Solly sat on his bunk waiting for Tojo’s next visit, his stomach doubled up with cramps, exploding with cramps, and needing a bowel movement like he never did before and wanting desperately to go, afraid of disgracing his underwear. The problem was, what would he do if Tojo came in playing dots and caught him with his trousers down and squatting on that skinny plank? Would he dive into the cesspool? He’d die first, but if the man hit him he might be knocked alive into the moonlit pool and then he would surely die, a hundred thousand times. The stench of the cesspool lived in his nostrils.
Much of the night he spent seated on the edge of his sack with the cramps exploding in his stomach, waiting for Tojo’s next visit. If Tojo’s motive was harassment he was certainly succeeding. He had everybody rest-broken excepting Lanky, who slept through most of the night. He didn’t even build himself a foxhole. The company lyricist said, “Frig it! If the man is going to get me, he’ll get me. I sure ain’t gon dig no grave for him to bury me in.”
The chief bombing target was undoubtedly the airstrip, to render it unsuitable for planes to land or take off from. The second most important target was the Anti-Aircraft gun emplacement, which was only ninety-seven feet away from Solly’s tent. The Anti-Aircraft group were a bunch of good-natured courageously frightened dark-haired and blond-haired boys, mostly from the bluegrass country of Kentucky. The dead Irish lad from Manhattan had been a member of their outfit. Worm and Solly and Jimmy got to know them on the comradely basis of drinking coffee with them late at night and talking with them about what the world was going to be like when the lights went on again all over. One of them, his name was Randy, was a friendly pessimistic bastard. He didn’t believe he’d ever see the bluegrass country again. He said, “One of these nights, goddamn my sorry asshole, Tojo gonna drop one right into my mama-hunching lap.” This was the second invasion he’d been on with the 913, and he had listened to Worm too carefully. And he prided himself on the fact that he could call as many mother-hunchers as the next mother-huncher.
It was funny how these blue-eyed bluegrass country boys seemed to have left their crackerism behind them in the blue fields of Kentucky. They had a natural ball with the mean bastards of the 913 without even trying hard. They didn’t even appear to be self-conscious about it.
The night before, they had sat late at night in the 913 mess hall drinking coffee and batting the breeze. The one named Randy said, “Man, one of these days I’m gon bring my sorry ass to New York City, and I’m gon nacherl-born do my number with all kinds of peoples like they got up there. I’m gon be as free as the goddamn breeze—be happy as a possum up a ‘simmon tree. When I get back, I don’t reckon I’m gon take to country life any mother-hunching more.”
Scotty said, “Goddamn, boy, you done just about got enough of Mister Ratoff’s old mule farting in your face, ain’t you, and not even saying, if you please.”
All of them laughed including Randy. And when the laughter died away, he said, “I ain’t never going home no more. I don’t believe nobody ever goes home. I don’t believe the war gon ever end.”
Solly said, “Why’re you in this war, Randy? What the hell is it all about?”
The big broad-shouldered mild-faced one named Harold said, “I’m in it cause I ain’t been able to figure out how to get the hell out of the bastard.”
Randy said, “I’ll tell you like my daddy used to tell folks used to ask him did he fight in the First World War. He used to say, ‘I fought and fought and fought and fought but they drafted me any-goddamn-how.’”
All of them laughed for Randy’s sake.
Harold said, “If I could lose me something unimportant like a left arm or a leg or a left nut or something like that, maybe they’d let me outa this sonofabitch.”
Solly said, “How about Freedom, Randy? Aren’t you willing to fight for Freedom and Democracy?”
“And all that kind of shit,” Worm added.
Solly was sick and tired of finding so many white soldiers who saw nothing for themselves in the anti-fascist Democratic War to save the World for Peace and Freedom.
Randy said, “I didn’t have no goddamn freedom down on the farm where I come from. I worked from sunup to sundown and didn’t never get nowhere. I ain’t had no education or nuthin like that. And if I went back home right now, me and you couldn’t go into town together. What kinda freedom is that? But y’all up there in New York City, y’all different, y’all got something to fight for in this war. They tell me up there freedom is a nacherl fact, and a man ain’t nuthin but a nacherl man. If I was from New York City like y’all is, I wouldn’t mind being in this mother-huncher.”
