by James Jones
Prew slipped his toe in through the leggin strap and worked it back, not saying anything. There was nothing to say. He had known for a long time it was coming, but he had not expected it to come. It was like with dying.
“Another stunt like missin Reveille,” the Chief said, “and you gone. I went out on a limb for you this morning. I wont do it again.”
“I wouldnt expect you to,” Prew said. “Not now.”
“I cant afford to,” the Chief said, placidly, factually, no guilt in his face or voice. “Maybe you think I let you down, because you and me been friends.”
“No.”
“I’m lettin you know now where I stand, so you wont think I doublecrossed you if I got to turn you in.”
“Okay. I got it.”
“I got pull with the Colonel,” the Chief explained factually, “but I aint got that much pull. I help you out along, what little bit I can, but no more goin out on limbs. I lucky to keep what I got and I aint goin to jeopardize it. I like this outfit.”
“So do I,” Prew said. “Thats funny aint it?”
“Yes,” the Chief said. “Very funny. Ha, ha. Ho, ho.”
“Big joke,” Prew said. “On me.”
“You buckin a big organization, when you buck the fighters in this outfit. They run this outfit. They maybe damn near run the Regmint. And they mean to see you go out for fightin, if they got to wear you down to a flyweight to do it.”
“Tell me somethin I dont know.”
“Okay. I thought you want the tip. But you tough. You a hard man. They cant touch you.” He made as if to get up.
“Wait,” Prew said. “Not as long as I keep within the ARs, within the Law, I dont see how they can. As long as I dont break no Laws.”
“Maybe not. But they want that Division Championship next winter bad, Dynamite wants it bad.”
“I dont see what he can do, long as I break no Laws.”
“Dont kid me,” the Chief said, “dont snow me. You no ree-croot. You been in quite a while. I guess you aint never seen a bunch get together and give a man The Treatment.”
“I’ve heard about it.”
“Whats The Treatment?” Maggio wanted to know.
The Chief ignored him. “Maybe they aint got it developed to a science, like the boys have at The Point, or VMI, or KMI, or Culver,” he said to Prew, “but its effective. Theres nothin in this world will bring a man into line quicker. Or else kill him. I seen it just once, in PI. The guy deserted, went back in the hills and married a Moro. When they caught him he got twelve years. He ended up a federal lifer.”
“I’m too smart for that,” Prew grinned. “And I dont kill easy, Chief,” he added, grinning stiffly, feeling the stiffness spreading clear up to his forehead like slow setting plaster, drawing these lips back tight on these teeth and cutting gashes in under these cheekbones, not him doing it, the stiffness doing it, as it always did this stiffness that came over him, over his face, in the ring when a man was trying to hit him, in a drunken brawl when a man drew a knife on him, any time there was fight, any time there was threat, always when there was this word, this kill word, which was the rottenest, foulest stinking word there was, but which some men used so freely and so proudly.
Chief Choate just looked at him stolidly, untouched, but Maggio who was watching him too was touched. Something like Humphrey Bogart, Maggio thought, something like a skull, more like a skull, a lipless cheekless deathshead skull.
“I can take everything they hand out,” Prew grinned, “and ask for more.”
“Yas,” Maggio said, “and me too.”
“Do you want a busted head, kid?” Chief Choate asked him seriously.
“No,” Maggio said.
“Then keep your big yap shut. This is serious. And if you smart, you keep your big nose out altogether. This is his fight. You ony make it worse on him by gettin in.”
“Thats right, Angelo,” Prew grinned, feeling the stiffness soften as he looked at the furious narrowshouldered little Wop.
“I hate to see somebody get screwed,” Maggio said.
“Then you might as well get use to it,” the Chief said. “You probly be seein it often before you die.
“I dont see why you want to do it,” he said to Prew. “You ony makin it hard on yourself. But thats your business, its none of my affair. I hate to see you fuck up, is all.”
“You refused to fight for Dynamite yourself, once.”
“Yas, but with me I knew what was the story. I had enough pull in Regmint I could make it stick. You cant.”
“Maybe not. We’ll see. I aint never refused a order yet, when its official duty. But I dont think they got the right to order me what to do outside of duty hours.”
