Johnnie
Authors: Dorothy B. Hughes
Dorothy B. Hughes
for Holly
who also writes mysteries
for Tony
who reads them
One
T
HERE WASN’T ANY SIGN
saying this was it. Just like there wasn’t any sign saying it was Friday night and May, a nice balmy night that didn’t need any overcoat to bother you when you prowled. This was it all right. New York. The heart of New York. Broadway.
Three of them stood there, right in the middle of the sidewalk. They didn’t pay any attention to the people walking at them and around them and away from them. They didn’t even pay any attention to the babes digging them as they swished by. They stood there, Bill and Hank and Johnnie.
“This is the Great White Way,” Bill announced.
“Don’t look white to me,” Hank said. “Kind of a dirty gray.”
“It’s the brownout,” Bill told him. “We’re in a war, soldier. Don’t you know nothing, soldier?”
Johnnie said, “I want to ride on the subway.”
The other two looked at him. Bill sighed. “There he goes again.”
Hank stood five feet eleven and one half inches in his G. I. shoes. He had black hair and a big knuckly fist. He said “Pipe down, soldier.”
Johnnie stood six feet two inches in his G. I. shoes. He didn’t duck. But he winced. “I only said I wanted to ride on the subway.”
Bill wasn’t as tall as Hank but he was the one with the guide book to New York City in his head. Besides he’d already been here on one pass. He said, “Listen, Johnnie, in the first place you don’t ride on a subway like on a merry-go-round. You ride in, like in a train.”
“Choo-choo. Get it, soldier?” Hank demanded. “You rode in a train all the way from Texas to New Jersey, didn’t you? Didn’t you? Now can’t you pipe down?”
“I’ve never been on—in—a subway. I always wanted to ride on—in—one.”
“Listen, Johnnie.” Bill was patient. He planted himself in front of Johnnie, blocking more sidewalk, and Hank planted himself beside him. Johnnie looked down at both of them. They looked tough and they looked exasperated. All because he wanted to ride on a subway.
“Listen, we got to be back in camp by Sunday morning, don’t we? We got thirty-three hours.” Bill looked at his watch. “Thirty-two hours and forty-seven minutes. And time off that to get back to camp. We got just that long to see New York. And you want to ride in a subway!”
Hank snorted.
“I still do,” Johnnie allowed. “Gee, I don’t know what my dad and my mom and my kid sister and my kid brother would think of me if I came to New York and didn’t ride on the subway. We used to talk about it all the time back home in Texas.”
The two tough faces weren’t weakening. No milk of human kindness dripping out. Johnnie changed tactics. “Listen, why can’t I ride on the subway while you guys go to the broadcast and the Stage Door Canteen and all the places you want to go?” He warmed up to it. “I’ll just take me a little ride and then I’ll meet you any place you say.”
Bill looked at Hank. Hank looked at Bill. They looked at each other as if something smelled. They looked at Johnnie.
“You’ll get lost,” Bill said sternly.
Johnnie picked it up fast. “How can I get lost?” He argued, “You get on and you ride. You stay on and you come back where you started. All you got to do is get off where you got on. You can’t get lost.”
“You would,” Bill stated.
“I couldn’t.” Johnnie had them wilting now. He stuck to his guns. “Even if I did, where do you think we are, Boona Boona? New Yorkers speak English, don’t they? I could ask ʼem, couldn’t I?”
Hank put in his oar. “F’go’sakes, Johnnie, you don’t mean you’d rather ride in a hole in the ground than go to the Stage Door Canteen? Dorothy Lamour might even be there.”
“She lives in Hollywood,” Johnnie told him.
“I saw her picture at the Stage Door Canteen,” Hank declared. “Anyhow there’s lot of girls there. Chorus girls!” He whistled. “Subway!” He snorted again.
“I still want to ride a subway. Gee, I don’t know what Jimmie, my kid brother, would say if I couldn’t tell him about riding on a subway—”
Bill interrupted. “Listen. Suppose we let you go. We’re just wasting our time standing here flapping, Hank. Suppose we let you go and we mosey up to the broadcast. Would you promise not to get lost? Would you promise to meet us in an hour at the Stage Door Canteen?”
“I promise,” Johnnie grinned.
“And you won’t buy the Brooklyn Bridge?”
“Do you think I’m a hick?” Johnnie demanded. “Don’t answer that.”
“Or the Empire State Building?”
He didn’t deign a reply to that one.
“Where you got your folding dough?”
“In my shoe. Where’d you think?”
“How much in your pockets?”
Johnnie investigated. “Two dollars.” He counted. “And ninety-seven cents. Four nickels, see?”
“Don’t spend it all,” Bill advised. “Now listen. It’s seven twenty-two. You be at the Stage Door Canteen—no—” He looked at Hank. “He’ll never find it.” He turned back to Johnnie. “You meet us at the Astor, front door.” He jabbed a finger in the black topcoat unfortunately passing them. “Scuse me. There it is across the street. See it. Astor. A-s-t-o-r. At nine o’clock. Don’t be any later than that.”
Hank said, “What a cluck. Sweating out the subway.”
“You won’t get lost?” Bill insisted.
“Don’t worry about me.” Johnnie grinned all over his face now.
“Nine o’clock, front door of the Astor.”
