Nightmare Alley

by Len Levinson

  “Having a little physical training?” Lieutenant Breckenridge asked. “Are these the new exercises we’ve been hearing about?”

  Frankie didn’t know what to say. He’d been caught with his pants down, and that’s the worst thing that can happen to any man.

  “Let’s get our clothes on,” Lieutenant Breckenridge said. “We’re going home.”

  . . .

  The MP sergeant looked up from the Spy Smasher comic book that he was reading. A tall, chubby man with his hands cuffed in front of him was pushed into the guardhouse by four MPs. The sergeant laid down his comic book.

  “What the hell’s going on here today? Every time I turn around, a new prisoner shows up! What’s this one done?”

  “He’s an AWOL,” one of the MPs told the sergeant. “He was hiding in a church.”

  “In a church?” The sergeant looked at the Reverend Billie Jones. “Why, you dirty son of a bitch.”

  The MP laid the papers on the desk, and the sergeant signed them. The Reverend Billie Jones thought he was like Christ being led before Pontius Pilate, and he was going to turn the other cheek, just as Christ had done.

  The sergeant returned the papers to the MPs, who unfastened the cuffs on Billie Jones’s wrists, turned around, and walked out of the guardhouse, closing the door behind them, leaving the Reverend Billie Jones with the sergeant and four guards, all armed with billy clubs.

  The guards got up from their chairs and approached Billie Jones, hoping he’d do something wrong, because they were itching for a fight. Two of their buddies were in the hospital due to rowdy prisoners, and they weren’t about to let that happen again.

  The sergeant read the charges. “Another AWOL,” he said. “Jesus Christ, they’re running away like rats from a sinking ship today.” He looked up at Billie Jones. “Are you a rat, prisoner?”

  Billie Jones didn’t answer.

  “I just asked you a question, prisoner!”

  Billie Jones didn’t answer.

  A guard poked his billy club into Billie Jones’s kidney, and Billie Jones flinched.

  “I asked you if you were a rat, prisoner!”

  Billie Jones didn’t rise to the provocation. He just stood at attention and thought of how great Christ must have been to put up with shit like this without blowing his top.

  The sergeant got mad. He was having a bad day, and he wanted somebody to pay for it. He arose and walked around his desk, looking up into Billie Jones’s face.

  “You’d better answer me, prisoner!” he said.

  Billie Jones didn’t answer.

  The sergeant spit in Billie Jones’s face, and Billie Jones flinched. He got warm underneath his collar and felt his mind going weird. He wanted to beat the sergeant to death, but more than that, he wanted to be a good Christian and turn the other cheek. So he angled his head to the side and actually showed his other cheek to the sergeant.

  The sergeant spat again, and some of the spittle flew onto Billie Jones’s lips, making him nauseous. Billie Jones had turned both of his cheeks, and now he didn’t have anything else to turn. The sergeant’s face turned purple with rage.

  “You’d better answer me, goddamnit!”

  Billie still refused to answer, although his head was filling with steam.

  A guard poked his billy club into Billie Jones’s kidney. Another guard slapped him on the thigh. The third guard poked his billy club up Billie Jones’s ass, and that did it.

  Billie Jones jumped to the side and raised his fists.

  “Get him!” the sergeant said.

  The guards converged on Billie Jones, swinging their clubs. He deflected one blow with his left forearm and another blow with his right forearm, then clasped his hands together, swinging sideways at the head of a guard. He connected with the jaw of the guard, dislocating it. The guard was knocked cold and flopped onto his back, while the sergeant ran behind his desk and picked up the chair.

  Another guard swung his club at Billie’s head, and Billie ducked. The guard couldn’t check his swing in time, and the club connected with the head of the guard who was charging Billie Jones from his blind side. The club caved in the side of the guard’s skull and flung him to the floor.

  Billie growled at the two guards and the sergeant advancing toward him with the chair held over his head.

  “C’mon, you fucking bastards, I’ll kill yez all!” Billie yelled.

