by James Jones
“Boots and saddles,” he sneered out loud defiantly, but not loud enough for Holmes to hear, and turned his back upon the coming Captain and went inside, to prove his independence to himself.
“I want these fixed up right away,” Holmes said, coming dripping into the Orderly Room and pulling papers from inside his coat. “Wheres Mazzioli?”
“Over at Personnel,” Warden said, without enthusiasm. “Sgt/Maj O’Bannon called for all the clerks this morning.”
“Then you’ll have to fix them,” Holmes said, handing him the papers. “I want an endorsement, you know; and a good letter of recommendation.
“This man Stark served with me at Bliss and I’ve already talked to Col Delbert about him. He wrote Department Hq to get his request through channels safely.” Holmes took off his Cavalryman’s hat and swung it vigorously, scattering the water on the floor.
“My God,” he said, “its wet. He’s a damned fine man. I always like to do everything I can for my old men.”
“Yes, Sir,” Warden said, and went on studying the papers.
“I want it sent out today,” Holmes said happily. “I’ll wait and mail it myself. Theres some other things I want to talk to you about anyway. We’ve got a Pfc rating open, havent we?”
“Yes, Sir,” Warden said, and went on studying the papers.
“Are you listening to me?” Holmes said.
“Yes, Sir,” Warden said. He raised the papers up, as if displaying them. “We got a full staff of cooks, Capn,” he made it casual. “You’ll have to bust somebody to make room for this guy. Have you talked to Sgt Preem about it yet? He aint kicked about his present cooks as far as I know of.” But he didnt make it casual enough.
Holmes’s face lost its roundness of happiness and became severe, all planes and angles. “I dont think Sgt Preem will contest my decision, Sergeant.”
“Not,” Warden said, “if you give him a bottle of lemon extrack.”
“What?” Holmes said.
“I said,” Warden said, “not if he wants to keep on the right track.”
Holmes stared at him disbelievingly. “Preem and Stark cooked together in Bliss. And I have never yet found it necessary to bolster my judgment with the advice of subordinates.”
“Yes, Sir,” Warden said, staring back at him.
“I know what I’m doing, Sergeant. Just let me handle it. When I want advice I’ll ask for it.”
“Yes, Sir,” Warden said, still staring at him. Holmes would never get a better first sergeant, and Holmes knew it, and Warden knew he could get by with it.
Holmes stared back long enough to let himself feel he had not been intimidated, and then he dropped his eyes to his sharp-peaked hat and shook it again to get the water off, unable to face the thing in Warden that just did not give a fuck.
“My God,” he mumbled. “Its wet.”
“Yes, Sir,” Warden said. Watching Holmes sit down at his desk and begin to doodle, feeling he had triumphed momentarily, he decided to beard the destiny once more, while he had the advantage.
“Can this thing wait a couple days, Captain? Leva is way behind in his supply reports and I’ve been helping him out. I’ve got work to do thats imperative; and this thing can be fixed up any time.” In a couple of days he might cool off and forget his altruism. He had done it before.
Holmes laid his pencil down emphatically. “Whats the matter with Sgt O’Hayer?” he said. “He’s the supply sergeant isnt he?”
“Yes, Sir!” Warden said.
“Well then. Let him do it. Thats his job.”
“O’Hayer cant do it. Sir. He’s too goddam busy running his goddam gambling shed.”
“What do you mean he cant do it? He’s the supply sergeant. He has to do it. Are you questioning my judgment, Sergeant?”
“No, Sir!”
“All right then. Let O’Hayer do his own job. Thats what he’s paid for. As long as I’m Company Commander of this outfit every man will do his own job, and it will be run as I say. And I want those papers made out now.”
“Yes, Sir,” Warden said violently. “I’ll make them out right now, Sir.” And the supply and all the rest of it can go to hell, he thought. Now there would be five boys from Bliss to hamstring the outfit. He sat down at his desk and went to work, ignoring Holmes, and in the work belittling him.
“By the way, Sergeant,” Holmes interrupted coolly. “About that open Pfc. I want you to have Mazzioli make out a Company Order giving it to Bloom.”
