by Andre Dubus
Once they reached the States, he would never see Hahn and Jensen and McKittrick again. Maybe he would not write to Senator Magnuson, just take his discharge and start a life of his own in Oakland, or that place near the mountains. What place?—His stomach doubled him over, dry heaves now, and he waited for it to give him peace. Monterrey, or east of the Cascades: two places he had never been. But he would write the letter, not to stay in the Corps so much but to show them on the Vanguard. Shift the sand under their cages, the Lieutenant had said. To show everybody. He did not immediately know who everybody was. Then he did: they were the people back home, or wherever they were now, boys and girls who had spurned him or barely noticed him. You remember Ted Freeman? Well, get this: he’s in the MaRINE Corps now and he’s married to this great-looking—I always thought he was cute but he was so shy (squirming between crossed legs as she reconsidered too late)—For some reason the girl was that cheerleader, the older girl with long dark hair, who was said to be putting out; a girl he had never spoken to. He replaced her with the faint image of a girl he had managed to date on those times when the whole class did something together—picnics, dances—and it took more nerve to stay home than it did to go. He had not thought of her in a long time; with pain made easily bearable by the demands of his stomach, he realized that she never thought of him either. His body jerked double, shivering, and he sobbed at his futility to resist it.
Before leaving, he washed his face, buttoned his collar, and adjusted his necktie. He stepped out and was struck by light and sound which threatened and halted him. Then he moved into it. When he sat down Amiko said, with sweet concern that both soothingly and disturbingly dispelled the isolation he had felt in the rest room:
“You been sick, Ted-san?”
“A little.”
“I get you something.”
She wore a green silk kimono which pulled tightly at her hips as she walked to the bar, coming back with ginger ale for him and a drink for herself. After she was settled and smoking one of his cigarettes, her hand returned to his thigh. He looked at the bottle of beer, thinking of how warm and flat it was, and pushed it farther away. Then Hahn was standing at the end of the table.
“Upstairs, men.”
Ted lit a cigarette and then merely held it after feeling that first breath of smoke on his throat; he pretended to be unaware of Hahn’s girl standing and looking at the other girls. Amiko squeezed his leg.
“We go upstairs now?”
He glanced at her and shook his head. They were all on their feet, except him and Amiko; one of the girls spoke in Japanese and Amiko shrugged.
“What’s the matter, Teddy-Baby?” McKittrick said. “Can’t get one up?”
“Jesus, I had one up since I come in here.”
“You going to stay down here and play with it?” Hahn said. “Maybe he’s going to write a letter with it. It’s about the right size.”
He took a ballpoint pen from his trouser pocket and held it up, while the girls laughed and Amiko’s hand moved down between Ted’s legs.
“No lead in his pencil,” Hahn said. “No pencil. Leave on ship. Forgot all about it.”
Amiko’s voice penetrated the giggles and laughter:
“No, not true. He bring to Iwakuni. To Amiko.”
Her hand moved again and Ted grabbed it.
“Jesus Christ, Teddy-Baby,” Hahn said.
He was turning to leave.
“I don’t want to catch anything, man. I got a Stateside shackup.”
“You sonofabitch kid,” Amiko said; to him it sounded like a scream and, his eyes on her angry face, he thought everyone in the place must be staring at him now. Her hand was gone.
“I clean. You—”
“Ssshhh: okay. A joke, huh? I know you clean. Very pretty girl. We go topside, okay?”
Her face softened and, before he knew it, her hand had gone to his leg and moved up.
“You sure?” Amiko said.
“See?” Hahn said. “I told you.”
“Too much beer,” he said to Amiko, hardly hearing his own words for the laughter. “I be okay. You see.”
“Ho-kay.”
She rose, took his hand as Hahn said something about a letter to a senator, and looking straight ahead and feeling that he was the only one in the place who was going upstairs with a whore, he followed them. At the small landing they were briefly squeezed together, so Ted’s back was pressed against the cool brick wall. Then Hahn and his girl started up, and soon Ted was ascending behind Amiko whose kimono slipped up to expose her calves, for the stairs were as narrow and steep as a ship’s ladder.
