PARTISAN REVIEW
"he should've been working away mighty anxious at that rice crop."
Laughter, brief and explosive, broke from the increasing circle
of men.
The corpsman swabbed the ulcerated sores on the soldier's legs,
dusting them with sulfa powder. Over two of the rawest sores he
placed temporary dressings. "Well, let's see how the rest of his body
looks. He's probably scratched to hell like this all over."
The S.P. forced the soldier to remove the rest of
his
clothes and
he stood,
his
clothes folded in a neat bundle at
his
feet, stripped before
us. Like the thin buttocks of an infant babe, his behind was withered,
but from poor diet. His eyes were like two pieces of wet coal stuck
in the untelling flatness of
his
face, and they did not seem to notice
either the relentless dazzle of the overhead lamps or us.
"Wait a minute," said one of the men and he ran to the X-ray
lab. He returned holding a gigantic enlargement of the photograph
of the chief's girl friend that I had been shown that afternoon. He
was grinning, "Let's see how he likes
things
in the States!"
The sullen quiet of the group dissipated instantly. Several began
to move around the J ap soldier excitedly, edging closer and closer
to
him
who merely kept the frozen, dental no-smile that he had
assumed when he first entered the treatment room. "Show it to him,
show it to him good. Let him see some of that stuff," the men called
joyfully.
Murphy took the picture in both his hands and held it up before
the face of the Jap soldier, the picture of the girl who was a trifle
too large-but a few inches away from the soldier's eyes. His fatalistic
composure did dissolve, I am sure, but one could not detect it except
for the fact that his eyes roved wildly a few seconds like spilled black
marbles rolling around.
"Why, he don't understand," said the S.P. "He don't even
know what it is, I believe. You know how their women are made
different. All he wanted was to get
him
a nice little Flip tail and an
old rice field."
The restraint of the circle of men was gone, the men now
crowding close to the J ap soldier, chanting to him their happy, lewd
cries. "Don't he see it, don't he see it at all?" "He sure is in a good
way, buck naked like he is, to be looking at a piece like that." "Look
at
it, dammit, look at what men cry for!" He would have reacted
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