Noon Gun

Joe Looked Down at Mousie, walking so sedately beside him, and he thought, you're a second-rater, and so am I. Her name wasn't Mousie, but Sara Nell. He always called her Sara Nell except when he thought about her, and then she was Mousie. It was her hair, maybe, or the nose that was so very well shaped only one-and-a-half sizes too large for her face. She had a little pointed face. Anyway, it was Mousie, and it wasn't affectionate.

"What's the matter, Joe?" Her voice was lovely, though. And her eyes. She always seemed to be interested in what she was saying, and her eyes widened all the time she talked. In between times they never seemed to narrow, but got longer.

"Nothin'. Thinking."

Thinking about the kind of girls you saw so often in taxis, so seldom on the bus. So often on TV or in the movies, never in a store or bowling or anyplace around. On TV and the movies you can watch big good-looking guys soften 'em up, push 'em over. The big good-looking guys talk fast and they always have the right answer, and they just mow them down. You never saw a movie about a guy didn't have enough chin, never had the right words at the right time and had none at all when he was mad, or afraid, or when he really meant what he was saying. What kind of a chick would look the second time at a guy like that? If that's what you are, you wind up walking along the street with Mousie because you can't do better.

She was watching him, not looking where she was going, holding his arm very tight and close the way she always did. He liked that, but he never could figure it with the way she turned away when he tried to kiss her. He said, "I was thinking about the picture we saw, the second one."

"Oh. Didn't you like it?"

(continued on page 126)Noon Gun(continued from page 117)

"Sure I did. Sure. It was swell. It didn't seem too phony either. I mean, the way he wiped out those two machine-gun nests, it could happen that way, I guess. And when he helped move all those wounded, and then dropped, and you realized he had a bullet in him all that time, that really sat me up. Only ----"

"Only what, Joe?"

"Oh -- nothing. Nothing much, just that I don't see him making all those wisecracks to that Army nurse when he was hurt. Did you ever know anybody like that, Sara Nell? Are there guys like that, that don't ever get scared, and grin when they fight, and like say something funny when they get hurt?"

"I imagine so. I've seen -- well, anyway, they wouldn't pay any attention to me."

Oh, Joe thought. But I do. I do, but one of those guys wouldn't. You take the next best thing. He took his arm from her suddenly, so quickly that she opened up her long eyes and stared at him. They walked on, a little apart.

"I'm sorry, Joe."

"For what?"

"I don't know," she said very softly. "I just suddenly felt sorry."

Mousie! he thought furiously. You make me mad. You watch me all the time. You watch me all the time. You never say what you see. Why did I have to meet up with you? What good are you doing me? You're just as bad as I am. Why don't you tell me to go jump in the drink?... But heck, she didn't mean anything. She was just trying to be ---- "Let's go in here and have a drink before we go home."

She looked up into the neon glare above the entrance. "They ask how old you are."

"Not here they don't."

"All right, Joe." All right, Joe. All the time, all right, Joe.

They went into the place. It split the difference between a twist-'n'-fizz joint and a real bar. It was mobbed. There were tables and booths and imitation morocco and all kinds of noise. "There's some seats," said Sara Nell as Joe hesitated.

"But there's a girl ----"

"Nonsense," said Sara Nell. "One girl in a booth that is s'posed to be for four. Come on."

Joe thought he ought to be the one to find the seats, but why make anything of it? They slid side by side into the booth. Joe slung his hat up and out and for once it landed on a hook. Sara Nell laughed and patted his shoulder and the girl opposite smiled.

"Order me what you're having," Sara Nell said. She burrowed into her black handbag and came up with a compact. "I'll be right back."

When she was gone Joe fixed his mind and the base of his tongue on a Cuba libre and let his eyes wander over the room. The girl opposite was watching him; he sensed it rather than saw it. It made him acutely uncomfortable. He tried hard not to look at her and very nearly succeeded. She was blonde and bigger than Mousie; that he could see out of the corner of his eye... But if he was with Mousie he didn't feel that he should ---- But heck, he could look at her, couldn't he? She wouldn't think he was crawling up her leg if she'd seen him come in with another girl. He obeyed his usual reflex when he felt confused, and took out his cigarettes.

