Holdoffer was standing behind us. “Okay, Andrews Sisters, now that you’ve viewed the stiff, let’s see you break down his tent and gather his gear, as he don’t much look like he can do it by himself.” He laughed, his foul breath seeming to squirt at us all.
Tony turned to him, speaking through gritted teeth, “You miserable shit.”
“Watch that stuff, Wesso,” said Holdoffer, unconsciously taking a backward step.
“Why couldn’t you let him have his goddamn booze?”
“I don’t owe you any fuckin’ explanation, Polack. It was against regulations. Matter of fact, I’d like to see your canteen.”
“It’s on my belt. Take it from me.” Tony had his feet planted and was ready to kill Holdoffer if this man moved as much as a fingernail to take the canteen.
Holdoffer considered the challenge for a moment and then smiled. “Polack, I’m gonna let you take the first punch. You know the penalty for striking a noncommissioned officer?”
“In your case—the Medal of Honor.”
“Then do it, Polack.” Holdoffer hung his chin out toward Tony. It was a most tempting target. “Come on, Polack. Hit the fuckin’ sergeant.” Holdoffer was speaking loudly enough to get everyone’s attention. He wanted witnesses and he had them. “Come on, you Polish scumbag—kiss me.”
Johnny and I moved simultaneously, almost as one man, both of us knowing that Tony was about to take Holdoffer up on his kind offer. I had one arm and Johnny had the other, and together we wrested Tony away, but it was like hanging onto a crazed bull and we could have used five more men, and some rope.
Holdoffer laughed. “That’s right, fuckheads! Back off! Back off, you Polish fart-smellers!”
Tony was barely in our grip and two other men had to jump in to help us restrain him. He was screaming at Holdoffer, the veins popping so prominently on his head that they looked ready to burst. “I’m gonna kill you, Holdoffer! You Nazi! I’m gonna kill you! Wait for it! Know it’s coming!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Holdoffer laughed as he walked away, not quite willing to take his eyes off Tony. “I’ll wait. Anytime you’re ready.” Then he turned his embarrassed wrath on the others, screaming at them, shoving them, swatting at the air as they stepped aside to let him pass.
Tony relaxed in our grasp, we could feel the strength going out of him. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“You sure?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’m fine. Thanks.”
We let him go and he walked off. He was okay. We looked at Deyo again. We had hardly known the man, never really ever spoke to him. Yet there he was, the first dead man that either Johnny or I had ever seen. I knew I’d remember that puffy, red-nosed face for as long as I would live. “What do we do with him?”
“Nothing,” said Johnny. “He’ll keep.”
We were all heading back to the post when the ambulances came out to meet us. We had covered only four miles but, apparently, somebody had enough brains to realize that the HQ Company of the 42nd Group was out there, in killing weather and without radio contact. Colonel Cranston took the credit but later we heard that it was a captain from the 317th Field Artillery Battalion who had given Cranston the idea.
Lieutenant Rankin was transferred out of the outfit almost as soon as we got back to the post. That wasn’t Cranston’s idea either. That was the post IG’s who, upon learning of the incident, saw to it that Rankin was in the next train west, attached to an infantry division as an officer replacement. Rumor was that he was killed within two weeks of having arrived in Korea. But that was only a rumor.
I wrote to Don of Deyo’s death—just a quick note without all the grisly details. It helped me to know that Don knew.
Four men had serious frostbite. One of them, Corporal Lightman (NG) lost an earlobe to the surgeon’s knife. Sergeant Deyo was buried on the post with full honors. We all attended the lavish ceremony and had the feeling they were burying MacArthur. He was awarded the Purple Heart posthumously. It went nicely with his purple cock and purple nose and purple lips. His boyfriend, Sergeant Kuyper, didn’t cry. He just saluted like a toy soldier.
Holdoffer still prevailed, like an evil spirit in the second act of a morality play. Tony calmed down but, when asked, still quietly claimed that he would kill Holdoffer; he was simply looking for a way to do it without incriminating himself. There was no doubt in my mind that Tony Wesso would one day do it.
