The Naked and the Dead (41 page)

            I ain't gonna be like the old man. (He shall defend his wife with his sword.)

            The bright glorious passage of youth.

            His teachers never remember him in high school, a sullen morose student without enthusiasm. He quits a year before graduation, out into the tag end of the depression and a job as an elevator boy. His old man is without work that year, and his mother goes out by day, cleans stucco, Spanish tile, and Colonial houses in Brookline, in Newton. At night she goes to sleep after supper, and his old man is down at the corner bar, waiting for someone to offer him an argument or a drink.

            Roy starts hanging around the Democratic Club in his ward. In the small rooms at the back there are the poker games, crap games, the con talk. The big room at the entrance where the kids come in and mingle with the cigar smoke, the serge suits, the attendants.

            Ladies in waiting.

            And the recruiting talks. Steve Macnamara who is getting up in the party:

            Sure, you guys, take a look, just take a look. A man can split a gut tryin' to go it the hard way. What's in it for ya? The only thing is politics, politics, that's what gets ya somewheah, you put in a couple of yeaahs, you show 'em you're a right guy, an' you're made, the organization'll take caah of ya. I remembeh when I was a punk like you kids, I showed 'em I was a willin' workeh, and now I'm set, you know this ain't a bad waard, it's easy to pull in the vote heah.

            Yeah, Gallagher admits, yeah.

            Listen, I've had my eye on you, Roy, you're okay, I can see wheah you'd have a future heah, you just got to show the boys you're a willin' workeh. I know y'are but you got to prove it to them. I'll tell ya what, the primary's comin' up in another month, and theah's a lot of leg work got to be done, givin' out the pamphlets, and havin' a couple of boys in the crowd to do a little yellin' when one of our candidates is makin' a speech, we'll tell you when.

            Yeah, that's okay.

            Sure, listen, theah's money to be made in this, you know you stick with the boys theah's always a lot of jobs, a lot of easy gelt, you'll be a big guy someday, I'll say I knew you when, I can see right off and I'm a student of human nature, you got to be in this racket, that you got the stuff for politics, you know, chaaarm.

            I'll be puttin' in my nights here.

            That's it, how old are ya now? Close to eighteen, by the time you're twenty you'll be making ten times what you are now. . .

            On the way home, he meets a girl he has talked to once or twice, and he stops to banter with her.

            I'm tired of my job, I'm gettin' a better one, he bursts out.

            What?

            Something big. (Suddenly he is shy.) Big, something big.

            You're mysterious, Roy, cut the kiddin'. (She giggles.)

            Yeah. (He can think of nothing to say.) Yeah, I'm on my way, I'm going places.

            You're a caard.

            Yeah. (He looks at her, lights a cigarette with elaborate nonchalance, swaggers self-consciously.) Yeah. (He looks at her again, and feels panicky.) I'll be seein' ya.

            When he is twenty, he has a new job, he works in a warehouse. (Roy, you done a lotta work, Steve Macnamara has said to him, don't let anyone tell ya different, and the boys appreciate it, you're goin' places. He makes himself say, Yeah, but Whitey's on the payroll, I done as much work as him. . . Now, listen, Roy, listen, don't let anyone hear ya talkin' like that, Jesus, they'll be thinkin' you're a sorehead, you built up a name heah for yourself, you don't want to be takin' chances with it.)

            One night he goes out to Cambridge to see a girl, but she has stood him up. He ends by walking through the streets, and wandering along the banks of the Charles. The goddam bitch, none of them can fool me, they all put out for the right guy, but they just don' gimme a chance, the caards are stacked against me, it's the goddam breaks I just never get them. I work my ass off at the club, and what does it get me?

            He sits down on a bench, and looks at the water languidly flowing. The lights from the Harvard Houses are reflecting in it. Work your ass off, work, work, work, and who the hell gives a damn, you're just stuck, if I'd had some big dough she'da been waitin' around for me, and with her legs ready to spread too, I bet she ran off with some Jewboy who's got the dough. I don't know, they always grab all the money, grab, grab, grab, you'd think that was all there was in life. Disgusting.

