W E B Griffin - Corp 01 - Semper Fi

by Semper Fi(Lit)

  And that had made of loving Father so pissed that he came after die accused with the base of the table lamp. After he'd demonstrated his willingness to use it by smashing the Philco radio and the glass in the bookcases and the plaster statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the accused had fled the premises and sought refuge in the rectory of Saint Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church. There he had remained until, accompanied by the good Father Zoghby, he surrendered himself to the Norristown Police to face charges. Good of loving Father Pat McCoy had accused his eldest son of assault with intent to do bodily harm as well as general all-around incorrigibility and heathenism and ungrateful sonism.

  "I'm sorry he cut his face," the accused mumbled to the judge.

  "That's all?"

  "Yes, sir."

  It had already been arranged, Father Zoghby had told him when he'd come to the jail. He'd had a word with the judge. To spare his family any further shame and humiliation, the judge would drop all charges on condition that the accused join the U.S. Marine Corps for four years.

  Later he'd tried to send his civvies home in the box they gave you at Parris Island, but it had come back marked REFUSED. So had die letters he'd written at first to his mother and Anne-Marie and Tommy. Then there had been a letter from Father Zoghby: His father could not find it in his heart to forgive him, and had started telling people he had no son named Kenneth. It would be better, Father Zoghby continued, if Kenneth stopped writing until things had a time to settle. He would pray that his father would in time forgive him, and he would keep him posted if anything happened he should know.

  While McCoy was still running the water-cooled.30-caliber Browning in Dog Company, First Battalion, 4th Marines, Father Zoghby had written him one more letter His mother was dead; Anne-Marie had a vocation and was a novice at the Convent of the Sisters of the Holy Ghost; Tommy had gone to Bethlehem, where the steel mills had reopened and there was work; and his father had remarried.

  "Anne-Marie left the convent at least two years ago, I'm sorry to say," the young priest said. "I'm sure your father would know where she is."

  "I can't ask him," McCoy said.

  The priest looked at him for a moment, and McCoy sensed that he was making up his mind. Then the priest stepped outside and closed the rectory door after him.

  "Maybe I can help you," he said.

  He led him past the church building, then down the cracked concrete walkway to the school buildings-the grammar school to the left and the larger, newer Saint Rose of Lima High School building to the right-and finally to the nun's residence.

  He spoke first to Sister Gregory, who recognized McCoy as she looked down at him from the steps of the residence, but acted as if she had never seen him before in her life. She went back inside, and a minute later Sister Paul appeared at the door and walked down the steps to where McCoy and the young priest stood.

  "How are you, Kenneth?" Sister Paul said.

  "I'm all right, Sister," McCoy said. "How are you?"

  "Have you made things right between you and God, Kenneth?"

  "I don't know, Sister," McCoy said.

  "You're not going to make trouble are you, Kenneth?" she asked.

  "I just came home from China," McCoy said. "I want to see Anne-Marie."

  "You were in China, were you?"

  "Yes, Sister."

  "Anne-Marie left the Sisters of the Holy Ghost," Sister Paul said, "and I'm sorry to tell you, she has also abandoned the Church."

  "Do you know where she is?"

  "Here in Norristown," Sister Paul said. "She's taken up with a Protestant."

  "Excuse me?"

  "She chose to marry a young man outside the Church. He's a Protestant whose name is Schulter. He has the Amoco station at Ninth and Walnut. They have two babies, a little girl and a little boy."

  "Thank you. Sister Paul," McCoy said.

  "I don't want you to do anything, Kenneth, that will cause your father more pain," she said. "I hope you've had time to grow up, to think things through."

  Chapter Eight

  (One)

  The man who walked out to the pump island when McCoy drove in wore an Amoco uniform: a striped shirt and trousers with a matching billed cap. There was an Amoco insignia on the brow of the cap and a nameplate, "Dutch," was sewn to the shirt breast. The man was about thirty, McCoy judged, and already wearing a spare tire.

  "Fill it with high-test, sir?" he asked.

  McCoy nodded. After Dutch had opened the hood, McCoy got out of the car.

  "You must have just had the oil changed," Dutch said, showing McCoy the dipstick. "Clean as a whistle and right to the top."

  "Your name Schulter?" McCoy asked.

  "That's right," Dutch said, warily curious.

  "I'm Anne-Marie's brother," McCoy said.

  Dutch hesitated a moment and then put out his hand. "Dutch Schulter," he said. "I heard-she told me-you was in the Marines."

  "I am," McCoy said.

  "You must be doing all right in the Marines," Dutch Schulter said, making a vague gesture first at the LaSalle. and then at McCoy himself.

  "I do all right," McCoy said.

  The gas pump made a chugging noise when the automatic filler nozzle was triggered. Dutch Schulter moved to the rear of the car, topped off the tank, then hung the hose up. McCoy looked at the pump. Eleven point seven gallons at 23.9 cents a gallon: $2.79. He took a wad of bills from his pocket and peeled off a ten-dollar bill.

