by James Jones
“Yes, man,” Maggio said. “Between Buck and his horse they had the two biggest chests in creation.”
“He was a deep sea diver,” Readall Treadwell said, sitting down, “before he got in the movies. I read it in a movie magazine. Our Lucky Stars, it was.”
“He was a sailor,” Maggio said scornfully. “You dont want to believe the crap in them magazines. Its propaganda. He was a sailor and he bummed around some, like Jack London.”
“Well anyway,” Readall Treadwell said, “when Buck Jones hit them they stayed hit. Deal me in.”
“Dont get my goddam blanket wet,” Maggio said, “or I’ll hit you so you’ll stay hit.”
“Remember Bob Steele?” Prew said, as Reedy moved to put a paper under him. “He was the one could hit. He was a natural hooker. He was good to watch when he fought, you could tell he been a fighter.”
“I seen him in Mice and Men,” Maggio said. “He was Curly, the boss’s brother-in-law. Boy, he was a mean son of a bitch in that one.”
“But he was a good guy in his own pictures though,” Readall Treadwell said.
“Sure he was, you jerk,” Maggio said disgustedly. “You dont think he’d be the villain when he was the star, do you? I wonder,” he said, “what ever happened to old Hoot Gibson? I can just barely remember him. My god, he had grey hair when I was just a kid.”
“I think he’s dead now,” Prew said.
“I guess so,” Maggio said.
“Tim McCoy was a good one,” Readall Treadwell said.
“I think he’s dead too,” Maggio said. “At least you never see him any more.”
“Remember Hopalong Cassidy?” Prew said. “He’s still playin. He’s the one for hair, his is pure white. Must be all of sixty-five.”
“And still a one-punch man,” Maggio said.
“Who’s the guy awys played with him?” Readall Treadwell said. “The one with a stubble beard.”
“Gabby Hayes,” Maggio said. “I hadnt thought of him in years. George (Gabby) Hayes. They always put it like that on the bill. In parenthesis.”
“He’s the one,” Prew said, “who was always tryin to roll a cigaret with one hand. Then when he dies in the end, just before he dies he rolls it.”
“That’s it,” Maggio said excitedly. “And then it falls out of his hand and old Hopalong just looks at it.” After a pause he said, “I wonder what old Hopalong’s real name is.”
“Bill Boyd,” Readall Treadwell said. “But nobody ever calls him that.”
“Jesus,” Maggio said. “I wish I had some popcorn.”
“Me too,” Prew said. “I been wantin some the last ten minutes.”
“They got a machine over to the Main PX,” Readall Treadwell said hopefully.
“We’re broke,” Maggio said.
“So’m I,” Treadwell said. “If thats what you mean.”
“I use to go regular,” Maggio said, “every Sataday afternoon and eat popcorn. Remember Johnny Mack Brown?”
“Had a southern accent?” Prew said. “And a rawhide hatcord? Let his hat hang down his back half the time?”
“Thats the one,” Maggio said. “I always liked that hatcord. I even cut holes in my hat to make one like it but it ruint the hat.”
“He played halfback in the Rose Bowl onct,” Readall Treadwell said. “For U S C. I read it.”
“I wonder what ever happened to him?” Maggio said. “You never see him any more either.”
“You said it a while ago,” Prew said, laying down his hand. “They die. Or graduate. Or retire. What do you say we talk about something else?”
“We gettin old, men,” said Angelo Maggio, aged nineteen and a half. “I never realized it.”
“Tom Tyler,” Readall Treadwell said. “He was another one.”
“I never liked him,” Maggio said. “Too handsome. But I remember him. He plays villains now, in the Technicolor ones. The western epics.”
“Sagas,” Prew said. “They call them sagas.
“The ones that star Tyrone Power and Errol Flynn,” Maggio said. “Those.”
“All the regular cowboys got to be musicians now,” Prew said. “Musicians first and cowboys second. Because they’re not Westerns anymore, they’re Musicals,” he said, suddenly surprisedly realizing sadly that he had watched and been a part of a phase of America that was dying just as surely as the Plains Indians Wars that gave it birth had died, had watched and been a part of it all this time, without ever knowing it for what it was, or that it was dying.
