Max Collins: The Million-Dollar Wound

“The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor!” Buddy’s eyes rolled back like slot-machine windows. “Jeez, boss, the radio’s on, aren’t you listening to it?”

“What’s Pearl Harbor?” Barney asked.

“It’s in Hawaii,” I said. “It’s a Naval base or something.”

Barney made a face. “The Japs bombed their own harbor?”

“It’s our harbor, schmuck!” I said.

“Not anymore,” Buddy Gold said, and walked away, morosely, polishing a glass.

From then on, or anyway right after President Roosevelt made his “day of infamy” speech, joining up was all Barney talked about.

“It’s stupid,” I told him, in one of God only knows how many arguments on the subject in his Lounge. Over beers, in a booth.

“So it’s stupid to want to defend the country that’s been so good to me?”

“Oh, please. Not the ‘I came up from the ghetto to become a champion’ speech again. You’re not cutting the ribbon on some goddamn supermarket today, Barney. Give a guy a break.”

“Nate,” he said, “you disappoint me.”

Nate. That’s me. Nathan Heller. Onetime dick on the Chicago PD pickpocket detail, currently a fairly successful small businessman with a three-man (one-secretary) detective agency in a building owned by the very ex-pug I was arguing with. Actually, it was about to be a two-man agency-my youngest operative was going into the Army next week.

“I suppose,” I said, “you think I should join up, too.”

“That’s your decision.”

“They wouldn’t even take me, Barney. I’m an old man. So are you, for that matter. You’re thirty-three. The Marines aren’t asking for guys your age.”

“I’m draft age,” he said, pointing to his chest with a thumb. Proud. Defiant. “And so are you. They’re taking every able body up to thirty-five.”

“Wrong on two counts,” I said. “First, I turned thirty-six, when you weren’t looking. Squeaked by the draft, thank you very much. Second, you’re a married man. I know, I know, you’re getting a divorce; but then you’re going to marry Cathy, first chance you get, right?” Cathy was this beautiful showgirl Barney had taken up with after his marriage went sour. “Well,” I went on, “they only take married men up to age twenty-six. And you haven’t been twenty-six since you fought McLarnin.”

He looked gloomily in his beer. “I don’t intend to shirk my duty by using some loophole. As far as I’m concerned, I ain’t married anymore, and even so, I’m joining up.”

“Oh, Barney, please. You got dependents, for Christ’s sake. You got family.”

“That’s just why I’m doing it. I got a special obligation to represent my family in the armed service.”

“Why?”

He shrugged expansively. “Because nobody else was able to go. Ben’s too old, Morrie’s got back trouble, Sammy’s got the epileptic fits, and Georgie’s got flat feet and the draft board turned him down.”

“That poor unlucky bastard, Georgie. Imagine goin’ through life with flat feet when you could’ve got ’em shot the hell off.”

“I take this serious, Nate. You know that. Think about what’s happening overseas, would you, for once? Think about that cocksucker Hitler.”

A word that harsh was rare for Barney; but the feeling ran deep. He’d gotten very religious, in recent years; and his religion was what this was most of all about.

“Hitler isn’t your problem,” I said, somewhat lamely.

“He is! He’s mine, and he’s yours.”

We’d been over this ground many times, over the last three or four years. Longer than that, really. From the first news of persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany, Barney had gone out of his way to remind me that I too was a Jew.

Which I didn’t accept. My father had been an apostate Jew, so what did that make me? An apostate Jew at birth? My late mother was a Catholic, but I didn’t eat fish on Friday.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “You hate Hitler; you’re going to whip those lousy Nazis. Fortunately for you, Armstrong isn’t on their side.” Armstrong was who Barney lost his title to. A little desperately I added, “But why the goddamn Marines? That’s the roughest damn way to go!”

“Right.” He sipped his beer, very cool, very measured. “They’re the toughest of all the combat outfits. If I’m going to do this thing, I’m going to do it right. Just like in the ring.”

I tried a kidney punch. “What about your ma? It was rough enough on her when you were fighting in a ring-now you want to go fight a war? How could you do that to her?”

He swallowed; not his beer-just swallowed. His puppy-dog eyes in that bulldog puss were solemn and a little sad. His hair was salt-and-pepper and he really did look too old to be considering this; he looked older than me, actually. But then I hadn’t taken as many blows to the head as him. Very deliberately, he said, “I don’t want to bring no more heartache to Ma, Nate. But wars have to go on no matter how mothers feel.”

It was like trying to argue with a recruiting poster.

“You’re serious about this, this time,” I said. “You’re really going to go through with it.”

He nodded. Smiled just a little. Shyly.

I finished my beer in a gulp and waved toward the bar for another. “Barney, look at this place. Your business is going great guns. Ever since you switched locations, seems like it’s doubled.”

“Ben’s going to take over for me.”

“Aw, but you yourself are such an important part of it-the celebrity greeting his customers and all. No offense to your brother, but it’ll flop without you.”

Again he shrugged. “Maybe so. But if Hitler comes riding down State Street, I’ll be out of business permanent.”

Such a child. Such a simple soul. God bless him.

“How far have you gone with this thing?”

“Well,” he said, smiling, embarrassed now, “they turned me down at first. Told me I was overage and should go run my cocktail lounge. Just like you did. But I kept swinging, and finally they sent a letter to Washington to see about getting me a waiver on the age rule. Took sixty days for it to come through. And today I got the word. All I got to do is sign on the dotted line, and pass the physical.”

I sat there shaking my head.

“The recruiting office is in the post office,” he said. That was just a few blocks away. “They’re open twenty-four hours, these days. I’m going down tonight. Why don’t you keep me company?”

“What, and join up with you? Not on your life.”

“Nate,” he said, reaching across to touch my hand. It wasn’t something I remembered him ever doing before. “I’m not trying to talk you into any such thing. You have every right to stay here, doing what you’re doing. You’re past draft age, now, you got my blessing. Really. All I want is yours.”

He didn’t know I’d already given it to him. I just sat there shaking my head again, but smiling now. He took his hand off mine. Then suddenly we were shaking hands.

That’s when we started to seriously drink.

It gets hazy after that. I know that my own mixed feelings-my own barely buried desire to get into this thing myself, my expectation of being drafted having turned to guilt-edged relief when the call-up missed me-came drifting to the surface, came tumbling out in confession to Barney, and, well, I remember walking him to the post office, singing, “Over There,” along the way and getting strange and occasionally amused looks from passersby.

I remember studying a poster boasting the great opportunities the Marine Corps offered a man. There were three Marines on the poster-one rode a rickshaw, one was cleaning the wings of an airplane, one was presenting arms on a battleship. I remember, albeit vaguely, studying this poster for the longest time and experiencing what must have been something akin to a religious conversion.