  Dutch Schulter handed the change to him, together with a Coca-Cola glass.

  "They're free with a fill-up," he said.

  "How do I get to see my sister?" McCoy said.

  Schulter looked at him for a moment as if making up his mind, and then raised his voice: "Mickey!"

  A kid in an Amoco uniform appeared at the door of the grease-rack bay.

  "Hold the fort, Mickey," Dutch called. "I got to go home for a minute."

  Home was a row house on North Elm, a little wooden porch in front of a fieldstone house that smelled of baby shit, sour milk, and cabbage.

  Anne-Marie looked older than he expected. She was already getting fat and lumpy, and she had lost a couple of teeth. She cried when she saw him, and hugged him, and told him he had really growed up.

  Dutch touched his shoulder, and when McCoy turned to look at him, handed him a bottle of beer.

  "You're an uncle, Kenny," Anne-Marie said. "We got a boy and a girl, but I just got them to sleep, and you'll have to wait to see them. You can stay for supper?"

  "I thought I'd take you and Dutch out for supper," McCoy said.

  "You don't want to do that," she protested. "You won't believe what restaurants ask for food these days."

  "Yeah, I do," McCoy said.

  "What I should have done," Dutch said, "is had him follow me in the truck. You want to run me back by the station? Could you find your way back here again?"

  "Why don't you take my car?" McCoy said. "I've got no place else to go."

  "You got a car, Kenny?" Anne-Marie asked, surprised.

  "He's got a goddamned LaSalle convertible, is what he's got," Dutch said.

  She looked at him in surprise.

  "You been doing all right for yourself, I guess," she said.

  "I've been doing all right," McCoy said.

  "I'll put it up on the rack, and grease it," Dutch said. "And then have the kid works for me, you saw him, Mickey, wash it."

  "Thank you," McCoy said, and tossed him the keys.

  Dutch Schulter returned a few minutes after six, as soon as the night man came on at the station. McCoy was glad to see him. Anne-Marie was getting on his nerves. She was a goddamned slob. He had to tell her to change the diaper on the older kid; he had shit running down his leg from under his diaper.

  The sink was full of unwashed dishes. McCoy remembered that, come to think of it, his mother had been sort of a slob herself. Many of the times the old man had slapped her around, it had started with him bitching about something being dirty.

 
; She told him she would really rather make his supper herself. When Dutch returned with his car, she said, he could take her down to the Acme and she would get steaks or something; but she didn't mean it, and McCoy didn't want to eat in her dirty kitchen, off her dirty plates.

  She asked him if he had been to see "Daddy," and he told her no. And she told him she hadn't seen him either. He had been mad at her since she left the convent (and boy, could she tell him stories about what went on in that place!); and after she had married Dutch, outside the church and all, it had gotten worse.

  Dutch was a good man, she said. She had met him when she was working in the Highway Diner on the Bethlehem Pike after she left the convent. He had been nice to her, and one thing had led to another, and they'd started going out. Then they got married and started their family.

  McCoy did the arithmetic in his head, and decided she had the sequence wrong: She and Dutch started their family, and then got married. The old man could count, too, which might be one of the reasons he was pissed-off at her.

  How dare she embarrass Past Grand Exalted Commander Pat McCoy of the KC? She not only leaves (or gets kicked out of?) the convent, but she gets herself knocked up by some Dutchy she meets slinging hash at the Highway Diner.

  Dutch came home with the LaSalle all greased and polished, then took a bath and got dressed-up in a two-tone sports coat and slacks. Anne-Marie had on a too-tight spotted dress with a flowery print. They loaded the kids in the car and went looking for someplace to eat.

  Anne-Marie said the food in the 12th Street Bar & Grill was always good, and they didn't ask an arm and a leg for it. McCoy knew she was less concerned with good food and saving his money than she was in going where the old man would be hanging out so he'd see them together all dressed-up, and him driving a LaSalle.

  "I saw a place on the way into town, Norristown Tavern... Inn... that looked nice," McCoy said.

  "They charge an arm and a leg in there," Anne-Marie said.

  "Yeah, they do, Kenny," Dutch agreed. He did care, McCoy decided, what it was going to cost.

  "What the hell, I don't get to come all that often," McCoy said.

  When they were in the Norristown Inn, in a booth against the wall, Anne-Marie looked up from trying to force a spoonful of potatoes into the boy and whispered, "There's Daddy."

  Good ol' Pat McCoy was at the bar, with a sharp-faced female, her hair piled high on top of her head, her lipstick a red gash across her pale face... obviously the second Mrs. Patrick J. McCoy.

  McCoy thought it over, and when they were on their strawberry shortcake, he got up from the table without saying anything and walked to the bar.

  "Hello," he said to his father.

  His father nodded at him. The second Mrs. McCoy looked at him curiously.

  He's not surprised to see me, which means that he saw me at the table with Anne-Marie and Dutch. And didn't come over.

  "You're home, I see," McCoy's father said.

