Andre Dubus: Selected Stories (21 page)

Hugh slept in the bunk above Paul’s. His father was dead, he lived with his mother and a younger sister, and at night in the squad bay he liked talking about his girl in Bronxville; on summer afternoons he and Molly took the train into New York.

‘What do you do?’ Paul said. He stood next to their bunk; Hugh sat on his, looking down at Paul; he wore a T-shirt, his bare arms were thin, and high on his cheekbones were sparse freckles.

‘She takes me to museums a lot.’

‘What kind of museums?’

‘Art.’

‘I’ve never been to one.’

‘That’s because you’re from the south. I can see her now, standing in front of a painting. Oh Hugh, she’ll say, and she’ll grab my arm. Jesus.’

‘Are you going to marry her?’

‘In two years. She’s a snapper like you, but hell I don’t care. Sometimes I go to mass with her. She says I’ll have to sign an agreement; I mean it’s not
her
making me, and she’s not bitchy about it; there’s nothing she can do about it, that’s all. You know, agree to raise the kids Catholics. That Nazi crap your Pope cooked up.’

‘You don’t mind?’

‘Naw, it’s
Mol
ly I want.
Her
, man—’

Now in his mind Paul was miles and months away from the squad bay and the smells of men and canvas and leather polish and gun oil, he was back in those nights last fall and winter and spring, showing her the stories he wrote, buying for her Hemingway’s books, one at a time, chronologically, in hardcover; the books were for their library, his and Tommie’s, after they were married; he did not tell her that. Because for a long time he did not know if she loved him. Her eyes said it, the glow in her cheeks said it, her voice said it. But she never did; not with her controlled embraces and kisses, and not with words. It was the words he wanted. It became an obsession: they drank and danced in night clubs, they saw movies, they spent hours parked in front of her house, and he told her his dreams and believed he was the only young man who had ever had such dreams and had ever told them to such a tender girl; but all this seemed incomplete because she didn’t give him the words.

Then one night in early summer she told him she loved him. She was a practical and headstrong girl; the next week she went to see a priest. He was young, supercilious, and sometimes snide. She spent an hour with him, most of it in anger, and that night she told Paul she must not see him again. She must not love him. She would not sign contracts. She spoke bitterly of incense and hocus-pocus and graven images. Standing at Hugh’s bunk, remembering that long year of nights with Tommie, yearning again for the sound of his own voice, gently received, and the swelling of his heart as he told Tommie what he had to and wanted to be, he felt divided and perplexed; he looked at Hugh’s face and thought of Molly’s hand reaching out for that arm, holding it, drawing Hugh close to her as she gazed at a painting. He blinked his eyes, scratched his crew-cut head, returned to the squad bay with an exorcising wrench and a weary sigh.

‘—Sometimes she lets me touch her, just the breasts you see, and that’s fine, I don’t push it. When she lets me I’m Goddamn
grate
ful. Jesus, you got to get a girl again. There’s nothing like it. You know that?
Noth
ing. It’s another world, man.’

On a hot grey afternoon he faced Hugh on the athletic field, both of them wearing gold football helmets, holding pugil sticks at the ready, as if they were rifles with fixed bayonets. Paul’s fists gripped and encircled the smooth round wood; on either end of it was a large stuffed canvas cylinder; he looked into Hugh’s eyes, felt the eyes of the circled platoon around him, and waited for Hathaway’s signal to begin. When it came he slashed at Hugh’s shoulder and neck but Hugh parried with the stick, then he jabbed twice at Hugh’s face, backing him up, and swung the lower end of the stick around in a butt stroke that landed hard on Hugh’s ribs; then with speed he didn’t know he had he was jabbing Hugh’s chest, Hathaway shouting now: ‘That’s it, little man: keep him going, keep him going; Munson get your balance, use your feet, Goddamnit—’ driving Hugh back in a circle, smacking him hard on the helmeted ear; Hugh’s face was flushed, his eyes betrayed, angry; Paul jabbing at those eyes, slashing at the head and neck, butt stroking hip and ribs, charging, keeping Hugh off balance so he could not hit back, could only hold his stick diagonally across his body, Paul feinting and working over and under and around the stick, his hands tingling with the blows he landed until Hathaway stopped him: ‘All right, little man, that’s enough; Carmichael and Vought, put on the headgear.’

