Mama's Boy Read online

  “No. I need it,” Gus said. “I’m sick.”

  “I feel like I got something coming on,” Harkey said.

  “Then go to sick bay and get your own medicine.”

  They watched What’s My Line. They didn’t talk much except to scoff at the blindfolded panel of big-name stars who couldn’t tell the famous wrestler, Gorgeous George, from a New York hairdresser. Gus got drowsy and didn’t want to watch anymore. He climbed into his bunk. Harkey kept on guffawing at the dumb-ass stars as they grilled the next celebrity guest.

  “You figure they’re actin dumb on purpose, Reppo,” Harkey said, “or they really can’t figure out it’s Mickey Mantle instead of Margaret Truman? Course, old Mick’s talking high up like a girl just to fool them, but even so it shouldn’t take them five dang minutes to figure it out. I mean, they ask the secret guest did she once play in a big house in Washington DC and ole Mick says in that fakey girly voice, ‘Kinda biglike, but not exactly a house. Lots of grass for carpet but no roof and people everywhere packed in like sardines,’ you’d think that might get them off the Margaret Truman idea, right? But no-oo. Betsy, the pretty blond-haired lady says, ‘It’s a pianer concert on the South Lawn?’ cause she knew Margaret Truman played pianer real good, like her daddy the president did.”

  “Could you please shut up, Harkey?” Gus said. “I’m trying to sleep.”

  “Want me to turn it down, Reppo?” Harkey said.

  “Just turn yourself down, Harkey. I don’t mind listening to the TV while I drop off.”

  Harkey wasn’t offended. He was happy with his TV and grateful to Gus for making it work so well. Gus could do no wrong as far as Harkey was concerned.

  The GI gin was making Gus feel numb behind the eyes. His thoughts became slow and random. Time itself crawled by. It moved with the leisure of a flower closing in evening shade. The last thing Gus said to Harkey still echoed in his mind as if he’d just spoken, but he wasn’t sure he’d actually said it out loud. “I don’t mind listening to the TV while I drop off,” he said again.

  Harkey nodded and grinned. “Got the message, little buddy,” he said.

  Gus finished the second bottle of GI gin. He felt himself dissolve. “I don’t mind listening to the TV while I drop off,” he heard himself say.

  “Got the message loud and clear,” Harkey said.

  A panelist said, “Hmmm. Kinda like a house but not in DC”

  “That ole Mick, he’s something aint he?” Harkey chortled.

  “I don’t mind …”

  “Roger and out, pardner.”

  “I’m thinking sports,” the panelist said. “Are you a famous sports star?”

  “Hot dang! Cook my grits in baby piss! We got us a real breakthrough!” Harkey sneered.

  “Could you be the great Babe Didrikson?” a panelist said and Harkey slapped his knee and scoffed.

  “I believe Babe died last year,” the secret celebrity said in a hoarse falsetto. The delighted audience laughed.

  Gus felt his lips forming the same words again, but silently this time as he sank into a pool of shimmering green light. I don’t mind …

  “We got hit by a Jap torpedo this morning,” Orson Gunlocke said. He was sitting on Ray Springer’s bunk. He crackled as if the meager fat under his torn skin was burning. What hair he had was on fire. Half his head was gone. Brain matter slumped like pale mud onto what was left of his shoulder and chest. A vampire squid drifted through his blown-out rib cage.

  “You died because of me,” Gus said. “I killed you.”

  “Spread the blame, boy. You didn’t make the goddamn rules.”

  “But people are responsible for what they do.”

  “A point comes in your life when you got to just say ‘No sir, I’ve had enough of your shit.’ ”

  “Say no to who?”

  “That’s the sixty-four dollar question, son.”

  “Hey, Reppo! Who you talking to?” Harkey said. He looked worried. Worried, then alarmed.

  Gus rolled over and pulled his pillow over his head and made a noise that sounded to Harkey like the solemn voice of an owl.

  34

  Gus walked past First Sergeant Burnside’s desk and went directly into Major Darling’s office without knocking and before Burnside could stop him.

  “What the goddamn hell …?” Major Darling said. He had his feet up on his desk and was drinking scotch out of a coffee mug.

