Tampico (James A. Michener Fiction Series) by Toby Olson

And Joaquín, what happened to him?”
    He was putting his own story off for the savoring, getting back to the one John had told the night before. He glanced out toward the chicken light at the promontory, but it was gone now, only those planes of shadow like layers of dark cardboard in the moonlight.
    “I was in Tampico once,” said Gino.
    “Are you sure it wasn’t Idaho?”
    “When was that exactly?” John said, ignoring Frank’s bait.
    “It was … I don’t know.” Gino grinned at Larry, then took his time in tamping and lighting up his pipe. “It was aught eight, I think, or probably nine.”
    John blinked at him, squinting under his thick brows.
    “So you can’t really remember it, just a baby I guess,” said Larry.
    “I was nineteen years old.”
    “Are you crazy?” Larry said. “How old
are
you?”
    “A hundred.”
    “You’re shitting me!”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “I used to think
I
was the old guy here,” said John.
    “How old are you?” Larry asked.
    “Well, I was in Tampico in ’23 and I was twenty years old. What is it, ninety?”
    “That seems right.”
    “Then I’m eighty-seven, or eight. What month is it?”
    “It’s still Winter,” Gino said. “The fifteenth of March.”
    He glanced out the window as if to confirm it, and they could see the faded blotches of scar tissue at the edge of his chin, spoiling his Truman profile, and the purplish spots, like mud, on the inside of his arm as he lifted his pipe away.
    “Seven, then.”
    The moon had moved in from the sea and the house on the promontory had come into definition. It was an old Victorian, gingerbread in the eaves, and though it was fenced off by rambling white pickets, it had no lawn but a yard of honeysuckle and autumn olive, leafless and skeletal bushes brushing the clapboards. Gino had turned his chair and was looking out again, and Larry was watching him.
    “He’s checking the wind speed or the temperature or something,” Frank said, brushing the falling hair away from his coat sleeve. He was much heavier than the others, thick through the chest and arms, but muscle was turning to fat now and wasting away, and his jowls hung in softened folds below his chin.
    “He’s old enough to be my father,” John said, and the two turned to him.
    “Wait a minute,” Frank said. “Thirteen?”
    “That’s old enough.”
    “Christ,” Larry said. “Me too. I’m only eighty-four. Would make him sixteen. In the old days, that would be plenty.”
    “Gino!” Frank said, sharply, and Gino turned from the window and took the pipe from his mouth. “What is it exactly that you did?”
    “Ordnance.”
    “No. He means after the war. For a living,” John said.
    “Trucking.”
    “That rips it,” Larry said, his mustache twitching. “The old eighteen wheeler. Women in towns along the way. When did you have your first child?”
    “Forty-two.”
    “Nineteen forty-two. A war bride. Gino on the trail of love in the European Theater.”
    “No.
I
was forty-two. It was 1931, I think. Around there. Between wars.”
    “I had a child once,” said Frank.
    “Mine was a girl,” Gino said.
    “Where is she now?”
    “I have absolutely no fucking idea at all.”
    “My son’s dead,” said Frank. “In Korea. He was a colonel. It killed my wife.”
    “I didn’t have a wife,” said Larry.
    “Not a one,” said John.
    “But I did have a few boyfriends.”
    “The gay business again,” said Frank. “You told us that.”
    “Loafers,” Gino said. “We used to say light in the loafers.”
    “Did you,” Larry said.
    “Well, not often, actually. There weren’t any gays in the suburbs then.”
    “Not that
you
knew of at least,” said Larry.
    “Was it good for you?” John said, lighting another cigarette, watching the match.
    “It was okay. It was Salt Lake City though, and that was a crusher. But then the war came, and after that, traveling. I lived in Cleveland for a good long while, then Philadelphia finally,