by Len Levinson
“Fuck you,” Jimmy O’Rourke said.
“Oh, yeah?” asked the sergeant.
“Yeah.”
The sergeant looked at two other guards in the office. “You hear that, boys?”
They nodded.
The sergeant returned his attention to Jimmy O’Rourke. “Gee, you must be a real tough guy,” he said. “Are you a tough guy?”
Jimmy O’Rourke refused to reply.
“I just asked you a question, prisoner.”
Again Jimmy O’Rourke wouldn’t answer.
“Gimme the papers,” the guard said to the MPs. “I’ll sign for the son of a bitch and take him off your hands.”
The MP laid the papers on the desk and the sergeant signed them. The sergeant took two copies and returned two copies to the MPs.
“He’s yours now,” the MP said.
“Thanks a bunch,” the sergeant replied.
The MPs gathered their papers, removed their cuffs from Jimmy O’Rourke’s wrists, and marched out of the office, leaving Jimmy O’Rourke standing in the middle of the room with the three guards looking at him.
The sergeant sat on the edge of his desk and folded his arms. “This guy thinks he’s a wise guy. How wise are you?” he asked Jimmy O’Rourke.
I’m not gonna answer him, Jimmy O’Rourke said to himself. I’m not gonna play his fucking game.
“I just asked you a question,” the sergeant said.
Jimmy didn’t reply. The two guards, each carrying a billy club, approached from either side. One poked his club into Jimmy’s kidney.
“Stand at attention!” the guard said.
Jimmy pulled himself together and stood stiffly, his arms straight down his sides, stomach in and chest out.
“That’s better,” said the sergeant, standing and unfolding his arms. He stepped forward until his face was a few inches from Jimmy O’Rourke’s. “Let me tell you something, Prisoner O’Rourke. We don’t like AWOLs in this stockade, because an AWOL is a coward who’s afraid to do his duty for his country.”
Jimmy O’Rourke’s eyes clouded over as he remembered the hell of the Guadalcanal beach, the bloody battle for Kokengolo Hill on New Georgia, and the deadly jungles of Bougainville. “I already did my duty for my country,” he said. “When are you gonna do yours?”
A guard behind him poked his club into Jimmy’s kidney again, and it hurt. “Keep your yap shut!” he said.
Jimmy spun around, drew back his arm, and punched the surprised guard in the mouth. The guard staggered backward, and Jimmy lashed out with his leg, kicking the second guard in the balls. That guard screamed and clutched his groin, bending over in pain, and Jimmy turned to the sergeant, who ran behind his desk.
“Halp!” hollered the sergeant. “Halp!"
Jimmy dived over the desk and grabbed the sergeant by the throat. He and the sergeant collided against the wall, but Jimmy didn’t release his grip. The sergeant turned purple as he sagged to the floor. Then the door flew open and more guards rushed into the room, swinging their clubs.
A club hit Jimmy upside his head, and he saw stars. Another club whacked his head on the other side, and he was out like a light. He pitched forward onto his face as the sergeant screamed: “Throw the son of a bitch into the hole!"
Colonel Hutchins walked through the long winding corridors of division headquarters, a truculent expression on his face. He was half drunk as usual and angry because the word had come in on Pfc. Craig Delane just before he’d left his office. It seemed that Delane had got drunk on champagne in his hotel room and thought the Japs had come after him. He’d fired his Colt .45 wildly around the hotel room, and then the MPs showed up, charging him with being AWOL, impersonating an officer, stealing military property (the Colt .45), and reckless endangerment.
Colonel Hutchins knew it’d be in all the papers that afternoon and that the Army would be embarrassed. General Hawkins would chew his ass out, but trouble and pressure made Colonel Hutchins mad. He was spoiling for a fight. They could throw him into the stockade if they wanted to, but no generals were going to push him around no matter how many stars they wore on their collars.
“Hello, Bob,” said a voice nearby.
Colonel Hutchins looked up and saw Colonel Jessup in the corridor. “Hi, Tim.”
“I hear you’re in trouble.”
“I’m always in trouble.”
“The old man’s awfully mad.”
