by James Jones
“He’s do it for you, Jim,” Warden grinned. O rare Milt Warden, O what a prick Milt Warden, O what a rare prick Milt Warden. I only just hope it works. “He’d do anything for you, Jim,” he grinned.
O’Hayer was looking at him thoughtfully, the tumblers making little clickings as they moved, still unemotionally, calculating.
“I like it where I am,” O’Hayer said, finally. “I see no reason to change my status, not from what you’ve told me. He might even end up by wanting me to pull drill with the Company, if he carried me surplus for straight duty. I like being the supply.”
“You wont when Leva transfers, Jim.”
“Maybe he wont transfer.”
“He will.”
“Maybe not,” O’Hayer said again, making a veiled threat of it, as if he knew more than he was telling.
“Okay,” Warden said. Well, he thought, it didnt work. He flipped his cigaret down at the rails in the bed below and watched the feeble glow, that was like a lightbulb in the daytime, splash in the gathering dusk.
He turned and walked away, grinning to himself happily. He spoke back over his shoulder just before he rounded the corner of the shed to O’Hayer who was still watching unemotionally.
“You know, Jim,” he said, “I really use to believe this stuff that you were one of those rare things, a human being truly without feeling. One of those that things come to naturally because they never mind risking coldbloodedly, or even losing coldbloodedly, what they have. Romantic, hey?”
As he rounded the corner O’Hayer was still looking at him, still unemotionally, all the tumblers still apparently still working.
Well, so what if it didnt work. Maybe Dynamite really would have done it for him, Big Jim meant a lot to Dynamite and not just as a punchie, maybe Dynamite really would have carried him as surplus, who knows? You never knew. Dynamite could hardly bust him.
But then Dynamite might also have transferred him. To HQ Company maybe where he would have to work. Or maybe Dynamite would only have clamped down on him in supply and made him work some here, although Christ knows what he could do without going to a supply school first. Well, maybe Dynamite might have sent him to supply school. Dynamite could have done any of these, if O’Hayer asked him to be relieved, like you hoped he would. So maybe old tumblers-in-the-head really did figure it out right. Maybe he wasnt scared.
But it was entirely possible Dynamite would have carried him as surplus though, he reminded himself. Entirely possible. And he preferred to believe Dynamite would have, and that old tumblers hadnt figured it out but was only scared to take a chance on losing his soft deal, just like us common mortals. Maybe Dynamite wouldnt have carried him as surplus, but Warden preferred to believe it the other way. It made him happy to believe it the other way.
He went on over to the barracks happily, believing it, to shower and change his clothes and go to town and have some drinks someplace or maybe just wander around happily downtown, not out at Waikiki but downtown, among the bars and shooting galleries and whorehouses, while he waited for time to meet Karen Holmes at the Moana in Waikiki. His T shirt and shirt both were sweated clear through from the gambling and he stopped on the stairs and raised his arm and put his nose to his armpit happily and inhaled the mineral-salts male smell of himself, feeling his chest expanding infinitely with maleness, feeling from inside himself the hard columnar beauty of his thighs and the slim thickly muscled beauty of his waist and loins; he was Milt Warden and he was meeting Karen Holmes in town tonight. But then suddenly, the eyes inside his mind that were not his eyes focused themselves, as his eyes had done, on the husky battered face of Maylon Stark and he straightened up with his nostrils sickened and smashed his fist against the wall, punching stiff-wristed, solid-forearmed as a fighter punches, at the place where Maylon Stark’s husky battered face was amorphously hanging and let the numbed hand fall contemptuously at his side and went on upstairs, to shower and change his clothes and go to town to meet Karen Holmes at the Moana.
Pete Karelsen was in their room, sitting on his bunk staring crumple-mouthed at the full set of grinning teeth in his open palm. He laid them down on the table quickly.
“What the hell happen to your hand?” he wanted to know eagerly. “You been in a fight again?”
“What the hell happen to your goddam teeth?” Warden said contemptuously. “You been in a goddam messhall again?”
“Okay,” Pete said offendedly. “Be wise. I was only intrested in your hand.”
