What Arthur liked to do was pit a general from one historical period against a general from another. Napoleon against Hannibal, for example, or Robert E. Lee versus Julius Caesar. The rules of the game became clear in a hurry. No matter whom he was commanding, Arthur triumphed because of superior strategy and daring in the field. I remembered what his father said about letting him win, but it was too much trouble to raise a stink. The actual battles didn’t take long. It was the setting up that filled our time. The troops had to be arranged just so before Arthur was ready to begin.
“You can’t do that,” he said, when I had established my legionnaires in what I thought was a strong position to ambush his Confederate cavalry. “The Romans always advance in a phalanx.”
“You know a lot about this stuff,” I said. “Your dad must be real proud.”
Arthur was lining up his rebels, Jeb Stuart out front, saber up, ready to lead the charge. They would be supported by a battery of Napoleonic artillery on the high ground of his bed. Likely, the barrage would wipe out most of my legionnaires before Jeb Stuart crossed the field. Then he’d send the samurais in behind the cavalry to mop up what was left of my front line and all I had in reserve were a handful of Sam Houston’s volunteers.
“Is your father a soldier?” he said.
I said, “He’s a tugboat captain,” and Arthur looked interested. I knew how he felt. The open sky and all that. Dicey currents and hidden shoals. A world composed almost entirely of men. Arthur asked me to tell him more so I described the way the tugs pushed barges around in the lacework of rivers in the south.
“He was gone a lot,” I said. “Two or three weeks at a time.”
“He didn’t take you with him?”
“He couldn’t. That was against the rules.”
“If he’s the captain, can’t he make his own rules?”
“It’s not his boat. He works for the men who own it.”
I thought he might be disappointed, but he said, “My father is gone a lot, too. He works for the President. He takes us with him to his posts when he can, but sometimes it’s too dangerous.”
“Do you like it here?”
Arthur shrugged. “I haven’t earned enough points yet to go home.”
The army used a point system, based on time in service and the nature of an assignment and individual records and so on, for determining when a soldier would be discharged, and I imagined Bunny explaining this to his son, telling him that he could expect no less from his family than he expected of his troops.
“At least you’re with your dad. I’m sure you miss him when he’s gone.”
“Did you miss your dad?” he said.
I nodded but said, “My mother and I did all right. It was my mother taught me how to type. I only let her give me lessons on the nights when my father was away.”
“Why?”
“I was embarrassed, I guess. I thought typing was for girls. I didn’t think my dad would like it.”
“Did he?”
“I don’t know.”
Arthur frowned at his line of horsemen.
“Let’s be allies instead,” he said. “You be Robert E. Lee and I’ll be Hannibal.”
“We’ll be unstoppable,” I said.
After many victories, the houseboy returned and told Arthur it was time for lunch. I followed him toward the kitchen. Bunny’s voice met us in the hall. “I’m not about to let that idiot back in the country. I don’t care what the papers say. I won’t be bullied. No reporter is going to undermine the progress we’ve made over here.”
Mrs. Bunny said, “It’ll be all right, General. The people love you. You know that. The press will come around.”
“Meanwhile, I’m supposed to tolerate half-wit editorialists? I haven’t the patience.”
They went quiet when we came in. Mrs. Bunny set Arthur’s plate on the table and smiled at me. Bunny was smoking his pipe and reading the Times.
“You boys have fun?” he said.
“Yes, sir.” Arthur slid into his chair. “Can Van come back next week?”
Bunny peeked at me over the page.
“All right,” I said, and he nodded, once, sealing the deal.
