HE wore no collar. If he had, it would have been size 13½. He didn’t,
because collars cost twenty cents. Twenty cents paid his overhead
expenses for a day: two meals of stew and coffee at Emil’s Busy Bee
Lunchery—music by the Elevated trains—and enough tobacco to make fifty
cigarets.
His collarlessness did not worry him; he gave it no more thought than he
gave to the art of poetry, the influence of Confucius on China, or his
country’s foreign policy, if any. How to get that daily twenty
cents—that was what concerned him; that done, he let his brain rest,
wrapped in a hazy blanket. Leaning against the wall of Hyde’s Stable in
West Houston Street, outside in summer, inside in winter, he accepted
the universe. Blue smoke, seeping from time to time from his nostrils,
was the only sign that he had not mummified.
His name was Joey Pell. He was nineteen years old. As a baby he had had
rickets, and as a result he was bowlegged and undersized. His complexion
was imperfect. Of the six children born to his parents, he was the last
and the only one to survive the hazards of infancy in a two-room flat on
Hudson Street. His mother sometimes said that this was enough to drive a
person to drink. Her husband, a truckman chronically on strike, would
remark, by way of repartee, that it was quite unnecessary to drive her
to drink. She would reply, in part, that his own record as a teetotaler
was not unimpeachable. At this point in the conflict little Joey knew it
to be an act of prudence to slip out of the room that served as kitchen,
living room and his bedroom. He was a timid, easily frightened child,
and had apparently inherited none of his parents’ bellicose corpuscles.
One day he went out and never came back, and his parents thereafter
quarreled in peace, while he attached himself to the stable as an
unofficial valet and general assistant.
He was afraid of horses, and he never conquered that fear entirely, but
the stable was warm, and the men gave him dimes for helping with the
harness, so he stayed there; his was not a soul for high adventure. They
let him hang about the stable because he tried to be useful. There was
only one sort of job he’d balk at—he would not go near mules. Of mules
he stood in deathly fear, for when he was six he had seen a man trampled
to death by an angry mule, and the look of fright that had come to
Joey’s face on that occasion had never entirely left it. His
haddock-like, watery blue-gray eyes were still slightly apprehensive;
his lips always seemed on the verge of a quiver. When he approached a
person he sidled. He seemed to expect to be kicked, and not infrequently
he was. When someone kicked him Joey Pell did not kick back. He just
melted away from the vicinity of the kicker, with a look, hurt, and yet
resigned, as if a certain amount of kicking were his lot in life.
He harbored no grudges and hated no one.
For one thing, his memory was not good enough for him to be a good
hater; and, besides, it took venom and energy to hate, and he had
neither. His lack of pugnacity barred him from the society of the other
boys of that part of the city, for they all aspired to be pugilists or,
failing that, competent members of the Hudson Dusters, the Whyo Boys,
the Gophers, or other gangs; their evenings were full of fisticuffs.
Joey would have liked to be one of them, but, since they did not appear
to want him, he accepted the fact.
Joey Pell had learned to read much later than the other boys, and
reading was still somewhat of a labor for him. He rarely got beyond the
comic strips in the newspapers; these he pored over with knit and sober
brow.
What went on in the world outside his stable mattered little to him.
Kings might be hurled into the dust, the dogs of war might growl and
gnaw their leashes, black calamity might threaten the land—it was all
one to Joey Pell. His stew, his coffee, his tobacco, his sleep—these
filled his brain; it was not a large one, and he had room for little
else. It may have been that the rumbling of events in the world reached
his ear, but they never penetrated into his head.
The men in the stable had been growing more and more excited about
something—a war of some sort, Joey concluded. It was much too remote an
affair to concern him, anyhow.
Then, one day, something exciting happened to Joey Pell. He received a
letter. It was the first letter he had ever received in his life, and he
stood in front of the stable, fingering it gingerly with dirty hands. He
was a little alarmed. Why should anyone write to him? Probably it was a
mistake. He stared at the address again:
Joseph Pell
c/o Hyde’s Stable
W. Houston St.
New York City
Himself beyond question. He wondered what he had done. He tore open the
envelope and pored over the printed letter inside. He wondered why he
should be called upon to present himself at a certain place and time.
The letter confused him. So he took it to Phil Hyde, who owned the
stable. Hyde glanced at it.
