The Lieutenant

by Andre Dubus

  A Navy lieutenant was taking Captain Schneider’s place on the signal bridge, asking for reports in a high nervous voice. Dan told him Mounts 6 and 8 were manned and ready. He heard Commander Craig’s voice and thought of him talking into the phone on the signal bridge, looking at the sky, his cop-out digested by now. Then the lieutenant cried, “Air action port!” and the guns jerked and swung toward the horizon and Dan saw them: a formation of silver A4D’s coming in low, the sun at their tails.

  His gun mount swung and jerked again as the radar operator below-decks tried to lock on. The lieutenant screamed, “Action port! Action port!” and Dan, having no function now but to pass on orders, watched the Marines closing the distance from horizon to ship, six hundred knots and three hundred feet above the water, their noses rising as they approached the ship, then flew over it ahead of the extended crash of their engines, the lieutenant now: “They’re over the ship!”—and Dan yelled into the phone, at the lieutenant and Commander Craig on the signal bridge, at anyone else on the whole ship who might be listening to that circuit:

  “Good! Good! Sink the sonofabitch! Sink it!”

  As if watching it from a distance, Ted waited for the nausea to spread upward from his legs which had suddenly cooled. He had not touched his beer in the last ten minutes; now he did, pushing the tall Asahi bottle farther away. The cold reached his stomach and he loosened his collar and tie; he was no longer conscious of Amiko’s hand resting on his leg, just above the knee.

  What bothered him most was not that, on his first night in Iwakuni, he was drunk in a whorehouse with Hahn and Jensen and McKittrick. It was more: the entire evening seemed to be the story of his life.

  They had landed at Iwakuni after dark, carried their seabags across the airfield, and Jensen had said: “Dry land, guys.” No one had answered. They had reported in to the Officer of the Day, a tall Marine first lieutenant with a blond moustache shaped like the gold pilot’s wings he wore over his left breast pocket. On the plane, Ted had dug a garrison cap out of his seabag, and now he clutched it in his fist at his side; standing beside the others, their barracks caps with shined visors held smartly under their left arms, he felt that the rectangular wool cap in his hand was a conspicuous indication of his character. The lieutenant read their orders, and said they had missed chow but there was a slop chute where they could get sandwiches and beer. He seemed to consider their case for a while, then added that he saw no reason why they couldn’t go on liberty, no matter what kind of discharge they were waiting for. He did not ask them what they had done to get the discharge. He gave them liberty cards, told them to be cool, there would be a Stateside hop in a couple of days, and sent them to a barracks with his clerk, whose plump body and long oily black hair worked on Ted’s shame until he had an impulse, as they climbed the barracks steps, to collar him and say that no matter what it looked like, he was a good seagoing Marine. Going down the corridor he said:

  “Soft duty.”

  He had not spoken for some time and his throat needed clearing. He did this as Jensen asked what he had said.

  “Soft duty in the Air Wing.”

  The clerk looked back at him, smiled, and shrugged. He took them to a squad bay where a few Marines were putting on civilian clothes, gave them four bunks at the far end, and left. None of the Marines spoke to them; soon, in pairs and threes, they were gone. Jensen said he was hungry.

  “Let’s hit the beach,” Hahn said.

  Ted had taken off his blouse, hung it in an empty locker, and was lying on a lower bunk. He would wait for them to leave, then go to the slop chute for a hamburger. On the plane they had been friendly enough, or at least not unfriendly, and he thought that was because his sharing their punishment made him less of an informer, perhaps not one at all. Still he wanted to avoid them. More important, he had to write those letters: first to Jan, who had not heard from him since last week when he had told her the Lieutenant knew she was pregnant but could not send him home because of regulations. He looked forward to writing that letter: he would be able to tell everything and she would know he wasn’t lewd and obscene, that he did not deserve an Undesirable Discharge. His letter to Senator Magnuson would be much the same. He had never in his life written a letter of any importance, had never used mail to change the way things were. In fact, he had rarely changed anything by his presence either: not like this, revenge, and also getting back what he had lost.

