by James Jones
“Well, you’re a college man. And all that,” Strange said. “You talk their language.”
“I thought you were mad at me,” Landers said.
Strange stared at him. “What?” He couldn’t connect Landers’ comment with anything. “Mad at you? What do you mean, mad at you?”
“Well, you hardly even said hello, when I saw you in the corridor earlier,” Landers said. “You just sort of went right off. As if you were cutting me.”
“Oh.” Strange felt as if he had come up against some kind of unanticipated brick wall in the dark. Here was a whole new field, new outlook opening up that he had neither the time nor the inclination to poke into. “Well, I was worried about Prell, don’t you see? Will you do it? Will you go to Curran?”
“Of course I will. I’ll do anything for any of the guys from the company. Especially Prell.”
Landers had heard the bad news about Prell. All of the guys had heard it, from Corello. At the time Landers had shrugged inwardly, and counted it as one more inevitable loss to the jungle campaigns, the jungle war, one more casualty to New Georgia. A leg. It had never occurred to him there might be anything anybody could do about it. Now a kind of wild flame of loyalty licked up in him searing his trachea and heart. He would do any damn thing he could do, for any of them.
They would understand, if he told them about the men on the hilltop. They might laugh about it. Now. But they would understand.
“But I don’t think Curran’ll listen to me any more than he would you,” he said. “Less, probably.”
“But will you try? And tell him all of us guys from the old company are ready to get up a petition and sign it, if he wants?”
“Sure I’ll try.”
“Prell seems to feel Curran wasn’t as strongly for the amputation as the other two.”
“I’ll go right now. You want me to go now?”
“Fine. And tell him about the petition?”
Landers was off his crutches by now, and was using a cane and the walking iron. He was still nervous with them, and unsure of himself on them. It took him a long time to get from the recreation center to the area of the surgery theaters. He had to work hard and move carefully going up and down the various ramps designed for rolling surgery beds and wheelchairs. When he got to Curran’s tiny office, his knees felt shaky. Fortunately, Curran was in.
Curran’s head was down, over some papers. Landers paused to rest, and to pull himself all together. He was going to have to remember to be tactful and polite. He didn’t feel much like either.
“May I speak to. you a few minutes alone, Col Curran, sir? Off the record?”
Curran looked up, his eyes immediately growing remote. He nodded. “Sure. I guess so. Come in.”
“It’s not about me,” Landers said. “It’s about a friend of mine. Named Prell.”
“What about him?”
“There are seven of us here from his old company. The guys decided to sort of appoint me their spokesman. We’ve heard that his right leg may have to be amputated.”
Curran seemed to stare, Landers thought. But not quite. Abstractedly, with another part of his mind, Landers wondered where he was getting the nerve to do what he was doing. But that was easy enough to answer. All he had to do was think of those men he had sat with on the hill. None of these people knew the first thing of what it was like to be like that. And didn’t want to. Any more than we did, he thought.
“It’s a possibility,” Curran said. “A very likely possibility.”
“Well, he’s one of the best men our outfit ever had. I guess you know, he saved his whole patrol after he got shot up. He’s been recommended for a medal for it. And, well, we think it will probably kill him if he loses that leg. The guys wanted me to ask you if there wasn’t something you could do to save his leg.”
Curran’s eyes seemed to get larger, and deeper. “What the hell do you think I could do?”
“We thought something that might give him a chance. A fighting chance.”
“Like what? Anyway, he’s not my patient.” Curran looked down and moved the papers on his desk.
“He said he felt you weren’t as much in favor of the amputation as the others.”
Curran’s head snapped up. “He told you that?”
Landers nodded. “Well, he told one of us. Not me. He said it was a hunch he had.”
“The man is in a very bad way,” Curran said. “His one leg won’t heal. The other is not doing all that well. There’s something wrong with his system. With his chemistry. He’s getting weaker and weaker, and he just won’t heal.”
