1

Bloom's dog was being heckled.

There are always innumerable stray dogs around an army post.
Men who are starved for affection can pet dogs as substitutes to
appease this hunger without fear of ridicule. A dog never goes
hungry on an army post.

Bloom had found his dog at the Post Beergarden and brought
her home with him. She was a poor starved little mongrel bitch
that carried her tail perpetually between her legs. Bloom named
her "Lady" and religiously begged scraps from the cooks three
times a day for her food. Lady was completely devoid of any
sense of her military obligation, and it was a delight to her
the deriders of Bloom to see him bellow and curse and threaten
Lady as she meekly with her tail tucked between her legs tried
to follow him out to drill or fatigue.

"Must be a virgin the way she keeps that thing covered up.
Reminds me of a girl I knew once," was Warden's comment. "When
she wasn't sittin on it, she walked with her legs so close to-
gether you couldn't stick a bayonet between them/" flatways."

Prewitt turned into the company lawn from the quad street
to see a crowd gathered on the grass. A big police dog from
F Company was circling around the captured Lady. Sergeant Hender-
son, caretaker of Holmes's polo ponies, was on his knees holding
Lady's front legs. His sidekick, Sergeant Wilson, the fighter,
was trying to hold her squirming midsection and at the same time
coax the police dog to mount her, between gasps of laughter.

The police dog was willing, but he was too tall for her.

2/

Lady could have stood up at full height under his belly without touching him. While the police dog sniffed and lapped around excitedly, Wilson held Lady's hindquarters up until her back feet were several inches off the ground, to make it easier for the bag dog.

"Hell," Henderson grinned up at one of the onlookers who was talking to him. "I was in Fort Sam, there was an old sargint dawg used to take his old bird dawg into San Antone once every two weeks to get him laid. A bunch of us would git drunk up and go in to watch. This who charge him five bucks fer the dawg and two bucks from each guy who wanted to watch."

"That son of a bitch, Bloom," said Wilson between struggles with Lady's hindquarters. "He'll be surprised as hell when Lady had a litter of police dawgs on his pillow."

The terror-stricken little bitch squirmed frantically in the grasp of her two tormentors. The crowd of men hemming her in and the loud guffaws of laughter probably frightened her more than the prospect of being mounted. She looked up at Henderson and Wilson with large beseeching eyes, then around the circle as if looking for aid or some loophole of escape. Being mounted was natural enough when mmh the smells and urge of rut pulsed through her, but being held and forced when desire was absent was a refinement her simple mind could not understand--any more than it abstinence could understand enforced mmh when in heat. She could feel the male hatred of the female in the laughter about her, and it increased her fear of being hurt because it was incomprehensible.

3

Prewitt shoved his way roughly through the crowd. The heel of his palm caught Henderson on the shoulder and threw him off balance. Henderson released his hold to catch himself as he fell, and Lady, her forefeet free, squirmed free from Wilson's grasp and scuttled off across the quadrangle, the police dog hot on her heels. She turned once and snarled, nipped him in the shoulder. After that he followed at a distance.

"What the hell'd you do that for?" Henderson wanted to know.

## Because I'm a man

Prewitt stared down at him impassively. "Because I don't like to see a son of a bitch be any more of a son of a bitch than he is."

"Quite a hero, ain't you?" Henderson sneered. He leaned on his elbow indolently in the grass, his right hand in his pocket. He held his long thin crafty homosexual's face expressionless all the viciousness that was in him."

Henderson's Prewitt looked at his hand in his pocket. "You pull that knife on me and I'll kill you, you bastard," he said tonelessly.

Wilson, the fighter, the sullen, impassible, always unmoved "ring killer," walked around and helped his boyfriend up from the grass. "Come on, Tom," he said soothingly. He held Henderson by his right arm and pulled him toward the barracks.

"You'll go to far someday, Prewitt," Henderson screamed, "and I'll cut your frigging heart out."

"Shut up, Tom," commanded Wilson, and Henderson submissively became quiet.

"You better learn to use your head, Prewitt," Wilson said coolly. "They aint many people round here like you the way it is."

4

Someday you'll find yourself in a lot of trouble you can't get
out of."

Wilson led the redfaced trembling Henderson inside to the
dayroom, patting him on the shoulder.

Prewitt watched them go silently, feeling the deeper meaning
of Wilson's remark run through him like a shock. No man, however
independent he might be, ~~muttermutter~~ wanted to be told he was not
well-liked by the men he had to live with.

Around him the crowd began to break up, and he could feel
their resentful eyes turned on him, disappointed at having their
fun spoiled. He thought he could detect a look of understanding
for him on the faces of several, but his pride would not let him
make overtures of conversation to any of them. He envied the
men like Maggio and the new recruit, McGourty, who could move
~~become a part of it~~ among a group of men and ~~meet them on their own ground~~ without
coming into conflict with their own integrity. He could not do
it.

As the crowd gradually disbanded and went about its various
pursuits, Prewitt stood alone and silent, his eyes fixed on the
wall in front of him. Deliberately, he waited until he alone was
left. Then he walked ~~alone~~ over to the Post Beergarden and stood
at the U-shaped bar, ordered a beer from the joyous-faced, always
laughing Kanaka boy, Dave Kaliponi.

"Six beer for six queer!" Dave announced with a rich laugh,
coming up with an armload of bottles. "What you so glum for,
Prew, eh?"

Prewitt winked. "Hangover," he said. Dave had told him how

5

he got his last name: because his grandfather had been one of the
first natives to sail to California. Kaliponi was California in
Hawaiian, which had no "r" or "f." A title of honor that had
grown through the years to be a common surname. He looked at
Dave laughing behind the bar.

What it amounted to, if you wanted to be part of any group of
men, was that you had to exchange your set of values for those of
the group. You couldn't disagree with them. There were times
when the mere thought of the human race made him sick to his
everybody
stomach. A man who had to fight/all his life in order to live
together
should have learned kindness and mercy. People who suffered/ought
to become comrades. Prewitt had seen it work out just the oppo-
site too often not to be cynical. Cruelty made the victims cruel.
Oppression made the oppressed desire to become oppressors.

It was a world going swiftly to hell any way you looked at it.
Men who longed for peace and a home somewhere, threatening to kill
each other over a little bitch dog! And actually meaning it. It
was silly, but that didn't make it less dangerous. And nowhere
could a man find peace.

Prewitt shook off the thought and drank his beer. Nine years
of loneliness
as a bum in the United States of America had taught him there are
things you must not let yourself think about. You must not go too
deep.

Night insects buzzed relentlessly against the lights over
the hell outdoor bar.

"Four beer for four queer!" Dave called laughingly. It was
his pet witticism.

1

Prewitt entered the messhall a little late and found a vacant
seat.

Sgt Henderson occupied the corporal's seat at the head of the
table, and Sgt Wilson was in the end seat on his right. Prewitt
would have preferred a different table, but the only other vacan-
cies in sight were at the sergeant's table up front, where only
S/Sgt Dhom, Ike Gallowitz, and Turp Thornhill were availing them-
selves of their privileged status.

Stolidly forcing himself to accept this situation, Prewitt
slid onto the four-legged stool and bent his head, not from any
lack of ease, but in the same way all the other heads were bent,
in silent benediction to the Great God Chow. In the temple of the
messhall, at the alter of the oilcloth-covered table, the univer-
sals of Good and Evil took a back seat to the first principle of
staying alive, of respect for the belly. These were men who could
understand such worship, for most of them had had experience with
an unreasonable god who demanded food when there was none.

The jaws of the heads moved silently and jerkily, as if the
priests were talling their beads.

"Pass the Willy." Prewitt reached for the beef platter without looking up or stopping eating.

"They aint kilt this cow yet, I think."

"Skid grease, please; skid grease comin down." Prewitt accept-
ed the butter from the next man, neither of them giving it a
blance, and passed it on.

"Meow. Meow. Canned cow down." The tin of condensed milk

2

made its way along the table without interrupting the man meditation of the bent heads or the catachism of the moving jaws.

As the platters and dishes were emptied, the interest became twofold, and there was a good bit of conversation about a forthcoming firing problem at the combat range, a falsefront village. First one man, then another rose and left behind him a vacant stool, until only a few were lest still eating or talking over cigarets and coffee.

"Hey, Prewitt," Bloom was sitting at the lower end of the table. He rose and moved his coffee mug up to the stool opposite Prewitt. "Hey, Prewitt!"

Prewitt looked up from the last bit of food on his plate reluctantly. With a kind of spasmodic clarity, the way a waking man recognizes his room, he noticed he was the only one still eating, that a group at the lower end were still discussing the coming problem, that Henderson and Wilson still sat alone at the head.

Bloom was looking at him with his face screwed up in that typical, peculiar way.

"Thanks for takin' care of my dawg when I was gone, Prewitt," Bloom hollered.

"All right," Prewitt said. He inspected his last bite of beef and put it in his mouth. He chewed on it.

Bloom watched Stark come in from the kitchen and go to the sergeant's table for coffee, a butt and conversation, as was his habit at the end of each meal. Stark's undershirt was soaked with sweat; sweat glistened from his chunky arms and shoulders, dripped from him the hair of his armpits.

3

"I always say," Bloom hollered, as if he were still at the end of the table, "that you can tell what kind of man a man is by the way he treats your pets."

It sounded so laughably platitudinous Prewitt had to remind Bloom was himself sincere. It was strange the antipathy some people could creat in you, without any apparent reason. Bloom was like a huge malodorous mastiff, ugly as sin, but bubbling over with friendliness and smothering you under wet and hairy caresses. Prewitt watched Bloom curiously. Bloom was watching Stark come in from the kitchen and go to the sergeants' table for coffee, a butt and conversation, as was his habit at the end of each meal. Stark's undershirt was soaked with sweat; sweat glistened from his arms and shoulders, dripped from the hair of his arms pits.

"Here," Bloom hollered suddenly, having pondered. He seized the metal coffee pitcher and refilled Prewitt's cup. "A man can always tell who his friends is," he looked pointedly at Henderson and Wilson. They were grinning.

"It's strange," Henderson said to Wilson, "how hard up the army is gettin. I can't remember they ever used to take the queer characters and punks they do now."

Wilson grinned sourly and grunted, his usual rejoiner to any remark.

Prewitt gave them a glance that was unimpressed. He had been Inside as long as either of them, and service held no fascination for him.

"I'll buy you a beer," Bloom said. "Soon's you're done. Go

4

over to the Post Beergarden."

"No thanks," Prewitt said. "I can't make it." He tried to make it as easy as he could. He tried to finish eating. He didn't want to make a human symbol of a stray bitch dog. He didn't want Bloom and he didn't want the other two. Why was he forced to choose between them, as if there was no other choice? All he wanted was to eat his goddam food, in peace.

In point of fact, he felt a prediliction for both Henderson and Wilson. In spite of the homosexual rumors about them, and in spite of Henderson's obvious feminine viciousness. Whatever else they were, they were real; they knew reality. That was the most important thing in a man: whether he was real, or whether he lied to himself. Did this prediliction of which he was vaguely ashamed make him a homo? Hell, no; but that was as sensible a question to ask as love my dog, love me. Wilson and Henderson were real enough they could be hated, coldly, implacably; but Bloom wasn't even real enough to inspire hate.

"I really appreciate you takin care of my dawg," Bloom said, anxious to show his appreciation.

Prewitt laid down his fork. "I would have done the same for any dog, Bloom. I just don't like to see some son of a bitch torment a goddam dog. Any dog. That's all there was to it. I don't give a damn whose dog it was." What a silly goddam thing to be arguing about.

"Okay. Okay," Bloom said testily. "I guess I can take a hint. I'm not dumb."

The old song again: If you're not for us, you're against us.

1

Prewitt had not expected to get called on the carpet for the episode of Bloom's dog, but the moment his name was called over the abortive little loud speaker system, during the break between dinner and Fatigue Call, he knew what it was for.

He rose from his bunk and went downstairs to report, knocking before he entered the Orderly Room.

Prewitt, "I understand you threatened Sergeant Henderson," Capt Holmes said after he had given Prewitt *a look at his hands* At Ease.

"He had his hand in his pocket, Sir," Prewitt said, "and I told him not to draw his knife." It was funny how the tiniest, most insignificant episode could grow into alarming proportions. In a world so negligent of big things, it was strange how *meaningless things* much importance it attached to meaningless remarks. The Czechs no longer had a homeland; that was all right. But Pvt Prewitt had threatened Sgt Henderson, and the authority of the United States Army was in jeopardy. "I told him if he *drew* pulled his knife on me, I'd kill him," Prewitt added, so that Holmes could not accuse him of evasion. See middle page 2

"On the Outside, that kind of thing can get you a year in jail, Prewitt," Holmes said. "That's dangerous talk. What made you think Sgt Henderson was carrying a knife?"

"Sgt Henderson always carries his knife, Sir," Prewitt said wearily, without protest. "Everybody knows it." The men who didn't carry knives could be counted in the fingers of one hand. A man could no longer act *unlawfully* in accordance with his conscience without running afoul of the Law. *In* Before he could even speak, he must first take into account a thousand different things that

2

hinged, not upon right or wrong, but upon the Law and the person-
alities of those present. Prewitt had seen the bulldog face of
Sgt Gallowitz in the crowd; he should have guessed Holmes's former
furnace-tender would run to the Old Man.

"If you were not attacked," Holmes was saying, "you had no
occasion to suppose Sgt Henderson had a knife. And no matter
what your grounds, you have no authority to threaten a non-comm-
issioned officer, Prewitt. The army has a reason for all the
regulations it makes, Prewitt, even though it may not be visible
to you. Without those regulations there would be no army, and
when you violate them, you are injuring yourself just as much as
you injure anyone else."

"I didn't mean to frighten anybody, Sir," Prewitt said, hid-
ing his smile. "They were tormenting Bloom's dog . . ." He was
at a lost to define the viciousness that had lain in the loud
guffaws.

"The dog has nothing to do with it," Holmes said. "Nothing
Sgt Henderson could have done to a stray mongrel could warrent
your usurption of authority you are not entitled to. When you
deny the discipline laid down in the regulations, you are jeopard-
izing your own future authority when you get to be a non-com."

Sgt Warden sat at his desk, his interest buried in his own
work. It was plain he was having no part of this discussion.
Holmes continued on, elaborating his involved dialectic. Prewitt
looked at him. It was obvious that Holmes had missed the whole
point behind the episode, and if he had missed it, how could
Prewitt explain it to him--even if he weren't an officer? Prewitt
wondered vaguely what he actually would have done had Henderson

3

drawn his knife. He had said he would kill him; would he?

"I could very easily have you court martiallyed for this," Holmes said. "You could get six months for disrespect to a superior--to say nothing of the threat upon his life. I warned you what happened to fuckups in my company. You had better remember it.

"I'm going to let you off this time," Holmes decreed. "You've been doing well. You did splendidly on the Range this year, and you've earned your Pfc stripe. I hate to take it away from you. I'm going to confine you to quarters for one week and let it go this time. But there better not be any next time, Prewitt."

"Yes, sir," Prewitt said wearily.

"Sergeant, make a memo on that. Prewitt is confined to the Company Area for one week. . . . And that means the Company Area, Prewitt. Not Choy's, or the PX. The Company Area."

"Yes, Sir," Prewitt said, "Warden said in a muffled voice."

"Yes, Sir," Prewitt said.

On his way out he looked to see if Warden was grinning his pleasure, but the 1st/Sgt had not raised his head. He was still engrossed with the papers on his desk, and he was not grinning.

5

People were never able to leave you alone. In this world, a man could no longer do or believe anything, without first calculating who it would make him for and who against.

"I guess I know when I'm not wanted," Bloom stood up, collecting his plate and silverware in one hand, his cup in the other.

"You're the smart one," Bloom sneered. "To be pullin a superior act. If that aint a laugh. It's always the poor white trash that runs down the Jews. It's the only way they can be superior."

True enough, Prewitt thought. So now I'm anti-Semetic. He straightened up on his stool.

"Why don't you wise up, Bloom?" he said. "I aint got nothing against you but your loud mouth. That, and the fact you don't know your ass from third base."

Bloom laughed. "If that aint a laugh. Who the hell you think you are to go around bein aristocratic. Never been nothing but a goddam bum all your life. And never will be nothin else."