"Please ----"

The voice was husky, throaty. He looked across the table, right straight at her.

She was incredible. Her hair was long and thick, golden with firelights. He thought her eyes were green. Her face was round, the skin very white and flawless, and the lobes of her ears were altogether pink. She was dangling an unlit cigarette in her fingers, and was looking at his battered lighter.

"Oh, excuse me," Joe said, and dropped his own lit cigarette into his lap. He flapped and plucked and got it, and corralled it in the ashtray, fumbled up his lighter, and spun the wheel. It caught with its usual bonfire effect.

The girl yelped, recoiled, then laughed and leaned forward. She watched him instead of the flame as she lit up. He saw that her eyes weren't green at all. They were blue, with a little crooked golden ring around each pupil. In the light of the booth's little table lamp, the movement of her mouth on the cigarette showed up a fine line of down on her upper lip. He had an impulse to touch it.

He snapped the lighter shut and displayed it. "Swedish," he announced. "I got it off a guy on a ship. You can't get 'em here. It's sort of beat up now. It dropped out of my pocket one day and I ran a bulldozer over it."

"A bulldozer? You run a bulldozer?"

He nodded eagerly. "You ever watch one work?"

"Oh yes," she said. "I rode on one once, for a couple minutes. They're the biggest, strongest ----"

"I know." He nodded. He knew, too. He thought she had run out of words. Couldn't find words for the blatting of those mighty engines, the unspeakable power of 21 tons of steel and racket and brute force, the whole thing obedient as cadets on parade. He looked across at her, at the miracle that had happened to her face to make it interested in his work, and in him. In him -- and she with that calendar face, that TV-Hollywood face.

"My girlfr---- The girl I'm with, she never saw a bulldozer," he said.

"Well I have. Is it hard to run one of those things?"

So Joe talked about it. Something inside him filled up and burst warmly, and spilled out in words. He had never been able to talk to a girl like this before. There was a time in high school, a girl called Peggy, and he suddenly found himself talking about her, because this blonde miracle understood about him and the bulldozer.

"You remind me of a girl called Peggy, when I was a kid," he told her. "Once I had a class with her, she sat right next to me; well I never could bring myself to say a word to her. You know how it is with kids. Well she passed and I flunked and after that I never saw her but on Wednesdays. On Wednesdays she would carry the flag in assembly. I used to live from one Wednesday to the next, just waiting for her. Just to watch. I never did speak a word to her. Well that went on for three years until the senior prom and she came with a friend of mine. And me stag. And he came over and said, 'Hi, Joe, you know Peggy.' I just nodded my head yes and she smiled at me. Know what I did? I left the dance," he said in recalled wonderment, "I left and went straight on home." He looked up from his kneading fingers to see the blonde girl's eyes fixed on his face. He blushed. "I guess I was a dope. As a kid."

"I think that was cute," said the blonde warmly. "Did you say your name was Joe? Mine's Bette."

"Oh," said Joe. "Pleased t'meecha. Mine's Joe, all right. Betty."

"Bette, with an e, not with a y. Betty with a y is such a common name, don't you think?"

Joe, by now too faraway from bulldozing and feeling lost, didn't know what he thought, and didn't have to, for he suddenly became conscious of two square hands with stubby fingers and an oversized signet ring on the table beside him. He looked up and saw that they terminated thick arms which in turn supported a pair of wide shoulders wearing an overpadded sports jacket. From a pink-cheeked baby face, a mean little pair of eyes leered viciously at him. One side of the mouth opened and said harshly, "Hiya, Bette. Who's yer friend?"

"Oh! Gordon. Gordon, meet Joe. Joe's just waiting for his girl. She's powdering her nose." There was an urgency in her deep sweet voice, and, looking up at the man's little eyes, Joe felt a miserable cold lump form in his stomach.

"Yeh?" Gordon slid in next to Bette and said heavily, "Let's jest sit here and help him wait for her."

"He doesn't believe it!" said Bette, and laughed with her mouth. "Gordon, (continued on page 225)Noon Gun(continued from page 126) where you been? I been waiting for you 30 minutes."

"Hadda stop an' paste a guy said he was going to make time with you, hon," said Gordon, winking at Joe. Joe smiled weakly. There was something wrong about all this, and he wished suddenly that Sara Nell would hurry up.

