The Million-Dollar Wound (Nathan Heller) Page 6

  Bullets danced across Whitey’s chest and as if in response Whitey did a little dance himself and dropped into the brush, blood splurting out of his chest wounds like three or four men spitting tobacco. We ran to him, keeping low; the Japs hadn’t seen us yet, and Whitey had fallen out of their sight.

  Heavy, Monawk, and Fremont were right there with Whitey, too. I didn’t know what the hell had become of D’Angelo.

  “I’ll be damned,” Whitey breathed. “I’m still alive.”

  “You got the million-dollar wound, kid,” I said, smiling at him, reassuring him. “You’ll go home for sure.”

  “Looks like…the war’s over for me,” he said, smiling, his eyes cloudy.

  “Let’s make a stretcher for him,” Heavy said, “out of our dungaree jackets.”

  “Yeah,” Fremont said, “we can try and carry him back.”

  We improvised a litter, and Barney and I took all the rifles while Heavy, Monawk, and Fremont, bending low in the brush, carried Whitey. We moved slow, making as little noise as possible. No sign of the Jap patrol. Maybe they figured they got us. Maybe they moved on.

  We’d got about fifty yards when machine-gun fire bup-bup-bup-bup-buped across our flank.

  Heavy and Monawk screamed, one unified searing scream of pain—they’d taken the slugs across the legs, and the litter bearing Whitey capsized and Whitey spilled out into the spiky brush. Fremont drove for cover as another spray of machine gun chopped up the landscape. He howled sharply, and then was silent.

  Barney and I were flat on our bellies, mosquitoes buzzing happily around our faces. Sweat was running in my eyes and my mouth, salty sweat. My mouth tasted as putrid as this goddamn jungle. Life was less than wonderful, but I resented the men with machine guns out there trying to end it for me.

  They hadn’t spotted us, I didn’t think, but they were arcing their machine-gun fire around, bullets cracking, snapping all around.

  I could see Heavy and Monawk, like cripples flung from wheelchairs, pulling themselves by the hands across the brambles and brush of the jungle floor, slowly, slowly, slowly finding their way to cover behind some trees. Then I saw Heavy slip down into a hole, a crater formed by an artillery shell. Barney and I edged over toward him, coming across Fremont on the way.

  He was in bad shape: gut shot. He was whimpering, barely conscious, his stomach a black/red soggy mess into which he dug one hand, trying to hold his life in.

  Above us, Jap bullets chewed up the landscape in a methodical arc.

  Staying on our bellies, Barney and I each took one of his arms and dragged him toward the shell hole. We pulled him down in, by which time he was unconscious. Too many people for one small hole. I looked around, frantically; I was burning up, felt like I was looking out through red eyes.

  Nonetheless, I saw it: another shell hole, ten yards or so away, a larger hole. In front of it, between us and the direction the Japs had been firing, was a fallen tree, dropped there by a bomb. Just beyond the shell hole, behind a tree, Monawk was slumped, legs shot to shit.

  It was more than one machine gun now, and rifle fire was in there, too. Were they zeroing in on us?

  Barney and I crawled to the hole, I slid in and he went on past and got Monawk and pulled him down in with us. We had that massive fallen tree between us and the Japs, whose bullets were hitting close enough to home that it was time to give up on keeping our position hidden, and start throwing it back at them.

  About then D’Angelo crawled in the hole, grinning. “I told you that turd was warm.”

  “Shut up and shoot,” I said.

  “You’ll have to prop me up,” he said.

  He’d gotten it in the leg.

  “Not you too,” I said.

  “Thanks for the sympathy, Pops. Prop me up!”

  I helped him sit up and he started tossing M-1 fire their way; our efforts seemed feeble compared to the barrage of bullets they were sending us. Barney started to throw Fremont’s rifle and Heavy’s BAR back to them, but they yelled from their shell hole that they were too weak, and in too much pain, to do any shooting.

  “You guys can do more good with ’em than us,” Heavy shouted. “Keep ’em…”

  His voice trailed off.

  “Hit?” I asked Barney.

  “Sounds like he passed out,” Barney said.

  “He’s got company,” I said, nodding toward a barely conscious Monawk and a slumped D’Angelo.

