Whistle

by James Jones

  Once, at one point during that first night, he had nearly passed out. Everything had sort of faded away, and while he never actually lost consciousness, he seemed not to be inside himself any more. All the enormous fatigue, the exhaustion from coughing, the awful discomfort: a feeling of not being able to get enough air into his chest, no longer seemed to be coming from within himself. There never had been any actual physical pain. And now all the discomforts seemed to be somewhere else. All he wanted to do was to go sound asleep; and stay here, where all the discomforts weren’t. The doctors and medics only irritated him. He could remember thinking that maybe this was the beginning of death. From the start he had never been afraid, all through the thing. From the beginning. And he wasn’t afraid then. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t bad at all. It was pretty damn good. At the same time, it was not as if he were actually outside himself, and could “see” himself from some other place. In other words, he could in fact “see” nothing. And yet there was this persistent sense of another him.

  Later he wasn’t afraid either. It wasn’t at all a bad way to go: To shuffle off. To Buffalo. He remembered at one point he had wanted to tell them the epitaph he had chosen for himself. It was to be: Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. They were to carve it in large letters on the stone, and forget about his name. Leave the name off.

  Later, one of the docs said to him, “I thought we were losing you there for a minute.” Winch only grinned at him.

  But apparently his heart was not nearly as enlarged as the excited young intern had thought, that night he reported in. He was salvageable, as one of the docs put it. But he had come out of it with a weakened heart. When after the five days they got him back on his feet, he was ordered to start moving around. They were very insistent on that.

  On his feet, he was shaky on his pins. For a formerly strong man it was an embarrassing experience. He felt too thin, too fragile. But there was some bitterness in him that appreciated, even relished, what had happened to him.

  In the bed, it had been astonishing to watch the excess flesh drain off his body. Apparently, or so they said, fat was held in suspension in the fluid in the cells. And when you pissed off water, you were also pissing off fat. He had been carrying the beginnings of a paunch for a couple of years. This disappeared and he had a flat belly again. He developed handsome new hollows under his cheekbones. His feet and ankles had been puffy and thick. Almost as he watched, this disappeared and he could see the bones in his feet and hands again.

  At least, they were willing to let him move on to Luxor. As long as he obeyed all his dietary rules and did no heavy exercise, and followed the injunction not to drink. Or smoke. Fine.

  The next day he went up to see Hoggenbeck to make him push the papers through. Old T.D. was getting him on an Air Transport Command flight for Luxor. He was more than ready to go. Prell or no Prell.

  The Army car from the Luxor Army Air Base deposited him in front of the big front doors of the hospital. There were no welcoming committees, no groups of patients looking to see if they could spot somebody they knew. Winch arrived alone. For a little he stood on the expanse of concrete in the summer sun and looked up at the entrance. He was thinking about that stupid dumb fuck, Prell. Then he picked up the green airman’s B-4 bag and carried it up the six low concrete steps to the big doors and inside.

  He could feel it immediately in his faster breathing, and in his heart action. It was always a surprise and a shock, to have it happen to him like this. In one way it gave Winch sort of a kick. It was a little like walking around with a loaded time bomb inside your chest. One that might blow at any moment. At least, it made everything—life . . . every moment . . . every breath—an exciting event. It was a little like being back in combat.

  When the orderly who picked him up at the desk read the tag on his shirt front, he looked alarmed and scolded him seriously for carrying the bag. Winch simply grinned at him. “You guys,” the orderly said glumly. “You’re all of you crazy.”

  The first thing Winch did in his new ward was telephone Jack Alexander, the old ex-pug, and arrange to meet him. Alexander had been expecting him.

  But before he could keep his date with Alexander, he was visited by a deputation for the nine-man contingent from his old company, in the persons of Strange and Landers.

  Somehow, by the never-quiet hospital grapevine, the word had already gotten around to them that he was here. The others, Strange said, were waiting in the snack bar to meet him. Strange had told them to wait there, instead of all coming to the ward.

  Strange coughed. Both men had sort of stopped short and stared, when they first came in and saw Winch. Winch was aware how thin and frail he looked. Now the two of them eyed each other guiltily. Winch decided to beat them to the punch and said in a frigid voice, “Well, what the hell are you staring at?”

