JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN. by Dalton Trumbo. A Puke (TM) Audiobook

JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN.
by Dalton Trumbo.

Introduction.
World War One began like a summer festival, all billowing skirts and golden epaulets. Millions upon millions cheered from the sidewalks while plumed imperial highnesses, serenities, field marshals and other such fools paraded through the capital cities of Europe at the head of their shining legions. It was a season of generosity, a time for boasts, bands, poems, songs, innocent prayers. It was an August made palpitant and breathless by the pre-nuptial nights of young gentlemen-officers and the girls they left permanently behind them. One of the Highland regiments went over the top in its first battle behind forty kilted bagpipers, skirling away for all they were worth, at machine guns. Nine million corpses later, when the bands stopped and the serenities started running, the wail of bagpipes would never again sound quite the same. It was the last of the romantic wars.
And Johnny Got His Gun was probably the last American novel written about it before an entirely different affair called World War Two got under way. The book has a weird political history. Written in 1938 when pacifism was anathema to the American left and most of the center, it went to the printers in the spring of 1939 and was published on September third, ten days after the Nazi-Soviet pact, two days after the start of World War Two. Shortly thereafter, on the recommendation of Mister Joseph Wharton Lippincott (who felt it would stimulate sales), serial rights were sold to The Daily Worker of New York City. For months thereafter the book was a rally point for the left. After Pearl Harbor its subject matter seemed as inappropriate to the times as the shriek of bagpipes. Mister Paul Blanshard, speaking of army censorship in The Right to Read (1955) says, "A few pro-Axis foreign-language magazines had been banned, as well as three books, including Dalton Trumbo's pacifist novel Johnny Get Your Gun, produced during the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact." Since Mister Blanshard fell into what I hope was unconscious error both as to the period of the book's "production" and the title under which it was "produced," I can't place too much faith in his story of its suppression. Certainly I was not informed of it, I received a number of letters from service men overseas who had read it through Army libraries, and, in 1945, I myself ran across a copy in Okinawa while fighting was still in progress. If, however, it had been banned and I had known about it, I doubt that I should have protested very loudly. There are times when it may be needful for certain private rights to give way to the requirements of a larger public good. I know that's a dangerous thought, and I shouldn't wish to carry it too far, but World War Two was not a romantic war.
As the conflict deepened, and Johnny went out of print altogether, its unavailability became a civil liberties issue with the extreme American right. Peace organizations and "Mothers'" groups from all over the country showered me with fiercely sympathetic letters denouncing Jews, Communists, New Dealers and international bankers, who had suppressed my novel to intimidate millions of true Americans who demanded an immediate negotiated peace. My correspondents, a number of whom used elegant stationery and sported tidewater addresses, maintained a network of communications that extended to the detention camps of pro-Nazi internees. They pushed the price of the book above six dollars for a used copy, which displeased me for a number of reasons, one of them fiscal. They proposed a national rally for peace-now, with me as cheer leader; they promised (and delivered) a letter campaign to pressure the publisher for a fresh edition. Nothing could have convinced me so quickly that Johnny was exactly the sort of book that shouldn't be reprinted until the war was at an end. The publishers agreed. At the insistence of friends who felt my correspondents' efforts could adversely affect the war effort, I foolishly reported their activities to the F B I. But when a beautifully matched pair of investigators arrived at my house, their interest lay not in the letters but in me. I have the feeling that it still does, and it serves me right.
After 1945, those two or three new editions which appeared found favor with the general left, and apparently were completely ignored by everybody else, including all those passionate war-time mothers. It was out of print again during the Korean War, at which time I purchased the plates rather than have them sold to the Government for conversion into munitions. And there the story ends, or begins. Reading it once more after so many years, I've had to resist a nervous itch to touch it up here, to change it there, to clarify, correct, elaborate, cut. After all, the book is twenty years younger than I, and I have changed so much, and it hasn't. Or has it? Is it possible for anything to resist change, even a mere commodity that can be bought, buried, banned, damned, praised, or ignored for all the wrong reasons? Probably not. Johnny held a different meaning for three different wars. Its present meaning is what each reader conceives it to be, and each reader is gloriously different from every other reader, and each is also changing. I've let it remain as it was to see what it is.

Book One.
The Dead.
Chapter One.
He wished the phone would stop ringing. It was bad enough to be sick let alone having a phone ring all night long. Boy was he sick. Not from any of their sour french wine either. A man couldn't hold enough of it to get a head this big. His stomach was going round and round and round. Fine thing nobody'd answer that phone. It sounded like it was ringing in a room about a million miles wide. His head was a million miles wide too. The hell with the telephone. That damn bell must be at the other end of the world. He would have to walk for a couple years to get to it. Ring ring ring all night long. Maybe somebody wanted something bad. Telephones ringing at night are important. You'd think they'd pay attention to it. How could they expect him to answer it anyhow? He was tired and his head was plenty big. You could stick a whole phone in his ear and he couldn't even feel it. He must have been drinking dynamite. Why didn't somebody answer that goddam telephone? "Hey Joe. Front and center." Here he was sick as hell and like a damned fool making his way through the night shipping room toward the telephone. It was so noisy you wouldn't think anybody could hear a tiny sound like a phone ringing. Yet he had. He'd heard it above the click-clickclick of the Battle Creek wrappers and the rattle of the belt conveyors and the howl of the rotary ovens upstairs and the rumble of steel route bins being hauled into place and the sputter of motors in the garage being tuned up against the morning's work and the scream of dollies that needed oil why the hell didn't somebody oil them? He walked down the middle aisle between the steel bins that were being filled with bread. He threaded his way through the floor litter of dollies and boxes and rumpled cartons and crippled loaves.
