The Million-Dollar Wound (Nathan Heller) Read online

  “Still not a single one,” he said. “My God, d’you suppose maybe she was in an accident, knocked over by a hit-and-run driver or something?”

  “She’s fine. Service mail’s always snafued, you know that.”

  He kept rubbing his knee, a little pile of grenades next to him. “If by some miracle I stay alive and get back to the States, back to Cathy, I swear the first thing I’ll do is kiss the ground, and never leave the good old U.S.A. again.”

  The U.S.A. That sounded so far away.

  It was.

  “Ma and Ida and my brothers and my ghetto pals,” he was muttering. “I’m never going to see ’em again, am I? Rabbi Stein’ll read a funeral service over me, but who’ll say Kaddish? I don’t have any sons.”

  I wanted to comfort him, tell him not to give up, but the fever wouldn’t let me. I was having my own thoughts, now.

  “Funny thing is,” he said, “I got into this to fight the Nazis, not Japs… I’m a Jew.”

  “No kidding,” I managed.

  “So are you.”

  I couldn’t find a wisecrack; maybe one wasn’t called for. Anyway, I wasn’t up to it. I saw my father. He was sitting at the kitchen table with my gun in his hand. He lifted it to his head and I said, “Stop!”

  Then Barney’s hand was over my mouth; he was shaking, wild-eyed. His .45 was in his other hand. We were still under the shelter half. D’Angelo was awake, alert, automatic in hand; the two Army boys were too, similarly armed. Not Monawk—he was slumped, breathing hard.

  His mouth right on my ear, Barney whispered: “You passed out. Be quiet. Japs.”

  We could hear them walking, twigs snapping, brush rustling. They couldn’t have been more than thirty yards away.

  Barney took his hand off my mouth, just as I was getting my .45 off my hip.

  Then Monawk awoke, in pain, and screamed.

  Barney clasped a hand over the Indian’s mouth, but it was too late.

  A machine gun opened up.

  D’Angelo dove for Monawk as if to strangle him, but Barney pulled him off.

  The machine gun chattered on, swinging in an arc.

  That meant they’d heard us, but hadn’t spotted us.

  “Bastard’s gonna get us killed,” D’Angelo whispered harshly. Monawk, barely conscious, was confused, to say the least; then his eyes shut as he slipped away again.

  Soon mortar shells began to land all around, and bullets zinged at us, as machine guns swept the area. It’s all pretty hazy after that; images floating in a fever dream; one of the soldiers takes a hit in the arm but sucks in his howl and doesn’t give us away; a slug creases Barney’s ankle; bullets flying everywhere; Monawk starts to scream again, but then is quiet, a bullet with his name on it finds its way home.

  More clearly, I remember: Barney, flat on his belly in the hole, starting to pitch grenades.

  That was safe—it wouldn’t give our position away; the enemy couldn’t tell where the grenades were coming from, in this darkness. He must’ve thrown a couple dozen.

  The sun was rising; I was burning up. They’d be coming any minute, climbing over the log, flowing over the edge of the hole, banzai, bayonets flashing, Barney saying the Shema Yisrael over and over, holding on to one last grenade to take the Japs with us when they came streaming over in and on us.

  A mortar shell hit, nearby, rocking the earth.

  “It’s from behind us!” Barney shouted.

  Our side firing…our side firing…another shell landed in front of us, in a crashing rumble, throwing up a huge cloud of smoke.

  Hooray for our side.

  “Nate, I’m going for help—the Japs won’t be able to see me in all this smoke. Okay, Nate?”

  I nodded. Nodded off. Slipping into a fever dream where things I never wanted to remember would teach me to forget them.

  “Nathan Heller,” I said.

  The captain smiled. He was a Navy man, the only uniformed doctor of the four on the panel. He seemed to be in his early forties—a doctor on his either side outranked him in age—and he was the only one who wasn’t a little on the heavy side. One of the well-fed civilian doctors was Wilcox, my doc, sitting at the far end. But the captain was in charge. It took a Navy man to give you your walking papers, your Section 8.