When she closed the door of the bedroom at the top of the stairs, the first thing he felt was silence: Hahn’s voice gone, the others too, faded down the hall. She was standing in front of him. Maybe now he could refuse. But he thought of her screaming at him, saying she was clean, cursing him, even forcing him to pay—and the others hearing it and grinning in beds down the hall. She unbuckled his blouse, and he asked her to turn out the light. When she got back to him in the dark, he was turned away, standing on one leg as he took off his trousers. She did not touch him. He heard the kimono rustle from her shoulders and, naked, he went past her and lay in bed, on his side. As she got into bed, he started to reach for her but did not; then she was close to him.
“Poor Ted-san drink too much. Here: you take it easy.”
He tried to raise his head against the nausea which was coming back; but it ebbed, was gone, as her hands moved. Well—Maybe he would be all right. She was his second woman, and a man certainly rated at least one more before he got married. Jan had probably had more—Probably. For too long he had been saying that. He had no idea what a virgin was like (deprived of that too) but he knew she had not been one. Although he had heard that many young girls lost it in other ways. But Jan had been so easy. If she had been a virgin it might have been different; as it was, though, he deserved this—He was surprised. Why, there was no difference at all, and she—now he remembered her name—Amiko could have been Jan. But after a while there was a difference, and Amiko finally asked him.
“Soon,” he said. “Too much beer.”
He saw himself asleep in the barracks, his letters mailed. Then Jan was sitting in her apartment, watching television. She looked up at him when he told her he was sorry, her face neither angry nor disgusted, but disappointed. She had waited so long, dressing carefully to hide the growing child from the people at work, from her parents: she must have tried to avoid them, made up excuse after excuse when they asked her to spend a Sunday in Stockton. He thought of those Sundays when her parents drove to Oakland: Jan wearing a loose dress, forcing herself to eat, throwing up with both faucets turned on and the toilet flushing as repeatedly as it could. He saw her with strained smile and voice, forcing her eyelids to stay open and her eyes to remain fixed on whoever asked about her boyfriend on the ship. All that time she was the only one in the world waiting for him: she had stood all that, had never mentioned abortion in those early months when it would have been possible, had never doubted (he assumed, hoped, then knew) that what she wanted was to live with him: a young kid who didn’t even know his way around San Francisco—or any other place, for that matter—who hardly ever liked himself unless he was with her, who was not even a man, so that here he was, tired and beginning to soften, Amiko hardly moving now, when all he had to do was simply get home, walk into the apartment and squeeze her while she talked and cried and pressed her head against his jaw until it hurt—
He heard voices down the hall. Someone was finished, or maybe all of them, and they would go now. He was ready to stop, had reached the point where, without shame, he could explain to Amiko what was already obvious, then go back to the Base. But he did not stop. He decided to wait: give them enough time to get downstairs, see that he wasn’t finished, then leave him. Until then, he would continue with Amiko. And that was what he was doing several moments later when the door opened and light from the hall crossed his legs,
followed by Hahn’s voice:
“You getting seconds, Teddy-Baby?”
And Hahn’s girl:
“No, no—you no go in there.”
But over his shoulder, poised as he was, Ted saw Hahn, Jensen, and McKittrick step into the room. One of them shut the door.
“Don’t stop now, Teddy-Baby,” Hahn said.
Someone crossed the room, and Ted was sitting near Amiko’s feet, on the edge of the bed, when Hahn turned on the light. He got up quickly and went for his clothes.
“What did I tell you?” Hahn said.
Amiko started cursing him. With his back turned he dressed, Amiko cursing still and Hahn and McKittrick and Jensen saying things he knew he would hear at night for the rest of his life. He buttoned his shirt, pulled on his trousers, and carrying his blouse, cap, and tie, started for the door. McKittrick was blocking it, but he didn’t care. Before he reached the door, he turned to look at Amiko, tears glistening as she knotted the belt around her kimono, screaming at Hahn:
“Why you do dat, you sonofabitch mean bastard—”
Ted faced her.
