by Max Shulman
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Rally Round the Flag, Boys!
A Novel
Max Shulman
For
Carel Dan Bud Pete Martha
1
Here begins a tale of action and passion, a guts-and-glory story of men with untamed hearts, of women with raging juices. There is violence, and torment, and raw, rampant power. But, withal, there is beauty—gentleness—occasional lulls in the storm—glades in the jungle—lambent moments to pause and reflect, to smile a bit, and—who can tell?—perhaps to blink back a tear.
At the vortex of this whirling drama, at the heart, so to speak, of the juggernaut, is one man. His name is Guido di Maggio. He is a tall young man, lithe as a willow wand and fair as the morn. He is by nature mild and merry, fond of lasagna, girls, and community singing. But unwarlike as he is, he wears the uniform of a second lieutenant in the United States Anti-Aircraft Artillery.
Our story begins, quietly enough, in the office of the post adjutant at Fort Totten, Long Island, on a gray winter day not so long ago. Second Lieutenant Guido di Maggio sat that day on a chair, straight, birch or maple frame, slot back, without arms, Type MIL-F-10091. In front of him was a desk, flat top, office, wood, oak color, Type B-1-FED-AA-D-201. Behind the desk in a chair, swivel, with casters, artificial leather upholstered, oak, with arms, Type 1-D-FED-AA-C-311A, sat Major Albert R. McEstway, post adjutant.
“Fairbanks,” said Major McEstway.
“Fairbanks?” said Guido.
“Fairbanks, Alaska,” said Major McEstway.
“Oh, no!” shrieked Guido, clutching his cheeks.
“The exec up there got frostbitten, and they’ve asked for a replacement,” said the Major. “You’ll fly out in the first available aircraft, which ought to be at Mitchel Field in a—What is the matter with you, Lieutenant?”
Guido seemed to be foaming somewhat at the mouth. “I can’t go, Major!” he shouted. “I just can’t!”
“I beg your pardon?” said the Major.
Guido reached across the desk and clasped the Major’s hand in both of his. “Listen, Major,” he pleaded, “you’ve got to get me an assignment in the States. In fact, it has to be right around New York.”
The Major disengaged his hand gently. “May one ask why?” he inquired.
“I’ve got a girl,” said Guido. “Wonderful girl. Pretty. Sweet. Educated. Plumpish. Not fat, you understand. About 120 pounds, I’d guess.”
“How tall?”
“Five-four.”
“Not a bit fat,” agreed the Major.
“Plumpish,” repeated Guido. “Toothsome, you might say.”
“You might at that,” allowed the Major.
“But stubborn. Mamma mia, talk about stubborn! A mule. A rock-head. You know how they get.”
“Oh, do I not!” said the Major, rolling his eyes.
“Two weeks ago we had this little rumble, and I still haven’t been able to square it. You ship me out of here now, and I’ll lose her sure as hell.”
“I see,” said the Major.
“I knew you’d understand,” said Guido.
“I do,” said the Major. “Do you?”
“Understand what?”
“That you will leave from Mitchel Field on the first available military aircraft and report to the 998th Anti-Aircraft Battery in Fairbanks, Alaska. And don’t go off the post. We never know for certain when a plane gets into Mitchel.”
“But—”
“That’s all, Lieutenant.”
Guido groaned, rose, mumbled “Yes, sir,” raised a limp salute, shambled out, shambled to the Officers Club, found the bar not yet open, shambled out, shambled to the BOQ, oozed down on his bed, and reflected glumly on the vicissitudes of life.
Actually, Guido’s life, until recently, had been singularly free of vicissitudes. He had been born and raised in the second vertical social stratum of Putnam’s Landing, Connecticut. (As any journeyman sociologist can tell you, the commuting villages of Connecticut’s Fairfield County—Westport, Darien, Stamford, Putnam’s Landing, etc.—show three distinct social categories, vertically divided. First, there are the Yankees, descendants of the original settlers and still the wielders of power. Second, there are the Italians—like Guido’s family—who initially came into Fairfield County as track layers for the New Haven Railroad and remained to become the storekeepers, artisans, mechanics, gardeners, police and fire departments. Third there are the New York commuters, also called the lambs, or the pigeons, or the patsies.)
