by James Jones
“I reckon he’ll survive it,” Strange said, sadly, and laid his good hand on Landers’ shoulder with a light slap, “People do all sorts of things when they’re drunk they wouldn’t do sober. No avoiding that. It aint that bad.”
He flexed the fingers of the bad hand, that still wore the plaster brace. “Now you go and dress and get in uniform. I’ll wait for you outside at the taxi stand, in the sunshine. We aint going to have all that much more of it, I don’t think. Even here in the good old Southland.”
It was in the taxi going in that he told Landers about the checking account he’d opened, and the $7000 in cash. He told Landers he intended to blow every nickel of it while he and the remaining guys from the company were still here.
Landers still wasn’t over the other thing, but Strange seemed to have forgotten Prell. “That’s an awful lot of money to blow, and just burn up,” Landers said cautiously. “You can do a lot with seven thousand bucks.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what you want. You could start buying a restaurant. You’re a cook, and restaurateur, aren’t you?”
“Don’t want anything like that,” Strange said. “Anyway, that amount of money aint going to last long, here. At a hundred bucks a day? For that suite? That’s only seventy days of suite, right there.”
“Did you ever ask them about paying monthly rates?” Landers said.
“No,” Strange said. “I haven’t.”
“Say,” Landers said, “listen. I’ve got something like two thousand bucks at home myself. What about me throwing mine in with yours?” Suddenly he felt elated, and excited. “That would give us twenty more days of suite, if we needed it.”
“All right,” Strange said. But then he raised one admonitory horny finger of his good hand. “Make certain you won’t be sorry.”
“Hell,” Landers said.
“Say, I’ll tell you what!” Strange said, excitedly. He had been looking out the window, at the big city park, Overton Park, that the taxis passed on their way into and out of town from the hospital. “Why don’t we have us a goddam picnic?”
Landers felt astonished. Apparently, Strange had put the matter of Prell totally out of his mind.
“Okay, why not?” Landers said.
“We’ll get the booze and the women and whatever guys are there, and buy some food, rent a taxi for the day, and come out to this damned park for the day,” Strange said. “How about that?” He too seemed elated, suddenly. “We’ll have ourselves a hell of a damned picnic day, by God.”
It was not till they had had three drinks, from the illegal pint Strange bought from the driver, that Strange brought up the other thing that apparently was on his mind.
He glanced nervously at the back of the driver’s head, as they moved through the streets of downtown. Then he leaned over to Landers with a conspiratorial air.
“Did you ever eat a girl’s pussy?” he whispered.
At first Landers thought he was going to some elaborate extreme as means for a joke. He began to frame in his mind some sort of joke answer. Then he saw, or sort of sensed, that Strange wasn’t joking. Strange was asking in deadly seriousness.
“Why do you want to know?” Landers asked in a normal tone, to buy time.
Strange made a violent braking motion with the open palm of his good hand, for softness of voice. “Don’t be embarrassed, God damn it,” he whispered. “I’m serious.”
“Well, if you put it that way. Well yes. I have,” Landers whispered.
“Did you like it?” Strange whispered.
“Well yes. I liked it. In fact, I loved it,” Landers whispered back.
Strange was nodding to himself. Thoughtfully. “Are you good at it?”
Everything was still in whispers, kept low by Strange’s constant admonition.
“Well. Well, I don’t know that there’s so much to being good at it. There’s this girl, Martha Prentiss? Who’s around the Peabody? That loves to suck cock.”
“I’ve had her pointed out to me, but I don’t know her. Never met her.” Whisper.
“I picked her up. She gave me a few pointers. But, hell. All it takes is a lot of gentleness, and a very wet tongue.” Whisper.
Strange nodded, but didn’t answer.
“I guess you know what a clitoris is, I guess?” Landers whispered.
“Yes, damn it. I know,” Strange whispered.
“Well,” Landers shrugged lamely.
“Does it smell?”
“Sure. It smells. It smells good.”
