by Andre Dubus
“Mister Tierney, I’m getting damned tired of your stubbornness. To a certain point, I admire your feelings for your troops. I’ll even say I wish my junior officers had some of it. But I’ve passed that point. I have duties on the bridge in fifteen minutes for air ops—that’s what this ship is for, Mister Tierney. Now I’m telling you to go down to that barracks and handle this, with the proper procedure this time, and I want those men off my ship as soon as possible.”
“Where’s Paulsen?”
Captain Howard stood up.
“Mister Paulsen is on his way to Okinawa. And this meeting is over. You go do as you’re told and report here at thirteen hundred. I’ll have the statements ready for signatures then.”
Without answering, Dan walked out, leaving Butler. He almost ran to Alex’s room, but managed to stop long enough to knock—you did not burst in on a man at sea.
“Saddle up,” he said. “That bastard wants a clean sweep.”
Alex was sitting at a desk cluttered with magazines and books. He took off his glasses.
“I thought so,” he said.
“Why? Jesus Christ, it’s all there in the statements if he’d open his eyes.”
“‘Professionalism is our business.’”
“What?”
“It’s a motto painted over a hangar at Alameda. Broken down, it means screw you. Look at it their way.”
“What do you think I am?—five foot nine of walking shit?”
“Try it for a minute. Doc Butler—let’s say he went along with you. Then let’s say Freeman goes to another duty station and surprises us all by turning out to be a queer. They investigate him and they find out that Butler decided he was all right. Bad for Butler.”
“Jesus—you don’t believe Freeman’s going to turn queer someday.”
“Course not. He’ll go home and marry that girl. But we’ve got to familiarize ourselves with the enemy’s motivations. Now, the Captain. It’d be worse for him. Suppose he forgot about Freeman, just let it drop. Then suppose we pull into port someday and Freeman gets caught doing hanky-pank with a young sailor. Another ONI investigation. The Captain has a one-year tour on the Vanguard. He’s the fourth skipper she’s had, and every one of the other three has made admiral. He doesn’t want two ONI investigations, especially for the same man.”
Dan moved a piled uniform from a chair and sat down.
“Can we beat it?”
“Good chance with Freeman. The others are through, but I’ll defend them anyway.”
“All of ’em?”
“The book says they have the right to counsel, and to appear before a board of three officers.”
“Alex Price, you’re a good tough son of a bitch.”
“They don’t bother me. I’ll be a civilian in a few months, if this bucket doesn’t sink. Howard’ll crap all over you, though. Can you take a bad fitness report?”
“Jesus, Alex.”
“Okay, friend. Let’s gird for battle.”
“Let’s.”
Then he went to the barracks, where Tolleson was waiting in the office.
“Captain Howard wants me to threaten these Marines into refusing their rights to a board. He wants ’em off the ship today.”
Tolleson did not even curse. He stood there with his mouth open, and Dan realized for the first time that, with the exception of Alex, he was entirely alone now. Tolleson would be no help. Defense counsels, field boards, legal infighting: these were part of that world which Tolleson neither comprehended nor wanted to: the world of officers’ clubs, mess nights, investigations, decisions, courts martial—always involving officers. For the rest of the fight, Tolleson would be there to encourage, to listen to the progress, to curse, and to solace. That was all.
“Let me see the Personnel Manual,” he said. “Then get those Marines up here.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Dan had spoken curtly, so now he added in a friendly tone:
“Mr. Price is going to defend them. We’ll request a board.”
Tolleson got the manual from the shelf, then found the page concerning Undesirable Discharges. Dan sat and read it once quickly, then a second time, more slowly, then a third. He did not want to have to read it to the troops.
But just before they came in he felt that he could not face them. He opened the book again, wanting to use it as a prop, something to fix his eyes on. He looked up at Tolleson, who was watching him.
“I hate to tell those kids,” he said. “Even Hahn doesn’t rate this.”
“I know, sir.”
