by James Jones
Usually it hit him at this same time of every afternoon. After a day of loose pussyfooting around. He would come back to some hotel, with something great to look forward to, like an evening speech. Or another night of revels with the jolly funsters of Hollywood. All now in US Army uniform. He would lie on his bed, trying to give his legs a couple of hours of rest, and try to battle it
An entertainer. Get people to pay out their money to buy war bonds. Playing on their emotions. A “performer.” With “lighting experts” and “sound experts” and “script writers,” and a “director” and a “producer.” All telling him what to say and how to say it, and how to “act” it. What on earth was he doing here?
Prell had no new answers to the question. The old, simple answer to it was he was here because he wanted to stay in the Army. If he wasn’t here he would be a civilian out on the streets somewhere.
Prell had been over it all before. Long before. He had been over it back when the final decision was made, back in early December. General Stevens, then still only a colonel, had called him in and presented him with the alternatives. There were only the two. Discharge; or sell war bonds. Stevens had kindly been willing to discuss it with him. The two of them had decided it then.
“I know how much you dislike the idea of it,” Stevens said. “But if you want to stay in the Army, I don’t see any other way. There’s just no other way to keep you in. In the shape you’re in.”
The slim, white-haired old West Pointer smiled, and behind his desk pushed back his own chair, looking at Prell in his wheelchair.
“I have to admit I feel a certain personal involvement in this, Bobby. It goes back to when you first came in here, in danger of losing your leg. We discussed the various options then, you and I, if you remember.”
“Yes, sir. I remember,” Prell had said, huskily.
“Back then, you didn’t have any Medal of Honor, and we weren’t even sure you were going to have the leg,” Stevens smiled. “Even then all you could say was that you wanted to be a twenty-year man.”
Prell had nodded, but hadn’t felt up to smiling back.
“I’ve looked into it for you carefully, as much as I can,” Stevens said. “W/O Alexander and I have. I can tell you pretty much what to expect. I’m not sure you’ll like it.”
He was a hospital casual right now, not a member of any outfit. He would be assigned directly to the AGO Washington, his provisional HQ here in Second Army, Luxor. His actual authority would be Stevens himself here at Kilrainey, at first. If he was as successful on the first couple of tours as they had every reason to think he would be, and if physically he was up to it, he would then be reassigned, probably to Los Angeles on the West Coast. And after that perhaps to Washington. Out there and in Washington he would work with these professional theater people who ran this kind of thing for the Army. He would become a member of a unit that traveled all over the country selling war bonds.
“That ought to keep you in business at least until after the war,” Stevens said.
“What about after the war?” Prell said.
Stevens held up his hand. “Now, after the war,” he said, and cleared his throat. “After the war is something else again.”
After the war, there were going to be an awful lot of men hanging around looking for work as soldiers. And there weren’t going to be that many jobs for all of them. At the same time, there were going to be a lot of bread-and-butter assignments lying around, for men who qualified for them and could get their hands on them.
One of them would be all of those ROTC assignments, at all of the various colleges and universities across the country. Usually they were held back for old-time master sergeants. But they had been known to go to lesser ranks.
“I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t qualify for one of them,” Stevens smiled.
Prell had sat listening, suddenly wanting to weep. A kind of wildly inarticulate love, out of all proportion to anything he was used to feeling for anybody, had seized him for this elegant old soldier. He was such a fine example of the old-time, old-line, gentlemanly school of Army officer who once had existed. Those were the school of men Prell had wanted to serve under, back when he first enlisted, but he hadn’t found too many of them. At the moment, he would have done just about anything the old gentleman might have asked of him.
“I’m not saying you’ll love it. But it’s the best that can be done,” Stevens said. “I’ve asked around and found out what I could, both W/O Alexander and I have, about placing you in one of these posts. And I think you can get one, after the war,” Stevens smiled. “Particularly with that Medal of Honor you have tucked away under your web belt.”
“I only have one question, sir,” Prell said, huskily. “I’m not sure it isn’t degrading the Medal.”
Stevens glared at him piercingly. “Nothing on earth can degrade that Medal. Or what you did to earn it. Don’t you ever forget that.”
“Aye, sir,” Prell said. And then decided to go one step further. “But I’ve always felt I didn’t really deserve the Medal.”
“If you didn’t deserve it, you wouldn’t have gotten it. That’s why the system of recommendations is set up the way it is, to make it difficult. And since you have gotten it, you deserve everything the Army can do to help you.” Slowly, he smiled again; but his eyes were still piercing.
And that was the way they had left it. Back in early December. There were a few little strings attached, to getting Prell one of the coveted ROTC posts, Stevens said. One of them was the problem of rank. If Prell wanted to come out of the war a master/sgt, so that he would be truly qualified for the ROTC post, it meant he would have to make at least 1st/lt. Once the war was over, everybody made during it would be reduced two grades in rank. Stevens was beginning to do what he could about that. “As of right now, today, you’re a staff sergeant.” And at the successful conclusion of his first war bonds tour, he would be moved up to tech/sgt. And then up to master. Once he was with AGO Washington and on the West Coast, he would be given a commission to 2nd/lt, and then promoted to 1st/lt. “There’s a little trick to this rank problem,” the old colonel smiled. “That’s right.” He nodded. “If I want to retire as a colonel, I’ll have to make major general during the war.”
