by James Jones
“You’ll be going back to duty, before long,” Curran said in a different voice. “I’ll be sending you to the rehab cen soon.”
Rehabilitation center, Landers the old-timer translated. His outfit hadn’t even had those words. That was the barracks off in the far corner of the paved central compound. Everybody with atrophied muscles went there for a while for toning up, before going back to total duty.
“Your ankle’s all right. It’s not in bad shape,” Curran said in the changed voice. “You’re lucky you didn’t do it more damage. But you can’t get in any fights with it for a while. Ping-Pong’s all right, you can play all the Ping-Pong you like. But the sudden, enforced, disruptive violence of fighting could damage it again, much worse. I want you to remember that,” he said sharply. “If you came in with it hurt again, it would not look good to Stevens.”
“Injustice and insults bug me,” Landers said.
Curran ignored that. “You’ll be classified limited duty. Don’t thank me. That’s your true classification. That ankle’s no good for infantry, that’s for sure. Anyway, limited duty isn’t all that different. About two out of every five wounded we get are limited-duty men. Quartermaster Gasoline Supply Companies, in the tank fighting. That kind. Even that isn’t accurate because in the QM Gas Supply Companies the biggest number of casualties are never found. If an eighty-eight shell hits a truck that is loading.”
“I may not be in that.”
“No.” Curran stood up. “I’m Irish. I’m a superstitious man. I even believe in leprechauns. If you tell me you see a curtain of fog in front of you—” He shrugged. “What can I say? There’s nothing I can say.”
Landers grinned. “I’ll tell you something else. I no longer believe in humanity, either. Or care about them. I think we’re a doomed race. Like the dinosaurs. We just don’t know it. I guess the brontosaurus and tyrannosaurus didn’t know it either, when they were feeding. We’ve overspecialized ourselves out of existence. Like they did.”
“When did you decide all this?”
“I don’t know. Sometime after I was hit. I was sitting on a hill, watching them all fighting, down below in the valley.”
“It’s pretty bleak,” Curran said. “I hope you’re wrong.”
“Yes. Well, I’m not,” Landers smiled. “It’s pretty bleak, all right,” he agreed. “Especially when you find you don’t care. We’ve overspecialized ourselves in war. A war will do us.”
“You think this war?” Curran said quickly.
“No. Probably not. But it doesn’t matter. Some later one will. The human causes no longer matter.”
“You think human causes no longer matter?” Curran asked quickly.
“Nope. Not as long as we continue to kill each other over them.”
Curran nodded.
Still standing behind his desk, Curran moved his feet, and shifted his weight, awkwardly. Hesitantly, he brought his right hand halfway up.
“You should be out of here by the first of the year. We’ll probably have a chance to talk again. But in case we don’t—” He held the hand out shyly.
Landers took it and shook it. It felt warm and cool and dry. But then, his own hand was, too.
As he closed the glassed door, he looked back and grinned inwardly again, over what he saw. Curran was already seated back at his desk, writing furiously, on papers out of Landers’ file.
Fuck him, he thought with vast amusement. Let him write it all down for the bastards.
He felt pretty much that same way about everything else. And everybody. Except for Strange, and occasionally Bobby Prell. Certainly he didn’t give a damn about Winch. Or the people at the Peabody suite. None of them cared, really, about anybody else.
And now Strange had more or less dropped him, and dropped everybody else, for this woman. This Frances Highsmith. That he was hanging out with.
And Bobby Prell appeared to have dropped them all, too. Including himself and Strange. Prell was getting around a little bit now on his legs, the least little bit, but he never came into town with them, and never came up to the Peabody. One day, riding into town in the taxi with Strange, Strange told Landers that Prell had told him that he Prell was going to get married.
“Married?” Landers said, and then grinned. “Married? Who the hell to?”
“To that little girl on his ward he’s been doing. Been hanging around with.”
“When?”
“I don’t know,” Strange said, staring out at the slow winter rain. “He didn’t say when.”
