“How can he do that without an act of Congress?” I asked.
“He’s doing it, isn’t he?” Larry answered.
“Our response for the present,” Johnson said, “will be limited and fitting. We Americans know, although others appear to forget, the risks of spreading conflict. We still seek no wider war.”
The turnkey, apparently bored by these events in Southeast Asia, clicked the set to another channel. Robert Mitchum’s unmistakable voice superseded Johnson’s in the jailhouse corridor as he urged his men into combat against the Japanese.
“Maybe they’re just testing us,” I said.
“Maybe,” Larry said.
“Like...”
“Like what?”
“Like... I don’t know... when they put those missiles in Cuba.”
“Testing our resolve, huh?”
“Yeah, our resolve.”
“Yeah,” Larry said. He sighed deeply. “You think we’ll ever get out of this joint?”
“Sure,” I said. “My father should have got the telegram by now, don’t you think?”
“Oh sure,” Larry said. A troubled look crossed his face. He hesitated a moment, as though not certain he wished to reveal what he was thinking. Even when he started to speak, he said only, “Jesus, I hope...” and then shook his head.
“What?” I said.
“I don’t want to go to war, do you?” he said.
“No,” I said.
It was not my father who came down to bail us out.
The man who stepped through the doorway at the far end of the corridor the next morning, ducking his head under the lintel, rising to his full height again as he followed the turnkey to my cell, tall and powerful-looking for all his sixty-four years, was my grandfather.
“Hello, Walter,” he said.
“Hello, Grandpa,” I said, and smiled.
“Have they been treating you well?” he asked.
“I guess so,” I said. “Grandpa, these are my friends, Luke Foulds and Larry Peters.”
“How do you do, boys?” my grandfather said.
“And there’re some more in the next cell,” I said.
“How many all together?” my grandfather asked.
“Well, the three girls and us,” I said.
“I’ll make out a check for six hundred dollars,” my grandfather said to the turnkey.
“I got nothing to do with money,” the turnkey said. “You see them upstairs about that.”
“I will,” my grandfather said.
“Sir,” Luke said, “this is very kind of you, but I’ve sent home for money and...”
“My grandson’s wire indicated you were all in a hurry to get somewhere.”
“Yes, sir, we are. But...”
“Well, you can reimburse me later,” my grandfather said. “Meanwhile, let me get you out of this place.”
“Grandpa?” I said.
“Yes, Walter?”
“Couldn’t my father come?”
My grandfather looked at me for what seemed like a very long time. At last, he said, “No, Wat, I’m sorry, he couldn’t.” He hesitated only an instant. “He has an important business meeting in New York tomorrow morning.” And then, before I could read the truth in his eyes and be hurt by it, he turned swiftly and walked down the corridor.
September
My mother died on the second Sunday in September, four days after Italy surrendered to the Allies. The Air Force gave me an emergency furlough and a lift on a C-47 to the Orchard Place Airport in Park Ridge. From there, I took a train and arrived in Chicago shortly after dusk. I did not want to go home. I was certain there would be a black wreath on the door, and I did not want to see it.
The chaplain had called me into his office at ten o’clock that morning and said, “Cadet Tyler, I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you. We got a call from Chicago just a few minutes ago. Your mother had a heart attack and passed away last night.”
I looked at him and hated him instantly, the gold-rimmed eyeglasses and the echoing gold cross on his collar, the harsh grating sound of his Bronx speech as he told me my mother was dead — no, “passed away,” he had said, “passed away last night,” the euphemism somehow making the fact more intolerable. I nodded and fastened my eyes on a bayonet letter opener on his desk, refusing to look into his face, afraid that I would begin crying here in the presence of this goddamned pious fool from Baychester Avenue.
“I’m sorry, Cadet Tyler,” he said.
“Thank you, sir.”
“I’ve already spoken to the C.O. about leave.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“He’d like a few words with you when we’re through here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“My own mother died in childbirth,” he said, as if somehow that exonerated him.
The barracks was empty as I packed my duffle and tried to sort out in my mind what I would need for my four-day furlough to Chicago. They would be burying her on Wednesday, and this was Sunday — no, that was only three days, I was due back by formation Thursday morning. The C.O. had told me he’d have to put me back a class unless I returned in time. As it was, I would have to make up two hours of code, two hours of sea-air recognition, and an hour each of math and physics, the C.O. telling me all this as though the possibility of washing out was the foremost thing in my mind on that Sunday my mother died. I told him I would be sure to be back by formation Thursday, sir, and he said I had better, because whereas it was permissible for me to miss three days of my intensive and arduous ten-week training program (though I would have to make up those lost hours, I understood that, didn’t I? Yes, sir, I said, I understand that), it was inconceivable that I could miss anything more than that without getting chased into the class behind mine. It’s for your own good, Tyler, he told me, we can’t put a man in the air without the training he needs to survive, all of this while the knowledge of my mother’s death sat behind my eyes and I wanted to cry but could not.
I could not cry on the transport, either, because there were twenty-five other guys in the plane, all headed for the Chicago Army Air Base. The train into the city was packed with civilians and soldiers, and I sat stiffly erect by the window and listened to the wheels and thought of movies I had seen where a guy is sitting by a train window and the wheels are clacking and the sound triggers a flashback, but there seemed to be nothing I could remember. I could not remember what my mother looked like, I could not remember a single one of her homespun sayings. And, of course, I could not cry because a member of the United States Army Air Force does not cry on a public conveyance, not when he is wearing on his garrison cap that winged propeller, no.
I could not cry in the taxicab, either. The driver, watching me in the rear view mirror as we worked our way east down Washington Street from the station, said, “Well, it looks like the Cards and the Yankees again, huh?”
“I guess so,” I said.
“Same as last year.”
“Yes.”
“Probably be a lousy series.”
“Mmm.”
“Well, how can you have a good series when half the guys are already in the service? You know where Di Maggio is? In Santa Ana. Where’s that, that Santa Ana?”
“California.”
“Yeah, California. Remember the pitching Johnny Beasley done for the Cards in last year’s series? You know where he is this year? In the Air Force, that’s where he is. It’s gonna be lousy, how can it be good? You think it’ll be good?”
“I don’t know.”
“Naw, it can’t be good,” the driver said, and fell silent until we pulled up in front of the old house I loved on East Scott Street. Then all he said was, “That’s seventy cents, soldier.” I paid him and tipped him and got out of the cab and hesitated on the sidewalk because I suddenly felt like a stranger here. I had left Chicago on June 27, and had spent five weeks in basic military training in Nashville, Tennessee, proceeding at the end of July, directly and without furlough, to Maxwell Field in Montgomery, Alabama, for pre-flight schooling — a stranger here now, and more a stranger because my mother was dead.