Carry Me Home (17 page)

When “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” starts playing again, Floyd starts drumming on the bar, his hand rat-a-tatting real good to the song, his head bouncing while he sings along. By the time that song is ending, though, Floyd stops making them little, quick taps and starts thumping his hand on the bar hard.
Thump, thump, thump
, hitting harder and harder ’til the noise his hand is making sounds like marching feet.

Then he starts shouting out something that is like a song, but it ain’t got no singing to it, just shouting. Jimmy joins in, and together they’re yelling, “
We’re the battling bastards of Bataan; No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam; No aunts, no uncles, no nephews, no nieces; No pills, no planes, no artillery pieces; And nobody gives a damn.”

When they get done, there ain’t a noise anyplace in the Ten Pin. That is, until I say, “Good thing you didn’t say no brothers or friends, ’cause I didn’t forget you guys. Well, once I did for a bit—when Eddie got the polio—but other than that, I didn’t forget you even for one minute.
I
always gived a damn.”

When it’s time to close up, me and the girls can see we got ourselves a problem. Slim’s gone now, and Jimmy and Floyd, they is so drunk they can’t walk. They is hanging over the bar, their heads almost scraping the ashtrays.

Eva Leigh says maybe we better call Mary to come get Floyd, so we do. Mary and one of her ugly sisters come in the Ford that ain’t clunking no more since Dad fixed it. Me and Mary, we put Floyd’s good arm over Mary’s shoulder, and I grab him around his skinny waist and we drag him to the car. Floyd, he is bitching up a storm. “Crissakes, they hacked off my arm, not my fucking legs. I can still walk, you know.” But he can’t.

After we stuff Floyd into the front seat, Mary says, “Let’s get Jimmy. I’ll give you both a lift home.” First I don’t know what to do. I’m suppose to walk the girls home like I do every night, but Eva Leigh, she tells me to run along with Mary and Jimmy and that her and Ruby Leigh will be just fine.

I get Jimmy and I hoist him up in my arms ’cause he’s passed out, and he don’t feel no heavier than LJ when I pick him up. We don’t even get a block down the street when Floyd pukes right down the front of Mary’s coat. Jimmy, he don’t puke ’til we get him home.

Next couple days, Jimmy is sick. Real sick. He’s shaking and sweating so bad from a fever that I’m scared his brain’s gonna fry. Dr. McCormick comes and he says that Jimmy’s got a bout of the malaria. He says that’s a sickness the soldiers get from skeeter bites over there in the jungle and that it might keep coming back for a time. He gives Ma some little white pills called quinine to give to Jimmy.

Jimmy has bad dreams most every night, but they is worse now that he’s sick.

Sick with the malaria, Jimmy don’t wake up when I try to shake him out of his bad dreams. And when I put Lucky on the bed to keep him company, Jimmy starts punching at him and Lucky yelps and runs back to our room.

With the fever, Jimmy don’t know he’s home no more. He sees them Japs wherever he looks, even when his eyes is open. I think of when me and Eddie went Jap hunting and how Eddie got scared just like that, thinking them was real Japs behind them trees. Just like Jimmy, Eddie was too scared to hear me say them Japs weren’t really there. I think of how the only thing that stopped Eddie from being scared was when I put that stick rifle in his hand and told him to shoot them Japs dead. Maybe, I think, people don’t stay scared of things that ain’t there if they fight back to make ’em gone. So when Jimmy gets all buggy and crouches on his bed, panting like Lucky when he runs far, I run and I get my wood sword out of my closet. I put that sword in Jimmy’s hand like it is a rifle, and I yell to Jimmy, “Shoot them dirty Japs dead, Jimmy!
Pow! Pow! Pow!
Shoot ’em all dead!”

Jimmy starts swinging that sword all over the place like it’s a baseball bat and screaming, “Fuckers! Motherfuckers!” He whacks the lamp with his rifle and it crashes off the nightstand, the bulb and the lamp both busting up in little pieces that skip across the floor. Jimmy leaps off the bed, and he takes the sword like it is one of them bayonets, and he starts stabbing at chunks of the lamp. He is cussing worse than a sailor.

Ma and Dad come thumping up the stairs and Ma is yelling, “What’s going on? Jimmy? Earl? What’s going on here?”

When Ma sees the broken glass and the little red splotches left on the floor from the bottom of Jimmy’s feet, her hands lift up into the air, then slap down to her legs.

Jimmy is standing on the bed again, crouched up against the wall, holding that wood sword like it’s a rifle and he’s looking for someone to pow. His eyes, they is shining like glass, and his face is all sweaty. Jimmy aims his rifle at Ma and screams, “Get back! Get back! You come any closer and I’ll blow your fucking head off!” Ma lets out a little scream, and Dad takes Ma by the shoulders and steers her into the hall.

