21-- Green Beret
He asks if I am in the military and I tell him I’m too
young.
Dave, working on some gray-haired drunk on the far side of
the bar looks older than I am, taller, but he’s too young, too.
My man frowns, his red whiskers wet with beer foam, and his
breath oozes the scent of booze the way my uncle Harry’s does each time I come
here to Lee’s Tavern to collect him.
I keep looking for Harry over my shoulder knowing he will
yell if he sees me dressed up the way I am, and he’ll think Grandma sent me to
spy on him and keep him from drinking, and on any other night, he might be
right.
My man asked why I’m dressed like I am if I’m not a soldier
and I tell him me and Dave are cadets, and he thinks I mean West Point cadets
when I really mean St. Brendan’s.
“I’m in a drum and bugle corps,” I tell him, making his
whiskers wiggle and beer foam run down his chin.
I hold up my tin can to show where it says “St. Brendan’s”
on the side; he shakes his head and points to my beret, a green beret, the kind
of beret the Green Beret’s wear; so, I must be lying.
He says he lost a brother in “the war” but he doesn’t say
which war and I tell him I have two uncles that served, one in Korea Vietnam
This makes my drunk start to cry; he thinks I said I am
going to Vietnam, and takes all the money he has and stuffs it all in my can,
then calls to his buddy down the bar and tells him how I might die soon, and
that he should give me all his money, too.
When we get outside and Dave checks my can, he sees it’s all
filled up and this give him an idea I don’t like – more bars, more money, and
more chance we have the band leader will let us play firs string with the band
even though Dave doesn’t practice except as an excuse not to take the trash out
when his mother yells.
We only come to this bar because the store the band leader
assigns us to doesn’t pay – a parade of senior citizens clutching their change
as they come and go, even picking up the pennies they see on the sidewalk. They
don’t want the pens we offer. Neither do the drunks, pushing money into our
cans and telling us to keep the pens for somebody else.
I look inside my can and think there’s too much money in it,
nobody collects this much money, especially us.
Dave says we can always take some out; he means for
ourselves.
I’m not against stealing; I steal all the time. I’m against
getting caught, especially by someone who’s not related to me, a strange might
put me in jail, and I tell Dave as much; Dave asks me who is going to catch us,
the drunks?
I don’t know why Dave needs to be in the band so much; I
only know why I need to, remembering all the stories my uncles used to tell
about when they were members of a marching back in Garfield, back before the
war, when they wore uniforms that didn’t translate into death, Uncle Albert
blowing his horn in the attic, while Uncle Rick banged on pots with his drum
sticks, until Grandpa threatened to kill them both if they didn’t stop, sending
them both outside where they could huff and puff and bang all they wanted on
anything that didn’t move as long as Grandpa didn’t have to hear it, just as he
hated when I went around whistling.
Dave and I both come up with schemes. But his always seem to
be schemes that he thinks will make him look good to girls; so when the cadets
put up the posters on all the telephone poles, he convince me to join, too,
disappointed after the first day when all they gave him was a pair of drum
stick, me a mouth piece, berets for both of us, and tin cans with which to raise
money the corps can afford to buy us uniforms, suggesting that we might make
first string if we make enough money – the only string worth playing int.
Maybe Dave is right in thinking the more we bring in, the
better the shot we have, though when we get to practice all we get are dirty
looks from the other cadets and a puzzled look from the adult leaders who
wonder what bank we robbed to bring so much money in, when everybody else
working much more lucrative spots came up with so little. Did we hold up the
senior citizens at gun point? And how come we still have so many of our pens
left, which we’re supposed to give away with each donation? Still, someone up
top in this cheesy organization wants to give us a prize, full uniforms for
both us, which we wear the next time we go out, to other bars down on Lakeview
Avenue around the corner from School No. 11 where there are men just like the
men at Lees who mistake us for soldiers, too, and want to help us out, filling
up our collection cans with bills and our stomachs with food, and our heads
with old war stories, of brothers lost, songs lost, fathers, brothers, best
friends, each bill into our can coming with a story so stark I want to stop
them and give them back the money they are too drunk to know they are giving,
each man in each bar looking at me and Dave like we are heroes when we are
really heals.
I can’t even confess any of this to my uncles, who praise me
for becoming a cadet just like they did when they were my age, and how they
believe I may someday become a real solider the way the drum corps inspired
them, telling me I might even follow in their youngest brother’s footsteps all
the way to Vietnam.
When I tell Dave I want to stop, he tells me I’m crazy. We
have a good thing going, and he doesn’t want me to blow it.
I keep thinking of all the dead kids the drunks get drunk
over, and how proud the drunks are each time we ask them to contribute, each
man putting money in our collection cans as if pennies on the eyes of the ones
they love – every one of them proud of us for doing what we’re doing, patting
our shoulders, and our green berets, and when we can’t stuff any more cash in
our cans and turn to leave, they are so proud of us it makes me sick.