PENGUIN

We were on a bus going into town at about four in the afternoon. Me and Sue. Sitting near the front of an almost empty Corpus Christi County Travel blue and yellow bus. A bus like everyone gets to the center, or to the Marina, or to the Nueces, on a Sunday. Still just outside the town limit, after the bus turns off the turnpike onto the long street that leads to Petronilla, a strange-looking guy gets on. He seems to be having some trouble with his directions when he’s talking to the driver. He’s carrying a backpack and wearing a green combat jacket, jeans and red shoes; beneath a sun-battered straw hat is a round red face with lively boggling blue eyes. I walk to the front of the bus to help him. “Nueces Promenade”, he was saying to the driver, pronouncing it as if it were some sort of disease.

 

I explain to the Mex what he wants, and he pays the driver and comes and sits by us. By me and Sue.

 

“Thanks”, he says.

“S’okay. So where you from?” I ask him. “Outta state, sure.”

“England. A little town called Oldham. Near Manchester. I’m sure you’ve never heard of it.”

“Well, maybe”, I said. “I lived in England for almost a year.”

“Really?” he said.

“By the way, my name’s Dave.” I said.

“Mine too,” he said.

“And this is Sue,” I finished.

“Hi!” they said to each other.

 

The bus is sliding along Petronilla, Alonzo and Kaiserslautern. Outside, the silver of the storefronts pulls the stark blue of the August sky into the cool haven of the air-conditioned bus. It hits us all in the eyes as we turn onto Marina Junction. I put on my dark glasses. Something I liked to do.

 

We weren’t planning on going all the way to the Nueces, but I told Sue that I’d stay on to help this guy with some directions. We then help him find a cheap hotel near to Santa Ana. “The Alamo” it’s called. I suggested that we’d meet maybe the next night for a drink or whatever. Dave seemed real pleased. He said he’d been hitching around the States for about two months. He had a job in Amsterdam, in Holland, and had taken some time off for what he called a “Barclaycard Holiday”. He’d worked on a summer camp in upstate New York in June. Sue asked him what New York was like; she had a friend who lived there for a while, she said. “I liked it”, said Dave. “Really electric, really lively.”

 

 

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“What do you want to go out with him for?” she says. “I mean, we’d already promised to go to see Arthur.”

“Arthur can wait. He probably wouldn’t even expect us anyway. You remember last time”, I said.

“Well if you think I’m going with you you’re mistaken”, Sue added, as she went off with the breakfast things, hoping I would follow her just because she was still in her panties and I could watch her long, honey-colored legs walk down the hall all the way to the kitchen, and then I would play the “I’ll go if you go”, “I can’t go without you” game. But I wasn’t up to it.

“I’ll go on my own then.”

 

Which was not quite true. I was going to get some friends together. Tom and Walker, maybe, and Bill, and we’d meet Dave and show him a bit of Corpus Christi that he would never discover alone. So maybe it’s better that Sue doesn’t come. After the office I phone her.

 

“Sue … I’m at Mason’s on Salzburg. Why don’t you come?”

“Why, Dave?”

“Well he seemed an interesting guy, honey. He’s probably got some good stories to tell. You know how I like good stories. Tom’s coming… Listen, we’ll wait until seven thirty in the hotel lounge. Think about it, honey. I love you…”

“I’ll think about it.”

 

I arrived at the Alamo Private Hotel, Hot & Cold Running Water, Established in Corpus Christi in 1904, at about twenty before seven. Dave, dressed as yesterday, was sitting in the little lounge waiting for me. He looked lonely. We talked a little and he let me buy him a scotch. He said he was trying not to spend too much. He wanted to make Mexico City before he had to get back, and he didn’t have too much money left. By the time Tom arrived, at about eight, both of us had forgotten about time, and money.

 

Dave was telling stories about his time in Manchester and Amsterdam. Occasionally he asked me about my year at Oxford. We had been drinking a bottle of sour mash he had brought with him from Tennessee, as well as ordering lots of beers from Rafael, the barman. Dave was in the middle of a story about Amsterdam when Tom came in. Tom had been to Europe too, years ago, on a student exchange visit. Tom suggested we move out to a bar, the Alsahoma, down by the Nueces, down by the bay. The Alsahoma is the sort of bar you’d miss if you passed by without paying attention. The big steel front door is always closed, and the only way you know it’s there is by a little illuminated buzzer, and underneath it says “Alsahoma Bar”. But it’s there all right. It’s there.