“Well, I’m madder. Get out of my way.”
Colonel Jessup stepped to the side, a worried expression on his face, and Colonel Hutchins proceeded to stomp down the corridor. He wore his belt low and his big belly hung over it. The corners of his mouth were turned down, and he looked like a bulldog. He turned left and right and left again, and found himself in front of General Hawkins’s office. Sergeant Somerall sat at a desk beside the door, and a clerk-typist sat at another desk on the other side of the door.
“I’m here for my appointment,” Colonel Hutchins said, “and I’m a little early.”
“Have a seat, sir.”
“Have a seat yourself, soldier.”
Colonel Hutchins walked toward General Hawkins’s door.
Sergeant Somerall stood behind his desk. “You can’t go in there!”
“The fuck I can’t.”
Colonel Hutchins twisted the knob and pushed the door open, storming into General Hawkins’s office. The General sat behind his desk, and in front of him were three of his staff officers. A meeting was going on, and it looked like a serious one.
General Hawkins nearly turned green. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, barging in here like this, Colonel!”
Colonel Hutchins realized that he’d fucked up again. “Sorry, sir.”
“Get the hell out of here and wait until I call you in!”
“Yes, sir.”
Colonel Hutchins turned around and walked out of the office, closing the door behind him. He tiptoed to a chair near Sergeant Somerall’s desk and sat down. Why do I do things like that? he wondered. What the hell gets into me? He noticed Sergeant Somerall looking at him, a faint smile on his face.
“What’s so funny, Sergeant?”
Sergeant Somerall wiped the smile off his face. “Nothing, sir!”
“Get the fuck to work!”
“Yes, sir.”
Sergeant Somerall turned his attention to the papers on his desk and shuffled them around. Colonel Hutchins took out a cigarette and lit it up. I’ve got to be real calm when I go in there to see the general, he thought. Otherwise I’m liable to wind up in the soup again.
The MPs had to drag Pfc. Craig Delane into the guardhouse at the stockade because he was too drunk to navigate in a straight line by himself. The same sergeant sat behind his desk, purple marks on his throat from where Pfc. Jimmy O’Rourke had tried to strangle him.
“Now what?” asked the sergeant.
“Got a present for you,” replied an MP.
“What’s this one done?”
“You name it and he’s done it.”
The MPs threw the papers on the sergeant’s desk, and the sergeant read them. “Holy shit,” he said. “What a day this is turning out to be.”
He signed the papers and the MPs took their copies.
“He can’t walk too good,” an MP said. “Somebody’ll have to carry him to his quarters.”
“Carry him my ass. He might haveta crawl, but he’ll get there under his own steam.”
Craig Delane stood unsteadily in front of the sergeant’s desk, leaning first to one side and then the other. The two guards arose from their chairs and walked toward Delane, poking him with their billy clubs.
“Stand straight!” one of them said.
Delane tried, but he couldn’t do it. He’d drunk three bottles of champagne before the Japs started coming at him out of the walls.
“I said stand straight!” the guard barked, slapping Craig Delane’s biceps with his billy club.
Delane turned to him. “Who do you thin
k you’re hitting with that club, shitface!”
“What!"
The guard raised his billy club, and Craig Delane dived for his wrist, but his aim was off and wind whistled past his ears as he fell to his face on the floor. The guard clobbered him on the back of the head with his billy club, and blood appeared through Craig Delane’s light-brown hair.
“Another wisenheimer,” said the sergeant behind the desk. “Throw him in the hole.”
The staff officers left General Hawkins’s office, looking at Colonel Hutchins as if he’d just crawled out from underneath a toilet bowl. Colonel Hutchins glowered at them and snarled as he puffed a cigarette, and the phone on Sergeant Somerall’s desk rang. Sergeant Somerall lifted the receiver and listened for a few seconds, then hung it up and said to Colonel Hutchins: “The general will see you now.”
Colonel Hutchins stood and walked toward the door. He wore a fatigue uniform neatly ironed and carried his fatigue hat in his back pocket. Opening the door, he entered General Hawkins’s office. General Hawkins was standing at the window, looking out.
“Sit down,” General Hawkins said, his back to Colonel Hutchins.
