by Ray Succre
While the confusion of being at bay, even slight, caused a tremor in one’s mind, the uncertainty was perhaps the worst feeling next to the certainty that all had gone wrong. It was stopping a swift car in a sudden way, simple to complete until the wheels caught and the vehicle fulfilled its cease in a violent lurch. That was when your skull reached into the windshield. When momentum caught, and the truth of the matter overcame you: Your life and all that it contained was at the mercy of forces you did not understand. Not like life, a force which defied understanding, but like death, the force that twisted into every thing that could end, and with only the rarest warning. He was accused of not being able to see the big picture, of having his head in the clouds. He had to stop to breathe, to clear his thoughts often, or he grew... stupid. He would begin making mistakes. Stopping to clear his head felt like death, however, and only served him the time to better feel that ever-present sense of fear. This emotion was everywhere and came over a man in staunch, innumerable ways. He had to choose between feeling terror and falling to stupidity. It was a rough call, most days.
“Think they’ll be sending us home?” the private with the bloody arm asked. Emery didn’t answer. They might. One of the medics approached and began talking to the injured Chaplin.
“Murphy, Ronald J?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“How’s that arm feeling, private?”
“Applesauce.”
“Good. I’ll need you to let go of it so I can take another look.”
“No, just leave me be. It’s fine.”
“I still need to look.”
“It’s fine.”
His father’s posture in the picture was odd. A strange expression from the camera catching them a moment earlier than anticipated. A goofy-looking I’m-a-man leaning near his me-too son. The son’s uniform was ironed and clean, regal yet ready. His father in the usual dress, suit performing the image Emery knew best. They had taken the picture in the afternoon, an hour before the high school graduation ceremony. It was the first time Emery had put on his uniform. His father seemed confused by the situation of war, and didn’t speak much once Emery put on the uniform. Henry Asher did dress up, however, and he posed for the picture, hair slicked back and chin high, mouth down-turned and eyes tired.
“I’m sorry, but we’ll have to take this off.”
“Get away from me. I can still move it,” the Chaplin jumper said.
Two years had passed. The son missed his father greatly. Emery’s hair in the picture, beneath his garrison cap, was as black as his father’s. But high school eyes. An adopted pose of bring-on-the-war and the unprofitable look of a tough act, mostly with girls in mind. What would his father think of him returning before his tour was complete? Certainly pride. Respect. But possibly doubt. The injury was severe, yet seemed by its look mild. Tertiary. Not a man-stopper, not at all, just painful. There would be those who might suspect him cowardly. He might have been, at times, unaccountable, but never cowardly. Perhaps he would be best to develop a fist for these sorts, if the knee sent him home. Thus far, the injury seemed intent on doing so.
“It has to be done.”
“You go cut your own balls off. This arm’s straight; I’m movin’ it just fine. See? So you all get away from me, now. Go on. Leave me be. Fuckin’ butchers.”
Soon Emery would be helped onto a truck bound for the airfield, and a flight to a proper surgeon who might have time to take a more dedicated look around in a soldier’s knee. Emery would be fine, and said this to himself. He wanted to say this to others present, to the Chaplin in the next bed, explain that they would also be fine, but knew this was not probable. Some would not be fine. The Chaplin was about to have his arm taken off. Across the tent, a man turned over and clutched at his stomach. Maybe from a bayonet. He had nothing left to retch, and so the sound of his doing so was brazen and hollow and animal-like. Outside, the Pacific downpour continued, seeping its thick moisture and humidity into the tent fabric, into the clothing and minds of all present, their lungs and even their complexions. Was he done here? Had his lot in this war drawn its straw, and had the length of it truly come out long?
“Private Asher,” he heard from his left, out of sight. A turn of the head showed him who he knew by voice to be Lieutenant Merrill. The aged man held his riding strop and the clasp of his holster had been left open in the rush of the morning’s events. The two met eyes and the Confederate lieutenant adopted a look of recognition, approaching. His medals popped from his chest as he moved and looked like jewelry in the dim light of the tent. They seemed almost effeminate. Emery noted these achievements as Merrill approached. The rhombus Pacific Theater Award for Leadership. A Confederate Medal for Courage and the cherished Southern Cross. Joining these at the forefront of his breast was the Medal of Honor. Though his boots were muddy and shins torn, the scabbard of his saber was polished to a high sheen, and had likely been cleaned not minutes previous. Merrill was a man of distinguished bearing. A man who chose to look good when he fought. Emery lifted his arm and gave salute, which felt a bit off and unpracticed while lying horizontally.
“Oh please,” the lieutenant said with a wave of his hand, “At ease, son. While I’m pleased to be saluted, I don’t much enjoy or deserve it coming from a sick bed. Came to see how things are.”
“Oh, I-”
“I know; the injury’s bad.”
“Right. Thank you, sir. I- I can’t jump or run infantry; my knee is pulp.”
“What?”
“So the knee, huh? Well, that’s a raw deal. You did all right last night. Thought you were catching up.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I hope we get something good out of that Jap we caught. At the least make all these injuries worth it,” Emery said, gesturing toward the rows of men in the tent.
