Whistle by James Jones
Midmornings his archenemy Hogan came in, with the other doctors, for morning rounds. Landers sat his chair at attention like a good soldier. But he stared his dislike and hatred across silently at Hogan, and Hogan glared his own dislike and hatred back at him. Neither ever spoke.
It was little wonder to Landers that he felt mean and gross and flamboyant, as he walked up to Col Stevens’ office. In full uniform, and under guard.
Make an example of him. What did he have to lose? Might as well be shot for a mean wolf as for a shitty sheep dog.
It was some wonder to Col Stevens, though. The arrogance, the cockiness, of the young man was a palpable force in the room of the office. Stevens thought all that already had been taken care of, by Winch.
The boy was even wearing all his ribbons, including his Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. Stevens felt guilty enough about his age and where he was, without being reminded. The whole of it irked him exceedingly.
Stevens had meant to say how he had found extenuating circumstances in Landers’ case, and that he had been given a highly laudatory recommendation of Landers. It had been his intention, up to now, to let Landers off without even breaking him, because of Winch. Now, instead, he spoke shortly, and much more sharply than he’d intended.
“Well, what have you got to say for yourself?”
In fact, Landers’ arrogance had been shrunk a great deal from what it was originally, only a moment before. That was the moment when he opened the outer door, and came into the presence of the statue-like, giant figure of Chief W/O Jack Alexander.
The w/o had looked huge, just sitting behind the desk. Then he had stood up. Landers thought he was the biggest man he had ever seen. The icy blue of his pale blue eyes bored into Landers’ soul. The bone edges of his hard mouth looked ready to physically take bites out of Landers. On the square bald head the giant face was as without expression as the eyes or mouth, as without expression as expressionless could get, neither contempt, nor pity, nor liking there. Combat service meant nothing to this soldier, his whole life had been one long war. It was the natural state of things.
The message seemed to be, if Landers was getting it, something like: Whatever the fuck it is you’re doing, you dumb punk kid, for God’s sake try to do it like a soldier.
But he hardly said ten actual words. Landers had seen him around the hospital compound at a distance, and at the medals awards ceremony, but he had never thought of him as so big, or so formidable.
It took every ounce of power Landers possessed to pull back any arrogance at all, in the short time he had, between Alexander and the opening inner door. And he did not lose hold of the message the huge, room-filling ex-heavyweight, ex-1st/sgt seemed to be communicating.
Certainly it affected his first answer. Probably it affected all the others.
“Nothing, sir,” he said staunchly. “I don’t have anything to say for myself.” He continued to stand at attention, since Stevens had not ordered him to stand at ease.
“At ease,” Stevens said. “I expect you know,” he said thinly, but much more mildly, “that Major Hogan has preferred four counts of charges against you.” “Yes, sir,” Landers said.
“And from what I can gather in investigating, Major Hogan is well within his rights. More than.”
“Yes, sir,” Landers said, ungivingly. But he was glad Jack Alexander was not in the room. Alexander would have made it harder. “You attacked and struck an officer, then engaged in a fight with him, in the recreation hall in front of twenty witnesses, and when Major Hogan remonstrated with you in the hall outside, you cursed him, insulted him, and physically threatened him. Then you disappeared, and went AWOL, for five days, before returning.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you have nothing to say to any of this?”
“No, sir.”
“You have no defense to make, at all?”
“No, sir,” Landers said, unbendingly. This would have been the moment for abject apology. He let it pass. He didn’t feel like an apology. He was boiling mad. At the unfairness of all of it, and he did not care now whether Alexander was in the room or not.
“If I sit back, and let this thing go through,” Stevens said, “you’ll come before a special court-martial. And that you’ll be convicted, with a sentence of three months or six months, with loss of grade and forfeiture of pay and allowances, there’s not much doubt.”
“No, sir,” Landers said, unwavering. But he hadn’t thought it would be quite that bad.
“Major Hogan has indicated he might be willing to withdraw the charges,” Stevens said, and waited. Landers did not answer.
“I think I might be able to talk him into doing that,” Stevens said, and waited again.
“May I speak frankly, sir?” Landers said. “Frankly, sir, I don’t give much of a damn one way or the other.” There, so it was out. He wondered if Alexander would have approved the manner. Or Winch. Probably not.
Stevens sat back in his chair, and moved some papers, noting abstractedly that his hands were shaking. With anger. He was trying so hard to be completely fair. To this dumb punk kid.
“Have you ever been in an Army stockade, Landers?”
“No, sir.”
“They’re tough,” Stevens said, more mildly, now that he had more control. “They’re not easy.”
“May I speak frankly, sir.”
“Go ahead,” Stevens said, and nodded.
“The lieutenant involved insulted my old outfit. He had no business doing that. He said we ought to come over to Europe if we wanted to see some real fighting. Besides, he didn’t have any business in there. In the recreation hall. It’s an enlisted man’s hall. He came in there looking for a Ping-Pong game.
