Twenty-Six

“Anytime a man can last more than 400 games and put his team into two Series, his path is chosen for him.”

—Ty Cobb

“You ever tell the boy, Cale?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He’ll find out, when I’m gone.”

“I hate it when you two do that,” Cagney said, “talk about me like I’m not here.”

“He wouldn’t understand, Norm. Hell, I’m not sure I understand.” Again, as if Cagney weren’t in the room.

“What’s to understand? It’s part of who you are.”

“I assume this has to do with Okinawa.” Cagney.

“I nearly got you killed.”

“You nearly got us killed, Cale,” Norm said with a chuckle. “But we survived.”

“I fell asleep when I was supposed to be on watch.”

“We were in a foxhole, the mortar fire ceased. We hadn’t slept in two days.”

“Wouldn’t have mattered to that Jap who happened upon us.”

“And that’s just what he counted on, that we’d be asleep. Two easy targets. Even a marine can’t function well without sleep, Cale.”

“That’s a helluva justification. It’s a good thing you had a weak bladder. If you hadn’t come back when you did—”

“You’d have been sporting multiple bayonet wounds.”

“Well, what happened?” Cagney asked.

“I left our foxhole to take a leak. I was a few feet away and had just finished tucking the old monster away when I heard movement. We were told to call out passwords if we were moving to another location, so we wouldn’t get shot by our own, so I suspected enemy movement. It was dark, but I crept back to our foxhole, my own bayonet blade drawn. I saw a Jap preparing to thrust his bayonet into your father, who was off in La-La Land snoring softly to himself. I lunged across the foxhole and wrestled that damn zipper-head to the ground. All the while we were grappling with each other to gain some advantage, he kept shouting what I took to be Japanese obscenities. Eventually we rolled over the side of the foxhole and on top of your father. ‘Jeesus!’ I heard him say. ‘It’s okay, Cale,’ I said, ‘don’t shoot.’ With all the wrestling going on, he was as likely to put a bullet in me as he was the Jap. I finally managed to slip my bayonet blade into the Jap’s gut and he let out a bloodcurdling scream. I put my hand over his mouth … ‘shhh,’ I whispered, twisting the blade. ‘Shhh.’ He stopped moving and a moment later I heard your father’s voice: ‘Get him off me, Norm. Goddamn it, get him off me.’

“By the time I managed to roll the body off your father, he was drenched in Jap blood. Your father sat up, looked at the corpse, its eyes wide but unseeing, and pummeled its face with the handle of his sidearm until the features were a bloody pulp. When he finished, I said, ‘Good morning sleepyhead. I guess you’re awake now.’ We laughed then, long and hard, before we pushed that little fucker out of our foxhole.”

During the silence that ensued, Cagney searched his father’s face for the young marine Norm had just described. The once steel blue eyes were now clouded by chemo and whatever other drugs his doctor was pumping into him.

What a horrific story, Cagney thought. And although Norm had related the events of that night with frank detachment, inserting humor at all the appropriate moments (if they could be called that), as if he’d related the tale countless times at numerous reunions—or relived the event through myriad nightmares—this wasn’t a story. No embellishments were necessary. Cale had confessed to Cagney of nightmares of his time on Okinawa, but never had he shared their content with him. Surely this was one of them. Cagney could only wonder what other lurid experiences his father might have tightly bottled up inside.

“I owe you my life, Norm,” Cale said. “But that doesn’t change the fact I fell asleep when I should’ve been on watch.”

“Ah, Cale. I can’t believe you’re still holding onto that after all these years. You’re still a good marine. The bravest I ever served with, and I made a career of the Corps.”

Cagney suspected this was not the story to which Norm, his father’s lifelong buddy, had alluded earlier. Certainly he saw no evidence, in this account, of the “bravest” marine with whom Norm had served.

“What is it I’m supposed to find out after you’re gone?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“He’s your son, Cale. He should hear it from you.”

Cale’s lips pursed twice, but he remained mute.

Cagney looked from his father to Norm, a silent plea for clarity; Norm merely shook his head. He would not betray a brother.

“You’re a good-looking kid, Cagney, tall, well-built. You’d have made a fine marine.”

“You can’t know that.”

