“Have you ever considered,” he asked while smoke streamed from his nostrils and whirled out of the cockpit, “the possibility of American suicide squadrons? You assume the kamikaze is peculiar to the Japanese. We all do. And so it is, but for one reason only: as yet America has not been obliged to resort to such tactics. I doubt if we will hear of them in this war, because we seem to be winning, and because at present the Americans are not psychologically oriented to suicide, but there may come a time when we will begin to hear of the Minute Men, for example, or, let’s say, the Pilgrims. They would wear distinctive uniforms—just think of the possibilities! Boots, epaulets, a star-spangled neckerchief, perhaps a tri-cornered hat. Now let’s continue: they would have carte blanche, as do the condemned. It could be made quite attractive economically—a handsome government annuity for the widow and children. Then, too, it would be the ultimate challenge, and youth does love a challenge. With the full weight of government propaganda behind it, such a program would gradually be regarded as not unnatural. After all, these posters we now see in every post office—the ones which portray a man charging with a fixed bayonet while in the shadows behind him we see a charging football player—we accept this utterly preposterous analogy. Is war a game? War games, indeed we call them. A game! Fancy that! And the slogan beneath the poster, what of that? It was conceived in some advertiser’s hollow head to ring out as one enunciates it. Slogans are generally alliterative because alliteration plugs the holes of slovenly logic. For instance: Courage! Confidence! Cooperation! Now should anyone stop to reflect, which, for better or worse, the poster cannot prevent one’s doing, it becomes apparent that this exhortation is valid for whatever one has in mind, whether it is winning a war by bayoneting the enemy, robbing a blind man, or decapitating the little wife.
“Consider the euphemisms for aggression. They change like a menu; all that truly matters is that they titillate the simpleton’s palate. Prior to assaulting a nation it is only necessary to disseminate the information that the invasion has become an ‘obligatory assault’ or is a form of ‘remedial pacification,’ or that, we’ll say, in order to insure freedom, with the usual ecclesiastic blessings, we intend to forestall aggression by means of, a ‘preventive war.’
“We were, as you know, itching to enter this one. Not long ago I discovered that our naval vessels in the Atlantic received orders—two months before Pearl Harbor—to destroy any German or Italian naval or air force encountered. And several days prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor our Pacific forces received orders to sink any Japanese ship they encountered. By the purest luck our warships encountered no Japanese. But what if they had? What then? How would history read? I’ll give you another fact: in September of nineteen forty-one, three months before our declaration of war, we destroyed two Nazi weather stations in Greenland and killed several Germans. The necessity of this I am not arguing either way—it is the hypocrisy I resent.”
Presently he went on. “Haven’t you learned that we are never told the truth until such a time as the truth can no longer affect the course of events? A generation ago our fathers went raging off to destroy the Kaiser because he was maiming Belgian children. Not until long after the war were our fathers informed that no such thing ever happened—it was a fable created to stimulate enlistment. By then, of course, what difference did it make?”
“But atrocities do occur.”
“The reply of a slipshod mind. Certainly they occur. And America, like every other nation, is guilty. How many thousands of prisoners have been shot in the back by American troops too lazy, or tired, or angry, to honor the terms of surrender? Yet, for the moment, that is irrelevant. A generation ago this nation was outraged by the news that one hundred and fourteen Americans had gone down on the Lusitania. What else was aboard that ship? Nobody could find out—not until the war was over. Only then did we learn that it was packed with munitions for the British: two hundred tons of rifle ammunition, two thousand cases of cartridges, eleven tons of black powder! The Lusitania, furthermore, was a British ship, not an American ship. The German high command was guilty only of a tactical error, that error being that the destruction of the ship did not quite compensate for the subsequent entrance of the United States into the war.”
“Then you have no interest in defending the United States?”
“In an extremity I would assassinate whoever or whatever threatened me, without the slightest compunction. But when it was over I would not genuflect in the expectation of being commended by God and bemedaled by the nation, for if there were a God surely he would not hesitate to strike me with lightning.”
