“Dude ain’t nothing but a mother-raping race hater trying to save face in front of his peckerwood pals by selling wolf tickets.”
That was how Chick described Junior Mosher to me after out first encounter at Fort Carson in the summer of ’71.
I’d only been back stateside for a few weeks, having spent the previous 2 ½ months laid up in an Army hospital in Honolulu. My entire stay there, I never saw an inch of the island, save for the small courtyard I had access to once I was able to get up and moving during the second half of my convalescence. No white, sandy beaches or plump, brown-skinned hula girls for me. Not that I had much reason to complain: by the time I was discharged my days ‘in country’ were over and my new orders had me finishing up my terms of service in Colorado. If not an island paradise, Fort Carson at least offered a nice view of the Cheyenne Mountains and all the Coors you could drink.
That day in August, I’d been lounging in my barracks—this was ‘The New Army,’ where they gave you four partitions and a whole 7×8 square feet to call your own—reading a borrowed copy of Portnoy’s Complaint and taking advantage of the lax discipline on base by openly drinking from a six pack of silver bullets when Chick, who bunked next door to me, pulled my collar.
“We need one more for hoops.”
“You kidding? Mexicans don’t play no goddamn basketball.”
“Burgos is playing.”
“Burgos is a Puerto Rican.”
“What’s the difference?”
“A five inch wingspan.”
“Yeah, and a dick and two balls.”
“You would know. Look, stitches up and down my ass still smart when I sprint, okay?”
“That’s because you sit on them all day. How’s your ass supposed to heal up you don’t break it back in some? I ain’t kidding. You’re getting soft. Keep it up, you gonna be short, Mexican and fat.”
We played the dozens a little longer, before I begrudgingly agreed to join the game, only to find myself paired up with three grungy rednecks—plus the genial Pvt. Burgos—and squaring off against Chick and four other black dudes, any of whom would look at home on a professional court. I was dismayed at the set-up, though hardly surprised. As with every sport, game and pissing contest at Fort Carson, teams were automatically divided by pigment, the bloods always sticking to one side while us Mexes and other Latin types got shoved together with the whites. This rarely led to any trouble; most of the guys on base at the time were, like me, riding out the final stretch of a standard four year hitch, so no one was looking to start any race wars. Still, it meant that every now and then I’d have to rub up against some mean redneck who’d just as soon string me up as look at me.
Two of these rednecks at least returned my casual greeting of “Hey,” with gruff nods, but the third—a shirtless, stringy, acne-scarred guy around my own age, 22, 23, whose buzzed-cut hair and thin eyebrows were both so white that I initially thought he was albino—practically snarled at me. I almost walked off the court, but before I had a chance one of the bloods blew a sharp whistle and the game got underway.
It was apparent within the first couple of minutes this was no friendly scrimmage. The bloods were playing for keeps, racking up point after point as they barreled through our pitiful opposition. I ate my share of stiff offense, but the majority of hurt was doled out to the rednecks, specifically White Ass, who caught so many errant shoulders, elbows and chest bumps that after five minutes his flesh had turned a glowing pink, while a scarlet spider’s web of fury traced itself between the burning pockmarks that dotted his scabby cheeks.
To add insult to injury, the bloods compounded their physical punishment with a running commentary of verbal abuse:
“Talk that trash now, ofay!”
“Take your cracker ass back to the farm, motherfucker!”
“What’s the matter, fish belly? Can’t run them feet like you run your mouth?”
Eventually, it got so that me, Burgos and even the other two rednecks hung back while our opponents took up shooting practice, leaving White Ass to mount a lonely and futile defense. This ended after one of the bloods took the ball and squared off with him, jutting first to the left, then to the right, then left again, before bulldozing straight through him while his legs were tangled up crosswise. One of his ankles twisted as he toppled forward.
I was closest to White Ass when he fell, so, against my better judgment, I bent down to help him up. He accepted my assistance until he got his legs back under him and could shove me off.
“Get off me, wetback! I ain’t carrying no wallet for you to lift.”
My mind flashed claret red and I nearly decked him. But I held back.
“Serves me right,” I said. “Picking up someone else’s trash.”
“Fuck you, beaner. Was probably your grease I slipped on. Serves me fucking right, shooting hoops with wetbacks.”
“What fucking hoops did you shoot? All I saw was five black guys passing you around like a ten-cent whore. Who taught you to give it up like that, your sister?”
When we’d started jawing, the bloods all watched with schoolyard glee, but even they went silent when I hurled the sister remark. I knew I’d gone too far, but since I had, I figured there was nothing to do but take it further.
