Battle Fatigue (2 page)

Chapter Two

The Right Way to Play War

I owe my popularity to a Nazi sign—my parents call it a “swastika.” I don't know what this word means but it is a bent and broken cross that stands for the Nazis who ran concentration camps—I have some. We all play war and we have good things for playing it because our fathers brought home great stuff from the real war. We have brown-green uniforms, field jackets with instructions printed inside by the U.S. Army on how to stay warm and dry while fighting. Mine is very baggy and goes down to my feet but it is a real combat jacket, which my uncle calls “combat fatigues.” I also have a wool jacket, called an Eisenhower jacket, which has shoulder pads that make me look big and soldierlike. Maybe that was why Eisenhower liked it too. Eisenhower was a general, so this must have been an officer's uniform, which is why it looks so good.

A bunch of us have German helmets. But I have something even better—two gray fur hats with Nazi swastikas on the front. And two canteens with the same signs. Kids in the neighborhood want to play war with me because I have the hats and canteens.

Dickey Panicelli has the best thing. He always has the coolest everything. His father is a policeman and carries a gun and is the only person, aside from the woman at the bakery, I ever saw with a tattoo. He was in the navy and has an anchor on his forearm, which makes him look like Popeye in the cartoons. We all call him Popeye and he doesn't seem to mind.

Popeye Panicelli brought back from his war a big white Japanese flag with a large red dot in the center. He also has a Japanese sword but we are not allowed to play with it. Popeye showed it to me once. He took it out of its case and waved a piece of paper across the blade and the paper was cut in two. That's how sharp it is. The Japanese used these swords to chop off their own heads rather than surrender. That's what Popeye says, but then he starts staring past the sword, that same stare that my uncle has, and he doesn't say anything for a minute.

“Dad!” says Dickey. Popeye looks at him and then he is okay and smiles and starts putting the sword away. So I decide to bring Dickey over to my uncle's house to show what I have—also something we are not allowed to take outside—a German rifle. It is dark wood and the metal part where you put the bullet has a black rod that slides in and out. I like the feel of it, pulling the heavy rod out and up by a handle, pretending to slip in a round, slapping the handle down, and jamming it in. Ready for combat. The only problem is that to do this you have to hold the gun with one hand, and it is so heavy I can barely lift it with both arms. I have to rest the whole thing on my lap to play with the bolt. My brother and I have contests to see who can hold the rifle straight out and for how long. But neither of us can hold it up for more than a second or two. I can do a little better than he can.

When we play war, Dickey doesn't join us because he is three years older. But he lets us use his Japanese flag to surrender.

He is always busy building things with lawn mower engines. Where does he get all the lawn mowers? He builds metal frames that he says are made out of beds. Whose beds? Then he puts the engine on the frame and adds wheels and he has a cart with a very loud motor that he can drive around the neighborhood. His white T-shirts always have grease on them.

In our wars there are rules. The Germans can't surrender. The Germans always have to die. But the Japanese surrender. I'm not sure why. Maybe because we have a Japanese flag and we don't have a German one, so the Germans don't have anything to surrender with. I wonder, though, shouldn't the Japanese be chopping their heads off? But in our wars they just surrender. They did surrender in the real war too. Whatever the reason, you would think this makes playing a German a bad deal. Still, you would be surprised how many kids want to be Germans. In fact, everyone wants to be a German because you get to wear one of the hats or one of the helmets or carry a canteen. If you are Japanese all you have is a flag for surrendering. My brother likes being a German and wearing one of the fur hats and I enjoy being the American who kills him. I get to kill him in several different ways on a good summer afternoon.

“
Tdg-tdg-tdg-kadush
,” I say, pointing my toy wooden Western rifle that doubles as a machine gun. And my brother jerks several times and spins and then falls dead, being careful not to let the fur cap fall on the ground. Sometimes he places the cap over his face as he lays dead. Or I jump on him and stab him with my make-believe knife. I can do whatever I want because he is the German and I am the American and the Americans always win and the Germans die. After he dies I take his hat to bring home to my family in America as a souvenir. He is happy that he gets to play with us.

I am two years older than my brother, Sam, and I have always been glad that I was born first because, even though he is already as big as me, being born first gives me the advantage in most things. I even have a better birthday: I was born on December 7, on the seventh anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Your birthday is always the most exciting day of the year. But on my special day everybody talks about the bombing of Pearl Harbor, “the sneak attack,” and what they were doing when they found out.

“I was making lasagna,” Popeye Panicelli's wife says, emphasizing the word “lasagna” as though it were a clue to understanding World War II—and maybe it is.

“We were planning our first car trip,” says my father.

On my birthday, newspapers write about Pearl Harbor and it is talked about on television.

“Look at this, will ya,” says my uncle, and I walk over. There on the television screen are films of ships sinking with black smoke coming out of them.

“Wow!” I say.

“Look at her go,” says my uncle. There is a long pause and then he adds, “The old
Arizona
.” Another long pause. “There she goes.” And a minute later, “Look at her go.”

My birthday is the same every year. The same pictures on television, my uncle saying the same things with the same pauses. Even during the rest of the year, after I tell people when my birthday is, they start talking about it. “What day is your birthday, Joel?” asked Stanley Wiszcinski's mom in April when I was at the Wiszcinskis' house for Stanley's birthday.

“December seventh,” I answered, and just waited for the response.

“December seventh! Who will ever forget that day? I was knitting a sweater when I heard.”

I smiled and nodded politely. Grown-ups are so excited to talk about this that I am never sure if it is supposed to be the worst or the best day of their lives.

My brother, on the other hand, was born on January 3. People don't remember what they were doing that day, except my uncle. He could celebrate Sam's birthday too.

