Carry Me Home (19 page)

Chapter 23

I
t’s a Sunday and it’s spring. Eddie’s coming over so we can go fetch tadpoles. Like Eddie says, getting tadpoles ain’t playing. It’s more like fishing, and even old men fish.

Eddie comes up the back porch. I hear his pail clunkity-clunk down the steps, then Eddie pokes his head inside. “Hey, Earwig, you in there?”

I’m in the kitchen making myself a peanut butter sandwich and trying not to slop the peanut butter all over the counter or Ma is gonna yell her fool head off. “In here, Eddie.” Lucky runs to the door to meet Eddie, his paws slip-sliding across the floor. Lucky likes Eddie a lot, so he jumps all over him all the way to the kitchen.

“That’s a lot of peanut butter you got on there, Earwig,” Eddie says, and I tell him it sure is. I mind my manners and ask Eddie if he wants a sandwich too, but he don’t. He just wants to lick the butter knife.

“Wait ’til you see what I got! You ain’t gonna believe it, Earwig.” Eddie scrapes the knife across his bottom teeth, then grins like nobody’s business.

“What you got?” I ask, but with that peanut butter sticking my tongue to the top of my mouth, it don’t sound like that’s what I’m asking.

Eddie’s eyeballs skitter back and forth. “Where is everybody?”

“Ma’s at some party for a lady that’s gonna have a baby, and Dad, he went to the garage to get a wrench to fix the sink. Jimmy’s over at Eva Leigh’s. Why you asking, Eddie?”

Eddie is talking in whispers. “’Cause I don’t want nobody seeing what I got, that’s why. I ain’t suppose to have them. If I get caught, I’m gonna get it good.”

“What you got, Eddie?”

Eddie taps his ass, right over his back pocket. “Pictures, Earwig.”

I start to laughing. “You got girlie pictures, Eddie? Oh, man!” I see’d girlie pictures before. Skeeter brought some to the Ten Pin and showed ’em to me. Them girls sure was something, their titties sitting there like two giant scoops of vanilla ice cream, with two big cherries sitting right on top. They had their legs open too, but you couldn’t see much of what they had there, on accounta they had that fuzzy hair covering that place up.

“Nope. I got something better than girlie pictures.”

“There ain’t nothing better than girlie pictures, Eddie.”

“Wanna bet?” Eddie picks up the Skippy jar and twirls the butter knife around the inside to get some more. Lucky wants a sandwich, but Eddie’s hogging up the last of the peanut butter, so Lucky’s gotta have just plain bread.

“Well, let’s see ’em, Eddie.”

“Just a minute.” He sets the licked-shiny knife on the counter and pokes his finger in the jar to rub out the last of the peanut butter. Eddie don’t put down that jar ’til there ain’t a bit left.

Eddie bends over and looks in the living room to check for somebody who might give him a lickin’, then he wipes his smeary fingers on the sides of his shirt. “Okay, Earwig, but you gotta promise you’re not going to tell nobody that I showed them to you.”

Eddie digs in his pocket and pulls out a mess of pictures. “You know my uncle Mike?” I tell him I sure don’t know his uncle Mike. “Well, he’s my ma’s brother. He’s from up north. He went to the Pacific to fight in ’43, and he took pictures and sent some to Dad. I snuck them out of Dad’s drawer.”

Eddie spreads them pictures on the table, lining ’em up neat as church windows, while I put away the bread so Ma don’t harp. “These are pictures of real live dead Japs, Earwig.”

Lucky must not want to see no pictures of dead Japs, ’cause he crawls under the table and lays down.

I go to the table to take a look. I pick one up. Eddie stands so close to me I can feel his breathing on my arm, and it’s warm and smells all peanutty. That picture is something awful. So awful it about makes me get the dizzies. Them dead soldiers are all tangled up with each other, their guts all spilled out. But there ain’t a Jap in that picture. Not a one.

“Ain’t that something, Earwig? Their guts are all blown apart. Must be a hundred dead yellow-bellies slung across that field.”

“What to hell you talking about, Eddie?” I say. “There ain’t no Japs in this picture.”

“What do you mean?” Eddie takes his finger and zigzags it across the photograph. “Jeez, Earwig, there’s dead Japs all over the place. You go blind, or what?”

