The Million-Dollar Wound (Nathan Heller) Page 2

  I was in the nuthouse.

  Hell, where did I expect to be? I didn’t know my own fucking name, right? Of course, I knew who was singing “White Christmas,” as the radio was piped in over an intercom system: Bing Crosby. I was no idiot. I knew the name of the song and the name of the singer; now, for the sixty-five-dollar question: who the hell was I?

  If I had any doubt about where I was, the human flotsam sprawled across the heavy chairs cinched it. Hollow cheeks and hollow eyes. Guys sitting there shaking like hootchie-coo dancers. Guys sitting there staring with ball bearings for eyes. A few very ambitious guys playing pinochle or checkers. One guy sat in the corner quietly bawling. Made me glad I held my own tears back. I had enough problems just being minus the small detail of an identity.

  Most of the guys were smoking. I craved a smoke. Something in the back of what was left of my mind told me I didn’t smoke; yet I wanted a smoke; I sat next to a guy who wasn’t shaking or staring; he was smoking, however, and he seemed normal enough, a tanned, brown-haired, round-faced man with distinct features. He was sitting along the wall over at right next to a window; this window, like all the other windows, looked out at a nearby faded red-brick building, through bars.

  I was in the nuthouse, all right.

  “Spare a cig?” I asked.

  “Sure.” He shook out a Lucky for me. “Name’s Dixon. What’s yours?”

  “I dunno.”

  He lit me up off his. “No kidding? Amnesia, huh?”

  “If that’s what they call it.”

  “That’s what they call it. You had the malaria, didn’t you, Pops?”

  Pops? Did I look that old? Of course Dixon here was probably only twenty or twenty-one, but somebody who hadn’t been in the service might peg him for thirty.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess I still got it.”

  “I hear it’s the ever-lovin’ pits. Fever, shakes. What the hell, you got any other injuries?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What about that noggin of yours?”

  He meant my bandaged head.

  “I did that to myself. In some hospital in Hawaii.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t like what I saw in the mirror.”

  “Know the feelin’,” he said. Yawned. “That’s most likely why you’re on MR Four.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Men’s Receiving, fourth floor. Anybody remotely suicidal gets stuck here.”

  “I’m not suicidal,” I said, sucking on my cigarette.

  “Don’t sweat it, then. There’s six floors in this joint. Worse off you are, higher your floor. As you get better, you get promoted downwards a floor or two. Hit MR One and you’re as good as home, wherever that is for ya.”

  “Wherever that is,” I agreed.

  “Oh. Sorry. I forgot.”

  “Me too.”

  He grinned, laughed. “You’re Asiatic, all right.”

  I understood the term; didn’t know why I did, but I understood it. It described any man who’d served long enough in the Far East to turn bughouse. Subtly bughouse, as in talking to yourself and seeing the world sideways.

  “You’re a Marine, too,” I said.

  “Yeah. That much about yourself you remember, huh, mac? Not surprising. No Marine alive’d forget he’s a Marine. Dead ones wouldn’t, neither. You can forget your name, that ain’t no big deal. You can’t never forget you’re a Marine.”

  “Even if you want to,” I said.

  “Right! Here comes one of those fuckin’ gobs.”

  A medical corpsman in his work blues strolled over; he seemed cheerful. Who wouldn’t be, pulling duty on a land-locked, home-front ship like St. E’s?

  “Private Heller,” he said, standing before me, swaying a bit. Something about bell-bottoms makes a Marine want to kill. If there was a reason for that, I’d forgotten it.

  “That’s the name they’re giving me,” I said. “But there’s been a fuck-up. I’m no Nathan Who’s-It.”

  “Whoever you are, the doctor would like to see you.”

  “I’d like to see him, too.”

  “Report to the nurse’s station in five minutes.”

  “Aye-aye.”

  He flapped off.

  “Don’t he know there’s a war on?” Dixon growled.

  “I don’t wish combat on any man,” I said.

  “Yeah. Hell. Me, neither.”

  “Is there a head in this joint?”

  “Sure.” He dropped his cigarette to the floor and ground it out with his toe. “Follow me.”