  Gus sat down in the chair across from Major Darling’s desk without asking permission. “They’re recommending me for a Section 8, Major. How the fuck did that happen? What did you tell them?”

  “You don’t come in here asking questions and demanding answers, airman,” Major Darling said. “Remember your place.”

  “Bullshit,” Gus said. “I don’t have a place. I’m getting kicked out of the air force. I don’t give a shit about protocol or whatever the hell it’s called.”

  “Calm down, Reppo. For Christ’s sakes. Getting a Section 8 isn’t the worst thing that could happen to you.”

  “ ‘Mentally Unfit.’ I’ll have to wear that for the rest of my life. Discharged from the air force for being mentally unfit.”

  “Look, Reppo. I admit I sicced the OSI jerk offs on you. I wanted them off my ass. They were giving me shit about my girlfriend, Heidi Zechbruder. I sneaked her across from East Berlin and brought her with me to the States. Cost me two months’ pay in bribes and forged papers. Heidi lacks credentials but she cooks, cleans, and fucks like a goddamn monkey. She also has some political baggage the OSI shits don’t like. You have any idea what an East German citizen has to put up with under the Reds? The secret police are everywhere. No one messes with the Stasi. You play their game or they put you in a hole under a concrete lid. So she worked for them. Translations and cryptography. I had to get OSI off Heidi, so I kept them talking about you, which is what they were mostly interested in anyway.”

  “I’m totally fucked,” Gus said.

  “For a good cause, Reppo. I’ll make it up to you.”

  “You can’t make up for a Section 8 discharge.”

  “Look here, Reppo. With a few more words, I could have had you put away in Leavenworth for ten years. All I needed to do was link you with those punks who went to the plutonium works at Hanford. And oh, what’s this about the lady who filed a rape and paternity complaint against you? The OSI paperpushers couldn’t talk enough about that caper. What’ve you been up to, Reppo? I believe you are Section 8 material. You’re a twisted little guy.”

  “I could have told them you ordered me to fly the C-47 from LA to Salt Lake.”

  Major Darling leaned back in his chair and lit a cigar. “Don’t you get it, airman? That’s why I paved the way for your Section 8 discharge. Who’s going to believe the ravings of a goddamned mentally incompetent bubblehead like you? In any case, what I told them about you washing out of Randolph wasn’t entirely false, was it? There’s a speck of truth there, right?”

  “Speck of fly shit maybe.”

  “You didn’t get your eight weeks in a PT-19? You didn’t solo?”

  “I don’t know where you get this crap from, Major.”

  “And I don’t think you’re in a frame of mind, airman, to know what is crap and what is not.”

  “I think I am.”

  “Then what were you doing behind the controls of my C-47? Answer me that.”

  “I don’t have any idea.”

  “You see? You’re obviously not thinking straight. Would I have trusted you with a C-47 if you didn’t have basic knowledge? Only a lunatic would have done that. You read me, airman?”

  “If I was able to read you Major, I’d fucking shoot myself.”

  “You’re hurting your cause, Reppo, coming in here with this attitude. You’re going to rot in a hell of your own making.”

  “I guess you’d be the expert on that, sir. But thanks for the heads up.”

  35

  Gus thumbed through a stack of magazines in the waiting room. He pull
ed a full-color brochure from the stack. The handout described the shield-like emblem for the 29th Air Division. Gus read the description. It seemed to have been written in English, or a form of English, but Gus couldn’t understand a word.

  “Azure within a diminished bordure,” it said, “issuant from a sinister base, a cloud formation proper, overall superimposed on the border and issuant, also, from the sinister base.”

  Gus read and reread the passage, failed to grasp the meaning, then went on to the next passage:

  “A demisphere with axis bendwise, light blue surmounted by a lightning flash of the second, between the missile symbol gules and sable, emitting a vapor trail of the second, all-fimbriated argent.”

  Gus thought: Something’s wrong with me or with the man who wrote this.

  He read more: “A radar screen of the fifth detail, detailed of the sixth, and edged of the seventh, emitting a light beam of the like, all bendwise, in dexter chief an aircraft symbol of the last, voided of the fifth, and in sinister chief, the owl, the bird of prey, and four mullets—one, two, and one of the seventh.”

