The World According to Garp

by John Irving

  Garp did not like the waist gun arrangements on the B-17E. There were two waist gunners tucked into the rib cage of the plane, their gunports opposite each other, and Garp was always getting clouted in the ears when his mate swiveled his gun at the same time Garp was moving with his. In later models, precisely because of this interference between the waist gunners, the gunports would be staggered. But this innovation would happen too late for Sergeant Garp.

  His first combat mission was a daylight sortie by B-17Es against Rouen, France, on August 17, 1942, which was accomplished without losses. Technical Sergeant Garp, at his waist gun position, was clouted once on the left ear by his gunner mate and twice on the right. A part of the problem was that the other gunner, compared to Garp, was so large; the man's elbows were level with Garp's ears.

  In the ball turret that first day over Rouen was a man named Fowler who was even smaller than Garp. Fowler had been a jockey before the war. He was a better shot than Garp, but the ball turret was where Garp wished he could be. He was an orphan but he must have liked being alone, and he sought some escape from the crowding and elbowing of his fellow waist gunner. Of course, like a great many gunners, Garp dreamed of his fiftieth mission or so, whereafter he hoped to be transferred to the Second Air Force--the bomber training command--where he could retire safely as a gunnery instructor. But until Fowler was killed, Garp envied Fowler his private place, his jockey's sense of isolation.

  "It's a foul spot to be in if you fart a lot," Fowler maintained. He was a cynical man with a dry, irritating tickle of a cough and a vile reputation among the nurses at the field hospital.

  Fowler was killed during a crash landing on an unpaved road. The landing struts were shorn off in a pothole and the whole landing gear collapsed, dropping the bomber into a hard belly slide that burst the ball turret with all the disproportionate force of a falling tree hitting a grape. Fowler, who'd always said he had more faith in machines than he had in horses or in human beings, was crouched in the unretracted ball turret when the plane landed on him. The waist gunners, including Sergeant Garp, saw the debris skid away from under the belly of the bomber. The squadron adjutant, who was the closest ground observer of the landing, threw up in a Jeep. The squadron commander did not have to wait for Fowler's death to become official in order to replace him with the squadron's next-smallest gunner. Tiny Technical Sergeant Garp had always wanted to be a ball turret gunner. In September of 1942, he became one.

  * * *

  --

  "My mother was a stickler for detail," Garp wrote. When they would bring in a new casualty, Jenny Fields was the first to ask the doctor how it happened. And Jenny classified them, silently: the Externals, the Vital Organs, the Absentees, and the Goners. And she found little gimmicks to help her remember their names and their disasters. Thus: Private Jones fell off his bones, Ensign Potter stopped a whopper, Corporal Estes lost his testes, Captain Flynn has no skin, Major Longfellow is short on answers.

  Sergeant Garp was a mystery. On his thirty-fifth flight over France, the little ball turret gunner stopped shooting. The pilot noticed the absence of machine-gun fire from the ball turret and thought that Garp had taken a hit. If Garp had, the pilot had not felt it in the belly of his plane. He hoped Garp hadn't felt it much, either. After the plane landed, the pilot hurried to have Garp transferred to the sidecar of a medic's motorcycle; all the ambulances were in use. Once seated in the sidecar, the tiny technical sergeant began to play with himself. There was a canvas canopy that covered the sidecar in foul weather; the pilot snapped this covering in place. The canopy had a porthole, through which the medic, the pilot, and the gathering men could observe Sergeant Garp. For such a small man, he seemed to have an especially large erection, but he fumbled with it only a little more expertly than a child--not nearly so expertly as a monkey in the zoo. Like the monkey, however, Garp looked out of his cage and stared frankly into the faces of the human beings who were watching him.

  "Garp?" the pilot said. Garp's forehead was freckled with blood, which was mostly dry, but his flight hat was plastered to the top of his head and dripping; there didn't seem to be a mark on him. "Garp!" the pilot shouted at him. There had been a gash in the metal sphere where the fifty-caliber machine guns had been; it appeared that some flak had hit the barrels of the guns, cracking the gun housing and even loosening the trigger handles, though there was nothing wrong with Garp's hands--they just seemed to be clumsy at masturbation.

  "Garp!" cried the pilot.