“Or maybe it was your cousin. Wait, what am I saying? Same thing, right?”
White Ass lunged at me, but was intercepted by his buddies come rushing between us. He struggled against them, yelling, “I’ll fucking kill you, you dirty fucking beaner! Talk about my sister?! I’ll cut your fucking balls off! Let me fucking at him!”
“Not here, Junior,” one of his friends hissed in his ear while grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. White Ass—or Junior, as it was—went rigid and bore his teeth like a dog, shooting a hateful stare into the one holding him, until he noticed how the bloods had all moved in close, their bodies coiled in murderous preparation. I knew they weren’t squaring up on my behalf, but had been looking for any excuse to jump the rednecks. Still, I was grateful for their intervention. Even in his hobbled state, I didn’t doubt that Junior might prove a scrappier fighter than I, and with his two buddies by his side I knew I wouldn’t have stood a chance.
With great strain, Junior managed to get his anger in check. “Fine, fuck it, let’s go,” he said, before shooting a finger my way. “We ain’t fucking done Pepe. Better watch your watch your wet back!”
He began limping off, his buddies giving him a wide berth, when the tallest of the bloods sprang forward and said, “Hey—Elmer Fudd!”
Junior stopped and turned around, shoulders hunched and fists clenched, clearly furious over the name. The blood approached him with an open palm outstretched. “Ain’t you forgetting something, bruh?”
Junior muttered “Fuck,” then reached into the pocket of his sweat-drenched gym shorts and pulled out several damp, crinkled bills. He handed them to the blood, who accepted made a show of his disgust.
“Man, next time have someone hold your cash for you. This is fucking unsanitary.”
Junior ignored him, turning around and moving grimly across the court and out the door all by his lonesome, his buddies having left him behind. The blood walked over to his teammates and divided up the money. After a quick commiseration, Chick ran over to me and slipped a couple bucks into my palm.
“What’s this?”
“It’s your cut of the cash we just took off them crackers. What, you think we socialize with scum for fun? Elmer Fudd and his pals was talking trash about how niggers is overrated at basketball, so we called them out, told them put their money where their mouth is. You see how that turned out.”
“So why pay me?”
“Man, you and him going at it was the funniest shit we seen all month. You earned your bread.”
“I’m accepting on principle,” I said, pocketing the money. “But next time you need a patsy to help settle a score, find someone else.”
“Patsy, shit. We went easy on your ass.”
“Yeah, but now I gotta watch out for a fucking lynching party every time I go to take a piss.”
“Hey, you’re the one called the boy’s sister a whore. I can’t believe you said that shit.”
Chick must have seen me clench up, because right away he was trying to get me to forget it. “You ain’t gotta watch out for shit. Dude ain’t nothing but a mother-raping race hater trying to save face in front of his peckerwood pals by selling wolf tickets.”
“You say so.”
“It’s true. Know how I know?”
“How?”
“Because the Elmer Fudd was in the same platoon as a buddy of mine, told me that when they was in country, dude never saw a second of action. Landed a cushy assignment in supply, sat on his ass the entire time. I mean, the entire time. Never once left the rear or hardly even the LZ. Feel better?”
“No.”
“Come on,” Chick sighed. “Drink’ll calm you down.”
“Hey, I’m calm.”
“Oh, sure. No sweating you. Water off a duck’s ass.”
“More like water off a wetback’s back.”
Chick snorted. “There he is.”
Short term, Chick was right. Neither Junior nor his pals sought any payback against me in the days and weeks that followed. Handful of times our paths crossed, we merely exchanged dirty glances and left it that. But before I left Fort Carson, he and I would have occasion to speak again. And that occasion would end in blood.
***
It was my last night of active duty. Come the following evening, I’d be on a plane bound for Los Angeles. I was dying to get out of Colorado; Chick, as well as the handful of other guys I’d gotten to know over the past six months, had all shipped home themselves, and I was lonely as I’d ever been. There was nothing to keep me occupied at Fort Carson, not even the drudgery of work, my daily duties consisting of ambling through an equipment warehouse that rarely received any shipments and so sat empty most of the time. Not that I pined for hard labor, but there were only so many hours a day a guy could spend sitting around doing nothing.
For a while, I’d hit the local bars soon as my shift ended, but that proved an expensive habit and offered scant respite from boredom. There was zero companionship to be found in those places; the townies tolerated my kind out of respect for our service, but they didn’t go out of their way to make us feel welcomed.
