He jumped up and looked around him as the Duck slowed down and stopped again. Solly said, “Where the hell are we?”
The gunner said, “You ain’t missed nothing. We just a few feet closer to the bridge.”
His head was clearing, his eyes discovered Samuels, and it came to him Who he was and Where he was and Why and When. His ears picked up the growing fury of the war.
He said, “Why don’t we go across the bridge?”
The gunner said, “What the hell you think we been trying to do since I don’t know when? The mother-fuckers at the other end don’t like the idea.”
Solly said, “Why don’t we try another bridge?”
The gunner said, “Why don’t you go back to sleep—?” He stopped and said, “Why don’t we try another bridge?”
Solly said, “They have four other bridges across this river.”
The gunner said, “Come with me.” And they jumped down off the Duck and started running toward the bridge, where death was flying thick and fast. There seemed to be an endless number of gun-mounted White Army trucks at the other end of the bridge and they were spread out and scattered and aiming all of their fire up at the center of the rainbow. And now a couple of the trucks from the White Army had entered upon the other end of the bridge and were moving slowly toward them belching fire and dealing death. The world was one great deafening roar. Solly and the gunner ran head down toward the fifth truck from the front with the dot game kicking up dust around them, and finally they reached it and climbed aboard. It was the craziest time in the world for formalities with bullets beating against the trucks like a hailstorm.
“This is Master Sergeant Roger Jones,” the gunner said. The master sergeant had black skin and cold-gray eyes and reminded Solly vaguely of Sergeant Greer.
Solly said, “I’m Solly Saunders of the 25th Amphibious, and my buddies are dying over there and I think we ought to try another bridge.”
The other master sergeant stared at Solly long and hard. “Which other bridge?”
“How about the King George Bridge? It isn’t very far from here.”
Rogers said, “Get back to your Duck and let’s get started.”
They ran back to the Duck telling the drivers on their way about the change in tactics, and now the trucks already on the bridge were backing off again, some of them with dead and dying. The Army from the other side did not pursue them. Apparently thinking the Black Army had given up and chickened out, they backed off at the other end.
Before the Black Army started for the King George Bridge, they took the few dead and dying off the trucks and left a couple of the healthy soldiers with them to help a corps of shocked Australian volunteers take care of the poor bastards until the ambulances arrived.
And now they were approaching the King George Bridge, and Solly and Samuels were in the Duck which was second in line in the convoy now, and the sun was burning up the world almost like it used to do up on the torrid South Seas island. They moved onto the bridge behind the truck which led the convoy. Every man was crouching now with the perspiration on his forehead like tiny bullets standing at attention. Every man peering nervously over a parapet of sandbags, as over the river the war went on and on and on, and you could hear the steady beat of rifle fire and machine guns and submachine guns, and the whole thing like a great big human slaughterhouse somewhere deep deep down in Hell.
They picked up speed after they reached the top of the incline at the middle of the bridge and it was downhill all the way. It was the first time Solly saw the gunner smile even though it was a nervous smile. His name was Johnson. He glanced at Solly and said, “Your brains should be in the White House, Sergeant. Goddamn if we hadda had you with us from the start, we’da been over there a long time ago. We’d most probably been dead and in Heaven already, or either busting Hell wide open.” The men started to laugh and loosen up and Solly laughed and Samuels laughed and even the gunner slyly laughed. They were about three-quarters across King George and heading for paydirt and quietly laughing amongst themselves, when machine-gun bullets started bouncing off the trucks and Ducks like a wild tornado had worked itself up suddenly and was blowing fifty calibers onto nothing but the convoy. The first truck stopped and hesitated. The driver of the Duck nervously adjusted his helmet and put his head down and gunned his motor and pulled out from behind the truck and leaped the ridge which separated them from the other-way traffic lane and rammed against the railing at the edge of the bridge and almost went into the river, but he straightened up and took off like a Lockheed Lightning down the wrong lane in the face of screaming bullets toward the Fourth of July celebration. Every gun on the Duck was talking.
Solly looked behind at the rest of the convoy, and other Ducks and trucks were leaping the barrier over into the other lane and now the crazy convoy was tearing along two abreast.
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat
Ziiiiinnnng—bop! Ziiiinnnng—bop!
The stenos working overtime in the stenographic pool.
Pow-pow-pow-pow-pow-pow-pow!
Ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping!
A ruthless hurricane of bullets batted Solly’s Duck as it charged crazily forward like a bull enraged and bleeding. Solly crouched behind the sandbags behind a submachine gun from which one of the men had a couple of minutes before gained his purple heart and his everlasting peace. Solly had taken it quietly from the dead man. Now he was squeezing it lovingly and belching death at a group of trucks at the end of the bridge. As they came closer he concentrated on one particular big bastard-of-a-target who himself was pumping fire from a 50-caliber machine gun. Death bounced lively all around Solly. Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! above his head and close to his ears, as merrily they rolled along. He wondered, where is Worm and Scotty? Are they living? Are they dead? What have the bastards done to Jimmy? I should have been with them in the first place. And love me, Fannie Mae! Love me! Love me! Love me, please, this Sunday morning—love me—love me! Understand me! And please don’t marry another till you know that I am dead. Wait for me forever. Son—son—darling son! Mama, take care of my son!
