by Andre Dubus
“You will, First Sergeant; and I will.”
“One moment, sir: also, if the Lieutenant sends Freeman home, then what happens when the next man comes in with a letter from his girl? Sir, if Freeman goes home, we’ll have fifty Goddamn emergencies before this ship gets to Iwakuni and Captain Schneider comes aboard.”
“You have a point there,” Dan said, and his cheeks were warm and flushed.
“Yes, sir. Also, there’s the Lieutenant’s career to think about.”
“That’s not important.”
“Sir, the Lieutenant’s a good officer and it is important.”
“Well—not in this decision.” Dan stood up. “But I’ll take your advice on that other point. You can send Freeman in now.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Tolleson said, grinning, turning and going rapidly out the door, like a man with good news.
The next day Freeman was Captain Howard’s orderly again. The Captain was surprised to see him, and said, “I thought you were in the brig,” and Freeman told him the Lieutenant had released him the night before. The Captain seemed to think about that for a moment, then he said: “Good.” All day Freeman stood on the bridge with Captain Howard, watching planes landing and taking off, or followed him about the ship, with that protective attitude he had acquired from carrying a loaded .45 while Captain Howard—who could probably not fire one anyway—was unarmed. After the evening meal he polished his shoes and brass and wrote a letter to Jan, telling her there was nothing to do now but wait. Then he undressed and lay in his bunk.
In the light of the small reading lamp above his head he stared at Jan’s picture near his feet. He was not as disappointed as he had thought he would be, because he had never really hoped: since Jan had first written that she was pregnant he had been certain that he could not return to the States and marry her, so his energy and preoccupations were directed toward waiting. He became a habitual watcher of time: every other day, on his duty day, as he stood on the bridge with Captain Howard, he glanced habitually at his watch, only occasionally aware of the time on its face or even aware that he had looked at it.
On the days when he was off duty, he sat through lectures on military subjects and, at three o’clock, he would go with his section to a sponson deck where the Lieutenant would lead them through calisthenics for an hour. That was one of the peaks of his waiting: in stationary double- time, lifting his knees high and pounding his booted feet on the steel deck, he would look at the horizon—on most days a fusing of shades of blue, on others the living grey of choppy sea and the dead paler grey of the sky—and he would feel that he had almost made another day.
His second peak would come that night, after shining his leather and brass and watching a movie on the ship’s television in the classroom or on the screen set up on the enlisted mess deck, then writing a letter to Jan and, on some nights, working on a correspondence course in squad tactics—then he would climb into his bunk and look at his watch and take the calendar from the small locker near his pillow where he kept toilet articles and cigarettes and stationery, and with his ballpoint pen he would block out that day. Then he would turn out the reading lamp and stretch his legs under the taut blanket, lying on his back, not sleepy for he was nineteen years old and a day on the Vanguard rarely tired him. He would try very hard to avoid thinking of the number of days left, for a three-digit number was unbearable: he would lie there, thinking he had made one more day.
So last night when the Lieutenant had released him from the brig and told him to wait for further word, he had climbed onto his bunk and sat with his feet hanging over its side and told himself there was no hope of his going home—no matter what the Lieutenant said. An airplane seemed to involve so much more than Lieutenant Tierney and the Detachment; it involved the ship itself, anonymous Naval officers behind grey hatches; it involved the Seventh Fleet and, by boarding a plane and rising above the Vanguard, it seemed that somehow you were involved with the command and staff of the entire Western Pacific. He was certain of that. He remembered the order about emergency leave which Captain Schneider had read to the Detachment before the ship left the States. When the First Sergeant had hollered at him from the classroom he had jumped to the deck and gone through the curtains between the berthing area and classroom, trying—as fervently as he avoided thinking of three-digit numbers, of Jan’s expanding belly—not to hope. The First Sergeant had told him to report to the Lieutenant and he had; and when he saw the Lieutenant’s face—that solemn look they always gave you just before they crapped on you—he knew he had been right.
