IF IT COULD ONLY all be like the luau had been, all the time, Warden thought with his feet cocked on the desk and his head cradled in his locked fingers. That was what it ought to be like. The luau had been on the eighth night. He had been desperate, even to suggest it. And she had been even more desperate to accept. Because this was a tourist luau in Waikiki and like as not they would run into somebody one or both of them knew. But they hadnt run into anyone. They had gone into town to the luau and each taken a new lover, and gotten the only real relief either one of them got from the other during the whole 10 days.
The fact that the new lover she took was named Warden, and the new lover he took was named Karen Holmes, that did not matter.
It was a tourist luau, not a real one, but after a few drinks it was practically just as good and you did not mind the fat white vacuum-cleaner faces watching, or the neatly pressed jackets and pants catching the light from the fire whitely. The tourists had all read Somerset Maugham, as preparation for their trip to the tropics, and went in for white linen suits and dresses. But you did not mind, not after a few drinks. Because everything else was there, just like in a real luau.
The long ditch with the fire dying down on the hot rocks and the black Kanaka kuke with skin catching red glints from the bonfire putting his layers of banana leaves in the kapuahi ditch to lay the food on, and then the music and hula dancing while the smells began to fan out from under the scorched banana leaves’ smell in the still breeze bringing a flood of water into the mouth—the pipi orna roastbeef, and the roasting puaa with a big ohia in his mouth and the pink scrubbed skin beginning to crisp brown (pig-skin and poi, pig-skin and poi), the heikaukau rock crab and welakaukau Hawaiian hot stew in the calabashes cooking. And in front of you the poi and kukui nuts and the i-a paakai salt fish, i-a uahi smoked fish, i-a maloo dried fish, i-a hou raw fish, fish fish fish (pig-skin and poi, pig-skin and poi), and the fruits, papaya, pineapple, malala, peels of raw cane—all this just to chew on while you waited for the real dinner (pig-skin and poi, pig-skin and poi) to get itself cooked. And all the time firelight flickering on naked bronze bodies as the greased muscles rippled under the koa trees in the hula.
The only luaus she had ever seen were the put-up jobs at Schofield for the officers. She had never seen the kane hula dancers whose masculine grace and swift agile angularity, savage and powerful, outshone and dimmed the hip-swinging wahine dancers as much as the ballet’s Spectre de la Rose outshone and dimmed a walkathon. She had never seen the pi-le noseflute either, or the little-tom-tom that they played with the knees and elbows sitting crosslegged. She had never eaten pig-skin and poi. And this place in Waikiki with its stone wall hiding the glade just across the street from where Kuhio Park narrows in to the highway seawall, she had never even heard about.
The real dishes, the others, the old ones that smelled like feces until you had ignored your nose and gotten them into your mouth and then forever after never smelled that way again, and that were not on this menu, she did not miss because she did not know about them. And if the songs they played and danced here were mostly songs that the tourists would already know—Song of the Islands, Sweet Leilani, Lovely Hula Hands, Hilo March and Kalhala March, Hanakai Tomboy, and the War Chant—still, she did not know because she had never heard the old ones, the ancient ones, like we use to play at Tony Paea’s family luaus, old Tony, who ran a battery shop on Nuuana, and whose father Ioane Paea had once been sole owner and proprietor of the Island of Paea, before the missionaries. Old Tony was somewhere Stateside now.
She had really taken it all in, eaten it up. And by the time the roast whole hog and pipi orna roastbeef had been finished off everyone was drunk, even some of the tourists were drunk, and he had stripped off his gook shirt and kicked off his sandals and rolled his slacks up to his knees and jumped out into the firelight and danced Meliani Oe for them with a gardenia snatched from the hair of the youngest wahine stuck over his ear, and that had really gotten her. With the grinning dancers who could not keep from forgetting they were paid entertainers egging him on solo, the seated ones beating time on the ground with their hands, the standing ones stamping it with the feet.
It made quite a sensation. Not many white men could dance the hula at all, let alone dance it well. But he had learned well, what old Tony had taught him better. And he had the figure for it, if I do say so as shouldnt.
