What I Lived For

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Corky manages a cracked-sounding laugh as if this is funny. Others, overhearing, turn toward Sean and grin.

  Liking the attention, Sean says again, in a louder voice, “Yessir—I get that age, take me out and shoot me! Va-va-voom!”

  Next comes an American Legion marching band, “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” deafening brass bugles and trumpets and too many drums imperfectly coordinated, Corky grates his jaws resisting the impulse to put his hands over his ears: not that he gives a damn about being rude but somebody’s sure to recognize him.

  In a democracy, every shithead’s a potential vote.

  You’re a politician, however small-time, you don’t forget that.

  Pathetic little squad of pom-pom girls, must be the Legionnaires’ granddaughters, O.K.-looking in the faces but flat-chested or chubby-assed or thick-legged, so few women really look good showing their bodies so why the hell risk it? These poor kids in their red-white-and-blue miniskirt costumes, more of those slick-cheap imitation leather boots, one of the pom-pom girls is on the fat side and some guys whistle at her jeering and crude so she’s almost in tears but, for Christ’s sake, you’re a fat-assed pom-pom girl who isn’t even pretty, get out of our faces.

  Next, military vehicles. Decked up in flags, banners. Officers saluting one another. Hot shit, eh? The highest rank in the parade is supposed to be some Air Force lieutenant-general, World War II. These are World War II veterans now, shocking to see how old, some of them in wheelchairs too, in their uniforms. A row or so of U.S. Army, then U.S. Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard. Corky loses count somewhere beyond thirty, old guys in their seventies but proud-looking, not marching exactly in step but marching. Every year fewer of them, must be depressing as hell. Can’t help but figure next time you might not be here, the parade goes on without you.

  Corky asks Sean, who’s a World War II vet himself, does he know any of these men, but Sean shrugs as if to say, Who cares?

  “Well,” says Corky, “—they look pretty good for their age. They’re holding up almost as well as you, Sean.” Feeling he should defend the veterans, his uncle’s attitude worries him.

  Sean Corcoran had fought in the Philippines as a Private First Class in the U.S. Army and was honorably discharged in 1945 but so far as Corky can remember he never spoke of it. Never. Unlike his younger brother Tim who talked so much about Korea, who’d seemed in a way fixated upon Korea, his platoon buddies there, what had happened to him. Sean had not been wounded in the war like Tim, nor taken prisoner by the enemy. He’d almost died of malaria, he’d maybe had a nervous collapse, or, Corky guesses, he’d spent some time in the stockade; there was some secret about his uncle’s wartime service nobody would speak of, not even Aunt Frances. Of course, his children would never have dared ask him, or his nephew Jerome.

  Sean had never marched in the Memorial Day parade and was said to have thrown out his Army uniform as soon as he got home, even his dog tags. Kept no mementos which is maybe a healthy thing sometimes?

  Though Corky thinks it’s a futile gesture, to try to erase history by an act of will.

  Next comes another marching band, the National Anthem played off-key but in high spirits, a Marine guard bearing tall impressive flags and a showy contingent of drum majorettes, not bad, a honey-blond tossing a flirty smile Corky’s way is especially not bad, though just slightly bowlegged, and an ass like a boy’s. Corky’s remembering poor Charlotte the night before clutching at him How I miss you how I love you oh Corky!—so sad, a woman closing her eyes lifting her face to be kissed, opening her legs to be fucked, so sad. How sad how serious to be a woman in a man’s world, he’d probably cut his throat, or bloat up to three hundred pounds if he had to be a woman that’s the fucking truth.

  Even Christina Kavanaugh: likes to think she’s independent, a “feminist,” uses her maiden name and has that loft and has her work such as it is and had Corky Corcoran as a lover but all the while she’s somebody’s wife, thinks of herself as somebody’s wife. He’s my husband I share most of my life with him.

  Next come the Korean War veterans. Old guys too, trying to march like they’re kids. Two of them in wheelchairs. One, Corky recognizes, last name’s Mulvaney, an old friend of Tim Corcoran’s. And there’s a black man, burly, somber, in gold-rimmed eyeglasses looking like a schoolteacher. Corky’s staring at these vets swallowing hard, blinking tears out of his eyes. It pisses him off nobody’s paying much attention to them, nobody knows them, old guys in uniforms stepping along only eleven of them, fewer than the others, strange, well maybe not strange: Korea was never a war was it. Next in the parade is a hook-and-ladder truck asshole firemen sounding their siren, God damn.

