Aces & Eights

by Tom Sheehan

Compulsive excitement filled Sergeant Charlie Twohig, down to his toes. Ledo, at this end of the Burma Road , was not a scavenger’s post with a limited amount of personnel; it was an army metropolis burgeoning even in the darkness with a kind of stateside activity. The muffled sound of a laboring engine crawled out of a nearby valley, sounding as if it were under wraps, promising more engines up the line with the sometimes slow hum of war. From the edge of night he heard the tom-tom of a hammer beating on sheet metal. Night guards, bent on their watches and patrols, loomed as hulking giants working thick shadows. The heat, floating down out of another valley, at first did not seem to bother Charlie Twohig. Noise and activity meant people and people meant money and money meant gambling. The long haul from North Africa had been worth the trouble; the pigeons, his resolute mind said, were ready for the taking.

Into his bunk he crawled and felt a slight but not new discomfort. His throat was dry and he needed a drink and an itching sensation began to crawl on his hands with the purchase of a seven-day itch. His heart, he swore, was pumping faster than ever and he convinced himself it was more of the excitement. A strange heat was subtilely making way in his body.

Private Jake Breda twisted in the bunk above him. Twohig wanted to talk. “Hey, Jake, you awake?”

“Yuh, Sarge.”

“You ever been really excited, Jake? I mean so bad you got sick from it.”

“Sure, when I got married.”

“Right at the altar?”

“Hell, no, Sarge. When I closed the door behind me at the motel. What have you got to be so excited about?”

“I’m in a streak, Jake. I never felt this way in my life. It ain’t I won so much, but I haven’t lost since that blackjack game in Ceylon .”

“What’s it feel like? I never felt really different when I was winning. Never parleyed much to begin with, so can’t tell by me.”

“Jake, I swear my hands are sweating for a deck of cards right now. Hell, I wished it was morning. I wish it was tomorrow already. I swear I’m going to win big, so big it’s burning a hole right through me.”

Breda dropped a hand down the side of the bunk. “Give me a smoke, will you, Sarge.” Twohig was for the moment a suddenly accessible sergeant.

“Sure, Jake, keep the deck. God, I’m burning with excitement. I wish I didn’t have to sleep at all. Tomorrow I’m going to line me up some real good ones. Blackjack, that’s what it’s going to be. Black jack. I can’t lose. I can’t lose. Tomorrow, all day, it’ll be twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-one. I’m in the groove.”

He fell asleep dreaming of getting hit and hit and hit with aces and deuces and treys and coming up twenty-one every time out of the gate. He did not see a king or queen all night. Twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-one.

Parts of the journey that brought him here to Ledo, at the end of the world in upheaval, clamor everywhere, came across his memory with unusual clarity, with unusual color. He didn’t think much about Ohio , and only knew the new uneasiness in him as irregular. Odds be damned!

* * *

Weeks earlier they had been at sea. Sergeant Charlie Twohig, long, lean and dark, with a mysterious ailment, as yet unknown to him, threatening to work its way into his consciousness, leaned against a metal bulkhead of a lead LST and felt the heat sinking into his back, blacksmith’s iron if anything. The perspiration falling off his brow he had long been aware of and continually tried to dismiss its presence by constantly shuffling a deck of cards, a veritable extension of his hands…fingers, hands, cards, money, they were partners forever.

Behind him where he gazed the uncoupled train of LSTs moved with a cumbersome plodding out of the Suez Canal and into the searing brightness of the Red Sea . The indignant, hot and worried cargo was a company of Graves Registration men that, already in the first flush of dawn, felt the slamming of solar heat, the huge and imponderable hammer of it. To a man they had heard and believed the waters before them boiled under an hour of sun. There was much evidence about them: with explosive quickness of a flare the sun had popped up over Asia and dark welts were maps on their fatigues. It was impossible to sit still and let sweat crawl a horde of ants over the skin, yet it was just as difficult to move about on the boats or find a piece of shade. And the worst was yet to come. It was like a sore throbbing elsewhere.

