by John Hersey
* * *
—
One night they went to the movies. The picture was Bombardier, and everything was fine until a bomb came down on a Japanese; the Japanese was running toward the camera, the bomb went off, the concussion exploded a big oil drum and blew the Japanese to Japanese hell. Joe felt the blows and the pain all through his body and his heart began pounding. He said, “Excuse me,” to Mary, and he got up abruptly and left. She followed him out as quickly as she could, but he had already hurried home.
Joe felt sick and upset all that night, and from the next day on things seemed to go badly. Joe began to be touchy all the time. People bothered him.
A veteran of the first war came into the barbershop one day when Joe was talking with Charley, and began shooting his face off. He said, “It’s going to happen the same thing in this war that it did the last—after the war England will take all the gravy.”
Joe got angry and said, “We are American citizens, we give a square deal and we get back a square deal, save criticisms till after.”
The veteran said, “I think it’s rather stupid sending lend-lease to Russia. Russia will declare war on us, she’ll be looking for us in the future.”
Joe was very angry. “Those Russians can fight,” he said. “Let ‘em win this war first.”
Very soon afterward he was riding out to the plant on a bus and an elderly woman sat down next to him and said, “You poor boy.” Joe’s face got red. She asked, “Where did you get maimed like that?”
Joe said, “Tunisia.”
The sympathetic lady said, “Dear me.” Then she added with genuine interest, “Are those little Japs as bad as people say?”
Joe lost his temper wildly. “Damn it, lady,” he said, “they don’t have Japs in Africa.”
She was alarmed at his outburst, and she said, “My goodness, son.”
Joe said, “I’m sorry, lady, but you people get me all nerved up. A person has gambled with their life, it’s wrong soldiers should have to listen to such ignorance.”
Each day Joe seemed to get more and more out of control. Someone made a perfectly innocent remark in the drugstore about rationing, and Joe turned and said, “We should all have our food cut in two by fifty per cent, and we’d still be in luxury compared with those occupied countries, hell, they was eating grape leaves over there.” And when a girl at the mill, thinking she was kidding Joe, called him a privileged character, he said loudly, “I don’t ask for any privileges. I can take care of myself.”
But the worst blow-up was his fight.
The fight took place in the Depot Lunch. Joe stopped in there for a drink one night with Charley. Charley was sitting on Joe’s left at one of the tables against the wall. A sergeant from Camp Prestley came in and sat on Joe’s right, where he could not see Joe’s left arm. The sergeant had two privates with him, and all three were half cut on beer.
The sergeant said, “Too many healthy-looking guys around here in civilian clothes. They ought to be in uniform.” Joe pretended not to hear.
When the sergeant spoke again it was obvious he was trying to bait Joe and Charley. He said, “Must be Four-F.”
Joe said very quietly, “Take it easy there.”
The sergeant turned and grabbed Joe’s right arm and began to shove. He said, “Get into uniform, Four-F.”
Joe said sharply, “Quit bulldozing me around.”
The sergeant said, “Trying to dodge the draft?”
Joe said, “Listen, you dance-hall Ranger, you’re talking to an old trooper here.”
The sergeant didn’t get the point. He went on, “Four-F.”
Joe said, “Listen, I had more bad time in this Army than you had good time in it.”
The sergeant was too drunk or too stupid to understand. He still had not seen Joe’s left arm. He stood up. Joe stood up and was in a tearing red mood. He clenched his right fist and his stump felt queer because he wanted to clench his left fist too. The stump made some little left jabs and then the right arm came around in a haymaker.
Charley ran around the table and picked the sergeant up off the floor and said, “Stand up and shut up. Don’t say a thing or else you’ll get thrown out of here.”
But the other two soldiers jumped on Joe and Charley, and the sergeant came back in. Then several others, thinking this an ordinary soldier-civilian brawl, jumped in too. Joe stood in the middle of it all, swinging hard with his one arm, trying to learn very quickly how to balance a one-armed blow with a little swing of the hips. Some of his blows landed, some missed. He took some around the chest. His stump hurt sharply.
One by one the brawlers noticed Joe’s empty sleeve. One by one they pulled out of the fight, until there was no fight left. All the soldiers except the sergeant walked out of the place. The Depot Lunch grew quiet. The sergeant went to the bar and drank alone.
After a while he walked soberly to Joe’s table. He stretched out his hand. Joe shook it.
The sergeant said, “I made a bad mistake. I want to buy you a round of drinks.”
Joe thought a moment and then said, “No, I want to buy you a round.” Then he smiled and said, “Since I’m a Four-F, I got a good job, I can afford a round, and you can’t.”
* * *
—
In the next few days people kept asking Joe about the fight, and that upset him more than the fight itself. Finally he went to Charley and said, “Charley, why can’t these people lay off? I thought I traded part of my body for a clean conscience, but they keep bothering me. A bunch of these older folks, these barroom quartets or what-you-call-’em, they got the whole war situation solved on one glass of beer, they size it all up, they keep arguing with me. All I want to do is stay around myself and think it over.”
Charley said, “Why argue with them?”
