IT WAS BARELY the middle of March, hardly ten days since Holmes had first brought him the papers, that the transfer of the Fort Kamehameha cook came back, approved, to Warden. For a transfer like that one was, from one branch of service to another, it was an unbelievably short time.
That afternoon that Mazzioli brought the transfer letter over from Regiment, Milt Warden had been sitting at his desk, puzzling over a snapshot Karen Holmes had given him of herself that was before him lying on the papers he had been working on, his cheek sunk on the knuckles of one big fist like a small boy watching a grownup’s movie he could not figure out.
She had given it to him the night of the moonlight swim, as he liked to call it now, grinningly. She had given it to him, without him even asking for it, almost as soon as he had climbed into the car. It was, he thought, almost as if she felt it was expected of her.
She had picked him out a good one, showing her as it did in a white bathing suit that was startling against the black-tanned flesh, reclining on a GI blanket in the sun before one of those pineappley palmtrees in her front yard, he recognized the tree, and wearing sun glasses and reading, and with one leg up a little showing perfectly the long full lines of thigh and calf converging delicately at the narrowness of knee. All the womanness of her shown in it, reached out demanding male attention, as a crowded street of long legged, tanned, high breasted women will catch your eye and pull your head around without your having even thought about it. If that was all there was, he thought again, for the fifteenth time today, just that womanness of this picture done in breathing flesh, it would be all right. But the picture didnt show it all. And he was not, he realized, a boy who is so rapt by the solemn religious joy of his first female flesh that he is blinded to the existence of the woman wearing it, does not even know or need to know that she exists. It would be fine if you were that, he thought, but you are not, and have not been for some time now, nor will you ever be again. You cant ignore the woman and keep all the rest, even for the first two weeks, though perhaps that would have been the best, if you could have done it.
She had picked him up, he remembered, going over it once again, downtown in Honolulu at the Kau Kau Korner drive-in where the tourists hung out in their rented cars, and where they had decided there was the least chance of being seen by anyone they knew. He had wanted to drive them out, since he knew the way, to the secret little beach out near the Blowhole that he had seen so often riding past in trucks and had thought how it would be such a wonderful place for a man to take a woman, that he had finally climbed down to it once. But she had been afraid to let him drive this car belonging to her husband. He had given her the directions and she had driven, taking wrong turnings twice and getting very nervous, before she got from Kau Kau Korner to Kaimuki and Waialae Avenue that became the Kalanianaole Highway to the Blowhole. Maybe that was what had started it, begun the killing of it, and the way he’d pictured it would be. She’d been two totally different women that day at the house and now this time she seemed to be a third one, unrelated to the other two. They had parked the car up near the Blowhole at a little parkway where there was a concrete marker that said you could see Molokai from here on a clear day, and walked back down. She was, she said, with a kind of frantic effort, “very pleased and happy.” It was all there, the full moon, the small mild surf showing white, the pale sands of the tiny beach set down among the rocks and glowing weirdly in the moonlight, the low wind surfing through the kiawe trees across the highway, and he had brought a bottle and there was a thermos full of coffee and the sandwiches she had brought, and even blankets. It was really all there and very fine, he’d thought, just like he pictured it. She had slipped climbing down the rocks and skinned her arm, and after they had got down she tore her dress, one of her best ones she said, on a snag. They had waded, nude, out into the water, hand in hand, making, he remembered, a fine picture in the moonlight with the water that seemed to run uphill from the beach breathing heavily around their knees. She had gotten chilled and had to go back and wrap up in a blanket. It was then he had given it up altogether, deciding it had been a damn fool thing, his mistake, in the first place. And he had gone back with her, even in the painfulness of feeling so damned foolish, still eager, burning, not feeling any cold at all, and wanting it badly, needing it badly, but how could you have it, as you ought to have it, when you were struggling to keep a blanket over you to keep from chilling her again. That was when he wanted her to take the drink, up to then he had not made an issue of it, though it puzzled him. But she would not drink now at all, any. She had smiled sadly with the great sadness of a Christian martyr who forgives the Romans, and accused herself of how she always messed things up and ruined everything she touched, and how she guessed she just wasnt an outdoor girl, although it had seemed fine when they had talked about it, in the bedroom, back at Schofield, and she really truly thought it would be better if he would get some other woman for it, she wouldnt mind. Driving back to town she said she wanted to be fair and asked him if he wanted to give the picture back now, that she didnt mind, really she wouldnt mind. He had felt guilty then, because he had not asked her for the picture, and because he saw now the whole idea had been stupid in the first place, and had said he wanted to keep the picture very badly, which, he suddenly had realized, he did. It was then, somehow or other, without meaning to, that he had made this other date, for after payday, because, she said, she didnt get much money out of Holmes, and that only after petty squabbling. He had tried then, half heartedly, to get her to take only one small drink, hoping guiltily that if maybe he could get her drunk it would be better, hoping maybe they could go somewhere and get a room, or something, and salvage something. But she would not drink, and she had not fixed an alibi, not figuring to stay away all night, and she would not do it in a car, ever, because, she felt, it was degrading.
He had gone down to Wu Fat’s then, on Hotel Street, in the heart of the whorehouse district, after she had let him out, timidly reminding him of the coming date, and gotten very drunk and then made a studbull roaring raid on Mrs Kipfer’s Hotel New Congress that was intensely satisfying, determined there would be no more dates as far as he was concerned, no matter what he’d told her, and he was still puzzling on it now, with Mazzioli coming in the corridor, wondering what it was had happened and why it had happened anyway and most of all why he could not seem to put his finger on it at all, still completely stumped as he put the snapshot back in his wallet where he kept it hidden behind his SP pass card and could feel smugly conspiratorial every time he flashed his wallet at the MPs at the gate, or took it out in the Orderly Room in front of Dynamite. At least he could understand that much, anyway.
Mazzioli was looking smug and obviously chortling to himself as he handed over the stack of papers that he had hidden the transfer letter in the middle of. He stood around grinning and waiting for the explosion, while Warden leafed impatiently through the four fingers of Memorandums, General and Special Orders, and War Department Circulars he had brought, looking for something that might accidentally turn out to be important.
It was quite a letter. It had gone out through channels, and come back through channels, and picked up another endorsement every place it stopped. Warden, who had been praying fervently some office or other would find some outfit or other overstrength or understrength, looked up at Mazzioli sagely when he found it.
“Well?” he snarled. “What the hell’re you standin around for? Aint you got no work to do?”
“Why I aint doing nothing,” the clerk objected. “Cant a man just stand still? without you jumping on him? for God’s sake?”
“What man?” Warden said. “No. He cant. I cant stand to see people standin still. I’m eccentric. If there aint no work,” he threatened, “maybe I can scare you up some.”
“But I got to go back to Personnel,” protested Mazzioli. “Right away. O’Bannon wants me right back there.”
“Then move. Dont stand there with your finger up your ass,” Warden said, making it sound ominous, but glad momentarily, even in this catastrophe of the transfer, to get out of the almost frightening bottomlessness of Karen Holmes and the abortive swimming party and onto solid ground he knew, even if only in its barrenness. “Why dont you just move in over there, Mazzioli?”
