by Andre Dubus
“Of course you know where you’ve gone wrong: you’ve mishandled a serious case, you’ve lied to your superior officer, and you almost aided and abetted four homosexuals on my ship. It’s only fair to say that I’ll take this up with you later on. Right now there are other things to do.”
He had spoken so gently that Dan’s consciousness was barely penetrated. It was not until a few minutes later, walking alone to the barracks, that he realized Captain Howard had said four homosexuals, while Butler had sat there, quietly watching. He went on to the barracks, feeling that he had consumed nothing but coffee and cigarettes for the past twelve hours. By the time he reached the office and told Burns to get out, his face looked so tormented that Tolleson pushed back from his desk and stood up, his face beginning to change too as if from immediate contagion. When Dan told him, he said in nearly a whisper: “The ONI?” Then he said it again, shaking his head; then he began to curse until Dan said to have the four prisoners report to the office. They were there in ten minutes, standing puzzled before him; he told them calmly that the word was out, that it had reached Captain Howard—he did not say that Freeman was responsible—then he sent them back to the brig to wait, and told Tolleson to take them off bread and water when their three days were up, but to keep them in the brig until the investigation was over.
By certain standards of time, no one had to wait long. A message was sent from the Vanguard, received on Okinawa, and answered that same day. Toward evening a plane left the ship and flew to Okinawa. It came back in late afternoon of the next day, carrying mail and an investigator from the Office of Naval Intelligence. During that time Freeman, Hahn, Jensen, and McKittrick had drunk seven pitchers of water and eaten nearly thirteen loaves of bread. They had not smoked, they had not talked, and they had slept little. Dan had spent about four hours with Alex, telling him what had happened. Besides those four hours he could not have said what he had done from the time he informed the prisoners until four-thirty the next day when he was called to the Captain’s cabin to meet the ONI investigator: a stocky man dressed in a grey suit, a white shirt, and a dark grey tie. He stood up to shake hands. Doc Butler was there too; they all had a cup of coffee and chatted with the investigator, whose name was Paulsen, about duty in the Far East and at sea. Dan rarely spoke. Instead he watched Paulsen; you were never supposed to know whether an ONI investigator was an officer or enlisted man, a sailor or Marine—but Dan thought he could tell if Paulsen was a Marine. He thought that would make a difference.
The bosun’s whistle sounded and mail call was announced. A part of Dan jumped, and he glanced at the door; then he looked at Paulsen again and after a moment or two he was all right. He tried to think of Paulsen’s long, wide, dark-whiskered face and large interested eyes under a Marine barracks cap. Finally he gave up, knew he would never know anything at all about this man, would never hear of him or see him again. Captain Howard was standing now.
“Mr. Paulsen, would you like some chow before you get to work?”
“Yes, sir.” He grinned. “I believe my stomach’s settled from the flight now.”
Captain Howard and Doc Butler chuckled; Dan smiled, watching Paulsen and wondering if this too was subterfuge, if perhaps the man had been a pilot himself.
“I’ll have some brought in here,” the Captain said. “It’s probably best not to show you to the entire wardroom. Mr. Tierney?”
Not knowing whether he was supposed to stay, Dan said: “Yes, sir.”
So four trays of food were brought in and, when they had eaten, Captain Howard told Dan to find some place where Mr. Paulsen would have privacy. Dan took Paulsen to his own stateroom, cleared the desk for him, and emptied the ashtray.
“This kid Freeman,” Dan said. “He’s a good boy. He’s got his fiancee knocked up back in the States: fine girl, she’ll be showing soon—”
Paulsen was watching him, no expression except interest, and Dan averted his eyes, because he could not think of what he had begun to say. He was very tired again, and he blinked his eyes and rubbed them, hoping Paulsen would see how worried he was, how much he cared for this kid.
“That’s the orderly?” Paulsen said.
“Right.”
“Captain told me about him. Why don’t I see him first, then I’ll call and let you know who to send in next.”
“Fine.”
Dan wrote his office phone number on a desk calendar, then phoned Tolleson and told him to send Freeman up to his stateroom. Tolleson said right away, sir, he had a chaser standing by in the brig. That small touch of readiness, of order, gave Dan his first slight satisfaction of the day. When he hung up he looked at Paulsen, but did not know what to say, so he left.
Tolleson was waiting in the Detachment office. As Dan shut the door he saw the single letter on his desk and recognized Khristy’s handwriting. He sat down, picked it up and hefted it, then dropped it on the desk.
“Shit,” he said.
“Right, sir. He might find out all kinds of Goddamned things about this Detachment.”
“Jesus: poor Captain Schneider—”
“It’s gonna tear him up, sir.”
Dan nodded. He had Khristy’s letter in his hand before he knew it, then he dropped it again.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we lose office hours. Captain’s pissed off about the way I handled this.”
“The way we handled it, sir. I guess I advised the Lieutenant wrong.”
Dan shrugged.
“I’d have done it anyhow,” he said. “I just wish I’d followed up and sent Freeman home.”
He spun his chair to face Tolleson.
“Goddamn, First Sergeant. If they give that kid a UD—”
He stopped.
