Tonight it was the wool-hat who interrupted my thoughts and writing. It was the first time he had ever come to my hut and until now our relations had been what you might call formal a casual greeting in passing and nothing else. Even then the greeting on his side was sullen, as if somehow in the past I had injured him in some way and the act had filled him with resentment. I never questioned him about the sullenness but put it down merely to his hatred of anything that was a little above him or a little different from the world with which he was familiar.
Tonight he came in, saluted, took off his hat, and stood in the doorway.
Looking up I said, "Yes, Homer." (It seemed silly to address the men as "Private." Only the Sergeant did I ever address by his title, and his bearing and professionalism demanded it.)
"Can I speak to you, mister?"
"Certainly. Sit down."
He sat down on the edge of my Army cpt and for a moment, remembering the yaws and the native women he frequented in spite of all controls, I felt a sudden tinge of squeamishness.
He did not speak and I said, "What is it?"
He twisted his hat for a moment. "It's about the Sergeant," he said. "He's always pickin' on me."
"How?" I asked.
He twisted his hat some more as if all conversation except when he was talking about "nigger hunts" and life back home was difficult or impossible.
He said, "Well, I get the blame for everything. Now he comes and tells me I musta been stealin' stuff out of the hut."
"I talked to him last night and he says he doesn't believe you took the stuff." I started to tell him the Sergeant's theory about the Japs and thought better of it. Probably the Sergeant hadn't told him, and if I even hinted there might be Japs in the bushes, he wouldn't be any good at all as a guard. He'd just hide away.
"Well, I know he does," said Homer stubbornly. "Even if a storm blows down the radio antenny, he says it's my fault." A look almost of anguish but with a touch too of murderous vengeance came into his face. "And he's always hittin' me."
"Does he ever really beat you up?"
Homer considered for a moment. "Well... I guess no... but he's always punching me in the muscles and afterward it's sore," He put one hand up to the muscles of his shoulders and rubbed the spot tentatively. "Sometimes it ain't good for a man's dignity."
I wondered where he had come across the word "dignity" and passed over it.
"I'll speak to the Sergeant about it," I said. And then unaccountably I felt a wave of sympathy for him. I said, "How'd you like a drink of real liquor?"
His face brightened. "I'd like it, mister. I ain't used to all this beer. I can drink it and drink it and I only bloat up and feel worse. All I get out of it is a lot of wind. Sometimes I feel like I'd cut off my right leg for one swig of good corn likker."
I got up and poured him a drink out of the bottle of Scotch. He tossed it off in a single gulp without a grimace or a cough. I suppose that after his long experience with the corn likker, mere Scotch seemed like soothing syrup.
"How are things getting on otherwise?" I asked.
"I want to get out of here and get home. I ain't got anybody to talk to here. I ain't used to bein' in places where niggers and kikes and Catholics is treated better than other folks. Seems like I cain't find anybody to talk to." He looked down at his hat again. "And that goddamn Sergeant. Him pickin' on me. If it was back home he'd get run right outa town like we do down there with all them papists and union organizers."
"Do you go to church?" I asked.
He looked at me. "You mean when I'm home?"
"Yes."
He nodded.
"What church?"
"The only church they is primitive Baptists."
There was a look of oppressive bewilderment on the lean face with its freckles and big splay mouth.
"I wanta go home," he repeated, "where a fella can be somebody. I git tired of always bein' treated no better'n a houn' dog."
It occurred to me that any attempts at conversation weren't going to get anywhere. I thought, "Maybe if he gets a little drunk he'll go to sleep and dream he's back home again and it'll make him ha^ppy for a little time." I said, "What about another drink?" and then cautiously added, "This is kind of a special occasion the first time you've ever paid me a visit."
"Sure," he said. "It makes me feel good."
So I gave him another shot of Scotch. He downed it and shook his head. "That Al," he said. "He's teacher's pet. They ain't nothin' too good for him. You know what he says the other night. He says, "Niggers is just as good as anybody else. He ain't had to live around niggers. Never saw one till he was twelve years old. Seems they don't have 'em up in his part of the country." The whisky appeared to have reached home and he became almost talkative. "And now you know what, mister? The Sergeant has asked that kid Al to move his sleepin' cot right into his own office."
