Just when Johnny thought he couldn’t get wetter, muddier, or more miserable, he heard artillery. For the last few minutes or so, he’d been thinking it was thunder. He should’ve known it wasn’t because he hadn’t seen any lightning. And now the noise was growing sharper. Louder. More distinct. The explosions were coming in bursts of two, three, four, only seconds apart.
Johnny felt rumbling in his stomach. His throat was suddenly dry and felt like it was closing. It was getting harder to breathe. He was okay, he told himself. This stuff I’m feeling, it’s just fear. Everybody’s as scared as I am. They might not let on, but everybody’s looking at where the sound of the explosions is coming from and nobody’s saying anything.
Johnny’d felt the same way the time Billy Pristash talked him into going out on the river in his uncle’s rowboat. He kept telling Johnny he was going to row straight into the wake of the sternwheeler that was heading downstream. At first, Johnny thought he was joking, but the more Johnny said he was crazy the more he laughed. That rooster-tail’s ten feet high, Johnny said. You row into that it’ll toss us around like a coupla corks. This boat will come down on our heads.
Billy said, That’s the point, dummy. It’s better’n Kennywood. Way more fun than the Racer or the Jack Rabbit. Especially cause that captain’s looking right at us and any second now he’s gonna blow the whistle. But that’s all he can do. He knows we’re gonna do it, and it’s pissing him off real bad, but he can’t do nothing but blow his whistle. Listen to him, there he goes, ha-ha! And here we go!
And there they went! Billy stroked fast as he could and rowed right into it, the crazy son of a bitch. And up and over they went, just like Johnny knew they would. Johnny dove left cause he didn’t want to be under the boat when it flopped over to the right. The oars went flying like a coupla popsicle sticks, and Johnny got scared stiff cause he hadn’t thought to take a big breath and didn’t know which way was up and must’ve swallowed a quart of water. God knows what was in it.
Johnny finally popped to the surface, no thanks to himself. Just dumb luck. When they righted the rowboat and climbed in, Billy asked if Johnny had swallowed any Allegheny whitefish.
Never heard of that kind of fish, he replied.
Christ, you don’t know nothing, do you? That’s a rubber, dummy. They’re all over the river. Probably swallowed a nigger fish too.
A what?
A turd, nitwit. Dumb as you are, I don’t even know why I’m friends with you.
I’m not as dumb as you think, Johnny said. I only got two B’s last year.
Two B’s! Well goody for you! But that’s school crap, it don’t make you smart.
That’s not what my dad says. Or my mom. They told me I keep getting grades like that, I could probably go to Carnegie Tech. Be an engineer.
An engineer! You go to Carnegie Tech so you can wind up driving a damn train? Boy, I heard everything now. We get back on the dirt, do me a favor. Pretend you don’t know me.
Okay with me, Johnny said. ’Bout five minutes ago, I thought you were gonna kill us both.
Well are you dead now? Huh? Don’t look dead to me. Hell, you don’t even know when you’re having fun. That was fun, dummy.
No it wasn’t!
Aw, go home to your mommy and daddy. But don’t forget what I said. From now on, you don’t know me and I don’t know you. Carnegie Tech. Christ Almighty.
Johnny remembered the conversation as though it had happened that morning, before he’d climbed up into the truck.
Fifteen minutes after they got to where they were going and were told what they were going to do and had started doing it, Johnny had already vomited twice. He was actually glad because retching made his eyes watery, so for a little while at least he couldn’t really see what he was trying to pick up, trying to match up with other pieces and parts he’d already picked up. Then he vomited again. And again. All that came up the last time was saliva.
Every day was the same. Johnny woke up and marched to the chow tent and tried to eat. As soon as he went out to start picking up the pieces, his breakfast came back up. He picked up more pieces. Tried to match them with still other pieces. Then they ate noon chow, and as soon as Johnny started work, the noon chow came back up. The vomiting got so bad, Johnny tried not to eat. But a day or so later, his squad leader caught on and ordered him to eat. Eat or die, his squad leader said. If you don’t eat, eventually you die, everybody knows that. So Johnny tried to eat again. He tried hard. But nothing he put in his mouth would stay down. Or if it didn’t come right back up, in a little while it would come out the other end, watery, until he was raw from wiping. Every time he swallowed he tasted acid. Then he started sniffling. He didn’t know whether he had a cold or the flu or whether he was crying. His whole body ached like he had the flu. He had chills that made him shake. But he didn’t have a fever. His nose wouldn’t stop dripping. His eyes kept filling up with tears.
He wondered whether what was happening to him was happening to anybody else. When he looked around, the only thing he noticed was that nobody was looking anyone else in the eye. Everybody seemed to be slouching around, head down, trying to not see. Worse, it looked like they were trying to not be seen. The only guys who seemed to be talking, saying anything at all, were the NCOs who never left their bivouac area. And those guys didn’t seem to have any trouble keeping their food down.
By the end of the second week, Johnny’s pants were practically falling off him. He had to keep shortening his belt. At the end of three weeks, Johnny looked down at himself when he was trying to wash off the stench and saw that his stomach was sinking back toward his spine. His ribs were protruding. He caught a glimpse of himself in somebody else’s metal mirror and he was so startled by the sight, he ran back to his sleeping bag and pulled it up over his head.
Johnny didn’t know what to do, his life seemed so bleak. He thought and thought if there was anything he’d liked to do. And if there was, where did he like to do it? Back home? He couldn’t remember where home was. He remembered a river he used to swim in. He also remembered he used to like arithmetic. Though when he tried to do simple addition or subtraction, he had to think really hard how to do it. But that turned out to be a good thing because thinking hard about how to add or subtract meant he could stop seeing, smelling, feeling what he did every day.
He soon tired of adding and subtracting. He tried dividing and multiplying. Over and over he multiplied time and then divided it. How many hours were in a month, how many minutes, how many seconds. He did the problems in the dirt with the point of his bayonet. He didn’t have to look at anybody, nobody had to look at him. He didn’t have to think about how skinny he was becoming. But in the middle of the third week he’d started to hallucinate. He saw a leg walking, hands clapping, a hand throwing a ball, a foot kicking a ball, teeth biting the air, lips spitting blood, brains thinking. When his first sergeant asked him what the fuck was going on with him, Johnny said, I’m seeing what thinking looks like.
Is that supposed to be funny? the first sergeant said.
Oh, it’s no joke, Johnny said. It’s hideous.
On his thirtieth day, seven hundred and twenty hours, forty-three thousand two hundred minutes, two million five hundred and ninety-two thousand seconds after he had been assigned to Graves Registration, on their first break of the morning, Johnny picked up his M-1 carbine, extracted the magazine to make sure it was fully loaded, reinserted the magazine, worked the bolt to put a round in the chamber, pushed the safety off, put the barrel in his mouth, and thought, here I am in the war and the only person I’m ever gonna shoot is me.
The next thing he knew, he was on his back and somebody was sitting on him, punching and pummeling him in the face, screaming.