"He had a hundred and seven points," Mattie said. "He has five battle stars, but you only wear a little silver one if you have five. You can't get five of the little gold ones on the ribbon thing. Five would look better. They'd look more. But he doesn't wear his uniform anymore, anyway. I got it. I got it in a box."

Babe crossed his legs as most tall men do, laying the ankle on the knee. "I'm out. I got out," he said. He looked at the clock in his sock, one of the most unfamiliar things in the new, combat-bootless world, then up at Vincent's girl. Was she real? "I got out last week," he said.

"Gee, that's swell."

She didn't care much one way or the other. Why should she? So Babe just nodded, and said, "You, uh . . . You know Vincent's--you know he was killed, don't you?"

"Yes."

Babe nodded again, and reversed the position of his legs, laying the other ankle on the other knee.

"His father phoned and told me," Vincent's girl said; "when it happened. He called me Miss Uhhh. He's known me all my life and he couldn't think of my first name. Just that I loved Vincent and that I was Howie Beeber's daughter. He thought we were still engaged, I guess. Vincent and I."

She put her hand on the back of Mattie's neck, and stared at Mattie's right arm, which was nearest her. Not that there was anything the matter with Mattie's right arm. It was just bare and brown and young."

"I thought you might want to know a little about it all," Babe said, and sneezed about six times. When he put away his hand kerchief, Vincent's girl was looking at him, but she didn't say anything. Very confusing and annoying. Maybe she wanted him to quit his introductions. He thought, and said, "I can't tell you he was happy or anything when he died. I'm sorry. I can't think of anything good. yet I want to tell you the whole business."

Don't lie to me at all. I want to know," Vincent's girl said. She let go of Mattie's neck. Then she just sat and didn't especially look at, or do, anything.

"Uh, he died in the morning. he and four other G.I.s and I were standing around a fire we made. In Hurtgen Forest. Some mortar dropped in suddenly--it didn't whistle or anything--and it hit Vincent and three of the other men. He died in the medics' CP tent about thirty yards away, not more than about three minutes after he was hit." Babe had to sneeze several times at that point. He went on, "I think he had too much pain in too large an area of his body to have realized anything but blackness. I don't think it hurt. I swear I don't. His eyes were open. I think he recognized me and heard me when I spoke to him, but he didn't say anything to me at all. The last thing he said was about one of us was going to have to get some wood for the lousy fire--preferably one of the younger men, he said--you know how he talked." Babe stopped there because Vincent's girl was crying and he didn't know what to do about it.

Mattie spoke up, telling Vincent's girl: "He was a witty guy. He was at our house. Gee!"

Vincent's girl went on crying with her face in one hand, but she heard Mattie. Babe looked at the low-cut shoe on his foot, and waited for something quiet and sensible and easier to happen--such as Vincent's girl, Vincent's swell girl, not crying any more.

When that happened--and it happened quickly, too--he talked again. "You're married and I didn't come here to torture you. I just thought, from stuff that Vincent told me, that you used to love him a lot and that you'd ant to hear this stuff. I'm sorry I have to be a stranger with hay fever and on my way to lunch and a matinee. I didn't think it would be any good, but I came anyway. I don't know what's wrong with me since I'm back."

Vincent's girl said, "What's a mortar? Like a cannon?"

How could you ever tell what girls were going to say or do? . . . "Well, sort of. The shell drops in without whistling. I'm sorry." He was apologizing too much, but he wanted to apologize to every girl in the world whose lover had been hit by mortar fragments because the mortars hadn't whistled. He was very afraid now, that he had told Vincent's girl too much too coldly. The hay fever, the dirty hay fever, certainly was no help. But the thing that was really terrible was the way your mind wanted to tell civilians these things--that was much more terrible than what your voice said.

Your mind, your soldier's mind, wanted accuracy above all else. So far as details went, you wanted to the bull's-eye kid: Don't let any civilian leave you, when the story's over, with any comfortable lies. Shoot down all the lies. Don't let Vincent's girl think that Vincent asked for a cigarette before he died. Don't let her think that he grinned gamely, or said a few choice last words.

