Chapter 22: On the Thin Ice of the Day
Lieutenant Nathaniel Hooper: Japan, 1946
WE WERE STUCK UNDER a sky the color of dirty ice, coming to terms with the reality that we were a helluva a long way from home. The breeze had picked up, chilling us in our wet uniforms, and we needed to move off the beach to stay warm, if nothing else. We climbed, all of us this time, over the seawall and turned inland. My face felt heavy under the helmet, greasy from the gun powder that hung in the air. Never mind the cold, I was sweating part of my uniform black.
It wasn’t fifty steps before I stood in front of the skeleton of the Japanese pillbox, defecated on just a few minutes earlier by naval gunfire. There were pieces of the Jap machine gun itself left, almost not enough to even tell it had been a thing trying to kill me minutes before. As we passed, Laabs took a playful swing at the gun barrel, then quickly let off a string of ripe profanity, pulling his hand to his mouth to suck at the burn caused by the still-hot metal.
Bodies had been thrown up into the trees, hanging like Christmas ornaments. The enemy soldiers on the ground were a mix of stories. Most you’d need a spoon to gather up. But one, there was too much of him left. He still had his glasses on somehow, one lens shattered. I felt like Dougie Dietz, who used to beat me up in school back in Ohio.
After passing through the trees, we came into a kind of open space, half-sand, half-dirt, with weedy sea grass about waist high, thick as hair. The grass whispered soft enough to lull as we walked through, but never let us see more than a few feet ahead. The sweat started in that one spot in the small of my back. Nothing good ever followed when that happened.
“Hey, Sarge, movement in the grass,” Marino said. We didn’t have guys like him back home, but we knew about them from the preacher: Marino was a hood, shrewd and sour, dangerous to boys from Ohio.
“It’s a dog, knucklehead,” one of the other men, Polanski, said. How’d I miss this guy aboard ship, with that face like a potato, teeth the color of root beer?
“It’s a dog, sir,” Burke said.
“I can see it’s a dog. Keep your heads down,” I said. I wasn’t sure what keeping our heads down had to do with a dog, but it sounded like a thing a leader would say. Nobody put their head down.
“Can I shoot it? I wanna shoot something in Japan,” Marino said.
“It’s just a dog,” I said.
“But it’s an enemy dog,” Marino said. “Sir.”
“Listen to the Lieutenant, rank has its privileges. And it’s a goddamn puppy, not a dog,” Sergeant Laabs said. “And you, Marino, ease up on your dago mouth, you’re acting like John Wayne with a hard-on. Dammit, you, Private Jones, put that ration can away.”
“Dog looks hungry, and if we ain’t gonna shoot it, we probably should feed it,” Jones said.
“Wait for the Lieutenant to make a decision,” Laabs said. I could swear I saw him wink at Smitty before he turned to me. “What should we do here, sir, you being in charge and all?”
“I think I see a village up ahead. Maybe it came from there,” I said.
“Sir, you want Sergeant Laabs to call out to the ships, get a Navy spitball on that village?” Smitty said. He already had the handset out, waving it toward Laabs, and, as a mean afterthought, back at me. I needed time to sort out being in charge of everything, including, apparently, a stray dog. Dammit, not a dog, a puppy. A puppy—as I stood there, I found myself slipping away, smelling the sweet Ohio clay turned over in the spring, seeing the field behind Reeve Primary School, looking past the electrical lines leading off forever…
“Goddammit, we are not here to care about dogs, we are here to, um, liberate Japan,” I said.
“Sir, Sergeant Laabs said it was a puppy, not a dog, so—”
“Jones, be quiet. Sergeant Laabs, get the squad ready to move toward that village. We’ll check it out on our way inland.”
“Can I at least throw a rock at the puppy, Lieutenant, scare it away?” Jones said.
“Fine, throw the damn rock, Jones, but don’t hit the puppy,” I said. It was the first decision where my mistakes weren’t counted in lives.
“Jeez, Sergeant, you see one day of this and start praying you never see another.”
“Oh my, that is true, Lieutenant.”