“Couldn’t you give him something?”
“We’re giving him everything we can. Sulfa. Plasma. Glucose. Besides, you seem to forget that he’s not my patient.”
“Well, what if you stopped giving him something? If it’s his body chemistry?”
Curran stared at him, his eyes narrowed. He looked down at the desk, then looked back up. “I don’t think you understand. That’s not the way it works. I can’t disagree with Col Baker’s statement. I think Col Baker is right. And he’s Col Baker’s patient.”
Landers nodded politely. It struck him suddenly that there was the possibility that Curran might be hedging on the truth the least little bit. That he wouldn’t admit that Prell was right in thinking Curran was less in favor of the amputation than the other two. He said nothing.
“It’s possible that Col Baker is pushing it a little,” Curran said. “But that’s not important, really. Col Stevens is not going to decide to amputate immediately, when it’s without Prell’s permission. Which Prell won’t give. Col Baker is just trying to be prepared for it. Ahead of time. As for stopping something that he’s getting, there’s very little that he’s getting that isn’t absolutely necessary. Don’t get the idea that some of us are ogres here, hoping for a chance to do a leg amputation.”
Landers had been nodding politely again. But somewhere inside his chest, or right behind his eyes, something seemed to be changing in him. Another personality that he did not know seemed to be taking over his muscles and his voice. It was almost like that day on the ship when he seemed to go out of himself. That kind of wild rage against everything, against life itself, seemed to flow all over him. “Nobody thinks that, Colonel. Anyway, the guys told me to tell you that we would all be willing to sign a petition amongst ourselves against the amputation and present it to you,” the new voice said. Harshly. “If you would want us to.”
Curran’s head snapped up again. He looked astonished. He said the same thing to Landers that Strange had said to Prell. “A petition? In the Army? Are you men out of your minds?” Then he stared at Landers a long moment. “You men think a lot of him, don’t you?”
“I guess we all admire him,” Landers’ new, harsh personality said. Landers was suddenly seeing his hilltop ridge and all the faces with their perpendicular white streaks running down them, beyond and through the clean sympathetic face of Curran. “But that’s not what it is. I don’t think you understand us. I don’t guess we any of us give much of a shit about anything, except each other. It’s not so much that we think a lot of Prell. It’s like we were investors. And each of us invested his tiny bit of capital in all the others. When we lose one of us, we all of us lose a little of our capital. And we none of us ever really had that much to invest, you see.”
“ ‘Do not ask for whom the bell tolls,’ ” Curran quoted.
“John Donne, sure,” Landers grinned wolfishly. “But that’s shit. And that’s not what it is with us. That’s abstract. And it’s poetry. That’s all of humanity. We’re not all of humanity. And we don’t give a shit about all of humanity. We probably don’t give much of a shit about each other, really. It’s just that that’s all the capital we have.
“So,” he said finally, “we’re perfectly willing to get up a petition and all of us sign it, and turn it over to whoever you say turn it over to, and to hell with the consequences. If it means going to the stockade, we’d all sign it che
erfully anyhow. If by doing it, it would help at all to save Prell’s leg.”
Curran’s face was white. And he got to his feet, stiffly. But he didn’t look angry. Landers wondered if he had gone too far somewhere, and forgotten to be tactful and polite.
“Do you realize it may very well kill him?” Curran said. “It’s getting that close. Do you want him dead?”
“I guess all of us would say let the poor son of a bitch die that way, if that’s the way he wants to die. Let him die the way he wants it. It’s about all he’s got left. Besides, he’s been nearly dead before. All of us have.”
“I can’t promise anything, Sgt Landers,” Curran said mildly. “But I can tell you that he’ll get every chance we can give him. Nobody here wants to take his leg off. But we may have to.”
“Then you don’t want us to get up the petition?”
“Get it up and sign it, if you want to. If it makes you feel any better. But I think it would serve absolutely no use with Col Stevens.”
