Page 143 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 113

more sense.”
“If I join the Reserves first, I can take basic where I want when I go
regular. This way I get Pendleton instead of Lejeune. This way I don’t have
to stay in the Midwest. This way I get to go to California.”
“This way you get to kill the dirty Gerries, or the dirty Commies, or
whoever’s dirty the next time.”
Thom’s face flushed. “In basic, asshole, they’ll teach me thirteen ways
to kill a man above the neck.” Thom reached out and twisted Ryan into
a wrestling hold. “Thirteen ways,” Thom said, “and I’ll start with you.”
“Guess again, asshole!” Ryan reached out and grasped, barely at first
with his fingers, and then with his whole hand their father’s heavy wooden
ashtray stand.
“Seminarians shouldn’t talk dirty,” Thom said. He was trying to drop
Ryan to the wall-to-wall carpeting.
“When I’m with dirt, I talk dirt.” Ryan spun free. He swung the
ashtray stand up into a high arc. He slammed it down onto Thom’s neck,
whacking his trapezius muscle as hard as he could. Thom hit the family-
room floor. “I always,” Ryan said, “fight dirty.” Thom lay sprawled out
on the rug, holding his upper shoulder, boo-hooing the way teenagers
cry. “You never learn, do you?” Ryan said. “Catch on, stupid! I’ve never
started a fight with you; but every fight you’ve started with me, I’ve won.
And I always will! So screw you, asshole. The only reason you’re joining
the Marines is so you think you can come back and beat the shit out of
me.” Ryan kicked Thom in the rump. “Try again, Cain, when you’re
able—which you and the Marines’ll never be.”
“You’re about as funny,” Thom said, standing up and dusting himself
off, “as a wicker bedpan in a diarrhea ward.”
“You’re so original I could puke.”
“You’re a phony, a fake! There’s something wrong with you,” Thom
screamed. “You’re some kind of freak! Like uncle Les! You holy-holy types!
You’re all freaks!”
Ryan was three years from knowing about uncle Les, but Thom knew
a freak when he saw one. The month after he finished boot camp at Pend-
leton, he married, much against his parents’ wishes, a fifteen-year-old San
Fernando Valley girl named Sandy.
“She wasn’t even baptized with a saint’s name,” Ryan said.
“I have to marry her.” Thom telephoned his parents long distance. He
was almost eighteen and he needed their permission as much as he wanted
their approval.
“Don’t give it,” Ryan said.

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