Summer of '42

by Herman Raucher

  She looked up at him. “Oh?” Women were always saying “oh” to him. What the hell did it mean? Her arms were motionless at her side, and her breasts were aimed at his nose. Had they been loaded with ammo, he’d have been caught in a deadly crossfire. A guy could get crosseyed trying to figure out which of the pert pistols to look at.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Actually, this stuff I’m burning is somebody’s fence.” His arms were beginning to tremble. Also his toes because he was balanced on them, too. He was in the air above her on ten little fingers and ten tiny toes.

  “Really?” She squirmed. Her other knee, having been fully rested, came up slowly to measure the distance between their two bodies. It gently nudged Hermie in the one place he was beginning to overhang in.

  “Can I toast you another tasty marshmallow?” It was him again, only because of the foreign pressure on his body, it came out a couple octaves higher than Lily Pons.

  She took a while to answer. And all the while she kept pushing her knee a little higher and therefore a little deeper into his nearest extremities. She was trying to tell him something, but Hermie kept pulling up and back. He’d shortly be off the ground. “Don’t you think,” she said, wiggling her knee in an incredible corkscrew motion, “that we’ve had enough marshmallows?”

  “You can never have enough of a good tasty marshmallow.” And he pushed himself off with all his remaining strength, his body withdrawing from her curious knee and arriving miraculously in a sitting position back at the marshmallows. He was sweating like a fiend. Also, he was scared shitless. He hadn’t counted on that kind of reaction from himself. Fright. Personal terror. Sexual panic. Nor had there been anything in the Twelve Dopey Points to cover such a situation. All he knew was that he couldn’t face her because he was obviously only half a man. What the hell was wrong with him? What weird disease had done him in? How could he be set on fire by that dumb girl and be unable to do anything about it, in spite of the fact that she was so spread out behind him that he could have walked right up her insides while wearing a full set of shoulder pads?

  But Aggie knew a few things, if not by feminine instinct then by the latest report from her knee which had just checked in. There was nothing wrong with Hermie or his anatomy. He was just nervous. And she had gone just about as far as she dared, manifesting an almost brazen feminine interest in the process. Also, if the truth were known, had Hermie responded in an aggressive manner, she’d have quickly pushed him off and run away screaming “Rape.” And so it came as a momentary relief to her to know that she was in no danger of having her morals tested. Therefore, she felt very good about things and decided to not be too forward, but just forward enough to let Hermie know that she liked him and that, if he could regroup his forces, a couple goodies still awaited him. A couple squeezes. A couple handfuls. But that’s all. “It certainly is calm tonight.” She looked up at the sky. “Does that mean it’ll rain tomorrow?”

  Hermie was very gratified to discover that she was neither angry nor insulting. “I think the night’s too clear. All those stars, you know.”

  “Yes, you’re right. You know a lot about weather, don’t you?”

  “Well, I know when it’s raining.” He hadn’t intended that to be funny, but since she laughed so convincingly, he figured he’d better do likewise. So he laughed and toasted another marshmallow and embellished his last comment. “There are certain kinds of clouds. Nimbus. That means rain. That’s meteorology, which we have to learn in preflight because it helps you fly better when you know if it’s going to rain, or snow for that matter.”

  “Yes,” she said. She could say “yes” and she could say “oh,” and Hermie figured it was just a way in which women filled in the gaps when they were getting hot.

  Hermie turned to her and offered her the twig with the marshmallow dangling on it. “Here you are.”

  She sat up because it had come at her so suddenly. And she opened her mouth and took in the whole marshmallow, slowly pulling her head back so that only the naked twig remained. And Hermie got so excited; only he didn’t know why. She rolled the marshmallow around inside her mouth, and Hermie finally could see the resemblance. She tried to say something, but her mouth was too full.

  Hermie looked down at his hand, the tricky one. It was moving. It had been involuntarily launched, and it was moving out. He looked over at Aggie, and she was flat on her back again, unable to speak because her face was so stuffed. He felt his body slide toward her, and he watched his hand move about her waist and disappear beneath her loose sweater. The hand was cold, and the flat belly was warm, and the girl went “eeek.” And the hand, frightened, withdrew and hid itself in Hermie’s pocket. Hermie’s mouth tried to retrieve at least a part of the awkward and dreadful moment. “How’d you like the tasty marshmallow?”