VI
It didn’t take long for word to spread. I raised a dollar at the Tuesday Night Poker Game and Rudy Grand said, “Damn, Van, your pockets must be full of babysitting money,” and the rest of the men picked up the joke—Did I have to change his diapers? Did Arthur make me cut the crusts off his sandwiches? If I’d let myself make fun of Arthur or Bunny or any of it, I could have turned the joke around, gotten us all in on it together, but something stopped me, and over the next few weeks, as my Saturdays with Arthur became a regular engagement, I was glad. The ribbing didn’t let up exactly, but I began to hear a hint of envy in it and my embarrassment faded with repetition and the truth is, I looked forward to those mornings after a while. If it was raining, we plotted great campaigns and fought desperate battles in his room, but if the weather was nice we’d toss a football in the yard or something, feeling a pleasant kind of pressure to enjoy the outdoors before the season changed again. Arthur wasn’t much of a ballplayer, but he was game and I knew he wanted to impress me, which made me like him more. I should say that, like Arthur, I’m an only child. I had no younger siblings to look up to me when I was a kid, and that’s probably one reason I took such pleasure in his admiration. This is not to mention that he was Bunny’s son. My father made a better-than-average wage, likely more than you’d expect, enough that we could afford a little house with a big front porch in a decent neighborhood—lots of old oaks and azaleas and Spanish moss, a dentist on our right, a middle-school vice principal on our left, the manager of a hardware store across the street. It was a decent life, better than most of the men I’d met in the army, but it was nothing like Arthur’s existence at the residence. The MacArthurs had four dogs: Blackie, a cocker spaniel; Brownie, a terrier; Koko, a Brittany spaniel; and the puppy, Taro, a white Akita named after Arthur’s favorite house-boy. All four dogs tagged along if we played outside, and when they barked and scrambled off toward the house, I knew they heard Bunny’s Cadillac on the gravel returning him for lunch.
One Saturday, on the way out to the residence, I noticed that Anchors Aweigh was playing at the theater downtown. Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra. It had been a big hit in the States the year before, had finally made it overseas. I thought maybe Arthur would be interested and asked his parents for permission to take him to a matinee. Bunny deferred to Mrs. Bunny. She was reluctant, but Arthur was so excited by the prospect that she agreed.
Because of the matinee I arrived later than usual the following week—Bunny had already come home for lunch and gone again—and a houseboy led me to her room, a kind of parlor with a sitting area and a writing desk. Lots of knickknacks, jeweled cigarette cases, lacquered fans. A window looked out over an alley of maples behind the house, branches heavy with misting rain. She told me to have a seat and I waited while she finished jotting something down.
“Are you thirsty?” she said.
“No ma’am.”
She came around the desk and took the chair across from mine.
“I’ll get right to business then,” she said. “I’m not sure this little excursion of yours is such a good idea.” She pinched her lips into a smile. “Please remove your hat,” she said, and I did, a prickle of shame crawling like an insect along my spine. I wasn’t sure if the shame was born of the fact that I’d forgotten to remove my hat or because Mrs. Bunny had ordered me to do so or because I’d been so quick to comply. Mrs. Bunny went on. “That’s better. I’ll be honest, Private; I was against this arrangement from the beginning. You and Arthur, I mean. It’s nothing personal. You seem a decent sort. But the General had his reasons so I went along. Arthur has become attached to you and he’d never forgive me if I went back on my promise to let you take him to the movies. I just want us to be clear before you go. The driver will carry you to the theater, drop you off, wait for you outside, an
d bring you directly home. There will be no stops in between. While you are out of this house, Arthur is your responsibility. If you return him to me with a hair out of place, I’ll see to it that you’re court-martialed by morning. Perhaps you think that such a thing is beyond my power, but I assure you I am entirely capable of keeping my word. Do we understand each other?”
“Yes ma’am.”
Mrs. Bunny crossed her legs, draped her wrists over one knee. In an instant, without a perceptible change in her facial expression, her demeanor somehow went from ominous to sociable.
“My husband tells me you’re from Mobile,” she said.
“Yes ma’am.”
“Do you know the Blackfords by any chance?”
“I don’t think so, ma’am.”
“What about the Harringtons, Lola and Jimmy? Surely that name rings a bell.”
“You mean the congressman?”
