Younger Than Springtime

by Andrew M. Greeley

  A runner was in a relatively safe position. It was not his money or his client’s money that was at risk. The only danger was that the traders might trample him to death like a child caught in a run of frenzied steers.

  Well, no runners were injured in my time there, but there were tales of broken arms and broken legs in the past.

  I hated the place with all the power of hatred at my command. It was the disorderly, chaotic life that I detested in its most undiluted form: sweating, violent men risking their fortunes on something only slightly more predictable than the spin of a roulette wheel. I realized from my economics courses that a mature capitalist economy needs commodity markets and that the traders took the risk out of farming for the growers. Fine. But it was still a nightmare world of which I wanted no part.

  I was as lonely as I had been in Bamberg. The women in my family were at the lake (where I could easily be if I weren’t so stubborn about getting a job), Dad drove up almost every night. I had the big house in Oak Park to myself. So I began to hang out with the Catholic War Veterans, an outsider, listening, watching, noting, sometimes photographing. When we didn’t play softball, we spent our time at the corner of Corso’s drugstore or at Larry Kerrigan’s Magic Pub. Larry had turned his hobby of magic into a kind of floor show at the bar that fascinated our crowd, especially the women.

  Men in their twenties hanging out on a street corner? It was a long time ago and most of us did not have cars. Women in the bar with us?

  Certainly some must find Chuck O’Malley interesting?

  Rosemarie and Peg cross-examined me about that subject, with more intensity than I thought was appropriate.

  I denied all charges. In truth, however, my comic stories about Bamberg (some of them marginally true) drew an audience of the women that at times was more enthusiastic than Larry’s audience. I was definitely cute. Peg and Rosemarie would hear that eventually.

  One night, after I had spun my mostly fictional yarns, I found myself sitting next to Tim Boylan, who at that point in the evening was, marvelous to say, still moderately sober. In fact, he had survived in right field for all seven innings and hit two homers.

  “Was it really like that?” he asked me.

  Tim was a tall, handsome black Irishman with thick black hair and eyebrows, dark skin, and a sharply carved face. He looked like he might be a pirate or a boxer or a lawyer on the way to the Federal Bench. The thick twisted scars on his neck and arms and chest underneath his khaki undershirt hinted that he was indeed a pirate.

  He had been a great basketball player in his high school days, good enough to play college ball if his life had been different. Now he was overweight and slow, a shell, no, a ruin of what he had been. Young women avoided him and he avoided them. His deep-set blue eyes were sealed in profound sadness. Yet occasionally they flickered with life and a mischievous smile flitted across his face. It almost made you forget the ugly scar across his forehead.

  “High points,” I said, “edited for barroom consumption.”

  A flicker of a smile appeared on his face.

  “You’re pretty good at the editing…. What was it really like?”

  “Dull, boring, lonely. Lots of corruption. The people were hungry, sick, beaten. No fun. Not Hurtgen, though.”

  “I don’t know anything about Hurtgen,” he said gently. “I don’t remember a thing. Just the hospital afterward.”

  “Oh.”

  “I was sure I was going to die. I wanted to die. I don’t know why. Maybe the pain, though they kept me pretty well doped up. It’s a shame I didn’t die.”

  Okay, Chuck O’Malley, what do you say to that?

  You say, “I’m sure a lot of people have told you that’s not true, so I won’t join their ranks.”

  “Yeah, thanks…. Funny thing is that I don’t know why I want to die. There’s a lot of anger inside me, but I don’t know why I’m angry.”

  “Being torn apart by an 88 shell will do that to you.”

  “Yeah,” he said with a bitter laugh, “I guess it will.”

  Okay, what do you say now?

  Nothing, that’s what.

  “There’s a lot of kids in our family,” he continued slowly, sipping cautiously on his beer. “They’re going to amount to something. I won’t. It’s too late for me. I was supposed to be the crown prince. Big lawyer like my dad. Not a chance. Better that they had a son who died a war hero than an emotional cripple who didn’t have sense enough to jump into a foxhole.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The medics told me afterward. Maybe I remember it, I don’t know.”