"He's a bulldozer operator," said Bette, nodding at Joe, who nodded back like a marionette. And for just a fraction of a second the arrogance slipped off Gordon's face, leaving it bland, years younger. Then he caught it again: "He is? Well -- long as he din't bring his bulldozer."

Joe said "Ha-ha," and was appalled at how hollow it sounded.

Sara Nell had slid in beside him before he fully realized she was back. She was saying something about she hoped she hadn't been too long.

You have been, Joe thought. He said, "Sara Nell, this's, uh, Bette and Gordon." Sara Nell bobbed her head as each name was mentioned. Bette said "Hello!" and smiled.

Gordon glanced briefly at Sara Nell's face, intently at the front of her dress, shrugged his shoulders and turned in his seat to face Bette more directly. He said not a word.

Joe sat silent and miserable. A waitress scuffed up. "Cuba libre," Joe said. Sara Nell shook her head. "I don't want anything now."

"Coke," said Bette. Surprise slanted into Joe's mind. She should have said "Champagne cocktail," or something. Didn't they always?

"I'll have a drink with you," Gordon said pointedly to Bette, "when you and him are finished." The waitress shuffled off again.

"Aw, Gordon, don't be like that. Joe didn't mean anything, did you, Joe? Does he look like a wolf or something?"

Gordon flicked a glance, not at Joe, but at Sara Nell. He said, "Hell no."

"Well, he isn't," said Bette complacently. "I know. He was telling me just before you came ----"

Oh no, Joe thought, holy smoke, don't tell him that! I didn't tell you that about Peggy so you would ----

But she was. In her own way, which wasn't like what he had told her. She made it different. She made it as if he was still the same kind of a cube he was when he was a kid. She made it sound as if it had happened just yesterday, instead of three whole years ago, nearly four. He opened his mouth to say something, and nothing would come. He felt Sara Nell's hand on his arm and realized he was half out of his seat, hanging there clumsily. He dropped back and closed his eyes and let the silly little anecdote come pouring over him like hot oil from a busted hydraulic line.

When Bette was quite finished, finished also with an expansion of how very cute she thought it all was, Gordon said, "Shee -- yit."

It made Joe jump. Bette apparently noticed nothing. Joe didn't have to look at Sara Nell.

Joe said, "Aw, Bette, you shouldn't've told about that."

"Why not?" Gordon grated. "She can say what she wants. It's a free country, ain't it?"

"Sure, but ----"

"But nothin', who do you think you are, Nicky Khrushchev or something?"

"Gordon," said Bette, "will you leave the kid alone?"

"Aw, it's all right," said Joe.

Sara Nell said suddenly, "Joe, will you take me home? I have an awful headache."

Joe looked at her in amazement. He had never heard her voice become shrill before. "You got a headache?"

"Sure she has," said Gordon. "Name's Joe." He brought his thick hand down on the table and guffawed.

"Very f ----" Joe began, but something choked him. He had to swallow before he could say, "Very funny." To Sara Nell he said desperately, "I ordered a drink."

"Please Joe..." she said. The face she had now, this was new to him, too. "Please. Now. I feel sick."

Joe opened his mouth, but before he could say anything Sara Nell was up and walking away. He rose, tried a smile and a shrug that somehow didn't quite come off, reached for his hat and started off after her.

"Hey. You!"

He stopped. Gordon said, "Who's supposed to pay for the drinks, deadbeat? Me?"

Infuriatingly, Sara Nell came back to him, accompanied him to the table. He said to her, "If it wasn't for you ----" He got his wallet out. Gordon was sitting back making his little eyes even smaller. Joe took out a bill and tossed it to him. "Here. When she comes. With the drinks. We got to go."

Bette said goodbye but Joe couldn't answer. He took Sara Nell's arm and hurried her out.

"Joe! Your change!"

"Skip it. I got plenty of money."

Outside it was red and dark, red and dark with the neon, and the cool air took the hot fuzziness that filled him and compressed it into a fiery ball. "You!" he gritted. "What'd you want to rush me out like that for? You want that guy to think I was afraid of him?"

Sara Nell made a strange little sound and snatched her arm away from him. They stopped walking. Joe said, "One more crack outa him and I'd'a had to paste him one."

