Ice-Cream Headache

by James Jones

  “We don’t deserve the women we got, Doc,” Lab Wallers said, his voice thick. “Neither one of us. None of us.”

  “If it wasn’t for the kids I’d light out tonight,” his father said. “Give her a chance. But it’s awful hard to leave your kids, your own kids. What you’ve done lives on in your kids, if nowhere else.”

  “She loves you though,” Lab Wallers said. “Don’t you forget it.”

  “No she doesn’t,” his father said, “and I don’t blame her. I know what I am,” he said. “I know what I’ve done.”

  “Give me the bottle,” Lab Wallers said. “I don’t know where I’d be if it wasn’t for my wife. Or you either. Where would the world be, without the wives? Where would our kids be, if it wasn’t for their mothers? Where would this nation be, if it wasn’t for the women?”

  “She was the most beautiful woman in this part of the country when I married her,” his father said. “I was lucky to get her. Everybody says so. If she just wouldn’t devil me so. Goddam it, Lab, someday the men will be free.

  “What time is it? I have to be back in town by ten. I have to see somebody. Goddam it, a man has to live, Lab …”

  John didn’t hear the rest. He was very sleepy and none of it made sense. He just shut his eyes for a minute, only a minute, because he really had to stay awake.

  He woke up surprised, because he wasn’t in the car any more. As he came awake he realized he was being carried. His father was carrying him in his arms. John noticed sleepily that his father was wearing some funny kind of sweet shaving lotion. He did not know where they were at first, but then he saw they were at home at the house. His father carried him inside.

  Upstairs, his father laid him down on his bed in his own room and began to undress him, fumbling the buttons. He lay very still, his eyes shut, letting his father undress him and put him to bed. It made him feel good. When he was under the covers, he opened his eyes and smiled at his father. His father smiled back, and John could tell by his eyes that he was pretty drunk.

  “Here,” his father said, reaching in his pocket. “Put this under your pillow. You earned it. You’re a damned good man. You’ve got a lot of guts and I’m proud you are my son.”

  John reached out his hands and took it. He rolled over sleepily in the bed. Gee, he thought, a quarter and two half dollars both. Gee. But he held them in his hand and did not put them under his pillow, because he was suddenly thinking of his mother. I really oughtn’t to take them, he thought, thinking guiltily about his brother Tom. I ought to give them back.

  “Guts are what a man needs,” his father said. “You’re going to need a lot of guts, Johnny boy, someday. Someday you’ll need guts bad.”

  His father paused and patted him on the head and then he rubbed his strong stubby-fingered hand over his chin that needed a shave. He got up from the bed slowly. “Always remember: If a man’s got guts, he’ll come out all light. You got to have the guts to stand up for yourself, even when you’re bad and wrong,” he said, “or you’re dead. You’ll never be a man again.” He stood beside the bed looking down and smiling sadly.

  There was Priscilla, the soldiers getting ready to put the hot iron against her thing, in her thing, hard; and there was the general and he was handing him $2,000, to go away and forget he seen it, like every good spy should. And it wasn’t even Priscilla. It was just some woman. And a good spy had work to do at the front

  But this time it didn’t work, because over the scene in the forest John could see his mother’s face with her bright bright eyes looking at him. He wished it would work, because he wanted to keep the money. But this time it was not real. It wasn’t a real game at all. It was only playlike. It wasn’t $2,000 at all, it was only a quarter and two half dollars both.

  And there was Mother watching him who didn’t think he loved her anymore. He could almost see her. Mother thought he was going to be like Tom. He could almost see her looking at him if he took the money.

  “Dad,” John said, looking at the silver moons. “Here, Dad,” he made himself extend his arm. “I don’t want your money.”

  His father stood looking down at him, his big face and the muscles around his eyes getting a crinkledy look that frightened John, and his eyes seemed to go out of focus and swing around back and forth behind themselves, from one side of John to the other. Then he took the coins and looked at them and put them in his pocket.