Paul took off the helmet and handed it and the pugil stick to Carmichael. He picked up his cap from the grass; it lay next to Hugh’s, and as he rose with it Hugh was beside him, stooping for his cap, murmuring: ‘Jesus, you really like this shit, don’t you.’

Paul watched Carmichael and Vought fighting, and pretended he hadn’t heard. He felt Hugh standing beside him. Then he glanced at Hathaway, across the circle. Hathaway was watching him.

In the dark he was climbing the sixth and final hill, even the moon was gone, either hidden by trees or clouds or out of his vision because he was in such pain that he could see only that: his pain; the air was grey and heavy and humid, and he could not get enough of it; even as he inhaled his lungs demanded more and he exhaled with a rush and again drew in air, his mouth open, his throat and tongue dry, haunting his mind with images he could not escape: cold oranges, iced tea, lemonade, his canteen of water—He was falling back. He wasn’t abreast of Whalen anymore, he was next to the man behind Whalen and then back to the third man, and he moaned and strove and achieved a semblance of a jog, a tottering climb away from the third man and past the second and up with Whalen again, then from behind people were yelling at him, or trying to, their voices diminished, choked off by their own demanding lungs: they were cursing him for lagging and then running to catch up, causing a gap which they had to close with their burning legs. Behind him Hugh was silent and Paul wondered if that silence was because of empathy or because Hugh was too tired to curse him aloud; he decided it was empathy and wished it were not.

And now Lieutenant Swenson reached the top, a tall helmeted silhouette halted and waiting against the oppressive and mindless sky, and Paul’s heart leaped in victory and resilience, he crested the hill, went happily past Swenson’s panting and sweating face, plunged downward, leaning back, hard thighs and calves bouncing on the earth, then Swenson jogged past him, into the lead again and, walking now, brought them slowly down the hill and out of the trees, onto the wide quiet gravel road and again stepped aside and watched them go past, telling them quietly to close it up, close it up, you people, and Paul’s stride was long and light and drunk with fatigue; he tried to punch Whalen’s arm but couldn’t reach him and didn’t have the strength to veer from his course and do it—Then Swenson’s voice high and clear: ‘’tawn: ten
huhn
,’ and he straightened his back and with shoulders so tired and aching that he barely felt the cutting packstraps, he marched to Swenson’s tenor cadence, loving now the triumphant rhythm of boots in loose gravel, cooling in his drying sweat, able now to think of water as a promise the night would keep. Then Swenson called out: ‘Are you ready, Gunny?’ and, from the rear, Hathaway’s answering growl: ‘Aye, Lieutenant—’ and Paul’s heart chilled, he had heard the mischievous threat in Swenson’s voice and now it came: ‘Dou-ble time—’ a pause: crunching boots: groans, and then ‘—
huhn
.’

Swenson ran past him on long legs, swerved to the front of the two files, and slowed to a pace that already Paul knew he couldn’t keep. For perhaps a quarter of a mile he ran step for step with Whalen, and then he was finished. His strides shortened and slowed. Whalen was ahead of him and he tried once to catch up, but as he lifted his legs they refused him, they came down slower, shorter, and falling back now he moved to his left so the men behind him could go on. For a moment he ran beside Hugh. Hugh jerked his pale face to the left, looked at him, tried to say something; then he was gone. Paul was running alone between the two files, they were moving past him, some spoke encouragement as they went—hang in there, man—then he was among the tall ones at the rear and still he was dropping back, then a strong hand extended from a gasping shadowed face and took his rifle and went on.

He did not look behind him but he knew: he could feel at his back the empty road, and he was dropping back into it when the last two men, flanking him, each took an arm and held him up. ‘You can do it,’ they said. ‘Keep going,’ they said. He ran with them. Vaguely above the sounds of his breathing he could hear the pain of others: the desperate breathing and always the sound of boots, not rhythmic now, for each man ran in step with his own struggle, but anyway steady, and that is what finally did him in: the endlessness of that sound. Hands were still holding his arms; he was held up and pulled forward, his head lolled, he felt his legs giving way, his arms, his shoulders, he was sinking, they were pulling him forward but he was sinking, his eyes closed, he saw red-laced black and then it was over, he was falling forward to the gravel, and then he struck it but not with his face: with his knees and arms and hands. Then his face settled forward onto the gravel. He was not unconscious, and he lay in a shameful moment of knowledge that he would remember for the rest of his life: he had quit before his body failed; the legs which now lay in the gravel still had strength which he could feel; and already, within this short respite, his lungs were ready again. They hurt, they labored, but they were ready.

