The Times Are Never So Bad

by Andre Dubus

  ‘Lieutenant,’ he said, his deep voice, almost harsh, snapping both him and Phil into the day’s hunt: ‘The good thing about a moustache is you can smell her all night while you sleep, and when you wake up you can lick it again.’

  The eyes opened and stared from a face still in repose; the mouth was slower to leave sleep, then it smiled and Phil said: ‘You ex-enlisted men talk dirty.’

  They dressed and went quickly down the corridor, rifles slung on their shoulders, Phil carrying in one hand a pack with their breakfast and lunch; they wore pistol belts with canteens and hunting knives, and jeans, and sweat shirts over their shirts, and wind-breakers; Harry wore a wide-brimmed straw hat. Still, the act of arming himself to go into the hills made him feel he was in uniform, and as Phil drove the open jeep through fog, Harry shivered and pushed his hat tighter on his head and watched both flanks, an instinct so old and now useless that it amused him. He had learned to use his senses as an animal does, and probably as his ancestors in Canada and New Hampshire had, though not his father, whose avocation was beer and cards and friends in his kitchen or theirs, the men’s talk with the first beers and hands of penny ante poker in French and English, then later only in the French that had crossed the ocean centuries before the invention of things, so in the flow of words that Harry never learned he now and then heard engine and car and airplane and electric fan. So in 1936, never having touched a rifle or pistol, he went into the Marine Corps with a taste for beer and a knowledge of poker acquired in his eighteenth year and last at home, when his father said he was old enough to join the table, and he trained with young men who had killed game since boyhood, and would learn cards in the barracks and drinking in bars. Four years later he returned home; in the summer evening he walked from the bus station over climbing and dropping streets of the village to the little house where his father sat on the front steps with a bottle of beer; he had not bathed yet for the dinner that Harry could smell cooking; he had taken off his shirt, and his undershirt was wet and soiled; sweat streaked the dirt on his throat and arms, and he hugged Harry and called to the family, took a long swallow of beer, handed the bottle to Harry, and said: ‘I got you a job at the foundry.’ Two days later, Harry took a bus to the recruiting office and reenlisted.

  The jeep descended into colder air; fog hid the low earth, so that Harry could not judge the distance from the road to the dark bulk of hills on both sides. He stopped looking, and at once felt exposed and alert; he smiled and shook his head and leaned toward the dashboard to light a cigarette. He could see no stars; the wet moon was pallid, distant. He watched the road, grey fog paled and swathed yellow by the headlights, and said: ‘There was a battalion cut off, when the Chinese came in.’

  ‘What?’

  He turned to Phil and spoke away from the rushing air, loudly over the vibrating moan of the jeep: the Chosin Reservoir, the whole Goddamned division was surrounded and a battalion cut off, and they had to go through Chinese to get there and break the battalion out and bring it to the main body. So they could retreat through all those Chinese to the sea. The battalion was pinned down about five miles away, so they started on foot, with a company on each flank playing leapfrog over the hills: two battalions, one of them Royal Marines, and their colonel was in command. A feisty little bastard. ‘I’ve never liked Limeys, but the Royal Marines are good.’ He guessed he liked Limey troops, it was just the country that pissed him off. The reason Alarines had such good liberty in Australia in World War II was the Aussies were off in Africa fighting for England. Even the chaplain probably got laid. ‘They loved Marines and still do, and if you ever get a chance to go to Australia, take it.’ Their boys were fighting the Goddamn Germans, so it was the Marines keeping Australia safe, and they’d go there for R and R and get all the thanks too. The Limeys were good at that, getting other people to go off and fight in somebody else’s yard. ‘Do you read history?’

  ‘Not since college.’

  ‘You’ve got to.’ He shivered and caught his hat before it blew off, and the jeep climbed into lighter fog. ‘If you’re going to be a career man, you’ve got to start studying this stuff now. Not just tactics and strategy; but how these wars get started, and why, and who starts them.’

  ‘I will. What about that battalion?’

