by Doug Stanton
Who am I? Where am I? he wondered.
I’m Giles Mc Coy from St. Louis, Missourah, and I’m one tough sonofabitch.
Brundige was hanging tight, actually calm. “You look funny,” he said out of the blue.
McCoy looked up. “What do you mean?”
“You look like hell.”
“Well, you oughta see yourself. You’re not so pretty.” Brundige wasn’t. His face was blackened by oil; around his eyes was a faint white stripe where he’d tried wiping it away. His tongue protruded slightly from his mouth.
McCoy’s own tongue felt hard and dry, like a root. His skin was cracked and sore, bleeding in places. If he looked like Brundige, he was sure glad he couldn’t see himself. He thought about his mother and her laugh when she beat him at Ping-Pong. He thought of his father, about the night he knocked him across the front yard, and the way he’d cried at the train station.
After McCoy made it off Peleliu alive, he’d sat down in the barracks and written a letter to his father apologizing for disobeying him the night he went to his good-bye party. He was no longer a boy, and yet not a man—he knew that. But, hell, he was going to war—he was going to kill people. He thought he deserved a send-off.
His whole life, McCoy had hated bullies, but he’d loved to fight. The Marine Corps had taught him how to lie in a stream for hours breathing through a straw, how to shoot to kill, how to survive. He’d always had the firm conviction of his own toughness.
Now he realized he hadn’t even known what strength was.
In Dr. Haynes’s group, the hallucinations were reaching full boil. One boy got in his car and was ready to drive home, but then lost his keys. Another saw an island overflowing with ice-cold coconut milk and dancing girls. One delirious sailor was seen starting an imaginary outboard motor with furious yanks at a rope and then puttering away.
By midafternoon, passenger trains were pounding along imaginary rails ringing the horizon, and hotels were springing up on city blocks floating atop the water. Some of the boys checked into the hotels and drowned, while others started swimming to catch the trains and vanished beneath the waves.
At one point, even Dr. Haynes succumbed. Spotting a shark, a five-footer—his first time seeing one at close range—he was seized with the desire to kill it with his bare hands and drink its blood. But no matter how hard he splashed at the creature, no matter how loudly he swore at it, it would not attack. It seemed to be mocking his rage. He couldn’t believe it. The shark didn’t want to eat him! Chuckling, the doctor paddled away, somehow feeling better.
He then came upon a group of boys. They looked odd—something was wrong with the picture. They were floating in single file, dog-paddling in place. Haynes asked one of them, “What’s up, son?”
“Shhh, Doc,” one guy said. “There’s a small hotel on the island there, and they got one room and you can get fifteen minutes’ sleep. You get in line—you’ll get a turn.”
Haynes craned his head and, for a moment, dammit, he believed he could see the hotel wavering atop the water. Nearby, other odd things were going on. Another twenty-five boys had queued up, as if preparing to set out on a journey. They told Haynes matter of factly that they were going to swim to Leyte, and that they figured it would take them about two days. They said their good-byes, promising to meet up again on land. Then they kicked out over the glass of the sea. They made it only 200 or 300 yards before sinking.
What struck Haynes as the grandest hallucination of all, however, was the moment, about midday, when the Indianapolis herself ghosted over the horizon and sailed back into the boys’ lives. At times, they yelled that the ship was steaming toward them. At others, it was drifting peacefully below them in the clear, green water, all her flags flying smartly, her portholes relit and gleaming. Some of the boys dove down to the ship and began swimming through her long passageways, back to their bunks, to the mess halls, and to the water fountains, where they drank deeply. “I found it,” they screamed in heartbreaking relief, breaking back to the surface. “There’s fresh water aboard! Come on fellas, let’s go! She ain’t sunk!”
More boys took deep breaths and dove to the ship, and in the aqua light of their dreams they sat at tables eating ice cream and drinking tall glasses of water. “Don’t drink! Don’t do it!” Haynes shouted, his throat raw, his voice breaking, as he watched their dreams turn to nightmares.
