The Patriot

by Evan S. Connell

  Cole shook his head. “I don’t expect to hear from them. What are you doing? Do you work in the mess hall?”

  “No. I’m a sort of flunky in sick bay. I run errands and sweep up.”

  Cole laughed, and with curious sobriety remarked, “That’s what sustains you, I believe. You can’t understand that you’re defeated. You’re a total, unmitigated ass. I don’t know where you belong—on a street corner, perhaps, gesticulating and admonishing. Look at you: two years of hard work and you’re lower than when you began.”

  “You don’t have to remind me of it,” Melvin said. “Incidentally, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you. Back at Memphis I got a card congratulating me on a new baby. I was—”

  “Yes, I sent it.”

  “I suspected you did.”

  “I know. I used to catch you gaping at me.” Cole smiled. “I knew that eventually you would conclude I must have sent it. But, ye gods—after all this time!” He stroked his chin, laughed, and then touched Melvin lightly on the chest. “You’re not intelligent—no doubt you realize that—but you compensate by utilizing faculties the majority of people neglect. You’ve reached the evolutionary level of, I would say, a fairly competent bird dog.”

  “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment,” Melvin said after thinking it over.

  “You might as well,” said Cole, regarding him somberly.

  “Listen, could I bum a ride some day when I’m off duty?”

  “You haven’t had enough flying?”

  “I never had anything against the flying itself. I always loved that.”

  “All right,” Cole answered with none of his usual malice. “What morning are you free?”

  So, one humid, cloudy morning of the following week, Melvin clambered into the rear cockpit of a Yellow Peril, the rickety biplane in which he and Cole had taken their primary training at the air station in Memphis.

  With his toes just resting on the pedals and one hand touching the throttle and the other on the stick, he studied the once-familiar cockpit and looked down at the earth while Cole practiced the various acrobatics he would be teaching after he had graduated from the instructors’ college. A gosport tube stretched between the cockpits, and Cole’s voice emerged from the tube with a muffled, intimate quality that reminded Melvin of a telephone he had made out of string and two tin cans when he was a small boy.

  “What we do here is not dissimilar to our old primary syllabus. We learn a few additional maneuvers, such as the cloverleaf and the inverted Immelmann; the principal thing, however, is to learn to speak. To elucidate during the actual course of the demonstration. No doubt you can recall the S turns to the circle, and how, no matter what, we were determined to hit that circle. I can clearly recall a day at Memphis when I rolled into a steep bank on the final turn, possibly ten yards above the ground. At the time I thought nothing of it. Not until I got here did I fully appreciate the danger.”

  He spoke rhythmically, with a pleasant intonation, as though it were a recitation; it was evident that he meant to become a conscientious instructor, which surprised Melvin a little, for, without thinking much about it, he had assumed Cole would be no more concerned about his students than he had been about anyone or anything else, except his own self.

  The Yellow Peril went spinning noisily along, the engine sputtering in the heat and the wind whistling through the struts. There was a patch on the underside of the top wing, a ludicrous X of adhesive tape.

  “I loiter around the BOQ every night drinking Manhattans and playing the slot machines,” Cole was saying. “Sundays I customarily go dancing in the city, shoot a few holes of golf if the weather isn’t unbearable, swim, fool about on the pistol range squandering the tax-payers’ money. By the way, try those Sunday affairs. Les Rebelles and another group known as the Mademoiselles both do it up quite nicely, magnolias and punch and that sort of thing. There’s a certain graciousness to the life down here.”

  “They wouldn’t let me in the door.”

  Cole laughed. “That’s right—they wouldn’t. See what I mean about different worlds?”

  The Yellow Peril gradually entered a shallow dive, the engine sinking below the horizon, and then rising as the plane started rolling—over it turned very slowly, the rudders altering—and came up the opposite side. The maneuver had been executed with style and assurance. Cole had bored a perfectly horizontal hole in the sky, and Melvin complimented him.

