The Man Who Cried I Am (13 page)

Under the cover of marshbrush, Max waited. Only half obscured by smoke, the massive tanks lay shattered, and those that still moved, moved hopelessly. Nearby a crew sizzled atop a tank like poorly patted hamburger. Look out for your men, he told himself. The men. Then he answered as his knees shook and he could not stop them: Fuck my men, and he cowered against the earth once more. He was bathed in his own sweat and his eyes were blurred. He wanted to move back, but his legs would not support him. The German counterattack began and through the smoke he could see the shape of the helmets; the sight of them had always moved him close to fear, but nothing like now. Small-arms fire wracked across the canals. Finally he stood on shaking legs and ran to the rear with wobbly steps. So many Germans! On they came, deploying around the tanks. But now, in front of Max, the American artillery started up: Ta-
WOW
! Ta-Ta
WOWTA
-
wow
ta
wow
! The oncoming Germans hesitated, then began to fade into the distance from which they had come.

There was a court-martial afterward. Who had drawn the maps? Why hadn't the tank captains followed them? Who ordered the tanks to follow so closely behind one another that they could not put up a barrage to protect themselves? The court-martials took place in an old church whose crucifix was bullet-ridden. The ugly word
cowardice
began to seep into the testimony and a chorus was taken up. The Buffaloes were cowards. (Like we said at first, them niggers are cowards, Jude!) A number of Negro officers were broken and stockaded when the verdict, Guilty of Cowardice in the Face of the Enemy, was handed down by the all-white panel of officers.

Shortly after the trial, Max was offered a field commission; there were not so many Negro officers around after that, but he refused it, as did many other soldiers. The white man was determined to undermine the division, but he wasn't going to get too much help from the Negroes in it.

But it was time to move out again. Max gathered Barnes and the new squad around him. He took them away from the other troops; he had made up his mind that he was not talking Army anymore; he was going to talk colored.

He stood in the center of them. The sky had cleared briefly and he could see what they said was Mount Abetone. They were all the same, he mused; you went up and you came down. Even if you were dead and in large pieces, you came down. “All right. You know my name. It's Reddick and I'm the boss. I'm going to tell you like it is.” His eyes went over the faces. Young. Hopeful. Afraid. In the background he watched the other squads preparing to move out. “It's like this: the Buffaloes got a bad name. And the white cracker soldiers don't help it none. A lot of our officers been court-martialed. We lost a lot of guys because we weren't trained properly. Now, I've got to tell you that that's because we're colored. No other reason. I want to put it to you straight because if you go out there thinking Uncle Sammy has prepared you as well as he has the white soldiers, you're in trouble; and if you think he cares for you as much as for the white soldiers, you're not in trouble anymore. You're just dead.

“Now it don't matter at all to me how you got here, drafted or volunteered. I'm just trying to tell you how you're going to have to act when the shit sprays the fan. First of all, the Germans think they've got an easy day if they see a black face. I don't know where that started, but you know the white folks back home and maybe even on your flank feel the same goddamn way. You want to live, you shoot first and ask questions later. All you got to tell me is that you saw a white face. Don't tell me what that white face is wearing, because I don't want to know. You get hit and I find you didn't do what I told you, tough titty. You do like I said and I'll break my balls for you.” Max shifted his feet. “Now, in case you think that's a little harsh, I might add that we've also lost a few boys in what they'd call little teeny race riots.” Max snapped, “If each of you guys looks out for number one—and that means looking out for your buddy—we'll make it all right. What you got to remember is that nobody here likes us; nobody here wanted us. If you've read the papers, you know that our own colonel can't make up his mind about us. And if you haven't read what the General said, I'll tell you: niggers ain't shit. You remember that; otherwise you're going to wind up in some American cemetery laid down in the middle of pretty green hills and your name's going to be in a three-by-five index file—and that place might be segregated. Let's go.”

Two days later they approached Castelnuovo. They came down a slight cobbled hill after flushing two snipers and leaving behind one of their nineteen-year-old riflemen. The sniper had been good; he'd drilled the kid right under the nose. There was a house at the bottom of the road. Max sent his men out wide and he came in on it with the BAR man. As they approached the house women ran out, old women and young women who looked old, and all were clad in black. “
Signor, per favore, per favore, bambini …
” Some of the women ran into the house and came out with babies, smiling. “
Bambini.
”

“Women and kids,” Max said.

