by James Jones
During the second period which was Old Ike’s close order he was called down twice, first for missing a pivot on a column movement (during which at least the two men in front of him were also out of step), then second for fouling up on a triple rear march-right flanking movement (during which the entire company except for the first two ranks of four became a shambling mob eating its own dust and cursing). Both times Ike called him out of ranks indignantly and read him off, spraying Prew’s shirt with a fine mist of old man’s Slavic spit, and after the second reading off sent him with a noncom across the road to the chemical warfare’s quarter-mile track to doubletime seven laps with his rifle at high port (as was customary with the awkward squad).
When he came back sweating heavily but silent, all the men of the jockstrap faction glared at him indignantly (as was customary with the awkward squad) while the men of the non-jockstrap faction did not look at him at all but intently studied the modernistic outlines of the new chem warfare barracks. Only Maggio threw him a grin. It was really very interesting.
In a close order drill the caliber of this one (for which Ike Galovitch was famous) being told off for such niceties of execution in the midst of so much fumbling was really laughable. So Prew laughed. The whole thing was quite a triumph of imagination over matter. The men slouched through Ike’s close order without snap or smartness, the commands in Ike’s perverted English seldom understandable and often given on the wrong foot, at least a third of them always out of step with Ike’s uneven cadence. Ike, in commanding, seemed to fluctuate between a chaste uncertain modesty and a grotesque and Mussolini-ish rage of self-assurance. Neither of these was conducive to a snappy drill, and to any man who had ever soldiered it was not only agony, it was unbelievable, it was the ultimate prostitution of soldiering, the greatest sin ever perpetrated by a boiler-orderly. And yet this company (who shambled spiritlessly through Ike’s stuttering peregrinations no longer caring, with one thought only: Lets Get The Fuck Out of This) glared at him indignantly for fouling up, and Ike (who as a Sergeant and devout Holmes-man felt it was his duty to help hobble this bolshevik) raged at his inefficiency. It was truly an admirable triumph of imagination over matter, of the ideal over appearances. And very laughable. And very interesting.
For the third period they marched up toward the Packtrain to the big sloping field where the bridle path began, just above the golf course where they would watch several religious foursomes of officers (and a couple giggling atheistic threesomes of officers’ wives) all playing their morning devotional round.
This field was the customary scene of a traditional lecture on cover and concealment given by Sgt Thornhill, during which lying on their bellies in the shade of the big oaks that lined the field the Company gave themselves over to the enchantments of mumblety-peg and the study of the bottoms of the officers’ wives and daughters as they bounced around the field on saddles, and during which this morning Turp Thornhill, a long stringy ferret-headed jawless man from Mississippi with 17 yrs serv, who was not a jockstrap man, or even a non-jockstrap man, gave Prewitt a reading off for inattention. And sent him down with a noncom to the nearest track for seven more laps of the best, at high port.
It was at this time that Maggio’s flair for sympathy cost him seven laps himself, when Ike Galovitch saw him make the holy mystic sign to Prew (the one where you close the fist, extend the middle finger, and jab the air) as Prew was leaving, and being incensed at this disrespect for discipline and justice, sent Maggio along this time too.
It went on. And still on. And then further on. First one noncom then another trying his skill, as if they were all bucking to become recruit instructors to the gook draftees that were beginning to come in now from the peacetime draft.
Even Champ Wilson, the lordly ring killer, the cold eyed, the always silent, the perpetually indifferent, condescended to give him a mechanical reading off during a dry-run triggersqueeze firepower exercise, because, The Champ said, he was not distributing his fire properly.
Prew leaned on his rifle muzzle and listened to this one as he had listened to the other ones, the only thing you can do with a telling off, but now he was only half hearing what The Champ was saying. Because he was not there now. He was standing with The Champ but his mind was thinking of the problem. He could see it all in his mind, unfolding like a run off the reel between the hands, each picture following the other logically and with a beginning at the one end and an ending at the other, one two three, right down the line.
The only trouble was you could not see the beginning now as it was lost in all the tangled swirls of celluloid on the floor, and you could not see the ending because it was still on the turning reel.
He remembered though that out of all of them the only noncoms who would not take their turn at booting this brand new ball around were Chief Choate and Old Pop Karelsen, both known openly as his friends. But even they had been offered plenty of chances. But like the non-jockstrap Pvts they preferred to stare uncomfortably off into the middle distance. Or watch the dazzling purity of the slow moving glaciers that were the fair weather cumulus cloud formations, white mountains high above dark mountains.
Well, what did you expect them to do, he thought, rise in mutiny and deliver you? You must surely realize you are not being forced into anything, dont you? You are doing all of this of your own free will, you know, he told himself. Yes sir, you are that, he thought, that you are.
Free will, he thought. There is free will. And then there is free love, dont forget free love. And then also there is free—let me see, free what? Free politics! Nope, not free politics. Well, free what then? Why, free beer, of course. Of course, free beer. Free will, free love, free beer.