That's it. Nothin but a bum. A choice between a Harlan coal-miner and a bum. Which shell is the pea under, Friend? Pick it and win ten.

"Me and my dawg don't need your goddam help, you son of a bitch."

Prewitt went white. As he stood up, he picked up the handleless coffee mug and threw it. The heavy mug hit Bloom in the center of the forehead. Bloom blinked his eyes and frowned perpexedly. He set his cup and dishes carefully on the table. Prewitt's cup bounced onto the floor and rolled up unbroken, as unconcerned and impervious as Bloom. Bloom looked around him at the remaining eaters, ruminantly. Then he started around the table. Prewitt

6

went to meet him, around the grinning Henderson and Wilson.

Stark was between them before they met, the cigaret still
hanging from his unimpressible crooked mouth.

"None of that," Stark said in a brassy voice that overrode
the confusion. He blocked Prewitt off with his hip and grabbed
Bloom's arms. "Not in my messhall. . . .

"Get your dishes and go on outside," he told Bloom. "You,"
he said to Prewitt, "sit down and finish your coffee."

Both of them obeyed him. Prewitt felt a vast relief at the
rocklike imperishable quality of Stark's voice. The single moun-
tainpeak in a seething world.

"You aint heard the last of this," Bloom threatened.

"I hope not," Prewitt said.

"Nobody can hit me in the head with a cup and get away with
it," he hollered over his retreating shoulder.

"I'll hit you with worse than a cup the next time you fuck
with me. Just keep away from me, that's all." But Bloom was gone.
Wasted words and wasted energy. Born of the attempted seduction
of a stray mongrel bitch.

He got himself another cup and filled it, expecting to see the
dark liquid slosh over the trembling edge. He looked at his hand,
but it was steady; the trembling was in his veins inside. You
can't even tremble on the outside, he thought contemptuously. He
lit a cigaret that tasted dry as ashes.

"Well," said Henderson, "if the guys aint gettin rough. The
army's getting to tough for guys like us, Fred."

"I think when I reenlist," grinned Wilson, "I'll get in the

7

Salvation army."

"Shut up, you guys," Stark said. He still stood over the table with his fists on his hips. "If you want to pop off, outside."

"Yes, Sir, Sergeant, Sir," Henderson said.

"Listen, Henderson," Stark said. "I don't give a goddam what you do anyplace else, but in this messhall, you do like I say or you don't get in. And if you do, I'll throw you out. Anlo ponies or no polo ponies. And that goes for you, too, Wilson, lightweight champion or not."

"Yes, Sir, Sergeant, Sir," Henderson grinned. But both he and Wilson collected their dishes and left.

STARK STARED AFTER THEM REFLECTIVELY. "The worst kind of queer," Stark said under his breath, "is a mean queer. Just as soon cut your heart out as go down on you."

Prewitt dragged on the distastful cigaret and let Stark have the lead, willingly. He sipped lukewarm coffee and stared at the feeling foolish at trying to ceiling, knowing he wasn't going to act as if nothing had happened. And yet he couldn't help himself. Why couldn't he just of ignored Bloom, instead of making an ass of himself?

"Don't do a thing like that any more," Stark said. "Next time you won't be so lucky, and it'll cost you a dime for a busted cup."

Prewitt didn't feel like grinning. He only shook his head.

A man could learn a lot if he kept his eyes open. The point was next time you saw somebody tormenting a dog for a perverted laugh, keep your nose out and mind your own business. Only he wouldn't be able to do that. He never had, and he never would. He just couldn't do it.

1

At precisely nine the guard bugler made his way through the gleams of bleary darkness under the feeble yellow morning light to the big megaphone at the corner of the quad to sound Tattoo. The clear brusque notes belled out against the walled-in square. Further off the call was echoed in other quads. One by one invisible CQs flipped their light switches and the upper porches became dark, mute before the clear indictment.

The bugler picked his way back to the guardhouse through the moonless dark, watching rodent clouds that scampered between him and the stars searching for the lost green cheese. He clutch-ed his battered duty bugle under his arm, feeling strongly for a moment his responsibility and the awesome presence of many human lives.

Prewitt came downstairs softly in the darkness and stood for a while leaning against one of the concrete porch pillars, relish-ing the cool night air on his bare head. It was at times like these he loved the army most. Bugles were the spokesmen of the dogface.

A closed knot of men came from the dayroom and went upstairs, volubly arguing the merits of nationalities in whores: aint out a ree-croot drill

"Big Virginia? Hell, mack. You're still a kid you aint laid Big Virginia in the Honolulu Rooms." The recruit hadn't.

"Tits as big as medicine balls, and a ass as wide as Texas. Greasy as a pig. Somebody hit her between the legs with an ax when she was a papoose."

"Lissen: I know for a fack she got to wear a jockstrap to keep her guts from fallin' out."

"Yeah? Well, she'd be a sargint in this outfit then."

2/

Prewitt grinned at the antique legend; with a shackjob he could afford to. When the exodus from the dayroom quieted down he squatted on his hams with his back against the pillar. There was a wooden chair beside him but he preferred to squat. He had the porch to himself now and it would be quiet till the show let out. He unbuttoned his shirt to let the cook air get at his skin. The wind carried him a snatch of/song from Choy's.

When a man finishes up a hard day's work he did not like to do, he is more tired and in a different way. His will is tired from driving himself the harder, to relieve his sense of guilt. To him the evening is not the earned repose of satisfaction but the vacuum of escape. He needs to get by himself and lick his wounds. Sick dogs are smart.

immobility

He was settled into immobilization when a figure detached itself from the darkness and ambled up the walk, blotting out Choy's lighted window. Prewitt recognized the stooped shoulders and of Sgt Gallowitz. the big-kneed bigfooted walk. His reverie was broken and instinctively he moved a little.

Gallowitz jumped back and whirled, squinting through the darkness. "Who dat?" He moved his tiny squirrel-eared bullethead to the side/side and his big hands twitched at the ends of his long arms. "Who? dat? What you doin sittin there?"

"Prewitt."

Old Ike relaxed a little. "Oh," he said. "What you doin ott here? Tryin to scare some body?"

"Hell, no." Prewitt rolled a cigaret and the match lit up the porch in shadowed planes momentarily, exposing the grotesque figure of the sergeant. As the match died Prewitt knew a sudden pity for this lonely man who every night went to the movies, alone,

3/

and came home early, alone. He had to listen closely to catch
the meaning of the butchered English.

Gallowitz stood indecisively with one hand on the concrete
staircase. This was the new man he had been told to keep an
eye on. A queer one, too quiet, and a hardhead.

abruptly

"I been ta the show," Old Ike said. He sat down/in the
empty chair, taking off his hat, and sat stiffly silent.

"Yeah?" Prewitt dragged on his cigaret. "How was it?"

Aw

Ike nodded vaguely. "I think right, I guess. I lef' early."

He stopped abruptly and sat stiffly, holding his hat on his
knees.

Prewitt looked up and hat to grin. Ike looked like one of
those old-fashioned tintype pictures. He sensed embarrassment
in the old man and extended a wave of sympathetic interest.

"Lissen," Ike said suddenly. "You tink it be awright I
took my tie off? I goin to bed pret' soon anyway."

"Sure," Prewitt drawled. "What the hell? I aint got none
on either. NoMPs around here."

"I know," Ike said, "but a man in my position got to set
example." He leaned over to peer at Prewitt's shirt in the
darkness. "A man in my position got to be careful," he said.
"No tellin who come around and try to turn me in. Git me bust."
Only when he had staisfied himself that Prewitt's tie was missing
did he begin to take off his own.

Prewitt screwed up his forehead thoughtfully. From Choy's
drifted a resonant tenor singing about four whores came down from
Canada. "How come you never go out with none of the guys, Ike?"

"Who? Me?" Ike said. The shot question befuddled him and he

4/

moved his hand vaguely as if wiping cobwebs from before his face.
"Nobody ask me. Beside, them always talkin about gettin me drunk
and takin me over the hill. Get me bust."

Prewitt ran his tongue over his teeth. "They just kiddin
you, Ike."

Old Ike became agitated. "Oh, no," he said. "They want to
git me bust. They don't like it 'cause The-Compny-Cmander are my
empty
good friend." Nervously Gallowitz looked up and down the/porch,
then left the chair and squatted on his hams beside Prewitt. He
leaned over and spoke secretly: "Lissen, boy. I am tole you
was a bad one. Tole to watch you. But I like you, boy. I
watch you drill: you a damn good soljer. I goin tell you suthin.

"Why you tink I am sargint, hah? You tink me 'cause I use
to be The-Compny-Cmander's orderly at Bliss? Naw. You tink
The-Compny-Cmander make me sargint if I wasn't good soljer? Naw
he do
he dont. For what reason would he that? You seen me give my
Close-Order-Drill."

Prewitt moved back to escape the old man's fetid breath. He
could not figure why 'Dynamite' would make Ike a sergeant either.
Dhom he could see, and Wilson, and maybe even Henderson. But not
Ike. He had seen too many samples of Ike's ability as a soldier.
Nobody could possibly rationalize Ike into a Sgt York.

"You're a good man, Ike," he lied.
Goddam right

"Goddam goddam" he nodded his roached head urgently. "Else
why am I a sargint, hah? Man dont git to be sargint he aint got
it on the ball. You know dat. But these other guys: all a time
actin lak I aint good soljer; tryin to git me bust." He
paused. "But they cant. Not in this country. You know, we all

5/

very lucky. United States is fine country. You take me. I
come from Jugoslavia. Bad there."

"How?" Prewitt asked. "You mean Nazis and stuff like that?"

Old Ike shook his head vaguely and did not answer. "United
States fine country," he said presently. "You take me. I got
sister in New Yawk, with three kids. She sew piecework for a
livin. She got to stay in take care of kids, an she cant talk
Anglish so she cant work. Don't make enough to eat. I send her
my money, ever' month. She come to this country with me. Her
and kids. Now I a sargint already in U.S. Army. What she do if
I get bust, hah?"

Prewitt rolled himself a cigaret and said softly, "How much
you send her, Ike?"

"All but eight dollar, ever' month," Ike said proudly. Then
he remembered his text: "You want to watch out for these guys,
'specially Warden. He is mean, that one. He is a devil. He
been tryin to get me bust ever since he come here. The-Compny-
Cmander dint know how good a soljer Old Ike is Warden would have
me bust already."

Ike hitched his buttocks nearer to Prewitt over the dirty
floor leaving a clean streak in the darkness. "Lissen, boy," he
buttered. You a good soljer an I lak you. I goin a give you a
advice: you gettin off to bad start in this Compny. The-Compny-
Cmander is a fine man. You shouldn't of turn him down when he
ask to be on his boxing squad."

Prewitt felt his neck stiffen automaticaly and forced it to
relax. "Yeah? Thats what Warden dole me."

"Bah," Old Ike spluttered. "Dont listen to that man. He'll
screw you. You listen ta men. I give you straight dope, boy.

6/

The-Compny-Cmander is a fine man. He been my frien' for long
'tim
time. Here is what you do: go see him and tell 'im you change
your mind, you decide you fight nex' year. See? Don' wait till
boxing season. He see you got it on the ball, he treat you right.
But you got to treat him right first: that's natural: 'cause he
The-Compny-Cmander. Then he give you that bugler job till they
is a noncom rating open."

"Are you talkin for 'Dynamite' or for yourself?" Prewitt said.

"I talkin for me; The-Compny-Cmander don' say nothin' to me."

"Sposin I dont want a fight?" And sposin I dont want that bugler's job?" That was the whole thing. He could still get Anderson's job if he wanted it. It was one way to escape Ike's Close Order Drills, anyway. If he didn't know Anderson, it might be different, but even then he doubted if he'd do it. It was sneakin'.

"You use to be a fighter, din' you?" Ike said. "But I bet you din' get no ratin' on it. Here would get a corporal anyway."

"I dint get no ratin'. I done it 'cause I thought I'd like it. But I found out I dint like it. Gettin in a ring and beatin up some stranger aint no fun. Its downright silly when you aint got no reason to be mad at him. Besides, you can git punchy. A guy in my old outfit went loony that way. One day he got down on his hands and knees and started barkin like a dog. And he wouldnt get up. They had to take him to the nut ward."

"Whats a matter?" Ike sneered. "You seared, boy? Fightin' makes a man out of a boy. I wasn't so old I go out myself for the squad."

Prewitt licked his thin lips purposefully with his tongue.
"You ever do any fightin?"

7/

"No, but I could." Ike was suddenly possessed by a picture of himself in trunks and gloves. It was not really him, at least it was not his body. It was him, but he was in O'Hayer's body--big and broad-shouldered, longlegged and coldly competent, the way O'Hayer looked when he took off his robe. "By God," he said, "why, I'd go out right now if they'd let me." Thats what you ought a do, boy. You got suthin, you silly not to use it."

Prewitt rose from his hams and walked over to the red pipe red where the/firebuckets hung. He leaned his elbows on it and stared across the quad at the lighted sallyport and Choy's single window.

"I met a lot a guys like you," he said. "You see somebody else do suthin you aint done and you think its wonderful. You see other guys on the gravytrain and you figure you got a right to git on and ride too. And maybe you have. You got to do what you got to do, and I got to do what I got to do. I cant take some guy's job who never done me no harm; and I cant take a soljerin ratin for fightin instead of soljerin. Maybe sometimes I like to, but I cant. Id be ashamed a myself. If They dont like it, They kin shove it Their ass."

"Yeah?" Ike said angrily. "Ashamed of what? I aint ashamed of nothin. If I wasn' a good soljer, you think The-Compny?Commander 'd make me a sargint? Look at Bloom: He a good soljer, but he wouldn' git nowheres if he wasn' fightin."

Prewitt turned so stare at him through the darkness and Ike had to drop his eyes. He ran his hand over the regulation haircut he was so proud of. Prewitt's steady stare made him mad. Not because Prewitt was right, but because he was wrong. He had no right to stare like he was right when he was wrong. He shouldn't

8

even be able to.

"A man got to look out for himself, goddam it," Ike said.
"If he dont, no other son of a bitch will. If a good soljer got
to play ball to git along, then he got to."

"Bloom aint no soljer," Prewitt said contemptuously. "Bloom
stinks. He couldnt even soljer with the Boy Scouts."

Ike felt his own soldiering was somehow being condemned.
"Well, by God, Im a good soljer," he cried. "Im a good soljer or
I wouldnt be a sargint."

"I dint say you wasnt, did I?" Prewitt said quietly.

Ike felt dimly that he had somehow trapped himself. He
opened his mouth to go on but closed it as he heard man with foot-
His tiny head
steps coming up the walk. man darted to see who it was
and man watched Pete Karelsen, Sgt of the Weapons Platoon, emerge
from the gloom. Karelsen was drunk.

"Who's a good soljer?" he demanded loudly. "By Christ, you
all fuckups for my money. Now, in the old army it was differnt."
He turned his head to peer owlishly at the two men, but his vic-
ious merry eyes took in every detail with calculated thought. His
and tie were
hat was gone, his shirttail hanging loose and his fly unbuttoned,
but his beautifully textured white hair was as smooth as always.
His body was shaped like one of those Humpty-Dumpty dolls that
cant be pushed over, big in the butt and narrow in the shoulders,
and set on sturdy beefy legs. As he sat down on the chair he
carefully smoothed his white silky hair, although it didn't need it.

"Hello, 'Pop,' Ike said carefully. His voice was almost faun-
ing. Only a few men in the Company had rank enough and time
enough to calk Karelsen Pete. Ike was one of those who had to
call him Pop. "I been tellin this boy here he is a good soljer,

9/

but he gonna git in trouble he don't watch out."

Karelseon loblled drunkenly in the chair, but his bright eyes watched Ike's face. "Who's that?" he said. "Prewitt? Sure, that's Prewitt. Hello there, Prewitt. How you do it?"

Karelsen laughed drunkenly, but Prewitt sensed he had known him and who he was from the first. "Hello, Pop," he said.

"I been tellin 'im," Ike guttered, "The-Compny-Cmander is a fine man."

Thass said.

"I think right," Karelsen thought. He sat up straighter.

"Irrevocably right, Ike." His face underwent a subtle change and gradually assumed the look of false wisdom that was his usual expression, but now he was just drunk enough that it appeared as a burlesque.

