by James Jones
The hardest thing, outside of not letting yourself go off too high when you get up there, was the first twenty minutes or so in the morning after you wake up. Before the first drink really takes hold. But you could outsmart that one by sleeping twice a day for four hours, instead of once a day for eight hours. By doing it that way you could still get the necessary sleep to maintain your health, and at the same time a couple extra drinks just before you hit the sack would last over till you woke up. Theres tricks to all trades.
But the hardest thing, he re-decided, the text of the sermon I have chosen today, was when you got up there just high enough, and the liquid magic began to warm through you and the low pressure area suddenly dissolved into fair weather and the sun suddenly got brighter and everything took on that new look, bright and clean-looking and sharply outlined in color, like after the world just been washed by a rain.
That was the hardest: to refrain and hold yourself back from going on any higher, no matter how much you want to. That was where they separated the sheep-drunkards from the goat-drunkards. That was where they told the men from the boys.
Prewitt reached for the bottle and glass on the floor happily, proud of his accomplishment and at peace with the whole world. It was time for another dose of your medicine. It was time for another Revival.
What day was this?
Ha! What the hell difference did it make? You got all the time in the world. You got years. He had seen members of the Canned Heat Brigade stay on a kick like this for years. But then they were really experts. One old guy, up in Seattle that time, and then he had met him in Indiana sixteen months later—just the same. And they didnt even have whiskey; all they had had was canned heat from Woolworth’s that they had to strain the alcohol out of the paraffin through a handkerchief and then strain the alky through a piece of stale bread.
With a sudden great optimism he suddenly believed that he might even actually break the world’s record. That same record that had remained in America ever since the Gay 90’s and the days of Diamond Jim Brady. There was a lot of history behind that record. They would put his name up on a bronze plaque on all the distilleries in Louisville, a mark for the world to see, that would remain forever a shining target to young hopefuls to shoot at. TO THE MEMORY OF ROBT E LEE PREWITT, HOLDER OF THE WORLD’S RECORD. The same identical championship record, that had been held in unbroken succession in American hands, for the last five or six generations. It was a great country, America; any guy could hold the world’s record, if he was good enough; that was why they always got all the records in America; there wasnt no getting around it it was a great country; and Jesse Owens beat Hitler in the Olympic Games; and they got the biggest oranges and grapefruits in the world. YOU ARE ENTERING MADISONVILLE KENTUCKY, the sign said, THE FINEST TOWN ON EARTH. It was the ony country on the face of the earth that used the shooting gunsling, as distinguished from the carrying gunsling; they had always had the best riflemen; they dint have to take nothing off nobody.
Oh, those goddam bastardly Germans.
He got up quickly and then walked vaguely across to go out on the porch but the blackout curtains were drawn so instead he went into the kitchen, and sat down there.
In the bedroom, behind the carefully locked door that Georgette always locked now every night, Georgette was saying:
“Well, I dont care what you say! Sooner or later something is going to crack. I’m a nervous wreck. He just cant go on like this indefinitely, Alma.”
They both of them knew it, but they did not either one know what to do about it. Because they had both already done everything they could either one think of. And in the end it was Prewitt himself who precipitated the transmogrification.
He found the article in the afternoon paper, on the afternoon of the eighth day. He had been reading the papers regularly again, if you could call running your eyes over the black marks on the white paper “reading,” but this item when he saw it was not black marks but words. It was a small item on a back page that told how on the morning of December 7th the guards at the Schofield Barracks Post Stockade had flung open the gates and turned the prisoners out to go back to their outfits.
The Warden’s remark about his chances—if the Japs or somebody bombed this Rock and they turned all the prisoners loose to go fight—had stuck in his mind like a dart thrown into a whirling board, and now it pulled everything else into a vortex of juxtaposition around it. The Warden had strained to think up the least likely possibility he could think of—and that was just exactly what happened!
It all quite suddenly became very reasonable. He could feel his mind crawling up out of the frozen mud and standing forth to look on the sun. All he had to do was get back to the Company without getting picked up. After he had hunted out the uniform, he got Alma’s .38 Special out of the desk and checked the cartridges in the cylinder and put some extras from the box in his pocket.
The last paragraph of the article had gone on to say that, since they had opened the gates on the 7th, there had been fewer new prisoners committed than during any other eight day period in the Stockade’s history. That was fine; he was all for it; but he was not going to be one of them. Not when all he had to do was get back to the Company. The MPs were not going to pick him up now.
After he had tucked the gun in his belt, he looked around for anything else of his valuable enough to take with him, because if he never saw this place again it would be too soon. But outside of the civilian clothes they had bought for him, there wasnt anything; except the one finished copy of The Re-enlistment Blues which he folded carefully and stuck in his notebook of book titles and buttoned down carefully into his breast pocket. Then he sat down to wait for them to come home.
And so it was that, when they came home from work on the evening of the eighth day, he was waiting for them eagerly in the living room, holding the afternoon paper impatiently. His eyes, though not what you could strictly call sober, were reasonably clear; and he had shaved, and bathed, and changed his clothes; he had even combed out his hair, which was getting quite long by this time.
