Battle Cry - Leon Uris [108]
“You don’t have to finish.”
“It was your idea, Mac. I ran away from my foster home to the lumber camps. I was twelve then. I swabbed decks, cleaned bunkhouses, waited on tables. I was a twelve-year-old punk listening to those guys cuss and talk dirty about women. When I was sixteen I was topping tall timber and going into town once a month and drinking and shacking up with whores—whores like my old lady.”
And then the venom, pent up for years, spat out.
“They’d act like they was having a big time and all they was thinking was how they could roll you and get the dough you beat your brains out for. They’d lay back and tell you what a swell guy you was and groan…the phoneys!” he cried. Then he simmered down a bit. “My kid brother wasn’t so lucky. He was a skinny kid and had to stay at the foster home…but Christ, Mac, that kid had a brain in his head, like Sister Mary. Smart, he was—liked to read and learn new things all the time. You should see what he could do with a motor. I saved a pile of dough so’s I could send him to college.”
Andy’s shoulders sagged and he looked very tired. His voice trembled. “He was a good kid, kept his nose clean. I saw to that, best I could. Then he got mixed up with this broad—a real slut. Somebody knocked her up and she pinned it on him. He had to marry her. And a kid like that with a brain like he’s got. Living with her, working for thirty bucks a week in a drygoods store. He’s only eighteen, Mac….”
It wasn’t a pretty story. I could understand how he felt now. “So what’s the payoff?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Mac, I just can’t put it together.”
“Andy, who the hell you think you are—God? You just can’t go barreling through life thinking every woman who walks is a pig.”
“I don’t, I don’t,” he cut in quickly. “Not about her. She ain’t like that, Mac.” He looked away bashfully. “I tried making out with her but she cut me down. And I keep coming back for more.”
“Nothing I say is going to wipe clean all the things you’ve got stored up, but if you love this girl you’re going to have to lay your cards on the table. Go all the way or pull out.”
“I want to tell her what I feel for her, honest. But something inside me won’t let me.”
“What is it, for Chrisake?”
“I don’t want to get hurt, that’s what! Ski had a nice girl, didn’t he? She loved him, didn’t she? Mac, honest to God I want to love her…it means more than getting into bed with her. But things like that just don’t keep, not for years, they don’t. It will end up the same way as all of them.”
“Do you think you could sell your story to Danny or Marion? Trusting their women is part of their life. A guy don’t go around with a rotten mind. You’ve got to have trust to live, Andy. Deep down you know she isn’t going to hurt you, but you’re going to have to find out the hard way.”
“I’m scared, Mac.”
“What about Pat?”
“How’d you know her name?”
“I read code.”
“Aw, I dunno. She’s kind of beat out. She’s lost a husband and a brother in the war. She’s scared like I am, in another way. Mac, did you ever feel this way?”
“No,” I said, “not exactly. I’ve met lots of nice girls. But I guess an old salt like me is married to the Corps. Every once in a while I get a big yen for the pipe and slippers routine…Maybe when I finish my thirty years, or when the war is over…”
Andy’s voice drifted, like he was in another world. “Her dad has a farm up past Masterton. You never met people like them. Funny, Mac, when I walked into the gate from the highway, it seemed like I’d known the place all my life. Like I knew every tree and building…. He showed me a piece of land that belonged to Pat’s brother…I was standing there on a knoll, looking down into the valley…. It seemed like I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Where have you been, Andy, we’ve been waiting for you….’”
CHAPTER 4
AS OUR DAYS before combat grew closer, we