Super Hermie took a deep breath, wiped the jelly from his mouth, tossed the empty doughnut bag to the winds, stuffed Jimmy Doolittle into one back pocket and the New York Times into the other, and faster than a speeding locomotive, he sallied forth to assist the damsel, pray tell. But when he arrived at her side and opened his mouth to speak, he addressed her in so arch a manner as to sound immediately stupid even to himself: “May I offer some assistance?”
He grimaced and she had to have seen it, but she was so gracious. “You may,” she said, and gads, she even curtsied. What manner of nobility had he stumbled on?
She wasn’t really taller. Actually they were about the same height. It was her stateliness that made her seem so far above him. He dropped to one knee, half expecting to be knighted or given one of her garters or granted a boon. But what he really wanted to do was pick up the fucking bundles, of which there were quite a few. She filled the gap with a sunny voice. Sunny was a good way to describe her. She was a sunny person. “I hadn’t planned on buying this much. I should have brought my wagon.”
“You should have brought your wagon.” Was that him? Jesus.
“Yes.” It must have been him because she was agreeing.
Hermie had the fallen bags in tow, but the New York Times kept slipping out of his pocket. Thank God it wasn’t the Sunday edition. He kept trying to reach around and keep it shoved in. It certainly wasn’t easy being a good Samaritan. The woman made a gesture as if to help, “Nay,” he said. “It’s okay.”
“But I can take one.”
“It’s okay.” He dropped the “nay.” Smart. Still in a feudal position, his arms encircled the bundles until his hands met and clasped like Stanley and Livingstone. Something ripped. It wasn’t a bag. Either he had just gotten himself a hernia or his shorts had given way. “What you really need is a wagon.” He said that immediately, to cover the sound of the ripping. It was all that occurred to him.
“I think you’re right,” said the sunny voice. And then she was kneeling alongside him. Hermie was mortified, but she spoke kindly, not at all patronizing. “If you carry some and I carry some, I think we can manage. And I’ll be glad to pay you.”
“I wouldn’t think of it.” That sounded better, more secure. They were both standing, the green eyes planted on his. The ice had finally been broken.
“I’m afraid my house is a pretty long walk.” She smiled.
“I know where it is.” That was a slip.
“You do?”
He regained his composure. “Yeah. It’s that way.” He pointed in the direction where all the houses were. The woman smiled and shook her head so that the brunette hair would not cover her face. And her perfume shot out at him, and it went up his nose right into his memory. Then they were walking.
Hermie could think of nothing to say, but she filled the void. “You live on the island?”
“In the summer.”
“With your family?”
“Yes, but they don’t bother me. I pretty much go my own way.” He felt it important that he establish his independence.
“What do you do?”
“Oh—interesting things.” Like what? Cutting out pictures? Listening to Tom Mix? Eating chicken? Humping pillows?
They continued the walk with Hermie trying not to reveal the difficulty he was having hanging onto the bundles. By then he had figured that the rip he heard was in his shorts and not in his groin. But the bags were getting heavier and gravity wasn’t helping, and the next rip would be his testicles exploding under the pressure.
Over the rim of the highest bag Hermie saw the two morons. Oscy and Benjie were coming toward him. They were the last lunatics in the world he wanted to bump into. He pulled his head in like a turtle and walked by following his toes. Soon his two sneakers passed the four sneakers of his friends. The question then was: Had they seen him? Not likely, though stranger things had happened. He kept walking. The bags were like lead. He glanced at the woman, who smiled, so he smiled back, trying not to talk because talking used up energy.
“Hey, Hermie!” The voice was Benjie’s. But it stopped quickly, as though Oscy must have delivered unto it a good elbow to the labonz. Good old Oscy. Somehow he knew that Hermie was involved in something important. Good old, mature Oscy. A guy doesn’t jerk off over Claire Trevor for nothing.
“Did somebody call you?” she asked.
“Not me.”
“Your name Hermie?”
“Yes.”
“Somebody back there called you.”
“Not me.”
“He called ‘Hermie.’”
