'That may not be the plan, but you have a nature, and you will obey it. It's to lead other men in battle and help them and prevent them from getting hurt. That is your nature.'
'They didn't say a thing about that. The reason we don't want the women down there is just some precautions. It's very corrupt in Hot Springs. Has been for years. All the cops are crooked, the newspapers are crooked, the courts and the judges are crooked.'
'I heard they have gangsters there, and whores. That's where A1 Capone went and Alvin Karpis and Ma Barker went to relax and take hot baths. They have guns and gangsters. It's where your father got killed.'
'My father died in Mount Ida, and he could have died anywhere on earth where there's men who rob other men, which is everywhere on earth. He didn't have nothing to do with Hot Springs. All that other stuff, you can't believe a lick of it. It's old hillbilly boys with shotguns.'
'Oh, Earl, you're such a bad liar. You're going off to a war, because the war is what you know best and what you love best. And you're going to leave me up in Fort Smith with no way to get in contact with you and I'll just have to wait and see if somebody doesn't come up with a telegram and say, Oh, Mrs. Swagger, the state of Arkansas is so sorry, but your husband, Earl, is dead. But it's okay, because he was a hero, and this here's another nice piece of plated gold for your trouble.'
'Junie, I swear to you nothing will happen to me. And even if it does, well, hell, you got $5,000 and you're still the most beautiful gal in Fort Smith and you don't have to stay in the hut, you could probably find an apartment by that time, when this housing mess is all cleared up. It'll all get better, I swear to you.'
'And who raises your son?'
'My? I don't have a son.'
'No, maybe it's a daughter. But whatever it is, it sure is getting big in my stomach.'
'Jesus,' said Earl.
'I wasn't going to tell you until after the ceremony, because I wanted the ceremony to be all for you. But then you went off and you didn't show up all afternoon.'
'I'm sorry, sweetie. I never would have guessed.'
'What do you think happens? You can't grab me four times a week without getting a baby out of it.'
'I thought you liked it when I grabbed you.'
'I love it. You didn't ever hear me saying no, did you?'
'No ma'am, guess not.'
'But it doesn't make a difference, does it?'
'I promised them. I said yes. It's more money. It's a better life.'
'Think about your boy, Earl.'
But Earl could not. Who'd bring a kid into a world where men fry each other with flamethrowers, machine- gun each other or go at it hand-to-hand, with bayonets and entrenching tools? And now this atom bomb tiling: turn the earth into Hiroshimas every-damn-where. He looked at her, indistinct in the dark, and felt her distance. He thought of the tiny being nestled in her stomach and the thought terrified him. He never asked to be a daddy, he didn't think he was man enough for it.
He was scared. He had a sudden urge, almost overwhelming, to do what he'd never done in the Pacific: to turn, to run, to flee, to leave it all behind him.
He saw his own melancholy childhood, that weary cavalcade of fear and pain. He didn't want that for his boy.
'I? I don't know what to say, Junie. I never thought about no boy or girl before. I just never figured on it.'
He had another feeling, one he felt so often: that he was once again failing someone who loved him.
He wished desperately he had a gift for her, something that would make it all right, some little thing.
And then he thought of it.
'I will make you one promise,' he said. 'It's the only one. I will quit the drinking.'
Chapter 6
The kid was hot. The kid was smoking. His strawberry-blond hair fell across his pug face, a cigarette dangled insolently from his lips, and he brought the dice, cupped into his left hand, to his mouth.
'Oh, baby,' he said. 'Jimmy Hicks, Captain Hicks, Captain Jimmy Hicks, Jimmy Hicks, Sister Hicks, Baby Hicks, Sixie from Dixie, sexy pixie, Jimmy Hicks, Baby Hicks, Mamma Hicks, oh, baby, baby, baby, you do what Daddy says, you sweet, sweet baby six!'
A near religious ecstasy came across his face as he began to slowly rotate his tightly clutched fist, and sweat shone brightly on the spray of freckles on his forehead. His eyeballs cranked upward, his lids snapped shut, but maybe it wasn't out of faith, only irritation from the Lucky Strike smoke that rose from his butt.
'Go, sweetie, go, go! said his girlfriend, who hovered over his shoulder. She looked about ten years older than he, had tits of solid, dense flesh, and her low-cut dress squeezed them out at you for all to see. Her lips were red, ruby red, her earrings diamond, her necklace a loop of diamond sparkle, her hair platinum. She touched the boy's shoulder for good luck.
With a spasm he let fly.
The dice bounded crazily across the table and Earl thought of a Jap Betty he had once seen, weirdly cart wheeling before it went in. The Betty had settled with a final splash and disappeared; the dice merely stopped rattling. He looked back at the kid, who was now bent forward, his eyes wide with hope.
'Goddamn!' the boy screamed in horror, for the cubes read three and four, not the two and four or the three and three or the five and one he needed, and that was the unlucky seven and he was out.
'Too bad, sir,' said the croupier with blank professional respect, and with a rake, scooped up what the kid had riding, a pile of loose twenties and fifties and hundreds that probably amounted to Earl's new and best yearly salary.
The kid smiled, and pulled a wad of bills from his pocket thick as Dempsey's fist.
'He crapped out,' Earl said to D. A., who stood next to him in the crowded upstairs room of the Ohio Club, watching the action. 'And he's still smiling. How's a punk kid like that get so much dough to throw around? And how's he get a doll off a calendar?'
'There's plenty more where that came from,' said D. A. 'You don't go to the pictures much, do you. Earl?'
'No, sir. Been sort of busy.'
'Well, that kid is named Mickey Rooney. He's a big actor. He always plays real homespun, small-town boys. He looks fourteen, but he's twenty-six, been married twice, and he blows about ten thousand a night whenever he comes to town. I hear the hookers call him Mr. Hey-kids-let's-put-on-a-show!'
Earl shook his head in disgust.
'That's America, Earl,' said D. A. 'That's what y'all was fightin' for.'
'Let's get out of here,' Earl finally said.
'Sure. But just look around, take it all in. Next time you see this place, you may be carrying a tommy gun'
The club was dark and jammed. Gambling was king here on the upstairs floor, and the odor of the cigarettes and the blue density of the smoke in the air were palpable and impenetrable. It smelled like the sulfur in the air at Iwo and the place had a sort of frenzy to it like a beach zeroed by the Japs, where the casualties and supplies have begun to pile up, but nobody has yet figured out how to move inland. And the noise level was about the same.
At one end of the room a roulette wheel spun, siphoning money out of the pockets of the suckers. A dozen high-stakes poker games were taking place under low lights. In every nook and cranny was a slot and at each slot a pilgrim stood, pouring out worship in the form of nickels and climes and silver dollars, begging for God's mercy. But craps was the big game at the Ohio, and at even more tables the swells bet their luck against the tumble of the cubes and piles of cash floated around the green felt like icebergs. Meanwhile, some Negro group diddled out hot bebop licks, crazed piano riffs, the sound of a sax or a clarinet or some sad instrument telling a tale of lost fortunes, love and hope.