The boys looked at him as he went. He remembered their faces floating by him as he moved toward the telephone. Dutch and Little Dutch and Whitey who took shots in his spine and Pablo and Rudy and all the boys. They looked at him curiously as he passed them. Maybe that was because he was scared inside and showed it outside. He got to the phone. "Hello." "Hello son. Come on home now." "All right mother I'll be right there." He went into the lean-to office with the wide glass front where Jody Simmons the night foreman kept a close watch on his crew. "Jody I got to go home. My father just died." "Died? Gosh kid that's too bad. Sure kid you run along. Rudy. Hey Rudy. Grab a truck and drive Joe home. His old , his father just died. Sure kid go on home. I'll have one of the boys punch you out. That's tough kid. Go home." Rudy stepped on it. It was raining outside because it was December and Los Angeles just before Christmas. The tires sizzled against the wet pavement as they went. It was the quietest night he had ever heard except for the tires sizzling and the clatter of the Ford echoing between deserted buildings in an empty street. Rudy sure stepped on it. There was a rattle somewhere back of them in the truck body that kept the same time no matter how fast they went. Rudy didn't say anything. He just drove. Way out Figueroa past big old houses and then smaller houses and then on out some more to the south end. Rudy stopped the car.
"Thanks Rudy, I'll let you know when everything's finished. I'll be back to work in a couple days." "Sure Joe. That's all right. It's tough. I'm sorry goodnight." The Ford grabbed for traction. Then its motor roared and it went side slipping down the street. Water bubbled along the curb. The rain pattered down steadily. He stood there for a moment to take a good breath and then he started for the place. The place was on the alley above a garage behind a two story house. To get to it he walked down a narrow driveway which was between two houses close together. It was black between the houses. Rain from the two roofs met there and spattered down into wide puddles with a queer wet echo like water being poured into a cistern. His feet squished in the water as he went. When he got out from between the two houses he saw lights on over the garage. He opened the door. A rush of hot air swept over him. It was hot air perfumed with the soap and scented rubbing alcohol they used for bathing his father and with the powder they put on him afterward to fight off bedsores. Everything was very quiet. He tip-toed upstairs his wet shoes still squishing a little.
In the living room his father lay dead with a sheet pulled over his face. He had been sick a long while and they had kept him in the living room because the glassed-in porch which was the bedroom for his father and mother and sisters was too drafty. He walked over to his mother and touched her shoulder. She wasn't crying very hard. "Did you call someone?" "Yes they'll be here anytime. I wanted you to be here first." His younger sister was still asleep on the glassed-in porch but his older sister only thirteen was crumpled in a corner in her bathrobe catching her breath and sobbing quietly. He looked over at her. She was crying like a woman. He hadn't realized before that she was practically grown up. She had been growing up all the time and he hadn't noticed till now when she was crying because her father was dead. A knock came on the door downstairs. "It's them. Let's go into the kitchen. It'll be better." They had a little trouble getting his sister into the kitchen but she came quietly enough. It seemed she couldn't walk. Her face was blank. Her eyes were big and she was gasping more than crying. His mother sat on a stool in the kitchen and took his sister into her arms. Then he went to the head of the stairs and called down quietly. "Come in." Two men in gleaming clean collars opened the door down there and started up the stairs. They carried a long wicker basket.
Quickly he stepped into the living room and pulled aside the sheets to have a look at his father before they reached the top of the stairs. He looked down at a tired face that was only fifty-one years old. He looked down and thought dad I feel lots older than you. I was sorry for you dad. Things weren't going well and they never would have gone well for you and it's just as good you're dead. People've got to be quicker and harder these days than you were dad. Goodnight and good-dreams. I won't forget you and I'm not as sorry for you today as I was yesterday. I loved you dad goodnight. They came into the room. He turned and walked into the kitchen to his mother and sister. The other sister who was only seven still slept. There were sounds from the front room. The men's footsteps as they tip-toed around the bed. A faint woosh of covers being thrown toward the foot. Then a sound of bedsprings relaxing after eight months' use. Then a sound of wicker squeaking as it took up the burden the bed had left off with. Then after a heavy squeaking from all parts of the basket a shuffling of feet moving out of the front room and down the stairs. He wondered if they were carrying the basket evenly down the stairs or if the head was lower than the feet or if it was in any way uncomfortable. His father performing the same task would have carried the basket very gently.
When the door at the foot of the stairs closed behind them his mother began to shake a little. Her voice came like dry air. "That's not Bill. It may seem like it but it's not." He patted his mother's shoulder. His sister relaxed down on the floor again. That was all. Well why couldn't it be all then? How many times was he going to have to go through it? It was all over and finished and why couldn't the goddam phone ever stop ringing? He was nutty because he had a hangover a big hangover and he was having bad dreams. Pretty soon if he had to he'd wake up and answer the phone but somebody should do it for him if they had any consideration at all because he was tired and sick of it. Things were getting floaty and sickly. Things were so quiet. Things were so goddam still. A hangover headache thumps and clatters and raises hell inside your skull. But this wasn't any hangover. He was a sick man. He was a sick man and he was remembering things. Like coming out of ether. But you'd think the telephone would stop ringing sometime. It couldn't just go on forever. He couldn't go over and over the same business of answering it and hearing his father was dead and then going home through a rainy night. He'd catch cold if he did that much more. Besides his father could only die once.
The telephone bell was just part of a dream. It had sounded different from any other telephone bell or any other sound because it had meant death. After all that bell was a particular kind of thing a very particular kind of thing as old Prof Eldridge used to say in Senior English. And a particular kind of thing sticks with you but there's no use of it sticking too close. That bell and its message and everything about it was way back in time and he was finished with it. The bell was ringing again. Way far off as if echoing through a lot of shutters in his mind he could hear it. He felt as if he were tied down and couldn't answer it yet he felt as if he had to answer it. The bell sounded as lonesome as Christ ringing out in the bottom of his mind waiting for an answer. And they couldn't make connections. With each ring it seemed to get lonesomer. With each ring he got more scared. He drifted again. He was hurt. He was bad hurt. The bell was fading. He was dreaming. He wasn't dreaming. He was awake even though he couldn't see. He was awake even though he couldn't hear a thing except a telephone that really wasn't ringing. He was mighty scared. He remembered how when he was a kid he read The Last Days of Pompeii and awakened in the middle of a dark night crying in terror with his face suffocating in the pillow and thinking that the top of one of his Colorado mountains had blown off and that the covers were lava and that he was entombed while yet alive and that he would lie there dying forever. He had that same gasping feeling now. He had that same cowardly griping in his bowels.