He had pulled his chair back up to the desk. “You understand, there are no absolute guarantees to this. I can’t guarantee you all of this. It’s much too soon, for anything like that. And it would be dishonest to say so. But it is certainly something to work toward, and I think it’s something you should plan toward.”
Prell had simply nodded, too dazzled to make an answer. He was as dazzled by the old gentleman’s honesty and sense of honor, as he was by the prospect of so much swift promotion. And it was these traits, Stevens’ honesty and sense of honor, that sent him back to the old West Pointer for advice when his problem arose with Delia Mae a month or so later.
There wasn’t really anybody else to go to. He did not want to go to Strange with it. Anyway, what could Strange tell him? And in the month since their first talk he had been back three or four times to see Stevens, whose door as Stevens said was always open to a Medal of Honor winner. Prell had come to think of him almost as a father. It was as close to a father, anyway, as a West Virginia orphan boy had ever had. Winch or Strange had never been that to him.
If it had not been precisely as he told it to Strange at the wedding, it had been very close to that. Perhaps he had not knocked her up the very first time his legs had been physically able to get on top of her and seriously fuck her. But it had been damn close to the first time. It had been in the first five days. All that time his damned legs had been too damned weak, and painful, to pull back out. And they had been going at it like a couple of minks. Then in two or three weeks she had come to him with looks of chagrin and fright darting over her face and told him that she had missed her period. But even then on her face there had been that look, that glow, of triumph, victory and success. It shone out openly and with total shamele
ssness from under the other looks, a glow saying that she knew she had trapped him.
“Of course, you must marry her!” Stevens exclaimed, without preamble or qualification, as soon as he was told what had happened. “It’s the only honorable thing you can do.”
Prell was ready to accept this. But he needed a little time to digest it. “Well there are other ways to solve it, sir. I mean, as a problem. If we were thinking of it like a mathematics exercise. Several other ways.”
“What ways?”
“Well, I could just not marry her at all. That’s happened a lot more times around this area than you might think, sir. She’d just go on off home and have the baby. And her mom would work and she’d take care of it. Or she’d work and her mom would take care of it. That’s happened a lot. Particularly in cases like this, when I’m about to ship off from here.”
“Good God, son! And that’s what you propose? What about her father? What’s he say? Where is he?”
“He’s overseas, sir, in the Army. In New Guinea, I believe.”
“MacArthur,” Stevens murmured, to himself.
“Some Signal Corps outfit,” Prell said.
“Well at least it isn’t the infantry. What other brilliant ideas have you got?”
“I could take her to an abortionist, sir. There’s one of these sleazy doctors who does them, down on South Main. Down below Beale Street, near the black section. I have lots of friends who have the address. She has the address herself.”
“No, no! Great Scott, boy!” The old West Pointer looked seriously shocked. “You’re destroying a human life.”
“I don’t really think of it as a human life yet,” Prell said. “She’s only a month and a half gone.”
“A human life is precious,” the old soldier said. “Um, how did she get hold of that address?”
“She said a friend gave it to her. In case she ever might need it.”
“I see. Well. Are you sure you’re the father?”
“It would be easy to say I’m not sure. But, honestly. Between us, sir. I’m pretty sure I am.”
“Well then, you’ve got to do the right thing by her,” Stevens said staunchly. “We men. We men like to have our good times. But we don’t like to pay up for it. We are supposed to look after women, and take care of them. Protect them. They need that from us. Our whole civilization is based on that.
“What about her mother? Does she know?”
“Yes,” Prell said. “She knows. She told her mother before she told me.”
Stevens stared at him. “She did? Well. Well, what does the mother say?”
“Oh she’s all in favor of the marriage,” Prell said. “She thinks I can become a movie star.”
“She what?!” Stevens said.
Prell shrugged lamely. “She said since I’m going off on this war bonds tour, I should make all the contacts I can with these Hollywood people. Then I can get started through them. She has this idea of a series of movies where I can be the owner of a ranch in the West somewhere, in a wheelchair. She seems to think I can become another Hopalong Cassidy or John Wayne.”
“Great Scott!” Stevens said.
“Well, she’s a little crackers, sir. The truth is she’s got this boyfriend in town in Luxor, older fellow, who is stationed at Second Army, and she wants to move into town with him. She figures if she marries Delia Mae to me, she’ll be free to do that.”
“Does her husband in New Guinea know?”
“I don’t think so, sir.”
“Hasn’t the daughter written him about it?”
“No, sir. I don’t think she has.”
Stevens was staring at him, kind of unbelievingly.
“She’s sort of in the middle,” Prell said.
“Yes,” Stevens said. “Do you see much of this, uh, mother?”
“Only when I can’t avoid it.”
Stevens continued to stare for a minute, then sighed. “You’ve gotten yourself into a bad bind, haven’t you, son?”
“I’m afraid so, sir. Yes.”