“It’s a pretty common name.”
The woman smiled and did not pursue the subject further. They walked on. It seemed as if they were walking to Chicago and just wait till they had to cross the Appalachians. Where the hell was her house? Periodically, Hermie would let a bundle slide onto an upraised knee, thus allowing himself a furtive moment to renew his grip. And on occasion he called upon self-hypnosis in an effort to convince himself that the bags were filled with inflated balloons and that his arms were not stretching out like thin rubber bands and that she was not making him carry home four bundles of bricks. Maybe she was a carpenter. Maybe she was going to ask him to build a wall, maybe all the way around China. Or how about something more simple, like a tank barrier or a submarine pen? Or how about a tree house, a thousand feet up? He could carry the bricks up one at a time and finish by the time he was a hundred. Hermie knew that if they didn’t get to her house soon…
“This is it,” she said.
“I can go further.” That ranked with some of the more idiotic things he’d ever said.
And it puzzled her. “But…there’s really no need.” She pointed to her house, as if maybe he couldn’t see it.
“Okay.”
Entering the house from the road side, he found there were no stairs to deal with, and thank God for that. He followed her, able to see only the top of her head. “Can you bring them in, please?”
“My pleasure.”
They entered the house, and music came up because everything was so special even though it was pretty much like every house on the island. He followed the dancing hair across the porch and through the tidy living room all suddenly bright with color because she was passing by. As he passed the mantel, Hermie saw a framed photograph of the man. It was just a quick look because Hermie had no time to linger looking at pictures; still, he’d remember it forever. The man was so handsome that Hermie knew he shouldn’t be in the same room with him. The smile was rich and masculine. And he was in uniform and had a pipe clenched between teeth that were blinding white. Hermie despaired. Everybody in the world had straight teeth except him. His teeth more nearly came in like a mako shark’s. There was some handwriting on the photograph. An autograph. “All my love, forever, Pete.” Pete. So that was his name. Hermie knew he was much closer to something or other.
“In here. In the kitchen.”
Hermie went into the kitchen, which was alive with flowers that she had in about a dozen vases. She certainly liked flowers. Lucky for Hermie he wasn’t allergic. “Would you just put them on the table?” she said.
Hermie had intended to set the bundles gently upon the table. But as it turned out, all the muscles, tendons, and ligaments in his arms quit at the same time. The bags slammed to the table like Jimmy Doolittle hitting Tokyo. Also, Hermie’s shorts tore a little more, and he knew that they were hanging in his pants like two separate hankies. He felt stupid and angry. “They should make these bags stronger.” He tried to gather up the items that were trying to escape or roll around just to be nasty.
“Please let me give you some money.” She had her purse open, and she was fishing around inside. If it were his mother’s purse, it’d take her a year and the quarter she’d pull out would be a Roosevelt/Wallace button.
“I wouldn’t think of it.” Shit, was he ever gallant!
She smiled at him. “But how can I repay you?”
“I d
on’t know.” Maybe she had something in mind. Something else. Naaaaaaaah.
She put her purse aside and turned her attention to the bundles. “I bought these marvelous jelly doughnuts.” Hermie gagged as she pulled out the bag that said Killerman’s Bakery. And he like unto shit when she took from the bag the very same jelly doughnuts he couldn’t eat again if his life depended on it. She put them on a plate, and when her back was away from him he coughed in an effort not to throw up rudely. “I’ve got some coffee,” she said. “It’s from this morning, but, well, we’ve all got to make things go further.” She turned on the burner under the coffeepot, and then she turned to Hermie. “You do drink coffee.”
“Before the war I drank a couple cups a day.” Before the war he was on Pablum.
She was still unsure. “I mean, I have milk.”
He misunderstood her by a mile. “I take it black.” Then he suddenly understood and felt stupid again. Whatever had become of the natural poise Oscy so often told him he possessed?
“Please sit down,” she said. And Hermie sat at the little kitchen table. He sat right on Jimmy Doolittle and the New York Times, a very lumpy thing for a man to do. So he got up, pulled both items from his back pockets, and then smoothed them out on the table. They looked as though Jumbo had sat on them for a year.
