by James Jones
“Yeah,” Weary said, “but——”
“No buts,” said Warden savagely. “Do like I said. Am I the Firs Sarnt or not the Firs Sarnt?”
“You’re the First Sarnt.”
“Maybe you dont know which side that Pfc of yours is buttered on. But me no buts. Just do like I said.”
“Okay, Top. But you sure demand a hell of a lot for a lousy goddam Pfc.”
“Cmere,” Warden said and grabbed him by his arm. “Dont you know we got to look out for this man, Weary?” he whispered. “He’s the best fuckin soljer in the Compny.” He paused thoughtfully. “The ony fuckin soljer in the Compny,” he amended.
“What is this?” Weary said. “A mutual backslapping society I stumbled into?”
“We got to take caref him while we can, see?” The Warden told him urgently. “This man may not be with us for long, and we got to take caref this man.”
“Okay, okay, Top,” Weary said. “Go back to sleep.”
“Its important,” Warden said. “You dont know. Very important.”
“All right,” Weary said. “For god sake, go to sleep.”
“You promise?” Warden said.
“Yeahr,” said Weary Russell wearily. “I promise. Now go back to sleep.”
“Okay then,” Warden said contentedly. “But dont forget. Zvery important.” He rolled over comfortably complacently in the dirty ribbed wood floor of the truckbed. “Because it may happen any day,” he said.
Weary looked at him and shook his head and put the tailgate up and drove off down the gravel toward the bivouac, carrying two drunks, who both fatuously drunkenly imagined, that once in a dream somewhere, sometime, someplace, they had managed for a moment to touch another human soul and understand it.
Chapter 34
IT HAPPENED THE DAY after they got back from Hickam. It had been coming a long time so that everybody was spoiling for it, and they had all been anticipating it, but it turned out to be very involved and when it happened it was so complex that almost no one could get any satisfaction out of it, especially Prew. Prew had planned to go to Maunalani Heights that night.
They had pulled in and unloaded the trucks late the afternoon before and worked late that night cleaning personal equipment, scrubbing the web, saddlesoaping the leather, working with the toothbrushes on the gummy rifles. Nobody liked that kind of work, and the whole next day was given to cleaning the company equipment, the stoves, flies, pyramidal tents, the officers’ sleeping tent, and generally policing up for the full field inspection.
To everyone’s surprise, Pfc Bloom was standing on the porch with the rest of the boxing squad which had turned out to watch, when they rolled in. It turned out that Bloom had been relieved from NCO School a week before. The story was that Bloom had been called out of ranks to give calisthenics. His first exercise had begun with the command: “Hips on shoulders, Place!” The platoon of Candidates had immediately degenerated into a disorganized and howling pandemonium. Bloom had been excused and sent back to the ranks. That afternoon he had been relieved.
It was great news to the grimy Company, just back from the wilds of field duty. The non-jockstrap faction lost no time in being very pleased to point out this result of Dynamite’s policy of promoting punchdrunk fighters. The jockstrap faction countered by pointing to Candidate Malleaux, the new featherweight, who was not only still in NCO School but was leading his half of the class. Bloom, they said, was not the whole story, and anyway a man did not need to graduate from NCO School in order to become a good noncom.
Bloom himself insisted to everyone who would listen that the queer investigation downtown had been the real reason. Very few would listen. The allusion to the queer investigation puzzled all of them, and the other story made much better telling. The non-jockstrap faction had never liked him anyway, and now the jockstraps felt he had compromised their reputation and were not sympathetic either.
All the first afternoon while they were unloading, and most of the next morning during the fatigues, Bloom wandered around from one detail to another belligerently explaining his position. Bloom had not been out in the field, so he was not on any of the details. He did not have to train that day either because tonight they were running off the first card of the Company Smoker season and he was on the card and today was his day off to rest. So he had all of his time free all day to work on this other and protest his innocence.
It was Bloom’s first bout as a middleweight. He was only eligible for Company Smokers again this year because he had fought as a lightheavy in the Bowl. He had had to dry out for three days to make the weight and eat nothing but Horlick’s Malted Milk Tablets and do his roadwork in a sweatsuit, two sweaters, and a GI slicker. He was drawn very fine. It was bad for him to be so upset.
