by James Jones
As far as Landers was concerned, there were only two places to go in Luxor. In the few days he had been loose out in the hospital proper, he had already spent enough time in the snack bar with the six or eight other members left of the old company to have learned that. One was the Claridge Hotel on North Main Street, and the other was the Hotel Peabody on Union Avenue.
In the several days he had spent around the other members of the old company, drinking coffee or milkshakes in the snack bar, or loafing in the big recreation center, Landers had discovered what it was that had made the others all look so different when he first had seen them. So much like strangers whom he did not know that he hadn’t recognized them. It was that they had all lost their sense of shock. All of them who were still here had been wounded back on Guadalcanal seven or eight months ago. They had never even seen New Georgia. And the peculiar numbness of soul that combat caused in everybody (which could be multiplied a hundred or a thousand times by being seriously wounded; and which carried with it its own kind of disclaiming innocence of new experience) had departed from them in the ensuing months at home. He and Strange and Prell hadn’t lost theirs yet. And that was why he hadn’t recognized them. They weren’t shocked any more, and they weren’t innocent any more. All that had been burned off. And in being burned off had left behind a kind of ashy residue on them that carried the sour, bitter, acid smell of furnace cinders. The kind his father used to call clinkers, and which as a boy it was one of his chores to shovel out of the furnace bottom during the long Indiana winters and carry outside and dump on the trash heap. The experience of recovering from being wounded had scorched out of them whatever innocence the experience of being wounded had given them.
Those that were going to be discharged were already discharged and gone (the lucky—or unlucky—bastards). Those that were left were all going back to duty, full infantry duty or some other. And they all knew it. And it showed on their faces. They were the ones who knew where to find the most whiskey, and the cheapest. Where to find the easiest and best girls, and the least expensive. Even freebies, if you were lucky. They were the ones who, with caustic grins, told Landers to go to the Claridge or the Peabody bar—if he had money. If you had money, those were the places to be.
Landers had the money. Although he had not written to his family, he had sent home to his bank account for $600 of the allotment money he had been saving since his enlistment.
The others, of course, didn’t have the money any more. They had long since collected their eight months’ or their ten months’ back pay, and drawn their allotment payments, and spent them, and were now back on their regular monthly pay (less the combat pay) for their spending money. And so were reduced to the cheaper, less ritzy bars and dives. But the Claridge and the Peabody were the joints to hit if you had the loot, they said with their caustic grins.
The whole town seemed to have the same acerb, caustic grin, it seemed to Landers. The cab driver who drove him in from the hospital had it. The Negro doorman in his elegant though frayed hotel uniform, who helped him and his crutches through the revolving door of the Hotel Peabody, had it. The desk clerks and the soldiers and sailors trying to get rooms all had it. The man in the lobby package store had it as he sold him the bottle in its brown paper sack that he would need in the bar. It was the only way you could buy booze. The two barmen in the bar off the lobby, and all the drinkers at the bar tables, had it. The women, sitting with or without men at the bar tables with their own paper sacks, had the look too. It was 11:15 in the morning when Landers arrived but the time of day was not bothering anybody’s drinking. About nine-tenths of the men drinkers were in uniform. There were all types and grades and service branches of uniforms. It did not take Landers very long to pick up a girl.
Usually, even as far back as high school, Landers had been excessively shy about approaching women. He always wanted to fuck them, and was afraid they knew this. This time, in the Peabody bar, he simply went straight up to a blonde girl sitting alone and asked her if she would like to have a drink. She said yes. It was only after he sat down with her, and she smiled, that he thought he recognized her as the blonde who had done the bumps and grinds for the truck convoy on the way from the station to the hospital. So he asked her. “You do some bumps and grinds for a convoy of casualties going out to the hospital a few days ago? On the street?” Somehow he knew she would know what the word casualties meant.
“How long ago was it?” she said with a rich Southern drawl.
Landers had to count. “Ten, eleven days ago?”
