Pride

by William Wharton

  Laurel’s pulling on my sleeve again as I’m trying to read this. She’s holding the salt-water taffy close against her chest with one arm and pulling at me with the other. Then she points. There’s a little stage. A lady comes out on it wearing a purple, shining costume and with bare legs. She has on high-heeled shoes and wears a sort of glittering crown on her head.

  After her come two men pushing motorcycles. They push them up a little ramp onto the stage and sit on them. Other people are stopping to look, but we’re right up front. I look back and it’s beginning to get darker. But now even Laurel’s so interested she doesn’t notice.

  The lady stands in front of a microphone. First the microphone clatters, then squeaks and howls a few times so the lion growls back. Then she begins talking into it. She tells how these men are going to ride on the WALL OF DEATH; do death-defying acts while hanging from the wall. She tells how the lion will ride on the wall. She tells how he’s a full-grown African lion and how this is the only act of its kind in the whole world.

  Just then, one of the men, a young one with a black leather jacket and slicked-back hair, kicks down so his motorcycle starts. He rolls it, pushing with both feet in big leather boots until the motorcycle is sitting on rollers. The rollers look like the rollers on Mom’s washing machine, the wringer part where you squeeze out water.

  Mom got her fingers caught once and they swelled and turned blue, one fingernail fell off. That was two years ago. Since then, Dad insists she save all the wringing-out for him. So Mom washes on Sundays after lunch and Dad wrings so she can hang them Monday morning with everybody else. She hangs out his work clothes at the same time, the ones she washed Saturday afternoon.

  These rollers are the same, set close together, but there are two sets of them, one set for the back wheel, one for the front; they’re bigger and they’re black shining metal.

  The man starts his motorcycle running on those rollers and they roll but his motorcycle stays there, the wheels spinning fast no matter how loud he turns up the motor. He tilts back and forth and stares out at the crowd while he makes noises with his motorcycle. I look back and there’s a crowd of people but it’s really dark now. This time I pull on the sleeve of Laurel’s dress; she’s as interested as I am and there’s so much noise she could never hear me say anything. I point out past the people behind us at the sky. There’s just a little bit of light still left out there over the ocean. Laurel looks at me with her mouth open and we start sliding our way out through the crowd.

  When we get back to our room, Laurel’s almost crying, both because she was afraid we’d get lost in the dark and because Mom will be mad. But, when we come in, Mom and Dad are still in bed and I think we wake them up coming in the door. Dad swings his feet over the edge of the bed. He looks at the alarm clock we brought with us.

  “My goodness, it’s late. Did you kids have a good time?”

  Laurel goes over and gives Dad the salt-water taffy.

  “We saw a real lion, Daddy, didn’t we, Dickie?”

  “We sure did and they have him trained to ride in a motorcycle on the side of a wall. I don’t know how they can get a motorcycle to stick on the side of a wall like that.”

  Mom’s up on her elbows now. She’s not wearing her chemise and holds the covers up to her shoulders.

  “Did you two just get in? I thought I told you to be home before it got dark. You should know better, Dickie.”

  “Gee, Mom. It got dark so fast and we were so interested watching the motorcycles and the lion we just didn’t notice.”

  I go over to Dad. He’s pulling on his pants.

  “The salt-water taffy cost fifty-nine cents and we both went on the merry-go-round for ten cents each, so that leaves twenty-one cents.”

  “You keep it, Dickie. The two of you might want to take another ride. So you had fun, did you?”

  “The man on the merry-go-round let us stay on for a real long ride. He smoked a whole cigarette while we went around. We were both on the outside and had the kind that go up and down.”

  Mom’s sliding out the other side of the bed. She pulls her chemise on over her head.

  “Well, I figure it’s about time I put together something for us to eat. I have hamburger and beans, how’s that sound?”

  Dad leans over, kisses Mom on the bare shoulder.

  “Sounds wonderful to me, love; and we can have salt-water taffy for dessert. Did you kids get the kinds of flavors I said, peppermint, cinnamon, spearmint, walnut and honey?”

