by James Jones
It made quite a sensation. Not many white men could dance the hula at all, let alone dance it well. But he had learned well, what old Tony had taught him better. And he had the figure for it, if I do say so as shouldnt.
And then when he came back grinning and put the gardenia in her hair, just as a gesture, just to carry it on out. And the fat-faced tourists whispering to each other about the crazy haole wondering who he was must be from old Island family who appeared to be more savagely Hawaiian than the Kanaka natives. Natives, he grinned, who would go back tomorrow morning to their jobs as waitresses at Walgreen’s and mechanics in some auto paint-and-body shop on Nuuanu with very unnative haole hangovers and the tourists if they went into Walgreen’s for a coke or stopped to get their carburetor fixed would not even recognize them.
“You’re always full of surprises,” she had smiled. “You’re always coming up with something. You just love to shock people, dont you? Where on earth did you ever learn to dance like that?”
And when they got back to the hotel—inn, they called it—that night it was again like it had once used to be, hot biting wiggling sweating savage, her playing the White Goddess again and him the savage. Like he liked it. But like it had not been very often lately now for a long time, and like it was not to be again, after that one time, during the rest of the last two days.
“My savage,” she had whispered biting gently. “My primitive crazy savage.”
The next night, the last but one, he made the mistake of trying to get it back again. He called her His Chippy, My Chippy, as he had done before; but this time she not only pushed him off but flounced out of the bed crying and after a seeming endless period of name-calling in which the worries about the kid came out again (“What if he should get sick? How would I find out? Here, shacked up with another man in a hotel like a common whore? What if he died? Would you care? Yes, a lot you’d care!”) ended up by sleeping in the other bed. Just like bundling in the old days, he had thought wanting to beat his fist into the wall, bite blood from his knuckles with the frustration of being unable to say one word that did not sound guilty and apologetic, except that now instead of a board inbetween we have this rocklike silence.
It was during those last two days, when he had been very angry about his slacked Morning Report, that he had told her the full story of Prewitt including Fatso Judson and the whore Lorene from Mrs Kipfer’s with whom he was in love, to let her know for once how the other half lived. And even he was surprised at how greatly concerned she had been, concerned enough to cry, which only made him love her, goddam it, that much more.
My point, his mind said, the apex of my conclusions, is that the illusion of romantic love, being an illusion grounded on the principle of you build me up and I build you up, cannot last through the years of you tear me down and I tear you down. Thats why the men step out and the women take to religion.
But as long as you can keep the illusion, he argued grimly, you can love. And if you’ve got the illusion, then by god you do love. Reality or no reality.
True, his mind said, coolly. And marriage is the great illusion breaker. You dont believe me, try it.
I intend to, he told it.
You see, it said, the foundation principle behind the illusive principle of Romantic Love—the Reality, in other words, behind the Fantasy—is Love of Self; which, up to the time of this paper, has remained undiscovered.
Probably, Warden said, thats because the illusion has received such general recognition and acceptance through the medium of commercial advertising?
Yes, it said indifferently. Now, to get back. What you really love, then, is Milt Warden. As long as she builds you up and makes you love Milt Warden more, because he is such a fine outstanding man, you love her too, naturally. Because she makes you a finer better man. But, when she begins to tear you down and make you love Milt Warden less, because he’s such an obvious no good son of a bitch, you naturally dont love her near so much any more. Because you arent such a nice person any more. And eventually, when it keeps on long enough, you dont love her any more at all. Its really very simple, once you understand it.
All right, Warden said impatiently. But whats to keep two people from just building each other up indefinitely.
Well, his mind frowned, its a little hard to explain to a layman. Theoretically, there is nothing. But in practice it gets rather repetitious. It gets rather hard to keep on inventing new compliments. Eventually, you reach a saturation point beyond which you can do no more than repeat. Naturally, the other party gets suspicious, if not actually bored.
A pretty picture, he said. You leave me a very pretty picture. Okay, you’ve diagnosed the ailment, how about the cure?
You misunderstood, his mind said. The subject of this paper is the isolation of the virus. We are not attempting to lay out a course of treatment.
