13/V

neck of the guitar in one hand and Friday's jacket in the other.
He lifted Friday bodily and jammed him against the wall, tearing
the guitar from his grasp. Bloom was/a little shocked by the
movement. He hadn't expected it to be that impressive. He had
seen John Wayne do that to a guy in a coalminer movie, and it had
been tough and virile.

"Theres guys in here tryin to rest," Bloom raged heroically,
waving the guitar at the room. "Just because you sit on your
dead ass all the time dont mean other guys dont work and need rest."

Live fear had shot into Friday's startled eyes. "A-all
right, Bloom," he stuttered. "L-let go. Ill put it away, Bloom.
Be careful, Bloom; please be careful. Dont bust my git-tar, Bloom."

The rest of the men sat up to watch the scene, and Bloom
felt lordly. "Dint you hear me tell you to quit?" He shook
Friday to punctuate his question and Friday's head smacked the
wall locker.

"No, Bloom," Friday said. "If Id of heard you Id of quit,
Bloom. Please be careful, Bloom. Dont bust my git-tar."

The other men watched, offering neither advice to the one nor
assistance to the other.

"Like hell you dint hear me," Bloom snarled in righteous wrath.
"I holler loud enough you could of heard me in F Compny." He waved
the guitar generally in the direction of F Company and Friday's
fear-laden eyes followed it anxiously. "You heard me all right."

Friday
"No, I dint," Bloom protested. "Honest, Bloom. Oh, please

14/V

dont break it, Bloom. It aint even paid for yet."

"Sure you heard me. I'm half a mind to bust this goddam thing over your goddam head. You heard me."

"Okay," Friday agreed. "I heard you. Only please . . ."

"Sure you did," Bloom said triumphantly.

It was at this stage of the discussion that Prewitt walked in the door, back from fatigue. He was so astounded by what he saw that it took him several seconds to believe it. Friday was the company mascot; nobody ever picked on him. He was helpless, openly proclaiming his inability to fight, so he offered no threat to anybody's prowess. He was as much looked after as a medieval village idiot. It was a shocking breach of an unwritten law, and it was even more shocking to Prewitt to see the other men sitting there doing nothing.

you fucking son of a bitch,"

"Let go of him, Bummom," he called sharply and started toward them.

Bloom released his grip slowly and dropped his hands. Oh, Christ, here it was: another fight. Bloom collected his anger.

"Theres men here tryin to sleep," he bellowed belligerently.

bother to
Prewitt did not/answer. The instinctive dislike Bloom had always generated in him, coupled with this unthinkable action, had fused his mind into a single bright hard jewel of purpose. Nothing existed beyond his minm sense of affront.

Friday stood against the wall locker, his hopeless eyes following the wild gyrations of his guitar, seeing nothing else.

Bloom tossed the guitar on the bunk and moved back out into

15/V

the aisle for room. Prewitt followed him single-mindedly. Friday went to the guitar.

Bloom began to work himself up for the coming fight; he went into a tirade on the guitarplaying.

"For Christ's sake, Bloom," yelled a couple of men from their bunks. "Shut up and sit down. Youre makin more noise than the guitar. Break it up."

This presented an honorable way out and Bloom stopped working himself up to the punching point. "Okay," he said reluctantly. "But anytime you want to fight, Im ready to go outside."

"When Im ready to fight," Prewitt said, "therefore won't be no chance to go outside."

"Oh," Bloom said. "Okay then. I'm ready right now."

"Oh Jesus Christ," said Corp Miller from his bunk beside where Bloom stood. "Break it up. Go soak yer head, Bloom. And you sit down, Prewitt."

"Okay," Bloom said. "I dont want to upset no rest. But I aint scared of you, Prewitt."

"Listen, buddy," Prewitt said. "Keep away from me from now on." Dont even come around me. Because I wont wait to ask you out."

Bloom laughed nastily. "Im really worried, Prewitt." In spite of Prewitt's anger, he could still retire with honor under the order of Corp Miller, and he turned his back and walked off. It was a dangerous thing to do, unknowingly Bloom walked right out from under a cocked fist. In the second of hesitation Bloom

16/V

was out of range. Prewitt debated following him for a moment,
then let it drop and sat down on Friday's bunk. His stomach was
crawling. When the white rage of indignity hit him, there were
now and
no consequences or afterwards. There was only/the urge to smash.
He looked at Friday trying to collect himself.

"Go ahead and play, Friday," he said.

Friday held his battered guitar on his lap. He swallowed
and grinned painfully. "I don't feel like playin any more."

"Go on, for Christs sake. The big bastard wont do anything."

"I know it, but honest, Prew, I just don't want to play no
more." Friday looked up at him anxiously, not wanting to displease.

"What the hell?" Prewitt said angrily. "First you want to
play. Now you don't want to play. What the hells the matter with
you?"

Friday shrugged.

"Well, I'll play it myself then," Prewitt said disgustedly.

He played the loudest piece he could think of, watching Bloom's
bunk and all the other bunks for a challenge to his right. No-
body offered to face the wrath of the little Kentuckian.

Bloom lay beneath his campaign hat obliviously. Christ, he
was thinking. Everything seemed to turn out wrong. Now he had made
another enemy, goddam it all.

"Listen," Prewitt said to Friday. "If that son of a bitch
comes around any more, pick up a chair or a bayonet and bust him.
Theres no sense in tryin to fistfight a big ox like that."

17/V

"Okay," Friday said. "It's all right, Prew. It don't make no difference."

"The hell it don't. It makes all the difference in the world!
No man has to take that kind of stuff."

25/

"It aint that its the way I want it, Prew. I guess, well,
its just that I got a different idea from you."

"Horseshit," Prew said. He did not move his eyes. "Diff-
erence in ideas dont have nothin to do with me and my friends.
A man who's your friend is your friend. If an idea's more
important than a friend, then that guy never was your friend.
I dont ask no man to believe what I believe so he can be my
friend. When you start doin that you're not a man no more,
you're just a bunch of ideas. Maybe that's why we got a war
right now."

"Are you comin?" Andy said to Friday.

"You can buy my part of the new git-tar," Prewitt said
to Andy. "Or else I'll buy yours, whichever way you want."
He still was sharing straight ahead, leaning on his folded
arms above his beer. "No man has got the right to tell another
man you're either for me or against me. If that's goin to be
the basis for friendship, in the world, in our time, then I
dont want any part of any of it."

"I'll buy your share," Andy said. "I won't be able to
pay you this only part next payday."

"Pay me any time you want."

"Are you comin, Friday?" Andy said. "Or aint you?"

Friday looked at Prewitt, then looked at Andy. "I guess
I'll go, Prew," he said. "Andy's got the git-tar. I own part
of it and I don't want to sell it. I guess that puts me in
with Andy." He got up and started to take another drink of the
beer that Prewitt had paid for, but before he touched it he
pulled his hand away and did not drink it.

26W

"Lissen, Prew," he said. "It's not that I'm . . ."

"Forget it," Prewitt said. "I understand that. You don't have to explain it to me."

"Yes, but . . ."

"I said forget it." Prewitt still sat there, the same as before, without looking up, staring straight ahead. He had not moved his eyes since Andy first got up.

"So long, Prew," Friday said.

"So long," he said. "Take it easy." He did not watch them leave. He sat there still, staring at the lattice fence, through the lattice fence, and finally he unfolded his arms and leaned back and picked up his beer.

Somebody sat down at the table and then at last he moved his eyes.

"Hello, buddy," Stark said. "Jimmy sent you over another beer. A cold one." He shoved it across the table.

Prewitt took it, feeling the cold moisture dripping metal cylinder fitted in his fist. "Hello, Maylon."

"Still trying to convince you of your error, 'ey?"

Prewitt blinked his eyes and nodded. "That's the story."

"Well," Stark said. "There's one consolation. As first Sergeant Warden says: the only way you can prove a man is crazy is if he reenlists."

27/

During the next two days Prewitt laid very low. Since he was working in the Orderly Room he did not have to fall out for drill or fatigue, he did not have to meet the Company. He spent all his time in the Orderly Room or at his bunk. He ate early chow at every meal and even then he kept off to himself.

It was not that he was afraid to face them. There was nothing there to be afraid of. But he felt somehow he could not face them. He could not sit and try to talk to somebody about some foolish topic, while all the time both their minds were on this other thing, this thing of the Smokers, constraining them, making them both halt in the middle of their sentences and awkwardly avoid each other's eyes so the other would not know what each was thinking. That was the way it would be, that was the way it had been with Andy and Friday, and rather go through a perpetual thing like that he preferred to be alone.

At the same time he could feel the excitement growing. Everybody was more excited Wednesday than they had been Tuesday. And Thursday more excited than they had been Wednesday. It was an important thing that the Company should win the Regimental championship, and in spite of refusing to fight himself he was hoping along with everybody else that they would win.

In the two days there were many times he heard soft sniggers when he was near. Sitting in the Orderly Room he would hear

28/

them snigger softly as they passed the door going to the
dayroom. Nobody cracked at him openly, to his face, they still
respected him as a fighter too much for that, and so there
was nothing much that he could do. He could not run down
all the secret sniggerers and accuse them openly. While he
was running one down, somebody else would have sniggered behind
his back across the room.

The beak-nosed Polack Zalnovitch was the worst, he was
the most sarcastic, but in his eyes there was a lack of focus
that betrayed the contempt he showed as really being envy and
perhaps a fear. Prewitt sensed his attitude was nothing but
a condom-thin cover for his feeling of his own ineptitude;
Zalnovitch, like Andy, was one of those who must always run
with the hounds. Zalnovitch and the huge Grzebinski, Gorton,
Grzelda and Champ Wilson, these were the worst, them and
Henderson and old Ike Gallowitz who were not even fighters.
But there was nothing he could do about it. He could not
fight them all, and there was nothing tangible to fight them
for.

Thursday night he ate early chow and went up to his bunk
and played solitaire. There was hardly anybody in the barracks.
They were all outside in the Company yard or else in the quad
show to start.
waiting for the ~~Fritz-hans-hummels~~. There had been many times
in his life that he had had the commencement blues, the lets-
get-started shakes. He had had them on the bum--the time they
pulled him in for vagrancy in Florida--the time in the boxcar
with the jocker when he knew ahead of time as if by foreldok
that he would have to kill the man--on the East Coast that time
this

29/

when he was waiting to sign his first enlistment papers, in
the office sitting silently among the wisecracking laughing
sergeant-clerks. He had had them always before a fight,
waiting in the dressing room and listening to the surf-roar of
the crowd outside. He had had them worst the time he played
the Taps at Arlington, standing at the gravehead knowing that
all of them even the President himself were standing in the
background.

But he had never had them like he had them now, playing
solitaire on his bunk, the cards very white and the colors
on them very live against the olive background of the blanket,
waiting for this show to start, knowing somehow that once this
show got on the road, there would be a monumental change for
him, in his life.

The first fight was set for seven-thirty, and at seven-
fifteen he hefted the barracks, going out through the deserted
dayroom and over to the Post Beergarden. There was hardly any-
body there, only a few old-timers who liked their liquor better
even than the Army's sport of sports, and Jimmy's helper, the
only man behind the bar. Jimmy himself had gone over to the
fights.

He bought two beers and sat down at the table to wait
till it was through. Through the lattice fence he could hear
rumble
the(200, 1209, 1039, 1471],

30/

be standing now, craning their necks to see the man that was
down, glancing now and then at the other, standing in the
nualtral corner his arms out on the roads, chest heaving
nervously. By ten o'clock the fights were over and he was
drunk enough to get up and walk out past the crowds that surged
in through the gates and stare each face in the eyes until
the eyes were dropped. He walked very straight, as he always
did when he was drunk.

He walked up past the Chapel where nobody went to church
and past the gym where he heard the Fencing Club always met,
to the Boxing Bowl. He stood for a while, holding to the
tion rod fence and looking down, down over the concrete
tiers and to the darkened ring at the bottom of the Bowl.
This was where the fights would be next December. He waited
long enough for the quadrangle to be clear and then he
went home, to go to bed and sleep.

