The Young Lions

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"ATTENTION!" a voice called from the door, dramatic and alarming, and Noah stiffened rigidly in front of his bunk.

Captain Colclough came in, followed by the Top Sergeant and Sergeant Rickett, and began his Saturday inspection. He walked slowly down the scrubbed middle aisle of the barracks, between the stiff rows of barbered and laundered soldiers. He peered heavily at their hairlines and the shine on their shoes, with a hostile impersonality, as though these were not men he was inspecting, but enemy positions. The blazing Florida sunshine struck in through the bare windows. The Captain stopped in front of the new man, Whitacre.

"Eighth General Order," Colclough said, staring coldly at Whitacre's necktie.

"To give the alarm," Whitacre said, "in case of fire or disorder."

"Rip that man's bed," Colclough said. Sergeant Rickett stepped between the bunks and tore down Whitacre's bed. The sheets made a dry, harsh sound in the still barracks.

"This is not Broadway, Whitacre," Colclough said. "You are not living at the Astor Hotel. The maid does not come in here in the morning. You have to learn to make a satisfactory bed, here."

"Yes, Sir," Whitacre said.

"Keep your goddamn mouth shut!" Colclough said. "When I want you to talk I will give you a direct question and you will answer, Yessir, or Nosir."

Colclough moved down the aisle, his heels strident on the bare floor. The Sergeants moved swiftly behind him as though noise, too, was a privilege of rank.

Colclough stopped in front of Noah. He stared ponderously at him. Colclough had very bad breath. It smelled as though something were rotting slowly and continuously in Colclough's stomach. Colclough was a National Guard officer from Missouri who had been an undertaker's assistant in Joplin before the war. His other customers, Noah thought crazily, probably did not mind the breath. He swallowed, hoping to drown the wild laughter that surged in his throat as the Captain glared at his chin for lurking signs of beard.

Colclough looked down at Noah's locker, at the sharply folded socks and the geometrically arranged toilet articles.

"Sergeant," he said, "remove the tray."

Rickett bent over and picked up the tray. Underneath were the rigidly folded towels, the stiffly arranged shirts, the woollen underwear, and under the other things, the books.

"How many books have you got there, Soldier?" Colclough asked.

"Three."

"Three what?"

"Three, Sir."

"Are they government issue?"

Under the woollen underwear there were Ulysses and the Collected Poems of T. S. Eliot and the dramatic opinions of George Bernard Shaw. "No, Sir," said Noah, "they are not government issue."

"Only items of government issue, Soldier," said Colclough, his breath charging at Noah's face, "are to be exposed in lockers. Did you know that, Soldier?"

"Yes, Sir," Noah said.

Colclough bent down and knocked the woollen underwear roughly to one side. He picked up the worn grey copy of Ulysses. Involuntarily, Noah bent his head to watch the Captain.

"Eyes front!" Colclough shouted.

Noah stared at a knot-hole across the barracks.

Colclough opened the book and leafed through some of the pages. "I know this book," he said. "It is a filthy, dirty book." He threw it on the floor. "Get rid of it. Get rid of all of them. This is not a library, Soldier. You're not here to read." The book lay open, face down, its pages crumpled on the floor, isolated in the middle of the barracks. Colclough brushed past Noah, between the double bunks, over to the window. Noah could sense him moving heavily around behind his back. He had a queer, exposed twitching sensation at the base of his spine.

"This window," Colclough said loudly, "has not been washed. This goddamn barracks is a goddamn pigpen." He strode out to the aisle again. Without stopping to inspect the rest of the men waiting silently before their cots, he walked to the end of the barracks, followed lightly by the Sergeants. At the door he turned around.

"I'm going to teach you men to keep a clean house," he said.

"If you have one dirty soldier you're going to learn it's up to all of you to teach him to be clean. This barracks is confined to quarters until reveille tomorrow morning. There will be no passes given to anyone for the week-end and there will be an inspection tomorrow morning at nine o'clock. I advise you to make sure the barracks is in proper order by that time." He turned and went out.

"Rest!" Sergeant Rickett shouted and followed the Top Sergeant and the Captain out of the building.

Slowly, conscious of the hundred accusing, deprived eyes upon him, Noah moved out to the middle of the aisle, where the book was lying. He bent over and picked it up and absently smoothed the pages. Then he walked over to the window that had been the cause of all the trouble.

"Saturday night," he heard in tones of bitter anguish from the other side of the room. "Confined on Saturday night! I got a date with a waitress that is on the verge and her husband arrives tomorrow morning! I feel like killing somebody!"

Noah looked at the window. It sparkled colourlessly, with the flat, dusty, sun-bitten land behind it. On the lower pane in the corner a moth had somehow managed to fling itself against the glass and had died there in a small spatter of yellow goo. Reflectively, Noah lifted the moth off.

He heard steps behind him above the rising murmur of voices, but he continued standing there, holding the suicidal moth, feeling the dusty, unpleasant texture of the shattered wings, looking out over the glaring dust and the distant, weary green of the pinewoods on the other side of the camp.

"All right, Jew-boy." It was Rickett's voice behind him.

"You've finally done it."

Noah still did not turn around. Outside the window he saw a group of three soldiers running, running towards the gate, running with the precious passes in their pockets, running to the waiting buses, the bars in town, the complaisant girls, the thirty-hour relief from the Army until Monday morning.

"About face, Soldier," Rickett said.

The other men fell silent, and Noah knew that everyone in the room was looking at him. Slowly Noah turned away from the window and faced Rickett. Rickett was a tall, thickly built man with light-green eyes and a narrow colourless mouth. The teeth in the centre of his mouth were missing, evidence of some forgotten brawl long ago, and it gave a severe twist to the Sergeant's almost lifeless mouth and played a curious, irregular lisping trick to his flat Texas drawl.

"Now, Tholdier," Rickett said, standing with his arms stretching from one bunk to another in a lounging, threatening position, "now Ah'm gawnta take you unduh man puhsunal wing. Boyth." He raised his voice for the benefit of the listening men, although he continued to stare, with a sunken, harsh grin, at Noah. "Boyth, Ah promise you, this ith the last tahm little Ikie heah is goin' tuh interfeah with this ba'acks' Saturday nights. That's a solemn promith, Ah thweah t' Gahd. Thith ithn't a thynagogue on the East Side, Ikie, thith ith a ba'ack in the Ahmy of the United Thtates of Americuh, and it hath t' be kep' shahnin' clean, white-man clean, Ikie, white-man clean." Noah stared fixedly and incredulously at the tall, almost lipless man, slouching in front of him, between the two bunks. The Sergeant had just been assigned to their company the week before, and had seemed to pay no attention to him until now. And in all Noah's months in the Army, his Jewishness had never before been mentioned by anyone. Noah looked dazedly at the men about him, but they remained silent, staring at him accusingly.

"Lethun one," Rickett said, in the lisp that at other times you could joke about, "begins raht now, promptly and immediately. Ikie, get into yo' fatigues and fetch yo'self a bucket. You are gahnta wash ev'ry window in this gahdam ba'ack, and you're gahnta wash them lihk a white, church-goin' Christian, t' mah thatishfaction. Get into yo' fatigues promptly and immediutly, Ikie, and start workin'. And ef these here windows ain't shahnin' like a whore's belly on Christmath Eve when Ah come around to inthpect them, bah Gahd, Ah promith you you'll regret it." Rickett turned languidly and walked slowly out of the barracks. Noah went over to his bunk and started taking off his tie. He had the feeling that every man in the barracks was watching him, harshly and unforgivingly, as he changed into his fatigues.

Only the new man, Whitacre, was not watching him, and he was painfully making up his bunk, which Rickett had torn down at the Captain's orders.

Just before dusk, Rickett came around and inspected the windows.

"All raht, Ikie," he said finally. "Ah'm gahn t' be lenient with yuh, this one tahm. Ah accept the windows. But, remembuh, Ah got mah eye on yuh. Ah'll tell yuh heah an' now. Ah ain't got no use for Niggerth, Jewth, Mexicans or Chinamen, an' from now on you're goin' to have a powerful tough row to hoe in this here company. Now get your arse inside and keep it there. An' while you're at it, you better burn those bookth, like the Captain sayth. Ah don't mind tellin' you at thith moment that you ain't too terrible popular with the Captain, either, and if he seeth those bookth again, Ah wouldn't answer fo' yo' lahf. Move, Ikie. Ah'm tahd of lookin' at your ugly face."

Noah walked slowly up the barracks steps and went through the door, leaving the twilight behind him. Inside, men were sleeping, and there was a poker game in progress on two pulled-together lockers in the centre of the room. There was a smell of alcohol near the door, and Riker, the man who slept nearest the door, had a wide, slightly drunken grin on his face. Donnelly, who was lying in his underwear on his bunk, opened one eye. "Ackerman," he said loudly, "I don't mind your killing Christ, but I'll never forgive you for not washing that stinking window." Then he closed his eye.

Noah smiled a little. It's a joke, he thought, a rough joke, but still a joke. And if they take it as something funny, it won't be too bad. But the man in the next bed, a long thin farmer from South Carolina, who was sitting up with his head in his hands, said quietly, with an air of being very reasonable, "You people got us into the war. Now why can't you behave yourselves like human beings?" and Noah realized that it wasn't a joke at all.

He walked deliberately towards his bunk, keeping his eyes down, avoiding looking at the other men, but sensing that they were all looking at him. Even the poker players stopped their game when he passed them and sat down on his bunk. Even Whitacre, the new man, who looked like quite a decent fellow, and who had, after all, suffered that day at the hands of Authority, too, sat on his re-made bed and stared with a hint of anger at him.

