His General Electric push-button radio, which his mother got along with a toaster and a lamp, all for twenty-four dollars, was playing Kate Smith singing “God Bless America.” There was no escaping Kate Smith singing “God Bless America” those days, so Hermie punched the “off” button with his elbow and got WEAF for a while until he used his index finger and got silence. It was a time for thinking. He did deep thinking two and three times a day because his English teacher told him it was a way in which to develop outlooks on life. Fifteen minutes of deep thinking and Hermie had some headache. He thumbed through his Aircraft Spotter’s Handbook and felt secure that if a Mitsubishi fighter flew over Maine, he’d be the first to know it.
In this way did Hermie pass much of each day. In musings and deep thinkings and forgery. But he did patriotic things, too. Like saving toothpaste tubes and scrap paper for the war effort. And often when he left the house it was with three squeezed Ipana tubes, which he dropped off at the Civilian Defense Center, and four issues of the New York Times, the latest of which his father probably hadn’t read, so he left it because, once before, when he took an unread New York Times his father barely missed his head with a rolled-up Journal-American and the hell with that.
The sun was high and happy when Hermie came out through the screen door on the front porch. And he was pleased to discover that he would not be required to step over the sun-burning body of his sister, which was usually lying faceup on the lawn as if a dog had left it there or it had fallen off of a passing truck. His sister was black on one side and white on the other because they only had the house for eight weeks and, if it meant walking backwards during July and August, he had the sister who could do it. She was one of the greatest and darkest backward walkers of all time. She had a black face and a white ass. It was enough to send shivers up the spine of Boris Karloff.
The Terrible Trio had scheduled a meeting for 2 P.M. on the beach, for music appreciation and general messing around. Hermie was already fifteen minutes late, which meant he’d be the first to arrive. So he slowed down his pace and counted the service stars in the windows. There were nine blues and one gold. The gold was for somebody named Robert T. Kendall, who got killed in the Pacific somewhere, or so he heard his mother say to a neighbor. Hermie never asked too many questions about men in service because he felt like a goddamned slacker not being in it. Anyway, because no one was around, he saluted the gold star and the memory of Robert T. Kendall, and he walked on, yearning to avenge the deceased first chance he got. He stopped to lean on a fence for a while because Oscy and Benjie wouldn’t show up for another hour and Oscy had the radio. He hummed some popular tunes until he figured they all three might arrive at the appointed destination on schedule and as planned, late as hell.
3
The three comrades lay flat out on the hot sand, each in last year’s bathing suit because bathing suits had to last two years according to the “Mother’s Handbook” of how to make your boy walk funny. They never brought towels or blankets to the beach because that was as sissy as carrying an umbrella through a tough neighborhood. As a result, they were covered with wet sand and looked like three freshly slaughtered breaded veal cutlets.
Oscy’s portable radio, for which he regularly collected “battery money” from Hermie and Benjie, was playing music. Once, when Benjie gave voice to the suspicion that with the “battery money” Oscy was collecting as tribute, they could run WOR for a year, Oscy didn’t bring the radio for two days. He arrived at that decision after first delicately accusing Benjie of being a Jap prick and then following it up with some rapid cuffing about Benjie’s face and head. Benjie’s only comment on that was an aside to Hermie that both of them together could very likely beat the shit out of Oscy, provided that Fat Willie Melnick sat on him. Hermie failed to see the wisdom of such a suggestion since he had enough brains to realize that, sooner or later, Fat Willie would have to get off, if for no other reason than to go to the crapper, at which time Oscy could be counted on to rise up, track them down, and beat the collective shit out of the pair of them. So it was no deal, and Benjie had to agree that, as usual, Hermie had saved their lives.
Anyway, the Benny Goodman Sextet was playing, and it was one helluvan improvement over Kate Smith and God blessing America. The trombonist took a solo, and Oscy, great musicologist, asked, “Who’s on trombone?”
“Tommy Dorsey,” said Benjie, mostly because he hadn’t said anything in some time and missed the sound of his voice.
Oscy was miffed at Benjie’s impertinence. “I asked Hermie. Go look at your watch.” Then he turned to Hermie. “Is that Tommy Dorsey, Hermie?”
