Sergeant Dickinson (9 page)

It had been a booby trap, two grenades strung on a trip wire, that had got Jeff. It was cancer that had got the bald sergeant on the Stryker frame who was crying now behind his eyes, in fitful sleep. The sergeant's hair had been burned away with cobalt. An anesthesiologist had made a mistake during a myelogram, and so the sergeant was a paraplegic. He deceived himself that he was going to live, that the innocuous pills they gave him each morning would prolong his life until a miracle medical breakthrough would make
him well again. He would be able to walk again and his hair would grow back and the cancer would go away.

His wife had visited him today. She did not wear a bra and her breasts bounced inside her blouse when she walked. She was an attractive woman and he had treated her badly, as always.

I wished that he would finish dying. I despised the soft pleadings for a cigarette, the infantile whinings accompanying requests to the orderly to turn him onto his back or stomach, the inert grotesque figure which reminded us all of our mortality, our terror, our secret cowardice. I knew that he knew inside himself that he was going to die, was already dead, and that he hated his wife because she was going to live and make love to other men. I had watched as he punished her with his words. I saw how her eyes retreated behind a protective glaze and how the lines at the corners of her eyes deepened. I knew that she was tired of it all.

My thumb throbbed, and in response to the surge of pain the nerves in the other fingers jumped all the way to the shoulder, leaving my arm numb and aching, as after an electrical shock.

Every night just before dropping off I would see the hand again as I had seen it right after the explosion, the white bone under the white tendon, the quick welling of blood out of the holes where the flesh was gone. Every night, just before falling finally to sleep, I would see this again and I would force myself awake to keep from seeing it and later I
would see it again but with less intensity and then at last I would sleep.

Smythe, who inhabited the bed next to mine, said that pain was a builder of character. Smythe spelled his name S-m-y-t-h-e rather than S-m-i-t-h and he pronounced it Smythe. I wondered whether Smythe's father spelled his name the same way.

Smythe said that pain was a builder of character. Smythe was either very young or very brave or he had very little physical sensitivity. I was neither very young nor very brave and my damaged hand hurt more than I thought it should. I knew that suffering did not build character, that if you had enough pain over a long enough time, it ate up your strength, it destroyed your courage. My hand hurt more at night than during the day and I feared the coming of each night.

The thumb and fingertips jumped suddenly and the nerves went into electrical charge to my elbow and settled there.

The saints seared themselves to their cores. Christ Himself burned away His dross in the desert. They starved and tortured themselves, seeking their essence. The revolutionists advocate long war, that only the fittest, the purest of themselves, should survive. But what if, after you got to where you were going, you had gone too far? What if you had passed right through and destroyed the best of yourself so that all you were left with was false direction?

Wendell came like a ghost through the ward and put his face in front of mine. He put two fingers crossways in front of his mouth. I handed him my cigarettes. He shook one out of the pack. “Give me one,” I said.

He stuck a cigarette between my lips and set the pack down on my chest. I put the matches in his hand. One flared and before he lit his cigarette he held the match low under his face and made an evil grin. After he lit his own cigarette he lit mine.

“Wendell. Give me the matches.”

I felt him grin again. Then the matches were on my chest next to the cigarettes and Wendell was gone.

Wendell had been machine gunned in the heart, stomach, and brain. The heart and the stomach had been repaired but part of his brain had been removed. You could still see the stitch marks on his scalp where the hair had not grown over them. He stole food from others and hid it under his pillow. One morning he woke up with cherry pie smeared all over his face and hair. We all enjoyed that and laughed over it, and Wendell laughed too. He continued to hide food under his pillow, apparently forgetting about it unless it had been crushed into his hair during the night. After he rediscovered masturbation he did not steal food so often.

His mother bought him a portable television, a radio, a plastic model of the Starship Enterprise. He broke them all. He masturbated and when she tried to put a sheet over him he vilified her. After a while she stopped crying in front of him and he stopped vilifying her. When she had the television repaired he began to spend his days watching it. She
didn't come in to see him today. He didn't seem to notice.

“Can't sleep, Sarge?”

“Hey, Tanner. Didn't know you were on duty.”

“Not supposed to smoke in bed, Sarge.”

“Okay. You want to put this out for me? I can't reach the ashtray.”

“Sure. You want another Darvan?”

“No. I'm all right.”

“All right. Try to get some sleep, Sarge.”

The thumb throbbed, the nerves jumped, but distantly. Soon, I knew, I would be asleep. I tried to think about how it was the first time I was wounded, but all I saw were the bones of my hand.

I lit a cigarette. When I was younger I thought about women in the time between wakefulness and sleep. I did not think so much about women anymore. At night, in the dark, with only the glow and flare of my cigarette to distract my vision, I wove faces and terrain as one would weave a tapestry. At first the knowledge of the ground was certain, but gradually the contours receded into my mind and only the color, blurred, brown, was left to my eye to recall. And often, without the intent, I put parts from different faces together to form one, so that I would know the features individually and could supply the name of the man to whom the brow or the jawline belonged, but I would not know the
face or the man in his entirety. All of the faces had the skin stretched taut and shiny around the eyes and temples, like fear revealed through parchment.

A neural jolt struck to my elbow, shoulder, and heart. My chest hurt and my arm throbbed and radiated heat. After a while my breathing became rhythmical again.

What was important to remember, you see, was that the war was not ever going to end. We were not going to quit and they were not going to quit, and the people we were supporting were not going to quit and the people they were supporting were not going to quit. Because quitters never win and winners never quit. We were all good sports about that, about not quitting. You didn't want to let anybody down, you see, not the coach and not the team and not the fans, either. People expected it of you, not to quit. The important thing was not how you played the game, but whether or not you played in it. So it was important to remember that nobody was going to quit, and the war was not ever going to end, and playing the game was all there was, and never mind how you played it.