Fantastic, Noah thought. This will pass, this will pass…

He took out the olive-coloured cardboard box in which he kept his writing paper. He sat on his bunk and began to write a letter to Hope.

"Dearest," he wrote, "I have just finished doing my housework. I have polished hundreds of windows as lovingly as a jeweller shining a fifty-carat diamond for a bootlegger's girl. I don't know how I would measure in a battle against a German infantryman or a Japanese Marine, but I will match my windows against their picked troops any day…"

"It's not the Jews' fault," said a clear voice from the poker game, "they're just smarter than everyone else. That's why so few of them are in the Army. And that's why they're making all the money. I don't blame them. If I was that smart I wouldn't be here neither. I'd be sitting in a hotel suite in Washington watching the money roll in."

There was silence then, and Noah could tell that all the players were looking at him, but he did not look up from his letter.

"We also march," Noah wrote slowly. "We march uphill and downhill, and we march during the day and during the night. I think the Army is divided into two parts, the fighting Army and the marching and window-washing Army, and we happen to be assigned to the second part. I have developed the springiest arches ever to appear in the Ackerman family."

"The Jews have large investments in France and Germany," another voice said from the poker game. "They run all the banks and whorehouses in Berlin and Paris, and Roosevelt decided we had to go protect their money. So he declared war." The voice was loud and artificial, and aimed like a weapon at Noah's head, but he refused to look up.

"I read in the papers," Noah wrote, "that this is a war of machines, but the only machine I have come across so far is a mop-wringer…"

"They have an international committee," the voice went on.

"It meets in Poland, in a town called Warsaw, and they send out orders all over the world from there: Buy this, sell this, fight this country, fight that country. Twenty old rabbis with beards…"

"Ackerman," another voice said, "did you hear that?"

Noah finally looked across the bunks at the poker players. They were twisted around, facing him, their faces pulled by grins, their eyes marble-like and derisive.

"No," said Noah, "I didn't hear anything."

"Why don't you join us?" Silichner said with elaborate politeness. "It's a friendly little game and we're involved in an interesting discussion."

"No, thank you," Noah said. "I'm busy."

"What we'd like to know," said Silichner, who was from Milwaukee and had a trace of a German accent in his speech, as though he had spoken it as a child and never fully recovered from it, "is how you happened to be drafted. What happened – weren't there any fellow-members of the lodge on the board?"

Noah looked down at the paper in his hand. It isn't shaking, he thought, looking at it in surprise, it's as steady as can be.

"I actually heard," another voice said, "of a Jew who volunteered."

"No," said Silichner, wonderingly.

"I swear to God. They stuffed him and put him in the Museum."

The other poker players laughed loudly, in artificial, rehearsed amusement.

"I feel sorry for Ackerman," Silichner said. "I actually do. Think of all the money he could be making selling black-market tyres and gasoline if he wasn't in the infantry."

"I don't think," Noah wrote with a steady hand to his wife far away in the North, "that I have told you about the new Sergeant we got last week. He has no teeth and he lisps and he sounds like a debutante at a Junior League meeting when he…"

"Ackerman!"

Noah looked up. A corporal from another barracks was standing beside his bunk. "You're wanted in the orderly room. Right away."

Very deliberately, Noah put the letter he was writing back in the olive-coloured box and tucked the box away in his locker. He was conscious of the other men watching him closely, measuring his every move. As he walked past them, keeping himself from hurrying, Silichner said, "They're going to give him a medal. The Delancey Street Cross. For eating a herring a day for six months."

Again there were the rehearsed, artificial volleys of laughter.

I will have to try to handle this, Noah thought as he went out of the door into the blue twilight that had settled over the camp. Somehow, somehow…

The air was good after the close, heavy smell of the barracks, and the wide silence of the deserted streets between the low buildings was sweet to the ear after the grating voices inside. Probably, Noah thought, as he walked slowly alongside the buildings, probably they are going to give me some new hell in the orderly room. But even so he was pleased at the momentary peace and the momentary truce with the Army and the world around him.

Then he heard a quick scurry of footsteps from behind a corner of the building he was passing, and before he could turn round, he felt his arms pinned powerfully from behind.

"All right, Jew-boy," whispered a voice he almost recognized, "this is dose number one."

Noah jerked his head to one side and the blow glanced off his ear. But his ear felt numb and he couldn't feel the side of his face. They're using a club, he thought wonderingly as he tried to twist away, why do they have to use a club? Then there was another blow and he began to fall.

When he opened his eyes, it was dark and he was lying on the sandy grass between two barracks. His face was collapsed and wet. It took him five minutes to drag himself over to the wall of the building and pull himself up along its side to a sitting position.

Michael was thinking of beer. He walked deliberately behind Ackerman, in the dusty heat, thinking of beer in glasses, beer in schooners, beer in bottles, kegs, pewter mugs, tin cans, crystal goblets. He thought of ale, porter, stout, then returned to thinking of beer. He thought of the places he had drunk beer in his time. The round bar on Sixth Avenue where the Regular Army colonels in mufti used to stop off on the way uptown from Governor's Island, where they served beer in glasses that tapered down to narrow points at the bottom and where the bartender always iced the glass before drawing the foaming stuff from the polished spigots. The fancy restaurant in Hollywood with prints of the French Impressionists behind the bar, where they served it in frosted mugs and charged seventy-five cents a bottle. His own living-room, late at night, reading the next morning's paper in the quiet pool of light from the lamp as he stretched, in slippers, in the soft corduroy chair before going to bed. At baseball games at the Polo Grounds in the warm, hazy summer afternoons, where they poured the beer into paper cups so that you couldn't throw the bottles at the umpires.

Michael marched steadily. He was tired and ferociously thirsty. His hands were numb and swollen, as they always were by the fifth mile of any hike, but he did not feel too bad. He heard Ackerman's harsh, grunting breath, and saw the way the boy rolled brokenly from side to side as he climbed the gentle slope of the road.

He felt sorry for Ackerman. Ackerman had obviously always been a frail boy, and the marches and problems and fatigues had worn the flesh off his bones, so that he now looked like a stripped-down version of a soldier, reedy and breakable. Michael felt a little guilty as he stared fixedly at the heaving, bent back. The long months of training had thinned Michael down, too, but with an athlete's leanness, leaving his legs steel-like and powerful, his body hard and resilient. It seemed unjust that in the same column, just in front of him, there was a man whose every step was suffering, while he felt so comparatively fit. Also, there had been the sickening hazing that Ackerman had been submitted to in the last two weeks. The constant ill-tempered jokes, the mock political discussions within Ackerman's hearing, in which men had said loudly, "Hitler is probably wrong most of the time, but you've got to hand it to him, he knows what to do about the Jews…"

Michael had tried once or twice to interrupt with a word of defence, but because he was new in the company, and came from New York and most of the men were Southerners, they ignored him and continued with their cruel game.

There was another Jew in the company, a huge man by the name of Fein, who wasn't bothered at all. He wasn't popular, but he wasn't annoyed. Perhaps his size had something to do with it. And he was good-natured and dangerous-looking. He had large, knotty hands and seemed to take everything easily and without thought. It would be hard to get Fein to take offence at anything, or even realize that he was being offended, so there would be little pleasure in baiting him. And if he did take offence he probably would do a tremendous amount of damage. So he was quietly left in peace by the men who bedevilled Ackerman. The Army, Michael thought.

Perhaps he'd been wrong to tell the man who had interviewed him at Fort Dix that he wanted to go into the infantry. Romantic. There was nothing romantic about it once you got into it. Sore feet, ignorant men, drunkenness, "Ah'm goin' to teach you how to pick up yo' rahfle and faght f' yo' lahf…"

"I think I can put you into Special Service," the interviewer had said, "with your qualifications…" That would probably have meant a job in New York in an office all during the war. And Michael's self-consciously noble reply: "Not for me. I'm not in this Army to sit at a desk." What was he in the Army for? To cross the state of Florida on foot? To re-make beds that an ex-undertaker's assistant found not made to his liking? To listen to a Jew being tortured? He probably would have been much more useful hiring chorus girls for the USO, would have served his country better in Shubert Alley than here on this hot, senseless road. But he had to make the gesture. A gesture wore out so quickly in an army.

The Army. The Regular at Fort Dix who had been in the Army thirteen years, playing on Army baseball and football teams in time of peace. Jock-strap soldiers, they called them. A big, tough-looking man with a round belly from beer drunk at Cavite and Panama City and Fort Riley, Kansas. Suddenly, he had fallen into disfavour in the orderly room and had been transferred out of the Permanent Party and had been put on orders to a regiment. The truck had driven up and he had put his two barracks bags on it, and then he had started to scream. He had fallen to the ground and wept and screamed and frothed at the mouth, because it was not a football game he was going to today, but a war. The Top Sergeant, a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound Irishman who had been in the Army since the last war, had come out of the orderly room and looked at him with shame and disgust. He kicked him in the head to quiet him, and had two men lift him and throw him, still twitching and weeping, into the back of the truck. The Sergeant then turned to the recruits who were silently watching and said, "That man is a disgrace to the Regular Army. He is not typical. Not at all typical. Apologize for him. Get the hell out of here!"