  "Garp?" said Garp. He was mimicking the pilot, like a smart parrot or a crow. "Garp," said Garp, as if he had just learned the word. The pilot nodded to Garp, encouraging him to remember his name. Garp smiled. "Garp," he said. He seemed to think this was how people greeted each other. Not hello, hello!--but Garp, Garp!

  "Jesus, Garp," the pilot said. Some holes and glass cracks had been visible in the porthole of the ball turret. The medic now unzipped the porthole of the sidecar's canopy and peered into Garp's eyes. Something was wrong with Garp's eyes, because they rolled around independently of each other; the medic thought that the world, for Garp, was probably looming up, then going by, then looming up again--if Garp could see at all. What the pilot and the medic couldn't know, at the time, was that some sharp and slender shards from the flak blast had damaged one of the oculomotor nerves in Garp's brain--and other parts of his brain as well. The oculomotor nerve consists chiefly of motor fibers that innervate most of the muscles of the eyeball. As for the rest of Garp's brain, he had received some cuts and slashes a lot like a prefrontal lobotomy--though it was rather careless surgery.

  The medic had a great fear of how carelessly a lobotomy had been performed on Sergeant Garp, and for that reason he thought against taking off the blood-sodden flight hat which was stuck to Garp and yanked down to where it touched a taut, shiny knob that appeared, now, to be growing on his forehead. Everyone looked around for the medic's motorcyclist, but he was off vomiting somewhere and the medic supposed he would have to find someone to sit in the sidecar with Garp while he drove the motorcycle himself.

  "Garp?" Garp said to the medic, trying his new word.

  "Garp," the medic confirmed. Garp seemed pleased. He had both his small hands on his impressive erection when he successfully masturbated.

  "Garp!" he barked. There was joy in his voice, but also surprise. He rolled his eyes at his audience, begging the world to loom up and hold still. He was unsure of what he'd done. "Garp?" he asked, doubtfully.

  The pilot patted his arm and nodded to the others of the flight and landing crew, as if to say: Let's give a bit of support to the sergeant, men. Please, let's make him feel at home. And the men, respectfully dumbstruck by Garp's ejaculation, all said, "Garp! Garp! Garp!" to him--a reassuring, seal-like chorus intent on putting Garp at ease.

  Garp nodded his head, happily, but the medic held his arm and whispered anxiously to him, "No! Don't move your head, okay? Garp? Please don't move your head." Garp's eyes roamed past the pilot and the medic, who waited for them to come around again. "Easy does it, Garp," the pilot whispered. "Just sit tight, okay?"

  Garp's face radiated pure peace. With both hands holding his dying erection, the little sergeant looked as if he had done just the thing that the situation called for.

  They could do nothing for Sergeant Garp in England. He was lucky to have been brought home to Boston long before the end of the war. Some senator was actually responsible. An editorial in a Boston newspaper had accused the U.S. Navy of transporting wounded servicemen back home only if the wounded came from wealthy and important American families. In an effort to quell such a vile rumor, a U.S. senator claimed that if any of the severely wounded were lucky enough to get back to America, "even an orphan would get to make the trip--just like anyone else." There was then some scurrying around to come up with a wounded orphan, to prove the senator's point, but they came up with a perfect person.

  Not only was Technical Sergeant Garp an orphan; he was an idiot with a one-word vocabula
ry, so he was not complaining to the press. And in all the photographs they took, Gunner Garp was smiling.

  * * *

  --

  When the drooling sergeant was brought to Boston Mercy, Jenny Fields had trouble categorizing him. He was clearly an Absentee, more docile than a child, but she wasn't sure how much else was wrong with him.

  "Hello. How are you?" she asked him, when they wheeled him--grinning--into the ward.

  "Garp!" he barked. The oculomotor nerve had been partially restored, and his eyes now leapt, rather than rolled, but his hands were wrapped in gauze mittens, the result of Garp's playing in an accidental fire that broke out in the hospital compound aboard his transport ship. He'd seen the flames and had reached out his hands to them, spreading some of the flames up to his face; he'd singed off his eyebrows. He looked a lot like a shaved owl, to Jenny.

  With the burns, Garp was an External and an Absentee all at once. Also, with his hands so heavily bandaged, he had lost the ability to masturbate, an activity that his papers said he pursued frequently and successfully--and without any self-consciousness. Those who'd observed him closely, since his accident with the ship's fire, feared that the childish gunner was becoming depressed--his one adult pleasure taken from him, at least until his hands healed.

