Summer of '42

by Herman Raucher

  Around 4 P.M. he decided to make the return trip to Packett Island. There was no one aboard to spark his imagination except maybe one woman, but she spent the crossing in the ladies’ room and who needed that? When the Island became visible on the horizon, all that Hermie could think of was Dorothy. He was drawing closer to Dorothy. Coming home to Dorothy. Home from Bataan. Home from Corregidor, one of the few men to escape the fiendish Jap trap. The band would be there playing “The Monkey Wrapped His Tail Around the Flagpole,” and he’d be carried off the boat on a stretcher by an honor guard, and women would cry and men would cheer. Medals would be pinned on his blanket, and wooden-legged veterans of World War I would salute and fall over. His stretcher would be left on Dorothy’s porch like Our Gal Sunday, and Dorothy would minister to him all night until the fever broke. Around midnight his eyes would flutter and he’d call her name and she’d sob with joy. There’d be no love-making because of his weakened condition, but after a few days of sitting in his wheelchair in the sun-drenched garden, he’d begin to feel better and she’d tell him she was going to have a baby, and Hermie made a point of remembering to take with him his last remaining rubber when calling on Dorothy that evening.

  He got off the ferry in a roundabout way just in case Oscy and Benjie, the Idiot Twins, might be hanging around. He walked into the ferryhouse, into the men’s room, and out the window. It was a bit out of the way but worth the effort because, if they were around, he had very definitely given them the shake. About 5 p.m. he entered his house via the back door and stayed in his room until just before dinner when his mother took him aside and grilled him. He never really remembered what he told her except that he had eaten healthy meals, and that seemed to satisfy her. It occurred to him that he could do anything he wanted and never upset his mother as long as he ate well. He could be a killer and a rapist and a forger, but as long as he weighed five hundred pounds, he’d always be Mama’s little boy.

  For dinner his mother had conjured up spaghetti, which was fine with Hermie because it gave him very little time for conversation. He was chastised from time to time for slurping, and his sister remarked twice that he had the manners of a filthy slob, but as long as he kept eating, he had his mother for an ally, and his sister finally left the table, enraged that, for a brother, God had given her Peter Pig. His father read the paper all through dinner, unusual for him because he relished good manners. But Rommel was still giving Africa fits, and his father, an expert on war with his pinochle-playing friends, was upset that the British Eighth Army couldn’t handle the wily Desert Fox. Anyway, when Hermie finally left the table, it was without having said a thing other than “Pass the salt” and “How’d the Giants do?”—neither of which got any results.

  He tried to catch forty winks of shut-eye because he wanted to be well rested for his call on Dorothy. But it was impossible for him to sleep, and so, at approximately 7 p.m., he went into the shower until 8 p.m. If his sister, the pig lady, was knocking the door down, he had no way of knowing it because the water was on full force. In the shower he sang a medley of hit war songs. “He Wears a Pair of Silver Wings,” “When the Lights Go On All Over the World,” and “Right in Der Fuehrer’s Face.” He was no Sinatra, but neither was he Hildegarde, which would have been no mean trick.

  When he left the bathroom, his sister was waiting outside like for a bus. She didn’t say a word when he breezed past her. She didn’t say a word for maybe thirty seconds, at which point the Voice of Horror filtered out of the bathroom with its usual observation. “There’s no hot water!” They could put that on his sister’s tombstone: “There’s No Hot Water.” The thought came to Hermie, just briefly, that maybe his sister was screwing around on that island just as he was. But he put the thought out of his mind because it was too ghastly. Although, on second thought, if he wanted to be fair about it, his sister had a good chest and legs a little like Lynn Bari, who was supposed to have the best gams in filmdom. Anyway, because there was a war on, anything could happen. Including his sister getting laid. But with who? He gave it the five seconds of thought it was worth and then dropped it completely as being something his mother could worry about when she wasn’t cooking.