Merrill had a moment of thought, leaning back to gauge what he had heard. He seemed puzzled but cautious.
“Do you mean the worth of these men to the war effort, or that injury’s worth to you?”
“Well... I suppose both, sir.” Merrill frowned.
“I see; you get hurt and turn like bad milk. You’re a fool, Asher. They’re all worth it. Every one. And don’t go feeling pity for yourself. It’s womanly.”
“No, sir. Of course not,” Emery said. He hadn’t meant to offend.
“You’re a soldier and you got off easy. This is better than it used to be. I’ve been here since the start. Lot of men lost things last night, Asher. Not just you. They lost limbs. Lives. Those damn, dirty nips shot my Lauderdale.”
The ex-confederate fighter’s thumb began to stroke the riding crop in his hand as he looked down at this tool in a troubled way.
“…had to finish the poor girl off myself,” he said, exhaling slowly before his resolve flashed him up again, “Conflict is an impatient bitch, Asher. But she’s the place for injury. And worse: She’s where it belongs. Everything’s worth everything. Better get used to that.”
“I didn’t mean… Sir, I- I am proud to serve. Defend the world against the Axis. The Germans and Japs... it… it’s important, I know. I don’t doubt that at all. We just got off on the wrong foot for a moment.” But Emery did doubt it, very much.
“The wrong foot,” Merrill repeated.
“Yes, sir. I agree with everything you’re saying. I know about honor. I know what it is.” Emery glanced at the achievements that littered Merrill’s chest then, distracted. The lieutenant, having been a cavalry officer in the Civil War, and having served in both World Wars, noticed Emery’s distraction and ran his hands over his various medals and patches, his awards and congressional notices. What an American Merrill had been, always doing his part. The adornments brocaded his chest and noised as he frisked them. His eyes grew dull.
“Do you respect these, private? These… honors?”
“Of course, sir,” Emery replied, a brief pain in his knee striking against his focus.
“Oh, wake up, boy. The South loses at the end. Ain’t you read the books?
Grant and his goddamned union. America and every Axis asshole who ever shot a round? The only honor is life. We don’t hunt our enemies here, they hunt us. They hunt our life. This is no fantasy and you haven’t really been here for most of it.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Be thankful you didn’t lose more than your mobility. A crumpled knee puts you at a desk. That’s easy street. You’ll be far away from this goddamned place. You should thank God above for not popping one through your brain out there.”
Perhaps from injury, exhaustion, the opiate, or else exasperation at having been brought to this moment without his true consent, Emery heated. His temper lifted him and filled his thought with honesty and ire.
“Sir, to tell you the truth, it’s just humans trying to kill one another over land. It’s been going on since the start. I wouldn’t pin it on a God. That guy two beds down did and they closed his lids for him. Fellow next to me is getting his arm taken away. He’s a Chaplin, one of God’s own, personal servants. How can there even be such a thing when wars like this happen? Hitler believes in God, too.” Merrill’s eyes widened at this. He was uncertain what the young private had meant to say, but whatever it was, an argument had begun. Merrill felt potent with such things.
“Explain that,” the lieutenant said, cold.
“How can different factions and sides in a war all think they’re guided by the same god? It’s ridiculous. And you’re right, now is not the time for it. This is about land-thieving and extermination and government. It seems to me that God is being used by everyone for whatever aim they have. It seems like maybe that’s how it has always been.”
The ex-confederate fended his posture, motionless, crop at his side. There was a blink atop the stare, followed by resolution. He did not appear angry, but orderly.
“You’re piss. A nothing. And seeing you in that uniform makes me sick. PATCH HIM UP AND GET HIM OUT OF HERE,” the lieutenant shouted then. This last statement, an order to the medics, flowed with a venom usually hidden.
“Goodbye, sir,” Emery said.
“Keep this godless cunt off my battlefield,” Merrill ordered, walking out of the tent with a rigid back and heated eyes.
Before the truck arrived, Emery slept again, a small drift of bundles that made up his drugged mind. This was at first difficult, as he could not dislodge the pensiveness he felt that his superior might cause him much trouble over his earlier statements. Less statement than notion, but still stated. He did sleep for a time. This was the very entrance, the first opening of the door to those nightmares that would come in his future.
Waking from this in a start, out of breath and to the sting of receding morphine, his last official maneuver of war was to hold his breath as tightly as he could while moving onto a stretcher. Murphy, the Chaplin, was no longer present.
CUT TO:
EXT. MEDIC TENT IN LEYTE - MORNING
A medic truck pulls to a stop near the tent and we see the DRIVER step out, bringing a clipboard with him. We see a MEDICAL OFFICER approach him.
MEDICAL OFFICER:
You’re late. Who ya here for? Murphy and Warner?
DRIVER:
Got orders for a Murphy, an Asher, and a guy named Wachs.
MEDICAL OFFICER:
Yeah, we got ‘em. Second two are all right. Murphy is out cold; bled a lot while they were takin’ his arm off. Might wake up, might not. It’s like I said, you’re late.