 

When we get inside it’s full of the military. Full of off-duty sailors. It’s not a nice atmosphere, but we get a place away from the jukebox. It’s quiet here, and we can talk. We can appreciate the topless waitresses from any corner of the room, and it’s quieter here. And we can talk. So we sit down, and that’s what we do. We talk. We do a bit of talking. Dave’s forgotten about his lack of money and he’s buying drinks like we are. We’re all buying drinks and we’re enjoying ourselves, and we’re swapping stories, about Corpus Christi, about Holland, about England, about other places.

 

“You wouldn’t believe my friends in Amsterdam,” Dave says. “They’re so fucked up by drugs … Last summer there was a free concert in the Rijkplaats, and I came into the pub to tell them to come along and see it, and they just stayed there, smoking their dope. They just sat there, lethargic like…”

 

Tom looks at me as Dave is finishing his story. “You do a lotta dope in Amsterdam, Dave?” he asks. “Well, I suppose I used to. Everyone does”, says Dave. “But I don’t really smoke much now. Occasionally.”

 

“You English don’t smoke as much as we do, right?” I ask. “I mean, I smoked my first joint when I was thirteen. I didn’t drink a beer until about five years ago, when I was twenty”, I say.

“Yeah, I suppose that’s true”, says Dave.

 

One of the sailors has gotten wild, as usual. Even on a Monday night the sailors from the Naval Base get out of hand. It seems that one of them must have touched a waitress. That’s what happened last time I came here. Now, down by the bar, and over by the jukebox, sailors and cowboys and Mexicans are fighting, the way they always do. When it dies down, after the police come, things become very calm; very calm indeed. Only people like us, like me, Tom and Dave, who were sitting in corners away from the noise, are left; the sailors have been taken out, along with the Mexicans. It’s just us now, quiet people. It makes it easier to see the breasts of the topless waitresses.

 

“Maybe I’ll stay here a few days”, says Dave.

 

When the Alsahoma closes, at about eleven, and we are all a little drunk, we go out and walk along the mouth of the Nueces to the bay. “This is where Columbus first saw land”, Tom tells Dave, as we reach the beginning of the boardwalk and sit down. Dave says that he wants some sex; he hasn’t been with a girl for ages. “Dutch girls just use you”, he says, “and I’m never in one place long enough to meet an American girl. I want to get laid, as you say”, he says. “I met a girl in New York. She was working on the summer camp too.” He takes off one of his shoes as he is talking. “I walked her home after a dance, and I thought that I had her, but when we got to where I thought her apartment was, she started to unlock a bicycle. I still know the combination of the lock. She would cycle from now on, she said, and she kissed me on the cheek and left.”

 

“Bitch”, says Tom. “What a bitch!”

 

Tom takes out a small packet from his Marlboros. Silver paper. “You want?” he asks. I know I want; I know Tom wants, and I imagine Dave wants too. We are now sitting on the first boards of the pier, and Tom has rolled three joints. We take one each and start to smoke them. “Like Amsterdam”, says Tom. Dave has now taken both shoes off, and maybe a sock or two. He’s sitting smoking and playing with his feet.

 

“So, Dave, what do you think of Corpus Christi, Texas? What do you think of tumbleweed?” I ask.

 

And as I look at Dave I see him staring along the boardwalk and gazing out into the bay in the distance.

 

“Let me tell you something”, says Dave. “I was in Brighton, on the south coast of England, with some friends of mine, on a night like this, in the summer also, and we walked to the end of the pier, and – believe it or not – at the end of the pier there was a little staircase leading down into the water, the English Channel, and, climbing up the steps, and then jumping into the water, and then climbing up the steps again and jumping into the water again, was a penguin. A penguin. I mean … can you believe it?”

 

“I believe it”, says Tom.

“A penguin?” I ask.

“Yeah, a fucking penguin”, says Dave. “I went to report it to the police. I found a fucking policeman, but he wouldn’t take me seriously. I told him there was a fucking penguin on the fucking pier, but he wouldn’t believe me. Imagine! I could have been in the fucking Guinness Book of Records. It was probably the first penguin to come so far north, and the fucking policeman thought I was joking or drunk or something.”

 

I look along the boardwalk to the sea, to the great bay beyond, to the blue and gray of the great ocean and the immense sky. To the horizon which never ends and which goes beyond everything we can ever imagine, the light slipping off into the clouds and shapes that shift and move as we look at them. A beautiful view of the growing darkness closing in upon the sea and of the light emerging from the land.

 

“I believe you”, I say.

 

Tom, now on his back, says we should walk along the boardwalk to the end to check for penguins. “Maybe we’ll see the same penguin here,” he says, but then he changes his mind.

 

“Maybe it’s too early”, he says.