  “All right, buddyboy,” he said in a voice John could hardly hear. “Good night, old man.” Carefully with his big hands, gently, he turned off the light and went out of the room and slowly shut the door.

  That look on his father’s face still scared John a little, but it gave him great pleasure to know he was not like Tom. Mother would be proud of him. He can’t buy my affection, John thought proudly. I’m not like Tom.

  The Way It Is

  Frederick L. Allen printed this one in the June 1949 Harper’s. We argued so much over it that Allen sent me back free the ms of the other story he bought, “Just Like the Girl,” saying he wasn’t up to it a second time. We argued over things like the fact that Allen wrote into my story a paragraph explaining it was Hawaii and Pearl Harbor. I refused to allow this. We argued over things like the abbreviation of lieutenant. I didn’t want a period after it. Allen wanted a period after it. We compromised by spelling it out.

  I SAW THE CAR COMING down the grade and got up from the culvert. I had to push hard with my legs to keep the wind from sitting me back down. I stepped out into the road to stop him, turning my back to the wind, still holding the mess kit I had been scouring. Some of the slop of sand and grease dripped out of it onto my leg.

  Then I saw Mazzioli was on the running board and had his pistol out and aimed at the driver’s head. I tossed the mess kit, still full, over against the culvert and got my own pistol out.

  I couldn’t see the driver. It was hard to see the car in the red air of the dusk against the black of the cliff and with the cold wind pouring against my eyes. It was a foreign make, a runabout with strange lines and the steering wheel on the right-hand side. When it stopped Mazzioli jumped off the running board and motioned with his pistol.

  “All right,” he said in that thick voice. “Get out of there, you.”

  I knew the man when he climbed out. He used the road every day. He could have passed for a typical Prussian with his scraped jowls and cropped bullethead. He wore a fine tweed jacket and plus-fours, and his stockings were of ribbed wool and very fine. I looked down at my legging and kicked off the gob of sand and grease. It didn’t help much. I hadn’t even had my field jacket off for three weeks, since the bombing.

  “What’s up, Greek?” I said, peering through the deepening dusk. I had to yell to make it heard above the wind.

  “I hopped a ride down the hill with this guy,” he said woodenly. “All the way down he was asking me questions about the position. How many men? How many guns? Was there a demolition? What was the road-guard for? I mean to find out what’s the story.” He looked offended.

  I walked over to him so I could hear above the wind. He was a little Wop but very meaty. His father ran a grocery store in Brooklyn.

  “What do you figure on doing?” I asked. I thought I had seen the Junker before someplace, and I tried hard to make my mind work.

  Mazzioli waved his pistol at the standing man. “Git over there, you, and put your back to the cliff,” he said ominously. The beefy Junker walked to it slowly, his steps jerky from rage, his arms dangling impotently. He stood against the black, porous cliff and Mazzioli followed him. “Where’s the men?” Mazzioli shouted to me above the wind. “I want a man to stand guard over this guy. You git a man and have him …”

  “There’s nobody here but me,” I called back. “I let them go up to the top of the hill. Two of them didn’t get any chow tonight. They went up to number one hole to listen to the guitar a while.” I walked over to him.

  I could see him stiffen. “Goddam you. You know there’s always supposed to be three m
en and one noncom here all the time. That’s the orders. You’re supposed to be second in command. How do you expect to handle these men when you don’t follow the orders?”

  I stared at him, feeling my jaws tighten. “All right,” I shrugged. “I let them go. So what?”

  “I’m turning this in to Lieutenant Allison. The orders are the orders. If you want to be on this road-guard to do your duty, okay. If you want to be on this road-guard to stop Coca-Cola trucks you can go back upstairs to the position. This road-guard is vital, and as long as I’m in charge of it everybody does like the orders says.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You’re a rotten soldier, Slade,” Mazzioli said. “Now look what’s happened. I wanted you to help me search this guy’s car. Now there’s nobody here to guard this guy.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So I’m a rotten soldier. My trouble is I got too many brains.” He was making me mad and that always got him. Ever since I went six months to the University downtown in Honolulu.