THINGS WERE QUIET ENOUGH I could imagine someone had reached for a big knob and turned down the volume on the war. Out in the distance it was repetitions of low ridges, leading to higher hills. This might be a pretty country someday. We crossed a frozen rice paddy, moving inland to check out the village I’d seen, maybe where the dog had come from, and to connect up with our own forces. At home I skated on ponds sort of like this paddy. I wondered when the last time someone else had. Maybe those people from the village.
We were strung out like links in a chain. The distance between each of us was supposed to be a couple of paces, for safety in case we were shelled, but the men bunched up so they could talk. Having survived the landing and the puppy, everyone was in what passed for a good mood, and the men stomped on the thin ice, just for the fun and the sound as they teased and cursed each other.
“Steiner, wait up. I got a joke for you. You hear the one about the midget and the horse?” Jones said.
“It’s a midget, a horse and a drunk, asshole,” Marino said. “Your jokes go over like a lead balloon.”
“Whatever. How’s it go?” Steiner said. He had a smile on that said he probably had heard a lot of off-color stories in his time. A dead cigarette dangled from his lip. He clicked open his Zippo to light it with one hand.
There were American artillery rounds passing overhead, reaching inland—even I could tell the incoming from outgoing now—followed by our Navy fighters, Bearcats, in their blue-almost-black paint, aluminum birds that had migrated here alongside us. Up higher, the sun glinted off the silver fuselages of the B-29s. They were bombing out of our new bases on Kyushu, commuters, two trips a day, to empty their bowels on some Japanese city. Enemy couldn’t touch us up there. All along the horizon, smoke was rising like exclamation points. It made me feel safe, as my war had pleasantly settled into a spectator sport.
“Lemme tell the joke, Marino, will ya?” Jones said. The three men paused while the rest of the squad moved forward. Better keep moving, Laabs said, but I stopped too, wanting to hear the joke myself.
“C’mon, tell the damn joke, Jones, some of us ain’t got all day,” Marino said.
“So this midget, a horse,” Jones looked at Marino, “…and a drunk… walk into a bar, and the midget says ‘Gimme a drink for my horse,’ and the drunk says, ‘That ain’t no horse, that’s a—’”
Three pops.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
There was no echo. Instead, in place of each pop was a pink mist. That was the three boys up ahead, the ones who hadn’t stopped for the midget, the horse, and the drunk, who just stepped on three land mines, which destroyed their bodies with such efficiency that everything but a little bit of what they used to be was gone. Their mist blew through me, kids to ghosts in the space of a breath I sucked in, taking them inside me. The others who kept the pace count were okay; the mines were specific in their work.
The dead hadn’t been with us even long enough to have acquired wartime nicknames—no Tex, no kid with red hair we would have called Rusty. They were three guys whose names didn’t matter because no one knew them, and because they ended up in front of the rest of us. Walking killed people here.
The metal top plate of Japanese mines was thin and brittle, like the ice, so the explosive underneath would shatter steel into flesh. The boys who stepped on them weren’t killed by the explosion—it was only a pop after all—but by a spray of hot steel projected up through their flesh faster than they could shout out their deaths.
Laabs had the squad look around for the dead men’s dog tags. Everybody had two sets; one to bury with the body, one to bring back to account for the lost man. A lot of guys kept one set around their necks, and another tucked into the laces of their bo
ots, so there’d be a second chance of IDing them if they got whacked. Laabs explained the boots usually got blown off and you could find them a short distance away, no matter what had happened to the legs.
“Hey, Jones, lookit this, steak for dinner,” Marino said.
“C’mon, Marino, show some respect,” Jones said.
“Aw, relax. Jeez, some people can’t take a joke,” Marino said.
Chapter 23: Getting to Know You
American Lines, Mess Tent, 1946
“HEY, POLANSKI, WHERE YOU from anyway?” Jones said.
“Chicago. Where you from, Jonesy?”
“Tulsa. Well, near Tulsa. That’s Oklahoma. I don’t think it’s too far from Chicago.”
“Sure, close enough, Jonesy,” Polanski said.
“Aw, Chicago ain’t much of a city,” Marino said. “Kind of a shithole.” His remark quieted the room. Cups were put down and plates pushed aside as everyone waited to see if Polanski would take up the challenge.
