by James Jones
“Sure is nice, ain’t it?” Winstock said, smiling craftily and looking out under the palms at the peaceful, sunny bay whose quiet water rippled and glinted in the sunshine. “Hell, I thought I was deef, by God, when I first got here outta that wind.” He rubbed his hand lingeringly over his freshly shaved, sharp chin. “Sure wish they hadn’t of closed the jookjoint, don’t you?” he added sorrowfully.
“Yeah,” Mast said. “It’s hell to think of having to go back out there again, ain’t it?” he added absently. He was emotionally blanked out too, like the rest of them, here in this quiet sheltered place.
“Whyn’t you get yourself a job in the orderly room?” Winstock said craftily. “With your education. Then y’could stay here all the time.” He got up lazily and went down the dancehall steps and out onto the closely clipped grass that led down to the sand beach under the palms, and walked around to Mast’s right side.
“I don’t want a job in the orderly room,” Mast said.
Winstock had stopped and was standing looking at Mast. “Hey, Mast! I never knew you had a pistol. How come? When you’re a rifleman. You ain’t supposed to have a pistol.”
That Winstock could stand there and barefacedly say such a thing was immediately suspicious to Mast. Winstock could not have failed to notice the pistol during the past three weeks. Everyone on the position knew about it, excepting only the young lieutenant and the two platoon sergeants who were in charge. Certainly Winstock would have heard about it from O’Brien. Mast turned to look at the crafty face carefully.
“I bought it off a guy from the 8th Field who had it and wanted to sell it, back before the war,” he said.
“No kiddin’!” Winstock exclaimed with great surprise. “You’re lucky!” Then he rubbed his newly shaved chin again, thoughtfully. “But that’s buyin’ and receiving stolen property, ain’t it? That guy, or somebody, ‘course it might not of been him, had to steal that pistol.” Again he paused, then wrinkled up his crafty face into a rueful look. “Gee, I don’t know what I ought to do about that, Mast.” It was the first time Mast could remember hearing Winstock use the word ‘Gee.’ Usually Winstock swore explosively.
“What do you mean: ‘Do’?” Mast said, his suspicions rising further.
“Well, you know.” Winstock shrugged apologetically. “That’s an Army pistol, you know. ‘Course you yourself are innocent, I know that. But however you got it, and however that guy who sold it to you got it, in the beginning somebody had to steal it—and from the Army. Now what kind of a position does that put me in?”
“It doesn’t put you in any kind of a position, as far as I can see,” Mast said narrowly.
“It don’t? Oh, but it does, Mast; it does. Don’t you see? You’re in my detail and I’m in charge of you. That makes it my responsibility. Not only to myself but to the Army too. Don’t you see that?”
“What the hell?” Mast growled. “You’re not in command of me. I’m not even in the same platoon you are. My squad leader’s the guy that’s in command of me. I’m only under you temporarily, on a little temporary detail, to do a definite, temporary job.”
“That’s just my point,” Winstock said. “’Course it’s only temporary, and as long as you’re there, long as you’re in my detail, you’re my responsibility, and so: so is that pistol.” He paused again and stared off thoughtfully, and rubbed again that freshly shaven chin that he, like Mast, was obviously still unused to. “I’m just going to have to figure out what to do, I guess. That’s all.”
“Do?” Mast growled nervously. “Do! What the hell do you mean: Do?”
“Well, whether to make you turn it over to me,” Winstock shrugged apologetically, “and turn it in. It puts me in a hell of a position. Mast. I don’t mind telling you.” He looked sad.
“Why, you’re crazy!” Mast exploded, and jumped up convulsively. He stood staring at Winstock a moment and then sat back down again. “You’re not in command of me in the first place! And in the second, it’s none of your damned business anyway, this pistol! It has nothing to do with our company! I told you: I bought it off a guy in the 8th Field!”
“Well, that’s not the way I see it,” Winstock said sadly. “I see it like it’s a sort of a responsibility of ethics—like, Mast, you know? I just got to decide what I ought to do.
