Dog Tags (16 page)

Trezevant sat up. The rats slid out of sight.

Two dawns later Scafa screamed. I stumbled into the sickroom and found him keening in horror, hands over his ears, fingers stiff, on the edge of madness. “A rat, a rat on my chest.” He heaved and gasped.

“Just a wood rat,” I said, soothing, crooning; a wood rat, yes, the fields and forests, nature's creatures, like bunnies and squirrels, “just a wood rat. They eat roots and berries. They won't hurt you.”

“Oh, oh,” Scafa said. “You sure, Lieutenant?”

“I'm sure,” I lied, and after that we saw rats often, at dawn, or in the dugout basement; and heard them, skitter skitter, rejoiced in them, named them, and argued whether this one was MacArthur or Mao. I would have had the men cook and eat them, at least in a stew, but their horror was primordial; they glared, pointed, unclean, unclean; I feared mutiny, anarchy, the chaos of despair, and shut up.

“Yo, it hurts,” Trez moaned. “Shooting pains in the legs here, at night mostly.”

I contemplated this big black man. Travel was broadening, no question. Cela change les idées. We were sipping hot water, two military gentlemen at tea, a brief chat, morale, faction and pother amongst the other ranks. “Me too. Keep it quiet. If we quit they'll all quit.”

“Be pleased to quit,” Trezevant said. “Purely love to quit.”

“Not you.”

“Well no.” He summoned a grin. “First time in years, though, I wouldn't mind going home.”

“Where's that?”

“Lee County, Arkansas, about ten mile from Marianna. Real shitkicker country.”

“What did you do before?”

“Ate shit,” he said comfortably, “and joined the army as soon as I could.” The grin again. “Lied about my age.”

“Sharecropper?”

“My papa. Still is when he ain't sick. Mama died from too many children and too little else. I suppose you had it real good.”

“I did.”

“I heard you were in the war.”

“That's right,” I said. “Corporal.”

“Then you know a little.”

“A little.”

“Fight much?”

“Germany. Purple Heart, even.” Braggart, hero. All men are little brothers.

“I wonder do you get a Purple Heart for prisoner.”

“No. Back pay.”

“Better yet. What about these pains, now?”

“It's scurvy,” I said.

“Scurvy? I thought that was sailors.”

“It's diet. No greens, no fruit. They'll all have it.”

“Mm. Oldridge going to make it?”

“No,” I said, “but keep quiet about it.”

“Funny fellow,” Trezevant said. “Little old Florida cracker, old and fat. They call him Pinky, you know that?”

“Pinky. I could save him with spinach, oranges.”

“Oranges. Oranges from Florida. Maybe we ought to eat those rats.”

“We will,” I said. “Bet a dollar.”

“That's a bet,” the big man said. “You first. Officers first.” He laughed softly.

I treated Turks from the Turkish Brigade, Britons from the 27th Commonwealth Brigade. “Just forget those designations,” Kinsella said crisply. “You know nothing about the units.”

“They know it all,” I said. “How many Turkish brigades are there? Or British?”

“Just the same,” Kinsella said. “How many you figure we are, all of us? You move around.”

“Seven, eight hundred.” Filipinos, Koreans.

“I don't suppose we could bust out.”

“We couldn't bust out of a used condom,” I said. “There's a hundred men dying and nobody else can even pee straight.” Thus myself, concertmaster and friend of Beethoven. Gourmets may rhapsodize. Those who eat shit talk shit. In the house of the hanged man everybody mentions rope. Soon we would be speculating on the afterlife. Some would go mad: Beer first. No. I was a species of captain and would leave the ship last.

Oldridge died that night. In the morning we found him dead and I bore his dog tags to Kinsella. He was a collector of dog tags, a numismatist, a heap in a sack like a hoard of strange shillings. “It's bad,” he said.

“It'll be worse,” I said. “He's sent for me again.”

“Tell him we're dying. We absolutely must have more food. Remind him about Nuremberg.”

“Nuremberg.” I made a serious effort to comprehend.

“War crimes,” Kinsella said briskly.

“Right,” I said.

