VJ DAY
by Floyd Salas
(from his novelThe Dirty Boogie)
 

"Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
the air-raid siren goes off on the Oakland Tribune Tower and everybody freezes in the doctor's office, but the spot of blood pops up on my thumb and the nurse quickly flips a drop of it onto the glass slide and wipes the blood off with a dab of cotton and drops it in the wastebasket and stands up and runs to the window with me as the siren keeps blasting, blasting, blasting, a long, deep hoot that won't stop blasting: "Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
But it isn't an air-raid, because everybody else is at their office windows too and dumping paper out the windows, down onto the people running out of the stores and restaurants and bars and onto the sidewalk and the street, and everybody's yelling and shouting, "The War's over! The War's over!"
Horns honk and cars and streetcars stop right where they are in the middle of the street, and the drivers and passengers jump out of their cars and run up and hug each other and kiss each other and spin each other in circles and dance and shout and scream, and Broadway, the main street of town, suddenly becomes a river of people, currents of people, whirlpools of people, splashes of people, torrents of people running and mingling and turning and churning in all different directions like some giant New Year's Eve in the middle of a hot summer day!
I run out of the office where I went to get a blood test for my tonsil operation the coming week that the doctor says will help me grow, because I've barely grown since Mom died. I run down the four flights of stairs to Thirteenth Street and right to the corner of Broadway where I plunge into the crowd and scream and yell with everybody else because it's over and Evan will be coming home from the Pacific and Manny will be coming home from Texas and all my cousins will be coming home and no more Americans will die in the War, and we'll have a family again. My family, I think, and the thought brings tears to my eyes.
I move with the crowd as it forms a spontaneous parade of people marching on the sidewalks and riding on car bumpers and roofs and truck beds and the backs of streetcars. I join it as it moves up Broadway where I see freckle-faced Jack Soots standing by Compton's Donut Shop.
Jack waves, says, "Come on," and runs into the street and leaps up onto a truckbed full of young men and women, and I leap on, too, and shout and yell with Jack, and soon Greg Jones appears and Gato and Warner and Irv Brill, too, my buddy who lives across the street, and it seems like everybody in Oakland has come uptown for a great big party.
Everybody's celebrating, breaking bottles open out on the truckbed, and sailors are kissing all the young women, and I wish I was older and bigger so I could kiss them all, too. But I'm happy and I stay on the truck with all my buddies and wave to Mona when the parade moves past the corner of Kress's Five and Dime where she stands out on the sidewalk and she waves and smiles at me. I want to jump down from the truck and run up and kiss her because I know she secretly likes me, but I'm afraid everybody will look at me, and I only wave back and lose sight of her pretty face in a quarter of a block.
Then I join Jack and Warner and Gato and Greg and Irv when they jump off the truck and leap onto a car, climb onto its running board and bumper and up onto its top as it moves up Broadway. I scream and shout and want to do something to show how I feel, want to do something heroic. I wish I had a trumpet and could play like Jack and Benny, that I could blow a beautiful song from the top of the car to show how good I feel, how good I really feel, now that my brothers will be coming home. We'll have a family again! We'll have a family again!
"Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!" I shout and lift my fist up at the people in the buildings above us. I shout and scream and squeeze everybody's hand who will let me, who will touch me back. We all shout and scream, scream and shout, "Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! . . . Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!"

