by James Jones
In the closet Holmes made up his mind to go riding anyway, whether he wanted to or not, because to hell with it and he’d take a bottle. Under the unpleasantness he dreaded he grinned back at himself.
When he stepped out in fresh underwear the change in him was already apparent. The dejection and the guilt were gone and in their place was sureness. He had assumed the hangdog air of a synthetic plaintiveness that was his defense that always wrested victory from the acceptance of defeat.
Karen recognized the attitude. In the mirror she could see him in his underwear, massive, hairy, legs bowed grotesquely by so many hours on a horse—at Bliss he had been the captain of the polo team—and the thick black hair on his chest padding out the T shirt like excelsior a cushion. His face, heavy bearded, had that gross blue sensuality of a fecund priest, and the same proud-suffering air. He had only shaved below his collarline, and the black curls reached up to the shaved neck like living flames sucked up a flue. Her stomach flopped in her sickeningly, like a big fish slimy on the hook, at the sight of him who was her husband. She moved along the seat before the dressing table until she could no longer see his reflection.
“I saw Colonel Delbert this morning,” Holmes said. “He asked me if we were coming to General Hendrick’s party.” His big jaw set, watching her levelly, he moved over to where his image was before her in the mirror again, casually, as he was putting on the breeches.
Karen watched him do it, knowing what he was doing now, yet still unable to keep her nerves from jangling like a plucked guitar string.
“We’ll have to go,” he said. “Theres no way out of it. Also, his wife is having another tea; I got you out of that.”
“You can get me out of the other, too,” Karen said, but her tone had lost its commanding air and was half-hearted. “If you want to go, go by yourself.”
“I cant keep on going by myself forever,” Holmes said plaintively.
“You can if you tell them I’m sick, which will be the truth. Let them think I’m an invalid, I’m near enough to make it ethical.”
“Simmons has been shipped down from football,” he said. “That leaves a majority open. The Old Man told me about it, then asked if you werent coming to the party.”
“The last time I went to a party where he was, you remember, I came home with my gown torn nearly off.”
“He was a little tight,” Holmes said. “He didnt really mean anything by it.”
“I hope not,” Karen said thinly. “If I wanted a man to sleep with I’d pick a man, not that beery tub of guts.”
“I’m serious,” Holmes said, transferring the insignia from the dirty shirt to the clean one. “Your being nice to him might mean all the difference now, since this Simmons thing has opened up.”
“I’ve helped you with your work all I can,” she said. “You know I have. I’ve gone to parties I’ve hated. Its been my part of the bargain, to play the loving wife. But the one thing I wont do is sleep with Colonel Delbert for you.”
“Nobody wants you to. All I’m asking is that you be decent to him.”
“You cant be decent with a lecherous old roue. It makes me physically sick.” Unconsciously, she picked up the brush and began to brush her hair again, distractedly.
“A majority is worth getting physically sick over,” Holmes said, pleadingly. “A man with a majority now, if he graduated from the Point, will be a General officer when this war thats coming ends. All you have to do is smile and listen to him talk about his grandfather.”
“A smile, to him, is only an invitation to put his hands between your legs. He’s got a wife. Why doesnt he take it out on her?”
“Yes,” Holmes said tautly. “Why doesnt he?”
Karen winced before the accusation, even knowing it was purely theoretical. Before this melancholy suffering-lover role the nerve ends of her body vibrated shatteringly.
“It was your part of our agreement,” Holmes said sadly.
“All right,” she said. “All right. I’ll go. There I said it, now lets talk about something else.”
“What are we having for lunch?” Holmes said. “I’m hungry, hungry as hell. I’ve had one hell of a day, listening to Delbert. He can talk your leg off. Then having to argue half the morning with the kitchen force, and this new transfer Prewitt.” He looked at her closely. “It completely exhausts me nervously.”
She waited until he finished. “You know this is the maid’s day off.”
