Three Soldiers - John Dos Passos (books to read fiction txt) 📗

cigarettes d’ye smoke?” asked the tall youth.

“I don’t smoke.”

“Ye’d better learn. The corporal likes fancy ciggies and so does the sergeant; you jus’ slip ‘em each a butt now and then. May help ye to get in right with “em.”

“Don’t do no good,” said Fuselli…. “It’s juss luck. But keep neat-like and smilin’ and you’ll get on all right. And if they start to ride ye, show fight. Ye’ve got to be hard boiled to git on in this army.”

“Ye’re goddam right,” said the tall youth. “Don’t let ‘em ride yer…. What’s yer name, rookie?”

“Eisenstein.”

“This feller’s name’s Powers…. Bill Powers. Mine’s Fuselli…. Goin’ to the movies, Mr. Eisenstein?”

“No, I’m trying to find a skirt.” The little man leered wanly. “Glad to have got ackwainted.”

“Goddam kike!” said Powers as Eisenstein walked off up a side street, planted, like the avenue, with saplings on which the sickly leaves rustled in the faint breeze that smelt of factories and coal dust.

“Kikes ain’t so bad,” said Fuselli, “I got a good friend who’s a kike.”

 

They were coming out of the movies in a stream of people in which the blackish clothes of factory-hands predominated.

“I came near bawlin’ at the picture of the feller leavin’ his girl to go off to the war,” said Fuselli.

“Did yer?”

“It was just like it was with me. Ever been in Frisco, Powers?”

The tall youth shook his head. Then he took off his broad-brimmed hat and ran his fingers over his stubby tow-head.

“Gee, it was some hot in there,” he muttered.

“Well, it’s like this,” said Fuselli. “You have to cross the ferry to Oakland. My aunt…ye know I ain’t got any mother, so I always live at my aunt’s…. My aunt an’ her sister-in-law an’ Mabe… Mabe’s my girl…they all came over on the ferry-boat, ‘spite of my tellin’ ‘em I didn’t want ‘em. An’ Mabe said she was mad at me, ‘cause she’d seen the letter I wrote Georgine Slater. She was a toughie, lived in our street, I used to write mash notes to. An’ I kep’ tellin’ Mabe I’d done it juss for the hell of it, an’ that I didn’t mean nawthin’ by it. An’ Mabe said she wouldn’t never forgive me, an’ then I said maybe I’d be killed an’ she’d never see me again, an’ then we all began to bawl. Gawd! it was a mess…. “

“It’s hell sayin’ good-by to girls,” said Powers, understandingly. “Cuts a feller all up. I guess it’s better to go with coosies. Ye don’t have to say good-by to them.”

“Ever gone with a coosie?”

“Not exactly,” admitted the tall youth, blushing all over his pink face, so that it was noticeable even under the ashen glare of the arc lights on the avenue that led towards camp.

“I have,” said Fuselli, with a certain pride. “I used to go with a Portugee girl. My but she was a toughie. I’ve given all that up now I’m engaged, though…. But I was tellin’ ye…. Well, we finally made up an’ I kissed her an’ Mabe said she’d never marry any one but me. So when we was walkin” up the street I spied a silk service flag in a winder, that was all fancy with a star all trimmed up to beat the band, an’ I said to myself, I’m goin’ to give that to Mabe, an’ I ran in an’ bought it. I didn’t give a hoot in hell what it cost. So when we was all kissin’ and bawlin’ when I was goin’ to leave them to report to the overseas detachment, I shoved it into her hand, an’ said, ‘Keep that, girl, an’ don’t you forgit me.’ An’ what did she do but pull out a five-pound box o’ candy from behind her back an’ say, ‘Don’t make yerself sick, Dan.’ An’ she’d had it all the time without my knowin’ it. Ain’t girls clever?”

“Yare,” said the tall youth vaguely.

 

Along the rows of cots, when Fuselli got back to the barracks, men were talking excitedly.

“There’s hell to pay, somebody’s broke out of the jug.”

“How?”

“Damned if I know.”

“Sergeant Timmons said he made a rope of his blankets.”

“No, the feller on guard helped him to get away.”

“Like hell he did. It was like this. I was walking by the guardhouse when they found out about it.”

“What company did he belong ter?”

“Dunno.”

“What’s his name?”

 

“Some guy on trial for insubordination. Punched an officer in the jaw.”

“I’d a liked to have seen that.”

“Anyhow he’s fixed himself this time.”

“You’re goddam right.”

“Will you fellers quit talkin’? It’s after taps,” thundered the sergeant, who sat reading the paper at a little board desk at the door of the barracks under the feeble light of one small bulb, carefully screened. “You’ll have the O. D. down on us.”

