'Tis

by Frank McCourt

  It’s only two o’clock and I’m free till chow time at five so I can go to the PX and read magazines, listen to Tony Bennett on the jukebox singing “Because of you there’s a song in my heart,” and I can dream about my three-day pass and seeing Emer, the girl in New York, and how we’ll go out to dinner and a movie and maybe an Irish dance where she’ll have to teach me the steps and it’s a lovely dream because the weekend of my three-day pass is my birthday and I’ll be twenty-one.

  12

  The Friday of my three-day pass I have to stand on line outside the orderly room with men waiting for ordinary weekend passes. A cadre corporal, Sneed, whose real name is a Polish name no one can pronounce, tells me, Hey, soldier, pick up that butt.

  Oh, I don’t smoke, Corporal.

  I didn’t ask you if you fuckin’ smoked. Pick up that butt.

  Howie Abramowitz nudges me and whispers, Don’t be an asshole. Pick up the fuckin’ butt.

  Sneed has his hands on his hips. Well?

  I didn’t drop the butt, Corporal. I don’t smoke.

  Okay, soldier, come with me.

  I follow him into the orderly room and he picks up my pass. Now, he says, we’re going to your barracks and you’re changing into fatigues.

  But, Corporal, I have a three-day pass. I was colonel’s orderly.

  I don’t give a shit if you wiped the colonel’s ass. Get into your fatigues and on the double and get your entrenching tool.

  It’s my birthday, Corporal.

  On the double, soldier, or I’ll have you in the fuckin’ stockade.

  He marches me past the men waiting on line. He waves my pass at them and tells them say bye bye to my pass and they laugh and wave because there’s nothing else to do and they don’t want to get into trouble. Only Howie Abramowitz shakes his head as if to say he’s sorry over what’s happening.

  Sneed marches me across the parade ground and into a clearing in the woods beyond. Okay, asshole, dig.

  Dig?

  Yeah, dig me a nice hole three feet deep, two feet wide, and the faster you do it the better for you.

  That must mean the sooner I finish this the sooner I can take my pass and go. Or is it something else? Everyone in the company knows Sneed is bitter because he was a big football star at Bucknell University and wanted to play for the Philadelphia Eagles only the Eagles wouldn’t have him and now he goes around making people dig holes. It’s unfair. I know men have been forced to dig holes and bury their passes and dig them up again and I don’t know why I should have to do that. I keep telling myself I wouldn’t mind if this were an ordinary weekend pass but this is a three-day pass and it’s my birthday and why do I have to do this? But there’s nothing I can do about it. I might as well dig as fast as I can and bury the pass and dig it up again.

  And while I’m digging I’m dreaming that what I’d really like to do is wrap my little shovel around Sneed’s head and smash him till his head is raw and bloody and I wouldn’t mind one bit digging a hole for his big fat football body. That’s what I’d like to do.

  He hands me the pass to bury and when I finish shoveling in the earth he tells me pat it with my entrenching tool. Make it nice, he says.

  I don’t know why he wants me to make it nice when I’ll be digging it up in a minute but now he tells me, ’Bout face, forrard harch, and he marches me back the way we came, past the orderly room where the line of men waiting for passes is gone, and I’m wondering if he’s had enough satisfaction for the day so that he might march inside for a replacement pass but, no, he keeps me going right to the mess hall and tells the sergeant there I’m a candidate for KP, that I need a little lesson in obeying orders. They have a good laugh over that and the sergeant says they must have a drink together sometime and talk about the Philadelphia Eagles, isn’t that some goddam team. The sergeant calls over another man, Henderson, to show me my job, the worst job you can get in any mess hall, pots and pans.

  Henderson tells me scrub those mothers till they shine because there’s constant inspection and one spot of grease on any utensil will get me another hour of KP and at that rate I could be here till the gooks and Chinese are long gone home to their families.

  It’s dinnertime and the pots and pans are piled high around the sinks. Garbage cans lined up against the wall behind me are alive with the feasting flies of New Jersey. Mosquitoes buzz in through open windows and feast on me. Everywhere there is steam and smoke from gas burners and ovens and running hot water and I’m sodden with sweat and grease in no time. Corporals and sergeants pass through and run their fingers around the pots and pans and tell me do them over and I know that’s because Sneed is out in the mess hall telling football stories and telling them how they can have a little fun with the draftee on pots and pans.

  When it grows quieter in the mess hall and the work slows the sergeant tells me I’m free for the night but I’m to report back here tomorrow morning, Saturday, 0600 hours and he means 0600. I want to tell him I’m supposed to have a three-day pass for being colonel’s orderly, that tomorrow is my birthday, that there’s a girl waiting for me in New York, but I know now it’s better to say nothing because every time I open my mouth things get worse. I know what the army means: Tell ’em nothing but your name, rank and serial number.

  Emer cries on the phone, Oh, Frank, where are you now?

  I’m in the PX.

  What is the PX?

  Post Exchange. It’s where we buy things and make phone calls.

  And why aren’t you here? We have a little cake and everything.

  I’m on KP, pots, pans, tonight, tomorrow, maybe Sunday.

