by Andre Dubus
He read his orders again. When he had received orders to sea duty he had felt that somehow his name had made an imprint on Headquarters Marine Corps: they knew who he was, what he was going to become, and they had given him a duty commensurate with his worth. Now they had changed their minds and, with shame, he imagined them sternly speaking his name as they took him away from the infantry, the troops, and sent him to a duty where he could do neither bad nor good: Force Service Regiment, where they dumped Reserve lieutenants with poor attitudes, old ex-enlisted captains who had no future except doing their jobs every day while they waited for the twentieth year, majors and lieutenant-colonels who were not given the command of infantry units because earlier in their careers they had not been at the right place at the right time or, being there, had not seized the promise of the day. He would be with all those retread veterans and misfit Reserves, working in a supply or maintenance unit, wandering among warehouses or garages or welding shops, a useless man among technicians. And the troops: he had seen them at Camp Pendleton, duck-tailed, soft, as unmilitary as the most casual sailor. They worked in shops or warehouses five days a week, were inspected rarely and leniently because no one expected them to look like Marines. In trucks and jeeps, they went to the field perhaps once a year when the entire division had an exercise; in the field—my God—they set up shower units for combat troops, established maintenance areas far behind the lines where they could work on vehicles and weapons. He had to grit his teeth when he remembered that they even had an ice cream platoon.
And the Marine Corps was relatively small: you never went to a duty station without running into an old friend. That was not all: people kept track of each other through Navy Times or The Marine Corps Gazette, and his friends would know that he had been ordered to the Vanguard (they would have envied that) and, after half a tour, transferred to the Second Division. At least the Gazette would only say: From USS Vanguard to 2nd Marine Division, and his friends would assume his duty was with the infantry. Still, in offices and clubs, they would be shaking their heads, wondering why Dan Tierney got orders so fast. Also, he could not complete a two- or three-year tour with the FSR without seeing old friends: giving them explanations which they would only partially believe, for everyone who was shanghaied or relieved or reprimanded always blamed the Old Man. Their eyes would shift with embarrassment for him as they listened; once in a while they would grant him a soft curse directed at that Navy Captain; but afterward he would be Dan Tierney, Honor Man at Basic School, who did all right as an infantry platoon commander but couldn’t hack it as an Acting CO aboard ship.
Khristy would probably learn of his transfer from her father, who would see his name in the Gazette. Maybe she would write him then, knowing he was in trouble. And though he yearned for that letter, he forcefully shook his head, pressed his palms on the desk. If she wrote, it would be with the hope that he was disillusioned and was going to resign. Only for a moment did he consider resigning. If he did that, it was all over: those whisperings of destiny he had heard for seven years, since he first saw the Officer Procurement Officer, a Marine captain in blues, standing near the table and posters in the student union at college. He was not just any man, to sit at a desk or drive around selling things—he had a profession.
His hands were twisting his swagger stick: for three years he would not lead infantry troops in the field. He would not lead anyone. He would watch them work, he would do some paperwork of his own, then go to the BOQ at night and shine his shoes.
He phoned Alex and asked him to go to the wardroom for coffee. Then he went up and waited in the lounge. When Alex came in, Dan caught himself before he averted his eyes. He followed Alex to an empty table and sat beside him, watching a group of junior officers several tables away. He envied their apparent satisfaction.
“You don’t understand it,” he said, “but you know how I feel about the Corps.”
“I understand.”
“Wrong word, then. You don’t approve.”
“I approve of you. I just don’t approve of the Marine Corps.”
Dan shrugged.
“They don’t approve of me right now,” he said. “I just got a bad set of orders: a service regiment at Camp Lejeune. It’s where they put officers so they won’t do any more harm. I’m pretty sure I’ll get passed over for captain next year and picked up the second time around, in two years. But it’s not the promotion I’m worried about: it’s doing two or three years in that service regiment, and losing face by getting passed over once.”
“I know. I wouldn’t say you’ve acted like a promotion- sweater lately.”
Dan remembered how good he had felt when he yelled at Captain Howard and was put under arrest. Still watching the junior officers, he said:
“You become a Marine infantry officer and you think for the rest of your career you’ll at least have pride every day. Then they take it away from you.” Now he looked at Alex. “For the next two or three years I’ll be ashamed of where I work.”
“You know that doesn’t really matter.”
“It does in my world.”
“That’s the whole trouble.”
Dan shook his head.
“No. Listen: I’ve always been scornful of those guys who aren’t line officers. Disbursing, supply, motor transport—I always thought they were just making a living, they weren’t really Marines. And now I’m one of them. But I shouldn’t be: I’m a good Marine. The Marine Corps might not know it right now, but they need me.”
He stopped, lifted his hands from the table, and let them fall.
“It’s because I believe. Or like that general I told you about, what he said: Living the lie and making the lie come true—”
“—We’ve been doing the first half of that around here for some time.”