  “You know your name,” the captain said, pleasantly. “That’s a good start.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Dr. Wilcox feels you’ve done very well here. It’s seldom a patient makes it down to the first floor so quickly.”

  “Sir, if I might ask a question?”

  “Yes, Private Heller.”

  “It was my understanding that the program here is a three-month one, minimum. I’ve been here a little over two months. Now, I’m not complaining, mind you—I’m glad to be getting this consideration, but…”

  The captain nodded, smiling again. “Your curiosity about this early Board of Review is a sign of your improved condition. I understand you were a detective before you enlisted.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m president of a little agency. It’s waiting for me back in Chicago, when the Marines get through with me.”

  “You understand, Private, that returning to combat, to any sort of active duty, is out of the question.”

  It was the ultimate Hollywood wound, the jackpot million-dollar wound: if you cracked up in combat, there was no going back to it. Heller goes marching home.

  “I’ve heard the scuttlebutt, yes sir.”

  “You’ll be honorably discharged, when you’re released from St. E’s. You should feel no stigma about that.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ve served your country honorably. I understand you’ve been awarded a Silver Star.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ve acquitted yourself admirably, to say the least. Bravery under fire is no small distinction. But you’re wondering why I haven’t answered your question, about this early hearing.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He gestured toward the wall behind me, which was lined with chairs. “Pull up a chair,” he said. “Have a seat.”

  I did.

  “There is a precedent for your early release, should we decide to do so, in response to the special circumstances that have come up. For example, many Army hospitals run an eight-week mental rehab program. So, Private Heller, you mustn’t feel shortchanged by getting a ‘rush job’ at St. E’s.”

  “Oh, I don’t feel shortchanged, sir…”

  He stopped me with an upraised hand. “Please relax. Consider the smoking lamp lit.” He was getting out his own cigarettes, Chesterfields, and the other doctors joined in. He offered me one.

  “No thank you, sir. I lost my taste for it.”

  His own cigarette in hand, the captain looked at me suspiciously. “That’s unusual, under these conditions. There isn’t much to do at St. E’s but sit and smoke.”

  “Oh, they found some floors for me to scrub, sir. That kept me busy.”

  The doctors exchanged smiles, although one of them, a roundfaced man with thick glasses, asked, “Is it because you associate smoking with combat? Dr. Wilcox’s report indicates you didn’t begin smoking until you were on Guadalcanal.”

  I looked to the captain, rather than the doctor who posed the question. “May I be frank, sir?”

  He nodded.

  “Suppose smoking does remind me of combat,” I said. “Suppose it does take me back to the Island.”

  They looked at me with narrowed eyes.

  “Then I’d be crazy to smoke, wouldn’t I? And put myself through all that.”

  Only the captain smiled, but then he was a military man; he could understand.

  “I don’t feel like a Marine, anymore,” I said. “I don’t feel like a civilian, either, but I’m willing to try to learn. I see no reason to dwell on what’s happened.”

  The third doctor spoke for the first time. He had a small mouth, like a fish, and wire-rim glasses. He said, “You suffered amnesia, Mr. Heller. That, too, was an
effort not to ‘dwell’ on your traumatic experiences.”

  “I don’t want to forget what happened, or anyway I don’t want to ‘repress’ it, as Dr. Wilcox calls it. But I do want to get on with my life.”

  Dr. Wilcox came to my defense, saying, “I think I’ve made it clear in my report that Private Heller quickly learned to regard his experience in its true perspective, as a thing of the past—something that no longer threatens his safety. I might add that it took only simple hypnosis, and no drug therapy or shock treatments, to achieve this effect.”

  The captain waved a hand at Wilcox, as if to quiet him on subjects better spoken about when the patient wasn’t present.

