The Corps I - Semper Fi

by W. E. B Griffin

  McCoy, thinking he had been dismissed again, started to do another about-face.

  "Hold it, Corporal," the president said. "Sit down a minute."

  McCoy sat down, more or less at attention.

  "Corporal, unofficially, what that Platoon Leader's Course actually is is Parris Island for officers. What it's really all about is to make Marines-Marine officers-out of civilians. To do that, they're going to lean hard on the trainees. That might be harder for a Marine corporal to take than it would for some kid straight from college. It would be a shame if some Marine corporal who a lot of people think would make a good officer were to say, 'I'm a corporal; I don't have to put up with this crap. They can stick their commission.' Do I make my point?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Now, while I cannot tell you how this board has acted on your application, or whether or not the appointing authority will concur with its recommendation, I can mention in passing that the next Platoon Leader's Course begins at Quantico One September, and if I were you I wouldn't make any plans for the period following One September. Perhaps between now and One September, your platoon commander could see his way clear to putting you on leave."

  "Yes, sir," Lieutenant Fogarty said. "No problem there, sir."

  "Well, that's it then," the president said. "Unless anyone else has something?"

  "I want to sec the corporal a minute when this is over," Captain Sessions said. "Stick around, please, Killer."

  " 'Killer?' " the president asked, wryly. "Is that what you call him? My curiosity is aroused."

  "With respect, sir, that is a little private joke between the corporal and myself," Captain Sessions said.

  (Five)

  Norristown, Pennsylvania

  10 August 1941

  Norristown was dingier, dirtier, grayer, and greasier than McCoy remembered; and he had a terrible temptation just to say fuck it and turn the LaSalle around and go back to Philly.

  In China, McCoy had told himself more than once that he would never go back home, because as far as he was concerned there was nothing left for him there. That had been all right in Shanghai, but it hadn't been all right once the Corps had sent him to Philly. He knew he was at least going to have to make an effort to go see his sister Anne-Marie, who was probably a regular nun by now, and his brother Tommy, who was now eighteen and probably almost a man, and maybe even the old man.

  McCoy told himself that at least he was not going back to Norristown the way he left… on the Interurban Rapid Transit car to Philly with nothing in his pocket but the trolley

  transfer the Marine recruiter had given him to get from the Twelfth Street Station in Philly to the Navy Yard.

  He was coming home in a LaSalle convertible automobile; he was wearing a candy-ass college boy seersucker suit like Pick Pickering wore; and he had a couple of hundred bucks in his pockets and a hell of a lot more than that in the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society bank.

  At the convent, a pale-faced nun behind a grille told him that she was sorry she couldn't help him but she had never heard of anyone named Anne-Marie McCoy. A moment later, the door over the grill was once more shut and locked. After that he went to the rectory at Saint Rose of Lima's.

  A young priest opened the door. He was a dark-eyed, dark-haired guy, who looked like he could be either some kind of a Mexican or maybe a Hungarian. He was only wearing a T-shirt; but the black slacks and shoes gave him away. Besides, McCoy could have told you this one was a priest even if he was naked in a steambath. He had that look. Still, McCoy was a little let down that the guy wasn't wearing a white collar and a black front.

  "Can I help you?" the young priest asked.

  "Is Father Zoghby in?" McCoy asked.

  Standing in exactly this spot, he recalled, he had asked that same question at least a couple of hundred times before: When he was an altar boy. Later when he was in some kind of trouble in school and the sisters or the brothers sent him to see "the Father." And later still on the night when the old man went apeshit and came after him with crazy eyes, swinging the bottom of the lamp. McCoy came here that night because he hadn't known where else to go or what else to do.

  "I'm sorry," the young priest said. "Father Zoghby's no longer at Saint Rose's."

  "Where is he?" McCoy asked.

  "He's in Saint Francis's, I'm sorry to say," the young priest said, and repeated, "Can I help you?"

  Saint Francis's was a hospital near Philadelphia. It was where they sent you if you were going to die, or if you went crazy.