Joe said, “You’ve broken a commandment, you’ve had the supreme thrill, you’ve killed somebody. It makes you restless, you get so you got to pick a fight.”
He grew increasingly irritable. In the mill one day his foreman, who had some kind of inferiority complex about not having been to the war, told Joe he was spending too much time in the toilet.
Joe said, “I can’t handle these little gidgets and gadgets. It makes my hand nervous. I have to have a smoke.”
The foreman said something about not having to smoke all day, and Joe blew up and quit.
A couple of days later he moved out of his family’s house into an unfurnished room. He said he didn’t want to sponge any longer. He also said, “I don’t like this neighborhood, too many trucks and buses, it’s just like before an action, they’re all going somewhere, you never know where but they’re all going like hell. You can’t sleep.”
Joe’s family loaned him an iron bed. He found it just as hard to sleep in the bare room as it had been at home. One night he would lie awake reliving his experiences, the next night he would do the same thing, only imagining himself more heroic than he had actually been: he would save his battalion, he would capture slews of Germans, he would end up walking the floor and smoking.
It was at this period that Joe joined both the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Disabled American Veterans. Joe took comfort from the meetings, where members talked over all the problems of returned soldiers.
But all through his unhappy days, Mary was Joe’s greatest support. She went walking with him every evening; they must have walked a hundred miles in those days. She sided with him in almost everything he did. She kept saying he ought to go into business for himself. He asked how she expected him to do that, when he had no money and was no use.
She urged him at least to go and inquire about the bakery. Joe went to Seraviglia’s cousins, and they said the bank owned the bakery now. Joe went to the bank, and they told him there that the bakery was for sale, but there was a $4,900 mortgage on it. Joe told Mary it was hopeless. She said to take a job—but not t
o forget that someday he would be his own boss.
He took a job as a clerk in a local grocery store, Maturo Brothers. It was hard on his feet, and all the reaching with his right arm made his stump hurt. He quit after three days. He signed on with John B. North, riggers and haulers, supposedly doing desk work in the office. On the fourth day the company fell shorthanded, and Mr. North asked Joe if he’d mind riding out on a job. The job involved moving an upright piano down some porch steps. That was no work for a one-armed man; Joe quit on the spot. He took a job with Moley, the line contractor, as a lineman’s assistant. He understood he would merely be handling tools and cutting and unreeling wire, and he thought he would enjoy the outdoor work. But they made him help set up poles, lifting and tugging at the heavy logs, propping them into deep holes. He quit there, too.
* * *
—
The night after he quit Moley’s he went out with Mary. He talked about his jobs. He said, “Is this what we laid in slit trenches for? Is this what we stood those bullets for? I’m going around talking to myself, Mary, I tell myself everything’s going to be O.K., then I get the real picture, I can’t do much at all, there’s no hope for me here in this lousy town.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“I tell you how bad it is: sometimes I think I’d rather be out there fighting again, that’s how bad.”
“What seems to be the trouble, Joey?”
“It’s a lot of things,” Joe said. “One thing, out there a man is proud, he’s in the best damn unit in the whole frigging army, he’s got buddies who would gladly die for him, he’s got something to do all day, a routine. He’s got responsibility. If he flops, somebody’s going to die. Back here, I’m not busy, I got no buddies, nobody’s interested in giving me responsibility. I’m just burning up my days.”
Mary said, “God doesn’t punish people, Joe. People punish themselves. You got to do something about this.”
“Wish to God I could.”
“Would you be fed up if I gave you some advice?”
“I’ve took so much advice and orders for two years, I’m still in the habit.”
“Don’t try to earn a million dollars the first job you take.”
“I don’t care if King Solomon himself advised you along those lines. Out in the field you’ve heard all these stories about the gravy train back home, you get so you believe them.”
“Don’t try to be a bank president, Joe. Don’t try to earn a thousand bucks a week. Be satisfied with what’s coming to you.”
Joe thought a little, then said, “I guess you’re right, Mary. I got thousand-buck ambitions and forty-five-buck ability.”
“It’s all right to have ambitions,” Mary said, “and maybe when you have a chain of baker shops you’ll get a thousand a week.”
“That damn bakery again.”
Mary said, “I just thought of something, Joe. Why don’t you go see Mr. Shaughnessy about the bakery?”
“What use he got for a guy that quit his mill? What would I say to him?”
“He likes you, Joey, maybe he could figure out some way for you to pick up the property.”
After a couple of days of winding up his courage, Joe did go to see Mr. Shaughnessy. He told Mr. Shaughnessy about the bakery, how nice it looked from the outside. He spoke of the mortgage, and he asked, “What can a man do to beat a mortgage?”
Mr. Shaughnessy was noncommittal. He said he’d think it over, and asked Joe to leave his address. Joe couldn’t figure out whether Mr. Shaughnessy was still sore at him for having left the knitting mill. Joe was discouraged by the conversation.
Four days later a messenger from the knitting mill came to Joe’s room and told Joe to report to Mr. Shaughnessy’s office. When Joe got there Mr. Shaughnessy had a lawyer with him. He told Joe to come with them, and they went out to Mr. Shaughnessy’s Packard and drove off. Joe didn’t know what it was all about.