“I wish to hell I could,” the clerk said bitterly, very disappointed because the blowup he expected had not come. “Oh how I wish. What do you think about that transfer, Top?” he needled hopefully. Warden did not answer. “Aint that something?” he asked sympathetically, changing tactics, still hoping. “That letter of the Colonel’s sure got quick action, didnt it?”
But Warden only stared at him silently, and kept on staring, until, completely defeated, he left in confusion, still disappointed. And Milt Warden went bitterly back to work, chewing what few germless grains of comfort he could glean from having seen through Mazzioli’s plot. I wish I could see through Karen Holmes that easy, he thought, I wish I could even see through what will come out of this transfer that easy.
There were times, he felt, Milt Warden never should of made this rating. This rating wasnt worth it. In a profession where fouling up was SOP, this rating had a reputation that stunk, in every noncoms’ club on the Post. To get this rating Milt Warden had taken over a notoriously bogged down outfit no other noncom in the Regiment would touch, and from a notoriously case-hardened old 1st/Sgt who had finally made that thirty-year-long pull up onto the retirement list and didnt have to worry about this any more. You really wanted this rating awful bad, didnt you, you jerk?
He took the letter to his desk to make the necessary notes, feeling the old rage, the rage that always saved him, mounting in him happily, and contemptuously tossed the rest of the pregnant mass of paper stillborn in Mazzioli’s filing basket.
Maybe he was a good man once, this old one, my predecessor, but they had worn him down, in thirty years, like a big knife made thin and fragile, needlelike, from constant honings. All that good steel just rubbed away no one knew where. And him, who had been a rip-roarer in the old days back in China, hanging on by his fingernails the last five years to get that pension, praying the Inspector General’s men would not find him out, and covering up his fear with this Victor McLaglen doing one of his movie soldiers act. That was no way to end. When my time comes they can stick their pension up their ass before I’ll fawn to get it.
But maybe it was all part of the process of getting old, he thought. All the old ones, the tough ones, ended up that way it seemed, Jones imitating Jones, Smith imitating Smith, playing a role they once had lived. And it wasnt only in the Army.
I think you need a drink, he thought, walking to the filing cabinet for the hidden whiskey, a good stiff drink, to make you madder, you who are in danger of becoming Warden imitating Warden, a really good one, you.
Everything, eventually, got old. There are gray hairs in this head too, already. But part of the process of getting old was not this gradual wearing down of a man by the seas of organization, this eating away of the rock a man could have been except for these lapping waves of affectionate regard driven by the wind of fear against the rock that always crumbled, finally—that was not part of getting old, or if it was, then getting old was wrong and there was no point to any of it and he did not like it at all, and by god I’m not having any.
I think its time we took a break and trimmed up our mustache a little, we want to look pretty for the women, dont we, character? he told himself, and got the paper shears off of Holmes’s desk and went in the closet to the mirror, hearing the fatigue details that were beginning to come in now and Pop Karelsen’s soft very cultured voice going up the stairs.
Looking at the big face staring angrily at him from the glass, the great shearers in the thick-veined hand, feeling the inability to go back to work now after this of the transfer, he wondered if that was what it really was? just getting old? Gimme a place to stand, the old man said, and I will move the world. And all they needed then was a place for him to stand. They were still looking for it.
Looks like you need another drink, he thought, you arent getting mad enough yet apparently. This one this time apparently is going to be more than a one drink job. Personally, I think its more than a two drink job, even. Personally, I think this job is going to be one of those that calls for a workout punching on the heavy bag. Yes, I think thats what it is, he decided, running his tongue over his mustache to see if it was short enough to keep from tickling him and, satisfied, stepped back and raised his arm and tossed the scissors over his shoulder like a rich man giving a bum a dollar, listening happily to the clashing clatter of their fall. There was plenty money in the Company Fund, let them buy some new ones. Let Dynamite take care of it, that was about his speed. He picked them up and laid them, with a full inch of one point broken off, on Holmes’s desk on top the transfer letter, in the box marked Urgent, and went upstairs to corner Karelsen, his punching bag, in the room they shared together off the first floor porch. Pop Karelsen, being one of Mazzioli’s intellectual confreres, but smarter, made the best heavy bag anywheres around. Mazzioli would serve for a light bag, speed workout, but there wasnt enough weight to him to make a heavy bag that developed power.
“Pete,” he bawled, charging in and blowing apart the quiet rainy-day privacy that had been in the little room, “I’m sick of it. I’m turning in my stripes. This is the goddamnedest fuckedup outfit I was ever in. Man like Dynamite’s a goddam disgrace to the goddam uniform he sports around. Him and that punk Culpepper.”
Pop Karelsen was undressing, sitting on his bunk to ease the aching joints of his arthritis that was so familiar to him now it had become almost a friend, had just taken off his hat and denim blouse, and was disengaging his false teeth, both plates. He looked up noncommittally, irritated that his privacy was invaded, afraid Mad Milton was off on another of his rampages though hoping he was not, but still not wanting to involve himself in anything, until he knew just where he stood.
“In the Old Army,” he said profoundly, but discreetly, “an officer was an officer, not a clothes horse,” and dropped the teeth into their glass of water on the table, hoping for the best.
“Old Army, my bleeding ass,” raged Warden joyously, pouncing on the platitude. “You bums and your Old Army make me want to puke. There never was any Old Army. The boys from the Civil War told it to the Indian War Recruits, just like the oldtimers from the Revolution told it to the boys of 1812. And all of them only tryin to excuse themself, for being bums and taking the shit they’ve always taken.”
“You know all about it, I guess,” Karelsen said stiffly, in spite of himself, because he knew now for sure that Milt was off again, and that the only way to handle him when he was a madman like this was to keep your equanimity. “You served with Braddock, didnt you?” The only trouble was, he could never do it.
“I served long enough to know enough not to be snowed with this Old Army shit,” Warden bawled at him. “I re-enlisted once myself.”
Karelsen only grunted, bending down over his belly to untie his muddy field shoes, trying to keep his equanimity, but Warden plumped down on his own bunk and banged his fist down on the castiron bedrail.
“Pete,” he bellowed at the other man accusingly, “I dont have to tell you about this Company. You’re no punk. I’m too good a man to waste my talents in this outfit. They’re killin me off, slow but sure. Jockstraps! Boys from Bliss! And now a new one.”
Old Pete’s face opened up vainly into a smug grin, as it always did when he conceived a mot. “This man’s Army,” he said distinctly, his equanimity recovered, “has always been a jockstrap Army, ever since Tunney first started fighting for the Marines in France. And it’ll probably stay that way.” The kid, he thought, Mazzioli, would really have enjoyed that one.
“What do you mean, new one?” Pete said, equanimously slipping it on the end, like a senator sticking his rider on a sure-thing bill. “Did the transfer of this Fort Kam cook go through?”
“Who else?” Warden cried impatiently. “A cook. I got more would be cooks than I know what to do with now. And now he’s bringin in this Stark.”
“Yeah? Say, thats too bad,” Pete comforted comfortably. “By the way,” he said, with all the gossip’s subtlety, “whats the story on this guy? The Old Man mean to make him Mess Sergeant? What’ll he do with Preem?”