But Lieutenant Tierney had told him something totally different from what he had expected. The Lieutenant had not said that it was impossible to send him home: he had said that it was possible, but he couldn’t do it because if he broke regulations for one man he would have to break them for everyone. Then he had said: “I know how tough it is, Freeman.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“If there’s anything else I can do, let me know.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
And the Lieutenant had said: “That’s all, Freeman.”
Now, twenty-four hours later, he looked at his watch, even read the actual time: eleven thirty-two. Later he would remember that: would vividly recall that, at eleven thirty-two, he had been lying on his bunk and it had just occurred to him that he had to piss.
But he did not go to the head: he lay there silently cursing Lieutenant Tierney and looking at the eight-by-ten picture of Jan’s face and thinking of one hundred and fifteen days until the ship got home, then he thought of his father in Bellingham: a barber whose own hair had long since fallen out, the top of his head smooth, and only short grey hairs at the sides and back now; a short man with narrow shoulders and a pot belly and a high laugh that ended in wheezing; he was grouchy in the morning, tired and quiet at night. If his father were dying, he could go home.
He was sitting up to go to the head when he heard footsteps on the rubber tile deck, stopping at his bunk; he turned and saw at eye-level Corporal McKittrick’s spit- shined cap brim, the black Marine emblem above it. Then he looked at McKittrick’s eyes and, farther down, at his white pistol belt and holstered .45; McKittrick was the Corporal of the Guard.
“What did the Lieutenant tell you last night?”
“He let me out of the brig.”
“No shit, Freeman: I ain’t blind. He said you can’t take leave, didn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
“You went crying to that sonofabitch and he chewed me out.”
“You want me to tell the Lieutenant that?”
“You better square away, Freeman, that’s what I’m telling you,” McKittrick said; but he turned and walked away, retaining a swagger: his holstered .45 at his hip, his right arm out from his side, swinging. Then Freeman dropped to the deck and went toward the head.
He did not want to, for he knew that Hahn was in there, and Jensen too, shining their shoes and talking with that group which gathered in the head at night. When he pushed through the swinging wooden hatch, Hahn was standing profiled to him, talking loudly and grinning at the others who sat on the deck near the lavatories, shining shoes, grinning and nodding at Hahn who was gesturing with his left arm (he wore utility trousers and a T-shirt); beneath his vaccination scar, on the broad surface of his left bicep, was a tattooed Marine emblem. Then Hahn saw Freeman.
“Jesus! It’s the brig rat.”
Freeman turned to his right and went to the urinal.
“Hey, Teddy-Baby,” Hahn said. “How come Dangerous Dan let you out? You do something for him?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, unbuttoning his fly and wishing he had not answered, now pulling out his penis that shamed him so, and it seemed even smaller than usual, as if it too shrank before their derision.
“Let’s see it,” Jensen said. “Maybe there’s toothmarks on it.”
Laughter bounced off the bulkhead in front of him as, shivering, Freeman pissed. He left the head
without looking back, stepping hot-faced into the dark of the berthing area, moving between the bulkhead on his left and the cubicles of metal bunks on his right, turning into his own cubicle and climbing onto his bunk. In the upper bunk opposite Freeman’s, Jack Burns sat up and said;
“They giving you a hard time?”
“Bastards.”
“Somebody ought to tell the Lieutenant what goes on around here,” Burns said, then lay down again and, pulling his blanket to his shoulders, rolled on his side, his back to Freeman, who was about to unlace his boots but stopped. The swinging hatch of the head had just slammed shut and he heard them coming, knew they were coming for him, and he straightened from his boot and sat holding the edge of the bunk as Hahn and Jensen stepped into the cubicle—then Hahn grabbed one of his dangling legs, just below the knee, in a grip that Freeman knew he could never break. Gradually Hahn pulled the leg downward, and Freeman held the bunk with both hands as he slid forward, closer to Hahn’s face which was level with his chest: Hahn grinning and his eyes brutal and unyielding; now he said:
“Let’s see the toothmarks, Teddy-Baby.”
