Dog Tags (15 page)

“You're a help,” Gabol said.

“You haven't really asked me anything,” Benny said. “It's like the third grade here. We must all be happy that they went to heaven.”

“We'll change the subject,” Cornelius said. “Tell us about the quarrels, the fights. Race, politics, whatever.”

“There wasn't much, considering how long we were there. A few fights about thieving, a few raids, a little gang war, a little racial stuff, but that was unimportant.”

“Religion?”

Benny shook his head.

“Politics?”

“Some.” Ewald: rest in peace. “Not so much between progs and reactionaries either. They were segregated.”

“Then what was it?”

Benny indulged impish longings. “One: whether we should have gone in there or not. Two: whether it was better to give them what they wanted and take the food, the privileges, the amenities, or tell them to go to hell. Later on, three: whether our own government was selling us out. Four: whether Eisenhower was or was not less, as much, or more of a horse's ass than Truman.”

“You take this lightly,” Cornelius said, icy.

“Yessir. But it's the truth.”

“If he starts talking polite talk,” Gabol said, “it won't help us. Some of these other fellows are lying all the time.”

“Well, I understand that,” Cornelius said. “I can understand that normal standards of respect would suffer erosion.”

“Hear hear,” Benny said easily. Respect! Erosion! A plague on all their houses, on every plump, prating, pious Pecksniff … paranoia. “It was the only entertainment we had.”

“Tell us more about your second point,” Alex said. “The collaborating.”

“Nothing you can't guess. Once in a while a man would disappear suddenly, transferred or whatever, and we used to wonder if he'd gone over, or what. So somebody would say he damn well should have, and a fight would start. But anybody who said he damn well should have, could have done it himself, and didn't, so he was only making noise. More entertainment.”

“You're speaking now of your own squad. Platoon.”

“Yes. There were others. The broadcasts. The defectors. You know more about that than I do.”

“Yuscavage? Bewley?”

“Yuscavage just disappeared. Bewley was a Christian. And a Negro. Maybe that mattered.” He asked Gabol, “Any correlations?”

“Correlations? We haven't even got the facts yet.”

“Oh,” Benny said. “Facts.”

Cornelius tacked: “Were there women in the camp?”

“A few. Clerks. Not for us. Couldn't tell them from the men, hardly. Baggy pants, baggy jackets.”

“Were they used?”

“Used?”

“Bait?”

“Not that I know of.” Benny smiled wistfully but at the notion he glowed, prickled and throbbed. “They missed a trick, didn't they. Puritan revolutionaries. Listen,” he said earnestly, “the Chinese are not savages. You understand? They are highly civilized and very angry and contemptuous of barbarians. They don't use women that way. Women were slaves for centuries, but now some of their heroes are women.” And mine, he thought, perturbed and ashamed, a lecherous mutt, a man of the past. No room for him now with his antique gallantries and peremptory prick.

Gabol asked, “Would it have worked?”

Benny shrugged.

“You're full of news,” Cornelius said.

“Hell,” Benny said, “this is just gossip. All I really know about is myself.”

“Then talk about yourself,” Alex said.

“Just a moment,” Cornelius said, and made a great play of leaning back and assuming magisterial airs. “You're being deliberately evasive, we know that, and you're doing your men a disservice. You had some freedom of motion. You saw a lot, including misconduct. You saw a friend killed. You've got to help now. You've got to level.”

“Oh, I know some things that happened,” Benny said, “but not their consequences. Not whether they were right or wrong. I won't judge. Nobody has the right. And I didn't see him killed. I saw him dead.”

“The right?” Cornelius was almost lofty. “Some of these men betrayed themselves, their army, their country. You may not want to believe it, but this is for their own good. For everybody's.”

“Maybe their army and their country betrayed them. Where were you when we needed you?”

Cornelius scowled. “If we'd known how to prepare them, they'd have done better. Not died, turned on their own, defected. We're not out to hang anybody.”

“Ah, come on,” Benny said.

“Benny,” Alex said gently, and Benny remembered that Cornelius was a major but Alex a lieutenant-colonel, the chain of command, remembered who was boss here, shadowy regions of cop and dossier. “Benny, some of these men made propaganda for the enemy. Somewhere there may be a line between that and firing on your own troops; if there is such a line we want to find it. A lot of what happened was shameful. Some of it was treason.”