  “Christ! He isn’t dead, is he?”

  I checked D’Angelo’s neck pulse. “No. Just unconscious.”

  Bullets continued to zing and whiz overhead.

  I called out to Fremont and he didn’t answer.

  “Looks like we’re it, buddy,” I told Barney. “Everybody else is asleep.”

  I thought of Corporal McRae’s remark, back at boot camp, about combat allowing no man sleep. He’d been wrong. So wrong.

  “They aren’t sleeping,” Barney said, meaning those sons of bitches throwing machine-gun fire at us.

  Neither was Whitey. I could hear him out there, not quite dead yet, yelling “Mother, Mother—Dad, Dad, please help me!”

  And then whimpering.

  It was the saddest thing I ever heard, but I didn’t cry. I was in that limbo world, that oddly detached place where men under fire go, to keep from going mad during the madness.

  With cool desperation I fired my M-1 into the rain of bullets.

  Wondering when sleep would next come for me.

  And, when it did, if waking would follow.

  Barney was leaning against the fallen tree, firing the BAR from within the shell hole. The big automatic rifle made him look like a grizzled, demented dwarf; maybe that look in his eyes was one his opponents in the ring were used to seeing from him—I’d known him a long, long time and never saw it before.

  The barrel of my M-1 was getting hot as I fired clip after clip; I too was leaning against the tree, not able to see who I was shooting at, not really, an occasional shape moving in the denseness of the jungle, with only the bullets that were chewing up the jungle around us to prove anybody was really out there at all.

  I heard a scream just behind me, and wheeled around and the nose of my M-1 thumped Monawk in the chest like a bayonet. He’d come around, the big Indian had, screaming in pain. Scared the hell out of me, too, but the poor bastard could hardly help it.

  Monawk would come in and out of it, like that, blacking out, then suddenly wake and start moaning and groaning and sometimes even screaming, bellowing like a big wounded animal. He was too weakened, too pain-racked, to help shoot or even reload. His legs were shot up real bad, way beyond anything we could do for him with the combat dressings in our first-aid pouches.

  “That’s all she wrote for the BAR,” Barney said, lowering the big weapon.

  “Watkins carries an extra fifty rounds on his belt,” I said. “Want me to crawl over and get it for you?”

  Barney shook his head. “I’ll go. You’re weak with malaria; you wouldn’t be on your feet if you weren’t leanin’ on that log.”

  I didn’t argue with him; he had a point—you could’ve fried an egg on my forehead. You could’ve fried a powdered egg on my forehead.

  Barney continued: “Anyway, I want to stay over there awhile, and lay down some fire—let’s make the Jap bastards believe they got a whole crowd of healthy Marines on their hands.”

  “Why not. Get Fremont’s extra rifle ammo, too, while you’re at it. I’ll lay some cover down for you.”

  I fired the M-1 over the log, emptying the rifle rapidly, then switching to another of the M-1s, to keep a steady barrage going while Barney crawled on his belly up and out of our hole and over to the one next door.

  Then his BAR opened up, and damn near convinced me there was a whole healthy Marine platoon out here, giving the Japs hell.

  I kept switching guns (rifles—this is my rifle, this is my gun, this is for Japs…) with the help of D’Angelo, who was groggy but awake, barely, and able to keep reloadi
ng for me. Even rotating six rifles, their barrels got so hot I was afraid they’d warp; the palm of my left hand was scorched black.

  At some point, Christ knows when exactly, two soldiers—two young-looking, scared-shitless Army boys—came out of nowhere, crawling on their bellies and dropping into the hole. They were both wounded in the legs, and one in his side as well; they were sobbing with pain. They didn’t have their rifles.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I said, with all due sympathy, switching rifles again.

  MARINES CROSSING MATINAKAU RIVER

  MARINES CARRYING WOUNDED

  “We…we got detached from our infantry regiment,” the less wounded one said. “We’re lost.”

  “Join the club,” I said. I fired off two rounds, looked back. D’Angelo was unconscious again. “You boys’ll have to reload for me.”

  “Yes, sir.” They were panting, but no longer sobbing. They reloaded for me.

  “Don’t call me ‘sir.’ My name’s Heller.”