But he worked hard to prove his innocence, just the same. It did not do much good. He might as well have rested. Wherever he went the other story had already preceded him, moving on the swift wings of gossip that were faster than the legs of any man. He offered all of them to rest his case with Capt Holmes. Dynamite was too big a man to be influenced by malicious gossip. Bloom had faith in Capt Holmes. He offered them to bet anybody even money Capt Holmes would still give him his corporalcy. Nevertheless, any time his big bulk would heave up on the horizon someone would look up from work and holler: “Yaaaaa, Hips on shoulders, PLACE!”
Finally, early in the afternoon, he had to give it up. He went off to the matinee at Theater # 1. He was terribly upset and very nervous, and they were showing Clark Gable in The Prizefighter and the Lady, and he needed badly to rest up and relax, for tonight.
Prew was on the detail that was scrubbing out the kitchen trailer. When Bloom had come around to them he had kept out of it. He would not be sorry if Bloom lost the rating, but he did not care much any more one way or the other. All he wanted was to get down to Alma’s. It had been two weeks now. He did not want to see the fights and it would be more tactful for him not to be there anyway. His guts writhed like a snake at the thought of Alma, marriage or no marriage.
The kitchen trailer was sitting in the company street and they had the floorboards out of the refrigerator part and leaning against the side while they scrubbed down the bilge. One of them was hosing down the floorboards. All they had left to do after that was scrub out the bread box in the other end and then hose it all down and wipe it off outside and they were done. That was where they were with it when Bloom left for the show. They watched Bloom leave amid hoots of “Yaaaaa, Hips on shoulders, PLACE!” They knew where he was going. If you were in fifty yards of Bloom, you always knew where Bloom was going. They went on working.
They were still working when Champ Wilson and Liddell Henderson came back from the Regimental gym with a bunch of other fighters who had all been working out. Sgt Wilson and the other fighters had not been in the field either, and were not on any of the details. Sgt Henderson was not a fighter but he had not been in the field either, he had stayed up at the Packtrain to take care of Capt Holmes’s horses. He had only gone along with Wilson over to the gym to watch his sidekick train. It was Sgt Henderson who cornered Bloom’s dog that was trotting inoffensively among the work details, and suggested that they have a little fun and help the big police dog from F Company to mount her.
“At ole po-lice dawg’s been nosin aroun for a couple weeks now. Bout time he got a break,” Sgt Henderson grinned in his high thin lazy Texas drawl. “That goddam Bloom, will he be surprised when ole Lady drops a littah of po-lice dawgs on his pillah.”
“I never did like that son of a bitch Bloom anyways,” Sgt Wilson said grimly, as he knelt to hold her forelegs. Sgt Champ Wilson always said everything grimly, inside the ring or out. Sgt Champ Wilson was a grim guy. He had to be. He was the champion lightweight of the Hawaiian Department. You did not carry an honor like that lightly. He held Lady’s forelegs grimly.
There were men scattered all over the company yard, working and loafing. There were details on the porch repacking the barrels of the watercoo
led machineguns that Leva had decided he might as well have done today, since they were working. There were details in the street and at the garbage racks and across the street in the quad where they were working on the tents. Before long Henderson and Wilson had quite a crowd around them, offering advice and encouragement.
Bloom’s dog was a little part-terrier mongrel. There were always plenty of stray dogs drifting around any Army post, because everybody always fed them to get to pet them, but Bloom wanted his own dog. He had found this one over by the Post Beergarden and brought her home and named her Lady and religiously begged scraps from the cooks who would have fed her anyway to get to pet her, so that he could feed her three times a day himself and win all her affection. Just as religiously, but with an even greater vigor that almost amounted to affronted outrage, he drove off all the male dogs that ventured into the company area. The big police dog from F Company next door was his especial enemy.
It became one of the biggest jokes in the Company. And Lady herself, who was a meek frightened-faced little bundle of nerves that carried her tail perpetually between her legs, did not help it any. She was completely devoid of any military sense, and it was a delight to the formation to watch Bloom bellow and curse and threaten Lady as she meekly with her tail tucked between her legs tried to follow him out to drill morning after morning.
