“Do you need some money? I have some.”
“No. I get paid tomorrow. We’ll settle up then.”
“Okay. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Don went off to his room and I sat there alone, just me and my iced tea, which I put aside, and the photograph of Ben, which I held onto. I was so tired, so very, very tired. I really wanted to get up and take that shower, but I knew I’d never make it. The best I could do, I figured, would be to summon up enough strength to reach over and turn off the lamp. I tried, but my hand fell short, landing instead on the pile of letters that Don had left on the table. Ben’s table. I was in Ben’s room. I had lost my way and was in Ben’s room. Crazy.
Ever the eavesdropper, ever the diary-peeper, wicked Ginnie Maitland pulled the letters over to where she lay, suddenly alive with curiosity. I had never read a man’s letters before. I would have preferred them to be love letters to some nameless female, swearing eternal devotion and filled with explicit sexual details straight from the Kama Sutra, Fanny Hill, and de Sade. But, under the circumstances, I was willing to settle for letters from Ben to Don, especially since Ben might just be reporting on the marvelously dirty things he was doing on his time off from the Army. I sat up and read them, in order, one at a time.
Dear Don,
I am in the Army. As such I am surrounded on all sides by an excruciating lack of intelligence. I am an island in a sea of ignorance and the waves are knocking on my shore. I pray that it is only due to the fact that I arrived here at high tide and that the waters will eventually recede and leave my senses undampened.
Two men puked on the bus, which had no windows and faulty air-conditioning. At Springfield, three others bolted for freedom but were captured and flogged and keelhauled (by a bus?). At camp it was snowing and freezing. (It is not at all like summer camp. I do not like my counselors, and the boy in the bed to my right was jerking off all last night while sobbing that he missed his mommy. Some mommy. Luckily he hooked further to the right, so I avoided pregnancy.) All today I have been outfitted with the very kind of clothing that my mother used to throw out. The food is inedible but plentiful, so I take a lot and don’t eat it. In one day I have lost 45 pounds. (Are you sure Mahatma Gandhi started this way?)
I have no friends and no hope of escape. If I send you the Queen’s ring, please use it to gain access to this fucking place and get my ass out of here. I love my country but, apparently, not enough.
Yours truly,
Private Shit-Head Webber
(that’s what the sarge calls me)
P.S.—burn this, or eat it. Or both.
Dear Don,
I received your letter and carry it around with me next to my heart because it’s very important that I know that the weather in New York is clear, with temperatures in the 30’s and with no snow anticipated. You are the worst fucking letter-writer since the Count of Monte Cristo…and I charge you, sir, to come up with something more creative or not to write at all.
Nothing new here except that Jackie Jerk-Off has been given an honorable discharge for his discharge. Once the news got out that Jackie got out, everybody began stabbing his own individual rabbit ceaselessly. No one sleeps, the noise is unbearable, and the walls are so insulated with dried sperm that the barracks sergeant has been able to turn down our thermostat five full degrees.
It is 4 degrees above zero in Fort Devens, Massachusetts. The sky is clear and a warm front is moving in from Alabama. And if you don’t write me a real letter soon, I will join the meat-beaters and end up with a forearm like Popeye and a full disability.
Yours truly,
Uncle Wethbee
P.S.—no rain in the forecast for Wednesday and Thursday, and the stars at night are big and bright, Deep in the Heart of Texas, you prick.
Dear Don,
Sorry to hear that you’re not all that thrilled with the way things are going at 20th for you. I agree that, by now, you should be out of the Messenger Corps and onto bigger things, but I don’t yet think it’s time for panic. Certainly I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by going in to Gruber and suggesting that he shove the entire operation up his ass. For one thing, it is not gentlemanly. And, for another, if Gruber truly shoved up his ass everything that people suggested he shove up—well—what room would there be for your suggestion? Hang in. Give it a little time. Maybe something will break in radio-TV publicity now that management is waking up to the fact that television can be used to sell films and not fight them.
The National Guardsmen are idiots. We played them touch football and won 42-6. We gave them the six because they were threatening us with post-game shit details. If we play them again we’ll try very hard to lose but don’t look for miracles.