  “Don’t start giving me that stuff,” he snarled.

  The Junker against the cliff stepped forward. “See here,” he said. “I demand you stop this bickering and release me. You’re being an idiot. I am …”

  “Shut up, you,” Mazzioli snarled. “Shut up! I warned you, now shut up!” He stepped to meet him and jabbed the muzzle of his pistol into the Junker’s big belly. The man recoiled and stood back against the cliff, his beefy face choleric.

  I stood with my hands in the pockets of my field jacket, my shoulders hunched down against the rawness of the wind and watched the scene. I had put my pistol away.

  “All right,” Mazzioli said to me. “The question is what’re we gonna do now? If there’s nobody here but you and me?”

  “You’re in command,” I said.

  “I know it. Keep quiet. I’m thinking.”

  “Well,” I said. “You could have the guy drive you up the hill to the lieutenant. You could keep him covered till you turned him over to the lieutenant. Then you would be absolved,” I said. Big words always got him.

  “No,” he said dubiously. “He might try something.”

  “Or,” I said, “you could search the car and have me watch the guy.”

  “Yeh,” he admitted. “I could do that … Yet … No, I don’t want to do that. We may need more men.”

  It was dark now, as black as the cliff face, and I grinned. “Okay,” I said, telling him what I had in my mind all along, “then I could call Alcorn down from up on the cliff and he could watch the guy.”

  “Yes. That’s it. Why didn’t I think of that before?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you’re tired.”

  “You call Alcorn down,” he commanded me.

  I walked toward the cliff wall that reared its set black face up and up in the darkness several hundred feet. The wind beat on me with both fists in the blackness.

  “Wait a minute,” Mazzioli called. “Maybe we shouldn’t call Alcorn down. There’s supposed to be a man up there all the time.”

  “Look,” I said. “I’ll tell you what I think. Before you go ahead, you better get the lieutenant’s permission to do anything with this guy. You better find out who this guy is,”

  “I’m in charge of this road-guard,” he yelled into the wind, “and I can handle it. Without running to no lieutenant. And I don’t want back-talk. When I give you an order, you do it. Call Alcorn down here like I said.”

  “Okay,” I said. I leaned on the culvert and called loudly, my face turned up to the cliff. There was no answer. I flashed my light covered with blue paper. Still no answer.

  For a second I couldn’t help wondering if something had got him. The Japanese invasion of Hawaii had been expected every day since Pearl was bombed. It was expected here at Kaneohe Bay on the windward side where the reef was low and there was good beach. Nobody doubted they would get ashore.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Mazzioli sharply from the darkness. “Is Alcorn asleep?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s the wind; it carries off the sound. The light will get him.” I picked up a handful of pebbles and threw them up the cliff with all my strength, trying to make no noise the Greek could hear.

  Sixty feet up was a natural niche and the BAR man was stationed there twenty-four hours a day. It was a hidden spot that covered the road and the road-guard. In case of surprise it would prove invaluable. That was Lieutenant Allison’s own idea. The road-guard was Hawaiian Department’s idea.

  Alcorn had stayed up there alone for the first four days after the bombing. In the four days he had one meal before somebody remembered him. Now he and the other man pulled twelve hours apiece.

  The road-guard was part of the whole defense plan. It was figured out in November when the beach positions were constructed. The defense was to mine the Pali Road and Kamehameha Highway where it ran up over this cliff at Makapuu Point. It was planned to blow both roads and bottle them up in Kaneohe Valley and force them north, away from Honolulu. They were great demolitions and it was all top secret. Of course, in December they found maps of the whole thing in the captured planes. Still, it was very vital and very top secret.

  A rock the size of my fist thumped into the sand at my feet. I grinned. “You missed me,” I called up the cliff. “Come down from there, you lazy bastard.” I barely caught a faraway, wind-tossed phrase that sounded like “truck, too.” Then silence, and the wind.