She shrugged, and smiled with the same white-white teeth. “I could have. It’s possible. I don’t know. Why?”
“Nothing,” Landers said. “I was on it.”
Her name was Martha-Lee. But she preferred to be called Martha. She worked for a big insurance outfit up the street, as a claims analyst. She was unmarried, she had come up here from Montgomery, and she loved Luxor and was never going to go back. Since it was a weekday, Landers wondered if she didn’t have to be at work. He didn’t mind buying booze but he hated to waste the time, if she did. A little amazed at his own temerity, he asked her. She had been thinking about going in, Martha said, but now she had about decided she wouldn’t. She gave him her big white smile. Her mouth, Landers noticed suddenly, was really extraordinarily sensitive and beautiful. After about five drinks, he offered to buy her lunch somewhere. Martha said she did not feel like eating anything right now. He had not done anything about getting a room yet, Landers told her, but he would go and see about getting one, if she would wait right here, and they could continue drinking up in the room.
“You’ll never get one,” Martha said, and gave him her smile.
“What do you mean, I’ll never get one?”
“They’re booked solid. They always are by eleven. Or even ten-thirty. What do you think all those unhappy-looking boys are standing out there at the desk for?”
Landers just looked at her. “Looking for a room?”
“And failin’ miserably.”
Some sure instinct made him cover up, and hide his disappointment. He gave her back a grin he hoped was acerb and caustic, like all the other grins around. “You haven’t got an apartment we could go to and drink, have you?”
“Not one I can take anybody to,” Martha said, and smiled the white smile again. “This your first time in town on pass? It is, isn’t it?”
“It’s my first time on pass anywhere. For almost seven months.” She put her hand over his on the table, and smiled. “Wait here a minute. I oughtn’t to be very long. But if I am, you wait. Hear?”
“Okay.”
It was more than a minute. It was more than ten minutes. He had time to finish his drink and pour them both another bourbon and water. And had time to drink his new one. He occupied himself with thinking about his sudden new finesse with women, wondering where it had come from. Then she was back still smiling her white smile, and handed him underneath the table a hotel room key with a big leather tab attached to it. Landers put it in his pocket and started to pay the check.
“Take your time,” Martha smiled. “There’s no hurry. It’s not going to go away. Let’s have another here, first. Have you already got a bottle?”
Landers shook his head. “Just this one,” he said, and lifted the bourbon bottle in its paper sack from the floor by the table leg.
“Did you buy it at a package store just outside the bar in the corridor, at the top of the stairs down into the lobby?” Martha said. Landers nodded.
“Can you maybe buy another? Or maybe two?” Martha smiled. “We might need it.”
Landers nodded. “Get it on the way out. Where did you get the key?”
“It’s a friend’s. Someone I know,” Martha said. “Don’t worry about it. It’s perfectly safe. Nobody will be there.”
“Fine,” Landers said.
“What did you do to your leg, soldier?” she smiled. “Fall off a ladder?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. That’s exa
ctly what I did do,” Landers said, and was suddenly reminded of a day when he had been carrying a message across the floor of the valley for his pet colonel. He had looked up to watch a platoon attacking the crest, and had seen a man turn and jump out from the side of the hill exactly like a man jumping off a ladder. A Jap hand grenade had exploded black, seconds later, at the spot where he jumped. He had watched the man get back up and start toiling back up toward the crest.
“I guess you won’t be able to dance for a while, will you?” Martha smiled.
Landers shook his head. After they finished their drinks, and picked up the new bottles, they made their way down the steps to the lobby and straight across to the elevators. They rode up in an elevator packed with servicemen. Several of these, even ones who had girls, bent envious looks upon Landers.
“Hi, Martha,” one of the men behind them said.
“Oh, hi, there,” Martha smiled.
