“What does your father do, Trevitt?”
“He’s a Greek teacher.”
“There,” Kelly said, pointing the bayonet at me. “See?” I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. “So I got a no-good bastard for a father. What can I do about it? I’d rather be dead than spend my life in the Army, so what’s there to do? But this?” He gestured with the bayonet. “You tell me, Trevitt. What’s the point of going on?”
I thought for a long time. “I don’t know,” I said, finally.
“Well then,” he said. “This is it.” He began pushing the bayonet down again. I watched his face. He closed his eyes. I waited.
Then he opened his eyes. “I mean, what’s the point of living? You tell me, Trevitt. You’re a smart guy. Go on. Tell me.”
“Jesus Christ, Kelly!” I exploded. “Are you going to kill yourself or aren’t you?”
“O.K.,” he muttered. “This is really it. So long, Trevitt.”
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes tight. It was stifling hot in the barracks right then. My bed was soaked with perspiration and as Kelly grabbed hard onto his bayonet, sweat ran across his knuckles. He pushed down on his wrist, farther and farther down.
Then he screamed “OWWW!!!,” dropped the bayonet, and began to swear. “Goddammit! Goddammit! It hurts!”
I started laughing, kicking my feet in the air. “What did you expect, Ulysses?”
He stood up, bleeding a little at the wrist. “I’ll bleed to death,” he said. “Trevitt. What’ll I do?”
“See the Chaplain,” I told him. “Last rites only cost a quarter.” He was licking at the cut with his tongue, making faces.
“Son of a bitch,” he said, kicking the bayonet across the floor. And with that he took off down the stairs, and I heard water running in the sink. I stretched out, trying to think of Zock again, but the sight of Kelly yelling, “OWWW!!!” kept getting in the way and I couldn’t help laughing.
Then he was back, walking stiff, looking determined as hell.
“Hi, Kelly,” I said. “What’s new?” He didn’t answer. “You got any more games we can play?” I asked.
“Same one,” he answered, more serious than ever. “I’m going to swallow a bedspring.”
“I don’t know,” I said, scratching my head. “But I swear it sounded like you said you were going to swallow a bedspring.”
He brought one out from behind his back. “I said it and I meant it.”
“God damn, Ulysses,” I said. “You pick the nicest ways. Did you ever think of roasting yourself over a spit?”
He looked at me. Then he started whispering. “I’m going to tell you something, Trevitt. Something I never told anyone else.” He paused, looking around. Finally, he said it. “I’m going to die a virgin.”
I shook my head. “Well, you can’t blame the old man for that, Ulysses. It’s nobody’s fault but your own. Because there’s a billion women in this world, Ulysses.” I started drawing numbers in the air. “One-nine-zeros-billion. And out of all of them the law of averages says there’s got to be one would do the trick for you.”
“Well,” he said, staring at the bedspring, “I never found her.”
“First you got to look, Ulysses.”
“It’s too late now,” he said, and with that, he stuck the bed spring in his mouth.
I won’t describe what happened next in too much detail, seeing as it gets a little messy, even though it was pretty funny at the time. Kelly’s face turned different colors, most of them green, and his eyes started watering, and then the bedspring hit the floor, quickly followed by his breakfast and lunch.
After it was over, we stared at each other. Then he broke out crying, turned, and tore away. I could hear him blubbering in the latrine, all the faucets going full, trying to blot out the sound.
I went to the head of the stairs. “Hey, Kelly,” I yelled down. “Best you come back here and clean this. Because I’m sure not going to.”
Then I sacked out again, waiting. Awhile later he appeared, carrying a mop and a bucket of water.
“Clean it up good,” I told him. “All of it.” He didn’t answer so I just stared at the ceiling and listened to the mop make swishing sounds along the floor. “You know,” I said, after a couple of minutes, “if you want a woman, I’ll do what I can for you.” He still didn’t answer. “Goddammit, Ulysses. If you want to get laid, I’ll see you get laid. Now don’t say you were never asked.” I could hear his brain working.
