To the End of the War (19 page)

“Who the hell are we supposed to be fighting for? Why, the Japs are using Douglas bombers. I’ve been shot at by them! My ship almost got knocked down once by a Douglas bomber made in Japan! They’re using them all the time; that ship is one of their most important planes.

“And then I listen to some dumb bastard who says the world is suffering because it’s become too sexy! Why don’t they try to learn the truth about things, instead of preachin and prayin and savin souls? It’s enough to make anybody blow his top. If I have to fight a war for my country, I don’t want to get killed by my own countrymen I’m supposed to be fightin for.”

Freedie tossed off his drink. He signaled for the waitress belligerently. “Ahhh, to hell with it,” he said.

Four coastguardsmen from Owensboro came in and set down at a table beside that of the young woman in the red dress.

Freedie eyes the coastsguardsmen silently. “Christ!” he burst out. “Who the hell knows I’m not going to get knocked down by American flak, shot out of American AA guns, made in an American defense plant—to help win the war? What are you going to believe in, if it’s run like that. Guys like me are just suckers. I . . . Ahhh, to hell with the bastards.”

Freedie got up from his chair and limped across the room to the table at which sat the dark-haired girl in the skin-cling skirt. Al and Johnny watched him talk to her for a moment, and then he sat down. They grinned briefly, and then they began to talk about the things that Freedie had just told them. Five minutes later, Freedie brought the girl over to the table and introduced her to Al and Johnny. Behind her back, he winked and grinned. He held up three fingers, pointed to himself and each of them and nodded elaborately.

Half an hour later, the party in Room 507 on the fifth floor was going strong, and the word got around. The bottles overflowed off the dressers and the people overflowed at the door. The bathroom was pressed into service, but Al and Johnny and Freedie would have none of it. Freedie sat on a pile of coats on one of the beds, getting drunk, hating all the foolish people, and enjoying the noise and presence of the crowd. No wonder, Freedie thought as he held a glass to the lips of the girl in the red skirt. No wonder God’s got a bitch against Evansville.

Freedie took away the glass and kissed her tentatively.

Jones wrote in his diary that his Uncle Charlie was trying to “break” him “thru fear and humiliation.” Jones was even more outraged when he learned his uncle had opposed his transfer to George Field in Vincennes, making him closer to Lowney. Jones wrote his uncle: “Just forget that I am a part of the Jones clan; just teach yourself that I you have no nephew named Jim.”

“You Are AWOL” reflects Johnny’s pent-up resentments against his hypocritical relative. The break with the lawyer/businessman relative decisively moves Johnny into Sandy’s orbit, for she, unlike Erskine, had come to believe Johnny could become a major writer.

AT THE ERSKINE CARTER HOME, AUTUMN 1943

“W
HEN DO YOU EXPECT TO
leave?” Erskine asked.

“I hadn’t thought about it,” said Johnny. “Maybe another week. Why?”

“Well,” said Erskine in a tone usually reserved for haranguing juries, “you are AWOL, and although you may not know it, I am breaking the law when I allow you to stay here, knowing you are AWOL. That makes me an accessory after the fact. Besides that, I’ve just had a visit from the chief of police.”

Johnny looked surprised.

“You didn’t expect that, did you?” said Erskine, “when you went all over town bragging openly that you were AWOL? The chief was very decent about it. But even you can hardly expect him to just overlook such a breech of the law.

“If you had come here to see me and Fanny it might be different. If you had not been so loud about being over the hill, the chief would not have had to recognize the fact. It seems quite evident to me that you have brought whatever happens to you upon yourself. And quite frankly, I don’t feel I have any responsibility to intercede for you. You have used our house as a resting up place between drunks and fornications, and for nothing else. I do not like that. You seem to have utterly no sense of gratitude or of responsibility. I do not like that.”

Johnny cut in on him: “We’ve been all over this.”

“Yes,” said Erskine, “and we’ll probably be all over it several times more. Since you seem to prefer the company of Sandy Marion to that of your own family, why don’t you just move into her house.”

“That’s an idea,” acknowledged Johnny.

“That is, provided Eddie will let you.” The implication caused by leaving Eddie’s name out of the previous statement was strengthened a great deal by this postscript. The postscript was unnecessary, however, because Johnny had already got it. When he still ignored the strengthened implication, Erskine went ahead.

