by Irwin Shaw
Suddenly Hope ducked her head. But she brought it up again quickly, and Noah saw she was holding a small box in her hands. “Here,” she said, “I brought you something.”
Noah took the box in his hands. He thought of the ten dollars for the gift, and the note at the bottom of his barracks bag, the ragged slip of paper with the sardonic “Tough” on it. As he opened the box, he made himself forget the ten dollars. That could wait until Monday.
There were chocolate cookies in the box.
“Taste them,” Hope said. “I’m happy to say I didn’t make them myself. I got my mother to bake them and send them on to me.”
Noah bit into one of the cookies and they tasted like home. He ate another one. “It was a wonderful idea,” he said.
“Take them off,” Hope said fiercely. “Take off those damned clothes.”
The next morning they went out for breakfast late. After breakfast they strolled through the few streets of the small town. People were coming home from church and children in their best clothes were walking in restless, bored dignity among the faded lawns. You never saw children in camp, and it gave a homely and pleasant air to the morning.
A drunken soldier walked with severe attention to his feet, along the sidewalk, glowering at the churchgoers fiercely, as though daring them to criticize his piety or his right to be drunk before noon on a Sunday morning. When he reached Hope and Noah, he saluted grandly, and said, “Sssh. Don’t tell the MP’s,” and marched sternly ahead.
“Man yesterday,” Noah said, “on the bus, saw your picture.”
“What was the report?” Hope picked softly at his arm with her fingertips. “Negative or positive?”
“‘A garden,’ he said, ‘a garden on a morning in May.’”
Hope chuckled. “This Army,” she said, “will never win the war with men like that.”
“He also said, ‘By God, I’m going to get married myself, before they shoot me.’”
Hope chuckled again and then grew sober thinking about the last two words. But she didn’t say anything. She could only stay one week and there was not time to be wasted talking about matters like that.
“Will you be able to come in every night?” she asked.
Noah nodded. “If I have to bribe every MP in the area,” he said. “Friday night I may not be able to manage it, but every other night …” He looked around regretfully at the shabby, mean town, dusty in the sun, with the ten saloons lining the streets in neon gaudiness. “It’s too bad you don’t have a better place to spend the week …”
“Nonsense,” Hope said. “I’m crazy about this town. It reminds me of the Riviera.”
“You ever been on the Riviera?”
“No.”
Noah squinted across the railroad tracks where the Negro section sweltered, privies and unpainted board among the rutted roads. “You’re right,” he said. “It reminds me of the Riviera, too.”
“You ever been to the Riviera?”
“No.”
They grinned. Then they walked in silence. For a moment Hope leaned her head on his shoulder. “How long?” she asked. “How long do you think?”
He knew what she was talking about, but he asked, “How long what?”
“How long is it going to last? The war …”
A small Negro child was sitting in the dust, gravely caressing a rooster. Noah squinted at him. The rooster seemed to doze, half hypnotized by the movement of the gentle black hands.
“Not long,” Noah said. “Not long at all. That’s what everybody says.”
“You wouldn’t lie to your wife, would you?”
“Not a chance,” Noah said. “I know a Sergeant at Regimental Headquarters and he says they don’t think we’ll ever get a chance to fight at all, our division. He says the Colonel’s sore as can be, because the Colonel is bucking for BG.”
“What’s BG?”
“Brigadier General.”
“Am I very stupid, not knowing?”
Noah chuckled. “Yep,” he said. “I’m crazy about stupid women.”
“I’m so glad,” Hope said. “I’m delighted.” They turned around without signaling each other, as though they had simultaneous lines to the same reservoir of impulses, and started walking back toward the rooming house. “I hope the son of a bitch never makes it,” Hope said dreamily, after awhile.
“Makes what?” Noah asked, puzzled.
“BG.”
They walked in silence for a minute.
“I have a great idea,” Hope said.
“What?”
“Let’s go back to our room and lock the door.” She grinned at him and they walked a little faster toward their rooming house.