Colonel Hutchins sat down and waited for General Hawkins to turn around, but General Hawkins didn’t turn around. He’s trying to make me nervous and catch me off guard, Colonel Hutchins thought. Well, I can wait as long as he can.
The room was silent, and bright sunlight streamed through the windows in two of the walls. Photographs of Franklin Roosevelt and General Douglas MacArthur were on the wall behind the desk, flanked by the American flag on the left and the division flag on the right.
“I ought to relieve you of command,” General Hawkins said in a low voice barely under control. He still was looking out the window.
“If you did, where would you dig up somebody to take over my regiment in the two or three weeks between now and the time we land on New Guinea?”
General Hawkins turned around, his eyes goggling at Colonel Hutchins. “How did you find out about New Guinea?”
“It’s all over the division. Everybody’s talking about it. You can’t keep a secret like that for long. You know the exact day we’re moving out?”
General Hawkins scowled, clasped his hands behind his back, raised himself on his toes, and lowered himself. He wore his blond hair parted on the side, and he had a thick blond mustache. A graduate of West Point, he knew all the right people and was on his way to the top of the Army, if he didn’t get killed first.
“I don’t know what to do with you,” he said to Colonel Hutchins.
“I think you’re stuck with me until we get to New Guinea at least.”
“You’ve made a big mess for me, you bastard!”
“I didn’t do anything. There’s a problem in my regiment and I’ll take care of it, if you’ll just get out of my road.”
“All problems come from the top,” General Hawkins said, raising himself on his toes again and looking down his nose at Colonel Hutchins. “A commander sets the tone of his unit. There’s a problem in your regiment because there’s a problem with you.”
“Well,” replied Colonel Hutchins, “my regiment is in your division, which means you’ve got a problem in your division. Is that your fault, since you’re the commander and the commander sets the tone?”
“I’ve never liked you, Hutchins. You’re a drunk and I wish I could get rid of you.”
“You didn’t talk that way when we were on Bougainville, sir. As I recall, my regiment saved your ass a few times.”
General Hawkins wheezed and his shoulders slumped. He sat on the chair behind his desk and seemed to shrink inside his uniform. “This isn’t Bougainville,” he said weakly.
“I know where we are, and I know where we’re going,” Colonel Hutchins replied. “We’ll be fighting the Japs in just a little while, and you’re gonna need me because my regiment is lean and mean, and I’m the guy who keeps them that way. Did I ever let you down on Bougainville?”
“No.”
“When the Japs pulled off their big counterattack on Bougainville, whose regiment was the only regiment that held its ground?”
“Yours.”
“Do you remember Pat’s Nose?” Colonel Hutchins asked, referring to Hill 700 on Bougainville.
“I do.”
“Pat’s Nose bore the brunt of the Jap counterattack, and do you know who stopped the Japs on Pat’s Nose?”
“Who?”
“My recon platoon and Fox Company, and I was there too. I got shot on Pat’s Nose, you may remember, sir, and I surely would’ve been killed. But my life was saved by the arrival of my men from the recon platoon, some of whom are in the stockade right now. I request your permission, sir, to go get them out!”
General Hawkins sat up in his chair. “But they’re AWOL!”
“So fucking what!"
General Hawkins blinked his eyes in astonishment. “Who in the hell do you think you’re talking to!"
“You!"
General Hawkins and Colonel Hutchins glowered at each other. General Hawkins wanted to bust Colonel Hutchins down to Private E-nothing and put him in the stockade, while Colonel Hutchins wanted to strangle General Hawkins on the spot. The room was silent except for snatches of conversation seeping through the door from the corridor outside.
Colonel Hutchins leaned forward and turned down the corners of his mouth. “In a few weeks, when the shit hits the fan on New Guinea, you’re gonna wish you had more men like the ones from my recon platoon who’re in the stockade right now.”
“Maybe so,” General Hawkins replied, “but they’re AWOLs and I’ve got to throw the book at them.”
“You don’t have to throw anything at them.”
“Oh, yes I do. The law is the law.”