Fuselli wrapped the blanket round his head and prepared to sleep. Snuggled down into the blankets on the narrow cot, he felt sheltered from the sergeant’s thundering voice and from the cold glare of officers’ eyes. He felt cosy and happy like he had felt in bed at home, when he had been a little kid. For a moment he pictured to himself the other man, the man who had punched an officer’s jaw, dressed like he was, maybe only nineteen, the same age like he was, with a girl like Mabe waiting for him somewhere. How cold and frightful it must feel to be out of the camp with the guard looking for you! He pictured himself running breathless down a long street pursued by a company with guns, by officers whose eyes glinted cruelly like the pointed tips of bullets. He pulled the blanket closer round his head, enjoying the warmth and softness of the wool against his cheek. He must remember to smile at the sergeant when he passed him off duty. Somebody had said there’d be promotions soon. Oh, he wanted so hard to be promoted. It’d be so swell if he could write back to Mabe and tell her to address her letters Corporal Dan Fuselli. He must be more careful not to do anything that would get him in wrong with anybody. He must never miss an opportunity to show them what a clever kid he was. “Oh, when we’re ordered overseas, I’ll show them,” he thought ardently, and picturing to himself long movie reels of heroism he went off to sleep.

A sharp voice beside his cot woke him with a jerk.

“Get up, you.”

The white beam of a pocket searchlight was glaring in the face of the man next to him.

“The O. D.” said Fuselli to himself.

“Get up, you,” came the sharp voice again.

The man in the next cot stirred and opened his eyes.

“Get up.”

“Here, sir,” muttered the man in the next cot, his eyes blinking sleepily in the glare of the flashlight. He got out of bed and stood unsteadily at attention.

“Don’t you know better than to sleep in your O. D. shirt? Take it off.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s your name?”

The man looked up, blinking, too dazed to speak. “Don’t know your own name, eh?” said the officer, glaring at the man savagely, using his curt voice like a whip.—“Quick, take off yer shirt and pants and get back to bed.”

The Officer of the Day moved on, flashing his light to one side and the other in his midnight inspection of the barracks. Intense blackness again, and the sound of men breathing deeply in sleep, of men snoring. As he went to sleep Fuselli could hear the man beside him swearing, monotonously, in an even whisper, pausing now and then to think of new filth, of new combinations of words, swearing away his helpless anger, soothing himself to sleep by the monotonous reiteration of his swearing.

A little later Fuselli woke with a choked nightmare cry. He had dreamed that he had smashed the O. D. in the jaw and had broken out of the jug and was running, breathless, stumbling, falling, while the company on guard chased him down an avenue lined with little dried-up saplings, gaining on him, while with voices metallic as the clicking of rifle triggers officers shouted orders, so that he was certain to be caught, certain to be shot. He shook himself all over, shaking off the nightmare as a dog shakes off water, and went back to sleep again, snuggling into his blankets.

II

John Andrews stood naked in the center of a large bare room, of which the walls and ceiling and floor were made of raw pine boards. The air was heavy from the steam heat. At a desk in one corner a typewriter clicked spasmodically.

“Say, young feller, d’you know how to spell imbecility?”

John Andrews walked over to the desk, told him, and added, “Are you going to examine me?”

The man went on typewriting without answering. John Andrews stood in the center of the floor with his arms folded, half amused, half angry, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, listening to the sound of the typewriter and of the man’s voice as he read out each word of the report he was copying.

“Recommendation for discharge”…click, click…“Damn this typewriter…. Private Coe Elbert”…click, click. “Damn these rotten army typewriters…. Reason…mental deficiency. History of Case…. ” At that moment the recruiting sergeant came back. “Look here, if you don’t have that recommendation ready in ten minutes Captain Arthurs’ll be mad as hell about it, Hill. For God’s sake get it done. He said already that if you couldn’t do the work, to get somebody who could. You don’t want to lose your job do you?”

“Hullo,” the sergeant’s eyes lit on John Andrews, “I’d forgotten you. Run around the room a little…. No, not that way. Just a little so I can test yer heart…. God, these rookies are thick.”

While he stood tamely being prodded and measured, feeling like a prize horse at a fair, John Andrews listened to the man at the typewriter, whose voice went on monotonously. “No…record of sexual dep…. O hell, this eraser’s no good!… pravity or alcoholism; spent…normal…youth on farm. App-ear-ance normal though im…say, how many ‘m’s’ in immature?”

“All right, put yer clothes on,” said the recruiting sergeant. “Quick, I can’t spend all day. Why the hell did they send you down here alone?”

“The papers were balled up,” said Andrews.

“Scores ten years…in test B,” went on the voice of the man at the typewriter. “Sen…exal ment…m-e-n-t-a-l-i-t-y that of child of eight. Seems unable…to either…. Goddam this man’s writin’. How kin I copy it when he don’t write out his words?”

“All right. I guess you’ll do. Now there are some forms to fill out. Come over here.”

Andrews followed the recruiting sergeant to a desk in the far corner of the room, from which he could hear more faintly the click, click of the typewriter and the man’s voice mumbling angrily.

“Forgets to obey orders…. Responds to no form of per…suasion. M-e-m-o-r-y, nil.”

“All right. Take this to barracks B…. Fourth building, to the right; shake a leg,” said the recruiting sergeant.

Andrews drew a deep breath of the sparkling air outside. He stood irresolutely a moment on the wooden steps of the building looking down the row of hastily constructed barracks. Some were painted green, some were of plain boards, and some were still mere skeletons. Above his head great piled, rose-tinted clouds were moving slowly across the immeasurable free sky. His glance slid down the sky to some tall trees that flamed bright yellow with autumn outside the camp limits, and then to the end of the long street of barracks, where was a picket fence and a sentry walking to and fro, to and fro. His