Leon Uris (14 page)

“Oh, Jaysus,” Paddy moaned. He signaled for a bottle of Irish whiskey. “That is my game in life, Son. Do you have any idea how many times I confessed battle fear to the priest? Fear is the monster that has to be stilled at birth and you never had the comfort of your mother’s breast. Flies hanging from the flypaper are filled with fear. Violets bending to the sun are frightened, to say nothing of the rats in Hell’s Kitchen.”

“I’ve never known you to be afraid.”

A hardy shot of whiskey slowed Paddy and he rounded up the nerve to pat his son’s hand and stare, his eyes looking a different way.

“We are all riddled with fear. It is how you are able to cope with it which makes you the manner of man you become.”

“You were scared at Sumter?”

“I’m still scared of Sumter,” Paddy said, and his son understood that his da wasn’t telling him this in order to make him feel good.

“You’ve always handled yourself so well, Zach, I thought it was you who had whipped fear. Small fucking wonder you dream of falling. I had the same kind of nightmares.”

“Did they ever go away?”

“Aye, when I went into the Corps. I knew that if I fell, some Marine would grab my hand and help me get up.”

“Did prayer help?”

“I never had much luck with the Virgin. She probably figured I was too rowdy. All right, then, let’s sleep on it.”

Zachary knew his da’s inner wheels were grinding, but unless he warned his da that he couldn’t make it as a Marine, it would all become too shattering later.

The next day Zachary made himself scarce, walking the neighborhoods till after dark. When he returned to the saloon, one of the bartenders told him Paddy was waiting down on the river at Pier
Four, where a worthy schooner, the
Beatrice K,
was docked. The skipper, Mike Ryan, was a longtime patron of the bar.

A moment of terror came upon Zachary as he approached the ship. That would be Paddy O’Hara’s way of solving things, like those night marches through the dark swamps, daring anyone to fall. Zach looked up the mast and fought off a surge of vomiting. His da met him at the top of the gangplank.

“Must be a hundred feet to the crow’s nest.”

“A hundred and twenty-two,” Paddy said sans mercy.

“It’s no use, Da.”

“I’m not ordering you to go up the mast, but I’m saying words you must hear or carry a stone in your guts the rest of your life. I cannot make you do what you can’t do, but before you can’t do it, you are going to have the benefit of my advice.”

“I’m a coward!” Zach cried.

“Having said that, listen up. This moment is here, now. It can’t be changed. It will never go away. The ship’s mast is going to tell you where you are going to settle on the human scale. No matter what you do, you are still my son.”

“In name only.”

Paddy wanted to kneel and plead, but it was beyond his way of doing things. “I’ve enough lead in me to forge an anchor. I can handle another wound. It is the wound you will have to endure that frightens me.”

Please God, Zach prayed, make this moment never have happened! Please God, make it go away! But it didn’t.

“You are the advance scout for your platoon,” Paddy began, “and your men are entering a blind ravine. There are sheer rocks up there that you have to climb to get observation, the only place from which you can spot an ambush. You have to climb up to be able to warn them or they are dead meat marching in—”

“Stop it, now. I’ve seen the sergeant-major tricks.”

“NOW . . . HEAR . . . THIS. There is no greater glory than the moment a man makes his decision that death is preferable to yielding to fear!”

Paddy backed away, somewhat frightened himself. “You’re still my son,” he said harshly, and went down the gangplank.

The Ferris wheel stopped and the operator unhooked the bar.

“We’ll do another few rounds,” Zach said.

And away they went, backward, up and up, into a patch of darkness, and the wheel was braked and it stopped and the passengers dangled.

Amanda kissed him with a tongue full of adventure and he met her in midfield.

Let’s fly like this forever and ever! We’ll never run out of kisses or most subtle ways to touch each other here and there in a most decent manner.

There you are, mighty Paddy O’Hara, standing on the dock, hands raised and shouting, “Hip hip hooray!”

Well, I went up the
Beatrice K
’s pole three times, Da, and I’m a fucking Marine! And then an afterthought . . . I don’t know whether I love you or I hate you, Da.

Can you imagine? The operator of the Ferris wheel wouldn’t even let the Marine pay for his extra rounds.

They walked, him somewhat weak-legged, back toward the midway. Amanda knew full well that Zach’s father had been there with them. As they left the Ferris wheel, they were hanging on to each other in a new and different way.

