To the End of the War (16 page)

“All right, goddam it,” George said, “then I’m not a good businessman. My self-respect is more important to me. I need to do things for myself, not have you do them for me. Besides, you got all those assets from the Stafford family,” he said, trying not to be irritable. “If you hadn’t been married to big Jim, you wouldn’t be where you are. I can’t just step into Jim Stafford’s donation and take it over.”

“What difference does it make where it comes from?” Riley asked. “Besides, you’re not going to be a lackey. Why, with your prestige as a veteran after the war, and having been wounded and all that, why you’ll be the biggest asset in the deal.”

“Sure,” George said with a laugh. “But if I wanted to trade on having a leg off, I could sell pencils. You know, the guy with a hat that sits on the corner. It’s the same damn thing.”

“Oh, George!” Riley said in a hurt voice.

George shrugged disconsolately. “You just don’t understand.”

“I understand rightly enough. You think I should just throw everything I like to the four winds and follow you wherever you see fit to go. You . . . Oh, never mind. We’ll talk about it later. Here comes Jimmy. And besides, I’m tired. I’ve had a hard trip. I’m going in and lie down for a while.”

Reluctantly, George watched her go into her room. He sat down in the big chair wondering what the hell?

“Where’s mother?” Jimmy asked.

“She’s taking a nap,” George said.

“Listen, George,” said Jimmy with great seriousness. “I’ve got a keen game. If I can get it out, will you play it with me?”

“Yeah,” George said. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Oh, boy! Swell!” Jimmy went cautiously into the guest room to sneak out the game. George rubbed his head with his fingertips reflectively.

George looked up when young Jimmy reentered the living room. He carried a large board something like a dart board; his eyes were shining with amused excitement. In his other hand, he held a small rectangular cardboard box. He laid the board flat on the rug.

“We’ll play this one, George,” Jimmy said enthusiastically. “This is about the best game I have. I’ll explain it to you.” George smiled and leaned closer while Jimmy explained the technical processes of the game.

The game was called “Bombsight,” or “Air Raid,” or something of that sort. George had not been in any air raids, but he remembered how the Mitchell bombers had pasted hell out of Holtz Bay. The board was covered with thin cork, and on the cork was drawn in color a miniature city with docks, ships, factories, airfields, dumps, and railroads all marked prominently in red. The small box was the “bombsight.” It had two eyeholes in one end and a mirror in the other, set at an angle to reflect horizontal vision downward. At the mirror end were four holes through the box; in each resided a wooden bomb with celluloid tailfins and a steel point like a dart. Each dart was held in place with a little wooden pin which, when pulled, allowed the bomb to fall upon the city below.

“This is a swell game,” Jimmy said, after his detailed explanation. “Of course, you’re not moving like a plane. You have to stand still, because this bombsight doesn’t allow for forward movement like a real bombsight. But it’s the same idea.” He leaned over the board, sighting through the eyeholes; then he straightened again and grinned. “This can be Berlin, or Tokyo’s better. And you’re one bomber and I’m another. . . . And we try to beat each other hitting vital installations. And we have to make good, because we only get one chance in this raid because we’ve got so far to fly back to a base, like General Doolittle’s raid. Here, you make your pass first.”

George took the game and leaned forward from his chair to sight.

“You have to hit the vital installations,” Jimmy said, “because they are military targets, and if you don’t hit them, you don’t cause much damage and only just kill a few civilians. There’s one ammunition dump. If you hit that, you can really blow things up. But it’s away off by itself and if you miss it, you don’t hit anything else.”

George let one of the bombs fall.

“No good,” Jimmy said. “I’ve always wanted to be a bombardier,” he confided to George. “Being a bombardier must be the most fun in the army. You fly over and let those old bombs fall and watch them spread out all over. A bombardier has the most fun, I bet.”

“Yes,” George said. “Yes, I guess. You stick to the Air Corps. Don’t ever get in the Infantry.”

“Oh, I like the Infantry,” Jimmy said quickly. “The Infantry is what wins the battles,” he parroted. “The Infantry takes the land and holds it. I can’t decide whether I’d rather be in the Infantry or a bombardier.”

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.

EVANSVILLE, INDIANA, AUTUMN 1943

I
N
E
VANSVILLE, 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-built 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.”