Chapter 48
The Japs are getting ready to evacuate the area, and
you are alone with Egan. The boom of the field
pieces and howitzers from the shore is becoming more frequent
as additional guns are beached and brought into position to
shell the places where reconnaissance patrols have reported enemy concentrations.
The wound in your side is throbbing and the cloth
of your jungle suit feels like sandpaper against it. You
are having difficulty drawing breath, and your lungs make a
snoring, sibilant sound as they fill with air. Your mind
is flogged with self-preservation and keeps repeating, "Get out of
here, get out of here, do you want to be
hit by your own guns?" But your body accepts only
one problem at a time, and it says, "Don't crowd,
don't push, don't rush me. I am slowly coming to
a stop like a wheel revolving on a roller bearing
and I refuse to let anything interrupt my leisurely momentum."
You wonder if there is such a thing as a
physical desire for death, and whether it is just as
strong as the will to live. Isn't there an urge,
a force, a basic compulsion to lead organic matter back
into the inorganic state, and by so doing re-establish a
pattern that was abnormally disturbed by the emergencies of life?
After all, what is your body to you? You fed
it, you clothed it, you washed it, you cared for
it and you told it that it was you. But
when its walled passageway narrows down and miles become
mmmyards
and yards feet and feet inches, you find to your
amazement how little you set by it. It's trivial. Unimportant.
Birth seems to have been goodbye to some inanimate entity
and only the logical end of living is hello again.
And yet, why not save yourself if you can? Why
not? Drag yourself out of immediate danger and make your
way back to friendly territory! Only Egan can talk about
death with any certainty. You have known nothing but living.
You look at him for the last time before shifting
in the direction of safety. You start your thoughts working
and turn away and leave them thinking, "I'll be seeing
you, Ege. I'll be seeing you. There must be some
place where there are no restrictions, space unreckoned,
mmmtime unclocked,
where two beings advancing in a parallel can defy the
laws of earthly mathematics and actually meet. And so, until
my shadow, rounding a corner on a street in Paradise,
bumps into yours and with a beg your pardon starts
to hurry away, but suddenly wheels and shouts and joins
you in glad recognition. . .Okay, kid. I'll be seeing you.
"And in the meantime, God, treat him well because he's
very tired and I happen to know he didn't sleep
last night. Give him everything he wants that he couldn't
get down here because the PX closed too early. But
don't make him stand around or sit or kneel or
stoop. Let him march. Always let him march. I was
at the rear in our squad formation and he was
in front of me, and I know he loved to
march because of the way he held his head and
swung his arms. So let him march, God. The sun
marches and the clouds march and the stars march and
the world marches. Make him a part of all that
marching. Out into the sky let him march, rhythmically, unendingly,
proudly, victoriously. Hut, tupe, trip, pfaw. . . .Hut, tupe, trip, pfaw.
"And wherever he is, that's the head of the column."
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