I felt nothing. I only saw the concerns of our buried people, who didn’t know the end any more than I did.
There were rifles going off, without sounds. There were hearts beating, without blood. There was a war going on, and it was over.
The war was finally over … and it felt so damn good … but it didn’t feel like anything without the ones who made the end possible.
Brooklyn, New York, August 21, 1945.
Just inside the entrance of the apartment building, within a small vestibule, was a row of names and a series of buzzers, affixed to the wall, used to call up to the apartments on the upper floors. Running my finger down the list of names, I made note that I was in the right place: 486 Brooklyn Avenue. For a couple of seconds my finger hovered over the button, unsure of whether I should go through with it. Without another thought, though, I pressed the button and closed my eyes, taking a deep breath and holding it in.
I was already uncomfortable.
Just a few minutes before I arrived at the tenement, I strolled down Brooklyn Avenue, and as I got closer to the corner apartments, I began receiving odd stares from the locals. I was a walking circus. The children playing in the street, the people sitting on their stoops, and a couple of elderly people walking down the sidewalk, all paused to look at the marine, dressed as I was in my uniform. They didn’t ogle me simply because I was a marine, though. Servicemen were commonplace in any part of the United States. In truth, as I walked down the street, looking at the addresses on the buildings, it was apparent to them who I was—or, at least, what I was doing there and who I was looking for.
In those days, in those close-knit city blocks, everybody knew everybody’s business. Neighbors became extended family members, and local gossip was better than cancer.
Mrs. Abbot used to have a star hanging in her kitchen window. Now all she has is a telegram, folded in the family Bible. Mr. Katz’s boy used to write home every day, but something happened to his son’s hands at Salerno. His son is learning to write his name now with a pencil held between his teeth.
Standing in the foyer, I opened my eyes again, looking out the glass-fronted door, at how the light bent strangely against the weather-beaten panes. Oddly enough, this was the same light from the same sun I had witnessed twisting its rays below the Five Sisters, a world and a lifetime away.
“Hello?” A small voice came from an even smaller speaker, below the row of buzzers.
My heart nearly jumped in my neck, startled, yet somehow I managed to clear my throat. “Sterling Mace,” I said. “I—”
Before I could say anything else, there was a buzz and a sharp click within the door’s unlocking mechanism, allowing me to enter the apartment building.
Inside it was the same old Brooklyn tenement, almost comforting: plaster walls, thick painted doors, nothing too shabby, yet nothing to differentiate this building from the dozens just like it that lined every one of these crowded streets.
I rode the elevator up and found the unit number. I knocked.
The door opened, and before me stood a very nondescript, middle-aged Jewish woman—her eyes glossy and tinted a light pink, the telltale sign of tears being held back in a battle that was soon to be lost.
“Sterling?” Her eyes didn’t leave mine. I felt compelled to return her stare, but I had to break off—I couldn’t stand her gaze. Immediately my sight drifted over her shoulder and to the wall inside the living room of her small apartment. On the wall was the largest portrait I had ever seen. It was huge, at least three by five feet, well framed, adorned with a perfectly painted image of the head and shoulders of a smiling teenager—the type of smile that said he was now ready for the rest of his life.
I knew that smile well.
The woman saw that I was looking at the picture, and she took a quick glance at the painting herself. When she returned my gaze, her face wore a smile—one that appeared eerily like that of the young man on the wall.
Cordially, I took off my cap. “Mrs. Levy?”
“Yes, Sterling. Please … come in.”
The heartbreaking part is that I’m twenty-one years old and I can look a man straight in the eyes and then kill him deader than hell, but I can barely brave the face of a grieving mother who lost her son to a place that most people have never heard of. Or dreamed of.
In a dreamlike state I step into the home where Seymour Levy grew up. Sy had spent most of his life here. He knew the hallways and bedrooms, the tables and chairs, the smell of his mother’s cooking. The feel of his bed. Softly, he spoke the words of Rudyard Kipling, late at night, sitting in his room under the cast of a dim bedstand light. I’m sure Sy pored over the stories—Gunga Din and The Jungle Book—over and over, until he could recite every word by heart.
