by Andre Dubus
‘He passed out, sir.’
They were standing above him. The platoon was running up the road.
‘Who is it?’ Hathaway said.
‘It’s Clement, sir.’
‘Leave his rifle here and you men catch up with the platoon.’
‘Aye-aye, sir.’
There were two of them. They went up the road, running hard to catch up, and he wanted to tell them he was sorry he had lied, but he knew he never would. Then he heard or felt Hathaway squat beside him, the small strong hands took his shoulders and turned him over on his back and unbuckled his chin strap. He blinked up at Hathaway’s eyes: they were concerned, interested yet distant, as though he were disassembling a weapon whose parts were new to him; and they were knowing too, as if he were not appraising the condition of Paul’s body alone but the lack of will that had allowed it to fall behind, to give up a rifle, to crap out.
‘What happened, Clement?’
‘I don’t know, sir. I blacked out.’
Hathaway’s hands reached under Paul’s hip, lifted him enough to twist the canteen around, open the flaps, pull it from the cover. The crunching of the platoon receded and was gone up the road in the dark. Hathaway handed him the canteen.
‘Take two swallows.’
Paul lifted his head and drank.
‘Now stand up.’
He stood, replaced the canteen on his hip, and buckled his chin strap. His shirt was soaked; under it the T-shirt clung to his back and chest.
‘Here’s your weapon.’
He took the MI and slung it on his shoulder.
‘Let’s go,’ Hathaway said, and started jogging up the road, Paul moving beside him, the fear starting again, touching his heart like a feather and draining his legs of their strength. But it didn’t last. Within the first hundred yards it was gone, replaced by the quick-lunged leg-aching knowledge that there was no use being afraid because he knew, as he had known the instant his knees and hands and arms hit the gravel, that he was strong enough to make it; that Hathaway would not let him do anything but make it; and so his fear was impotent, it offered no chance of escape, and he ran now with Hathaway, mesmerized by his own despair. He tried to remember the road, how many bends there were, so he could look forward to that last curve which would disclose the lighted streets of what now felt like home. He could not remember how many curves there were. Then they rounded one and Hathaway said, ‘Hold it,’ and walked toward the edge of the road. Paul wiped sweat from his eyes, blinked them, and peered beyond Hathaway’s back and shoulders at the black trees. He followed Hathaway and then he saw, at the side of the road, a man on his hands and knees. As he got closer he breathed the smell.
‘Who is it?’ Hathaway said.
‘Munson.’ His voice rose weakly from the smell. Paul moved closer and stood beside Hathaway, looking down at Hugh.
‘Are you finished?’ Hathaway said.
‘I think so.’
‘Then stand up.’ His voice was low, near coaxing in its demand.
Hugh pushed himself up, stood, then retched again and leaned over the ditch and dry-heaved. When he was done he remained bent over the ditch, waiting. Then he picked up his rifle and stood straight, but he did not turn to face them. He took off his helmet and held it in front of him, down at his waist, took something from it, then one hand rose to his face. He was wiping it with a piece of toilet paper. He dropped the paper into the ditch, then turned and looked at Hathaway. Then he saw Paul, who was looking at Hugh’s drained face and feeling it as if it were his own: the cool sweat, the raw sour throat.
‘Man—’ Hugh said, looking at Paul, his voice and eyes petulant; then he closed his eyes and shook his head.
‘We’ll run it in now,’ Hathaway said.
Hugh opened his eyes.
‘I threw up,’ he said.
‘And you’re done.’ Hathaway pointed up the road. ‘And the barracks is that way.’
‘I’ll walk.’
‘When you get back to New York you can do that, Munson. You can diddle your girl and puke on a six-pack and walk back to the frat house all you want. But here you run. Put on your helmet.’
Hugh slung his rifle on his shoulder and put his helmet on his head.
‘Buckle it.’
He buckled it under his chin, then looked at Hathaway.
‘I can’t run. I threw up.’ He gave Paul a weary glance, and looked up the road. ‘It’s not that I won’t. I just can’t, that’s all.’
He stood looking at them. Then he reached back for his canteen, it rose pale in the moonlight, and he drank.
‘All right, Munson: two swallows, then start walking; Clement, let’s go.’
