Allegiance (2 page)

• • • • 

Me and a million other American boys. So many the Army doesn't have doctors for all the physicals. The induction letter summons me back to Philadelphia, and on Friday I join a line of wan young men at Pennsylvania Hospital. Billy Fitch is a Philadelphia boy too; up ahead, I can see his red curls, the nape of his pale neck. Behind me a fellow with slicked-back hair snaps his chewing gum. “Ask me how I'm getting out of it,” he says.

“Getting out of it?” I repeat, uncomprehending.

“What's that?” he bellows, cupping an ear. “Sorry, can't hear you.”

I blink, and he turns away with a laugh.

There are no rooms for the examinations, just spaces made with hanging sheets. I fold my clothes and place them on one stool. The doctor sits on another and taps my folder against his knee. “Caswell Harrison,” he says.

“Cash,” I answer.

He circles a finger in the air. “Turn around for me.” He makes a note in the file. “That's all right, then.”

“What?”

The doctor strokes his beard. His smile says he knows something I do not. “So, Cash, you look like a fellow who's got at least half his teeth.”

“Yes.”

“Ever been convicted of a crime?”

“No.”

The pencil moves, checking boxes. “Drink too much? Like boys?”

“What?” I can feel my face redden.

“Sit down.” He takes my foot in his hand and flexes it. “How are your ankles?”

“They're fine. Couple of sprains.”

“Mmm. Straighten your leg out. Knees?”

“Never had any trouble.”

“You do any running?”

“I play squash.”

He nods. “Get up and walk for me.”

I go from my stool to the sheet. When I turn to come back, I see the pencil pressed against his lips. “Ever run straight? Or hike?”

“No. I did track once, but . . .” My voice trails off.

“Your knees hurt.”

“No more than normal.”

A small shake of the head. “It's not normal.” He makes another note and closes the folder with an air of finality. “You're out,” he says. “Go home.”

“What?”

“Overpronation. You can't march.”

“Of course I can.” Part of my mind is insisting that I should feel relief, but what rises in me instead is anger. “I'm a varsity athlete.”

“Side to side I bet you're grand.” He smiles. “Like a crab. But you can't go forward. It's like flat feet.”

Something is being taken from me. “I want to volunteer,” I say. “There must be something I can do.”

For the first time, he looks surprised. “I'm sure there is. But this isn't a
recruiting center. It's a preinduction physical, and you've failed. Go home.”

“But I can still volunteer?”

“I don't know why you're asking me.” He shakes his head. “Look, I've got other men to see.”

I button my shirt as I step out. Young men mill on the sidewalk, hands exploring new-mown hair. The gum-snapping slicker is there, both ears now prominently on display. Billy Fitch looks younger without his curls, all big eyes and pale, vulnerable skin. He looks at me. “What happened?”

“Ankles,” I say.

His nod is unconvinced. “You always seemed okay to me.”

“I thought so too. It was the doctor.” He nods again and turns away. We are on different paths now, in different worlds. I take a taxicab to Suburban Station and ride the Paoli Local out to the Main Line. The first name the conductor calls triggers the whole familiar string in my mind. Overbrook, Merion, Narberth, Wynnewood, Ardmore, Haverford, Bryn Mawr.
Old maids never wed and have babies.
I never make it to the babies either, getting off at Haverford. From the station I can walk home down the wide and quiet streets. There has never been much traffic, but now there is even less. Almost anyone can get a B or C gas sticker from the local price administrators, but new tires are harder to come by.

The familiar houses sprawl back from the road, with low stone walls and long drives. I knock at a glossy black door and give my bag to James, who has been with us since before I was born. My mother kisses me and grasps my hands in hers. “You said they were going to cut your hair.” She reaches up, as if to be sure it's still there, and runs her fingers across my brow.

I pull her hand down. “I failed.”

“What?”

“I failed. Something about my ankles.”