"Joe!" she cried as if she had been stabbed, "don't talk out of the side of your mouth!"

"What's the matter with you?"

She placed her hands carefully together and looked down at them. Her bag swung from her left wrist, and from its wide gilded clasp, the neon letter B, reversed, appeared and disappeared. B for Bar. B for Backwards. B for Bette. She spoke to him carefully, and at last in her own full voice again. "Joe...I don't want you to be mad at me. I have no claim on you, and you can do what you want. But----"

"What are you talking about?"

"Please don't throw your money away. You work too hard for it."

"For God's sake, I told you. I got plenty."

"All right, Joe. But...$10 is a lot for a drink you didn't even have."

"Ten -- did I put $10 on that table?"

"That's what you took out of your wallet."

Joe whipped out his wallet and fanned through it. "Holy smoke." He looked up at the pulsing glare, and back at his wallet.

Sara Nell said, probably to herself, "Those awful people..."

"Aw, they're OK," Joe said. He put away his wallet. "He just talks too much for his own good, that's all... Well," he demanded suddenly, "we just going to stand here?"

She just stood there.

"Come on," he growled.

"All right, Joe," she said. They walked away from the bar. After a while she said, "Let's walk all the way."

"I got enough mon ----"

"I want to," she said.

They walked in too much silence after it had been normally dark for a time, and he lashed out, "All right, so you didn't like them! So they're not your type, that's all. So forget them!"

"All right, Joe."

All the time, all right, Joe. And watching him. She had always been watching him, ever since he met her. She watched him eat. She watched him walk. Did she...did she think while she watched? She never said. He had such an abrupt vision of the crooked golden ring on blue pupils that he blinked; the vision jogged along with him, fading no faster than the afterimage of a flash bulb. Oh God, no matter what, this Mousie would never do that to him, or anything like it.

He found, after a while, that she had his arm again. He had not been aware of her taking it. She said, "Joe. Did I ever tell you about my brother Jackie and the noon gun?"

"What about it?"

"We used to live near the fort. Every time they shot that cannon at noon Jackie would start to cry, even when he was a baby. Everybody knew about it. Everybody used to laugh at him, to kid him out of it. They used to look at their watches and hang around him waiting. And sure enough when the gun went off he'd jump and start to cry.

"Well, one summer when he was about 13, my Uncle John and Aunt Helen were visiting, and Jackie cried like that, and Uncle John gave me two dollars but he said to Jackie he was ashamed they had the same name. I -- I guess he was only trying to help. But anyway, at night Jackie told me he would never cry at the noon gun again. The way he said it, Joe, he scared me. I was so worried, the way he acted, I kept my eye on him all the next morning.

"Well, about 11:30 he sort of slid out of the yard without saying anything and I waited a second and went after him. He took the hill road and went right up to the fort, and jumped over the road wall at the top and went on around the side of the building and sat down on the grass with his back to the wall. And there right over his head was that cannon." She was quiet for so long that he nudged her.

"What'd he do?"

"Nothing. He just sat there looking out at the sea. At five minutes to 12 he could hear the voices of the gun crew. I could, too, where I was hiding. Then he sort of squinched up his face and dug his fingers into the dirt. And he started to cry. He didn't try to wipe his face. He kept his hands in the dirt. It must have been to keep him from putting his fingers in his ears. Finally the gun went off -- blam! -- and he jumped like a jack-in-the-box. Afterward, he sat there for a minute until he stopped crying, and he wiped off his face with his handkerchief and wiped his hands on his pants."

"What'd you say to him?"

"Oh -- nothing. I ran home. He never did know I saw him."

"Now why did he want to do a thing like that?"

Sara Nell looked up at him. "He was a funny kid. You know, he never did cry at that noon gun anymore. For a couple of weeks he'd sort of tighten up when it went off, but after a while he stopped doing that even. And then he'd just grin."

They reached her gate. Joe said, "That's the craziest story I ever heard."

She reached behind her, opened the gate, slid through and closed it between them. "Well...goodnight, Joe. Thanks for the show and all." She turned and went up the steps. At the top she looked back and saw him still standing there. She said goodnight again and when he didn't answer she went into the house.

