“Goin' to tear things up?”
“Man...I got a girl at home back in Frisco. She's a good kid.”
“Yer right not to go with any of the girls in this goddam town.... They ain't clean, none of 'em.... That is if ye want to go overseas.”
The flaxen-haired youth leaned across the table earnestly.
“I'm goin' to git some more chow: Wait for me, will yer?” said Fuselli.
“What yer going to do down town?” asked the flaxen-haired youth when Fuselli came back.
“Dunno,—run round a bit an' go to the movies,” he answered, filling his mouth with potato.
“Gawd, it's time fer retreat.” They overheard a voice behind them.
Fuselli stuffed his mouth as full as he could and emptied the rest of his meal reluctantly into the garbage pail.
A few moments later he stood stiffly at attention in a khaki row that was one of hundreds of other khaki rows, identical, that filled all sides of the parade ground, while the bugle blew somewhere at the other end where the flag-pole was. Somehow it made him think of the man behind the desk in the office of the draft board who had said, handing him the papers sending him to camp, “I wish I was going with you,” and had held out a white bony hand that Fuselli, after a moment's hesitation, had taken in his own stubby brown hand. The man had added fervently, “It must be grand, just grand, to feel the danger, the chance of being potted any minute. Good luck, young feller.... Good luck.” Fuselli remembered unpleasantly his paper-white face and the greenish look of his bald head; but the words had made him stride out of the office sticking out his chest, brushing truculently past a group of men in the door. Even now the memory of it, mixing with the strains of the national anthem made him feel important, truculent.