Heroes, Page 5

  Two games were being played at the same time, the sharp, take-no-prisoners game the hushed audience was observing and the subtle, tender game in which Larry LaSalle was letting me win.

  Finally, the score stood at 20–19. My favor. One point away from victory. I resisted meeting Larry LaSalle’s eyes. It was still his serve. Crouching, waiting, I finally looked at him, saw his narrowed eyes. They were suddenly inscrutable, mysterious. A shudder made me tremble as I realized that he could easily win the next two points and take the championship away from me. He could win it so easily and so humiliatingly that the crowd—Nicole—would know instantly that he had been toying with me all along.

  The perfect serve came my way but my return was perfect. We entered a seesaw cycle, hit and return, repeating endlessly, near misses and lunging stabs, until finally the ball came to my side, a breathtaking shot that veered to the table’s edge, causing the crowd to gasp, although he and I knew that it was within my reach. His final gift to me. Lunging, I returned the ball to the only place it could go, impossible for him to return.

  He led the cheers, the hollers and whistles of celebration. Dashing to my side of the table, he pumped my hand, hugged me furiously, his ear close enough for me to whisper: “Thank you.” He turned me over to the crowd as the cheers continued, my name endlessly shouted. My eyes sought Nicole, found her joyous face, hands joined together as if in prayer, eyes half closed as if making herself an offering to me.

  A moment later, as the crowd broke up, she was suddenly in front of me, radiant, clasping my hand, whispering: “My champion.” And leaning so close that her breath was warm on my cheek: “See you tomorrow.”

  But tomorrow was December 7, 1941.

  Arthur Rivier is slumped against the brick building at the entrance of Pee Alley, and I know instantly that he is drunk. The streetlight catches his open mouth and the dribbles of saliva on his lips and chin.

  Almost midnight and Third Street deserted. Restless in the tenement, I decided to walk the streets, telling myself that it was possible for Larry LaSalle to show up in Frenchtown at night as well as during the day.

  Arthur Rivier blinks as he sees me approaching. “You okay?” I ask, even though I know he is not okay.

  He regards me with bloodshot eyes, his lips turned downward like the mask of tragedy high above the stage at the Plymouth.

  “Nobody talks about the war,” he mutters, trying to focus his eyes and finally finding the focus and now his eyes drill into mine, the bleariness gone. “They talk about GI bills and going to college and getting married and joining the cops or the firemen but they don’t talk about the war …”

  I place my arm around his shoulder to support him as his body threatens to slide down the wall, a ridiculous gesture because he outweights me by at least fifty pounds.

  He lifts his head to the night. “I want to talk about it, my war,” he cries. “And your war, too, Francis. Everybody’s war. The war nobody wants to talk about …”

  “What war is that?” I ask, having to say something, having to respond to the sorrow in his voice. But not expecting an answer.

  “The scared war,” he says, closing his eyes. “God, but I was scared, Francis. I messed my pants. One day, running across an open field, so scared I shit my pants, bullets at my feet and everything let go …” Opening his eyes, he asks: “Weren’t you scared?”

  I remember the village and our advancing platoon and Eddie Richards saying: “What are we doing here, anyway?” And the smell of diarrhea.

  “Everybody was scared,” I tell him.

  “Heroes,” he scoffs, his voice sharp and bitter, all signs of drunkenness gone. “We weren’t heroes. The Strangler and his scrapbook. No heroes in that scrapbook, Francis. Only us, the boys of Frenchtown. Scared and homesick and cramps in the stomach and vomit. Nothing glamorous like the write-ups in the papers or the newsreels. We weren’t heroes. We were only there …”

  Closing his eyes, he again slumps against the wall, as if the words he has spoken have used up all his energy.

  Shadows loom in the alley’s entrance and I look up to see Armand and Joe silhouetted against the lights of Third Street.

  “Poor Arthur,” Armand murmurs, coming forward, placing his arm around him, touching his face lightly. A deep snore flares Arthur’s nostrils, flutters his lips.