“Sir, the Lieutenant’s had a rough time and he ain’t made a wrong move yet. Freeman should have kept his mouth shut.”
Tolleson went to the door.
“Well, sir, if the Lieutenant needs me I’ll be slopping down some o’ that garbage in the chiefs mess.” Then his eyes softened as they did when he smiled, though his face was serious and there was in it a certain tenderness which reminded Dan of Doc Butler. “Don’t worry, sir. They ain’t queers. Cut the top off a Marine’s head and all you’ll see inside is little beer cans and pussies.”
Dan raised a hand in half-salute to him as he left. He sat there for several minutes, thinking of Freeman being trapped by Paulsen’s calm manner, before he picked up Khristy’s letter again and slowly opened it:
Darling Dan:
I’ve thought about everything I’m going to say in this letter for a long time, in fact since I first met you at that Commanding General’s reception, so you probably have already sensed some of the things I’m going to say. For instance, I’ve always fought loving you. I think you knew that. Judging from the way I feel right now, I didn’t do a very good job. But even that last night was more goodbye than anything else, even then I meant it that way. I hope it wasn’t a dirty trick.
I’ve been walking around the campus all day, and for days before that, for months, and I’ve been thinking how little my life would change if we were married. There would be you, but the honeymoon would end and you’d put on that Marine green again and we’d settle down. We’d live in places where I lived as a child, where I waited for Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and a fairy to buy my lost tooth. You’d go to the same service schools my father went to, the same duty stations, and we’d go to the Birthday Ball every year, and the officer clubs, and battalion and regimental parties, and I’d hear variations of the same old sea stories from protégés of my father and his friends. I’d have your children in Navy hospitals, maybe even where I was born: good old USNH Camp Lejeune, N.C. Our children would grow up in riding stables and officers’ swimming pools and Base movies. They’d go to Base schools or they’d be those service kids who start school one year and are gone the next. We’d have to tell a daughter who was going steady that we were moving across the country again.
And you, my darling troop
er. Oh, and you. Within this decade Marines will probably be fighting again somewhere. You’ll be a captain, a company commander, and I can see you now, maybe with a rough brown beard and with all sorts of gear strapped around you instead of a woman’s arms. You’d have to check foxholes and fields of fire and clean your pistol before you could even read my letters, much less answer them. And all that time I’d be reliving my life. Danny, I don’t want to relive my life . . .
In the remaining paragraphs she assured him that she had, and did, love him. He read it through, to her name at the end, then went into the classroom and got a cup of coffee from the percolator, nodding at the Corporal of the Guard; then he returned to his desk, closing the office door again, and read the letter a second time.
He could not put shape, form, to his loss. He felt it, his spirit barren and salted, but he could not see images of it. He saw his career she had summarized, saw himself as a lonely captain inspecting defenses on bare and rocky terrain. But he was unable to focus on Khristy’s absence; it seemed impossible that she would not always be there, either loving him on stationery or in his quarters.
He stepped out to the classroom and refilled his cup; when the Corporal of the Guard said he was about to make some more, Dan found that he could not reply. Back in the office he replaced the letter in the envelope and stuck it under his shirt. Then he busied himself with coffee and cigarettes while he waited. He was angry only once, when he remembered all the Japanese girls he had refused. In just over an hour Paulsen phoned and said he thought he’d like to see McKittrick now. Dan called the brig and told the turnkey to send McKittrick to his stateroom. He did not realize how solemn his voice was until the turnkey echoed his tone.
After a while Tolleson came in and they waited together, through McKittrick’s interrogation, then Jensen’s; half an hour after the evening prayer and Taps, Doc Butler phoned and asked how it was going.
“He’s with the last man now. Hahn.”
“Okay, Dan. I’m sacking out.”
“You are?”
“You should too.”
“Not me, Doctor.”
When he hung up, he said to Tolleson:
“That son of a bitch.”
It was close to midnight when Paulsen phoned to say he was finished.
“What’s the word?”
“Three of them confessed to homosexual acts in the past. They were the passive party. In San Francisco, for steak dinners, five bucks—stuff like that. Hahn, Jensen, and McKittrick. They used to go to a queer bar on liberty.”
“What about Freeman?”
“No past homosexual experiences.”
“What about the other night? He say anything different?”
“He left when the sexual business started.”
“Will you stay there a minute so I can talk to you?”
“Sure.”
Then he told Tolleson.
“Well, sir, that’s nothing new.”
“What isn’t?”
“Marines’ve always got liberty money from queers so they can afford a woman.”
“They’ll have to go: those three.”
“No loss, sir. Lieutenant ought to sleep good tonight.”
As he reached the passageway above the barracks, he touched Khristy’s letter through his shirt. He went quickly to his room, entering a smell of cigarette smoke like the lingering scent of spoken confessions. The written confessions were lying on his desk, and Paulsen—without coat and tie now—let him read them. Most of Freeman’s was concerned with what Hahn, Jensen, and McKittrick had done to him since he joined the Vanguard.
“Do you think they’re queer?” Dan said.
“Nope.”
“Will that go in your report?”
“We just investigate. No opinions.”
“Have you investigated queers before?”
“Too many.”
