“You know your name,” the captain said, pleasantly. “That’s a good start.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dr. Wilcox feels you’ve done very well here. It’s seldom a patient makes it down to the first floor so quickly.”
“Sir, if I might ask a question?”
“Yes, Private Heller.”
“It was my understanding that the program here is a three-month one, minimum. I’ve been here a little over two months. Now, I’m not complaining, mind you-I’m glad to be getting this consideration, but…”
The captain nodded, smiling again. “Your curiosity about this early Board of Review is a sign of your improved condition. I understand you were a detective before you enlisted.”
“Yes, sir. I’m president of a little agency. It’s waiting for me back in Chicago, when the Marines get through with me.”
“You understand, Private, that returning to combat, to any sort of active duty, is out of the question.”
It was the ultimate Hollywood wound, the jackpot million-dollar wound: if you cracked up in combat, there was no going back to it. Heller goes marching home.
“I’ve heard the scuttlebutt, yes sir.”
“You’ll be honorably discharged, when you’re released from St. E’s. You should feel no stigma about that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve served your country honorably. I understand you’ve been awarded a Silver Star.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve acquitted yourself admirably, to say the least. Bravery under fire is no small distinction. But you’re wondering why I haven’t answered your question, about this early hearing.”
“Yes, sir.”
He gestured toward the wall behind me, which was lined with chairs. “Pull up a chair,” he said. “Have a seat.”
I did.
“There is a precedent for your early release, should we decide to do so, in response to the special circumstances that have come up. For example, many Army hospitals run an eight-week mental rehab program. So, Private Heller, you mustn’t feel shortchanged by getting a ‘rush job’ at St. E’s.”
“Oh, I don’t feel shortchanged, sir…”
He stopped me with an upraised hand. “Please relax. Consider the smoking lamp lit.” He was getting out his own cigarettes, Chesterfields, and the other doctors joined in. He offered me one.
“No thank you, sir. I lost my taste for it.”
His own cigarette in hand, the captain looked at me suspiciously. “That’s unusual, under these conditions. There isn’t much to do at St. E’s but sit and smoke.”
“Oh, they found some floors for me to scrub, sir. That kept me busy.”
The doctors exchanged smiles, although one of them, a roundfaced man with thick glasses, asked, “Is it because you associate smoking with combat? Dr. Wilcox’s report indicates you didn’t begin smoking until you were on Guadalcanal.”
I looked to the captain, rather than the doctor who posed the question. “May I be frank, sir?”
He nodded.
“Suppose smoking does remind me of combat,” I said. “Suppose it does take me back to the Island.”
They looked at me with narrowed eyes.
“Then I’d be crazy to smoke, wouldn’t I? And put myself through all that.”
Only the captain smiled, but then he was a military man; he could understand.
“I don’t feel like a Marine, anymore,” I said. “I don’t feel like a civilian, either, but I’m willing to try to learn. I see no reason to dwell on what’s happened.”
The third doctor spoke for the first time. He had a small mouth, like a fish, and wire-rim glasses. He said, “You suffered amnesia, Mr. Heller. That, too, was an effort not to ‘dwell’ on your traumatic experiences.”
“I don’t want to forget what happened, or anyway I don’t want to ‘repress’ it, as Dr. Wilcox calls it. But I do want to get on with my life.”
Dr. Wilcox came to my defense, saying, “I think I’ve made it clear in my report that Private Heller quickly learned to regard his experience in its true perspective, as a thing of the past-something that no longer threatens his safety. I might add that it took only simple hypnosis, and no drug therapy or shock treatments, to achieve this effect.”
The captain waved a hand at Wilcox, as if to quiet him on subjects better spoken about when the patient wasn’t present.
But the doctor with the fish’s mouth and the wire glasses picked up on Wilcox’s little speech, taking offense, bristling openly, patient present or not: “I hope by that that you don’t mean to imply anything derogatory about the use of drugs or shock by others here at St. Elizabeth’s.”
“Not at all. Merely that some battle neuroses are relatively minor compared to chronic cases we might encounter from within the civilian population.”
“Gentlemen, please,” the captain said. He looked like he wished he had a gavel to pound. Instead he looked at me and said, “We are going to have to ask you some questions, at some length, before we can reach a decision.”
“Understood, sir. But before you begin, could you answer my question?”
“Private?”
“You said some special circumstances had come up, that made this early hearing necessary.”
The captain nodded. “A federal prosecutor in Chicago wants you to give testimony before a grand jury.”
“Oh.” I thought I knew what that was about.
But the captain didn’t realize that, and he shuffled through some papers, looking for the answer to a question I hadn’t asked. “It involves racketeers and the film industry, I believe. Yes, here it is. The defendants include Frank Nitti, Louis Campagna and others.”
“I see.”
“You seem strangely disinterested, Private. Do you remember the incident this involves?”
I couldn’t “repress” a smile. I said, “I don’t have amnesia anymore, sir. But you can get amnesia permanently testifying against Frank Nitti.”
For the first time the captain frowned; I’d overstepped my bounds-after all, I wasn’t discharged yet. I was still in the service.
“Does that mean you’re not interested in testifying?”