When the chaser knocked on the door, Dan closed the book and nodded at Tolleson. He let them in. They stood abreast before him, then Dan rose, told them to stand at ease, and came around the desk and sat on its edge, as close to them as he could be, looking in turn at each man’s face: Hahn, McKittrick, Jensen, Freeman.
“The word isn’t good,” he said.
He paused, breathed once.
“Captain Howard wants each of you to get a UD.”
His eyes lowered then, and he bent over and took his pack of cigarettes from his sock, offering it as he straightened.
“Here. Your brig time’s over.”
He passed his lighter around, then lit one for himself.
“Now: you can either sign a statement waiving your rights and accepting a UD, or you can take advantage of your rights. The book says you have right to counsel, to appear before a board of at least three officers, and to call witnesses and make a statement on your own behalf. My friend Mr. Price has offered to serve as counsel for all of you. I’ll give you time to think it over. If you want my advice I’d say take every right you can get.”
Hahn nodded. He was the only one who looked more determined than afraid.
“I can’t say what will happen, but I have a few ideas. You, Hahn—McKittrick—Jensen—will probably get UD’s: because of that business in San Francisco. The book’s pretty clear on that. But I’d fight it anyway. Freeman, you have a good chance, since there’s no evidence against you except that bit the other night.”
“So you men think it over. Meantime, we’ll prepare release orders and at least get you out of the brig. Are there any questions?”
“Sir,” Hahn said. “I don’t need to think it over. I want counsel and a board.”
“Okay. Anyone else?”
McKittrick and Jensen said yes, sir; Freeman licked his lips and finally got out his answer too.
“All right. I’ll inform Mr. Price and the Captain, and I’ll let you know if there’s anything new. You ought to stand by in the barracks for Mr. Price. Any more questions?”
They shook their heads. Hahn came to attention, clicking his heels, and the rest did too.
“That’s all,” Dan said.
Tolleson opened the door, as they marched out, then sat at his desk, the Manual open beside his typewriter, and began typing their requests.
At precisely one o’clock, after lunching with Alex, Dan was outside the Captain’s cabin, returning the orderly’s salute, then going past him and knocking, without waiting to be announced. He went in and this time did not sit down. The Captain, sitting at his desk, had not invited him to anyway. Doctor Butler sat to one side of the Captain’s desk, half-facing Dan, who stood at ease.
“Sir, they want counsel and a field board.”
For the first time Captain Howard’s face colored, and his voice was high, unnatural, as if it had not been raised for months.
“Goddammit, what are you doing? Losing control down there?”
“I’m not losing control, sir. I advised them of their rights as provided by the Marine Corps Personnel Manual.”
“Mister Tierney, I specifically instructed you to get them to waive their rights. I told you I’d have those statements prepared for their signatures—” He was on his feet now: he tried to scoop up the typed statements from his desk but they slid away from his fingers, separating into a disorderly row of originals and carbons; so he pointed at them—“Here they are. Now you tell me no one
’s going to sign them. Why?”
“Because, sir, they have a right to be heard.”
“Mister Tierney, I want these statements signed. I told you how we handle these cases on this ship and there will be no exceptions for your Detachment—” he lowered his voice, still firm “—which will not be yours for long, I can assure you. Now you go tell those men they will either face a court-martial or accept a UD.”
Dan looked at Butler, whose face was a mingling of surprise and—yes: he saw it, drew from it—admiration. He turned to the Captain again; he was not even standing at ease now, one foot ahead of the other, his hands on his hips.
“No, sir,” he said. “I can’t do that.”
“I’m telling you to.”
“Sir, I’m not paid to railroad troops into UD’s. The Captain knows they have rights, sir.”
“Mister Tierney, we’ve spent enough time on this, and in about two minutes I’m going to be highly pissed.”
“Goddamn, sir—” he had not said it loudly, had nearly breathed it pleadingly, but Captain Howard’s face colored again “—three of ’em don’t have a chance, but Freeman does. He doesn’t rate a UD, sir. The Captain knows that man—”
“—I know enough about him to get him off my ship—”
“—Yes sir. As for the other three, sir, they’re going to have to go through life trying to get jobs with a UD. They’ve got to fight it, sir. Jesus—I’d fight it with everything I had: board, counsel, letters to Congressmen for crying out loud. Wouldn’t you?”
