by James Jones
The thing that stayed in Prew’s mind as he pushed in and out up the street was what Warden had said about his chances. Fat chances! If they bombed the rock and let the prisoners out! It burned all over him like a fire of gall. Some chances!
As he crossed Maunakea he saw Scholar Rhodes and Bull Nair weaving down toward him arm in arm. They insisted on buying a drink.
“We just come from the Ritz,” Nair said happily drunkenly as they stood up to the bar. “Aint as ritzy as Mrs Kipfer’s, but thats why I like it better. Them ritzy places gives me the willies.”
“I used to go to the Ritz all the time before I got in the Company,” Prew said. “Its good.”
“Christ!” Rhodes said dreamily. “It was jest like losing my cherry all over again.”
“It was wonderful,” Bull Nair said.
“When you coming back?” Nair said, as they came out into the street again.
“I dont know,” Prew said. “I aint tired of being a civilian yet.”
“Christ!” Rhodes said, still dreamily. “Wisht I had the guts to go over the hill. If I had the money.”
“Boy, we really gapped them up to the Ritz,” Nair grinned foolishly, “dint we, Dusty?”
Rhodes guffawed. “Yeah, we sure gapped them.”
“Lets gap old Prew,” Nair suggested.
“Naw,” Rhodes said. “My jaws is tard.”
“Well,” Nair said, “we see you when you git back. Too tard to gap you.”
“See you,” Rhodes said, still dreamily.
Prew watched them weave away arm in arm, the bitterness of gall burning him fiercer than ever until he wanted to twitch, itching him. where he could not scratch, until he wanted to drive his fist into the face of the first man who came within reach.
When they were out of sight, he turned and crossed Beretania and instead of going on up to the car stop he went on down the side street. The Ritz Rooms was just down the block.
The Ritz was crowded, and he had to wait a while before he even saw Georgette anywhere. His hands were sweating freely and his face was flushed and his throat thick, and the savage wildfire scourged him harder. To hell with it, to hell with all of it, burn it all down, tear it all up, smash all of it.
He caught her in the hall, finally, and stopped her. When she saw it was him, she pulled him into an empty room to see what he wanted and find out what was wrong. At first she was embarrassed. Then the embarrassment stopped.
Afterwards, when he held out the money, she laughed and refused it. But when he continued to hold it out to her stubbornly she looked at him and then at the money and that look came back in her eyes and she took it.
When he got home to the house, after the long taxi ride sitting alone in the dark savoring it, he sat up to wait for them, drinking one scotch and soda after another. Have it out right now, get it over with. But he passed out on the living room floor before they got home.
When he got up in the morning and went out to the kitchen to get water for his head, Alma was already sitting at the table over coffee. He could tell by the cool way she looked that Georgette had already told her, either last night when they got home, or else early this morning. He might have known she would; he had expected her to. But he had meant to tell her first himself. Only, he had passed out.
Alma did not say anything to him, either then or later. She did not blow up, or get mad, or anything else. She was very polite. She was warm, and friendly, and she smiled, and talked to him, and she was very polite. She was so polite he could never get his nerve up enough to tell her. She never gave him an opening, and she never referred to it.
So, instead, he moved out onto the divan in the living room.
She never questioned or referred to that, either. She had never treated him so nice since he had known her. They got along fine. Once, during the next week, she came out to the divan and slept with him and then got up and went back to bed and that was very nice too, very polite.
Georgette did not treat him nicer, nor worse. She neither stayed home more often nor went out more often. They all sat around the breakfast nook table in the morning for coffee and talked to each other nicely, and Georgette did not go out early to shop any more like that one time. They were just one big happy family.
It was during that week that he copied down from memory the first verses, and then went on to finish, The Re-enlistment Blues.
Rummaging in the desk for paper, one afternoon, he noticed Alma had taken out all the money that she kept there. She had not touched the gun. She did not lock up the radio-bar either. He was drunk most of the time.
