by Andre Dubus
‘Where did it happen?’
‘Sir?’
‘Where did she do it. Where the fuck were you born.’
‘Lake Charles, Louisiana, sir.’
‘Well no shit Lake Charles Louisiana sir, you college idiot, you think I know where that is? Where is it?’
‘South of New Orleans sir.’
‘South of New Orleans. How far south.’
‘About two hundred miles sir.’
‘Well no shit. Are you a fucking fish? Answer me, candidate shitbird. Are you a fucking fish?’
‘No sir.’
‘No sir. Why aren’t you a fish?’
‘I don’t know sir.’
‘You don’t know. Well you better be a Goddamn fish because two hundred miles south of New Orleans is in the Gulf of fucking Mexico.’
‘West sir.’
‘You said south. Are you calling me a liar, fartbreath? I’ll break your jaw. You know that? Do you know that?’
‘Sir?’
‘Do you know I can break your Goddamn jaw?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Do you want me to?’
‘No sir.’
‘Why not? You can’t use it. You can’t Goddamn talk. If I had a piece of gear that wasn’t worth a shit and I didn’t know how to use it anyway I wouldn’t give a good rat’s ass if somebody broke it. Stop shaking. Who told you to wear that uniform? I said stop shaking.’
‘My captain sir.’
‘My captain. Who the fuck is your captain.’
‘My reserve captain sir.’
‘Is he a ragpicker?’
‘Sir?’
‘Is he a ragpicker. How does he eat.’
‘He has a hardware store, sir.’
‘He’s a ragpicker. Say it.’
‘He’s a ragpicker, sir.’
‘I told you to stop shaking. Say my reserve captain is a ragpicker.’
‘My reserve captain is a ragpicker, sir.’
Then the two fists came up again and struck his chest and gripped the shirt, shaking him back and forth, and stiff and quivering and with legs like weeds he had no balance, and when Hathaway shoved and released him he fell backward and crashed against a steel wall locker; then Hathaway had him pressed against it, holding the shirt again, banging him against the locker, yelling: ‘You can’t wear that uniform you shit you don’t even know how to wear that uniform you wore it on the Goddamn plane playing Marine Goddamnit—Well you’re not a Marine and you’ll never be a Marine, you won’t make it here one week, you will not be here for chow next Sunday, because you are a shit and I will break your ass in five days, I will break it so hard that for the rest of your miserable fucking life every time you see a man you’ll crawl under a table and piss in your skivvies. Give me those emblems. Give them to me! Take them off, take them off, take them off—’ Paul’s hands rising first to the left collar, the hands trembling so that he could not hold the emblem and collar still, his right hand trying to remove the emblem while Hathaway’s fists squeezed the shirt right across his chest and slowly rocked him back and forth, the hands trembling; he was watching them and they couldn’t do it, the fingers would not stop, they would not hold; then with a jerk and a shove Hathaway flung him against the locker, screaming at him; and he felt tears in his eyes, seemed to be watching the tears in his eyes, pleading with them to at least stay there and not stain his cheeks; somewhere behind Hathaway the other men were still watching but they were a blur of khaki and flesh: he was enveloped and penetrated by Hathaway’s screaming and he could see nothing in the world except his fingers working at the emblems.
Then it was over. The emblems were off, they were in Hathaway’s hand, and he was out in the corridor, propelled to the door and thrown to the opposite wall with such speed that he did not even feel the movement: he only knew Hathaway’s two hands, one at the back of his collar, one at the seat of his pants. He picked up his suitcase and seabag, and feeling bodiless as a cloud, he moved down the hall and into the lighted squad bay where the others were making bunks and hanging clothes in wall lockers and folding them into foot lockers, and he stood violated and stunned in the light. Then someone was helping him. Someone short and muscular and calm (it was Whalen), a quiet mid-western voice whose hand took the seabag and suitcase, whose head nodded for him to follow the quick athletic strides that led him to his bunk. Later that night he lay in the bunk and prayed dear please God please dear God may I have sugar in my blood. The next day the doctors would look at them and he must fail, he must go home; in his life he had been humiliated, but never never had anyone made his own flesh so uninhabitable. He must go home.
