Authors: James Jones
For a moment, she looked over at her father’s bent head and thought of telling him what she meant to have done, to herself. But that was pointless—and anyway, Gwen realized suddenly, he was so concerned with his own guilt that he no longer had any concern for hers. What was it he was always saying: “Each man must find his salvation within himself alone. It is not to be found outside. In another person.” Well, he would have to find his own. She had found hers.
As if he was aware of her looking at him, Bob suddenly raised his head.
“Yes?” he said. “You do have your answer? And what is it?”
“That I’m guilty,” Gwen said.
“We both are guilty, dear Gwen, I think,” Bob said. “I might say we
all
are guilty. You, me, Dave, that girl, everyone. And yet, at the same time, we all are also unguilty. We suffer, and we learn; and then we grow. Though growth may often seem like ‘Sin’ to others; to the ignorant. Do you remember the end of Hawthorne’s
Marble Faun?”
He straightened up in his chair. “And what do you plan to do now? now that you have your answer? Do you intend to go back to teaching?”
“No,” Gwen said. “I don’t think I’ll ever want to teach anybody anything again. If,” she added, “in all these years I ever have.”
Bob was looking at her carefully. “You know, Dave used to tell me,” he said suddenly, “that you didn’t have a critical work in your book, dear Gwen, you had a novel. I gather that he had told you this, too,” he added.
“Yes, he did say that,” Gwen said. She felt suddenly startled. A sudden, strange high excitement began to rise in her.
“Yes, he did say that! As a matter of fact, he told me that that first night we met, there at Frank and Agnes’s.”
Bob just looked at her, almost penetratingly. “Perhaps it might provide a way out of your dilemma with your book,” he said softly.
Gwen stared back, hardly seeing him. “You know, I believe he’s right!” she said. “I could very
easily
novelize it. It wouldn’t be an academic work, then; and consequently would be no
proof
; but what do I care for
proof?
And, if I novelized it, I could develop it in ways I know about—in my mind—but never had the research proof to do. Why, yes!” she said excitedly. “It’s a perfect answer!”
Bob merely continued to watch her, eyes brimming with some private emotion of his own.
“Well,” he said finally, “you do already know a good bit about novel writing, don’t you?”
Gwen turned to look at him. “He gave us something too; didn’t he?” she said softly. “Dave gave
us
something, too.”
Bob did not answer. But after a moment he said, gently: “I think you should move away from here, too, dear Gwen.”
“Yes,” Gwen said. “I expect I should.”
“Of course, this place will always be yours, you know,” Bob added. “You will always be able to come back to it, when you want.”
Gwen nodded, but she did not answer this remark. She sat for a moment looking at her father, realizing suddenly that if she did not tell him what she meant to have done she would once again be lying, be parading under false pretenses—just as she done before, in just the opposite way. And he, whenever he saw or heard from her, would go right on thinking she was still that same virgin—who had, she was convinced, caused so much damage with her virginity—whether he believed that or not.
So she told him, calmly, what she meant to have done, to herself.
Once more, Bob made his old familiar apologetic near-shrugging motion. “Well, dear Gwen, I cannot advise you. If that is what you think you must do, then you must—” But then he stopped himself. And suddenly he smiled. “Yes, dear Gwen. I think that is just exactly what you should do.” And so it was that three days later, Gwen French with three bags packed and loaded in her new sedan she had bought out in Tucson and driven home, was on Route 40 driving east and keeping a sharp eye out for the Indiana cops. She was headed for New York, where she would put up with their lady editor friend until she could get an apartment, and she planned a stopover in Indianapolis.
She picked one of the nicest of the business buildings, and there were three gynecologists on the wall directory. She chose the first one: a Doctor Goster. She had come in figuring that if she did not like his looks, she would just get up and go right back out; but she didn’t mind this doctor’s looks. But how did you begin? How did you say it? A half an hour later, she was back out on the road, on Route 40, and heading eastward toward Ohio.