  Aggie couldn’t speak because her mouth was too full. And she couldn’t hear too well because of the pounding in her temples. So she picked herself up on her elbows and smiled. She was perhaps one of the world’s greatest smilers. She was a rare bird indeed. The warm-bellied, quick-smiling eeker. Find that in your John James Audubon.

  Hermie retired to the fire feeling strangely good. He had made a move. He had demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was not a homo. But more than that, she had been the one to call it quits. All this was fine with him because he was shaking like a flivver, and had she allowed him to go further, he might have just passed out at the encountering of a navel, especially if it was an outsie, which was the most uncommon of all navels. He toasted and ate four more marshmallows before Aggie spoke. Aggie knew that the situation had died aborning. She had no illusions of Hermie’s trying again. She had said “eek,” and that was the end of it. There was nothing left to do but inquire about the other people in the world. She did so with remorse and a certain coldness. “Shouldn’t we save a few marshmallows for Miriam and Oscy?”

  Hermie looked off into the night like a pointer. “We may never see them again.”

  “They seem to be getting along very well.” That may have been a sarcastic dig. Hermie couldn’t tell.

  “Yes. They’re very friendly.” It pained Hermie to realize that the rest of him was not as masculinely aggressive as his hand. He knew that, in spite of her “eek,” Aggie had wanted him to get funny with her. He knew that the “eek” was merely a reaction to the sudden temperature differential. Shit, any warm belly would go “eek” if suddenly a cold hand slid across it. He cursed himself for not making certain that his hand was warm before sending it off on Objective: Tit. If nothing else, he had learned that you never go for a warm tit with a cold paw. Unless, of course, you wanted to be rebuffed. And he thought about that for a little while. Maybe, subconsciously, he had deliberately sent out a cold hand because he knew it would make her go “eek” and that that would be the end of it and he could withdraw from combat in the crummy belief that there was nothing wrong with him. He began to feel more and more like a homo. Why did he always take such pains with his hair? Why were some of his shirts so loud that his father thought they were his sister’s? Why could Aggie look so good to him one minute and so repulsive the next? Why had he allowed Oscy to claim big-boobed Miriam without at least a small discussion on the matter? How close had he himself come to running away that night at the movie house? He plucked the petals of his mind. Homo. Not a homo. Homo. Not a homo.

  There was a noise not too far away but coming closer. A huffing and a puffing. A padding on the sand, almost imperceptible to the naked ear but not to the son of the greatest pair of ears on earth, the Listening Mother. Hermie peered into the darkness, squinting so tightly that his teeth appeared between his pulled-up lips.

  Out of the darkness, trotting, came Oscy. His shirttail flapping in his wake like a midnight witch, his belt askew and smacking his belly like a shutter in a heavy wind. And as he ran, he kept trying to button his fly lest his pants fall down and trip him. He stopped about ten yards short of the fire, his vision somewhat impaired by the sudden sharp l
ight, and he looked around like a blind man. “Pssssst? Hermie?”

  Hermie, ever the gentleman, asked of Aggie, “Would you excuse me for a moment, please?”

  Aggie said, “Sure,” but she didn’t know what to make of it.

  Hermie was gallant. “Thank you.” He stood, smiled at her as though thanking her for the dance, and then walked over to where Oscy stood, studying his notes and holding up his pants. “Hi, Oscy.” Talk about your disinterested calm.

  Oscy was harassed. He didn’t even look at Hermie. He just stuck out his hand, “Lemmee see your notes. My lousy carbon copy is smudged from sweat. Come on, come on. Fork over!” Hermie dug out his copy of the document, which he had folded and stuffed into his key pocket. Oscy grabbed it and unfolded it impatiently. Then he held it to the light and studied it closely. “Yeah. Just as I thought.”

  “What number you up to?”

  “Six.”

  “Six? Six is foreplay!” Hermie was knocked out. “You up to six?”

  “Yeah. But that crazy Miriam—she’s up to nine.”