  “I used to have a great deal of trouble with those,” Cole replied. “I slipped and lost altitude and heading. It seems remarkably simple now.” He rolled the plane again, remarking as he did so, “I enjoy this life. I enjoy being a pilot and an officer. I enjoy being respected, Melvin. All of us do. You should give it some thought.”

  “I don’t doubt a word you say. I’ve wished more than once that I had your knack for—”

  “Knack!” Cole interrupted. “So you think it’s a knack! Small wonder you failed.”

  The Yellow Peril rolled over again and Melvin looked at the great delta of the Mississippi twirling beneath his head; then they were right side up and the sun was burning steadily into his shoulders and against the back of his neck. A yellow wing went up, the tail sank, and with sickening speed they slipped toward the river while the altimeter needle drifted backward around the dial. In the channel he could see a number of rusty merchant ships; a brightly painted excursion steamer whose top deck was crowded with sightseers was approaching a wharf.

  “Do you hear from anybody?”

  “The other day you asked the same question. Are you so discouraged that you’ve taken to living vicariously? As a matter of fact, I did have a card from Roska. He was beached in San Diego and didn’t think he would be going anywhere. Apparently he continues to drink himself into a stupor every night. He also mentioned—or should I say he did mention, since he didn’t specifically observe that he stupefied himself every night—that McCampbell and Horne passed through on their way to the Pacific.”

  “Were they headed for combat?”

  Cole drew the plane out of the slip before answering. He glanced in the mirror, patted the top of his helmet, and jerked his thumb backward.

  “All right, I got it,” Melvin said, taking over the controls. There was a metallic clunk and the airplane rocked as Cole pulled the lever of his seat adjustment and dropped to the bottom of the cockpit.

  “I wouldn’t know where else they would be headed,” he remarked dryly.

  Melvin had not been aloft since crash-landing the Dauntless, and it had been a year since he had flown a Yellow Peril. Already it felt strange—the pressure of the wind against the surfaces, and the way the pedals sank to the floorboards. The instrument readings were unfamiliar; he stared at the manifold gauge for a long time, thinking it was too low, but did not want to ask Cole.

  “Well, Horne in combat,” he said and flew along. “When he runs out of bullets he’ll probably begin throwing his shoes. But he’ll get through all right. Nick will, too.”

  “If they’re lucky,” Cole said. He had taken off his helmet and was running his fingers through his hair.

  “I get the feeling you never liked any of us.”

  “I didn’t dislike you. It’s simply that I thought and still think you are credulous—the four of you—gullible. Your prissy patriotism outraged my sense of reason. When I overheard you telling one another about the malevolence and perfidy of the Japanese, in toto, as though they were less than human, you insulted my intelligence.”

  “If you’re that cynical why’d you get in the Navy? You could have pretended to be a conscientious objector.”

  “Frankly,” Cole said, with a laugh, “I didn’t think of it until too late. America raped me while I was a babe. America the beautiful. Like a woman, she concludes that whatever she wants, she should have. Now you’re wondering how I can masquerade as a naval officer,” he suggested, looking into the mirror, there in the sunlight high above New Orleans—gold bars pinned to the collar of his short-s
leeved tropical shirt and wings pinned to his breast, handsome, sun-tanned, with curly hair and a mustache and quizzical, amused eyes—a Navy flyer not much different from others Melvin had seen many times at other air stations.

  “Seriously, though,” he went on, “I don’t pretend. I’m honest, believe it or not. I’m not a conscientious objector; consequently I would never take refuge in that. I never deceive anyone, and most certainly not myself.” He loosened the gosport mask in order to light a cigarette and then held the mask to his lips whenever he was not smoking. “You consider me a hypocrite. How so?” he asked.

  “You accepted a commission, and you accepted all that training, but you never had the slightest intention of going to war.”

  “You have a high-school education, possibly one year at some local college or state university—the actuality doesn’t interest me,” Cole said patiently, “and on the basis of that you presume to evaluate me! This is absurd. What do you know of intellectual discipline? Your dialectic is as specious as that of the common man, which, essentially, is what you are. For example, how intensively have you dialyzed the Synoptic Gospels? What can you tell me of Aristotelian morality? What exegesis could you offer of the Samaritan Pentateuch, let us say, or the books of the Apocrypha? You do not know what I am talking about, yet you—you undertake to censure me. This is ridiculous!