“Well, they got you,” Hyde said with a grin.
“Got me?”
“Yeah—you gotta fight.”
“Me fight? Fight who?”
“Say, stupid, don’t you know there’s a war on? This here means you’re
drafted.”
* * * * *
Joey liked camp. For the first week he was in a daze; the officers who
examined him seemed blurred and enormous. He was lanced by a fear that
he must immediately shed blood, or have his own shed. It seemed a poor
choice to Joey Pell. When he found that the day he must engage in actual
combat was remote he began to enjoy the military life. Never before had
he been so well fed, had he had such a clean, warm place to sleep, had
he had such trim new clothes. He realized this, and he did what he was
told to do, whole-heartedly; he was afraid that he might be put out of
the Army.
The regular life suited him. It was pleasant to have someone else do all
the thinking. He liked to do things by the numbers—one, two, three,
four. He liked to march along, hep, hep, hep, hep, in step, shoulder to
shoulder with the other soldiers. He belonged with them; they were his
gang; it was a fine new feeling. They accepted him as one of them. He
began to take trouble about his hair and finger nails, to take an
interest in baths. His chest grew an inch, his biceps grew firmer.
Joey Pell learned many things at camp. One of them was bayonet fighting.
At first it made him tremble and turn sick inside; but he got over that.
“Hey, you, with the pasty face!” the sergeant barked. “Put some life
into it. It’ll make a man of you.”
Joey tried to do so. But he found it hard to be enthusiastic about
stabbing even a dummy.
“Get mad!” roared the sergeant. “Hate ’em! Drive it into their guts!
Curse ’em as you thrust. Give it to ’em—one, two, three!”
Joey was a good soldier; he was told to hate; he hated. He learned to
drive the keen point of his bayonet into the straw intestines of the
dummies; as he did so he gritted his teeth and sharply cursed. He came
to hate each of the dummies with a personal hate.
The other soldiers in his squad did not talk much about the war. Mostly
they talked of girls, and baseball, and prize fighting, and the
bartenders they knew, and of what the lieutenant said to them and their
own daring retorts to him. Sometimes, in sentimental moments, they
showed one another pictures of wives, sweethearts or babies. When they
did talk of the war they cursed the men they were to fight against, and
told stories of their savagery.
As Joey listened he felt inside very much as he had felt that day when
he saw the mule trampling the life from a man. His fear bred hate. These
people were devils; it was a virtue to hate them, a good deed to kill
them.
Grim monsters peopled his dreams. They were in gray, and were twice the
size of ordinary men, and fiendish of face. In his dreams he fought
them. As they bore down on him he drove his bayonet into their throats.
The sergeant had no occasion to criticize his bayonet drill now.
Joey Pell was a one-idea man. Once his mind had been filled to capacity
with the problem of keeping alive; now that problem was happily solved
for him; so he had space for another idea. That idea was to be a good
soldier, and, it followed, a sincere hater of the enemy. This became
Joey’s obsession. He won an approving grunt from the sergeant by the
ferocity of his attack in the bayonet drill.
Another fine new feeling came to Joey Pell on his first leave of absence
in New York City. He realized that he was a hero. He saw that he was a
person of importance. His had been a life without color, a humble life.
Back in the stable he was less important than one of the horses; not the
faintest beam of limelight had ever fallen on his small figure in that
manure-scented obscurity. Men had treated him curtly; no woman had ever
smiled at him. He had been unwanted. But now it was different. He was a
soldier.
He had taken the three days’ leave of absence because his turn had come,
not because he wanted it; he’d no idea what use he could make of it.
He was trudging along Fifth Avenue, bound for his stable below
Washington Square, when he heard a voice calling, “Oh, soldier boy! Oh,
soldier boy!”
He looked about; there was no other soldier in sight; so the lady in the
limousine must be calling to him. Her car had come quite close to the
curb; it was a magnificent car, huge and glittering with polished
nickel. Inside, it was heavily upholstered, and so was the richly
dressed lady who sat there, and who had called to Joey. She was smiling.
Joey eyed her suspiciously.
“Can’t I take you where you are going?” she asked.
“Ain’t goin’ nowhere,” he mumbled. He felt suddenly hot, awkward,
conscious of his complexion.