“Well, I’ll let you know. Soon’s I figure it out. Got to think about it.” He slapped Mast on the arm, warmly and apologetically. “I’m sorry, kid. Well, maybe I’ll feel like I won’t have to do it maybe.
“Well, come on. We better get back upstairs. The truck’ll be ready to leave soon.”
“So you’ll let me know?” Mast growled sourly.
“Sure,” Winstock said cheerfully, “sure. Soon’s I figure out what I oughta do.” He turned and started off across the grass toward the steps up the cliff.
Mast continued to sit, staring out at the water framed by the softly rustling palms, but the beautiful scene had lost a great deal of its appeal for him. He could not remember Winstock being that kind of a chicken noncom; usually it was just the reverse, and Winstock was always in trouble from trying to work angles. Nervously Mast cracked his knuckles, one by one methodically, and at the same time convulsively, then bit a hangnail off his right index finger and spat it out angrily. He should never have come down here where Winstock could accost him openly. He should have stayed where there were other people. Winstock wouldn’t have dared do such a thing in front of other people. The pistol was becoming an almost unbearable responsibility. Everything he did or thought had to be governed by it. He could hardly keep up with it all.
From the top of the stairs in the cliff, Winstock hollered down at him to come on, that the truck was loading, and as he got up wearily to go, he looked at the lovely tropic scene before him, the like of which he had seen in so many movies and had so often dreamed of seeing in the reality; it left him feeling only an intense, gloomy sense of tragedy and sorrow, and a sad, resigned melancholy. This was not for him, any more than were the ‘gravy train’ positions of the other half of the company’s sector. For him in life there were only the Makapoos and the Winstocks. There was an almost enjoyable luxury in accepting and admitting it.
The ride back out to Makapoo was even worse. Everyone hated leaving the comforts and shelter of the CP, meager as they were, compared to the beach positions in the city. When the truck left the cover of the Koko Head saddle and came back out to the beach, the unceasing wind began to buffet them again. Up in front, right behind the cab where the most shelter was, Winstock and O’Brien sat opposite each other with their heads together talking and grinning at each other. Far off across the open sea here, its surf whipped up by the wind, Molokai where Stevenson had lived and where the leper colony still was, was visible as a low storm cloud on the horizon.
There was no real doubt in Mast’s mind as to what Winstock would decide to do. Nonetheless, after the truck had deposited them back within their isolated barbed-wire island at Makapoo and the little four-man detail had gone right back to work straightening and strengthening pickets and trying to dress up the hopelessly uneven lines of wire, Mast spent the rest of the day in an absolute agony of suspense, before Winstock finally came around to him after chow that evening.
“I’ve thought it over, Mast,” Winstock said, his thin, sharp little face twisted up with apology. “Thought it over carefully. And I’m gonna have to take your pistol and turn it in to Sergeant Pender to be turned in to the supply room.
“I hate to have to do it, Mast,” he said, “and I know you’ll think it’s chicken. But my conscience just won’t let me do anything else. It’s my responsibility as a noncom. Maybe this way someday it’ll get back to its rightful owner,” he said piously.
Mast stared at him in silence with narrowed eyes, his mind casting frantically about this way and that to try and find some escape. There wasn’t any. Whatever else, Winstock was a corporal with authority. All he had to do if Mast refused was go to Sergeant Pender anyway. Whatever old Sergeant Pender thoug
ht, he would always back up a corporal against a private. Slowly he took off his rifle cartridge belt and unhooked the pistol from it and passed it over.
“I’ll take the extra clips, too,” Winstock said.
Mast passed them over.
“I’m sure sorry. Mast,” Winstock said, squinting his face up apologetically.
“’Sall right,” Mast said.
He stood and stared after the wiry little corporal as he made his way down toward the number one CP hole with the stuff. The man, all unwitting, because of some impractical, obscure, personal moral point, was carrying off Mast’s hope, more than his hope: his faith; and Mast could have, and would have, easily killed him, had there been any way at all of getting by with it.
