by James Jones
“I want to know where you’ve been,” he said, as she came in.
“Hello,” Karen said gaily. “How come you’re not at the office?”
“I called them and got the morning off.”
“Wheres Bella?”
“I gave her the day off.”
Karen poured herself a cup of his coffee and sat down at the table with him.
“I bet that made her happy,” she said happily. “And so now, everything’s all prepared for the show.”
“I said, I want to know where you’ve been,” Holmes said. “And with whom.”
“But I told you all that yesterday, darling,” Karen said merrily. “I was saying good-by to a very dear friend.”
“Dont call me darling.”
“All right,” Karen said cheerfully. “It was figurative.”
“You didnt tell me anything yesterday.” Holmes’s eyes were like two frantically brilliant diamonds in the dried, cracked plaster of his face. “You didnt tell me where you were meeting him, and you didnt tell me who he was.”
“I didnt say it was a him,” Karen said.
“But it was. You think I havent known about it. But I’ve known about it all along. I even tried to ignore it, as long as I could. Until it got too flagrantly open. Now I want to know where you met him and just who he is.”
“I dont think thats any of your business,” Karen said.
“I’m your husband,” Holmes said. “It is my business.”
“Not it isnt. Its my business,” Karen said. “And no one else’s. You sound like a page right out of Hemingway.”
“Maybe I’ll make it my business.”
“No,” Karen said, “I dont think you will.”
“I suppose now you want a divorce.”
“I hadnt really thought about it. One way or the other.”
“Well, I wont give you one.”
Karen sipped her coffee. She could not remember having felt so happy, so zestful, so full of just plain healthy animal spirits, since before she was married.
“You hear me? I wont give you one.”
“All right,” Karen said agreeably.
Holmes looked at her, the frantic diamonds of his eyes sparkling at her desperately out of his plaster-paris face. Even in his acute distress, he could see she was not acting.
“Maybe I’ll get the divorce,” he said, trying a frontal attack.
“All right,” Karen said agreeably.
“We might as well settle it right now,” Holmes said. “I want to get this thing settled once and for all.”
“As far as I can see, its already settled. You’re going to get the divorce.”
“Ha,” Holmes said. “Yes, you’d love that, wouldnt you? Well, I’m not. I’m not giving you any divorce. And if you try to get one, I’ll fight you through every court in the land.”
“All right,” Karen said cheerfully. “Then I guess thats settled. No divorce.”
“How does it feel to know you’ll have to live with a horror like me the rest of your life?” Holmes said contortedly.
“Not very nice,” Karen said cheerfully. “But then, on the other hand, there is the compensation of knowing you’ll have to live with me the rest of your life, too.”
“God!” Holmes said agonizingly, “how can you be so cruel? How can you sit there and smile? After what you’ve done. Didnt your responsibilities mean anything to you? Didnt the years of your marriage mean anything? Didnt your own son, our son, mean a damn thing to you? Dont you feel any shame?”
“I dont seem to,” Karen said. “Not a bit. Its odd, isnt it?”
“Well, you ought to!”
“I know,” Karen said. “But I dont. Its terrible, isnt it?”
“Terrible?” Holmes exclaimed frenziedly. “A woman of your background? and upbringing? and breeding? A happily married woman with an eight year old son? And you call it terrible?”
“I cant understand it myself,” Karen said cheerfully.
Gradually, one by one, the inviolable spears of right-mindedness were breaking themselves against this undentable armor of cheerfulness.
“Dont you know what you’ve done to me?”
“What have I done to you?”
“You’ve ruined my marriage, is all. You’ve knocked the bottom out from under my whole life. You were my wife. I trusted you.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” Karen said. “I’m truly, genuinely, sorry. To have done that to you. But I guess it couldnt be helped.”
“Why do you think I’ve done all I have? All this,” Holmes said contortedly. He spread his arms.
“Done all what.”