  Jan would at least be happy that he was coming home. He would tell her that if he won, he would probably go to Stateside duty; if he lost, he would start looking for a job. Either way, they would get married, and Jan was making money now—so actually there was nothing to worry about. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it had seemed.

  But as he was lying there, the others had put on their caps and Jensen had said:

  “Let’s go, Teddy.”

  “No thanks. I got to write my girl.”

  “Come on,” Hahn said. “We’ll beat the letter to the States.”

  He had got up, put on his blouse and cap, and followed them out, thinking of what he might have said: that he wasn’t hungry, or he felt sick, or he was tired. But as soon as Jensen told him to come with them, he had known he would go. He was unable to refuse invitations, even one like this: whenever someone asked him to go some place, to do something, his mind emptied and he could never think of a reason why he should not accept. These three had picked on him as long as he had known them, at a time when he thought everyone—including himself—had outgrown physical harassment; they had been ready to beat him up during the board and although they had left him alone since then, they surely did not like him. Nor did he want them to. He knew all this, knew that Hahn’s telling him there was no use writing a letter was not a plea for his company, but a form of attack, as if Hahn could not tolerate his making a decision on his own. Still he had walked with them to the slop chute, chuckling at their remarks, solemnly nodding his head when they cursed the Lieutenant and Mr. Price and the ship. At the slop chute they changed their money to yen; hoping if they lingered they might not leave, Ted had suggested a beer.

  “What do you want to stay on the Goddamn base for?” Hahn had said. “You waiting for the Lieutenant?”

  “Piss on him. I just need a beer.”

  But apparently no one had heard: they were leaving, and he followed. A Japanese taxi brought them to town, where for a while it was all right, drinking the first beer fast, then ordering again and talking to the hostess, soon unaware of the others except for their voices. He bought the hostess drinks because this was his last night in town, he would stay aboard the Base from now on, and he might as well get rid of the yen. Sometimes he did not talk to the hostess, but watched the other people in the bar: sailors and Marines in uniform, the Marines probably from a ship because the Iwakuni Marines were allowed civilian clothes. You could tell the seagoing Marines by their haircuts anyway, and he was beginning to feel superior to every one of the long-haired civilian-clothed Iwakuni Marines in the bar until he remembered why he was there; he found himself glaring at Hahn, and shifted his eyes before Hahn saw him.

  “Fly lice,” Hahn was saying, and Ted said to the hostess beside him:

  “Me too. Fried rice.”

  He heard McKittrick and Jensen ordering fried rice; then he shook his head.

  “Make it sukiyaki. And bring some chopsticks.”

  She nodded and went to the bar, a short pretty girl with a high voice like music, long hair knotted on top of her head, and wearing a blue silk kimono which felt to his hand like a delicate responsive part of her body. He watched her placing his order, lit a cigarette, and poured beer into his glass with the casual preoccupied motions of a man who has lit cigarettes and poured beer in a thousand bars of a hundred lands while waiting for native women to bring him strange food. Before she got back to the table, he rose and went to the rest room, stepping without effacement around standing Marines and sailors and girls. The rest room was large enough for two men but only one could urinate,
and a sailor was doing that, so Ted waited behind him, a little to one side, his back to the wall. The sailor was one of those who took a long time, braced with one stiffened arm at the wall, his head lowered to observe the whole function. He shook and milked afterward too, his head turning once to look at Ted: a wide reddened face that was at the same time amiable and antagonistic, depending on whether you looked at his numb smile or his drunk eyes.

  “Just a minute, bellhop,” he said, and went back to his business as if alone again. Ted was thinking he could shift to his right and bring down a chop to the base of the skull. Or he could wait until the sailor turned, pretend he didn’t want trouble, step toward the urinal and quickly knee him in the groin. There was also the solar plexus to consider. In Boot Camp they had said if you hit a drunk man there he would vomit every time. The sailor turned and, without looking at Ted, walked out. As he urinated, his body trembled and he wished with all his fast heart that the sailor had given him a chance. Returning to the table he looked around for the sailor, found him sitting at the end of a booth crowded with sailors and girls, and walked by, his jaw set, waiting for a remark which he would answer with a sudden chop to the throat. But he passed unnoticed.