"It doesn't make much difference, does it? Sergeant's quarters aren't any different from the rest of you fellows. They aren't much different from this." I gestured to include my own room which certainly wasn't much of a place. "I suppose the Sergeant wanted company."
"It's just favoritism, that's what it is."
"What did Meyer think ahout it?"
Homer spat on the floor. Maybe it was the whisky that set him back to primitive habits. "How do I know what that sonofabitch kike thinks about anything? He don't talk. It's like I ain't good enough to speak to."
"He doesn't talk much to anybody."
"Well, he ain't said anything... but it don't look right."
He picked up his glass as if to hint for another drink but I didn't respond. I'd never seen Homer drunk. As he said, beer didn't seem to have any effect on him. Like all the boys he could drink can after can of beer and just sweat it out, but whisky was different. Drunk, you probably couldn't tell what he'd do. Then something occurred to me and I asked, "Who's on night guard duty?"
"Me," he said.
"What time do you go on?"
"Oh, any time now."
I stood up and said, "Well, any time you have a complaint, Homer, feel free to come in and talk to me. I don't think it's very serious about the Sergeant taking Al in with him. Maybe it's a good idea."
He took the hint and stood up and at the same time he gave me a curious look. I can only describe it by saying that the pale blue eyes looked suddenly like the eyes of a turtle. It was a cold dead look but venomous. I think it was the first time he had ever really looked me in the eyes. He said, "Mebbe... only if that sonofabitch don't keep his hands off me I might use a gun on him."
At that I stiffened a little. "I don't want any of that kind of talk, Homer, out of you or any of the boys. If you get fresh with a gun you might end up in jail for the rest of your life."
He looked away sullenly. "It wouldn't be a hell of a lot different from bein' here. I might find somebody I could talk to in jail."
I held open the door for him. "Get such ideas out of your head. You'd better go now and get ready to go on duty before you get into trouble again. I'll speak to the Sergeant tomorrow but I guess it's not all one-sided. You can do your part too. Keep your quarters in order and be on time and don't answer back. Good night. Feel free to complain."
I gave him a pat on the back but in return I did not even get so much as a "Good night." He merely walked off toward the huts that stood in a dark row against the thick wall of the jungle.
As soon as he had gone I knew I had done the wrong thing. I shouldn't have offered him the drinks even out here in this damned choked dripping wilderness where the five of us had to get on together or at least to be as friendly as possible. I hadn't made things any better. I hadn't softened him. I hadn't roused any feeling of co-operation or any sense of friendliness. He had taken the drinks and merely decided that I was a damned fool. He hated me because I didn't feel as he did about Negroes and Catholics and Jews. He probably thought that because I wasn't a primitive Baptist I was just as bad as the others. What did you do about somebody like that? What could you do to help him?
I believed now what the Sergeant said that Homer's only idea was to get out of a task, to put something over on you. If he succeeded he felt good all over, and if you caught him out at it he hated you with a resentment that grew more and more cancerous. If you tried to treat him decently and give him a break he merely thought you were a damned fool.
For a long time I sat thinking about him, unable to get back to my writing. He was, I suppose, the "underprivileged," and nature had made no provision for his redemption. Possibly far back, a dozen or fifteen generations ago, an ancestor or two had been convicts shipped out to Georgia as exiles, and presently other ancestors had taken to the hill country to live in miserable poverty with their only pleasures, fornicating, corn likker, shoutin' and rollin' and an occasional "nigger hunt." They never owned any slaves. They just hated the Negro, perhaps because somehow, in spite of a poverty and ignorance as abject as their own, the Negro had a better life because he ate better and had more fun out of the whole sorry thing. There wasn't any reason for Homer's folks to think themselves better than their Negro neighbors, except a fancied reason that had no logic in it that their skins were white instead of black, and that was only an accident. I wondered how many of them there were like Homer, whether all the community in which he lived back there was a community merely of Homers.
He was "underprivileged" all right, but what did you do about him and all his kind? I doubted that anything could be done about Homer, and I doubted that anything could be done about his wretched offspring unless they were taken away from Homer and his folks altogether. What did you do about someone who could not be brought out of his own particular wilderness into the world, because the world instinctively looked upon him with loathing and contempt? How else could you look on somebody like Homer?