“You mean Gene Autry,” Maggio said. “Roy Rogers and his horse Trigger.
“I read Gene Autry was a Eagle Scout when he was a kid,” Readall Treadwell said.
“I believe that,” Maggio said. “My hometown, the ony ones ever got to be Eagle Scouts was the preachers’ sons and the schoolteachers’ sons. I was a Second Class onct myself, till they kicked me out of the Troop for gettin in a fight with the Assistant Scout Master.”
“Gene Autry cant play Come to Jesus in whole notes,” Prew said, argumentatively. “Neither one of them can. You cant commercialize that kind of music without killing it.”
“Dont look at me,” Maggio said. “I dont like them either. You cant commercialize anything without killing it. Look at the radio.”
“But those guys,” Prew said irritably, because this was a thing of great importance to him, and because he was trying hard to explain it, to find the word for this that always made him angry, “those guys. They’re imitation,” he said, finally, lamely.
“That Roy Rogers,” Maggio grinned. “I was makin a Jewgirl lived on West 84th Street when I work at Gimbel’s. Use to go up there and take her to the Schuyler Theater on 84th and Amsterdam.”
He stopped dealing and began to laugh to himself. “Well, one night there was a bill of a Roy Rogers show outside, you know? how they put them in the frames on the wall behind the chicken wire? And there was a little bitty Jewboy standin lookin at it. Thats all Jewish up around in there, see?
“‘You like Roy Rogers?’ I ask him.
“‘Sure, man,’ he says. ‘Don’t you?’
“‘Yes, man,’ I told him. ‘Roy Rogers and his horsetrigger. Ony I aint never found out whats a horsetrigger yet.’
“‘A what?’ he says.
“‘A horsetrigger,’ I told him. ‘I know whats a hairtrigger, but what is a horsetrigger?’
“‘Trigger’s the name of his horse, you jerk,’ he says, disgusted as hell. ‘You know what horses are. They’re them animals they ride in the pitcher. Horsetrigger,’ he says. ‘Where the hell you learn about cowboys? I bet you aint even a ’Muricun, but a goddam Wop or immigrunt or sothin.’
“Then he turnt around and stalked off a little ways so nobody would think he was with me,” Maggio said, laughing, looking at the others brightly, wanting to be sure they got it. “I never cracked a smile,” he explained, “or said a word.”
“I bet he still thinks you’re a Gestapo spy,” Prew, who liked the kind of humor himself, laughed.
“John Wayne was another good one,” Readall Treadwell said, almost a hunger in his voice, when they stopped laughing.
“Not any more,” Maggio said. “He’s graduated into Adventure. Give him five more years he’ll move up into Drama.”
“Thats the same way Gary Cooper started,” Readall Treadwell said. “He really use to be a real cowboy once.”
“You cant compare Gary Cooper to John Wayne,” Maggio protested.
“I aint comparing them. All I said was they both started out in Westerns. You cant compare none of them to Gary Cooper.”
“I guess not,” Maggio said. “I hope not. Gary Cooper goes deeper than just plain adventure. If theys anybody shows all the things this country stands for its Gary Cooper.”
“Thats what Hedda Hopper says,” Readall Treadwell nodded.
“Hedda Hopper, my ass,” Maggio said heatedly. “If I like Gary Cooper its my business. And its in spite of Hedda Hopper, not because of Hedda Hopper. Even my old
daddy likes Gary Cooper. He go to see him every time he’s on, even if its raining, and he cant speak ten words a English.”
“All right,” Readall Treadwell said, good naturedly with the strong fat man’s unrufflability, and with none of the weak fat man’s malice that is the worst malice there is except a woman’s malice, Prew thought, a world of difference between fat Reedy and fat Willard, “all right. I jist mention it.”
“Well dont mention it,” Maggio said. “In the first place she couldnt never act anyways. And in the second place all this ‘the Cary Grants visited the Herbert Marshalls for Sunday badminton,’” he minced. “Whats that got to do with acting? She makes me sick, her with her new hat every day to please her adoring public while the world is blowing itself to hell.”
“All right,” Readall Treadwell grinned. “You dont care if I read her column, do you, Angelo? You wont beat me up if I read it will you?”
