Don't Get Me Wrong

I

I WAS just leaving Oliphant and Company’s offices when I saw Mike. The personnel man at Oliphant’s had been as pleasant as you could ask. He’d given me a cigarette and lighted it for me. The first time that anything turned up, he said, — absolutely the very first time, — you know the story. So I said, ‘If you’ll give me a shovel I’ll dig my way out of here.’ It didn’t make him sore. He was used to worse than that. He just said, ‘Good-bye,’ in a perfectly friendly way.

But about Mike. The last time I’d seen him, three years ago, we were both working in the Franklin Corporation’s auditing department. They’d hired us when they got the big government orders. It was a fine place to work. They almost paid us a living salary, and, as their personnel man said when he took us on, a man with imagination and energy had every chance to work up. He said industry didn’t have too many good men, it had too few. There was an excess supply only of mediocre men. We were there seven months before they bought, the new machine. It was a honey of a machine. Using it, they only needed thirteen people in the auditing department where they’d had forty-two before. You had to admire a machine like that. I hadn’t seen Mike since. He’d said he thought he’d go West. He had relatives there.

As soon as I saw him I knew why he was in the building. He was there for exactly the same reason I was. You can always tell. I can’t describe how, but after you’ve had a little experience it’s infallible. A man may be dressed pretty well, have his shoes shined and his hair cut, and look superficially exactly like a thousand other men with jobs and incomes and a date for going to a show and a big party next Saturday night. But, as I said, if you’re in the know you can always tell.

I said, ‘Hi, Mike,’ and he swung around nervously. He studied my face a second as if he didn’t quite place me, then he grinned. I saw he had a set of store teeth now — the kind that practically say aloud, ‘Complete plates thirty dollars up and a year to pay.’ I wondered if he still had the dentist on the cuff. Then we shook hands.

‘Pete,’ he said, ‘it’s good to see you.’ He had a nice way of greeting you. There was a little drawl to his voice — I think he came from Georgia and had gone to school in the South. ‘Been a long time, Pete.’

‘Longer than that. How’s it going, Mike?’ Of course it was a stupid question — I knew how it was going with him, but you always say something like that.

‘ Well —’ he said, and stopped. ‘ Well, not too hot just now. Matter of fact, I was just going up —

I finished the sentence for him. ‘To Oliphant’s. You can save shoe leather. It’s no dice. I just came from there. If they had ten more chairs in the waiting room there’d be fifty more people trying to sit in them.’

Mike nodded. He wasn’t smiling now and I noticed how much older he looked. There were deep lines where there had been shallow lines before, and shallow lines where there’d been no lines at all. It scared me a little. I wondered if I’d changed that much in three years. If it wouldn’t have looked silly I’d probably have dashed up to the nearest mirror for an examination. Then I thought that Mike was eight or ten years older than I. He was over forty. I felt better thinking that.

The elevator came down and three men stepped out and through the lobby to the street. They were holding themselves erect and trying to look as if they’d just left their desks for a minute to get some cigarettes. But I saw through that at first glance. Mike did too. They’d been to Oliphant’s, like me. And they’d got the same story — nothing right now — damned sorry too, and the first thing that turns up ... I hoped for their sakes they were experienced enough to take it for what it was worth.

I said, ‘I was just going to a joint around the corner for Java and sinkers. Come along.’

‘Well,’ Mike said, ‘I think I’d better make a couple more calls.’ And I knew right then he was flatter than I was — which was the height of something. It was the way he said it. Oh, you know lots of things when you’re a qualified expert.

‘Oh, come on,’ I said. ‘There’s plenty of time. You’ve got me in a loose moment. The planked porterhouse is on me.’

‘I don’t want —’

I cut him off and took his arm. I thought: The lines in your face get deeper when you’re hungry. ‘Let’s go,’ I said, and we went.

II

The newsboy was calling an extra when we reached the street. It was about a German sub sinking a big English battleship, eight hundred men lost. I took a look at a headline and shook my head. ‘Tough,’ I said. ‘Very bad stuff. I hope we can keep out of it.’ It was just one of those things you automatically said. Everybody said seven times a day they hoped we would keep out of it, so you said it too. It was the fashion. Like ’Twenty-three skiddoo,’ or ‘How’s your old man?’