He went in through the northwestern truck entrance, walk-
ing in the street instead of on the sidewalk like he always
liked to do when he was drunk, past H Company's Barracks and
turned into the walk that led up to the porch. The quad was
deserted now and the lights were turned off. But he could
see the refuse scattered on the grass. The porch was deserted
too and there were no sounds of talking. Everybody had made
a rush for the Post Beergarden, to try and get a beer before
Taps was sounded.

As he went up the walk a shadow moved out from under the
deeper shadow of the porch, and moved to meet him on the walk.

"By Gott," the shadow said, "I know him. Am telling to you

31/

that taking them we always were tonight, 'ey? Good are we? or
else good are we not, 'ey?

"Hello, Ike," Prewitt said.

"Who that is? That not is Prewitt? Who that is?"

"Prewitt that is."

Old Ike moved up closer to him and thrust his glowering
ape's face at him and he could smell the thick malt of drunk-
enness on the heavy breath.

"What doing you are here? Why not are you off someplace
to yourself for shame crying? A lot of guts you got your face
around here showing."

fetid
Prewitt stepped back to escape the/breath. He waved his
arm. "Out of my way, old man. I'm going to bed to sleep and
I don't want to argue with you my character withstanding."

Ike moved back two steps and then he stopped. "You ought
ashamed be from even here coming. It is no right have/to
be sleeping in these barracks even."

Prewitt moved up to him on the walk. "Go to hell, you
old fart. Get the fuck out of my way."

Ike's voice was going steadily higher. He stepped back
again and fumbled in his pocket. "Every time I see him it is
am
red I am. You nogood bum. After he breaks his Captain Holmes
giving you that you should traitor to him. Is this best friend
any man ever having. Am wishing to kiss you I should."

"You and whose army? Get out of the way I say. I'm goin
to bed."

Old Ike stepped back again, pulling from his pocket a
knife whose flicked-open blade seemed to collect all the scant

32/

dim lightxmemaxinga left.

"Has done everything for you can one man do. You are
grateful? Like shit. Maybe there is letting you get by with
everybody else will. But one who is not. Nobody treating
the Captain Holmes like bum and old Ike know it."

He lurched down the walk at Prewitt, still mumbling, hold-
in his palm
ing the knife/as a painter holds his brush, the blade flicker-
ing in and out, tossing its light and catching it.
put away

"You are young punks/should be," Ike screamed.

Watching the knife with the disinterest of drunkenness
Prewitt stepped in to meet him, feeling his jaws tighten, feel-
ing the curl of three days hatred set on his lip. He parried
Ike's wrist outside of him with his left forearm and stepped
in, turning on the ball of his left foot and moving Ike side-
ways and off balance. Ike was already falling when he swung
with his right, his feet planted and set, his weight and the
rawness of three days all behind it. It was a Sunday shot and
he timed it perfectly, without thinking.

Ike moved backward off the walk, still holding the knife,
his feet going backward very fast across the grass. At the
sidewalk along the kitchen wing he fell and skidded the last
three feet on his rump and came up against the garbage wrack
and stopped, his head lolling back in the drippings from the
GI cans sitting on the concrete platform.

Prewitt stood on the walk watching him, not thinking about
it one way or the other. Dully he watched quite a while but
Ike did not move.

"I told you I was going to bed," Prew said. He hiccupped

33/

and started on to the stairs. On the porch he stopped and looked back. Old Ike had not moved.

As an afterthought Prew turned and walked over to where the other lolled and reached down and took the big frogsticker stuck the blade in a deep out of the laxness of his hand. He cracked the blade open and broke it off in a crack in the concrete and snapped the blade off short. The blade slid down into the crack and he laid the knife carefully on Ike's lap. Then he turned around and went upstairs to bed.

He locked his wallet in the footlocker and shook the key down in his pillowslip, and then he slipped out of his clothes and slid naked into the drum-tight bunk and slept the heavy dreamless sleep of drunkenness.

It was a flashlight in his face that woke him. He looked at the luminous dial of his watch, loud in the darkness beyond the flashlight's cone, and saw that it was only midnight.

"What sa matter?" he said out loud. "What is it? What's up? Get that goddam light out of my eyes." Around him he could hear the soft noises of sleeping men and near him several of them stirred uneasily.

"Shut up," a voice said, in a whisper. "You want to wake the whole goddam Compny up? Thats Prewitt, aint it?"

"Sure its Prewitt." He sat up then, rubbing his face with his hands, still feeling a little of the drunkenness, recognizing the C Q's voice, wondering what could cause a thing like this that was so unusual. The only thing he could think was that this was another Sabotage Alert like last year when

34//

the Regiment had been called out suddenly in the middle of the
night. It kept going through his mind still dulled from sleep.

"What is it, Miller?" he said out loud. "For Christ sake
go back to bed and let me sleep."

"Goddam it, be quiet," the C Q said. "Come on. Get up."

"What for?" lowering his voice.

the darkness
"Because you're under arrest," said the voice from/begin-
hind the bright cone of the flash. "This is him, Sergeant,"
Miller said. "This is the man you want."

"Okay, Corporal," said the second voice. "You can go on
back to bed. I can handle it from here." The voice paused
and changed its angle of direction. "This is the man, Sir,"
it said. "Private Prewitt." I think the man's still drunk."

"Very well then," the third voice said. "Rout him out
and get some clothes on him." It was an officer's voice,
very clipped and British, very bored. "I havent got all
night. Rout him out." The O D must inspect the Posts, you
know."

"Yes, Sir," said the sergeant of the Guard.

An arm and shoulder with corporal's stipes on the sleeve
came inside the cone of light to shake Prewitt by the
shoulder. "Lets go," the C Q said. "Get up. Get some clothes
on. You heard what the O D said."

Prew moved his naked shoulders and took the disembodied
arm by the wrist and moved it from him. "Keep your goddam
hands off of me, Miller. I can get up by myself. Just take
it easy." Then he heard the leather of the sergeant's holster
dqueak.

35/

"Let's have no trouble, Private," the O D's clipped bored voice said. "The more trouble you make the harder it will go with you. We are quite able to take you in by force, if we have to."

"I dont want no trouble," Prew said. "Only just keep your hands off of me." He slid up, by habit, out of the blankets, leaving the bunk needing only to be tightened up. The flashlight followed him, revealing the nakedness of his unprotected body, leaving him without defense, blinding him.

"Say Sir, when you speak to an officer, buddy," the Sergeant of the Guard said. "Whats the matter with you?"

"Never mind," the O D said. "Just get him dressed. I havent got all night."

"Will you take that goddam light out of my eyes?" Prew said. "So I can see my clothes? What am I being taken in for?"

"Never mind," the O D said. "Just do as you're told. You'bl have plenty of time to find that out. Move the light, Sergeant."

Prew was putting on the CKCs that were on his footlocker. Around him in the squadroom several men were awake and sitting up, watching. Prew took his garrison shoes and socks and sat down on the bunk to put them on.

"What about my bunk?" he said. "Shall I make it up?"

"Never mind the bunk," the O D said. "Just get dressed. You men there," he said to the men nearby. "Go on back to bed and go to sleep. This is none of your affair."

36/

The dim figures as one man laid down without a sound and rolled over in their beds, away from the light.

"My wallet's in my footlocker," Prew said, standing up.

"Never mind your wallet," the O D said. "You wont need it. Your equipment will be taken care of."

Prew got his Bootlocker key from the bottom of the pillow-slip. "Theres money in it, lootenant. If I dont get it, it wont be there when I get back."

"All right then," the O D said impatiently. "Get it then. But hurry up."

Prewitt got it out and locked the footlocker back up. They led him to the porch and down the stair, Cpl Miller in front, the Sgt of the Guard behind, the O D bringing up the rear.

"I aint going to take off on you," Prewitt said, and grinned.

"Never mind," the O D said, clipped and very military-British.

"Shut up," the Sergeant said.

Downstairs in the hallway the C Q's light was on, the mosquito netting thrown back from his bunk beside the little desk. In the light Prewitt could see them now. The O D was 1st/Lt Van Voorhees, of K Co, tall and big-nosed and flat-headed, three years out of the Point and still remembering it. The Sgt was Euxwestwoofmam a man he didn't know by name but only recognized his face.

"Hold it up, you," the Sgt said when they passed the C Q's desk. Then he turned to Miller. "You got this on your report yet?"

37/

"No," Miller said. "I was just going to ask you."

They stood by the desk, talking in the number and the
names that would go on the report and that you could sit down
sometime, in your spare time, and read and understand, and
never know the men or who they were or what it was that happened,
like the way you make an algebraic formula from the falling of
a bomb. Prewitt listened to them, feeling very funny.

"Well, thanks a lot, Corporal," the Sergeant said. "Sorry
we had to wake you up. You can go on back to bed now."

"You're very welcome," Miller said. "Any time I can be
of help. You sure there's nothing more I can do?"

"Nope," the Sergeant said. "It's all done, now."

"Okay," Miller said. "Just ask me though."

"No," the Sgt said. "We appreciate your help."

Prewitt turned to look at Lt Van Voorhees standing by
the door into the poolroom. "What's the charges, Sir?" he said.
"On me."

"Never mind," Van Voorhees said. "You'll have plenty of
time to find that out." He looked at his watch.

"But listen," Prewitt said. "Who preferred charges?"

"Capt Holmes," Van Voorhees said. "Are you finished,
Sergeant?" The Sergeant nodded. "Well, come on then. Lets
get gone." He looked at his watch again and led the way out
through the dayroom and across the street to the Company MX
Regimental Guardhouse, the Sergeant with his holstered .45
and the billy hanging from his wrist by a leather thong bring-
ing up the rear.

The Guardhouse was a long low building of corregated
iron set half under the shade of an enormous oak that was on

38/

the corner and right beside the Post railroad tracks they had around the corner to cross. Across the street/Prewitt could see the Post Beer-garden hiding behind the lattice fence, dark now and very quiet in the middle of the night, the place where he had sat drinking beer, just last tonight. But it was tonight really. And behind the Guardhouse was the big pen where they kept the Regimental mascot that appeared in half-relief on the Regimental shield that was the Regimental insignia he wore on his hat, the Kodiac beer cub that they always led out to the General's Field for the shorttimer parades. When the cub got to big to be a mascot any more, they always shot it and then they got another one that was younger, still a cub.

As they led him to the door he thought, I wonder what they'd do if I took off on them now? The Sergeant would have to drop his club before he could draw the pistol. But where would you go? You might go through Kole Kole and you might take the Honouliuli Trail down along the range until you got to Barber's Point. Then all you'd have to do would be follow the highway clear around Pearl Harbor and into town, you still in uniform. And where would you go in town?

Inside the long low building with the heavy wire diamonds across the windows there was a desk up at the front. Behind the desk was a row of bars set in vertical strips of iron clear across the width and with a little door of bars hinged in it.

"You can go on back there and go back to sleep," the O.D. said. "The members of the guard are back there and you'd better not wake them up, by god. We don't lock the door,

39/

Inside the long low building with the heavy wire woven like nets across all the windows the Corporal of the Guard was sitting at the desk pushed up against the front wall. He scrambled to his feet and looked inquiring at the Sergeant to see if there had been any trouble. The Sergeant shook his head, grinning proudly, and took up his stand, his hands behind his back as he had been commanded: "Stand At Base," with his back against the row of bars that cut the longness of the room in two unequal sections and sliced through the light from the bare bulb in the ceiling. The O D sat down in the chair the Corporal had vacated for him and took a nailfile from his pocket. He pushed back his hat and turned the desk light on and then leaned back and crossed his feet up on the corner of the desk and inspected Prewitt, standing in the light.

"You can go on back there and go to sleep, Private," he said finally. "The members of the guard are back and its my get responsibility to see they/their sleep, so you better not wake them up by god."

"Get this mah a blanket," he said, turning to the Sergeant. "We dont lock the door," he said to Prewitt, "but there will be someone here all night, awake and armed. Okay, that's all."

