Author: James Jones
Category: Literature
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Johnny laughed. “Nothing could be that bad.”
“It is,” George said. “Yeah, Sandy’s always like that. She just turns the house over to you and lets you do what you want. She’ll go off upstairs and read and fool around, do whatever it is she does. Maybe she’ll come back and sit and talk awhile. Eddie’s the same way. When I was going to college, I’d bring down the whole football squad. Eddie’d walk in home from work and there’d be a mob of guys in the kitchen, eating and drinking, and Sandy cooking fried chicken. He’d never bat an eye, just sit down and start drinking with us.” George laughed a misty reminiscent laugh. “By Christ! We used to have some fun back in those days. The guys on the squad thought they were wonderful; they’d always dedicate one touchdown to Sandy and Eddie.
“Eddie played on the State team,” George said, conferring a great compliment. “You wouldn’t think a little runt like him would last five minutes.
“They’re a couple of mighty swell people. But don’t let her fool you any. She can be tougher than hell when she wants. The first bloody nose I got in my life I got from Sandy Pruitt in grade school.”
Johnny joined in his laugh, thinking that George would probably end up at the dance.
“How old do you think I am?” George said.
“Thirty-two or -three,” Will said, deliberately lowering it.
“Thirty-eight,” George said.
“Yeah,” said Johnny, “Fanny told me she thought you seemed a little old for the Infantry.”
George laughed gratingly. “Did you explain the army to her?”
Johnny grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “I told her. She knows all about it now. Understands it all; just like the rest of the PFCs.”
The kitchen was a gaily decorated place. The curtains over the small square windows matched the red and white check of the tablecloth, and the shelves of the china cabinets were covered with shelf paper of the same checked design. There were concealed fluorescent lamps above the windows behind the curtains turned them on before she left because it was getting dusk, outside, and they gave out a diffused gay light. The three soldiers sat in the room and talked, and some of the unobtrusive happiness, the serene gaiety that permeated the room crept into their minds. The bitter “gripes” became less bitter jokes. Johnny and George became drunker, and the combat and the army faded away from them in this room that was the antithesis of all army barracks and bivouacs. They laughed and felt very fine.
“When you were talking about war books,” Will said, “you made me think of something. Why is it that they always sound romantic to someone who hasn’t had the experience? Even now when I think of combat, I think of it with a sort of thrill of adventure. Even though I know it isn’t.” He got up from the table and rinsed his glass, stood it bottom up on the side of the sink.
“I don’t read much,” George said, “but you know what I think? I think a man has to go through a war before he can understand it—even in books.” George squirmed on his chair. “Hand me them crutches, Johnny. I got to go to the can.” Johnny stepped after them, and George swung himself awkwardly into the other room. A twinge went through Wilson and he looked at Johnny quickly. A man so helpless he couldn’t even go to the toilet privately and with dignity, without help or a pair of wooden sticks. Johnny was looking down at the table, rolling his cigaret around the lip of the ashtray.
“That’s nothing, Will,” he said without looking up, “There was a guy next to me in the hospital in the New Hebrides who had both hands off. He had to be fed by the wardboys, and when the food dribbled down his chin, they wiped his chin off for him. He was a grown man about George’s age. When he went to the can, he had to have somebody unbutton his pants and wipe his ass for him.” Johnny seemed to have divined Will’s thought.
“Both hands,” said Will thoughtfully. “What could he do?”
“He could go to the movies and laugh,” Johnny said.
Will watched Johnny’s face tighten up. “He was a nice guy,” Johnny said. “Had three kids.”
“It seems to me,” Johnny said as George came back, “that if the reader don’t get the author’s point, then it’s the author’s fault. When you write a book, it’s your job to get across to people what you’ve got to say.”
“They got too much propaganda stuffing their heads,” George said. He sat down awkwardly, and Johnny took his crutches, leaned them against the wall.
