild leaps and crazy headlong rushes through the bright green seas of our minds. Someone had a bottle of Jack Daniels, and there was talk of going back to Joe's to kill it. Maybe it even worked out that way, but not for me. Because the next thing I knew I was stretched out on my cot like a snoring corpse, and then my mind snapped out like a fused lamp.

• • •

Consciousness crawled back in a darkened room. I figured out the time from the luminous face of my bedside clock. Nine. I got up, rubbing the ache in my shoulders. A nerve was doing a mambo in my right temple. If I'd known how, I would have gladly died on the spot.

Solution: Joe. Drink in Joe's pad. Great guy, Joe, great crip. Finest crip a guy could ever meet. Not a shred of self-pity in him anywhere, gutsy as they came. Swell neighbor, fine example to entire community. Great community down here on beach, swellest spot you ever pitched your tent on. No need to move ever. Go see Joe, see crip buddy. Get drinkee. Drinkee fix everything, clarify picture.

OK, quick march. Square off. Go---- --

It was thickly dark outside. But the night breeze was kind to my throbbing temple, the unseen surf crashed harmoniously against the shore. It was swell to be pushing through the night, walking toward a bottle and a pal. A pal and a bottle, my old self again. No longer scared of taking a drink, of getting involved with a strange woman. Woman. I saw her light burning a few yards away. Woman. I'd tell her, I'd lay it on the line. This is a quiet beach, I'd tell her, we don't want no bitchin' redheads lousing up the joint. No, sir. Tell her to head up the coast and not leave a forwarding address. Let her go up to Frisco, that was a good place for phonies. Or Carmel, that's where the real nuts flourished. Tell her to go up there with the fakes, and dazzle them with that square bit about being chased from state to state by an ape man, and leave us simple, uncomplicated Southern Californians to our fishing and our liquor and our laughs.

I tried her door. It was unlocked, so I walked into her living room. Her face swam in a circle of lamplight.

"OK, relax," I told her. "It's only me, come to give you best piece of advice you've ever had."

She stood up, saying, "Are you all right? Here, sit down. Can I get you anything?"

"Whiskey. Neat. Take your hands off. Won't siddown. Prefer to stand."

I sat down.

"Let me fix you a coffee."

"Hell with coffee. Whiskey."

She was heading toward her kitchen when there was a sudden ringing. I stared at the phone. I reached out a hand.

"Don't," she said quietly. "Don't answer it. It's---- --"

I stared at her, blinking.

"Please don't. He's been trying to get through all day. If I answer he doesn't say a word, just breathes---- --"

The phone continued to ring.

"And you stand for it?" I said thickly. "Boy, am I going to give that nut a mouthful."

"No, please." She rushed over, her hair spilling wildly around her shoulders. "You've been drinking. You're not yourself. Let me handle this."

But I had lifted the receiver.

"Who dat?" I asked, shaking her hand off my arm. "Speak up, punk. I can't hear you."

"For God's sweet sake," the redhead implored, "hang up."

But nothing could stop me now. "Listen, punk. You're not talking to a woman now, punk. What kind of a man are you, anyway? Trying to scare a woman like that. I'll tell you something, punk. Listen, I got news for you." I timed the words carefully. "You revolt her. You make her sick to the stomach. She says you've got a face like an ape's. Got that, punky? You turn her gut over every time she thinks about you. So hang up. Blow."

The voice, when it came, was different from anything I'd expected.

"Finished talking, pally?" it asked, noncommittally. "OK, then get this. I'm coming over to collect her in five minutes. Tell her to start packing. We're leaving on the next bus out of this dump."

The line went dead. I hung up.

"What did he say?" the redhead asked in a low voice.

"That he's coming here to collect you. And when he does, I'm going to push his teeth down his neck."

She started pacing the room, barely looking at me. "You must go. You must leave at once, you hear? Listen, I don't want you to be around when he arrives, is that clear?" I refused to budge, and she went on: "You fool, you stupid fool. He's a maniac, he's capable of doing anything."