  "I'm looking for Anne-Marie McCoy," he said. "She used to be in this parish, and then I heard she was at the Sisters of the Holy Ghost as a novice. But when I asked at the convent, they told me she wasn't there. And they wouldn't tell me where she went."

  "What's your interest in her?"

  "She's my sister," McCoy said. "I've been away."

  "I see," the priest said.

  There was recognition now in his eyes. McCoy thought the young priest had probably heard all about the grief and pain the incorrigible son had inflicted on good ol' Pat McCoy before they ran the incorrigible off to the Marines. Nobody but his family would believe it, but when good ol' Pat wasn't glad-handing people at the used-car lot or the KC or the 12th Street Bar Grill, good ol' Pat McCoy was pouring John Jamieson's into his brain. Only his wife and kids knew it, but good ol' glad-hand Pat was a mean, vicious drunk who got his kicks slapping his wife and his kids around. Sometimes he beat them because there was some kind of reason like not showing the proper respect, or for bad grades or a note from one of the Sisters or the Brothers, or for leaving polish showing when you'd waxed one of the cars on the lot. More often he beat them for no reason at all.

  Kenneth J. McCoy would never forget the time when good ol' Pat had dragged him in front of the judge: "God knows, Your Honor," Pat McCoy told the judge, the Honorable Francis Mulvaney, a fellow knight at the KC, "I have tried to do my best for my family. God knows that. I sent them to parochial school when it was a genuine sacrifice to come up with the tuition. I made them take Mass regular. I tried to set an example."

  He paused then to blow his nose and wipe his eyes.

  "And now this," his father went on. "Maybe God is punishing me for something I done in my youth. I don't know, Your Honor."

  "I'll hear your side of this," His Honor said to the incorrigible.

  Who replied that good ol' Pat had slapped his eldest-just turned seventeen-son one time too many. And his eldest son (otherwise known to this court as the accused, Kenneth J. McCoy) had seen red and given him a shove back. And good ol' Pat, the loving father who had sent the accused to parochial school even when that had been a genuine financial sacrifice, had been so drunk that he fell down and tore his cheek when he knocked over the coffee table.

  And that had made of loving Father so pissed that he came after die accused with the base of the table lamp. After he'd demonstrated his willingness to use it by smashing the Philco radio and the glass in the bookcases and the plaster statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the accused had fled the premises and sought refuge in the rectory of Saint Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church. There he had remained until, accompanied by the good Father Zoghby, he surrendered himself to the Norristown Police to face charges. Good of loving Father Pat McCoy had accused his eldest son of assault with intent to do bodily harm as well as general all-around incorrigibility and heathenism and ungrateful sonism.

  "I'm sorry he cut his face," the accused mumbled to the judge.

  "That's all?"

  "Yes, sir."

  It had already been arranged, Father Zoghby had told him when he'd come to the jail. He'd had a word with the judge. To spare his family any further shame and humiliation, the judge would drop all charges on condition that the accused join the U.S. Marine Corps for four years.

  Later he'd tried to send his civvies home in the box they gave you at Parris Island, but it had come back marked REFUSED. So had die letters he'd written at first to his mother and Anne-Marie and Tommy.
Then there had been a letter from Father Zoghby: His father could not find it in his heart to forgive him, and had started telling people he had no son named Kenneth. It would be better, Father Zoghby continued, if Kenneth stopped writing until things had a time to settle. He would pray that his father would in time forgive him, and he would keep him posted if anything happened he should know.

  While McCoy was still running the water-cooled.30-caliber Browning in Dog Company, First Battalion, 4th Marines, Father Zoghby had written him one more letter His mother was dead; Anne-Marie had a vocation and was a novice at the Convent of the Sisters of the Holy Ghost; Tommy had gone to Bethlehem, where the steel mills had reopened and there was work; and his father had remarried.

  "Anne- Marie left the convent at least two years ago, I'm sorry to say," the young priest said. "I'm sure your father would know where she is."

  "I can't ask him," McCoy said.

  The priest looked at him for a moment, and McCoy sensed that he was making up his mind. Then the priest stepped outside and closed the rectory door after him.

  "Maybe I can help you," he said.

