Call to Arms

by W. E. B Griffin

  “You want a Thompson?” Zimmerman asked evenly.

  “One of my lieutenants,” Esposito said. “I put a hundred rounds through a Garand, and I sort of like it. It ain’t no Springfield, of course, but I’m getting two-, two-and-a-half-inch groups.”

  “The Garand is a pretty good weapon,” Zimmerman said. “People don’t like it ’cause it’s new, that’s all.”

  “What about the Thompson? Can you help me out?”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Zimmerman said. “That why you come looking for me?”

  “What makes you think I come looking for you?”

  “You’re all dressed up,” Zimmerman said.

  Esposito shrugged and drained his beer mug and refilled it before he replied.

  “I was hoping maybe I’d run into you, Zimmerman,” he confessed.

  “You did,” Zimmerman said.

  “Out of school?” Esposito asked.

  Zimmerman nodded.

  “You’re pretty tight with Lieutenant McCoy,” Esposito said.

  “We was in the Fourth Marines together,” Zimmerman said. “He’s all right.”

  “Scuttlebutt says he had you to dinner,” Esposito said. “On some yacht, where he’s shacked up.”

  “That’s what the scuttlebutt says?” Zimmerman replied.

  “What do you know about his brother?”

  “Not much,” Zimmerman asked.

  “I got an old pal at the Diego brig,” Esposito said.

  “What’d he do?” Zimmerman said.

  “I said ‘at,’ not ‘in,’” Esposito said, before he realized that Zimmerman was pulling his leg. “Shit, Zimmerman!”

  “What about your pal at the brig?”

  “He says McCoy—PFC McCoy was in there,” Esposito said. “You know anything about that?”

  Zimmerman shook his head. “No.”

  “He was supposed to be on his way to Portsmouth to do five-to-ten for belting an officer.”

  “That’s what you heard, huh?” Zimmerman said.

  “I also found out when he reported in here, he had just had full issue of new uniforms, and he’s got a brand-new service record.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I got the straight poop from my friend at the brig,” Esposito said. “If they vacate a general court-martial sentence and turn somebody loose, they give him a new service record. And since general prisoners don’t have uniforms, except for dungarees with a ‘P’ painted on them, they give them a new issue.”

  “If I was you, Esposito,” Zimmerman said, “I wouldn’t be running off at the mouth about this.”

  “Because of Lieutenant McCoy, you mean?”

  “Because if the Corps gave him a new service record, it means the Corps wants him to have a clean slate. Don’t go turning over some rock.”

  “How would your friend Lieutenant McCoy react if I kicked the shit out of his little brother?”

  “Why would you want to do that?” Zimmerman asked.

  “For one thing, he’s a wisenheimer,” Esposito said. “For another, he thinks he’s a real tough guy. He beat the shit out of two of my kids. No reason, either, that I can get out of anybody, except that he wanted to show people how tough he is. And he’s running off at the mouth, too. About his brother, I mean. What’s with the shack job on the yacht? Is that true? And while I’m asking questions, what’s the real poop about Lieutenant McCoy?”

  Zimmerman lit a Camel with his Zippo, and then took a deep pull at his beer mug.

  “What do you mean, real poop?”

  “He really kill a bunch of Italian Marines with that little knife of his?”

  “Two Italians,” Zimmerman said. “He killed two Italians. Stories get begger and better every time they get told.”

  “You was there?”

  “I was there,” Zimmerman said.

  “Mean little fucker, isn’t he?” Gunnery Sergeant Esposito said, approvingly. “I heard fifteen, twenty Italians. I knew that was bullshit.”

  “It was twenty Chinamen,” Zimmerman said. “Not Italians, Chinamen.”

  “No shit?”

  “Okay, we’re out of school, right?” Zimmerman said. He waited for Esposito to nod his agreement and then went on. “McCoy and I were buddies in the Fourth. We had a pretty good rice bowl going. We ran truck supply convoys from Shanghai to Peking. We got pretty close. One time the convoy got ambushed. Chinese bandits, supposed to be. Actually the Japs were behind it. McCoy killed a bunch of them—twenty, anyway, maybe more—with a Thompson.”

