Just Like the Girl

"Now Listen Carefully," John's mother said, and her voice was rushed and breathless.

She took him by his left arm, and her skin-flaky hand -- which, as she said, was "rurned" from washing dishes -- went clear around the thinness of his arm. She pulled him close to her and talked into his ear as if they were not alone in the house.

"He'll be home in a minute," she said to him, her eyes bright and nervous. "It's after six now and he never stays at the office later than five. He's been somewheres drinking, I could tell by his voice over the phone. He'll come home with that great big ugly nasty belly tight as a drum with beer again."

"Yes, Ma'm," John said. He was scared by the intensity of her voice, and she was gripping his arm so hard he could hardly keep from wincing.

"Here is what I want you to do for me, John. I want you to do this for your mother who loves you. When he brings the groceries in, you run out and get in the car. You understand?"

"Yes, Ma'm," John said. "All right, Mother." He knew this was important, because she was shaking his arm hard. "But what for?"

"Be still. Listen to me. I asked him (continued on page 34) Just Like The Girl(continued from page 23) please not to go back downtown in his condition. I asked him to stay home. I only just hope the operator was listening. Mrs. Haddock says they always do. God knows I've lived with it long enough and tried to hide it and hold our heads up," she said. "And he just laughed at me. Like he always does. But I've always done my duty, in the eyes of God and society. I've done all I could be expected to do."

John was nodding his head. His arm hurt and his mother was still shaking him; he was wondering how, if he was to go in the car, they would be able to go to the Sugar Bowl and the show. This was Saturday and Saturday night his mother always took him and Jeannette to the Sugar Bowl and they ate coney islands or barbecues and they had a malted and then they went to the show. And the malteds at the Sugar Bowl were thick, boy. It was their Saturday treat and he hated to miss it, even if his mother always did make them sit with her at the show instead of down front with the other kids and she stopped outside the show to talk to the other ladies and always made them stand right beside her because, as she told the ladies, John was grown up and taking his father's place like a little man. But then that was what you had to do if you wanted to go.

"Aren't we going to the show tonight, Mother?" he said.

"No we're not going to the show tonight, Mother. Aren't you listening to me? I want you to go in the car with your father. I want you to get in the back seat and keep out of sight. Get down on the floor and stay hid. You watch where he goes and when he comes home you tell me every place he went. I want you to do this for me."

"I don't care about the show, Mother," John said.

"Maybe we'll go tomorrow. If you love your mother like you say, you'll do this for her. You'll hide in the back of the car and find out who it is your father meets, and find out what her name is if you can, and then when I go away I'll take you with me and we'll go away for ever."

"Will Jeannette go too, Mother?" John said.

"Yes. We'll take Jeannette with us too," she said to him and there were tears in her bright eyes. "He isn't fit to have children. Him with those great big arms and strong as a bull. He hurts everything he touches, he'd kill any woman. We'll go far away where he can never find us, with his big talk of education and making fun of my Science and Mrs. Eddy, making everybody think he's so intelligent and saddled with a dumb wife."

"You're not dumb, Mother," John said. "You're smart. You're my mother." He blinked tears from his own eyes, he felt very sorry for his mother. A diworce, he thought, we're going to get a diworce.

"I've given my whole life to you children." His mother let go of his arm and he was glad of that. It was a little numb, but he didn't rub it because his mother put her hands on his shoulders. "You're all I have left now. You and Jeannette. Since your brother Tom grew up and left me. Everybody said I was the most beautiful woman in this country and he was lucky to get me. Now he's cast me aside, for any hot-assed bitch that walks the streets."

John nodded, memorizing the phrase. He learned lots of good swearwords the other kids never heard, listening to his mother and dad when they were mad, although he never said them around her, except when he forgot, because she always washed his mouth out with soap, holding him by the back of the neck, and turning the washrag around wrapped over her fingers and rubbing it hard over his tongue and the roof of his mouth, whenever she heard him swear.

"Someday women will be free," his mother said. She knelt down on the floor beside him and put her arms around him. "Your mother loves you, Johnny, even if she is the ugliest old hag in town."

"You're not ugly, Mother," John said. "You're beautiful and you're my mother." He patted the cook-sweating broadness of his mother's back. It was almost like the game where someone asks the question and you have to give the right answer or pay a forfeit, except he always got so scared it wasn't any fun.

