Now I Lay Me Down
Now I Lay Me Down
By
Varo Borja
Baxter clocked out at the furniture factory about 11pm. His shift had lasted for 12 solid hours, and when he got to the Gaslight all he could think of was the bottom of a Dickel on the rocks, straight with a Bud chaser and the long, lovely arms of the bar wrapping around him in the afterdark of his worn down life. The Gaslight was Baxter’s haunt of choice for the evening and had been for just about every night for the past five years. He was a regular, complete with his own barstool and a tab that he paid every Thursday when he got his slim subsistence from Thomason Furniture, Inc.
Exiting his orange ’73 Dodge Roadrunner, Baxter extracted his black plastic comb from the back pocket of his tattered Levi’s and slicked back his overlong, dingy hair until he looked like a used up cross between James Dean and Ronnie Van Zant. He had a two-day old stubble of a beard and his eyes still had the look of the jungle to them. He hid this as best he could through occasional jokes and jabs at his coworkers and codrinkers, but Baxter definitely still had the thousand-yard stare. He had served four tours in Nam as a Navy Seal, and he had the tattoo and the grayish pink bullet wounds to prove it. Baxter was not a big man, but his was a barely concealed fire. A hideous demon just below the dam erected by numerous sessions with the corpsman-therapist at the VA hospital in Johnson City beat against Baxter’s breast and tormented him on a daily, if not hourly basis. Baxter was a man not to be trifled with, and he had found nothing in the world to live for but the backbreaking labor of a tenon machine operator and the occasional jaded touch of a barfly harlot to soothe his latent aggression and disillusionment with life in postwar Americana. Baxter lumbered up to the double doors of the Gaslight and entered with a great sigh of relief and the feeling that an orphan might experience on being returned to kith and kin.
The scent of stale beer and hot women struck Baxter like a fist as he entered the bar, accompanied to the sound of Melissa on the jukebox and the greeting gazes of half a dozen war buddies and a few decked out and perfumed ladies of the night. Baxter stretched for the ceiling, savoring the cigarette smoke and loud music, feeling the good tiredness that only the manual laborer knows and maintaining his rebel without a cause posture. He sidled up to the bar where a glass with twelve-year-old George Dickel waited expectantly nestled up beside a perspiring twelve-day-old Budweiser.
“How’s it goin, Bat?”
“Not bad, Possum. Long day. I’m ready to unwind,” said Baxter to the corpulent bartender who presented him with a half toothless grin while wiping at a spot on the bar with lackluster precision.
“Where’s Owl been the past week? He owes me about 50 bucks on his tab, and I ain’t coverin’ that shit when Top collects this week. Is he fucked up again on that black tar shit them niggers sell down in Blacksburg?”
“Shit man, I don’t know. Owl didn’t show up for work this week, and I be damned if I’m goin down to the lake to drag his ass out again. He may have had it bad at Dak To, but I be a shithouse rat if I cover that fifty for his ass,” retorted Baxter as he polished off the first of what would be many whiskeys. Baxter knew that he would cover the fifty as soon as he got paid next week; he always did. Baxter’s band of battered bastards from the nether regions of Nam was a tight group. They always stuck together, even when one of them wasn’t packing his own gear or pulling his own weight, like Owl. The men who had been in country always had a couple of bucks to spare for a brother down on his luck, and Baxter was no exception.
Baxter reached into the sweat stained and grimy front pocket of his dime store wifebeater and extracted a crumpled pack of Marlboros. Lighting one up and feeling the sultry smoke fill his lungs, he realized for an instant how tired he was and how futile his life had become, but this passed in an instant when the desire for another 8 ounces of the brown stuff crowded his existential awakening to the side like so much dust blown in the wind.
“How bout another one, there Possum old buddy? Hey Brubaker, where does a man get a drink around here anyway?”
Brubaker, one of the resident sots of the establishment was another Nam vet who had served with the 173rd Airborne. Brubaker was another of the former GI’s who was down and out and drunk all the time. He just couldn’t seem to get it together, and he lived off a small dole from Uncle Sam and spent damn near the whole thing on cheap whiskey and Lucky Strikes. He nodded and peered drunkenly at Baxter and then collapsed face first on the oak veneer bar.
