by James Jones
He shouldn’t have picked up that water pitcher. And he wouldn’t let himself do something like that again. He was glad they hadn’t pushed him to using it. Strange didn’t want to accidentally kill or cripple anybody. Just a good clean fight.
Strange had put a lot of deep thought on the matter of Frances Highsmith. And why she had to be his first blow job. Even the most superficial analysis spotlighted Frances. She was the first girl he had fucked back home in the States, other than Linda Sue. Frances was also the first girl anywhere to ask him to go down on her. And even more important, at least to Strange, it was Frances who had warned him he could lose his wife if he didn’t take better care of her in bed. Frances deserved to be the first. By every moral right. Strange had realized this last night, when Annie Waterfield, too, had asked him to go down on her.
Annie hadn’t really asked him, exactly. She had just assumed that he would. When she had started to go down on him, all laid out flat on the bed as he was, she had stretched that long, long, lean, beautiful leg out full length over him, and then had put her knee and her long lean rounded lovely thigh on the other side of his chest on the bed.
Strange had lain looking up at all the exposed woman-flesh, just above his face. She was pretty well exposed, in that position. There was a delicious, beautiful, little hollow on the inner surface of each thigh just where it met the trunk. These shaded into the thick, dark shadow of her crotch hair. In the middle of this thicket was the pink gape of her cunt, the two inner lips, hanging and open, joined to form the sheath, curling and pink, of the clitoris. After a moment, Strange put his hand up and began to manipulate her there.
Annie slowed her sucking, on the upstroke, as it were, and turned her head slightly without losing contact. “You don’t suck pussy? All right. Just do that. Ahhh. That’s it. But put a couple of fingers inside me.” She went back to sucking.
It was certainly tempting. To say the least. Why did he suddenly find it so terribly desirable? Maybe it was that delicious exposure of her position.
But then, like some blocking mechanism lowering an iron inflexible curtain, Strange knew that it was Frances who deserved to be his first one. Deserved it. He owed it. It was easy enough for Strange to see that this was some sophomoric, boy’s, or boy scout’s, moralism. Easy enough for him even to state it publicly. That did not make it any less binding. He had to back away.
Strange had gone on manipulating her with his hand, doing it as she had told him. When she came, it was with a gush of unintelligible words and an outpour of emotion that was almost shocking and engulfed him. It was the first time in his life, Strange became aware, that he knew for sure he had made a woman come. It was no soft ah-ing and oh-ing, like when they faked it. He realized that making a woman come was one of the better things in living.
None of this changed the way he felt about old Frances. Or the way he felt about Linda Sue.
Strange had expended a great deal of deep thought on the subject of Linda Sue, also. More time and more depth than he had spent on Frances, and almost all of it anguished. One matter he had gone deepest into was the subject of jealousy. He had a lot of that. But only where it concerned Linda Sue.
One of the first things he’d noted about all the girls of Luxor was that, however many times he’d screwed one, and however much he might like her, it did not matter to him who she fucked or might be fucking when he was not with her. This was not the case with Linda.
No. With Linda, his imagination worked overtime, and double overtime. Always, of course, with that Air Force lt col of hers. The “aeronautical genius,” as Linda had referred to him more than once. That must have come straight from him himself, to her. Or from some of his buddies, maybe. If he allowed Linda to meet them?
Strange’s imagination had a way of slipping little pictures of Linda in passion up into Strange’s conscious mind when Strange wasn’t expecting them. Linda, with her head thrown back in ecstasy. Linda in the act of coming. Linda, arching and playing with her nipples with the first two fingers of both her hands. Linda with her legs stretched wide as wide, waiting for it, receiving it. All things, of course, which she had never done with Strange. But which Strange had always imagined her doing. And now imagined again.
But always of course with the “aeronautical genius.” The lt col was always curiously faceless in these images. But big. Broad-shouldered. Unhairy (Strange was hairy). Long-waisted. Narrow-assed. Beautiful in other words. And he had a huge cock. Much bigger around, much longer, than Strange’s own. And a long mobile sensitive questing tongue. Which he used beautifully, to great advantage. On Linda. Driving her out of her seclusion, out of her withdrawal, out of her mind with passion.
