Chapter 8 Browning Automatic Rifleman
No one thought of John Fallon until his name was in the police registers and in the papers.He was a clerk in a large insurance company, frowning dutifully, moving his bulky frame awkwardly between filing cabinets.After the cuffs of the white shirt are rolled up, you can see that he has a gold watch tightly stuck on one wrist, and a military identification wristband is loosely worn on the other wrist. This is the previous one. A holdover from a more casual age.Fallon was twenty-nine, a stocky, well-built man with carefully combed brown hair and a pale, sad complexion.Except for widening his eyes when confused and narrowing his eyes when threatening, his eyes are very kind; except for biting his lips when he speaks viciously, his mouth is always slightly open in a childish way.Usually, he likes to wear a simple, beautiful blue coat with straight shoulders and buttons that are pushed down.His heels were inlaid with steel plates, and his heavy steps made a crisp sound as he walked on the road.He lived in Sunnyside, Queens, and had been married for ten years to a girl named Rose.She was skinny, had sinus headaches, couldn't have children, and made more money than he did by typing eighty-seven words a minute without missing a bite of gum.
Five nights a week, Sunday through Thursday, the Fallons would sit at home playing cards or watching TV, and sometimes she would let him get a sandwich or potato salad for a late-night snack before bed.On Friday, the last working day of the week, when there was usually a boxing match on TV in the evening, he would be with his mates at the Isle Bar, off Queen Street.People there become friends more out of habit than by choice.For the first half hour, they stand around unnaturally, swearing at each other and laughing at every newcomer ("Oh, man, look who's here!").But by the end of the fight, they usually had a lot of banter and a lot of drinking, and Friday nights usually ended with singing and shaking at two or three in the middle of the night.On Saturday, Ferron will sleep in for a morning, help with housework in the afternoon, and spend the rest of the time with his wife: they will watch a movie in a nearby cinema, and then go to the ice cream shop after watching a movie. They were in bed before twelve o'clock.Sunday lolling through a mess of newspapers in the living room, and then his next week began again.
That particular Friday, maybe nothing would have happened at all had it not been for his wife's insistence on breaking his routine: That night, the last night Gregory Peck's movie was shown, said she saw no reason why he would live his life There's nothing wrong with not watching a professional boxing match once in a while.She had told him so on Friday morning, the first of all the things that had gone wrong that day.
At lunch—he always ate lunch in a midtown German bistro with three of his office colleagues at noon on a payday—everyone else was talking about boxing, and Fallon rarely interrupted.Jake Kopek, who knows nothing about boxing (he said last week's fight was "a great fight," when in fact, for fifteen rounds the whole fight was just about wringing each other out, cowardly Defense, and the final judgment score is also ridiculously tight), he said to the people present that the best full-round contest he had ever seen was still in the Navy.Then the whole table started talking about the Navy, and Fallon squirmed boredly in his seat.
"That's when I," said Kopek, poking his chest with his well-manicured thumb, ending the third long story, "was my first day on a new ship, and besides wearing a custom-made navy uniform, I stood there Didn't do anything but get checked. Scared? God, I'm shaking like a leaf. Veterans walk up and down, look at me, say, 'Where do you think you are, sailor? You think it's makeup Prom?'"
"Speaking of inspections," Mike Boyle said, widening his round clown eyes. "Let me tell you, we have a commander, and he'll put on his white gloves and run his fingers over the bulkhead, bro, if there's a little dirt on the gloves, you're dead."
Then they started feeling sad. "Ah, it's a good life, Navy," Kopek said. "Clean life. The best thing about being in the Navy is, you're somebody, know what I mean? Everyone has his own separate job to do. I mean, hell, in the Army you all do Just dangling around, like everyone else, looking stupid as hell."
"Brother," said George Walsh Jr., rubbing mustard on the sausage, "you're right. I've been in the Army for four years, and believe me, you're right."
At this point John Fallon's patience was exhausted. "Really?" he said. "What army unit is that?"
