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Some sailors believed that the most dangerous time in the war was a fellow’s last few days right before he was heading home. They believed that more men got killed just before they were supposed to go home than at any other time. Pappy knew this couldn’t be true, but he was extra careful just in case. He spent his last few days very close to camp. One day he was walking along the beach when he saw something shining in the sand. He bent down and picked it up. It was an unusual object, dark brown and dome shaped on one side, but shiny and beautiful on the other side. It had a perfect spiral on the shiny side and was probably a part of a seashell. Pappy looked in the sand all the way back to camp and found five more of the shiny shells. One of his friends said they were called cat’s eyes but they really were the doors to snail shells. Another sailor called them “Mermaid’s Dollars.” Pappy put them into his duffel bag. He was glad to have found them, because on all his journey he hadn’t found anything to bring home to his girlfriend. These would be perfect. Maybe one day he could get them made into a bracelet for her.

Finally, Pappy was going home. He was put on a freighter, a ship that carried supplies. In a few days he got to be friends with some young men from Mexico who were going to San Francisco. They were jolly boys who sang songs from early morning until dark. One was going back home to work in a brick yard for $25 a week. Not much, but he was happy to be going home and happy to be out of the war. Pappy landed in San Francisco and was so glad to be back in the United States that he thought his heart would burst. He had to take a military train to Chicago, Pappy’s hometown. He arrived at the receiving area near Chicago and the very last step was for a medical sailor to see if he still had good blood. They wanted to be sure the sailors hadn’t caught any tropical diseases before they released them. The sailor took out a big needle and told Pappy to roll up his sleeve. He poked and poked with his needle until the blood ran down Pappy’s arm and dripped off his fingers. Pappy was mad. He wanted to punch that medical sailor right in the nose, but that would mean he would go to the brig (Navy jail.) He decided it wasn’t worth it, so he gritted his teeth and just took it. Finally, he did get out and got to go home to his mother and his three brothers and his little sister and his very nice girlfriend who treasured those cat’s eyes for the rest of her life.