He was unchristly scared so he gathered his strength and made like a man buried in loose earth clawing out with his hands toward air. Then he sickened and choked and fainted half away and was dragged back by pain. It was all over his body like electricity. It seemed to shake him hard and then throw him back against the bed exhausted and completely quiet. He lay there feeling the sweat pour out of his skin. Then he felt something else. He felt hot damp skin all over him and the dampness enabled him to feel his bandages. He was wrapped in them from top to bottom. Even his head. He really was hurt then. The shock caused his heart to smash against his ribs. He grew prickly all over. His heart was pounding away in his chest but he couldn't hear the pulse in his ear. Oh god then he was deaf. Where did they get that stuff about bombproof dugouts when a man in one of them could be hit so hard that the whole complicated business of his ears could be blown away leaving him deaf so deaf he couldn't hear his own heart beat? He had been hit and he had been hit bad and now he was deaf.
Not just a little deaf. Not just halfway deaf. He was stone deaf. He lay there for a while with the pain ebbing and thinking this will give me something to chew on all right all right. What about the rest of the guys? Maybe they didn't come out so lucky. There were some good boys down in that hole. How'll it seem being deaf and shouting at people? You write things on paper. No that's wrong they write things on paper to you. It isn't anything to kick up your heels and dance about but it might be worse. Only when you're deaf you're lonesome. You're godforsaken. So he'd never hear again. Well there were a hell of a lot of things he didn't want to hear again. He never wanted to hear the biting little Castanet sound of a machine gun or the high whistle of a seventy-five coming down fast or the slow thunder as it hit or the whine of an airplane overhead or the yells of a guy trying to explain to somebody that he's got a bullet in his belly and that his breakfast is coming out through the front of him and why won't somebody stop going forward and give him a hand only nobody can hear him they're so scared themselves. The hell with it. Things were going in and out of focus. It was like looking into one of those magnified shaving mirrors and then moving it toward you and away from you.
He was sick and probably out of his head and he was badly hurt and he was lonesome deaf but he was also alive and he could still hear far away and sharp the sound of a telephone bell. He was sinking and rising and then going in lazy quiet black circles. Everything was alive with sound. He was nuts all right. He caught a glimpse of the big ditch where he and the guys used to go swimming in Colorado before he came to Los Angeles before he came to the bakery. He could hear the splash of water as Art did one of his high dives he's a fool for diving so far why can't the rest of us do it? He looked out across the rolling meadows of Grand Mesa eleven thousand feet in the sky and saw acres of columbines stirring in a cool August breeze and heard far off the roar of mountain streams. He saw his father pulling a sled with his mother on it one Christmas morning. He heard the fresh snow squealing under the runners of the sled. The sled was his Christmas present and his mother was laughing like a girl and his dad was grinning in his slow wrinkly way. They seemed to have a good time his mother and his father. Especially then. They used to flirt with each other right in front of him before the girls were born. Do you remember this? Do you remember that? I cried. You talked like this. You wore your hair so.
You picked me up and I remembered how strong you were and you put me on old Frank because he was gentle and after that we rode across the river on the ice with old Frank picking his way carefully like a dog. You remember the telephone when you were courting me? I remember everything when I was courting you even the gander that used to rush and hiss at me when I took you in my arms. You remember the telephone when you were courting me silly? I remember. Then you remember the party line going eighteen miles along Cole Creek Valley and only five customers? I remember I remember the way you looked with your big eyes and your smooth forehead you haven't changed. You remember the telephone line and how new it was? Oh it was lonely out there with nobody in three or four miles and nobody really in the world but you. And me waiting for the telephone to ring. It rang two times for us remember? Two rings and you were calling from the grocery store when the store was closed.
And the receivers all along the line all five of them going click-click Bill is calling Macia click-click-click. And then your voice how funny it was to hear your voice the first time over a telephone how wonderful it always was. "Hello Macia." "Hello Bill how are you?" "I'm fine are you through with the work?" "We just finished the dishes." "I suppose everybody is listening again tonight." "I suppose." "Don't they know I love you? You'd think that was enough for them." "Maybe it isn't." "Macia why don't you play a piece on the piano?" "All right Bill. Which one?" "Whatever one you like I like them all." "All right Bill. Wait till I fix the receiver." And then way out on Cole Creek way west on the other side of the mountains from Denver music tinkling over telephone wires that were brand new and wonderful. His mother before she was his mother before she thought particularly of becoming his mother would go over to the piano the only one on Cole Creek and play the Beautiful Blue Ohio or perhaps My Pretty Red Wing. She would play it clear through and his father in Shale City would be listening and thinking isn't it wonderful I can sit here eight miles away and hold a little piece of black business to my ear and hear far off the music of Macia my beautiful my Macia. "Could you hear it Bill?" "Yes. It was lovely." Then somebody else maybe six miles up or down the line would break into the conversation without being ashamed at all. "Macia I just picked up the hook and heard you playing. Why don't you play After the Ball is Over? Clem'd like to hear it if you don't mind." His mother would go back to the piano and play After the Ball is Over and Clem somewhere would be listening to music for maybe the first time in three or four months. Farmers' wives would be sitting with their work done and receivers to their ears listening too and getting dreamy and thinking about things their husbands wouldn't suspect.
And so it went with everybody up and down the lonesome bed of Cole Creek asking his mother to play a favorite piece and his father listening from Shale City and liking it but perhaps growing a little impatient occasionally and saying to himself I wish the people out on Cole Creek would understand that this is a courtship not a concert. Sounds sounds sounds everywhere with the bell fading out and returning and him so sick and deaf he wanted to die. He was wallowing in blackness and far away the telephone bell was ringing with nobody there to answer it. A piano was tinkling far far away and he knew his mother was playing it for his dead father before his father was dead and before she had any thought of him her son. The piano kept time with the bell and the bell with the piano and in back of it there was thick silence and a yearning to listen and lone-someness. Now the moon shines tonight on pretty Red Wing The birds are sighing, the night wind crying.

Chapter Two.
His mother was singing in the kitchen. He could hear her singing there and the sound of her voice was the sound of home. She sang the same tune over and over again. She never sang the words to it just the tune in a kind of absent voice as if she were thinking of something else and the singing were only a way of killing time. When she was busiest she always sang. It was the fall of the year. The poplars and cottonwoods had turned red and yellow. His mother was working and singing in the kitchen over the old coal-burning stove. She was stirring apple butter in a big crock. Or she was canning peaches. The peaches sent a rich spicy smell through the whole house. She was making jelly. The pulp from the fruit hung in a flour sack over the cooler part of the stove. Through the cloth the juices oozed stickily down into a pan. The pan had a thick pinkish-cream scum around its edges. In the center the juice was clear and red. She was baking bread. She baked bread twice a week.
