Oscy shortly closed the gap and was soon walking alongside. “As it so happens, Hermie, you were under our surveillance. We were watching you from a range of thirty yards.”
“No shit.”
“You were in there a long time, Hermie. You could’ve brought those bundles in and been out in ten seconds. What happened?”
Hermie considered not answering, but that would be like ignoring a bee up your ass. Next he considered lying. But lying was not really his style. It was too out of character in spite of the lies he had told the woman a moment ago. Finally he decided to tell the truth but in a manner that would dazzle. “We had drinks.”
Oscy’s eyes lit up. “You’re kidding.”
“Okay, I’m kidding.” And he quickened his pace.
Oscy knew he wasn’t kidding and caught up, turning to Benjie, who was tagging along the required ten steps back. “They had drinks.”
“Big deal.”
Oscy, really interested, leaned confidentially in on Hermie even as they walked. “Hey—she let you get funny?”
“You had the field glasses. What’d you see?”
“They don’t work around corners. Come on, Hermie. Did she let you get cute?”
Hermie wanted very much to stay above the crudity of it all. “You’re a dope.”
Oscy might have been a dope, but he was also relentless. “An older woman like that—what’s a little feel to her? Hey, Hermie, baby—she let you have a feel?”
“She gave me some doughnuts.” Hermie chose not to lie about his escapade. He was too tired and worn-out and was too worried about a hernia to make his chance meeting with the woman into a romantic saga. Without looking, he tossed the bag of doughnuts over his shoulder to where Benjie could catch it.
Benjie saw it coming, a soft pop fly to right field. He moved his hands to catch it, but owing to his unearthly lack of coordination, the bag hit him smack in the middle of the forehead. “Cut it out, Hermie,” he said. And then he kicked the bag as hard and as far as he could—three feet.
Oscy kept after Hermie. “Hermie, what the hell’d you do in there all that time?”
“I wasn’t aware of the time. It flew quickly.” The memory of her caused him to wax rhapsodic, and his tongue was feeling so much better that he sucked it back into his mouth like a large piece of macaroni.
Oscy was going crazy with his own imagination. “Boy, I tell you, I think I’d like to give her a good feel.”
“I thought you were mature, Oscy.” Hermie noticed that the sky had never been bluer. Nor had the breeze ever been more pleasant. Nor had he given himself a hernia. Things could never seem so lovely to a man with a hernia.
“It’s very mature to feel girls. My brother does it all the time.”
“Then how come he’s a dentist?” That remark was on behalf of his sister. Better a big-busted sister than a brother who was a dentist.
Miffed, Oscy placed himself directly in Hermie’s way. “Don’t be such a big shot all of a sudden. And don’t try to tell us that something happened in there with that lady!”
Hermie tried to sidestep Oscy without displaying fear, a totally impossible maneuver. “I’m not trying to tell you anything.”
Oscy kept the way blocked, Horatius at the Gate. “Which is exactly like telling us that a lot went on in there. A lot!”
Hermie found himself getting angry, not because Oscy was acting like a moron—Oscy always acted like a moron. It was just that he was acting like a moron so soon and was ruining Hermie’s memory of his precious rendezvous before it had even had a chance to solidify. “Screw you, Oscy!” (“Screw” was somehow gentler than “fuck.” Maybe he wouldn’t get a rap in the kisser for saying “screw.” Saying “fuck” so close up to Oscy was a guaranteed mash in the mush.) Hermie continued, “I’m not gonna tell you something happened if nothing happened! Nothing happened! And if that makes you believe that something happened, then I’m sorry for you—because nothing happened! Jesus, I don’t even know her name!” And that realization really upset Hermie, and unthinkingly, he shoved Oscy out of the way.
A man seldom made first contact with Oscy and got away with it without some memento in the eye. But Oscy saw how disturbed Hermie was, and so he decided to withhold punishment, at least for the nonce. Instead, he fell in step again and resumed the shouting match. “You expect us to believe that!”
“Well—I don’t give a hot crap what you believe. I’m going home. My father’s waiting for his newspaper and his Time maga—” He pulled them both from his back pockets. They looked like hell. “Jesus!” What could he tell his father? That they arrived on the ferry that way? That a steamroller ran over them? He looked at the cover of Time magazine. Jimmy Doolittle had a few wrinkles there that would take a normal man seventy years to acquire. He looked as if he had tried to escape from Shangri-La, which was exactly the place President Roosevelt said the planes were launched from. Wasn’t that a coinci—
“You going home?” Oscy kept after him.
“Yeah. I’m going home. I have things to think over. I’m going home.”
“What’re you gonna do later?” Oscy was being very nice.
“I’m gonna kill myself!”
“After that—”
“I don’t know. Oscy, I don’t know!” He left his friends there and headed home, still smacking his fist against his thigh. Still berating himself. “Hernia. Ooooooooooh!”