He looked at Hugh lowering the canteen, his head back gargling, then his eyes were on the road directly in front of him as he ran up a long stretch then rounded a curve and looked ahead and saw more of the road, the trees, and the black sky at the horizon; he was too tired to lift his head and see the moon and stars and this made him feel trapped on a road that would never end. Before the next curve he reached the point of fatigue he had surrendered to when he fell, and he moved through it into a new plane of struggle where he was certain that now his body would truly fail him, would fold and topple in spite of the volition Hathaway gave him. And then something else happened, something he had never experienced. Suddenly his legs told him they could go as far as he wanted them to. They did not care for his heat-aching head, for his thirst; they did not care for his pain. They told him this so strongly that he was frightened, as though his legs would force him to hang on as they spent the night jogging over Virginia hills; then he regained possession of them. They were his, they were running beside a man who had walked out of the Chosin Reservoir, and they were going to make it. When Paul turned the last bend and saw the street lights and brick buildings and the platoon, which had reached the blacktop road by the athletic field and was marching now, he felt both triumphant and disappointed: he wanted to show Hathaway he could keep going.
They left the gravel and now his feet pounded on the gift of smooth blacktop. They approached the platoon, then ran alongside it, and as they came abreast of Lieutenant Swenson, Hathaway said: ‘Lieutenant, you better send a jeep back for Munson. Me and Clement’s going to hit the grinder; we had a long rest up the road.’ The lieutenant nodded. Paul and Hathaway passed the platoon and turned onto the blacktop parade field and started to circle it. It was a half-mile run. For a while Paul could hear Swenson’s fading cadence, then it stopped and he knew Swenson was dismissing the platoon. In the silence of the night he ran alongside Hathaway, listened to Hathaway’s breath and pounding feet, glanced at him, and looked up at the full moon over the woods. They left the parade field and jogged up the road between brick barracks until they reached Bravo Company and Hathaway stopped. Paul faced him and stood at attention. His legs felt like they were still running. He was breathing hard; he looked through burning sweat at Hathaway, also breathing fast and deep, his face dripping and red. Hathaway’s eyes were not glaring, not even studying Paul; they seemed fixed instead on his own weariness.
‘You get in the barracks, you get some salt tablets and you take ’em. I don’t care if you’ve been drinking Goddamn Gulf water all your life. Dismissed.’
The rest of the platoon were in the showers. As he climbed the stairs he heard the spraying water, the tired, exultant, and ironic voices. In the corridor at the top of the stairs he stopped and looked at the full-length mirror, looked at his short lean body standing straight, the helmet on his head, the pack with a protruding bayonet handle, the rifle slung on his shoulder. His shirt and patches on his thighs were dark green with sweat. Then he moved on to the water fountain and took four salt tablets from the dispenser and swallowed them one at a time, tilting his head back to swallow, remembering the salt tablets on the construction job when he was sixteen and his father got him the job and drove him to work on the first day and introduced him to the foreman and said: ‘Work him, Jesse; make a man of him.’
Jesse was a quiet wiry Cajun; he nodded, told Paul to stow his lunch in the toolshed and get a pick and a spade. All morning he worked bare-headed under the hot June sun; he worked with the Negroes, digging a trench for the foundation, and at noon he was weak and nauseated and could not eat. He went behind the shed and lay in the shade. The Negroes watched him and asked him wasn’t he going to eat. He told them he didn’t feel like it. At one o’clock he was back in the trench, and thirty minutes later he looked up and saw his father in seersucker and straw hat standing with Jesse at the trench’s edge. ‘Come on up, son,’ his father said. ‘I’m all right,’ and he lifted the pick and dropped more than drove it into the clay at his feet. ‘You just need a hat, that’s all,’ his father said. ‘Come on up, I’ll buy you one and bring you back to work.’ He laid the pick beside the trench, turned to the Negro working behind him, and said, ‘I’ll be right back.’ ‘Sure,’ the Negro said. ‘You get that hat.’ He climbed out of the trench and walked quietly beside his father to the car. ‘Jesse called me,’ his father said in the car. ‘He said the nigras told him you didn’t eat lunch. It’s just the sun, that’s all. We’ll get you a hat. Did you take salt tablets?’ Paul said yes, he had. His father bought him a pith helmet and, at the soda fountain, a Seven-Up and a sandwich. ‘Jesse said you didn’t tell anybody you felt bad.’ ‘No,’ Paul said. ‘I didn’t.’ His father stirred his coffee, looked away. Paul could feel his father’s shy pride and he loved it, but he was ashamed too, for when he had looked up and seen his father on the job, he had had a moment of hope when he thought his father had come to tenderly take him home.