The sum of a life is measured how? By the quantity of years or by the remembrances entrusted to others?
In Sy’s case, my memories of the kid made him whole. To his mother, however, his legacy simply meant he was gone.
It could have easily been my mother, standing here with a stranger in her home—living out the last minutes of her son’s life through the recollections of those who knew him till the end. That’s a sobering thought, and it doesn’t make one bit of difference that my mom had already lost a baby once, while Seymour Levy was an only child.
Hurt is hurt, and that’s a fact, but the vacuum left in a mother’s womb must be the darkest place imaginable, no matter how bright the cause for which she gave.
Just inside the door, Levy’s mother gives me a hug, holding me there for a few moments before releasing me. Yet even as she lets go of the embrace she still grasps me by my shoulders, at arm’s length—her eyes taking in the shape of my face, my uniform, the way that I stand.
For the first time she gets a look at the missing link in Sy’s personal chain of events. One of the last people to see her boy alive.
“Here.” She waves a hand to shoo away any maudlin sentiments (as if they were that easy to dismiss) and walks toward the kitchen area. “Come. Have a seat. I’m sorry the place is such a mess. I just want to thank you for stopping by, Sterling. You don’t know how much it means to me and my husband, having one of Seymour’s marine friends over. We just don’t know much about what happened that day.”
“It’s not a problem, Mrs. Levy. Seymour was a good friend of mine.” Instead of sitting where she indicated, I stop in front of the huge portrait, admiring the likeness, the nice frame, recalling the way Sy and I used to smile and give each other a thumbs-up before heading into combat.
A heart beats somewhere in the portrait, but I don’t know whether it’s mine or his. It’s a tough thing to articulate. It’s a hell of a feeling to break down.
“Sterling?” Suddenly Levy’s mother is standing right beside me. She startled me; I didn’t hear her walk up. “Would you like anything? Some tea? Water? I’ve got sandwiches.”
“No. No thank you, Mrs. Levy. I’m fine, thank you.” She had caught me daydreaming—remembering back to when Levy and I first arrived on Pavuvu together. Sy and I had just arrived at K Company’s street and begun settling into a temporary tent when Levy gave us a big surprise.
Sy put his seabag down on a cot and looked around the quarters. “Well, if we gotta stay here all night, we’re gonna need some light.”
“Nah,” I said. “They ain’t gonna keep us here for long.” Looking around some more, I saw the tent was pretty bare; at least it wasn’t crowded. “This place ain’t so bad, ya know, Sy? Sy?”
I heard the click of a Zippo and then—whoosh!
“Shit!” Levy yelled. There was fire all over the deck … and spreading!
I jumped up out of my cot. “Sy, what the hell’d ya do!?” I could see the broken glass on the floor, and the liquid fire snaking around like lava. I knew then that Seymour had improvised one of those lamps we had all seen in the veteran marines’ tents. It was basically a Coke bottle filled with gasoline, with a rag serving as a wick, but in a green marine’s hand it was a firebomb—a
Molotov cocktail!
Levy was in a panic, attempting to stamp the fire out with his boondockers.
“C’mon, Sy!” I yelled and grabbed him by the dungaree jacket. “Let’s beat it! This place is goin’ down!”
We ran outside the tent, and already marines were dashing up the street with buckets of water.
Every so often there were buckets placed outside of tents, going up and down the street. At the end of the street was a barrel filled with water, for cases just like this. The thing was, these canvas tents were old and rotted, very dry under the sun, so all it took was a little spark and they’d go up like bonfires.
Eventually the bucket brigade had the fire under control, so, slipping away a good distance from the scene of the crime, I pulled Levy aside. “Hey, look, Sy, if ya didn’t like the place, all ya had to do was say so.” I laughed
Levy smirked. “Yeah, well, what the hell they gonna do to me, huh? Put me in the marines?”
“Good point,” I considered.