The orientation lectures. Military courtesy. The causes of the war which You Are Fighting. The expert on the Japanese question, a narrow, grey-faced professor from Lehigh, who had told them that it was all a question of economics. Japan needed to expand and take over the Asian and Pacific markets and we had to stop her and hold on to them ourselves. It was all according to the beliefs that Michael had had about the causes of the war for the last fifteen years. And yet, listening to the dry, professional voice, looking at the large map with spheres of influence and oil deposits and rubber plantations clearly marked out, he hated the professor, hated what he was saying. He wanted to hear that he was fighting for liberty or morality or the freedom of subject peoples, and he wanted to be told in such ringing and violent terms that he could go back to his barracks, go to the rifle range in the morning believing it. Michael looked at the men sitting wearily beside him at the lecture. There was no sign on those bored, fatigue-doped faces that they cared one way or another, that they understood, that they felt they needed the oil or the markets. There was no sign that they wanted anything but to be permitted to go back to their bunks and go to sleep…

In the middle of the speech Michael had resolved to get up and speak in the question period scheduled after the speaker had finished. But by the time the professor had said, "In conclusion, we are in a period of centralization of resources, in which… uh… large groups of capital and national interests in one part of the globe are… uh… in inevitable conflict with other large groups in other parts of the globe, and in defence of the American standard of living, it is absolutely imperative that we have… uh… free and unhampered access to the wealth and buying power of China and Indonesia…" Michael had changed his mind. He had wanted to say, as he thought, "This is horrible. This is no faith to die by," but he was tired, and like all the other men around him, he wanted to go back to his barracks and go to sleep.

In front of Michael, as he marched, Ackerman stumbled. Michael quickened his pace and held Ackerman by the arm. Ackerman looked at him coldly. "Let go," he said, "I don't need any help from anybody."

Michael took his hand away and dropped back. One of those Jews, he thought angrily, one of the proud ones. He watched Ackerman's rolling, staggering walk without sympathy as they crossed the brow of the hill.

"Sergeant," Noah said, standing before the desk in the orderly room behind which the First Sergeant was reading Superman, "I would like permission to speak to the Company Commander."

The First Sergeant did not look up. Noah stood stiff in his fatigues, grimy and damp with sweat after the day's march. He looked over at the Company Commander, sitting three feet away, reading the sports page of a Jacksonville newspaper. The Company Commander didn't look up.

Finally, the First Sergeant glanced at Noah. "What do you want, Soldier?" he asked.

"I would like permission," Noah said, trying to speak clearly through the down-pulling weariness of the day's march, "to speak to the Company Commander."

The First Sergeant looked blankly at him. "Get out of here," he said.

Noah swallowed dryly. "I would like permission," he began stubbornly, "to speak to…"

"Get out of here," the Sergeant said evenly, "and when you come back, remember to wear your class A uniform. Now get out."

"Yes, Sergeant," Noah said. The Company Commander did not raise his eyes from the sports page. Noah went out of the small, hot room into the growing twilight. It was hard to know about the uniform. Sometimes the Company Commander saw men in fatigues, and sometimes not. The rule seemed to change every half-hour. He walked slowly back to his barracks past the lounging men and the loud sound of many small radios blaring tinnily forth with jazz music and detective serials.

When he got back to the orderly room, in his class A uniform, the Captain wasn't there. So Noah sat on the grass across the street from the orderly room entrance and waited. In the barracks behind him a man was singing, softly, "I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier, the dying mother said…" and two other men were having a loud argument about when the war would end.

"1950," one of the men kept saying. "The fall of 1950. Wars always end right as winter sets in."

And the other man was saying, "Maybe the German war, but after that the Japs. We'll have to make a deal with the Japs."

"I'll make a deal with anyone," a third voice said. "I'll make a deal with the Bulgarians or the Egyptians or the Mexicans or anybody."

"1950," the first man said loudly. "Take my word for it. And we'll all get a bullet up our arse first."

Noah stopped listening to them. He sat on the scrub grass in the darkness, with his back against the wooden steps, half asleep, waiting for the Captain to return, thinking about Hope. Her birthday was next week, Tuesday, and he had ten dollars saved up and hidden away at the bottom of his barracks bag, for a gift. What could you get for ten dollars in town that you wouldn't be ashamed to give your wife? A scarf, a blouse… He thought of how she would look in a scarf. Then he thought of how she would look in a blouse, preferably a white one, with her slender throat rising from the white stuff and the dark hair capping her head. Maybe that would be it. You ought to be able to get a decent blouse, even in Florida, for ten dollars.

Colclough came back. He moved heavily up the orderly room steps. You could tell he was an officer at a distance of fifty yards, just by the way he moved his behind.

Noah stood up and followed Colclough into the orderly room. The Captain was sitting at his desk with his cap on, frowning impressively at some papers in his hand.

"Sergeant," Noah said quietly. "I would like permission to speak to the Captain."

The Sergeant looked bleakly at Noah. Then he stood up and went the three steps over to the Captain's desk. "Sir," he said, "Private Ackerman wants to talk to you."

Colclough didn't look up. "Tell him to wait," he said.

The Sergeant turned to Noah. "The Captain says for you to wait."

Noah sat down and watched the Captain. After half an hour, the Captain nodded to the Sergeant.

"All right," the Sergeant said. "Make it short."

Noah stood up, saluted the Captain. "Private Ackerman," he said, "has permission from the First Sergeant to speak to the Captain."

"Yes?" Colclough did not look up.

"Sir," said Noah, nervously, "my wife is arriving in town Friday night, and she has asked me to meet her in the lobby of the hotel, and I would like to have permission to leave camp on Friday night."

Colclough didn't say anything for a long time. "Private Ackerman," he said finally, "you are aware of the Company rule. The entire Company is restricted on Friday nights to prepare for inspection…"

"I know, Sir," said Noah, "but this was the only train she could get reservations on, and she expects me to meet her, and I thought, just this once…"

"Ackerman," Colclough finally looked at him, the pale spot on the end of his nose white and twitching, "in the Army, duty comes first. I don't know whether I can ever teach that to one of you people, but I'm goddamn going to try. The Army don't care whether you ever see your wife or not. When you're not on duty you can do whatever you please. When you are on duty, that's all there is to that. Now get out of here."

"Yes, Sir," said Noah.

"Yes, Sir, what?" Colclough asked…

"Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir," Noah said, remembering the lecture on military courtesy. He saluted and went out.

He sent a telegram, although it cost eighty-five cents. But there was no answer in the next two days from Hope, and there was no way of knowing whether she had received it or not. He couldn't sleep all Friday night, in the scrubbed barracks, lying there knowing that Hope was only ten miles from him after all these months, waiting for him in the hotel, not knowing, perhaps, what had happened to him, not knowing about people like Colclough or the blind authority and indifference of the Army, on which love had no claims, tenderness made no impression. Anyway, he thought dreamily, as he finally dozed off just before reveille, I'll see her this afternoon. And maybe it was all for the best. The last traces of my black eye may disappear by then, and I won't have to explain to her about how I got it…

The Captain was due in five minutes. Nervously, Noah checked the corners of his bunk, the arrangement of the towels in his locker, the shine on the windows behind the bunk. He saw the man next to him, Silichner, buttoning the top button of the raincoat which hung in its ordered line among his clothes. Noah had made certain before breakfast that all his clothes were buttoned correctly for the inspection, but he looked once more at his own clothes. He swung his overcoat back and then blinked. His blouse, which he had checked just an hour ago, was open from the top button down. Frantically, he worked on the buttons. If Colclough had seen the blouse open he would have been certain to restrict Noah for the week-end. He had done worse to others for less, and he had made it very clear that he was not fond of Noah. The raincoat, too, had two buttons undone. Oh, God, Noah thought, don't let him come in yet, not yet, not until I'm finished.

Suddenly Noah wheeled round. Riker and Donnelly were watching him, grinning a little. They ducked their heads and flicked at spots of dust on their shoes. That's it, thought Noah bitterly, they did it to me. With everyone in the barracks in on it, probably. Knowing what Colclough would do to me when he found it… Probably they slipped back early after breakfast and slipped the buttons out of their holes.

He checked each bit of clothing carefully, and leaped to the foot of his bunk just as the Sergeant shouted "Attention!" from the door.

Colclough looked him over coldly and carefully and stared for a long time at the rigid perfection of his locker. He went over behind him and fingered every piece of the clothing hanging from the rack. Noah heard the cloth swishing as Colclough let the coats fall back into place. Then Colclough stamped past him, and Noah knew it was going to be all right.

Five minutes later the inspection was over and the men started to pour out of the barracks towards the bus station. Noah took down his barracks bag and reached into the small oilskin sack at the bottom in which he saved his money. He drew the sack out and opened it. There was no money in it. The ten-dollar bill was gone. In its place there was a single piece of torn paper. On it there was one word, printed in oily pencil. "Tough."

Noah stuffed the paper into his pocket. Methodically he hung the barracks bag up. I'll kill him, he thought. I'll kill the man who did that. No scarf, no blouse, no anything. I'll kill him.

She was in the crowded lobby, among the surging khaki and the other wives.

Noah saw her before she saw him. She was peering, a little short-sightedly, through the milling soldiers and women and dusty potted palms. She looked pale and anxious. The smile that broke over her face when he came up behind her and lightly touched her elbow and said, "Mrs Ackerman, I presume," was on the brink of tears.

They kissed as though they were all alone.

"Now," Noah said softly, "now, now…"

"Don't worry," she said. "I'm not going to cry."

She stood back, holding him at arms' length, and peered at him. "It's the first time," she said, "the first time I've seen you in uniform."