By late afternoon, the men on McCoy’s raft were trying to kill him. At least, he thought they were. Ed Payne swore he was going to jump off the raft. McCoy was certain he wanted to commit suicide. Gray looked like he wanted to jump, too.
Everybody, thought McCoy, was going crazy. Everybody, that is, except Brundige. He was glad Brundige wasn’t going insane. He just wished he’d say something.
“Goddammit,” McCoy told Payne and Gray, “you’ve got families, relatives—you’ve got things to live for.”
One of them—Willis Gray—looked up and said, “Live for? Shit.”
“We’re going through this day after day,” said Payne, “and nobody is looking for us. To hell with it! It’s easier to die than to live.” Payne looked like he really was going to jump.
McCoy felt that he and Brundige were in a kind of unspoken contest, each trying to prove who was the tougher sonofabitch. It would be a last hurrah before the lights went out, before McCoy slumped over and drowned and the sharks started eating him.
“Don’t you worry, guys,” he announced, speaking particularly to Payne. “I’ll take care of you. I’ll make sure the sharks don’t get you.” When he had been fighting on Peleliu, McCoy had felt scared, alone, and he’d been certain he was going to die. During the worst of it, a marine captain had told him, “You stick with me, Private, and I’ll get you through this.” And the man had kept his word. McCoy had never forgotten this.
Payne began moaning, and then he jumped and began to swim. McCoy studied the water; it was so clear, like a glass floor he might walk across. As usual, he could see sharks down there, circling. He dove and started swimming.
He swam about fifty feet and caught the sailor, grabbed hold of his vest, and dragged the blubbering kid back to the raft. He yelled up to Brundige, “Come on, give me a damn hand here!” And Brundige, tall and strong, reached down and lifted Payne into the raft. McCoy swam up through the hole in the busted bow. He pulled himself onto the suspended lattice floor. And then Payne got up on the side of the raft, looked around, and jumped over again.
McCoy looked at Brundige, thinking, I saved his ass once, do I gotta do it again? He looked at the sharks and jumped. He swam out over them and stroked up behind Payne, jerked him hard, and brought him back to the raft. Now McCoy was mad—and dead tired. It was as if all the blood had drained from his arms and legs. He was so thirsty it was a struggle not to sip some salt water as he splashed back aboard. He slammed Payne against the rail of the raft. Payne was crying, and McCoy looked at him and whacked him on the face, screaming, “Now, dammit, cut that out, cuz you’re going to kill yourself!”
Payne’s eyes widened, and his head rolled back and forth on the rail. “Why’d you hit me?” he asked. “Don’t hit me no more!” He was crying, but no tears were coming; Payne was too dehydrated for tears.
McCoy turned around, and there was Willis Gray on the raft’s edge, jumping. The sonofabitch He’d walked off the raft like he was stepping off a street comer. This time, McCoy just sat there and watched. He thought Gray was dumb for jumping. He said it out loud: “You know, you are a real turd.”
“Hell, we just can’t leave him out there,” announced Brundige.
McCoy looked at him. “I just don’t have no more fire.” Then Brundige hit the water. Batting and kicking at the sharks, he towed the boy back to the raft, and McCoy started lecturing: “What in hell do you think you’re doing, son? Tell me, what’s going on?” But there was no answer—Gray didn’t understand. His eyes were blank spots on an empty map. Looking at him, McCoy felt suddenly certain that his own death was out there waiting,
too.
“You know what?” he said. “They’re not comin’. Nobody’s going to rescue us.” He turned to the rest of them: “We are going to die,” he said. “We are all going to die.”
It felt good to say it. His stomach felt queasy, as if he had butterflies. In fact, all day he’d felt nauseated. And it wasn’t from swallowing fuel oil. It was a sickness that came from lying to himself.
“We are going to die,” he said again. He was feeling better by the minute.
