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‘Washing Machine Charlie’ is what they’ve started calling the Jap planes circling overhead like mosquitoes—though mosquitoes, while dangerous and annoying, don’t tend to drop 1,800 pounds of explosives on you. Their goal is to disrupt their sleep, tire them out, make them confused and liable to slip up and unmotivated to go on. As far as Sidney’s concerned, it’s working. Two, three air raids a day and the Jap navy shelling them by night have him deliriously drifting through the days, wondering almost casually whether he’ll ever be able to sleep again and whether or not it’s possible to die from a lack of sleep. It wouldn’t surprise him—if there is one thing he’s learned here it’s that there are many different ways in which men can die.
They’ve abandoned the mortar pit close to the river, which is deeper and fortified with sandbags and offers more protection, but the Japs have it zeroed. Instead, he’s hugging the ground in a much shallower foxhole further back towards the tree line, feeling like one of the hares he used to go out hunting for, foolishly hoping he won’t be spotted. The familiar smell of sweet blood mixed with mud and cordite creates a queer confusion in his mind, present fear distorting happy memories, and he feels a sudden sympathy for his old catches. As the ground trembles, he trembles with it; explosions pass right through him, rattling his teeth and whittling down his nerves, whittling them right down to just the thinnest of branches. Everything inside him, from his brain to his guts to his legs to his eyes, is telling him this is no place for human beings, being hunted like animals and living like them, too, in holes in the ground.
What else do hares do? Play dead, wait out the danger. It’s ironic, pretending you’re already dead to stay alive, but really, when he thinks about it, it’s not such a terrible strategy. Except the Japs don’t care if he’s already dead; they want him deader. They want him ripped into little bitty chunks, spread out all over the mud. In fact, it seems to Sid that as they’re walking in their artillery, he’s more likely to get hit if he stays in the same place, if not by a shell then surely by shrapnel. Isn’t he? The freight-train sound of the navy bombs, the impact of explosives like a giant’s footsteps coming closer and closer rips his thoughts to shreds.
Just a little while longer, he tells himself, like he always does, imposing discipline over rationality or the lack thereof, clawing his fingers into the mud and gritting his teeth. It’ll be over soon. Except it won’t be. And tomorrow there will be another raid, and another one, on and on until the end of time, and life will become only an interlude between moments of monstrous thunder, death and destruction.
He tries to pray, like he always does; it’s the one thing that helps just a little. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name—
He can’t remember the next line, and he feels himself starting to panic. Terror, frantic and certain, has gripped him hard, reduced him to a giant heart throbbing with fear.
Try again. Our Father, who art in heaven—
But between God in heaven and him, there’s Japs in their planes, and what can God do now but watch?
He thinks of the bomb shelters some of the guys have built behind the lines. But that would mean moving, exposing himself, if not to the Japs then to any trigger-happy marines around him. If he stays here, though, he fears something worse than dying may happen. He’s seen it happen to some of the others, limping towards aid stations with a bullet in their foot or calf, but whose real ailment seemed to be, according to the guys he asked, that they were tired; just tired.
He’s never thought it would happen to him, never worried about it, either, and he’s knows that it’s his business, his hope, to stop it, to fight off the madness. But the one thought growing larger and larger in his mind until it pushes out all the rest is that he needs to get away from here. He can’t bear it, not for another single second.
He lifts his head and gazes around, but the jungle changes faces with every flash that follows the thunderclap of the bombs, disorienting him. He gets to his feet and is knocked back on his ass by a nearby blast almost immediately. Try again. He gets up. He runs, not knowing where. In the shattered light of explosions and the distant fires from the enemy’s afternoon barrage of their stockpiles of aviation gasoline, he passes foxholes and sees the dull gleam of helmets, sees bodies curled up like babies in their earthen wombs. He slips, stumbles, eyes flitting frantically across the ground. A piece of shrapnel zips past his nose, missing him by millimetres. He’s stopped by a shell blast a few yards in front of him, turns tail and presses his hands against his ears, trapped inside the noise, trapped inside the column of mud scattering down on him, and then it starts to rain, big, greasy drops that slide down his collar and almost instantly turn the mud into an even more dangerous, slippery mess.
He yells; it spills out of him, uncontrollably. Help me, Lord. Save me. Maybe yelling will make God hear him up there.
His foot slips, and he falls smack on his front, landing painfully on his elbows. He grits his teeth, lifting himself back up. When he does, he spots a small structure of coconut logs with a hole in the middle.
There.
