Carry Me Home (16 page)

“Hey, Earwig,” the other soldier says. I don’t wanna know that that’s Floyd with the snapped-off arm, but it is Floyd. I can tell ’cause he sounds like Floyd. And when he gives me a hug with that one arm, he feels like Floyd. I hug Floyd real careful-like, ’cause he feels all little and bony in my arms like he might break too.

After the hugging is done, Floyd and Jimmy, they stand close together like they is on one team and we is on another. They light cigarettes and suck on them like there ain’t no air in the room, just in them cigarettes.

“Oh, you boys are so thin,” Ma says, and Jimmy tells her that he is fat now compared to what he was when he got back to the States. “I was under ninety pounds when I got back, Ma. I’m up to one twenty-six now.” Ma presses her gloved hand to her cheek and her eyes fill up with tears. Dad says that Ma and Mary will have ’em fattened up in no time. Then he says there ain’t no use standing around talking in the bus station, and, speaking of food, why don’t we go back to the house and have some of that stuff Ma’s been cooking. “I hope you boys are hungry,” Dad says, and they tell Dad they are.

Ma and Mary, they drag all the food Ma’s cooked from the Frigidaire. When Ma opens that oven, you can smell the baked ham she left in there to stay warm while we was gone. That smell gets Jimmy and Floyd and Lucky almost drooling.

Ma and Mary work like bees, bringing bowls to the table. There’s potato salad and coleslaw and bread pudding, and reheated buns and raisin pie and a plate of pickles and celery sticks and stuff like that. Jimmy and Floyd, they sit on the edges of their chairs and they smoke one cigarette after another while they wait for the ladies to set the table. Lucky is sniffing them up and down and they pat him now and then. Jimmy’s and Floyd’s eyes, they are darting all over the place like they is scared that a Jap is gonna spring from somewhere and hold a gun on ’em and make ’em march right back to that bad camp. Dad, he is talking away, telling them all the stuff that went on in Willowridge while they was gone. That ain’t much, ’cept for who died in the war and who moved away to find work in the city.

Jimmy and Floyd, they eat like pigs, and this makes Ma and Mary real happy. Afterward, they say they feel sick, and Jimmy, he runs to the bathroom and throws up. Ma, she fusses at him when he gets back to the table, and Dad says maybe they better go light on the food ’til their bellies get used to eating again. But Jimmy don’t go light. After he pukes, he comes right back to the table and he starts filling his belly up all over again.

Every now and then, Floyd, he flinches like he’s in pain. Dad asks him if something’s hurting him and he says that his arm is. I shit you not, he says that that arm that ain’t even there is hurting him. “I’ve heard of that,” Dad says.

Floyd and Mary, they keep making eyes at each other as we eat, and Mary, she keeps touching Floyd. This makes me feel real sad for Jimmy, who ain’t got a girl no more to make goofy eyes at him. It must make Ma sad too, ’cause she says to Jimmy, “I’m sorry I had to tell you about Molly, Jimmy. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t want you disappointed when she wasn’t waiting with us at the depot. I hope she’s at least got the decency to return your ring.”

“The ring doesn’t matter,” Jimmy says.

“I think it does,” Ma says.

“Jimmy, I didn’t know,” Mary says, then she presses her lips together and her mouth looks all knuckly, folded over her big teeth like that. Jimmy nods.

Ma, she wants Jimmy to sit with us in the living room and listen to the radio or the phonograph after Floyd and Mary leave, but Jimmy, he says he thinks he’s gonna call it a night. “I’m as weak as a baby yet, Ma,” he says.

Ma nods and gets all teary-eyed again. She gets up and gives Jimmy a hug. “Oh, Jimmy,” she says. Jimmy don’t say nothing back to her, but he looks at me and asks me if I want to go up too.

I’m picking at my pants the whole way up the stairs, though I ain’t exactly sure why. I follow Jimmy into his room, where he stands for a bit and just looks at the walls and the bed and the dresser. Lucky, he follows us, his toenails making little tippity-taps on the floor.

“It looks exactly the same as it did when I left it,” Jimmy says. He walks over to the dresser and he picks up his old baseball and he tosses it around in his hands a bit. “I wanted to play for the Chicago Cubs,” he said.

“Maybe you can play for the Cubs now,” I say, but Jimmy, he shakes his head and puts the ball back.

Ma, she’s got a pair of pajamas laid out on Jimmy’s bed, so he unbuttons that army shirt and he drops it on the floor. He takes off his undershirt too, and that’s when I see them marks he’s got on his back and on his side, close to his belly. They is like stains on his skin, and some of ’em is puckered up too. “Them dirty Japs do that to you?” I ask. Jimmy looks down, like he’s forgotten they was there, and he nods. “Some of them. Some are just scars from jungle ulcers.”