“It aint a question of right or wrong, its a question of fack. But there is awys been a question if there is any outside duty hours for a soljer, whether the soljer has the right to be a man.”
“And its gettin more and more that way lately, in this world all over.”
“And not ony in the Army,” Maggio put in, and Prew could see that Angelo was remembering Gimbel’s Basement.
“Thats right,” Chief Choate said. “And so what?”
“So this duty stuff is okay, maybe,” Maggio said, “for wartime. In wartime a soljer’s awys under orders. But not in peacetime.”
“Been wartime,” Chief Choate said, “ever since I enlisted. And thats thirteen years ago. For an army, its awys wartime.”
“Thats right,” Prew said. “There aint no peacetime army. But what I dont believe, is that the Regimental Boxing Squad, or fighting for the Regimental Boxing Squad, is essential to the perpetual war effort.”
“You ast Dynamite what he thinks,” the Chief said, “and see what he says.”
“Hell,” Angelo Maggio said. “Thats no problem, Mr. Anthony. Dynamite’s so full of West Point propaganda it runs out of his ears an leaves a yellow stream behind him.”
“Maybe,” the Chief said, “but he’s the Compny Commander.”
From out in the quad the guard bugle sounded Drill Call imperatively and Chief Choate got up from the bunk, looking at Prew blankly searchingly.
“Well,” he said. “Well, I see you.”
“In the Stockade,” Prew grinned, and watched the big man dogtrotting lumberingly graceful down the aisle to his end bunk, to get his equipment on. Then he picked up the bayonet scabbard he had forgotten and worked a hook into the wide length of cartridge belt under the old third pocket.
“Nice homecoming gift,” he said.
“To hell with them,” Angelo Maggio said. “All of them. They cant do nothing. What can they do?”
“Sure,” Prew said and hooked in the other hook and shook them down into the belt, watching the Chief buckling into field training harness, the bayonet that became a toothpick when it hung on him, the light pack that looked like a matchbox on his back, the big hefty Springfield ’03 like a Woolworth imitation of itself for small boys when the big fist picked it up.
“Him too,” Angelo said. “A fine pal.”
“No, he’s all right.” When times changed, you accepted it. The days of Jeb Stuart and the plumed hats and the highwayman came riding, riding up to the old inn door; that was the Civil War, that wasnt now. The days when the Emperor was nourished through hardship and the long walk home from Moscow by the full hearted devotion of the Old Guard and the Young Guard who still loved him in defeat, that wasnt now either but even earlier, they didnt have gas warfare then, why, they didnt even kill the enemy, in those days, if they could help it. Times change is all, or maybe those were only stories, maybe only dreamed up afterwards, because they would have liked it to have happened that way. “Just because he use to eat breakfast with me in Choy’s, does that make him owe me something? The Chief’s a damned good man.”
“Sure,” Angelo said. “So was Pilate.”
“Oh, balls. Can it, will you? You dont understand it. Stick to things you understand.”
“Okay,” Angelo said and stuffed his
cigaret pack and book of matches into a cartridge pocket. “We’ll need these. Jesus, my head. And that goddam Stark layin out down in the cooks’ room sleepin up a fog. We better be gettin outside?”
The guard bugle in the quad sounding the repeat answered him and from downstairs S/Sgt Dhom’s big voice boomed up through the screens, sounding very like a soldier.
“All right, up there, you men. Outside for drill. Everybody outside. Lets jerk that lead. Outside. Drill Call.”
“Lets go, my squad,” Chief Choate bellowed. “Grab your hats and grab your bats, this war is on.” He lumbered gracefully light footed down the stairs singing Drill Call in a natural basso that carried far, “Fall out for drill, like hell I will, I aint had no chow. I said Fall out for drill, you bet I will, the compny commander’s here now.”
“But he can sing,” Angelo said grudgingly.
All over the big squadroom men were moving, picking up their rifles and heading for the stairs.
“Well. Lets cut this cake,” Prew said, picking up the long wood, clean steel, solidness of his own.
From the third floor porch he could look down out over all of it, the whole ritual of drill call, the first call after the rainy season. He stopped to watch it. Angelo stopped too, waiting for him, indifferent to the picture.