‘What?’ Mike said. ‘Oh, yes. Sure.’ He looked away from me. I steered him off the main drag and down an alley to the coffee-and place. They had good coffee, and a cup with two doughnuts only cost a nickel. I never could see how they did it, but that was their business. It was the best buy in town. They wore only particular about one thing —you paid when you got the food, or they took it away. They’d had experience too.

W’e didn’t talk until we’d finished the first coffee-and. Then I ordered two more of the same. There I’d spent twenty cents, cash money, just as if it wasn’t a fortune.

Over number two we got to talking about what we’d done in the last three years since the Franklin Corporation days. He’d been around more than I had. That was largely because he wasn’t married. He’d picked fruit and washed cars and sold vacuum cleaners and peddled a line of gyp gloves and stockings, and for three months, during the halcyon days of 1937, he’d had a job with a salary with an equipment outfit. A bigger equipment outfit had bought it out and merged, and naturally they had their own staff. It was the old ‘Sorry, boys, it’s tough, but you can see our position. Don’t slam the door — the hinges are weak.'

I told him about me, which wasn’t much. He asked how the wife was, and I said the wife was all right. I didn’t want to talk about that. It made me think of the impossibility of remodeling an ancient coat for the fifth time, and the look in her eyes when she passed a window full of fine new clothes. And the big cheerful smile that never vanished when she knew I was looking at her. Once in a while I’d look at her when she wasn’t aware of it and it was different then — I turned the subject.

I said, ‘This war, now — things are going to perk up. They’re doing it already. I saw in the paper yesterday how many guys they figure have gone back to work.’

‘Do you know any of those guys?’ Mike said.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘well, that doesn’t mean anything. It isn’t just conversation. It’s happening.’

‘Sure,’ Mike said, ‘it’s happening. If you know how to do the right things. Or if you know t he right people.’

I said, ‘When it gets bigger, you won’t have to know the right people, and there’ll be all kinds of things to do.’

‘You’re right there. If it gets big enough. And when it does.’

He said that a curious way. I looked at him hard. He was looking down at his empty coffee cup, which he was moving aimlessly about. And he was smiling at it — a sort of fond, far-away smile.

I said, ‘I guess you saw some of the big pay during the last war. I was a little too young. The fact is, I was going to military school. I remember hoping to hell it would last long enough for me to get in. We all hoped that.’

Mike said, ‘I didn’t need the big pay then. I got in the war right off the bat. I joined up with the Canadians.’

He must have been terribly young then, I thought. If I’d been a few years older I’d have probably joined up with the Canadians too, before this country got into it. It seemed great stuff then.

‘You were in the wrong army,’ I said. ‘I understand you couldn’t get much out of the Canadian army when you were discharged. This army, now — if you had athlete’s foot it was good for a pension. And there was the bonus.’

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Mike said. ‘I was invalided out in 1917 so I never had a chance to get in this army. But the Canadian was a good army. It was as good an army as you could ask for.’

He was still smiling down at his coffee cup, still twisting it about with his fingers. He was thinking a long way back, I knew; probably about buddies long dead, and victories and defeats, and the sound shells made. There had to be a lot of things to think about if you had been in a war — terrible, gruesome things.

Just then the door opened and a newsboy came in. The main headline of the paper said something about neutrality and fresh protests to belligerents. The boy came around trying to sell papers, and everyone passed. I thought that a kid who tried to sell a newspaper for five cents in a joint where you could get coffee and two doughnuts for the same money would never get far ahead in the world. You never get far unless you know how to pick your spots, no matter what you are doing.

‘Neutrality,’ Mike said. He waited a minute. ‘Non-intervention.’ He waited another minute. ‘Peace.’ And he laughed.

It was a queer laugh, low and deep down in the throat. I knew he hadn’t been talking to me at all. He had been talking to himself and to space. For the moment he hadn’t known I was there, or the Greek, or the counter, or even the coffee cup he twiddled. I was sure of that.

But it made me a little sore, the way he said it. I said, ‘Sure. Neutrality, nonintervention, and peace. What’s wrong with those things? Do you think we ought to mix up in Europe’s messes again?’

‘What?’ He looked at me then. ‘Oh — the hell with Europe. I was thinking of something else. I was thinking about the army. I had one hell of a fine time in that army.’

’I’ve heard guys say that,’ I said. ‘And I’ve heard other guys say differently. I was never in an army, so I don’t know. I’d sure as hell have been in one if the war had lasted two years more. I’d have been sixteen then and could have lied two years and got away with it.’

