Irwin Shaw

He was going to be seventeen years old soon and another year after that he could enlist.

caramels from a package

“Christ, can you imagine how many hours thousands of poor bastards in those mills of his in North Carolina have to put in at the machines, coughing their lungs out, so that he can have a swim every day?”

All workers, in Dwyer’s view of labor, coughed their lungs out.

'What do you remember about him? That's what I want to talk about. I was just a kid; it seems to me I hardly ever saw him; he was just somebody who came in for meals mostly. I still have dreams about him, but I never get the face right. But you were twenty....'

'His face,' Henry said. 'His face was the face of an honest rough man who never had any doubt about himself. It was a face out of another century. Duty and honor were written plain on those simple features.' Henry was mocking himself, mocking our father's memory now. 'And he gave me bad advice,' Henry said, almost sober for the moment. 'Also out of another century. He said, "Marry early, boy." You know how he was always reading the Bible, and making us all go to church. It's better to marry than to bum, he said. I married early. I have a bone to pick with good old dad; insurance or no insurance, burning is better.'