Where I'm Calling From

shit about Vietnam true we see on the TV?”
    Nelson had his red eyes fixed on me. He said, “What I want to say is, do you know where your wife is? I bet she out with some dude and she be seizing his nipples for him and pulling his pud for him while you setting here big as life with your good friend. I bet she have herself a good friend, too.” “Nelson,” Benny said.
    “Nelson nothing,” Nelson said.
    Benny said, “Nelson, let’s leave these people be. There’s somebody in that other booth. Somebody I told you about. Nelson just this morning got off a plane,” Benny said.
    “I bet I know what you thinking,” Nelson said. “I bet you thinking, ‘Now here a big drunk nigger and what am I going to do with him? Maybe I have to whip his ass for him!’ That what you thinking?” I looked around the room. I saw Khaki standing near the platform, the musicians working away behind him. Some dancers were on the floor. I thought Khaki looked right at me—but if he did, he looked away again.
    “Ain’t it your turn to talk?” Nelson said. “I just teasing you. I ain’t done any teasing since I left Nam. I teased the gooks some.” He grinned again, his big lips rolling back. Then he stopped grinning and just stared.
    “Show them that ear,” Benny said. He put his glass on the table. “Nelson got himself an ear off one of them little dudes,” Benny said. “He carry it with him. Show them, Nelson.”
    Nelson sat there. Then he started feeling the pockets of his topcoat. He took things out of one pocket. He took out some keys and a box of cough drops.
    Donna said, “I don’t want to see an ear. Ugh. Double ugh. Jesus.” She looked at me.
    “We have to go,” I said.
    Nelson was still feeling in his pockets. He took a wallet from a pocket inside the suit coat and put it on the table. He patted the wallet. “Five big ones there. Listen here,” he said to Donna. “I going to give you two bills. You with me? I give you two big ones, and then you French me. Just like his woman doing some other big fellow. You hear? You know she got her mouth on somebody’s hammer right this minute while he here with his hand up your skirt. Fair’s fair. Here.” He pulled the corners of the bills from his wallet. “Hell, here another hundred for your good friend, so he won’t feel left out. He don’t have to do nothing. You don’t have to do nothing,” Nelson said to me. “You just sit there and drink your drink and listen to the music. Good music. Me and this woman walk out together like good friends. And she walk back in by herself. Won’t be long, she be back.”
    “Nelson,” Benny said, “this is no way to talk, Nelson.”
    Nelson grinned. “I finished talking,” he said.
    He found what he’d been feeling for. It was a silver cigarette case. He opened it up. I looked at the ear inside. It sat on a bed of cotton. It looked like a dried mushroom. But it was a real ear, and it was hooked up to a key chain.
    “Jesus,” said Donna. “Yuck.”
    “Ain’t that something?” Nelson said. He was watching Donna.
    “No way. Fuck off,” Donna said.
    “Girl,” Nelson said.
    “Nelson,” I said. And then Nelson fixed his red eyes on me. He pushed the hat and wallet and cigarette case out of his way.
    “What do you want?” Nelson said. “I give you what you want.”
    Khaki had a hand on my shoulder and the other one on Benny’s shoulder. He leaned over the table, his head shining under the lights. “How you folks? You all having fun?”
    “Everything all right, Khaki,” Benny said. “Everything A-okay. These people here was just fixing to leave. Me and Nelson going to sit and listen to the music.”
    “That’s good,” Khaki said. “Folks be happy is my motto.”
    He looked around the booth. He looked at Nelson’s wallet on the table and at the open cigarette case next to the wallet. He saw the ear.
    “That a real ear?” Khaki said.
    Benny said, “It is. Show him that ear, Nelson. Nelson just stepped off the plane from Nam with this ear.
    This ear has traveled halfway around the world to be on this table tonight. Nelson, show him,” Benny said.
    Nelson picked up the case and handed it to Khaki.
    Khaki examined the ear. He took up the chain and dangled the ear in front of his face. He looked at it.
    He let it swing back and forth on the chain. “I heard about these dried-up ears and dicks and such.”
    “I took it off one of them gooks,” Nelson said. “He couldn’t hear nothing with it