“Ah, then let me take you to the Home Trench,” said the lady. Joey
looked dubious; he wondered what her game was. “Don’t you know about the
Home Trench?” she asked. Her voice partly reassured him. “It’s for
soldier boys like you. It’s in my own house on Fifth Avenue. I’m Mrs. J.
Goodhue Wilmerding, you know. Come, get in.”
She held open the limousine’s door invitingly. Joey stumbled in. He sat,
uncomfortable, bolt upright on the edge of the fat seat. The roses in
the silver vase overawed him; he associated flowers only with funerals.
From the corner of his eye he watched the lady. Perhaps, he thought, she
was a spy who would try by honeyed words to get important military
information from him. He resolved to kick her roundly in the shins and
leap from the car if she tried any funny business on him, Private Joseph
Pell.
“It is just wonderful,” he heard her say, “of you boys to do what you
are doing.”
“Yes’m,” said Joey Pell.
“Ah, if I were only a man”—she expelled a sigh—“but, since I’m not,
I’m doing my bit as best I can. Last week at the Home Trench we
entertained seven hundred and sixty-one soldier boys.”
“Yes’m,” said Joey Pell.
“I hope you’ll like the Home Trench,” she went on. “All the waitresses
there are Junior League girls. They dance with the boys.” Then she
added, “With all the boys. Isn’t it wonderful how this terrible war has
brought us all closer together?”
“Yes’m,” said Joey Pell.
“I wonder,” she said, “if you know my son at your camp—Major Sears
Wilmerding, on the general’s staff?”
“No’m,” said Joey Pell.
“You must introduce yourself to him when you go back.”
“Yes’m,” said Joey Pell, with mental reservations.
“You see, I consider all soldier boys my sons,” she said. “Ah, here we
are—at the Home Trench.”
The motor car purred up to the curb before an opulent brownstone house
on lower Fifth Avenue. Over the door was a sign, decorated with flags:
The Home Trench
All Soldiers Welcome
Joey followed Mrs. Wilmerding into the house. Inside, a pretty girl
pounced on Joey, asked his name, and pinned a tag on his coat bearing
the words “I am Private Pell.”
Blinking, he stepped from the hallway into the large front room. It was
filled with soldiers and girls. In one corner a phonograph was grinding
out brassily “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag, and Smile,
Smile, Smile.” Some of the girls and soldiers were dancing—the soldiers
for the most part stiff and self-conscious, the girls bright-eyed and
putting much spirit into the task of making the soldiers enjoy
themselves.
A little bobbed-haired girl captured Joey.
“I’m Peggy Sturgis,” she announced, taking his hand, which hung limply
by his side, and shaking it violently. “You’re Private Pell, aren’t
you?”
Joey gulped, and nodded.
“I know some Pells at Tuxedo Park,” she said. “Are you one of them?”
“No’m,” said Joey.
“Shall we dance?”
He was too overwhelmed by this entirely novel experience to refuse. She
towed and hauled and steered him about the crowded room, while the
phonograph did its best with “Over There.”
“I think,” she said, “it’s just wonderful of you boys to do what you are
doing.” Joey flushed. “I wish,” she said wistfully, “that I were a man.
I’d be in the cavalry. Don’t you just adore horses, Mr. Pell?”
Joey licked dry lips and nodded. He hated horses, as a matter of fact;
but she had called him Mister, and that was another new and stimulating
experience.
Other girls danced with Joey Pell that day. They told him, every one of
them, how brave a thing he was doing. He drank a great deal of not very
sweet lemonade, and only when the Home Trench closed for the day, at six
o’clock, did he leave.
He was almost as much intoxicated as if the lemonade had been champagne,
as he strode up the avenue, chin out, eyes narrowed sternly.
He wished earnestly that he might meet one of the enemy face to face at
that moment. He felt capable of laying him low, barehanded. He saluted
all officers with a sharp precise salute; he even saluted a passing
letter carrier. His heart beat with unwonted vigor; he was a soldier; a
somebody.
He surveyed suspiciously each passerby in the hope that he might
discover a spy. He found no spy, but he did find an elderly gentleman
who gave him a theater ticket, and a blessing. Joey took the ticket
without embarrassment; he was getting used to gifts.
As he marched along he saw a sign: