This last sort didn't mean much in itself since it was usually added to extra duty so demanding that you didn't have any time in your tent other than for sleep anyhow; it was a decoration added like a cherry on top of a dish of ice cream to notify you and the world that you had pulled not some everyday goof-off but something unbecoming of a member of the M. I. and were thereby unfit to associate with other troopers until you had washed away the stain.
But at Camp Spooky we could go into town -- duty status, conduct status, etc., permitting. Shuttles ran to Vancouver every Sunday morning, right after divine services (which were moved up to thirty minutes after breakfast) and came back again just before supper and again just before taps. The instructors could even spend Saturday night in town, or cop a three-day pass, duty permitting.
I had no more than stepped out of the shuttle, my first pass, than I realized in part that I had changed. Johnnie didn't fit in any longer. Civilian life, I mean. It all seemed amazingly complex and unbelievably untidy.
I'm not running down Vancouver. It's a beautiful city in a lovely setting; the people are charming and they are used to having the M. I. in town and they make a trooper welcome. There is a social center for us downtown, where they have dances for us every week and see to it that junior hostesses are on hand to dance with, and senior hostesses to make sure that a shy boy (me, to my amazement -- but you try a few months with nothing female around but lady jack rabbits) gets introduced and has a partner's feet to step on.
But I didn't go to the social center that first pass. Mostly I stood around and gawked -- at beautiful buildings, at display windows filled with all manner of unnecessary things (and not a weapon among them), at all those people running around, or even strolling, doing exactly as they pleased and no two of them dressed alike—and at girls.
Especially at girls. I hadn't realized just how wonderful they were. Look, I've approved of girls from the time I first noticed that the difference was more than just that they dress differently. So far as I remember I never did go through that period boys are supposed to go through when they know that girls are different but dislike them; I've always liked girls.
But that day I realized that I had long been taking them for granted.
Girls are simply wonderful. Just to stand on a corner and watch them going past is delightful. They don't walk. At least not what we do when we walk. I don't know how to describe it, but it's much more complex and utterly delightful. They don't move just their feet; everything moves and in different directions... and all of it graceful.
I might have been standing there yet if a policeman hadn't come by. He sized us up and said, "Howdy, boys. Enjoying yourselves?"
I quickly read the ribbons on his chest and was impressed. "Yes, sir!"
"You don't have to say ‘sir' to me. Not much to do here. Why don't you go to the hospitality center?" He gave us the address, pointed the direction and we started that way—Pat Leivy, "Kitten" Smith, and myself. He called after us, "Have a good time, boys... and stay out of trouble." Which was exactly what Sergeant Zim had said to us as we climbed into the shuttle.
But we didn't go there. Pat Leivy had lived in Seattle when he was a small boy and wanted to take a look at his old home town. He had money and offered to pay our shuttle fares if we would go with him. I didn't mind and it was all right; shuttles ran every twenty minutes and our passes were not restricted to Vancouver. Smith decided to go along, too.
Seattle wasn't so very different from Vancouver and the girls were just as plentiful; I enjoyed it. But Seattle wasn't quite as used to having M. I. around in droves and we picked a poor spot to eat dinner, one where we weren't quite so welcome a bar-restaurant, down by the docks.
Now, look, we weren't drinking. Well, Kitten Smith had had one repeat one beer with his dinner but he was never anything but friendly and nice. That is how he got his name; the first time we had hand-to-hand combat drill Corporal Jones had said to him disgustedly: "A kitten would have hit me harder than that!" The nickname stuck.
We were the only uniforms in the place; most of the other customers were merchant marine sailors -- Seattle handles an awful lot of surface tonnage. I hadn't known it at the time but merchant sailors don't like us. Part of it has to do with the fact that their guilds have tried and tried to get their trade classed as equivalent to Federal Service, without success— but I understand that some of it goes way back in history, centuries.
There were some young fellows there, too, about our age the right age to serve a term, only they weren't -- long-haired and sloppy and kind of dirty looking. Well, say about the way I looked, I suppose, before I joined up.