  He finished his beer glass in a single gulp.

  “The war didn’t seem to do that to most of these guys.” He glanced around the bar. “Some of them were Purple Heart types too.”

  “Not as bad as you.”

  “Or spent time in a POW camp in Japan.”

  “No one in this room.”

  “Yeah, Chuck, but that’s not the point, is it?”

  “No, Timmy,” I agreed. “It isn’t.”

  I ordered another Coca-Cola.

  “What am I sitting here telling you all this stuff for?”

  “Because I’m an outsider too.”

  “You with your camera and I with my ruined body, huh?”

  “Maybe, but it isn’t really ruined.”

  “I think it is.” He shrugged. “So does everyone else.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  It seemed suddenly that everyone in the bar was watching, Monica Sullivan with tears in her eyes. It must have been the first time Timmy had talked seriously to anyone.

  “You going to be a professional photographer?”

  “No, an accountant,” I replied primly. “I’m not a photographer, just a picture-taker.”

  He threw back his head and laughed.

  “So we’re both afraid of life, huh?”

  “Maybe,” I said lamely.

  “Tell you what, Chuck O’Malley. When you become a photographer, I’ll become a lawyer. Deal?”

  “It’s not a fair proposal,” I said even more lamely.

  “Yeah, I suppose not”

  His exuberant mood disappeared. He hunched forward grimly and began to demolish another beer. In one long gulp.

  “Well, anyway, thanks for listening. See you around.”

  He stood up and lurched out of the bar into the humid summer night, perhaps our neighborhood’s first and only Flying Dutchman.

  “You said exactly the right thing,” Rosemarie said indignantly as we lolled in the waters of Lake Michigan the following Saturday. “He had no right to propose that deal.”

  “I know,” I said sadly, as I splashed her with water.

  She splashed back, naturally.

  I had arrived that morning at a tense summer home. A very somber Peg had picked me up at the South Shore Yards to drive me to the beach in our funny-looking new Studebaker about which I said, not unreasonably, that you couldn’t tell whether it was coming or going.

  “What’s wrong?” I demanded.

  “Nothing.”

  “Fight with poor Vince?”

  “Certainly not.”

  Vince was my Neopolitan classmate from St. Ursula and Fenwick who was in love with Peg. He was a football star at Notre Dame and certainly had to be lurking somewhere in the vicinity on a summer weekend. The only trouble with Vince was that for stupid reasons of social class and nationality he felt inferior to the O’Malleys, especially as we became more affluent.

  How could anyone feel inferior to the crazy O’Malleys?

  “Rosemarie?”

  “You’re too damn smart for your own good, Chucky Ducky.”

  “Rosemarie got drunk again last night,” I observed, “embarrassed you and Vince, and you and she had a shouting fit?”

  “Shut up!”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Fool around with Monica Sullivan’s life and Timmy Boylan’s. Leave mine alone.”

  “Yes, ma�
��am.”

  I glanced at her. Tears were flowing down her lovely face.

  “Sorry, Chuck.”

  “It’s okay, Peg.”

  “It was really bad. She was terrible. She’s very contrite today. I don’t know whether that means anything.”

  “It means she’s sorry…. It hasn’t happened recently, has it?”

  “No…Almost a year. I thought it was over…. That’s why I feel so bad this morning.”

  She pulled the car over to the side of Highway 12 to dab at her eyes.

  “I shouldn’t take it out on you. And I shouldn’t have said that about Monica and Tim either.”

  “I’m not really fooling around with their lives,” I said meekly, though indeed that was exactly what I was doing.

  “I know that. I think it’s wonderful that you’re helping them.”

  “I’m not helping them!” I said, raising my voice. “I’m just listening to them.”

  “It’s still wonderful,” she said as she eased the car back on the road.

  “I don’t even know why they want to talk to me.”

