Fergie is above it all. "Showers," he repeats. "Two, three times a day I took 'em."
"I used to sell down there," a guy in the middle of the truck announces. I can barely see his face in the darkness. "Memphis and Dallas are the best towns in Dixie, for my dough. In the wintertime Miami gets too crowded. It used to drive you crazy. In the places it was worth goin', you could hardly get a seat or anything."
"It wasn't crowded when we were there - was it, Fergie?" asks the kid from Valentine Avenue.
Fergie won't answer. He's not altogether with us on this discussion. He's not giving us his all.
The man who likes Memphis and Dallas sees that, too. He says to Fergie, "Down here at this Field I'm lucky if I get a shower once a day. I'm in the new area on the west side of the Field. All the showers aren't built yet."
Fergie is not interested. The comparison is not apt. The comparison, I might and will say, stinks, Mae.
From the front of the truck comes a dynamic and irrefutable observation: "Not flying again tonight! Them cadets won't be flyin' again tonight, all right. The eighth day no night flyin'."
Fergie looks up, with a minimum of energy. "I ain't hardly seen a plane since I'm down here. My wife thinks I'm flyin' myself nuts. She writes and tells me I should get outta the Air Corps. She's got me on a B-17 or something. She reads about Clark Gable and she's got me a gunner or something on a bomber. I ain't got the heart to tell her all I do is empty out stuff."
"What stuff?" says Memphis and Dallas, interested.
"Any stuff. Any stuff that gets filled up." Fergie forgets Mee-ami for a minute and shoots Memphis and Dallas a withering look.
"Oh," says Memphis and Dallas, but before he could continue Fergie turns to me. "You shoulda seen them showers in Mee-ami, Sarge. No kiddin'. You'd never wanna take a bath in your own tub again." And Fergie turns away, losing interest in my fact, which is altogether understandable.
Memphis and Dallas leans forward, anxiously, addressing Fergie. "I could get you a ride," he tells Fergie. "I work at Dispatchers. These here lieutenants, they take cross-countries about once a month and sometimes they don't already have a passenger in the back. I been lotsa times. Maxwell Field. Everywhere." He points a finger at Fergie, as though accusing him of something. "Listen. If you wanna go sometime, gimme a ring. Call Dispatchers and ask for me. Porter's the name."
Fergie looks phlegmatically interested.
"Yeah? Ask for Porter, huh? Corporal or something?"
"Private," says porter, just short of stiffly.
"Boy," says the kid from Valentine Avenue, looking past my head into the teeming blackness. "Look at it come down!"
Where's my brother? Where's my brother Holden? What is this missing-in-action stuff? I don't believe it. I don't understand it. I don't believe it. The United States Government is a liar. The Governments is lying to me and my family.
I never heard such crazy, liar's news.
Why, he came through the war in Europe without a scratch, we all saw him before he shipped out to the Pacific last summer, and he looked fine. Missing.
Missing, missing, missing. Lies! I'm being lied to. He's never been missing before. He's one of the least missing boys in the world. He's here in this truck; he's home in New York; he's at Pentey Preparatory School ("You send us the Boy. We'll mold the man - All modern fireproof buildings..."); yes, he's at Pentey, he never left school; and he's at Cape Cod, sitting on the porch, biting his fingernails; and he's playing doubles with me, yelling at me to stay back at the baseline when he's at the net. Missing! Is that missing? Why lie about something as important as that? How can the Government do a thing like that? What can they get out of it, telling lies like that?
"Hey, Sarge!" yells the character in the front of the truck. "Let's get this show on the road! Bring on the dames!"
"How are the dames, Sarge? They good-lookin'?"
"I don't really know what this thing is tonight," I say. "Usually they're pretty nice girls." That is to say, in other words, by the same token, usually they're usually. Everybody tries very, very hard. Everybody is in there pitching. The girls ask you where you come from, and you tell them, and they repeat the name of the city, putting an exclamation point at the end of it. Then they tell you about Douglas Smith, Corporal, AUS. Doug lives in New York, and do you know him? You don't believe so, and you tell her about New York being a very big place. And because you didn't want Helen to marry a soldier and wait around for a year or six, you go on dancing with this strange girl who knows Doug Smith, this strange nice girl who's read every line Lloyd C. Douglas has written. While you dance and the band plays on, you think about everything in the world except music and dancing. You wonder if your little sister Phoebe is remembering to take your dog out regularly, if she's remembering not to jerk Joey's collar - the kid'll kill the dog someday.
