Evan Hunter - Sons

I did not recognize him at first.

I looked him full in the face, and he looked back at me, and then we both turned away. I lifted my scotch and sipped a little of it, and listened as my first jukebox selection fell into place, a song new to me, its melody haunting, its lyric evocative, “... on a train that is passing through, those eyes...” and I drank silently, listening, and then ordered another scotch and glanced again at the captain. He was wearing a jauntily tilted crushed hat and he had a blond mustache and blue eyes, silver pilot’s wings over the left-hand pocket of his blouse. He turned toward me as though aware of my casual glance, his own look becoming one of scrutiny, and all at once he said, “Will?”

Our eyes met, his probing tentatively and uncertainly, mine searching for a clue. “Will Tyler?” he said, more confidently now, and I suddenly knew who he was, the face registered, the voice registered, “Michael?” I asked.

We were rising simultaneously off our stools, slowly, slowly, our faces cracking with wide grins, our arms coming up (“Michael?” I asked, “Michael Mallory?”) and we rushed toward each other like some crazy Klondike prospector brothers meeting in the middle of a muddy Main Street after months in the wilderness (“Michael, you son of a bitch!”) and threw our arms around each other and let out blood-curdling yells that must have shattered a dozen glasses behind the bar. We jigged all around that room, we threw our hats in the air, we put six quarters in the juke and turned the volume up full, and bought the bartender a drink when he complained, and laughed and slapped each other on the back, yelling over the sound of the music, roaring our amazement and our pleasure, “Let’s call my sister!” I shouted, “Let’s call Charlotte Wagner!” Michael shouted, our words tumbling over themselves, overlapping, You look great, When’d you get back, Where’ve they got you now, What were you

flying, How do you like my paintbrush, I’ve seen more hair on a strip of bacon, Hey, remember that night, Remember old Ronny Booth passing out on us, Remember those jigs chasing us out of Douglas, remember? remember? remember?

The party was being given for a bombardier who had lost an eye over Ploesti. Michael had met him at Fort Dix (where the poor bastard was being discharged with a Purple Heart), and he had invited Michael to the big bash tonight, promising him plenty of girls, booze, and music. Michael had assured him he would show, but then had lost his courage, and had wandered into the bar for a few fortifying drinks. We finally decided to brave it together, hero fighter pilots that we were, and we managed to find the Sutton Place address, a high-rise overlooking the East River, but then Michael chickened out again. I think he really was afraid of contact with, well, people who hadn’t been dropping bombs or firing machine guns. People.

So we stood on the edge of the river, and watched the shimmering reflection of a tug’s lights on the water, and Michael softly said, “Reminds me of the lake, doesn’t it you?” and I said, “Yes, it docs,” though I wasn’t really sure, I think anything that night would have reminded us of Chicago. Michael began talking all at once about how strange it felt to be back in the United States, and then asked me if I’d taken one of those returnee tests at Mitchel, and when I told him I hadn’t as yet, he went on to explain that the Air Force had developed a questionnaire to assist them with the enormous task of redeployment and that some of the responses given by bomber pilots and fighter pilots were pretty surprising, hadn’t I heard about that questionnaire?

“Well,” he said, “you might be interested in knowing that only twenty-eight per cent of the bomber pilots thought they should be shipped overseas again, whereas forty-six per cent of the fighter pilots figured they would be sent over and actually wanted to go.”

“So what docs that prove?” I said.

Michael shrugged. “Nothing, I guess.” He looked out over the water again. “I don’t remember all the figures, Will, but the guys who said they didn’t want to go overseas again gave a lot of different reasons. Some of them felt they’d already done their share of overseas duty — almost twice as many bomber pilots said that as fighter pilots. Or they just couldn’t take another tour either physically or mentally — the percentage was in favor of the fighter pilots on that one. Or...”

“You think they’re going to ship us to the Pacific?”

“I don’t know,” Michael said, and shrugged again. “There was another question on one of the tests, Will. This one was given only to enlisted men, maybe the Air Force didn’t want to hear what its flying officers had to say. Anyway, the question was ‘Do you ever feel this war is not worth fighting?’”

“What were the answers?”

“The majority, forty-five per cent, said ‘Never.’ Twenty-three per cent said ‘Once in a great while.’ Twenty-four per cent said ‘Sometimes.’ And eight per cent said ‘Very often.’” Michael paused. Turning to me, he said, “What would you have answered, Will?”

“I’ve never once thought this war wasn’t worth fighting,” I said. “Have you?”

Michael looked out over the water. Very softly, he said, “I was seared to death. All the time. Every minute. I kept thinking it’d catch up to me. I kept thinking it had to catch up. I kept thinking my grandfather got out of the Spanish-American War alive, and my father got out of World War I alive, but I wouldn’t get out of this one, I wouldn’t make it, Will, the world’s fucking idiocy would overtake me at last.” He sighed deeply then, and turned to me again, and I looked at his face in the light of the street lamps, and knew why I had not known him in the bar, and wondered suddenly what had taken him so long to recognize me.

“Look,” I said, “why don’t we go upstairs, huh? Might be a good party after all, what the hell. Come on, Michael, what do you say?”

“Sure,” Michael answered. He grinned suddenly, the old hell-raising grin I remembered, and linked his arm through mine and cheerfully said, “Off we go!” and together we turned from the river and walked directly into the building, past the doorman who called behind us, “Excuse me, gentlemen, whom did you wish to see?”

“Lieutenant Douglas Prine,” Michael answered.

“Yes, sir,” the doorman said, “that’s apartment 14B.”

In the elevator, a pimply-faced operator said, “You fellows just back from overseas?”

“Just back,” Michael said. “How can you tell?”

The elevator operator shrugged. “You can tell guys who’re just back. You see any action?”

“A little,” Michael said.

“Fourteen,” the elevator operator said.

She had hazel eyes and brown hair, and she came into the party at about one a. m., wearing a gray Persian lamb she had undoubtedly borrowed from her mother. Our host, Douglas Prine, a black patch over his right eye, helped her off with her coat, and then kissed her on the check and shook hands with her escort, a sallow-faced kid of seventeen or eighteen who stood awkwardly shuffling his feet and gazing into the living room, where all us grown-up soldiers and dolls were drinking and dancing and laughing. Michael Mallory was unconscious on the sofa, his head in the lap of a buxom brunette who huskily sang “Long Ago and Far Away” while idly running her fingers through his hair. The record player was indifferently spinning the cast album of Carousel, June bustin’ out all over the room as couples tried to dance to the hardly rhythmic beats of a Broadway orchestration. As I watched from a vantage point near the piano, the new girl said goodnight to her escort, who pecked her self-consciously on the cheek and then sidled out the front door. She stood hesitantly in the entrance to the living room as though trying to decide whether she should join the party, and then smiled and turned on her heel and started up the staircase leading to the second floor of the duplex. I bounded out of the living room.