Freeman looked down at Jensen, shorter than Hahn, grinning too; his left arm was bent upward, so the sleeve of his T-shirt stretched around his bicep, and Freeman saw the can of shaving cream in his hand.
“Aw, come on,” he said, hating the whine in his voice. “Come on now.”
He looked at Burns, who was still on his side, the blanket over his shoulders, his back turned. Then Hahn pulled again and Freeman tried to stop himself but couldn’t and he knew he would scrape his back and hit his head on the bunk’s edge as he fell—but then from the classroom beyond the curtain he heard the slide of a .45 slamming forward and the click of the hammer and Hahn wasn’t pulling on his leg anymore, though gripping it still as he stood with his head cocked toward the curtain, listening to the sounds of the changing of the guard: the sentries clearing their .45’s.
“Mac’s getting relieved,” Hahn said. “Let’s get him.”
“All right,” Jensen said, and he moved farther into the cubicle and stood with his back against Burns’ bunk.
“Come on, Teddy-Baby,” Hahn said. “We’ll get old Mac.”
“Okay”—nodding his head—“okay: good.”
He slid down from the bunk and stood with them and listened as the new corporal of the guard took his sentries up the ladder. He heard McKittrick coming through the curtains, into the dark, approaching the cubicle, his heels clicking. Then he saw him. Jensen and Hahn sprang from the cubicle and he followed them, saw McKittrick going to the deck on his back and Jensen pinning his arms; Freeman kneeled on McKittrick’s shins and with each hand pushed down hard on a knee, watching as Hahn unbuckled McKittrick’s belt. He looked away, down at McKittrick’s struggling legs, heard McKittrick’s voice murmuring curses without malice, curses that became strange laughter from his throat; then cursing and laughter both stopped and Freeman heard what he thought was a groan and McKittrick’s legs stopped struggling though their muscles were still tight, and Freeman looked up from the legs and saw what Hahn was doing and for an instant he could not move, as if an intense nausea had suddenly rushed up from his knees to his throat—then he moved: he rose quickly, turning, his left ankle tripping on McKittrick’s outstretched legs and he stumbled but did not fall. He ran out of the berthing area, through the curtains, into the lighted classroom.
3
AN HOUR LATER, trying to sleep, he heard Burns shifting in his bunk, pushing away a blanket and sitting up.
“Jesus,” Burns said. “I saw it all.”
“You did?”
“Jesus Christ, I don’t care what they do to me, I’m telling the First Sergeant tomorrow morning. I had to go to the head and puke, for Christ’s sake.”
So now, though Freeman had always been their victim, it was Burns who would tell. Lying there in his bunk, Freeman thought that for years he had been wandering around, trying to decide what to do, while someone else was already doing it.
In high school, surrounded and defined by blackboards and the semi-enclosing blond wood of his several desks, by teachers who seemed old and certain, by young boys whose dress and manner he imitated, and girls whom he at once desired and shied from, Freeman had never paused to consider what he was. He thought he knew, and had he ever articulated this knowledge, he would not even have said student: he would have said high school boy. Then he was graduated.
During the first weeks of that summer, as a bag and carry-out boy at a supermarket, he was all right. But after a month had passed he was restless. At the check-out counter he tried to pack each bag as quickly as he could, was conscious only of the damp cold of milk cartons, the hard cylinders of soup and vegetables, the crisp lettuce that yielded to his squeezing fingers, and time that was measured by empty bags becoming filled. When there were few customers, he swept the floor and arranged canned goods on the shelves and measured time by the hands of his watch. At night he would walk home, feeling somehow severed from the world as he had known it.
He had assumed that he would go to college at the end of the summer. But now this troubled him. At college he would have to tell people what he wanted to study, what he wanted to become. He began to think of joining the service.