She kept a jar of starter in the ice box from baking time to baking time so she never had to worry about yeast. The bread was heavy and brown and sometimes it swelled two or three inches over the top of the pan. When she took it out of the oven she smeared the brown crust with butter and let it cool. But even better than the bread were the rolls. She baked them to come out of the oven just before supper. They were steaming hot and you put butter inside them and it melted and then you put jam on them or apricot preserves with nuts in the syrup. That was all you wanted for supper although you had to eat other things of course. On summer afternoons you took a thick slice of the bread and put cold butter on it.
Then you sprinkled sugar over the butter and that was better than cake. Or you got a thick slice of sweet bermuda onion and put it between two slabs of bread and butter and nobody anywhere in the world had anything more delicious to eat. In the fall his mother worked from day to day and from week to week scarcely ever getting out of the kitchen. She canned peaches and cherries and raspberries and black berries and plums and apricots and made jams and jellies and preserves and chili sauces. And while she worked she sang. She sang the same hymn in an absent voice without words as if she were thinking of something else all the while. There was a hamburger man down on Fifth and Main. He was slight and stooped and pasty-faced and always glad to talk with anyone who stopped by his stand. He was the only hamburger man in Shale City so he had a monopoly on the business. People said he was a dope fiend and that sometime he would get dangerous. But he never did and he made the best hamburgers anyone ever ate. He had a gas flare over his gas plate and you could smell the wonderful odor of onions frying there for a block on either side of his stand. He came out about five or six in the afternoons and made hamburgers until ten or eleven. You had to wait if you wanted a sandwich. His mother loved the hamburger man's sandwiches.
On Saturday nights his father worked late at the store. He would go down town on Saturday nights and wait until his father got his pay check. At about a quarter to ten when the store was getting ready to close his father would give him thirty cents for three hamburgers. He would rush with his money over to the hamburger man to get a place in line. He would order three hamburgers to go with lots of onions and sweet mustard. By the time the order was filled his father would already be on the way home. The hamburger man would put the sandwiches in a bag and he would put the bag inside his shirt next to his body. Then he would run all the way home so that the hamburgers would still be warm. He would run through the sharp autumn nights feeling the heat of the hamburgers next to his stomach. Each Saturday night he tried to beat last Saturday's time so the sandwiches would be even warmer. He would get home and pull them out of his shirt front and his mother would eat one right away. By that time his father would be home too. It was a great Saturday night feast.
The girls would be in bed being so young and it seemed to him that he had his father and mother completely to himself. He was in a way grown up. He envied the hamburger man because the hamburger man could have all the sandwiches he wanted. In the fall the snow came. Usually there was snow for Thanksgiving but sometimes it didn't come until middle December. The first snowfall was the most wonderful thing on earth. His father always waked him early his voice booming out about the snow. It was usually a wet snow and it clung to everything it touched. Even the wire fence around the chicken coop in the backyard would hold the snow maybe a half inch deep. The chickens never stopped being puzzled and alarmed about the first snow. They would walk carefully in it and shake their feet and the roosters would talk about it complainingly all day long.
The outbuildings were always beautiful and a fence post would have a cap four inches high. The birds in vacant lots would make little patterns in the snow crossed up once in a while by a rabbit track. His father never failed to wake him early when the snow fell. First he rushed to the window to look. Then he got into his heavy clothes and his mackinaw and his boots and his sheepskin gloves and took his flexible flyer and went out with the rest of the kids and didn't come back till his feet were numb and his nose was frosty. The snow was a wonderful thing. In the spring there were primroses ail over the vacant lots. They opened in the morning and closed when the sun grew hot and then opened again in the evening. Each evening the kids went on primrose hunts. They brought back great bouquets of white flowers as big as your hand and put them in flat bowls of water. On May Day they made baskets and filled them with primroses hiding a little candy beneath the flowers. When it was dark they went from house to house and left a basket and knocked on the door and ran away fast into the night. Lincoln Beechy came to town. It was the first airplane Shale City ever saw.
They had it in a tent in the middle of the race track over in the fair grounds. Day in and day out people filed through the tent looking at it. It seemed to be all wire and cloth. People couldn't understand how a man would risk his life just on the strength of a wire. One little Wire gone wrong and it meant the end of Lincoln Beechy. Away up in front of the plane ahead of the propellers was a little seat with a stick in front of it. That was where the great aviator sat. Everyone in Shale City was pleased with the idea of Lincoln Beechy coming to town. It was a wonderful thing. Shale City was really becoming a metropolis. Lincoln Beechy didn't stop at every little stick-in-the-mud town. He stopped only in places like Denver and Shale City and Salt Lake and he was going on to San Francisco. The whole town turned out the day Lincoln Beechy looped the loop. He did it five times. It was the damnedest thing anybody ever saw. Mister Hargraves who was superintendent of schools made a speech before the flight.
He told about how the invention of the airplane was the greatest step forward man had made in a hundred years. The airplane said Mister Hargraves would cut down the distance between nations and peoples. The airplane would be a great instrument in making people understand one another in making people love one another. The airplane said Mister Hargraves was ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity and mutual understanding. Everyone would be friends said Mister Hargraves when the airplane knitted the world together so that the people of the world understood each other. After the speech Lincoln Beechy looped the loop five times and left town. A couple months later his airplane fell into San Francisco Bay and Lincoln Beechy was drowned. Shale City felt as if it had lost a resident. The Shale City Monitor ran an editorial. It said that even though the great Lincoln Beechy was dead the airplane the instrument of peace the knitter together of peoples would go on. His birthday fell in December. Each birthday his mother cooked a big dinner and he had his friends over to the house. Each of his friends also had birthday dinners so there were at least six big affairs during the year for the guys to get together. They usually had chicken and there was always a birthday cake and ice cream. The guys all brought presents. He would never forget the time Glen Hogan brought him a pair of brown silk socks. That was before he had long trousers.