  “We got everything, Dad, just the kind you said.”

  PART 4

  Sture Modig was overwhelmed by his first few days in the army. He was paraded naked from one place to another. His head was shorn; he received shots in both arms till he couldn’t bend his elbows, then was given new clothing, most of which didn’t fit.

  Sture felt as if somehow he had lost everything that mattered in life: his animals, the farm, his mother, his father; and nobody seemed to care.

  He was assigned a bunk of woven canvas straps covered by a straw mattress perched high on top of another bunk. He sat there with his needle and thread, carefully tailoring and adjusting his new clothes to fit. He shined his high boots till they glowed, while his arms ached and he daydreamed of the farm. He worked on those boots with the heels of his hands so they wouldn’t pinch his feet. Without knowing it, Sture was well on his way to becoming the ideal soldier.

  He quickly grew accustomed to the six-o’clock wake-up, late for Sture. He enjoyed the food about which others complained. He began to be proud of his smart appearance in a military uniform.

  On the field and at the rifle range he far outstripped his fellow draftees. He became expert with the rifle and 30-caliber machine gun; he qualified as a sniper. He was tireless on marches, spurring his fellow draftees on. By the end of the first month he was marked by his superiors for non-commissioned grade.

  Because of its predictability, its very mundane demands, military life was ideal for Sture Modig. He enjoyed taking his rifle apart, cleaning it; here was a machine he could appreciate. The reality of ballistics appealed to him. Here was a true Spartan life.

  At the end of basic training, he was called into the company commander’s office. By now, Sture knew all the rigid formality of military bearing and actually liked that, too. He snapped to attention in front of the company commander. This captain had been a Greek-literature major at Princeton, had asked for and received his commission automatically. He was assigned as captain to an infantry company, but still hadn’t qualified with his pistol.

  “Private Modig, your sergeant, Sergeant Meek, has recommended you be promoted to corporal as his assistant squad leader. You will receive your notification of promotion in the next week but you may sew on your stripes now. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Sture knew he deserved it. He deserved to be company commander far more than this pale, stubble-bearded man in front of him, a man who spent his evenings in town dancing, or drinking at the officers’ club.

  Sture waited for the mandatory salute ending the discussion. Almost as if he’d forgotten, Captain Fitzgerald gave his salute so Private, soon Corporal, Modig could return it, spin on his heel, and leave the orderly room.

  Sture climbed up on his bunk. He pulled out the corporal stripes he’d already bought and proceeded to sew them on the sleeves of all his shirts with neat, tight lock stitches.

  Sture was soon shipped overseas with the 32nd Infantry Division.

  Before his outfit was shipped, however, Sture Modig made platoon sergeant. He was the only draftee in his regiment promoted so fast to such rank.

  His outfit was one of the first American divisions actually to participate in the fighting. They were attached to a French command and took a terrible beating with staggering casualties. They fought bravely, starting August I along the banks of the Vesle, Aisne, and Ourcq, attacking northward. They captured Fismes, east of Verdun, on August 1–2. Although General Pershing had thoug
ht first of breaking up this division of the Wisconsin National Guard, it soon became known as the Powerhouse Division. On August 30 they captured Jovigny, and overran the plateau around Terny.

  On the evening of the first attack, his platoon lieutenant was killed and Captain Fitzgerald just disappeared. For two weeks, in the midst of combat, while replacements were being awaited, Sture Modig served as acting platoon leader. One of the other platoon lieutenants filled in for the missing Captain Fitzgerald.

  In early September, 1918, Sture Modig was commissioned a second lieutenant of infantry, one of the first field commissions awarded to an American in this particular war.

  War was something at which Sture was good. His men, most older than he was, respected him. His benevolent smile and innate confidence inspired confidence in others. His lack of fear in danger, his adept decision-making, justified, verified this confidence. At Terny, he was awarded the bronze star for bravery, also his first purple heart for a shrapnel wound received during a heavy bombardment. He spent three hours in the hospital tent while his wound was dressed. He then, without permission, worked his way back to his outfit.

