Johnny Got His Gun

by Dalton Trumbo

  Come on youngsters take a nice look and then we’ll go into our nursery rhymes. New nursery rhymes for new times. Hickory dickory dock my daddy’s nuts from shellshock. Humpty dumpty thought he was wise till gas came along and burned out his eyes. A dillar a dollar a ten o’clock scholar blow off his legs and then watch him holler. Rockabye baby in the treetop don’t stop a bomb or you’ll probably flop. Now I lay me down to sleep my bombproof cellar’s good and deep but if I’m killed before I wake remember god it’s for your sake amen.

  Take me into the colleges and universities and academies and convents. Call the girls together all the healthy beautiful young girls. Point down to me and say here girls is your father. Here is that boy who was strong last night. Here is your little son your baby son the fruit of your love the hope of your future. Look down on him girls so you won’t forget him. See that red gash there with mucus hanging to it? That was his face girls. Here girls touch it don’t be afraid. Bend down and kiss it. You’ll have to wipe your lips afterward because they will have a strange rotten stuff on them but that’s all right because a lover is a lover and here is your lover.

  Call all the young men together and say here is your brother here is your best friend here you are young men. This is a very interesting case young men because we know there is a mind buried down there. Technically this thing is living meat like that tissue we kept alive all last summer in the lab. But this is a different cut of meat because it also contains a brain. Now listen to me closely young gentlemen. That brain is thinking. Maybe it’s thinking about music. Maybe it has a great symphony all thought out or a mathematical formula that would change the world or a book that would make people kinder or the germ of an idea that would save a hundred million people from cancer. This is a very interesting problem young gentlemen because if this brain does hold such secrets how in the world are we ever going to find out? In any event there you are young gentlemen breathing and thinking and dead like a frog under chloroform with its stomach laid open so that its heartbeat may be seen so quiet so helpless but yet alive. There is your future and your sweet wild dreams there is the thing your sweethearts loved and there is the thing your leaders urged it to be. Think well young gentlemen. Think sharply young gentlemen and then we will go back to our studies of the barbarians who sacked Rome.

  Take me wherever there are parliaments and diets and congresses and chambers of statesmen. I want to be there when they talk about honor and justice and making the world safe for democracy and fourteen points and the self determination of peoples. I want to be there to remind them I haven’t got a tongue to stick into the cheek I haven’t got either. But the statesmen have tongues. The statesmen have cheek. Put my glass case upon the speaker’s desk and every time the gavel descends let me feel its vibration through my little jewel case. Then let them speak of trade policies and embargoes and new colonies and old grudges. Let them debate the menace of the yellow race and the white man’s burden and the course of empire and why should we take all this crap off Germany or whoever the next Germany is. Let them talk about the South American market and why so-and-so is beating us out of it and why our merchant marine can’t compete and oh what the hell let’s send a good stiff note. Let them talk more munitions and airplanes and battleships and tanks and gases why of course we’ve got to have them we can’t get along without them how in the world could we protect the peace if we didn’t have them? Let them form blocs and alliances and mutual assistance pacts and guarantees of neutrality. Let them draft notes and ultimatums and protests and accusations.

  But before they vote on them before they give the order for all the little guys to start killing each other let the main guy rap his gavel on my case and point down at me and say here gentlemen is the only issue before this house and that is are you for this thing here or are you against it. And if they are against it why goddam them let them stand up like men and vote. And if they are for it let them be hanged and drawn and quartered and paraded through the streets in small chopped up little bits and thrown out into the fields where no clean animal will touch them and let their chunks rot there and may no green thing ever grow where they rot.

  Take me into your churches your great towering cathedrals that have to be rebuilt every fifty years because they are destroyed by war. Carry me in my glass box down the aisles where kings and priests and brides and children at their confirmation have gone so many times before to kiss a splinter of wood from a true cross on which was nailed the body of a man who was lucky enough to die. Set me high on your altars and call on god to look down upon his murderous little children his dearly beloved little children. Wave over me the incense I can’t smell. Swill down the sacramental wine I can’t taste. Drone out the prayers I can’t hear. Go through the old holy gestures for which I have no legs and no arms. Chorus out the hallelujas I can’t sing. Bring them out loud and strong for me your hallelujas all of them for me because I know the truth and you don’t you fools. You fools you fools you fools…

  xx

  He felt the vibrations of heavy feet leaving the room. The man who had come in and tapped the question and who had stood listening to his reply for how long he couldn’t imagine had gone. He was alone with the nurse again. He was left alone to wonder.

  He began to have misgivings. Just as he had always suspected himself of some mistake in his count of time so now he felt wild little ripples of fear shudder through his flesh. He had been so eager to tap that perhaps his message hadn’t made sense. Perhaps he had made a mistake in remembering the code so that his words came out as a jumble of letters with no meaning. His thoughts had rushed through his head so tumultuously that perhaps he hadn’t got them down in order clearly and sanely. Perhaps ten thousand other possibilities had come between him and the message he was bleeding inside to give them. Or perhaps the man had just gone away to talk to his superior and would soon return with an answer.