“Major Hogan, when he stopped me in the hall, accused me of malingering. He said if I could play Ping-Pong like that, and fight like that, I ought to be back to duty, and that I was malingering by staying in the hospital. That’s why I cursed him, and that’s why I insulted him. As for threatening him, I said I’d like to beat him up. But I didn’t.”
“Why did you go AWOL?” Stevens said.
“I was sick of the whole thing, that’s why. I was sick of this place, and the people in it, and the war, and everything else. Major Hogan doesn’t deserve to be an officer. He’s never treated anyone fairly here, and everybody knows it. He’s probably a bum as a doctor, on the outside. He’s never been shot at, he’s never been in danger, he’s never seen men blown up beside him. I’ll probably be killed in this war. Certainly I expect to be. But he won’t be, and you won’t be, and neither will most of the people here. He doesn’t deserve the job he’s got, and he shouldn’t be where he is. He shouldn’t have it. And if there was any justice at all in this Army he’d be canned.”
He stopped.
“Is that all you have to say?” Stevens said.
“Yes, sir,” Landers said.
“All right then, Landers. You may go.”
“Yes, sir. I just want you to know that I don’t expect to get any square deal. And I won’t get one in this trial. That’s why I don’t really give a damn. The whole thing is a big fat joke. On me.” He drew himself up to attention and saluted and about-faced.
He didn’t know, as he left, that Stevens behind him in the office was wanting to jump up on his feet and yell with rage, and was instead resolutely studying his pale fingernails. Landers didn’t know because he was doing all he could to maintain his ego and combat the enormous, reproving presence of Jack Alexander which filled the outer room.
Back at his own ward Strange was waiting for him. With the message “to play ball” that Winch had asked him to deliver. When Landers gave him a detailed account blow-by-blow, quote-for-quote of the interview, Strange began to curse him.
Despite Strange, Landers had a weird sense of growing elation he had not had when he left the big office. When he left Stevens and Alexander, he had been suffering a deep depression. He had heard enough about stockades, one place and another, to picture gra
“What the fuck are you smiling about?” Strange demanded.
“Well, we’ll just have to wait and see,” he finally finished lamely. “See what he does.”
They had to wait two days. Then orders came down from the administrator’s office, one copy to Landers, one to be posted on the ward bulletin board, to the effect that the special court-martial had not been called, and that orders were being cut to be forwarded to Washington for approval that the transit casual Sgt Landers, Marion J be reduced to private and all pay and allowances of sgt be withdrawn and discontinued.
“I think you got off damned lucky,” Strange said. “Considering.” There was an urgency in his voice, and on his face. “I don’t think you got one damn thing to complain about.”
He then proceeded to tell Landers, who did not know, about the two days of phone calls and talks that had gone on, to avoid the court-martial. Winch had been the prime mover, behind it. Alexander had been for the court-martial, but hadn’t really cared.
“If he had cared,” Strange said, “believe me, you’d have got it.”
Col Stevens had been against the court-martial, when he got over being angry. He did not think what Landers had done was all that terrible. The whole thing had rested on the conscience of Stevens. And Winch had played on that. Though he did not like Landers personally, in fact detested him personally, Stevens did not think what he had done really deserved the special court Hogan was after.
“You can thank your lucky stars that that old man has a conscience,” Strange said, urgently. “Hell, if you hadn’t acted up like you did, you wouldn’t even have got busted.”
Landers was curiously disappointed. Though he did not tell this to Strange. He had geared himself up emotionally for the trial. And its conviction, which he knew would be a foregone conclusion of it. And for his three to six months sentence, which he felt he had readied himself for. Being busted to private seemed like a ridiculous, terrible anticlimax after the possibility of all that. He had proved to himself, to his own satisfaction, an important moral point, moral issue, about the whole US Army—only to have the damned schoolboy conscience of that one old man ruin it and throw it all out.
Also, his nightmares had stopped. The dream about the platoon and Landers’ one canteen of water which kept recurring to him had ceased on the night of the day of the interview with Stevens, and had not come back until several days after the administrative order had come down. That in itself had been a blessed boon to him. At least, while it lasted.
“I can understand his disliking me,” he said to Strange at one point in their discussions. “But do you really think he detests me? That was the word you used. Where did you get that word?”
“It was Winch’s word,” Strange said. “He used it.” The odd look of urgency had come back over his face. “Winch would never use that word himself. So I reckon he heard the old man use it.”
“But detests,” Landers said. “That’s pretty strong.” He looked into Strange’s eyes, with their urgency which still did not make any sense to Landers. “If he detests me, it’s because I showed him what hypocrites he and the Army are,” he said righteously, “for not firing Hogan.
“He’s never been shot at, neither has Hogan,” he finished inconclusively. “None of them has. Or ever will be.”
“No,” Strange said. “I don’t reckon they ever will be.” The silent look of urgency, Landers noted, had not left his face.
“What’s this with Winch?” Landers asked him. “I didn’t ask him for anything. I don’t want any help from him.”
“You better be damn glad you had help from him,” Strange said. “Without him you’d be in jail.”
“Fuck him. He never comes around. We never see him. We never hear from him. He never comes up to the hotel.”