The socks seemed to mean a step forward into a grownup future. They were very handsome. After the party he put them on and stared at them for a long while. He got the long pants to go with them three months later. The guys all liked his father probably because his father liked the guys. After the dinner was over his father always took them all to a show. They would put on their mackinaws and go outside into the snow and tramp down to the Elysium theatre. It was great feeling warm on the inside from food and your face cold on the outside from zero air and a show to look forward to. He could hear their footsteps squeaking in the snow even now. He could see his father leading the pack down to the Elysium. He remembered that the shows were always good. In the fall there was the County Fair. There were bucking bronchos and steers to be bulldogged and bareback Indian races and trotting races. There was always a bunch of Indians headed by the great squaw Chipeta.
A street in Shale City was named after her. The town of Ouray Colorado had been named after Chief Ouray her husband. The Indians Chipeta brought with her didn't do much but squat around and stare but Chipeta herself was full of smiles and talk about the early days. A carnival came to town during the fair and you could see women cut in half and motorcycle riders defying death inside a straight up and down circular wall. In the main auditorium of the fair grounds there were canned fruits gleaming through Mason jars and displays of embroidery and rows of cakes and piles of bread and huge squashes and extra-fancy potatoes. In the livestock pens there were steers that looked as square as an outhouse and pigs almost as big as cows and thoroughbred chickens. Fair week was the biggest week of the year. In a way it was even bigger than Christmas. You bought whips with tassels on the ends and it was a mark of favor if you flicked the legs of a girl you liked. There was a smell about the fair grounds you never forgot. A smell you never ceased dreaming of.
He would always smell it somewhere back in his mind as long as he lived. In the summer they went out to the big ditch north of town and stripped off their clothes and lay around on its banks and talked. The water would be warm from the summer air and heat would be rising off the brown-gray land like steam. They would swim for a little while then they would go back on the bank and sit around all naked and tan and talk. They would talk about bicycles and girls and dogs and guns. They would talk about camping trips and rabbit hunting and girls and fishing. They would talk about the hunting knives they all wanted but only Glen Hogan had. They would talk about girls. When they came of an age to take girls out on dates they always took them to the pavilion in the fair grounds. They began to get very dressy. They talked about ties with matching handkerchiefs and they wore brogue shoes and shirts that had bright red and green and yellow stripes in them. Glen Hogan had seven silk shirts. He had most of the girls too. It got to be an important matter whether or not you had a car and it was a very humiliating thing to walk your girl to the pavilion.
Sometimes you didn't have enough money to go to the dance so you would drive lazily by the fair grounds and hear the music coming through the night from the pavilion. The songs all had meaning and the words were very serious. You felt all swelled up inside and you wished you were over there at the pavilion. You wondered who your girl was dancing with. Then you would light a cigarette and talk about something else. It was quite a thing to light a cigarette. You only did it at night when nobody would see you. You made a serious business of holding the cigarette in a properly careless fashion. And the first guy in the bunch able to inhale was the greatest guy on earth until the rest caught up with him. Down at Jim O'Connell's cigar store the old men sat around and talked about the war.
O'Connell's was very cool in the back room. Before Colorado went dry it was a saloon and it still had the smell of beer in the floorboards on damp days. The old men sat there on high chairs and watched the pool tables and spat into big brass spitoons and talked about England and France and in the end about Rooshia. Rooshia was always on the point of starting a big offensive that would push the goddam Germans right back on Berlin. That would be the end of your war. Then his father decided to leave Shale City. They went to Los Angeles. There he became conscious for the first time about the war.
He waked to the war when Roumania entered. It seemed very important. He had never heard of Roumania except in geography classes. But the entry of Roumania into the war occurred on the same day the Los Angeles newspapers carried a story of two young Canadian soldiers who had been crucified by the Germans in full view of their comrades across Nomansland. That made the Germans nothing better than animals and naturally you got interested and wanted Germany to get the tar kicked out of her. Everybody talked about the oil wells and the wheat fields of Roumania and how they would supply the Allies and how this surely was the end of the war. But the Germans walked right through Roumania and they took Bucharest and Queen Marie had to leave her palace. Then his father died and America entered the war and he had to come too and here he was. He lay and thought oh Joe Joe this is no place for you. This was no war for you. This thing wasn't any of your business.
What do you care about making the world safe for democracy? All you wanted to do Joe was to live. You were born and raised in the good healthy country of Colorado and you had no more to do with Germany or England or France or even with Washington D.C. than you had to do with the man in the moon. Yet here you are and it was none of your affair. Here you are Joe and you're hurt worse than you think. You're hurt bad. Maybe it would be a lot better if you were dead and buried on the hill across the river from Shale City. Maybe there are more things wrong with you than you suspect Joe. Oh why the hell did you ever get into this mess anyhow? Because it wasn't your fight Joe. You never really knew what the fight was all about.

Chapter Three.
He shot up through cool waters wondering whether he'd ever make the surface or not. That was a lot of guff about people sinking three times and then drowning. He'd been rising and sinking for days weeks months who could tell? But he hadn't drowned. As he came to the surface each time he fainted into reality and as he went down again he fainted into nothingness. Long slow faints all of them while he struggled for air and life. He was fighting too hard and he knew it. A man can't fight always. If he's drowning or suffocating he's got to be smart and hold back some of his strength for the last the final the death struggle. He lay back quietly because he was no fool. If you lie back you can float. He used to float a lot when he was a kid. He knew how to do it. His last strength going into that fight when all he had to do was float. What a fool. They were working on him. It took him a little while to understand this because he couldn't hear them. Then he remembered that he was deaf. It was funny to lie there and have people in the room who were touching you watching you doctoring you and yet not within hearing distance. The bandages were still all over his head so he couldn't see them either. He only knew that way out there in the darkness beyond the reach of his ears people were working over him and trying to help him. They were taking part of his bandages off. He could feel the coolness the sudden drying of sweat on his left side. They were working on his arm.
