Between staring into the vast empty future and writing his novel about the Army and bull sessions with Moore and Worm and Rogers and Lanky Lincoln and Jimmy Larker, the time slipped past like the bottomless ocean beneath the ship. Some evenings he would sit in the hot and overcrowded hatch and watch the great and endless checkers duel between two of the oldest men in the outfit, Jackie Ray and Geoffrey Grant. The hatch smelled like a locker room—close and angry. Jackie was a tall lanky soldier from Cleveland, Ohio, and before that from Iberia, Louisiana, which he never mentioned. The men nicknamed him “Hopjack.” In his youth he had been a professional tap dancer, according to him. And even now he was a fair-to-middling hoofer. Grant was a self-proclaimed Black Nationalist from New York City and Trinidad. The men nicknamed him, “General Grant.” His face was always deep in thought and his forehead ever wrinkled. They had a checkers tournament going which began the day they put out to sea.
They played their games in a sweating deadly earnest and they argued the fate of the world. The General was pro-Japanese—he pictured the Japanese as the champions of the colored race. Hopjack was a Yankee-doodling flag-waving red-blooded American, who couldn’t wait to get overseas and into the patriotic war.
Sometimes Solly would come from topside and walk over to them and ask them, “What’s the score?” They always announced each other’s score. The General would look up from the game and smile sheepishly and grudgingly admit, “White folks—228.” And stare at the dark-faced Hopjack, whom he characterized positively as a white-folks’ colored man, unworthy of human consideration. Yet they were the best of buddies.
And Hopjack would announce Grant’s score triumphantly, “Japanese—221.”
And the lead kept changing hands from day to day as the battle raged and the whole world hung in balance.
Solly would sit and watch and listen to them argue. One evening when the score was White Folks 356 and Japanese 359, Hopjack said, “Goddamn, you just as sneaky as them Japs.”
Grant said, “Don’t show your ignorance, mawn.”
Hop said, “Your mama must’ve had a Jap insurance man.”
Grant said indignantly, “The Japanese are not sneaky. They are an honorable race of people.”
“How come that man was in Washington grinning in the President’s face at the same time they snuck up on Pearl Harbor?”
Rogers came over. “You goddamn right they’re sneaky. Remember Pearl Harbor, a day of infamy, so help us God, and chin up and V for Victory and we did it before and we can do it again, and all that kind of shit.” He started to sing in his brassy bass:
“’Land where my fathers died,
Land of the Pilgrim’s pride—‘“
And Solly remembered Millie and Pittsburg and the day he left it all behind, and “The Darktown Strutters’ Ball.”
Hop got up and said, “I just wanna slap a dirty little Jap.” And he did a fancy tap-dance step.
Other men had gathered around and were laughing at the floor show. General Grant was speechless with rage. He looked up and around at the laughing men and the wrinkles in his forehead seemed to be popping out of his tightened skin.
“You goddamn ignorant bawstards! The Japanese are fighting for your freedom and your dignity. The white man is the most deceitful, the most two-faced human being in all the world. But if he pissed in your face and told you it was raining outdoors, you damn fools would purchase umbrellas.”
Solly felt a kind of vague uneasy sympathy with the General, and he was not one of those laughing, and neither was Clint or Jimmy Larker, whom the men had named the Quiet Man.
Solly said quietly, “I appreciate how you feel, and I don’t blame you. But you have to face the facts. Both the Germans and the Japanese have fascist governments, and Hitler and Tojo are out to dominate the world.”
Grant shouted, “Of course they are, mawn. That’s what I been trying to tell these fools. Hitler and Tojo are going to conquer the whole damn world, and then after that, Tojo going to conquer Hitler, and the colored mawn going to rule the world. The bottom coming to the top.”
Solly shook his head. He wanted Grant to tell him that Asia offered something different. Not just the bottom coming to the top. This was not enough for him.
Hopjack said, “They still the sneakiest people in the world and they snuck up on Pearl Harbor and you must be drinking jungle juice.”