Also—there is a sergeant, a Frankenstein type name of Luther Holdoffer who is indescribably imbecilic and bestial and makes life worth living as he is a target for all our wrath. He’s right out of central casting, the consummate finky sergeant. Last night we put a little surprise in his boots and it was like a dream come true.
We have instituted a program called “Draftee of the Week.” It’s too complicated to go into here. Suffice it to say, it’s very dangerous, marvelous, ridiculous, and necessary.
Write soon, and don’t quit.
Regards to anyone who still
remembers me,
Benedict Arnold
Dear Don,
Thank you for your letter. I’m sorry but I can’t advise you from this far away. If you really can’t stand it anymore then, yes, you have to quit. I just wish you had something else to go to. Also, I don’t know how the hell you’ll swing the rent. If we were married I could send you my allotment, but “going steady” doesn’t count with the Army so maybe you’d better send back my fraternity pin. I have some bucks in the post bank which I’ll send you as a money order, first chance. No, it’s not charity. It’s just in case I get the firing squad for killing Holdoffer. I’d want you to have that money to erect a monument to me for service to my country. Meantime, keep looking for a roommate, someone who can help you get up the rent money. I know there’s no one else who could ever replace me in your heart…but a buck’s a buck, so don’t be a schmuck.
Write, you fool,
Ben.
Dear Don,
Two things I think you must now do: 1) Tell Gruber to shove it up his ass. And 2) get yourself a roommate before you lose the apartment for nonpayment of rent. Above all, don’t lose the apartment. We’ll never get another like it. Ask around for a roommate. Put up posters in the office. Somebody has to know somebody.
Again I have been named Draftee of the Week and it makes me very proud. Johnny, Tony and I are very thick; it’s almost fun. No furloughs yet but we do manage to get a Sunday off every now and then and we bus into Boston, go to the USO…and get bored to death.
I wish I were in love. Where is she? I need her. Someone to write to. Someone whose picture I can carry around in my helmet liner like in Guadalcanal Diary. I am in great need in that area. Write me a letter as if you were a girl. On second thought forget it. Just send me some 8 x 10 glossies of Debra Paget, Helen Westcott and Mitzi Gaynor…and sign them all in a different hand.
Missing in action—
Ben
That was the last letter and for some reason it moved me to tears. Ginnie “the Gush” Maitland was crying again. I placed the letters back on the table and dragged my sagging remains back to my own room. Or was it Ben’s room? I didn’t know where I was anymore—and I walked between the two rooms until I figured for sure that I had the right one. Then I fell upon my bed like a brick. Only it wasn’t my bed because it wasn’t my room. Goddamnit, it was Ben’s room, the light from the hallway coming in at a different angle, outlining a different table, a different bureau. It had a different feel, too, and a different smell. And it was a different time, a somewhere else. A nice place, a safe place. I cuddled into the pillow and snuggled the blankets around me, a mouse holing up for the night. And
I knew, even as I dropped a thousand feet straight down into the deepest of sleeps, I knew I’d be kept on by Annice. Ben Webber would be my luck.
I awoke. Almost noon. Shit. It took a year for me to figure out where I was and another year to figure out who. I walked into the shower like a zombie, and out like a mummy. I looked at the time. Twelve-forty P.M. Rehearsal was at one. I had twenty minutes.
I didn’t quite make it, arriving at one-ten, the rehearsal in full swing. Nobody looked at me or made any move that might indicate I was there at all. To prove that I was either there or not, I got out onto the floor between Weesa and Vanessa and squeezed my body into the number already in progress.
The piano and drums were going, really going—pow, bam, zocka-zocka-chung! It was like live-sacrifice time. And all twelve of us dancers were jumping and leaping as if auditioning for the last Ed Sullivan show of all time. I gave it everything I had, toe-stepping and hip-churning, pushing my pelvis in directions that only an out-of-its-mind compass could track, grinding my ass north and south, swiveling my tits and shoulders east and west, shaking one knee toward Haiti, knocking the other at Minneapolis.