“You’re Cale’s son, aren’t you?”

Cagney didn’t know what to say, or maybe he did: his father had never advised him on enlisting in the Corps, or any branch of the military. Did he think to keep him from harm’s way, or was he merely reluctant to share the brotherhood, as he was reluctant to share any aspect of his time spent in the Marines?

Cagney, to Norm: “You remember being here in ’73 for a Marine Corps reunion?”

“Son, I’ve been to a lot of reunions over the years.”

Cagney couldn’t keep the disappointment from his face. He recalled that weekend as if it were last month: the bottle of tequila Norm and his father had shared, trading shot for shot—his mother trying to keep pace until she got sick—the tiny worm from the bottom of the bottle they cut in two and ate. Shortly before adjourning the patio for the bathroom, to empty the contents of her stomach, Cagney’s mother had contracted a bad case of hiccups. When it became clear they weren’t going to stop, Norm stood behind her, asked her to hold her breath, and stuck a pinky finger from each hand into each of her ears. After what seemed an interminable length of time, two, maybe three minutes, Norm turned to Cale and asked if she were still holding her breath. Cale nodded. A few moments later, she let out her breath, cured.

Yet what Cagney found most memorable from that long ago night was Norm’s arrival at their house. After flying in from San Diego, a nephew who resided in nearby Novi had picked him up from the airport. After getting settled in at his nephew’s house, Norm showed up in his nephew’s car, a two-year-old Lincoln Mark III. Without a thought, Norm tossed Cagney the keys and told Cale to direct him to the restaurant at which they’d be dining. Cagney recalled the looks of chagrin on his mother and father’s faces, their lack of confidence that their 16-year-old son could manage an eight-mile roundtrip to and from the German restaurant without damaging the big Mark III. Cagney said none of this, only:

“You let me drive your nephew’s Lincoln to and from the restaurant.”

Norm nodded, yet Cagney wasn’t certain if he truly recalled that night; Norm elucidated: “As I recall, you’d just gotten your diver’s permit.”

Cagney nodded and, watching his father, said, “You made me feel like a man.” When the intended barb didn’t penetrate Cale’s hardened veneer, he added: “You trusted me, as if we’d shared a foxhole together.”

Cale remained stoic.

Norm: “I’d gladly have shared a foxhole with you, son.”

Cagney grieved to hear those words from a stranger, words he’d longed to hear from his father.

“You’re your father’s son, aren’t you?”

Cagney felt his eyes tear up. He was certain Norm would interpret his show of emotion as pride. Yet Cagney felt no such pride. What he felt was the emptiness of a non-entity. Twice, in a matter of minutes, Norm had referred to him as Cale’s son. He’d called him by name but once since arriving, a last visit with Cale before he died, to revisit the good old days in the Corps, to swap stories Cagney had never heard. Bonded in the eyes of a near stranger as a chip off the old block, Cagney had never felt a bond with his old man. Will I ever be Cagney Nowak, sui generis?

“His wife is divorcing him,” Cale spat.

Norm only shrugged. “Common among couples of his generation, Cale. My oldest boy divorced his wife a few years ago. It happens.”

“He cheated on her.”

Cagney cringed from the harshness of his father’s accusation.

“He’s not the first married man to have dipped his pecker into another woman. My son left his wife for another woman, I imagine not without first taking a test ride.”

“I’m ashamed of him.”

Cagney averted his eyes, unable to hide his own shame.

“Ah, Cale. We raised our own brand of hell, didn’t we, when we were in China?”

“We did our share of drinking,” Cale said, but something in the way he avoided eye contact with Norm told Cagney that here, at best, was a plea for lenience, at worst, a lie of omission. “And that was before I met Iris.” As an admission of guilt, it was perhaps the closest Cale could come.

“It’s a different world in which we live, Cale.”

“That it is,” Cale said. “Not the place I’d envisioned when we dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

“It’s a better place than it would’ve been had we not ended the war,” Norm said.

“Freedom without accountability—that’s not what I risked my life for. That’s not the American way.”

“Would you have done it any differently had you known the effect on later generations?”

Cale said nothing.

“We did the right thing, Cale. Our duty. What kids do today with the world we gave them, well, that’s up to them. Our job is done.”