Free A Drinking Life by Pete Hamill

walking around in the dark streets shouting orders at the deaf, the careless, or the indifferent.
    On summer nights, these drills were exciting. Everybody would be out in the street, sitting on chairs or stoops or the front steps of the stores. Some of us even sat on Sanew’s newsstand. If it was hot, the big people drank hot tea, which was supposed to make you cooler. Most of the time they talked and joked and made fun of the air raid wardens, whose helmets for some reason were white, making them perfect targets for roaming Messerschmitts.
    On one such evening, a warden started shouting into Rattigan’s. Someone shouted back. Then the warden went into the saloon. Then he came hurtling out of the saloon and landed on his back, the helmet skittering away into the gutter. A group of men came outside behind him. One of them was my father.
    The warden stood up, shouting. On our side of the street, everybody was standing now, moving down to the corner. The argument got louder, the words still not clear. Then my mother started across the street. I followed her.
    Billy, she said, come on home.
    Stay out of this! he shouted.
    What’s the matter?
    This bum called Eddie Malloy a draft dodger!
    Draft dodger!
The worst words in the English language. Draft dodgers were rich guys. Draft dodgers were cowards. Some draft dodgers even wanted the Nazis to win.
    Yiz are all a bunch of draft dodgers! the warden said, standing now, adjusting his white helmet, trying through his anger to look dignified.
    Then a big suety guy with a flushed face came forward. This was Eddie Malloy.
    You say dat again, you bum, I put you down the sewer! I got t’ree kids in de army. I got one kid in da navy. I went down an’ volunteered da day after Poirl Harba!
Dey
toirned me down on accounta as’ma. An’ because I’m too old. I tried da navy. I tried da Marines. Don’t call me no draft dodger, you bastid.
    Then suddenly a police car with its lights out came around the corner of Twelfth Street and another one hurried along the avenue from Ninth Street.
    Come on home, Billy, my mother said, taking my father’s arm as I watched from the doorway of the Gapers Club.
    You
go home, he said, shaking off her hand. This is none of your goddamned business, woman.
    She backed away, shocked and hurt. Then the cops were piling out of the patrol cars, shouting, What the hell’s going on? The air raid warden pointed at the crowd.
    They assaulted me while I was doing my duty! he said.
    That’s a load of bullshit, my father said. He came in looking for trouble and he got it. Eddie Malloy was smoking a cigarette at the bar and when this idjit told him to put it out, Eddie laughed. Then he called Eddie a draft dodger.
    The biggest cop said, You’re Mister Malloy? I went to Holy Family with your son Jackie. How is he?
    Inna Sout’ Pacific, killin’ them Japs.
    The big cop turned to the crowd and said, Okay, let’s everybody go home now.
    Then he said to the air raid warden, Relax, pal. Go check out who’s smoking on Thirteenth Street.
    Then to Eddie Malloy, Go inside now, and for Chrissakes, don’t smoke ‘til the drill is over.
    The warden strode away in a fury. The cops got into their cars and left. The men were laughing and slapping each other on the back and then started inside. My father’s face was beaming. He’d told them, yeah. He’d told them. Then, as if remembering something, he separated from the others and came over to my mother.
    I’m sorry, Annie, he said. Come in, we’ll have a drink in the back.
    You can drink alone, she said, and took my hand and walked quickly back across the street.

14
    T HE WAR was always with us. On the radio, we heard about the men who were building Liberty Ships in two weeks and how, at the great plant in Willow Run, a complete bomber was coming off the assembly line every hour, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But in the summer at Coney Island, we saw lumpy blobs of congealed oil on the beaches and were told