But his body failed him. It was healthy enough for them to keep it and torment it, but not strong enough, and each day he woke tired and rushed to the head where men crowded two or three deep at the mirrors to shave and others, already shaved, waited outside toilet stalls; then back to the squad bay to make his bunk, the blanket taut and without wrinkle, then running down the stairs and into the cool first light of day and, in formation with the others, he marched to chow where he ate huge meals because on the second day of training Hathaway had said: ‘Little man, I want you to eat everything but the table cloth’; so on those mornings, not yet hungry, his stomach in fact near-queasy at the early morning smell of hot grease that reached him a block from the chow hall, he ate cereal and eggs and pancakes and toast and potatoes and milk, and the day began. Calisthenics and running in formation around the drill field, long runs whose distances and pace were at the whim of Lieutenant Swenson, or the obstacle course, or assaulting hills or climbing the Hill Trail, and each day there came a point when his body gave out, became a witch’s curse of one hundred and forty-five pounds of pain that he had to bear, and he would look over at Hugh Munson trying to do a push-up, his back arching, his belly drawn to the earth as though gravity had chosen him for an extra, jesting pull; at Hugh hanging from the chinning bar, his face contorted, his legs jerking, a man on a gibbet; at Hugh climbing the Hill Trail, his face pale and open-mouthed and dripping, the eyes showing pain and nothing more, his body swaying like a fighter senseless on his feet; at Hugh’s arms taking him halfway up the rope and no more so he hung suspended like an exclamation point at the end of Hathaway’s bellowing scorn.
In the squad bay they helped each other. Every Saturday morning there was a battalion inspection and on Friday nights, sometimes until three or four in the morning, Paul and Hugh worked together, rolling and unrolling and rolling again their shelter halves until, folded in a U, they fit perfectly on the haversacks which they had packed so neatly and squarely they resembled canvas boxes. They took apart their rifles and cleaned each part; in the head they scrubbed their cartidge belts with stiff brushes, then put them in the dryer in the laundry room downstairs; and they worked on shoes and boots, spit-shining the shoes and one pair of boots, and saddle-soaping a second pair of boots which they wore to the field; they washed their utility caps and sprayed them with starch and fitted them over tin cans so they would shape as they dried. And, while they worked, they drilled each other on the sort of questions they expected the battalion commander to ask. What is enfilade fire, candidate Hugh? Why that, colonel, is when the axis of fire coincides with the axis of the enemy. And can you name the chain of command as well? I can, my colonel, and, sorry to say, it begins with Ike. At night during the week and on Saturday afternoons they studied for exams. Hugh learned quickly to read maps and use the compass, and he helped Paul with these, spreading the map on his foot locker, talking, pointing, as Paul chewed his lip and frowned at the brown contour lines which were supposed to become, in his mind, hills and draws and ridges and cliffs. On Sunday afternoons they walked to the town of Quantico and, dressed in civilian clothes, drank beer incognito in bars filled with sergeants. Once they took the train to Washington and saw the Lincoln Memorial and pretended not to weep; then, proud of their legs and wind, they climbed the Washington Monument. One Saturday night they got happily and absolutely drunk in Quant
ico and walked home singing love songs.
Hugh slept in the bunk above Paul’s. His father was dead, he lived with his mother and a younger sister, and at night in the squad bay he liked talking about his girl in Bronxville; on summer afternoons he and Molly took the train into New York.
‘What do you do?’ Paul said. He stood next to their bunk; Hugh sat on his, looking down at Paul; he wore a T-shirt, his bare arms were thin, and high on his cheekbones were sparse freckles.
‘She takes me to museums a lot.’
‘What kind of museums?’
‘Art.’
‘I’ve never been to one.’
‘That’s because you’re from the south. I can see her now, standing in front of a painting. Oh Hugh, she’ll say, and she’ll grab my arm. Jesus.’
‘Are you going to marry her?’