“January third,” he says. “We were given extra rounds and we moved up.”

“Moved up where?” my brother asks. I already know the answer.

“The Ardennes forest, Ardennes, the forest …” He gets lost in thought. January 3 is the anniversary of when the Allies broke through the German lines. I don't really know what that means but breaking through seems to be big. It was the Bulge, which seems a weird name for a battle. My uncle was there.

For a long time I thought people could just arrange to have their kids on the anniversaries of important battles and that when I was ready to have children they would be born on the anniversaries of battles that have not yet been fought but that would be important to me. In time I came to realize—and Sam did too—that his birthday was not as important as mine, except maybe to my uncle. But I don't care about Sam feeling bad about not having as good a date as me, so I just dress him up as a German and tell him it is the Bulge and kill him.

When Tony Scaratini comes over he insists on being a German too. Tony is the neighborhood bully. He is bigger than the rest of us and we are all a little afraid of him.

“I'm the German. Give me the hat,” he demands.

“We already have the Germans picked out,” I say.

Tony twists his face. He has a way of twisting it that makes him look really mean. Also very ugly. “You know why I'm the German?” he says in a menacing tone as he looks down at me.

I do know why—because he is going to beat me up if I don't let him be the German. But he wants to explain anyway. “I'm Italian!” he announces.

Now I am getting curious. “So? You're Italian?”

“The Italians were on the side with the Germans. And we don't have any real Germans here, right? So I should get to be the German. I'm as close as you got!”

I hand him the hat, relieved to have an excuse to give it to him without fighting about it, even though I hate the way he plays a German. He plays like he expects the Germans to win.

Donnie LePine always plays an American. There is never any debate about that because, obviously, Donnie LePine is going to win. He wins at everything and always does everything well, and he is more popular than me even though he doesn't have any World War II hats or things. His father was a navy officer in the Pacific but he didn't bring anything good back. Donnie doesn't need it. The other kids look up to me just because Donnie LePine is willing to come over to my place to play. I would like to get to kill him, or at least make him surrender, but he is an American and will never know defeat. Side by side we liberate Europe and the Pacific.

“
Tdg-tdg-tdg-kadush-kadush.
” I charge the Germans, my brother and Tony, from across the backyard, fighting next to Donnie LePine, who is firing: “
Gudj. Gudj-gudj
.” He also brings in an artillery barrage: “
Whaaaaa-k'brrm!
” That was his little thing. I never heard the phrase “barrage” before.

The Germans are holding their own. “
Dew-dew-whack dew.
” But finally we get up there and I knock my brother down, pretend, with the rifle butt and then shoot him while he clutches his hat.

But Tony is always a problem. Finally Donnie says, “Tony, you're dead. You have to lie down.”

“I'm not dead, Donnie.”

“You wanted to be a German. The Germans die,” Donnie insists.

“Okay, I'm surrendering.”

“You can't surrender. You're a German.”

“All right,” Tony says, and he just leaves the yard and walks home.

“Tony!” I shout. “My hat. You can't take my hat!”

But he just keeps walking. I have to have my parents get it from his parents, which is embarrassing. But that is what Tony is like.

“I got da hat,” says Donnie in a perfect Scaratini voice. We all do Scaratini but only Donnie does it well. Donnie has a perfect voice and when we have to sing in school he is the one the teachers pay attention to. Tony has a voice like a cough. But Donnie does it best and we all laugh and try to do it too: “I got da hat.” We all laugh, but I'm the one who has to tell my parents.

Stanley Wiszcinski is the smallest kid in the neighborhood, so we make him play the Japanese and surrender in a serious ceremony in which he turns over the flag. Then we push him around a little for bombing Pearl Harbor, but also because everyone likes to pick on Stanley.

Rocco Pizzutti doesn't play war. Rocco is a perfect cube—as wide and thick as he is tall—with one thick black eyebrow that goes all the way across the top of his face, marking it like a Hebrew vowel. Rocco never says very much and he looks at his sister, Angela, in a way that makes everyone afraid to talk to her, which is too bad because she is the only girl I know that you could actually call pretty. Lucky for her, she didn't get the eyebrow.

Rocco and his sister do not have a father because their father was killed in what we always call “the Korean conflict.” It is never called a war and when I ask my mother why not, she explains that it wasn't a war, it was “a police action.” I don't understand what a police action is but I know it was bad enough for Rocco and Angela Pizzutti's father to die. If asked about their father, they don't get upset but they always say, “He was killed in the Korean War.”

They are the only ones who call it a war.

Sometimes, if my brother complains about being made to play a German all the time, I tell him to be quiet or I will make him play a Korean. Then he would still die, but it wouldn't even be a real war. That usually makes him be quiet.

Bernie, the vegetable man, is making a delivery while we are playing and we attack him with our toy guns, our helmets and hats, and our flag. Bernie Vegetable—that's what we call him—starts sweating, and his hands, holding fruit, start to shake. He picks up a squash and shakes it like it is a musical instrument. But he isn't joking around.

Bernie was a marine in the Pacific and maybe he has the same thing as my dad had. We don't know that much about him. There is a teacher in school who was in Europe and if you drop your books really loudly, he jumps and shakes and sweats. Kids slam things on purpose to see if they can get him to shake. His name is Mr. Schacter but we all call him Mr. Shaker. He teaches older kids and we are very glad that it will be a lot more years before we have to have Mr. Shaker for a teacher. Maybe Mr. Shaker and Bernie Vegetable have the same thing. I heard my father call it “battle fatigue.” Is that like my jacket that is called “fatigues”? Does wearing the jacket make you that way or are they called “fatigues” because people wearing fatigues often get fatigue? I don't know.