“These are dead Japs?” I ask.

“Sure they are, Earwig.”

My breath gets hung up on my Adam’s apple. Them Japs, they ain’t nothing but men. Just men. Men just like me and Jimmy and Floyd and John. And some of ’em ain’t even men at all, but boys just like Eddie. Even in black-and-white pictures, I can see they ain’t yellow either. Not even their bellies that are naked, their shirts flung up to show the holes in their guts. Their bellies is the same shade of gray as their faces.

Eddie slaps another picture over the one I’m holding. “Look at this one, Earwig. It’s a close-up. You can see the dead guy’s face real good.” That guy’s eyes, they are wide open and so is his mouth. He’s got a big dent where the rest of his head should be, and dark blood is soaked down the front of his shirt.

Not me or Eddie or Lucky hear Dad come into the house. Just all of a sudden he’s there, standing in the kitchen. Eddie says, “Oh, boy” under his breath.

“What do you boys got there?”

Eddie, he backs his ass up against the cupboard, like maybe he thinks Dad is gonna take a swat at it.

Dad sets his wrench on the table and picks up a picture. He holds it out far as his arm stretches, on accounta his eyes ain’t what they used to be.

“They is just like us,” I say to Dad, and my voice is girlie-soft. “Everybody said they weren’t. They talked about ’em like they was dirty, mean hornets or something, but all them Japs is is guys. Guys just like us.” Dad picks up a couple more, looks at ’em quick, then tosses ’em back on the table.

“Nobody told me they was guys like us,” I say. My eyes feel all stingy and my belly ain’t feeling so good. I’m hoping I don’t start bawling in front of Eddie.

Dad looks at me for a time, then he turns away. “I guess that’s something we can’t think about too hard when we’ve got a war to fight.”

“Why?” I ask.

Dad chews on his lip a bit, then he says, “Well, I guess we couldn’t kill them if we thought of that, Earl. So we tell ourselves they’re different, so we can hate them enough to kill them. That’s the goddamn shame of war, Earl. Each side having to hate so they don’t have to admit they are killing human beings just like them. Sometimes, though, people gotta lie to themselves so they can do what’s gotta be done. This had to be done, Earl.”

I look down at my feet. I blink hard and try to suck the tears back up into my eyeballs. “They ain’t even got yellow bellies, do they?”

Dad’s shoulders look all droopy. “That’s just a name for someone who’s a coward, Earl. That’s all.”

Dad scoops all the pictures up into a pile and holds ’em out to Eddie. “Where’d you get these, son?” I butt in and tell Dad they come from Eddie’s dad’s drawer, ’cause Eddie looks too scared to tell him anything. “I think you better take these home, Eddie, and put them back where you found them.”

Eddie, he forgets all about getting tadpoles. He scoops up the pictures and runs out of the house. I can see him out the window, running so fast no one would ever know that he used to be crippled up from the polio.

After he’s gone I get his pail that is tipped over at the bottom of the steps and I set it down on the porch, real gentle-like.

Chapter 24

M
ary is gonna have a baby. That’s what she tells us when she stops by after supper while we is listening to
Fibber McGee and Molly
. She ain’t looking so good, with her face all peaked and her eyes all red from crying. “Oh, honey,” Ma says. She moves to the couch and sits down by Mary and takes her hand. Dad turns the radio off, and now I’ll never know where Fibber is really going when he tells Molly that he’s taking night classes when he ain’t.

“I just don’t know what to do anymore, Mrs. Gunderman.”

“Does Floyd know?” Dad asks.

Mary nods. “He told me to divorce him now, before the baby is born. He said it’s better for me and for the baby.”

“Jimmy . . .” Ma says, like she expects him to say something that will make Mary stop crying.

Jimmy lights a cigarette. He don’t say nothing ’til he’s got all that smoke blowed out of his mouth. “Floyd’s a mess. And it seems to me he’s getting worse.”

“Can’t you talk some sense into him?” Ma asks.

Jimmy, he’s dumped out lots of sorrows. I know this ’cause he ain’t having them nightmares so much anymore, and during the day his step, sometimes it’s got something a little bouncy put back into it. But Floyd, it’s like he ain’t got nothing happy left in him. I know this ’cause four times now Ruby Leigh or Slim had to tell Floyd to leave the Ten Pin ’cause he was getting real mean with the customers and talking crazy.

