Better Times Than These

  They continued gambling for a while after Brill staggered off, until Trunk decided to call it a night. As they were leaving, Sergeant Groutman thumbed through his winnings.

  “The old lieutenant really throws it around, huh, Top?” Groutman said.

  Trunk liked Groutman even less than he liked Brill. In fact, he thought he was crazier than Brill, but he’d let him into the game anyway because they needed another player.

  “Screw it, Groutman. He don’t belong in here any more than them shitheads in troop bay do. Let him play up on officers’ deck if he wants.”

  “Shit, Top, ol’ Brill’s all right. He must be—’cause them other fucking officers won’t have nothing much to do with him.”

  “Hell, man,” Trunk said, “don’t you think I know that. That’s his problem. I don’t need no damned nutty lieutenants hanging around here—it ain’t natural.”

  “Aw, Top, the lieutenant ain’t nutty. I know him. He just likes to think he’s tough, that’s all.”

  Trunk sat on his bunk and began unlacing his boots. “The hell he ain’t nutty—you remember what he did to Hepplewhite that day. I thought the poor bastard was gonna have sunstroke. He could of, too.”

  A sneer crossed Groutman’s pudgy face.

  “Hepplewhite deserved it. Besides, you ain’t seen anybody spitting in ranks after that, did you?”

  “Ain’t the point, Groutman,” Trunk said. “The point is, I should of been the one to take care of that. It ain’t dignified for officers to go driving down the street chasing after men.”

  “What ain’t dignified?” Groutman exclaimed. “Since when you worrying about officers being dignified?”

  “I’m not talking about officers, damn it. I’m talking about noncoms,” Trunk barked. “What ain’t dignified is for people to see officers dealing out Company punishment. Makes it look like we can’t do it ourselves.”

  Groutman stuffed a wad of bills into his pocket. “Well, I tell you what, Top, I kind of like old Lieutenant Brill—’cause I know what makes him tick.”

  “Listen, Groutman, you got a lot to learn about this man’s army—and one of ’em is, don’t fool around with officers,” Trunk said, shooing Groutman out the door.

  9

  Private First Class Harold N. Miter, Jr., was lying in his bunk playing his harmonica and waiting for the shift buzzer that would send him out onto the decks again. He finished the last bars of “My Old Kentucky Home” and slapped the instrument against his palm, remembering the trouble it had caused him, but still not feeling sorry he’d bought it—though at the time he would gladly have traded it back for the nine dollars and ninety-five cents he had paid for it at a pawnshop just off post.

  It had been a sweltering North Carolina night and the barracks had been almost deserted, since almost everyone had gone away on leave for the Fourth of July weekend. He had spread out all the money from his wallet and pockets and beneath the stark overhead light counted exactly thirty-two dollars and eighty-six cents—all he had in the world until the next payday.

  Outside in the dusty Company street there was the glow of a cigarette and the sound of men laughing. He put the money away and stepped into the freshly starched khaki trousers he had laid out, wishing he’d been born a millionaire and silently cursing himself for buying the harmonica when Julie was going to arrive at the bus station in half an hour and he didn’t know if the thirty-two dollars was enough to pay for her room and for supper and breakfast in the morning too.

  He also remembered finding the letter in his footlocker when he opened it to replace his shoeshine polish, and taking it out and reading it again. Outside, someone must have told a dirty joke, because several men started laughing hysterically.

  A large brown sweat stain stretched from “Dear Harold” across the top of the page to the letterhead, which was the great blue seal of the United States Congress.

  I was happy to hear from you last week and I am most encouraged that you are doing well and have been promoted to private first class.

  He hated to be called Harold—it sounded pompous and silly. He didn’t even mind the rest of the company’s calling him “Spudhead,” because anything was better than “Harold.” Why couldn’t his parents have given him a nickname of their own?—a nice one, like “Chipper.”