The Captain sat down. He slid the typed statements together into a stack, then picked it up and tapped it on the desk until it was neat again.
“Mister Tierney, I’m getting damned tired of having a junior officer interfering with the way I choose to run this ship. There will be no board. Those men will sign these statements and they will pack their gear and leave this ship by plane at sixteen hundred today. They will go to Okinawa and await transportation to the States where they will receive their discharges.”
“Well, sir, let’s look at this way: they know their rights, so they can’t be snowed. They’ve requested Mister Price as their counsel and he’s agreed. And by now they’ve signed requests to that effect.”
He paused. The Captain was glaring at him as no senior officer had ever done, no sergeant during his officer candidate training. But he was not frightened. He could not see, hear, beyond this moment, and would not have wanted to if he could.
“So you see, sir, there’s no way in hell they can be refused their rights.”
The Captain had been slouched forward in his chair, his arms resting on the statements. Now he tensed and struck the desk with his palm.
“All right, Mister Tierney. All right.” He turned his swivel chair and worked the switch of an intercom near his desk.
“Orderly, get Commander Craig on the phone and tell him I want to see him.”
Then he looked at Butler.
“I should have a doctor.”
“Kellog?”
“All right. And I’ll get another Regular officer.”
He turned his chair again and faced Dan.
“They’ll get their board, Mister Tierney. It will be tomorrow afternoon; Commander Craig is senior member. That’s all, Mister Tierney.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
He came to attention; then he about-faced and walked out.
The difference between a court-martial and a field board is that the members of a field board already know a man is guilty. They deal with men who are considered a discredit to the service for any of several reasons: repeated minor offenses against the Uniform Code of Military Justice, refusal to pay debts, homosexuality, or lewd and obscene acts. The board does not give a sentence, as a court does; it merely hears the case, then makes a recommendation to higher command, either for the man to be retained on active duty or be given an Undesirable Discharge.
The field board ordered by Captain Howard was held at two o’clock the following day, a Sunday, in Commander Craig’s stateroom. A Marine orderly was assigned to stand outside the door and call in each man when Alex told him to. The four men waited down the passageway, around a corner, in the waiting room of the dental office which was closed for the day. They were dressed in fresh tropical khaki uniforms, with neckties; their web belts were scrubbed clean, the brass tips and buckles polished; their shoes were brilliant dark brown. They all sat on a couch, smoking as carefully as women so ashes would not spill on their uniforms; they faced a dentist’s office and through its door Ted could see the chair, the light, and the drill. He remembered waiting to have three teeth filled—counted the years by looking at the outstretched fingers on his thigh—when he was sixteen. Waiting then had been much the same as waiting now. He shut off the nervous conversation beside him and considered that: as if somewhere beneath the shadows of his experience in dental offices, there lay some hope. Maybe that was the game, played over and over: you waited, with fear or excitement, and finally whatever you waited for happened and it was never as bad or as good as you had expected. Except pussy. He was quickly disgusted with himself for thinking in that term, and he corrected it: making love with Jan. Now he felt old. He had gone off to sea and become a man who could hardly talk anymore without profanity; he was indeed no longer a boy. He wondered if Jan would notice, if even when she burst through the crowd on the pier and ran to him, she would see something different about his face, would look at him curiously just before they lovingly collided.
Then Hahn was talking to him.
“How’d he get a confession from you?”
Ted shrugged, looked vaguely at the dental chair through the door.
“You didn’t have nothing to hide, is that it?”
“I guess so.”
“He kept calling me ‘son,’ ” McKittrick said.
“Yeah,” Jensen said. “I thought he was a queer. ‘Have a cigarette, Leo.’ Pretty soon I was waiting for five bucks—” He laughed, then as suddenly stopped. “Be good to see ‘Frisco again,” he said.