  He sat beside the girl at their table which was between the booths, out in the middle of the floor, so there was always someone skirting them or standing nearby, and Ted prepared himself for the first one to spill beer on him. He gazed with insolence at people in booths and saw himself telling Jan: He was a big guy, but I caught him off guard; on the table, his right hand straightened for a karate blow.

  He saw himself as a corporal—and not a clerk either—but leading a rifle squad up a hill at Camp Pendleton. No one would ever know that he could have done that. Even Jan would say she believed he could do anything, but she wouldn’t really mean it, for he was different with her and she didn’t know this side of him. He had nearly completed his correspondence course and he knew the answers. That was the secret: while everybody else stood around, it took one man to spot a treeline or a draw going up to a flank, establish a base of fire, and execute a single envelopment. Or, if there were no other approaches, it was hi-diddle- diddle-up-the-middle with a frontal assault. Those were the only two movements a squad could use. A platoon could go into a double envelopment or a penetration; turning movements were for regiments and above. COCOA was the key word for terrain appreciation: critical terrain, observation and fields of fire, cover and concealment, obstacles, and avenues of approach. The four phases of offensive combat were MACE: movement to contact, attack, consolidation, and exploitation. He had been looking scornfully at a profiled, oblivious Marine in civilian clothes, probably a grease monkey. Now his eyes swept boldly over Hahn, Jensen, and McKittrick. The dumb bastards, he should be leading them. Hahn, he would say, you open your fat mouth one more time you’re going to see the Skipper. I’m running this squad.

  When the food came they started into their fried rice, using forks; then Hahn, at the opposite end of the table, stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth and watched the hostess filling Ted’s plate with sukiyaki from the pot. She gave him a bowl of rice, another bowl with a raw egg in it, and pair of varnished chopsticks which he carefully arranged in his right hand.

  “Look who’s going Jap,” Hahn said.

  Ted did not answer until he had taken rice with the chopsticks, dipped it in egg yolk, and got it smoothly into his mouth.

  “Hell,” he said, chewing, “that’s chow-hall rice you’re eating. If you want to eat native, go all the way.”

  “The old salt,” McKittrick said. “Who taught you to use chopsticks? The Lieutenant?”

  “Right,” Hahn said. “Lieutenant kept him back this morning and said he sure was sorry old Teddy-Baby was getting a UD, and they sat on the deck and ate with chopsticks.”

  “Ate what?” McKittrick said.

  Before Ted had thought about it, he said:

  “I thought you were the one knew all about that.”

  McKittrick pushed his chair back, ready to stand.

  “I’ll break your Goddamned jaw, Freeman.”

  Ted took a piece of meat watching more than he had to the chopsticks closing on it then chewed and swallowed before he said:

  “What are you pissed for? We’re all getting thrown out aren’t we?”

  “Shut up, Freeman,” Hahn said.

  Ted shrugged and began eating, his eyes on his plate except when the hostess asked if they were going to make trouble, and he turned to her and said quietly that they were already in trouble, but those three guys were too stupid to know it. But, he said, he wasn’t going to be in trouble long. She smiled as if she understood.

