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Read Ebook: The Recruit by Walton Bryce Schelling George Illustrator
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Ebook has 594 lines and 60350 words, and 12 pages
THE RECRUIT
BY BRYCE WALTON
It was dirty work, but it would make him a man. And kids had a right to grow up--some of them!
Wayne, unseen, sneered down from the head of the stairs.
The old man with his thick neck, thick cigar, evening highball, potgut and bald head without a brain in it. His slim mother with nervously polite smiles and voice fluttering, assuring the old man by her frailty that he was big in the world. They were squareheads one and all, marking moron time in a gray dream. Man, was he glad to break out.
The old man said, "He'll be okay. Let him alone."
"But he won't eat. Just lies there all the time."
"Hell," the old man said. "Sixteen's a bad time. School over, waiting for the draft and all. He's in between. It's rough."
Mother clasped her forearms and shook her head once slowly.
"We got to let him go, Eva. It's a dangerous time. You got to remember about all these dangerous repressed impulses piling up with nowhere to go, like they say. You read the books."
"But he's unhappy."
"Are we specialists? That's the Youth Board's headache, ain't it? What do we know about adolescent trauma and like that? Now get dressed or we'll be late."
Wayne watched the ritual, grinning. He listened to their purposeless noises, their blabbing and yakking as if they had something to say. Blab-blab about the same old bones, and end up chewing them in the same old ways. Then they begin all over again. A freak sideshow all the way to nowhere. Squareheads going around either unconscious or with eyes looking dead from the millennium in the office waiting to retire into limbo.
How come he'd been stuck with parental images like that? One thing--when he was jockeying a rocket to Mars or maybe firing the pants off Asiatic reds in some steamy gone jungle paradise, he'd forget his punkie origins in teeveeland.
But the old man was right on for once about the dangerous repressed impulses. Wayne had heard about it often enough. Anyway there was no doubt about it when every move he made was a restrained explosion. So he'd waited in his room, and it wasn't easy sweating it out alone waiting for the breakout call from HQ.
"Well, dear, if you say so," Mother said, with the old resigned sigh that must make the old man feel like Superman with a beerbelly.
They heard Wayne slouching loosely down the stairs and looked up.
"Relax," Wayne said. "You're not going anywhere tonight."
"What, son?" his old man said uneasily. "Sure we are. We're going to the movies."
He could feel them watching him, waiting; and yet still he didn't answer. Somewhere out in suburban grayness a dog barked, then was silent.
"Okay, go," Wayne said. "If you wanta walk. I'm taking the family boltbucket."
"But we promised the Clemons, dear," his mother said.
"Hell," Wayne said, grinning straight into the old man. "I just got my draft call."
He saw the old man's Adam's apple move. "Oh, my dear boy," Mother cried out.
"So gimme the keys," Wayne said. The old man handed the keys over. His understanding smile was strained, and fear flicked in his sagging eyes.
"Do be careful, dear," his mother said. She ran toward him as he laughed and shut the door on her. He was still laughing as he whoomed the Olds between the pale dead glow of houses and roared up the ramp onto the Freeway. Ahead was the promising glitter of adventure-calling neon, and he looked up at the high skies of night and his eyes sailed the glaring wonders of escape.
"Where you think you're going, my pretty lad?"
Wayne grinned down. "Higher I hope than a typewriter jockey."
"Well," the sergeant said. "How tough we are this evening. You have a pass, killer?"
"Wayne Seton. Draft call."
"Oh." The sergeant checked his name off a roster and nodded. He wrote on a slip of paper, handed the pass to Wayne. "Go to the Armory and check out whatever your lusting little heart desires. Then report to Captain Jack, room 307."
"Thanks, sarge dear," Wayne said and took the elevator up to the Armory.
A tired fat corporal with a naked head blinked up at tall Wayne. Finally he said, "So make up your mind, bud. Think you're the only kid breaking out tonight?"
"Hold your teeth, pop," Wayne said, coolly and slowly lighting a cigarette. "I've decided."
The corporal's little eyes studied Wayne with malicious amusement. "Take it from a vet, bud. Sooner you go the better. It's a big city and you're starting late. You can get a cat, not a mouse, and some babes are clever hellcats in a dark alley."
"You must be a genius," Wayne said. "A corporal with no hair and still a counterboy. I'm impressed. I'm all ears, Dad."
The corporal sighed wearily. "You can get that balloon head ventilated, bud, and good."
Wayne's mouth twitched. He leaned across the counter toward the shelves and racks of weapons. "I'll remember that crack when I get my commission." He blew smoke in the corporal's face. "Bring me a Smith and Wesson .38, shoulder holster with spring-clip. And throw in a Skelly switchblade for kicks--the six-inch disguised job with the double springs."
The corporal waddled back with the revolver and the switchblade disguised in a leather comb case. He checked them on a receipt ledger, while Wayne examined the weapons, broke open the revolver, twirled the cylinder and pushed cartridges into the waiting chamber. He slipped the knife from the comb case, flicked open the blade and stared at its gleam in the buttery light as his mouth went dry and the refracted incandescence of it trickled on his brain like melted ice, exciting and scary.
He removed his leather jacket. He slung the holster under his left armpit and tested the spring clip release several times, feeling the way the serrated butt dropped into his wet palm. He put his jacket back on and the switchblade case in his pocket. He walked toward the elevator and didn't look back as the corporal said, "Good luck, tiger."
Captain Jack moved massively. The big stone-walled office, alive with stuffed lion and tiger and gunracks, seemed to grow smaller. Captain Jack crossed black-booted legs and whacked a cane at the floor. It had a head shaped like a grinning bear.
Wayne felt the assured smile die on his face. Something seemed to shrink him. If he didn't watch himself he'd begin feeling like a pea among bowling balls.
Contemptuously amused little eyes glittered at Wayne from a shaggy head. Shoulders hunched like stuffed sea-bags.
"Wayne Seton," said Captain Jack as if he were discussing something in a bug collection. "Well, well, you're really fired up aren't you? Really going out to eat 'em. Right, punk?"
"Yes, sir," Wayne said. He ran wet hands down the sides of his chinos. His legs seemed sheathed in lead as he bit inwardly at shrinking fear the way a dog snaps at a wound. You big overblown son, he thought, I'll show you but good who is a punk. They made a guy wait and sweat until he screamed. They kept a guy on the fire until desire leaped in him, ran and billowed and roared until his brain was filled with it. But that wasn't enough. If this muscle-bound creep was such a big boy, what was he doing holding down a desk?
"Well, this is it, punk. You go the distance or start a butterfly collection."
The cane darted up. A blade snicked from the end and stopped an inch from Wayne's nose. He jerked up a shaky hand involuntarily and clamped a knuckle-ridged gag to his gasping mouth.
Captain Jack chuckled. "All right, superboy." He handed Wayne his passcard. "Curfew's off, punk, for 6 hours. You got 6 hours to make out."
"Yes, sir."
"Your beast is primed and waiting at the Four Aces Club on the West Side. Know where that is, punk?"
"No, sir, but I'll find it fast."
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