At least the other side had a program. We had no program, we were only against their program. We had an anti-program. We did the same things they did but we called them by opposite names. We did not practice terrorism and guerrilla war, we practiced counterterrorism and counter-guerrilla war. Maybe when we had practiced enough to be as good at it as they were, things would make sense. They
seemed to for the other side. We did the same things but they were able to make sense out of what they did and we only did what we did. So if the war was everything and our doing it was all there was to do, we had better learn to like it. And I did like it. Oh yes, I did, oh indeed I liked it. I liked the almost dying and then the not dying. Oh yes. There is nothing like it, nothing is as good. What is it the Marines say? “You haven't lived until you've almost died.” And it's true. It's true. Almost dying and afterward is the best thing there is. I watched the war protesters on television and I could see the pleasure on their faces. They knew what they were after. They, too, embraced the Great Inversion. What was good is bad, what was bad is good. We are all standing on our heads. But they risked so little. What was jail or a beating compared to death itself. They were still babies. But they were after something, you could see that. You could see that they knew there was something there. Someday, if they hadn't already, they would spawn killers. And then we would know each other very well indeed.

So far I had killed only one man that I could be certain of, and it, the killing, had left something sad inside of me, as though the boy I had shot had taken something of me away with him. The sadness had gotten smaller but it was still there. I did not know really that I wanted it to go away, for there was a recognition of something that went with it that I did not want to lose. I felt, though, that if I killed more I would not know more, but instead that sad place would be sealed off from me forever. One killing was tolerable, I thought, and even good if you could keep from considering
the victim; it took away much of your ability to deceive yourself. But further killings, I thought, would construct another, different, deception, and I was afraid of where that one would lead. I laughed: body count. We were fighting a war with the singular purpose of killing, and I had neglected to tally my bag. I had forgotten to tell that sergeant with the clipboard to add my one to his numbers. It was really very funny. Killing not even for numbers but for itself. It was hilarious.

“You're gonna get me in trouble, Sarge, smoking in bed.”

“Okay. This is my last one.”

“I believe it. You know, it's almost dawn.”

“Time flies when you're having fun.”

“Ha ha, Sarge. I worry about you. I really do.”

“I don't need a mother, Tanner.”

“Fuck you too, Sarge. I'm gonna find you an ashtray. You're really fucking up my floor.”

“There's one on the table.”

In the morning Lieutenant Laurel, the ward nurse today, came into the ward to see if there were some way in which she could be helpful. There was not. She stuck her finger into Smythe's side and tried to rouse him. When he did not wake up she went away.

After breakfast Specialist Four Nurse's Aide Coker came in to change the sheets and pillowcases.

“Hey, Coker,” Smythe, who was now fully awake, called. “Do you know what a Polack joke is?”

“No, I don't know what that kind of joke is,” Coker replied cheerily.

“Listen. I'll tell you one.”

“Did you see that movie on the television last night? It was a wonderful movie. It made me cry.”

“No. What was it about?”

“I forget.”

“You forgot? Well, listen, don't you want to hear my joke? I guarantee it'll make you laugh.”

“No. I don't want to listen to it.” Coker had already turned her back to him and was walking rapidly toward the door.

“Hey, Smythe.” I twisted to face him. “Don't tell her the joke.”

“Why not? It's a good joke.”

“She's afraid that if you start telling Polack jokes you'll tell Negro jokes next.” Nurse's Aide Coker was black.

“Come on.”

“I'm serious.”

“Really? You think that's why she ran away?”

“Yes.”

Later in the morning Coker came back to finish changing the sheets. Smythe asked, “Do you know how you can tell when a Polish nurse isn't wearing panties?”

“No, how?” Coker asked.

“You can see the dandruff on her patent leather shoes.”

And Nurse's Aide Coker laughed merrily.

Major Harkness pulled a chair around from in front of the bed and sat down.

“How's the hand?”

“It's still there. Sometimes I wish it would go away.”

“You were lucky. You'll probably keep all of your fingers.”

“If you just cut it off at the wrist, how long would it take the stump to heal?”

“No faster than it's taking the fingers to heal. Does it hurt much at night?”

“Yes. Also when I clean it.”

The major nodded. “Except for the penis, the fingers are the most sensitive part of the body. Lots of nerve endings there. Have you cleaned them yet today?”

“Once. just before you came in.”

“How are you sleeping? All right?”

“Well enough.”

“You could have more Darvan if you want it.”

“No. I'm sleeping all right. I doze during the day, too.”

“You don't have to worry about getting addicted to it. We won't let you have that much.”

“No. I don't want any more. One is enough. I always get some sleep sooner or later.”

“Are you dreaming? Are you having nightmares?”

“Some.”

“About the war?”

“I think so. I don't always remember them.”

“Do you want to see a psychologist?”

“No. I'll work it out.”

“All right. Have you been to San Francisco before?”

“Once, when I was a kid.”

“You're from southern California, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I prefer northern California myself. San Francisco is a great city.”

“That's how I remember it.”

“It gets nicer in the spring. You get more sun then.”

“Will I be here that long?”

“We'll do the skin graft in a couple of weeks. If it takes, we'll probably release you six weeks later.”

“Christ. What if it doesn't take?”

“We'll do it over. What's your hurry? Don't you like the food?”

“Love it. So what. Look, do you think I'll be able to stay in the Army?”

“I don't see any reason you couldn't if you wanted to. There are plenty of guys in worse shape than you who are staying in. Do you want to stay in the Army?”

“I don't know. But I'd like to be able to make the choice myself.”