“You’re the law around here, General. What you say goes. And your career is on the line here, too, sir. Let’s not forget about that part. If the Japs kick our asses off New Guinea, you’re gonna find yourself behind a desk in Washington so fast it’ll make your head swim, if you’re still alive that long; but you’ll never get kicked off New Guinea with men like the ones in the stockade from my regiment.”
General Hawkins put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it up. He blew smoke into the air and thought about what Colonel Hutchins had said. It was true: You couldn’t have enough good soldiers in a tough fight, and a tough fight was looming for the Eighty-first Division.
“What can we do?” he asked Colonel Hutchins.
“You don’t have to do anything. I’ll take care of everything.”
“What about the men in the stockade?”
“I’ll get ‘em outta the stockade.”
“But they’re AWOL!”
“They’re not AWOL unless you say they’re AWOL.”
“But the MPs picked them up!”
“They made a mistake.”
“Two of your men were on the front page of today’s Honolulu Daily News! You can’t cover up something like this!”
“Leave everything to me. If anybody asks you anything, refer them to me. The ones in the stockade I’ll get outta the stockade, and the ones who’re still on the loose will probably show up sometime today. The Honolulu Daily News will forget about the whole mess by tomorrow. As far as I’m concerned, all those men of mine were out on official business for the regiment. They were never AWOL in the first place. The MPs were overzealous in the performance of their duties. Feel better now, sir?”
General Hawkins pounded his fist down on his desk. “But one of them was found dead drunk in a gutter on one of the worst slum stretches in Honolulu!”
Colonel Hutchins smiled tolerantly. “He was on a reconnaissance mission, sir, because we’re gonna have to fight in cities before this war is out, and it was part of his training.”
“I don’t want to hear anything more about this,” General Hawkins said wearily. “Get out of my office.”
Colonel Hutchins jumped to attention and threw a snappy salute. “Yes, sir!"
&nb
sp; It was high noon in the whorehouse, and Frankie La Barbara was fucking his brains out. A whore named Barbara lay on her back with her legs wrapped around Frankie’s waist, while Frankie lay on top and long-stroked her, cupping her ass in his hands.
“Oh, baby,” Frankie murmured, “you’ve got the greatest cunt in the world.”
“Fuck me, you big son of a bitch!” she replied passionately, although she didn’t feel passionate at all. This was her job, and she customarily turned ten to twenty tricks a day, sometimes more.
On the next bed a whore named Flo was perched on her hands and knees, wagging her ass from side to side while Pfc. Morris Shilansky did it to her doggie-style.
“Ooooh!” Flo said. “It feels so good!”
Flo was acting, too, while thinking about the ranch in Texas that she hoped to buy someday, although the only ranch she’d ever own was the one in the painting that hung on the wall of her little room in the whorehouse.
Both beds creaked as they bounced up and down. The air was fragrant with perfume and sweat, and a horn blew down the street outside the window. Frankie huffed and puffed, because he was nearing his third orgasm of the day, and Shilansky’s tongue hung out of the corner of his mouth, because he was on his fourth.
Suddenly, as if in a nightmare, the door to the room broke apart, and soldiers in green fatigues, carrying Thompson submachine guns, burst into the room. Frankie screamed, jumped into the air, and dived under his pillow, reaching for his Colt .45.
A hand clamped on his wrist. “Hold it right there, scumbag,” said the nasal voice of Sergeant Cameron.
The whores screeched and held their fists to their cheeks. Shilansky’s dick shriveled up and fell out of the well it had been drilling. He saw Pfc. Hotshot Stevenson pointing a Thompson submachine gun at him.
“Don’t shoot!” said Shilansky, holding up his hand.
“Raise your hands over your head, you silly son of a bitch,” said Hotshot Stevenson, who had been a professional pool shark and shoplifter before the war.
The girls covered themselves with sheets and wondered what the hell was going on. Sergeant Cameron yanked the Colt .45 out from underneath the pillow and tucked it into his belt. Frankie rolled over onto his back, sat up at the edge of the bed, and looked around, his face pale and his dick dripping a substance that looked like the white of a raw egg. He saw Lieutenant Breckenridge standing near the door, a big grin on his face.