The Brick Foxhole

by Richard Brooks

  Everything was good for life, thought Jeff. Especially on the radio. There was one announcer, for example, with a voice like a church organ, who talked about floor wax. Some wax! And the comedians on the show made believe they were impatient with the announcer for bothering the listeners with talk about floor wax. Greatest wax in the world because it did something no other wax ever did: it waxed the floors. And the comedians said, oh is that so, and listen to him, and come on, hurry up, let’s get this over with, and how did you get in here anyway; and the listeners were supposed to think that was all very funny because even the comedians didn’t like the commercial about wax, and the sponsor and the comedians and the writers of the radio show were absolutely certain that this was the best way to slip over a sales talk because it would be painless that way. Floor wax—makes your floors good for life.

  And then on another program you learned about a local dealer in furniture who could provide you, for the puny sum of one hundred and seventy-eight dollars, tax included, with a complete three-room set of furniture. It was the buy of the century. Never in wartime had there been anything like this. There were sixty-eight pieces in this three-room set. For example (a thought never mentioned in the advertisement) a lamp consisted of about five pieces. There was the base, the stand the lamp, the bulb, and the electric cord. A small night table was really two pieces: the table itself and the drawer inside it. And all sixty-eight pieces for one hundred and seventy-eight dollars, tax included. That made it a little less than three dollars for each piece. And where, the announcer asked, could you buy a bed and inner spring, with an easy-sleep mattress, for three dollars? And to show you the good faith of the furniture dealer, you did not have to pay cash. And if you came before Friday of next week—early, mind you, to avoid the crowd—you would get a beautiful, hand-carved, priceless satin doll for the lady’s bed. And the clincher, the final word to break down all sales resistance, came when the announcer whispered confidentially that this set of furniture was guaranteed for life. Any fool could see what a bargain this was.

  Anyone who lives in a barracks is a radio listener. Jeff had heard how shoes and suits and hats and carpenter tools and many other items were being made to last for life. Silverware went a step further. It was made to last not only for your life, but for generations. And lately there had been a pen and pencil company which claimed that its product was made to last not only for life … not merely for generations … but FOREVER! It was good to know, thought Jeff, that his children and great-grandchildren and all their offspring, for as long as there would be people, would be using that very same pen and pencil and would keep writing with it even when there was nothing left to write about.

  Everything, it seemed to Jeff, was good for life, except a soldier. He was good only for death … and not even good for that if he was trapped in a brick foxhole.

  The girl came back into the room. She was still naked. There was nothing about her to indicate that she had been affected in any way by anything that had transpired. Jeff noticed several faded welts on the girl’s hips. She was walking around completely uninhibited, unashamed, matter-of-course, making motions as if to tidy up the room. She didn’t say a word, but just the same she made it plain to Jeff that his time was up. He began to get out of the bed. From a near-by room came a sudden cry of pain. Ginny turned toward the sound. Then she looked at Jeff to see if he had heard it. She knew that he had. The cry was not repeated. He arose and put on his clothes. Ginny slipped on the evening gown and began to brush her hair. He watched her and wondered what she was thinking.

  Ginny put down the hairbrush and, from the small, disorderly pile of bills he had dropped on the dresser, extracted five dollars. She folded the remaining seven dollars and pushed them into his pants pocket.

  “What’re you thinking of?” he asked.

  “Nothing. Why? What were you thinking about?”

  She powdered her nose and examined herself in the mirror.

  “What was that … a few minutes ago?”

  “What was what?”

  “The scream.”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” she said.

  “Yes you did. It was in the next room … in this place somewhere. We both heard it.”

  She lit a cigarette. “Why?” she said coldly. “The hero ready to rush to the rescue?”

  “I’m not the hero type. Just wondered, that’s all.”

  She was looking into the mirror as though it were another room like hers. Jeff could see the anger spreading her nostrils. “Yeah,” she said, “I heard it. Everybody heard it. You heroes.” The words came out short and bitter, strained through hatred. “I hate every damned hero that ever was.”