Ike stood up and took out his sack of tobacco. "I been tellin 'im," he guttered on, "that it are his duty to fight for The-Compny-Cmander, since he is a fighter. The-Compny-Cmander is a fine man, and he be a friend to any man do him right. Aint that right, Pop?"

Karelsen nodded sagely. "I have never served under a better officer, not in all my twenty-two years service. I was a sergeant when he came here, but I'm glad I got to serve under him."

"There, you see?" Ike turned eagerly to Prewitt who still leaned against the rail. "What I tell you? The-Captain-Holmes don't have no soljers but good soljers."

"You're a good man, Ike," Prewitt said. "You'll make a good topkicker someday." Karelsen's eyes flickered briefly to Prewitt and back to Ike.

Ike scratched his brush of hair. "No," he said thoughtfully. "I got as far as I ever go. I aint got the brains for to be

10/

no topkicker. I just be a sargint."

Prewitt wet his finger and slipped a cigaret paper from
his sheaf. He kept his eyes lowered to pour the tobacco, feeling
ashamed of his unappreciated sarcasm. As if to make amends, he
told Ike what he had been thinking about before Ike came up. It
was the listening to the breathing of the sleeping men around the
quad. The soft warm sound had seemed to hover low over his
head. There was some power in the breathing of all the sleep-
ing men that drew him. Men were so trustful when they slept.

"My mother use to make handwover coverlets and sell them to rich dames from up North. Tourists. She cared the wodl and spun it herself. Took her a whole year to make one. Sometimes when the mine was out, that was what kept us eatin." He licked his cigaret eftly and lit it.

"Sometimes, I feel like the whole goddam world is one of them goddam coverlets, see? and each man is a thread, all woven together to make the coverlet. Any time a thread breaks, the coverlet is that much worse. If too many threads break, the coverlet is ruint." The two men were staring at him. Prewitt shrugged irritably. "I dont know," he added. "Sometimes I feel that, but I guess its wrong cause they dont ever act it--except maybe when they're asleep." That wasn't what he had started out to say.

"I dont get you," Ike growled.

"Never mind. Forget it. Just forget it."

"I think I understand," Karelsen said oracularly, as if his
understanding cut Ike completely out. This was the kind of dis-
cussion was his meat; he and Mazzioli, the Company Clerk, talked
this stuff all the time and with the Regimental clerks. "What

11/

you mean is all men are brothers. They all belong to one big
soul of which each one is a little part. There've been a lot of
books written about that." Karelsen hiccuped loudly.

"I guess so," Prewitt said. "I don't know what I meant. For-
get it." He looked at Karelsen and felt his brows contracting
irritably.

"I don't know about that," Ike said, "but ever' man got to
pitch in and help with the Company. I know that. Ever' man got
to do his duty he best can do, like me, and Pop there. I know
that. You got to think of other people."

"Thats right, Ike," Karelsen said. "We all got to stand
behind The Company Commander." He went on talking, his words
slightly blurred, explaining to Ike in detail how they had to
stand behind Captain Holmes. Prewitt watched him closely. There
was a the same story told about Karelsen in the Company. He enlist-
ed during the last war and got the clap from an army nurse in
France. He re-enlisted to get cured, since treatment was expen-
sive then. As he talked, Ike nodded vigorous agreement.

"That Warden," Ike broke in. "He's your roommate. You ought
a tell him some a that. He is a devil. He tryin to run this
whole Compny."

"Hell," Karelsen said. "The son of a bitch wont listen to
me. He's crazy. I just been over to Choy's, and Warden tried
to take the place apart. Him and some Staff Sergeant got into it
and he ended up by crowning the guy with a bottle. Went hog-wild.
Nobody could get near him without getting punched. Chief Choate
finally tackled him and got him down and then him and Leva took
him out to walk him around. All three of them drunker than hell."

12/

"Thats him," Ike said. "Thats the devil." His head was nodding in furious rhythm with Karelsen's words. "Suthin ought to be done about that Warden. He's bad, mean bad. Don't know how he ever got to be a topkicker."

"Me either," Karelsen said, oratorically. "If I was a Commander I wouldn't have him in my Company, Ike, let alone a first sergeant." Would you, Ike?

"No, by God." Ike stood up and stretched his cramped knees. "I goin to bed," he said. He turned to Prewitt. "You 'member what I said, boy. You goin to get into bad trouble, you don't watch out. You think about it."

"Trouble and me aint no strangers," Prewitt said. Again he felt Karelsen's eyes. "I already tole you what I'm goin to do."

Ike's small eyes blazed briefly. "Hokay, boy," he said. "You' member what I said.

1/

Chapter 11

Maggio was standing on the porch, waiting for him, his
bony shoulders in the undershirt hunched up against the chill,
watching the streams of water falling just outside the screen.
The sound of the water spattering on the walk below filled the
whole porch, drowning the sounds of sleep from the squadroom.

"What do you want?" Prew asked him irritably.

"Gimme a butt," Angelo said.

"Well for Christ's same!" Prew said. "You got all the
guddam money. Buy some."

"Okayokay. Take it easy."

Prew pulled the almost empty pack out of his shirt pocket
and gave him one. "You'd take the half dollars off the gyes
of your dead mother and then ask her for change. Is that all
you called me out here for?"

"No," Angelo said. "Look at that," he waved his arm to
here
include the sodden darkened quad. "Aint this/a fuck of a life?
I wanted to ast you you wanted to go to town with me. If I
win, that is."

"You better take what you got and go by yourself," Prew
said resentfully, "while you got it. What do you want me to
go for?"

"I dunno," Angelo said. "I like you. You got a match?"

"Jesus Christ!"

"Awrightwright. What's a stinking match?" He opened the
book Prew handed him, tore off one, struck it, and handed baak
the book, the bronze glow lighting up his thin child's face.

Is your mouth dry?" Prew said. "You want me to spit for
"MmmxwamtmmxamapitxamxpmoxixxExamnsaid
you?"

"Not on the floor," Angelo said with a shocked look.

2/Ch 11

"Not on the floor. Where's your manners?"

"In my ass," Prew said. "Is there anything else I can
do for you? Let you use my mouth for an ashtray? Lay down
and let you walk on my face?"

"No," Angelo grinned, "but thanks. You're a good boy.
You ever get to Brooklyn, look me up, I'll treat you right.
You might get my shirt for me; I'm gettin cold."

"Go to hell," Prew said, turning back toward the latrine.
For a while, when he had been winning, he had seen the trip
to town he was going to spend it on so clearly it was a real-
ity and now, after he had lost the money for the trip, the
picture was still there and he couldnt shake it loose.

"Wait a minute," Angelo said. "Dont get fluffy. It could
just as well been you that won and then I'd be S.O.L. Dont
you want to go?"

"What are you doin? invitin me because you feel sorry for
me?"

"Hell no," Angelo said angrily. "Why should I feel sorry
for you, for god sake? You could just as easily won as me.
Listen. You dont want to let that Bloom son of a bitch get
your goat. Everybody knows he's a prize prick."

"He dont bother me," Prew said, coming back. "If he
fucks with me I'll bust his goddam flat head for him. And
that goes for all of them, see?"

"It wouldnt do you any good," Angelo said reasonably.

"Maybe not, but it would make me feel a hell of a lot
better."

"He was needling you with all that crap about being
yellow," Maggio said. "Nobody believes that."

["3/Ch 11", "\"Listen,\" Prew said. \"Drop it. I don't care what any of them think. I'm doin' what I have to do, and they can all of If I'm pissed off, its them go fuck themselves. So drop it. Wha? hoo? hoo? hoo? me? me? me? me? me? me?

4/Ch 11

ground
unfamiliar ground. He looked down at the/porch below where
the streams of water splashed.

"I dunno," he said with a minute Italian shrug. "I
gues because I dint like it where I was. Imagine that? Sorta
seemed like a good idea at the time, you know? Travel. Ad-
venture. Good pay. Stuff like that.

"You figure to be a thirty-year-man, dont you, Prew?"
he said. "I mean seriously."

Prew nodded slowly, still seeing the picture of the
woman in his mind, the woman he would have had if he had won.

"I dunno," Angelo said. "I dont like it. You aint free.
But you aint free you work in Gimbel's Basement neither. A
man ought to be free. I'll probably go back to Brooklyn and
marry some fat wop and eat garlic and spaghetti all me life.
You still aint free, but I guess that's what I'll do I guess."

"You're freer here than you are there," Prew said. "Thats
why I aim to stay in."

"In one way," Angelo said thoughtfully, "thats true. But
in another way it aint. You can always quit a job on the
Outside, if somebody starts makin you eat shit. And when we
get in this war, brother, you'll be a hell of a lot less free."

"If you live through it, you'll be freer than you are now
though."

"Thats a big IF, friend," Angelo said. "I dunno. I guess
guys like you and me aint smart enough to be free. It takes
money to be free in this world, and the money goes to the
smart ones."

"I dont know," Prew said. "I use to run around with a
rich man's daughter in Baltimore. She wasnt free. She wasnt

5/Ch 11

as free as I am. She was runnin away from herself all the
time."

"I guess that's right," Angelo said. "The more money you
got, the more time you got to think, the more time you got to
think, the more you worry, the more you worry, *themselves*
the less you're free.

*I'm thinking. It'd like to try it once; I'd like to have
enough money once to see for myself.*" I don't think I'd worry."

"I think the only way a man is ever free," Prew said
slowly, "is not to want anything. And if you don't want *any*
thing, you might as well be dead."

"What burns my ass," Angelo said bitterly, "is the
smart people of this world, the rich men and the officers of
this world, they think guys like you and me are so stupid we
don't know enough to want any more than what they see fit to
give us. They think we're content with anything they hand out,
while they ride the gravytrain. That's what burns my ass.

They think because they're *smart* and read lots of books
they're more 'sensitive' than us. I'd like to read a lot of
books myself, sometime. Ah, shit." He turned and started
on down the stairs. "You goin to town with me or not? If I win?"

"I'd sure like to go," Prew said, seeing the picture of
woman more clearly, so clearly it made him breath a little
faster. "You think you'll win?"

"Sure I'll win," Angelo scoffed. "I always win."

"What about Andy and Friday?"

"They're goin to the show, aint they? To hell with them.
What they don't know wont hurt them."

"Okay," Prew said. "I'll go. If you win."

6/Ch 11

They stopped on the porch and little Maggio peered up at
him from under the knife edge of his hatbrim. "Okay. Where'll
you be?"

"I'll be in the Bayroom. You better win, goddam you.
I aint had a piece of ass in almost a month."

"No wonder you're pissed off," Angelo grinned. "I aint
since last payday.

had any <u>mmman</u>. Unless you want to count my fist.

I don't count it myself. Maybe that's why I'm pissed off. Gimme
a but before I go." He held up his hand quickly. "Awright-
awright," he said hastily. "You want me to win dont you?

Tsure own fault, friend. You held me up. Astin me all them
questions about the fuckin army."

Prew grinned and gave him the cigaret, reaching into his
pocket and bringing out a single tube from the unseen pack.

the

"Smatter?" Angelo asked. "Scared I'll steal <u>gumman</u> pack?

Now match me and I'm gone. . . .

"I'll see you, kid," he said, puffing luxuriantly, like
a rich man on a fifty cent cigar. He swaggered off out into
the rain, ducked through the falling sheet of water, swaggered
on, his bony shoulders hunched up beligerantly, his thin arms
swinging widely, his torso swaying from side to side, agitating
the formless raincoat that enveloped him.

Prew had to grin, even with the coil of gall hungering
in his belly.

"If I aint in the Dayroom, I'll be in the latrine," he
called after him.

"Okay, friend. Bring your footlocker to help carry home
the ghelt."

26/Ch 10

"Stick around," Maggio said, peering at him in the dimness of the porch. "I'm gonna win just enough for a good trip to town, then I'll come back and get you, and we'll go to town. Okay? I wont have enough to take them two guys with us."

"Okay," Prew said. "But what'll I tell them?"

"Tell em anything," Maggio said. "Send em to the second show, or somethin."

"Okay," Prew said.

"You s'tick around then?"

"Sure. I'll be in the Dayroom probly."

"We'll have a time," Maggio said hopefully. "I know a couple good bars not many soljers go to. They treat you just like other people. Then we'll go up to the New Congress and take a couple pieces. If I make enough, we might even take an all night job. Old Chief will report us in for Revell, and we wont have to be back till drill call."

"Sounds good to me."

"Okay," Angelo said, peering at him. "Wish me luck, buddy." He turned and left, and Prew watched him walking down the porch with the same bent-kneed, shoulder-bobbing walk that Old Ike Gallowitz had, but there was a world of difference in them. At the last door Angelo tiptoed into the breathing squadroom and came back out with his hat and raincoat. At the stairs he stopped and grinned back, making the good luck sign of thumb and forefinger placed together in a circle. Prew made it back at him, and watched him bob down the stairs, all the cynical wisdom of the ages in his bent misshapen undernourished body and the thin sharp face, heir to a new race

27/Ch 10

whose food, whose movies, whose beer, even whose trees in
Central Park were canned, who flourished can openers as men
once had flourished swords, and who like the ancient myth grew
dwarfed and stunted because their feet never touched the
mother earth, and whose heir tried to escape his heritage by
trading in his can opener for a bayonet and now was sallying
forth to joust with Chance.

The game had broken up in the latrine, but Sal Clark and
Andy were still there. Andy was sitting on a comode reading
in a batter comic book that had been laying around, and Sal
was on the big wood bench playing with a deck of cards.

1/

Prewitt was sitting on his bunk, one evening, oiling his
rifle sling and bucking the brass frogs, hurrying to get it
done before Lights Out, when Maggio came down from the second
floor squadroom and came in the double doors. He stopped in
the aisle, a hunched little old man with his hat pushed back,
and looked around the big dim concrete room. Then he
came over and stretched out on the bunk next to Prewitt's,
his black eyes moving restlessly. There was a small change
crapp game going on a corner bunk and Maggio kept watching
the huddled figures that were sweating out the dice.

"You busy, Prew?" he said cautiously.

"Only this," Prewitt said, shaking the slingstrap. "I'm
just doin it to have something to do. Why? What's up?" He
turned his head to watch the crapgame Angelo was staring at.

"I just feel like goin to town," Maggio said. "How
about comin along? We start now we be in town in a hour."

"If its money, Angelo, I'm broke. And if its clothes
you want, my civvies all at the cleaners and I aint got the
dough to get them out."

"I'm invitin you, aint I?" Maggio said disgustedly. "My
god, did I ask you for a loan. I aint no mooche. If I want
a loan, I'll ask you. I got four bits taxi fare to town and
I want to spend it." He looked around the big dim concrete
room that was always cold at night.

Prewitt grinned and held a brass frog up to the light
and squinted at it. "I aint even got that much. I'm flat
broke. Did you ever know me to have money in the middle of
the month? unless I made a day killing?"

2/

"Can't you even scare up fitty cents?"

"Nope." Prewitt ran the oiled rag along the strap then
stropped it with his hand. "What the hell good is four bits?
It costs that much to get to town, and then you're there, with
no money to spend and no way back except to bum." I cant
see it."

"I know where we can get free drinks all night," Maggio
said, "and carfare home. Once we get in town." He was look-
ing over at the crapgame, watching one of the players get
up disgustedly and walk down toward them to the door. "Hold
it," he said quickly. "Here some somebody."

Prewitt waited till the man was gone. "Why all the fuckin secrecy for Chrisakes?"

"Nothin," Maggio said. "Lissen. I know where I can get
hold of four bits cabfare for you. If I get it will you go?"

"I dont want to go, Angelo. What good is four bits? I
dont want to stand around on a street corner all goddam night.
What do you want me to go for?"

"Ah," Maggio said. He shrugged his bony shoulders. "I
Come on and go. Honest, you wont need a cent where
owe you. I'll take you."

"Wheres that?"

"The Waikiki Tavern. What's a matter, dont you trust me?"

"Sure, but what's the deal? Some of them tourist women?"

"No," Maggio said. "I got me a queen line up down there."

"That beats me," Prewitt said. Finally satisfied, he
laid the sling out tenderly at the foot of his bed and go out
his sack of Dukes and papers. "Every time I get around a
a queer I want to punch him in the head. I dont like them."

3/

"I don't either much. Here. Have a tailormade. Go
ahead. I got plenty." Prewitt took the cigaret and lit it
and looked down at the gleaming slingstrap that tomorrow would
be just as drab and dusty as it was before he cleaned it.

