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…