“Ginnie, if you’re quite finished—” That was Her Eminence, Annice.
“Well—” I huffed, still dancing, unable to stop, Jumbo going downhill. “I was ten minutes late, so—”
“Please sit down,” she said, and so I applied the brakes and, wet and embarrassed, found a chair in which to be mortified. Everyone else was already seated, either laughing or trying not to. How long had they been watching me go on and on like a crippled toy? Oh, well, I thought, if nothing else my Caribbean carioca had cut the tension wide open; and whichever of us were getting the ax, at least we all would have had a good laugh.
Annice was great, what a lady. “Okay, chillun. Here’s the way it is. I can’t cut any of the boys because all I’ve got is four to begin with. As to the girls, eight is just too many. I’ve got to cut it down to no more than six. I knew last night who I was going to cut, but I just wanted to make sure. And, it has nothing to do with performance, because you’re all so great it’s impossible to choose—except on size. I’m cutting the two shortest girls. Cramped together on stage the shortest girls just seem to lose their lines. They seem squat when what I must have is elongation. You know who you are—Diane and Betsy—BUT, I want you both as extras, in case something goes wrong; in case someone gets hurt or sick. ALSO, you’ll both be on full salary, so what’s everybody bitching about?”
There was spontaneous applause, followed by hugging and crying, all of us so slick that we slid off each other like eels. There would be two more days of rehearsal before we opened. And Annice was right to have made the cuts. With more room to move around we were each of us ten times as good. It was a tight-knit group. Black dancers didn’t work all that much and I knew the kids needed the loot. Anyway, we all went crosstown to Confucius’ for a midafternoon Chinese bacchanal, all except Annice, who always stayed aloof from the troops and also had to rehearse her own numbers. After stuffing myself with a ton of Moo Goo Guy Kibbee, I waddled up to the apartment to tell Ben the good news. Excuse me—Don.
Two men were with him and he introduced them to me. Big Al Epstein was a mountain of a man with a smile on it; Arnie Felsen was a little feller with eyes the size of Rolls-Royce headlights. They all worked at 20th and none of them seemed too happy about it.
Anyway, as the conversation didn’t really concern me, I excused myself and plopped into a hot tub where, an hour later, the Chinese food surfaced in my throat and I thought I was drowning in the Yangtze. The walls were so thin that I couldn’t help but overhear what the boys were talking about. That, plus my being a congenital and skilled eavesdropper, made my bath both restful and informative.
Don’s point was that they were getting nowhere and had better face it. Also, the new man, Sam Gaynor, universally disliked, was making a strong pitch for Ben’s job. With the exception of someone named Bob Steinman, there was no one at 20th (beyond the three of them) worth passing the time of day with.
The conversation went on and on and the next thing I knew there was a knocking at the bathroom door. “Ginnie? Hey, you all right?”
I had fallen asleep in the tub and Don was worried. “Huh? Oh, yeah. I’m fine. Must’ve fallen asleep.”
“In the tub?”
“Don’t be silly. On the John.”
I dried off and came out, in my robe, of course. Big Al and Arnie had left, leaving Don alone with a bottle of Scotch that he was doing a good job on. He was obviously unhappy and I didn’t think it vital that I tell him how well things were breaking for me.
We talked and we talked, and he filled me in on all the people at 20th, and the politics. He was teetering, I could see it. Ready to crack. All that marvelous veneer, all that poise and assurance, it was as though it were peeling off as the night wore on, chipping away, flaking off—and it was hard to keep him on the subject. In the process, I learned more about Ben, about his job at the greeting-card shop, about how great a copywriter he was, how he was such a natural and a sure bet.
Cleverly I tried to find out about Ben’s love life, who he went with, the kind of girls he liked. I was very close to overdoing it when the phone call came. Bob Steinman was dead. Suicide or accident—they couldn’t tell at the moment. The funeral would be the next day, Jewish people not being big on letting the dead hang around too long.