Solly stared at Randy and started to laugh and couldn’t stop laughing. Worm had a mouth full of coffee and it went down the wrong way and he got strangled and it came back through his nostrils and seemed to come from his eyes and ears, and he was laughing and crying at the same time, but Randy didn’t see a goddamn thing to laugh about.
And now it was about 2347 o’clock and the full moon seemed to be aiming its special beam directly onto Solly’s tent and into Solly’s foxhole and on the pretty pool behind the tent. And where had he seen her face before? Worm sat on the other side of the tent on his cot and Jimmy sat on his, and they were discussing the stupidity of Lanky not building a foxhole and sleeping unbothered through the night and Solly trying hard to keep from crapping in his pants. Lanky was on a cot in the back of the tent with his net tucked in and actually snoring. Scotty shouting from the other side of the company street, “Hey, Sergeant Sandy, whatcha gonna do when the world’s on fire—yah?”
Her face was like a baby’s face. The Filipino washerwoman.
Solly shouted, “Run like hell and holler fire—yer.”
She was not even five feet tall.
About midnight you could hear the faint rumblings of big guns down the other end of the island and you knew the man was on his way, and when they became louder and clearer, you knew a hot fear, as the guns picked up the chase nearer and nearer to the target, and you felt your face grow even hotter and the cramps in your stomach unbearable now and the very tip of the hole of your rectum nibbling angrily at the cot, and now you hear the Ack-Ack men in the gun emplacement ninety-seven feet away, telling you that Tojo is in at eleven o’clock at ten o’clock closer and closer, and the Anti-Aircraft louder and louder and nine o’clock and eight o’clock and when you hear the 90mm. gun in your own front yard begin to talk, you know the man is sitting on top of you. Sometimes he drops flares, sometimes bombs, and all the time he plays his deadly dot games.
The Ack-Ack man said “SIX O’CLOCK.”
Randy from the bluegrass country said, “FIVE O’CLOCK.” And all the island was sounding off and the sky was a pattern of red polka dots. And Solly went silently out of the side of the tent and slid into his foxhole, as did everyone but sleeping beauty. The big 90mm. was sounding off and the ground was trembling like an earthquake. Worm jumped in his hole and it sounded like he was diving into a swimming hole. The tide was in the flood and had paid his hole a visit. Solly and Jimmy began to laugh but Worm didn’t see the humor of it. And Solly could see Tojo now coming in at three o’clock and heading for pay dirt, and how in the hell could they miss him with the earth quaking and coming apart from the giant Ack-Ack guns?
Suddenly General Grant emerged from the tent across the way and began to wave his arms and scream at the top of his voice.
“Gwan, Tojo! Gwan, Tojo! Fly your ass off! Fly your ass off! Fly, black man! Fly! Fly! Fly!”
As scared as Solly was, tears came to his eyes as he watched the General and thought about what a “freedom-loving” country had done to warp the values of this freedom-loving man. At that moment he hated everything in America that had pushed the General to this point in time and space.
Now the big gun ninety-seven feet away was talking and shaking the earth, beating out a rhythm like it was stomping at the Savoy.
SHU-LOOM-AH-SHU-LOOM-AH-SHU-LOOM-AH—SHU-LOOM-AH—SHU-LOOM—and
every time it SHU-LOOMED it almost threw Solly from his foxhole. And Tojo almost sitting in their laps now and the General still standing in the middle of the company street with the full moon shining on his apoplectic face and screaming louder than ever and waving his arms.
“Flyyyyy! Flyyyyyyy! Fly, mother-fucker! Show these paddies how to fly!”
Scotty was in his foxhole outside of the tent next to the General’s tent. And of all the people in 913, he stood up in his hole and aimed his rifle at the General. “If you don’t get outa that street and shut your loud mouth I’m gon blow your ass up there so you can join Tojo!”