Solly wanted General Grant to say that Asia and Africa were the New World—the brand-new hope for all mankind. Because sometimes he himself harbored a sneaky suspicion that Western civilization was hopelessly hopeless. That it had had its chance and goofed it.
Grant said, “You got your facts all mis-screwed.” Some of the soldiers laughed at him.
Solly said seriously, “But, General, the Japanese did make an unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor. I mean, no matter what your sympathies may be—I mean—I may sympathize with you but—facts are facts—”
Grant screamed like a snake had bitten him. “Unprovoked? Unprovoked? I’m surprised at you, Corporal Solly. You supposed to be intelligent. You just like the rest of them—believe everything the white mawn say—”
Solly said, “But they did, didn’t they? I mean, those are the facts.”
Grant said, “What you think the American Navy was doing in Hawaii? What you think the Japanese ambassador was doing in Washington?”
Rogers said, “I’ll bite—what was he doing?
“The white mawn in Washington didn’t want to see the great proud Japanese people follow their destiny, which is to lead the colored people to rule the world. Africa and Asia gon come to the top.”
Rogers burlesqued, “I don’t want no goddamn spooks ruling over me. I know a couple of spook cops in Harlem. They get their nuts off whipping black heads. Course I don’t blame them. They better not whip any of them pretty white folks’ heads.”
Grant said contemptuously to Rogers, “You have no dignity, Sergeant.” He looked around at the rest of the men. “The United States was trying to choke the Japanese to death, cutting off all their trade with other countries and so, and the reason the Navy was in Hawaii, they were getting ready to attack the Japanese mainland, and the Japanese ambassador was in Washington talking peace and trying to head them off and trying to get a breathing spell for his great country and its mission. He thought he was dealing with gentlemen. He didn’t know the white mawn. Washington turned him down flat, and although the Japanese were not ready yet to wage war against the United States, they had no alternative but to defend themselves.”
“That is unadulterated horse manure,” Solly said heatedly, and he stared at General Grant and felt like crying—crying for the misdirected bitterness erupting from this sensitive human being. And his country was responsible. His country was entirely culpable.
Rogers said, “You must have been one of those Japanese spies they rounded up in Harlem. How in the hell did you sneak into the Army?”
Grant glared at him. “Your pride is in your arse hole.” And the General walked proudly toward the head.
It was just before noon on the twenty-fifth day when Solly saw a long huge strip of greenish earth begin to shape up out of the misty sea like a prehistoric monster and slowly but surely materialize. About a half an hour earlier, a reception committee of sea gulls had come out to meet them and guarantee them safe convoy to the biggest island in the Southern Seas. Between them and the big green monster were smaller islands, scattered over the translucent waters like lettuce leaves in a great and gorgeous salad. The tide was apparently in the flood because some of the smallest of the islands were entirely under water except for the tops of trees, which seemed to grow up from the ocean’s depths. The New Rotterdam picked its way gingerly into the bay around the tiny uninhabitable islands and the coral atolls and lagoons and the dazzlingly beautiful but treacherous coral reefs toward the big granddaddy of the tropics. The job was made a little easier by the shattering radiance of the sun, which pierced the jeweled blue of the ocean’s surface all the w
ay to the bottom of the bay.
Solly stared off the side of the ship through the breathless heat and thought maybe this was where his body would be buried. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after that, maybe next month or even maybe this day now. Somewhere on this place, this island, were the men he had come thousands of miles from home and family to hunt down and encircle, to shoot down and to kill. Or be killed. Men like himself, born of woman, with frightened anxious families in their homeland. But it was all their damn fault. The little brown bastards! They let a bunch of power-hungry fanatics lead them down a highway to self-destruction. And misery for the rest of the world. They had made their choice and so must suffer the consequences. The color of their skin had nothing to do with it. He blamed them for fouling up his life in his short life’s most important years, and he worked himself into a sweating fury. Maybe it was the heat, maybe the fear and anguish and frustration. Millie and Mama and Fannie Mae and career, writer, lawyer. Life was a tick-tock of infinity, and he was wasting his forever and forever and for what? And it was all their damn fault! These brown men somewhere hidden on this jungle of an island.