Holmes’s eyes crinkled painfully. “Is it? By god! What is today? Thursday? I thought today was Wednesday.” He looked hopefully at his watch, then shrugged. “Well, its too late to go up to the Club now. Wouldnt I do it though?”
Karen, feeling him watching her closely, tried to go on brushing to escape the sense of guilt because she was not offering to fix a lunch for him. He never ate lunch at home and it was not in her part of the bargain they had made, yet still he was making her feel like a heartless criminal.
“I guess I’ll just have to catch one of those lousy sandwiches at the PX,” Holmes said resignedly. He fidgeted around for a minute and sat down on the bed. “What do you eat for lunch?” he said with the air of one who shamefacedly makes a great imposition.
“I usually just fix soup for myself,” Karen said, breathing deeply.
“Oh,” he said. “You know I dont eat soup.”
“You asked me, didnt you?” she said, trying to keep her voice from going higher. “I fix myself soup. Why should I lie?”
Holmes got up hastily. “Now, darling,” he said. “Now take it easy. I’ll just go on over to the PX. I dont mind. You know what it does to you to get upset. You just cant stand it. You’ll have yourself sick in bed.”
“Theres nothing wrong with me,” she protested. “I’m no bedfast invalid,” thinking how he had no right to use that word with her, to call her darling. He always did it, in these spells, and the word was like a skewer pinning her to the beaverboard among the other butterflies of his collection. In her imagination she saw herself rising up, telling him what she thought of him, packing a bag and leaving, to live her own life and earn her own way. She would get a job and an apartment someplace. What kind of a job? she asked herself. In your physical condition what can you do? what training have you? Besides to be a wife.
“You know your nerves arent strong, darling,” Holmes was saying. “Just quiet down now and take it easy. Just relax.” He walked over and put his hands soothingly on her shoulders, gripping them affectionately and lightly, and looking solicitously into her eyes in the mirror.
Karen felt them on her, holding her down, tying her down, as her life was tied down, and she had the same sensation she remembered having as a child when out in the woods she had caught her dress on the barbs of a wire fence, and she had lunged and plunged and pulled until she got loose leaving half her dress behind, even though her mother was coming all the time to help her.
“Thats it, relax,” Holmes smiled. “Now you just fix yourself lunch the way you would if I wasnt here and I’ll eat whatever you have for yourself. Now. Hows that?”
“I can fix you a toasted cheese sandwich,” Karen said weakly.
“No,” he smiled. “No sir. I’ll eat what you eat.”
“It wont take but a minute.”
“No,” he said. “Theres no sense in you working yourself up over such a silly thing as lunch, and I wont let you.” His eyes crinkled up along the white sunburnt lines. “I tell you what. Have we got any meat around? I believe I’ll fix myself a meat sandwich. Fix it myself and you just forget I’m here.”
“We havent any meat,” Karen said desperately. “This is the maid’s day off. I wasnt going out to shop until this afternoon.”
“Oh,” Holmes said.
“But I’ll fix the toasted cheese for you,” she said.
“Okay,” he smiled. “Cheese will be fine.”
He followed her out to the kitchen and while she got the lunch ready, sat at the kitchen table following her with his eyes. When she measured
out the coffee, his eyes watched her solicitously. When she greased the skillet and set it on the burner, his eyes watched her, carefully protecting. Karen prided herself on her cooking, it was her only art and she had learned to do it well and with the least amount of wasted time and motion. But now, for some reason, she forgot about the coffee, and it boiled over. When she grabbed up the pot she burnt her hand.
Holmes jumped up with magnificent speed and grabbed a dishtowel to wipe up the stove. “Now, now,” he said. “Just forget it. I’ll clean it up. You sit down. You’re worn out.”
Karen put her hands up to her face. “No, I’m not,” she said. “Just let me fix it. I’m sorry I boiled it. I can fix it all right. Please. Let me fix it.”
It was then she smelled the smoke. She caught the cheese sandwich just in time to keep it from burning. It was black on one side.