“Does it work that way? If I choose to testify, I’m sane and a civilian? And if I choose not to, I’m crazy and a Marine?”
The captain wasn’t at all pleased with me; but he only said, calmly, “There are no strings attached to this hearing. We were merely requested to move it up a few weeks, to give a federal prosecutor-in Chicago-the opportunity to speak with you. Nobody’s requiring you to do anything.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But I’m sure the government would appreciate your cooperation in this matter.”
“Yes, sir.”
“After all, it is one government. The same government prosecuting these gangsters is the one you chose to defend-enlisting, out of patriotic zeal.”
Out of a bottle is more like it, I thought, but was smart enough to “repress” that, too.
“At any rate, we’ve been asked to consider your case, and we do have a few more questions for you.”
The interview covered a lot of things-my memories and my feelings about what had happened on Guadalcanal. How and why I lied about my age enlisting. They even talked to me about the suicide of my father. One of them seemed to find it significant that I had carried the gun my father killed himself with as my personal weapon, thereafter. I explained that I had done that to make sure I never took killing too lightly, never used the thing too easily. But you killed in combat, didn’t you? Yes, I said, but I left that gun home.
Anyway, it covered lots of ground, including how my malaria hadn’t flared up since I first got here, and I didn’t lose my temper anymore or crack wise and the captain seemed to like me again by the end of the interview. I was dismissed. There were chairs just outside the conference room, where I could sit and wait for the verdict. I sat and looked at the speckled marble floor. Part of me wanted a smoke, but I didn’t giv
e in.
“Hi.”
I looked up. It was that pretty little nurse from the fourth floor; I hadn’t seen her in weeks. She was a student nurse actually. Her name was Sara, and we’d struck up a friendship.
“Well, hello,” I said.
“Mind if I sit down?”
“I’d mind if you didn’t.”
She sat, smoothed out the white apron over the checked dress; her blouse was blue, her cap white. And her eyes were still light blue, freckles still trailed across a cute pugish nose. She had some legs; you can have Betty Grable.
“I heard you were getting your Board of Review today,” she said. “I just wanted to come down and wish you luck.”
“Too late for that. I already said my piece.”
“I wouldn’t worry. You’ve made remarkable progress. I don’t know of anybody ever getting a Board of Review after only a couple of months.”
“Uncle Sam has something else in mind for me, that’s all.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. Just a federal grand jury they want me to testify to, for some stupid extortion racket that dates back before the war.”
Her tight little smile crinkled her chin. “It all seems so…unimportant, somehow, doesn’t it? What happened before the war.”
“Yeah. It all kind of pales, that life back there.”
“You’ll be going back to it.”
I shook my head. “It’s all changed. Haven’t you heard, lady? There’s a war on.”
“Nate. Are you sleeping better now?”
I put a smile on for her. “Oh, yeah. Sure. Fine. No problem.”
“You had some rough nights on the fourth floor.”
“I graduated to the floors below, remember? I’m the wonder boy, or I would be if I were younger.”
“You weren’t sleeping much at all. And when you did…”
When I did I had nightmares of combat and I woke up screaming, like Monawk.
“Not anymore,” I said. “Ah, you know, that Doc Wilcox is a whiz. He put my head back together, piece by piece. I feel great.”
“You have dark circles under your eyes.”
I was glad she wasn’t on the Board of Review.
“I’m fine, honestly. If I wasn’t sleeping, how could I be so bright and cheery today?”
“You get plenty of rest sitting around the dayroom. You seem able to catch naps, sitting there, not knowing you’re sleeping. But at night-”
At night, sleep refused to come, until I was so tired it and the nightmares sneaked up on me, like a Jap with a knife in the dark.
“It’s not a problem, anymore. Really. Gosh, Sara, it was nice of you to stop down and wish me luck.”
“I know you’re still not sleeping. I know you’re still having the nightmares.”
“Sara, please…”
“I’m not going to say anything. I know you’re keeping it to yourself so the doctors won’t keep you in here. You want to go home, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, and suddenly my goddamn eyes were wet. What is this shit!
She slipped her arm around my shoulder. “Come ’ere, big boy.”
I wept into her blue blouse, and she patted me like a baby. Another woman did that once, babied me while I bawled; I’d seen somebody I cared for die, violently, and it had rocked me, and Sally had helped me through that.
“There, there,” Sara said.
I sat up, glancing around, hoping nobody saw me. After all, I wouldn’t want to look like a nut in a mental ward; people would talk.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m not going to say anything to the doctors. You’ll be better off back in Chicago, anyway. Do you really know some of the people you say you know?”
“Yeah. What’s wrong, haven’t you ever met anybody famous?”
“Oh sure. Napoleon, for instance, and a guy who thinks he’s Hitler.”
“Did you ever consider that if you had the genuine articles they’d be in the right place?”
She smiled broadly, showed me those pretty childlike teeth. “Good point.” She stood. “If you’re ever in Washington again, try and look me up.”
“Are you implying you’d go out with a former mental patient?”
“Sure,” she said. “There’s a man shortage.”
“Some compliment. Say, how’s Dixon doing?”