"What troop?" Walsh said, blinking. "Well, I was in the Ordnance Corps for a while, in Virginia, and then I went to Texas, and Georgia—what do you mean, what Corps?"
Ferron's eyes narrowed and his mouth pursed. "You should try infantry equipment, boy," he said.
"Oh, well," said Walsh resignedly, with a half-smile.
But Kopek and Boyle were unconvinced and grinned at him. "Infantry?" Boyle said. "What do they have—infantry specialists?"
"You can certainly say they're experts," Fallon said. "Every son-of-a-bitch in a rifle company is an expert, and if you want to know anything, I'll tell you one thing, man—they don't worry about no silk gloves, no tailor-made suits, and you Availability is a bet."
"Wait a minute," Kopek said. "I want to know one thing, John. What's your specialty?"
"I'm a Browning automatic rifleman," Fallon said.
"what is that?"
For the first time, Fallon realized how much the people in the office had changed over the years.Back in the day, back in '49 or '50, with the old gang, if anyone didn't know about Browning automatic rifles, they would shut up.
"Browning Automatic Rifle," Fallon said, putting down his fork, "is a B.A.R. caliber 3.0, with a detachable magazine, fully automatic, and the primary firepower of a rifle squad of twelve men. That answer satisfies you." ?"
"You mean?" Boyle asked. "Like a submachine gun?"
Fallon had to explain, as if talking to kids or girls, that it was nothing like a submachine gun, that it served a completely different tactical purpose; and finally he had to take out his mechanical pencil and, from memory and love, write on the back of the envelope that contained his salary. Draw the outline of the gun.
"Okay," Kopek said, "tell me, John. What do you need to know to shoot this gun? Do you need special training, or something?"
Fallon squinted his eyes in anger as he stuffed the pencil and envelope back into his coat. "Try it sometime," he said. "Try it, walk twenty miles on an empty stomach with a Browning automatic rifle and ammo belt on your back, then lie down in a swamp with water up your ass, machine guns and mortars pinning you down Come on, but this time the squad leader yells at you, 'Get me the Browning automatic rifle!' You gotta cover the retreat of a whole platoon or company. Try it sometime, man—you know you gotta know What's up." He took a swig of beer, choked and coughed, and sprayed it on his big, freckled hand.
"Relax, relax," Boyle said with a laugh. "Don't try too hard, man."
But Ferron just wiped his mouth, looked at them angrily, panting heavily.
"Well, you're a hero," Kopek said dismissively. "You're a fighter. Then tell me something, John. Have you ever fired that shot yourself in combat?"
"What do you think?" Ferron said without moving his thin lips.
"how many times?"
In fact, Fallon was the strongest and most capable soldier in his squad of nineteen, and had been dubbed "Best Browning Automatic Rifleman" by the rest of the squad several times.Two months before the end of the war, he carried his gun on his blistered feet through countless miles of roads, fields, and forests, laying down holding it under the barrage of artillery and mortar fire, holding it into the chest of a recently captured German prisoner of war; but he fired it only twice, again into obscurity rather than at people, and both times it hit nothing, and the second time he was shot by a small I was trained and said it was a waste of ammunition.
"How many times is none of your fucking business!" he said, as the others looked down at their plates, unable to hide their grins.He glared angrily and looked at them defiantly to see who would dare to tease him, but the worst part was that neither of them said anything more.They ate and drank beer in silence, and after a while they changed the subject.
Fallon didn't smile all afternoon, and he was still morose when he ran into his wife at the supermarket near home for their weekend shopping.She looked tired, which she always did when her headaches were worse.He trudged along, pushing a shopping cart after her, and turned his head to stare at the writhing butts and full boobs of the other young women in the mall.
"Wow!" she exclaimed, dropping the Ritz crackers and rubbing her heels in agony. "You push that thing, can't you see where it goes? You'd better let me push it."
"You shouldn't stop suddenly," he told her. "I didn't know you would stop suddenly."