Prewitt was still standing there before the desk. He took the blanket the Sergeant handed him and looked at it in his hands, and then he went through the open door of bars, seeing the unlocked padlock gaping from its ring. On the other side of the bars the air seemed to change, grow heavier, becoming harder for him to breath. And as he looked back over his shoulder at the faces and figures on the other side the

40/

black bars between him and the light distorted the perspective
of them, giving them a sinister look they had not had be-
fore. He went on down between the double row of canvas cots,
waddling through the breathing of the huddled figures, until
he found an empty one.

He lay down on the cot and pulled the blanket over him
and put his hands behind his head.

He was not new to this feeling of having crossed the
line into another world, the world of heavy air and heavy
water. He was not new to jails. He had learned how to
breath the heavy air and drink the heavy water that were the
same in every jail, in Florida or Texas, or in Ft Meade where
he had done three weeks for drunkenness. You have to breath
deep, very deep, in jails--where your lungs threaten to close
up and collapse because the heavy air does not want to go into
them--where all proportions and perspectives are different
from the other world, like a stick thrust into water will
look bent, like the diver standing on the sinking stage sees
the line of water rise across his faceplate cutting off his
contact with his real life, dropping him into the strangeness
of another universe.

He considered taking off his shoes, they were his best pair
of garrison shoes and the slightest touch would scuff them,
but the movement was too great to make. Tomorrow, when they
brought over the fatigues and field shoes for the prisoner to
wear, they would take these back. They would cache them with
his other *things*, slammed away, tagged, scuffed and dusty, on
a back shelf in the supplyroom. He felt a new affection for

41/

these shoes and for all the service they had given him, a suddenly so strong it made him want to cry. Raising his head, looking down at them sticking out from under the blanket in the darkness, he ground first one toe then the other against the opposite sole, taking satisfaction from the gritty sound of scratching.

Outside it began to rain and he listened to the rain-drops drumming on the roof of corregated tin, watching through the window the lighter darkness that was the sky, cut up and served to him in little diamonds by the wire.

The kept him there three weeks, before his trial was held. There were of course many papers to be made out. It did not turn out to be much of a trial. There was no drama, because there was no jury because whose emotions could be appealed to. There was only the court of five judges, ranging from a colonel down to Capt Holmes.

35/1

"Lets go," the C Q said. "You heard what the O D said."

Prew shrugged his shoulders up and took the disembodied arm by the wrist and moved it from him. "Just take it easy," he said. "I knew you when you were a buckass private, Miller. So keep your goddam hands off of me. I'm awake. And I can get up by myself." He heard the leather of the sergeant's holster squeak seriously.

"Lets have no trouble, Private," the O D's very bored voice said. "The more trouble you make the harder it will go with you. We are quite able to take you in by force, if necessary."

"I dont want no trouble," Prew said. He slipped up, by habit out of the blankets, leaving the bunk needing only to be tightened up to be ready for inspection. The flashlight cone exposed him, making him want to shrink, they way he did when he had to drop his pants before the cold eye of the surgeon at the monthly short-arm inspection.

"Say, 'Sir,'" when you speak to an officer," the Sergeant said. "Whats the matter with you, buddy."

Prew began putting on the CKCs that were on his foot-locker, aware that around him in the squadroom several men were awake and sitting up to watch.

"Would you mind taking the light out of my goddam eyes?" he asked the Sergeant. "Just so I can see my clothes, please?"

"Listen, you," the Sergeant said.

"Move the light, Sergeant," the O D said, boredly. "Just

36/

get him dressed. 'ou men there," he said to the men nearby.
"Go on back to sleep. This is none of your affair."

As one man the dim figures laid down without a sound
and rolled over in their bunks, away from the light. Prew,
putting on the garrison shoes he had worn last night, watched
them, grinning. For a moment in his mind he saw a lurid movie
scene of Alan Hale and ten thousand other galley slaves swarm-
ing to the aid of Errol Flynn, overpowering Authority and
giving freedom to the beloved comrade. Maybe once, he thought,
there really was a time when a man could find his salvation
in his comrades, without the sweating fear of having to find
it in himself.

it was just another way
Of maybe even then
Of lying to
yourself, he told himself.
There's no need to be bitter now.
You're only mad at them because you are ashamed, because you
would do the same thing too, if you were them.

"My wallet's in my footlocker," he said, standing up.

"Never mind your wallet," the O D said, impatiently.

"You wont need it where you're going. Your equipment will be taken care of."

"Theres money in it, lootenant. If I dont get it, it
wont be there when I get back. And even in jail, a man always
has a use for money."

"All right then. Get it then. But hurry up."

He got his footlocker key from the bottom of the pillow-
slip and got the wallet out. He left the key there in the lock.

They led him to the porch and down the stairs, the flash-
light always on him. In the hallway to the dayroom the C Q's
light was on, the mosquito netting thrown back from his bunk

37/

beside the little desk. Miller yawned and went over to the desk and opened up his Day Book.

"Hold it up, you," the Sergeant said. He turned to Miller, "You got this on your report yet?"

In the light Prew could see them now, three sleepy men, bored with a routine now that the excitement was all gone. Even his pride could not keep him from studying them, fascinated as he was always fascinated by guards who without passion or realization interred another man. The O D was Lieutenant Van Voorhees of K Co, tall and big-nosed and flat-heated, three years out of the Point and still remembering it. He did not know the sergeant. If it had been yesterday, or tomorrow, it would have been three other men, different men, and not these men at all. It would not have been Miller, or Van Voorhees, or the Sergeant. For some reason this amazed him.

Miller and the Sergeant stood by the desk, talking in the numbers and the names that would go on the report, and that you could sit down sometime, in your spare time, and read, when there was nothing else to read, to keep from being bored. You might even read it yourself someday, he thought; an algebraic formula for everybomb that falls on you. Any man who knows the mathematics can read it on the paper.

33/

CHAPTER

It was a flashlight in his face that woke him. At first he thought it was a brightly lighted stairway diminishing like railroad tracks leading to the sun and she was walking up it, getting smaller and smaller, going away from him.

"Dont go," he said out loud.

"Prewitt?" a voice whispered.

He rolled over then, away from it, trying to burrow down deep enough to get her back, her who looked like Alma and was not Alma and always came to him when he was drunk. This time she wore a white fur jacket reaching to her thighs, and nothing else. She held out to him a golden bugle, but he had not taken it. She was hurt and disappointed and as he tried to explain it to her the long black hair falling on the white fur began to move away from him up the long stairway, taking with it the lovely hairy mattress curling on the olive skin, an echo of her and stark against the white fur, and the pain in him was so tremendous it was waking him.

"But dont you see?" he called. "Please come back."

"Shut up," the voice whispered. "You want to wake the whole fucking Compny up? Is that Prewitt?"

"Hell yes its Prewitt," he said. "For Chrisake go away. Go to bed and sleep it off." Around him he could hear the soft vulnerable noises of sleeping men and near him several of them stirred uneasily. He looked at the luminous dial of his watch, loud in the darkness beyond the flashlight's cone, and saw that it was only midnight.

"Come on," the voice insisted. "Get up out of there."

34/

He sat up then, rubbing his face with his hands, still feeling a little of the drunkenness, recognizing the C Q's voice, feeling the knowledge that was in the dream sliding away from him.

"What is it, Miller?" he said. But even as he asked he knew he did not need to ask. He knew what it was, of course. It was just that he had not expected it so quickly, or that Gallowitz would ever be the cause. He had been trying lately to anticipate how it would come, and now that it had come in by a door he had not seen the knowledge left him calm and crystal clear.

"You're under arrest," the C Q said.

"All right," he said. "How about taking the light out of my eyes so I can get up?"

"Fine, Corporal," said the second voice. "You can go on back to bed. I can handle it from here." The voice paused and changed its angle of direction. "This is the man, Sir," it said. "Private Prewitt. I think the man's still drunk."

"I'm as sober as you are," Prew said.

"Very well then, Sergeant," the third voice said. "Rout him out and get some clothes on him. I haven't got all night. The O D must inspect the Posts, you know." The officer's voice was very military-British, very bored.

"Yes, Sir," said the Sergeant. "Right away, Sir."

An arm and shoulder sporting corporal's stripes came inside the cone of light to shake Prew by one naked shoulder.

35/

Prew shrugged his shoulders up and took the disembodied
arm by the wrist and moved it from him. "Just take it easily,"
he said. "I knew you when you were a buckass private, Miller.
I'm awake. And I can get up by myself. So keep your goddam
hands off of me." He heard the leather of the sergeant's
holster squeaking seriously.

"I dont want no trouble," Prew said. He slipped up, by
habit, out of the blankets, leaving the bunk needing only to
be tightened up to be ready for inspection. The flashlight
cone exposed him, making him want to shrink, the way he shrank
when he had to drop his pants before the cold eye of the sur-
geon at the monthly <u>penium</u> inspection.

"Say, 'Sir,' when you speak to an officer," the Sergeant
said. "Whats the matter with you, buddy."

Prew began putting on the CKCs that were on his foot-
locker, aware that around him in the squadroom several men
were awake and sitting up to watch.

36/

get him dressed. You men there," he said to the men nearby.
"Go on back to sleep. This is none of your affair."

As one man the dim figures laid down without a sound
and rolled over in their bunks, away from the light. Prew,
putting on the garrison shoes he had worn last night, watched
them, grinning. For a moment in his mind he saw a lurid movie
scene of Alan Hale and ten thousand other galley slaves swarming
to the aid of Errol Flynn, overpowering Authority and
giving freedom to the beloved comrade. Maybe once, he thought,
maybe once upon a time there really was a time when a man
could find his salvation in his comrades, without the sweating
fear of having to find it in himself.

"Never mind your wallet," the O D said. "You wont need
it where you're going. This is no time to think of wallets."

He got his footlocker key from the bottom of the pillow-
slip and got the wallet out. He left the key there in the lock,
deliberately. Again in his mind he saw the ten thousand galley
slave a-swarming, but they were swarming over the footlocker,
not Authority.

They led him to the porch and down the stairs, the flash-
light always on him carefully. In the hallway to the dayroom
the C Q's light was on, the mosquito netting thrown back in
haste from his bunk beside the little desk. Miller went over

37/

"Hold it up, you," the Sergeant said. "I don't know what you're doing.

Prew stopped. Leaning against the wall he yawned. Miller looked over at him irritably and Prew knew that he had erred. The chief figure in a tragedy should not yawn, it was unbecoming and out of character, and it destroyed the reality of the role.

"You got this on your report yet?" the Sergeant said to Miller.

They stood there by the desk, talking in the numbers and the names that would go on the report, Miller writing it all down in his Day Book. Someday it would be read, in some man's spare time, to keep from being bored; you might even read it yourself someday, Prew thought. He watched them, thinking that for every bomb that falls there is an algebraic formula, and man who knows the mathematics can read it on the paper. But show it to a man who's been there.

"You're very welcome, Sergeant," Miller said. "Any time I can be of help. You sure there's nothing more I can do?"

"No," the Sergeant said. "But we appreciate your help."

"You don't need to thank me," Miller said. "I'm just glad there wasn't any trouble."

"So am I," the Sergeant nodded. "You never know about these things."

38/

"Thats right," Miller nodded. "You never know."

In the light where he could see them now, Prew watched
the three of them, fascinated by them who were responsible for
his interment. If it had been yesterday, or tomorrow, it
would not have been these men at all. It would have been three
other, different men. For some reason this amazed him.

"Who preferred the charges against me?" he asked the
officer.

"Never mind," the O D said. "Are you finished there,
Sergeant?" The Sergeant nodded. "Well, come on then. Lets
get gone." His voice was very bored. He looked at his watch
again and led the way out through the dayroom and across the
street, across the grass-grown railroad track to the long low
building of corregated iron under the enormous oak that was
the Regimental Guardhouse.

Around the corner where the guardhouse was, across the
other street, Prew could see the Post Beergarden's lattice
fence, dark now and silent in the middle of the night, where
just last night he had been sitting drinking beer. Or was
it tonight? Behind him the Sergeant's holster slapped against
his fat thigh and on his wrist the leather thong creaked
against the wooden billy.

