by James Jones
“Always was,” Stark corrected.
“Okay, always was. And you mean he’s really just as good a man?”
Stark frowned. “Well in a way yes, but you put it wrong.”
“But if thats true,” Prew said, “what becomes of love? I mean, instead of hard work to succeed, its hard work to marry the boss’s daughter and succeed. And love is cut out altogether. What happens to love?”
“Did you, personally, ever see any of this love?”
“I dont know. Sometimes I think I did, and then sometimes I think it was imagination.”
“It seems to me,” Stark said, “that people only love the things they can get something they want out of. And that they dont love anything they cant get what they want out of. Love, it seems to me, is a matter of expediency.”
“No,” Prew said, remembering Violet, “you’re wrong. You cant say that love dont exist except in romance or imagination.”
“Hell I dont know,” Stark said irritably. “You’re gettin in too deep for me now. All I know is what I said.
“Look: We livin in a world thats blowin itself to hell, as fast as five hundred million people can arrange it. In a world like that, theres ony one thing a man can do; and thats to find something thats his, sam, really his and will never let him down, and then work hard at it and for it and it will pay him back. With me its my kitchen . . .”
“With me its bugling.”
“. . . and thats all I can take care of. As long as I do that right I dont have to be ashamed. And if the rest of them fuck each other, kill each other, blow the whole damned world to hell, its none of my business.”
“But they’ll blow you up with it,” Prew said.
“Fine. Then I wont have to worry.”
“But your kitchen will be gone.”
“So fine. Because I’ll be gone too and it wont make no difference. And thats all I know.”
“I’m sorry, Stark,” Prew said, slowly because he did not want to say it, harshly because he was having trouble getting it said, wishing there was some way, some argument Stark had said, that would allow him not to say it; really almost angry at Stark because Stark had not convinced him when he wanted so badly to be convinced, “I cant. I just cant, thats all. And dont think I dont appreciate it either.”
“I dont,” Stark said.
“But if I did, why then everything in my life I’ve ever done up to now would be no good, thrown away.”
“Sometimes its better to throw it away and start from scratch than to hang on to it.”
“Not if you got nothing else left, and nothing in sight ahead to take its place. You got your kitchen.”
“Okay,” Stark said, flipping away his cigaret butt and getting up. “Dont rub it in. I know I’m lucky, but at the same time I took plenty and did a lot of work, to get it.”
“I’m not rubbin it in. And I would like to work for you, Stark, really I would like to.”
“I see you later,” Stark said, “sometime. Almost time for them to be coming in and I got to be out there to see the meal goes off all right.”
Prew watched him leave, his face still the face of all good cops or all good noncoms, impassive, consciously a mask of iron legality beyond which now, with Stark, there was no more appeal, and with the human curiosity squeezed out of it altogether except for the blankly interested eyes. They lose a lot, he thought, but then like everybody else they probly gain a lot, things that the rest dont know. At least they get to do the work they like.
Then he dropped the whole thing utterly and went back to work, speeding up his pace to meet the supper stuff that began to come in shortly.
It grows dark quickly on islands, or anywhere near the sea. Sunset is a matter of minutes. One minute it is clear up and still full daylight, the next its down and it is night. Standing on the western beaches you can actually see the sea’s deep throat swallowing the golden cracker. Ritz Cracker, he thought, while in the Blue Ridge and the Smokies the sunless mountain twilight lingers bronzely on for hours. You’ve seen a lot of this world, Prewitt, he told himself, feeling his eyes blinking scratchily trying to adjust to the fading light, thats one thing you’ve done anyway.
The Company ate its baked beans and franks under the electric lights and laughingly, talkingly took its time to drink its coffee. In garrison the evening is the finest time of day for the soldier because it is his own time and he can waste it. He can spend it prodigally in one great splurge, or he can dole it out like pennies in a candy store, so much for this, so much for that, two jawbreakers, four nigger babies, one licorice stick, and I’ve still got two cents of my nickel left, to keep.
Anderson and Friday Clark stopped on their way out to ask him if he wanted to sit in when they got the guitars out, later on, Andy who was on guard bugler wearing the web pistol belt and long black holster with the lanyard from the butt up over his shoulder passing under the tucked in tie, and the bugle that he must never let out of sight while on guard hanging down his back.
