"Can I ask you a question, Corporal McCoy?" Malcolm Pickering asked.
McCoy looked at him and nodded.
"I saw you in Chicago on the track with some strange-looking guys," Pickering said. "What was that all about?"
Chicago? What the hell does he mean by that?
And then he understood. There had been an hour's wait while the railroad switched locomotives. The lieutenant had the bright idea that the prisoners should exercise. Since they couldn't do calisthenics or close-order drill handcuffed and with their feet shackled, what the lieutenant had done was send them shuffling up and back down the track for half a mile or so. This Pickering guy had obviously seen that.
"We were exercising the prisoners," he said. "That what you mean?"
"What did they do?" Pickering asked.
"Three of them were fags," McCoy said. "One of them slugged an officer. The rest of them found out the hard way that once you enlist, you're in until they let you out."
"They were Marines?"
"Sailors," McCoy said. "The Marine Corps does the Navy's dirty work, like guarding and transporting prisoners."
"What happened to them?"
"We took them to the Naval Prison at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to serve their sentences," McCoy said.
"Is that what you do in the Marine Corps?" Pickering asked.
"No," McCoy said. "I just got to San Diego when they needed a couple of corporals for the guard detail."
"What do you do?" Pickering asked.
"I'm a motor transport corporal," McCoy said. Though he didn't like the sound of it, that's what he was on paper. "I work in the motor pool."
"You like it?"
"No. I told you, I'm just waiting to get out of the Marine Corps."
"Then what will you do?"
McCoy didn't want to tell this nosy guy that he was going back to China. That would trigger a whole new line of questions. And aside from going back to China, he couldn't think of a thing he was likely to do. He had been in the Marine Corps since he was seventeen. It was the only thing he had ever done.
"What made you join the Corps?" McCoy asked.
"My father was a Marine," Pickering said. "In the World War."
"And he didn't warn you off?" McCoy said.
"He was a corporal," Pickering said. "What he warned me to do was get a commission."
Then he realized what he had said.
"I didn't mean to offend…" he began.
"Your father was right," McCoy said.
"So, with war coming, I figured I had better get one," Pickering said. "A commission, I mean."
"You seem sure that we're going to get into this war," McCoy said.
"You don't?"
"Christ, I hope not," McCoy said.
"We're probably going to have to do something about the Japanese," Pickering argued.
"The Japs are probably thinking the same thing about us," McCoy said. "And you wouldn't believe how many of the bastards there are."
"But they're not like Americans, are they?" Pickering asked.
"The ones I've seen are first-class soldiers," McCoy said. He saw the surprise on Pickering's face.
"The ones you've seen?" Pickering asked.
"I just came from China," McCoy said. "I was with the Fourth Marines in Shanghai."
Now why the fuck did I start in on that?
"I'd like to hear about that," Pickering said.
'I'd rather talk about something else," McCoy said.
"Like what?" Pickering said, agreeably.
"I'm going to be stationed in Philly," McCoy said. "For a while, I mean, say a month or six weeks, until I can get my discharge. If you know anything about it, why don't we talk about the best way to get laid in Philadelphia?"
"The best way, I've found," Pickering said, "is to use a bed. But there is a school of thought that says that turning them upside down in a shower is the way to go."
McCoy looked at him for a moment and then laughed out loud.
"You tell me about the Marines in China, McCoy," Pickering said. "And then I will tell you about getting laid in Philadelphia. Maybe with a little luck, when we get there- that's where I'm going, too, to the Navy Yard, to give them my college records-we could conduct what they call a 'practical experiment.' "
If I keep drinking with this guy and then start chasing whores with him, I am probably going to get my ass in deep trouble. But right now, I don't give a fuck.
He raised his hand above his head, snapped his fingers at the steward for another drink, and turned to Malcolm Pickering.
"You can buy a fourteen-year-old virgin in Shanghai for three dollars," he said. "What's the going rate these days in Philly?"
"There are no fourteen-year-old virgins in Philadelphia," Malcolm Pickering said solemnly.