“I could transfer out of here tomorrow,” Warden raged on happily, “In Grade—get that? In Grade—to any one of ten compny’s in this Regmint. Why the hell should I work my ass off here with no cooperation or appreciation?”
“Oh, sure,” Pete managed to stick in, the equanimity fading. “Sure you could. I could be Chief of Staff too, except I cant stand leaving all my old buddies. But whats the story?”
“I dont have to take it,” Warden bawled. “I’m the best man in their goddam Regmint, and whats more they know it. I’m turning in my stripes, Pete, I mean it. I rather be a buckass private who just does what he’s told. If I had knew what was good for me, I’d of stayed in A Compny as a Staff.”
“We all know you’re indispensible,” Pete said bitterly.
“I’m too damn good to waste my talents in this outfit, thats a cinch,” Warden bellowed at him, going on unabashed, lashing himself into the cathartic tirade, battering at the other like the stream from a firehose. Why, he said, was Apey Galovitch running the First Platoon? Why did every noncom just happen to be a jockstrap? Why was Gentleman Jim O’Hayer the supply sergeant of this outfit? and where was Dynamite getting his gambling money that he lost like water at poker at the Club? “Officers,” he snorted. “West Point socialites. Learn to play polo, poker and bridge and which fork to use, so they can mingle with society and marry a goddam wife with money who can entertain and teach the gook maids how to serve English style and copy the colonial Britisher and be goddam professional soldiers with a private income, just like Lord-Kiss-My-Ass.
“Where do you think Holmes got his wife? Right out of a bargain basement in Washington that specializes in young ingenues, right out of Baltimore, political family with a private fortune. Only Dynamite miscalculated, and this family went broke. Before Holmes could get anything but his four polo ponies and that goddamned pair of sterling silver spurs.”
In the midst of his harangue, like a man in the calm center of a hurricane, seeing the curiosity brightening Pete’s eyes, he coolly warned himself away from Holmes’s wife and calmly steered it back to where he wanted it, on the things Pete already knew, and began on Sgt Henderson who had not pulled one day’s drill in almost two years because he was the nursemaid to Holmes’s polo ponies up at the Packtrain.
“Oh Jesus Christ!” Pete yelled back finally, putting his fingers in his ears, the equanimity beaten to death now by this wordy stream of energy that was battering him groggy. “Shut up. Leave me alone. Shut up. If you hate this place so much and can transfer out In Grade, why the hell dont you do it? And leave me alone?”
“Why!” Warden bawled indignantly. “You ask me why. Because I’m too goddamned kind-hearted for my own good, thats why. This outfit would collapse like a bamboo hut in a typhoon if I was to leave it.”
“I wonder why the General Staff aint never discovered you?” Pete yelled, feeling that what made it all so goddam bad was that damn near all of what he said was true; if it wasnt true, and he was just blowing, it wouldnt be so hard to take.
“Because they’re all too goddamned stupid, Pete, thats why,” Warden said, suddenly, easily, in a normal voice. “Gimme a butt.”
“You’ll wear them goddam stripes out,” Pete yelled at him. “Taking them off and sewing them back on so much. Sometimes I wonder how any single man so wonderful ever managed to get born.”
“Dont get excited,” Warden said. “Sometimes I wonder that myself. Gimme a goddam butt, I said.”
“I’m not excited. You’ll never change the Army,” Pete yelled, realizing that Warden wasnt yelling any more and managing to pull his own voice back down to normalcy in the middle of it, “so you might as well relax,” he said. He tossed a crumpled raindamp pack over to the grinning Warden. The silence in the little room, with the rain heard dripping down past the open window, deafened him.
“Is these rags all you got?” Warden said distastefully. “They wont even burn, for God’s sake.”
“What do you want?” Pete yelled. “Gold tips?”
“Sure,” Warden grinned. “At least that much.” He lay back on his bunk, the enema completed, and put his arms contentedly behind his head and crossed his feet.
“You’ll never change the Army,” Pete said again. He paused and stood up in his socks and turned around to get his towel, exposing buttocks pocked with the syphilis hip shots he had been taking every two weeks for the past year, looking with his narrow shoulders and pussy hips like a child’s round-bottomed doll that cant be knocked over. In the pause, Warden could feel the epigram that was coming.
“This outfit’s no worse than any other. The Army’s been that way,” Pete said distinctly, the equanimity miraculously recovered, “ever since Benedict Arnold first put the slippery dong to the Point—and got reamed for his pains.”
“Who was Benedict Arnold, Pete?”
“Go to hell,” Pete said. “God Damn You.”
“Now, Pete,” Warden said. “Now, Pete. Now dont get excited now. Keep your equanimity.”
“You think I dont know what it is you’re doing?” Pete yelled. “When you come up here and ride me like you do? You think nobody’s smart but you? You think I’ll go on taking it off you forever, just because you’re the Topkick. But I wont. Someday I’ll move out of here by god, even if I have to move out in the squadroom with the privates.”
Warden looked over at him, almost startled, without moving, a look of actual real hurt coming on his face.
“If you’re such a hotshot,” Pete yelled, “why didnt you transfer Prewitt into my platoon, like I asked you the other day? Why dont you do it now.”
“I want him where he is, Peter, in Galovitch’s platoon, thats why.”
“He’d be an asset, in my Weapons Platoon.”
“He’s an asset where he is.”
“An asset to the Post Stockade, you mean. With what that boy knows about the MGs he’d make a squad leader right off, and as soon as I had an opening I’d make him section leader.”
“Maybe I dont want him to have a rating yet. Maybe I’m tryin to educate him first.”
“And maybe you couldnt get Dynamite to sign an order giving him a rating,” Pete suggested. “Maybe you couldnt even get him to okay putting the kid in my platoon.”
“Maybe I’m training him for bigger things.”
“Like what, for instance?”
“Like taking a correspondence course, and recommending him for a reserve commission,” Warden sneered.
“Why dont you send him to the Army War College while you’re at it?”
“Thats an idea. Maybe I’ll do just that. How do you know how a good mind works?”
“Big-Hearted-Harry. You want to know what I think? I think you’re nuts. Pure plain crazy. Goofy as a loon. Thats what I think. I dont think you know what you mean to do yourself, with anything, least of all Prewitt, or this new transfer.”
Maybe he’s right, Warden thought. Is he right? He’s right all right. Because who does know what they mean to do themself, with anything, anymore, in the world this one’s becoming, when no man can do anything without creating some strange result he never had foreseen—like me just now.
“Thats what I think,” Pete said again.
Warden only stared at him affectionately, grinning slyly, and he went to his footlocker to get his soapbox and his razor, trying to maintain the dignity he had just had but that was fast slipping away from him in the face of Warden’s silent grinning, his body oozing the stale mushy smell of an old man who drinks too much and cannot assimilate the alcohol that in his youth he had thrown off so easily.
But he’s a sharp old bastard. But is that the way Milt Warden will grow old? end up pimping for the Old Army? for a whore that never was? to save his face? His face, Milt thought, aint even savable, without the teeth, caved in and crumpled like a crying monkey, like a good sound apple forgotten and left for twenty-two years’ service on the shelf, until its crisp moisture was evaporated and it remained, a mushy-smelling echo of itself, shrunken and brown, still whole because unmoved, but ready to crumble at the slightest pressure to move it from the shelf.