  But the doctor with the fish’s mouth and the wire glasses picked up on Wilcox’s little speech, taking offense, bristling openly, patient present or not: “I hope by that that you don’t mean to imply anything derogatory about the use of drugs or shock by others here at St. Elizabeth’s.”

  “Not at all. Merely that some battle neuroses are relatively minor compared to chronic cases we might encounter from within the civilian population.”

  “Gentlemen, please,” the captain said. He looked like he wished he had a gavel to pound. Instead he looked at me and said, “We are going to have to ask you some questions, at some length, before we can reach a decision.”

  “Understood, sir. But before you begin, could you answer my question?”

  “Private?”

  “You said some special circumstances had come up, that made this early hearing necessary.”

  The captain nodded. “A federal prosecutor in Chicago wants you to give testimony before a grand jury.”

  “Oh.” I thought I knew what that was about.

  But the captain didn’t realize that, and he shuffled through some papers, looking for the answer to a question I hadn’t asked. “It involves racketeers and the film industry, I believe. Yes, here it is. The defendants include Frank Nitti, Louis Campagna and others.”

  “I see.”

  “You seem strangely disinterested, Private. Do you remember the incident this involves?”

  I couldn’t “repress” a smile. I said, “I don’t have amnesia anymore, sir. But you can get amnesia permanently testifying against Frank Nitti.”

  For the first time the captain frowned; I’d overstepped my bounds—after all, I wasn’t discharged yet. I was still in the service.

  “Does that mean you’re not interested in testifying?”

  “Does it work that way? If I choose to testify, I’m sane and a civilian? And if I choose not to, I’m crazy and a Marine?”

  The captain wasn’t at all pleased with me; but he only said, calmly, “There are no strings attached to this hearing. We were merely requested to move it up a few weeks, to give a federal prosecutor—in Chicago—the opportunity to speak with you. Nobody’s requiring you to do anything.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But I’m sure the government would appreciate your cooperation in this matter.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “After all, it is one government. The same government prosecuting these gangsters is the one you chose to defend—enlisting, out of patriotic zeal.”

  Out of a bottle is more like it, I thought, but was smart enough to “repress” that, too.

  “At any rate, we’ve been asked to consider your case, and we do have a few more questions for you.”

  The interview covered a lot of things—my memories and my feelings about what had happened on Guadalcanal. How and why I lied about my age enlisting. They even talked to me about the suicide of my father. One of them seemed to find it significant that I had carried the gun my father killed himself with as my personal weapon, thereafter. I explained that I had done that to make sure I never took killing too lightly, never used the thing too easily. But you killed in combat, didn’t you? Yes, I said, but I left that gun home.

  Anyway, it covered lots of ground, including how my malaria hadn’t flared up since I first got here, and I didn’t lose my temper anymore or crack wise and the captain seemed to like me again by the end of the interview. I was dismissed. There were chairs just outside the conference room, where I could sit and wait for the verdict. I sat and looked at the speckled marble floor. Part of me wanted a smoke, but I didn’t give in.

  “Hi.”

  I looked up. It was that pretty little nurse from the fourth floor; I hadn’t seen her in weeks. She was a student nurse actually. Her name was Sara, and we’d struck up a friendship.

  “Well, hello,” I said.

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  “I’d mind if you didn’t.”

  She sat, smoothed out the white apron over the checked dress; her blouse was blue, her cap white. And her eyes were still light blue, freckles still trailed across a cute pugish nose. She had some legs; you can have Betty Grable.

  “I heard you were getting your Board of Review today,” she said. “I just wanted to come down and wish you luck.”

  “Too late for that. I already said my piece.”

  “I wouldn’t worry. You’ve made remarkable progress. I don’t know of anybody ever getting a Board of Review after only a couple of months.”

  “Uncle Sam has something else in mind for me, that’s all.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing. Just a federal grand jury they want me to testify to, for some stupid extortion racket that dates back before the war.”