So on a Saturday afternoon in midsummer he stood outside the courthouse, confronted by a large recruiting poster luring him to the service which, after many walks from the supermarket to his home and many wakeful hours in bed, he had decided would do for him what he had not been able to do for himself. The poster showed a rifle inspection at Boot Camp, focusing on a tall young recruit in the front rank and the corporal who was inspecting him. The recruit wore utilities and a cartridge belt and stood stiffly at attention. The corporal wore tropical khaki, and a campaign hat cocked over his eyes; his fists were on his hips, his face—suntanned as only technicolored movie actors are—was leaned toward the recruit, and he looked like a very young man who could do anything he chose. The large caption of the poster was THE MARINE CORPS BUILDS MEN. Freeman thought of himself as the recruit on the poster, afraid but efficient (you could see that) in a strange, harsh world. Then he looked at the corporal and thought of himself too: standing before a group of men with his fists on his hips, or home on leave and people turning to look as he sauntered in uniform down these same streets. Oh, he would say at a bar, it’s not bad: you just do what you have to.
After what seemed a long time he walked up the sidewalk and the steps and into the courthouse, past the blind man who worked behind the candy and cigarette counter, and down the stairs into stale subterranean coolness and the smell of a spittoon at the bottom of the stairs, and into the office where a sly lean staff sergeant in blue trousers and a tropical khaki shirt with campaign ribbons looked up from his desk, rose, and extended a hand as he smiled and said: Come on in. Months later Ted felt the same fear and discomfort when, in Tijuana, he entered a whorehouse. In the whorehouse he quickly said no, and left; but that day in the recruiting office he said yes, although nothing the sergeant talked about appealed to him: in fact, the entire interview increased his fear—and his final yes was really spoken to himself, an affirmation of his need to endure Boot Camp and infantry training, to be somehow transformed.
Boot Camp did change him, but not enough. By the end of it he could run two miles with a haversack on his back, though he still could not approach that run with confidence and he felt that he was able to keep up with the platoon only because he was afraid of his Drill Instructor. Freeman would always remember him: leaning forward, his eyes wrathful under the brim of his campaign hat, his harsh Boston voice taunting and cursing until tears came to Freeman’s eyes, and two fists struck his chest, grabbing his shirt before he fell: breathless and stiff and open- mouthed, he felt his face paling and his knees going weak as rope, just before he was shoved backward against the bruising corner of a foot locker, going over it, legless now, his back and head hitting the deck, and above his sudden pain, the voice:
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br /> “Goddamn you Freeman you skinny little shit you can’t even fall like a Marine. Get up get up. Freeman did you ever just once—just one tiny little fucking time in your whole life play football?”
“Sir no sir.”
“Well what the fuck did you do? Did you ever get a piece of ass?”
“Sir no sir.”
“Freeman you are an asshole. Now I’m going to ask you one more time, Freeman, just one more fucking time: describe the M-1 rifle. Describe it, I said.”
“Sir the M-1 rifle is a gas-operated semi-automatic—”
“What does gas-operated mean, asshole?”
The sergeant spun away, out of his vision which was not really vision, for he did not see the recruits standing at attention on the opposite side of the squad bay, nor did he see the bulkhead: he saw, through a mist, only himself. Then a rifle muzzle was inches from his face, at eye level, and the sergeant’s long forefinger was touching it.
“See that Freeman. That is the gas cylinder. Now, Freeman, what does it do?”
“Sir—”
Then the rifle was smacked against his chest before he could raise his hands to grab it, then he had it, not knowing what to do with it next, and he was about to hold it at port when the sergeant said:
“Now you hold that piece out in front of you. Straight out, Freeman: horizontal. Freeman if you drop that weapon I’ll break your skinny fucking arms. Now you hold it. How much does it weigh, Freeman?”
“Sir the M-1 rifle weighs nine point five pounds sir.”
“That’s not very much, is it, Freeman?”
“Sir no sir.”
“Then why the fuck is your whole Goddamn body shaking? Freeman you are an asshole. Do you know why you never got a piece of ass? I know why. Because, Freeman, you are nothing but a skinny turd and you would fuck up a wet dream.”
