Richard Neumann
EDSON'S RAIDERS
At first I let myself believe my father's little war with bugs actually kept him from drinking. All day long I watched him hobbling around on his crutches in and out of the back alley. As he over-turned broken bottles and empty soup cans, he smashed all kinds of bugs. Later, when we went back up into the apartment, I realized his bugs no longer gave him the same kind of pleasure, even though he wouldn't let me near them. He told me he had captured them and only he, because he had fought on Guadalcanal with Edson's Raiders, only he could guard them.
Then he got quiet.
I knew he was ticked off about something, so I waited. After a few minutes he showed me an old Tribune clipping he'd found in a desk drawer. It was about my little accident six years ago at Navy Pier. I tried to explain everything again, all that stuff about the guy on the yacht and that I was just ten years old at the time, but my father still wasn't buying any of it. He only phoned the liquor man, who sent him a case of Thunderbird in a taxi. Afterwards he sat on the kitchen floor ordering his bugs in military formations as he sang "Chattanooga Choo Choo."
I wasn't up for another evening of the bad old days, so I slung a pair of high-tops across my shoulder and headed over to Sheridan Park. I figured I'd lose the past with an evening of hoops. Around 8:30, when I finally returned home, I heard my father really laughing it up. So I tiptoed into the kitchen where I discovered he had wiped out his entire army of bugs.
He'd torched them with a Bic.
"Zip the Nips," he said.
I knew what he was talking about. Sooner or later he'd begin, but I just didn't need to hear him harping on me again, not for that. Besides, when he had fumbled around in his shirt pocket, trying to get a Lucky Strike, he'd accidently knocked the Tribune clipping out. It had fallen on the floor, landing next to the bottle of Thunderbird. There was still a chance he'd reach oblivion, even though I doubted it, because he was wound up tight. Still and all, I poured him another cup of Thunderbird. I was hoping that somehow I could swipe the Tribune clipping and pitch it, like I should have years ago, before my father figured out what'd happened. I even let myself believe that maybe, if he didn't have those words right there in front of him, reminding him, maybe he'd think he'd dreamed the whole thing up, and I'd be able to squeeze an apology out of him.
Whistling, I cupped my hand over the Tribune clipping and moved it slowly toward me. I watched my father. As he drank, he tilted his head back and closed his eyes. The points on the Burger King crown I'd given him earlier were now crushed. I had my chance, so I scooped up the clipping and stuffed it into my pocket. When I stopped whistling, my father opened his eyes and glared at me.
I picked up the bottle.
"More Thunderbird, Pop?"
Outside on the sidewalk a man shouted something in Spanish. And a woman laughed.
Then there was silence.
"More Thunderbird, Pop?" my father said, mimicking my voice. "You think I was born yesterday, Kid?"
I didn't answer. I only tried real hard to listen to other sounds. But no matter how hard I tried, all I could hear was my father's voice. Even the sounds of the street were against me. The only thing I could think of was to start whistling again. Yet even that seemed difficult.
Then my father, just like clockwork, started in.
"Two days before I lost--I lost this thing."
He pointed at the stump below his left knee.
"I swam the Canal."
I couldn't remember all the times he had told me of how he had fought off sharks and unbelievable currents and dodged around an old Japanese submarine as bullets slapped the water in front of him and of how he had swum around Guadalcanal, doing all of this, and more, just so he could deliver some important orders to Colonel Mike Edson. Yet now, because he was reliving the accident I'd had with that guy at Navy Pier six years ago, it seems as though I were hearing my father's story for the very first time.
"Look it, Pop," I said, playing right into his drunkenness. "I tried to swim too."
He stopped talking, paused for a moment, then gave me this funny look, like I was still that puny ten year old. The Burger King crown had slipped down around his ears so it now rested crooked above his eyes.
"Tried?" he said. "Listen, Kid. If you really wanted to, believe me, you'd've swam too. You don't need no help--not from those people."
Upstairs the neighbor lady's kid started crying. My father looked up at the ceiling, then put a finger to his lips.
"Shhh, you'll wake up the damned dead."
He lit up another Lucky and blew out a long stream of smoke. He stared at his bad leg for a bit, then took another drink of Thunderbird. The kid upstairs was still crying. And I could hear the neighbor lady talking, almost in a whisper, talking real soft, trying to comfort him. And I wondered how it would feel to be held by her, pressed closely against her breasts, and rocked back and forth until I had fallen asleep, until I had drifted off into oblivion.
"Edson's recon was right on the money," my father said. "No ands, ifs, or buts about it."
I looked away and began counting the water spots on the ceiling. The neighbor lady stopped talking, but I could hear an occasional floorboard squeak as she walked around her apartment. My father leaned back, taking another drag off his Lucky.
"Edson knew where the Nip was at," he said. "He could smell 'em coming."
He stopped for a moment, then picked up the cup of Thunderbird. It seemed as though he were weighing it in his hand. He turned the cup around several times, examining the daisies painted on its sides, then set it back down again and looked at the bitter smoke trailing off his cigarette.
"So we dug in on the Ridge," my father said. "It was do or die."