“He’s crazy,” Landers said, definitively.
“Probably,” Strange said, softly.
But in the taxis riding in was about the only time Landers got to see Strange. Or so it seemed, any more.
He didn’t mind. It was as if he were saying good-by to all of them, in a finite way. Their time together was running out. Their common interests changed. He would be alone, when he went back into the fire. As they all would be. If they went back at all to it.
At least he knew how long he had. Curran had told him he had until around the first of the year. That was less than a month. That wasn’t too long. On the other hand, Landers did not know what he wanted to do, or could do, for a whole month.
It was funny but in each case it was a woman who had pulled them away. Females. Pussy. Cunt. Had split the common male interest. Cunt had broken the centripetal intensity of the hermetic force which sealed them together in so incestuous a way. Their combat. Cunt vs combat. In his cups Landers decided he had discovered quite by accident the basic prevailing equation of the universe.
If the universe is represented by a floating compass, and the cock is a sliver of iron rubbed on a magnet, it will always point due North to cunt. Always. No matter what.
This was the equation modern man had broken, to his peril, with his creation and introduction of mechanized, social, group combat, for some fucking damned cause or other.
But sobered up he didn’t think so much of it.
And half-sobered up he suddenly remembered when he was a boy his father when he was drunk had this song he sang, “Those Wedding Bells/Are Breaking Up/That Old Gang of Mine.” That was the only line Landers could remember. But he remembered the rest of the tune. He went around whistling it to himself, for a day or two. Until he wore out its poignancy.
He saw no reason why he should not do it, too. Since the others were all doing it. Even if only for a month. But his new dislike for and distrust of humans included the females. It was not that there were not opportunities. One night at the Peabody, during their two hours allotted time on one of the beds, Mary Lou, cuddling up to him with her breasts and pubes after a rousing fuck, said, “I think I could fall seriously in love with you.”
This was very flattering. Too flattering to refuse totally. “Don’t,” Landers said immediately, and then quickly amended, “Or at least don’t too much. Just a little.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know where I’m going, or what I’ll be doing. You don’t want to be in love with a combat infantryman, do you?”
“Maybe.”
“You wouldn’t marry one, would you?”
“Maybe. I might. What are your allotments?”
“Very low. And don’t forget, I’m not a sergeant any more. I’m back to base pay.”
She laughed. “That’s true. That’s an important point,” Mary Lou said huskily. “Oh, I think I am, falling in love with you, Marion.”
“Good,” he said. “Let’s leave it at that.” He brought his raised arm down gently onto the top of her head. “I’ll be gone soon, and you can fall in love with another one.”
This new cynicism about females served as a braking mechanism, in the month he had left. He did not fall in love. But it was hard to tell whether new types of female-related experience were created by the cynicism, to hunt him down; or whether now he simply saw the new experience standing there, where before he would have passed blindly by, protected by innocence.
&nbs
p; Some of them, outside the Peabody, were pretty bizarre. None of them featured poor Mary Lou. But Landers had no time to think about them, then. The days passed with a swift inexorability that was the essence of a tragedy in a drama. Like some Shakespearean play, or some dumb war movie. He would have plenty of time to think about the woman-experiences later, when he was mired in the muddy depths of Camp O’Bruyerre. Plenty of time, with no passes except on weekends. By Christmas he had long been out in the rehab cen, doing GI calisthenics and running in the mornings. His ankle seemed in fine shape. Much better than Curran had made it sound.
Landers ate Christmas dinner in the rehab cen barracks, alone. And in a self-castigating, tooth-biting way he enjoyed it. Nobody there knew anybody else, or tried to. They were all on temporary assignment, before shipping off to various destinations. All of it was so familiar. The turkey and dressing and cranberries, and mashed potatoes and yams, lay like a lump of lead in his belly.
Landers, a pvt now, with the traditional dark spots on his sleeves, could have gotten a three-day pass to go home for Christmas, but chose not to. Besides, he did not want to miss any of his nights up at the Peabody or off alone in downtown Luxor. At the Peabody he wanted to eat another, real Christmas dinner but couldn’t, because of the undigested one.
