by James Jones
“Of course,” Malloy said. “But he gave Fatso the orders.”
“I don’t know,” Prew said. “I’ve never felt about him like I’ve felt about Fatso. Major Thompson’s an officer; you expect that from officers; they’re on the other side of the fence. But Fatso, Fatso’s an enlisted man. And that makes him a traitor against his own kind.”
“I can see what you mean,” Malloy said. “And you’re right. But you are wrong to kill him—just simply because it wont do any good.”
“I got to do what I got to do,” Prew said impassibly.
“Yes,” Malloy said. “So have we all. So has Fatso.”
“Then thats whats the matter,” Prew said, falling back on the old phrase of finality.
“You love the Army, dont you?” Malloy said.
“I dont know,” Prew said. “Yes. Yes, I do. I’m a thirty-year-man. I’ve always been one. Ever since I first signed up.”
“Well, Fatso is as much a part of the Army you love as your 1st/Sgt, Warden, that you’re always talking about. One as much as the other. Without the Fatsos you couldnt have the Wardens.”
“Someday we will.”
“No. You never will. Because when that day comes you wont have any Armies, and there will be no more Wardens. You cant have the Wardens without the Fatsos, either.”
“You dont mind if I go on thinking we will?”
“No. You ought to think that. But what you want cant be achieved by killing off all the Fatsos. When you kill your enemy Fatso, you are also killing your friend Warden.”
“Maybe so. I still cant help what I got to do.”
“Okay,” Malloy said, and grinned. “And is this the end-product of all I’ve tried to teach you about passive resistance? You didnt understand it any more than Berry or Angelo did.”
“Passive resistance did them a lot of good, didnt it?” Prew said. “They both used it, and look where they are now.”
“Neither one of them used it,” Malloy said. “Their resistance was always active, not passive.”
“They didnt fight back.”
“They didnt have to. In their minds they fought back. They just didnt have access to clubs, that was all.”
“You can only expect so much of a man,” Prew said.
“Thats right,” Malloy said. “But listen. A guy named Spinoza wrote a sentence once. He said: Because a man loves God he must not expect God to love him in return. Theres a lot in that, in lots of ways. I dont use passive resistance for what I expect it will get me. I dont expect it to pay me back any more than it ever has. That isnt the point. If that was the point, I’d of given it up years ago as a flop.”
“I understand that,” Prew said, “and I was wrong. But I’m going to kill Fatso, just as sure as God made little green apples. I aint got no choice. Thats the only thing a fathog prick like him understands. Thats the only way.”
“Okay,” Malloy said. He shrugged and looked away, down the barrack. The lights had been out quite a while, and the others were already in their bunks. The two of them sat on their bunks facing each other talking, their expressions lit only by the glow of their cigaret ends. Prew had, by a common tacit consent, moved into Angelo’s bunk next to Malloy after the little guy went up to the hospital. Malloy kept on looking down the darkened aisle, as if debating something.
“All right,” he said finally, turning back. “Now I’ll tell you something. I hadnt meant to tell you. But maybe it’ll do me good; just like your telling me about Fatso done you good. Sometimes it helps to talk about something you’re going to do that you dont want to do. I’m going to bust out of here,” he said.
Prew felt a stillness that was not of the quiet night creep over him slowly. “What for?”
“I dont know if I can explain it,” Jack Malloy said. “You see, theres something wrong with me.”
“You mean you’re sick?”
“No, I’m not sick. This is something else. Something that has to do with what I told you about being born in the wrong time. Theres something lacking in me that keeps me from doing what I want to do. You see, I’m responsible for what happened to both Angelo and Berry, just as surely as if I had signed the Discharge and swung the club. Just as surely as I’m responsible for you killing Fatso.”
“Aw now, thats a lot of stuff, Jack.”
“No it isnt, its the truth.”
“I dont see why the hell you should feel that.”
