Pete Hamill - A Drinking Life

It was still there. I paid my six cents, held it in my hand, smelled the paper. I hurried home and went to the roof. The first sentence reached out and grabbed me: “As silently as a panther, Bomba climbed the great dolado tree, the giant of the forest. …” I soon learned that Bomba was about fourteen and lived in a cabin deep in the jungles of the Amazon, wearing the skin of Geluk the Puma, armed only with a machete and a bow and arrows. With him was a white-haired old naturalist named Cody Casson, who gave Bomba some education but was evasive about the boy’s origins. The old man was frail and had lost most of his senses in an accident; he was really in the care of the boy.

That first book, and all the others in the series, were driven by Bomba’s search for his lost parents, and therefore a solution to the riddle of his own identity. The entire series was a classic quest.

Once, when my father shouted at me, I ran to Prospect Park and crawled into Devil’s Cave, which was hidden beside a stream that fed the Swan Lake. In times of peril, Bomba almost always took refuge in a cave. Mine was low, narrow, extending about six feet into the hill. I sat there alone, wishing for a thunderous Amazonian storm, fierce lightning, the stream transformed into a swollen river. Instead, a parkie came over and said, Hey, kid, you better beat it. It’s gettin’ dark.

When I went home that evening, my father was gone. I took down a Bomba book and retreated into the jungles of South America, moving through the swamp of death, wary of anacondas, using a pole to test for quicksand, the rubber trees so tall that there was no light. In a way, I hoped Bomba would never find his father. He might be sorry.

AT NIGHT FROM the kitchen windows, we could not see New York. There were wartime blackouts, every light in the city extinguished so that German bombers could never find us and so that German submarines couldn’t see the freighters and navy ships as they left New York Harbor. Mayor La Guardia was in charge of all this, talking in his thin squeaky voice over the radio, asking all New Yorkers to cooperate. Everybody did, because almost everybody loved Mayor La Guardia, except one of my aunts, who lost her job when Jimmy Walker lost his. To keep out the light, people began buying blackout shades, which were, of course, black, and on some nights there would be air raid drills, with sirens blaring from the firehouse up the block and air raid wardens walking around in the dark streets shouting orders at the deaf, the careless, or the indifferent.

On summer nights, these drills were exciting. Everybody would be out in the street, sitting on chairs or stoops or the front steps of the stores. Some of us even sat on Sanew’s newsstand. If it was hot, the big people drank hot tea, which was supposed to make you cooler. Most of the time they talked and joked and made fun of the air raid wardens, whose helmets for some reason were white, making them perfect targets for roaming Messerschmitts.

On one such evening, a warden started shouting into Rattigan’s. Someone shouted back. Then the warden went into the saloon. Then he came hurtling out of the saloon and landed on his back, the helmet skittering away into the gutter. A group of men came outside behind him. One of them was my father.

The warden stood up, shouting. On our side of the street, everybody was standing now, moving down to the corner. The argument got louder, the words still not clear. Then my mother started across the street. I followed her.

Billy, she said, come on home.

Stay out of this! he shouted.

What’s the matter?

This bum called Eddie Malloy a draft dodger!

Draft dodger! The worst words in the English language. Draft dodgers were rich guys. Draft dodgers were cowards. Some draft dodgers even wanted the Nazis to win.

Yiz are all a bunch of draft dodgers! the warden said, standing now, adjusting his white helmet, trying through his anger to look dignified.

Then a big suety guy with a flushed face came forward. This was Eddie Malloy.

You say dat again, you bum, I put you down the sewer! I got t’ree kids in de army. I got one kid in da navy. I went down an’ volunteered da day after Poirl Harba! Dey toirned me down on accounta as’ma. An’ because I’m too old. I tried da navy. I tried da Marines. Don’t call me no draft dodger, you bastid.

Then suddenly a police car with its lights out came around the corner of Twelfth Street and another one hurried along the avenue from Ninth Street.

Come on home, Billy, my mother said, taking my father’s arm as I watched from the doorway of the Gapers Club.

You go home, he said, shaking off her hand. This is none of your goddamned business, woman.

She backed away, shocked and hurt. Then the cops were piling out of the patrol cars, shouting, What the hell’s going on? The air raid warden pointed at the crowd.

They assaulted me while I was doing my duty! he said.

That’s a load of bullshit, my father said. He came in looking for trouble and he got it. Eddie Malloy was smoking a cigarette at the bar and when this idjit told him to put it out, Eddie laughed. Then he called Eddie a draft dodger.

The biggest cop said, You’re Mister Malloy? I went to Holy Family with your son Jackie. How is he?

Inna Sout’ Pacific, killin’ them Japs.

The big cop turned to the crowd and said, Okay, let’s everybody go home now.

Then he said to the air raid warden, Relax, pal. Go check out who’s smoking on Thirteenth Street.

Then to Eddie Malloy, Go inside now, and for Chrissakes, don’t smoke ‘til the drill is over.

The warden strode away in a fury. The cops got into their cars and left. The men were laughing and slapping each other on the back and then started inside. My father’s face was beaming. He’d told them, yeah. He’d told them. Then, as if remembering something, he separated from the others and came over to my mother.

I’m sorry, Annie, he said. Come in, we’ll have a drink in the back.

You can drink alone, she said, and took my hand and walked quickly back across the street.

THE WAR was always with us. On the radio, we heard about the men who were building Liberty Ships in two weeks and how, at the great plant in Willow Run, a complete bomber was coming off the assembly line every hour, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But in the summer at Coney Island, we saw lumpy blobs of congealed oil on the beaches and were told they came from sunken ships. It was true: Loose lips sink ships, loose lips sink ships … We were losing; we were winning; everyone must play a part. At one point, we were told to roll up toothpaste tubes while we used them and were forced to turn them in before we could get another; my mother started buying tooth powder, which was cheaper, the canister made with cardboard; but after a while there was none of that left either, and we brushed our teeth with bicarbonate of soda or didn’t brush them at all.

On the radio now, they were singing Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me and I got spurs that jingle jangle jingle, and every morning, on a show called “Rambling with Gambling,” we heard Oh what a beautiful morning, Oh what a beautiful day from a Broadway show called Oklahoma.

I’d love to see that show, my mother said one day. I love those songs.

Why don’t you go and see it? I said.

It’s over on Broadway, she said, as if explaining it was in Madrid. It’s much too dear.

She said this as if ending the discussion. I was persistent.

Why can’t Daddy take you? He has money for Rattigan’s. Why can’t he save up and take you over to Broadway?

Well … maybe after the war is over.