He did not care about the money because he had no place to go and no impetus to go there, but he was glad she did not lock up the radio-bar on him. She did not say a word to him about being drunk. She did not ask him to leave either, because he would obviously have no place to go; they had been over that before.
That was the way it went that week.
Somewhere, either out of her silence and politeness, or else out of his own imagination, he got the idea that she had been planning to marry him all along until this happened. He felt like a man who had got his ring back.
Once or twice they got into heavy arguments over nothing, absolutely nothing, like whether St Louis Heights was 483 feet elevation or 362 feet elevation. They would start with something like that, but before they were finished everything would be dragged in. Your ad; my ad; your ad; my ad. He held his own, in these; it was the silence that got him. And he took a lot of ad points with his old threat of just walking out. It still seemed to work just as good as ever.
Even, he thought, if he didnt have the guts to actually do it.
Chapter 50
MILT WARDEN DID NOT really get up early the morning of the big day. He just had not been to bed.
He had gone around to the Blue Chancre, after Karen had gone home at 9:30, on a vague hunch that Prewitt might be there. Karen had asked him about him again and they had discussed him a long time. Prewitt hadnt been there, but he ran into Old Pete and the Chief; Pete was helping the Chief to celebrate his last night in town before going back into his garrison headquarters at Choy’s. They had already made their bomb run on the whorehouses and dropped their load on Mrs Kipfer’s New Congress. After Charlie Chan closed up the Blue Chancre, the four of them had sat out in the back room and played stud poker for a penny a chip while drinking Charlie’s bar whiskey.
It was always a dull game; Charlie could not play poker for peanuts; but he always let them have the whiskey at regular wholesale prices and if they complained loud enough he would even go in on it and pay a full share, although he drank very little. So they were always willing to suffer his poker playing. They would always overplay a hand to him now and then to keep him from finding out how lousy he was.
When they had drunk as much as they could hold without passing out, it was so late the Schofield cabs had stopped running. They had hired a city cab to take them back because there was nowhere else to go at 6:30 on Sunday morning.
Besides, Stark always had hotcakes-and-eggs and fresh milk on Sundays. There is nothing as good for a hangover as a big meal of hotcakes-and-eggs and fresh milk just before going to bed.
They were too late to eat early chow in the kitchen, and the chow line was already moving slowly past the two griddles. Happily drunkenly undismayed, the three of them bucked the line amid the ripple of curses from the privates, and carried their plates in to eat at the First-Three-Graders’ table at the head of the room.
It was almost like a family party. All the platoon sergeants were there, and Stark was there in his sweated undershirt after getting the cooks started, and Malleaux the supply sergeant. Even Baldy Dhom was there, having been run out by his wife for getting drunk last night at the NCO Club. All of this in itself did not happen often, and today being Sunday, nobody was less than half tight and since there had been a big shindig dance at the Officers’ Club last night none of the officers had shown up, so that they did not have to be polite.
&n
bsp; The conversation was mostly about Mrs Kipfer’s. That was where Pete and the Chief had wound up last night, and most of the others had gone there. Mrs Kipfer had just got in a shipment of four new beaves, to help take care of the influx of draftees that was raising Company strengths all over Schofield. One was a shy dark-haired little thing who was apparently appearing professionally for the first time, and who showed promise of someday stepping into Lorene’s shoes when Lorene went back home. Her name was Jeanette and she was variously recommended back and forth across the table.
At least one officer was always required to eat the men’s food in the messhall, either Lt Ross, or Chicken Culpepper, or else one of the three new ROTC boys the Company had been issued during the last week; the five of them passed the detail around among them; but whichever one got it, it was still always the same and put a damper over the noncoms’ table. But today it was just like a big family party. Minus the mother-in-law.