“The point I am coming to is this: I don’t want you to stay here any longer as long as you are AWOL. And as long as you feel you must act as you have been acting, I don’t want you to stay at all. I want you to plan to leave sometime tomorrow.”

“Then I take it you’d rather I did move down to Sandy’s?” Johnny asked mischievously.

“You are of age,” said Erskine. “You are free to do as you see fit. Of course, what the chief of police does after you leave here is also your concern.”

“All right,” said Johnny. “I’ll leave tomorrow night. I wouldn’t want to get you into any trouble with the law; I wouldn’t want to ruin your business or your reputation.”

“Fanny and I,” said Erskine, “have taken a number of years to build up the reputation of the Carter name in this town from where it was when your father died. I loved Joe as much as any brother ever loved another—even if he was only my uncle; nevertheless I cannot condone some of the things he did.”

“Yes,” said Johnny. “You have told me this also.”

“I’ll drive you to Evansville, and put you on the train for camp.”

Johnny laughed harshly, his eyes squinting up a little in sudden anger, “Don’t you think I’m capable of taking care of myself?”

“I don’t know whether you are or not, frankly.” Erskine took his hands from behind his back and folded them over his chest. Johnny remembered suddenly the legend of Endymion that the only man who could ever make Erskine Carter holler uncle was his Uncle Joe, Johnny’s farther. Erskine must have seen what was in Johnny’s eyes, because he unfolded his arms and hung his thumbs in his belt.

Johnny tossed off the remainder of his drink and stood up. He was directly in front of Erskine and facing him.

“All right,” he said. “Now I’ll say something. As you said, I’m of age. I’ll do as I darned please. You won’t take me to Evansville to put me on no train, no time. I’m leaving tonight. Your jurisdiction goes just as far as your front door. No farther. When I leave this house, I don’t expect to come back in it. That’s not because I dislike you. Neither is it because I feel I’ve been treated badly. I don’t. I agree with you when you say whatever happens to me is my own fault. I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Johnny stopped for breath and found that he was leaning forward toward Erskine. His fists were clenched and he could feel a tension in him that seemed to be begging for a wrong word, or for a wrong movement. He forced himself to relax a little and lean back.

“When I leave here, just mark me off the roll, forget that you’ve got a Carter relative by the name of Johnny. You and I have nothing in common except the name of Carter. I’ve tried to explain some of my ideas about things several times to you. Your picture of me as a punk kid coupled with your own natural lack of foresight makes you too goddamned narrow to listen. That’s your tough luck, not mine. I don’t feel hurt and I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at what you represent. You and I haven’t even any common speaking ground.

“I’ve told you about how I liked the kind of life you folks live: good food, good liquor, good fun. I still like it. But any poor ignorant son of a bitch can live like that without any effort. That kind of life is fine, but it is no end in itself, and it’s no justification for itself. That kind of life is false, as long as everybody in the whole damned world doesn’t live it also. There’s a great change coming on this earth when this war is over. People like you will be left out of it, because people like you are enemies of change. As long as you try to keep your ‘fine life’ for yourselves, you will remain enemies, not only of change but of
real
progress. I don’t expect you to understand what I’m saying. But someday you’ll remember it, when the world moves away from you and your kind.

“Just remember what I said: Mark me off the roll, forget you know a Johnny Carter.” Johnny stopped talking, realizing that he was unable to say what he wanted to say.

“Fine,” said Erskine. He stared back at Johnny, eye for eye. His jaw muscles were set tight and his mouth was very thin. “Don’t expect to come running back to me when somebody kicks you in the tail.”

“Every Time I Drop an Egg . . .” is a powerful story, but it is not subtle. Jim Watkins is an American Nazi who loves war, death, and destruction. Every time he dropped an egg, he told Johnny, “I’m going to kiss it goodby and pray it kills a thousand of those bastards. That’s the life. That’s where the excitement and the fun is.”

“George and I are lost,” Johnny says. “But old Jim is double-lost.”

Jim Watkins is a good soldier.

LAST DAY IN ENDYMION, AT THE MARION HOME, AUTUMN 1943

“H
E SAID HIS NAME WAS
Lieutenant Watkins,” said Eddie, who had taken the call. “He sounded as if he wanted to make sure I heard the ‘Lieutenant.’ He called Erskine’s for you and Erskine told him you were down here.”