This was especially true of The Frog Pond, the nearby ‘burlesque’ club—although that designation was a total joke. The place was staffed by handful of cocktail waitresses of varying bust size, most of them twenty-going-on-fifty, who every once in a long while would take a break from grouchily slinging watered-down liquor and flat beer to do a quick jiggle and bounce in their hand-me-down corsets and ratty tassels. Most of the girls turned tricks in the parking lot or at the neighboring motels, with the guys from the base making up the majority of their clientele, but while there was no law against miscegenation, it was generally understood they’d only trick for whites. There was a colored pimp on the outskirts of town who serviced the rest of us, but his small stable was an even sorrier lot. If you wanted an even halfway decent lay, you had to make the trek to Colorado Springs.
Little as I cared for The Frog Pond, I still found myself drinking there my last night in town, although I was barely there an hour before a craggy exhaustion set in and I decided to call a cab and head back to base.
Stepping out to the club’s back parking lot, I was pierced by a sharp stab of longing which I’d been feeling more and more of late, though I couldn’t place its source. Sick as I was of Colorado, I wasn’t aching for home. Sure, I was returning with some money saved up, but nothing in the way of plans, goals, or even pipe dreams. I suspected that as soon as I was back in L.A., I’d find myself in essentially the same rut, desperate with the urge to escape, but with zero conception of where or even which direction to flee.
Just as I began to sink into heavy despair, I noticed of a set of angry voices sounding from close by. I looked over to the other end of the parking lot where three people—two guys and a girl—stood beside a Dodge Charger, their figures silhouetted by the dim yellow light of a nearby street lamp. One of the men leaned casually against the trunk of the car, while the other loomed threateningly over the girl, her back pinned against the front passenger-side door. At first, she seemed to be holding her own, her posture defiant, the words spilling out of her mouth in a defiant stream. But the dynamic changed when the man in front of her shot his arm past her head and slammed his palm off the roof of the car, causing her o cover her face with her hands. The other guy jumped up and moved over to them, but rather than come to her defense, he merely gestured at the ride, running his hand over the roof’s surface to check for any dents. This set the men to bickering, which gave the girl an opportunity to get away, although she wasn’t able to take two steps before the one she’d been jawing with grabbed her by what I could now see was a ponytail and yanked her hard against the vehicle. Right away, the second man flung open the rear passenger door and the two of them attempted to shove her inside.
Without realizing it, I was already rushing over towards them. I heard myself shout, “Hey! Stop!”
The men froze and looked over in my direction. As I moved closer, the one holding onto the girl pointed a finger at me and said, “Mind your own fucking business!”
By the time he spoke the words, I was close enough for everyone to get a good look at one another. Upon recognizing me, Junior let go of the girl. She nearly fell to the ground, but managed to stay on her feet.
“Gotta be shitting me…,” Junior said, immediately advancing upon me.
He didn’t get very far before our attention was caught by the heavy banging of the bar’s back door. We all looked over to the rear entrance, where a tall, burly figure stood, a heavy bag of trash drooping from one of his mitts.
The girl spoke called out weakly to him, “Gerr!”
I realized it was the bartender who’d interrupted us. He set the garbage bag on the ground and stepped over to the girl, who I saw now was one of the dancers. He didn’t seek to console her, only asked her curtly, “What’s the problem, Brenda?”
“Ain’t no problem, Gerry,” Junior spoke up.
Gerry cut him off by holding up a single finger. He turned back to Brenda. “Well?”
She took a deep breath and nodded towards Junior and his buddy, who I thought I recognized as a Fort Carson lifer. “These two say they want to party, ask for a suck, one at a time. But then we get out here and they say they want a two-on-one, only they only want to pay for a half-and-half.”
“That’s bullshit—” Junior said, before Gerry cut him off again.
“Let the girl tell it.”
“But she ain’t telling it right—”
“I will hear your side of it in a second.”
Just then, the headlights of a car cut around the corner of the parking lot and pulled into the driveway, the black and yellow colors of a checkered taxi cab trailing behind them. I flagged it down.
Gerry turned to me and asked, “The hell you think you’re off to?”
“Hey pal,” I said, “this has got nothing to do with me.”
“What you doing standing in the middle of it, then?”
“Look, these two assholes were roughing up your girl. All I did was yell at them to let her go. It’s your problem now, you handle it.”
I walked towards my cab, but Gerry stepped in front of me and reach behind his back. That stopped me. I looked at Junior to find him staring at me over a little kid’s shit-eating grin.
“Son,” Gerry addressed me as though he were my C.O., “you gonna want to stay put until I say otherwise.”
“I ain’t your goddamn son and I ain’t staying nowhe—”
“Quiet!” Gerry shouted, before spinning around to Brenda. “How about it? It true what he say? These two rough-handle you?”
