The Lieutenant

by Andre Dubus

  He went to the Captain’s ladder. Some time that morning, watched by a Marine chaser, Navy prisoners had swabbed the landings, then waxed and buffed them; they had shined the ladder’s brass handrails; and they had left a dark purple rag, smelling of Brasso, lying on the steps. Dan went all the way up the ladder, to the Captain’s cabin (there was no orderly outside the cabin: Captain Howard would be on the bridge) but the prisoners and chaser had gone to chow. So, using the orderly’s phone on the bulkhead, he called the Detachment office and when Tolleson answered he told him the prisoner detail had left a rag on the Captain’s ladder.

  “Aye aye, sir. I’ll get on that chaser about it.”

  Then Dan was suddenly chuckling.

  “I didn’t pick it up,” he said. “It’s on the 03 level.”

  Tolleson laughed.

  “Chaser’ll take care of it, sir,” he said.

  At lunch in the wardroom, Dan ate soup and a salad and iced tea without sugar. He had been eating carefully since joining the ship, and it had worked: his belly was still flat and easily contained by his trousers and his tailored, close-fitting shirts. Beside him Alex Price was eating curry. Alex was taller and heavier than Dan and, in his loose Navy uniforms, he looked firm enough. He wiped his moustache, then his mouth, and turned to Dan and asked how the Marine Corps was holding up. Dan said that everything was squared away.

  “I’ll switch jobs with you,” Alex said. “I’ve got three special courts in the next ten days.”

  He was the Vanguard’s Education Officer. A year ago he had attended the Naval Justice school and since then he was continually appointed to serve as trial or defense counsel on special courts martial. His reputation as a conscientious and smart counsel had spread among the crew; so, besides the courts he was appointed to, he had performed in many others, because sailors requested him. Marines never had to request him; Dan always did it for them.

  Last July a squadron commander had accused Hahn and Jensen of beating up two of his sailors. Captain Schneider had told Dan to investigate and, based on the sworn written statements of Hahn and Jensen and the two sailors (who were both skinny, bruised, and visibly afraid of further involvement), he recommended that the case be dropped. The beating had occurred at night and Dan had a reasonable doubt, as the book put it, that the sailors had clearly seen the men who attacked them. Captain Schneider agreed and sent the investigation, with his endorsement, to Captain Howard. But Captain Howard ordered a special court-martial. Even then Dan believed the Marines were innocent (he had been aboard only two months and didn’t know them yet), and he thought Captain Howard was either stupid or showing his dislike of Marines, or both.

  He had asked Alex to defend Hahn and Jensen. Before the court-martial Alex talked to the sailors, then came to the Detachment office, asked Dan to call in Hahn and Jensen, and told them he was tired of being snowed, they were guilty of assault and battery, of lying under oath, and if they didn’t start telling the truth he would refuse to defend them. So they told him that, while drunk, they had beaten up the sailors, but they were sorry, especially after seeing in daylight how small those sailors were. Alex said he didn’t believe they had been that drunk and he didn’t for one second believe in their remorse, but he would do what he could. At the court-martial he pleaded guilty and got them a light sentence: reductions from private first class to private, and thirty days in the ship’s brig. They got out five days early for good conduct.

  “I think I can get a suspended sentence for one of these sailors,” Alex said now. “He was sleeping on watch.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Sure. He shouldn’t have been on watch. He had just come off four hours before and they put him on again because they couldn’t find the sailor who was assigned the watch in the first place. He also had fever and he told them so.

  “But he slept on watch.”

  “He slept on the short end of the stick.”

  “Okay: good. Go on in there and expose all these commissioned sailors who don’t give a damn about what’s happening to their troops.”

  Then he smiled. Across the table from him, an ensign looked up from his bread pudding and returned the smile. He was from the Naval Academy, having reported to the Vanguard a week before she left the States; when he used terms like deck or bulkhead or aft or deploy for air ops he spoke with that rather uneasy pride of young officers who have recently adopted the language of their service as their own; his cheeks flushed brightly when he smiled, which was often, though his mouth did not appear suited for it: it was narrow, and his lips were thin, and usually closed tightly.

