Ice-Cream Headache (19 page)

“We’ll go,” Quentin said, “the four of us. We’re sort of his buddies.”

“Then you’re responsible for him, Corporal,” the GRC lieutenant said after them. “You and these other men.”

When they caught up to him, Zwermann glared at them with the ferocious suspicion of a man who has learned not to trust strangers. But he did not protest their walking behind him.

That night, instead of waiting till they got marching orders, Quentin Thatcher put in to the Company Commander personally to go back to straight duty with the 2nd Platoon immediately. His request was immediately rejected, emphatically and with finality.

Five days later the Regiment moved out, and Quentin marched with the Company Headquarters at the head of the company column beside the First, who carried a Listerine bottle full of whisky and took frequent gargles for his sore throat without offering Quentin any for his. The 2nd Platoon was somewhere in the rear.

Their battalion hiked seven miles the first day and bivouacked that night in the jungle, dead beat. The next day they crossed an Engineers’ bridge and started up a steep hill that rose abruptly up out of the jungle from the riverbank. The noise of the firing did not sound any closer than it had back down on the beach.

Then they came up over the crest of the hill and found themselves in combat. The noise that had sounded faint in the jungle beat about their ears and fell upon them with both drumming fists. It seemed a little unfair for no one to have warned them.

The hilltop was alive with men, but none of them noticed the new arrivals except to curse them for being in the way. The men cursed one another ferociously and ran back and forth, with boxes of ammo and C rations. Over on the next hill the men in Quentin’s battalion could see the little black figures of the 3rd Battalion toiling doggedly up the slope toward other little black figures at the top.

Their first reaction was to tiptoe back down the hill and get the hell out of the way before they disturbed somebody or were run over; or at least to go back down and come up properly this time, in squad column with scouts out. They stood around awkwardly, trying to see, waiting for someone to tell them what they were supposed to do, feeling like poor relations at the family reunion.

Quentin found himself standing beside Fred Beeson, the supply sergeant, who had insisted on coming to see the fun.

“I thought they’d have a better system of supply than this in combat,” Beeson said excitedly. “Didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Quentin said, wondering what had become of the First. He looked around to see if he could see Shelb. His eyes found the First, over on the right. The big man was kneeling over some cases of grenades and hacking at them with his bayonet as if he were using a machete, deftly splitting box after box open around the middle.

“Hey, hey! let’s go!” the First, who still had his Listerine bottle, whooped, drunkenly happy. “Let’s go, let’s go. Here’s grenades. Who wants grenades?” he hollered, pulling the black containers out of the racked boxes and forward-passing them like footballs at arms raised out of the crowd.

“Let’s go, you men!” he roared at them. “What the hell you guys waiting for?”

“Yeah,” somebody said indecisively, “what we waiting for?”

They started fixing bayonets, as if each man had thought of it first, individually by himself, and then they were walking down the hill with the Company Commander in the lead, as if that were the most nearly normal thing to do, under the circumstances.

“Get your eggs here!” the First howled at them happily as they passed. “Nice fresh yard eggs!”

Quentin found himself in motion between the mess sergeant and two of the cooks. They had also come along to see the fun. Wondering again where Shelb was, he looked around and discovered he was surrounded by fun-seeking members of the cook force.

“This is better’n slingin’ hash any day,” one of them grinned at him excitedly.

“Yeah,” Quentin said.
We’re in combat,
he thought; and then repeated it:
we’re
in combat.
Was this all there was to it?

Ahead of them the hill sloped down, long and gradual and quite bare, to a brushy creek at the bottom. Ahead was the steep hill where the black figures of the 3rd Battalion were still toiling doggedly, but closer to the top now.

As Quentin watched them, he saw one marionette at the top throw something down at another marionette below him. The second marionette turned without hesitation and jumped out from the side of the hill as a man jumps out from a ladder. He fell maybe seven yards before he hit again and began to roll. From where he had jumped something burst black like a cannon cracker. The second marionette stopped rolling and got up and began to toil doggedly back up toward the top again. The first marionette had disappeared over the crest.

Then Quentin’s company was at the bottom, fighting through the brush and starting up the slope, and Quentin could not see the men at the top any more.