It was a good picture though, a soldiering picture, like the Pall Mall ad (they pronounce that Pell Mell, dont they, like the bloody English peerage. I like Pall Mall better though, its American, even if it aint highclass) that he still had scotchtaped to the inside of his footlocker top, a fine picture, if you were a thirty year man. The quadrangle was alive with men in blue fatigues and the khaki almost faded white of belts and leggins and the sharp-brimmed olive drab campaign hats, pouring out the walks and lining up in their companies, very soldierly, the kind of soldierly that wins a war, he thought proudly, any war, but all those other companies were remote, even the bugle corps was remote he noticed, all faceless figures and remote, a background for our Company, where every face was a face he knew so that the sameness of uniform did not matter, even enhanced the individuality of the faces, each face with its special orbit that revolved around the central sun of Captain Holmes (dead star, he thought, but then maybe The Warden is our sun), asteroid faces, not big enough for a private orbit, too small to be classed as planets (like Dhom, or Champ Wilson, or Pop Karelsen, or Turp Thornhill, Jim O’Hayer, Isaac Bloom, Niccolo Leva—good names, he thought, good old American names—or like the new man Mallaux who was a coming featherweight, or Old Ike Galovitch—was Ike a planet? Ike was more like a third rate moon).
Looking down through the screens he could see the asteroid face of Readall Treadwell, that was one of them, Readall Treadwell (christened “Fatstuff” but who was no more fat than Man Mountain Dean was fat) who could hardly read any, let alone read all, but whose solid endurance at carting around the BAR he never got to fire was almost legend. He could see Crandell “Dusty” Rhodes (christened “The Scholar”) whose scholarship consisted solely of always turning up with a genuine diamond ring or a real honest-to-God antique Roman coin he was willing to let go to you because you were a friend. He could see “Bull” Nair (alias “The Stud”) whose social distinction was determined by the fact that he had a cock that was a full nine inches long when hard (by actual measurement, this, that was the envy, illogically, of the whole Regiment) and that only one whore in Honolulu (outside of the Mama-San Big Virginia) would even attempt to take, and then she charged him five bucks instead of three.
These were all part of it, he felt, looking down; important parts, as small memories are important parts of the life of a man, parts of your chosen heritage, even of your destiny maybe, small functioning parts of this tiny solar system that is the company that is lost among the galaxies of regiments that make up this universe that is the Army, the parts that give meaning to the only universe you know, he thought, the only universe you want, because it is the only one you ever found a place in yet. And now you are rapidly losing that.
“Come on, Angelo,” he said, watching the knot of noncoms clustered around the baldheaded, sandhog shouldered Dhom who towered over Chief Choate even, “we better get our asses down there.”
“Man, you look sick,” Angelo said as they fell in with the 1st Platoon.
“Not sick,” Prew said, looking at him sideways under the hat brim low over his eyes. “Just hung over.” But it was not the head, he thought, be honest, you’ve fallen out for drill with bigger heads than this before and always laughed them off. Four hours drill under a hot sun with a head on was as much a part of soldiering as was musketry with a half pint hidden in your belt to help you shoot, or as were forced practice marches with a Listerine mouthwash bottle full of saki on your hip. Soldiering and drinking have always been blood brothers. But what, he thought, is soldiering?
The very, very odd thing was that all this that was costing him, in the Army, had not a thing to do with soldiering. There should be something important, there, he told himself. Reality, he thought. To know the real from the illusion. Man, man, I think you’re off your nut, but he could not shake off this new sense of separateness.
The knot of noncoms on the green broke up, the giant Dhom going front and center and the others doubletiming back to their platoons. Standing out in front alone and looking very soldierly Dhom gave them right shoulder sounding very soldierly and the rifles moved and were smartly slapped in unison very satisfyingly soldierly, but even this did not free him from this agonizing separateness that was worse than any loneliness, this feeling that he knew a thing the others did not know.
They marched at attention out the northwest truck entrance and across the intersection where the well-bucked MP was directing the heavy early morning traffic and where they were given route step and somebody in the back began the ancient hallowed dialogue of the Infantry.
“Who won the War?”
“The MPs won it,” came the answer.
“How’d they win it?”
“Why, their mothers and sisters fuckin for Liberty Bonds.”
