by Irwin Shaw
“In all my time in the Army,” Captain Lewis said to the WAC secretary who sat at the next desk, “I never read anything like this. Where did we get this from?”
“The Provost Marshal’s office sent it over,” the WAC said. “They want you to go and look at the prisoner and tell them whether you think he’s faking lunacy or not.”
“I am going to finish writing this letter,” Captain Lewis read, “and then I am going to get on the subway to the Battery and take the ferry to Governor’s Island, and give myself up.”
Captain Lewis sighed, and for a moment he was sorry that he had studied psychiatry. Almost any other job in the Army, he felt, would be simpler and more rewarding.
“First of all,” the letter went on, in the nervous, irregular handwriting on the flimsy paper, “I want to make it clear that no one helped me leave the camp, and no one knew that I was going to do it. My wife is not to be bothered, either, because I have refrained from going to see her or getting in touch with her in any way since I arrived in New York. I had to figure this question out and I did not wish to be swayed one way or another by any claims of sentiment. No one in New York has sheltered me or even spoken to me since I arrived two weeks ago, and I have not even by accident met anyone I ever knew. I have walked around most of the day and slept at night in various hotels. I still have seven dollars, which would have kept me going for three or four more days, but slowly my mind has been made up on the proper course that I must follow, and I do not wish to delay any longer.”
Captain Lewis looked at his watch. He had a date for lunch in the city and he didn’t want to be late. He got up and put on his coat and tucked the letter into his pocket, to be read on the ferry.
“If anybody wants to know where I am,” Captain Lewis said to the WAC, “I am visiting the hospital.”
“Yes, Sir,” the girl said gravely.
Captain Lewis put on his cap and went out. It was a sunny, windy day, and across the harbor New York City, rooted in the green water, stood secure against the gale. Captain Lewis experienced the usual little twinge when he saw the city standing there, peaceful, tall and shining, and hardly the place for a soldier to spend the war. But he saluted with snap and precision in answer to the salutes of the enlisted men who passed him on the way down to the ferry, and he felt more soldierly by the time he went forward to the section of the upper deck reserved for officers and their families. Captain Lewis was not a bad man, and he suffered often from pangs of guilt and conscience, which he dutifully recognized. He would undoubtedly have been brave and useful if the Army had put him into a place of danger and responsibility. But he was having a good time in New York. He lived at a good hotel at a cut military rate; his wife remained home in Kansas City with the children, and he was sleeping with two girls who worked as models and did Red Cross things on the side, both of them prettier and more expert than any girl he had ever known before. Every once in a while he woke up gloomily in the morning and resolved that his time-wasting must come to a halt, that he must ask for a more active assignment in a combat zone, or at least take some steps to inject some real vitality into his own work on the Island. But after a morning or two of grumbling and cleaning out his desk and complaining to Colonel Bruce, he relaxed again and drifted back into the easygoing routine as before.
“I have searched myself,” Captain Lewis read in the officers’ section of the ferry, as it throbbed at its moorings, “for the reasons that I have acted as I have done, and I believe I can state them honestly and understandably. The immediate cause of my action is the fact that I am a Jew. The men of my Company were mostly from the South, for the most part quite uneducated. Their attitude of mild hostility, which I believe had begun to wear away in respect to me, was suddenly fanned by a new Sergeant who was put in command of my platoon. Still as I have said. I believe I would have taken this action even if I were not a Jew, although that brought it to a crisis and made it impossible for me to continue living among them.”
Captain Lewis sighed and looked up. The ferry was moving toward the lower point of Manhattan. The city looked clean and everyday and dependable, and it was hard to think of a boy roaming its streets, loaded with all this misery, preparing to go to the reading room of the Library and there spill it out onto paper for the Provost Marshal to read. God only knew what the MP’s had made out of the document.
