by James Jones
Warden banged his fist down on the counter. “Then he should of stayed in the fucking Bugle Corps,” he shouted, “instead of fucking up my outfit.” He flung back the folding countertop, kicked open the plywood door and went inside the counter, threading through the piles of shirts and pants and leggins on the floor.
Leva ducked his head back down to his typewriter and began to poke it, snuffling softly through his long thin nose.
“Have you got this goddam clothing issue stuff closed out yet?” Warden raged at him.
“What the hell you think I am?” Leva asked, still laughing silently.
“A goddam supply clerk, whose job is to get this stuff done instead of gossipping about transfers all the time. You should have had this done two days ago.”
“Tell it to Supply Sergeant O’Hayer,” Leva said, “I’m only the clerk here.”
Warden stopped his raging as suddenly as he had started it and looking at Leva with a speculative shrewdness scratched his chin and grinned. “Has your illustrious mentor, Mister O’Hayer, been in this morning yet?”
“What do you think?” Leva said. He unwound his jerked-leather frame from around the desk and lit a cigaret.
“Well,” Warden said. “I would be inclined to say no. Just as a guess.”
“Well,” Leva said. “You would be entirely right.”
Warden grinned at him. “Well, after all, its only eight. You cant expect a man of his station, and with his cares, to get up at eight o’clock with clerks like you.”
“Its a joke to you,” Leva said, peevishly. “You can laugh about it. Its no joke to me.”
“Maybe he had trouble with that Dusenberg of his,” Warden mocked.
“Its a Chrysler,” Leva said.
“Maybe he lost the key to that luxurious apartment.”
“He never locks it,” Leva said bitterly. “He keeps a woman or two instead.”
“Maybe he was counting the take,” Warden grinned, “from his game in the sheds last night. I bet you wish you had a nice easy life like that.”
“I wish I had ten percent of the dough he takes in every payday in that shed,” Leva said, thinking of the maintenance sheds across the street from the dayroom where every month, when they had moved out the 37 millimeters and the machine gun carts and all the rest of it, most of the money in the Lower Post finally wound up and where, of the four sheds, O’Hayer’s always had the biggest take.
“I understood,” said Warden, “that he give you almost that much to do his work here for him.”
Leva gave him a withering look and Warden chuckled.
“I believe you,” Leva said. “Next thing, you’ll be askin me for a cut on what he give me, or else have me busted.”
“Now thats an idea,” Warden grinned. “Thanks. I’d of never thought of that.”
“It wont be so goddam funny,” Leva said grimly, “some day. Some day when I transfer the hell out and leave you with this supplyroom in your lap with nobody to do the work but O’Hayer who don’t know a Form 32 from a 33.”
“You’ll never transfer out of this Compny,” Warden scoffed. “If you was to go outdoors before sundown you’d be blind as a bat. This supplyroom’s in your blood. You couldnt leave it if you had to.”
“Oh,” Leva said. “Is that the way it is? I’m gettin tired of doin the supply sergeant’s work while Jim O’Hayer gets the credit and the money because he’s Dynamite’s number one lightheavy and pays off in Regiment to run that shed. He aint even a good fighter.”
“He’s a good gambler, though,” Warden said indifferently. “Thats what counts.”
“He’s a good gambler, all right. The mother sucker. I wonder how much, in addition to Regiment, he gives Dynamite every month.”
“Why, Niccolo,” Warden chortled. “You know such a thing is illegal. It says so in the ARs.”
“Fuck the ARs,” Leva said, his face congested. “I’m telling you, some day he’s gonna make me mad. I could transfer out tomorrow and get a supplyroom of my own. I’ve been inquiring around some lately. M Company lookin for a supply man, Milt.” He stopped suddenly, aware he had let loose a secret he had not intended to divulge, aware that Warden had needled him into it. His face a mixture of start and sullenness he swung back to his desk in silence.
Warden, catching the fleeting look on Leva’s face, making a careful mental note of this new thing he had discovered and must find some way to combat if he wanted to keep his supplyroom running, stepped over to the desk and said, “Dont worry, Niccolo. Things wont be this way forever. I got some irons in that fire myself,” he hinted broadly. “You ought to have that rating, and you’ll get it. You’re doin all the work. I aim to see you get it,” he said, soothingly.
