Elma knew about Nate giving me the watch, but she kept nagging me to throw it away. But then nagging was her way of life. Elma the lump. Would it have worked out okay if she hadn't had her insides taken out—that lousy operation?
Or was our marriage all wrong from the jump?
4—Elma
My marriage to Elma worked out fine, at first. I did a lot of thinking about Elma while I was in Korea. She used to write me regularly, dull letters but the only mail I received. I don't know if Nate knew my A.P.O. address or not. Anyway, every letter would make me wonder why I'd been in such a rush to marry Elma, and what I'd do about it if I came back.
It wasn't much of a worry because for a time I didn't think I was coming back. I guess I wanted to die; you know, kid stuff—felt it would spite Nate. But dead or alive, I wanted to be a big hero. Again, it might have been to prove to Nate I could make it on my own, didn't need him. I still felt nameless, and I suppose I thought if I became a hero, even a dead one, at least I'd be a somebody.
Okay, it sounds childish now, but then I considered myself the toughest thing out, and I guess I was. I was anxious to fight anybody or anything. I kept going up to sergeant and being busted back to private over some brawl. The weird part was that although I saw more than my share of combat and shooting, kept volunteering for patrols—and once I was the only guy who came back—in actual combat I never got a scratch. They gave me two Purple Hearts but both of them were phony.
There was an Italian hick from Maine I got to be kind of pals with. Perhaps because I'd considered myself an Italian for so long I couldn't stop. Most of my fist fights were over some slob making a crack about Carmen Brindise's name. Carmen was a little guy who spoke with a nasal twang, smart and tough. He knew all there was to know about hunting and fishing. In his wallet he carried fish hooks and a line and any time we were around a river, the ocean, even the damn rice paddies, he had a line over. Not that I ever saw him catch anything, either.
One night when we were resting between patrols, and supposedly in a rear area, we were sharing a pup tent. It was that cold winter when it seemed I'd never get real warm again. Carmen had made some rice wine and we were tanked up on the junk. Matter of fact, it was so freezing cold, the bottle broke and I got a nasty cut on my arm taking glass out of the rice mash. Carmen was telling me about how he used to go hunting up in Maine and Canada and on cold nights he'd stick a finger out of the tent and say, “Feels two dogs cold,” and take two hunting hounds in with him for warmth.
In the middle of the night we were high with wine and Carmen was doing his act, sticking a gloved finger out and announcing it was now “ten dogs cold.” Not that we had any dogs, you understand. The last time he did this, a rifle slug blew the top of his head off, splattering me with blood. When the medics reached us they put my bottle cut down as a wound and I got my first Purple Heart.
The second time, I was hitching a ride in a supply truck when a plane came in strafing, killing the driver. I got a bad cut on the head diving out the cab for the ground. When I came to in a base hospital I had another Purple Heart. I suppose that second one was legit.
I didn't pay much attention to the medals, but they helped me get home on rotation and by then the war was over. I figured I'd tell Elma it had been a quickie marriage, let her get a divorce. But Elma surprised me.
She had put away over a grand from my allotment checks and had been making good money working in an aircraft factory. So when I came home I found we had our own apartment, a three-room deal in a swank elevator house. The truth is, for the first couple of months I was nuts about Elma. There was a big sex business with us. She wasn't any beauty but was wonderfully curious about so many things, and we made up for the years I'd been away. It was terrific. I mean, we'd have these workouts and then in the morning she'd take off for work while I'd sleep until the middle of the afternoon, then lounge round the house, watch TV. Even the apartment was kicks then—compared to the tenement I'd known—and I'd often put in hours cleaning it up, waxing the floors, waiting for Elma to come home and make supper.
Her aircraft job folded a few months later; all the women were laid off, and Elma found an office job at half her former salary. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. I took a lot of civil service exams, my being a vet giving me extra points. In the meantime we needed dough and I went from one job to another, none of them really much. I was a restless sour ball, always socking the boss or a customer. Like I became a stock clerk in a big clothing house. Might have been a good deal; some of the clerks went on to become salesmen and store managers. My boss let everybody know he'd been a Marine and when I happened to mention I had a double Purple Heart, I was his boy. He put me on the floor, selling. The third day I was a salesman some crumb tried on a loud, checkered sport coat—something he'd picked out himself. When he looked in the mirror and said, “I look like a wop in this,” I flattened him before I realized I was swinging. He sued the company and that was very much that.
I worked in a supermarket; turned out I was good at displaying and selling vegetables. Only for some dumb reason I told them my name was Bucklin Laspiza, got screwed up on my Social Security and had to leave the job after a few months—when I was starting to know what it was all about.
Another time I became a truck helper. If I became a driver and got a union card, the pay would be high. But the fat-jawed dispatcher thought calling me “Fountain Penn” was such a witty remark that I had to break his nose after a few weeks.
Considering the way she acted later on, it was odd Elma never complained about my job turnover then. It was really her sickness that changed her, I guess. One of the reasons we got along so smooth then was, no matter how often I got the sack, she didn't nag about it. It was about this time she began to get tired easily and at first we thought she was pregnant. I think I wanted a kid; at least I kept telling myself he wouldn't have to worry about his name.
The doctor said Elma had a tumor, a big one, and needed an immediate operation. She had a hysterotony, or whatever they call it, where they cleaned her out. The doctor explained that he had left her sex roots in—and maybe I'm not using the correct terms—but actually I think he was wrong. It was a difficult operation and for a time they didn't think she was going to make it. It took every dime we had. Her folks didn't have a penny, and I doubt if they would have helped us anyway—they didn't look with favor upon taking a “bastard” into the family. I wired Nate, care of his local office, for three hundred dollars and got it within a week.
For a time it was even sort of tender fun nursing Elma back to health, but after that she was never the same. For one thing, she completely let herself go, became all soft and baggy, a regular heavyweight of lard. And she suddenly decided she couldn't work any more—hell, it took months before she would even get out of bed.
Things have a way of working—sometimes—and we were both happy when I was appointed a police officer, sent to the police academy for three months. I was nuts about the job. It did something to my—I suppose “ego” is the right word—to be sporting a badge and a gun. Maybe it was silly, but I was very pleased with myself, full of a deep feeling of satisfaction. You see, I was no longer a nameless nobody. I was now authority, with a gun to prove it, and until I met up with Doc, it was all very important to me. Especially that gun—I spent every free minute I could snag on the target range.