  They told me theirs, but I don’t remember them.

  Barney’s BAR firing let up, about then. Soon he had crawled over and dropped down in with us, eyes going wide when he saw our two new tenants.

  “The Army’s here to start that mopping-up operation you been hearing about,” I said. “They’re just a little early.”

  Barney looked the boys’ wounds over; applied a combat dressing to the wound in the one boy’s side.

  “What’s the story?” I asked, no enemy fire coming our way at the moment.

  Barney looked up from his medic duty and said, “Watkins said you and me should get the hell out of here—while we still got our legs to do it with, he said. Said they were trapped, couldn’t hope to get out alive, but maybe we could.”

  “What’d you say to that?”

  “I told him he was full of shit as a Christmas turkey. I told him we were sticking around, and not to give up. Help’ll come.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “Sure. Robbins was only a half hour ahead of us; the skipper knows by now we must’ve run into trouble. They’ll come for us.”

  “I take it you’re out of BAR ammo.”

  “Yup. But I got the extra rifle ammo. That’ll help.”

  “What about grenades?”

  “We’ll have to go back for those, if we need ’em. Couldn’t carry ’em in one trip.”

  “We’ll be out of ammo before you know it, Barney.”

  “Maybe they’re gone, those lousy Jap bastards. There hasn’t been a round fired in three or four minutes.”

  I lit up a smoke. My mouth and throat were dry, my eyes were burning with the malaria and my head was pounding; a smoke was the worst thing in the world for me right now. But it was something to do. Which reminded me: “How’s our water situation?”

  He was finished with the dressing, now. He took his position down from me against the fallen log and looked at me glumly and said, “Not good. We had a bad break—both Watkins and Fremont’s canteens got stitched by that machine-gun fire.”

  “Monawk’s, too,” I said. “I already checked.”

  The two Army boys did have canteens, and so did Barney and me, and D’Angelo. But the wounded men were going through the water fast. I craved it, or anyway my malaria craved it, but the poor shot-up bastards needed it worse.

  Twilight.

  The machine-gun and rifle fire had let up long enough, now, for the jungle to come back alive, birds cackling, land crabs skittering. Maybe the Japs were gone. Maybe we’d worn ’em down with the 350 or so rounds of ammunition we’d hurled their way.

  The wounded men were sleeping, or in comas, who could say, and I began to think maybe we might just be able to last, just hide here, tucked away, and the American troops, Marines, Army, I didn’t care if it was the fucking Coast Guard, would stumble across us, as the front moved forward.

  Then machine-gun fire ripped open the night, whittling at the fallen tree, carving Jap initials in it, some bullets ricocheting wildly off the log, hitting my helmet, Barney’s too, putting puckers in our tin hats. We ducked down.

  “That fucker’s close!” I said. Bullets flew over us, popping, snapping; tracers bounced off the log and rolled into our hole, sizzling like tiny white-hot rivets. It woke Monawk up with a scream, which dissolved into groaning.

  “He’s too damned close to keep missing,” Barney said, over the gunfire and Monawk, “that’s for sure.”

  “Hit the fucker with a grenade!”

  “I can’t stand up to do it! He’d riddle me to pieces.”

  I wasn’t in the running for this event, standing or otherwise; the fever had weakened me too much. It had to be Barney. I mustered a pep talk: “You’re a world’s champ, you little schmuck; just throw ’em from where you are—body punches! Do it, man!”

  Face bunched up like a bulldog’s, he pulled three grenades off his belt and, one at a time, pulled the pin with his teeth and hurled. Each one in a slightly different direction.

  He did it so quickly there seemed to be only one explosion.

  And one high-pitched scream of terror.

  And then Barney was standing up, bracing his rifle against the log, firing and screaming, “Got you, you dirty fuckin’ bastard!”

  Such profanity was rare from Barney, but he was right: he had got the dirty fuckin’ bastard, only more machine-gun and rifle fire was coming our way—not from as close as the guy Barney just nailed, but coming and coming closer.

  We started in firing again, and within fifteen minutes were running out of ammo. Soon we’d be down to the .45 automatics on our hips.

  “One clip left,” I said. Eight rounds.