  Hermie took a backward step, a gesture of stunned awe. “You’re kidding?”

  “I’m not kidding. She’s ruining my timing.” He was studying the notes with scholarly concentration. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Jesus Christ.” Then he thrust the paper back at Hermie. “How you doing with Aggie?”

  “Well, I—”

  “No time for gabbing, Hermie.” And he turned and ran back into the night, tugging up his pants as he went, looking like the last man in a potato sack race.

  Hermie wandered back to Aggie, who had heard nothing but who wasn’t exactly blind. “That was Oscy,” she said. She was a regular Mr. Keen.

  Hermie sat down on the blanket, pushing his notes back into his pocket. “Feel like another marshmallow?”

  “What’s that paper?”

  “This?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh. It’s a map.” He stuffed it in before he had a chance to fold it properly. It lumped up in his pocket like a golf ball.

  “Buried treasure?” Aggie asked. What a simpleton she was turning out to be.

  “Yeah,” said Hermie. “Buried treasure.” And he was beginning to think it was, too.

  “Well, can I see it?”

  “Why don’t you just have another marshmallow?”

  “Oh, I—” That was about all she had a chance to say before the burned-to-a-crisp marshmallow came thrusting at her. It fell apart in her fingers, but she still managed to smile. Hermie was getting pretty goddamned sick of all her smiling. And he was beginning to wonder what he ever saw in her in the first place.

  He ate a couple more marshmallows, some of them raw just for a change of pace. He figured he’d probably get the gout, but it didn’t much matter. It was as good a way of dying as any. He ignored Aggie, not rudely, but just by busying himself. He picked up debris and things and kept feeding it all to the fire until the flames were climbing so high they could guide in the whole Luftwaffe. Among other things that his fire feeding proved: Coke bottles don’t burn, and the best you can get from seaweed is smoke. Hermie knew that he’d screwed up completely and that it was Miriam he should be with. Miriam was some hot blond potato. Aggie was more like a nun. He tried to figure out some deal he could offer Oscy so that they could switch girls on the next marshmallow roast, which, by the by, would be without marshmallows or else without Hermie. But what the hell could he give Oscy besides Aggie to sweeten the offer? The answer was nothing. He looked over at Aggie, and there she was, at it again, flat on her back with that one stupid knee in the sky, wiggling it around as if it were some kind of compass. That Aggie could fall on her back at a moment’s notice. It was as if there were a hinge on her ass. In her loose-fitting clothes she looked like a pile of laundry. He wished he could just go over and screw her without all the polite chitchat. It was the polite chitchat that was driving him up the wall. “Point Two: Converse.” Well, fuck Point Two. Oscy was up to foreplay, and Miriam was God knows where. Boy, did he ever want a crack at Miriam. But Oscy had her. Oscy was also running toward the fire again. He arrived and then stood there, disheveled, looking as though he’d gone ten rounds with a Mixmaster, mopping his hair into place with one hand, holding up his sagging pants with the other. “Hermie? Hermie?”

  Hermie addressed Aggie with poise and carriage. “Would you excuse me again?”

  The hinge on Aggie’s ass sprung her into a sitting position. She wasn’t sure she liked the way Oscy looked, but still she said, “Yes.”

  “You’re very kind,” said Hermie, and he went to join Oscy at the fire. “Say, Oscy—”

  “Gimmee a rubber.” Oscy had his hand outstretched.

  “What?”

  “A rubber, a rubber! Come on, Hermie!” He sounded desperate.

  “But what happened to your heirloom?”

  “It was spoiled. They don’t keep. Hermie, for Chrissakes—” He shoved Hermie hard. Hermie then pulled the blue foil package from his pocket. Oscy was in some kind of a hurry. “Open it! Will ya open it!”

  Hermie broke the foil. Up till then it had been his hope that when the seal was broken, it would be on his own behalf, but those days were over. Three individually hand-rolled little rubbers met his eye, like newborn kittens, thirty-three and a third cents apiece. Oscy’s hand shot in and pulled one from the litter. Then he was running away with it. Hermie, quite put out, called angrily after the hysterical runner, “Don’t you even say thank you!”