These thing didn't happen. These things weren't done outside movies and books except by a very, very few guys who were unable to fasten their last thoughts to the depleting joy of being alive. Don't let Vincent's girl fool herself about Vincent, no matter how much she loved him. Get your sight picture on the nearest, biggest lie. That's why you're back, that's why you were lucky. Don't let anybody good down. Fire! Fire, buddy! Now!

Babe uncrossed his legs, briefly squeezed his forehead with the heels of his hands, then he sneezed about a dozen times. He used a fourth, fresh handkerchief on his burning, watery eyes, put it away, and said, "Vincent loved you something terrific. I don't know exactly why you broke up, but I do know it wasn't anybody's fault. I got that feeling about it when he talked about you--that your breaking up wasn't anybody's fault. Was it anybody's fault? I oughtn't to ask you that. Your being married. Was it anybody's fault?"

"It was his fault."

"How come you married Mr. Polk, then?" Mattie demanded.

"It was his fault. Listen. I loved Vincent. I loved his house and I loved his brothers and I loved his mother and father. I loved everything. Listen, Babe. Vincent didn't believe anything. If it was summer he didn't believe it; if it was winter he didn't believe it. He didn't believe anything from the time little Kenneth Caulfield died. His brother."

"That the little one, the younger one he was so crazy about?"

"Yes. I loved everything. I swear to you," Vincent's girl said, touching Mattie's arm almost vaguely.

Babe nodded. Without sneezing first, he reached into his inside coat pocket and took out something. "Uh," he said to Vincent's girl. "This is a poem he wrote. No kidding. I borrowed some air-mail envelopes from him and it was written on one of the backs. You can have it if you want it." He reached his long arm forward, unable to avoid being fascinated by the shiny links in his shirt cuffs, and handed her a mud-dirty G.I. air-mail envelope. It was folded once the short way, and slightly torn.

Vincent's girl looked at the face of it, and read the title with her lips moving. She looked at Babe. "Oh, Lord! Miss Beebers! He called me Miss Beebers!"

She looked down at the poem again, and read it through to herself, moving her lips. She shook her head when she reached the end, but not as though she were denying anything. Then she read the poem through again. Then she folded the poem into a very small size, as though concealment was necessary. She put her hand with the poem in it into her jacket pocket and left it there.

"Miss Beebers," she said, looking up as if someone had come in the room.

Babe, who had his legs crossed again, uncrossed them, as an overture to getting up. "Well," he said. "The poem, is all." He stood up and so did Mattie. Then Vincent's girl stood up.

Babe extended his hand, which Vincent's girl duly clasped. "I probably shouldn't have come," he said. "I had the best and the worst motives . . . and I'm acting very peculiarly. I don't know what's the matter. Goodbye."

"I'm very glad you came, Babe."

That made him cry and he turned around and walked quickly out of the room towards the front door. Mattie wen tout behind him, and Vincent's girl slowly followed. When he turned around in the hall outside the apartment, he was all right again.

"Can we get a cab or something?" he asked Vincent's girl. "Are there cabs running? I didn't even notice."

"Maybe you can get one. It's a good time."

"Would you like to go to lunch and theater with us? he asked her.

"I can't. I have to--I can't. Ring the 'Up' bell, Mattie. The 'Down' one doesn't work."

Babe took her hand again. "Goodbye, Helen," he said, and released it. He walked over and stood beside Mattie in front of the closed elevator doors.

"What are you gong to do now?" Vincent's girl almost shouted at him.

"I told you, we're going--"

"I mean now that you're back."

"Oh!" He sneezed. "I don't know. Is there something to do? No, I'm kidding. I'll do something. I'll probably get an M.A. and teach. My father's a teacher."

"Hey. Go see some girl dance with a big bubble or something tonight, huh?"

"I don't know any girls who dance with big bubbles. Ring the bell again, Mattie."

"Listen, Babe," Vincent's girl said intensely. "Call me sometime, willya? Please. I'm in the book."

"I know some girls," Babe said.

"I know, but we could have lunch or something and see a show. Wuddaya-call-it can get tickets to anything. Bob. My husband. Or come to dinner."

He shook his head and rang the elevator bell himself.

