It was the middle of round two before Crump landed a blow to the blond boy. By this time he had been pummeled savagely, and the skin around his face was mottled with reddish-purple marks, as though he were the victim of an awful birthmark. The blond had delivered another vicious combination when Crump heaved out with a right cross that knocked the blond back a couple of steps and stood him up straight. He dropped his guard just a bit, and looked at Crump as if he were hurt: not physically hurt, exactly, but as if his feelings had been hurt because Crump had hit him so hard. His honest blue eyes began blinking rhythmically again, and he lay back in a kind of rocking motion with his knees slightly bent and his muscular tanned arms pressed close in to his sides. Crump bore in and let loose with a powerful left hook that the blond boy took on his glove before backing away, as though he now respected Crump more for the earlier punch.
Kahn was hollering for Crump with the rest. It was obvious everyone felt Crump had the upper hand now, that he had taken the blond boy’s best shots and remained unfazed, that it was only a matter of time. Kahn watched, fascinated. Crump—big, muscular, sinewy Crump; lean and mean Crump, the way the Army wanted them. Crump, pressing forward, taking the shots but holding on, the big punch, the killer blow—that was it.
Let the blond boy jab away, he wouldn’t last long; he was in a ring twenty feet square and there was no place to hide. And Crump was there, always coming at him, pressing, his big dumb face looking at him, the way the Seventh Cavalry would be, the way Bravo Company would be, pressing in on the gooks, the big punch, moving forward, mortars behind, big artillery behind that, pounding away, a line of Crumps charging in the way Patch had said, colors flying, moving forward, “Garryowen,” crush them with the power, the power that stemmed from the almighty righteousness, brushing aside gnatlike punches from blond beach boys or yellow-faced Communist zips.
SHIT! That was what all this was about; what they never really taught you, but you realized it on your own, without benefit of the “school solution”: that only America had the Crump-like boring-in stamina to see it through to the end . . . and he, Lieutenant Billy Kahn, and the Crumps and all the rest of them were going now to prove that point!
Kahn’s head was raised up now, craning to see what was going on in the ring, his heart beating faster at his revelations, and also from the half a pint of Scotch, and he was only faintly aware of the frantic screaming of the crowd.
The blond soldier was circling Crump like a rock ’n’ roll dancer, and Crump was standing bewildered in the center of the ring, his head guarded in the same funny way as before, the big gloves about his ears. The blond boy was hitting him at will, moving to his left, circling, lashing out against the side of the head, so that the right side of Crump’s face looked as if it had been horribly sunburned. Somehow the second round had passed without Kahn’s noticing it, and he wasn’t sure how far into the final round this was.
The referee, a sergeant from Third Battalion, was standing in a corner enjoying the spectacle. He had not stopped the fight because Crump was still on his feet and also because nobody had asked him to.
Occasionally, he cast a questioning look at Crump’s corner, where DiGeorgio was crouched frantically yelling at Crump to turn head on to the blond. But Crump, either because he could not hear or because he did not care at this point, simply continued, backing around half a step slower than the honest-eyed blond boy, taking a merciless beating on the right side of his face.
The blond, moving rhythmically, began circling in the opposite direction, hitting Crump whenever he felt like it, knocking him back against the ropes. The crowd was at the height of its passion. It was certain Crump was a goner.
DiGeorgio couldn’t stand it anymore. He suddenly leaped inside the ring, throwing himself between the blond and Crump, his hands high in the air with the sign of surrender, and it was over. The blond boy backed off astonished, still blinking, and the referee helped DiGeorgio and Spudhead get Crump from the ring. The crowd noise settled to a murmur.
Kahn felt let down. Not so much because of Crump, although he was sorry for him, but because his whiskey had failed him. There had been that fleeting moment when everything seemed to come into focus; but like Crump, it was gone now, and Kahn was simply a man alone in a crowd.
On top of part of the ship’s superstructure, behind the ring, sat gray-haired Major Dunn, his transoceanic radio beside him. Kahn considered going over and talking to him, but before he could make a decision, there was a loud roar from the crowd as Sharkey stepped into the ring, a green Army towel around his shoulders.