"They're all right," Maggio said. "They're just peculiar,
thats all. They're maladjusted. But they'll buy you drinks
all night. Just to get to blow you."

"This Hal treats me swell. He's always good for a touch
when I'm broke. Five bucks. Ten bucks. I gnly go down to
see him in the middle of the month."

"I dont like to be blowed," Prewitt said. "Even by a
whore
womam."

like

"You dont have to. Its all right, nothin a piece of
ass, but its something. You just come along for the drinks.
The only reason I let this one blow me is I got a good thing
there and I want to hang onto that income."

"How you know he'll be there?"

"He's always there. Every night. All I got to do is
show up and he'll ditch whoever he's picked up for me."

"He wont want another guy along."

"Hell, he wont care. Christ, he'll blow us both, if I
say so. Beside, he got this sidekick he hangs around with
thats queer too. They're usually together."

"They may not be there tonight."

"They'll be there. They always are. Come on and go.
Its no fun to go alone. Hell, I drink champagne cocktails
all night long."

Prewitt looked around thmm at the big bare mroom squadroom,
very dim under the weak bare bulbs, at the corner crapgame and

4/

the scattered figures on their bunks, a few of them already
between the sheets. One man was snoring shatteringly.

"All right," he said. "I'll go. Wait a minute." He
took the sling up carefully, holding it by the undersides
and walked to the rifle racks. He ran it through the swivels
of his rifle, holding the frogs with a handkerchief while he
hooked them in the holes. "I like to soljer," he said, com-
ing back. "I like bucking my stuff."

"You're nuts. A goddam fuckin thirty year goonybird."

Prewitt grinned. "Whats the chances of rolling these
queens?"

"Not much," Maggio said. "I inquired around about that.
None of them ever carries morn fifteen twenty bucks. They're
wise. They got to be, here where there's so many dogfaces.

"Besides, if I ever rolled mine it would be: that's all
she wrote. Dear John. For a few bucks it aint worth it.
It comes in handy around the middle of the month."

From the quadrangle they heard the first notes of the
bugle sounding Tattoo. Maggio sat up on the other bunk and
put his hat back on. The crapgame on the corner bunk broke
up to move into the latrine, and the other men scatter around
started for their bunks. The C Q downstairs flipped the light
switch and the big dim room was suddenly dark. Maggio and
Prewitt sat on the two bunks, their faces lighted by the glow
of their cigarets, talking softly, among the breathing darkness.

"I thought maybe they had money," Prewitt said.

"They have, but they're too wise to carry it. But they
like you they buy you anything. I drink champagne cocktails
all night. Lissen: You get dressed, in civvies, and I'll be

5/

meet you in the dayroom, soon as I change my clothes."

"What the hell? Lets go in uniform."

"They don't like it," Maggio grinned. "They high-toned
friends might get the wrong idea and think they was queer,
runnin around with soljers."

"Hell," Prewitt said. "They never use to care around
Washington or Baltimore."

"But this aint there. Honolulu's a small town, sort of.
You been out with them before?"

"A couple times. Me and another guy rolled some rich
ones in Washington. We carried a Irish spud in a GI sock.
It worked swell. They wont go to the law."

Maggio laughed. "I don't work here. I was out with a
cruiser one night in Waikiki, picked me up in his car,
wouldnt even offer me no dough. That was before I got wise.
I was sittin in the back seat and he was down on his knees,
see? and I put my hand up and grabbed the hand strap to give
him more room, see? Well, he ducked so hard he like to fell
out of the car. Then he told me he never carried money.

what I'd like two bedfellows tonight anyway. What time must
you boys be back?

"Six o'clock," Prewitt said. "For Reveille."

"Oh, you," Tommy said. "You bitch. You dirty bitch.
I've a good notion to walk right out, right now."

Hal laughed. "Suit yourself, Queenie." He went into the
kitchen to mix the drinks.

Tommy stood glaring after him, his big arms straight at
his sides, his fists clenched against his thighs. "You know
I won't leave," he said. "You know I've got to stay. You know
I **have** to stay. Now."

Hal stuck his head out the kitchen door. "Of course,"
he grinned. "I know how hot you are."

Hal rattled ice and glasses and came back finally with
the drinks, suggesting that they get out of their clothes and
let propriety suffer for comfort. In the muggy heat they all
were sweating. Tommy agreed at once and took off everything
but his underpants. Neither Prewitt nor Maggio were wearing
underclothes, but Hal had a pair of swimming trunks he kept
for Maggio. So they sat around drinking, Hal in his pareu,
Tommy in his shorts, Maggio wearing the brightly colored
trunks, and Prewitt wearing his own slacks but with his shirt
shoes and socks off. It would be cooler later, Hal said, the
wind was changing and coming in from sea.

"This is what I always wear at home," Hal said, lifting
a fold of his pareu. "Its in keeping with the Hawaiian atmos-
here and tradition. Of course, the natives all wear trunks
now, but they used to wear the pareu. In Taheti they still
do, but, alas, there is little use for a French tutor there."

"How long were you in France?" Prewitt asked.

29/

"Off and on for fifteen years," Hal smiled. "At one time I seriously considered becoming a citizen of France. Its the most wonderful country in the world."

"I never been there," Prewitt said. He watched the thin man smiling under the thin grey line across the length of upper lip, thinking that there was something else here, something other than the obvious weakness of big Tommy, here in this dried-up body that in clothes had been handsome but now was ugly when uncovered with its musclelessness and the fakely skin hanging in folds over the chest without depth and the arms without girth. Why, he thought, he's getting old.

"Me neither," Maggio said vaguely, struggling to sit up. "But it wont be long till me and Prewitt see it. Whenthis sonofbitchin war. . . . I wan a nuther drank." He moved out slowly to the kitchen.

"Of course you two havent seen it," Hal said. "And how can I describe it to you? beyond that trite old stuff about Paris and the Bois and the trees and the cafes? But there is something more, an atmosphere.

"You see in France they have none of your Baptist-Methodist-Presbiterian-Christian moral dogma. They dont let religion interfer with enjoying life."

"Neither do the Baptists," Prewitt said, "Except they hide it or call it by another name."

"Ah, but that's hypocracy." Hal paused to watch Maggio came back from the kitchen. Maggio was scowling fiercely. "But in France," Hal said, "they have a system. There, an older man who has suffered life and has experience and understands it, takes a youth and teaches him all he knows. They become inseperable, the Master and the Disciple. And the sit-

30/

uation is looked on with general admiration. The youth gets
his chance to avail himself of the older man's wisdom, and
the Master is happy because he has a Pupil to carry on down
what would otherwise be lost."

"I hate the army," Maggio said bitterly. "Oh god how
I hate the fuckin army. You're a thirty-year-man," he pointed
accusingly at Prew, "but even you hate it. I hate it. And
before my three years is up we'll be in this fuckin war. When-
ever I ever get out I wont vote for nobody but what swears
to disband the army. Its like livin in a fuckin desert."

"I'm a thirty-year-man because I tried a lot of things
and found this better for a guy like me than anything else,"
Prewitt said. "I'm a thirty-year man because I got more
freedom there than I would have had in the coalmines, or on the
bum." He grinned at the scowling little figure. "You said
yourself there wasn't much choice between that and Gimbel's
Basement."

"Thats it. There aint. A man like me will always be a
slave, no matter who's the master. But not the fuckin army.
Not for me. If you wasn't a thirty-year-man I'd really like
you. Don't mind me. I'm drunk."

"Yes," Hal smiled. "You are. But as I was saying, the
Greeks used that same old system: the Master and the Disciple.
And for them it worked, too. It's a beautiful thing, the
older more experienced man passing on to the seeking youth
his painfully acquired knowledge."

"And incidentally," Prewitt said, "they go to bed to-
gether."

How about your brows in a frown. "Why make it vulgar?

["31/", "That might or might not be the case. Either way, it is a fine\narrangement.\"", "Prewitt grinned. \"How about if the old man didn't have\nno knowledge?\"", "\"Older men always have more knowledge,\" Hal said. \"They've\nhad more experience.\"", "\"I know some that aint,\" Prewitt said. \"And some of them\nare queers, who've taken young boys to train. Our Chief Bugler\nwas like that.\"", "\"I'd have to see him first,\" Hal said. \"I wouldn't take\nyour opinion.\"", "Prewitt stared at the long smiling upper lip. 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32/

"Perhaps I'm right," Hal said. "This I know. All men have homosexual instincts. The way they will look at that picture on my desk proves that."

"That may be right," Prewitt said. "But I guess I've got them, because that picture made me hot. But when you start saying that because they got those instincts that they should hate all women and never touch a woman. Then you're preaching a dogma, just like the church you say you hate. other Because I know I like women. I don't know about the woman but I know about the women. I'd take a woman any time."

"You don't hate the idea of a church. You just got a new religion you want to set up in place of the one there is."

"I believe a man should be free to do whatever he wants to do," Hal said.

"Sure, me too. Only you make this restriction about women. You're always talking about freedom, but you do it know what freedom it. You want me to tell you what freedom is? I've never been free but I know what it is. It's this. Take a man and put himself someplace where he has nothing. Not even food and a fartsack. I've been that way, I've been on the bum. And then if this man who has nothing desires nothing, nothing in the world but a chance to bum a meal. That man is free. The man who has nothing and still wants nothing, at least the only free man."

"If every man was like that, where would society be?"

"To hell with society. Where is it now? I'm talking about freedom that everybody talks about. In my life I've seen two or three free men, on the bum. And now and then you

33/

find them in jails. They learn it because they have to, I guess. You think you're free because you break some laws. But where would you be if you were alone, completely alone? If you didn't have somebody to go down on, you'd go nuts. Don't talk to me about being free."

and kicked up his heels.
"I'm free," "aggio yelled. "I'm free! Listen, buddy," he said to Prew. "I told you to take it easy. You want to fuck up you setup? You want to ruin my good deal?"

1

O'Hayer looked good when he entered the ring. Tall, de-
ceptively slim, long muscled. And smiling--from up here you could-
n't see his eyes.

up alone,
Warden sat high/in the Boxing Bowl, /his back almost against
the iron rail fence. Staring him straight in the face was a six-
foot emblem of the Regimental insignia, fastened to a beam high
above ringside. There were eight of them around the ring, all
different, each facing one section of the octagonshaped Bowl.
Separating the sheep from the goats.

"WE are the sheep, of course; YOU are the goats." The same
thing with countries. Always looking for something to Deify. Two
years ago the 27th Wolfhounds had a pitched battle with the 35th
Cactus on the football field--fists, clubs, hunks of coal for
artillery. The playing fields of Eton. A man who didn't have
anything else to Deify could always Deify himself. But, such was
his nature, that if he didn't have something to protrate himself
before like a Cardinel in "supreme supplication" he counted himself
lost.

Why can't they be like me? and Deify the Absence of Deity?
Tolerance was the offspring of the absence of deity. Then every-
thing was simple. In the light of non-Godliness every action was
understandable, even forgiveable, almost.

Warden studied the huge Regimental insignia. That was the
army: always supplying no food for Deification. Made according to
the Deified rules of heraldry. The dexter eagle on the argent
field.

O'Hayer was wearing his own personal robe and trunks, instead

2

of the red or blue Bowl trunks. He was in the blue corner. His opponent wore the usual red trunks provided by the Bowl. He was a wellbuilt cleancut nicelooking kid. He was excited.

O'Hayer's trunks were a light purple with a gold band. His robe was to match with gold cuffs, collar, and high class belt, wide in the back like a motorcyclist's kidney belt, narrowing down to thin gold bands that tied in front. Altogether an expensive looking outfit. Satinized material that glinted in contrast to the boy's dull red trunks and striped faded bathrobe. Even amongst enlisted men, dressed to the common pattern, money had its little way of showing, Warden thought. On O'Hayer's trunks and across the back of his robe was his signature, sewn in gold. Esthetically very satisfactory, Warden thought.

Gathered around Holmes's section were a number of men and women in evening clothes. Holmes wore his mess jacket, of course, his wife a long gown. Warden couldn't have told this group from officers had he not already known they were Honolulu socialites with a sprinkling of the richer or more famous tourists. They were O'Hayer's guests. Warden grinned at Holmes's self-consciousness, admired Karen's boredom.

In spite of O'Hayer's satin trunks and socialites, he still had to wear the rubber-edged cup beneath the trunks. It was some consolation to know that even O'Hayer had to wear the rubber "Baby pants" in case he got knocked loose from his control of his sphincter. Some consolation but not much. Even dictators and other great men, like senators, had to drop their pants once a day and

3

squat uncerimoniously on a queershaped bowl. No matter what or shape, color, or texture its use could not be disguised.

I wonder what a great man thinks about when he takes a crap? he asked himself. Could it be that suddenly he is aware of his kinship with other men? Shouldn't he realize suddenly, if only for that moment, that in spite of all his speeches, treaties, pocket money, he is as vulnerable as a migrant fruit picker? that with all his power, his adulation he cannot contract his sphincter any longer than John Jones, convict? Probably not. Instinct de-feats its own end by being automatic. How many world-shaking mm alliances have had to wait breathless moments while a minister took a shit?

Democracy begins in the latrine. Or should. So should hon-esty. A woman can shave off her pubic hair because it's nasty, but she can't rid herself of the other. Only statues can have a triangular flat place with a smooth cold apex. Only statues have the attribute of perfection, because statues are made in man's image of man, just as God is made in man's image of God's image of man. Write that one down.

Tobacco smoke swirled about the Regimental strange device.

O'Hayer came out smoothly in the flat-footed, unwashed-motion style of Joe Louis, only greatly inferior. He looked big for a light-heavy. Drying out caused that. The boy was cautious. He had heard about O'Hayer. This was his first Bowl fight.

O'Hayer fought the way he gambled, the way he lived. Everything was clockwork, accounted for. Only a man without imagination can hold the solid image of his destiny in his hand, Warden

4

thought. He can hold his own organ in his good right hand and
believe in its existence. He does not know that what comes from
inside is something wholely unrelated. He doesn't believe it be-
cause he cannot see it.

In a clinch O'Hayer cuffed the boy's ear with his laces. The
referee warned him. The boy's ear was red. So was his face.

Good, Warden said. Right on time.

At the end of the round O'Hayer clinched and leaned on the
boy. He jabbed his right thumb into the boy's eye(s). The referre
twas on the other side but he saw it. He warned O'Hayer. The
boy went to his corner rubbing his eye with his glove.

Fine, Warden said. We are progressing. Which one next?

The boy came out fast for the second round. He hit O'Hayer
with two left and good right cross. O'Hayer smiled. Not grinned,
smiled. O'Hayer never smiled.

O'Hayer stepped on the boy's forward foot in a clinch, broke,
and pushed the boy. The boy went down. A knockdown. Technically,
a knockdown with points. The boy got up mad. O'Hayer waited for
him to come in. He did. O'Hayer really knocked him down.

Everything according to schedule, Warden said. Two knock-
downs, twenty points. Fine.

Thirty seconds before the bell O'Hayer fell down. He slipped.
Obviously, because the boy was not near him. No knockdown. The
referee stepped in and dusted O'Hayer's gloves. O'Hayer smiled.
As he moved back in, he hitched up his trunks. In doing so he
wipe glovetips over the resin on his seat. A twisting left jab
cut the boy's forehead open. The boy was raging now.

5

Excellent, Warden said.

The boy was unhurt except for the sting of the resin, fuel
to the fire. He rushed as the round ended.

The referee walked over to O'Hayer's corner and talked àn a
low voice. Warning him again, Warden said. The queer ways of
people. The referee may warn him once for each foul, each differ-
ent type of foul. If he repeats it, he loses on a foul. Let's
see, O'Hayer should have fifteen or twenty more to use yet, but I
doubt if he will need them.

At the bell the boy rushed. O'Hayer met him with a straight
right hand, his one good punch of the fight. The referee counted
the unconscious boy out.

Bravo, Warden said. Take him in and clean his pants.

Warden could see Holmes grinning in victory. Holmes was
patting O'Hayer on the back.

Put me in, coach, Warden said.