He dives in headfirst and lands on top of a body. The shelter is small, barely big enough for two people, and the people are Chuckler and Leckie. Leckie’s eyes are as wide as his own, and just inches away from him. He looks startled, then concerned, and it’s not until he lifts a hand to thumb away tears from around his mouth that Sid realizes his face is not wet from the rain; he’s crying. Leckie mouths something, and Sid dully watches his lips move, but he can’t hear anything over the pounding of blood and bombs in his ears.
Leckie opens his arms and folds them around him, pulling him close. He’s warm and damp, smelling of mud and sour sweat, and as his arms tighten around him Sidney closes his eyes and wraps his own arms around Leckie’s torso, breathing in big gulps of fetid air. He can feel Leckie’s heart pounding wildly against his own, as if excited to have found a companion.
Leckie begins to rock him slightly, back and forth, back and forth. One hand is on the back of his neck, his head, and Sidney can feel his lips against his forehead, his cheek, his ear, moving. A prayer? Not Leckie, not likely. He imagines the words he can’t hear.
It’s gonna be okay. It’ll be over soon. Don’t cry. Things his mother would say to him when he was young and came bawling into the kitchen with a scraped knee.
The tears keep coming; he can’t stop them, feels them sliding down his neck. He begins to shiver, and he can’t stop that either. Leckie doesn't do anything except continue to rock him, seeming to Sidney as big as a house, a tolerant giant soothing him with infinite patience. His hand is blessedly still and heavy on his neck, just his thumb brushing up and down. His breath skates over Sid’s temple.
Slowly, very slowly, a stillness starts to grow inside of him. It ripples out to the edges of his body, his trembling lips, his quivering fingers, slowing down his ragged breath and the tumult in his head. Outside, the inferno rages on, and he can still feel the concussions as they travel through Leckie's body, but his arms stop them from knocking everything loose again by gently holding Sidney in place, submitting him to their own isolated rhythm.
The world has contracted to Leckie’s embrace. Sidney feels himself slip into a weary half-dream, a hallucination, almost, of being transported back into the past when a pair of rocking arms was all he knew and enough to protect him from all the dangers of the world around him; then further back, to the moment when God scooped him out of the chaos and darkness and held him in the palm of His hand.
*
“Hey, Phillips, wake up.”
He doesn’t want to wake up. He’s warm and comfortable and tired, still so tired, his eyelids seem glued shut; he couldn’t possibly open them even if he wanted to.
Fingers stroke the back of his neck. Warm breath on his ear.
“C'mon, Johnny Reb. Rise and shine.”
Reluctantly, Sid blinks his eyes open. Grey light filters into the burrow. It’s quiet again, so quiet that he can hear his ears ringing. Underneath the ringing comes a wash of noise of men talking and laughing, and, in the distance, the ocean. He even hears the warbling of a bird.
For a moment he feels disoriented. He doesn’t remember the shelling stopping, and he doesn’t remember falling asleep. But somehow, he has slept. Somehow, he is still here, his head resting on Leckie’s chest, which rises and falls underneath him, and he rises and falls with it. They’re alone; Chuckler is nowhere to be seen.
Now he remembers. How everything spilled out of him last night when normally he keeps it all so carefully locked up. How he cowered in Leckie’s arms, hysterical, sobbing like a child. The strange hallucinations. Even just the fact that he fell asleep right on top of him—
Shame sloshes nauseatingly in his stomach. It had to be Leckie, too; Leckie with his wry smile and his wild temper, his contempt for officers and his poet's diction, who he feels so inexplicably drawn to, like the big brother he never had. Who he wants to like him, be impressed by him, more than anyone else. Who he feels a connection with, more than with the others, and while it feels reassuring it also makes him feel that much more afraid of losing it somehow.
“It was a bad one, huh?” Leckie murmurs. His hand burns in Sid’s neck.
What he should do is apologize and tell Leckie not to worry about him, reassure him that he’s alright and just take this whole thing lightly, laugh at himself, like he always does. But for some reason, he has to work to make his lips and tongue move.
He quickly raises himself up, unable to look Leckie in the eye. He and Chuckler will surely tell the others about his moment of weakness, and never let him hear the end of it. He’s got it coming, being the youngest, and usually he takes these things in stride, but right now, the idea of them seeing him as crazy, a coward, and an altogether poor excuse for a Marine makes him feel completely mortified.
Poor little Johnny Reb. Was it a bad one, huh? Did you want your mommy?
Finally, he gets out: “I’m sorry”, and he scrambles to his feet, ducks his head and crawls outside.
