by Ray Succre
“The Unitarians aren’t my sort of people, Emery.”
“Who cares? That system could be good for us. The whole thing is practically designed to help people like you and I survive our religions. You could be you and I could be me, and everyone else would simply frown a bit, that’s all.”
“Are you pulling a gag?”
“No. If we needed to, we could join into Unitarianism. You can have your beliefs, and our stony guardians can have theirs. We could marry. It’s not even a conversion, technically.”
“Tell me we’re not back to this. I’m tired of this.”
“Yes, we’re back to this.”
“Marriage. Beliefs. I don’t think you understand how serious a thing getting married is. You don’t do that just because you love someone. And what right do you have to talk about beliefs, anyway? What beliefs would you possibly get in being Unitarian? I don’t think you have any beliefs.”
“I take marriage in the traditional view. A sacred thing if you decide to let it be that. I’m more than serious about being your husband, and I’ve given it far more thought than you seem to think I have. And as for beliefs… well, you know me and those. I’m on even ground with everyone.”
“Honestly, I may not know all there is to know about the Jews, Emery, but I do know that belief in God is a big deal to them. And everyone else, for that matter, including Unitarians. I don’t know what you’re up to with that.”
“Well, I suppose I’m the wicked sort. You know, an impostor. Grifter, too. Deceitful. Plausibly sinister.”
“Something or other.”
“Please marry me.”
“Emery, no.”
“Then I shall have to impregnate you and give the marriage a kick in the pants to stir things along.”
“Emery Asher!”
“Well, if I’m going to be deceitful, I don’t see the service of not going the full mile. No one likes a slacker, Beth. I imagine one would have to work quite hard at deceit to get very good at it, and I’m the sort who likes to be the best at things.”
“Stop talking like that. It’s annoying and… and crazy. And dopey, too.”
“I aim to be the best at those things, as well.”
“Well, you’re off to a brilliant start. You’re an irritating, mad goof.”
“Please marry me, Beth.”
He noticed their walk had aligned again. Timing. Perhaps she would push him from her in the weeks to come, or begin distancing herself that very night. This was a plausible end to their story. There was, however, the matter of love, an emotional sea from which both had taken a strong drink. This above all else kept her from discovering what a wretch he felt to be. How worthless and lost he felt. So little seemed to matter, but certain points kept him navigating. As their feet moved over the grass, he couldn’t but wonder if she knew what little time he had spent with those previous women, what little of him had truly been alive enough to even attempt feeling anything in the past two years, and how much he now did, how often he thought of her.
The clocks ticked on at Antioch and the two made their way across the final stretch of path to her dormitory. How many hours had he spent walking her home in wondrous talk in the past months? Enough to fill a complete day, maybe more. How many moments had been spent at her dormitory’s main door wondering if there was to be another kiss this time? Infinite. There was no proof of this, however. How could she know? There were no declarations of his feeling but for those in mere words, and she did not trust those. How could he prove his mind’s willingness to continually dote on her?
Timecards would have helped
Chapter Five
Nicks in the surface of the oak desk were visible despite over-waxing and a dark stain, scratches and small digs that contrasted with the rough edge of the wood and its hasty construction. This was a cheap desk, and through the lacquer and wax one could see that the oak was not so old as it at first seemed, but had merely been mishandled and slapped together with too much speed. This was good wood put together poorly by an uncaring shop in years past. Mr. Gill was tapping his cigarette toward a green, glass ashtray. This receptacle had a jagged, chipped corner, damage likely present after being dropped. Mr. Gill did not reach a close enough proximity with his cigarette, however, causing the haphazard ash to dash against the waxy coating of the desk in a quality much like a dot of paint being spattered. The ashen debris joined into the sheen of the surface, one that looked to be wiped off with a bare palm on occasion, to make room for soon-stained papers and the various office paraphernalia of a radio station manager. In this instance, the station manager was also the program director. In his hand, the station manager held one of three identical items, the other two resting on the desk near the ashtray. These items represented the entirety of his lunch.
