Summer of '42 Read online

  Benjie glanced up at his arm and offered a great profundity: “Eleven minutes to three.” No one picked up on his brilliant observation, but it was no loss to the world.

  Oscy recovered. “My dumb brother, he’s a dentist in the Army. I can’t believe it. He was such a tough kid. A dentist. Jesus, he makes me ashamed.”

  Benjie spoke. “My brother is a cook in the Navy. Says he’s getting a Purple Heart for roast beef.” Benjie laughed.

  Hermie spoke. “My sister’s in high school.” He wondered why he said that. It could only get him into trouble. It did.

  Benjie, the barracuda, moved in. “How come you got no brother, Hermie?”

  “My sister’s got a brother. It works out.” If that was the end of it, Hermie figured he was getting out cheap. It wasn’t the end of it.

  “I think your sister’s got a sister.” Coming from Benjie, that was so clever that Hermie was off-balance for a moment.

  By the time he understood the depth of the insult Oscy had joined the conversation. “I’m going into the Marines when I go. I like their uniforms.”

  Benjie had a preference, too. “I’m gonna be a Ranger.”

  Oscy decided to bait Benjie. It was so easy to bait Benjie that sometimes it just wasn’t worth it. But things were dull, so—“It’s still the Army, same uniform. You’ve been conned into thinking the Rangers are their own organization. They’re not. Wrong, Benjie. Wrong and stupid. But very typical.”

  Benjie bristled. “Screw. You wear a thing on your arm that distinctly says ‘Ranger.’”

  Oscy countered. “From far away it still looks like you’re in the Army.”

  “Screw. When a guy comes up close, he sees that you’re a Ranger.”

  “Double screw. By the time someone comes up to read your arm you could be dead.”

  “Triple screw to you, Oscy. Long before that guy ever—”

  “There must be some girls on this God-forsaken island.” It was Hermie again, reporting in from left field, where a ball hadn’t been hit in months.

  Oscy rolled over in the surf, much preferring to carry on a dialogue with Hermie because Benjie was such a simpleton. “What branch you going in, Hermie?”

  “My father says the war’ll be over before I’m old enough. So I’m not going.”

  Oscy didn’t like the sound of that answer. It was too quick, too good an advertisement that Hermie wasn’t of a mind to be drawn into a debate, and he was going to get a rise out of Hermie or die. “What does your father know? He’s a salesman.”

  “He reads Time magazine. And cut it out, Oscy, because I know what you’re doing and you can’t.”

  On that note of absurdity Oscy rolled over in the water, and the baton was thus silently passed to Benjie, who nobly took the anchor leg. “You know what your trouble is, Hermie?”

  “Yeah. You.”

  “Your trouble is you got a sister in high school.”

  He didn’t intend it to happen, but the lunacy of Benjie’s remark got Hermie so peeved that he was sucked in. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means if you had a brother in danger, your father wouldn’t be so smart.”

  “I got a cousin in danger. My cousin Ronald. He’s a major in the Aleutian Islands. In Kiska, for your information.”

  “A cousin’s not a brother.”

  “To his brother he’s a brother.”

  “How do I know he has a brother?”

  “He has a brother.”

  “Yeah. I only have your word on that, Hermie.”

  Hermie rolled over. There was no dealing with nincompoops and he hated himself for having tried. And so he withdrew from all further discussion. “I don’t know why I talk to you idiots. You’re idiots.”

  Oscy was back in the competition, speaking soft but carrying a big stick. “Hermie, you gotta stop insulting us. There’s a war on, you know.”

  “Jesus,” Hermie mumbled. For it was precisely that kind of remark that made him prefer the company of cutlets and sea gulls to that of his nearest and dearest friends.

  Oscy was standing. Standing and smiling. Hermie looked up as the shadow crossed his face. When Oscy stood and smiled, something was afoot. “Now, Hermie…because I don’t want to belt you out, for your punishment I’m gonna take your stupid shirt.” Which he did. “I will return it to you when you’ve learned patriotism.”