  “Don’t you really, Chuckie?”

  Her normal good humor was back in place.

  “Nope.”

  “It’s obvious.”

  “Oh?”

  “Because taking care of people is what you do!”

  She was wrong, but I saw no reason to argue.

  “I need help with a metaphor,” I said, changing the subject.

  “A metaphor?”

  “Right…. If you’re a cougar slinking through a forest and Rosemarie is a timber wolf charging at prey, what’s Monica Sullivan?”

  Peg laughed so hard I thought she’d have to stop the car again.

  “Chuckie! How wonderful! Am I really a sleek, strong, beautiful cougar—whatever a cougar is?”

  “She cougar,” I added.

  “I completely agree that Rosie is a timber wolf, that’s perfect!”

  And just when I thought I had begun to understand women!

  “Well, let me think about Monica. She’s not easy. How about a filly, all prim and proper and dignified and determined to win any race she runs?”

  “I’ll take that under advisement…Now don’t go telling Rosemarie that I said she was a timber wolf.”

  “Why not? They’re beautiful creatures.”

  “And dangerous.”

  “Only when you threaten them or their cubs…Promise me you’ll be nice to her today, please?”

  “I’ve been nice to her ever since I came home.”

  “I know. And you wrote her such nice letters while you were away.”

  Naturally Peg had read all my letters to Rosemarie. I had taken that for granted.

  “Did I?”

  “She feels so bad today.”

  “Embarrassed, worthless?”

  “Terrible…Promise?”

  “Sure.”

  So I was very nice on the beach and in the water as we bounced up and down on the waves under the hazy sky and a searing sun.

  Rosemarie had insisted on anointing me with suntan cream because, as she said, redheads have to take good care of their skin.

  I did not resist. How could I? During the process I thought that, if God approved, heaven for me might be Rosemarie’s gentle fingers rubbing suntan cream into my body.

  I offered to return the favor. She glanced at me skeptically and offered me the bottle.

  “Only my back, Charles Cronin O’Malley.”

  “If you say so.”

  I then proposed to the Deity that if He didn’t mind we could split the time in heaven so that she anointed me for half of eternity and I anointed her for the other half.

  “You have very tender hands, Chuck,” she said with a sigh. “It’s like you’re rubbing cream into a baby’s skin.”

  “Anytime.”

  In the water she had turned to the subject of Monica, Jim, and Timmy. Dazed by her beauty and the intimacy that the heat and the humidity of the day created, I recounted my stories, this time with very little editing.

  Then she said that I had done the right thing in rejecting Tim’s offer.

  “Of course,” she said as she struggled to pull me under the water, “you are going to be a photographer. Absolutely. But not to save someone else who won’t take care of himself.”

  I let her pull me under because it seemed a pleasant experience. Then I had to pull her under to even the score.

  We are acting like young lovers, I thought. But we’re not that. Nor will we ever be.

  Still it was fun.

  And she was so very, very beautiful.

  “Is it true that Mr. Sullivan told Monica she had to move out of the house if she didn’t stop seeing Jim Rizzo?”

  “Yes,” I said, gulping water. “He’s given her til Labor Day to make a decision.”

  “What do you think she’ll do?”

  She suspended the wrestling because gossip was now more important.

  “It will be hard for her. She loves the younger children. Her mother is hysterical. Jim is willing to suspend their, uh, courtship for a while.”

  “So you think she’ll drop him?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Good for her! Those prim little fillies can run pretty fast when they want to, can’t they?”

  She pulled me under the water again. Naturally, Peg had told her about my metaphors.

  “But,” I said, struggling to the surface, “it’s those timber wolves you gotta watch.”

  “They’re very good to their mates and their children,” she gurgled as her head went under.

  A point well taken, but how did she find it out so soon?

  In those days young women rarely moved out of the family home until they married. It would be a grave scandal in the neighborhood.

  “Big Tom is a big jerk,” I said, twisting her arm behind her as I prepared to dunk her again, mind you only in reprisal.