“But you wont,” Leva said grudgingly. “Not while Dynamite is the CC. Not as long as O’Hayer is on his boxing squad and pays his rent to Regiment. You’re hooked through the bag and you cant get off.”
“You mean you dont trust me?” Warden said, indignantly. “Dint I tell you I got an angle?”
“I aint no ree-croot,” Leva said. “I dont trust nobody. I been in this man’s army thirteen years.”
“How you comin with this stuff?” Warden said, pointing to one of several stacks of forms. “You need some help?”
“Hell, no,” Leva said. “I dont need no help.” He thumbed a pile of forms four fingers deep. “I hardly get enough work to keep me busy. Thats why my morale is low. You know: like the Personnel boys say: No work for idle hands hurts the morale.”
“Gimme half them,” Warden said, with mock weariness. “Along with everything else I got to suffer, I got to be supply clerk.” He took the forms that Leva handed him and grinned and winked down at the cadaverous Italian. “Two good men like us can get this done today,” he said, noting Leva was not swallowing the flattery. “I don’t know where the hell I’d be if I didnt have you in this outfit, Niccolo.”
He didn’t believe that about the angle, either, Warden thought, any more than you did. You cant snow an old bull like him with promises, you have to put it on the personal basis, you have to work on his friendship, on his pride.
“We get this done,” he said, “and you’ll have a rest for a month or two. You’re as bad as the kitchen force, Niccolo. Always threatening to quit because Preem is the mess sergeant. But they never do. A rifle scares them to death.” He laid the pile of forms out on the counter, separating them into neat piles he could work from. From the corner he pulled a high stool and sat down at the counter and pulled out his old pen.
“I wouldnt blame them none,” Leva said, “if they did quit.”
“Well, they wont. I wish to hell they would. And you wont either, but not for the same reason. You couldnt quit me, Niccolo, and leave me in the lurch. You’re as big a fool as I am.”
“Yeah? You watch me, Milt. You just watch me,” but the timbre of his voice had changed; it was no longer serious but taunting.
Warden snorted at him. “Lets work. Or I’ll make you re-enlist.”
“In a pig’s asshole,” Leva said, completing the chant.
Oh, Milton, Warden thought, what a son of a bitch you are, what a fine lyin son of a bitch. You’d sell your own mother to Lucky Luciano if it would secure the hatches on this outfit. You’ll lie and cajole poor old Niccolo into staying, just to make your supply efficient. You’ve lied so much now, he told himself, you dont know whats true and what aint. And all because you want to make your company Superior. You mean Holmes’s company, he thought. “Dynamite” Holmes, boxing coach, horseman, and number one brownnoser with our Great White Father Colonel Delbert. Its his company, not yours. Why dont you let him do it? Why dont you let him sacrifice his soul upon the altar of efficiency? Yes, he thought, why dont you? Why dont you get out of it? When are you going to get out of it and save your self-respect? Never, he told himself. Because its been so long now you’re afraid to find out if you’ve still got the self-respect to save. Have you got it? he asked himself. No, Milton, no, I dont think you ha
ve. Thats why you dont get out of it. You’re hooked through the bag, like Leva said.
He turned to the forms before him and went to work with that wild swift energy that is one hundred percent efficient, that makes no errors, and gets the work done so fast and sure that you are not even there, you are some place else and when you come back you see the work is done but you did not do it; the same energy with which Niccolo Leva behind him was working.
They were still working an hour later when O’Hayer came in. He stood momentarily in the bright doorway, a wide shouldered shadow adjusting his eyes, and an aura of chill seemed to come in with him that killed the warm gush of energy for work that had been in the others.
O’Hayer looked at the paper and equipment scattered around distastefully. “This place looks like hell,” he said. “We’ve got to clean this place up, Leva.”
He moved to come in through the counter and Warden had to move all his papers and get up so O’Hayer could pass through. He watched the tall dapper Irishman step with the lithe delicacy of a fighter over the piles of equipment and lean down to peer over Leva’s shoulder. O’Hayer was wearing one of his hand-tailored uniforms that were made for him in Honolulu and upon which the three stripes of sergeant had been hand-embroidered. Warden put his stuff back on the counter and went back to work.
