Victor, pt. 2

Victor came down with polio two weeks before he received notification that he'd been drafted. By the time he recovered, much of the war had been fought, but still, the call came for him to join, and nothing--not even his bout with polio--could keep him safely out of Uncle Sam's reach.

His luck would improve, however.

Following basic training in Texas, Vic was shipped up to New Jersey, whereupon he received further training in mechanical repair. From there, he flew to San Diego, where he was to board a flight to Pearl Harbor. He was to report to the USS Hancock, a mighty aircraft carrier fresh in for repair from its mission in the Pacific theater.

Victor was boarding the flight to Hawaii when word came of V-E day.

"We thought we were done," Vic told me one night over beers. "All the boys were looking around at each other wondering if we'd just get to go home." The war in Japan wouldn't allow it yet.

Vic never talked much about his time on the Hancock, except for a few stories about strange things he'd seen at sea. V-J day came not too long after he arrived in the Pacific, and Vic transferred to a destroyer vessel that took patrol in north Africa. He told me one day they were sailing up a river, passing by a primitive village, when all of the children came wading out into ankle-deep water, removed their pants, and started shouting, "Piss on you, Joe!"

As best as I can intuit, Vic fixed airplanes and preserved freedom as he did it. I don't think he had to man a machine gun and tear the Japanese from the sky before they bombarded him, but I do not know for sure.

The person to ask would be Lazarus, though.

Lazarus Bontifore is a blind black man. He was on the Hancock in Vietnam when a steam piston exploded, shooting boiling vapor into his eyes and sending him into the dark forever. Vic knew him from the VA and made friends with him to trade stories about the carrier they both served upon.

These days, Lazarus mostly sits down at Mary's Cafe. He's pretty overweight now, thanks to Mary's blueberry pie. His teeth are stained as black as his skin. I found him a few days ago and started asking about Vic.

"Mr. Sally," as Lazarus called him," never saw nobody die."

"How can you be sure?" I asked. "Lots of men don't talk about the war."

"Lots of men ain't seen nothin' to talk about," Lazarus said. "Mr. Sally was like a lot of folk, goin' about they business and shinin' up the place and keeping things runnin'. Nawsuh. He never saw nobody die."

"He did meet a woman in the war, though."

This perked my attention. As far as I had known, the young man Victor had only known one young woman, and that was Marilyn. And as my cliffhanger ending telling Marilyn's story clearly illustrates, Vic and Marilyn met in New York.

"Who?"

"Naw I don't remember her name. But Mr. Sally married her sure as I sit here eatin' pie."

I couldn't deny the man was eating pie. "Now wait a minute, Lazarus," I said. "What about Marilyn?"

"This girl was French," he replied. "She was a missionary or somethin' like that workin' up in noth Africa. Mr. Sally said she was fine lookin'. Met her in a town somewhere."

Lazarus grinned his wide, black-toothed grin. "Nawsuh, I reckon' Mr. Sally ain't told nobody but me about that."

I could tell he was proud of his knowledge, an upper hand of sorts. "But he married Marilyn," I said. "Did he never tell her he was divorced? Or even married to begin with?"

Victor's old friend laughed. "He didn't get no divorce!"

"What do you mean?"

"Wasn't really married to begin with."

"You just told me that he married this girl, Lazarus. He couldn't have been married to two women at the same time."

"Lawsah," he sighed. "Ain't no man cut out for that. Naw, Mr. Sally's woman never had the law bless the marriage. It was her daddy married 'em, out in the sticks of Africa. They might not've had a piece of paper to write they's married on."

"What happened to her?"

"What happened to him, more like it," he said. "To put it in a way, his ship sailed. They was only together a couple weeks."

"Why on earth marry the woman in the first place?" I wondered out loud.

"'Cause her old man found 'em in the sack! The only holy thing to do was to make it right in the eyes of God." He paused to let a good belly laugh echo across the cafe. "The old man didn't know he done married her to a GI, though. I reckon they's still a solid load of buckshot someways on that destroyer when her daddy tried to chase it down the river with a shotgun."

This is why I love knowing Lazarus. He's named that way, I should point out, because he came out of his mother as blue and black as his teeth are now--still born by all apparent signs, and according to the preacher who delivered him, unresponsive to the sharp slaps on his buttocks the nurse tried. Who knows what's true and what's not, but the story is that they'd wrapped him up and laid his dead body in his mother's arms when suddenly a bolt of lightning struck outside, its thunder roaring through the tin shack they lived in, and waking Lazarus from his slumber. He belted out a shrill cry. "And that Praychuh," Lazarus loves to say, "he says, 'Missus, this boy done raised up!'"

"Now Mr. Sally done told you about the lady he was lovin' on when he met Mrs. Sally, right?" Lazarus said to me. He didn't need to see to know my look of confusion.