Battle Fatigue by Mark Kurlansky

back at the Germans, there wouldn’t have been a Pearl Harbor.”
    Now, I don’t understand that at all. Wasn’t it the Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor? As Dickey and I get the big Hemi engine back together with its parts clean and new gaskets placed on the edges and everything clamped in, he explains about the importance of standing up and fighting. I start to feel a lot better. Still, it is hard to believe that Dickey Panicelli is actually going to war. He is the first of us. We will all go, just like our fathers.
    Seeing his son enlist in the military is affecting Popeye’s walk. The difference is subtle, but I am sure I’m not imagining it. His elbows and knees stiffen and his back straightens and he walks as though marching on a parade ground, turning at an abrupt right angle to leave the garage and go into the house.

    Dickey has joined the marines and is training at boot camp. It is baseball season again so I wouldn’t have been working on cars with him anyway. But still, I keep thinking how the first of us is already off training for war.
    Then he is back, but only for a visit. In his uniform. A marines uniform with that great red stripe. I cannot help imagining how I would look in a uniform like this. I don’t want to be a marine, but they do have that uniform. I have always thought of myself going into the navy because I like their uniforms, but I have to admit a marine could look pretty good. We have all discussed the different branches of service. Rocco wants army, which I think is a mistake because my father and uncle didn’t seem to like it. Donnie and Stanley and I have been talking about the service since our Three Musketeers days. But we can never agree on where we are going to war together. Donnie likes the air force. Stanley likes the marines. A lot of these choices have to do with the uniforms.
    I have to look closely to see that it really is Dickey because they have shaved his hair off, making his ears and eyes seem very large and giving a kind of intense, almost angry look to his face.
    They really are sending him to Vietnam. I’m still not sure where that is. I ask him and he just says, “Somewhere in Asia, I guess.” I look on a map and it isn’t close to anything I know; it is a part of the map I have never looked at. When my brother and I were little we had a globe and we would spin it and stick a finger on it, and where the finger stopped was where we were going to go. Our fingers never landed anywhere near Vietnam.
    The next day Dickey leaves. He doesn’t seem worried, though his parents do. Popeye looks fierce and Mrs. Panicelli looks sad. But Dickey seems unfazed. I’ve seen kids look more nervous about going off to college. “It’s the training,” he explains. “I’m ready. You know, Joel”—he leans in closer because he wants to tell me something especially important—“you know, now when I hear ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ it means something.”
    I look at him and whisper back, “What does it mean, Dickey?”
    He just glares at me. It is a stupid question, I guess. Why am I always asking stupid questions? But I really wanted to know.

Chapter Seventeen
    The F-Word
    This year I will turn seventeen and it is a great year because the Yankees aren’t even in the World Series. It is between the Dodgers and the Twins and the Dodgers started off in trouble because Sandy Koufax took the first game off for Yom Kippur. I didn’t see that game anyway because my parents would not let me watch a game on Yom Kippur, one of the few Jewish holidays that we always observe. The other kids watched because they aren’t Jewish but they all said it was a terrible game.
    The first thing everyone was talking about was whether Koufax should pitch in the first game. Stanley came to me to ask if Yom Kippur was that big a deal given the importance of getting the best pitcher into game one. I