Free Loving Women by Pete Hamill

(I said to my young self): Stop this! You’re here. You made it. You’re in Florida, and it’s snowing in New York .
    I was drying myself with a towel when I heard Bobby Bolden playing again. A quick jump tune. The words moved through my head: Jumpin with my boy Sid in the city. He’s the pres-i-dent of the deejay committee … Lester Young wrote it and King Pleasure sang it. For Symphony Sid’s radio show on WEVD, the ethnic radio station. I used to listen at night, fall asleep, and wake up to a lot of singing Hungarians. The weirdest station in New York. They had a Hungarian hour and a Russian hour and an Irish hour and a Lithuanian hour. And every night at midnight, Sid showed up to play jazz. I was then so young that I actually cared about being hip or square, and I knew that Sid was hip. I was also sure that Bobby Bolden was hip, even though I’d never met him. And I thought: I gotta meet this guy . I finished drying myself, wrapped a towel around my waist and wriggled into the shower shoes. I picked up the ditty bag and soiled skivvies and flip-flopped back to the bunk
    I paused in the archway. An older sailor was standing at my bunk, a billy club attached to his wrist with a leather thong. He was tapping it gently on his thigh. A first-class gunner’s mate. In dress whites. He was shorter than I was, but his back was very straight and muscles rippled under his tight jumper. There were three hash marks on his sleeve, each standing for a four-year hitch. He looked like a battering ram. And I felt suddenly afraid. Not of the hard body. Or the billy club. It was his face. Pale red sideburns. The white hat precisely two fingers above where his brows should have been. Except that he had no eyebrows. And no eyelashes. His eyes were a slushy pale blue and he didn’t blink. His mouth was a slice. Lipless. Without color. Bracketed by two lines that seemed etched into his cheeks. The skin on his face was shiny. Like plastic. This was my first sight of Red Cannon.
    He moved a few feet to his left and stood beside the locker I’d chosen. His eyes never left me. He didn’t speak a word. For amoment, I felt as if I were looking down from the ceiling at the two of us. I saw the empty barracks, the palm trees outside, and felt the breeze coming through the windows. And the young man facing the Old Salt. We locked eyes for a long time. Two seconds or an hour. Even now I can remember the feeling, the knowledge that if I broke the stare I was doomed. Fear entered my belly like a piece of ice.
    Finally, without taking my eyes off him, I said: “Excuse me.” I reached for the locker but the gunner’s mate didn’t move. I would have to go though him to get to the locker.
    “That’s my locker,” I said.
    Something like a smile showed on his face. But he didn’t move. For a moment his eyes clouded, as if a drop of milk had been added to the slushy blue. And then they were diving deep into me, probing for weakness or softness like a knife. And I broke it off. I turned to the side and fiddled with my towel and groped in the ditty bag for something I didn’t want. I felt humiliated. The gunner’s mate had faced me down. And I’d quit to him like a dog. In this strange and alien place. On New Year’s Day. A long way from home.
    “What’s your name, boy?” the man whispered.
    “Michael Devlin.”
    “Your Navy name, boy.”
    “464 0267.”
    “464 0267, what ?”
    “464 0267, sir.”
    There was a long, silent moment. He stared at me, and I tried to smile in a casual way to cover up my fear.
    “Open it,” he said, stepping aside from the locker. His short arms were hanging at his sides. “Let’s see what y’ got heah, boy.”
    I turned the combination lock. Six, for the month I was born.
    Twenty-four, for the day. Thirty-five, for the year. I unhooked the lock and lifted the latch and opened the locker door. The gunner’s mate stared into it. Then, with his free hand, he grabbed the edge of the door and slammed it