“That’s partly it,” Johnny said. “Take Wilson. He knows how rotten the army is. Cutthroat and full of graft. How monotonous and inefficient and chickenshit it is. He know all that, but he’s never been overseas. So he gets the idea it’s different overseas. Adventurous. He figures it will magically change if he gets overseas. Most of the guys in the States hate the army, but they figure if they could get overseas it would be different. When they do, they find it’s just the same as here—except more people get killed.”
“You may be right about most fellows,” Wilson said, “but you’re dead wrong about me. I just said it seemed adventurous. If I never get overseas, it’ll be too soon. I’ll forego punching my typewriter at the enemy just to selfishly get out and go ahead with my own work.”
Johnny got up to mix himself and George another drink. “Well,” he said, “I’d sure like to see somebody come out with a book on this war that would cut the romance out of it; I’ve got two nephews aged seven and three. . . . It seems the more terrible and realistic they make war seem, the better people like it. This Great Crusade stuff, coupled with the dissatisfaction of their daily lives, always gets them. Most people would rather be crusading against some poor son of a bitch than live like peaceful hermits. It makes them feel superior; people are always crusading against something or other.”
“You know,” George said in a surprised voice. “That’s what Sandy and Eddie are, in a way.” He was pleased at his own thought. “They’re peaceful hermits, right in the middle of a town. They live their own lives and never bother anybody. But if somebody wants what they’ve got to offer, they give it and help all they can. If you don’t want it, they leave you alone and just keep on going their own way.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Johnny said. He had not heard. He was staring down at his glass, thinking.
Jones’s agent Maxwell Aley wrote Jones on March 25 1945: “The Red Cross attack will probably run into trouble with any publisher. It sounds too exaggerated to be convincing. Defeats itself.” Lowney scrawled on that page of the letter: “disagree. handle it better. refer to what Millie told us and question why we never see an auditing or a statement like a bank—No corporation laws to stop swindling on a mammoth scale. don’t say name but imply all you will.”
Jones apparently did some revisions of this section before mailing the final draft to Perkins, but the name remained. Jones and his surrogate Johnny did not worship sacred cows.
SURELY NOT THE RED CROSS
AT THE CARIBOU CLUB GRILLE, ENDYMION, AUTUMN 1943
CLIFF MERRITT INTRODUCED HIM TO the strange girl, Sylvia Greening, a Red Cross Recreation Worker. Shortly after Cliff left the table.
“Surely not the Red Cross,” Johnny said in mock surprise. “You look much too lovely and intelligent.”
“What’s wrong with the Red Cross?” the girl asked, coloring slightly. Her voice was not angry.
“Nothing particularly,” Johnny answered. “Except that I don’t like it. It could be I’m prejudiced; I may have read too many magazine articles written by Red Cross girls who have been overseas helping our boys. I’m allergic to such concentrated goodness. Actually, I’ve had no dealings with the Red Cross.
“I’ll take that back,” he added. “The Red Cross did give me a pack of cigarets in New Zealand. I had to sit through a sociological interrogation that lasted half an hour and covered everything from my birthmarks to my ambitions in life before I got them. But they did give them to me.” Of course, this was not strictly the truth. Johnny had had more than one pack of cigarets from the Red Cross. After he got back to the States, he had
made friends with one of the civilian girls who did the secretarial work for the Red Cross in the hospital, and he had got all the cigarets he wanted.
“I take it you don’t think so much of the Red Cross,” the strange girl said, not unkindly.
Johnny stared at her obdurately. “Frankly no, I don’t,” he said. “I’ve been in the army almost five years, and the only Red Cross outfit I’ve seen that was worth a damn was the one my brother runs.”
At this remark, the girl perked up her ears, and her slightly condescending attitude of before took on more interest. “Oh,” she said in a significant tone, as if his brother being in the Red Cross changed him into another person. “Is your brother in the Red Cross?”
“Yes,” he said. “He’s a field director.”
“Is he really?” she said in a surprised tone.
“Sure,” he said. “I told him to stay the hell out but he wouldn’t listen to me.”
“Why are you so set against the Red Cross?” she asked, “Or are you just set against everything?”
