This boy was Airborne, 101st, Screaming Eagles, wounded at Bastogne. He wore his jump wings, his CIB, his campaign ribbons. His wound had healed, except that he still used a cane to walk.
“Can you dance, Mr. Paratroop?” she said.
Bare-legged, blue dress, tiny white polka dots, red high-heeled shoes.
“Sure can,” the boy had said and leaned the cane against a chair. “Cane’s mostly just for meeting girls.”
The band played “Sentimental Journey,” she sang softly to him, “ . . . gonna set my heart at ease . . .”
“Are you in any pain?” she said softly.
“No. Just a little stiff now, another couple months I’ll be fine.”
He was a slim kid, with smooth black hair combed back, and nice even features.
“Where’d you get wounded?” she said, moving her hips against his.
“Bastogne. Last winter.”
“Nuts?” she said.
The boy laughed.
“General McAuliff? They tell me he said that. I didn’t hear him.”
“Was it a bad wound, Mr. Paratroop?”
“Depends,” he said, “what you mean by bad. It hurt like hell. But it got me out of there.”
“Oh God,” she said. “I’d have been so scared.”
“I was,” he said.
“But you did it.”
“I guess I had to,” he said.
“That’s so brave.”
“No braver than anyone else,” he said.
The music changed. “Kiss me once, and kiss me twice, then kiss me once again. . . .”
“You going home to anyone, Mr. Paratroop?”
“Not really,” he said. “My parents, I guess.”
“No sweetheart?”
“No.”
“Well, maybe, for now, anyway, that will be me,” she said.
When the club closed they walked back to her apartment.
“Do you like scotch?” she said.
“I like pretty much everything,” he said.
She put out Vat 69 and ice and put the soda siphon beside it on the coffee table. He made her a drink and one for himself. She sat on the couch beside him.
“What did you do before the war?” she said.
“I was in college.”
“Did you finish?”
“No. I’ll probably go back when I get out.”
She had her legs crossed. Her bare legs were white and smooth. She pressed her thigh against his.
“Have you ever been able to talk about it?” she said.
“The war?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we talk about it some,” he said. “You know, me and the other boys.”
“But then you have to pretend about it,” she said. “Have you ever had the chance to really talk about it, all of it, no need for pretense.”
“I guess not.”
“It’s hard for men,” she said. “To talk about feelings.”
She was pressing close to him. He could smell her perfume. He put his arm around her. She put her hand on his thigh.
“Has it been a long time?” she said softly.
She rubbed his thigh gently.
“Long time?” he said.
“Since you’ve made love.”
He laughed.
“Mademoiselle from Armentiers,” he sang. “Parlez vous?”
She laughed too.
“I’ll bet there wasn’t much conversation,” she said.
“Not much more than combien,” he said.
“Have you ever made love with a woman who actually cared about you?” she said.
“Not yet.”
“Well,” she said, “then it’s time.”
She pressed her lips hard against his and opened her mouth.
THEY WERE TOGETHER every night. He was not inept. He’d learned from French professionals. But he insisted that she teach him, and she did show nuance and invention to him. At the most intimate of moments she urged him to let go, to talk about the war, about his wound, about himself.
“Let it all come out,” she said, “let it go.”
He did his best. He wasn’t sure he had that much to say. He told her all the things he could think of.
“Everything,” she would moan, “everything.”
“Carole,” he would say, “that is everything.”
She would shake her head and kiss him and whisper that a woman knew. And she knew. There was more. One night he told her he had to report back.
“Did you know I was married?” she said.
“No. Where’s your husband?”
“Naval Hospital,” she said. “He was wounded in Guadalcanal.”
“Marine?”
“Yes.”
“So I guess that means that we’ll be saying goodbye to each other,” he said.
“No,” she said.
He looked at her without saying anything.
“I’ll go with you,” she said.
“What about your husband?”
“It was a two-week romance, you know, boys going off to war, maybe they won’t come back.”
“How bad is he shot up?”
“Bad. They’re not sure about him.”
“And you want to divorce him?”
“Yes. I’ll divorce him and go with you.”
“I’m not ready to get married,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll go with you. I love my Little Mr. Jump.”
“What will you tell your husband?”
“Something,” she said.
Had it happened that way? Burke no longer knew. Fact and anguish had blended so fully and for so long that whatever was factual, this, for Burke, was the truth.
16.
JULIUS ROACH sat in the den of his penthouse with Central Park behind him through the picture window. His forearms rested on his thighs. He turned a brandy snifter slowly in his big soft hands.
“I’m not blaming you,” he said to Burke. “I hired you. You did what you thought needed to be done.”
Sitting opposite, on the leather couch, Burke waited without speaking. He too had a brandy snifter. It sat on the end table next to him.
“And there won’t be any police trouble. Frank and I have already seen to that.”
Burke waited.
“But I’ve known Frank Boucicault for a long time,” Julius said.
He stopped for a moment and sipped his brandy.
“God, that’s good,” he said. “Money can buy you a lot.”