  “We’re not sailors,” he said. “We’re Naval officers.”

  “Well, I’m a Marine. And I know what they taught you at Canoe U. They said remember three things: enlisted men don’t count and they won’t salute you anyway; a commander’s wife outranks everybody below the rank of commander; and you can make or break your career in the wardroom. Do you know what the troops are eating on the mess deck while you’re having curry and pudding? Beans and franks.”

  He was still smiling. The ensign’s cheeks were flushed, and his lips had narrowed.

  “Maybe you should eat with them,” he said.

  “Oh no: they can’t eat with me, so why should I be able to eat with them? But do you know what happens when a Marine battalion goes to the field? The privates eat first and the colonel eats last.”

  “Oh come on: what if he doesn’t get anything?”

  “That’s the point.”

  “An army,” Alex said, “marches on its stomach. Let’s go, Leatherneck. You’re disturbing my colleagues.”

  In the passageway, Dan said:

  “Well, I’m going down to my island of military discipline and instill some of it.”

  “Office hours? What for?”

  “I don’t know, Alex. But they won’t get away with it.”

  “Keep your powder dry.”

  When Dan was halfway down the ladder to the barracks the Corporal of the Guard shouted tenhuhn; Dan walked quickly through the stiffened troops, not seeing any of their faces, looking directly ahead of him as if he were passing through familiar trees. At the office door he said loudly: “Carry on.”

  Since his leaving the barracks four hours ago things had happened: the office had been prepared, the green decks shined, the tops of desks cleared and dusted; on the glass cover of his own desk were four typed unit punishment sheets, the Manual for Courts-Martial, and the service record books. He knew that word had been passed too, and Freeman and Hahn and Jensen and McKittrick were standing by in the berthing area, wearing fresh uniforms for office hours; and like grade school boys when a classmate is called to the principal’s office, the rest of the Detachment had been telling each other what had happened and making guesses about what the Lieutenant would do. Sitting at his desk now he felt that sense of power which comes when you know that during your absence you have been present: you have changed the appearance of an office and entered the minds and conversations of men.

  He opened McKittrick’s service record book, which told him that McKittrick’s father was deceased, that he came from Davenport, Iowa, the address a route and box number which made Dan think of a lonely house surrounded by flat mud; he was at least partly right: McKittrick’s civilian occupation was described as Raised corn and hogs on mother’s farm. He had left high school after three years, but while on active duty had passed the General Educational Development Test which the Marine Corps recognized as a high school degree. McKittrick had listed hunting and fishing as his hobbies. Dan closed the book and glanced through the others, except Freeman’s: two nights ago he had read about Freeman in his platoon commanders’ notebook, and he still remembered it, because there wasn’t much to remember, so that finally the essential thing was to connect the right face with the right information. Jensen was from Chicago, had graduated from high school where he had lettered for four years in football and track. After that he had gone to a trade school, studying auto mech
anics for two months. He had not finished the course; for six months he had been a construction worker, then he had joined the Marines. There were no hobbies listed in his record book. Hahn’s record was so bare that Dan turned to the page listing parents and religion. It said that he was a Lutheran, and that his mother and father were alive in Haverhill, Massachusetts. The other page, the one for personal information, merely showed what he had not done: he had finished high school but had not been an athlete, he had no hobbies, and his only job experience was working two months in his father’s shoe repair shop. Dan could easily have thought of him as a guard or tackle, one who broke training but was mean and primed for Friday games; he could not imagine Hahn sitting in the stands, responding to cheerleaders or even the score. He especially could not picture Hahn bent over someone’s worn- out boot.

  He was rising from his desk to call Tolleson when two bells sounded on the loudspeaker and Tolleson came in and said:

  “Is the Lieutenant ready?”

  “It’s time,” he said. “Bring ’em in.”

