by Sandra Kring
Jimmy starts swinging that sword all over the place like it’s a baseball bat and screaming, “Fuckers! Motherfuckers!” He whacks the lamp with his rifle and it crashes off the nightstand, the bulb and the lamp both busting up in little pieces that skip across the floor. Jimmy leaps off the bed, and he takes the sword like it is one of them bayonets, and he starts stabbing at chunks of the lamp. He is cussing worse than a sailor.
Ma and Dad come thumping up the stairs and Ma is yelling, “What’s going on? Jimmy? Earl? What’s going on here?”
When Ma sees the broken glass and the little red splotches left on the floor from the bottom of Jimmy’s feet, her hands lift up into the air, then slap down to her legs.
Jimmy is standing on the bed again, crouched up against the wall, holding that wood sword like it’s a rifle and he’s looking for someone to pow. His eyes, they is shining like glass, and his face is all sweaty. Jimmy aims his rifle at Ma and screams, “Get back! Get back! You come any closer and I’ll blow your fucking head off!” Ma lets out a little scream, and Dad takes Ma by the shoulders and steers her into the hall.
“Jimmy?” Dad holds up his hands. “Jimmy, it’s Dad. It’s okay, son. You’re home now. Your ma’s here. I’m here. Earl’s here.” Dad talks real soft as he walks closer to where Jimmy is, but Jimmy, he can’t seem to hear him.
Dad tells me to stay back, but I don’t. I ain’t scared of Jimmy, and he ain’t really scared of me. He’s just scared of Japs. When Jimmy aims his sword at Dad, Dad stops, but I don’t. I go to Jimmy and I say to him, loud, “It’s me. Earwig. Come on, Jimmy. Lay down and I’ll show you my comic books. Them Japs are gone. You killed every last one of ’em.” It takes a little bit, but Jimmy, he lets me take his arm and he lays down real good. He don’t look at my comic book, though. He’s sicker than a poisoned pup, so he just falls back to sleep.
Ma, she goes downstairs and fetches the broom and dustpan. “Go to bed, Earl,” she says as she sweeps and cries, but I tell her no. “I’m a man now, Ma, and I can make my own decisions, and I’m gonna stay right here by Jimmy.”
Dad checks on Jimmy before he leaves for the garage in the morning. He pats my shoulder and tells me I’m taking good care of my brother. Dad looks at Jimmy, who’s still asleep, and he takes a slow, deep breath ’til his belly blows up, then shrinks like a flat tire. “Dad,” I ask. “Has Jimmy gone buggy and falled off his rocker?”
“No, son. He’s just having some trouble putting it all behind him.”
“Funny, ain’t it, Dad, how people can still hurt from things that is gone now, like Japs and broked-off arms? And funny, ain’t it, how them pictures stay in our heads for a long, long time? It was like that after I cut Mrs. Pritchard’s leg. Long after that cut of hers was healed up, I could still see it in my head, all open and bloody.”
“Yes, son, that’s how it is when people get a bad shock.”
“Dad? How does a guy get rid of that bad shock in his head and get his war sorrows out, anyway?”
“I don’t know, son,” Dad says. “It just takes time, I guess.”
When John comes home, Jimmy and Floyd and me go to meet him. His family comes too, and so do some of their friends. That whole bus station is filled up, ’cause John ain’t the only GI coming home from Europe. They got signs to hold up when the bus pulls in, welcoming the soldiers home and saying they is heroes ’cause they winned the war. I feel kinda bad when I see them signs, ’cause Jimmy and Floyd, they didn’t have no signs.
One thing I’m learning quick is that people don’t think the soldiers who lost the battle in Bataan are that great. It’s like at baseball games. Nobody cheers when the loser team walks off the field. It ain’t fair is what I think. Jimmy and Floyd, they was as brave as John, and they suffered more, seems to me. Still, nobody thinks they’re heroes.
Jimmy and Floyd hug John and he tells ’em that they look like shit. Floyd says, “You don’t look so great yourself, Pissfinger.” John, he’s gotta go home and eat ’til he’s stuffed and visit with relations, but that night he comes into the Ten Pin and gets drunk with Floyd and Jimmy. Mary, she comes along around closing time without being called now, and she hangs by the counter with Eva Leigh. Even from my little window, I can see Mary’s got sorrows.