Inside the long low building with the heavy wire woven
mackeral
like/nets across the windows the Corporal of the Guard was
sitting at the desk pushed up against the wall. When he saw
the O D he scrambled to his feet. The O D took the chair.
Then he took a nailfile from his pocket and began to use it
thoughtfully. He pushed back his hat and turned the desk light
on and leaned back and crossed his feet up on the corner of

39/

the desk. He inspected Prewitt, standing in the ceiling light.

"You have any trouble?" the Corporal asked the Sergeant.

The Sergeant slowly shook his head. "Not a bit," he said. "All went off like clockwork." He fixed the Corporal with a disapproving stare and moved away from him back up against the row of bars that cut the longness of the room in two unequal sections. He clasped his hands behind his puffy buttocks as if he had been commanded, "Stand At Ease" and inspected Prewitt too.

The Corporal watched him, then turned and inspected Prewitt, too, but he looked a little disappointed. The three Prewitt of them inspected mmmm sorrowfully, until the O D spoke.

"You can go on back there, Private," the O D said, "and go to sleep. The members of the guard are back there, and I intend to see that nothing disrupts their sleep. They need it. Bear that in mind." He closed the nailfile mmmm with finality and put it in his pocket. "We dont lock the door," he said. "But dont forget that there'll be somebody here all night, awake and armed." He studied Prew to see he understood the implications.

When Prew nodded, he turned back to the desk and said, "Get the man a blanket, Sergeant."

The Sergeant came alive and grabbed a blanket from a pile in one corner. He handed it to Prewitt as if it were the accepted condemned man's last meal. Prew mmmmm it indifferently, feeling very sleepy and wishing that this tragedy would hurry up and get over, so he could go back to sleep.

He went on back, through the open door of bars, seeing the great gongued padlock dangling from its ring. Beyond the

40/

bars the air changed, grew heavier, harder to breathe and his
arms and legs moved thickly, the way a man walks under water.

He looked back and saw their faces changed, wavering long and
bulbous the way a face looks under water, the movement giving
them a sinister look they had not had before. But none of it
could penetrate minimum the blanket layers of his sleepiness.
Beside the sleepiness it had no meaning.

He went on down between the double row of canvas cots,
wading through the breathing of the huddled figures, until
he found an empty one. He moved mechanically, feeling nothing.
He had known that this was coming for a long time now.

He lay down on the cot and pulled the blanket over him
and put his hands behind his head. And then it began to come
to him. He was no longer sleepy. He was in jail, locked up,
so that he could not get out.

He was not new to jails. He had learned how to breathe
this same air made heavy by the accumulated breath of all the former
inmates who had gone. You have to breathe very deep in jails
to find the little air among all the humid exhaled breaths
that sink thickly to the floor and push the oxygen outside.
Your lungs threaten to close up and collapse beneath that
heaviness.

He was not new to this feeling of having crossed the
line that changes all perspectives, as a stick thrust under
water will look bent, as the diver standing on the sinking
stage sees the line of water rise across his faceplate cutting
off his contact with the familiar world, making of him a
monster dropped into this other strange green universe, haunted
by a phlegm-green twilight, where every breath must support

41/

entire ocean's weight,
the weight of man when he is dead, where he is no more a man but
a morbid curiosity.

He was not new to any of it. But he was in jail, locked
up, so that he could not get out. He half sat up and looked
back at them whose job it was to keep him in and saw their faces
changed, wavering long and bulbous the way a face looks under
water, the movement giving them a sinister look they had not
had before. If he saw Alma walking down the street, these men
who did not even know him, would not let him go out to her.

Alma would not know he was put away. He would have to
find some way to let her know. If she thought he stood her
up she was just as liable to pick herself another man and
take him home. She would do it to get even. Later on she
would be sorry, after it was done. She would wish she had not
then, and she would want him back again. She would accuse
herself then, after she found out the reason.

42/

They kept him there three weeks, before his trial was held. There were of course many papers to be made out. It did not turn out to be much of a trial. There was no drama, because there was no jury whose emotions had to be appealed to. No jury of enlisted men would ever have sentenced a private to the Stockade, just as no jury of officers would ever have acquitted him. There was only the court, five officers ranging from a Colonel down to Capt Holmes. And the defense council, Lt Culpepper, who had been appointed by the court. There wasnt even any prosecutor; the court was both the prosecutor and the judge. In any Court Martial a man is always, by the law, considered to be guilty until he is proven innocent.

During the three weeks before the trial Prewitt was the only prisoner in the Regimental lockup, except for two drunks brought in in the middle of one night and released next morning, to their CCs for Company Punishment. He remembered the feeling with which he watched them go, climbing back up out of the heavy air, into the morning.

They did not work him here, as he knew they would in the Stockade, and he was free in the morning to stand by the window and watch old G Company march, at seven minutes after eight, going to the drill field. He would watch them down the road as far as he could see them, until they passed behind a building. It was at these times that he would secretly examine the wire diamonds on the window. They were on the inside and every time it rained hard the Corporal of the Guard would have to go down the line and unlock them so he could close the win-

43/

dows. Prewitt always watched him closely when he did it, watched
the
him and the key in his hand, feeling/ridiculousness of it some-
how. The heavy woven wires were welded into a square frame
that fit the window, bocked on the inside with a padlock.
When he watched the Company going out, he always felt an over-
powering urge to touch the wires and frame with his finger,
just to test their solidity, to make sure they were there. He
would lift the padlock and move it in its ring. Sometimes he
would look down inside the keyhole, if there was nobody look-
ing. Sometimes he felt it would have been better if they had
worked him, especially since he was the only prisoner.

Of course, the members of the guard were always there.
He played casino with them often. Every day they changed,
going through the ritual of informal guard mount outside the
window. The new O D the second morning had decreed that since
they had a prisoner they should keep the door locked, and after
that the Corporal of the Guard had to let them in and out,
because this was where they bunked while on their tour. They
bars
would go up to themmm and call and the Corporal would unlock
the door for them, then they would step outside, and he would
lock it up again. It was a procedure which commanded Prewitt's
close attention; no matter how many times it happened in a day,
he never did get tired of watching it. There were something
strange about it his mind could not graps and put into words.
Many times he wondered what would happen if he walked up and
called, and the Corporal unlocked the door and he stepped through
and then the Corporal locked it up again.

The casino helped a lot, and the guard was always buying

44/

comic books and they would leave them there for him. He would read in them a little at a time, but he could not put his mind on them. Always, after a page or two, he would have to put them down. The cards was better; he played casino incessantly, as long as any of the guard would play. Then he played Sol. While they played he would crack wise and laugh and that part of his mind dwelling in the new universe would be lulled. But every now and then, while playing, it would all go blank, just disappear, amid cards and guards and all, and none of it would reappear until some one of them had called him several times.

"Its your play, Prewitt. Hey. Prewitt. Its your play. Come on. PREW. ITS YOUR PLAY."

Then it would come back and he would find he had been thinking about the padlocks on the wire frames in the windows, or about the Corporal opening up the door when a guard would call him. Then he would grin and make a crack and play. But they would look at him strangely. How can a plane square on a paper understand a solid cube? or a line comprehend a square? when both are in a different universe.

He had always accepted jails before as being part of the life he lived. Not everybody had to accept them, because they did not enter everybody's life. But from the time his father had been locked up in the strike they had been a part of his. Yet now, maybe because he was in here for doing a thing he did not think was wrong, a thing that could not have been done otherwise, he found in the idea of jails something he had not seen before. He could not understand how wood and iron and

45/

concrete could be utilized to lock up living breathing men
and hold them stationary. It was not even ridiculous; it was
impossible. He could not comprehend it any more than a cube
could comprehend a figure in the fourth dimension that held
eight cubes the same size as itself inside it. And the feel-
ing of apartness that came over him the first night as he
looked back through the wall of bars grew stronger every
bars in the wall were growing thicker,
day. It was as if the wall of bars in the fourth dimension
were closing up the spaces in between them until they were
only tiny cracks leading to the outside world.

50

the water and you know you must push yourself through this
encumbering element that binds you before it is too late,
he felt a frantic desire to charge the door, to somehow burst
it and bull his way out, fight a path downtown, run the
thirty-five miles to town without a break, so he could warn her
not to do a thing that she could not recall. He would not
mind then, it would be all right for them to bring him back,
it would be all right for them to double his time even. Be-
cause then, if he was to be away from her for a long time,
another while he was gone
it would not matter if she took a lover, the thing that matter-
ed was that she should not do it in anger. It was important
that she not bed down with another man just to get even, for
revenge. It was like her being a whore: he did not mind the
men she fucked for during business hours. They never bothered
him. But the thought of her taking another man to the apart-
ment up on Maunalani Heights stabbed him with an agony that
made his head swim. He could see the man sitting in the chair
that he had sat in, eating from the little dinette table in
the end of the kitchen where he had eaten, moving with the
same intimacy through the four rooms where he had moved, and
lying in the bed where he had lain, squeaking the bedsprings
he had squeaked.

And yet still he could not mention it to Warden. It was
impossible to speak to Warden about a woman unless she meant
nothing.

50/

understand how you could love a woman, particularly a whore?

"Say, Warden," he called hurriedl

On the walk outside Warden stopped and turned. "Yeah?"

"Listen, will you . . . I wonder if . . . I thought you
might . . .

"Say, listen. Tell Slade to come over and see me, will
you? I got a favor I want to ask him."

He could feel the big man looking at him penetrat

"Okay," Warden said. "I'll tell him, /' kid." He turned
to go, the understanding concealed deep down in his voice
untouched by either of them.

Prewitt cursed his pride and Warden too, aware that his
withholding of his confidence had hurt the other. What did
a son of a bitch like that know about loving a woman you
couldnt have? He tried to smooth it over.

"Say, Warden. When you think the trial will be, anyway,
hunh?"

"Not for another week yet anyway." Warden paused and
then turned back. "If you need those cigarets just let me know."

As it turned out, Prewitt needed them; they kept him there
three weeks, before his trial was finally held. Nothing
official ever happens swiftly; too many signatures are required,
and with every signature is demanded a reflective opinion.
Before a trial that lasts a half an hour can take place there
is a hundred hours paper work to do.

It did not turn out to be much of a trial. There was
no drama, because there was no jury whose emotions had to be

51/

appealed to. No unpacked jury of enlisted men would ever have
sentenced a private to the Stockade; unlike civilian juries,
a crime committed against Authority was not a threat to them.
To a code whose maxim had always been Discipline since the
time of the Roman Legions the thought of a jury was not only
a degradation, it was a logical absurdity.

In this Court, five officers ranging from a Colonel down
to Capt Holmes and of course Lt Culpepper, defense council
appointed by the Court, histrionics were frowned on in the
British manner. There was no prosecutor; the Court was both
the prosecutor and the judge--which was fair enough, since
in any Military Court the accused is always, by the law,
considered to be guilty until he had been proven innocent.

After every one was present and the Court had been put
in session, Ike Gallowitz, choking in fresh starched CKCs and
with his collar buttoned as a concession to the gravity of
the occasion, his cheek and jaw still bruised an ugly black,
Ike told his story. He was followed by the two eye-witnesses,
who corroborated everything he said. They were followed by
Lt Culpepper who made an eloquent little plea for clemency,
pointing out that since his client had been drunk he had not
known what he was doing. After conferring for perhaps 90
seconds the Court handed down its verdict. During the whole
proceedings Prewitt refused to say a word, nor was he asked to,
nor did this omission upset the ritual any.

There was no malice, no cruelty in the judges or their
decision. The whole thing was all very objective, very
austere with that austerity which is the kernel of true jus-
tice. Even the witnesses obviously did not hate the accused.

52/

The whole thing was all very objective, very austere
with that austerity which is the kernal of true justice.
Except for Gallowitz, which was understandable, no hate was
evident toward the defendent. There was no malice, no cruelty,
in the judges or in the witnesses. This was not a question
of revenge; just as it was not, to everyone except Lt Culpepper,
a question of a private having hit a sergeant. The defendent
was merely being handled, without prejudice and in the proper
form, as one whose intractability has brought him to the
attention of his superiors, as every man who by his noncom-
formity repudiates the code by which he is allowed to live
must obviously be handled, through the proper channels. In
sucha situation, with a man who from his arrival in the Regi-
ment had shown in his every act his unwillingness to cooperate,
there was only one decision possible for the court to make.

