“I would like to bet you that not three men in this room were drafted,” the tall man said. “These are the elite. The very top cream of the scum. What Wellington won at Waterloo with. Well, Mr. Hoover ran us out of Anticosti flats and Mr. Roosevelt has shipped us down here to get rid of us. They’ve run the camp in a way to invite an epidemic, but the poor bastards won’t die. They shipped a few of us to Tortugas but that’s healthy now. Besides, we wouldn’t stand for it. So they’ve brought us back. What’s the next move? They’ve got to get rid of us. You can see that, can’t you?”
“‘Why?”
“Because we are the desperate ones,” the man said. “The ones with nothing to lose. We are the completely brutalized ones. We’re worse than the stuff the original Spartacus worked with. But it’s tough to try to do anything with because we have been beaten so far that the only solace is booze and the only pride is in being able to take it. But we’re not all like that. There are some of us that are going to hand it out.”
“Are there many Communists in the camp?”
“Only about forty,” the tall man said.
“Out of two thousand. It takes discipline and abnegation to be a Communist; a rummy can’t be a Communist.”
“Don’t listen to him,” the red-headed Vet said. “He’s just a goddamn radical.”
“Listen,” the other Vet who was drinking beer with Richard Gordon said, “let me tell you about in the Navy. Let me tell you, you goddamn radical.”
“Don’t listen to him,” the red-headed one said. “When the fleet’s in New York and you go ashore there in the evening up under Riverside Drive there’s old guys with long beards come down and you can piss in their beards for a dollar. What do you think about that?”
“I’ll buy you a drink,” said the tall man, “and you forget that one. I don’t like to hear that one.”
“I don’t forget anything,” the red-headed one said. “What’s the matter with you, pal?”
“Is that true about the beards?” Richard Gordon asked. He felt a little sick.
“I swear to God and my mother,” the red-headed one said. “Hell, that ain’t nothing.”
Up the bar a Vet was arguing with Freddy about the payment of a drink.
“That’s what you had,” said Freddy.
Richard Gordon watched the Vet’s face. He was very drunk, his eyes were bloodshot and he was looking for trouble.
“You’re a goddamn liar,” he said to Freddy.
“Eighty-five cents,” Freddy said to him.
“Watch this,” said the red-headed Vet.
Freddy spread his hands on the bar. He was watching the Vet.
“You’re a goddamn liar,” said the Vet, and picked up a beer glass to throw it. As his hand closed on it, Freddy’s right hand swung in a half circle over the bar and cracked a big saltcellar covered with a bar towel alongside the Vet’s head.
“Was it neat?” said the red-headed Vet. “Was it pretty?”
“You ought to see him tap them with that sawed-off billiard cue,” the other said.
Two Vets standing next to where the saltcellar man had slipped down, looked at Freddy angrily. “What’s the idea of cooling him?”
“Take it easy,” said Freddy. “This one is on the house. Hey, Wallace,” he said. “Put that fellow over against the wall.”
“Was it pretty?” the red-headed Vet asked Richard Gordon. “Wasn’t that sweet?”
A heavy-set young fellow had dragged the salt-cellared man out through the crowd. He pulled him to his feet and the man looked at him vacantly. “Run along,” he said to him. “Get yourself some air.”
Over against the wall the man who had been cooled sat with his head in his hands. The heavy-set young man went over to him.
“You run along, too,” he said to him. “You just get in trouble here.”
“My jaw’s broken,” the cooled one said thickly. Blood was running out of his mouth and down over his chin.
“You’re lucky you aren’t killed, that wallop he hit you,” the thick-set young man said. “You run along now.”
“My jaw’s broke,” the other said dully. “They broke my jaw.”
“You better run along,” the young man said. “You just get in trouble here.”
He helped the jaw-broken man to his feet and he staggered unsteadily out to the street.
“I’ve seen a dozen laying against the wall over there on a big night,” the red-headed Vet said. “One morning I seen that big boogie there mopping it up with a bucket. Didn’t I see you mop it up with a bucket?” he asked the big Negro bartender.
“Yes, sir,” said the bartender. “Plenty of times. Yes, sir. But you never seen me fight nobody.”
“Didn’t I tell you?” said the red-headed Vet. “With a bucket.”
“This looks like a big night coming on,” the other Vet said. “What do you say, pal?” to Richard Gordon. “O.K. we have another one?”
Richard Gordon could feel himself getting drunk. His face, reflected in the mirror behind the bar, was beginning to look strange to him.
“What’s your name?” he asked the tall Communist.
“Jacks,” the tall man said. “Nelson Jacks.” “Where were you before you came here?”
“Oh, around,” the man said. “Mexico, Cuba, South America, .and around.”
“I envy you,” said Richard Gordon.
“Why envy me? Why don’t you get to work?”
“I’ve written three books,” Richard Gordon said. “I’m writing one now about Gastonia.”