He said, “Worm, let’s book the next passage back home. I don’t believe I’m going to like this place.”
Worm laughed his dry laugh. “This is home, buddy boy. We been on a long vacation. We ain’t gon never leave again.”
Grant’s angry eyes were glowing. “Somewhere on this island is the heroes of the colored race!”
Solly said, “Stop kidding yourself, General Grant. We are Americans and these people are our enemies.”
Hopjack cut a fancy step. “Let me at ‘em! Let me at ‘em!”
Buck said, “We know you aren’t scared, old folks. Why in the hell don’t you stop breaking wind? The heat is bad enough already.”
Everybody is scared, Solly thought, and everybody is being brave. The big green glittering mystery ahead of them, rising quietly up out of the wide and deep blue water, was awe-inspiring. He was scared but at the same time nervously impatient. He was burning hot and boat-sick, and now that they had arrived he wanted to see what kind of country he had come to.
Far out in the bay the ship stopped suddenly, as if the white rays from the sun had dehydrated its engine. After a time it moved in toward the shore and then back out to the edge of the bay again, and back and forth three or four times, like it couldn’t make up its mind, with frantic signaling to the shore and blinding signals in return. A couple of officers boarded the ship from a launch, stayed about fifteen or twenty minutes, and got off again and raced back to the island.
Worm said, “If we going ashore let’s go, goddammit!”
General Grant said almost hopefully, “It sure would be funny if the Imperial Navy would slip up behind us at the mouth of the bay and sink every ship in the harbor. That’s what you call a mouse trap—a masterful stroke of strategy!” As if he had just gotten word it was going to happen.
Rogers said, “Don’t worry about nothing, fellers. Them Japs got better sense than to mess with Uncle Sam like that.” He stopped. “Wait a minute—them bastards are just sneaky enough to try something like that. They don’t know what cricket is.” He cupped his hand around his mouth. His voice was like a muted foghorn. “All ashore that’s going ashore! All ashore that’s going ashore!”
Nobody laughed, and Solly wondered if it really mattered who won the war, even though he wanted to believe that it mattered desperately. To hell with it. He was in it and was going to make the most of it. Darling Millie. And don’t you worry about it, Mama. Your boy is going to do his damnedest to come back home to you and Millie. He has no plans for heroism. Just get ahead and get it over and get back home and start life over.
Three hours later they still sat out in the blazing heat. Quiet Man Larker said, ironically, “Maybe they made a mistake. Maybe they’re looking for us over in England to open up that Second Front.”
General Grant almost took him seriously. “Then we could shoot up gobs of white men!”
But the impatience of the men notwithstanding, it was almost dusk before they moved with deliberate purpose toward the zigzagging coastline of deep thick jungle standing breathless in the white heat even as the sun was leaving. Closer in you could see vehicles like giant cockroaches racing through the green thicket, and closer, thatch-roofed buildings and jeeps and trucks and dirt roads and people and “civilization.” And finally the ship dropped anchor. A half an hour later the nervous men of 913 climbed, hot and sweaty, down the side of the ship on a swaying rope, carrying packs and duffel bags, and boarded a barge to take them ashore. The other companies in the regiment stayed with the ship and who knows why or what or when.
Buckethead Baker stood on the barge alongside Solly and Rogers and Bookworm and the others. The barge rocked from side to side and it seemed a fifty-fifty chance that it would bump against the underside of the ship, which reached up out of the water to about a hundred feet above them. Even though no breeze was stirring, they felt a slight wet wind caress their nervous sweaty faces and it was good good good, and Buckethead opened his mouth to drink it in and smacked his lips. “The salty sea sure is delicious. Ain’t nothing like it nowhere.”