There was a legend about old Pete in the Company, one Pete worked hard to foster with his intellectualisms, about how he came of a rich family in Minnesota, and had enlisted to Save the World in the last war, caught the clap from an army nurse in France, and stayed in to get free treatment, so rare and expensive then, and because his family kicked him out. Pete loved the story, so it probably wasnt true. There were so many who prided themselves on being misfits, rebellion for rebellion’s sake, a sort of inverse sentimentality, romance in reverse. You do it some yourself. But on the other hand, what? The officers. How to choose between a false success and a fake failure? between a fake God and a false Devil? If the story had been true, it wouldnt have been romantic, to Pete or anybody else. But part of it was true anyway, he thought, the part about the clap was true, whether he got it from an army nurse in France, or from a Paris whore, or from a pickup in Chicago. You could prove that much was true, with the arthritis; on some men it went down into the bones and stayed there.
And yet there remained, when the choppers filled out the watery indistinctness of the crumbled face, a firm intelligent line along the jaw, an echo of forgotten promise; and when the toothless pucker did not obscure the eyes, you could see the clearness in them of a man who knew machineguns and knew he knew them, the only satisfaction left an old man whose hobby now was collecting pornography in pictures.
“Where you going, Little Sir Echo?” Milt asked him as he clumped past to the door in the Japanese style wooden clogs.
“To take my goddam shower, if the First Sergeant’s got no objections. Where’d you think? to the movies in this towel?”
Warden sat up and rubbed his face, as if he was trying to rub all of it, Karen, the transfer, Prewitt, Pete, himself, away.
“Thats too bad,” he said. “I was just thinkin about goin over to Choy’s and lappin up some brew. And I was goin to invite you along.”
“I’m broke,” Pete said. “I aint got no money.”
“I’m buying. Its my party.”
“No thanks. You think you can buy me off with beer? Come up here and needle me all afternoon and then buy me a couple of brews and make it all all right. No thanks. I wouldnt drink your beer if it was the last beer in the world.”
Warden slapped him on the butt and grinned. “You mean if it was the very last beer? and you wouldn’t touch it?”
Pete was trying hard to keep his craving off his face. “Well,” he said. “If it was the very last beer. But I hope to God it never gets that low.”
Milt Warden smiled, charmingly, all the deep warmth rising from his eyes, striking from the record all the rest of it, in spite of Pete’s severity.
“Lets you and me go over to Choy’s and get drunkern hell and tear up all the chairs and tables.”
Pete had to grin, a little, but he would not renege all the way. “It’ll have to be on you,” he said.
“Its on me,” Warden said. “Everything’s on me. The whole fucking world’s on me. Go take your bath. I’ll wait. Couple days we’ll see what this new man Stark is like.”
They did not have to wait that long, because the new man Stark arrived the next day, barracks bag and baggage.
It was one of those first clear days that prophesied the ending of the rainy season. It had rained all morning and then suddenly cleared at noon, and the air, freshly washed today, was soft and free of dust, like dark crystal in the sharp clarity and sombre focus it gave to every image. Everything looked clean, smelled clean, and there was that holiday sense that always comes with an impending weather change. To work, on such a day, was sacrilege, but Warden had to be on hand for the arrival, to look him over.
It was, Warden felt, very appropriate that on this day there had been the usual Preem dinner menu of canned franks and canned baked beans, sometimes called “Stars and Stripes,” but more often called now, since Preem served them almost every day, “Ratturds and Dogturds.”
Sighing inwardly at the helplessness of a man in the hands of Fate when he saw the Hickam Field taxi creeping around the quad like a stranger looking for an address, he waited till it stopped in front of here to unload a man and his equipment on the still-wet grass in this dark clean air that was as tangible as water and then went outside to meet the adversary. At least he could shake his fist at Fate that much, by refusing to fight it as a Defensive Action in the Orderly Room, he thought, prepared for anything.
“I dont care if he is a ex-dogface,” the new man said, staring after the departing taxi. “Thats still too much to pay.”
“Probly got a gook wife,” Warden said, “and half a dozen hapahaole brats to feed.”
“Aint my fault,” Stark said. “The govmint ought to pay for movin transfers.”
“They do. All except the ones that transfer at their own request.”
“They ought to pay for all of them,” Stark said doggedly, not missing Warden’s little dig.
“They will. After they get their Citizen’s Army built up to strength and we get in this war.”
“When that comes, they wont be no more transfers by request,” Stark said, and they exchanged a sudden glance of knowledge that Pete Karelsen could not have shared and that, prepared as he was, surprised Warden with his understanding. That other part of his mind that never entered into anything and always stood outside himself observing, made a mental note.
“They pay it for the officers,” Stark said in the same slow dogged drawl. “Everybody sticks the dogface. Even the ex-dogface.” He pulled a sack of Golden Grain out of his shirt pocket by its dangling tab and got a paper out. “Where I put my stuff?”
“In the cooks’ room,” Warden said.
“Do I see the Old Man now? or after?”
“Dynamite aint here now,” Warden grinned. “He may be back some time today, and he may not be back at all. But he wants to see you though.”
Making the cigaret, the sack dangling from the string held in his teeth, Stark looked up at Warden levelly. “Dint he know I was comin in?”
“Sure,” Warden grinned, picking up the biggest bag and the little canvas furlough satchel, “he knew it. But he had important business. At the Club.”
“He aint changed much,” Stark said. He took the other two blue barracks bags and followed, bending under the double weight balanced delicately on his back, across the porch and through the deserted messhall, dim and ghostlike now with the lights off. Warden led him into the tiny cooks’ room that opened off at the back, across the corner from the doors into the Dayroom.
“You can start stowing this. And I’ll call you if The Man comes in.”
Stark let the bags fall heavily and straightened up and looked around the little room that, shared with all the other cooks, would be home.
“Well,” he said, “I reckon I be here. I had to borrow money from the twenty percent men at Kam to git moved up here.” He hitched his pants up with one thumb, a dispassionate gesture. “It was rainin like a tall cow pissin on a flat rock, when I left there.”
“It’ll be rainin here tomorrow,” Warden said, going to the door.
“You ought to doubledeck these bunks in here, First,” Stark said. “Theyd be more room.”
“This is Preem’s territory,” Warden said from the door. “I never touch it.”
“Old Preem,” Stark said. “I aint seen him since Bliss. How is he?”
“He’s fine,” Warden said. “Just fine. Thats why I never touch his territory.”
“He aint changed much either,” Stark said, untying the drawropes of a bag and reaching in. “Heres my papers, First.”
Back in the Orderly Room Warden looked them over closely. Maylon Stark was twenty-four, they told him, had served two hitches and was on his third, had never done any time in a Stockade. That was all, not much to go on.