III

Outside I heard the newsboy calling papers again. All about a debate in Congress and the battleship going down with eight hundred men. I thought about how it must feel to be in Congress with ten thousand a year and maybe some hearty cumsha on the side and be talking to packed galleries about big stuff like foreign policy. You’d have reason to feel pretty proud of yourself. Nobody could blame you for oozing the chest out and pulling the belly in when the camera boys stopped you.

‘We had the best times on the other side, of course,’ Mike said. ‘And going over was good, too. There were supposed to be submarines after us, but nobody worried about that. And there were more blackjack games than I ever saw before or since. I remember the second night out I got lucky. Shooting craps. I had twenty-seven bucks when I started and when I got through I had better than nine hundred. I made seventeen straight passes and never crapped.’

‘What did you do with all that dough?’

Mike rolled a cigarette out of the remnants of a package of tobacco. ‘I lost most of it before we got there — it was a ten-day voyage. I didn’t care. I had no real use for money. And if you needed any there was always someone you could borrow from. And if you had to you could get along fine without it if you played the angles right. Money wasn’t much of anything. It’s like that when there s a war on and you’re in a good army. I guess all armies are pretty much like that, too. So I’ve been told.’

‘That sure is a funny thing,’ I said. ‘Money being nothing. I never was in a position where I could feel like that. And never less than now.’

‘There was a time in Paris,’ Mike said. On leave. I was flat broke. I spent my last franc at a bar, and an Australian sergeant asked me to have a drink. When I said no he got tough about it. He said maybe he wasn’t good enough to drink with. And I had to tell him why — it was because I was broke and couldn’t buy him a drink. He made me take three hundred francs — said he’d been hot in some screwy gambling game the Australians played. He wouldn’t take no for an answer — I’d likely see him again sometime, he said, and anyway it didn’t make any difference.’

‘Did you see him again?’

‘No.’

‘He must have been a swell guy,’ I said. ‘You don’t meet many like him.’

Mike crushed the end of his cigarette out. He adjusted his necktie — I noticed he had it tied so it wouldn’t show the worn part, and that made it too bulky and wide in front. Most people wouldn’t have noticed a thing like that, but I always seemed to — at least, for the last few years.

‘There are lots of swell guys in armies during a war,’ he said.

‘That was the good part of it,’ I said, and thought it would be good to be on the loose in a town like Paris with a uniform on and no worry at all. No worry about money, that is. ‘But there must have been the bad part. Like the food.’

‘There was nothing wrong with the food most of the time,’ Mike said. ‘Only when things were mixed up, like during a battle, and you expect that. And you’re too busy to want to sit down to a meal anyway. The rest of the time the food was all right. And there was usually all you could eat of it. Plenty of hot food, good-tasting food when you were hungry. And you knew you were going to get it. You could think in the middle of the afternoon, “At six o’clock I’m going to eat, all I want to eat.” And you always did. And when you were on leave you got your fill of fancy food. It didn’t make any difference what it cost. You didn’t have to worry about going back broke. You intended to. It was all right, the smart thing to do.’

I said, ‘I never thought of it that way. I guess you have to experience it to know what it’s like. To get the feel of it.’

Mike rolled another cigarette. He made this one thin — his tobacco was mostly gone. You get so you’re awfully careful with tobacco. You brush up the little bits you drop and put them back in the sack. ‘Yes, you have to experience it,’ he said. ’But you catch on quick. It doesn’t take any time at all. I remember fellows who were practically misers their first pay day. Then in a month or so they were right in the swing.’

I could imagine, a little, how that would be. A man can change his habits mighty fast when the circumstances are right. I saw the Greek looking at us and knew he wished we’d leave. Our time was about up — he had sort of a system whereby he gave you so much time, based on what you spent. When he figured you’d had your share he started looking at you. I’d never stayed long enough for him to say anything about it, but I imagined he would if you forced him to it. I didn’t blame him. He had a small place and couldn’t take a chance on having chairs filled with deadheads in case of a rush.

‘But there’s the other side of war,’ I said to Mike. I wanted to hear about the other side. This one he’d made seem too — well, anyway, I wanted to hear about the other side. ‘People getting killed — your friends. And horribly mutilated—I remember a book I saw once, an illustrated book, about that. It was terrible. I can’t describe it to you. And you know you may be next in line. You must think a lot about that.’