  “You’ve lost a little weight,” Strange said.

  “So? I’m on a diet.”

  “Yeah,” Strange said. “Well, good. Have you been sick, too?”

  “I’ve been a little sick. But I’m over it now,” Winch said. “Now, what’s all this about fucking Prell?”

  They both started in to talk at once. Then Landers shut up, and Strange went on alone. But Winch held up a hand and stopped him. He already knew all the background, he told them. The last he’d heard, this Col Baker had requested authority to take off the leg. Col Stevens had not yet given the okay. The other doctors all seemed to agree with Baker.

  “That’s correct,” Strange said. It felt good to have the old First Sarn’t holding the reins again. Strange didn’t want the job. “But it’s more a question of degree. Of approach. Than of absolute agreement. There’s this other doctor, name of Curran. Prell seems to feel Curran’s not as hot to amputate it right away, and would give it more time. But Baker outranks Curran. If Curran disagrees, he’s not saying so.”

  “Then we probably can’t count on him for much,” Winch said. “The main question is, are the doctors right? Is Baker right?”

  “Who knows? How can we judge that? All we know is Prell wants to keep the leg. And we’re trying to help him.” Strange shrugged, happy to pass along the buck of decision-making. “Landers here talked to this Curran. Tell him about it, Landers.”

  Slowly Landers began to tell about his interview with Curran, and its inconclusive result. He wanted to get it exactly right for Winch. Landers was finding he was much less in awe of Winch than before. Whether it was Winch’s new physical fragility, or the new wild something that kept happening to himself lately, he did not know. But he had always had this desire to be as absolutely honest with Winch as possible. Something in Winch demanded it. That hadn’t changed. When he finished, Winch went on staring at him, piercingly.

  “What do you think, yourself?” Winch said. “What’s your opinion of it?”

  “I’m inclined to think that Prell is probably right,” Landers said. “I think Col Curran would probably wait, if Prell was his patient. But Prell isn’t. And if he isn’t, Curran isn’t going to intervene.”

  “And that brings it back to Col Stevens.”

  “I guess so,” Strange said.

  “And what influence do you think you’ve got with Col Stevens?” Winch leered. “If any.”

  Strange shrugged. “None.” Then, looking a little shamefaced, he told him about the petition. They had gotten it together, and all signed it, and Strange was keeping it in the drawer of his bedside table, about the only place patients had to keep anything personal.

  “A petition? In the Army?” Winch said. “And whose idea was this?” He swung on Landers. “Yours?”

  “No,” Landers said. “It was Prell’s own idea, I guess.” He moved his head. “He gave it to Johnny Stranger.”

  It was the first time Winch had ever heard his former clerk use Strange’s personal nickname out in the open like that, and he stared at the younger wartime-only soldier. Well, we were all changing. And fast. It was only to be expected. When the situation c
hanges, the juxtapositions and orbits of the relative bodies within the situation change. All except Prell.

  “I should have guessed it,” he said in a low, iron-edged voice. “That stupid, dumbass son of a bitch. The hero-chaser. If there was any way for him to mess some damn thing up, and damage himself in the process, that hero-chaser would find the way to do it. And they’d give him a medal for it. We don’t even know whether the doctors are wrong or not, do we?”

  “No,” Strange said, “we don’t. But if it’s going to kill him, and he wants to take the chance, I think they ought to let him do it.”

  “Does anybody know why it isn’t healing?”

  “No, they don’t,” Strange said. “Tell me something, Top. Did you come all this way down here just because of Prell?”

  Winch swung his head to glare at Strange. “Are you out of your skull? You think I’d come here? I go where I’m sent, like all the rest of you meat-wagon candidates. Now, you men clear out of this and let me get myself shaped up. I’ve got a medical appointment.”

  “Do you think there’s anything you can do to help?” Strange said.

  “Me? What?” Winch said. “I don’t carry any more weight here than you do. This aint the old regiment.”

  “We’d like to ask you to do what you can,” Landers said suddenly, and loudly.

