“This is the anatomy of hate, pure, clean and unadulterated . . . .”
She turned to another station.
“No mild men ever fought with more sheer ferocity nor with more hatred for the adversary. Both sides are . . .”
She turned the dial.
“As for the weather it was a balmy day in Bainbridge, made even warmer by the outbreak of hostilities. Bainbridgites are aghast and outraged and still cannot believe that . . .”
She clicked off the wireless and went to the kitchen and got a drink, and she poured it down her throat and felt it spreading through her shoulders and burning up her stomach. How could it possibly be that people could be born in the same country and grow up together side by side and have such hatred for each other? It was the first time she could really even begin to appreciate the anger deep inside of Solly, the anger she had tried so hard to reach and to know and to understand and to feel and to hold and to caress and to soften into tenderness. Because he is a tender man. He is a tender human being. I have known his tenderness.
She went to the telephone for the fifteenth or twentieth time, and she tried to get through to the Farms, she tried to call the Jones Street station. Everywhere the lines were jammed. She finally got somebody to answer at General Jack’s headquarters.
She said, “Why don’t you people do something to stop the bloody massacre? Have all of you gone crazy?”
The polite American at the other end said, “Sorry, lady, we’re doing everything we can.” And he politely hung up, and she started to call him again, but she slammed the receiver onto the hook, and she sat on the couch, and she thought, maybe I’m the one who’s crazy. Maybe I’m imagining the whole damn thing. It must be my imagination. It’s just been too much for me, she tried to think soberly. Losing Pat so suddenly and now Solly is leaving me next week, but I just have to get hold of myself. She saw Solly now as plain as the moonlight, lying dead on a quiet street with his face his dear eyes staring sweetly at the moon, and she knew it was no dream she dreamed, she saw him dead, she saw him dead, and she would never see him alive again. She fell face down on the couch and she cried, “Don’t be dead, Solly! Don’t be dead! Don’t be dead! Please, dear Solly, don’t be dead!”
She reached out and turned the wireless on again.
“ . . .enraged Australian authorities are moving swiftly now to bring the Americans to their senses . . . an insult to the people of Australia . . . a slap in the face to the war against fascism . . . Efforts to contact General Jack have so far been futile. The word is that he is up north where the other war is continuing. Our authorities have reached all the way to Washington . . . . Meanwhile the Battle of Bainbridge continues unabated . . . .”
It was after four in the morning and the Battle of Bainbridge was headed toward its second day, and they had battled every inch and every millionth of a second since they came across the King George Bridge, and Solly had lost track of time and space and he thought his back was breaking and his spine would snap in two and he would never sleep again and his eyes would never cry and his shoulder must be broken from the constant kicking of his rifle and the submachine gun, and his trigger hand was fast asleep it seemed, but he was wide awake. They had battled the others block for block, truck to truck, Duck to Duck and Duck to truck, building to building, house to house, hand to hand and man-to-goddamn-crazy-man. He’d seen dead and dying everywhere, but Solly had not gotten a glimpse of Bookworm or the Quiet Man. Scotty was killed near the Jones Street station.
They’re all wiped out, he thought. All of them killed and dead and dead and dead, and maybe they were better off than he was, who had not received a single scratch. Worm and Scotty and Quiet Man and Worm and Scott and Quiet Man. They had paid their everlasting dues. He didn’t know it, wasn’t certain about Worm and Jimmy, but he felt in the pit of his stomach. All night long he and Samuels and the gunner had shot their way up one street and down the other, not knowing whom they killed or how damn many, and he didn’t even know the gunner’s name. The gunner was dead now and Scotty was dead, as were soldiers all over the place in every street in every doorway. All night long the guns were talking belching screaming one sweet tune of Peace Everlasting Found in Death’s Eternal Tender Sleep. He thought, maybe it’s all over now, the Battle of Bainbridge, because he couldn’t hear the sound of war anymore. His ears were deafened and maybe he would never hear again, or maybe he had also won that Everlasting Peace in Death. Maybe he was dead—he hoped—he almost hoped—
But he shouted to himself, “I’m still alive! I’m still alive I Fannie Mae, I’m still alive! Tell our son, I’m still alive!” as the crazy Duck dashed madly up a narrow street. They had changed vehicles three times through the night. From Duck to truck to Duck again. The Duck plunged suddenly out onto a broad plaza, made soft and mellow by an unfeeling unromantic orange-colored moonlight spilling all over it, and they had run completely out of the war. And it felt damn good to be alive and feel the cool fresh air like chilled wine rush into his weary lungs. He straightened up and looked around him and he opened his mouth and closed his eyes and drank the air in deeply all inside of him, and it was just like Scotty used to say, “You close your eyes you lose sight on the world, and you won’t ever see again.”