"If you really love your mother, you'll stand by her."

"Sure I will, Mother," John said. "I'll do anything for you. Someday, Mother, I'll make a million dollars and I'll give it all to you."

"No," his mother said. "No, you won't. Someday you'll do just like your brother did. You'll grow up and forget all your mother ever did for you. You'll remember the money your father gives you and I don't have to give you and you'll turn on your ugly mother just like your brother did and go over to your father."

"No I won't either," John protested, feeling guilty. He knew his mother didn't have the money to give him quarters and half dollars like his father did. He knew how hard up they were because his father threw so much money away on beer and whiskey, and then tried to buy his son's affection with quarters and half dollars. Every time he sneaked up in the garage loft to play with his secret collection of extra soldiers and guns, he felt guilty.

"I'll always stand by you, Mother," he said. "I won't be like Tom. Honest I won't. I'm not like Tom."

"Will you prove it to me? Will you find out who your father goes out with tonight?"

"Sure I will, Mother. Didn't I say I would?"

His mother stood up. "All right. You wait out on the front porch where he won't see you. When he brings the groceries in you run out and get in. But be careful: He bought groceries for over Sunday and he'll probably have to make two trips to the car."

"All right, Mother," John said. "You can trust me, Mother."

His mother was on her way back to the kitchen. "Don't let him see you out on the porch."

"OK, Mother," John said.

He went out the front door and sat down in the porch swing to wait for his father to come home. The moon was full, and it reminded him of the quarters and half dollars his father tried to buy his affection with every now and then. It was so bright it made shadows under the trees just like daytime. It made everything hazy like a lace curtain. He sat and swung the swing and listened to the chain creak and rubbed his arm where it still hurt and watched the lace curtain of moonlight.

I'll fool him, he thought. I won't let him buy me away from mother with quarters and half dollars like he did Tom. I'll take the quarters and half dollars, but I won't let him kid me. It made him feel a little better, a little less guilty, but still he knew, guiltily, that he shouldn't take them, any of them.

Once his father had given him a half dollar right in front of his mother. It was the time she hit him with the kitchen fork when she was frying chicken. He was standing by the stove bothering her with questions and making a nuisance of himself, and it was a hot day long, long years ago, and she just got mad and hit him with the fork. The fork cut his forehead and broke his glasses and the blood ran down into his eyes. It did not hurt much but the blood in his eyes scared him because he couldn't see and thought maybe he was going to die. His mother threw the fork down on the floor and started crying and that scared him worse because then he was sure he was going to die and he did not want to die yet, (continued on page 42) Just Like the Girl(continued from page 34) when he was still just such a little boy. She phoned the doctor and his father, and she kept wringing her hands and crying "O what have I done! My poor little boy! My darling son!" and he had felt very sorry for her and put his arms around her and told her it was all right and it didn't hurt much and for her not to worry, he did not really mind dying when he was still such a little boy, but it only made her cry worse. He knew she did not really mean to do it because she cried so much and she sacrificed everything for him and Jeannette and loved them better than anything in the world. So when the doctor and his father came, he and his mother told them he fell down and cut his forehead on the edge of the table. His father gave him a half dollar right in front of his mother and squatted down and put his arm around him. If he had been cut over both eyes he bet his father would have given him a whole dollar.

Other kids' fathers didn't give them whole dollars when they got cut over both eyes, and his father really looked tough when he got mad. He bet there wasn't anybody would tackle his father when he got mad, even if he was a drunkard and ran around with hot-assed bitches and had those great big arms and belly and strong as a bull and would kill any woman. Sitting in the swing he wondered what the hot-assed bitch looked like. He hoped he would get to see them doing it.

Suddenly in his mind he saw his father sitting at the kitchen table, all alone, holding the diworce, drinking a bottle of beer, playing with a pile of quarters and half dollars that he did not have anybody to give them to, that was the way it would be when they were gone. He blinked tears from his eyes, he felt very sorry for his father. A diworce, he thought, we're going to get a diworce.