Johnny Munez went his stoic way, never connecting with anything, just allowing the days to come and go, almost reveling in them because his life as a civilian had been so predictable and uneventful—anything was an improvement.
As for me, I was merely strung out. Frustrated. I sensed the waste of time and energy. I began to pick out my own overtones in everything I was saying. Cynicism and sarcasm were my watchwords, peppering my speech, overloading my attitude. If the US kept winning wars it could only mean that our enemies were stumble-bums. And if I was to get killed in the name of the U S of A, then my ghost would find the ghost of George Washington and kick its ass back to Valley Forge.
I wanted to be W. Charles Gruber, with a limousine and a girl I could send to my friends. I wanted to be Zanuck and Skouras, kings of all creation. I wanted to be Stirling Silliphant and Josh Meyerberg and Tyrone Power and Victor Mature. I wanted to be out of the fucking Army and back at 20th Century-Fox, protecting my job against the new man in town. I missed Alice and Susan and Jessica and Patricia Jarvas and all the nameless girls at the Museum of Modern Art. I wanted to go home. To New York and Don Cook. To Pittsburgh and Elizabeth Satterly in her yellow dress. To Carmody’s Junkyard, Patterson’s Tobacco Shoppe. To my mother and father whom I never deserved in the first place.
Meantime I was drinking a lot of beer at night and rolling in drunk where Johnny and Tony, both of them made of better stuff than me, calmed me down and got me off to sleep and up the next day and back to my appointed tasks of guarding a door, cutting a pipe, reading a manual, answering a phone, suppressing a scream.
Letter from Don Cook:
Dear Ben,
Bad news. Terrible news. Bob Steinman. He was with this girl, in his apartment, screwing her I guess—at least that’s what the police figure from the story she didn’t tell all of. There was a big fire on the street and every fire truck and prowl car arrived at once—sirens all over the place. Bob must have thought he was under fire or something because, as the girl told it, he yelled “Cover!” and dove through the window. Six floors. He died on impact. Crazy story, strange guy. But we all liked him. Funeral was yesterday and it was a big military thing at this temple on the West Side. Lots of brass, very impressive. They gave his mother a flag. Anyway, I thought you should know. I’ll write again soon, hopefully with better news.
Best—
Don
I read the letter three times and then screamed. If Tony hadn’t been able to subdue me I’d be running still, off the post, out of the Army, back toward whatever sanity might still remain. Tony tackled me and wrestled me back to the barracks, incoherent, I’m told, for almost an hour. Coherent would have been a better word, for it was then that I began to fear that Deyo’s death was but a preamble to Bob’s, and Bob’s but prologue to mine.
CHAPTER TEN
Ginnie
1950
Standing out there on MacDougal Street, barefoot in the middle of the goddamn night, holding my portrait of Maggie while watching my dandy-keen basement apartment wither into embers, I really didn’t have a solid thought in my head as to what I was going to do or where I was going to go or how I was not going to freeze to death in my dopey shorty nightie.
A policeman pulled me aside, a little roughly I thought, and asked if I lived in that building. “No,” I said, “I always walk around half naked, selling paintings.” He then turned to a fellow officer and said, “She’s in shock. Take care of her.” But I was gone before the law could make a move at me.
It was absurd, of course. The streets were cold, and I cut myself nine million t
imes but I just kept on walking. To where, I had no idea. All I knew was that it was all over back there on MacDougal Street and that there was no sense in hanging around and letting my name or picture get in the papers because I was still underage and didn’t want to blow my cover.
I hadn’t really developed any friendships in the Village other than with Sy and Iri, both of whom lived north somewhere. So there I was, no one to go to or drop in on or even telephone.
Then I remembered that Roland Jessup lived right around the corner from me, on Sullivan Street, and I walked there. Because of the wandering route I had taken, it took me close to an hour. After an hour walking barefoot on New York City streets, I was lucky to have arrived there with all my toes and ankles.
