Red struck an attitude, one hand on his breast. "Now's your chanct,
Buzz, to save your country an' your flag. Enlistment office's right over
the Golden Eagle clothing store. Step up. Don't crowd gents! This way!"
Buzz was staring at him, open-mouthed. His gaze was fixed, tense.
Suddenly he seemed to gather all his muscles together as for a spring.
But he only threw his cigarette into the gutter, yawned elaborately, and
moved away. "S'long," he said; and lounged off. The others looked after
him a moment, puzzled, speculative. Buzz was not usually so laconic. But
evidently he was leaving with no further speech.
"I guess maybe he ain't so dead sure that Hatton bunch won't git him for
this, anyway," Casey said. Then, raising his voice: "Goin' home, Buzz?"
"Yeh."
But he did not. If they had watched him they would have seen him change
his lounging gait when he reached the corner. They would have seen him
stand a moment, sending a quick glance this way and that, then turn,
retrace his steps almost at a run, and dart into the doorway that led
to the flight of wooden stairs at the side of the Golden Eagle clothing
store.
A dingy room. A man at a bare table. Another seated at the window, his
chair tipped back, his feet on the sill, a pipe between his teeth. Buzz,
shambling, suddenly awkward, stood in the door.
"This the place where you enlist?"
The man at the table stood up. The chair in front of the open window
came down on all-fours.
"Sure," said the first man. "What's your name?"
Buzz told him.
"Meet Sergeant Keith. He's a Canadian. Been through the whole game."
Five minutes later Buzz's fine white torso rose above his trousers like
a great pillar. Unconsciously his sagging shoulders had straightened.
His stomach was held in. His chest jutted, shelf-like. His ribs showed
through the pink-white flesh.
"Get some of that pork off of him," observed Sergeant Keith, "and he'll
do in a couple of Fritzes before he's through."
"Me!" blurted Buzz, struggling now with his shirt. "A couple! Say, you
don't know me. Whaddyou mean, a couple? I can lick a whole regiment of
them beerheads with one hand tied behind me an' my feet in a sack." He
emerged from the struggle with his shirt, his face very red, his hair
rumpled.
Sergeant Keith smiled a grim little smile. "Keep your shirt on, kid,"
he said, "and remember, this isn't a fist fight you're going into. It's
war."
Buzz, fumbling with his hat, put his question. "When--when do I go?" For
he had signed his name in his round, boyish, sixth-grade scrawl.
"To-morrow. Now listen to these instructions."
"T-to-morrow?" gasped Buzz.
He was still gasping as he reached the street and struck out toward
home. To-morrow! When the Kearney girl again stepped out of the
tree-shadows he stared at her as at something remote and trivial.
"I thought you tried to give me the slip, Buzz. Where you been?"
"Never mind where I've been."
She fell into step beside him, but had difficulty in matching his great
strides. She caught at his arm. At that Buzz turned and stopped. It was
too dark to see his face, but something in his voice--something new, and
hard, and resolute--reached even the choked and slimy cells of this
creature's consciousness.
"Now looka here. You beat it. I got somethin' on my mind to-night and I
can't be bothered with no fool girl, see? Don't get me sore. I mean it."
Her hand dropped away from his arm. "I didn't mean what I said about
havin' you up, Buzz; honest t' Gawd I didn't."
"I don't care what you meant."
'Will you meet me to-morrow night? Will you, Buzz?"
"If I'm in this town to-morrow night I'll meet you. Is that good
enough?"
He turned and strode away. But she was after him. "Where you goin'
to-morrow?"
"I'm goin' to war, that's where."
"Yes you are!" scoffed Miss Kearney. Then, at his silence: "You didn't
go and do a fool thing like that?"
"I sure did."
"When you goin'?"
"To-morrow."
"Well, of all the big boobs," sneered Miss Kearney; "what did you go and
do that for?"
"Search _me_," said Buzz, dully. "Search _me_."
Then he turned and went on toward home, alone. The Kearney girl's silly,
empty laugh came back to him through the darkness. It might have been
called a scornful laugh if the Kearney girl had been capable of any
emotion so dignified as scorn.
The family was still up. The door was open to the warm May night. The
Werners, in their moments of relaxation, were as unbuttoned and highly
_negligée_ as one of those group pictures you see of the Robert Louis
Stevenson family. Pa, shirt-sleeved, stocking-footed, asleep in his
chair. Ma's dress open at the front. Minnie, in an untidy kimono,
sewing.
On this flaccid group Buzz burst, bomb-like. He hung his hat on the
hook, wordlessly. The noise he made woke his father, as he had meant
that it should. There came a muttered growl from the old man. Buzz
leaned against the stairway door, negligently. The eyes of the three
were on him.
"Well," he said, "I guess you won't be bothered with me much longer." Ma
Werner's head came up sharply at that.
"What you done, Ernie?"
"Enlisted."
"Enlisted--for what?"
"For the war; what do you suppose?"