“You know, Marino, you got a mouth only a fist could love. Where you think you’re from anyway?” Polanski said.
“Flatbush. Brooklyn.”
“How the hell many people in Brooklyn? Every damn outfit I pass through’s got someone from Brooklyn. The Army ever draft anybody from anywhere else?” Polanski said.
“Some kid from the Bronx I heard, but I never saw him around,” Marino said, with enough of a smile that people picked up their cups, and forks went back to digging deep into scrambled eggs.
“Smitty, you?”
“Ohio, a big city, Toledo.”
“Ohio is Ohio. If you ain’t from Brooklyn you can take a hike,” Marino said.
“That kinda talk is gonna bite you in the ass someday, buster,” Polanski said.
“Nah, ain’t nobody that hungry,” Marino said.
“You’re a charmer, Marino,” Polanski said. “But how come you’re the only red-haired kid in your family, huh? Better ask your mom about that Irish postman.”
“Guys, stop kidding around, Marino don’t have red hair. And I sorta got a bad feelin’ about this war,” Jones said.
“Jones, I got a bad feeling about you. Like this war’ll be over twice and you’ll still never have learned to handle your liquor like a grown man,” Smitty said.
“Hell, Jonesy here, he ain’t no teetotaler. Tell him, Jonesy, about Chinatown, in Waikiki,” Marino said.
“Yeah, I ain’t no teetotaler, guys,” Jones said. “Sort of.”
“Old Jonesy here met a bowlegged bar girl, the best kind. She kept making him buy drinks so she’d stick around and talk with him,” Marino said. “Tell them her name, Jonesy.”
“Her name was Jenny.”
“Tell ’em how you know her name was Jenny,” Marino said.
“Because after I told her my girl back home was named Jenny she said her name was Jenny, too. What’d you think of that coincidence, fellas?” Jones said.
“I bet old Jonesy’s girl back home is real Oklahoma, major-league tits with bush-league brains,” Marino said. He added in a hand gesture like he was holding two basketballs in case his point wasn’t clear enough.
“Jenny, the one back home, she ain’t no backseat girl, she’s nice. And anyway, my bar girl was prettier than yours, Marino,” Jones said.
“Yeah, the one I was with was nothing special, but then again, I know quality tail from street meat. Got more ass back home than a toilet seat,” Marino said. “But you gotta make do when traveling.”
“Sure, Marino. But you seemed happy enough. Jeez, when you were kissing her, it sounded like my mom stirring macaroni and cheese on the stove. And she couldn’t even speak English. You had to tell her kid hanging around the bar what you wanted to say so he could translate,” Jones said.
“Yeah, well, that kid spoke damn good English for a little Chinaman. I gave him an extra buck and he taught her to say ‘I love you,’” Marino said, scratching his pimple-studded nose with a middle finger everybody but Jones saw. “Anyway, Jonesy, tell ’em how you can’t hold your booze any better than a schoolgirl.”
“Marino, no, not now,” Jones said.
“So yeah, what happened with ‘Jenny’ next?” Burke said.
“Jonesy, he’s at the bar with whatever the hell her name was, and I’m over in the corner getting to know my little cookie real up close,” Marino said, grinning for effect. “Next thing I know, Jonesy’s girl is laughing and cursing at the same time. So I step over to see what the commotion is, and Jones tells me he just upchucked a week’s pay worth of gin all over the place.”
“You ain’t so nice, Marino,” Jones said. “You wasn’t supposed to tell anyone that. You promised.”
“Yeah, Jones? Well, you’re just some hick anyway.”
“I, um, I ain’t that, Marino,” Jones said, chewing on the neck of his undershirt.
“C’mon Marino, give the kid a break, and stop reminding the rest of us why we don’t like you,” Polanski said.
“I saw you Polanski, you don’t fool me. What were you smiling about over there while I was telling the story, huh?” Marino said.
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. You were staring way out there, and I seen a smile, just enough of one. What’s your little piece of sugar’s name? She from Chinatown?”
“No way,” Polanski said. “And especially not for you, Marino. One more crack outta your mouth and I’ll give you a knuckle sandwich to chew on.”
