The Med (7 page)

A good swing, and then the satisfying
chunk
as the rifle butt hit …

“This off-limits area extends from just beyond the railway station, the Estazione Ferroviaria. Under no conditions are military personnel permitted to cross into it. The Shore Patrol will point the limits of this area out to you, should this be necessary.”

Ess-tossy-onay Fairy Veahria, Givens repeated in his mind. The exec sounded like a pansy.

No. That wasn't right. For a moment he felt scared. Thinking about hitting another marine—being disrespectful, even in his mind, to an officer—that wasn't him. His lips moved, calling for strength to resist the unrighteous. He was letting Cutford and Silky get to him. Make him like them, in their own different yet like images of power. So what if the exec knew some Italian. Maybe he could learn some himself. It had been easy enough to pick up a couple of words in Spanish at Rota. Hernandez said he sounded like a real “raza,” whatever that was.

No, he had to discipline his thoughts. The exec was all right, for a officer. For
an
officer. Maybe, he thought guiltily, I better start listening up.

“… Palermo has been a center of historical events and military campaigns for centuries. In
A.D.
835 the Saracens captured the town, and held Sicily for two centuries, till Roger the Norman recaptured it. It was taken by Allied forces under General Patton in 1943, in the largest amphibious assault in history.…”

“Jee … sus,” he heard Liebo mutter to his right, his round face outthrust so that Will could see him even with his eyes straight ahead. “Shut your fuckin' mouth, Dippy,” came Sergeant Silkworth's rasping murmur down the line.

Where do they learn all that? Givens wondered. Was that college, too? Or did all the officers get briefed, before they hit a port? Read it out of some manual?

“… And remember, as in any Catholic country, women are respected. Make no advances until you ascertain their status. A lot of the men here carry knives, and they know how to use them.

“That brings up one last point: politics. The Italian Communists are active here. They'd love to embarrass the Marine Corps and through us the United States. Don't be drawn into arguments. We don't want any international incidents, and we don't want any of our troops hurt, either.

“Any questions?… Top, take over and dismiss the men.”

As the formation broke Givens let his knees sag for a moment. He looked around. The land was nearer, a hazy stroke of pastel across a blue-gray morning. The snickering sailors were gone from the crane. Cutford was talking to another brother. He looked dangerous, as he usually was after being subjected to an officer's lecturing. Will moved toward the rail to avoid hearing, to avoid being drawn in. His boots scuffed on the nonskid of the deck.

The ship was turning, the wind shifting to the starboard side, and as he reached the nets the land came suddenly into full view, much closer than he had thought. He dropped to sit, dangling his legs above the wake sixty feet below, and looked out.

Low, blue, the flattened hills were hazy and contrastless, curved in a sweep of sea and morning-pure sky. Other marines were looking on, saying little. One of them was Washman, clicking away with an Instamatic. Givens stared out. He was a long way from Carolina. For a moment he wished he had never come.

“Where you planning on going, Will?”

“Oh. Hey, Washout.” He looked behind him to make sure Cutford was out of earshot, then turned back to the squad rifleman. “I guess, just ashore. You heard the stories Silky been telling. Be fun to see the town, wouldn't it?”

“Shit, yeah. I never been here, either. That off limits, that sounds like the place to go. ‘Everything past the railway station.' We could spend all fucken four days there.”

“We could go there for a little while, yeah,” said Givens cautiously.

“And all the other stuff, too. The castles and the volcano and the mummies.”

“Mummies?”

“Wa'n't you listening? Lieutenant said they buried 'em in a cave, dressed and standing up. Said they scared the piss out of him. Well, he didn't say ‘piss.' But it's going to be on that tour they set up.”

“Yeah. Sure. The tour.” Givens paused, knowing that what he really wanted, every waking moment and most achingly at night, was forbidden. “Well—I guess it wouldn't hurt to go ashore, look around a little.”

“I know one of the squids,” said Washman, twisting his pimpled face nervously around the deck; he was afraid of Cutford, too. “One of the gunner's mates. We was talking about the mortars. He wanted a round of eighty-one and I told him no way, José; Butterbars counts them fuckers every time we open the ammo locker. But he said he been to Palermo lots of times. He's an old guy, thirty. I bet he'd tell us the places to hit.”

