Whistle

by James Jones

  But then he didn’t start. Instead, he sat with his ungloved hands on the wheel, staring out across the country square. Landers got the impression of an immensely inarticulate man, tongue-tied not so much by dumbness, as by the terrible complexity of saying anything at all. After a minute, without a word, he turned the ignition key and jerked at the gear lever.

  Somewhere in the outskirts of the town he pulled up to what up north would have been called a roadhouse. It was dark, and looked deserted and closed. Waterfield rapped on the door, anyway. A man in an open shirt and a woman in a long gown opened it. The two led them into music, warmth, low lights, and a long bar along the lefthand wall with a dance floor behind. Vera Lynn was singing “The Umbrella Man.” There had been ten or twelve cars outside in the parking lot. All the people from them were in here.

  Waterfield got a chorus of affectionate greetings. Somebody said, “Say, Charlie, who’s your friend?”

  “Friend of Annie’s come to visit. From Luxor.”

  The point wasn’t pressed, but it was an announcement. Any friend of Charlie’s had better be a friend of Landers.

  In the light, he had circles under his eyes so pronounced they gave him the look of an alert, very patient hound dog. The eyes looked at you with that same look of a smart hound, alert, patient, waiting.

  They fixed a table for him, in what was apparently a ritual. Off by itself, with a bottle of whiskey, glasses, ice, and a pitcher of water. The two of them sat at it and talked as they drank, mostly questions by Charlie and answers by Landers about Annie.

  How was she doing down there in Luxor? Was she in good shape, healthy? Was she having a good time, was she happy? How was that job of hers holding up? Did she look good? Did she have decent friends?

  Here was the only place he stumbled, over the adjective decent, which he half hesitated on, then changed to nice. So that the final question read: Did she have nice friends?

  Landers answered the best he could, not knowing much about Annie. Landers did not know, for example, whether Annie had a job or not. He did not see how she could, going off for a week or a month with servicemen all the time. But he did not tell this to Charlie.

  “She doesn’t have to work,” Charlie smiled, from below the perpetually alert hound’s eyes. “I send her all the money she wants. But I guess she enjoys working.” Landers thought it best not to make an answer to this at all.

  There wasn’t much question that Charlie was at least part owner of the joint. The lady manager in the gown came over to ask his advice on a technical question about the bar. “I don’t want to talk about it now,” was all he said, raising those alert, patient hound’s eyes, and the lady faded. Charlie went back to his questions about Annie.

  It was six-thirty and the daylight was coming up in the east, when they finally got home. Landers was both drunk and exhausted. Charlie showed no signs of either. He showed Landers to his bedroom in the huge derelict house, but he himself did not go to bed. He changed into his day uniform, and went out to do his morning inspection tour he did every day at this hour.

  Changing into his day uniform meant taking off his navy blue pants, and the white shirt with shoulder straps, with its black four-in-hand tie; and putting on khaki pants and a khaki shirt with shoulder straps, and a khaki four-in-hand tie. The sheepskin coat and semi-Western-style hat he did not change. He walked out of the house, telling Landers that Loucine would be around the house when he woke up, to make him breakfast. This was the pattern life took, in the big Main Street house. It was Charlie’s pattern, but day by day Landers’ pattern fell more and more in line with it. He got up at noon, had breakfast, then read the papers in the dark, unused living room. Then he went for a walk in the business district, hitting all the poolrooms, and in one of them he usually found Charlie. He would have a sandwich and a Coke laced with illegal whiskey for lunch in one of them. It was amazing how much whiskey there was loose in this county seat of a dry county. Then he would go back to the tall, spindly house and sleep or read for a couple of hours. They almost always had dinner out with Loucine. Then when Loucine went home to bed, the two of them would start Charlie’s late evening rounds that would last till dawn.

  It was not such a terrible deal. At the very least he was safe here. The only comment Charlie Waterfield ever made on his being a deserter was to hand him a full book of blank pass forms. “There’s plenty more where these come from. And you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like.”

