By nine Joe was a nervous wreck, wondering why the kid didn't come, and rambling on and on, to keep himself from going to pieces. He was in the middle of a speech about train wrecks, maybe Walt was hurt on his way home... that's the way it always happens... when the bell rang.
We both jumped and ran for the door. Walt was standing there, his uniform neat and pressed, a high polish on his shoes. He was dragging a barracks bag that seemed almost as tall as the kid. He hadn't put on much weight or gained any height, but you only had to look at his sharp little face, the shrewd eyes, the cigarette carelessly pasted on his lip—to see he was a man, a tough little squirt. He and Joe hugged each other awkwardly, and as Joe shut the door, Walt straightened his shirt. Joe said, “Son, you remember Uncle George?”
“Sure. Howya, Jackson,” the kid said, brushing the corporal stripes on his sleeves as he shook hands with me. There was a strong odor of whiskey on his breath.
We sat down, Joe and I on one side of the room, the kid on the couch beneath the picture of his mother. He looked around, said, “Place looks the same.”
“You bet, haven't changed a thing. Wanted home to look exactly the way you remembered it,” Joe said. “Guess home looms pretty large to a soldier.”
“Yes and no,” Walt said. I was fascinated by the cigarette actually pasted to his lips, it went up and down when he spoke like a tail wagging. “Germany isn't rugged, at least not in Berlin.”
There was a moment of silence, then Joe suddenly bounced to his feet. “My God, I forgot the beer! You drink beer, Walt?”
“Yeah, I'll take an amber. Had a couple with some of the guys at the station, why I'm a little late.”
“Couple of what?” Joe asked, although he must have had a whiff of the kid's breath too.
“Whiskey. Bastards charge you fifty cents a shot here. Over in Berlin we get a goddamn glassful for a dime.”
Joe was staring at him bug-eyed, and I said brightly, “I'll get the beer.” I brought in three bottles and glasses. Joe poured and Walt held up his glass, said, “Here's to you, Pop. You, too, Jackson.”
We drank and Joe said, “Guess you must of had plenty of good German beer over there.”
Walt screwed up his thin face. “Kraut beer is a lot of crap. About the same as this, and the krauts are such hustlers, they'd water their own pee if they could grab a buck out of it. Hey Pop, still smoke a pipe?”
Joe nodded.
Walt reached over lazily, pulled the barracks bag to him. He dug out a box, threw it to Joe. “Jesus!” Joe said, opening it, his voice high with excitement. “George, look at this, a set of two meerschaum pipes! Genuine, meerschaum.”
I examined the white bowls and yellow stems, all set in a gaudy red plush box, carefully handed them back to Joe. “They'll color up nicely,” I said to make conversation.
“Walt, you didn't have to bring me nothing as expensive as this,” Joe said, so pleased I thought he'd burst with pride.
“Got lot more stuff,” Walt said, digging into the barracks bag again. He came up with a tan-leather camera case, handed it to Joe. “How's this? I got a couple of 'em.”
“Some camera,” Joe said, opening the case.
The kid laughed softly, said to me, “Get him—the square. Some camera. Pop that's a Leica, the camera. You can hock it for a hundred bucks any place in the world, sell it for two hundred. Five years ago you could have got a grand. Sure, I'm loaded with junk—including perfume you can give your girls.”
“What girls?” Joe asked a little too quickly.
“Aw come on, you ain't that old,” Walt said grinning. He pointed to the cigarette hanging from his thin lips. “In Germany this still means a girl, if you ain't too particular. Couple candy bars or a pack of butts means all night. For a carton of butts you can get a blonde midchen that's good as anything in the movies. Those kraut babes are built for it. Got you some perfume too, Jackson.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Joe hesitated, then said, “Well, guess you're a man now, know all about girls.”
“I had a clap two weeks after I hit Berlin.”
“Walt! You never wrote you were sick...?”
“Who was sick? Nothing to it now. Give you a couple of shots of penicillin and you leave the hospital the same day, ready to do more bedwork. Plenty of VD over there, but once you get a steady piece, you don't have to worry.” The kid sucked on his cigarette and it was out. He took out a lighter, lit the butt, blew out a heavy cloud of smoke through his nose. “Got a couple of Swiss lighters, too. Nothing little Walter skipped.”