Well, thats fine, Warden said. Thats just fine. You prove to me that I’m dying from a disease, and then tell me its incurable.
Well, his mind said, the isolation of the virus opens several avenues of approach. We have a few ideas we’re working on—
Better, he said, to have let me died in blissful ignorance.
I thought you were a man who liked to know the facts? his mind said stiffly.
Facts, hell! How do you think I’m going to tell her the facts?
Thats your problem. Of course, it said, there is always the possibility that she already knows the facts.
Yes, he said, that just what I’m afraid of.
To date, his mind said, the only known path of recovery from the disease of love is to get married.
You mean, just let it wear itself out.
Thats it.
And walk on crutches the rest of your life.
Well, his mind said, at least you wont be dead.
Give me polio any time, he said.
Well, his mind said, I guess I’ll sign off now. If I find anything new I’ll let you know.
Well, thanks, he said. Well, thanks a lot.
He sat on in the chair alone, wondering if this was how a man felt whose doctor has just told him he has cancer, and waiting for mortgageforecloser Ross to come in.
He wondered if the man with cancer also would worry most of all about how to tell his wife?
Even whiskey had no medicinal value for this disease. Hadnt he just tried two days of it?—because he was afraid to go down to Mrs Kipfer’s for another shock treatment? That showed how far gone he was.
You’re nothing but a husk, Milt, he told himself, and took another drink. A dried up eaten out empty husk. Not so long ago he had at least been able to get temporary relief in a whorehouse. Now he could not even do that, because he was afraid of ruining his reputation with a fiasco.
Back in the old days, before the moral United States got a throttlehold on the literary world, they used to write quite a bit about fiascoes. It was quite a subject, then. Now, they did not write about them any more; either because fiascoes were less frequent, which he doubted; or else because they were considered more shameful, which he suspected. After all, you could not propagate the race with fiascoes; and today propagating the race was of the utmost importance, in Germany and in Russia and in the USA, because where the hell are we going to get the manpower for the next war, after this one’s done, unless we propagate the race?
Why dont you write a paper on that one? he told it. A lot of people would like the answer to that one.
But there wasnt any answer from the gallery.
In fact, when you thought about it, just about the only consolation for this disease was the fact that it was not a rare one. That you were not the only one who suffered from it.
Well, lets wait and see what litigationprolonger Ross has got to say. He’s about the only hope thats left.
Lt Ross, when he came in, did not say anything. He ignored the bottle sitting in plain sight on the desk. He moved around the orderly room, shaking hands with his new 1st/Sgt, talking to get acquainted and taking no notice whatever of ei
ther the whiskey or the crummy $120 Brooks Bros. suit or the three days stubble of beard on his 1st/Sgts jaw.
The dirty kosher schmuck a mingia, Warden thought. He knows goddam good and well he cant run this fucking Compny without me. For two cents I’d offer the schlemiel a drink; then he’d have to notice it. Kotz, Warden said to himself throatily, letting it lie on the back of his tongue like butter. Kotz; kotz. The shithead.
“I’ve got something for you Sergeant,” Lt Ross said, apparently feeling he was sufficiently acquainted. He pulled a paper out of his pocket. “Instead of taking the full correspondence course for Reserve Officer’s Training, they are going to let you just take this examination. Because of your service, and experience, and rank; and because Col Delbert wrote a letter asking that in your case they waive it.” He paused, smiling expectantly.
Warden did not say anything. What did they expect him to do? scream with joy?
“Here is a copy of the examination you will take next Monday,” Lt Ross went on, laying the paper out on the desk. “Col Delbert sent it over for you to glance over and told me to give it to you with his compliments.”
“Thanks,” Warden said lazily, without looking at it. “But I wont need it. Hows about a drink, Lieutenant?”
“Why, thanks,” Lt Ross said. “I dont mind if I do. Col Delbert said you’d probably say that. He said you probably wouldnt want it or need it, but he thought it would be a good idea to bring it over anyway, just to let you know we’re all back of you.”