Hermie delivered the expertise. “Tommy Dorsey doesn’t play in the Benny Goodman Sextet. It’s Lou McGarity.” Then he grew annoyed because they had interrupted one of his moments of deep thinking and he’d be getting a headache for nothing. “Why don’t you guys just shut up and listen?”
“I am listening,” said Benjie.
“Go look at your watch,” said Hermie. That was two suggestions for Benjie that he look at his watch. So, ever one for democracy, he looked at his watch.
Peggy Lee’s voice was heard, singing the vocal.
Grab your coat and get your hat,
Leave your worries on the doorstep…
And Benjie was pleased to observe, “That Helen O’Connell, she’s something.”
Oscy looked quickly to Hermie, “That Helen O’Connell, Hermie?”
Hermie sighed. He only wanted to listen without interruption. “It’s Peggy Lee.”
And Oscy gave Benjie a short backhand smash across the chest that set him tumbling. “As usual, Benjie, you’re wrong.”
Benjie spit sand from his mouth. “How come Hermie’s always right?”
“He’s not always right,” said Oscy, with the wisdom of the ages. “It’s just that you’re always wrong.”
Hermie was able to tune out his two weird friends almost any time he cared to. It was a secret he had learned in the Orient when he had accompanied Lamont Cranston, alias the Shadow, on a tour of the Nanking opium dens. But his gaze was turned up the beach, and soon Oscy and Benjie were gazing likewise.
It was the man and woman, the ones from the house on the dunes. They were wearing bathing suits and were strolling arm in arm in perfect synchronization. And a person would have to be blind to not see how very, very much in love they were. The man wore a soldier’s overseas cap, and again his muscles were rippling shamelessly. The woman was so beautiful, so smiling, so green-eyed and long-legged that the boys all had to roll over onto their stomachs lest their extended antennas bring in police calls. The lovers drew closer and passed by not five feet from the Terrible Trio. Hermie never blinked, never once. His eyes were the eyes of a lizard, lidless and frozen open, focused on the smooth legs and flat belly of the beauty in motion. And when he got a whiff of the pipe the man was smoking, he knew that that was the way he wanted to smell.
“I’m gonna be built like that,” said Benjie, referring to the man. Oscy only grunted. “I will,” said Benjie. “I’m gonna work out. With weights. An hour every day.”
“You’ll never look like that,” said Oscy.
And Benjie knew he was right. “Yeah. Must be an officer.”
Hermie’s comment came from somewhere out of left field, surprising even himself. “She’s built pretty well, too.” Oscy and Benjie, like two heads on one neck, swiveled to look at the madman in their midst. Hermie could feel their staring, and he knew that Tweedledum and Tweedledee were nudging each other at his expense. And he knew that soon, at any time, some inane remark would be directed at him, and he’d be damned if he’d wait around for it like Pearl Harbor, so he went on the offensive. “The two of you are morons!” And he got up and walked away without so much as a by-your-leave. And when he had gone far enough, he turned and shouted to Benjie, “It was Peggy Lee! Pay up!”
Benjie was confused. He looked at Oscy. “Pay up? I didn’t bet him anything. Did I bet him anything?”
Oscy gave him a shove and a put-down. “You’re inhuman. You know how sensitive Hermie is.”
“Yeah? Well so am I. The hell.” And he shouted back at Hermie, who was already almost too far away to hear. “It was Helen O’Connell!”
Hermie kept walking. Only when he’d walked far enough upwind did he turn and shout back. “Peggy Lee!” If Benjie ever said anything after that, Hermie never heard it because Benjie, as usual, was downwind and an idiot.
4
If there was one food that Hermie hated it was veal cutlet. The very sound of it was offensive. But all the way back to the Depression he was never allowed to leave the table until he had finished everything his mother had set before him. And there were no exceptions. So he lingered there, poking his fork at the cutlet in hopes of proving that it was still alive and, in so doing, get out of eating it since cannibalism was not his family’s strong suit. But if it was alive, the veal cutlet was doing a fine job of playing dead. And by the time Hermie finished stabbing it, it had all the appetite appeal of a handball glove.