  “There’s no need to look so abashed,” Cole went on. “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, nor would I ever say to you in public what I have just said. Cynical?” he inquired after a pause, “No. No, Seaman Isaacs, I am not cynical. I am sincere, I am altogether genuine. Hitler must be destroyed, and there is, consequently, a necessity for human cannon fodder. What you interpret as cynicism on my part is nothing but the fruit of elementary reasoning. Thus: twenty years from today no one on earth will know or care what I did during this war, any more than you or I really care what our fathers did in their war. And whether I, myself, in person, go off to fight, or whether I pass the time in the suburbs of Chicago, will not materially affect the course of events. Assume that I went into combat and was killed. What then? I would be dead, dead and absolutely nothing more. The war would end as it will end, whether I live or die. What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

  “You are willing to exchange your soul for the world, then.”

  “Quite the contrary. I shall keep my soul. I shall keep it.”

  “Well,” Melvin said, “it’s no mystery why you were more or less unpopular. That isn’t exactly what I mean,” he added with an apologetic glance in the mirror.

  “Popularity. Popularity. Let us now cast our votes for the most popular corpse.”

  “Sometimes your sense of humor doesn’t amuse me.”

  “I am not attempting to amuse you. After all, I’m not a clown.”

  “I suppose you think I am?”

  Cole seemed to be considering this. “Yes,” he said finally, “but I’ve never held that against you. You don’t mean to be a bumpkin. You do your best, really. That’s one of your most engaging traits. I don’t believe I’ve ever known anyone who tried as hard as you do. You remind me of someone who believes in the truth of Horatio Alger.” He shrugged, and looked down at the city. “If only you had more sense. You’ll get killed if you aren’t careful.”

  “It’s a good thing you weren’t assigned to combat,” Melvin said irritably.

  Cole grinned. But when he began to speak he was serious. “Now pay attention to me, Melvin. The imbeciles killed in battle are invariably characterized as having heroically given their lives for their country. That’s a lie. They seldom give their lives; they are driven to it by the very real fear of being thought cowardly, and their deaths, by and large, occur when they are attempting to kill someone else. I would be inclined to call this poetic justice, if it were not so pitiful.” He buckled on his helmet. “Don’t allow yourself to be deceived. Don’t ever believe in the integrity of a government. No government ever existed which honestly cared about the individual. Ours is no exception. It is opportunistic, militant, and does not comprehend the meaning of remorse. Ever since this nation was founded the government has spent approximately five-sixths of its entire income on purposes associated either directly or indirectly with war. From seventeen seventy-five to nineteen twenty-three, for example, our military forces engaged in more than one hundred separate conflicts comprising almost nine thousand battles. Yet the citizens of this country insist our wars are defensive and have been brought about through the wickedness of other nations. For a century and a half we’ve been involved in an average of sixty battles per annum. Still we claim to be a peaceful country. On this assumption we arrive at the conclusion that a nation, isolated by geographical accident from the rest of the world during a large part of its life, can fight nine thousand defensive battles. Anyone who thinks so has a slight case of patritis.”

  “Of what?”

  “Inflammation of the patriotic gland,” said Cole. “And speaking of popularity, Mussolini was made an honorary member of the American Legion and was invited to address the annual convention in Boston. Listen to this: ‘Every male brought into existence should be taught from infancy that the military service of the republic carries with it honor and distinction, and his very life should be permeated with the ideal that even death itself may become a boon when a man dies that a nation may live and fulfill its destiny.’ That sounds like Mussolini, doesn’t it?”

  Melvin nodded. “Yes. Mussolini or Hitler. But I didn’t know he addressed the Legion convention.”

  “He didn’t. The invitation was later withdrawn. And I wasn’t quoting Mussolini. That statement was from an article by Douglas. MacArthur in the United States Infantry Journal.”

