by James Jones
It had the distinct feel of a repeat performance. Except that now as Landers went up against this kindly, middle-class, bourgeois enemy, it was with all the pessimism and experience he had not had at his fingertips the first time out. Landers knew now that all the fine promises they made would have nothing to do with him once he was out in the field again, in the real world. They might not know that, but Landers did; now. He was prepared at any moment to tell them he wanted to stay in the Army.
But the moment would not come. That was apparently what they were trying to get him to say. But everything they said to him, every question they asked him, seemed to drive him away from the point of wanting to say it.
All the questions they asked him about his abilities and intentions were the same questions the five men at Kilrainey had asked him. All the statements they made about wanting to use his talents, his experience, were the same statements made at Kilrainey.
Finally the round-faced, jowly man in the middle wearing glasses, a full colonel among three other full colonels in the five but plainly the chief, asked him in a perplexed, slightly amused voice, “Well, Sergeant, what kind of job in the Army would you like?”
Drawing himself up, his voice fluting with the rage he was trying to hold down, Landers gave the only answer he felt he could give them. “Sir, there’s no job in the Army I want,” he said stolidly.
“All right, that’s all. You may go,” the bespectacled colonel said.
The word was around the ward almost before he could get back to it. Landers was out. The board had voted, unanimously, to discharge him. So many other prisoners, who saw this as a major triumph, rushed over to him to congratulate him and slap him on the back that the morose Landers finally insulted them and ran them all off, cursing.
After that, he was even more of a marked man. Not only was he out while all of them were still in, but they did not like it because he had rejected their well-meant congratulations. All of them left him strictly alone.
It didn’t really matter. The winding-down, the mechanics, took only five days. Five days, from the meeting of the board till Landers was out on the street, a free man. The wheels ground slowly, but once they got started, they rolled very fast. And much of the last three of the five days was spent out of the ward, signing releases in first one office then another. Landers wasn’t in the ward that much to suffer his new rejection. Anyway, he didn’t care what they thought. He wasn’t like them.
He went to the Finance office, to sign his last payroll. He went to the QM office, to turn in the last of his gear. To the Insurance office, to keep or cancel his GI insurance. Landers decided to cancel his. If he was going out, he did not want any more to do with the Army than was obligatory. Most of the rest was done in offices in the hospital HQ section itself.
As was required by the regulations, everywhere he went an armed guard had to go with him. He was still a prisoner. But it was indicative of his status that the pistol-wearing MP joked with him and hardly bothered to watch him. No guy who was going out in two days was going to run off from a guard.
In retrospect it seemed like a wild, fantastic rush, the last five days. Then on the morning of the sixth he was signing his last paper, which was the receipt for his engraved, pure, white Honorable Discharge which was tendered to him. That took place in the hospital clerical office itself.
Then, totally unprepared for it, he was suddenly out in the street in front of the hospital, in uniform, with an old blue barracks bag half full of personal gear, a free man able to go anywhere he pleased to go.
He walked the three blocks down to the bus stop, and waited there. After a moment, he set the bag on the frozen ground. A bus for Luxor should be along in a little bit. It was a dry day, but cold, and a little snowy on the ground.
Landers huddled down into his GI greatcoat. In front of him on the asphalt main street a long column of men in fatigues and field jackets marched by, wearing the Divisional patch of the new infantry Division, their faces gaunt and haunted and worn-down looking. It took them a long time to pass, and Landers watched them.
It had been running through his mind all the places he was now free to go. Places these guys couldn’t go. He would probably wind up going home, to Indiana, in the end. To his lousy family. The thought of going home filled him with anguish. But he didn’t have to do that yet.
Normally he would have gone into Luxor to the Peabody to see Johnny Stranger. But Strange had told him during his visit that in two or three days’ time, from then, he would be coming back to duty himself. Somewhere here on the post at O’Bruyerre. That meant Landers would have to go up to see Winch at the Command building and say good-by to him, in order to find out where Strange was. And Landers didn’t have the stomach for that at the moment. Of course, he could always go in to the Peabody by himself. Though Strange was giving up the suite, Strange had said, having run out of money.