Guido’s father, Vittorio di Maggio, owned a small but highly successful grocery store. On one side of Vittorio’s store was an A & P, on the other a Grand Union, and down the block a First National. They all undersold him by a wide margin, but Vittorio’s business continued excellent nonetheless. He carried one important item that his competitors did not—namely, charge accounts. Vittorio had made a study of commuters and had sagely concluded that a man who requires a four bedroom house, a full time maid, a part time gardener, a second car, a power mower, riding lessons for his daughters, sailing lessons for his sons, a mink stole for his wife, and ten ounces of alcohol per day for himself is a man who must be chronically out of money. At the same time, having house, wife, children, maid, cars, mower, etc., he is not likely to decamp quietly on some moonless night. Skewered thus on the two horns of fixedness and cashlessness, could there be a better victim for a high priced credit grocer?
So Vittorio prospered and—being prosperous, Catholic, and good buddies with his wife—proliferated. There were seven di Maggio children, of whom Guido was the last. They were all raised according to two simple precepts, one promulgated by the mother, one by the father. The mother said of child rearing, “Don’t hit the kids unless you gotta—but when you gotta, hit ’em good.” To this, the father added the unarguable dictum, “God never told nobody to be stupid.”
Under these sensible rubrics, Guido, like his brothers and sisters, grew up to be smart, sunny, and obedient. He worked in the store, he sang in the choir at St. Thomas the Apostle, he fished and swam and clammed in Long Island Sound, he maintained a respectable B-minus average at school, he shot a passable game of snooker, and he left his virginity with a lady in Bridgeport.
He also played a lot of baseball—but not because he wanted to. Since his name was di Maggio, everybody naturally assumed he loved baseball and they automatically called for him whenever there was a game. Actually, he would have been much happier to stay home, but he hated to disappoint people so he always went along. Constant exposure made him, willy-nilly, a first rate ball player. In his last year of high school, he captained the team and hit a gaudy 375.
After high school, he thought he might give college a whirl. He was the first di Maggio ever to entertain such an exotic notion, and Vittorio was quite taken aback when Guido broached the subject. “College?” he exclaimed, startled.
“Why not?” said Guido.
“Atsa right,” replied Vittorio after some thought. “Why not?”
So Guido went off to the University of Connecticut. Why, indeed, not? He was a bright boy, his family could afford to send him, and they did not really need his help in the store. Besides, college would keep him out of the Army for a while. Guido, let it be emphasized, had no wish to shirk doing his bit, but neither was he in any tearing hurry.
College and Guido were friends from the outset. His respectable B-minus average stuck with him. He learned a smattering of literature, a smidgen of language, a dash of history. And, while trailing his fingers in the main currents of American thought, he also picked up some necessary
graces: he joined a fraternity; he got a jacket with two vents in the back; he took up the bongos; he bought a half interest in a Chrysler Airflow. And, of course, he played baseball. When Coach saw the name di Maggio on the enrollment list, he came pounding on Guido’s door, and Guido, who wanted to play baseball like he wanted a third nostril, was, as always, obliging.
To keep the Army safely at bay, Guido joined the R.O.T.C. This took five hours out of his week—two of drill and three of classwork—but Guido considered the time well spent. It meant, in the first place, that he could count on four uninterrupted years of college, and, second, that when he was finally called, he would go in as a second lieutenant.
His romantic activities on campus were lively, but non-specific. There was a series of assorted gropes, some moderately successful, some shutouts. Once or twice, moonstruck or randy, he spoke careless words, but not too careless. God, he always remembered in time, never told nobody to be stupid. His SAE pin stayed firmly anchored to his baseball sweater.