His mother was inside with the dishes and Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour. His sister, now that the sun was down, was in her room mooning. God knew what she was mooning about. It was occult, her fascination with celestial objects. By day she sunned and by night she mooned. She was eighteen years old and a complete foreigner to the rest of the family. From the moment she first sprouted breasts she was never normal. And the more her breasts grew, the more remote she became. And more than once Hermie wondered just what good his sister’s breasts were doing anyone if she continued to keep them in her room like lamps.
As for his father, he could only make it up to the island every other weekend. Gasoline was hard to come by, and their car didn’t have the right priority. Half the time their car didn’t even work. The other half it seemed as if it could only go downhill. His father had mastered the art of coasting because it saved gas. Sometimes he could coast half a block to a red light and get there by the time it turned green. At those moments his father was a happy man. His father was a veteran of the First World War and even had a few medals because he did something at Château-Thierry. However, he didn’t have enough of them to impress the Army when he tried to enlist for World War II because he was much too old. Forty-four. Still he managed to keep abreast of the news, thanks to Edwin C. Hill and Gabriel Heatter and Walter Winchell and his Aunt Pearl, who was, in reality, the Voice of America.
Anyway, Hermie was alone at the dinner table, unless you wanted to count the veal cutlet, which was a lousy conversationalist no matter how you sliced it. Hermie had offered his mother what he thought was a very fair deal. He would eat the asparagus, stalk and all, if he could leave over half of the cutlet. It was no deal. Trying to reason with his mother while Major Bowes was on the air was like talking into a catcher’s mitt.
Hermie and the cutlet stared at each other for another five minutes, after which Hermie decided to make a break for it. Some lunatic on Major Bowes was playing a musical saw, and Hermie’s fantastic mother was singing along. “There’s an old spinning wheel in the parlor…”
With consummate stealth, Hermie got up from the table and walked toward the door. If the cutlet would not give him away, he could make it. The cutlet, dying of its wounds, sighed just a bit but didn’t have the strength to rouse the singing mother from her duet with the saw. “…and it brings back sweet memories of you.”
When he reached the screen door Hermie could see them. Oscy and Benjie. Oscy was spread-eagled on the grubby lawn, gazing at the sky. Benjie, in another position of endless boredom, was staring at his Ingersoll. He always stared at his Ingersoll. Maybe someday he’d discover radium. Touched by this view of his exciting friends, Hermie considered returning to the cutlet for a little gaiety. But inertia kept spurring him onward, and he opened and closed the screen door so quietly that not even a moose could hear. But a moose was not a mother, and the voice came out of the living room, filtered through the screen door, and landed on his brain like a cannon. “Herman, you’re going out.”
That had been a direct statement. Not a question, but a statement of fact. Mother; noun; female: all-seeing, all-knowing. Jesus. Hermie stood on the top step waiting for the rest because that was the way his mother worked. First, the direct statement that could not be argued with. Example: “Herman, you’re going out.” Next would come the veiled threat. It came. “I certainly hope you finished your cutlet.” There would be a third utterance fairly soon. It would be a question. Questions were deadly in that they called for a response. For a direct statement you could be in Poughkeepsie. But for a question you’d better be in the house. Hermie sat down on the top step and waited for the question. From there he could observe Oscy and Benjie acting out the Fall of Rome. He could also determine whether or not there was any life in the two corpses that the two families up the street had dropped on his lawn. There was but not much. Just a little uneven breathing.
Hermie was always neat. His hair was combed. It didn’t get combed too often or too well because it had to be shot to get it down. But every once in a while some primordial instinct would jab at Hermie’s conscience, like Peter Pain in the Ben-Gay ads, and it would whisper to him, “Comb your hair. You never know.”
As for Oscy, he always wore the same idiot sweat shirt. He claimed that he had four of them, all the same flat gray color. But Hermie strongly suspected that there was no way in which any four sweat shirts could share the same identical grease spots, paint marks, tears, nicks, and blood. Oscy, therefore, was lying. Worse, on occasion Oscy could smell pretty gamy, especially on hot humid days and especially indoors, like in a small closet. As for Benjie, Hermie never took notice of what he wore. As long as Benjie had his watch, he was dressed and all was well with the world. “Seventeen minutes to eight,” he said. No argument there.