The sun was like a hammer in the sky. As the day wore on, the bodies piled on the surface of the sea in ragged heaps that swirled as the sharks tugged them from below. Carrying on with the grim ritual he’d been dutifully executing the past three days, Dr. Haynes set out to bury the newly dead. He was no longer a doctor, it seemed; he was now a coroner. So be it. The realization wrenched him back to reality, but this was a blessing he had mixed feelings about.
As he paddled by, some of the boys stirred, lifting their oil-caked heads to stare bleary-eyed at the sun. “Hey, Doc, take a look at this guy, will ya!” a few of the more lucid called out. “Hey, Doc, is this guy alive?”
Stroking up to one boy, Haynes gently lifted him by the hair and peered into his eyes. “Are you alive, son?” he asked.
“Yes, Doctor, I’m alive,” the man croaked.
“Good. That’s real good.” He moved on to the next candidate.
“Son?” He lifted the head. “Are you with us?” There was no reply. “Son?” Haynes tapped on the cold, opened eyeball. When he found a reflex, he felt an immense sense of relief.
Then he moved quickly to the next boy. He tapped again; this eye was bloodshot and swollen—a sign, Haynes knew, of edema caused by the ingestion of salt water. There was no reflex. It was like touching the blank and glassy eye of a stuffed animal. Haynes had to declare the boy dead.
“This man is dead,” he said aloud. It was strange, but saying it made it seem more real. It made him feel like he wasn’t alone. At the sound of Haynes’s voice, several boys turned to watch. More than a few of them didn’t have life vests. They were half dog-paddling and half drowning, heroically supported by comrades who themselves were close to giving up. The boys supporting these swimmers had enormous sores on their hips from the chafing of their heavy loads. Yet none of them wanted to let go of their charges. They were clinging to them as if saving themselves. The boys without vests had either untied them in their delirium or had voluntarily taken them off because they were losing buoyancy. Either way, they needed relief.
Time was critical—Haynes needed the dead boy’s life vest—and he moved quickly. It was not easy work because his burned hands were badly swollen, practically unusable. He tried not to look into the boy’s eyes as he struggled to loosen the knotted straps. They were soaked with fuel oil, which made them impossibly tight. Untying them was painful, methodical work.
When he was done, he removed the boy’s dog tags. He wrapped them around his own arm, where they clinked tinnily. Haynes then paddled behind the body, placed one hand on the vest’s collar, and gave a gentle pull, easing out first the shoulders and then the arms. It looked very much like someone removing a coat from a sleeping child. Finally, the corpse slid free from the vest. Haynes quickly tossed the vest aside and then snatched the body before it could sink. The bodies of the bigger boys required more strength than those of the smaller ones, and strength was something Haynes hadn’t much of. Still, he was determined not to let any corpse sink without praying over it.
He drew the cold, wet body close, grabbed it tight in a bear hug, and paused. Aboard a ship, the chaplain would do this duty, but Father Conway was close to death himself. Haynes groped for a way to say good-bye to these boys, many of whom he knew only in passing. But he always said something. With his cheek pressed to the dead boy’s cheek, he could smell the salt and sweat, and he began: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name … . Thy kingdom come, thy will be done …
Sometimes he made it to the end of the Lord’s Prayer, and sometimes he didn’t. After several hours of burying the dead, he was often so spent that he could do nothing more than hold the dead boy and pray in silence, feeling, in his addled state, that he’d been an utter failure as a doctor.
He opened his arms and watched the body fall. It dropped for a long time, twirling feet first, like a man falling down a crystalline elevator shaft, getting smaller and smaller, no bigger than a doll when it finally disappeared.
Why, oh why, Haynes wondered, can’t I do anything to save these boys?
Now that he was going to die, McCoy decided he wanted to die clean. It made no sense, he knew, but nothing did now. Dying suddenly seemed like play. He untied his vest, tossed it in the raft, and slipped over the side of the raft for a last bath.
Brundige boomed, “What the hell you doing, marine?”