  That was it. Oh please god that must be it he was sure of it. The man would return soon with an answer. All he had to do was to lie back and rest he was so tired. It seemed to him that he was lying in some kind of dream coma like a man who has spent all his emotions in one wild drunk and afterward is simply sick and disgusted and sure of the worst. He had been tapping now for weeks months maybe years he couldn’t tell because the tapping had taken the place of time for him and all his energies had gone into it all his energies and all his hopes and all his life.

  He stiffened.

  The vibrations were coming toward him again. The man was returning with an answer. Great merciful god thank you here it is here it is my answer. Here is my triumph here is my return from the dead here is life vibrating against the floor singing in my bedsprings singing like all the angels in heaven.

  A finger began to tap against his forehead.

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  The tapping went on against his forehead but he paid no more attention to it. Everything in his mind went suddenly blank hollow completely quiet. A moment of this and then he began to think about the message to make certain there was no mistake that it meant exactly what it said. And he knew it did.

  He could almost hear the wail of pain that went up from his heart. It was a sharp terrible personal pain the kind of pain that comes only when someone to whom you have never done any harm turns on you and says goodbye goodbye forever without any reason for doing it. Without any reason at all.

  He had done nothing
to them. He wasn’t to blame for the trouble he was causing yet they were drawing the curtain around him stuffing him back into the womb back into the grave saying to him goodbye don’t bother us don’t come back to life the dead should stay dead and we are done with you.

  But why?

  He had hurt no one. He had tried to give them as little trouble as possible. He was a great care that was true but he hadn’t intentionally become so. He wasn’t a thief or a drunkard or a liar or a murderer. He was a man a guy no worse no better than anybody else. He was just a guy who’d had to go to war who’d been bad hurt and now was trying to get out from his prison to feel fresh cool air on his skin to sense the color and movement of people around him. That was all he wanted. And to him who had harmed nobody they were saying goodnight goodbye stay where you are don’t give us any trouble you are beyond life you are beyond death you are even beyond hope you are gone you are finished forever goodnight and goodbye.

  In one terrible moment he saw the whole thing. They wanted only to forget him. He was upon their conscience so they had abandoned him they had forsaken him. They were the only people in the world who could help him. They were his last court of appeal. He might rage and storm and howl against their verdict but it would do him no good. They had decided. Nothing could change them. He was completely at their mercy and they had no mercy. For him there was no hope. He might just as well come face to face with the truth.

  Every moment of his life since he had awakened into the darkness and dumbness and terror every moment of it had been concentrated upon the time some day some year when he would break through to them. Now he had done it. He had broken through and they had refused him. Before even in his most terrible moments there had been a vague hope that kept him going. It had prevented him from going stark raving crazy it had shined like a glow in the distance toward which he never stopped moving. Now the glow was gone and there was nothing left. There was no reason for him to fool himself about it any longer. These people didn’t want him. Darkness desertion loneliness silence horror unending horror—these were his life from now on without a single ray of hope to lighten his sufferings. They were his whole future. It was for them that his mother had borne him. Curse her curse the world curse the sunlight curse god curse every decent thing on earth. God damn them god damn them and torture them as he was being tortured. God give them darkness and silence and dumbness and helplessness and horror and fear the great towering terrible fear that was with him now the desolation and the loneliness that would be with him forever.

  No.

  No no no.

  He wouldn’t let them do it.

  It was impossible for one human being to do this to another. No one could be so cruel. They didn’t understand that was all he hadn’t made it plain enough to them. He couldn’t give up now he must go on and on until they understood because they were good people they were good kindly people and they needed only to understand.

  He began to tap again.

  He began to tap again and to tell them pleadingly haltingly humbly that please he wanted out. He wanted to feel air against him the fresh clean air outside a hospital. Please understand. He wanted the feel of people of his own kind free and happy. There really wasn’t any good reason except that. The thing about showing him in a case forget that it was just a way to raise money and make it easier on them. Only that. He was lonesome. That was all just lonesome. There were no more reasons he could give them. There was nothing he could do except to try to let them know that inside the skin that covered his body there was so much terror so much loneliness that it was only right they should permit him such a small thing as the freedom he could pay for.

  As he tapped he felt the nurse’s hand against his forehead stroking him soothing him. He thought to himself I wish I could see her face. It must be a beautiful face she has such beautiful hands. Then against the stump of his left arm he felt 3 sudden wet coolness. The man who had tapped his answer was applying an alcoholic swab. Oh god he thought I know what that means don’t do it please don’t. Then he felt the sharp deadly prick of the needle. They were giving him dope again.

