by James Jones
“Yas,” Pete said, “you sure take a beating, dont you?”
“Sure. Even Mazzioli tells me how to run my orderly room. Come on, lets get out of this. What time is it?”
“Eight o’clock. But what for? I’m just beginning to enjoy myself,” Pete protested.
“Sure. And we hang around here any more you’ll be crying in your goddam beer.”
“But you dont understand,” Pete said, his great emotion coming back. “The things I’ve seen, the things I’ve done. All of them gone. All of them not any more.”
“Sure,” Warden said, “sure, I know. Come on, for Christ sake. Come on. I cant stand it. You’re killing me.”
“But you dont understand,” Pete said. “Where’ll we go?”
“Go out front,” Warden said. He led the way out of the kitchen and around to the front of the restaurant so no one would see them coming out because it was against regulations.
It was not the same now any more, you could do it all, the same as you use to do it, but it was not the same.
Chief Choate was at his corner table and they sat down with him, ordering more beer. Pretty soon they were joined by the K Company topkick who had just quit a little bit ahead of O’Hayer’s game, making the four of them a tight little group of old timers in the smoky room that was crowded with the yelling singing horseplay of the youngsters, amongst whom they sat quietly upon their dignity and talked about the Old Army. Chief retold his story of the time he was on guard duty in PI and caught a black gook going down on the colonel’s wife in a calash parked along the road on his post, in a much-more-than-embarrassing position.
“Did you see it?” Warden said. “Did you see it? or did you just suspect it?”
“I seen it,” the Chief insisted with his ponderous calm. “You think I’d make it up? A thing like that?”
“Hell, I dont know,” Warden said, twisting the big shoulders irritably, looking around the room. “How the hell do I know? What do you say we get some pitchers and adjourn to the green? This goddam place gives me the willies.”
All of them looked at The Chief for agreement, since this was his table and he rarely left it.
“Its okay by me,” The Chief said. “I dont like it much in here myself on Payday.”
“I dont believe it,” Warden said, as they went out in the sallyport. “You probably heard that story someplace, from some bastard’s perverted imagination and just picked it up, thats all.”
“I dont give a damn what you believe,” The Chief said. “I know what I seen. Whats eating you?”
“Nothings eating me. What makes you think somethings eating me?”
The Chief shrugged. “This is better out here,” he said. “A lot nicer.”
And it was nicer, as they sat down cross legged on the sparse grass around the pitchers they had brought out. The air was very clear to breathe and good to see through after the deafening confusion and tobacco smoke of Choy’s. The quad was dotted with parties of beer drinkers but their conversation made a pleasant insect-like hum out here that was no longer deafening. Now and then a laugh would ring up sharp and clear out of the hum and the stars seemed to be winking at all of them over each other’s shoulder. The fights that kept breaking out out here on the green were removed from them and remote, instead of being in their laps. The large warm semi-tropic moon was just coming out, dimming the stars around it, making the clear air golden with a tangible pulsating life, painting new stark shadows on the ground in the perspectiveless planes and angles of a cubist.
Pete and The Chief launched into an argument over the respective merits of PI and the Panama Department, enumerating advantages and disadvantages and weighing them against each other.
“And I served in both of them,” The Chief summed up stolidly. “So I ought to know.”
Pete was definitely hampered because he had not been in PI.
“China,” the K Co top said. “China’s the place thats got them all beat. Aint that right, Milt? Your money’s worth ten, twelve times as much. In their rate of exchange. A private lives like a general, in China. I’m gunna ship over for China as soon as my time’s up in this rotten Pineapple Army. Aint that right, Milt? You served in China, you tell them.”
Warden was lying leaning on his elbow watching the moon ascend and looking at the lighted screens along the faces of the barracks; there were few shadows moving along the porches this night. He stirred.