A great lesson in humanity, he said. An illuminating lesson
in life. O'Hayer wins the fight. But O'Hayer never wins the
championship. In four years he hasn't won it. There's a point
there; not a moral, or an ethic--just a point. Some big ox will
knock him on his dead ass later on, not because O'Hayer has fouled
the boy; because the big hard-hitting ox will not realize he has

Good enough for him, hey? Except that O'Hayer doesn't
been fouled. went the championship or mind being knocked out. So
he loses nothing. You can't rob a man of what he doesn't want.

Now that I have learnt my lesson for this evening, I am free
to go drink beer and muse upon the stars, the bottomless sky, the
coming war, and the immortality of man.

1

From outside the supply room seemed cool because it was dim. It was an illusion. Warden ran a hooked fingermm over his eyebrows and flung the sweat at a cupboard. In the windowless room the moldy dust and rancid grease of piles of equipment had/dissolving itself into the air for years. The ceilinghigh cupboards and bins crowded the little open space behind the counter, pushing in throng like the mmum around an accident victim. Warden felt a sudden overpowering desire to rush out into the open. It was strange how winter days could be so hot when the nights were so cool.

"How many more?" he asked savagely.

"Too many." First-Fourth Leva, Supply Clerk, wry and blood-less as if the perpetual gloom of his castle had been transfused into his veins, sat before the single desk, his nose buried in stacks of papers upon which he was laboriously writing. He grinned up at Warden, perched on a stool before the counter.

"Think we'll get done today?" Warden asked.

"We might. What time is it?"

"Ten-thirty."

"You come in at eight-thirty. That's two hours." Leva examined a stack of finished forms. "Yeah, we can. If we don't, we got tomorrow and Wednesday morning. We'll make it all right."

"I want to get done today. This goddam clothing issue cost me a weekend in town. I hate it."

"That's sure tough." Leva grinned. He seldom went to town.

"Two whole days;" WARDEN EXPLAINED. "Two whole days, I mean. Workin my ass off when I could a been laying on Waikiki Beach. All day Saturday and all day Sunday."

"I bet you never seen Waikiki Beach in your whole life. You never got nearer to Waikiki than the Service Rooms."

2

"That's a lie."

"Life is too complicated," Leva said. "Everything is writing reports or reading reports. In fact, you're so busy with the reports, you don't have time to do the things the reports report. You can't take a crap without the permission of the Compny Commander. Life is so much paperwork there's a paper shortage."

"There's also a life shortage," Warden said.

Leva nodded his fleshless head profoundly. "Sure. People try so hard to be efficient they forget what they're bein efficient about. Trouble with people is they don't t rust each other."

"You sound like a school teacher who used to be a preacher who is running for senator," Warden said. "Shut up."

"Why don't they just hand this stuff out? It's no good any-
way. Instead of making everybody initial a Form 32?"

"Because you'd lose your life work and die of loneliness and inertia," Warden said. "That's why. Let's work."

They bent their heads to the papers. They were still working when O'Hayer came in for the morning. He stood in the doorway, a ing heavy shadow, adjust/his blinded eyes to the dimness, and the work faded and grew faint.

O'Hayer looked around. All over the counter, the floor, the boxes, and jammed into the already occupied shelves were uniforms-- CKC slacks, ties and shirts.

"This place looks like hell," O'Hayer said. He stepped to the counter. "We've got to clean this place up." Warden had to move all his papers and get up so O'Hayer could pass through the counter.

3

Warden moved his papers back, and went back to work.

O'Hayer stepped with lithe delicacy over piles of clothes and leaned down to peer over Leva's shoulder. The tall dapper wide-shouldered Irishman looked good. All his uniforms were handmade for him by a tailor in Honolulu. The three stripes on his sleeves were MILDRED RICHER THAN magline AS handmada-woven, further above the PX-woven stripes than the PX variety was above the plain cloth GI stripes.

"How are you coming, Leva?"

Leva looked up wryly. "So-so, Sergeant," he said. "So-so."

O'Hayer smiled down easily, his eyes unchanged. "That's good."

Leva went back to work.

"These things are going to have to be separated for size," O'Hayer said to Leva. He looked down at the clothing strewn across the floor aloofly.

"They've already been separated," Warden said without looking up.

"They have? Well, we'll have to find a place for them. They'll be getting in everybody's way."

"They may get in your way. They don't get in mine," Warden said. It was a delicate situation. Warden was always irritated by delicate situations. O'Hayer was too smart to be doing it deliberately; he was not dumb enough to do it unconsciously. If Holmes insisted on O'Hayer being supply sergeant, why in hell didn't he send him to a goddam school?

"I want you to get this stuff up off the floor," said O'Hayer to Leva coolly. "The Old Man won't like it."

Warden tightened his lips against the immediate "and why not?"

4

that rose. Hmmm... O'Hayer could piss on the Orderly Room floor if he wanted to. But O'Hayer was in, the cold eyed bastard, and he had to be handled with gloves.

"Okay, Sergeant," Leva said.

Warden put his mind back on the work with difficulty. A moment later he rose swiftly to check a size number. He burned into O'Hayer who was in process of stepping with his boxer's delicate balance over a pile of clothes. Warden dropped his arms.

"For Christ's sake!" he bellowed. "Get the hell out and go someplace. You're only in the goddam way. Go over to the sheds and count last night's take. You keep hangin' around, we'll never get it done. We're doin' the work, don't worry about it." This last was a crack; the cold O'Hayer never worried about anything.

O'Hayer stared back coolly from his gambler's eyes. His self-assured smile never reached them.

He wanted to say more. He Warden stopped himself, stared into the flat eyes without anxiety. He was curious as to just how far you had to push this smiling gambler to make him show some emotion. Warden didn't believe in the cold killer type. The emotional killer, yes. Not the cold one. Dispassionately Warden contemplated knocking him down, just to see what he would do. There must be some feeling someplace, squeezed in among the ratchets, gears and tumblers of this automatic calculator.

O'Hayer stepped around Warden, deliberately turning his back. He left without a word. He was obviously not upset, he had left simply and without comment, because the topkick had asked him to.

After he was gone, Leva straightened his back. "O'Hayer fights

5

Friday night in the Bowl," he said casually.

Warden did not look up from his writing. "Yeah?" he said.
"I'll have to go see him. I might as well get something for do-
ing his work." O'Hayer could fight, he thought. Not as good as
Wilson maybe, but he could fight. Holmes never let personal re-
lations, like $300 a month rakeoff from the sheds, interfer with
his sacred duty as boxing coach.

The goddam things man can find to be sacred about! he thought.
Everything from tomato plants and dollar bills to genets and God.
Ethics and
Attempts to help people cause more trouble in the world than
any immorality. Ever since the time of Plato and his abortive
effort to define "Good" and "Evil."

The only honest man was the man to whom nothing was sacred,
including himself. Someday O'Hayer would be a big man, if some
son of a bitch didn't kill him first.

1

They ran out of liquor at ten o'clock in the evening, and Warden left Karen in the room while he went down after some. There was a big tourist dance going downstairs, and they could hear the music and shuffling feet through the closed window shutters. Now and then a high trill of a feminine laugh would break through the rhythm like a clarinet riff.

"Listen to them," Karen said. She lay on the unmade bed watching Warden don slacks, gookshirt and sandles over his nakedness. "The dancing princesses. Sneaking underground every night to dance. While the palace walls are crumbling about their ears, and some of the soldier armed with a flamethrower treads on the trains of their dresses. It was only a nail, only a nail."

"Yeah," Warden said. "And I'm the soldier."

"No, Milt," The world is the soldier. The big careening whirling soldier that will blow up like a powder keg. But they needn't worry. Whatever happens to the world, there will always be tourists, and people to cater to them. If there's one city left, the tourists will crowd its sidewalks; and the caterers will wear red hats and point out the ruins of the world's greatest library."

Karen lay back on the bed and laughed out loud.

"The rich," Warden said. "Where there are rich, there is everything waits. The sun stands still, and the governments mark time and wait--wait until the dance of the rich is over. You ought to know, Baby; you're a Washingtonian."

"Because I've rubbed elbows with the rich?" Karen smiled.

2

"Has no one ever told you that the rich develop calluses on their elbows at an early age? They lean on safe deposit boxes†. The elbows of the rich transmit nothing.

"If there were no greedy middle class of politicians and lawyers and professional soldiers--of which I, as a member, can speak with authority--there would be no rich, Milt. You're hopped up on the rich, Milt."

Karen waved her hand at another clarinet riff of laughter that drifted up through the shutters. "Those are the middle class. Who aspire to being rich, or as second choice, to imitate the rich. Your tourists come from the small towns of the Middle West, to undo the scalp-drawing love knot and let their immoral body hair flow freely."

Warden grinned and turned to the door. "Your body hair was made to flow freely," he said. "Like wine. Like dago red."

"That's the point. So was theirs. Washington is the Mecca of the middle class, the Mayflower bar is the Caaba. Take me with you, Milt."

"Okay," Warden said at once. "Come."

Karen shook her head. "No. I think I'll stay here. I'd like to walk proudly beside you on the street, but that's reserved for moral maddens and legal ladies. I haven't the right to label you."

"To hell with that," Warden said. "If you want to come, come. Always do what you feel like doing. There is no other test. Everything else is only the result of argument."

"No, you go ahead. I'll wait here. The only time you and I can go out together is during duty hours. From eight AM to four

3

PM. Professional soldiers love to mingle with the wealthy in the Waikiki, and we might meet anyone."

"So what?"

"Your job. My home."

"I got my job in spite of my friends, not because of them. I'd of been bustled out long ago if I wasn't so good they hate to let me go."

"Ability is a vehicle that will carry you only so far. From there on you must walk with friends or else not go. Ability will off set trivial things but not the big ones."

"And more discredit to human beings because of it," Warden laughed, his combative brows quivering with relish. "You ought to copyright that one. I'll be back in a minute."

"Wait." Karen threw off her mistlike Japanese kimono, and stretched out on the bed. "Turn off the light. Then look the door as you leave."

Warden walked down the three flights from the top floor, thinking about it. You seldom found a woman who had both intelligence and sensuality. For some reason they seemed never to go together. If Diogenes had wanted a real puzzle, he should have looked for an honest woman; a little reasonless suffering might possibly make a man honest, but a woman had more than complacency to overcome. She had to overcome habit. I've discovered an old bottle of Courvoisier, he thought. I can set it up and look at it and never taste it. Or I can drink it up, and it will be gone. That's the way it is.

In the human language, the most basic The sedate lobby was crowded beneath the dim and conservative lights. If a man could know the shady

4

deals that went on beneath the protective covering of dim and
conservative lighting. With amused brows Warden walked with
composure through the milling dinner jackets, cummerbunds and
He felt
gardenia corsages. /A few turned to stare at the hook-browed
small
Soldier and allowed himself a/grin.

The little yard of the private house with its slender palms
and squat palms and its screening fence of heavy vegetation was
dark and mysterious. The block of exclusive stores beyond the
Tavern were bright, shedding light from expensive display windows.
At the end of the block next the sandy palm-studded park and pub-
lic beach the package store was doing business. It was night and
life was stirring. People were out. Night, the time of surge
and captivated senses. Night that softened the new wrinkles of
faces and opened the way to nature with her diamond-studded
apron that billowed over all as she stepped about. The surf
washed dimly on the sand and hissed like seltser as it receded. Stand
Soldiers not admitted to the great hotels did not dispair but
walked their wahines back and forth across the little park look-
ing for a dark spot that was level and unoccupied. A well-known
queer drove his battered Ford up and down Kalakaua Avenue in his
unfruitful search, stopped by the sea wall and picked up a single
soldier.

And over all brooded the drums with hammers raised, waiting,
waiting for the rich to make up the mind of the middle class.
Warden felt the night surge through his body. The air was cool
upon his naked toes. Whatever else, a man could turn to life.
Nature was his accomplise there. The body and the mind grasped
at life. Life fought on to live. When there was nothing else,

5
existence was enough. The will to keep on living. No manmade
force could ever dent its power.

As he walked back into the hotel lobby, someone hailed him.
He turned to see Jim O'Hayer standing at the desk. O'Hayer lean-
ed a casual elbow on the desk with the ease of a man who was sure
he belonged here.

"Hello, Milt," O'Hayer said with a dazzling smile. "What brings you down to the den of the swells?" It was the first time he had ever used Warden's first name.

"Hello, O'Hayer," Warden returned. "I wanted to see how the
other half lived."

O'Hayer could not resist. "And do you find it any differ-
ent?"

"Not much. I'm surprised how little."

The thin-faced clerk came back to the counter from the big
safe. "Here you are, Mr O'Hayer, Sir," he said. He counted out
a fistful of tens and twenties and picked up the lightly inked
check that lay before O'Hayer. He put the check in a drawer.

"Any time we can be of service, Mr O'Hayer."

"Thank you, John," O'Hayer said languidly. He picked up the
bills and folded them over his second finger, gambler fashion,
and riffled through them, counting.

"All right, Sir?" the clerk asked anxiously.

"Of course, All shipshape." O'Hayer fitted the bills into
his wallet.

"Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir. Come back any time, Mr O'Hayer.
Glad to help you out."

"Okay, John. I will." O'Hayer straightened up and gave his

6

tie an expert twist.

"You staying here, Warden?" O'Hayer smiled his slow gam-
bler's smile and flicked an imaginary spot of dust from the sleeve
of his white jacket. "Give me your room number and I'll look
you up tomorrow."

While he had cashed the check Warden had studied him. This
could hardly be the same man who sat hour after hour at the poker
table, his green eyeshade/over his eyes. He wore his clothes
deadly with no self-consciousness and hardly a touch of awareness.
Warden in his gookshirt and slacks knew it was not what you wore
but how you wore it that made it either come off or fall flat.
O'Hayer wore his, not as if he belongs in them, but as if he was
aware that he belonged in them. A small distinction, most people
wouldn't notice it.

"No," Warden said, loud enough for the hovering clerk to hear. "I picked me up some ritzy tourist dame. It's her room. I got to be back in the mawnin."

O'Hayer laughed pleasantly, a good camouflage of the cold-
ness in his eyes. "Do I know her? What's her name? I ought to
know her if she hangs around the Moana much."

"I doubt if you know her, O'Hayer," She aint been here
long." And idea struck him. "She come over for romance. She
thinks I'm workin as an A.B. on a private yacht in the Ala Moana
Basin."

O'Hayer laughed again. "Is that right?" He turned to the
clerk. "I've told you about my outfit, John. This is my first
sergeant, Mr Warden."

John evinced surprise, and the first humanness he had shown.

7

"Well, well! Is that so? I'm glad to know you, Mr Warden. Mr O'Hayer . . ."

"Sergeant Warden," Warden said.

"Oh, excuse me, Sir. When you're in civilian clothes . . ." It dwindled away.

"Actually, it makes no difference," Warden said. "Civies or not."

O'Hayer laughed again, as if he had been scored on. "There are some people waiting on me, Milt. I must go. Will I see you around at the dance?"

"I doubt it. I imagine I'll be busy." The clerk moved away. "You on pass, O'Hayer?"

O'Hayer grinned. "Three day . . . and the weekend, of course."

"Yeah. Of course. Well, I'll see you, O'Hayer."

"Sure, Warden." O'Hayer grinned again, his eyes not changing. He walked off through the lobby to the big French doors.

"You see, darling?" Karen said as he unlocked the door. "I'm waiting for you here, in the dark, when you unlock the door. Almost as if you were coming home."

"Home," Warden said. "Yes. Almost as if I were coming home." Home. Men built homes for permanence and peace. Then, when the homes were knocked into kindling, they built new homes for permanence and peace. They used the kindling to start the fire on the hearth of home.

"I ran into Dana's righthand man downstairs, all dolled up in summer formal and cashing a two hundred buck check." It was

8

strange that since knowing Karen he no longer thought of the
Captain as "Holmes". When he thought of him, it was always as
"Dana."

"You mean Jim O'Hayer?" Karen asked.

"Right the first time."

He's getting to be quite well known in this **haute monde**.

"He has the coldest eyes I've ever seen in a human being."

"That's probably why he's getting to be such a social success with the malahinis and kamaainas."

"The new comers and the old timers," That covers just about
everybody, doesn't it?"

"Not quite," Warden said. "It doesn't cover me, Baby."

"No. No, it doesn't, does it, Milt? . . . Milt, always keep
on calling me 'Baby,' will you? It's so coarse and so honest.
I love it. That's why I like you, Milt, I think. You are elemental."

