Better Times Than These (5 page)

“Stand by a bunk,” Trunk roared, and again there was a great milling around as everyone pressed to find a bed. When it became apparent that there were not nearly enough bunks to go around, the noise and the cursing grew louder as men who were left out scrambled up one aisle and down the next, hoping to find a niche of their own.

Trunk let this continue for a few minutes before he quieted them down again so he could say what he had known secretly since they had left the sand hills of North Carolina: that in fact there weren’t going to be enough bunks for each man to have his own, because Division wanted the whole Brigade to arrive at once, and since there wasn’t another transport available, these twenty-one hundred men were going to have to go over on a ship built to carry only fifteen hundred of them.

“All right, shitheads, now you see what the problem is,” Trunk said, measuring his words slowly.

“Don’t fret, girls,” Trunk said sweetly, his picket teeth gleaming in a Cheshire Cat grin, “everybody’s gonna get to sleep on this here little sail—you’re just gonna have to do it different times.” He explained how the rotation of sleeping shifts would work—one third of the men would have to be up on deck at all times. There was a predictable chorus of groans.

“Knock it off, shitheads,” Trunk bellowed. “You’ll get used to it. Now, anybody without a bunk find one to share and stop bitchin’ like a bunch of goddamned women. This is just a little pleasure cruise, compared with what you’re in for when we get over there.”

Slowly, the ones without bunks carried their gear to a bunk that was already occupied. This exercise took somewhat longer than it might have as the left-out men searched the faces of those already with a bunk for any sign of receptiveness and the ones who had already claimed bunks tried their best, without actually saying or doing anything outright, to look as unreceptive as they could.

By 3
P.M.
, the sun had burned off the remaining haze. The day had turned brilliant California blue, and a perky breeze had sprung up off the ocean. Most of the men were lounging outside on the cargo deck when the first tremor from the big engines shivered through the steel frame of the ship.

DiGeorgio and Crump were leaning against the rail talking to Pfc. Spudhead Miter when they saw the cloud of dirty smoke belch from the forward stack. Moments later a similar cloud flew out of the stack behind it, blowing a gigantic smoke ring skyward.

“Here we go,” Crump said, peeling a tangerine and looking helplessly down at the Navy dockhands casting off the thick braided mooring lines. “Here we go.”

DiGeorgio’s beady little eyes danced wildly, looking up and down at Crump’s skinny frame slouched against the rail.

“Goddamned right we do, you dumb ape. Whatja expect, they’d change their minds the last fuckin’ minute? You thought Trunk’s gonna come running out here and say, ‘Okay, shitheads, this here’s just a drill’? Jesus, Crump, you’re brilliant—fuckin’ brilliant!”

“Why don’t you shut your mouth up, Dee-Gergio?” Crump said, hawking up a wad of phlegm and blowing it out with his tongue so that it arched in mortarlike trajectory into the boiling water in the fast-widening gap between ship and pier.

Spudhead Miter’s big potato-shaped head followed Crump’s expectoration until it hit the water, and he gazed down for a while at the spot where the spittle had landed. None of them spoke as the ship shuddered under the strain of 28,000 horsepower, but each felt his own strong sensation. Finally Spudhead jammed his hands into his pockets and said with authority, “We’re really in the dogfuck now.”

5

F
irst Lieutenant Billy Kahn, Bravo Company’s Executive Officer, was stowing away the last of eight precious bottles of Cutty Sark he had smuggled into his duffel bag in North Carolina after learning that the Navy didn’t allow whiskey drinking on its ships at sea. When the engine tremor reached his cabin, Kahn stopped for a moment and for no reason he could think of glanced at his watch—it was 3:10
P.M.
—then finished tucking the bottle gently in with the rest, cushioning it among a dozen or so pairs of olive-drab underwear so that it wouldn’t break if the ship started to rock or pound. When he finished, he stepped over to the small porthole next to the bunks to watch the ship pulling away from the pier, and wondered why the Navy wouldn’t let people drink on their goddamned old scow. So what if the men got drunked up a few times? So what if they got into a few fights? What was it going to hurt? What’d they expect—their damned ship was going to be torn up by drunks?