“Hold your horses, Bat, I’m comin’” said Possum as he managed to move his great weight to the bottle of Dickel and give Baxter a generous helping of the fiery poison.
As the record changed on the jukebox, a small, ratlike figure clothed in a tattered Army Jacket and jeans entered through the double doors and scurried up to the bar, fingering in his pocket for a moment and producing a small, round white poker chip with the letters AA emblazoned in cheap gold lettering in the center.
“Well I’ll be damned, if et ain’t Shitbird. Back from the VA, huh?” said Baxter in a mocking tone, gliding along the edge of the buzz produced from his first two drinks.
“Gimme a goddam drink, Possum. That AA shit is for gooks and goners,” said Shitbird with the nervous anticipation of the alcoholic about to be in his cups.
“Well, I guess one won’t hurt ya. I know, I know, the first one’s on the house for a white chip. Jesus, slow down Shit, there’s more where that come from but you ain’t sleepin’ in the back this time. Two o’clock’s lights out for this saloon. Top will have my ass if he catches you drunk in his office again.”
Top was the owner of the Gaslight. He stood about 6’7” and dressed out at about 300. He was a likeable man, but when angered he could commit the most unspeakable atrocities upon all those present. Like Baxter and Shitbird, Top had been in the war, but he had achieved the rank of First Sergeant in ’68 right before the Tet offensive, consigning him forever to the ranks of the Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers. For an enlisted man, Top had made good in the Army and now in private life he owned a couple of car lots and the Gaslight. He was not above ostentation— he drove a sparkling white Cadillac and showed his gold-toothed grin to everyone he liked and the back of his hand to everyone he despised. Top showed a mutual respect to the Nam vets who frequented the Gaslight though, and had more than once slipped them a twenty when they were down and out. However, Top was a family man, and his wife didn’t let him out to play with the boys at the bar and talk about the good old days. He was rarely ever present at the Gaslight past 7:30pm, and tonight was no exception.
“Top’s a big softy, Possum. You don’t know him like I do. Top may have made First Sergeant, but he was in the shit back in ’67 with the rest of us. Whaddayou know about that anyhow, Possum? You were 4F in ’67 and workin’ down at Hollister’s then. Gimme another goddam drink and quit your bitchin’ fat boy” said Shitbird, darting his rodent’s eyes around at the fellow topers present as he anxiously awaited another round.
“Yeah, whatever Shit. Just don’t raise no hell. Hey Walter, did you ever see such an ungrateful little drunk?” said Possum as he poured Shitbird another round from the inexpensive brand saved for deadbeets and drifters.
Walter was the oversized doorman; a former Force Recon marine who had done two tours in country and could crush a Campbell’s Tomato soup can, unopened. Walter said very little, but his 27-inch biceps made it so that he didn’t have to be very vocal to transmit his unquestioned hegemony over all present at the Gaslight.
“Don’t gimme that fuckin’ horsepiss, Possum. Gimme a shot of the good stuff. I just got my check and I’m splurgin’.”
“Alright, Shit” said Possum “I forgot it was the first of the month.”
The night rolled on to the sound of Skynyrd, The Allman Bros., Creedence Clearwater, and Cat Stevens as the wounded warriors drank and lied and drank and lied and laughed about the “bad old days” until like Brubaker, Baxter and Shitbird were wasted and sentimental. About 1:30 a couple of fine young things in tight leather and stiletto heels sidled up to the pair of intoxicated anti-heroes and asked them if they cared to partake of a certain white powder that one of the tarts had in her purse. Baxter candidly refused, saying that he would stick with the liquid poison, but Shitbird greedily acquiesced to their query and the trio headed for the ladies bathroom. Baxter peered through his tin stamped, bleary beer goggles at the bar and tried to remember if he had enough gas to get home. He stumbled over to the jukebox, swerving mightily and careening off the table of a pair locked in the amorous clutches of heavy petting. The young brave with his hand down his lover’s pants immediately rose and demanded satisfaction from the drunken S.O.B. that had just disturbed his passionate pursuit. Baxter laughed in his face and then took a big gulp from his lukewarm Budweiser, spitting the contents onto the jacket of the erstwhile-offended Romeo. Then, with a movement that betrayed Baxter’s drunken state, he did a quick downward snap kick, breaking the knee of the unlucky lover and sending him crashing through the Formica table and onto the floor. As Romeo lay on the floor gibbering and cursing at his misfortune and his broken kneecap, Baxter straddled him and began cursing in Vietnamese, slapping the unfortunate man senseless. About this time, Walter seized a Louisville Slugger from behind the bar and swiftly cracked the bat over Baxter’s back. This floored Baxter for only a moment, and he came up from the floor as quickly as he had went down. Walter certainly had the advantage since he was sober and in full control of his wits, but Baxter had a fifth of a gallon of fire water in his gut and he was rapidly becoming dangerous. Possum had not been idle either. He had telephoned the local police because he knew this situation could very quickly become deadly. Both men in question were confirmed killers, and if the fight escalated, which it was bound to do, one or both men could end up six feet under. Possum had been lifelong friends with both men, and didn’t want to see them hurt or dead.