It really had been nothing. One small sharp pain, and that was all. Such a simple thing. Well, she was what she was now, at least, at any rate. Perhaps someday she might find a man. Who knew? She didn’t want one. But who knew? She might: one who was sensitive, and kind, and intelligent. She just might. But mostly what she was thinking about was the work she was going to get done, and the thought of it filled her with a rising, burgeoning high excitement of just living.
Then, as her eyes moved about watching the road, a picture of Bob superimposed itself on the windshield in front of her: Bob as he had looked this morning when she left. She had looked back in the rearview mirror before she pulled out of the drive, and had seen him standing in the cellar doorway. He had been leaning on the door, with his white crew cut and heavy gray mustache, and he had been smiling, happily, and there had been that other, strange look on his face, too. Old Bob. Well, she wouldn’t be gone forever. Someday she would be coming back. Coming back home.
Leaning over, she switched on the car’s radio to a news broadcast that the Chinese Communists had invaded North Korea and that our armies were in full retreat. She had heard from Wally’s mother that he was over there (he had never written to herself or Bob) and that his outfit had been one of the first sent there from Japan, and suddenly her heart went out to him, painfully, warmly.
They came running through the paddy fields across the snow, their rifles held at a rigid precise Port Arms, in their quilted uniforms or large long overcoats and the quilted boots, the conspicuous white bandoliers crossing their chests, and you shot them down. Sometimes, later, you could count upwards of a hundred bodies lying on the slope up which they came in front of the position. Other times, you did not know how many all of you might have killed. But then it didn’t seem to matter, really. There were so many of them that no matter how many hundreds of them you might kill, it was never enough. They swarmed around like ants, everywhere, coming from every direction, all around you. And on those times the Company would finally, under the constant overpowering pressure, have to fall back as best they could to another hilltop and regroup and set up another perimeter.
They did not always run. Sometimes they walked. In long, thin, evenly spaced lines, those rifles held at that rigid Port like on parade, right up the slope at you. At other times, they would come ramming down a draw, all running in unison in their quilted boots, rifles at rigid Port, in a regular column of fours, close packed. Trying to outflank, of course. And usually they did. Those were the best for shooting. But—much more often than not—it would be at night.
In the evening, as dusk came on, you could sometimes hear them on the next hill: that strange weird out-of-tune chant; they were death-singing: getting ready to die. Ought to do some death-singing ourselves, somebody would say. Then, with the dark, the bugles and the shepherd’s pipes and the cymbals and the rattles would start making their weird ungodly noises, and the attack would begin again. And if the night was light enough, or if something was burning somewhere, you could see those widely spaced lines of widely spaced men—strange, alien, totally foreign and un-understandable—coming down their own hill, crossing the frozen paddy fields, beginning to mount your hill below you. They seemed to always prefer the gentlest slope—for their main attack, at least. Sometimes—if the BARs and LMGs didn’t jam, or just simply burn out—the fire would be too much for them and they would go to ground among the rocks. Then the grenading and countergrenading and the firefight would begin, while they tried to work up to rush. They had a trick of—when they thought they were close enough—three men rushing in a V, the two men behind firing to cover the one in front. Lots of times, small knots would break inside the perimeter in their rushes. But they fought funny. Once they were inside, most of them didn’t seem to know what to do and just sort of ran around aimlessly until somebody cut them down. Although all of them didn’t do that though. So far, the Company had kept its unity, as Regiment withdrew slowly westward back onto Division. They had never quite been caught bad enough to be broken up entirely. But if they had kept their unity, attrition was thinning them out swiftly and dangerously.
The pattern was set. After the first big battle at the Chongchon—which we had lost, so badly; and which the Company had only got a very little of—it was withdraw and fight, withdraw and fight. Luckily, moving back on their own Division to the west, they had not had to run “The Gauntlet.” But they were catching hell of their own kind, just the same. The trouble was, in these damned hills and this damned weather, nobody knew where anybody else was most of the time. They might be behind you in a big column, they might be ahead, they might be on either side. You just had to set up as tight a perimeter as you could, and fight. Then when they drew off next day to bury their dead, as they always seemed to do, take the road and withdraw. That was the pattern. There wasn’t much question any more of trying to attack.