Levy’s mom and I sit at a small table with a floral cloth draped over it, just inside the dining room window. I notice her hands are fidgety, nervous, as she smoothes out the already smooth tablecloth.
Propping her chin on her fist, she looks out the window, contemplative, while the sun turns her simple brown eyes into honey-colored pools.
When she looks back at me, her irises change to a darker hue, an earthy tone, without the benefit of the sunlight to soften them.
“Sterling? Did Seymour ever tell you how I felt about him joining the marines?”
“Well … maybe … something about—”
“That I didn’t want him to join? I know. I know that Seymour and I didn’t part on the best of terms. He was just so … so adamant about joining, you know? That boy. Once he made up his mind about something … that was it. Even as a child Seymour was like that. Ever the curious little man!” She chuckles and bites her lower lip, in order to take the pain away from where she’s feeling it the most. The tears are just beginning to pool in her lower eyelids.
“And just think,” she resumes. “I could have given him my blessing—but I didn’t. It’s as if I knew what was going to happen. He even died on the eve of a Jewish holiday.”
There is a long pause. She produces a handkerchief and begins daubing the tears from her cheeks. I realize that the hanky had been wadded up in her hand this whole time, having already been used copiously, long before I arrived.
“What happened out there, Sterling?” she asks. “How did my Seymour die?”
Looking down at the tablecloth, I see orchids and wildflowers, marigolds and roses … not the shit-stained side of a cliff, with its bouquet of decomposed flesh and leaves of soiled toilet paper. I see Levy laughing at something I said on our voyage over to Pavuvu, and not the young man who regretted coming back to Peleliu after cashing out his million-dollar wound and giving it all to stupidity.
“Seymour died, Mrs. Levy,” I say, hoping she can see the sincerity in my face; she can hear it in my voice. “He died very quickly. Instantly, even. I’m really sure … that is, I don’t think it was possible for him to feel any pain, when it happened.”
Although that wasn’t the question she asked, was it?
“You were there? You were right there?”
“Only a few yards away.”
Her mouth is moving, ever so slightly, but no sound is coming out—she’s just letting the rivulets flow.
“Only a few yards away?” she pleads.
“Yes, ma’am. He wouldn’t have even known what happened, it was so quick. The way anybody would want it to be.”
“But…” She reaches across the table and grabs my hands, her eyes darting back and forth, desperate. “Was it worth it?”
“I don’t understand. Was what worth it, Mrs. Levy?”
“What you boys did over there. Why Seymour didn’t come back home. Was it worth it?”
“Ma’am…” I try to give her hands a reassuring squeeze. “I … I’m not sure what you’re asking me, Mrs. Levy.”
“Was it worth my boy not making it back home?”
I lean back in the chair, leaving her hands on the table among the pretty flowers. I want to be angry at the question—not at her, but at the question itself. I don’t even know how I made it back, let alone how somebody else didn’t. Yet one thing is certain: I know from experience that not knowing something is sometimes worse than knowing all the little details that you’d rather forget.
What am I supposed to say to something like that?
“Mrs. Levy,” I begin, “I was just a marine. That’s all. Just like Seymour … like a bunch of us, we were only doing our jobs. Sure, questions like that … questions like that, they’re not questions that anybody thinks about, and they’re not something that anybody can answer. But … you’re asking me if it was worth it? Well … I think … I think that if Seymour thought it was right to join the Marine Corps … if he thought it was worth it? Then, Mrs. Levy … I promise you it was worth every last bit of it.”
I finish speaking, and Mrs. Levy’s hands are over her mouth, slack-jawed, still devoid of sound. However, I can make out what she’s attempting to say, seen through the fingers that bar her lips.
Yes, she appears to say. Yes, I understand. Yes and yes.
Yes is a belief that even Larry Mahan couldn’t refute.
Later that evening, when I walked out of Sy’s home, I didn’t feel any different. Nothing there had purged my soul of pain. There was no balm for a bleeding host.
