Khaki-Boy
Where the torrent of Broadway leaps highest in folly and the nights are riddled with incandescent tire and chewing gum signs; jazz bands and musical comedies to the ticket speculators’ tune of five dollars a seat, My Khaki-Boy, covered with the golden hoar of three hundred Metropolitan nights rose to the slightly off key grand finale of its eighty-first matinée, curtain slithering down to the rub-a-dud-dub of a score of pink satin drummer boys with slim ankles and curls; a Military Sextette of the most blooded of Broadway ponies; a back ground of purple eye-lidded privates enlisted from the ranks of Forty-Second Street; a three hundred and fifty dollar a week sartorial sergeant in khaki and spotlight, embracing a ninety pound ingénue in rhinestone shoulder-straps. The tired business man and his lady friend, the Bronx and his wife, Adelia Ohio, Dead heads, Bald heads, Sore heads, Suburbanites, Sybarites; the poor dear public making exit sadder than wiser.
On the unpainted side of the down slithering curtain, a canvas mountain-side was already rumbling rearward on castors. An overhead of foliage jerked suddenly higher, revealed a vista of brick wall. A soldiers’ encampment, tents and all, rolled up like a window shade. The ninety pound ingénue, withholding her silver-lace flouncings from the raw edges of moving landscape, high-stepped to a rearward dressing room; the khaki clad hero brushing past her and the pink satin drummer boys for first place down a spiral staircase.
Miss Blossom De Voe, pinkest of satin drummer boys, withdrew an affronted elbow, the corners of her mouth quivering slightly, possibly of their own richness. They were dewy, fruit-like lips, as if Nature were smiling with them at her own handiwork.
“Say, somebody around here better look where he’s going or mama’s khaki-boy will be calling for an arnica high-ball. What does he think I yam, the six o’clock subway rush?”
Miss Elaine Vavasour wound down the spiral ahead of Miss De Voe, the pink satin blouse already in the removing.
“Go suck a quince Blos. It’s good for crazy bone and fallen arch.”
“If you was any funnier, Elaine, you’d float,” said Miss De Voe withdrawing a hair pin as she wound downward, an immediate avalanche of springy curls released.
Beneath the stage of the Gotham Theater a corridor of dressing rooms ran the musty subterranean length of the sub cellar. A gaseous gloomy dampness here; this cave of the purple lidded, so far below the level of reality.
At the door of Miss De Voe’s eight by ten, shared by four, dressing room, one of the back drop of privates, erect, squarebacked, head thrown up by the deep-dipping cap vizor, emerged at sight of her, lifted hat revealing a great permanent wave of hair that could only be born not bought.
“H’lo, Hal.”
“Hello, Blossum.”
“Whose hot water bottle did you come to borrow?”
“Hot water bottle?”
“Yeh, you look like you got the double pneumonia and each one of the pneumonia’s got the tooth ache. Who stole your kite, ikkie boy?”
Mr. Hal Sanderson flung up a fine impatient head, the permanent hair-wave lifting,
“We’ll can the comedy, Blossum,” he said.
She lowered to a mock curtsey, mouth skewed to control laughter, arms akimbo.
“We will now sing psalm twenty-three.”
“Come to supper with me, Blos? You been dodging me pretty steady here lately.”
She clapped her hand to her brow, plastering a curl there.
“Migaw, I am now in the act of dropping thirty cents and ten cents tip into my Pig Bank. Will I go to supper with him? Say, darling, will the Hudson flow by Grant’s monument to-night at twelve? On a Saturday matinée he asks me to supper with a question mark.”
“Honest, Bloss, you’d hand a fellow a ha ha if he invited you to his funeral.”
She sobered at that, leaning against the cold plastered wall, winding one of the shining curls about her fore finger.
“What’s the matter—Hal?”
He handed her a torn newspaper sheet, blue penciled.
She took it but did not glance down.
“Drafted?”
“Yes,” he said.
The voice of a soubrette trilling snatches of her topical song as she creamed off her make-up, came to them through the sulky gloom of the corridor. Behind the closed door of Miss De Voe’s dressing room, the gabble of the pink satin ponies was like hash in the chopping. Overhead, moving scenery created a remote sort of thunder. She stood looking up at him, her young mouth parted.
