“Maybe you’re a weak guy,” said Sylvia.
“Maybe that’s true,” said Frankie, but he knew he really wasn’t a scared rabbit, and seeing his mother dying, he wasn’t even scared of dying himself.
“Can’t you go work in a hospital? Instead of the infantry?”
“I asked that,” said Frankie. “The draft board said my beliefs need proof. Which I don’t have. They can’t accept my word. And, besides, even if they did, a Sicilian guy who won’t put up his hands, or won’t kill Nazis, everybody figures is a fairy.”
“Are you, Frankie? I heard some fairies ride Harleys. Tony says cops on them are. Personally, I wouldn’t know. I met one once in Miami. He did my hair. And he wasn’t so bad. My motto is, Live and let live. So I wouldn’t care if you was.”
“I don’t know if I am,” said Frankie, sensing the door of opportunity swinging open. “I hang around with guys. And we like each other. And I’m a little shy with dames.”
“You called me,” said Sylvia. “And when I said to come over, you did. You ain’t shy.”
Frankie thought his guardian angel might have followed him into the house to stand behind the sofa to protect him from sin, but when he looked around he didn’t see her. He thought she looked like the nun he had for catechism when he was seven. The angel had been trailing him since his mother died. He tried burning candles and saying rosaries for years, to send her away, but she kept whispering in his ear, but at least she wasn’t behind the sofa.
“I don’t think of you as just a dame,” he said.
“Then what as?” said Sylvia, her femininity never before challenged by any male. And while a catty friend couldn’t hurt her, it was much harder to shrug off Frankie’s sting. “I ain’t a dame?”
“You’re a person a guy can talk to,” said Frankie.
“I appreciate that,” said Sylvia. “But if you don’t see me as a dame, you have a problem.”
“It could be.”
“There’s nothing I can do. And it’s getting late. So why don’t you go to a burlesque? See how it makes you feel?”
“That’s a good idea,” he said.
“If you went in the Army, you might like the boys. That would be a pity.”
“I like holding your hand, Sylvia. And kissing your cheek.”
“That doesn’t count. Let me know how it comes out.”
“Any chance you could give me a test? I might be turning queer and not know it. Jesus, if you saved me, I’d respect you all my life.”
“I can’t,” said Sylvia. “This guy, works for Tony, he’s married. He’s Sicilian too. And, you know, he’d get sore. He ain’t no pussycat, which’s, I guess, why I like him. But I wouldn’t want him on my bad side.”
“I see,” said Frankie, crushed that another guy was in the picture. He could still secretly love her, but he couldn’t compete with a gangster.
Sylvia observed his sinking face, but couldn’t guess how deep was his disappointment. She might encourage Frankie now, if not with a test, possibly with a sample. He could be a fine man someday. He could love women who all needed to be loved. He could fight just battles. Many such men were already in the service, and it worried her slightly that if she helped him he would go too. But someone should help him. It was the right thing to do. Otherwise, he could be a miserable coward, and miss the pleasure of having a woman in his bed, and sharing his daily life.
“I’ve an idea,” she said. “We’ll go in my bedroom. And talk privately. Which wouldn’t feel right here in the parlor.”
“You’re wonderful,” said Frankie.
“Don’t think I’m double-crossing my boyfriend.”
Sylvia put the light on. On her ruffled bed were dolls from newborns to first-graders. Frankie thought his first visit to a dame’s bedroom might be an intrusion on her privacy. Her bra and underpants were on her bedroom chair, and her slip, stockings, and nightgown made a pink puddle on the floor. She sat on the edge of her bed and patted the space next to her. His heart upped its beat. Then he worried that nothing ever was as easy as he thought. Never having done it before, would he be nervous? And would his angel kick him in the ass?
“Sicilian girls ain’t so beautiful as you,” he said.
“A girl in a bathing suit excite you?” she said.
“Is she supposed to?” he said, faking.
“Suppose she’s in underclothes?”
“I’ve never seen any girl like that.”