“Ah, whats the difference? They all the ferkin same. Five cents of one, a nickel of the other.” He sat up and locked his elbows around his knees. “You bums make me sick. Always wishin you was someplace else then where you are. Always re-enlisting for a new place you aint been in, always changing, always disgusted with it after the first year.
“Anyway,” he said, “there wont be no China next year when your time is up. You’ll have to re-enlist for Japan.”
He lay back down and crossed his arms behind his head. “I knew a White Russian girl in Shanghai, though. Thats the only thing about China. Theres lots of them there. She was some kind of a duchess or princess. A countess, I think she was. Had blonde hair down to her crotch. Boy, she was beautiful. By god. The most beautiful woman I ever seen. And hot. The hottest woman I ever seen too. I should of married the bitch, I guess.”
“Oh-oh,” Pete winked at the others. “Here we go again.”
Warden sat up. “All right, goddam you. I dont give a damn whether you believe it or not. Her old man was a Rusky, got killed with the stinking 27th in Siberia, fighting the Reds. The 27th U.S. Infantry Russian Wolfhounds. Ever hear of them, you smug bastard? Your next-door neighbors, is all they are. You dont believe me, I’ll take you over there and prove it by Master Sergeant Fisel. He knew her old man.”
“I know,” Pete grinned. “I know. Have another drink and tell us all about it. Again.”
“Go to hell, you son of a bitch.”
“Theres the bugler,” The Chief said, and they all stopped talking then and turned to look at the corner of the quad where the guard bugler was raising his horn to the big megaphone to sound Tattoo. Sharply, insistently, he blew the complex notes of Lights Out. The four men lay quiet and absorbed until he had finished, blowing the traditional first and repeat, once to one side, then swinging the megaphone and pouring it out to the north against the 3rd Battalion. One by one the lights in the squadrooms around the quad went out.
“Well, thats it,” the K Co top said, completely inexpressively, unable to put this solid foundation stone in words. “That boy sure cant touch that Prewitt kid though,” he said. “Was you out here the other night he played the Taps? I swear sure as hell I thought I was gonna bawl. Its a shame that boy cant be playin one all the time.”
“Yeah, I heard him,” The Chief said. “He’s had a raw deal, that kid. All the way around.”
“He’s gettin a worse one now,” Pete said. “He’s gettin a real beating now.”
They all of them watched the guard bugler depart, watching him inexpressively, looking at him inarticulately, seeing in him this fatality of which they were aware but powerless to influence, this that was more than men, an irresistible cosmic force of some kind that defied isolation.
“Well,” the K Co top said, getting up, “I think I’ll take a quick run over to Big Sue’s and back. I got work to do tomorrow.”
“I’ll go with you,” Pete said. “Loan me five, Milt.”
“Sure,” Warden said. “At twenty percent.” All of them laughed. Warden got up holding a full pitcher of beer.
“Fooled you,” Pete said. “I got money. Come on and go along?”
“Hell, no,” Warden said contemptuously. “When I have to buy it, I quit.”
“Well, I’m going,” said the K Co top.
“You want to go, Chief?” Pete said.
“Yeah I might as well,” Choate said. He heaved his great bulk up. “Come on and go, Milt.”
“No. I told you when I have to buy it, I quit.”
“Ah, come on,” Pete said.
He took the full pitcher of beer between his hands and heaved it high into the air over a steel manhole cover in the grass. The beer slopped out in a spray as it fell, and the other three men scattered. Warden stood still, watching the pitcher fall straight like a plummet from star to star, the beer splattering on his uniform and upturned face in tiny drops.
“Whoops!” he yelled as the pitcher smashed on the manhole cover sending a big spray over him.
“You crazy bastard,” said the K Co top. “We could of took it in the cab with us.”
Warden rubbed his wet palms into his beerwet face. “Leave me alone,” he said muffledly from between the vigorously rubbing palms. “Why dont you leave me alone? Get the hell out and leave me alone.”
He turned and walked away from them toward the barracks to shower and get dressed in the dark, to go to town and meet Karen Holmes at the Moana.