  “No shit?” Esposito said, much impressed.

  “You don’t want to get him mad at you, Esposito,” Zimmerman said. “You was asking about the boat—”

  “Yacht, is what the brother says,” Esposito said. “And the rich broad who lets him drive her LaSalle convertible.”

  “One thing at a time…Christ, what do you guys do, spend all your time gossiping about your officers like a bunch of fucking women?”

  Esposito gave Zimmerman a dirty look, but didn’t say anything.

  “First of all,” Zimmerman went on, “the LaSalle is McCoy’s. He come home from China with a bunch of money—”

  “Where’d he get it?”

  “He’s a goddamned good poker player,” Zimmerman said. “And on top of that, he was lucky, real lucky, a couple of times.”

  Esposito nodded his acceptance of that.

  “So he bought the LaSalle; that’s his,” Zimmerman said. “And so we both wound up here. And like I said, we were buddies. But he’s now an officer, so he can’t come in here, and I can’t go to the officers’ club. So he has a girl friend. A real nice girl, Esposito, you understand? I personally don’t like it when you say ‘shack job.’ And she lives on a boat, not a yacht, a boat. And McCoy tells her about me and his kid brother, and she says bring us to dinner. So we go. And that’s it. We had dinner and drank some beer, and then McCoy drove us back out here.”

  “I figured it was probably something like that,” Esposito said. “His brother’s got a real big mouth.”

  “I saw that myself,” Zimmerman agreed.

  “And he’s a mean sonofabitch, too,” Esposito said. “I told you; he really beat the shit out of a couple of my kids.”

  “I don’t want to put my nose in where it ain’t welcome,” Zimmerman said. “But, maybe, if you would like, I could talk to the brother.”

  “I don’t know,” Esposito said, doubtfully. “You think he’d listen to you? He sure as shit don’t listen to me when I try to talk to him.”

  “You start beating up on him, you’re liable to lose your stripes,” Zimmerman said.

  “Well, shit, Zimmerman, if you think you could do any good,” Esposito said.

  “It couldn’t hurt none to try,” Zimmerman said.

  “What the hell,” Esposito said. “Why not? And what about the Thompson?”

  “You take the old one to the armory, tomorrow,” Zimmerman said. “And tell the armorer I said to swap it for you.”

  “You want to split another pitcher of beer?”

  “Nah, hell, I got to get up in the wee hours. But thanks anyway.”

  Ten minutes later, Gunnery Sergeant Ernst Zimmerman was outside the enlisted beer hall, known as the Slop Chute.

  There was a cedar pole ten feet from the entrance. Seventy-five or so knives were stuck into it. Zimmerman had heard about the cedar pole, but it was the first time he had seen it. There was a regulation that the Raiders could not enter the Slop Chute with their knives. So rather than going to his barrack or tent to leave his knife there, some ferocious Raider had stuck it in the cedar pole and reclaimed it when he left the Slop Chute. The idea had quickly caught on.

  “Dodge fucking City,” Zimmerman muttered under his breath, disgustedly.

  He pushed the door open and walked inside, grimacing at the smell of sour beer, a dense cloud of cigarette smoke, and the acrid fumes of beer-laden urine.

  “Hey, Mac, no knives,” a voice behind him
said. Zimmerman turned and saw there was a corporal on duty at the entrance. Zimmerman didn’t reply. Finally, the corporal recognized him. “Sorry, Gunny,” the corporal added. “Didn’t recognize you at first.”

  Zimmerman looked around the crowded room until he spotted PFC Thomas McCoy, who was sitting with half a dozen others at a crude table drinking beer out of a canteen cup.

  He walked across the room to him.

  “Hey, whaddasay, Gunny!” one of the others greeted him, cheerfully. “You want a beer?”

  “I want to see McCoy for a minute, thanks anyway,” Zimmerman said.

  “What the hell for?” PFC McCoy replied. He was a little drunk, Zimmerman saw.

  Zimmerman, on the edge of snapping, “Because I said so, asshole! On your feet!”, stopped himself in time and smiled. “Colonel Carlson’s got a little problem he wants you to solve for him.”

  The others laughed, and a faint smile appeared on McCoy’s face. He got to his feet.