  I do not have to tell you I am pleased to have a son in the service of our country. The news that you are going overseas leaves me with a certain feeling of pride, because you finally seem to have found a place for yourself in our fine Army. Also anxious, for obvious reasons.

  Unfortunately, your mother and I are leaving for a three-week fact-finding tour of Eastern Europe, and will not be in Washington during the time you wanted to come home. As you know, I prefer to keep the house empty when your mother and I are away, so it would be best if you remain where you are until we return.

  As I understand it, you do not leave until the 26th and we will return on the 22nd. We would like to stop by and see you on our way to the district, so please let me know when it would be convenient for us to arrive.

  Your mother sends her love.

  Best regards,

  Dad

  Harold N. Miter

  Member of Congress

  HNM:sj

  Spudhead tucked the letter under some socks at the bottom of the locker. He was disappointed they wouldn’t let him come home when he could get his leave, and he was also disappointed that his father had dictated the letter instead of writing it himself. It made him feel like a constituent instead of a son. And he felt funny that some office girl now knew his parents didn’t want him in their house while they were away.

  Once, when he was home from college, some of his friends had gotten into his father’s liquor cabinet and accidentally broken a chair, and since then they hadn’t allowed him to stay home unless they were there—but the office girl knew none of this and he wondered what she must have thought.

  Spudhead walked to the big mirror by the weapons rack and straightened his shirt.

  He wished plaintively his hair hadn’t been shaved so close, because it emphasized the size of his head . . . and he wished he were six inches taller and there weren’t pockmarks in his face and that he had blue eyes . . . What he really wished, though he ordinarily avoided thinking it, was that he had been born handsome. It wasn’t that Julie cared, because she didn’t, but he always felt his father had.

  The Company street had been deserted when Spudhead walked into the soft summer evening across the parade ground, past the infirmary, toward the bus station. Surprisingly, the bus was on time, and Julie was the first one off, lugging her big beat-up suitcase down the steps. She was wearing the pretty flowered dress he’d always liked best, and during those first few minutes he was so thrilled to see her again he felt he was in a dream.

  They took a local bus into town to the women’s rooming house run by Mrs. Jordan—pronounced Jer-den—where he’d rented a room for thirteen dollars. He had wanted to take Julie in a taxi, but he’d worried about the money . . .

  He’d also wanted to put her into a proper hotel, where they could spend the night together, but there hadn’t been enough for that either, so he’d decided on Mrs. Jordan’s because he knew it was neat and clean. There were any number of fleabags in town where they could have gone, but he didn’t want it that way with her. They had never made love, though they’d come close a few times, and Spudhead knew she was ready—but he wanted it to be perfect, to happen in a place that was fitting for a nice Midwestern girl.

  She snuggled up to him as the bus lurched down Anzio Drive past row after row of wooden barracks and intermittent groups of post housing projects. “You look so healthy,” she said. “You look so good.”

  “How do you like my haircut?—It looks funny, huh?” He squeezed her hand, almost petting it.

  “Oh, Harold, you look just beautiful; you’re the most beautiful man in the world,” she said, and for once he didn’t mind being called Harold.

  They stopped at th
e corner near the rooming house and dropped off Julie’s bag. They walked down gaudy Fayetteville Main to the Vista-View Italian Restaurant in a motor lodge, where they sat by a window looking out on the pool. The waitress lit the candle in a red bowl between them, and Julie reached over and took Spudhead’s hand.

  “I love you so much,” she said.

  “I love you too,” he said. “You’re beautiful.”

  She was beautiful, too, he thought. Not pretty, like some of the girls at the university. Not like the cheerleaders and prom queens and sorority girls. But she was beautiful, and as he said it, he realized it was the first time he had ever told her that because up till now he had confused being beautiful with being pretty or being handsome and he knew neither of them would ever be that. But they were terribly in love and it made them beautiful. Perhaps only to each other, but it really didn’t matter about anyone else.