Stark was the only one, outside of Warden and Baldy, who had not been around to Mrs Kipfer’s last night. But he was drunk, too. Stark had picked himself off a shackjob down at the Wailupe Naval Radio Station while they had had the CP out at Hanauma Bay. Some of them had seen her, and she was a hot-looking, wild, I’ll-go-as-far-as-you-will wahine, but Stark would not talk about her. So he did not enter the conversation much at the table; but he listened. He had not spoken to Warden since the night at Hickam Field except in the line of duty, and at the table he ignored Warden and Warden ignored him.
It was a typical Sunday morning breakfast, for the first weekend after payday. At least a third of the Company was not home. Another third was still in bed asleep. But the last third more than made up for the absences in the loudness of their drunken laughter and horseplay and the clashing of cutlery and halfpint milk bottles.
Warden was just going back for seconds on both hotcakes and eggs, with that voracious appetite he always had when he was drunk, when this blast shuddered by under the floor and rattled the cups on the tables and then rolled on off across the quad like a high wave at sea in a storm.
He stopped in the doorway of the KP room and looked back at the messhall. He remembered the picture the rest of his life. It had become very quiet and everybody had stopped eating and looked up at each other.
“Must be doin some dynamitin down to Wheeler Field,” somebody said tentatively.
“I heard they was clearin some ground for a new fighter strip,” somebody else agreed.
That seemed to satisfy everybody. They went back to their eating. Warden heard a laugh ring out above the hungry gnashings of cutlery on china, as he turned back into the KP room. The tail of the chow line was still moving past the two griddles, and he made a mental note to go behind the cooks’ serving table when he bucked the line this time, so as not to make it so obvious.
That was when the second blast came. He could hear it a long way off coming toward them under the ground; then it was there before he could move, rattling the cups and plates in the KP sinks and the rinsing racks; then it was gone and he could hear it going away northeast toward the 21st Infantry’s football field. Both the KPs were looking at him.
He reached out to put his plate on the nearest flat surface, holding it carefully in both hands so it would not get broken while he congratulated himself on his presence of mind, and then turned back to the messhall, the KPs still watching him.
As there was nothing under the plate, it fell on the floor and crashed in the silence, but nobody heard it because the third groundswell of blast had already reached the PX and was just about to them. It passed under, rattling everything, just as he got back to the NCOs’ table.
“This is it,” somebody said quite simply.
Warden found that his eyes and Stark’s eyes were looking into each other. There was nothing on Stark’s face, except the slack relaxed peaceful look of drunkenness, and Warden felt there must not be anything on his either. He pulled his mouth up and showed his teeth in a grin, and Stark’s face pulled up his mouth in an identical grin. Their eyes were still looking into each other.
Warden grabbed his coffee cup in one hand and his halfpint of milk in the other and ran out through the messhall screen-door onto the porch. The far door, into the dayroom, was already so crowded he could not have pushed through. He ran down the porch and turned into the corridor that ran through to the street and beat them all outside but for one or two. When he stopped and looked back he saw Pete Karelsen and Chief Choate and Stark were all right behind him. Chief Choate had his plate of hotcakes-and-eggs in his left hand and his fork in the other. He took a big bite. Warden turned back and swallowed some coffee.
Down the street over the trees a big column of black smoke was mushrooming up into the sky. The men behind were crowding out the door and pushing those in front out into the street. Almost everybody had brought his bottle of milk to keep from getting it stolen, and a few had brought their coffee too. From the middle of the street Warden could not see any more than he had seen from the edge, just the same big column of black smoke mushrooming up into the sky from down around Wheeler Field. He took a drink of his coffee and pulled the cap off his milk bottle.
“Gimme some of that coffee,” Stark said in a dead voice behind him, and held up his own cup. “Mine was empty.”
He turned around to hand him the cup and when he turned back a big tall thin red-headed boy who had not been there before was running down the street toward them, his red hair flapping in his self-induced breeze, and his knees coming up to his chin with every step. He looked like he was about to fall over backwards.
