The Brick Foxhole Read online

  The shop was one of a chain that an enterprising master barber in New York had established in several towns near military posts. As long as they made money, and all of them were coining it, the absentee owner left each shop pretty much alone. Pelagrini was the manager of this one, and he ran it to suit himself. He was also its only barber. He had formerly had two helpers, but the draft had taken them and he had not been able to replace them. Their unused chairs still stood there beside Pelagrini’s, and Pelagrini carried on alone. He was a short, flabby Italian. The crown of his head was bald and ringed with a fringe of iron-gray hair that gave him a tonsured look, rather like a monk. But there was nothing monkish in his character. The face was sensuous, the features heavy and stolid, and were set off somewhat incongruously by a jaunty, well-trimmed mustache. This mustache was the only thing about him that seemed alert. For the rest, he was excessively phlegmatic. He spoke slowly. And like a badge of indifference he always wore white shirts without a collar, and they were always stained at the inside of the collarband.

  Peter Keeley always went to Pelagrini’s barbershop. The other shops in the Town were not as clean. When Jeff came in, Keeley was lying back in one of the unused barber chairs fanning himself with a newspaper. Pelagrini was cutting a corporal’s hair.

  “You’ll have to go back to selling neckties out of a suitcase when the war is over,” Keeley was saying to Pelagrini.

  “Me?” said Pelagrini. “Not me.”

  “You don’t really believe you’re a barber?” Keeley was staring straight up at the yellow ceiling.

  “I don’t do so bad. You come here.”

  “That’s because of your strong character,” said Keeley. “You fascinate me. You’re like Niagara Falls. Like the Grand Canyon. Like a French postcard. Irresistible. But you can’t cut hair. You’re terrible at cutting hair.”

  “But you come here anyway,” smiled Pelagrini. “And I cut your hair.”

  “And I pay you fifty cents.”

  “And you tip ten cents.”

  “That I can’t explain. I shouldn’t do it, but it makes me feel superior to you.” Keeley sat up and saw Jeff.

  “I’ve been looking for you, Pete.”

  “Yeah?”

  “How about a beer?”

  Pelagrini finished cutting the corporal’s hair and the corporal adjusted his necktie, paid his fifty cents, and left.

  “That’s just what we’re going to do. Pelagrini has an icebox full of beer. And it’s not three point two. It’s real beer and it’ll make you stolid like this Roman god.”

  “No beer yet,” said Pelagrini. “It’s not closing time.”

  “When you want to take three days off to go to the races, it’s closing time. You shut the shop and everybody at the barracks gets called down for long hair.”

  “That’s business,” smiled Pelagrini.

  “And when you want to go fishing you close the doors and I can’t get any good beer.”

  “Business, Peter.”

  “And women. Are they business, too?” Keeley turned to Jeff. “You know what Hercules here does? He lays his women in the barber chair. If you don’t believe that’s tough, try it sometime. You’ve got to have a very fine back for that sort of work.”

  “All right. I close the shop. No business anyway.”

  Pelagrini went to the door and locked it. Then he drew the blind down over the plate-glass window and over the door. They all went back to the small room where the icebox was. Pelagrini opened three bottles of Schlitz and set them on the ratty table.

  “This is my friend Jeff Mitchell,” Keeley explained, as he drank from the bottle.

  “I never see him before,” Pelagrini murmured.

  “He never cuts his hair,” said Keeley. “It doesn’t grow. Hasn’t grown in years. They told him at the hospital it was because of arrested hairgrowth. A new disease.”

  Pelagrini looked at Jeff with slight interest. He had heard of so many new diseases that he accepted them as a matter of course.

  “You been in the Pacific?” asked Pelagrini of Jeff.

  “Well, I.…”

  “How many Jap bastids you kill?”

  Jeff felt a tugging at his control. Always it was the same question. “How many Japs have you killed?” Everyone asked that. It was the badge of a hero. If you killed you were worthy of respect. Keeley looked at Jeff over the tilted bottle. He had a way of looking at you without seeming to do so.

  “I haven’t been over,” said Jeff. “I haven’t killed any Japs.”

  Pelagrini nodded to himself. It was almost a shrug of dismissal.