Behind them the flat oblique shadows of the LSTs lay on the waters of the Red Sea; ahead of them was half the company’s final target, India and Burma and the dead. The other two platoons, under Captain Redmond, were to continue on to China . At both ends of the Burma Road the dead needed to be buried.

Corporal Tally Biggs sat beside Charlie Twohig and eyed the deck of cards. He said, his head at a condescending angle, “You know, Twig, if I never saw you with a deck of cards I’d of thought you were naked.” Biggs pronounced naked as if it were nekid, and he had the ungracious habit of speaking with little lip movement, watching guard perhaps on any commitment. An inconsistent green in his eyes likewise operated under a controlled guise. Biggs was not easy to like, and found few fast friends, if any at all, in the ranks of comrades.

“Hell,” Twohig said with his Midwestern drawl, “if I didn’t have a deck of cards to fondle, you know I’d be bare ass. You wanna cut low card for a buck?” If it was not the sun lighting up his eyes, it was the thought of a gamble, of odds being folded up in someone’s camp and might as well be his.

Biggs read him clearly. “No siree!” he said. “Not for three cuts to your one. I owe you up to my ass now and I ain’t getting in any deeper.” Always he’d worried about making some outward sign of the cowardice lodged within his thin frame. It made his voice soft and entreating as he said, “Twig, couldn’t we get torpedoed out here? Christ, but we’re moving slow, ain’t we? Couldn’t they up and stick a fish right in us?”

“Torpedoes is for boats, not for these little lake-crossing barges. What you really got to worry about is getting strafed by some Heinkel or Junkers or a Stuka, or maybe getting dive-bombed when you ain’t got your life belt on.” Twohig loved to pull the string that tied Biggs’ guts together. “Cut!” He held the deck out. The blue bicycles of the top card caught the sun.

Biggs, aware of Twohig’s constant taunts, had spent much of the night dwelling on the idea of swimming in the cauldron of the Red Sea . He hated fish and he hated blood and he didn’t know how to swim in the first place. “I ain’t cutting, Twig! Not three to one I ain’t cutting.” The deep green of his eyes had retreated to a thin, watery green and he moved his wrist to mop away sweat lingering at the edges of his eyes. “I don’t care how hot it gets, I ain’t getting nowhere out of this belt. All’s I can do is keep my head from going under if we was to get thrown in the drink.”

Twohig moved one shoulder away from the bulkhead and a wisp of air was sucked in behind his back. “Life belts are no good against sharks, Tally. They’re the real butchers of the sea. They tell me sharks can amputate a leg quicker’n a doctor can with an electric saw. Cut!” The blue bicycles again.

“Ain’t no sharks in these waters! Nothing lives in these waters, nothing at all!”

“Don’t be stupid, Biggs. I suppose you never heard of the balance of power. You must be pretty dumb not to know about that.”

“What the hell’s that got to do with sharks? That’s only about countries lining up against each other in bunches to keep out of war. And I ain’t cutting!” Slowly he shook his head at Twohig and smiled a treacherously deceptive smile.

“Yuh, and it’s all about little ones getting eaten by big ones. It keeps order in things like they don’t need traffic cops or anything. They just go on and anything small in the way of big ones gets eaten up. Maybe they do have traffic cops here. I’d guess that’s what you’d call sharks. They eat up their share of smaller fish and anything foreign that gets in the water, and you know what, Biggs?”

“What?”

“If you was to fall in the water when we got dive bombed, you’d be foreign. Cut!” The bicycles were rolling.

The deck of cards was there in front of him, the rolling stock. “Trey of spades!” Sweat ran over Biggs’ face but he smiled that thin despicable smile of a caricatured rat.

“Deuce. You owe!” Upward in Twohig’s sweaty hand the two of hearts lay and a thin blotch of pink was evident on the white of the card.

Angrily, Biggs said, “You’re a lousy gambler, sergeant. I’m the only guy in the whole outfit you can beat.” Great desire to punch the sergeant rushed on him, but he knew he’d probably get thrown over the side if he hit him. “Someday I’ll beat your ass, but good,” and he could see his fists smashing away at Twohig’s face the way Henry Armstrong could, or the way Harry Greb used to throw them in the barrooms in New Orleans when he was training for fights. His father always said Harry Greb was a real, real tiger, standing in the middle of a bar and yelling out, “I’m Harry Greb and I can kick the crap out of any man in here,” and going ahead and doing it, his training routine.