And then when he came back grinning and put the gardenia in her hair, just as a gesture, just to carry it on out. And the fat-faced tourists whispering to each other about the crazy haole wondering who he was must be from old Island family who appeared to be more savagely Hawaiian than the Kanaka natives. Natives, he grinned, who would go back tomorrow morning to their jobs as waitresses at Walgreen’s and mechanics in some auto paint-and-body shop on Nuuanu with very unnative haole hangovers and the tourists if they went into Walgreen’s for a coke or stopped to get their carburetor fixed would not even recognize them.
“You’re always full of surprises,” she had smiled. “You’re always coming up with something. You just love to shock people, dont you? Where on earth did you ever learn to dance like that?”
And when they got back to the hotel—inn, they called it—that night it was again like it had once used to be, hot biting wiggling sweating savage, her playing the White Goddess again and him the savage. Like he liked it. But like it had not been very often lately now for a long time, and like it was not to be again, after that one time, during the rest of the last two days.
“My savage,” she had whispered biting gently. “My primitive crazy savage.”
The next night, the last but one, he made the mistake of trying to get it back again. He called her His Chippy, My Chippy, as he had done before; but this time she not only pushed him off but flounced out of the bed crying and after a seeming endless period of name-calling in which the worries about the kid came out again (“What if he should get sick? How would I find out? Here, shacked up with another man in a hotel like a common whore? What if he died? Would you care? Yes, a lot you’d care!”) ended up by sleeping in the other bed. Just like bundling in the old days, he had thought wanting to beat his fist into the wall, bite blood from his knuckles with the frustration of being unable to say one word that did not sound guilty and apologetic, except that now instead of a board inbetween we have this rocklike silence.
It was during those last two days, when he had been very angry about his slacked Morning Report, that he had told her the full story of Prewitt including Fatso Judson and the whore Lorene from Mrs Kipfer’s with whom he was in love, to let her know for once how the other half lived. And even he was surprised at how greatly concerned she had been, concerned enough to cry, which only made him love her, goddam it, that much more.
My point, his mind said, the apex of my conclusions, is that the illusion of romantic love, being an illusion grounded on the principle of you build me up and I build you up, cannot last through the years of you tear me down and I tear you down. Thats why the men step out and the women take to religion.
But as long as you can keep the illusion, he argued grimly, you can love. And if you’ve got the illusion, then by god you do love. Reality or no reality.
True, his mind said, coolly. And marriage is the great illusion breaker. You dont believe me, try it.
I intend to, he told it.
You see, it said, the foundation principle behind the illusive principle of Romantic Love—the Reality, in other words, behind the Fantasy—is Love of Self; which, up to the time of this paper, has remained undiscovered.
Probably, Warden said, thats because the illusion has received such general recognition and acceptance through the medium of commercial advertising?
Yes, it said indifferently. Now, to get back. What you really love, then, is Milt Warden. As long as she builds you up and makes you love Milt Warden more, because he is such a fine outstanding man, you love her too, naturally. Because she makes you a finer better man. But, when she begins to tear you down and make you love Milt Warden less, because he’s such an obvious no good son of a bitch, you naturally dont love her near so much any more. Because you arent such a nice person any more. And eventually, when it keeps on long enough, you dont love her any more at all. Its really very simple, once you understand it.
All right, Warden said impatiently. But whats to keep two people from just building each other up indefinitely.
Well, his mind frowned, its a little hard to explain to a layman. Theoretically, there is nothing. But in practice it gets rather repetitious. It gets rather hard to keep on inventing new compliments. Eventually, you reach a saturation point beyond which you can do no more than repeat. Naturally, the other party gets suspicious, if not actually bored.
A pretty picture, he said. You leave me a very pretty picture. Okay, you’ve diagnosed the ailment, how about the cure?
You misunderstood, his mind said. The subject of this paper is the isolation of the virus. We are not attempting to lay out a course of treatment.
Well, thats fine, Warden said. Thats just fine. You prove to me that I’m dying from a disease, and then tell me its incurable.
Well, his mind said, the isolation of the virus opens several avenues of approach. We have a few ideas we’re working on—
Better, he said, to have let me died in blissful ignorance.
I thought you were a man who liked to know the facts? his mind said stiffly.
Facts, hell! How do you think I’m going to tell her the facts?