But this now is free will. Your own free will, thats doing this. Not them thats doing this. They are merely offering your free will a free choice. Kindly but logically, seriously but without malice, a free choice for your free will.
1) You can go out for boxing. 2) You can not go out for boxing and you can blow up and fight back; in that case you go to the Stockade. 3) You can neither go out for boxing nor blow up and fight back; in which case you can continue to suffer indefinitely this unpleasantness that hurts you because you are sensitive and an artistic bugler, instead of an artistic fighter which would have made it very simple. And, if you continue in this unpleasantness which you are free to choose and which is without malice, but which shows no promise of letting up, the logical sequence will be company punishment for inefficiency plus extra duty plus restrictions plus, eventually inevitably, the Stockade.
Now if we reduce these fractions we have on the one hand, go out for boxing; and, on the other hand, we have go out for the Stockade. Since you are an artistic bugler (instead of an artistic fighter, like The Champ here) we can cancel out the first. So, reducing still further, we have 1) go out for the Stockade; or, 2) go out for the Stockade. The choice is up to you, a rather restricted choice but nevertheless a choice, presented to your free will unemotionally logically without partisanship, and without personal malice or meanness of spirit.
He would, he thought, much have preferred that they hate him, that they band together in the sacred name of Home & Country (not Family, I think we can leave Family out of this one) and oppress him with the mace of Law & Order. Law & Ordure, he thought, or, perhaps, shall we say, Slaw & Hors D’Oeuvre. As, say, the Nazis do the Jews, for instance. Or as the English do the Indians. Or as the Americans do the Negroes. That would have been much better, wouldnt it? Yes. Then you would have been a hated human, instead of an unhated number (# ASN 6915544, all present and accounted for). Because obviously, how can anybody hate a number? Yes, that would have been better. But then a man cant have everything. We do not want to make life too easy for him, do we. No, we do not want him to become a sluggard, a lead swinger, a gold brick.
You did not ever really believe they would do it to you, did you? No, you didnt. Because you know damn well you could never have done it to one of them, having suffered as you have from an o
verdeveloped sense of justice all your life, not to mention being a hotly fervent espouser of the cause of all underdogs all your life (probably because you have always been one, I imagine).
But he had always believed in fighting for the underdog, against the top dog. He had been raised up on that. He had not learned it, not from The Home, or The School, or The Church, but from that fourth and other great moulder of social conscience, The Movies. He had learned it from the movies, all right. He had learned it from the movies, from all those movies that had begun to come out when Roosevelt went in, those movies that had been inspired by the Depression when America was buckling into harness for its social revolution that was the hope of all the intellectuals then. That was before the Communists made their pact with Hitler and lots of them were Communists then because they believed there was hope then, in Communism, and they made these movies that were great movies in the fullness of their belief that there was hope, and that would remain great because of the belief that was in them, no because of Communism, even when later the hope had died, as the hope of the generation before them that was in Socialism had also died.
He wondered what was the hope of the younger generation now. He suspected that it was hope in Frank Sinatra and in Stan Kenton, but he was not sure since he had not talked to any of them. They were too young for the army yet.
But he had been a kid back then, a kid who had not been on the bum yet, but he was raised up on all those movies that they made then, the ones that were between ’32 and ’37 that were truly great and had not yet degenerated into commercial imitations of themselves like the Dead End Kid perpetual series that we have now. He had breathed them and eaten them and slept them and grown up with them, those movies like the very first Dead End, like Winterset, like Grapes of Wrath, like Dust Be My Destiny, and those other movies starring John Garfield and the Lane girls, and the on-the-bum and prison pictures starring James Cagney and George Raft and Henry Fonda.
He had only been a green kid but he had learned from all those pictures to believe in fighting for the underdog, against the top dog. He had even made himself a philosophy of life out of it; they had taught it to him well; it was ingrained. It was too ingrained to be dropped later after thirty-seven when everything began to change, leaving him an anachronism.
So that he had gone right on, unable to stop believing that if the Communists were the underdog in Spain then he believed in fighting for the Communists in Spain; but that if the Communists were the top dog back home in Russia and the (what would you call them in Russia? the traitors, I guess) traitors were the bottom dog, then he believed in fighting for the traitors and against the Communists. He believed in fighting for the Jews in Germany, and against the Jews in Wall Street and Hollywood. And if the Capitalists were top dog in America and the proletariat the underdog, then he believed in fighting for the proletariat against the Capitalists. This too-ingrained-to-be-forgotten philosophy of life of his had led him, a Southerner, to believe in fighting for the Negroes against the Whites everywhere, because the Negroes were nowhere the top dog, at least as yet.
He had learned it well and he could not change and now the waters of hope had receded, the flood was over, and he was left high and dry with his outmoded philosophy of life.
Still he felt it was a very creditable philosophy, as naturally he would having it ingrained, one that was well adapted to this age in which there were so many under dogs. It, unlike other philosophies of life, had only one simple danger to look out for. And that was that in fighting for the under dog you do not ever let yourself become top dog, or else you would cornhole your own philosophy.