“I got to go home,” McKittrick said. “Daven-fuckin- port. The farm. I’ll say, ‘Well, Mom, I’m home early. They just figured I ought to get my ass home and see you.’”
“You wouldn’t be going if you’d kept your mouth shut,” Hahn said.
“You didn’t do so good yourself.”
“He wouldn’t have got one Goddamn word out of me if he hadn’t said you guys already wrote it down.”
“All right,” McKittrick said. “You got snowed.”
“Yeah, but you were the first one—Teddy-Baby don’t count. You were the first one, then he had us.”
“I told you, I never said nothing about you and Jensen.”
“You didn’t have to. After that, he knew.”
“That’s what he told me,” Jensen said. “He already knew.”
“You’d have told him too,” McKittrick said to Jensen. “Goddammit, he sent the chaser for coffee, and we sat there talking about liberty in Japan and all that crap, then he started talking about ‘Frisco, and we’re sitting there laughing like old shipmates, then he says he used to play around with the queers when he was young—pick up money on Friday so he could get him a woman Saturday. Then he says at first he just tried rolling ’em and him and a sailor got hold of one and got both their asses whipped—”
“—He was snowing you,” Hahn said.
“No lie. Think I don’t know that now? He says after that he didn’t try rolling ’em anymore, he just went along with the game. Maybe it’s true: 1 don’t know.”
“Sure,” Hahn said. “Think he could be an ONI man if that was true? ONI would know about it.”
“I don’t know. Anyhow, so I told him about the time Russell got pissed ’cause that other queer was buying me drinks and they got in this Goddamn argument like two women. And Paulsen starts laughing and acting like a queer—no lie: he starts around the Lieutenant’s room, shaking his hands and talking like a pissed-off queer and he says yeah, don’t I k
now, don’t I know. I remember he Goddamn said that: don’t I know. Then he sits down and says hell, Bradley, if that’s all you did why don’t you write it down and we’ll get this over with so everybody can get back to work.”
Jensen chuckled.
“Mac,” he said, “you just ain’t cool.”
McKittrick reached for a cigarette in his sock, paused bent-over looking at the deck, and said:
“Shit.”
Hahn stood up and walked to the bulkhead opposite the couch, then faced them—no, faced Ted, squinting at him, and Ted averted his eyes to the dental chair past Hahn. Then the orderly came in and said the board was starting and they wanted McKittrick first. McKittrick said “Shit” and jabbed his cigarette in an ashtray, leaving it smoldering as he rose and left.
Hahn was looking intently at the door now, and in that respite from his glare, Ted lit a cigarette. Alone with Hahn and Jensen he thought of the old riddle of the fox, the goose, and the sack of grain. But there was no grain: two foxes and he was the goose, not even a goose really, just a small—
“Mr. Price is cool,” Jensen said.
“He better be.” Then Hahn was looking at Ted again. “I ain’t getting no queer discharge.”
Ted found himself watching Hahn with pity: he was thinking of him and Jensen walking through the night of San Francisco, pretending they were glad to be out of the Corps, probably dropping into their old bar, laughing as they gulped the paid-for drinks and told the queers what had happened. Now Hahn’s face, looking at Ted, changed too, became quizzical, and he said: “Ain’t none of us Goddamn queers. Not even Teddy-Baby.”
“Guys at Dago used to do it,” Ted said. “For easy money.”
“Easy money,” Jensen said, and Hahn began to pace, looking at the door McKittrick had gone through.
Ted felt closer to them, the comradeship you felt for your buddies in Boot Camp when you were all getting crapped on; but at the same time he felt cheapened, and he put his face in his hands as if he were tired, and thought of Jan.
He did not have to worry long, though, about being one of them. Less than an hour after McKittrick had left, he returned with the orderly, who said they wanted Jensen. McKittrick’s face was pale. He stood in the center of the room, smoking deeply, his slumped height making him appear entirely defeated. When Jensen had followed the orderly and shut the door, McKittrick said: “You little son of a bitch,” and crossed the room, his hands reaching for Ted who jerked back on the couch. Then McKittrick spun toward Hahn.