Whistle (5 page)

But it was not the kid that had driven him up on deck. Something else had done that. When the news passed that home was sighted, a terrible reaction had seized him. An evil, awful depression. The worst thing was that he did not know what it represented, or what caused it. Also, it was totally unanticipated. Yesterday he would have bet all his unpaid back pay, which was considerable, that home landfall would have delighted him.

Now he stared at it, the faint, blue coast. From the ship’s side he could only see dimly a very short length of it. Then it faded swiftly into invisibility to the south. And such a violence of not caring raged through him that he wanted to yell out loud. It was such a mammoth, massive country. He was realizing that fact for the first time, with the shock of seeing clearly something known vaguely before but never defined. It was so big that how could you care? And all his life Landers had been taught that to care was important, that caring was the most important thing of all, whatever it was you were involved in.

There was certainly no place for a twenty-one-year-old Landers there, in it. Not Landers, staring at it from a hole in the huge side of this big ship. This ship that was now carrying toward it such a load of human meat. It frightened him, frightened him down to an unreadable depth. And at the same time, like some deep contrabass figure repeated over and over, was the thought that he did not deserve it, this return to safety.

Two men passed by behind him. They had come down from the Promenade Deck. One of them clumped along in leg plaster, his walking iron ringing on the metal deck. Their presence broke Landers’ concentration.

“Hey, Landers,” one of them said. “Thinking about all that homegrown pussy we’ll all be shafting?”

Landers only waved. He did not trust himself to speak. He saw that the second man had plaster on his arm and body, the bent arm held out rigidly and horizontal from the shoulder in the case. There seemed to be so many arm and shoulder cases like that on board. Perhaps they were just more conspicuous.

The men went on.

Over the sea the coast did not appear to be getting any nearer. Not to the naked eye. But that was an optical illusion. In the slight swell the ship hardly rolled at all on the easy sea. College man! Jesus!

Something had happened to Landers with his wounding in the New Georgia islands. But it was hard to say exactly what it was. It had been an easy enough wounding. Commonplace, even. A big-sized mortar round had landed close by him and blown him up and knocked him out. It must have happened to thousands. That part had not been bad at all. There was no pain, nothing hurt him, there was no time to be afraid. The noise-fire blossomed so swiftly to engulf him that he had hardly heard it. Then swift comforting blackness, buzzing up. If anything at all, there was only a half-beginning of a surprised thought: Why, this isn’t so bad—

He assumed, later, he meant dying. The thought seemed to include the idea that he would never come to. Then he did come to, his nose bleeding, his head heavy and unable to think. His head was bleeding and his helmet had disappeared. Contrary to all the rules of first aid, somebody was rolling him around and slapping his face. There was the usual comic moment of panic when he felt all over his crotch to make sure he had everything. Then he walked out. At the aid station the medical lieutenant had told him he had a mild concussion and said he would send him back to rest a couple of days. It was not till then, when he tried to get back on his feet, that they discovered his smashed ankle. He had walked out on it. It was during the time he was waiting to be jeeped out that the peculiar thing, the something, happened to him. They had cut off his shoe, which turned out to be full of blood, and had bandaged his ankle. Four men had placed him on a stretcher and carried him over and put him down where there were others waiting. He sat on the stretcher on the crest of the ridge and with some of the other wounded placidly, contentedly almost, watched the battle in progress below them.

At this point Landers’ job designation was Battalion Communications Sergeant. Wandering around with his company, where as company clerk he was not even supposed to be, he had been picked up four days before by the lt colonel commanding the battalion and impressed as his communications sergeant, to replace the original who had been killed. He had been up forward to deliver a message from the colonel to one of the platoon commanders when the mortar round knocked him off.

