“You dirty bastard 1” I said, and walked out of the barn.
I was too angry to sleep. Sid got up as soon as Bonard started to snore. I waited a moment, then followed him. He was at the window, giving Yvonne five bars of candy, when I said, “Damn it, she's only a child!”
He spun around. “That's why I'm giving her candy. I never touched...”
“Bull! She Bonard's great-grandchild and you have to mess up like a dog in heat!”
“Take it easy, Marsh. I didn't do a damn thing... but how come you're out here? What did you want the candy for, kiddy?”
Yvonne was eating the candy, watching us without interest.
“I came out to protect the kid.”
“I bet!”
Yvonne held a finger to her lips for silence.
I whispered, “I'm going to beat the slop out of you! Raping this...”
“Stop talking like a jerk. No point fighting, nothing happened,” Sid said. “And let's get away from here, before we wake the old gent.”
We walked out to the road and I suddenly turned and measured Sid, swung on him.
The night turned very dark and when I came to, I saw Sid's thin face over me, wet with tears. I was lying with my head in his lap. He moaned, “Marsh! Thank God you're alive!”
I sat up, my head spinning, felt of my jaw... I'd forgotten how he could punch.
Sid was still crying. “I could cut off my hand! Marsh, you're my best pal and I slugged you, you with your concussion...!”
“That was years ago,” I said, standing up, brushing myself off.
Sid jumped to his feet. “Honest, Marsh, you feel okay?”
“Sure,” I said, rubbing my jaw. “Must have been nuts to swing on you, way you wallop.”
Sid began laughing so hard he started to cry again. “Marsh, you scared the living crap out of me. I thought you were dead! And listen, I never laid the kid. That's the truth.”
I wanted to grin but my jaw hurt. “I know. I couldn't get no place with her last night, either. Now let's get some sleep and stop acting like dopes.”
We worked till late Sunday afternoon and Bonard was fairly happy with my work—I thought it was great. As we were dressing to go back to the hotel, he said, “About Yvonne, I am glad you both acted with honor. For the sake of my family and your health. Watch.”
We were sipping the last of the alleged cognac, and Yvonne was nibbling those horrible K-ration crackers that tasted like dog biscuits. Bonard opened a sharp little gold pen knife and handed it to her, then tossed part of a cracker in a corner of the barn. He held up a hand for silence, pointing toward the cracker.
I thought he was off his rocker, but after a few minutes a gray rat came out and sniffed at the cracker, Yvonne suddenly threw the knife—a clean expert motion—the blade went through .the rat, pinning him to the rotten floor.
We stared at the tiny pool of dark blood forming under the rat, who thrashed about for a second and then quietly died. It was a hell of a knife throw. I glanced at Sid and he was sweating too. I mumbled, “This is a rough war.”
Sid said, “M-Marsh, you saved my life.... Why we could of been killed!”
With the invasion of Germany we moved out of Paris and for a time were soldiers again, sleeping in tents, eating out of mess kits. We even rushed into the Battle of the Bulge—after a few hours of frantic carbine practice—but got there too late.
When the war was over I didn't exactly know what I wanted to do. I would have liked to stay overseas as long as possible, but I couldn't bring myself to sign up for the occupation army, so I was sent to a repple-depple in the south of France, and there was little chance of getting to Paris. I made a half-hearted attempt to get a job as a truck driver with the Red Cross, so I could be discharged overseas, but nothing came of it.
The repple-depple was crowded, noisy, and uncomfortable, and being among combat soldiers made me a little ashamed. Sid was sent back to the States in October, 194S. Although I had enough points to get out—I'd been in longer than most of the other men—I kept trying to get back to Paris on some sort of assignment. There was talk about going to a French college under the G.I. Bill, but nobody at the camp knew how to go about it, and it ended up as a latrine rumor. There wasn't any privacy in the camp and I couldn't do any sculpting. Finally, in December, I was fed up with the damp cold, stopped ducking shipping lists, and returned to the States. I didn't bother with a leave, but was sent back to Dix and discharged.
I hadn't been a soldier, merely a tourist with corporal stripes.
Mary Jane was living in a large four-room apartment in Flushing. She had spent several years working in an aircraft instrument plant, had over two grand in the bank besides a lot of new furniture. Mary looked swell, slim and even a bit sophisticated. For a few weeks we just hung around the apartment, doing a lot of bottle and bed work. I thought for a time we might make a go of it, but things wore thin again. We simply didn't have anything in common.
For the hell of it I saw Kimball once and that turned out to be a disappointing evening—now she was an elderly woman with wrinkles and dyed hair, trying so desperately hard to be young and gay. New York had been one big Smorgasbord table for Kimball during the war years, and she was bubbling over with stories about all the soldiers she had been “friends with.” Somehow the stories seemed old hat to me.
For many months I didn't do a thing but sleep a lot, lounge around the apartment, write to Bonard, tell myself that “tomorrow I'll start sketching, maybe buy clay...”
Mary Jane gave me a wise, patronizing look, as though I'd just been released from a nut-house and had to be humored. One of the current myths of the time was that all soldiers needed “adjustment and readjustment.” It was true I was trying to find myself, but the war had nothing to do with it.
I didn't see Sid for awhile and when we did meet he had changed, no longer wanted to slug somebody after a few shots to demonstrate his punch. He was about to marry a “nice” young girl and work in his in-law's big hardware office. He had paid a thousand under the table for a small apartment in the Village, was going to art school at night, suggested I do the same under the G.I. Bill.
I finally purchased some clay and tools, tried my hand at carving wood—for some stupid reason—and became thoroughly discouraged. I felt too unsettled to do anything for any length of time. I was sending Bonard CARE packages and he wrote once, but his French scrawl was too much for me.
1946 slipped by and we were broke. In '47, Mary tried to get work in an aircraft instrument factory, but they weren't hiring women. She took out her anger with a week's drunk, being sick most of the time, then went back to office work. She began making cracks about me getting off my rear—we couldn't live on her pay—and of course she was right.
Kimball was opening her own agency, having rooked Barrett out of two of his best accounts, and gave me a job doing layout. Little things annoyed me, like having to shave every day, wear a fresh shirt and tie each morning... I didn't have the heart any more for this rat race. I gave it up after a month and went back to my old real estate office, and into the soft routine of collecting rents. With apartments as hard to find as uranium, people were paying their rent promptly, not asking for repairs, so the job was even more of a comfortable rut than before. Although with no repairs, the petty graft was out.