“How you coming, Leva?” O’Hayer said.
Leva looked up wryly. “So-so, Sergeant. So-so.”
“Thats good. We’re late, you know.” O’Hayer’s smile was easy, his dark eyes unchanged before the irony. Leva looked at him a moment and went back to work.
O’Hayer took a turn around the small space, looking at the piles of equipment, turning some things over, straightening a pile or two. “These things are going to have to be separated for size,” he said.
“They already been separated,” Warden said, without looking up. “Where were you when the shit hit the fan?”
“They have?” O’Hayer said easily. “Well, we’ll have to find a place for them. Cant leave them lying here. They’ll be getting in everybody’s way.”
“They may get in your way,” Warden said, pleasantly. “They dont get in mine.” This was a delicate situation, and he felt he had to restrain himself. Every time he talked to Jim O’Hayer it was a delicate situation, he thought. Delicate situations always irritated him. If they insisted on him being a supply sergeant, why didnt they send him to a goddamned school?
“I want you to get this stuff up off the floor,” O’Hayer said to Leva. “The Old Man wont like it, messy like this. This place is crummy.”
Leva leaned back from his desk and sighed. “Okay, Sergeant,” he said. “You want me to do it now?”
“Sometime today,” O’Hayer said. He turned back to the room and began to look in all the big square pigeonholes.
Warden put his mind back on the work with difficulty, feeling he should have spoken up just now, irritated because he didn’t. A moment later he rose swiftly to check a size number and bumped into O’Hayer. He dropped his arms disgustedly and bent his head over to one side.
“For Christ’s sake!” he bellowed. “Get the hell out and go some place. Go any place. Go take a ride in your Duesenberg. Go over to the sheds and count last night’s take. We’re doin your work. Just go away and dont worry about it.” It was a long bellow for one breath and the last of it tapered off.
O’Hayer smiled at him slowly, his arms hanging half-loosely with readiness at his sides, and staring back out of his cool gambler’s eyes that the smile did not ever reach.
“Okay, Top,” he said. “You know I never argue with the First Sergeant.”
“First Sergeant, hell,” Warden said. He stared back into the flat eyes, curious as to just how far you had to push this smiling gambler to make him show some emotion. There must be some feeling some place among the tumblers of this adding machine. Dispassionately, he considered knocking him down, just to see what he would do. From the desk Leva was watching them. “I wasnt talking as the goddamned First Sergeant. I was talking as Milt Warden. And I still say get the fuck out and go away.”
O’Hayer smiled again. “Okay, Top. No matter who you’re speaking as, you’re still the top. I’ll see you later,” he said offhandedly to Leva and stepped around the other, deliberately offering his back, and left without a word.
“Some day he’s gonna make me mad,” Warden said, staring at the door. “Some day I’d like to make him mad. I wonder if he can get mad.”
“You ever see him fight?” Leva asked, casually.
“Yes-I-seen-him-fight. I seen him win that decision over Taylor. I figured I might as well get something out of all this work of his I’m doin.”
“He fouled Taylor six times,” Leva said. “I counted them. Each time a different foul, so the referee could only warn him. It made Taylor mad. But when Taylor fouled him back he didnt get mad. He’s a smart boy.”
“I wonder just how smart he is,” Warden said speculatively.
“He makes a lot of money,” Leva said. “I wish I was smart enough to make that much money. He made enough money from his shed to bring his whole family over from the States, buy his dad a restaurant on the Wahiawa Midway, buy his sister a millinery shop downtown where all the ritzies go, and also build them a ten room house in Wahiawa. Thats fairly smart. . . .
“I hear he’s running around with the society downtown now. Got him a society dame.”
“For when his Chinese shackjob’s got the monthly, ’ey?” Warden said. “Christ!” he said hopefully. “You suppose he’ll marry her and retire?”
“We aint that lucky,” Leva said.
“He’s more trouble to me than Preem. Preem’s only a drunk.”
“Maybe we can work now,” Leva said.