He felt the pinch of a sharp little instrument grabbing something and getting a bit of his skin with each grab. He didn't jump. He simply lay there because he had to save his strength. He tried to figure out why they were pinching him. After each pinch there was a little pull in the flesh of his upper arm and an unpleasant point of heat like friction. The pulling kept on in short little jerks with his skin getting hot each time. It hurt. He wished they'd stop. It itched. He wished they'd scratch him. He froze all over stiff and rigid like a dead cat. There was something wrong about this pricking and pulling and friction heat. He could feel the things they were doing to his arm and yet he couldn't rightly feel his arm at all. It was like he felt inside his arm. It was like he felt through the end of his arm. The nearest thing he could think of to the end of his arm was the heel of his hand. But the heel of his hand the end of his arm was high, high, high as his shoulder. Oh Jesus Christ they'd cut his left arm off. They'd cut it right off at the shoulder he could feel it plain now. Oh my god why did they do a thing like that to him? They couldn't do it the dirty bastards they couldn't do it.
They had to have a paper signed or something. It was the law. You can't just go out and cut a man's arm off without asking him without getting permission because a man's arm is his own and he needs it. Oh Jesus I have to work with that arm why did you cut it off? Why did you cut my arm off answer me why did you cut my arm off? Why did you why did you why did you? He went down into the water again and fought and fought and then came up with his belly jumping and his throat aching. And all the time that he was under the water fighting with only one arm to get back he was having conversation with himself about how this thing couldn't possibly happen to him only it had. So they cut my arm off. How am I going to work now? They don't think of that. They don't think of anything but doing it their own way. Just another guy with a hole in his arm let's cut it off what do you say boys? Sure cut the guy's arm off. It takes a lot of work and a lot of money to fix up a guy's arm. This is a war and war is hell and what the hell and so to hell with it. Come on boys watch this. Pretty slick hey?
He's down in bed and can't say anything and it's his tough luck and we're tired and this is a stinking war anyhow so let's cut the damn thing off and be done with it. My arm. My arm they've cut my arm off. See that stump there? That used to be my arm. Oh sure I had an arm I was born with one I was normal just like you and I could hear and I had a left arm like anybody. But what do you think of those lazy bastards cutting it off? How's that? I can't hear either. I can't hear. Write it down. Put it on a piece of paper. I can read all right. But I can't hear. Put it down on a piece of paper and hand the paper to my right arm because I have no left arm. My left arm. I wonder what they've done with it. When you cut a man's arm off you have to do something with it. You can't just leave it lying around. Do you send it to hospitals so guys can pick it to pieces and see how an arm works?
Do you wrap it up in an old newspaper and throw it onto the junk heap? Do you bury it? After all it's part of a man a very important part of a man and it should be treated respectfully. Do you take it out and bury it and say a little prayer? You should because it's human flesh and it died young and it deserves a good sendoff. My ring. There was a ring on my hand. What have you done with it? Kareen gave it to me and I want it back. I can wear it on the other hand. I've got to have it because it means something it's important. If you've stolen it I'll turn you in as soon as I get these bandages off you thieving bastards you. If you've stolen it you're grave robbers because my arm that is gone is dead and you've taken the ring from it and you've robbed the dead that's what you've done. Where is my ring Kareen's ring before I go under again? I want the ring. You've got the arm isn't that enough where's my ring Kareen's ring our ring please where is it? The hand it was on is dead and it wasn't meant to be on rotten flesh. It was meant always to be on my living finger on my living hand because it meant life.
"My mother gave it to me. It's a real moonstone. You can wear it."
"It won't fit." "The little finger silly try the little finger."
"Oh." "See I said it would fit." "Little mick." "Oh Joe I'm so scared kiss me again."
"We shouldn't've turned the lights out. Your old man'll be sore." "Kiss me. Mike won't care he understands." "Little mick little mick little mick." "Don't go please don't go Joe." "When you're drafted you got to go." "They'll kill you." "Maybe. I don't think so." "Lots of people get killed who don't think so don't go Joe." "Lots of people come back." "I love you Joe." "Little mick." "I'm not mick I'm bohunk." "You're half and half but you look mick. You've got eyes and hair like a little mick." "Oh Joe." "Don't cry Kareen please don't cry." Suddenly a shadow fell across them and they both looked up.
"Stop that stop it goddam you." Old Mike Birkman how did he get into the house so quietly was standing above them in the darkness glaring down. They both lay there on the sofa and stared up at him. He looked like an overgrown dwarf because his back was crooked from twenty-eight years in the coal mines of Wyoming. Twenty-eight years in the mines with an I W W red card and damning everybody. He stood and glared down at them and they made no move. "I'll have none of this business going on in my house. You think this is the back seat of a flivver? Now get up like a couple decent people. Go on. Get up from there K'reen." Kareen got up. She was only five feet one. Mike swore it was because she didn't have enough food when she was a kid but that probably wasn't the truth because her mother had been small and Kareen was perfectly formed and healthy and beautiful so beautiful. Mike was liable to exaggerate when he got excited. Kareen looked up at old Mike unafraid. "He's going away in the morning."
"I know. I know girl. Get into the bedroom. Both of you. Maybe you never get another chance. Go on K'reen." Kareen took one long look at him and then with her head bent as if she were a very busy child thinking about something walked into the bedroom. "Go on in there boy. She's scared. Go in and put your arm around her." He started to go and then he felt Mike's grip against his shoulder. Mike was looking straight into his face and even in the dark his eyes could be seen. "You know how to treat her don't you. She's no whore. You know don't you?" "Yes." "Go to bed boy." He turned and went into the bedroom. An electric candle was burning on one side of the bureau. In the corner of the room beyond the candle Kareen was standing. Her waist was off lying on a chair beside her. She was wearing a slip. As he came in she was twisted around and down a little toward her hip where her hands were trying to undo the fastening of her skirt. She looked up and saw him and just looked without moving her hands or anything. She looked at him like she was seeing him for the first time and didn't know whether to like him or not. She looked at him in a way that made him want to cry.
He walked over and put his arms around her carefully. She leaned to him with her forehead against his chest. Then she turned away and went over to the bed. She pulled the covers down and climbed in clothes and all. She kept her eyes on him all the time as if she was afraid he might say a sharp word or laugh or go away. She made quiet movements under the covers and then her clothes began to drop over the side of the bed from between the covers. When they were all on the floor beside the bed she smiled at him. He started slowly to take off his shirt not moving his eyes from her. She looked around the room and frowned.
