Point of No Return Read online

  This southern Colonel would have to be satisfied quick because he was all set not to leave a man alone. He looked like an average Colonel, young, twenty-eight or so, probably pretty stuck on himself with that build and that wavy brown hair and those silver oak leaves, not too bad, just southern.

  One of the players had backed out of the game and was counting his money with an air of innocent wonderment. They’re sure taking kids in this army, Jacob Levy thought. This one didn’t look as if he’d started shaving yet. Jacob Levy said, “Are we in Germany here, Mac?”

  “We was in Belgium yesterday,” Pfc Hammer said. “I know that.”

  “Germany,” Sergeant Follingsby said. He was stoking the stove. “I don’t know exactly where at. Aachen’s someplace around here, I heard Lieutenant Hooper say.”

  “Thanks.” So now it was Germany and it was no different. In the trucks they’d come through villages that you couldn’t hardly tell from France or Belgium or even Italy. What made these crazy European people stay in these godawful little towns? The only difference in Italy was there’d be more children and more women washing their laundry in a horse trough. Who’d want to live in the filthy dumps, no roofs, no windows, smashed to hell, wars all the time? Why hadn’t they got up and left a couple of hundred years ago? And the way they went on fighting about their countries you’d imagine they really had something to fight for.

  Jacob Levy closed his eyes and began to think about the place where he was going when the war was over, if he didn’t get that third wound. For a long time he planned simply to go home. He had never considered whether he liked his city, his house or his life; they were what he had and all he knew. But in the last hospital, perhaps because he doubted the chance of ever getting home at all, he began to dream of a new place and an unknown life. St. Louis was allright; he never had any trouble there. He knew a lot of people, maybe you could call them friends; he’d played football at Soldan High and that sort of fixed things up for him; Poppa’s store would be his, just the way it was Poppa’s, a family business; they’d lived in the house on Enright and Clarendon since he was born and comparing it with the holes he’d seen in Italy and France, he knew how good a house it was. His folks weren’t the nagging kind, always asking questions; he could do what he wanted, with his own front door key and the use of the car whenever he asked for it. There was everything to go back to. He did not want to go back.

  For a time, not knowing where to fix his hope made him sick the way the pain in his side made him sick. But it was hard to plan a life if you didn’t know how to do anything, except the stuff the army taught you and helping Poppa in the store. Even helping Poppa wasn’t knowing anything; he only knew what anybody could do, mixing sodas and wrapping packages and finding the things people asked for and saying how much they cost.

  Then, slowly, and yet like revelation, Jacob Levy found what he wanted.

  Every summer the family took a trip in the car for two weeks, to a different place. Poppa used to say he wanted to go to Europe some year. If Poppa only knew; they were lucky they’d stayed in America. These holidays were blurred together: Lake Michigan, New York City, Miami Beach, the Ozarks. But there was one summer which Jacob Levy started to remember, in the last hospital, as if he were living again under that same sun. Softened by time, gentle, safe, the memory of a stream in the Smokies came back to him. He knew it as well as Enright Avenue, though he had only been there once, in the summer of 1936, when they were driving to Charleston. And, thinking of this quiet place, he knew that he had never liked cities, and had never truly wanted the life he was born to. There were too many people around in cities; they expected something of you or they were waiting to criticize you. They sort of looked at you; they talked too much; they were always in a hurry. Momma and Poppa could come and visit him or maybe he’d go and see them once in a while. But where he wanted to live was by his stream.

  The stream was so cold it hurt your hands to cup up the water. It was bright and clear like ice, but it ran over smooth brown rocks and little patches of gravel and sand, so standing above it you might think the water was brown. There was an old wood bridge for wagons, but nothing ever came that way. The boards of the bridge were grey like elephant hide, and thick, and warm in the sun. Lying on the bridge, you had the world to yourself; the water made a rushing sound so loud you couldn’t hear anything else. There were ferns, like the ones in the florists’, growing down to the water, and moss on the big stones that stuck up at the side of the stream. The trees came together like a roof over the old dirt track of the road so it was all shaded, except for light green specks of sunshine. Those were birch trees and some other kind too. And there were some that turned their leaves inside out when the wind blew, so they looked silver. Plenty of pink and yellow and white flowers grew everywhere but nobody had planted them. No one would bother you in a place like this.