By the time he got out of his gear and hung his wet uniform by the window and wiped his rifle clean and lightly oiled it, the rest of the platoon were out of the showers, most were in their bunks, and the lights would go out in five minutes. Paul went to the shower and stayed long under the hot spray, feeling the sweat and dirt leave him, and sleep rising through his aching legs, to his arms and shoulders, to all save his quick heart. He was drying himself when Whalen came in, wearing shorts, and stood at the urinal and looked over his shoulder at Paul.
‘You and Hathaway run all the way in?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then the grinder?’
Paul nodded.
‘Good,’ Whalen said, and turned back to the urinal. Paul looked at his strong, muscled wrestler’s back and shoulders. When Whalen passed him going out, Paul swung lightly and punched his arm.
‘See you in the morning,’ he said.
The squad bay was dark when Paul entered with a towel around his waist. Already most of them were asleep, their breath shallow and slow. There was enough light from the corridor so he could see the rifle rack in the middle of the room, and the double bunks on either side, and the wall lockers against the walls. He went to his bunk. Hugh was sitting on the edge of it, his elbows on his knees, his forehead resting on his palms. His helmet and rifle and pack and cartridge belt were on the floor in front of his feet. He looked up, and Paul moved closer to him in the dark.
‘How’s it going,’ he said softly.
‘I threw up, man. You see what I mean? That’s stupid, Goddamnit. For what. What’s the point of doing something that makes you puke. I was going to keep running till the Goddamn stuff came up all over me. Is that smart, man?’ Hugh stood; someone farther down stirred on his bunk; Hugh took Paul’s arm and squeezed it; he smelled of sweat, his breath was sour, and he leaned close, lowering his voice. ‘Then you crapped out and I thought good. Good, Goddamnit. And man I peeled off and went to the side of the road and waited for it to come up. Then I was going to find you and walk in and drink Goddamn water and piss in the road and piss on all of them.’ He released Paul’s arm. ‘But that Goddamn Doberman pinscher made you run in. Jesus Christ what am I doing here. What am I doing here,’ and he turned and struck his mattress, stood looking at his fist on the bed, then raised it and struck again. Paul’s hand went up to touch Hugh’s shoulder, but stopped in the space between them and fell back to his side. He did not speak either. He looked at Hugh’s profiled staring face, then turned away and bent over his foot locker at the head of the bunk and took out a T-shirt and a pair of shorts, neatly folded. He put them on and sat on his locker while Hugh dropped his clothes to the floor and walked out of the squad bay, to the showers.
He got into the lower bunk and lay on his back, waiting for his muscles to relax and sleep to come. But he was still awake when Hugh came back and stepped over the gear on the floor and climbed into his bunk. He wanted to ask Hugh if he’d like him to clean his rifle, but he could not. He lay with aching legs and shoulders and back and arms, and gazed up at Hugh’s bunk and listened to his shifting weight. Soon Hugh settled and breathed softly, in sleep. Paul lay awake, among silhouettes of bunks and wall lockers and rifle racks. They and the walls and the pale windows all seemed to breathe, and to exude the smells of men. Farther down the squad bay someone snored. Hugh murmured in his sleep, then was quiet again.
When the lights went on he exploded frightened out of sleep, swung his legs to the floor, and his foot landed on the stock of Hugh’s rifle. He stepped over it and trotted to the head, shaved at a lavatory with Whalen, waited outside a toilet stall but the line was too long and with tightening bowels he returned to the squad bay. Hugh was lying on his bunk. Going past it to the wall locker he said: ‘Hey Hugh. Hugh, reveille.’ He opened his locker and then looked back; Hugh was awake, blinking, looking at the ceiling.
‘Hugh—’ Hugh did not look at him. ‘Your gear, Hugh; what about your gear.’