“I’m tied up at the Guardhouse till nine,” he said. “The Corprl wants to go to the show and I got to take his place. But after I blow Tattoo I’m off till Taps. Thats when we figured.”
“Okay with me,” Prew said, wanting to get done now more than ever. “Me and Angelo fixing to play some pool after we get off here anyway.”
“I’ll sweat the pool game out?” Friday said. “If you let me, Prew? I cant go over to the Guardhouse since the OD run me off this afternoon.”
“You can play if you want.”
“Naw, I had rather watch. I aint good enough for you guys.”
“Okay, then you can sweat them. But right now take off, will you? And let me get done up.”
“Come on,” Andy said disgustedly. “Cant you see he’s in a hurry? You always fiddlefuck around.”
“Lay off of me,” Friday said, as they left. “You neednt ack like such a big shot. If you wasnt on guard tonight you’d be downtown with Bloom anyway, chasin queers, and your git-tar locked up in your wall locker.” It was the greatest condemnation Friday knew.
With supper over things began to move now all over the Company, the few guys with money calling for a taxi to town, the many guys without money walking out to go to the gate on the highway and hitchhike down, or getting ready to go to the show or to the gym to watch the 35th basketball champs play an exhibition game with the Fort Shafter squad. Prew could hear the groups of voices on the darkened porch discussing all the things to do, and he worked harder listening to them talk.
While he was washing down the sinks Stark came around again.
“I’m going to town tonight, Prew,” he said. “You want to go along?”
“I’m broke,” Prew said. “Flat.”
“I dint ast you you had money. I got the money. I awys save out enough for a big one at the end of the month. I awys make my best one then, when theres nobody much in town, instead of tryin to go down Payday when you cant even get in a bar, let alone a whorehouse.”
“Its your money,” Prew said. “If you want to spend it on me I should worry. What time?” He was seeing sudden pictures of white, hair shadowed flesh swelling out loud flashy gowns in dim rooms and reflecting jukebox colored lights, the old womanhunger held in check so long rising in him, making his voice thick.
“After Taps is the best time,” Stark said. “Its more fun if you got somebody with you,” he explained, “and you look like you been hard up for some for quite a spell,” he grinned lopsidedly.
“You didnt miss it, brother,” Prew said, and that was all either of them would allow himself to say about the unexpected invitation.
“We get down there around midnight,” Stark said, “and have time to hit a bar for a while and get prepared. Then around one we go up and hang around till two and take one for all night, maybe take a quickie in the meantime. Thats how I usely work it.”
“All night!” Prew said, thinking avidly of the three hours, from two till five, that constituted all night in a Honolulu whorehouse. “
Thats fifteen bucks!”
“Sure,” Stark said, “but its worth it. When you ony have one big one a month, and save up for it, its more than worth it.”
“Buddy,” Prew said, “I’m your man. We was plannin to have a session with the git-tars from Tattoo till Taps, so even that will even all work out all right.”
“Sure,” Stark said. “We wont go till after Taps. Maybe I’ll come out and sit in with you myself,” he half asked, abruptly.
“Come ahead. You play one?”
“Not enough to count. But I like to listen though. I’ll see you then,” he growled harshly, almost dislikeably, plainly not wanting any more about it, and walked away, obviously afraid he would be thanked.
Prew grinned after him and went back to scrubbing down, feeling good now, feeling really fine, feeling wonderful, with the Ferriswheel sickness coming in his belly and the heavy, pendulous, full bellying swinging maleness rising, and with Maggio waiting on him in the Dayroom to play pool.
They played straight rotation, no slop and call your shot, the same difference between this game and plain rotation slop as between three cushion billiards and straight billiards, which was a game for amateurs who could not make them any other way, and tonight Prew, feeling very happily the brother of the whole wide world, was hot. It was a pretty even match between them, the Atlantic Avenue champ versus the boy who made his spending money on the bum by taking on the local stars in strange smalltown poolrooms, but Prew had the edge, a very slight one.