No bell, so I clanged the brass knocker (a lion’s tongue), and Roland appeared like a genie summoned. He was wearing a violet velour robe with crimson rolled collar and golden slippers that curled up at their Turkish tips. I looked at him through the tears that had come to my five-year-old eyes. “My feet are all cut and I feel awful.”
“Love your costume,” he said, trying to take the edge off my discombobulation. When he closed the door, I could see that I had stepped into Scheherazade. Billowing curtains and drapes like the sails of faeried clipper ships, and dripping beads and cloudy cushions and different colors climbing different walls at different angles and a ceiling-to-floor portrait of a knock-out black lady in silver sequins and shining feathers—Roland could see my dumbfoundedness. “Just a few things I picked up during my voyages with Sinbad.”
“Who’s the chocolate sundae?”
“Josephine Baker. Who’s your pink lady?”
He was referring, of course, to my portrait of Maggie which I was still clutching. “My mother.”
“Couldn’t get a wallet-size?”
“It is wallet-size.” He laughed and I set the painting face-against-the-wall, as if to not let my mother see where her daughter hung out at three-thirty in the A.M.
Roland gestured for me to flop on one of his pillows. “I think the mauve will go well with your chiton.”
I sat in and disappeared in the mushy thing. When I came up for air it was because my feet were being tickled. Roland was examining the soles of my feet. “Is it bad?” I asked.
“Yes. Filthy. The bottoms of your feet are blacker than mine.”
We laughed and chatted and I filled him in on the events of my morning in Manhattan. He daubed Mercurochrome on my feet and asked that I walk only on the red squares of his red and purple carpet.
Roland made some tea and we talked the sun right into the window. He had an idea where I might find a place to stay, and he made me feel very safe, safer than I could remember either of my parents ever making me feel. We fell asleep amid all the pillows, with me hugging him as if he were Winnie the Pooh and him hugging me as if I were the black man’s burden. It was the first and last time I ever embraced a man without feeling either threatened or shat on.
A few hours later, the sun really at work on the day, he let me wear his cape-coat and a pair of his too-big sandals. In that attire I went to my bank, managed to identify myself, and withdrew enough bucks to get some jeans, sneakers, a dumb jacket, with some money for extras. I waited in Roland’s apartment for his phone call, as instructed. It came at eleven thirty A.M. At six thirty that night I was in Don Cook’s endless apartment. Roland had found me a place to stay.
I liked Don Cook. He was all uptown and well dressed and spoke like someone auditioning for the part of Don Cook. He expressed only slight amazement at my arriving with only the clothes on my back, plus Maggie’s portrait. But when I explained about the fire, he quipped, “All I ask is that your cow not knock over my GE three-way lamp.”
The apartment was nutsville, a railroad-type thing with different rooms like in a hotel. There were three bedrooms. One was his. One was mine. And one was Ben’s.
“Who’s Ben?”
“My roommate. He’s in the Army.”
“Ah.”
“Hasn’t been back since the day he left. Roland says you’re a dancer.”
“Yes.”
“Nice legs.”
“Yes. Roland does have nice legs.”
“Had any dinner?”
“Nope.”
“I’ll split a tunafish and grilled cheese with you. I think it’s ripe now.”
“No, thanks. I have to get some clothes and go to work and have no time for Continental cuisine.”
“You’re in a show.”
“Yes. The Annice Chatterton Dancers.”
“They’re black.”
“Yes.”
“And what are you? An albino?”
“Black. Don’t let the blonde hair fool you.”
“And the blue eyes?”
“A flaw in my ancestry.”
“How old are you?”
“Eleven.”
“You mean I should stay away from you.”
“Well, Roland said there’d be no problem.”
“Have no qualms, Nell. If you’re eleven, there’ll be no problem.”
We laughed and split a fiat Coke, our territories outlined, our mutual respect clearly established. He would make no demands of me other than my share of the rent and expenses. I told him he’d probably have to do all the shopping as I’d be working nights and sleeping days. He saw no problems.