“How you going to do it, Trevitt?”
“I’m magic,” was all I said.
“How you going to do it, Trevitt? How? You really going to do it? Naw. You’re just kidding. You’re not really going to do it. I know you’re not.”
“O.K.,” I said. “I guess I’m not.”
He grabbed me by the arm. “How? Go on. Tell me. How?”
“Get your clothes on and we’ll go into Hastingsville and find somebody.”
“Who?”
“How do I know who? Somebody. Just get your clothes on.”
“O.K., Trevitt,” he said, patting me. “O.K. Great.” He was jumping around like a Mexican bean. “Terrific.” He headed for the stairs. Then he stopped. “You mean with a whore?”
“I sort of had that in mind,” I said.
“I don’t know,” he began. “What if I catch something?”
“Look, Kelly,” I said. “Please. Make up your mind. You’re not going to hurt my feelings, so don’t worry about that. But please. One way or the other. Make up your mind.”
“But what if I catch something?” he said again.
“If you do,” I whispered, “we won’t tell a soul. And we won’t go to the doctors. And you’ll get so sick you’ll die. Then all your troubles will be over. See?”
“Sure, Trevitt,” he nodded. “I get you.”
So off we went.
The bus ride to Hastingsville took fifteen minutes and Kelly didn’t say one word all the way. He just shook. Which is catching, because by the time we got there, I was a little tense myself. As soon as we left the bus his questions started again, faster than ever.
“Where is she, Trevitt? Where is she?”
“I don’t know, Ulysses. We got to look.”
“Maybe she’s not here, Trevitt. What about that?”
“Kelly,” I said. “If there’s a God in Heaven, there’s a whore in Hastingsville.” And with that, I started looking, moving from one bar to the next, Kelly always waiting for me on the sidewalk. Each time I came out, he bombarded me with questions, more and more of them as the afternoon went by.
Then, finally, in about the tenth bar I tried, I found her. She was sitting alone, sipping a beer, so I sat down beside. Her name, unfortunately, was Irma, and she was no beauty, being big and fat. But she laughed a lot as we chatted, haggling over this and that, mainly money. When she was done with her beer, we went outside.
Which was when Kelly started walking away.
“Hey!” I shouted. He stopped, his back to us. We walked around him. “Ulysses,” I said. “Meet Irma. Irma, this here is Ulysses and he’s virgin, so go easy.”
Irma laughed.
Ulysses pulled me over. “She’s not very pretty,” he whispered.
“You’re right,” I said.
“Tell him he’s no Adonis,” Irma said.
“She says you’re no Adonis,” I told him.
“I heard,” Ulysses muttered. “I heard.”
“Let’s get going,” Irma said.
“What if I catch something?” he whispered to me.
“I’m clean,” Irma said. “Tell him I’m clean.”
“Ulysses,” I said, “if you want to whisper, whisper.”
“I can’t,” Ulysses said.
“Let’s get going,” Irma said again.
We started to walk.
Irma put her arm around Ulysses. “Quit shaking,” she said.
“I’m not shaking,” Ulysses said, sneaking away, putting me in the middle as we moved along. W
e got to Irma’s apartment.
Irma stopped.
“This is it,” she said, walking inside.
“I’ll wait on the sidewalk, Ulysses,” I told him.
“No,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, starting to push him.
Irma stuck her head out the door. “Come on,” she said. “I ain’t got all day.”
“What’ll I do, Trevitt?” Ulysses whispered. “What do I do?”
“Figure it out,” I said, shoving harder.
“I can’t do it, Trevitt,” he pleaded. “Let’s go back.”
“Grab him, Irma,” I said. “He’s all yours.”
She grabbed him.
I waited on the sidewalk. About ten minutes later, Kelly came out.
“Hi, Ulysses,” I said. “What’s new?”
“Not much,” he answered, trying to be casual. He made it for about ten seconds, after which he began jumping around, whooping it up, throwing his arms around me, laughing like crazy. “Trevitt,” he yelled. “Trevitt, hey Trevitt. I feel great!”
