The Thin Red Line (3 page)

“I think our outfit looks pretty capable, pretty solid, don’t you, Sergeant?” he said, putting a certain amount of authority in his voice, without overdoing it.

Welsh merely grinned at him insolently. “Yeah; for a bunch of slobs about to get their fucking ass shot off,” he said. A tall, narrow-hipped, heavily-muscled man in his early thirties, his Welsh blood advertised itself in every part of him: in his dark complexion and black hair; in his dark, blue-jowled jaw and wild, black eyes; in the look of dark foreboding which never left his face, even when he grinned, as now.

Stein did not answer him, but neither did he look away. He felt uncomfortable, and he was sure his face showed it. But he didn’t really care. Welsh was mad. He was insane. Truly a real madman, and Stein never had understood him. He had no respect for anything or anybody. But it didn’t really matter. Stein could afford to overlook his impertinences because he was so good at his job.

“I have a very real sense of responsibility toward them,” he said.

“Yeah?” Welsh said softly, and continued to grin at him with his insolent look of sly amusement, and that was all he would say.

Stein noticed that Band was watching Welsh with open dislike, and made a mental note to take this up with Band. Band must be made to understand this situation with Sergeant Welsh. Stein himself was still looking at Welsh, who was staring back grinning, and Stein who had deliberately not looked away before, now found himself in the silly position of being engaged in a battle of stares, that old, ridiculous, adolescent business of who is going to look away first. It was stupid as well as silly. Irritably he cast about for some way of breaking off this childish deadlock with dignity.

Just then a man from C-for-Charlie walked past in the companionway. Easily, Stein turned to him and nodded brusquely.

“Hello, Doll. How’s it going? Everything okay?”

“Yes, sir,” Doll said. He stopped and saluted, looking a little startled. Officers always made him uncomfortable.

Stein returned the salute. “Rest,” he murmured and then grinned behind his glasses. “Feeling a little nervous?”

“No, sir,” Doll said, with great seriousness.

“Good boy.” Stein nodded, halfway dismissing him. Doll saluted again, and went on out through the water-tight door. Stein turned back to Welsh and Band, the silly locked stare broken, he felt, without indignity. Sergeant Welsh was still standing grinning at him, in insolent silence, but with an asinine look of petty, sly triumph now. He really was mad. As well as childish. Deliberately, Stein winked at him. “Come on, Band,” he said brusquely, with shortened temper. “Let’s have a look around.”

Private First Class Doll, after he stepped through the water-tight door, veered right and crossed the hatchway area to the forward hold. Doll was still looking for his pistol. Since leaving Tills and Mazzi, he had made the long trip back to the stern, covering the entire rear of the ship on this deck, and he was beginning to wonder now if he had not done it too hurriedly. The trouble was, he did not know exactly how much time he had.

What did Bugger Stein mean, stopping him and asking him if he was nervous! What kind of shit was that? Did Bugger know he was out after a pistol? Was that it? Or was Bugger trying to make out that he, Doll, was yellow or something. That was what it looked like. Anger and outraged sensibilities rose up in Doll.

Furious, Doll stopped in the oval water-tight doorway to the forward hold to look this next hunting-ground over. It was very small, compared to the area he had already covered. What Doll had hoped, when he started out, was that if he simply went wandering around with an open mind and open eyes, the proper moment, the right situation, would eventually present itself, and that he would be able with inspiration to recognize and seize it. That was not what had happened, and now he was desperately beginning to feel that time was running out on him.

Actually, in his entire circuit of the whole stern, Doll had only come upon two loose pistols which were not being worn. That was not very many. Both pistols had presented him with a decision to make: Should he? Or shouldn’t he? All he had to do was pick it up belt and all and put it on and walk away. Both times Doll had decided against. Both times there had been quite a few men around, and Doll could not help but feel, quite very forcefully, that a still better opportunity would show up. None had however, and now he could not help but wonder, with quite equal force, if he had not perhaps erred on the side of caution because he had been afraid. This was a thought Doll could hardly bear.