  Hermie dressed in his finest garments. A blue shirt, very, very neat and open at the collar so that his embryonic Adam’s apple was excitingly exposed. His white duck trousers, pure as the driven snow, were a Davega special intended for proms and unworn by human legs. Saddle shoes, brown and white, with a little white polish on the brown and a little brown on the white because who the hell could handle that kind of horseshit? And his socks. Socks were proper. He hadn’t worn socks the whole summer, but he knew that socks were correct for the situation. The socks he had chosen were hysterically argyle, knitted by his sister for some college man who was getting drafted. Only she gave them to Hermie because they had imperfections in them, like little pieces of wool that stuck out like worms. At first he thought he had the socks on inside out, but the inside was even worse. His sister was not one of the world’s better knitters. Anyway, Hermie decided to take a chance, and he snipped the scraggly ends off and prayed to God the socks wouldn’t come apart like the lousy embroidery on his OPACS sweater. He put them on, and they were resplendent. Red, white, and gray, the flag of Madagascar very likely. He brushed his hair until it stopped fighting him, and miraculously, the first part he made needed no improving on. He took that to be another omen in his favor. He felt so good that he didn’t hear the croaking harmonica outside. Life was falling marvelously in place for him. He was shedding the agonizing skin of youth, and an irresistible fellow was emerging, smiling at him in the mirror. And when he left his room, it was with the knowledge that when he returned he’d be a man. He was, from head to toe, a walking erection that radiated sex and confidence and maturity. He disdained bringing along his notes because that suddenly seemed ugly. But in his pocket he placed the last of his red-hot rubbers because, as the Coast Guard so aptly put it, Semper Paratus.

  He took the back way out, stepping through the doorway like David Niven, smooth and confident. Oscy was standing there. Oscy, magnificently depressed, and Hermie would have swapped him even up for the goddamn sea gull because, if nothing else, the sea gull never insisted on playing a harmonica. The sea gull got rid of its shit in other ways. As for Oscy, he was blowing the shit right through the partitions in his harmonica. “Three Blind Mice,” as played by the maestro, was smelling up the sweetness of the special world that Hermie had taken two hours to construct. Upon seeing Hermie, Oscy stopped playing and smacked the harmonica against his palm. Another load of spit dropped out only to find itself soon sucked into Oscy’s sweat shirt. That sweat shirt was fast becoming America’s secret weapon. They could drop it on Berlin and the Germans would surrender. Hermie acknowledged Oscy’s presence with a little nod and a sharp right-angle turn. But Oscy moved deftly in the way, blocking Hermie’s passage to paradise. “It’s all over,” Oscy said, and for a minute, Hermie thought that Oscy’s father had died because for years he’d been plagued with a deviated septum.

  “What’s all over?”

  “Me and Miriam.”

  Hermie didn’t really care to hear, but Oscy looked so weird. “What happened?”

  “I’m embarrassed to tell you.”

  “Then don’t.” Hermie was not going to put up with any mystery stories, so he stepped around Oscy and got going.

  Oscy caught up with him and walked alongside. “Hermie, you won’t believe it.”

  “After last night I’ll believe anything.” Hermie just wanted to get away. Oscy, only fifteen years old, was sure as hell going to rob him of his new maturity.

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “Oscy, I’m in kind of a hurry.”

  Oscy nodded; he’d get right to the point. “We had a little argument this afternoon because I grabbed her boobs on the beach and got sand on them or something. Then, when I went to her house to apologize—” He took a dramatic pause and then completed his thoughts. �
�She’s got appendicitis. They took her to the mainland. I just hope, for her sake, they don’t cut up her boobs.”

  “I don’t think the scar goes that far.” He wasn’t interested but he was curious about why he hadn’t seen Miriam since he had seen every ferry that docked at the mainland that day.

  “She said she was breaking our date and the next thing I knew—appendicitis. She sure goes to extremes. They loaded her on the speedboat on a stretcher.”

  The speedboat—that explained why Hermie hadn’t seen Miriam getting off the ferry. No matter, he had feigned rapt interest just about as long as he could. He accelerated and said, “Well, maybe it’s all for the better.”

  Oscy’s arm caught him and spun him to a halt. “All for the better! How the hell can you say such a dumb thing!” Oscy was really mad. His blue pupils turned red in their white settings. He was in great danger of being saluted.

  But Hermie was mad, too. He didn’t care to linger. He pulled his arm free. “Because I’m not really interested!” He figured that his own eyes were red, white, and brown. Not worthy of a salute, but maybe Oscy’d get the message.

  “Bullshit! You’re interested! You took yourself some long look at us! We knew you were looking!” They were nose to nose and getting dangerously close to open warfare.