After that, in order to ensure that the car would not hit her again, he could only focus on her narrow body and her thin legs like matchsticks.From the side, Rose Fallon always seemed to be leaning slightly forward; as she walked, her buttocks floated, indecently detached from her body, as if they were a separate part behind her.A few years earlier, doctors had explained her infertility to a tilted uterus and told her it could be corrected with an exercise class; she did it with little interest for a while and then gave up.Fallon might not remember whether her odd posture was the cause or the result of her tilted uterus, but he was sure, like her sinus headaches, which had gotten worse over the years of their marriage; You can swear that when they first met, she stood up straight.
"Would you like crispy rice or posta toast, John?" she asked him.
"Crispy rice."
"Oh, but we only had it last week. Don't you get tired of it?"
"Okay, the other kind."
"What are you mumbling about? I can't hear what you're saying."
"I say, posta toast!"
When he walked home, he was carrying a lot of food in both hands, and he was panting more than usual. "What's going on?" she asked when he stopped to change hands.
"I think I'm failing physically," he said. "I should go out and play handball."
"Oh, to be honest," she said. "You always say that, but you have nothing to do but read the paper all day long."
She took a shower before making dinner, and when she ate, she put on a huge home dress, tied with a belt, and, as usual, she looked messy after a shower: wet hair, dripping water; Dry skin, large pores; no lipstick, no smile on the upper lip with a ring of milk marks, as if smiling. "Where do you want to go?" she said as he pushed the plate away and stood up. "Look there—there's a full glass of milk on the table. Honestly, John, I bought the milk for you, and I did, and you went away, leaving a full glass of milk on the table. You come back, Drink it."
He came back and gulped down the milk, feeling sick.
After dinner, she began to carefully prepare for the evening's outing; he had long since washed and dried the dishes, and she was still standing at the ironing board, ironing the dress and blouse she planned to wear to the movie.He sat down and waited. "If you don't start, it's too late," he said.
"Oh, don't be silly. We've got about an hour. Besides, what's the matter with you tonight?"
Her stiletto loafers look weird under her ankle-length house robe, especially when she's hunched over and splay-footed, unplugging her iron from the wall.
"How did you give up those workouts?" he asked her.
"What exercise? What are you talking about?"
"You know," he said. "You know. Workouts for your house tilt."
"Uterus," she said. "You always say 'houses.' It's the womb."
"Then what the hell is the difference? Why did you give up?"
"Oh, honestly, John," she said, folding up the ironing board. "For God's sake, why mention this now?"
"So what do you want to do? Walk around with a tilted womb all your life? Or something else?"
"Okay," she said, "of course I don't want to get pregnant, if that's all you want to say. Can I ask where we'll live if I quit my job?"
He got up and stormed around the living room, staring furiously at the shadows of the lamps, the floral watercolors, and a little china figurine of a sleeping Mexican with flowering dried cactus behind him .He went into the bedroom, where her clean underwear was spread out on the bed for the evening, and he picked up a white bra with latex foam cups, without which her breasts were as flat as a boy's.She came in and he turned to her, his bra up into her horrified face, and said, "Why the hell are you wearing that?"
She snatched the bra from his hands, leaned her back against the door frame, and looked him up and down. "Okay, listen," she said. "I've had enough. Do you want to be decent? Do you still want to go to the movies?"
Suddenly, she looked so pitiful that he couldn't bear to look at her.He grabbed his coat and walked past her like a gust of wind. "Do what you want," he said. "I'm out," he slams the apartment door.
It wasn't until he wandered into Queen Street that his muscles relaxed and his breathing calmed down.He didn't stop at the Isle Bar—it was too early for the fight anyway, and he was in too bad a mood to watch it.So he stomped down the subway stairs, swept into the revolving box, and headed straight for Manhattan.
He vaguely wanted to go to Times Square, but he got off the subway at Third Avenue because he was thirsty; on the street he drank a couple of beers at the first bar he saw, a bleak, depressing one. Flower tin walls, a smell of urine.In the bar, to his right, an old woman dances a cigarette like a baton, singing "Peg, My Heart," and to his left, a middle-aged man is saying to another, "Uh, Here's my take: Maybe you can take issue with McCarthy's actions, but, son of a bitch, you can't question him on a matter of principle. Am I right?"