There was a knock on the door and the landlady’s voice clanged through the peeling wood. “Mrs. Ackerman. Mrs. Ackerman, I would like to see you for a moment, please.”
Hope frowned at the door, then shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll be right down,” she called.
She turned to Noah. “You stay right where you are,” she said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
She kissed his ear, then unlocked the door and went out. Noah lay back on the bed, staring through mild, half-closed eyes up at the stained ceiling. He dozed, with the Sunday afternoon coming to a warm, drowsy close outside the window, with a locomotive whistle sounding somewhere far off and lonely soldiers’ voices singing, “You make time and you make love dandy, You make swell molasses candy, But, honey, are you makin’ any money, That’s all I want to know,” on the street below. Drowsily, he knew he’d heard that song before. Then he remembered Roger and that Roger was dead. But before he could think much about it, he fell asleep.
He was wakened by the slow closing of the door. He opened his eyes a slit, smiling gently as he saw Hope standing above him.
“Noah,” she said, “you have to get up.”
“Later,” he said. “Much later. Come on down here.”
“No,” she said, and her voice was flat. “You’ve got-to get up now.”
He sat up. “What’s the matter?”
“The landlady,” Hope said. “The landlady says we have to get out right away.”
Noah shook his head to clear it because he knew he was not getting this straight. “Now,” he said, “let’s hear it again.”
“The landlady says we have to get out.”
“Darling,” Noah said patiently, “you must have gotten it a little mixed up.”
“It’s not mixed up.” Hope’s face was strained and tense. “It’s absolutely straight. We have to get out.”
“Why? Didn’t you take this room for a week?”
“Yes,” said Hope, “I took it for a week. But the landlady says I got it under false pretenses. She said she didn’t realize we were Jews.”
Noah stood up and slowly went over to the bureau. He looked at his smiling picture under the jonquils. The jonquils were getting dry and crackly around the edges.
“She said,” Hope went on, “that she suspected from the name, but that I didn’t look Jewish. Then when she saw you she began to wonder. Then she asked me and I said, of course we were Jewish.”
“Poor Hope,” Noah said softly. “I apologize.”
“None of that,” Hope said. “I never want to hear anything like that from you again. Don’t you ever apologize to me for anything.”
“All right,” Noah said. He touched the flowers vaguely, with a drifting small movement of his fingers. The jonquils felt tender and dead. “I suppose we ought to pack,” he said.
“Yes,” said Hope. She got out her bag and put it on the bed and opened it. “It’s nothing personal,” Hope said. “It’s a rule of the house, the landlady said.”
“I’m glad to know it’s nothing personal,” Noah said.
“It’s not so bad.” Hope began to put the pink soft clothes into her bag, in the crisp folded way she had of packing anything. “We’ll just go down the street and find another place.”
Noah touched the hairbrush on the dresser. It had a worn
silver back, with a heavy old-fashioned design of Victorian leaves on it. It shown dully in the dusty, shaded light of the room. “No,” he said, “we won’t find another place.”
“But we can’t stay here …”
“We won’t stay here and we won’t find another place,” Noah said, keeping his voice even and emotionless.
“I don’t know what you mean.” Hope stopped her packing and looked at him.
“I mean that we’ll walk down to the terminal and we’ll find out when a bus is leaving for New York and you’ll get on it.”
There was silence in the room. Hope just stood there, looking solemn and reflective, staring at the rosy underclothes tucked away in the bag on the bed. “You know,” she whispered, “this is the only week I can get in God knows how long. And we don’t know what will happen to you. You may be shipped to Africa, to Guadalcanal, any place, next week, and …”
“I think there’s a bus leaving at five o’clock,” Noah said.
“Darling …” Hope did not move from her sober, thoughtful position in front of the bed. “I’m sure we could find another place in this town …”
“I’m sure we could,” Noah said. “But we’re not going to. I don’t want you in this town. I want to be left alone here, that’s all. I can’t love you in this town. I want you to get out of it and stay out of it! The sooner the better! I could burn this town or drop bombs on it, but I refuse to love you in it!”