Jimmy tells Mary that he’ll do what he can, but he ain’t promising it will do any good. Mary smiles, even though she’s crying. She thanks Jimmy and says, “I don’t want to lose him, Jimmy.”

“Maybe she’s already lost him,” Jimmy says once we get to the Ten Pin, when he tells Eva Leigh what happened. “Maybe we all have.”

“It’s so sad,” Eva Leigh says as she looks over to where Floyd is sitting, staring at nothing, his cigarette ash long and fuzzy as a caterpillar. “Are you going to try to talk to him, Jimmy?”

Jimmy nods. “For all the good it’ll do.”

Jimmy picks up his Coca-Cola, which he is drinking most times now ’cause he says that beer is bothering his guts. He goes over to Floyd and pats his back and sits down on the stool next to him.

Most of the bowling lanes are empty ’cause it ain’t a bowling-league night, plus, Tommy and the Toe Tappers are playing over at the town hall. I stay behind my triangle window and watch Jimmy sitting with Floyd.

Floyd, he keeps telling Ruby Leigh to fill up his glass. He shouts it to her even when she’s way over on the other side of the bar taking care of somebody else. He is being so loud that a couple old guys at the bar turn their heads to stare at him. Floyd looks at them and yells, “What the fuck you looking at?” Slim, who is over by Eva Leigh giving her some change for her drawer, he looks up and I know he’s thinking that it’s almost time for Floyd to go home.

Jimmy leans his head over like he’s trying to get Floyd to look at him. I can’t hear nothing Jimmy is saying, ’cause he ain’t yelling. Floyd, he don’t pay no attention to Jimmy, not ’til Jimmy puts his hand on Floyd’s broked-off arm. Floyd gets so pissed his face turns red. He jerks his stump away from Jimmy and gets off his stool. Jimmy’s got his hands held up, his arms spread, and he’s talking, but Floyd keeps backing up.

“Listen, you prick,” Floyd shouts. “I don’t need you or anybody else telling me what the fuck I should or shouldn’t do! Get the fuck outta my way.”

Slim, he hears Floyd and starts heading over to the bar. Floyd sees Slim and he shouts, “Save your breath, old man. I’m leaving.”

Floyd circles around Jimmy and walks all wobbly-like to the door. Jimmy starts to follow. When Floyd gets to the door he turns around. He looks like a top that’s winding down. “Get fucked, Gunderman! I don’t need your shit. You hear me?” He opens the door and stops for a second like he’s gonna say more, but Slim, he yells at Floyd to keep walking.

Mary ends up moving back with Floyd ’cause her ma and dad say she’s gotta now that she’s gonna have a baby. This scares the dickens out of Eva Leigh. Whenever Mary comes into the store I look good at her puffy face to see if it’s got yellow and purple on it. It don’t, but like Eva Leigh says, some hurts don’t leave bruises you can see on the outside.

When Floyd stops coming to the Ten Pin, Jimmy gets worried. One morning when Jimmy runs home from the Skelly to fetch a hacksaw Dad left in the basement, he stops Mary as I’m carrying her groceries to her car. He asks her how Floyd is doing.

“Oh, Jimmy,” Mary says. “He doesn’t even leave his chair anymore, except to go to the bathroom or get another beer. He won’t eat anything either. He’s acting so strange that I’m afraid to leave him home alone, even to run here or to my doctor appointments.”

Jimmy don’t say nothing as he watches Mary drive away, but he sure does look worried.

It’s a Sunday, so Jimmy ain’t gotta work in the garage and I ain’t gotta work in the store. I gotta clean the dog shit out of the yard, though, ’cause the winter snow’s melted now and them turd piles is strung all over. Jimmy is helping. It’s a good brother who will help you clean up dog shit when he don’t even gotta.

Jimmy picks up a gob of dried turds with his rake and he shouts, “Think fast, Earwig,” and he flings them turds right at me. I jump fast, but one of ’em hits me right in the leg anyway. “You son of a bitch!” I yell. Jimmy laughs.