We were on Guadalcanal once again. It was September 13th, 1942, a Sunday. Maybe it was around 10 o'clock. Maybe it was later. He couldn't remember. But I had heard the story a hundred times. I had even come to believe that it was some kind of confession, and just for him, and my own curiosity, I had taken in all the war movies. I had seen Randolph Scott rallying his raiders, crying out to them: "Gung Ho!" And I had seen John Garfield as Al Schmidt, a marine who had been blinded by a grenade blast, firing a machine gun at waves of Japanese soldiers while his dying buddy guided him on target. I had even read books. In our apartment Guadalcanal wasn't just an island where my father and a lot of other men had fought and died. Around here it was the only thing we ever seemed to talk about.
"The jungle was dark, Kid," my father said.
Sure, I knew. But there was a moon in the sky, a cloudy sky. The shadows of kunai grass and palm fronds swayed in a light breeze, looking like huge, distorted men. No one could sleep. The air was filled with a putrid, almost overpowering stench, and the humidity, always the humidity, hung in it like a blanket of salt and sweat. Like some rotted boot, my father said, like some worn out Raider's boot dripping with malaria. Out across the Ridge, he heard a cuckatoo cry out, and in the foxhole sitting beside him, Red Malone, an Irishman from Brooklyn, told him the Chicago Bears were nothing but a bunch of pantywaists.
Then the Japanese nambus kicked in.
Green flares burst above the jungle. And artillery shells pounded the earth and ripped across the sky and screamed back and forth until it seemed that the whole world had been gutted open.
"And I'll be damned. Right in the middle of all this shit, Edson stands up," my father said. "And he shouts at us, like we was all back at Tent City going through training."
The jungle glowed a bright, eerie green. Wave after wave, Japanese soldiers poured onto the ridge, yelling "Banzai!" above the steady pump of the nambus, moving in, real small at first, like an army of dwarves, moving across a long stretch of kunai grass.
I could almost hear Edson as he shouted to his Raiders.
"Ready on the left. Ready on the right."
The entire Ridge began to tremble.
"Stand by to commence firing."
Then Japanese mortar shells dropped in. And all of a sudden, my father could hear one whistling in, real slow and spooky, and he couldn't beliebe it had Private Vanousky's name on it. Written in Nip scrawl, he said. So he buried his face in the dirt, covering it up.
"Like this, Kid."
He crossed his arms and pressed his hands against his forehead. The Burger King crown sat on the back of his head. I picked up the bottle of Thunderbird and poured him another cup. I started talking about the Bears, hoping I could get him off Guadalcanal with football.
"Sayers was great last week, Pop. Ran for three T.Ds."
Then the mortar shell hit, and my father unhooked his clenched fist. "And Red Malone's gone," he said, "gone, just like that."
I tried to imagine Sayers running that T.D. But all I could see was a cripple falling down at the forty yard line, holding onto his leg, screaming out in pain as Red Malone disappeared into a million little pieces beneath the uprights.
Upstairs the neighbor lady started walking around her apartment again. I could hear the floorboards squeak until her hi-fi clicked on. Then the ceiling began to vibrate with music. It was a popular tune, called "Blue Moon," by an old sax player, a real famous guy, too. The notes he played were really something. They worked inside you, filling you up with a strange sort of light. Even the dark lines in my father's face, as he looked up at me, seemed to glow.
"But I did it, Kid," he said. "I swam...the Canal."
His voice sounded distant and all worn out. Yet I really didn't pick up on it at first. I was too busy worrying about that Tribune clipping and how I could make my father understand that I'd only been ten years old at the time and that it had been, after all, an accident. But that old familiar feeling of guilt tied up my tongue--the feeling that, accident or not, I had betrayed my father.
I knew he wouldn't hit me, but I just didn't want him hollering at me for being a "Jap lover." Heck, when I was young, I had tried to be just like him. I had been a great little racist myself, even though I'd known only one Japanese kid. A boy named Sterling Tskamoto. He'd been real quiet and kept to himself mostly. In school I'd mock him though, calling out in a cartoon like voice: "Hey, Ster, I can see your underwear." And the class'd really laugh it up. I'd figured I was somehow proving my valor. Remember Guadalcanal, Ster. And all that stuff. I even had these strange fantasies during those days of maybe bayonetting him before he snuck up on me. "You could never trust 'em" were my father's words. War was funny in that way. Even after all these years, my father and I had still been inflicting casualties.
Upstairs that guy on the saxophone started playing a deep, slow riff, nice and loud.
"I really tried, Kid," my father said.
He glanced up at the ceiling and looked at the water spots. The Burger King crown swayed in time with the music as he forced a smile.
"I done what I could without her," he said. "Didn't I?"
It was an unbelievable turn of events. But all that Thunderbird had finally gotten to my father. He had talked himself off of Guadalcanal and onto the good old days, turning sappy on me in the meantime. I took a quick look up at the ceiling and found myself smiling, nearly grinning. I started to feel a whole lot better, too, so I refused to answer him, playing up the silence. I even whistled along with that saxophone, just to see if I could really get him going. He closed his eyes, then coughed, clearing his throat. He had this slack, lost look on his face.