“Okay,” Warden said. “Be hurt. I was only intrested in your goddam teeth,” and went on looking at his own hated face in the mirror, unbuttoning the thick chenille of his shirt, pulling it up savagely out of his pants.
“All the time making cracks,” Pete said. “All the time needling somebody. I merely ask you a simple friendly question. You dont have to go casting aspersions. You dont have to go being snotty.”
Warden went on looking in the mirror without answering and finished unbuttoning his shirt and took it off and dropped it on the bed. He unbuckled his belt in silence.
“What are you doing?” Pete said conversationally. “Getting ready to go to town?”
“No. I’m getting ready to go over to Choy’s, thats why I’m changing into civilians.”
“Okay. Go to hell.”
“I’m going over to Choy’s and get drunkern hell.”
“I been thinkin of doing that myself,” Pete said. “Somehow or other I dont feel much like going to town today. You know,” he said, looking stealthily at the teeth on the table, “its really the same old thing, over and over, when you think about it. And what does it get you in the end, going to town? A hangover, is all. I’m getting bored with it,” he said. He stole another look at the teeth. “I’m getting any more so I dont much care I go to town or not. Ever. I’d even ruther go to Choy’s.”
“All right,” Warden said, turning away from the mirror. He picked his shirt back up and put it on again and started buttoning it. “Lets go. What the hellar you waitin on?”
“You mean to Choy’s? Really?”
“Sure. Why not? Like you say, why go to town?”
“I thought you were snowing me,” Pete said. He got up grinning toothlessly and picked the teeth up from the table and leered at them. “Hunh,” he said and put them back. “To hell with you. Come on, Milt.”
They went out through the deserted squadroom, Warden unbuttoning his pants and stuffing the shirt tail down into them and buttoning them back up again and tying the tie, Pete walking and talking newly animatedly.
“We’ll get a case of cans,” he said. “Maybe we’ll sit out in the kitchen this time. I dont like to sit out front on Payday, with all them young punks yelling around. Or maybe we’ll get four or five pitchers instead, take them outside on the green. Maybe that would be better?
“After we get teed up,” Pete said as they reached the stairs. “After we’re properly soused, maybe we’ll go over to Big Sue’s in Wahiawa and take one, hey? And come right back. For the hell of it. Wait a minute,” he said. “I better go back and get my teeth.”
Warden stopped silently. He lit a cigaret and leaned back against the porch banister and crossed his feet and folded his arms, and was suddenly a statue frozen into a perpetual granite immobility, the top half of him a cut black paper silhouette fixed against the deepening dusk outside the screens. He stood so in suspended animation, divorced from life.
When Pete came back he spoke, without moving, the cigaret a hobbling red point that was the only breathing live thing about him.
“The trouble with you, Pete,” the voice that did not seem to come from him but from the cigaret said savagely, “is you cant see any further than that douchebag nose of yours. You concern yourself with the petty details of life in order not to think, like whether or not to wear them goddam teeth of yours if you think a cunt is gunna see you—just like the goddam housewives in my brother’s parish with their makeup when they’re going to confession. While the whole damn world is roc
keting to hell you got to go back and get your fucking teeth. Whynt you go get in the goddam church and hold hands with the padre and pray for peace, you’re at about that age now, and you’re suffering from the same disease that afflicts the rest of the human race.”
Pete stood stricken motionless in the act of putting in his teeth, transfixed by the sudden sanguinariness of the attack, his mouth open and his thumbs still inside with the teeth, staring at this two dimensional statue cut from tin.
“Its because of you theres Nazis in Germany,” the voice that was not Warden sermonized him. “Its because of you there’ll be Fascism in this country someday. After we have got in and pulled the chestnuts out again for the rest of the world and won this war for England. And you sit around with Mazzioli and the rest of the commendable clerks and discuss. Any subject, just discuss. Whynt you get up a regular Tuesday Literary Club like the Irish ladies in me brother’s parish. Intellectuals!”
The statue moved out of frozen mobility into a dead run for the stairs, his feet flickering down them like a boxer’s feet skipping rope.