Warden grinned and picked up the phone. "Soon's I get some
ice and seltzer up here, you'll find out how elemental I am."
Waiting for **Romm Service**, he thought. I acted like a kid with
O'Hayer. Pulling my vulgarity routine for the benefit of the
clerk. A high school kid with his first piece. Was I being
honest? Maybe I was honest; I was honest; but when you are honest
consciously and with an effort, are you being honest or are you
being a bigger liar than the man who unconsciously dishonest?
That's getting deep. A man can delude himself with the **hypnosis**
truth as easily as he can with the false. But that O'Hayer makes
me that way. I get belligerent around a man who is so obviously
and unahhamedly a coldhearted son of a bitch.

N.Y. TIMES Nov 11/ 1945

The Second Service Command disclosed yesterday that four prisoners at the United States Disciplinary Barracks, near Poughkeepsie, N.Y. died Friday as the result of drinking a mixture of anti-freeze solution and milk. One other prisoner, the command added, was in a critical condition.

The command also revealed that seven others were in a serious condition, and ten were under observation as a result of drinking this mixture. The announcement added that the four died soon after consuming the fluid.

---

PM Dec 18, 1945

Pfc Garland O. Howard is a 22-year-old paratrooper who enlisted voluntarily in July, 1941, served 29 months overseas, saw active service in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France and Germany and was shipped back as a psycho-neuroic case. He was hospitalized at the Camp Upton, L.I. Had 110 points, applied for discharge and was told he was still mentally sick, needed more treatment, and would have to wait for a medical discharge.

On Nov 2 Howard was found unshaven and wearing a sweater during barracks inspection. His commanding officer, 2nd Lt John Foster, ordered Howard to appear at his office. Howard explained that his unkempt appearance was due to his feeling sick because of an influenza injection that morning.

The Lt. had him restricted to quarters over the weekend instead of being allowed a weekend pass home he had obtained. Howard is alleged to have blown up, used abusive language and refused to salute the officer before leaving his office. He refused to salute twice, once before a group of officers.

2/

Howard was thrown into the guardhouse and given a general court-martial on Nov 26. Three psychiatrists testified at the trial. Two of them testified that the youth was not responsible for his behavior because his judgment was impaired at the time. The third declared he knew what he was doing and should be held responsible.

He was sentenced to five years imprisonment at hard labor and a D.D. (Had been sent hom with medical diagnosis of "anxiety state, severe, chronic." That was my own diagnosis.)

was allowed to

The correspondent (Albert Deutsch)/talked to him over the phone and told him about his sentence reduction which he did not know about yet.

Quote:

"Are you satisfied?" I asked

"No. The sentence is still too high."

"Why did you refuse to salute your superior officer?"

"That man had been riding me for a long time. He didn't like me, and we had a lot of arguments. I was sick that morning, and didn't feel able to get dressed up. Afternoon, of course. When he took away my weekend pass for home, I blew up and told him off. I don't think I've been treated right."

"I could use this saluting indicent for the reason Maggio is thrown in blackhole on B. & W."

From U.S. D.F.P. 4/7/45: (articles on inspection of Fort Ben, Indianapolis Prison Camp by Kenneth McCormick, APree Press Correspondant;

"The prisoner knows that an unfavorable report from a guard may retard consideration for some time. Besides, if his violation is serious enough, he may wind up in solitary.

"Guards were irked at first by remarks made by inmates. Some in-corrigibles even went so far as to boast that being a prisoner was better than being in a foxhole." "No o shit!"

3/

"The work of the guards is made easier by the prisoners' desire to be restored to active duty."

COURTS --

The Summary Court is limited to a maximum sentence of confinement for one month and forfeiture of two-thirds of pay for one month.

The Special Court is limited to a maximum sentence of confinement for six months and forfeiture of two-thirds of pay for six months.

The General Court is not limited, from anything over six months to death.

SAFEGUARDS IN MILITARY JUSTICE (From WD, Bureau of Public Relations, Press Branch, a background statement on courts-martials and C-M procedure)

It is intended to give the accused a fair and speedy trial. If he is found guilty the sentence will be commensurate with the nature of the offense, and if the offense is a serious one the penalty will be severe in order to act as a deterrent to others.

The system is a fair one, both to the accused and to the Army. It is fully realized that the system is dependent upon the manner in which it is administered. Everything is done that is humanly possible to assure justice to the individual and enforcement of the discipline necessary to an army.

It should be noted that in the Johnson trial, in addition to the rights that he would have been assured before a civilian court, he also had the following safeguards:

a. Before trial he had the right to give evidence and to face and cross examine witnesses in order to show that he was innocent or to minimize his guilt.

b. The type of trial was chosen which would give him the least, not the greatest, punishment consistent with military discipline.

4/

c. Johnson was given, at no expense to himself, a defense counsel.

d. At the trial he had the right to make an unsworn statement without
subjecting himself to cross-examination.

e. His previous convictions were not allowed to be considered in
determining his guilt.

f. He was given a typewritten record of the trial.

g. He was given an automatic appeal from the court-martial to
the reviewing authority and from the reviewing authority to the Judge
Advocate General, before the sentence was effective.

h. Six months after confinement to a disciplinary barracks, his
case was reviewed for elemency by the Under Secretary of War and further
review will be had every year thereafter until he is released from con-
finement.

i. At any time during his confinement he can, by showing proper
conduct, attitude and ability, be restored to duty as a soldier and
become entitled to a honorable discharge.

From TIME Dec 31, 1945

"The ugly red brick buildings, begrimed by industrial smoke, sat on a treeless limestone hogback. Most of the barracks windows were broken. There were no lawns or plantings around the camp. Worse than the looks of the place were the ugly reports that came from there;

"The newcomer saw the line of men double-timing along the walks. Even men who could barely walk, because of leg wounds received in combat, were forced to double time into their bleak cold barracks. Those who faltered were clubbed across the shins by guards.

"The newcomer said he saw other things: men put through callisthenics which lasted three hours in the morning, three and a half in the afternoon; men found with cigarets, forced to eat them; men asking to go to the latrine, dosed with castor oil. Another allegation: Negroes in the mess hall were

5/

forced to crawl and bark like dogs before they were fed.

"In spite of its similarities, this was no Nazi concentration camp, but the prison stockade of the U.S. Army's 10th Reinforcement Depot at Litchfield in England's Midlands. The victims of these brutalities were U.S. soldiers--most of them AWOL (often by the technicality of having overstayed a pass by a few hours); only a small proportion of them were guilty of more serious crimes.

"Last week, in a bare-boarded, dirty-windowed courtroom in London's Grosvenor Square, before a U.S. Army general court-martial, the ugly story began to unfold. The first defendant was slight, mild-looking Sgt Judson H. Smith, a guard in the camp, who got an 8th-grade education in bloody Harlan County, Ky. In the words of Col James A. Kilian, camp commandant, Smith was "one of the best non-commissioned officers I've ever seen." In four perspiring hours on the stand, Smith denied all charges of mistreating prisoners. Outside the court, the disarmingly forthright Kilian supported these denials.

"A procession of witnesses testified that the brutalities had indeed occurred; further, that the guards were under orders to act as they did, under threats of punishment if they did otherwise.

"In the background of the whole trial was a fact which everyone recognized. During the invasion of Europe, Gen "Ike" Eisenhower's combat division had been hampered by the shortage of replacements. Gold-bricking was a threat to victory. Some of the G.I.s who landed in Litchfield as prisoners were suspected of trying to dodge combat. There was some reason for the Army to make Litchfield so tough that gold-brickers would prefer the front lines. Did that justify the kind of brutality that prosecution witnesses described?

"There were others besides Judson Smith facing trial--other enlisted men, some junior officers. The trail of trials might not stop there. The U.S. Army was on trial."

7/

ing at attention.

"In the guard house he was put on a detail flattening cans," Rep Gavin said.
"But there the soldier did not work fast enough to suit the guard.

"He was again court-martialed and sentenced to break rocks with a short-handled sledge at a cadence of 120 blows a minute.

"No human could possibly carry on at that speed and the cadet was again re-primanded for not working fast enough.

"The (MP) pvt then dismissed the guard and commanded the boy to stand at attention with the sledge at his side, which he did.

"He was then smashed across the jaw with an MP's club which raised a welt on the left side of his face about as big as a fist and which knocked the fillings out of his teeth. He was knocked down and upon arising he was again knocked down and smashed into unconsciousness and beaten around the shoulders, arms and legs. He was then dragged off to the guardhouse and placed in solitary confinement."

From Washington Post N ov 10/45

Seven Navy prisoners--armed with two sub-machineguns and three rifles--escaped from Camp Peary, near Williamsburg, Va., at 9 AM yesterday.

Within an hour the fugitives held up a civilian near Camp Peary and took his money and his car.

The prisoners, the Navy said, overpowered two Marine guards in making their break. The men had been taken from the compound in a work detail. They robbed the guards of their submachine guns and striped one of his uniform.

When they fled the camp, one of the prisoners was wearing the Marine uniform. The others wore gray prisoner garb.

A short while later, the men stopped Norman R Ring of Detroit at gunpoint on Route 168 near Camp Peary.

Ring said that one armed man in Navy uniform halted him. As he stopped, he related, the man leveled a rifle at his head while the other men scampered out of hiding from nearby woods.

Ring said the men had two submachineguns and at least three rifles. He said

8/

that after taking his cash, $38, they ordered him to go into the woods and burn his back while they drove off in his car.

One of the Marine guards over powered by the prisoners told camp officers he had overheard them discussing the holdup to get a car. He said they planned to start abandoning the car singly after reaching Toana, Va., a small town about ten miles north of Williamsburg.

From NY Times Dec 19,45

US Army S/Sgt Ashur H Baizer of 987 Columbus Ave, New York, testified today that military guards at the Litchfield, Eng., replacement depot lived in constant fear of being imprisoned themselves if they were not "tough enough" with prisoners. Sgt Baizer was called in the court-martial of Sgt Judson H Smith, first of 12 Litchfield guards to be tried on charges of brutal treatment of prisoners.

He heard an officer tell the guardhouse staff that "if they weren't tough enough they might find themselves behind bars," he said.

Pfc John P Buckmaster of Miami, Okla., who flew hear from France to testify, said he saw a Negro soldier clubbed to his knees by two sgts in the guardhouse. 3 days

Other witnesses told today of being held 14 days on bread and water in solitary confinement for failure to eat a burned potato, and of being forced to stand motionless facing a wall for eight consecutive hours.

From NYHT 46

Col Kilian is a short, barrelchested man whose Eisenhower jacket fits like a glove. On his chest was a Legion of Merit ribbon given him in October, 1944, he said, for his efficient duty as commander of Litchfield. He peered myopically from steel-rimmed spectacles. He had the ruddy complexion and close-cropped gray hair common to regular Army officers of long service. He has been an officer since 1918.

From NYT Jun 27/46 - In the trial of Col James A Kilian, former camp commandant, a witness testified that prisoners in the guardhouse were called out to fiew the bloody faces of two soldiers who had been beaten, and were warned by guards: "That's

9/

what will happen to you if you get smart."

NYT Jun 23/46

A witness in the court-martial of Kilian testified he saw guards at Litchfield
stip the clothing from one American soldier and beat him with a rubber hose.

Corp Henney who did temporary guard duty at Litchfield said the guards took off the prisoner's clothes "threw a blanket over him and one guard him him while the other held him."

X] think I might work hp how there is a prison inspection in the Stockade
while Prew is there, made by a conscientious Inspector General, but that everything
is apple pie until he is gone and has turned in his clear report.[]

Kilian quoted: "There are a lot of things you can do in an Army guardhouse.
You can take a man out of sight and work him over, and no one will know it except the
man,"

Kilian, Cubage testified, hammered his desk on one occasion and ordered him
to "take a certain prisoner down to the rifle range and done break too many bones.".
Cubage said Kilian told him, "I am not going to send that man to a disciplinary barracks
There is nothing that we cant do that they can do."

Lt Cubage said two guards had been promoted by Col Kilian--one for shooting a
prisoner in one leg during a reported attempted escape and another for shooting
through a window near the head of a soldier who was looking out in violation of
guardhouse rules.

"Thats the kind of man I want--he's carrying out instructions," Lt Cubage
quoted Col Kilian as saying.

After that, he testified, he heard a captain "more or less joking with the
guards about shooting prisoners so they'd be promoted."

Chaynes, Ennis's attourney, compared the 220-pound athletic Ennis with the
"tough Army sgt created on the screen by Victor McLaglen." He looked tough and he
Tough--but he had a heart of gold full of faithfulness to the flag and its
ideals
Ennis said. He cited Ennis's three battle wounds, his Silver Star and ten-

10/

year climb up through Army ranks from private.

Pvt Caspar Furnari of 1323 2nd Ave NY City testified he had been beaten to the ground by Litchfield guards and then "kicked for fifteen or 20 minutes." Sgt Thomas P Cappello, of Chicago, said he had been clubbed while standing for ten hours with his nose and toes pressed against a wall, and John L Bernardo, of West Haven, Conn., testified he had been struck fifteen times with a leather strap for smoking.

A soldier prisoner at the "hotel" testified that he had heard Defendant Smith ask another prisoner where he had been wounded. When the soldier told Smith, the Sgt "rammed a club" into the spot indicated.

Maj Gen Albert E. Brown who had been chief of the Ground Force Reinforcement Command, according to LoBuaono, had told him that the treatment at the guardhouse was too soft, and had told Smith: "You're not tough enough on these men. You're running a hotel, Sergeant."

In the Army's records, it was listed at the Loire Detention Training Center at Le Mans, but in the memories of GIs the institution was the "Continental Stockade."

As it was closed out last week, and its last batch of prisoners shipped to other centers, ugly stories came to light. Tear Gas had been used frequently; authorities argued that this was the "most humane" way of treating mobs. There had been a riot in which prisoners were shot. There had been brutality by the guards, and mass punishment for trivial offenses. Examples: exposure in freezing weather on a windy hill; confinement of 15 men for 36 hours in a 6-by10-ft "hole" where they could neither sit nor stand erect.

A.D. Baker of Harlan, Ky., told the court Lt Ennis "kicked me in the seat of the pants" because of Baker's failure to run fast enough during calisthenics. Baker asserted he was handicapped by a sharpnel wound in the back.

From a letter by Hicswa: "When they told me I murdered the jap, I got excited. I didn't think I hit him that hard. (he said he had no k ife.) They were still moaning and moving when I feft them. I guess they have to blame somebody so I guess I'm the

11/

loser. They say that if they don't find a rop strong enough to hang the person, they'll
shoot him. I believe that is just a rumor.

"Today they had me on the rock pile from 7:30 this morning till 5 this after-
noon. They get me up at 4:45 in the morning and we are busy until we go to bed,
usually around 7 or 8."

Pvt Joseph J Defelice said he complained because he was not allowed enough
time to eat (five minutes) and was forced to eat three meals at one sitting and was
then dosed with castor oil.

Pvt Fred Moore said he and eight other Litchfield prisoners were beaten follow-
ing an attempted break by other prisoners. He identified Pvt Norris as the man who
"hit me with his fists about ten times on the nose and face."

"He looked me against a partition in the washroom. It seemed he was intoxicated by the way he was swinging wild. Later he grabbed the back of my head and pushed my face into the sink and another guard kicked me. Holt and I had to mop up the blood."

From PM

One out of four prisoners was beaten or struck with rifle butts and clubs dur-
ing their stay, according to a census of prisoners.

Men were given about five minutes to eat their meals. Anyone who was quick
enough and audacious enough to ask for seconds had a heaping tray of food rammed down
his throat followed by a huge dose of castor oil.

Prisoners did calisthenics seven hours a day and occasionally at night.
Anyone failing to perform in an unflagging manner was stood with nose and toes
against a brick wall for hours, or was forced to "run" with his nose resting against a
brick wall.

Men were beaten brutally, often being dragged from their beds in the middle of
the night at the whim of the guards and left unconscious or bleeding without medical
care.

13/

duty becausethey feared they "could not do the job."

Asked if he had not consulted Capt Rudoph Warnecke, former camp docter, Lt Ennis replied; "What was the good of my taking it up with him? When fifty or sixty men would go on sick call, all they would get was a dose of castor oil."

Asked if he had spoken to the post chaplain and other officer about mis-
treatment, Ennis replied: "They didn't give a damn. The only thing they were inter-
ested in was running their tea parties on Tuesdays and their dances on Saturday."

