Orrie's Story

by Thomas Berger

  “So you show up just about the time they’re carrying out the body.”

  “Yeah,” said E.G. “It’ll still be early enough for a visit under ordinary circumstances. What would be more natural than me showing up to welcome my cousin home from the war? And lucky I got there then, what with this tragedy, a time when you need all the help you can get.” He reached for the cigarette in her right hand, his left forearm across her breasts. Both of them were naked on this unusually warm night for September.

  With one hand Esther placed the cigarette in E.G.’s lips and with the other she pushed his fingers down over her belly and into the damp thicket between her thighs. In a moment, still with the cigarette in his mouth, he had flopped her over as if she were weightless and entered her forcefully from behind.

  * * *

  Next morning, after Ellie finally took her wan self off to school on the two-mile walk she preferred, even in bad weather, to riding with her uncle, Esther repaired to the bathroom to run through the procedure by which her husband would be electrocuted. There was an immediate bit of bad news: the temperature had fallen significantly throughout the night, which could have been expected, but as yet the air gave no suggestion that it would soon rise again. They had counted on another scorcher that began early and by afternoon would make an oven of the bathroom and so make obligatory the use of the electric fan.

  But E.G. had warned her against capricious pessimism. “It’s a sound plan, as long as we don’t lose our nerve.”

  Like Ellie, Orrie ignored Uncle Erie as much as possible. E.G.’s holiday gifts, always in the form of cash, were invariably transferred by the boy to his mother, without deductions. She preferred to believe her son was being more generous to her than negative to her lover. But no such interpretation was possible when he spurned E.G.’s offer to help with college costs.

  “What the scholarship doesn’t pay for, I’ll get waiting tables.” Orrie’s tone was causelessly bitter, and his chin was at a defiant thrust that Esther found disrespectful.

  “Hell, Orrie,” E.G. said, elaborately opening his wallet, “I’ve got some portraits of Ben Franklin here, burning a hole in my pocket.” He began to extract and wave hundred-dollar bills, one by one. A couple of those would cover dormitory room and board all year, which was more than could be said for the job Orrie had been given by the college employment agency. The scholarship took care of only tuition, with a modest allowance for books.

  “Go ahead, Orrie,” Esther urged. “Uncle Erie means it.” E.G. began a movement that might have ended in his forcing the bills into the boy’s shirt pocket, had not Orrie backed up violently and balled his fists.

  Infuriated, Esther shouted, “Don’t you act like that!”

  Orrie gave her one contemptuous stare and left the room, and not long afterward, without saying a decent goodbye, the house itself. It was by accident that she glanced out the window at the right time to see his departure for college, the shabby old suitcase of his father’s in hand and, worse, wearing the jacket to one of Augie’s old suits, a salt-and-pepper tweed, so out of style it was belted in the back. Orrie had the pathetic belief he could get away with this as a sportcoat when he wore it, as now, with a pair of green corduroy slacks that scraped the ground at his heels, in an era when the prevailing style for young fellows was “pegged” pants, the cuffs well above the shoes.

  She was about to call to E.G. to come and have a look but was suddenly restrained by a feeling of loyalty, affection, and an uncomfortable pity for her son, which she soon enough however converted into a more convenient hatred for the father who had selfishly run off to war to try to prove his manhood while leaving wife and children behind to fend for themselves.

  That had been several weeks earlier. She had not expected soon to hear from Orrie, given the nature of his leaving, and she did not. But he had already written twice to Ellie. Esther intercepted both letters, read and destroyed them. This was done to retain her power in the house, but she was not without a more tender emotion. She genuinely loved Orrie and therefore could be wounded by him, and she knew he loved her in return, and not just, conventionally, as a mother. They had always had profound affinities. Even when Augie was at home, Orrie displayed a marked preference for her company and a notable lack of attraction for his father’s pursuits. After the boy had rejected a series of invitations to rabbit hunts, big-league ballgames, and shows in which stunt drivers crashed through burning walls, Augie wondered about Orrie’s virility.

  “He ought to get out of the house more, have fun like a man.”

  “He’s a child.”

