Battle Cry - Leon Uris [69]
The little fellow simmered down and dropped his hands slowly, then extended one to Andy. Andy shook it. “I’m sorry, Andy, I just got…I’m sorry.” He turned and walked from the room.
“Jesus, he sure got a wild hair up him,” Andy said.
“It’s that girl, Andy. He hasn’t heard from her in two weeks. He’s going nuts.”
“Poor little bastard,” Andy muttered. He took his pad and laid it on the deck and moved Ski’s down. “Them broads is all alike…I guess I don’t want a lower nohow.”
Speedy Gray, the Texan, and Seabags Brown, the farmer, wavered precariously on their bar stools. Gray broke into song:
“Tired of my hoss,
Tired of my saddle,
Tired of rounding up,
Crappy old cattle,
Come a ki yi yippie, yippie ya, yippie ya….”
The bartender leaned over to them. “You two guys have had enough, you’d better get going.”
“Did you hear the man, cousin?”
“The hell you say.”
“Let us not stay in this den of iniquity.”
“Yeah, let us not tarry.” With each other’s aid they managed to navigate from the stool to the deck without incident. Speedy then began to collapse. He fell into Brown, who was falling into him. They braced each other and with arms locked staggered to the street.
The fresh air nearly floored them. They moved backwards and forwards, managing to gain a few feet toward their objective, which was nowhere in particular.
Seabags came to a halt against a building. “Can’t go another step, cousin…I’m plum tuckered.”
He took off his blouse, dropped to his knees, and made a pillow of it on the sidewalk. Then he lay down. Speedy shrugged and lay down beside him.
A huge M.P. leaped from the paddy wagon and went over to the prostrate pair. He poked his billy club into Speedy’s ribs.
“What are you doing down there?”
The Texan looked at him through almost shut eyes and answered, “What the hell you think I’m doing? I’m trying to get this bastard home.”
It was ten o’clock. Spanish Joe turned his eyes from a floorshow of dubious wartime quality. Sister Mary glanced at his watch and then back to his book. Joe reached across the table and tugged Marion’s sleeve.
“Look, Marion,” he said, “put down the book for a minute.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“That fifty bucks I won in the poker game last night—you took?”
Marion withdrew his little notebook. “You owe out thirty dollars and fifteen cents of it.”
Gomez downed a double shot of rye and wiped his lips with his sleeve. “It’s like this, old buddy, I got the number of a joint…and well, look…Christ on a crutch, don’t give me a sermon. Could I go, huh?”
Marion slammed the book down mentioning something about Satan. Spanish Joe bent close to him, pleading. “I tell you it’s a high class joint.”
“Doesn’t anything soak into that renegade skull of yours?”
“Aw come on, Marion, be a real shipmate. Ain’t I been to church two Sundays in a row? And I ain’t borrowed a thing from the guys all month.”
“No!”
“But these girls are sensational…Jesus, all guys ain’t like you. We’re only human.”
“I’ll bet they’re sensational,” Marion sneered. “Did you ever stop to think of the consequences that might follow? I mean other than moral.” He pointed a finger under Gomez’s nose. “Suppose you get a dose and they throw you in the clap shack and make you do G.O. time, without pay.”
“Just one of the chances in the game.”
Marion reopened his book.
“Most of us are only human. Aw come on, Marion, don’t be a wedgeass all your life.”
“I’m not going to give you fifty dollars, Joe, and see you get rolled.”
“Just a tenspot is all I need, just a sawbuck.”
“From what I understand, ten dollars is too much.”
“Yeah, but Marion, this is Dago and there’s a war on. Broads are hard to import.”
Marion eyed his pleading pal and weighed the pros and cons of human weaknesses. Finally he chalked up another round to the devil. “I’ll have to go along, understand, or you’ll never get back to camp.”
Gomez pumped Marion’s hand wildly. “That’s a real understanding