It occurred to me that it was the tendency of our times to label and pigeonhole everything, people most of all. Perhaps it was a mixture of sentimentality and of the bureaucratic mind which likes to have its statistics straight and everything adding up to two times two. But "underprivileged" was a silly convenient term for the sloppy thinkers and the demagogic politicians. If they meant the simple or the humble as Christ used those words, they had some meaning, for humbleness and simplicity are virtues and not economic labels. Homer certainly fitted neither the category of the humble nor the simple. There must certainly be some good in every man, but neither the Sergeant nor myself had ever been able to find any good in Homer, try as we would from the beginning. He wasn't the only such specimen I had encountered in the Army, but he was probably the worst. He was the sort the reformers proposed to "level up" while they leveled down the intelligent, the able, the virtuous to his level, all, of course, in terms of economics.
I thought, "let them try to level Homer upward. All he wants is his gun, a houn' dog, some corn likker, fornication, and an occasional “nigger hunt,” Let them give him the vote to be exercised for the first cheap politician who comes along and talks down to his level of lynchings and ignorance and insane religion and prejudice. Let them try to level up Homer... and see how far they get."
Homer didn't want to be leveled unless it was in terms of cash given to him without the demand for anything in return. He just wanted to be let alone. How did you expect to get anything out of the dark, inbred, suppressed ancestry which had produced him. Sure, he'd be great in a mob, great in a revolution, for he'd be free to express the only talent he had for bullying and tearing down and destroying everything, for murdering and torturing and burning anybody who was a little more intelligent or a grain kindlier or more human than himself. Underprivileged, hell!
I went back to writing, and presently the distant racket of the Sergeant's radio was shut off and there were only the sounds of the night and the jungle which had an extraordinary variety and often resembled human sounds although you knew there was no one there. It was as if spirits returned to haunt the night. It showered now and then, and presently I no longer heard even the sounds of the jungle and felt sleepy, and as I was undressing slowly, the noisy wet stillness was shattered by a shot and then another and another in rapid succession until several had been fired.
I thought first of the Sergeant's theory of the stray Japs and pulled on my pants and picked up my service revolver and an electric torch. The sound came from the direction of the huts and I made my way through the darkness toward them. There was a light on in the Sergeant's quarters, and in the luminous darkness outside I presently came upon his heavy figure, highly visible because he was clad only in white shorts and singlet. He carried an electric torch, flashing it spasmodically so as not to provide a fixed aim for any attacker. Quickly I caught up with him, calling out my name so that I might not get a pot shot in my belly during the excitement.
"It's over here, I think!" lie said.
Then abruptly we came upon Homer in the darkness. He was standing flattened out against the side of one o the Quonset huts.
"What's up?" asked the Sergeant, and Homer said, "If s them Japs. I seen 'em!"
"What Japs?" asked the Sergeant.
"Them Japs that's been stealin' the cans." Then from the sounds I knew Homer was vomiting. Maybe it was the unaccustomed whisky I had given him and maybe it was because he was plain scared.
"Let's get out of here," said Homer and turned on his electric torch. The Sergeant grabbed it from him and said, "You damned fool! Do you want to get us all potted?" Then I said, "Better get under cover some place until we can find out what happened."
I led the way back through the darkness to the Sergeant's office. If it was only two or three Japs they were possibly unarmed and probably wouldn't try to harm us unless we came on them suddenly. If there were any Japs at all they simply wanted to keep out of our way and scrounge what food they could find even out of the garbage pit.
Once inside the hut we hung jackets over the two windows. Homer was still retching and his freckled face was a gray-green color. The Sergeant in his underwear looked like the bottom man of a strong-act team. In a corner Al, the farm boy, was pulling clothes onto his husky frame, with a curious dazed look on his face as if he were not yet quite awake. For the sake of space the two cots occupied by the Sergeant and Al had been pushed near to each other and were covered by a single canopy of mosquito netting.
The Sergeant said to Homer, "Now give us a line on what happened. Pull yourself together and talk."
"What about Meyer?" I asked and the Sergeant turned to Al. "Better go and bring him in here too. It looks like we've got trouble on our hands."