  Oscy walked away, holding Hermie’s shirt by one sleeve and dragging the rest of it through the crud that lined the beach where the water washed in all things smelly. Benjie got up and followed Oscy, faithful Igor, the bumpkin. Hermie didn’t move, he just watched. It was a time to rationalize his not going to rescue his shirt from Oscy Hitler. First, Hermie figured, he didn’t much care for that shirt, which was why he always wore it to the beach and nowhere else. Second, if he never got the shirt back, it would be a relatively easy thing to leak the news to his mother, the Crimson Avenger, who would then take it up with Oscy’s mother, the Cat Woman, and after that, not only would the shirt be returned, but Oscy would be in solitary for a week on saltines and water. But all that was mere speculation. The real question was: Was a green-and-yellow checked, short-sleeved, un-Sanforized shirt worth going to war over merely because Hermie’s pride of ownership had been impugned? The answer was quick and simple. For a McGregor shirt, you fight. But for Fruit of the Loom, which was the case, the hell with it. Fuck you, Oscy. Choke on it.

  Less than fifteen yards up the beach, Oscy reversed gears and returned, not choking. Benjie, the pilot fish, returned with his master. Oscy stood over Hermie and let the shirt drop like a parachute onto Hermie, who didn’t budge and didn’t even appear to show any interest. “And let that be a lesson to you.”

  Though Hermie’s head was almost completely covered by the Fruit of the Loom abomination, his vision was not quite obliterated. One eye could still see from the shirt’s armpit, and it was looking down the beach very keenly. And the eye told the brain what it was looking at. And the brain told the heart, and the heart spread the news to the penis, which began burrowing into the wet sand like a Lilliputian steam shovel.

  She was there. A lithe figure striding toward the ocean. The woman. She walked to a place on the beach and claimed it for all time by spreading her beach towel upon it. It fluttered in the breeze, a banner of love, a semaphore of passion.

  Oscy’s voice. “What’s he looking at?”

  Benjie’s voice. “It’s that lady again.”

  Lady Again then lay upon her back to take the sun. Her bathing suit glistened, for it was made of ten thousand true diamonds, each one cut to perfection by a different Belgian gemcutter, who then died happily. Her legs were long and smooth and pretty, the both of them, the one with the knee up, as well as the one with the knee flat. The legs were glorious and identical; you could take your pick. Her lips were moist and parted, and all the white teeth a woman could ask for sparkled beyond like thirty-two handpicked Chiclets. Her hair was loose and inviting, and even though there was nary a breeze, it seemed to waft within the gentle caresses of a zephyr from the east. Long lashes curtained the emerald eyes that lay within the gossamer lids, recharging their green batteries. And all this lovely landscape Hermie could see with one eye, from ground level, thirty yards away. Ted Williams never had better vision.

  Oscy’s voice. “Jesus, Hermie, you gonna go into another deathlike trance?”

  Benjie’s voice. “Hey, Deathlike.”

  Hermie didn’t bother with either remark. Very likely he hadn’t heard anything beyond the sounds of angels. He pushed his shirt aside so that the other eye could come into play and tell him if it was really true, really her. For a moment, as the second eye focused, there were three of her. Then four. Then a dozen, spinning kaleidoscopically. But when the spinning ceased, there was only one of her but in perfect focus. Tears came to Hermie’s eyes. It was hard for him to figure. Just looking at her caused him to cry. What could that possibly mean? Who cries upon observing beauty? What emotional depth ha
d been plumbed by the very sight of her?

  Oscy’s voice. “I swear, Hermie, I don’t know what’s come over you. That’s a very old person. I don’t see the attraction.”

  Benjie’s voice. “Hey, Deathlike.”

  Hermie knew, because of having a sister, that if the woman was over twenty-three years of age, it wasn’t by more than a couple of minutes. He watched her as the knee that was up came down and as the one that was vice went versa. And there was a thunder going on in his heart, so you can imagine what was going on in his privates.

  Benjie’s voice. “Maybe it’s her mind. Maybe their minds meet and say hello.”

  Hermie’s image of love reclining was jostled because someone, probably Oscy, was nudging him in the small of the back with a sandy foot that featured an ugly hangnail. “Go say hello to her mind, Hermie. Say hello.”

  Hermie looked up at Oscy, who had a blinding sun at his back. “Cut it out, Oscy.”

