by Irwin Shaw
Donnelly knocked Noah down. Noah sprang up and jumped in the air to reach Donnelly’s face. Donnelly began to bleed from the nose and he sucked in the blood at the corner of his mouth, with a look of surprise and anger that supplanted the professional expression he had been fighting with until now. He held Noah’s back with one hand, ignoring the fierce tattoo of Noah’s fist on his face, and pulled him toward him. He swung, a short, chopping vicious blow, and the men watching silently went “Ah.” Donnelly swung again as Noah fell and Noah lay at his feet on the grass.
“I think,” Michael said, stepping forward, “that that’s enough for this …”
“Get the hell out of here,” Noah said thickly, pushing himself up from the ground with his two hands.
He stood before Donnelly, wavering, blood filling the socket of his right eye. Donnelly moved in and swung, like a man throwing a baseball. There was the noise again, as it hit Noah’s mouth, and the men watching went “Ah,” again. Noah staggered back and fell against them, where they stood in a tight, hard-eyed circle, watching. Then he slid down and lay still. Michael went over to him and kneeled down. Noah’s eyes were closed and he was breathing evenly.
“All right.” Michael looked up at Donnelly. “Hurray for you. You won.” He turned Noah over on his back and Noah opened his eyes, but there was no light of reason in them as they stared thoughtlessly up at the evening sky.
Quietly the circle of watching men broke up and started to drift away.
“What do you know,” Michael heard Donnelly say as Michael put his hand under Noah’s armpit and lifted him slowly to his feet. “What do you know, the little bastard gave me a bloody nose.”
Michael stood at the latrine window, smoking a cigarette, watching Noah, bent over one of the sinks, washing his face with cold water. Noah was bare to the waist, and there were huge red blotches on his skin. Noah lifted his head. His right eye was closed by now, and the blood had not stopped coming from his mouth. He spat, and two teeth came out, in a gob of red.
Noah didn’t look at the teeth, lying in the basin. He dried his face thoughtfully with his towel, the towel staining quickly.
“All right,” Michael said, “I think that did it. I think you’d better cancel the rest …”
“Who’s the next man on the list?”
“Listen to me,” Michael said. “They’ll kill you finally.”
“The next man is Wright,” Noah said flatly. “Tell him I’ll be ready for him three nights from now.” Without waiting for Michael to say anything, Noah wrapped the towel around his bare shoulders and went out the latrine door.
Michael looked after him, shrugged, took another drag on his cigarette, threw the cigarette away and went into the soft evening. He did not go into the barracks because he didn’t want to see Ackerman again that evening.
Wright was the biggest man in the company. Noah did not try to avoid him. He stood up, in a severe, orthodox boxing pose, and flashed swiftly in and out among the flailing slow hands, cutting Wright’s face, making him grunt when he hit him in the stomach.
Amazing, Michael thought, watching Noah with grudging admiration, he really knows how to box, where did he pick it up?
“In the belly,” Rickett called from his post in the inner circle of the ring, “in the belly, you dumb bastard!” A moment later it was all over, because Wright swung sideways, all his weight behind a round, crushing swing. The knotted, hammer-like fist crashed into Noah’s side. Noah tumbled across the cleared space to fall on his hands and knees, face down, tongue hanging thickly out of his open mouth, gasping helplessly for air.
The men who were watching looked on silently.
“Well?” said Wright, belligerently, standing over Noah. “Well?”
“Go home,” Michael said. “You were wonderful.”
Noah began to breathe again, the air struggling through his throat in hoarse, agonized whistles. Wright touched Noah contemptuously with his toe and turned away, saying, “Who’s going to buy me a beer?”
The doctor looked at the x-rays and said that two ribs were broken. He taped Noah’s chest with bandage and adhesive, and made Noah lie still in the infirmary bed.
“Now,” Michael said, standing over Noah in the ward, “now, will you quit?”
“The doctor says it will take three weeks,” Noah said, the speech coming painfully through his pale lips. “Arrange the next one for then.”
“You’re crazy,” said Michael. “I won’t do it.”
