I Pledge Allegiance Read online

I nearly fling myself overboard with fright. It’s Vera, and it’s one of the few times I’ve seen him out and about without an officer right on his back shouting and bullying him into it. He’s one of those people, Vera, who makes you know how sad he is just by walking by. Not that he’s a drag or anything, because really he never has a bad word for anybody, and if any one of us, anyone who is not a superior officer, asks for anything, he’s right there with whatever. He’s just … you know that look a person gets when they’re really sick but they don’t know what they’ve got? Vera wears that look all the time.

  “I sleep,” I say, exaggerating only a little. Truth is, I sleep a little bit less every week as time goes by.

  “Not much,” he says. “I know. You don’t think I know?”

  Somehow, you gotta know he knows.

  “I worry,” I say.

  “Everybody worries,” he says.

  Probably he worries even more than I do. He got himself in a lot of trouble by not showing up for the war the night we got hit. He got punishments, but not as much as he could have. Skipping the actual battle parts of a war is about the most serious thing you can do in the service, but because the officer in charge either knew just what he was doing or knew nothing at all, Vera was punished with restriction to quarters. That’s like sentencing a glutton to pizza and ice cream. But he got some leniency because it turned out he got sick and that’s why he missed the big game. Lucky for him, right? By the time they came to mop the floor with his butt, there was a lot more mopping to do, since he had decorated the whole House with vomit.

  We all did the natural thing and mocked the guy mercilessly. We even braved the stench as Vera was forced to sponge down the walls until he puked even more and could not keep up with his own production.

  He kept scrubbing until he passed out, with his mates’ laughter still ringing in his ears.

  Turns out the whole sickness thing was job related.

  Seven Hands Vaughn told me later. Vera drank himself some bleach.

  “You’d be a little nuts not to worry,” I say.

  “What do you worry about? Aside from the obvious stuff like getting blown up and drowning and all.”

  “My pals,” I say, because even though this might seem quick to be answering so truly to somebody, Vera feels like a guy I could be friends with. Like if he wasn’t so miserable he’d be great company, if that makes any sense. “I came over with three friends, and they are out there someplace, in-country. One guy, Rudi, got drafted into the Marines. And we kind of had a pledge, if one guy was drafted — especially if it was Rudi — we were all joining. I kind of feel like, from the ship, it’s my job to look out for them.”

  I shrug, the way you do when your words come out and they float there stupid on the breeze and you’re not sure they mean anything to anybody else.

  Vera gives me a solidarity shrug.

  I go on. “I imagine that when we fire our guns, we’re shooting down the guys who’re about to shoot down my guys. And I hope that we’re not actually shooting down my guys along with them.”

  “The ol’ friendly fire,” Vera says with a snarly smile.

  “The ol’ friendly fire,” I say.

  We walk past the tall Terrier missiles, still pointed and baring their teeth in the direction of the Vietcong. We walk to the very back of the ship, to the rail above the churning water behind us.

  “I imagine when we’re firing our guns,” Vera says, staring way, way off over the water, “that we’re shooting my dad, over and over again. I worry that we keep missing him.”

  I face straight out to sea, just the way he does. But my eyes dart in my skull, side-to-side-to-side, pinball-like. I think he senses my discomfort and my need for a bit of explanation.

  “He’s a big man in the Marine Corps, my father. A colonel.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, wow. He wanted me to join the Marines. I wanted no part of the Marines, or this stinking war at all. But my family … we’re a big family, family is everything to us. And we go back, in the military. Uncles, cousins, everybody. Even the girls. Couldn’t look nobody in the eyes ever again if I tried to stay out of it. Big shame.”

  “So you joined the Navy,” I say helpfully. “Cool.”

  “Yeah, cool. Very impressed, my dad. The Nancy Navy, he called it. The Floating Fairies.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Ouch,” he says, finding a new lower level of sad that I didn’t think would be possible. “He called me Vera way before you guys did.”