Nine o’clock, the Astor, Johnnie repeated. His eyes weren’t paying any attention to old Bill now. They were roving to the subway kiosk by the newspaper stand over there. People diving into the door and other people popping out of it. Like a magician putting rabbits in a hat and pulling out chickens. He’d seen it happen once on the stage at the high school auditorium back home in Texas.
Hank had the last thing to say. He said it ruefully.
“Tain’t safe, Bill.”
Johnnie put his hands in his pockets, felt for a nickel, took a breath and dived into traffic. He made it to the island where the subway opening stood. He didn’t bother to watch the departure of Bill and Hank. Couple of old women. Just because he’d got lost in Newark waiting for a train. That had been purely accidental. Just because Hank had been to school in Tulsa, he thought he was big time. Just because Bill was from Omaha, he thought he knew his way around any place. Well, he, Johnnie had been to Dallas a couple of times himself. And anybody could have got lost in Newark on Decoration Day. He wouldn’t get lost tonight. There wouldn’t be any parades tonight. If there were, he’d stand still and watch, not follow a baton twirler. He was bait for baton twirlers. Particularly blonde ones.
Johnnie kept his nickel in his hand as he ducked into the doorway. It wasn’t so easy then. The subway wasn’t standing on a track, waiting. He even had a sneaky feeling maybe Bill and Hank had been right after all. Maybe he shouldn’t have wandered off from them. Maybe he was just a hick. That feeling didn’t last. He found his way. He started down the stairs. He found where to drop a nickel. He went around corners and followed arrows and climbed up and down more stairs. He took his time, not like all these people darting around like polliwogs in a pool of water. He had plenty of time. A whole hour and a half before he had to meet the guys again. A whole hour and half to take a subway ride.
He finally reached the place where the subway train ran. Right under a big sign, black letters on white. Johnnie craned his neck to read it. Times Square. He was starting out from Times Square. All he had to do was come back to Times Square. A pipe. Johnnie was exceedingly content.
He stood there and observed a couple of trains. He didn’t pay any attention to the three girls digging him. He wanted to get the full feel of a subway before he got on for a ride. Besides there’d be better looking girls at the Stage Door Canteen. He wanted to know what he’d look like when he was inside one of those trains. He wanted to know how about getting inside. He figured it out easy. When the door slid open you pushed in, no ticket or nothing. Then you grabbed a strap or sat on a wicker seat or leaned against the door after it slid closed. The train rumbled away out of sight down a long tunnel. He could go that far watching. When he was well filled with it, he moved up nearer the edge of the platform. He waited for the next train with the blissful anticipation of a small boy, and with only the slightest apprehension of something so radically new.
It was coming now. First you heard the roar. Then you saw the two green eyes, or the green and red eyes. Then the train rushed up, quieted, finally stopped moving. The magical doors opened. And Private Johnnie Brown walked inside, just as if he were used to subways.
The car was fair to middling crowded, not any sardine in a can crowd, but enough so that Johnnie had to hold to a strap. He didn’t mind that. It made it more fun than just sitting down. And the strap was easy on his hand; he didn’t have to strain his seams like the five by five beside him. He got a kick out of watching the walls slide by, the lights blink, the jerk whenever the train stopped. It was like being in a movie. A movie of New York. He got such a kick out of it that he didn’t pay any attention to all the other folks riding, most of them reading papers anyhow. He didn’t even notice until past Columbus Circle that the pudgy guy beside him was talking German. When he first noticed it, he didn’t rightly notice. It just seemed like part of being in a movie. Then he woke up that it really was German. Johnnie hadn’t ever heard it spoken except in movies, movies about Nazis and spies, but he knew it was German all right. It was like listening to someone talk and clear their throat all at once.
He took a good look at the five by five then. A little fat fellow, about fifty maybe, with a moon face that should have had a handlebar mounted over the fat mouth. Maybe he had had one once; under his button nose the skin wasn’t as weathered as on the cheeks and forehead. The man had on a dark suit and a pepper and salt topcoat. His black derby was too big for him; it sat down on his ears. Johnnie looked below to the fat man’s shoes; you could usually tell whether a guy had folding money by his shoes. This one didn’t have much. His feet were little and splayed out like a duck’s. The shoes were black with pointed toes and even a shine wouldn’t have made them look too good.
By that time Johnnie was catching some words, and clear words like Munich, spitting out the ich, and Potsdam. There were other words that sounded like nothing at all. Totenkopfverbaede. Sicherheitsdrentl. Not Hitler. Maybe the fat man wasn’t a spy after all. But he hadn’t ought to be giving out with enemy flap. It just didn’t sound good. Somebody ought to tell him it didn’t sound good.
Johnnie had about made up his mind that he might say something to Pudgey when he happened to remember that the guy wasn’t talking to him. And unless he was a nut, he wasn’t talking to himself. The woman holding the strap on the other side of the man had a newspaper covering her face. She couldn’t be it. That left the man sitting down in front of Pudgey. Johnnie took one look and knew that was the one. His face looked like he had indigestion or was about to have it; long thin nose, long thin cheeks, long pointed chin. His eye, the one Johnnie could see, was like a glass eye. No more expression than that. He was dressed better than the fat one. His derby fit him. His black overcoat had a velvet collar. Everybody in New York seemed to wear overcoats even if they didn’t need them. This guy’s feet belonged to him, the gray spats were clean and the black shoe tips had a high polish. His gray gloves were clean. He didn’t look like the subway. Pudgey did. His fat hands had dirty fingernails.