The Brick Foxhole

by Richard Brooks

  Keeley called Max Brock to his side and stopped for a moment at Captain Finlay’s car.

  “Got a match, Sergeant?” asked Finlay.

  “Yeah,” said Keeley. He gave Finlay his lighter.

  Finlay stoked up his pipe. As he puffed he said: “Your friend, the Crawford boy, has gone back to the Post.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He’s not my friend,” said Keeley.

  “He seemed friendly enough.”

  “Who do you think killed Bowers, Captain?”

  Finlay shrugged.

  “You think Jeff Mitchell killed him, too?”

  Again Finlay shrugged. “Why not? Bowers would have made a good witness.”

  “But you can’t think that!”

  “Thinking is a luxury,” mused Finlay. “It’s what I can prove that counts. The doctor says Bowers died a short while after Edwards. Whoever killed Edwards could have murdered Bowers, too.”

  “Jeff didn’t do it,” said Keeley doggedly.

  “Earlier you were saying he couldn’t do it. Maybe pretty soon you’ll come around to my way of seeing things. After all, Sergeant, my theory has been proved and yours hasn’t. You say there are men who cannot kill. I say I’ve seen every type of man commit murder.”

  A great calm was beginning to settle over Keeley. He would shape things up the same way he did before going into battle. Outline a plan. “Estimate of the situation.” Yeah. Always has to be an estimate of the situation. What was the enemy strength? Unknown, since the murderer was unknown. But Finlay was the terrain. In enemy hands he would help the enemy. In your hands he would help you. Finlay wanted to be shown. Okay. Now what about the enemy? Where was he? Could he be smoked out? Would he give information if captured? Would Monty confess what really happened?

  “Jeff didn’t kill Edwards because he wasn’t with him at the time,” said Keeley.

  “Oh? Where was he?”

  “He was in a cathouse.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  Finlay took the pipe out of his mouth and looked thoughtfully into the blackened bowl. He didn’t like this new angle. Cathouses made him sad, anyway. But suppose Mitchell really was with a whore? Will he admit it to his wife? Will the girl in the cathouse back up the alibi? Will she go to bat to save a stranger? And a soldier at that? Those girls have ethics all their own. And maybe this sergeant is just stringing me along to save his friend. He may be lying. He probably is. Everybody lies.

  “Well?” Keeley was insisting.

  “Well what, boy?”

  “What are you going to do, Captain?”

  “Not so fast, Sergeant. This isn’t the battlefield, you know. Things aren’t all black and white here. The colors are gray. We have to move slowly. A mistake in the battlefield is only a mistake. A lot of guys may get killed, but it’s still just a mistake. Here a mistake means somebody’s job.”

  “What’re you going to do about Crawford?”

  “Nothing right now,” said Finlay. “We’ve got his story, and we know where to find him if we want him again. He can’t run away anyplace.”

  You’re damn right, thought Keeley, and at once he knew what he had to do. Yes. His battle plan was complete now. Whatever happened, Monty Crawford would not run away.

  “Well, Captain,” said Keeley, “if you don’t need us any more, I guess we’d better run along.”

  “Okay,” said Finlay, nodding thoughtfully. “Sure. You’ve done all you could. Just take it easy, now, Sergeant.”

  Keeley took Max by the arm and they walked across the street and hailed a cab. As they got in, Finlay waved in a kind of salute. Keeley waved back. Then he leaned forward and spoke to the driver.

  The cab started for the Post, thirty-five miles away.

  CHAPTER XX

  The second or third feature was playing, but they didn’t watch it and their ears didn’t hear it. Shots were fired, and hoofs pounded on the perpetual mesa, and flaxen-haired girls wooed but never kissed the hero, who kissed only his horse. The bums cheered and whistled. The soldiers slept, for they were tired. One frowzy middle-aged woman who reeked of cheap perfume was soliciting her decaying flesh for fifty cents a throw. Her voice was far pleasanter than she was. It said: “Hello, kiddo, let’s have a little fun in the balcony.”

  But Jeff and Mary saw none of it. They were blind to everything except each other, deaf to all else but their own words. And the touch of their hands set their bodies trembling.

  Where is all my fine anger, thought Jeff. Why don’t I accuse her? Here she sits. She, who caused all this. And I love her. I want her. That’s all I know now. All I need to know. Why didn’t I know it before?

  “When I got the phone call I almost went crazy,” Mary said. “Jeff, darling, what’s the war doing to us? Why does it have to go on so long. When will it end?”

  Jeff felt stronger now because she was weaker. There were others, then, who asked the same questions about the war. Others as confused as he. The world itself was confused. And only a handful of Keeleys knew what to do.

  “It’ll end when we’ve won,” he heard himself saying.

  “Ah, yes,” she said, “we will win, won’t we?” But why was she talking about the war? She wanted to talk only of him.

  “There’s something I’ve got to tell you about, Mary.”

  “Yes, Jeff. Yes. Anything.”