"How do I look?"

Her mouth trembled a little. "Horrible," she said. Then they both laughed.

"Let's go upstairs," he said.

"We can't."

"Why not?" Noah asked, feeling a clutching sense of disaster.

"I couldn't get a room here. Full up. That's all right." She touched his face and chuckled at the despair she saw there. "We have a place. A rooming house down the street. Don't look like that."

They joined hands and went out of the hotel. They walked down the street silently, looking at each other from time to time. Noah was conscious of the polite, approving stares of the soldiers they passed who had no wives, no girls, and were only going to get drunk that afternoon.

The rooming house needed painting. The porch was overgrown with grape vines and the bottom step was broken. "Be careful," Hope said. "Don't fall through. This would be an awful time to break your leg."

The door was opened for them by the landlady. She was a thin old woman in a dirty grey apron. She stared coldly at Noah, exuding a smell of sweat, age and dishwater. "This your husband?" she asked, her bony hand on the door knob.

"Yes," said Hope. "This is my husband."

"Ummm," said the landlady, and did not smile when Noah grinned politely at her. The landlady watched them as they mounted the stairs.

"This is worse than inspection," Noah whispered as he followed Hope towards the door of their room.

"What's inspection?" Hope asked.

"I'll tell you," Noah said, "some other time."

Then the door closed behind them. The room was small, with one window with a cracked pane. The wallpaper was so old and faded that the pattern looked as though it was growing out of the wall. The bed was chipped white iron and there were obvious lumps under the greyish spread. But Hope had put a small bunch of jonquils in a glass on the dresser and her hairbrush was there, sign of marriage and civilization, and she had put a small photograph of Noah, laughing, in a sweater, taken on a summer holiday, under the flowers.

They avoided looking at each other, embarrassed.

"I had to show her our marriage licence," Hope said. "The landlady."

"What?" Noah asked.

"Our marriage licence. She said you had to fight tooth and nail to maintain a respectable establishment with a hundred thousand drunken soldiers loose on the town."

Noah grinned and shook his head wonderingly. "Who told you to bring the licence down?"

Hope touched the flowers. "I carry it around with me," she said, "all the time, these days. In my handbag. To remind me…"

Noah walked slowly over to the door. There was an iron key in the lock. He turned it. The clumsy noise of the primitive tumblers screeched through the room. "There," he said, "I've been thinking about doing this for seven months. Locking a door."

Suddenly Hope ducked her head. But she brought it up again quickly, and Noah saw she was holding a small box in her hands. "Here," she said, "I brought you something."

Noah took the box in his hands. He thought of the ten dollars for the gift, and the note at the bottom of his barracks bag, the ragged slip of paper with the sardonic "Tough" on it. As he opened the box, he made himself forget the ten dollars. That could wait until Monday.

There were chocolate cookies in the box.

"Taste them," Hope said. "I'm happy to say I didn't make them myself. I got my mother to bake them and send them on to me."

Noah bit into one of the cookies and they tasted like home. He ate another one. "It was a wonderful idea," he said.

"Take them off," Hope said fiercely. "Take off those damned clothes."

The next morning they went out for breakfast late. After breakfast they strolled through the few streets of the small town. People were coming home from church and children in their best clothes were walking in restless, bored dignity among the faded flower-beds. You never saw children in camp, and it gave a homely and pleasant air to the morning.

A drunken soldier walked with severe attention to his feet, along the sidewalk, glowering at the churchgoers fiercely, as though daring them to criticize his piety or his right to be drunk before noon on a Sunday morning. When he reached Hope and Noah, he saluted grandly, and said, "Sssh. Don't tell the MPs," and marched sternly ahead.

"Man yesterday," Noah said, "on the bus, saw your picture."

"What was the report?" Hope picked softly at his arm with her fingertips. "Negative or positive?"

"'A garden,' he said, 'a garden on a morning in May.'"

Hope chuckled. "This Army," she said, "will never win the war with men like that."

"He also said, 'By God, I'm going to get married myself, before they shoot me.'"

Hope chuckled again and then grew sober thinking about the last two words. But she didn't say anything. She could only stay one week and there was not time to be wasted talking about matters like that.

"Will you be able to come in every night?" she asked.

Noah nodded. "If I have to bribe every MP in the area," he said. "Friday night I may not be able to manage it, but every other night…" He looked around regretfully at the shabby, mean town, dusty in the sun, with the ten saloons lining the streets in neon gaudiness. "It's too bad you don't have a better place to spend the week…"

"Nonsense," Hope said. "I'm crazy about this town. It reminds me of the Riviera."

"You ever been on the Riviera?"

"No."

Noah squinted across the railroad tracks where the Negro section sweltered, privies and unpainted board among the rutted roads. "You're right," he said. "It reminds me of the Riviera, too."

"You ever been to the Riviera?"

"No."

They grinned. Then they walked in silence. For a moment Hope leaned her head on his shoulder. "How long?" she asked.

"How long do you think?"

He knew what she was talking about, but he asked, "How long what?"

"How long is it going to last? The war…"

A small Negro child was sitting in the dust, gravely caressing a rooster. Noah squinted at him. The rooster seemed to doze, half hypnotized by the movement of the gentle black hands.

"Not long," Noah said. "Not long at all. That's what everybody says."

"You wouldn't lie to your wife, would you?"

"Not a chance," Noah said. "I know a sergeant at Regimental Headquarters, and he says they don't think we'll ever get a chance to fight at all, our division. He says the Colonel's sore as can be because the Colonel is bucking for BG."

"What's BG?"

"Brigadier-General."

"Am I very stupid, not knowing?"

Noah chuckled. "Yop," he said. "I'm crazy about stupid women."

"I'm so glad," Hope said. "I'm delighted." They turned round without signalling each other, as though they had simultaneous lines to the same reservoir of impulses, and started walking back towards the rooming house. "I hope the son of a bitch never makes it," Hope said dreamily, after a while.

"Makes what?" Noah asked, puzzled.

"BG."

They walked in silence for a minute.

"I have a great idea," Hope said.

"What?"

"Let's go back to our room and lock the door." She grinned at him and they walked a little faster towards their rooming house.

There was a knock on the door and the landlady's voice clanged through the peeling wood. "Mrs Ackerman, Mrs Ackerman, I would like to see you for a moment, please."

Hope frowned at the door, then shrugged her shoulders. "I'll be right there," she called.

She turned to Noah. "You stay right where you are," she said.

"I'll be back in a minute."

She kissed his ear, then unlocked the door and went out. Noah lay back on the bed, staring through mild, half-closed eyes up at the stained ceiling. He dozed, with the Sunday afternoon coming to a warm, drowsy close outside the window, with a locomotive whistle sounding somewhere far off and lonely soldiers' voices singing, "You make time and you make love dandy, You make swell molasses candy, But, honey, are you makin' any money? That's all I want to know," on the street below. Drowsily, he knew he'd heard that song before. Then he remembered Roger and that Roger was dead. But before he could think much about it, he fell asleep.

He was awakened by the slow closing of the door. He opened his eyes a slit, smiling gently as he saw Hope standing above him.

"Noah," she said, "you have to get up."

"Later," he said. "Much later. Come on down here."

"No," she said, and her voice was flat. "You've got to get up now."

He sat up. "What's the matter?"

"The landlady," Hope said. "The landlady says we have to get out right away."

Noah shook his head to clear it because he knew he was not getting this straight. "Now," he said, "let's hear it again."

"The landlady says we have to get out."

"Darling," Noah said patiently, "you must have gotten it a little mixed up."

"It's not mixed up." Hope's face was strained and tense. "It's absolutely straight. We have to get out."

"Why? Didn't you take this room for the week?"

"Yes," said Hope, "I took it for a week. But the landlady says I got it under false pretences. She said she didn't realize we were Jews."

Noah stood up and slowly went over to the bureau. He looked at his smiling picture under the jonquils. The jonquils were getting dry and crackly around the edges.

"She said," Hope went on, "that she suspected from the name, but that I didn't look Jewish. Then when she saw you she began to wonder. Then she asked me and I said, of course we were Jewish."

"Poor Hope," Noah said softly. "I apologize."

"None of that," Hope said. "I never want to hear anything like that from you again. Don't you ever apologize to me for anything."

"All right," Noah said. He touched the flowers vaguely, with a drifting small movement of his fingers. The jonquils felt tender and dead. "I suppose we ought to pack," he said.

"Yes," said Hope. She got out her bag and put it on the bed and opened it. "It's nothing personal," Hope said. "It's a rule of the house, the landlady said."

"I'm glad to know it's nothing personal," Noah said.

"It's not so bad." Hope began to put the pink soft clothes into her bag, in the crisp folded way she had of packing anything. "We'll just go down the street and find another place." Noah touched the hairbrush on the dresser. It had a worn silver back, with a heavy old-fashioned design of Victorian leaves on it. It shone dully in the dusty, shaded light of the room.

"No," he said, "we won't find another place."

"But we can't stay here…"

"We won't stay here and we won't find another place," Noah said, keeping his voice even and emotionless.

"I don't know what you mean." Hope stopped her packing and looked at him.

"I mean that we'll walk down to the terminal and we'll find out when a bus is leaving for New York and you'll get on it."

There was silence in the room. Hope just stood there, looking solemn and reflective, staring at the rosy underclothes tucked away in the bag on the bed. "You know," she whispered, "this is the only week I can get in God knows how long. And we don't know what will happen to you. You may be shipped to Africa, to Guadalcanal, any place, next week, and…"

"I think there's a bus leaving at five o'clock," Noah said.