And driving Strange out of his mind with thinking about it.
If Strange was with a woman, and was drunk, and at one of those big parties, with lots of laughing, talking, and people, it was not so bad. If he was alone, or at the hospital, it was bad.
The other element he had gone into deeply which concerned Linda Sue was his loneliness. That didn’t make much sense, even to Strange. Strange had never been lonely in his life. Never, that is, until now.
Even back before they were married, when Linda was at home single and alone in Texas, and he did not see her except every year or so, Strange had not been lonely. When the war came along, after they were married, and she had been shipped back while he stayed on in Wahoo, he had not been lonely. He had never been really lonely on Guadalcanal and New Georgia. On his way back out, when the restaurant problem and his discharge had become uppermost, about half of the time he wished he was out of the marriage altogether. He certainly had not been lonely for her.
Now, he was lonely with a fierceness and a misery that were unbearable. When he was at a party, drunk, and with a woman, was when he was the most lonely. But it hurt less than when he was lonely alone or at the hospital.
At first, he had attributed the jealousy and the loneliness to love. Lost love. And being in love. Then in his deeper brooding, it occurred to him he had never been lonely away from Linda Sue, as long as he knew he had her there, waiting. And he had never been jealous of her, any more than of the Luxor girls, until he knew he’d lost her.
If these were murky glimmers of truth themselves, then his jealousy and his loneliness weren’t due to lost love so much at all, as to a sense of disrupted ownership.
And Strange was smart enough to know that no one had a right to own anybody. That not only wasn’t love. It was wrong. It was downright immoral. That was slavery.
And where did that leave him? he asked himself.
It left him a lot better off thinking about Frances Highsmith, and his debt to her. That was where. He got out and paid for his unbearable taxi ride. In the fall sunshine he turned to the revolving door of the Peabody. Its suave old Negro doorman, in Peabody livery, with his look of thousand-year-old patience, pushed the rotating door leaf for him.
In the frantic, uniform-jammed lobby, Strange looked around. Only, where in hell was Frances? And where in hell in Luxor was Frances to be found?
In fact, it was no trouble at all to find Frances. She was in the suite waiting, when he got there. And she was both drunk and furious at Strange.
“What the hell kind of shit was that?” she began. “Keeping me hanging around. And then standing me up for Annie Waterfield. You kept me hanging around till it was too late to pick up any other genuine date. And then you turn me off? Like a faucet? Did you expect me to go out and pick up some soldier boy in the streets? Or the downstairs bar? Do you think I’m some kind of hooker?”
Strange had hardly got the door shut fully. He stared at her pinched little furious face. Apparently the suite of the Navy flyers on the floor below had been closed down for the night, last night. Frances had sat up alone all night, brooding, while doing away with the better part of two fifths of bourbon. Only Landers and Trynor were in the place with her. She had burst in on Trynor and begun her tirade when he was there alone, and helpless. Luckily Landers had come
along shortly after.
“Well, I’m not some fucking kind of hooker,” Frances continued. “I’m a fucking decent girl. I work for my fucking living. And I pay my fucking own way.”
Apparently the pickup and use of barrack-room language by girls was another new sign of the times, and the war, Strange realized suddenly.
“What the fuck kind of show do you think we run around here?” Frances demanded. “Do you think we’re just easy lays? Just line us up, and bim-bam, thank-you-mam? You embarrassed me. You made me play second place to Annie Waterfield, in front of everybody. Annie Waterfield, who thinks she’s such hot shit and number one because she’s so fucking beautiful with her tits and long blonde pageboy. You’re nothing but a fucking son of a bitch, Strange.”
“I’ve been trying to calm her,” Landers whispered. Trynor simply sat, cracking his knuckles, and pushing his eyebrows farther up his forehead, out of his depth.