“Come on, you stupid boob,” Warden bawled. “What the hellar you waitin for?”
Pete finished the interrupted teeth insertion and champed his jaws to settle them in and followed silently, shaking his head confoundedly.
“And what the hell do you do?” Pete said indignantly, half running to keep up with the long loping strides as they moved across the quad. His voice was so choked with hurt, after the warm comradely time he had envisioned, that he seemed almost to be crying. “I suppose you dont concern yourself with the petty details of life?”
“Sure,” Warden said. “Why not? Dont bawl, for Christ sake.”
“Then why read me off? I’m not bawling. And what do you mean we got to get in and win this war? We’re all ready in, except for sending troops.”
“Sure,” Warden agreed. “Thats it.”
“And maybe the Ruskies and the Jerries will get in it with each other and kill each other off and save us the trouble. Anyway, it looks like they will. In spite of this treaty.”
“Fine,” Warden said. “Fine. The more thats dead the less to feed the more beer for me. What are you arguing about?”
“Why dont you talk sense? I’m not arguing. You’re arguing. You started this argument.”
“Did I? Well then I’m ending it. As of right now.”
He opened the screendoor between the garbage racks and stacks of empty cases on the porch and went into the kitchen of Choy’s restaurant irritably, with Pete following cursing chokingly and impotently angrily.
They were among the scant dozen noncoms in the Regiment who had the privilege of sitting and drinking in Choy’s kitchen and now they sat down and prepared themselves, unbuttoning their shirts under their loosened ties and rolling up their sleeves two turns and propping their feet up on Choy’s freshly scrubbed meatblock, and then called for Old Choy who had been sitting on a high stool in the corner to bring them beer. They were going to make a party.
“Hey, Old Choy, you heathen Chinee,” Warden bellowed. “You blingee beer, eh? Blingee two four six beer. Chop-chop!”
He held up ten fingers and the eighty-year-old statue in the corner came to life and shuffled perilously across the kitchen to the ice chest grinning hugely under the thin straggly white beard. Old Choy always grinned at Warden, because since Young Choy, his eldest son, had taken over the business from him the ancient one was not allowed to go out front where the customers were and where Young Choy was now in the shouting Payday hubbub, and the old man, who sat in the kitchen all day every day in his black silk skull cap and long embroidered robe that Young Choy who had given up ancestor worship for American business ethics called bad for blisness, worshipped Warden because Warden liked to come sit in the kitchen and drink beer and kid the old man, whenever he had the blues.
“Huba-huba,” Warden bellowed after him with a wink at Pete, “wiki-wiki, chop-chop. You feet, stickee floor, old goat. Me in hully, old man, you bletta snappem shit.”
Old Choy tottered to the meatblock with an armload of cans.
“You goat, Old Choy,” Warden grinned. “Goat, see? You mother goat. Mama-San she goat, see? She blingee you goat. Goat, see? Goat. Baa-a-a.” He put his fingers under his chin and waggled them at the Chinese.
Old Choy set the beer on the block, his almond eyes closed to bright slits, and chuckled with great glee at being called an old goat.
“No goat,” he chuckled. “You goat, Walden.”
Warden grabbed an empty can off the block, his bright eyes dancing in the broad big face, the energy pouring out of him in dazzling radiations, the lets-make-this-a-party energy.
“See, old goat,” he bellowed ferociously, and bent the can double with one movement using his thumbs for fulcrum on the seam. “You do that? You makee can double? You call me goat, I make you double. Like this, see?”
He took another can and bent it. Then he worked his way with a sudden savagery through all the empties standing on the block, bending them viciously easily and tossing them over his shoulder into the trash box. “See? like this. See? like this. You bletta no mess with me, old man goat.”
The Chinese stood before him, grinning all over his eroded face, his shoulders shaking with his chuckling, his head doddering with age.
“Blingee beer,” Old Choy said. He held out his hand with a delighted grin. “Me blingee beer. Now you play.”
