Authors: Thomas Pynchon
Levine left the orderly room and walked around the building to the day room. Through the screen door he could hear the lieutenant talking. He pushed open the door. The lieutenant and about a dozen PFC's and specialists from Bravo Company were sitting or standing around a table and looking at a map which was stained with coffee cup rings. "DiGrandi and Siegel," the lieutenant was saying, "Rizzo and Baxter-" he looked up and saw Levine. "Levine, you'll be with Picnic." He folded the map carelessly and put it in his back pocket. "Everything straight?" They all nodded. "Okay, that's all till one then. Have the trucks out of the motor pool by then and take off. I'll see you at Lake Charles." He put on his hat and left, letting the screen door bang behind him. "Coke time," Rizzo said. "Somebody got a weed?" Levine sat down on a table and said, "What's happening."
"Oh Christ," Baxter said. He was a little blond-haired farm kid from Pennsylvania. "Welcome to the club, Levine. It's the goddam Cajuns again. They put up all kinds of signs, sure. Dogs and Army Stay off the Grass and all. But the minute the least little thing screws up, who do they go crying to."
"131st Signal Battalion," Rizzo said, "is who."
"Where-all we going at one," Levine said. Picnic got up from where he was sitting and headed for the Coke machine. "Someplace out by Lake Charles," he said. "They had a storm or something. Lines are down." He put a nickel in and as usual nothing happened. "Bravo company to the rescue." His voice became soothing, caressing.
"Come on,
bebi
," he said to the Coke machine and kicked it viciously. Nothing happened. "Be careful you don't tilt it," Baxter said. Picnic hammered on the machine in certain carefully selected spots. Something clicked and two streams, one of carbonated water and one of Coke syrup, began to flow out. Just before they shut off, an empty cup dropped down and got covered on the outside with syrup. "Oh god, you're cute," Picnic said. "It's neurotic," Rizzo said. "The heat has driven it crazy." They talked for a while, speculating and cursing the Cajuns and the army, smoking and drinking Cokes, till finally Levine stood up and put his hands in his pockets letting his gut bulge out. "Well," he said, "I reckon I'll go pack."
"Wait a minute," Picnic said. "I'll go with you." They went out the screen door and back down the gravel path to the sand area in front of Radio section's barracks. They trudged across the sand, sweating in the windless air and the hot yellow sun. "Never a dull moment, Benny," Levine said. "Oh Jesus," Picnic said. They went in the barracks doing the stockade shuffle and when Capucci asked what was happening they gave him the finger, simultaneously and precisely, like a vaudeville team.
Levine got his laundry bag out and started throwing fatigues, skivvies and socks into it. He put his shaving kit in last and then as an afterthought wedged an old blue baseball cap down the side. He stood there frowning for a while and then said. "Hey Picnic."
" Yo," Picnic said from the other end of the barracks.
"I can't go on this detail. I got leave starting at 4:30."
"So what are you packing for," Picnic said.
"I think maybe what I'll do is go over and see Pierce about it."
"He's eating, most likely."
"Well we got to go eat anyway. Come on."
They plodded out again into the sun, through the sand, around to the back door of the mess hall. Lieutenant Pierce was sitting at an empty table near the serving line. Levine went over.
"I been thinking," he said.
The lieutenant looked up. "Having trouble about the trucks?" he said. Levine scratched his stomach and tilted the helmet liner back on his head. "Not exactly," he said, "but my leave starts at 4:30 and I was figuring." Pierce dropped the fork he was holding. It hit the tray with a loud clank. "No," he said, "you'll have to wait awhile on that leave, Levine." Levine smiled a big loose idiot's smile that he knew got on the lieutenant's nerves. "Hell," he said, "since when am I so indispensable to the company?" Pierce sighed in annoyance. "Look, you know the situation in this company as well as anybody. And the order says specialists, ace specialists. Unfortunately we don't have any. But you have to do, slobs like you are all we have." Pierce was ROTC, a graduate of MIT. He had just made first lieutenant and was trying hard not to feel his power. When he spoke it was with a precise, dry Beacon Hill accent. "Lieutenant," Levine said, "you were young once. I got this broad in N'Orleans, she's waiting for me. Give youth its day. There's hundreds of specialists better than me." The lieutenant smiled grimly. There was an implicit and mutual recognition of worth between them whenever things like this cropped up. Outwardly neither had any use for the other; but each had the vague sense that they were more alike than either would care to admit, brothers, possibly, under the skin. When Pierce had first arrived at Roach and found out the story on Levine he had tried to talk to him. "You're wasting yourself, Levine," he would say. "Here you are, college graduate, highest IQ in the damn battalion, and what are you doing. Sitting here in the most wretched pesthole in the armed forces, on an ass that gets broader every month. Why don't you go for OCS? You could probably even get into the Point if you wanted. Why did you enlist in the army in the first place?" And Levine would say with a hesitant grin that was neither auite apologetic nor auite scornful, "Well I sort of figured I'd like to stay an enlisted man and make a career out of it." At first the lieutenant would blow up whenever he said this, get incoherent. Later he would turn and walk away and finally he gave up altogether and gave up talking to Levine. Now he said, "You're in the army, Levine. Leave isn't a right, it's a privilege." Levine stuck his hands in his back pockets. "Ah," he said. "Well, okay."