I'll be goddamned if I don't really like this candy-ass civilian.
(Three)
The Bellevue Stratford Hotel Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 0905 Hours 17 July 1941
The first thing McCoy remembered when he woke up was that there had been a woman in bed with him, which meant he was likely to find his money and his watch gone.
The second thought was more frightening: The "Guaranteed Officer's Checque" from Barclays Bank, Ltd., Shanghai, had been in his money belt with the three hundred bucks. The whore probably wouldn't be able to cash it; but sure as Christ, she would have taken it, and it was going to be a real pain in the ass to get it replaced.
When he sat up, his head hurt like a toothache, as if his brain had shrunk and was banging around loose inside his skull. His lips were dry and cracked and the tip of his tongue felt like the sole of a boot.
How the hell am I going to get from wherever the hell I am to the Navy Yard without any fucking money? Or for that matter, out of the hotel? Jesus Christ, I hope at least they made me pay in advance!
He looked around the room, and that made it worse. This was no dollar-a-night hot-sheet joint. This was not only a real hotel, but a fancy-hotel hotel. Great big fucking room, drapes over the windows, a couch and a couple of armchairs, and Christ only knows what he had paid for the bottles sitting on a chest of drawers across the room. Before the whore got his money, he thought, at least he'd spent a hell of a lot of it.
And then he saw the money belt. It was on the little shelf over the wash basin in the bathroom. That figured. Just before she left, the whore had taken the money belt into the bathroom, just in case he should wake up and see her going through it. Once she'd emptied it, she hadn't given a damn where she left it.
He needed a glass of water, and desperately. Maybe, if he hadn't been rolled, too, he could borrow say, ten bucks, from Pickering. It wasn't the end of the fucking world. He had his pay record with him, and he had at least two months' back pay on the books. All he had to do was come up with enough money to get from here to the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and he could draw enough money to keep him going.
And he would go to some bank and ask them what you were supposed to do when you lost a 'Guaranteed Officer's Checque.' He would say he lost it. And since he hadn't signed it, they would have to sooner or later make it good.
He staggered across the room to the bathroom and saw that it was really a high-class place. There was a little button marked ICE WATER that operated a tiny little chrome water pipe. And when you pushed the button, it really produced ice water.
He drank one glass of ice water so quickly it made his teeth ache. He drank a second glass more slowly, from time to time looking at his reflection in the mirror over the sink. His eyes were bloodshot, and-he had to check twice to make sure what it was-his ears were red with lipstick.
He looked down at other parts of his body.
Well, I apparently had a very good time, even if I can't remember the details.
There was something under the empty money belt, making a bulge. Idly curious, he pushed the money belt off it. It was his watch.
"I'll be goddamned," McCoy said, then told himself that just because the whore hadn't stol
en the watch, it didn't mean she hadn't helped herself to the cash and the "checque." It wasn't that good a watch, he knew. He had bought it primarily because it had a lot of radium paint on the hands, so that he could see them at night. He picked up the money belt and worked the zipper. There was money in it, $250, and the "checque."
"I'll be goddamned," he said again.
Now he had a cramp in his bladder, so he went to the toilet and relieved himself. He saw that the bathroom had two doors: one led in from his fancy bedroom, and one went out into some other room. When he was finished taking a leak (an incredibly long teak), he tried the knob. It was unlocked, and he pushed it open.
Malcolm Pickering (McCoy remembered at that moment that sometime during last night, Pickering had told him to call him " 'Pick") was on his back on a double bed, stark naked. His arms and legs were spread. And he was awake.
"Please piss a little more quietly," Pick Pickering said. "I woke up thinking our ship was going down."
"Shit." McCoy laughed.
"I have come to the conclusion, Corporal McCoy," Pick Pickering said, "that you are an evil character who rides on railroads leading innocent youth such as myself into sin."
"It looks like we had a good time," McCoy said.
"Yeah, doesn't it?" Pickering said. "What time is it?"
"A little after nine," McCoy said.