Also convicted at Bad Nauheim last week was Litchfield prosecution witness Fred C Moor, a Negro private. For pummeling a German civilian who, he said, was caught rifling his billet, Pvt Moore was fined $180 and sentenced to six months at hard labor.

The Litche field trials have provoked widespread condemnation of Army brutality.
But as James Henle writes in a letter, no disciplinary barracks can be "soft;" if so,
the stockade of the Army would be quickly thronged in time of war with shirkers.

"Why doesn't someone tell the truth--or at least the truth as I see it," he writes, "about the trials of enlisted men and officers for cruel treatment of men in disciplinary barracks? There was a similar scandal following World War I and everybody felt extremely virtuous when 'hard-Boiled' Smith was sent to prison. My own feeling is that modern war is so terrible that punishment in disciplinary barracks has to be almost correspondingly terrible."

"Unfortunately, human beings are so constituted that if prisoners were well treated, many men would commit infractions of discipline in order to escape the horror of front-line warfare. Not only do prisoners have to be treated with less than kindness, but news of their treatment has to seep through to men in front-line positions."

"If this is true, it seems just a little foolish and anything but fair to prosecute either officers or enlisted men for performing what may be considered a cruel but necessary function. This is an instance where, literally, everyone in and out of the Army is guilty."

14/

In other words the Litchfield trials are treating the symptoms, not the disease, and the men on trial (with definite exceptions) probably are not so much the sadists they have been pictured as as excutors of an official Army policy of toughness, which in turn is the outgrowth of the social system and "civilization" of conflict that modern man has created.

AMEN

From FM Apr 19/46

The entire disciplinary policy of the Army was brought under question at the Litchfield court-martial when defense attourneys yesterday succeeded in showing that Litchfield's "beat-them-to-the-ground" policy was modeled after that of other Army detension centers.

Defense attourneys for Sg James M Jones also drew from Lt Cubage, details of a top secret plan whereby some 3000 EM were sent from Litchfield to the battlefront at the point of a gun.

Cubage admitted freely that he had instructed EM guards to work the men over with the understanding the order meant sever beatings with wooden clubs.

He said this general policy was well known among the guards and that they were encouraged to administer such beatings when they saw cause.

Cubage said he had received instructions to institute such policy from the commander, Col Kilian. He said Col Kilian knew the nature of the treatment that "difficult" prisoners received at ADTC (Army Disciplinary Trng Centers) and that they could be at tough as any of them.

Cubage is a clean-cut, 27 year old officer who entered the Army direct from Okla. Univ. six years ago. He is a former Boy Scout of near Eagle Rank, he said, in giving testimony.

Defense attorney McGee asked: "Did other DTCs use methods similar to Litchfield that the guards of Litchfield might have been aware of supporting their belief that they were carrying out a legal order? "

Cubage replied, "Yes. When I took prisoners from Litchfield to the DTCs I took g guards with me from Litchfield. . . The commandant at DTC 2913 at Lanford, Eng., for

15/

instance, took myself and the guards through their solitary confinement cells in Oct.
1944, and showed us the punishment the men got there. . . <u>medieval</u> Also when we
returned from DTC 3 at Sudbury, Eng. I told our guards that the commandant there had
told me his men used slubs for beating prisoners. I told them that at Langford they
had a dungeon far below ground, you couldnt see the light, and the officer in charge
laughingly told me that occasionally someone fell down these stairs on his face."

Cubage told how Litchfield became croweded, even though several "top secret orders for mounting prisoners" directed some 3000 men to the front under guards at the point of a gun.

Cubage said he tried to get transferred to other duty because he did not agree
with Litchfield's methods, but that he was told the only way he could get out was to
get a big "unstaisfactory" on his record. [So I guess he didn't go.]

From PM Wed Jun 19.46

Capt Earl J Carroll, the assistant prosecutor, said: "I believe there has
been more than one death as a result of beatings." At least two different witnesses test-
ified that a paratrooper was supposed to have died in Litchfield from mistreatment.

Eril L Bolton, who had just recovered from combat wounds, came to Litchfield in
good condition. Within about two weeks he was sent to France, with a bandaged head and
swollen face. En toure he died, according to the prosecution, "from massive cerebral
hemorrhage, possibly <u>caused by having his head rammed against a wall.</u>"

Pvt Theo. L Taylor testified that he was beaten by two guards in the presence
of Maj Lobuono and Lt Cubage. Two guards, one night, including Sgt Judson Smith, led
him from his bunk to the officers. Sgt Smith said: "Break that nigger's goddam neck."
and struck him on the head. Then they wrapped a blanket around his head and beat his
naked body for 15 minutes.

"Two guards held Alfred by the arms while a third asked him where he had been wounded. When he said his stomach, he hit Alfred repeatedly in the stomach until he collapsed, groaning and crying, with blood flowing from his mouth."

16/

Article on description of prison camp in Italy said the greatest hardship was the lack of reading matter.

The prisoners explained they used sewing needles to clean messkits after they are washed and dried.

"Mess kits are made of unburnished stainless steel. By scratching the mess kid with a needle, you get the same effect as burnishing."

The prisoners said no one completed them to needle their mess kits, but that they found it the easiest way to keep up with the camp's standards of cleanliness.
(I think maybe it was too keep from being fored, too.)

BOOK ONE

I

Under the blows of the summer Hawaiian sun the quadrangle gasped helplessly like a losing arm-heavy fighter. Through the heat haze and the thin mid-morning film of the red dust came a muted haze of sound: the clankings of steel-wheeled carts bounding over brick, the slapping of oiled leather slingstraps, the shuffling beat of scorched shoesoles, the hoarse expletives of irritated noncoms. In the earthern square in the center of the quadrangle a machinegun company went disinterestedly through the motions of drill.

In 1939 the tourist folders of the Matson Company barely mentioned the U.S. Army's Schofield Barracks as a point of questionable interest, to be toured in a short half hour on the way to Waianae and a swim in the fabulous breakers. The tourist, if his patriotism was sufficient to brave the heat and dust, carried away with him a memorable picture of his nation's armed might. The huge sprawling Post with its Artillery Parks, Vehicle Parks, Drill Areas when viewed by the tourist's impersonal eye were so impressive that for a moment he felt a nationalistic pride that he was a citizen of this Republic; he even ceased to begrudge the taxes he had to pay, for a moment. Afterwards, whenever he remembered the vast horde of marching men, it was a curious phenomenon of his mental picture that the men were faceless; they had arms, legs, heads and chests, but where their faces should have been there were only long lines of blank spaces. If the tourist ever noticed this phenomenon, he paid no attention to him.

2/I

to it.

For the tourist, below on the Beach-At-Waikiki, the salt
breeze blowing in over water might be cool. In some secluded
grove under the lee of a mountain the temperature might be below
eight. But here in the quadrangle, high on the flat red dirt
of the "pineapple plateau," the red line was well above a hun-
dred, with nothing at all but the dust in the air to soften its
punch.

The machinegun company toiled timelessly in the earthern
square. At the bandstand in one corner stood a trim and hand-
some second lieutenant, his elbows propped behind him on the
bandstand floor, watching from the shade his men squatting over
their water-jacketed gun in the sun. His duty sergeant stood
deferentially before him. The grass had
been a green carpet after the spring rains, but now it was grey,
showing ever wider patches of red dirt in its middle age, like
the sunburned head of a bald man. Repeated with efficient mono-
tony, came the ringing double belltone as a man yanked the bolt
handle twice at a non-com's command of "Load!" Then the trigger
would click with dry humor on the empty chamber, a disillusion
made boring through repetition. They had been doing this since
eight o'clock. It was now after nine.

Private Robert Lee Prewitt came out of Sam Choy's sallyport
restaurant, still savoring the taste of the fried eggs, ham and
coffee he had just eaten. He looked out over the drudgery of
"Dog" Company with sympathy greatly enhanced by his own impending
return to straight duty. The screendoor slammed behind him, add-

3/I

ing its small sixteenth note to the lazy symphony of the hot
summer drone. The slamming of the screen was to Prewitt the
final banging of a steel door. It locked him out of a garden
of privilege he would never enter again. It emphatically punc-
tuated the end of a period, and in spite of his rigid self-
control, his stomach wrenched with a regret that he refused to
impassive
let echo upon his φmm face.

No more, said the door, would Prewitt get out of his bunk
at eight-thirty when the Regiment was already out at drill,
leisurely dress and shave, and saunter over to Choy's for a
late breakfast. He was no longer a privileged member of the
Regimental Drum and Bugle Corps. He was losing a soft deal, and
he knew it, and he kind of hated to see it go.

1/

Throughout the summer, during all the things that happened, Prewitt had been vaguely waiting for the boxing season to begin, the way a man will sit in a bar and drink and talk and laugh until he keeps looking at his watch to see what time his train is due in. In a small spot in his mind was always the knowledge of its coming, and of the unforeseen, unpredicted change that it would bring. Always was the feeling that the unknown change would cancel out these other things that seemed important now.

On a Tuesday in early July it came and he felt the asinine relief of the man who has sat all night waiting for the attack to start when it is dawn. On Thursday night would be the first Company Smoker of the Regimental intramural season, and already in the heat they were laying the mats and getting the ropes ready to be hung in the bandstand in the corner of the quadrangle.

That morning, even more than other mornings, drill was only a formality that the Company had to suffer through. Every member of the Regimental squad was excused from drill that morning to help put up the ring and there was only Gallowitz and Thornhill and three corporals left to take the Company out. At Drill Call they were trooped outside and stood around looking enviously at the fighters at the bandstand across the quad and it was like on the day the circus came and you all rode your bikes out to the park and watched the big snake-muscled Negroes driving stake and you knew the circus did not start tomorrow like your mother said, it started now, even though you had to go back home.

2/

Capt Holmes and Lt Culpepper neither one showed up at drill that morning, and the men sat on the grass around the noncoms but they did not hear the lectures and their whispered was not on women today but on the coming Smokers. It was almost like a holiday with all the fighters gone from drill, and of course a holiday was always good.

In the afternoon Prewitt, still sluggish from the big noon meal, standing in the Orderly Room by the window could look out over the heads of the fatigue formation and see the of fighters detail/smoothing down the gym mats and lacing down the canvas over them, twisting out the thick taped ropes and hanging them on the hooks in the corner posts that supported the roof where the lights were being hung now too, all under the proud eye of S/Sgt Dhom his big face red from anxious thinking and his bald dome running the sweat of unaccustomed concentration. Dhom worked the corner turnbuckles himself, while Champ Wilson barefooted on the canvas, his dead face smiling now for once, bounced weaving off the ropes to test their tension then turning his head to tell Dhom to tighten or slack off. The weathered fatigue details watched the/bandstand as it blossomed out into usefulness and the complaining privates who a week ago had cursed them jockstraps in their companies were proud and anxious now.

The formation in the company street broke, Warden started for the Orderly Room, and Prewitt left the window; went into the closet to catch up on his filing, not wanting Warden to see him watching, feeling the old excitement that had seeped down him warmly like a drink as he watched the detail working on the ring. Maybe it was because he knew he was not going

3/

to be in there that it hit him now so hard, and he remembered
the hot brightness and the resin-sweat-strained smell and
the great proud contempt for the yelling crowds that bragged
and cheered and booed, but never climbed inside the ropes
themselves.

Warden came in and threw his list of details in the
wastebasket and stood looking out the window at the men
swarming over the bandstand like ants around a dying bee.

"What you doin there, kid?" he said without turning his
head.

"Just filin some old stuff, Get it out of the way."

"In the French Revolution," Warden said, "they got ready
for the executions by setting up the scaffold in the square.
They did that for Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. This
is only for the honor of the Compny." He did not look around,
but he seemed to be waiting for an answer.

But Prewitt didn't answer. Somehow for a long time now
he had sensed that Warden knew, about Dixie Wells. Warden
had a way of sniffing out the truth that was underneath the
surface of a thing, without ever going out of his way to look
for it, without snooping, without making you feel you had been
raped. It was almost as if Warden was hunting for the thing
itself, and did not even see you. But this was a thing Prewitt
did not want to talk about.

"Wish you was going to be there, kid?" The big man
leaned against Holmes's desk, without looking around. He
folded his arms and went on staring out the window.

"Nope." Prewitt went on with the filing.

4/

"They sure workin hard out there, them guys. Just to be puttin up a ring. They never work that hard for me."
"They can have it," Prewitt said.

"A man is silly," Warden said, "to expect that because one man got blinded in the ring all other men would give up fighting. He'd be silly to say fighting was an evil. Wouldnt he?"

"I guess that's right," Prew said. He could hear the measure of a hammer loud on wood through the window from across the quad and knew that somebody had crawled up in the rafters and was fixing in the lights. "Yes, I guess he would."

"You could not expect," Warden said, "That because one innocent man, now and then, got hung the world would give up execution."

"You couldnt expect that because one innocent man, now and then, was given life and served it the world would give up execution."

Who ever expects the world to give up/hurting. Let alone killing. Except some old ladies' club of anti-vivisectionists."

Prewitt put the papers down and turned around to face him, but Warden was still looking out across the quad.

"So what am I supposed to do? Go out there and let them beat my brains in? Or do it to some other guy? So he can start punching every time he hears a trolley bell? For the honor of the Compny?"

"Not for me. Not if you dont want to." Warden turned around and grinned, not his usual grin but a half-shy half-sad

5/

smile that made the other think for a second of Maylon Stark.
"I killed some Chinese bandits once. I got four I know of,

Maybe I got more. There was 30 dead
I seem them tumble over my sights. /All of us on the detail
got a medal for it. I give mine to a blonde White Russian
cunt, in Manila, a long time after."

Prewitt leaned back against the table and the sharp
straight edge was like a memory of the middle rope against
his buttocks. The muscles around his shoulder blades seemed
to be reaching for the top one.

"If a man did not want to fight, he should not have to.
The goddam coaches and the colonels should not pressure him,
for the honor of the Regiment."

"Thats right," Warden said. "They shouldnt. You are
perfectly right. What do you aim to do about it? Its a long
time from now until December, when the Regimental season
starts, and every day it will be harder." Even the straight
duty men who called Holmes's punchies goldbricks a month ago
will think you've double-crossed the Compny."

"Let them," Prewitt said. "Its none of their concern."

"They'll make it their concern. They're like business-
men who worship the corporation that sucked them dry. You're
not supposed to look at those diamonds in the twenty-year-
service-pin they give you. They are diamonds, even if they
are the size of gnat-turds."

Prewitt grinned, pulling tight the leather of his lips.
"A man has got to do what hes got to do. If he dont he wont
be not man at all. What counts is what he thinks about him-
self, down underneath where no one else can see."

6/

"You're going to be damned unpopular," Warden grinned, "even with your friends."

"Friends cant do it for you, Top. The only friend I ever had knocked my sister up. What do you want? me to go out and help them win the trophy? for the dayroom?"

"Who?" Warden said. "Me? I never saw a jockstrap yet that could soldier worth a damn." He went over to the tall green filing cabinet and pulled open the top drawer this time. Hidden down under the stacks of folders was a bottle and he pulled it out. He drank alone and corked it up. Then as an afterthought he turned and offered it to Prewitt.

"Here," he said, "Prewitt. Have a fucking drink."

As Prewitt took the bottle their eyes met and held.

"Okay," Prewitt said. "Thanks, Top." He drank and gave it back.

Warden stuck it back inside the drawer and arranged the papers over it. "Dynamite found my last one. I had to move it to another drawer. And lissen, kid, I always memorize just where the line comes on the label. Now that you know where I keep it."

"I'd hate to have to put water in such good whiskey,"

"Yeah?" Warden nodded at the cabinet. "What the hell are you foolin with back there?"

"Just filin up some old stuff, like I told you the last time you ask."

"Yeah?" Warden said. "Well if that's all you're doin, get the hell out of here and take the goddam afternoon off or something. You bother the shit out of me, standin around. I got some real work to do. Dont you ever work around this

7/

place?

"Fuck you," Prewitt said. He reached up on the wall to get his hat.