On Christmas day the papers carried the names of the commanders of the European expeditionary forces, and their assignments. It was the big, lead story. Ike to Lead Allied Invasion of France. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, and Patton were off to England. President Roosevelt, everyone’s great hero, had shrewdly chosen December 24 to make his announcement, so that correspondents would have time to cable the news home for the Christmas papers release.
By the tenth of January Landers was reporting to the chief of Second Army Command G-1 Personnel Section, for reassignment. The chief of Second Army Command Personnel turned out to be W/O Mart Winch, his former 1st/sgt.
CHAPTER 24
STRANGE HAD TOLD WINCH on the phone, “I think he’s going crazy, if he aint already crazy.” But then Strange had not been able to explain what he meant, and had simply fumbled it around. He said he didn’t mean crazy in any ordinary, accepted sense. “He’s not cutting out paper dolls or anything.” But his ideas were not tracking. His thoughts were not following each other in any reasonable manner. “It’s hard to explain,” Strange ended lamely, “or even see. Unless you’ve spent as much time with him as I have.”
“Well, I’ll have to watch it. I’ll just have to watch for it,” Winch had mumbled. He was wondering if Landers was having nightmares, like those he himself was having. Strange of course couldn’t know that. And Winch wouldn’t ask.
“I aint spent as much time with him as I ought to have,” Strange said guiltily.
“Fuck him,” Winch said. “Everybody has to do a little something for himself on his own.”
Winch had not changed his mind about that. He still felt the same way, when one of his twenty-three clerks brought Landers into his private office in the Command’s three-story headquarters building.
Landers clearly did not know that he was receiving special treatment. Usually hospital reassignments never got past one of the twenty-three clerks. Winch himself never saw them. But he was not going to tell that to Landers.
Nor, Winch received the distinct impression, if Landers had known, would he have been very interested, impressed, or moved. Or affected.
But Winch had given explicit instructions that he wanted to see Landers, when he reported for duty. Landers obviously could not have cared less. Also, Landers was three days late, three days AWOL, Winch noted when he examined his papers.
Landers on the other hand, which Winch could not know, was surprised. He knew from Strange that Winch had made w/o and had moved into a big important job. But he had not guessed at the magnitude of the importance. This was at least the office of a colonel, that Winch was installed in.
“I see you’re a little late,” Winch said to him.
“Yes,” he said. “I took myself a three-day pass. To say good-by to my girl. They wouldn’t give me one.”
“Say good-by?” Winch said. “She’s only thirty-five miles away.”
“Yes,” Landers said. And would say no more.
Winch stared at him. Landers smiled. If Winch couldn’t figure it out, to hell with him.
“I see,” Winch said. “You don’t have a car, and wouldn’t be getting any passes except weekends. If then.”
“Yes,” Landers said. “But also, she’s one of the girls that hangs around up at our suite in the Peabody.”
Winch continued to stare at him, and nodded.
“She’s in love with me,” Landers explained reasonably. “But I couldn’t ask her to be faithful to me. Not up there. Not around that bunch.”
“And you couldn’t ask her to move out here to the village,” Winch said.
“I asked her,” Landers said. “She didn’t want to. I couldn’t blame her for that.” He felt very equable.
“So you took three days off to say good-by to her,” Winch said. “All lovey-dovey.”
“Yes,” Landers said, stiffly.
“Great,” Winch said. “Fine. Beautiful.”
“I view it as just another casualty of the war,” Landers said.
“Casualty?” Winch said. “Well, we can fix that AWOL up,” he said. “Right here in this office. We can fix up a lot of things here in this office.”
“Oh?” It was all Landers would let himself say. He did not expect, or want or need, any help from Winch’s shitty office. But Winch apparently did not understand that point, either. Because he went on.
“There are a lot of things this office can do, for certain people,” Winch said. “If you know me, you’re a friend of Jack Alexander. And if you know Jack Alexander—” He let it trail off, and grinned.