“Hot dog?” the manager asked, his mouth full of slurry and smoke.
“Thank you. I’ve already eaten,” Emery replied.
“So eat again.”
“Oh, I’m fine. You know, the history of that product is an interesting one. German immigrants, fancy restaurants, then state fairs and the such. Wrote a paper on it in high school. I’ve always preferred ‘frankfurter’, to be honest. Like the word more. Not so good when it changed to ‘hot dog’, which is based on the exclamation. It’s somewhat as if we named them ‘gosh darns’ or something of that nature.”
“Jesus. Who cares?” the station manager asked, looking at Emery to discern if the writer was being serious or not.
“Well, no one. I was just saying.”
“And anyway, with those kraut’s having done what they did? They don’t get to name nothin’. It’s only right.”
“I fought some of those,” Emery said.
“Good, now they can keep their frankfurters and we can have our hot dogs.”
Mr. Gill sat behind the desk in a necessarily lax position due to his weight and the unscrupulous position of his desk near the small window. That this window offered a second floor view of Cincinnati’s downtown was only a small presence, being only four missing bricks that had been replaced with badly sealed glass. When one took into view the cluttered, messy office, it was with artificial light. The view was bare anyway. A few colors behind the glass were all that was represented of the outside world. The desk faced this window, far enough back that one might, if need for the outside became overwhelming, glance at specks of it with a tilt of the head. The feeling was dungeon-like. The sort of furnishing and placement of the room gave enough space for a chair by normal means, though not quite enough room for the space a fat man needed between such a chair and his desk. Mr. Gill was one such man. With cigarettes. A fat man in the ever-curling wit of recently drawn, lung-filtered smoke. Seeing this waft of burning tobacco caused Emery to retrieve his pack and light one, himself. Both of the men were smoking, as was expected. This was a job interview, an introduction to the career ahead. Emery hoped employment might result from this uncomfortable encounter; he was in dread need of a job.
Beth was at home and their rent was nearing the date at which payment could not be supported by their current reservoir of money, which more a puddle than an expanse. They were low to the coin. His father would have called it ‘flat broke’. Beth called it ‘a start’. There were many ways to say most anything.
“What about German Chocolate Cake?” Emery said then, nervous and uncertain of what he should talk about, “Will we say ‘American Chocolate Cake’ now?” Many things had changed name due to the war, and though the war had ended, with the Russians sitting in the cat-bird seat in Germany and with two Japanese cities having been cindered, the changes continued. Such was the American view of devastated enemies; there were many ways to narrow the eyes. Removing another nation from current commerce and diction was a smaller spoil of war, but one of those few in which the average citizen, even a child, could take part. Mr. Gill’s eyes grew at this and he gave a smile of surprise.
“American Chocolate Cake. Huh, it’s funny you bring that up. Couple days ago, I
read that one. In my wife’s Clarion rag. We call it Devil’s Food Cake now.”
“Ah, devils! I see the allusion, but changing the names of things seems... unnecessary and a little fatuitous,” Emery said.
“What’s it to you, anyway? You’re nobody.”
“Sure, I’m only saying.”
“You keep saying that. Listen here, man of words, I’m going to show you something about the wonders of radio. Play along, would you? I want you to lay out a definition for me: Define ‘fatuitous’.”
“Well, it mostly means ‘absurd’.”
“Got it. Absurd. Which in turn would mean what? ‘Silly’, right?”
“Well, they’re synonymous for the most part.”
“For the most part! I like that. That’s the part we’re concerned with, right? The part that’s the most.”
“I think I follow.”
“And if you take fifty guys and ask ‘em what ‘fatuitous’ means, how many do you think will know it?”
“Most?” Emery tried.
“No. Hardly a dozen. How many would know what ‘absurd’ means?”
“All of them.”