  “No.” Oscy pulled Hermie roughly to his feet. “If she’s the love of your life, go say hello.”

  Hermie looked into Oscy’s face and hated every bit of it. He wanted to haul off and plaster him one in the chops, but he didn’t want to get killed. He tried to take the measure of Oscy’s inscrutable grin. From past experience he knew that if Oscy’s grin curled left, Oscy was benign. But if it curled right—condition red. In this particular case, Oscy’s grin was curled up at the end of both directions. The barking dog was wagging its tail. Go figure it.

  Oscy placed both paws on Hermie’s shoulders. Then he turned him, hard, pointing him in the proper direction, as in Pin the Tail on the Donkey, and gently but firmly, he pushed Hermie toward the woman. “We wanna see you go say hello because maybe you’re some kind of a hotshot lover we don’t know about so”—he pushed him very hard, and Hermie flew about three feet down the beach toward the woman—“go say hello, Hermie. Go and say hello.”

  Hermie followed his feet. He hated himself for his cowardice but praised himself for his intelligence. For he who is afraid of Oscy and runs away lives to run away from Oscy another day. Besides, in his heart, Hermie knew that even if Oscy and Benjie were not on the scene, he’d still find an excuse to kind of amble up to the woman to just kind of see what would kind of come of it. Wrong. Liar. Coward. But an intelligent, lying coward. And a lot of bullshit.

  Hermie walked as well as he could, which wasn’t bad if you accepted the fact that he was half out of his mind with desire and the other half with fear. Closer and closer he drew to her, closing the interminable gap between them, soon realizing that her bathing suit was not made of diamonds after all. Rather, it was constructed of something sheer and Grecian and breathlessly close to transparent. Or was it his X-ray eyes pumping their beams at her? Time would tell. Onward.

  The magical harmonica was once again evoked by the gods, and it sent exotic sonatas spiraling into the sky for the pleasure of the tenants of Mount Olympus. Lord, if that was Oscy playing, Hermie didn’t dare turn to look because Oscy simply couldn’t play. Which meant that it had to be Benjie, which was even more unacceptable. Before him she lay, haloed in the sun, and wonder of wonders, she was not sweating. No signs of sweat. She didn’t sweat. How glorious because who could really desire a woman who sweated? An ape maybe.

  And what dreams of Hermie inhabited her mind? What mystical instinct told her how close he was? Errol Flynn on the prowl; Tyrone Power come from Eden; Gary Cooper coming to bat with the bases loaded while Teresa Wright wrung her hanky in the dugout. Hermie circled her like a wolf pack. Silent, stealthy. She was the center of the universe and Hermie its panting perimeter. And because of his circling, again it was as though she were on a slow turntable, served up and presented from every angle for Hermie’s delight. The toes were tiny trinkets. The thighs, alabaster carvings. The fingers, tendrils of passion. The elbows and shoulders—connected to the neck bone. Egyptian gold adorned her ears, which were seashells. The hair, pure silk. The lashes, velvet webs. The voices, Oscy and Benjie.

  “Hey, lady in the blue suit! That’s Jack the Ripper!”

  “It’s Herman the German, Nazi spy!”

  “It’s a sex fiend!”

  “Hermie the rape artist!”

  Hermie froze as the princess stirred, her delicate lashes flickering their awareness, her royal rest disturbed by the raucous sounds of those crude mortals. Hermie’s circle became a straight line—away. He took only one last look at the goddess reclined, who, with graceful majesty, was raising herself on both elbows while lightly the curtains lifted from o’er her lustrous twin shamrocks. If Lucky Strike Green had gone to war, it was AWOL in her eyes. And Hermie knew that if she ever trained those emeralds on him, it would be the end of him. Away he went. Hi-ho, Hermie, away. A crow never took so straight a course. A coward never deserted so definitively. Hermie had always known that he was fast—he didn’t run high school track for nothing—but there, on that beach, under those circumstances, the four-minute mile, which had eluded man since time immemorial, was being crashed and broken for all time. If only the coach could see. His stride was perfection, his arms pumping well, his breath firing in proper bursts. The crowd was cheering him on, his father’s cigar going up into the air with a shout: “Go, Hermie!” He was out there alone, lapping the runner from James Madison, now shooting past the befuddled contestant from Manual Training. Midwood fell. Fort Hamilton quit. New Utrecht never knew what happened. They came at him swiftly, like birds of prey, Jap silent, Jap quick. Oscy hit him low with a fine rolling body block. Benjie would have hit him high were it not for the fact that Oscy had already cut him down. As a result, Hermie looked up from where he lay on the sand to see Benjie flying over him like a bag of shit, striking full force at empty sky, then landing with a scream, right on his stupid nose just as it was inhaling. There’d be sand in his mucus right through October.

