BLOOD ON THE MOON
23
fiber. Lloyd’s heart melted. The old bastard was withered to prune dimensions and was obviously a threat to no one. He walked to the old man and handed him his canteen. The old man grasped it with shaking hands, raised it to his lips, then threw it to the ground, screeching:
“That not be what I need! I needs my Lucy! I gots to have my Lucy!”
Lloyd was befuddled. Was the old geezer crying out for his wife or some long lost love?
He removed the flashlight from his bayonet housing and shined it in the old man’s face, then winced; the mouth and chin of that face were covered with congealed blood, from which glass shards stuck out like crystalline porcupine quills. Lloyd recoiled, then pointed his light into the old man’s lap and recoiled further: the withered hands were cut to the bone, and three fingers of the right hand had been ground down to bloody stubs. The gnarled left hand held the shattered remnants of a bottle of Thunderbird wine.
“My Lucy! Gimme my Lucy!” the old man wailed, spitting globules of blood out with each word.
Lloyd took his flashlight and went crashing through the glass-strewn ruins, brushing tears from his eyes, searching for an intact bottle of liquid salvation. Finally he found one, partially hidden by an overturned ceiling beam—a pint of six-year-old Seagram’s 7.
Lloyd carried the bottle over and fed the old man, holding his head by the short nap of his grey hair, keeping the bottle a few inches from his bloody lips lest he try to ingest the entire thing. Thoughts of going for medical attention crossed his mind, but he pushed them away. He knew that the old man wanted to die, that he deserved to die drunk and that this service he was performing was the wartime equivalent of the many hours he had spent talking to his mute, brain-damaged mother.
The old man made slurping sounds, sucking convulsively at the bottle each time it touched his lips. After a few minutes had passed and half the pint was consumed, his tremors subsided and he pushed Lloyd’s hand away.
“Dis be de start of World War Three,” he said.
Lloyd ignored the comment and said, “I’m P.F.C. Hopkins, California National Guard. Do you want medical attention?”
The old man laughed, coughing up huge wads of blood-streaked sputum.
“I think you’re bleeding internally,” Lloyd said. “I can get you to an ambulance. Do you think you can walk?”
“I can do anything I wants to,” the old man shrieked, “but I wants to die!
Ain’t no place for me in this war—I gots to make the scene on de other side!”
24
L.A. NOIR
The bloodshot, filmy old brown eyes importuned Lloyd as if he were an idiot child. He fed the old man again, watching some kind of liquid acceptance course through the ancient body. When the bottle was finished the old man said, “You gots to do me a favor, white boy.”
“Name it,” Lloyd said.
“I’m gonna die. You gots to go over to my room and get my books and maps and things out and sell dem so I can have a decent burial. Christian like, you dig?”
“Where’s your room?”
“It in Long Beach.”
“I can go there when the riot is over. Not until then.”
The old man shook his head furiously, until his body shook with it, ragdoll like, all the way down to his toes. “You gots to! They gonna lock me out tomorrow ’cause I behind on the rent! Then de po-lice gonna throw me in de sewer with the rats! You gots to!”
“Hush,” Lloyd said. “I can’t go that far. Not now. Don’t you have any friends here I can talk to? Someone who can go to Long Beach for you?”
The old man considered the offer. Lloyd watched his wheels turn slowly.
“You goes to de mission on Avalon an’ One hundred and sixth. De African church. You talk to Sister Sylvia. You tell her she got to go to Famous Johnson’s crib and get his shit and sell it. She gots my birthday in de church records. I wants a nice headstone. You tells her I loves Jesus, but I loves sweet Lucy more.”
Lloyd stood up. “How bad do you want to die?” he asked.
“Bad, man, bad.”
“Why?”
“Ain’t no place for me in dis war, man.”
“What war?”
“World War Three, you dumb motherfucker!”
Lloyd thought of his mother and reached for his rifle, but couldn’t do it.
*
*
*
Lloyd ran all the way to 106th and Avalon, composing epitaphs for Famous Johnson en route. His chest was heaving and his arms and shoulders ached from holding his rifle at high port, and when he saw the neon sign proclaiming the “United African Episcopal Methodist Church” he took in last gulps of air to bring his raging heartbeat down to a low ebb; he wanted to be the very picture of armed dignity on a mission of mercy. The church was storefront, two stories high, with lights shining in viola-