“Deliver your goddamn lectures some place else,” Noah whispered. “If you won’t do it, you can leave now. I’ll do it myself.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Michael asked. “What do you think you’re proving?”
Noah said nothing. He stared blankly and wildly across the ward at the man with a broken leg who had fallen off a truck two days before.
“What are you proving?” Michael shouted.
“Nothing,” Noah said. “I enjoy fighting. Anything else?”
“No,” said Michael. “Not a thing.”
He went out.
“Captain,” Michael was saying, “it’s about Private Ackerman.”
Colclough was sitting very erect, the little roll of fat under his chin lapping over his tight collar, making him look like a man who was slowly being choked.
“Yes,” Colclough said, “What about Private Ackerman?”
“Perhaps you have heard about the … uh … dispute … that Private Ackerman is engaged in with ten members of the Company.”
Colclough’s mouth lifted a little in an amused grin. “I’ve heard something about it,” he said.
“I think Private Ackerman is not responsible for his actions at this time,” Michael said. “He is liable to be very seriously injured. Permanently injured. And I think, if you agreed with me, it might be a good idea to try to stop him from fighting any more …”
Colclough put his finger in his nose. He picked slowly at some obstacle there, then pulled his finger out and examined the treasure he had withdrawn. “In an army, Whitacre,” he said in the even, sober tone which he must have heard from officiating ministers at so many funerals in Joplin, “a certain amount of friction between the men is unavoidable. I believe that the healthiest way of settling that friction is by fair and open fighting. These men, Whitacre, are going to be exposed to much worse than fists later on, much worse. Shot and shell, Whitacre,” he said with grave relish. “Shot and shell. It would be unmilitary to forbid them to settle their differences now in this way, unmilitary. It is my policy, also, Whitacre, to allow as much freedom in handling their affairs as possible to the men in my Company, and I would not think of interfering.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Michael. “Thank you, Sir.”
He saluted and went out.
Walking slowly down the Company street, Michael made a sudden decision. He could not remain here like this. He would apply for Officer Candidates’ School. When he had first come into the Army, he had resolved to remain an enlisted man. First, he felt that he was a little too old to compete with the twenty-year-old athletes who made up the bulk of the candidate classes. And his brain was too set in its ways to take easily to any further schooling. And, more deeply, he had held back from being put into a position where the lives of other men, so many other men, would depend upon his judgment. He had never felt in himself any talent for military command. War, in all its thousand, tiny, mortal particulars, seemed to him, even after all the months of training, like an impossible, deadly puzzle. It was all right to work at the puzzle as an obscure, single figure, at someone else’s command. But to grapple with it on your own initiative … to send forty men at it, where every mistake might be compounded into forty graves … But now there was nothing else to do. If the Army felt that men like Colclough could be entrusted with two hundred and fifty lives, then no over-nicety of self-assessment, no modesty or fear of responsibility should hold one back. Tomorrow, Michael thought, I’ll fill in the form and hand it in to the orderly room. And,
he thought grimly, in my Company, there will be no Ackermans sent to the infirmary with broken ribs …
Five weeks later, Noah was back in the infirmary again. Two more teeth had been knocked out in his mouth, and his nose had been smashed. The dentist was making him a bridge so that he could eat, and the surgeon kept taking crushed pieces of bone out of his nose on every visit.
By this time Michael could hardly speak to Noah. He came to the infirmary and sat on the end of Noah’s bed, and they both avoided each other’s eyes, and were glad when the orderly came through, crying, “All visitors out.”
Noah had worked his way through five of the list by now, and his face was crooked and lumpy, and one ear was permanently disfigured in a flat, creased cauliflower. His right eyebrow was split and a white scar ran diagonally across it, giving the broken eyebrows a wild, interrogating twist. The total effect of his face, the steady, wild eyes, staring out of the dark, broken face, was infinitely disturbing.
After the eighth fight, Noah was in the infirmary again. He had been hit in the throat. The muscles there had been temporarily paralyzed and his larynx had been injured. For two days the doctor was of the opinion that he would never be able to speak again.
