The Complete Collection. William Wharton

just be the nut himself, won’t read anything that doesn’t have spit on it; hires this T-4 especially to spit on his papers. Could be anything. He looks up; very serious, very dignified for a fat man. His eyes are glinting behind his glasses; very much the working psychiatrist this morning.

      ‘You say here you were court-martialed?’

      ‘That’s right, sir.’

      Give him the old ‘sir’ bit; get no doctor-ing from me. Got to get out of here with my skin. Should’ve lied about the fucking court-martial.

      ‘What type of court-martial was it, Sergeant?’

      There it is; Sergeant; now we know.

      ‘Summary, sir.’

      ‘And what was the offense?’

      ‘Attacking non-commissioned officer, sir.’

      He gives the old hmmmm and two ahhhaas. Then he looks to see if the door to the office is closed. It is. Almost expect him to get up and open it. Here he is locked in with the mad officer killer. I give him my killer stare from under one eyebrow; Sicilian, Mafia, contract-killer look; all rolled in one. I used to practice it in front of the mirror; have to get some advantage out of being Italian.

      I’m not giving an inch. I’m thinking of getting up from the chair slowly and moving in for a pin. He clears his throat and folds his hands just behind the spit pile.

      ‘Do you get these violent impulses of ten, Alfonso?’

      The psychiatrist is back in the office. He’s got the Santa Claus grin on and all. Hell, I’d be a better psychiatrist than this moron. He doesn’t quite know what to do. I don’t know which way to play it myself. I’m wishing this had happened in the middle of the war instead of after it’s all over. Maybe I could’ve gotten myself a big pension as a homicidal maniac. That’s right; they turned this little neighborhood boy into a raving maniac by horrible war experiences. I’d live the rest of my life in gravy, just growl every now and then or beat up some old man.

      He’s still grinning at me; not a single flinch in that grin; he’s got the psychiatrist grin down to the nickel. He’s trying to shake me up. I’m tempted to tell him how much I enjoyed pushing that hunky’s face in with the shovel. Niggers in the coal truck sure were scared shitless, too.

      ‘No, sir. Not of ten, sir.’

      ‘Would you mind telling me how it happened?’

      Sure I would, but I know a direct order when I hear one.

      ‘Only in the army four days, sir. Corporal at Fort Cumberland grabbed me by the arm and I reacted instinctively, sir.’

      ‘Oh, I see.’

      He doesn’t see and he knows he doesn’t see. I smile back at him. Big smiling game. Great being Italian; all the movies make everybody afraid of you. When people think of a bad guy, they think of an Italian. I give him my dangerous look again. He’s going over the wet form; doing the hmmm, ahhhaa thing some more; we’re not getting anywhere.

      ‘Sir, should I go back to the ward this morning?’

      ‘That’s right, Sergeant. I think it’s the best chance we’ve got.’

      I wait. I can’t really get up and leave till he does something. When you’re in the army, you’re tied down all around. I can’t figure why he isn’t asking me if I’ve ever clobbered Birdy. That’s the first question I’d ask.

      He stands up at last and I stand, too; give him the salute. I have a feeling he’s pissed at me and pissed at himself for being pissed. I scare him; this makes me feel good. I keep hoping I’m finished with that crap but when somebody starts leaning, it all comes back.

      ‘OK, Sergeant, I’ll see you tomorrow about this time.’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      Bastard’s going to write to Dix for my records. Please Lord, just let me out of the goddamned army!

      I get back to Birdy and even though he’s still squatting on the floor, I know it’s different. I know he’s knowing I’m there. I know it’s Birdy and not some fake, freaky bird.

      – Had another session with your doctor, Birdy. You’re going to have a great time with him when you decide to talk. Whatever you do, don’t tell him about the pigeons and the canaries and all that bird shit. He’ll have you pinned into a case as a specimen.

      I know he heard me that time. I want to hang in there, keep it going.

      – Hey Birdy, remember when we were selling the mags? Christ, that was a scene!

      After we get back from Wildwood and I finally recover from old Vittorio’s revenge, we have to figure some way to pay back the money. We owe our parents ninety-two dollars in train fare. We get the idea to sell magazines door-to-door in apartment houses.

      We work out a smooth deal. The building superintendents try to keep us out but we push all the call buttons and somebody is always lazy enough just to push the door buzzer without calling back. Once we’re inside, one of us keeps the elevator busy while the other goes from one apartment to the other selling the mags. We’re selling Liberty, Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s and Cosmopolitan. The best time for selling is from right after school till about five-thirty, when the men start coming home. A lot of the ladies are alone because their men are off fighting the war. We get a regular route of ladies who buy from us. I’m the one who usually does the selling; Birdy does the elevator business and keeps the superintendent chasing after him. Fat chance that super has of ever catching Birdy.

      Most of those ladies are bored out of their minds and I’m always getting invited in for a cup of tea or coffee. If I were older and knew what to do, I could probably really make out.

      Birdy’s already started with all his crappy breath-holding. He’s getting to be more and more of a freak. He shows me once how he can hold his breath for five minutes. He sticks his head in a pan of water in my cellar. He tells me he turns his mind off breathing. That’s nuts!

      Then he’s always talking about flying. He tells me once, ‘People can’t fly because they don’t believe they can. If nobody ever showed people they could swim, everybody’d drown if they were dropped into the water,’ is what he says. Really weird ideas. He’s going to a Catholic high school, now, down at Forty-ninth Street in Philadelphia. The things he tells me about that school, I begin to understand why he’s turning so crazy. It’s a regular prison.

      He’s also beginning with his canary thing. He talks about that canary all the time and he starts different goof y exercises. I try getting him to work out with weights to build himself up, but he only does his arm flapping and jumping up and down. Sometimes he talks about his canary and I think he’s talking about a real person. I think maybe he’s finally noticed there are girls in the world but it’s just the canary. He calls her Birdy, named after himself I guess.

      The school he goes to is too cheap to have buses so he rides in on his bike. I cut one day and ride in with him. What a miserable place. Freshmen and sophomores use outside staircases like fire escapes and everybody is always robbing everybody else’s locker. They have Christian brothers teaching there. They wear long black skirts like priests except they have little stiff bibs sticking out from under their chins; real bunch of creeps; guys who want to be priests but are too dumb or don’t have the guts.

      The whole school smells funky, like a gigantic jack-off party going on all the time. Big places like that without any girls are always funky. On wet days, Birdy says it smells so bad you have to wear a gas mask.

      The way you eat lunch in this school is to walk round and round the track. Brothers are standing in the middle like lion tamers. If you want to take a piss or something you have to ask for one of these wooden passes. They’ve got five passes for more than three hundred people. Everybody walking around, holding a lunch bag, eating and holding back from peeing.

      Birdy starts faking library passes to get to the library during lunch. He has the inside