Wild Town by Jim Thompson

Bugs shot him in the hip.
    The shooting cost him two years in the Army stockade. He was also sentenced to a dishonorable discharge, but a higher court toned that down to a discharge under honorable conditions, also remitting six months of his previously forfeited pay.
    He was in San Diego, looking around and resting on the money when he met his wife-to-be.
    It happened one Sunday, at the city’s justly famous zoo. Bugs was standing in front of the monkey cages, one of the crowd of people tossing peanuts through the bars and watching the animals’ antics. He was standing there gawking and grinning, and thinking he looked pretty nice in his new suit of clothes, when a monkey reached behind him suddenly, came up with a brimming handful of ordure, and flung it all over him.
    Talk about messes. He looked like he’d just crawled through a sewer. And everyone was laughing at him, really knocking themselves out. And he didn’t know what the hell he was going to do; how he could get across town ten miles to his room where he could wash up and change clothes.
    Then a hand touched his arm, closed over it gently, and he looked down into a face that wasn’t laughing, but only tender and sympathetic. And he realized later that a dame didn’t get a pan on her like that in less than forty years. But at the time, she looked like an angel to him.
    She had a little apartment nearby. He was more than welcome to come there and get himself in order. Gratefully, he accepted the invitation.
    He bathed and scrubbed himself, while she worked over his clothes in the kitchen. Then, with a sheet pulled around him, he sat down on the bed to wait for the return of the garments. She came in with them, finally, dressed in a robe. She started to hand them to him, and somehow accidentally-on-purpose her robe fell open. And apparently she’d had some laundry to do of her own, because she sure as hell wasn’t wearing any.
    Naturally, she was thoroughly mortified. As she put it, she felt just like sinking through the floor. By the way of compromise, she sank down on the bed instead, where, needless to say, her nudity was promptly covered with more of the same.
    She wept bitterly afterwards. Bugs almost made with the tears himself. It was her first experience with a man—possibly excepting the members of the Pacific Fleet and the local Marine contingent—and he was dismayed at having despoiled her.
    They were married in Arizona the next day. It was the very least he could do—to make her an honorable woman.
    Two weeks later, when he came down with practically every disease in the venereal category, he was still too unawakened to connect her with them, and was completely satisfied with her theory as to how they had been contracted.
    Fortunately, for himself, at least, he had just taken a job where a physical examination was necessary. And with the ancientest of medical jokes, the doctor rid him of his childish naivete.
    “A toilet stool, eh?” he said. “Do you sleep with a toilet stool?”
    “Of course, I don’t.” Bugs frowned. “I sleep with my wife.”
    “No one else? Don’t do any playing around? Well, then,” said the doctor. “Well, then, young man?” And he spread his hands significantly.
    Bugs almost killed her. Except for the arrival of the police, he might have been beating on her yet.
    Arrested and held for trial, he would give no reason for the assault. He had too much pride; he was too ashamed of being taken for a sucker.
    He was sentenced to six months in the county jail, plus permanent banishment from the state. Released, he started drifting, arriving eventually in Texas.
    In the mushrooming towns-become-cities, municipal employees were at a premium—particularly if they were young and able-bodied and had anything at all in the way of police experience. Bugs fitted those specifications. He also was an honorably discharged veteran. True, he had a bad record, but in those hectic days a man might work a very long time before his