“Well, I’m on one of those patrols and we see one of ’em trying to wade across a creek so we let him have it. He was hit but not bad and he’s sitting up, holding his hands over his head, saying something in Jap. There wasn’t no officers on the patrol, just a corporal and six other guys, and I says, ‘Hey, listen, you guys, just hold him here and I’ll go back to get my samurai sword and we’ll have a regular execution.’ The corporal was a little chicken about it, the orders were to bring in prisoners, but like I said, there were no officers present and after all, that’s what the bastards did all the time to our guys, cut off their heads, and we took a vote and they tied the fucker up and I went back and got my samurai sword. We made him kneel down in the regular way and he did it just like he was used to it. It was my sword so I got to do the job. I picked it up way over my head and clunk! there was his head rolling on the ground like a coconut, with his eyes wide open. The blood spurted out, it must have been close to ten feet. I tell you,” Pyle said, touching the edge of the weapon lovingly, “these swords are something.”
“Horseshit,” Claude said loudly.
“What’s that?” Pyle asked, blinking. “What’d you say?”
“I said horseshit,” Claude repeated. “You never cut off no Jap’s head. I bet you bought that sword in a souvenir shop in Honolulu. My brother Al knows you and he told me you haven’t got the guts to kill a rabbit.”
“Listen, kid,” Pyle said, “sick as I am, I’ll give you the beating of your life, if you don’t shut up and get out of here. Nobody says horseshit to me.”
“I’m waiting,” Claude said. He took off his glasses and put them in the breast pocket of his suit. He looked pathetically defenseless.
Tom sighed. He stepped in front of Claude. “Anybody wants to pick on my friend,” he said, “he has to go through me first.”
“I don’t mind,” Pyle began, handing the sword to one of the other boys. “You’re young, but you’re fresh.”
“Knock it off, Pyle,” said the boy who now was holding the sword. “He’ll murder you.”
Pyle looked uncertainly at the circling faces. There was something sobering that he saw there. “I didn’t come back from fighting in the Pacific,” he said loudly, “to get into arguments with little kids in my home town. Give me my sword, I’m due back at the house.”
He beat a retreat. The others drifted off without a word, leaving Tom and Claude in possession of the boys’ toilet.
“What’d you want to do that for?” Tom asked, irritated. “He didn’t mean no harm. And you know they wouldn’t let him take me on.”
“I just wanted to see the expression on their faces,” Claude said, sweating and grinning. “That’s all. Power. Raw power.”
“You’re going to get me killed one day with your raw power,” Tom said. “Now what the hell did you have to tell me?”
“I saw your sister,” Claude said.
“Hooray for you, you saw my sister. I see her every day. Sometimes twice a day.”
“I saw her in front of Bernstein’s Department Store. I was riding around on the bike and I went around the block again to make sure and she was getting into a big convertible Buick and a guy was holding the door open for her. She was waiting for him in front of Bernstein’s, that’s for sure.”
“So, big deal,” Tom said. “She got a ride in a Buick.”
“You want to know who was driving the Buick?” Behind his glasses, Claude’s eyes were joyous with information. “You’ll drop dead.”
“I won’t drop dead. Who?”
“Mr. Theodore Boylan, Esquire,” Claude said. “That’s who. How do you like that for moving up in class?”
“What time you see them?”
“An hour ago. I’ve been looking for you all over.”
“He probably drove her to the hospital. She works in the hospital on week nights.”
“She isn’t in any hospital tonight, Buddy,” Claude said. “I followed them part of the way on the bike. They took the road up the hill. Toward his place. You want to find your sister tonight, I advise you to look in on the Boylan estate.”
Tom hesitated. It would have been different if Gretchen was with one of the fellows around her own age, off in a car to the lover’s lane down near the river for a little simple necking. Tease her a little later on. Hideous boy. Get a little of his own back. But with an old man like Boylan, a big shot in the town … He would rather not have to get mixed up in it. You never knew where something like that could lead you.
“I’ll tell you something,” Claude said, “if it was my sister, I’d look into it. That Boylan has quite a reputation around town. You don’t know some of the things I hear around the house when my father and uncle are talking and they don’t know I’m listening. Your sister may be asking for a big load of trouble …”
“You got the bike outside?”
“Yeah. But we need some gas.” The motorcycle belonged to Claude’s brother Al, who had just been drafted two weeks before. Al had promised to break every bone in Claude’s body if he came back and found that Claude had used the machine, but whenever his parents went out at night, Claude pushed it out of the garage, after siphoning off a little gas from the family’s second car, and raced around town for an hour or so, avoiding the police, because he was too young to have a license.
“Okay,” Tom said. “Let’s see what’s happening up the hill.”
Claude had a length of rubber tubing slung on the motorcycle and they went behind the school, where it was dark, and opened the gas tank of a Chevy that was parked there and Claude put the tube in and sucked hard, then, as the gasoline came up, filled the tank of the motorcycle.
Tom got on behind and with Claude driving they spurted through back streets toward the outskirts of town and began to climb the long winding road that went up the hill to the Boylan estate.
When they got to the main gate, made of huge wrought-iron wings standing open and set into a stone wall that seemed to run for miles on each side, they parked the motorcycle behind some bushes. The rest of the way they’d have to go on foot, so as not to be heard. There was a gatekeeper’s cottage, but since the war nobody had lived in it. The boys knew the estate well. For years, they had been jumping over the wall and hunting for birds and rabbits with BB guns. The estate had been neglected for years and it was more like a jungle than the meadowed park it had been originally.
They walked through the woods toward the main house. When they got near it, they saw the Buick parked in front. There were no lights on outside, but there was a gleam from a big French window downstairs.
They moved cautiously toward the flower bed in front of the window. The window came down almost to the ground. One side of it was ajar. The curtains had been drawn carelessly and with Claude kneeling in the loam and Tom standing astride him, they both could look inside at the same time.
As far as they could see, the room was empty. It was big and square, with a grand piano; a long couch, and big easy chairs and tables with magazines on them. A fire was going in the fireplace. There were a lot of books on the shelves along the walls. A few lamps did for the lighting. The double doors facing the window were open and Tom could see a hallway and the lower steps of a staircase.
“That’s the way to live,” Claude whispered. “If I had a joint like this, I’d have every broad in town.”
“Shut up,” Tom said. “Well, there’s nothing doing here. Let’s move.”