  He sat down again, facing the door, and waited. They came single file, Hahn in front: he marched up to the desk, then right-faced and went to the bulkhead, left-faced and halted. His eyes had not met Dan’s, but Dan had watched him all the way, knowing he had him now, no lies, no snow job this time. Jensen and McKittrick were next, then Freeman: they stood facing him, abreast, Hahn against the bulkhead on one side, Freeman’s leg touching a desk on the other, and McKittrick and Jensen squeezed between them. Tolleson shut the door and stood at ease behind them. Dan opened the Manual for Courts-Martial to the page Tolleson had marked with a paper clip and, with a bored and near-scornful voice, he quickly read Article Thirty-one aloud. They broke their formation to bend over the desk and initial the unit punishment sheets, declaring that they understood their rights under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. When they were at attention and abreast again, Dan read the charge from each sheet. All were the same: disorderly conduct, and the specifications were simply: did, on or about 16 November 1956 create a disturbance in the Marine Barracks aboard the USS VANGUARD. Looking up at them, pausing at each man’s face, beginning with Hahn and ending with Freeman, he said:

  “How do you plead?”

  He was watching Freeman when he said it; but it was Hahn, to his left, who answered:

  “Not guilty, sir.”

  His head jerked toward Hahn, then he was on his feet and he struck the desk with his fist.

  “What’s this left field crap, Hahn? If you want me to interrogate like I did this morning then I’ll by God do it but you’re pissing me off.”

  “Begging the Lieutenant’s pardon, Sir, but I wasn’t interrogated this morning.”

  “Well, Hahn, I’m sorry I left you out of the Goddamn office party. But since you’re standing there looking so innocent, I’ll refresh your memory: Freeman and your buddy McKittrick here admitted it this morning, and that’s all I need. So forget about this sea lawyer business and face your Goddamn punishment like a man.”

  “Sir, Pfc McKittrick and Private Freeman were not warned of their rights under Article Thirty-one, sir.”

  Dan sat in his chair again and looked up at McKittrick. After a moment, he said quietly:

  “How do you plead?”

  “Not guilty, sir.”

  He looked at Freeman, whose stare went past and above Dan, to the bulkhead. “And you?”

  Freeman did not answer. Leaning toward his profiled face Dan slapped the cover of the Manual and Freeman’s eyes blinked.

  “I’m talking to you. Freeman!”

  “Not guilty, sir.”

  He leaned back in his chair.

  “All right,” he said. He looked at Hahn’s stolid face: then at McKittrick, tight lips and angry defensive eyes like a man in a fight; then Jensen, short and compact, and appearing as calm as if he were merely standing sentry duty. Then he looked at Freeman.

  “First Sergeant,” he said. “Send them all out except Freeman.”

  While Tolleson gave the command to about-face and march out, Dan was already on his feet, circling his desk and going to Freeman; he stopped inches from him, watching Freeman’s pale cheek and one blinking eye until he heard the office door close. He glanced at Tolleson and said:

  “Type a confession for Freeman’s signature, and start it off with: ‘Having been warned of my rights under Article Thirty-one, UCMJ, I do hereby voluntarily make the following statement.’”

  “Aye sir.”

  Dan waited until Tolleson was sitting at the desk to his left, directly behind Freeman; he waited for Freeman to hear the paper being rolled into the typewriter, followed “by the rapid dull clicking of keys, the ring of the bell, and the carriage sliding fast to the right again, banging. Then he said:

  “Turn around and look at me, sea lawyer.”

  Freeman right-faced. Just as he finished the movement Dan brought both hands up from his sides, palms out, slapping Freeman’s chest and closing on his shirt pockets; then he spun, jerking Freeman completely around and pushing him with one smooth unresisted drive across the office, and slammed his back against the bulkhead, then held him pressed against it. Freeman was limp and, as he held him, Dan could see the entire scene: the troops outside the office turning suddenly to the door when they heard Freeman hitting the steel bulkhead; Tolleson spinning in the swivel chair, his mouth opening in worried but approving surprise; and himself, his head thrust forward, his cheeks flushed, his white-knuckled hands twisting Freeman’s shirt. Then he released him and stepped back.

  “You’re going to sign that,” he said. “And no more of this Article Thirty-one bullshit. And I’ll tell you why: because I plan to give you people three days’ bread-and-water. That’s all.”

  Behind him, he heard Tolleson typing again.