  Her tight little smile crinkled her chin. “It all seems so…unimportant, somehow, doesn’t it? What happened before the war.”

  “Yeah. It all kind of pales, that life back there.”

  “You’ll be going back to it.”

  I shook my head. “It’s all changed. Haven’t you heard, lady? There’s a war on.”

  “Nate. Are you sleeping better now?”

  I put a smile on for her. “Oh, yeah. Sure. Fine. No problem.”

  “You had some rough nights on the fourth floor.”

  “I graduated to the floors below, remember? I’m the wonder boy, or I would be if I were younger.”

  “You weren’t sleeping much at all. And when you did…”

  When I did I had nightmares of combat and I woke up screaming, like Monawk.

  “Not anymore,” I said. “Ah, you know, that Doc Wilcox is a whiz. He put my head back together, piece by piece. I feel great.”

  “You have dark circles under your eyes.”

  I was glad she wasn’t on the Board of Review.

  “I’m fine, honestly. If I wasn’t sleeping, how could I be so bright and cheery today?”

  “You get plenty of rest sitting around the dayroom. You seem able to catch naps, sitting there, not knowing you’re sleeping. But at night—”

  At night, sleep refused to come, until I was so tired it and the nightmares sneaked up on me, like a Jap with a knife in the dark.

  “It’s not a problem, anymore. Really. Gosh, Sara, it was nice of you to stop down and wish me luck.”

  “I know you’re still not sleeping. I know you’re still having the nightmares.”

  “Sara, please…”

  “I’m not going to say anything. I know you’re keeping it to yourself so the doctors won’t keep you in here. You want to go home, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said, and suddenly my goddamn eyes were wet. What is this shit!

  She slipped her arm around my shoulder. “Come ’ere, big boy.”

  I wept into her blue blouse, and she patted me like a baby. Another woman did that once, babied me while I bawled; I’d seen somebody I cared for die, violently, and it had rocked me, and Sally had helped me through that.

  “There, there,” Sara said.

  I sat up, glancing around, hoping nobody saw me. After all, I wouldn’t want to look like a nut in a mental ward; people would talk.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m not going to say anything to the doctors. You’ll be better off back in Chicago, anyway. Do you really kno
w some of the people you say you know?”

  “Yeah. What’s wrong, haven’t you ever met anybody famous?”

  “Oh sure. Napoleon, for instance, and a guy who thinks he’s Hitler.”

  “Did you ever consider that if you had the genuine articles they’d be in the right place?”

  She smiled broadly, showed me those pretty childlike teeth. “Good point.” She stood. “If you’re ever in Washington again, try and look me up.”

  “Are you implying you’d go out with a former mental patient?”

  “Sure,” she said. “There’s a man shortage.”

  “Some compliment. Say, how’s Dixon doing?”

  Her cheerful expression faded and she shook her head; sat back down. “Not so good. He’s up on the sixth floor. No early Board of Review for him.”

  “Damn. What about that Navy guy who wasn’t talking, the uh, what did you say his condition was called?”

  “Catatonic,” she said, and started to giggle.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I shouldn’t laugh. You remember the fuss he made, when we fed him with a tube?”

  I had helped her, on several occasions, her and the corpsman, feed the guy his mixture of tomato juice, milk, raw eggs, and purged meats and stuff; if they won’t eat, they get this concoction in a tube down the throat, but this guy—completely clammed up otherwise and placid as glass—would go berserk when you tried to put the tube in him.

  “He’s started to talk,” she said. “He’s had some shock treatments, and he’s talking now. He told us why he squirmed so when we tube-fed him.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He thought it was an enema and we were putting it in the wrong end.”

  We sat and laughed and laughed and pretty soon I was crying again, but it was a different kind, a better kind.

  She stood.

  I stood.

  “Good luck,” she said. She touched my face. “Get some sleep.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said. Sat.

  She swished off; pretty legs. I’d spent hours here beating my meat, thinking about those legs. There’s not much to do in a mental ward.