“I—oh, Hal—well—well, whatta you know about that—Hal
Sanderson—drafted.”
He stepped closer, the pallor coming out stronger in his face, enclosed her wrist, pressing it.
“Grover’s drafted too.”
“Grover—too?”
“He’s three thousand and one. Ten numbers before me.”
Her irises were growing, blackening.
“Well, whatta you know about that? Grover White, the world’s dancing tenor, and Hal Sanderson the world dancing tenor’s understudy, drafted! The little tin soldiers are covered with rust and Uncle Sam is going to—”
“Hurry, Bloss, get into your duds. I want to talk. Hurry. We’ll eat over at Ramy’s.”
She turned but flung out an arm, grasping now his wrist.
“I—oh, Hal—I—I just never was so—so sad and so—so glad!”
The door opened to a slit enclosing her. In his imitation uniform, hand on empty carriage belt, Mr. Hal Sanderson stood there a moment, his face whitening, tightening.
In Ramy’s glorified basement, situated in one of the Forties which flow like tributaries into the heady waters of Broadway, one may dine from soup to nuts, raisins and regrest for one hour and sixty cents. In Ramy’s, courses may come and courses may go, but the initiated one holds on to his fork forever. Here red wine flows like water, being ninety-nine per cent., just that.
Across a water tumbler of ruby contents, Miss Blossom De Voe, the turbulent curls all piled up beneath a slightly dusty but highly effective amethyst velvet hat, regarded Mr. Sanderson, her perfect lips trembling as it were, against an actual nausea of the spirit which seemed to pull at them.
“Whadda you putting things up to me for, Hal? You’re old enough to know your own business.”
Blue shaved, too correct in one of Broadway’s black and white checked Campus Suits, his face as cleanly chiseled and thrust forward as a Discobolus, Mr. Sanderson patted an open letter spread out on the table cloth between them, his voice rising carefully above the din of diners.
“There’s fellows claiming exemption every hour of the day that ain’t got this much to show, Bloss. I was just wise enough to see these things and get ready for ’em.”
“You ain’t your mother’s sole support. What about them snapshots of the two farms of hers out in Ohio you gave me?”
“But I got to be in this country to take charge of her affairs for her—my mother’s old, honey—ain’t I the one to manager for her? Only child and all that. Honest, Bloss, you need a brick house.”
“Well, that old lawyer that wrote that letter has been doing it all the time, why all of a sudden should you—”
He cast his eyes ceilingward, flopping his hands down loosely to the table in an attitude of mock exhaustion.
“Oh, Lord, Bloss, lemme whistle it, maybe you can catch on the. Brains, honey, little Hal’s brains is what got that letter there written. I seen this coming from the minute conscription was in the air. Little Hal seen it coming, and got out his little hatchet. Try to prove that I ain’t the sole one to take charge of my mother’s affairs. Try to prove it. That’s what I been fixing for myself these two months, try to—”
“Sh-h-h-h, Charley—”
“Brains is what done it,—every little thing of my mother’s is in my care. I fixed it. Now little Blossy-blossum will you be good?”
He regarded her with cocked head and face receptive for her approval. “Now will you be good!”
She sat loosely, meeting his gaze, but her face as relaxed as her attitude. A wintry stare had set in.
“Oh,” she said, “I see.” And turned away her head.
He reached closer across the table, regardless of the conglomerate diners about, felt for her hand which lay limp and cold beside her plate, and which she withdrew.
“Darling,” he said, straining for her gaze.
“Don’t, Hal.”
“Darling, don’t you see? It’s fate knocking at our door. There’s not a chance rover can get exemption. He ain’t eve got a fifth cousin or a flat-foot!”
“Maybe he could claim exemption on dandruff.”
“I’m serious, honey. It’s going to be one of those cases where an understudy wakes up to find himself famous. I can’t fail if I get this chance, Bloss. It’s the moment I have been drudging for, for five solid years. I never was in such voice as now, I never was so fit. Not an ounce of fat. Not a song in the part I don’t know backwards. I tell you it’s the hand of fate, Bloss, giving us a hand-out. I can afford now, darling, to make good with you. On three fifty a week I can ask a little queen like you to double up with me. From thirty-five to three fifty! I tell you honey, we’re made. I’m going to dress my little dolly in cloth of gold and silver fox. I’m going to perch her in the suite de luxe of the swellest hotel in town. I’m—”
She pushed back from the table, turning more broadly from him.