Stevens stared down at his desk, frowning at it furiously as if it were responsible for this, before he looked up. “Well, if you’re asking my advice, I think you should marry the girl. In spite of all. I think you owe her that. Besides, you don’t know. She may love you with all her heart.”
“She loves the fact that I’m a Medal of Honor winner,” Prell said.
“I think you must marry her. You want to give your child a name.” He had commenced to doodle on a pad on his desk.
It was somehow what Prell had expected to hear. It was almost as if he had heard it in the air around him, before he had even come in. Perhaps he even had come here hoping to hear just that.
“Well, sir. I’m ready to do it,” Prell said. “If you think that’s what I ought to do.”
Stevens made a big circle over his other doodles, and ran it around three times, and then threw his pencil down. “I do. And you’ve given me an excellent idea. I think there is at least a way that we can make a lot of capital out of this for you, just in publicity alone.” And he had commenced to lay out his ideas for the hospital wedding.
Prell himself, in Kansas City, still did not know how much effect the idea of the wedding had had on his final decision to marry. It certainly had had some. Also, as Stevens had said, “If it doesn’t work out, you can always get a divorce. But at least you’ll have given your son your name.” He did say son. Although how he thought he knew, Prell had no idea. Delia Mae was about five months into her pregnancy right now and nobody, including the doctor, had any idea boy or girl. In the big hotel room Prell pulled himself laboriously up onto his feet again and, haltingly, walked across to the table for another bourbon.
He looked at his watch, which said ten-thirty, and realized room service would cut off serving dinners soon. If he didn’t order, there would be nothing but damned white turkey meat sandwiches.
But he wasn’t hungry. He took the straight bourbon back to the bed and sat down on the bed edge to drink it. Then he stretched back out and tried to burrow back into the sleep the ringing phone of Strange’s call had brought him up out of.
The sexual cutoff had begun almost as soon as the wedding itself was over. She was too tired, her back hurt her, or she was nauseous. He tried to point out that she was only two days more pregnant than she had been two days before the wedding, but it had not made the slightest difference. Stevens had arranged for them to spend four days at the Claridge free, paid for by the hotel’s public relations account, as a sort of honeymoon. Prell actually had gotten less sex during that four days than he had had at any time since he had first met Delia Mae on the ward, when he had felt a hell of a lot worse.
It was as if all the hot sexuality in her, which she had hated secretly all this time but had never admitted hating, had run down out of her like mercury out of a broken thermometer, leaving only the glass shell and the etched numbers as sort of ghostly reminders of the heat that had once been measured there.
It was as if now, with her back areas and lines of retreat safely stabilized and covered by a marriage certificate, she was ready to stand and fight for her principles. Whatever the fuck they were. One of them was clearly that genu-wine high-class ladies wasn’t supposed to like sex.
Prell burrowed his head down deeper into the bed’s pillow.
The sleep came slowly, in little spurts. It came like small snow flurries, sweeping an area with their stillnesses, on the light winds of a steadily thickening snowstorm. Then when the full sleep came, with it came the nightmares. Immediately. Or so it seemed. It seemed only half of him was truly asleep, because it seemed half of him was awake watching the nightmares.
They were all involved with the squad again, and the patrol. They went all through it again, over and over. The half of him that was not asleep was aware that he had not had them in quite a long time, and was a little shocked at seeing them. And this time Landers was with them, in them.
It was as though Prell could never quite sp
ot him. But he was with the dead, and at the same time he was with the wounded. Whenever Prell looked back from his own improvised stretcher to check, the two dead, both Crozier and Sims, would be there; but Landers would be one of them, or sort of with them. Whenever he looked at his wounded and counted them to check, all of them would be there, the count exactly right, but one of their agonized faces would be Landers. When Prell looked at their faces individually, each belonged to its owner. But he would know that there was another one hanging around, hovering somewhere.
He woke sweating. He had not had any of these dreams in quite some time. And never had Landers been in any of them.
His watch said it was after midnight. He knew he would never go back to sleep now. He didn’t want to go back to sleep. Heavily, he got himself back onto his feet and walked teetering over to the phone, and on the strength of a pretty solid hunch called Jerry Kurntz’s central suite. Sure enough, they were all there.
“Shit, kid,” Jerry Kurntz cried at him from the phone. “Didn’t I tell you this bunch was ripe? All you got to do is pour some booze down them, and loosen up their inhibitions. And they all of them got the hots for you. One of them thought she was your date, and got so mad when you didn’t show up, she went into a sulk. But she’s beginning to loosen up now.”
“Well what about the other guys?” Prell said. “Are there enough to go around?”
“Hell, baby, nobody cares,” Kurntz roared into the phone. “You come on over and you can take your pick.”
Prell’s pick was the one who had sulked over his absence. She was a good-looking blonde lady, who by the time he arrived had had more than enough to drink, but was still a lady. None of these ladies was the kind of bimbo you would find down around 4th Street in Luxor. And, usually, almost always they were married. “Married and harried,” Kurntz liked to say, laughing. Kurntz always liked to point out that it was because the tour people were out-of-towners, only there for a night or two, that they made out so well. They represented no strings, no embarrassing reappearances.