“Then it’s time to start on the last half. I’ve got to square away at FSR so I can get back to the troops. I’m not going to resign. It’s comeback or nothing. Like the Communists say: one step backward and two forward. When I go to that fat happy outfit, I’ll have to keep my mouth shut, stop fighting city hall.”
“I thought that’s what city hall was for.”
“Not if you believe in it.”
“You can’t—not after the past three days on this ship.”
“I believe in what it stands for.”
“Yes. But what it stands for is—”
Then Alex stopped, put a hand on Dan’s shoulder, and squeezed; then his hand was gone.
“All right,” he said. “I believe in a few abstract lies too. Like justice. Only thing is, my little beliefs are relatively harmless.”
He finished his coffee, frowning as he swallowed, because it had cooled.
“Forget I said that. What about your letter to the Commandant?”
Dan stood up.
“I’ll go do that now and see what happens.”
For a long while before writing his statements—one for the letter of reprimand and another for the unsatisfactory fitness report—he lay on his bunk, making absolutely sure that his alternatives were simply defined: revenge or his profession. Recalling his fights with Captain Howard he knew he would write to the Commandant and even Magnuson if Freeman were still alive. He had the courage for that. But with Freeman dead, the most he could accomplish with a new fight was revenge, an immediate goal, a thing of the present and therefore almost the past. If he took this revenge, focused his life on one issue right now, he might change the course of his own future. He hoped that after leaving the Force Service Regiment he would command an infantry company. Someday a battalion; then, if he was lucky, a regiment. And he would not get command billets by establishing a reputation as a troublemaker. Already his name was too familiar at Headquarters Marine Corps; it was the wrong time to send a letter accusing Captain Howard of dishonesty, especially when the victim of that dishonesty had become a dead horse.
In a way, he owed it to Freeman to endure as a professional. The dead Freeman did not need avenging; but other Freema
ns, in junior high schools now all over the United States, would some day need him as their commanding officer, just as he needed them as evidence of his worth. He had something to give them: he could infuse his spirit into training which would make them better men and possibly save their lives as well. That was his final choice; those men who, after two or three years, he would lead.
He left his bunk. Sitting at his desk, he opened his box of stationery. Khristy’s letter was there, in its thin blue envelope. He picked it up and read his name and address, then hers. He took two sheets of stationery and dropped Khristy’s letter back in the box.
For a while he did not write. He was not hesitating: he had made his decision, and now he was suffering the consequences before his writing made them real, like a man trying a razor blade on his arm before pressing it to his throat. He knew there was more than Freeman involved, that Freeman represented a truth which also needed avenging; yet last night, in his letter to Jan, he had denied that truth. Some part of him as palpable as blood had flowed then; and now he sat, even looking at his right hand, as if he could actually see and feel the blood coursing down his arm to gather in his fingers.
Then he picked up his pen and wrote the first of his statements, using the words which he would repeat in his answer to the letter of reprimand:
I have seen subject fitness report and have no statement to make.
At eight o’clock next morning, the Vanguard was approaching the harbor at Iwakuni. She was too large to moor at the pier, so she would drop anchor, and liberty boats would take the officers and crew ashore. From the sponson deck, where he stood alone, Dan watched the steep green Japanese coast. He knew that Captain Schneider would be waiting at the pier, grinning, quickly returning the salute Dan would give him from the liberty boat, so he could wave. Dan pitied him for having to get all this news at once.
His footlocker and officer’s suitcase were packed; his orders were endorsed, and his statements had been typed by Tolleson, who at first had been surprised, then—before Dan could explain—had said:
“That’s probably a smart move, sir. Trouble don’t raise the dead.”
Last night Alex had spent an hour or so with him; Dan had folded uniforms and packed, rarely looking at Alex, who talked about all the possibilities in Hahn’s case, finally guessing that Hahn would get the maximum sentence—ten years—and that some of it would be cut by the convening authority. When he asked about the statements, Dan had shrugged and said:
“They’re typed and signed, for whatever that’s worth.”
“Good.”
“If they don’t follow up on it, we’ll know that’s the name of the game.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised at anything,” Alex said. “I’ll let you know.”
Shortly after Taps Alex got up and said he was going to bed.
“We won’t sleep tomorrow,” he said. “You ready?”
“I’m ready. We’ll throw a good one.”
So they had not said goodbye, had put it off until tonight when they could drink. But tonight would not be one of those memorable last drunks with a friend, those farewells that imitate and foreshadow death. For Dan had already told him goodbye, yesterday afternoon at his desk, and it was becoming more difficult for him to look into Alex’s eyes.
Now he breathed the salt air and watched the bright green sunlit hills sliding past. He was having trouble finding something to do with his hands, for he had packed his swagger stick in its cardboard case where it would remain until he was a captain with his own infantry company. Between him and that time, he could foresee nothing out of the ordinary, no decisions that were not routine. He would come and go unobtrusively, keeping his energies dormant until the Corps let him emerge, restored because forgotten, from the Force Service Regiment.