  "About ten days ago."

  McCoy's father moved his glass in little circles on the bar.

  "Learn anything in the Marine Corps?" McCoy's father asked.

  That told his new wife who I am. Now she doesn't like me either.

  "I learned a little," McCoy said.

  "So what are you doing now, looking for a job?"

  "Not yet."

  "Maybe the Dutchman'll give you one pumping gas," his father said. He laughed at his own wit and turned to his wife for an audience. She dutifully tittered.

  "Maybe he will," McCoy said, and walked back to the table.

  "What did he say?" Anne-Marie asked.

  "Not much," McCoy said.

  He told himself he was being a prick when the bill came and he got mad that Anne-Marie had ordered one of everything on the menu. He'd offered to take them to dinner; he shouldn't bitch about what it cost.

  He told Anne-Marie and Dutch that he had to go back to Philadelphia, so he couldn't stay over on the foldaway bed. But he promised to write. Then he dropped them at their row house. Before he left, he asked for Tommy's address.

  They were obviously pressed for dough, and he considered slipping Anne-Marie fifty bucks "to buy something for the kids," but decided against it. She'd already started moaning abut how hard it was to make it with two kids on what Dutch brought home from the Amoco station. If he gave her money, she would be back for more.

  He didn't return to Philly. He never intended to. Though he wasn't on leave, he didn't have to go back or make the reveille formation or anything. Lieutenant Fogarty had pointedly told him that no one was going to be looking for him around the platoon, and that if he didn't want to use up his leave time, he could sack out in the barracks whenever and check in with the first sergeant every couple of days.

  He just wanted to get away from the row house and the stink of baby shit and cabbage.

  He stopped outside of town, put the roof up, then drove to Bethlehem and checked into the Hotel Bethlehem. It wasn't the Bellevue Stratford, but it was nice, and when he went down to the dining room in the morning, they had breakfast steaks and corned beef hash on the menu. He ordered it up, fuck what it cost.

  Tommy lived in a rooming house, a great big old rambling building built on the side of a hill. He wasn't there, of course; but the landlady, a big pink-cheeked Polack woman told him he could probably catch him at the walk bridge over the railroad tracks when his shift was over, and that if he missed him there, he could find him at the Lithuanian Social Club.

  He drove around town. He saw Lehigh University and, just for the hell of it, drove inside. There really wasn't much to see. He was disappointed, and wondered why. What had he expected?

  He went back to the Hotel Bethlehem, and checked out. When the eight-to-four shift let out, he was standing at the end of the bridge over the railroad tracks hoping he would be able to spot Tommy.

  Tommy spotted him first. Tommy had changed so much he had let him walk right by him. But Tommy saw him out of the corner of his eye, and came back-even though the last fucking person in the fucking world he expected to see was his fucking brother on the fucking bridge wearing a fucking suit.

  They went to the Lithuanian Club, and drank a lot of beer. Once Tommy told the guys his fucking big brother was a fucking corporal in the fucking Marines, it was all right with them despite the fucking suit that made him look like a fucking fairy.

  The Lithuanian Club reminded McCoy of the Million Dollar Club in Shanghai. Not in looks. The Lithuanian Club was a dump. It smelled of beer and piss. But the Million Dollar Club was the place where Marines went because they had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do but get drunk when the duty day was over. And that's all the Lithuanian Club was, too, a place where the enlisted men from the steel mill went because there was no place else to go when they came away from the open hearths, and nothing to do but get drunk.

  Tommy reminded McCoy of a lot of Marines he knew, particularly in the line companies.

  They wound up in a whorehouse by the railroad station. McCoy paid for the all-night services of a peroxide blonde not because he was really all that interested in screwing her, but because the alternative was worse: He was too shit-faced to get in his car and drive back to Tommy's rooming house or the Hotel Bethlehem.

  The Corps was hell on drunk driving and/or speeding. He still hadn't accepted the possibility that he could become an officer. Which was the main reason why he hadn't said

  anything about Quantico to either Anne-Marie or Tommy. Besides, they probably wouldn't believe it. Which was easy to understand; he didn't quite believe it himself. But getting arrested for drunk driving or speeding would be the end of it. He wanted to give it a shot, anyway.

  Tommy pulled him out of the whore's bed at half-past six in the morning and said he had to go to fucking work and needed a fucking ride and some fucking breakfast: He couldn't work eight fucking hours on the fucking open hearth with nothing in his fucking stomach.

  They went to a greasy spoon and had eggs and home
fries and coffee. He dropped Tommy off at the walk bridge over the railroad tracks and drove back to the Navy Yard.

  (Two)

  The San Mateo Club San Mateo, California 27 August 1941

  The building that housed the San Mateo Club had been built, in 1895, as the country residence of Andrew Foster, Sr. It so remained until 1939, when Andrew Foster, Jr., seventy, on the death of his wife, moved into the penthouse atop the Andrew Foster Hotel in San Francisco and put the estate on the market.