Thats your problem. Of course, it said, there is always the possibility that she already knows the facts.
Yes, he said, that just what I’m afraid of.
To date, his mind said, the only known path of recovery from the disease of love is to get married.
You mean, just let it wear itself out.
Thats it.
And walk on crutches the rest of your life.
Well, his mind said, at least you wont be dead.
Give me polio any time, he said.
Well, his mind said, I guess I’ll sign off now. If I find anything new I’ll let you know.
Well, thanks, he said. Well, thanks a lot.
He sat on in the chair alone, wondering if this was how a man felt whose doctor has just told him he has cancer, and waiting for mortgageforecloser Ross to come in.
He wondered if the man with cancer also would worry most of all about how to tell his wife?
Even whiskey had no medicinal value for this disease. Hadnt he just tried two days of it?—because he was afraid to go down to Mrs Kipfer’s for another shock treatment? That showed how far gone he was.
You’re nothing but a husk, Milt, he told himself, and took another drink. A dried up eaten out empty husk. Not so long ago he had at least been able to get temporary relief in a whorehouse. Now he could not even do that, because he was afraid of ruining his reputation with a fiasco.
Back in the old days, before the moral United States got a throttlehold on the literary world, they used to write quite a bit about fiascoes. It was quite a subject, then. Now, they did not write about them any more; either because fiascoes were less frequent, which he doubted; or else because they were considered more shameful, which he suspected. After all, you could not propagate the race with fiascoes; and today propagating the race was of the utmost importance, in Germany and in Russia and in the USA, because where the hell are we going to get the manpower for the next war, after this one’s done, unless we propagate the race?
Why dont you write a paper on that one? he told it. A lot of people would like the answer to that one.
But there wasnt any answer from the gallery.
In fact, when you thought about it, just about the only consolation for this disease was the fact that it was not a rare one. That you were not the only one who suffered from it.
Well, lets wait and see what litigationprolonger Ross has got to say. He’s about the only hope thats left.
Lt Ross, when he came in, did not say anything. He ignored the bottle sitting in plain sight on the desk. He moved around the orderly room, shaking hands with his new 1st/Sgt, talking to get acquainted and taking no notice whatever of either the whiskey or the crummy $120 Brooks Bros. suit or the three days stubble of beard on his 1st/Sgts jaw.
The dirty kosher schmuck a mingia, Warden thought. He knows goddam good and well he cant run this fucking Compny without me. For two cents I’d offer the schlemiel a drink; then he’d have to notice it. Kotz, Warden said to himself throatily, letting it lie on the back of his tongue like butter. Kotz; kotz. The shithead.
“I’ve got something for you Sergeant,” Lt Ross said, apparently feeling he was sufficiently acquainted. He pulled a paper out of his pocket. “Instead of taking the full correspondence course for Reserve Officer’s Training, they are going to let you just take this examination. Because of your service, and experience, and rank; and because Col Delbert wrote a letter asking that in your case they waive it.” He paused, smiling expectantly.
Warden did not say anything. What did they expect him to do? scream with joy?
“Here is a copy of the examination you will take next Monday,” Lt Ross went on, laying the paper out on the desk. “Col Delbert sent it over for you to glance over and told me to give it to you with his compliments.”
“Thanks,” Warden said lazily, without looking at it. “But I wont need it. Hows about a drink, Lieutenant?”
“Why, thanks,” Lt Ross said. “I dont mind if I do. Col Delbert said you’d probably say that. He said you probably wouldnt want it or need it, but he thought it would be a good idea to bring it over anyway, just to let you know we’re all back of you.”
Furiously, indignantly, outraged, Warden watched him calmly take the bottle off the desk and uncork it.
“It tastes a little thin,” Lt Ross said.
“Some son of a bitch is been watering it while I was on furlough,” Warden said, staring hard at him.
“Thats too bad,” Lt Ross said.
Warden grinned at him. “You know,” he said lazily, “I’m surprised at the Great White Father Delbert. I thought old Jake would be doin everything he could to screw me out. Instead of tryin to help me. Especial what with this feud him and Holmes been having the past three or four months.”