The Vanguard was passing cliffs now, rising straight from the beach, and he remembered a time when Khristy had passionately argued that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was immoral. Dan had failed to show her why she was wrong; with tears in her eyes she angrily shook her head and told him his naïveté was almost as evil as the pragmatic minds of generals and politicians. On this cruise he had been to Hiroshima, had seen the museum, the monuments, the ruins at ground zero; he had looked sorrowfully at children darting through alleys or urinating on sidewalks. And two months ago, while he and Alex were drinking one afternoon in a nearly empty Yokosuka bar, the Japanese bar manager had talked to them, had a drink with them, and even given them two rounds. There had been something furtive about the man, and Dan had assumed that he was going to offer them women or pornography. So, prepared for that sort of encroachment, he was late understanding what the man actually wanted. Leaning toward Dan’s face, he was pointing to the breast pocket of his coat, and saying: On ship—you have ladiation? his fingers inserted now into his pocket, an obsequious almost frightened grin on his face, and his eyes blinking and uncertain, as though he might cry—or run away—if he were rebuked. Have what? Dan said. Then he knew, an instant before Alex said it: A dosimeter? The man nodded excitedly, as if he were relieved, but he was not: he stopped grinning, leaned closer to Dan who was saying: Tells radiation dosage, pointing at his own pocket to show that they were talking about the same thing, the man’s English was working, and dosimeters did indeed fit in your shirt pocket. Then the man said: Can you get one? For me? He was starting to smile again when Dan abruptly shook his head and said: No, it can’t be done, and now it was Dan who wanted to run away. They had finished their drinks and left.
Now, two months later—and for all his life, he knew—he could vividly recall every nuance of that man’s voice, every detail of his face, especially his eyes which must have been forty years old. Yet watching these cliffs from the ship he told Khristy once again: yes, by God, it was terrible; but there had been no other choice, for think of all those young Marines who would have died assaulting the beaches of Japan.
A Biography of Andre Dubus
Andre Dubus (1936–1999) is considered one of the greatest American short story writers of the twentieth century. His collections of short fiction, which include Adultery & Other Choices (1977), The Times Are Never So Bad (1983) and The Last Worthless Evening (1986), are notable for their spare prose and illuminative, albeit subtle, insights into the human heart. He is often compared to Anton Chekhov and revered as a “writer’s writer.”
Born on August 11, 1936, in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Dubus grew up the oldest child of a Cajun-Irish Catholic family in Lafayette. There, he attended the De La Salle Christian Brothers, a Catholic school that helped nurture a young Dubus’s love of literature. He later enrolled at McNeese State College in Lake Charles, where he acquired his BA in English and journalism. Following his graduation in 1958, he spent six years in the United States Marine Corps as a lieutenant and captain—an experience that would inspire him to write his first and only novel, The Lieutenant (1967). During this time, he also married his first wife, Patricia, and started a family.
After concluding his military service in 1964, Dubus moved with his wife and their four children to Iowa City, where he was to earn his MFA from the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. While there, he studied under acclaimed novelist and short story writer Richard Yates, whose particular brand of realism would inform Dubus’s work in the years to come. In 1966, Dubus relocated to New England, teaching English and creative writing at Bradford College in Bradford, Massachusetts, and beginning his own career as an author. Over an illustrious career, he wrote a total of six collections of short fiction, two collections of essays, one novel, and a stand-alone novella, Voices from the Moon (1984)—about a young boy who must come to terms with his faith in the wake of two family divorces—and was awarded the Boston Globe’s first annual Lawrence L. Winship Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, the Rea Award for the Short Story, and the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations.
In the summer of 1986,
tragedy struck when Dubus pulled over to help two disabled motorists on a highway between Boston and his home in Haverhill, Massachusetts. As he exited his car, another vehicle swerved and hit him. The accident crushed both his legs and would confine him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Plagued by residual pain, he sunk into a depression that was further exacerbated by his divorce from his third wife, Peggy, and subsequent estrangement from their two young daughters, Cadence and Madeleine. Buoyed by his faith, he continued to write—in his final decade, he would pen two books of autobiographical essays, Broken Vessels (1991) and Meditations from a Moveable Chair (1998), and a final collection of short stories, Dancing After Hours (1996), which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist—and even held a workshop for young writers at his home each week.
In 1999, Dubus died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-two. He is survived by three ex-wives and his six children, among them the author Andre Dubus III. Since his death, two of Dubus’s short works have been adapted for the screen: “Killings,” which was featured in Finding a Girl in America (1980), became the critically acclaimed film In the Bedroom (2001), starring Sissy Spacek, Tom Wilkinson, and Marisa Tomei; and We Don’t Live Here Anymore (2004), starring Mark Ruffalo, Laura Dern, Peter Krause, and Naomi Watts, is based on Dubus’s novella of the same name from his debut collection, Separate Flights (1975).
Dubus Sr., with a sixteen-month-old Andre in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Andre’s sister Elizabeth is on the left and Kathryn is on the right. The family is bundled up for the Louisiana winter, which Kathryn remembers as being much colder during her childhood than it is now.