“I hear,” Burke said.
“Frank and I go way back,” Julius said. “And, damn it, Burke, I can’t have some guy working for me shooting up some guys working for Frank.”
“Because?”
“Because business doesn’t work that way.”
“Which means?”
“Which means I’m going to have to let you go.”
“Lauren?”
“Frank has promised to control his son.”
“Why didn’t he do that a year ago? Save everybody a lot of trouble.”
Julius smiled and swirled his brandy, watching the liquid move in the glass.
“You don’t have children, Mr. Burke?”
“No.”
Julius nodded.
“Children are difficult, Mr. Burke, and it is often easier, except in extremis, to give them their head.”
“But now it’s extremis?”
“Yes,” Julius said. “I will give you two weeks’ pay, and I have put in a word for you with a number of people I know who might wish to employ you.”
“Thanks,” Burke said.
Julius stood. Holding the brandy in his left hand, he put out his right.
“There’s no animosity,” he said. “You did a good job, but circumstances . . .” He shrugged.
Burke didn’t stand.
“One more thing,” Burke said.
“Which is?”
“We need Lauren in here to let her know what’s going on.”
“I�
�ll inform her,” Julius said.
Burke shook his head.
“She and I need to say goodbye,” he said.
“You may write her a letter,” Julius said.
Burke shook his head.
“I can have you removed,” Julius said.
Burke sat motionless on the couch. His expression didn’t change. Julius looked at him for a time.
“But not easily,” Julius said finally.
He went to his desk and picked up the phone and dialed. He spoke into the phone briefly and hung up. In a moment Lauren came into the den. She was smoking a cigarette, and wearing white silk lounging pajamas under a white silk robe.
“The men in my life,” she said and sat on the big leather couch beside Burke and curled her legs under her.
Burke said nothing. Lauren took a drag on her cigarette.
Julius said, “Mr. Burke is leaving us.”
Lauren froze, her forefingers touching her lips, the thoughtless cigarette smoke exhaling gently.
“No,” she said.
Julius nodded yes. Burke said nothing.
“You can’t go,” she said to him.
Burke shrugged. Lauren took the cigarette away from her mouth.
“You can’t,” she said again, leaning toward him.
Julius said, “It is not up to him, Lauren.”
Lauren ignored Julius.
“Without you, he’ll get me.”
“Frank Boucicault has promised to contain Louis,” Julius said.
“You are the thing I hang onto,” Lauren said. “You keep me from sliding into the mess.”
“Lauren,” Julius said, “please, stop the dramatics. I hired Burke when he was needed. I can fire him when he’s not needed.”
Still leaning toward Burke, with her eyes fixed on his face, Lauren said, “I need him.”
“You don’t,” Julius said. “Frank and I have spoken. Louis will not trouble you further.”
“Burke,” Lauren said.
“I don’t make the rules,” Burke said.
“Please,” Lauren said.
Burke didn’t answer.
“He’s a sickness,” Lauren said. “You’re the cure.”
“Enough,” Julius said. “It is time to bid Mr. Burke goodbye.”
For the first time, she looked at her father.
“You miserable prick,” she said. “You don’t care what happens to me.”
“Enough of that language, Lauren,” Julius said.
“Fuck you, enough,” Lauren said. “Burke’s the only stable thing in my whole sick life. Ever. My mother’s a drunk, my father’s a crook, and all the men I ever meet are degenerates. Don’t you dare tell me, enough.”
Julius folded his arms across his chest and said nothing. Burke stood suddenly and walked to the window and looked out down at the park.
“I’ll go with you,” Lauren said to Burke. “I’ll go where you go, anywhere, just so I’m with you.”
Burke stared out the window, his eyes following a horse-drawn carriage moving slowly uptown through the park.
“You have to take care of me,” Lauren said. “No one has ever taken care of me. . . . You have to take care of me.”
Burke turned from the window and looked at her silently. Then he took in some air in a long slow breath and let it out.
“I can’t take care of anyone,” Burke said. “Not the way you mean.”
The muscles in Burke’s cheeks twitched. The lines around his mouth were very deep. There was sweat on his forehead.
“There,” Julius said to Lauren. “Does that satisfy you?”
Lauren’s breath was short. It sounded raspy. Her chest rose and fell arrythmically. Tears ran down her face. She kept looking at Burke. He shook his head. She looked at him some more and then her eyes dulled, and her breathing began to regularize. She turned and looked at her father.
“If you think I was corrupt before . . .” she said.
She stood suddenly and dropped her cigarette on the rug and walked out of the den without looking back. She left the door open behind her. No one moved for a moment. Then Julius came over and picked up the burning cigarette and snubbed it out in an ashtray. He scuffed the burn mark on the carpet with the toe of his shoe, as Burke left.