  He rose—he was shorter than I’d thought, but had the solid build that comes from boot camp and a tour or two of duty—and led me out into the hall, into the head, where finally I saw a mirror. I looked in it.

  The face, with its white-bandaged forehead, was yellow-tinged, but it was American. I was not a Jap. That was something, anyway. But I could see why Dixon called me Pops. My hair was reddish brown on top, but had gone largely white on the sides. My skin was leathery, wrinkles spreading like cracks through dried earth.

  “Do I look Jewish to you?” I asked Dixon.

  Dixon was standing at the sink next to me, staring at himself intently in the mirror; he tore himself away to take a look at my reflection and said, “Irish. You’re a Mick if ever I saw one.”

  “Micks don’t use words like ‘schmuck,’ do they?”

  “If they’re from the big city they do. New York, say.”

  “That where you’re from?”

  “No. Detroit. But I had a layover there once. I put the lay in the word, lemme tell ya. Now, there. Look. Will ya look at that. That proves it. Once and for all.”

  He was covering one side of his face with his hand. Looking at himself with one eye.

  “Proves what?” I asked.

  “That I’m nuts,” he said, out of the side of his mouth that showed. “Now, look.”

  He covered the other side of his face. Looked at himself with the other eye.

  “They’re completely different, see.”

  “What is?”

  “The two sides of my face, you dumb sonofabitch! They should be the same, but they ain’t. My goddamn face, it’s split it in two. This fuckin’ war. Oh, I got a screw loose, all right.”

  He turned away from the mirror and put a hand on my shoulder and grinned; there was a space between his two front teeth, I noticed. “We’re in the right place, you and me,” he said.

  “I guess we are,” I said.

  “Semper fi,” he shrugged, and strutted out.

  I took a crap. That’s something I hadn’t forgotten how to do. I sat there crapping and finishing my smoke and thinking about how I wanted to get out of this place. How I wanted to go home.

  Wherever the hell home was.

  I flushed the shitter, went over to the sink, and threw some water on my face. Then I went out to meet the doctor.

  He was waiting for me outside the nurse’s station; he wasn’t in military apparel. White coat, white pants. He seemed young for a medic, probably early thirties. Trim black hair, trim mustache, pale, kind of stocky.

  He extended his hand for me to shake.

  “Pleased to meet you, Private Heller,” he said.

  “If that’s my name,” I said.

  “That’s what I’d like to help you determine. I’m Doctor Wilcox.”

  Civilian, apparently. “Glad to make your acquaintance, Doc. You really think you could help me find my way back? Back to my name. Back to where I come from.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I like your confidence,” I said, walking next to him down the hall. “But I always thought when a guy went bughouse, it was pretty permanent.”

  “That’s not at all true,” he said, gesturing with a hand for me to enter a small room where two chairs and a small table waited; not a straitjacket in sight. I went in. He went on: “Many mental disorders respond well to therapy. And those due to some intensely stressful situation, such as combat
, are often easier to deal with.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because the trauma can be more or less temporary. Be grateful your problem isn’t a physical one. That it isn’t chronic.”

  I sat down in one of the chairs. “You going to give me truth serum?”

  He remained standing. “Sodium amatal is one possibility. Shock treatments, another. But first I’d like to try to knock your barrier down with simple hypnosis.”

  “Haven’t you heard, Doc? Vaudeville is dead.”

  He took that with a smile. “This is no sideshow attraction, Private. Hypnosis has often proved effective in certain types of battle neurosis—amnesia among them.”

  “Well…”

  “I think you’ll find this a less troublesome route than electric shock.”

  “It cured Zangara.”

  “Who’s Zangara?”

  I shrugged. “Damned if I know. What do I have to do, Doc?”

  “Just stand and face me. And cooperate. Do exactly as I say.”

  I stood and faced him. “I’m in your hands.”

  And then I was: his hands, his warm soothing hands, were on my either temple. “Relax completely and put your mind on going to sleep,” he said. His voice was monotonous and musical at the same time; his eyes were gray and placid and yet held me.