Hope came over to him swiftly and held him. “Dearest,” she shook him fiercely, “what’s happened to you? What have they been doing to you?”
“Nothing,” Noah shouted. “Nothing! I’ll tell you after the war! Now pack your things and let’s get out of here!”
Hope dropped her hands. “Of course,” she said, in a low voice. She went back to folding her clothes and placing them precisely in her bag.
Ten minutes later they were ready. Noah went out carrying her valise and the small canvas bag in which he kept his extra shirt and shaving kit. He didn’t look back as he went out onto the landing, but Hope turned at the door. The lowering sun was slanting through the breaks in the unhinged shutter in thin, dusty gold. The jonquils remained in their glass on the dresser, bending over a little now, as though the weight of approaching death had made their blossoms heavy. But otherwise the room was as it had been when first she entered it. She closed the door softly and followed Noah down the stairs.
The landlady was on the porch, still in the gray apron. She said nothing when Noah paid her, merely standing there in her smell of sweat, age and dishwater, looking with silent, harsh righteousness at the soldier and the young girl who walked slowly up the quiet street toward the bus station.
There were some men sleeping in the barracks when Noah got there. Donnelly was snoring drunkenly near the door, but no one paid any attention to him. Noah took down his barracks bag and with maniacal care he went through every article there, the extra shoes, the wool shirts, the clean fatigues, the green wool gloves, the can of shoe-dubbing. But the money wasn’t there. Then, he got down the other barracks bag, and went through that. The money wasn’t there. From time to time he glanced up sharply, to see if any of the men were watching him. But they slept, in the snoring, hateful, unprivate, everlasting way. Good, he thought, if I caught any of them looking at me, I would kill them.
He put the scattered things back into the bags, then took out his box of stationery and wrote a short note. He put the box on his bunk and strode down to the orderly room. On the bulletin board outside the orderly room, along with the notices about brothels in town that were out of bounds and regulations for wearing the proper uniforms at the proper times, and the list of promotions that had come through that week, there was a space reserved for lost-and-found notices. Noah tacked his sheet of paper up on top of a plea by PFC O’Reilly for the return of a six-bladed penknife that had been taken from his foot-locker. There was a light hanging outside the orderly room, and in its frail glare, Noah re-read what he had written.
To the Personnel of Company C … Ten dollars has been, stolen from the barracks bag of Private Noah Ackerman, 2nd Platoon. I am not interested in the return of the money and will press no charges. I wish to take my satisfaction, in person, with my own hands. Will the soldier or soldiers involved please communicate with me immediately.
Signed,
Private Noah Ackerman
Noah read what he had written with pleasure. He had a feeling as he turned away, that he had taken the one step that would keep him from going mad.
The next evening, as he was going to the mess hall for supper, Noah stopped at the bulletin board. His notice was still there. And under it neatly typed, was a small sheet of paper. On the sheet of paper, there were two short sentences.
We took it, Jew-Boy. We’re waiting for you.
Signed,
P. Donnelly B. Cowley
J. Wright W. Demuth
L. Jackson E. Riker
M. Silichner R. Henkel
P. Sanders T. Brailsford
Michael was cleaning his rifle when Noah came up to him.
“May I talk to you for a moment?” Noah said.
Michael looked up at him with annoyance. He was tired and, as usual, he felt incompetent and uncertain with the intricate clever mechanism of the old Springfield.
“What do you want?” Michael asked.
Ackerman hadn’t said a word to him since the moment on the hike.
“I can’t talk in here,” Noah said, glancing around him. It was after supper, and there were thirty or forty men in the barracks, reading, writing letters, fiddling with their equipment, listening to the radio.
“Can’t it wait?” Michael asked coldly. “I’m pretty busy just now …”
“Please,” Noah said. Michael glanced up at him. Ackerman’s face was set in withered, trembling lines, and his eyes seemed to be larger and darker than usual. “Please …” he repeated. “I’ve got to talk to you. I’ll wait for you outside.”