“Whats up, Red?” Warden hollered at him. “Whats happening? Wait a minute! Whats going on?”
The red-headed boy went on running down the street concentratedly, his eyes glaring whitely wildly at them.
“The Japs is bombing Wheeler Field!” he hollered over his shoulder. “The Japs is bombing Wheeler Field! I seen the red circles on the wings!”
He went on running down the middle of the street, and quite suddenly right behind him came a big roaring, getting bigger and bigger; behind the roaring came an airplane, leaping out suddenly over the trees.
Warden, along with the rest of them, watched it coming with his milk bottle still at his lips and the twin red flashes winking out from the nose. It came over and down and up and away and was gone, and the stones in the asphalt pavement at his feet popped up in a long curving line that led up the curb and puffs of dust came up from the grass and a line of cement popped out of the wall to the roof, then back down the wall to the grass and off out across the street again in a big S-shaped curve.
With a belated reflex, the crowd of men swept back in a wave toward the door, after the plane was already gone, and then swept right back out again pushing the ones in front into the street again.
Above the street between the trees Warden could see other planes down near the smoke column. They flashed silver like mirrors. Some of them began suddenly to grow larger. His shin hurt from where a stone out of the pavement had popped him.
“All right, you stupid fucks!” he bellowed. “Get back inside! You want to get your ass shot off?”
Down the street the red-haired boy lay sprawled out floppy-haired, wild-eyed, and silent, in the middle of the pavement The etched line on the asphalt ran up to him and continued on on the other side of him and then stopped.
“See that?” Warden bawled. “This aint jawbone, this is for record. Thems real bullets that guy was usin.”
The crowd moved reluctantly back toward the dayroom door. But one man ran to the wall and started probing with his pocketknife in one of the holes and came out with a bullet. It was a .50 caliber. Then another man ran out in the street and picked up something which turned out to be three open-end metal links. The middle one still had a .50 caliber casing in it. The general movement toward the dayroom stopped.
“Say! Thats pretty clever,” somebody said. “Our planes is still usin web machinegun belts that they got to carry back home!” The two
men started showing their finds to the men around them. A couple of other men ran out into the street hurriedly.
“This’ll make me a good souvenir,” the man with the bullet said contentedly. “A bullet from a Jap plane on the day the war started.”
“Give me back my goddam coffee!” Warden hollered at Stark. “And help me shoo these dumb bastards back inside!”
“What you want me to do?” Chief Choate asked. He was still holding his plate and fork and chewing excitedly on a big bite.
“Help me get em inside,” Warden hollered.
Another plane, on which they could clearly see the red discs, came skidding over the trees firing and saved him the trouble. The two men hunting for metal links in the street sprinted breathlessly. The crowd moved back in a wave to the door, and stayed there. The plane flashed past, the helmeted head with the square goggles over the slant eyes and the long scarf rippling out behind it and the grin on the face as he waved, all clearly visible for the space of a wink, like a traveltalk slide flashed on and then off of a screen.
Warden, Stark, Pete and the Chief descended on them as the crowd started to wave outward again, blocking them off and forcing the whole bunch inside the dayroom.
The crowd milled indignantly in the small dayroom, everybody talking excitedly. Stark posted himself huskily in the doorway with Pete and the Chief flanking him. Warden gulped off the rest of his coffee and set the cup on the magazine rack and pushed his way down to the other end and climbed up on the pingpong table.
“All right, all right, you men. Quiet down. Quiet down. Its only a war. Aint you ever been in a war before?”
The word war had the proper effect. They began to yell at each other to shut up and listen.
“I want every man to go upstairs to his bunk and stay there,” Warden said. “Each man report to his squad leader. Squad leaders keep your men together at their bunks until you get orders what to do.”
The earth shudders rolling up from Wheeler Field were already a commonplace now. Above it, they heard another plane go roaring machinegun-rattling over.