The spell was broken. Grant turned and looked disdainfully at Scotty and walked quickly into the tent with dignity. By that time Tojo had come and gone, but he left his calling card. He dropped his egg and—
SHOOSH-SHOOSH-SHOOSH-SHOOSH-SHOOSH-SHOOSH
Solly tried to make himself smaller underneath his helmet and held his breath and his anus bit the angry air and sucked the wind. He thought his race was run, his day was come, and it seemed like a century of waiting before—
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The good earth threw him five feet in the air and took him to her breast again and shook him like a sassy child, and suddenly everything was peace and quiet, as if there would never be noise again on earth. No sounds whatever. He would never hear a violin or a symphony or Jimmie Lunceford or a cricket laugh or Ellington or a baby crying or Lester Young or a mockingbird or his mother’s voice or Fannie Mae’s or Millie’s voice or Beethoven or Benny Goodman or Anderson or Robeson or the screeching of a subway ride, or Lady Day or Ella. The earth would be nice and warm to him and still forevermore. And if he were dead it would hold him close to its bosom and keep him from ever growing cold as dead men had a way of doing.
The next morning he went about ninety yards from the camp to see what damage the bomb had wrought. And if they discovered a miracle drug that let him outlive old Methuselah, he would never forget the promise his guts made to his heart and soul and mind, and he would never be the same again. He would be quieter and more reflectful and older than he’d ever been. He was a grown man and he would put away childish things.
Worm and Lanky went with him, and when they got there, quiet men were passing the shack and looking in as if the bodies lay in state. Solly stood there with the helpless anger filling up his face and for a moment he could not look away.
Her face was so beautiful and sweetly calm in death, as she lay there on the floor of the shack with a big hole in the back of her head and a gaping canyon in her side and a hollow where her young breast used to match the other one and another huge chunk from the thigh of her left leg, and that was all the evidence. Do you know you died in Freedom’s cause? The baby in her arms and the dog at her feet were serenely happy and unblemished by the bomb, but equally as dead as the mother. Madonna’s face was soft dark brown burnt toast with soft brown-black eyes and her cuddly mouth relaxed and full with the appetite for life and living. Solly thought they’d probably been sleeping and never knew what hit them. She probably opened her eyes just in time to die with them open. It began to build up from the depths of his stomach and moved upward through his body through his chest and spreading over his shoulders. He thought he heard her silken voice softly screaming, “Where is God? Where is God? Where, Lord, is the Prince of Peace?” It was moving through his throat now. He remembered, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord—” And he couldn’t remember the rest of it, and what is your name, beautiful Madonna, with the face of a gentle girl? He felt like he was her lover and had looked for her all these years, and he didn’t even know her sweet sad name. When he was a boy in Georgia he had a dog just like the one that lay so quiet. It was choking in his throat now and filling up his face, and what was he becoming in the Army? A Private First-Class Pansy? He had never cried before so easily, every time he looked around. He turned shamefacedly from the shack and moved away, but he would never forget the woman’s face. He would never forget the innocent baby and the dog with his tongue on the floor, who loved them and watched over them but could not protect them from the latest in civilized mass murder, made by man and named for a flower, the lovely bomb, the beautiful efficient deadly daisy-cutter. He would see Madonna’s face in the face of every woman he ever met, past, present, and future. And in every Adam and in every Eve. And why not cry goddammit? The world was in a miserable mess and maybe tears would wash it clean, or destroy it like in Noah’s time.
When he got back to the tent Jimmy was complacently brushing his teeth. Solly came in and sat down on his cot.
Jimmy said, “Lieutenant Samuels was here a couple of minutes ago. He says the captain wants you to come to his quarters.”
Solly sat on his cot and stared at the floor and didn’t trust himself to speak.
Jimmy said, “I said the lieutenant was—” He stopped and stared at Solly. “Well why in the hell did you go down there in the first damn place?” Jimmy was choking with rage. “What did you expect to find? Easter eggs?” The Army had made a man out of Jimmy. It had taught him how to cuss.