  Their hands clasped tighter, and the sweat between their palms felt good, intimately good. And what was it he wanted to tell her? Before he could arrange his thoughts she spoke again.

  “Jeff,” she began, and then stopped. “Jeff, why did your friend call me long distance? What was wrong?”

  Here it was. Now, how was he going to say it? What words should he use? Why did his imagination desert him now? Where was the pain that had driven so deep into him? He tried desperately to recall the thoughts with which he had tortured himself. Instead he saw Max in the ring being beaten into a sickening pulp. Whitey was pounding Max with soggy, wet leather. And Max was enjoying it. Then Whitey was no longer in the ring. Max was fighting Max, viciously flaying himself. And then Jeff saw Jeff beating up Jeff. And he knew why he and Max were alike. Keeley had known that. And Mary was the same. She could see no further than herself. And all the men in the barracks were like that, too. They were trying their best not to fit into the pattern of the whole, to keep from being absorbed into this thing that was so much bigger than themselves. And because they wanted to stand alone they were destroying themselves. Why doesn’t Max think of the two million Jews who have been butchered in Europe, thought Jeff: then he wouldn’t beat himself to death. Too long had the Jews wanted to feel the pain of Moses, to suffer again the hunger and despair of ancient persecutions. But were other people any different? What of himself? He believed Mary had wronged him, had embraced another man. So what had he done? He had multiplied his fancied wrong, nursing his sense of injury as though it were a precious thing. How flimsy was his love for this woman! The world and all its peoples were reeling under a death blow, and he had simpered and whipped his flesh because of … of what? A rumor.

  “What was wrong, Jeff?” she was saying. “What was it?”

  “I needed you. Keeley thought I needed you.”

  “Keeley must love you very much.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Is he married?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “His wife must love him very much.”

  “She must.”

  But why didn’t he say what was on his mind?

  “Darling,” he said, “did you ever hear of a man called Red Appleton?”

  “Red Appleton?” The name meant nothing to her. “A friend of yours?” she asked.

  A feeling of exultation rose in him, followed swiftly by dismay. What had he done? He and all his delicate tortures.… Red a friend of his?

  “No,” he said. “A soldier. An overseas hero. You entertained him.”

  She remembered the man now. Tall. Ju
st a boy, really. Young, eager, and full of the pride of having done things. Yes, she remembered him. There had been a party. There had been many parties. There had been many young heroes. And they told their stories, and the stories had a sameness. And the women danced with the young soldiers, and even kissed them good-by. Yes. She had danced with this Red Appleton. And she had kissed him good-by. And a sudden fear seized her. Why did Jeff ask about this man?

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “But there is something. Jeff, what is it?” And she wondered why they were sitting there talking of things like that when Finlay was waiting outside in his car. They had only a few minutes to be together. Why were they wasting them?

  “There’s been some talk about you and Red.” He hated the sound of the words. He felt ashamed of himself for saying them, but now he had said them.

  “You believe the talk?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t believe it.”

  And because he said he didn’t believe it, she told him about it. There had been nothing. Nothing, really. It was the least those at home could do for the boys who came back. A party. A few drinks. A dance. A good-by kiss. That was all.

  As Jeff listened to her he wondered where his self-pity was now. Why didn’t he crow and feel pleased? His Mary was innocent. She had not betrayed him. The talk was barracks talk. Scuttlebutt. Yet he had believed it. And the knowledge of his own betrayal was bitter in him.

  “Let’s not talk about things like that,” she said.

  “But there’s something else.”

  “No”, she said. “Nothing else. Nothing but us.”

  “There’s been a murder.”

  “Yes, I know. But you didn’t do it.”

  “No.” As he uttered the word he knew he did it to reassure himself, not Mary. She did not require it. She had not asked a question. She had simply affirmed her faith in him. And he felt his love for her burning in him like a flame. And with his love for her he also felt the full burden of his own guilt, the bitterness of his own lack of faith. And he thought of Keeley, and of what Keeley would have said: “A murder has been committed and it belongs to all of us and all of us are guilty and we all did it.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “We’ll tell them where you were when it happened.”

  “Yes,” he said. “We’ll tell them.”

  “Where were you, darling?”

  Yes. Where were you, Jeff Mitchell? Where were you at the time? You were evening the score … a score that didn’t even exist. Tell her, Jeff Mitchell. Tell your wife you were with a whore. Tell her so that you may save your life. Tell her so that you may be free to love her again.

  So he told her. In a low voice, haltingly, and with bitter shame. He could not look at her. His eyes were riveted on the screen. Watching the man on the horse sweep up the flaxen-haired girl and save her from the runaway mare and the yawning canyon beyond, he told her of Ginny and what he had done. He made no excuses for himself. He told it straight, concealing nothing. And he found it good to tell it so, because it was the truth … the truth that makes men free.

