The Brick Foxhole Read online

  He saw her lips form his name and then she said it aloud, “Jeff!”

  What would he do? Kill? Kill the man! Kill her! Inflict pain. Hurt her. Hurt him. Humiliate them. But if he spent his anger, his fury, in deliverance of pain, then the score would be even. He would have nothing to complain about. That’s what she would want. To be hurt. To be hurt so that his guilt would equalize hers. He would tell the man to go. And then she would want to know what he was going to do? She would know how hurt he was. How could she do this to him? She was his world. His everything. And she had hacked it to pieces. Then he imagined she said he was placing too much stress on something that was not important. Not important? Going to bed with another man not important? No. She had been lonesome. Hadn’t he been lonesome? What had he done about it? Nothing. Then he was a fool. When people are lonely they should do something about it. It had nothing to do with a woman’s love for a man. And then he wanted to hit her. Why couldn’t they forget it? Forget it? How could he forget it? Forget their bodies close together? Forget that she had sighed and gasped and held another man as he had dreamed she reacted only to him? Didn’t it make any difference who the man was? Was it each for himself and unto himself? Was the whole business of love one-sided, to be enjoyed by each alone? And what of the next time she became lonely? Very well. She would kill herself. She begged him to strike her. Hurt her. He liked that. It suited him. Now it would be he who would forgive. His to be lenient. She wanted him. She needed him. That was better. She couldn’t live without him. Better still. See what she did to him? She had made him cry. War and fear and sickness had not made him cry. But she had done that. And then what? He didn’t know. For no matter how it would come out, the pain would be there. The feeling that all was lost. That everything was nothing and that the nothing would last forever.

  He climbed down from his bed and walked slowly to the latrine. The stench of the unflushed bowls, the sight of the crushed cigarettes and torn magazine pages, made him feel weak and dizzy. He leaned over one of the bowls and wanted to puke. But nothing came up and his throat hurt and he had to hold onto the walls lest he collapse. He continued to gag until his breath wouldn’t come. Then he felt cold, but he didn’t feel better as one usually did after vomiting.

  He wanted to pick up the phone and call her. In a few minutes he could hear her voice. That’s all it would take. A few minutes. Then Mary would tell him the whole thing was a lie, a fantastic lie which had fermented in the mental juice of a paranoiac. But what if she said it wasn’t a lie? Worse still, what if no one answered the phone? What if she weren’t at home? That would give him several more hours of torture. She might be at a movie. Yes, he told himself. She would be at a movie. And if he called after three o’clock and still she didn’t answer? That would be twelve o’clock in California. The shows would be out. What excuse would there be then? A night club. Alone? Mary go to a night club alone? He knew at once it wasn’t possible. She would have gone with someone. Whom? Which of the many could it be? No. He knew she would be home. She would pick up the phone and her voice would be soft and low. It would be his Mary. And she would tell him all the things he wanted to hear.

  For a moment he felt better and the griping at the basement of his soul eased.

  The easiest kind is the married ones.

  Billy’s right. If she’s married and is got a husband in the service she’s easy. Ask anybody.

  Ask them, damn it. Ask anybody about Mary. Three and a half years of marriage to him. Easy? Who said so? Not Mary. She was his. Nobody else’s. She would pick up the phone and talk to him and reassure him and he could breathe again. And then she would hang up and turn back to the man beside her. The sonofabitch beside her. There was space in his way. Three thousand miles. And time. That was in his way, too. And he was tied down. Trapped. Buried in a military base. A prison. A brick casket filled with living corpses.

  He walked back toward his wing of the barracks. That’s what he knew. Knew it about all of them. All of them were trapped. Caught in a code of hooks, militaristic hooks which tore at you in a thousand ways. Spit and polish. Jeff walked between the long rows of double-decker beds. Here they were. A hundred and twenty of them in this wing and a like amount in the other wing. And there were thousands of such wings all over the country. Wings which held millions of men. Fighting men who weren’t fighting. Who only were getting ready to fight and many of them probably never would fight. Those who came back from the war told him how lucky he was to stay at a base in the States. Lucky? What the hell did they know about it? Rotting away day after day. Polishing shoes, shining belts, pressing trousers, ironing shirts, attending lectures, close-order drill, learn the manual, stand a guard once a week, sweep and dust and clean and salute and “yes sir” and shave and get ready for the big thing that never would come. Never! A million ghosts! Living in their wooden and brick barracks, in tents, in make-believe bivouacs. Having neither the hard glory of fighting nor the freedom of civilians. Envied and hated by the fighters and despised and ignored by the people at home. Rotting. Rotting every day. Each day a little more. The inactivity biting deep into your morale.

