His attacker kept shouting at him, You think you’re gonna blow your fucking brains out and leave the rest of us here to stick your fucking dog tag in your teeth and hang the other one on your fucking carbine! You think you’re gonna get out of this shit that easy? The fuck you are!
He didn’t know who had knocked him down and beat him; he hadn’t seen him coming. All he knew for sure was that he was having trouble breathing. He didn’t know his nose had been smashed nearly flat. Blood was streaming into his eyes from the deep cuts on his eyebrows. Everything looked red. Some of his teeth had been knocked out. He was gagging on the blood pouring from his gums, trying not to swallow his teeth.
By the time he got to Paris, most of the swelling had gone down in his face. By the time he got to England, all the cuts had healed. By the time he got to Fort Dix, New Jersey, he wasn’t wearing the straitjacket anymore, but he was still in handcuffs and leg irons.
A couple of months later, when the commanding officer of the prison ward in the hospital handed him his discharge papers, Johnny barely glanced at the words. Both of them said, Unfit for Military Service. Or maybe they said, Unfit for Military Duty. He wasn’t sure. He was sure that he didn’t care. He also didn’t care that all the brass insignias had been removed from the new uniform he’d been issued. He didn’t care that he had cash in his trouser pocket or that the corporal who’d handed him the cash had subtracted the price of a bus ticket back to Pittsburgh.
The last thing the prison ward CO said to him was, There’s a VA hospital in Pittsburgh. Maybe they’ll be able to help you there, son.
Johnny asked if he was supposed to report to that hospital.
No, the CO said, you’re officially separated from the army, Mr. Giumba. I can’t order you to report anywhere. I am advising you and suggesting strongly that you go there and ask for help because, son, you really need it.
The last thing they did before he got on the bus was remove the handcuffs and leg irons.
Sitting on the bench in the back of his parents’ house on Washington Street in the McKees Rocks Bottoms, head back, eyes closed, the sun warm on his face, he wondered if anything would happen if he didn’t go to that VA hospital, wherever it was. Since he was legally discharged, he was pretty sure they couldn’t say he had deserted. They shot some guy in France for deserting.
He thought he’d keep wearing his uniform, even though he couldn’t remember why he didn’t have any insignias. He believed that if an MP showed up and tried to say he was a deserter, he could tell him the reason he was wearing his uniform was to show he was planning to go back. And if he was planning to go back that would mean he was not a deserter, just Absent Without Leave.
He read the discharge papers again. They said the same thing they said every time he’d read them. And five minutes later he couldn’t remember whether it was Service or Duty he was unfit for.
When his mother and father were in the kitchen, they stopped talking when he passed through to go back to the bench outside. After he closed the door, he could hear them speaking, their voices low. Lately, it seemed every time he passed them, they were whispering. Another thing he noticed was they both were looking guilty. He wondered what they had done to look that way.
One afternoon his mother came to the door and said, How you feeling today, Johnny? You feeling any... different?
He shrugged. Just like he did every time she’d asked him that before.
Next question was as predictable as the last. You sure you don’t want me to wash your clothes?
He shook his head no, closed his eyes, and lifted his face to the sun.
Her next comment had as little impact as the previous two. Johnny, don’t get mad, but you’re starting to smell.
He thought, starting? Jesus, you think I smell now? Should’ve smelled me a couple months ago. He didn’t say it. There wasn’t any point smarting off to his mother. She’d always been good to him. And anyway, none of what had happened since he’d arrived in France was her fault. Nothing was her fault. His father’s either.
He started thinking about something he’d been thinking about for the last week or so. He’d been thinking about not talking anymore. But if he did stop talking, he worried his mother might think it was because she kept asking the same questions every day, and it wasn’t that at all. It was just because he was running out of things to say and he was pretty sure that if he used up all his words talking about how he was or wasn’t feeling or whether he did or didn’t want his clothes washed, he might try to talk one day and find out all his words had been used up and he wouldn’t be able to say anything else ever again because he was also pretty sure he didn’t know where to go to get a supply of new words. Not new new words. Just words new to him. That, he felt sure, would be a real problem.
A big, poofy cloud hid the sun for a couple of minutes. Johnny took off his Ike jacket, hooked it over his shoulder, and started walking toward the river. He hadn’t been down there since yesterday and he wanted to make sure it was still there. There was something about the river that soothed him. Maybe because one time he talked to some guy from the museum who was digging on the Indian Mound and that guy told him the river was real old. It had been there since the last glaciers melted. Thousands of years ago. At home that night Johnny multiplied how many hours, minutes, and seconds there were in a thousand years and he couldn’t even pronounce the number he got. He did like the name of the river, although he’d had to ask his father what it was.
Ohio, his father said. It’s the Ohio River. When you were a kid you used to go swimming in it, remember?
He wasn’t sure if he could remember swimming in it. He did like the sound of the river’s name. He walked around saying it over and over, singing it, sort of. Oh-high-oh.
It was unusually warm for November. Indian summer, his father said. He couldn’t figure out why the summer would be named after the Indians. Maybe it was because of the Indian Mound, which was a little bit closer to Pittsburgh, where he talked to the guy from the museum who told him how old the river was. There were supposed to be a lot of Indians buried in that mound. Johnny believed that was true because he’d found a whole jarful of finger and toe bones. They were still on the shelf in his closet upstairs. Maybe when he went home he’d take them out of the jar and count them again. He wondered why finding those Indian bones had never bothered him, not anywhere near the way finding bones in France had bothered him. The pieces of bodies he collected in France made it impossible for him to eat, to nourish himself. In a month he’d lost nearly thirty pounds. A pound a day. When he was weighed in Fort Dix, he was so weak medics had to steady him on the scale.
A little before he reached the end of the block, he heard a horn and somebody calling his name. He kept walking at the same pace, but he thought he recognized the voice, so he turned and looked. The car was keeping pace with him. The driver was smiling.
Hey, Johnny boy, I heard you was home. Wasn’t over there too long, huh?
Johnny stopped and bent over to get a better look at the driver. I know you?
Do you know me? The hell kinda question’s ’at? I’m Billy. You don’t remember me?
Billy?
Billy Pristash! The hell’s the matter with you? You lose your mind?
No. I know where it is. He tapped his head. It’s right up here.
Billy thought that was funny. You’re jagging me, right?
Jagging you? I’m way over here, how could I be jagging you?
Oh, now I know you’re jagging me. Hey, serious now, I wanna talk to you about something.