Wally Dennis—Wallace
French
Dennis—former holder of the Parkman College Fellowship for the novel—could, as he cleaned his piece and saw that his squad was altogether, think back wryly to his former life in Parkman, Illinois—so many thousands of miles and thousands of years away. That just hadn’t been him: It had been another guy. When he thought of Gwen French, and of Dave Hirsh, and of ’Bama Dillert, and of Old Bob—they just weren’t real. They were only a dream, and this, here, now, was all that was real. Funny, had he once been in love with some girl named Dawn? some girl who had been the cause of him enlisting in the goddamned Army? Funny. How funny people were. But the only people he knew existed anywhere were: one, his squad that he had to take care of all the time and check them to see they changed their socks; and two, the Company and the captain—Captain Hewitt—whom they all of them loved desperately, and who was the main instrument that up to now had kept the Company together—he wasn’t scared of anything, Captain Hewitt wasn’t; and three, a long line of unknown men behind him up through Regiment and Division whom he had never seen and would never know, but who were governing the continued existence of his life. And that was all. His bad ear had been running for some time now. But little things like that just didn’t matter anymore. Not now. Wally had been at the Pusan Perimeter—was the only one left in his squad who had, in fact—but the Pusan Perimeter had never been anything like this. He had long ago—on November 25, to be exact, when he saw all the antlike hordes pouring in—given up the idea of ever getting out of this alive.
“Here they come,” someone would say, and he would get his little pile of M1 clips ready and at hand. Nobody had any helmets anymore; you just couldn’t wear them in this cold without freezing off your ears; and it was always a funny feeling to stick your head up over the edge of the hole in the big pile cap. But it was just something that had to be done.
He still had his Randall #1 and, in fact, had carried it all through. He had rigged a prong hook on the sheath so he could wear it on his ammo belt, and he kept it bright and shining clean. Every time he cleaned his piece—which in this freezing weather had to be frequently—he also got out the Randall #1 and wiped it carefully with the oily rag he carried in his shirt. Oil, of course, could not be put on the gun at all, in this weather: It would lock it in a minute. But the Randall #1 had no working parts, and the oil was good for it. It still looked as bright and shining clean as when it used to lie on his dresser at home. And he loved it. It had saved his life on more than one occasion. Guys were always coming up to look at and handle it. Most all of them said they were going to order one. Well, if he had helped sell a bunch of Randall knives, he was glad—because more than any other thing anywhere, his Randall #1 gave him a sense of comfort and luck. It was funny, in times of stress, what things men cadged onto to believe in and superstitiously hang their hopes on. Wally’s was his knife: If he could just keep his knife with him, and keep it clean, he felt he might still yet get out—be one of those who wouldn’t have to be hauled out like cordwood in the trucks, dead. Besides, it was a lethally beautiful work of art: the only piece of beauty he had been able to hang on to—except for some snatch pictures he had picked up in Japan. He had killed eight Gooks with it.
Funny, even now that fact was still almost unbelievable. It took a lot more force to drive a sharp knife into a man’s body than he had anticipated. The shock in your arm was about the same as punching a guy in the head. It didn’t take much effort to slash their throats, but even then there was more pull against the knife than he had ever thought there would he. The flesh clung to it. And he had killed eight with it. Unbelievable. Eight ants. Only, they weren’t ants; they were men.
They were so different from us, these Asiatics. They had no idea of the individual importance of the separate human life. And in that, they
were
like ants. It was like fighting the terrifying Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan. Apparently, they had no thought at all about killing one man, or five, like we did. They were terribly poor equipped. Their quilted uniforms were almost completely inadequate to the cold. The rice bags they lived off of would not have sustained our men at all. Their Russian rifles were evidently not of the best grade, either. Of course, now, lots and lots of them were equipped with captured American equipment. But the others: Some of them even attacked uphill without any weapons at all. And yet none of them seemed to mind all this much at all. You couldn’t help feeling sorry for the poor bastards sometimes—or would have, if there were not so many of them all around you—trying so hard to kill you.