  The way the water kicks up in our wake, it reminds me of films I used to see, of women water-skiing in fancy ridiculous Hollywood musicals. And then I’m thinking of World War II films, with PT boats cutting up the waters and sinking German U-boats and everybody being comrades in arms and knowing which side of everything was the right side and being sure to be on that side. Everybody always had great teeth in all those films. Vera has great teeth, and I’m forcing myself to think these things, because, I realize, I don’t think I want to think about what Vera wants me to think about.

  “I was a great shot,” he says after apparently too much of all that Hollywood. “In basic training. Every type of gun they let me shoot — rifle, the cannons, antiaircraft, whatever they gave me — I could shoot the eyebrows off a fly a mile away. Must be in the blood, the Rivera genes.”

  “That’s great,” I say.

  “Yeah, great. And I swore I was gonna come over here and shoot my father’s eyes out. I was gonna make sure I knew where he was all the time and I was gonna shoot that way. Problem is, I think I said so out loud a few times.”

  “That explains the laundry duty.”

  “I believe my dad was scared of me, so he fixed things.”

  “Is that likely?”

  “Likely? Did you know before you got here that they were actually gonna make us sing ‘Anchors Aweigh’?”

  “No, sir,” I say, shaking my head vigorously and laughing. “I thought it was a joke song, from cartoons or something.”

  “Exactly. Now guess what. I can’t stop. The song, it spins in my head night and day and day and night and I can’t stop it. It plays at the same time with the Marines’ hymn, ‘From the Halls of Montezuma’ — and I mean AT THE SAME TIME, with the words twisting and snaking in and all over each other. I’m not kidding you, man. It doesn’t ever stop.”

  He turns and locks my eyes with his, right up scary close.

  “My dad used to come in my room and sing that song in my ear while I was sleeping. Night after night. To make me into what he wanted me to be. And not what he didn’t want me to be, you know what I mean? I would wake up, all sweating, that song in my head, but nobody there. I could smell him, though. Just me, there, alone, shaking, with his scent and his song, but no Dad. I knew, from his smell, he was there just a minute ago. Scent of Dad, but no Dad.”

  I get more of a chill now than from anything I have seen or heard yet in this war.

  “That’s … ah. Wow, man. No offense, but I don’t think I’d give you a gun, either. I think the Navy’s probably right about that at least.”

  Another first: Vera laughs. That’s a relief. It feels like something is opening, so I step on in. “Why are you talking to me now so much, Vera? After all the not talking you’ve done all this time? “

  His tensed-up features melt some to a real, soft, and hopeful smile. He looks like a kid.

  “‘Cause I been watching you, Mo. You’re a good one. You’re the real thing, aren’t ya? And I need a friend.”

  It seems like a simple enough thing. It seems like the kind of thing that would happen to a person lots of times over the course of a life. But I cannot think of one time, even as a little boy, when somebody came right out and asked me if I would be their friend.

  And here and now, in war and all. In the middle of the night and all. Facing off the stern of a great warship, the wind at our backs, the smell of the sea all around, the roll of the deck beneath our feet. It seems like the easiest answer in the world.
Why not?

  I try the easy way first, the man way.

  “We’re all your friends, Vera,” I say. “All the guys.”

  He shakes his head. The smile remains.

  “I mean a real friend. I don’t think I have ever, once, had a real, true friend. And everyone should have one real, true friend before he dies, don’t you think?”

  It seems, again, like the simplest answer. Doesn’t it seem like the simplest answer? I give him the simplest answer.

  Because I’m his friend.

  “Yes,” I say. “Of course.”

  But maybe if I was a better friend, I would have listened more closely, and I would have heard.

  He’s too quick for my mind to even contemplate his mind.

  With the strength and speed and skill of a gymnast, and still with that angel’s smile on his face, he is off.

  He grabs the rail, flips over, and dismounts, throwing himself out and into the white and wild churning water below.

  My new friend flies.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Home Again Home

  In basic training they told us we could expect to learn something new every day in the Navy. Here is something I learned: In the military, in war, you make friends just like that. And you lose them again, just like that.

