"I think," Michael said, stepping forward, "that that's enough for this…"
"Get the hell out of here," Noah said thickly, pushing himself up from the ground with his two hands.
He stood before Donnelly, wavering, blood filling the socket of his right eye. Donnelly moved in and swung, like a man throwing a baseball. There was the noise again, as it hit Noah's mouth, and the men watching went "Ah," again. Noah, staggered back, and fell against them, where they stood in a tight, hard-eyed circle, watching. Then he slid down and lay still. Michael went over to him and kneeled down. Noah's eyes were closed and he was breathing evenly.
"All right." Michael looked up at Donnelly. "Hurray for you. You won." He turned Noah over on his back and Noah opened his eyes, but there was no light of reason in them as they stared thoughtlessly up at the evening sky.
Quietly the circle of watching men broke up and started to drift away.
"What do you know," Michael heard Donnelly say as Michael put his hand under Noah's armpit and lifted him slowly to his feet. "What do you know, the little bastard gave me a bloody nose."
Michael stood at the latrine window, smoking a cigarette, watching Noah, bent over one of the sinks, washing his face with cold water. Noah was bare to the waist, and there were huge red blotches on his skin. Noah lifted his head. His right eye was closed by now, and the blood had not stopped coming from his mouth. He spat, and two teeth came out, in a gob of red.
Noah didn't look at the teeth, lying in the basin. He dried his face thoughtfully with his towel, the towel staining quickly.
"All right," Michael said, "I think that did it. I think you'd better cancel the rest…"
"Who's the next man on the list?"
"Listen to me," Michael said. "They'll kill you finally."
"The next man is Wright," Noah said flatly. "Tell him I'll be ready for him three nights from now." Without waiting for Michael to say anything, Noah wrapped the towel around his bare shoulders and went out of the latrine door.
Michael looked after him, took another drag on his cigarette, threw the cigarette away and went out into the soft evening. He did not go into the barracks because he didn't want to see Ackerman again that evening.
Wright was the biggest man in the Company. Noah did not try to avoid him. He stood up, in a severe, orthodox boxing pose, and flashed swiftly in and out among the flailing slow hands, cutting Wright's face, making him grunt when he hit him in the stomach.
Amazing, Michael thought, watching Noah with grudging admiration; he really knows how to box. Where did he pick it up?
"In the belly," Rickett called from his post in the inner circle of the ring, "in the belly, you dumb bathtard!" A moment later it was all over, because Wright swung sideways, all his weight behind a round, crushing swing. The knotted, hammer-like fist crashed into Noah's side. Noah tumbled across the cleared space to fall on his hands and knees, face down, tongue hanging thickly out of his open mouth, gasping helplessly for air. The men who were watching looked on silently.
"Well?" said Wright, belligerently, standing over Noah.
"Well?"
"Go home," Michael said. "You were wonderful."
Noah began to breathe again, the air struggling through his throat in hoarse, agonized whistles. Wright touched Noah contemptuously with his toe and turned away, saying, "Who's going to buy me a beer?"
The doctor looked at the X-rays and said that two ribs were broken. He taped Noah's chest with bandage and adhesive, and made Noah lie still in the infirmary bed.
"Now," Michael said, standing over Noah in the ward, "now, will you quit?"
"The doctor says it will take three weeks," Noah said, the speech coming painfully through his pale lips. "Arrange the next one for then."
"You're crazy," said Michael. "I won't do it."
"Deliver your goddamn lectures some place else," Noah whispered. "If you won't do it, you can leave now. I'll do it myself."
"What do you think you're doing?" Michael asked. "What do you think you're proving?"
Noah said nothing. He stared blankly and wildly across the ward at the man with a broken leg who had fallen off a truck two days before.
"What are you proving?" Michael shouted.
"Nothing," Noah said. "I enjoy fighting. Anything else?"
"No," said Michael. "Not a thing."
He went out.
"Captain," Michael was saying, "it's about Private Ackerman." Colclough was sitting very erect, the little roll of fat under his chin lapping over his tight collar, making him look like a man who was slowly being choked.
"Yes," Colclough said. "What about Private Ackerman?"
"Perhaps you have heard about the… uh… dispute… that Private Ackerman is engaged in with ten members of the Company."
Colclough's mouth lifted a little in an amused grin. "I've heard something about it," he said.
"I think Private Ackerman is not responsible for his actions at this time," Michael said. "He is liable to be very seriously injured. Permanently injured. And I think, if you agreed with me, it might be a good idea to try to stop him from fighting any more…"
Colclough put his finger in his nose. "In an army, Whitacre," he said in the even, sober tone which he must have heard from officiating ministers at so many funerals in Joplin, "a certain amount of friction between the men is unavoidable. I believe that the healthiest way of settling that friction is by fair and open fighting. These men, Whitacre, are going to be exposed to much worse than fists later on, much worse. Shot and shell, Whitacre," he said with grave relish. "Shot and shell. It would be unmilitary to forbid them to settle their differences now in this way, unmilitary. It is my policy, also, Whitacre, to allow as much freedom in handling their affairs as possible to the men in my Company, and I would not think of interfering."
"Yes, Sir," said Michael. "Thank you, Sir."
He saluted and went out.
Walking slowly down the Company street, Michael made a sudden decision. He could not remain here like this. He would apply for Officer Candidates' School. When he had first come into the Army, he had resolved to remain an enlisted man. First, he felt that he was a little too old to compete with the twenty-year-old athletes who made up the bulk of the candidate classes. And his brain was too set in its ways to take easily to any further schooling. And, more deeply, he had held back from being put into a position where the lives of other men, so many other men, would depend upon his judgment. He had never felt in himself any talent for military command. War, in all its thousand, tiny, mortal particulars, seemed to him, even after all the months of training, like an impossible, deadly puzzle. It was all right to work at the puzzle as an obscure, single figure, at someone else's command. But to grapple with it on your own initiative… to send forty men at it, where every mistake might be compounded into forty graves… But now there was nothing else to do. If the Army felt that men like Colclough could be entrusted with two hundred and fifty lives, then no over-nicety of self-assessment, no modesty or fear of responsibility should hold one back. Tomorrow, Michael thought, I'll fill in the form and hand it in to the orderly room. And, he thought grimly, in my Company, there will be no Ackermans sent to the infirmary with broken ribs…
Five weeks later, Noah was back in the infirmary again. Two more teeth had been knocked out of his mouth, and his nose had been smashed. The dentist was making him a bridge so that he could eat, and the surgeon kept taking crushed pieces of bone out of his nose on every visit.