There was an almost imperceptible movement behind a park bench in the plaza as two M-1 rifles took careful aim at Solly, letting him come closer and closer so they could blow his head away. Closer closer closer—they could not miss him if they tried to. He should have never closed his eyes. Closer-now!
Samuels felt the movement more than heard it, and he did not hesitate for a why or where or who or by-your-leave. He combed the bench from end to end with a submachine gun he had inherited during an earlier part of the nightmare. Two brief shouts from the mourners’ bench and all was peace and quiet there.
Solly hit the floor of the Duck like he was doing a belly-buster. When he finally got his voice again he said, “Thanks, my friend.” Time was the only difference between life and death, and Time could wait and Time could also get impatient.
His friend said, “It’s about time we called each other ‘friend.’ We’ve been working at it long enough.”
Solly laughed weakly into the darkness. Just a hundredth of a second between his living and his dying. “You’re a colored man tonight, old buddy. You have naturally earned your spurs. I’m going to vote you into the club.” The driver softly laughed at them.
Samuels stood up and shouted angrily at Solly, “I am a white man and I am your friend, and you are a Negro man and you are my best friend, and we are both friends of the human race. Don’t hand me any other kind of half-assed nationalistic shit!”
He stared at Samuels through the night, and he tried his best to laugh at Samuels. “Anything you say, old buddy boy.”
The driver turned toward them and laughed again a kind of harsh and bitter laughter.
Their little tête-à-tête was rudely interrupted as they heard round after round of machine-gun fire sounding off about two blocks beyond the plaza. The driver made a swift U-turn and headed back toward the principal area of the fighting, which had quieted down considerably.
After a while Solly said, “Maybe everybody has just about run out of ammunition.”
You could only hear sporadic outbursts now. “Or maybe they just ran out of steam.”
They went wearily up a dark and narrow quiet street.
Samuels said, “Maybe everybody has reconsidered and realized what fools they’ve been. Maybe they’ve had a change of heart.”
The driver said in a thick and dry and Southern voice, “You must be from up-the-country. A peckerwood is a peckerwood and he gon always be a peckerwood till he become a dead peckerwood.”
Solly laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. He remembered what Scotty had said a few hours earlier, and he laughed and cried and laughed and cried.
The lines were burning between Washington and Bainbridge, and ears were burning too. And heads of brass would su
rely roll.
Washington learned about the battle from Australian authorities and they in turn contacted Adeline Street, which was the Supreme Command of the South Pacific.
General Buford Jack was in the Philippines. One of his flunkies, Major General Benson, caught the full wrath of the Pentagon.
“No excuses, Benson! Just stop that goddamn race riot!”
“Sir—”
“Have all of you down there gone completely out of your mind? Don’t you know what the war is being fought for?”
“But—”
“No buts, Benson. Stop it immediately, that’s all, and get to the bottom of who’s responsible, and I don’t mean enlisted men. There’ll be a full-scale investigation and court-martials and all the rest of it. This is a disgrace to America.”
“Yes, sir—”
“And it better not get into the newspapers or else your head will roll along with the rest. That’s no threat, that’s a promise. It must get no publicity at all—you understand? I don’t care what you have to do to prevent it.”