Twohig tired of Biggs and wanted to move on to new entertainment. In front of him Captain Redmond’s big ears were fire red and sweat was a shadow that covered his whole shirt. Beneath the captain’s arms it seemed darker still, dark like patches on tire tubes. Twohig was willing to bet the captain was wearing a tie. With the deck clutched in his hand he moved his left shoulder and saw steam come up from behind his back. With his left foot he nudged the fruit crate Redmond was sitting on.

Redmond turned around and looked at him. The knot on his tie was still tied under the oversized larynx, his eyes were bulging as though the sockets had loosened their properties and the oversized lower lip was more a piece of extra flesh than an integral part of his mouth. Twohig did not like the captain, not from the outset; he was ugly and a phony to boot. Why didn’t the man wear his glasses outside the orderly room? If he only knew how much they improved his appearance.

“Sorry, Captain. Guess I need to stretch a bit.” Twohig loved to play games with him as much as with Tally Biggs. Biggs’ money he liked, but the captain was more fun and he relished the idea of toying with an officer. The idea of the India/Burma assignment caused him some minor dread, and it was lucky, he thought, that the captain was going on to China with the first two platoons.

Twohig the gambler knew what the captain would say, knew him like a book he did. Would he never get tired of mouthing the same pet phrases?

“That’s quite all right, sergeant. We all of us need some stretching, but the road ahead is a long one and we must make the best of it.”

It was Redmond clear as a phony bell. Just another echo. Christ, if that ain’t just like him, thought Twohig. He can’t talk without any of them damn sickening words…we all of us, as if he really belonged; the road ahead…make the best of it. Just another broken record from officer country.

A licorice sensation ran through Charlie Twohig, and a fluttering joy swam in his head. It was game time: “What is the road ahead, sir? We all of us heard some scuttlebutt back there,” he said, pointing over his shoulder back to the African horizon now a low cloud on the rim of the sea, “but I’m sure we could do with some reviewing.” It was not a successful attempt, though he had chosen his words carefully. The homely bastard had hardly blinked his eyes.

When the sergeant had kicked his box, Captain Redmond had been deep thought about his gambling non-com. Inside his shirt pocket, probably now soaked from the sweat, was a letter from Twohig’s wife. There would be no need of reading it again for he had memorized its contents. It was evident she was a more intelligent person than Twohig, though hardly as devious, and he had read between the lines the love she had for the mad gambler. As for himself, he had never had, owned or partaken of a woman for any extended period of time, though he knew how deep the hooks of a good, true love went. The thought that he might help this woman had built a new spirit in him, but he was destined to go to China after the split-up in Ceylon . A deep desire prompted him to do what he could. It would make him feel good inside, this call beyond duty.

“We break at Ceylon , Sergeant. First and second platoons go with me to China . Third and fourth go with Lieutenants Tozzi and Milano to Diamond Harbor at Calcutta .

The Guinea Brigade, thought Twohig. If we could ever get to Rome or Naples , they might get something done for us. What the hell use are two damn Guineas out in India ? They might as well be on the moon.

“What’s our course after Calcutta , sir?” Twohig was irritated. What the hell made Redmond think he was so damn smart. Anybody who ever read anything knows about Diamond Harbor . Damn the sweat! It was making him blink as it ran into his eyes and he’d be damned if he ever wanted an officer to think he was forced to blink when stared down.