I wanted to leave, I didn't like the look on Joe's big face: as if something was hurting him and he didn't understand what it could possibly be. He needed a skinful, but quick.
We didn't talk for a while and the kid lit another cigarette. The way his-cigarette hung from his lip if he had smoked king size he would have burned his tie. Walt asked if we were still the big wheels at Sky Oil, and a lot more small talk. Joe just sat there, staring at the kid and, for the first time since I had known him, speechless.
Walt stood up, stretched, walked over and turned on the radio. He went from station to station, listening to each for a split second, then shut the radio off. Taking a handful of pretzels he went back to the couch. “Radio's a piece of junk. Going to buy us a television set, one of these slick combination jobs—radio, phono, and television. Got a lot of buying to do. Need suits, shirts, shoes—the works.”
Joe smiled weakly, “Sure, have to buy you a suit. I... eh... was wondering about this summer. I mean, I can get you a job at the office before you start college in September. Of course if you want to rest this summer, that's okay with me. Say, hope you've been giving school a lot of thought, like I wrote you. Any idea what college you want to attend?”
“I have been giving it a lot of thinking,” Walt said slowly. “Fact is, I may not want to go to school. Thinking of opening me a package liquor store.”
“What?” Joe jumped as if about to strike the kid.
“Sure, as a vet I get a preference and it's a good business—stock can't spoil or get old. And if the depression comes, people only hit the bottle more, so...”
“By God, you'll go to college! What the hell you think I sent you into the army for?” Joe shouted.
“Relax Joe, he's just come home. You can talk this over later when...” I said.
Walt gave me a cool grin. “That's okay, Jackson, might as well get this straightened.” He turned to Joe. “Now look Pop, I ain't the little snot-nose kid that went out of here three years ago. I'm an operator, a slick one, a real smart little bastard, if I say so myself. I've learned to hustle—big-time hustling. College is okay, but I haven't time for that now. Maybe later I'll take something in business administration—polish up my hustling.”
“Later? What the hell you think...” Joe said.
“Know what I got in my pocket, six thousand bucks, all good American green stuff! And in the sole of my army shoes at the bottom of the barracks bag, I have another five grand in money orders—all made out to me.”
Looking stupid with astonishment Joe mumbled, “Six and five...”
“Eleven grand,” Walt said proudly. “Also got some jewelry—rings and stuff, but the stones may be phony.”
“Walt, how did you get that dough?” Joe asked, his voice taking on an almost stern, comical 'father's' tone.
“By using my head,” Walt said, his voice cocky. “The country yokels went crazy getting a girl for a couple of cigarettes. Right from the start I got smart—I let those dopes buck for the stripes, get stupid-happy over selling a jit candy bar for a buck. I sucked around, got in with the medicos, formed a partnership with the supply sergeant. We sold big stuff—medicine, cases of food and clothing. Even had a cracker with us that made a still and we refilled old whiskey bottles. Know what a bottle of whiskey, real whiskey, will bring in a German night club?”
Joe didn't (or couldn't) speak, and I said I had no idea.
“At least a hundred bucks. We sold them our bootleg stuff—and it wasn't bad whiskey either—for fifty. Hell, what I got is peanuts.. If I'd been a field officer, or if my partners hadn't been so damn yellow, we'd have cleaned up a hundred thousand, at least.”
The room was heavy with silence, broken only by Walt crunching pretzels. He stood up, stretched. “I'm kind of tired. Played crap all the way across, so I haven't had too much shut eye. Came out with a little over four hundred. Those jokers didn't have no real dough on them, and here they're coming back to the States. Well, tomorrow I'll look around, get orientated, as they say in the soldier's manual.”
He dragged his barracks bag into the bedroom. Joe still sat there, looking miserable and sick. I thought how odd it was that it took the army to bring out the Joe in Walt. Joe was always talking about a “sideline to make easy dough. Get us a mail-order racket, where you sit on your can and watch the dough roll in.” Before, Walt had been so reserved and quiet you wouldn't have thought he was Joe's son....
