Solly said jokingly, “Suppose I don’t give you a pass. Those MPs at the gate will whip your head till their arms get weary.”
Worm said, “The lady got an automobile, man. Her and her girl friend ride outa here every night all by their lonesome. Wake up and live.”
They cut it short when the lady came back with the malteds and they stood there amidst the PX madness, sipping one right after another and talking about first one thing and then another, till it was time to close up the place. And Solly met her girl friend, Sally Anne Walters, who worked behind the tobacco counter. She was light brown-skinned with big gray eyes and dark brown hair flopping down around her roundish shoulders. She was slightly taller than Fannie Mae Branton. “Pleased to meet you, Corporal Saunders. Your partner talks about you so much, I almost feel like I already know you.” Her eyes were wide and overanxious. He supposed she was a pretty girl.
And standing outside of the Post Exchange, Bookworm popped the question again. Could they escort the ladies home?
Fannie Mae laughed. “You don’t discourage easily, Mr. Taylor. Indeed you don’t.” She turned to her girl friend. “What do you think, Sally Anne?” The whole thing was like it had been rehearsed.
Sally Anne said coyly, “I guess it’s all right.” But she did not disguise the eagerness in her voice nor in the side glance she gave Solly.
Bookworm said, “Sally and Solly—that’s a good combination.” And Solly could have killed him twice and once more for good measure.
Sally Anne laughed nervously. The four of them walked together to the area where Fannie Mae’s car was parked, it being understood and taken for granted that Solly was going along to town with them to make an even number. They were standing in the parking area near her car now, and Worm was laying it on thick and heavy.
“Come on, man!” Bookworm said. “Don’t be no chinch!
“I really wish I could make it, Joe. I mean I’m not kidding, I really do.” He felt his face grow warm with anger. “I have to get back to the company and type up a roster for battalion. It has to be down there by eight in the morning,” he lied. “You know I’d be glad to go if I could.”
“Well, girls, I did the best I know how,” Worm said, throwing up his arms. “Maybe you can make him change his mind.”
“I don’t think we ought to impose on Corporal Saunders. If he’s busy, he’s busy,” Fannie Mae said, staring at Solly now and making him feel warm and silly.
“You understand, don’t you?” he said. Without conviction.
They started to get into the car, and after a moment of embarrassed hesitation the Bookworm sat up front with Fannie Mae and Miss Walters sat in the back by herself. As they drove off both of the ladies said good-bye, and Bookworm said smugly, as if he were sliding into a nice warm bed and pulling the covers up around his neck, tucking himself in for the night, “See you back at the company, good kid. Don’t work too hard.”
Solly sat on his bunk back in the barracks and thought about Bookworm and Fannie Mae and Miss Walters, but mostly about Worm and Fannie Mae, and wondered what they were doing, and why in the hell should he care about what they were doing? His mind made all kinds of erotic images of Worm and Fannie Mae together. He didn’t have any list to make up for battalion headquarters or any other headquarters, and now he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t gone with Worm and the ladies. Maybe it was because he was afraid the MPs might catch him off the post without a pass and he wanted to keep a clean record in the Army and to do nothing to jeopardize his possibilities. Maybe it was because he knew that Worm would sit in front with Fannie Mae and he in the back with Miss Walters, and maybe he was just a little bit jealous of Private Taylor—Private Joseph (N.M.I.) Taylor—not even acting corporal yet. All right, goddammit, maybe he was jealous. He thought about writing a letter to Millie, but he didn’t feel like letter-writing tonight. She was probably at the Stage Door Canteen and at that very moment dancing in another soldier’s arms and listening to his line and smiling in his face and maybe even making a date with him just to build up both of their morales.
He was still lying fully dressed on his back on top of his bunk when Bookworm returned. He closed his eyes and he heard the Worm moving around, taking off his shoes and maybe his shirt. He was the noisiest bastard in Uncle Sam’s Army. Solly had an agonizing desire to move from the position he was in. He wanted to get up and pull off his clothes and get into bed, but what he didn’t want was conversation, which he knew he would certainly get from Bookworm if he gave the slightest hint of being alive. He didn’t feel like hearing about the great amorous exploits of one Private Joseph Bookworm Casanova Taylor.
