by James Jones
Sgt/maj of Personnel Records at Letterman was no mean, lousy job. God knew how many wounded passed through there. And each soldier’s sacred Service Record booklet and 201 File had to go with him wherever he went, and could not be lost. The records a hospital ship carried for its wounded must have taken up almost as much room as the bodies.
“Sure, sir, any time. I’ll take you up there right now if you want,” the lieutenant said, when Winch asked him. “I can show you the way.” Winch stared at him curiously, and only nodded. He was not used to being called “sir” by officers, however young. The lieutenant was authoritative enough with the ward boy and the nurse on the ward, though.
The corridors were jammed. Another ship was due in from New Guinea in a few days, and space had to be cleared, people had to be moved east to make room. When they got to the right building, making their way along through all the frenetically moving men in uniforms or bathrobes, the Personnel Records Section was on the top floor.
The office itself looked as big as a basketball court. There must easily have been fifty or sixty desks in it. Down at the other end, where the lieutenant led him, and where there was a plate-glass window through which old T.D. could look out over his toiling slaves, was old T.D.’s office. It was not a cubicle.
The w/o himself stood leaning his meager buttocks against his desk edge, his skinny arms folded over his thin chest. He must have seen them coming through the plate glass, but he made no move and said nothing, until the lieutenant had gone out and closed the door. Then he stood up and grinned. But he did not shake hands. Instead, he came forward with both arms out. With his two hands he took Winch by both shoulders, and shook him a little, and then embraced him, putting both arms clear around him. Watching with a cold curiosity, Winch wondered if T.D. was not actually going to get tears in his eyes.
“How are you, Mart old boy, how are you?” old T.D. said.
“Hello, T.D.,” Winch said. “Looks like you got yourself a fair berth here. Even got second lieutenants to run errands for you.”
“I got more than that,” Hoggenbeck said, grinning, and went behind his desk, where he got out a bottle of Seagram’s Seven Crown and two glasses. “See? I even remembered your brand.” He did not bother to close the curtains over the plate glass. Winch was acutely aware of its openness behind them. “When I seen your name on that manifest, I sent somebody right out for a bottle.” He paused to take a breath. “You fellows who are doing so much for us out there, you by God deserve every by God thing we can give you.” Winch thought coldly that this time there actually were a few tears in the chicanerous old hypocrite’s eyes. Probably they were even sincere. “Yes, I got a lot more than that,” Hoggenbeck said, taking back up his first thread. “Second looies for office boys, and captains and majors for assistants. They’re finally beginnin to realize just how valuable and important some of their old-time Regular noncoms are to this nation. There’s more worthless commissions floating around, that don’t know how to do nothing, than you can shake your dick at. Political commissions, that somebody bought for their kid or their cousin. They’re full up to choking with them. Nobody knows what to do with ’em and men like me and you can just about write our own ticket. I got me a big house outside the Presidio, and buying another. Got a piece of the NCOs’ Club. I’m in on a piece of the PX. Got a half interest in one of the gambling sheds. My wife’s got a shop. I tell you the sky’s just about the limit around here nowadays. The sky’s not even the limit. They need us, Mart,” old T.D. said, “they need us. Without us, nobody can run this damned civilian Army for them.” He filled the glasses. “Here,” he said, and poked one of them across the desk. “I knew your Division was out there. Relieved the 1st Marine on Guadalcanal. Then I saw your name on that boat roster, and you could of knocked me down.” He drained his own glass. “Tell me, what’s it like out there, Mart. Pretty rough? Hunh? Where were you hit?”
Winch thought his own mind must be deserting him, because he felt ice-cold all over. The whiskey in his glass seemed to have disappeared even before he touched the glass. Old T.D. refilled it. Winch’s teeth clenched. He wanted to pick up the beautiful, precious bottle of Seven Crown and crown Hoggenbeck with it, split his skull. In full view of every eye on the other side of the plate glass.
“Pretty tough? Pretty rugged, hunh? Is it as rough as the papers say? Don’t want to talk about it, eh?”