“Thats all right,” Holmes smiled bravely. “Now just forget it, darling. I dont want you to get upset. This is perfectly all right.”
“Let me scrape it for you,” Karen said.
“No, no. Its perfectly all right like this. This is good. It really is.”
He chomped on the sandwich to show how fine it was. He ate it with gusto. He did not drink any coffee.
“I’ll catch a cup at the PX,” he smiled. “I have to go back over to the Company to sign some papers anyway. You go in and lie down and get some rest. It was really a fine lunch, truly it was.”
Karen stood in the screendoor watching him go down the alley. After he was gone she went back in the bedroom. She put her hands down at her sides and forced herself to relax them. She coughed once or twice, rackingly, but she did not cry. She made herself breathe deeply. She relaxed her muscles, but the nerves inside them went on fluttering frantically.
Furtively, as if it had an intelligence of its own, her hand moved up to her stomach and touched the ridge of scar tissue, and the horror she held of her own body, of the pusiness, of the cheesy degenerations, began to rise up queasily. The grape torn open and the seed plucked out, withering before it ever came to fruition.
That isnt so, she told herself, you know it isnt so. You’ve borne his heir for him, who can say your life is fruitless? How can you be fruitless? You’ve been a mother, haven’t you?
There must be more, there must be, something told her, someplace, somewhere, there must be another reason, above, beyond, somewhere another Equation beside this virgin + marriage + motherhood + grandmotherhood = honor, justification, death. There must be another language, forgotten unheard unspoken, than the owning of an American’s Homey Kitchen complete with dinette, breakfast nook, and fluorescent lighting.
Among the broken bathroom fixtures and the sticky brightly colored rainwashed labels on the emptied cans, Karen Holmes was searching through the city dump of civilization, desperately hunting for her life, and the muck she got upon her fingers didnt matter.
There was so much of it already, Karen felt, upon her.
Chapter 7
PREWITT WAS SITTING on his bunk waiting for chow, playing solitaire to forget the sense of strangeness, when Anderson and Clark, the G Company buglers, came in the big unsympathetic squadroom. He had carted his stuff over from A Company and stowed it, made up the bare mattress into a precisely square-cornered bunk, arranged his uniforms in the wall locker, rolled a neat combat pack and old timer’s envelope roll, set his shoes and foot locker on the stand, and he was home. He had put on a clean suit of tailormade blue fatigues and sat down with the cards. In less than half an hour he had accomplished what it would have taken a recruit like Maggio doubtful hours to accomplish, but it had been unpleasant and he did not feel satisfied. It was always unpleasant, moving like this; it always brought home to you the essential rootlessness of yourself and all men like you, always on the move, never really stopping anywhere, never really home. But you could forget anything with solitaire, for a while at least; solitaire was the game of exiles.
Prewitt knew the G Company buglers by sight. He put down his cards and watched them cross the squadroom. He had seen and listened to them playing their guitars evenings around the quad; they were much better on the guitars than they were on the bugle. . . .
The instinctive judgment swept him with the air and atmosphere of the Corps and he felt a sudden wave of unbearable homesickness. The smell of the ball diamond bleachers during the morning drill period with the sun shining brightly on the weathered wood. The heavy bleats from the different-pitched bugles, drifting up to the golf course on the wind, rolling metallically into the edge of the woods. The many bugles conflicting, the calls begun in confidence and then left hanging doubtfully unfinished. And now and then the rare well-executed phrase, rising over all, sharp, insistent, catching the moment and the mood and carrying them to distant unseen ears. He felt a hunger for the acrid smell of metal polish that hung about his bugle as he played.
Almost enviously he watched the two men pass between the rows of bunks. It was eleven and the Corps had been dismissed. They were through for the day. It was a standing joke in the Corps about the way these two watched the clock. They were always the first to leave the bleachers and sprinted back to the barracks so they could have an hour alone to practice before the Company came in from drill.