At the click of the door Joe started, took a step toward the gate. There was something so very final about the click; it left him alone, and it told him what he hadn't known until then -- that he didn't want to be alone. He started at the lighted windows for a moment, and finally shrugged. "That dame," he said out of the corner of his mouth. He turned and started downtown.

"I guess I shoulda pasted that guy one," he muttered. He put his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders. In the back of his mind, a most intimate possession of his, a sort of private movie projector, began reeling off a new feature, in Technicolor. He saw himself in the bar, striding up to the table, a thin smile on his merciless lips. Gordon looked up and turned pale. "Well, wise guy?" said Joe out of the corner of his mouth. Gordon said, "Now, looka, a joke's a joke, huh?" Joe slowly extended his hand. Gordon said, "OK, OK," and put the change from Joe's $10 into it. Joe put the money in his pocket and stood there rocking on the balls of his feet, staring Gordon down. "Punk!" he spat. Bette rose and ran to him and threw her arms around him. "Don't hit him, Joe!" Joe gently disengaged her and shoved her carelessly aside.

Fade-out.

Joe took his hands out of his pockets and walked a little faster.

Another reel. Joe and Gordon standing toe to toe, slugging it out. Bette shouting, "Come on, Joey!" A right, a left, another right, and Gordon was down, blood streaming from his nose and mouth. "Oh, Joe, my Joe..."and as he turned to face her and the hot promise of her parted lips, he saw too late that the coward on the floor had a gun. Blam! But with the explosion, Bette's tear-filled face was blanked out by the superimposed picture of a kid sitting in a swirl of smoke under the muzzle of a cannon, digging his hands into the dirt and crying.

Joe shook his head in annoyance. He tried to get a close-up of Bette, whose dress was torn somehow, saying, "You've killed him, you rat! You've killed my Joe!" -- flinging herself down beside him as he gasped his life out; but it couldn't jell.

Gordon, he thought bitterly. Gordon is the guy who grins when he fights. A tough guy. Smack him one in the nose. He grins. When the noon gun goes off, he grins. Pump him full of lead, and he cracks wise with the Army nurse. The blonde Army nurse.

I'll get him out on the fill where I'm working, Joe thought. I'll be up on my dozer, and I'll run him down. I'll slap her in sixth gear. Just a touch on the steering clutches. He can't dodge me. I got 21 tons at my fingertips. Blade him under. Lock a track and spin him into the dirt and spread him out and back-blade him into nothing but a stain in the mud. In Technicolor again, he pictured himself up on the machine, approaching the bar. He dropped his blade and swung into the front of the building. Blam! But instead of people running and screaming, instead of chrome-pipe chairs bouncing and scattering off the blade, instead of a sweaty Gordon crying, "He brought his bulldozer!" there was just the kid under the gun again, crying without trying to wipe his face.

"I got to do it," Joe said suddenly in a strained voice. He thought, what right have I to horn in on them? and replied instantly, I can just ask for my change.

Ahead of him the lurid neon over the bar made the street and house fronts alternately blood and black, blood and black. He crossed over toward it and stumbled on the curbstone. His heart was pounding so hard that he had to catch his breath in between beats. He went in.

There were not many people left. He thought suddenly, maybe they've gone. He craned his neck toward the booths and instantly saw Bette's beacon of hair.

He wiped his palms on the sides of his trousers. The waitress was behind the bar. Maybe she'd have the change. Maybe he wouldn't have to ask Gordon at all. He went over to her. She looked tireder than she had before.

"I gave you $10 for a Cuba libre and a Coke a while back," he said. "I was sitting over there. Have you got the change?"

"Oh -- you're the feller ordered and then went out. Was that your $10? I give the change to your friend there. Ask him about it."

"Thanks." Joe swallowed. "I -- I guess I will." He looked at the waitress. She was numbly mopping the bar with a gray towel. "I'll go ask him about it right now." It didn't seem to make any difference to her; she just went on mopping. "Yes," said Joe. "Well, thanks."

He walked away from the bar. Maybe he ought to have a little drink first. As the thought occurred to him it was canceled by a reaction against any more stalling that jolted him to his ankles. He was trembling ever so slightly, all over, when he walked back to the booths.