  Somewhere in those woods there was a sign, with an arrow, marked “Fish Hatchery.” He did not know what a fish hatchery looked like, or what anybody did there, but he could learn, considering all he’d been able to learn in Basic. He’d get a job and it didn’t matter what it paid because he would need so little. He was going to build his own shack out of logs from the woods and the stones of the stream bed. And later make a vegetable garden. There would be enough money saved up for this from the years in the army. And he would live there, not worrying or thinking about people, or trying to please anybody, for he wanted everything easy and quiet from now on out.

  Poppa might kick at first. He’d say he had built up the business for him, it wasn’t everybody had a business established since twenty-three years, no debts, all that goodwill, and customers who wouldn’t trade with anyone but Mr. Levy. Why couldn’t Jacob take over the drugstore like a good son who had his head screwed on straight? Momma would say, leave the boy alone, Poppa; maybe he needs a change, he’ll come out of it by himself, just leave him alone now. The guys from Soldan, unless they were killed somewhere in this war, would say what’s the idea being a hermit? The girls would say nothing because they would be married. But maybe he wouldn’t have to listen to all this gabbling and is-he-right-is-he-wrong. Maybe he’d already be in the place he had chosen, with nothing to hear but the noise of the clear brown water over the stones.

  Jacob Levy sat on his heels, tired, a little cold now, unmoving, and thought the same things he always thought. Then he reached inside his overcoat and unbuttoned the breast pocket of his jacket and took out the only personal possession he ever carried with him, which was a calendar. He did not have any ideas about when the war would end and he was not looking forward to a leave. He just crossed out the days on his calendar, and to see each day finished and sure not to come back gave him pleasure.

  I wish that sergeant would show up, Jacob Levy thought. His eyes burned and his back was getting chilled from the damp wall. There must be someplace, maybe in the attic or in a barn, where the Headquarters enlisted men slept; or maybe there was a tent he could squeeze in or maybe the guys were out there in the rain, in whatever holes they’d dug. He hoped this new Colonel wasn’t the kind that shouted orders at you. They seemed to be pretty nice fellows here in the message center, as if they’d been together a long time and got used to each other and would just as soon be friendly. Maybe he ought to find that sergeant himself; you never could tell how things worked in a new outfit. Jacob Levy slid down so that his legs stretched out on the red tiled floor, his head nodded forward on to the dirty wet overcoat, and he slept.

  The staff had eaten, making unfavorable remarks about fried spam, Bittelheim, the climate, the Corps M.P.’s who were alleged to have snafued traffic all the way to Paris, this forest from which no good might be expected, and now, still wet, cold, bored, generally disgusted, they had gone to sleep on their various square feet of floor. All except the S-2, Lieutenant Gaylord, and Sergeant Postalozzi, who were taking the first night shift. Major Hardcastle should have stayed up but since he came to supper sneezing and with a feverish look in his ey
es, and Doc Weber diagnosed flu, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers was replacing him.

  “Why don’t you get some sleep, Johnny?” Lieutenant Gaylord asked. “I’ll call you if anything comes up.”

  “I’ll stay around.” It was no hardship to sit up with Bill; he liked Bill the way you would like someone at home, in peace time. He could act natural but Bill wouldn’t take advantage of that. Of course there were a few things they couldn’t talk about: the oak leaves and the silver bars precluded absolute candor. Lieutenant Colonel Smithers thought, with amusement: look at that guy, would you? As usual, Bill’s uniform appeared to have flown together and settled on him. He had folded a blanket on the seat of a kitchen chair, tipped the chair against the wall, stretched his feet out on a box, and now gave the impression of a man gloriously at ease on an overstuffed sofa.

  Lieutenant Colonel Smithers was reading a poop sheet that had filtered down from Division. This document discussed the responsibility of unit commanders in the matter of trench feet.

  “Why don’t they send me some overshoes,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers asked, “instead of this slop?”