“Hey, soldier, where the hell you been?” Solly heard Lanky’s big bare feet flip-flapping across the floor toward the Bookworm’s bunk.
“Where in the hell you think I been?”
He wished they would take their noise and carry it somewhere else.
“Come on, Worm, where was you? What you been up to?”
“I ain’t been tending to none of your business. That’s one sure thing.”
Solly opened his eyes slowly and sat up on his cot. “Why don’t you loud-mouth Bee-Essers let somebody sleep?”
“I knew good and well you were playing possum,” Bookworm said delightedly. “You should’ve gone with me, good kid. I mean, they’re fine as wine. You better believe me when I say so. Both of em—yours just as fine as mine is.”
“What do you mean, yours?” Solly demanded.
“You been out with some bitches, man? You all right, Bookworm.” Lanky sat down on the cot beside Solly.
“Two fine delicious dinners. Tried to get my cut-buddy here to go with me. He come talking about some damn company rooster or roster or whatever you call it. And boy that chick’s weak for old Solly. I know what I’m talking about.”
“Did you get any of the trim?” Lanky asked.
“That wouldn’t hardly be any of your business, I don’t think.”
“Let me smell your hand. I can tell, you rotten bastard. Find out whether you been playing stink finger.”
“You better get outa my face,” Bookworm said, but it was obvious Worm was having the time of his life, and it made Solly hot against his will.
Lanky tried to grab Worm by the hand, but he pulled away from him.
“Get away from me, you faggot.” Worm was getting on Solly’s nerves with the big broad grin on his wide-open face.
“Old Bookworm playing stink finger.”
There was an image in Solly’s mind of sweet-faced Fannie Mae and he felt his anger mounting. She had more on the ball than both of these soldiers put together and multiplied.
“They got an NAACP in town, and my old lady is head of the Youth Council,” Bookworm told Solly.
“Your old lady?” Solly couldn’t help reacting.
“Sure it’s his old lady,” Lanky said. “Any time you get that trim, that’s you. At least till another stud come along and beat your time.”
“My old lady is the president,” Bookworm repeated. “And I think Sally Anne is the secretary or some kinda shit like that. Miss Walters, I mean. I told them you’d be particularly interested in that kind of jive. Talking about some kinda Double-V for Victory, or something. That’s their slogan. She’s like you. She says she’s an anti-fascist. Down here and over there.”
“Damn all that jive, Worm. How was the pussy? Tell us about it. Ain’t no need of keeping it to yourself.”
Bookworm glanced at Solly and away again. He looked at Lanky and smiled sheepishly.
“I remember the first time me and my old lady got together,” Lanky said. “It was in Central Park on a hot summer night. She’d been putting me off and putting me off. Before then, every time I asked her for some, she’d giggle me out of it or tell me she was scared or some other kind of old antiquated bullshit. But that night I told her she was going to get up off it, or else she wouldn’t be seeing the kid no more.”
“That’s the way you have to put it down with some of these chicks,” a new
voice amened Lanky. Solly looked around him and saw that three other soldiers had joined the bull session. “You got to make ‘em put up or shut up,” Baker said. “If you don’t, some other stud will. Ain’t no goddamn lie.” Baker had a big face and big handsome head and a big thick neck on a medium-sized body. “They used to call me Bashful Bill Baker from Jamaica, but now they call me Lover Boy.”
Lanky Lincoln continued, “She commenced to crying and carrying on, and I just backed her up against one of them trees with a cool breeze blowing and pulled up her dress and hunched over my shoulders and got amongst her for a while—and ooh—goddamn—Got so good our legs commenced to tremble and our knees gave way and both of us fell to the ground without coming apart and I kept right on grinding!”
“Goddamn Old Rose!” a soldier shouted.
“Boy, they don’t never forget a thing like that!”
“You ain’t just a-bullshitting!”
Solly said, “Why don’t you guys grow up? You act like a bunch of fifteen-year-old kids. What have you got against women?”
Baker said, “I got one big stiff eight-inch jab against them. That’s what I got. And, man, they love it.”
Little Clint Moore was the real bookworm in the outfit. He looked up from the book he was reading and said seriously, “You fellers forget your mothers are women.”
