around money anyway,” he said, taking a drink from the pint. He passed it back to me, and I noticed that his hands weren’t really clean. Jack had always wanted a job where his hands wouldn’t get dirty, but I saw that he hadn’t made it yet. I suddenly felt sorry for him. He was smart and worked hard and tried his damnedest to make it, but things always turned to shit on him. I could see him twenty years from now, still hustling, still scurrying around trying to hit just the right deal.
“You got a girl?” he asked.
“Had one,” I said. “She sent me one of those letters about six months ago.”
“Rough.”
I shrugged. “It wouldn’t have worked out anyway.” I got a little twinge when I said it. I thought I’d pretty well drowned that particular cat, but it still managed to get a claw in my guts now and then. I’d catch myself remembering things or wondering what she was doing. I took a quick blast of bourbon.
“Lotsa women,” Jack said, emptying his beer. “Just like streetcars.”
“Sure,” I said. I looked around. The furniture was a bit kidscarred, and the TV set was small and fluttered a lot, but it was someplace. I hadn’t had any place for so long that I’d forgotten how it felt. From where I was sitting, I could see a mirror hanging at a slant on the wall of the little passage leading back to the bedrooms. The angle was just right, and I could see the rumpled, unmade bed where I assumed he and his wife slept. I thought of telling him that he might be making a public spectacle of his love life, but I decided that was his business.
“What’d you take in college anyway?” Jack demanded. “I never could get the straight of it out of the Old Lady.”
“English, mostly,” I said. “Literature.”
“English, for Chrissake! Nouns and verbs and all that shit?”
“Literature, Stud,” I corrected him. “Shakespeare and Hemingway, and all that shit. I figured this would be the issue that would blow the whole reunion bit. As soon as he gave me the “What the hell good is that shit?” routine, he and I would part company, fast. I’d about had a gutful of that reaction in the Army.
He surprised me. “Oh,” he said, “that’s different. You always did read a lot—even when you were a kid.”
“It gives me a substitute for my own slightly screwed-up life.”
“You gonna teach?”
“Not right away. I’m going back to school first.”
“I thought the Old Lady told me you graduated.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but I’m going on to graduate school.”
“No shit?” He looked impressed. “I hear that’s pretty rough.”
“I think I can hack it.”
“You always were the smart one in the connection.”
“How’s your beer holding out?” I asked him, shaking my empty can. I was starting to relax. We’d gotten past all the touchy issues. I lit another cigarette.
“No sweat,” he said, getting up to get two more. “If I run out, the gal next door has a case stashed away. We’ll have to replace it before her old man gets home, but Marg ought to be here before long, and then I’ll have wheels.”
“Hey,” I called after him. “I meant to ask you about that. I thought your wife’s name was Bonnie.”
“Bonnie? Hell, I dumped her three years ago.”
“Didn’t you have a little girl there, too?”
“Yeah. Joanne.” He came back with the beer. I noticed that the trailer swayed a little when anyone walked round. “But Bonnie married some goof over at the Navy Yard, and he adopted Joanne. They moved down to L.A.”
“And before that it was—”
“Bernice. She was just a kid, and she got homesick for Mommie.”
“You use up wives at a helluva rate, old buddy.”
“Just want to spread all that happiness around as much as I can.” He laughed.
I decided that I liked my brother. That’s a helluva thing to discover all of a sudden.
3
A car pulled up outside, and Jack turned his head to listen. “I think that’s the Mama Cat,” he said. “Sounds like my old bucket.” He got up and looked out the window. “Yeah, it’s her.” He scooped up the empty beer cans from the coffee table and dumped them in the garbage sack under the sink. Then he hustled outside.
They came in a minute or so later, Jack rather ostentatiously carrying two bags of groceries. I got the impression that if I hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have bothered. My current sister-in-law was a girl of average height with pale brown hair and a slightly sullen look on her face. I imagine all Jack’s women got that look sooner or later. At any rate Margaret didn’t seem just exactly wild about having a strange GI brother-in-law turn up.
“Well, sweetie,” Jack said with an overdone joviality, “what do you think of him?”
I stood up. “Hello, Margaret,” I said, smiling at her as winningly as I could.
“I’m very happy to meet you, Dan,” she said, a brief, automatic smile flickering over her face. She was sizing me up carefully. I don’t imagine the pint and the half-full beer can on the coffee table made very many points. “Are you stationed out here at the Fort now?” I could tell that she had visions of my moving in on them as a semipermanent houseguest.
“Well,” I said, “not really what you’d call stationed here. I’m being discharged here is all. As soon as they cut me loose, I’ll be moving back up to Seattle.” I wanted to reassure her without being too obvious.
She got the message. “Well, let me get this stuff put away and then we can talk.” She pulled off the light coat she was wearing and draped it over one of the kitchen chairs.
I blinked. She had the largest pair of breasts I’ve ever seen. I knew Jack liked his women that way, but Margaret was simply unbelievable.
“Isn’t she something?” Jack said, leering at me as he wrapped a proprietary arm about her shoulders. The remark sounded innocent enough, but all three of us knew what he meant.
“Come on, Jack,” she said, pushing him off. “I want to get all this put away so I can sit down.” She began bustling around the kitchen, opening cupboards and drawers. The kitchen area was separated from the living room by a waist-high divider, so we could talk without yelling.
“Dan just got back today,” Jack said, coming back and plunking himself on the couch. “He’s been in Germany for a couple of years.”
“Oh?” she said. “I’ll bet that was interesting, wasn’t it, Dan?”
“It’s got Southeast Asia