When his father drove in the driveway he got down on his hands and knees behind the brick railing and watched through the four-cornered hole like a diamond while his father opened the back door of the big square Stude-baker and took two huge paper sacks of groceries in his big arms and carried them to the back door. Looking through the trees into the clearing Hawkeye leveled his cap-n-ball-long-rifle and let the big Indian have it, right in the chest, and the two big paper sacks of dynamite tumbled unhurt to the ground; Hawkeye had fired between them carefully because the dynamite was needed to blow the Indian village up the river. He aimed over his finger and fired; and his father walked on to the house.

Then he waited, just as his mother had told him, grinning at how he was outsmarting his father. After the second trip he ran lightly out into the yard, carrying his rifle at trail and loading her as he ran, the Indians called him The Man Whose Gun Was Always Loaded, opened the back door of the car and hit the dirt. It was dusty on the floor and the dust got in his nose and choked him up but he did not mind because he had made it across the clearing unseen and had slipped into the enemy general's limousine.

He heard them talking loud in the kitchen and guessed they were having another big argument. His father came out and slammed the door and got in the car and he lay, laughing to himself, very excited.

His father drove down toward town and every corner John concentrated hard on which way they turned and tried to see the corner in his mind. There was a place on the road through the forest the enemy general's truck was following that it was of the greatest importance he jump out the back of the truck unseen. Some enemy soldiers were holding Priscilla Jenkins captive and going to torture her with red-hot irons. In his mind he saw Priscilla, a great lady, now, standing tied to a tree, her clothes torn clear off of her and the enemy soldiers stepping up to put a red-hot iron against her thing -- just as he leaped into the circle of firelight wearing his fringed buckskins of a scout and the two enemy soldiers were deaders and Priscilla was very happy to be saved from a fate worse than death and they did it there in the firelight with the two deaders staring open-eyed at the sky.

When his father stopped the car it was the spot, and it was of the greatest importance that he know where it was, and he picked Meeker's Restaurant. He waited till his father got out and was gone and then peeked over the bottom of the window. Instead of Meeker's Restaurant they were in front of the old American Legion. It was very bad, because Priscilla was a deader unless he could figure something out.

He lay there on the floor a long time, wishing his father would hurry up and come back with the hot-assed bitch so he could see them do it, he had never seen anybody do it, but he was tired of laying on the floor and he was getting sleepy. He lay with the sleepiness and the Saturday night noises coming loud suddenly, then going far away, and coming and going and coming and going and he heard his father speak from behind a curtain and far away the car doors opened and his father and someone else got in. Then suddenly he was back inside himself again and listening hard. None of the kids had ever really seen anybody do it. They wouldn't care if he was a drunkard's son or not, if he told how he had seen them do it and just what they did.

"Give me the bottle," he heard his father say. "You mark what I'm saying, Lab. It won't be 10 years."

John recognized with disappointment the other voice that answered. It was no hot-assed bitch at all, it was only old Lab Wallers from the American Legion, and he felt he had been cheated of a great adventure.

"I still say she wouldn't want you to go, Doc," it said.

"I don't know," his father said. "Sometimes I think she would. I know she would. She'd be damned glad to get rid of a no-good like me. And I guess I don't blame her any. Anyway," he said, "I'll be too old."

"There won't be another war anyway," Lab Wallers said. "Thas why we won the last one, so there wouldn't be no more. Wilson was a good man, and he knew what he was doin'."

"He couldn't do anything with a Republican congress," his father said.

"Well, he was smarter than this Coolidge. Doc, you don't want your boys to grow up and get drug into something like we did," Lab Wallers said.

"Hell, no," his father said. "But there's no way out. Give your son luck, and throw him into the sea. That's what the Spaniards say. That's all any man can do. I tell you it won't be 10 years."

That's me, John thought, they're talking about me. He was a little surprised because everybody knew there wouldn't be any more war. He had always been sorry when he thought how he would never get to be in a war like his father. He lay there, excited, thinking how he would save Priscilla Jenkins from the enemy just as they were about to burn her think with the red-hot iron. He would come home a great hero and everybody would think he was a fine upstanding man. He wouldn't drink at all, and maybe he would marry Priscilla Jenkins.

Following the pictures in his mind the sleepiness came back and the voice talking began to come and go, loud and faint, like the band concert across town sounded in a shifting summer wind.

"She's a fine woman, Doc," Lab Wallers said. "They don't come any finer. My wife's always talkin' about how fine she is."

