by James Jones
“Hell, you ought to see some of them, bud,” the trustee told him spitefully, as if putting him back in his place for trying to hog into the humor—he thinks I’m playing for their benefit, Prew thought wanting to laugh, he thinks its them, he dont know I’m doing it for my own self, and just barely that—“You aint nothing special, you ought to see the ones that dont fit,” the trustee told him.
The two giants laughed again.
“How’m I doin?” the trustee grinned at them.
“Pretty good,” the first giant, Hanson, the talkative one, said. “Pretty good, Terry. Lets go, you,” he said to Prew.
Terry the trustee stuck his head out the halfdoor cautiously and looked up and down the long hall. “Well how about givus a fuckin tailormade then, Hanson,” he pleaded anxiously. “Give you joes some laughs, dint I?”
The giant Hanson looked cautiously up and down the hall himself. There was nobody in sight. He reached quickly in his shirt pocket and pulled a single tube out of the pack in the pocket and tossed it into the supplyroom door. Terry the trustee scrambled for it on the floor hungrily. Hanson jabbed Prew in the buttocks with the butt of his grub hoe handle.
“Okay, Mack,” the talkative Hanson said.
They all went down the hall toward the barracks wings.
“You’ll get your ass in trouble someday, Hanson,” the silent one said, “doin damfool things like that.”
“Yeah?” Hanson said. “You wount be the son of a bitch to turn me in, would you, Turniphead?”
“Not me,” the silent one said. They walked on.
“His name’s Turnipseed,” Hanson explained to Prew.
“I wount turn my own mother in,” Turnipseed said proudly, after long thought, “much as I hate her guts.”
“You turned a prisoner in last week,” Hanson said, unimpressed. “For smokin tailormades.”
“Thats business,” Turnipseed said. “And he was a fuckup anyway.” Apparently the unanswerable had been said. The longwinded conversation died abruptly.
The barred double doors to the three barracks wings were wide open. They took him into the first one they came to, the west one. There was nobody in it. It was very long with windows on both sides. The windows were nailed shut. They had chainmesh grids on them. The barrack was just wide enough for two rows of double deck bunks down the sides and a six foot aisle in the middle. There were no footlockers or wall lockers, each bunk both upper and lower had a small shelf nailed to the wall at the head. Each shelf was stacked in identically the same way with identically the same items: one suit of fatigues, pants on the bottom; one fatigue hat on top of the jacket; one suit of GI underwear on top of the hat, pants on the bottom; one khaki GI handkerchief on top of the underwear; one pair of rolled socks sitting on top of all of that like an apple on top of a layer cake. On the left side of the shelf the toilet articles: one GI Gillette razor to the front, box open toward the aisle; behind it one GI shaving brush and one GI shaving stick, side by side even with the ends of the razor box; behind them one GI khaki plastic soapbox with bar of soap inside and one GI washcloth folded in fours under it and squared with the soapbox corners.
The two giants lounged smoking, leaning their arms at the armpit on a top bunk like an ordinary man standing up at a bar, while Prew made up his bunk and studied the shelf next to his and arranged his equipment. After he got it arranged he stepped back and looked at it, the not quite double handful of possessions that for three months now would be all he owned in the world. Hanson came over and looked at it too.
“The beds all right,” Hanson said.
“Whats wrong with the shelf?”
“Lousy,” Hanson said. “Get a demerit first thing.”
“Whats a demerit? I mean, in this place?”
Hanson grinned.
“I mean, what does it get you?”
Hanson grinned. “Shelf’s lousy,” he said. “You’re new so I’ll give you a chance to fix it. Tomorrow you wont get a second chance.”
“It looks all right to me,” Prew argued.
“It does,” Hanson grinned. “Look at the others.”
“Dont look any different to me,” Prew insisted.
“How long you been in the Army?”
“Five years.”
“Suit yourself,” Hanson said. “You ready to go?” He started away for the door, and Prew felt something dangerous touch at his mind delicately and then go clear away again.
“Wait,” he said. “I want it to be right,” he said lamely.
The silent one, Turnipseed, still lounging smoking, suddenly laughed snortingly.
