Soldiers’ Pay by William Faulkner (digital e reader txt) 📕

“Who was that talking, Joe?”

Gilligan told him and he sat slowly plaiting the corner of his jacket (the suit Gilligan had got for him) in his fingers. Then he said: “Carry on, Joe.”

Gilligan picked up the book again and soon his voice resumed its soporific drone. Mahon became still in his chair. After a while Gilligan ceased, Mahon did not move, and he rose and peered over the blue glasses.

“You never can tell when he’s asleep and when he ain’t,” he said fretfully.

Captain Green, who raised the company, had got a captain’s commission from the governor of the state thereby. But Captain Green was dead. He might have been a good officer, he might have been anything: certainly he remembered his friends. Two subaltern’s commissions were given away politically in spite of him, so the best he could do was to make his friend Madden, First Sergeant. Which he did.

And so here was Green in bars and shiny putties, here was Madden trying to acquire the habit of saying Sir to him, here was Tom and Dick and Harry with whom both Green and Madden had gambled and drunk whisky trying to learn to remember that there was a difference not only between them and Green and Madden, but that there was also a difference between Madden and Green.

“Oh, well,” they said in American camps, “he’s working hard: let him get used to it. It’s only on parade, hey, Sergeant?”

“Sure,” Sergeant Madden replied. “The Colonel is giving us hell about our appearance. Can’t we do better than this?”

But at Brest:

“What in hell does he think he is? Pershing?” they asked Sergeant Madden.

“Come on, come on, snap into it. If I hear another word from a man he goes before the Captain.” Sergeant Madden had also changed.

In wartime one lives in today. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow may never come. Wait till we get into action, they told each other, we’ll kill the son-of-a-bitch. “Not Madden?” asked one horrified. They only looked at him. “For Christ’s sake,” remarked one at last.

But Fate, using the War Department as an instrument, circumvented them. When Sergeant Madden reported to his present captain and his old friend he found Green alone.

“Sit down, dammit,” Green told him, “nobody’s coming in. I know what you’re going to say. I am moving, anyhow: should get my papers tonight. Wait,” as Madden would have interrupted. “If I want to hold my commission I have got to work. These goddam training camps turn out officers trained. But I wasn’t. And so I am going to school for a while. Christ. At my age. I wish to God somebody else had gotten up this damn outfit. Do you know where I would like to be now? Out yonder with them, calling somebody else a son-of-a-bitch, as they are calling me now. Do you think I get any fun out of this?”

“Ah, hell, let ’em talk. What do you expect?”

“Nothing. Only I had to promise the mother of every goddam one of them that I’d look out for him and not let him get hurt. And now there’s not a bastard one wouldn’t shoot me in the back if he got a chance.”

“But what do you expect from them? What do you want? This is no picnic, you know.”

They sat silent across a table from each other. Their faces were ridged and sharp, cavernous in the unshadowed glare of light while they sat thinking of home, of quiet elm-shaded streets along which wagons creaked and crawled through the dusty day and along which girls and boys walked in the evening to and from the picture show or to sip sweet chilled liquids in drug stores; of peace and quiet and all homely things, of a time when there was no war.

They thought of young days not so far behind them, of the faint unease of complete physical satisfaction, of youth and lust like icing on a cake, making the cake sweeter.⁠ ⁠… Outside was Brittany and mud, an equivocal city, temporary and twice foreign, lust in a foreign tongue. Tomorrow we die.

At last Captain Green said diffidently:

“You are all right?”

“Hell, yes. They wanted to reduce me at one time, but I am all right now.”

Green opened his mouth twice, like a fish, and Madden said quickly: “I’ll look after them. Don’t you worry.”

“Ah, I’m not. Not about those bastards.”

An orderly entered, saluting. Green acknowledged him and the man delivered his message stiffly and withdrew.

“There it is,” said the captain.

“You’ll go tomorrow, then?”

“Yes. Yes. I hope so,” he answered, vaguely staring at the sergeant. Madden rose.

“Well, I think I’ll run along. I feel tired tonight.”

Green rose also and they stared at each other like strangers across the table.

“You’ll come in to see me in the morning?”

“I guess so. Sure, I’ll come in.”

Madden wished to withdraw and Green wanted him to, but they stood awkwardly, silent. At last Green said: “I am obliged to you.” Madden’s light-caverned eyes held a question. Their shadows were monstrous. “For helping me get by with that dose. Court-martial, you know.⁠ ⁠…”

“What did you expect of me?” No less, Green acknowledged and Madden continued: “Why don’t you let those women alone? They are all rotten with it.”

“Easy to say.” Green laughed mirthlessly. “For you, I mean.”

Madden’s hand strayed to the pocket of his blouse, then fell to his side again. After a while he repeated: “Well, I’ll be going.”

The captain moved around the table, extending his hand. “Well, goodbye.”

Madden did not take it. “Goodbye?”

“I may not see you again,” the other explained lamely.

“Hell. You talk like you were going home. Don’t be a fool. Those birds don’t mean anything by panning you. It will be the same with anybody.”

Green watched his knuckles whitening on the table. “I didn’t mean that. I meant⁠—” He could not say I may be killed. A man simply didn’t say a thing like that. “You will get to the front before I do, I expect.”

“Perhaps so.