Author: James Jones
Category: Literature
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George made a hit on one of the ships in the blue cork harbor.
“Swell!” Jimmy said.
“I was aiming at the airport,” George said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jimmy said. “Any hit counts. This game is really fun.”
“Yes,” George said. “It sure is.” He handed Jimmy the box.
“You know, George,” Jimmy said, sighting through the box, “I’d like to go overseas.” George did not answer.
“I’ve got a Thompson gun at home,” Jimmy said, releasing his first bomb, it struck the airport. “A hit!” He prepared to loose the next bomb.
“It’s just a wooden gun,” he explained, “but it looks like a real one off a ways; it’s got a pistol grip with notches for your fingers, like a real one. When we play, I’m the captain, because I’ve got the Thompson gun—on account of that captain in the Philippines.”
“Is that right?” George said.
“Yeah,” Jimmy said. He released another bomb. It fell into the cork sea. “Aw, missed. I’m gonna try for the railroad station. Did you ever have a Thompson gun?”
“No,” George said. Then he added: “I knew a staff sergeant who had one.”
“I thought only officers had them,” Jimmy said. “What happened to him?”
“He got shot,” George said.
“Killed in action?” Jimmy said.
“Yes,” George said.
“Did you see him get shot?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll bet it’s terribly exciting, isn’t it, sometimes?” Jimmy said.
“Yes,” George said. “I guess you could say it was.”
Jimmy frowned. He laid the bombsight on the table. “Well, I got the railroad station, but I missed the ammunition dump. I only used one bomb on it. Not so good, but I still beat you.”
“That’s right,” George said. “Now I’ll have to pay off when we get to the base.”
Jimmy smiled briefly and then frowned again. “I think I’ll go outside and play a while,” he said. “You sort of have to use your imagination with this game. We play war at school a lot. Someday I’m going to buy a real Thompson gun. I like things where it’s really true like the true thing.”
“Yes,” George said. “But the real thing never pans out quite like you think.”
Jimmy was not listening. “I think I’ll go outdoors for a while,” he said.
“Okay,” George said. “I’ll tell your mother when she wakes up.”
Jimmy went out, and George picked up the child’s bomb-sight, wondering what city the board had been drawn from, if any. This must be the way it looked to the brass when they planned it all out.
Johnny and another troubled serviceman in Sandy’s orbit, Ensign Al Garnnon, escape Endymion for a toot in Evansville, Indiana. Johnny had participated through nonstop orgies in Memphis. The two merrymakers added Freedie, a former Flying Tiger in China, who was also ready for a wild time.
Jones had probably read in the library at Schofield Barracks or from Lowney’s collection Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry, a satirical novel about a hypocritical revival preacher. To his understanding of Lewis’s art, Jones seems to add firsthand knowledge about wartime religious revivals. Jones in this story adds to the drunken spree of the musketeers the sermon of a revival preacher who is a warmonger. The sermon was interrupted by Freedie, as embittered and vocal as Johnny.
WILD FESTIVITY IN EVANSVILLE
EVANSVILLE, INDIANA, AUTUMN 1943
IN EVANSVILLE, AS IN EVERY city in the country, the hotel business and its associate industries were booming. Men and women far from home, and with no place else to go, flocked to the larger hotels, and after as goodly a fashion as possible set up temporary substitutes for the homes they missed. A man who stayed at one of the large hotels often enough to become known to clerks and hotel detectives felt a thrill of pleasure at being addressed by name in the midst of hordes of other servicemen. He felt he was truly coming home again. A man who had just spent from a week to a month in the barren squalor of nameless men in nameless barracks wanted pomp, lavishness, and individual recognition; and to hell with the cost. With an eye on the business and a hand on the register, cash, or guest, hotel managers to the best of their abilities strove to fulfill this desire. They instructed detectives, porters, maids, barmen, clerks, to note faces, to remember names. It was hard on the hired help, submerged in breakers of khaki, but they did their best.
Where before the hotels had enforced at least a pretention of rigid respectability, because of customers’ reputations, they now turned a lidded eye upon any but the most riotous goings-on. The customer was always right, and now the clientele had changed to those who laid no claim to rigorous respectability and cared not if everybody knew it.
