I rolled over and watched Jim with the five girls. He was standing up, sticking his chest out and showing off his balls. He didn't have my barrel chest and big legs. He was slim and neat, with that black hair and that little nasty mouth with perfect teeth, and his little round ears and his long neck. I didn't have a neck. Not much of one, anyway. My head seemed to sit on my shoulders. But I was strong, and mean. Not good enough, the ladies liked dandies. If it wasn't for the boils and scars, though. I'd be down there now showing them a thing or two. I'd flash my balls for them, bringing their dead air-headed minds to attention. Me, with my 50-cents-a-week life.
Then I saw the girls leap up and follow Jim into the water. I heard them giggling and screaming like mindless… what? No, they were nice. They weren't like grown-ups and parents. They laughed. Things were funny. They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things. D, H. Lawrence had known that. You needed love, but not the kind of love most people used and were used up by. Old D, H. had known something. His buddy Huxley was just an intellectual fidget, but what a marvelous one. Better than G. B. Shaw with that hard keel of a mind always scraping bottom, his labored wit finally only a task, a burden on himself, preventing him from really feeling anything, his brilliant speech finally a bore, scraping the mind and the sensibilities. It was good to read them all though. It made you realize that thoughts and words could be fascinating, if finally useless.
Jim was splashing water on the girls. He was the Water God and they loved him. He was the possibility and the promise. He was great. He knew how to do it. I had read many books but he had read a book that I had never read. He was an artist with his little pair of bathing trunks and his balls and his wicked little look and his round ears. He was the best. I couldn't challenge him any more than I could have challenged that big son-of-a-bitch in the green coupe with the looker whose hair flowed in the wind. They both had got what they deserved. I was just a 50-cent turd floating around in the green ocean of life.
I watched them come out of the water, glistening, smooth- skinned and young, undefeated. I wanted them to want me. But never out of pity. Yet, despite their smooth untouched bodies and minds they still were missing something because they were as yet basically untested. When adversity finally arrived in their lives it might come too late or too hard. I was ready. Maybe.
I watched Jim toweling off, using one of their towels. As I watched, somebody's child, a boy of about four came along, picked up a handful of sand and threw it in my face. Then he just stood there, glowering, his sandy stupid little mouth puckered in some kind of victory. He was a daring darling little shit. I wiggled my finger for him to come closer, come, come. He stood there.
"Little boy," I said, "come here. I have a bag of candy-covered shit for you to eat."
The fucker looked, turned and ran off. He had a stupid ass. Two little pear-shaped buttocks wobbling, almost disjointed. But, another enemy gone.
Then Jim, the lady killer, was back. He stood there over me. Glowering also.
"They're gone," he said.
I looked down to where the five girls had been and sure enough they were gone.
"Where did they go?" I asked.
"Who gives a fuck? I've got the phone numbers of the two best ones."
"Best ones for what?"
"For fucking, you jerk!"
I stood up.
"I think I'll deck you, jerk!"
His face looked good in the sea wind. I could already see him, knocked down, squirming on the sand, kicking up his white- bottomed feet. Jim backed off.
"Take it easy. Hank. Look, you can have their phone numbers!"
"Keep them. I don't have your god-damned dumb ears!"
"O.K., O.K., we're friends, remember?"
We walked up the beach to the strand where we had our bicycles locked behind someone's beach house. And as we walked along we both knew whose day it had been, and knocking somebody on their ass could not have changed that, although it might have helped, but not enough. All the way home, on our bikes, I didn't try to show him up as I had earlier. I needed something more. Maybe I needed that blonde in the green coupe with her long hair blowing in the wind.
40
R.O.T.C. (Reserve Officer Training Corps) was for the misfits. Like I said, it was either that or gym. I would have taken gym but I didn't want people to sec the boils on my back. There was something wrong with everybody enrolled in R.O.T.C. It almost entirely consisted of guys who didn't like sports or guys whose parents forced them to take R.O.T.C. because they thought it was patriotic. The parents of rich kids tended to be more patriotic because they had more to lose if the country went under. The poor parents were far less patriotic, and then often professed their patriotism only because it was expected or because it was the way they had been raised. Subconsciously they knew it wouldn't be any better or worse for them if the Russians or the Germans or the Chinese or the Japanese ran the country, especially if they had dark skin. Things might even improve. Anyhow, since many of the parents of Chelsey High were rich, we had one of the biggest R.O.T.C.'s in the city.
So we marched around in the sun and learned to dig latrines, cure snakebite, tend the wounded, tie tourniquets, bayonet the enemy; we learned about hand grenades, infiltration, deployment of troops, maneuvers, retreats, advances, mental and physical discipline; we got on the firing range, bang bang, and we got our marksmen's medals. We had actual field maneuvers, we went out into the woods and waged a mock war. We crawled on our bellies toward each other with our rifles. We were very serious. Even I was serious. There was something about it that got your blood going. It was stupid and we all knew it was stupid, most of us, but something clicked in our brains and we really wanted to get involved in it. We had an old retired Army man, Col. Sussex. He was getting senile and drooled, little trickles of saliva running out of the corners of his mouth and down, around and under his chin. He never said anything. He just stood around in his uniform covered with medals and drew his pay from the high school. During our mock maneuvers he carried around a clipboard and kept score. He stood on a high hill and made marks on the clipboard - probably. But he never told us who won. Each side claimed victory. It made for bad feelings.
Lt. Herman Beechcroft was best. His father owned a bakery and a hotel catering service, whatever that was. Anyhow, he was best. He always gave the same speech before a maneuver.
"Remember, you must hate the enemy! They want to rape your mother and sisters! Do you want those monsters to rape your mother and sisters?"
Lt. Beechcroft had almost no chin at all. His face dropped away suddenly and where the jaw bone should have been there was only a little button. We weren't sure if it was a deformity or not. But his eyes were magnificent in their fury, large blue biaxing symbols of war and victory.
" Whitlinger! "
"Yes, sir!"
"Would you want those guys raping your mother?"
"My mother's dead, sir."
"Oh, sorry… Drake."
" Yes, sir! "
"Would you want those guys raping your mother?"
" No, sir. "
"Good. Remember, this is war' We accept mercy but we do not give mercy. You must hate the enemy. Kill him! A dead man can't defeat you. Defeat is a disease! Victory writes history! NOW LET'S GO GET THOSE COCKSUCKERS!"
We deployed our line, sent out the advance scouts and began crawling through the brush. I could see Col. Sussex on his hill with his clipboard. It was the Blues vs. the Greens. We each had a piece of colored rag tied around our upper right arm. We were the Blues. Crawling through those bushes was pure hell. It was hot. There were bugs, dust, rocks, thorns. I didn't know where I was.