Maggio grinned, then laughed, the fiery Italian anger gone as quick as it had come. “Sure,” he said, “I’ll beat you up. You think you’d stand a chance with me? I keep a sawed off pool cue in my wall locker just for guys like you.”
“All right,” Prew said, “beat him up later. Right now, deal the cards.”
“I dont feel much like playin any more,” Maggio said. “I guess my arm’s tired. Theres no fun in gambling without money. I quit. Lets look at my old photograph alabum instead, and I show you a picture of that Jewgirl I was tellin about.”
“Okay by me,” Prew said. He was bored with the cards too, now that the sudden, memorable conversation had petered out, but the thinking of Willard still making him feel he should utilize this running luxury of time that had been so momentous and now was being spent insignificantly.
He watched Angelo get out the album, a big and nearly completely filled one that he had seen a thousand times before and knew as well as he would have known his own if he had ever had one, but he never had because he did not believe in collecting photographs that were always posed and therefore never truthful, but that now he wished sometimes he had because, even if they were not truthful, they would have shown him himself and all the places he had been and people he had known as they were then, bringing back truthful memories out of their untruthfulness, like this one of Angelo’s obviously did for him. The first third of it, that he always showed them first, devoted to a younger Angelo from Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and who had a family, believe it or not its true, look and see for yourself, one soldier who really had a family, there they are, the whole fifteen of them; the fat, round faced, obviously too lenient, plainly too undignified, grinning Mr Maggio, trying hard not to grin but to look dignified, and not succeeding; and the even fatter, stern long faced, very hard bargain driving, policy dictating, family dominating, not grinning Mrs Maggio, trying hard to grin and to not look dignified, and not succeeding; both trying very hard to deceive the camera, as everybody tried to deceive the camera, into showing only what they wanted it to show; together with all thirteen of their slicked up grinning offspring, all grinning at the camera with that temporarily donned, fake, denying-anything-but-happiness, happiness that all camera subjects but the most caught-unawares camera subjects (and us artists, he thought grimly remembering how he had to put into a Taps his secrets he could not talk about, us artists who are under a compulsion to be ashamed in public) always grinned at the camera with; each dressed in his own full length snapshot little Angelo could always carry with him; (and the sounds and smells of a grocery store in Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn with quarters upstairs came back to me who had never been there or seen it and probably never would, but that I knew now just as well as if I had always known them). And then the last two-thirds of it devoted to Hawaii, the Army, and the tourists photographs of Hawaii and the Army, two entirely different things, tourist photographs of Honolulu, the Mormon Temple, Waikiki Beach, the big Hotels (Halekulani, Royal Hawaiian, Moana; that none of us had ever seen the insides of), Diamond Head, a tourist picture of Schofield that looked lovely enough to make you want to enlist for this happy land, pictures of quaint Wahiawa without the smells, all the places the tourists saw from the outside and thought were lovely and whose attitude these photographs reflected, but that we always saw from the inside (excepting of course: Halekulani, Royal Hawaiian, Moana; Lau Yee Chai’s, Ala Wai Inn) with an entirely different perspective, a perspective not recorded in any photographs since our photographs of the inside were always jokes; clean jokes: a guy with his helmet on grinning in the Company Street, or a guy in full field grinning at the bayonet on the rifle he was holding in the Long Guard Position, or even two or three guys holding beer bottles and their arms around each other’s necks and elaborately crossed legs and grinning in front of a palm tree or the Chapel or the Bowling Bowl; or dirty jokes: like the series of the French-Hawaiian beauty from Big Sue’s in Wahiawa, first in her dress, then in her undies, then in her pants, then in nothing, then in an embarrassing position, a strip tease five in all, one buck for the series or two bits apiece; or perhaps the biggest, grandest joke of all: the Company photograph, with the fond smiling Captain and all his grinning men; but always, always jokes, because all of us always grinned reflexively, instinctively, a joke, if a camera (or even a reporter) popped up anywhere within shouting distance, Prewitt thought, which is why nobody ever knows our inside perspective unless they’ve been there but always see us as Our Simple Boys, and that even if they have they tend to forget because there is nothing anywhere to remind them; and which is why I’m goddamned if I’ll collect recorded jokes about things I do not feel like laughing at. But if I had a bugle and could make recordings I’d remind them, he thought. And, but God, how I’d like to be the one.