In Evansville the Hotel Roquefort was the tops. It was a world within a world, completely self-sufficient except for one thing, its customers’ money. Without ever stepping outside its doors, a man could live for months, even years, and still have everything his heart desired, including fresh air. Within its walls, a man could buy anything and everything, from condoms to wedding rings. Sufficient unto the day is the money thereof.
And soldiers flipped the dice and sweated out the cards.
Those who won went gloriously to the Roquefort; those who didn’t went to a lesser hotel or to a tourist cabin, if lucky, and if not, stayed in camp till next payday. One month’s pay equaled approximately a weekend pass at the Roquefort. Two months’ pay, yours and one of the losers, equaled a weekend plus a three-day pass. And, so on up. Some of the very lucky were able to spend every weekend in the month plus a three-day within the bounteous walls of the Roquefort, forgetting the war, the army, the wife; everything a man in the army, navy, or marines needs to forget.
In the Hotel Roquefort was the Rendezvous, the bar of the century. Soft indirect lighting, soft deep cushions covered with soft maroon leather, sweetly soft piped music from invisible speakers—nothing as shockingly low class as a jukebox would be thought of here, beautiful murals of soft tropic scenes—such scenes that the men back from the Pacific commented upon them with a whistle of amazement, soft-voiced polite very friendly barmen, soft-voiced polite not quite so friendly waitresses. All the conveniences and graciousnesses of which civilization is capable. A loud rushing place, but loud and rushing in a soft pleasing way. The antithesis of PX 3.2 beer gardens, the antithesis of hard barren unadorned bunks and walls. Here, a man could be a soldier as the movies portrayed soldiers! Here, men from Breckenridge or Campbell, or any other camp within range of a weekend pass, could meet men they knew from Breckenridge or Campbell, or whatever camp, and they could form a closer comradeship because they were meeting old friends in a new rich world, so alien to their daily lives. And here, battle-weary men from convalescent hospitals could proceed with drinking their way back to health.
Through this world, Al and Johnny moved with a familiarity bred of practice. And as they moved from bar to grille to lobby to dining room to luxuriant latrine, their old friendship grew deeper and ripened with their understanding of each other and of the Hotel Roquefort.
“This is my hangout,” Al said, in the Rendezvous. “When home gets too much to stand, and Rose too much to lay, I retire to the Roquefort for some headcheese. About half my leave, every time I’m home. Home is strange, but the old Roquefort is familiar, and I can breathe easily here.”
Johnny grinned his understanding. It was a world that was familiar to him also, a world in which he, too, moved with the ease of long association. The particulars were different in Evansville, but it was the same wild festivity, every night a New Year’s Eve, that he had lived for ten months in Memphis.
“They say the Jew who opened this hotel picked Roquefort for a name because it was such a high-sounding French word. Later on, he found out it meant cheese. So now the joint specialized in all sorts of cheeses.”
The three of them at the table laughed. The third man, who had just recounted the familiar legend, was a well-buil
t blond-headed youth, a staff sergeant in the Air Corps. He wore a nest of ribbons, many of them with Clusters. On his left sleeve the Air Corps patch and on his right the red white and blue shield with the five-pointed star and the many-pointed star of China. He was a former Flying Tiger and was now recuperating from malaria and a compound leg fracture in the local general hospital. He called himself the King of the Rendezvous Bar. His wide face was good looking until he smiled. Smiling, his eyes squinted up and nasty lines formed under them. He was possessed of a great bitterness, and his humour was peculiarly pungent.
“Come on,” he said jitterishly. “Let’s get out of this tropic beauty. I can’t stand it. Makes me homesick.”
“What’s the matter, Freedie?” Johnny asked. “You getting sober?”
“Almost,” Freedie said. “Almost. It’s terrible. These Evansville broads are too educated. They should do a hitch in China. Every time I try to drink one of them groggy enough to lay, I pass out first.”
