Battle Cry - Leon Uris [71]
“I said knock off the crap!”
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that, Joe—I’m a lover, not an athlete.”
I changed the subject. “Back on those keys. I’m shoving off and I don’t want any of you bums sneaking out until seventeen hundred.” I went to the door, put on my poncho and pith helmet. “Forrester, check into barracks in fifteen minutes and relieve Marion on the C.Q. and take these sick-bay soldiers to chow.”
I entered the lifeless barracks and scanned the long row of neatly made bunks. In his corner, Marion Hodgkiss on C.Q. duty lay back staring blankly at the ceiling. The phonograph spun a piece of his classical music. It bounced, haunted-like, off the empty bulkheads. I shook the rain off and moseyed over to him.
“Damned pretty piece, what’s its nomenclature?”
“I told you a hundred times,” he recited in monotone. “The last movement of Brahms First Symphony.”
“Yeah, that’s right, Brahms, damned pretty.” I circled around his sack. “Sure is raining out, yep, sure is raining.” The record ran out, the player arm going around in crazy circles. I reached over and cut it off.
“I didn’t tell you to do that!” Marion snapped.
“Look, Marion, you’re going to crack up if you keep this up. There’s even scuttlebutt of transferring you to artillery.”
He gritted his teeth and looked out of the window. A wind whirred the rain hard against the windowpane, sending the little drops flying and swirling in a million crazy directions. “I happened to be going to Coronado the other night and—”
“Mind your own goddam business.”
This type of language from Sister Mary could well mean I might be on the receiving end of a fractured jaw. I turned to go.
“Mac,” whispered Marion.
“Yeah.”
“Mac, I’m sorry. I’m…I’m…”
“Come on, kid, put on your rain stuff and let’s go down to the slop shute and talk. The guys will be in here in a few minutes.”
“The C.Q.?” he asked.
“Forrester will take it.”
He slipped the poncho over his head, buttoned it down and donned his pith helmet. We walked slowly down the slippery, rain-soaked street, the water squishing under our boondockers, past Barracks One to the catwalk over the sand, and entered the slop shute. I brushed the water off and sauntered up to the bar. “Two beers.”
“Coke for me.”
“Beer and a coke.” We took the bottles and sailed for an empty table.
At the end of the bar we spied Gunnery Sergeant McQuade and Burnside tossing down brews. McQuade was surrounded by a gang of his boys from Fox Company. His huge gut hung far below his belt. He leaned on the bar and through sea-hardened lips he bellowed for a survey on the beer. He spotted me.
“Hi Mac,” he shouted.
“Hi Mac,” I called back.
“This here reecruit is nine beers behind me.”
“Line up ten beers,” Burnside ordered. “I’d like to see the day that a washed-up mick can outdrink Burnside.” McQuade threw back his big red face and roared. They both had reputations as human beerkegs and they’d been having a drinking bout for six years. The “Gunny” turned to his boys.
“Why, I’ve passed more ship masts than this guy has passed telephone poles,” he bellowed as Burnside chuggalugged his third bottle down. “Did I ever tell you men about the all-Marine ship, the old U.S.S. Tuscarora? Yes, sir, what a ship! Forty decks deep and a straw bottom to feed the sea horses. Why, one time we was going up the Yangtze River and there were so many bends in it that the aft guard was playing pinochle with the forward guard.” He tilted a bottle to his lips, “Here’s to the next man that dies,” and downed it in two swallows.
Burnside lifted his voice in song:
“Glorious, glorious!
One keg of beer for the four of us,
Glory be to God that there are no more of us,
Cause one of us could drink it all alone….”
I turned to Corporal Hodgkiss. “Think you’d like to bat the breeze, Marion?”
“I’d like to write a story about Burnside and McQuade some day.”
“They are a couple for the book.”
“Mac,” he said, “I don’t understand about those women.”
“Whores…I mean prostitutes?” He nodded. “I don’t know, Marion, it’s hard to say. When we were over in Shanghai in