"She could really dance, your Mother could."
The Burger King crown nodded up and down.
"Like she had wings or something. And me, me, hell, I had two left--feet."
He tried to laugh as he hung on that last word but started coughing again.
"She tried too, you know, tried hard, damn hard." He took another long drink from his cup of Thunderbird, then glanced over at me.
"You can't ever forget that--can you, Kid?"
I couldn't. Cancer had taken her when I was just a baby, so I'd hardly known her. But there were some old snapshots of the three of us around the apartment. And my father liked talking about her on his better days, reminding me of how things once were way back when. But all and all, as strange as it may seem, he was everything. He was the one who'd played Santa each Christmas with the check they sent him from the VA and he was the one who'd walked me to St. Ignacius on my first day of school--scared for both of us, hobbling down Taylor Street, bad leg and crutches blazing a trail for me. Yet sometimes I wished, out of self pity I guess, that the mortar shell had taken him instead of Red Malone.
As that saxophone continued playing, a lot of high notes this time, I realized my father had sobered up a little and was coming down on himself real hard for all his problems. Without him even knowing it, he had turned everything around. Now it was my turn to make him squirm. I could do it too. I could really put the screws to him. I could make him pay for every little thing he had failed to do as a father. And my childhood folly at Navy Pier would be forgotten--erased from memory.
"Now and then, I guess, we all mess up," my father was saying. "It's just the way things are, like human nature or something."
I stuck my hand into my pocket. I ran my thumb over the words on that Tribune clipping, feeling once against every little letter of the accident. And I felt like telling my father all the details, all that stuff I'd never told him. Sure, I had screwed up, Pop, I wanted to say. Sure, I'd fallen into Lake Michigan. No, no fallen. Heck, I'd jumped right in. I knew you'd kill me. Time and time again you'd warned me to stay away from Navy Pier. "Get your little butt home right after school, Kid." The whole bit, I knew.
But listen, Pop. There was this guy standing on a yacht. And for a moment I imagined myself on Guadalcanal swimming around that old Japanese submarine, just like you did. And I told myself that if I made it back through all that dark water, then maybe I'd be bathed in light, maybe you'd take notice, and maybe, just maybe, you'd even be a little proud. "This is the Kid," I was hoping you'd say. "He can do it too. He's no sailor boy. He's one of us--he's an Edson's Raider."
But I couldn't swim, Pop. Not even to save my life. Before I went under, I felt the guy's arm grab me, and he carried me above the waves as some people on the pier looked on, cheering us when we hit shore. On the beach I had closed my eyes. I had tried, Pop. And I remember I kept hoping the whole thing was some strange dream, but I knew that it wasn't.
Then the guy spoke to me.
Monkey chatter, you always called it. And I don't know why, but I opened my eyes, and before I knew it, as this guy, who could've saved my life, except for you and all those damn war movies, Pop, as this guy knelt above me, staring at me with his slanted, puffy eyes, smiling all the time, and nodding his head up and down, like some Japanese kewpie doll bobbling in the kunai grass, I told him that no matter what, I swear, Pop, I told him that I'd never buy a Sony--never.
A cloud of gray smoke swirled around my father as he sat staring at the stump below his knee. Two points on the Burger King crown were crushed, bent over like wilted plants.
"So we ain't like saints, none of us," he was saying, "not you--and--not me."
I guess I'd squeezed an apology out of my father after all. I think he felt a little ashamed or something because he wouldn't look up at me. He just sat crumpled on the kitchen floor, staring at the daisies printed on his cup of wine. That guy playing the saxophone on the neighbor lady's hi-fi sounded real neat, almost sweet and mellow. And Guadalcanal seemed like just another bad dream six years later. I was feeling a little sleepy but ready for him when my father looked up and patted my leg. His eyes had narrowed into watery slits.
"We're Edson's Raiders," he said. "Me and you--right, Kid?"
I didn't say anything. The Tribune clipping was all wadded up and felt like a tiny paper ball. For a moment I almost took it out and tossed it on the floor, but I kept my hand inside my pocket, making a tight fist. My father had turned away. He seemed to have grown real small, and he looked all wrinkled up, real strange, as though he had become Boris Karloff in The Mummy. That saxophone continued to play. I sounded like a warm up, or something real soothing and full of light. Maybe it was an old Negro spiritual or a Salvation Army hymn. I wasn't sure. But it made me feel kind of funny, like I was happy in parts, yet sad at the same time.
"That's right, Pop," I said. "We're Edson's Raiders, me and you."
But my father was too clouded in Thunderbird to hear me. He sagged against a cupboard door, his eyes half closed and his neck slack. I tried to boost him up and help him over to the La-Z-Boy, where he liked to snooze, but his body had lost all will and was now too weak and weighty. So I draped a blanket over his bad leg and set a pillow on the floor for his head. When I turned the kitchen light out, I stood against the sink, listening to him breathe. I was thinking about old war wounds and maybe only one of us would ever really heal. A moment later I rolled up my high-tops in a U of I sweatshirt. Then I felt my way through the apartment and down the front stairs, taking in the faint sounds of that saxophone as I stepped out onto the street.