*

I'm standing so close to Gene Krupa up on the bandstand at night, I can see the sweat popping out in little beads all over the thumping, drumming, pop-pop-popping, famous drummer's face. He looks like Manny. He looks a lot like Manny. Manny, who won't die now. It's the end of the war. It's VJ Day. And Krupa's filled the block-size auditorium with his thumping, jumping, big beat, big band, boogie-woogie sound.
The place is packed on VJ Day night. Soldiers and sailors and marines by the thousands. Packed with young people in their new fancy war-bought clothes. The men in suits and ties. All the women in fancy dresses and high heels. And lipstick and mascara. And pretty hairdos and pompadours. For VJ Day. VJ Day!
Everybody dancing in small circles, so little room. Here and there a circle forming, clearing a space to watch dancers jitterbugging it up, daring to break apart and dirty-boogie and snap their hips at each other with each pounding beat. Shimmying and shaking. Doing every kind of mating dance in tune, in time to the rocking beat, the thumping beat.
I stand next to the bandstand with my buddies in the mass of people, thrilled by what I see. An army of Napoleon after a great battle. When there's no more death. Drunk and dancing with the girls. I'm present at a great historical spectacle. Just like in the biography of Napoleon I've just read.
Then the band suddenly hits it hard again with a loud blast of trumpets and a roll of drums, and it looks like everybody in the whole place starts jitterbugging. We form a circle around a girl from our neighborhood who's dancing right next to us with a soldier from the neighborhood, too. She can really dance.
Everyone stands around them, grinning, and claps in time to the jumping sound, grinning, watching her curvy ass in the knee-length skirt shimmy and shake away in rocking time as she breaks apart from her partner and backs up to do the dirty boogie. She doesn't see me and bumps into me with her butt.
"Hey, Baby!" I say and shake my butt, too.
"Dance!" she says and grabs my hand and jerks me out into the circle, and I grab her and spin her and twist and turn and skip under my arm and under hers and twirl her around and clasp hands and meet her and skip back and stamp my feet and then break apart from her and wiggle my shoulders and flutter my hands and rock my head and shuffle my feet all in time to the boogie woogie sound.
She gasps and claps her hand over her mouth and flutters her eyelashes and wiggles her eyebrows and shakes her butt and her shoulders and her head and sands her feet in her pointed high heels, and quivers her whole body in pulsing rhythm as we move around and around inside the circle, around and around, keeping the motion in perfect beat.
I swing to the big band, the dirty-boogie woogie, come-and-get-me-baby sound. It goes on and on and on and on to a great big band climax, and me and the pretty young girl stop in perfect time, frozen in motion for just that final second of sound.

*

Stuffed with hot dogs, about two o'clock in the morning when it seems like the celebration has been going on for days already, I walk with my buddies away from the Oakland Auditorium where Krupa wailed with his band and see a teenage kid picking the pockets of a drunken sailor lying in the darkness under a small tree.
The kid touches him carefully, slowly, but doesn't even bother to glance over at me and my buddies, all dressed in our drape slacks, with baggy knees and tight cuffs, sport shirts and sweaters, and fingertip length sport coats.
We say nothing. We keep moving. We only stop to watch when two young sailors suddenly start fighting on the sidewalk right across from Lake Merritt and one knocks the other down and kicks him in the face, not real hard but enough to make him shout, "I quit! I quit!"
We move on and keep moving, only stare when we hear a siren and see a fire truck come swinging down next to the lake, shoot past us in front of the auditorium, because it must be the hundredth fire truck we've seen come rushing by, going nowhere but to a false alarm today. Fire alarm boxes with the glass broken and the little doors hanging open on them are on every other corner. We watch without any real interest as it rumbles and screams by us, and keep walking down the broad sidewalk toward town again, still looking for something to do, but heading generally in the direction of our neighborhood on the other side of downtown.
"Look!" I say, and everybody turns to see a sailor running fast down the street toward us, a skinny little guy with his black navy raincoat unbuttoned and flapping at his heels.
When he runs past us, I notice his smooth pink face and the round sailor's cap pulled down low over his head clear to his ears, not shaped like a cute little rowboat perched on the top of his forehead like a sharp sailor from our neighborhood would wear it. He looks comic with his black coat flapping in the wind behind him, a little like Laurel, the skinny little sissy sidekick of Hardy, the fat man in the comedy team of Laurel and Hardy.
We idly walk along in the same direction behind him as he runs off up the street toward downtown and disappears from sight on the other side of the courthouse. We're all tired, finally, after hours and hours and hours of celebration, and not very interested in the sailor, when, glancing back, I see a big husky sailor, a lumbering heavyweight, come running from the same direction as the little sailor. He's running hard, but slow and panting, panting, his face red and sweating, and grunting with each breath.
"Say! What's up?" I ask.
"Hu-hu-hu-hu-" the big sailor pants, running toward us. "You, hu-hu, catch, hu-hu, that sailor and I'll, hu-hu, give you a buck apiece, hu-hu-hu-hu-hu."
"Let's go, you guys," I say, and we start running.
Refreshed by the excitement, we run up the small rise, but see the sailor still a block ahead, and I say, "Catch up to him, Warner, and slow him down."
Warner, all five foot eight and a hundred and thirty-five pounds, sails down the sidewalk, seeming to barely touch the concrete, and catches up with the sailor in two blocks, bumps into him, blocks his way, hampers him, and slows him down to a walking trot until me and the others can catch up.
Noticing how the skinny little sailor is barely moving now and how his pink cheeks, glistening with sweat and puffing in and out with his short breaths, make him look so much like a sissy, a little momma's boy, I say, "Hey! That big sailor told us he'd give us a dollar apiece if we caught you for him."
"Oh, no! Oh, no!" the pink-cheeked sailor cries, and slaps his hand over his mouth like a girl. "I'll, I'll give you a dollar apiece if you let me go! I will! Here! Here!" he cries and reaches into his breast pocket, pulls out his black wallet, digs into the bills there and hands me a dollar.
Then all the guys crowd around him and get in front of him and stop him to get their dollars, too, and I hold out my hand again and he gives me another dollar. But when he puts his wallet back in his pocket and tries to run, I stick my foot out, catch my toe on his ankle, and trip him, drop him flat on his face, his black coat spread out like bat's wings. Then when he jumps up to run, all the guys jump in front of him and block his path.
"Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!" he cries as the big sailor comes running up and tackles him, knocks him flat on his face again, straddles his back like a horse, holds him down, then pulls out his wallet, gives each of us a dollar, says, "Okay, blow!" and waves us off.
As we walk away, he grabs the little sailor by the back of his neck and says, "Got you, you sonofabitch! Got you! Got you, you little sonofabitch!"