  Winch did not answer him. He simply stared at them expressionlessly.

  As they left, he turned back to his bed. After a moment, he began to straighten his bathrobe.

  Jack Alexander was a different proposition from old T.D. Hoggenbeck.

  His office was equally impressive, and he was careful to take as good care of his creature comforts, but there the resemblance ended. And Winch knew it.

  And Winch had never served with Alexander and didn’t know him, as he did old T.D. Alexander the Great—“The Emperor”—was just finishing his reign and shipping home with his loot he’d collected as number-one fighter in the Department, when Winch was just first arriving in Wahoo as a lowly corporal. Alexander had been a legend in the Army, even then.

  Now he was old. And he looked it. In fact, he resembled nothing so much as a huge, ancient, bait-wise old sea turtle. With his totally bald head and thick-wrinkled face, his only slightly flattened beak and big jaw and lipless mouth like a razor blade, bleak as the edge of an ice floe. With his faded, pale, flat, blue eyes which had seen just about everything the earth had to offer, and neither liked nor hated it all that much. An old turtle who had swum the oceans of his planet for two centuries, avoiding the traps laid by men and wearing the scars to prove it, until now he was so huge there wasn’t anything for him to fear any more. And Alexander was huge. He had always been a big man, even back in the old days, but then he had been relatively lean. Now he carried a huge hard paunch that stuck out in front of him two feet, and meat packed the skin of his head and neck to bursting. And it wasn’t fat. It was meat. How or why he had chosen to wind up his days here at Kilrainey General in Luxor was anybody’s guess.

  Winch, with his new experience, couldn’t help wondering fleetingly what Alexander’s blood pressure must be.

  With his thick fingers he pulled out a bottle of bourbon and sat it upon the desk and gestured. Winch nodded and grinned. He wasn’t supposed to, he said; but he could smell it. Alexander poured two shots and sat down and motioned to the chair across from him. So far he hadn’t said a single word.

  Winch wet his lips only, with the whiskey, and collected his thoughts.

  “So far I can’t figure out, or find out, whether this man Prell of mine ought to have his leg off or not,” he said.

  Alexander nodded.

  “You understand, I just happen to be here.”

  The huge Alexander nodded again.

  “If it ought to come off, it ought to come off,” Winch said. “Naturally, I’d like to see him save it. But he seems to feel that at least one of these damned civilian doctors would give him more time if he had the authority.”

  “That’s Curran,” Alexander said. His voice was a deep rasp from down in the middle of his paunch, which flowed past a voice box covered with the scar tissue of many years of punches.

  “Curran,” Winch said.

  “It’s got Col Stevens upset,” Alexander said. “He’s up for brigadier the next promotions list. A scandal could scotch him.”

  It was Winch’s turn to nod.

  “Even getting noticed could,” Alexander said.

  “What’s this Baker like?”

  “He’s a hardhead. He’s in love with himself. He’s good,” Alexander said.

  “And Curran?”

  “The same,” Alexander said. “Younger.”

  “So there’s no choice. What’s wrong with stalling it?” Winch said.

  “Nothing,” Alexander said. “But Prell could die.”

  “Don’t other men die here?”

  Alexander’s huge shoulders moved ever so slightly in the expensive swivel chair. “Sure.”

  “So?” Winch said. He was playing it all by ear now, a response at a time.

  “There’s been so much notoriety,” Alexander said. “Publicity. He might have relatives.” He moved in the chair, an enormous bulk. “I’m telling you how the Old Man, how Col Stevens is thinking.”

  “He hasn’t got any relatives,” Winch said.

  “He’s got a lot of friends,” Alexander said. “Apparently.”

  “I can promise the friends won’t say anything. About anything,” Winch said. “They all want the surgeons to wait.”

  “I guess the Old Man—if I was the Old Man, that is—would sure like to be sure of that,” Alexander said.

  Winch paused, as an idea hit him. “As a matter of fact,” he said finally, “I’ve got a—” his throat choked itself off at the word petition, “a paper,” he said instead, “that’s signed by all the former members of his outfit here, which asks that Prell’s leg not be amputated.”