9
The rest of the day had very little purpose and went nowhere at all. Most of the time Hermie lay on his bed, his hands locked behind his head, very deep in thought. His thoughts were mostly random, hard to nail, tough to catalogue, and they rattled around in his mind with great and rapid disorder. Foremost, of course, was the woman, so lovely and intelligent and patriotic. But then there was the man, Pete. Hermie knew that if things went well for the United States, Pete would one day return and would have to be dealt with, and Hermie had scruples about servicemen. An appreciation of his own lunacy kept whipping about in Hermie’s mind, washing over his brain, and leaving him with the stark reality he could not truly suppress. He was a young boy infatuated with an older woman, Andy Hardy on the half shell, Henry Aldrich running for class president. Once before it had happened to Hermie. In freshman math, Miss Randall, Josephine Ruth. But he got immediately over it the afternoon he hung around the classroom to ask a question he already knew the answer to, and he caught her removing an upper plate that was studded with false teeth. That ended Josephine Ruth for him right then and there, and later, whenever she came to mind, it was as an old hag cackling as she dropped her dentures into a glass of Polident for the night and then poisoning a dozen apples for the Snow White kid. Still, his latest heartthrob was different. Her teeth were real. They had to be. God couldn’t be that cruel two times in a row. And her legs were real. Long and tan and crazy. You can’t fake false legs nohow. Her hair, that was no wig. There had been at least three separate gusts of wind that would have surely blown a wig to kingdom come, and her hair had stayed on in the face of it. Her breasts, well—they might have been a little on the spare side, but if the truth were known, Hermie leaned toward small-breasted women, like Margaret Sullavan. Besides, all the classical beauties of history were small-breasted. Diana, Juliet, the White Rock girl.
Hermie thumbed through Popular Mechanics for a while and read about a man in Joplin, Missouri, who built his own airplane out of old automobile parts, three unicycles, and a glider wing. Thrilling.
Dinner was novel. Meatballs and fruit salad, on separate plates. Junket, otherwise known as the Pink Plague. And cookies baked by his sister during a moment when she wasn’t examining her boobs. The cookies were flat; the sister wasn’t.
After dinner his father expressed some dismay at the condition of his Time magazine. Hermie explained that he had been attacked on the way home by a lost Italian paratroop brigade and was lucky to have escaped with his life. His father dropped the subject because his son was talking nutty again, better call the doctor.
And there they were, resplendent on his lawn. Oscy and Benjie, the Happiness Boys. Oscy had a beginners’ book for harmonica players and was forcing out a melody that approximated “Jingle Bells,” a brilliant musical selection for a midsummer night. As for Benjie, he was playing a Hi-Li, counting each time he hit the rubber ball that was attached to the wooden paddle via a red rubber band. Benjie was up to one hundred and forty-three. That meant that he had cheated about seventy-five times because, with his spastic coordination, there was no way in which he could ever hit the ball more than three times in a row, unless, of course, he’d lay the ball on the ground and stand over it and swat it with the paddle. Oscy and Benjie saw Hermie, but no mention was made of any prior problems they might have had earlier that day. That was the code. Dinner washed out the day. Whatever happened before dinner was over the bridge. Whatever came after was dull.
So it was “Jingle Bells” and Hi-Li at ten paces for the next fifteen minutes. Because he had eaten his meatballs and Junket, there was no voice berating Hermie from within. He could pick up and leave any time he pleased. No one would stop him. He could go to town with his chums and get ice cream. It was up to him. So they went to town, and Hermie had strawberry with chocolate sprinkles because Mr. Sanders, the druggist, really laid on the sprinkles. Oscy had chocolate mint, which Hermie despised. And Benjie had bubble gum, which he couldn’t work very well and which ended up on his nose as it always did. They watched the last ferry go out, and then they went home, each to his own house. Another exciting evening on Packett Island had gone into history.
Hermie sneaked into his room without saying goodnight. Usually that angered his mother because she was such a stickler for saying good-night. But because she was involved in a heated discussion with his sister, his mother overlooked Hermie’s transgression. Lying on his bed, Hermie could hear them. His sister didn’t want to write to a certain guy because he was a jerk. But his mother said that even jerks like to receive mail when they’re in the Army because they were risking death for their country. His sister asked how the jerk could be risking death if he was stationed on Governors Island. His mother countered by asking about the size of the mosquitoes on Governors Island in the summer. His sister ran to her room screaming and slammed the door. His mother stood outside and shouted about patriotism. His father came by and shouted about the shouting. Then the incident was over, and everyone went to sleep.
Hermie lay in bed and wondered why life was so swiftly passing him by. He switched on the radio and learned that Rommel was loose in Africa and seemed able to go anywhere he pleased. Hermie wished that Rommel would get to Packett Island before the summer ended. Surely there was something of military value on the island that was of interest to the Germans. Why else would there be a Coast Guard station there? Hermie then reflected on just what it was that the Coast Guard did beyond guarding coasts, which seemed the height of stupidity since Packett Island was all coast and had no inland to speak of at all. He then decided that an even dumber branch of service was the Merchant Marine because he didn’t even know what was meant by Merchant Marine. He had an uncle in a leather goods store who called himself a merchant. Could it be that a certain part of the Marine Corps was made up of leather goods merchants? Was that where the word “leatherneck” came from? Hermie fell asleep with the woman’s face floating through his dreams. He wished there was some way in which he could save her life.