  “My friend, here, is an artist,” said Keeley. “He kills Japs with pictures.”

  “Artist?” Pelagrini drank from the bottle and then belched.

  “He draws pictures. He used to work for Disney.”

  A smile lighted Pelagrini’s face. “Mickey Mouse, hah?”

  “Yeah,” grunted Keeley. “Mickey Mouse. Did you see ‘Snow White’?”

  “I saw it.”

  “That was Jeff. He did it.”

  Pelagrini turned to Jeff. “Very good. That was very good. I like Mickey Mouses. All of them. Very funny. I like them better than the picture. You got time sometime maybe you’ll draw me a Mickey Mouse. I’ll hang him up on my wall. I like pictures.”

  He went to the icebox and brought forth more beer.

  “It’s nice you should do the same work as before. That’s what I say all the time. This war is different. The big shots, they recognize talent.”

  Keeley didn’t feel it necessary to tell Pelagrini that Jeff didn’t draw Mickey Mouse pictures any more. That he worked on animated maps. That he drew arrows and relief maps. Jeff didn’t bother to explain. A long time ago he had felt his job a necessary one. He had felt that his work was contributing to the winning of the war. But not any more. Now he felt the only contribution was killing Japs. That was the work by which you were judged.

  “Maybe sometime you draw pictures for fun, too, hah?”

  “He means sketches of naked women,” Keeley explained to Jeff. “Our Roman’s libido grows stronger as he grows older.”

  Jeff neither felt indignant nor pleased. Since he had arrived at the Post, the men had demanded drawings of a licentious nature. The men felt you could put more action into a drawing than you could get into a photograph.

  “Tell Jeff about that waitress, Pelagrini.”

  “She was nothing.”

  “Tell him anyway.”

  “She was a little fat girl from across the street. She don’t work there any more. She got married to a lieutenant.”

  “Tell the story.”

  “It’s nothing,” Pelagrini shrugged. “She came one night very drunk. She said if I could cut her hair. The short hair. I don’t like that kind of thing. Sometime it makes trouble.”

  “But not always, eh?” Keeley smiled.

  “This one was all right.”

  “Tell him the story,” insisted Keeley.

  “It was nothing. I pulled down the shades and cut the hair. Then I gave her a push and she went away. That’s all.”

  “John has absolutely no sense of the dramatic. Later on he would cut the lieutenant’s hair. The one she married.”

  “He was transferred,” added Pelagrini.

  “What’s the use?” grunted Keeley. “I often think this war is going to kill all sense of irony. Do me a favor, Pelagrini, never tell that story to anybody. It just doesn’t make sense when you tell it.”

  Keeley started another bottle of beer.

  “I’m going to ask for a transfer,” said Jeff.

  “What’s the matter? You don’t like this place?” asked Pelagrini.

  “You mean the big beautiful lawns?” Keeley asked facetiously. “The rollin’ hills and the sweet-smellin’ honeysuckle aticklin’ mah heartstrings? An’ the simply mahvelous ’tomac rivah aflowin’ past in all its mighty glo’y? An’ the scrumptious brick buildin’s wid the steam heat? An’ the boondocks wid the little d
irt paths arunnin’ through ’em? Give all that up, Massah Jeff? Yankee, you is alivin’ lak a gen’man fust time in yoah life.”

  Pelagrini laughed and clapped Keeley on the shoulder.

  “Peter is very funny when he makes out like a nigger,” Pelagrini said.

  “Pelagrini has absolutely no sense of humor,” Keeley said mirthlessly. “And like most people around here he can’t tell the difference between the white and black except by their color. Do you know why, Pelagrini? Because that’s the only difference.”

  Pelagrini giggled. “Very funny,” he said. “Very funny.”

  “I want to get transferred overseas,” Jeff said.

  “What for?”

  “Because I’m not doing anything here. That’s what for.”

  “Atta boy,” said Pelagrini. “Go kill them Japs.”

  “I said what for?” Keeley put down his bottle of beer. His face was angry. Taut. He was suddenly aware that something was the matter with Jeff.

  “It’s just that I can’t stand it here any more. All the work I’m doing doesn’t amount to anything.”