Johnny and Al laughed with enjoyment. More comical than what he said was his way of saying it with lugubrious sarcasm, a very thinly skinned hatred. Where he had come from, where he was going, they did not know; neither did they know who or what he was. Nothing, except that he was a staff sergeant in the Air Corps, at present in sickbay, and formerly a Flying Tiger. Their paths had crossed in the Roquefort lobby and they had joined forces for a while, no questions asked or expected.
“Come on,” Freedie said. “Come on. Let’s go. Let’s leave this den of depravity. It’s ruining my morals watching what I can’t get in on.”
“Where’ll we go?” said. “Too early to start another party.”
“Go for a walk,” Freedie said. “Anywhere. But get out a here.”
They finished their drinks. In the Rendezvous, people passed and repassed, people drank, laughed, made dates, broke dates, got drunk. For Johnny and Al, it was a break, a pleasant lull. For Freedie, it was merely a distasteful period to be endured until a new party started. Last night, Sunday night, had been a big party. Tonight would be another. Right now Johnny and Al were relaxing, but Freedie seemed incapable of it. He looked enviously and with hatred at each woman who passed the table. Last night, he had spent more time in the bathroom with more women than any of them, but now that was forgotten and he resented each woman he saw because he had not slept with her.
The big double room with two double beds Al had gotten through his acquaintance with the chief hotel detective had been a replica of the Grand Central Station. He and Johnny had invited people up, those invited others, and the others still others. Introductions were a time-wasting formality. The word got around that Room 507 on the fifth floor was going strong, and the room became a clearinghouse for everybody. The main party settled down to Al and Johnny, the chief detective who stopped in every ten or fifteen minutes for another drink, three unknown women, and Freedie, who had appeared from nowhere with two of the women.
Freedie had abandoned his own room for this one where there were more people, more noise, more liquor, and more love-making. He was just shortly back from China, and he had more money than he could throw away, although he still made the attempt, flinging it about with curses rather than smiles. He liked having lots of people around him, although he bitterly despised all of them individually.
The rest of the shifting crowd was considered as transient. Later, after midnight, the crowd overflowed the room into the hall, and the crowd in the hall brought other people. The bottles overflowed off of the two dressers into the corners of the floor and from the corners spread out to meet each other until the two double beds became one island in the sea of bottles. Everybody seemed to bring a new one. Bellboys brought bottles of chaser and stayed to drink. The beds became the combined coatracks and petting places. For more strenuous love-making the bathroom was pressed into service. When a man had a woman drunk enough or hot enough, he took her to the bathroom, if it wasn’t already locked and in use. It was uncomfortable but private, and most of the women had scruples about privacy with their copulation. In the haze of smoke and alcohol, the harsher lines on the faces were obscured, and every woman became beautiful. It was almost possible for the uniformed men to believe the women’s scruples were sincere.
At eight o’clock in the morning when the firing ceased, Al and Johnny found themselves alone in the sea of bottles and cigaret butts with only Freedie, the China staff sergeant, left. He was passed out on the coatrack after having practically monopolized the bathroom all night. They sent out for a pack of cards and played two-handed stud at a dollar ante until Freedie came to. Then they played three-handed and drank until they all fell asleep. In the afternoon they awoke, showered, and adjourned to the Roquefort Grille Room for breakfast. By that time, the arrangement had become permanent, and plans were made to use the big room as a sitting room and Freedie’s room (a secret among the three) up on the next floor was to be the “bed” room. A man’s finesse could be used to much better advantage in a bed than in a tile bathroom, no matter how expensive, with a poor choice between the commode, the bathtub, or standing up.
After the three of them finished their drinks, they sauntered out into the outside world that still existed, beyond the jurisdiction of the Hotel Roquefort. Freedie carried a full pint bottle in his hip pocket under his blouse. It was a bottle that had been refilled from other bottles many times.
“He’s a good soldier,” Freedie told them, patting the bottle, “He rates a dozen Purple Hearts. He’s been killed in action more times than any other soldier on earth!” Since it was now Monday, the bars were open, and they stopped at several for reinforcement. One drink to a bar. While they sat to the drinks, Freedie quietly cursed every woman he saw for being a woman and for not coming over and offering herself to him; he cursed all the civilian men for being 4F; he cursed all the uniformed men for being damned fools.