  They flew along in silence for a while. Then Cole said, “The Russian attack on Finland was, according to President Roosevelt, ‘unprovoked aggression’ by a ‘brutal despotism second to none on earth,’ but not so long afterwards we began to supply Russia’s war machine. Yet you, who do not find this outrageous, if indeed you ever reflected on it, can imply that I am a hypocrite. Perhaps you’re right, after all. Who knows? The paradox of our century is the aphasia of the moral man, and am I not an example? I think myself moral, yet do I speak out against the jingoes—the gory butchers with their star-spangled cleavers? I do not. Why not? I don’t fancy myself as a sacrifice. I wash my hands.” He went on in a moment. “While you and your apoplectic friend Horne were poring over government manuals to discover the wing loading of an obsolescent dive bomber I was doing a little research of my own, curious as to why we were in the Navy. Nobody ever got around to telling me wars were fought for economic reasons; I was under the impression we were resisting an aggressor.”

  “Japan attacked America. You know that.”

  “Ah, so! Did it? Long before Pearl Harbor the Allied blockade shut off three-fourths of Japan’s normal imports. What were they to do? What would any nation do under those circumstances? Burn incense and hope for the best? Yet how sanctimonious we became when they decided they must fight or starve. A day of infamy, we labeled it. It was that, it was indeed. But how can we absolve ourselves? Nevertheless this absolution was accomplished by the United States, as nations have accomplished it since antiquity.

  “Let us assume, though, that we are at war; regardless of the genesis, we are at war. I demand to know why I, personally, am served up like a pig on a platter to the Axis gunners. Why have I been granted the privilege of defending good old Mom’s gooseberry pie, and why is my life being risked to defend the right of a co-ed to lie around cramming a cedar chest full of silverware? What privileges are these? I am here because I was given no choice. And I tell you this: if there is one thing which infuriates me, it is coercion.” He paused, looking into the mirror without a smile. “More than once, for instance, I have gone a considerable distance out of my way in order to cross a picket line. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” Melvin said.

  “Not to
avoid crossing a picket line, I say, but to breach it—to rupture it!” he exclaimed with a rising voice.

  Melvin had never heard him speak with such emotion; very quickly Cole became aware of this and continued in his usual restrained and sardonic tone, “Essentially it is that pickets symbolize organization, which is pure force, and all my life I have thought force despicable.” He did not say anything else for several minutes, but then lifted the mask once more to his lips. “Just the other day in the mail I received a circular from my alma mater—I should have brought it along to read to you. They are raising funds for a memorial to be erected after the war honoring us who have died, or are about to die, although that fact is phrased with admirable discretion. The gall of it, really! They tell me it is my privilege to contribute. They will erect a carillon on the campus, and around the base of this carillon there will be inscribed on bronze the names of those who gave their lives in service. They point out that the site is ideal. Someone has calculated the number of persons who will be able to hear the bells.”

  “Are you going to contribute?”

  At this Cole studied him in the mirror and burst out laughing. “Do you think I should?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Melvin said. “Most people would.”

  “Not a dollar! Be certain of that. The Memorial Fund Committee poetically concludes that the bells will peal forth the names of our honored dead and the hill winds will remember them. Bells peal forth no names, nor does the wind remember, and I dare say the memory of man is but slightly superior. No, I will not contribute. Nor will ‘Patrick Cole’ be inscribed on any bronze plaque. The patterns of behavior which have worked for better or worse over the course of some thousands of years are rapidly becoming lethal. The survival of mankind depends on whether or not we are able to pierce the thought barrier erected by homespun minds over the course of centuries, a barrier which prevents the man with the hoe from observing that superior force cannot be the final arbiter of disputes.” His eyes narrowed as though he were smiling behind the mask. “In any event, each morning before getting up I ask myself, ‘Pat, where are you?’ And if I can answer myself rationally, ‘You are in the United States Navy, friend, and you will not get out today,’ then I know I will be all right.” He took another cigarette from the breast pocket of his shirt and leaned forward, hunching his broad, loose shoulders.