For a long while they lay in bed, not sleeping. Sylvia wasn’t crying or laughing now, and they weren’t talking, but their naked sides still touched.
Sylvia thought about the Jewish boys in the Army, about Frankie who was too young to be her lover, and about Bruno in bed with his wife. Nothing good would ever come from Bruno. She liked Bruno’s looks and that he was smooth on the dance floor and sure of himself. But now she had a boy who wasn’t sure of himself, and it wasn’t as awful as she thought it might be, and, in fact, was kind of nice. Sylvia wasn’t sure now that she could give up Frankie as easily as she thought she could give up Bruno.
With just one lamp on, and both Sylvia and Frankie under the bed sheet, Frankie thought he was no nearer to deciding whether or not to put on the uniform. But he was deliciously drowsy from love’s wine, which also made him feel manly, strong, and knowing. Then he turned on his belly to sleep while Sylvia was still on her back, and he put his arm lightly around her. “You asleep, Sylvia?” Her slow regular breathing convinced him that she was, so he didn’t ask again. “Good night, sweetheart,” he said, and heard someone’s distant radio playing love songs.
The war was in the newspapers, on every radio, in classrooms, in newsreels and movies, in letters from guys in the service, in most conversations between housewives buying chickens, workers building ships at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and between the old men at the Sicilian Social Society. Young men lied about their youth or health to dress their punches in olive drab in order to knock out the enemy sooner.
Gene Dragoni was planning to join up that summer before coming of age. He took the elevated downtown to the Marine Corps recruiting office on Fulton Street. The recruiting sergeant said, “Fill this out. Answer every question.” The sergeant didn’t believe that Gene was seventeen and a half, the minimum age, but he accepted the application anyway, and would tell his captain later.
Gene went home to wait for his notice. Then, he thought, he would leave a note for his parents saying he was running away, and would go into boot training as a recruit. A week later a letter came from the Marine Corps captain. He said he appreciated Gene’s patriotism, but that he had called the teacher Gene put down as a character reference and the teacher had told him Gene’s true age. So Gene would have to wait for a few years. Then the Marines would be proud to have him.
Next, Gene decided to be a fighter pilot. Hearing of a Navy program that would train Utrecht graduates to fly, he went downtown again. The chief petty officer with a bunched-up old rug for a face put a nickel in the vending machine and handed a Her-shey’s to Gene and slapped him on the back. “Send in your older brother,” he said. And after he thought for a moment, added, “You have any sisters at home?”
Gene wouldn’t give up trying to get into uniform, to do the manly thing, as he saw it. He had grown up with his father’s uniform, a cop’s, around the house or in the closet, but he didn’t see himself as a cop, since his father as a cop was often scolded by his mother for being away day and night. But the cop’s uniform, and all uniforms, but especially the Marines’ dress blues, seemed to bestow on the men who wore them modern-day knighthood. Rocco scoffed at that.
The uniform could put a guy on equal footing with his father, could make him as tall as a cop, and mitt-to-mitt with a heavyweight champ. Rocco didn’t buy that either.
“I’ll go in in two years. When my notice comes,” said Rocco, but he wasn’t crazy about fighting for a private’s pay when he was making three, four times that with his gloves, and with much less chance of coming home in a pine box.
Some 79th Street kids, when they tried to hit a homer, or get an A, but failed, next time didn’t even try, and thereby avoided the failure too. Others, such as Rocco, who was flattened to the canvas a few times, always got up to win the fight. And Gene wouldn’t quit either. So when he heard on the radio that the 69th Regiment of the New York State Guard was asking for volunteers, he went to their armory.
The sergeant, a grocer in daytime, was forming his new company. Most of his soldiers so far were older guys like himself who wouldn’t be drafted because they had kids, flatfeet, a punctured eardrum, or a weak heart. Still, they would do their bit in the Guard, which didn’t give physicals, and would protect the home shores in case the enemy got some crazy idea it could invade. So when Gene Dragoni showed up, the grocer-sergeant had high hopes that some young blood would be coming in too.
“You’re seventeen?”
“Yeah.”
“Why’re you joining?”
“To get training. For when I get drafted.”
“You ever shoot a gun?”
“No. But I ain’t afraid to.”
“You sick or anything?”
“I’m an ox,” said Gene, who was more like a bantam.
“Let’s go meet the colonel.”
The chicken colonel wasn’t saying much. Through his thick glasses, he looked at the paper on which Gene had written his name, address, and religion, not required to give references this time. The colonel glanced up a few times and then went back to reading the paper. Gene thought that if the colonel didn’t hurry up he would piss in his pants, partly because he was nervous. He thought the colonel knew he was too young, but was taking him anyway.
Finally, the colonel stood up and shook hands, and Gene thought it was a puny shake. “Welcome to the Guard, Private Dragoni,” said the colonel.
With the signed requisition in his hand, Private Dragoni was sent to the quartermaster. That sergeant worked during the day in Macy’s men’s wear stockroom. The quartermaster asked Gene his sizes and loaded up his duffel bag with two sets of olive-drab fatigues for training, a khaki uniform for summer parades, and dress olive woolens for winter parades, and Gene stored his clothes in Rocco’s garage.
He went to three meetings in fatigues, and marched around the armory, which was as big as St. Finbar’s if all the pews were taken out. The recruits were instructed on how to strip down a rifle, clean it, oil it, and reassemble all the parts. Not only did they learn to do it, but they had to do it very fast. Gene was getting fed up with doing it over and over, and with marching back and forth.
Then the regiment was going upstate for the weekend. They would fire weapons. That ignited Gene’s interest again. He convinced his father that he was going to pick vegetables for the war effort, as he had done once before as a class project one weekend.
The M-1 was almost as tall as he was when he brought it down from carrying it on his shoulder. He got into the standing shooting position as ordered, as the other recruits did too, hoisting the butt end against his shoulder, sighting down the barrel, getting ready to fire.
“It has a kick,” said the sergeant. “You have to lean into it. Cup it inside your shoulder.”
“Like this?” said Gene, who didn’t have much weight to put behind the butt.
“And spread your feet, to keep your balance when it comes back on you.”
“I can do it.”
“You men, you each got a clip. When you hear the whistle, fire at will from the standing position. When you hear it again, you stop. Even if you ain’t fired all your rounds. Ready. Aim. Fire.”
The sergeant blew the brass whistle hanging from his neck. The live men shot at the cardboard men against the hill. The hill sponged up the bullets that went through the targets or missed them. Gene drove the bolt forward, and then, as he had learned, squeezed the trigger gently. The rifle fired with a small explosion, but it recoiled violently, knocking him on his ass, and the weapon was almost out of his hands. Taking his stance again, he pushed on the bolt to load the chamber, but forgot to squeeze. The pulled trigger exploded the round and the rifle shot back, again knocking him down.