He thought his heart would leap out of his chest, and his stomach thought his mouth had swallowed razor blades, and double-edged, but his teeth dug into his bottom lip and he tasted his own blood, and he put everything out of the ears and eyes of his mind and stared long and hard and deliberately at a particular big man whom he didn’t know from Adam, the world was crazy, but there he was in a particular truck behind a very very particular gun, and then and then and finally Solly began to squeeze his own gun and talk his talk and listen to his own death music—tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat—the gun kicking his shoulder viciously and pow! pow! pow! pow! and tat-tat-tat—tat-tat-tat-tat, till he saw the big man go over backwards, his heels up over his head, and he turned his aim on another poor ignorant miserable anonymous bastard crouched behind another gun. A bastard whom he didn’t know, had never known, would never know, and couldn’t hate specifically, but kill and kill and kill and kill—and that’s what makes the world go round and puts lead in your pencil.
The Ducks and trucks flew across the bridge like blind bats straight into the gaping jaws of Hell. He didn’t know how they reached the end of the bridge (a couple of trucks crashed through the railing and plunged into the placid waters of the river), he didn’t know how anybody stayed alive, but Great God Almighty, somehow they did, as the trucks poured off the foot of the bridge and through a blazing gap of Hell and brimstone on a peaceful Sunday morning which had already become afternoon racing madly toward the evening.
The truck he was in blasted its way up Mary Street, shooting at everything white that moved an eyelash and being shot at in return. Johnson crouched behind the sandbags behind his submachine gun with half-smile half-scowl on his face, like a man who had a job to do and was going about his business without any qualms or doubts or fears, as he policed one side of the street and left the other side to Solly. There were snipers all over the place, and he had the sharpes
t ears and eyes and nostrils in the world. They were three blocks up the street, which had suddenly become empty of trucks and gunfire and other people, when suddenly Johnson started raking a doorway on his side of the street before he came to it, before he could possibly see anybody in the doorway, but then came the screams and two men ran crazily out of hiding into the line of fire and they would never run or walk or scream again. Johnson saw to that. He grunted and mumbled, “Paddy bastards—”
On his side Solly knelt behind his machine gun, hoping he wouldn’t have to use it again, even though he had already used it coming across the bridge and afterwards, and even as the bullets beat around his head and shoulders and up against the Duck, even as the men around him on the street and in his Duck fell in the battle. Even though he knew this was his war, his cause was just, he had no stomach for the killing. His face was filled, his insides were erupting, exploding like the street around him. He was pure-and-simple chickenshit. His mother had not prepared him for killing or for being killed. He vomited too easily.
Suddenly they plunged into another street where nothing was happening and he breathed more freely, sucking into his nostrils and his lungs the taste of gunsmoke and the smell of sunlight, and he breathed deeply and more easily. He was still alive and they had run out of the war. He didn’t have very long to breathe though.
Up ahead of them a big truck turned the corner and came toward them. As they came closer he hoped and prayed they were colored comrades, and if not, please let them be Australians, but he knew in his heart they were red-blooded all Americans, and he aimed his machine gun at the cab of the truck, at the pale and frightened face which he saw clearly now, and they had begun to shoot at his Duck with rifle fire, and yet he hesitated, damn his chickenhearted soul, he hesitated, hoping that Johnson would open fire on them before he had a chance to. But when Johnson didn’t, he thought even Johnson had had a stomachful, and he took his eyes off the other truck for a minute, and looked toward Johnson and his heart fell as he saw the great damn Johnson had fallen. He screamed, “Samuels! Bob! Samuels! What the hell did you come along for? Just for the ride?” His great White Buddy moved toward Johnson’s gun, and Solly yelled, “Pick it up and shoot it!” But the Duck was already being peppered now and there was no time to let Bob do it. Solly turned his fury on the cab of the truck again and his dot game went from left to right and the pale-faced driver threw up his hands, and the truck swerved from the street onto the sidewalk and crashed into a shop window and turned over with a crazy sound and fury and glass flying and humans screaming like the jungle in the night-time. The Duck began to swerve, their own driver had been hit and had slumped over the wheel, and Samuels jumped eagerly into the driver’s seat and shoved the man aside, just in time to save the Duck from the same fate as the truck. Solly thought, the sonofabitch is glad to be in the driver’s seat and not behind the gun. A big black soldier had the other machine gun now. There were only three of them breathing on the Duck now—he and Samuels and the other gunner. The rest had crossed the River Jordon. Samuels righted the Duck and went quickly up the silent street that was strangely quiet. You could hear the silence, even though you heard the thunder raging everywhere and all around you.
The other soldier shouted to Samuels, “Don’t be in such a hurry. I see some paddies crawling out from underneath the truck.” And he raked his fire beneath the truck.
