by James Jones
A little later in the evening he had his first major fight with his father, when he refused to make a date to come down to the American Legion and tell the boys from World War I about his experiences. His father refused to take no for an answer. Landers flatly refused to go. By then Landers was drinking almost nonstop. So much his father complained about it. But Landers did not stop, or even slow down. Instead, he drank more.
It was easy enough to drink. Later on, when he escaped from the big house on West Main and limped the two blocks to the Elks Club, everybody there wanted to buy him a drink. Landers started by accepting half of the offers, but quickly progressed to accepting all of them. Everybody he met everywhere in town wanted to buy him a drink. It would begin early in the day, depending on when he got up, at one of the poolrooms or bars on the square, and progress through the afternoon and evening until late at night Landers would stumble home from the Elks Club or bum a ride in from the Country Club and fall into bed and sleep till noon the next day. Dimly, he slowly became aware that everyone was afraid of him, for some reason, but by then had usually progressed far enough in his drinking that he would forget or ignore it. He saw little of his family. His sister did not come home.
On one of these earlier evenings Landers was asked to make a speech at the Elks Club. It had become a local custom to give each new batch of departing draftees a free farewell dinner at the Elks Grille, and the local Chamber of Commerce secretary, who organized the dinners, on the spur of the moment had the bright idea of inviting Landers to talk to them. This was undoubtedly a mistake but the secretary, who was also the newshawk for the local paper, was noted for making gaffes. Landers, who was sitting alone in the club bar and grille, drinking quietly and minding his own business when the secretary came over and slid into his booth, thought about it awhile and then said sure he’d be glad to talk to them. They were having one of the local ministers, the secretary explained, to talk to them about religious responsibilities; and the principal of the high school to talk about social responsibilities; and the football coach to talk about patriotic responsibilities. He thought it would be nice if Landers, who had been over there, could talk to them about a soldier’s responsibilities. “Sure, that’s a great idea,” Landers said.
The draftees were just coming in and Landers looked over at them. There were twenty of them. Landers had been to school with some of them. All of them but one were poor boys whose fathers were farmers or plant workers and too poor to be members and, unless they had played varsity football or basketball, they had probably never seen the inside of the club, and so were suitably dazzled by their surroundings. This, too, offended Landers’ social conscience. He nodded at the secretary.
While the draftees ate their farewell dinner, Landers drank more and prepared his speech on a soldier’s responsibilities.
Landers was to follow the coach. The secretary introduced him, with a highly laudatory introduction, mentioning that though he did not wear them Sgt Landers had the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. Craftily, when he stepped up on the little orchestra stand in the corner, Landers got hold of the microphone so they couldn’t shut him up. Even so, he had decided he had better make it short. He began by saying he had listened to the other speeches with interest, but that he was not sure just how much all those responsibilities applied to a soldier in a war.
“You don’t think much about God, or the Four Freedoms, or loving your country, when you’re in a fight.” He grinned at them. “It is true that a lot of fellows pray a lot. But that is not quite the same thing as thinking of your religious responsibilities. I can tell you for one thing that that man who said there are no atheists in foxholes was wrong. Mostly you think about getting your ass out of there, and about killing those other people so they won’t kill you.” Down below the secretary had sat up straight in his chair and was blinking his eyes behind his thick glasses. Landers grinned at him, too. “I’ve been asked to talk to you about a soldier’s responsibilities,” he said into the mike, which seemed to carry much louder and much farther than he had anticipated, “and I think I can safely assure you that the soldier’s first responsibility is to stay alive.” He felt he was warming up. “In the first place, a dead soldier is no good to anybody. And second place, a wounded soldier takes two or three other men away from fighting to take care of him. So, theoretically, it’s better to wound a man badly than to kill him. I can’t in honesty tell you that you will be fighting for freedom, and God, and your country—as all these other gentlemen have told you. In combat you don’t think about any of that. But I can assure you that you will be fighting for your life. I think that’s a good thing to remember. I think that’s a good thing to fight for. And remember, if you have the choice—which you may not—always try to wound a man badly instead of killing him. Good luck, fellows, and God bless.”
When he let go of the mike, the secretary seized it. “And now, boys, there will be drinks over at the bar, so cluster round, gather round,” he said quickly.
Feeling pleasantly red around the ears, Landers stepped down and went to his booth and sat down with his drink. Let the sons of bitches ask him to make some more speeches. None of the draftees came over to thank him. Landers did not mind, and beamed at all of them indiscriminately. Naturally, he was not asked to make other speeches. And when his father heard about it, they had another fight.
It was not that he was the only wounded vet back home in town. There were several others. Two boys had been to North Africa as ambulance drivers, and had come back home. Another, whose father ran a drugstore on the square, was an Air Force sergeant and had been shot down in a bomber over Italy, and was being discharged. But in September 1943 there were not all that many, and each was a celebrity. Landers did not like it. It made him feel guilty, and as if he were masquerading under false pretenses.