“Because they were trying to follow what I had been trying to teach them,” Malloy said. “Whether you see it or not or believe it or not. The same thing has happened to me all my life. I’ve tried to teach people things I saw but they always take them wrong and use them wrong. Its because theres something lacking in me. I preach passive resistance and a new kind of God with a new kind of love that understands, but I dont practice it. At least not enough. Sometimes, I dont think I’ve ever loved anything in my life.
“If it hadnt been for me and my talk, neither Angelo nor Berry would have done what they did. Or got what they got. And if I stay here (I’ve got seven more months to do, this stretch) the same thing is going to happen to other guys. Its already happened to you. I say resist passively, but you all fight, because I feel fight, even if I say dont fight. I dont want it to happen to anybody else.”
“I dont think thats true at all,” Prew said helplessly, inadequate before the mental task of arguing back.
“Well, its true,” Malloy said. “And thats why I’m busting out.”
In the glow of his cigaret Prew saw him grin bitterly gently.
“Its a thing,” Malloy said, “that apparently happens to guys when they try to do what I’ve tried to do all my life and lack what it takes. Probably, after I bust out, they’ll misunderstand that too and start making a goddam hero out of me for escaping.”
“How do you figure to do it?”
“Thats the easy part,” Malloy said. “I could bring enough tools in from the motorpool to cut through these walls easy.”
“What about the searchlights?”
“They’d never even see me.”
“But what about the electric fence? And the alarm?”
“Rubber-handled Klein pliers from the motorpool,” Malloy said. “And a long piece of baling wire for each strand, back of where I cut it on both sides, to keep the circuit closed.
“But it’ll be easier just to go out from the motorpool; theres not a man there that would turn me in or want to stop me. A pair of grease-monkey coveralls to get me down into the Post to my outfit to borrow civilian clothes, and I’m gone.”
“What about money?”
“I dont need money. I’ve got half a dozen different friends in town who would hide me out long enough to get me out on a Matson liner for the States.”
“Theres a war coming up soon,” Prew said.
“I know it. Probably, I’ll enlist again Stateside under an assumed name, when it comes up. Thats what I’ve figured. But I’m finished here, and theres no point in staying. And until the war does come theres some things I want to do—without having it all taken the wrong way so that it hurts the guys that I like.”
“Take me with you,” Prew said.
In the glow of the cigarets Jack Malloy looked up, startled. Then he grinned what Prew always remembered afterwards as the saddest, gentlest, bitterest, warmest grin he had ever seen on a human face.
“You dont want to go with me, Prew.”
“Sure I do.”
“No you dont. What about Fatso?”
“Beside going with you, to hell with Fatso.”
“You dont know what you’d be getting in to. I’ve been on the run from the Law before.”
“So have I.”
“Yes, but not from town to town and sheriff to sheriff. And this time theres about a fifty-fifty chance I’ll never get off the Island and back to the States. Theres nothing romantic about it. And it isnt easy.”
“You said yourself it would be almost as easy to go out of here as it would be to go out throu
gh the motorpool,” Prew argued.
“It would. I dont mean that. I mean afterwards, after we were out. With two men it would be five hundred per cent harder. We’d have to head for the hills and go down that way in prison clothes, instead of back through the Post. And thats where they’d be looking for us. It would take a week to get down to town safely, we’d have to skirt every house and settlement, then go clear across Honolulu to my friends.”
“I’d like to go,” Prew said.
“I know how to travel,” Malloy said. “I’ve done all this before. I know how to go on shipboard like a rich man above suspicion. I know how to dress and act—like ordering dinners, the way to treat stewards and servants, and especially other passengers—a million little things it takes years to learn. You’d give it away the first day.”
“But I learn fast,” Prew said. “Listen, I know I’d be lots of trouble, at first. But I’d more than pay it back later on, in the things you plan to do.”
Malloy smiled. “You dont know what I’m planning to do.”
“I got a pretty good idea.”
“I dont even know myself, Prew.”
“Okay,” Prew said stiffly. “I wont force you. But I would’ve liked to of gone.”