She looked over at them again. Junior titled his head on his neck and gave her a hard stare. She looked down at her shoes and shrugged. “Nah, I mean, I guess not. They was arguing about the price is all. Then this one come running up yelling and next thing I know you’re out her giving me the business.”
Gerry was thinking it all over when the driver of the cab poked his head out the window and asked, “One of you getting in or not?”
Gerry raised a palm at him. “One second!”
He turned back around and looked at Junior and his companion. “Price is the price boys. You don’t like it, you take your business elsewhere. You come back here, I don’t want to hear you’re trying to barter with any of the girls. And I definitely don’t want to hear nothing about you put your hands on any of ‘em, ‘lessen it’s what you paid for? You got it?”
Junior, all mock coy, nodded and said, “Absolutely, Gerry. Misunderstanding, is all.”
Then Gerry turned to me. “You I don’t think should come around here again. We got no call for troublemakers, you hear?”
All I could do was shake my head and laugh.
“Why don’t you get in your cab before it takes off, leaves you to fend for yourself?” He took Brenda by the crook of her elbow and steered her towards the bar. After a couple of steps, she looked back at me over her shoulder.
I asked her, “No good deed, am I right?”
She dropped her eyes. “Mighty white of you,” she said softly, before shaking loose of Gerry and hurrying back indoors.
I walked over and climbed into the cab, clocking Junior every step of the way. His smirk was gone and in its place he wore a simian mask that read something closer to hunger or lust than anger. His eyes stayed on me until we drove off.
I was worried the anger and adrenaline surging through me would make sleep impossible, but as soon as I got back to my barracks and lay down, I crashed out. I don’t know how many hours passed before I was jostled awake by the sound of bodies moving over and around me. Before I’d even fully opened my eyes, my nostrils were assaulted with the reek of booze. I tried to sit up sideways, but stopped when I felt something cold and chrome jam up against my right temple. I grokked the situation straight away.
A slurred voice spoke from behind the pistol. “Benny notches, spic.”
I lay my head back flat and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark. Once they did, I could see there were two of them standing over me.
“Keep th’ fuck still,” the one holding the gun ordered. “And don’t e’en think a try’n call for no help. You raise your voice, you dead.”
“You’re drunk, Junior,” I said.
“Shut up,” he snapped at me, loud enough that his buddy had to shush him. “Fucking tell me what I am.”
“You don’t want to do this,” I continued, speaking at regular volume in the hopes that one of my neighbors would hear what was happening and put a stop to it. “You don’t want to fuck your entire life up over something you done drunk.”
Junior chuckled. “Ain’t my life I’m aiming to fuck up. Or don’t you know how guns work? Bullets come out this end, stupid—” he tapped the barrel against my head, then let out a short burp. “Stupid fucking beaner.”
“You shoot me and that’s it for you, Junior. They’ll hang you.”
“Not if we say you started it. Spic come at me with his spic knife. All I did was d’fend myself. My word—our word—against a dead spic’s, whose they gonna believe?”
I don’t know why I thought I could reason with him, but I found myself trying nonetheless. “It won’t wash, Junior. You’re drunk, I’m not. They can tell that, even after you’re dead. You’re inside my bunk, I’m in my own bed. I’m under the covers, in my underwear, for chrissakes. Someone probably saw you come in here. Even if they didn’t, they’ll all hear the shot. You’ll never make it out of here. And don’t forget about Gerry. Or Brenda. Or my cabdriver. All of ‘em witnesses to our trouble earlier. They’ll all testify to it. No one will buy self-defense. They’ll get you for murder, the both of you, which means hanging. Think this through.”
My argument seemed to sober up Junior’s buddy at least. He leaned over and whispered something into Junior’s ear. But Junior only shoved him away.
“And I say he has t’ die! Sticks his fucking nose where it don’t belong, tries to tell white folks how to behave. Plus I told you what he said ‘bout my sister—”
With Junior distracted, I tried sliding one foot out from out the covers towards the floor, my new plan being to bumrush him and grab hold of the gun. But it didn’t work. He caught my move and barreled down on top of me, driving his knee into my ribs and pinning me to the mattress. He planted his free hand against the side of my face and shoved my head into my pillow, while he drove the gun’s barrel deeper into my temple.
“Nuh-uh! Not on my watch, spic!”
“Fuck you!” I hissed through the pressure and the pain, fury overtaking my fear.