I'll just say "Hi," easylike, he told himself. But when he got there he couldn't say anything at all. He put his hands down on the table and leaned on them. He looked at Gordon and wished that little muscle in his cheek would stop twitching.

"Well, will you look what crept in!" said Gordon. "What do you want?"

"My money," whispered Joe. He cleared his throat. "My money," he said.

"You lose some money?" Gordon nudged Bette. "He lost his money."

"Better forget it, kid," said Bette.

Joe said, "I left $10 here to pay for drinks."

"That's your hard luck," said Gordon. "I don't know nothing about it. Why'n't you save yourself some bad trouble and beat it?"

"Give it to me."

"Look, son -- ain't it worth 10 bucks to you to keep me from feeding you your teeth? How're you gonna prove anything?"

Joe was suddenly certain that his mouth would form just one more statement before it dried up altogether. He said the only thing that would come into his mind. "Give it to me."

Gordon carefully and ostentatiously adjusted his heavy signet ring. Joe became fearfully aware of what that big ring could do. "I guess I gotta give it to him," said Gordon. He got up and stepped so close to Joe that Joe could smell the liquor on his breath. "Now get outa here," rasped Gordon. He put his open palm against Joe's face and shoved.

Joe stepped backward, his arms flailing for balance, until the backs of his knees brought up against a chair, and he fell over it backward and crashed to the floor on his head and shoulders. He rolled over and tried to get up. Gordon stepped over and kicked him in the stomach, and when he put his hands down, kicked him in the head.

It made a noise inside his head like nothing he had ever heard. Just blam! and then the whole world was full of roiling smoke. It began to clear, and he became conscious of a bleating noise -- the waitress. He raised his head and looked past the thick columns of Gordon's legs, and saw Bette's face. She was not saying, "Oh, Joe, my Joe..." She was smiling, with her mouth half-open. He could see almost all her upper teeth. She was smiling at Gordon.

Gordon stepped back as Joe got to his knees and then to his feet. "You kicked me," he said inanely, and then rushed.

He felt his hands close around Gordon's forearms. They felt almost squashy in his grip. He forgot all about dream fights, movie and TV fights, the one-two, the feint and duck and right cross. He bent Gordon's arms until the square hands were fluttering under the baby chin, and he bore down with all the power that 10 hours a day pulling steering clutches can give. Gordon went to his knees. "Money," said Joe. He pulled Gordon back on his feet, released his arms, grabbed a handful of hair and hauled Gordon's head back until he could see the skin on the pink throat stretching. Holding him like that, he swung at Gordon's jaw, cheek, nose, eye, mouth, jaw. He kept swinging until Bette screamed. Then he let go, and Gordon came down and over and around his feet like something dumped out of a truck.

The waitress was saying, "Stop it! Stop it!" Joe said, to his own astonishment, "You stop it. You're making all the racket," and went over to Bette. "I want my money," he said.

"I got it," she said. "Gosh, Joe, we were only having fun with you." She opened her pocketbook and took out a $10 bill, the whole $10, and put it on the table. Joe picked it up and slid it into his wallet, and took out a dollar and gave it to the waitress. "Throw some water on him," he said.

Bette looked at the feebly stirring figure on the floor. "You didn't need to get mad like that," she said. "Now when he comes to he's going to take it out on me. I'm gettin' out of here." She walked off.

Joe found his hat, picked it up, dusted it off, put it on. Bette was waiting for him outside on the sidewalk. The blinking neon did strange things to the color of her hair.

"Are you going my way?" she asked him, holding his arm.

"What's your way?"

She pointed. He shook his head. She said, "I could go the other way."

He took her hand off his arm. "I got a date," he said.

His head hurt.

He went straight to Sara Nell's house, thinking about what he should say when he saw her. He thought up plenty, but when he stood in the light of her opened door, he forgot it all and said only, "I got the money. They had it, all right."

"Joe! You're hurt!"

"I feel fine." How she got into his arms he couldn't imagine. He held her close and stroked her hair. She didn't turn her face away. His eyes were hot. He said, "You're so little! You're no bigger'n a little old mouse. I oughta call you Mousie."

She said, "All right, Joe."

He held her close, but he was careful, because his arms were so strong he didn't want to hurt her.