Lincoln said, “Uh-uh! I didn’t know College Boy played the mothers.”
Clint stood up from his cot. He was about five feet five and slim and neat. He had a soft voice but when he spoke you heard him. “I have too much love and respect for women to play the mothers or the dozens or whatever you call it. And if any of you say anything disrespectful about my mother, I will pick up the first thing I can put my hand on and whale the hell out of you.”
The men were silent for a moment. Then Lincoln said, “Aw to hell with College Boy. He don’t know nothing about womenfolks. If you bust that cherry, Jim, you got it made for life. I know what I’m talking about.”
“You can go back there the longest day you live,” Baker said. “Don’t care if she gets married a million times, you’ll always be the best damn man. They never forget.”
“They never forget is right,” Bookworm agreed, like an expert on the subject. Casanova incognito. “Not if you lay it on ‘em like they like it.”
Solly wanted to say, “Did you lay it on Fannie Mae, Mr. Bookworm? Tell us all about it, Mr. Bullshit Artist. Give us all the sordid details.” But he didn’t say a word. Maybe he was afraid of what Bookworm’s answer might be, and what he might or might not do in reaction to Bookworm’s answer. He felt his entire face fill up with anger and anger spreading through his shoulders and building a fire in his stomach. What was it to him anyhow?
“I used to have a old lady,” Bookworm boasted. “She wasn’t no more than sixteen years old. Lived way up in the Bronx. Boy, I didn’t b’lieve in messing around in them days. I used to knock on her door and she would open the door, and when she saw me she used to grin he-he-he-he, and I’d say he-he-he-he-hell, let’s fuck. I’m a busy man, I ain’t got no time to mess around.”
The men were howling and Solly was burning. He could not help it.
After the laughing and the foot-stomping and the thigh-slapping died away, Solly looked around at the serious faces of some of the men, their eyes riveted on Bookworm’s face as if they were in Sunday School and Worm were the Sunday School teacher. Clint was reading his book again. Solly watched himself stand up and laugh out loud at Taylor. His own voice sounded strange to him. “You wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if you had one, Bookworm Taylor—you virgin.” He was staring down at the Bookworm now with an angry laugh on his lips and all over his face, and Worm looked up at him, his broad face wide open now in genuine amazement. He was speechless for a moment.
Solly said, “Why don’t you just lay off the PX lady? You know good and damn well you didn’t get anywhere near her. You didn’t even swap any spit with the lady.”
Worm answered weakly, “What’s the matter, good kid? You jealous or something?”
“Jealous?” Solly repeated. “Jealous of a pissy-assed virgin? I’ll bet you still got your cherry. I’ll give you ten to one—like taking a cherry from a baby virgin.” He looked around at the rest of the men. “Anybody wanna bet?”
The soldiers were laughing with Solly now and Worm was so surprised at the suddenness of the attack and especially coming from Solly Saunders, his bosom buddy, he couldn’t get himself together. All he could say was: “What’s the matter, good kid?”
“Just stop signifying about the PX lady, that’s all. Just because the lady is nice and friendly, don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.”
Worm said weakly, “I ain’t said nothing disrespectful about her.”
“And don’t, Mister Worm,” Solly said and turned and walked the length of the barracks to the orderly room. And wrote letters to Millie and Mama.
He finished the letters and looked up from them, and there was the image of Fannie Mae staring at him from across the desk. He closed his eyes and he overflowed with loneliness. All through his face, all through his throat, his chest, his stomach, his loins, the cheeks of his aching buttocks, he longed for Millie. He heard the men out in the barracks still talking about women and laughing and stomping their feet. He opened his eyes again and Fannie Mae was still there staring with her large black eyes and a soft smile on her curving mouth, and at that moment a crazy thing happened. He heard music. He listened for a wild ecstatic moment, and then he picked up his pen and started to write. Ever since he could remember he’d had this fierce obsession to write, to put something down on paper, and he had started many novels many poems ever since he was ten or eleven or twelve years old and all by himself in a lonesome one-room kitchenette in lonely New York City while his mother made up hotel beds all day long in mid-Manhattan. He’d been published in his high school and his college magazines. He had a drawer full of rejection slips. His face filling up again and all through his shoulders and he wrote. His fingers trembled and he wrote:
“This world is much too sad a place
For Fannie’s warm and happy smile.