Ou-yang's very bulk lent him authority; I felt scrawny, obsequious, a flunky. “Come with me,” Ou-yang said, and I nodded dumbly. We walked beneath unshaded light bulbs, passed offices, a storeroom, a toilet—a toilet! I gaped: an Oriental toilet, one hunkered, footrests of stone, a chain. I hurried along. The infirmary: a small room, an overhead lamp, a table, cots. Three patients. “These two,” Ou-yang announced, “have a
rash
. This one has a
wet
ear.”

I examined, grunted, emitted the imposing sonorities of expertise. I must consult with Untermeyer, the makings of a tragedy, an epidemic of underwear fungus, evacuate the women, children and bladder. Untermeyer. Ah, to see the Untermeyers here! An unworthy thought. “These two should wash more often. Bathe it twice a day with potassium permanganate. All right then, alcohol. All right then,
soap
, for God's sake. This one has an infection. Keep it clean and if there's penicillin, use it.”

“Ah, penicillin.” Ou-yang spoke; a soldier unlocked a small cabinet. “Go ahead,” Ou-yang said.

Dreamily I inspected the vial, the syringe, the needle. “You took these from me.”

Ou-yang said, “Yes.”

“My men are dying,” I said. “They need food. They've all got pneumonia. They need medicine.”

“We have no medicine. Keep them warm.”

I set down the syringe. “I can't do this. I can't come here and … I can't …” What was I trying to say? I prepared the dose, administered the injection. Skin, blood, all skin was skin, all blood, blood. “Have the needle sterilized,” I said. “Is this aspirin?”

“Yes.”

I unscrewed the lid and took six tablets. I wrapped them in a scrap of newspaper and defied Ou-yang sullenly, an animal, a dog with a bare bone.

“Keep them,” Ou-yang said. “Come with me.” He spoke to a soldier. We went back to his office. Already jaded, I ignored the toilet. Ou-yang told me to be
seated
. “We have no food,” he said. “It goes to the front lines. All over China people are
hungry
. Some are starving. We have had the country only one year, and there is so much to do. Did you think we
wanted
this war?” He brooded, stocky and sad. “When there is food it will be
distributed
. We are not torturers.”

“That may be too late,” I said. “We have scurvy now, lots of it.”

Ou-yang shrugged. He gestured and a stately plump bald corporal came from the doorway bearing a bowl of rice on which lay two crossed leeks. I gobbled, shoveling the food into a parched mouth. “Tea? Is there tea?” Ou-yang himself poured. I guzzled, and was abruptly and savagely overcome by shame; my throat closed. I pondered that. Then I summoned up all my moral corruption, and ate. In joyous iniquity I cleaned my plate; there are children starving in China. I grew calm, and sucked a tooth. “A mirror,” I said. “Is there a mirror?”

“Yes, yes.” Ou-yang rummaged. On his desk, a magazine: eagerly I scanned the mysterious characters. Ou-yang handed me a small mirror, and was amused.

My dark stringy hair hung like a wild girl's. My beard—a rabbi! at last!—curled, dry, wiry. My eyes peered from the brush like field mice. My lips were cracked, baked mud. This face. That haunched a thousand hips. “I look like a convict,” I said.

“You
are
a convict,” Ou-yang said.

“You have no right,” Kinsella said flatly.

“Here,” I said. “Take three.”

“What is it?”

“Aspirin.”

“Aspirin! God damn, man, that's no help.”

“He said there was no food. When it comes we'll have it. I told him it might be too late.”

“You're
fraternizing
!” Kinsella said. “Damn you, Beer, you're in trouble!”

“You're kidding,” I said.

“You're a soldier,” he said. To myself I acknowledged now, hardly hearing him as he rattled on, that I had never known what it was to be a real soldier: to wake with energy, to love plans and tactics and camouflage and the heart-stopping glimpse of an enemy in your sights, the lilting recoil; the satisfying, how satisfying it must be if you love it at all, contortions of flopping dolls that had intended your death and met their own. The coffee and the cigarettes and the tall stories about other battles, women, legendary sergeants, enfilades.

“I had a sergeant once,” I said, “who used to take us out for grenade practice and tell us to watch out for flyin derbis.”

“You what?”

“Flyin derbis,” I said.

“God damn,” Kinsella said. “What's that all about?”

“Right,” I said.