“That’s right,” he said. “That’s what he is.”
He looked at Hahn, who was grinning.
“Just like the Lieutenant said: he’s yellow.”
Hahn moved close to him.
“That right, Teddy-Baby?”
Hahn stiff-armed his chest, pushing him backward.
“Show me, Teddy-Baby.”
Ted had the blouse over one arm, his cap and tie held in that hand, and he knew that if he dropped the clothes he would be just as committed as if he had raised his fists. McKittrick was still at the door, Jensen a few paces inside the room; either one could stop him. But if he got his knee into Hahn—and that knee was telling him now to move forward, get within range—maybe they would be too surprised to grab him before he ran out the door. Hahn shoved him again; Amiko, who had been quiet, began her loud repetitive cursing; and Ted waited for the next time Hahn closed the distance between them. But when the moment came his legs refused, or he refused them, and after that shove he was near the door, hearing quick climbing footsteps under Amiko’s voice. A stocky Japanese man looked past McKittrick’s shoulder, into the room; then he went downstairs again.
“Let’s go,” McKittrick said. “He’s calling the Shore Patrol.”
“So what?” Hahn said. “What can they do?”
Jensen said something about a UD. Then Hahn pushed Ted with both hands and he went backward, glancing off McKittrick, into the hall. Now Hahn was at the door, the other two just behind him but still in the room, and Ted shouted:
“What are you trying to prove? Here—” he lifted his right arm, bent at the elbow, tightening his bicep “—feel it. You can beat on me all day and it won’t prove a Goddamn thing.”
Grinning, Hahn felt his bicep, then Ted jerked his arm down to his side again.
“You’re right, Teddy-Baby: I guess everything you got is tiny.”
“At least I just stick mine in women, you queer sonofabitch.”
He saw the swing beginning in Hahn’s face and a slight shifting of his weight, and he was bringing up his left arm when the fist struck his jaw, lifting him, sending him backward against the wall, then onto his hands and knees: looking at the floor, he wished he had been knocked out. Incredible that anyone could hit so hard. He gathered his blouse, tie, and cap, then stood up. Hahn put his left hand behind his back.
“Come on, Teddy-Baby. One hand.”
Ted slowly shook his head.
“You’d eat shit, wouldn’t you? I’m going to do it again, Teddy-Baby. Watch it, baby, it’s coming—” Hahn was bobbing and weaving in front of him. There must be words, some way he could stop this; then he saw it coming and ducked to one side so it struck him near his left eye, knocking him to the floor. He lay on his side, considered staying there until someone lifted him to his feet. Then he got up. Somewhere beneath his dazed pain, his limp weight, he thought that just for Hahn to see his face would be enough, that surely he looked like the most helpless, the most pitiful—Hahn slapped him.
“Cut it out, Hahn,” he said.
Hahn’s right hand was moving again, and Ted got his arm up in time to block it, but Hahn slapped him with his left.
“Don’t slap me, Hahn!”
McKittrick and Jensen were in the hall now. Then Amiko came out and ran past Ted, down the stairs, and watching her he slid his feet closer to the stairs. Two strides and he could be running down them.
“Come on,” McKittrick said. “You can’t make him fight.”
“Fuck you,” Ted said.
Hahn slapped him, harder than before. Jensen and McKittrick were far enough to Hahn’s rear; he could easily make the stairs, and if he could use surprise, could get his knee up there real hard, then he could be downstairs before Jensen or McKittrick moved after him. Real hard: drive them right up into Hahn’s throat, send that big sonofabitch to the floor, paralyzed. He half-turned, his left side to Hahn, and said:
“Fuck all you guys: I’m going.”