The tall, handsome, statuesque MP flushed deeply, and as they passed Post Theater #1 someone broke into the Regimental Song and the rest took it up, singing the words the regimental yearbook never printed.
“Oh, we wont come back to Wahoo any more.
No, we wont come back to Wahoo any more.
We will fuck your black kanaky,
We will drink your goddamned saki,
BUT we wont come back to Wahoo any more.”
And Chief Choate in his deep rich basso took his favorite line of the break alone.
“Kiss me, Charlie, theres some barley,
Runnin down my leg.”
And the voice of authority spoke through the brassy soldierly throat of S/Sgt Dhom.
“Can that, you men, or you can march at attention. Theys liable to be ladies present around here.”
And this was soldiering, the column of marching men that was George Company moving on out Kolekole Pass Road toward drill between the rows of tall old elms that lined the road on either side exuding an abiding permanence, but Pvt Robert E Lee Prewitt was untouched, the old shiver was not in his spine, because the soldiering that once was the only real was now obviously the illusion, since the real lay somewhere hidden below its realistic camouflage.
Chapter 19
NO OFFICERS APPEARED at drill all morning, even for the usual look-see. It developed into a sort of general Tell-Off-Prewitt field day with first one noncom then another carrying the ball. They gave him a good going over. He had not up to then believed that anything could hurt a man so much, without actually resorting to physical pain. He was, he realized, learning a considerable bit about pain lately.
In the first period Dhom, the calisthenics master (by virtue of being trainer to the boxing squad), read him off over a silent 36-count side straddle hop exercise and had him to do it again alone (as was customary with the awkward squad) while the Company rested. Prew, who had not miscounted a side
straddle hop since getting out of recruit drill, did it, perfectly, and was asked to do it once again and this time try to get it right and then warned (as was customary with the awkward squad) to look alive or find himself on extra duty.
Prew knew Dhom, and had never much cared for him. It was Dhom who had once, during a Retreat formation, bulled his way into ranks like a bowling ball making a strike and punched a young recruit in the jaw for talking; he came near getting busted over that one, though never, of course, near enough to worry over. But on the other hand, it was also Dhom who last fall during the annual 30-mile hike had carried four extra rifles and a BAR the last 10 miles to bring G Company in one hundred percent present, the only company in the Regiment to make it. And also, it was Dhom whose perpetual henpecking by his greasy Filipino wife had become a company institution.
Back at the barracks, talking to The Chief, Prew had dismissed being hurt. Being hurt had not entered into it then. Harlan County boys are born with a facility for standing physical pain, if they live at all, and he was proud of his tested capacity, confident in the belief that they could doubletime him forever and work him till he dropped but they could never break that endurance that was the only thing his father had bequeathed him. He saw it as a simple battle of wills on a physical plane—which in a way it was. But it was also more than that, and this he had not seen. He had not seen that these men meant anything to him. Long ago, at Myer, when he first quit fighting to get in the Bugle Corps and saw how they all construed this to be lack of guts, he had had to reluctantly put aside his hope of ever being understood. This caused a certain loneliness but he accepted that because, he told himself, it was probably that in the first place that made him want to bugle. Then later, when they dropped him from the Bugle Corps because he got the clap and nobody of his many friends stepped forward to go to bat for him and try to get him reinstated, he had tossed the empty bottle labeled Comradeship aside also, realizing that it was now time for the hangover. This had increased his loneliness, but it also hardened his invulnerability.
And now, being invulnerable since there was nothing left for them to hurt, he had been quite sure that these men meant nothing to him. What he had forgotten, of course, was that these men were men and, being men, could not help but mean something to him, who was also a man. What he had forgotten momentarily was that he was a man, and that these men were, in effect, the same men who had come silently out on the porches last night (only last night, it was) to listen to his Taps. These men were, in effect, the disembodied voice that had come across the quad from Choy’s, the abstract spokesman for them all, saying proudly, “I told you it was Prewitt.” How this could be, he did not know. He could see this was going to be a hard thing to understand. What he had forgotten entirely was that though he had matched them for his faith in comradeship and understanding and had lost, he still had his faith in men kicking around somewhere, and that this was where they could still reach him. It did not take the hurt long in getting started.