The room was a big, old-fashioned, high-ceilinged suite on the seventh floor. The windows were open and it was cool. In the bathroom big fresh white towels hung on the rack. In the open closet four neatly pressed Naval officer’s uniforms were hung on hangers. The blues carried two-and-a-half gold stripes. Landers wasn’t sure about Naval insignia but thought two-and-a-half stripes was a lieutenant commander. Pilot’s wings were pinned over the pockets. Landers looked, but said nothing.
“Those are my friend’s,” Martha said. “He keeps this place by the week. When he’s here, there are parties all the time. But he’s not here very often. He teaches out at the Naval Air Station.”
After pouring a drink which they did not finish, Martha wanted to autograph Landers’ cast. This was not hard to do, since to get the pants on, the pantsleg had been split up the seam to above the knee. Making up her mouth afresh with her lipstick, she pressed her lip print to the cast and then signed under it. Martha-Lee Prentiss. Her hands strayed up his flanks to his shoulders. A few kisses made them both begin to pant a little. Martha insisted on going into the bathroom to take her clothes off. There was nothing quite as ungraceful-looking, she insisted, as a woman getting out of her clothes and all her gear. Landers did not argue. When she came back out, she had draped one of the huge towels around her. Drawing herself up straight like a model, she pulled it loose and let it fall to the floor. “There. Isn’t that better?” Then she walked to the bed and threw it back and lay down.
“I’ll let you fuck me—if you want—but you mustn’t come in me,” she whispered. “But what I really want is to suck you. I’m a cock-sucker. I’m a marvelous cocksucker. Did you ever go down on a girl?”
“Sure,” Landers said. And while this was the truth, it was only just barely the truth. He had experimented a few times in college with girls as equally unknowledgeable and embarrassed as himself. He was having difficulty getting undressed because of the cast and Martha came from the bed and helped him. She helped him hobble back across the floor to the bed. “Your poor leg,” she said. “Can you get on top of me? Or shall I get on top of you?” After a while she took her mouth off of him and whispered, “Do it up at the top more. Talk to me. Tell me I’m a cocksucker. Tell me I’m a marvelous cocksucker.” When his loins finally exploded into orgasm, making his eyes go crossed, Martha had already come four times.
The second time around he put it inside her for a while. Then she instructed him, in and about how to go down on a girl. Landers didn’t mind that at all. It was valuable instruction. After the second time, they went back to their drinks for a while. Later on that evening they ordered food up from room service. But they only stopped long enough to eat about half of it. Landers did not know about Martha, but he was catching up for many months of dry season. Late that night, just about when the early summer dawn was cracking through, Landers woke up in the dark to find a nude Martha weeping beside him.
When he put his arm around her, she leaned her face against his shoulder, and wet his armpit thoroughly with her tears.
“What is it? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.”
“But something must be the matter.”
“It’s nothing. Oh, it’s— My fiancé was killed. In North Africa. He was shot down. Was Air Force.”
Landers patted her bare back. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. But my daddy is dead, too.”
“In the war? Too?” He was shocked.
“No. He died several years ago. But he was so dear. Don’t pay any attention to me. Please. Go back to sleep.”
Finally, he did, with her face still pressed against the side of his wet chest. When he woke, he was alone in the bed and she was gone.
Landers looked all around for some kind of a note, but there wasn’t any. The key with the leather tab was lying on the dresser. Somehow he couldn’t feel bad about it all. How could you feel bad about a lucky windfall evening like that? But he felt oppressed and lonely. Bone-cold lonely. Martha had made him lonelier, if anything. After a while, he ordered himself up a marvelous breakfast of sunnyside eggs, buttered toast, grits and bacon and lots of coffee, and sat in the sunshine by the open window and ate it. Scrupulously, he paid the room service waiter cash for it.
While he was smoking a cigarette with the last of the coffee, with one of the huge towels wrapped around his waist, the outside door opened with another key, and the young Naval lieutenant commander came in. He hardly even seemed surprised.
