Irwin Shaw - The Young Lions

"Hey, Whitacre," it was the other sentry, Private Leroy Keane, who had already been on duty for an hour, "do you have anything to drink?"

"No," said Michael. He was not fond of Keane, who was garrulous and a scrounger, and who had, to boot, the reputation of being an unlucky man to be with, because the first time he had left camp in Normandy his jeep had been strafed and two of the men in it had been wounded, and one killed, although Keane had not been touched. "Sorry." Michael moved away a little.

"Have you got any aspirin?" Keane asked. "I got a terrible headache."

"Wait a minute." Michael went back to his bivouac and brought back a small tin of aspirin. He gave the tin to Keane. Keane took six of them and tossed them into his mouth. Michael watched, feeling his own mouth curl in distaste.

"Don't you use water?" Michael asked.

"What for?" asked Keane. He was a large, bony man of about thirty, whose older brother had won the Congressional Medal of Honour in the last war, and Keane, trying to live up to the glory of the family, put on a very tough front.

Keane gave Michael the aspirin box. "What a headache," Keane said. "From constipation. I haven't been able to move my bowels for five days."

I haven't heard anybody use that expression, Michael thought, since Fort Dix. He walked slowly beside the line of bivouacs along the edge of the field, hoping Keane wouldn't follow him. But there was the clumsy scuffle of Keane's boots in the grass beside him and Michael knew there was no escaping the man.

"I used to have a perfect digestion," Keane said mournfully.

"But then I got married."

They walked in silence to the end of the row of tents and the officers' latrine. Then they turned and started back.

"My wife stifled me," said Keane. "Also she insisted on having three children, right away. You wouldn't believe it, that a woman who wanted children like that was frigid, but my wife is frigid. She can't bear to have me touch her. I got constipated six weeks after the wedding day and I haven't had a healthy day since then. Are you married, Whitacre?"

"Divorced."

"If I could afford it," Keane said, "I would get divorced. She's ruined my life. I wanted to be a writer. Do you know many writers?"

"A few."

"Not with three children, though, that's a cinch." Keane's voice was bitter in the darkness. "She trapped me from the beginning. And when the war began, you don't know what a job I had getting her to allow me to enlist. A man from a family like mine, with my brother's record… Did I ever tell you how he won the medal?"

"Yes," said Michael.

"Killed eleven Germans in one morning. Eleven Germans," Keane said, his voice musical with regret and wonder. "I wanted to join the paratroopers, and my wife threw a fit of hysterics. It all goes together, frigidity, lack of respect, fear, hysteria. Now look what I'm doing. Pavone hates me. He never takes me out with him on his trips. You were at the front today, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"You know what I was doing?" asked the brother of the Medal-of-Honour winner bitterly. "I was sitting here typing up rosters. Five copies apiece. Promotions, medical records, allowances. I'm really glad my brother isn't alive, I really am."

They walked slowly, in the rain, the water dripping from their helmets, the muzzles of their carbines held low, pointing groundward, to keep the wet out.

"I'll tell you something," Keane said. "A couple of weeks ago, when the Germans nearly broke through here, and there was talk about our being set up as part of a defensive line, I'll admit to you, I was praying they would break through. Praying. So we would have to fight."

"You're a goddamn fool," Michael said.

"I could be a great soldier," Keane said harshly, belching.

"Great. I know it. Look at my brother. We were full brothers, even if he was twenty years older than me. Pavone knows it. That's why he takes a perverted pleasure in keeping me back here at a typewriter, while he takes other people out with him."

"It would serve you damned well right," Michael said, "if you got a bullet in your head."

"I wouldn't care," Keane said flatly. "I wouldn't give a damn. If I get killed, don't give my regards to anyone."

Michael tried to see Keane's face, but it was impossible in the dark. He felt a wave of pity for the constipated, brother-and-hero-haunted man with the frigid wife.

"I should have gone to OCS," Keane went on. "I would have made a great officer. I'd have my own company by now, and I guarantee I'd have the Silver Star…" His voice went on, mad, grating, sick, as they walked side by side under the dripping trees. "I know myself. I'd have been a gallant officer."

Michael couldn't help smiling at the phrase. Somehow, in this war, you never heard that word, except in the rhetoric of the communiques and citations. Gallant was not the word for this particular war, and only a man like Keane would use it so warmly, believing in the word, believing that it had reality and meaning.

"Gallant," Keane repeated firmly. "I'd show my wife. I'd go back to London with the ribbons on me and I'd cut a path a mile wide through the women there. I never had any luck there before because I was a private."

Michael grinned, thinking of all the privates who had done spectacularly well among the English ladies, knowing that Keane could arrive anywhere with all the ribbons in the world, and stars on his shoulders, and find only frigid women at all bars, in all bedrooms.

"My wife knew it," Keane complained. "That's why she persuaded me not to become an officer. She had it figured out, and then when I saw what she'd done to me, it was too late, I was overseas."

Michael was beginning to enjoy himself, and he had a cruel sense of gratitude to the man beside him, for taking his mind off his own problems.

"What's your wife like?" he asked maliciously.

"I'll show you her picture tomorrow. Pretty," Keane said.

"Very well formed. She looks like the most affectionate woman in the world, always smiling and lively when anybody else is around. But let the door close, let us be alone, and it's like the middle of a glacier. They trick you," Keane mourned in the wet darkness, "they trick you, they trick you before you know what's happening… Also," he went on, pouring it out, "she takes all my money. And it's awful here, because I just sit around and I remember all the things she did to me, and I could go crazy. If I was in combat I could forget. Listen, Whitacre," Keane said passionately, "you're in good with Pavone, he likes you, talk to him for me, will you?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"Either let him transfer me to the infantry," said Keane, and Michael's mind registered, This one, too, and for what reasons!

"Or," Keane went on, "let him take me with him when he leaves camp. I'm the sort of man he needs. I'm not afraid of being killed, I have nerves of steel. When the jeep was strafed and the other men were hit, I just watched them as coolly as if I was sitting in a movie looking at it on the screen. That's the sort of man Pavone needs with him…"

I wonder, Michael thought.

"Will you talk to him?" Keane pleaded. "Will you? Every time I start to talk to him, he says, 'Private Keane, are those lists typed yet?' And he laughs at me. I can see him laughing at me," Keane said wildly. "It gives him a distorted pleasure to think that he has the brother of Gordon Keane sitting back in the Communication Zone typing rosters. Whitacre, you've got to talk to him for me. The war will be over and I will never be in a single battle if someone doesn't help me!"

"OK," Michael said. "I'll talk to him." Then, harshly and cruelly because Keane was the kind of man who invited cruelty from everyone he spoke to, "Let me tell you, though, if you ever get into a battle I hope to God you're nowhere near me."