Prewitt was sentenced to one year at hard labor in the
Post Stockade and fined two-thirds of his pay for a like
period.

During the three weeks before the trial Prewitt was
the only prisoner in the Regimental lockup, except for two
drunks brought in in the middle of one night and released next
morning to their CCs for Company Punishment. He remembered
the feeling with which he watched them go, climbing back up
such
out of the heavy air, into the morning, / unhappy victims of
such a trivial thing as Company Punishment.

During those three weeks Lt Culpepper had came to see
him often, carrying the brandnew briefcase in which he kept
the papers of the trial. Lt Culpepper had worked out a de-

53/

fence over which, as it developed in his mind, he became
quite enthusiastic. His defense was built around a plea of
"Guilty." If Prewitt would plead guilty and ask for clemency
had been drunk and
because he/did not know what he was doing, they could get him
off with nothing but a month and two-thirds, which was he felt
under the circumstances practically an acquittal. Every time
he came he urged the wisdom of this step upon his client.

"Everything's in the mind," he told his client. "The
answer is always there, if you can find it." You're only
trading a worthless fiction for eleven months in jail."

It was probably because he was so proud and happy over
having worked out this piece of legalfurniture that he became
quite angry every time Prewitt refused to enter the plea.

Half the time Prewitt watched Lt Culpepper walking swift-
ly through the sunlight up the walk with that swift, happy,
snappy stride of the young West Point and carrying his brand-
new breifcase and he was quite sure that Lt Culpepper had
talked it all over beforehand with Dynamite and they two had
decided on this plan. The other half the time he believed
this cheery, energetic, satisfied young man, who was such a
comical Don Juan around the Club, was simply a fool who had
been too well indoctrinated and was sincerely trying to help
to help this client he had been appointed with.

He never did find out which it was Lut Culpepper was.

Neither could he ever explain satisfactorily to Lt Cul-
pepper, or to himself, why it was he refused to plead guilty
and ask for clemency.

54/

"Goddam it!" Lt Culpepper would exclaim. "You hit him, didn't you?"

"Sure I hit him," Prewitt would say.

"If you hit him, you are guilty. That's open and shut. Why try to hid the truth?"

"I hit him, but I'm still not guilty. I'll be goddamed if I'll plead guilty when I'm not."

"All right." Lt Culpepper would mark an x a new blank sheet of paper with _mum_ the pencil of his matched Parker set. "Look here. Here's number one: If you dont plead guilty you'll get a year, sure as anything. If you do, and ask for clemency, then you'll only get a month. I _guarantee_ you that." He w uld mark another x. "Nobody cares whether you're guilty or not, although you admit you hit him. It's not important whether you're guilty or not; what's important is that you can save yourself eleven months in jail if you _plead_ guilty. It has nothing to do with whether you _are_ guilty."

Prewitt would only shake his head. "I wont _mum_ do it. To hell with it. I _cant_ do it, Lieutenant."

"You dont expect to get acquitted, do you?"

"No. That's one thing I sure dont expect."

"Then if you dont expect acquittal, what _have_ you got to lose?"

"Nothing," Prewitt said. "A lot. I've got a lot to lose."

"All right. Just tell me what? You cant tell me what."

"Nothing. I dont know. Listen, I just cant go up there and beg them to _mum_ take it easy for something I never did."

"But you _mum_ admit you hit him."

55/

"Sure I admit it."

"But look," Lt Culpepper would plead. "This is no black
black mark against
you. This is only a legal technicality.
It's your privilege to use it, if it will help you any."

"Would you admit a thing you didn't do, just to save
yourself some jail time?"

"Hell, yes! I'd admit I raped my mother, if it would
save me time, as long as it was within the law."

"Well, I won't," Prewitt said. He always came back to
that. I won't. There were times when he almost told the
dapper little shavetail about the knife. Sometimes he even
imagined them taking a couple of sixteen pound sledges and
knocking out the concrete platform of the garbage rack and
find there the knifeblade, just as he had described it to them
in the crack. But it is dream never lasted long; the real thing
he was being tried for was because he refused to play ball
and fight for
Holmes, just as he refused to play ball with Houston
in the Corps. But what use would that be to them
If that was what they were accusing him
of, tacitly, then he was guilty, and so was he
not going to
beg off of what they had to hand him. He was man enough to
take everything they could hand out and still come back for
more, still go on doing what he had done and defy them in
their teeth.

53/

During the three weeks before the trial he had been the only prisoner in the Regimental lockup. Except for two drunks brought in in the middle of one night and released next morning to their CCs for Company Punishment. He always remembered the feeling with which he watched them go, climbing back up out of the heavy air, into the morning. Such unhappy victims they were, and of such a trivial, personal thing as Company Punishment. They could not have the honor of being the impersonal manifestation of an abstraction that was above such things as punishment.

During those three weeks Lt Culpepper had come to see him often, carrying the brand new briefcase in which he kept the papers of the trial.

He came to discuss the defence he had worked out for Prewitt, and over which as it developed in his mind he/became enthusiastic. The defense was built around a plea of "Guilty." If Prewitt would plead guilty and ask for clemency on the grounds that he had been drunk and had not known what he was doing, he was sure that he could get him off with nothing but a month and two-thirds. Which Lt Culpepper felt under the circumstances was practically an acquittal.

"Everything's in the mind," he said, enthusiastically. "The right answer's always there, if you can just find it. And finding it is all a matter of approaching the problem with the proper attitude of mind."

"But I cant plead guilty," Prewitt always told him. "In

54/

the first place I wasnt drunk. And in the second place, I
knew what I was doing."

"That's not the point," Lt Culpepper would say. "The
point is that the witnesses say you were drunk. By pleading
guilty and admitting that you were you can turn around and use
their testimonies against them."

"In other words, you mean I can prove that they are lying
by admitting what they say is true."

"Well," the lieutenant said, "in a sense, if that's the
way you want to put it, yes. But I didn't say that they were
lying. Maybe they're telling the truth."

"How can they be telling the truth if I'm telling the
truth when I say I wasnt drunk?"

"Well, in one sense, in a way, they're lying, if you weren't
drunk. But, in another sense, they may be telling the truth,
in that they really believe you were drunk. So, actually, you
both may be telling the truth, as you see it, and still dis-
agree. You see?"

"Yes," Prewitt said.

"But that's not the point. The point is what is in the
testimonies. The Court won't believe you if you say you weren't
drunk. Every criminal always protests he's innocent. You
see? What you're really doing is only trading a worthless
fiction for eleven months in jail, The truth has nothing to
do with this. You see?"

"Yes," Prewitt said.

"Okay. I had this typed out, saying you were drunk and
didn't know what you were doing. You read it over, to see it's

55/

not putting you in a hole. I wouldnt want you to sign it without reading it. And then you sign it, and we'll turn it in out of the blue at the trial and I'll ask for clemency with the Court. Then they cant honorably give you more than a month."

"I was always told," Prewitt said, "that Military Courts never accepted appeals for clemency."

"Well," the lieutenant said, "they dont, but in this particular case, the whole thing's different. You see, it all hinges on the question of your being drunk." He paused to frown and stare at Prewitt, and then began to doddle on a sheet of paper he took out of his briefcase. "Nobody in the army considers drunkenness a sin. You know that. In fact, although they never say it in a Special Order, of course, most commanding officers feel that a soldier who doesn't get drunked up now and then is a suspicious character to be closely watched."

Prewitt nodded, to the unspoken question in his eyes. "And so," the lieutenant went on, "if you admit that you were drunk, now, in this particular case, then we turn the whole thing right back on them, because the getting drunk itself is more a thing to be proud of than ashamed of, and so the Court, who understand that, couldnt honorably give you the limit, just for getting drunk. You see that, dont you?"

"I see that," Prewitt said.

"Well, go ahead and read this then, before you sign it. I don't want you to sign it without reading it. Never sign anything without reading it first."

"But I'm not guilty," Prewitt explained. "I can't sign

56/

something that says I'm guilty if I'm not."

"My God, man!" Lt Culpepper said. "What has that to do with it? Nobody gives a damn whether you're guilty, or not. It's all a question of this legal technicality. No Court could possibly give a soldier the maximum sentence, just for getting drunk, when getting drunk is not only a soldier's privilege, it's his duty, *IN ONE WAY*, like Hemingway said the syph was the occupation disease of bullfighters and soldiers."

"Did you ever have it, Lieutenant?"

"Who? Me? Hell, no. What's that got to do with it?"

"I've had the clap," Prewitt told him. "I'm not going to beg them for anything, I aint going to brownose with them because they're proud of their men getting drunk. I aint asking them for nothing. And anyway, there's more to it than just that."

Lt Culpepper scratched his head with his Parker pencil. "It's not a question, in this case, of you begging them, or throwing yourself on their mercy. It's simply the matter of the legal furniture."

"I cant sign it, Lieutenant, and act like everything I've done the past six months was wrong. It wasnt wrong. No matter what they think, I'm not guilty, see?"

"You hit the man, didn't you?" Let Culpepper cried, irrationally. "My God, man."

"Sure I hit him."

"If you hit him, you are guilty. That's open and shut. Why try to hide the truth?"

"But you said the truth didn't have anything to do with this."

57/

"Well, it doesn't. Look. You don't expect to get acquitted, do you?"

"No. That's one thing I don't expect."

"Then if you don't expect acquittal, what have you got to lose?"

"Nothing," Prewitt said. "A lot. A lot to lose."

"Okay, Prewitt," Lt Culpepper would say disgustedly. "You think it over. If you don't plead guilty, you're sure to get a year, sure as anything. I'll be back tomorrow, or next day. We'll talk it over then."

He would leave then, walking swiftly through the patchy sunlight down the walk in that swift, happy, snappy stride of the young West Pointer that Capt Holmes must have once had, proud of his place and his position.

It was probably because this was the first case he had ever worked on, and because he had worked out the defense himself, that Prewitt's stubbornness made him so angry. But Prewitt noticed that his anger and depression always left him by the time he hit the walk.

Half the time Prewitt was quite sure Lt Culpepper had talked it all over with Dynamite beforehand that they two had decided on this plan to prevent any slippup. The other half the time he believed this cheery, energetic, staisfied young man, who was such a comical Don Juan around the Club, was simply a fool who could not understand the abstraction underneath the surface of the trial and was sincerely trying to help this client he had been appointed to help.

He never did find out which it was, but it was always nice

58/

to note that his anger and depression over his client's stubbornness did not injure his digestion.

There were several times he almost told the dapper little youngster about the knife. But there was some pride in him that would not let him mention it. Even if Culpepper did not know about it, Holmes must know about it.

42/

In the morning it was the Guard Sergeant who woke the prisoner. While the prisoner folded his blanket properly and placed it properly on the cot, the Sergeant stood alertly in the aisle, waiting to march the prisoner to breakfast, and the trip had all the earmarks of a great excursion.

At E Company across the street, where the Guard was rationing this month, the prisoner was marched upstairs to wash and the Sergeant stood behind him with great seriousness of duty, motioning all the men who entered the latrine not to pass between him and the prisoner/bent over to see if he was still in the room. When they got downstairs the prisoner was taken directly to the head of the chowline for his two fried eggs, and the hush that always accompanies the presence of a prisoner under guard spread in his wake. In the little messhall when the Sergeant marched him through it to the prisoner's table where they were the only occupants the conversation was choked off and the silverware stopped rattling.

The prisoner, enjoying the public attention almost as much as the Sergeant while at the same time hating the Sergeant as the cause of what he enjoyed, ate his food with gusto. It was only after the Sergeant marched the prisoner back and relieved of his responsibility began to prepare himself to go off guard that the prisoner again became unhappy at his lot. He began to look around to see if there was anything new or different. Prewitt watched the informal Guard Mount and the retiring Sergeant that morning with a great relief, until he was informed the new O.D. had issued orders that the door in the

meat

43/

barred partition was to be kept locked at all times now there
was a prisoner inside. While the unlocked door did him no
good at all, the mere physical act of locking it opressed
him greatly.