Baxter was Section 8 though. He was in what his corpsman-therapist would call a paranoid delusional state fueled by about a fifth of whiskey and years of pent up aggression. He couldn’t distinguish his friend Walter Pulaski from the phantoms of his past. Baxter had long ago crossed over into what was known as No Man’s land, and it had only taken a hair to break the camel’s back of his sanity.
As soon as Baxter had risen from the floor, he had swiftly extracted his Gerber boot knife from the top of his worn leather motorcycle boots. The two combatants circled the floor: Baxter with knife drawn and in a defensive posture, seeking for the first opportunity to drive the knife between the ribs of what he thought was a VC operative. Walter was being as cautious as possible, seeking for the first opportunity to diffuse the situation and go home alive.
About this time Shitbird emerged from the bathroom with his two coked out companions and seeing Baxter and Walter faced off in their deadly duel, he immediately ran to where the two men were about to converge and began to try and talk down Baxter with soothing words that might have come from his own mother some winter bedtime long ago when nightmarish djinn had hidden under his bed lustily waiting to inflict their tortures upon his hapless and helpless soul. Shitbird soothed and salved Baxter’s rage enough to the point where Baxter started to see through the eyes of a human again instead of a hunted beast. Baxter glanced quickly at both men, searching for the visage of the Vietnamese soldiers he had been surrounded by just a few seconds before, but they were not visible anymore. What he saw was an angry giant of Polish descent in a tank top t-shirt and a small, haggard friend in an Army jacket and worn blue jeans. Immediately, Baxter dropped his guard and fell to the floor, uncontrollable sobs heaving forth from his sawdust and liquor scented body. Where two minutes ago there had been a trained killer on the verge of committing a terrible crime, there was now a frightened child, seeking protection and his mother’s breast.
Shitbird moved close to Baxter, cradling him in his arms for a few minutes until the police arrived. They immediately inquired as to what the disturbance was, but all present were silent. Don Juan with the broken kneecap started to tell the whole affair, but one look from Walter and he was silent. Possum was the first to answer the police officer.
“Just a little accident. I called because I thought two niggers were breaking in the back. It turned out to be nothing. This man here just tripped over his own shoelaces, and the man crying there, well, his mother died today and he’s right upset. You boys want a drink?”
“No thanks. We’re on duty. Well, I better not get any more calls from you this evening, Willard (Possum’s real name), and if I have to come back down here tonight, somebody’s goin’ to jail. You here me?”
“Sure, Jack. You won’t hear a peep. Scout’s honor” said Possum as he tried to look busy wiping the bar and be as cordial as possible at the same time.
The policemen left and Shitbird drove Baxter home to his trailer in the small community of Sawmills. The coke that Shitbird had done in the bathroom enhanced his ability to drive and they made it home safely. Shitbird helped Baxter into bed and lovingly tucked him in, turning on the box fan and the three nightlights in the hall before he crashed out on the couch, passing out before he hit the pillow. Baxter lay in bed, and though still drunk he began to say a prayer from his childhood that he had religiously repeated every night since he was five years old. He had said it in the jungles of Cambodia, he had said it in the whorehouses of Saigon, and he had said it while in the seclusion room in the State Hospital.
“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.”
The sublime state of sleep slowly crept up on Baxter, and he drifted off to a land where children run under a golden sun and lovers lie by crystal clear pools of untroubled water and the dead walk again on an Earth that has never known the horrors of war or the cries of impoverished babes sent to untimely graves in the perfume scented fields of Southeast Asia.