  “What did you want it to amount to? What did you think you were going to do? Draw a picture and win the war?”

  “It’s natural,” said Pelagrini. “The boy wants to kill Japs.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Pelagrini, keep quiet. Drink your beer. Cut hair. Play the races. Raise your prices or something, but stop yapping about killing.” Keeley turned to Jeff. The fifty-watt bulb overhead made his face appear too old quite suddenly. “Listen, Jeff. Some people are made to kill. But not you. You’re no soldier. They’ll never make one out of you. Not if they train you for a thousand years.”

  “You know what they think of artists here. Take Pelagrini. He knows.”

  “He doesn’t know a damned thing.” Keeley’s voice was like broken glass. “And since when do you care what people think? What’s the matter? Afraid you won’t have the privilege of dying in this war?”

  “It’s only that I feel guilty, that’s all.”

  “Guilty of what? That you’ve got both your legs and arms? What’s the matter? Don’t you get your name in the paper? All right. I’ll knock out a piece on how much you’re doing. Everybody’ll read about you and you’ll be a hero. I’ll get them to run a picture in the paper and then you’ll be recognized. I’ll write that Jeff Mitchell is one of the unsung heroes of the war. While pleading for active duty on the battlefront, he nevertheless remained at his post doing vital intelligence work. And I’ll say how you got malaria right here in these God-lousy barracks. The South Pacific comes to Jeff Mitchell. Then people will sympathize with you. What the hell’s the matter with you anyway? Who’s been talking to you?”

  “What’ll I have when it’s all over? Memories of an office and drawing board?”

  “Oho, so that’s it? You want to wear overseas ribbons. You want to tell the pretty little girls all about your foxhole and how your rifle jammed just when the Jap was going to bayonet you. And then how you fought him hand-to-hand and killed the enemy. Or are you the type who would like to have one leg shot off and when the movie star comes to your bedside in the airy, comfy hospital, you don’t complain but make a corny joke? Or maybe you would like to do a jitterbug dance with a wooden leg for the newsreels just to show how brave you are?”

  “You don’t understand, Pete. I feel left out. I don’t count for anything.”

  “You poor sack. You poor misguided jackass. You want to go out and kill Japs. Well, I’ve killed them. And I’ve got overseas ribbons to wear. So what? I’ve been there and I tell you it’s tougher here. Tougher in a different way. It’s funny. Everybody over there wants to get back and everybody here wants to go over there. Kill. That’s what it is. You play with your bullets so long you can’t wait to see how they look inside somebody. Jeff, please don’t disappoint me. We’ll win this war. And you’re doing your share. Only stop listening to these crazy bastards like Pelagrini.”

  But he knew then that Jeff, like so many others who were trapped in their barracks, would never be satisfied until he had killed. It was in the air all over the world, he thought. He wanted to strike Jeff for having made him angry. He was upset for having said what he had. He knew that the only way to win a war was to kill, and to kill more than the enemy, and faster and better. And he had learned that men kill better when they are blind to objectives. It wasn’t true that men fought better when they had reasons. The Jap on Guam believed more fiercely and, from his own point of view, had more in which to believe than the American. His emperor was far more exalted to him than any Bill of Rights to most Americans. The Jap believed with a blind faith; he was an unquestioning soldier who followed orders without the bat of an eye. And yet it did him little good when the chips were down. It was the American’s skill and teamwork, his firepower, his tremendous weight of naval guns and air power that won at Kwajalein. It wasn’t the American soldier’s belief in his Bill of Rights, his Constitution, or his God which enabled him to win at Cape Gloucester and Wadke and Saipan. It was the G.I.’s ability to attain a fine anger on short notice. Sentimentality helped. The American was maudlin. He wept easily. He laughed easily. He got angry easily. He would shoot his own officer in the back if he had a grudge against him. But let the enemy shoot that very same officer and the American wept as he opened the trigger on his Johnson light machine gun. He swore, then, at the Jap, hated him on an instant’s notice. Liberty, humanity, freedom were merely words. Many of the men who had fought on Eniwetok and Kwajalein and Guadalcanal had peculiar ideas about liberty and freedom which sounded like white supremacy and Protestant justice. The American’s skill and ability to fire artillery had helped him win and not the desire to free a handful of natives in the Solomons and on New Georgia. Where the American could run a medium tank like a jalopy, the Jap would fumble at the controls. Where an American could bend his plane in half, the Jap faltered at the second sputter. It was the American’s ability to sentimentalize himself, to sob over Dinah Shore’s voice on the short wave, to howl over a Bob Hope joke, to get lonely over Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas.” These things helped him paste the enemy into defeat.