Warden looked up from his typewriter, his eyebrows quivering. “Bloom!”
“Yes,” Holmes said tranquilly, “Bloom. Bloom’s a good man, he’s got the makings of a good noncom in him. Sgt Galovitch tells me he works harder and has more initiative than any private in the Company.”
“Not Bloom,” Warden said.
“Why, yes,” Holmes said, satisfaction in his voice. “I’ve had my eye on him for quite a while. I keep my finger on the pulse of this Company much more than you think. Good athletes, I’ve found, always make the best soldiers,” he said maliciously. “Bloom won four of his fights in the Bowl this year. Its not impossible that we’ll make a Division Champion out of Bloom next year. Sgt Wilson is going to work with him.”
Holmes waited, looking at him, demanding an answer with his eyes. “You have Mazzioli do that tomorrow, will you?” he insisted gently, but firmly.
“Yes, Sir,” Warden said without looking up. “Yes-sir, I’ll do that.”
“Thanks,” Holmes said. He picked his pencil up triumphantly.
Warden finished up the papers, wondering if Holmes really believed the things he said or just said them for the effect; aware, as he handed the papers to Holmes, that he had just witnessed the beginning of the complicated mental process that had elevated over half the noncoms in the Company to their present rank.
Holmes looked the papers over with an air of profound well-being. “I suppose these are in good order?”
“Sir?” exploded Warden. “I make them out they’re always in good order.”
“Now, now, Sergeant,” Holmes said, raising his hand as if he were a bishop. “I know you’re a good first sergeant. I just want to be sure theres no slip on this transfer.”
“I made it out,” Warden told him.
“Yes,” Holmes smiled, “but your mind was too much on Leva and the supplyroom. If you’d quit worrying about Mess and Supply and trying to do their work in addition to your own, we’d have a lot more efficiency, and a much better outfit.”
“Somebody has to worry about it, Sir,” Warden said.
“Now, now,” Holmes laughed. “It cant be that bad, Sergeant. You look for things to worry about.
“Oh by the way, how is this new man Prewitt making out with straight duty now?”
“Doing fine. That boy is a good soldier.”
“I know he is,” Holmes said. “Thats what I’m counting on. I never saw a good soldier who liked to do straight duty as a private. I’m expecting to see him out for Company Smokers this summer. Theres an old saying that they tame lions in the Army.”
“I think you’re wrong,” Warden said bluntly. “I dont think you’ll ever see him out for boxing.”
“Wait until the rainy season’s over, Sergeant, before you be so sure. We’ve got a lot of field work coming up this summer.” He winked at Warden knowingly and picked up his rain-dark hat; at the moment he was sure, because Prewitt had been included in the plans of his campaign, and how could he not be on the squad if he was in the plans?
Warden watched him plowing his way back across the rain-swept deserted quad, realizing suddenly why he hated Holmes. It was because he had always feared him, not him personally, not his physique or mind, but what he stood for. Dynamite would make a good general someday, if he got the breaks. Good generals ran to a certain type, and Dynamite was it. Good generals had to have the type of mind that saw all men as masses, as numerical groups of Infantry, Artillery, and mortars that could be added and subtracted and understood on paper. They ha
d to be able to see men as abstractions that they worked on paper with. They had to be like Blackjack Pershing who could be worried about the morality of his troops in France so much he tried to outlaw whorehouses to save their mothers heartache, but who was proud of them when they died in battle.
Through the obscuring mist of anger in him, the stark nakedness of the raindrenched earth and muddy grass and the lonely moving figure of Holmes huddled in his topcoat made a picture in his mind of a ghost town street and a strong wind rolling along a tattered scrap of paper in the gutter to some unforeseen and unimportant destination, moaning with the sadness of its duty. From upstairs he could hear the shouts and splashings of the Company washing up for chow, and the dullness that swept in through the open window made him shudder and put on his field jacket that hung on his chair.
He stared out the window, his rage disintegrated, replaced by an unutterable melancholy that had no reason he could find.