So I scoop turds on my rake, and I’m just about ready to give ’em a heave when Mary runs up from the alley. Mary’s got a pooch of a belly, and that would be the baby. She’s got a hand over that baby and her eyes are all buggy. “Jimmy! Jimmy!” She can’t hardly talk ’cause she lost her wind while she was running.

Jimmy drops his rake and hurries to her. “What’s wrong, Mary?”

“Floyd. He’s got his rifle out and it’s loaded. He’s just sitting there holding it. Oh, God, Jimmy, it’s like he can’t even hear me!”

“Earwig, you take Mary inside.” Then Jimmy takes off running down the alley, which is quicker to Floyd and Mary’s place than taking the sidewalk or even the car. Ma, she comes out on the porch and she asks what’s wrong. She sees Mary carrying on and she hurries to her. I take off after Jimmy, Lucky barking at me from his chain.

My heart is beating in my ears as I run up the apartment steps. The door, it’s open a little, but I don’t go inside at first. I’m scared that Floyd is gonna be dead in there, his guts ripped open or his head half blowed off like the guys in Eddie’s pictures. I lean my ear right to that crack and I listen. I can hear Jimmy talking, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. Jimmy wouldn’t be talking to no dead guy, I don’t think, so I go inside.

There is a kitchen first. I pass the table, where there’s a bowl and baking stuff out like Mary was fixing to make biscuits or something, then I go through the living room. There is beer bottles on the end table next to a big chair. I peer down a short hall and I can see the bedroom down there. I can tell it’s a bedroom ’cause I can see a dresser with a couple shirts sitting on top, folded pin-neat. Jimmy is standing in there. I can see his back parts through the doorway. It don’t seem like Jimmy notices I’m here. “Floyd, talk to me. Come on, buddy. Put the gun down and talk to me.”

“Leave me alone, Gunderman,” Floyd finally says. “I mean it. Get the hell out of here and leave me alone.” His voice don’t sound mad, though. It just sounds tired.

“I’m not leaving. If you’re gonna blow your brains out you’re gonna have to do it in front of me, ’cause I’m not leaving.”

Floyd laughs then and his laugh is too loud, too hard. “Why? You want to watch the one-armed wonder try to figure out how to get a rifle up to his goddamn head?”

“Floyd, come on. Think of Mary. Think of your kid. Jesus Christ. She waited for you. You owe her something, don’t you?”

“It’s no good, Jimmy!” Floyd says, and he is coming close to crying now. “She waited for someone else, not some fucking lopped-off lunatic who can’t even get it up no more. Jesus Christ, Jimmy, I can’t even sleep through the night without crying like a goddamn baby. She’s better off without me. So is the kid.”

“So you’re gonna let the Japs win, is that it? You didn’t let those bastards break you then, but you’re gonna let them break you now. Crissakes, Floyd. Think about it.”

I scoot closer to the door. I can see most of Floyd, who is sitting on the bed, where sheets and blankets are dripped to the floor. He’s got the gun in his hand. Floyd ain’t looking so good. His face is white as his knuckles and he ain’t shaved. His eyes is so raccooned that anybody can see he ain’t slept in a long time.

Floyd, he moves his hand so his finger is right on that trigger. I get scared for a minute, thinking maybe he’s gonna shoot Jimmy, but then my head tells me that he ain’t wanting to shoot nobody but hisself.

“I can’t take it anymore, Jimmy. I’m good as dead inside anyway. I can’t feel nothing. I can’t taste nothing. I can’t see nothing but that place, and it won’t get out of my head. I’m not here anymore, Jimmy. I’m still in that fucking hole and I can’t get out.” Floyd, his voice sounds like it’s got tears in it, but he ain’t got none on his face.

Jimmy’s shoulders fall some then. “I know, Floyd. It was the same for me for a long time. Still is, some days.”

“Jimmy, I don’t know how to make it stop. Either I’m feeling nothing, or else I’m feeling so goddamn much rage that I want to rip the whole fucking world to shreds.”

Jimmy sits down on the bed, careful-like, right by Floyd. “I know, Floyd. I know.”

Floyd finally says, “I killed one of us.” Floyd sounds like he’s choking on them words. “On the Hell Ship. When I volunteered for work duty. You told me not to go, remember? But I did anyway, because I had to get to hell out of that goddamn shithole before I lost my mind.