  A crooner was singing on the radio. The little girls in the radio audience were shouting and screaming and the soldiers were hating the crooner and yet envying him. Jeff heard them every day. All of them trying to imitate him. Listening in spite of themselves. And if it wasn’t the radio it was talk. Always that same talk. Scuttlebutt. A man in uniform lived by it. Rumors. It was every man for himself. He lived by the scuttlebutt because then he could prepare a way for himself. He wouldn’t be left behind. If he had the rumor first maybe he could snow an officer. Make a deal. Make sure he wasn’t forgotten when a move was made. That was the barracks. Any barracks across the country. Talk. Talk about the new division being formed. About replacements. About women. Women they had had. Women they would like to have had. Where to get whisky. Never about the war. The enemy? A lousy Jap. Hitler? Who the hell was Hitler? What did he matter? That wasn’t their concern. They were preparing for Pacific amphibious warfare. Somebody else was fighting Hitler. That was enough. Their war was with the Japs. And after the Japs would come the Russians. And why the Russians? They couldn’t tell you. It was just accepted that that would happen. If you said, no, not the Russians, they looked at you. They wondered what was the matter with you. You didn’t belong any more. Jeff had found out early it wasn’t because they were anti-Russian. They were just pro-American. And pro-American meant being ready to fight anyone at any time for any reason and beat them.

  Downstairs the reading room was full. Another radio with the same crooner singing. A card game. A checker game. A box of chessmen standing idle. The picture magazines getting a big play. That was the highlight of the day. Picture magazines. Pictures of half-naked women and pogey bait. A mouthful of chocolate pogey bait, munching the candy abstractedly, and a brainful of bare thighs and half-uncovered breasts. Dead men dreaming of heaven. Heaven on a pogo stick. Jeff had heard them a thousand times.

  “She danced with me at the canteen. Yeah. Just like that. She wasn’t wearing nothing but a dress. I could feel it. Yeah. I’m going back. I’m going to get me one of them big shots. They like soldiers. Yeah man.”

  Jeff went into the “rec” room. Maybe he could find Peter Keeley there. Keeley would make him feel better. Keeley knew what the score was. Keeley had been over. He had ribbons even though he never wore them. Keeley had been an overseas correspondent for a service paper. He had been to Kwajalein and Saipan. Keeley knew the score and he also knew Jeff.

  There was standing room only as Jeff entered. The “rec” room was always full. Four pool tables and all busy. Two ping-pong games going, always going. The chairs around the walls of the large room like a horse collar of leather and wood, and they were occupied. Some soldiers were waiting to shoot a game of pool. Others were reading the same picture magazines, ogling the same girls, goosing themselves with the same thoughts. A few were listening to the radio. The radio crooner was singi
ng what a beautiful way it was to spend an evening. Across the room a piano was being played with a couple of fists. The floor vibrated with the stomp of feet and the rocking Boogie-Woogie. Jeff thought that somehow all songs sounded the same when played in Boogie-Woogie. And all this against a background of chatter. Never-ending chatter.

  “That Sinatra. I’d like to see him in a uniform. Hot damn.”

  “Sinatra. What the hell you got against him?”

  “Bobby socks.”

  “Oh balls. Is that his fault?”

  “What about Crosby?”

  “What about him?”

  “Sinatra can’t touch Crosby.”

  “Yeah? Look at the dough Sinatra makes.”

  “What does that prove?”

  “Oh, who cares? Fa Chris’ sakes who cares!”

  “Anybody wanna go to D.C.?”

  “I got twelve o’clock liberty tomorra.”

  “That’s the best humpin’ thing about this base. Twelve o’clock liberty on Saturday. Saturday night and all day Sunday in D.C.,” said a tall, pimply-faced, young man.