“From what I can gather,” said Lt Ross, “the Colonel thinks very highly of you as a soldier. Much too highly to let a thing like a personal disagreement stop him from pushing your application, when he thinks you deserve it.”
“And,” Warden grinned, “when it’ll be a feather in his bonnet if I make it.”
“Yes,” Lt Ross grinned. “And in mine, too.”
Warden did not say anything. There was not anything else left to say. He stopped grinning and stared at Ross, but that didnt do any good either. Apparently it was going to be just like with Sgt Wellman back in A Co, who put in for the OEC last January; every officer in the battalion helped him with his correspondence lessons. Wellman who didnt know a squad column from a skirmish line; now he was a hotshot 2nd Lt down in the 19th.
“Thats too bad about your whiskey, Sergeant,” Lt Ross said, looking at his watch. “Well, I guess I better be getting on up to the Club for lunch. I’ll see you later on this afternoon. If you have any questions about that exam paper, you just ask me. I’ll try to answer them for you.”
Warden sat up after he was gone and picked up the copy of the exam. No wonder they had such stupid shitheads for officers, if they give them such childish examinations as this. He knew the answers to these questions before he even finished reading them. If you have any questions, he minced, you just ask me. Shit. He stuffed the exam in his pocket and turned to watch Lt Ross through the window, crossing the quad in his bent-kneed back-bobbing shambling walk, his uniform hanging from him dismally. Picture of a soljer. The son of a bitch walks like a goddam ragman. Or a plow jockey. Looks like a ragman, too.
A gentleman, he sneered, a gentleman. Manners, no less. Politeness he’s got. His old man is probly a pork packer on Millionaire’s Row or something. He took the bottle off the desk and put it back in the filing cabinet. Them and their goddam examination papers.
But that night, while Pete was off visiting some sidekick in the 27th, he looked over the copy of the exam again in his room. And Monday morning, when he went over to Regiment to take it, he sat right down and wrote them off contemptuously. Then he tossed the paper contemptuously on the desk of the 2nd Lt who was acting as timer and walked out, with over half of the two hour time limit still to go, feeling the Lt staring after him incredulously.
It was when he got back to the Orderly Room that morning that Rosenberry handed him the Department Special Order decreeing that the annual fall maneuvers would start on the 20th, two days hence.
He carried Prewitt present on the Morning Report until the morning they left, before he finally picked him up as absent. He had been able to give him an extra week. If there was ever any investigation about Fatso Judson, that ought to cover him. Anyway, it was the best he could do.
The evening before they pulled out, on the strength of a hunch, he went down to the Blue Anchor Cafe on King Street two doors from Mrs Kipfer’s New Congress which had been the Company hangout ever since he got in the outfit, both because it was cheap and because it was two doors from Mrs Kipfer’s—The Blue Chancre, they called it in the Company. There was nobody there tonight; they were all home getting ready to move in the morning. He waited four hours, swilling straight shots with beer chasers, and talking to Rose the Chinese waitress.
Prewitt did not show. Rose said she could not remember that he had been there, not for long time now. But then, Rose wouldnt have told him if he had. She and Charlie Chan the bartender-proprietor knew fully as much about the personal affairs of G Company as its Company Administration ever did. At one time or another Rose had been shacked up with almost every noncom in the Company. Sort of a community wife.
Somehow, he had had a hunch Prewitt might show up down there. He might never come back to the Post, but he wouldnt be able to stay away from news of the Company for ever. So, logically, the Blue Chancre would be the place he would head for. It was only a hunch. He knew it was a wild last-gasp shot in the dark. In the morning they moved out for the beaches and he dropped him for rations and picked him up AWOL on the Morning Report.
Lt Ross, who was having a nervous time with his first maneuvers and did not know Prewitt from his name on the roster, was very angry about it at first. He wanted to court martial him. Warden had to explain to him that Prewitt was probably drunked up lying in somewhere with a wahine and would probably show up at the Hanauma Bay CP in a day or two, before he would accept Warden’s idea of Company Punishment. Lt Ross was trying hard to learn the ways of the Regular Army. He laughed, and relented.
Warden could teach him a lot, he said, if he wanted to, during these next two months before his commission came through.