Solly stood up, his eyes bleary. “I don’t know, Jimmy, but I know one thing—when I get back home I don’t want to even hear rumors of another war. I don’t want to see another uniform or another parade the longest day I live. I don’t want to see any poverty either. I don’t want to see any more misery or people suffering. I might run amuck if I do. And if a boy of mine puts on a scout uniform I’ll break his damn legs off.”
Jimmy said, “But—”
Solly said, “And I can’t take that shit right now about the War against Fascism and the Arsenal of Democracy. I don’t want to hear it. That baby-faced girl and her little baby and her dog, they hadn’t done anything to anybody. What is it, Jimmy, when the world looks on while two big uncivilized civilized bullies—?” His voice choked off. He was crying and he could not help himself. “I’m a man, Jimmy, goddammit. I mean I hate this shit with all my heart! What are we doing in these people’s country? No-damn-body sent for us. I mean the United States and the Japanese Empire didn’t ask these people, ‘May we use your country for our little old battleground?’ We rain down bombs on their cities and their homes and rice paddies, and we kill thousands of innocent people. And what the hell do the Filipinos get out of it? Not a goddamn thing but death and starvation and degradation.”
He sucked the tears back through his nostrils but they still streamed from his angry eyes. “I mean what’s happened, Jimmy, to words we learned in school like liberty and justice and the Constitution and fair play and love thy neighbor and all that kind of—I mean, is it all a lot of bullshit? Is that all it is? What’s happened to civilization?”
Jimmy said, “Lieutenant Samuels—he said it was—”
“Fuck Lieutenant Samuels. I don’t need his brotherhood shit today. I want to know who really gets anything out of all this shooting and maiming and killing, all this so-called civilized madness. I—”
Jimmy said, “All of us need this brotherhood shit. If we had it, the world wouldn’t be in the fix it’s in.”
Solly said, “Sometimes I wonder if General Grant is crazy after all. Sometimes I think he’s at least halfway on the ball. Maybe we are shooting at the wrong damn people. Maybe Western civilization has had its chance and flubbed it. It must be time for something else.”
He stared bleary-eyed at the quiet soldier. “Jimmy,” he said as he wiped his eyes with his shirttail, “you’re one of the greatest guys I’ve ever known. I mean it. Let’s be really good friends if we ever get back home again.”
He felt foolish the moment the words were out of his mouth. He said, “Fuck it!” And he stuffed his shirttail in his pants and walked quickly from the tent.
He strode into the captain’s tent and reported as ordered, and the captain said, “As you were.” Rutherford was seated on the side of his cot in his underwear. He was pathetically undernourished.
Solly said, “I’ll never be as I was.”
The captain stared at him and got up and stepped into his trousers. “I got some more War Department literature, Sergeant. I want you to look it over when you get a chance. When things settle down here we’re going to have sessions twice a month. Every man will have to attend. We’ll teach them what this war is all about.” He took some pamphlets from his table and handed them to Solly. Solly stood there with his hands to his sides as if he were not really there at all. And possibly he wasn’t.
The captain said, “A couple of provocative ones. ‘Our Soviet Ally in War and Peace.’ And this one: ‘Americanism versus Racial Hatred.’”
Solly still wasn’t there. He was dead with his Madonna. Nothing from nothing left nothing.
The captain said, “Which one should we do first? What do you think?”
Solly licked his lips and swallowed. He was filled up like a swollen river but he would not overflow. He would not flood before Captain Charlie. The captain repeated, “Well, what do you think?”
“I really think it’s a crock of shit, sir, if you’ll pardon the expression. I think you ought to get yourself another boy.”
The captain had sat down but jumped up again. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Saunders. This damn invasion’s got the best of you. I’ll overlook—”
“I’m saying that Bell was right the other day back in that other place at that other session. That’s what I’m saying.” How long was it? Two weeks? Three weeks? It felt like years ago. “There’ll be wars and rumors of wars just like he said the Bible said, as long as fools like me go out and kill each other and never know the reasons why. I’m also saying how in the hell are you going to fight a democratic war with a racist Army? That’s what I’m saying.”
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 39