"I never saw rain like this," the boy from Valentine Avenue says. "You ever see it like this, Fergie?"
"See what?"
"Rain like this."
"Naa."
"Let's get this show on the road! Bring on the dames!" The noisy guy leans forward and I can see his face. He looks like everybody else in the truck. We all look alike.
"What's the looey like, Sarge?" It was the boy from near the Bronx.
"I don't really know," I say. "He just hit the Field a couple of days ago. I heard that he lived right around here somewhere when he was a civilian."
"What a break. To live right near where you're at," says the boy from Valentine Avenue.
"If I was only at Mitchel Field, like. Boy. Half hour and I'm home."
Mitchel Field. Long Island. What about that Saturday in the summer at Port Washington? Red said to me, It won't hurt you to see the Fair either. It's very pretty. So I grabbed Phoebe, and she had some kid with her named Minerva (which killed me), and I put them both in the car and then I looked around for Holden. I couldn’t find him; so Phoebe and Minerva and I left without him... At the Fair we went to the Bell Telephone Exhibit, and I told Phoebe that This Phone was connected with the author of the Elsie Fairfield books. So Phoebe, shaking like Phoebe, picked up the phone and trembles into it, Hello, this is Phoebe Caulfield, and child at the World's Fair. I read your books and think they are very excellent in spots. My mother and father are playing in Death Takes a Holiday in Great Neck. We go swimming a lot, but the ocean is better in Cap Cod. Good bye!...And then we came out of the building and there was Holden, with Hart and Kirky Morris. He had my terry-cloth shirt on. No coat. He came over and asked Phoebe for her autograph and she socked him in the stomach, happy to see him, happy he was her brother. Then he said to me, Let's get out of this educational junk. Let's go on one of the rides or something. I can't stand this stuff....And now they're trying to tell me he's missing. Missing. Who's missing? Not him. He's at the World's Fair. I know just where to find him. I know exactly where he is. Phoebe knows, too. She would know in a minute. What is this missing, missing, missing stuff?
"How long's it take you to get from your house to Forty Second Street?" Fergie wants to know from the Valentine Avenue kid.
Valentine Avenue thinks it over, a little excitedly. "From my house," he informs intensely, "to the Paramount Theayter takes exactly forty four minutes by subway. I nearly won two bucks betting with my girl on that. Only I wouldn't take her dough."
The man who likes Memphis and Dallas better than Miami speaks up:
"I hope all these girls tonight ain't chicken. I mean kids. They look at me like I was an old guy when they're chicken."
"I watch out that I don't perspire too much," says Fergie. "these her G.I. dances are really hot. The women don't like it if you perspire too much. My wife don't eve like it when I perspire too much. It's all right when she perspires - that's different!...Women. They drive ya nuts."
A colossal burst of thunder. All of us jump - me nearly falling off the truck. I get off the protection strap, and the boy from Valentine Avenue squeezes against Fergie to make room for me....A very drawly voic
e speaks up from the front of the truck:
"Y'all ever been to Atlanta?"
Everybody is waiting for more thunder. I answer. "No," I say.
"Atlanta's a good town."
- Suddenly the lieutenant from Special Services appears from nowhere, soaking wet, sticking his head inside the truck - four of these men must go. He wears oilskin covers on his visored cap: it looks like a unicorn’s bladderie. His face is even wet. It is a small-featured, young face, not yet altogether sure of the new command in it issued to him by the Government. He sees my stripes where the sleeves of my swiped raincoat (with all my letters) should be.
"You in charge heah, Sahgeant?"
Wow. Choose yo’ pahtnuhs... "Yes, sir."
"How many men in heah?"
"I’d better take a re-count, sir." I turn around, and say, "All right, all you men with matches handy, light ‘em up-I wanna count heads." And four or five of the men manage to burn matches simultaneously. I pretend to count heads. "Thirty-Four including me, sir," I tell him finally.
The young lieutenant in the rain shakes his head. "Too many," he informs me-and I try to look very stupid. "I called up every orderly room myself," he reveals for my benefit," and distinctly gave orduhs that only fahve men from each squadron were supposed to go." (I pretend to see the gravity of the situation for the first time. I might suggest that we shoot four of the men. We might ask for a detail of men experienced in shooting people who want to go to dances.)...The lieutenant asks me, "Do you know Miz Jackson, Sahgeant?"
