Solly laughed at his G.W.B. “And you are not the Second Coming of Abraham Lincoln in John Brown’s body. Believe me when I say so.”
Samuels’s face was blood-red now with alcohol and anger which he tried to hide.
“You’ve been right about the whole goddamn thing. I admit it. You and your undemocratic cracker Army fighting the war for democracy and your Double-V for Victory. Every bit of it—all down the line. I admit it—”
Solly stared at Samuels and thought of Fannie Mae and his heart began to leap about and his body grew warm all over and a thick sweet taste was in his mouth, and he remembered her with all of him, and why in the hell didn’t she answer his cablegram?
“I’m going to miss you, you arrogant so-and-so. How am I going to do without you?”
“Much better—probably,” Solly answered absently. He thought sarcastically of Celia. “Much much better, I should think.” And I’m going to do much better with Miss Fannie Mae. Maybe she’s already married. Maybe she’s in love with the lucky bastard with the billion-dollar purple heart.
“Will you promise to do me a favor when you get back? Will you go to see my folks for me soon as you get back to the city?”
“If you say so, Captain Buddy Boy. After I make my trip to Georgia.”
“I’m going to give you their address right now. I want you to see them. I’ve mentioned you in my letters so many times, they know you by heart already.”
“If you say so, Captain Buddy Boy.” Any day now he would hear from her telling him she would wait for him.
“I do say so, you tough-hearted bastard, and I want you to go to see my wife and promise to give my two little boys a hug apiece for their lonesome bastard of a daddy.” His eyes were filling, his face warm and glowing and slowly changing from tan to red.
Solly said, “If you say so, Captain buddy boy.” He was a fool for sending the cablegram. She loved the purple-hearted bastard away back home in Ebbensville, teaching school with one another.
The captain said, “I do say so, and stop saying, ‘If you say so,’ with that bloody superior drunken smile on your bloody face. You’re my friend, aren’t you? Closest friend I have in this Godforsaken—”
He looked up into Samuels’s face, which was carrot-red and open-pored. “If you say so, Buddy Boy.”
Samuels raised his voice in anger. “You think I don’t know how you feel, goddammit? I’m a Jew. When I was ten and eleven and twelve years old, pretty little blond American blue-eyed Ango-Saxon Protestant boys and girls used to gang up on me and beat my skinny ass every day on the way from school—beat me up for something somebody’s supposed to have done to another poor Jew two thousand years ago.” He stared at Solly glassy-eyed and Solly hoped he wouldn’t cry. Solly was fresh out of handkerchiefs. “I know how you feel!” Samuels shouted. “I know how you feel goddammit!”
Solly said slowly and heatedly, “You don’t know shit! You know how I feel? You’re a white man. Don’t get carried away with that Florida tan. Only those who’ve paid the dues can know what it is to members of the Club.”
“I do know! I do know!”
“You’re a lying ass and a tinkling symbol,” Solly said. “And you’d better stop talking so loud or you will know precisely how it feels. They’ll mistake you for a colored man and throw you out of this high-class dump. And I won’t know you from Adam’s house cat.”
The bottle was two thirds empty and they were three sheets in the wind and their eyes were almost four fourths shut, and Samuels shook his head. “You’re a tough bloody bastard.”
Solly said, “And you’re a bloody phony boss-cocky, and you can’t take colored criticism. That’s what you are. And you want all the prerogatives of being white and want me to love and trust you like you’re colored. I’m your buddy as long as I say das right boss, and yassa boss. Well that’s the coldest shit in town!” He paused to catch his breath and then said, “I know one thing. You’d better call out to the Farm to the outfit like you had some sense and see what’s happening and let them know where we are and how to get a hold of us if they need to. This is Saturday night and—”
“See what I mean? Always on the frigging ball.” Samuels’s face was burning up, but he tried to hide his anger. “How’m going do withou’ you? You call ‘em Sarge Solly, and speak to Charge Quarters and tell him give him Celia’s number—and see if you can speak to Quiet Sergeant Larker—tell him keep things under control—”
Solly stood up and waved his fist at Samuels and laughed at him sardonically. “You’re a first-class frigging phony, you know that, don’t you? And you know I know it, don’t you? But you’re always in there pitching. That’s what I like about you.”
Samuels said, “Don’t you wave your fist in my face. You just shut your mouth and call the platoon.”