“Would you like to?” She turned on other lamps, filling the room almost with sunlight near midnight. Standing a few feet from Frankie, she dropped her skirt, and then her blouse. Miss Sylvia Cohen could be Miss Double Cones.
Frankie’s biological system reacted as it hadn’t at the burlesque, but he stayed icy to wait for the scoops themselves to be presented. Then he grinned. When she pulled down her underpants, he went to take her in his arms. She examined him from the outside and she was pleased.
“I think I’m in love with you,” he blurted out.
“Well, that’s healthy,” she said, not believing it, but taking it as a compliment to her figure. “I think you’re just a little too sensitive, Frankie. Which a girl wouldn’t expect, the way you’re built. Sensitive’s nice, but we all have to grow up, and go to war, in one way or another. Now, you have to go home, Frankie.”
“Don’t make me,” he said.
“I gave you a show and you sneaked a feel, but that’s that. Kids brag.”
Since she kept her lips out of reach, Frankie kissed her neck like a starved madman. Then her shoulders turned down. She was surrendering, but then, mustering her resolve, she pushed free. They stood there, he in all his clothes and she naked.
“I wouldn’t ever tell anyone.”
“You had enough.”
“Okay, I’ll go,” said Frankie. “But you think … I’m embarrassed asking, but could I, you know, take a look? I could be sure then. That I ain’t queer. I might even volunteer for the Army.”
Sylvia sat on the bed and Frankie kneeled, but she was shy and kept her feet together. So he put his cheek on her thigh and kissed the white pillow that was her belly. Then she fingered his hair and closed her eyes. And he looked. Her thighs were warm petals on his cheeks. Her hair was darker blonde, curlier, and in a halo. She hummed while Frankie seemed to be praying. Then she pulled his hair, not to hurt him but to draw him up to the bed.
“I love you, Sylvia.”
“I love you too, Frankie,” she said, about a mild illness that would cure itself. “The nice Jewish boys I went to school with, that my mother said I should marry one, they’re in the service. Two are gold stars hanging in their windows. Sometimes I cry thinking about guys I had bagels with. Not that I loved them, or even kissed them.”
Frankie thought he could grow old there, holding her breasts until he died, and he thought Sylvia was the most perfect thing in the world, and that maybe women everywhere were the most perfect things God ever made. “Can we always be friends, Sylvia? Can we do this again?” And, not seeing his guardian angel in the room, he made his move with Sylvia and she didn’t try to stop him.
“Only one other guy touched me,” said Sylvia. “Which wasn’t right I let him. But I liked him so much. And now you. There must be something wrong with me that I chose that other guy. And that I chose you.”
“I appreciate you chose me,” said Frankie.
“You loved me good,” said Sylvia. “So I doubt you wouldn’t do the right thing.”
“Let’s again,” he said.
“You mustn’t ever tell anyone,” she said. “Bruno would kill me.”
“I promise, Sylvia. I’ll never say anything. But I’m asking you to be my steady, even though I know it’s impossible. Would you?” She didn’t answer, but they made love again, and were still in each other’s arms, not wanting to untie the knot. It was a comforting illusion to think that one was part of the other. Then Sylvia was crying and sniffling. “Did I hurt you?” he said.
“You did it nic
e,” she said, laughing now, tears running down her cheeks. “Someday I’ll marry an accountant. I’ll have a boy and a girl. I’ll get a little fat. And I’ll go to Miami Beach.”
“Maybe I’ll marry you,” said Frankie.
“You’re a goyim. No good Jewish girl marries a goyim. You’re not even circumcised.” She laughed. “Maybe one of these days the war’ll be over.”
For a long while they lay in bed, not sleeping. Sylvia wasn’t crying or laughing now, and they weren’t talking, but their naked sides still touched.
Sylvia thought about the Jewish boys in the Army, about Frankie who was too young to be her lover, and about Bruno in bed with his wife. Nothing good would ever come from Bruno. She liked Bruno’s looks and that he was smooth on the dance floor and sure of himself. But now she had a boy who wasn’t sure of himself, and it wasn’t as awful as she thought it might be, and, in fact, was kind of nice. Sylvia wasn’t sure now that she could give up Frankie as easily as she thought she could give up Bruno.