  Poor all of us, I think as I watch them lurching away with Arthur Rivier between them. A cold wind buffets the buildings and sends me hurrying back to Mrs. Belander’s tenement.

  Larry LaSalle was one of the first Frenchtown men to enlist in the armed services, announcing his intention on Monday afternoon, a few hours after President Roosevelt’s address on the radio declared that a state of war existed between Japan and the United States, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Patriotic fever, mixed with rage over the sneak attack in the Pacific, ran rampant through the streets of Frenchtown and, according to radios and newspapers, throughout the nation. Recruiting offices were immediately thronged with men and women answering the call to fight for their country.

  Larry LaSalle stood before us that afternoon at the Wreck Center, the movie-star smile gone, replaced by grim-faced determination. “We can’t let the Japs get away with this,” he said, anger that we had never seen before flashing in his eyes. As we were about to cheer his announcement, he held up his hand. “None of that, kids. I’m just doing what millions of others are doing.”

  Larry’s action became for us the beginning of wartime in Frenchtown. Other enlistments followed as fathers and brothers joined the armed forces. People gathered daily in Monument Square to say goodbye to the men being carried by buses to Fort Delta to enlist in the army and air force, and by train to the headquarters of the marines and navy in Boston.

  The Frenchtown factories went on twenty-four-hour schedules as they began to manufacture material for the war effort. “We don’t make guns and bombs,” Uncle Louis said at supper one night. “But our men need everyday things—combs and brushes, buttons, knives and forks—life goes on, even in the service.”

  I had heard rumors that the Monument Comb Shop, where Uncle Louis worked, was producing secret material in a special section of the factory. He lifted a gnarled finger to his lips. “Shhh,” he said. A thrill went through me—a wartime secret in Frenchtown! Should we be on the lookout for spies?

  Larry LaSalle’s enlistment caused the Wreck Center to close for what people now called “the duration.” The kids of Frenchtown hung out in St. Jude’s schoolyard or in front of Laurier’s Drug Store. Within a short time, the absence of young men on the Frenchtown streets was noticeable. At the Sunday masses, Father Balthazar prayed from the pulpit for the safety of our men and women in the service. Women, too, had begun to show up in uniform. They were called Waves and SPARS and walked the streets with a pride in their steps that hadn’t been there when they were shop girls in the factories.

  Young people and women took over some of the jobs in stores and factories. Mr. Laurier hired me to work part-time, after school and on weekends, at his drugstore. I ran errands, swept the floors, took out the rubbish and filled the shelves with stock from the back room. My special pleasure was stocking the candy cases with Tootsie Rolls, Butterscotch Bits and the big five-cent candy bars like Baby Ruth and Mr. Goodbar.

  Mr. Laurier, always suave and dapper in his white shirt and black bow tie, paid me two dollars and fifty cents a week, and treated me to a chocolate frappe on Saturday afternoon after handing me the money.

  Nicole Renard dropped into the drugstore once in a while. She sometimes lingered after picking out her favorite candy. Butterscotch Bits, three for a penny. She, too, had discovered the Monument Public Library and told me how she wept as she read the final pages of A Farewell to Arms.

  “That’s my favorite novel,” I said.

  “Have you read Rebecca?” she asked.

  “No, but I saw the movie,” I replied, amazed that we were carrying on a normal conversation.

  “I did, too,
but I liked the book better,” she said. “Which do you like best, movies or books?”

  “Both,” I said.

  “Me too.”

  And then a sudden silence but a good silence as she offered me a Butterscotch Bit.

  Taking a deep breath, I said: “Would you like to go to the movies sometime?”

  The earth paused in its orbit.

  “That would be nice,” she said at last.