Johnny laughed. “And I didn’t tell Erskine I was coming here. That’s Jim Watkins,” he added after a moment. “Though I didn’t know he was home. He enlisted in the Regular Army the same time I did.”

“Who is he?” asked Sandy.

“His father’s a farmer down south of town. He and I both enlisted for Hawaii. After the war started, he went through flight training and got a commission. We were pretty good friends in Hawaii.”

“I told him you weren’t here,” Eddie said, “but he said you’d be here soon. He’s going to stop by to see you.”

“Yeh? I’d like to see him, too,” Johnny said. When Jim Watkins came, Johnny answered the front door. The man who stood in the doorway was tall and heavy. He was dressed immaculately in an officer’s woolen uniform, and the second lieutenant’s gold bars glittered on the shoulders of his blouse. The uniform fitted him perfectly; he looked very trim and neat and military in it. There was a heavy stolid look about his face that seemed out of place in a man so young.

“You’re out of uniform,” said Jim jokingly. Johnny had taken off his tie and shirt in the kitchen and wore only a cotton T-shirt above the waist.

“Hello, Jim,” he said, sticking out his hand. “Come in and have a drink.”

Jim Watkins took Johnny’s hand, and shook it firmly, as if he were doing so with a deliberate thought. Yet when he smiled, there was genuine friendship and liking in his face.

“No thanks,” Jim said, a little awkwardly. “I can only stay a minute. I just wanted to see you and say hello. The heater’s running; come on out to the car.”

Johnny inspected Jim’s face for a moment, then he said: “Okay. You go on out while I get a shirt or something.”

Jim went out to the car, and Johnny shut the door. He took his topcoat from the chair on which he had tossed it and went out into the kitchen. Sandy and George and Eddie were sitting at the table.

“Jim doesn’t want to come in,” he grinned. “I think he’s heard all about our reputation.”

He overlapped the topcoat without buttoning it and tied the belt in a loose knot and went out the back door. Jim was standing beside his oar in the dull gray-black winter dusk.

“How’ve you been, old boy?” Jim asked him. “How’s the leg? Mother wrote me you’d been sent back Stateside in the hospital. You’re a lucky bastard, you know it?”

“Yeh,” said Johnny. “I used to think I’d never get back.”

“That wasn’t what I meant. I meant you’re lucky you got to see all that action.”

“Oh.”

Jim Watkins laughed. “The same old Johnny, aren’t you? What the hell are you doing wearing an officer’s topcoat?” He grabbed Johnny’s upper arm with a large strong hand. “You know the old ARs.”

Johnny shrugged, playing the part Jim’s attitude forced him into. “Well, you know me,” he laughed.

Jim slapped his arm a couple of times. “The same old Johnny. Wild and woolly. I heard about you being over the hump. When are you going to settle down a little? You’d probably be an officer now if you weren’t so damned bullheaded. Then you could wear one of those topcoats without trouble.”

“I’m wearing it now.”

“Sure, but you couldn’t wear it in camp without some chickenshit shavetail jumping on you.”

“I guess you’re right, Jim. I shouldn’t have turned down that chance I had to go to OCS.”

“You turned down OCS?” Jim was incredulous. “How come?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Johnny shrugged. “Just don’t appeal to me. And I wanted to go into action with my outfit.”

“Oh,” said Jim. “Then I don’t blame you. You ought to get married, Johnny. Did you know I’m married?”

“No. Congratulations. I hadn’t heard about it.”

“Thanks. That’s what you need, old Johnny. Makes you grow up. This war is serious business, you know. You ought to quit playing around, and start taking this war serious.”

“So I’ve heard. Say, Jim, come on in the house and have a drink. Sandy’s frying you a steak by my orders. She’s got some fine tenderloin.”

Jim’s eyes flickered away from Johnny’s gaze almost automatically.

Johnny could almost see a film form over them. “I can’t make it, Johnny.” Jim said, not looking him in the eyes. “I left mother and the wife downtown, and I’ve got to pick them up. Besides,” he added, “I don’t drink anymore.”

“Don’t drink!” Johnny was genuinely surprised; he and Jim had been on some glorious bats in Honolulu. “How come?”