“Jimmy?” Dad holds up his hands. “Jimmy, it’s Dad. It’s okay, son. You’re home now. Your ma’s here. I’m here. Earl’s here.” Dad talks real soft as he walks closer to where Jimmy is, but Jimmy, he can’t seem to hear him.

Dad tells me to stay back, but I don’t. I ain’t scared of Jimmy, and he ain’t really scared of me. He’s just scared of Japs. When Jimmy aims his sword at Dad, Dad stops, but I don’t. I go to Jimmy and I say to him, loud, “It’s me. Earwig. Come on, Jimmy. Lay down and I’ll show you my comic books. Them Japs are gone. You killed every last one of ’em.” It takes a little bit, but Jimmy, he lets me take his arm and he lays down real good. He don’t look at my comic book, though. He’s sicker than a poisoned pup, so he just falls back to sleep.

Ma, she goes downstairs and fetches the broom and dustpan. “Go to bed, Earl,” she says as she sweeps and cries, but I tell her no. “I’m a man now, Ma, and I can make my own decisions, and I’m gonna stay right here by Jimmy.”

Dad checks on Jimmy before he leaves for the garage in the morning. He pats my shoulder and tells me I’m taking good care of my brother. Dad looks at Jimmy, who’s still asleep, and he takes a slow, deep breath ’til his belly blows up, then shrinks like a flat tire. “Dad,” I ask. “Has Jimmy gone buggy and falled off his rocker?”

“No, son. He’s just having some trouble putting it all behind him.”

“Funny, ain’t it, Dad, how people can still hurt from things that is gone now, like Japs and broked-off arms? And funny, ain’t it, how them pictures stay in our heads for a long, long time? It was like that after I cut Mrs. Pritchard’s leg. Long after that cut of hers was healed up, I could still see it in my head, all open and bloody.”

“Yes, son, that’s how it is when people get a bad shock.”

“Dad? How does a guy get rid of that bad shock in his head and get his war sorrows out, anyway?”

“I don’t know, son,” Dad says. “It just takes time, I guess.”

When John comes home, Jimmy and Floyd and me go to meet him. His family comes too, and so do some of their friends. That whole bus station is filled up, ’cause John ain’t the only GI coming home from Europe. They got signs to hold up when the bus pulls in, welcoming the soldiers home and saying they is heroes ’cause they winned the war. I feel kinda bad when I see them signs, ’cause Jimmy and Floyd, they didn’t have no signs.

One thing I’m learning quick is that people don’t think the soldiers who lost the battle in Bataan are that great. It’s like at baseball games. Nobody cheers when the loser team walks off the field. It ain’t fair is what I think. Jimmy and Floyd, they was as brave as John, and they suffered more, seems to me. Still, nobody thinks they’re heroes.

Jimmy and Floyd hug John and he tells ’em that they look like shit. Floyd says, “You don’t look so great yourself, Pissfinger.” John, he’s gotta go home and eat ’til he’s stuffed and visit with relations, but that night he comes into the Ten Pin and gets drunk with Floyd and Jimmy. Mary, she comes along around closing time without being called now, and she hangs by the counter with Eva Leigh. Even from my little window, I can see Mary’s got sorrows.

After them lanes are closed up, I go by Eva Leigh and Mary. Mary’s watching Floyd over there at the bar, and she ain’t got even one smile or laugh in her. “I hardly know him anymore,” she says. “He’s not the same. He hardly talks at all and he rarely sleeps. It’s like he’s a bundle of nerves.”

I tell her that Jimmy ain’t the same either. “But he’s still Jimmy,” I say. “I know it when I hug him. He’s just Jimmy with sorrows. When he gets them sorrows out, then he’ll be more like the Jimmy he was before the war. Floyd too.”

Mary, she smiles all sad-like and she says, “How’d you get so smart, Earl?” and I tell her I don’t know.

Then Mary, she talks about the same thing Dad talked about at breakfast. How that army, it ain’t gonna help Jimmy and Floyd. “They’re trying to get out of paying them benefits,” she says, “so they’re saying that their hands are tied because the Japanese didn’t keep any records on their prisoners.”

“That’s crazy,” Eva Leigh says. “They know they were there because the Rangers rescued them there. How can they do this?”

Mary shakes her head. “I don’t know, but they are. And the VA hospitals aren’t going to help them either. They’re saying they have no idea how to treat these jungle diseases, and they don’t know how to help them with the shell shock either.” Mary sighs. “They just don’t want to help them because they’re afraid they’ll be paying them benefits for the rest of their lives. Floyd and Jimmy and the rest, they did their best for their country, but now their country isn’t going to do the best for them. It’s just so unfair.”