  “That’s why those unit punishment sheets don’t say a Goddamn thing, Freeman. Because that offense is too serious for office hours: it ought to draw a special court. But it’s not, Freeman: I’m going to handle it myself, right here today, because I’ll be Goddamn if I’ll let four grab-assing little boys for crying out loud screw up the reputation of this Detachment. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Freeman’s mouth opened but he did not answer.

  “Are you going to cry, Freeman?”

  He shook his head.

  “No, sir,” he said, his voice high in his throat.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then get in the ball game, Freeman. You know you don’t have to sign this confession: you can request mast with Captain Howard and tell him—” now he mimicked a child’s whine “—Lieutenant Tierney laid hands on me. But if Captain Howard hears about that business last night, it’ll be out of my hands and you’ll be facing a special court. So you lose: you play ball with Hahn and you’ll get the bat shoved up your ass.”

  Tolleson had finished typing. Dan took the confession from him and read it, then looked at Freeman.

  “All this says is that you and Hahn and Jensen tackled McKittrick, while he was a corporal. The First Sergeant has left out the rest of it. Because, Freeman, this confession goes on file too and we’re covering this thing up. Now come here and sign it.”

  He laid it on the desk, placed a ballpoint pen on top of it, and watched as Freeman left the bulkhead and picked up the pen and signed his name.

  “Sign all four copies,” he said.

  He went behind his desk and told Tolleson to bring in the others. They marched in, Hahn leading again, and Freeman moved over to give them room. When they were facing him, Dan left his desk and stood in front of Hahn, looking up at him.

  “Hahn,” he said, “it’s a shame that in order for me to save this Detachment’s reputation I have to save you. Because you’re not a Marine, Hahn. You’re not even a man. You lie. You lie so much I doubt if you can tell when to believe yourself. You’re a bully: and to me that means you’re yellow. Yellow, Hahn—” Hahn’s lips began
the bare trace of a smirk, and Dan was about to scream that old line he had heard in movies but had never heard in the Corps: Wipe that grin off your face; but he paused, held on, and continued coldly: “—Course you don’t think so. You think you’re a real man. Well, Hahn, I can only go on the evidence. Look to your left, Hahn. Go on: look at your buddies—” Hahn turned his head “—These are the guys you lead around with this manly courage of yours. McKittrick there is a tall man, but he’s not as strong as you: you’ve got thirty-five or forty pounds on him. Jensen is strong but he’s short—he’s not over a hundred and sixty- five pounds, Hahn. And there’s Freeman. He can’t even whip me.”

  Hahn looked forward again; now his lips had straightened, the smirk vanished before it had formed. His eyes, though, were still defiant and confident.

  “Those are the men you bully, Hahn. Oh: but I shouldn’t forget your actual fights. Last summer you and Jensen tore up a couple of sailors. That was a fine show, Hahn. They were skinny little kids and they were drunk. But it’s mighty funny, Hahn, that for a big man you don’t have any guts. There’s a boxing smoker on this ship every once in a while and some of the troops get in there and fight sailors. But not you. No, because that would take guts: you’d have to get in shape so you could last three rounds. You’re getting flabby around the gut. And worst of all you’d have to get in there and fight a man your size. He wouldn’t be drunk and he wouldn’t be a ninety-eight-pound weakling—and all those people would be watching Hahn fighting someone as strong as you and maybe in better shape than you. You’ll never fight in a smoker, Hahn, because that just scares the piss out of you.”

  Hahn’s cheeks colored; Dan watched him for a moment, then spoke softly:

  “You know, there’s a young doctor on this ship—Doc Kellog—and he happens to be studying psychiatry. I think you ought to talk to him, Hahn. Because there’s something wrong: all those lies, all that bullying—Everybody knows there’s something wrong with a bully. You’re running scared from something, Hahn, and I’m starting to worry about you. So maybe you should talk to that doctor while you can do it free of charge. You think it over, Hahn, and if you decide to get help I can arrange it for you—” Dan leaned over the desk and, as he was picking up Freeman’s confession, he said “—when you get out of the brig.” Then he straightened quickly, spinning toward Hahn again, and cried: “Because that’s where you’re going right now!”