‘In two years. She’s a snapper like you, but hell I don’t care. Sometimes I go to mass with her. She says I’ll have to sign an agreement; I mean it’s not her making me, and she’s not bitchy about it; there’s nothing she can do about it, that’s all. You know, agree to raise the kids Catholics. That Nazi crap your Pope cooked up.’
‘You don’t mind?’
‘Naw, it’s Molly I want. Her, man—’
Now in his mind Paul was miles and months away from the squad bay and the smells of men and canvas and leather polish and gun oil, he was back in those nights last fall and winter and spring, showing her the stories he wrote, buying for her Hemingway’s books, one at a time, chronologically, in hardcover; the books were for their library, his and Tommie’s, after they were married; he did not tell her that. Because for a long time he did not know if she loved him. Her eyes said it, the glow in her cheeks said it, her voice said it. But she never did; not with her controlled embraces and kisses, and not with words. It was the words he wanted. It became an obsession: they drank and danced in night clubs, they saw movies, they spent hours parked in front of her house, and he told her his dreams and believed he was the only young man who had ever had such dreams and had ever told them to such a tender girl; but all this seemed incomplete because she didn’t give him the words. Then one night in early summer she told him she loved him. She was a practical and headstrong girl; the next week she went to see a priest. He was young, supercilious, and sometimes snide. She spent an hour with him, most of it in anger, and that night she told Paul she must not see him again. She must not love him. She would not sign contracts. She spoke bitterly of incense and hocus-pocus and graven images. Standing at Hugh’s bunk, remembering that long year of nights with Tommie, yearning again for the sound of his own voice, gently received, and the swelling of his heart as he told Tommie what he had to and wanted to be, he felt divided and perplexed; he looked at Hugh’s face and thought of Molly’s hand reaching out for that arm, holding it, drawing Hugh close to her as she gazed at a painting. He blinked his eyes, scratched his crew-cut head, returned to the squad bay with an exorcising wrench and a weary sigh.
‘—Sometimes she lets me touch her, just the breasts you see, and that’s fine, I don’t push it. When she lets me I’m Goddamn grateful. Jesus, you got to get a girl again. There’s nothing like it. You know that? Nothing. It’s another world, man.’
On a hot grey afternoon he faced Hugh on the athletic field, both of them wearing gold football helmets, holding pugil sticks at the ready, as if they were rifles with fixed bayonets. Paul’s fists gripped and encircled the smooth round wood; on either end of it was a large stuffed canvas cylinder; he looked into Hugh’s eyes, felt the eyes of the circled platoon around him, and waited for Hathaway’s signal to begin. When it came he slashed at Hugh’s shoulder and neck but Hugh parried with the stick, then he jabbed twice at Hugh’s face, backing him up, and swung the lower end of the stick around in a butt stroke that landed hard on Hugh’s ribs; then with speed he didn’t know he had he was jabbing Hugh’s chest, Hathaway shouting now: ‘That’s it, little man: keep him going, keep him going; Munson get your balance, use your feet, Goddamnit—’ driving Hugh back in a circle, smacking him hard on the helmeted ear; Hugh’s face was flushed, his eyes betrayed, angry; Paul jabbing at those eyes, slashing at the head and neck, butt stroking hip and ribs, charging, keeping Hugh off balance so he could not hit back, could only hold his stick diagonally across his body, Paul feinting and working over and under and around the stick, his hands tingling with the blows he landed until Hathaway stopped him: ‘All right, little man, that’s enough; Carmichael and Vought, put on the headgear.’
Paul took off the helmet and handed it and the pugil stick to Carmichael. He picked up his cap from the grass; it lay next to Hugh’s, and as he rose with it Hugh was beside him, stooping for his cap, murmuring: ‘Jesus, you really like this shit, don’t you.’
Paul watched Carmichael and Vought fighting, and pretended he hadn’t heard. He felt Hugh standing beside him. Then he glanced at Hathaway, across the circle. Hathaway was watching him.