Being a replacement as well as a clerk, this was only Landers’ second time up in fighting country. The first time he had roamed around with his outfit a few days, been part of a small firefight, watched several men wounded, then been unconditionally ordered back to the regimental rear area to his job by the company commander, at Top/Sgt Winch’s instigation. The second time, he had armed himself with three three-day passes from the head of G-1 who thought his request marvelous. Charming, if not actually quixotic. Landers himself thought it bizarre, a good story to tell someday, how he had to get a pass to go
toward
the fighting. But under that was the nagging feeling which always gnawed at him, that he was back in the relative safety while they were up there in the smoke and fire. But after one day with them he had been caught and shanghaied by the battalion’s colonel. The truth was, he at once became the pet enlisted aide of the colonel, who had looked up his dossier and found he had a twenty-one-year-old with three and a half years of college. All of this had infuriated Winch, whose clerk he’d been. But the result was he spent most of his time intellectualizing the war with the battalion officers and doing organizational things fairly far back. And probably, if he had not been wounded, he would have been transferred to the colonel, with a raise in grade. But at least he could have said he was doing his share.

But on the ridge all that changed. At some unspecified point. Landers watched as below him in the shallow bowl men roared and shouted and hollered and yelled, ran forward carrying things, ran back carrying things (as often as not other men), fired guns, threw things, struggled and fought. Landers thought only one thought. They were all silly idiots. What did they think they were doing? They were ridiculous. He did not know then that most of them felt the same way when they were wounded.

On his ridge Landers watched with perfect equanimity as they bopped and banged and shot and exploded and stabbed each other. Good. Good for them. They deserved it. They deserved whatever happened to them. He felt completely acquiescent. But he was outside of it. But being outside went further than just being on the ridge. It extended to his special pet colonel, to his old outfit, to the whole Army, to his entire nation, to the enemy nation—to the whole human race, finally. He was not part of it.

He realized this did not particularly affect anything. They could still give him orders. They could put him in jail. And he would go to jail. He could be bayoneted and he would scream. They could even give him a medal and he would salute and say Thank you. Or they could kill him, and he would die. But that was all. Because all the rest was bullshit. Just plain bullshit.

It was not because they were insane. He had suspected that before, from the beginning. It was not that modern war itself was insane. He had known that, too. It was not even that in ten years these same men battling down there, those who survived, would be making trade agreements with each other, signing mutual business deals for mutual profit, while the dumb luckless dead ones moldered in some hole. Landers had been cynically aware of all that, long before. It was that, seeing it, it was all so foolish, so abysmally stupid and ridiculous and savage, he could not consider himself a part of it.

Suddenly, sitting there on the hillside, he began to weep.

Crying was no catharsis for it. When he stopped, he did not feel any better. Perhaps he felt worse. His tears had washed two striking, clean streaks down his dust-caked, gaunted cheeks. Around him other men were weeping, too. They displayed the same two striking, white streaks down their faces. This did not impress him.

All his life Landers had prided himself on being an outsider. Now he really was outside. It was not at all a pleasant feeling. They were a quarrelsome, violent race. Worse than baboons. A race of beasts. They came from a long line of beasts. Whatever they pretended. Straight back to
Australopithecus.
He did not want to be a part of them.

In the hours, then days, then weeks, that followed, the “outside” feeling never left Landers, nor did it change or loosen up or soften. At times the sense of it there in him made him frantic to get rid of it. But nothing could do that. The frenzy drove him to do some wild, extravagant things occasionally. But always it settled back into that strange acquiescence, without having touched the feeling.

In a couple of days he was flown out, first to Guadalcanal, then to the New Hebrides. In the Naval base hospital there the doctors looked into his eyes and ears, tested him here and there, and after a few days said his concussion was cured. They were ready to operate on his ankle.

The surgeon was a young man, a major, with a boyish handsome face which showed clearly that nothing bad had ever happened to him in his life. The same handsome sense of handsome invulnerability showed in the way he went about things.