“Oh,” she said, looking over her shoulder from the stove where the coffee was returning to suffering life, “Time magazine.”
“I read it regularly. It’s informative.” He wouldn’t read Time magazine if they gave him a medal for it.
She put some fresh flowers into clean water, and the colors reflected in her eyes. “Are you in high school?”
“Yes. Erasmus Hall. In Brooklyn. You can’t miss it. I’m a sophomore.”
“Ah, a sophomore.”
“Yes.”
“Ummmmmmmm.”
“I was a freshman last year.”
“I thought you were older.”
“And next year I’ll be a junior and so on.”
“Well, don’t be in too big a hurry. You’ll be in the Army before you know it.”
“It’ll be finished by then.”
“By when?”
“By then.”
“I see.” But Hermie knew she didn’t. The feminine mind had trouble grasping certain things. Feminine minds were good at coffee. Except that coffee looked as if it didn’t care to try it again. It huffed and waddled and steamed and even complained. “Well,” she said, “I hope you’re right.”
“But if it isn’t over, I’m prepared to go. I’m taking preflight courses in high school, and I expect I’ll fly a plane pretty soon.”
“That ought to be very exciting.” She was watching the coffee, wondering if it hadn’t been used too much, hoping it wouldn’t come out white.
“Maybe I’ll team up with my brother. He’s a paratrooper. Maybe I can drop him out.” Out of what, his mind? His imagination? The nearest thing he ever had to a brother was his sister before her boobs bloomed.
“Ah, your brother’s a paratrooper.”
“Well, mostly I have a sister in high school.” Confession was good for the soul. Especially if he ever brought her home to meet his family.
“Coffee’s ready.” She brought the pot to the table, and she poured two cups. Like the fool he really was, Hermie picked up his cup, and acting as though it were something he had been doing all his life, he immediately boiled his tongue. How he lived through it without screaming was a testimonial to the poise Oscy had so often referred to. But his eyes began to run, and his tongue kind of fell out of his mouth and hung down on his chest like a necktie. The woman gasped. “Oh! I should have told you! It’s very hot! Are you all right?”
“Yeth. Thertainly.” He could feel the steam from his tongue moving right up his nose. Maybe it was good for his sinuses. A lot of people steamed their noses.
She was very rattled, feeling very much at fault, and she was hovering all about him—like a mother, which he already had one of. “Would you like some ice? I can get you some ice. Why don’t I get you some ice? I’ll get you some ice. Ice. Ice.” She was scurrying around at the refrigerator. Maybe she was a Red Cross nurse. Maybe he’d have to lie on her bed and have his tongue bandaged.
She returned and plunked a few ice cubes into his cup so quickly that for a moment Hermie thought that maybe they were red-hot. He looked at the ice cubes shriveling away in his cup. He didn’t have much time. They’d be gone in a trice. So when her back was turned, because she was trying to chip out more ice cubes, he leaned over and rested his tongue on the expiring cubes in his coffee cup. It provided immediate relief. Jesus, she made the hottest coffee in town. Wheweeeeee.
He wasn’t quite sure how long she had been talking or just what it was she was saying. He was more involved in tickling the ice cubes with his tongue. When the cubes finally disappeared like explorers in quicksand, leaving the temperature of the coffee a mere nine hundred degrees, he looked up to see where she was and what she was doing. She was sitting opposite him and was eating one of the—ugh—jelly doughnuts. She was also talking, and he tuned her in in the middle of a sentence. “Such an old stove I can never quite regulate it. And as far as getting it repaired, there’s just no one on the island who knows what to do with a 1934 stove.” She became aware that he was staring at her, and she figured she should stop babbling. So she smiled and switched the subject back to him. “Do you have many friends on the island? Hermie? Hermie?”
He had never seen a woman speak more beautifully. “Two,” he said. “I have two. But very immature.” His tongue was coming around, recuperating nicely.