In front of him the last of the troop column had made their right turn off of the main road, and were dwindling away down one of the hole-pocked gravel side roads. Behind them on the main road, coming fast, was a civilian car, but with post plates. Driven by a woman. Women were so important.
Landers watched the last of the troops dwindle, getting smaller and smaller, their breaths throwing out the same plumes as before, but now at this distance the plumes seemed bigger than they were. Landers was devoutly glad he wasn’t one of them. On the other hand, he had no desire really to go in to the Peabody all by himself. Even if he could get a room, this late.
Landers watched the woman coming on in the car. She was very good-looking, even at a distance. Probably some officer’s wife. But she was really going too fast. Landers bent with the tie rope of the barracks bag he was holding, and rolled it meticulously down and around onto the top of the bag, and then stood teetering on his heels and watching her.
Just as she was about to come level with him on the road, Landers stepped out off the curb in front of her.
As he stepped out, he realized he would not have done it if she had been a man, driving a jeep or a GI truck. But she really was so beautiful. Her coat was thrown back open in the heat of the car, and in the sweater under it her breasts swelled out thrusting their weight against the lapels deliciously. So delicious. And her hair fell to the collar of the coat with an equally delicious feminine grace.
Landers heard the wild squeal of the brakes. And perhaps a cry. And then the crash of glass and tear of headlight metal. And a loud thumping thud.
He saw or thought he saw the look of horror that came across her face in back of the windshield. Because she thought she was doing something wrong, and he wanted to laugh. The mouth a wildly spread O of lipstick. Eyebrows arched up. Eyes staring. He hated to do all that to her. But, by God, at least she knew she had hit something. Then the helicopter moved away from the ship.
The big red crosses were still on its white flank. And the sea still moved backward along its waterline. Everything was still silence.
Far off, the great blue continent still stood. Uninhabited. Green with the silent, unpeopled forests and soft grasses. The breakers clashing on the white, unpeopled sands. And the silence of home.
BOOK FIVE
THE END OF IT
CHAPTER 29
BOBBY PRELL HEARD ABOUT it at the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City. Strange called him there long distance to tell him.
Prell was on his first bonds-selling tour, and in fact the call took several hours to reach him because he was out and running around. It was their first day in Kansas City, and the first day was always spent running around. Setting things up. “Working,” was what the people in the tour staff called it. Though Prell found it hard to think of what he was doing as work. He was also doing some real running around on his own, with some of the tour staff, chasing women. Something the tour staff boys apparently always did in every city. When he got back to the hotel after an all-day, eight-hour absence, it was to find six little white call slips waiting for him. That someone from Camp O’Bru
yerre had been calling. A Sgt Strange.
All that seemed so far away. Prell had difficulty recalling who the caller was. If the slips had said Kilrainey General and Delia Mae, or Luxor where Delia Mae’s mama had moved in the past month, the call would have meant something was wrong with her damned pregnancy probably. But not Strange, from O’Bruyerre. Strange had only been at O’Bruyerre now for a month. Prell could not imagine why Strange would be calling him.
Prell was supposed to go out with a couple of the “crew” and the “producer” of the “show,” Jerry Kurntz, for drinks and dinner that night. They were meeting some of the women, or “broads,” they had collected like a comet’s tail during the course of the day and the day’s meetings. The tour staff were all Hollywood “types,” and Prell was learning a whole new “show-biz” vocabulary from them. But in the big, old lobby with the six call slips from the desk clerk in his hand, Prell begged off. He would take a rest in his room, and eat there, and find out what this phone call was and maybe he might meet up with them later. He had no idea what could be so important that Strange would telephone him. And no idea how soon the call might come.