I pushed him away and started laughing too. “I feel pretty good myself,” I said.
From then on, we were buddies.
Now, I’m not trying to say that sex is the elixir of life or anything like that. I’m not knocking it either, but it isn’t the handle, not even close, because if it was, people like Irma would be running this country, and then where would we be?
In Kelly’s case though, it worked miracles.
Mainly, I think, because it was the first time anyone had done anything nice for him. He didn’t have many friends, either in the Army or out. But I had done the favor and afterward, I couldn’t get rid of him. At breakfast, he ate next to me. The same at lunch. And supper. When he had any free time, he spent it with me. Wherever I went, there he’d come, a pace or so behind. None of which I minded, for he really wasn’t so bad; just an overgrown lapdog, and there’s a place for them in this world too, like everything else.
He told me all about himself, about his whole life until his father had made him enlist. About how he wanted to be a farmer, how he had a green thumb and dreamed only of living his life out on his own farm some place, growing crops and doing whatever else you do when you live on one. About how his mother had died and his father had brought him up, shipping him from one military school to the next, seeing as he never did well at any of them. About the time when he’d been turned down from West Point and how his father didn’t speak to him for weeks after, even though they were living together at the time, alone under the same roof. I could have written Kelly’s autobiography inside of a week, I knew that much about him.
In training too, he was different. He still made the same mistakes, still screwed up the platoon as much as before. But now he didn’t care, didn’t yell and holler; now he only laughed, blushing, looking over at me. He was in a good mood from Irma on, Kelly was; just another happy slob fumbling his way through the Army.
Then one night, more than a week later, I was lying in my sack, half asleep, when all of a sudden there he was, standing over me.
“Trevitt,” he whispered. “I got to talk to you.”
“You are talking to me, Ulysses,” I whispered back.
“I got to talk to you,” he said again. “In private. Alone.”
Which is a hard thing to do around an Army barracks, so we left it and walked outside. It was a hot night, full of stars, cloudless, and we moved through it awhile, circling the company area. He was scared again, like he’d been that day on KP when the eggs went slopping. Still, I didn’t say anything but just walked quietly beside him, waiting for him to come out with it. Finally he started talking.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “After lunch. Major Sheffield’s coming down here. He’s a friend of my father, Major Sheffield. To talk about Officer’s School.”
“So what?” I said.
“We have to sign papers,” Kelly went on, whispering even though we were alone. “Applications. For OCS. I heard about it just now. In the orderly room.” He reached down and picked up a handful of dust, rubbing it in his hands. “What’ll I do, Trevitt?” he said after a little. “What am I gonna do?”
“Well, Ulysses,” I said, slapping him on the back, “I’ll tell you. Tomorrow we’ll go in there and we’ll listen to the Major. And then when he’s done, we’ll leave. We won’t sign a thing. Not you. Not me. But that’s tomorrow. Right now, we’re going to get some sleep.” And I started toward the barracks.
He didn’t budge. He just stood right where he was, rubbing that dust in his hands. I came back to him. “Come on, Ulysses,” I said. “Let’s stand tall. You got nothing to worry about. Not a thing. You want to be a farmer. Be a farmer. That’s all there is to it.”
He shook his head. “I’ll never have a farm,” he whispered. “I’ll never get to have one.”
“I don’t know why not,” I said, slapping him again. “Hell, Ulysses. I can see that farm right from here. I can see it plain as day, Ulysses, so I don’t know why you can’t.” I picked up a stick, sauntered over to the supply-room steps, and sat down. Then I started drawing in the dust.
“The farmhouse,” I began. “That goes here.” I drew a big square. “And then I suppose you’ll want a tractor. You want one, don’t you?” He didn’t answer. “Well, I’ll give you one,” I said, and I drew a smaller square next to the farmhouse. “And then you’ll have to have a car, Ulysses, because you’re such a slob you’d never walk into town.” I put the car next to the tractor. “And then, out behind the house, is the cornfield.” I started drawing a bunch of wavy lines and while I was doing that, he came over and sat down beside me, his chin cupped in his hands, watching. “And over here, to the right of the house, you’ve got some barley going.” I drew lines for the barley. “And here on the left, is wheat.” I sat back and looked at it. “That sure is some farm you got there, Ulysses,” I said. “I got to give you credit.”