“Doesn’t it smell fishy?”
“It smells fishy. But it’s not really fishy. It smells— Do you know the word fecund?”
Strange shook his head.
“Fecund means rich. Like rich earth. Rich for growing. Rich for growing all the rich things of summer. Ripe,” Landers whispered. He began to be afraid he was sounding too poetic, and stopped.
“Ripe,” Strange whispered sourly. “I’ll bet it smells ripe.”
Their faces were hardly a foot apart, and Strange stared into Landers’ eyes intensely.
“Doesn’t it smell pissy?”
“Well yeah. A little bit. But you don’t mind that. At least, I don’t. But that’s only at first. After a little, it doesn’t smell pissy.”
“Doesn’t it taste?”
“No. Doesn’t taste at all. Has no taste whatever. Tastes like whatever you’ve had in your mouth before. A cigarette. Whiskey. A steak.”
Strange nodded in silence, his intent eyes not budging from Landers’.
“Say, what is all this?” Landers whispered.
“Oh, there’s this girl,” Strange whispered with elaborate indifference. “Wants me to blow her. Keeps telling me I’ll like it. Says everybody does it.”
Landers grinned. “‘Show me the man who doesn’t eat cunt, and I’ll show you the man whose wife I can steal,’ ” he grinned, quoting in a whisper the ancient joke. Strange did not laugh. Strange just stared at him.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Landers whispered. “Too damn many of them taste like soap.”
“Taste like what?”
“Soap. So many girls are so ashamed of them, and so afraid they’ll smell, that they’re constantly scrubbing the hell out of them. And they taste like soap.”
“Aw, shit,” Strange whispered, “you’re a damned expert.”
“No, no. I learned it all right here. Or almost all.”
They were so close together, and Strange was staring so intently, that Strange’s eyes were like two bright blue searchlights, flooding Landers’ face. In that light, just about nothing could be hidden. In front of them, the back of the driver’s head was not cocked. By the back of his head, he was going right on driving, totally unconcerned. After a long moment Strange relaxed back into the seat, staring straight ahead. “Times are changing everywhere,” he said, to no one in particular. Though said in a normally loud tone of voice, it came out muffled.
The cab was already onto Union Street, still heading in, moving uphill toward Main Street and the big river, invisible beyond it. As the driver swung wide to make the U turn to stop in front of the Peabody, Strange grinned and said, without expression, in a normal tone, the one word, “Thanks.”
Strange had not forgotten about the picnic. The picnic, in fact, turned out almost exactly as Strange had imagined it. Except it was even more pleasant, more fun. There were four men from the old company waiting in the suite and they had picked up some girls in pairs and singles, both at the Peabody bar and at the bar of the Claridge up on Main Street. Landers noted that without exception the four were guys who had been at Kilrainey longer, and had run out of money. Strange was obviously concentrating his largesse and his giant spending on guys who no longer had money.
That part was okay with Landers. He was willing to do exactly the same with his smaller sum, as soon as he got it down here. And by that time, he thought, Prell would be further along with his therapy. He badly wanted to do something for
Prell. Landers had tried to do what Strange apparently had done so easily with the faux pas of last night, and put it entirely out of his mind. But Landers couldn’t do it as well and Prell kept coming back to his mind in some comparative fashion almost all the time. And each time, Landers had the same awful feeling he had had that morning. Even to him, it seemed out of all proportion.
Then, when he had fallen asleep three-fourths drunk on the sunny side of one of the big trees in one of the big glades of the park, the dream or vision of the waterless platoons and his full canteen of water on the dry hill on New Georgia, suddenly came back to plague him. Again they were begging him for his water and he would not give them any. He woke suddenly, choking back a cry. The brunette girl who was with him, he did not remember which one she was or who, quickly grasped his biceps with her five fingers and smiled and winked down at him, and crooned soothingly. She apparently had done it many times before and knew what to do.
Landers sat up, and reached for another drink. It was the first time in a long time that that dream had imposed itself on him and he couldn’t help but wonder, Why now?