So I roved my little hell, stumbled over corpses, made my rounds without instruments, without medicine, without hope. I offered vain advice, instructed men in nursing care. I excised dead flesh with a long fingernail, with a contraband metal spoon. I displayed the aspirin to my men, who crowded around me and exclaimed. Trezevant was appointed its keeper. A cold rain persisted, and dark earth swelled through the snow like mange on a polar bear. There was no news of the war. What war? I had a vision: the war was over, the others had all gone home, and these here were penitents, this was their infernal landscape, their limbo, each had killed or betrayed, committed undefined sacrilege, inexpiable. Cuttis went on living, freckled and friendly. Scafa declined. Bewley conversed with Jesus. I stood gaping at the Yalu like a village idiot, and adjured myself to survive.

We were much beset, and business picked up. In every hut a miser's hoard of dog tags. My own still lost. I could steal a pair and be anyone ever after. Never. I am that I am. One morning Collins, sleeping like a fetus, was unable to straighten his legs. “Jesus Christ,” he shouted, “I'm paralyzed!” I examined him, stringy Collins, never fat and now all sticks and stones. Wearily but gently, gratefully, it was an occupation, mon métier, I massaged him. Trezevant brought him hot water to sip. The left leg relaxed, millimeter by millimeter slacked and stretched. Ewald worked at the right leg. In half an hour Collins was walking. Ewald went so far as to smile.

I conferred with Trezevant, and he made the announcement: “Only one way to stay alive and this is it, so you men listen. From now on you get up in the morning when we tell you. Never mind seven o'clock and never mind the Chinese. We get you up. Then you wash. And you wash Cuttis and Scafa and anybody else real sick. After chow you police the hut and the grounds. After that you sit down and hunt lice. You dig 'em out and you pop 'em. From now on we fetch wood every day and not every second day. Also, in that room by Cuttis, we make a checkerboard on the floor. We use stones for checkers and every man gets to play two games every day, and you keep track. A tournament, you hear? Prizes to be announced later. And every day before lunch, calisthenics.”

The bitching groan was the first truly human noise out of them in weeks.

But next morning they balked, jeered, cursed. Collins refused to rise at all, and took his ease. Sunderman and Ewald, the firewood detail, shrugged: “Plenty time tomorrow.” I looked to Trez for iron, for bone; Trez too shrugged. Trez, Bewley and I turned out for calisthenics. We stood in the wind, hopeless and aimless. “Well, let's do a few,” Trez said. We did a few, and returned to the warm hut.

Then Mulberg guttered. For some days he sat mute, staring into his past. The others shied. It was his business. Yuscavage complained of the shoulder. Bewley prayed in a tenor drone and said, “Jesus the best healer.” Mulberg ate mechanically or not at all. Then he spent most of several days lying down. “There's some like that in every hut,” Kinsella said.

“It's not sickness,” I said. “Not like the scurvy.” My own legs were agony at night. Murderous.

“What do you think?”

“I don't know.”

Mulberg asked for ice water. He asked for sherbet. During the third week he refused to eat unless he could have soda water.

“Ice water.” Kinsella was astounded. “There's about a dozen asking for different drinks. Root beer. God damn. What is it, anyway?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe he's going crazy. I'll do something.”

With Trez I went in to Mulberg, who had removed his jacket and covered his head with it. “Mulberg,” I called; there was no answer. Trez shook him and nothing happened. “Chow time,” I said. Nothing. Together we raised him to a sitting position and I unwrapped his head, then slapped him twice. Modern medicine. He blinked and growled. “Ewald,” I called, “bring a bowl of soup.” Dull of eye, Ewald would not stir; Trez fetched the millet. He pried Mulberg's mouth open and I poured soup into it. Mulberg gagged, flopped, spat and twisted away. We tried again. He roared and spewed. I slapped him again: “Don't waste food.” It was all so useless. But he swallowed the next mouthful; we made him finish, and left him. Next morning we did it again. After chow Mulberg urinated on the floor, lying brutish on his side, his hose limp, spraying; Trez and I were not so much disgusted by bad manners as revolted by gross ignobility. We dragged him outside, stood him up, and played medicine ball with him: shoved him back and forth until he fell, dragged him erect and shoved him some more. We stripped him and threw pebbles at him. He protected his jewels. We tore his hands away; he fought. He rose and howled. He lunged for his pants. We let him dress. “No more shit,” Trezevant said. Mulberg stood there panting. “Jumping jacks,” Trezevant ordered, and counted. Mulberg executed ten jumping jacks and glowered.