He turned and walked away slowly, hands in his pockets, over to the tray rack. He got a tray and silverware and went through the line. It was stew again. Thursday always seemed to be stew day. He went over to where Picnic was eating and said, "Guess what."
"I figured," Picnic said. They ate and walked out of the mess hall and about a mile through sand and over concrete, dragging their feet and not talking, just letting the sun glare and work through the helmet liners and hair to the scalp. They got to the motor pool at a quarter to one and found most of the others already there with six ¾-ton trucks with radio equipment in the back. Levine and Picnic got into a truck, Picnic driving, and followed the other trucks up to the company. At the barracks they got their bags and threw them in back.
They headed on a southwesterly direction, through swamp and past farmland. As they got nearer to the town of De Bidder they could see clouds to the south. "Rain?" Picnic said. "Jesus Christ." Levine had put on a pair of sunglasses and was reading the paperback again, something called Swamp Wench. "The more I think about it," he said lazily, "the more I think someday I'm gonna give that there lieutenant a punch in the mouth."
"It's a bitch, ain't it," Picnic agreed.
"I mean," Levine said, putting the book face down on his stomach, "Sometimes I almost wish I was back at City. And that's bad."
"Why bad?" Picnic said. "I'd rather be back at the Academy any day than doing this crap."
"No," Levine said frowning, "you don't go back. I only went back once that I can remember and that was to a broad. And that was bad too."
"Yeah," Pic said. "You told me. You should have gone back. I wish I could. Back to the barracks, even, and go to sleep."
"You can sleep anywhere," Levine said. "I can."
At De Bidder they turned south. The clouds massed up, gray and threatening, ahead of them. Around them swamp would stretch out, gray and mossy and foul-smelling, and then give way to poor-looking farmland. "You want to read this after me?" Levine said. "It's pretty good. All about swamps. And this broad that lives in them."
"Really?" Picnic said, looking grimly at the truck ahead of them. "I wish I could find a broad in one of these. I'd build me this shack way out in the middle of one of them, where Uncle would never find me."
"Sure you would," Levine said.
"I know damn well
you
would."
"Till I got tired of it, anyway," Levine said.
"Why don't you settle down, Nathan," Picnic said. "Find a nice quiet girl and go live up north."
"It's the army I'm in love with," Levine said.
"You 30-year men are all alike. Does Pierce still believe all that crap about re-upping?"
"I don't know. I don't believe it, why should he. But then I might be telling the truth. I reckon I'll just wait and see, when the time comes."
They drove on like this for about two hours, dropping off trucks along the way to set up relays back to Roach until on the outskirts of Lake Charles there were only two trucks left. Rizzo, with Baxter, in the truck ahead, waved Levine and Picnic down. The sky was completely overcast now and a small wind was blowing, chilly against their damp fatigues. "Let's find a bar," Rizzo said. "Wait for the lieutenant to catch up." Rizzo was a staff sergeant. He was also the company intellectual. He would lie in his bunk and read things like
Being and Nothingness
and
Form and Value in Modern Poetry
, scorning the westerns, sex novels and whodunnits that his companions kept trying to lend him. He, Picnic and Levine often held long bull sessions at night in the PX or the coffee shop, usually with Rizzo doing most of the talking. They drove into town and found a quiet bar near a high school. There were a couple of schoolkids sitting at the bar but otherwise the place was empty. They got a table near the back and Rizzo headed for the latrine. Baxter headed for the door. "Be back in a minute," he said, "I want to get a paper." Levine sat drinking beer and brooding. He often had this habit of pursing his lips like Marlon Brando and scratching his armpit. Sometimes, depending on his mood, he would make quiet ape noises. "Picnic, wake up," he said finally. "The general's coming."