Grinning, Hanson came back and screwed up his eyes at the shelf. “Major Thompson inspects ever morning; he carries a plumb bob in his pocket,” he said.
Prew looked at his shelf. He went over and took the stack of clothes down off it. He started putting them back one at a time, and Hanson came over and peered over his shoulder professionally.
“The lines from the ends of the razorbox dont biseck the handles of the shaving brush and shaving stick,” Hanson said. “The soapbox aint in the center of the washcloth.”
Prew fixed them and went back to the clothes stacking.
“You know what a plumb bob is?” Hanson asked.
“Yeah.”
“I never heard of it till I come here,” Hanson said. “Its somethin carpenters use, aint it?”
“Yeah,” Prew said. “And bricklayers.”
“What they use it for?”
“I dont know. Get their corners straight. Make sure a board is straight up and down. Stuff like that” He was beginning to feel better now. He had it choked back down. But he could feel it still lying there, just under his swallowing mechanism, still waiting. It was not gone. Even as he thought about how he felt better the association caused it to start to rise up again, sickeningly, dizzily, ponderously, like a fairgrounds balloon. With something like astonished disbelief he realized again that he was here, locked in behind chainmesh grids, while she was there, still in Maunalani Heights that he knew so well in his mind, and he could not leave here and go there when he wanted to. He swallowed and set his jaw tight and kept his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth. It pressed up against them a moment tentatively and then sank back patiently waiting, as elemental a force as that which kept the planets in their courses and as unfeeling. Fooled you that time, he told it, seen you coming. If you couldnt swallow it, you were licked, you were through. Alma, he thought, Alma. No, he told himself, no, you dumb bastard, no.
He had been in other jails, hadnt he? He had been in some tough ones, back in the days on the bum. And none of them had ever gotten into him, none of them had ever broken him down. A couple of them, a county outfit in Georgia and a city lockup in Mississippi, had been as tough as they come. Even the Nazis had nothing on them. He still wore their scars. And they had not cracked him.
But he had not been in love then, had he? Being in love made you especially vulnerable. You wanted something. He must immediately fall out of love temporarily, he informed himself, it was the only way. He tried to think of all the things he disliked about Alma. He couldnt remember any. He couldnt remember a one. It was strange how he had not realized how much in love he was until he heard the chainmesh gates close and lock after him.
“There,” Hanson was saying to Turnipseed, “I told you, you dumb fuck. This dumb fuck Turniphead,” he grinned at Prew, “he tried to tell me Major Thompson invented it.”
“Invented what?” Prew said dazedly.
“Plumb bob,” Hanson said. “Just to use in inspections.”
“Well, I never heard of the goddam thing before,” Turnipseed said angrily. “An he’s the kind of guy would do it. I still think he did.”
“Aa, shut up,” Hanson said disgustedly. “Dint you hear what the guy just said?”
“Sure,” Turnipseed said stubbornly. “But does that prove it?”
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Hanson said.
Prew stepped back from his shel
f. “Hows that?” he said.
“Pretty good,” Hanson said grudgingly.
“It looks perfect to me.”
“Me too,” Hanson said. Then he grinned that grin. “But I aint personally guaranteeing it for you, bud.”
“Lets move, men,” Turnipseed suggested. “Somebody liable come around.”
They took him out through into the hall again. They went back past the other barracks doors, back the way they had first come. Prew noticed each barrack was a completely separate wing. Between the outside barracks and the middle one there were yard spaces of about ten feet.
“Yeah,” Hanson grinned, watching him, “the middle wing’s for recalcitrants.”
“Bolsheviks,” Turnipseed grinned.
“Fuckups,” Prew grinned.
“Ats right,” Hanson grinned. “Got two searchlights trained on them yard spaces where they come out in the open, see? Like a defile, see? Never turned off at night.”
“Be pretty hard to get out of there,” Prew said conversationally.
“Pretty hard,” Hanson grinned.
“How many machineguns?” Prew asked sociably.
“One on each,” Hanson grinned. “But there plenty more around if they needed.”
“Efficient,” Prew said.