Pasted up in the windows of all the stores along the streets they followed were large placards. More and more frequently as the three men walked along, Freedie stopped to read these placards. After a while he was moving in short jerks from one store window to the next, stopping at each and reading the announcements upon the placards with great intensity. Johnny and Al watched his antics with unconcealed amusement.
The placards which Freedie examined with such deep interest were announcements of the presence of a noted evangelist. The manner of their printing had obviously been intended to excite attention. At the top of the placard in large red letters was proclaimed the single word “REVIVAL!” with each letter vividly underscored in red and followed by a large bold red exclamation mark. Beneath this was the picture of a man with a long upper lip and wearing glasses. The picture was labeled in black: “THOMAS M POSTELWAITE” and beneath this caption in smaller print: “NATIONALLY KNOWN EVANGELIST AND ORATOR. APPEARING CURRENTLY AT THE GEORGE WASHINGTON HIGH SCHOOL AUDITORIUM. WILL PREACH NIGHTLY FOR ONE WEEK BEGINNING MONDAY” and it gave the date. Said the poster: “THE GENERAL TEXT Of REV. POSTELWAITE’S SERMONS IS: WHAT GOD HAS AGAINST EVANSVILLE.” Then it went on to say that each evening’s individual text would be different. Finally, the poster ended with the reminder in red: “ALL INVITED. COME BRING OTHERS.”
In the center of the various posters in black letters almost as large as the red “REVIVAL” at the top were sentences of expostulation. These varied on different posters. “GET RIGHT WITH GOD.” “THE SAVIOR WANTS YOU!” This one was accompanied by a drawing copied from the Uncle Sam recruiting poster. “HAVE YOU MADE YOUR PEACE?” “HAVE YOU GOT SOUL INSURANCE?” “ARE YOU PREPARED TO MEET DEATH?” “GOD IS COMING!”
Freedie examined each of these for several blocks. Finally, he clapped his hands and shouted.
“Hurray,” he said. “Come here, you guys. Come here. I’ve finally found two alike.” Al and Johnny walked over to where he stood. The sentence he pointed out read: “ARE YOU AFRAID TO DIE? WHY?”
“I knew I could do it.” Freedie smiled, and his eyes squinted up into those peculiar lines. “I knew
if I kept at it I could find two of them that were the same. I saw one back that said the same as this one.” He resembled a small boy who had just inherited a bicycle.
“Come on,” Freedie said. “This calls for a drink.”
They walked to the end of the block where there was another bar. At the corner strung up over the street was a huge cloth sign that wavered back and forth in the mild wind. The words printed in eighteen-inch letters read: “JESUS. COMING SOON.” At the ends of the sign were small letters which referred to the visit to Evansville of Rev. Postelwaite.
“Coming attractions,” Johnny said.
“Just look at that,” Freedie said in awe. “This guy Postelwaite must be a cousin of Aimee. That ought a be good. You know? ‘What God Has Against Evansville.’ ”
When they came out of the bar, Freedie stopped and looked up at the sign again.
“You know what?” he said. “I’ve got a lot against Evansville myself. What you say we go hear what God has against it. He may agree with some of my ideas.” He paused for a moment and made up his mind. “Come on. Let’s go. It really ought a be good. Anything for a laugh Friedenberger. That’s me. Besides, the dames who go to them revivals are really something. We can pick some of them up afterwards. Jesus!! Boy, you can’t beat a gal who’s just had her soul saved at a revival.”
“What the hell,” Al said. “Who wants to listen to that crap?”
“I do,” Freedie declared solemnly. “It’s very enlightening. Come on. No kidding. You want a learn what you’re fightin for? Well, come on out to the George Washington High School and listen.” Freedie whistled shrilly at a cruising cab.
Johnny grinned and winked at Al and started for the cab. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll try anything once.”
Freedie gave the address and the cabbie looked at him. The cabbie asked for the address a second time, and Freedie stared at him belligerently.
“Well? What’s a matter?” he asked litigiously. “Dincha ever see a sojer go to church?” The cabbie shrugged and drove on.