In the opposite corner, a tall, powerful-looking black soldier was making his way between the ropes, wearing nothing but his fatigue trousers, not even sneakers. Kahn hadn’t realized Sharkey was fighting next, and he suddenly felt uncomfortable that he hadn’t offered to second for him, although Donovan had. The black man was at least six inches taller than Sharkey, and he looked as if he could move.
Sharkey could have been chiseled from a sack of cement hardened in the rain. His squat body was so compact it looked as if it had been somehow jammed together from a previously respectable height into this badgerlike mass of muscle now unveiling itself from the towel.
Brill, who had been looking forward to this all night, was reminded of the running arguments he had had years ago over whether or not a lion could beat a tiger. This was going to be good, he thought. Brill suspected Sharkey was going to get the hell beat out of him, which was appealing because it would probably take some of the cockiness out of the sonofabitch. Even though Sharkey was one of the few officers in the company who took the time to talk to him, Brill sensed a kind of condescending attitude. There were times when he liked Sharkey and times when he didn’t, and this was one of the times he didn’t.
Groutman was still beside him, grinning wildly and offering to take “the nigger” for five dollars. Brill declined the bet, but would have taken it if he could have had the nigger himself.
When the bell rang, Brill worked his way forward, but he was not yelling with the rest of the crowd.
Sharkey met the black soldier in the center of the ring, his chin tucked down on his chest and his elbows bent in tight on either side of his navel. The black man struck out with a frantic combination of punches that rained down on Sharkey’s gloves, leaving him virtually untouched, and he waded inside the taller fighter, pounding away at his belly, while the black man, unable to move away, slapped him frantically on the back of the head. The referee stepped in and Sharkey backed off, his chin still down on his chest, looking up at his towering opponent like a man peering over spectacles. The black fighter’s stomach had changed color, to a sort of deep purple, and he stopped some of his dancing and began to backpedal as Sharkey stalked him around the ring.
Kahn was yelling with the rest for Sharkey, who seemed to be almost everybody’s favorite except those from the black fighter’s own company.
“Knock him on his ass, sir; that’s it, sir, don’t let him get away,” Trunk was bawling, jabbing Kahn in the ribs.
“You see that Lieutenant Sharkey, sir? He’s gonna whip that motha—that motha can’t hit him,” Trunk shouted.
The yelling around Kahn became a dull roar from far away. Curiously, what he sensed most of all was the gentle rolling of the transport, imperceptible to most, because everyone now compensated automatically by shifting his weight every so often from one leg to the other. The sky above was very starry, but the ocean around them was black so that it was impossible to see even the water as the ship churned on into the night.
Kahn had a feeling, although he had absolutely no scientific way of knowing it, that the transport was now passing over one of the deeps; that five or six miles below them the bottom of the sea was so still, so dark, so calm, except for the jagged mountains and rocks and crevices where nothing lived—nothing with a brain, anyway—that it was totally unknowing of what was happening here above: that a transport ship with two thousand armed men, some of them fighting each other
on the deck, was making its way across the chasm.
The right hand that stopped Sharkey was so fast only those on the edge of the ring saw it. It lashed out from the tall black soldier like a striking cobra, popping Sharkey’s head back the way a man’s head will pop back when it strikes a branch in the dark. It took several seconds for Sharkey to realize what had happened, that behind his mouth guard his front teeth had been smashed in by that mighty punch, which somehow was timed, accidentally or on purpose—he would never know—with the rolling of the ship. Both fighters backed away from each other for a moment; then Sharkey looked at the referee and raised his hand high into the air, realizing he could not continue this way.
As the referee held up the black man’s hand in victory, Kahn shoved his way toward Sharkey, who was stepping through the ropes, dripping blood from his broken mouth. He’d tongued the mouthpiece out gently, wondering what would come out with it. He knew that feeling no pain meant nothing now. The pain would come later, late at night in his bunk, and in the morning, but it was something he didn’t worry about now at all. His gums felt numb and mushy, as though they did not belong in his mouth anymore. Kahn caught Sharkey by the arm, and he and Donovan helped him through the crowd without speaking, and took him to his cabin.