They were both so surprised that they were inside the door and already sitting down, before they either one even noticed that the clean clothes he had put on happened to be his uniform. In the starched uniform, his face startlingly clean and shining, he looked boyishly hopeful and eager, beneath the puffiness under his eyes.
“If I’d had an ounce of goddamned sense,” he said happily, as he held out the paper, “I’d of gone back Sunday morning like I had a hunch to. Hell, if I’d gone right on out to the CP at Hanauma Bay I’d of probly got there before they did.”
Alma took the paper, and read it, and handed it on to Georgette.
“If I’d of left then,” he said, “I wouldnt of had any trouble at all getting back. Everything was so confused and so many guys were trying to get back that nobody would have noticed me. Now its going to be harder, but once I get back to the Compny under my own power and report in, I’m all right.”
“I see you’ve got my gun,” Alma said.
Georgette, who had finished reading the article, laid the paper down on the chair and got up without saying anything and went to draw the blackout curtains against the twilight outside.
“I dont think I’ll need it,” Prew said. “Its just a precaution. I’ll bring it back first time I get a pass. Well,” he said, on his way to the door. “I’ll see you all. You better turn out the lights when I go out.”
“But aren’t you going to wait until morning?” Alma said. “Its almost dark now.”
“Wait, hell,” Prewitt said. “The only reason I waited this long was to let you know where I went so you wouldnt wonder what happened to me.”
“Well, that was certainly considerate of you,” Alma said tightly.
“I figured I owed you that much,” he said.
“Yes,” Alma said, “I guess you owe me that much.”
With his hand on the knob he turned back from the door. “Hey, whats the matter? You sound like yo
u think I’m going away for ever. I may get compny punishment for a couple weeks, but soon as they let me have a pass I’ll be back up.”
“No you wont,” Alma said. “Because I wont be here. And neither will Georgette,” she added.
“Why not?”
“Because we’re going back to the States, thats why!” she said wildly.
“When?”
“We’re scheduled for a boat leaving January 6th.”
“Well,” he said, and took his hand off the knob. “How come?”
“Because we’re being evacuated!” Alma said recklessly.
“Well,” he said slowly, “then I’ll try and get back up before then.”
“‘I’ll try and get back up before then,’” she mimicked. “Is that all it means to you? You know god damned well you wont be able to get back up before then.”
“I might,” he said. “What the hell do you want me to do? stay here till you’re ready to leave? I’ve already stayed out over a week now. I stay much longer I wont be able to go back at all.”
“You could at least stay until morning. They’ll have patrols out all night,” she said, her voice beginning to crumble. “And theres a curfew at sundown.”
“They’ll have patrols out all day, too. As far as that goes, it’ll be easier to make it at night.”
“Maybe if you stayed till morning you’d change your mind,” she wept at him, openly and suddenly weeping, nakedly and without preparation in the same way a bullet is suddenly nakedly and without preparation in flight from a gun barrel.
Georgette, who had silently drawn all the blackout curtains, just as silently came down the steps from the glass doors and went up the steps into the kitchen.
“I dont think thats too much to ask,” Alma wept.
“Change my mind about what?” Prew said uncomfortably. “About going back? And what’ll I do when you ship out for the States? Jesus Christ!”
“Maybe I wouldnt go back,” Alma offered weepingly.
“Well, Jesus Christ!” he said fuddledly. His distaste and impatience were both frank in his voice. “I thought you had to go back.”
“No, I dont have to go back!” Alma yelled potently between weepings like an angry face thrust out between bars. “But if you walk out that door I sure as hell will go back!
“What do you want to go back to the Army for?” she cried, getting her breath. “What did the Army ever do for you? besides beat you up, and treat you like scum, and throw you in jail like a criminal? What do you want to go back to that for?”
“What do I want to go back for?” Prewitt said wonderingly. “I’m a soldier.”
“A soldier,” Alma said inarticulately. “A soldier!” Through the fast-drying tears on her face she began to laugh at hint wildly. “A soldier,” she said helplessly. “A Regular. From the Regular Army. A thirty-year-man.”
“Sure,” he said, grinning uncertainly like a man who does not get the joke, “a thirty-year-man.” Then he grinned genuinely. “With only twenty-four years to go.”
“Jesus!” Alma said. “Jesus! Jesus Christ!”
“Will you turn off the lights while I go out?” he said.
“I will,” Georgette said firmly, but gladly, from the steps to the kitchen. She came down then and went over to the switch by the blackout-curtained glass doors, and in the darkness he slipped the night lock and went out and closed the door after him.
Chapter 52
FROM OUTSIDE THE HOUSE looked full dark as if there was not a soul home. He stood a minute happily and looked back at it, still feeling a little drunk although he had not had a drink since around three o’clock, feeling free.
She would get over it in a couple days. He knew that. When he got a pass and came back up she would be as glad to see him as ever. He was not worried about her going back to the States.
One good thing about the Army. It kept you separated from your women so much they never had the chance to get sick of you. And vice versa.
After he had gone a block he stopped and took the pistol out of his belt and put it in his pants pocket. Then he went on. The pistol, and the shells in the other pocket, dragged at his thighs as he walked. The pistol especially was very bulky.