  He read it again and again understood nothing. He hated the man who wrote it, blamed himself for not understanding it. He thought: Is this my future? Would there come a time when he understood nothing? Would his inability to understand make him unfit for any kind of occupation, civilian or military? Would he one day see only unintelligible gibberish wherever he looked? And where would that lead him? Would the world he lived in become a madhouse of unsolvable cryptograms? A wave of terror rocked him. He dropped the pamphlet and stood up. He read a sign on the wall: PSYCHIATRIC WARD. LOUD CONVERSATIONS NOT PERMITTED.

  “The doctor will see you now,” a nurse whispered.

  Gus went into a dim office. It had a window, but the blinds were drawn. The main illumination came from an antique floor lamp with a fringed shade. The floor lamp was next to the doctor’s desk, also an antique. The doctor, Colonel Adrian Make-piece, was decorating a small Christmas tree. He fixed a glittery star to the blue spruce’s leader then stepped back to admire it.

  Doctor Makepiece made an offhand but affable gesture offering Gus a chair while he wound a string of lights through the branches of his tree. When he was satisfied the lights were distributed evenly, he attached silver and red balls to the outer branches. He stood back every so often to judge his progress. Gus sat down and watched the doctor work.

  Though a meticulous tree trimmer, Doctor Makepiece was a man not comfortable in a uniform. His tie was loose. His shirt was unbuttoned under the tie. He wore colorful Scandinavian slippers. Their tasseled, turned-up toes made them look like toy buckskin canoes. “Would you like to help decorate, airman?” he said.

  “No thank you, sir.”

  “Well, it’s almost finished. I don’t like this new tinsel they have now—silvered cellophane of some kind.” He shook a handful of it at Gus. “You see how flimsy it is?” he said. “The old tinsel was made of lead foil and looked so much better. It had proper heft, don’t you think? Icicles require heft.”

  The doctor stepped back to judge his work. Satisfied, he went to his desk and sat down.

  “Now,” he said, “who do I have the pleasure of interviewing?”

  “Airman Gus Reppo,” Gus said.

  “And your MOS, Airman Reppo?”

  “Radio tech,” Gus said.

  “And this is also your vocation?”

  “Sir?”

  “Vocation. The vision you have of yourself making a positive contribution to society. Do you understand me, airman?”

  “I, uh, yes. I mean, I guess so, sir.”

  “I knew a man once,” Dr. Makepiece said, “who had no vocation and wanted none. He was all essence as opposed to substance. He was widely loved and esteemed but he contributed nothing tangible to the well-being of society for the simple reason he had nothing to contribute. He was, as we say, disconnected. He had personhood, but was otherwise vacant. What do you make of the Disconnected Man, airman?”

  Gus made nothing of it.

  “You see, all men must find their vocation or rely solely on the power and conviction of their personalities. If it’s the latter, then their only commodity is themselves. But should a man be proud of himself though he lacks common ability? Most politicians are such men, which casts a dark shadow upon the future. If I had my way, all politicians would be forced to learn a trade and apply that trade humbly five to ten years before entering the political arena. What is your reaction to that, airman?”

  “Sounds like a good idea, sir,” Gus said.

  Dr. Makepiece studied Gus for a moment, then jotted something in a notepad. The whispering nurse entered with a packet of official documents for the doctor. Gus looked at her and their eyes met for half a second. Gus saw either sympathy or disdain in her eyes. He couldn’t tell which. She left the room, whispering to herself.

  Dr. Makepiece read quickly through the documents. “It says here you suffer from gross indifference. Can you explain that, airman?”

  “No sir.”

  “I suppose it’s my job to do that. Tell me, son. Why do you want a Section 8 discharge? Surely you know that it will be an irradicable stigma that will follow you the rest of your life? Whatever vocation you choose will be compromised by it.”

  “I don’t want a Section 8, sir.”

  “No? But your papers here indicate acquiescence to the Section 8 process.”

  “I want to stay in the air force, sir. I was hoping to apply for flight school. I’d like to fly a Scorpion.”