I hung Maggie’s portrait in my new room and hustled down to Capezio’s, still open, picked up some additional workout clothes, and then went back downtown to The Blue Angel, just in time for an eight thirty P.M. rehearsal. Roland was there and I thanked him for hooking me up with Don. Roland, embarrassed at being thanked, could only shrug.
Annice worked our asses off. The little stage didn’t afford us much room to go all out. To make up for it we had to shorten our stride. As Annice put it, we didn’t have the Caribbean to step around in, so we might as well get used to it. Besides, there were a dozen of us—eight girls and four boys. But worse than anything else was Annice’s announcement that we’d have to cut the group to fit the stage. She was sorry but it was the only way. She hoped that once the act got on the road we’d go back to the original dozen; so, following the next day’s rehearsal, she’d announce the cuts. And that was it, except that we were to be there by one P.M.
Roland bought me an ice-cream soda and we discussed the problem. I just couldn’t see how Annice could cut a black girl and keep me. Roland wasn’t sure, though he did say that Annice was perfectly capable of making an unbiased decision. If I was a good dancer, I had no worries.
I walked the twenty-eight blocks to my new home, trying to figure out just what it was I was supposed to be doing with my life beyond wandering, dancing, and trying out new places to sleep. I stumbled in somewhere around eleven-thirty, closer to death than to exhaustion. The five flights of stairs didn’t help. Don was still up, going over some papers and things. And the big lug was in his bathrobe. Uh-oh, I thought, here it comes.
He smiled at me, like a husband. “Hi.”
“Not tonight, darling. I’ve got a headache.”
He laughed, got up and went to the kitchen, and came back with a cold glass of something. “Iced tea. I thought coffee’d keep you awake.”
“Oh, can I ever use that. Thanks.” I took the tea and collapsed into a chair. “I think I need a shower.”
“Don’t worry about it. I never shower until I get fourteen anonymous letters from people in the neighborhood.”
“What’re you working on so late?”
“Just going over some correspondence. Ben writes a letter for every one I write him, and I owe him. Here’s a picture he sent. He’s the one—”
“No. Don’t tell me. Let me guess.”
“Sure.”
I studied the photo. It was very small. There were about a dozen soldiers, all standing around in a bunch and mugging for the camera. Not all of them were mugging. Some seemed serious. But only one of them was Ben. Don’t ask me how I knew—but I knew. I knew exactl
y which one was Ben; the one in the top row, on the extreme right, in the group but not quite, trying to look like one of the boys but not fooling me for a minute. Oh, the sadness to his even-featured face. Oh, the anger behind the eyes, the pucker to the mouth that said, “Take my picture but don’t mess with me.” “This one,” I said. I had my finger on the face and turned the photo to Don.
“Sonofabitch. How’d you do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah, that’s Ben. Even when he’s happy he’s angry. What the hell he’s doing in the Army is beyond me. If there’s more than three people in a room he tenses up. And there he is, in with a hundred thousand idiots, all in green, all with short haircuts, all with their individualities destroyed.”
“His isn’t.”
Don studied the photo again. “I guess not.”
“How’d you meet?”
“On the street. He was dressed in rags but was smoking a sixty-cent cigar, like an exiled monarch. Proud…so fucking proud. Nothing going for him on the surface, but, Christ, what insides he had.”
“So you became roommates.”
“Yes. Because, as I suspected, the raggedy king had a few drachmas and, with the rent coming due, I suggested a merger of our two nations. He would contribute to my depleted treasury, in return for which he would receive a naval base in the bathroom, a bedroom in which to rehabilitate, and landing rights in the other bedroom.”
“Landing rights?”
“Yes.” He didn’t seem anxious to explain. “There were other roommates, fly-by-nights. But it’s too long a story. Besides,”—he stood up and yawned—“I’ve had it and I’m going to sleep. Would you like to sleep with me, Ginnie?”
“Thank you, but no.”
“Very well. I will ask you again, you know. It’s the hospitable thing to do. But I will never force myself upon you because, judging from your legs, I might get hurt. Good night, Ginnie. I’ll stock the kitchen tomorrow.”
There Should Have Been Castles Page 14