Fallon left the place for another bar near Lexington, chrome-tanned and softly lit, where everyone was blue and green.Standing next to two young soldiers, he could read the unit designation on their armbands, their boat caps folded under their shoulder loops, and he could see which infantry regiment they belonged to.They didn't wear medals—they were kids—but Fallon could tell they weren't recruits: for one thing, they knew how to wear an Eisenhower jacket, short and tight, and their combat boots were soft, black, and polished.They both turned their heads suddenly, looking past him, and Fallon, who turned after him, watched with them a girl in a tight tan skirt leave the table in the shaded corner.She walks past them, muttering "excuse me," all three heads drawn to her hip, watching it wriggle and wriggle and writhe until she disappears into the ladies' room.
"Hey, a lot," said the shorter soldier in the middle, grinning at them, including Fallon, who grinned back.
"There should be a law against wiggling like that," said the taller soldier. "Disturbing the morale of the army."
They were from the West by the accent, and they had the blond, squint-eyed, country-boy faces that Fallon remembered from his old class. "What unit are you in?" he asked. "I should know that number."
They told him, and he said, "Oh, yes, of course—I remember. They're from the Seventh Army, right? In '44 or '45?"
"Not sure, sir," said the little soldier. "That was long before us."
"Where did you get a 'sir' from?" Ferron asked enthusiastically. "I'm not much of an officer. I'm a private first class at best, except they made me a deputy corporal for a few weeks, and that was in Germany. I'm a Browning automatic rifleman."
The short soldier looked him up and down. "Needless to say I knew it," he said. "You're a Browning automatic rifleman your size. Those old Browning automatic rifles are damn heavy."
"You're right," Fallon said. "It's heavy, but, I want to tell you, it's damn good in a fight. I said, what do you two want to drink? By the way, my name is Johnny Fallon."
They shook hands with him, murmured their names, and when the girl in the tan skirt came out of the ladies' room, they all turned to look.They watched her sit back in her seat, and this time, they focused on the quivering in her puffy blouse.
"Hey," said the little soldier, "I say, good couple."
"Probably false," said the tall soldier.
"They're real, boy," Fallon assured him, winking, worldly, and turning back to his beer. "They're real. If they're fake, I can tell from a mile away."
They drank a few more rounds and talked about the army for a while, and then the tall soldier asked how to get to Central Plaza in Fallon, where he heard he had Jazz Friday nights; , the fare was paid by Ferron.As they stood in the central plaza waiting for the elevator, he took off his wedding ring with difficulty and stuffed it into his watch pocket.
The spacious and tall ballroom is full of young men and women; hundreds of young people are sitting around tables with piles of beer on them, listening and laughing; nearly a hundred young people are circling in rows of chairs Dancing wildly in the empty arena.In the distance, in the orchestra pit, a group of black and white musicians were sweating and playing hard, their various horns flickering under the smoke and lights.
Fallon lolled in the doorway, and to him, all jazz was the same, but he put on a connoisseur look, his taut face glowing amidst the crackling clarinet, The fingers snapped casually to the beat of the drum, the knees nodded slightly, and the beautiful blue pants were also shaking.He led the soldiers towards the table next to the one with the three girls. It wasn't the music that captivated him, nor did it cheer him up. The prettiest of the three girls danced.She was a tall, slender, dark-haired Italian girl with a little sweat on her brow.She walked ahead of him, weaving from table to table, toward the dance floor, while he reveled in the grace of her slowly twisting hips and fluttering skirts.Already in his ecstatic, beer-drunk mind he was imagining what it would be like to bring her home—what it would be like to touch her with his hand in the private shadow of the taxi, and later, The way she undulates naked in a darkened bedroom at the end of the night.As soon as they stepped onto the dance floor, she turned and raised his arms when he pressed her tightly against his warm body.