  What is that? What are you talking about? Are you all right?

  I’m worn out from digging holes and washing pots and pans.

  Why?

  I didn’t pick up a butt.

  Why didn’t you pick up a butt?

  Because I don’t smoke. You know I don’t smoke.

  But why would you have to pick up a butt?

  Because a fucking corporal, excuse me, a cadre corporal who was rejected by the Philadelphia Eagles told me pick up the butt and I told him I didn’t smoke and that’s why I’m here when I should be with you on my fucking, excuse me, birthday.

  Frank, I know it’s your birthday. Are you drinking?

  No, I’m not drinking. How could I be drinking and digging holes and doing KP all at the same time?

  But why were you digging holes?

  Because they made me bury my damn pass.

  Oh, Frank. When will I see you?

  I don’t know. You may never see me. They say every grease spot I leave on a pot gets me another hour of KP and I could be here till I’m discharged washing pots and pans.

  My mother is saying couldn’t you see a priest or something, a chaplain?

  I don’t want to see a priest. They’re worse than corporals the way they . . .

  The way they what?

  Oh, nothing.

  Oh, Frank.

  Oh, Emer.

  Saturday dinner is cold cuts and potato salad and the cooks are easy on the pots and pans. At six the sergeant tells me I’m finished and I don’t have to report on Sunday morning. He shouldn’t be saying this, he says, but that Sneed is a goddam Polack prick that no one likes and you can see why the Philadelphia Eagles didn’t want him. The sergeant says he’s sorry but there was nothing he could do about putting me on KP when I disobeyed a direct order. Yeah, he knew I was colonel’s orderly and all but this is the army and the best policy for a draftee like me is a shut mouth. Tell them nothing but your name, rank and serial number. Do what you’re told, keep your mouth shut especially when you have a brogue that stands out, and if you do that you’ll see your girlfriend again with your balls intact.

  Thank you, Sergeant.

  Okay, kid.

  The company area is deserted except for men in the orderly room and men confined to barracks.

  Di Angelo is lying on his bunk confined to barracks because of the way he spoke up after they show
ed a film on how poor everyone is in China. He said Mao Tse-tung and the Communists would save China and the lieutenant showing the film said communism is evil, godless, un-American, and Di Angelo said capitalism was evil, godless and un-American and he wouldn’t give two cents for isms anyway because people with isms cause all the troubles in the world and you may have noticed there is no ism in democracy. The lieutenant told him he was out of order and Di Angelo said this is a free country and that got him confined to barracks and no weekend pass for three weeks.

  He’s on his bunk reading the copy of The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan Corporal Dunphy loaned me and when he sees me he says he borrowed it from the top of my locker and who, for God’s sakes, dipped me in a grease pit. He says he did KP like that one weekend and Dunphy told him how to get the grease off the fatigues. What I should do now is stand in a hot shower in my fatigues, hot as I can bear it, and scrub off the grease with a scrubbing brush and a bar of the carbolic soap they use for cleaning lavatories.

  While I’m in the shower scrubbing Dunphy sticks his head in and wants to know what I’m doing and when I tell him he says he used to do that, too, only he’d bring in his rifle and do everything at one time. When he was a kid first time in the army he had the cleanest fatigues and rifle in his outfit and if it wasn’t for the goddam booze he’d be top sergeant by now and ready to retire. Speaking of booze, he’s heading to the PX for a beer and would I like to come along after getting out of my soapy fatigues, of course.

  I’d like to ask Di Angelo along but he’s confined to barracks for praising the Chinese Communists. While I’m changing into khakis I tell him how much I owe Mao Tse-tung for attacking Korea and liberating me from the Palm Court at the Biltmore Hotel and he says I’d better be careful what I say or I’ll wind up like him, confined to barracks.

  Dunphy calls from the end of the barracks, Come on, kid, come on, I’m gasping for a beer. In a way I’d rather stay and talk to Di Angelo, he has such a gentle way about him, but Dunphy helped me become colonel’s orderly, for all the good it did me, and he might need the company. If I were a regular army corporal I wouldn’t be hanging around the base on a Saturday night but I know there are people like Dunphy who drink and have no one, no home to go to. Now he drinks beer so fast I could never keep up with him. I’d be sick if I tried. He drinks and smokes and points at the sky all the time with the middle finger of his right hand. He tells me the army is a great life especially in peacetime. You’re never lonely unless you’re some kind of asshole like Sneed, the goddam football player, and if you get married and have kids the army will take care of everything. All you have to do is keep yourself fit to fight. Yeah, yeah, he knows he’s not keeping himself fit but he carries so much Kraut shrapnel in his body he could be sold for scrap metal and the drink is the only pleasure he has. He had a wife, two kids, all gone. Indiana, that’s where they went, back to his wife’s daddy and mom, and who the hell wants to go to Indiana. He takes pictures from his wallet, the wife, the two girls, and holds them up for me to see. I’m ready to tell him how lovely they are but he starts to cry so hard it brings on a cough and I have to clap him on the back to save him from choking. Okay, he says, okay. Goddam, it gets to me every time I look at them. Look what I lost, kid. I could have them waiting for me in a little house near Fort Dix. I could be home with Monica making dinner, me with my feet up, taking a little nap in my top sergeant’s uniform. Okay, kid, let’s go. Let’s get outa here and see if I can straighten out my shit and go to Indiana.