“Why, worked my ass off with this goddamned miserable boxing squad that I’ve hated. Brownnosed with Col Delbert and Gen Slater. Degraded myself. Had my nose rubbed in it.”
“I dont know. Why.”
“Why; for you, thats why. Because you’re my wife, and I love you. For you and our son and our home, thats why.”
“I always thought you did it because you wanted to get ahead,” Karen said.
“But why does a man want to get ahead? Do you think its just because he wants money? and power?”
“I had thought so.”
“What good will money and power do a man? If he’s alone. A man tries to get ahead because of his wife and his sons. So he can give them the things he’s never had. So he can make life nice for them. So he can have a home. And a family.”
“I guess I just have no gratitude,” Karen said.
“Gratitude!” Holmes said desperately. “For God’s sake, Karen!”
“Perhaps I’m amoral,” Karen said cheerfully. “You know, like criminals?”
Somehow or other, without quite knowing how, the last spear gone, broken against the unbreechable armor, Holmes found himself on the defensive. He was pleading.
“Where would this country be? If all the wives felt like that?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Karen said. “In fact, I’ve never even considered the possibility.”
“A man hears about other men’s wives,” Holmes said. “But his own . . .”
“But you didnt think it could happen in your own home?”
“Happen!” Holmes said. “If anyone had told me it would happen in my home, I’d have killed them! I tried not to believe it. I told myself it wasnt true. As long as I possibly could.”
“But it has happened in your own home. Right?”
Holmes nodded dumbly. “I convinced myself it was all my imagination.”
“So it has to be dealt with. Right?”
“You dont know how a man feels,” Holmes said.
“No,” Karen said. “I suppose not.”
“Men dont feel like women do. About a thing like that. Women know it doesnt mean anything to a man. But it breaks a man all up, inside. It destroys his manhood.”
“I wonder why men feel so different from women?” Karen said.
“I dont know,” Holmes said miserably. “All I know is, they do.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Karen said cheerfully. “Its a lovely day out. I think I’ll go for a walk, then walk up to the Club and lunch by myself. I’m good and hungry. And then you’ll have time to decide before I get back.”
“Decide what?”
“What you’re going to do.”
“I’d rather you didnt go yet,” Holmes asked. “I’d like to get this whole thing settled up first.”
“I thought it was already settled.”
“Well, its not. You havent hardly said anything.”
“What is there for me to say?”
“I’m willing to forgive you,” Holmes said. “Tell me where you were, and who you were with. Make a clean breast of it. I’ll forgive you.”
“I’m sorry,” Karen said. “I’m afraid thats something you’ll never know.”
“You’ll have to tell me someday.”
“Why?”
“Well, you just will. After all, I’m your husband. You cant hide things from me forever.�
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“My God,” Karen said, grinning, “if you surely dont sound like a page out of Hemingway. I’m not going to hide anything from you. I’m just not going to tell you.
“I will tell you something else, though. I’ve deceived you before. Once. You never knew about it. And it is very likely I’ll deceive you again someday. One never knows. But I think you ought to know that before you decide anything. We’re going to have to change the terms of our agreement, you see.
“Now you just sit right there,” she said maternally, “and take it easy, and decide what you want to do. If you want to divorce me, all right. And if you dont thats all right, too. Whatever you decide is just fine.
“But Junior will be coming home from school for lunch in a few minutes now, and we dont want him to see us having a big scene, do we?”
“I’m hungry,” Holmes said dismally.
“Theres plenty of cold meat and stuff in the refrigerator,” Karen said. “And I’ll be back before dinner.”
“But what about Junior’s lunch?”
“Bella always fixes it right after breakfast and puts it in the refrigerator, remember?” she explained patiently. “Its all right in there on the plate. He knows where it is.”
“Well, do you care if I go up to the Club with you?” Holmes asked humbly.
“I’d rather go by myself. Its a lovely day out, and I want to enjoy it. Without having to talk over problems.”