  Sergeant Postalozzi, brooding over the papers that always accompany replacements, knew that no reply was required from him. And this is Captain Waines’ job, Sergeant Postalozzi thought, I’m exploited is what I am. Lieutenant Gaylord did not bother to answer. For two hours that afternoon he had appealed to charity and threatened blackmail, in an effort to find some liquor for Johnny. Johnny needed a drink. Johnny was wound up tighter than a clock. But there wasn’t a bottle anywhere or else Regiment was full of lying miserly bastards. He never expected things to be good so he was not upset, the way Johnny was, when things became worse. Besides, he had taken the precaution of borrowing a book called “Murder Makes Merry” from the Regimental S-3; his night was fixed. And meanwhile he had to catch up on L’il Abner.

  “Bill,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said. “You seen my new driver?”

  “Just saw him.”

  “What do you make of him?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” This was the first Stars and Stripes in four days. Lieutenant Gaylord had saved L’il Abner until last and needed quiet to enjoy it.

  “He’s a Jew,” said Lieutenant Colonel Smithers.

  “Fine old Jewish name, Levy.”

  “He don’t seem very bright.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “I can’t get over that pan of his,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers went on.

  “He ought to go in the movies. He could call himself Jack Lee. He’d have the women squirming from New York to California.”

  “Yeh.”

  Lieutenant Gaylord finished L’il Abner, laughed, and said, “It was good today.”

  “Where’s Levy from, Sergeant?” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers asked.

  “He didn’t say nothing to me, sir.” Sergeant Postalozzi was having no part of this business. Could Levy help it if he looked like Victor Mature, only more soulful? The soulful angle came from being in the hospital so long, as anyone could tell except somebody like the Colonel who’d never been hit. Sergeant Postalozzi had been wounded and once was enough. He came from Detroit, worked at the Fisher Body plant, belonged to the C.I.O., and knew about Southerners: anti-union slave-driving KuKluxers, at heart. The Colonel was allright but sometimes he acted like everybody was a dog unless they came from south of the Mason Dixie line. And besides, being anti-semites was one of the reasons for this war, so at least the officers could remember that. And he would like to stuff these papers in the garbage or elsewhere, as the case might be. Levy didn’t ask any more questions than he had to, and he knew his job. They could lay off guys just because they weren’t southern gentlemen from some hick town in Georgia.

  “You never know where you’re at with a Jew,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers said.

  For God’s sake, Lieutenant Gaylord thought, won’t he ever stop worrying? He looks for things to worry about. What difference did it make if Levy was a Jew or a Catholic or a Chinaman or an Eskimo, as long as he could drive a jeep? Johnny took this war too personally.

  “I never had a Jew in my Battalion.”

  “Nobody’s going to blame you.”

  “Yeh, I know.”

  Lieutenant Gaylord was about to observe that Johnny should stop acting like an old woman. But seeing his commanding officer hunched over the mimeographed papers, he thought: it’s getting Johnny down. How did he know what it meant or cost, to command a Battalion? He wouldn’t want the job at any price; there was no rest for a man. Maybe Johnny worried all the time about everything because he had to, because he couldn’t stop; maybe Johnny himself was sick of it.

  Out of pity, Lieutenant Gaylord said, “What we need is a trip to Paris.” He knew it always cheered Johnny up to think about Paris. There wasn’t anything to worry about in Paris.

  Paree, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers thought, responding happily and at once as Lieutenant Gaylord had expected. This was the only memory that was anything like what you read about war, or heard or saw in the movies: his forty-eight hours leave in September. Those cute little French girls who walked around on stilt slippers, with their hair in a high wave over their foreheads, and their legs that were perfect but shorter from the knee to the ankle than the girls at home. His ribbons fresh from the PX and his uniform cleaned and pressed and the smell of that French shaving lotion. The night club on the Champs Elysées, all that glass and chromium and pictures painted on the walls and two orchestras and the girls in evening dresses, hanging all over you and chiselling drinks. The carriage in the park, voulez-vous, amour, and a brass bed as big as an LST, darleeng you are so wonderfool, darleeng, more.…

  “Paree,” Lieutenant Colonel Smithers sighed.