Bobby
In 1946, five years after the Dodgers lost the 1941 World Series, in the first fully postwar season, in the summer before my fourteenth birthday, in a year when Stan Musial hit .365, the Dodgers and the Cardinals tied for the National League pennant. There was a post-season playoff for the first time in modern baseball history, which for me seemed to stretch back primordially. The pennant was decided in a two-of-three playoff. I felt I was witness to a historical event. The Cardinals won two straight games. Howie Schultz, as I recall, struck out to end the season.
I was heartbroken. But I had puberty to worry about, and, in a few weeks, the pain receded.
In October of that year, Brooklyn Dodgers GM Branch Rickey announced the signing of a Negro player, Jack Roosevelt Robinson, a four-sport star at UCLA, to a minor league contract with the Dodgers’ Triple A farm club, the Montreal Royals.
I was thrilled. Once again I was given the chance to bear witness to history. To be around when something happened that people a hundred years from now would write and speak of. I didn’t forget the playoff loss to the Cardinals. I haven’t forgotten it yet. But this seemed as if it might be sufficient compensation. There were pictures of Jackie and Branch Rickey at the signing. Rickey with his cigar and bow tie. Jackie gleaming black.
By then we had moved to a town east of New Bedford called Mattapoisett where the Dodgers games could still be heard, coming up the coast on WHN, which was now called WMGM. Negroes lived in the town, and went to school with me. I knew them. At least one of them was a friend, which did not please my mother. My mother said that if there was trouble it would be the colored guy that would get blamed and if I was with him, I’d be blamed too. I don’t remember now quite what I thought of that position, but I do remember that I continued to be friends with the colored guy in question.
Interestingly enough, in a group that had debated whether to have sex with Lena Horne, no one seemed shaken by Robinson’s signing. We were interested and excited, but no more so than we were by, say, the deal that sent Hank Greenberg from Detroit to Pittsburgh three months later. I, being the out-of-place Dodgers fan, was expected to react more intensely than anyone else, and I did. I cannot explain why I was so pleased, any more than I can fully explain why my racial attitudes differed from the norm. I know that I was pleased that the people in the news, doing the historic thing, were the Dodgers.
The war was over. . . . The players were back. . . . The Dodgers were pennant contenders. . . . The team had just done something that no team had done before. . . . I was fourteen. . . . My voice was changing. . . . I hadn’t had sex yet. . . . But I would sooner or later. . . . And the uncluttered world lay ahead of me to the horizon.
Hubba, hubba.
17.
MR. RICKEY was wearing a blue polka dot bow tie and a gray tweed suit that didn’t fit him very well. He took some time getting his cigar lit and then looked at Burke over his round black-rimmed glasses.
“Mr. Burke,” Rickey said. “Do you follow baseball?”
“Yes.”
“I’m bringing Jackie Robinson up from Montreal,” Rickey said.
“The other shoe drops,” Burke said.
Mr. Rickey smiled.
“I want you to protect him,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Just like that?” Rickey said.
“I assume you’ll pay me.”
“Don’t you want to know what I’m asking you to protect him from?”
“I assume I know,” Burke said. “People who might want to kill him for being a Negro. And himself.”
Rickey nodded and turned the cigar slowly without taking it from his mouth.
“Good,” he said. “Himself was the part I didn’t think you’d get.
”
Burke didn’t say anything.
“Jackie is a man of strong character,” Rickey said. “One might even say forceful. If this experiment is going to work he has to sit on that. He has to remain calm. Turn the other cheek.”
“And I’ll have to see that he does that,” Burke said.
“Yes. And at the same time, see that no one harms him.”
“Am I required to turn the other cheek?”
“You are required to do what is necessary to help Jackie and I and the Brooklyn Dodgers get through the impending storm.”
“Do what I can.”
“My information is that you can do a lot. It’s why you’re here. You’ll stay with him all the time. If anyone asks you, you are simply an assistant to the general manager. If he has to stay in a Negro hotel, you’ll have to stay there too.”
“I got through Guadalcanal,” Burke said.
“Yes, I know. How do you feel about a Negro in the major leagues?”
“Doesn’t matter to me.”
“Good. I’ll introduce you to Jackie.”
He pushed the switch on an intercom, and spoke into it, and a moment later a secretary opened the office door and Robinson came in wearing a gray suit and a black knit tie. He moved as if he were working off a steel spring. He’s nobody’s high yellow, Burke thought. He’s dark black. And did not seem furtive about it. Rickey introduced them.
“Well, you got the build for a bodyguard,” Robinson said.
“You too.”
“But, I ain’t guarding your body,” Jackie said.
“Mine’s not worth ten grand a year.”
“One thing,” Robinson said, and he looked at Rickey as he spoke. “I don’t need no keeper. You keep people from shooting me, good. And I know I can’t be fighting people. You gotta do that for me. But I go where I want to go, and do what I do. And I don’t ask you first.”
“As long as you let me die for you,” Burke said.
Something flashed in Robinson’s eyes.
“You got a smart mouth,” he said.
“I’m a smart guy.”
Robinson grinned suddenly.
“So how come you taking on this job?”
“Same as you,” Burke said. “I need the dough.”
Robinson looked at him with his hard stare.
Double Play Page 6