"General's ass," Picnic said.
"You're just bitter," Rizzo said, coming back. "Be like me, or Lardass there. Happy-go-lucky."
Baxter came running in just then with a newspaper, all excited. "Hey," he said, "we made the headlines." He had a Lake Charles paper, and when he opened it up on the table there was this big banner headline, 250 MISSING IN HURRICANE. "Hurricane?" Picnic said. "Who the hell said anything about a hurricane?"
"Maybe the navy can't get a plane up," Rizzo said, "they want us to find the eye or something."
"I wonder what's going on out there, though," Baxter said, thoughtfully. "Christ, things must be bad if they got no communications at all."
The hurricane, it turned out, had completely annihilated a small village called Creole, located on an island, or rather a high area, in the bayou country along the gulf, about 20 miles from Lake Charles. The whole business had clearly been a foulup on the part of the Weather Bureau: Wednesday afternoon, when the inhabitants of the town had started to evacuate, the bureau had issued a statement that the hurricane would not arive till Thursday night. It urged them not to crowd the roads. There was plenty of time. Sometime between midnight and three Thursday morning the hurricane hit, zeroed in on Creole. The National Guard was coming, the article continued, so were the Red Cross, the army and the navy. They were trying to get planes up from the air force base in Biloxi but flying conditions were very bad. One of the big oil companies was contributing a couple of tugboats to aid in rescue operations. Creole would probably be declared a disaster area. And so on. They had a few more beers and talked about the hurricane and everyone agreed that for the next few days they were probably going to be working their ass off, and this led to several statements, obscene and disaffected, about the nature of the U.S. Army. "Re-up," Rizzo said, "you still got time, you can still be eligible.
I
got 382 goddam days. Christ, I'll never make it." Levine smiled. "Shucks," he said, "you're just bitter, is all." When they got outside it was raining and cooler. They got in the trucks and splashed back out of town to the rendezvous point Lieutenant Pierce had arranged. There was no sign of him yet. Levine and Picnic sat parked, listening to rain bounce off the roof. Levine pulled Swamp Wench out of his pocket and began reading again.
After a while Rizzo came over and banged on the window. "The general's coming," he said, pointing down the road. Through the rain they could make out a jeep with a muddy figure in khakis driving. The jeep pulled up alongside Rizzo's truck and the driver got out and ran shakily over to where Rizzo was standing. He was unshaven and red-eyed. His khakis were ragged and filthy and his voice had a slight tremor in it when he spoke. "You guys from the National Guard?" he said, louder than he should have. "Ha," Rizzo barked. "Jesus no. We may look it but we ain't."
"Oh." He turned away and Levine realized with a mild sense of shock that he was wearing two silver bars on each shoulder. He shook his head. "It's a little rough back there," he murmured and started back for the jeep.
"Sorry, sir," Levine called after him. And then more quietly, "God, Rizzo, did you see that?"
Rizzo laughed. "War is hell," he said ungraciously.
They sat there for half an hour more until finally the lieutenant showed up. They told him about the captain who was looking for the National Guard and gave him the newspaper's account of the hurricane. "Well, let's get moving," Pierce said. "They're bitching back there about commo."
It turned out the army had taken over McNeese State College, on the outskirts of the city, for a base of operations. It was after dark when the two trucks pulled off one of the quiet campus streets onto a huge, grassy quadrangle. "Hey," Picnic yelled at Baxter, "race you to see who gets 'em up first." They set up the 40-foot antennas and Baxter and Rizzo won. "What the hell," Levine said, "buy you a beer when we get all this junk set up." Picnic got to work on the TCC-3 and Levine started setting up AN/GRC-10. About midnight they had communications.
Baxter stuck his head in the back of the truck. "You guys owe us a beer," he said.
"You got any idea where the bars are around here?" Levine said. "You're the Joe College in the crowd," Baxter said, "you and Rizzo. You ought to be able to home right in on one."