“Whas that, spic? You looking t’ die? You must be looking t’ die, fucking with me like you been fucking with me. You know how many gooks I zapped? Huh? You have any fucking clue how many notches I got on my scorecard already?One more don’t make no never mind t’ me none.”
In that moment, I can honestly say that I’d rather have died than had to listen to him, or smell him, or feel his body against mine, for one second more. I told him as much, leaving him with this: “Just know, you sister-fucking son of a bitch, I’ll be waiting for you in hell.”
He laughed, loud enough that I know it had to haven woken up half the barracks. I even thought I heard someone from one of them yell at him to pipe down. So much for my hopes of rescue.
Junior lowered his face so that his foul breath blew right into my ear. “Know what my idea of hell is?” he asked, before loudly gathering up a wad of saliva and hawking it directly onto my brow. “It’s Mexico.”
In a single motion, he jumped off me while bringing the butt of his pistol down against the crown of my skull. I felt a hot gust of wind blow through my bones, as a heavy black sheet fell over my eyes. When I came to a moment later, my vision was filled with popping lights. One thing you learn, you take a big hit: cartoons ain’t just a bunch of make-believe. You really do see stars.
I don’t remember Junior or the other one leaving, no do I recall how long I lay bleeding in my bed. No one came to check on me, I know that much. Next morning, it took the better part of an hour and ten staples to stitch me up. They shaved the patch of hair around the wound completely bald, making it so I had to wear a hat everywhere I went for the next moth, lest someone take me for an escaped mental patient.
When the doc was through with me, the company sergeant come by and asked who gave me the pistol whipping, but I just told him I banged my head on something when I got up in the middle of the night to take a squat. He didn’t buy it, of course, but neither did he push me for the truth. Hear no evil, speak no, etc.
For my part, there was nothing I wanted more than to nail Junior’s ass to the wall, but never for a second did I entertain thoughts of ratting him out. That would have kicked off a whole ordeal would drag out for days, possibly weeks, and which would probably necessitate my staying put until it was all settled. No. Better simply to eat the pain, anger and shame—even as I knew they would stick to my guts, undigested, like swallowed gum—than prolong my stay in the Army by even an hour. So that’s what I did. I ate it. That evening, I made my flight and landed back in Los Angeles on schedule.
***
It was around ten or so years later that I saw Junior for the last time, albeit under very different circumstances. Upon first glance, I thought I must be having an acid flashback, but nope, there it was, his face printed big as life on the cover of Time Magazine. It was on account of the unveiling of the Memorial Wall—the original one, that is, the one they got over there in D.C., not the replica they tour all around the country—that the magazine interviewed a handful of veterans for the standard sob story: what it was like being over there, what it was like being back. Read one, you’ve read them all.
Anyway, Junior was one of the guys in the story, and I suppose whoever it was decided want picture went on the front of the magazine really liked their one of him kneeling down in front of the Wall in his full dress greens, bare head bowed and his face scrunched up all tearful. I think it must’a been the way he had one forearm draped over his knee, beret clenched tight in his fist, that put that photo over the top. It was a nice touch, I’ll give it that.
I bought the rag and took it with me over to whatever dive it was I was haunting in those days. I read through the story a couple of times over the course of an hour and probably half a dozen shots. I kept having to go back over the parts about Junior because I simply couldn’t believe what it said. He spoke about his horrible experiences in combat, how the things he saw and did and was made to do had left “a smoldering wound upon my psyche that I fear will never fully heal.” He spoke too about how hard the return home had been for him, how he’d expected a hero’s welcome only to be cursed at and spat on by the people he thought he’d been fighting for. Spat on! I shit you not, that’s what he said.
But my favorite part of the article was when he talked about how trying the ordeal had been his parents—the good Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Mosher Sr.—what with him being an only child and all. That one got me, boy. I mean, it really set me howling. I remember the other stragglers in the bar shooting fearful glances my way as I nearly fell out of my stool.
When I’d read the story over for the final time, I stood up and paid, leaving the magazine behind on the bar top next to my change. I left some other things behind too, things I’d been holding onto since that last night in Colorado. I’ve had an easier go of things since then, and these days, I can honestly say I no longer go about the world in anger.
Which isn’t to say I’ve let bygones be bygones. Far from it. For example, say I were to see a person, person of most any color or creed, fall down in front of me in the street—say they go into seizure or topple over clutching their chest—I pay them no heed and simply walk around them as I continue about my day. But! Should this person happen to be white, well in case, I may go out of may way to step directly over them.
Though even then, I won’t spit on them.
[Image Credit : Photo by Kristaps Ungurs on Unsplash ]
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Zach Vasquez
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- White of You - September 17, 2023
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