Furiously, indignantly, outraged, Warden watched him calmly take the bottle off the desk and uncork it.
“It tastes a little thin,” Lt Ross said.
“Some son of a bitch is been watering it while I was on furlough,” Warden said, staring hard at him.
“Thats too bad,” Lt Ross said.
Warden grinned at him. “You know,” he said lazily, “I’m surprised at the Great White Father Delbert. I thought old Jake would be doin everything he could to screw me out. Instead of tryin to help me. Especial what with this feud him and Holmes been having the past three or four months.”
“From what I can gather,” said Lt Ross, “the Colonel thinks very highly of you as a soldier. Much too highly to let a thing like a personal disagreement stop him from pushing your application, when he thinks you deserve it.”
“And,” Warden grinned, “when it’ll be a feather in his bonnet if I make it.”
“Yes,” Lt Ross grinned. “And in mine, too.”
Warden did not say anything. There was not anything else left to say. He stopped grinning and stared at Ross, but that didnt do any good either. Apparently it was going to be just like with Sgt Wellman back in A Co, who put in for the OEC last January; every officer in the battalion helped him with his correspondence lessons. Wellman who didnt know a squad column from a skirmish line; now he was a hotshot 2nd Lt down in the 19th.
“Thats too bad about your whiskey, Sergeant,” Lt Ross said, looking at his watch. “Well, I guess I better be getting on up to the Club for lunch. I’ll see you later on this afternoon. If you have any questions about that exam paper, you just ask me. I’ll try to answer them for you.”
Warden sat up after he was gone and picked up the copy of the exam. No wonder they had such stupid shitheads for officers, if they give them such childish examinations as this. He knew the answers to these questions before he even finished reading them. If you have any questions, he minced, you just ask me. Shit. He stuffed the exam in his pocket and turned to watch Lt Ross through the window, crossing the quad in his bent-kneed back-bobbing shambling walk, his uniform hanging from him dismally. Picture of a soljer. The son of a bitch walks like a goddam ragman. Or a plow jockey. Looks like a ragman, too.
A gentleman, he sneered, a gentleman. Manners, no less. Politeness he’s got. His old man is probly a pork packer on Millionaire’s Row or something. He took the bottle off the desk and put it back in the filing cabinet. Them and their goddam examination papers.
But that night, while Pete was off visiting some sidekick in the 27th, he looked over the copy of the exam again in his room. And Monday morning, when he went over to Regiment to take it, he sat right down and wrote them off contemptuously. Then he tossed the paper contemptuously on the desk of the 2nd Lt who was acting as timer and walked out, with over half of the two hour time limit still to go, feeling the Lt staring after him incredulously.
It was when he got back to the Orderly Room that morning that Rosenberry handed him the Department Special Order decreeing that the annual fall maneuvers would start on the 20th, two days hence.
He carried Prewitt present on the Morning Report until the morning they left, before he finally picked him up as absent. He had been able to give him an extra week. If there was ever any investigation about Fatso Judson, that ought to cover him. Anyway, it was the best he could do.
The evening before they pulled out, on the strength of a hunch, he went down to the Blue Anchor Cafe on King Street two doors from Mrs Kipfer’s New Congress which had been the Company hangout ever since he got in the outfit, both because it was cheap and because it was two doors from Mrs Kipfer’s—The Blue Chancre, they called it in the Company. There was nobody there tonight; they were all home getting ready to move in the morning. He waited four hours, swilling straight shots with beer chasers, and talking to Rose the Chinese waitress.
Prewitt did not show. Rose said she could not remember that he had been there, not for long time now. But then, Rose wouldnt have told him if he had. She and Charlie Chan the bartender-proprietor knew fully as much about the personal affairs of G Company as its Company Administration ever did. At one time or another Rose had been shacked up with almost every noncom in the Company. Sort of a community wife.
Somehow, he had had a hunch Prewitt might show up down there. He might never come back to the Post, but he wouldnt be able to stay away from news of the Company for ever. So, logically, the Blue Chancre would be the place he would head for. It was only a hunch. He knew it was a wild last-gasp shot in the dark. In the morning they moved out for the beaches and he dropped him for rations and picked him up AWOL on the Morning Report.