That was true, Warden agreed, aware that this was only a holding action. If Prewitt didnt come back, it wouldnt mean anything. What he was hoping was that the maneuvers would bring him in. Prewitt would know about the maneuvers; everybody in Hawaii always knew about maneuvers. On an island the size of Wahoo the annual maneuvers were almost as much of a territorial holiday as the Army Field Day in April. Truck convoys moved through town stopping traffic, and details set up machineguns at all the important civic installations, and other details laid road blocks on all the highways, and the bars in town always did a land office business. An old soldier snorts over maneuvers like an old firehorse snorts over a dry-run fire.
Warden went about setting up his CP at Hanauma Bay and waited, wondering why it was he was bothering so much about a common fuckup. Maybe he was losing his touch. He was getting as sentimental as Dynamite Holmes. He must be, to go out of his way to try and save the neck of a man he had called clean for a fuckup the first day he came in the Company.
Yet somehow there was something else. Prewitt seemed to hold the key to something. He felt if he could save Prewitt he would be saving something else. A something that if it was saved would provide the justification for still something else. Prewitt had become a symbol to him of something. When he did not show as the days passed and Lt Ross’s good-humored leniency got thinner and thinner, Warden found himself taking it almost as hard as if it really meant something to him personally.
Probly its because you feel guilty about becoming an officer, he told himself. Probly thats all it is.
He decided he was staying away because he still thought they were looking for him for Fatso. That must be the reason. But how to get word to him that that was blown over? You couldnt, unless you knew where he was. And you couldnt look for him, not with the maneuvers on and you out in the field.
The maneuvers started out to be pretty much the same as last year, and the year before that. It was the same old stuff. They moved out in the trucks to the beach and set up the MGs according to the Defense Plan and settled down to wait till they were called into action. G Company’s sector of beach ran from Sand Island in Honolulu Harbor east clear to Makapuu Point and included Waikiki Beach and the estates along Black Point and Maunalua Bay. It was one of the choicest sectors on the rock; Waikiki had the best bars on the rock and the Black Point estates had the most wahine maids, and most of the maids had their living quarters right there on the estates. But since the whole Company knew they would be pulled off and relieved by the Coast Artillery as soon as the reds landed they did not get very excited.
This year the master plan was built around the landing of an enemy assault force at Kawela Bay on the north end of the island. The 27th and 35th with the 8th Field were the red attacking forces; the 19th and 21st, together with the rest of the Field Artillery and all the Coast Artillery, were the white defensive forces. The reds landed the third day. At the very least it took two days to lay the groundwork with even the most amenable wahine maids. G Company, instead of laying groundwork, made a 35-mile forced march up Kamehameha Highway through Wahiawa to Waialua where it made rendezvous with the Regiment and took up defense positions. They dug slit trenches all the next day and the day after were picked up by trucks and carried around by back roads in the dust to the other side of the island while another outfit took over their slit trenches. At Hauula, five miles below Kahuku where the main white line rested, they went into reserve. In an open field with no shade they dug more slit trenches and set up a bivouac that could have passed, and did pass, a regular full field inspection. They stayed there the rest of the two weeks and did nothing. It was the same old stuff. A typical maneuvers. They played cards and talked about how they wished they were back on the beach positions and compared notes on wahine maids and waited till word came that the battle was all over and the enemy all repulsed or captured and they broke camp and piled into the trucks to go home where, if there was not a plethora of wahine maids, there were at least showers.
Then it changed, and was not a typical maneuvers any more. The trucks, instead of taking them back to Schofield, took them back down to their beach positions from which the Coast Artillery had already gone home to Fort Ruger. Other trucks, from Schofield, arrived simultaneously and unloaded piles of picks and shovels and axes, sacks of cement and mortar hoes. One truck even unloaded thirty Barco gasoline-driven jack-hammers.
Nobody knew what the hell for.
As if in answer, orders came down through channels that they were to construct pillboxes on all their positions. At the time they were still sleeping in the shelter tents used on maneuvers, but before they could bitch about it still other trucks arrived from Schofield with both pyramidal tents and the cots to put in them. They already had their mosquito bars; in the field on Oahu you always had your mosquito bars. And instead of temporary bivouacs the beach positions suddenly became permanent encampments.