  It was possible, of course, that Garp had Vital Organ damage as well. Many fragments had entered his head; many of them were too delicately located to be removed. Sergeant Garp's brain damage might not stop with his crude lobotomy; his internal destruction could be progressing. "Our general deterioration is complicated enough," Garp wrote, "without the introduction of flak to our systems."

  There'd been a patient before Sergeant Garp whose head had been similarly penetrated. He'd been fine for months, just talking to himself and occasionally peeing in his bed. Then he started to lose his hair; he had trouble completing his sentences. Just before he died, he began to develop breasts.

  Given the evidence, the shadows, and the white needles in the X rays, Gunner Garp was probably a Goner. But to Jenny Fields he looked very nice. A small, neat man, the former ball turret gunner was as innocent and straightforward in his demands as a two-year-old. He cried "Garp!" when he was hungry and "Garp!" when he was glad; he asked "Garp?" when something puzzled him, or when addressing strangers, and he said "Garp" without the question mark when he recognized you. He usually did what he was told, but he couldn't be trusted; he forgot easily, and if one time he was as obedient as a six-year-old, another time he was as mindlessly curious as if he were one and a half.

  His depressions, which were well documented in his transport papers, seemed to occur simultaneously with his erections. At these moments he would clamp his poor, grown-up peter between his gauzy, mittened hands and weep. He wept because the gauze didn't feel as good as his short memory of his hands, and also because it hurt his hands to touch anything. It was then that Jenny Fields would come sit with him. She would rub his back between his shoulder blades until he tipped back his head like a cat, and she'd talk to him all the while, her voice friendly and full of exciting shifts of accent. Most nurses droned to their patients--a steady, changeless voice intent on producing sleep, but Jenny knew that it wasn't sleep Garp needed. She knew he was only a baby, and he was bored--he needed some distraction. So Jenny entertained him. She played the radio for him, but some of the programs upset Garp; no one knew why. Other programs gave him terrific erections, which led to his depressions, and so forth. One program, just once, gave Garp a wet dream, which so surprised and pleased him that he was always eager to see the radio. But Jenny couldn't find that program again, she couldn't repeat the performance. She knew that if she could plug poor Garp into the wet-dream program, her job and his life would be much happier. But it wasn't that easy.

  She gave up trying to teach him a new word. When she fed him and she saw that he liked what he was eating, she'd say, "Good! That's good."

  "Garp!" he'd agree.

  And when he spat out food on his bib and made a terrible face, she'd say, "Bad! That stuff's bad, right?"

  "Garp!" he'd gag.

  The first sign Jenny had of his deterioration was when he seemed to lose the G. One morning he greeted her with an "Arp."

  "Garp," she said firmly to him. "G-arp."

  "Arp," he said. She knew she was losing him.

  Daily he seemed to grow younger. When he slept, he kneaded the air with his wriggling fists, his lips puckering, his cheeks sucking, his eyelids trembling. Jenny had spent a lot of time around babies; she knew that the ball turret gunner was nursing in his dreams. For a while she contemplated stealing a pacifier from maternity, but she stayed away from that place now; the jokes irritated her ("Here's Virgin Mary Jenny, swiping a phony nipple for her child. Who's the lucky father, Jenny?"). She watched Sergeant Garp suckle in his sleep and tried to imagine that his ultimate regression would be peaceful, that he would turn into his fetus phase and no longer breathe through his lungs; that his personality would blissfully separate, half of him turning to dreams of an egg, half of him to dreams of sperm. Finally, he simply wouldn't be anymore.

  It was almost like that. Garp's nursing phase became so severe that he seemed to wake up like a child on a four-hour feeding schedule; he even cried like a baby, his face scarlet, his eyes springing tears in an instant, and in an instant being pacified--by the radio, by Jenny's voice. Once, when she rubbed his back, he burped. Jenny burst into tears. She sat at his bedside wishing him a swift, painless journey back into the womb and beyond.