Sharkey plopped down on his bottom bunk, his chest still heaving from the fight. Kahn went to his locker, took out a three-quarters-full bottle of the Cutty Sark and poured a glass full of it. Sharkey sat up and drank half of it down straightaway without a breather. He leaned on the edge of his bunk for nearly a minute, saying nothing, then went into the head and puked. Kahn was tempted to go in after him, but he sensed Sharkey preferred being alone. When he came out, Sharkey sat back down on the bunk and drank the rest of the Scotch in a gulp, swishing it in his bloody mouth an instant before swallowing, bulging out his big brown Jerry Colonna eyes and giving out a deep ahhhhhhhh.
“I shuda ta done difs,” he said with difficulty, feeling the smashed teeth tenderly with his fingers. “I mighta known thif would happen.”
“Ah, hell, what can you know—it was a lucky punch,” Kahn said.
“Yeaf, lucky—look at my goddamn teef. I gotta gem to a dentist,” Sharkey said painfully.
“We’ll be in Okinawa in two days. Take the bottle; just keep pouring, Shark,” Kahn said. “It was a lucky punch.”
The overhead lights in the nearly deserted troop quarters below cast a stark shadow on the floor of the dejected head of Pfc. Homer Crump, buried in his sore, bony hands. DiGeorgio and Spudhead Miter sat silently while Crump gurgled pathetic little sobs from the edge of his bunk.
“I tried,” Crump whimpered. “I couldn’t of tried no more.”
DiGeorgio and Spudhead exchanged glances each time Crump spoke. They had said everything they could say to make him feel better, and all they could do now was just stay here with him, although DiGeorgio thought he’d try one more time because he couldn’t stand to see Crump cry this way.
“You did the best you could, Crump; nobody could do no better than you did. The bastard was a pro—he wasn’t no amateur.”
“He wasn’t no pro—he just whipped me. He did it fair and square,” Crump said, raising his head for a moment.
“Look, Crump, you could’ve gotten him if they’d been more time—you had him in the second,” Spudhead injected.
“Shit, I know I did, I had him in the second. He was running away—he knew he was beat.”
“Hey, Crump, you want a Hershey Almond?” Spudhead asked brightly.
“Hell, no, I don’t want it. I don’t want nothin’. Just leave me be,” he said.
“Look, Crump,” DiGeorgio said, “we gonna be fighting fuckin’ gooks in a few weeks. Them bastards are gonna get their asses kicked. They gonna get the shit kicked outta them by us three. Screw that fight. In two weeks you’ll be laughing about that fuckin’ fight.”
“Hell I will, hell I will,” Crump said. “I shoulda beat him, beat him bad. I never lost a fight before—never lost one.”
“You didn’t lose that one tonight; you woulda had him down if there’d been more time,” Spudhead said.
“Yeah, that’s right,” DiGeorgio said. “If there’d been more time.”
13
The transport slipped in before dawn to the concrete piers of the Army Ship Terminal at Okinawa. Everyone knew they were to arrive sometime this day, but it didn’t occur to the men as they woke up that they might already be there. It took several minutes for someone to figure out that there was no rolling motion anymore, and no throb of engines. Practically everyone was on deck within minutes after they realized this, because they were excited to see land again. The transport would be here only a day, taking on fuel and supplies. Then it would steam out, and make a turn southward, two thousand more miles into the South China Sea and the land of the River Blindness.
Today they had been promised relief from the tedium of twenty days at sea. Provision had been made for their entertainment, and while most of them out of past experience did not expect much from it, they were nevertheless grateful for a chance to drink some beer and be on dry land again. The night before, Patch had announced over the loudspeaker system that they would be taken care of by the Okinawa Army Special Services people. Arrangements had been made for them to go to a local beach, where beer, box lunches and sports facilities would be provided. They could swim if they wished, in the nude, since the spot was remote.