“I believe,” the letter went on, “that I must fight for my country. I did not think so when I left camp, but I realize now that I was wrong then, that I did not see the issues clearly because of my preoccupation with my own troubles and a sense of bitterness which was suddenly made unbearably strong by something that happened on my last night in the camp. The hostility of the Company had crystallized into a series of fist-fights with me. I had been called upon to fight by ten of the largest men in the Company. I felt that I had to accept that challenge.
“I had gone through nine of the fights, however, fighting honorably, and asking for no quarter. In the last fight, I managed to beat the man who was opposing me. He knocked me down several times, but in the end, I knocked him out, as a culmination of many weeks of fighting. The Company, which had watched all the fights, had before this left me on the ground, full of congratulations for the winner. In this instance, when I faced them, looking, perhaps foolishly, for some spark of admiration or grudging respect for what I had done, they merely turned, as one man, and walked away. It seemed to me as I stood there that I could not bear the fact that all I had done, all I had gone through to gain a place in the Company, had been absolutely wasted.
“At that moment, looking at the backs of the men at whose side I was expected to fight and perhaps die, I decided to desert.
“I realize now that I was wrong. I realize now that I believe in this country and in this war, and an individual act like this is not possible. I must fight. But I think I have the right to ask for a transfer to another division, where I can be among men who are more anxious to kill the enemy than they are to kill me.
Respectfully,
Noah Ackerman, Private, US Army.”
The ferry docked and Captain Lewis slowly rose to his feet. Thoughtfully he folded the letter and put it into his pocket, as he crossed the gangplank to the wharf. Poor boy, he thought, and he had an impulse to call off the lunch and go right back to the Island and seek Noah out. Ah, well, he thought, as long as I’m here now, I might as well have lunch and see him later. But I’ll make it quick, he thought, and get back early.
But the girl he was lunching with had the afternoon off, and he had three old-fashioneds while waiting for a table, and after that the girl wanted to go home with him. She had been a little cool to him the last three times he had been out with her and he felt he couldn’t risk leaving her now. Besides his head was a little fuzzy by now and he told himself he would have to be absolutely clear and sober when he went to see Noah, he owed it to the boy, it was the least he could do. So he went home with the girl and called his office and told Lieutenant Klauser to sign out for him after Retreat that afternoon.
He had a very good time with the girl and by five o’clock he decided that he had been foolish to think that she had grown cool toward him, very foolish indeed.
The visitor was very pretty, although a great deal of worry seemed to be under severe control in her steady dark eyes. Also, Lewis saw, she was pregnant. And from the look of her clothes, she was poor. Lewis sighed. This was going to be even worse than he expected.
“It was very good of you,” Hope said, “to get in touch with me. They haven’t let me see Noah all this time, and they don’t let him write me, and they won’t deliver my letters to him.” Her voice was cool and steady, and there was no tone of complaint in it.
“The Army,” Lewis said; feeling ashamed of all the men around him, all the uniforms, guns, buildings. “It does things its own peculiar way, Mrs. Ackerman. You understand.”
“I suppose so,” Hope said. “Is Noah well?”
“Well enough,” Lewis said diplomatical
ly.
“Are they going to let me see him?”
“I think so,” Lewis said. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about” He frowned at the WAC secretary, who was watching them from her desk with frank interest. “If you please, Corporal,” Lewis said.
“Yes, Sir.” The WAC rose reluctantly and went slowly out of the room. She had fat legs and the seams of her stockings were crooked, as always. Why is it, Lewis thought automatically, why is it the dogs are the ones who join up? Then he realized what he was thinking and frowned nervously, as though somehow the grave, steady-eyed girl seated erectly in the stiff chair by the side of his desk could somehow read his thoughts and, in the middle of her terrible dilemma, be shocked and disgusted by him.
“I suppose,” Lewis said, “that you know something of what has gone on, even though you haven’t seen or heard from your husband.”
“Yes,” said Hope. “A friend of his, a Private Whitacre, who was down in Florida with him, passed through New York and he came to see me.”
