The captain wasn’t at all pleased with me; but he only said, calmly, “There are no strings attached to this hearing. We were merely requested to move it up a few weeks, to give a federal prosecutor-in Chicago-the opportunity to speak with you. Nobody’s requiring you to do anything.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But I’m sure the government would appreciate your cooperation in this matter.”
“Yes, sir.”
“After all, it is one government. The same government prosecuting these gangsters is the one you chose to defend-enlisting, out of patriotic zeal.”
Out of a bottle is more like it, I thought, but was smart enough to “repress” that, too.
“At any rate, we’ve been asked to consider your case, and we do have a few more questions for you.”
The interview covered a lot of things-my memories and my feelings about what had happened on Guadalcanal. How and why I lied about my age enlisting. They even talked to me about the suicide of my father. One of them seemed to find it significant that I had carried the gun my father killed himself with as my personal weapon, thereafter. I explained that I had done that to make sure I never took killing too lightly, never used the thing too easily. But you killed in combat, didn’t you? Yes, I said, but I left that gun home.
Anyway, it covered lots of ground, including how my malaria hadn’t flared up since I first got here, and I didn’t lose my temper anymore or crack wise and the captain seemed to like me again by the end of the interview. I was dismissed. There were chairs just outside the conference room, where I could sit and wait for the verdict. I sat and looked at the speckled marble floor. Part of me wanted a smoke, but I didn’t give in.
“Hi.”
I looked up. It was that pretty little nurse from the fourth floor; I hadn’t seen her in weeks. She was a student nurse actually. Her name was Sara, and we’d struck up a friendship.
“Well, hello,” I said.
“Mind if I sit down?”
“I’d mind if you didn’t.”
She sat, smoothed out the white apron over the checked dress; her blouse was blue, her cap white. And her eyes were still light blue, freckles still trailed across a cute pugish nose. She had some legs; you can have Betty Grable.
“I heard you were getting your Board of Review today,” she said. “I just wanted to come down and wish you luck.”
“Too late for that. I already said my piece.”
“I wouldn’t worry. You’ve made remarkable progress. I don’t know of anybody ever getting a Board of Review after only a couple of months.”
“Uncle Sam has something else in mind for me, that’s all.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. Just a federal grand jury they want me to testify to, for some stupid extortion racket that dates back before the war.”
Her tight little smile crinkled her chin. “It all seems so…unimportant, somehow, doesn’t it? What happened before the war.”
“Yeah. It all kind of pales, that life back there.”
“You’ll be going back to it.”
I shook my head. “It’s all changed. Haven’t you heard, lady? There’s a war on.”
“Nate. Are you sleeping better now?”
I put a smile on for her. “Oh, yeah. Sure. Fine. No problem.”
“You had some rough nights on the fourth floor.”
“I graduated to the floors below, remember? I’m the wonder boy, or I would be if I were younger.”
“You weren’t sleeping much at all. And when you did…”
When I did I had nightmares of combat and I woke up screaming, like Monawk.
“Not anymore,” I said. “Ah, you know, that Doc Wilcox is a whiz. He put my head back together, piece by piece. I feel great.”
“You have dark circles under your eyes.”
I was glad she wasn’t on the Board of Review.
“I’m fine, honestly. If I wasn’t sleeping, how could I be so bright and cheery today?”
“You get plenty of rest sitting around the dayroom. You seem able to catch naps, sitting there, not knowing you’re sleeping. But at night-”
At night, sleep refused to come, until I was so tired it and the nightmares sneaked up on me, like a Jap with a knife in the dark.
“It’s not a problem, anymore. Really. Gosh, Sara, it was nice of you to stop down and wish me luck.”
“I know you’re still not sleeping. I know you’re still having the nightmares.”
“Sara, please…”
“I’m not going to say anything. I know you’re keeping it to yourself so the doctors won’t keep you in here. You want to go home, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, and suddenly my goddamn eyes were wet. What is this shit!
She slipped her arm around my shoulder. “Come ’ere, big boy.”
I wept into her blue blouse, and she patted me like a baby. Another woman did that once, babied me while I bawled; I’d seen somebody I cared for die, violently, and it had rocked me, and Sally had helped me through that.
“There, there,” Sara said.
I sat up, glancing around, hoping nobody saw me. After all, I wouldn’t want to look like a nut in a mental ward; people would talk.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m not going to say anything to the doctors. You’ll be better off back in Chicago, anyway. Do you really know some of the people you say you know?”
“Yeah. What’s wrong, haven’t you ever met anybody famous?”
“Oh sure. Napoleon, for instance, and a guy who thinks he’s Hitler.”
“Did you ever consider that if you had the genuine articles they’d be in the right place?”
She smiled broadly, showed me those pretty childlike teeth. “Good point.” She stood. “If you’re ever in Washington again, try and look me up.”
“Are you implying you’d go out with a former mental patient?”
“Sure,” she said. “There’s a man shortage.”
“Some compliment. Say, how’s Dixon doing?”
Her cheerful expression faded and she shook her head; sat back down. “Not so good. He’s up on the sixth floor. No early Board of Review for him.”
“Damn. What about that Navy guy who wasn’t talking, the uh, what did you say his condition was called?”
“Catatonic,” she said, and started to giggle.
“What’s so funny?”
“I shouldn’t laugh. You remember the fuss he made, when we fed him with a tube?”
I had helped her, on several occasions, her and the corpsman, feed the guy his mixture of tomato juice, milk, raw eggs, and purged meats and stuff; if they won’t eat, they get this concoction in a tube down the throat, but this guy-completely clammed up otherwise and placid as glass-would go berserk when you tried to put the tube in him.
“He’s started to talk,” she said. “He’s had some shock treatments, and he’s talking now. He told us why he squirmed so when we tube-fed him.”
“Yeah?”
“He thought it was an enema and we were putting it in the wrong end.”
We sat and laughed and laughed and pretty soon I was crying again, but it was a different kind, a better kind.
She stood.