  The flank companies kept making contact in the hills, and the troops in the road would assault and clear that hill, then start moving again; but they were moving too slowly, it was one firefight after another, so the colonel called back for trucks and brought the people down from the hills, and they all mounted up in the trucks and hauled ass down the road till they got hit; then they’d pile out and attack, and when they’d knocked out whatever it was or it had run off to some other hill, they’d hi-diddle-diddle up the road again—

  ‘Holy shit.’

  ‘I never felt so much like a moving target.’ He rode shotgun in a six-by; the driver was a corporal and he pissed all over himself; he was good, though; he just kept cussing and shifting gears; probably he was praying too; maybe it was all praying: Jesus Christ God-damn—pissssss—shit Jesus—From the front of the six-by he watched the hills, but what good was it to watch where it’s going to come from, when you’re moving so fast that you know you can’t see anything till you draw fire? He felt like he was searching the air for a bullet. He told the corporal he wished he were up there and the Chinese were down here. Probably that was a prayer too—Harry grabbed his hat as the brim slapped the crown; he put it in his lap, and the air was cool on his bald spot. ‘De-fense is best, you know. Or don’t they tell you that.’ ’Course they don’t, Marines always attack; but with helicopters you can go behind them and cut off their line of supply and defend that. ‘Read Liddel Hart. And learn Spanish. That’s where it’s going to be.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Mexico to Tierra del Fuego. We got the battalion out.’

  He twisted and reached behind his left hip for his canteen.

  ‘So the colonel was right.’

  ‘Sure he was.’ He gargled, then swallowed, and drank again and offered the canteen to Phil, who shook his head. ‘We lost people we might not have, if we’d done it the right way. But we had to do it the fast way.’

  The jeep climbed, and above him the fog was thinning; to his right he could see a ridge outlined clearly against the sky.

  ‘Have you seen your mother yet?’

  ‘Last night. She and the girls. We had dinner. Catherine’s screwed up.’

  ‘Not dope?’

  ‘No. She doesn’t think I should go. At the same time she—’ He shrugged, glanced at Harry, then watched the road.

  ‘Loves her brother,’ Harry said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just the women? No boy friends?’

  ‘I don’t think they like Marines.’

  ‘Fuck ’em.’

  ‘I’ll leave that to Catherine and Joyce.’

  ‘Easy now. My daughters are virgins.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I wish your skipper had left the top on the jeep’: ‘

  —soon.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Today will be hot.’

  Harry nodded and put on his hat, pressing it down, and watched the suspended motion of fog above the road.

  The deer camp duty officer’s table was near the fire. He wore hunting clothes and was rankless, as all the hunters were, but was in charge of the camp, logging hunters in and out, and recording their kills, because he had drawn the duty from a hat. A hissing gas Ian-tern was on the table near his log book, and above him shadows cast by the fire danced in trees. Harry and Phil gave him their names and hunting area; he was in his midthirties, looked to Harry like a gunnery sergeant or major; they spoke to him about fog and the cold drive, and he wished them luck as they moved away, to the fire where two men squatted with skillets of eggs and others stood drinking coffee from canteen cups. The fire was in a hole; a large coffeepot rested on two stones at the edge of the flames. Harry poured for both of them, sh
ook the pot, and a lance corporal emerged from the darkness; he wore faded green utilities and was eating a doughnut. He took the pot from Harry and shook it, then placed it beside the hole and returned to the darkness. The two men cooking eggs rose and brought the crackling skillets to the edge of the fire’s light, where three men sat drinking coffee. The lance corporal came back with a kettle and put it on the stones, then sat cross-legged and smoked. His boots shone in the fire’s light. From above, Harry watched him: he liked his build, lean and supple, and the cocky press of his lips, and his wearing his cap visor so low over his eyes that he had to jut out his chin to see in front of him. Phil crouched and held a skillet of bacon over the fire, and Harry stepped closer to the lance corporal; he wanted to ask him why he was in special services, in charge of a hobby shop or gym or swimming pool, drawing duty as a fire-builder and coffee-maker. Looking down at his starched cap and polished boots and large, strong-looking hands, he wished he could train him, teach him and care for him, and his wish became a yearning: looking at Phil wrapping a handkerchief around the skillet handle, he wished he could train him too. He circled the lance corporal and sat heavily on the earth beside Phil.