Fortunately, there was plenty still left to drink. If it had been a great, warm, sunny picnic, it had also certainly been a heavy drinking one. Strange had brought along just about every potable with alcohol in it that he could think of and get hold of. He had, at Landers’ instigation, even brought along a couple of bottles of French wine; but the wine had languished. Not even Landers drank it. Like everybody else, he preferred shots of whiskey with cold beer chasers. By the time it began to get chilly and they repaired to the hotel, they were all of them, including the girls, quite drunk.
Strange did not seem to show it as much as the rest. Though Landers was sure he had drunk just as much. Landers had been curious, after their conversation, and covertly watched him with the women. But it was hard to tell about Strange. Strange had divided his time about equally between Annie Waterfield, Prell’s girl of last night, and Frances Highsmith. Frances was a girl who had been around the bunch a lot, and whom Landers had made it with a few times, and whom he was sure Strange had been to bed with at least once. During all the booze buying and food buying, Strange had kept Frances with him and had ridden out to the park with her in one of the three cabs they had had to hire, and Landers had thought, Ah ha, that’s the one! But then halfway through the picnic he had redirected his attention to Annie and had gone off walking to sit with her across on the other side of the glade from where they had spread the blankets, and Landers had thought, Ah no, it was Annie! But before they left Strange went back with Frances, and rode back with her. But then when they were all settled in the suite, Strange left Frances again and sat with Annie and a bottle of bourbon that was beside them. Frances appeared to be getting irritated. But Annie Waterfield did not. At that point Landers went to bed and to sleep, not knowing who to bet on, or even whether he should bet on either. And not much caring.
He had been afraid to go to sleep again because of the dream. But the heavy drinking all day in the park, and all the hot sunshine, had done him in in a way that was more than he could handle. Even the thought of having the dream again in his sleep could not keep him awake. Besides, the girl, whose name was Mary Lou Salgraves it turned out, was there and went to bed with him, and was willing to hold his head against her naked breasts while he slept. Landers went straight off to sleep. Without even attempting to fuck; without even a hard-on. And Mary Lou seemed to like it as well that way, or like it even better.
He slept for three hours before the dream woke him again, his conscious mind rising befuddled out of sleep but, even befuddled, already trying to choke off any noise or cry he might be making.
As he came awake, he realized Mary Lou had her hand over his mouth, and her other hand was stroking his head. It was she who had waked him, he realized, as his mind began to take messages from outside.
“Ah’m sorry to wake you,” she said as she took her hand off his mouth, “but you were beginnin’ to make noises and holler in your sleep. I thought you’d want me to.” It was curiously as though she had done it all so many times that she knew exactly what to do without asking any questions. They were alone in the big bedroom he noted, and that included the smaller cot-type bed turned endways by the door.
“Yeah. Yeah, sure. Thanks,” Landers said in a sleep-roughened voice. “Thanks.”
“It was all somethin’ about water,” Mary Lou said. “Water, water. Are you thirsty?”
“No,” Landers said, then corrected himself. “Yes. Yes, I’m thirsty for some whiskey and soda.”
“Comin’ right up,” Mary Lou answered, smiling at him. She got up slowly, and then put her dress on without bothering with the underwear.
Landers watched her and felt a stirring and thickening in his crotch. “You’re some girl, you know that, Mary Lou?”
“Why, thank you, sir,” she smiled. Her chin dimpled.
Outside in the suite’s sitting room Strange was still sitting with Annie Waterfield, talking. His voice sounded a little thicker, but his eyes were quick. The level in the bourbon bottle had gone down appreciably.
“Well,” the mess/sgt said from his seat. “You get some rest?”
Landers nodded, stretching. Mary Lou handed him his drink.
Strange and Annie were the only two left in the suite. The four other old-company men and their four girls had disappeared. Frances Highsmith also had disappeared. The door to the other bedroom was wide open, and nobody was in there. It was eight-thirty, and strangely quiet and peaceful.