  “This going to take long?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Zimmerman said.

  He motioned for McCoy to go ahead of him, and then followed him across the room and out of the building. McCoy went to the cedar post, jerked one of the knives from it, and slipped it into the sheath on his belt.

  “Where we going?” he asked.

  “Right over this way,” Zimmerman said, “it’s not far.”

  Behind the Slop Chute building was a mixed collection of other buildings, some frame with tar-paper roofs, some Quonsets, and some tents. Here and there a dim bulb provided a little light.

  Zimmerman went to the door of one of the small frame buildings, took off his dungaree jacket and his hat, and hung them on the doorknob.

  “What’s this, Gunny?” McCoy asked, suspiciously.

  “You know what it means, you fucking brig bunny,” Zimmerman said. “It means that right now you can call me ‘Zimmerman,’ ’cause right now, I ain’t a gunny. I just hung my chevrons on the doorknob.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” McCoy asked.

  “Nothing’s wrong with me,” Zimmerman said. “What’s wrong is wrong with you, asshole.”

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Gunny, but if you think I’m going to get in it with you and wind up back in the brig, you have another think coming.”

  “You’re not going back to the brig,” Zimmerman said, moving close to him. “Having his brother in the brig would embarrass Lieutenant McCoy, and you’ve embarrassed him enough already, brig bunny.”

  “I wish I believed that,” McCoy said. “I would like nothing better than to shove your teeth down your throat.”

  “Have a shot,” Zimmerman said. “Look around, there’s nobody here. And your brother’s an officer. He wouldn’t let them put you in the brig on a bum rap.”

  “Fuck you,” McCoy said.

  “I thought that you were supposed to be a tough guy,” Zimmerman said. “I guess that’s only when you’re picking on kids, right?”

  McCoy balled his fists, but kept them at his side.

  “Come on, tough guy,” Zimmerman said. “What’s the matter, no balls?”

  McCoy threw a punch, a right, with all his weight behind it.

  Zimmerman deflected the punch with his left arm and kicked McCoy in the crotch.

  McCoy made an animal sound, half scream and half moan, and fell to the ground with his hands at his crotch and his knees pulled up.

  “You cocksucker,” he said indignantly, a moment later. “You kicked me.”

  Zimmerman kicked him again, in the stomach.

  “That’s for calling your brother’s lady friend a ‘shack job,’” Zimmerman said, conversationally. He kicked him again. “And that’s for calling me a ‘cocksucker.’ You got to learn to watch your mouth, brig bunny.”

  McCoy was writhing around on the ground, gasping for breath, moaning as he held his scrotum.

  Zimmerman, his arms folded on his chest, watched silently. After several minutes, McCoy managed to sit up.

  “Are you getting the message, tough guy? Or do you want some more?”

  “You don’t fight fair,” McCoy said, righteously indignant. “You kicked me, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Get up then, Joe Louis,” Zimmerman said. “Try it with your fists.”

  McCoy took several deep breaths, and then got nimbly to his feet, balled his fists, and took up a crouched fighting posture.

  “I must have missed,” Zimmerman said, almost wonderingly. “Usually when I kick people, they stay down.”

  “You cocksucker!” McCoy said, and charged him. He threw a punch. Zimmerman caught the arm, spun around, and threw McCoy over his back. McCoy landed flat on his back. The air was knocked out of him.

  Zimmerman walked to him and kicked him in the side.

  “I told you,” he said. “Don’t call me a cocksucker.”

  With a massive effort, McCoy got his wind back and struggled to his knees. And then he heaved himself upright.

  Zimmerman slapped him twice with the back of his left hand across the face, and then with the heel of his right hand across the throat. The first blow was hard enough to make McCoy reel, and the second sent him flying backward, his hands to his throat, gasping for breath. And then he fell heavily onto his backside.

  Zimmerman stepped up to him and kicked him in the side again. McCoy bent double and threw up.

  “I hit you with my open hand,” Zimmerman said, conversationally. “If I had hit you with the side of it,”—he demonstrated with his left hand—“you would have a broken nose, and you wouldn’t be able to talk for a week. If I had hit you hard enough, I would have crushed your Adam’s apple and you would choke. The only reason I didn’t do that is because your brother is a friend of mine, and he might feel bad about it.”