Her cheerful expression faded and she shook her head; sat back down. “Not so good. He’s up on the sixth floor. No early Board of Review for him.”
“Damn. What about that Navy guy who wasn’t talking, the uh, what did you say his condition was called?”
“Catatonic,” she said, and started to giggle.
“What’s so funny?”
“I shouldn’t laugh. You remember the fuss he made, when we fed him with a tube?”
I had helped her, on several occasions, her and the corpsman, feed the guy his mixture of tomato juice, milk, raw eggs, and purged meats and stuff; if they won’t eat, they get this concoction in a tube down the throat, but this guy-completely clammed up otherwise and placid as glass-would go berserk when you tried to put the tube in him.
“He’s started to talk,” she said. “He’s had some shock treatments, and he’s talking now. He told us why he squirmed so when we tube-fed him.”
“Yeah?”
“He thought it was an enema and we were putting it in the wrong end.”
We sat and laughed and laughed and pretty soon I was crying again, but it was a different kind, a better kind.
She stood.
I stood.
“Good luck,” she said. She touched my face. “Get some sleep.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said. Sat.
She swished off; pretty legs. I’d spent hours here beating my meat, thinking about those legs. There’s not much to do in a mental ward.
I wiped some residue of moisture off my face, thinking what a sweet cunning little bitch she was. She knew I was holding back; she knew, hypnosis or not, there were things I hadn’t told Wilcox.
Hell, there were things I couldn’t tell Wilcox. There were doors that just wouldn’t open. Or was that jumble of events, that rush of images in the shell hole, simply the fever that had gripped me then?
How the fuck did Monawk die, exactly? He was shot. Who shot him?
Well, the Japs, of course. Don’t be stupid.
Then why did he have black, scorchy powder burns on his chest, where he was shot? Why was the hole in his goddamn back big enough to drive a Mack truck through?
Close range; somebody shot him close range.
With a.45, that had to be it, like the.45s we all had, Barney, D’Angelo, those Army boys, me.
Me.
Like the.45 I had in my hand when I noticed the powder burns on Monawk’s dungaree jacket…
I bent over, covered my face with my hands. No, I hadn’t told Wilcox about that. I hadn’t told anybody about that. I hadn’t told anybody that I thought I’d seen it happen, Monawk’s murder, but I, goddamnit, I repressed it, it’s stuck back here someplace in my fucking head but I can’t, I won’t remember.
Did I kill you, Monawk? Did you scream and endanger us all and I killed you?
“Private Heller?”
It was the captain. In the doorway of the conference room.
“Please step in.”
I did.
“We’ve reviewed your case,” the captain said, sitting back down behind the table. I remained standing. “We’re quite impressed by your recovery, and are convinced that you are in every way ready to rejoin society.” There were some papers in front of him, with various signatures on them; he handed them to me.
My Section 8.
“And here’s your honorable service award,” he said, handing me a little box.
I didn’t bother opening it; I knew what it was: my Ruptured Duck, the lapel pin all armed forces vets got upon their discharge-so called because the eagle within the little button spread its wings awkwardly.<
br />
“Check with the front receiving desk, and they’ll help you arrange transportation. You should be able to make train reservations for this afternoon, if you like. You’re going back to Chicago, Mr. Heller.”
I smiled down at my discharge. Then I smiled at the captain. “Thank you, sir.”
He smiled too and stood and offered his hand and I shook it. I went down the line shaking all their hands. I lingered with Wilcox, squeezing his hand, trying to convey some warmth to this heavyset little man who’d brought me back to myself.
“Good luck, Nate,” he said.
“Thanks, Doc.”
Just as I was leaving, he said, “If your trouble sleeping persists, check in at the nearest military hospital. They can give you something for it.”
I guess I hadn’t fooled him so good, after all.
“Thanks, Doc,” I said again, and headed back to my ward, to pack my sea bag.
It didn’t matter what happened back there in that shell hole; that was over, that was history. What mattered was not that Monawk died, but that some of us had lived through it. Fremont and Whitey hadn’t, of course, but Watkins did and D’Angelo and the two Army boys and Barney, hell, Barney was a hero. They said he killed twenty-two Japs with those grenades he was lobbing. They also said he was still over there, on the Island. Still fighting. How could he still be over there?
And me here?
I sat on the edge of my rack and thought about how screwy it seemed, going back to Chicago to see some federal prosecutor about Frank Nitti and Little New York Campagna and the Outfit bilking the movie industry. What did that have to do with anything, today? Who cared? Didn’t they know there was a war on? It seemed another world, Nitti’s Chicago-a lifetime ago.
Not three short years…
The deli restaurant on the corner was calling itself the Dill Pickle, now, and the bar next door was under new management. Barney Ross’s Cocktail Lounge had moved to nicer, more spacious digs, across from the Morrison Hotel, where Barney kept an “exclusive” suite. I lived at the Morrison myself, in a two-room suite, not so exclusive.
Which was still a step up from the days, not so long ago, when I slept in my office, on a Murphy bed, playing nightwatchman for my landlord in lieu of rent. My landlord, the owner of the building, was then, and was now, one Barney Ross.
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