  The machinegun apertures in the pillboxes up the hill all faced out to sea. Whoever planned the position had forgotten about the road, and all that faced the road was the tunnels into the pillboxes. To cover the road the MGs would have to be carried up into the open, and it was a shame because there was a perfect enfilade where the road curved up the cliff. But they couldn’t rebuild the pillboxes we had cut into solid rock, so instead they created the road-guard.

  The road-guard was to be five men and a BAR from up above. That was us. We were to protect the demolition when the Jap landed. It was not expected to keep him from getting ashore. We were to hold him off, with our BAR, till the demolition could be blown behind us. After that we were on our own. It was excellent strategy, for a makeshift, with the invasion expected truly every day. And the road-guard was vital, it was the key.

  Every man at Makapuu volunteered for the road-guard. The five of us were lucky to get it. The job was to stop and search all vehicles for anything that might be used to blow the demolition. The Coca-Cola trucks and banana trucks and grocery trucks and fruit trucks used this road every day to get to market. We stopped them all, especially the Coca-Cola trucks.

  In a couple of minutes I heard a scrambling and scraping and a bouncing fall of pebbles and Alcorn came slouching along the sand at the road edge, blowing on his hands.

  “The Greek wants you, Fatso,” I said.

  He laughed, low and rich and sloppy. “I think I’m deef from this wind, by god,” he said and scratched inside his field jacket. “What’s he want now?”

  “Come over here,” Mazzioli ordered. We walked over through the blackness and the wind and I felt I was swimming under water against a strong current. The Greek swung his blue light from the Junker onto us. Alcorn’s clothes hung from him like rags and on the back of his head was a fatigue hat with the brim turned up that defied the wind. He must have sewed an elastic band on it. Beside him I looked like I was all bucked up for a short-timer parade.

  “Where’s your helmet?” Mazzioli said. “You’re supposed to wear your helmet at all times. That’s the orders.”

  “Aw now, sarge,” Alcorn whined. “You know the steel band of them things gives a man a headache. I cain’t wear one.”

  I grinned and gave the brim of my own inverted soup-plate helmet a tug. Alcorn was a character.

  “When are you men going to learn to obey orders?” the Greek said. “An army runs by discipline. If you men don’t start acting like soldiers, I’ll turn you in.”

  “Off with his head,” I said.

  “What di
d you say?”

  “I said, coffee and bed. That’s what we need. There’s not a man on this position who’s had three good hours sleep since this bloody war started. Putting up barbed wire all day and pulling guard all night. And then putting up the same wire next day because the tide washed it out.”

  Alcorn snickered and Mazzioli said nothing. The Greek had had charge of a wire detail that worked one whole night to put up three hundred yards of double apron wire on the sand beach below the road. In the morning it was gone. Not a single picket left.

  “Alcorn,” Mazzioli ordered, “get a rifle and keep a bayonet against this guy’s belly till I tell you not to.”

  “I don’t know where the rifles are down here,” Alcorn said.

  “I’ll get it,” I said.

  I walked to the culvert and climbed down around it. The wall made a protection from the wind and I felt I had dropped into a world without breath. The absence of the wind made me dizzy and I leaned my face against the concrete. I felt the way you feel when you look out the window at a blowing rainstorm. All our blankets and stuff were down here. Against the wall of the culvert lay four rifles with bayonets on them, wrapped in a shelter-half. I pulled one out and made myself climb up into the wind again.

  Alcorn took the rifle and kept the bayonet against the Junker’s paunch. Every time the Junker moved or tried to speak Alcorn jabbed him playfully in the belly. The Junker was getting madder and madder, but Alcorn was having a fine time. I knew the lewd nakedness of that scraped face someplace before. I went over in my mind all the people I had seen at the University.

  The Greek was doing a bang-up job of searching the car, he even looked under the hood. I sat on the culvert and got my mess kit and put a handful of fresh sand in it from beside the road and rubbed it around and around. The dishwater that got out to us from the CP at Hanauma Bay gave us all the dysentery until we started using the sand.