The Young Lions

As Michael dressed he tried to think about other things. There was something inglorious about sitting, a little hung-over from last night's nervous drinking, in this over-fancy, pink-chiffon, rented bedroom, uneasily going over your finances on this morning of decision, like a book-keeper who has lifted fifty dollars from the till and is worrying about how to get it back before the auditors arrive. The men at the guns in Honolulu were probably in even worse financial straits, but he was sure they weren't worrying about it this morning. Still, it was impracticable to go down and enlist immediately. It was ridiculous, but patriotism, like almost every other generous activity, was easier for the rich, too.

Outside, across the street, on a vacant lot that rose quite steeply above the rest of the ground around it, there were two Army trucks and an anti-aircraft gun and soldiers in helmets were digging in. The gun, poking its long, covered muzzle up at the sky, and the busy soldiers scraping out an emplacement as though they were already under fire, struck Michael as incongruous and comic. This, too, must be a local phenomenon. It was impossible to believe that any place elsewhere in the country the Army was going to these melodramatic lengths. And, somehow, soldiers and guns had always seemed to Michael, as they did to most Americans, like instruments for a kind of boring, grown-up game, not like anything real. And this particular gun was stuck between a woman's Monday wash-line, brassieres and silk stockings and pantie girdles, and on the back door of a Spanish bungalow, with the morning's milk still on the steps.

Michael walked towards Wilshire Boulevard, towards the drugstore where he usually had his breakfast. There was a bank building on the corner, with a line of people outside the door, waiting for the bank to open. A young policeman was keeping them in order, saying over and over again, "Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen. Keep your places. Don't worry. You'll all get your money."

Michael went up to the policeman, curiously. "What's going on here?" he asked.

The policeman looked sourly at him. "The end of the line, Mister," he said, pointing.

"I don't want to get inside," said Michael. "I haven't any money in this bank. Or," and he gri

The policeman smiled back at him, as though this expression of poverty had made sudden friends of them. "They're gettin' it out," he gestured with his head to the line of people, "before the bombs fall on the vaults."

Michael stared at the people in the line. They stared back with hostility, as though they suspected anyone who talked to the policeman of being in conspiracy to defraud them of their money. They were well dressed, and there were many women among them.

"Back east," the policeman said in a loud, contemptuous stage whisper. "They're all heading back east as soon as they get it out. I understand," he said very loudly, so that everyone in the line could hear him, "that ten Japanese divisions have landed at Santa Barbara. The Bank of America is going to be used as headquarters for the Japanese General Staff, starting tomorrow."

"I'm going to report you," a severe middle-aged woman in a pink dress and a wide blue straw hat said to the policeman. "See if I don't."

"The name, Lady, is McCarty," said the policeman.

Michael smiled as he moved on towards his breakfast, but he walked reflectively past the plate-glass windows of the shops, some of which already had strips of plaster across them as a protection from blast. The rich, he thought, are more sensitive to disaster than others. They have more to lose and they are quicker to run. It would never occur to a poor man to leave the West Coast because there was a war on somewhere in the Pacific. Not out of patriotism, perhaps, or fortitude, but merely because he couldn't afford it.

He went into the drug-store and ordered orange juice, toast and coffee.

He met Cahoon at one o'clock at the famous restaurant in Beverly Hills. It was a large, dark room, done in the curving, startling style affected by movie-set designers. It looks, Michael thought, standing at the bar, surveying the crowded civilian room, in which one uniform, on a tall infantry sergeant, stood out strangely, it looks like a bathroom decorated by a Woolworth salesgirl for a Balkan queen. The image pleased him and he gazed with more favour on the ta

There were rumours and anecdotes about the war already. A famous director walked through the room with a set face, whispering here and there that of course he didn't want it spread around, but we hadn't a ship in the Pacific, and a fleet had been spotted 300 miles off the Oregon coast. And a writer had heard a producer in the MGM barber-shop sputter, through the lather on his face, "I'm so mad at those little yellow bastards, I feel like throwing up my job here and going – going…" The producer had hesitated, groping for the most violent symbol of his feeling of outrage and duty. Finally he had found it," – going right to Washington." The writer was having a great success with the story. He was going to table after table with it, cleverly leaving on the burst of laughter it provoked, to move on to new listeners.

Cahoon was quiet and abstracted and Michael could tell that he was in pain from his ulcer, although he insisted upon drinking an old-fashioned at the bar before going to their table. Michael had never seen Cahoon have a drink before.

They sat down at one of the booths to wait for Milton Sleeper, the author of the play Cahoon was working on, and for Kirby Hoyt, a movie actor whom Cahoon hoped to induce to play in it.

Cahoon stared gloomily at two comedians who were making their way along the bar, laughing loudly and shaking hands with all the drinkers. "This town," he said. "I'd give the Japanese High Command five hundred dollars and two seats to the opening nights of all my plays if they'd bomb it tomorrow. Mike," he said, without looking at Michael, "I'm going to say something very selfish."

"Go ahead," Michael said.

"Don't go in till we get this play on. I'm too tired to get a show on by myself. And you've been in on it since the begi

"Don't worry," Michael said softly, half afraid already that he was leaping at this honourable excuse in friendship's name to remain aloof from the war for another season. "I'll hang around."

"They'll get along without you," Cahoon said, "for a couple of months. We'll win the war anyway."

He stopped talking. Sleeper was threading his way through the crowd towards their booth. Sleeper dressed like a forceful young writer, dark blue work shirt and a tie that was off to one side. He was a handsome, heavy-set, arrogant man, who had written two inflammatory plays about the working class several years before. He sat down without shaking hands.

"Double Scotch," Sleeper said to the waiter. "Well," he said loudly, "Uncle Sam has finally backed his tail into the service of humanity."

"Did you rewrite Scene Two yet?" Cahoon asked.

"For Christ's sake, Cahoon!" Sleeper said. "Do you think a man can work at a time like this?"

"Just thought I'd ask," said Cahoon.

"Blood," said Sleeper, sounding, Michael thought, like a character in one of his plays. "Blood on the palm trees, blood on the radio, blood on the decks, and he asks about the second scene! Wake up, Cahoon. A cosmic moment. Thunder in the bowels of the earth. The human race is twisting, tortured and bleeding in its uneasy sleep."

"Save it," said Cahoon, "for the trial scene."

"Cut it." Sleeper glowered heavily under his heavy, handsome eyebrows. "Cut those brittle, Broadway jokes. That time's past, Cahoon, passed for ever. The first bomb yesterday dropped right in the middle of the last wisecrack. Where's the Ham?" He looked around him restlessly, tapping the table in front of him.