Friday leaned on his elbow in one of the windows between the alcove and the Dayroom that had once been a porch and watched, interested but plainly only putting in the time until they got the guitars out. After a while, men even came in from the Dayroom to watch.
Maggio, holding his cue, perched between shots in the other window like an egotistic robin, his stiff blocked hat proudly on his head, pushed back to show curls damp with concentration, happily pointing out the peaks requiring esoteric appreciation, in case the audience had missed them.
“This character is a poolshooter,” he announced, with a thumb at Prew. “I know. I can judge. Brooklyn is the home of the original poolshooters, as well as the sharpie pingpong players. Man, what I would not give to have this character in the corner poolroom in my hometown is not worth picking up and put in your pocket. I’d dress him up in overhalls and a straw hat and put a grass in his teeth, and I would make a whole mint of ghelt off him.”
“Nine ball off the end rail and side rail in the cross corner pocket,” Prew said, and made it.
“See what I mean?” Maggio chortled to the audience.
“Maybe I’ll come home with you some day, Angelo,” Prew said, chalking up. “For a visit.”
“Oh no,” Maggio protested. “Not me, friend. My old lady would kick us both out on our can. She is prejudiced against dogfaces. Every since one of them from the Army Base laid my next biggest sister. She has no use for uniforms.”
At nine Andy came in from the Guardhouse, his bugle still down his back, and they broke it up. “Soons I blow Tattoo now I’m off till Taps,” he said, going through and out the other door. “Somebody bring the git-tars out.”
“I’ll get em,” Friday said, “I’ll get em,” coming to life now and starting for the stairs at a run.
“Can I come along and listen?” Angelo said, knowing this was a private session. “I wont say a word. Not a single request.”
“I thought you didnt like hillbilly,” Prew grinned.
“I dont,” Angelo said fervently. “But you guys dont play hillbilly. With Gene Autry its hillbilly, with you guys its music.”
“Okay, come on. I wonder what happened to our friend Bloom tonight,” Prew said, walking out to the quad. “I aint seen him.”
“I aint seen him around,” Angelo said. “He probly went to town. To see his queer. I see him all a time down to the Waikiki Tavern when I go down to see mine. He’s got himself a steady now, ony his aint got the money mine has got.”
“Maybe he dont want the money.”
“Maybe not. Maybe he’s after a shoulder to cry on. The son of a bitch.”
They met the others in the darkness of the quad, Friday eagerly dragging the two guitars, and after Andy finished Lights Out they sat on the back steps of the kitchen, playing the blues, but softly in the darkness so a crowd would not gather now when they did not want a crowd but only the privacy of their own communion. Around the quadrangle the CQs one by one flipped the lights off in the squadrooms. Stark came out from the messhall and sat on the curbing smoking and leaning back against the building, gladly listening but sullenly not speaking, even a solitary word, and staring off across Headquarters building as if he were trying to see Texas. Maggio hunched up on the bottom step like some organgrinder’s hairless monkey with his round shoulders, listening as intently as Stark to this music that was foreign to his hometown Brooklyn.
“You know what,” he said after a while, “them blues songs sounds like jazz instead of hillbilly, way you play them. Slow jazz, real nigger jazz, like they play in the joints on 52nd Street.”
Prew stopped playing and Friday’s guitar gradually stopped too. “They are in a way,” Prew said. “Theres nobody can tell where hillbilly leaves off and jazz begins. They shade into each other. Me and Andy’s got an idea for writing our own blues that will be our private special blues. We been talkin’ about it, goin to do it someday.”
“Sure we are,” Friday said. “Gonna call them The Re-enlistment Blues. Theres Truckdriver’s Blues and Sharecropper’s Blues, but no Army blues, see?”
Stark sat silent, listening to the rising, falling conversation as they went on playing, listening to it all but taking part in none of it, only smoking silently and communing with some bitter silence in himself.
“That was no way to play Tattoo,” Prew said to Andy, with the indisputable air of an expert. “Tattoo wants to be staccato. Short, and snappy. You dont waste a second on the long notes. Tattoo is urgent. You’re telling them to get them goddam lights out and you dont want argument. So it has to be precise and fast, without slurring the notes. And yet a little sad underneath, because you hate to have to do it.”