“Cut off her booze,” Strange told Landers. Frances’ voice went up another five decibels.
“I’ll help myself to anything around here that I want,” she shouted. “And none of you fucking pricks will stop me. Gimme nuther drink.”
Finally they were able to get her into one of the bedrooms, where she sat on the pillows at the head of the bed, in a sort of last-ditch defensive position, her pretty legs crossed under her.
Strange and Landers sat on the two bed edges by the pillows, on either side of her. Trynor had crawled onto the bed foot and sat there cracking his knuckles and working his washboard forehead.
The three of them were thinking the same thing, which was that if it went on much longer and got any louder, the house dick would be up there, probably with two huge MPs. “I think she’s becoming hysterical,” Landers whispered.
“Hysterical. I’m not hysterical. I just know my rights,” Frances shouted.
Futilely Strange and Landers both flapped their hands at her to be quiet. She was undeterred.
“And you. You son of a bitch,” she yelled at Strange. “I know what you’d like to do. Wouldn’t you? You’d like to hit me. Wouldn’t you? Well, go ahead. Why don’t you? Go ahead.”
“For God’s sake. Shut up, now, Frances,” Strange said.
“Yeah, please do,” Landers whispered.
She apparently did not even hear them. Strange stared at her. Here he was all prepared to go down on some woman, his very first time, everything arranged, everything all set, and she had to go and throw some idiotic scene. Strange saw it all floating away.
“I know you’d like to hit me. I know your type. Well, why don’t you? What’s to stop you? I can’t,” Frances shouted. “Go right ahead. You’d like to bust me right in the nose. Break my nose. Well, go ahead. Why don’t you?” She got a deep breath. “I’ll tell you why you won’t. Because you haven’t got the guts, that’s why. You’re chicken. Chickenshit. Yahhhh.”
She shut her eyes and screwed up her face and thrust it forward, sticking her tongue out as far as it would go. “Yahhhh. Yahhhh. Hit me. Go ahead. I dare you. I double-dare you. Yahhhh.”
Why not, indeed? The words formed themselves in Strange’s mind. Before they could be digested, his left hand shot out, the good one, of its own volition, in a short straight pistonlike punch. Fortunately, he was sitting twisted on the bed, so that he could not put any weight behind it. Nevertheless there was a loud cracking noise, followed by a sharp squawk from Frances, who then collapsed into silence, head down, her hands to her face.
Strange was aghast at himself. Hitting a woman. It was the same sudden violent reaction he had had last night, when he grabbed up the water pitcher. What was happening to him?
At the same time, way down deep under his start and dismay was a tiny bright red tickle of satisfied pleasure. Goddam women. There wasn’t one of them who could be rational about anything. At least he had gotten even with them for once. But he was sorry.
“Jesus God,” Landers whispered. He got his palm on her forehead, and began forcing her head up. Strange got her hands and pulled them down. A bright red stream of blood was running from her nose, down over her hands, and now down over her chin, into her lap.
“At least it shut her up for a while,” Strange said, to nobody, with a silly grin.
Trynor was already on his way back from the bathroom with towels. “You oughtn’t to of done that,” he said in a mild but shocked voice.
“You big oaf,” Frances said, in a muffled but nonetheless loving tone of voice. “A real dumbkopf.”
“Put your head back,” Landers said. “Way back. Get some ice from the ice bucket,” he said to Trynor.
“Go ahead, turn me in,” Strange said with a grin. “Just go down to the lobby. There’ll be an MP somewhere. I’ll wait right here.”
“Oh, shut up, you oaf,” Frances Highsmith said.
“Do you want us to try and get you a doctor?” Landers said.
“I don’t want anything,” Frances said. “Just stop the bleeding, and get me out of here. I’ve got a doctor.”