Strange smiled at Landers fondly, from across the room. “The others all went off to get some nigger barbeque out on Poplar someplace. They were getting a little edgy. I slipped Corello some cash. They going to some movie.” He grinned, a little sheepishly. “Frances has left us, too. Frances was the girl, in fact, I was telling you about before.”
“I think Frances’ nose was a little out of joint,” Annie said. “She acted like she had some previous claim on Sergeant Strange.” She smiled with sweet feminine bitchery.
“She’ll be all right,” Strange grinned. “There’s plenty of fellows, and plenty of hotel suites, around.”
So Annie had won, Landers thought. Or Frances Highsmith had lost. At least, now he knew which one of them it was who had asked Strange to eat her.
All along, Landers had thought it was probably Frances. But he wanted to laugh. If Strange thought he was onto something different with Annie, Strange didn’t know what kind of tree he was barking up.
Landers stared at Annie, his mind struck suddenly empty. He had been abruptly penetrated by the blunt realization that these girls had their own fierce little pecking order going here, fought over with just as much blood thirst as any other group of young females. The only difference was that the time span was shortened by the war, and the pride of ownership telescoped to three days or five days, or one night. So they fought over the men night by night. Then they started over, like any divorcée.
Landers wondered who Mary Lou had nosed out, to get him. Or he to get her? Mary Lou had certainly made it a lot easier for him today.
Landers sat down in an overstuffed armchair with his drink, and motioned for Mary Lou to come sit by him on the arm. The new drink, on top of all the booze he’d put away already, hit him swiftly. He sat tasting the strange quiet in the suite, his arm around Mary Lou’s hips.
It was such a moment of peace, in all the hot scrambling for cunt, and liquor, and life. He winked over at Strange.
Johnny Stranger, deep in his own cups and already apparently well past Landers, winked back, his one eyelid closing and then opening very slowly. Strange appeared to be savoring the quiet peace, too.
Two hours later the two of them had had their first fight in Luxor, with some Navy personnel. About seven Navy personnel, to be exact. Fortunately, not all of the enemy became engaged.
It would be easy to say it was because of all the booze they had put away. But there was more to it than that for Landers.
The four of them had gone down for a quiet, peaceful dinner in the main dining room downstairs. The old-fashioned main dining room off the lobby, with its wall paneling and quiet old colored gentlemen waiters, had in general been kept back out of the way of the huge influx of wild-eyed, fire-breathing servicemen, and was the place for that kind of dinner. Old Luxor families still took their older and younger generations there for family dinner outings. And Strange and Landers were after a quiet dinner, in keeping with the mood they had had upstairs.
Afterward, they had gone across the lobby to the bar for a drink, Strange picking up a bottle at the package store in the corridor.
They could have gone back upstairs. And none of them knew why they went to the bar. The truth was, they were feeling affectionate and, if not in love, felt warm and close. Like lovers, they wanted other people around for contrast.
Needed the audience, Landers thought sourly, later.
The contrast they got in the bar was immediate and cataclysmic. The whole place was packed. And the noise level was commensurate. They got a table for four, luckily, because a party of four got up to leave as they came in. Right behind them crammed against the wall was a long table filled on the three open sides with these Navy people, ranging upward in rank and topped off with two chiefs, one of them an old duffer in his dress whites.
Strange got up to go out to the john, after they were seated and he had poured a drink. And at the same time, behind him, another sailor came in to the long table. It was then the old duffer in dress whites reached over a huge hand and grabbed Strange’s seat away from the table. The white uniform had lots of unfamiliar WW I ribbons above the left breast, and he had gold hash marks literally all the way up his left sleeve from the wrist to his insignia.
Something blazed up in Landers’ mind like a fire ball. Though the two girls hardly seemed to notice the theft. Keeping his voice carefully empty of rage, Landers stepped over to the long table.
“That seat’s taken.”
“There was nobody in it,” the old chief said.