Without a word, she held out an envelope to him. His name was typed on it. The return address was printed in an old-fashioned, hard-to-read typeface:
Government of the United States, War Department.
Another, smaller line below that said:
Office of Selection for Service.
'Oh,' he said. It felt like a punch in the breadbasket. He'd known it was possible, of course, but he hadn't thought it was likely. 'Oh, shit.'
Edna Grimes nodded. 'That's what I said, too, Armstrong, when I saw the damn thing. But there's nothing you can do about it. If they conscript you and you pass the physical, you've got to go.'
'Yeah.' Armstrong nodded glumly. From some of the things he'd heard, the only way to flunk the physical was not to have a pulse, too. He did his best to look on the bright side of things: 'If they conscript me, it's only for two years. That's a year less than I'd spend if I joined up on my own.'
'I know. But still…' His mother gave him a hug of the sort he hadn't had from her in years. 'You're my baby, Armstrong. I don't want you going off to be a soldier. What if we have another war?'
Being his mother's baby didn't appeal to Armstrong. Fighting a war did- if you were going to be a soldier, what point was there to being one when nothing was happening? None he could see. That he might get hurt or killed never crossed his mind. He was, after all, only eighteen. But he was smart enough to know that, if he told his mother what he really thought, she'd pitch a fit. So, as soothingly as he could, he said, 'There won't be any war, Ma. We're giving the Confederates those pleb-whatchamacallits, so they've got nothing left to fight about.'
'Jesus, I hope you're right,' his mother said. 'Some people, though, if you give 'em an inch, they'll want to take a mile. The way the Freedom Party carries on, I'm afraid they're like that.'
Armstrong's little sister met the news that he was going to go off and be a soldier with complete equanimity. 'So long,' Annie said. 'When do you leave?'
'Not tonight, you little brat,' he said. She stuck out her tongue at him. He wanted to belt her a good one, but he knew he couldn't. She'd just go yelling to their mother, and then he'd end up in trouble. Annie was almost as big a pest as Aunt Clara, who would no doubt hope he never came back when he went off to wherever they'd ship him for training.
When his father got home and found out, though, he slapped Armstrong on the back and poured him a good- sized slug of whiskey, something he'd never done before. 'Congratulations, son!' Merle Grimes said. 'They'll make a man out of you.'
Since Armstrong was already convinced he was a man, that impressed him less than it might have. To show what tough stuff he was, he took a big gulp of the whiskey. He hadn't done a lot of drinking. The hooch felt like battery acid going down the pipe, and exploded like a bomb in his stomach. 'That's good,' he wheezed in a voice that sounded like a ghost of its former self.
'Glad you like it,' his father answered gravely. If he knew that Armstrong had just injured himself, he was polite enough not to let on. That was more discretion than he was in the habit of showing. He took a smaller sip from his own glass and asked, 'When do you go in for your preinduction physical?'
'Next Wednesday,' Armstrong said. 'I can hardly wait.'
He meant that ironically, but Merle Grimes took it seriously. 'Good,' he said. 'That's real good. You ought to be eager to do something for your country. It's been taking care of you all along.'
'Right,' Armstrong said tightly. He could have done without his father sounding like a goddamn recruiting poster.
Next Wednesday, naturally, rain poured down in buckets. Armstrong had to walk three blocks from the trolley stop to the building where the government doctors waited to get their hands on him. He was half soaked by the time he made it inside. Seeing several other guys his own age who were just as bedraggled as he was made him feel a little better. More fellows with wet hair and pimples came in the door after him, too.
A pair of clerks marched into the room. At the same time as one was saying, 'Line up in alphabetical order by last name,' the other declared, 'Line up according to height.'
After some confusion, alphabetical order won. Armstrong would have ended up about the same place either way. As a G, he was fairly close to the head of the line but not right at it. He was also taller than most of the young men there for their physicals, but not a real beanpole, either. He had a chance to look things over before the system got to work on him.
First came the paperwork. He would have bet money on that. His old man made a living pushing papers around for the government, and had plenty to do. Armstrong filled out about a million forms and carried them with him to the eye chart, which came next. The fellow in front of him had some trouble. 'I can see the little bastards just fine,' he told the guy in the white coat in charge of the test. 'Only thing is, I can't no way read 'em.'
'Let me see your paperwork,' the man in the white coat said. Armstrong got a glimpse of a couple of pages, too. Just about everything was blank. The man in charge of the test frowned. 'You're illiterate?' Seeing the puzzled look on the young man's face, he tried again: 'You can't read and write?'
' 'Fraid not,' the youth said. 'I can sign my name. That's about the size of it.'
'Didn't you go to school?'
'A couple years. I never was much good, though. I been workin' ever since.'
'Well, uh, Slaughter, no matter how good a name you've got for a soldier, you need to be able to read and write to enter the Army. You're not even in the right place in line. You'll be excused from conscription. I don't know if your exclusion will be permanent or if they'll class you as fit for service in an emergency. But we won't take you now.' He glanced towards Armstrong Grimes. 'Next!'
Armstrong thought about pretending he couldn't read, too. Too late, though-he'd already filled out his paperwork and done it right. He stepped up to the line and went down the chart as far as he could, switching eyes when the man in the white coat told him to.
'Give me your papers,' the man said, then nodded. 'You've passed here. Proceed to the next station.'
He saw even more guys in white coats than he had at the Polish sausage works where he'd tried to get a job. They measured and weighed him. One of them listened to his heart. Another one took his blood pressure. Another one- this one with a brand new pair of rubber gloves-told him to drop his pants, turn his head to one side, and cough. As he did, the man grabbed him in some highly intimate places. 'No rupture,' he said, and wrote on Armstrong's papers. 'Now bend over and grab your ankles.'
'What?' Armstrong said in alarm. 'You're not going to-'
But the man in the white coat was already doing it. That was a lot less pleasant than being told to turn his head and cough. 'Prostate gland normal,' the man said. He took off the gloves and tossed them into a corrugated- iron trash can. Then he wrote on the papers again. As soon as he gave them back, he started putting on a fresh pair of gloves.
'You must go through a lot of those,' Armstrong said. He pulled up his pants in a hurry, still stinging a little.
'You bet I do, sonny,' the man in the white coat agreed. 'All things considered, would you rather I didn't?' Armstrong hastily shook his head. 'Well, neither would I,' the man said. 'Go on to the next station.'
They drew blood there. A big, strapping fellow passed out just as Armstrong arrived. The fellow with the hypodermic syringe put it down in a hurry and managed to keep the big young man from banging his head on the floor. He dragged him off to one side and glared at Armstrong. 'You're not going to faint on me, are you? This guy was the third one today. Roll up your sleeve.'
'I don't think I am,' Armstrong said. 'What do you need to do this for, anyway?'
'See if you're anemic. See if you've got a social disease. See what your blood group is for transfusions. Hold still, now.' The man swabbed the inside of his elbow with alcohol. The needle bit. Armstrong looked away as the syringe filled with blood. He felt a little queasy, but only a little. The man yanked out the needle, stuck a piece of cotton fluff on the puncture, and slapped adhesive tape over it. He wrote on Armstrong's papers. 'That's it. You're done.'
'Did I pass?' Armstrong asked.
'Unless you're anemic as hell or you've got syphilis, you did,' the man replied. 'You're healthy as a horse. You'll make a hell of a soldier.'
'Oh, boy,' Armstrong said.