  Corky says to Sean, casually, as if this is just making conversation, “—Dad would probably be marching here, if he was alive.”

  Sean makes no reply. Maybe hasn’t heard.

  Corky’s feeling again that sharp painful sensation of a son seeing his father out there. He’d be standing with Theresa clasping his hand, the excitement and worry was almost more than he could bear. A tall broad-shouldered good-looking man in a private’s uniform, with medals, a Silver Star, a Purple Heart, fancy epaulettes, a smart visored hat—his dad. Jerome standing rigid staring so Theresa laughed and nudged him—There’s Daddy! but even then he’d felt shy, doubtful. He knew that tall red-haired man marching with the others was Daddy but could he be sure?

  Even when Daddy saw him, grinned and waved at him, even then could he be sure?

  Corky remembers soldiers on horseback. Funeral wreaths carried alongside the American flags. A solitary trumpeter playing that slow, sad song “Taps.” The Memorial Day parade so much bigger, so much more of an event, than it is now. The World War II vets were still youthful, and there were a lot of them, and the Korean vets were young. Young and vigorous and good-looking even the crippled ones nobody had to feel sorry for them exactly, they were important, they mattered, they were the real thing.

  That’s all a man wants, no matter what it costs him. To be the real thing.

  Jesus, Corky can’t help thinking, if Tim Corcoran was alive and marching in this unit today he’d be just another of these sad old guys in their tight uniforms, trying to march in step, eyes restlessly scanning the faces of onlookers hoping to see somebody, anybody, familiar so they can smile, wave, salute.

  Corky surprises his Uncle Sean by grinning and waving at the Korean vets, like he’s the one who’s been drinking. He calls out to the marchers, “Great, guys! Terrific! Keep it up! Congratulations! You’re almost there!”—meaning the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument a half-mile away. Startled, squinting, most of the vets wave back at Corky. His enthusiasm starts a wave of enthusiasm close around him and others are waving and calling out too, it’s a good feeling even if it’s over almost before it’s begun.

  The next, noisy unit, drawing much more attention, is the Union City Firemen’s Association Marching Band. Flags, drums, majorettes in skintight gold lamé with the glossy-shellacked glamor of grade-B hookers, followed by a shiny-red fire engine emitting teasing squeals of siren, each of them deafening. Kids are jumping up and down yelling with excitement as uniformed firemen, grinning like bozos, toss candy from the rear of the truck. Demeaning crap, Corky thinks, offended. What’s it doing in a Memorial Day parade? Isn’t a Memorial Day parade about the dead? It’s fucking disgusting to see children, some of them just old enough to make it on their own, rushing out like greedy rats to pick up candy from the pavement. Corky Corcoran would never let any kid of his participate in such shit.

  Glancing surreptitiously at his watch. Already past three P.M. The parade was slow getting started, it looks now as if it’s maybe going to rain. Quick chill gusts of wind from the lake and that sulfurous smell that makes Corky’s nostrils pinch that shift in the barometer something’s going to happen. You can’t grow up in Union City, New York, without getting to like that smell, that sensation. Like an addict, liking it a lot.

  Next is Vietnam, guys Corky’
s age and, yes, he knows a few of them but keeps back just far enough so if they’re scanning the crowd they don’t see him. Only twenty-two men. A row of Army uniforms, a row of Navy, a row of Marines. A bugler with a ponytail—that’s shocking. Poor dumb-fuck leftover of the Sixties, Corky’s embarrassed for him but nobody looking much cares, or even notices. One of the Marine officers is a guy Corky knows from the old neighborhood, Billy Brannon, the rumor was he’d gotten hooked on heroin in Vietnam but he looks clean now, walks with a slight limp but like it’s a badge of pride—Vietnam’s a long time ago, all’s forgiven.

  Corky makes sure Brannon doesn’t catch his eye. They run into each other around town, sometimes at City Hall where Brannon shows up occasionally, he’s a high school principal.

  Vietnam: Corky Corcoran’s war, if he’d gone.