“But won’t it bother you to be training cadets? I mean, knowing you were training them eventually to kill other people?”
Cole cranked himself up in the seat, took over the controls, and swung the airplane around a billowing cloud. Far below them the Mississippi gleamed in the noonday sun, and there was the city of New Orleans and the vast, shallow lake, and the field with its flashing beacon and swastika-like complex of runways.
“I impart to them my skill,” he said. “That is all they receive from my hands. If, then, they commit murder, how can you hold me culpable?”
He landed the plane smoothly, and as the Yellow Peril rolled along the runway, he said, “How about giving me some assistance on the brakes? They get pulpy in this hot weather.”
So, working together, pressing the brakes in unison, they taxied in.
A few days later Melvin was assigned to another job, cleaning the officers’ barracks. He was sorry to be removed from the dispensary because he was beginning to enjoy it, but there was nothing he could do about the assignment. He thought of asking Cole to intercede; he might have some influence, despite the fact that he was only an ensign, but after thinking it through Melvin decided not to ask. For one thing, he had not seen Cole since their flight together, which very strongly implied that Cole had no interest in seeing him again. Then, too, there was a possibility Cole might have had something to do with having him transferred, although this was so utterly pointless that he could not take the idea seriously.
He dreaded cleaning up Cole’s room. Each morning as he approached, working his way along the corridor, he was hoping the room would be empty, but one day when he knocked, instead of silence he heard the bored voice call, “Yes? What is it?”
Melvin steadied himself and opened the door and walked in, holding up the mop and the pail.
Cole was lying on the bed smoking a slender, ladylike cigar with a long, zinc-white ash. It gave off a pleasant but rather sugary aroma. He was reading the sports section of the newspaper. He lowered the paper to his chest and watched Melvin go around raising the shades.
“Put the shades back the way you found them,” he said.
Melvin was about to begin mopping the floor; he leaned the mop against the desk and lowered the shades.
“That starboard shade was almost touching the sill,” Cole murmured. “Let’s see you fix it.”
Melvin dropped the mop on the floor and jerked the shade a few inches further down.
“Square it away,” Cole said evenly. “I said, square it away. There, that’s better,” he added, “But it’s still a trifle high. I don’t like the glare from outside.”
“It’s good enough the way it is.”
“On the bureau you’ll find my nail file. Bring it to me.”
Melvin ignored him and commenced mopping the floor.
Cole folded the newspaper. He tapped ashes on the wet linoleum.
“I’ve about had enough,” Melvin said. “I’ve got a bellyful, so look out.”
“Are you disobeying an order?”
“You know what you can do with your orders.”
“Have you any idea what I could do to you for that remark?”
“I’ve been in this business as long as you have,” Melvin said. He slung the mop around beneath the bed. “Be careful, Pat. I’m warning you.”
“Is that the way you habitually address an officer?”
“Since when are you an officer?”
Cole raised himself to one elbow and looked at Melvin with an expression of boredom, or negligence, in which there was only the barest curiosity, and said, “You can’t do anything, can you? Not anything!”
“How would you like a poke in the nose?”
At this Cole gave a wan smile and placed the cigar delicately between his front teeth as though he might nip away the butt.
Melvin continued working, but the silence became oppressive, so he said, “Any new word from Roska?”
Cole made no attempt to answer, nor even indicated that he had heard; he was watching, turning the cigar around in his smiling lips with his little finger hooked as though he had hold of a teacup.
“Suit yourself. Don’t answer. It doesn’t make a damn to me. How much longer will you be here?”
Gradually Cole relaxed on the bed and crossed his arms over the paper. He looked at the ceiling with a whimsical air and replied, “You can hardly wait for me to shove off. Isn’t that so?” He flipped the burning cigar through the doorway into the hall where the clean-up cart was parked and waited to see what would happen.