He watched the new corporal lock the padlock, wondering
again at the slowed up time sense that was in this other world,
at what vast realms of thought the mind could range between
the striking of a match and the raising of the arm to light
the cigaret, at how his mind geared to follow the swifter
measurement of time Outside was now taking him back to Harlan
and the soot-grimed face of Uncle John, back to the Taps at
Arlington and the President's face, back to some deserted
spot in Oklahoma seen through an open boxcar door--and a
thousand other places, beads on the single thread of one man's
life--and all seen and known in the time elapsed between two
heartbeats.

It was Warden who at 10 o'clock brought over the pitiful
armload of *mhmhm* possessions the prisoner was allowed to
have. Usually they sent a clerk, first thing in the morning,
with the soap and towels and shaving things. Even in prison
a soldier must be a credit to his uniform.

When Prew saw him he jumped up from the cot. But as his
feet began to carry him toward the door he saw the mental pic-
ture of his face pushed humbly against the bars, like a poor
kid at the window of a candy store, and he sat back down again.

The big man *mmmm* seemed, as always, in a terrific hurry.
As he stated who he was and what he had and asked contemptu-
ously if he'd need a signed permit from Col Delbert the club-

44/

like sarcasm in his voice beat the corporal back down in his
chair and made him try to hide his comic book. Warden laughed
out loud when he found out the door was to be kept locked, and
Prewitt felt the warp of slowed up time sense slowly straight-
ening out inside him.

"It aint me," the Corporal protested. "It's the O.D.'s orders."

"Aint you goin to search this bindle?" Warden grinned.
"Maybe I got a couple files in there."

As he bent to unblock the door, the Corporal shook his
head.

"You're sure you trust me now," Warden said, stepping
through the open door. "How you know I aint a cop-killer in
disguise?"

"I'll leave it open while you're in there," the Corporal
said.

"You better lock it," Warden said. "If you don't I aint
responsible. This savage beast might overpower me and make
a break. I aint very strong, you know. . . .

"Well?" he swung around on the Corporal who was hesitating
with the door. "Go on. Lock it up. A cop or a MP has got
to learn never to leave his back exposed; some self-respecting
citizen is always ready to step up and stick a knife in it."

The Corporal closed the door and locked it. "I aint no
MP. I was detailed on this guard tour." He sat down at the
desk again and furtively slipped his _Batman Comics_ in a drawer
and shut it.

"Well," Warden said. He tossed the bundle down on Prewitt's

45/

cot. "I guess you know what kind of a hole you put me in, dont
you? Now I got no clerk. I hope you're satisfied. I had to
take this kid Slade, the Air Corps transfer."

"He's a good boy," Prew said, feeling a warmness seeping
through the pit of coldness in his belly that not even the
coffee this morning would take away.

"Everybody's a good boy," Warden said. "I got to unlearn
him everything he learned in the goddam Wheeler Field Clercical
Schook, and then begin to teach him how to clerk, Thanks to
you."

"Did they find the knife yet?" Prew asked.

"What knife?"

"Gallowitz's knife."

"How old are you anyway? Dont you know Gallowitz is a
nice, feeble, old fuck who never owned a knife in his life?"

"I guess so," Prewitt said. "But I was hoping whoever
found him would find it. Who turned me in?"

"When you hit people, son," Warden said patiently, "you
ought to have enough brains to look around and see if there's
any witnesses, especially if the guy you hit is your Company
Commander's pet."

"I did."

"Yeah? Then how come you didn't see Wilson and Henderson
sitting on the porch?"

"Probably because they wasn't there."

"They say they were. And I know they were. And what
carries the weight, Holmes says they were."

"Then I must of been wrong, 'ey?" Prewitt said.

46/

"Why in the name of Christ did you have to pick on
Gallowitz? Why couldnt you of picked a man to knife you who
wasnt Dynamite's pride and joy?"

"I thought of that," Prew said.

Warden shook his head and put his knuckles on his hips.
"You sure killed the goose that laid the golden eggs, buddy.
You'll be lucky to get off with a year."

Prew didnt answer; the quip did not come. He was accept-
ing the facts, as Warden laid them out. That was the way the
army worked, and that way the way you had to figure it.

Because the umpire was a buddy of the other team you
did not protest the game. Who ever heard of an umpire who
was impartial? Maggio had got six months; therefore Maggio
was wrong. If Maggio had been important enough for Dynamite
or the Great White Father to spare Maggio would not have got
six months; and therefore Maggio would not have been wrong.

"You know what the charges are?" he asked.

"I ought to," Warden said. "I been making out Court
Martial papers since seven o'clock this morning. They're
throwing the book at you: Drunk; Assaulting a Non-commiss-
ioned Officer; Disorderly Conduct; Disobeying a Direct Order . . ."

"How did they figure that one?" Prewitt interrupted.

"What, Disobeying a Direct Order?" Warden grinned. "Dont
you remember? Old Ike done his duty and ordered you to go to
bed and sleep it off, and you disobeyed him. Instead, you
hit him."

"I hit him all right," Prew said, with satsifaction; it
was the only satisfaction he could find in the whole damned

47/

mess. "What kind of Court am I getting?"

"A Special," Warden said.

"Then I cant get over a year, and two-thirds of my pay."

"That's all," Warden said. "You're lucky you didn't get a General Court. What a you want? a Summary? If I had my way, you'd get ten years."

"If I did," Prew grinned, "I'd will the last nine of them to you, Top."

Warden stared at him accusingly and Prewitt had to laugh.

"I got to be gettin back," Warden said. "You better shuck them CKCs and get into these fatigues. There's two pair. And your shaving stuff. Two suits of underwear . . ."

Prewitt stood up. "You ever hear of a soljer who wears GI underwear?"

"Hell no. None except Pete Karelsen. I brought you what the Ars call for. One pair shoes field. Two towels face. Two towels bath. One bar soap." Warden laughed. "Sign here."

Prewitt changed the clothes, feeling the helplessness that prisoners always feel not that Warden was leaving. He was not a man who enjoyed feeling helpless, it was still a little hard to accept it like it was. If he had the pull; if, say, he had not quit the Corps and forfeited the friendship mfi Chief Houston was willing to bestow upon brown-nosing subordinates; if he had been willing to fight for Dynamite. But then, he thought, if you'd done that you would be here anyway, now would you? Not if he had friends among the Brass; but he had taken care of that, hi self. He had taken care of that well, without wanting to, because he had no choice.

48/

"There's not a thing I can do," Warden said, as if he had seen the thought. "Once I've made the papers out I don't count for shit. All I can do is argue, up until the papers are sent in. Yours went in this morning."

"I know that," the other said. "Forget it."

Warden moved his feet and cracked a knuckle. "I'd do it if I could, Prew," he said. "Even if you did fuck me up. I never did like jails. Or jailers."

"I said forget it." Prewitt folded the CKs up neatly and rolled them in a bundle. "I had an uncle once named Ham Haley. He died when I was a kid. I never seen him. They took him to Frankfort for killing a man in a honest gunfight. They tried to work him in the shoe factory at Frankfort. He refused to work for them."

"So they put him in one of those wells they had along the river bank and turned the water in. There was a pump in the bottom of the well and they told him to work or drown. They used that on the 'incorrigables' they called them; after four or five days, a week at the most, they was ready to come back to work. But old Ham Haley never pumped a drap."

"That's the Law for you," Warden said. "The Law always kills the good men. The men like Debs. How you fixed for cigarets."

"I got a few bucks. If I run out I'll let you know." He picked the clothes up very slowly, not wanting Warden to leave, partly because when he left the old vitality of unwarped time would go out with him, partly because he had a favor he was trying to get up nerve enough to ask him.

49/

He wanted to let Alma know why it was he did not come down. If she didn't hear from him she would get mad and think he quit her. With the old suspicion toward writing letters, unwilling to expose him his private thoughts to the censor who would read his letters now, he had to find some other way to let her know. He wanted to ask Warden to go down and see her for him.

Warden was almost at the door that the Corporal was unlocking, but still he put it off. He could still catch him before he left, he told himself. It was odd the things you could never say, how you stood and looked and wanted so to speak. It was so easy to tell a women that you didn't love how much you loved her. Why was it always impossible to tell a woman that you loved? Hey, Warden, tell that whole how much I love her and why I can't come down.

"Oh, by the way," Warden turned back at the door. "Lt Culpepper's been appointed your defense concil."

"Yeah? They aint takin any chances on a slipup, are they?"

If Alma got stood up with knowing why she was just as liable to pick herself another man and take him home. She would do it to get even and later she would be sorry. The men she fucked for during business hours never bothered him, but the thought of her taking another man to the apartment up on Maunalani Heights stabbed him with an agony that made his head swim and he could see them bouncing in the bed he knew so well and hear the springs squeak. And yet he could not ask him. How could you speak to Warden about a woman, unless the women meant nothing? How could you expect Warden to

50/

understand how you could love any woman, particularly if she
was a whore?

"Say, Warden," he called hurriedly, going to the window.

"Listen, will you . . . I wonder if . . . I thought you
might . . ." The hell with it, he thought. If she dont
trust me more than that, why should I worry?

"Say," he said. "Tell Slade to come over and see me,
will you? I got a favor I want to ask him."

He could feel the big man looking at him penetratingly.

"Okay," Warden said. "I'll tell him, kid." He turned
again to go and the understanding underneath the layers of
his voice made Prew curse his pride. He cursed Warden too,
because the big man was foolish enough to let himself be hurt.

"Say, Warden," he tried to smooth it over. "When you
think the trial will be, anyway, hunh?"

"Not for another week yet anyway." Warden paused. "If
you need those cigarets just let me know."

"Okay, First," he called. "If I do I will. But I dont
think I will."

ed

But as it turned out he need/them. They kept him there
three weeks, before his trial was finally held.

Since nothing official ever happens swiftly, since too
many signatures are required and with every signature a much-
thought-over opinion, before a trial that lasts a half an hour
can be held there is a hundred hours paper work to do.

There was no drama in it, because there was no jury whose

51/

emotions had to be appealed to. No unpacked jury of enlisted men would ever have sentenced a private to the Stockade. Unlike civilian juries, a crime committed against Authority was not a threat to them, it was a compliment. To a code whose maxim had always been Discipline sine the time of the Roman Legions the thought of a jury was not only a degradation, it was a logical absurdity.

In this Court, five officers ranging from a Colonel down to Capt Holmes and of course Lt Clupepper, defense council appointed by the Court, histrionics were frowned on in the British manner. There was no prosecutor; the Court was both the prosecutor and the judge--which was fair enough, since in any Military Court the accused is always, by the law, considered to be guilty until he has been proven innocent.

After every one was present and the Court had been put in session, Ike Gallowitz, choking in fresh starched CKCs and with his collar buttoned as a concession to the gravity of the occasion, his cheek and jaw still bruised an ugly black, Ike told his story. He was followed by the two eye-witnesses, who corroborated everything he said. They were followed by Lt Cuplepper who made an eloquent little plea for clemency, pointing out that since his client had been drunk he had not known what he was doing. thereafter

During the whole Proceedings Prewitt refused to say a word, not was he asked to, not did this omission upset the ritual any.

52/

The whole thing was all very admirable in its objectivity, very austere with that austerity which is the kernel of true justice. Except for Gallowitz, which was understandable, no hate was evident toward the defendant. There was no malice, no cruelty, either in the judges or the witnesses.

Prewitt understood that no one had anything against him personally. This was not a question of revenge; just as it was not, to anyone except perhaps Lt Culpepper, a question of a private having hit a sergeant. It was the question of his noncompliance that was truly before the Court. They were deciding, without prejudice and in the proper form, whether the defendant had the right to be intractable and uncooperative with the aims the Regiment had adopted for itself. It was not what he had done to Gallowitz; it was what he had done, or refused to do, over the past six months that was up for judgment. They were dealing with an abstraction to be tested, not punishing an individual for a certain act.

In such a situation, with a man whose unsympathetic attitude had brought him to the attention of his superiors since his arrival in the Regiment, there was only one possible decision for the Court to make.