“Soldier,” the doctor had said, standing over him, a puzzled look on his simple college-boy face, “I don’t know what you’re up to, but whatever it is I don’t think it’s worth it. I’ve got to warn you that it is impossible to lick the United States Army singlehanded …” He leaned down and peered troubledly at Noah. “Can you say anything?”
Noah’s mouth worked for a long time, without sound. Then a hoarse, croaking small noise came from between the swollen lips. The doctor bent over closer. “What was that?” he asked.
“Go peddle your pills, Doc,” Noah said, “and leave me alone.”
The doctor flushed. He was a nice boy out he was not accustomed to being talked to that way any more, now that he was a Captain.
He straightened up. “I’m glad to see,” he said stiffly, “that you’ve regained the gift of speech.”
He wheeled and stalked out of the ward.
Fein, the other Jew in the Company, came into the ward, too. He stood uneasily next to Noah’s bed, twisting his cap in his large hands.
“Listen, Pal,” he said, “I didn’t want to interfere here, but enough’s enough. You’re going at this all wrong. You can’t start swinging every time you hear somebody say Jew bastard …”
“Why not?” Noah grimaced painfully at him.
“Because it ain’t practical,” Fein said. “That’s why. First of all, you ain’t big enough. Second of all, even if you was as big as a house and you had a right hand like Joe Louis, it wouldn’t do no good. There’s a certain number of people in this world that say Jew bastard automatically, and nothing you do or I do or any Jew does will ever change ’em. And this way, you make the rest of the guys in the outfit think all Jews’re crazy. Listen, they’re not so bad, most of ’em. They sound a lot worse than they are, because they don’t know no better. They started out feeling sorry for you, but now, after all these goddamned fights, they’re beginning to think Jews are some kind of wild animal. They’re beginning to look at me queer now …”
“Good,” Noah said hoarsely. “Delighted.”
“Listen,” Fein said patiently, “I’m older than you and I’m a peaceful man. I’ll kill Germans if they ask me to, but I want to live in peace with the guys around me in the Army. The best equipment a Jew can have is one deaf ear. When some of these bastards start to shoot their mouths off about the Jews that’s the ear you turn that way, the deaf one … You let them live and maybe they’ll let you live. Listen, the war ain’t going to last forever, and then you can pick your company. Right now, the government says you got to live with these miserable Ku Kluxers, O.K., what’re you going to do about it? Listen, Son, if all the Jews’d been like you we’d’ve all been wiped out 2000 years ago …”
“Good,” Noah said.
“Ah,” Fein said disgustedly, “maybe they’re right, maybe you are cracked. Listen, I weigh two hundred pounds, I could beat anyone in this Company with one hand tied behind me. But you ain’t noticed me fightin’, do you? I ain’t had a fight since I put on the uniform. I’m a practical man!”
Noah sighed. “The patient is tired, Fein,” he said. “He’s in no condition to listen to the advice of practical men.”
Fein stared at him heavily, groping despairingly with the problem. “The question I ask myself,” he said, “is what do you want, what in hell do you want?”
Noah grinned painfully. “I want every Jew,” he said, “to be treated as though he weighed two hundred pounds.”
“It ain’t practical,” Fein said. “Ah, the hell with it, you want to fight, go ahead and fight. I’ll tell you the truth, I feel I understand these Georgia crackers who didn’t wear shoes till the Supply Sergeant put them on their feet better than I understand you.” He put on his cap with ponderous decision. “Little guys,” he said, “that’s a race all by itself. I can’t make head or tail of them.”
And he went out, showing, in every line of his enormous shoulders and thick neck and bullet head, his complete disapproval of the battered boy in the bed, who by some trick and joke of Fate and registration was somehow linked with him.