Melvin began to twist the filthy water from the mop; he did not know quite why, but this part of his duty was particularly odious, more so than emptying garbage or surgical waste, and he looked at the pail with aversion, conscious that Cole was aware of his extreme distaste and was amused.
“As a matter of fact, now that you mention it,” Melvin said, while the water dripped from the strings, “maybe it won’t really break my heart when you do shove off.”
“I have one question. I’m not requesting an answer. I do suggest, however, you take a few minutes some day after I’ve gone to reflect on it.” He shook open the newspaper so that his face was concealed, and asked, “How do you think it makes me feel to see you doing this?” And he was never again in his room when Melvin came around.
One morning several weeks later, while the swimming pool was unrestricted, Melvin was stroking along under water when he bumped into a pair of pale, slender legs and the first thing that came into his mind was that these legs belonged to a WAVE; he popped to the surface with a look of buoyant anticipation but was confronted by a dripping mustache. Cole appeared to be equally startled.
They were near the deepest part of the pool and in order to talk they were obliged to tread water. After the first contact and recognition they had each backed away so that a few yards of water separated them.
“How’s it going?” Melvin asked, determined to be civil.
“I bought a convertible,” Cole said. He pushed the hair out of his eyes and squinted into the maze of white-washed rafters overhead.
They rode high in the water, which reeked of chlorine, their legs churning as though they were on unicycles.
“What happened to your fiancée who was supposed to come to the graduation with your folks?” Melvin asked.
“She married a 4-F.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I remember you talking about her even back at Albuquerque.”
“You’re sorry?” Cole inquired with a mocking smile. “I’m touched.”
“All right, just skip it,” Melvin said, controlling an impulse to spring at him and hold him under until he drowned. He was surprised that Cole did not swim away. They had nothing in common any more. What had seemed a genuine and permanent bond was due simply to the fact that circumstances had placed them in the same barracks and classrooms for a while. They had become accustomed to each other, as they had become accustomed to abuse, uncertainty, and fear throughout the cadet program, as they had become accustomed to obstacle courses and curious instructions and philosophical acceptance of the fact that it was to result in peace, subsequent to the usual damage, waste, mutilation, death, fire, wrath, and havoc.
“Why is this water so dark?” Melvin inquired, peering down. “Have they painted the bottom?”
“Somebody told me it’s from an artesian well.”
This sounded like a reasonable explanation. Melvin tried to see his hand a few inches beneath the surface. “I didn’t know artesian water was black.”
“Well, you think about it,” said Cole; he put his face into the water and snorted, and came up dripping. “So long,” he remarked briefly, filled his lungs with air, and dove out of sight. He reappeared at the shallow end of the pool, where he climbed the ladder, picked up a towel and dark glasses and baseball cap, and went outside to the sun deck. Melvin could see him preparing to lie down on a gymnasium mat.
Not many days after this, when he entered Cole’s room at the usual hour he found it vacant. Linens and blankets were heaped on the mattress and the bureau drawers were open. The desk drawer was on top of the desk, as though he had become impatient with the details of packing and had perhaps just emptied his possessions into his cruise box. Paper clips, pencil stubs, some old literary magazines, an almost empty gin bottle, and a book or two—these were the mementos on the floor, and in the wastebasket a few of the slim, sweet cigars.
There was such finality in this disorder that Melvin paused, and though he had no desire to meet Cole again he wondered where he had gone, and felt somewhat restless. He recalled that at Pensacola Cole had been quite certain of an assignment to Glenview after finishing the instructors’ college. Curious as to whether he had in fact been able to manipulate the machinery of the Navy, Melvin walked over to the administration building that afternoon and asked the WAVE on duty if she could let him know where Ensign Cole had been sent. Somewhat to his surprise she got up without hesitation and went to a filing cabinet; in a few moments she came back and said Ensign Cole had received orders to report for duty as a primary instructor at the Naval Air Station in Glenview.
“Old Dead-Eye Dick,” said Melvin, and the WAVE looked at him uneasily.