  But of course that didn’t solve anything. The problem was somewhere else. Whenever Landers thought of Captain Mayhew and his fucking telephone, and what he had done to the 3516th, he went into a rage that was murderous, and which he carefully hid, and he swore he would never go back.

  But the sworn oath was always followed by a monstrously deep, black depression, which drove him out to wherever there was whiskey. He had not been there more than a week when he knew he would not be able to stay.

  When Landers woke that first morning at noon, it was to the smell of bacon frying. When he could get dressed and downstairs, he found Loucine in her winter nightgown and a not very sexy robe, cooking and eating her own breakfast. She did not seem surprised to see him. She was enormously pregnant. She was a small, slender girl, but she literally waddled around the kitchen. It was a big, comfortable kitchen, sunny at the end where the table was, on a sunny day. The plate of yellow scrambled eggs laced with red-brown strips of bacon and tan squares of toast she placed before him looked and tasted delicious, in the winter sunshine. Then she went off to get dressed.

  Landers had to grin sourly two days later, when Annie’s prediction about how long it would take for him to end up in bed with Loucine came true, a day ahead of schedule.

  It happened suddenly. The second noon at breakfast she was not in the flannel nightie and unsexy robe, and instead wore a thin shorty nightgown and a knee-length negligee, also thin. When Landers went into the living room after he’d eaten, and sat down with the papers, she sat silent on a windowseat near him and looked out over the town, which was under a thin snow, granular and sifting like flour. The next afternoon she was suddenly in his lap, between him and the papers, crushing the Louisville Courier-Journal, although Landers never quite knew how she arrived there. Charlie seemed to make it a point of not coming home at this time of day.

  So Loucine was added to Landers’ daily life pattern in Barleyville. Her time was the early afternoon, or the early and late afternoon, depending. Loucine would screw him as many times each afternoon as he felt he was capable of screwing. The record was ten, in four hours of one afternoon. Landers wanted to see just how far she would go, and what her limit was, and also whether he could get her to talk, besides just saying hello and good-by. Besides, he had nothing much else to do. But he never found out. And afterward she had to make him a big raw-eggs-and-milkshake drink, to help his shaky legs, before he went out for his daily walk down the street and a half of business establishments and pool halls.

  Charlie introduced him to lots of other available women, during the nights. Almost all were married, or at least engaged, to guys who were away overseas, or at least off somewhere in the Army. All of them were lonely, and hungry for a cock.

  Landers had a sneaking feeling that Charlie already had made out with each of the ones he himself went off with. But Charlie never talked about it, or about women. The women never talked about it, either. Any more than Loucine did. It was as if the women all felt that if they did not talk about it, it would seem not to have happened. And they all would still be getting the release they all needed.

  So there were plenty of women. But Landers began to resent being the out-of-town stud for all the juke joint ladies. Besides, he got tired. Serving as stud to a pregnant lady was not all that easy. After the first couple of times the novelty wore off. Especially if like Loucine she didn’t talk. He discovered it required an enormous amount of physical energy, because you had to be careful to keep yourself up off her stomach. What it amounted to, finally, was
a sort of series of unlimited push-ups, until either you came or your arms gave out, whichever happened first. But Landers felt he owed it to Loucine. He certainly owed them something for taking him in. And after his afternoons with Loucine, he was not up to other ladies. He took to spending more and more of the nights just with Charlie, getting drunk and just talking.

  They talked about everything, excepting women. There was something about Charlie that seemed to insist on seeing all women as ladies. He was prepared and willing to make excuses for all of them. Most of his Southern confreres, Landers had found—indeed, most Americans—divided women into two distinctive categories: ladies and whores. With no shadings of gray in between. But not Charlie. He had only the one category.

  Twice while Landers was with him in the sheriff’s car he drove over across town in the late afternoon to see his wife. Charlie, it turned out, brought her every afternoon the groceries she wanted for that evening and the next day.

