By the end of the year our marriage began to wear. I still felt sorry for her, and at times we had some fine moments. But Mary Jane whined a lot, and if she was young and sweet, she was also dull and boring. I collected rents and didn't even look at a paint-brush.
That Christmas Pearl Harbor happened and we forgot about ourselves and in February I was number seven in my draft board and got my greetings and we had quite a tender scene when I went off.
They sent me to Fort Dix, over in New Jersey, and the only true feeling I had about things, aside from a faint feeling of patriotic duty, was one of relief, of being free from Mary.
Logan was alone. He walked down the alley with a long, springy stride. I don't know why I kept thinking he still didn't look like a private detective. More like a salesman, or a young bank clerk.
When he saw me he slowed down a little, smiled as he said, “Lose your baggy tweeds? And your height? My, you've grown a lot of hair.”
“Forget that phone talk, Logan,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “Guess I'm overcautious.” My hand dropped into my pocket, on the gun—all very casually—as he came around the back of the house. I felt of my other pockets with my left hand, asked, “Got a cigarette?” He was less than three feet from me.
He dug into his breast pocket, held out a crumpled pack: I took one, put it in my mouth—all with my left hand.
“Thanks, I have a match,” I said. I had a firm grip on the gun only... I got it half out... forgot about the clumsy long target barrel. The damn thing was stuck in my pocket—would only come partly out!
Logan dropped the pack of butts, his eyes went big. He came at me as I backed away, still tugging at that lousy, clumsy gun. Suddenly I yanked it out and...
He was lightning fast. I think I saw the bright burst of flame from his hip before I felt the bullet... felt as though I'd been smacked across the belly with a baseball bat. The force of the slug knocked me down.
For a moment, when the shock got me, I didn't even know I was hit, thought I'd stumbled backwards. My gun fell from my hand. I tried to sit up... and then... at the same time I heard the sharp, clear sound of the shot, the hot terrible pain—this awful, awful pain—cut into my guts and the blood came squirting out of my shirt, down my legs.
For a long second the pain was so intense, so complete, I couldn't breathe or see. Then he came into view, his gun still in his right hand. He carefully kicked my gun away, went over and picked it up.
We stared at each other for a long time. His face was pale and his eyes puzzled. He asked, “What the hell is this? What you throw a gun on me for? Who the hell are you?”
CHAPTER THREE
ONE OF THE CORNY JOKES you heard in the army was: “You never had it so good.”
That was pretty true for me, I got more than my share of breaks in the army. At the start I remained at Fort Dix for nearly three months. Guys were being shipped out on all sides of me, but my name was never called. Our regiment, company, battalion, or whatever we were, was made up of a small permanent cadre of several enlisted men, all “old” army men, meaning they had been in six months or a year, and a Captain Drake, a dapper little man about thirty-five years old. His uniform was always sharply pressed, he walked with an inflated strut, spoke with a drawl, and happily was rarely seen. I was made a barracks orderly, meaning after morning inspection I had nothing to do for the rest of the day.
On week-ends I came in to New York and saw Mary Jane, and one day I walked into Kimball on Lexington Avenue and she made a fuss over my being in uniform and bought me a fine wrist-watch on the spot.
I was taking things easy, doing a lot of sketching of the various faces in camp, plenty of reading, and soaking up hours of sack time. For the first time in my life I had no worries about rent or food, and the army showed me the fallacy of this goosing finger of fate we call ambition. I mean, a joker hustles and wears the correct clothes and puts up a big front to impress his boss—and zowie, the army calls him and all that energy is wasted because now he's merely another buck-ass private under a non-com who happened to be called a few months before our joker-buddy. So he bucks like hell for stripes in the army, brown-noses everybody in sight, and maybe by the time the war is over, he has sergeant stripes and then—zowie, they discharge him and he's a nobody civilian again and has to start the apple polishing all over again. Now I don't mean a guy shouldn't try to get ahead—but not too hard, should make that his whole life. You push so much, you never get a chance to enjoy life, and one day you'll push yourself into the grave and they'll shovel dirt on your face and on your tombstone they'll chisel, Where Did It All Get You?
The trouble was, after a time I got restless at Dix. I dropped in to see Captain Drake, gave him a clumsy salute, asked if my records had been lost or something. He said, “Jameson, you're a Kentucky boy and ah'm from the South, too. Figured ah'd rather have you getting these soft jobs around here than any of these here Northern boys. Sick to my belly with talking to Jews and wops and micks. About a year or so, they'll throw mah can out of here and ah'll take you with me. All right with you, boy?”
“Yes, sir. Only—well there is a war on. I sort of feel useless here.”
“You got spunk, son. But ah let you go and sure as shooting you'll be shipped to the infantry. Know you don't want that. Boy, what were you doing in civilian life?”
It was a good thing I wasn't drunk on PX beer at the moment—one more “boy” and I might have socked his skinny jaw. I said, “I was an artist—advertising art.”
Drake was impressed, said, “See what I can do for you, Jameson.”
I cinched the deal by giving him a pen-and-ink drawing of himself. A week later I was sent out of Dix on a one-man shipping list, stationed at Lexington Avenue and 46th Street. I was part of a special-service outfit that made posters. We had a chicken officer who must have got a rake-off from the shoe polish companies. We had to march along crowded Lexington Avenue, trying to look like soldiers, and all the people staring at us as though we were. I felt more of a fraud than in Dix. It was very frustrating.
Also, I was seeing Mary Jane every night and I wanted to get away from her. Poor Mary was at least working in a defense plant in New Jersey and I didn't want to be a tin soldier. I casually mentioned to the first looey who was our CO. that I didn't think the war effort was really dependent upon whether we shined our damn shoes or not. Two days later I was back in Dix and out the same night on a troop train heading for Fort Benning, Georgia.
Infantry basic wasn't as rugged as football training and it felt fine to get into shape again. But one morning when they had us hitting the dirt—running and throwing ourselves on the ground—breaking the fall by digging the butt end of our rifles into the hard earth—I took a heavy fall and had a headache that scared hell out of me.