“You dont belong with me,” Malloy said. “You belong in the Army. What do you want to go with me for?”
“I dont know. Because I want to help, I guess.”
“Help what?”
“I dont know. Just help.”
“Help change the world?”
“Maybe. Yeah, I guess thats it.”
“The little bit you and me might change the world,” Malloy smiled, “it wouldnt show up until a hundred years after we were dead. We’d never see it.”
“But it’d be there.”
“Maybe not,” Malloy said. “Thats why I say you dont belong with me. You got a romantic picture. It would mean years of living too close together, always on the jump. I’m not good at living close to people; I’m better when they’re always a little way off. And you’d soon get disillusioned with it. I’m doing what I’m doing for my own self only, not for what it might or might not produce. You know what I told you a while ago was wrong with me? You remember what I told you?”
Prew did not answer. It would have sounded stupid and inane to say he did not think there was anything wrong with Malloy.
“You dont know me at all,” Jack Malloy said. His voice had suddenly taken on the contorted abortive tone of a confessional. “You got a romantic picture of me too, just like all the rest. I’ve never loved anything enough in my life. Thats whats wrong.”
“What about the Wobblies? What about America?”
“The Wobblies are gone. Have been for a long time. But I dont think I even loved the Wobblies enough because if I had, I’d of been able to do something.
“And America isnt a thing. America is an idea. An idea that everybody has a different definition of. I can love ideas, as long as they’re my own, but ideas arent things. I’m the kind of a guy who dont like to get too close to any individual, to see his faults; if I do, it shuts off the love I feel; then I get angry and hate myself for it afterwards; and if I have to stay close to the guy, or the thing, I eventually get to hate him, or it, too. You see, the same things wrong with me thats wrong with everybody else. I preach against it with them, but its true of me, too. Even though I can prove logically that its not.”
“I dont believe that,” Prew said. “Thats not true. You’re just tearing yourself down.”
“Dont like to discover the feet of clay, do you?” Jack Malloy smiled painfully. “If you went with me, you’d discover it soon enough. Because its true. Believe me, its true. But you’re different. You love the Army. Really love it. Are a part of it, and belong in it. I’ve never loved anything enough to belong in it. The things I’ve loved have always been too phantasmal, too immaterial, too idealistic. I suffer from the same disease I try to diagnose, the same disease thats destroying the world.
“Thats the thing that has always dogged my steps haunting me,” he said abortively, for all the world like a good Irish Catholic confessing his customary Saturday night infidelity. “The thing thats always followed and tripped me up, the thing I’ve always been looking for, still am looking for, and never will find, and know I never will find. I’d give whatever place in heaven I’ve got coming to have been able to love something as much as you love the Army.
“Dont leave it,” he said. “Dont ever leave it. When a man has found something he really loves, he must always hang onto it, no matter what happens, whether it loves him or not. And,” he said with an almost religious fervor, “if it finally kills him, he should be grateful to it, for having just had the chance. Because thats the whole secret.”
Prew did not say anything. He still did not believe him. But how could he argue against a brain like Malloy.
“‘Because a man loves God,’” Jack Malloy said, his voice coming back up to normal again, “‘he must not expect God to love him in return.’ At least not according to his limited definition of love.”
Prew still did not say anything. He did not know what there was for him to say.
“I wont say good-by to you,” Malloy said, his voice entirely normal now, “because I wont know just when I’m going out. I’ll have to wait till the time comes up right. Then I’ll recognize it. Thats the only way to work a thing like that. So just forget all about it, and expect to see me till you dont.”
“It seems like,” Prew said contortedly, “it seems like life is made up of saying hello to people we dont like and good-by to people we do.”
“Thats horse shit,” Jack Malloy said. “Sentimental horse shit. Dont ever let me hear you say a thing like that again. You just happen to be going through a period of the good-bys. Every man has them to go through at different times. Now shut up with that crap. And lets hit the sack.”