  Saturday afternoons at the Plymouth downtown became our weekly date—the word made my head spin: I was actually dating Nicole Renard. We met in front of the theater and she insisted on buying her own ticket although she allowed me to treat her to Milk Duds from the vending machine in the lobby. The theater was always crowded and raucous, the Saturday matinees a special time for kids, with a cowboy serial and two movies. The Movietone News brought reminders of the war that was raging around the globe, as the grim narrator spoke of places that had been unknown to us a few months ago—Bataan in the Pacific, Tobruk in Africa. We cheered our fighting forces and booed and hissed when Hitler came on the screen, his arm always raised in that hated salute.

  At some point during the afternoon we held hands, her hand cool in my own, but I had to keep drawing mine away to wipe the sweat from my palm. Just before “The End” of the last movie appeared on the screen, she allowed me an innocent kiss, our lips briefly touching, the taste of chocolate transferred from her lips to mine. Once, my hand accidentally dropped and brushed her sweater and I was surprised at the softness of her breast.

  My hand lingered there for a moment and she didn’t protest. My breath went away and then came back again as we rose to leave.

  On the way home, we talked not only about the movies we had seen but about a thousand other things. I was amazed at the lack of pauses in our conversation, how I always managed to have something to say. She had a way of teasing that coaxed me into forgetting my shyness.

  “What do you want to do besides be a champion at table tennis?”

  “I don’t know.” My mind racing: What did I want to do?

  “You must want to do something, Francis. Say the first thing that comes into your mind.”

  “I want to read every book in the Monument Public Library.”

  “Good,” she said. “How about writing books? Didn’t you win Sister Mathilde’s medal for composition?”

  A blush of both pleasure and embarrassment made my cheeks grow warm.

  “Oh, I could never write a book.”

  “I think you could.”

  It was necessary to change the subject: “How about you, Nicole? What do you want to do?”

  “Oh, lots of things,” she said, raising her head and looking round at the passing Frenchtown three-deckers, the steeple of St. Jude’s in the distance. “Such a big world out there. I’d like to help more in the war. Maybe become a nurse, if the war lasts long enough …”

  I knew that she spent time with the nuns at the convent, knitting socks and scarves for the armed forces. I teased her about the smell of cooked cabbage that she carried with her when she dropped in to Laurier’s after leaving the convent. “The convent’s perfume,” I said, thinking myself clever.

  “Not a bad smell, Francis,” she said. “Better than Evening in Paris.” Which was the cheap perfume that was our best-seller at the store.

  Once, as we passed the Wreck Center, I started to sing “Dancing in the Dark” in a comic way, off-key as usual, because I loved to hear her laugh. But she didn’t laugh this time.

  “That was a sad party, wasn’t it?” she said.

  I agreed, thinking of that December seventh party, during which word was received that the Japanese had bombed a place we’d never heard of called Pearl Harbor, the party suddenly frivolous and superfluous. How could we celebrate a table tennis tournament and a musical show when our country had been attacked and our world had changed so drastically in the space of a few moments?

  The party broke up abruptly as everyone left to go home, hurrying through the streets as if bombers were expected to fly over Frenchtown at any minute. We had discovered in one moment on a Sunday afternoon that the world was not a safe place anymore.

  Laurier’s Drug Store became the gathering spot for the people of Frenchtown, who bought The Monument Times or The Wickburg Telegram and discussed the progress of the war, shaking their heads at the swiftness with which the boys of Frenchtown were becoming fighting men.

  “Amazing,” Mr. Laurier said. “A kid graduates from high school, gets six weeks of basic training with guns and grenades, then overseas he goes on a troopship and five months later—five months later!—he’s fighting the Japs or the Germans.”

  The small red radio on the shelf near the soda fountain blared the news of the day between wartime songs like “Rosie the Riveter,” which celebrated the working women in the war factories, and “The White Cliffs of Dover,” about the cliffs the fliers saw as they returned to England after bombing raids over Europe.

  Every day, page five of the Times carried stories and pictures of our fighting forces, often announcing medals awarded for valor on the battlefields.

  “Did you hear about Larry LaSalle?” Nicole asked breathlessly, rushing into the store one Tuesday afternoon. Although she was speaking to me at the candy counter, the customers turned and listened and a deep silence fell in the store.