After them lanes are closed up, I go by Eva Leigh and Mary. Mary’s watching Floyd over there at the bar, and she ain’t got even one smile or laugh in her. “I hardly know him anymore,” she says. “He’s not the same. He hardly talks at all and he rarely sleeps. It’s like he’s a bundle of nerves.”
I tell her that Jimmy ain’t the same either. “But he’s still Jimmy,” I say. “I know it when I hug him. He’s just Jimmy with sorrows. When he gets them sorrows out, then he’ll be more like the Jimmy he was before the war. Floyd too.”
Mary, she smiles all sad-like and she says, “How’d you get so smart, Earl?” and I tell her I don’t know.
Then Mary, she talks about the same thing Dad talked about at breakfast. How that army, it ain’t gonna help Jimmy and Floyd. “They’re trying to get out of paying them benefits,” she says, “so they’re saying that their hands are tied because the Japanese didn’t keep any records on their prisoners.”
“That’s crazy,” Eva Leigh says. “They know they were there because the Rangers rescued them there. How can they do this?”
Mary shakes her head. “I don’t know, but they are. And the VA hospitals aren’t going to help them either. They’re saying they have no idea how to treat these jungle diseases, and they don’t know how to help them with the shell shock either.” Mary sighs. “They just don’t want to help them because they’re afraid they’ll be paying them benefits for the rest of their lives. Floyd and Jimmy and the rest, they did their best for their country, but now their country isn’t going to do the best for them. It’s just so unfair.”
“I don’t like the government no more,” I say. “First they was mean to that Red Lawson guy, then they telled Jimmy and the rest of the Janesville ninety-nine that they had better shut their mouths about what happened over there, ’cause if they don’t, then that Red Lawson is gonna get the court martial and go to jail. They tell ’em to shut up, and they tell ’em they ain’t helping ’em. No, it sure ain’t fair.”
Eva shakes her head. “How can they do that?”
Mary shrugs. “It’s not like any of them are talking about what happened over there anyway. Floyd won’t say a word, even when I ask him. Is Jimmy talking about what happened, Earl?”
“No, he ain’t, but I ain’t asked him either, ’cause I don’t want Jimmy to get into trouble and go to jail.”
Eva Leigh is sticking bowling shoes in the little cubbyholes. “That must be what hurts the most. They served longer than anyone, they suffered in those prison camps, and what do they get to compensate for their suffering? Not even acknowledgment for what they’ve been through. Not even from their own country.”
Them guys, they are calling me to come have a beer with ’em. I am old enough to drink beer in the Ten Pin now, but I don’t drink much ’cause I still think beer tastes like horse piss. Still, I go over there and take the glass Ruby Leigh hands me.
Jimmy, he slings his arm around my shoulder. “What do you think of this guy here, huh? A job. Money in the bank. He went and grew up on us while we were gone, boys, and turned into a mighty fine man.” The guys, they lift up their beers to give me a cheer. I ain’t feeling so cheery, though, and underneath their drunk, I don’t think they is feeling cheery either.
Jimmy guzzles, burps, then lifts his glass again. “And here’s one for our comrade, Louie.” They all cheer and drain their glasses and tell Ruby Leigh to fill ’em up again.
We get to talking about Louie then, and before we know it, we is laughing. “Hey, Jimmy,” I say, “remember when Louie got shockered on Floyd’s electric fence when he pissed on it when you told him to?”
Floyd laughs. “No shit. What a gullible idiot.”
“Yeah,” John says, “the poor, pathe
tic bastard.” John snorts a bit when he laughs, then he says, “Hey, do you suppose Louie really hosed that girl from Janesville, like he said he did?” Everybody laughs, ’cept John. “No, really. I wonder. He said he screwed her, but who to hell knows. Christ, I hope he did. Wouldn’t that be the shits, getting killed before you even got any?”
“He sure didn’t have any luck with the dames,” Floyd says with a laugh. “Remember, Pissfinger, when you gave him a hard time about running with Preacher Michaels’s daughter? The ugly, fat one?”
“Yeah,” Jimmy says, and he starts yucking it up good. “Pissfinger, you told him she looked like a goddamn pig, so what does the clown do? He swipes one of the biggest sows on Larks’ farm, puts a scarf around its head, props it right up on the front seat of his car, and cruises up and down Main Street.”