10
On the beach the next day the sun worshipers clustered tightly together on an infinitely narrow strip of sand, despite the fact that there were broad expanses of beach available both left and right. It was the herding instinct or something, and as he stepped over and across the seemingly disembodied arms and legs of the sunbathers, the smell of Skol and Noxzema danced up his nose. It was a very unsexy smell, and it subverted the very reason that he and Oscy and Benjie had chosen to walk through the collection of partially nude bodies. They had come to get a look at the girls since that was the place where girls in risky bathing suits hung out. As for the men, what few there were, they were mostly under draft age and not much older than the Terrible Trio, though they were a little larger and undoubtedly a little wiser. Hermie, Oscy, and Benjie picked their way through the suntanned humans as though walking through a minefield. Portable radios blared out a symphony of popular songs of the day, the lyrics of one riding over the lyrics of another as the stroll progressed.
There’ll be blue birds over
The white cliffs of Dover
Tomorrow, just you wait and see…
He’s One-A in the Army and he’s
A-One in my heart,
He’s gone to help the country
That helped him to get his start…
I’ll walk alone,
Because to tell you the truth
I’ll be lonely…
Fillaga-doosha, Shinna-maroosha…
Johnny got a Zero, He got another Zero…
Along the Santa Fe Trail…
Oscy peered lasciviously at the sprawled girls, pretending he was looking for someone he knew, hoping perhaps to recognize her by the familiarity of her crotch. Hermie followed a few bodies behind. And Benjie was way back, clumsily managing to trip over a few knees and ankles in his effort to keep up with his friends.
Eventually, having covered the field and proved nothing, they regrouped on sand less populated, leaving the music and the high sexuality behind them. Oscy was insistent. “Boy, I’d like to feel every one of those girls. I should’ve tripped right on top of a couple of them, like that nutty redheaded broad, did you see her? She’d never of known I was getting a feel. Goddammit!”
Hermie felt very mature, too mature even to have come along on that walk in the sun. “That’s not the way to do it.”
Oscy spun him around. “So what’s the way to do it?”
Hermie shrugged him off. “You have to say things.”
“I’ll say excuse me.”
“You know what I mean. You just don’t go up to a girl and fall on her. It isn’t done.”
“We did it with Gladys Potter.”
“She was twelve years old. What’d she know?”
Oscy smiled reminiscently. “I don’t know, but she didn’t seem to mind.”
“She was surprised.”
“So was I. She had nothing to feel.” He turned to Benjie, who was having trouble standing on the hot sand. “Come on, Benjie. What the hell you doing, dancing?”
“Shut up,” said Benjie as he plopped down on his ass and studied the fried soles of his feet.
Oscy confided to Hermie: “I don’t know what’s going to become of him. He has no emotions.”
“He’s just confused.” Hermie sat down on a wormy log.
“Tell you the truth, so am I.” Oscy sat down and waved the flies away while snuffing out the lives of a dozen little bugs. He grew very pensive. “I been waking up in the middle of the night a lot.”
“That’s okay,” said Hermie. “So do I.”
“But I wake up feeling crazy and thinking about Vera Miller.”
“So what?”
“So I hate Vera Miller!”
“So stop thinking about her.”
It must have occurred to Oscy, the topsy-turvy emotionality of love. “Jesus, do you think I’m in love with her?”
“I don’t know.”
“I hope I’m not in love with her because I hate her.”
“Wha
t kind of thoughts do you have about her?”
Oscy became evasive. “I forget.”
“Then how can I help you?”
“Who the hell’s asking you to help me?” He shoved Hermie roughly, and Hermie flipped off the log and landed on his back, face to the sun. Somehow he didn’t mind. It was more comfortable and gave him a view of his toes he hadn’t had since he was six months old. Oscy smacked the undersides of Hermie’s feet. “Sometimes you act too supreme, Hermie. So watch yourself.”
Hermie lay there and gave his line a Jack Benny reading. “I’ll watch myself, I’ll watch myself.”
Benjie moved into the scene. “What’re you guys talking about?”
Oscy waved him off. “Nothing you’d understand.”
“Fuck you, Oscy.”
Oscy became malevolently tolerant. “That’s your whole problem, Benjie. You’re only interested in fucking me. How about fucking a girl?”
“Okay.”
Oscy laughed down to Hermie. “Okay, he says. Boy, that’s something.” And turning back to Benjie: “You wouldn’t know the first thing to do.”
“I would so.”
“What’s the first thing to do?”
“You feel ’em.”
“Wrong. You kiss ’em.”
Benjie looked puzzled. “We didn’t kiss Gladys Potter.”
“We weren’t in love with Gladys Potter. If you’re in love with a girl, you’re supposed to kiss her.” He punched Hermie’s foot. “Right, Hermie?”
Hermie gazed up and took a moment to frame his answer. “Well, it’s polite.” Sky is blue, clouds are white; the stupid gull is nowhere in sight. Poem. “Looking at Sky,” by Hermie.
Benjie was agitated. “Polite, shit. It’s not required.”
Oscy got up and walked over to Benjie. “It’s required, you dumb ninny.” And he gave Benjie a jarring shove.
Summer of '42 Page 7