“I don’t like the government no more,” I say. “First they was mean to that Red Lawson guy, then they telled Jimmy and the rest of the Janesville ninety-nine that they had better shut their mouths about what happened over there, ’cause if they don’t, then that Red Lawson is gonna get the court martial and go to jail. They tell ’em to shut up, and they tell ’em they ain’t helping ’em. No, it sure ain’t fair.”

Eva shakes her head. “How can they do that?”

Mary shrugs. “It’s not like any of them are talking about what happened over there anyway. Floyd won’t say a word, even when I ask him. Is Jimmy talking about what happened, Earl?”

“No, he ain’t, but I ain’t asked him either, ’cause I don’t want Jimmy to get into trouble and go to jail.”

Eva Leigh is sticking bowling shoes in the little cubbyholes. “That must be what hurts the most. They served longer than anyone, they suffered in those prison camps, and what do they get to compensate for their suffering? Not even acknowledgment for what they’ve been through. Not even from their own country.”

Them guys, they are calling me to come have a beer with ’em. I am old enough to drink beer in the Ten Pin now, but I don’t drink much ’cause I still think beer tastes like horse piss. Still, I go over there and take the glass Ruby Leigh hands me.

Jimmy, he slings his arm around my shoulder. “What do you think of this guy here, huh? A job. Money in the bank. He went and grew up on us while we were gone, boys, and turned into a mighty fine man.” The guys, they lift up their beers to give me a cheer. I ain’t feeling so cheery, though, and underneath their drunk, I don’t think they is feeling cheery either.

Jimmy guzzles, burps, then lifts his glass again. “And here’s one for our comrade, Louie.” They all cheer and drain their glasses and tell Ruby Leigh to fill ’em up again.

We get to talking about Louie then, and before we know it, we is laughing. “Hey, Jimmy,” I say, “remember when Louie got shockered on Floyd’s electric fence when he pissed on it when you told him to?”

Floyd laughs. “No shit. What a gullible idiot.”

“Yeah,” John says, “the poor, pathetic bastard.” John snorts a bit when he laughs, then he says, “Hey, do you suppose Louie really hosed that girl from Janesville, like he said he did?” Everybody laughs, ’cept John. “No, really. I wonder. He said he screwed her, but who to hell knows. Christ, I hope he did. Wouldn’t that be the shits, getting killed before you even got any?”

“He sure didn’t have any luck with the dames,” Floyd says with a laugh. “Remember, Pissfinger, when you gave him a hard time about running with Preacher Michaels’s daughter? The ugly, fat one?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy says, and he starts yucking it up good. “Pissfinger, you told him she looked like a goddamn pig, so what does the clown do? He swipes one of the biggest sows on Larks’ farm, puts a scarf around its head, props it right up on the front seat of his car, and cruises up and down Main Street.”

Jimmy starts to laughing so hard he spits his beer out and Ruby Leigh’s gotta sponge off her titties. “Yeah. You said to him, ‘Jesus, Louie, I’m sorry I poked fun of your new girl. Seeing her in the daylight like this, I can see she ain’t half as ugly as I first thought she was.’ ”

We laugh ’til we ain’t got no more laughs left, then after we quiet down, Jimmy says, “I can’t believe he’s gone.” And then Floyd, he says the damnedest thing. He says, “Maybe he’s the lucky one.”

That night, Jimmy gets them nightmares again. When I get in Jimmy’s room, he’s crying like a titsy baby, holding his side ’cause it hurts. He’s got scars there, so I think maybe they do hurt. I go downstairs to the bathroom, and I get the Mercurochrome, and I bring it back upstairs. I paint Jimmy’s side and back good with that red shit, and Jimmy, he just rocks back and forth while I do this.

I cover Jimmy up when I’m done, and he falls back to sleep. I go downstairs to put the Mercurochrome back in the medicine cabinet, and Ma comes to the door, squinting, on accounta the bathroom light is bright.

“Earl, what are you doing with the Mercurochrome?”

“I was putting it on Jimmy’s marks, ’cause he was hurting.”

“Oh, Earl, those wounds don’t hurt anymore. They’re all healed now.”

I guess Ma don’t know a thing about places hurting long after they look all healed up.

Ma, she don’t want Dad to bitch at Jimmy, but he does anyway, though he ain’t mean when he does it.

“Don’t you think it’s time you come back to work, Jimmy?” Jimmy, he don’t even lift his head up and look at Dad, and I think it’s ’cause his head is pounding from last night’s beers.