Lt Ross, who was having a nervous time with his first maneuvers and did not know Prewitt from his name on the roster, was very angry about it at first. He wanted to court martial him. Warden had to explain to him that Prewitt was probably drunked up lying in somewhere with a wahine and would probably show up at the Hanauma Bay CP in a day or two, before he would accept Warden’s idea of Company Punishment. Lt Ross was trying hard to learn the ways of the Regular Army. He laughed, and relented.
Warden could teach him a lot, he said, if he wanted to, during these next two months before his commission came through.
That was true, Warden agreed, aware that this was only a holding action. If Prewitt didnt come back, it wouldnt mean anything. What he was hoping was that the maneuvers would bring him in. Prewitt would know about the maneuvers; everybody in Hawaii always knew about maneuvers. On an island the size of Wahoo the annual maneuvers were almost as much of a territorial holiday as the Army Field Day in April. Truck convoys moved through town stopping traffic, and details set up machineguns at all the important civic installations, and other details laid road blocks on all the highways, and the bars in town always did a land office business. An old soldier snorts over maneuvers like an old firehorse snorts over a dry-run fire.
Warden went about setting up his CP at Hanauma Bay and waited, wondering why it was he was bothering so much about a common fuckup. Maybe he was losing his touch. He was getting as sentimental as Dynamite Holmes. He must be, to go out of his way to try and save the neck of a man he had called clean for a fuckup the first day he came in the Company.
Yet somehow there was something else. Prewitt seemed to hold the key to something. He felt if he could save Prewitt he would be saving something else. A something that if it was saved would provide the justification for still something else. Prewitt had become a symbol to him of something.
When he did not show as the days passed and Lt Ross’s good-humored leniency got thinner and thinner, Warden found himself taking it almost as hard as if it really meant something to him personally.
Probly its because you feel guilty about becoming an officer, he told himself. Probly thats all it is.
He decided he was staying away because he still thought they were looking for him for Fatso. That must be the reason. But how to get word to him that that was blown over? You couldnt, unless you knew where he was. And you couldnt look for him, not with the maneuvers on and you out in the field.
The maneuvers started out to be pretty much the same as last year, and the year before that. It was the same old stuff. They moved out in the trucks to the beach and set up the MGs according to the Defense Plan and settled down to wait till they were called into action. G Company’s sector of beach ran from Sand Island in Honolulu Harbor east clear to Makapuu Point and included Waikiki Beach and the estates along Black Point and Maunalua Bay. It was one of the choicest sectors on the rock; Waikiki had the best bars on the rock and the Black Point estates had the most wahine maids, and most of the maids had their living quarters right there on the estates. But since the whole Company knew they would be pulled off and relieved by the Coast Artillery as soon as the reds landed they did not get very excited.
This year the master plan was built around the landing of an enemy assault force at Kawela Bay on the north end of the island. The 27th and 35th with the 8th Field were the red attacking forces; the 19th and 21st, together with the rest of the Field Artillery and all the Coast Artillery, were the white defensive forces. The reds landed the third day. At the very least it took two days to lay the groundwork with even the most amenable wahine maids. G Company, instead of laying groundwork, made a 35-mile forced march up Kamehameha Highway through Wahiawa to Waialua where it made rendezvous with the Regiment and took up defense positions. They dug slit trenches all the next day and the day after were picked up by trucks and carried around by back roads in the dust to the other side of the island while another outfit took over their slit trenches. At Hauula, five miles below Kahuku where the main white line rested, they went into reserve. In an open field with no shade they dug more slit trenches and set up a bivouac that could have passed, and did pass, a regular full field inspection. They stayed there the rest of the two weeks and did nothing. It was the same old stuff. A typical maneuvers. They played cards and talked about how they wished they were back on the beach positions and compared notes on wahine maids and waited till word came that the battle was all over and the enemy all repulsed or captured and they broke camp and piled into the trucks to go home where, if there was not a plethora of wahine maids, there were at least showers.