“You remember that look the guys would get a couple hours or a couple days before they died, like their fucking souls already left, even while they were still breathing? Every time I’d catch myself staring off into the distance, not a fucking thought in my head, I’d think I was getting that death stare, and I’d get so scared I’d almost piss myself.

“They put us down in the hold. We were down there for five days, maybe six. We were packed like rats, and there wasn’t enough air to breathe. A couple guys, they went nuts down there. They couldn’t take it anymore and they just went nuts. God, Jimmy, you know what guys are like when they go nuts. They don’t cry or scream. They howl. They howl like goddamn wounded animals.”

Jimmy, he don’t say nothing.

“The Japs, you know how scared they were of nuts. The first time, they stuck a couple rifles down into the hold and fired. The second time, they threatened to shut off our air vents. I didn’t want to suffocate. I didn’t want to die down there in a puddle of my own shit and piss. So me and a couple other guys, we choked those howling, nutty bastards. We choked them so they’d shut the fuck up. Our own guys.”

“Floyd,” Jimmy says. “Those guys were already gone. There wasn’t anything you could have done to save them. Maybe what you did was the only kind thing to do.”

“I didn’t do it to be kind!” Floyd shouts. “I did it to save my own fucking ass! Just like when I tried to get Cub to hang on. I didn’t give a shit if he lived for his sake, I wanted him to live for mine!”

I move closer until I’m standing right inside the room. Jimmy looks up at me. He looks pissed that I’m here. Floyd, he don’t look up, ’cause now he’s bawling so hard that he probably can’t see me.

Floyd’s head rolls back. “I did it to save my own fucking ass!”

Jimmy talks loud so Floyd can hear him. “That’s what war is, Floyd, fighting to save your own ass. I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but it took one shot close to my head to destroy any notions I had about being a goddamn hero. From then on, I was fighting to save my ass. Nothing more. I think we all were.”

I don’t think Floyd can hear nothing Jimmy’s saying, on accounta he’s still bawling. The gun slips outta his hand and clunks to the floor.

Jimmy, he starts to tell Floyd to “Shhhhhh,” and I go all the way inside the room and I shake my head.

“He’s gotta get his sorrows out, Jimmy.”

Jimmy scoots the rifle away from Floyd’s bare foot, using his boot to move it. Floyd’s bawling like his guts is getting ripped apart, and it’s a pitiful sound for sure.

It’s a long time before Floyd stops howling. Then his guts heave, like them tears is trying to puke out the rest of the sorrows that the howls left behind.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Floyd finally says. He’s got strings of spit from his top lip to his bottom. “I don’t know how to live here anymore.”

Then Jimmy, he says, “You just gotta keep putting one foot in front of the other, Floyd. Walking through your days the best you can until you walk far enough away from those hard times to be able to live again. That’s what I’m doing.

“And you have to find something good to cling to, Floyd. Remember how good you felt when you stepped off the bus and saw Mary waiting for you? You said, ‘Crissakes, Gunderman, look at that. She’s looking at me like I’m Humphrey Bogart.’ You remember that when the horror pictures start, Floyd.”

“Mary . . .” Floyd says when his guts stop heaving and he can talk a bit better. “She deserves better than this. So does my kid. He deserves a dad who can hold him with two arms, for godssakes.”

I clear my throat ’cause it’s got some snot in it from the tears I’m crying. I take a couple steps so I’m closer to the bed. “My dad, Floyd, he don’t ever hold me with two arms. He puts one arm around me, just like this,” and I show him by putting my arm across his shoulders. “And that one arm, it’s enough to hold my scared down. That’s all a dad’s gotta do to help, Floyd. Just use one arm.”

Floyd, he looks up at me like it’s the first time he notices me. He smiles, even though his eyes are still sad.

“You just walk through your days, Floyd,” Jimmy says, and he’s got teary eyes too. “And when you feel like you’re going to fall on your ass again, you just grab tight to the first person that’s nearby and you hold on until you steady yourself enough to take another step.”

The front door creaks open and I can hear a lady’s shoes clacking down the hall. Then Mary is in the doorway, her eyes all puffy from crying. She sees Floyd and brings her shaky hand over the top of her big titties. “Oh, Floyd,” she says. And Floyd, he gets up and he hugs Mary with his good arm and she cries like a baby.