  “I’d sure like to have a copy of that paper,” Alexander said.

  “Would you show it to Col Stevens?”

  “No,” Alexander said. “I couldn’t do that.”

  “I can get you a copy of it,” Winch said.

  “Signed?”

  “Sure, signed.”

  “I would like to have it,” Alexander said.

  “Then there’s another thing,” Winch said. “This man Prell’s been recommended for a Congressional Medal by our Division commander. Did you know that? It ought to be in his 201 File, hadn’t it?”

  Alexander nodded his enormous head. “It is. The Old Man’s seen it. There’s an interesting bit on that. When the man first got here, I got a letter on him. From Washington. They wanted to know how he was getting along. I had to write back not so good. They didn’t answer. Later I wrote two follow-ups on that medal. We got decorations lists here, you see. And every so often the Old Man makes some presentations. I got answers on all the others. But I didn’t get an answer on that Prell medal. Now what does that sound like to you?”

  “Where was the inquiry letter from?” Winch said, his mind racing around.

  “From AGO.”

  “Where do the medal responses come from?”

  “The Medals Division.”

  “So?” Winch asked. He answered himself, “So. It looks like they don’t want a one-legged Medal of Honor winner right now. At least, not from Luxor.”

  The big head nodded slowly. “That was what it looked like to me.”

  “Wouldn’t Col Stevens like to have a Medal of Honor winner here?” Winch asked. “Make the presentation?”

  “Not a dead one,” Alexander said. “With no relatives.”

  “The regiment would like to have that medal,” Winch said.

  “You can’t speak officially for the regiment, though,” Alexander said. His turtle-horn mouth cracked a mirthless grin. “And I think it’s live Medal of Honor winners, with all their arms and legs, that they’re looking for, right now.”

  “There’s a very good chanc
e that he’ll live, I seem to feel,” Winch said. “Better than even, I’d say. But this Col Curran hasn’t any authority.”

  “The Old Man couldn’t take a patient away from Col Baker and give him to Col Curran,” Alexander croaked mildly. “But he does have an awful lot of work right now. Awful busy.”

  “And he could stay busy awhile,” Winch said.

  “I would like to have that paper,” Alexander said.

  “I can have it for you this afternoon.”

  “Naturally, I wouldn’t show it to Col Stevens. It might look too much like some kind of a petition. You can imagine what that would do to Col Stevens. Like a red flag to a bull. But he might hear about the men, huh?”

  “You’ll have it today,” Winch said.

  “Much obliged,” Alexander said. For the first time since they’d started, he picked up his shot glass of bourbon. He gestured a salute with it and tossed it off. He put the bottle away.

  “Of course, I can’t speak for Col Stevens, you understand,” Alexander said with massive modesty in the flat turtle eyes.

  “Of course not,” Winch said.

  When Winch had his hand already on the stainless steel doorknob, the chief w/o grunted behind his desk. Winch turned around.

  “It’s nice to do business with you, Sgt Winch,” Alexander said. “Old T.D. Hoggenbeck wasn’t wrong about you.”

  “Well, it’s nice to do business with you, sir,” Winch said.

  “Maybe we’ll do more,” Alexander said from behind the desk, without even a crack of a smile.

  “Maybe,” Winch said. “It’s possible.” Old T.D. must have told him about that, too.

  “I know everybody at and Army,” Alexander said.

  Winch nodded. So old T.D. had told him. He shut the door behind him.

  There was no difficulty in getting hold of the petition. Strange turned it over to him immediately. After the noon meal Winch read it, rewrote it in a less formal petition style, and took it with him to the snack bar where he was to meet with and say hello to the other men, and had them all re-sign it. Then he sat and talked with them awhile.

  It was not much of a reunion. At least, not for Winch. Without knowing it about Landers, Winch had the same reaction to all of them that Landers had had. They did not seem to be the same men. Their faces were all different. He remembered them as the men they had been when they left Guadalcanal back in January or February on the big planes or the Navy ships, when their faces had been skeletal and hollow-eyed and haunted, and full of fear and terror and a boyish relief. Different men. More like his perpetually dehydrated platoons, who were still out there.