Solly said, “And don’t you raise your voice at me. You’re a peckerwood and you talk too bloody loud and when the chips are down you always show your color and you’re a phony. Look at you. A white man always turns cracker red when a black man criticizes him. You should see your face right now.”
“You just take your finger out your ass and make that phone call,” Samuels said.
Solly said, “Blow it out you ‘A’ bag!” And turned from the booth and went drunkenly and overcarefully toward the public telephone.
CHAPTER 4
We shouldn’t go into town tonight, he told himself. He knew they should not go to town. Deep in him Jimmy knew it, even as he showered and shaved and got GI sharp, like all the rest of the men were doing.
“Let’s stay at the Farm tonight,” he said as he stood near his bed on the second floor of the temporary barracks. He was adjusting his black necktie and Worm was sitting on the side of his cot brushing his shoes to a gloss he could see his wide face in. “Let’s take in the movie out here at the Farm.”
Worm looked up. “Who in the hell wanna see Up in Mabel’s Room? Let’s go into town and tear our ass. I wanna see what Maggie’s room looks like. And if she comes to the Cross tonight, I’m gon put the hard word on that chick. You better believe me when I say so.”
Stab after stab of nervousness in Jimmy’s stomach. Every man in the 25th platoon felt he had to go to town and particularly to the Southern Cross, since the man had put it off limits to them. Even though most of them were as uneasy as Jimmy they had to go. Jimmy understood they had to go. Because they were soldiers who had been in battle and had seen men die like flies and mosquitoes and cockroaches, had seen their best buddies give up the ghost before their eyes and in their arms. And they themselves had fought and bled and almost died. Every one of them were purple-hearted. Their lives were as cheap as the sand on the beaches where they died, so many times they died. They had to up the price. It was time. Yes, it was time.
“What makes the Cross so special?” Jimmy said belligerently. Next to Solly he was the highest-ranking non-com in the 25th platoon.
Worm stood up and stared at his gleaming shoes, then he looked at Jimmy. “Cause that’s where Maggie comes every Saturday night, and that’s where you promised to meet your chick.”
“We could call them and meet them somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere—I mean—anywhere.”
“Maggie ain’t got no phone, and ain’t nowhere else that jumps like the Southern Cross. Where? Where?”
There was nowhere like the Southern Cross for the 25th platoon.
Worm said, “The main reason we got to go is cause the man say we can’t go. Goddammit, this ain’t Mississippi.”
“We’ll be deliberately looking for trouble, and most probably we will find it.”
Most of the men were ready now and restless, and some of them had come over to where Jimmy and Worm were arguing. Jimmy Quiet Man Larker had the quietest strength in the 25th, and he could make his weight felt unobtrusively when he felt he was in the right. Tonight he was uncertain.
Worm said, “We got five jeeps requisitioned and waiting for us. What’s the
matter, you got shit in your blood since the man gave you them four stripes and made you the company-goddamn-clerk? Solly ain’t letting no grass grow under his feet. And he’s a master-goddamn-sergeant.”
Jimmy said quietly and fiercely, “That has nothing to do with anything, and you know good and well it doesn’t. It just doesn’t make any sense for us to go into town looking for trouble. It’s like begging the man to whip our heads.”
Worm said, “You going, or are you gon get left?”
Jimmy said, “You’re no braver than anybody else. But no matter how much we’re in the right, we cannot buck the Army of the United States of America.”
Worm said, “We got our passes. You gon pull rank and tear them up?”
Jimmy heard somebody mumble, “Chickenshit!”
And somebody else, “That’s the way it is with them educated ones.”
Worm said, “Are you with us or against us?”
Jimmy said, “Go to hell,” and reached for his cap.
They drove five jeeps into town together like a convoy, and they stopped briefly at a liquor store and their next stop was the Southern Cross.
When they reached the Cross, Scotty and Worm and Quiet Man sought out Dobbs and Miss Daphne Walker, the lady in charge. Quiet Man was the spokesman. They went into her tiny office. Jimmy told Dobbs and Miss Walker they should know that the Army had put the Cross off limits to Government Issue regardless of race, color, religion, or previous condition.
Dobbsy said quietly, “We read the orders.”
Scotty and Jimmy and Worm looked at each other and then to Dobbs and then to prim Miss Walker and back to Dobbs again.
She nodded her head. “We know all about it, boys.” She was middle-aged and soft-faced and her hair had been jet black once, but was sprinkled with salt and pepper now.