Barnes said, “Yeah, and the top floor filled with snipers and maybe a machine gun to stitch up our asses when we move on.”

Max was finding it harder and harder to work with Barnes. Barnes, if he could help it, never let up the pressure for Max to be as hard and tough as he indicated he was. “All right, search it, but be careful of those people in there.”

Barnes moved off without answer, gesturing for the BAR man to join him. This BAR man was short with broad shoulders. Unlike the man from Morehouse who had been killed at Cinquale, this one liked his gun. Max saw Barnes poised at the door. A sudden movement and his foot shot against it. The BAR man was a taut form which seemed to flow and merge with his weapon. It's the helmet that makes him seem so short, Max thought. A few minutes later the BAR man rejoined Max. “Barnes said he'd catch up with us. He thinks he's got him some pussy in there.”

I hope the bed's booby-trapped, Max thought, and he led the squad off again, four men on one side of the shattered main street and four on the other. Midway down the street, they heard a double explosion; two grenades, and every man in the column spun, rifles jabbing nervously backward toward the house they'd just left. Smoke gushed from the upper floor. Screaming women raced into the street holding each other or carrying children. Barnes came jogging down the street.

Max did not need to be told what had happened. Pussy no longer meant anything to Barnes. Max did not know how he knew it, but he knew it. Barnes was beyond it. War, inherently bereft of love, breeds hate in its place but even that had a phrase involving love: loving to kill. Max watched the corporal jog up and slow menacingly. He wished he could be as single-minded as Barnes and kill without conscience. He envied Barnes, a product of a deranged society, like Max, like the others, but who had developed his own protection against that society. The corporal slowed about ten paces from Max and panted, “I wasn't takin' no chances. I didn't know what snipers they had hid there. I dumped two grenades upstairs. If there were snipers, they long gone now.” Barnes's body was stiff and his arms were stretched out, the one that held his rifle, too, like a gunslinger approaching a deputy in a shoot-out. His face was covered with plaster. His eyes bugged, and when he talked, Max could see the red of his mouth. Behind Barnes Max could see the able-bodied women carrying out the wounded ones; children's cries echoed down the street. Max walked toward Barnes. When he was close, he turned his carbine around and brought the butt down against the corporal's jaw. For just a second Barnes tried to evade the blow, throwing up his arm and backing away. But Max was not to be denied. Barnes went down without a word. He knelt beside the unconscious man and moved him by the jaw. It was broken. “Price,” he said, without looking up, “help him along.” The column moved forward again.

By the time they arrived at Viareggio, Max was jumpy. They limped into town in the vanguard of the regiment. Max's hemorrhoids had slipped down in the past week and he was shoving them back up with his fingers. When he had done that the pain stopped, until they slipped once more. Two or three times he considered taking himself out and going to the hospital, but each time he did he thought of the squad, still intact save for Barnes and the kid rifleman. This time he was doing a job. As they took the town, fighting from house to house, the Germans started to shell it. The shelling, Max thought, was unusually long. He lay in a hole vomiting and shaking and when the shelling finally lifted and the counterattack failed to materialize, he climbed out of his hole and lay there. No more, he thought. Would to God it had been ammunition-carrying in some safe port, like Salerno, now.

Late in the afternoon Max sat apart from his squad and shivered. He didn't know what was wrong with him. Battle fatigue, maybe, but that only applied to white soldiers. When the Buffaloes complained, they were said to be fucking off. They were at the edge of town awaiting the start north to Massa. From time to time Max could see people moving through the streets huddled over. He watched one fat young woman move slowly back and forth across his vision, a black shawl tied tightly to her head, her black skirts dragging in the dust. An hour passed and the shadows grew longer, but the woman, looking at Max now, still moved back and forth. Maybe, Max thought, what I need is a great big whopping piece of pussy. That might put me back on my feet. He lit a cigarette and extended the pack in the woman's direction. She approached timidly, glancing left and right. Max saw that she was fatter than she had looked in the distance. Everything about her now looked old and worn, except her eyes, which had not dulled, and her kewpie-doll mouth, which had not yet begun to sag.