“Oh, hi there. How you doing?” He shucked out of his khaki jacket with the shoulder boards, and flashed Landers a grin. “Do I know you? Guess not. You must have met Marty, huh? Well, make yourself at home. I’ll only be a minute. Wash up.” He stripped off his shirt and pants and went into the bathroom in his skivvies.
Some cold thing in Landers made him stay seated by the window and enjoy a second cigarette. He listened to the sound of the shower. When it stopped, the young lieutenant commander came to the bathroom door nude, toweling himself vigorously.
He looked at Landers’ cast and smiled. “Where you from? South Pacific?”
Landers got up slowly on his one leg, resting the other on the walking iron. “Yes. Guadalcanal and New Georgia. How did you know?”
“You’ve got that sallow look. The malaria look. I was in Guadal awhile myself.” He went back in and put on his skivvies and came out and began to dress. “Well, make yourself at home. I’ve got to run, huh? When you leave, just leave the key with the bell captain, will you? Give him your name, and if you ever want it again he’ll give it to you. This place is like Grand Central Station. By the way, what is your name?”
Landers told him. “Uh—I paid the waiter cash for the breakfast. But I don’t know about the dinner.”
“Oh, that’s all right. Don’t worry about it. Several of us share this place. Marty often brings friends up here. We’ve all of us sort of adopted Marty. She has a sad story. Sometimes her friends are the wrong sort. But if they are, they soon drift off. You, I can see, are not. Any man who will have himself a sumptuous breakfast in the sunshine by the window alone, has got to be the right sort.” He looked at Landers’ shirt, hung neatly over the back of a chair. Landers had just had chevrons sewn on it, the day before. “So come back whenever you want, Buck Sergeant Landers. And don’t forget to give the bell captain your name. So he can put you on the list. If you ever want to contribute a few bottles of booze, leave them with the bell captain. We never leave booze in the room. If we do, it all gets drunk. There’s a damn party here about every night. Bunch of drunks. But good-looking chickens.” He was shouldering back into the khaki jacket with the Navy shoulder boards. He buttoned it neatly and then picked up the khaki black-billed cap, and waved at Landers with it. “See you. Got to run, huh? If you see Marty, say hello for me. Oh. Name’s Mitchell. Jan Mitchell. Jan is short for Janus. Terrible name. Saddled with it.” He waved with the cap again and went out the door.
Landers made himself a drink. A long half-empty bourbon bottle was standing on the dresser, and he stood with the drink
in front of the dresser mirror. Right sort. Right sort. Landers didn’t know whether to take that as a compliment or not. He supposed he should. He decided he would leave the bottle for whoever the next occupant might be. This time, he noted the four or five uniforms in the open closet were of several different sizes.
It was ten o’clock and he had an hour and a half to kill before he should start back to the hospital. He couldn’t think of anyplace better to spend it than to spend it here, thinking over last night. He double-locked the door with the chain, and went in the bathroom and had a shower and shaved with the lieutenant commander’s wet razor. He was sure the lieutenant commander wouldn’t mind. Then he came back out and made another bourbon and water.
But after a while alone in the room, the bone-white loneliness was stronger than ever. And with it came the sense of guilt, and the wild rage. He felt he had not earned all this. But at the same time, he did not want to go back. He dressed and left and went down to the bar to drink. But before he did, he went to the state package store off the lobby and bought three bottles of bourbon and left them and the key with the Negro bell captain. He gave the bell captain his name.
When he showed up at the hospital snack bar in his official uniform of bathrobe and pajamas, after reporting back in, he found that several of the guys from the old company—as well as a number of others—already knew about Martha—Marty. The autographed cast was impossible to hide. The leg of the pajamas had had to be split too, and the red of the lipstick showed up brightly. She had done the same thing to Corello’s cast, when he first arrived.
“She’s a great blow job.” Corello, the Wop from McMinnville, grinned. “Did she try to get you to eat her pussy?” A couple of the others who knew her laughed.
“Any broad’d ask me that I’d break her goddamn jaw,” Alvin Drake the tall boy from Alabama growled.