  There was a cheer heard through that section of trenches when he showed up, his hand bandaged and his arm in a sling. He smiled his enigmatic smile and passed among his troops, enjoying their adulation but looking for any sloppiness in their weapons, or lack of safety in their positions.

  It was in the St.-Mihiel offensive in mid-September that the regiment took its most serious casualties. There was rumor of armistice but the war went on. A minor skirmish developed almost on its own as a sort of coup de grâce by the Americans, an auto-da-fé for the Germans facing them.

  In the process of this raging battle, the captain of Sture’s company was seriously wounded. He later lost a leg, then his life.

  Sture Modig was by acclaim and natural authority company commander. He became Cap Modig to all, despite the fact that Lieutenant Burns, as executive officer, outranked him. Lieutenant Burns had been a history major at Harvard when he managed to arrange a commission with the help of his lawyer father in Boston. He could keep company records, manage the company roster, but recognized his own ineptitude as line commander. He willingly ceded field command to Modig. After two captains lost in a few months, the job did not hold much appeal for Lieutenant Burns. Sture was promoted to first lieutenant.

  It was the last days of September. The weather had turned unseasonably cold but still the men were plagued by mosquitoes. Two of Cap Modig’s men, one of them Sergeant Meek of the second squad, his old squad, were caught out in a shell hole under enemy fire. It was in a gas-filled blind alley called by the Germans Stumpflager. Clouds of yellowish-brown smoke began billowing toward them from the German lines, clinging close to the ground. It was chlorine gas mixed with phosgene and mustard gas. This was not the first time Sture and his men had experienced this sickening, all-pervading virulent weapon: droplets that stung, burned, and ate out the lungs. But they’d always managed to retreat in time. Gas masks, promised, never arrived and, even when used, were not effective.

  Sture ordered his company back to the next line of trenches, then started working his way out to the shell hole. He found his old sergeant, Sergeant Meek, dead, a piece of shrapnel buried in his temple, blood coming out of his nose and mouth from some other serious internal injury, his eyes open and empty in the burning gas. But the second soldier, though unconscious, was still alive. Sture hoisted him over his shoulder and started running back through the suffocating, brownish-yellow, blowing clouds of gas. The gas clung to the ground and there was no way to avoid it. He tried to hold his breath, not suck in the burning, destroying, fetid clouds. But he couldn’t. He gasped in agony and struggled on with his heavy load through the slippery mud. He felt a hard thud in his upper leg, which knocked him sideways and over onto the wet ground. He struggled back to his feet again, lifting the wounded man onto his shoulder, and staggered on with blood streaming down his leg into his boot. He was practically unconscious, his throat, eyes, lungs, nose burning so he could scarcely breathe. He fell down the parapet into the arms of his men.

  “Get back! Get back farther! Come on, let’s go!”

  He tried to stand but fell unconscious. His men hurried him and the man he’d carried onto a makeshift litter, and they all retreated before the billowing, sickening droplets of death.

  Cap Modig woke in a bed. His eyes were bandaged. When he tried to breathe he couldn’t suppress the scream. A hand out of nowhere held on to his. He struggled. He felt as if he were drowning.

  “That’s all right, lieutenant. Just try to relax. You’ll be all right.”

  It was a woman’s voice. He felt the hypodermic needle slip into his arm and then a muffling thickness surrounded him until the fire in his chest quieted and he went to sleep again.

  It was two weeks before Cap could stay awake more than two or three hours without morphine. But something in him knew he had to live with the pain; the soft rubbery weakness of the drug wasn’t life as he wanted it. He gritted against the searing pains of breathing, suffered through the agony of fighting back coughing fits; often surrendering to the racking, rending pain when he couldn’t stop himself from hollering out.

  And he was still in the dark, a red-black haze, frightening because it wasn’t the way he remembered things to have been when he simply closed his eyes. This was more: a wet, thick darkness, not restful, a blinding red of dark with spots of light like fireflies drifting or sparking across his eyes.