“Don’t,” she said pressing her kerchief against her lips.
“Why—why what’s the matter, Bloss? Why—why, what’s the matter?”
“Don’t talk to me for a minute,” she said, still in profile; “I’ll be all right, only don’t talk.”
“Why, Bloss, you—sick?”
She shook her head. “No. No.”
“You ain’t getting cold feet now that we got the thing before us—in our hand?”
“I dunno. I dunno. I—don’t want nothing. That’s all, nothing but to be left alone.”
He sucked his lips inward, biting at them.
“Don’t—don’t think I ain’t noticed, Bloss, that you—you ain’t been the same—that you been different—for weeks. Sometimes I think maybe you’re going cold on—on this long engagement stuff. That’s why this thing is breaking just right for us, honey. I felt you slippin’ a little. I’m ready now, Peaches, we can’t go taxi-cabbing down for that license none too soon to suit me.”
She shook her head, beating softly with one small fist into her other palm.
“No, Hal,” she said, her mouth tightening and drawing down.
“Why—why, Bloss!”
Suddenly she faced him, her hands both fists now, and coming down with a force that shivered the china.
“You—you ain’t a man, you ain’t. You ain’t a man, you—you’re a slacker! You’re a slacker, that’s what you are, and Gawd, how I—how I hate a slacker!”
“Bloss—why, girl—you—you’re cra—-”
“Oh, I’ve known it. Deep down inside of me I’ve known it since the day we found ourselves in the mess of this war. I knew it, and all those months kept kidding myself that maybe—you—wasn’t.”
“You—”
“Thought maybe when you’d read the newspapers enough and heard the khaki-boys on the street corners enough, and listened to—to your country pleading enough that—that you’d rise up to show you was a man. I knew all these months down inside of me that you was a slacker, but I kept hopin’. Gawd how I kept hopin’.”
“You—you can’t talk to me that way! You’re—-”
“Can’t I! Ha! Anybody can talk any old way to a slacker he wants to and then not say enough. You ain’t got no guts you—you’re yellow, that’s what you are, you—”
“Blossum!”
“You, sneaking up to me with trumped up exemption stuff when your country’s talking her great heart out for men to stand by ’er! Gawd! If I was a man—If was a man she wouldn’t have to ask me twice, but before I went marching off I’d take time off to help the street cleaning department wipe up a few streets with the slackers I found loafing around under a government they were afraid to fight for. I’d show ’em. I’d show ’em if a government is good enough to live under it’s good enough to fight under. I’d show ’em.”
“If you was a man, Blossum, you’d eat those words. By God, you’d eat ’em. I’m no coward—I—”
“I know you’re not, Hal—that’s why I—I—”
“I got the right to decide for myself if I want to fight when I don’t know what I’m fighting for. This ain’t my war, this ain’t America’s war. Before I fight in it I want a darn sight to know what I’m fighting for, and not all the street corner rah rah stuff has told me yet. I ain’t a bull to go crazy with a lot of red waved in my face. I’ve got no blood to spill in the other fellow’s battle. I’m—-”
“No, but you—”
“I’m at a point in my life that I’ve worked like a dog to reach. Let the fellows that love the hero stuff give up their arms and their legs and the breath that’s in them for something they don’t know the meaning of. Because some big-gun of a Emperor out in Austria was assassinated, I ain’t going to bleed to death for it. It’s us poor devils that get the least out of the government that right away are called on to give the most, it’s us—-”
“Hal, ain’t—ain’t you ashamed!”
“No. I ain’t ashamed and I ain’t afraid. You know it ain’t because I’m afraid. I’ve licked more fellows in my time than most fellows can boast. I—I got the Fifty-fifth Street fire rescue medal to my credit if anybody should ask you. I—I—ask anybody from my town if any kid in it ever licked me. But I ain’t going to fight when I ain’t got a grudge against no man. Call that being a coward if you like, but then you and me don’t speak the same language.”
Her silence seemed to give off an icy vapor.