Solly looked up and around and his eyes discovered the source of the sweet breeze blowing. “Salty sea, your ass,” he said triumphantly. “Somebody on board just took a piss and flushed the head.” He pointed to a hole in the ship about thirty feet above them where the great salty flush had subsided to a feeble sprinkle.
The tension exploded in the heavy heat. The soldiers began to laugh and howl and stomp their feet like they were landing for a Sunday picnic, and the barge bumped heavily against the underside of the old New Rotterdam.
And now they stood at ease, ill at ease on the hot white sandy beach, near their packs and duffel bags and rifles, tired and sweaty and angry and nervous and slapping sand flies and mosquitoes. Solly felt he’d been baked in an oven and melted down. And the bugs were making a meal of him. Captain Rutherford told them, “Everything’s under control. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about. I just have to make a few arrangements. So y’all stay here near your gear till I get back. Take a smoke or anything else, but just don’t move from the immediate area.”
Scotty sang underneath his breath an old blues fragment.
“’Gon grab me a freight train . . .
Take myself a ride . . . .’“
The captain asked were there any questions and, before Scotty could open his mouth or raise his hand, called Saunders to accompany him in a jeep he had commandeered. Solly drove with the captain all over the strange and quiet terrain, with its majestic coconut palm trees and its great grass taller-than-tall-menfolk and almost thick enough to walk on top of, as the bright green color began to fade quickly into a dark green, almost black, and the daylight leaving and the sun setting somewhere way out on the Coral Sea. The sticky heat hung around for evening. The first stop was division headquarters and from there to corps, and then to base headquarters, the captain getting hotter by the second, but it did him no good. No place they went were they expected.
At the entrance to base headquarters a homemade sign read:
“TIMES SQUARE TEN THOUSAND MILES AS THE CROW FLIES.”
A round-faced major gave them a requisition to take to Quartermaster. “They’ll give you some cots for tonight. At least your men’ll have something to sleep on. Keeps happening all the time. Some promotion-happy lieutenant colonel hurries his outfit overseas before it’s ready, just so he can make full colonel. I don’t say it happened with you all, but it wouldn’t be the first time.”
The major must be kidding, Solly thought. Surely—I mean not even the Army! He was so hot and angry, he thought his head would pop wide open. Overseas to sweat and bleed and die ahead of schedule!
The twenty-five days at sea had given Rutherford a broiled-lobster-like expression sprinkled with sea salt, but he was boiling now and very much at sea.
“You’re lucky to have something to sleep on,
” Captain Rutherford told the evil men about an hour later back at the beach. “Thanks to me and Corporal Saunders’s loyalty and stubbornness and ingenuity.”
But meanwhile night had fallen noisily and definitely and the ungrateful men did not feel lucky, neither did Solly, as the jungle got black dark and began to sound off with birds crying and lizards and frogs and other things whatever-they-were screeching and yelling and laughing and singing like the jungle was a madhouse or an all-night jamboree. And the night-fighters began their eternal blitzkrieg. The anopheles mosquitoes came roaring out of the jungle in squadrons, in platoons, came in companies and in regiments, in divisions and in army corps. Came swooping down bloodthirsty and relentless and irresistible. It made no difference how many you killed, the brave mosquitoes kept coming on like a host of vicious vampires and they would not be denied.
The grumbling worried soldiers took up their cots and their gear and walked along a winding road into the screaming jungle. They went about two hundred yards and stopped in a small dark clearing. The captain told them, “This is it for tonight, men. Any questions? Have a nice meal and get some rest. Got a busy day tomorrow.” And took off hurriedly in his commandeered jeep.
Solly laughed bitterly and looked around him. The air thick with buzzing mosquitoes and praying mantises, and the earth crawling with restless land crabs and centipedes and all kinds of things that had no “civilized” names as yet. Like the rest of the nervous men were doing, he unfolded his cot and sat on it and opened his rations and tried to eat some beans and hardtack, and every time he opened his mouth two or three mosquitoes went in on his fork or maybe they were praying mantises. Worm’s cot was next to Solly’s.
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 31