“your party is not answering, sir.”
slim did not want to argue with the operator. he wanted his nickel back. “thank you, i will try later.” he hung the receiver up and his nickel dropped back down.
the war was over.
slim was out of the stockade, back in the u s a, and down on his luck.
he had about a dollar’s worth of nickels and he was using them to try to track down some old friends and cellmates to see if they could help him out or at least give him a helpful steer.
so far he had had twelve of his calls answered to the extent he could not get his nickel back but on only one of them had he actually got through to the person he was calling. that was rip johnson - why had he called that jerk? - and rip was no help at all and neither were any of the other people who had picked up - some of them wives or girl friends, most of them claiming they never heard of the party slim was calling.
and he had not gotten through at all, and gotten his nickel back, nineteen times.
the bus station was not that crowded, and the phones were not all being used, so slim could have kept going but he decided to quit for a while.
he went outside. he looked up and down the street and saw twenty places where he could get a cup of coffee.
at least in every one of them the coffee would taste great compared to the coffee in the stockade and on the troop ship that brought him back to the states.
he had forty cents left. should he get a cup of coffee and then panhandle? or should he panhandle the price of a cup of coffee first?
since being picked up in paris eighteen months ago and sent to the stockade he had not had to make any decisions like this.
he saw a man sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper. a big man, and he filled the bench up from side to side. the newspaper he was reading completely covered his face and upper body, but slim saw that he had a new shine on his shoes.
slim decided to ask the man for a nickel, maybe even for a dime.
he approached the man, and as he did, the man lowered the newspaper and looked directly at slim.
it was the general. in civilian clothes, and looking like he had put on a few pounds since slim saw him last.
“hello there,” the general said, as if he had seen slim a week ago.
“it’s a small world,” was the best slim could come up with.
“yes, and i do my part to make it smaller all the time,” the general replied.
“i like that suit,” slim said. “a little flashy, but on you it looks good.”
“thank you. you are looking well yourself,’ the general replied.
“i could use a square meal.”
the general laughed. “always right to the point. i am happy to see you haven’t changed.”
“you’re not sore, are you?”
“sore about what? we won the war, didn’t we?”
“that’s right, we did. why don’t we celebrate with some ham and eggs?”
“why not?” the general started to fold up his newspaper. “any place in particular you had in mind?”
“one place is as good as another.”
the general got to his feet. “isn’t it, though? i had a decent cup of coffee in that place over there.” he waved his paper at a place directly across from the bus station that seemed to be marked simply “cafe.”
“you weren’t following me, were you?” slim asked as he fell in beside the general.
“of course i was following you. what else would i be doing here? i have a job for you.”
“just like old times.”
“what’s wrong with old times?”
slim did not bother to answer. they waited for a break in the traffic, so that they could cross the street.
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