  “Seen Keeley around?” Jeff asked him.

  Floyd Bowers turned toward Jeff and quickly sized him up. Jeff knew the look. It silently asked whether he had any money to spare. He was being appraised.

  “H’ya Jeff. Goin’ up to D.C. tomorrow?”

  He knew what would come if he said no. So he told Floyd that he intended to go and that that was why he wanted Keeley. To borrow a few dollars. Floyd was always broke. He always lost at cards and dice. He always managed to borrow a few dollars. And he always neglected to pay them back.

  “Somebody said he went to see Pelagrini at the barbershop.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Hey, Jeff.”

  Jeff paused, “Yes?”

  “Look, Jeff, what’s the matter, huh?” Floyd’s voice was low and confidential. “Don’t you like me or somethin’?”

  “Sure, I like you, Floyd. Why?”

  “Je-suss, I don’t know. I got a feelin’ you don’t like me. I don’t think you like people from the South. Je-suss!”

  “Sure I do. Why, I don’t know anything about the South. Why would I dislike it?”

  “But you’re a nigger-lover.”

  “What?”

  “You like niggers.”

  “It’s not that. I just feel that Negroes …”

  “That’s what I mean,” Floyd interrupted. “Je-suss, you don’t even like to call them niggers. You love niggers. An’ you know same as I do that there ain’t a good nigger in the world ’less he’s dead. An’ you don’t like the South an’ you don’t like me.”

  “You’re crazy, Floyd. We just see things in a different way, that’s all, but I’ve got nothing against you.”

  “You think I’m okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “You wouldn’t want to have your sister raped by a nigger, would you?”

  “I wouldn’t want her to be raped by anyone.”

  “’Specially a nigger. Right?”

  Rape. That was a thought. Maybe Mary had been raped. In that case.…

  “We’re in the same outfit, ain’t we Jeff?”

  “Yes, Floyd.”

  “An’ you wouldn’t want to see a buddy in trouble, would you?”

  Then Jeff knew what was coming.

  “Je-suss, I need a coupla bucks bad. How ’bout it, Jeffie?”

  He gave Floyd two dollars, peeling them off in his pocket so as not to show him how much there was.

  “Keeley went to see the Greek at the barbershop. An’ thanks for this, Jeff. See you on it next payday.”

  “Yes. Okay.”

  Jeff started to go. Floyd held his elbow and grinned at him. “Want to know somethin’? Some of them nigger gals ain’t bad. Back home I had me one. She didn’t wanna do it, but I made ’er! She went home afterwards and never said a word. Niggers’re all right … if they know their place. Je-suss, yeah.”

  Outside it was mucky, and while it wasn’t raining, the air was wet. It always was wet. The air came in off the river sopping wet, populated with mosquitoes and bugs. The wool of Jeff’s trousers clutched and sucked at his legs with a hot breath. In a year’s time the wool had been like emery paper which had worn away the hair on his calves and thighs.

  Jeff walked toward the Town. He had to find Keeley.

  CHAPTER II

  The Town was small. You could walk through it in five minutes. It had one main street and a couple of low buildings that landlords called houses and apartments. It was a small town within the confines of the military post. There was no way in except past the M.P.’s at the gates, and no way out except under their surveillance. Women and their soldier husbands lived in the fungus-apartments and civilians milked the Great Cow in uniform at the shops each day.

  An unguarded railroad track divided the Town from the Post. And there was a railroad station immediately across the tracks. Jeff had seen pictures of such railroad stations and the captions had always called them quaint. But when it was not in a picture it didn’t look quaint. It looked ugly. It was dirty. It was somber. The men who sold you tickets inside were soft of speech and short of temper. And one flight up a set of rickety stairs above the railroad station was a telegraph office where you could send a wire, when they would accept it, if they were in at that time. Too many hopeless wires had been tapped out on the old ticker which sounded off against a bent tobacco can: SEND FIFTY DOLLARS AT ONCE. AM WAITING. And the middle-aged man with the puffy cheeks who sent the wires knew that sometimes ten dollars would come instead of fifty, and more often nothing would come. Not even an answer. And sometimes the party on the other end would not pay for the wire, so the man in the telegraph office tried to be firm enough to say “no collect wires.” But he didn’t always succeed. For when a soldier had a furlough paper in his hand and the furlough look in his eye and the overnight bag in his hand, the old man sent the wire despite his rules. But most often no answer came, and the furlough look died slowly, and at last the soldier would walk down the broken, sagging stairs and return to the barracks.