“That’s it,” Johnny said. “I’m like the Chicago Tribune; I’m an agin-er.”
“No, seriously.”
“Well, in my own personal experience, I’ve never seen the Red Cross do anything worth a damn—except collect money.”
“Perhaps there are other people in the world,” said the girl sarcastically.
“I was just coming to that. Among all the guys I’ve met in the army, in combat and in the hospital afterwards, the Red Cross is a joke.”
“Well, there are millions of people in the service, you know,” she said.
Johnny agreed. “So I read in the papers. I’ll grant you that much. And then again, I think the guys I’ve met are a pretty good cross-section of these millions you speak about—except for officers, of course. I don’t know whether they like the Red Cross or not; I imagine they do since they can at least date the Red Cross girls.” The girl started to speak, but he made a motion with his hand and continued. “Besides that, I’m inclined to think the Red Cross is just a gravytrain. For the big shots, I mean. It’s possible I’m wrong; but there’s a lot of money donated to the Red Cross in this country. Why is it nobody ever sees an annual statement from the Red Cross? The world has a right to ask for an accounting, I guess, since everybody is a stockholder, haven’t they? Why don’t they publish an account of funds received and funds spent like any other business? You never see a bank or corporation that doesn’t publish an annual statement, do you?—unless they’re crooked. Where does the money go? How is it spent? And did you ever notice that all the really big jobs in the Red Cross are political appointments? and that some politician appoints somebody to the jobs?”
The girl was almost swept under by this tirade. “Oh, I’m sure they do publish a statement,” she said. “Someplace.”
“Have you ever seen one? I never have.” Johnny did not pay much attention to what he was saying. He felt a vague desire to antagonize this girl, to make her angry. It was not quite a conscious desire, or he would have realized that he resented the girl because she was attractive and because, as a Red Cross worker, she was in the officer class, and so immediately out of bounds for him. “I don’t mean the little guys when I say that,” he went on. “It’s the big shots I mean. The little guys in the Red Cross are all right; they work hard and they’re conscientious. The only bone I have to pick with them is that ninety-nine percent of them are dumber than hell and don’t know the first thing about people or how to handle them—in spite of their psychology and sociology majors.
“Now. What were you going to say?”
The girl smiled. “There’s not much for me to say, is there? Except that I disagree with you completely. For one thing, Red Cross girls are not hired to date the enlisted men.”
“They’re not hired to date the officers, either,” Johnny put in.
“They’re hired to provide them with recreation,” she continued. “That’s what they’re hired for, and that’s what their official designation is: Recreational Workers.”
“What if you don’t like quoits or croquet? I never saw anything so goofy as a bunch of battle-weary Infantrymen tossing rings at a stick.”
“There are a lot of other things they provide beside those,” the girl said, laughing in spite of herself.
“Oh, yes,” Johnny grinned. “Excuse me. I forgot about the movies.”
A scene from They Shall Inherit the Laughter not printed in To the End of the War shows Jones developing the background for George’s reactions in the ironic conclusion of “Air Raid”:
On Attu, May 29, 1943: The Jap concussion grenade hit George’s leg; it exploded, blinding him, deafening him, shocking his nervous system into disintegration.
Oh, Christ, he sobbed. Oh, Jesus Christ. The dirty bastards blew my leg off. Oh, Christ, Oh, Jesus, Jesus Christ.
I’m hit, George, Smitty said. They’re all dead but us.
A bunch of Japs came into the camp, prodding the bodies, bayoneting those who weren’t dead yet. They stopped in front of Smitty. They struck him deliberately five times until Smitty finally writhed on the ground, screamed once: You yellow bastards! and lay still. They must have decided George was dead, because they went on and left him. He looked dead, all covered with blood and mud and his leg mangled, just hanging by a thin strip of flesh.
I want a bath, Riley, he kept saying to the medic. Don’t let me die dirty.