“There’s no problem about the metal fragments. They can be removed easy enough. The problem is, there are two ways to repair your ankle,” the major smiled. “It comes down to my way against the Army way. The Army way is to patch you up and get you back to duty. The Army way, you’ll have a nearly adequate ankle out of
it.
But it won’t be perfectly repaired. It will almost certainly bother you the rest of your life, particularly as you get older. But you’ll be out of the hospital and back to your outfit in five weeks.

“If I fix it my way, the way I would fix it for a patient back home, you’ll be in a cast at least two months. There’ll be no choice but to send you back to the States. You’re the patient. The choice is up to you.”

Landers suddenly wanted to yell at him, curse him. Landers could remember back when his life had been like the major’s, when nothing bad had happened to him, either. That was back before his misshapen sense of honor got him to enlist in the infantry as a private.

“I suppose getting shipped back to the States would be the best thing,” he said, instead. “Wouldn’t it?”

The major had thought the answer a foregone conclusion, and Landers had rattled him. “Are you trying to tell me you prefer
not
to go back to the States?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, what
are
you trying to tell me, Sergeant, uh”—he looked down at the papers— “Landers?”

Landers felt wacky. His extravagances again. Suddenly he lowered his head and peered up at the youthful doctor through his eyebrows, and leered. Not even knowing his name seemed the last, ultimate joke. “Well,
I
think they’re going to get me,” he said, leering, “
one
way or the other. If you want to know the truth. That’s what I think.
I
haven’t got a chance.”

The young major was brought up short, for a moment. “Who’s they?”

“Them. You know,” Landers said. “Whoever. The same ones you’re trying to fight, isn’t it?”

“I see . . . Yes. Well.” The major scratched his nose. “I don’t think you understand. I’m not fighting any ‘them.’ I’m fighting a government policy. I’m doing my work the way it ought to be done, the way I was taught to do it.”

“Oh, I understand all right,” Landers said. But he really wanted, again, to shout at the major, simply fill his lungs with air and bellow it back out. How could he be so fucking sure of himself about everything? How could he be so safe?

“Look. Tell me something. Do you
want
to go back up there?” the major asked.

Landers thought this over seriously. “No, sir,” he said finally. “I don’t want to go back.”

“All right.” The major slapped his hands down on his knees. He stood up. “I’ll have you prepared for tomorrow.”

“But I don’t think it’ll make any difference,” Landers said.

As if he had not heard, the major said, “After all, my job is seeing that you men are fixed up as well as possible for your later life.”

“Yes, sir,” Landers said sourly. “Thank you, sir.”

“Also, it’s a job of work I’d like to have a shot at. It’s got interesting problems.”

Landers stared at him. “Sir.”

“Of course, it’ll make a difference!” the major said suddenly. “Why wouldn’t it make a difference?” Still standing, the major put his hands on the desk and looked at Landers. “I don’t think you’re acting very rational. Well. It’s probably perfectly normal.” He sighed. “I’ll have you gotten ready for tomorrow.” But he looked hurt. As if somehow Landers had let him down. If he had been the type to get angry, he would probably have gotten angry.

Landers was certainly angry. But he was confused. And then he began to feel guilty. By the time he was rolled back to his ward, he began to worry. He worried all that night about their misunderstanding, about how he had treated the major. But in the morning when they rolled him in half-woozy from the shot and put him on the table, the surgeon smiled at him. Then they put the anesthetic to him.

Lying comfortably in the hospital bed after the operation, he slept a lot.

But they kept him full of dope for several days, and something kept coming back in his mind.

Going up with the message from the colonel he had carried a full canteen. The heat was terrible, and soaked with sweat he had conscientiously conserved his water. But after getting hit, he had drawn the canteen and allowed himself his first, luxurious drink. Nothing had ever tasted better in his life than the warm, gritty canteen water.

Standing among the prone members of the taut-faced, sick-faced advance platoon—as if being wounded once, already, made him invulnerable to being hit again—he thought of leaving the rest of the canteen with them. They were not even one of his own platoons. But they had been without water since midmorning. He had only to wait to drink until he was back at the aid station.