  That smile of hers seemed to follow him for the rest of the night. When they finished eating, Hahn, Jensen, and McKittrick stood and put on their caps and he did too, though no one had spoken to him, and walking with them on the sidewalk he realized that possibly he could have stayed, then caught a taxi to the Base. It was in the next bar that he began to get drunk, talking again to the smiling lips of a hostess, and when some time later he was in a third bar with a third hostess, he felt that he had spent two days looking at a woman’s smile. All this time, since Hahn had told him to shut up, he had not spoken to them; or, if he did, he had said so little that it was the same as saying nothing at all. When he talked—less and less often as the evening advanced—he talked to a hostess. Every time they rose to leave a bar, he thought of sitting there and letting them go; but not knowing what he would reply if one of them said to come on, he quietly went along: having too many beers in bars which he could not remember except as a merging of one continual noisy room and the smile of a hostess, strangely broken by walks of a couple of blocks, or taxi rides. Finally he was at the whorehouse, sitting at a table with those three and their girls and with little Amiko whose face was prettier than when he had first seen it, though he still had not thought of changing his mind. When she had come to sit by him, perhaps an hour earlier, he had told her what he had not told Hahn and Jensen and McKittrick in the taxi.

  “I buy you drink,” he had said. “But no bed. Go home to Stateside girl, maybe couple days.”

  She had smiled.

  “We’ll see about dat. Maybe you change your mind.”

  She had laid a hand on his thigh. It was still there, but in place of the discomforting warmth, his leg was now cool. He pulled at his tie again, though its knot and his collar were already pressureless against his throat. Then someone shook his forearm on the table; he looked to his right, up McKittrick’s arm stretching past the girl between them. McKittrick had his glass of beer lifted in a toast. They all did, even the girls.

  “To a UD,” Hahn said.

  His face reminded Ted of the sailor whom he vaguely recalled from the rest room of the first bar: grinning, and so numb that you imagined his skull awash with alcohol, his consciousness drowned.

  “Toast, Goddammit,” Hahn said.

  Ted’s hand touched his beer bottle; its tepid surface made him swallow, and he withdrew his hand, shaking his head.

  “Might not get one,” he said.

  Jensen chuckled and lowered his glass. The others still had theirs raised.

  “To a UD,” Hahn said, looking at Ted, and Jensen picked up his glass and raised it with the others—Amiko too (he could see her lifted then disappearing glass out of the corner of his left eye)—but Ted’s hands lay on the table.

  “And why won’t you get one, Teddy-Baby?” Hahn said.

  Ted focused on him, at the end of the table. All night Hahn had been sitting at the head of a table, sending his voice down it like static in Ted’s mind as he had groped to understand what he, Ted Freeman, was doing in this suspended drunken hiatus, so far away from Jan, so far away from all that he deserved. It occurred to him that Hahn would fold if you kicked him in the balls.

  “I’m going to write Sen’tor Magnuson of Washington. Lieutenant tol’ me to.”

  Jensen grinned and started talking to his girl again. McKittri
ck said something that Ted did not hear.

  “He told you that, huh?” Hahn said.

  “Yep. Got to write it early tomorrow and send it airmail.” He opened his mouth to laugh but nothing happened, as if the climbing nausea would not allow it. So he forced a sound like a laugh, and said: “He tol’ me when sen’tors fart gen’rals inhale.”

  Hahn was talking to him. Ted pushed his chair away from the table, told Amiko he would be right back, and as he was leaving the only thing he heard was Hahn’s weirdly excited shout:

  “I want to see that letter!”

  He weaved between crowded tables, sidestepped a Marine in uniform at the rest room door, the Marine’s haircut dully registering on his mind as the mark of a seagoing man, and he lowered his eyes in shame at his pale face, his loosened collar and tie. He made it. For five minutes, which seemed as long as the evening had been (he even thought he recalled and somehow relived each swallow of beer and bite of sukiyaki as it left him), he was helpless. He thought dying must be like this, your body turned against you finally, doing things you couldn’t resist—and he felt wretched, no better than a muttering wino on a dark street. As with the loneliness of love, he thought of himself sleeping in the barracks, his letters to Jan and Senator Magnuson already in the mailbox for tomorrow’s plane. In some future time he was sitting with Jan in the living room of a strange host, nursing a (he was sick again) beer and saying calmly: 1 don’t drink much anymore. No matter what happened after his letter to Senator Magnuson—and he would write those letters tomorrow, if it took hiding in the Base Library—he would change. I’ll never get drunk again, he told Jan; then, trembling and gasping, almost went to his knees.