“Okay. But listen, kid,” Jerry Kurntz said. “You’re missing a big opportunity. I aint never seen a bunch of broads as ripe as this one. And aint you the star of our show? Without you we won’t any of us stand as good a chance.”
Kurntz was a college graduate who was not only not ashamed of using aint. He was proud of using it, and other bad grammar. Something else that was new to Prell.
“My legs are tired,” Prell said, and made his eyes go flat. All of them knew how he disliked referring to his legs.
“Oh, fine, fine,” Kurntz said quickly. “You go on and rest, then. The legs are more important.” The group broke up quickly, to go to their own rooms.
Prell had learned there were two things they were afraid of. They were afraid because he had killed people, and nearly been killed himself. They thought that somehow made him different. And they were afraid because he came from the West Virginia coal country. And knew how to make his eyes go flat.
Prell ordered some bourbon sent up to his room, and went on up himself. Beside the desk was his wheelchair, and he dropped into it gratefully, and let the bellboy push him to the elevator.
His folding wheelchair was always kept near the desk, out of sight, no matter what the hotel or the city. This was a strategy he and Kurntz had worked out at the start of the tour to satisfy Prell. The wheelchair was never taken along in the cars at the start of the day for the day’s outings and meetings. Not unless there was a speech to be made that night, before they came back to the hotel. They took the little half-crutches, and if Prell had to have help during the day, he used those. But Prell hated the wheelchair, with a rabid dislike. He refused to have it in the cars, or to use it, during the day. But there were times, like right now this evening, when he simply could not stay up on his feet any longer and had to use it.
The room was big, and comfortable. But Prell had to get up onto his feet again, out of the wheelchair, in order to make himself a drink at the little table bar. The bellboy brought in the new bottle, and Prell double-locked the door and put the chain lock on. With his impassive face, nobody was aware of the effort it took for him to get onto his feet from a sitting position. With the door secured, he took off his pants and sprawled down on the bed to ease his legs, while he waited on the phone call.
His legs were worse than tired. They were like two toothaches. Using them was the only way to make them better. But then the pain was always there. It was like one of those toothaches you so learned to live with and got so used to, that when the dentist finally got to you and stopped it you felt there was some part of you missing.
He was so uncomfortable on the bed, turning on his side each time to drink from the glass, that after a couple of tries at it he got up again, and sat in the damned wheelchair until he finished the drink. Then he lay back down again.
He had fallen asleep when the phone rang loudly in the room and he made a large scringe in both thighs as he rolled convulsively over onto his belly and put his head down, thinking Mortars. A part of his mind was already saying how ridiculous he was. What was it? eight months? nine months now? It took him a little while to get up off of the bed and the phone rang four or five times before he could get to it.
“Yes?” he said cautiously. “Yes?”
It was Strange, all right. And he didn’t fiddlefuck around. He came right to the point. Had Prell heard that Landers had been killed?
“What? Killed?” Prell said. “Killed? How?”
Strange went on to tell him. A woman. In a civilian car. But with post plates. Some officer’s wife. Had hit him. Killed him instantly. He had only been discharged just an hour before. Was on his way off the post. The woman was all broken up by it.
“What a dumb way to get it,” Prell said. But why call him up, all this way, to tell him about it? he wondered. His first, natural reaction had been to think it was some drunken fight. In some poolhall or bar. “Sure a dumb way to get it,” he said.
“Yes,” Strange’s voice said. “But there’s even some question about that. The woman claims he stepped right out in front of her. She couldn’t miss him. And he was looking right straight at her.” The voice stopped.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Prell said. But why call me up? he wondered again. He was beginning, as his sleep confusion lifted, to catch a peculiar urgency in Strange’s voice.
“Well, there’s no reason for her to make it up. Nobody’s blaming her. They were already calling it an accident. Not her fault. Why make up a story like that?”