A picture of his blank-faced, fear-eyed platoons, bleeding and breathing mud for every yard of ground, passed across the inside of Winch’s eyes. Through it, he studied his old drinking buddy, coldly. Icy. All of that had nothing to do with any of this, nothing at all.
“It’s hell, T.D.,” Winch said, straight-faced. “Real hell. They’re great, tough fighters, those Japs. Rough. They’re mean.”
“I know they are, I know they are,” T.D. said.
“And they know the jungle. But we’ll lick them, T.D., we’ll lick them,” Winch said.
“I know we will, I know we will,” old T.D. said.
Winch realized his second glass was gone. T.D. refilled it. And refilled his own. “That jungle’s rough, hunh? Where did you get hit?”
“In the leg,” Winch said.
“Was it bad?”
“It was pretty bad. In fact, it was terrible, T.D.”
“Did you have a heart attack, too?”
“No, nothing like that. Just what they call a murmur. But the two, together. You know. And I was pretty sick, from dengue and malaria. I figured it ought to be enough to get me home, and that it was about time.”
T.D. cackled, and his bushy eyebrows went up and down. “I figured, I figured,” he giggled.
Winch winked, and then noted his third glass was gone. The straight, blended American whiskey, neat like that, was like the ambrosia of the gods. They could have all the Scotch in the world, if he could have one bottle of Seagram’s Seven. Old T.D. pushed the bottle over to him.
“You help yourself,” T.D. said. “I’ve got to keep my head about me. Got work to do. But you go ahead.”
Winch shook his head.
“You always could drink more than me,” T.D. said. “Or anybody.” He grinned. Leaning back in his deluxe swivel chair, he told Winch what he wanted to do for him.
There was no need for Winch to go through the reprocessing. By evening T.D. would have a three-day or a five-day pass for him. A five-day, if he could slip it through. After that, Winch could have another five-day, and another. When he was ready to go east, Hoggenbeck would get him on an Army Transport Command plane and fly him, to any of the eastern hospitals he chose.
Winch, in his depression, had not even thought about San Francisco. Now he thought about it. “I haven’t even got a uniform, T.D.,” he said.
“They’ll issue you a uniform!” T.D. grabbed a book of chits on his desk, and a pen.
“Oh. I know those hospital issue uniforms,” Winch said. There seemed no way to escape from T.D.’s overeffusive generosity.
“Wear them outside the gate, and go to a tailor shop!” T.D. cried. “You can get an officer’s tropical worsted with shoulder straps at any joint on Market Street for thirty-six bucks!” Did he have money? Otherwise, old T.D. would arrange it for him to draw a partial-pay voucher.
Winch said he had money.
“Then you’re all fixed,” T.D. cried. “For a fine time. I wish it was me. You won’t believe this town, Mart. It’s changed. It’s like it must of been during the Gold Rush.”
He’d be glad to invite him out to the house for dinner, T.D. added. But he was sure a quiet dinner with his old woman was not what Winch was looking for. Not after them jungles.
The petty stuff out of the way, Hoggenbeck hitched his chair closer and, grinning, said he had something else to tell him. When he had seen Winch’s name on that early ship’s roster, he had started doing a little exploring. He wanted to send Winch to the hospital in Luxor, Tennessee. The point was, T.D. could do just about anything he wanted to from here, with in-transit casuals. He
knew Winch’s wife was installed in St. Louis, and that might prove a big hitch. He had looked up Winch’s records as soon as they came in. But if Winch did not mind not going to St. Louis, he thought he had something pretty good lined up for him.
“Between you and me, T.D.,” Winch said, “I’d a whole lot rather not go to St. Louis. And if my wife didn’t receive any official notification about where I was sent, I wouldn’t be disturbed at all.”
“That can be handled, that can be handled,” old T.D. said. “Notifications git lost.”
The point was, Luxor, Tennessee, was also the headquarters of the Second Army Command. And Second Army Command would shortly be in need of a new sgt/maj for its Personnel G-1 office. Old Frank Maynard there was about on his last legs and they were going to retire him. Hoggenbeck was still in touch with a couple of his old commanding officers who were down there now, and had already spoken to them about Winch. The point was, when Winch came out of hospital at Luxor, if he went there, he would automatically go right into Second Army Command in any case. And from there it would be just a simple step. They could discover him. “If you’re interested, Mart,” old T.D. grinned, “I’ll write them right away today. How about it?”