"Darling…" Hope did not move from her sober, thoughtful position in front of the bed. "I'm sure we could find another place in this town…"

"I'm sure we could," Noah said. "But we're not going to. I don't want you in this town. I want to be left alone here, that's all. I can't love you in this town. I want you to get out of it and stay out of it! The sooner the better! I could burn this town or drop bombs on it, but I refuse to love you in it!"

Hope came over to him swiftly and held him. "Dearest," she shook him fiercely, "what's happened to you? What have they been doing to you?"

"Nothing," Noah shouted. "Nothing! I'll tell you after the war! Now pack your things and let's get out of here!"

Hope dropped her hands. "Of course," she said, in a low voice. She went back to folding her clothes and placing them precisely in her bag.

Ten minutes later they were ready. Noah went out carrying her valise and the small canvas bag in which he kept his extra shirt and shaving kit. He didn't look back as he went out on to the landing, but Hope turned at the door. The lowering sun was slanting through the breaks in the unhinged shutter in thin, dusty gold. The jonquils remained in their glass on the dressingtable, bending over a little now, as though the weight of approaching death had made their blossoms heavy. But otherwise the room was as it had been when first she entered it. She closed the door softly and followed Noah down the stairs.

The landlady was on the porch, still in the grey apron. She said nothing when Noah paid her, merely standing there in her smell of sweat, age and dishwater, looking with silent, harsh righteousness at the soldier and the young girl who walked up the quiet street towards the bus station.

There were some men sleeping in the barracks when Noah got there. Donnelly was snoring drunkenly near the door, but no one paid any attention to him. Noah took down his barracks bag and with maniacal care he went through every article there, the extra shoes, the woollen shirts, the clean fatigues, the green woollen gloves, the tin of shoe-dubbing. But the money wasn't there. Then he got down the other barracks bag, and went through that. The money wasn't there. From time to time he glanced up sharply, to see if any of the men were watching him. But they slept, in that snoring, hateful, unprivate, everlasting way. Good, he thought, if I caught any of them looking at me, I would kill them.

He put the scattered things back into the bags, then took out his box of stationery and wrote a short note. He put the box on his bunk and strode down to the orderly room. On the bulletin board outside the orderly room, along with the notices about brothels in town that were out of bounds, and regulations for wearing the proper uniforms at the proper times, and the list of promotions that had come through that week, there was a space reserved for lost-and-found notices. Noah tacked his sheet of paper up on top of a plea by PFC O'Reilly for the return of a six-bladed penknife that had been taken from his locker. There was a light hanging outside the orderly room, and in its frail glare Noah re-read what he had written.

To the Personnel of Company C: Ten dollars has been stolen from the barracks bag of Private Noah Ackerman, 2nd Platoon. I am not interested in the return of the money, and will press no charges. I wish to take my satisfaction, in person, with my own hands. Will the soldier or soldiers involved please communicate with me immediately. Signed, PRIVATE NOAH ACKERMAN Noah read what he had written with pleasure. He had a feeling, as he turned away, that he had taken the one step that would keep him from going mad.

The next evening, as he was going to the mess hall for supper, Noah stopped at the bulletin board. His notice was still there. And under it, neatly typed, was a small sheet of paper. On the sheet of paper, there were two short sentences.

We took it, Jew-boy. We're waiting for you.

Signed,

P. Donnelly B. Cowley

J. Wright W. Demuth

L. Jackson E. Riker

M. Silichner R. Henkel

P. Sanders T. Brailsford

Michael was cleaning his rifle when Noah came up to him.

"May I talk to you for a moment?" Noah said.

Michael looked up at him with annoyance. He was tired and, as usual, he felt incompetent and uncertain with the intricate clever mechanism of the old Springfield.

"What do you want?" Michael asked.

Ackerman hadn't said a word to him since the moment on the route march.

"I can't talk in here," Noah said, glancing around him. It was after supper, and there were thirty or forty men in the barracks, reading, writing letters, fiddling with their equipment, listening to the radio.

"Can't it wait?" Michael asked coldly. "I'm pretty busy just now…"

"Please," Noah said. Michael glanced up at him. Ackerman's face was set in withered, trembling lines, and his eyes seemed to be larger and darker than usual. "Please…" he replied. "I've got to talk to you. I'll wait for you outside."

Michael sighed. "O.K.," he said. He put the rifle together, wrestling with the bolt, ashamed of himself, as always, because it was so difficult for him. God, he thought, feeling his greasy hands slip along the oily, stubborn surfaces, I can put on a play, discuss the significance of Thomas Mann, and any farm boy can do this with his eyes closed better than I can…

He hung the rifle up and went outside, wiping the oil off his hands. Ackerman was standing across the Company street in the darkness, a small, slender form outlined by a distant light. Ackerman waved to him in a conspiratorial gesture, and Michael slowly approached him, thinking, I get all the nuts…

"Read this," Noah said as soon as Michael got close to him. He thrust two sheets of paper into Michael's hand.

Michael turned so that he could get some light on the papers. He squinted and read first the notice that Noah had put up on the bulletin board, which he had not read before, and the answer, signed by the ten names. Michael shook his head and read both notes over carefully.

"What the hell is this?" he asked irritably.

"I want you to act as my second," Noah said. His voice was dull and heavy, and even so, Michael had to hold himself back from laughing at the melodramatic request.

"Second?" he asked incredulously.

"Yes," said Noah. "I'm going to fight those men. And I don't trust myself to arrange it myself. I'll lose my temper and get into trouble. I want it to be absolutely correct."

Michael blinked. Of all the things you thought might happen to you before you went into the Army, you never imagined anything like this. "You're crazy," he said. "This is just a joke."

"Maybe," said Noah flatly. "Maybe I'm getting tired of jokes."

"What made you pick on me?" Michael asked.

Noah took a deep breath and Michael could hear the air whistling into the boy's nostrils. He looked taut and very handsome in a rough-cut, archaic, tragic way in the blocked light and shadows from the hanging lamp across the street. "You're the only one," Noah said, "I felt I could trust in the whole Company. " Suddenly he grabbed the two sheets of paper. "O.K.," he said, "if you don't want to help, the hell with you…"

"Wait a minute," Michael said, feeling dully that somehow he must prevent this savage and ludicrous joke from being played out to its limit. "I haven't said I won't help."

"O.K., then," Noah said harshly. "Go in and arrange the schedule."

"What schedule?"

"There are ten of them. What do you want me to do – fight them in one night? I have to space them. Find out who wants to fight me first, who wants to fight me second, and so on. I don't care how they come."

Michael took the sheet of paper silently from Noah's hand and looked at the names on the list. Slowly he began to place the names. "You know," he said, "that these are the ten biggest men in the Company."

"I know."

"Not one of them weighs under a hundred and eighty pounds."

"I know."

"How much do you weigh?"

"A hundred and thirty-five."

"They'll kill you."

"I didn't ask you for advice," Noah said evenly. "I asked you to make the arrangements. That's all. Leave the rest to me."

"I don't think the Captain will allow it," Michael said.

"He'll allow it," said Noah. "That son of a bitch will allow it. Don't worry about that."

Michael shrugged. "What do you want me to arrange?" he asked. "I can get gloves and two-minute rounds and a referee and…"

"I don't want any rounds or any referees," Noah said. "When one of the men can't get up any more, the fight will be over." Michael shrugged again. "What about gloves?"

"No gloves. Bare fists. Anything else?"

"No," said Michael. "That's all."

"Thanks," Noah said. "Let me hear how you make out."

Without saying goodbye, he walked stiffly down the Company street. Michael watched the shadowy, erect back vanishing in the darkness. Then he shook his head once and walked slowly towards the barracks door, looking for the first man, Peter Donnelly, six feet one, weight one hundred and ninety-five, who had fought heavyweight in the Golden Gloves in Miami in 1941 and had not been put out until the semi-final round.

Donnelly knocked Noah down. Noah sprang up and jumped in the air to reach Donnelly's face. Donnelly began to bleed from the nose and he sucked in the blood at the corner of his mouth, with a look of surprise and anger that supplanted the professional expression he had been fighting with until now. He held Noah's back with one hand, ignoring the fierce tattoo of Noah's fists on his face, and pulled him towards him. He swung, a short, chopping vicious blow, and the men watching silently went "Ah." Donnelly swung again as Noah fell and Noah lay at his feet on the grass.

"I think," Michael said, stepping forward, "that that's enough for this…"

"Get the hell out of here," Noah said thickly, pushing himself up from the ground with his two hands.

He stood before Donnelly, wavering, blood filling the socket of his right eye. Donnelly moved in and swung, like a man throwing a baseball. There was the noise again, as it hit Noah's mouth, and the men watching went "Ah," again. Noah, staggered back, and fell against them, where they stood in a tight, hard-eyed circle, watching. Then he slid down and lay still. Michael went over to him and kneeled down. Noah's eyes were closed and he was breathing evenly.

"All right." Michael looked up at Donnelly. "Hurray for you. You won." He turned Noah over on his back and Noah opened his eyes, but there was no light of reason in them as they stared thoughtlessly up at the evening sky.

Quietly the circle of watching men broke up and started to drift away.

"What do you know," Michael heard Donnelly say as Michael put his hand under Noah's armpit and lifted him slowly to his feet. "What do you know, the little bastard gave me a bloody nose."