Mast had passed one day of horrible anxiety, and was to pass a number more of almost suicidal depression. When you take away a man’s chance of being saved, Mast asked himself over and over as the little movie of the Jap major splitting him in twain like a melon returned to plague him day after day, when you do that to a man, what is there left?
But the one day of horrible anxiety, and the number more of near suicidal depression, were as nothing to what Mast felt just one week later when, going out on another detail after Winstock’s wire-repair detail had been disbanded, Mast saw Corporal Winstock wearing on his own rifle belt Mast’s pistol.
Six
WHAT HAD CAUSED WINSTOCK to do it, to come parading out in the open with the pistol so soon after he had won it, was something that would probably never be known. Certainly at the time Mast was in no state to speculate on it.
In any case Winstock, after forcing himself (with who knew what monumental efforts of will power) to wait a whole week, apparently could stand it no longer and finally had had to begin wearing it. And who knew what anguished arguments with himself he may have gone through in making his decision?
Mast of course was thinking, and indeed was concerned with, none of these things. Such spasms of outrage, fury and hate flamed and exploded and smouldered all through him that his psyche, had it been visible, might have resembled an artillery barrage seen at night, and Mast himself swore he could smell the odor of ozone in his nostrils. He had not been put today on the same detail with Winstock, who had been given charge of a smaller detail to police the edge of the highway outside the wire, so all Mast really got was a glimpse as his own detail was marched out through the gate of wire which the sentry closed after them. But the glimpse was enough. There wasn’t, of course, anything he could do about it then. Mast was not all sure there was anything he could do about it ever.
The new detail Mast had been assigned to was not a permanent, or even a semi-permanent one, but was a one shot, a one day’s job.
Back in October and November, when Mast’s company had been building the pillboxes they now manned, across the highway from them a little farther down an engineer company had been blasting and digging a cave in the cliff. This cliff, of black volcanic rock, ran straight up ninety or a hundred feet, and was the shoulder of the mountain range behind it. At one time the mountain shoulder must have descended at this point to the sea, but now a shelf had been blasted out to give the highway passage around it. Down this cliff the highway descended steeply in a curve to come out onto the great flat hollow of the Kaneohe Valley. The strategists of the Hawaiian Department had chosen this spot to place a huge demolition of high explosives which when detonated would tumble the tip end of the mountain down over the highway and on down into the sea, to block the highway. That was the purpose of the cave the engineer company had blasted into the cliff in October. It was really one vast mine.
The strategy of this plan, as every man at Makapoo knew, centered around the fact that an enemy (which back in October had to remain nameless and amorphous but could now openly be called the Japanese) would probably attempt his main landings on the beaches of the Kaneohe Valley where the reefs were low and the beach was good. This highway here at Makapoo and the highway up over the much more famous Pali, which had been mined also, were the only two roads over the mountains into Honolulu, and if both roads were blown, the enemy would be bottled up in the Kaneohe Valley and forced to go north and around the mountains and come down the center of the island.
That was the strategy. However, the idea of leaving several tons of high explosive lying around ready to go off at any moment was disturbing to the strategists. In peacetime, they could not quite bring themselves to do this. There might even have been political repercussions, if they had. Also, it was not inconceivable that saboteurs might want to blow it up to aid the enemy. Such a demolition, once constructed and completed, became a physical fact, rather than a mere idea. And as an existing fact it could be equally as useful to the enemy as to the ones who built it, depending upon the tactical situation existing at the time. The demolition might easily, and suddenly, turn into its own opposite and become a danger rather than an aid.
So, for all of these reasons, the demolition had not been loaded back in peacetime. Then, when the attack came, and immediate invasion was expected, there were too many other things of pressing importance. So the big, empty, manmade cave had simply stood there, hollowly. And now, more than a month after the initial attack and confusion, someone had remembered it. The threat of immediate invasion was past, but the threat of future invasion in heavy force was not. So it had been decided at this late date to go ahead and load the demolition.