  Oh god he thought they won’t even let me talk. They won’t even listen to me any more. All they want is to make a madman out of me so that whenever I tap my messages to them they can say he’s only crazy don’t pay any attention to him poor fellow he’s nuts. That’s what they’re trying to do god they’re trying to drive me crazy and I’ve fought so hard I’ve been so strong that the only way they can do it is by giving me dope.

  He felt himself sinking back back into the place where they wanted to thrust him. He felt the tingle of his own flesh and he began to see the vision. He saw the yellow sand and he saw the heat waves coming up from it. Above the heat waves he saw Christ in his flowing robes and his crown of thorns with the blood dripping from them. He saw Christ quivering in the desert heat coming up from Tucson. And far off in the distance he heard a woman’s voice crying my son my little boy my son…

  In sheer terrible desperation he shut out the voice he pushed the vision away. Not yet. Not yet. He wasn’t through. He would talk to them he would keep on tapping. The muscles of his body were turning to water but he would keep on tapping. He would not let them lower the lid to his coffin. He would scream and claw and fight as any man should do when they are burying him alive. In his last moment of consciousness in his last moment of life he would still fight he would still tap. He would keep on and on and on tapping all the while tapping when he was asleep tapping when he was doped tapping when he was in pain tapping forever. They might not answer him they might ignore him but at least they would never be able to forget that as long as he lived here was a man who was talking to them talking to them all the time.

  His taps came slower and slower and the vision swam toward him and he pushed it away and it swam toward him again. The woman’s voice faded in and out like something that is carried on the wind. But still he tapped.

  He was tapping why? why? why?

  Why didn’t they want him? Why were they shutting the lid of the coffin against him? Why didn’t they want him to speak? Why didn’t they want him to be seen? Why didn’t they want him to be free? It was five maybe six years now since he had been blown out of the world. The war must be over by now. No war could last that long killing so many people there weren’t enough people to kill. If the war was over then all the dead had been buried and all the prisoners had been released. Why shouldn’t he be released too? Why not unless they figured him as one of the dead and if that was true why didn’t they kill him why didn’t they put a stop to his suffering? Why should he be a prisoner? He had committed no crime. What right had they to keep him? What possible reason could they have to be so inhuman to him?

  Why? why? why?

  And then suddenly he saw. He had a vision of himself as a new kind of Christ as a man who carries within himself all the seeds of a new order of things. He was the new messiah of the battlefields saying to people as I am so shall you be. For he had seen the future he had tasted it and now he was living it. He had seen the airplanes flying in the sky he had seen the skies of the future filled with them black with them and now he saw the horror beneath. He saw a world of lovers forever parted of dreams never consummated of plans that never turned into reality. He saw a world of dead fathers and crippled brothers and crazy screaming sons. He saw a world of armless mothers clasping headless babies to their breasts trying to scream out their grief from throats that were cancerous with gas. He saw starved cities black and cold and motionless and the only things in this whole dead terrible world that made a move or a sound were the airplanes that blackened the sky and far off against the horizon the thunder of the big guns and the puffs that rose from barren tortured earth when their shells exploded.

  That was it he had it he understood it now he had told them his secret and in denying him they had told him theirs.

  He was the future he was a perfect picture of the future and they were afraid to let anyone see what the future
was like. Already they were looking ahead they were figuring the future and somewhere in the future they saw war. To fight that war they would need men and if men saw the future they wouldn’t fight. So they were masking the future they were keeping the future a soft quiet deadly secret. They knew that if all the little people all the little guys saw the future they would begin to ask questions. They would ask questions and they would find answers and they would say to the guys who wanted them to fight they would say you lying thieving sons-of-bitches we won’t fight we won’t be dead we will live we are the world we are the future and we will not let you butcher us no matter what you say no matter what speeches you make no matter what slogans you write. Remember it well we we we are the world we are what makes it go round we make bread and cloth and guns we are the hub of the wheel and the spokes and the wheel itself without us you would be hungry naked worms and we will not die. We are immortal we are the sources of life we are the lowly despicable ugly people we are the great wonderful beautiful people of the world and we are sick of it we are utterly weary we are done with it forever and ever because we are the living and we will not be destroyed.

  If you make a war if there are guns to be aimed if there are bullets to be fired if there are men to be killed they will not be us. They will not be us the guys who grow wheat and turn it into food the guys who make clothes and paper and houses and tiles the guys who build dams and power plants and string the long moaning high tension wires the guys who crack crude oil down into a dozen different parts who make light globes and sewing machines and shovels and automobiles and airplanes and tanks and guns oh no it will not be us who die. It will be you.

  It will be you—you who urge us on to battle you who incite us against ourselves you who would have one cobbler kill another cobbler you who would have one man who works kill another man who works you who would have one human being who wants only to live kill another human being who wants only to live. Remember this. Remember this well you people who plan for war. Remember this you patriots you fierce ones you spawners of hate you inventors of slogans. Remember this as you have never remembered anything else in your lives.