Benny groaned. “Propaganda. What a big word. And was it all lies? Do we incinerate white kids? You're worried about good and bad,” he burst out bitterly, a spasm of twisted pride, “well, I'm worried about good and evil.”

“Do you think there was truth in it?”

“Yes,” Benny said more quietly. “A little. Possibility, if not truth. Hang me.”

“Nonsense,” Alex murmured. “We're old friends. But the major's right: you're not much help.”

“All I know is me.”

“Then talk about you.”

“Peccavi.” Benny sighed. In this chrome-and-teak confessional. The lulling throb of engines. Portholes, blue circles. This morning bacon and eggs. Last night chicken. Salt, pepper, soft bread, hot coffee. Sheets, magazines, soap, pinups. “I never killed,” he began correctly. “I never informed. I cut no records, wrote no speeches, transmitted no Christmas greetings. Never stole from my own men,” he was in his stride now, “and not that I recall from the Chinese—though I would have. I assaulted no officers, but in moments of severe and understandable stress I walloped a couple of enlisted men. I practiced medicine on any human being in need, and once accepted food for myself that I could not distribute among the men.” He had his second wind now. “I cursed a lot, and indiscriminately. I quit once, but was restored to active duty by a few well-chosen words. I was falsely accused by my own men of high crimes and misdemeanors. I was flagrantly lacking in reverence, optimism and moral tone. I made no effort to escape. I declined to pray.”

“That'll do,” Cornelius said.

“I begged,” Benny recited. “I humbled myself in the face of the enemy and begged turnips and aspirin. Pickled turnips.”

Wearily Cornelius said, “We're only trying to avoid a repetition of this sort of collapse.”

“The Chinese told me,” Benny said, “that they were only trying to avoid a repetition of this sort of war.”

Cornelius snorted. “And you believed them.”

Benny laughed aloud.

“You never believed in this war.” Alex was matter-of-fact.

“Not for me. Wasn't even supposed to be there.” After brief consideration he went on: “I'll give you the same answer I once gave Ou-yang. I do not believe in killing anyone today for the sake of some maybe-if-we're-lucky better world tomorrow. Because that automatically makes it a worse world tomorrow, right there. I can conceive of dying today for a better tomorrow. But not killing.”

Gabol asked if he would kill one man to save ten.

“Sure,” Benny said, “but not on some politician's say-so. Hell, I've killed. You forget I was a corporal once, down there where life is real and earnest.”

“What about World War Two?” Cornelius pounced, real and earnest. “If you had it to do again, would you fight?”

They eyed him hard, like wary guards. He saw prison camps, kapos, saw himself in a striped suit, 57359; the blood hummed in him. Hitler! “I might not,” he said tightly, prickling and flushing as vengeful ranks of uncles and aunts surged in hieratic wrath; “I might not,” he said again, breathless (God! leave me alone! all I want is to be left alone!); and sat panting in the warm Pacific air. “Oh hell,” he said, “of course I'd fight.” Hunched and stiff, he rocked briefly. “But there's another answer somewhere. Something I don't know yet.”

“You killed for your country,” Cornelius said.

“Moy nayshun,” Benny grieved. “What ish moy nay-shun?”

Agog, they dithered and scowled.

Alex shook his head ruefully. “Benny, you can't lick us; better join us. Let me ask you something. Suppose I said I thought being Jewish had something to do with this.”

Hello again. Benny started to say, “I am that I am,” but refrained, not wishing to be offensive. Cornelius spoke for him. “That's out of order, Alex. There are dead Jewish soldiers buried in Korea.”

As opposed, Benny thought, to live Jewish soldiers buried in Korea.

“Amen,” Gabol said.

Benny rather thought that Alex was right. Alex twinkled. He and Benny understood.

“And plenty of good white Christians collaborated,” Cornelius said.

Any second now, Benny thought, he will tell us that there are good and bad in all races.

“I didn't say worse,” Alex said mildly. “I only said different. Maybe even better.”

“There's good and bad in all races,” Cornelius said.