The point was, it was the kind of long-term, not very killing kind of a job—a sinecure, old T.D. said—that Winch or a man like him should have, and that Winch deserved. And it wouldn’t hurt old Frank Maynard, because old Frank was going out anyway.
Winch looked up. It was one of those refined, delicate, shrewdly juggled pieces of old-Army-type manipulation, as finely balanced and calculated as any Winch had ever put together. As an old, professional manipulator himself, Winch had to admire it.
Winch had been nodding and hardly listening, but his ears and attention straightened up when he heard Luxor, Tennessee, mentioned. Luxor, he seemed to remember, was one of the places where a good-sized number of men from his old company happened to be congregated. He dimly recalled someone mentioning it. Then he pulled himself up short. It was he who had warned Johnny Stranger that all that of the company was finished and over. Still, it was a good deal old T.D. was proposing to him. It was exactly the kind of deal that, a few years back, before Guadalcanal, he used to dream of and imagine for himself. But he had imagined himself as old.
“Tell them I’d be very pleased to have it,” he said.
“By God, I’ll do just that,” old T.D. said, and cracked his palms together. “You’ll make junior warrant officer out of it within a year. That’s great, boy, that’s great.”
Winch realized suddenly that, although it rankled, he was going to have to thank old T.D. Hoggenbeck for it.
“I’ll tell you something, Mart,” T.D. said. “I’m sitting pretty right now, and I know it. But I won’t be for very long and I know that too, once this war gets over and we go back to anti-Army and the reaction sets in. But I aint going to stay in a full thirty years. Or twenty, if it’s that. When it’s over, I’m getting out. You’ll be smart to do the same. I know what I am, and I know what I’m worth. And I know I’m valuable, for right now, anyway. And if there’s anything I can do for any of my old buddies who’ve been out there and come back through here, I’m sure’n hell gonna do her. You’re the first one to come back that I know of. If there’s anything I can do more for you, don’t you hesitate to pop up here and let me know it.”
He rubbed his hands together. “Say, I’ll tell you something else. Did you know you’re getting the Distinguished Service Medal?”
Winch looked at him unbelievingly. “Who the hell did that?”
“Not me, not me. Don’t look at me,” T.D. said, enjoying his surprise. “There’s some things I can’t do. No. But it’s all on your records. Recommended by your Division commander. With personal recommendations from your battalion commander and your company commander. And, of all people, your old Division surgeon.”
Before Winch left, T.D. hauled out two flat pint bottles of the Seagram’s and thrust them on him. “Stick ’em down inside your pajama belt, and hold them up with your bathrobe pockets. Go on, take ’em. No, don’t thank me, Christ’s sake. You fellows, you’ve been out there. That’s all I need to know.” At the door, he offered one last word of advice. “When you’re set up down there, buy real estate. Buy a bar. You can’t go wrong with a bar.”
A little less than three hours later, not quite five hours after the ship had put her nose against the Embarcadero dock, while the others off her were finishing their warmed-over supper off compartmented tin plates, Winch was standing on the corner of Geary and Market at Lotta’s Fountain with his hands in the pockets of an officer’s tropical worsted with shoulder straps for thirty-six dollars, from a tailor joint on Market Street. He was already half drunk. It felt wonderful.
CHAPTER 7
THE MARK HOPKINS, of course, was the place to go. It was on the top of Nob Hill, and its “Top O’ The Mark” was famous all over the South Pacific as the place to head for, if you ever got back home. Winch hailed a cab and headed there.
If you ever got back home. The very phrase, and all its insinuations, made the pit of Winch’s stomach fall. Well, Winch was back home. Wasn’t he? Fuck the rest of them. Winch sat back and looked out. In his mind was his constant admonition not to drink. Or smoke. He listened to both, constantly. Each time he took a drink or lit a cigarette he listened to them, he thought; and laughed out loud in the cab.