“That’s what they all say,” she said. “It’s like hiding behind a petticoat, hiding behind a defense like that. Sure you ain’t got a grudge. Maybe you don’t know what it’s all about—God knows who does. Nobody can deny that. There ain’t nothing reasonable about war, if there was there wouldn’t be none. That talk don’t get you nowheres. The proposition is that we’re at war, whatever you or anybody else may think of it.”
“That’s just it—we didn’t have no say-so.”
“Just the same, Hal Sanderson, this great big grand country of ours is at war, and needs you. It ain’t what you think any more that counts. Before we was in war you could talk all you wanted, but now that we’re IN, there’s only one thing to do, only one, and not all your fine talk about peace can change it. One thing to do. Fight!”
“No government can make me—”
“If you want peace now it’s up to you to help make it, a new peace and a grander peace, not go baying at the moon after a peace that ain’t no more.”
“You better get a soap box. If this is the way you got of trying to get out of something you’re sorry for, I’ll let you off easier—you don’t need to try to—-”
She regarded him with her lips quivering, a quick layer of tears forming, trembling and venturing to the edge of her lashes.
“Hal—Hal—a—a fellow that I’ve banked on like I have you! It ain’t that—you know it ain’t. I could have waited for ten times this long. It’s only I—I’m ashamed, Hal. Ashamed. there ain’t been a single gap in the chorus from one of the men enlisting that my heart ain’t just dropped in my shoes like dough. I never envied a girl on my life the way I did Elaine Vavasour when she stood on the curb at the Battery the other day crying and watching Charlie Kirkpatrick go marching off. Charlie was a pacifist, too, as long as the country was out of war, and there was something to argue about. The minute the question was settled, he shut up, buckled on his belt and went! That’s the kind of a pacifist to be. The kind of fellow that when he sees peace slipping, buckles on and starts out for a new peace; a realer peace. That’s the kind of a fellow I thought you—you—-”
Her voice broke then abruptly, in a rain of tears, and she raised the crook of her arm to her face with the gesture of a child. “That—that’s the kind of a fellow I—I—-”
His cigarette discarded and curling up in a little column of smoke between them, he sat regarding her, a heave surge of red rising above the impeccable white of his collar into the roots of his hair. It was as if her denouncement had come down in a welt across his face.
“Nobody ever—nobody ever dared to talk like this to me before. Nobody ever dared to call me a coward. Nobody. Because it ain’t so!”
“I know it ain’t, Hal. If it was could I have been so strong for you all these months? I knew the way you showed yourself in the Fifty-fifth Street fire. I read about it in the papers before I ever knew you. I—I know the way you mauled Ed Stein, twice your size, the night he tried to—to get fresh with me. I know you ain’t a slacker in your heart, Hal, but I—I couldn’t marry a man that got fake exemption. Couldn’t, no matter how it broke my heart to see him go marching off! Couldn’t! Couldn’t!”
“That’s what it means, Blossum—marching off!”
“I know it, but how—how could I marry a man that wasn’t fit to war his country’s uniform even in a show. I—I couldn’t marry a man like that if it meant the solid gold suite in the solid goldest hotel in this town. I couldn’t marry a—a fake khaki-boy!”
“Ain’t there no limit, Bloss, to the way you can make a fellow feel like dirt under your feet? My God! ain’t there no limit?”
“There—there’s nothing on earth can make a man of you, Hal, nothing on God’s earth but War! Every once in a while there’s some little reason seems to spring up for there bein’ a war. You’re one of them reasons, Hal. Down in my heart I know it that you’ll come back, and when I get a hunch it’s a hunch! Down in my heart I know it, dear, that you’ll come back to me. But you’ll come back a man, you’ll come back with the yellow streak pure gold, you’ll-you’ll come back to me pure gold, dear. I know it. I know it.”
His head was back as if his throat were open to the stroke of her words, but there was that growing in his face which was enormous, translucent, even apogean.
He tore up the paper between them, slowly, and in criss crosses.
“And you, Blossom?” he said, not taking his eyes, with their growing lights, off her.
“Why, I’ll be waiting, Hal,” she said, the pink coming out to flood her face, “I’ll be waiting—Sweetheart.”
[signed] Fannie Hurst