With just one lamp on, and both Sylvia and Frankie under the bed sheet, Frankie thought he was no nearer to deciding whether or not to put on the uniform. But he was deliciously drowsy from love’s wine, which also made him feel manly, strong, and knowing. Then he turned on his belly to sleep while Sylvia was still on her back, and he put his arm lightly around her. “You asleep, Sylvia?” Her slow regular breathing convinced him that she was, so he didn’t ask again. “Good night, sweetheart,” he said, and heard someone’s distant radio playing love songs.
The war was in the newspapers, on every radio, in classrooms, in newsreels and movies, in letters from guys in the service, in most conversations between housewives buying chickens, workers building ships at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and between the old men at the Sicilian Social Society. Young men lied about their youth or health to dress their punches in olive drab in order to knock out the enemy sooner.
Gene Dragoni was planning to join up that summer before coming of age. He took the elevated downtown to the Marine Corps recruiting office on Fulton Street. The recruiting sergeant said, “Fill this out. Answer every question.” The sergeant didn’t believe that Gene was seventeen and a half, the minimum age, but he accepted the application anyway, and would tell his captain later.
Gene went home to wait for his notice. Then, he thought, he would leave a note for his parents saying he was running away, and would go into boot training as a recruit. A week later a letter came from the Marine Corps captain. He said he appreciated Gene’s patriotism, but that he had called the teacher Gene put down as a character reference and the teacher had told him Gene’s true age. So Gene would have to wait for a few years. Then the Marines would be proud to have him.
Next, Gene decided to be a fighter pilot. Hearing of a Navy program that would train Utrecht graduates to fly, he went downtown again. The chief petty officer with a bunched-up old rug for a face put a nickel in the vending machine and handed a Her-shey’s to Gene and slapped him on the back. “Send in your older brother,” he said. And after he thought for a moment, added, “You have any sisters at home?”
Gene wouldn’t give up trying to get into uniform, to do the manly thing, as he saw it. He had grown up with his father’s uniform, a cop’s, around the house or in the closet, but he didn’t see himself as a cop, since his father as a cop was often scolded by his mother for being away day and night. But the cop’s uniform, and all uniforms, but especially the Marines’ dress blues, seemed to bestow on the men who wore them modern-day knighthood. Rocco scoffed at that.
The uniform could put a guy on equal footing with his father, could make him as tall as a cop, and mitt-to-mitt with a heavyweight champ. Rocco didn’t buy that either.
“I’ll go in in two years. When my notice comes,” said Rocco, but he wasn’t crazy about fighting for a private’s pay when he was making three, four times that with his gloves, and with much less chance of coming home in a pine box.
Some 79th Street kids, when they tried to hit a homer, or get an A, but failed, next time didn’t even try, and thereby avoided the failure too. Others, such as Rocco, who was flattened to the canvas a few times, always got up to win the fight. And Gene wouldn’t quit either. So when he heard on the radio that the 69th Regiment of the New York State Guard was asking for volunteers, he went to their armory.
The sergeant, a grocer in daytime, was forming his new company. Most of his soldiers so far were older guys like himself who wouldn’t be drafted because they had kids, flatfeet, a punctured eardrum, or a weak heart. Still, they would do their bit in the Guard, which didn’t give physicals, and would protect the home shores in case the enemy got some crazy idea it could invade. So when Gene Dragoni showed up, the grocer-sergeant had high hopes that some young blood would be coming in too.
“You’re seventeen?”
“Yeah.”
“Why’re you joining?”
“To get training. For when I get drafted.”
“You ever shoot a gun?”
“No. But I ain’t afraid to.”
“You sick or anything?”
“I’m an ox,” said Gene, who was more like a bantam.
“Let’s go meet the colonel.”
The chicken colonel wasn’t saying much. Through his thick glasses, he looked at the paper on which Gene had written his name, address, and religion, not required to give references this time. The colonel glanced up a few times and then went back to reading the paper. Gene thought that if the colonel didn’t hurry up he would piss in his pants, partly because he was nervous. He thought the colonel knew he was too young, but was taking him anyway.