  Landers was curious to see her, knowing what Annie had told him about her down in Luxor. She was a good-looking woman for her age, about forty-five, and she had not lost what they called bloom. She still had a figure. But for a roundish face such as she had there was a peculiarly elusive ferretlike toughness to some part of it. She had a soft, gentle, delightful Southern smile, which went all the way up to and deep into her eyes, with a kind of ropy, sexy charm of innocence. She almost never relaxed this smile in her eyes, even when her face wasn’t smiling. The few times she did, the very few times Landers caught her at it, Landers thought he saw behind it the eyes of a shrewd, hard-hitting poker player. The kind he would not want to play against, in any serious game.

  She took one look at Landers, and decided immediately Landers was sleeping with her second-oldest daughter. Both she and Landers knew what this conclusion she had made was. Both knew there would be no revoking it. While Charlie was unloading the car of its groceries, Landers sat with her in the parlor and talked politely.

  Her first name was Blanche. She was, it came out quickly in her talk, a pillar among the local Baptists, and wanted to know if perhaps Landers would come down to the church to some of their meetings. Landers said he would be delighted to. She smiled her thanks. But she carefully did not press him for a specific time.

  Apparently Annie in Luxor was the only one who knew she was the mistress of the local Nashville politician, Landers thought. But then he revised that. Charlie knew. Then he revised again: Everybody knew.

  The two little girls of nine and eight were abominable. They were both spoiled totally rotten. Worse, even at eight and nine they were both already well aware of being females, knew that this carried special privileges, utilized these shamelessly, and just did not have the finesse yet to hide it. They flirted outrageously, just as if they were already women, and thrust out their little buds of breasts as though the breasts had already grown into what they would someday become.

  Outside in the car, when Charlie had delivered all the groceries, Charlie stared off through the windshield again. As if he were about to say something. But he thought better of it, and threw the car violently into gear. Before he released the clutch, he took a deep breath and let out one huge sigh.

  Sitting there, watching and saying nothing, not even involved, Landers had the impression he was with a man who in the course of his life had had to learn the hard way to cope with a great many disarrayed and enigmatic things, and had done it; but in the course of doing it, had found a great many other darknesses he would never be able to cope with ever. Not ever. Never.

  Landers never had found out when Charlie slept, and never did. It wasn’t in the morning. And it certainly wasn’t in the afternoon, because he was never there. Landers finally decided he must exist by catnapping. Like a combat soldier. Sleeping a half hour at a time, in his big swivel chair at his desk, in the back room of his office at the courthouse.

  When they had taken Loucine out to eat and brought her back home, Charlie brightened up. As the two of them set off on his evening rounds. And that night it was Charlie who went off somewhere with one of the lonely juke joint ladies. Leaving Landers behind for an hour or two. Landers could almost hear him sighing. Simplicity, simplicity.

  It was near the end of the third week he had been there that Landers told him he couldn’t stay. It would not have been true to say that his final decision was due to their two visits to Blanche and the little girls. But it was possible meeting them caused him to make the decision earlier.

  He tried to explain to Charlie how there was just too much going on, too many things that had not been resolved; too much, too, he hadn’t solved for himself. Charlie apparently had already anticipated this. He had a sad, rueful smile and said he suspected as much, but he must add that he thought it was a mistake.

  “You know, this war’s not going to last forever. May seem like it to you, but it aint. We’ve won it, now.”

  “A lot of good men are going to die before the Germans and Japs believe that,” Landers said somberly.

  “I know, and that’s sad, but what I say’s the truth, just the same. Soon’s this invasion of France gets under way, sometime this spring, it’s not going to be too long in Europe. And the goddam Japs’re already whipped. Just going to take a little power.”

  Landers thought this was an awfully large and conclusive statement to swallow, without water. Especially coming from a Tennessee country sheriff. What he felt must have shown on his face.