"I know who she is," I say as the men listen-without taking drags on their cigarettes.
"Well, Miz Jackson called me this mawnin’ and asked for just thi’ty men even. I’m afraid Sahgeant, we’ll have to ask four of the men to go back to their areas." He looks away from me, looks deeper into the truck, establishing a neutrality for himself in the soaking dark. "I don’t care how it’s done."
I look cross-eyed at the men. "How many of you did not sign up for this dance?"
"Don’t look at me," says Valentine Avenue. "I signed up."
"Who didn’t sign up?" I say. "Who just came along because somebody told him about it?" - That’s cute sergeant. Keep it up.
"Make it snappy, Sahgeant," says the lieutenant, letting his head drip inside the truck. "C’mon now. Who didn’t sign up?" - C’mon now, who didn’t sign up. I never heard such a gross question in my life.
"Heck, we all signed up, Sarge," says Valentine Avenue. "The thing is, around seven guys signed up in my squadron."
All right, I’ll be brilliant. I’ll offer a handsome alternative.
"Who’s willing to take in a movie on the Field instead?"
No response.
Response.
Silently, Porter (the Memphis-Dallas man) gets up and moves toward the way out. The men adjust their legs to let him go by. I move aside, too....None of us tells Porter, as he passes, what relatively big, important stuff he is.
More response... "One side," says Fergie, getting up. "So the married guys’ll write letters t’night." He jumps out of the truck quickly.
I wait. We all wait. No one else comes forward. "Two more," I croak. I’ll hound them. I’ll hound these men because I hate their guts. They’re all being insufferably stupid. What’s the matter with them? Do they think they’ll have a terrific time at this sticky little dance? Do they think they’re going to hear a fine trumpet take a chorus of "Marie"? What’s the matter with these idiots? What’s the matter with me? Why do I want them all to go? Why do I sort of want to go myself? Sort of! What a joke. You’re aching to go, Caulfield...
"All right," I say coldly. "The lst two men on the left. C’mon out. I don’t know who you are." - I don’t know who you are. - Phew!
The noisy guy, who has been yelling at me to get the show on the road, starts coming out. I had forgotten he was sitting just there. But he disappears awkwardly into the India ink storm. He is followed, as though tentatively, by a smaller man-a boy, it proves in the light.
His overseas cap on crooked and limp with wet, his eyes on the lieutenant, the boy waits in the rain-as though obeying an order. He is very young, probably eighteen, and he doesn’t look like the tiresome sort of kid who argues and argues after the whistle’s blown. I stare at him, and the lieutenant turns around and stares at him, too.
"I was on the list. I signed up when the fella tacked it up. Right when he tacked it up."
"Sorry, soldier," says the lieutenant, " - Ready, Sahgeant?"
"You can ask Ostrander," the boy tells the lieutenant, and sticks his head in the truck. "Hey, Ostrander! Wasn’t I the first fella on the list?"
The rain comes down harder than ever, it seems. The boy who wants to go to the dance is getting soaked. I reach out a hand and flip up his raincoat collar.
"Wasn’t I first on the list?" the boy yells at Ostrander.
"What list?" says Ostrander.
"The list for fellas that wanna go to the dance!" yells the boy. "Oh," says Ostrander. "What about it? I was on it."
Oh, Ostrander, you insidious bore!
"Wasn’t I the first fella on it?" says the boy, his voice breaking.
"I don’t know," says Ostrander. "How should I know?"
The boy turns wildly to the lieutenant. "I was the first one on it sir. Honest. This fella in our squadron This foreign guy, like, that works in the orderly room - he tacked it up and I signed it right off. The first fella."
The lieutenant says, dripping: "Get in. Get in the truck boy." The boy climbs back into the truck and the men quickly make room for him. The lieutenant turns to me and asks, "Sahgeant, wheah can I use a telephone around heah?"