Michael stood at the latrine window, smoking a cigarette, watching Noah, bent over one of the sinks, washing his face with cold water. Noah was bare to the waist, and there were huge red blotches on his skin. Noah lifted his head. His right eye was closed by now, and the blood had not stopped coming from his mouth. He spat, and two teeth came out, in a gob of red.

Noah didn't look at the teeth, lying in the basin. He dried his face thoughtfully with his towel, the towel staining quickly.

"All right," Michael said, "I think that did it. I think you'd better cancel the rest…"

"Who's the next man on the list?"

"Listen to me," Michael said. "They'll kill you finally."

"The next man is Wright," Noah said flatly. "Tell him I'll be ready for him three nights from now." Without waiting for Michael to say anything, Noah wrapped the towel around his bare shoulders and went out of the latrine door.

Michael looked after him, took another drag on his cigarette, threw the cigarette away and went out into the soft evening. He did not go into the barracks because he didn't want to see Ackerman again that evening.

Wright was the biggest man in the Company. Noah did not try to avoid him. He stood up, in a severe, orthodox boxing pose, and flashed swiftly in and out among the flailing slow hands, cutting Wright's face, making him grunt when he hit him in the stomach.

Amazing, Michael thought, watching Noah with grudging admiration; he really knows how to box. Where did he pick it up?

"In the belly," Rickett called from his post in the inner circle of the ring, "in the belly, you dumb bathtard!" A moment later it was all over, because Wright swung sideways, all his weight behind a round, crushing swing. The knotted, hammer-like fist crashed into Noah's side. Noah tumbled across the cleared space to fall on his hands and knees, face down, tongue hanging thickly out of his open mouth, gasping helplessly for air. The men who were watching looked on silently.

"Well?" said Wright, belligerently, standing over Noah.

"Well?"

"Go home," Michael said. "You were wonderful."

Noah began to breathe again, the air struggling through his throat in hoarse, agonized whistles. Wright touched Noah contemptuously with his toe and turned away, saying, "Who's going to buy me a beer?"

The doctor looked at the X-rays and said that two ribs were broken. He taped Noah's chest with bandage and adhesive, and made Noah lie still in the infirmary bed.

"Now," Michael said, standing over Noah in the ward, "now, will you quit?"

"The doctor says it will take three weeks," Noah said, the speech coming painfully through his pale lips. "Arrange the next one for then."

"You're crazy," said Michael. "I won't do it."

"Deliver your goddamn lectures some place else," Noah whispered. "If you won't do it, you can leave now. I'll do it myself."

"What do you think you're doing?" Michael asked. "What do you think you're proving?"

Noah said nothing. He stared blankly and wildly across the ward at the man with a broken leg who had fallen off a truck two days before.

"What are you proving?" Michael shouted.

"Nothing," Noah said. "I enjoy fighting. Anything else?"

"No," said Michael. "Not a thing."

He went out.

"Captain," Michael was saying, "it's about Private Ackerman." Colclough was sitting very erect, the little roll of fat under his chin lapping over his tight collar, making him look like a man who was slowly being choked.

"Yes," Colclough said. "What about Private Ackerman?"

"Perhaps you have heard about the… uh… dispute… that Private Ackerman is engaged in with ten members of the Company."

Colclough's mouth lifted a little in an amused grin. "I've heard something about it," he said.

"I think Private Ackerman is not responsible for his actions at this time," Michael said. "He is liable to be very seriously injured. Permanently injured. And I think, if you agreed with me, it might be a good idea to try to stop him from fighting any more…"

Colclough put his finger in his nose. "In an army, Whitacre," he said in the even, sober tone which he must have heard from officiating ministers at so many funerals in Joplin, "a certain amount of friction between the men is unavoidable. I believe that the healthiest way of settling that friction is by fair and open fighting. These men, Whitacre, are going to be exposed to much worse than fists later on, much worse. Shot and shell, Whitacre," he said with grave relish. "Shot and shell. It would be unmilitary to forbid them to settle their differences now in this way, unmilitary. It is my policy, also, Whitacre, to allow as much freedom in handling their affairs as possible to the men in my Company, and I would not think of interfering."

"Yes, Sir," said Michael. "Thank you, Sir."

He saluted and went out.

Walking slowly down the Company street, Michael made a sudden decision. He could not remain here like this. He would apply for Officer Candidates' School. When he had first come into the Army, he had resolved to remain an enlisted man. First, he felt that he was a little too old to compete with the twenty-year-old athletes who made up the bulk of the candidate classes. And his brain was too set in its ways to take easily to any further schooling. And, more deeply, he had held back from being put into a position where the lives of other men, so many other men, would depend upon his judgment. He had never felt in himself any talent for military command. War, in all its thousand, tiny, mortal particulars, seemed to him, even after all the months of training, like an impossible, deadly puzzle. It was all right to work at the puzzle as an obscure, single figure, at someone else's command. But to grapple with it on your own initiative… to send forty men at it, where every mistake might be compounded into forty graves… But now there was nothing else to do. If the Army felt that men like Colclough could be entrusted with two hundred and fifty lives, then no over-nicety of self-assessment, no modesty or fear of responsibility should hold one back. Tomorrow, Michael thought, I'll fill in the form and hand it in to the orderly room. And, he thought grimly, in my Company, there will be no Ackermans sent to the infirmary with broken ribs…

Five weeks later, Noah was back in the infirmary again. Two more teeth had been knocked out of his mouth, and his nose had been smashed. The dentist was making him a bridge so that he could eat, and the surgeon kept taking crushed pieces of bone out of his nose on every visit.

By this time Michael could hardly speak to Noah. He came to the infirmary and sat on the end of Noah's bed, and they both avoided each other's eyes, and were glad when the orderly came through, crying, "All visitors out."

Noah had worked his way through five of the list by now, and his face was crooked and lumpy, and one ear was permanently disfigured in a flat, creased cauliflower. His right eyebrow was split and a white scar ran diagonally across it, giving the broken eyebrow a wild, interrogating twist. The total effect of his face, the steady, wild eyes, staring out of the dark, broken face, was infinitely disturbing.

After the eighth fight, Noah was in the infirmary again. He had been hit in the throat. The muscles there had been temporarily paralysed and his larynx had been injured. For two days the doctor was of the opinion that he would never be able to speak again.

"Soldier," the doctor had said, standing over him, a puzzled look on his simple college-boy face, "I don't know what you're up to, but whatever it is I don't think it's worth it. I've got to warn you that it is impossible to lick the United States Army singlehanded…" He leaned down and peered troubledly at Noah. "Can you say anything?"

Noah's mouth worked for a long time, without sound. Then a hoarse, croaking small noise came from between the swollen lips. The doctor bent over closer. "What was that?" he asked.

"Go peddle your pills, Doc," Noah said, "and leave me alone."

The doctor flushed. He was a nice boy but he was not accustomed to being talked to that way any more, now that he was a captain.

He straightened up. "I'm glad to see," he said stiffly, "that you've regained the gift of speech."

He wheeled and stalked out of the ward.

Fein, the other Jew in the Company, came into the ward, too. He stood uneasily next to Noah's bed, twisting his cap in his large hands.

"Listen, Pal," he said, "I didn't want to interfere here, but enough's enough. You're going at this all wrong. You can't start swinging every time you hear somebody say Jew bastard…"

"Why not?" Noah grimaced painfully at him.

"Because it ain't practical," Fein said. "That's why. First of all, you ain't big enough. Second of all, even if you was as big as a house and you had a right hand like Joe Louis, it wouldn't do no good. There's a certain number of people in this world that say Jew bastard automatically, and nothing you do or I do or any Jew does will ever change 'em. And this way, you make the rest of the guys in the outfit think all Jews're crazy. Listen, they're not so bad, most of 'em. They sound a lot worse than they are, because they don't know no better. They started out feeling sorry for you, but now, after all these goddamn fights, they're beginning to think Jews are some kind of wild animal. They're beginning to look at me queer now…"

"Good," Noah said hoarsely. "Delighted."

"Listen," Fein said patiently, "I'm older than you and I'm a peaceful man. I'll kill Germans if they ask me, but I want to live in peace with the guys around me in the Army. The best equipment a Jew can have is one deaf ear. When some of these bastards start to shoot their mouths off about the Jews that's the ear you turn that way, the deaf one… You let them live and maybe they'll let you live. Listen, the war isn't going to last for ever, and then you can pick your company. Right now, the government says you got to live with these miserable Ku Kluxers, O.K., what're you going to do about it? Listen, Son, if all the Jews'd been like you we'd've all been wiped out two thousand years ago…"

"Good," Noah said.

"Ah," Fein said disgustedly, "maybe they're right, maybe you are cracked. Listen, I weigh two hundred pounds, I could beat anyone in this Company with one hand tied behind me. But you ain't noticed me fightin', do you? I ain't had a fight since I put on the uniform. I'm a practical man!"

Noah sighed. "The patient is tired, Fein," he said. "He's in no condition to listen to the advice of practical men." Fein stared at him, heavily, groping despairingly with the problem. "The question I ask myself," he said, "is what do you want, what in hell do you want?"

Noah grinned painfully. "I want every Jew," he said, "to be treated as though he weighed two hundred pounds."

"It ain't practical," Fein said. "Ah, the hell with it, you want to fight, go ahead and fight. I'll tell you the truth, I feel I understand these Georgia crackers who didn't wear shoes till the Supply Sergeant put them on their feet better than I understand you." He put on his cap with ponderous decision. "Little guys," he said, "that's a race all by itself. I can't make head or tail of them."