“He’s busy out at O’Bruyerre. He’s back to duty, and holding down a whole new job,” Strange said. “But he keeps an eye on us. Besides, he’s got some little girl he’s shacking up with.”
“Who? Not that little girl I tried to make?”
“I don’t know, honestly,” Strange said. “And I don’t care. Why? Does that make you sore?”
“Me? Are you kidding?”
“Well, what’s eating you then?”
“Nothing,” Landers said. “But fuck Winch.”
With his tentative bust to private in the works, Landers was no longer on ward arrest. He was able to go back to the suite at the Peabody. Until the demotion was approved in Washington he was not required to remove his sergeant’s stripes, so he didn’t. He found he had a really serious reluctance to part with them that was totally unanticipated. Especially around the Peabody.
But getting back to the Peabody was not the great thrill he had imagined so heatedly, when he was being kept away from it. The girls were all pretty much the same girls. And the few new ones were not that much different. The fellows were all still the same fellows. Corello, and Trynor, and the others. Strange apparently had developed a permanent relationship with Frances Highsmith, and no longer came around to the suite much, though he still saw to it that all its bills were paid, as did Landers himself. With Strange gone, Landers became the leader. He developed a semipermanent relationship himself, with Mary Lou Salgraves. But none of it was really that exciting.
Landers had lied to Col Stevens only once, and that had been during the interview when Stevens had asked him about his ankle. Stevens understood that Landers had reinjured his ankle in the fight in the rec hall with the lieutenant. He was given this impression by Landers’ surgeon, Curran, who had examined the ankle after the fight. Actually, the ankle had been reinjured in the first fight he and Strange had had with the Navy petty officers in the hotel bar, and then reinjured again when Landers had kicked the Air Force ferry commando in the head. But Curran had not known about this, and had not examined the ankle after the first fights, had assumed the ankle was reinjured in the hospital fight, and Landers had not felt up to telling either Curran or Stevens the whole truth about it.
It was not until after the whole thing was over and the court-martial had been canceled that Curran told Landers he had known about the ankle all along. They were together in Curran’s little office, after the most recent examination of it.
He had grinned. “Yes, it’s not too hard to tell from the swelling, or lack of it, if a muscle or a joint has been injured recently. It’s harder to tell how long ago, or how many times, something has been hurt, if the injury was at some time in the past. I just knew, was pretty sure, that you hadn’t done it in that particular fight.”
“Why didn’t you tell that to Col Stevens?” Landers said.
Curran was still grinning, that funny little private smile of his. “Well, you obviously hadn’t told him yourself. For some private reason of your own. I just wanted to back you up, and give you some maneuvering room if that was what you wanted, or felt you needed.”
“I just didn’t want them to know about the other fights, back then at the beginning,” Landers said.
“I figured it was something like that,” Curran said. He shrugged. “Sit down, Marion,” he indicated the chair on the other side of the desk. “You and I have known each other quite awhile, now. Enough to get to know each other pretty well.”
Landers took the chair gingerly. And sat in it a little stiffly. Then he proceeded suddenly, without having thought it out, to tell Curran about the two earlier fights, in detail. By the time he finished they were both of them laughing. On the strength of that he told in detail about the other fights he had had over the past months, the ones in which he had not hurt anything. Except a barked fist, or a jammed knuckle or two.
Curran made a large, elaborate shrug, and then held up his two surgeon’s hands. He wiggled the eight fingers and two thumbs in the air. “I simply can’t do something like that. I’d be out of a job.”
“I don’t think it’s all that great,” Landers said, lamely.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you, Marion.” Curran hitched his swivel chair a little closer to the desk. For intimacy. “Normally I don’t talk to anybody except about their surgical problems. But you’re on the verge of getting into serious trouble.’
Landers stared at him. “You mean like going to the stockade?”
Curran nodded.
Landers grinned. “I’m already in serious trouble. I’m going to get killed in this war. I’m futureless.”
“Think beyond that. Think about after the war.”
“I can’t.”
“You don’t want to get into trouble with the Army and wind up with a dishonorable discharge that will dog you the rest of your life.”
“I can’t think about after,” Landers said again. “There’s no after there. There’s nothing. A blank wall. A curtain of fog, that I can’t see beyond.”
Curran peered at him piercingly. “You really mean that?”
“Sure,” Landers said. “There’s no after the war. Not for me. It’s easy for you. You’ll go on. You’ll go into surgery, have a big career, become famous, you’ll help humanity and make lots of money. Incidentally. It’s easy for you.”
Curran pursed his mouth, still peering. “Yes. I guess it is. I guess that’s exactly what it will be like. I feel guilty enough about it, as it is, without your mentioning it.” He stared at Landers again. “But you really do feel that,” he said. “How did you say it? That there’s ‘a curtain of fog’ you can’t see beyond.”
“Sure,” Landers said. “That’s exactly what it’s like. There isn’t anything there.”
After a moment, Curran’s hand reached out and pushed his chair back, back a little way, from the desk. Didn’t take long, Landers thought with an inward grin.