“Amen,” Gabol said.

Benny decided that it was not his quarrel.

“Let's drop this,” Alex said. “Come back to it later. Why did the Turks behave so well?”

“Okay,” Benny said. “Let me think a minute.” He glanced out the porthole; he rose, and went to stare at the calm sea, the deep, serene blue, everlasting. Some day he would learn to sail, and would sit alone in a small white boat, sleepy under the blazing sun, alone and untroubled. “The Turks,” he said, still gazing out at the sea, “were a real army. Superiors had the power of life and death over subordinates. Perfect fascism to do a fascists' job. They were trained to kill and they signed on to kill, and the big fellows threw the fear of death into the little fellows. Hell, their officers gave
orders
. Their enlisted men refused absolutely to obey the Chinese, and took orders only from their own officers, and the Chinese respected that. The Turks were
soldiers
.”

Cornelius said impatiently, “What's all this got to do with our boys?”

11

Out of a white sky, sweeping across the gray Yalu, an incessant, merciless wind beat down from Manchuria. “I'm a Mediterranean type,” I mourned.

At the fence Kinsella said, “They don't want us to die.” We stared emptily at an impassive guard, an armed bundle of quilted garments. Somewhere tailors, stitching, Chinese Jacobs. Kinsella's eyes roved, sunken, black hollows. “We have to believe that. What did he tell you?”

“Haircuts. Soon.”

“Photographers,” he said. “Remember in the war they took pictures, both sides, showing off? Barbershops, volleyball.”

I shivered. “Let's go back.” My knees wobbled. The earth was iron-hard.

Kinsella puffed, “Maybe they'll give us a banana for the pictures, or a tennis racket.”

“Better a banana.”

“Refuse it,” he said. “Tell your men. They're smart bastards and they'll use us. I don't know how but they'll use us.”

“I asked him if we could farm in spring. He said no.”

“God damn. An ear of corn.”

“Butter. Salt.” My stomach contracted, fluttered.

“I figured something out,” Kinsella said. “Their turbines are all along here, the Yalu, their dams and power plants. I bet this village was workers' housing once, and they put us here so we wouldn't bomb the plants and all. It stands to reason.”

“Sounds right. Small comfort.”

“You're working for them.”

I was too tired to make speeches.

“The men don't like it.”

“Where you from?” I asked him.

“Oklahoma.”

“How long you been in?”

“Since forty-one.”

“I heal the sick,” I said. “Most of the time not even that. We're losing dozens, Major.”

“You're working for them too.”

“For us too. You rather they lock me up?”

“No skin off my ass,” Kinsella said. “Just remember you're an American soldier.”

“Right,” I said.

“You've got an obligation to escape.”

Less weary, I might have been startled. I scuffed along, skinny and scant of breath.

“You've got an obligation to help others escape. We've been talking it over. You're in a privileged position.” For a dozen paces he meditated. “Beer,” he said, “I want you to bring me every scrap of information that might help.”

A lunatic.

“About the guards, the fences, lights, arms, gates—anything. You have a great responsibility and a great opportunity.”

“Yessir,” I said.

“Has he said anything about the other camps?”

“No.”

“Or where we are, exactly?”

“No.”

“God damn. Spring and summer's the best shot, maybe early fall, lots of cover and growing things. For food.”

“Right.”

“If we could get to the river.”

“If you could get to the river,” I said, “you'd drift down into the bay. Then what? Port Arthur?”

“Our navy,” he said. “These bastards have no navy. I bet our ships are patroling right now.”

I was silent. Such a mind exacted admiration.

“Find out all you can. Report to me every day.”

“Yessir,” I said.

I woke in boneless terror, out of breath, freezing; a hand covered my mouth. By the dawn's milky light I saw that it was Trezevant's; I breathed, my pulse stuttered alive. Trez's eyes directed my own; without budging I scouted the doorway, and sighted two lean brown rats, alert, one sitting up on his hindquarters and peering about. I observed. Even in the half-light they were bright-eyed, tiny glass beads, and they were whiskered, and had small ears that twitched and pricked, and long tails. The tails were gray and naked; otherwise these might be pets, wee wild creatures, short-haired, clean, nervous.