I looked up toward the sky, however, expecting to see a trillion bright beacons in the blanket of night, just like the night I lay on the deck of the Sea Runner, having survived Peleliu.
This is it.
Instead, the streetlights choked out the stars, effortlessly. Yet I knew the stars were there—and that’s all that mattered. Constellations of ghosts. That’s all I had to show for my struggles on Peleliu, Ngesebus, and Okinawa. Constellations of ghosts.
So as I stood there, gazing toward the heavens, the only solace I had was that I had made it home—even as unreal as it seemed. I was back in New York, alive … and maybe, just maybe, I had a little help making it back all the way.
It must have been a glorious day in heaven the day that Sister Dorothy finally laid down her weapon, never again having to concern herself with the earthly crowd.
Sleeping on a cloud.
EPILOGUE
THE UNIFORM IS FOLDED AND put away. Everything is over: the war, my current obligations to a grateful nation—it’s all over. I’m free of everything except for my memories.
That’s the toughest part.
I open the front door, walk out to the street, and look up toward the boulevard. Three years ago I walked up that street with my little cardboard suitcase full of civilian clothes, never knowing that when I reached the Marine Corps they would throw the suitcase and all its contents straight in the garbage.
George McNevin comes over to eat supper with my family. My mom remarks to George that she’d like to have him over every night, because with George over, that’s the most I’ve eaten since I’ve been home. George quits chewing for a second and looks at my mom. I put my spoon down.
Funny.
I don’t dream anymore. Not even nightmares.
I’m just having a hard time understanding how I got here. Adjusting. Making room inside myself for life after wartime. I don’t fit.
On the street corner you can still find some of the same wiseguys who used to hang out there every Saturday, before the war. They act as if the boys who were killed in Europe are still there, shooting the same shit. Of course, they’re not. I’m not there, either. I’m in uniform, and they ask me where I’ve been. I tell them. Either they don’t understand or they don’t want to. They’ve been to North Africa, Sicily, and France. I’ve been to … places. Places they’ve never heard of.
Pitkin Avenue, in Canarsie, East New York. I go down to the shops, with my mustering-out pay, and pick out a
brown zoot suit, with a one-button roll and pegged pants. My hat is a dark brown fedora with a wide three-inch brim. A familiar marine sees me on the corner in that getup, and I can’t stand the way he looks at me.
So we look for jobs, only they’ve got this new government program: the 52-20 Club, which pays out twenty dollars a week for fifty-two weeks, until we can get back on our feet.
A young newly discharged marine walks up to a desk, and the government man behind the desk asks the marine what’s his occupation.
“I kill Japanese,” the young marine says. Only he doesn’t really say that. Instead, he says, “I’m an exterminator.”
“Okay.” The government man jots down the note. “So, have you had any luck finding a job killing Japanese?” That’s not what the man behind the desk actually says, either. What the man says is, “Exterminators … even in a big city like this, everybody’s got pests, but not everyone can afford to get rid of them.”
“No,” the young marine concedes. “I mean, yes. People in my line of work aren’t in very high demand these days.” He pauses. “Especially now that the war’s over.”
The government checks keep coming in the mail. We blow our cash on crap games and liquor, doing everything we can to forget.
On Okinawa.
At the aid station.
“Boy, you must have really been out of it, buddy.” A marine in the cot next to me is propped up on his elbow. “I thought you were dead.”
“Whattaya mean?” I ask. My words come out in a coarse whisper.
He chuckles. “You were just laying there. Not movin’ an inch. An’ this band came by—some Salvation Army quartet or somethin’, and they were playin’ right at the foot of your cot. I mean right at the foot! And you didn’t move a muscle. As far as I knew, they were playin’ for a dead man!”
I try for a smile, but I come up short. I feel like the shit that even shit turns its nose up at.
The last thing I remember is a doctor sitting at the side of my cot administering a shot of sodium pentothal. I’ve got some choice words to say about the new officers on Okinawa. They’re not like the ones we had on Peleliu.
Battleground Pacific Page 32