He didn’t say anything, but bent over instead, looking at it carefully.
“Jesus, Ulysses,” I said then. “I forgot the goddam silo.”
“Silo goes here,” he said, taking the stick, drawing a circle.
“You put it right on top of the house, for chrissakes.” And I grabbed the stick, erased the circle.
“Then here,” he said, making another circle with his finger.
“Not in the cornfield,” I told him, erasing it. He bent down again, ready to put it some place else, but I grabbed his hand. “Ulysses,” I said. “I’m sorry. You can’t have a silo.”
“I got to have a silo,” he said.
“For what?”
“For fodder.”
“Don’t joke, Ulysses,” I said, starting to laugh.
“Fodder,” he said, louder this time. “To feed the animals.”
I stared down at the farm. Then I shook my head. “There’s no room for animals, Ulysses,” I told him. “Sorry.”
“I need animals,” he said, louder still, grabbing the stick out of my hand, erasing what I’d drawn. “Anyway, you got the whole thing wrong. The farmhouse goes here and the silo goes here,” and with that, he was off.
We stayed up all that night, talking about his farm, me asking questions, leading ones, to keep him going. He talked and he talked and every so often he’d reach down and pick up another handful of dust, kneading it in his hands as if it wasn’t dust at all, but rich black topsoil just aching to give birth.
Along about three in the morning he started pooping out, his eyes half closed. But I kept him going, nudging him every once in a while, joking around some, mostly just listening to him.
Then, when he was almost out on his feet, I started talking. About how that afternoon, when the time came, neither of us was going to sign any papers. And nothing his father or anyone else could do would make us do any different. He was so exhausted he began to believe me, sitting there on the steps, nodding his head, half in agreement, half because he was too tired to do anything else.
When reveille
blew I got him back to the barracks splashed water in his face, herded him out for formation. He was really dragging all that morning, but around lunchtime he started snapping to. And when that happened, the fear came back. So there he was, just like he’d been the night before, except that now I didn’t have the time to talk him out of it.
I sat beside him at lunch, horsing with him, pouring salt in his coffee, hitting him, but it didn’t do any good. He just sat there, not touching his food, staring straight ahead. I stayed with him after lunch, doing what I could—not much, because now the minutes were ticking away and he was so scared I thought he might shatter apart, right in front of me. I knew I had to do something. But I didn’t know what.
At the start of training in the afternoon, Sergeant Muldoon called some names, Kelly’s and mine and a lot more, and we waited while the rest of the company marched away. Then he told Kelly to march us down to the auditorium at the end of the company street.
When we got there, the Major was waiting for us.
He was all smiles, the Major, grinning from ear to ear, nodding to each of us as we came in, calling Kelly by name. “Make yourselves comfortable, men, make yourselves comfortable,” he said, over and over as he stood up on the platform, leaning on the lectern, that smile still plastered on his face. I sat down in the front row, Kelly beside me, and waited.
We all got quiet and the Major started to talk. “Men,” he began, “I’m here to speak to you about something important, something that may make a world of difference in your lives.”
“Our discharges, Major?” I said, out loud.
He stopped and looked at me for a second. After which he chuckled. Something I’ve always hated. I mean, if you can’t go all the way and laugh, why bother?
“No, soldier,” he said. “I’m not here to talk about your discharge. I’m here to talk about the life you can have if you choose the Army for your career.”
I groaned.
This time he didn’t chuckle, but only smiled, hurrying on, getting to the main part of his speech. Telling us all about the benefits, the honor, the responsibility, the satisfaction of serving your country, of a job well done. And while he talked, I began to yawn, stretching out, sprawled in my seat, drumming my fingers on the armrest, my eyes closed. It wasn’t long before he noticed me.