It was the last fight and if he stayed down it would be all over. He peered bloodily up from the ground at Brailsford, standing above him in pants and undershirt. Brailsford seemed to flicker against the white ring of faces and the vague wash of the sky. This was the second time Brailsford had knocked him down. But he had closed Brailsford’s eye and made him cry out with pain when he hit him in the belly. If he stayed down, if he merely stayed where he was on one knee, shaking his head to clear it, for another five seconds, the whole thing would be over. The ten men would be behind him, the broken bones, the long days in the hospital, the nervous vomiting on the days when the fights were scheduled, the dazed, sick roaring of the blood in his ears when he had to stand up once more and face the onrushing, confident, hating faces and the clubbing fists.
Five seconds more, and it would be proved. He would have done it. Whatever he had set out to demonstrate, and it was dim and anguished now, would have been demonstrated. They would have to realize that he had won the victory over them. Nine defeats and one default would not have been enough. The spirit only won when it made the complete tour of sacrifice and pain. Even these ignorant, brutal men would realize now, as he marched with them, marched first down the Florida roads, and later down the roads swept by gunfire, that he had made a demonstration of will and courage that only the best of them could have been capable of …
All he had to do was to remain on one knee.
He stood up.
He put up his hands and waited for Brailsford to come at him. Slowly, Brailsford’s face swam into focus. It was white and splotched now with red, and it was very nervous. Noah walked across the patch of grass and hit the white face, hard, and Brailsford went down. Noah stared dully at the sprawled figure at his feet. Brailsford was panting hard, and his hands were pulling at the grass.
“Get up, you yellow bastard,” a voice called out from the watching men. Noah blinked. It was the first time anyone but himself had been cursed on this spot.
Brailsford got up. He was fat and out of condition, because he was the Company Clerk and always managed to find excuses to duck out of heavy work. His breath was sobbing in his throat. As Noah moved in on him, there was a look of terror on his face. His hands waved vaguely in front of him.
“No, no …” he said pleadingly.
Noah stopped and stared at him. He shook his head and plodded in. Both men swung at the same time, and Noah went down again. Brailsford was a large man and the blow had hit high on Noah’s temple. Methodically, sitting with his legs crumpled under him, Noah took a deep breath. He looked up at Brailsford.
The big man was standing above him, his hands held tightly before him. He was breathing heavily, and he was whispering,
“Please, please …” Sitting there, with his head hammering, Noah grinned, because he knew what Brailsford meant. He was pleading with Noah to stay down.
“Why, you miserable hillbilly son of a bitch,” Noah said clearly. “I’m going to knock you out.” He stood up and grinned as he saw the flare of anguish in Brailsford’s eyes when he swung at him.
Brailsford hung heavily on him, clinching, swinging with a great show of willingness. But the blows were soft and nervous and Noah didn’t feel them. Clutched in the big man’s fat embrace, smelling the sweat rolling off his skin, Noah knew that he had beaten Brailsford merely by standing up. After this it was merely a matter of time. Brailsford’s nerve had run out.
Noah ducked away and lashed out at Brailsford’s middle. The blow landed and Noah could feel the softness of the clerk’s belly as his fist dug in.
Brailsford dropped his hands to his sides and stood there, weaving a little, a stunned plea for pity in his eyes. Noah chuckled. “Here it comes, Corporal,” he said, and drove at the white, bleeding face. Brailsford just stood there. He wouldn’t fall and he wouldn’t fight and Noah merely stood flat on the balls of his feet, hooking at the collapsing face. “Now,” he said, swinging with all his shoulder, all his body behind the driving, cutting blow. “Now. Now.” He gained in power. He could feel the electric life pouring down his arms into his fists. All his enemies, all the men who had stolen his money, cursed him on the march, driven his wife away, were standing there, broken in nerve, bleeding before him. Blood sprayed from his knuckles every time he hit Brailsford’s staring, agonized face.
“Don’t fall, Corporal,” Noah said, “don’t fall yet, please don’t fall,” and swung again and again, faster and faster, his fists making a sound like mallets wrapped in wet cloth. And when he saw Brailsford finally begin to sway, he tried to hold him with one-hand long enough to hit him twice more, three times, a dozen, and he sobbed when he no longer could hold the rubbery bloody mess up. Brailsford slipped to the ground.