"You're facing ninety days in the can, kid," Denny Walkowicz said. "At least, maybe a lot more. And it ain't only the time, it's a criminal record."
"For getting in a fight?"
"You don't listen, do you, McCoy?" the plant security chief said. "You hit a guy with a beer bottle, it's not like punching him."
"I told you, I didn't use no bottle."
"Yeah, you said that, but other people say different."
"Well, fuck you!"
"I'm glad you were here and the cops are to hear that, Denny," the chief of plant security said. " 'Using profane or obscene language to a supervisor or member of management shall be grounds for dismissal for cause,' " he quoted.
"He's got you, McCoy," Denny Walkowicz said. "You gotta learn to watch your mouth."
"Take him back to jail," the chief of plant security said, and then picked up the brown envelope and handed it back to the white-collar guy from administration. "Do what you have to," he said. "No severance pay."
"Now wait a minute," Denny Walkowicz said. "We had a deal, we worked this out."
"Nobody tells me, 'fuck you,' " the plant security chief said.
Denny Walkowicz took the envelope back from the white-collar guy.
"You," he said to Tommy McCoy, "keep your fucking mouth shut!"
Then he led him out of the room, with the cops following.
The cops took the handcuffs off him.
"If it was up to me," the larger one said, "you'd do time."
"Yeah, well it ain't up to you, is it?" Denny Walkowicz said.
"If you're smart, McCoy, you won't hang around Bethlehem," the cop said. "You know what I mean?"
As Denny Walkowicz drove Tommy to the boardinghouse in his blue Buick Roadmaster, he said: "You better pay attention to what the cop said. They're after your ass. It took three of them to hold you down, and you kicked one of them in the balls. They're not going to take that."
"That was all the union could do for me?"
"You ungrateful sonofabitch!" Denny Walkowicz exploded. "We kept you from going to jail!"
Tommy went to bed the minute he got to his room. He slept the rest of the day, and except for going out for two beers and some spaghetti about ten that night, slept right around the clock.
At ten- thirty the next morning, he went down to the post office and talked to the recruiter. The guy was especially nice to him after he told him his brother was a Marine, too. He told Tommy that if he enlisted for the duration of the present emergency plus six months, he could fix it for him to be assigned to the same unit as his brother. And when Tommy said that he had always wanted to be a pilot, the recruiter said he could arrange for that, too.
Thomas Michael McCoy was sworn into the United States Marine Corps at 1645 hours that same afternoon. He was transported by bus to the U.S. Navy Yard, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the next morning. At Philadelphia, he learned that the recruiter had been something less than honest with him. He wasn't going to be trained as a pilot, but as an infantryman. And the corporal in Philadelphia told him he stood as much chance of being assigned with his brother as he did of being elected pope.
But the corporal felt that professional courtesy to a fellow corporal required that he inform Corporal McCoy that his little brother was on the base awaiting transport to Parris Island. He called Post Locator, and they told him that Corporal McCoy had been the day before transferred to Marine Corps Schools, Quantico, Virginia.
Then the corporal made the connection. This dumb Mick's brother was the China Marine in the campaign hat driving the LaSalle convertible, the one they were sending to officers' school. They sure as Christ made little apples were not two peas from the same pod, he thought.
(Four)
Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel
Headquarters, United States Marine Corps
Washington, D.C.
29 August 1941
The wooden frame building-designed for no more than five years' usage-had been built during the Great War (1917-18). The Chief of Company-Grade Officer Assignments stood waiting in one of the doorways to catch the eye of the Deputy Chief, Assignments Branch. The doorway sagged.
The Chief of Company-Grade Officer Assignments, a balding, stocky man, had taken off the jacket of his cord suit and rolled up the sleeves of his sweat-soaked white shirt. Standing there with his suspenders exposed, he didn't look much like the captain of Marines he was. He held two documents at his side. One was that week's listing of actual and projected billet vacancies. The other was the service record of MACKLIN, John D., 1st Lt.
The Deputy Chief, Assignments Branch, had been reading with great interest an interoffice memorandum which compared projected Company-Grade Officer Requirements for Fiscal Year 1942 against projected officer recruitment for Fiscal Year 1942 and was wondering where the hell they were going to dig up the 2,195 bodies that represented the difference between what they needed and what they were likely to get. Finally he noticed the Chief of Company-Grade Officer Assignments standing in his door and motioned him inside with a wave of his hand.
The Deputy Chief, Assignments Branch, who had also removed his jacket, was a major-although he looked, and sometimes felt, more like a bureaucrat than a Marine officer.
"How would you like me to handle this, sir?" the Chief of Company-Grade officer assignments asked. He handed the major the documents in his hand.
The major opened the service-record jacket of MACKLIN, John D., 1st Lt.
There was a file of orders concerning the officer in question bound to the record jacket with a metal expanding clip. The order on top, which made it the most recent one, had been issued by the 4th Marines. Lieutenant Macklin, having been decreed excess to the needs of the command, was relieved of duty and would proceed to the United States of America aboard the U.S.S. Shaumont, reporting on arrival to Headquarters, USMC, Washington, D.C., for further assignment. A thirty day delay en route leave was authorized.
Macklin was not really expected to physically report in Washington. His orders and his records would be sent to Washington. When Washington decided what to do with him, either a telegram or a registered letter would be sent to his leave address telling him where to go and when to be there.
In a manila folder were copies of Lieutenant Macklin's efficiency reports, mounted in the same manner as his orders.
"I wonder what he did?" the major asked, without expecting an answer, as he turned his attention to Lieutenant Macklin's most recent efficiency report. Officers were rarely decreed excess to the needs of a command. Commands, as a rule of thumb, generally sent a steady stream of justifications for the assignment of additional officer personnel to carry out their assigned missions.
A civilian, reading the efficiency report, would probably have concluded that it was a frank, confidential appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of what a civilian would probably think was a typical Marine officer.
He was described as a "tall, lean, and fit" officer of "erect bearing" with "no disfiguring marks or scars." It said mat Lieutenant Macklin was "slightly below" the avenge of his peers in professional knowledge; that he had "adequately discharged the duties assigned to him"; that there was "no indication of abuse of alcoholic beverages or other stimulants"; and that Lieutenant Macklin had "a tendency not to accept blame for his failures, but instead to attempt to shift the blame to subordinates." In this connection, it said that Lieutenant Macklin was prone to submit official reports that both omitted facts mat might tend to make him look bad, and "to present other facts in such a manner as to magnify his own contribution to the accomplishment of the assigned mission." It said finally that Lieutenant Macklin "could not be honestly recommended for the command of a company or larger tactical unit at this time."
A civilian would doubtless mink mat here was a nice-looking erect young man, who was mostly competent, did what he was told to do, and had no problem with the bottle. If there was anything wrong with him at all, it was a perfectly understandable inclination to present only his best side to his superiors. If he could not be recommended to be a company commander at this time, well, he was young, and there would be a chance for that later. In the meantime, there were certainly other places where his "slightly below average professional knowledge" could be put to good use.