I sighed and rested my head against the tree trunk. In the dust at my feet, two ants were fighting over a crumb. I stepped on them both, but it didn't make me feel any better. A pony! Shoot. Why couldn't Mama fight fair?
Seventeen
That night I went outside for some fresh air and found Donny sitting on the steps, smoking and staring into the dark. I thought he'd tell me to get lost, but he patted a place beside him and said, "Take a load off your feet, Gordo."
For a while we didn't talk. It wasn't any cooler outside than in, but it was kind of peaceful. The cicadas were making a din in the snowball bushes. Lightning bugs flickered all around, bright as stars. Way off on the horizon, heat lightning flashed, and every now and then thunder rumbled, too far away to worry about.
"So what do you think about the old man coming back?" Donny asked after a while. "Are you all excited about going to California?" His voice was sharp with sarcasm.
"Are you kidding?" I spat in the bushes. "I wouldn't go around the block with the old man. Not for a million bucks. How about you, Donny? Are you going with them?"
"I had enough of the old man when I was a kid," Donny said. "Besides, I start pumping gas at the Esso station next week. No sense going to California when I've got a job right here in Grandville."
He paused to light a cigarette. I was dying to ask him for one but I was scared of breaking the nice mood between us, so I just breathed in his smoke and pretended I had a Lucky Strike hanging from my lower lip too.
"Do you think Grandma will let me stay here?" I asked.
"Don't see why she wouldn't. So long as you behave yourself." Donny grinned. "That old bird doesn't take anything off anybody, does she?"
"I wish Mama was like Grandma," I said. "Maybe then she'd tell the old man to get lost and that would be the end of him."
"Sometimes I think Mama doesn't have good sense," Donny muttered. "Maybe the old man knocked her brains out once too often."
I'd been thinking that myself but it scared me to hear my brother say it. Made it true somehow. "She's better now than she was," I told him. "When we first got here, she wouldn't talk to anybody. Just sat around staring into space like she was shell-shocked or something."
"What do you know about shell shock?" Donny's voice was so low I almost didn't hear him.
"I read about it in Life magazine. Battle fatigue, they called it."
"Battle fatigue." Donny snorted. Suddenly he turned to me, his face so close I could smell beer and cigarettes on his breath. "You keep asking what the war was like. Do you really want to know?"
I nodded, but all of a sudden I wasn't so sure. "Are you drunk?"
Donny shrugged and took another swig of beer. "War is hell, just like some guy said a long time ago. Sherman, that's who said it, way back in the Civil War, I think."
I watched him swallow another mouthful of beer. "War's a lot of noise," he went on. "More noise than you ever heard in your whole entire life. It's men getting shot all around you. Screaming and dying in ways more horrible than you can imagine. It's never knowing when it'll be your turn to catch a bullet or step on a mine or get blown away by a shell. It's fires and ruins and death, Gordy. And stink, the worst stink you ever smelled. That's what war is."
Donny turned his head and looked me in the eye. "I'll tell you the truth, Gordy. If I'd known what I was getting into, I'd have hid in the woods like Stu. I swear to God it's what everybody should've done. The Krauts and the Japs included."
I didn't know what Donny expected me to say to that, so I kept quiet. It wouldn't do to tell him I was disappointed, maybe even a little bit sore to hear him talking like that. The way I saw it, Stu had always hated fighting, so it was natural for him to desert. But Donny was tough like me. He'd never run away from anybody.
"Most of us just wanted to stay alive," Donny said, more like he was talking to himself than to me. "Get out of there in one piece. Come home safe. Kill the Krauts before they killed us."
"But how about guys like Butch and Jimmy?" I asked, reminding him of guys we'd known back in College Hill. "They got medals. They were heroes." Heroes like I'd wanted Donny to be.
Donny put his head in his hands. "They died to get them, Gordo. That's why I'm here and they're not."
He paused to open another bottle of beer.