“
Scusi
…”

Roughly Max thrust the cigarettes at her. “
Amore
. Love. We make-a da love, hah, fatso?”

“
Avete da mangiare, signore?
” Her voice was very small and it shook.

Probably, Max thought, the first time she ever looked at a Negro without laughing her fat can off. “Speak English, bitch,” Max grumbled. “
Amore, amore!
”

She took two cigarettes and tucked them somewhere in her skirts. “
Amore?
” she said, and her face fell in shame and anxiety. Someone had told her that the
soldati neri americani
were kinder than the
soldati bianchi americani
who were almost as bad as the Germans, but now …

“
Amore
, baby. Pussy. Fucka-fuck.”

The woman took a deep breath. “
Quanto pagerà?
” She stared at the ground.

“What? Oh, hell,” Max said. “Five bucks. Pussy, five bucks.”

“
Come?
”

“Five bucks!” Max was close to shouting with frustration. Then he remembered. “
Dollari. Dollari.
” He held up five fingers, inspired by her understanding of “
dollari.
”

“
Cinque dollari?
” she said, knitting her brows. The people might overlook it now, but later, in her old age, they might point her out as she walked to market.

Max reached into a pocket and showed her the money. The woman nodded. “Okay, Joe. Okay.” Max got to his feet and walked beside the woman who now had pulled her shawl far over her face. Max smiled. Let her be ashamed. She needs the money, I need the pussy. Capitalism in action. They went into an abandoned house and Max watched her look carefully around. She gave Max one worried look; she wondered if he would pay after. She spread two of her skirts on the floor then got down heavily on her knees, turned on her back and closed her eyes, and placed one of her arms over her stomach. Max looked from the piles of human feces in the corners to the holes in her black stockings. He approached her and pulled up her skirt. Her eyes shot open in fear and she blinked them and tried to smile. “
Come ti chiami?
” she asked. Perhaps that would make it easier, if she knew his name; there was too much distance, too much coldness like this; she felt like an ordinary
prostitua
, which she wasn't. She was only hungry. Laboriously she moved her heavy body with each tug at her clothes.

“What?” Max was busy at her clothes.

“
Tuo nome?
” the woman said. She didn't know whether to keep her eyes open or closed now.

“
Nome?
” Max said. “Name, oh, name. Aw, what the hell do you care,” he grunted, unbuttoning his pants and pushing them partway down. “Just call me Joe.
JOE
!”

Hurt, the woman turned her head and closed her eyes. Why did he have to be so cruel? He didn't look like a cruel man. Wars, what they did to men … and to women. She put her hands over her eyes and bit her lower lip as the black American plunged brutally into her.

When he was finished, the woman covered herself hurriedly. With head averted, she waited until Max had pulled up his pants, then took the bills and said quietly, “
Grazie.
” she stood to fasten on her skirts.

Max was thinking about his penis. It hurts, he thought. Jesus. Instant clap? Instant syph? Wow, it hurts. He turned to urinate and the woman, about to leave, saw. “
Sangue!
” she hissed and, holding her stomach as if it had been polluted, ran out of the building. Jesus, Max thought, watching the blood come out in a dark ugly stream. Blood, how about that? I've got jaundice. Jaundice? Jaundice!

Joy! He leaped about in the building shouting, Y
EAH
,
REET
!” Now he was out of it. All the armies in Italy could go on, but he was out of it now, out of the mud and cold, the mountains. He replaced his helmet and snatched his carbine and ran out of the building, pumping his arm up and down in a frenzied “forward” signal. He ran a few steps then bounded into the air shouting, “C
ALDONIA
,
CALDONIA
,
WHAT MAKES YOUR BIG HEAD SO HARD
?
MOPPPP
!” Breathless, he came across his squad and each man in it rose, cautiously thinking, Reddick's had it; he's cracked up. “Look, you bastards,” Max cried. He took out his penis and urinated for them. “See that? That's blood. Jaundice. I'm out of this shit, make it on your own.” He took off his helmet and spinning around and around like a hammer thrower, sent it whining off the wall of a house. That was the ritual for the man wounded enough to get out of it for good.