Michael sighed. “O.K.,” he said. He put the rifle together, wrestling with the bolt, ashamed of himself, as always, because it was so difficult for him. God, he thought, feeling his greasy hands slip along the oily stubborn surfaces, I can put on a play, discuss the significance of Thomas Mann, and any farm boy can do this with his eyes closed better than I can …
He hung the rifle up and went outside, wiping the oil off his hands. Ackerman was standing across the Company street in the darkness, a small, slender form outlined by a distant light. Ackerman waved to him in a conspiratorial gesture, and Michael slowly approached him, thinking, I get all the nuts …
“Read this,” Noah said as soon as Michael got close to him. He thrust two sheets of paper into Michael’s hand.
Michael turned so he could get some light on the papers. He squinted and read first the notice that Noah had put up on the bulletin board, which he had not read before, and the answer, signed by the ten names. Michael shook his head and read both notes over carefully.
“What the hell is this?” he asked irritably.
“I want you to act as my second,” Noah said. His voice was dull and heavy, and even so, Michael had to hold himself back from laughing at the melodramatic request.
“Second?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes,” said Noah. “I’m going to fight those men. And I don’t trust myself to arrange it myself. I’ll lose my temper and get into trouble. I want it to be absolutely correct.”
Michael blinked. Of all the things you thought might happen to you before you went into the Army, you never imagined anything like this. “You’re crazy,” he said. “This is just a joke.”
“Maybe,” said Noah flatly. “Maybe I’m getting tired of jokes.”
“What made you pick on me?” Michael asked.
Noah took a deep breath and Michael could hear the air whistling into the boy’s nostrils. He looked taut and very handsome in a rough-cut, archaic, tragic way in the blocked light and shadows from the hanging lamp across the stre
et. “You’re the only one,” Noah said, “I felt I could trust in the whole Company.” Suddenly he grabbed the two sheets of paper. “O.K.,” he said, “if you don’t want to help, the hell with you …”
“Wait a minute,” Michael said, feeling dully that somehow he must prevent this savage and ludicrous joke from being played out to its limit. “I haven’t said I won’t help.”
“O.K., then,” Noah said harshly. “Go in and arrange the schedule.”
“What schedule?”
“There are ten of them. What do you want me to do—fight them in one night? I have to space them. Find out who wants to fight me first, who wants to fight me second, and so on. I don’t care how they come.”
Michael took the sheets of paper silently from Noah’s hand and looked at the names on the list. Slowly he began to place the names. “You know,” he said, “that these are the ten biggest men in the company.”
“I know.”
“Not one of them weighs under a hundred and eighty pounds.”
“I know.”
“How much do you weigh?”
“A hundred and thirty-five.”
“They’ll kill you.”
“I didn’t ask you for advice,” Noah said evenly. “I asked you to make the arrangements. That’s all. Leave the rest to me.”
“I don’t think the Captain will allow it,” Michael said.
“He’ll allow it,” said Noah. ‘That son of a bitch will allow it. Don’t worry about that.”
Michael shrugged. “What do you want me to arrange?” he asked. “I can get gloves and two-minute rounds and a referee and …”
“I don’t want any round or any referees,” Noah said. “When one of the men can’t get up any more, the fight will be over.”
Michael shrugged again. “What about gloves?”
“No gloves. Bare fists. Anything else?”
“No,” said Michael. “That’s all.”
“Thanks,” Noah said. “Let me hear how you make out.”
Without saying good-bye, he walked stiffly down the Company street. Michael watched the shadowy, erect back vanishing in the darkness. Then he shook his head once and walked slowly toward the barracks door, looking for the first man, Peter Donnelly, six feet one, weight one hundred and ninety-five, who had fought heavyweight in the Golden Gloves in Miami in 1941 and had not been put out until the semi-final round.