"There's this guy in my class named Jerry Langerman," I said while Donny fiddled with the opener. "His cousin won a bunch of medals but he didn't get killed getting them. He lets Langerman wear them to school."
"Bully for Langerman's cousin" was Donny's answer to that. "Bully for Langerman, too."
He sounded funny, kind of choked up. I couldn't tell if he was mad or not, so I just sat there, prying at a splinter on the top step. It was the kind that would really hurt if you stepped on it.
"Let me tell you about this guy in our outfit," Donny said after a while. "His name was Gerald and he was about thirty-five. Had a wife. Real pretty, I saw her picture. No kids, though, so he got drafted. From the day he joined our company, he was like a father to us. Always joking about his age, saying he was too old for this, too old for that, but he always did it, whatever it was."
Donny took another swig of beer. "Gerald was a private like us, not an officer or anything, but he took care of us, Gordy, he looked out for us. He was the sweetest guy I ever met."
"What happened to him?" I thought I already knew.
"We were in France, somewhere near the German border, pushing hard. Killing Krauts. Getting killed. Living up to the great general's expectations. Good old Blood and Guts." Donny turned his head and spat on the ground to show me what he thought of General Patton.
"It was fall, late September, I think. The leaves were turning red, just like home." Donny glanced at me. "The woods were supposed to be clear, no Krauts, but all of a sudden a nest of machine gunners opened fire on us. Snipers hiding in the trees. We all hit the ground. A couple of guys were wounded, but nobody was killed."
I stared at my brother, but he was peering into the summer dark like he was seeing something altogether different from what I saw. Not the backyard squared with light from the kitchen windows. Not the fireflies in the bushes. Not the heat lightning. But a place he remembered. A place I'd never seen and never would. A bad place.
"Gerald's the first to see where the Nazis are," Donny went on. "'Stay low,' he tells us, 'I'll get them.' We're pinned down, Gordy, scared, but Gerald rises up real slow to throw a grenade."
Donny drank more beer. Even in the dark I could see how tightly he was holding the bottle. "The Krauts see him," he said. "They start firing. He's hit. We try to drag him back, but he's on his feet, throwing that grenade. Then he runs right at those German SOBs. Next thing he's killing the ones the grenade didn't finish. I never saw anything like it, Gordy. He wipes out the whole bunch and then, then—"
Donny hurled the empty beer bottle into the darkness. I heard the glass break. "Gerald died. He died right there with the Krauts. We had to leave him with them and go on."
He looked at me. "I'll never forget him lying there with those stinking Nazis. One American and six or seven Krauts. All dead."
There was no doubt about it. Donny was crying. Me, too. I'd never seen Gerald alive but I could imagine him lying there with the Nazis he'd killed. For some reason, I pictured a night scene with the moon shining down on the dead soldiers. Everything for miles around was torn up from bombs and shells and fighting. In the distance, the rest of Donny's squad was firing at the Nazis, but where Gerald lay everything was still and quiet like a scene in a play. Only no one was going to get up and take a bow at the end.
Donny wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "Gerald saved the life of every guy in our squad, me included. He never thought of himself. Just us. The kids, he called us."
His voice shook and he paused to take a drag on his cigarette. "I don't know how Gerald did that, Gordy, I really don't."
I waited for him to say something else, but he just sat there, smoking and thinking his own t
houghts. Finally I said, "I'm sorry about Gerald, but I'm glad you didn't get killed, Donny. I'm glad you're here."
My brother put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me against his side. After a while, he said, "When I came home, you asked me about souvenirs. Well, I picked up a Nazi helmet for you, but I ended up throwing it away."
I told him it was okay, but I felt a little twinge of disappointment just the same. "Was it too heavy or something?"
"No, that wasn't it," he said. "Do you remember going to the beach once a long time ago? Way back before the war, when you were about three and Stu and me were in our teens? June wasn't even born yet."
I shook my head, surprised our family had ever done anything as nice as go to the beach. It was probably the only vacation we'd ever had. Didn't seem fair I'd been too little to remember it.