  “I only caught a glimpse.” Hermie stepped back, ready to put up his dukes. There was no uncertainty in his voice. “Shut up, Oscy. I’m not interested in the dirty details.”

  Oscy seemed very surprised. His voice softened. “You mean—you don’t want me to tell you?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I mean. Exactly. I don’t wanna hear about it.”

  Oscy remained stunned. A smile tried to happen on his face, and his shoulders hunched, and his hands opened and went a little sideways. “But—I was gonna tell you everything.”

  “Don’t.” Hermie walked away. Fuck you, Oscy. Those were the words with which history would mark this era. “The Fuck You Oscy Age.” 1938 through 1942. Especially Packett Island. And especially that street. It was “Fuck You Oscy Street,” right on the corner of “Fuck You Oscy Boulevard.”

  Oscy fell in step again. He walked alongside Hermie with his hand reaching out from time to time to paw at Hermie’s shoulder, to spin him around, to make him face him. “One day you’re gonna wanna hear about it, hotshot, and I won’t tell you.”

  “Good.” Hermie kept shrugging off Oscy’s hand. He was like a gyroscope inexorably on course, no matter what. He kept walking down the street.

  “Something’s wrong with you, Hermie. You’re not normal.”

  “Good.” He shook off another of Oscy’s grabbings, and he was getting pretty damned tired of it. He felt his arms tightening, and he knew his fists were clenched and that it wouldn’t take much to push him to the point of no return.

  Oscy had to have sensed Hermie’s unwavering attitude. He walked alongside him a bit farther before switching subjects. “You look all dolled up.”

  “Good.” It was also good that Oscy had seen fit to stop pawing at his new blue shirt.

  “Do I know that shirt?” He was trying to be friendly.

  “It’s new.”

  “It’s very nice. You go for blue, don’t you?” A sneaky smile appeared on his crummy ugly face.

  Hermie knew that Oscy was referring to the color of his pack of rubbers. He also knew that if Oscy kept up that kind of crap, he’d pull out that last surviving rubber and slap it over Oscy’s head and hold it there till the son of a bitch stopped breathing. Then he’d leave him there, on the street, like a shot-down blimp, the world’s biggest hard-on.

  “Going to her house?”

  Those were certainly fighting words. Hermie wasn’t afraid to fight; it was just that he hated the thought of getting mussed up. He didn’t think it was nice to go a-courting like a street fighter. “Fuck you, Oscy.” Oscy could take that any way he wished. He could take it as a challenge or as an offhand remark or as a weather report. It was strictly up to him. Hermie would not fire the first punch.

  Oscy let the moment go by, choosing instead to keep needling Hermie, which he did with that wide steeplechase smile of his. “Have your instructions handy, lover?”

  Hermie was not the kind of guy not to know when he was getting the needle. But he chose to rise above the infantilism of it all. “It’s not going to be that kind of evening. But you wouldn’t understand because you’re…crass.”

  “Crass?” Oscy had to laugh. “What the hell is crass?”

  Hermie was surprised to see all his patience vanish, just like that. He stopped, turned on Oscy, and grabbed his slimy sweat shirt, crumpling the chest of it in one fist while cocking his other fist right under the nose he had so well bloodied a few days ago. “Oscy, you better leave me alone or you’re gonna feel this!” His fist felt like one big lump of steel. One wrong word from Oscy, one random smile, and Hermie’d ram that steel fist flush into Oscy’s mush, and his nose would come out on the other side and would bleed down his neck and wet his ass and trickle down the backs of his knees and form a red pool in his fucking sneakers, and he could go squish-squish-squish all the way home.

  Oscy was hardly a statesman, but neither was he a coward. He looked at Hermie’s fist, the one crumpling his moss-coated sweat shirt. “Remove your fucking hand, Hermie.” The threat of death was strongly implied in Oscy’s words to Hermie’s hand.

  Hermie held fast. He wanted to hit Oscy. All he needed was one false move. “Remove your big mouth.”

  Oscy looked into Hermie’s face and saw no laughter there. He knew he could take the measure of Hermie every time. And he was particularly ready that time to do so. What he couldn’t understand was Hermie’s apparent desire to be killed. Talking to Oscy like that amounted to suicide, so why was Hermie doing it? Bigger men than Hermie had been properly decked by Oscy, yet Hermie really seemed to want it. Which was why Oscy, a true sadist, withheld, at least for the moment. “What the hell you so mad about, Hermie?”

