Battle Cry - Leon Uris [39]
At one end of the enormous room Marion’s record player spun on. The music haunted the empty place. Danny crushed out a cigarette, threw it into the sandbox beside a dozen others he had smoked. He lay back on his bunk and stared aimlessly at the ceiling, melancholy sweeping into every pore of his body. A pain of loneliness almost sent him screaming. He rushed to his locker, dressed, and left the cursed barracks. He walked the length of the hot, empty parade ground until he came to the tents of the Pioneer battalion. Thank God Norton was there and alone.
“Hello, Danny.”
“Hello, professor. I…sure am glad to catch you in.” He sat on a cot, wiped the sweat from his face and reached for a cigarette.
“See anything new?” Norton said, proudly throwing out his left arm.
“I’ll be go to hell. You made Pfc.”
“How about that. How’s that for promotion?”
Danny rose and halfheartedly punched Norton’s arm to “tag on” the new stripe. “You should be an officer, professor.”
“Going ashore?”
“Yeah—that damned barracks gives me the creeps on Sunday.”
“Anything on your mind, kid?” Norton smiled.
Danny sat silently for several moments. “Christ, Nort, I don’t know what’s coming over me…I…I get so goddam lonesome,” he blurted.
Norton put an arm around his friend’s shoulder. “We’re in a lonely business, Danny.”
“Do you ever get that way?”
“Sometimes I think I’m going to bust, Danny.”
“Jesus, it must be rough on you. Having a wife and all that.”
“It’s rough on everyone.”
“Funny thing, Nort, I never used to be this way. There’s a swell bunch at school. I told you about the Indian and Andy and Marion—best bunch I ever met. Oh hell, I don’t know.”
“Everything all right back home?”
“Sure…sure. Look, I got a picture of her yesterday in the mail.”
Norton studied the young girl. Golden hair that fell to her shoulders, and laughing eyes. Ivory clear skin, a young body, round and firm and tender. “She’s very beautiful, Danny. No wonder you’re lonely here.”
“Nort, could a guy like me—I mean a guy just eighteen and a girl seventeen fall in love? I mean fall in love the same way you feel about your wife?”
“How does she feel about it?”
“She says she loves me, but it’s going to be a long time. Too damned long…I don’t want it to wear off and have her being faithful just because she feels sorry for me—she’s like that Nort. She’ll stick even if she doesn’t want me.”
“Hell, Danny, what do I know? How old does a fellow have to be to go through what you’re going through right now? You’re old enough to be here and wear a green uniform.”
“And her?”
“I guess people grow old fast in wars. Nature’s way of trying to compensate for the things that young people are asked to do.”
“I’ve tried to fight it off, Nort. If she ever quit me, there wouldn’t be any use of living.”
“Then stop wading in like a punch-drunk fighter. Ride with the punch as best you can. You’re both in a war, clean up to your necks, and you can’t get out of it. Tell her how you feel.”
“I…I don’t know.”
“I sometimes wonder, Danny, if we all aren’t a bunch of wild, crazy animals. I guess we all wonder that. But we’ve got to try to go on living and loving and hating and feeling and touching and smelling whether there’s a war or not.”
“Professor.”
“Yes.”
“Would you lend me your I.D. card?”
“Why?”
“I want to get crocked.”
Norton put out his cigarette and shrugged. “Is it going to make it easier by going out and getting drunk?”
“I’ve got to do something or I’ll blow my stack. Don’t give me a lecture.”
“Have you ever gotten drunk before?”
“No.”
“Ever had a drink before?”
“A bottle of beer, once.”
“Oh, the hell with it. Here…take my card.”
Danny forged an air of indifference as he passed through the open portals of a quiet-looking saloon, off the main drag. He propped a foot on the bar rail between two sailors and stared into the mirror back of the bar.
“What’ll you