"We took the ferry across the bay and drove all the way to Ocean City," Donny said. "The old man was on the wagon, I guess, or we'd never have gone. Anyway, Stu found this seashell on the beach. One of those big ones you can hold up to your ear and hear the ocean."
I nodded. I'd seen those shells, but I couldn't figure out what they had to do with Nazi helmets.
"Well, he brought it back to the cabin where we were staying and set it down by his bed," Donny went on. "The next night we started smelling this bad smell. I said maybe it was the old man's feet."
We both laughed because the old man's feet stunk so bad we used to hold our noses when he took off his shoes.
"Turned out this creature lived in the shell," Donny said. "Kind of like a snail or something. Anyway, it had died in there. We couldn't get the smell out so we threw the damn shell back in the ocean."
He looked at me. "That's how the helmet smelled, Gordy. Like something had died in it."
Donny flicked his cigarette butt into the yard. It glowed red for a second, then vanished in the dark. He kept his arm around my shoulders. I don't know how long we'd have sat there if a horn hadn't blown out front.
"That's the boys," Donny said, getting to his feet. "See you later, Gordo."
I followed him around the house and watched him get into an old Ford convertible with three or four other guys. The car radio was playing "Pistol-Packin' Mama," and I heard Donny start singing along with it, laughing with the others. Somebody yelled, "Yahoo!"
I waved, but Donny didn't look back. I guess he'd already forgotten me.
I stood there listening till the last sounds died away. Then I went inside. It seemed like my brother had told me a whole bunch of sad stories and then left me to take care of them while he went out drinking.
Eighteen
Later that night, I lay awake for a long time thinking about Gerald and what he'd done. Like Donny, I didn't understand how anybody could be that brave. To keep fighting even when you knew you were dying. That was something. For Gerald's sake, I hoped my brother would get himself together and do something good with his life.
But it didn't seem as if Donny was ready for that. Even after he started working at the Esso station, he went on drinking beer and hanging out at bars. Grandma kept saying, "Give him time, give him time," but finally she got tired of waiting and told him to shape up or ship out. And that's what he did. Found himself a room in a shabby old boarding house on Seventh Street and shipped out.
After Donny moved, I hung around the Esso station so much it's a wonder they didn't put me on the payroll too. I kept hoping we'd have some more talks like the one we'd had about Gerald, but Donny's boss made it clear he wasn't paying Donny to shoot the breeze with his kid brother. So we never got beyond sports and the war, which was dragging on like it would never end. I swear the Japs meant to fight till every one of them was dead and most of us as well.
One hot afternoon toward the end of July, June and I were picking Japanese beetles off Grandma's roses. They were tough little bugs with shiny green shells and brown wings, not quite as big as a dime, and they ate their way through everything if you let them. Even after you dropped them in a can of bug killer, they spun around on their backs as if they were trying to swim.
June hated the way the beetles buzzed and wiggled in her hand. She said the Japs must have sent them to America to ruin our crops, but I'd read somewhere that they came over here all by themselves in some bushes way before the war. No matter how often I told June this, she insisted she was right and I was wrong. When that kid believed something you couldn't get her to change her mind. She was that bullheaded.
"Did Mama tell you Daddy will be here either today or tomorrow?" June asked. Her face was scrunched up against the sun, squeezing her freckles together and making her eyes into little slits.
Before I answered, I dropped a beetle into my can and watched it die. The bug killer had a funny, sickly sweet smell strong enough to make you sick, but that wasn't what made me feel like puking. Dumping more beetles into my can, I muttered, "Mama never tells me anything."
"That's because you're so hateful about Daddy," June said in the prissy little goody-goody voice she sometimes used.
"He's a hateful man," I said, struggling to keep my temper.
"You're just jealous because he's not bringing you a pony."
"He's not bringing you one either, June. I told you that's just one of Mama's crazy stories."