He didn’t move. Paul put on utilities and spit-shined boots and ran past him. At the door he stopped and looked back. The others were coming, tucking in shirts, putting on caps. Hugh was sitting on the edge of his bunk, watching them move toward the door. Outside the morning was still cool and Hathaway waited, his boots shining in the sunlight. The platoon formed in front of him and his head snapped toward the space beside Paul.
‘Clement, did Munson Goddamn puke and die on the road last night?’
‘He’s coming, sir.’
‘He’s coming. Well no shit he’s coming. What do you people think this is—Goddamn civilian life where everybody crosses the streets on his own time? A platoon is not out of the barracks until every member of that platoon is out of the barracks, and you people are not out of the barracks yet. You are still in there with—o-ho—’ He was looking beyond them, at the barracks to their rear. ‘Well now here he is. You people are here now. Munson, you asshole, come up here.’ Paul heard Munson to his left, coming around the platoon; he walked slowly. He entered Paul’s vision and Paul watched him going up to Hathaway and standing at attention.
‘Well no shit Munson.’ His voice was low. ‘Well no shit now. Mr. Munson has joined us for chow. He slept a little late this morning. I understand, Munson. It tires a man out, riding home in a jeep. It gets a man tired, when he knows he’s the only one who can’t hack it. It sometimes gets him so tired he doesn’t even fucking shave! Who do you think you are that you don’t shave! I’ll tell you who you are: you are nothing you are nothing you are nothing. The best part of you dripped down your old man’s leg!’ Paul watched Hugh’s flushed open-mouthed face; Hathaway’s voice was lower now: ‘Munson, do you know about the Goddamn elephants. Answer me Munson or I’ll have you puking every piece of chow the Marine Corps feeds your ugly face. Elephants, Munson. Those big grey fuckers that live in the boondocks. They are like Marines, Munson. They stick with the herd. And if one of that herd fucks up in such a way as to piss off the rest of the herd, you know what they do to him? They exile that son of a bitch. They kick his ass out. You know what he does then? Son of a bitch gets lonesome. So everywhere the herd goes he is sure to follow. But they won’t let him back in, Munson. So pretty soon he gets so lonesome he goes crazy and he starts running around the boondocks pulling up trees and stepping on troops and you have to go in and shoot him. Munson, you have fucked up my herd and I don’t want your scrawny ass
in it, so you are going to march thirty paces to the rear of this platoon. Now move out.’
‘I’m going home.’
He left Hathaway and walked past the platoon.
‘Munson!’
He stopped and turned around.
‘I’m going home. I’m going to chow and then I’m going to see the chaplain and I’m going home.’
He turned and walked down the road, toward the chow hall.
‘Munrow!’
He did not look back. His hands were in his pockets, his head down; then he lifted it. He seemed to be sniffing the morning air. Hathaway’s mouth was open, as though to yell again; then he turned to the platoon. He called them to attention and marched them down the road. Paul could see Hugh ahead of them, until he turned a corner around a building and was gone. Then Hathaway, in the rhythm of cadence, called again and again: ‘You won’t talk to Mun-son talk talk talk to Mun-son you won’t look at Mun-son look look look at Mun-son—’
And, in the chow hall, no one did. Paul sat with the platoon, listened to them talking in low voices about Hugh and, because he couldn’t see him, Hugh seemed to be everywhere, filling the chow hall.
Later that morning, at close order drill, the platoon was not balanced. Hugh had left a hole in the file, and Paul moved up to fill it, leaving the file one man short in the rear. Marching in fresh starched utilities, his cartridge belt brushed clean, his oiled rifle on his shoulder, and his boot heels jarring on the blacktop, he dissolved into unity with the rest of the platoon. Under the sun they sweated and drilled. The other three platoons of Bravo Company were drilling too, sergeants’ voices lilted in the humid air, and Paul strode and pivoted and ignored the tickling sweat on his nose. Hathaway’s cadence enveloped him within the clomping boots. His body flowed with the sounds. ‘March from the waist down, people. Dig in your heels. That’s it, people. Lean back. Swing your arms. That’s it, people—’ With squared shoulders and sucked-in gut, his right elbow and bicep pressed tight against his ribs, his sweaty right palm gripping the rifle butt, Paul leaned back and marched, his eyes on the clipped hair and cap in front of him; certainty descended on him; warmly, like the morning sun.