“So let's go find him, man,” said Will, thrusting his thumbs under his web belt and scowling. It was easy to act tough around the Washout.

“In your pack, man.”

They found the gunner's mate coming out of the mess decks with a mug of coffee. He didn't seem to recognize Washman, but when they asked about town he nodded. They followed him up to the after three-inch mount and sat on a ready service locker. Washout borrowed his ball pen and got the essentials down on a torn-out page of his
Guidebook for Marines.

*   *   *

The rest of the morning oozed by, slow as promotion, like all the time they spent on shipboard. He and Washman wandered up to the bridge and watched the coast draw clearer until a lookout chased them off. They wandered down to the first-class mess, attracted by the sound of a television, and were ordered to move along. They went by the ship's store, hoping for pogey bait, chocolate or gum, but it was closed. So after that there was nothing to do but go back to the berthing space. Two decks down into the hull, it was as hot and smelly as any cavern inhabited for months on end by two hundred prehistoric men. They sat at the card table and watched Dippy and Hernandez in their endless game of spades. Harner was there, sitting beside the Chicano rifleman, chain-smoking Marlboros like he always did; he never touched the cards, never kibitzed, volunteered nothing. He was the tallest in the squad and never complained, even on forced marches. Cutford was there, but he seemed to be on safe for the moment. Lying in his bunk, eyes closed, earphones over his stocking cap, he was nodding to his stereo. Silkworth, Liebo muttered, was in a meeting with the Top. A fly droned among the slowly tilting bunkframes, the drowsing men:

A little after lunch they heard the squids man up for sea detail. The squad played one more hand and then drifted off to their lockers. Givens pulled a set of fresh Charlies from the wrappers they had been stowed in since the States. Liebo dimpled his tie in the mirror by the hatch. Hernandez patted on cologne, and tropical flowers filled the compartment. Harner meditated in the head, his straight razor dangling in his hand, sucking silently at a bloody lip.

Givens checked himself in the polished glass. His garrison cap sat straight on short, wiry hair. The collar of his khaki shirt was straight with starch, his globe-and-anchors a dull and warlike black. He pinned his ribbons level with the deck, conscious of their paucity. Someday, he promised himself for the hundredth time, there would be more. A whole chestful. He bared his teeth at his image and wrinkled his nose, wishing it were not quite so wide, wishing he did not look quite so young—

“What the fuck you doin', Oreo?”

“Nothin', man.” He moved aside as Cutford shouldered his way into the mirror. “Uh … you goin' on libs, bro'?”

Cutford said nothing. He stared into the mirror, then shifted his narrow eyes to Will's. He's so much darker than I am, Givens thought.

“Jesus, you stink,” said the corporal.

“That's Hernandez.”

“Why don't you put some on, too?”

“I don't like the smell. It's too strong.”

“Hey,” said Cutford. “Dap, brother.”

Givens dapped him unwillingly. He felt clumsy doing the rhythm. He missed one and Cutford sneered and turned back to the mirror, flipping out a comb. There were gray wires in his hair. “Oreo, you fucked-up ofay-lover, you can't even pass power right.”

“Cutford, nobody goes for that power stuff anymore.”

“That's what
they
been tellin' you. Where you think you're goin'?”

“Out on liberty, like everybody else.”

“‘Like everybody else.' Yeah, that's just your tune, Oreo. You just want to be one of the boys.” He accented the last word. “And where you plannin' to go on this sweet liberty the big man give you?”

“I don't know. Just go ashore, walk around a little.”

“Who with?”

“Nobody. Just us pees in the squad.”

“You referrin' to your swan friends, of course.”

“The whole squad's goin', man.” Will sounded plaintive even to himself. He looked around, hoping someone else needed the mirror; but the compartment was emptying, men pushing by them, stepping carefully up the ladder to keep their starched O.D. trousers from bagging at the knees. He wanted nothing more than to get away from this man, but he was part of the squad; the offer, at least, was a necessity. “Why don't you come with us?”