That was the detail Mast, along with a number of other men from Makapoo, was on that day. Trucks came from the underground vaults in the city loaded down with cases of high explosive. The small engineer detail at the cave, which could not possibly handle so much weight to be moved, had been instructed to get aid from Mast’s own lieutenant at Makapoo. So every man who could be spared at the larger infantry position, Mast among them, was sent to help unload the high explosive.
None of them from Makapoo had ever really seen the cave before. A four or five man detail of engineers under a young lieutenant had been placed there to guard it, although for what and from whom nobody knew, since the cave was totally empty except for its guards who when it rained wisely slept inside. So, not having been allowed inside it before, it was a treat to the men from Makapoo to get inside and look it over, even though the work of unloading was hard. For that matter, it was a treat to them to do anything: any detail, any job, any act that would get them outside that encircling, isolating wall of wire which they had built around themselves and which they had all come gradually to hate. So the cave was a double treat. That is, it was a treat to everyone but Mast who had seen his pistol on the hip of Corporal Winstock.
It was an exciting cave, going deep back into the mountain before it opened out into the magazine, its high vaulted ceiling echoing and at the same time muffling the sounds of the working men, reflecting back in the gloom the light from the engineers’ electric lanterns, while weird gnomelike shadows formed and moved grotesquely on the walls as the carriers themselves moved, an insane, mad, comically ironic parody of everything they did. Looking at those shadows would make even an uneducated man wonder about the seriousness of human endeavors, and it had that effect on almost all of them. But Mast hardly saw it at all. He was far too busy thinking about his pistol, his pistol, hanging there on Winstock’s hip, and what things he could do to go about getting it back.
The working party, consisting of fifteen men from the position plus the four or five engineers, moved back and forth trampingly, through the gloomy gallery between the bright sunlight and dust of the trucks outside and the lamplit magazine, two shuttling lines, one carrying the heavy cases, the other returning for a new load. By the end of the day, with a break for lunch, they had unloaded five truck loads of explosive and the stacks of cases in the magazine had grown steadily higher until the cave was nearly filled. Almost everyone had the same reaction, which was a mixture of awe and an expressed desire to be around, but not too close, if it was ever detonated. It would be quite a sight. Shortly before suppertime it was done, and then it
was back inside that hated, hateful, self-constructed wall of wire, the gate of which the sentry closed and locked after them. The excursion was over.
During the course of the day Mast had garnered several gossips’ comments upon the appearance of his pistol on Winstock’s hip. Everybody knew about it, and the opinions ran all the way from the one that Winstock had bought it from Mast for an extraordinary sum, to the one that Winstock had won it from Mast for nothing by a single cut of the cards for the pistol against an even more fabulous sum. But it was clear that Winstock had told somebody, perhaps several, that he had bought it from Mast.
Mast himself neither confirmed nor denied any of these opinions and merely grinned knowingly, although he was raging inside. He still had not figured out how he was going to go about getting it back, unless he actually assaulted Winstock physically, a thing which he of course could not do in front of anyone since it was a court-martial offense. Court-martial offense or not, he was prepared to do even that, if he could get Winstock off to himself, because Mast felt he no longer owed Winstock the respect due a noncom. Mast was very emphatic about that. Winstock had already negated that respect himself, Mast felt righteously, when he had lied and cheated and used his rank as a noncom to get hold of the pistol by underhanded means. Mast was shocked and indignant when he thought about a noncom doing such a thing: A man who was a corporal was supposed to set an example of probity and integrity and inspire trust as a leader of men. Mast knew that were he himself a noncom, he would never do such a monstrous thing. He would take his duties and responsibilities far too seriously to do so. So Mast felt no compunction about hitting such a noncom. And besides, Winstock was smaller than Mast.
That evening after supper Mast approached the number two hole where a group had formed around two men who had guitars. He had seen both Winstock and his other enemy O’Brien there. Outside of talking, the guitar music and the singing that went with it (always provided the guitar players felt in the mood to play, of course) were about the only recreation left to those men who were no longer financially solvent enough to play poker.