With a certain amount of absurdity Al pulled a comb through his tousled curly hair and then started off for the other hut. At the same time Homer said, "I was patrollin' the huts and all at once when I come round the corner of the hut that was broke into I run onto a Jap, almost fell over him."
"How'd you know he was a Jap? It might have been one of them fuzzy-wuzzies."
Homer seemed to have lost some of his fear and the color began to come back into his face. "I turned my flashlight on him just as he was gittin' away into the brush. I seen he was a Jap."
"But how?" persisted the Sergeant.
"I know the little sonsofbitches," said Homer. "I seen lots of 'em at Maloyka when they brung 'em as prisoners short bowlegged yellow bastards. They ain't the same color and they ain't built the same as the fuzzy-wuzzies. They got short thick legs and the fuzzy-wuzzies is long and skinny."
The Sergeant looked at me. "Well, what are we gonna do?" But before I could answer him he turned again to Homer. "When you shot did you hit him?"
"I kinda think I did," said Homer. "Just as he hit the brush he let out a yell and jumped into the air. It was just like hittin' a rabbit."
Then Al returned bringing Meyer with him. The dark little fellow hadn't even wakened up and he said nothing now. He just came in and stood there watching us with his great dark beautiful eyes. It was a funny assembly.
The Sergeant turned to Homer. "You'd better go back out there and go on watching. There ain't any use in letting 'em come up and plump grenades in the window."
At first Homer didn't answer, but the lower lip of the big loose mouth was thrust out suddenly. Then he said, "I ain't agoin' outside just to be a pot shot for no goddamn Jap."
The Sergeant moved instinctively toward him to give him a good going-over. I said, "Wait a minute. Better all three of you go out you and Al and Meyer. You can make up sleep tomorrow. The Sergeant and I will have to work out some strategy." I turned to the two others. "Go ahead, boys. Keep your eyes open. Don't get between the bushes and the sky and don't use your torches unless you want to get a shot... and don't shoot each other."
"It's only fair," said Homer.
Al and Meyer were both awake now and you could see that both of them kind of liked the excitement, what with nothing going on for so long. Al picked up his Tommy gun and slung it on. Then the three of them went out.
When they had gone the Sergeant turned and said, "What d'you think of that damned wool-hat sonofabitch?"
I grinned. "What did you expect?"
"Not very damned much."
"Maybe there was only one Jap and maybe Homer hit him."
"It ain't likely either way," said the Sergeant. "What are we gonna do now?"
He sat down on a packing case, and I said, "I guess well just have to keep our eyes open and work out some plan of doubled guard duty."
"With only three of them," he said, "it ain't goin' to be easy. I'll take over myself for three or four nights anyway. We sure can't run the Japs outa that jungle. A whole division couldn't do it"
Then we were silent for a time and a brilliant idea came to me. "Tell you what we could do, Sergeant We could feed them."
"What d'you mean . . . feed 'em?"
"We could leave out some food every night for them to come and get."
He looked at me with astonishment. "That wouldn't be Army regulations feedin' the enemy. No, that wouldn't be accordin' to regulations."
I grinned. "What the hell? Which do you prefer feeding them or letting them blow us all up and kill us off one by one like sitting ducks. We could put out so many cans of stuff every night where they'd find it. Just let 'em come and get it. Maybe they haven't got any guns. If they swam over here the chances are they're unarmed. But maybe they have. And a starving man is likely to kill anybody, Feed 'em and probably they'll let us alone,"
"Unless they're nuts like a lot of 'em are. You know... what they call fanatic... them Banzai charges."
"That could be."
"And what about the reports and if they come to check up on the stores?"
"Nobody's going to check up. They've damned near forgotten us already, and if they do come to get us the order will be to destroy all the supplies. We might just as well buy protection for ourselves."
The Sergeant scratched his bristly head. "Somehow it don't seem right givin' aid and comfort to the enemy."
"Well," I said, "that's what we're going to do, I haven't got any intention of getting myself or any of you guys killed just because it's against Army regulations to feed a few godforsaken starving Japs. We'll just see how it works anyway. Maybe they'll even come in and surrender and then they can do the washing and kitchen police."
At this the troubled look went off the Sergeant's big red face. He even grinned. "You've got something there. Could be."