‘Not after a while,’ Mike said. ‘You can always reason it out. When you think of all the men that were in the war, the ones that got killed and wounded don’t make such a big total. The odds are all with you. And even if you are hit the chances are it will be only a little wound and you’ll wind up in a fine hospital with even better food and a soft bed and nurses to look after you and nothing to do but read and smoke and play games — with all the cigarettes and magazines you want, all free, just there for the asking. I know about that. I was in a hospital. And after that I was in a nursing home. That was one hell of a fine place. Mostly garden. They had a cute bunch of nurses. Young kids — not really nurses at all, I suppose. They didn’t need real trained nurses there, because no one was that bad off. We weren’t supposed to, but we used to take the nurses to entertainments and dances and on walks at night. Nobody kicked. I remember one nurse — her name was Hortense. A hell of a name, but she was a pip. We had a lot of fun. She was green as hell, at the beginning. I was a lieutenant by then and she thought it terribly impressive. She didn’t know we were so short of officers practically anyone who could count to ten and hadn’t been caught spying for the enemy could get a commission.’

‘But there are the other ones, anyway,’ I said. ‘There are the ones that get killed and badly wounded and mangled. You have to remember that.’

‘I remember that, all right,’ Mike said. ‘But as I told you, it doesn’t bother you. Hell, you might walk out of here and get run over by a truck and be killed or paralyzed from now on. You don’t let that bother you, do you? If you did you’d be in the booby hatch in a week.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I mean no, I don’t worry about that. No one does.’ I saw the Greek staring at us again, a little harder now, and I said, ‘We’d better move along.’ I didn’t want him to have to ask us to go because then I’d have been too embarrassed to come back. And it was a place I wanted to be able to come back to. I didn’t know of any others like it.

IV

They had a new extra by the time we reached the street — I guess the papers were getting out a dozen editions a day. It would be a swell time to be in the newsprint business, I thought. And probably it would be a good time to be a newspaper man — they must be taking on new people, with all the news they were handling. But I wasn’t a newspaper man and that was too bad.

This extra was about some German planes being brought down by the French. Mike slowed up at a corner where a newsboy had a lot of papers slacked and read the big headline and the little heads under it. He was smiling a little when we walked on. I knew what he was thinking about, and it made me feel strange. And at the same time I felt confused. I wanted to leave him and go about my business. And yet I wanted to talk to him some more about the war. It was nice and comfortable, in a certain way, to hear about it. In another way it wasn’t nice and comfortable at all. It was a hell of a thing.

At a main intersection Mike stopped. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m going this way. There’s another fellow I want to see. He told me last week I should come back and see him about this time.’

‘Did he?’ I could just hear the fellow saying that in a smooth, accustomed voice. It was like a tune played endlessly on a phonograph. He was probably a good-hearted fellow who didn’t want people to be let down too hard. The hard-hearted fellows were really the easiest on you, though, in the long run. You didn’t wear out shoe leather and time running back and forth to their offices. Not that time was important, but shoe leather was. And those soles you get in the dime store for a quarter and glue on yourself aren’t much for wear when you’re on your feet a lot.

‘I think I’ll be going along home,’ I said. ‘ It’s getting pretty late to see anybody.’ And I thought that it would be a nice way to kill an evening to sit around in the flat and talk with Mike. We didn’t have very much company. I said, ‘I was thinking that you might like to come up to my place. I don’t think you ever met my wife. We could have a little something to cat later on and talk.’

Mike said, ‘Thanks. I’ll take a rain check on that. But I want to see this fellow now. And there’s another fellow I can see this evening if nothing comes of that. He works nights.’

I could tell by the way he looked at me that there was no use trying to coax him. He must be even closer to the line than I’d thought. That put him right on top of it, practically.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’d like you to come. But some other time, maybe.’

‘You bet. Almost any time. We’ll be meeting.’ He fidgeted a minute, then said, ‘Good-bye now.’

I watched him walk away. He didn’t walk very fast. I remembered that when we were working together he was a very fast walker.

V

It was an hour’s walk to where I lived, and by that time there was another paper out. It was about the French massing many divisions of new troops behind the Maginot Line. Right now, I thought, if it was mealtime in France, they were drinking wine and eating meat stew and crispy French bread. Or if it wasn’t mealtime they were drilling or playing cards in nice warm rooms for which they didn’t have to pay any rent. They didn’t have a thing to bother them. I remembered seeing pictures of the troop accommodations the Maginot Line afforded. They were mighty good.

