Battle Cry - Leon Uris [12]
“Bullcrap.”
“Just the same, who knows anything?”
“It’s different with us, Danny. We…well, we are almost like married now. I haven’t got much but Susan.”
“I guess I see.”
“I’m glad I met you, Danny. I hope we land in the same outfit.”
“Me, too.”
The train rolled on. The shouting from the washroom became louder. Someone kicked an empty bottle and sent it scuttering up the aisle. Ski swung the curtain open and slipped into his pants.
“Where you going?”
“I’m all jumpy inside. I’m going to smoke a cigarette.”
Danny stretched his cramped position and for several moments lay in the darkness listening to the clattering dice and the fascinating clicking of the wheels. And then the noise faded and he thought about her as he had thought about her a thousand times.
The brown and white saddle shoes, plaid skirt, and sweater on backwards. The cute flip of her head and the sway of her skirt as she swung past. The stag line at the weekly gym dance, the first date at a neighborhood show. Bowling after school, Friday night rugcutting sessions to Glenn Miller records at the house of one of the gang, ice skating at Carlin’s Park, after-game thick corned-beef sandwiches at the Malt Palace and summer ferry excursions to Tolchester Beach.
The fight to find courage for the first kiss. And kissing her and tripping over the milk bottles on her porch and falling down the steps into the rose bushes.
Her dates with other fellows that hurt past all pain. And his spite dates with Alice, the school tramp.
Arguments about him cutting classes to go to the burlesque. Then came the autumn of 1941 and college plans loomed larger and larger. He drove the family car now and there were the nights at the reservoir. He slipped his class ring on her finger and she nodded yes…and the night they were together and, almost without intending it, he felt her breast….
The wonderful sensation thinking of her…and rehearsing the speech he would say on the day he would return from college and tell her he loved her.
And he thought of how wonderful it would be to sleep with her. But if a fellow felt the way he did about a girl—that wasn’t right.
Ski struggled back into the berth and Danny shoved himself against the wall.
“Jesus, I wish those bastards would break it up. How the hell we supposed to sleep?”
“Yeah, yeah…”
Marvin Walker lay on the sofa, his nose buried in a magazine. He muttered something about taxes. Sybil Walker sat in her armchair by the lamp, a mending basket in her lap. The rays of light caught a far wall from the kitchen where Kathy studied her lessons.
“Marvin.”
“Hmph…this administration is nothing but a bunch of Commies…”
“Marvin!”
“Getting so a working man—”
“Marvin, put that magazine down.”
“Oh yes, dear, what is it?”
“I want to talk to you.” He came to a sitting position, stretched his pudgy little body, and took off his reading glasses. “What’s on your mind, Sybil?”
“Marvin, don’t you think it’s time we sat Kathleen down and had a good heart to heart talk with her?”
“That’s your job.”
“I don’t mean that.”
“Well, what do you mean?”
“I mean about her and Danny.”
“Oh, that again.”
“You don’t have to take his side all the time.”
“I like Danny.”
“So do I. He’s a fine boy. But…well, don’t you feel that Kathleen is just a little too young to be going steady?”
“Pissh, woman. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. Just a phase. If we make an issue out of it you’d really make trouble. You seem to forget past experience.”
“Nevertheless, she could be seeing other boys. You can never tell just how serious they are.”
“Oh come now. The boy is going off to college in another month.”
“Just what I mean. I don’t want to see her tied down.”
“I think they’re sensible enough to reach an understanding between themselves on that score.”
“I still feel, Marvin…”
“See here, Sybil. If the specimens of drips she used to drag