  “He’s started his teens,” said Augie. “I hope he likes girls.”

  Esther was pleased to notice that Orrie never displayed such an interest in her presence, not even when the Burchnal kid, two backyards away, sunbathed her precociously developed body in shorts and halter. “That girl’s really a mess,” Esther had said to her son, who had given every evidence of not disagreeing.

  To Augie she protested. “I don’t want him coming home with a disease from one of the little chippies around this town. He’s going to get somewhere in life!” Which of course was to make more of an attack on her husband than to express a hope for her son, though she was sincere enough as to the latter: she wanted Orrie not simply to succeed in the monetary sense, like his uncle Erie, but to have prestige of the kind that E.G. did not enjoy. She was aware that E.G. had no real friends but herself, whereas everybody professed to adore Augie—while taking their trade not to his store but to the nearest Woolworth’s. People were such rotten hypocrites. E.G. was right in his conviction that fear was a more useful effect to evoke in others than affection. Nevertheless she did want Orrie to be a man of unimpeachable esteem, and that meant, in peacetime or war, anywhere in the world: doctor.

  Orrie had winced and shaken his crewcut fifteen-year-old head when she first mentioned that. “God. Touching sores? All that blood? Getting coughed in the face?”

  “They get used to those kind of things,” said Esther. “It soon becomes just a job like any other. But you don’t have to be a family doctor. There are all kinds of specialties, and they pay a lot more besides. Not all of them would be so bloody. What about the doctor who mainly takes X rays?”

  Ellie intruded. “Or a nut-doctor. You know psy-uh—” Her mother told her to be quiet.

  Orrie continued to grimace. “We’re cutting up a frog now in biology, and I don’t like it very much.”

  “Doctors are honored everywhere they go,” Esther said. “Because everybody needs them. The President needs his. People will look up to you, Orrie. The greatest and strongest men in the world must obey their doctors.”

  “But Orrie wouldn’t like making people take medicine,” said Ellie. “He wants to be an artist.”

  Esther glared at her. “I thought I just told you to shut up.” She resented Ellie’s implication that he might be on closer terms with his sister than with the woman who gave him birth. She turned to Orrie. “I know he thinks that’s what he wants to be at this point, but he hasn’t yet had to face the world. Who’s going to buy your art? The people around here don’t even know what art is. They hang up calendars they get for free. So you go to the big city: who do you know there? And unless you know somebody, you’re not going to get anywhere. They don’t give strangers any breaks. The day of the free lunch is long gone.”

  “I don’t know what I’ll be in the future,” said Orrie. “I just like to draw.”

  Ellie would not be stifled. “Mrs. Taviner hangs all his pictures up in the art room. You ought to see them.”

  With his usual modesty Orrie said, “She puts up a lot of stuff by other people, too. It’s just a school in a little town.”

  “She gave him a book!” cried Ellie.

  Orrie corrected her. “She lent it to me. It’s full of oil paintings by Rembrandt and others. God, I’ve never yet even painted the right kind of water color.”

  “What’s the right kind?”

  “Not mu
ddy! I’m hopeless.” He ducked his head.

  “No, you’re not!” cried Ellie.

  But with justifiable self-righteousness, Esther said, “There you are. You’re probably not cut out to make art more than just a hobby. If you become a doctor you’ll be able to buy all the art your heart desires.”

  He was irritated. “Buy? That’s not the point. I like to make things of my own.”

  “As a doctor, you’ll make people well,” said she. “That’s the greatest kind of making there is.”

  Orrie not only loved his mother. He honored her judgment. When the time came for him to go to college, though the actual departure was unpleasant, she had the comforting knowledge that he intended to take the premedical program of studies. The matter with which she had had no success at all, however, was in persuading him to be more friendly with E.G., and that was unfortunate, insofar as Orrie’s conception, unlike that of either of the girls, happened during one of those periods when Erie was in town. He was gone again before Esther knew she was pregnant and did not return until Orrie was half grown, at which time E.G. first entertained the suspicion, since become a conviction, that he was the boy’s father.