"Tell you what," I said. "Tomorrow have the boys rake the sand all smooth for about ten feet out from the huts and tell them to keep off it. Then if we get any footprints well know whether they're Japs or not. Maybe they're just fuzzy-wuzzies."
The idea appealed to his detective-story tastes. "That's great," he said. "That's great! Robinson Crusoe."
I turned to the door. "Ill go out and make the rounds now and then go to bed. Better keep an eye on the boys till morning and in a couple of nights I think we can get back to the one-man guard. And tomorrow before dark put out a half-dozen cans of feed... make it an assortment, you know beans, corn, and soup. The more tasty you make it, the more they'll let us alone."
He was all for the idea now and grinning about it. "Better put out a can opener too. The poor bastards probably have to smash the cans to get 'em open."
I started for the door and the Sergeant said, "Jeez. You ought to be a general."
"No," I said. "Diplomat is the word."
Outside it was raining again. I found the three soldiers together. Everything seemed to be quiet and I said to Homer, "I want to speak to you for a minute. You other fellows go along with your patrol."
The other two went off leaving Homer standing there. I could not see him in the thick darkness but I knew how he looked, the lower lip thrust out, the narrow face sullen and pinched.
"You know what you did, Homer?"
"No, what?"
"You refused to obey orders and you know what the penalty is. You could be sent up for years or you might even be shot."
"To hell with that!" he said suddenly and with equal suddenness I lost my temper. "So that's what you think," I said. "Now I'm going to tell you something. If I wanted to I could shut you up right now and put you on bread and water and keep you there till somebody came along and picked you up and took you back for trial. You're no damned good and you never have been any good to anybody any place. You make trouble. You won't work. You're a coward and a bully. In fact you're about the worst sonofabitch I've ever known. Have you got anything to say for yourself?"
"I ain't gonna get killed savin' the rest of you. That's what you'd all like to get me killed and out of the way. I'm always gettin' the dirty work shoved off on me."
I could see it wasn't any good going on in that vein. It didn't make any impression. I said, "I'm not going to put you under arrest and I'm not going to send in any report. Now it's up to you to behave yourself. I don't want any more trouble. Okay?"
Out of the darkness came the answer "Okay" but it was an answer heavy with hate and resentment.
I waited till the watch came round again and Homer joined them, and then went back toward my own hut. On the way I passed the Sergeant dressed now, bustling, and on the job.
I said, "Everything seems to be quiet I think it'll be all right now... especially if Homer did get that Jap."
"He never did," said the Sergeant. "The truth ain't in Mr. If he gets scared he'll just blast away at anything. To more scared of bein' shot by him than I am of the Japs. Go on to bed, Captain. I'll keep on the job."
Back in the hut I put out the light and undressed but I didn't sleep. I kept thinking how easy it would be for a Jap to pitch a grenade in the window. But it wasn't really that which kept me awake. I kept thinking of other things... what a silly situation this was five of us sitting out here guarding a lot of food that nobody was ever going to use. And all around us were the half-starved natives full of lice and disease living in a jungle so rich and dense that you couldn't get through it without hacking your way. And it grew right up again behind as you went through. And crawling around in that jungle were Japs, maybe one, maybe two, maybe a dozen starving to death in the midst of all that rich rank vegetation and maybe plotting to clean us all out, poor ignorant little bastards fighting to hang onto a life which was hardly worth hanging onto. What were we all doing here? What the hell was it all about?
At last I got up and hung a canvas over the door and a coat over the window and went about writing down all this, and suddenly it came over me that in essence and spirit the life here wasn't much different from the life back in Oakdale. In both places I had been marking time... until I began to write all this. Probably nobody will read it. Probably in my heart I never meant it to be read by anybody, but whatever happens I am beginning to feel that I am really doing something for the first time in my life, really doing something in which my mind works and I can take satisfaction.
Note: There are more Japs around. In the morning the cans of food were gone and on the clean-swept sands there were naked footprints. They were not the prints of the long splay feet of the fuzzy-wuzzies. They were those of unmistakably Jap feet, short, thick, and flat and smaller than any of ours. The poor devils must really be starving to risk being shot at. Again, my only fear is that trigger-happy Homer will shoot one of them or even one of us.