  He lay there, day after day, losing some days to the needle, holding on to others. They never put him out unless he screamed. He felt gently with his arms and found a tube attached to one arm; there was another tube in his penis. He felt like one of the cows on his failed milking machines, or a tomato plant held up with stakes and strings.

  Sture didn’t have will enough to lift the tight bandages over his eyes. Twice he knew the bandages had been changed while he was asleep because the smell decreased. Complaint never occurred to Sture Modig. He knew this is the way life is; sometimes it’s hard and you must wait, be patient, till you find out what’s happening.

  It was almost a month later when he knew there was someone standing beside him, talking to him.

  “Lieutenant Modig!” He said the first part like the mo in eeny, meeny, miney, mo, rather than like the moo of a cow. “I’m going to take the bandages off your eyes. I want you to tell me how much you can see. Can you talk at all?”

  Cap nodded his head. He hadn’t tried talking because he didn’t want to start coughing, but he’d screamed so he must be able to talk.

  Slowly, with much unwrapping and clipping of scissors, the bandages were unwound from his head. At the end there were only gauze pads left over each eye. Carefully, the doctor lifted one pad and Cap opened his eye slowly until he felt a blinding pain. He closed his eye and then slowly squinted it open again. He could see blurs of light, couldn’t focus, couldn’t recognize anything.

  “Can you see, lieutenant?”

  “Blurs.”

  Cap exhaled the word softly, quietly, delicately.

  “That’s good, you’ve still got some sight in that eye anyway.”

  Cap for the first time realized how serious the chance of his being blind was. So many things he couldn’t do if he were blind: couldn’t ride a bicycle, couldn’t help much on the farm, couldn’t see the beautiful world. Tears started burning in the corners of his eyes as a new gauze patch was adjusted over the eye he’d opened.

  The doctor started slowly lifting the other patch. There were areas of pussy mucus sticking the pad to the eyelids and to the lashes; he gently separated them.

  “Now try this one, lieutenant. Can you open it?”

  Cap was feeling a strong need to cough, to bring up another glob of thickness gathering in his throat. He held back. He opened his eye slowly to avoid pain from the light. There was no pain this time. Again he saw blurs, light movements, but it was not as bright as with the first eye. He didn’
t know the doctor’d had the shade drawn by one of the nurses.

  Cap thought he might be even more blind in this eye. The doctor was flashing what seemed like a red light on his eyeball, pushing the lid up and away so the skin cracked. He closed it again, slipped the pad into place.

  “Nurse, you can wrap him up again but less tightly this time. We’ll have those bandages off in another week.”

  “Well, lieutenant, you’re lucky; you’ll see, you might even see as well as you did before.”

  Cap only nodded, trying to hold back the burning tears and the choking need to cough. He felt terribly alone. He wondered, as he had so often during the past weeks, what’d happened to his company, if any more had been killed, if they’d taken back the territory they’d fled before the gas, who was the new company commander?

  “Well, you have two things to celebrate, lieutenant. You will see again, and the war’s over. The armistice was signed three weeks ago. When you get out of the hospital you can go home. The Huns got themselves licked, thanks to brave men like you.”

  Cap stayed quiet. He tried to smile, to bring forth one of his glowing smiles, but it wasn’t there. He felt as if he’d missed the end of the party. He was glad the war was finally over, that no more soldiers would be killed, but he hated not being there with his good friends, his company.

  Cap Sture Modig was sent to a hospital in France near a town called Contrexéville. It was a hospital specializing in seriously gassed patients. They were given curative waters, encouraged to eat much fruit and lie out in the sun when it wasn’t too cold.

  It was several months before he could breathe without pain and months more before he could do even the lightest exercise without bringing on spasms of coughing and retching. His eyes gradually improved until he had full vision, but this took almost nine months. Cap did eye exercises he’d devised himself, focusing near, then far, shifting his eyes from side to side, concentrating on making the fuzziness go away. The doctors were amazed. They didn’t actually expect anyone with the degree of eye injury Sture suffered to totally regain sight.