His own company might begin to move upstairs at any moment now. On the other hand, he was tormented by the thought of Mazzi and Tills and the rest, if they saw him come back now without a pistol.

Gingerly, Doll wiped the sweat from his eyes again and stepped on through the doorway. He went on up the starboard side of the forward hold, working his way in and out amongst this crowd of strangers from another outfit, searching.

Doll had learned something during the past six months of his life. Chiefly what he had learned was that everybody lived by a selected fiction. Nobody was really what he pretended to be. It was as if everybody made up a fiction story about himself, and then he just pretended to everybody that that was what he was. And everybody believed him, or at least accepted his fiction story. Doll did not know if everybody learned this about life when they reached a certain age, but he suspected that they did. They just didn’t tell it to anybody. And rightly so. Obviously, if they told anybody, then their own fiction story about themselves wouldn’t be true either. So everybody
had
to learn it for himself. And then, of course, pretend he hadn’t learned it.

Doll’s own first experience of this phenomenon had come from, or at least begun with, a fist fight he had had six months ago with one of the biggest, toughest men in C-for-Charlie: Corporal Jenks. They had fought each other to a standstill, because neither would give up, until finally it was called a sort of draw-by-exhaustion. But it wasn’t this so much as it was the sudden realization that Corporal Jenks was just as nervous about having the fight as he was, and did not really want to fight any more than he did, which had suddenly opened Doll’s eyes. Once he’d seen it here, in Jenks, he began to see it everywhere, in everybody.

When Doll was younger, he had believed everything everybody told him about themselves. And not only told him—because more often than not they didn’t tell you, they just showed you. Just sort of let you see it by their actions. They acted what they wanted you to think they were, just as if it was really what they really were. When Doll had used to see someone who was brave and a sort of hero, he, Doll, had really believed he was that. And of course this made him, Doll, feel cheap because he knew he himself could never be like that. Christ, no wonder he had taken a back seat all his life!

It was strange, but it was as if when you were honest and admitted you didn’t know what you really were, or even if you were anything at all, then nobody liked you and you made everybody uncomfortable and they didn’t want to be around you. But when you made up your fiction story about yourself and what a great guy you were, and then pretended that that was really you, everybody accepted it and believed you.

When he finally did get his pistol—if he did get it—Doll was not going to admit that he had been scared, or unsure of himself, or indecisive. He would pretend it had been easy, pretend it had happened the way he had imagined it was going to happen, before he started out.

But first he had to get it, damn it all!

He had gone almost all the way forward when he saw the first one, up here, that somebody was not wearing. Doll stopped and stared at it hungrily, before he bethought himself to look around at the situation. The pistol hung from the end of a bed frame. Three bunks away in the heat a group of men clustered around a nervous crapgame. In the companionway itself four or five other men stood talking about fifteen feet away. All in all, it was certainly not any less risky than the two he’d seen in the stern. Perhaps it was even a little more so.

On the other hand, Doll could not forget that maddening sense of time running out. This might be the only one he would see up here. After all, he had only seen two in the entire stern. In desperation he decided he had better chance it. No one was taking any notice of him as far as he could tell. Casually, Doll stepped over and leaned on the bunk frame for a moment, as if he belonged here, then lifted the pistol off and buckled it around his waist. Stifling his instinct to just up and run, he lit a cigarette and took a couple of deep drags, then started leisurely toward the door, back the way he had come.

He had gotten halfway to it, and, indeed, had begun to think that he had pulled it off, when he heard the two voices hollering behind him. There was no doubt they were aimed at him.

“Hey, you!”

“Hey, soldier!”

Doll turned, able to feel his eyes getting deep and guilty-looking as his heart began to beat more heavily, and saw two men, one a private and one a sergeant, coming down toward him. Would they turn him in? Would they try to beat him up? Neither of these prospects bothered Doll half so much as the prospect of being treated with contempt like the sneak-thief he felt he was. That was what Doll was afraid of: It was like one of those nightmares everybody has of getting caught, but does not believe will ever really happen to them.