She was much more worried about the blood on the lap of her skirt than about her nose, apparently. The skirt made her look as if she had started menstruating. They got it off of her and Landers washed the blood out of it in cold water, and hung the dress up to dry. By the time it was dry enough the bleeding had all but stopped, but the nose was swelling steadily. “Just get me out of here,” Frances said again. They gave her a hotel napkin to cover it and Landers went down with her to the street and put her in a cab. He offered to go with her, but she did not want him to. When he came back, he threw himself down in a deep armchair with a “Whoosh!” of relief.
It was the beginning of the end for Landers and Strange. Trynor stayed on, with a key, in case any of the other old-company men should come in. But Strange and Landers had had enough of partying. Both were ready to go back to the hospital.
But before they did, they stayed on long enough to get good and drunk. Then they drank more in the cab going back. On the main outdoor walkway they parted to go to their respective wards and sleep the night through. It was just suppertime on the wards.
“What’s gotten into you?” Landers asked in the cab. “You could have gotten us all into a lot of trouble.”
“I know,” Strange said. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
On his own ward he slept the whole night through in an unrestful sleep, but without dreams. In the morning, though Col Curran did not appear with the morning rounds group, Strange went to him in his surgery office and turned himself over to him, with the information that he wanted the second operation.
Strange calculated that in a little over four days he had spent just about two thousand dollars of the seven-thousand-dollar total.
But that, of course, was only if you included the $1400 paid to the hotel for the two weeks of the suite.
CHAPTER 21
CURRAN WASTED LITTLE TIME. Strange told him what he’d decided. Curran smiled his small smile and said he would take Strange the next day, tomorrow.
He had been meaning to get around to Strange, he said. There was not any question of Curran’s having waited for Strange to make a decision. He hadn’t. He just had been extraordinarily busy. Which was also the reason he had missed making morning rounds. The US 5th Army had been halted by the Germans at the Volturno in October. And had been doing heavy work, was the way Curran phrased it, since then, and in fact had been hung up not far from there since November 1st. And the tougher surgical cases were drifting back, now. He hadn’t had time for Strange.
The mention of the 5th Army in Italy shocked Strange. He had seen two of them come onto his own ward with forearm or hand wounds. Sour, dour, silent men. Who knew nobody, and did not even know each other. Strange knew about the Salerno invasion, of course. But what shocked him was that he had not even paid much attention. And how, though he knew about the taking of Naples, he had not bothered to read up on it at all. He realized suddenly he had not looked at a newspaper in weeks.
He left Curran’s office, already back on the familiar hospital treadmill. His day pass was canceled for that afternoon. That evening he would get a special light supper. At night at bedtime, which was at nine o’clock, they would give him a light sleeping pill. In the morning they would come at six a.m. with the pisser duck and the calmative hypo, and then wheel him to surgery.
And fuck the 5th Army in Italy. That was how he felt. Was that how the others had felt?
In the surgery, while they were prepping his arm and had not yet put their masks on, he asked Curran groggily, grinning a silly grin, if they would please give him some other kind of anesthetic,
Curran shook his head. Sodium pentothal was the best they had. “Why another?”
“Gives me bad dreams,” Strange said woozily.
Curran grinned. “A few bad dreams never hurt anybody.” He went on putting up his gauze mask, becoming some kind of an alien with its tie-strap over his cap. Then he turned to his male assistant for his sterile gloves, popping his hands into the rubber.
The dream when it came, the vision, the hallucination, was all very familiar. It was as though it were taking up right where the other had left off. A certain time period seemed to have passed. And Strange, in his mind, was aware of all that had happened, while he had been away.
There were the same flashing lights, and the same distant shouting. As of crowds. And in fact it followed exactly the same physical projection of the other time. First, the anesthetist was talking him up onto it, softly, gently, exhorting, like a trainer talking up a fighter before going down to the ring. Then he was dripping the stuff into the vein, and Strange was counting backward from ten, till the explosion of noxious fumes came in the roof of his mouth. Then with no time lapse at all he was in the great hall. Waking up. Aware he was waking up. Struggling hard to wake up. But committed to the vision, to its complete unrolling, before he would be allowed out of limbo and back to Strange.