putting on the bandage was over and past, we was told that after we got on to the theory we'd be sent down to the Charity Ward for two solid weeks and practice what we'd learned. Well, I thought, if I ever get there Gawd[Pg 49] help the charity patients! I guess the two weeks won't qualify me for the Auto Service. More likely I'll be ready for the Battalion of Death, or whatever they call them Russian women! [Pg 49] Well, when the bandages was all gathered up we was dismissed, as they call it, and told to report for drill in a certain place in the park, it being a fine day. I must say I didn't think a whole lot of the hospital end of the game, because it wasn't pleasant. Of course I had no intention to quit in any way, but it sort of depressed me, what with all that sickness going on round me and the talk about wounds and bandages. And so my mind wasn't took off Jim, like it was by the auto work, me having a heart which needed a little bandaging—only that can't be done, of course. IV Well, on the way home I cried some more. And well I might. For when I got there had Jim phoned? He had not! Nobody but Goldringer, the manager, and Roscoe, the publicity man, and a few unimportant nuts like[Pg 50] that, and some of the newspapers. Ma had stalled them off pretty good by saying it was impossible to disturb me. Well [Pg 50] And it seems these people hadn't been able to locate Jim anywheres, either. At first that sounded sort of funny to me; but when I come to think it over I realized about his nose, where the alligator had bit him and the doctor had put on the brown stuff, from which he wouldn't naturally care to be seen—only no one could say that it would prevent him using the phone, which I also realized. Well, after I eat a little liver and bacon, and so on, which Ma had fixed for me, and cried some, which made me feel better again, I started out for drill; which means that now comes the real important part of what happened and the true measure of the tale, as the poet says. Well, it seems we rookies—and I must pause to mention that I don't like that word rookies; it sounds like something that would get the hook amateur nights. Well, as I was saying, we rookies was told to report at three o'clock for a private drill, all of our very
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