“We cant all be good,” Andy said. “I’m a git-tar player. You stick to the bugle and I’ll stick to the git-tar.”
“Okay,” Prew said. “Here.” He handed over the new guitar that was not very new any more but was still Andy’s private guitar.
Andy took it and picked up the melody from Friday, still watching Prew’s face in the darkness.
“You wanta take my Taps?” he offered. “You can take them tonight if you want.”
Prew thought it over. “You sure you dont care?”
“Naw. I aint no bugler, I’m a guitarman, like I said. Go ahead and take them. I never could play them anyway.”
“Okay. Gimme the horn. Heres your mouthpiece. I got mine with me. Just happened to have it.”
He took the tarnished guard bugle and rubbed at it a little, held it in his lap then, as they sat on in the cool darkness, playing softly and talking a little, but mostly listening, Stark not talking any but only listening, gladly but sullenly. Once a couple of men wandering by stopped to listen for a minute, caught by the haunting hope without hope that sang out in the set blues rhythm. But the silent Stark was alert. He flipped his cigaret viciously out into the street, at them, the falling coal shattering at their feet and showering sparks. It was as if an unseen hand had pushed them away and they went on, but they were strangely lifted.
At five of eleven they stopped and all got up, the four of them walking out to the megaphone in the corner, leaving Stark leaning against the wall still smoking sullenly, tacitly accepting his aloofness, him rolling them and smoking and silently taking it all in, not missing anything.
Prew took his quartz mouthpiece from his pocket and inserted it. He stood before the big tin megaphone, fiddling nervously, testing his lips. He blew two soft tentative tones, wiped the mouthpiece out angrily and rubbed his lips v
igorously.
“My lip’s off,” he said nervously. “I aint touched a horn in months. I wont be able to play them for nothing. Lip’s soft as hell.”
He stood there in the moonlight, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, fiddling with the bugle, shaking it angrily, testing it against his lips.
“Christ,” he said. “I cant play them like they ought to be played. Taps is special.”
“Oh, go ahead, for God sake,” Andy said. “You know you can play them.”
“All right,” he said angrily. “All right. I dint say I wasnt gonna play them, did I? You never get nervous, do you?”
“Never,” Andy said.
“Then you aint got no goddam sensitivity,” Prew said angrily. “Nor sympathy, nor understanding.”
“Not for you,” Andy said.
“Well for Christ’s sake shut up then,” he said angrily nervously.
He looked at his watch and as the second hand touched the top stepped up and raised the bugle to the megaphone, and the nervousness dropped from him like a discarded blouse, and he was suddenly alone, gone away from the rest of them.
The first note was clear and absolutely certain. There was no question or stumbling in this bugle. It swept across the quadrangle positively, held just a fraction longer than most buglers hold it. Held long like the length of time, stretching away from weary day to weary day. Held long like thirty years. The second note was short, almost too short, abrupt. Cut short and too soon gone, like the minutes with a whore. Short like a ten minute break is short. And then the last note of the first phrase rose triumphantly from the slightly broken rhythm, triumphantly high on an untouchable level of pride above the humiliations, the degradations.
He played it all that way, with a paused then hurried rhythm that no metronome could follow. There was no placid regimented tempo to this Taps. The notes rose high in the air and hung above the quadrangle. They vibrated there, caressingly, filled with an infinite sadness, an endless patience, a pointless pride, the requiem and epitaph of the common soldier, who smelled like a common soldier, as a woman once had told him. They hovered like halos over the heads of the sleeping men in the darkened barracks, turning all grossness to the beauty that is the beauty of sympathy and understanding. Here we are, they said, you made us, now see us, dont close your eyes and shudder at it; this beauty, and this sorrow, of things as they are. This is the true song, the song of the ruck, not of battle heroes; the song of the Stockade prisoners itchily stinking sweating under coats of grey rock dust; the song of the mucky KPs, of the men without women who collect the bloody menstrual rags of the officers’ wives, who come to scout the Officers’ Club—after the parties are over. This is the song of the scum, the Aqua-Velva drinkers, the shameless ones who greedily drain the half filled glasses, some of them lipsticksmeared, that the party-ers can afford to leave unfinished.