In the dark he was climbing the sixth and final hill, even the moon was gone, either hidden by trees or clouds or out of his vision because he was in such pain that he could see only that: his pain; the air was grey and heavy and humid, and he could not get enough of it; even as he inhaled his lungs demanded more and he exhaled with a rush and again drew in air, his mouth open, his throat and tongue dry, haunting his mind with images he could not escape: cold oranges, iced tea, lemonade, his canteen of water—He was falling back. He wasn’t abreast of Whalen anymore, he was next to the man behind Whalen and then back to the third man, and he moaned and strove and achieved a semblance of a jog, a tottering climb away from the third man and past the second and up with Whalen again, then from behind people were yelling at him, or trying to, their voices diminished, choked off by their own demanding lungs: they were cursing him for lagging and then running to catch up, causing a gap which they had to close with their burning legs. Behind him Hugh was silent and Paul wondered if that silence was because of empathy or because Hugh was too tired to curse him aloud; he decided it was empathy and wished it were not. And now Lieutenant Swenson reached the top, a tall helmeted silhouette halted and waiting against the oppressive and mindless sky, and Paul’s heart leaped in victory and resilience, he crested the hill, went happily past Swenson’s panting and sweating face, plunged downward, leaning back, hard thighs and calves bouncing on the earth, then Swenson jogged past him, into the lead again and, walking now, brought them slowly down the hill and out of the trees, onto the wide quiet gravel road and again stepped aside and watched them go past, telling them quietly to close it up, close it up, you people, and Paul’s stride was long and light and drunk with fatigue; he tried to punch Whalen’s arm but couldn’t reach him and didn’t have the strength to veer from his course and do it—Then Swenson’s voice high and clear: ‘’tawn: tenhuhn,’ and he straightened his back and with shoulders so tired and aching that he barely felt the cutting packstraps, he marched to Swenson’s tenor cadence, loving now the triumphant rhythm of boots in loose gravel, cooling in his drying sweat, able now to think of water as a promise the night would keep. Then Swenson called out: ‘Are you ready, Gunny?’ and, from the rear, Hathaway’s answering growl: ‘Aye, Lieutenant—’ and Paul’s heart chilled, he had heard the mischievous threat in Swenson’s voice and now it came: ‘Dou-ble time—’ a pause: crunching boots: groans, and then ‘—hubn.’
Swenson ran past him on long legs, swerved to the front of the two files, and slowed to a pace that already Paul knew he couldn’t keep. For perhaps a quarter of a mile he ran step for step with Whalen, and then he was finished. His stride shortened and slowed. Whalen was ahead of him and he tried once to catch up, but as he lifted his legs they refused him, they came down slower, shorter, and falling back now he moved to his left so the men behind him could go on. For a moment he ran beside Hugh. Hugh jerked his pale face to the left, looked at him, tried to say something; then he was gone. Paul was running alone between the two files, they were moving past him, some spoke encouragemen
t as they went—hang in there, man—then he was among the tall ones at the rear and still he was dropping back, then a strong hand extended from a gasping shadowed face and took his rifle and went on.
He did not look behind him but he knew: he could feel at his back the empty road, and he was dropping back into it when the last two men, flanking him, each took an arm and held him up. ‘You can do it,’ they said. ‘Keep going,’ they said. He ran with them. Vaguely above the sounds of his breathing he could hear the pain of others: the desperate breathing and always the sound of boots, not rhythmic now, for each man ran in step with his own struggle, but anyway steady, and that is what finally did him in: the endlessness of that sound. Hands were still holding his arms; he was held up and pulled forward, his head lolled, he felt his legs giving way, his arms, his shoulders, he was sinking, they were pulling him forward but he was sinking, his eyes closed, he saw red-laced black and then it was over, he was falling forward to the gravel, and then he struck it but not with his face: with his knees and arms and hands. Then his face settled forward onto the gravel. He was not unconscious, and he lay in a shameful moment of knowledge that he would remember for the rest of his life: he had quit before his body failed; the legs which now lay in the gravel still had strength which he could feel; and already, within this short respite, his lungs were ready again. They hurt, they labored, but they were ready.