It must be a great temptation though, he thought, being top dog. Of course you dont know. You have never been one. But you can imagine how it would be. All you have to do is imagine you are an officer. You can imagine that.
It was, he realized, a very flighty philosophy, a chameleon philosophy always changing its color. You were a Communist one day and the next day you were an anti-Communist. But then this was a very flighty age, a chameleon age in which the chameleon lived perpetually upon a bright Scotch plaid.
So that so what if maybe today you are a Capitalist and tomorrow an anti-Capitalist? And maybe this minute cry over downtrodden Jews and the next minute cry against sadistic Jews? So what? It is a very irrational and emotional philosophy. Well, this is a very irrational and emotional age. I think that your philosophy puts you right in step with life in these United States and life in this disunited world.
But where, you ask, does it put you politically? What are your politics?
I think we can dispense with that question, he told himself. It is a wrong question, one that implies you have to have some kind of politics, and is therefore an unfair question because it restricts your answer to what kind of politics. It is the kind of question a Republican or a Democrat or a Communist would ask you. And anyway, you cant vote, you are in the Army, they wouldnt be interested in you.
Yes, I think we can reject that question. But if we had to answer it, truthfully, under oath (let us suppose that Mr Dies and his Un-American Activities Committee called you up because you refused to go out for boxing), then I would say that politically you are a sort of super arch-revolutionary, the kind that made the Revolution in Russia and that the Communists are killing now, a sort of perfect criminal type, very dangerous, a mad dog that loves underdogs. Thats what I would say you were.
But you better not tell that to anybody unless you have to, Prewitt. They’ll put you in the nut ward. Because here in America, he thought, everybody fights to become top dog, and then to stay top dog. And maybe, just maybe, that is why the underdogs that get to be top dogs and there is nothing left for them to fight for, wither up and die or else get fat and wheeze and die. Because they no longer got anything to fight for but to stay top dog, to keep what they already got.
All of which, Prewitt, does not do you a whole hell of a lot of good—except to make you feel a little better—since the way things look now it is very unlikely that you will ever get to be top dog and have to worry about getting fat and wheezing. If you were worrying about getting fat and wheezing, all this doubletiming that is sweating you like a nigger at election would ease your mind of that. Maybe they are doing you a favor and do not know it. Well, dont tell them, thats all. Dont ever let them know it.
What a business. You go along trying to mind your business and be yourself and bother nobody and look what happens to you. Yes, look what happens. You get mired in up to your ass in something. Grown men, seriously pushing each other around, over the burning question of whether or not a certain man should or should not go out for a boxing squad. It seemed so silly, suddenly, that it was hard to believe that absolutely serious results for you could ever come out of it.
Yet he knew that those results could and would come out of it for him. You cant disagree with the adopted values of a bunch of people without they get pissed off at you. When people tie their lives to some screwy idea or other and you attempt to point out to them that for you (not for them, mind you, just for you personally) that this idea is screwy, then serious results can always and will always come out of it for you. Because as far as they care you are the same as saying their lives are nothing and this always bothers people, because people prefer anything to being nothing, look at the Nazis, and that is why they tie their lives to things.
Why dont you, he thought, tie your life to something, Prewitt? To a tree, perhaps. It would save us all a lot of trouble and discomfort.
Maybe Red in the Bugle Corps had the right idea after all. Maybe you cant go along and mind your business any more. Maybe that privilege is restricted to just certain kinds of business. Such as real estate development, politics development, manufacturing, laboring, consuming, and patriotisming. And apparently not going out for boxing is on the Restricted List, for us robots.
A sort of sullen stubbornness of dull rebellion began to rise up in him. He had plans for Payday, and this very serious foolishness might very easi
ly turn out to have an extra KP in it for him on Payday.
All right. If they want to play, well we will play. Hate they like, hate they will get. We can hate as well as the next one. We were pretty good at it once, in our youth. We can bruise and burn and maim and kill and torture, and call it kindliness and thoughtful discipline, just as subtly and intangibly as the next one. We can play the game of hates and call it free enterprise of competition between individual initiatives, too.
That was the only way to handle this. We will hate, and we will be the perfect soldier. We will hate, and we will obey every order perfectly and to the letter. We will hate, and we will not talk back. We will not break a single rule. We will not make a single mistake. We will only hate. Then let them take it and carry it from there. They will have to search hard to find any offense to charge this one with.
He hung on sullen hatefully to that role the rest of the morning. And it worked. They were puzzled. They were perplexed. They were obviously deeply hurt because he hated them, and because he was so perfect as a soldier. Some of them even got angry at him; he had no right to react like that. He was like a damnfool bulldog that has got his teeth into a man simply because the man has beat him, and cannot be swung loose or kicked loose or pulled loose or beaten loose but only made to let go by the cutting of his jaw muscles, which in this case happened to be illegal.