After a long moment of silence better becoming a graveyard, Oscy had a very important question to ask of the sky. He did it haltingly, thoughtfully, for the answer was crucial. “How many sticks of dynamite…do you think it would take…to blow up…this whole fuckin’ island?”
After long and considerable thought, Hermie offered the correct answer. “Twenty-three.” Another long silence prevailed as the boys pondered both the asking of such a question and the veracity of such an answer.
Then came the third sound from the mother within. The question. Zow. “Herman, did you finish your cutlet?” Oscy and Benjie cranked their heads around, fixing Hermie in the crossbeam. For depending on Hermie’s answer, the world would plan its next turning. Hermie looked back at them, first at one and then at the other. He repeated that process, quickening the pace until it was apparent to all that he was nodding his head in the negative, which was the cue for the three of them to silently get up and quietly walk to town. They had played that scene many times before, on each of their lawns and in front of many houses in Brooklyn, and it was the law: If you didn’t finish your dinner, move on. No man had ever worked out a better solution or a more conditioned response.
Even as he left the house behind, Hermie knew that the unanswered question would shortly bring his mother to the fourth and final stage: a personal appearance in which she would stride onto the porch, hands on hips, looking this way and that, and then calling into the vacant air, “Herman, do not come home until you finish your cutlet.” That was the kind of logic Hermie had to deal with. It was the stuff of his life.
5
The old wooden water tower stood high against the sky, a tall, buglike structure straddling the earth like the Colossus of Rhodes, providing a refuge for all mothers’ sons who could navigate the forty rungs without breaking their asses. Beyond it the sun was checking out in a conspiracy of reds and purples. Below it the small town stretched lethargically, turning on a few spasmodic lights as talismans against the night. And upon it three boys, their legs drawn to their chests, sat shoulder to shoulder on the narrow platform that embraced the bulging water barrel. In the good company of only each other, they were bo
red shitless.
They passed the one soggy cigarette down the line, puffing it dramatically like combat men enjoying a brief respite from bloody battle. And the silent and unresisting air provided Hermie the proper climate for his incisive observation: “This has been the longest summer of my life.”
Neither of his companions cared to contest that point of view, and so the day spun out and the night began to cramp them with sudden soft gushes of cool air from the bay. The tide was shifting, and the wind was changing, and Hermie used such moments for more deep thinking. But all that kept occurring to him was why that one stupid sea gull had singled him out and kept following him. It had flown over him when he walked to town that morning, barely missing him with a bombload of crud it had slung at him like a diving Stuka. And later, as he was tilling his meager Victory garden, it had circled him threateningly before coming in low in a strafing run that caught his cabbage patch unawares. And finally, the goddamned bird had come in behind him at six o’clock high and let loose a quick burst of shit that splattered on the back of his neck not ten minutes after a new haircut. It had all been very strange because Hermie had always liked to believe that he got along well with birds and woodland creatures even though he was a city kid. And so why this one hysterical bird was causing him no end of grief was a true and growing puzzle. Unless, of course, the bird was doing it all as an act of love. Cats did that. Cats would bring their kills, dead mice and such, to their masters. Yet if that were the case, wouldn’t the bird just drop a fish on him instead of clobbering him with shit? It was beyond Hermie’s ken. And he knew that, until the gull could find somebody else to love, he’d be the recipient of all its high-flying turds, and he’d be walking around with a paralyzed neck from bird watching. Another thought occurred to him. Maybe, like in Pinocchio, the gull had been sent to be his Jiminy Cricket, to guide him through life until he became a real boy. But why the shit? Jiminy Cricket never crapped on Pinocchio, at least, not in the movie. That was probably it. The cricket crapped on Pinocchio in the book, but they cleaned it up for the movie. Hermie considered asking Oscy his opinion, but Oscy was very busy coughing and would not be available for counsel until a lung or two had collapsed. As for Benjie, he was studying his watch, seeing if it truly glowed in the dark. “Eight thirty-one,” said Benjie as evidence that his watch glowed in the dark. Oscy whacked him, and he lost his place at eight thirty-one and three seconds. “Fuck you, Oscy.” Some things never changed.
Summer of '42 Page 2