  Hermie sprang to his feet, and there was blood on the moon. He made no sound, just clenched his fists and advanced on Oscy, who was just getting to his feet and laughing. Oscy turned, bewildered at the sight of Hermie advancing. Then he smiled, neither left nor right, which meant he didn’t know what to make of things.

  Benjie was back on his feet, snorting sand from his nose like a dragon, then launching a sneak attack on Hermie’s back. But the sun was behind him, and Hermie saw the swift shadow and sidestepped like Harmon. Benjie went shooting by, the Brighton express gone out of its mind, smashing once again into total nothingness and refilling his irritated nostrils with another two loads of sand. The scream that followed was unearthly and absolutely unheard by Hermie, who was squaring off, face-to-face, with the architect of the duplicity, Oscy the Fuck.

  Oscy the Fuck knew there’d be no avoiding the confrontation, no backing off. Benjie the Jerk was staggering to his feet, steaming like a bull and cursing like a major. Without looking at him, Oscy waved Benjie off. “Leave him, Benjie. Leave him.” The implication being that Oscy would take great pleasure in handling matters himself. And so, Benjie, Faithful Beast, obeyed by quickly backing off and immediately assuming the role of sadistic spectator because, as was common knowledge, Oscy could make mincemeat of Hermie.

  Oscy was bigger, stronger, tougher, and more experienced. But he was also, at heart, a pretty decent citizen. He didn’t want to hurt Hermie because Hermie was everything Oscy wasn’t, yet always yearned to be: a scholar, a poet, and a prince. But the little son of a bitch was moving in like Barney Ross, so what could Oscy do? He danced about Hermie, flicking tormenting left jabs at the face, pulling punches as best he could, trying only to demonstrate to Hermie that fighting was not in his best interests. But Hermie kept coming, taking each jab lightly on the schnoz, pulling his head back at precisely the right moment so that very little contact was made. Still, his face reddened, and Oscy grew concerned because his sensitive adversary had yet to back off. “Had enough, Hermie?”

  Hermie said nothing, just kept moving, searching, watching Oscy’s eyes, waiting for that one opening his father always said was b
ound to be there if a fella held his ground and protected his chin. Hermie even threw a few punches to let Oscy know his contempt. The punches never landed, but they were psychological. Again he heard his father’s voice: “You send out a couple and you send ’em out timid. You let him think that’s all he has to concern himself with. You watch his eyes and the points of his shoulders, and you let him know you’re not scared.” His father had had a few professional fights, but Hermie didn’t know whether he won them or lost them. What if he lost them? Jesus, what was he doing following the advice of a loser? For all his thinking and his strategy, Hermie had to sustain a continuous barrage of torturous lefts from Oscy’s hummingbird fist.

  Oscy grew more and more troubled as blood began to trickle from one of Hermie’s two noble eyebrows. “Had enough, Hermie? Tell me when you’ve had enough?”

  Hermie kept coming, still swinging some nebulous punches, only a bit more pragmatically. He was a track man, and Oscy was not. The longer he could remain on his feet, the greater the chances of Oscy pooping out first. He felt the tomato juice slithering into his left eye, and he blinked a few times to push it out. His wind was good, no heavy breathing. His arms were not tired. And his heart was pumping enough adrenaline to keep him going for a year.

  On the sidelines Benjie got scared at the sight of blood on Hermie’s face. “Cut it out, Oscy. He’s crazy.”

  “I’ll stop whenever you say, Hermie,” said Oscy, still flitting about gingerly, showing no signs of withering with time.