"I know she is," his father said. "Everybody knows it. Nobody has to tell me that. I know it's my fault. I (continued on page 69)Just Like the Girl(continued from page 42) know I'm a bum and a drunk."

"We don't deserve the women we got, Doc," Lab Wallers said, his voice thick. "Neither one of us. None of us."

"If it wasn't for the kids I'd light out tonight," his father said. "Give her a chance. But it's awful hard to leave your kids, your own kids. What you've done lives on in your kids, if nowhere else."

"She loves you though," Lab Wallers said. "Don't you forget it."

"No she doesn't," his father said, "and I don't blame her. I know what I am," he said. "I know what I've done."

"Give me the bottle," Lab Wallers said. "I don't know where I'd be if it wasn't for my wife. Or you either. Where would the world be, without the wives? Where would our kids be, if it wasn't for their mothers? Where would this nation be, if it wasn't for the women?"

"She was the most beautiful woman in this part of the country when I married her," his father said. "I was lucky to get her. Everybody says so. If she just wouldn't devil me so. Goddam it, Lab, someday the men will be free.

"What time is it? I have to be back in town by 10. I have to see somebody. Goddam it, a man has to live, Lab..."

John didn't hear the rest. He was very sleepy and none of it made sense. He just shut his eyes for a minute, only a minute, because he really had to stay awake.

He woke up surprised, because he wasn't in the car any more. As he came awake he realized he was being carried. His father was carrying him in his arms. John noticed sleepily that his father was wearing some funny new kind of sweet shaving lotion. He did not know where they were at first, but then he saw they were at home at the house. His father carried him inside.

Upstairs, his father laid him down on his bed in his own room and began to undress him, fumbling the buttons. He lay very still, his eyes shut, letting his father undress him and put him to bed. It made him feel good. When he was under the covers, he opened his eyes and smiled at his father. His father smiled back, and John could tell by his eyes that he was pretty drunk.

"Here," his father said, reaching in his pocket. "Put this under your pillow. You earned it. You're a damned good man. You've got a lot of guts and I'm proud you are my son."

John reached out his hand and took it. He rolled over sleepily in the bed. Gee, he thought, a quarter and two half dollars both. Gee. But he held them in his hand and did not put them under his pillow, because he was suddenly thinking of his mother. I really oughtn't to take them, he thought, thinking guiltily about his brother Tom. I ought to give them back.

"Guts are what a man needs," his father said. "You're going to need a lot of guts, Johnny boy, someday. Someday you'll need guts bad."

His father paused and patted him on the head and then he rubbed his strong stubby-fingered hand over his chin that needed a shave. He got up from the bed slowly. "Always remember: If a man's got guts, he'll come out all right. You got to have the guts to stand up for yourself, even when you're bad and wrong," he said, "or you're dead. You'll never be a man again." He stood beside the bed looking down and smiling sadly.

There was Priscilla, the soldiers getting ready to put the iron against her, hard; and there was the general and he was handing him $2000, to go away and forget he seen it, like every good spy should. And it wasn't even Priscilla. It was just some woman. And a good spy had work to do at the front.

But this time it didn't work, because over the scene in the forest John could see his mother's face with her bright bright eyes looking at him. He wished it would work, because he wanted to keep the money. But this time it was not real. It wasn't a real game at all. It was only playlike. It wasn't $2000 at all, it was only a quarter and two half dollars both.

And there was Mother watching him who didn't think he loved her anymore. He could almost see her. Mother thought he was going to be like Tom. He could almost see her looking at him if he took the money.

"Dad," John said, looking at the silver moons. "Here, Dad," he made himself extend his arm. "I don't want your money."

His father stood looking down at him, his big face and the muscles around his eyes getting a crinkledy look that frightened John, and his eyes seemed to go out of focus and swing around back and forth behind themselves, from one side of John to the other. Then he took the coins and looked at them and put them in his pocket.

"All right, buddyboy," he said in a voice John could hardly hear. "Good night, old man." Carefully with his big hands, gently, he turned off the light and went out of the room and slowly shut the door.

That look on his father's face still scared John a little, but it gave him great pleasure to know he was not like Tom. Mother would be proud of him. He can't buy my affection, John thought proudly, I'm not like Tom.

That's me, John thought, they're talking about me.