AIR RAID
SANDY’S SISTER, RILEY, ARRIVED IN midafternoon. In the golden, soft breathing autumn afternoon she drove her conservatively maroon Buick roadster up onto the Marion driveway and tooted the horn as a signal of her arrival. Jimmy, her nine-year-old son, peered owlishly over the top of the dashboard at the garage. He was on a vacation from a private boys’ school, an exclusive one, and happy that his mother had brought him along on this trip. He always had more fun at this aunt’s house than he ever had anywhere else. He had secretly packed four of his smaller board games in his suitcase; there was always somebody to play the games with him here, provided that there were games present. So he had taken care of that contingency.
As Riley stopped the car, Sandy came to the back door with greetings. Sandy was not in the mood for receiving guests, but she was able to make her smile seem as cheerful as ever.
Young Jimmy hopped out of the car and ran across the front yard to climb up onto the three-foot stump of a tree. After climbing it, he stood atop the flat tableland in his blue single-breasted suit, arms akimbo, his tie fluttering in the mild breeze, the master of all he surveyed.
“Come here, Jimmy,” his mother called primly. “Carry in the bags like a gentleman should.” Without argument or comment Jimmy climbed down from his throne and walked to the car. “And tuck in your tie, darling,” amended Riley, as she brushed a speck from his knickerbocker trousers.
“Where’s George?” Jimmy asked Sandy, peering at her from within his little old man’s face, and concealing his excitement almost as well as a grownup. “Is George here?”
“He’s not up yet, Jim.” Sandy led them into the house, carrying two of the larger bags.
“Let him do it,” Riley said. “I want him to learn how to behave properly.”
“I don’t mind,” Sandy smiled. “These big ones are a little heavy for him. How’s Chicago?”
Chicago was fine, but colder. Riley proceeded to explain how nice it was to get away from Chicago for a while, although she’d go mad in the dullness of a small town if she stayed away for over a week. It was nice to get away from business and the office for a while, too.
Eddie and George, sleeping the well-earned sleep of the hangover, were awakened in their respective beds by the dissonant blasting of the car horn. By the time they had almost gotten back to sleep, Sandy called to them to come down.
“Riley’s here,” she said. “Come to take a week with us. Get up, you morons, and come on down.” After she called, she went back in the kitchen to talk to Riley about George, while young Jimmy was in
the downstairs guest bedroom putting away things should not exist for them—although exist they did, and Riley failed to realize that children are perceptive to the moods and emotions of their grownups, even if they are only present after the completion of the quarrels.
For this orientation confab, Eddie assumed his customary Sunday position in spite of guests, which was to stretch himself out luxuriously on his back in the center of the thick rug. He relaxed and remained silent with closed eyes.
The main topic, of course, was George, and Riley was confidently solicitous in her inquiry, in her efforts to close the gap of open water and bring the drifting boat against the sturdily founded dock. George did not accept the proper part in the mooring process.
“How are things going at the hospital?” Riley asked with kindly interest. “Not worth a goddam,” George said. “What the medics know is a deep dark secret. And they intend to keep it a secret because they don’t want anybody to know how goddam dumb they are.” He laughed abruptly.
This was not the answer Riley expected. “Will you have to have any more operations?” she asked with composure.
“Probably,” said George sullenly. “Probably several. They say there’s another piece of bone has to come out. The last three operations I’ve had have been the ‘final’ one. This one will be the final one, too.”
“Why, I didn’t know they were as bad as all that,” Riley smiled indulgently. “I’d understood the army had the very best doctors.”
Riley’s open indulgence irked George and he laughed harshly. “Sure,” he said. “The army has all the best food, too. Just try and eat it. There’s a helluva lot more to the army than you people read in the newspapers and magazines.”
Riley was non-plussed but not enough to lose her poise. “Oh, I think we get a pretty fair picture of how things are, back here,” she said with sweet composure. She felt it best to overlook George’s breach of courtesy, although he ought to know that talking rudely would do no good to anybody. It was unlike George to be nasty about things, and complaining. He had always been the type of man who took things as they came and turned them to his own use. It was one of his traits that she most admired.