But Samuels kept moving up the empty street. And in a couple of minutes they were in the middle of the war again. Solly wondered where his buddies were. And if today was his dying day, he wanted to die with them this Sunday. Every overturned or empty Duck, every Negro standing or fallen that they came across, he searched in vain for a face from the 25th Amphib. Worm, Jimmy, Scotty—he never saw a one of them. They had been in the combat zone for two or three hours and no sign of one of his buddies.
They ran into another quiet street and when they were halfway up the block a soldier ran out from a doorway shouting:
“Sergeant Sandy! Sergeant Sandy!”
Solly’s heart leaped about inside his chest and Samuels braked the Duck, and Solly shouted, “Scotty! Scotty! Damn your soul!”
The chunky soldier ran toward the Duck and climbed and scrambled in. His angry eyes were filled with tears of gladness and Solly could not help from crying. They put their arms around each other. They were speechless for a moment.
Finally Scotty said, “Goddamn, buddy, I’m more gladder to see you this morning than my old lady back on Edgecombe Avenue.”
Solly did not trust himself to speak. He didn’t want to break down and really cry in front of this lionhearted soldier, as he stood there remembering the first time he ever met this goddamn ornery bastard. “If the prisoner gets away, you do his time, the Army never loses.” He understood Scotty at this moment, as he had never done before. Jerry Abraham Lincoln Scott was a dedicated patriot and Dignity was his country and Manhood was his government and Freedom was his land. This was where Scott lived. Or died. There wasn’t that much difference. Solly remembered, “I been home to fuck Miss Scotty!” And he started to laugh and cry at the same time and he moved away from the other soldier and did not bother to wipe his eyes or blow his nose.
When he could finally speak he said, “Where’re the rest of them?”
Scotty said, “They around here some-damn-where, dead or dying.”
Solly said, “You’re the first Amphib I’ve seen all day long.”
Scotty said, “You shouldna strayed away so far from home. You almost missed every goddamn thing. Peoples is the craziest mama-jabbers in all the world. You shoulda seen that General-goddamn-Grant. He got his nuts off killing gobs of paddies this morning, and he’s happy in Heaven this afternoon, or else he’s busting Hell wide open.”
Solly wiped his face with his sleeve and was scared to ask the next question. “How about Worm and Jimmy and the others?”
“Last time I seen Worm and Jimmy they was whaling, but that was early this morning. Maybe they got ‘em back at the Jones Street station.”
Solly said, “Maybe! Maybe!”
Scotty said, “That’s a better maybe than a whole heapa maybe’s I could maybe.”
It was funny but for the last five or ten minutes Solly had not heard the thunder or seen or felt the lightning. He had stood in peace with Scotty. But now he heard it all anew. His heart began to explode again and hell was bursting in his belly and his whole body began to leak a brand-new perspiration. Maybe they were at the police station with Army colonels and cracker military cops, and it would be some place to go instead of roaming streets like bloodthirsty wolves. And they could go and fight and live and hope. They were hemmed in anyhow.
He said, “Which way to the Jones Street station?”
Scotty said, “Tell that mama-jabbing driver to move over, I’ll take you there.” And when Samuels moved Scotty stared at him and started to laugh and laugh and laugh, and he climbed into the driver’s seat as Samuels moved to let him in. He put his arms around the captain. “You all right with me, old buddy. You the first peckerwood I ever know who was a good peckerwood without being a dead peckerwood.”
Samuels’s face turned red as an overripened carrot, and Solly laughed inside of him till his stomach hurt. And he didn’t know whether he was laughing or crying, as Scotty made a sweeping U-turn and moved back up the silent street toward the middle of the thunder and the lightning.
The fighting had broken out now all over South Bainbridge, even a few brief skirmishes in the residential section. All day long Celia had sat helpless near her wireless with the reports coming in of concentrated fighting in the commercial district and sporadic outbursts here and there and even now spilling over into North Bainbridge. And she could do nothing but sit and walk up and down and listen to the wireless and go crazy and cry and slowly die and die and die. A few times she went into the street and got into her bomb. The people in the streets were numbed and shell-shocked. How in the hell could it possibly happen? How could it happen? A full-scale
war in Bainbridge! American soldiers slaughtering each other on the streets of her Bainbridge. It wasn’t true—it wasn’t true. How could there be such bitterness? Where are you, Solly? Where are you, beloved Solly? Live, my darling, live! Kill if you have to, but please God, live, my bloody darling. Live for your child you’ve never seen. And live for Her and live for Me. Yes, yes, live for me. Live for all the times you loved me. And live for you—live for you you you! She tried to get through to the Elizabeth Bridge, but by evening the police and the provost marshals had roped off a section that reached six blocks square this side of the bridge and they would not let anybody through. A P.M. stopped her and she turned around and tried to go down another street and another and another, and she tried another bridge, but each time she was thwarted. She came back home after dark and she could hear the war over in the south of her city going on and on and on, and the reddened sky above the city looked like the entire world was burning down. Celia went back into her house and turned on the wireless and turned from station to station, and it was all about the “Battle of Bainbridge,” they had already given it a title for posterity, the Battle of Bainbridge, which was still raging with a fury never witnessed before in the history of modern civilization.
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 55