Dan looked at the other confessions. They were written in longhand, and he thought of those three illiterate boys biting their tongues as they put words on paper. They had awkwardly used medical-sounding terms to describe what they had done, several times, in San Francisco.
“UD’s—right?” Dan said. “Because of San Francisco.”
“I guess that’s what it’ll be.”
“And Freeman’s clean.”
“The only thing you could charge him with is assaulting an NCO, which would be stretching it. He’s probably the only one you should have charged with disorderly conduct.”
Dan nodded. He was touching Khristy’s letter again. When Paulsen left, he took out the letter, opened the envelope, then stopped with his inserted thumb and forefinger closed on the letter. He released it and put it in the drawer, on top of the letter he had started two nights ago. He got a single sheet of stationery from a box on the shelf, dated it, and printed in block letters:
AS THE SAYING GOES, IF THE MARINE CORPS WANTED ME TO HAVE A WIFE THEY WOULD HAVE ISSUED ME ONE.
He signed it, then went up to the post office and mailed it before going to bed.
When he woke he still had not had enough sleep, and in his mind he was talking to Khristy, telling her he had tried to make the right moves and it looked like he was breaking into the clear now. Freeman was clean, which was what counted, and that made his original decision to cover up the whole thing one-quarter right. Then he was fully awake, his loss tangible now, and getting out of bed and unbuttoning his shirt from its wooden hangar, then changing his mind and deciding to wear a fresh one, he could see her: some night she would lie in a motel bed, a diamond ring and a wedding band on her finger, her psyche all checked out; and perhaps the bastard would even ask who had taken it and she would say horseback riding or she might say: A Marine, on our last night together. He did not know which he preferred.
Now he was dressed. But he did not leave yet; he phoned Alex and told him what Paulsen had found.
“Then Freeman’s okay,” Alex said.
“Yes. Thank God something’s working out.”
As he was leaving, his phone rang.
“Morning,” Doc Butler said. “Skipper wants to see us at nine.”
“Looks like you’re in the chain of command now.”
He could hear the grin in Butler’s reply:
“Looks that way.”
“Well, I waited up last night. Hahn, Jensen, and McKittrick have had passive homosexual experiences in San Francisco. Freeman’s clean.”
“We’ll see.”
“Paulsen said so.”
“I only work here, Danny.”
“You do more than that.”
He hung up and went to the wardroom, eating creamed beef on toast at a table of junior officers, whose presence ruined whatever little pleasure he could have got from his favorite breakfast, a meal he had eaten heartily in peaceful days, at Quantico and Camp Pendleton, when trucks had brought it to the field early in the morning and it was steaming in green metal food containers when you got out of your sleeping bag and quickly dressed against the chill. He looked at the officers’ faces with near hatred: smooth, happy, untouched—or if they seemed unhappy it was of no more importance than the homesickness of a boy at camp. Not one of them was a commander of troops. Not one of them had to face the Captain today. And not one of them had to worry about the future of an innocent boy who had knocked up a pretty red-haired girl. When he left the wardroom he was whistling “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
In the passageway he saw Alex, steady, smiling, his moustache rising with the corners of his mouth, his cap on the back of his head, and his belly seeming to delight in its nascent spreading beneath the wrinkled khakis.
“Stand by,” Dan said.
“What’s the word?”
“I smell blindness in upper echelons.”
“I’ll be in my room after chow.”
Frowning, Alex shook his head and went on to the wardroom.
At five minutes before nine, Dan met Butler at his stateroom, then they went up the escalator, Dan feeling that tightening in h
is rear. With his thumb he was rubbing the cut in his swagger stick.
Again they poured coffee from the silver pitcher. Then Captain Howard, sitting at his desk, pointed at the papers in a thin stack beside his coffee cup.
“Mr. Paulsen has given me the confessions and I’ve read them. Not with much surprise, I might say. I’ve seen this too many times at sea.”
He glanced at Butler, who nodded once, then sipped his coffee.
“Now,” the Captain said, “that’s step one. The next step is up to you, Mister Tierney, and I’ll tell you how to do it. You will give each man one of two choices: they can either sign a statement accepting a UD, or face court-martial for homosexual acts. I’ll have the legal officer prepare the statements in the proper form. The men will sign them and we’ll fly them off the ship. All this can be done today.”
He looked at his watch. Doc Butler finished his coffee and returned the cup to the tray holding the pitcher.
“Just a minute, sir,” Dan said. “Did I understand the Captain to say each man?”
“That’s right.”
“Sir, Freeman is innocent. Paulsen said—”
“Paulsen’s business is not to say. Freeman helped them undress McKittrick.”
Dan sensed again that futility of dealing with names in the Captain’s cabin: especially now, when the names had become signatures on confessions elicited by an ONI investigator.
“That doesn’t make him a queer, sir.”
“It makes him something. He’s been involved in this stuff for a long time in that Detachment of yours.”
“Involved? He was forced, they bullied him—”
“Then why didn’t he report it?”
“I guess he was afraid to, sir. The Captain knows these kids: they don’t want to be informers—” He paused. “I guess he was ashamed to tell about it too. I’d be.”
Captain Howard looked at his watch again.