Chapter 51
Joe's coming. With every moment passed and ever shot fired,
Joe is coming. He's just a steadily advancing line on
a map showing where the fighting is. And he's coming.
Follow the road signs, Joe. Keep to the right. Observe the
local speed limits. Go slow on dangerous curves. Don't turn
into any blind alleys. Watch the guy in front of
you. Don't jam up. It's one-way traffic, Joe. It's
forward only. But the lights, Joe, watch the lights. Some
of them are green, and that's okay. But the others
are blood-covered and that means stop, and when it happens
you'll wait a long time for the lights to change.
There are traffic cops too, Joe, and they keep you
moving and see to it that you don't run out
of gas and give you directions whether you need them
or not and write out a ticket if you do
something they think is wrong. They're on your side, Joe,
but they represent a system of regularity and conformity that
has become bigger than they are and bigger than you
are and bigger than anything you ever thought was human.
And so they sit in rooms that are far away
and point to charts on the wall and indicate little
bits of tinted paper stuck in a sandbox, and say,
"Take this island, envelop that position, break through right here."
And nobody's legs give way under then, and nobody starts
coughing and spitting blood, and nobody carries in a boy
that's too old to cry and too young to swear
and too lifeless for either. And nobody sticks him in
the sand and says, "This is Joe," while all the
traffic cops present nod their heads in agreement and murmur,
"Yes, General, yes indeed, General, how right you are, General."
So that's the end of Joe. And all the people
at home hear that Joe is gone and they are
sorry it happened and they add, "Gee, he never told
me that he was in any kind of danger, you
should see his letters, they sound so full of jokes
and anecdotes and stuff you'd think he was vacationing at
some country club with a bunch of his college chums."
But what do they expect? Do they think that Joe
is going to tell them what he's been through and
what he expects to go through and all the things
that he doesn't even dare to tell himself? It's a
feeling he has that can't be expressed in V-mail letters,
the way one thought builds on another until it extends
all the way to the front door, only it sounds
weak and silly and sentimental when it's said out loud,
and what in hell is there to write about anyway?
It's all routine. The slogging along in mud, the feel
of the rifle on your shoulder, the crudeness of sanitation,
the griping, the personal discomforts. Those things aren't
mmmever important.
So he spent a week in a foxhole. So what?
So he covered seventy miles in two days. So what?
So he killed a whole company of Japs and rescued
every one of his buddies from certain extinction. So what?
Here's what really matters to him: a paved street lined
with familiar trees and a grassy lawn and a car
and a girl and a hamburger joint and a crowd
coming out of a movie and a hot bath and
a gay necktie and the labor of a trolley going
uphill and a glossy pond and peanuts behind third base.
It isn't the war that bothers him. It's the duration.
* * *