“Unfortunate,” Lewis said. “Most unfortunate.” Then he flushed, because the barest hint of an ironic smile played across the corners of the girl’s mouth at his sympathy. “Now,” he said briskly, “this is the situation. Your husband has asked to be transferred to another organization … Technically, he can be tried by a court-martial on the charge of desertion.”
“But he didn’t desert,” Hope said. “He gave himself up.”
“Technically,” Lewis said, “he deserted, because at the time he left his post, he did not intend to return.”
“Oh,” said Hope. “There’s a rule for everything, isn’t there?”
“I’m afraid there is,” Lewis said uncomfortably. The girl made him uneasy sitting there, staring steadily at him. It would have been easier if she cried. “However,” he went on stiffly, “the Army realizes that there are extenuating circumstances …”
“Oh, God,” Hope said, laughing dryly. “Extenuating circumstances.”
“… and in recognition of that,” Lewis insisted, “the Army is willing not to press the court-martial and return your husband to duty.”
Hope smiled, a grave, warm smile. What a pretty girl, Lewis thought, much prettier than either of the two models …
“Well, then,” Hope said, “there’s no problem, is there? Noah wants to be returned to duty and the Army is willing …”
“It isn’t as simple as that. The General in command of the base from which your husband deserted insists that he be returned to the Company in which he was serving, and the authorities here will not interfere.”
“Oh,” Hope said flatly.
“And your husband refuses to go back. He says he would stand trial before going back.”
“They’ll kill him,” Hope said dully, “if he goes back. Is that what they want?”
“Now, now,” Lewis said, feeling that since he was wearing the uniform and the two bright Captain’s bars, he had to defend the Army to a certain extent, anyway. “It’s not as bad as that.”
“No?” Hope asked bitterly. “Just how bad would you say it was, Captain?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Ackerman,” Lewis said humbly. “I know how you feel. And remember, I’m trying to help …”
“Of course,” Hope said, touching his arm impulsively with her hand. “Forgive me.”
“If he stands trial, he is quite certain to be sent to jail.” Lewis paused. “For a long time. For a very long time.” He did not say that he had written a biting letter to the Inspector General’s office about this matter, and had put it in his desk to be reworked the next morning to get it perfect and that he had begun to think, as he re-read the letter, that he was sticking his neck out awfully far, and that the Army had a quiet way of sending obstreperous officers, officers who found it necessary to make complaints about their superiors, to unpleasant places like Assam or Iceland or New Guinea. And he neglected to tell Hope that he had put the letter in his pocket and had re-read it four times during the day and then had torn it up at five o’clock in the afternoon and had gone out and gotten drunk that night. “Twenty years, Mrs. Ackerman,” he said as gently as possible, “twenty-five years. Courts-martial have a tendency to harshness …”
“I know why you called me here,” Hope said in a dead voice. “You want me to convince Noah to go back to his Company.”
Lewis swallowed. “That, more or less, is it, Mrs. Ackerman.”
Hope stared out the window. Three prisoners in blue fatigues were heaving garbage into a truck. Two guards stood behind them, with shotguns under their arms.
“Are you a psychiatrist in civilian life, too, Captain?” she asked suddenly.
“Why … uh … yes,” Lewis said, flustered by the unexpected question.
Hope laughed sharply. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself today?” she asked.
“Please,” Lewis said, stiffly. “Please. I have a job to do and I do it the best way I know how.”
Hope stood up. She stood up heavily, carrying the child within her a little awkwardly. Her dress was too small for her and hung grotesquely in front. Lewis had a sudden vision of Hope desperately trying to alter her clothes because she could not afford to buy maternity dresses.
“All right,” she said, “I’ll do it.”
“Good.” Lewis beamed at her. After all, he told himself, this was the best possible way for everybody, and the boy would not suffer too badly. He almost believed it, too, as he picked up the phone to call Captain Mason in the Provost Marshal’s office and tell him to get Ackerman ready for a visitor.