When General Benson hung up he got in touch with the division commander and ranted and raved and swore at him and threatened. And the division commander called Brigadier General Jefferson Jamison, the base commander at Camp Worthington Farms, and on down the line till it reached the adjutant, Colonel William Bradford the Third.
“What the hell are you doing to stop this race riot?” the base commander asked him. General Jamison was a son of the South like his adjutant, and he was West Point and Regular Army and tall and blue-eyed and overly handsome and fiftyish and graying very hurriedly.
Bradford had just come into the office on the double and was almost out of breath. He said, “Nothing, sir. I mean we’ve tried but—”
The general said, “Nothing!” He stared at the colonel incredulously. “You mean you have done nothing at all?”
Bradford was not excited yet. As impressive an officer as the general undoubtedly was, it was almost impossible for Bradford to fully respect him, since he slept with the general’s wife and knew that the general slept with every fat-assed boy he could lay hands on, even interracially, and from the general’s wife he knew other intimate details about the great man.
“Sir, I telephoned you and I spoke to you about it when you got back to camp, and it didn’t seem to—I mean I tried to keep them from—We did everything—”
“Listen carefully, Colonel Bradford,” General Jamison said. “First of all, you had the first opportunity to stop the convoy from going into town—understand? That’s when the whole thing should have been halted, but you let the niggers make a fool out of you by your own admission.” The general paused and stared contemptuously at his adjutant. “Second—you’re the one, again by your own admission, who triggered the riot with your idiotic phone calls. If you spent as much thought on Army matters as you do on the strategy and tactics of getting into the drawers of every whore from here to Melbourne, you’d be a military genius.”
This bastard knows about me and his wife, the colonel thought, and he’s ready to throw me to the pack. He ought to be thankful to me. I’m keeping Martha satisfied while he’s running all over the place after every Tom, Dick, and Harry.
General Jamison said, “You were faced with a simple emergency situation, and instead of using your head, you panicked like a pregnant woman. And you are held entirely responsible for what has happened. Of all the stupid hysterical actions—”
The colonel was so angry he was trembling and his voice failed him temporarily, and he was scared now, because he saw the unveiled hatred in the general’s face. And you got me where you want me, you limp-wristed bastard, and you’ll feed me gladly to the wolves, and watch them pick me to the bone, and I have nowhere to pass the buck.
When he could talk he said, “Sir, I have to differ with you, sir, I don’t—”
The general had worked himself into a rage. He slapped the desk with the palm of his hand. “I don’t give a damn about your differing or who you’re fucking or whose fucking you. Washington has sent the word down. You understand what that means? Somebody’s ass is going to bum and it ain’t going to be General Jamison’s, understand? A race riot in Australia—When I get through with those black Amphibs they’ll wish they’d never been born. And you, Colonel, you—”
“I won’t be a scapegoat for anybody, General. Not even you. I’ll—”
“You shut up and listen to me. I want every white man on this base who is not already over in South Bainbridge. I want them under your command. I want you to take them over the river and peaceably bring that idiocy you started to a halt. I want it done immediately. On second thought I’d better go with you. You might screw it up again. You let me know when you’re ready.”
Bradford stared at the general. He had the picture completely before him now. He was to be the scapegoat and the general would be the hero who put out the fire and saved the maiden’s honor. And there was nothing he could do to change the story’s ending. Nothing—not a goddamn thing—nothing he could do to save his own ass. He would be burned at the stake and General Jamison would get another citation. At the court-martial he could tell it like it happened and let the chips fall every damn where and bring the general down with him. He could do that, and he almost felt consoled by the realization that he had the power to destroy the general. He could pull the building down, even though he himself might be wiped out by the falling debris.
“Get going, Bradford!” the general shouted.
Bradford came to attention and saluted the general and went hurriedly out into the early morning darkness.
“When those damn Amphibs face my court-martial!” the general shouted to the early-morning darkness. “They want to fight, do they? I’ll send the crippled black bastards up north to the goddamn front!”