“Ha-ha,” Warden laughed, “ho-ho. Me no can play. Not got cash.” He held up his hand in the old, Army gesture, middle finger extended, other fingers closed, thumb and middle finger pinching together repeatedly in the air.
“You blingee woman, me play.”
He made the old, Army sign for woman again, under Old Choy’s nose.
“You woman, old man goat, me show you how play. My play you then.”
“You play,” Old Choy said, giggling. “You play, Walden.”
Warden got his wallet out and gave him a bill. “You smart like fox, old man goat. You catchee much money, much cash. You son him makee million dollar.”
The old Chinese laughed delighted, patting Warden on his big thick shoulder with the thin fine-boned almost transparent hand, and shuffled with the bill to the door out front and called softly in Chinese to his son to come take the money. Then he came back with the change, still grinning, and perched up on his stool to watch the show, his bright old eyes constantly moving.
“Ah,” Pete sighed. He wiped the foam from his lip with the back of his hand. Then he pinched off the speck of foam the small hole in the can had left on the end of his nose with his thumb and forefinger and flung it on the cement floor. “Ah,” he said. “Ah, man.”
Pete had watched the party-ritual sadly, gazing down from the summit of his 22 years service. Now he began his party-ritual.
“You remember the old Bijou Theater in Coconut Grove, Milt?” he said sadly. “I wonder if its still there these many years.”
“Sure,” Warden grinned, teetering in his chair. “The Red Dog Theater on Balboa Street. They probly closed it up by now since the Zone is gone respectable. If they aint they will, soon as these young virgin draftees start comin in and the Future Gold Star Mothers of America make the whole Army go respectable for the duration. Remember what they done to Storyville in the last war.”
“Ah, yes,” Pete said sadly. “Nawrlans aint never been the same. They even have tore down the old market and built a new one thats sanitary. Did you know that, Milt?”
“Sure,” Warden said indifferently, the party energy beginning to wear thin before this old rehashing. He got himself another can to bolster it.
“Yes, sir,” Pete said. He looked off at the ceiling corner with great emotion. “Colon. Balboa. Panama City. Walking post along the locks. Coconut Grove. The old Bijou Theater with nothing but shunt pictures. Newsreel cartoon, and a feature. I got some of the best and most artistic pictures in my collection down in The Grove. Things aint like they was, Milt. Remember? the MPs
had no authority above the ground floor? and if a whore ever got you up on the second floor you might as well kiss the boys goodby? It was a fifty-fifty chance they find you in the river. They were men in those days.”
“If you ever get caught with that collection of yours,” Warden taunted, “you can kiss the boys goodby. Possessing pornography is five years and a DD, Pete.” This that he had heard so often was killing the partiness and the other, the jaw-tightening, the scrotum-sickening, was coming back. “Wouldnt that be a shame,” he nagged, “you with only seven years to go for rocking chair money?”
“Once I took a girl down there to the Bijou,” Pete reminisced emotionally. “Can you imagine that? But I was a young buck then. I was a fireball.”
“How many beers you had, Pete?”
“Only four. As yet. Why? This girl was a planter’s daughter, see? Her old man worked about five hundred gooks and she had led a very sheltered life. A very moral young lady, Milt. I took her out to a high class dinner and then to the Bijou. It was a great shock to her to learn about life. But she took it well. She got to like me very much, after that.” He took up another can, a fresh one.
“Well,” Warden said, “go on. Tell the rest of it.”
“Thats all there is,” Pete said.
“The last time I heard it you told it different.”
“Well,” Pete said, his great emotion still secure. “What do you expect? I was in a different mood then.”
“Oh,” Warden said. “Is that it? Hey, Old Choy. Pappa-San blingee more beer to soljer boys, or Pappa-San gettem beard pulled offem face, eh?”
Old Choy got up and tottered grinning obediently to the ice chest.
“What do you want to make over the old duffer so much for?” Pete asked, still speaking with great emotion. “Whynt you let him die in peace? since he’s old and useless?”
“I dont make over him. Him and me got an understanding, aint we, Choy?”
“You play now,” Old Choy grinned, setting down the cans. “You play, Walden.”
“See?” Warden said.