            Two Harvard undergraduates pass, and he stiffens in momentary panic. I wonder if I can sit here. Jesus, I shouldn'ta sat down.

            I just held my breath, I tell you, that extension of Markova's was the most superbly terrifying thing I have ever seen, it was, oh, simple and subtle and just tremendous, terriFYING, absolutely terrifying.

            Coupla fairies, what kind of crap was that, talkin' like a bunch of women. He turns around and looks at the lights in the Harvard buildings. Somebody ought to wipe out all those mother-fuggers. He watches the automobiles speeding past on Memorial Drive. Go ahead, hit the gas, hit it, hit it, go as fast as you goddam please, and break your goddam necks. That Harvard, goddam lefty outfit, somebody ought to blow up the fuggin place, work your ass off so some of those goddam fairies can sit around and act like women, life of Riley, how do they rate it, aah, the caards are never shuffled right, I'd like to kill every one of the mother-fuggers, there ought to be a man to take care of them, somebody ought to drop a bomb.

            He sits on the bench for over an hour, calms at last. The river languishes by, stippled and quivering like the play of light on a metallic cloth. Across from him, the dormitories of the business school lance their reflections into the water, and the automobiles in the distance seem tiny and alive. He feels the earth under him germinating in the spring night, the sweet assuasive air. In the sky the stars are studded in the warm intimate velvet of the night.

            Jeez, it's beautiful out. A play of yearnings, lost and never articulate. Makes ya think. He sighs. Real beautiful, makes ya think. The woman with whom he could share this. I'm gonna be something.

            Awe. Night like this makes you know there's a God, dumb atheists. Jeez, it's beautiful, really beautiful, it makes ya think things are gonna be okay.

            He sits there, absorbed in the night. I ain't like the other guys, theah's somethin' special in me. He sighs again. Boy, to. . . to. . . He fumbles for his thought as though his hand were groping for a fish in the water. Jeez to. . .

            Roy, you're okay with us, I don't have to tell ya that, you know that we're gonna be givin' ya somethin' special real soon, and to show what the boys think of ya, we got a little outfit you're gonna be working with for a while, it ain't tied up to us exactly [Macnamara moves his hand deprecatingly] but mentioning no names theah's a couple of the big boys kinda like the way they work against the international plot, you know the one the rich kikes got all figured out to bring us communism.

            On the payroll at ten dollars a week even though he is only working nights. The office is on the top of a two-story loft, a desk and a room filled with pamphlets and magazines tied in bundles. Behind the desk there is a large banner with a cross and an interlocking C and U.

           
Christians United,
that's the name of this here outfit, Gallagheh,
CHRISTIANS. . . UNITED,
you get it, we're out to break the goddam conspiracy, what this country needs is some blood, y'afraid of blood? the big guy behind the desk asks. He has pale-brown eyes like panes of dull glass. We gotta staart mobilizing and get ready, the International Jews is tryin' to get us to war, an' we gotta get them first, ya see the way they take away all the jobs, we let it go an' we won't have a fuggin chance, they're high up but we got our friends too.

            He sells magazines on street corners (READ ABOUT THE BIG FOREIGN PLOT! GET FATHER KILIAN'S MAGAZINE AND LEARN THE TRUTH!), he goes to secret meetings, drills for an hour a week in a sporting club which uses old Springfields.

            What I wanta know is when we gonna staart, I wanta see some action.

            Y' got to take it easy, Gallagheh, it takes time, we gotta get everything set up and then we can come out in the open, we're gonna get this country run right, you come in with us at the bottom and you're in.

            Yeah. (At night sometimes he cannot sleep, the thick lusting dreams, the quick ache in his chest.) I swear I'm gonna bust up if we don't. . . we don't get goin'.

            But. . .

            The girl friend at last, the hormones no longer distilled into vinegar.

            You know, Gallagher says to Mary, you're really a swell kid, I. . . I get a bang outa talkin' to ya.

            This is a swell night, Roy. (Looking off across the beach, searching the lights of Boston Harbor, which flicker like star formations in an uncertain clouded sky. She picks up a handful of sand, and pours it on her shoe, the glare from the bonfire making her hair seem golden. Her slim long face, freckled and sad, seems pleasant, almost lovely.)