  He led him past the church building, then down the cracked concrete walkway to the school buildings-the grammar school to the left and the larger, newer Saint Rose of Lima High School building to the right-and finally to the nun's residence.

  He spoke first to Sister Gregory, who recognized McCoy as she looked down at him from the steps of the residence, but acted as if she had never seen him before in her life. She went back inside, and a minute later Sister Paul appeared at the door and walked down the steps to where McCoy and the young priest stood.

  "How are you, Kenneth?" Sister Paul said.

  "I'm all right, Sister," McCoy said. "How are you?"

  "Have you made things right between you and God, Kenneth?"

  "I don't know, Sister," McCoy said.

  "You're not going to make trouble are you, Kenneth?" she asked.

  "I just came home from China," McCoy said. "I want to see Anne-Marie."

  "You were in China, were you?"

  "Yes, Sister."

  "Anne- Marie left the Sisters of the Holy Ghost," Sister Paul said, "and I'm sorry to tell you, she has also abandoned the Church."

  "Do you know where she is?"

  "Here in Norristown," Sister Paul said. "She's taken up with a Protestant."

  "Excuse me?"

  "She chose to marry a young man outside the Church. He's a Protestant whose name is Schulter. He has the Amoco station at Ninth and Walnut. They have two babies, a little girl and a little boy."

  "Thank you. Sister Paul," McCoy said.

  "I don't want you to do anything, Kenneth, that will cause your father more pain," she said. "I hope you've had time to grow up, to think things through."

  Chapter Eight

  (One)

  The man who walked out to the pump island when McCoy drove in wore an Amoco uniform: a striped shirt and trousers with a matching billed cap. There was an Amoco insignia on the brow of the cap and a nameplate, "Dutch," was sewn to the shirt breast. The man was about thirty, McCoy judged, and already wearing a spare tire.

  "Fill it with high-test, sir?" he asked.

  McCoy nodded. After Dutch had opened the hood, McCoy got out of the car.

  "You must have just had the oil changed," Dutch said, showing McCoy the dipstick. "Clean as a whistle and right to the top."

  "Your name Schulter?" McCoy asked.

  "That's right," Dutch said, warily curious.

  "I'm Anne-Marie's brother," McCoy said.

  Dutch hesitated a moment and then put out his hand. "Dutch Schulter," he said. "I heard-she told me-you was in the Marines."

  "I am," McCoy said.

  "You must be doing all right in the Marines," Dutch Schulter said, making a vague gesture first at the LaSalle. and then at McCoy himself.

  "I do all right," McCoy said.

  The gas pump made a chugging noise when the automatic filler nozzle was triggered. Dutch Schulter moved to the rear of the car, topped off the tank, then hung the hose up. McCoy looked at the pump. Eleven point seven gallons at 23.9 cents a gallon: $2.79. He took a wad of bills from his pocket and peeled off a ten-dollar bill.

  Dutch Schulter handed the change to him, together with a Coca-Cola glass.

  "They're free with a fill-up," he said.

  "How do I get to see my sister?" McCoy said.

  Schulter looked at him for a moment as if making up his mind, and then raised his voice: "Mickey!"

  A kid in an Amoco uniform appeared at the door of the grease-rack bay.

  "Hold the fort, Mickey," Dutch called. "I got to go home for a minute."

  Home was a row house on North Elm, a little wooden porch in front of a fieldstone house that smelled of baby shit, sour milk, and cabbage.

  Anne- Marie looked older than he expected. She was already getting fat and lumpy, and she had lost a couple of teeth. She cried when she saw him, and hugged him, and told him he had really growed up.

  Dutch touched his shoulder, and when McCoy turned to look at him, handed him a bottle of beer.

  "You're an uncle, Kenny," Anne-Marie said. "We got a boy and a girl, but I just got them to sleep, and you'll have to wait to see them. You can stay for supper?"

  "I thought I'd take you and Dutch out for supper," McCoy said.

  "You don't want to do that," she protested. "You won't believe what restaurants ask for food these days."

  "Yeah, I do," McCoy said.

  "What I should have done," Dutch said, "is had him follow me in the truck. You want to run me back by the station? Could you find your way back here again?"