There was a pale light burning through our window and I stood outside on the street a moment looking up at it. I thought that Alice was in there, reading one of the old magazines we occasionally bought cheap from a secondhand bookstore down the block, or perhaps getting something ready for dinner, or perhaps washing clothes. I wondered if she was feeling really sick again. I knew she wouldn’t let me know if she was — not until she got so sick she couldn’t stand. She had gone a few times to the free clinic, but you had to wait in line so long you usually felt worse after you got your treatment. And they acted a certain way, she said — oh, they were nice enough and undoubtedly meant to be kind, but there was something she couldn’t explain.

If a guy was in the army, in a war, I thought, the government would take care of his wife — it would have to. She’d be sure of a place to sleep and three meals a day and clothes to wear and medical attention if she needed it. And if you worked in industry during a war you’d get such big wages you wouldn’t have to worry about doctor bills — not with a whale of a pay check waiting for you at the cashier’s window each Saturday night.

A little wind had come up and the sun had just gone down. It was growing cold. I walked up the three flights of stairs and opened the door. Alice was sitting on the bed, mending something. She came over to me and I kissed her.

I said, ‘How do you feel, uglymug?’

‘Fine, quince-puss. Just fine.’

I knew she lied like hell. I turned away so she wouldn’t see by my face that I knew she lied. It was better that way. There wasn’t a thing I could do about it. All I could do was make her think that her faking was going over a hundred per cent.

She didn’t say anything more. I knew she was waiting for me to tell about the day. She never asked any more — at first, we had made a habit of talking it all over together, laughing like blazes at the funny places I’d gone and the screwy people I’d met. Now she just waited for me to tell her what had happened. She knew as well as I did that there was no good news — if there had been I’d have naturally been yelling it out before I was halfway through the door. But she waited anyway. It was the new habit.

‘Nothing doing,’ I said. I sat down in the chair and looked at the wall. I noticed that she had scrubbed the woodwork. Pretty soon I’d get some paint and paint it and that would make the place look a whole lot better, I thought. ‘But the fellow at Oliphant’s was encouraging. He said he wouldn’t forget. He’s a damned nice fellow.’

‘That’s good,’ she said.

Then I began talking about Mike. I knew perfectly well I shouldn’t, knowing how she felt about such things, but I couldn’t help doing it. My mind was full of what he had said. I wanted to get it out of my mind. So I talked about it.

‘I ran into a fellow I used to work with today,’ I said. ‘Fellow by the name of Mike Ferguson. A hell of a good man. Matter of fact, we dissipated and had coffee and sinkers together. We got to talking about the war — he was in the last one, all the way through almost, and it was interesting to listen to him — you know, get the stuff at first hand.’

‘The war?’ Alice said. I caught the horror in her voice. Nobody hated what war meant more than she. And yet, damned fool that I was, I kept on going. It’s funny how a thing can get you — get you so you can’t stop, even when you want to.

‘People who don’t know war have a lot of wrong ideas about it,’ I said. ‘When you come to think of it, it’s got its points. If they don’t draft you, you get in the big money with some job. And if they do, you’re all fixed up anyway. Not a thing to worry about, and your three squares a day regular as the clock.’

I heard her move. I heard her draw in her breath, sharply. I didn’t look at her. I went on talking, a little fast now, maybe.

‘Not that I’m for war, understand. Not for a second. But you might as well look at a thing whole whether you like it or not. If a guy gets sick in war there’s the best doctors in the world to fix him up. He goes to the best hospitals and gets the last word in attention. If his shoes wear out he just asks for some new ones and he doesn’t get no for an answer. Every month he gets a little pay, and if he happens to run short there’s always friends around to tide him over. Soldiers are generous with their money, Mike said; they know there’s plenty more where it came from and they don’t have to be close-fisted. And if a man has dependents the government — ‘

That’s when she spoke. She said a curious thing, in a hard, low voice. ‘This is what it’s done to you,’ she said. I looked up at her. I stood up. She was standing against the wall near the bed and her face was white. ‘This is what it’s done to you,’ she said, again.

‘Wait a second,’ I said. ‘Hold it. Don’t get excited. What’s done what to me? I’m just the same.’

I never tried so hard in my life to be convincing. I never talked so long or so fast, putting everything I had and more into it. She’d got me all wrong; I said it over and over, she’d got me all wrong. ‘Hell,’ I said, ‘pull yourself together, darling; you’ve got it all mixed up — ‘

It didn’t do any good. She just sat there and cried. I couldn’t convince her at all. And I knew all along, really, that I couldn’t.