  3

  The returning hero was touched to see a homemade banner draped across the top rank of bottles: WELCOME HOME, AUGIE. It seemed to be part of a bedsheet, lettered probably with a shoe-polish dauber cap.

  Behind the bar as he was, facing the door, Herm naturally saw Augie before the others did, and without telling them why, suddenly demanded silence.

  He lifted the glass of ice water he always kept under the bar and said, “Here’s to your friend and mine…” Because he was staring over their heads, by the time he had pronounced Augie’s name they had all spun around on their stools.

  Rickie Wicks stepped down and was first to shake Augie’s hand though he had not been that close a friend before the war, whereas Joe Becker, who of all those present had known Augie best, was the last of the men to greet him and was least demonstrative though not for lack of regard.

  Augie, still holding his suitcase, nodded at the ladies. “Hi, Molly. Hi, Gladys.”

  “You look fine,” said Gladys. “Just fine, with the ribbons and all.”

  Molly wore a little smile that just barely raised the corners of her mouth. “You leave any live Germans behind to clean up the mess? Or did you wipe ‘em all out?”

  It was dispiriting to Augie to find her with the same sarcastic manner she had displayed prewar. Not much was left of Molly’s looks now, but when they had been in high school together, she was, if not exactly pretty, attractive, to a painfully shy kid like himself. At least her skin had been clear. They became pals, walked home together, and routinely consulted each other on homework. His parents called her his “girl,” and he himself began to think of her that way too, but when he finally got the nerve to take her hand in that phase of their homeward route when they cut through a little stand of trees where no one would see, she drew hers away as if it had been burned, made it into a fist, and shook it at him. He got the bizarre feeling that she believed him a pervert, as if she had been a boy with whom he tried to hold hands. From then on his feeling for her changed. In return she became wry. Not all these years had changed her.

  Herm had drawn him a beer. “We’ll go in back for lunch after a while. It’s on the house.” He handed the mug over, then said, fingers twitching, “Let’s have that valise.”

  Augie gave him the suitcase, which Herm stowed behind the bar.

  “How’s that stack up with German brew?” asked Rickie Wicks.

  “A lot better,” Augie said, having taken a swig. “Can’t beat anything American. You learn that right away wherever you go.” He spotted his postcards fastened with yellowing Scotch tape to the lower right corner of the back-of-bar mirror, and pointed. “Hey, you kept them.”

  “Proud of you, Augie boy.” Herm leaned into the bartop. “Now tell us about them ribbons.”

  When nearsighted Bob Terwillen began to examine them at close range, Augie identified the most important.

  Al Hagman called down to Joe Becker at the far end of the group, asking him whether he had ever seen a Silver Star. Joe said he had not, but stayed where he was.

  “Must have been darn rough.”

  “Let’s put it this way, Al. I didn’t do any more than any of you would have done in my place.” There were good-natured jeers of disbelief.

  Molly shrieked, “Since when are you gettin’ so modest?”

  Terwillen hoisted his glass. “Here’s to you, Aug. God bless you. Just glad you got home without leaving any part of yourself on a foreign field.”

  Later they all except the women, who professed to have duties at home (Glad had to feed her cat), went into the back room where meals were served and ate lunch, Augie’s being a thick T-bone steak smothered in onions and paid for by the others (each chipping in a quarter; on the way home later on, Hagman reflected that Herm had made money on that deal). The rest of them ordered the blue plate: today, hash topped with a fried egg. The high point of this phase of the celebration was when Herm’s wife, Gwen, who was the chef, brought out a layer cake that Rickie Wicks had got from the local bakery not an hour earlier, with just time enough for the baker to do a rush decoration job: stock rosebuds of frosting, much the same as used for weddings and birthdays, around the rim of the top, but framing “Welcome Back, Augie,” handwritten in edible red script, beneath which was planted a miniature paper replica of the American flag.

  Nobody asked Augie for particulars of his combat experiences, though he had been prepared to give such from what he had learned frequenting a bar near a big Army hospital down South where wounded veterans returned from foreign action to recuperate. He had bought the officer’s uniform and captain’s bars and ribbons from the legitimate owner thereof who had lost heavily at craps and poker. Any genuine holder of a decoration could obtain a replacement from the War Department if the original was lost or stolen, so nobody had been deprived.