Lady was no virgin, it was obvious her morals were no better than the average, and she did not mind the big police dog half as much as Bloom did, but now they had frightened her. The police dog was willing but he was too tall for her, without Lady’s cooperation. And Lady was not cooperating. Lady could have stood up at full height under his belly without touching him, but she was hunkering down as low as Sgt Henderson would let her. Sgt Wilson held her front legs grimly while Sgt Henderson tried to elevate her stern. The police dog jumped around barking excitedly and pawing the air vainly. The circle of onlookers cheered and offered more advice. Everybody thought it would be a big joke on Bloom.
“Hell,” Sgt Henderson grinned up at the audience. “Ats nothing. Ah was in Fort Sam, we had a ole sarnt was in Mexico with Pershing use to take his ole bird dawg into San Antone over payday and get him laid. This whore charged twenty for the dawg and five apiece for every guy who watched. Regular price for a piece was three bucks. At gal made herself a fortune and retard the next yeah.”
Lady made a lunge and almost got loose and Sgt Henderson had to turn his attention back to the job at hand.
All of them had heard similar exciting stories about dogs and horses. There was a Russian Jew in L Company who swore he had seen the statue of the horse that killed Catherine the Great that they had erected in the little town in Russia where the royal stud farm had been. But none of them had ever seen them happen and Lady was beginning to whine and yelp and lunge until it was all the two sergeants could do to hold her. The novelty was wearing thin. It was not so much fun any more. The crowd began to wander away, a little vague-eyed and shamefaced, back to the jobs. But Sgt Henderson would not give up. The few who stayed on began to get half ashamed looks on their faces mingling with the eagerness. Sgt Henderson still would not admit defeat.
Prew did not say anything for quite a while. It was none of his business and it was not his dog. Bloom should take care of his own damned dog. But it had all been building up in him, coming on to the saturation point where you were just looking for an excuse, a sorehead asking for an excuse, and he looked at them, the ones who had shamefacedly walked away just as much as the ones who had guiltfacedly eagerly stayed, just as much as the Champ Wilsons and Dogrobber Hendersons of this world who never went out in the field, and he hated all of them, as savagely and implacably as he hated Bloom and Bloom’s goddam sniveling little dog.
He walked over from the trailer and elbowed in through the half-eager half-reluctant faces and bumped Henderson hard on the shoulder with the heel of his open palm. Henderson was on his knees battling with Lady’s squirming hindquarters, and he went over backwards releasing his hold to catch himself as he fell back.
Lady, her traction free, dug in. Wilson could not hold her. She scuttled off across the quad with the police dog hot on her heels. She turned once and snarled and nipped him in the shoulder and after that he followed at a distance.
“Now what the hell’d you want to do that for?” Sgt Henderson demanded.
“Because I dont like to see a man be any more of a son of a bitch than he just naturally is,” Prew said. “Go on back to the stables with your goddam horses.”
Sgt Henderson grinned and leaned back on his elbow indolently and put his right hand in his pocket. “Whats a mattah, Prewitt? You got a weak stommick or something? Quite a nice girl all of a sudden, aint you?”
Prew was looking at the hand lovingly fingering something in the pocket. “Dont ever pull that knife on me, you son of a bitch,” he said, “or I’ll kill you with it.”
The grin went off of Sgt Henderson’s face, but Champ Wilson, the always cool, was already at his sidekick’s elbow helping him up. “Come on, Liddell,” he said soothingly. He held Henderson by his right arm and pulled him towards the barracks.
“You’ll go too far someday, Prewitt,” Henderson screamed suddenly, “and I’ll cut your fucking heart out.”
“When,” Prew said.
“Shut up, Liddell,” commanded Wilson grimly. “You better learn to use your head, Prewitt,” he said coolly. “Someday you’ll get yourself into a trouble you cant get out of. They aint many people around this outfit like you the way it is.”
“There aint many of them around this outfit I’d care much to have them like me, Wilson,” Prew said.