Mr. Shaughnessy pulled up in front of the bakery. He and the lawyer and Joe got out. Mr. Shaughnessy went up and unlocked the door and motioned the others in.
Joe said, “How come you got the key to the bakery?”
Mr. Shaughnessy said, “It’s yours, Joe.”
Joe said, “You wouldn’t pull my leg, Mr. Shaughnessy.”
Mr. Shaughnessy said, “We got together a small syndicate of men here in Onteoga who have confidence in you, Joe. We’ve bought out the mortgage on the bakery and we want you to run it.”
Then the lawyer went into a long song and dance about common stock, forty per cent for Joe, sixty per cent for “the syndicate,” a lot of stuff Joe didn’t understand. All he could think about was that he wanted to tell Mary. He hurried off to tell her as soon as he could get away.
Mr. Shaughnessy had arranged to send Joe to a bakery in Binghamton to learn the trade. Joe spent three weeks there as an apprentice and then came back to be his own boss.
* * *
—
In those first days Joe Souczak was a proud baker. He worked like a slave. He loved the smell of the dough in the proofing box as the bread came up, and his one hand, growing strong now, soon became expert at knocking the gas off and rounding the loaves. He kept his oven at exactly 400°, he pinched off his loaves and scaled them at exactly eighteen ounces. He reached the peel into the deep oven and scooped out the loaves like an old hand. He ruined some loaves, but they had told him in Binghamton that the only way to learn was to have a few bad batches. One day he left the salt out, and what his teachers said was true: “Bread without salt tastes like dirt.” After that he always measured the salt into the dough mixer first of all the ingredients. Salt, then flour, then water, then yeast and enriching tablets in lukewarm water. The mixing, the rising, the rounding, the scaling, the proofing, the slitting, the baking, the cooling—it was all a daily rite, and Joe in his white baker’s robe felt like some high-and-mighty priest of bread.
Mary came in every morning and helped for a while. She was just as proud as Joe. Joe could see her pride, and he knew it was about time to speak his mind to her. He still was not sure of his right to ask for her, but he was positive of the need and he certainly had the urge.
One night he borrowed the family car and took Mary to Charter’s. They had a fine meal and quite a few drinks. Joe was not particular about drinks; he would toss off anything that passed under his nose. The evening was fast and happy, and on the way home Joe stopped the car.
“I’m on the up-and-up,” he said. “We taken in $64.85 this week.” He always said “we” when he talked with Mary about the bakery.
“That’s wonderful, Joe.”
“Of course,” Joe said, “we’re not going to have as much in our pocket while we’re building up our stocks of ingredients and things as we would have.”
“That doesn’t matter, Joey.”
“I got a pension coming,” Joe said. “A sixty-per-cent disability means sixty bucks a month, plus another thirty-five because I lost the arm. I’m grabbing that mustered-out pay: I’m expecting a check for three hundred smackers any day from the Army. I’m doing fine.”
“You’re doing very good, Joe.”
“You understand, I won’t ever be rich. I’m too good-hearted, I could never get rich.”
“Who wants to be rich?”
“I don’t know how it is with you.”
“It’s the same as it always was, Joe.”
Joe pulled out a cigarette and said, “I’m great stuff for these butts. I got started like a chimney on that invasion over there.” He fiddled with the cigarette.
Mary said, “I want to marry you in spite of the arm, Joe. I like your strong right arm.”
Joe was quiet for a long time. Finally he said, “How’s June? June O.K.?”
“June would be good, Joe. June would be very good.”
For a couple of days Joe was wildly happy. He now had what C
harley had said he needed: the right job and the right girl. Everything, he thought, was going to be hunky-dory. But then Joe found out that his serenity was neither permanent nor even real.
It rained on the third day after he and Mary became engaged. On the way to the bakery, walking through the rain, Joe saw a new war poster in a store window. It was a lurid picture of death on a battlefield, with a young man pointing an accusing finger at passers-by. The young man looked like one of Joe’s friends in Company G who had been killed. The poster shocked Joe. He felt a little dizzy as he went to the bakery. Joe forgot to put flour on the cloths in the proofing box, so when the bread came up it was all stuck to the cloth. The dampness crept into his stump and it began to ache; then his head did, too.
Mary came into the bakery at about noon and found Joe slumped at the roll-top desk with his hand over his eyes. She said, “What’s the matter, Joe?”
He looked up and said, “I got me a scare this morning.” And he told her what he had seen.
Mary said, “The only person who can help Joe Souczak is Joe Souczak.”
“Mary, I don’t want to be a wreck, nobody wants to be a wreck from this war.”
“You’re no wreck, you’re going good, Joey. Look at this bakery.”
“You’re the only thing that keeps me going any good at all.” Then Joe thought about the war again, and he frowned and said, “I got to concentrate on my business, got to concentrate my mind, that’s what I got to do. God, I wish I could forget a lot of these past incidents. That’s the way I’d like to do if I only could. God, if I could.” Joe leaned forward and put his hand back over his face. “If only I could,” he said.