Prewitt was sentenced to one year at hard labor in the Post Stockade and to have two-thirds of his pay for a like period.

Neither Prewitt, nor his council, nor the witnesses, nor the Court, were very much surprised by the verdict or taken unawares.

Slade argues Jewry with Price. Price maintains that, in spite of his evil in general, has discovered a good thing in the rigorous control of Jewry; and that America could take a good lesson from Hitler in this respect.

Slade argues that persecution, rigorous control in any respect is an evil to humanity. As a point against this the falicy of persecuting Jewry, he points out Sussman, who is one of the most likeable, harmless and integrated men in the Company, and that everybody recognizes this.

Price admits this but offers Bloom as example for the other side. He blindly says that the Sussmans must be persecuted also, in order to get rid of the Blooms--an obviously foolish and closed-eyed belief.

Slade is terribly upset by this argument, because he can see a sort of shred of perverted truth in what Price maintains. Yet he knows it is wrong.

Warden laughs at Slade's fears and says for him not to worry about the Prices of this world. That they are always wanting to pull down anybody who is naturally superior to them, Jew or not. Slade sees this is true, and sees also that the same disease is what makes Bloom what he is.

Slade argues the same question with Prewitt over Negroes. And he is oppressed by the stolid dogma of both men which makes them keep themselves blind to logic and truth. Yet the strange thing is that Prewitt is basically 'good' and Price basically 'evil.'

Have PRICE, the "100% Americanism", American Nazi, propound
the belief that if the Nazis won the war, there would be "world
Government" (in argument with BROWNE); that *infinitism* it would al-
so be a workable government, because the common man has not the
ability nor inclination to rebel against it.

Browne: "There is a point in which you can encroach upon Human
Rights and any human will rebel, if his personal selfish freedom
is usurped."

Price: "No. Because the Nazis are shrewd enough not to usurp
the liberty beyond that point. They'll go up to that point, but
not beyond it. They will leave a little hope."

Browne: "I'll never believe that. I believe that any man, when
his personal *selfish* is taken from him will fight, and fight to
the death."

Price shook his head. He smiled amusedly at this naive faith.
"You're overestimating the common average man."

"No," Browne said, "I'll tell you why. Because there is a criminal
in all of us. The very criminality, the very all-inclusive self-
ishness that makes me a criminal in the eyes of most of my coun-
try is the very thing that would make me fight, and to the death,
just for the satisfaction of taking a couple of those bastards
with me, the selfish satisfaction--when I couldn't have what I
wanted in life because of a government oppression."

"I'll grant that," Price said, "but you are an exceptional man.
you can't compare the Average American to yourself."

"Yes, I can," Browne said. "And I do. Because I know people

2/Price vs Browne

well enough to know that in the secret heart of each is a strain
of pure selfish criminality; a selfishness that supercedes all
else. I've seen hundreds of respectable citizens snitching and
lying and cheating, because simply--they selfishly want something
and dont care whom they hurt to get it.

"The Nazis very forte will be, in the long run, the thing
that would defeat their world government, or any Fascist world
government."

I can use Andy Piper's helper, Sy, as an example of the American Nazi type. The result of a high inferiority complex-- which makes him need to top the best story (true or not) of the other man with a still greater one of his own.

Like Hitler, it is necessary for him to prove himself superior to everybody else. To do this he lies, and believes his own lies--tho most everybody else does not believe them. When others will not accept his stories at face value, he becomes indignant, hates them for being jealous.

He is a good soldier, a top soldier in fact, but when his ex ploits do not measure up to the superiority he needs to feel, he elaborates them. The many, many things he has done and has had done to him are so multiple that any ass can see it is impossible for them all to have happened to one man in one lifetime--but he himself believes them.

He is a strong advocate of military discipline and of military neatness--altho he is a sloppy soldier personally. He de-rides "sloppy soldiers" as having no pride in Self or Outfit and maintains that it is necessary to deal harshly with them to main-tain the general level. He admits there are exceptions to this Rule (example: Reedy Treadwell) but the exceptions are so much a minority that it is necessary to concern the general policy with the mass, and the mass demand hard treatment.

It first glance he talks, seemingly sanely. War is cruel; Americans are cruel in particular, as bad as the Nazis whom he hates, or worse. In the next breath he admires this cruelty in

2/Sy

the form of strict discipline and the honor of the outfit. He
admires West Pointers, the tougher ones, for their toughness which
he professes to hate in Nazis, their cold power.

He hates war, professes to be a physical nervous wreck from
combat, but in the next breath maintains that "we will have to
whip the slimy Russkys who are worse rapers than the damned Nazis."
And he is quite ready to go right on when this war is done and do
the job right by whipping the Ruskys and getting it over with,
with the "great U.S." the world dominator--altho he has already
said the U.S. is no better than Nazism anyway.

He is proud of the number of casualties in his outfit. He
casualty
insists on beating any other outfit's/figures with those of his
own bunch, no matter what the truth. He worships his Regiment and
it's West Bint colonel.

HE MUST? BECAUSE OF HIS INFERIORITY? BE THE BIG CHEEZE. HE
IS READY TO GO TO ANY CRAZY LENGTHS TO MAINTAIN THIS SELF-SUPERIOR-
ITY. This is the key to him and to Fascism. That bright look
is in his eyes.

The strange thing is, he is almost an artist. Has a vivid
imagination. But somehow it just misses the artist, "Good incar-
nate", if there such a thing, and is "Bad, incarnate." His imag-
ination is so exagerated that it loses all truth, which the imag-
ination of the artist seeks to condence by means of its own exag-
eration. Just a hairline that makes the difference, but it is al
the difference in the world.

His wild imaginings are easily seen through by the other men.
They mark him of as nuts and let it go at that. Many He is so

3

preposterous that they cannot see the danger in him, which is the
danger of all Hitlers. They humour him, which is all they can
naturally do, being unbiased themselves. But in him lies the dan
ger to all freedom, to all individual rights. What he cannot
achieve by his wild stories which people refuse to believe, he ca
more or less achieve through being a pinion of the State, of the
Regiment, of Military Discipline which regulates the mass.

He and his kind are the potent danger of our own land that
has come out of this war.

Sy said about Andy that he didn't say it around him, and it
was not that he was prejudiced against Germans, but the average
German--not the Nazi--folded up when you got within bayonet range
of him. He was a good man at 600 to 1000 yards; could hold his
own firing, manuvering, outguessing you. but he couldn't take the
steely-the bayonet or knife. Man for man, he said, the American
was the toughest hardest killer going.

He didn't want to hurt Andy, he said, but Andy came from
the old country, had people over there. They were Germans. I
said my grandfather came over from the old country (a lie) and
that I too had relatives over there. That that didn't means much
and tried to twist it so that to prove people were pretty much th
same, regardless of nationality. He would have none of it and
branched off into anew subject without giving me the satisfaction
of agreeing with me or letting it came up to a argument.

Stupid, ignorant, awkward, personally unappealing, sort of
well meaning lummocks, // pathetic--youre touched by his ugly un-
gainliness--certainly not one of the much vaunted enemies of civi-
lization, you think. And therein lies the danger.

30/V/1

John Slade was considerably impressed by the Infantrymen he had met during the sabotage problem. For several weeks after they had gone, the faces of Prewitt, Andy, Friday, and Choate remained vividly before his mind. Sunburned, hardened and active, they were the faces of men ready equally to laugh or fight or get drunk or march thirty miles and they haunted Slade because they seemed to have found a purpose--a purpose, paradoxically, that stemmed from either an ignorance or a refusal to admit that there was any purpose to life except to live it. Beside them the men at Hickam seemed milkfed, fragile, bloodless.

The Infantrymen turned/vices into lusty virtue. Drinking, fornicating, gambling, fighting among the clerks, mechanics, armorers without guns of Hickam were complexities of whispered comment and secret knowing grins, nasty escapes from abortive lives. Yet these same "vices" in the Infantrymen seemed the natural expressions of strength and vigor; they lived, simply and vigorously, without that hedging prudence which characterized the higher type of citizen Slade had always known. And Slade, the dreamer, yearned to be away from falseness into honesty.

On figure intrigued his imagination more than any other and that was the tall swaggering first sergeant who had sauntered over to Choate's puptent and hauled a full pint flask from his pocket carelessly and openly. There, Slade mused, was the kind of man one would not mind taking orders from.

31/V/1

His imagination, never flaccid, was caught up and whirled away by these men. He possessed no knowledge of them to give his Pegasus the clay feet of reality. His secret dreams of glory and achievement which place a curtain between him and the daily round found in them ample nourishment. Amongst them he would be an equal among equals, he would be given his rightful place as one who valued honesty even above advancement. His complete inability to cope with his own problems at Hickam sent his mind off to G Company, where he would undoubtedly conquer every problem.

There were, in reality, as many sunburned men ready to laugh or drink or fornicate at Hickam as anywhere else, but Slade did not know them; or if he did he was unable to make or keep their friendship. The very intensity of his desire to be one of them made it impossible for him to approach them or be accepted by them. The old group of recruits who had come over together had broken up and turned to various cláques. Their closeness born of being strangers together was gone. None of them had turned to the alternately too silent and too talkative Slade.

Slade was at that point that comes early to all visionaries: he was losing the ardor of youth and finding nothing to replace it. He had not yet learned to reconcile himself to loneliness.

Always a voracious reader to escape the classroom, home and pubescent desires, the frantic pull of *adulation* man, he was discovering now at the same time that he had been reading literature without knowing it. He was beginning to take note of authors' names, discovering in surprise that here were men who had suffered the same thing he suffer-

32/VII

ed. It was a great discovery, for it proved forever that he was no
longer alone.

He came in off post one evening to be informed by the Sergeant
of the Guard that he was to report to the Orderly Room in the morn-
ing about his transfer. In that second the dreams were shot to
hell and he was facing the stark bare fact.

He went upstairs to the tiny guardhouse squadroom determined
to read, but he could not. He sat on his bunk with his finger
marking his place in Thomas Wolfe's YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN, and he
wondered if you really could. He had only discovered Wolfe a month
ago, and he had had to go into town and buy copies of all four of
his novels because the abortive library on the Field had nothing
of Wolfe. The wild testiculate surge of that man's yearning pound-
ed with a rhythm Slade recognized as his own. He had read the
books through one after the other, resentful of the time spent
eating, sleeping, and walking post.

He was reading on the last one now, and he had reached the
point where the letters had begun to come in from the citizens of
Libya Hill damning George Webber's book. As he read, he burned
with a hate for the Libya Hill citizens that was greater than their
hate for Webber, and he wondered what the end would be for the
great man who had guts enough to speak the truth.

But he already knew. Some time back he had read the ending,
the long letter to Foxhall Edwards, the summation of Wolfe's life.
And to Slade the sum of it had been the statement: _We are lost_

33/VII

here in America. The sentence blazed before his mind. And there was an answer there. Slade agreed. John Slade, aged nineteen, fervently concurred. He sat on his bunk, the book closed in his hand, his finger marking the place, and stared at the title on the binding. There was a crap game going on one of the bunks and on another three off duty sentries played cassino because they were broke. Slade lit a cigaret and stared down at the book. He forgot to puff and the cigaret went out. It dangled from his lip unnoticed. His mother wouldn't like it because the Infantry was obviously crude; you didn't have to be/a gradeschool graduate, let alone highschool, to get in the Infantry.

And his father had wanted him to learn a trade, was bent on him learning a trade. No specific plans. Just trade, he wrote, any trade. Maybe I can be a cop when I get out.

the book down

Slade put his hand on his hip and went outside. He couldn't read, not with the transfer/coming up tomorrow. Tomorrow was the day. He had already been to Schofield; he had seen Capt Holmes and got a letter of permission. But he hadn't seen that first sergeant. It was indeed the CQ who had taken him in to see Holmes. Slade was disappointed.

It was funny how that first sergeant seemed to stick in his head.

Slade stood alone in the dark, looking across at the barracks lights. Music and shouts came to him faintly. He would have to decide definitely before tomorrow.

There would be war. Everybody knew there would be war. There

34/V||

already was war, and it was only a matter of time until we got in.