            Ya want me to toast a hot dog?

            Let's just talk, Roy.

            Around them, the couples with whom they have come have deserted the fire and are giggling in the shadowed hollows of the beach. A girl screams in mock fright, and he strains at the noise; uncomfortable, he thinks he hears the liquid slapping sounds of love.

            Yeah, it's been a swell night, he repeats. He wonders if he can make love to her, and becomes suddenly shy. (She ain't like that, she's the pure kind, a good religious girl.) He feels guilty with his desire.

            There's lots of things I'd like to talk to you about.

            Sure, Roy.

            Well, you know, we been goin' out for a coupla months, you know, what do ya think of me? He flushes at the crudeness of it, at the part of his mind that hopes for a physical issue. (The giggles become louder on the beach.) I mean do ya like me?

            I think you're really swell, Roy, you know you are a gentleman, you're not fresh like all the other fellows.

            Oh, yeah. He is disappointed, vaguely humiliated, and yet he generates some pride. I got other things on my mind.

            I know, you always seem to be thinking, you know, Roy, I never know what's going on in your head, and I'd like to know because I think you're different.

            How?

            Well, you're shy, I don't mean shy but you're nice.

            You should heah me talkin' to the guys. (They laugh.)

            Oh, I believe you're just the same with them, you wouldn't be any different. (Her hand drops abstractedly on his knee, and she jerks it away with embarrassment.) I wish you'd go to church more often.

            I go pretty regularly.

            Yes, but there's something bothering you, I wonder about it, you're a mystery.

            Yeah? He is pleased.

            Roy, you always seem so angry about something, it worries me. My father was talking about you, and he said you're in Christians United, I don't know anything about politics, but I know one of them, Jackie Evans, was a nasty kid.

            Aw, he's all right, it's just something with the club, you know they were tryin' me out, but it's nothin' much.

            I wouldn't want you to get in trouble.

            Why?

            (She looks at him, her eyes passive and calm. This time she puts her hand on his arm.) You know why, Roy.

            His throat is tense and his chest aches with warmth and hunger. He shivers as he hears the girl giggling again. This is swell out here at City Point, he says. (The thick lusting dreams at night for he knows not what.) I'll tell ya, Mary, if I was goin' steady -- his voice is strong with his sense of renunciation -- I wouldn' be hangin' around with them so much, 'cause you know I'd be wantin' to see more of you.

            You would?

            He listens to the lapping of the surf. I love ya, Mary, he says suddenly, holding himself stiff and cold, troubled delicately by a passing uncertainty.

            I think I do too, Roy.

            Yeah. After a while he kisses her gently, then hungrily, but a corner of his mind has retreated and become cold. Oh, I love ya, kid, he says huskily, trying to cauterize the doubt. His eyes stare away. City Point is so beautiful, she says.

            In the night they cannot see the garbage that litters the beach, the seaweed and driftwood, the condoms that wallow sluggishly on the foam's edge, discarded on the shore like the minuscule loathsome animals of the sea.

            Yeah, it's something, he says slowly.

            Hey, theah, Roy, how's the old married man, how's it feel gettin' it steady, what do ya say?

            Aw, it's okay. (He shivers in the September dawn that lifts bleakly over the gray stone pavement and the slatternly wooden houses.) Jesus, it's cold out, I wish the goddam polls'd open.

            I'm glad you're with me today, Roy, you know we think you're all right, but we ain't seen much of ya.

            Aaah, well, I quit the CU, he mumbles, and I thought maybe the boys were you know not so glad to see me.

            Well, ya shoulda told 'em, but between you an' me, the club is gonna lay off 'em for a while, started gettin' pressure from on top, clear out of the state I heard. It always pays to stick with the club, you don't go wrong that way, I bet if you hadn't been with the CU you woulda been the election captain here today, I hope there's no hahd feelin's, Roy.

            Naw. (He feels a dull resentment. Back wheah I staarted.) I bet some of those rich kikes in the party are the ones that creamed the CU.