Chapter 22
WARDEN WORE HIS comparatively new tan suit of Forstmann tropical worsted with the saddle-stitched lapels that had cost him $120 tourist prices, and that he saved for great occasions. But all the way into town he was furious with himself for coming. His hand hurt him and was swollen fatly and that also was her fault. He wished furiously he had stayed with Pete and the guys, forgetting how miserable he had been with them. He wished furiously he had left her and the rest of these middle-class society women to the gigolos who were neurotic enough themselves to be able to understand them. He wished furiously a lot of things. Once he even wished furiously he was dead and in hell. He knew then that he was in love.
When the cab stopped he went straight across to the Black Cat to buy a bottle in the package store and while he was there had several angry drinks at the bar, before he finally walked furiously over to King to catch furiously the Kalakaua Avenue bus that went furiously to Waikiki. Oh he was in love all right. Was in love for sure. And might as well admit it.
By the time he got off the bus in front of the Waikiki Tavern the whiskey on top of all that beer back at the Post had hit him like a hammer and he was not only in love but was also half drunk and spoiling for a fight. But he didnt find any fights. Everybody was too happy. Waikiki was Payday-crowded and even the civilian people’s faces showed they were under the spell of the bars-down festivity.
He walked furiously up past the crowded Tavern to where the beach came in almost to the street to form the little triangle of sand they labeled Kuhio Park where the green benches sat amongst the palm trees in the sand, and where he was meeting Karen Holmes. Kuhio Park was also crowded, and soldiers in civilians and sailors in uniform walked back and forth across it and sat on the benches, with or without women, mostly without. He did not expect her to be there.
She was there all right, though. In the midst of all this champing maleness she was sitting reluctantly on one of the most secluded benches trying hard not to see it, any of it. She sat with her ankles crossed primly and her hands folded primly in her lap and with her elbows and shoulders pulled in tensely primly to her sides. She was there all right all right. And she stared perpetually out over the darkling water with her upper lip between her teeth as if trying to be someplace else. He thought he saw the tensed prim shoulders heave up several times as if in heavy sighs. He walked over to her.
“Why hello,” she said lightly. “I didnt think you were coming.”
“Why not? I aint late.” He felt awkward and constrained and sullen and just a little bit tight and very angry. This was not the debonair way a man should act when having an affair with a married woman, he had had other married women, hadnt he? when he first hit this Rock as a p v t he had worked nights as a deckhand on one of the Ala Moana boats that made moonlight cruises to Molokai for the tourists and he had had all the married women he could take care of then, but of course though, he was not in love with them.
“Oh,” she said lightly, “I just couldnt see any reason why you should. After all, I did sort of coerce you into making the date. Didnt I?”
“No,” he lied.
“Yes I did, you know I did.”
“I wouldnt of come if I dint want to, would I?”
“No,” she agreed. “You see?” she said lightly. “Thats the same question I’ve been sitting here asking myself for the last half hour. But then I came too early, didnt I? I must have been over anxious. You werent over anxious though, were you? You got here right on the dot.”
“Whats eating you?” Warden said, looking at and not liking the tensed primness she was still sitting in. “Relax, why dont you? Take it easy.”
“Oh,” she said, “I’m completely relaxed. Its just that I’ve had five chances to be picked up in the past half hour, before you came.”
“Is that whats bothering you? Hell, thats nothing, thats SOP around here.”
“One of the offers,” Karen said lightly, “was from a woman.”
“A big tall wide-shouldered dyed-blonde woman?”
“Why, yes,” Karen said. “Do you know her?”
“If you mean is she a personal friend of mine, the answer’s no.”
“Oh,” Karen said. “Well, I only wondered.”
“Well dont wonder. I know of her. Every dogface knows of her. She hangs around here all the time and tries to pick them up. The doggies call her The Virgin of Waikiki. Does that satisfy you?”
“You certainly picked a savory spot for our love tryst, darling,” Karen said.