We see HOST ASHER enter the scene. He is wearing his black, tailored suit. He steps into frame from behind the truck, as if having strolled through the camp. This bit of real life is now a set, a scene. The DRIVER leaves frame, into the tent, leaving HOST ASHER in MEDIUM SHOT, CENTER, as he gives the closing monologue:
HOST ASHER:
The efforts of war. The game of conflict where young men stop each other’s hearts and spill their lives across the ages. The war-zone of gun and mortar is the battlefield of sword and spear, and then the later theater, the one fought for all of a veteran’s life, one of apprehension and grim memory. Perhaps more grim is that Private Asher will soon learn of the passing of his father. This is a time of death for the private, whether those near to him are lost to gunshot, grenade, faulty parachutes, or the time-honored tradition of heart attack.
The game of life and death sits in the perches of a man’s soul, waiting, living with the nightmares of the soldier who can never extinguish his guilt or pride. Forever to haunt his dreams and psyche, the memory of those lost will follow his every step, keeping one foot always on The Other Side.
WIPE BLACK
END CREDITS
Chapter Four
The more astonishing thing was not that the professors had much to profess, or that the government had built a bridge over which Emery might cross and attend college (the plausibility of his enrollment had been thin before the war), but that the campus had not yet adopted timecards for their classrooms. No bells indicating class was to start, no strictness of schedule, no repercussions for missing class beyond an ever-lowering grade that did not feel to be all that important when returning from violence. So many seats were empty certain days, while so many intelligent professors baffled the very air with stale dilemmas and that certain pungency of near universal disdain for war. They were knowledgeable souls, with many fine arguments, and there were only a curmudgeonly few with callous faces, but either sort went unheard by numerous students who skipped lectures. Emery held a similar hatred for the war, its sensation of neglect permeating his hopes through those surly recollections of its worst attributes. These had burned into his ill dreams, snapshots scorched into his emulsion, but he had begun to understand why so many of the students on The Bill skipped the lectures: War was the topic that would not ease or settle, and it was referenced with incessancy on campus.
Most of the male students had been there, in Europe, or in the Pacific, firing at real men, and these professors had not, though there were one or two older instructors that had taken part in the First World War. Hearing disdain about what returning soldiers had been forced to do, as if blaming the draftees for their ordered actions, was as if having your marriage explained and dissected by lonely, single misers. There were professors in favor of the war, but these were so meshed with a love of history and skirmish that they seemed just as distanced from the war as those that despised what had happened. All agreed on one or two points, however: Germany had needed to be stopped, Japan had been foolish to attack the United States, and Russia was now becoming a large problem. At least in these views, everyone tended to agree.
The manner by which lecture was given seemed in long moments less the convoluted overlay of rhetoric than the shrill, warbling notes of a yodeler. Physics and history and the cursory instruction of photography being yodeled at you in a tiredly befuddling tenor that you couldn’t be certain you were hearing at all. The oddity was that his professors held their views of war over his own, and instead felt to possess the truth of it more than those men who had returned home and promptly enrolled. There was worship involved, as well, from those people that had been too young or too old to be taken up by the war, but that had been all for it. There was a sense of ongoing reverence and homecoming for soldiers, but also a sense of caretaking. It was as if these world war believers quietly considered all of the returning men to be hayseeds and rubes, in need of being celebrated and hugged before being sat down and quietly informed about the war from which the soldiers had just returned.
Many students skipped their courses. They had enrolled for various reasons, but the largest was a compulsion due a difficult question: What else was there to do? Get a job and cease moving about? Accept that the prior, high-charged years were a temporary sort of world that would not be returning? They had survived a thing and wanted to see what they could do with the lives they had managed to keep. They were trained in a way that was no longer relevant. There had to be something for them; perhaps school or further training. Women were a monumental part of the new life they encountered.
The empty seats in the lecture rooms were often, and not surprisingly, cold in the absence of bored-off veterans that were doll dizzy and youthfully raring. These were hollowed out classrooms only a hundred feet from courts and grounds that buzzed with couples and singles and the pulse of the interested and energetic.
Timecards would have helped.
Emery held his studies at arm’s length. He did as was appropriated him, but ambled deeper into those few fantastic realms that caught his mind. Literature was the enticing Gilgamesh, gnomic verse, old Wordsworth, and, when academic eyes were not looking, his own private literary stock of Huxley, Wells, and a subscription to Topnotch Science Tales. Physical Education was the portion of his day that caught him most, after Literature, the latter for its intrinsic magnanimity of tale, which he felt in his blood, and the former in preparation of his major and occupation. Already he had served his work details at camp and in a halfway-house as resident counsel, and in the years to follow, there would be more internship, more field study, more labor, and from the crumbs of these biscuits, whatever nutrient of experience one might draw. He had planned on becoming a teacher and coach of the physical, but several other areas of interest had taken hold of him.
“You did mean it, didn’t you?” she asked, looking at him.
“Of course I did. I’m no scamp, Beth. Even if I wanted to be, I don’t quite have the age or height for it. You know I love you.”
“Well, you could still be a scamp. Any man could. At whatever age. Good looks and war stories. Bluh.”
“I’d make a good husband.”
“Says you. And I’m tired of hearing it. How could we just get married like that? We couldn’t, Em. We’re not aligned.”