  I raised the alarm. We tried to find him.

  But we never did.

  It’s kind of funny that we receive our next shipment of mail just before we’re due to arrive in Boston. In no time we’re going to be face-to-face with most of the people who wrote us the letters, and so maybe we should save them and have them read to us by the authors.

  Pretty funny, huh?

  All the guys from The House are sitting in mess, our food in front of us, our mail in hand.

  Here’s another funny thing: We lost our quietest guy, and somehow The House got quieter.

  The plan was to take the mail to dinner, read out loud, mock each other, throw food and be stupid, without thinking any of the thoughts that are likely to make our trip ashore less fun than it should be.

  Instead, we read to ourselves. We eat like birds, and I don’t mean seagulls. Seven Hands plucks away at something that haunts, that I have never heard but that feels like I have known it all my life.

  I have a letter from Beck.

  Hello Lucky,

  You are welcome. Even though I am so jealous I could puke, you are welcome anyway. Everyone is talking about what happened to you boys and how your reward was a trip back to Boston. A little coincidental, didn’t you think? That’s because it was me, my plane up there shooting at your little toy boat. Didn’t you see me? I had the pilot tip the wing to wave at you and everything. Oh right, you wouldn’t have seen me because you were too busy on the deck, cowering. Anyway, I thought you could use a break from all that floating and tanning.

  Say hi to Boston for me, Morris. Never thought I would miss the dump like I am missing it. I wonder, if I were at Wisconsin-Madison right now, if I’d be missing home as much.

  Nah.

  You heard from the guys? I heard that Ivan invaded Laos.

  I’m worried about Rudi. I haven’t heard from him, but that’s not shocking. He told me he wouldn’t write to me because I would correct his letters. I don’t correct, I just offer friendly advice. I hope he’s all right. He’s still got you watching over him, right?

  Try to look up once in a while, too. You might just see me.

  And don’t forget to watch over Morris, right? Right?

  See you soon, pal.

  Beck

  How did he know I was cowering? Maybe it was him up there. The jerk.

  I’m more homesick than ever now. I’m going home, will be there in a matter of hours, and I’m almost literally sick to my stomach with homesick. I’ll see people, I’ll see my mom, I’ll eat well and sleep in my own bed and the world will not constantly undulate beneath my feet, and all this is good — no, great — stuff.

  But I’ll be home to a home that doesn’t have Rudi and Beck and Ivan in it. I’ve never really known a home like that, at least not since I reached the age of really knowing things.

  So, is that really home?

  The most loving and strangulating hug in human history answers my question as soon as I walk through the door.

  Of course this is home. I am home.

  “Ma, please,” I gurgle, the breath squeezed right out of me. She has her head on my chest, her strong arms pythoning my rib cage, and she’s quietly crying. I have seen this phenomenon maybe three times in my life, the crying. “Please, Ma, don’t,” I plead. It is not sloppy sobbing. There are no cries to the heavens of my son, my son, thank God he’s alive. But in her own way, in our way, this is a highly emotional demonstration.

  “How is it possible that you got skinnier?” she asks, examining each rib with her fingers the way a tailor would check seams.

  “It isn’t possible,” I say rather feebly, “because I’m not skinnier.”

  “You’re telling me? You are telling me about this?” She gestures at the totality of me, a sweeping gesture from my head down to my feet as if I am a magic trick she just conjured out of nothing.

  She raised me all by herself after we lost my dad. So in a way, I am exactly that.

  I’m wearing my uniform, which if you have ever seen the uniform of the United States Navy, you will realize it exaggerates whatever body you’ve got. Brilliant white flared trousers topped by a brilliant white blouse and a blue kerchief, all topped by the white cupcake hat. If you’re fat or short or tall, you’re fatter or shorter or taller in this getup. If you’re thin …

  “Get in here,” Ma demands, pulling me by the hand through the front hall toward the kitchen. I can smell her meatballs percolating away in her homemade sauce. I can smell that there are forty of them. Just for me. It’s ten a.m., and I know this meal has been on for a minimum of four hours.