  The two guards attacked Billie, swinging their clubs. Billie caught a guard’s wrist in his hands, but the other guard slammed him on the head. Everything went black in front of Billie’s eyes, and he heard bells and birds. He staggered back, and the other guard clobbered him on the top of the head, but Billie was a big strong man and he wouldn’t go down. The sergeant crashed his chair on Billie’s head, and Billie’s legs buckled slightly, but still he did not fall.

  The door to the guardhouse was thrown open.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” hollered a voice as loud as thunder.

  The guards and the sergeant turned around and saw a stout colonel with a beer belly charging into the guardhouse, followed by soldiers armed with machine guns.

  “I said what the hell’s going on here?"

  The sergeant didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. He decided the safest thing would be to come to attention and salute. Young Private Jilliam from the recon platoon recognized the Reverend Billie Jones underneath the blood covering Jones’s face.

  “It’s Billie Jones!” he said.

  Colonel Hutchins turned to Billie Jones and got mad. “Why, these sons of bitches have been beating up on him!”

  “He tried to escape!” shouted the sergeant.

  “I did not!” replied Billie Jones.

  Colonel Hutchins didn’t know whom to believe, but it didn’t matter. “He’s coming with me!” Colonel Hutchins shouted.

  The Reverend Billie Jones smiled. “Blessed be the Lord,” he said.

  “But, sir . . .” protested the sergeant.

  “But what, you son of a bitch?” replied Colonel Hutchins, waving his loaded Colt .45 around wildly.

  “But he’s a prisoner!”

  “Not anymore he ain’t!” Colonel Hutchins unbuttoned his shirt pocket and took out a sheet of paper, which he unfolded and handed to the sergeant. “I’m taking these men out of here too! Go get them for me!”

  The sergeant read the names and realized every one of them had been thrown into the hole that day. “By whose authorization am I releasing these people, sir?”

  “By my authorization!"

  “Yes, sir!” The sergeant wasn’t about to argue with a full bird colonel. He handed the paper to one of the guards. “Go get these men out of the hole!”

  “Yo!”

  The guard ran out of the door. The sergeant looked down the barrel of the Colt .45 in Colonel Hutchins’s hand. The Reverend Billie Jones shook his head and tried to come to his senses.

  “He spit in my face,” Billie Jones said, “and then they beat the piss out of me, but they never knocked me down.”

  Colonel Hutchins smiled. Billie Jones was as tough as a block of steel, just the kind of soldier he’d need on New Guinea.

  “Sir,” said the sergeant, “how should I list these men on my daily report?”

  “Just say they were released on my orders.”

  “But they’re AWOLs!”

  “They’re not AWOLs. They’ve never been AWOLs. This is just an MP fuck-up. And you’d better hope I don’t press charges against you for beating up my man.”

  “But he tried to escape!”

  Just then the door opened and three men, covered with cuts and bruises, stumbled into the guardhouse. They were Corporal Lupe Gomez, Pfc. Craig Delane, and Pfc. Jimmy O’Rourke. Their eyes blinked and they appeared dazed because there was no light in the hole, and now the exposure to light was disorienting them.

  “My God!” said Colonel Hutchins. “What happened to you?”

  Craig Delane turned around and looked at Colonel Hutch
ins. “Is that you, sir?” he asked.

  “It ain’t nobody else.”

  “They beat me up, sir.”

  “Me too,” said Pfc. Jimmy O’Rourke.

  “Yo también,” added Corporal Gomez, who was so punch-drunk he’d forgotten how to speak English.

  Colonel Hutchins turned to the sergeant. “You son of a bitch, they all didn’t try to escape!”

  “But, sir . . .” cried the sergeant, holding up his hands.

  “I oughtta kick the shit out of you myself!”

  “But, sir . . .”

  “Don’t but me!"

  “Yes, sir!”

  Colonel Hutchins looked at his men. “Let’s get back to the regiment!” Then he returned his malevolent glare to the sergeant. “I’m gonna press charges against you, you son of a bitch! I’m gonna have you thrown into that hole where you threw my men!”

  “Yes, sir!” said the sergeant, a catch in his voice.

  Colonel Hutchins turned and stormed out of the guardhouse, and the rest of the recon platoon followed him.