‘He passed out, sir.’

They were standing above him. The platoon was running up the road.

‘Who is it?’ Hathaway said.

‘It’s Clement, sir.’

‘Leave his rifle here and you men catch up with the platoon.’

‘Aye-aye, sir.’

There were two of them. They went up the road, running hard to catch up, and he wanted to tell them he was sorry he had lied, but he knew he never would. Then he heard or felt Hathaway squat beside him, the small strong hands took his shoulders and turned him over on his back and unbuckled his chin strap. He blinked up at Hathaway’s eyes: they were concerned, interested yet distant, as though he were disassembling a weapon whose parts were new to him; and they were knowing too, as if he were not appraising the condition of Paul’s body alone but the lack of will that had allowed it to fall behind, to give up a rifle, to crap out.

‘What happened, Clement?’

‘I don’t know, sir. I blacked out.’

Hathaway’s hands reached under Paul’s hip, lifted him enough to twist the canteen around, open the flaps, pull it from the cover. The crunching of the platoon receded and was gone up the road in the dark. Hathaway handed him the canteen.

‘Take two swallows.’

Paul lifted his head and drank.

‘Now stand up.’

He stood, replaced the canteen on his hip, and buckled his chin strap. His shirt was soaked; under it the T-shirt clung to his back and chest.

‘Here’s your weapon.’

He took the Ml and slung it on his shoulder.

‘Let’s go,’ Hathaway said, and started jogging up the road, Paul moving beside him, the fear starting again, touching his heart like a feather and draining his legs of their strength. But it didn’t last. Within the first hundred yards it was gone, replaced by the quick-lunged leg-aching knowledge that there was no use being afraid because he knew, as he had known the instant his knees and hands and arms hit the gravel, that he was strong enough to make it; that Hathaway would not let him do anything but make it; and so his fear was impotent, it offered no chance of escape, and he ran now with Hathaway, mesmerized by his own despair. He tried to remember the road, how many bends there were, so he could look forward to that last curve which would disclose the lighted streets of what now felt like home. He could not remember how many curves there were. Then they rounded one and Hathaway said, ‘Hold it,’ and walked toward the edge of the road. Paul wiped sweat from his eyes, blinked them, and peered beyond Hathaway’s back and shoulders at the black trees. He followed Hathaway and then he saw, at the side of the road, a man on his hands and knees. As he got closer he breathed the smell.

‘Who is it?’ Hathaway said.

‘Munson.’ His voice rose weakly from the smell. Paul moved closer and stood beside Hathaway, looking down at Hugh.

‘Are you finished?’ Hathaway said.

‘I think so.’

‘Then stand up.’ His voice was low, near coaxing in its demand.

Hugh pushed himself up, stood, then retched again and leaned over the ditch and dry-heaved. When he was done he remained bent over the ditch, waiting. Then he picked up his rifle and stood straight, but he did not turn to face them. He took off his helmet and held it in front of him, down at his waist, took something from it, then one hand rose to his face. He was wiping it with a piece of toilet paper. He dropped the paper into the ditch, then turned and looked at Hathaway. Then he saw Paul, who was looking at Hugh’s drained face and feeling it as if it were his own: the cool sweat, the raw sour throat.

‘Man—’ Hugh said, looking at Paul, his voice and eyes petulant; then he closed his eyes and shook his head.

‘We’ll run it in now,’ Hathaway said.

Hugh opened his eyes.

‘I threw up,’ he said.

‘And you’re done.’ Hathaway pointed up the road. ‘And the barracks is that way.’

‘I’ll walk.’

‘When you get back to New York you can do that, Munson. You can diddle your girl and puke on a six-pack and walk back to the frat house all you want. But here you run. Put on your helmet.’

Hugh slung his rifle on his shoulder and put his helmet on his head.

‘Buckle it.’

He buckled it under his chin, then looked at Hathaway.

‘I can’t run. I threw up.’ He gave Paul a weary glance, and looked up the road. ‘It’s not that I won’t. I just can’t, that’s all.’

He stood looking at them. Then he reached back for his canteen, it rose pale in the moonlight, and he drank.