  “If I can be of any help with them, Chuck,” she said as we wrestled, “I’d be glad to do whatever I could.”

  I almost told her that she was a high school senior who couldn’t control her drinking. However, a benign angel talked me out of it.

  “That’s a good idea, Rosemarie,” I said, “an excellent idea. I’ll see what happens!”

  Her face lit up with joy. So I kissed her and then dunked her. She came up sputtering. I kissed her again and pushed her under.

  The kisses were very mild.

  “What are you two doing out there?” Peg shouted from the beach.

  “I’m trying to drown your obnoxious brother!” Rosemarie shouted happily.

  Peg and Vince charged into the water to join us. We frolicked till the sun went down.

  As far as I was concerned the day could have gone on forever.

  Some of the time, I informed God, we’ll want to play in the lake. I assume you have one up in Heaven.

  That night the four of us—Vince and Peg, Rosemarie and I—went to a Dan Dailey/Jeanne Crain film about a band leader. Then we went to a soda parlor where I ate three dishes of ice cream. It was, I had to admit, a delightful evening. Rosemarie was on her very best behavior, funny, charming, intelligent. Vince, of whom I hadn’t seen much since my return, alternately talked about Notre Dame and gazed adoringly at Peg.

  He thought Notre Dame was wonderful, great priests, great guys, great life, great football team, great school. I had my doubts about all of it. Vince did protest too much.

  “Who’s going to win the election?” Peg demanded, tired of the praise for Notre Dame.

  “I think it’s time for a change,” Vince said. “But I’m a Democrat, so if I were old enough to vote, I’d vote for the haberdasher from Missouri.”

  “Dewey is a funny little man on a wedding cake,” Peg added, quoting our mother’s judgment.

  “But he’s going to win,” Rosemarie said. “Everything says that. The stupid Democrats are split four ways.”

  (Strom Thurmond was running on
the Dixiecrat ticket and Henry Wallace on a left-wing Progressive Party ticket.)

  “It looks like the race is already over and it’s only August,” Peg sighed. “I think elections are exciting.”

  Time for Chucky Ducky to weigh in.

  “The race is not over and Dewey won’t win,” I announced. “Bet on it.”

  They all insisted that I was wrong, didn’t know what I was talking about, didn’t read the newspapers, had been away from America too long.

  “Three malted milks say I’m right,” I insisted.

  “You won’t pay,” Peg sneered. “That’s why I never bet with you. You always weasel out.”

  “I won’t this time…. Incidentally, ma’am, may I have a chocolate malted milk with double whipped cream and don’t forget the butter cookies.”

  So the bet was made. I won it, naturally. And collected.

  Smart political analyst? No, lucky guesser who wanted to make trouble on a pleasant August evening when we were all so very young.

  More interested in and better informed about politics, if I may say so, than many subsequent generations of young people.

  Peg and Vince went for a long walk on the beach. Rosemarie protected me from the embarrassing necessity of proposing the same thing for us by saying that she was tired and was going right to bed.

  Michael was in the other bed in our room when I stumbled in.

  “On a date, Chuck?” he said, with a touch of totally unjustified amusement in his voice.

  I hadn’t known he was coming back from his seminary summer assignment.

  “No,” I said curtly, “just went to a movie with Peg and Rosemarie and Vince.”

  “That isn’t a date?”

  “Certaínly not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I didn’t ask them, they asked me.”

  “It would only be a date if you invited Rosie?”

  “Right,” I said, turning off the light and climbing into my bed.

  “I’m glad that’s cleared up.”

  The punk was becoming dangerous. I’d have to watch out.

  As I struggled to come down off the excitement of the evening, I thought about Vince and Peg. The bond between them was strong, not as tensile tough as that between Monica Sullivan and Jimmy Rizzo, but tough enough. They would marry. Maybe a year after Vince’s graduation from Notre Dame. She would have finished her sophomore year in college.