  Halfway to the barracks he changes his mind and goes back for more beer and I know from this he’ll never get to Indiana. He’s like my father and when I’m in my bunk I wonder if my father remembered the twenty-first birthday of his oldest son, if he raised his glass to me in a pub in Coventry.

  I doubt it. My father is like Dunphy who will never see Indiana.

  13

  It’s a surprise on Sunday morning when Di Angelo asks me if I’d like to go to Mass with him, a surprise because you’d think that people who sing the praises of Chinese Communists would never step into church, chapel, or synagogue. On the way to the base chapel he explains the way he feels, that the Church belongs to him, he doesn’t belong to the Church, and he doesn’t agree with the way the Church acts like a big corporation declaring they own God and it’s their right to dole Him out in little bits and pieces as long as people do what they’re told by Rome. He sins every week himself by receiving Communion without first confessing his sins to a priest. He says his sins are nobody’s business but his and God’s and that’s who he confesses to every Saturday night before he falls asleep.

  He talks about God as if He were in the next room having a pint and smoking a cigarette. I know if I went back to Limerick and talked like that I’d be hit on the head and thrown on the next train to Dublin.

  We might be on an army base with barracks all around us but inside the chapel it’s pure America. There are officers with their wives and children and they have the clean scrubbed look that comes from shower and shampoo and a constant state of grace. They have the look of people from Maine or California, small towns, church on Sundays, leg of lamb afterward, peas, mashed potatoes, apple pie, iced tea, Dad snoozing with the big Sunday paper dropped to the floor, kids reading comics, Mom in the kitchen washing dishes and humming “Oh, what a beautiful mornin’.” They have the look of people who brush their teeth after every meal and fly the flag on the Fourth. They might be Catholics but I don’t think they’d feel comfortable in Irish or Italian churches where there might be old men and women mumbling and snuffling, a suspicion of whiskey or wine in the air, a whiff of bodies untouched for weeks by soap and water.

  I’d like to be part of an American family, to sidle up to a blonde blue-eyed teenage daughter of an officer and whisper I’m not what I seem. I might have pimples and bad teeth and fire alarm eyes but, underneath, I’m just like them, a well-scrubbed soul dreaming of a house in a suburb with a tidy lawn where our child, little Frank, pushes his tricycle and all I want is a read of the Sunday paper like a real American dad and maybe I’d wash and clean our spanking new Buick before we drive over to visit Mom’s grandpa and grandma and rock on their porch with glasses of iced tea.

  The priest is mumbling away on the altar and when I whisper the Latin responses Di Angelo nudges me and wants to know if I’m all right, if I’m hung over from my beer night with Dunphy. I wish I could be like Di Angelo, making up my own mind about everything, not giving a fiddler’s fart like my Uncle Pa Keating back in Limerick. I know Di Angelo would laugh if I told him I’m so steeped in sin I’m afraid to go to confession for fear of being told I’m so far gone that only a bishop or a cardinal could give me absolution. He’d laugh if I told him that some nights I’m afraid to fall asleep in case I die and go to hell. How could hell be invented by a God who’s in the next room with a beer and a cigarette?

  This is when the dark clouds flutter like bats in my head and I wish I could open a window and release them.

  Now the priest is asking for volunteers to pick up baskets from the back of the chapel and make the collection. Di Angelo gives me a little push and we’re out in the aisle genuflecting and sending the baskets along the pews. Officers and noncoms with families always hand their contributions to their children to drop in the basket and that makes everyone smile, the little one is so proud and the parents are so proud of the little one. Officers’ wives and noncoms’ wives smile at each other as if to say, We’re all one under the roof of the Catholic Church, though you know once they’re outside they know they’re different.

  The basket goes from pew to pew till it’s taken by a sergeant who will count the money and pass it on to the chaplain. Di Angelo whispers he knows this sergeant and when the money is counted it’s two for you and one for me.

  I tell Di Angelo I’m not going to Mass anymore. What’s the use when I’m in such a state of sin for impurity and everything else? I can’t be in the chapel with all those clean American families and their
state of grace. I’ll wait till I get the courage to go to confession and Communion and if I keep committing mortal sins by not going to Mass it won’t matter since I’m doomed anyway. One mortal sin will get you into hell just as easily as ten mortal sins.

  Di Angelo tells me I’m full of shit. He says I should go to Mass if I want to, that the priests don’t own the Church.

  I can’t think like Di Angelo, not yet. I’m afraid of the priests and the nuns and the bishops and the cardinals and the Pope. I’m afraid of God.

  Monday morning I’m told report to Master Sergeant Tole in his room at Company B. He’s sitting in an armchair and sweating so much his khaki uniform is dark. I want to ask him about the book on the table next to him, Notes from the Underground by Dostoyevsky, and I’d like to tell him about Raskolnikov but you have to be careful what you say to master sergeants and the army in general. Say the wrong thing and you’re back with the pots and pans.