  The sergeant was left alone with his guards. He dragged his feet around his desk and collapsed into his chair.

  “Damn!” said the sergeant, burying his face in his hands. “What am I gonna do now?”

  “If I was you,” replied one of the guards, “I think I’d go AWOL.”

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and Lieutenant Diane Latham’s shift was coming to an end. She stepped out of the nurses’ station, turned left, and nearly bumped into Lieutenant Dale Breckenridge, who was heading the other way at top speed.

  “Oh!” she said, stopping and raising her hands to her face.

  Lieutenant Breckenridge jumped backward as if he’d just seen a rattlesnake. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, stepping to the side and walking around her, continuing on his way to the solarium.

  He walked inside and saw Butsko seated in his wheelchair on one side of a big round table where the men were playing poker for chips.

  Butsko looked up at Lieutenant Breckenridge. “Be with you in a moment.”

  Lieutenant Breckenridge walked to the window and looked at the parking lot below. His eyes came to rest on a yellow car that stood out among all the other cars, and he realized it was the Packard convertible belonging to the lovely Diane Latham.

  If only I’d met her under different circumstances, Lieutenant Breckenridge thought. Boy, would I love to get that girl into a bed.

  It occurred to him that he still didn’t know what Bob Utsler had done to her, and he made up his mind to speak with Utsler as soon as he was finished with Butsko. Lieutenant Breckenridge took out his pack of cigarettes and lit one up, blowing smoke at the window. It rolled back at him and he saw a small figure in a white nurse’s uniform enter the parking lot, heading toward the yellow Packard.

  “It’s her,” he muttered.

  She unlocked the door of the Packard, got inside, and put the top down. Lieutenant Breckenridge wished he could go for a ride with her, then remembered the last ride he’d taken with her and said “Ouch!”

  “Talking to yourself these days?” Butsko asked, approaching in his wheelchair.

  Lieutenant Breckenridge turned around. “I think I’m going nuts,” he said.

  “You’ve been going nuts ever since I met you.” Butsko replied. “Have a seat. What’s going on? By the way, who in the fuck beat you up?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it,” Lieutenant Breckenridge said, sitting down.

  “Was it one of the maniacs in the platoon?”

  “It was a woman.”

  “A woman did that to you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “She must’ve been awfully strong.”

  “She kicked my ass off a cliff.”

  Butsko smiled. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And you know who she is too.”

  “I do? Who is she?”

  “Nurse Latham.”

  “No shit!”

  “No shit.”

  “What’d you do to her?”

  “I guess you could say that I lied to her.”

  “And she kicked your ass off a cliff?”

  “That’s right.”

  Butsko shivered.”Boy, I’d better be careful what I say to her. I wouldn’t want to tell her a lie by mistake. I always thought she was a sweet kid.”

  “She’s no sweet kid,” Lieutenant Breckenridge said darkly.

  “Did you fuck her?”

  “No.”

  “That was your problem. You should have fucked her. That’s all women really want.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. Anyway, I didn’t have time to fuck her. As soon as we were alone, she kicked my ass off the cliff.” Lieutenant Breckenridge sucked his cigarette and wrinkled his forehead, because he didn’t want to talk about Nurse Latham anymore. “Never mind all that shit,” he said to Butsko. “I came here to tell you what happened today.”

  ‘That’s right too,” Butsko replied. “What happened?”

  “Everybody’s back,” Lieutenant Breckenridge said with a satisfied smile.

  “No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  “How’d they get back?”

  “I took some of the men and got Frankie and Shilansky out of that whorehouse, and Colonel Hutchins somehow had the others released from the stockade.”

  “All the others got caught?” Butsko asked.

  “The MPs picked up every one of them.”

  Butsko grimaced in disgust. “Dumb fucks. Can’t even go AWOL right.”

  “Wait’ll I tell you what your boy Pfc. Craig Delane did to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel,” Lieutenant Breckenridge said, looking around and leaning closer so nobody could hear.

  Lieutenant Breckenridge arrived at the officers’ club shortly after five o’clock in the afternoon, and the first thing he did was check in at the bar. He ordered a whiskey and soda and sipped it, leaning against a wall because all the bar stools were taken.