“I went to school with Lola. We spent a lovely weekend at their place on Point Clear just before the war.”
I heard Arthur’s footsteps on the stairs and he came tearing into the room ahead of an apologetic-looking houseboy, and Mrs. Bunny morphed again before my eyes, this time from socialite to mother. She made Arthur give her a hug and walked us to the door, where we were met by the driver, a negro named Ridges, who escorted Arthur to the car under an umbrella. When I climbed into the passenger seat, without looking at me, he said, “You in back,” and Arthur laughed, and I slid onto the leather seat at his side, embarrassed again and irritated with him, rather than Ridges, for reasons I couldn’t have explained.
The car, a navy blue Packard, was not as impressive as Bunny’s Cadillac, but it was waxed and polished and raindrops pearled and glistened on the chrome, still a sight, I thought, to the locals. There would be no doubt that somebody important was inside. And the scene, as we rounded the curve along the baseball diamond, was almost comical. A dozen or so boys not much older than Arthur were in the middle of a game—it wasn’t raining hard enough to keep anybody inside—and the ball had just been popped up as we came into view, an easy out, but the boys were so entranced by our passage that it dropped between second base and center field, bounced twice, and trickled slowly over the grass, the only thing moving in the tableau of their wonder.
“We should come down here sometime,” I said. “Maybe they’ll let us play.”
“I doubt my mom would go for that,” he said, and I figured he was right. I also thought I heard an edge of worry in his voice. He didn’t have much experience with ordinary kids. Irritation again—at his anxiety, his pamperedness. But I didn’t want to be irritated. To change the subject, I asked his favorite movie star and he said, “John Wayne,” without hesitation.
“What about Gary Cooper?” I said. “You ever see The Plainsman?”
Arthur nodded. “Pop showed it at the house. It’s pretty good, but Stagecoach is better.”
He was spoiled, yes, but he was so marooned by the nature of his life, he was ignorant of his privilege. It’s possible he was the loneliest person I’d ever met. He knew only isolation, and this made him immature in certain ways. He’d lived all over the world, had every material advantage, but as we neared the theater, in his excitement, he reached across the seat and took my hand in the manner of a child much younger than himself and all my irritation ebbed away. Ridges left the car running and came around to Arthur’s door and walked him to the marquee under the umbrella, then handed me the umbrella so I could walk him back.
The theater was about three quarters full, more locals than GIs, and Anchors Aweigh pretty much what you’d expect—two sailors on liberty, lots of singing and dancing, plenty of romance. I worried that Arthur wouldn’t like it, but whenever I glanced over I could see his eyes shining in the light from the projector, his face pleasantly empty and relaxed, a fistful of popcorn rising toward his mouth. Afterward, as we filed up the long aisle toward the lobby, I asked him what he thought, and he said, “It was great.”
“Really? You liked it?”
“The part where Gene Kelly danced with the cartoon mouse—I thought that was pretty neat.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It was.”
The first thing I noticed in the lobby was a crowd of locals bunched up against the windows, everybody chattering in hushed, excited Japanese.
“What’s going on?” Arthur said.
“I don’t know.”
I took hold of Arthur’s wrist, waded in. I couldn’t see anything but more people outside and the Packard at the curb. To my surprise, I spotted Namiki in the throng, craning on tiptoe like all the rest. I reached over an elderly man to tap her shoulder and she looked at me blankly, lost in whatever was happening, unable to place me in the moment, then recognition passed over her face. The crowd was thick enough that it swelled in behind us as we moved closer together, and we had no choice but to give way.
“It is said that General MacArthur’s son is here.” Her eyes were bright with expectation, her English hesitant but much improved since I’d seen her last. That’s when she noticed Arthur. She looked at him, then back at me, confused, surprised, impressed, then at Arthur again, and I felt washed with unexpected pride. She blushed and started a bow but I put a hand on her arm, pressed a finger to my lips. I winked at Arthur.