  They had spaghetti and meatballs with mushrooms and a bottle of red wine by candlelight, and talked about the university and the football team, which might win the conference championship if it got past Notre Dame, and the freshman poetry class where they’d met . . . but after a while Julie grew quiet and began to stare out at the empty motel pool. He sensed what was wrong, because they had been through this before, but he knew she wouldn’t let it out unless he brought it up, so he did.

  “I’m sorry, darling,” she said, “but I’m . . . I’m so afraid . . . I love you so much,” she said, looking down into the half-eaten plate of spaghetti as though she were ashamed of herself for saying it.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he said, taking her hand again. “It’ll only be for a year, you know; then I’m out, for good. I’ll go back and finish school, and we—”

  “Oh, damn it,” Julie said, and burst into tears.

  “It’s all right, baby,” he said. “It’s all right, hear?”

  “Can’t your father do anything?” She tried to compose herself.

  “What do you mean—about what?”

  “I mean about getting you out of it. He’s a Congressman; he must—”

  “Julie, nobody knows about that down here—and I don’t want them to, okay?”

  “But you could get hurt, don’t you know that? You could . . . Oh, damn it,” she said, and the tears began again. “Aren’t you afraid?” she asked after a while.

  “No,” he said.

  It was a bald-faced lie.

  “But I don’t understand,” she said. “You mean you haven’t told anybody who your father is? They don’t even know? Why, they could put you back in the headquarters or something, where it’s safer . . .”

  “I just don’t want anybody to know, darling—nobody. Do you understand?

  “Look, you met my old man. You know how he is. Do you know he even locks the refrigerator when I go home?”

  “Locks the . . . What do you mean?” she said, drying her eyes with the napkin.

  “I mean he locks it up at night so I can’t get in it and eat anything or drink beer—and he locks the door to the house when he goes to bed and he won’t let me have a key.”

  “A lock on the refrigerator . . . but why?” She started to laugh.

  “Well, he thinks I eat too much—says I get enough at dinner; so he put this goddamned lock on the icebox—he locks it before he goes to bed.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said, bursting into laughter. “A lock on the refrigerator—I’ve never heard . . .”

  “It’s true,” he said, laughing too, and for the next several minutes they sat there laughing crazily about a lock on a refrigerator four hundred miles away.

  At 1 A.M. he had taken her back to Mrs. Jordan’s, just before she locked the doors (proper girls don’t stay out past 1 A.M.—that was the rule she had laid down). But he was feeling good, and the wine they had had for dinner hit him hard because he wasn’t used to it.

  When he arrived at the barracks, there was some sort of party going on out in the parking lot. A dozen or so men were sitting on parked cars or on the ground, drinking beer from several cases iced down in their cardboard cartons. In the middle of this group stood Lieutenants Sharkey and Donovan, both in khakis but stripped to their waists. Sharkey was telling a story, and he interrupted it only long enough to motion Spudhead to the beer cache.

  “. . . So old Donovan here,” Sharkey said, “runs into the goddamn Eighty-second Airborne club, you see—where nobody knows who he is . . . and the goddamn assholes are lying all over the tables drunker’n goats, right?” There was a chorus of anticipatory laughter. Spudhead opened a beer.

  “. . . And as soon as Donovan hits the door he yells loud as he can, ‘When I drink, everybody drinks!’ and every asshole in the place runs up to the bar and starts ordering drinks, right?”

  Spudhead sat down next to Crump and DiGeorgio, who were enjoying themselves immensely.

  “. . . And Donovan, he orders a drink for himself right off, and drinks it down in a gulp, see, and when he’s through, he stands back and yells, ‘When I pay, everybody pays!’ and he throws a buck on the floor and runs out the door—and they’re still looking for him!” Sharkey was bent over almost double laughing, and there were tears in his eyes. He grabbed Donovan by the shoulder and clanked beer cans with him, and both officers drank deeply, and laughed until they fell down.