At the dance pavilion, the blue-plate special was fifty-nine cents, within reason, and consisted of a combination of Maryland fried chicken, a Maryland fried crab cake, and a side of oysters with mashed potatoes, string beans, and “various,” to be concluded with a quarter of a watermelon.

Amanda wanted desperately to slip Zach a five-dollar bill but knew it would cut him to the quick and perhaps dampen the most wonderful day of her life.

Zach had come fully financed for the excursion. He had ironed sixty-two shirts for his buddies at the barracks at a nickel each, added four dollars and ten cents in a poker game, and drew a few dollars from what he had riding on the paymaster books.

“What will you have to drink, Marine?”

“Beer.”

“What year were you born?”

“Eighteen twenty.”

“And you, miss?”

“Beer, 1824,” she said, looking straight at him.

“I’ll bring you a pitcher, it’s cheaper.”

They held hands and cruised with their eyes around the pavilion.

“Who all is here?” she asked.

“A lot of Irish,” Zach observed. “Steel-mill workers from Sparrow’s Point. Lot of Germans,” he continued, “teamsters and dock-workers. See those midshipmen lining the bar?”

“Uh-huh.”

“A Norwegian training ship is in port. Over there, maybe trouble, two tables of single ladies.”

“What do you mean by
trouble?
Good trouble?”

“Bad trouble. Notice, when the music ends the Norwegians go back to the bar.”

“They’re probably bashful with the language and all.”

“No, that’s not it. They came together and they’re leaving together. They’re taking care of each other.”

“Look, Zach, one of them is leaving with a girl,” Amanda said.

“Let’s hope he doesn’t wake up tomorrow on a Greek freighter heading for Montevideo.”

Amanda’s mouth went agape.

“I draw shore-patrol duty sometimes. We’ve gotten more than one sailor out of a mess.”

“Are you teasing me?”

“We fought a war in 1812 about the British borrowing our sailors without consent.”

“Would you agree if I went to the bar and asked one to dance?”

“No.”

“
You
wouldn’t be jealous, would you?”

“Oh sure, a little bit. That’s not it. I am responsible for you.”

Amanda felt incredibly protected. On to more mischief. He challenged her to a glass of beer. It had a disgusting taste, but her curiosity was aroused. Why is beer so sacred? It’s really not all that bad. Hmm. Hmm.

“Hey, there’s a buddy from my platoon. He and his girl are being seated at a table of strangers. Would you mind?”

“Ask them over.”

Zach zinged out a whistle and shot over the floor. “Hey, Varnik! Over here, man!”

The two Marines fell on each other as long-lost cousins, not as two men who spent all their living hours together.

“Hi, ma’am. I’m Zach.”

“I’m Beth Shaughnessy.”

“Amanda,” Amanda said.

“Casper Varnik,” the corporal said, shaking Amanda’s hand and bowing. “Hey, we got lucky, huh, Beth?”

The party was on. They recounted their daring adventures down the midway. Casper Varnik was thick of neck and shoulders and Beth was thin but deceptively pretty, with Irish-colored hair and skin and a pert nose.

“I work at Müeller’s,” Beth said to Amanda.

“I don’t know that one,” Amanda said.

“Cotton-finishing factory. I do the fancy stitching on bed linens. My sisters work there as well. Where do you work, Amanda?”

“My father has his own business. He has a shop, outfits boats.”

“Lucky you. It took me a long time to get lacework on the third floor, but they’re very strict on us. I’m on a wait list for a nanny’s job,” Beth said, crossing her fingers for luck.

Beth lived in Pottstown, an Irish enclave of Baltimore.

Casper Varnik came from halfway across the country—Chicago!

“How did you two meet?” Amanda asked.

“I was visiting a cousin in Baltimore,” Casper said, “and there was this here social event at the Sacred Heart Seamen’s Mission.”

“I’m a Baltimorean, too,” Amanda said. “You poor fellows should have found yourselves a couple of birds at Riverside Park near your barracks.”

The corporal patted his girl’s hand with sincere affection. “Not on your life,” he said. “You know it ain’t all that bad. We get a forty-eight-hour pass every month. Catch a train to Baltimore, hop the trolley to Pottstown, and hey, we still got Sunday, huh, Beth? Zach, how’s about you and me taking the late train back to Washington tomorrow?”