  “He saved the lives of an entire platoon,” she announced. “Captured an enemy machine-gun nest. It was on the radio …”

  The following Saturday afternoon at the Plymouth, we were stunned to suddenly see Larry LaSalle featured in the Movietone News. He was unshaven, face gaunt and drawn, eyes sunk deep into their sockets. But it was our Larry LaSalle, all right.

  Cheers filled the air, feet stomped the floor, almost drowning out the voice of the broadcaster:

  “A New England marine is one of the great heroes of Pacific action, receiving the Silver Star …” and again cheers and applause rocked the theater, drowning out the rest of the commentary.

  That night and the following day, the people of Monument jammed the Plymouth to see the town’s first big war hero on the silver screen.

  I haven’t always worn the scarf and the bandage. In the hospital in England, on its grounds and in the surrounding countryside, I enjoyed the sting of air on my flesh, once the bandages were removed. I had barely glimpsed myself in mirrors, windows or glass doors. Until the day I went on a three-day pass in London.

  Walking through the bright sunshine of a spring day, I was disappointed because London had always been linked in my mind with foggy days and evenings and either Jack the Ripper or Sherlock Holmes stalking through the shadows. I headed for Baker Street, hoping to find 221B, even though I knew that address existed only in the stories of Conan Doyle.

  As I walked along, I became aware of people coming upon me and turning away, or giving me wide walking space. A small boy holding his mother’s hand suddenly cried out and pushed his face into his mother’s skirt. I wondered what had scared him until I saw him peeking at me again with one big eye before bursting into tears.

  I shrank against the side of a building and made my way to the plate-glass window of a pub, where, among the advertisements for pints of ale and kidney pies, I saw what the boy had seen—my face. No face at all, actually, the nostrils like the snout of an animal, the peeling cheeks, the toothless gums, my jaw and mouth jammed together as if by invisible clamps.

  I tried to draw up the collar of my Eisenhower jacket to cover at least the lower part of my face but the collar was too narrow, didn’t cover anything at all, and I hurried along the sidewalk, head down, avoiding eye contact, wishing to be invisible.

  Why didn’t anyone warn me? I wondered bitterly on the double-decker bus, hiding my face in my hands. Then realized that the doctors and nurses had probably become so accustomed to the wounded and the maimed that the abnormal had become normal to them.

  Enrico made me the gift of the white scarf, which he said he had won from an air force flyboy
in a poker game.

  Now in Frenchtown, my face is healing. My dentures have given shape to the lower part of my face and my jaw is firmer, but my nostrils are still caves and the flesh of my cheeks refuses to heal completely, remaining raw and red. When I study myself in the mirror, I don’t see me anymore but a stranger slowly taking shape.

  The truth is that I don’t care whether I heal or not. Because I know that it doesn’t matter. What matters is hiding my face from others, not only to save them the shock of seeing a face in disrepair but so that they won’t identify little Francis Cassavant later on, after I have carried out my mission.

  Now each day when I wake up I know that this might be the day when Larry LaSalle will show up and I start to close doors. Not real doors but doors to the future. I take out the address and telephone number of Dr. Abrams in Kansas City and burn it in the kitchen sink. Next is the list of veterans’ hospitals that Enrico handed to me when I left England. “I’ll be in one of them,” he told me, “until I find the proper method of disposal.” I knew what he meant by disposal because I had already planned my own method after my mission was completed.

  I watch the flames eating up the list of hospitals. Goodbye, Enrico.

  The smell of ashes fills the air, a damp incense burning for Larry LaSalle’s homecoming.

  His second homecoming.

  Closing my eyes, I think of Nicole and how his first homecoming during the war changed our lives forever.

  Lieutenant Lawrence LaSalle, U.S. Marine Corps, holder of the Silver Star for acts of heroism in the steaming jungles of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific, hero of newsreels and radio broadcasts, was coming home on furlough. He was scheduled to arrive on the 3:10 P.M. train from Boston on July 3, 1943.