  “All right, now,” he said, hands still on my temples, “keep your eyes on mine, keep your eyes on mine, and keep them fixed on mine, keep your mind entirely on falling asleep. Now you’re going into a deep sleep as we go on, you’re going to go into a deep sleep as we go on.”

  His hands dropped from my temples, but his eyes held on. “Now clasp your hands in front of you”—I did; so did he—“clasp them tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, they’re getting tighter and tighter and tighter, and as they get tighter you’re falling asleep, as they get tighter you’re falling asleep, your eyes are getting heavy, heavy…”

  My eyelids weighed a ton; stayed barely open, his eyes locking mine, his voice droning on: “Now your hands are locked tight, they’re locked tight, they’re locked tight. Can’t let go, they’re locked tight, you can’t let go; when I snap my fingers you’ll be able to let go, when I snap my fingers you’ll be able to let go, and then you’ll get sleepier, your eyes getting heavier—”

  Snap!

  “Now your eyes are getting heavier, heavier, heavier, you’re going into a deep, deep sleep, going into a deep, deep sleep, deep asleep, far asleep, now closed tight, closed tight, deep, deep sleep, deeply relaxed, far asleep…you’re far asleep…far asleep…now you’re in a deep sleep, no fear, no anxiety, no fear, no anxiety, now you’re in a deep, deep sleep.”

  I was in darkness now, but his hands guided me, as did his voice: “Now just sit down in the chair behind you. Sit down in the chair behind you.” I did. “Lean back.” I did. “And now fall forward into a deep, deep sleep. And now falling forward, going further and further and further asleep. Now when I stroke your left arm it becomes rigid, like a bar of steel, as you go further asleep, further asleep.”

  My arm, as if of its own will, extended, rod straight.

  “Going further, further, further asleep. Rigid.”

  I could feel him tugging at my arm, testing it.

  “Cannot be bent or relaxed. Now when I touch the top of your head, when I touch the top of your head, that arm will relax and the other will become rigid. You’ll go further asleep. In a very deep sleep.”

  His hand, lightly, touched the top of my head; my left arm relaxed, right one went sieg heil.

  “And your sleep is deeper and deeper. Now when I touch this hand my finger will be hot. Now when I touch this hand my finger will be hot, you will not be able to bear it.”

  Searing pain! Like red-hot shrapnel!

  “Your arm is rigid. Now when I touch your hand you will no longer feel any pain there. Will be normal.”

  Pain was gone, no trace of it.

  “Now your arm is relaxed and you’re further and further and further asleep. Now you’re deep asleep. Going back. Going back now. Going back to Guadalcanal. Going back to Guadalcanal. You can remember. Everything. You can remember everything. Back on Guadalcanal. You see everything now, clearly. You remember it all, now, every bit of it coming back. Tell me your story. Tell me your story, Nate.”

  Through the haze I could see it, the island, “the Island” we’d soon call it. A red-tinged filter of dawn, like a soft-focus lens on an aging movie queen, worked its magic on the cone of land ahead, seducing us into thinking a Pacific paradise reclined before us, a siren lounging in a cobalt sea, waiting, beckoning, coconut palms doing a gentle hula.

  Even then we knew we were being lied to. But after a month of duty on Pago Pago—that grubby barren no-man’s-land we’d come to call “the Rock,” in honor of Alcatraz—the vista before us made us want to believe the come-on.

  “It looks like Tahiti or something,” Barney said.

  Like me, he was leaning against the rail, sea breeze spitting pleasantly in both our faces. We, and the rest of B Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, were so many sardines in a Higgins boat, a landing craft without a ramp, meaning soon we’d be going ass over tea kettle over the sides into the foam and onto the beach.

  “Don’t kid yourself,” I said. “You’ve heard the scuttlebutt.”

  “Only it ain’t scuttlebutt,” a kid squeezed in just behind us said.

  The tropical paradise beckoning us was, we all knew, the site of the bloodiest fighting to date in the Pacific Theater. We of the 2nd Marine Division were on our way to spell the battle-weary 1st Division, who since early last August had been struggling to hold on to and preserve Henderson Field, our only airfield on the Island, named after a Corps pilot who fell at Midway. Outnumbered and outsupplied by the Japs, the 1st had held on in the face of air attack, Naval shelling, and jungle combat, the latter enlivened by mass “banzai” charges of crazed, drunken, suicidal Japs. We also heard about the malaria, dysentery, and jungle rot afflicting our fellow leathernecks; the sick were said to outnumber the wounded. Scuttlebutt further had it you couldn’t leave the battle lines unless your temperature rose above 102.