The two men came on down toward Doll ominously, looking indignant, their faces dark with outraged righteousness. Doll blinked his eyes rapidly several times, trying to wash from them the self-conscious guilt he could feel was in them. Behind the two, other faces had turned to watch, he noticed.

“That’s my pistol you’re wearin, soldier,” the private said. His voice held injured accusation.

Doll said nothing.

“He saw you take it off the bunk,” the sergeant said. “So don’t try to lie out of it, soldier.”

Summoning all his energy—or courage, or whatever it was— Doll still did not answer, and forced a slow, cynical grin to spread across his face, while he stared at them, unblinking now. Slowly he undid the belt and passed it over. “How long you been in the army, mack?” he grinned. “You oughta know fucking better than to leave your gear layin around like that. You might lose it someday.” He continued to stare, unflinching.

Both men stared back at him, their eyes widening slightly as the new idea, new attitude, replaced their own of righteous indignation. Indifference and cheerful lack of guilt made them appear foolish; and both men suddenly grinned sheepishly, penetrated as they had been by that fiction beloved in all armies of the tough, scrounging, cynical soldier who collects whatever he can get his hands on.

“Well, you better not have such sticky fingers, soldier,” the sergeant said, but it no longer carried much punch. He was trying to stifle his grin.

“Anything layin around out in the open that loose, is fair game to me,” Doll said cheerfully. “And to any other old soldier. Tell your boy he oughtn’t to tempt people so much.”

Behind the two, the other faces had begun to grin too, at the private’s discomfiture. The private himself had a hangdog look, as if he were the one at fault. The sergeant turned to him.

“Hear that, Drake?” he grinned. “You better take better care of your fucking gear.”

“Yeah. He sure better,” Doll said. “Or he won’t have it very goddam long.” He turned and went on leisurely toward the door, and nobody tried to stop him.

Outside, back in the hatchway area once more, Doll stopped and allowed himself a long, whooshing sigh. Then he leaned against the bulkhead because his knees were shaking. If he had acted guilty—which was what he really had felt—they would have had him. And had him good. But he had carried it off. He had carried it off, and it was the private who had come out as the guilty party. Nervously, shakily, Doll laughed. And it had all been one big lie! Over and above his scare he had a sense of high elation and of pride. In a way, he really was that sort of guy, too, he thought suddenly: that type of guy he had pretended he was back there. At least, anymore he was. He hadn’t used to be.

But he still hadn’t got a pistol. For a moment, Doll looked at his watch wondering, and worrying, about time. He hadn’t wanted to leave this deck, hadn’t wanted to get that far from C-for-Charlie. Then, on legs still a little shaky, but feeling triumphant, he began to mount the stairs to the deck above with a high sense of his own worth.

From the moment Doll stepped into the bunk area on the deck above, everything played for him. He was still a little shaky, and certainly he was considerably more skittish than before. It didn’t matter. Everything worked perfectly for him, and for his purpose. It could not have worked more perfectly if he had requested this exact sequence of events personally from God. Doll did not know why, he did nothing himself to cause it, and had he been a minute earlier or a minute later, it might certainly have been different. But he wasn’t earlier or later. And he did not intend to stop to question fortune. This was the perfect situation and set-up that he had originally imagined himself seeing and, in a flash, recognizing, and he did recognize it that way now:

He had not taken three steps inside before he saw not one but two pistols, lying almost side by side on the same bunk, right on the edge of the companionway. There was not a man in this entire end of the bunk area except for one, and before Doll could even take another step, this man had gotten up and gone off down to the other end where, apparently, everyone was congregated.

That was all there was to it. All Doll had to do was step over, pick up one of the pistols, and put it on. Wearing the stranger’s pistol, he walked on through the bunk area. At the other end he merely went out and down the hatchway stairs, turned back left, and he was back safe in the midst of C-for-Charlie. The company had not yet begun to move and everything was just as when he left it. This time he made a point of passing close by to Tills and Mazzi, something he had deliberately avoided before, when returning empty-handed from the stern.