Mortar shells were beginning to drop down here and there around Quentin’s company, and that was when Quentin noticed that the explosions did not make any noise. Men around him were beginning to shuck out of their combat packs and leave them where they fell.

Quentin shucked out of his own pack, wishing momentarily that he knew where Shelb was. He looked around.

He could not see Shelb, but way off to the left he saw Gorman a second, climbing doggedly. Then somebody came between. Gorman had no pack. Gorman’s face looked peculiar, as if somebody had poulticed it with plastic wood. The heel.

The silent mortar shell explosions were getting thicker, and the 3rd Battalion was puffing hard and digging holes along the military crest, in the shelter of the real crest of the hill. As the uneven line passed through between the holes on to-ward the real crest, the diggers glared up at them furiously without stopping digging. Then Quentin’s company was over the crest and going down the second hill toward the jungle that came halfway up, only this time there was nobody in front of them and everything changed weirdly and seemed to shift its gears. Quentin felt as if a light bulb had been turned off in his mind. He was all alone in the silence of the dark locked closet.

He was also getting very tired.

Two strangers who were walking beside him on his left suddenly quit and lay down to rest. Quentin closed over automatically, wishing he had guts enough to quit and lay down to rest. That Gorman. Quentin’s legs ached, and a dull rage began to grow in him at this obvious laziness that would only leave more dirty work for him and Shelb to do.

A mortar shell burst silently in front of him and he saw three more strange men he did not know lie down to rest. Quentin felt like kicking them, but he closed over further left and went around. Smoke burned his eyes. One of the strangers yelled something at him. The other two strangers were asleep already. Quentin went on. There sure were a lot of strangers with the company today.

It was when he closed over that he saw Shelb for the first time since at breakfast. Shelb was walking with Joe Martuscelli and Al Zwermann and Gorman, off to Quentin’s left. Quentin had difficulty telling them apart; they all four seemed to be wearing the same poulticed face. As he opened his mouth to yell at them through the silence, a mortar shell geysered silently in front of them and three of them jerked, and lay down to rest. Only Shelb went on walking.

Quentin was outraged.
Who do they think they are? They’re no better than I
am. Or Shelb is. Is everybody going to quit but me and Shelb?

Joe Martuscelli sat back up and looked at Quentin dully. Shakily, he got to his feet with his rifle, holding his left arm close in to his side, and started on.

Sure,
Quentin thought furiously,
that damn Martuscelli, he always was a
goldbrick. Looks like me and Shelb will have to do it all.

Then Shelby, who had moved perhaps ten yards, dropped his rifle and put his hands to his face and fell down.

Why, damn him!
Quentin thought outragedly.
I thought at least he would
stick with me. What do they want me to do? win this war all by myself?

Shelb did not move and Martuscelli stumbled past him and went on. Shelb lay as he had fallen, face down and shoulders limp, his lax hands still up by his face.

Well, I’m damned,
Quentin thought disgustedly,
if he hasn’t fainted dead
away.
Embarrassment for his brother made him suddenly hate him for failing in the clutch.
Gone yellow. Can’t take it. Ought to go and kick him up.

“Hey!” the man on his right said. “There’s one. I see one.”

“Where?” Quentin said.

“There,” the man said. “Right there. See him?”

“No,” Quentin said. The man was a big man and right beside him but his voice came from a long way off.

“Well, I see him,” the big man said. He raised his ride and fired the whole clip into the jungle. “Must of missed him,” he said. “Come on.”

“Okay,” Quentin said. Then he stopped. Fifteen yards away on the edge of the jungle was a dark blob of wood on the side of a tree. Somehow his eyes had fastened themselves upon it and recognized it for a helmet. He was astounded.

“What is it?” the man beside him said.

“Shh,” Quentin said craftily. He dropped down to a kneeling position. No shooting from the offhand this time; he was taking no chances. The big man beside him stopped, trying to see what it was, and Quentin chuckled to himself.

As he took up the slack and started the squeeze, the helmet moved. Slowly and carefully it raised itself and a face appeared over the sights. Quentin was astonished. He touched her off and in firing was even more astonished to see the same plastic-wood poultice on this face, too.

Ha, he’s afraid,
he thought savagely, and all the hate and fear of the past two hours compressed itself into his forefinger vindictively.