The Infantry was the place to die. Men died in the Air Corps,
too, of course, but . . .

Leaning against a post, he looked up in the sky, as if expect-
ing help there. There were no clouds. The big dipper hung low
on the eastern horizon, its handle lost behind the curve of the
earth. He felt a surge of power through his arm, immeless, in-
vincible. Yet if he worked that arm only half as hard as some men
worked theirs it would be weak and useless. But now the power
was there. How could a man measure his good right arm, except by
the fallible brain?

And suddenly Slade knew from somewhere that if he went he
would die. And because of that very reason he knew he must go. It
was such a simple thing, and such an impossible one: safe, secure,
with a full belly and an undramatic bed waiting--and a man could
make up his mind so that in some future time he would bring about
his own destruction; and then go to bed and sleep. It was laugh-
able.

He could get a clerking job if he stayed; he could probably
keep himself out of it and safe. It wouldn't last forever. Yet
that was not his way. His was the path of the wild, of the reckless
cast of the die flung out with a curse. His was the way of those
who said fuck it let it come. Because in that path lay the only
route to life. The others were the living dead.

Tomorrow he would put it through. Because you can't go home

nqm

35/VII

again, because we were lost here in America, because there was some-
thing more to life than guarding it.

As he walked back to the guardhouse he saw himself throwing
away a young life full of promise, tossing it gallantly upon death's
craptable. He wanted to cry.

In the end when Slade comes back to the Company after being wound-
ed, Warden badgers and sneers and ridicules him for coming back.

Finally Warden browbeats him into going again, this time on a
pretext; and as Slade leaves he remembers Tom Wolfe's letter to
Fox: "I believe we are lost here in America, but I believe we
shall be found." And he suddenly realizes the truth of the latter
half of that statement which he had ignored before. And he knows
that we are lost in the mass, in the collective; but it is in the
individual that we shall be found. He knows that old saw: Humani-
tarians and philanthropists love people in the mass, while "I"
yet hate them in the mass; and/love each individual whom "I" get to know.

Thus, it is in the mass that we are lost, and in the individual who
is never all evil that we shall be found. He see this in Warden,
who will snear at Prewitt and who will laugh at an idealist coming
back again, and who will even by pressure force the idealist to
leave once more, for good--yet will stay himself, even though he
is half-dead with malaria. And Slade vows that he will dedicate
himself to this hope, this creed, this faith; of the individual
Warden and the individual Prewitt, in which our salvation lies.

1

Prewitt was sitting in the dayroom reading a six months old magazine when the deafening roar and clatter of a motorcycle approachwildly down the street and stopped in front of the barraks.

It distracted his attention and he threw the magazine down on the seat beside him disgustedly. He had been reading the advertisements. It was a "slick" magazine, and many of the ads were in color. He went through the magazine from front to back, looking at the ads. Most of them had women in them and these were what he was looking for. The colored ads were the best for reality in picturing the women, but on the other hand they usually put a few more clothes on them than the line drawing ads. The line drawing ads with the slightly oversized breasts and the collection of wrinkles around the crotch (most of them were in shorts) stimulated his imagination more.

He was disgusted at himself rather than the interruption, because he did not have the money for a trip over to Big Sue's in Wahiawa, let alone town, and he was only getting himself hot for no purpose. He was flat broke, and he hated to borrow money from O'Hayer or Turp Thornhill at twenty percent. It offended his sense of justice. He found himself thinking of Violet. He had been down to the Service Rooms last payday, but paying a woman money to go to bed with you and then being rushed to make room for the next man was not as satisfying as taking your time with a woman who did it either because she liked you or else liked it. It made a hell ov a difference. He had been intending to save back enough money to go down-

2/

town in mid-month when the whorehouses were not crowded and they
didn't rush you so much. But somehow he never had any of his
twenty-one bucks left a week after payday, and he had not made a
killing in the sheds for months.

Irresistably the magazine drew him back. Two of the pictures
he liked better than the others. One was a color drawing advertiz-
ing a Buick. There were two women in it and a sharply dressed man.
One of the women had on shorts and a two piece halter that crossed
on her chest like the bandeliers in the Bugle Corps. They didn't
reveal very much but that was the trick to it. In colored shadow
the ad hinted at the heavy voluptuous swelling underneath the
cloth. Prewitt stared at it for a long time.

The other was a line drawing. It was a little ad advertizing
an armpit deoderant. Not very expensive. The double line of the
brassiere seemed about to burst under the pressure of the perfect
swelling breasts. Half circles and dots hinted at rubbery red
nipples beneath it. The tiny pants were drawn up tightly around
her crotch, making a fan of wrinkles forming the v of her secret.
The clothes really made no difference. If the artist had left out
half a dozen lines it would have been a nude. Yet Prewitt found
himself staring and staring, trying vainly to penetrate beneath the
plane attire to the plane figure beneath as if it were three-dimen-
sional. Funny how just a few pencil lines adroitly arranged could
suggest the swelling, pulsating life of a lovely woman.

It made him angry, yet he could not put the magazine down. He

3/

was mad that some son of a bitch had put these pictures there for
they
him to look at and get hot over, that he had not left the clothes
off entirely so he would not rupture his eyes trying to see beneath
them, that he could not have these women here and now on the day-
room floor. He had looked at the stories in the magazine, but he
read no more than a few words. Why didn't they publish pictures
like this and then put such pale, gooey, lifeless stories beside
them? Why not publish the kind of stories that went with the pic-
tures? Good old out and out pornography like Karelsen's books,
so a man could read and enjoy them?

And that son of a bitch in his tweed suit, standing beside
his Buick, preening before his whores. If he didn't have the money
and the Buick, he wouldn't have the women. Prewitt hated the
handsome, smiling playboy. A man got so goddamned hungry for a
woman's soft flesh in the army. They shouldn't put these ads in
the magazines they sold the army. It was enough to make a man ru
amuk almost.

But that line drawing. He could feel his hands begin to sweat
and the muscles along the inside of his thighs began to tremble. In
That woman was too good to be true. No woman ever lived with tits
and an ass like that. Maybe/why it was more appealing than the
colored photographs. He was still staring at the line drawing when
Pvt Sussman came in the dayroom door.

Sussman was wearing boots laced to the knee and britches. He
had on his white twill cap and the big goggles padded with thick
rubber. Around his waist was an elaborately tooled kidney belt of

4/

thick leather embossed with stainless steel caps and disks. A
cigaret stuck up out of his mouth at the happy angle of President
Roosevelt's but without the holder. His eyes glittered hotly as if
he were drunk.

"Hey, Prew," he called. "I been lookin for you. Want a go
for a ride on my bike?"

Prewitt was released from his spell. He threw down the maga-
zine and breathed deeply, feeling his guts writhe like a dying
snake. He put his hand in his pocket and reached surreptitiously ad-
justed himself before he got up.

"Sure," he said. "I'm dyin around this rathole. Where you
goin?"

"I found a new road I aint been on," Sussman grinned. "Its
blacktop too. I thought Id make a night run and see where it comes
out. I thought there wasnt a road on this goddam Rock I didnt know.
You want a go?"

"Sure," Prewitt said. "Sure Ill go." He had never been riding
with Sussman before. "How come you asked me?"

"I dont know," Sussman grinned brilliantly. "Just thought
about you. Howd you make out in the sheds the other night?"

"Im broke," Prewitt declared bluntly. "I cant even buy a
gallon of gas."

"Oh, well. I thought maybe you had enough dough to buy some
beer after we make the road. I borrowed enough off of Warden for
a full tank of gas. Come on along anyway. Only we wont be able to

5/

do nothin but ride."

"Marden!" Prewitt echoed.

"Yeah. Aint that funny? I just hit him up on a hunch. I
cant afford to pay no twenty percent. And he forked right over."

Prewitt shook his head wonderingly.

"Come on, dets go," Sussman urged. "I got a extra helmet and
goggles out in the saddlebags. Maybe I can find a gok who wants
a ride bad enough to pay for some beer."

"Okay," Prewitt said. They went out into the quiet refractive
night. The sky was clear as crystal. Sussman started the motor-
cycle and they roared down the street, over to Wianaie and out the
Main Gate in front of the library. Sussman wound his swift way
in and out of the outgoing traffic like a broken field runner. They
took off north outside the gate.

"When you gonna get this goddam thing paid for?" Prewitt
shouted. His hands were hooked in Sussman's belt, the back of the
long tongued, fleece covered single seat supporting his back. The
road was a conveyor belt run amuk as they shot up and down the
curving hills. The wind blew the helmet out from his ears and
roared against his eardrums with a wild exstacy. The speedometer
read 60, but they seemed to be going much faster because there
were no sidewall protections like on a car.

"Hell," Sussman shouted back. "I'll never get it paid off.
I'll have to go back to the States and leave it here. If I hadn't
won some dough and paid two hunderd down, theyd never let me have

6/

it. I only got to pay fifteen bucks a month." Sussman paused reflectively as they shot around a car.

Fifteen buck out of twenty-one, Prewitt thought. That would leave him four and a half a month with a buck and a half off for laundry, not counting cigarets. Every cent of Sussman's money was scrupulously saved for his motor. Out of that four and a half he had outfitted himself with the accessories like the belt, the best he could buy in Honolulu.

"I been thinkin serious of reenlistin here," Sussman said. "I'll get the bonus, and then pay this out. Then I can ship it back with me after this extra hitch. Three years is a long time, but this heres a good baby."

Prewitt felt slightly awed in the presence of such devotion. "What if you crack up and have to pay for repairs?"

"I aint yet," Sussman said. He let go of the handbar with one hand to knock on his head. "Im pretty careful. I take chances. It wouldnt be fun if you didnt. But I been lucky so far."

The slender twowheeled monstor roared through the night, its Cyclopean eye peering this way and that as they rounded the curves. On the curves the machine seemed to lean delicately over until Prewitt wanted to draw his knee in to keep it from rubbing the pebbly black bathmat of road. They shot over the hump of a little culvert at seventy and the wheels seemed to leave the ground completely. Prewitt felt a wild crazy desire to shout, to whoop at the top of his lungs. He did and the wind pored down into his lungs,

77

almost strangling him.

"This is the stuff, aint it?" Sussman answered the yell. "Boy, theres nothin like it. This really gets the wahines; they really go nuts over a motor."

"How the hell can you afford a woman?" Prewitt yelled.

¶ "I dont have to," Sussman yelled back. "They afford me. I dont have to even pay for the drinks. I tell ya, these black gals go nuts over a motor. Most of them got their own hats and glasses, even without a motor. Thats why I carry this extra set. Sometimes I run onto one who aint got her own. Christ, theyll buy you anything just to go out for a night ride. And lay em. They love it. Theyy wild after they been ridin."

They rode on, tearing the heart out of the wind at every foot. The headlight rose lightly over hill and fell swoopingly into valley. Sussman took wild chances, yet never was the machine out from under his control. Once they passed a car upgrade and another crested the hill at the same moment. Sussman jammed the accelerator down and flitted lithely in and out and between the passing cars like a shuttle through a loom. To Prewitt it looked as if he could

He was not frightened, neither did he want to slow. He have touched the coming car with his elbow. Prewitt wanted to go on, take bigger chances yet, force himself down and mPrewitt laughed in the teeth of the wind. fate's throat. He

They turned right at Haleiwa and they went right past Violet's house. There were lights burning, in it. Prewitt was untouched. To hell with Violet. The wind was his friend. The wind tickled him and roared with laughter at him, tried teasingly to hold him back.

8/

The wildness rose up from his loins to his heart, to his brain.

There was no world, no women. There was only beady-eyed stars
watching him enviously, and the buxom kiss of the wind.

Sussman slowed when they came to the new road. "Now I figure
this will bring us out someplace near Kahuka. We'll stop at that
bar, you know? and see if their aint a gook wholl buy some beer for
a ride."

"You ought to see me take that road out to Peark from town,"
Sussman said as they swung off into the new road. "I got a Wahine
lives right in front of the Main Gate at Hickam. Boy, I thread
that road like a needle, I mean. Scares them card drivers half to
death."