  “Jesus Christ!” McCoy said, barely audibly.

  “The next time, McCoy, that I hear that you said one fucking word out of line, or that you took a poke at anybody, I’m going to be back and give you a real working over. Tough guy, my ass!”

  He walked over to McCoy and raised his foot to kick him again.

  McCoy scurried away as best as he could.

  Zimmerman lowered his foot and laughed.

  “Shit!” he said, contemptuously. And then he walked to the small building, put his dungaree jacket back on, and walked off.

  PFC Thomas McCoy waited until he was really sure that he was gone, and then he got to his feet. His balls hurt, and his sides, and inside, and it hurt him to breathe.

  He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at the vomitus on his jacket and trousers and boots. Then, gagging, he staggered off toward his barrack.

  (Two)

  The Foster Peachtree Hotel

  Atlanta, Georgia

  14 March 1942

  Second Lieutenant Richard J. Stecker, USMC, stood with a glass of Dickel’s 100-proof twelve-year-old Kentucky sour mash bourbon whiskey in his hand, looking out the window of his bedroom in the General J. E. B. Stuart suite. It was raining—it looked as if it couldn’t make up its mind to snow or rain—and the wind had blown the rain against the window-pane. Stecker idly traced a raindrop as it slid down.

  He was more than a little pissed with his buddy, Second Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, for a number of reasons, all attributable to Pick’s infatuation with the female Stecker thought of alternately as “the Admiral’s Daughter” and “the Widow.”

  Stecker was either sorry for the poor sonofabitch—who really had a bad case of puppy love for Martha Sayre Culhane, or unrequited love, or the hots, or whatever the hell it was—or pissed off with him about it.

  At the moment, the latter condition prevailed.

  From yesterday at noon until fifteen minutes ago, there had come a ray of hope:

  At noon yesterday, using a concrete beam foundation of one of the hangars at Saufley Field for a table, they had been having their lunch (a barbecue sandwich and a pint container of milk) when Pick,
out of the blue, spoke up. “How would you like to get laid?”

  “Are you seeking to increase your general fund of knowledge, Pickering, or do you have some specific course of action in mind?”

  “I was thinking we might drive to Atlanta,” Pick said, “and take in the historical sights. They have a panorama of the Battle of Atlanta, which should be fascinating to a professional warrior such as yourself. There are also a number of statues of heroes on horseback, which I’m sure you would find inspirational.”

  “I thought you said something about getting laid?”

  “That, too,” Pick said.

  “You realize, of course, that if we go to Atlanta, you won’t be able to hang around the lobby of the San Carlos panting for a glimpse of the fair Martha?”

  “Fuck fair Martha,” Pick said, just a little bitterly, and then quickly recovered. “Which might be a good idea, come to think of it.”

  “I heard it takes two,” Dick said.

  “Do you want to go to Atlanta, or not?”

  It was necessary to get permission to travel more than a hundred miles from the Pensacola Navy Air Station. And before they could run down Captain Mustache and obtain his approval, it was after six. As a result they got to the Foster Peachtree Hotel after midnight. The bar wasn’t closed, but there were no females dewy-eyed with the thought of consorting with two handsome and dashing young Marine officers.

  That didn’t seem to bother Pick. He was interested in drinking, and the two of them closed the bar long after everyone else had left. Stecker wondered why the bartender hadn’t thrown them out, until he remembered that Pick’s grandfather owned the hotel.

  And Pick of course waxed drunkenly philosophic about his inability to get together with the Admiral’s Daughter. Dick Stecker had heard it all before, and he was bored with it.

  “I’ll make a deal with you, Pick,” he said. “You won’t mention Whatshername’s name all weekend, and I will not pour lighter fluid on your pubic region and set it on fire while you sleep.”

  In the morning, Pick slept soundly, snoring loudly, until long after ten.

  Then, determinedly bright and cheerful, he went into Stecker’s room, ordered an enormous breakfast from room service, and then explained that they really shouldn’t eat too much, for they were meeting his Aunt Ramona for lunch at quarter to one.