  ‘I used to be graceful.’

  ‘Civilians are entitled to a beer gut. We forgot a spatula.’

  ‘Civilian my ass. Here.’

  He drew his hunting knife and handed it to Phil; behind him, and beyond the line of trees, a car left the road and stopped. Bacon curled over the knife blade; Phil lifted strips free of the skillet, lowered the pale sides into the grease, and said: The eggs will break.’

  ‘I’ll cook them.’

  ‘Fried?’

  ‘Lieutenant, I’ve spent more time in chow lines than you’ve spent in the Marine Corps.’

  Three hunters came out of the trees and stood at the table to his left. The lance corporal flipped his cigarette into the flames and crossed his arms on his knees and watched the kettle.

  ‘They use spatulas,’ Phil said.

  ‘True enough. But I will turn the eggs. How they come out is in the hands of the Lord.’

  ‘Bless us o Lord in this thy omelet.’

  ‘Over easy. Do you go to Mass?’

  ‘Sometimes. Do you?’

  ‘On Sundays.’

  Across the fire the three men rubbed their hands in the heat. A car left the road, then another, and doors opened and slammed, and voices and rustling, cracking footsteps came through the trees. The lance corporal rose without using his hands and took the coffeepot into the darkness.

  ‘Where does he go?’ Harry said.

  ‘He’s like an Indian.’

  ‘He’s like an Oriental.’

  Then he heard the water boiling and, as he looked, steam came from the spout. From the pack he took bread, eggs, and paper plates. Phil spread bacon on a plate, then Harry dug a small hole with the knife and poured in some of the bacon grease and covered it. Kneeling, he fried four slices of bread, then broke six eggs, one-handed, into the skillet and was watching the bubbling whites and browning edges when he heard cars on the road; he glanced up at the dimmed stars and lemon moon; the fog was thinner, and smoke rose darkly through its eddying grey. In the skillet the eggs joined, and he was poised to separate them with his knife, then said: ‘Look what we have.’

  ‘Your basic sunnyside pie.’

  ‘It’s beautiful.’

  He slanted the skillet till grease moved to one side, and with the blade he slapped it over the eggs. He held the skillet higher and watched the yellows, and the milky white circling them; he slid his knife under the right edge, gently moved it toward the center, and stopped under the first yolk. Phil held a paper plate, and Harry tilted the skillet over it, working the knife upward as connected eggs slid over the blade and rim, onto the plate.

  ‘I hate to break it,’ Phil said. ‘Should we freeze it?’

  ‘In our minds.’

  Phil took their cups to the coffeepot; Harry watched him pouring, and waited for him to sit at the plate resting on loose dirt. They did not separate the eggs. On the road, cars approached like a convoy that had lost its intervals, and Harry and Phil ate quietly, slowly, watching the disc become oval, then oblong, then a yellow smear for the last of their bread. Men circled them and the fire. Phil reached for the skillet, and Harry said: ‘I’ll do it.’

  He tossed dirt into it and rubbed the hot metal, then wiped it with a paper towel; he stabbed the knife into the earth and worked it back and forth and deeper, and wiped it clean on his trousers. He held his cigarettes toward Phil, but he was shaking one from his own pack. They sat facing the fire, smoking with their coffee. The lance corporal put on a fresh log, and Harry watched flames licking around its bottom and up its sides; above and around him the voices were incoherent, peaceful as the creaking of windblown trees.

  Under a near-fogless sky, a half-hour before dawn, he reached the northern and highest peak of the narrow ridge, and walked with light steps, back and forth and in small circles, until his breathing slowed and his legs stopped quivering. Then he sat facing the bare spine of dirt and rock that dipped and rose and finally descended southward, through diaphanous fog, to the jeep. He heard nothing in the sky or on the earth save his own breathing. He rested his rifle on his thighs and watched both sides of the ridge: flat ground to the east until a mass of iron-grey hills; the valley, broken by a dark stand of trees, was to the west; beyond that was the ridge where Phil hunted.