He did not make out well with the girls either. They were all either with somebody who might soon be drafted, or were waiting for somebody who had already gone, or else they were scared of Landers. He was not the Marion Landers who had gone away a year and a half ago, one of them told him nervously. At the hospital, when he first arrived, Landers had received three letters—one from his folks, one from his sister, and one from an old girlfriend who wrote she had read of his return in the paper and wanted him to know that she would be glad to see him if he got home, that all the men like him coming back should be treated with admiration and understanding and if there was anything she could do for him she would. So on the fifth or sixth night he was there, Landers called her and asked her to go to the basketball game that was being played that night. Frances said she would love to go.
It was early in the year for basketball, but Imperium was especially a basketball town, and was playing this big exhibition game ahead of the regular schedule. Landers of course did not know then, when he invited her, that Frances Mackey had been writing in only a purely social way, when she wrote she would do anything for him that she could.
At the basketball game he endeared himself to everyone by refusing to stand up for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” when it was played before the game. But nobody said anything. This not standing up for the national anthem had become quite a big thing with the guys at the hospital, where every night at closing it was played at the Starlight Roof of the Hotel Peabody and other bars in Luxor. The theory was that if you had a Purple Heart, you shouldn’t have to stand up. And besides, everybody knew he had a bum leg.
After the game, it was raining. As he and Frances came out of the big gym, a little Dodge pulled up in front of them and stopped short, so violently it rocked a little. Inside it was a large older woman named Marilyn Tothe, who worked for one of the other law firms in town as a clerk. And who was a notorious bull dyke, though it was thought impolite to say so. Landers had known her all his life, too. She had come to pick them up, she said brusquely. Landers could only stare at her wonderingly. She was at least as broad in the shoulders as he was, and, at least at this moment anyway, considerably stronger. She co
uld certainly beat him up if she wanted, and she seemed to know it. Frances Mackey got meekly into the front. Landers was invited to sit in the back. “Where do you want us to drop you?” Marilyn Tothe said harshly. Landers said he guessed the Elks Club would be good enough. When the car stopped in front of it, Frances turned back to wave but the car started forward almost before he was out, so that she was jerked back around to the front. Landers stood looking after them in the rain, feeling bemused and left out of everything.
Perhaps that was why he got more drunk that night than usual. If he was more drunk than usual. He could remember leaving the Elks when it closed at three. He could remember deciding to walk up town to the square for some food at the all-night restaurant. He could remember crossing the treeless courthouse lawn in the rain. And he could remember coming upon the old brass Civil War cannon in its marble pedestal on the courthouse lawn with a sense of shock and surprise, just as if it had not been there all his life since he could remember and he had not known about it there. He could remember putting his arm around the cannon and rubbing his cheek against the brass, and shedding a few drunken tears—or was it raindrops—for this other old soldier, whose reward for faithful service it was to be left to stand and molder in the rain. Every year all his life on Memorial Day the fake red poppies were thrust into the courthouse lawn, and the white crosses were driven into the grass in rows, and somebody read “In Flanders Field.” Every fucking year. Who would write the poem for them? What would they call it? Who would read it?
Landers remembered standing up and looking across the square through the drizzle at the lights of the restaurant, in the middle of a great stillness, and that was the last he remembered. When he woke up, he had a terrible hangover, and the dazzling sun was pouring into his eyes through the barred window, and he was in a cell in the city jail with the cell door unlocked and open.
His cane was lying on the cot beside him, and he got it and walked outside and yelled, “Hey, where is everybody?”
“Down here, Marion,” the chief of police’s voice called from the anteroom. “You finally wake up? Come on out.”
The chief, a big Swede named Nielson, was sitting behind his desk with an embarrassed look on his face.
“What the hell happened?” Landers said.
Several loafers were standing around grinning.
“Well, you know old Jeremy,” the chief said with an embarrassed smile. “Charlie Evans, the night cop, took you home and the old man said to let you sleep it off in the jail.”
“Well, did I do something terrible?” Landers asked.
“No, no. You went into the all-night restaurant and ordered some bacon and eggs and passed out cold. They couldn’t wake you, so they called Charlie Evans. When Charlie couldn’t wake you, he took you home. That’s all. But old Jeremy told him to bring you down to the jail.”
“My father did that?”
“Well, you got a good night’s sleep out of it,” the chief smiled. “You don’t look so bad.”
Landers looked down at himself. “I’m pretty messy. Well, what do I owe you, Frank?”
“Nothing. There’s no fine or anything.” He hesitated. “We would have left you at home. But you know old Jeremy. He wouldn’t accept you. You’re not going to hold it against him, are you?”
“Against my father?” Landers said. “Call me a cab, will you, Frank?”