Just then the cabin door was flung open and a fireplug-shaped figure with a nose that resembled a summer squash mashed between two wide-opened Jerry Colonna eyes stomped in.

“Shit, shit, shit,
shit!”
the figure bawled, slinging its fatigue cap with a gold second lieutenant’s bar onto a pile of gear already lying on the bottom bunk. The epithets continued to fill the air like a fog.

“What’s
your
problem, Sharkey?” Kahn said nonchalantly, his back still toward the figure, which was now standing squarely in the center of the cabin, meaty hands jammed on its hips.

“Guess what,” the figure demanded violently.

“What?”

“Kennemer’s going around with a list from the Old Man. It’s the duty.”

“Yeah?”

“Guess what.”

“Damn, Sharkey, I don’t know. What?”

“Guess what I am for the next month.”

“How the hell should I know? Tell me.”

“The goddamned Laundry Officer.”

“You’re what?” Kahn said, the beginnings of a snicker welling up from his stomach and spreading along his high cheekbones into a grin.

“Laundry—fuckin’ Laundry! Two thousand goddamn grunts gotta have their laundry done and Patch’s put my ass in charge of it.”

“You mean you have to do their laundry for them?” Kahn asked casually.

“Oh, for crissakes, Billy; there’s a big laundry room down there somewhere and a couple of swabbies to help out; but Brigade’s gotta staff the whole thing. Patch’s put me in charge.”

In mock despair Kahn began to bang his head on his forearm on the porthole opening. “I guess somebody heard all your bellyaching about keeping clean after all.”

“Can you imagine having to be in there with all that stinking stuff? And Patch’ll be chewin’ my butt every time somebody complains they didn’t get their skivvies back.”

“Poor bastard,” Kahn said patronizingly. “Did you get a look at what I’m in for?” he asked, and dreaded the answer.

“Nah, I didn’t see the list, but Kennemer’ll find you sooner or later.”

“It’s relentless, ain’t it, Sharkey?”

“It sucks,” Sharkey said.

On deck, a stiff, cold breeze, accelerated by the course of the ship against it, whipped out of the west as the transport rounded the bight and cut into the whitecapped chop of San Francisco Bay, heading directly for the Golden Gate Bridge and the ocean beyond. On the port side, where Kahn and Sharkey had found a place at the rail, the city of San Francisco gleamed in pastels like the City of Oz pasted against the blue afternoon sky.

“I’d of liked to have had time to get out to the fault,” Kahn said, flipping a cigarette butt over the side.

“What in hell are you talking about now, Billy?” Sharkey said.

“The San Francisco quake, fool—nineteen oh six. Tore this place apart—started a fire that burned it flat. Where you been, man?”

“Jesus, Kahn, you mean you got fuck-else to worry about than something happened sixty years ago? You better worry about your ass and what’s gonna happen to it for the next year, that’s what you better start worrying about,” Sharkey said.

He glared skeptically at the delicate, aquiline features of the company Exec, thinking that he didn’t really look much like an Infantry officer; that his lean, freckled frame would probably have been better off in the Finance Corps or Quartermaster, bent over a desk figuring on paper, instead of being second in command of a hundred fifty riflemen headed into jungle combat. It was a sheer stroke of luck that Kahn had been born a year earlier than he, and consequently graduated a year earlier, and therefore outranked him, even though he had gone to the Academy and Kahn was a product of ROTC. It wasn’t that Sharkey minded it; it was just that he thought they ought to leave the fighting up to professionals and let the others push paper.

“Nah, seriously, a whole new theory of earthquakes came out of the San Andreas thing,” Kahn said, “ ‘Elastic rebound.’ The outcroppings are exposed right there.”