  Unexpectedly, Lieutenant Gaylord laughed. “You remember that captain from the 12th we saw this morning, Johnny?”

  “Yeh.”

  “Remember he told us how those touring correspondents from home came around and asked his men what they were fighting for and the G.I.’s acted like they had a mouthfull of it?”

  Now they were both laughing. They could see those soldiers’ faces as if they’d been there: the captain had said he’d nearly choked at the time.

  “I wish some correspondents would come around and ask me,” Lieutenant Gaylord said. “Gaylord knows, I’d say. Gaylord isn’t a dumb slob like most of these soldiers. Gentlemen, I’d say, Gaylord is fighting for one thing and one thing only.”

  Sergeant Postalozzi listened to the conversation of the officers with bored detachment. He looked at his watch and wondered how he could keep awake for another three hours. The army gave orders about everything except how you should get enough sleep. Suddenly Sergeant Postalozzi was filled with homesickness for the kind of talk he liked: a meeting of his local for instance, where the men would be serious, practical, shrewd and maybe a little angry; angry about something that counted, talking about something that mattered. The stupidity of war depressed Sergeant Postalozzi. Anyhow, Sergeant Postalozzi thought, for Levy’s sake it’s good the officers are still interested in women. Levy seemed like a pretty nice fellow; he might even belong to a union, where he came from.

  2

  The room smelled of bodies, the thick half-cooked breakfast bacon, damp plaster and stale cigarette smoke. At eight o’clock in the morning there was scarcely enough light for Lieutenant Colonel Smithers to write his weekly V-mail letter to his parents. “Things are pretty quiet up here and we’re not doing much but lay around taking it easy,” he wrote, paralyzed by boredom. There was nothing he could tell his family, nothing he wanted to tell, and very little he wanted to hear. His parents lived beyond time and measurable space in a world that seemed grotesque to him, a scurrying loud patriotic antheap where everyone babbled his stupid head off about the war as if any of them knew what they were talking about. What next, he asked himself. “I hope you’re all getting on fine.”

  He had been asleep with his eyes open, or simply numb, and was su
rprised to hear Sergeant Postalozzi say, “Message for you, sir.”

  He took the yellow message blank and as he read it, he felt what it said, like a gong thudding inside him. There was a cold still second while he listened to this warning. Then he was ready, as he always had been before, and became the certain man, Lieutenant Colonel John Dawson Smithers, commanding the Second Battalion, 277th Infantry, Twentieth Division, U. S. Army.

  “Tell Lieutenant Gaylord and Captain Martinelli to follow me over to Regiment right away,” he said, and took his raincoat from a nail on the wall, and was gone.

  The Battalion area seemed to be peopled by men who had all got drunk in the same obsessed way and were now engaged in carrying things idiotically from one place to another. There was a great deal of shouting. “Where’s Sergeant Black? Anybody seen Sergeant Black? He better show up. Lieutenant Gaylord wants him.” … “Where’s Lieutenant Grace? Well, for Christ’s sake, get him! S-4 wants him.” … “Where’s Captain Weber? How should I know? Regiment wants him.” The truck drivers regarded the horses, who were to replace wheeled transport in this mud, with dismay and suspicion. “We’re lousy mules is what we are,” said a telephone linesman, as he dumped a bundle of blankets on a khaki mound. “Move on, mule,” the Supply Sergeant said. The Catholic chaplain came over from Regiment and set up his confessional in a pup tent. The Protestant chaplain wandered around the Companies, saying kindly and encouraging words, and to some he opined that God would look after them. The recipients of this news took it with skepticism, having noticed God’s indifference to many of their friends; and besides this was a form of conversation that embarrassed them in broad daylight where other men could hear. At various times they had bargained with God, making many promises and crying silently for help; but that was a man’s own private business and nothing you wanted to talk about with a chaplain. PX rations were distributed; old debts of cigarettes and razor blades were repaid. Some men wrote letters home and some did not. They told each other, in the voice of disgust which was also the voice of pride, that whenever the situation was screwed up higher than a kite, their Battalion got called in to straighten out the mess.