“Maybe, maybe not. It’s not assured. Now how many would know what ‘silly’ means?”
“Again, all of them.”
“Right. Definitely all of them, this time. Because ‘silly’ is the most common way to say it, the way you hear it the most. Now, those fifty guys? They’re probably listeners.”
“I understand.”
“You want to be in radio, you say ‘hot dog’ and ‘silly’, not the other words, Antioch. We play for folks, not fellows? If you want to be a jackass on the air, you do it with funny voices, not fatuitous words. You gettin’ how this works?”
“I am. It’s quite clear, Mr. Gill. And I can do that, of course.”
“Glad to hear it, Mr. Asher. Say, listen to that. Mister to mister. You and I and what do you know, we’re all business in here. That’d be swell if I actually liked doing these interviews,” the man said, pausing for a moment to bite and chew. Mr. Gill’s managerial power served as a hard, prophylactic shell around what was probably a crass and unapologetic sleazebag. A dray that thought himself a racer.
“I suppose I could take one of those hot dogs from you, after all. Then we’d be less in an interview and more in a lunch?” Emery offered.
“That’s a queer thought. Say, that makes me wonder. What sort of name is Asher? Sheeny name, right?”
Beth with the ever-lit eyes. The dark hair and Protestant grandparents. Beth pregnant and awaiting the third trimester with certain zeal, a mood Emery would confess he admired greatly. In the realm of mothers, or as Emery knew them by his own and those he had met, there was a certain staunch will that gave its effort over to women. A father could not do what a mother did. It was not in him. A mother seemed somehow better connected to that hub of what it meant to be alive, whether you knew your own or not. There was a reason so much of mythology involved rebirth and various forms of the world and its seas as a womb. The sense of motherhood and creation was everywhere. It was a bit of shame that when he had met Beth in college and fallen in love, they had to turn from the ways of their guardians. His Jewish family and her Protestant family did not approve of their marriage, and had forbid it in the way one forbids an insect at the brow: With quick waves, furrows, and the occasional bit of profanity. They were not a couple to tolerate or allow. Emery and Beth had changed at Antioch, however. The couple had chosen a newer route, Unitarianism, closely tied to the school, and this specific course had given them the marriage they so wanted, though alienated them each from their lineage.
“A sheeny name,” Emery repeated. Mr. Gill shrugged.
Emery had lately taken to the works of Jung. He was attempting to discover himself, or at the least understand the path of his thoughts, his place in the modern consciousness. Unitarianism had aided in this, but caused him to question more, as faith was wont to do. That a man might change his religion so liberally had him wondering what other things might also be altered so simply, should he desire change. Occupations might swivel more with one’s dreams in this way, or perhaps marriage reach its full measure with minds thus opened to their potential. Much could change for a man if his mind were allowed to think it, and not simply wish or pray for it. Was not perception one of the firmest foundations of psychology and philosophy, of literature and politics? Jung, Sartre, and Goebbels had shown as much.
As a newly married man, Emery’s latest undertaking was that of discovering his wife. No wish or hope would suffice this. He needed to be with her more. To do more than adore her, or provide for her, or change his faith for her, but to accompany her as she accompanied him. Proximity was perhaps the most important facet of being a social creature. Proximity made lovers and liars, friends and thieves.
“Yeah. That the story?” Mr. Gill reiterated, fidgeting the cigarette in his fingers.
“It might be a name like that. What about Gill, sir? It seems to me that might be a mick name.” The program director’s eyes sharpened as he exhaled smoke. A vein stood out on his neck.
“I’ll unscrew your goddamn head, kid. That how you want this to go? Because you look frail.”