“Wait a minute. Then you mean a suicide?” Prell suddenly felt wide awake. But he wondered still again, So what? Why call him? If old Landers wanted to knock himself off, he had the same right everybody else had. “A suicide, Johnny?”
“Well, nobody’s saying that. And certainly officially it’s going to go down as an accident. Maybe she’s just feeling guilty anyway. Even if she’s not responsible?” Strange said. “We all do that sometimes. Otherwise why would she make up such a story?”
What was coming through to Prell was that Strange had not called him because of him, but because of Strange. Prell had never been a buddy of Landers’. Had hardly known him, really. Landers hadn’t even been Regular Army. But Strange had been a buddy. If Strange needed him, he had to be there.
“Would she?” Strange’s voice said urgently.
“I don’t know,” he said. “She might have. But anyway you can’t solve it all right now, Johnny. Hell, maybe it’s something we’ll never know.
“What does Winch say about it?” he asked cautiously. “How is Winch taking it?”
“Who knows,” Strange said. “With him? He’s pretty upset, I guess. Hell, I’m pretty upset. But I didn’t mean to upset you, by calling you.”
“I didn’t really know him all that well,” Prell said calmly.
“I know. But the four of us were all on that same ship together.”
“Yeah. He came in to see me there in that main lounge a bunch of times, I remember.” As he talked, he was casting around for the right thing to say that would ease Strange.
“Yeah. Well.” He heard Strange swallow. “Well we were working on that discharge for him. Or Winch was. He thought that was what he wanted. He said that was what he wanted. To one of his lieutenants.” Strange’s voice was getting higher, and threatening to crack.
“Yeah, you told me,” Prell said. “I thought it was all fixed up.”
“Well, how would you feel? If you suddenly walked out of the hospital, with a discharge out of the Army?”
“I’d feel terrible,” Prell said. “But I wasn’t him. He wasn’t a Regular Army type”—then he changed that word—“Regular Army guy. I am. That was what he wanted, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. That’s true,” Strange said, sounding unconvinced. “He was no RA soldier.”
“Listen, Johnny. I’ll be back at Kilrainey
in a couple weeks. You just hang on to it. Go talk to Winch about it.”
“Winch won’t talk about it.”
Of course he wouldn’t. That fucker, Prell thought, furiously. “We’ll go over it when I get back. We’ll talk it all out.”
“Sure,” Strange said. “Sure. I’m not flipping out, over it. I just thought you’d want to know.”
“Of course I’d want to know. I’m glad you called me,” Prell lied. “Call me here tomorrow, if you want. The day after tomorrow we’ll be in Lincoln, Nebraska.”
“Sure,” Strange said. “Don’t worry. Don’t worry about me, I mean. I’m fine. I’ll see you as soon as you get back.”
“How’s the new outfit doing?” Prell asked.
“Fine. It’s no great outfit. Signal Corps, I’m in. But at least I’m seeing they get some decent hot meals, for a change.”
“I bet they love it,” Prell said, and found he was grinning frantically, at the phone. Idiotically. As if Strange could see him.
“They do. They do. Okay, so long.” The question that followed was a polite afterthought. “How are you doing, out there?”
“Fine,” Prell said. “I guess I’m a natural-born speechmaker.”
“Good.”
The phone clicked off, dead. Prell realized he had been standing up on his feet all this time, and that his legs had begun to hurt him seriously again. He went back to the bed. Then, after he had sprawled back down, the guilts began to attack him.
Guilt because he had not helped Strange as much as he might have on the phone. Guilt because he had not cared more about Landers. Then, guilt because he had not been a better friend to Landers. Why hadn’t he been?
Then finally, the biggest guilt of them all. What was a man like him doing here? Making speeches for a living. He had become an entertainer. Him, and his Medal of Honor. They were a vaudeville team. It was something he had to wrassle with and defeat every day. And every new day it was back again, stronger and more powerful, to be wrassled with and defeated again.