  That was no travel poster come to life, stretched out before us like Dorothy Lamour. It was green fucking hell.

  I looked at Barney, an aging bulldog loaded down in battle gear. “Another fine mess,” I said.

  “Semper fi, mac,” he said, grinning, not seeming nervous at all. But he had to be.

  Like me, he wore a steel, camouflage-covered helmet, heavy green dungaree jacket with USMC stenciled on the left breast pocket, a web pistol belt (with a pair of canteens, Kabar knife, hand grenades, ammo pouch, and first-aid kit hooked on), green dungaree trousers tucked into light tan canvas leggings over ankle-high boondockers, and a bronze Marine Corps globe-and-anchor emblem on one collar, for luck. The heavy pack on his back no doubt contained, like mine, a poncho, an extra pair of socks, mess kit, boxes of K rations, salt tablets, twenty rounds or so of carbine ammo, a couple hand grenades, toothbrush, paste, shaving gear, and a dungaree cap. Barney also carried photos of his family and his girl, and writing paper and pen and ink, in waterproof wrappers. I didn’t. I didn’t have family or a girl. Maybe that’s why, at age thirty-six, I found myself in a Higgins boat gliding toward an increasingly less beckoning beach.

  Still, in a way, Barney really had gotten me into this fine mess. Mess kit, maybe I should say.

  Oh, for the record: Barney is Barney Ross, the boxer, ex-boxer now, former world lightweight and welterweight title holder. We grew up on the West Side of Chicago together. The friendship stayed, as did we in Chicago, and in fact I was sitting with him in a booth in his Barney Ross Cocktail Lounge, across from the Morrison Hotel, on December 7, ’41, when the shit first hit the fan.

  We were arguing with a couple of sportswriters about how long Joe Louis would hold the heavyweight crown. The radio was on—a Bears game—and the announcer must’ve cut in with the news flash, but we
were a little sauced and a little loud and none of us heard it. The bartender, Buddy Gold, finally came over and said, “Didn’t you guys hear what happened?”

  “Don’t tell me Joe Louis busted his arm in training,” Barney said, half meaning it.

  “The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor!” Buddy’s eyes rolled back like slot-machine windows. “Jeez, boss, the radio’s on, aren’t you listening to it?”

  “What’s Pearl Harbor?” Barney asked.

  “It’s in Hawaii,” I said. “It’s a Naval base or something.”

  Barney made a face. “The Japs bombed their own harbor?”

  “It’s our harbor, schmuck!” I said.

  “Not anymore,” Buddy Gold said, and walked away, morosely, polishing a glass.

  From then on, or anyway right after President Roosevelt made his “day of infamy” speech, joining up was all Barney talked about.

  “It’s stupid,” I told him, in one of God only knows how many arguments on the subject in his Lounge. Over beers, in a booth.

  “So it’s stupid to want to defend the country that’s been so good to me?”

  “Oh, please. Not the ‘I came up from the ghetto to become a champion’ speech again. You’re not cutting the ribbon on some goddamn supermarket today, Barney. Give a guy a break.”

  “Nate,” he said, “you disappoint me.”

  Nate. That’s me. Nathan Heller. Onetime dick on the Chicago PD pickpocket detail, currently a fairly successful small businessman with a three-man (one-secretary) detective agency in a building owned by the very ex-pug I was arguing with. Actually, it was about to be a two-man agency—my youngest operative was going into the Army next week.

  “I suppose,” I said, “you think I should join up, too.”

  “That’s your decision.”

  “They wouldn’t even take me, Barney. I’m an old man. So are you, for that matter. You’re thirty-three. The Marines aren’t asking for guys your age.”

  “I’m draft age,” he said, pointing to his chest with a thumb. Proud. Defiant. “And so are you. They’re taking every able body up to thirty-five.”