But if he put his hands in his pockets if they stopped him.
There was always the chance he could talk them out of it.
But no bunch of lousy MPs were going to take him in and keep him from getting back to the Company. He had made up his mind.
It would be best to follow Sierra down into Kaimuki. Wilhelmina was shorter. But most of the houses were close to the street on Sierra. So were their garages. And the yards were all terraced with brick or stone walls. There were more dark nooks and niches among the fairy tale houses of Sierra. He was not worried about after he got out of Kaimuki.
When he got out of Kaimuki he would cross Waialae Avenue and go over into the Waialae Golf Course.
The Waialae Golf Course was a strip of dull barren but slightly higher ground between the Highway and the beach, treeless and all sand hills and scrubgrass, which had never been good for anything else but a golf course. Where Waialae Avenue that ran through Kaimuki met Kealaolu Avenue it changed its name and became the Kalanianaole Highway to Makapuu Head, and the resulting triangle between the two avenues and the beach was the Waialae Golf Course. He knew the Waialae Golf Course like the back of his hand. They had used to meet a couple of gook maids on the 5th Tee every night, last year during maneuvers. Going through the golf course meant he would have to cross the Highway twice because at its eastern end the Highway narrowed in almost to the beach. But going through the golf course, which he knew, was worth the risk of crossing the Highway twice.
After that, the only hard thing was the causeway over the salt marsh clear out just this side of Koko Head. The causeway was about half a mile long and he would probly have to sprint it. But after that, it was made.
All the beach positions along here belonged to G Company and he could have turned in at any one of them. But he did not want to turn in to one of the beach positions. He wanted to turn in at the CP at Hanauma Bay. Under his own power.
The trip through the golf course was something like the wild loud nightmare of the long walk to Alma’s after Fatso had cut him. And it was something like the dreamy stillness of the stalk through Waikiki the night he had hunted Angelo Maggio drunkenly down Kalakaua. There was no sound except his breathing and the scuff of his shoes in the sand. Not a living soul moved anywhere in the blackness. He was completely alone in a world as soundproofed and as black as the inside of a coal mine. There was not a single light to be seen anywhere. No windows. No streetlights. No neon on the juke joints. Not even car headlights. Hawaii had gone to war. He was glad to be getting back.
Once, over on the Highway as he moved east he saw one patrol car with blue headlights rolling slowly west in the opposite direction. It excited him strangely. He stopped for a minute to watch it. He had been very careful when he crossed Waialae the first time. He had waited a long time and made very sure there was nothing on the Highway. Those blue headlights were supposed to be invisible from the air and maybe they were. But on the ground you could see them a mile away.
He was just as careful when he came up to the second crossing, near the end of the golf course. He was coming down from higher ground with no obstructions and he could see almost half a mile each way and there was not a blue light anywhere. So he did not stop. He just started on across. If there had been a patrol car with its light on anywhere within a mile he could have seen it easily.
What he could not have seen easily, if at all, was a patrol car with its lights off. But he was not expecting to see any patrol cars with their lights off. So he did not look for any.
It was sitting about thirty yards to the west of him in the middle of the Highway.
As he came up onto the shoulder and stepped out on to the asphalt it turned its lights on, the two blue headlights and one spot that was a much lighter blue, almost white. He saw it then
. He was caught square in the center of the beam. If he had crossed a hundred yards back or fifty yards further on, it might not have heard him, even though he was not trying to move quietly.
His first instinct was to run but he choked it off. It wouldnt have done any good anyway. He was almost in the middle of the Highway, with flat open ground on both sides of it. Besides, there was still always the chance he might talk them out of it, before he had to make the break.
“Halt!” a voice erupted at him nervously.
But he was already halted. It made him think of the night Warden had halted him, that time at Hickam Field, and he wanted to laugh wildly. Oh, the bastards, the bastards, the smart smug bastards. Sitting there with their lights off. Just when it was all going so good. They would have to pull a smart one like that.
The patrol car, it was a jeep, pulled up slowly and cautiously to within ten yards of him. There were four scared MPs in it; he could see their blue faces and the blue light reflecting from the white letters of their brassards. They all had helmets on. The one beside the driver was standing up staring at him over a Thompson gun above the windshield; he could see the bulge of the Cutts Comp on the muzzle.
“Who goes there?”
“A friend,” he said.
The two in the back, who doubtless considered the answer to be a stock reply to a stock question, were climbing out over the side reluctantly slowly. They were covering him with pistols.
“Advance, friend, and be recognized,” said the bigger one squeakily. Then he cleared his throat.
And he, Prewitt that is, the unrecognized friend, came toward them slowly. Thinking how now, for a split minute out of the time run, by a happenstance of smartness on their part and dumbness on his, they held it all in their hands. A thing that had started almost a year ago, with Chief Bugler Houston, and led up through Dynamite Holmes and the boxing into The Treatment and Ike Galovitch and from there to the Stockade and Jack Malloy and the late Fatso Judson, and a lot of other things both before and after, to finally here, where, for this split minute that was the current point of time in the line of time which was not a line but an infinite series of points, four strangers held it all in their hands without even knowing it.