Walt came out of the bedroom, shirt off, khaki undershirt showing off his wiry shoulders and arms. He had another cigarette hanging on his lower lip. He stopped at the entrance to the bathroom, said, “Joe, we got to get a bigger apartment. Look around for that tomorrow, too.”
“Nothing wrong with this,” Joe said, looking up at the picture of his wife.
“It could be fixed up, but it's too small. I need a room for myself. You know, whenever I shack up. I want....”
“You want... Listen, this is my house and it's what the hell I want that goes! You'll do what I tell you to, understand!” Joe shouted, his fat face flushed.
Walt stood there, the smile on his thin face mocking and cool. “Don't go off the handle, Pop. Maybe I'll get my own apartment—with a room for you. We'll see, I got a lot of plans to work out.” He made a motion toward me as if he was firing a pistol, walked into the bathroom and shut the door gently.
Joe stood up, looked around wildly, then picked up the box of pipes, was about to hurl them at the wall. I grabbed him. “Easy. He's young, been through something you and I will never know about. Give him time.” .
Joe nodded, tears in his eye. “Yeah. I'm okay, Georgie. It's... he was such a good kid and I looked forward to having him back. Now... now I feel like a damn stranger in my own house.”
I was glad to walk out of Joe's house that night, thankful I was free of his problems and those of all fathers. I suppose one reason Flo and I never stayed together was my desire to lead the simple life—duck other people's neuroses. I had enough to do worrying about my own complexes—or lack of them.
Joe soon snapped out of it. Later, when he was down at the cottage for a week-end, he was back to normal, full of admiration for Walt—the same admiration he'd have for anybody with eleven thousand.
When Joe left, Eddie—Flo's kid brother—came down. He was a handsome kid, tall and with a big skinny frame, and the only member of her family I liked.
We were on the beach early Monday morning and Eddie's serious, quiet, talk was a relief from two days of Joe's gabbing. We sunned ourselves, talked of going over to Sag Harbor and fishing for blows. Eddie said he'd called Mr. Henderson before he left, who said Slob was fine, coming up for his meals regularly. I wondered if the cat ate the old man's concoctions—cats are smart.
Eddie was getting red from the sun and I stared at the ugly scar that looked like twisted burnt skin on his left shoulder, and the small scar farther down his back—where the bullet had come out. The slug had done something to one lung—exactly what I never knew—but he wasn't able to do any heavy work, received a full pension from the government. He rolled over on his back, dug his toes into the sand and laughed. “This is the life, sun and the sea air and no sweaty clothes on. I feel as if no other world existed but this beach and the pretty girls in their brief suits. My headache is gone, too.”
“Something wrong?”
“My head's been throbbing... for the last few months.”
“Sounds like a cold, or one of these new X sicknesses. Been to a doctor?”
“Sure, he said it was mental, that I worry too much. George, has the world gone mad, or is it merely me? My God, I read the headlines, listen to the news over the radio, and my head becomes full of pain. And on rainy days when I can feel my wound and I hear this war talk... another war and my wound isn't properly healed yet. It doesn't make sense.”
“Far back as I can remember, there's always been some sort of war talk. Hell, we can't let Russia, or anybody else, walk over us.”
“Nuts,” Eddie said. “We ought to learn by this time that war never settles anything. But it seems nobody learns, all they do is forget. Look how the vets forget the things promised them. Mention the Four Freedoms now and it sounds like double talk. Ah, headache starting again.”
“Maybe the sun's too strong for you? Had your eyes examined recently?”
Eddie turned over so he faced me. “Funny, that's exactly what the doctor asked. He was a fellow from my old outfit. He gave me a thorough check-up. Said to forget the world and the headlines for a while.”
“That's good advice?”
“Good? It's impossible! We never worry about cars but we keep our eyes open when we cross the street. How can we shut our eyes when it seems the world is going out of its way to get knocked down by a tank.” He dug up a little mound of sand with his fingers, made a tunnel through it with a finger and the mound collapsed. “George, how do you plan, think of anything decent, when such blundering headlines leave you in a cold sweat?”
