Loving Women by Pete Hamill

looks like Poirl Harbuh t’day,” he said.
    “You from New York?” I asked.
    “New Awlins. Why?”
    I tried to explain that in New York, particularly in Brooklyn,people said “poirl” for “pearl” and “terlit” for “toilet.” They could say things like “I dropped my poirls down the terlit.” If Waite Hoyt was pitching for the Dodgers, and something happened to him, they’d say, “Hert’s hoit.” They could also tell you that the men’s room looked like Poirl Harbuh.
    “Just like New Awlins,” he said. He had a wide gap-toothed grin and eyebrows that touched, making him look wicked. “What’s your name again?”
    It was that easy. Becket showed me the metal bins where smaller parts—tools, nuts and bolts—were stored. Donnie Ray gave me a new Navy coffee cup. The phones were ringing and traffic was heavy at the counter. I watched Jones and Becket work and then I handled a few requisitions myself, and during a lull I took a walk down to the coffee urn.
    A bony man with a pinched face stood beside the urn, a cup in his hand. His shirt told me his name was J. T. Harrelson. He groaned softly, then again. I poured myself a cup. Harrelson stared bleakly at the empty morning. His hands trembled.
    “You okay?” I said.
    “Ah’ll never be okay again,” he said. “That gah-dam white lightnin eats you gah-dam guts out.”
    “Maybe you need somethin to eat.”
    “Ah’d rather swallow a can of worms.”
    Harrelson looked at me, squinting. I must’ve been smiling.
    “Who in the hell are you?”
    I told him and started to shake his hand. But he was using both hands for his cup.
    “And where you from , boy?”
    I said the fatal words: New York.
    “Gah-dam. Yawl got anybody left in New York? More gah-dam New Yorkers in this man’s Navy now than I seen in thirteen years .”
    “Ah, well,” I said and walked away. I didn’t like the hint of coldness about Harrelson, the curl to his lip when he mentioned New York. I went back to my desk and studied the parts catalogs. The coffee cooled and tasted sour.
    Suddenly the side door slammed open. A gangly sailor in dirty dress whites lurched into the room. Everything stopped. Donnie Ray looked up from the telephone, at once alarmed and relieved. The sailor was in his twenties and was wearing a third-class AK’s V-stripe. His eyes were wild and red. His big hands waved in theair, jerking, twisting, as if detached from his arms. His shoes were dirty and scuffed. The missing Boswell.
    “Hank’s dead!” he screamed.
    Donnie Ray came on a run. Becket emerged from the back room and hurried over, with Jones behind him.
    Donnie Ray said, “Gah-dammit, Boz, I been looking all over for—”
    “Hank’s dead!”
    Donnie Ray took his arm but Boswell shook him off.
    “Hank’s dead, gah-damnit! Hank is fuckin dead !”
    “What are you—”
    “Hank Williams ! Hank Williams died, Donnieray ! They found him dead in some car in West Vir gin ia! Just dead. Dead in the back of a Cadillac !”
    I’d never heard of Hank Williams. I thought: Why is Boswell so upset? What’s going on here? Then Harrelson was there, his face ashen. He said: “Hank Williams is dead ?”
    “ Dead . He’s fuckin dead.”
    Boswell’s eyes closed, then widened.
    “Dead!” he screamed and sat down hard on the concrete floor. “It’s on the radio. In the fuckin newspapers. Hank’s dead . On New Year’s fuckin Day.”
    Harrelson hurried to his desk, took out a small radio and started turning the dials. There were three sailors waiting at the counter now, staring down the hundred-foot length of the Supply Shack, watching us. Donnie Ray leaned over Boswell.
    “Boz, you gotta go somewhere, get cleaned up,” he said. “How’d you get on the damned base anyway?”
    “The back,” Boswell mumbled. “You know, the hole in the fence …”
    Jones and Becket grabbed him under the arms and started to lift his dead weight off the floor. Donnie Ray nodded at me to help. I grabbed