  “Believe me. Just believe me,” Charlie said. “A year in Europe. Another six months for the Japs. I’ve got friends in Washington. They know. They’re already planning.

  “Anyway, I think it would be pretty silly for you to get killed in this war, now. You’ve already done your share.

  “So you just think it over a couple days. And in the meantime, let me make you a proposition.”

  “What kind of a proposition?”

  “You just stay here with us. Forget about going back to the Army. That’s the proposition.”

  Landers was staring at him, and didn’t answer.

  “Just think about it,” Charlie urged. “That’s all I ask. In a month you can start putting on civilian clothes. I can even get you a job, if you want. But you don’t need it.

  “Nobody’s going to say a word to you. Nobody’ll pick you up. Not in my county.”

  For Landers it was a little breathtaking, that the law could be so grandly circumvented so totally, and with such confidence.

  “You think about it,” Charlie said.

  “What about my citizenship?” Landers asked. “I’ll get a dishonorable discharge out of it, finally, in the end. As a deserter. Lose my citizenship. Lose my right to vote.” He wrinkled up his face. “Not that I give a shit about voting.”

  “I’m telling you, that can all be taken care of. Maybe not right now. But certainly after the war,” Charlie said. “And maybe right away. I told you, I got friends in Washington.”

  “Well!” Landers said. “It’s some proposition. Why?”

  Charlie made a squeezed, painful shrug. “Well, we like you. I certainly do. And Loucine has gotten to like you a lot. I even suspect that she’s in love with you.”

  “In love with me!”

  Charlie held up a big hand. “Young women her age fall in love, Marion. If you happen to be standing close to them, and are in focus at the right moment, they fall in love with you. You move away a few feet, they fall in love with another one, that happens to be closer. That’s just the way it is.”

  Landers did not trust himself to answer. No mention had been made of his sleeping with her.

  “You could do a lot worse than Loucine,” Charlie said. “You wouldn’t have to marry her, of course. Unless you decided you truly wanted to. And that kid’s my property. The one she’s carrying. I’ll take care of him, and I’ll raise him. You wouldn’t have to take on that responsibility unless you truly wanted to.

  “Have you ever thought about how you’d be as a deputy sheriff? I think you’d be pretty
good. You’ve got natural authority, and you stand right.” Suddenly he grinned, impishly. “Anyway, all you have to do is walk around and look important, look like you know things. And have a piece of a bunch of the right kind of investments.”

  Landers still did not answer.

  “You could grow up to be a good sheriff yourself. In a very few years. And Loucine is going to make somebody a fine wife.”

  “Charlie, she’s hardly said ten words to me since I’ve been here,” Landers said.

  “That’s why she’ll make a good wife,” Charlie said solemnly.

  Landers thought briefly that vaguely, like some transparent apparition, he could see the fine faint hand of Blanche in this somewhere. But then he thought he couldn’t.

  “Well, Jesus, Charlie. I don’t know,” he said finally.

  “You think about it,” Charlie smiled. “Let me tell you something. I know you’re a friend of Annie’s. But that won’t matter. Annie’s a rover. Always been. She’s always going to be on the run. Loucine’s not. Loucine’s a regular homebody. You give Loucine a home and she’ll never stir. She just aint got any home, yet.

  “Let me tell you something else. About being a father. A father is the garbage pail of a family. Everything that’s getting a little old, or getting to smell a little, or is going bad, or is upsetting, is dumped on him. Just like a garbage pail. That’s what he’s for.”

  “I don’t know if I’m ready to be a father.”

  “Well, nobody is,” Charlie said.

  It was a munificent offer, in its way. Almost unbelievable. Charlie didn’t even ask that he marry Loucine and give the kid his name. Of course, Charlie probably figured that he would, if he simply stayed around long enough. Landers promised that he would think it over for two days. But even before he promised, even from the very beginning of it, he had known he was not going to accept. He did think it over for the two days. But nothing he thought changed.