“I picked it because there was less chance of being seen by somebody you know. Would you rather of met me in the cocktail lounge of the Royal?”
“I dont think so,” Karen smiled lightly. “But you must remember I’m rather new at this sort of thing, darling. All this stealthy secretiveness as if we were doing something sinful. All this having to sneak around corners. All this back alley loving.”
“You’re beginning to sound like the local president of the PTA,” Warden said. “You got any better ideas how to work it?”
“No,” Karen said lightly. “No, I havent.” She looked back at the softly breathing water and took her Up between her teeth again. “You dont have to be gallant with me, Milt,” she said. “If you’re bored already, or tired, why just say so. Just come right out and say so, it wont hurt my feelings, really it wont, darling. I understand about men getting tired quickly.” She loosed her lip and smiled up at him painfully lightly, obviously waiting for the protest.
“What the hell makes you think I want to back out of anything?”
“Because you probably think I am a whore,” she said succinctly, and looked up at him and waited.
He could see he was expected to protest this too and tell her no, but he was looking at the battered husky face of Maylon Stark hanging amorphously on the palm tree, Stark was very masculine she probably cozily enjoyed it a lot with Stark, and he was having all he could do to keep from banging up his other hand.
“What makes you think I’d think you were a whore?” he asked, knowing it was the wrong answer.
Karen laughed, her face curling up suddenly—he thought—with all the sweet prim terrorism of a well-embalmed old maid.
“Why, Milt darling,” she smiled, “you mean you cant see it on my face? Other people see it. My five pickups must have seen it, and the woman surely saw it. The Virgin of Waikiki,” she said. “What a person is always shows on their face, you know; as a man thinketh so is he,” she quoted. “You dont really believe they’d try to pick up a decent woman?”
“Hell yes. They’d try to pick up any woman, and almost any man. Down here.”
“But even the room clerk at the Moana saw it, when I registered as Sgt & Mrs H L Martin. I could see it plainly on his face that he saw it.”
“For Christ’s sake,” Warden said, “he gets them like that all the time. Whats it to him? long as he gets his money? The tourist women who stay at the Halekulani and the Royal all bring their pickups to the Moano, and vice versa. Thats where the hotels get their biggest turnover.”
&nb
sp; “Well,” Karen said, “at least I know with whom I am classed now. I wonder what their husbands do, to pass the time?”
“How the hell should I know?” Warden said, gradually being forced back onto the defensive. “Hang around down town and smoke cigars and discuss business prospects for next year, I guess. What would you guess?”
Karen laughed. “I thought perhaps they might go to stags. In a private apartment upstairs in the Officers Club. Thats where mine goes.” She stood up primly. “Well, I guess its about time for me to be getting back home, isnt it?” she said.
“Isnt it?” she said lightly.
“Isnt it, Milt?” she said piercingly sweetly. “Isnt it time?”
Warden swallowed his gorge. He saw that if anybody swallowed their gorge it would have to be him, so he swallowed his. “Listen,” he said humbly. “What the hell started all this? I didnt start it, or if I did I didnt mean to.”
Karen looked at him and then she sat back down. She reached over and took his hand, the nearest one which was the left one. She smiled brimmingly at him through the half dark. “And I would let it all go to pot, wouldnt I? Because of my silly pride.
“I’m not very pleasant to be around, am I?” she said softly. “I wouldnt see why you’d love me. I’m not gay at all. You never see me gay and happy, do you? Sometimes I am gay though, when I’m feeling well, really I am. You’ll have to believe I’m gay sometimes. And I’ll try and be gay for you.”
“Here,” Warden said painfully. He handed her the bottle. “I brang you a present, lady.”
“Why, darling,” Karen said. “A bottle. I love it. Give it to me. I’ll drink it all up by myself.”
“Hey now,” he grinned, “wait a minute. I want a little.” He felt, foolishly, very near to crying, and over nothing.