Jimmy said, “We just don’t want to make any trouble for you.” The other men were quiet.
Dobbs said almost in anger, “This is still our country, I hope. And this is our club, and we don’t give a tuppence about their orders. It’s entirely up to you, mytes. You’re the ones who’ll suffer the consequences, if there be any.”
They looked to Miss Walker. There was a subtle firmness in her dark blue eyes, in the soft but settled contours of her middle-aged middle-class face. She said quietly, “We’re glad to have you. We feel at home with you, and we hope you feel at home with us. All of you—”
Jimmy persisted. “There may be trouble from the MPs.” He almost wished that they would turn them out.
Dobbs said proudly, “Only the P.M.s can give us trouble. We’re not answerable to your bloody MPs. Excuse me, Daphne,” he said to Miss Walker. He turned to Jimmy and Scotty again. “If they come here looking for a rough up, we’ll give ‘em a bloody go! Excuse my language, Daphne.”
They were standing in the door to the office now, which was little larger than a phone booth. The piano playing pretty music and the shuffling sound of dancing feet. Daphne Walker smiled with all her built-in poise and her quiet dignity. “This is your home when you come into town, and we hope you know we mean it from the bottom of our hearts. Nothing your Military Police or your headquarters can do or say will change our opinion about the colored Yankees.” The smile no longer on her face. “You have lived among us and we know who you are, and no amount of propaganda can change the living truth.”
Jimmy heard the stubborn anger in her voice. He said thanks, and she went back into her little office, and as they went across the floor between the dancers, Dobbsy said, “She’s aces, mytes, and she’s full quid all the way.” And he said, “How’s about a little alleviation?” And they went with him to the men’s room and he took a bottle from his hip pocket, and each of them took a long hard swallow down to their bellies and were properly alleviated.
Dobbsy said, “Up the Republic!”
Scotty said, “Up your bloody kilts!”
Quiet Man laughed and coughed and almost strangled and loosened up a tuppence worth.
Worm said, “Man, you worry too damn much. Wear it like a loose damn garment.”
They went back inside where the party was going full swing now, with the big fellow, Danny, goosing the piano with his big fat fingers, playing loud and singing louder an old Australian folk song, and everybody dancing and the 25th Amphibs all over the place having a natural ball, as were a few other colored Yanks from out at the Farm. Toward midnight the place was jammed, the biggest crowd the Southern Cross had ever known. Diggers and Negro Yankees and women women everywhere. Blondes, brunettes, redheads, and in-betweens. All sizes and descriptions. Healthy ones, streamlined ones, stacked-up and built like there were no wartime shortages. The dancing had to be close-quartered, there was no room for rug-cutting and jitterbugging or Lindy-hopping. And yet somehow Worm, as usual, and his girl friend, Maggie, had themselves a little private space off in a corner of the room and were bugging like tomorrow was the end of it. She was sandy-haired and freckled-faced and swivel-hipped and very Australian, but she moved like Savoy Ballroom was her natural habitat.
Jimmy danced with one quiet soft-faced girl most of the night, and he was warm and comfortable with her. They’d known each other since his first visit to the Cross and he had been to her house, met her parents. They had been a few places together. Back home he had always been one of the shyest guys in the neighborhood. The great war had relaxed him. The girls had always thought him cute.
Debby looked up into his face, and he smiled for her, but his eyes did not cooperate. She asked him, “What’s the matter?”
He said, “Nothing. I’m having myself a ball.”
She said, “You’re so moody tonight. You seem a million miles away.”
His hand pressed against the small of her back and he held her closer as they danced, and he laughed and said, “You’re just imagining things.” The hornets buzzing in his stomach. He thought, we shouldn’t have come here tonight. We’re asking for it. He’d always been the kind of guy who would go ten blocks out of the way to avoid a fight, if a fight could be avoided. Maybe we have to settle these kind of things after the war is over. Maybe Solly and Worm are dead wrong with their Double-V for Victory. Maybe maybe maybe maybe—Where in the hell was Solly Saunders?
Debby said anxiously, “You’re not happy tonight. Did I do something to make you angry?”
He laughed and shook his head at her.
Worm and Dobbs and Scotty made frequent trips to the men’s room and they had almost up-ended a bottle of plonk and a fifth of brandy.
