The Lieutenant

by Andre Dubus

  “He trusted me too,” Doc Butler said, then over the loudspeaker the bosun’s whistle sounded and Dan automatically looked at his watch, and they both leaned forward, arms on their thighs and knees, and gazed at the carpeted deck of Butler’s stateroom of their burning cigarettes which neither of them smoked while the Protestant chaplain, a stout pleasant-faced Baptist, spoke the evening prayer over the loudspeaker: “Oh heavenly Father, in Thy name we have finished our day’s work. We have handled planes on the flight deck and in the hangar bay for our brothers who fly them. Some of us have stood far above the ship on the signal bridge, in Thy sun and wind. Some of us have worked in the heat of the engine room, out of our brothers’ sight, but always in Thy sight, oh Lord. Some of us have worked in the galley, cooking for our brothers and even cleaning their trays as Your Son washed the feet of the apostles. We have manned radios and radar and other modern equipment which give even more glory to Thy ever-glorious name. And we have rested too. We have written letters to loved ones, we have talked with our friends at chow, we have had bull sessions over coffee; and now our fellowship is ending for the day, our games of acey-deucy are over, and silence is about to fill this great ship. As the Vanguard takes us over Thy dark sea tonight, we pray that You keep us in Thy hands, oh Lord, that we may enjoy our well-deserved rest and wake tomorrow to perform our many duties in Thy name, oh Lord: Ah-men.”

  The bosun’s mate then announced Taps, lights out, and the smoking lamp is out in all berthing spaces.

  “But I’ve been in these cases before,” Doc Butler said, “and the only thing to do is call in ONI.”

  “No! Come on now, Major, haven’t you ever heard of circle jerks in Boy Scout camps?”

  “This is different.”

  “It isn’t. Look: I know these troops. Freeman’s a good kid and the other three aren’t worth the powder to blow ’em up—but they’re not queers.”

  Butler looked at him for a few moments, then smiled briefly, understandingly, as he had been doing for the past thirty minutes, and said:

  “How do you know, Dan?”

  “Because I know these troops.”

  “Not that well. There’s nobody on the ship qualified to handle this, including me.”

  Dan stood quickly and began walking back and forth so that he was always looking at Butler with turned face, in passing.

  “How ’bout Doc Kellog? He’s a shrink.”

  “Oh, hell: Kellog’s no psychiatrist. He’s going to be one when he gets out.”

  “Then how come he interviews all my Marines getting security clearances and asks ’em those Mickey Mouse questions about did they ever kill a cat when they were little boys?”

  Butler shrugged.

  “Somebody’s got to do it.”

  “Jesus. Somebody’s got to do this too—according to you—so why can’t Kellog?”

  “That’s not the way to handle Undesirable Discharges.”

  Dan stopped.

  “Young Private Freeman is not getting an Undesirable Discharge. Major, he told you what they’ve been doing to him down there. I’d have jumped McKittrick too.”

  “We’ll have to leave that up to ONI and the Skipper.”

  “Hell with that. Freeman’s a Marine and what happens to him is up to me and the Commandant of the Marine Corps—and it’s not about to get as far as the Commandant.”

  Doc Butler smiled again, even paternally this time.

  “Why are you fighting it, Dan?”

  “Because I gave those four Marines my word.”

  “Your word wasn’t that important when you talked to Commander Craig last night.”

  Dan thought of Commander Craig sitting in the wardroom and telling the gathered laughing commanders and lieutenant-commanders of his stupidity.

  “I guess everything that happens on this bucket gets talked up at the wardroom—” he paused “—this too, I guess.”

  “I’m talking to you, Dan.”

  “All right: but at least I snowed the Gun Boss to save those four troops.”

  “Why don’t you sit down and have a cigarette and relax?”

  “I can’t. I got more problems than you do.”

  “You’re not going back on your word. It was Freeman that let it out, not you.”

  “But don’t you see? He didn’t know what he was getting into. What did you do: just sit there acting like Daddy Chaplain while he talked himself into an Undesirable Discharge?”