"I treat my hangovers with large breakfasts and a beer," Pickering said. "That sound all right to you?"
"I don't want to report smelling of beer," McCoy said.
"They have Sen-Sen," Pickering said, and suddenly sat up. "Jesus!" he said, and then he swung his feet to the floor and reached for the telephone. "Room service," he ordered, and then: "This is Malcolm Pickering, in 907. Large orange juice, breakfast steak, medium, corned-beef hash, eggs up, toast, two pots of coffee, and two bottles of Feigenspann ale. Do that twice, please, and the sooner the better."
Very classy, McCoy thought. That'll probably cost three, four, maybe five dollars. But what the hell, I've still got most of my money.
"What's this place costing us?" McCoy asked.
"I probably shouldn't tell you this. Killer," Pickering said. "It is only because I am an upstanding Christian that I do. We flipped for it last night, and you won. It's not costing you a dime, and I don't want to think about what it's costing me."
McCoy was surprised that Pickering called him "Killer." The only way he could have known that was if he had told him. And the only way he would have told him. as if he needed another proof, was that he was pretty drunk.
"I want to pay my share," McCoy said.
"Don't be a damned fool. If that quarter had landed on the other side, you would have paid," Pickering said. He got to his feet and walked across the room. "But since I am paying. I get first shot at the shower.
If anything, McCoy decided. Pickering's room was larger than his. And then he noticed that a door and not just the bathroom connected both rooms. He went back to his own room, found his seabags in a closet, and took out a clean uniform. It was clean but mussed. He hated to report in a mussed uniform, even if the first thing he was going to do when he reported in was ask for the buy-out papers.
"What the hell." he said aloud and picked up the telephone. He didn't give a damn what it cost, he was going to have it pressed. So far, he hadn't spent much money at all.
A waiter and a bellboy delivered the breakfast on a rolling table. By the time he'd eaten everything and put down both bottles of ale. he felt almost human again.
When he was dressed. Pick Pickering lifted up the telephone and told them to send up a boy for the luggage and to have a cab waiting.
The MP at the gate to the Navy Yard took one look at McCoy's campaign hat and went back in the guard shack for his pad of violation reports.
"Got to write you up. Corporal, sorry," the MP said. "Maybe they'll let it ride because you just got back."
The Officer Procurement Board was in a three-story red-brick building near the gate, and McCoy said good-bye to Pickering there.
"Well, maybe we'll bump into each other again." Pickering said.
"I hope by then I'm a civilian. Otherwise. I'll be standing at attention and calling you "sir.' " McCoy said.
"So what?" Pickering said.
"It doesn't work that way. Pick." McCoy said, giving him his hand. "As you are about to find out. this is the U. Fucking S. Fucking Marine Corps. But it was fun. and I'm glad the quarter landed the way it did."
"Good luck," Pickering said, and squeezed McCoy's hand a little harder, then got out of the cab and walked up the sidewalk to the big red-brick building.
The 47th Motor Transport Platoon was in a red-brick barracks building not far from the river. Two Marines were very slowly raking the small patch of carefully tended lawn between the sidewalk and the building.
McCoy paid the cab driver and then stood by the open truck.
"You guys want to give me a hand with my gear?" he called to the guys with the rakes.
He was still a corporal, a noncommissioned officer. Noncommissioned officers don't carry things if there are privates around to carry things. They looked at him curiously, not missing the out-of-uniform campaign hat and the illegal chevrons. Then they stepped over the chain guarding the lawn and shouldered his seabags and followed him into the barracks building.
The linoleum deck inside glistened, and the brass doorknobs and push plates were highly polished. This was the States, McCoy thought, where American Marines-not Chinese boys-waxed the decks and polished the brass. And Marine corporals watched them to make sure they did it right.
There was a sign on the orderly room door, KNOCK, REMOVE HEADGEAR. AND WAIT FOR PERMISSION TO ENTER
McCoy checked his uniform to make sure it was shipshape, removed his campaign hat, knocked, and waited for permission to enter.