Warden went about setting up his CP at Hanauma Bay for the second time, still with no Prewitt, but forgetting that now. Even in the memory of the old Island men like Pete Karelsen and Turp Thornhill, nothing like this had ever happened before.
Up to then they had always moved onto the beach, set the MGs up in the open, and slept on the sand in their blankets—or, if they were lucky like Position #16 on Doris Duke’s estate, in a beach cabana with the compliments of the estate’s manager (Nobody ever even saw Doris). That was the way it had always been, and that was the way they had assumed it would always be. That an enemy naval force could blow them to hell sitting out there in the open like that, long before it started to send barges in, they fully realized; and, knowing the Army like draftees will never know it, that was just what they expected to happen if the Island was ever attacked. But as long as there were bars to sneak off to and so many Americanized gook girls around to invite onto the position to inspect the awesomely lethal machineguns, they didnt give a damn one way or the other. Anyway, who the hell was ever going to attack this island anyway? The Japanese?
Showing them the MGs was an inspiration. It was practically irresistible. In addition to the awesomeness of the potential death in them there was the intriguing mechanical mystery of an unknown machine function that no American black brown or white can ever resist tinkering with to find out how it works. And with the hard cases you could even let them sit down behind the gun and swing it on the pintle and pull the dead trigger. Not even a virgin wahine could resist that. A haole girl, yes. But not a wahine, because in spite of the absolute triumph of American mechanics, plus all the efforts of the self-chosen-missionaries, American morals had come no nearer to winning a victory in the Islands than had American standards of comfort, so that they did not even mind being screwed in a shelter tent on the sand.
Rumor had it that the rest of the Infantry outfits were doing the same thing and building pillboxes on their positions, but G Company was getting more ass than it had ever gotten before in its history, in spite of the work. Not to mention all the pints and fifths they gave the wahines the money to buy for them, or that if they were broke the wahines bought and brought by themselves—(the good thing about wahines, Mack, that is different from white women, is that wahines like whiskey with their panipani almost as much as us soljers).
If there was anyone in the Company who wondered at all, it was Milt Warden who was unable to take advantage of the bonanza because of his newly acquired fear of fiascoes. Warden, perhaps alone, wondered if maybe this was finally the beginning? if perhaps somebody in Washington or somewhere had gotten ahold of some information or something that had finally worked its way down through channels. He had always wondered just how they began to begin; nobody that ever wrote about them ever seemed to mention just exactly how they began. But since nobody else said anything about it, he did not bring it up either. Maybe he was just being foolish. Besides, it would be a shame to spoil all the fun that everybody but him seemed to be having.
The job lasted a month. It was a wonderful time, even though there was a strict order against giving passes. In a situation like this who the hell wanted passes? Engineer Companies delivered them ready-cut beams and planking of koa wood that they had cut on the slopes of Barber’s Point. All they had to do was dig holes in sand and set beams in them and line them with planking, and then put beams over them and line them with planking, and then cover it all up with sand, after they had made sure the MG apertures pointed the right direction. Their nights were their own. The officers hardly ever came around from the CP in the daytime, let alone during the night. The Company took care not to strain themselves with overwork in the daytime, so as not to detract from the nights. In fact, they were usually so hungover and worndown from the nights that they could not have strained themselves if they had wanted. That was one of the reasons the job took a month. It was a wonderful time.
Another reason the job took a month was Position #28 at Makapuu Head. It was not a wonderful time at Makapuu Head. The thirty gasoline driven Barco drills had been for Makapuu Head. Makapuu Head, a foot under the surface, was one solid rock. Also, the Waimanalo Girls School was eight or ten miles away down in Kaneohe Valley. And, because Makapuu Head was manned by more than a full platoon, instead of just three or four men, there was always an officer there; he even slept there. There were no estates, bars, dwellings, or places of recreation at Makapuu Head—unless you wanted to count the two public outhouses down below on the Kaupo Park beach just opposite Rabbit Island, from which a number of men caught the crabs. All there was at Makapuu Head was the lighthouse out on the Point and the one solid rock, and the Engineers across the highway with the pneumatic drills, digging and blasting into the cliff wall where the highway demolition would be.