  Keeley knew that.

  He had felt it in himself.

  He knew that pride in a squad, in a platoon, in a battalion, was more important than fighting for a better world … that is, if you wanted to win battles. Kids from eighteen to twenty-four could make a mad dash across the boondocks much more easily if the prestige of their company was at stake than if they were told that the hellish enemy had starved fifteen per cent of the Greek population to death or that he had murdered eighty per cent of the Jews in Europe.

  If a man was sage enough to think of a better world, of a world where justice was the keynote and tolerance was thrown in for good measure and understanding was the icing to the cake, he also was able to estimate the price of death and gauge the temper of his hatred. Such a man did not easily lend himself to an amphibious operation after four weeks in a rathole called a transport. The best hunters are those who have no qualms about the hunted. The best soldiers are those who enjoy the pastime of killing.

  It was the Cinderella story all over again. It was winning the war for us, thought Keeley. The infantryman could, without too much trouble, imagine himself as Humphrey Bogart crawling through the muck of a jungle, and sooner or later he would kill dozens of the enemy and, before it was all over, end up in a beautiful bar with a girl who wore low-cut dresses and kissed with her mouth open. And an American aviator could place himself in the field jacket of Spencer Tracy and nonchalantly dive his plane into the funnel of a Jap aircraft carrier, knowing all the time that he would meet Lionel Barrymore in some leather armchaired heaven and, before the thing ended, have Irene Dunne in his arms.

  The enemy was tough because he was a realist.

  We were tougher because we combined realism with sentiment. And sentiment was the sugar that counted for that extra yard and paydirt.

  But Keeley knew that while
the war would be won that way, Jeff Mitchell was not a hunter and he was not a killer. He knew that Jeff was the hunted, but that even the hunted might kill when cornered. How far, he wondered, was Jeff in the corner?

  “You talk very funny. Very.” said Pelagrini. “Everybody, the whole world, they say you are the best fighters in the war. They say nobody can fight like you. But you don’t talk like it. I don’t think they would like it if they hear you talk.”

  Keeley was suddenly tired. What was the use of explaining? One didn’t go around explaining religion or debunking myths. Certainly his outfit had long been known as the best. Probably they were, he thought. The same slogans which had sold the men of the outfit and the people at home fell into a neat pattern in his mind. “Attack!” “Never Retreat!” “What do you wanna do, live forever?” “We’re the best!” “We’ve never lost a war yet.” The funny thing about it was that it was true. The kids believed it and carried it out. Tradition and pride were the backbone of his outfit. Spirit and courage were the fuel which had made Keeley’s branch of the service the most tenacious, most daring, most skillful in the world. The men had dash, imagination. There was plenty of good reason, thought Keeley, for their tendency to swagger. Even the recruits, who had nothing about which to swagger yet, swaggered. And they did so merely because they wore the same uniform. But he also knew that once the custom and tradition, the nuts and bolts, rusted into the mind, they never would budge. There wasn’t a foe in the world who could question the fighting ability of the men who wore the same uniform as Keeley. At the same time he knew there wasn’t a friend who would be impudent enough to ask those men why they were fighting. He knew that most of them were merely fighters. They had no objective in mind. That’s why so many Southerners joined his outfit. Most Southerners didn’t know what the war was about, the basis on which it was being fought, or for what reasons. They knew there was a war, so they joined the self-advertised, best fighting force in existence. They wanted to see action. With this branch of service they would see it. They wanted glory. This way they would get it. Keeley had heard them talking. Many of them had enlisted to get away from their wives, not to make the world secure for their wives. And having got away, the men then dreamed of their women; for the warm belly of a woman is a poignant memory when you’re lying in a foxhole up to your waist in water.