Wilson did not answer. He led the raging, but unresisting, Henderson inside to the dayroom, patting him tenderly on the shoulder. Prew went back to the trailer. The crowd broke up and went back to work, a little disappointed at having been denied what might have turned out to be a decent fight. Prew was not sure whether he was disappointed or not. Nobody at the trailer mentioned it to him. Apparently, he thought grimly, the word had already gone out some time before now, that Prewitt was just about at the edge.
Nobody else said anything about it either, the rest of the afternoon. It was already forgotten, another one of those thousand little incidents that almost start a fight. Nothing should have come of it. It would have ended there. Of course it would have to have been Pfc Isaac Bloom who brought it back to life again that night at chow.
They were having franks fried whole and Stark’s hashbrowns that were as good as any Toddlehouse hashbrowns, and utilized the leftover spuds from dinner. There were green limas on the side, and those large half peaches canned in syrup for dessert. It was a good meal, and it was not until the platters and dishes were beginning to stay emptied that there was conversation. Prew inspected his last frank butt, crisp skinned and dark, and put it in his mouth and watched Stark come in from the kitchen and go to the sergeants’ table for his post-meal coffee and a butt and conversation, his undershirt soaked with sweat, sweat glistening from his chunky arms and shoulders, sweat dripping from the hair of his armpits. He liked Stark, warmly, he liked him a lot, Stark was about the only man in this outfit he would give a decent fart for. Maybe The Warden. No, not that sly son of a bitch. Andy and Friday maybe. And Maggio. He swallowed the last of the meat and lit a cigaret, smoky on the tongue over the saltiness. Now to add the taste of coffee to the others.
That was when Bloom moved his dishes over to the table where Prew was and sat down across from him. There was a hopeful lull of conversation around the room.
“I want to thank you for takin care of my dawg when I wasnt here to look out for her, Prewitt,” Bloom hollered.
“You’re welcome,” Prew said. He reached for his coffee mug.
“Here,” Bloom hollered. He seized the metal coffee pitcher and refilled Prew’s cup. “A man can always tell who his friends is,” he hollered. “I always say,” he hollered, “that you can tell what kind of man a man is by the way he treats your pets. I
owe you a lot.”
Prew let the coffee sit. “You dont owe me nothin, Bloom.”
“Oh yes I do,” Bloom hollered.
“Oh no you dont.”
“And I’m a man who pays his debts.”
“I would of done the same for any dawg. I just dont like to see some son of a bitch torment a goddam dawg. Any goddam dawg. I dont give a goddam whose goddam dawg,” he said. “In fack, I dint even know it was your goddam dawg,” he lied, and watched Bloom through the exhaled smoke.
“Why, everybody knows it is my dawg,” Bloom protested.
“No they dont. I dint know it. If I had I wount of stopped it,” he said. “So you dont owe me nothin. All I ask from you is you stay away from me.” He stood up and picked up his dishes. “See you later, Bloom,” he said.
The conversation that had billowed up again disappointedly across the coffee mugs and cigarets faded attentively again, like a turned down radio.
“Well, Jesus Christ,” Bloom said. “Is that any way to treat a goddam man when he tries to thank you?” He stood up himself and emphatically collected his own dishes. “I only come over here to show you my appreciation, Prewitt. Certainly not because I wanted to.”
“Well, I dont want your fucking appreciation, Bloom,” Prew said. “How do you like that?”
“Ha,” Bloom said. “If that aint a laugh. Who the hell are you? the King of England? Its awys the poor white trash that runs down the Jews.”
“What’re you tryin to do?” Prew said. “Insult me?”
“Did me and my dawg ask you for any help?” Bloom hollered. “No. We dint. Well, wait till you’re asked next time. Me and my dawg dont need your goddam help, you son of a bitch. In the future please leave me and my dawg alone.”
Prew had set his plate down, but the cup was still in his hand and he threw it. The heavy handleless mug hit Bloom in the center of the forehead. Bloom blinked his eyes and frowned. The cup bounced onto the concrete floor and rolled off unbroken; unconcerned, indifferent, impervious.