"Please."

"I'm all right. Don't be that way.. I'm just not used to things yet."

The elevator doors slammed open. Mattie hollered "Goodbye," and followed her brother into the elevator. the door slammed shut.

There weren't any taxis down in the street. They both walked west, toward the Park. The three long blocks between Lexington and Fifth were dull and noonish, as only that stretch can be in late August. A fat, apartment-house doorman, cupping a cigarette in his hand, was walking a wire-haired along the curb between Park and Madison.

Babe figured that during the whole time of the Bulge, the guy had walked that dog on this street every day. He couldn't believe it. He could believe it, but it was still impossible. He felt Mattie put her hand in his. She was talking a blue streak.

"Mamma said we ought to see that play, Harvey. She said you like Frank Fay. It's about this man who talks to a rabbit. When he's drunk and everything, he talks to this rabbit. Or Oklahoma! Mamma said you'd like Oklahoma!, too. Roberta Cochran saw it and she said it was swell. She said--"

"Who saw it?"

"Roberta Cochran. She's in my class. She's a dancer. Her father thinks he's a funny guy. I was over at her house and he tries to make a lot of wisecracks. He's a dope.'" Mattie was quiet for a second. "Babe," she said.

"What?"

"Are you glad to be home?"

"Yes, baby."

"Ow! You're hurting my hand."

He relaxed his grip. "Why do you ask me that?"

"I don't know. Let's sit on top of the bus. An open one."

"All right."

The sun was brilliant and hot as they crossed over to the Park side of Fifth Avenue. At the bus stop, Babe lighted a cigarette and took off his hat. A tall blond girl carrying a hatbox walked zippily along the other side of the street. In the middle of the broad avenue a small boy in a blue suit was trying to get his small, relaxed dog, probably named Theodore or Waggy, to get up and finish walking across the street like someone named Rex or Prince or Jim.

"I can eat with chopsticks, " Mattie said. "This guy showed me. Vera Weber's father. I'll show you."

The sun was full warm on Babe's pale face. "Kiddo," he said to Mattie, tapping her on the shoulder, "that's something I have to see."

"Okay. You'll see," said Mattie. With her feet together she made the little jump from the curb to the street surface, then back again. Why was it such a beautiful thing to see?

The Varioni Brothers.

by J.D. Salinger.

Around Old Chi with Gardenia Penny.

While Mr. Penny is on his vacation, his column will be written by a number of distinguished personalities from all walks of life. Today's guest columnist is Mr. Vincent Westmoreland, the well-known producer, raconteur, and wit. Mr. Westmoreland's opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Mr. Penny or this newspaper.

"If, like Aladdin, I had means to be waited on by a sociable genie, I would first demand that he pop Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito into a fair-sized cage, and promptly deposit the menagerie on the front steps of the White House. I should then seriously consider dismissing my accommodating servant, after I had asked him one question--namely: 'Where is Sonny Varioni?'

"To me, and probably to thousands, the story of the brilliant Varioni Brothers is one of the most tragic and unfinished of this century.

"Although the music these golden boys left us is still warm and alive in our hearts, perhaps their story is cold enough to be told to some of the younger readers and retold to the older ones.

"I was there on the fatal night their music publisher and friend, Teddy Barto, gave them the handsomest, most ostentatious party of the crazy Twenties. It was in celebration of their fifth year of collaboration and success. The Varioni Brothers' mansion was stuffed with the best shirts of the day. And the most beautiful, most talked about or against, women. The most supercolossal, blackest colored boy I have ever seen stood at the front door with a silver plate the size of a manhole cover into which dropped the invitation cards of our then favorite actors, actresses, writers, producers, dancers, men and ladies about town.

"It seemed that with success Sonny Varioni had developed quite a taste for gambling. Not with just anybody, but with big shots like the late, little-lamented Buster Hankey. About two weeks before the party, Sonny had lost about forty thousand dollars to Buster in a poker game. Sonny had refused to pay, accusing Buster of dirty-dealing him.