And he went out, showing, in every line of his enormous shoulders and thick neck and bullet head, his complete disapproval of the battered boy in the bed, who by some trick and joke of Fate and registration was somehow linked with him.

It was the last fight and if he stayed down it would be all over. He peered bloodily up from the ground at Brailsford, standing over him in trousers and vest. Brailsford seemed to flicker against the white ring of faces and the vague wash of the sky. This was the second time Brailsford had knocked him down. But he had closed Brailsford's eye and made him cry out with pain when he hit him in the belly. If he stayed down, if he merely stayed where he was on one knee, shaking his head to clear it, for another five seconds, the whole thing would be over. The ten men would be behind him, the broken bones, the long days in the hospital, the nervous vomiting on the days when the fights were scheduled, the dazed, sick roaring of the blood in his ears when he had to stand up once more and face the onrushing, confident, hating faces and the clubbing fists.

Five seconds more, and it would be proved. He would have done it. Whatever he had set out to demonstrate, and it was dim and anguished now, would have been demonstrated. They would have to realize that he had won the victory over them. Nine defeats and one default would not have been enough. The spirit only won when it made the complete tour of sacrifice and pain. Even these ignorant, brutal men would realize now, as he marched with them, marched first down the Florida roads, and later down the roads swept by gunfire, that he had made a demonstration of will and courage that only the best of them could have been capable of…

All he had to do was to remain on one knee.

He stood up.

He put up his hands and waited for Brailsford to come at him. Slowly, Brailsford's face swam into focus. It was white and splotched now with red, and it was very nervous. Noah walked across the patch of grass and hit the white face, hard, and Brailsford went down. Noah stared dully at the sprawled figure at his feet. Brailsford was panting hard, and his hands were pulling at the grass.

"Get up, you yellow bastard," a voice called out from the watching men. Noah blinked. It was the first time anyone but himself had been cursed on this spot.

Brailsford got up. He was fat and out of condition, because he was the Company Clerk and always managed to find excuses to duck out of heavy work. His breath was sobbing in his throat. As Noah moved in on him, there was a look of terror on his face. His hands waved vaguely in front of him.

"No, no…" he said pleadingly.

Noah stopped and stared at him. He shook his head and plodded in. Both men swung at the same time, and Noah went down again. Brailsford was a large man and the blow had hit high on Noah's temple. Methodically, sitting with his legs crumpled under him, Noah took a deep breath. He looked up at Brailsford.

The big man was standing above him, his hands held tightly before him. He was breathing heavily, and he was whispering, "Please, please…" Sitting there, with his head hammering, Noah grinned, because he knew what Brailsford meant. He was pleading with Noah to stay down.

"Why, you miserable hillbilly son of a bitch," Noah said clearly. "I'm going to knock you out." He stood up and grinned as he saw the flare of anguish in Brailsford's eyes when he swung at him.

Brailsford hung heavily on him, clinching, swinging with a great show of willingness. But the blows were soft and nervous and Noah didn't feel them. Clutched in the big man's fat embrace, smelling the sweat rolling off his skin, Noah knew that he had beaten Brailsford merely by standing up. After this it was merely a matter of time. Brailsford's nerve had run out.

Noah ducked away and lashed out at Brailsford's middle. The blow landed and Noah could feel the softness of the clerk's belly as his fist dug in.

Brailsford dropped his hands to his sides and stood there, weaving a little, a stunned plea for pity in his eyes. Noah chuckled. "Here it comes, Corporal," he said, and drove at the white, bleeding face. Brailsford just stood there. He wouldn't fall and he wouldn't fight and Noah merely stood flat on the balls of his feet, hooking at the collapsing face. "Now," he said, swinging with all his shoulder, all his body behind the driving, cutting blow. "Now. Now." He gained in power. He could feel the electric life pouring down his arms into his fists. All his enemies, all the men who had stolen his money, cursed him on the march, driven his wife away, were standing there, broken in nerve, bleeding before him. Blood sprayed from his knuckles every time he hit Brailsford's staring, agonized face.

"Don't fall, Corporal," Noah said, "don't fall yet, please don't fall," and swung again and again, faster and faster, his fists making a sound like mallets wrapped in wet cloth. And when he saw Brailsford finally begin to sway, he tried to hold him with one hand long enough to hit him twice more, three times, a dozen, and he sobbed when he no longer could hold the rubbery bloody mess up. Brailsford slipped to the ground.

Noah turned to the watching men. He dropped his hands. No one would meet his eyes. "All right," he said loudly. "It's over."

But they didn't say anything. As though at a signal, they turned their backs and started to walk away. Noah stared at the retreating forms, dissolving in the dusk among the barracks walls. Brailsford still lay where he fell. No one had stayed with him to help him.

Michael touched Noah. "Now," Michael said, "let's wait for the German Army."

Noah shook off the friendly hand. "They all walked away," he said. "The bastards just walked away." He looked down at Brailsford. The clerk had come to, although he still lay face down on the grass. He was crying. Slowly and vaguely he moved a hand up to his eyes. Noah went over to him and kneeled beside him.

"Leave your eye alone," he ordered. "You'll rub dirt in it this way." He started to pull Brailsford to his feet and Michael helped him. They had to support the clerk all the way to the barracks and they had to wash his face for him and clean the cuts because Brailsford just stood in front of the mirror with his hands at his side, weeping helplessly.

The next day Noah deserted.

Michael was called down to the orderly room.

"Where is he?" Colclough shouted.

"Where is who, Sir?" Michael asked, standing stiffly at attention.

"You know goddamn well who I mean," Colclough said.

"Your friend. Where is he?"

"I don't know, Sir," said Michael.

"Don't hand me that!" Colclough shouted. All the sergeants were in the room behind Michael, staring gravely at their Captain. "You were his friend, weren't you?"

Michael hesitated. It was hard to describe their relationship as friendship.

"Come on, Soldier! You were his friend."

"I suppose so, Sir."

"I want you to say yessir or nosir, that's all, Whitacre! Were you his friend or weren't you?"

"Yes, Sir, I was."

"Where did he go?"

"I don't know, Sir."

"You're lying to me!" Colclough's face had grown very pale and his nose was twitching. "You helped him get out. Let me tell you something, Whitacre, in case you've forgotten your Articles of War. The penalty for assisting at or failing to report desertion is exactly the same as for desertion. Do you know what the penalty for that is in times of war?"

"Yes, Sir."

"What is it?" Suddenly Colclough's voice had become quiet and almost soft. He slid down in his chair and looked up gently at Michael.

"It can be death, Sir."

"Death," said Colclough, softly. "Death. Listen, Whitacre, your friend is as good as caught already. When we catch him, we'll ask him if you helped him desert. Or even if he told you he was going to desert. That's all that's necessary. If he told you and you didn't report it, that is just the same as assisting at desertion. Did you know that, Whitacre?"

"Yes, Sir," Michael said, thinking, this is impossible, this could not be happening to me, this is an amusing anecdote I heard at a cocktail party about the quaint characters in the United States Army.

"I grant you, Whitacre," Colclough said reasonably, "I don't think a court-martial would condemn you to death just for not reporting it. But they might very well put you in jail for twenty years. Or thirty years. Or life. Federal prison, Whitacre, is not Hollywood. It is not Broadway. You will not get your name in the columns very often in Leavenworth. If your friend just happens to say that he happened to tell you he planned to go away, that's all there is to it. And he'll get plenty of opportunities to say it, Whitacre, plenty… Now…" Colclough spread his hands reasonably on the desk. "I don't want to make a big thing out of this. I'm interested in preparing a Company to fight and I don't want to break it up with things like this. All you have to do is tell me where Ackerman is, and we'll forget all about it. That's all. Just tell me where you think he might be… That's not much, is it?"

"No, Sir," Michael said.

"All right," Colclough said briskly. "Where did he go?"

"I don't know, Sir."

Colclough's nose started to twitch again. He yawned nervously. "Listen, Whitacre," he said, "don't have any false feelings of loyalty to a man like Ackerman. He was not the type we wanted in the Company, anyway. He was useless as a soldier and he was not trusted by any of the other men in the Company and he was a constant source of trouble from beginning to end. You'd have to be crazy to risk spending your life in jail to protect a man like that. I don't like to see you do it, Whitacre. You're an intelligent man, Whitacre, and you were a success in civilian life and you can be a good soldier, in time, and I want to help you… Now…" And he smiled winningly at Michael.

"Where is Private Ackerman?"

"I'm sorry, Sir," Michael said, "I don't know."

Colclough stood up. "All right," he said quietly. "Get out of here, Jew-lover."

"Yes, Sir," Michael said. "Thank you, Sir."

He saluted and went out.

Brailsford was waiting for Michael outside the mess-hall. He leaned against the building, picking his teeth and spitting. He had grown fatter than ever, but a look of uncertain grievance had set up residence in his features, and his voice had taken on a whining, complaining note since Noah had beaten him. Michael saw him waving to him as Michael came out of the door, heavy with the pork chops and potatoes and spaghetti and peach pie of the noonday meal. He tried to pretend he had not seen the Company Clerk. But Brailsford hurried after him, calling, "Whitacre, wait a minute, will you?" Michael turned and faced Brailsford.

"Hello, Whitacre," Brailsford said. "I've been looking for you."

"What's the matter?" Michael asked.

Brailsford looked around him nervously. Other men were coming out of the mess-hall and passing them in a food-anchored slow flood. "We better not talk here," he said. "Let's take a little walk."