It was odd, he thought, leaning back and cocking his feet up on his desk, relaxing the big shoulders and thick arms smugly and with satisfaction in the chair, it was odd how there were no ages in the Army. Back in his hometown Stark, who was twenty-four, would have been of a different generation, a newer crop, than himself who was thirty-four; but here they both were contemporaries of Niccolo Leva, who was forty, and of Prewitt, who was only twenty-one. Here they were all the same, of a certain similarity, of a certain common knowledge, of a certain deep unshakeable very flexible something that was in the bony structure of their faces and in the shaded halftones of their voices. But they were not contemporaries of Maggio or Mazzioli or Sal Clark, who were still punk kids. And they were not, either, the contemporaries of guys like Wilson, Henderson, or Turp Thornhill, or O’Hayer. Lets not be romantic now, he thought. But still, with all the romance put aside, there really was this similarity, this difference, this contemporariness, that was not in the others. You could feel it. Chief Choate had it too. Sometimes even Pete Karelsen had it, but not very often. Usually he only had it when he got real mad. Or drunk. Pete had it drunk. It was a thing you felt, even though you could not name it and no word ever said it. He was still mulling this illumination over, trying vainly to find a name for it, when Capt Holmes came in.
By the time the Customary interview and peptalk for new men was ended, that other part of Warden’s mind knew quite definitely what he meant to do about the kitchen situation.
Maylon Stark stood in the Orderly Room during the whole of Capt Holmes’s lecture, after he and Holmes had shaken hands and Holmes had beamed his pleasure at him, with his hands easily behind his back, his campaign hat dangling from them, staring at Holmes reflectively. He expressed his gratitude perfunctorily and said nothing else. At the end of the lecture, still staring reflectively at his new commander, he saluted precisely and withdrew immediately.
Maylon Stark was medium-built and husky. That was the only word to fit him, husky. He had a husky face, and the nose on it was badly bent and flattened huskily. His voice was husky. His head sat huskily on his neck, the way a fighter carries his chin pulled in from habit. It was the huskiness of a man who hunches up his shoulders and hangs on hard with both hands. And with it Maylon Stark had a peculiar perpetual expression, like that of a man who is hanging hard onto the earth to keep it from moving away, out from under him. The line from the right side of his flattened nose to the corner of his mouth was three times as deep as the same line on the left side; his mouth did not curl, but the deepness of this line made him look like he was about to smile sardonically, or cry wearily, or sneer belligerently. You never knew which. And you never found out which. Because Maylon Stark never did any of them.
“He’s a good man, Sergeant Warden,” Holmes insisted, after Stark had left. There was a puzzled, not quite satisfied look on his face. “I can always tell a good man when I see one. Stark’ll make me one damn fine cook.”
“Yes, Sir,” Warden said. “I think he will.”
“You do?” Holmes said, surprised. “Well. Well, its like I say, real soldiers dont grow on trees, and you have to look hard before you find one.”
Warden did not bother to answer this one. Dynamite had said the same thing about Ike Galovitch, when he made him sergeant, except that he had not looked puzzled.
Capt Holmes cleared his throat and reset his face and began to dictate next week’s Drill Schedule to Mazzioli, who had come in while the lecture had been on. Mazzioli stopped his filing to type the Drill Schedule for the Captain. The Captain walked back and forth, his hands behind his back, his head thrown back thoughtfully, dictating slowly so Mazzioli could get it with the typewriter.
Mazzioli typed disgustedly, knowing that later The Warden would haul out his FMs and change the schedule all around and then he would have to type it up again. And Dynamite would sign it without noticing the difference.
As soon as Holmes was gone, Warden beat it out to the cooks’ room, almost unhinged by Dynamite’s eternal piddling rumination of the Schedule, feeling he had suddenly escaped from an airtight bottle, breathing joyously, and wondering what Holmes would do if he ever realized his own uselessness and the finicking he hid it with; dont worry, he thought, he never will; it would kill him; but mostly hoping Holmes’s dawdling had not given any of the cook force time to get back before he got to see Stark alone.
“Come on upstairs,” he said, finding Stark was still alone, doubtfully holding up a pair of the old outmoded suntan breeches that he hated to throw away but had no use for any more. “To my room. I got talkin to do thats private. And I dont want none of them cooks around to see me with you.”
“Okay, First,” Stark said, answering the urgency in his voice, and got up still holding out the breeches. “I had these breeches ever since the year my sis got married.”
“Throw them out,” Warden decided for him. “When this war comes and we move out you wont have room for half of what you got thats useful.”
“Thats right,” Stark said. He tossed them on the growing pile of refuse by the door implacably and looked around the tiny room, and at the three barracks bags that held seven years’ accumulation of a way of life.
“Aint much, is it?” Warden said.
“Enough, I guess.”
“Footlockers aint got room for memories,” Warden said. “And barracks bags even less. Hell, I even use to keep a diary. Still dont know what happened to it.”
Stark took a leather framed picture of a young woman and three boys from the satchel and set it open on his wall locker shelf. “Well,” he said, “I’m home.”
“This is important,” Warden said. “Lets go.”
“I’m with you, First,” Stark said, and picked up the pile of castoffs and the breeches. “Ony time I ever got around to clearin out is when I move,” he said apologetically.
On the porch he dropped it all into a GI trash can without breaking stride, following Warden up the stairs, but at the landing he looked back at it, once, at the breeches leg with its thin round GI laces whose metal tips had been lost long ago, dangling outside the can.
“Sit down,” Warden said, indicating old Pete’s bunk. Stark sat down without speaking. Warden sat on his own bunk facing him, and lit a cigaret. Stark rolled one.
“You want a tailormade?”
“I like these better. I awys smoke Golden Grain,” Stark said, eyeing him reflectively, but waiting coolly, “if I can get it. If I cant get Golden Grain, I rather smoke Country Gentleman than tailormades.”
“I read some stories about a private dick, named Sam Spade, who like Bull Durham over tailormades,” Warden said. “I never believed it.”
“Me neither,” Stark said. “Nobody smokes Durham, if they can get something else. Even Dukes is bettern Durham.”
Warden set the battered ashtray on the floor between them. “I play them straight, Stark. Five cards face up.”
“Thats the way I like them.”
“You had two strikes on you when you got here, as far as I’m concerned. Because you served with Holmes at Bliss.”
“I figured that,” Stark said.
“You from Texas, aint you?”
“Thats right. Borned in Sweetwater.”
“How come you to leave Fort Kam?”
“Didnt like it.”
“Didnt like it,” Warden said, almost caressingly. He went to his wall locker and fished around down behind his diddy box till he brought up a fifth of Lord Calvert. “They never inspect my room on Saturday,” he said. “Drink?”
“Sure,” Stark said. “A breath.” He took the bottle and looked at the label, inspecting the longhaired dandy the way a man sweats out his hole card in a big game too rich for his blood, then upended it and drank.
“You ever handled a Mess, Stark?”
Stark’s adam’s apple paused. “Sure,” he said around the bottle and went on with his drink. “I was runnin one in Kam.”
“I mean really run one.”
“Sure. Thats what I mean. I was acting bellyrobber on one stripe. Ony I was never acting.”
“How about menus and marketing?”
“Sure,” Stark said. “All that.” He handed the bottle back reluctantly. “Good,” he said.
“What kind of rating did you say?” Warden said, not bothering to drink now.