  At the time the United States got into the war, Augie’s business had failed and his wife was having an affair with his cousin. He was in no position to make trouble when it was only by means of the same relative that he avoided bankruptcy. Only some desperate measure could save him. Harold Banks’s son Jerry, often on the wrong side of the law, had escaped prosecution for a series of petty thefts from auto-parts stores by agreeing to join the paratroops, and Sam Potter had a boy who enlisted in the Navy to evade final exams as a high-school senior. The war could be used for your own ends if you were young enough, but Augie was no kid. It had taken him a while to realize that the mere appearance of joining the Army might serve as well as the fact. All he really had to do to establish the premise was to leave home. Esther was unlikely to send the police to fetch him back, involved as she was with Erie, and certainly not if Augie sent her regular amounts of money in the guise of G.I. family allotments. That he might be able to get away with the imposture made the idea at first the more frightening. He had not previously been the least daring in any area of life. He had married Esther because she was the only girl who would go to bed with him. He had inherited the store on the death of his father.

  But what of the children? He was closest to golden-haired Gena, who was just at the threshold of womanhood. He had little in common with Orrie, who had always been more Esther’s son than his own. It was possible that Orrie would never be one hundred percent masculine: he seemed averse to certain male pursuits by nature, for example, hunting and football. When tackled gently by his father, a very young Orrie burst into tears as his little body hit the grass. It could not have hurt; the boy took worse spills all day long. Later on, when old enough to go out for high-school teams, Orrie was saved by his size, having not then grown beyond five-four and a hundred ten pounds. As for hunting, an unfortunate thing happened the first and only time his father had taken him for pheasant. Augie brought down a bird with a poor shot that only disabled a wing. The creature dragged itself into the undergr
owth and when discovered, with heaving body and the anticipation of death in its glittering eye, was admittedly not a happy sight for a normal hunter, let alone a squeamish youngster. But much of manhood consisted of dealing with responsibilities irrespective of prevailing conditions. Bagging game was to bring meat to the table. To put a wounded thing out of its misery was a human obligation. Augie opened his clasp knife and, working as quickly and mercifully as he could, cut off the pheasant’s head. Wiping the knife on the ground and his hands on the legs of the old pants he wore when hunting, he heard Orrie running away through the field.

  Later on, in the car, Augie said, “If you think hunting’s wrong, then you oughtn’t eat meat at all. Because this is the kindest way any animal can be put to death. You know how fhey kill and butcher cattle?” But like so many of the moralistic (most of whom were women), Orrie wanted to indulge himself in easy emotion and not to face the issue.

  Not long after Augie went presumably to war, Gena had herself run away from home and had never been heard from since. Esther wrote him a vicious letter in which he got all the blame. As if Gena had needed another example than her mother to go wrong! Augie as it happened did not take such a bleak view. He thought it likely that the girl had gone to Hollywood, to try to become one of the blonde stars like those whose movie-mag photos she clipped out and pasted on the wall over her bed. Gena was pretty enough for the screen, but you needed more than beauty to succeed there, as you needed more than brains to make a go of business, which Augie had discovered the hard way. You needed luck. He had never had any—until he began to make his own.

  He had got off the bus in a Southern city that offered a choice of defense-industry plants, all of which were eager to hire workers, no experience asked, and pay them what on the heels of the Depression were remarkably generous wages: on an aircraft-engine assembly line, with overtime, he was soon making in excess of a hundred dollars a week, more than twice what only yesterday would have been a nice income. His room, in a house of such, was overpriced by a rent-gouging landlord of the kind that was created by wartime, costing half a week’s pay per month, and he had to eat most of his meals out, except for canned soup heated on a hotplate that was illicit on those premises, running his expenses even higher, for you could not fill yourself up at supper for much under six bits. But he spent little on anything else except nightly beers, and was able not only to send Esther a monthly “allotment” that was equivalent to the one the government would have paid, but also put something aside in the form of war bonds, for which an automatic deduction was made from his paycheck.