"I have a couple of things to do," Michael said, "before parade…"

"It'll only take a minute." Brailsford winked solemnly. "I think you'll be interested."

Michael shrugged. "O.K.," he said, and walked side by side with the Company Clerk towards the parade-ground.

"This Company," Brailsford said. "I'm getting good and browned off with it. I'm working on a transfer. There's a sergeant at Regiment who's up for a medical discharge, arthritis, and I've been talking to a couple of people over there. This Company gives me the willies…" Michael sighed. He had planned to go back to his bunk and lie down in the precious twenty minutes after dinner.

"Listen," he said, "what's on your mind?"

"Ever since that fight," Brailsford said, "these bastards have been picking on me. Listen, I didn't want to sign my name on that list. It was a joke, see, that's what they told me, the ten biggest guys in the Company, and I was one of them. I got nothing against the Jew. They told me he'd never fight. I didn't want to fight. I'm no fighter. Every kid in town used to lick me, even though I was big. What the hell, that ain't no crime, not being a pugilist, is it?"

"No," said Michael.

"Also," Brailsford said, "I have no resistance. I had pneumonia when I was fourteen, and ever since then I have no resistance. I'm even excused from hikes by the doctor. Try and tell that bastard Rickett that," he said bitterly. "Or any of the others. They treat me like I sold military secrets to the German Army, ever since Ackerman knocked me out. I stood there and took it as long as I could, didn't I? I stood there and he hit me and hit me and I didn't go down for a long time, isn't that true?"

"Yes," said Michael.

"That Ackerman is ferocious," Brailsford said. "He may be small, but he's wild. I don't like to have no dealings with people like that. After all, he gave Donnelly a bloody nose, didn't he? and Donnelly was in the Golden Gloves. What the hell do they expect from me?"

"All right," Michael said. "I know all about that. What's on your mind now?"

"I ain't got no future in this Company, no future at all." Brailsford threw away his toothpick and stared sorrowfully across the dusty parade-ground. "And what I want to tell you is neither have you…"

Michael stopped. "What's that?" he said sharply.

"The only people that've treated me like a human being," Brailsford said, "are you and the Jew that night, and I want to help you. I'd like to help him, too, if I could, I swear I would…"

"Have you heard anything?" Michael asked.

"Yeah," said Brailsford. "They got him at Governor's Island, in New York, last night. Remember, nobody is supposed to know this, it's secret, but I know because I'm in the orderly room all the time…"

"I won't tell anybody." Michael shook his head, thinking of Noah in the hands of the Military Police, wearing the blue fatigues with the big white P for prisoner stencilled on the back, and the guards with the shotguns walking behind him. "Is he all right?"

"I don't know. They didn't say. Colclough gave us all a drink of Three Feathers to celebrate. That's all I know. But that ain't what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to tell you something about yourself." Brailsford paused, obviously sourly pleased with the effect he was going to make in a moment.

"Your application for OCS," he said, "the one you put in a long time ago…"

"Yes?" Michael asked. "What about it?"

"It came back," Brailsford said. "Yesterday. Rejected."

"Rejected?" Michael said dully. "But I passed the Board and I…"

"It came back from Washington, rejected. The other two guys from the Company was passed, but yours is finished. The FBI said no."

"The FBI?" Michael stared sharply at Brailsford to see if this was some elaborate joke that was being played on him.

"What's the FBI got to do with it?"

"They check up, on everybody. And they checked up on you. You're not officer material, they said. You're not loyal."

"Are you kidding me?" Michael asked.

"Why the hell would I want to kid you?" Brailsford asked aggrievedly. "I don't go in for jokes no more. You're not loyal, they said, and that's all there is to it."

"Not loyal." Michael shook his head puzzledly. "What's the matter with me?"

"You're a Red," said Brailsford. "They got it in the record. Dossier, the FBI calls it. You can't be trusted with information that might be of value to the enemy."

Michael stared out across the parade-ground. There were men lying on the dusty patches of grass, and two soldiers were lazily throwing a baseball to each other. Across the parched brown and dead green the flag whipped in a light wind at the top of its pole. Somewhere in Washington at this moment there was a man sitting at a desk, probably looking at the same flag on the wall of his office, and that man had calmly and without remorse written on his record… "Disloyal. Communist affiliation. Not recommended."

"Spain," Brailsford said, "it's got something to do with Spain. I sneaked a look at the report. Is Spain Communist?"

"Not exactly," Michael said.

"You ever been in Spain?"

"No. I helped organize a committee that sent ambulances and blood banks over there."

"They got you," Brailsford said. "They got you cold. They won't tell you, either; they'll just say you don't have the proper qualities of leadership or something like that. But I'm telling you."

"Thanks," Michael said. "Thanks a lot."

"What the hell," Brailsford said; "at least you treat me like a human being. Take a tip. Try and wangle yourself a transfer. I ain't got no future in this here Company, but you got a lot less. Colclough is crazy on the subject of Reds. You'll do KP from now till we go overseas, and you'll be first scout on every advance in combat, and I wouldn't give a damn for your chances of coming out alive."

"Thanks, Brailsford," Michael said. "I think I'll take your advice."

"Sure," Brailsford said. He took out another toothpick and poked between his teeth. He spat, reflectively. "Remember," he said, "I ain't said a word."

Michael nodded and watched Brailsford lounge slowly along the edge of the parade-ground, back to the orderly room in which he had no future.

Far away, thin and metallic over the whispering thousand miles of wire, Michael heard Cahoon's voice saying, "Yes, this is Thomas Cahoon. Yes, I'll accept a collect call from Private Whitacre…"

Michael closed the door of the telephone booth of the Rawlings Hotel. He had made the long trip into town because he did not want to make the call from camp, where somebody might overhear him. "Please limit your call to five minutes," the operator said. "There are others waiting."

"Hello, Tom," he said. "It's not poverty. It's just that I don't have the necessary quarters and dimes."

"Hello, Michael," Cahoon said, sounding very pleased. "It's all right. I'll take it off my income tax."

"Tom," Michael said, "listen carefully. Do you know anybody in the Special Services Division in New York, the people who put on shows and camp entertainments and things like that?"

"Yes," Cahoon said. "Quite a few people. I work with them all the time."

"I'm tired of the infantry," Michael said. "Will you try to arrange a transfer for me? I want to get out of this country. There are Special Services units going overseas every day. Can you get me into one of them?"

There was a slight pause at the other end of the wire. "Oh," Cahoon said, and there was a tinge of disappointment and reproof in his voice. "Of course. If you want it."

"I'll send you a special-delivery letter tonight," Michael said.

"Serial number, rank, and unit designation. You'll need that."

"Yes," said Cahoon. "I'll get right on to it." Still the slight coolness in his voice.

"I'm sorry, Tom," Michael said. "I can't explain why I'm doing this over the phone. It will have to wait until I get there."

"You don't have to explain anything to me," Cahoon said.

"You know that. I'm sure you have your reasons."

"Yes," said Michael. "I have my reasons. Thanks again. Now I have to get off. There's an expectant sergeant here who wants to call the maternity ward of the Dallas City Hospital."

"Good luck, Michael," Cahoon said, and Michael could sense the effort at warmth that Cahoon put into the words, almost convincingly.

"Goodbye. I hope I see you soon."

"Of course," Cahoon said. "Of course you will."

Michael hung up and opened the door of the booth. He stepped out and a large, sad-looking Technical Sergeant, with a handful of quarters, flung himself on to the small bench under the phone.

Michael went out into the street and walked down the saloon-lined pavement, in the misty neon glow, to the USO establishment at the end of the block. He sat at one of the spindly desks among the sprawling soldiers, some of them sleeping in wretched positions in the battered chairs, others writing with painful intensity at the desks.

I'm doing it, Michael thought, as he pulled a piece of paper towards him and opened his fountain pen, I'm doing what I said I'd never do, what none of these weary, innocent boys could ever do. I'm using my friends and their influence and my civilian privileges. Cahoon is right perhaps to be disappointed. It was easy to imagine what Cahoon must be thinking now, sitting near the phone, in his own apartment, over which he had just spoken to Michael. Intellectuals, Cahoon probably was thinking; they're all alike, no matter what they say. When it finally gets down to it, they pull back. When the sound of the guns finally draws close, they suddenly find they have more important business elsewhere…

He would have to tell Cahoon about Colclough, about the man in the office at the FBI, who approved of Franco, but not of Roosevelt, who had your ultimate fate at the tip of his pencil, and against whom no redress, no appeal, was possible. He would have to tell him about Ackerman and the ten bloody fights before the pitiless eyes of the Company. He would have to tell him what it was like to be under the command of a man who wanted to see you killed. Civilians couldn't really understand things like that, but he would have to try to tell. It was the big difference between civilian life and life in a military establishment. An American civilian always could feel that he could present his case to some authorities who were committed to the idea of justice. But a soldier… You lost any hope of appeal to anyone when you put on your first pair of Army shoes. "Tell it to the Chaplain, Bud, and get a TS slip."

He would try to explain it to Cahoon, and he knew Cahoon would try to understand. But even so, at the end, he knew that that little echo of disappointment would never finally leave Cahoon's voice. And, being honest with himself, Michael knew that he would not blame Cahoon, because the echo of disappointment in himself would never fully leave his own consciousness, either.

He started to write the letter to Cahoon, carefully printing out his serial number and unit, feeling, as he wrote the familiar ciphers that would seem so unfamiliar to Cahoon, that he was writing a letter to a stranger.