“Pfc. I was up for a Sixth Class, ony I never got it. I was Second Cook on the TO, but without the money. I ran the mess without even being acting. I did everything but wear the stripes and draw the money.”
“And you didnt like it,” Warden grinned, repeating back, saying it almost chortlingly.
Stark stared at him reflectively, that peculiar about to laugh, about to cry, about to sneer expression on his face. “The setup? no,” he said. “The work? yes. Thats my job,” he said.
“Good,” Warden said happily and took a drink now. “I need a good man in my Mess, one I can depend on, one with the rating. How about First and Fourth, to start with?”
Stark looked at him reflectively. “Sounds reasonable,” he said. “If I get it. What then?”
“The Rating,” Warden said. “Preem’s Rating.”
Stark talked it over with his cigaret. “I dont know you,” he said, “but I’ll call you, First.”
“Heres the deal. Theres four men from your old outfit at Bliss in this Compny. They’re all four sergeants. You got no trouble there.”
Stark nodded. “I can see that far.”
“The rest is simple. All you got to do is keep your nose clean and show you’re a better man than Preem. You’re a First Cook with a First and Fourth, as of today. All you got to do is step in and take over whenever Preem dont show, which is just about every day.”
“I’m a new man here. Kitchen crews is clannish people. And Preem’s got The Rating.”
“Dont worry about The Rating. You dont need The Rating. I’ll take care of that end. When you have trouble in the kitchen, come to me. The cooks’ll give you lip for a while, especially this fat guy Willard. He’s a First Cook and he’s bucking for Preem’s job. But Dynamite dont like Willard.
“You’ll get lots of lip, but dont argue. Be chickenshit. Bring it to me. It’ll be all your way.”
“Its goin to sure be tough on poor old Preem,” Stark said, accepting the bottle Warden was offering him again.
“Have you seen him yet?”
“Not since Bliss.” Stark handed the bottle back reluctantly. “Good,” he said.
“I like it some myself,” Warden said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Preem likes it too. Preem married it. Preem looks like a man who either seen a miracle, or was hit at the base of the skull with a rubber hammer.”
“He was an awful quiet guy when I knew him. Kind of guy to go off and get drunk all by himself.”
“He’s still that way. Except now he has to go off and get sober by himself.”
“Quiet guys like that are bad. The ones that get drunk by theirselves. They awys flip their lid.”
“You think so?” Warden said, suddenly narrowly, that other part of his mind tuning in and clocking up the platitude, and reminding him that where theres smoke theres fire and where theres platitude theres liar. “Some of them dont.”
Stark shrugged. “Theres just one thing, First. If I take your kitchen, I run it my way. Nobody sings and nobody squares. There’ll be no backseat drivin from the Orderly Room if I take your kitchen. Otherwise no soap.”
“Forget it,” Warden said. “You run it right and its your baby.”
“That aint what I said,” Stark said doggedly. “I said its all my baby. Right or wrong. And the Office keeps its nose out. Or else I dont want any part of it.”
Warden grinned at him slyly, the pixy’s eyebrows quivering, thinking that he couldnt be too dumb. “Fine,” he said. Why cant you just be honest once? he thought, just make one promise without keeping your fingers crossed, you bastard.
“Okay,” Stark said, with finality. “How about a nuther drink?”
Warden handed him the bottle. The hand was over now, the cards were being collected by the dealer. The spontaneous conversation of relaxed tension broke out bubbling.
“What I dont see,” Stark said conversationally, “is what you make on this deal.”
“I make nothing,” Warden grinned. “You ever hear of the man with the whip? Well, I’m the guy. Holmes only thinks this is his Compny.”
The bottle worked back and forth now like a shuttle, weaving brilliant colors, over and under, around the strings of words.
“How many guys from Bliss in the Compny now?”
“Five, counting you. ‘Champ’ Wilson has the First Platoon,” Warden said, skewering the word. “Preem the Mess. Two platoon guides, Henderson and Old Ike Galovitch.”
“Ike Galovitch! Jesus Christ! He was our boiler orderly at Bliss, couldnt even speak plain English.”
“Thats the boy. He still cant speak it. And he’s Dynamite’s Close Order expert.”
“My God!” Stark said. He was sincerely shocked.
“You see what I’m up against?” Warden grinned happily, watching the lovely beautiful brilliant shuttling of the bottle as it wove and wound and spun the web of unreality, of talk about them both, relaxing into it.
“. . . But you’re all right. You were at Bliss and that puts you on the inside track.” . . .
“These cooks wont like it though.” . . .
“To hell with them. Long as I like it, you got no worry.” . . .
“Okay, First. You lead the band.” . . .
“You goddam right I do. . . .
“. . . the setup in the Regiment. Holmes and Colonel Delbert are just like that, see? They . . .”
“. . . what I got to work with.” . . .
“They’s two men you can depend on. . . .
“. . . and heres the setup in the Compny. Strickly a jockstrap outfit, see? Dhom is the Staff because he’s trainer for Dynamite’s squad, but he’s as far as he will ever get and . . .”
The soldier’s greatest hobby, he thought as he listened to his own voice talking, the bull session, add a bottle and you have his greatest joy, also his greatest escape, he thought. The unofficial institution that is the first-string substitute for women and the age-old conversation where the man explains his ideals and his hopes for his life and the woman listens and agrees and tells him how wonderful he is. But soldiers are men without women, he thought, and they cannot hold each other’s heads upon their breasts and pat each other’s hair. But they escape just as well, the other part reminded him.
Ah, if you could only lose this other part of your mind too, like Stark is doing, not lose but forget it for a little while, without thinking about the women, or the men, or all the other angles.
“Gimme a drink,” Stark said. “Is that tall blonde wife of his still around?”
“Who?” Warden said.
“His wife,” Stark said. “Whats her name. Karen. Is he still married to her?”
“Oh her,” Warden said.
Maybe its better for you you cant deliberately distract that other part, he thought. More painful, surely. But maybe in the long run better. Provided, of course, that you can stand it. There is courage, he thought, and then theres courage.
“Yeah,” he said, “he’s still married to her. She comes over here ever once in a while. Why?”
“I just wondered,” Stark said, mellow now and feeling philosophical. “I dunno, I awys figure Holmes would of left her before now. She was a regular bitch in heat at Bliss, when I knew her, but mean like, as if she really hated it and all the ones she gave it to. They said she laid half the EM on the Post at Bliss.”
“They did?” Warden said.
“Hell yes. I heard she even got the clap down there. Ony thing kept her from bein out and out a whore was she was married.”
“You mean she kept her amateur standing,” Warden said.
Stark threw back his head and laughed. “Thats it.”
“I dont put much stock in stories like that though,” Warden said, carefully casual. “You hear them about every woman that lives on a Army Post. Mostly wishful thinking, you ask me.”
“Oh yeah?” Stark said indignantly. “Well this aint no story. I fucked her myself, at Bliss. So I know it aint no story.”
“Come to think of it,” Warden said. “I been hearin some pretty rough stories about her around here.” What was it she had said, that afternoon, in the house, with the rain dripping sounding softly at the open window, what was it? Now he had it. She said, “Dont you want me either?”