  The air and earth were the grey of twilight; then, as he looked down the western slope, at shapes of rocks and low thickets, the valley and Phil’s ridge became colors, muted under vanishing mist: pale green patches of grass and brown earth and a beige stream bed. The trees were pines, growing inside an eastward bend of the stream. Brown and green brush spread up the russet slope of Phil’s ridge, and beyond it was the light blue of the sea. Harry stood, was on his feet before he remembered to be quiet and still, and watched the blue spreading farther as fog rose from it like steam. He turned to the scarlet slice of sun crowning a hill. From the strip of rose and golden sky, the horizon rolled toward him: peaks and ridges, gorges and low country, and scattered green of trees among the arid yellow and brown. He faced the ocean, saw whitecaps now, and took off his hat and waved it. On the peak of Phil’s ridge he could see only rocks. The sea and sky were pale still; he stood watching as fog dissolved into their deepening blue, the sky brightened, and he could see the horizon. He sat facing it.

  At eight o’clock he started walking down the ridge: one soft step, then waiting, looking down both slopes; another step; after three he saw Phil: a flash of light, a movement on the skyline. Then Phil became a tiny figure, and Harry stayed abreast of him. Soon the breeze shifted, came from the sea, and he could smell it. Near midmorning he flushed a doe: froze at the sudden crack of brush, as her bounding rump and darting body angled down the side of the ridge; in the valley she ran south, and was gone.

  He sat and smoked and watched a ship gliding past Phil, its stacks at his shoulders. Then he stood and took off his jacket and sweat shirt and hung them from his belt. He caught up with Phil, and stalked again. When the sun was high and sparkling the sea, the ridge dropped more sharply, and he unloaded his rifle and slung it from his shoulder, and went down to the jeep. Phil sat on the hood. Behind him was open country and a distant range of tall hills. Harry sat on the hood and drank from his canteen.

  ‘Saved ammo,’ Phil said.

  ‘I almost stepped on a doe.’

  ‘How close?’

  ‘Three steps and a good spit.

  ‘I’ve never been that close.’

  ‘Neither have I.’

  ‘Pretty quiet, Pop.’

  ‘She startled me. If she’d been a buck, I would have missed.’

  They ate sandwiches, then lay on their backs in the shade of the jeep. Harry rested his hat on his forehead so the brim covered his eyes.

  ‘Are you staying for dinner?’ Phil said.

  ‘No. I don’t like driving tired.’
<
br />   ‘We can go back now, if you want.’

  ‘Let’s hunt. What will you do tomorrow?’

  ‘Make sure my toothbrush is packed.’

  ‘No girl?’

  ‘There isn’t one. I mean no one. So why choose now, right? I’ll go out with the guys and get drunk.’

  ‘Only way to go. What time Monday?’

  ‘I don’t even want to say.’

  ‘They love getting guys up in the dark.’

  His boots were warm. He looked out from under the hat: sunlight was on his ankles now; he looked over his feet at the low end of Phil’s ridge.

  ‘Orientals can hide on a parade field. Chinese would crawl all night from their lines to ours. A few feet and wait. All night lying out there, no sound, nothing moving, and just before dawn they’d be on top of us. And Japanese: they were like leaves.’

  ‘Except that tank.’

  ‘What tank?’

  ‘Your Silver Star.’

  ‘That was a pillbox.’

  ‘It was?’

  ‘Sure. Did you think I’d go after a tank?’

  ‘Not much difference. Why didn’t I know that?’

  ‘Too many war stories, too many Marines; probably a neighbor told his kid about a tank.’

  ‘I told them. Was it on Tarawa?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At least I got that right.’

  ‘It’s not important. It’s just something that happened. We were pinned down on the beach. The boxes had interlocking fire. I remember my mouth in the sand, then an explosion to my right front. It was a satchel charge, and a kid named Winslow Brimmer was the one who got it there.’

  ‘Winslow Brimmer?’