  This went on for another hour. First Sharkey, then Donovan would recount some escapade, about boxing at West Point or football at Notre Dame, about seducing girls on golf courses or living-room couches while their parents slept a few feet away. From Crump and DiGeorgio, Spudhead had learned that the two officers had roared into the barracks several hours earlier and rousted out everyone still there. They had formed them up in the Company street and marched them to the parking lot, where the beer was waiting.

  At last the beer and the stories petered out and the officers went on their way. Crump, DiGeorgio and Spudhead made their way with the others back to the barracks, Crump and DiGeorgio singing, Spudhead lingering a little behind. Finally Spudhead sat down on a curb and put his head in his hands. It was a few minutes before Crump and DiGeorgio came back and discovered him there, crying softly.

  “Hey, what’s this?—hey,” Crump said. “Hey, what’s wrong, man, you drunk?”

  “He’s fuckin’ stinkin’—lookit him,” DiGeorgio said, laughing madly.

  “Whataya fuckin’ crying about,” Crump asked. “Yer girl fuck you over?”

  “Nah, nah, just let me be a while . . .” Spudhead wiped his eyes, looking beyond the dim street lights to the darkened parade ground where they’d spent so many hours in close-order drills and bayonet practice and calisthenics and picking up every scrap of paper and cigarette butt on police detail . . .

  “Hey, say what’s wrong, man,” Crump said, squatting down in front of Spudhead. “We buddies, ain’t we?”

  “It’s nothing, Crump . . . It’s just . . .” He stopped. “I love her so much, and . . .”

  “And what—what in hell is it?” DiGeorgio said.

  “Oh, damn, I don’t know,” Spudhead said. “It’s . . . I don’t have any more money . . . I wanted to take her to breakfast, you know, and buy her lunch before she has to go back tomorrow, and . . . I bought that goddamned harmonica, and the dinner cost twelve bucks, and . . .”

  “Well, hell, man,” Crump said, “why didn’t you say so? We got some money left, haven’t we, Dee-Gergio? We got maybe twenty, thirty bucks between us—that’ll get you through sure.”

  “No, no, thanks, I don’t—”

  “Forchrissakes, Spudhead, don’t be an asshole—we’ll just lend it to ya till payday,” DiGeorgio said.

  “O Goddamn-shit-fuck! . . . Oh, I’m sorry, you guys . . . I don’t want to . . . I don’t know . . . I just don’t want to go now . . . I want to stay here and get married and go back to school and . . . Fuck the Army . . . FUCK THE ARMY!—I don’t care a shit about the Army—and fuck this war, and—”

  “Hey, cool it, man, you gonna wake everybody in the C
ompany up,” DiGeorgio said.

  “Look here,” Crump said, “nobody wants to go over to that thing, but what the hell else we gonna do, huh? We in the damned United States Army, man—we in it now.” He stuffed two ten-dollar bills into Spudhead’s shirt pocket.

  “Come on, now, Spudhead, let’s go to bed ’fore we get ol’ Trunk up chewin’ our asses,” Crump said.

  They helped him to his feet, taking him by the elbows and putting their arms around his shoulders.

  “Come on, now, Spudhead, that’s a boy,” Crump said. “Everything’s gonna look better in the morning.”

  “Yeah, Spudhead, we gotta war we gonna fight—we need our sleep if we gonna kill gooks,” DiGeorgio said.

  The transport shift buzzer startled Spudhead out of a half-sleep, and he foggily swung his feet onto the bare metal floor. The harmonica was still in his hand, and he opened his duffel bag and carefully stowed it away. All around him people were stirring, preparing to take their turns up on deck. He thought of Julie and of his father and mother, and wondered what they were doing and if they were thinking of him. He felt a little nauseated, but it wasn’t from seasickness; he had felt that way ever since he learned they were going over. He hurried to lace on his boots and get topside. The sea air had been good for the nausea, and this afternoon he might see more dolphins, or a whale.