  “Yeah,” Jeff said. Then he thought for a moment and added, “Yeah.” For the first time since he had come here he did not feel so lonely. There was a bond between them after all. She was angry at the world, too, he thought.

  “Well, soldier,” she said, finally, “you better shove off and start looking for a pair of green lights.”

  “You know the whole story, don’t you?” he said.

  “Yeah. That story anyway.”

  “Maybe I don’t think I need the green lights,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me one of you heroes trusts somebody.”

  “What’ve you got against the uniform?”

  “Me?” she said, and the word was an accusation. “Nothing. I’m patriotic. I’m for the four freedoms. I’m for democracy. I’m giving my all for my country. In God we trust. Salute the flag. Hail Columbia.”

  He took one of her cigarettes from the small case and lit it. Then he remembered and gave it to her. Then he took another for himself. He wondered whether, if he embroiled her in an argument, she would forget and let him stay awhile longer?

  “You want to know what the scream was?” she said.

  He shrugged.

  “It was Louise. Her and that big hero from the Navy. Know what he carries in that little satchel? A switch!” She paused. She was no longer talking to Jeff but addressing the universe. “Yeah. A little rubber switch. Oh, he’s a good man, that lieutenant. Oh, he’s good, all right. Every night he goes home and gets into bed with his wife and he don’t even put the lights on because it isn’t decent to look on a woman’s body. But once a month he comes here with that suitcase and that damned rubber switch. And after he uses it, he kisses you where you bleed till his mouth is all covered with blood. And then he gets all excited. He’s like a wild animal then.”

  She stood there held in the rigid vise of memory. Then she relaxed and her mouth fell open. A wave of revulsion rippled her features.

  “Why does she do it?” he asked in a whisper.

  She looked into the mirror again and pinched her cheeks to bring spots of color into them.

  “His money’s good,” she said. “He pays plenty. Part of the job. I don’t know.”

  She started for the door. He didn’t want her to go

  “Do you have to go?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” Her question asked him more than that. It was a surprised probe, he felt. She thought he wanted her again.

  “Well, if you’re not busy … I mean … well … maybe you could stay awhile and we could … well, maybe we could talk for awhile.”

  She regarded him coolly for a moment. “Look, soldier, I’ve heard that big-brother line before.”

  “No, no. I thought maybe we could really talk. Maybe you could tell me something about yourself.”

  “You’re all the same,” she said. Then she mimicked: “How did such a nice girl like me ever get started in a game like this? Was it some man?”

  She was repeating the whoremonger’s lament.

  “I’m not interested in that,” he said swiftly.

  “No? What then? Maybe you love me, huh? You’ve got a great big week-end pass and so maybe you’d like to marry me, huh? The Army wants to marry me. The Navy wants a second helping because it’s my patriotic duty. The Marines think I’m like their little sister ba
ck home so they want to live with me. The Coast Guard want to raise my position in life. They’ll be glad to get me a better job. They’ve got a swell ten-dollar house to put me into. What kind of a proposition you got in mind?”

  “Never mind. I was just wondering where you came from.”

  “You heard. Virginia.”

  “You don’t come from Virginia, and your name’s not Ginny.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “We better cut this out,” she said. “I don’t think Mrs. Bell would like this.”

  A sudden, hot anger swept through his belly. It reached the back of his mouth and it tasted bitter and familiar. Again somebody was sitting back of the scenes somewhere like a god and telling him what he could and could not do. Ever since he had enlisted he had been butting his head against a solid wall of “don’ts.” Ever since his first day at basic training, he had been on a merry-go-round of restrictions. Don’t do this and you can’t do that. Don’t think. An enlisted man is not supposed to think. Don’t move without an order. Don’t dream. Don’t hope. Don’t, don’t, don’t. For a year the same anger sat on his tongue. Be a nonentity and you got by. Make yourself heard or known and somebody wouldn’t like it. There always was a somebody. And that somebody could be a commanding officer, a colonel, a top sergeant, a buck sergeant, an orderly, an M.P., a civilian, an indignant train traveler, a Mrs. Bell. His anger was too close to the surface for Ginny not to notice it.