Don didn’t say another word that night. He just sat in his chair and I sat alongside him, filling the air with all the gratuitous wisdom a seventeen-year-old runaway could muster. Finally, I got him to go to sleep, helping him into his room, easing him onto his bed and taking off his shoes. He was talking dopey. “You’ll like Bob Steinman. He’s a genuine war hero.” That scared me, so I never really went to sleep, just kind of dozed in his room while he lay on his bed, in the dark, all night. His eyes never closed.
When it started to get light I took a look in the kitchen to see if Don had really done some shopping. He had lots of junk food, exactly the kind of garbage I would buy if turned loose in the A & P. But there were eggs and coffee and juice, so I had breakfast already going when Don came out of his room.
He was all dressed up in a blue suit, white shirt, and maroon tie. “Wouldn’t have a hat on you, would you, kid?”
“Sorry.”
“Well—they’ll give me one at the temple.”
We ate quietly, most of the chatter supplied by myself. I was tired and not very good at it. Then Don became talkative, frighteningly so, his eyes all red, magnified by the tears he refused to release.
“Bob was my last friend. I can’t count on Al and Arnie. They go their own way: I don’t have many friends. Never did. Scare ’em away with my large mouth. Virginia, child, you are gazing upon a jigsaw piece to the wrong puzzle. I do not fit in.”
“I think you’re wrong.”
“Will you come with me?”
“To the funeral?”
“Got anything better to do?”
“I’ll have to get some clothes.”
“You’ve got a few hours. Come with me. Everyone’ll be there. Maybe you’ll be discovered.”
“Yeah. By the truant officer.”
We went to the funeral. It wasn’t much fun. Part of it was in English and part in Hebrew, but none of it made any sense. I mean, putting a man in a box and parading him around and invoking God and telling God that He knows best. As usual, I cried, as did everybody else. An American flag was on the coffin, and a lot of Army people had come. And when it was over, they folded the flag up very ceremoniously and gave it to a tiny woman who I guessed was Bob’s mother. She accepted it very graciously, as though knowing that if she watered it every day, her son might grow out of it. I didn’t know what she’d really do with it though. What do you do with a flag that’s given to you when your son dies? Do you hoist it on the Fourth of July? Do you hang it in the window on his birthday? Do you flop it across the piano as a decoration? Or do you put it away in your
attic? What if you have no attic? How about a drawer? Yes, you put it in a drawer. That’s what you’d do with your son if they’d let you keep him. You’d put him in the drawer. “Hello, nice to see you. Want to see my son? Oh, Morris?—which drawer do we keep Bobbie in?”
We didn’t go to the cemetery which evidently was so far out on Long Island that we’d have needed passports to get there. Big Al led me out of the temple. Arnie Felsen led Don. Jews seem to know what to do at funerals. I felt very lonely, very vacant. Somebody I almost knew was dead. And somebody I wanted desperately to know was almost there. It was all very mixed up. They put Don and me into a cab and sent us home, like we were deaf-mutes in Afghanistan.
Don was laughing. So I asked, “What’s so funny?”
“Arnie got his notice to report. He got it this morning.”
“Is that funny?”
“No. It’s hilarious. We put Bob away and send Arnie to take his place. What else could happen to fill out this grotesque day?”
What else could happen was in the mailbox when we got back. A letter from Ben.
Dear Don—
We buried Sergeant Walker Deyo today. On the post. Full military honors. He wasn’t much, not really. A fat little man who drank so much that he pissed 100 proof. He joined us on a little bivouac in the cold and he froze to death by morning. It was Luther Holdoffer who was responsible, but it’s the Army that creates the Luther Holdoffers. Tony will kill Holdoffer. It’s just a matter of time. Everyone knows it. And if he doesn’t then Johnny and I will. And if we don’t, then God will. Like I say, Sgt. Deyo wasn’t much. But yesterday he was alive, and today he isn’t…and as Arthur Miller wrote, “Attention must be paid.”
My best to you all. And please give a special hello to Bob for me. The knowledge that the Armed Forces can turn out men like him allows me to accept the facts of this very cold day without running AWOL to the moon.
There Should Have Been Castles Page 15