Then, midway through his senior year, he met Maggie Larkin at a campus dance. Her hair was honey blond and her eyes were Lake Louise blue. Her throat arched, her breasts billowed, her waist tapered, and her flanks were round and cunningly articulated. She was five feet four inches tall and weighed 120 pounds. Plumpish. Not fat, you understand. Plumpish.
Guido asked her to dance. Steering her around the floor, looking at her level eyes and excellent head, feeling her honest weight, Guido fell suddenly in love. It was about as pleasant as a judo chop. He felt weak and addled. His ears rang, his salivary ducts sludged up, his kneecaps vibrated like tuning forks. Smiling inanely, unable to speak, he danced with her again and again, and when the evening was over he hustled her into the Airflow.
Here, on home grounds, a measure of confidence returned to him. He drove to a moonswept hill, cut the motor, sidled skillfully toward her.
“No,” she said.
“Aw,” he said.
“Look,” she said, “I am a normal girl with normal instincts, and you are a very attractive boy.”
“Well then!” cried Guido, closing in.
She fended him off. “No.”
“Maggie,” he said truthfully, “if you’re thinking this is just a pass, you’re wrong. I don’t know exactly what’s happening, but you unsettle the hell out of me.”
“I like you too, Guido,” she replied, “but I have my work.”
“What work is that?”
“Children.”
“I’ll be damned!” said Guido. “How many you got?”
She laughed, and Guido’s heart leapt with every tinkle. “None of my own,” she said. “I’m a teacher … That is, I’ll be one in June when I get my degree. Right now I’m doing some practice teaching over in Willimantic—the second grade.”
“I see,” said Guido, then corrected himself. “No, I don’t see. What’s your teaching got to do with me?”
“I just don’t have time for you, that’s all. I mean I need every minute to prepare my lecture notes.”
“For the second grade?” said Guido, looking at her askance.
“Guido, do you know what a teacher’s job is?”
“Teaching?” he hazarded.
“Not the way you mean. Not just filling their little heads full of the three Rs. A teacher’s job—no, a teacher’s sacred obligation—is to repair the trauma that children incur at home!”
Guido regarded her shining eyes, her upraised fists, with some astonishment. Here, obviously, was a girl of passion and fire. Now it remained to find out just what it was she was passionate and fiery about. “I’m not quite sure I follow you,” he said.
“Do you love children?”
“What’s not to love?”
“Exactly. How can you help loving those sweet, innocent little things, so full of trust and affection, so capable of perfect happiness? Now, why can’t they have perfect happiness?”
“Well, it’s a pretty tough world.”
“Yes, it is. But why?”
“Wars, famines, H-bombs—”
“No, Guido, that’s not it. The basic trouble in the world today is emotional insecurity. How can we ever hope to solve our political and economic problems when all our children are growing up with deep psychic disturbances?”
“They are?”
“Certainly they are! Didn’t I? Didn’t you?”
“Well, I—”
“Of course we did. Everybody does. And why?”
“Well, I—”
“Do you think insecurity is natural?”
“Well, I—”
“It’s not! It’s the most unnatural thing in the world. When you and I were born, we had no fears, no insecurities. Where, then, did we get them?”
“Well, I—”
“From our parents!” she said, ramming her forefinger into Guido’s ribs with every word. “From the ignorance and malice of our parents!”
“Oh, no!” said Guido stoutly. “No, sir! I don’t know what kinds of folks you got, but mine are a couple of living dolls.”
“Yes, yes,” she said with a weary smile. “And, I suppose according to ordinary standards, mine are fine parents too. They fed me, they clothed me, they sent me to college.”
“So what are you rapping ’em for?”
“Because they filled me full of insecurities.”
“You don’t look very insecure to me,” said Guido honestly.
“No? Then why do I still have nightmares? Why am I afraid of snakes? Why can’t I swim? Why won’t I ever have an enema?”
“Please!” gasped Guido, going crimson.
“Don’t you see, Guido? I’ve got all these fears—fears I was not born with.”