  The voice that came back at him was Miriam’s. “Thank you, Hermie.” It was followed by distant laughter, Oscy and Miriam.

  Hermie was really steaming. He folded up the foil and stuck it back in his pocket. He returned to Aggie. Her hinge had her still sitting upright. He tried not to look at her because he hated her so much for giving him such a hard time, whereas her blond friend Miriam was out there in the night, screwing Oscy’s brains out.

  “Why did Miriam say thank you?” Aggie asked that like the imbecile she really was.

  “Because she’s a lady!”

  “I see.”

  Hermie snapped at her like a mongoose. “See what!” Jesus, did he ever hate her for thinking her tits were so special that a guy had to beg her for a squeeze. Who the hell did she think she was, Carole Landis?

  She seemed surprised at his question. “See what?”

  Hermie was a small fire. For the first time he noticed the blemishes on her adolescent face and the few crooked teeth in her half-open mouth. What the hell was he doing with a girl with crooked teeth? He had enough crooked teeth of his own to look at without gazing at hers. “You said you saw! What did you see?”

  “Well, actually—nothing.”

  “Then don’t say you see when you don’t see, okay?”

  “Okay. Gee.” She wondered what she’d done to get him so angry.

  “Have a marshmallow, folks!” He pushed a marshmallow right at her, and she opened her mouth just in time not to wear it on her nose. Hermie watched the marshmallow blobbing around in her mouth. It wasn’t nearly as exciting as the other time. What the hell was so exciting about watching a girl with blemishes eating a marshmallow, anyway? He must have been out of his mind.

  He decided to let her sit there and think things over. He also decided not to feed the fire. Fuck it. Let it go out and all mankind with it. Who was he feeding it for anyway, Oscy? Oscy was the son of a bitch who took his girl, his rubber, and his self-respect. Aggie? Her miserable tits were obviously so cold she could boil ’em in oil and still never get a sizzle out of them. So what the hell was he doing trying to keep Aggie warm? Besides, he’d built that fire so well that it could burn a year and still have enough left to cook Joan of Arc. He took a quick look at Aggie. Her hinge had sprung, and she was frozen in an upright position. For the first time, she didn’t bother to smile. The hell with her. She’d used up enough smiles to keep Laurel and Hardy in business forever. It was obvious that their relationship was ending. Tomorrow they’d be just friends, whic
h was a lot more than they’d been yesterday. He could forget her just like that. And if, in future years, he ever did remember her or recall her to mind, it would be as a deaf-muted, crooked-toothed, acne-skinned, nippleless girl.

  Huffing noises drew Hermie’s attention to the direction whence Oscy had arrived two times already. This was the third. Only he wasn’t in such fine fettle anymore. He drew up to the fire and stood there, waiting to die. He tried to call Hermie, but all that came out was a wheeze. “Huuuuuuh. Huhhhhhh.”

  Hermie looked at Aggie once again to enlist her permission to be excused. But before the request could even be verbalized, Aggie merely waved at him, motioning that it was all right for him to go. And judging by the kind of wave she whipped out, it was also all right for Hermie never to return.

  Hermie got the message and went over to Oscy, fully geared to punch him out for his thoughtlessness, selfishness, and cheapness. But by the time he reached his forlorn companion another emotion had consumed him, kind of pity and nostalgia and encouragement, so that all he could say to Oscy was, “Need a rubber?”

  “I need a breather.” Oscy truly looked as though he hadn’t quite made it under the Macy’s truck. His breathing was impaired, returning to regularity only ever so slowly. But say what you wanted about Oscy, he was no quitter, which was why he added, “I also need another rubber.”

  Automatically, Hermie dug out his package of rubbers and opened it. Oscy took one of the rubbers, and Hermie said, “That’s sixty-six cents, Oscy.” Oscy couldn’t comprehend, so Hermie explained. “Two rubbers, sixty-six cents. I’m not running a charity, you know.”

  Oscy was so dulled he could only nod and say, “S’okay.” Then he seemed to sag. His knees kind of splayed out sideways, as though a heavy object were resting on his shoulders, like maybe the world.