Anyway, when Colonel Newton-Haddle asked him if civilian clothing was going to pose a problem, he said “No, Sir,” because he didn’t think it would be. But when he got home, went to his room and locked the door so nobody in the family would see him and ask what he was doing, and tried to put on his civilian clothes, none of them fit.
The first thing he thought was that the goddamned dry cleaners had shrunk them. That had happened before. But not even his shirts fit, and the dry cleaner couldn’t have fucked them up, because his shirts had been washed and ironed in the house by the maid.
After a while, though, what happened finally hit him: All the physical training he’d gone through, first basic training, then Officer Candidate School, and then jump school had really changed his body. He had real muscles now. That was why his jackets were too tight at the shoulders and he couldn’t even button his shirt collars.
It didn’t matter as long as he could wear his uniform. Colonel Newton-Haddle not only told him that he could wear his uniform at home, because that would keep people from asking questions about how come he wasn’t, but that he should. And there wasn’t a hell of a lot wrong with wearing the parachute wings and jump boots; that went with being an officer of the 82nd Airborne Division. He wore his uniform the two times he went out with his brothers, Angelo, Frank, and Dominic. And if it weren’t for Dominic, he knew damned well he could have gotten laid. But you don’t try to get laid when you’re out with a brother who is a priest and who is out drinking with you only because of a special dispensation from the pastor of his parish, because he told him you were going overseas.
Colonel Newton-Haddle had also told him he should explain to his family that he was going on temporary duty with a special engineer unit, and gave him an address in Washington where they could write to him. But he was not to tell them anything about going to Argentina; that was classified. So he hadn’t. An order is an order.
So what he did was wear his uniform all the time he was home. And then, along with his uniforms, he packed a sports shirt, a pair of pants, a two-tone (yellow sleeves and collar, blue body) zipper jacket with “Pelosi & Sons Salvage Company” lettered on the back, and a pair of shoes. They got him a compartment on the Crescent City Limited, and he decided to just wait until he was almost in New Orleans to change into the civilian stuff. The OSS gave him a check for two hundred dollars to buy civilian clothing; he’d do that in New Orleans. And he’d ask what he should do with his uniforms; he didn’t think they’d want him to take them down to South America.
Two things went wrong with that plan. First of all, he wasn’t all alone in the compartment. He thought he would have it all to himself, but when he got on the train there was already a guy in it. He was an expediter for the Western Electric Company, whatever the fuck that meant. So Tony had to come up with a bullshit story about having just been discharged from the 82nd Airborne because of a bad back he got jumping. Even when he showed the guy the draft card Colonel Newton-Haddle gave him that said he was an honorably discharged veteran, he didn’t think the Western Union guy believed him. And he sure gave him a funny look when he started changing out of his uniform and putting on the Cicero Softball League jacket.
He really hated taking off his uniform, especially the jump boots. You had to earn jump boots, and he really liked the way they felt, as well as the way they looked (he’d polished them so you could actually see your face reflected in the shine of the toes). He wondered when the hell he would ever be able to put them on again.
And then his goddamned civilian shoes were too small. He couldn’t figure that out. As far as he knew, there were no muscles in the feet, so they shouldn’t have grown the way his back and arms and neck had. But he could barely get the goddamned things on his feet; and when he did, it hurt him even to walk around the compartment. And when he walked three cars down to the dining car to have breakfast, his feet hurt him so much he didn’t believe it.
When he got back to the compartment, he took off his shoes. And when they pulled into the train station in New Orleans, he took his socks off and put the shoes back on without them.
Fuck how it looks. If I wear the socks, I’ll never make it all the way down the platform and into the station.
Halfway down the platform, Tony saw Staff Sergeant Ettinger waiting for him, just inside the station at the end of the platform. Ettinger was wearing a three-piece suit, and he was talking to a tall guy wearing a cowboy hat, boots, and a sheepskin coat.
The shit-kicker probably asked him a question or something.
When Ettinger saw him, he smiled and waved, and Tony walked up to him.
“What do you say, Ettinger?” Tony said.
“Nice trip, Tony?”
“It was all right.”
Tony saw the cowboy looking at his bare ankles.
Fuck you, Tex! Anybody wearing beat-up boots like yours is in no position to say anything about anybody else.
“Tony, this is…Mr. Frade,” Ettinger said.
Mr. Frade? This cowboy is Lieutenant Frade? A Marine officer?
“Good morning, Sir,” Lieutenant Pelosi said.
“’Morning,” Clete replied. “Pelo
si, from here on in, you can belay the ‘Sir’ business.”
“Excuse me?”
“We’re supposed to be civilians. Civilians don’t say ‘Sir.’ I’m Clete. He’s David. What’s your first name?”
“Anthony, Sir,” Tony said. Then, “Sorry.”
“That all your luggage, Anthony?”
“Yes, S—Yeah.”
“We’re parked out in front,” Clete said, then laughed. “What did you do, Anthony, forget your socks?”