“Take your shot, Polanski,” Marino said. He was on his feet. While a couple of G.I.s stepped away, about twice as many got closer to watch the fight.
“C’mon, easy guys. So, other than the girls, what’d you guys miss from back home? Being warm? Your folks?” Steiner said. He was on his feet, hands on Polanski’s shoulders, guiding him without much resistance back down into his seat.
“Not me, I mean my dad, he died when I was young. It was pretty rough on me as a kid,” Polanski said. He fingered the hole where a good tooth once had been. “My mom changed my first name, you know, legal and all, after he died, so I became a junior. She said I’d remember him better that way. Then every time we went to the cemetery I saw my goddamn name on the headstone.”
“Back home in Brooklyn we lived in a railroad flat, so my old man was always just on the other side of a curtain, no bedroom wall,” Marino said. “Snores like a dragon when he’s drunk. Which was every night. Not a speck of nice in him after the booze neither. At night, we’d listen for his keys when he came home from the bar. If the old man was sober enough to get the key in the lock, it’d probably be okay. If he couldn’t and Ma didn’t open the door fast enough, it’d be a bad night. Sometimes I’d try and make him pissed at me, call him the bastard he was, so he’d beat on me instead of Ma. Helluva thing.”
“So?” Steiner said.
“So it was rough on him as a kid, nitwit,” Polanski said. He rubbed his arm right near those little round burn scars.
“So he slapped the shit outta my mom and when she ran off, he kicked the shit outta me until I ran off. Booze and kicking, like peanut butter and jelly for him. You ever fight some old perv behind the bus station over a cardboard box to sleep in? You ever not win a fight like that and know what happens to a kid? I only remember one good Christmas, we got Chinese takeout from the place on 93rd, in them white paper cartons. Here ya’ go son, have a fortune cookie, merry freaking Christmas. You ain’t got that in happy land, do you, Jones?”
“Aw, shut up, Marino. What do you know anyway? And it don’t matter. We’re all gonna get plenty of Chinese food here in Japan anyway. And you ain’t so special. One way or the other we all got drafted and now we’re here.”
“Maybe you got drafted, Jones, probably right off your mama’s tit. I volunteered, to get away from my old man. Even in Brooklyn you gotta have a better excuse than I had to whack someone.”
“That’s it, I’ve had enough for one war, I’m gonna go to the latrine,” Polanski said. “Any of you palookas got any toilet paper?”
<
br /> “Not for you, Polanski,” Marino said. “Say goodbye to one of your socks.”
THE BASE CAMP WAS starting to empty out, except for the brass who stayed behind in what I found a new reason to call the rear. The rest of us were being sent off to sleep in the snow and walk across the paddies and do the fighting.
The men were gathered in front of the briefing tent when I came out from meeting Captain Christiansen. In the center of the group was Laabs, cleaning his M-1. The smell of oil and solvent must have been a permanent part of him, like a guy who sold fish. I cleaned my rifle, too, everybody did, but I watched as he oiled it like an artist at work, then drew a cloth patch and a stiff brush through the bore, and worked the action click-clack back and forth in a nervous tic. One speck of dust was a score that needed settling for that guy. Next to him was Jones, chewing gum like he was the squad’s rhythm section. Polanski, Marino, Steiner, Burke, and Smitty, with the radio. They all saw me and drifted in.
“See what we got now, sir? A BAR, a real live Browning Automatic Rifle,” Polanski said. The weapon could put out a lot of lead, probably the most dangerous one-man firearm we had.
“Who signed the hand receipt for that?” Laabs said. He shot a glance over at Jones. “See, Lieutenant, every piece of U.S. government property has to be signed for. There are ten thousand clipboards running this war, as I figured you knew, from your officer training and all, and you’d want to do things by the book. Sir.”
Laabs appealed for an ally with a raised eyebrow aimed at Jones. The shot missed.
“We put your name on the receipt, Lieutenant Hooper,” Jones said. He was grinning. It was easy to imagine him back home somewhere, grease on his face, working with this dad in the garage, same grin. A pause to see if he was in trouble with me, but the smile endured.
Hooper’s War Page 16