At about four A.M. on that festive, frightful morning there were about two hundred of us jammed fashionably in the crazy, boyish basement where the Varionis wrote all their hits. It was there that the thing happened. I must have a reason for retelling a tragic story, I shall say with conviction that it is my right. Because honestly I believe that I was the only sober individual in that basement.

"Enter Rocco, Buster Hankey's newest, most-likely-to-succeed trigger man. Rocco inquires sweetly of the dizziest blonde in the room, whose name escapes me, where he can find Sonny Varioni. The tipsy blonde--poor thing--points wildly in the direction of the piano. 'Over there, Handsome. But what's your hurry? Have a li'l' drink'

"Rocco doesn't have time for a 'li'l' drink.' He elbows his way through the crowd, fires five shots, very fast, into the wrong man's back. Joe Varioni, whom no one in the room had ever heard play the piano before, because that was Sonny's affair, dropped dead to the floor. Joe, the lyricist, only played the piano when he was tight, and he only got tight once a year, at the great parties Teddy Barto threw for him and Sonny.

"Sonny stayed in Chicago for a few weeks, walking around town without a hat, without a necktie, without a decent Christian night of sleep. Then suddenly he disappeared from the Windy City. There is no record of anyone having seen or heard of him since. Yes, I think I should ask my hypothetical genie: 'Where is Sonny Varioni?'

"Some remote little person somewhere must have the inside dope. As, unfortunately, I am a little short on genii, will he or she enlighten a sympathetic admirer, one of thousands?"

My name is Sarah Daley Smith. I am one of the remotest little numbers I know. And I have the inside dope on Sonny Varioni. He is in Waycross, Illinois. He's not very well, and he's up day and night typing up the manuscript of a lovely, wild and possibly great novel. It was written and thrown into a trunk by Joe Varioni. It was written longhand on yellow paper, on lined paper, on crumpled paper, on torn paper. The sheets were not numbered. Whole sentences and even paragraphs were marked out and rewritten on the backs of envelopes, on the unused sides of college exams, in the margins of railroad timetables. The job of making head and tail, chapter and book, of the wild colossus is an immeasurably enervating one, requiring, one would think, youth and health and ego. Sonny Varioni has none of these. He has a hope for a kind of salvation.

I don't know Mr. Westmoreland, of the guest columnist Westmorelands, but I guess I approve of his curiosity. I think he must remember all his old girls by the Varioni Brothers' words and music.

So, if the gentlemen with the drums and bugles are ready, I shall pass among the Westmorelands with the inside dope.

Because the inside dope begins there, I must go back to the high, wild and rotten Twenties. I can offer no important lament or even a convincing shrug for the general bad taste of that era.

I happened to be a sophomore at Waycross College, and I actually wore a yellow slicker with riotously witty sayings pen-and-inked on the back, suggesting liberally that sex was the cat's pajamas, and that we all get behind the ole football team. There were no flies on me.

Joe Varioni taught English III-A, from Beowulf through Fielding, as the catalogue put it. He taught it beautifully. All little girls who take long walks in the rain and major in English have had Grendel's bloody arm dragged across their education at least three times, in this school or that. But somehow when Joe talked about Beowulf's silly doings they seemed to have undergone a rewrite job by one of the Brownings.

He was the tallest, thinnest, weariest boy I had ever seen in my life. He was brilliant. He had gorgeous brown eyes, and he had only two suits. He was completely unhappy, and I didn't know why.

If he had ever called for volunteers to come to the blackboard and drop dead for him, I would have won a scholarship. He took me out several times, walking just ahead of my gun. He wasn't much interested in me, but he was terribly short on the right audiences. He sometimes talked about his writing, and he read me some of it. It was part of the novel. He'd been reading from some crazy sheets of yellow paper; then all of a sudden he'd cut himself short. "Wait a minute," he'd say. "I changed that." Then he'd fish a couple of envelopes out of his pocket and read from the backs of them. He could cram more writing in less space than anybody I ever knew.

Suddenly one month he stopped reading to me. He avoided me after classes. I saw him from the library window one afternoon, and I leaned out and hollered to him to wait for me. Miss MacGregor campused me for a week for hollering out the library window. But I didn't care. Joe waited for me.

I asked him how the book was coming.