"Well, Post Engineers’ sir. I’ll show you." We wade through the rivers of red bog over to Post Engineers. "Mama?" the lieutenant says into the mouthpiece. "Buddy...I’m fine...Yes, mama. Yes, mama. I’m fixin’ to be. Maybe Sunday if I get off like they said. Mama, is Sarah Jane home?... Well, how ‘bout lettin’ me talk to her?...Yes, mama. I will if I can, mama; maybe Sunday." The lieutenant talks again. "Sarah Jane?...Fine. Fine...I’m fixin’ to. I told mama maybe Sunday if I get off. - Listen Sarah Jane. You got a date t’night?...It sure is pretty bad. It sure is. - Listen, Sarah Jane. How’s the car? You get that thing fixed? That’s fine, that’s fine; That’s mighty cheap with the plugs and all." The lieutenant’s voice changes. It becomes casual. "Sarah Jane, listen. I want you to drive oveh to Miz Jackson’s t’night...Well it’s like this: I got these boys heah for one of those pahties Miz Jackson gives. You know?...Only this is what I want to tell you: they’s one boy too many...Yes...Yes...Yes...I know that, Sarah Jane; I know that; I know it’s rainin’...Yes...Yes..." The lieutenant’s voice gets very sure and hard suddenly. He says into the mouthpiece, "I ain’t askin’ you, girl. I’m tellin’ you. Now I want you to drive ovuh to Miz Jackson’s right quick - heah?...I don’t care...All right. All right...I’ll see y’all later." He hangs up.
Drenched to the bone, the bone of loneliness, the bone of silence, we plod back to the truck.
Where are you Holden? Never mind the Missing stuff. Stop playing around. Show up. Show up somewhere. Hear me? It’s simply because I remember everything. I can’t forget anything that’s good, that’s why. So listen. Just go up to somebody, some officer or some G.I., and tell them you’re Here - not Missing, not dead, not anything but Here. Stop kidding around. Stop letting people think you’re Missing. Stop wearing my robe to the beach. Stop taking the shots on my side of the court. Stop whistling. Sit up to the table...
15. The Stranger
THE maid at the apartment door was young and snippy and she had a part-time look about her. "Who'd ya wanna see?" she asked the young man hostilely.
The young man said, "Mrs. Polk." He had told her four times over the squawky house phone whom he wanted to see.
He should have come on a day when there wouldn't be any idiots to answer the house phones and doors. He should have come on a day when he didn't feel like gouging his eyes out, to rid himself o
f hay fever. He should have come - he shouldn't have come at all. He should have taken his sister Mattie straight to her beloved, greasy chop suey joint, then straight to a matinee, then straight to the train - without stopping once to take out his messy emotions, without forcing them on strangers. Hey! Maybe it wasn't too laugh like a moron, lie and leave.
The maid stepped out of the way, mumbling something about maybe she was out of the tub and maybe not, and the young man with the red eyes and the leggy little girl with him entered the apartment.
It was an ugly, expensive little New York apartment of the kind which seems to rent mostly to newly married couples - possibly because the bride's feet began to kill her at the last renting agency, or because she loves to distraction the way her new husband wears his wrist watch.
The living room, in which the young man and the little girl were ordered to wait, had one Morris chair too many, and it looked as though the reading lamps had been breeding at night. Ah, but over the crazy artificial fireplace there were some fine books.
The young man wondered who owned and cared about Rainer Maria Rilke and The Beautiful and the Damned and A High Wind in Jamaica, for instance. Did they belong to Vincent's girl or Vincent's girl's husband?
He sneezed, and walked over to an interesting, messy stack of phonograph records, and picked up the top record. It was an old Bakewell Howard - before Howard had gone commercial - playing Fat Boy. Who owned it? Vincent's girl or Vincent's girl's husband? He turned the record over, and through his leaky eyes he looked at a patch of dirty white adhesive tape fastened to the title sticker. Printed on the tape in green ink were the identification and warning: Helen Beebers - Room 202, Rudenweg - Stop Thief!
The young man grabbed his hip pocket handkerchief and sneezed again; then he turned the record back to the Fat Boy side. His mind began to hear the old Bakewell Howard's rough, fine horn playing. Then he began to hear the music of the unrecoverable years: the little, unhistorical, pretty good years when all the dead boys in the 12th Regiment had been living and cutting in on other dead boys on lost dance floors: the years when no one who could dance worth a damn had ever heard of Cherbourg or Saint-Lo, or Hurtgen Forest or Luxembourg.
22 Out-of-print J. D. Salinger Stories Page 13