“But we cant both go up to the Club and eat at separate tables,” Holmes protested.
“Then you can go over to the PX,” Karen said gently, but firmly. “If you dont want to fix yourself something here. I’ll tell you something,” she said from the door. “If you wont let the coffee boil in the pot, but just let it barely start to come to a boil, it wont be so bitter.”
“I’ll use the Silex,” Holmes said.
“All right,” Karen said solicitously. “I’ll see you later on then.”
She went on out the back door and down and out from under the big old trees into the summer-bright sunlight on Waianae Avenue. It was really a remarkably lovely day, and its lazy summery loveliness tingled all through her. She walked on along Waianae Avenue. Schofield Barracks was really a very lovely Post. There were anti-aircraft guns set up on the ball diamonds in sandbagged emplacements, and there was a lot of raw dirt around from the bomb shelters they were digging. But even all that was lovely. Everything was lovely. Everything was so lovely, in fact, that Karen felt with the right amount of balance and proportion and the proper timing of everything from now on, the proper savoring of every morsel, and no greediness, she actually believed she might keep it that way almost indefinitely.
Last night, when Milt came, she had been reading about Stendhal’s philosophy of happiness. It was not a moral philosophy; it was a very materialistic philosophy. Many people probably would not approve of it. Its only purpose was to deduce and plan ahead of time rationally, how to make life completely interesting and fully happy. The good thing about that Stendhal, he understood the very important place that misery and tragedy played in the making of a full happiness. She had never thought of that, any more than she had never thought of a philosophy constructed for the sole purpose of making life happy.
She felt she would never love another man. But if love was over, life need not be.
Suddenly, walking along Waianae Avenue, she began to cry, over the lovely anti-aircraft guns and the beautiful piles of raw dirt.
Major Holmes, staff G-3 of the —rd Brigade, sat on heavily at his kitchen table after his wife had gone out through his back door. Then he got up heavily and went to his refrigerator and got out the cold meat and fixed himself two sandwiches with mustard. He drank milk, instead of coffee.
He stacked up the dishes, and put the stuff away in the refrigerator, and brushed off the table. He washed and dried the dishes in the sink, and put them away. He emptied the overfull ashtray and washed and dried it. Then, when there was nothing left to do, he sat down at the table and smoked a cigaret.
The cigaret did not taste any better than the sandwiches and cold milk. Major Holmes detested cold milk; and he could not cook. He wished he had not given the maid the day off. As soon as Karen and the boy left for home, he could start eating at the Bachelor Officers’ Mess. That was only a couple of weeks off, only until January 6th.
He mashed the cigaret out in the clean ashtray before it was half finished and got up from his table and bolted out through his back door, away from his house. He was back to the safety of his office long before his son came home for his lunch.
Chapter 56
ON JANUARY 6TH Milt Warden was in town on pass. Maylon Stark went with him.
It was the first day that passes were issued to the troops of the Hawaiian Department since the Saturday night before Pearl Harbor, and at ten o’clock, in the morning a well-primed yowling horde of wild men from all around the 90-mile perimeter descended upon Honolulu like spokes descending upon a wheel hub and began to line up outside the bars and whorehouses until even the lines got entangled and men heading for the New Congress Hotel suddenly found themselves inside Wu Fat’s Restaurant four doors up the street ordering drinks. It stayed just about like that all day long until the curfew. It, and the two days following, were a sort of red letter day. Not a bartender in town will forget them. Neither will many of the madams who were there then. Even a few of the respectable people still remember it.
The pass order stated explicitly that no more than one-third of the complement of any installation might be absent at one time. For G Company on the beach it was a problem in distribution. G Company had fourteen beach positions. The commander of each position (more often a noncom than an officer) was ordered by Lt Ross to turn in the names of one-third of his men to go on pass. Warden was given charge of the passes for the CP personnel. Stark had charge of the passes for the kitchen force.