For over a half an hour now they had left the Duck and walked the moonlit streets of South Bainbridge among the ruins of dead and dying, passing other Yankee soldiers, walking, riding, quiet soldiers, white and colored, and overturned trucks and Ducks upended and shattered plate glass, and everywhere it seemed that a combination of typhoon, tornado, hurricane, and earthquake had smashed and battered the business district. The shooting had died away completely. They had probably run out of ammunition, Solly figured. And run out of hatred, Samuels hoped. Solly and Samuels wearily patrolled the streets with their empty rifles turning over bodies, looking for familiar faces. Looking in doorways and under Ducks and trucks. They stumbled over soldiers who had fallen asleep right where they were when the shooting ended. Solly remembered the men of the Bowery in the cold of New York winter. Day was about to break again as Solly and Samuels sat down on the edge of the sidewalk and all the fear and pain and horror and tiredness of the last twenty-four hours ganged up on them and moved in on them, and they stretched out and almost fell asleep, excepting they could not really fall asleep. Solly thought he would never be able to sleep again. He would always live with nightmares.
He said to Samuels, “Let’s get going. We got to find Worm and Jimmy and get the hell out of this place.” He tried to get up but could not make it. Why was he in such a big hurry? Where were they going anyhow? And what would happen when they got there? Court-martial—which would probably result in them being sent up north back to the front and join the other soldiers and complete the job of dying. Somehow now he envied Scotty.
Samuels said, “Just a few more minutes. Let’s just sit here a few more minutes.”
Solly said, “Come on now. Don’t fall asleep. We have to get the hell out of this place. Got to find—come on—come on. Don’t fall asleep.”
He struggled to his feet and managed to get Samuels to stand up, and they went stumbling down the street together.
“How do you get out of this place?” Samuels mumbled. “Which way is the bridge?”
They turned a corner and up ahead they saw a capsized Duck, and Solly broke into a run. He saw upside-down the Double-V, the Bookworm’s famous trademark on the backside o
f the Duck. He shouted like a little boy on Christmas morning. He saw the big bright letters FANNIE MAE.
“It’s Worm! It’s Worm!”
They dragged the bodies from beneath the Duck. They were Worm and Baby-Face Banks and Jimmy.
Jimmy was smiling. Worm was angry. Banks’s hardened baby face was no longer puzzled, as if he had at long last found a cause to die for.
Solly couldn’t take his eyes from them—especially Jimmy, the Quiet Man. Smiling for eternity, caught for all infinity. As if he’d played a miserable joke on the whole damn world and made his exit. All three of them had found a cause worthy of their precious lives.
They laid them out on the sidewalk neatly side by side, and they sat down on the curb and cried. They didn’t even bother to be ashamed of crying. They were filled up to the overflowing and they let the tears come down. They forgot that they were men and men were not supposed to cry.
Solly could think of nothing but they’re dead and forever more they’re dead, and Scotty is dead, and it didn’t have to happen, and there’s no earthly reason for it, and he remembered the first time he saw the big-eyed soft-spoken soldier from the work battalion that night in Ebbensville, but they’re dead and dead and dead, and every time he thought he had stopped crying, it would keep building up in him, through his shoulders into his face, and he felt sick, and he thought the war is over for them, everything is over for them, and they’re better off, goddammit, and I should be happy for them, and he cried and cried and he had to stop crying, it did no good, it would not bring Worm and Scotty and Jimmy and Billy back, but his eyes kept filling up and he could not help from crying. They had been babies once and their mothers and their fathers had looked at them and dreamed for them and they had been children on the streets of New York City and they had gone to school and they had dreamed and they had grown into manhood and had had hopes and aspirations to be somebody and success and families of their own, and here they were ten thousand miles away from home, fighting for their country and Democracy and Freedom and Manhood, and they were dead and dead and dead . . . And tomorrow they would still be dead and the day after that and after that and after that and they were forever ever dead . . . .
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 56