  And downstairs in the railroad station was the little room for the Colored.

  Beyond the railroad track and station was the Town.

  Two blocks long and another block of landscaping and then the river. And the two blocks had many shops next to each other. One third of the stores sold clothing and military apparel. Another third sold restaurant food and beer. Finally a few miscellaneous places such as three barbershops, a hardware store (which also sold gasoline), a post office, a five-ten-twenty-five-fifty-dollar-and-up store, and at last the bank.

  The town bank was different. It had a Venetian blind in the large window. Inside there was a card which read: THESE EMPLOYEES ARE WORKING FOR YOU. Only you felt that they weren’t. People employed in a bank never seemed to be working for the depositor, but only against him.

  All the stores and houses in the Town had once been painted a gray-white color. Age and weather had changed that color to a dull, peeling, pallor. A few places had false red-brick fronts.

  By day the Town was drowsy and slow-moving and unexciting, and there were many pregnant women big with child, and they walked on low-heeled shoes and did the only thing left to a woman in this Town. They went window-shopping. But there wasn’t much to see and even less to buy and everything cost too much, too much for a soldier’s allotment. And always there were Reserve officers who wore their new shiny gold bars as a young man wears his first mustache. And they were constantly fitting on uniforms and learning how to return salutes smartly, and they had a grateful look in their eyes when an enlisted man with a hash mark offered them the salute.

  At night there were a few neon signs and soft laughter and good smells from open restaurant doors, and the pavements were crowded with the same pregnant women who now wore high-heeled shoes to make their legs look more shapely, and because of this their bigness flounced and they had to hold it with their hands. They walked now beside their husba
nds, who were eager for something and didn’t know what it was. They could buy a magazine, a tube of toothpaste, or drink a few bottles of beer or go to the post movie. Everybody went to the post movie. Everybody went almost every night because every night there was a different picture except Sunday and Monday. On those two days the same picture played. It was supposed that many persons left the Post on Sunday and they would want to see the picture on Monday. And young mothers would go to the movies with infants in their arms. A great anger would seize Jeff on seeing this, for a crowded movie house was no place for a six-month-old child. But when he would see the mother’s face and see how the tiredness would leave her eyes when the movie began and he realized she had been waiting for this all day, he wasn’t angry any more. Only sad.

  Near the post movie house was a red-brick building that housed the post library, and on the second floor was the museum. The museum was almost always deserted, and at night it was the only place on the Post for a rendezvous.

  At night the women in uniform would walk along the street in the Town and they looked much better in their summer outfits. They didn’t look as uncomfortable and warm any more. They were more feminine without their neckties and heavy blouses. Their breasts showed more clearly under the soft material and their legs looked better, and because of the summer uniforms more of the women in service were seen with men. In the early evening the girls were cool and their voices were murmurs. Later, after the beer, their voices were harsher.

  That was the Town.

  A glittering piece of cheap glass in an iron ring.

  Jeff found Peter Keeley in Pelagrini’s barbershop. There was no barber pole outside because everyone knew at once where everything in the Town was situated, so shops didn’t need special identification tags. Inside, the barbershop was not the customary white hospital sort of place. The woodwork was a dirty mahogany color. The two long walls had mirrors which had lost much of their mercury paint. The floor was rough and uneven and was littered with cigarette butts and hair clippings, with several spittoons scattered about. On one wall hung a calendar of tremendous size advertising a uniform shop, and each month’s page had a large Varga drawing. This month had a blonde young lady with her rump in your face, and the impossible beauty of it made you stop and stare and run your tongue over your dry lips. The only other decoration was a print of a horse’s head. In the back of the barbershop there were half a dozen iron-wire ice-cream-parlor chairs. No magazines or newspapers. There wasn’t time for that. A haircut took only about five minutes.