“I know the Landers,” the chief said, looking perplexed. “There’s a cab right outside, Marion.”
Landers shook hands all around. “Thank you for a pleasant stay.” In the cab the driver kept grinning back into the rearview mirror so broadly that it was obvious he must already know the story. Landers only winked at him.
Back at home he showered and shaved and put on his other uniform. Then, with his mother pleading and moaning behind him, and trying to hold him back, he telephoned his father at his office.
“Listen, you son of a bitch,” Landers shouted into the instrument, “I just want you to know—”
“Don’t you hang up on me, you son of a bitch!” he raged at the phone. Then he slammed it down and turned on his mother. “All right then, you tell him. You tell him I said to forget he ever had a son named Marion. Jeremy Landers has no son named Marion. You tell him that. And I’ll forget I ever had him for a father. You understand? You got that?”
“Marion,” his mother wailed. “Marion. Please, Marion, please.”
“Go to hell,” Landers shouted and grabbed his canvas satchel.
At the station he had to wait an hour and a half for the next train. He waited on the green bench out in front, alone. Landers could hardly wait to get back to Prell and Winch and Strange and the others. He wondered how Prell’s legs were doing. Also, they were going to have to do something about Strange’s hand some time soon.
On the train the ride back did not seem nearly so difficult. Maybe the six days using it had helped the leg. Landers was even able to negotiate the steel plates between the cars and go to the club car for some drinks. As might be expected, it was full of drunken servicemen. He sat on the couch with his drink in his hand, thought about his family briefly, his ex-family, and could hardly wait to get back to Luxor.
When he reported back in to his ward, four days earlier than necessary, he found that Mart Winch had been taking out the girl Carol Firebaugh every single night since he had left.
BOOK THREE
THE CITY
CHAPTER 15
IT WAS HARD to make any real friends in a hospital ward. As their medical status changed, men moved from one ward to another. There was a constant shuffling process going on that kept moving men away from each other. Men who made friends with the men in the beds beside them would look up and find them gone, replaced by newer strangers.
John Strange found this had a tendency to throw men back for friendship onto other members of their old outfits, if they were lucky enough to have any around. If they didn’t, they just sat around and brooded and withdrew. Just when they should be starting to forget their old emotional attachments and build new ones.
Strange had watched the beginning of Winch’s romance with Carol Firebaugh at first with amusement, then with irritation, and finally with downright envy.
Like everyone else who went in and out of the big basketball-court lounge of the recreation building, Strange had lusted after the sweet youthfulness and shy grace of the Red Cross girl who handed out the Ping-Pong balls and paddles, and had wanted to fuck her. But being a properly married man just returned to his wife from overseas Strange put it out of his mind. Still she was, as some forthright, bathrobe-clad Government Issue had said, eminently fuckable.
Some female thing about her every movement said so, and her shy self-awareness of her sex in front of so many male eyes underlined it. Her one kooky eye that kept looking off in a wrong direction half the time made her even sexier. For some odd screwball reason.
Strange had paid attention when she seemed interested in Landers, and thought that all right and in keeping with the fact that they were both college people. But when in Landers’ absence she attached herself to Mart Winch twenty years her senior, Strange’s mind balked. When he saw them together in town up at the Plantation Roof on the top of the Peabody Hotel, sitting together right in front of everybody, Strange was suddenly intensely jealous. If he had known she went for older fellows, he would gladly have offered himself. Only, he hadn’t. Leave it to shrewd old Mart Winch to wheel in there, and sop up the gravy.
Up to now, Strange had studiously avoided other women in Luxor. He felt he owed that to Linda. But it was not nearly so easy to do as it sounded. It required more effort not to pick up women in town in Luxor than it did to meet them and take them out and screw them. The city was full of unattached women. Riveters. Welders. Lathe operators. All sorts of minor assembly-line workers. And all of them hellbent on picking up some in-transit serviceman for a one-night stand or one-week fling. Since their work shifts ran right on around the clock, it was just as easy to run
into one at eight o’clock in the morning as in the evening. A lot of them didn’t work at all, had quit it, or had never done it, and just went on and on, from one party to another, from one hotel suite to another hotel suite. It was hard work not to pick them up, or be picked up by them.
Just the same, Strange had resisted. He had been home—home?—to Cincinnati one further time after his second trip while Bobby Prell was mending. Making a total of three visits in all. He had not found anything there had much changed. Linda Sue was just as cold and indifferent to his bedroom advances as she had been the first time. Though she never turned him down when he asked. But Strange found it harder and harder to ask with any real excitement. He found it easier to just roll over and go to sleep. Or go downstairs to that never-vacant kitchen and drink more beer.
Maybe at the age of twenty-eight he was outgrowing sex excitement. The way his parents had done. He only knew that for the marriage and their dream of a restaurant to be maintained required fidelity. On both sides, his as well as hers.