There was an unwritten law that a commander did not go on pass until his men were served, and since they could not go themselves, the noncom-commanders (who unlike officers were not above conniving with enlisted men) gleaned what they could and there was a great exchanging of handclasps, currency, souvenirs, and not a few of the almost-priceless too-swiftly-dwindling whiskey bottles changed hands on the eve of January 6th.
Honor forbade Warden and Stark to put their own names down on their pass lists, but Warden saw to it that they both got their passes anyway. He simply filled out two extra pass forms beyond the quota and had Lt Ross sign them. Nobody in the Company disputed his breach of etiquette, least of all Lt Ross. Lt Ross knew a good thing, once it had been pointed out to him. From the day he turned down his commission Warden had had G Company wrapped and tied and stamped with the Indian sign the way he used to kid himself he had it under Holmes, but hadnt.
Stark had a pint bottle he had milked out of the pass situation. They finished that off on the way in to town. They made their first stop at Charlie Chan’s Blue Chancre. The Blue Chancre was not as crowded as the better bars. There was no line outside on the sidewalk. At the Blue Chancre people only stood three deep at the bar. They had to drink six drinks standing in the press before they could get stools at the bar and start drinking in earnest.
“Ahhh,” Stark sighed, as they slid onto the stools. “My feet was made for hikin, not for standin up in no bars. Even a Fort Bliss payday night in Juarez aint this bad.”
“Herro, Walden! Herro, Stalk!” Charlie beamed. “Longtime no see. Him wondelful day, eh?”
“Yeah,” Warden said. “Fine day.”
“Such a fine day,” Stark said serenely, “that I feel like getting good and lousy drunk and beatin some loudmouth clean to death.”
“Stark, you’re a Texan,” Warden said. “Texans love their buddies, the State of Texas, and their mother. And they hate niggers, and Jews, and strangers, and immoral women—unless they happen to be screwing them.”
“Looks like we’re early,” Stark said. “Or else G Compny has dissolved its alliance with the Blue
Chancre Bar & Grille.”
“I can see through you like glass,” Warden said. “Hey, Rose!”
As a matter of fact, they were early; they had left the CP at five minutes after nine, instead of ten o’clock with the rest of them. The only familiar face in the place was Rose’s boy friend the S/Sgt of Artillery, sitting in the same back booth as if he’d never left it, this time with three buddies.
“Get dlunk,” Charlie beamed. “Evelybody get dlunk. Fine day. This one on me, boys.” He nodded at them beaming sweatily and moved away down the bar he was trying to handle alone.
“Fine fella,” Stark said.
“Yeah. Great guy,” Warden said.
“You suppose he can afford to give away a drink?”
“No. I doubt it.”
“He needs more help behind the bar,” Stark said.
“He needs more help out in front, too,” Warden said, watching Rose, who although she had another girl to help her, still was not doing much better than Charlie because she was trying to handle her orders and sit with her S/Sgt at the same time.
“I said, hey, Rose!” Warden bellowed.
She was sitting in the Artillery booth, but she came over. Her swarthy wanton little face, which was Portagee but was betrayed as a racial misalliance by the faintly slanted eyes, was a little irritated though.
“What you want, Warden?”
“Whats your boy friend’s name?”
She eyed him sullenly. “What you want to know for? Is none of your business.”
Warden ogled her lush breasts openly. Rose followed his gaze down and then raised her eyes angrily to stare into his light blue eyes defiantly.
“What outfit is he in?” Warden asked conversationally.
“Say! What you care? I thought you want something. You drunk, eh? Lissen, Charlie wait on you. I no wait on bar.” She turned with a flounce, and marched back to the Artillery booth.
As one man, Warden and Stark both swung on their stools to watch her go. Her round bare legs slithered together prophetically under the swirling skirt. The small of her back made a concave surface that rounded out breathtakingly into the firm curved cheeks of her little bottom that waggled at them impishly.