“Okay,” Prew said contritely. He squashed out his cigaret in the can and slipped under the blankets. He lay in the bunk in the silence, feeling suddenly a vague presentiment that somehow Jack Malloy with his slick brain had tricked him but he could not put his finger on just how.
It was a week before Malloy’s opportunity presented itself. Prew saw him every day when they came in from work, and every day he expected not to see him. In spite of all Malloy had told him about forgetting it, every evening he expected not to see him. Then the evening came when he did not see him, and Hanson when he locked up for them told the story of how Jack Malloy had just walked out of the motorpool in a pair of stolen greasemonkey overalls and nobody in the motorpool knew a damn thing about it. Pfc Hanson, whose worship of The Malloy was perhaps exceeded only by that of the late Pvt Blues Berry, was tickled to death. MP patrols were sent out through the pineapple fields and along the Honouliuli Trail; the gate guards down in the Post were alerted; the Wahiawa Patrol and the Shafter MPs downtown were furnished with full particulars and instructions. It was the first time anybody had ever escaped from the Schofield Barracks Post Stockade, except for three men ten years ago who had been brought back in less than twelve hours. But no trace of Jack Malloy was found anywhere. In Number Two, as Malloy had prophesied, they were as proud as party members whose candidate had just been elected as President.
Prew sat by himself and wondered wildly if he had not already met the new Messiah of the new faith Malloy had also prophesied. A Messiah who refused a following and preferred to work alone. Met him, and lived alongside of him, and failed to recognize him.
After two weeks of a fruitless search, accompanied by as intense an interest inside the Stockade as the outcome of the World Series, Jack Malloy’s escape tapered off into old stuff and, like everything else, before the constant pressure of the work like a stone against a steel blade, eroded away into boredom and nothingness.
In the Stockade, whatever else happened, you worked. You swung your 16 lb hammer to crush this rock, or you swooped a scoopshovel to load this rock you had already crushed, into the trucks that came
. Work without purpose, work without end, work without pride. Your hands blistered, broke, bled, calloused. They corned up like a mailman’s feet. By their blisters, you thought wildly, shall ye know them, Lord, when the day of judgment came. And as soon as you busted all of this rock available, the Engineers came in and accommodatingly blasted more slabs of it out of the mountain for you. It was an unlimited mountain. And your muscles ached and toughened. And your mind ached and toughened. And your asshole ached and tightened, when you thought about a woman. You would be a tough, good, dangerous soldier, when you got out of this.
Chapter 44
IN ALL, COUNTING the extra time for the trip to the Black Hole and the transfer into Number Two, he served 4 months and 18 days, and G Company was changed.
The Warden was gone; on a 14 day furlough. Leva was gone; transferred to M Co and a S/Sgt Maylon Stark was a S/Sgt, and Lt Culpepper was the Company Commander now. Dynamite Holmes had been reassigned to Brigade HQ with a majority. Holmes had taken S/Sgt Jim O’Hayer with him and O’Hayer was a M/Sgt. They were expecting a new Company Commander, a Captain, to be shipped in any day. It was a different company.
He pulled in from the Stockade wearing the same CKC uniform he had worn at the trial. It felt strange and new after 4 months and 18 days of nothing but the outsize Stockade fatigues. The suntans were neither dirtier and more wrinkled, nor cleaner and more pressed. They had hung on a hanger in the Stockade supply room for 4 months and 18 days and except for a faint crease across the knees were just exactly like they had been when he took them off. He could not overcome a feeling of surprise at this. It was the same with everything.
He drew his bedding and equipment and his same old foot-locker with all the old familiar personal possessions in it just like he had left them but looking strangely new and unused. They were the same blankets, and the same riflebelt and pack and canteen, but Leva did not issue them to him. They were issued to him by the welcome-grinning S/Sgt Malleaux, the new supply sergeant. From behind Malleaux Pete Karelsen, a S/Sgt too now, and still on SD in the supplyroom, came up grinning to shake hands also. Apparently, he was still a celebrity. They asked him about Maggio. He had promised himself he would wait nine days.