“Besides,” Landers said, “she doesn’t know where I’ll be, or what will happen to me. When I leave here.”
“You may never leave here,” Winch said.
“We can only assume it will be bad,” Landers said. “And that’s no way to leave a girl. Especially a Peabody girl.”
“Yeah. Well, I said you may never leave here,” Winch said, a lot louder. “You may even have your own car yourself. And all the passes you can handle.”
“Yes?” Landers said. “Ah, how? How so?”
“Very easy. Just assign you to myself here. You’re more than qualified. And nobody’s going to protest it anyway. You’ll have your three stripes back in no time, and maybe a couple of rockers. Hell, that was the whole plan from the beginning. When I first went to Colonel Stevens about you.”
“I think that’s indecent and immoral,” Landers said.
“Hell, didn’t Strange tell you all that?”
“No. And if he had I’d have told him the same thing. With all these poor fuckers going overseas and getting their ass shot off. I don’t want any part of that. Or anything like it.” He could feel a cold, brilliant, hardened diamond point of determination in him. Winch could not affect that.
“I grant you it may be indecent and immoral,” Winch grinned. “But that’s the way things get done around here, you’ll find. And the way they get done in the world, too, you’ll find. Too. Someday.”
“Maybe,” Landers smiled. “I still don’t want any part of it.
“And I don’t want any part of you,” he suddenly said more sharply. “Mister Winch.” It suddenly was all threatening to pour out of him, and he had to bite it back. He had to keep his coolness. “I don’t need you, and don’t want you, don’t want any help from you, and don’t need help from you. I can pull my own weight. And I intend to. Do just that. On any line.”
“Well,” Winch said. “All right.” But he wasn’t grinning any more, Landers noted. He sat down behind his desk and began to look at the papers Landers had turned over. “You want a drink, kid?”
“Sure,” Landers said.
Winch put up on the desk top a bottle of Seagram’s which he took fr
om a desk drawer. “I’m sorry I haven’t got any ice. But there’s water,” he pointed at a glass cooler. “No ice is fine,” Landers said.
“Paper cups, there,” pointing. “Help yourself. I’m not drinking.” He riffled through the papers and examined them while Landers made his drink. “They’ve given you a royal decking with these papers, kid,” he said after a moment, and threw them down. “I could send you to the infantry if I wanted, on these papers.”
Landers turned on him sharply. “What do you mean?” he demanded, his voice even sharper than the turn. “Where?” He leaned over the papers. He had never been able to trust Winch an inch. Nobody had.
“Right here,” Winch said and handed him the papers.
There were six sheets of them, which had been in the large envelope with his service record and his 201 File. “Look on page two. You’re marked fit for Limited Duty only. Now look on page four. It says fit for infantry duty. See there? That’s a direct, bald contradiction.” They were signed officially by the officer who had headed the Medical Board Landers had gone before, a colonel he had never met except the once.
Landers was in a fury. “How can that be?” he demanded. “How can they do that?”
“They can’t,” Winch said. “Like I said, it’s a contradiction. Some fool clerk, or pair of clerks, who made it out made a mistake. But that wouldn’t have made any difference, here. One of my clerks, say, who processed this, would have sent you to the infantry.” He accepted the papers back from Landers, and threw them down again. “I didn’t have anything to do with that, kid.”
“Those dirty fuckers,” Landers said in a quivering voice. “Dirty cocksuckers.”
“You want to go to the infantry, kid?”
“No,” Landers said. “No. I don’t want to go to the infantry.”
“Okay. Where do you want to go? Since you don’t want to stay here.” Winch spread his hands. “You can have your choice.”
“I don’t want any choice,” Landers said, trying to get hold of himself, and of his voice. “I want to go where I’d have gone if everything were straight. I want to do what is decent and honorable—“Don’t you see? That that’s the only way I can live with myself, damn it?” He was trying desperately to hold his voice down to normal.