Turnipseed snorted. “Efficient,” he said. “I guess.”
“Shut up you dumb fuck Turniphead you,” Hanson grinned affectionately. He touched Prew on the arm with his grub hoe handle delicately. “Stop here, bud,” he said.
Prew stopped, feeling he had come off pretty well in that exchange, they werent bad joes at all, feeling again the old, good toughness in him that made him think maybe he would come out of this without a smudged reputation after all.
They were standing in front of the bulletin board.
In the center of the bulletin board, holding the place of honor among the mimeographed memorandums and sheets of detailed instructions about inspections, was a Robert Ripley “Believe It Or Not” that had been clipped from a newspaper. The clipping was brittle and yellow with age. It had been mounted on cardboard to preserve it, and there was a black border of cardboard around it on the bulletin board it caught the eye instantly.
Hanson and Turnipseed were grinning down at him proudly, like the old nigger guides conducting a party around the sacred environs of Mount Vernon Virginia as if they personally owned it. Prew stepped up to the board.
The chief subject of the clipping was a bust drawing in the familiar style of Mr Ripley, of John Dillinger grinning behind his dark moustache he had grown shortly before he died. Prew remembered having seen the newsfoto it was drawn from. Under it was the legend, in Mr Ripley’s familiar block printing and equally familiar Gabriel Heatterish style.
THE FIRST PLACE WHERE FORMER PUBLIC ENEMY #1 JOHN DILLINGER EVER SERVED TIME IN PRISON WAS IN THE POST STOCKADE AT SCHOFIELD BARRACKS IN THE TERRITORY OF HAWAII, WHERE THE SCHOFIELD BARRACKS MILITARY POLICE COMPANY RUNS WHAT IS SAID TO BE THE TOUGHEST JAIL IN THE U S ARMY. IT WAS SO TOUGH THAT JOHN DILLINGER UPON BEING RELEASED FROM IT SWORE TO HAVE VENGEANCE UPON THE WHOLE UNITED STATES SOMEDAY, EVEN IF IT KILLED HIM.
Under this, neatly printed in small letters with a pencil, were the words
WHICH IT DID
Prew looked again at the pencilled words “which it did” and the black border of one inch cardboard. A flaming rage burned up fiercely through him like fire sucked up a flue, burning out the soot and cleansing it so it will draw well. There was a cool calm solace of protection in the unreasoning rage. But his mind was functioning enough to recognize it was a false protection.
The two giants still grinned down at him, waiting. He felt he must not say something debasing.
“Great stuff,” he said. “Why show it to me?”
“Show it to every new man,” Hanson grinned. “Major Thompson’s orders.”
“You’d be surprised,” Turnipseed grinned, “all the differnt reactions we get from this clipping.”
“Very illuminatin,” Hanson grinned. “Some guys fly into a regular fit and cuss and fart and snort like a stud bull in the pasture.”
“On the other hand,” Turnipseed grinned, “other guys actually get the shakes.”
“Major Thompson must be quite a guy,” Prew said. “To put that up there. I wonder where he got hold of it.”
“Hell, he dint put it up there,” Turnipseed said indignantly. “I been here longer than he has, and it was there when I come here.”
“I been here longer than you have,” Hanson said. “And it was here when I first come here.”
“Well,” Prew said, “you’ve showed it to me. Where to now?”
“Take you in for your visit with the Major,” Hanson grinned, “then we’ll take you out to work.”
Prew studied him. There was no malice in that odd grin, only a humor of amusement, like when you watch a child mispronounce a word too big for it. It seemed to be a stiff grin.
“Well, lets go,” he said. “What’re we waitin for?”
“Major Thompson’s very proud of that clipping,” Turnipseed said. “You’d almost think it was his. He claims you can tell just what kind of prisoner a guy will make just by the way he reacts to it.”
“Well, lets shove,” Hanson grinned friendlily. “From now on you’re marching at attention, bud,” he added.
As they rounded the corner back down the long gleaming corridor to the outside door they had first entered by, Hanson made the old familiar quick shuffle with his feet, like a sliding boxer, to pick up the step. Their footsteps in unison reverberated crashingly ahead of them down the long hall.