Leva’s bald head floated leisurely up the open window, heading for the kitchen where he and Warden ate, instead of with the Company in the messhall.
“Whats for chow?” Warden called.
“BS and C,” stated the wryfaced Leva laconically, and strolled on.
Roast beef hash and gravy! Again! Preem was getting worse and worse. It kept the Company Fund broke buying GI lemon extract for him.
Warden sat down at his desk and reached into a drawer and brought out the regulation .45 pistol he always kept there, hefting the heavy weighted balance in his hand. Just like the pistol his father had brought home from the War. Same weight, same shape, same heavy blueness. He and Frankie Lindsay up the street had swiped it from his father’s bureau, every now and then, and shot caps in it sticking them in the slot before the pinless hammer; they would drop pebbles down the muzzle too and shoot them out a foot or so, playing they were bullets.
The Company was trooping down the stairs for chow.
Warden leveled the pistol at the small doorless closet where the filing cabinets were and cocked it. The raising of the hammer made a dull metallic click that was an ominous expectant sound, and Milt Warden banged his other palm down flat on the desk.
“Ha! you son of a bitch,” he said out loud. “Thought I didnt see you.”
He stood up, staring at the inoffensive closet, eyes narrowed, brows arched and quivering.
“Re-enlist, will you? I’m Wolf Larsen, see? and nobody re-enlists. Not without answering to old Shark. . . . No you dont!”
He stepped around the desk and strode at the closet, chin thrust forward murderously, stopping in the doorway, pulling the trigger slowly, inexorably.
The hammer fell, inevitable as a clock stroke. The dull click was flatly disappointing after the expectancy of the cocking.
He tossed the heavy pistol on the closet table clatteringly. “Continued next week,” he said, looking down at it. In its simple lines and solid gunmetal color it was an entity, beautiful and complete within itself as a woman’s calf. But then, he thought, a woman’s calf is only a symbol of the rest of it; what man would be satisfied with a woman’s calf alone?
Angrily he picked it up and jerked the slide back, letting it slam forward viciously, carrying a cartridge from the clip into the chamber, pointing the now loaded, cocked pistol at his own head and putting his finger lightly on the trigger.
Just where is, he thought, the line that separates insanity? Any man who would pull this trigger now would be insane. Am I insane? because I put it loaded to my head? or because I touch the trigger?
He gazed raptly at the heavy death a moment, then he took it down. He released the magazine expertly and ejected the shell upon his desk. He slipped shell back into clip, clip back into piece, piece back into drawer; and leaned back in his chair listening to the sounds of eating in the messhall.
After a while he rose and took a fifth of whiskey from the second drawer of his file cabinet and had a long, adam’s-apple-bobbling drink. Then he went out onto the porch and into the kitchen where Leva was leaning against the castiron sink, eating from a plate in his hand.
Warden’s chance came sooner than he had expected. The next afternoon it cleared a little, the rain stopped a while at noon and drew back to re-form its ranks before the next assault. It was hanging low and heavy-bellied, ominously, as Holmes came around the quad, staying on the street this time, wearing civvies, a soft brown tweed suit, and carrying his topcoat, to tell him that he was going down to town with Col Delbert and that he would not be back today.
And suddenly Warden knew that he would have to do it. He didnt know why exactly, because this was more than just a woman, there were women enough downtown that he could have. This went much deeper.
Up until now, while he had thought about it, he had only played with the idea. Always before it had been a point with him to steer clear of Army women, they were cold, with no more warmth in them than in a brilliant diamond, and there was no pleasure in them. They did their fornication out of boredom rather than desire. And from what Leva had told him and from what he had seen himself, he suspected Karen Holmes was one of them.
Yet above all that he still knew that he would do it, not as vengeance, or even retribution, but as an expression of himself, to regain the individuality that Holmes and all the rest of them, unknowing, had taken from him. And he understood suddenly why a man who has lived his whole life working for a corporation might commit suicide simply to express himself, would foolishly destroy himself because it was the only way to prove his own existence.
“Will you be back in time to take Retreat?” he said to Holmes casually, not looking up from the papers in his hand he had been reading.