  Should have, maybe. His dad would have been ashamed of him doing all he could to stay out. A man among men: he’d missed it forever. Why Corky runs off at the mouth so much, maybe. Chasing pussy like he’s desperate to prove something. That’s it?

  Next comes the brassy-percussive noise of another marching band belting out in quickstep time what sounds like the theme song from Rocky: it’s the South Union City High School Marching Band and this is a unit everybody’s waiting for, cheers whistles catcalls wild applause for the marchers bearing the American flag and just behind it the school colors Day-Glo green-and-white most of all for the teenaged majorettes looking just as terrific to Corky’s yearning eye as they’d looked in Dundonald Park, a glisten of sweat on their faces, upper chests, half-moons of sweat darkened beneath their arms, Corky’s thinking Jesus how he’d love to lick them there, the tall gorgeous black girl first, then between the legs, that sweaty-cunty smell, that heat, nothing like it. Clapping and whistling like every other fuckhead as the girls strut past swinging their cute little asses, poking out their tits, to the boom! boom! boom! of big drums and the manic crash of cymbals the gleaming-silver batons fly up into the air, turn and flash and drop still turning and are unhesitantly caught and twirled and tossed up again, so sexy Corky’s getting a hard-on just watching the fucking batons let alone the girls.

  Helpless Corky stares after the majorettes strutting away sad-hearted as if they’re leaving him stuck somewhere to die. Those satin asses, smooth-gleaming young thighs and buttocks you can be sure have no trace of that veiny-fatty cellulite that’s in older women, poor Charlotte’s ample ass now riddled with it, even Christina’s firmer thighs beginning to show it, fine-cracked flesh like it’s been crumpled. Corky’s looking after the high school girls wondering if he’d really screwed up misreading the black girl’s fuck you gesture with the baton, maybe it was really fuck me, maybe it’s a way the kids have of communicating with one another, he’s out of it: too old. Actually shocked when, at the Council, the public health people come to demand money for condoms for not just high school kids but for junior high too, for the “sexually active” as they’re called. No use pretending they’re not screwing like rabbits, mothers as young as thirteen mostly black girls but not in every case, the ones that get pregnant are the innocent ones, the ones that get caught.

  Also the threat of AIDS, spreading if they don’t use condoms. Kids think they’re going to live forever, that’s why the Army can recruit, that’s why wars, no end to wars, young guys eager to put on the uniform, grab the gun, that cruel ancient bullshit: A man among men.

  Doggy-Corky wiping his face, blowing his nose. Has Uncle Sean picked up on him, staring at the black majorette?—does he feel it, too? Or is he old enough to be out of it?

  Dryly Sean remarks, nudging Corky in the ribs like they’re two young studs surveying the field together, “—Not bad, eh? Except for the smell, maybe.”

  Corky’s frankly shocked by this dumb-fuck racist remark from his own uncle but, shit, laughs to go along with it, only just not very loud or very enthusiastically so Uncle Sean can take a hint. But being half-soused and feeling cocky in his straw hat and blue serge, Uncle Sean isn’t in a mood to take any hint. At least lowering his gravelly voice so he won’t be overheard by a black family a few yards away, saying, with a sardonic grin, “—Saw you on TV yesterday, Corky—why’d you turn up at that whore’s funeral?—those people are not your friends.”

  Amazed Corky stares at his uncle. “What? What ‘whore’? You mean—Marilee Plummer? What people?”

  Sean screws up his face regarding Corky with pale washed-out blue eyes, blood-veined, yellowish. That look of sour wisdom, old-mannish scorn. And the grizzled eyebrows jutting over, it registers in Corky’s memory bank, he gets old he’s got to remember to have the barber trim his eyebrows, yes and the nostril hairs, wiry hairs sprouting out of the ears. Can’t let himself go, the next stop’s dead meat.

  Sean’s looking at him like he, Corky, is the asshole.

  Corky repeats, “What ‘whore’? What people?”

  Shrugging Sean says, “Lad, don’t play dumb.” Looking back at the parade, saying, indifferently, “—The whore was on the take, they paid her fifty thousand dollars to lie about that nigger minister what’s-his-name, everybody knows it.”