  “Something like that. He came to me, Dan.”

  “Jesus.”

  Then he stopped and sat down.

  “Did you warn him under Article Thirty-one?” he said quietly.

  Butler’s face paled, then quickly colored again.

  “That’s beside the point”

  “Like hell it is.”

  He stood and picked up his cap and swagger stick.

  “Like hell it is,” he said.

  Looking at the cap and stick, Butler said:

  “Don’t go off half-cocked and get yourself in a sling.”

  Dan moved toward the door, then stopped and faced Butler again.

  “Listen, Doctor: everything you heard is inadmissible at any kind of court or hearing.”

  “Dan, you’re talking through that Marine hat. You know and I know what’s happened, and you’ve got a signed confession from Freeman down there in the barracks.”

  “That’s right, Doctor Butler, but those confessions don’t say a Goddamned thing about what you think is a homosexual act. That was part of my decision too.”

  He put on his cap, holding its sides so he would not touch the spit-shined visor that came over his eyes, exactly two fingers above his nose.

  “And I’m going to stick by it” he said.

  “You can still back off.”

  “No sir, Doctor Butler, I’m sorry but I can’t.”

  When he walked out Butler was calling him back but he shut the door and went down the passageway with strides that were near running; he approached the ladder going down to his room, then passed it without slowing and went on through the mess deck, turning right and snapping a salute to a posted sentry whose saluting motion he had seen but whose face he had not. He went through two more hatches, then descended, his feet pounding on the steel ladder, into the brig.

  “Let me into Freeman’s cell,” he said, his voice high as he strained to control it. As soon as the key turned in the lock Dan jerked the door open and stepped into and past the turnkey who was trying to dodge him. He slammed the door behind him, saw in the darkness Freeman starting to rise, a white T-shirt and light hair, from the dark shapeless blanket and mattress near the bulkhead.

  “Get up!” Dan said, whispering, because if he let his voice have any sound at all he would have shrilly awakened the entire brig. Quickly Freeman was on his feet, the white shorts and legs visible now, standing at attention beside his mattress. In two steps, Dan was in front of him, smelling his stale odor which was indistinguishable from the odors of the cell that seemed to have sweated with every prisoner it had contained. Still he whispered hoarsely:

  “God damn you, Freeman, you’re in so deep I don’t know if I can pull you out, I ought to—” he even raised the swagger stick like a club, held it tightly there, the stick too thin and delicate in his grip, his hand and arm wanting more weight and size to swing; then he lowered it and Freeman’s eyes left the stick and focused on him again “—Doc Butler, your friendly Goddamn chaplain, wants you investigated as a queer: he wants you to get a U- Dee, Freeman—a Goddamned U-Dee.” He stopped now, listening to his own rapid breath. Then tears filled his eyes and he said: “Goddammit, I lied for you, Freeman!” and he raised the swagger stick again and swung it against the bulkhead, his rage increasing when it struck, thinking of what it would look like now: he had a vision of forever carrying that stick marked by this night. He spun away and left the cell, pounding up the ladder without a glance at the turnkey.

  He did not look at his swagger stick until he reached his room. About four
inches down from the top, where it had struck the edge of a steel shelf, there was a deep white cut shaped like a football. He rubbed it with his thumb, then laid it on his desk beside his letter to Khristy which he had meant to finish tonight but had not, for after chow he had waited, doing nothing at all, having asked Doc Butler to call him when the request mast with Freeman was finished. Now he folded the letter, remembering why he was writing it as he might have remembered something which had been very important, when it had occurred a year ago. He did not undress for a while. Then he did, because it was something to do, hanging shirt and trousers on a wooden hangar, buttoning the shirt all the way up. He got into bed and pulled the covers to his chest and smoked. There were footsteps in the passageway and a knock on his door; turning on his side, he looked at the door for a second or two, then said:

  “Come in.”