“You can probly,” Stark said, whiskily innocent, “believe them all. Because she’s rough. I can see a single woman sleepin around some,” he said; “I can even see a married woman steppin out on her old man. But I dont like to see any woman, specially if she’s married, just layin for any guy comes along. A whore’s a whore, thats how she makes her livin. But theys somethin wrong with a woman who does it for fun, and then dont like it.”
“You think thats what she does?” Warden said. “Holmes’s wife, I mean?”
“Hell yes. Why should she of fucked me down there at Bliss? a buckass private in the rear rank, who didnt even have no dough to spend on her?”
“You really fucked her?” Warden asked, then felt ashamed, because he used that word which was a good word, one of the best words, strong and powerful and coming straight from life into the language, like all the best words come; but still a word that was also private, intimate, a word to be whispered at the right time and in the right ear, but not a word he should have used, here and now, with Stark.
“You think I’d lie to you about it?”
“I don’t see why you should,” Warden said, and shrugged. “What the hell?” he said. “Its nothing to me. Maybe I can get some of it myself, sometime.”
“If you’re smart,” Stark said, “you’ll leave it alone. She’s nothin but a topflight bitch. She’s coldern hardern any whore I ever saw.” His face was adamant, convincing.
“Here,” Warden said. “Have another drink. Dont let it get you down, for Christ sake.”
Stark took the bottle without looking at it. “I done seen too many of these rich women. They worse than queers. And I dont like them.”
“Neither do I,” Warden said. If she had as many . . . Leva had said, she’d be a porcupine, he thought, listening to Stark’s voice going on to something else and his own voice answering. And they’re both smart boys, he thought, they know their way around, they aint punk kids.
But how can you, with your past experience, take anybody else’s judgement? you who’ve seen so many of the sure ones proved so wrong so many times? Conviction and intensity are not the coin of truth, they alone can never buy it. You take one man’s word, because he knows, and then you find the next man tells you just the opposite just as surely, and he knows too. Leva’s only giving you hearsay, he’s had no personal experience with her. And Stark was five years younger then, a mere nineteen, a kid, when he had his experience with her. That must have been an experience, he thought, that must really have been quite an experience, to make him talk the way he does now, five years later. Remember he was a juicy green young kid serving his first hitch.
But would the woman who went on the moonlight swimming party have done that? would she have laid for half the EM at Bliss? What do you say? I dont know. Yes, you dont know; and here are two men who do know. But can you trust their judgment? No, you cant. You cant accept what they know, and you dont know. Where does that leave you?
He wanted to take the bottle and rise up and smash it down on this talking, jawbone wagging skull, flatten it out on the floor until the jawbone jutted out of the pancaked matter and ceased wagging. Not because of what Stark had told him, and not because he’d laid this woman he himself had laid (you shy away from the Word, dont you?), no not because of that; he felt almost a curious friendliness and comradeship for him because of that, like two men who use the same toothbrush. Did two men ever use the same toothbrush? No, he wanted to flatten out this wagging skull with this bottle simply because it happened to be here, and he, absurdly, for no reason, felt the need of smashing something. Because what right have you to be mad at Stark because she laid for him? or for all the EM on the Post at Bliss, for that matter?
“. . . I think we can make it work,” Stark was saying. “We got all the cards.”
“Right.” Warden caught the shuttle in midpassage and returned it to his footlocker. “You wont see me around after this, Maylon,” he said. Might as well call him by his first name, he’s practically your brother, it looks as though you’ve got a lot of brothers. “Bring your troubles to the Orderly Room,” he said, listening to the tones of his own voice carefully. “You’ll have plenty of them. But after Retreat you dont know me any better than you do any other noncom in this outfit.”
Stark nodded at this wisdom. “Okay, First,” he said.
“You better get back down and get that stuff cleaned up now,” Warden said, astounded, maybe even proud, at how cool he could make his own voice sound.
“Christ,” Stark said getting up. “I forgotten all about it.”
Warden grinned, it felt as if his face was cracking, and waited till he left. Then he lay down on his bunk and put his arms behind his head. And with the other part, that came forward now, that always came forward when he was alone, thinking about it, consciously, like a man who cant quit biting on a sore tooth but wont go to the dentist.
He could see it all in his mind, just the way it must have happened, with Stark holding her, her lying on the bed as he himself had seen her, every secret open and unveiled, the heavy breathing like a distance runner, the eyelids shuddering closed at that moment when you went clear out of your own body and you knew nothing and knew everything, you a long ways off with only a slim silver cord attaching you to yourself back there. Maybe Stark gave her more pleasure than you gave her, he thought, biting on the tooth that was unbearable, maybe all of them gave her more pleasure than you gave her, maybe even Holmes gave her more pleasure than you gave her. He had never thought about Holmes sleeping with her before. But now he thought about it. Now he wondered if she might not be sleeping with Holmes all along, all this time.
Whats the matter with you? he thought, what is it to you? You’re not in love with her. Its nothing to you who she sleeps with. You’re not even going to see her anymore anyway. You made your mind up to that the night of the swimming party, didnt you?
He would, he decided after a while, just keep that next date, after all. Theres no sense in turning down a piece of free stuff, when it costs three bucks at Mrs Kipfer’s. Besides, he would like to find out the true answer to this puzzle, just to satisfy his curiosity, his intellectual curiosity.
I think, piped up the other part of his mind suddenly, I think you wanted to keep it all along, meant to keep it all along.
Maybe, he admitted. But anyway I didnt blow this transfer deal, did I? I could have, but I didn’t. This deal should pan out all right now, if we have any luck, dont you think?
Dont change the subject on me, the other part insisted. I think you meant to keep that date even then, that same night, when you went down to Wu Fat’s and got drunk, looking for sympathy.
All right, he said to it, but go away. Do you always have to be checking up on me too? like you do with everybody else? Cant you even trust your own flesh and blood?
How much do you know about families? it said to him disgusted, and you ask me that? You’re the one I should trust the least.
Listen, he said, I got work to do. This kitchen deal is going to be touch and go for a while, and we’ll need all our luck, but I think we can swing it, if we have the luck. So dont bother me with theory. This is practical. And he got up quickly off the bed and went downstairs to make out Stark’s promotion, before it had a chance to answer.
They had the luck. Capt Holmes found the order on his desk that night, when he stopped in a minute on his way up to the Club for dinner, and he signed it. It made Stark a First Cook with a First and Fourth, dropped Willard back to Second Cook and First and Sixth, and sent Pfc Sims back to straight duty shorn of his Sixth Class. It was just the way Holmes had planned it, except he had not meant to let Sims keep his Pfc, and he was surprised to find it there like that because he had expected to have trouble out of Warden when he put it through. Nothing serious, just some of Warden’s childish balking, and he was glad now, as he signed it, that there would be no argument because he always hated to have to pull his rank, even when it was for the good of his Company.
