was always a sack for him in Seattle, Washington, where his best Army buddy, Willoughby, lived (and Willoughby’s kid sister, whom Roy was supposed to be fixed up with). Another good buddy, Hendricks, lived in Texas; his father owned a ranch, where Roy could probably work for his grub if he ever ran short of loot. And then there was Boston. It was supposed to be beautiful in Boston. It was the most historic city in America. “I might just try Boston,” he thought, even as his mother went gaily on losing her senses. “Yes sir, I might just pick up and head East.”
But to be honest, he could use a few more months of easy living before starting in roughing it again, if that’s what he finally decided it was best for him to do. He had spent sixteen months in that black hole of Calcutta (as they called it), eight to five every day in that scintillating motor-pool office—and then those nights. If he ever saw another ping-pong ball in his
life
… and the weather! It made Liberty Center seem like a jungle in South America. Wind and snow and that big gray sky that was about as inspiring to look at as a washed blackboard. And that mud. And that chow! And that narrow, soggy, undersized son-of-a-bitching (really) excuse for a bed! Actually he
owed
it to himself not to go anywhere until hehad caught up on all the rest he had probably lost on that g.d. bed—and gotten one or two of his taste buds back to functioning too. After an experience like that he surely couldn’t say he minded having breakfast served to him in a nice bright kitchen every morning, and having a room of his own again where everything didn’t have to be squared away with a plumb bob, or taking as long as he wanted (or just
needed
) in the john, with the door closed and nobody else doing his business at either elbow. It felt
all
right, he could tell you, to eat a breakfast that wasn’t all dishwater and cardboard, and then to settle down in the living room with the
Leader
, and read it at your leisure, without somebody pulling the sports page right up out of your hands.
As for his mother chattering away at him nonstop from the kitchen, he wasn’t so stupid that he couldn’t understand that why she was concerned for him was because he happened to be her son. She loved him. Simple. Sometimes when he finished with the paper he would come into the kitchen where she was working, and no matter what silly thing she was saying, put his arms around her and tell her what a good kid she was. Sometimes he’d even dance a few steps with her, singing some popular song into her ear. It didn’t cost him anything, and as far as she was concerned, it was seventh heaven.
She really meant well, his mother, even if some of her pampering ways were a little embarrassing at this stage of the game. Like sending him that package of toilet-seat liners. That’s what he had received at mail call one day: a hundred large white tissues, each in the shape of a doughnut, which she had seen advertised in a medical magazine at the doctor’s office, and which he was supposed to sit on—in the Army. At first he actually thought of showing them to his first sergeant, who had been wounded in the back at Anzio during World War II. But thinking that Sergeant Hickey might misunderstand, and instead of making fun of his mother, make fun of him, he had strolled around back of the mess hall late that night and furtively dumped them into a can of frozen garbage, careful first to remove and destroy the card she had enclosed.It read, “Roy, please use these. Not everyone is from a clean home.”
Which was a perfect case of her meaning well, but not having the slightest idea that he was a grownup whom you couldn’t
do
things like that to any more. Nevertheless, there had been times up in Adak when he missed her, and even missed his father, and felt about them as he had in those years before they had started misunderstanding every word that came out of his mouth. He would forget about all the
But to be honest, he could use a few more months of easy living before starting in roughing it again, if that’s what he finally decided it was best for him to do. He had spent sixteen months in that black hole of Calcutta (as they called it), eight to five every day in that scintillating motor-pool office—and then those nights. If he ever saw another ping-pong ball in his
life
… and the weather! It made Liberty Center seem like a jungle in South America. Wind and snow and that big gray sky that was about as inspiring to look at as a washed blackboard. And that mud. And that chow! And that narrow, soggy, undersized son-of-a-bitching (really) excuse for a bed! Actually he
owed
it to himself not to go anywhere until hehad caught up on all the rest he had probably lost on that g.d. bed—and gotten one or two of his taste buds back to functioning too. After an experience like that he surely couldn’t say he minded having breakfast served to him in a nice bright kitchen every morning, and having a room of his own again where everything didn’t have to be squared away with a plumb bob, or taking as long as he wanted (or just
needed
) in the john, with the door closed and nobody else doing his business at either elbow. It felt
all
right, he could tell you, to eat a breakfast that wasn’t all dishwater and cardboard, and then to settle down in the living room with the
Leader
, and read it at your leisure, without somebody pulling the sports page right up out of your hands.
As for his mother chattering away at him nonstop from the kitchen, he wasn’t so stupid that he couldn’t understand that why she was concerned for him was because he happened to be her son. She loved him. Simple. Sometimes when he finished with the paper he would come into the kitchen where she was working, and no matter what silly thing she was saying, put his arms around her and tell her what a good kid she was. Sometimes he’d even dance a few steps with her, singing some popular song into her ear. It didn’t cost him anything, and as far as she was concerned, it was seventh heaven.
She really meant well, his mother, even if some of her pampering ways were a little embarrassing at this stage of the game. Like sending him that package of toilet-seat liners. That’s what he had received at mail call one day: a hundred large white tissues, each in the shape of a doughnut, which she had seen advertised in a medical magazine at the doctor’s office, and which he was supposed to sit on—in the Army. At first he actually thought of showing them to his first sergeant, who had been wounded in the back at Anzio during World War II. But thinking that Sergeant Hickey might misunderstand, and instead of making fun of his mother, make fun of him, he had strolled around back of the mess hall late that night and furtively dumped them into a can of frozen garbage, careful first to remove and destroy the card she had enclosed.It read, “Roy, please use these. Not everyone is from a clean home.”
Which was a perfect case of her meaning well, but not having the slightest idea that he was a grownup whom you couldn’t
do
things like that to any more. Nevertheless, there had been times up in Adak when he missed her, and even missed his father, and felt about them as he had in those years before they had started misunderstanding every word that came out of his mouth. He would forget about all the
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