“I pulled guard duty. I’ve got to be at the barracks early.”

“But last train to Washington’s in an hour,” Casper said.

“I did some extra work at Captain Storm’s house, and in exchange, he loaned me his horse and rig.”

“Jesus, ‘scuse my language, that Captain Storm is more like, you know, a father than an officer. His wife, Matilda, throws a spread for us every month, Chinese food. She’s got this big pan in their galley, and as fast as we can eat it clean, she’s throwing more stuff into it.”

“What does your dad do?” Amanda asked Beth.

“After the eighth kid he went west with the railroad, an old Irish tradition,” she answered, and switched the subject, admiring Amanda’s doll. “Casper never wins the brass ring.” She held up a velvet cushion with a glittering chesapeake park and a painting of a mostly nude woman dancing the hoochie-koochie. “I have one of these already.”

“It’s beautiful!” Amanda said, giving Zach an imploring look. He nodded.

“Let’s trade!” Amanda cried. “My doll for your pillow.”

“Gracious!”

A straw-hatted quartet attired in vertical peppermint-striped jackets gave out with “Ta-Ra-Ra Boom Der-E.”

The Marines took their girls to the dance floor. Casper Varnik
and Beth Shaughnessy were no slouches at ragtime. They traded partners, stepping wildly. Now a quadrille with a Norwegian sailor and his girl and a soldier boy and his girl. They danced till their sides ached.

Zach put his hand over Amanda’s glass as Casper poured a round. She’d already had two.

“It’s quite all right. I have a very fine escort,” she said, taking his hand away.

All too soon their witching hour fell.

Oh, to drive a dandy phaeton pulled by a magnificent Hambletonian trotter with the most beautiful girl in the world cuddled up against you.

Amanda ran her hand over the garish velvet pillow. It would be two weeks before Zach got a forty-eight-hour liberty. Maybe she’d slip over to Washington? That would not be wise. She told herself not to fall into a state of sadness.

The carriage turned onto the road up Butcher’s Hill. They could make out the lights of Inverness on its crown. As the carriage passed through a dark stretch of road, she told him to pull over.

“Aye.”

He tied up where the horse could nibble at a patch of tall grass. Amanda asked him to snuff out the carriage lamps and they were in total darkness.

“We’re still early,” she said. “I love this pillow. I really liked Beth and Casper.”

“This was the first time I’ve met her in person, but I’ve been looking at her picture on the wall by Varnik’s bunk for a year. She’s a soft little thing, like an Irish nymph. Varnik isn’t too articulate, but you should see how he takes charge and controls men, and his tactical sense. He’s going to be a great Marine officer.”

Amanda chose her next words cautiously. “I could get Beth onto the household staff at Inverness,” and added quickly, “It would be better than the job she has now.”

Damn! His silence said everything.

“Zach, I’m sorry.”

“Varnik and I are equals, buddies for life. Lord, my da was a sergeant major when he and my mother married. She did the Irish washerwoman’s chores and carried out the chamber pots in someone’s fine mansion.”

“And it angered your father, badly.”

“No, they knew the drill when they married. What riled him was the everlasting low station of all the Irish. Varnik serves at the pleasure of his country. They love each other and can maybe make a go, but it’s a hard life to be the wife of an enlisted man.”

“I am sorry,” she repeated, then shivered, although it was warm. “It’s been such a beautiful day, I want to hang on to it a little longer.”

“Did your parents really know you were going to Chesapeake Park?”

“There is that possibility.”

“You told me you had their approval.”

“I did, in a manner of speaking.”

“But you didn’t, specifically.”

“It falls under the terms of a treaty with Father.” Amanda could feel Zach smiling through the darkness. She sighed. “You aren’t the only one who has to live up to regulations. Before I was sixteen I always had a couple of Father’s Pinkertons with me or following me everywhere. I’ve made a lot of different kinds of different friends, some who made my father’s hair bristle. It was difficult to keep them, so I decided to take a stand.”

“How’d you do that?”

“In my parents’ world, daughters are presented to society when they’re sixteen. Well, the Baltimore Cotillion was coming up and I told them I would not attend unless he gave me some freedom. A year of Mother’s noble scheming would go down the drain. Father and I did not exchange a word for over a month. Then he yielded. Father agreed that in the future I could leave Inverness without his Pinkertons and I could keep my friends on the condition that I was properly escorted and home before midnight.”