Makapuu Head was the most crucial spot in the Company sector. If an enemy landed at Kaneohe, there were only two roads he could take into Honolulu without going clear around the whole island, the Pali road that came down Nuuanu Avenue into town, and Kalanianaole Highway at Makapuu Head. The majority of Pete Karelsen’s weapons platoon, under Pete, formed the nucleus of the Makapuu Head complement because they were the best machinegunners in the Company, and there was another whole platoon of riflemen to protect them because they were precious. But now both machinegunners and riflemen worked together side by side with the Barco drills and shovels like a nigger labor battalion. At Makapuu it was definitely not a wonderful time.
Gradually, as the work on one position after another was completed, and Makapuu still made no headway into the one solid rock, more and more men were shifted out there to help cut with Barco drills the one solid rock. Until finally the whole Company was out there, working in eight-hour shifts, around the clock 24 hours a day. A kind of frenzied ecstasy for work got into everybody, particularly the night shifts for some reason, and specially after The Warden made it his headquarters and took to operating a Barco while lashing sarcastically at everybody in a voice that drowned even the stuttering one-cylinder engines. The cooks stayed up all night in shifts voluntarily, to keep them supplied with hot sandwiches and coffee. Even the clerks and cooks took their turns at working the Barcos; Mazzioli, when he came down from Schofield for a couple of days to look around, put on his unfaded fatigues he had hardly worn in a year and displayed his surprisingly good physique naked to the waist on a Barco and it turned out much to everybody’s surprise that his old man had been a sandhog on the Holland Tunnel job in New York. It was inexplicable, the whole thing. The men who had been out there from the start wrapped handkerchieves proudly around bleeding blisters and laughed uproariously as the blisters on the hands of the new men began to break.
Maybe somebody would even sing the old soldier’s parody of Chow Call.
We’ve built a million kitchens,
For the cooks to burn our beans;
We’ve walked a hundred million miles,
We’ve cleaned out camp latrines.
If we ever get to heaven, the angels all will yell:
Take a front seat, Men of Schofield,
You’ve done your hitch in hell.
It turned out to be even more fun than wahines and whiskey which was fun. Even The Warden’s wild driving leadership could not account for it. It was the thing that makes Infantry Companies Infantry Companies, and gives old men who were once soldiers the sentimentality with which to tell stories that bore their grandchildren.
A Barco drill has no trigger like an air hammer and it is twice as heavy because its one-cylinder gasoline engine is built right onto the barrel. When they picked it up to move it to a new spot, they had to pick up the whole vibrating bucking mass, bracing it against a thigh to even hold it, because if you turn it off it takes five minutes to start it again with the spring plunger and you have to move it every minute or so. And the only place on a Barco that you can touch without getting burned, except for the grips, is the gas tank under the handles, and after half an hour of bracing the gas tank against your thigh your fatigue pants leg is scorched rusty brown and all the hair is worn off and burned off your leg. Compared to an air hammer a Barco is an antiquated monstrosity, and if you had asked any of the men who complained because they didn’t have air hammers (and all of them did) to trade the Barcos in for them, they would have snorted and said they didnt need air hammers like the goddam Engineers. It was as if they liked burning the hair off their legs, and shaking their back teeth loose when they moved them, and wearing the skin on their hands down to raw meat. It was as if they used them and hated them and loved them and would not have had anything else. It was as if they had never had so much fun in their lives.
And across the road the Engineers with their pneumatic drills digging the demolition listened to them sing and watched them enviously, and they knew the Engineers watched them and laughed and sang even more loudly. Until finally even some of the Engineers, after they got off their own shifts, came over to help.
And in a month it was done, and they laid the brace-steel and poured the concrete themselves for the roofs, and went back to Schofield and garrison soldiering, some of them with a new disease that made it feel like the veins in the shoulders and elbows and wrists were swollen and aching while their fingers and hands and finally their whole arms got tingly numb, a disease that every time they did any work with their hands they would wake up with in the middle of the night and get up and shake their arms back awake while the veins in their joints kept aching a long time afterwards so that they had to go out to the latrine for a Piss Call and smoke a cigaret while they let the aching subside so they could go back to bed, but a disease that they never went on sick call with because they had never even heard of it and did not know it was a disease.
The date was November 28th, 1941.