Jimmy starts to laughing so hard he spits his beer out and Ruby Leigh’s gotta sponge off her titties. “Yeah. You said to him, ‘Jesus, Louie, I’m sorry I poked fun of your new girl. Seeing her in the daylight like this, I can see she ain’t half as ugly as I first thought she was.’ ”
We laugh ’til we ain’t got no more laughs left, then after we quiet down, Jimmy says, “I can’t believe he’s gone.” And then Floyd, he says the damnedest thing. He says, “Maybe he’s the lucky one.”
That night, Jimmy gets them nightmares again. When I get in Jimmy’s room, he’s crying like a titsy baby, holding his side ’cause it hurts. He’s got scars there, so I think maybe they do hurt. I go downstairs to the bathroom, and I get the Mercurochrome, and I bring it back upstairs. I paint Jimmy’s side and back good with that red shit, and Jimmy, he just rocks back and forth while I do this.
I cover Jimmy up when I’m done, and he falls back to sleep. I go downstairs to put the Mercurochrome back in the medicine cabinet, and Ma comes to the door, squinting, on accounta the bathroom light is bright.
“Earl, what are you doing with the Mercurochrome?”
“I was putting it on Jimmy’s marks, ’cause he was hurting.”
“Oh, Earl, those wounds don’t hurt anymore. They’re all healed now.”
I guess Ma don’t know a thing about places hurting long after they look all healed up.
Ma, she don’t want Dad to bitch at Jimmy, but he does anyway, though he ain’t mean when he does it.
“Don’t you think it’s time you come back to work, Jimmy?” Jimmy, he don’t even lift his head up and look at Dad, and I think it’s ’cause his head is pounding from last night’s beers.
“Oh, Hank, I think Jimmy needs more time. He’s still weak.”
Dad, he ignores Ma and says to Jimmy, “Son, I know you’ve been through hell and back, but the war is over, and somehow you have to get back to living. This getting drunk every night isn’t helping either. You need to get back to work. You need to have a reason to get up in the morning.”
Jimmy, he drops his fork onto his plate. He looks mad and sad at the same time, but he don’t say a thing.
“Tomorrow morning, Jimmy, you come back to work.”
Without saying no more, Dad gets up and leaves for the Skelly, and Ma hurries back to the stove to get Jimmy some more scrambled eggs that Jimmy don’t eat.
Chapter 21
When Jimmy was gone, it felt like the whole house, walls and floors and everything, was holding its breath waiting for him to come back. Now he’s home, and it feels like the house is still holding its breath.
Jimmy goes back to work, but he still goes to the Ten Pin every night to get drunk. He drags me along with him on nights I ain’t gotta work, and I watch out for him and Floyd and help ’em both get home. Mary, she don’t come to fetch Floyd no more, ’cause she moved back home with her folks and her sisters. She says she ain’t coming back ’til Floyd stops getting drunk every night.
“I think Floyd gets mean to her when he’s drinking,” Eva Leigh says to me real quiet-like one night at the Ten Pin.
“Floyd, he wouldn’t go hitting on no girl.”
“I don’t think he hits her either, but I think he says mean things. And I know he’s been breaking things around the house.”
I look across the place at Floyd, who is singing with Jimmy and the jukebox, and I pick at my pants.
That same night, that Bottoms Conner, he starts pestering Eva Leigh. He don’t grab her arm or call her bad names like he done to Ruby Leigh that time, but he keeps hanging around her counter and trying to make her laugh at his jokes about peckers and hosing. When closing time comes, I tell Jimmy I gotta walk Eva Leigh home in case that Bottoms tries following her. “Ruby Leigh is going home with that GI over there, and I don’t want Eva Leigh walking home by herself,” I say. Jimmy thumps me on the back and he says, “You’re a good man, Earwig.” Jimmy says he’ll walk home with me and Eva Leigh too, even though he’s so drunk I don’t know if he’s gonna be able to walk at all.
Floyd’s daddy comes to give Floyd a lift home. He asks us if we want a ride, but Jimmy says he thinks he could use some fresh air. Floyd’s skinny dad has the damnedest time getting Floyd to the car, so I give him a hand. Floyd’s dad looks sad. Real sad.