As Hahn stepped forward, Ted spun to meet him, his knee coming up fast; but Hahn saw it, twisted his hips, and caught it on his leg. Ted had only an instant to wish he had never tried that before Hahn’s fist, coming around with the full weight of his untwisting body, hit his chin and drove him straight back, falling to nothing, to the stairs, sliding down head first on his back, his vaguely conscious mind clutching the duration of his fall as something peaceful, saving, an ultimate respite—
He did not know whether his eyes were open. Voices above him spoke in Japanese, then he heard a familiar one but could not recognize it. He was aware that he was lying on his back, his legs stretched out, his arms probably at his sides; but he could neither move nor feel his arms and legs. Cold was all he felt, and absolute weakness: he did not want to move or be awake to hear those voices above him, one of them shrill as a hovering bird. Then he felt the blood on his neck: from some wound he could not locate, it was spurting warmly at regular intervals. At first, like a child wetting the bed, he gave himself up to its pleasant warmth on his cool skin. Then he was afraid.
When he woke again, his fear was waiting for him like the pain of illness; whatever remained of his consciousness searched for the bleeding and found it: a pulsating flow of blood at the back of his head, but still he could not feel the cut. Then heard the siren—rather, allowed it to enter his mind now that he had finished looking for the source of his bleeding—and he looked up at the dark head and chest of a man, who was speaking guttural Japanese. Now he felt the man’s fingers pressing the side of his throat and, with a gasp that he was too weak to make audible—as if some very small part of him in his chest, the only part he was aware of now, had taken that startled breath—he knew he was dying.
Either his eyes or head moved to the right: he saw a long bright ribbon of neon signs, thought of the word Iwakuni, and had no recollection of why he was here. He had one clear thought: nothing in the entire world mattered except Jan, for she loved him and her hands would cover her grieving face, and he knew that he should not be here, he had done something irrevocably wrong. Now he felt the vibration of the engine, as if he were sinking into the floor of the ambulance, merging with it.
7
STANDING IN FRONT of Captain Howard’s desk two hours after the Marines had attacked and theoretically sunk the Vanguard, Dan read a copy of the message from the Commanding General of Iwakuni; the original had been sent to the Commandant of the Marine Corps. In the language of telegrams, the message said that Hahn, Jensen, and McKittrick were being held for investigation concerning the assault and battery of Pvt. Theodore C. Freeman. It ended with: Freeman critical condition USNH Iwakuni fractured skull. Looking at Freeman’s printed name, Dan saw him chasing his barracks cap down the flight deck. Then he looked at Captain Howard.
“He was your orderly,” he said.
He dropped the message, watched it fall slowly and settle near a thin stack of papers; o
n the top one, he saw his name.
“Is that my fitness report and letter?”
“Yes. You may read them now, if you like. If you’d rather wait—”
“Might as well. Everything else happens at once around here.”
He read them quickly, standing with his weight on one stiffened leg.
“That’s not me,” he said, and tossed them on the desk. He picked up the message and looked at its last sentence.
“Mister Tierney, I know you don’t want my advice, but I’ll give it anyway. You notice your fitness report says that with more experience you might develop into a good career officer, provided you gain some maturity. But I’m beginning to wonder. It looks to me like you’ve given up. You’re acting like some of my disgruntled Reserve officers. I was informed of your poor leadership this morning. What you said over those phones is inexcusable from an officer. It’s harmful to the morale of the men—and you say you’re concerned about their welfare.”
“Good old Gun Boss: doesn’t miss a chance.”
“There are other officers on this ship besides Commander Craig.”
“That’s right. There’s Doc Butler and you.”
“Mister Tierney, another indication of your poor attitude is that I have to remind you, a Marine officer, that you have not said sir since you came into this cabin.”
“Shit. Freeman’s dying.”
He tossed the message toward the desk, saw with satisfaction that it fell short, and walked out. He went to his room and sat down with pen and paper. But he did not begin his statement. He would write to Jan first, get her address from the brig mail log, and there was no use writing that letter until—When he realized what he was waiting for, he left his room. In the passageway he stopped. He went back into his room, phoned Tolleson, and said to meet him on the sponson deck where physical conditioning was held.