He did not want to stay around the Company. He did not want to watch them working in the quad. He went up, that last free afternoon, to see Maggio in the Stockade, walking along the dusty gravel road between the rows of elms and past the golf course where the officers in kneelong British shorts were following the white balls across the wellkept greenness of the grass and on up past the Packtrain and the riding stables where the officers' women in johdpurs were mounting and dismounting in the English saddles, to the Stockade very white and very pretty, the place where the prisoners were, under the shade of a pretty grove and all the time the mountains right before him pushing up a promise into the sky, looking always seductively as if the next step he took would put him on them. He took along the cartons of tailormades that he had bought for Angelo last payday. Those there at the Stockade were always redlined on the Payroll and they only issued papers to a man and a sack of Bull a day, here at this pretty white and shaded place where they kept the prisoners.

And now, after evening breakdown, after the hot blazing afternoon and red dusty grass, after Retreat and the sweating rush into the messhall crowding shoulders to sit down to a meal that the heat made it impossible to eat anything but pick at while the sweat ran down your forehead, he sat with Andy and Friday in the Post Beergarden and the heat was begin-

8/

ning to go away now and it was almost dark, and he was think-
ing about Angelo locked up up there. And still all around
them at the open air tables and the bar the talk was on the
coming Smokers of the --th Regiment.

Mynameybadykmknwns

Andy set his beercan down and wiped a little blob of
foam from his upper lip with the back of his hand.

"Everybody knows, he said evasively, "that Dynamite's
looking for new talent. Everybody knows thats why man had
the intramural season pushed up from September to July, so our
Smokers would be the first of any on the Post."

"Sure," Friday smiled his eager artless smile.
"<u>Who</u> He's <u>really</u> bucking for that Championship again this
year. For The Regiment to win it twice in a row <u>is</u> <u>really</u>
something. <u>Why</u> He's going to keep them training right
up to fall maneuvers and then begin again as soon as they are
over <u>and</u> <u>keep</u> right on up until December."

"G Compny's a cinch to win it," Andy said, "with Champ
Wilson and Grzenda for our coaches. It's too bad them two cant
fight again this year."

"We got Sergeant Dhom, the Trainer," Friday nodded, "and
Captain Holmes, the Coach, in there all the time."

"Even if they are supposed to be nonpartizan," Andy said.
"We got more eligible Regimental fighters than any other
Compny. Oh, we'll win it all right. But what I'd like to see
is G Compny win all eight of the individual championships."

"Man," Friday said, "that would be <u>somethin</u>."

"You aint just woofin," Andy said. "The way I see it,

9/

we got four of them cinched and two more we ought to win."

And all around them voices buzzing, talking up the prospects. In this crowded place of men relaxing and of the myriads of cans moving back and forth like silver fish across the olive stiffness of/pushed back hats, the insignias of all four of the Infantry Regiments in the Hawaiian Division were present and sprinkled through the blud hatcords of the Infantry the Red cords of the Artillery and the maroon and white cords of the Engineers. And in the moving, crowded, laughing, lying on the grass relaxing place, all of them discussing the outcome of the Smokers and the meaning they would hold for next December.

Prewitt listened to the buzzing voices and watched how the grass was like a sieve through which the water that was dusk was dripping while on the sidewalks outside the lattice fence the crowds of khaki drifted toward the early show, and he studied the two men with him.

They had walked over through the long dusk that lasted like an afterglow after the sun went behind the mountains until it dropped in the sea, crossing the street from the Regimental Guardhouse of corregated iron and sifting through the crowds of uniforms all going someplace now in the dusk, to this little triangle of green left over from the meeting of three streets and with the white lattice fence around it and the roofed-ver U-shaped bar inside. Here was one place besides the golf course and the Officers' Club where the grass was always thick and green; and they could come here, in the evenings. They had hurried over gladly thinking about the cold beer in beaded cans thirsty for it under the heat and

10/

wanting to beat the crowd there and they had and now the
dusk was almost dark and the heat was going and they were on
their second can, sitting at one of the metal tables out in
the grass and watching the growing crowd that milled around
the bar with that smug complaisance of the man who got there
first and got his seat. And Prew was wishing he had come
here by himself.

"Grzebinski," Andy was saying, "has got the heavyweight
division sewed up tight." He looked at Prew and Friday for
agreement. But only Friday nodded.

"Okay," Andy said. "Now Gorton, he stands a damn good
chance to win the lightheavy. Unless L Compny really springs
this darkhorse I'd say Gorton ought to win it." Hold-
ing up his hand to be a scoreboard, Andy turned down two
fingers.

"What I want to know," Friday said, "is why they call
them Smokers."

"Now the middlweigh," Andy said. "Bloom will win the
middleweight, if he can make the weight. And he's supposed
to make it."

"That Bloom," Friday said. "I hope that bastard loses."

"What!" Andy said. "You dont mean that. Thats a hell
of a way to talk."

"I dont like him," Friday said.

"Okay, so you dont like him. He's still fightin for the
Compny, aint he? You shouldnt even kid about a thing like
that? Should he, Prew?"

Prew turned back from looking through the lattice. "Sure.
If that's the way he feels, why shouldnt he say it? I hope he

4/4

loses too. He wont though."

Andy turned down the third finger. "That makes three/
we ought to win. Now the welterweight." He paused. "We got
no welter worth a damn. Smith couldnt punch his way out of
a paper bag." He paused again and looked at Prewitt from the
corner of his eye.

"I still would like to know why they call them Smokers,"
Friday said.

Prew swung around him his chair. "You guys want another
beer?" Neither of them answered. "Okay," he said to Andy,
"What it you're trying to get said. You think I ought to
fight? Is that it?"

Andy would not meet his eye. "Well, no, Prew. Not exactly.
I wouldnt say a guy ought to fight, if he didnt want to."

"But you think I ought to want to. Is that what you
mean?"

Friday was staring embarrassedly at his beer.

"Well, no," Andy said, glancing at him sideways. "I wasnt
tryin to show you. All I was doin was goin over all the
prospects. I'd like to see us win mmmmmm the championship in
every weight, that's all."

"All I was doin," Andy said, glancing at him sideways,
"Was goin over all the prospects. We havent got a welter,
have we?"

"No," Prewitt said. "We havent. You want another beer.
Or not."

"Yeah," Andy said. "I'll take one, Prew. Now Dupree.
Dupree will win the lightweight. I dont see how he can loose

12/

it. It's a shame Dupree wasn't here last year."

"Yeah," Friday said softly. "I betcha he would even took
Champ Wilson."

"I'll go get the beer," Prewitt said. He stood up.

"Okay, Prewi"

"Sure, Prew." Their eyes looked up at him, accusing mildly, embarrassed by a thing they did not understand.

"Zalnovitch will win the featherweight," he said. "Hands down."

"Thats six," Andy said, turning down another finger.
"Four inches out of six. One fifty-fifty chance. One loss."

"Thats how she stands," Prew said. Names were a fine thing, he thought, in their own right. Grzebinski, Gorton, Bloom, Dupree, Zalnovitch--and Prewitt. These names symbolize America, they said. All melted in one pot. All little men with an equal chance to become big men. That was how they said it. Yet the names themselves really did mean something because they sounded good. But what it was he could not say.

Dupree was a new man just out of recruit drill, a stocky
bandy-legged Frenchman from Jersey with a crooked grin below
his mashed down nose, a grin caused by thick lips full of scar
tissue. Dupree had been a Golden Glover before he enlisted.
Already he had starred in track and had whipped a couple men
on the green. His stock had risen. You could see he liked to
fight and liked the adoration it gained him. Well, nobody was
trying to keep him from fighting. Already Dupree was fast
becoming a Company favorite. That, apparently, was the way
it went.

Standing next to him, Stark said that might have made her stop. But it wasn't dark. The only light now was from the electric bulb straining on poles alway. The tables and chairs of the bar.

He walked over toward the bar, the grass cushioning his steps and bringing him a sudden enlarged sense of the fruitfulness of life, the fullness and richness of just living well. What was it a question of? It was a shame that all the grass was not well tended. What was it wrong with him? That always made him think of the red-dusty grass? even when walking on the thick well-watered grass? even more, then? Didnt his mother's Bible say: "The poor we will always have with us"? The army's job was not to water grass. And yet the old indignation rose up in him again. And on the back of his neck he felt the dumb accusation of their eyes, following him.

He saw Stark standing at the bar, crowded up on both sides, yet just as alone here in this crowd as if he had been in his storeroom. He walked over to him, drawn by that loneliness.

"Hello, kid," Stark said. He squeezed back to make a minimum place for Prewitt at the bar.

"Hello, Maylon," Prew said. "Hey, Jimmy!"

"Hey there boy," Big Jimmy hollered at him from down at the end of the bar. His broad Kanaka face was grinning through its sweat and his hands were opening and passing cans of beer as fast as he could pull them from the cooler. "Compny Smokers comin up," he yelled up to Prew. "You goin do smore fight, eh?"

"Not me," Prew said. "I'm scared I'll git a callyflower ear."

"Boy, you a hot one," Jimmy grinned, flashing the teeth that were always whiter in a dark-skinned face. "You no kid me, boy. I see you fight last year. In a Bowl. You good boy."

1/

vaguely
Throughout the summer Prewitt had been waiting for the
boxing season to begin, the way a man will sit in a bar and
drink and talk and laugh but keep looking at his watch to see what time his train was due in.

Summer in Hawaii was very much like summer anywhere,\ except the nights are always very cool. After the March rainy
season he watched the summer grow, realizing again that he
did not even know Hawaii. Schofield Barracks was not Hawaii,
aust ad Ft Myer was not Virginia and Ft Meade was not Maryland.
Any army post was like any other army post, it carried its
own atmosphere and set it down and walled it up within the
alien country and the soldier looked across the wall and knew
again he was a stranger's loneliness.

On a Tuesday in July that was very hot the intramural
boxing season of the Regiment got started. The first fights
would not be till Thursday, today they were only putting up
the ring, but it was started now. Like on the day the circus
comes and all the children ride their bikes out to the park
and watch the big snake-masculated Negroes driving stakes and
they know the circus does not start tomorrow, it starts now.

17/

dyes looked like twin bubbles in a slopjar. Dont let him
worry you."

"You know, Maylon, half of it with me is that they're
gonna <u>make</u> me fight. You know about Dixie Wells?"

Stark nodded. "Warden told me."

"That son of a bitch. He would."

"I dont think he told nobody else, Prew."

"In the beginning it was just a simple thing: I didn't
want to fight any more. I transferred out of the 27th to keep
from fighting, took a bust from sergeant. But it's gone beyond
that now. People bring all kinds of other things into it.
Things that got nothin to do with it. It's all got so big and
so complex I don't understand it anymore." Except I know they
aint goin to <u>make</u> me."

"It seems," Stark said, "that to get along in this outfit
a man either got to be a nonentity, or else a punchy or one of
Dynamite's boys from Bliss. Thats the only reason I got my
rating. Whether I'm a good mess sergeant is completely out of
it."

"I don't care about the rating, Maylon. All I want is
for them to let me alone."

"Nobody ever believed this man's army was a democratic
institution, except maybe the newspapers that are buildin up
this peacetime draft. But its more than that." <u>Stark</u>
was staring off over Prewitt's head at the neon light around
the roof. "It seems anymore the way the world is no man can
be free to do what he wants to do. A man ought to be able
to lay on the beach and be a bum, if he wanted to. There was
a squirrel use to live in a tree outside the kitchen I was in

18/

at Bliss. We use to feed him nuts. He would eat right outa
your hand. He'd eat his nuts and then just lay on his belly
on a big branch with his arms and legs hanging down over the
sides. I really envied that squirrel. It seems people are
saddling each other with all kinds of duties and responsibilities.
You either got to play ball or take the consequences."

"But they're always bringin outside things into it," Prew
said. "Things that got nothin to do with the real thing."
empty

Stark set his/beer can down and picked up one of Prewitt's
three. He turned his head to holler at Jimmy to bring another.

"You know what that makes me thing of? You know this
waitress Rose that works down at the Blue Chancre? She lives
down mm one of them shacky streets out near John Rodgers
Airport, just off the road to Kickam Field. J Road or L Road
or M Road. (There's a big Filipino settlement down there.)
Its the place where the gooks are always having these illegal
cockfights; I went out to one of them once. You ever see one?"

Prewitt shook his head.

"They're really a spectacle. All the gooks jabberin
and arguin and wavin their arms and bettin, and the two roosters
in the ring with the steel spurs catching the sun and walkin
around and around each other like a couple of punchies feelin
each other out in the first round. And everybody bring their
whiskey or some beer and maybe some sandwiches. They really
take their cockfights serious. A lot of money changes hands
over one of those things. There's always a couple of fights;
somebody is always gettin cut up bad. . . .

"Well anyway, I took this Rosie home one Saturday night.

21/

tween his hands, moving his arms to keep from being bumped,
he could feel Stark/∫ watching him reflectively with the big
sneered and laughed and cried all at
deep-circled eyes that ∫x∫x∫dxt∫x∫n∫e∫x∫m∫d∫kx∫mgkx∫m∫kx∫m∫xy
the same time but never shifted. There were times when Stark's
for
eyes haunted him, looking always/some unseen thing that could
not be named or handled or described. He he walked back to
the table the sad mockery of those eyes seemed to follow him.
There were some things, they seemed to say, no man can ever
∫m∫kx∫m∫y find.

The atmosphere of dumb accusation had not changed any
since he left the table. He had been innocent enough to hope
it would, but it still hung over them, unspoken, unalluded to,
but making its weight felt.

"I seen Champ Wilson and Hdnerson over there," Andy said,
"while you was gone. Dupree and Salnovitch was with them.
Old Ike Gallowitz came up while they was there, but they razzed
him till they run him off."

"He thinks them guys are Christ on a crutch," Prew said.
"Because they're punchies."

"Yeah," Andy said, "but I think its because Capt Holmes
is the coach, ∫dont you?"

"Maybe," Prew said. "Maybe you're right."

"I think I'm right," Andy said. "We figured out the cham-
pionships while you was gon. Way we figure we got five/them
cinched. Two of them we ought to win, with luck. Only one
is a sure loss."

"The welterweight, I suppose."

23/

"Well it sounds highclass to guys like Dynamite," Prew said. "Back in the old days before fightin was accepted socially they use to hold all the cards in rich men's clubs. The rich men financed the cards and the fighters' training expenses and for that they got to run the show. They kept it exclusive and when they held the cards they'd watch the fights and smoke and thats why they call them Smokers. Anything else you want to know?"

"Yeah," Friday grinned. "What did the rich men get out of it?"

"They got to run this show. That made them gentlemen-sportsmen. Every now and then they'd put on the gloves with one of their boys and the boy would carry them. That made them sportsmen. They had lots of money and paid for everything. That made them gentlemen. Gentlemen-sportsmen. You get it?"

"I guess so," Friday said.

"All right. Here's something else. It's the same thing today. Everybody feeds off the fighters. Holmes and Dhom and Delbert and all the rest of them. I don't expect you jerks to understand it. But I want you to get this straight, see?"

"I ain't going to fight this year, or another year. I've quit, see? There's no use of us all sitting around all clammed up about it. If you guys want to still be my friends, that's fine. But friends like a guy for what he is--not what he does. And if you want to be my friends there ain't going to be any more of this stuff of backhandedly tryin to push me into fightin, simply because you want me to or think I ought to, see?" A man's friends are either for him or they aint his

24/

friends, see?

He paused and neither of them answered or would look him in the eyes.

"I'm your friend, Prew," Friday said after a while.

"So am I," Andy said, sullenly.

"Okay then," Prew said. "Then you'll lay off of this subtile stuff of trying to dig me by talkin about the Smokers and the individual championships. You dont fool me a fuckin bit. I dont give a goddam who wins what, that's the way I feel. Now if you guys dont want to be seen in public with a fighter who refuses to fight for the honor of the Compny, then you can get up and walk away now. Take it or leave it."

"Hell," Friday said. "You know I dont give a goddam about what they say about you." He looked around at Andy, who had not answered.

"All right," Prew said. "How about you, Andy?"

"Well," Andy said, looking off to the side, "I think you ought to fight, to help the Compny win."

"I don't give a dam what you think. As long as you don't talk about it around me, or try to high-pressure me." It's up to you."

"Well," Andy said. He paused a moment and then stood up. "Well, I guess I'll be gettin on back to the barracks. I wanted to practice some on the <u>white</u> git-tar tonight anyway, before lights out."

"Okay," Prew stared straight ahead, he did not turn to look as Andy moved around the table. "If that's the way you want it."