  Mary sat still and listened. A wave of revulsion swept over her. Not because of what Jeff had done, but because his doing it had placed her in competition with a whore.… Her eyes, too, were on the screen, and she was wishing that everything could be as simple as the picture. There were no bad girls in Westerns. Only good girls. And everyone could recognize the bad people at once. Why was it that in real life the villains looked like anybody else?… So her husband had been with another woman? This, then, was what happened to soldiers? Whores took the place of wives. Could wives be that easily displaced, then? Was the only important function of a wife to supply what could be bought anywhere for a few dollars? The thought angered her. Then let him go back to the woman. It would be easy to explain to her friends. People would sympathize with her and uphold her. Had her husband not committed the sin of the ages?… Was everything we dreamed and hoped for, then—was it based on two people in bed? Was that the meaning of everything? If so, the answer was simple. All she had to do was to get up and leave Jeff now. Leave him and go back home.… But when she faced the woman whose husband would never come back from the war, whose husband had been killed or mutilated, what would she say to that woman? What would such a woman say to her? The people in Greece would not stop starving because Jeff had gone to a prostitute. The jungles were as impassable as ever. The Jap soldiers still were savage butchers. Russia’s plains would not stop bleeding because Jeff had done this. China still could not smile, and the ruins of London were still there. Did she imagine all these things would change because Jeff had slept with a whore? Was she going to measure the earth’s circumference with a six-inch ruler?… Poor Jeff. She understood how it had been with him. And suddenly she knew she could never leave him. Especially now, when he needed her so desperately. She loved him and wanted him as much as ever, perhaps more. The only thing that hurt now was the knowledge of that other woman. Well, she would have to prove she was the better woman, that she was better for Jeff than any other woman.…

  The picture was coming to an end. The flaxen-haired girl was safe from harm. Her poor father had had his ranch restored to him. And now the hero was riding off into the horizon with his sturdy friend, the horse. The horse was proud, the mesa was beautiful, the hero was strumming his guitar and singing at the fade-out, and you knew that beyond the horizon were other mustachioed villains and other flaxen-haired girls who needed the strong arm of a hero.

  “Where is she?” asked Mary.

  “Who?”

  “The girl. Ginny.” There. It hadn’t been so difficult to say the name, after all.

  “Why do you want to know where she is?” he asked. “What does it matter?”

  “Because she can help us,” said Mary. “She’s got to help us. She’s the only one who can get you out of this. If she will tell the truth, they’ll know you couldn’t have committed the murder.”

  “Yes,” said Jeff, “but I don’t know. She’s a strange girl. Seems to hate all men. I’m nothing to her. She won’t care what happens to me.”

  “Just the same,” said Mary, quietly, “I’m going to her.”

  “Ah Mary. Mary darling.”

  These were the only words he had left to tell her how much she loved her. Mary had none. She simply took his hand and held it tight.

  At last Jeff gave her the slip of paper on which Ginny had written her address. Then Finlay came into the theater, and they saw him standing there.

  Finlay was tired. His feet ached. His jaw also ached from holding the pipe. He wanted a cup of hot tea. He nodded to Mary.

  They got up and left the theater with him.

  CHAPTER XXI

  Keeley and Max were sitting in the cab, hurtling south into Virginia, soft Virginia, poverty-stricken Virginia, miserable Virginia, beautiful Virginia. They were two molecules flung off from the whirling periphery of the human maelstrom that was D.C. each week end. The howling, grinding, screaming, whistling, boisterous mass of khaki, blue, white, tan, and gray would spin until early Sunday evening, and then would slowly disintegrate into thousands of somber, weary faces that fled from Washington.

  The road was good and wide and fast. Keep it under thirty-five for victory. What the hell was victory to the comfortable bellyachers, thought Keeley. Victory was something that made steaks cost more and Scotch scarce and streamliners crowded with grumblers who had never ridden them before. Victory was no trips to Europe unless you wore a uniform, and who wanted to wear a uniform? And what was victory anyway, and what did thirty-five miles an hour at four in the morning have to do with victory?

  “There’s the airport,” said the cabby, a sociable fellow.

  “Yeah, the airport.”

  “They sure look nice taking off at night.”

  “Yeah, they look nice at night.”

  “What the heck,” said the cabby. “Once drivin’ a cab was like f
lyin’ a plane. Those guys, they’re just like chauffeurs. High-class chauffeurs. After the war they’ll be like cabbies. Dime a dozen.”

  On. On. Bend the tires to the road. Make this old crate go. Push her up. Fifty and faster. I’ve got a date with Monty. Monty and me. Then we’ll be able to have victory. What good is thirty-five miles an hour when you can’t have victory? What good are cabs or tires or roads or airports or planes or runways or anything else? Monty Crawford is stuck in the throat of victory.

  “Look, the Pentagon Building.”

  “Yeah, the Pentagon.”

  “Looks nice at night.”

  “Yeah. Looks nice at night. Ever seen it in the daytime?”

  “Yeah. Crowded.”

  “Ever see such big parking places?”

  “Sure are big parking places. Must hold a million cars.”

  “Where they get the gas?”

  “There’s plenty gas. Always was.”

  “How about it cabby? How’s the gas these days?”