  “Cover me while I go over and get the rest of the grenades.”

  I used my eight rounds sparingly, but they were gone before Barney was back. D’Angelo, groggy but willing, was suddenly at my side, handing me a .45.

  “It’s Monawk’s,” the kid said. “He won’t mind.”

  Monawk was out of it again.

  By the time I’d emptied the .45, Barney had scrambled back in, dropping handfuls of grenades like deadly eggs into a basket.

  “Gotta make another trip,” he said, and scrambled back out.

  I’d just taken my own .45 out of its holster when the mortar fire started in; I ducked down into the hole. The shells were landing close. White-hot shrapnel was flying, but it missed us.

  It didn’t miss Barney. He was on his way back to us with the rest of the grenades as the burning shrapnel ate into his side, his arm, his leg.

  “Bastards, bastard, bastards!” he was screaming.

  He stumbled back to the hole and I pulled him down in and put rough dressings on the wounds. The mortar barrage kept pounding on, and on. Like my feverish head. And everybody else but Barney in the goddamn hole was sleeping. That’s war for you—you end up envying guys who passed out.

  Then the shelling stopped.

  We waited for the lull to explode away; half an hour slipped by, and the lull continued. Darkness blanketed us, now. We’d be hard for the Japs to find at night. But hard for anybody else to find, either.

  “How are Fremont and Watkins?” I asked Barney.

  “Watkins is conscious, or anyway he was. Fremont’s got his finger in his stomach trying to stop the flow of blood.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Poor bastard doesn’t stand a chance.”

  “I wonder if any of us do.”

  “I thought the infantry or B Company would’ve come to the rescue by now.”

  “There was a chance of that, till it got dark. They sure as hell won’t try to advance at night.”

  He shook his head. “Poor Whitey’s still lyin’ where the boys dropped him. Dead by now. Poor bastard.”

  “Only difference between us and him is that we’re already in a hole.”

  The mosquitoes were feasting on us, crawling in our hair. Barney was chewing some snuff to keep his thirst at bay—he’d given his water to the wounded men—and I was having a s
moke, shaking, sweat dripping down my forehead in a salty waterfall. The fever seemed to keep me from getting hungry, that was something, anyway. But Christ I was thirsty, Jesus I could use some water.

  It began to rain.

  “Thanks for small favors,” I told the sky.

  Barney and I each had a shelter half along, and we covered the two shell holes with the camouflage tenting, or anyway Barney did. I was too weak even for that. The rain seemed to rouse the wounded men and boys to the point of being able to move themselves. We huddled together. As the shelter half collected water, I stuck my head out and tilted the tenting over and drank from its edge; Barney did, too, guzzling at it greedily. We drained the water into a canteen and passed it around to the wounded. Monawk was in especially bad shape, now, conscious, but moaning like a dying man.

  The hole stayed fairly dry, but Barney and I would occasionally stick our heads out into the refreshing cloudburst; so did D’Angelo, who seemed in better shape than the others. Thirsty again, I drank from puddles near the edge of the hole.

  Heavier and heavier, the rain came down, turning from blessing into curse; the shelter half began to leak, water running in along its sides, the earthen floor of our home turning into a muddy mess. I was starting to chill, now, hugging myself, shivering.

  Barney was rubbing his knee.

  “Nice weather for arthritis,” I said.

  “Ain’t it.”

  Then, like all tropical downpours, this one ended as abruptly as it began. We sat under the shelter half, pigs in a wallow, listening to fat droplets finding their way down off the trees above, landing on the tenting like bird droppings.

  The wounded, except for D’Angelo, were sleeping, or whatever it was they were doing. I was smoking. I lit one up for D’Angelo and passed it to him; he nodded thanks and sat quietly smoking. My chills had stopped. I felt the fever taking hold again, but by now that seemed only natural. I couldn’t remember what it was like not to have a fever.

  “I wonder if I’ll ever see Cathy again,” Barney said.

  Did I mention Barney married his pretty blond showgirl just before we left San Diego? Well, he did. She was a gentile, so they had a civil ceremony. I stood up for him. He was writing her General Delivery, Hollywood, almost daily. But he hadn’t got any mail from her, yet.