“Well—what do you do? To keep busy, I mean.”
“I lean toward basketball but I think there’s a lot to be said for baseball. At least, in baseball, you don’t get round-shouldered from dribbling.”
“Oh.”
“I also run track.”
“You’re very athletic.”
“Yes. A lot of people are. The trick is to be good at it.”
“Do you…like music?”
“Yes. I’m quite musical.” He could feel the conversation really flowing. He was in control. Life was good.
“Do you play an instrument?”
“Yes. I sing.”
“Oh,” she said, and she laughed.
Hermie hadn’t intended that as a joke. He’d have to straighten her out. “I think a voice is like an instrument.”
“Oh, I do, too.” She was being nice. What the hell did she know about music? All she was was the most beautiful woman on earth. What the hell did she have to know about music?
“Anyway—for a change, you can whistle. Gives a man a lot of range.” That he had intended as a joke.
But that she missed. And she only shook her beautiful head in serious agreement. “That certainly is true.”
“I play around with things poetic, on occasion.” He was surprised that he said that. He had never told that to anyone, not even Oscy. Nor did he ever leave any of his verses around where someone might come across them. Everything he ever wrote he burned. It was better that way. He could always keep the dream that way. If he was never read, no one could say he was lousy.
“Well, you certainly have many interests.”
Hermie stood up. He had read somewhere that the experienced man knows when it’s time to go. “Well, I guess I’ll be moseying along. Next thing I know, you’ll be making me lunch.”
She stood, too. “Must you go?” She seemed sincere. She really wanted him to stay longer, to tarry awhile, to linger on.
“Yes. I’ve got some bacon grease to bring in. Three weeks’ worth. They use it for making ammunition. Do you have any old stockings? They use it to make powder bags for naval guns.”
“I don’t wear stockings in the summer.”
“That’s very patriotic.”
“I don’t know how patriotic it is, but it’s certainly a lot cooler.” She was smiling. That was some kind of joke.
He smiled and
even attempted an adult chuckle. She wasn’t too funny, but then, how many women were Red Skelton?
“I wish you”—she was putting some doughnuts back into the Killerman Bakery bag—“would take some of these delicious jelly doughnuts. Seems the least I can do.” She thrust the bag into his arms. The doughnuts were his for all time.
“Thank you very much. I’ll eat them as soon as I can.”
“Oh, I thank you, Hermie.”
“Then you’re welcome. It was a privilege.” He was backing toward the door with the uneasy feeling that he was knocking things over, which was precisely what he was doing. A chair. A lamp. A magazine rack.
She smiled and didn’t seem to notice as she walked with him. “Next time I’ll be sure to bring my wagon when I go shopping.”
“I think you should. You could get a hernia.” Why he said that he would never know.
She shook it off, thinking perhaps that she had just heard it wrong. “Perhaps I’ll see you again.”
“It would be a privilege.” He was running out of things to say. He’d better beat it before he’d be saying hello again. He was at the door.
“Good-bye,” she said.
“Good-bye,” he said and the screen door closed behind him. He kind of slipped out of the house and waved to her, wanting desperately to say, “I shall return,” but suppressing the urge. He walked down the road toward town, carrying the bag of doughnuts as if it were a dead and putrefying corpse. He was very annoyed with himself for his unfortunate turn of a phrase, for his oral ineptitude, and he pounded his fist repeatedly against his thigh, again and again, as he said to himself, “A hernial Jesus!”
Oscy and Benjie seemed to form out of nowhere. One minute there was nothing, and the next they were squarely in his path. A pair of binoculars dangled about Oscy’s neck, and was he ever smiling. “Hi, Hermie.”
Hermie executed a neat semicircle around them. “Hi,” he said as he went loftily by, hoping they’d disappear in a puff of green smoke, but they didn’t. He couldn’t hear their Apache feet, but he could feel them trailing him. But he was too intent on letting the sea breezes cool his tongue to talk with fools. He continued on, his tongue hanging out of his mouth like Lassie’s.
Summer of '42 Page 6
