Three Soldiers | Page 3

a trip on one of them
liners."

"Yer dad come over from the old country in one, didn't he?" Al would
ask.
"Oh, he came steerage. I'd stay at home if I had to do that. Man, first
class for me, a cabin de lux, when I git rich."
But here he was in this town in the East, where he didn't know anybody
and where there was no place to go but the movies.
"'Lo, buddy," came a voice beside him. The tall youth who had sat
opposite at mess was just catching up to him. "Goin' to the movies?"
"Yare, nauthin' else to do."
"Here's a rookie. Just got to camp this mornin'," said the tall youth,
jerking his head in the direction of the man beside him.
"You'll like it. Ain't so bad as it seems at first," said Fuselli
encouragingly.
"I was just telling him," said the other, "to be careful as hell not to get
in wrong. If ye once get in wrong in this damn army...it's hell."
"You bet yer life...so they sent ye over to our company, did they, rookie?
Ain't so bad. The sergeant's sort o' decent if yo're in right with him, but
the lieutenant's a stinker.... Where you from?"
"New York," said the rookie, a little man of thirty with an ash- colored
face and a shiny Jewish nose. "I'm in the clothing business there. I
oughtn't to be drafted at all. It's an outrage. I'm consumptive." He
spluttered in a feeble squeaky voice.
"They'll fix ye up, don't you fear," said the tall youth. "They'll make
you so goddam well ye won't know yerself. Yer mother won't know ye,
when you get home, rookie.... But you're in luck."
"Why?"
"Bein' from New York. The corporal, Tim Sidis, is from New York, an'

all the New York fellers in the company got a graft with him."
"What kind of cigarettes d'ye smoke?" asked the tall youth.
"I don't smoke."
"Ye'd better learn. The corporal likes fancy ciggies and so does the
sergeant; you jus' slip 'em each a butt now and then. May help ye to get
in right with "em."
"Don't do no good," said Fuselli.... "It's juss luck. But keep neat-like
and smilin' and you'll get on all right. And if they start to ride ye, show
fight. Ye've got to be hard boiled to git on in this army."
"Ye're goddam right," said the tall youth. "Don't let 'em ride yer....
What's yer name, rookie?"
"Eisenstein."
"This feller's name's Powers.... Bill Powers. Mine's Fuselli.... Goin' to
the movies, Mr. Eisenstein?"
"No, I'm trying to find a skirt." The little man leered wanly. "Glad to
have got ackwainted."
"Goddam kike!" said Powers as Eisenstein walked off up a side street,
planted, like the avenue, with saplings on which the sickly leaves
rustled in the faint breeze that smelt of factories and coal dust.
"Kikes ain't so bad," said Fuselli, "I got a good friend who's a kike."

They were coming out of the movies in a stream of people in which the
blackish clothes of factory-hands predominated.
"I came near bawlin' at the picture of the feller leavin' his girl to go off
to the war," said Fuselli.

"Did yer?"
"It was just like it was with me. Ever been in Frisco, Powers?"
The tall youth shook his head. Then he took off his broad-brimmed hat
and ran his fingers over his stubby tow-head.
"Gee, it was some hot in there," he muttered.
"Well, it's like this," said Fuselli. "You have to cross the ferry to
Oakland. My aunt...ye know I ain't got any mother, so I always live at
my aunt's.... My aunt an' her sister-in-law an' Mabe... Mabe's my
girl...they all came over on the ferry-boat, 'spite of my tellin' 'em I
didn't want 'em. An' Mabe said she was mad at me, 'cause she'd seen
the letter I wrote Georgine Slater. She was a toughie, lived in our street,
I used to write mash notes to. An' I kep' tellin' Mabe I'd done it juss for
the hell of it, an' that I didn't mean nawthin' by it. An' Mabe said she
wouldn't never forgive me, an' then I said maybe I'd be killed an' she'd
never see me again, an' then we all began to bawl. Gawd! it was a
mess.... "
"It's hell sayin' good-by to girls," said Powers, understandingly. "Cuts a
feller all up. I guess it's better to go with coosies. Ye don't have to say
good-by to them."
"Ever gone with a coosie?"
"Not exactly," admitted the tall youth, blushing all over his pink face,
so that it was noticeable even under the ashen glare of the arc lights on
the avenue that led towards camp.
"I have," said Fuselli, with a