“No. You got to straighten this place up,” Warden said, relaxing, grinning. “Come on, get to work, you bum. Sometime today. It’s too messy for the Old Man, may make him puke. They didnt do it this way at West-Point-on-the-Hudson.”
“Kiss where I cant reach,” Leva said.
They had not been working very long when a car drove up in the company street outside.
“What the hell?” Warden said. “Since when is this place the goddam Royal Hawaiian?”
“Who is it now?” Leva said disgustedly.
Warden watched the tall lean blonde woman get out of the car. A nine-year-old boy clambered out after her and began to hang on the kneehigh guardrails along the walk. The woman moved on up the walk, the faces of her breasts always falling slightly, under the purple sweater. Warden looked at them closely and decided she was not wearing a brassiere, they moved too much and were too pointed.
“Who is it?” Leva said.
“Holmes’s wife,” he said contemptuously.
Leva straightened his back and lit another cigaret. “Goddam her,” he said. “Her and them sweaters. She’ll come in here if there aint nobody in the Orderly Room. And every time she comes in here it costs me three bucks with Mrs Kipfer at the New Congress and a buck roundtrip taxifare to town. Big Sue’s girls aint good enough to take that picture off my mind.”
“She’s a good lookin woman,” Warden admitted grudgingly. He watched the tight skirt under which, over her hip, passed a thin bulge that was the hem of her panties, fading out of sight. Framing the volute power of her life that no woman ever will acknowledge, he thought. Warden had a theory about women: For years he had been asking them to sleep with him, the ones that interested him. “Will you go to bed with me?” and they were always shocked, even the rummy barflies. Of course, they always did, but that was only later, after he had fulfilled the proper requirements of approach. No woman ever said, “Why, yes, I’d like to go to bed with you.” They couldn’t do it. It wasnt in them to be that honest. God damn their souls.
“Sure,” Leva said. “She is good lookin. And she knows what its for. If that dame had as many sticking out of her as she’s had sticking in her, she wouldnt be a woman; she’d be a porcupine.”
“Is that right?”
Warden said. “And I suppose you’ve made her.”
“Hell, no, not me. I aint got enough stripes. But I’ve seen her in here talkin to O’Hayer. Just last week he drove her over to Wahiawa in that Chrysler, to shop,” he mimicked.
“Looks like I’ll have to buy a car myself,” Warden said. But secretly he did not believe it. It always went by some other name with women. They never called it by the right, the only proper name, unless they were professional whores. They couldn’t face the fact men loved their body and its uses. It was too crude, too physical, and too simple. The soppy dampness of love and the sharp musk smell of love sweat must never reach them. Cinderella wore glass slippers, Prince Charming had a fig leaf, and no body hair. That was their Ideal.
“Now dont tell me she’s never made a pass at you,” Leva said.
“Hell, no,” he said. “I’d of given her this.”
“Well you’re the only one,” Leva said. “If I had that rating you been promisin me I could get some of it myself. But you got to be at least a corporal to make time with that one, she dont take to us privates,” he said bitterly. He held up five fingers and ticked off the names he mentioned. “O’Hayer, a sergeant. Sgt Henderson, from Dynamite’s old outfit at Bliss, who now takes care of Holmes’s horses up at the Pack Train and goes riding with her three times a week. Cpl Kling, who is Holmes’s dogrobber. She’s laid them all. Everybody in the Compny knows it. She must have some kind of a perverse yen for all her husband’s noncoms because he cant take care of her.”
“What’ve you been doin? Studyin psychology?”
They listened for a moment to her knocking on the Orderly Room door and when there was no answer, heard the door squeak open.
“I dont need to know psychology to know that much,” Leva said. “I guess you didnt see her kiss Champ Wilson when he won the lightweight championship last year?”
“Sure I seen it. So what? Wilson is Dynamite’s prize punchie and he won the crown. Natural enough.”
“Thats what she knew you’d think, and everybody else,” Leva said. “But there was more to it than that. She kissed him right on the lips, blood, collodion and all, and flung her bare arms around his back and rubbed them on the sweat. When she let him go her dress was dark with it and blood all over her face, dont tell me.”