“Let’s have a little fun,” I said.
Keeping a grip on Arthur’s wrist, I circled around behind the knot of people at the window and shouted, “All right. Clear the way. VIP coming through,” and there was a perceptible intake of breath from the crowd, a new tenor to their murmuring, and like magic they policed themselves backward to form an aisle from the lobby through the door and out across the sidewalk to the car, bowing as we passed, me leading the way, then Arthur, then Namiki, beaming, thrilled, swept along behind us as if caught up in our wake. Ridges saw us coming and hustled around to open the door. Even overcast, the day was too bright after the darkness of the theater and the rain brushed my face like walking through a spiderweb and somehow Namiki tumbled into the car behind us before Ridges could cut her off. I realized just as we were all pouring into the backseat that I’d forgotten the umbrella. I could see it clearly, propped against an empty seat, dripping a puddle on the floor. Then someone in the crowd shouted, “God bless USA!” and someone else shouted, “MacArthur live long time!” The door slammed shut behind us and the crowd closed in around the car and as Ridges jostled his way back to the driver’s side and fell in behind the wheel, we were washed in good wishes and cheers.
“Who the fuck is that?” he said, meaning Namiki.
He yanked the gearshift, nudged us out of the crowd.
I said, “Watch your mouth.”
Our eyes met in the rearview mirror. He shifted his gaze to Arthur and Namiki, weighing, I thought, the repercussions of cursing in front of Bunny’s son against responsibility for this woman in the car. “The missus ain’t gone like it,” he said, and only then did I pause to examine my motives. “Not one bit,” he said, and it dawned on me that I’d been showing off, inspired by Namiki’s admiration. She was wearing sandals and a belted white dress—gifts from Clifford, I presumed, straight from the PX—and she was lovely in her American clothes and she knew me only as the roommate, a stand-in, a messenger, someone to occupy her friend. I sensed something else as well, something petty behind my desire to impress Namiki, a need to rebel that had been building in me since my meeting with Mrs. Bunny. The elation I’d felt as we paraded through the crowd evaporated, leaving me limp.
“I forgot the umbrella,” I said.
Ridges flicked his eyes at me again, this time with more confidence. On either side of me, Arthur and Namiki were twisted in their seats, watching the crowd disappear behind us as we pulled onto MacArthur Boulevard. We drove in silence for a minute, Arthur and Namiki exchanging smiles across the seat, both of them shy, intimidated by the other. At the next intersection, Ridges eased over to the curb.
“All right, miss,” he said to Namiki. “That’s far enough.”
/> I wanted to argue, insist that he at least take her to the nearest bus stop, but there was no point in it and all the steam was gone from me. He was right. Mrs. Bunny would be furious that I’d let Namiki into the car at all. It wasn’t just that she was a stranger, a woman, a local. She was a dance hall girl, some enlisted man’s onri wan. In Mrs. Bunny’s eyes, that would make her little better than a whore. To my surprise, Arthur stepped in. “But it’s raining. We can’t leave her here.” He turned to Namiki. “Where are you going?”
Namiki dropped her eyes. “Ginza,” she said. “Work.”
“Take her there,” Arthur said.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mister Arthur. Your momma say—”
“Take her,” Arthur said.
Ridges hesitated and I felt two things: On the one hand I was vaguely proud of Arthur for standing up for her, for seizing the initiative, but on the other I felt sorry for Ridges all of a sudden. No matter what happened now, he couldn’t win. Though it was my fault, he would be saddled with a measure of the blame for Namiki’s presence. If he did what Arthur said, his liability would be compounded by making us late, keeping Mrs. Bunny waiting. If he refused, he would be delivering home a spoiled, sulky child made unhappy by his decision, and who knew what effect that might have on his life down the road.
“Listen, Arthur,” I said. “If we take her, you can’t tell your mom. You understand? Your mom’ll have all our hides. We’ll tell her we got caught in traffic or something.”
The Typist Page 6