  It had been an exasperating day, but now it was over. All the AWOLs were back, and beginning tomorrow he’d start toughening up his men for the landing on New Guinea. He wished Butsko would be there to help him, but Butsko wouldn’t be out of the wheelchair for another month. Lieutenant Breckenridge would have to go it alone.

  The cocktail lounge was chock-full of the usual drunks. In the middle of the bar sat the middle-aged major with black hair who was always drunk and stole whatever money was left on the bar near him. His chest was covered with combat ribbons and he was a scandal all over the post, but no one ever made a harsh remark to him because one of the decorations on his chest was the Congressional Medal of Honor.

  Officers arrived lively and smiling, anxious for a drink, and other officers staggered toward the doors, drunk out of their heads. Shortly before quarter to six, Lieutenant Breckenridge saw Lieutenant Jack Utsler enter the lounge and head for the bar, elbowing his way among the drunks, calling out his order to the bartender. Lieutenant Utsler got his drink and stepped back into a less-populated zone. Lieutenant Breckenridge was waiting for him.

  “Hi,” said Lieutenant Breckenridge.

  “Hello, Dale,” replied Utsler. “Heard you had a big problem in the regiment today.”

  “It was nothing,” Lieutenant Breckenridge said with a wave of his hand. “It’s all over now.”

  “Heard Colonel Hutchins and General Hawkins had a big set-to.”

  Lieutenant Breckenridge shrugged. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “They were really going at it, somebody told me.”

  Both men sipped their drinks. Lieutenant Breckenridge wondered why Utsler didn’t say something about Nurse Latham. It seemed to him that Utsler should be mad at him, since Lieutenant Breckenridge had promised that Nurse Latham would fuck Utsler and it hadn’t happened that way.

  Or had it? Lieutenant Breckenridge’s brow became furrowed. His curiosity was getting the best of him. He looked at Utsler, who calmly took out his pack of cigarettes and lit one up. />
  “Hey, Jack,” Lieutenant Breckenridge said, “how’d everything go that night between you and that nurse I set you up with?”

  “You mean the blonde?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lieutenant Utsler smiled. “It went just like you said it would, Dale. She sucked my dick and then we screwed for a while.”

  “You get a hotel in town?”

  “Naw, we did it in the woods. She was a real eager beaver, just like you said. Couldn’t wait to get my clothes off. Thanks a lot, by the way. Guess I forgot to thank you, huh?”

  “That’s okay, Jack.” Lieutenant Breckenridge raise 1 his glass and drained it dry. “I need another drink.” he said. “Can I get you one?”

  “Not yet.”

  Lieutenant Breckenridge pushed through the mob and made his way to the bar, ordering a double from the bartender and wondering whether Jack Utsler was lying. Lieutenant Breckenridge knew there were some jerks in the world who’d lie about screwing women, especially when the babe in question was supposed to be screwing everybody. No guy wanted to be the one she wouldn’t screw.

  Lieutenant Breckenridge waited while the bartender mixed drinks for the officers who’d ordered ahead of him. He glanced back at Utsler, who was talking with another officer. Would he lie about something like that? Lieutenant Breckenridge asked himself.

  It’s possible, he answered himself, because Utsler’s response was extremely suspicious. First of all, he didn’t think Nurse Latham was the slut he’d made her out to be when he’d described her to Utsler, although maybe she was; he couldn’t say for sure. Second, if it had all gone as Utsler said it had, Utsler would have called sometime yesterday to thank him. But Utsler hadn’t called. Why? Maybe because Nurse Latham had slapped his face or kicked him in the balls, and Utsler didn’t want to talk about it if he didn’t have to.

  Third, if Nurse Latham had screwed Utsler and had such a good time, why would she kick Lieutenant Breckenridge off the cliff?

  It didn’t add up. Lieutenant Breckenridge decided that Utsler had lied, although it was impossible to say for sure. A man could never be sure about a woman. A man should never bet his life on his children being his children. Lieutenant Breckenridge had met numerous crazy females in his life, and knew they were capable of any weird thing. They could lie with a straight face and do the strangest things for no reason at all.