Outside, Landers leaned against the wall of the corridor along the surgeries to collect his wits. The other personality was gone. For a while he had actively been another person in the little office. That had never happened to him before. He did not know whether what he had done was helpful or detrimental. Or whether it had no effect. After a while, he started hobbling back.
Back in the rec center he told Strange the whole story, with Curran’s responses. He left out only his metaphor of the investors, which now sounded high-toned and dumb to him, and he didn’t mention that feeling of another personality. Between them, he and Strange were unable to deduce whether the visit had helped at all.
“Maybe it’ll make him think about it a little,” Strange said sourly.
Across the basketball floor in the corner, the girl Carol Firebaugh motioned to Landers to come over, that she wanted to talk to him. Grimly Landers stared at her and slowly shook his head and turned away back to Strange.
“I just wish to hell Winch was here,” Strange said sorrowfully. “If only fucking Winch was here.”
“I thought Winch hated Prell,” Landers said.
“He does. I mean, he doesn’t like him,” Strange said. “But that wouldn’t matter.”
When Strange asked him to come, Landers left and went with him to the snack bar to see the others from the company. Strange had decided they would make up the petition and sign it, anyway. Landers did not bother to say good-by to Carol Firebaugh, or even wave at her.
When the two of them went to report to Prell about the interview with Curran, Prell listened in silence until they were finished. Their inconclusive ending. Then still without a word he turned his head to the side and two tears squeezed out from under his closed lids. After a minute they decided to sneak away.
“I’m sorry, buddies,” Prell called after them in a frog’s croak. “I’m not quite myself. This thing’s got me all worn down.”
“Winch would know what to do,” Strange said softly as he closed the ward door.
CHAPTER 12
STRANGE AND LANDERS could not know it, but Winch already knew about Prell. And was already pushing forward his departure from Letterman to Luxor, because of him. Even as Strange was closing the big plywood swinging door of Prell’s ward, and wishing his 1st/sgt were there.
Winch did not know what he could do about Prell, but if there was anything he could do, he wanted to be there. Not that the prick deserved it.
Winch had heard about Prell from old T.D. Hoggenbeck. After the hospital had let him out of bed, and he was finally back on his feet again and able to move around a little, he had had dinner with old T.D. and Lily. Lily was T.D.’s rawboned, long-jawed, acquisitive battle-ax of a Missus. They invited him to their three-story brick house outside the Presidio.
Winch was on the wagon so he figured he might as well go. He was unable to drink at all. It was one of the worst evenings he had ever spent. The worst nights he had spent on Guadalcanal were not as bad. All T.D. and old Lily could talk about were their recent acquisitions of property. Neither of them was what you could call a light drinker. When they had their string of whiskeys before dinner, the anguish and rage Winch suffered watching them were the worst he could remember. But he had learned about Prell from T.D.
“You remember old Jack Alexander?” T.D. said after they had put down their three huge strip-sirloins—Winch’s cooked without salt. “From Wahoo? Old Alexander the Great?”
Winch remembered him. Alexander had been heavyweight champion of the Hawaiian Department during Winch’s first hitch out there. “Alexander the Great” and “The Emperor,” they had called him. He had held the title five straight years.
T.D. nodded. “Well, I just had a letter from old Jack. He holds down my same job in Luxor at Kilrainey General. He writes me they’re going to take a leg off of one of your boys down there. Only this kid won’t give his permission, and is throwing the whole place into a tizzy.”
“Prell?”
“That’s his name.”
Winch listened, while T.D. unfolded the entire tale. It certainly sounded like Prell.
“Who’s right?” he said when T.D. finished.
“Hard to say. The kid’s pretty sick, I gather. None of the other doctors want to go up against the opinion of this civilian big shot, Col Baker.” T.D. grinned. “It’s causing old Col Stevens a lot of worry. He’s the chief of administration down there. You remember him?”
Winch shook his head.