  "Why don't you take my car?" McCoy said. "I've got no place else to go."

  "You got a car, Kenny?" Anne-Marie asked, surprised.

  "He's got a goddamned LaSalle convertible, is what he's got," Dutch said.

  She looked at him in surprise.

  "You been doing all right for yourself, I guess," she said.

  "I've been doing all right," McCoy said.

  "I'll put it up on the rack, and grease it," Dutch said. "And then have the kid works for me, you saw him, Mickey, wash it."

  "Thank you," McCoy said, and tossed him the keys.

  Dutch Schulter returned a few minutes after six, as soon as the night man came on at the station. McCoy was glad to see him. Anne-Marie was getting on his nerves. She was a goddamned slob. He had to tell her to change the diaper on the older kid; he had shit running down his leg from under his diaper.

  The sink was full of unwashed dishes. McCoy remembered that, come to think of it, his mother had been sort of a slob herself. Many of the times the old man had slapped her around, it had started with him bitching about something being dirty.

  She told him she would really rather make his supper herself. When Dutch returned with his car, she said, he could take her down to the Acme and she would get steaks or something; but she didn't mean it, and McCoy didn't want to eat in her dirty kitchen, off her dirty plates.

  She asked him if he had been to see "Daddy," and he told her no. And she told him she hadn't seen him either. He had been mad at her since she left the convent (and boy, could she tell him stories about what went on in that place!); and after she had married Dutch, outside the church and all, it had gotten worse.

  Dutch was a good man, she said. She had met him when she was working in the Highway Diner on the Bethlehem Pike after she left the convent. He had been nice to her, and one thing had led to another, and they'd started going out. Then they got married and started their family.

  McCoy did the arithmetic in his head, and decided she had the sequence wrong: She and Dutch started their family, and then got married. The old man could count, too, which might be one of the reasons he was pissed-off at her.

  How dare she embarrass Past Grand Exalted Commander Pat McCoy of the KC? She not only leaves (or gets kicked out of?) the convent, but she gets herself knocked up by some Dutchy she meets slinging hash at the
Highway Diner.

  Dutch came home with the LaSalle all greased and polished, then took a bath and got dressed-up in a two-tone sports coat and slacks. Anne-Marie had on a too-tight spotted dress with a flowery print. They loaded the kids in the car and went looking for someplace to eat.

  Anne- Marie said the food in the 12th Street Bar Grill was always good, and they didn't ask an arm and a leg for it. McCoy knew she was less concerned with good food and saving his money than she was in going where the old man would be hanging out so he'd see them together all dressed-up, and him driving a LaSalle.

  "I saw a place on the way into town, Norristown Tavern… Inn… that looked nice," McCoy said.

  "They charge an arm and a leg in there," Anne-Marie said.

  "Yeah, they do, Kenny," Dutch agreed. He did care, McCoy decided, what it was going to cost.

  "What the hell, I don't get to come all that often," McCoy said.

  When they were in the Norristown Inn, in a booth against the wall, Anne-Marie looked up from trying to force a spoonful of potatoes into the boy and whispered, "There's Daddy."

  Good ol' Pat McCoy was at the bar, with a sharp-faced female, her hair piled high on top of her head, her lipstick a red gash across her pale face… obviously the second Mrs. Patrick J. McCoy.

  McCoy thought it over, and when they were on their strawberry shortcake, he got up from the table without saying anything and walked to the bar.

  "Hello," he said to his father.

  His father nodded at him. The second Mrs. McCoy looked at him curiously.

  He's not surprised to see me, which means that he saw me at the table with Anne-Marie and Dutch. And didn't come over.

  "You're home, I see," McCoy's father said.

  "About ten days ago."

  McCoy's father moved his glass in little circles on the bar.

  "Learn anything in the Marine Corps?" McCoy's father asked.

  That told his new wife who I am. Now she doesn't like me either.

  "I learned a little," McCoy said.

  "So what are you doing now, looking for a job?"

  "Not yet."

  "Maybe the Dutchman'll give you one pumping gas," his father said. He laughed at his own wit and turned to his wife for an audience. She dutifully tittered.