The rest of it was just as easy as that. It was so ridiculously easy that it seemed incredible. Stark had the anticipated trouble with the cooks. They balked at the assumed authority of the newcomer. Fat Willard, watching the wind change and seeing his own star set, was the ringleader. He agitated brilliantly and complained superlatively until Stark took him out on the green and beat him up so bad he was afraid to speak at all. When the rest of them impeded progress Stark took it to the Orderly Room. Warden gave his decision and Stark departed. By the end of a week Capt Holmes was so sure he had discovered a kitchen genius that he pointed out to Warden the vast importance of proper early training for recruits.
Stark loved his kitchen, it was already “his,” with the single-mindedness women have been taught to dream of and expect, demand, and decry when attached to anything but love. Stark drove himself as hard or harder than he drove the cooks and the KPs. The dormant Company Fund was brought into the light, and Stark bought new silverware, he recommended the purchase of newer better equipment. There were even fresh flowers on the tables now and then, a unique experience in G Company. Sloppiness in eating was no longer allowed, and Stark enforced this new rule like a tyrant. A man who slopped catsup over his plate onto the oilcloth would suddenly find himself outside the door in the middle of a meal. The KPs lived a life of hell on earth, yet the reflective eyes in Stark’s sad sneering laughing face were always soft and no KP could force himself to hate him. They saw him working just as hard as they did, and they chortled at the way he rode the cooks. Even fat Willard was forced to work.
In less than two weeks, before the end of March, the tall cadaverous Sergeant Preem was broken to a private. Capt Holmes could be as hard as the next man, when it was necessary. He called Preem in and told him bluntly and militarily. Because after all, it was Preem’s own fault, nobody could have given him more of a chance than Capt Holmes. If another man was the better man, then by rights he should have the job. He gave Preem a choice between transferring to another company in the Regiment, or transferring to another regiment, because you cant let a former high-ranking noncom stay in his outfit as a private, its bad for discipline.
Preem, who had been rising every day at noon, oozing that stale mushy smell of a middle-aged drunk, and wandering out dazedly through his now bustling sparkling kitchen where there was no room for him, chose the other regiment because he was ashamed. He said nothing. There was nothing he could say. He was through and he knew it. His gravytrain days were over. He heard his fate with a face that was as much dazed as it was impassive. He was a broken man.
“Captain,” Warden said, after he had left, “how you want me to make this order out? Busted for ‘Inefficiency’?”
“Why, yes,” Holmes said. “How else would one make it?”
“Well, I thought maybe we might make it ‘Insubordination.’ Everybody gets busted for insubordination sometime or other. A man who aint been busted for insubordination aint a soldier yet. But ‘Inefficiency,’ a man who’s got that on his record’s done.”
“Why, yes, Sergeant,” Holmes said. “Make it ‘Insubordination.’ I dont guess anybody’ll know, will they? Preem ought to have a break, as long as it doesnt interfere with the efficiency of my Company. After all, he served with me in Bliss.”
“Yes, Sir,” Warden said.
The order was made out that way, but he knew it was a futile gesture. The minute Preem appeared at this new outfit with his rubber hammer look they would know the story.
That night Stark bought the traditional boxes of cigars and passed them out at chow. Everybody was happy with the new food, new management, and new rating. Pvt Preem ate in obscurity at a back table, already completely forgotten, displaying that most touching mark in soldiering: the dark spots on his sleeves from which the stripes had been removed.
Stark, Warden, Leva, Choate, and Pop Karelsen celebrated the occasion and christened Stark’s three stripes with beer at a private table in the shouting befogged interior of Choy’s. There were four fights that night, and Big Chief had to be transported home in the usual manner. Leva went over for the big two-wheeled machinegun cart and with much straining and grunting the huge limp Choctaw was dumped in and carted home by the other four.
In the midst of the festivity Stark sat at the table silently, the perpetual dark rings under his eyes making them look like burning oil at the bottom of two deep wells. He bought all the beer the others could manage to drink between seven and eleven, and he drank a lot of it himself, even though he had had to borrow the money from the twenty percent men to pay for it. But he watched it all reflectively, and the old peculiar almost laughing, almost crying, almost sneering expression did not leave his face.
Prewitt was one of the G Company men who happened in during the evening. Stark bought each one of them the traditional free beer a new noncom always buys. It was the custom to drop in and collect it. But when Prewitt came Warden waxed drunkenly sarcastic.
“Whats a matter, kid?” he wanted to know, swimmingly, his hair down in his eyes. “You broke kid? Poor kid, he broke. No beer, no money, no cunt. Poor kid. I’ll buy you a whole case, kid. I hate to see you come around for the handout, its as hard on a man’s pride as a breadline. Hey, Choy! Bring my friend here a case of Pabst, and put it on my account.” He laughed uproariously.
Stark watched Warden with reflective eyes and then looked Prewitt over thoughtfully. His eyes crinkled up contemplatively as he studied both of them. Then he offered to buy Prewitt another beer, besides the free one. But Prew refused and left, and Stark nodded thoughtfully.
That night Warden lay in his narrow bunk, his big arms crossed behind his head and listened to Pete’s drunken snore. It had been like drawing a flush at stud, when trips was the best possible hand against you. In the dark the pixy look of relish swept over his face, raising the quivering ends of his eyebrows. He looked at Pete’s dim form pityingly and then rolled over triumphantly toward sleep.
Dont pity Pete, it told him in the silence.
What, he thought, you again? I thought you went on a trip.
Nope, I’m still here. Did you think you could put me off forever? You’ve had a good time, the past two weeks, evading me. But the thing with Stark is over now.
Socrates had nothing on me, he thought. You mean you think I’ve been deliberately avoiding you?
Well? Havent you?
My god, he thought, whats gotten into you anyway? I can remember back when you trusted everybody; not just me, but everybody. And it wasnt so many years ago either, not more than ten. And now you wont even take my word of honor.
Thats right, it told him cheerfully. Can you remember all the scrapes we got into back then, too? We trusted this one, and we trusted that one. Man, it really cost us, didnt it? I can even remember a few times when I trusted you, and nearly laid us both right out to cool.
You’re exaggerating, he thought, you’re just cynical, god damn you.
Is that any way to talk to me? After all I’ve done for you?
Great God, he thought, I didnt marry you. You’re getting so you sound just like my Mother.
Dont blaspheme me, it told him coldly. You pulled a fast one, Milton, it went on relentlessly, on this deal with Stark. It looked good. But it didnt change the Company any. Its still the same. O’Hayer and the jockstraps havent lost an inch. And besides, its no credit to you. Anybody could have won a made to order hand like that one was, with Stark as the old ace in the hole.
All right, he thought, you bastard. I give up. What do you want?
Are you going to keep that date with Karen?
I said I was.
But you didnt admit you’d meant to keep it all along.
I did too admit it.
But you didnt believe it.
All right then, he thought, then I believe it. Does that suit you, you moralistic bastard? What else do you want me to admit?
Nothing now, it grinned. I’ll see you later.
“Oh Jesus,” he said aloud, “but you’re a distrustful son of a bitch. I wouldnt be like you for anything.”
“What?” Pete mumbled, sitting straight up in his bed. “I didnt do it, Sir. Honestly I didnt, Sir. I’m innocent as a new born lamb, Sir, I really am.”
“For Christ’s sake shut up and go to sleep,” Warden bellowed, plumping up his pillow. “You drunken bum.”