“Sure you do.” T.D. unwound his long shanks and reached for the whiskey bottle. “He was at Riley with you. Had a company. Well, the kid’s refusal is putting all the responsibility in his lap. And he’s up for brigadier on the next promotions list. You must remember him?”
Winch shook his head again. Col Stevens was the least of his concerns. But Prell was not. Like a poker player covering a filled flush, he said, “T.D., by the way. I’ve been meaning to ask you. What’re the chances of getting my orders cut to go on down there to Luxor? If I’m going to see about that job in 2nd Army, I had better be getting down there.”
“Why, sure. Any time you say. Just as long as the doctors give you the medical clearance.” T.D. looked as though he did not expect this could happen soon. An almost boyish concern flashed across his leathery hard-wrinkled face. “But you want to take care of yourself, you know. You’re not in any perfect shape. You gave us quite a scare.”
Winch shook his head. “I’m okay. As long as I don’t do any boozing.”
“Yeah. That must be hard.”
“No,” Winch said. “Not at all.”
“I sure wouldn’t like it,” T.D. said, and reached for the bottle.
Winch watched him drink, without expression. Then watched him pour for Lily, and watched them both drink.
As soon as he could, he got out of there.
The next day he started working on the doctors who were handling his case. In actual fact, he found it nice to have some goal in life again. But that it should be Bobby Prell outraged him.
“You must have a lot of friends in high places,” the chief heart man smiled, as he put away his stethoscope. “Normally we would discharge a man with what you’ve got.”
“They need my experience,” Winch said.
“I see no reason why you can’t go,” the doctor said. “As long as you remember all you’re supposed to do. The diet. No heavy exercise. But what’s your hurry? One hospital is the same as another.”
“I’ve got to see about a job, that’s supposed to be waiting for me down there,” Winch said.
“Well, I wouldn’t hold you back. You know that we’re not sure as to just what the actual chemical causes are. But we’re pretty sure it’s tied in with all the alcohol you’ve put in you. You’re just going to have to get used to the idea that you can never take one drink again the rest of your life.”
“I’m used to it,” Winch said.
But he wasn’t. When he thought about it, it was enough to have him almost biting the walls. It w
as astonishing, when you got down in and noticed it, how much almost everything in America had to do with drinking. Every dinner. Every meal. Almost every social occasion. If you were chasing some girl. And at night, when everybody was philosophizing about life and the war and death, or dancing and trying to make out with some broad, if you did not drink you were outside everything. And bored to death by all of it.
Winch had gone back into town for one evening, after he had been out of bed a week, but the whole place was totally impossible if you did not drink.
“Will you get a report up to W/O Hoggenbeck?” Winch asked. Another thing the attack had done was to entirely take away his sex drive. Or else, it was the medication they had been giving him.
“First thing tomorrow,” the heart doctor said.
“Could you do it today?”
The doc nodded. “Sure, I guess.”
After two hours of it in town Winch had come back to the hospital and had not left it since.
But the rest of it had not been really so bad. If you really wanted to die, it was probably as good a way as any, congestive heart failure. Winch wasn’t sure if he wanted to. Obviously, he did not want to or he wouldn’t be off drinking. But it was comforting to know about. If he ever did want to die, all he had to do was start drinking again.
They had slapped him in a bed in the heart ward and kept him there. And put him on a high dosage of diuretics and digitalis and kept an exact measurement of how much fluid he took in and how much he pissed out. Apparently, total bed rest was an excellent diuretic by itself. After twenty-four hours he was pissing out three times what he took in. And after the first night he was able to breathe easily again. They had kept him in the bed for five days.
Acute edema was what they called it. The retention of fluids. When the edema got into the lungs themselves was when it went into the congestive heart failure phase, and you began to cough up the foamy stuff. When it went into your lungs, your lungs began to fill up. This caused a further strain on the heart, which caused more edema. A vicious circle. Finally, you slowly drowned.