Danny was playing Yankee boogie-woogie with an Australian beat, and the floor was crammed with dancers dancing, and in the middle of the floor Jimmy could actually feel the floor give way time and again, straining beneath the weight of the dancers. Laughing, talking, dancing, the joint was literally leaping. And over in a corner the inevitable group of diggers harmonizing to themselves, competing with Danny’s boogie-woogie, along with a couple of drunken Amphibs. Eternally.
“Bless ‘em all.
Bless ‘em all.
Sergeants, Captains
And all . . .”
Off key, on key, who gave a bloody damn, the party went on and on and on till two p.m., when two carloads of MPs arrived, and then the picnic started. Dobbsy met them at the door.
He told the MP sergeant, “There must be some mistake, mytes.”
The MPs shoved and pushed their way into the place already jammed and made it to the other side of the room toward the piano, shoving and pushing and being shoved and pushed in return. Everything was noisily quiet excepting Danny, who kept right on “Waltzing Matilda” loud and strong.
The MP sergeant said, “Will you kindly stop playing for a couple of minutes, mate?”
Danny played louder and louder and louder.
The MP standing next to the sergeant waved his gun at Danny. “Will you knock it off, feller? Or do we have to—?”
Danny was sweating bullets and the skin pulled tight over the ridges of his wide gleaming forehead. He st
opped playing “Waltzing Matilda” and moved softly and swiftly into “Danny Boy.”
“Oh Danny boy,
The pipe, the pipes are calling . . .”
The perspiration poured from him now, his shirt soaked at the armpits. The women and diggers began to applaud, as did most of the colored Yankees.
The MP sergeant was a powerfully chested man of medium height with a face like a belligerent bulldog, and his voice was like Jimmy knew it wouldn’t be—a squeaky clarinet in need of tuning.
“All right—all right—that’s enough of that.”
Dobbsy came up to the sergeant. “Your bloody oath,” he said quietly. “We’ve had enough of you already, and we’d like for you to leave—now!”
“From glen to glen
And round the mountain side . . .”
The Yankee sergeant stared at the little sawed-off Australian sergeant with his bowlegs bowing beneath his khaki shorts. He looked around at a hundred other angry and excited faces and back to Dobbsy.
“We have nothing against you Aussie people,” he squeaked. “It’s just that—I mean you know how it is. We have nothing against your Southern Cross. You’re perfectly free to run it anyway you see fit. After all, it’s your country, and—”
Dobbsy said, “Your bloody oath!”
The MP sergeant turned from Dobbsy. “All right—all right, all you GIs line up against the other wall. You’re off limits every last one of you. Line up now and take out your passes. We want your names and serial numbers.” Every MP had drawn his gun now.
Some of the colored Government Issue had slipped out of the back door, out of side windows, out into the alley, and taken off for points unknown. Some of them gave the MPs a wide berth, but most of them crowded in on the MPs along with the diggers. The MPs found themselves surrounded and jammed too close together for anybody’s comfort. Their faces dripped with perspiration. Hypersensitive fellows, Jimmy thought anxiously, as he stood at the inner edge of the crowd. And some of them scared and dangerous with their courageous guns and nightsticks. You can’t buck the Army of the United States, he had known you couldn’t buck them. And they shouldn’t have come to the Cross so soon after the order was handed down. The Army had to back it up and you couldn’t buck the Army. He should have torn up the passes. Debby stood behind him, holding one of his hands and squeezing it and relaxing and squeezing and relaxing to the rhythm of her breathing, which came quick and short like she had been running up a hill. He felt her breathing on his neck. He was hemmed in by the other soldiers and diggers and the women, and he couldn’t have lined up against the wall, even if he had wanted to obey the sergeant’s orders. He couldn’t say, “Make room, fellows, I want to line up against the wall like the sergeant says we should.” He wished he could say something to this sergeant. Tell him these men meant no harm. The only thing they meant was to be men as all men must mean to be and were always meant to be. Debby squeezed his hand and he thought about home and wished he were home even if he had to be a little boy again, with his mother squeezing his hand and telling him to be careful. And when he was three and four years old, and his mother went to work to help his father make ends meet, and she would leave him with the older children, he used to say, “Mommy say everbody be cafful for me.” And the older kids would laugh at him. But he was here and now and he was a man and Debby was behind him and the men were behind him and he was a man, and he should take charge here and now, and he wished he could find the words to tell this sergeant what it was all about, but as he stared into the sergeant’s face, he knew there were no such words available. It was as if they came from opposite sides of the world and spoke different languages. He could not bridge the gap.
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 50