The Christmas Kid

The Warrior’s Son

MOST MEN IN THAT neighborhood thought Soldier Dunne had been born in a most fortunate year: 1937. This accident of birth made him too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam, a stroke of luck that would have overjoyed the young men who had to fight those wars. But Dunne did not consider himself lucky; in fact, he was furious at his fate. More than any man in that neighborhood, he thought that a real man’s greatest glory was war. In 1955, when a perforated eardrum kept him out of the peacetime army, his anger soared into rage.

“This country is soft as mush!” he shouted one night at the bar in Rattigan’s. “We shoulda done what MacArthur wanted, just keep on goin’ into Red China! We should be fightin’ them right now!” He slammed the bar for emphasis. “Then they wouldn’t keep me out of it! Not for a damn pinhole in an eardrum!”

But the bureaucratic decision was final; Dunne was doomed to remain a civilian all his life. And so he tried to make up for his loss in other ways. He bought most of his clothes in army-navy stores, appearing in smartly cut khakis in the neighborhood bars, his jump boots gleaming, his posture erect, his hair chopped short in a crew cut. He read military history, lecturing late at night about great battles “we” fought, and — during Vietnam — how victory could be won. When he was in his mid-twenties, the men of that neighborhood began to call him Soldier, and, grim-faced, squinty-eyed, shoulders squared, Dunne wore the ironic title as a badge of honor.

Along the way, Soldier Dunne married a quiet, pretty neighborhood girl named Marge Rivington, went to work at the gas company, and fathered two daughters and a son, each of whom was required to call him sir. He ran his home with the discipline of a company commander. Food was “chow,” the kitchen was “the mess,” the bathroom “the latrine.” On the walls of the living room he hung framed photographs of Douglas MacArthur, Omar Bradley, and Mark Clark; a huge American flag billowed on a pole outside his window every day of the week; he mourned the death of John Wayne, traveled once a year to Arlington to salute the fallen heroes of the republic, and when asked his favorite song would always reply: “You gotta stand when they play it.”

Naturally, his first daughter ran away and married an ironworker when she was seventeen. The second lasted until her eighteenth birthday; she took $216 she had saved, flew off to Orlando, became a tour guide at Disney World, and married an animal trainer. Soldier Dunne’s attention then fell most heavily upon his son, Jack. His attention, and his alarm. For Jack was not the son that Soldier had hoped for.

“He’s a nice kid,” he said a few times, when pressed by other members of the Saturday night infantry. “Takes after his mother, know what I mean? Reads a lot. Smart, that kid. Smart.”

But the truth was that at home they barely spoke. Jack had refused when he was thirteen to call his father sir, a small mutiny that Soldier punished by confining the boy to quarters. Confinement was ended through the tearful intercession of Soldier’s wife, Marge, whom Dunne started calling the judge advocate general. The boy said nothing. He never called his father sir again.

Worse, the young man resisted the military impulse. He thought parades were boring. He wouldn’t play with guns. He laughed at John Wayne movies. He read his books, listened to rock and roll, kept the door to his room closed. When Soldier offered to take the boy on his annual pilgrimage to Arlington, the boy turned him down; he was going with his friends to see the Rolling Stones. Then one evening, in the young man’s seventeenth year, Soldier Dunne came to his son’s room. He was carrying a thick manila envelope. Jack was listening to music on a Walkman. He looked up at his father, but he didn’t move.

“Hey!” Soldier shouted. “You think I’m standing here for my health?”

Jack removed the headset and sat up. “What is it, Dad? The Russians invade or something?”

“Don’t be a wise guy,” the father said. “I want to talk to you.”

“Shoot.”

“Look,” the father said. “You’re almost eighteen. You gotta start thinking about the rest of your life.”

“Yeah.”

“And I think I know what you gotta do. Nex’ June, when you graduate, go right in the army. They’re giving great deals now to high school graduates. You can pick a career. Electronics. Computers. All kinds of things. The money’s great. It’ll be the bes’ thing ever happened to you, believe me.”

He opened the manila envelope and took out a batch of brochures; the army, navy, and marines were all represented.

“Where’s the air force?” the young man said, smiling.

“Ah, hell, that’s not for you,” he said. “That’s not like the real service. But if you want, why don’t you…”

“Forget it, Dad,” Jack said. “I’m not going in the service.”

The father stood very erect. “Why not?”

“I don’t want to.”

“You’re a man, ain’t you?” the father said, his voice rising. “A real man serves his country if he has the chance. I didn’t have the chance. They turned me down. But you got nothin’ wrong with you. They won’t turn you down. They…”

“I’m going to college, Dad.”

“College?”

The word fell between them like a sword. Soldier Dunne turned abruptly on his heel and walked out of the room and out of the house. At the bar across the street, he drank a beer in silence. College. Not even West Point, or Annapolis. Just college. It wasn’t as if he had already served his country and was going on the GI Bill. He was just going to college. That’s why the country was going to seed; these kids were soft; they had no discipline; they didn’t know what it was like to fight, to bleed, to die for your country. No wonder the Russians were pushing us around everywhere. They had infantry, planes, bombs, tanks, trained killers, spies; we had college boys!

“You all right, Soldier?” said Loftus, the bartender. “You look like yer gonna cry.”

“It’s a sad day for this country,” Soldier said.

“What happened?” Loftus said. “I miss the news?”

“My kid’s going to college.”

Loftus laughed out loud. “That’s great. Soldier. Why’re you sayin’ it’s sad?”

Soldier snapped to attention and said: “You’d never understand.”

He walked out of the bar and marched through the dark streets of the neighborhood for hours, until his legs grew heavy and his hands cold and he headed home. As he crossed the avenue, he saw a figure standing in the vestibule of his building. He tensed, ready for combat. But when he came closer, he saw that the shadowy figure was only his wife. Good old Marge. Waiting up for me. He smiled and opened the outer door.

She stepped forward and slapped him hard across the face.

“You dumb son of a bitch,” she said.

Soldier stepped back, a hand to his stinging face, and said: “What is this? What’s going on? What’s this about?”

“Your son’s upstairs bawling his eyes out,” she said. “That’s what this is about!” Then, her face furious, she slapped him again. “I took your crap for a long time, Mr. Dunne. All this soldier-boy gobbledygook, all this yes-sir-no-sir baloney. Well, you drove the girls out with it. But you’re not gonna do it to Jack. I’m not gonna let you, Mr. Dunne.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I want you out of the house,” she said in a cold voice. “Tonight. Pack your bags and go. Get a room at the Y. Sleep on the subway. I don’t care. But get the hell out.”

Soldier backed up against the wall, stunned, riddled with words that came at him like bullets. He tried to speak, but nothing came out of his mouth. His legs were gone, his head ringing. He slid down the wall to a squatting position. His post had been overrun.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. She looked down at him, as if prepared to shoot the wounded.

“Save it for the boy,” she said, doing an about-face and hurrying up the stairs. Soldier squatted there for a long time, listening to the wind blow down the avenue. After a while, he thought: Maybe he’ll at least join the ROTC. And then slowly, he rose to his feet and started up the stairs, hoping the enemy would accept his unconditional surrender.