“Prisoner, column right, harch!” Hanson said, when they reached the first door on the right, and both giants marked time while Prew cut the pivot and then followed him in one pace behind him, half a step on his right and left.
“Prisoner, halt!” Hanson said from his left. It was a beautiful movement, beautifully executed with professional precision. Prew was standing two paces from the mission oak desk of Major Thompson and bracketed exactly between the two statues of the gleaming giant MPs.
Major Thompson looked at them approvingly. Then he picked up the sheaf of papers on his desk and looked at them through his gold rimmed spectacles.
Major Thompson was a short barrelchested man whose OD blouse and summer pinks fitted like a glove. On his chest was a World War Victory ribbon with three stars and a Legion of Merit ribbon, joined on the same steel band. He peered myopically from his gold rimmed spectacles. He had the ruddy complexion and close cropped gray hair common to Regular Army officers of long service. He had evidently been an officer ever since 1918.
“I see you are from Harlan Kentucky,” Major Thompson said. “We get quite a few boys from Kentucky and West Virginia here. I could almost say they are our chief stock in trade. Most of them is coal miners,” he said, “but you dont look big enough to be a coal miner.”
“I’m not a coal miner,” Prew said. “I never was a—”
The butt of a grub hoe handle thudded into the small of his back above the kidney on the left side and he was afraid for a second he would vomit.
“—Sir,” he said quickly.
Major Thompson nodded at him from behind his gold rimmed spectacles. “Much better,” he said. “Our purpose here is to re-educate men to both the manual skills and right mental thinking of soldiers, and to reinstill in them (or teach them, if they never have learned) the desire to soldier. You dont want to get off on the wrong foot, do you?”
Prew did not answer. His back ached and he thought the question was purely rhetorical. The butt of the grub hoe handle whacked into the small of his back in the same spot making his testicles ache, informing him differently.
“Do you?” Major Thompson said.
“No, Sir,” Prew said quickly. He was catching on.
“We feel here,” Major Thompson said, “that if you men had not mislaid either your manual skills of soldiering, or your mental conditioning, or your desire to soldier, you wou
ld not be here. Whatever the legal reasons for your restriction. So our every effort is bent toward reaching the objective of re-education with the minimum of wasted time and the maximum of efficiency. Both to the men personally and to the government. We all owe that much to the American taxpayers who support our Army, dont we?”
“Yes, Sir,” Prew said quickly, and was rewarded by hearing a rustle subside behind his left. That would be Hanson, he thought, my old pal Pfc Hanson.
“I think you will make a model prisoner,” Major Thompson said, and paused.
“Sir, I hope so,” Prew said quickly into the breach.
“We may appear to be unduly harsh in our methods,” Major Thompson said. “But the quickest, efficientest, least expensive way to educate a man is to make it painful for him when he is wrong, the same as with any other animal. Then he will learn to be right. Its the same way you train yourself a birddog. Our country is at present building a rather reluctant civilian army with which to defend itself in the greatest war in history. The only way to do that is to make the men want to soldier. To be a good soldier a man has to want to soldier more than he wants not to soldier.
“Chaplains’ talks on patriotism and indoctrination films are not enough. Perhaps if there was less egotistical selfishness and more willing sacrifice in the world it would work. But it dont. This policy works. We wont talk to you about patriotism here. We will make not wanting to soldier so painful you will prefer to soldier. We mean to see when a man gets out of this Stockade he will be willing to do anything not to get back into it again, even die. Are you following me?”
“Yes, Sir,” Prew said quickly. The nausea in his stomach was beginning to subside a little.
“There is always some men,” Major Thompson said, “who because of psychological shortcomings and poor home training will never be good soldiers. If there are men like that here we want to find out about it. If its more painful for them to soldier than to stay in this Stockade then they are useless, and we want to get rid of them before they taint the men around them. They will be discharged as unfit for service. We are not concerned with individual soldiers, we’re concerned with the Army. But we want to be quite sure they really dont want to soldier, and are not just goldbricking. You see what I mean?”