Jimmy, he is wobbly, but he can still walk if I let him lean into me now and then. Outside, it feels warm for winter, them snowflakes falling softer than a whisper. There ain’t a noise anywhere except the soft squishing sounds of snow under our shoes.
“Why don’t you boys come up for coffee? It looks like somebody here could use some.”
“You got cocoa?” I ask, after Eva pays the sitter-girl and she leaves, and Eva Leigh says she does.
Jimmy falls down on Eva Leigh’s wored-out chair and lights a cigarette. He’s singing a bit of “Chattanooga Choo Choo.”
Eva Leigh, she gives Jimmy a cup of coffee. It’s made from old grounds, she tells him, and Jimmy says, “After what I drank in the camps, this will taste like heaven to me.”
“What did you drink in the camps, Jimmy?” I ask, ’cause I think that’s something maybe Jimmy can talk about without getting slammed in the clink. Jimmy’s hand starts shaking, and Eva Leigh takes his cup from him so he don’t get burned.
“Jimmy,” I say. “I’m sorry I asked. I know you ain’t suppose to be talking about them camps. I shouldn’t a asked you nothing.”
“It’s okay, Earl,” Eva says. “It’s not like Jimmy has to be afraid of you or me repeating anything he says.” And I tell her no, sirree, he ain’t gotta worry about that, ’cause we’re both real good at keeping secrets.
Eva, she sits down on the sofa by me. Her eyes is all soft as they look at Jimmy.
Jimmy, he pulls out a cigarette, but when he goes to light it, his hands are shaking so bad that he can’t strike the match. Eva leans over, and she takes the Ten Pin book of matches from him and lights it.
“Strange how that scared feeling stays with you long after the danger’s gone,” Eva Leigh says. Jimmy looks up at her and his eyes are red from Schlitz. He stares at Eva for a long time, right in her eyes. And then those drunken eyes, which ain’t quite so sunken and raccooned anymore, they get shiny like there is tears rising up somewhere behind ’em.
“Dad says to try to get back here, but I don’t know how,” he says.
Eva Leigh, she’s got her hands cupped around Jimmy’s coffee mug. “I think you just put one foot in front of the other, Jimmy. You go through your days, scared or not, the best you can. That fear, it’s like a guard dog. It’s been on guard so long that it doesn’t know how to not be anymore. So if you sit still and wait for that fear to settle down, you’re going to be waiting your whole life. But if you keep walking through your days, doing the best you can, breathing when you forget to, and reminding yourself that things are different now, then in time that fear starts to settle down. It’s simple, but it isn’t easy.” Eva Leigh hands his coffee cup back to him.
Jimmy nods and sips his coffee. Nobody says nothing.
Before we leave, Eva Leigh rubs the side of Jimmy’s arm a little. She don’t say nothing, but she smiles witho
ut showing her teeth, and Jimmy does the same.
On the way home, it’s still snowing. Them teeny flakes looking almost like streaks of rain under the streetlights. Jimmy, he scoops up a handful of snow from the bank along the sidewalk and, without saying nothing, he throws it at me. That snowball crushes against my coat and falls in clumps. So I get snow and cup it into a snowball too, and I throw it back. Before you know it, me and Jimmy is running down that sidewalk throwing snowballs at each other. Jumping over the banks and ducking behind parked cars, and laughing and cussing and having a real good time.
Chapter 22
Well, someone sure looks spiffy tonight,” Ma says when Jimmy comes to the supper table wearing Old Spice and his nice blue shirt. “You going somewhere special?”
Jimmy pulls out his chair and sits down. He don’t even wait for Dad to sit down before he starts spearing them chicken pieces, looking for a thigh. “What? Can’t a guy look decent when he goes to the Ten Pin with his brother?” he says. One of Ma’s eyebrows lifts up as she looks at Dad, but she don’t say nothing.
Jimmy and me walk to the Ten Pin. Jimmy says the walking, even that little ways, is helping his legs get stronger. We walk with our hands stuffed in our pockets and our chins tipped down into our collars ’cause the wind is whipping.
“How long have you known Eva?” Jimmy asks me.
“Long time, I guess.”
“I remember Luke Leigh,” Jimmy says. “A real hotheaded, arrogant son of a bitch. Never could stand him. He was mean to her, huh?”
“He sure was. She used to come into the store all banged up.”
“I wonder why she didn’t leave him and go back home?”