Her face lights up. “But that's wonderful. Charles, come here.” My father does not stir from his study, or even deign to answer, so she pulls me with her into the room. Now he sets aside the
Bulletin
and rises from his chair. His back is straight, his grip strong.

“Cash. Will you be staying for dinner?”

“Yes, father. The weekend, actually. I need to make some plans.”

“Now you can join Morgan Lewis after all,” he says.

“Yes,” I say. “I could. But—”

“You're not thinking of New York, are you?”

“No. I'm thinking of volunteering.”

At my side, my mother gives a small gasp, but my father just blinks at me. His face suggests that he's not quite sure what I mean, but if it's along the lines he suspects, I must be insane. It's the expression I must have shown the gum-chewing dodger, and now I realize where I get it. “Volunteer?” he says, as though trying out a word in a foreign language. “For what?”

I have not yet given this much thought, and I manage only a few inarticulate syllables before my father speaks again.

“You don't know.” He shakes his head as though his suspicions have been confirmed.

“I just want to do something.”

“Drive an ambulance, maybe? Like Ernest Hemingway?”

“Why not?”

“I don't believe there's much need for that right now.” He pauses, and a slow smile touches his lips. “And don't you know what happened to him?”

“Charles!” My mother turns to me. “Cash,” she says. “Why would you want to leave? What about Suzanne? What about us?” She listens to the radio. She has heard that war will plow under every fourth American boy, that we will not put out the fires of Europe by setting our home ablaze.

“Do you remember the Easter egg hunts at Merion?” I ask. It is her turn to look puzzled. “When I was five,” I say. “I'd just moved up into an older group, but I went after the toddler eggs by mistake. I got them all. I remember showing you my basket.”

She shakes her head. “I'm afraid I don't remember that.”

“I was very proud of myself. And you didn't tell me that they weren't for me, that I'd made a mistake. You just said, ‘And what will you do with your bounty?' ”

“I did? Bounty? That doesn't sound like me.”

“Well, that's what you said. And then—”

“I certainly don't know what I meant by that,” she continues. James places a glass of wine in her hand. “If I said it.”

“Yes, you said it.”

“Bounty?”

“Yes!” It comes out louder than I intended. My father coughs; my mother raises the glass to her lips. Age shows in her hands. The skin is thinner, tight over the knuckles and webbed with lines. The rings look heavy on her fingers. “And then you helped me hide them again.”

“Would a five-year-old even know the word ‘bounty'?”

My father coughs again. “That's charming,” he says. “But I don't see what it has to do with your plans. Egg hiders are in less demand even than ambulance drivers, I should think.”

“It's about doing something with what I've been given,” I say.

“Bounty,” my mother says again. “You know, I don't think that's a word I use.”

I blink at her. “Maybe not. But that's how I remember it. And that's what matters.”

“I think it matters what I said.”

“I'm going to volunteer,” I say. “For something. You can't stop me.”

She looks at my father, helpless. “Indeed, you have been given things,” he says. “Investments have been made. In you. What return do you foresee from this?”

“It's not about return,” I say. “It's the right thing to do.”

He raises his eyebrows mildly. “Because of what you owe your country? It was not your country that sent you to the University, that paid your way to law school. That fed and clothed you these years. Other people have a claim on you as well.”

I look down at the dark waxed floor, my certainty melting. My brother is raising a family already; he trades stocks, went to Harvard. Each achievement made me feel less necessary, a fainter echo trailing in his wake. But my father is a banker; perhaps he loves his reserves better than I know. Or values them more highly. The firelight flickers over thinning Persian rugs. My mother lays a hand on my arm. “Just take some time,” she says. “Talk to Suzanne. Talk to her father.”

• • • • 

Judge Skinner's house is another short walk down the quiet streets. Dusk is gathering in the trees; the birds have gone still, and a pale moon is emerging in the eastern sky. But when Suzanne opens the door, it's as though the sun is still high. Her skin has the glow of a spring day and her green eyes are full of light. “How are you?” she asks, and throws her arms around me.