“Hell no,” Holmes said happily. “Or Reveille either, probably. I told Culpepper to take them both for me if I dont show up. If he doesnt show up, you take them.”
“Yes, Sir,” Warden said.
Holmes was walking back and forth across the office, displaying an uninhibited joy and anticipation Warden had seldom seen in him. Under the burning lights that flickered out the window oilily upon the gloomy rainy day, Holmes’s normally florid face was flushed a deeper hue of happiness.
“All work and no play,” Holmes said, and winked. It was a male wink, implying the turgid weighted pendulum that must be relieved, and it flung a momentary bridge across the gulf of caste that always separated them. “You ought to take a day off yourself,” Holmes said. “All you do is sit around this gloom sweating over this paper and that. There are other, happier things in this world besides administration.”
“I’ve been considering it,” Warden said thinly, exchanging the papers in his hand for some on his desk and picking up a pencil. This was Thursday, the maid’s day off, it was just as good a time as any. He watched the beefy happiness on Holmes’s face narrowly, surprised that now at this time he should like him better than he ever had.
“Well,” Holmes said. “I’m going. I’m leaving it in your care, Sergeant.” There was great trust and feeling in his voice, and in his suddenly powerful emotion he clapped his hand on Warden’s shoulder.
“It’ll be here when you get back,” Warden said. But he was only playing out the role, and his voice was dead.
You’ve got nothing to go on but your woman’s intuition, Milton, Warden told himself, you better play it safe, you better really have it figured out. He watched Holmes leave and sat down at his desk to wait for Mazzioli to come back, because even now, in this big moment, he would not leave the Orderly Room with nobody but the CQ to run it.
It began to rain again before the clerk came back, and Warden occupied himself with cleaning up some odd jobs that had been accumulating. There were a number of letters he had to write out for Mazzioli to copy up for Holmes to sign, and then he made out in the rough the next week’s drill schedule, looking up the Field Manuals for the authorization.
Alone in the damp air, he worked savagely, taking out his hatred on the paper, forgetting everything else but this before him, throwing himself headlong at it like a ho
pped-up Jap attacking a machinegun, and the power of his energy filled the room to bursting.
Mazzioli, the company clerk, was dripping wet when he came in and trying to protect a half a dozen manila envelopes from the water.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, looking at Warden with his sleeves turned back. “Its cold enough outside. Shut that window before we both freeze to death.”
Warden grinned at him slyly, his eyes squinted up. “Is the poor little delicate baby cold?” he said. “Is him freezin?”
“Aw,” the clerk said. “Can it, will you?” He put his folders down and stepped to push it shut himself.
“Leave it open!” Warden roared.
“But its cold,” the clerk protested.
“Then freeze,” Warden grinned. “I like it open.” Suddenly his face hardened. “Where the hella yah been all goddam day?” he snarled.
“You know where I’ve been,” the clerk said primly. “I’ve been over at the personnel section in Regiment.” Having attended a business college on the outside, he exercised his right to intellectual superiority; to this end he prided himself on his good grammar and always sat in on the discussions held by the clerks in Choy’s. Now and then he even held a discussion with Pop Karelsen, the sergeant of the weapons platoon, who rumor had it once had been a rich man’s son. “I’ve been working with Sgt/Maj O’Bannon,” Mazzioli added bitterly, with a prissy mimic. “If I ever saw an old maid . . .”
“Grant went to the hospital today,” Warden interrupted bluntly. He picked the Sickbook up and opened it and held it under Mazzioli’s nose. “Did you know Grant was interned? He’s got the clap. Know what that is?”
The clerk stepped back, his armor pierced, looking guilty.
Warden grinned sourly. “Yeh. Thats time lost under AW 107,” he said, bludgeoning him with it. “Did you make up his individual sick record? did you make a note for the Morning Report? did you make a remark for your pay cards? did you fix my card index roster? The goddam Sickbook is your job. You’re the clerk. I cant do your work, too.”
“I didnt have time when the Sickbook came back this morning,” Mazzioli started. “Those medics never get it back before eleven. They . . .”