Some palm trees have been knocked down, others gouged by ragged chunks of steel as big as his hand. He sees tents, packs, weapons scarred by shrapnel, some of it useless now. The muddy earth is pitted with craters, and he sees corpsmen bearing stretchers trying to navigate their way around them without stumbling or dropping their charges, wounded marines and bodies covered with ponchos. The men around him are getting to work, repairing shelters, setting up guns, rustling up breakfast. They’re not talking about last night, because there is nothing to say. What happened happens every day. Someone, like Leckie, might say it was a bad one—‘bad’ being a word that loses all value here, and just means rougher or longer than usual, but even that seems superfluous. Why place judgment on something they can’t change, and have no choice but to suffer through?
On any other morning, that would be him, getting on with the day, situation normal all fucked up. But right now, the scene in front of him only makes him feel even more dispersed and alien, bewildered at the change that came over him last night, which has scared him more than he cares to admit. More than the bombs, more than the thought of dying itself—the fear, all-encompassing, wiping away discipline, courage, physical training, everything he has worked hard to cultivate. He feels betrayed not only by his body and his mind, but by his soldier’s heart.
And to think it may even have jeopardized how Leckie, how the others see him—
"Hey."
He jumps when a hand lands on his shoulder. He turns around and sees Leckie. The front of his dungarees is covered in mud—the mud Sid slipped in before throwing himself on top of him—and Sid blushes, preparing himself to be hazed. But Leckie just stares at him, searching his face with those penetrating eyes of his, and Sid feels somehow naked, as if Leckie can see right through him, right through his skin into this dark secret centre inside him.
“Listen, Leckie—I’m —"
But Leckie cuts him off, leaning in, his voice soft and deep in Sid’s ear.
“It’s all right,” he says. He gives Sid’s shoulder a squeeze. “You’re only human.”
He says it so convincingly, with such empathy, that for a moment Sid has to blink away tears. He blushes again and looks away, biting his lip, trying with all his might to control himself. Why did Leckie do it—hold him like that? He hadn’t even seemed to care that Chuckler was there. Had it been anyone else, they would have acted as if his fear was infectious, though they would probably have offered an arm around his shoulder. They’re Marines; they’re brothers. Most would offer that much. That's what he would have done.
But not Leckie. After the constant violence and brutality, and the roughness of his fellow Marines, Leckie’s behaviour has him staggering. It’s as if he knew exactly what Sid was feeling and what he needed.
Leckie unfurls a long arm and presses Sid against him, just for a second or two. Looking back up into his eyes, eyes that have often met his own sparkling with mirth or mischief, and lately, more often, with a little glance of shared grief and exhaustion, he sees himself reflected as Leckie sees him. He sees not worry, not judgment, but compassion, understanding. He sees his own faith reflected there, and he thinks, as he has often thought before, that Bob Leckie seems to know the human heart from a to z.
He doesn’t move; he doesn’t want Leckie to remove his arm. A wave of inexpressible relief rises, gathers force and sweeps through his whole being. It is all right. He is all right. Not just an animal shivering in a hole; not crazy; not a coward; not weak. And, perhaps most importantly, not alone. It’s all right because it can happen to any of them—maybe even to Bob Leckie.
He still feels uncertain about himself; uncertain about God, but not about being able to count on his friend.
He feels a deep gratitude well up inside him that he can’t name, can’t express. Even if he knew, like Leckie, how to turn his feelings into full sentences, all words seem to have been drilled out of him. So he nods and bites his lip, but he can't quite keep the emotion from his voice when he says, "Thank you."
Leckie smiles his crooked smile and lets him go. He puts on his helmet, then walks away, disappearing into the ant hill of activity. Sid looks after him, and feels a new wild quiver in his heart that he doesn’t understand.
Such kindness. That anybody could be so kind.
He puts on his own helmet, and begins to make his way down to his mortar pit.
*
When the far-off buzz of airplanes starts up again and he’s by himself in the cold dark of his foxhole, he thinks about Leckie. Throbbing in his chest along with the old, worn-out fear, he feels a different kind of weakness, a different kind of loss. A wanting which, too, feels like something to be suffered, to be withstood without breaking.
And yet, he feels new powers, too, a new kind of faith within himself.
He doesn’t lose himself again. Now, when the air raids come, he manages to stay in control. The noise is still indescribable, and the wet mud clings to him and chills him in the same way; but when he closes his eyes, he glides into his own world. He summons up Leckie’s face, his hands; lips and fingers that wipe away tears and bless Sidney's face, brush not only his neck but his heart, too. A kind voice, clearly heard this time, that reassures him.
It's all right. You’re only human.
He wonders if Leckie thinks about it, too.