"Come!" a voice called, and he pushed the door open and walked in.
There was a company clerk, a PFC, behind his desk, and a first sergeant, a squeaky-clean guy of about thirty-five behind his. Behind the first sergeant was a door marked LT A.J
FOGARTY, USMC, COMMANDING.
"You must be McCoy," the first sergeant said. "You was due in day before yesterday."
"At Portsmouth they told me I had forty-eight hours to get here," McCoy said. "I'm not due in until noon tomorrow."
"What were you doing at Portsmouth?" the first sergeant said.
"I was in a squad of prisoner-chasers from Diego," McCoy said.
"Shit!" the first sergeant said. "Nobody told us anything about you going to Portsmouth. You went on the Morning Report as AWOL this morning. Now we'll have to do the whole fucking thing over."
Well, I'm stepping right off on the wrong foot. Not only did I have to take those poor bastards to Portsmouth, but it put me right on the first sergeant's shit list.
"We can submit an amended report," the company clerk said.
"When I want your advice, I'll ask for it," the first sergeant said. He looked at McCoy. "Sit," he said. "You know that campaign hat's nonregulation?" "No, I didn't," McCoy said.
"Well, it is," the first sergeant said. "And so are them chevrons,"
"I just got a violation written by the MP at the Main Gate," McCoy said. "For the hat. He didn't say anything about the stripes."
"It'll take a week, ten days, to come down through channels," the first sergeant said. "I don't know nothing about violations until the message center delivers them. And sometimes they get lost. You want a cup of coffee?" I'll be a sonofabitch, he's not entirely a prick. "Yes, please, thank you."
The first sergeant picked up the telephone on his desk and dialed a number.
Then, while it was ringing, he covered the mouthpiece with his hand and spoke to the PFC: "You heard the corporal," he said. "Get him a cup of coffee and if they got any, a doughnut."
The PFC scurried from the orderly room.
"Sergeant-Major, this is Quinn," the first sergeant said to the telephone. "Corporal McCoy wasn't AWOL. The
y stuck him with a prisoner-chaser detail to Portsmouth. He just reported in a day early. I got him on the Morning Report as AWOL. How do you want me to handle it?"
Whatever the sergeant-major replied it didn't take long, for the first sergeant broke the connection with his finger and dialed another number.
"First Sergeant Quinn," he announced. "Is Lieutenant Fogarty there?"
A moment later. Lieutenant Fogarty apparently came on the line, for Quinn delivered the report that McCoy had arrived, that he wasn't AWOL, and that he'd caught the Morning Report before it left for Washington and was going to make out a new one.
"The Old Man says wait," First Sergeant Quinn said when he hung up. "You want to read the newspaper?"
He pushed a neatly folded Philadelphia Bulletin across his desk toward McCoy.
"Top," McCoy said, "what I'd really like is to get buyout papers filled out."
"What?"
"No offense, but I've have enough of the Corps."
The first sergeant laughed, not unpleasantly.
"All discharges have been frozen," he said. "Nobody's getting out of the. Corps except on a medical discharge. Didn't they know that in China?"
"Shit," McCoy said.
"There's some people thinks there's going to be war," the first sergeant said.
"I didn't know discharges had been frozen," McCoy said lamely.
Half an hour later, a young PFC came into the orderly room (without knocking, McCoy noticed).
"If you're Corporal McCoy," he said, "the Old Man's outside in the staff car."
McCoy looked at the first sergeant, who jerked his thumb in a signal for him to go with the driver.
The Old Man was about twenty-four, McCoy judged, a well-set-up, ex-football player-type. He returned McCoy's salute, motioned him into the backseat of the staff car, and then, as it moved off, turned to face McCoy.
"I'm glad it turned out you weren't AWOL, Corporal McCoy," he said. "That really would have disappointed a lot of people."
"Sir, I didn't volunteer to go to Portsmouth," McCoy said.
"I didn't think you did.'' Lieutenant Fogarty laughed.
The Corps I - Semper Fi Page 16