OSU Libraries
Oregon State UniversitySpecial Collections & Archives Research Center
Ninety Days Inside The Empire: A Novel by William Appleman Williams

Flying Home to Church

Page 23

The soccer was how Lieutenant Reis got the name Run-Run. He came to Annapolis as a midfielder from a posh prep school and could play the game flat-out longer and better than anybody else. He liked going until you were ready to drop and then going some more. He could see out of his ears and so could stop an attack and then make a cross-over pass that led to a score. Not always, but often enough. He was very good.

But soccer was not a big game and Jews were not all that welcome at Annapolis. It was not as bad as a century earlier when somehow a Negro slipped into the place. In those days the future officers and gentlemen chained "The Darkies" to a buoy in the bay and let the rust do the rest. Jews just got put off in a corner. Near the end of Plebe Year the Company Officer told Nathan in a most friendly way that he had a great future in the Supply Corps. "You people do that kind of thing better than the rest of us." Nathan saluted and walked out.

-- I've heard about the Negroes. I'm not going to count rubbers. I am going to be an officer of the line.

Shortly afterwards, during the summer cruise, he had anchored the blundering old battleship on the dot in the middle of the moorage circle on the chart, eaten his steak and apple pie for breakfast, chipped his share of deck plates and swabbed more than one stinking head. But nobody asked him to play cards or go off chasing girls on liberty. He wasn't in Coventry, but it was maybe even worse. He came back from the cruise angry and scared and lonely, and walked down one of the bare corridors of Bascom Hall crying.

And then this Middle in work whites with his tie awry and tied in a silly droppy bow came up to him and said: "What's the fuck wrong, Mate? Didn't you get the word that we ain't lower than the Admiral's cat's ass any more?" Then he did a little jig.

The dam burst.

"I'm a Jew and nobody will room with me." He had never before admitted any part of that in public and he was ashamed.

The wiry tow-headed kid gave him a knee in the thigh where it hurt and said: "Shit, man, you don't know nothin'. Wait till I tell you about this dumbhead who can't tell his ass from a bilge that I just walked out on. You got yourself a wife. Let's go move our gear."

At that moment neither of them knew what they were getting into-let alone understanding it. Nathan Reis had never been talked to like that before. Kerry Trevor Wye had never talked to anyone any different-well, except his mother and his grandmother, especially his grandmother. Both women knew the words and what they meant, but he was not supposed to know either that they knew them or that he knew and used them. But they most surely did know. And sometimes got angry and sometimes smiled.

Wye had grown up in a small farming and railroad town between Minneapolis and even the Indians didn't know where. It had some Jews and Negroes left over from that phase of the exploitation of The West. But he had been taught to treat them just like anybody else. He started kindergarten with them and along the line told some of them to get lost. Most of them he liked. The rest he just didn't care about one way or another. He could dance up a storm with any female of any color or religion and argue anybody into the ground. He also played basketball like a summer twister.

Except for the painful mess of his parents' divorce, Reis had lived a mostly protected life until he entered the Naval Academy. Jewish adults treated Jewish boys the right way, and Jewish boys treated Jewish adults with the proper respect. He had never been taught that there were people who simply didn't give a damn about his family or his religion. Of course he had learned about his family and his religion. Of course he had learned about the hate before his first year at Annapolis, but he was totally new to this indifference. It kind of shook him when he realized that Wye simply did not care about anything right then but getting the gear from the dock and moving it up to the room.