The corporal's face came closer. Givens dropped his eyes to his gold chain, the twisted-carrot trinket Cutford wore without explaining even under his uniform, even in the showers, and the invitation died on his lips.

“Private Givens. Will, baby.” The corporal's voice became soft. “Listen. You don't need to go out with those people. You don't need to suck up to them and buy them beer. You don't need to snake their dirty whores in some enlisted man's off-limits craphouse, then cover your ass with that Jesus talk of yours. You're a black man, a black
king,
every place but in your head, man.”

“Get off my case, Cutford. We bunk with them and eat with them and we're supposed to be ready to fight with them. You're the main gunner, man. Why can't you figure you got to live with them, too?”

“Fuck you, then, Oreo. Someday you're going to see the light. Till then—”

He tensed, expecting violence, but the corporal disappeared from the mirror. He hadn't touched him, even. When he was sure he was gone Will breathed out. He removed his cap, ran his comb through the stubble again, and ran up the ladder to the main deck.

From sixty feet up he could see all of Sicily. From the pier back the city lay like a pastel carpet. Miles of buildings festered between the hills and spread beyond them. Far inland a massive volcanic cone thrust upward like a thunderhead. In the afternoon brightness of the Mediterranean, Palermo seemed endless, immense, the largest city on the planet, and after weeks at sea or on barren maneuver areas the honking, dog-barking murmur of land, the chuffing of a rusty tugboat, the rich smells of exhaust and sewage and pasta were intoxicating. He joined ten score other marines and a few sailors at the rail and leaned his elbows on the warm metal, breathing deep. Silkworth was right, he thought again. He had smelled it from far at sea; had smelled it, stronger and deeper, all through the morning. Even the stink of the compartment, soap and ship, starch and cologne had become part of it, natural, like the perfume of a beautiful, unwashed woman, a naked woman who spread her legs from hill to hill before him.

To ease his sudden excitement he leaned forward, looking down at the pier.

Below them, on the outstretched sterngate (the ship had moored stern to), sailors in dungarees shouted and jumped back. The gangway had broken loose. It tilted, balanced for an instant, and then slid gracefully into the brown murk at the foot of the pier. The marines groaned. The sailors stared stupidly into the water. A fish circled belly up in sluggish scum, drink cans, oily rainbows. A fat chief in whites came out from inside the well deck and began giving orders. The marines shouted suggestions. A couple of linehandlers, a policeman, and a priest in hot-looking black watched from the pier. The sailors fished cautiously off the sterngate. The grapnel snagged something, they hauled away together, and the end of the gangway crept up into view, dripping slime.

“Don't drop it again,” Will shouted down, and beside him Washman laughed. “These friggin' squids kill me,” he said. The priest caught a heaving line and the policeman and two linehandlers joined him on it. When the far end of the brow banged on the concrete, the chief ran across and began lashing it to a bollard.

“Let's head on out,” said Hernandez, with a deep sigh of anticipation.

*   *   *

On the pier, free at last, they ranged themselves in swaggering line abreast. Past two passenger liners the quay ended at a modern-looking concrete building that as they neared it became flaking, prewar. Its walls flapped with posters in fading greens and reds. He looked back once. The
Spiegel Grove
looked small, moored among the liners; small and old, graceless and dirty. It had carried him in her guts for three months, and every minute of it he had hated her.

He did not look back again.

The six of them—Givens, Washman, Hernandez, Sergeant Silkworth, Liebo, and Harner—stopped by common accord at the first bar beyond the gate, on a cobbled street as full of diesel fumes as traffic. The proprietor grumbled at their dollars, but took them. After two or three beers apiece to take the edge off they headed uphill at a more leisurely pace. Silkworth declined to lead. He said he had been drunk every time he'd been here and he could never remember the way. They strolled uptown, conspicuous in starched Charlies amid the thronging, swift-talking Sicilians. Givens stared open-mouthed at the shabby, crumbling buildings, the mobile-junkyard cars, the hammer-and-sickle posters six to every wall. He felt conscious of his uniform, his foreignness, his skin. He closed up on Liebo and Silky and Washman, in the lead.