Hanging on

Kelly was fascinated by Danny Dew's relationship with the dozer, because he'd never thought a black man needed a virility symbol. White men bought fast cars or owned guns, built huge and phallic homes and amassed fortunes. But a colored man needed no symbol of his manhood. His manhood was formidable enough to speak for itself. Yet here was Danny Dew with a virility symbol he could not do without. In the morning, he washed the dozer in the river, oiled it, greased and polished it. In the afternoon, he raced it back and forth across the field for fifteen minutes, because he was afraid it would come to feel unwanted unless it was used every day. In the evening, he slept on its wide tread, on a bundle of folded blankets, forsaking his cot in the main bunker. At odd moments, he amorously caressed the wheel, the clutches, the seat, the backrest…

If you asked — few ever did — he explained in detail about the hydraulic steering clutches, the forward reverse lever which allowed you to drive in all speeds front and back, the booster springs… the stressed blade… the four mammoth cylinders!

One night when they had been drinking, Kelly asked Danny Dew why he needed a virility symbol. And Dew said, “Because of my balls.”

“Your balls?” Kelly had asked.

“My testicles,” Danny said glumly.

“They're gone?”

“No. I've got them.”

“Well?”

“They're not normal. My testicles are abnormal.”

“Abnormal?” Kelly asked, incredulous.

Danny took a drink of whiskey. “It's been the curse of my life, Kelly. I feel silly. And feeling silly makes me feel inadequate — and so I need the dozer.”

Kelly hesitated, drank. Then, “What's wrong with your — balls?”

“They're silly.”

Major Kelly's face felt fuzzy. He wiped at imaginary cobwebs. “Yes, but how are they silly?”

Danny was exasperated. He waved his arm for emphasis. “Silly! They just are, that's all. They're laughable.”

“Has anyone ever laughed at them?” Kelly asked.

“Everybody who's seen them.” Danny looked suicidal.

“Even the girls in Eisenhower?” Kelly asked, recalling how easily Danny had gotten the girls there.

“Even them.” Danny took a drink and let whiskey run out the corner of his mouth. He didn't seem to know he was losing it.

Kelly poured another drink. He was only using the whiskey as an excuse not to ask what, finally, he had to ask. “Could I see your funny testicles?” When Danny sighed, Kelly said, “I don't want to touch them.”

“Sure, sure,” Danny said, as resigned as a weak woman submitting to a powerful rapist.

“You don't think this is an odd request?” Kelly asked anxiously.

“No,” Dew said. “Everyone wants to see them when they hear how damn funny they are.” He stood, unzipped his pants with considerable fumbling effort, reached inside, cupped himself, and revealed his cock and balls.

“What's funny about them?” Kelly asked.

“Come on,” Danny said. “I can see you want to laugh. I'm used to it.”

“They're perfectly ordinary,” Kelly said. He looked closely, because he wanted a good laugh, needed a good laugh, but he couldn't find anything funny about them.

“Don't be sarcastic. Go ahead and laugh, but don't make it any worse.”

“Really, Dan, there isn't—”

“Shit,” Danny Dew said. “You're smirking behind that frown. You think you'll make me let down my defenses— and then you'll laugh at me. I know you sadists. Come on, now. Everyone laughs. No one's ever sympathetic.”

“Nothing to be sympathetic about,” Kelly said. “You have ordinary—”

“There!” Dew said, pointing and grinning. “That's better! Laugh. Go on, don't worry, laugh your head off. That's the way!”

Kelly looked around the blanket-walled room. Only the two of them were there, and neither of them was laughing. “I'm not laughing,” he said.

“That's it!” Danny went on. He slapped the table, grinning and nodding his head. “Laugh it up. I told you they were funny!”

“But—”

“Well, now, try to be decent about it,” Danny Dew said, no longer grinning. “You don't have to laugh that hard. You'll make yourself sick if you keep it up, for Christ' sake. Now, stop it!”

“Who's laughing?” Kelly wanted to know. He wasn't laughing at all.

“Stop it, you bastard!” Danny said. “Come on, Kelly!” He put his balls away and zipped his fly, stepped back against the blanket. “I'm going to leave if you don't stop. You ought to be ashamed. Do you laugh at cripples and blind men?” He lifted the blanket flap. “You get hold of yourself. I'll expect an apology.” He left.

To the empty room, Kelly said, “But I wasn't laughing, Danny.”

It was a shame, the major thought later, that Danny Dew — who could think himself into being anyone else in the world — could not pretend himself another set of balls if he thought his own were funny. Not even Danny Dew, who could become a white man at will, not even Danny could escape everything.

So thanks to Danny Dew, the bridge was completed at two o'clock in the morning, twenty-six hours after the unit set to work on it. The last of the men staggered out of the ravine like the dead returning from hell. They had worked a sweltering day and a muggy night, and they could hardly see where they were going. Most of them trudged back to the main bunker, but no one wanted to sleep underground. They fell down in the grass and looked at each other and mumbled about the heat and fell asleep. A few men could not sleep, at first. They had been driven to the limits of their endurance, and they had come around the bend of exhaustion to a sort of manic insomnia. But in an hour, lulled by the snores of their fellows, they too slept.

A score of men went to the rec room where there was ice for cold drinks that Maurice supplied. Privates Hoskins and Malzberg were trying to start a poker game in the rec room, even though they were almost too tired to shuffle the cards. The men slumped on the benches and floor and looked at Hoskins and Malzberg as if they were insane. Actually, they were.

Hoskins sat at a scarred table talking to the men. “You worked hard,” he told them. “You deserve a little fun, an interesting game.”

Malzberg, the tallest in the unit, stood in the middle of the room and spread his arms despairingly. “We're doomed anyway,” he said, in a rumbling voice full of the sadness of ages. “We've no chance. We're all dead men. We can't afford to throw away our last precious hours of life in sleep.”

By the time he'd finished, all the men in the room had fallen asleep.

“Blackjack?” Hoskins asked.

Malzberg sat down, dwarfing the table. “Deal,” he said.

Fifteen minutes later, even they were asleep.

6

“Kelly, wake up.”

The major snorted, blinked, opened his eyes and looked directly into Private Tooley's flashlight. “Turn that thing off!”

Tooley turned it off, blinding both of them. They were only inches away from each other, but it was like being sealed up in two separate cans side by side on a grocery shelf. Talking from his can, the pacifist said, “I have