"Oh, listen," she said, arching back angrily so it was obvious that his hands were wrapped tightly around her clammy neck. "Is this what you call dancing?"
He relaxed a little, shivering, and grinned at her. "Relax, honey," he said. "I won't bite you."
"And don't call me 'honey,'" she said, and that was all she said by the end of the dance.
She had to stay with him, though, because the two soldiers had moved over to join her lively, giggling companions.They are now at the same table, and for more than half an hour, the six of them have been sitting there in an uneasy party atmosphere: the short soldier and one of the girls (both small and blond) are whispering to each other. Saying something, the girl kept laughing loudly; the tall soldier's long arms were around the other girl's neck.But Fallon's tall, dark-haired girl reluctantly told him her name was Marie, and then sat stiffly and primly beside him in silence, buttoning and opening her handbag on her lap again and again, Buckle it up again.Fallon's fingers gripped the back of her chair, his knuckles white, but whenever he tentatively put his fingers on her shoulders, she shrugged and moved away.
"Do you live around here, Mary?" he asked her.
"Bronx," she said.
"Do you come here often?"
"Occasionally."
"Want to have a cigarette?"
"I don't smoke."
Fallon's face was burning, and a tiny blood vessel could be seen twitching in his right temple, beads of sweat rolling down his ribs.He was like a boy on a first date, her warm clothes so close to him, the smell of her perfume, the way her slender fingers flicked on and off her handbag, her full lower lip glistening with moisture, it all Let him be clumsy and unable to speak a word.
A young sailor at the next table stood up, clasped his hands to his mouth in the shape of a trumpet, and roared toward the orchestra pit, which was picked up by others in the room.It sounded like, "We want saints!" But Fallon didn't know what that meant.But at least it gave him a chance to speak. "What are they shouting?" he asked her.
"The Saint," she told him, meeting his eyes just long enough to convey the message. "They're going to listen to The Saints."
"Oh."
After that, they didn't say anything for a long time, until Mary made an impatient look at the nearest female companion. "Hey, let's go," she said. "Let's go. I want to go home."
"Ah, Mary," said the other girl, flushed from beer and flirting (she was wearing a short soldier's boat cap now). "Don't be so stupid." However, seeing Ferron's pained face, she tried to help him out. "Are you in the army, too?" she asked cheerfully, leaning across the table.
"Me?" said Fallon, startled. "No, I—but I was. I've been out of the Army for a long time."
"Really?"
"He used to be a Browning automatic rifleman," the short soldier told her.
"Really?"
"We want "Saints"!... We want "Saints"!" Now, in the whole ballroom, in all directions, in every corner, people were shouting, their voices getting louder and more urgent.
"Hey, let's go," Mary said to her companion again. "Let's go, I'm tired."
"Let's go then," said the girl in the soldier's cap unhappy. "If you want to go, go, Mary. Can't you go home by yourself?"
"No, wait, listen—" Fallon snapped. "Don't go yet, Mary—I'm telling you. I'll get some beer, okay?" He was gone before she could say no.
"Don't buy it for me," she yelled at his back, but he was already three tables away, walking briskly toward the wing of the house, where the bar was. "Bitch," he whispered. "Bitch. Bitch." As he stood in line at the makeshift bar, the images tormented him, heightened by rage: a physical struggle in the cab, torn clothes; Brute force, choking moans that turn into whimpers and finally lustful spasms and moans.Oh, he'll put her at ease!He will put her at ease!
"Come on, come on," he yelled to the guy behind the bar fumbling with draft beer, beer corks, wet bills.
"We—want—The Saint!" "We—wanted—The Saint!" The shouts in the ballroom reached their peak.Then, the drums pounded out a relentless, gruff rhythm that became almost unbearable until it ended in a burst of cymbals, replaced by the rough sound of a brass band, and the crowd simply went wild.It took Fallon a moment to realize that the band was playing "Saints Marching" when he finally turned and walked back from the bar with a draft beer in his hand.