“Not good enough for Uncle Sam,” I say. Over her shoulder I can hear voices and the clink of glassware. The Judge is entertaining.

Suzanne squeezes me harder and then lets go. “I knew it,” she says, and she truly doesn't sound surprised. “I knew you wouldn't leave me.”

“I was thinking, though. That maybe there's something else I could do.”

I can see her body go tight as she takes a step back. “What do you mean?”

“My number came up. I was supposed to go.”

“That's not what the doctor said.”

“I feel like I'm cheating. Like I'm not pulling my weight.”

“Don't be silly. You work harder than anyone I know.”

“Some guys at Columbia,” I begin. The observation says more about her acquaintances than my work habits, but there's no point in pursuing it. “It's not about working. It's serving.”

“But that's what you're doing. This is what's right for you. Oh, Cash, you don't belong in the army. You're going to be a lawyer.”

“Billy Fitch was going to be a lawyer, too.” I think of his pale face, the accusation in his eyes. “He's just as smart as I am. Works just as hard.”

“I don't care about Billy Fitch,” Suzanne says, and her arms are around me again. “I want you to be safe.”

“But why me and not him? How am I different?”

“You big dummy,” she says. Her voice is amused but patient, as though explaining something to a child. “You're different because I love you.”

This will not be resolved in one conversation. I stroke her hair and she nestles into my chest. “Let's see a movie,” I say, and she rubs her face up and down against me: yes. There will be time to talk to the Judge later. And certainly there is no hurry. I have a school year to finish out, one more round of exams to take. But still the idea grows inside me. My number did come up. It wasn't the call I thought, but it feels like permission. It is a sign, if you
believe in that sort of thing. By May, law school will be done. By the end of the month, I can sign up and ship out; by June, I will be gone.

So I say, and Suzanne protests and remonstrates and finally weeps. And my father talks of investments, and my mother reaches out and lets her arms fall to her side. Even Judge Skinner has a word with me about the fine traditions of Morgan Lewis and the value of Center City practice. But as it turns out, June finds me someplace none of us could have expected.

“DOING WELL, CASH?”
the voice on the phone asks. It is Herbert Wechsler, who taught me constitutional law, or tried, and now sits at the Justice Department in Washington, DC. He doesn't wait for an answer. “Good. Anyway, this isn't a social call. There's an opening at the Supreme Court. Hugo Black needs a new law clerk.”

“Me?” I am taken aback. A law clerk sits at the Justice's elbow, discusses the cases, offers opinions on weighty and complicated questions. I am not an obvious choice for that role. Not all my exams were as disastrous as con law, but I am by no means one of the bright young things of Columbia. It seems quite possible that Wechsler is thinking of another man entirely. He is young and brilliant but somewhat distracted, and students have never been his chief focus. Perhaps, I suggest, he intends to reach out to someone other than Caswell Harrison.

“Of course I mean you, Cash,” Wechsler says. “You're the right sort of guy for this.”

“Really?”

Now he hesitates a moment. “It's a bit of a last-minute thing, that's all. Justice Black's just had a second clerk drafted out from under him.”

I remain silent. The phrase puts me in mind of one of the glorious generals from the history books in Judge Skinner's study, battling to victory as a succession of mounts go down. It makes more sense now that Wechsler
would call me, from one perspective at least. Word of the physical has gotten around: I am a horse that will not falter.

“You could start in June, couldn't you?” he continues. “And you play tennis.”

This last is a statement, not a question, and it makes me wonder where he is getting his information. I am a competent tennis player, but not a star. “More squash,” I answer. At Merion, lawn tennis is an arriviste that crowds out cricket. “I lettered at Penn.”

“You could keep up with a fifty-five-year-old man, though,” says Wechsler. Again it is not a question, and this time I let it pass.

“Actually, I was thinking,” I say. “That after graduation maybe I'd sign up for something.”

“Sign up? What are you talking about?”

“Volunteer. For the war.”