“Do they hurt?” I ask, and Jimmy says yeah, sometimes they hurt.

One thing I notice is that Jimmy, he don’t see real good no more. He picks up his pajama top and he thinks it’s a bottom, so I gotta tell him he’s got it wrong. Just like in the car coming home, when Dad pointed out something new about the factory, and Jimmy couldn’t see it. “Can’t you see good no more, Jimmy?”

Jimmy blinks at the shirt he’s got all tangled up in his hands. “Not real good, but it’s getting some better. It’s from starving,” he says. “Starving wrecks your eyes.”

Jimmy stretches out on his bed and he smokes ’til the room is foggy. “Jeez, you got big, Earwig. You filled out, you got taller. You look like a goddamn giant.” He laughs when he says this, so I laugh too. He points to my uniform shirt. “Pretty dignified there, Earwig. You like your job?”

“I sure do, Jimmy. I got friends there too. I got Slim and Skeeter and, best of all, I got Eva Leigh, and Ruby Leigh.”

“Ruby Leigh?” Jimmy grins. “Well, aren’t you a lucky bastard. I bet Ruby Leigh didn’t ration her sweets during the war,” he says, and I tell him no, Ruby Leigh wasn’t on the ration board, but Dieter Pritchard was.

Then Jimmy, he stops grinning and he looks right in my eyes and he says, “I wouldn’t have made it back if it weren’t for you, Earwig. I just kept telling myself, every day, every hour, that I had to live through it to come home for you.” The corners of my mouth feel like they is getting tugged down when he says this. I go over and I give Jimmy a hug, and I don’t feel all skittery inside no more ’cause Jimmy don’t look the same. “It took a long time for you to come home, Jimmy.”

Funny how you can feel two things at one time, ’cause that’s what I’m feeling now. I feel happy ’cause Jimmy is saying something like this, but I feel sad too, ’cause I’m thinking of how Jimmy is the best brother I ever had, yet he is only my half brother. I watch Jimmy take another puff on his cigarette, and I wonder if he knows we is only half brothers too. I want to ask him, but I can’t.

The next day, Eddie comes over with a plate of warm doughnuts. “My ma said to bring these over for you, Jimmy,” he says. Jimmy takes a doughnut and dunks it into the coffee he’s drinking. “Thank your ma for me, Eddie.” He takes one bite and halfa the doughnut disappears. “How you been, Eddie?” Jimmy asks, after he swallows.

“I’m good. My polio is all gone. How are you, Jimmy? You don’t look so good.”

“I’m not so good,” Jimmy says. “I got pretty sick while I was over there.”

“When I was sick, my ma and dad took me to Minneapolis to see Sister Kenny to get my muscles reeducated. Maybe you need something like that too, so you can get strong again like you used to be.”

I get mad when Eddie says this. “Jimmy’s still strong! He could still beat up anybody he wanted to!” Jimmy stops chewing. He looks at me. I know he’s planning to tell me that no, he ain’t strong enough to beat anybody up no more, maybe not even Eddie, but he don’t got to. I already know it.

That night, Lucky wakes me up ’cause he’s barking and carrying on. First I think he’s just gotta piss or something, but then I hear what he’s making a fuss about. Jimmy is making all kinds of racket in his room. He’s screaming and groaning so loud that I can hear it right through the walls. I get out of bed, and that floor, it sure is cold on my bare feet. I hurry into Jimmy’s room.

I can see Jimmy ’cause that streetlight is coming some right through his curtains, making Jimmy all glowy. Jimmy, he is batting at the air one second, then covering his head the next. He is crying and yowling, but there ain’t no tears shining on his face.

I hurry to his bed and I shake him a bit. “Jimmy? Jimmy, wake up!” He grabs my arm first and squeezes it tight. Then, as I’m bending over him, trying to help him lay back down, he grabs me around the neck and he starts to choking me. I can feel his fingers digging into my neck and it hurts like hell. He’s got me so hard I can’t do nothing but swat at his arms and squeak. I don’t want to hit at Jimmy, but I can’t breathe now, and my eyes, they feel like they is gonna pop right out of my head, so I gotta swat at him.

Jimmy’s eyes are open, but it’s like they is seeing somebody scary, not me. I swat harder at his arm and yell at him to let me go. He blinks, then he lets go. He’s shaking something fierce, and so am I. He looks around real quick, like he can’t figure out where he is. Then he says, “Oh, shit. Oh, shit.”

I ain’t never see’d anybody that skittery. His face is so twitchy that he looks like there’s bugs crawling under the skin. He jumps off the bed and he starts walking in little circles. He is breathing so hard that, I shit you not, I can see the front of his pajama shirt moving in and out from the thumping in his chest.