  Doc Butler had the large book with him, the Navy Regulations, holding it with two fingers marking the place. He sat in a chair and lit a cigarette, then got up again and took an ashtray from the desk, and returned to the armless straight-backed chair, leaning forward with the book awkwardly in his lap, the ashtray and cigarette in one hand and the other still inserted into the book.

  “I brought you something to read.”

  “Why don’t you put it on the deck? I know what it says.”

  Doc Butler put it on the deck, stooped forward, his fingers lingering between the pages even when he had released the book. Then, as if the fingers themselves were reluctant, they slowly came out and the book closed. Doc Butler straightened in the chair, a bit short of breath, and Dan both scorned and pitied him for being a Naval doctor approaching middle-age, harassed so late at night, so far from home. Then he was only scornful.

  “It says that all such cases will be referred to the ONI,” Butler said.

  “This isn’t one of those cases.”

  “What would you call it?”

  “Childish grab-ass.”

  “Good word.”

  “Another thing: you’re after Freeman too. If it was only the other three—No: I still wouldn’t, because they’re not queers. But I already told you Freeman left before this hanky-pank. He took off.”

  “He’s still involved.”

  “Doc, if you’re going to try to get Freeman a UD, after what that kid’s been through, you might as well get me one too.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Oh, yes. I’m so committed on that, you wouldn’t believe it.”

  “What do you think Raymond would do?”

  “Same Goddamn thing I’m doing. And Captain Schneider would also tell you to stick to medicine and keep your nose out of the discipline of the Marine Detachment.”

  He paused, stopped his eyes from going to the deck, and forced them at Butler’s face.

  “Which I guess is what I’m telling you.”

  Butler picked up the Navy Regulations and rose; he looked at Dan, some anger in his face but not much—mostly that friendly and now paternal hurt expression again that not only outraged Dan but scared him too, made him feel he was looking at the precursor of his defeat.

  “Dan, I’m trying to help you. This thing is medical now, it’s my responsibility. I have to go to the Skipper with this—”

  “—Pretty shitty of you—”

  “—but I’ll wait till tomorrow. You sleep on it. I’d rather you went in yourself. But if you don’t, I will.”

  “Then that’s the way it’s going to be,” Dan said, rolling, turning his back, pulling the covers to his shoulders, talking to the bulkhead: “Because as far as I’m concerned—and I believe I’m still Acting CO of this Detachment—the incident is closed.”

  He lay with his eyes open, looking at the bulkhead inches from his face, waiting for Butler to leave. Finally Butler said: “You sleep on it, Dan,” and walked out. The door hardly made a sound when he shut it.

  5

  HE GOT OUT of his bunk and turned out the lights at the desk and lavatory, then got into the bunk again, his stateroom lighted now by only the small reading lamp above his head. He set his alarm clock for six-thirty. It was now eleven-ten.

  At eleven-thirty he considered calling Tolleson to his room, but did not for he knew exactly how it would be: Tolleson, as ignorant of homosexuality as he was, cursing Freeman, Butler, and the entire Navy. Just before midnight he half rose, pushing the covers back; then he lay down again. There was no use seeing Alex either. Alex could only give him legal advice, and he already knew about that: if he held on, refused to be scared or bluffed, and if the troops kept quiet, he could win. He rather doubted the troops could get through an interrogation by a man from the Office of Naval Intelligence; he had never been involved with them, but he had heard that they rarely failed to break a case. Usually they got confessions as well. But that did not overly disturb him. For one thing, even if the troops broke—which he thought they would whenever he allowed himself to think about it—he felt that an ONI investigator would agree with him: it was all a matter of grab-ass caused by the restlessness of young men at sea. Most of all, though, he did not worry about the troops’ ability to survive an investigation, because this was not the important thing—what mattered was whether or not he would fight.

  With fatigued but nervous post-midnight clarity, he knew he was not afraid of them. He could stand before Captain Howard like a commissioned Hahn, could refuse to answer, could plead Article Thirty-one for the troops and himself as well. If the troops—Freeman, for instance—confessed, then he would be in trouble. But at three in the morning he knew, as certainly as he knew anything, that it was not his career or his life that mattered: it was today. He could take anything they did to him: getting through this day and the ones to follow, without cowardice, without disloyalty to the troops, the Detachment, and the Corps, would be worth the price.