  The doctor looked momentarily bewildered, then said, “I knew a man who had an admirable vocation, yet he negated his good fortune by taking his own life. In the end, his accomplishments meant nothing to him. What do you make of such a man, son?”

  “Crazy?”

  “An over-used and under-comprehended word. The mind is a labyrinth. In its deepest recess lies a Minotaur.”

  “I don’t understand, sir,” Gus said.

  “No one does,” Dr. Makepiece said.

  The doctor stood up and went to the room’s single window. He opened the blinds and looked out at the gray day, then turned back to face Gus. He was now silhouetted against the window and appeared to Gus as a dark, featureless shape.

  “Do you know why we celebrate Christmas, airman?” he said. He didn’t wait for an answer. “We celebrate the birth of the man who understands us. The man who’s gone into the labyrinth, faced the Minotaur, and come back alive. This is what is meant by resurrection. It could be anyone, not just some first century Jew. The problem is, he’s in hiding. You see?”

  “Not exactly, sir.”

  “My little tree is a token reminder that the man exists, or did exist, but will not make himself known to us in our time. Why do you suppose that is?”

  “No idea, sir.”

  “We light our decorated trees to lure him out of the shadows. We sing our carols to tempt his ear. But where is he? Does he scorn us, does he decry what we’ve become?”

  “I see what you mean, sir.”

  “No, of course you don’t. But no matter. I am going to upgrade your discharge from the air force to ‘medical,’ which is perfectly honorable and will not follow you through life like a black cloud.” Dr. Makepiece returned to his desk and sat down. The cushioned chair expelled an almost human sigh.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me,” Gus said.

  “If only it were that simple.”

  “Sir?”

  “Incest, overrated as a factor in delayed-onset psychosis, can be contributory, however, to an aberration of character. This condition, while serious, will nonetheless allow you to function as a productive member of society, though in a somewhat attenuated fashion. The prognosis falls short of being bleak provided you grasp and then accommodate your shortcomings. You will lack enthusiasm, a sense of purpose, loyalty, and companionability, but in all other respects you will be relatively normal.”

  Gus felt like crying. “There was no incest, sir.”
>
  “I understand why you need to believe that.”

  “No, really sir …”

  “Listen to me, son. In certain limited areas, the attenuated personality can lead a rewarding life. Be of good cheer.”

  Dr. Makepiece leaned back in his chair and swiveled so that he faced the window. He looked out at the gray buildings of Malmstrom Air Force Base and hummed a carol. Gus recognized it. “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

  Gus went to Ray Springer’s ward. Ray’s bed was behind a privacy screen. He could hear him chatting with Lt. Dorio. He opened a pack of cigarettes and lit up. Lt. Dorio came out from behind the screen. She had a sponge in one hand and a shallow pan in the other and an amused smile on her face.

  “Go down one floor if you want to smoke, airman,” she said. “This is a non-smoking area.”

  Gus ground the lit end of his cigarette against the sole of his brogan, pocketed the butt. “How’s Ray doing?” he said.

  “He feeds himself but likes me to bathe him. Men are babies, when it comes right down to it.” She collapsed the privacy screen and rolled it against the wall.

  “You mean that in a good way, right?” Gus said.

  “I mean it in the only way. Men are simple animals. Basic pleasures are all they want out of life. Sex, food, shelter, security. The rest is mischief. Don’t you agree, airman?”

  It sounded right. It also sounded too easy. “I don’t know,” Gus said.

  Lieutenant Dorio laughed. “Don’t break a blood vessel thinking about it, airman. It’s not nuclear physics.” She leaned against the end of Springer’s bed.

  Ray Springer was sitting up in bed, eating an ice cream bar. His jaws were no longer wired together.

  “How you doing, Gate?” he said. “You look a little fried.”

  “I’m okay,” Gus said. He knew he didn’t look good. He knew he looked pale and nervous and shifty eyed. He was glad to see Ray, but worried about what Ray might see in him.

  “Glad to hear it,” Springer said. “Have a seat.”

  “You look good, Ray,” Gus said. It wasn’t a lie. Springer’s hair was clipped short on the sides, and there were circular indentations the size of dimes behind his ears where drains had been inserted, but his color was good and his eyes clear.