*

The house looks all dark when I let myself into the big hall. I start to go up the stairs to my room when I notice a crack of light under the dining room door, and thinking Dad might still be up, I go back to wish him a happy V-J Day, a Victory in Japan Day, since I haven't even seen him in three days.
But no one's in the kitchen where the light is on, only an empty whiskey bottle and several small glasses on the table. I don't feel bad, though, because Dad doesn't get drunk too much anymore. But when I glance into the dark bedroom and see him lying on his stomach with one arm hanging off the bed, his mouth in a pillow and snorting as if he's having trouble breathing, I get worried and hurry into the room and up to the bed to see if he's okay. I try to roll the big fat man over on his back so he can breathe, but can't, it's like trying to turn over a giant boulder and I say, "Daddy! Daddy! Are you okay?"
"Huh? Huh? Huh? What?" Dad asks and opens one eye, stares at me blindly with a glazed eyeball. Then it suddenly focuses and he grabs my wrist and jerks me onto the bed as he rolls over on his back and hugs me, saying, "My poor little boy! My poor little boy! It's over! It's over! Your brothers will be coming home! They'll be coming home! And I've got you here with me! My little boy! My poor little boy! His brothers will be coming home!"
Then he starts kissing me on the cheek. He kisses me and kisses me and kisses me and mumbles, "My poor little boy . . ! My poor little boy . . ! He's safe! He's safe! He'll never have to go to war! My little boy! My poor little boy!"
Then he starts french-kissing me on the cheek, tonguing my cheek, kissing me all over my cheek, slobbering my face.
I try to break away. I throw my feet off the bed, and try to pull out of his strong grip, saying, "Daddy! Hey, Daddy! Please, Daddy! Hey, Daddy! Please, Daddy!"
I feel embarassed, then -- when he won't let go, and won't stop kissing me -- silly, and I finally grin, then chuckle, and then, as he keeps on kissing my cheek, break out laughing, saying, "You're right, Daddy! Evan and Manny are coming home! They're coming home!" And I keep laughing and laughing and laughing.