  This was getting too much for her to handle. In the face of human lava her youth crumpled in upon her. She thought only that at any moment he would start to smash things. That was her experience. When men in uniform got angry they broke furniture, they destroyed. She didn’t know what to do. All her poise and sureness were gone. She was frightened.

  Jeff began to tremble and shake. His entire body shook. The blood drained away from his face. He shuddered as though his heart were a bellows blowing icy blasts through his arteries.

  He reached into his pocket and brought out the bottle of atabrine tablets. He dropped the first pill but got the second one into his mouth. He swallowed painfully several times and finally managed to get it down his throat.

  “Please,” he chattered, “can I?…” He motioned toward the bed. “Just for a minute?”

  She nodded. He stretched out on the bed and lay there shivering. She was too frightened to feel sorry for him, but she did manage to pull the covers over him. His eyes thanked her. When she started for the door, he said, “Please don’t.” She came back and sat down stiffly on the edge of the straight-backed chair. She sat there for several minutes watching him, wondering what had happened. Her mind could only say over and over again: “Something always happens with soldiers. Always. Always trouble. Always something. Maybe he’ll die. Maybe something will happen. What will Mrs. Bell say? Always trouble.”

  Finally his body gave a long quivering sigh and his heart breathed warmth again. He wiped the sweat from his face with a wet palm.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “That’s all right,” she whispered. “Feel better now?”

  “Yes. I’m going.” He threw back the covers. Then he answered the unasked question in her eyes. “Malaria,” he said.

  She swallowed the word testily. Then she gave him the small bottle of atabrine tablets which he had dropped. He put them in his pocket.

  “Atabrine,” he said. “It never works this fast. Shakes just happened to stop, that’s all. I’m lucky, though. This stuff is supposed to turn your skin yellow. Mine hasn’t started yet.”

  “Where’d you get it?” she wanted to know. “The malaria?”

  “Oh, Guadalcanal,” he lied.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What for?” He lied again. “It’s the only way you can get back.” He felt very sorry for himself. He saw himself on Guadalcanal suffering from malaria, anxious to go on fighting the Japs, and then being sent home because of the malaria. He saw the ship arriving at the dock and the cheering crowds. Everyone knew he had malaria and everyone knew he had done his bit. No one could say he hadn’t helped to win the war. He counted for something. His malaria was a badge of courage. Then he remembered where he had caught malaria and the dream was dispelled. He was a barracks hero. A Hollywood Commando. “One of them artist guys.”

  “Six times as many soldiers in the Pacific get malaria as get killed by bullets,” she said.

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “Oh, I read about it.”

  “You read a lot?”

  “No more,” she said. “I once got interested in reading, though.”

  “But no more, eh?”

  “No. Reading’s too lonesome.”

  Her words were warmer than the blankets had been. He was glad to find someone else who was lonely.

  “You get lonely, too?” he asked.

  “Sometimes.” Then she added quickly. “But not for men.”

  “For what?”

  “Things,” she said. “I get lonesome for things. All my life I wanted to buy things. All kinds of things. Bottles of this and that. Pins and cigarette lighters. I don’t know. All kinds of things, I guess. I just like to buy things. I don’t care about having them because most of the time I give them away or lose them or something. But I like to buy them. That’s what I get lonesome for. Shopping. Buying things. I could just shop and buy things all my life.”

  “Don’t you ever get lonely for people?”

  She thought for a moment and then shook her head. Jeff wanted to say that it was only natural for people to get lonely for people. She saw the disappointment in his face.