"Huh," said June. "You don't know everything, Mr. Smarty-Pants Gordy." Turning her back on me, she went on picking Japanese beetles off the roses. She was wearing a pink sunsuit Grandma had sewn for her. Under her bare skin, her shoulder blades wiggled like wings. Every time she dropped a bug in her can, she said, "Eeee-yoooo."
The old man didn't come that day or the next, but I swear I felt him getting closer and closer. We were all tense with waiting. Mama and Grandma got so edgy you couldn't say a word to either of them without starting an argument. The boys fussed and cried and fought with each other, driving us all crazy.
June spent hours hanging on the front gate, peering down the street as if she expected every car that turned the corner to be the old man's. She'd already named the pony Petunia and was planning to make a bed for it in Grandma's garage. Of course, she hadn't mentioned this to Grandma.
Three or four nights later, I was lying in bed, too hot to sleep. The temperature must have been close to ninety and I was wishing for a thunderstorm to break the heat wave.
Along about midnight I heard a car pass the house real slow. I lay still and waited for it to stop, but it went on by. A few minutes later it came back. I knew it was the same car because the muffler was bad. This time, it stopped out front.
Thinking it might be Donny, I went to the window to see what he was up to. Although the car was parked in the shadows under a tree, I recognized it. The old man had kept his promise. He was here.
I expected him to get out of the car and come to the house, but he just sat there smoking a cigarette. I could see the red tip glowing. I swear I even smelled the smoke mixed in with the sweet perfume of Grandma's roses.
The cicadas made their usual racket, a train blew for the crossing, a dog barked. The leaves hung still in the summer night. Nothing moved, nothing stirred either outside or in. Everything was ordinary except for one thing. The old man.
A few minutes passed. My heart beat loud and fast. The rest of me was as still as the old man, frozen, clenched tight as a fist. After a while, I started hoping he'd go away. Grandma had said he wouldn't have the nerve to come to her door. Maybe she was right.
Finally the old man threw his cigarette out of the car window. It arced across the lawn and disappeared into the snowball bushes beside the front porch. At the same moment, I was startled to see Mama run as lightly as a girl across the moonlit lawn. She must have been waiting downstairs. I was sure she hadn't passed my door.
Without a word, she got into the car. Try as hard as I could, I wasn't able to see or hear what they said or did. After a long time, the driver's door opened and out stepped the old man, carrying a big suitcase. The moon shone full on his face as he walked around the car to open Ma
ma's door. He didn't stagger or stumble. He was clean shaven, his hair was combed, his clothes were ironed. He'd even lost some weight. In fact, if I hadn't known better, I'd have thought he was just an ordinary guy, the kind of dad most kids have.
I watched Mama lead him up the sidewalk. He hesitated a moment at the bottom of the porch steps, and Mama whispered something to him. They came inside so quietly I wouldn't have heard them if I hadn't been listening for them.
Holding my breath, I slid into bed, closed my eyes, and lay still. I was afraid Mama might bring him into my room to say hello, but they passed by, tiptoeing and whispering to each other. Mama's door closed softly. I knew I was the only one besides Mama who knew the old man was in the house.
The next morning I told myself I'd dreamed the whole thing. The old man couldn't be here. Not really. But when I went to the window to check, the car was right where I'd seen him park it. The shade of the trees dappled it like camouflage, but the sun shone on its windshield.
I pulled on my clothes slowly and dragged myself downstairs, hoping he was still sleeping. But before I got to the kitchen, I heard his voice.
"Why, just wait till you see California," he was saying. "It's like the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Lemons and oranges grow on the trees and the sun shines every day."
"And will I really have a pony?" June asked. She was sitting close to the old man, her eager eyes fixed on his face.
The old man grinned. "Sure, honey. A mockingbird, a diamond ring, a pony—Papa will buy his little girl anything her heart desires."
He looked up then and saw me in the doorway, staring knives and daggers at him.
"Why, Gordy," he said in the friendliest voice I had ever heard from him, "come here. Let me get a good look at you, son." He held out his hand as if he wanted me to shake it, but he didn't fool me. I stayed where I was.