  If only his hands would heal, she thought. Then he could suck his thumb. When he woke from his suckling dreams, hungry to nurse, or so he imagined, Jenny would put her own finger to his mouth and let his lips tug at her. Though he had real, grown-up teeth, in his mind he was toothless and he never bit her. It was this observation that led Jenny, one night, to offer him her breast, where he sucked inexhaustibly and didn't seem to mind that there was nothing to be had there. Jenny thought that if he kept nursing at her, she would have milk; she felt such a firm tug in her womb, both maternal and sexual. Her feelings were so vivid--she believed for a while that she could possibly conceive a child simply by suckling the baby ball turret gunner.

  It was almost like that. But Gunner Garp was not all baby. One night, when he nursed at her, Jenny noticed he had an erection that lifted the sheet; with his clumsy, bandaged hands he fanned himself, yelping frustration while he wolfed at her breast. And so one night she helped him; with her cool, powdered hand she took hold of him. At her breast he stopped nursing, he just nuzzled her.

  "Ar," he moaned. He had lost the P.

  Once a Garp, then an Arp, now only an Ar; she knew he was dying. He had just one vowel and one consonant left.

  When he came, she felt his shot wet and hot in her hand. Under the sheet it smelled like a greenhouse in summer, absurdly fertile, growth gotten out of hand. You could plant anything there and it would blossom. Garp's sperm struck Jenny Fields that way: if you spilled a little in a greenhouse, babies would sprout out of the dirt.

  Jenny gave the matter twenty-four hours of thought.

  * * *

  --

  "Garp?" Jenny whispered.

  She unbuttoned the blouse of her dress and brought forth the breasts she had always considered too large. "Garp?" she whispered in his ear; his eyelids fluttered, his lips reached. Around them was a white shroud, a curtain on runners, which enclosed them in the ward. On one side of Garp was an External--a flame-thrower victim, slippery with salve, swaddled in gauze. He had no eyelids, so it appeared he was always watching, but he was blind. Jenny took off her sturdy nurse's shoes, unfastened her white stockings, stepped out of her dress. She touched her finger to Garp's lips.

  On the other side of Garp's white-shrouded bed was a Vital Organ patient on his way to becoming an Absentee. He had lost most of his lower intestine and his rectum; now a kidney was giving him trouble and his liver was driving him crazy. He had terrible nightmares that he was being forced to urinate an
d defecate, though this was ancient history for him. He was actually quite unaware when he did those things, and he did them through tubes into rubber bags. He groaned frequently and, unlike Garp, he groaned in whole words.

  "Shit," he groaned.

  "Garp?" Jenny whispered. She stepped out of her slip and her panties; she took off her bra and pulled back the sheet.

  "Christ," said the External, softly; his lips were blistered with burns.

  "Goddamn shit!" cried the Vital Organ man.

  "Garp," said Jenny Fields. She took hold of his erection and straddled him.

  "Aaa," said Garp. Even the r was gone. He was reduced to a vowel sound to express his joy or his sadness. "Aaa," he said, as Jenny drew him inside her and sat on him with all her weight.

  "Garp?" she asked. "Okay? Is that good, Garp?"

  "Good," he agreed, distinctly. But it was only a word from his wrecked memory, thrown clear for a moment when he came inside her. It was the first and last true word that Jenny Fields heard him speak: good. As he shrank and his vital stuff seeped from her, he was once again reduced to Aaa's; he closed his eyes and slept. When Jenny offered him her breast, he wasn't hungry.

  "God!" called the External, being very gentle with the d; his tongue had been burned, too.

  "Piss!" snarled the Vital Organ man.

  Jenny Fields washed Garp and herself with warm water and soap in a white enamel hospital bowl. She wasn't going to douche, of course, and she had no doubt that the magic had worked. She felt more receptive than prepared soil--the nourished earth--and she had felt Garp shoot up inside her as generously as a hose in summer (as if he could water a lawn).

  She never did it with him again. There was no reason. She didn't enjoy it. From time to time she helped him with her hand, and when he cried for it, she gave him her breast, but in a few weeks he had no more erections. When they took the bandages off his hands, they noticed that even the healing process seemed to be working in reverse; they wrapped him back up again. He lost all interest in nursing. His dreams struck Jenny as the dreams a fish might have. He was back in the womb, Jenny knew; he resumed a fetal position, tucked up small in the center of the bed. He made no sound at all. One morning Jenny watched him kick with his small, weak feet; she imagined she felt a kick inside. Though it was too soon for the real thing, she knew the real thing was on its way.