The recoil slammed his shoulder and he kept both eyes open like he had been taught and saw the face open redly like a thrown tomato. A piece of bridgework popped out of the mouth.

“I got him!” Quentin yelled. “I got him!”

“Good work,” the big man said. “Congratulations.”

“Come on!” Quentin said. He jumped up to run to the tree. A mortar shell, a ninety, burst close by and slammed him right back down. He lay there stunned by the concussion, reminded that there were other Japanese. He had forgotten the war.

“Come on,” the big man beside him said “Get up. You ain’t hurt. Get up!” A big hand grabbed Quentin by the shoulder and hoisted him back up.

His chin was bleeding from a cut where it had hit a rock but it did not seem important. He wiped it off and started to walk on toward the jungle. The big man stayed close beside him. All around them groups of men were entering the jungle.

The dead Japanese lay sprawled out on his back. The bullet had gone in just below his nose and smashed the teeth. Thick glue-like blood had filled the mouth and run out at both corners to hang in strips down to the ground.

“He looks awful dead,” Quentin said, looking at the other man. Slowly, he recognized him; it was the First. But his face looked different.

“Your face looks different,” Quentin said.

“So does yours,” the First said.

“It does?” Quentin said. He felt of his face. “I need a shave,” he said. He picked up the piece of bridgework that had popped out of the Jap’s mouth and stuck it between his helmet and the liner strap and struck a pose for the First.

“The immortal infantryman,” the First said. “How about his wallet?”

“I forgot!”

Quentin fished it out of the grimy shirt pocket. There was a picture. It showed a Japanese woman holding a baby and smiling toothily. There was Japanese writing in up-and-down lines on the back. There was no money.

“Tough luck,” the First grinned.

“Mine by right of conquest,” Quentin said. “I guess you won’t be so damn wise about clerks now, will you?”

“Nope,” the First said. “I guess not.”

“You and Gorman.”

“Want a little drink?” the First said.

“Sure,” Quentin said. The rifle fire was getting heavier down below in the jungle. He wiped his mouth. “Hear that? Come on.” He turned down toward the firing, then turned back. “Did you see that damn Shelb poop out back there on the hill?”

“No,” the First said. “I didn’t see him.”

“He was right beside us.”

“I didn’t see him,” the First said, impassively.

“You don’t have to kid me,” Quentin said. “I know you saw him. Wait’ll I get my hands on him! I’ll beat his damned head in!” He moved away between the trees down the hill toward the firing, looking for more Japs to kill.

“He’ll never make a soldier. Come on, First, let’s go,” he said eagerly to the man moving slowly behind him. “Come on, damn it, let’s go.”

“I’m coming,” the First said, watching up in the trees. “Go ahead. I’m right beside you. Go ahead, you’re doing fine.”

“He ought to be shot,” Quentin said.

“Watch the trees,” the First said. “You’re doing fine.”

Playboy
bought and published this one in October 1955 right after I wrote it, largely because I was famous then and they were jazz specialists.
Playboy
thought of it as “a sort of Profile, not a story” but didn’t know what to do about this and printed it anyway. I myself think of it as a good example of the ‘Double Plot’ story, in which two stories, almost unrelated but spiritually connected, are taking place. For me the real story is the story of the college band, and what happens to them, like has happened to so many hundreds and thousands of others.

W
HEN WE MET
Willy Jefferson, “King” Jefferson, our band had already been following his progress for over five years. His records used to cause more argument in our band than Stephen Grappelli’s Hot Four and the question of whether the violin ought not to be morally disqualified as a jazz instrument. All we had to do was to put on some of King’s records and listen to that trumpet and we would end up by bringing in everybody from Panassié and Rudi Blesh to Dave Dexter, Jr.

Our whole band were juniors in high school when they were combing the backwoods of Louisiana looking for King. The next summer, when Bob Rhynolds of US Records finally found him, our band was playing its first booking away from home ground as a truly professional outfit. We manufactured schmaltz for ten weeks in the pavilion at Seraphan Lake upstate for the dancers. Our high school music director led the outfit. We had to put up with him because he got the job for us. He was friends with the owner and also had the soft-drinks concession. We came home from there sick of Guy Lombardo, but with our minds made up to all go together in a body to the same university so we could continue to develop our band as a unit, in spite of the parents.