He asked for Mason’s extension and listened to the ringing in the receiver. “By the way,” he said to Hope, “does your husband know about … the child?” Delicately he avoided looking at the girl.
“No,” Hope said. “He hasn’t any idea.”
“You might … uh … use that as an argument,” Lewis said, holding the buzzing phone to his ear. “In case he won’t change his mind. For the child’s sake … a father in prison, disgraced …”
“It must be wonderful,” Hope said, “to be a psychiatrist. It makes you so practical.”
Lewis could feel his jaw growing rigid with embarrassment.
“I didn’t mean to suggest anything that …” he began.
“Please, Captain,” Hope said, “keep your silly mouth closed.”
Oh, God, Lewis mourned within him, the Army, it makes idiots of every man in it. I would never have behaved so badly in a gray suit. “Captain Mason,” a voice said in the receiver.
“Hello, Mason,” Lewis said gratefully. “I have Mrs. Ackerman here. Will you get Private Ackerman down to the visitors’ room right away?”
“You have five minutes,” the MP said. He stood at the door of the bare room, which had bars on the windows and two small wooden chairs in the middle of the floor.
The main problem was not to cry. He looked so small. The other things, the queer, smashed shape of his nose, the grotesque broken ear, the split, torn eyebrow were bad, but what was hard to conquer was that he looked so small. The stiff blue fatigues were much too large for him and he seemed lost and tiny in them. And they made him seem heartbreakingly humble. Everything about him was humble. Eyerything but his eyes. The soft way he came into the room. The mild, hesitant little smile as he saw her. The embarrassed, hasty kiss, with the MP watching. His low, mild voice, when he said, “Hello.” It was dreadful to think of the long, cruel process which had produced such humility in her husband. But his eyes flared wildly and steadily.
They sat almost knee to knee on the two stiff chairs like two old ladies having tea in the afternoon.
“Well, now,” Noah said softly. “Well, now.” He grinned at her gently. There were the sorrowful gaps, between the healed gums, where the teeth had been knocked out, and they gave a horrible air of stupidity and rudimentary cunning to the wrecked face. But Whitacre had prepared her for the missing teeth, and her expression didn’t change at all. “Do you know what I think about all the time in her
e?”
“What?” Hope asked. “What do you think about?”
“Something you once said.”
“What was that?”
“‘You see, it wasn’t too hot, not too hot at all.’” He grinned at her, and not crying became a big problem again. “I remember just how you said it.”
“What a thing,” Hope said, trying to smile, too. “What a thing to remember.”
They stared at each other in silence, as though they had exhausted all conversation.
“Your aunt and uncle,” Noah said. “They still live in Brooklyn? The same garden …”
“Yes,” Hope said. The MP moved a little at the door, scratching his back against the wood. The rough cloth made a sliding sound on the wood. “Listen,” Hope said, “I’ve been talking to Captain Lewis. You know what he wants me to do …”
“Yes,” Noah said. “I know.”
“I’m not going to try to tell you, one way or another,” Hope said; “You do what you have to do.”
Then she saw Noah staring at her, his eyes slowly dropping to her stomach, tight against the belt of the old dress. “I wouldn’t promise him anything,” she went on, “not a thing …”
“Hope,” Noah said, staring fixedly at the swelling belt. “Tell me the truth.”
Hope sighed. “All right,” she said. “Five more months. I don’t know why I didn’t write you when I could. I have to stay in bed most of the time. I had to give up my job. The doctor says I’ll probably have a miscarriage if I keep on working. That’s probably why I didn’t let you know. I wanted to be sure it was going to be all right.”
Noah looked at her gravely. “Are you glad?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Hope said, wishing the MP would fall to the floor in a dead faint. “I don’t know anything. Don’t let this influence you one way or another.”
Noah sighed. Then he leaned over and kissed her forehead. “It’s wonderful,” he said. “Absolutely wonderful.”