“You’ve also got teeth you were not born with,” he observed.
“You miss the point. My teeth came naturally. My fears were forced on me by my parents. Out of their deep, buried destructive impulses, they had to make me insecure too.”
“Maggie, listen,” he said earnestly, “try not to knock your folks any more, will you? It isn’t nice. Really.”
“Nice?” she cried. “The time for niceties is over. Action is what we need—and right now! A massive reeducation program! Mental health for parents! Clinics on every corner in America!”
“Fine,” said Guido. “Now how about we go someplace for ribs?”
“But it will take years to get a mental health program started,” continued Maggie, unheeding. “Meanwhile somebody has to try to repair the damage that parents are doing to their children at home. And that’s where we come in—we, the teachers.”
“This is all you talk about?” asked Guido with genuine concern. “Parents and kids and like that?”
“Could anything be more important? Why, do you know that in the United States—in this so-called enlightened democracy—there are still parents—today, mind you, in the twentieth century!—there are still parents who actually physically strike their children?”
“The hell you say!”
“Can you give me any reason at all why a grown-up adult should actually physically strike a child?”
“I’ll give you several,” said Guido with a reminiscent chuckle. “A) for busting a window; B) for jumping on the cat; C) for shoplifting at Woolworth’s; D) for burning the curtains; E) for drinking up the Communion wine.”
Maggie shook her yellow hair vehemently. “Those aren’t reasons; those are excuses. There’s only one reason why a parent strikes a child—only one—and that is because the parent subconsciously harbors a homicidal hatred for the child!”
“That does it,” sighed Guido and started the Airflow.
“You taking me home?” she asked.
“As fast as I can.”
She nodded philosophically. “Yes, this is what usually happens. But it doesn’t matter. I’ve got no time for boys anyhow. I need all my time for teaching the second grade children of Willimantic that there is love in the world—not just fears and threats. Love! Patience! Kindness! Understanding!”
“Lots of luck,” said Guido politely.
He dropped her at the Chi Omega house and went home and curled up in bed with a good book. “Boy!” he said to himself. “I am well rid of that one!”
“Too bad she’s loony,” he said to himself a little later, “because she sure is pretty. Those eyes! Those blue, blue eyes! And the teeth! Did you ever in your whole life see such teeth? Gorgeous! A woman like that wouldn’t cost you a dime for dentist bills.”
Still later he said to himself, “And what about the built? You think a built like that comes walking down the street every day in the week? In a pig’s valise, buddy! A built like that comes along once in a lifetime—if you’re lucky, that is. Mamma mia, what a built!”
Toward morning he said to himself, “So she’s a little overboard on the subject of kids. So what? She’s been studying too much psychology and it went to her head. She’ll get over it … And, anyhow, the whole thing does her credit. I mean this girl really loves kids. So nuts about ’em she can’t think straight. What a fine, big heart she must have! What a whale of a heart! There, now, is a parlay for you—those eyes, those teeth, that built, and a great big heart into the bargain! Am I going to let a package like that slip through my fingers?”
He did not. He courted her with skill and persistence, and he prevailed.
Naturally he had to do a bit of lying. He had to tell her with a perfectly straight face that he had reconsidered her views on child psychology and come to the conclusion she was absolutely right. Once she was persuaded of this, the rest came easy.
They went steady for the remainder of their senior year, and Guido was the happiest of men. There were, of course, occasional dead spots—usually on the days when Maggie received the latest psychopediatric bulletin and learned that asthma was nothing but interior crying or that Lepke Buchalter’s conduct was directly traceable to toilet training. On these occasions Maggie, her eyes bright with excitement, would run on for hours about permissive-behavior and ego-function and organ-language and birth-trauma, while Guido nodded and made intelligent grimaces and swallowed yawns.
But these seminars were fairly rare. Most of the time Guido and Maggie did just what any other lovers do: they danced and skied and swam and went to movies and picnicked and clutched each other in moist, happy embraces.