But bugling meant nothing to them, except as a means to escape straight duty and to get more time to practice on guitars. They wanted to play guitars, but there were no chairs for guitars in the Regimental Band. These two possessed the things that Prewitt valued, but they wanted something else instead. It seemed the very fact they did not want what they had led life to conspire to help them keep it; and he who loved to bugle had to give it up because he loved it. It was not right.
Anderson stopped when he saw Prewitt. He seemed to be debating whether to go on or to go back out. He made up his mind, and passed by without speaking, his deepset eyes sullenly on the floor. Clark stopped when Anderson stopped and looked at his mentor to see what he would do. When Anderson went on he followed, but he could not disregard Prewitt’s eyes. He nodded embarrassedly, his long Italian nose almost hiding his shy smile.
They dragged out their guitars and began to play furiously, as if by putting their souls into it they could dispel the alien presence. After a while their playing tapered off and finally stopped and they looked in Prewitt’s direction. Then they went into a huddle.
Listening to them play Prewitt realized for the first time how good they really were. He had never paid much attention to them before but being in their Company suddenly made him aware of them as individuals. Even their faces were subtly changed, were the faces of different men, no longer indistinct. It was a thing he had noted before: how you could live beside a man for years and have no positive picture of him, until you were suddenly thrown into his company to find that he was not just a vague personality but an individual with an individual’s life.
Anderson and Clark came out of their huddle and put their guitars away. They passed by Prewitt again, without speaking, and went on into the latrine at the end of the porch. They were deliberately avoiding him. Prewitt lit a tailormade cigaret and stared at it impassively, acutely aware of being the stranger.
He was sorry they had stopped playing. They played his kind of songs—blues songs, and hillbilly music—the kind of music the ex-bums and field laborers and factory workers who had tried to escape their barren lives by enlisting in the Army understood and always played. Prewitt picked up his cards and started to deal himself a new game when he heard the two guitar players walking back down the porch toward the stairs.
“What the hell you think?” part of Anderson’s indignant protest came through the open door. “The best goddam bugler in the Regiment for Chrisake!”
“Yeah, but he wouldnt . . .” Clark said perplexedly; the rest was only a mumble as they passed beyond the door.
Prewitt dropped his cards and threw the cigaret to the floor. He moved swiftly and caught them on the stairs.
“Come back here,” he said.
&nbs
p; Anderson’s head, amputated by the floor level, turned to face him with consternation, a balloon in suspension. The ominous insistence made his legs carry him back up the stairs before his mind had decided what to do. Clark tagged reluctantly along after his mental guide, without choice.
Prewitt wasted no time on preliminaries. “I dont want your goddamned job,” he said in a low white voice. “If I’d wanted to bugle I’d of stayed right where I was. Its a cinch I wouldnt come here and cut you out of your stinkin little job.”
Anderson shifted his feet evasively. “Well,” he said uneasily, without meeting Prewitt’s eyes, “you’re good enough you could get my job any time you wanted.”
“I know it,” Prewitt said. A white wall of anger descended over his eyes like the polar icecap descending over the globe. “But I never check a cinch into nobody—outside of a game. I dont play that way, see? If I wanted the goddam job, I wouldnt sneak in here and cutthroat you out of it.”
“Okay,” Anderson said placatingly. “Okay, Prew. Take it easy.”
“Dont call me Prew.”
Clark stood silently by, grinning embarrassedly, his soft eyes wide, looking from one to the other like the spectator at a wreck who watches a man bleed to death because he doesnt know what he should do and fears making a fool of himself.
Prewitt had meant to say that Holmes had offered him the job and he had turned it down, but some look in Anderson’s eyes touched his mind and made him hold it back.
“Nobody likes to do straight duty,” Anderson said lamely; you never could tell about a fireball like Prewitt. “I know I aint as good as you are when you played a Taps at Arlington. You could get my job easy, and it wouldnt be a square thing.” It ended up in the air as if unfinished.
“I dont want you to get down sick,” Prewitt said. “You can quit worrying about it now.”