  Corky can’t believe how his uncle tosses this off, such a remark, such an accusation, what he’s saying is that Oscar Slattery bribed Marilee Plummer to bring false charges of rape, sodomy, against Steadman, to perjure herself to a grand jury, the way it’s tossed everybody knows like there’s nothing to discuss. Typical neighborhood bullshitting, Christ knows where he picked it up, doesn’t go to church any longer, does he? Corky opens his mouth to protest with a kid’s incredulous whine then figures what the hell, no point in trying to argue with his uncle when his uncle doesn’t know shit only what he thinks he knows.

  Corky makes a joke about the TV interview hoping to hear Sean say he sounded good but Sean’s not listening, must be Corky’d offended him so obviously not believing his inside dope, well too bad, fuck that, Corky’s face is smarting and his heart beating hard those people are not your friends what the hell does this ignorant old rummy know about Corky Corcoran’s life?—about anything?

  Irish Hill, in the old days: big grins, laughter, like it was an accomplishment of one of their own, and Corky’s own relatives for instance Joe Donnelly his uncle calling out right on Dalkey Street to Corky Great news, eh?—when news of the assassination of Martin Luther King first hit the neighborhood.

  Even Aunt Frances, such a goodhearted woman, her face going stiff watching TV seeing the demonstrations, burnings, Detroit Los Angeles Newark Philadelphia, it’s the Jews put them up to it, it’s the Jews give them money, now look.

  Corky stubs out a cigarette in the grass, and lights up another.

  Decides to keep his mouth shut. Let Uncle Sean think whatever crap he wants, he’s never going to be interviewed on TV.

  Next comes a solemn contingent of mostly middle-aged and older women in white and gold-trimmed capes, caps, pleated skirts and rubber-soled walking shoes, nobody’s paying much attention to them craning their necks impatient to see what’s next, the Gulf War vets the real glamor stars of the parade are at the end and a military marching band pounding out “Stars and Stripes Forever” and National Guard motorcyclists bringing up the rear. Distracted Corky his mouth God-damned parched by now watches these good ladies trudging along visibly tired after three miles much of it uphill, poor old biddies bearing American flags like claiming they’re American, too, they’re in this parade, too, carrying floral funeral wreaths and photographs of what you’d guess to be dead sons, don’t look at me, lady, I didn’t kill your precious son. The fluttering satin banner AMERICAN GOLD STAR MOTHERS stirs some scattered applause, Corky doesn’t think it’s jeering or derisive though the American Gold Star Mothers aren’t walking fast enough to suit the crowd C’mon ladies get a move on!—trailing after the quickstepping South Union High School Marching Band whose noise is still dominant as if amplified, broadcast downward, out of the very sky.

  Afterward wondering why for fuck’s sake he hadn’t asked Sean more
about it, what he’d said about Marilee Plummer, for instance where did the specific sum $50,000 come from?—for in fact none of this was common knowledge nor even common gossip at this time. Afterward wondering why he’d been so hurt, so pissed, was it because he’d expected his uncle to be impressed with him on TV like maybe his own father might’ve been, instead the old bastard was critical, bad-mouthing him to his face those people are not your friends.

  Is that Nick Daugherty?—Nick, with one of his kids, on the far side of the crowd at the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument? Corky tries to catch his eye, he’s sure it is Nick, staring straight at the speakers’ platform not noticing Corky. His old friend, once closest-friend Corky.

  Dying for a drink but here’s good-sport Corky Corcoran beside his Uncle Sean in a sparse crowd of about one hundred people at the fifty-foot tower-like Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument at the northernmost edge of Lake Erie Park, the quick-waning afternoon of Memorial Day 1992. More military music, an hour of speeches, eulogies. This day of sacred remembrance. That they might not die in vain. The dead we cherish, may they live forever in our hearts and minds. The high point of the ceremony is the unveiling of a memorial honoring the single soldier from Union City to die in Bush’s Gulf War, an Army helicopter pilot, the novelty is she’s female, twenty-five years old when she died, crashed in Northern Saudi Arabia in a noncombat accident the day after the cease-fire. Can’t be much consolation to the parents, their daughter dead and this chunk of granite and a copper plaque with her “likeness” stamped on it, but they’re up there on the platform being noble being photographed and on TV blinking tears from their eyes as the president of the Mohawk County American Legion reads off a citation followed by one of the Mayor’s aides reading off another followed by one of Cuomo’s aides reading off a statement by the Governor, We honor you who by your sacrifice honor us.