Having lived through the war and completed his schooling, he was left with a strange void into which his days had begun to spiral. There was little within this but the passage of time, and Emery was the sort for whom dreams weighed much, and followed long after their need. A path. A route. Carrying those bits of his mother and father, always present in him, toward a full, new fruition. A man with a mind with a timbre. That’s what he considered his meaning. He felt an incessant draw toward an unknown thing, a job for the creative mind, a way to take one’s feats and manifest them into the world in a manner unique and personally contrived. He might have been a fat-head. His slow metamorphosis from soldier to student to bum might have been nearly complete. He needed more than work; being a lark within a man and given grain only fed the lark portion of him. His urge was toward being the self-made sort, a writer making a name, yes, though it was tawdry to base another man’s worth on only this.
“Sir, to be honest,” Emery said, “my last name is the name of someone who graduated from Antioch, fought the Germans and Japanese, is happily married, and can work hard.”
“Antioch? What degree?” the Mr. Gill asked.
“Literature.”
“Eh, that won’t help you much here. Didn’t answer my question, either. You’re a Jew, right?”
“Well, are you a Nazi, Mr. Gill? I don’t see an insignia.” Mr. Gill frowned at this and exhaled hard, smoke in a horizontal cyclone that dissipated quickly. He was a real Model A.
“I’ll forgive that because you’re uppity. Listen kid, I’m all right. Just like to know where a person comes from.”
“Binghamton, New York, America. My parents were Jewish; my wife and I are Unitarian. I served in the war until a grenade pulverized my knee. I’m a college graduate and I have a child on the way. That’s where I come from. Is that an acceptable background to work in your radio station, Mr. Gill?”
“Oh, cool off. You wouldn’t still be here if I didn’t like you some. You vets need to learn how to take a rib. I’m getting the idea you’ve never had a regular job before.”
“I’ve had a few. And not too many.” Emery thought briefly of the work he supported his wife with when they were first married: Testing experimental Air Force parachutes for $50 a jump, and the grand he had made testing a jet ejection seat that had killed three others. Those reckless and scurrying days were over. He had a family on the way.
“Unitarians, huh? That’s very Antioch, all right. Which force were you in?”
“ARMY. 11th Airborne. I was a paratrooper.”
“Say, that’s something.”
“Sure it was.”
Dropping in a plummet with a rifle. Into someone’s shouts, possibly your own. Because you were told to do so. No amount of Boy Scout training could have settled him into a dispos
ition that could have handled such a thing. Those years of Scout Leaders talking about war were as if a cruel joke. Even the military had barely readied him for such an energetic spitting in death’s face. Rope tying badge. Bronze Star. Foraging badge. Philippine Liberation Medal. Ribbon for generosity. The great badge of condolence for having his knee obliterated by angry, tacit, enemy vitriol. Puffed parachutes hanging men into a sea of spittle and flame, again and again. Scouts, soldiers… What responsible young men they made. Killers for the insignias they gained, the flags they held aloft, and the cleavage of earth by doctrine kept in the hands of its owners. It was short-lived. He got on the wrong C.O.’s nerves and ended up in the 511th demolition platoon for a time. The nickname for where they put him was the Death Squad. His guilt over forgetting to load his magazines, over his trouble keeping his mind on the ground, and getting lost several times while wandering, had abated. They were foolish troubles, and he had been young. That he did not get a bullet through the brain was some sort of fortune.
While his shame over certain things had slowly left him, some things would not. The images of from Leyte and Manila were acid-etched into his memory and the nightmares were near him, most weeks, hovering above his bed and waiting for him to close his eyes in a drift. His bitterness was a constant ally and enemy, and navigating it had taken years to learn. He had not been cut out for war, but had found out too late. He knew that luck and the watchful eye of others were large contributors to the current state of his heart, which was still, thankfully, beating. At times, he wondered if he had caused more trouble than he had solved, then he thought of the Japanese dead, and all the things they would have done to his brothers had he not done those things first to the Japanese. He had helped the effort, most of the time.
“Jumpin’ outta planes. Crazy stuff. Any medals?” the station manager asked. The smoke was beginning to cloud the room, making it difficult to breathe.
“Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and a Philippine Liberation Medal.”
“What won the heart for ya?”