The feeling she feels far too deep
For the endless heartless guile
Of this unfriendly world.”
He looked up at Fannie Mae. She was no longer smiling.
He wrote some more. He felt good when he was writing. He felt man. Whole. Complete. Fulfilled.
“The tenderness that fills her face
Is unprepared for the awful bile
Of this world’s great sophistication.
The true emotions of her heart
Are unprotected from the start—”
He stopped and tore the paper up into little pieces. What did he know about her anyhow? And what did he know about writing? It was just that he was lonely, that was all. A lonesome one in a strange and loud and lonely place. She was lovely and he was lonesome. That was all there was to it. He could make it in this Army if he weren’t so lonely most of the time. He had to get hold of himself. And maybe Worm was right. Maybe he took himself too seriously. He stayed wound up all the time. Maybe like Worm said—he should wear this world like a loose garment. He was too anxious about making good. Maybe he should—maybe he should go to the Post Exchange more often. And get himself some malteds. And a bit of recreation.
CHAPTER 5
Solly sat in the orderly room scanning OCS material. When Opportunity knocked, he intended to open the door. It was after midnight and he was getting sleepy and fighting sleep because he wanted to make sure Worm got back from town all right. Worm had escorted the PX lady home again and was out much later than he usually was. Solly heard him coming up the steps as noisily as usual. He knew Worm’s walk by now. Solly dropped the book and jumped to his feet as Worm came through the door like a clumsy weapons carrier.
“What the hell happened to you?” Worm was like an accident looking for a place to happen—his lips cut and swollen and bleeding
, his clothes torn and his necktie hanging down his back and his shirttail out all the way around. And he was hatless.
“You got a gun, Solly? You got a gun? I’m gonna kill me a sonofabitch tonight, if I have to hunt him all night long.”
Solly took Worm by the arm and tried to sit him down. “What’s the matter, soldier? What happened to you?”
He pulled away from Solly. “Never mind what happened. I just wanna get my hand on a gun and I’m going outa here and blow me a sonofabitch to hell!” His lips were quivering with anger. Tears streamed down his swollen face. He wiped his running nostrils with his shirt sleeves and the back of his trembling hand.
“Now wait a minute, Worm. Sit down and get yourself together.” He put his hands on Bookworm’s shoulders and tried to force him into the chair.
Worm pulled away from him again. “Ain’t no whole lotta sit down. I wanna kill me a sonofabitch tonight. I mean that thing!”
“All right already. So you’re going to kill you a sonofabitch. But just slow up a second and tell me what happened.” He took a first-aid kit from the table and a bottle of iodine. When the iodine kissed Worm’s broken lips he yelled bloody murder. “Now tell me what happened.”
“You my buddy, ain’t you, Solly?”
“Of course I’m your buddy.”
“All right then, help me get a gun from somewhere, cause I just got to kill him.”
“Kill who?” Maybe Worm ran into Fannie Mae’s boy friend. He looked like he’d been battling a two-and-a-half-ton truck.
His eyes spilling over, his nose leaking—”After I took Fannie Mae home tonight I went by the Busy Bee Bar and Grill and got me a couple of sociable drinks. There wasn’t a damn bit of disturbance in the Busy Bee at all, till them two cracker MPs come into the joint and started picking at the soldiers and pulling at the womenfolks. It’s a good thing Fannie Mae wan’t with me. I’da been a dead mother-lover if they’d started any stuff with her. So help me, I’da carried me a cracker away from here tonight just as sure as heaven’s happy. They come over to where I was leaning on the bar and says to me, ‘All right, boy, let’s get going.’ I says, ‘Uncle Sam ain’t got no boys in the Army.’ He says, ‘All right, don’t get smart.’ I says, ‘Ain’t nobody getting smart. You the one getting smart.’ One of them says, ‘Shut your goddamn mouth,’ and I says, ‘Why don’t you bastards leave me alone?’ That’s when they started pushing me around. Took me out to their jeep and drove me off to the quiet spot and beat the shit outa me. I hit one of them bastards in the stomach so hard my arm went in up to my elbow.”
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 8