“Christ, Kahn, you shoulda been in the damned Engineers with all that geology stuff—they coulda got more outta you than they did at Benning.”

“I wish to hell I
had
been in Engineers,” Kahn said. “I was almost in the Finance Corps.”

The bridge was passing overhead, and for a moment his mind wandered back to the ancient geology amphitheater and musty labs at Florida State University and the countless hours he’d spent trying to comprehend the forces that created and maintain this planet, and it came to him suddenly and with wry satisfaction that this expedition was simply another clot of man-made stupidity that would scarcely be remembered in the far-distant future of the world. If people then thought about it at all—assuming there would be people and assuming also that they would be thinking—they would see it merely as a tiny spot in backtime, far removed from themselves and whatever they were presently doing. And as far as Billy Kahn’s part was concerned, they more than likely would not remember that at all—in the far-distant future of the world.

“Uh-oh,” said Sharkey, peering down the line of men leaning against the rail. From this angle, Sharkey’s nose reminded Kahn of a banana.

Captain Kennemer, Four/Seven’s Adjutant, a clipboard in hand, was approaching, searching the faces for the ones he sought. He spotted Kahn and Sharkey before they could turn around.

“Ah, Kahn, my man, I’ve been looking for you,” Kennemer said in the insipid gung-ho way he said everything these days. Kahn had noticed the change in Kennemer ever since Brigade had gotten its marching orders. Before, he had merely been a pain in the ass. Now he was a royal pain in the ass.

He loves this, Kahn thought, looking down at Kennemer’s spit-shined combat boots. Damned war lover—out for an oak leaf so he can retire and sit on his can somewhere and draw six hundred a month for the rest of his life.

In the meantime, Kennemer was a royal pain in the ass.

“Got a job for you, Kahn,” Kennemer said.

“Sorry—the doctor advised me to spend my time playing shuffleboard. I’m up in First Class, you know.”

“Don’t be a wiseass, Kahn. We’re all going to have to pull extra duty because the Old Man’s in charge of troops till we get across, did you know that? You know General Butterworth and Headquarters Company went ahead—they’re all flying over so they can set things up for us when we get there. The Old Man is senior colonel aboard and he wants Four/Seven’s officers to help him out. I’ve already told Sharkey here what he’s got to do.”

“I know. He’s going to be the navigator,” Kahn said unenthusiastically. Kennemer ignored the comment.

“Well, let’s see—yeah, Kahn . . . Kahn . . . he’s got you down for”—a toothy grin spread across Kennemer’s pudgy face—“ ‘rumors control.’ ”

“Say for what?” Kahn asked, squinting at Kennemer.

“Rumors Control Officer. Gotta have somebody to check out the rumors—you know about that—like we did it back at Bragg. Division thinks it keeps the EMs happier if they have somewhere to go to ask somebody official about the rumors—there’s more rumors going around here than flies in a shithouse. Hell, I heard we been diverted to the South of France just an hour ago,” Kennemer said, winking at Sharkey. “You might check that one out first.”

“But what in hell do I do—how do I find out the truth myself? Nobody tells me anything.”

“That’s your problem, Kahn. Just sit tight—there’ll be an officers’ call in an hour; you can find out all about it then,” Kennemer said, bouncing off to find another unsuspecting victim.

“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it,” said Kahn. Sharkey was near hysterics, pounding at the rail with his fist. “This isn’t happening,” Kahn said. “He’s gotta be some kind of nut.”

“Heard any good rumors lately?” Sharkey said, breaking again into fits of laughter.

“Shit on rumors—I don’t stop ’em, I start ’em,” Kahn declared sourly. He lit another cigarette and leaned back on the rail, watching the great city of San Francisco disappear forever around a bend as the ship pounded into the blue waters of the Pacific.

“I sure wish I could have taken a look at that fault,” he said dejectedly.

“There’s a rumor the war’s been postponed for inclement weather—mind checking it out?” Sharkey said, breaking up one more time.

6