“You and your goddam tourist photographs,” he said to Angelo, bitterly, for perhaps the hundredth time.
“Aw dont start that,” Angelo said. “You know thems ony for showing to my folks when I get back home. You know they’ll want to see what Wahoo’s like.”
“But Wahoo aint like that.”
“Sure it aint. But they wont know it. This is what they want to see, not what its like. Here, look at this one,” he said, pointing out a new one, a beautiful Chinese girl in a flowered dress and a beret looking lovingly back over her shoulder, obviously at her lover, and with that blankness, absolutely nothingness, of a beautiful Chinese girl simulating lovingness; a picture every soldier on the post had at least two prints of because they were two-for-a-nickel-in every PX on the Island.
“It kills me,” Prew said. “It knocks me out.”
“But I like it,” Readall Treadwell said.
“Its the one,” Maggio grinned, “that I’m going to tell them back home is the one I almost married, but shacked up with for a year instead, and left behind me.”
“The Girl I Left Behind Me,” Prew said and began to whistle it sarcastically. But he did not get up and walk away, like he could have.
They were still looking, a little later, when Bloom came in freshly showered from the latrine and leaned down uninvited to look too, standing beside Readall Treadwell across the bed.
The four of them, silently looking, made a momentary still picture that was nowhere apparently dangerous. But Bloom, Prew thought later, was never one to take a backseat for very long, even to a photograph album, if he could help it. Probably he only did it to make known the fact that The Great Bloom had arrived on the scene, since no one had acknowledged it. But in doing what he did he made at least two, and maybe three, enemies that would never again be anything else but enemies. It was a thing Bloom was always doing.
It all happened quite swiftly. One moment there was this apparently peaceful still picture of four men looking at an album. Then the picture shuddered, quaked, broke up in the same way dreams shift, and began to move into a series of apparently disjointed actions, one, two, three, right down the line, like a jerky oldfashioned movie, too blurredly swift to be understood, as these things always were, but hanging over it all that utter-complete-bloody-hell-with-it feeling
that only comes when a man has an absolutely bellyfull.
Bloom thrust his hand down between their two heads and pointed out a picture of a petite, olive-skinned, sloe-eyed girl of fifteen who was Angelo’s youngest sister and who was sitting very Hollywoodishly in a bathing suit in the summer Brooklyn sun upon a tile roof ledge still dusted with last winter’s soot, trying to display womanishly the girlish, but very full, young body that she was so proud of because men looked at it, but that obviously was not womanish since obviously she had never tested it out yet and had only the vaguest romantic idea of the womanish uses of it. It was a picture that did not come off very well, but Bloom said delightedly, half teasingly:
“Man, I bet that one’s a hotshot piece of ass to lay,” and laughed complacently at his own great wit.
Prew, who had not known he was there and who knew the girl was Maggio’s sister, and what’s more, knew that Bloom knew this because they all had seen the album many times, felt a chill of momentarily time-stopping shock run down through him. Then a red running fire of hatred, half shame for Bloom, half rage for Bloom, who had done this deliberately, whether kiddingly or not certainly stupidly, but probably kiddingly in his bull-like, patronizing, dominating way, but even kiddingly with a deliberate degrading maliciousness, trampling callously over one of the few respected tabus, the things nobody ever said to anybody else, even in the Army, the fire of hatred making him want to beat the living piss out of such stupidity.
But before he could even raise his head he found he was holding the full weight of the album and Maggio was gone, silently to his wall locker, opening it, then turning around silently and calmly and stepping up to Bloom and bringing down the sawed off pool cue on Bloom’s head with all his strength.
Prew shut the book carefully, thinking that this was it all right, and tossed it two beds down where it would not get mauled and stood up ready. Readall Treadwell had seen Angelo coming and considerately faded out into the aisle to give him room, to give them both room.
“Why, Jesus Christ!” Bloom said above the reverberating crack of the pool cue on his head. “You hit me, you little Wop!”