September brought no relief from the breathless, stagnant heat. Melvin occasionally rode the bus into New Orleans. There, for an hour or two, he wandered up and down Canal Street and through the French Quarter in the hope that something rare and unforgettable would occur, but nothing ever did. Ordinarily he ended each night at the USO. Listless and sticky in his tight white uniform he played checkers with a gravely discouraged expression until it was time to return to the base.
In October a card arrived from Sam Horne. It had been forwarded from Kansas City. Horne was in Honolulu. He had gotten married the previous summer, about two months after leaving Pensacola. His wife was still in the United States and they expected their first child a bit sooner than was customary, probably around Lincoln’s birthday. Horne was confident it would be a son.
On receipt of this news, concluding that he had been left behind in every possible respect, Melvin went into New Orleans and hastily drank himself into a stupor. The Shore Patrol came across him lying in an alley with neither wallet nor shoes; they picked him up by the hands and feet and started carrying him to the wagon. On the way he woke up, and was not displeased to find himself being carried, but began to struggle in order to prove that he could not be handled so unceremoniously. The door banged shut on his protest and he relapsed into a state of aggrieved rumination. Everything considered, it was an ignominious way to salute his best friend, and while he was riding back to the base with the other drunken sailors he reflected that his dossier by this time must resemble that of a confirmed bolshevik.
Having been in the service of the United States Navy for what seemed to him quite a long time he wrote to his father that he would get a leave at Christmas, but he didn’t. He was not able to understand this, and went to the administration building determined to look into naval regulations governing his situation, but could not get in to talk to anybody. Then, in January, he was detached from New Orleans and was sent to a base in central Texas. He rode on a train filled with soldiers, and, knowing that he had not been a particularly valuable piece of property so far, began to wonder if the Navy had somehow contrived to trade him to the Army.
19
On the day he repo
rted for duty aboard his new station a chief petty officer with gold hash marks led him around to the rear of a low, white-washed adobe building where there was a flagstone patio. On this patio were a number of wide-backed chairs and glass-topped tables shaded by beach umbrellas, and at the far end there was a barbecue oven. There was also a row of little buckets.
“Tell me your name, son,” said the chief in a kindly tone. He was a grizzled old man whose hands sometimes trembled and whose head nodded.
“Isaacs,” Melvin said, looking suspiciously at the buckets.
“That’s fine, son,” the chief said, and patted him on the shoulder. He opened the screen door of the building and stepped inside. When he came out he was swinging a golf club. “This here,” he said, “is a golf club, son. Club to play golf with.”
Melvin nodded. The club was a brassie.
“You got her so far, boy?”
“I think so.”
“That’s fine,” the old chief petty officer said. “You won’t have no trouble, provided you listen close and do like I say. Them little bitty buckets over yonder, you see them buckets? Go get me one of them. They is full of balls.”
Melvin walked across the patio, picked up one of the buckets, and brought it back to the chief, who had waited silently in the shade.
“That’s fine,” the chief said. He waggled the brassie a few times, cleared his throat, spat on the flagstones, and beckoned the new seaman to follow him.
They walked without haste through the glaring light, past the barbecue oven, and stepped off the patio and continued across the dusty earth until they came to a bunker. They climbed to the top and here, all at once, Melvin got his first view of the Texas prairie. It was concave, studded with gopher holes and pearl-gray sagebrush, and gave the impression of being solidly packed with dust. A telephone line which was attached to the adobe BOQ went straight out and kept going and finally, miles away, disappeared over the horizon—the poles diminishing regularly with stark, geometric purpose. Melvin stood on top of the bunker holding the bucket of golf balls, limp with astonishment. The distant telephone poles rippled in the drifting waves of heat. Nothing else moved. There were no birds in the stupendous sky, and the sky appeared to be everywhere except directly beneath his feet. There was no sign of life. The earth sagged and baked in the light of the roaring sun, like the floor of an evaporated ocean.
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