  Hermie shouted so that the whole island could hear. “I don’t know!” And he didn’t. Oscy was his best friend. Oscy had had a terrible crisis with Miriam. Oscy was interested only in Hermie’s welfare. Oscy could also beat the crap out of Hermie. All those thoughts ripped through Hermie’s mind but in no particular order. And when they all added up to nothing, Hermie released Oscy’s Wheatena-covered sweat shirt and walked away saying “aaaaaaaaaah.”

  Oscy watched him go and didn’t follow. He just called out another taunt. “Got your rubbers?” Hermie kept walking. “You know what, Hermie? I’m sorry I ever tried to help you!”

  Hermie stopped, wheeled, and shouted back, “That makes two of us!”

  “I gave up my binoculars to get you educated, you fuckin’ ingrate!” They were separated by some twenty feet, facing each other like the first stage of a gunfight.

  “Tough!” Hermie would hold his ground. He’d make his stand. He’d had enough. If Oscy came up to him, he’d pop him a good one, clean clothes or no clean clothes. Fuck you, blue shirt.

  Oscy stayed where he was. “The word’s gettin’ out on you, Hermie! You’re a homo!”

  “Come over here and say that, you big tub of shit!”

  Oscy looked at Hermie and kept looking. If it was anyone else but Hermie, he’d have sailed into him and very likely killed him for that kind of talk. But it was Hermie. And Hermie was sensitive and poetic and pretty crazy. Oscy said “aaaaaaaah” and waved his arm at Hermie in total disgust. Then he walked away in the opposite direction, stopping only to yell, “Homo!” Then he really walked away. Truly.

  Hermie watched Oscy grow smaller and smaller, then gradually disappear in the waning light, kicking stones and tossing twigs, but never turning. And even after Oscy lost himself around a corner, Hermie held his position because Oscy was the kind of man who could return at a moment’s notice and with a regiment of men.

  When he could no longer feel the blood in his clenched fists, both of which were grimly cocked in Marquess of Queensber
ry fashion and of no real use against a killer like Oscy, Hermie relaxed. He unwound his fingers. He stretched them and felt the blood returning via the ten usual routes. And then, taking a few deep breaths, so deep that if anyone fell into them, it was sure they’d never reach bottom, Hermie turned his back on the entire abridged confrontation. And he walked again in his original direction. For the moment, with the casting out of Oscy from his life, he had broken all ties with his youth, severed all vestiges of the inanities of his former life. Ahead lay Dorothy, and you could take that thought any way you like. He knew how preposterous an idea it was, Dorothy falling for him. But he was living in America, and America was a place of dreams, settled by men who nurtured dreams, defended by men who depended on dreams. And so onward he walked, and each step of the way his confidence grew like Topsy, and then he saw the house on the dune, silhouetted against the gray-purple sky, and he stopped because he knew how scared he was. He indulged again in dreams of America because they had always sustained him in times of self-doubt. He thought of the disaster at Pearl Harbor that no one had a right to expect America to recover from. He remembered his father’s reaction when he asked him, “What’s Pearl Harbor?” His father had smiled grimly and said, “It’s a place the Japs are going to be more sorry about than us.” He remembered President Roosevelt’s voice and the way men flocked to enlist and the way the women hurried to man the riveting machines. He thought of all the brave people who had answered their country’s call, and he knew that he was of that stock, that breed. He also knew that none of it was working and that he was a half a minute away from running home and hiding under the bed, so he’d better try thinking about something else. He tried a number of things. Like how good he was in art, especially cartooning. And how much he missed his Uncle Harry, who died at twenty-seven of leukemia. He thought about all the girls he had been in love with in his life and how helpless he’d been to do anything about it and how this was the first time that he’d ever behaved in a manner that was even halfway grown-up. And he knew that if he turned back after all the desire and all the preparation, if he called it quits and went back to his room and kissed Penny Singleton, he’d be nothing but a shell of a man for the next thirty years of his life and little more than a tombstone after that, a tombstone that would read: “Here Lies Nothing at All. Don’t Fall In.” And so he went forward and that pleased him because it meant there was still hope for him, not necessarily as a great lover but as a man.