McCoy ignored him. The water was cool, the air hot, the shock instant. McCoy stroked around the raft. To his surprise, he was having fun. Looking down, he could see thirty or forty feet below, and he wondered what the water felt like down there where the sharks circled in glassy coils. He didn’t care about them anymore, didn’t give a damn. He dove. He felt like he was flying, as his head poked through a cool band of water. Half his body was warm, the other cold. He looked up and to his surprise he saw that he was only about six feet deep.
He prayed that his mother would understand why he had not been able to make it home; he prayed that she would know he’d tried his hardest to get there. And then he asked God to forgive him his sins, especially for the killing he had done on Peleliu.
He broke the surface, paddled over to the raft, and hoisted himself up. And then he began scrubbing himself with his T-shirt, rubbing at the smeared oil on his chest and arms. He wanted to be clean because he wanted to be identified if anybody found his body. He realized he’d probably be chewed up by sharks, but he hoped they’d at least leave his face. He wanted somebody to be able to recognize him.
Brundige told him, “You still got oil all over you, you know. You stupid thing.” He said it again: “You stupid thing.”
McCoy liked that—You stupid thing. It made him laugh. He was a stupid thing. Sitting in this ocean, he felt like nothing more than a speck. All his life, he had thought he was tough. Now he felt like a speck, and he felt relieved to know the truth. He looked at Payne, Outland, and Gray, who were now passed out, sitting in the water up to their chins. McCoy decided he had better tie them together for safekeeping. He asked Brundige to help, and they drew the boys so close that their foreheads were touching. McCoy and Brundige cinched up all the straps on the vests to prevent their heads from falling into the water. They floated like that inside the raft, their feet dangling. McCoy and Brundige were each in a corner, hanging on the rails.
Sometime before nightfall, they started betting each other about who was going to die first. “I’m sure as shit gonna stay alive longer than you,” McCoy said.
“Like hell,” Brundige shot back. “I’m a Tennessee farmer, and I’m pretty damn tough.”
“Well, I’m a marine from Missourah, and I’m a lot tougher.”
“You go to hell.” After a while, they fell silent and drifted. Around them, Payne, Outland, and Gray started moaning. The sharks were circling the raft again.
“Well,” said Brundige, “I guess nobody’s gonna miss me but my mom and dad.”
“My mother’s gonna miss me,” said McCoy. “And I’m sure my dad will, too. And I also know I’m gonna outlive you.”
“We’ll see.”
“You know,” McCoy said finally, “if some damn shark gets me, I hope the sonofabitch gets indigestion.” He laughed. “I really hope he has a hard time digesting me.”
They fell asleep with their heads resting on each other’s shoulders.
By nightfall, Haynes was burying Father Conway and Captain Parke. The big marine went first. His selfless lending of life vests to struggling swimmers had finally taken its toll. Parke, an astonishingly strong and discipl
ined man, had died in mid-hallucination; he suddenly broke away from the group and started swimming for the horizon. His death shocked those still lucid enough to understand it.
Conway was next. The deteriorating condition of the priest crushed Haynes. He remembered the day Conway had come to his cabin on the Indy with the money for leave. It was the most generous thing anyone had ever done for the doctor.
For the past three days, Conway had kept drowning men afloat, praying with them as they died, refusing to quit even when it must have felt impossible to swim another inch. A few hours ago, however, he had finally succumbed to delirium, keening in Latin and babbling prayers, a soaring, incoherent litany. As Conway sang, Haynes had cradled the naked priest in his arms, smoothing his balding, sunburned head with a gentle hand. As Conway’s condition worsened, his keening grew in intensity. Soon he was blessing Haynes, hitting him repeatedly in the face as he delivered absolution. Haynes did nothing to stop the crazed priest. He watched and waited for him to die.
When Conway fell limp, the silence was deafening. Haynes heard only the water gurgle and swish around him. When it was clear that Conway was dead, Haynes removed his vest and set his friend’s body sailing into the deep.
Haynes was left holding the dog tags he’d collected from the boys he’d personally buried over the past three days. There were well over 100, their silver chains wrapped tightly around his fist. Suddenly they felt so heavy he could hardly believe it. He was so exhausted he could barely lift them up anymore.