  He was hesitant, though, for another reason. Knowing it took as much guts to admit you were wrong as it did to fight, he lay in his bunk, opening a pack of cigarettes, and tried to recall anything from his own experience like what had been done to McKittrick—and, worse, apparently with McKittrick’s cooperation. He could not. There had been things on night bus trips in high school, when the baseball team was returning from a game. But all these things had one common factor: no one touched anybody else. Toward four o’clock he was trying to imagine himself as a nineteen-year-old boy, full of sap and dirty-minded anyway; but he could not see himself doing that to McKittrick or having it done to him.

  He thought of Burns going to the head to puke, of Freeman running away when he saw what the joke was turning into: Freeman, who obviously was not queer, sleeping with and impregnating a girl whose photograph and letters excited Dan, and even made him jealous.

  So possibly it was true that something was wrong with the other three. They didn’t look like queers, but people said that half the actors in Hollywood were queer, and none of them were the fat, wavy-haired, whiskerless, girlish brand of human you would expect. And if they were queer, then by God his first duty was to drum them out of the Corps. He thought of the Iwo Jima monument in Washington, and the Marines who guarded it: those tall strong young men in blues, standing there as living testimony of the tradition which had existed long before Iwo Jima and would always exist, all those Marines from 1775 until now joined by Admiral Nimitz’s words cut into the monument: Uncommon valor was a common virtue.

  That fusion of the discipline and courage of the past with - the present and future too, was more important than anyone and everyone on the Vanguard; it was the lie come true, worked into truth every day by perhaps only a handful of dedicated officers and troops—all that was needed, really—and he would sacrifice anyone, including himself, to keep that truth alive.

  There was no place in the Marine Corps for queers.

  The worst thing that could happen would be the discovery that Hahn, Jensen, and McKittrick were indeed—if incredibly—homosexuals; and they would be undesirably discharged. Freeman was clean. As for himself, he would b
e in trouble for covering up an incident which should have been reported, and for lying to the Gun Boss. But that was all right too.

  It was nearly four-thirty now and Dan was so tired that he gained no emotional reward for deciding to face the Captain and admit that he had been wrong.

  His meeting with the Captain occurred at eight-thirty that morning, after two hours of sleep and a breakfast he had felt he ought to get down. Doc Butler went with him, looking fresh, and still acting kindly; it was Butler who, after they had poured coffee from a hot silver pitcher, told Captain Howard that Dan had something to say. So he told the entire story, his voice unnaturally high: he silently blamed this on lack of sleep. He talked for a long while, without interruption, looking from the encouraging face of Butler to the inscrutable nodding Captain, and several times his voice broke. As he spoke he felt that names—Hahn, Jensen, McKittrick, and especially Freeman—were becoming merely that: names spoken in the official aura of the Captain’s cabin, names linked with perversion, the ONI, Undesirable Discharges. He began talking about those names, inserting into his narrative a good trooper; a fine Marine; a good sentry; a good orderly, as you know, sir; he found some praise for each of them, even Hahn, whom he said would be a good man in combat. Then, as he was finishing, he suddenly began to cry, as he had not cried since he was a boy: he had no more control over his body than he would if he had been throwing up, and his face went into his hands and he heard with amazed despair the volume of his jerking sobs; and finally, to explain to someone if only himself, he moaned into his hands:

  “Oh Goddamn. Those Goddamn stupid little boys.” But it was not over: not this meeting, nor this day, nor this week. He knew that and, when he could, he blew his nose and wiped his face, glancing at Doc Butler whose voice he had heard a long time back, it seemed, telling him: That’s okay, Dan, that’s right; just let it all out, boy. When he was settled with a cup of coffee, they began the process. He hardly listened as Captain Howard phoned the ship’s Communications Officer and told him to come to the cabin. Then Captain Howard, sitting at his desk, faced Dan.