"Joe turn your back." "Why?" "I want to get out of bed." "Why?" "There's something I forgot. Turn your back." "No!" "Please." "No! I'll get it for you." "I want to get it myself. Turn your back." "No! I want to see you." "You can't Joe get my robe." "All right. I'll do that." "In the closet. It's red." He went to the closet and got her robe. It was a thin little thing with flowers printed on it and not enough to cover anybody really. He took it over to the bed holding it a little distance from her. "Bring it closer." "Reach for it." She laughed and then reached out quick and snatched it from him back under the covers. She had to reach so far that he saw the curve of her breast. She laughed softly all the while she struggled under the covers putting the robe on and pulling it down as if she had played a great joke on him. Then she threw the covers back and jumped out of bed and ran in her bare feet into the living room. He saw the bottoms of her feet as they whisked to the floor.
They had two arches one through the instep and another that crossed it rising delicately in the ball of her foot and fading away toward the heel. He thought how beautiful her feet are how strong and beautiful they are. She came back with a bowl filled with red geraniums. She took them over to a little table that stood in front of the window. She opened the window and then turned slowly around to face him. She was leaning against the little table and kind of hanging onto it with her hands at the same time. "If you really want to see me" "But if you don't want me to I don't want to." She walked over to the closet and turned her back and slipped off the robe. Then she turned around watching her feet all the time and went over to the bed and slipped in between the covers.
He turned out the light and took off his clothes and got into bed beside her. He threw his arm around her a little carelessly as if it were all an accident. She lay very quietly. He moved his leg. A little puff of air came up from between the covers and he could smell her. Clean, clean flesh and the smell of soap and sheets. He put his leg next to hers. She whirled to him and threw both of her arms around his neck and held him tight. "Oh Joe, Joe I don't want you to go." "You think I want to go?" "I'm afraid." "Of me?' "Oh no!" "Little mick." "It's nice like this isn't it?" "Um." "Were you ever like this with anyone before?" "Not with anyone I loved." "I'm glad." "It's the truth. You?" "You shouldn't ask that." "Why?" "Because I'm a lady." "You're a little mick." "I never was." "I know." "But you couldn't've known really oh Joe I wish you'd run away and not go." "There. My left arm under you. Like a cushion." "Kiss me." "Sweet little mick." "Darling. Oh darling. Oh. Oh my dear my dear my dear my" They didn't sleep very much. Sometimes they dozed off and awakened and found that they were apart and came back to each other and held one another tight very tight as if they had been lost forever and had just found each other all over again. And all night long Mike was stirring through the house and coughing and mumbling. When morning came he stood over their bed holding a breadboard which had two breakfasts on it. "Here you kids eat." Tough old Mike standing there gentle and grizzled and fierce with bloodshot painful eyes. Mike had been in jail too many times not to be good. Old Mike who hated everybody. He hated Wilson and he hated Hughes and he hated Roosevelt and he hated the socialists because they had only big talk and milk in their veins for blood. He even hated Debs a little although not much. Twenty-eight years in the coal mine had fixed him up for a fine hater.
"And now I'm a railroad bull goddam me a railroad bull how's that for a filthy way to make a living?" Mike with his crooked back from the mines standing there with their breakfasts. "Here you kids. Hurry up and eat. You ain't got much time." They ate. Mike went grumbling off and didn't come into the room again. When they had eaten they lay for a little while looking up at the ceiling and digesting their food. "You rumbled." "I did not. Besides it isn't nice for you to mention it. It was you anyhow." "It was a cute little rumble. I liked it." "You're terrible. You get up first." "No you get up first." "Oh Joe kiss me don't go." "Hurry up you damned kids." "You get up." "You." "I'll count, one two three." They jumped out of bed. It was chilly. They shivered and laughed at each other and almost never got dressed for wanting to stop and kiss. "Hurry up you damned kids. You'll miss the train and then Joe will be shot by Americans instead of Germans. That would be a goddam shame." There were four train loads of them leaving that morning and there was a terrible crowd at the station. The whole place the station and the cars and even the locomotives were draped with bunting and the children and women mostly carried flags little flags that they waved vaguely vacantly.
There were three bands all seeming to play at once and lots of officers herding people around and songs and the mayor giving an address and people crying and losing each other and laughing and drunk. His mother and his sisters were there and Kareen was there and Mike was there muttering goddam fools and glaring at everybody and watching Kareen sharply. "And their lives if necessary that democracy may not perish from the face of the earth " It's a long way to Tiperrary it's a long way to go "Don't get scared Kareen. It's all right." "As that great patriot Patrick Henry said " Johnny get your gun get your gun get your gun "As that great patriot George Washington said " "Goodbye mother goodbye Catherine goodbye Elizabeth. I'll send back half my pay and dad's insurance will hold out till I get back." And we won't be back till it's over, over there "Step lively boy you're in the army now." Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile "As that great patriot Abraham Lincoln said."
"Where's my boy where's my boy? He's under age can't you see? He just came up from Tucson bout a week ago. They had him in jail for a tramp and I came all the way here to get him back. They let him out of jail if he'd join the army. He's only sixteen except he's big and strong for his age he always was. He's too young I tell you he's just a baby. Where is he my little boy?" Goodbye maw goodbye paw goodbye mule with your old hee-haw "As that great patriot Theodore Roosevelt has said " America I love you you're like a sweetheart to me "Don't go Joe run away they'll kill you I know it I'll never see you again." Oh Kareen why do they have a war right now just when we find each other? Kareen we've got more important things than war. Us Kareen you and me in a house. I'll come home at night to you in my house your house our house. We'll have fat happy kids smart kids too. That's more important than a war. Oh Kareen, Kareen I look at you and you're only nineteen and you're old old like an old woman. Kareen I look at you and I cry inside and I bleed. Just a baby's prayer at twilight when lights are low.