The place is now a madhouse.Girls screaming, boys screaming from chairs, arms flailing; glasses shattering, chairs spinning, four policemen standing vigilant against the wall against riots, while the band safely song.
Pushing and panicking through the tumult, Fallon tried to find his party.He found their table, but couldn't be sure if it was theirs—it was empty except for crumpled cigarette packs and a pool of beer stains, and an overturned chair.He thought he saw Mary among the wildly dancing crowd, but it turned out to be another tall brunette in the same dress.Then he thought he saw the little soldier, gesturing at him across the room, and he pushed his way, but it was another soldier with the face of a country boy.Fearon turned around, sweating profusely, looking for one in the bewildering crowd.There was a boy in a sweaty pink shirt who staggered and hit his elbow hard. Cold beer spilled on his hands and sleeves before he realized that they were gone.They dumped him.He came out into the street, walking fast, steel heels thumping the ground, and the noise of the cars at night sounded startlingly quiet after the riot of howling and jazz.He walked aimlessly, without any sense of time, except for the heavy heels of his shoes on the ground, except for the pulling of muscles, except for trembling, sucking in air and then spitting it out violently, except for the boiling blood, there was nothing he could do. I don't feel anything else.
He didn't know if it was ten minutes or an hour, twenty blocks or five, and after that he had to slow down and stop at the edge of a small group of people.The group huddled around a lighted doorway as officers waved at them.
"Go ahead," said a policeman. "Please go forward. Don't stop."
But Fallon, like most of the others, stood there motionless.This was the entrance to a lecture hall—he knew it because the light inside was dim, but the words on the bulletin board could just be read; this marble staircase must lead to the auditorium.But it was the cordon that caught his attention the most: three men about his age stood there, their eyes gleaming with righteousness, they wore boat-shaped caps with gold and blue trims like those of some veterans' organization, and their hands There was a placard inside that read:
"Go ahead," the policeman was saying. "Go on."
"Civil rights, my God," muttered a flat voice from Fallon's elbow. "They should lock up this Mitchell. Did you read what he said at the Senate hearing?" Fallon nodded, remembering the frail, pretentious face in so many newspapers.
"Look over there—" continued the muttering voice. "They're coming. They're coming out."
There they were, coming down the marble steps, past the bulletin board, and onto the sidewalk: men in raincoats, greasy tweed coats, pompous, girls in leggings who looked like they were from Grimm. From Wedge Village, some Negroes in the middle, and some neat, self-conscious male college students.
The demonstrators leaned back and stood quietly, one hand holding up the placard in their hand, and the other hand clenched into a fist and put it to the mouth: "Bah——! Bah——!"
The crowd followed: "Bah!" "Bah!" someone shouted, "Go back to Russia!"
"Go ahead," the policeman was saying. "Go forward. Keep going."
"Here he comes," said the muttering voice. "Look, here he comes—that's Mitchell."
Fallon saw him: a tall, skinny man in a cheap double-breasted suit that was too big for him, carrying a briefcase, and two average-looking women in glasses walking away. on either side of him.This is the smug face in the newspaper, looking slowly from side to side with a serene, detached smile on his face, as if to say to everyone he meets: Oh, you poor fool.You poor fool.
"Kill the bastard!"
Several people turned their heads to look at him quickly, and Fallon realized he was screaming; the next thing he knew was to keep shouting, over and over, until his voice was hoarse, crying like a child: "Kill!" Kill that bastard! Kill him! Kill him!"
Pushing and jostling in four strides, he came to the head of the crowd; but one of the demonstrators dropped the placard, ran up to him, and said, "Relax, man! Ease—" But Fallon Pushing him aside, wrestling with another, he broke free again, grabbing the front of Mitchell's coat with both hands, tearing at him like a crooked puppet.He saw Mitchell's face recede from the sidewalk, horror on wet lips.When the blue arms of the policeman were raised high above his head, the last thing he remembered was: absolute satisfaction and complete relief.
Notes:
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