Finally, the colonel stood up and shook hands, and Gene thought it was a puny shake. “Welcome to the Guard, Private Dragoni,” said the colonel.
With the signed requisition in his hand, Private Dragoni was sent to the quartermaster. That sergeant worked during the day in Macy’s men’s wear stockroom. The quartermaster asked Gene his sizes and loaded up his duffel bag with two sets of olive-drab fatigues for training, a khaki uniform for summer parades, and dress olive woolens for winter parades, and Gene stored his clothes in Rocco’s garage.
He went to three meetings in fatigues, and marched around the armory, which was as big as St. Finbar’s if all the pews were taken out. The recruits were instructed on how to strip down a rifle, clean it, oil it, and reassemble all the parts. Not only did they learn to do it, but they had to do it very fast. Gene was getting fed up with doing it over and over, and with marching back and forth.
Then the regiment was going upstate for the weekend. They would fire weapons. That ignited Gene’s interest again. He convinced his father that he was going to pick vegetables for the war effort, as he had done once before as a class project one weekend.
The M-1 was almost as tall as he was when he brought it down from carrying it on his shoulder. He got into the standing shooting position as ordered, as the other recruits did too, hoisting the butt end against his shoulder, sighting down the barrel, getting ready to fire.
“It has a kick,” said the sergeant. “You have to lean into it. Cup it inside your shoulder.”
“Like this?” said Gene, who didn’t have much weight to put behind the butt.
“And spread your feet, to keep your balance when it comes back on you.”
“I can do it.”
“You men, you each got a clip. When you hear the whistle, fire at will from the standing position. When you hear it again, you stop. Even if you ain’t fired all your rounds. Ready. Aim. Fire.”
The sergeant blew the brass whistle hanging from his neck. The live men shot at the cardboard men against the hill. The hill sponged up the bullets that went through the targets or missed them. Gene drove the bolt forward, and then, as he had learned, squeezed the trigger gently. The rifle fired with a small explosion, but it recoiled violently, knocking him on his ass, and the weapon was almost out of his hands. Taking his stance again, he pushed on the bolt to load the chamber, but forgot to squeeze.
The pulled trigger exploded the round and the rifle shot back, again knocking him down.
“It takes getting used to,” said the sergeant.
“My arm hurts too,” said Gene.
“Your size, you should have a carbine. But only a noncom gets it. If you made corporal you’d have it. And it ain’t so heavy.”
“I don’t think I can shoot in the prone position now. I hurt.”
“Get down there, Private Dragoni.”
“I don’t think I can run anymore, sarge.”
“Get the lead out of your ass, private.”
By the time the weekend was over, Gene had had enough of being a soldier. But he had been sworn in, as in the regular Army, and he had been at the lecture that warned against going AWOL, which could land a guy in the stockade the same as a GI in the South Pacific leaving to screw a native girl. The sergeant had put it that way to give them a piece of candy on the side. The guys puffed their chests to show they were loyal GIs who wouldn’t run out on the sergeant. They also wanted to show they were the kind of guys that, if they had a legitimate pass signed by the CO, would go out to the grass huts and knock off a piece of native tail.
At church on Sunday, Gene asked God to get him out of the Guard. He was too young. He was too small. He was too bored. When he grew up in a few years, he would be happy to be drafted at eighteen. Then he would serve his country as other guys on the street were already doing. It was his duty too. He had no doubt of that, but in the meantime, if God could arrange a miracle and get him honorably discharged, he would say a novena to St. Anthony and wouldn’t ever go to another burlesque show.
With all the suffering in the world, God didn’t have time to get back to Gene, who was more impatient after another Guard meeting. He was lectured on how to clean his brass buttons and his brass belt buckle, polish his boots, and arrange his underwear and personal items in his footlocker. He thought he was too quickminded to worry about such crap. He wanted to do something daring and brave, but knew now that he had to wait.
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