  “What kind of people?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Anybody. Somebody. Maybe a man. Somebody who would be with you always. Maybe build a place for you. And you could raise kids and make payments on a car and read the funnies on Sunday and get drunk on Saturdays. Somebody like that?”

  “Sure,” she smiled. “I know who you mean. He comes here to get away from it all on Mondays.”

  They both laughed.

  “Would you like to know my name?” he asked.

  “No. Why?”

  “I’m running for election, that’s why.” He thought he sounded gay and pleasant. “Everybody ought to know my name. I want to walk down the street and hear people call out, ‘Hello, Jeff Mitchell, how are you, today? Would you like to shake hands? Would you like to come into my house and talk for a while?’”

  She laughed at his enthusiasm. “What’re you running for?” she said.

  “Me? I’m running for Ambassador.”

  “You don’t run for Ambassador. Ambassadors are picked.”

  “I know. Like strawberries. But this is out of season. Besides, I want to be elected. I want people to say, ‘I voted for Jeff Mitchell.’ I’d be a new kind of Ambassador, I guess. I’d go around and make sure nobody was lonely. If I’d see a man sitting in a restaurant all alone, I’d go right up to him and say ‘Good evening Man, how are you?’ ‘Ambassador,’ he would say, ‘I’m awful lonely tonight. I’m lonely to talk to Bette Davis. For five years now I see her in the movies. I would like to know her. All I want to do is sit down and talk to Bette Davis for awhile.’ We would drink twenty cups of coffee and talk. ‘Okay, Man,’ I would tell him. And I would go to see Bette Davis and tell her that I met a man who is lonely to talk to her and if she has time can she help him out. And of course Miss Davis would be nice about it because she must be lonely at times, too. And she would understand. And then there would be you. You’d be on my list, too. You would be lonesome to go shopping. So I would go with you and you could buy anything you wanted.”

  “How about you?” she asked. “Suppose you got lonely?”

  “I wouldn’t. That’s because I would have something to do. I’d be like the train at night. I’d have someplace to go all the time, and something to do, and people would be waiting for me.”

  “Okay,” she said seriously. “I vote for you, Jeff Mitchell. From now on
you’re Ambassador.”

  He heard Mrs. Bell’s voice calling outside the door, “Ginny, you’ve got visitors, honey.”

  The girl became cold and impersonal again. She hitched at her evening gown. She stepped to the bed and rapidly straightened out the sheets and batted the pillows into smoothness. He wished she would put new sheets on the bed and wondered who had used them before him. He wondered how long he had been there? Half an hour? Forty-five minutes? He knew he didn’t want to leave. At least he didn’t want to leave Ginny. There was no place to go. Once he left her, it would start all over again. Where to go? Who to talk to? What to do?

  “Ginny,” he began and then stopped.

  Having made the bed, she was ready to leave.

  “Ginny, if I paid you again … would you … could you … stay? I mean only for a short time. Maybe a half hour? Here, I could pay you in advance and Mrs. Bell would see that I was still a … a visitor.”

  “What do you want to stay for?” Her voice was not inquisitive. It was merely factual.

  “I don’t know,” he said, feeling embarrassed at her disregard for his recuperative powers. Then he added, “It doesn’t make any difference to you who pays, does it?”

  She quickly evaluated the next half hour. She had already stayed too long with him. Mrs. Bell liked to have her visitors attended to in fifteen minutes. Half an hour was too long. Especially on a Saturday night. A man came there to buy release from the fire in his veins. Not to buy a syrup for his soul. Mrs. Bell liked her business to be brisk. Turnover was the important thing. Visitors were not encouraged to stay for an encore. It usually took too long the second time.

  Jeff saw his answer in her hesitation.

  “Suppose I wanted you all night?” he asked impetuously.

  “I’m sorry, soldier.”

  “But if I paid for it?”

  “It’s against the rules.”

  “But.…”

  “Mrs. Bell wants fifty dollars for something like that. Besides, why do you want that?”

  “Because I do.”