"As that great patriot Woodrow Wilson has said." There's a silver lining through the dark cloud shining "All aboard. All aboard." Over there over there over there over there over there "Goodbye son. Write us. We'll make out." "Goodbye mother goodbye Catherine goodbye Elizabeth don't cry." "For you are Los Angeles' own. May God bless you. May God give us victory." "All aboard. All aboard." The yanks are coming the yanks are coming "Let us pray. Our Father which art in Heaven" I can't pray. Kareen can't pray. Kareen, Kareen this is no time to pray. "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" Kareen, Kareen I don't want to go. I want to stay here and be with you and work and make money and have kids and love you. But I've got to go. "For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever Amen." "Goodbye Mike goodbye Kareen I love you Kareen." Oh say can you see "Goodbye mother goodbye Catherine goodbye Elizabeth." What so proudly we hailed. "You in my arms Kareen forever." Whose broad stripes and bright stars Goodbye everybody goodbye.
Goodbye my son father brother lover husband goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye my mother father brother sister sweetheart wife goodbye and goodbye. O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. "Goodbye Joe." "Goodbye Kareen." "Joe dear darling Joe hold me closer. Drop your bag and put both of your arms around me and hold me tightly. Put both of your arms around me. Both of them." You in both of my arms Kareen goodbye. Both of my arms. Kareen in my arms. Both of them. Arms, arms, arms, arms. I'm fainting in and out all the time Kareen and I'm not catching on quick. You are in my arms Kareen. You in both of my arms. Both of my arms. Both of them. Both I haven't got any arms Kareen. My arms are gone. Both of my arms are gone Kareen both of them. They're gone. Kareen, Karee,n Kareen. They've cut my arms off both of my arms. Oh Jesus mother god Kareen they've cut off both of them. Oh Jesus mother god Kareen, Kareen, Kareen my arms.

Chapter Four.
It was hot. So hot that he seemed to be burning up inside and out. It was so hot he couldn't breathe. He could only gasp. Far off against the sky there was a foggy line of mountains and moving straight across the desert was the railroad track dancing and leaping in the heat. It seemed that he and Howie were working on the railroad. That was funny. Oh hell things were getting mixed up again. He'd seen all this before. It was like going into a new drug store for the first time and sitting down and suddenly feeling that you've been there many times before and that you've already heard what the clerk is going to say as soon as he comes up to serve you. He and Howie working on the railroad in the heat? Sure. Sure. It was all right. Things were under control.
He and Howie were working there in the hot sun laying that railroad straight through the Uintah desert. And he was so hot he felt he was going to die. He felt that if he could only stop for a little rest he would cool off. But that was the awful thing about a section gang job. You couldn't ever stop. The fellows didn't laugh and kid as you'd think guys would either. They didn't say a word. They just worked.
Looking at a section gang it always seems as if they are working slow. But you have to work slow because you never stop and you have just so much strength. You don't stop because you're afraid. It isn't that you're afraid of the foreman because the foreman never bothers anybody. It's just that you're afraid for the job and of how much the other guy will do. So he and Howie worked slow and steady trying to keep up with the Mexicans. His head throbbed and he could hear his heart pounding against his ribs and even down in the calves of his legs he could feel the strong pulse beat and yet he couldn't stop work even for a minute. His breath came shorter and shorter and it seemed that his lungs were too small to hold the air he had to get into them if he was going to keep alive. It was a hundred and twenty-five in the shade and there wasn't any shade and he felt like he was smothering under a white hot blanket and all he could think was I've got to stop I've got to stop I've got to stop.
They stopped for lunch.
It was their first day on the gang and he and Howie naturally thought they would be supplied with lunch from the hand car. But they weren't. When the foreman saw they had nothing to eat he said something to a couple of the Mexicans. The Mexicans came over and offered them something out of their lunch pails. The Mexicans were eating fried egg sandwiches all crusted over with red pepper. He and Howie just grunted no thanks and flopped on their backs. Then they turned over on their stomachs because the sun was so hot it would have burned out their eye balls even with the lids closed. The Mexicans just sat and chewed on their fried egg sandwiches and stared at them.
All of a sudden there was the noise of the Mexicans getting up so he and Howie rolled over to see what was happening. The whole gang was starting down the tracks on a slow gallop. The foreman just sat and watched the gang. They asked the foreman what the idea was and the foreman said the boys were going to take a swim.
The idea of a swim was too much. He and Howie jumped up and ran along after them. The way the foreman spoke they thought they were going just a little piece down the track. But it turned out they ran two miles before they came to a canal maybe ten feet wide and mud-colored and beached on both sides with a solid mass of tumbleweeds. The Mexicans started pulling their clothes off. He and Howie wondered how they figured to make it into the water without getting full of thistles. They decided there must be some path through the weeds or the Mexicans wouldn't have tackled the swim in the first place.
By the time they were undressed the Mexicans were splashing around in the ditch and laughing and yelling.
It turned out there wasn't any path through the tumble-weeds after all. They were ashamed to stand there so naked and white compared to the rest and do nothing about it. So they began jumping through the tumbleweeds until they were in the water. The water was hot and it smelled of alkali but that didn't make any difference. It was like an April shower. He thought about the Y.M.C.A. swimming pool in Shale City. He thought my gosh these guys act as if this was the greatest swimming hole in the world. He thought I'll bet they were never in a swimming pool in their lives. He was standing there with the mud of the ditch bottom up above his ankles when the Mexicans began climbing out and putting their clothes on again. The swim was over.
By the time he and Howie got back to their clothes they were whiskered with thistles to the hips. They noticed that the Mexicans didn't even bother to pick the thistles out.
Some of the Mexicans were already starting on the trip back to the hand car so they sort of brushed the thistles off their legs and leaped into their clothes. Then they ran the two miles back and lunch was over and it was time to go to work again.
As the afternoon wore on he and Howie began to stumble at their work and finally to fall. The foreman didn't say anything when they fell down and neither did the Mexicans.
The Mexicans just stopped and waited for them to get up staring like babies all the while.
When they stumbled back to their feet they began tugging at the rails again. Every muscle in their bodies ached and still they had to keep on working. Most of the skin had worn off their hands. Every time they grabbed the hot rail-tongs and lifted they could taste the pain of raw hands clear into their mouths. The thistles in their feet and legs seemed to go deeper and deeper with every step they took and they festered and there was no time to stop and pick them out.
But the aches and bruises and the awful weariness weren't the worst things. His body could keep up somehow but it was the things inside of him that began to strain and roar.
His lungs got so dry that they squeaked with each breath. His heart swelled from pumping so hard. He got a little panic-s