From the deck of the ship the island was a pastiche of brilliant green, with darker, bluish-green hills in the background. It revealed no evidence of the bitter fighting two decades before.
“Jesus, the place is full of gooks,” said Madman Muntz, peering down at a cluster of brown-skinned Okinawans feverishly working on the docks.
“Yeah, lookit them shitheavers,” said DiGeorgio, who had joined Muntz and Spudhead and Sergeant Groutman at the rail. “Shit, I’ll bet they makin’ fifty cents an hour wrestlin’ those drums,” he said.
“Gooks ain’t worth fifty cents an hour,” Groutman said. “Gooks ain’t worth shit.”
Within an hour, brown military buses began taking the men off the transport. Officers and senior noncoms were permitted to go on their own, and when Bravo Company was put aboard the buses, the officers signed out and went down to wait in line for one of the tiny taxicabs standing at the dock. Kahn, Donovan, Inge and a lieutenant from Charlie Company went to the village of Nominui to find a bar. Brill joined Groutman to try to find a whore someone had told him about. Sharkey, headed for a dentist, got a lift up to Fort Buckner with Major Dunn, who wanted to try to call his wife, and Captain Thurlo, who had severe stomach pains.
The ride into Nominui took only a few minutes. They passed rice paddies and cane fields and lush bougainvillea and japonica and experienced a variety of smells that had not been smelled in weeks, and it was difficult to tell if they were smells peculiar to this part of the world or simply the normal smells of land. The trip would have been more comfortable had it not been for the bulk of ex-tackle Donovan squeezed into the tiny cab.
Kahn and his pals had been drinking in the Shan Wan Saloon since it had opened at 10:30 A.M. Before that, they had each gotten a bath and a hand job at the “Geisha House” two doors down. The Shan Wan was about as out-of-the-way a place as a man could find, without really trying hard to get lost, so when Sergeant Trunk came bursting through the cheap plywood doors shortly after 2 P.M., the five officers were completely astonished that he had found them.
“Lieutenant Kahn, I been looking for you for an hour. The Old Man wants to see you,” Trunk said.
“What about? Sit down, Sergeant,” said Kahn, motioning for Trunk to pull up a chair.
“Well, the Old Man wants to see you about Captain Thurlo, I think. Sergeant Major told me to find you because Captain Thurlo has got appendicitis and he’s gonna have to be operated on. It wasn’t no seasickness after all—or anyway, he’s got appendicitis now, ’cause he’s up in the hospital at Fort Buckner, and you gonna have to b
e the CO, sir, I think.”
Kahn said nothing. He looked dumbly at Sergeant Trunk. Inge and Donovan exchanged glances at the new development in the hierarchy, and the lieutenant from Charlie Company drained his beer.
“But that ain’t all, sir; there’s something else,” Trunk said, leaning his fat head across the table, breathing a tobacco breath.
“What else?”
“It’s about the men, sir. There’s . . . a problem.”
“What kind of problem?” Kahn asked.
“I think you ought to come with me, Lieutenant—it’s better if you see it yourself.”
“What is it, Trunk? Nothing’s happened, has it?”
“Oh no, sir, nothing’s happened; it’s just, ah . . . where they’ve got them,” Trunk said. “Sergeant Dreyfuss is outside with a cab. It won’t take long,” he said.
“Yeah, okay, Trunk.” Kahn polished off his beer. “Hey, you guys, let me know where you’re gonna be if you’re not here, okay? I’ll catch my part of the check later.”
The three of them got into the tiny Japanese-made taxi and Trunk directed the driver to the main beach road.
“What’s this all about, Trunk?” Kahn asked irritably as the cab flew past the last of the city along the coast road. He was still trying to absorb his apparent new standing.
“If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to wait and let you see for yourself. You gotta see the Old Man afterwards anyway.”
Fifteen minutes out of the city, the cab came to the first of the fenced-in compounds. It slowed, but Trunk motioned for the driver to go on. Inside the big chain-link fences, soldiers from the troop transport sat huddled in bunches, many of them with their fatigue blouses pulled up over their heads to keep out of the searing midday sun.
Better Times Than These Page 10