"You think I'd leave you alone with a guy like that on the rampage? Don't you worry, doll, I'll fix him."

"Oh, you fool," she said again. "You stupid fool."

• • •

The door opened slowly. He stood there, a great animal of a man, squinting into the lamplight. He was rocking from side to side, a strange grin on his ugly puss, rocking to the music that seemed to be playing inside his head.

"OK, honey, you're coming home," he said, ignoring me. "There's a bus out in fifty minutes. You and me are going to be on it."

"You keep away from her," I said, rising, my fists bunched. "Persecuting the kid like that, calling her on the phone and then not talking, chasing her from state to state when she hates your guts. What right have you to follow her around like that?"

"Shut up, junior."

"I won't shut up. For days you've been pestering her, following her into drugstores, monkeying around on the phone---- --"

The guy kicked the door shut and lumbered into the center of the room. The redhead watched him uneasily. Suddenly he began to laugh, his great body shaking as the laughter roared out of him.

"Jesus, this is funny." He looked at me, the tears streaming from his eyes. "Is that what she told you? Is that really what she told you? Oh, my God, that's funny."

His laughter really made me mad. I stepped forward, tightening my fists. This made him laugh all the more.

"Oh, no, and now sonny-boy wants to fight me for persecuting this poor, defenseless woman. Chee, that's rich. OK, man, if it's a fight you're after, never let it be said that Jack Rafferty didn't oblige. Take this for a commencement, son."

He struck out at my heart and a flash of pain seared through my body. I was real mad now, and I let him have it, swinging in with both arms. This made him laugh all the more, and, countering my blows, he started slapping me around the head, still laughing like crazy.

"Ho, ho, ho," he bellowed. "Take that, and that, and that." We danced around like a corny ballet, with him taking casual swipes at me and laughing his big, stupid head off. "Haw, haw, take that, and that---- --

A crunching blow on the jaw sent me toppling backward.

"Had enough, pal?" the big ape asked, grinning. "OK. Now may I take my ever-lovin' wife home to her three kids?"

"Wife?" I asked through thickening lips. "Kids?"

"Sure. I don't know what she told you, pal. But then I just blew into town. So I called her from the bus terminal, natch. And you gave me all that bull about me trying to scare her." He started laughing again. "Scare her? Most of the time she scares the living daylights out of me. The stories she dreams up. Chee, what imagination. This kid," he said proudly, "is a walking soap opera." He put his arms around her and drew her fondly to his body. "But I'm crazy about her. Besides which, somebody's got to wash the diapers and cook my meals." He tweaked his wife's nose affectionately. "OK, doll, pack your duds. We're going home."

I looked at the redhead. She averted her face, and hurried into the bedroom. I got to my feet, swaying, my head ringing like a telephone switchboard on Christmas Eve. The big guy watched me humorously as I headed for the door.

"So long, pal," he called after me. "Don't let anyone sell you a flannel nickel. Hey, and another thing: go easy on the bottle. If you can't handle it, leave it alone."

You could almost touch the dark outside, a land darkness that had nothing to do with the universe of light that hung over the great surging mass of the sea. In the house, the guy was laughing again. At times you could hear the slap of his big ham hand across the redhead's butt as he hustled her along with the packing. You could hear his slaps and delighted roars all the way across that wide beach. He sure seemed glad to be back with his old lady.

I sat down shakily, and the sand felt cold against my palms. A big red disk of a moon rode low over the ocean. The surf thundered its timeless laughter. And, after a while, I found myself staring up at that great cosmic orange and laughing too. OK, so I'm a cookooboo, but I couldn't help laughing, even though I had to hold my ribs where it hurt. Then the lights went out in the Green Chalet and I was quite alone. Alone, laughing like a goosed hyena. And the ocean laughed with me.

Egg-whisks, for gar's sakes.