It was pretty hard not to drink around this place. Outside all the ritzy hotels they passed on their way up Nob Hill, parties of girls and sailors or girls and soldiers roared and hooted, or cackled out nighttime laughter, and went off up the streets playing kids’ games. Everybody seemed so rich, with money to spare, and time to spend it. It was unbelievable. Winch thought suddenly of his waterless, gasping, sweating platoons. And his stomach sank down through him to somewhere in the vicinity of the soft, springy cab seat. Unbelievable. Again he had the disturbing feeling that all this had nothing to do with all that, out there. They were not connected. His momentary fine mood was gone.
The “Top O’ The Mark” was a bust. Flyboys, both Naval and Air Force, dominated it. With their medals and decorations and Midway campaign ribbons. Fruit salad. And their crushed-wing officer’s garrison caps. They hopped from table to table, and shouted with gay laughter, and danced jitterbugging dances, and bought bottles and bottles of champagne. And had apparently already usurped all the luxurious-looking women in the place. Winch wore no ribbons or insignia. In his pocket he had two brand-new 1st/sgt’s chevrons, but at the last minute had not had them sewn on. Like an aging private, in his tailored officer’s uniform he had no right to wear, he stood at a bar, had two drinks, and left and rode down to the street and went outside. He had been accosted twice, by two different but equally exquisite call girls wanting a hundred bucks a throw, and had talked for a minute to a cutely giggling upper-class college belle, who was whisked away to dance by an Air Force captain she called by the name Jim.
These were the only two types the “Top O’ The Mark” had available. And Winch did not feel like buying the one, or spending the week of evenings it would cost to make out with the other. Apparently most of these people already knew each other.
Outside on the street Winch stopped a moment, then stepped back quickly to let a laughing party of girls and sailors go loping past. They went on into “The Mark.” Winch turned down California Street, heading down the hill toward the honky-tonk and low bar area of North Beach. Momentarily he regretted not having taken on one of the hundred-dollar hookers. He had the money. And they were delicious. But it had happened to him too suddenly. For eleven months he had so stringently put women completely out of his mind that he was experiencing difficulty letting them back in again. It was all too fast.
With it so nearby, he decided to walk on down through Chinatown on Grant Avenue. It was a walk of about three-quarters of a mile, and it was all downhill, but by the time he got to the bottom he felt tired and worn-out.
Into North Beach, the numb
er of bars multiplied swiftly. Servicemen were everywhere. Women were nearly everywhere. Jukebox music drifted out of the bars. It was like the last last-ditch, desperate dream of his badgered, beleaguered platoons, here, and his heart sank again. Winch figured he would have no difficulty finding himself some kind of lady friend before too long.
Winch had promised himself he would not have another drink until he got to Washington Square. But before he did, with the Square in sight up ahead, he broke the promise and stepped inside a bar. The single drink refreshed him, and put some energy back into him. It also raised his spirits. He was watching himself carefully, since those first three fast drinks in old T.D. Hoggenbeck’s office. He was keeping the level of drinking up only to just that exact point where everything was painless and life was tolerable. But he did not want it to drop below that.
Back outside the music from the bar jukes drifted along the street. The Andrews Sisters rendition of “The Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B” competed for attention momentarily with “I’m Gonna Buy a Paper Doll,” sung by the Inkspots. Farther along, the Andrews Sisters faded, and Glenn Miller’s “String of Pearls” came up strong from somewhere. Under it Winch heard a song he had never heard before, called “Paper Moon,” sung also by the Inkspots, or perhaps the Mills Brothers. Winch drifted along with it, toward the Square.
He found her in the third bar. She was seated at a table with a girlfriend, who was with a drunken young Marine. She was obviously on the lookout for somebody, and sent Winch over an open smile of invitation where he stood at the crowded bar nursing a drink.
The two girls were around twenty-eight. Or thirty? Too old for a drunken nineteen-year-old Marine, who could not seem to get enough liquor down him. If he didn’t slow it up, he was not going to be of any use to any lady. But that was her girlfriend’s problem, not Arlette’s, and Arlette made that quite plain. She also made it plain to Winch that everything was going to go by the proper rules of first meeting and seduction, and that she was not just some floozy.