  “I was going to take you out to eat tonight,” I say as she just about throws me into my chair. The kitchen set. Aluminum frame. Two-foot by two-foot table with a pebbled silver Formica top. Just-about-padded red vinyl seat and back on the chairs. I want to be buried with this set.

  “So who says you can’t take me out? Tonight is a whole day away, and you have a good few meals to catch up on.”

  I spend a good portion of the day eating, and still she doesn’t change her mind about going out for dinner. Then the curse of the Navy uniform starts to grab me, and I feel like a loaf of bread stuffed into a half-loaf bag.

  “That’s more like it,” Ma says, standing in front of me, in front of my bedroom door. She pats my stomach with great professional chef satisfaction. I’m not any bigger, just more like a garden hose that got a rat stuck in it.

  “Where are we going to eat tonight, Ma?” I ask, and I am so looking forward to this exchange.

  “Oh, no place special. I don’t want to be any trouble. Someplace nice, inexpensive …”

  “Anthony’s Pier 4,” I say powerfully. It feels really good.

  She gasps. “Oh, my, no. That is just nonsense. All we need to do is —”

  Cheesy as it sounds, I take the greatest delight yet in drawing my wallet out of my pants pocket, opening it up, and fanning a selection of bills I am sure she has not seen since my father died. And quite possibly not before then, either.

  She gasps again.

  “I thought you were in the Navy, not the Mafia.”

  “Ma. I get paid. And I don’t spend hardly any of it.”

  She is actually blushing. This is my most successful day as a son, topping my graduation, even. And it may be my peak, so I plan to milk it.

  “So, lady,” I say, pointing at her, “while I’m taking my nap, you can just call Anthony’s Pier 4 and make us a reservation.”

  I approach my bed with a grin on my face. Ma always thought of Pier 4 like it was some kind of holy grail of dining experiences, talked about it as if it was this mystical, not-really-possible ideal that was great to think about, without ever q
uite getting there. Now she’s getting there.

  I strip off my crisp Navy issue whites and take devilish pleasure in dropping them right there on the floor. It’s like escaping the regimented military life and slipping back into my kid self all in one smooth, sloppy move.

  I flop onto my bed.

  How did this happen?

  I stare up straight over my bed. My room is upstairs, where my mother and I occupy the top half of my uncle’s two-family house. They don’t talk to each other, so it’s like we own a house to ourselves but just never use the downstairs part. I’m on the gabled front of the house, and the ceiling has slants and angles all over. On the tilted surface that I would always stare straight into while lying on my back, there is my great big poster of Tony Conigliaro. It’s a collage of him batting, playing center field for the Red Sox, and signing autographs for kids at the park. Covering the other sloped wall, just on the opposite side of my one window, is the great up-close shot of Bill Russell leaping, torso-to-torso, to block the shot of the immense Wilt Chamberlain. Behind my head, over the headboard, is Richard Petty and his blue-and-red number 43 winning Daytona.

  How did this happen?

  How did these posters get so … small? How did they lose their zing?

  This is my room, my life, my me. I am lying on my scuffed-up pine colonial mini poster bed, which feels noticeably smaller than it did the last time I slept in it only seven months ago.

  And Tony C. and Russ suddenly look … what? Stupid. That cannot be. They’re great men. But what they are doing, what looked to me like the most important jobs in the world, now looks like a massive waste of some amazing physiques.

  It cannot be. I cannot let it be.

  I’m in my underwear, and I pop up out of bed, duck under the baseball poster without looking at it again, and go to my window. I look out at the neighborhood as I know it, at the world as I knew it. I look out over my two modest little swimming trophies from Jamaica Plain Youth Week that stand on my windowsill, raising their tiny arms for attention.

  I stare out over the Sem, the Seminary, where I played about fifty thousand innings of baseball. Looking off beyond that is Hyde Square, where I was first ever allowed to go to the store by myself.