He reaches for a cigarette. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he keeps saying. “I thought you were a Jap. Shit. I’m sorry.” He’s pacing up and down the room, and he’s stopping now and then to shake first one leg, then the other. He’s rubbing the top parts of his legs too. “Your legs got the prickles in ’em from being asleep?” I ask.

Jimmy shakes his head. “They’re just numb,” he says.

“You have a bad dream about them dirty Japs, Jimmy?” I ask, and he says he supposes he did. I ain’t sure he’s all the way waked up, though, ’cause his eyes, they is skidding back and forth, and he still looks real scared. He starts thumping on his chest with his fist as he gulps for air.

“Jimmy,” I say. “There ain’t no Japs here.” I pick up the edge of his bedspread and I hold it up and look under that bed, where there ain’t even one speck of dust left after Ma’s cleaning. “There ain’t no Japs under your bed, Jimmy. See?” Then I go to the closet, and I open that up too, and I yank the hanged shirts and pants aside so he can see clear to the back wall. “Ain’t none here in your closet either. My eyes ain’t bad from starving, and I can see there ain’t no Japs in here.” I go to his dresser, ’cause I know Japs is little, maybe even little enough to crawl into his underwear drawer, so I open that up too and pull his underwear and balled-up socks out. “Ain’t no yellow-bellies in here either, Jimmy,” I say.

Jimmy’s eyes are following me, and he’s nodding each time I say something. I go through every goddamn place in his room that might be big enough to hide a Jap, and I show him there ain’t no Japs. I sit down. Jimmy calms down some and comes to sit on the bed by me. He’s still rubbing the top part of his legs some, but he ain’t breathing quite so hard now.

Jimmy tells me he didn’t mean to hurt me. “You gotta wake me up careful though, Earwig, ’cause when I’m sleeping, I don’t know who you are.”

Finally, Jimmy lays back down and he smokes, the smoke curling out of his nose ’cause his mouth ain’t open enough to blow it all out. One hand is holding his Camel, and the other hand is holding his bedspread.

I don’t say nothing at first, then I say, “You want Lucky to sleep by you, Jimmy? He won’t let no Japs get in here. He hates Japs more than mailmen even.” Jimmy, he sorta smiles, and he don’t say yes or no, so I just pat the bed and Lucky, he leaps up by Jimmy. “He keeps you warm too.”

After I go back to my bed, I just lay there and listen and think of what Ruby Leigh said, about how sorrows that get locked inside gotta come out or else they make you do crazy things and make your heart close up like a fist. Jimmy’s got them sorrows locked up inside. Lots of them, I think. I start to thinking how sorry I am that the fever got me when I was a bitty baby, ’cause if I was smarter, I’d probably know how to help Jimmy get them sorrows out.

The next day, our regulars from the store and the Skelly, they stop in all day long and ask to say hello to Jimmy. The ladies, they bring a little something for Jimmy to eat, and the men, they shake his hand and pat his shoulder so hard Jimmy wobbles.

Jimmy and Floyd, they both come to the bowling alley to see me work. Eva Leigh, she don’t know Jimmy much, so when Jimmy and Floyd come, I introduce her to ’em like they never met before. Jimmy says to Eva Leigh, “I’m sorry to hear about your husband.” Floyd says he’s sorry too, so I say I’m sorry, even though I already telled Eva Leigh that a long time ago. Eva Leigh thanks us, then her head dips down for a bit. When she picks it up again, she says, “I’m glad you two made it home, though.” She puts one arm around my waist and leans her head on my arm for a bit. “This guy here sure was worried.”

Jimmy and Floyd sit at the bar and they smoke and drink Schlitz. I watch ’em from my little triangle window. I watch ’em get drunk and I watch the ball so I can jump outta the way so they don’t see me get whacked.

Ruby Leigh, she fusses over Jimmy and Floyd, making sure their glasses don’t go dry, and she’s licking her red lips and laughing with ’em every minute she ain’t busy refilling somebody else’s glass. Some of the bowlers go up and shake Jimmy and Floyd’s hand, but lots more don’t. They just stare at ’em when they think Jimmy and Floyd ain’t looking.

When them lanes get closed, I hang up the towel I wipe my hands on when they get sweaty, and I pick up my two empty pop bottles, then me and Skeeter lock up that door. Slim, he is at the bar and he is buying Floyd and Jimmy another beer. Them two are drunk as skunks as it is, but Slim says they look like they could use another one.

Slim and Ruby Leigh and Eva Leigh start tidying up the place, but they tell me to sit at the bar with my brother and friend and to yell if we need anything. Slim pops a coin in the jukebox and he plays some tunes. Jimmy and Floyd don’t know the newer songs, but they sure do like “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” When the songs stop, Jimmy pops some more coins in the jukebox and he squints down, looking for them songs to play again, but he can’t find ’em on account of he’s half blind from the starving and half blind from the beers. Ruby Leigh runs to help.