Redmond, though he sweated profusely, did not mind the heat. For a long time he had conditioned himself to do without comfort and had forced himself into extreme exposures, both of the body and of the mind. For eighteen months he had been without a woman and he was still able to think of them with great sensitivity and imagination. Even among the married men of his command, no other could say the same. When his time came (he felt the slight rocking of the craft as a warning of a growing need), he would really enjoy his fling. Searching for a woman would be an adventure. Of course, his looks would hold off some women, but they would be arrogant and unworthy. A man had more to offer than looks. When he looked at Twohig he wondered what his wife looked like. Somehow he had formed a picture of her; big of bust and hip, blonde hair, blue eyes, skin like buttermilk, and tremendously good in bed. That she was intelligent was unquestioned. That had been divined from her letter. Her use of negatives was clue enough, and the way she slid into comfortable alliterations made him think of her reading poetry on a morning porch by the sea or a wide lake, by herself.

The dark, brooding eyes of Twohig were focused on him. Realizing the contempt behind them, Redmond exerted his station. It would never do to let Twohig know he was either aware of his intentions or that he was reacting to an enlisted man’s barbs. “From Calcutta, the Black Hole, you’ll go to Dacca, Tripura, Silchar, bypass the Khasi Hills, to Sylhet and on to the far corner of Assam, ending up at Ledo. His eyes were locked onto Twohig’s eyes.

Smart-ass! I read Kipling, too. Does he think no one but him ever read? “Do we go near Cooch-Behar, sir?” That ought to stir his almighty ass.

“I don’t believe so, Sergeant. From my recollection of the map I think Cooch-Behar is in the western part of Assam .” Maybe the interrogating sergeant would take the hint and not push it any more. He’d be able to spell correctly more Indian names than Twohig could think of: Dibrugarh, Sadiya, Tinsukia, Sibsagar, Mahiganj, and he’d even throw in Saikoa-ghat for a plum. The map of Assam and Burma burned in his mind just as clearly as the letter from Twohig’s wife. At the moment he had the incredible feeling of being unable to separate them.

“Begging your pardon, sir.” Twohig said, as he felt an irking sensation swim through his body, “but I’m willing to bet that Cooch-Behar is…”

Redmond cut him off. “I’m not a betting man, Sergeant, as we all must know by this time.” His hand waved in the air as if brushing the whole episode away. “It really isn’t too all important.” The letter was important and he wanted to get his mind back to it. Introducing Tozzi and Milano to its contents was a thought that had not previously entered his mind. As the craft rocked the little wings of memory started to flutter in his groin, and he was aware of a slight sense of hopelessness for the whole situation. Neither Tozzi nor Milano, both seemingly good young officers though as yet untried, could hardly begin to understand the woman who had written the letter. She loved with a deep and abiding love. Well, maybe they could see that, but the rest would be a mystery to them and the fact that she could be good in bed would never enter their indecent young minds. It would only be time and chance that would force him to reveal the letter, to enlist their aid, but that bore on the unthinkable. Besides, it would deprive him of aiding her all by himself. She had written to him, the company commander. It was strictly his responsibility.

The train of squat craft were now riding easily over a sea of slow, even swells and the sexual impact of their motion made Redmond think about finding a girl among the

Ceylonese before he headed off to China . Ceylon seemed much more romantic than China . He pictured a mysterious dark-eyed beauty standing above him. Her subtle undulations would match the motion of the sea.

Except for the oppressive heat and an occasional alarm when an aircraft came into sight over the flat, hot sea, the trip to Ceylon was routine. Neither submarine nor surface craft threatened them and Twohig managed to bite into Tally Biggs’ bankroll for thirty-two dollars. Captain Redmond fidgeted and sweated the whole way, as did his command, but he was frustrated in devising a plan to aid Sara Twohig. The woman was well worth assisting and he couldn’t help but think that her bed, in the privacy of darkness, was lonely and pathetic, and certainly bore amends.

The big excitement at the harbor on the northern tip of Ceylon was neither a big blackjack game for Twohig, nor Redmond ’s seduction of a beautiful and young Ceylonese secretary on the second night. The excitement was Captain John Tracker who met them when they landed. He, and not Redmond, was to go on to China because headquarters found out that he had lived there for five years when a boy. Redmond could not have been more pleased. Even while he was making love to the olive secretary with hair as black as midnight and a scent about her that moved soft wings in his nostrils, he was thinking about Sara Twohig in that lonely bed in Ohio.

On the last day of June, with the monsoons in season, the –nth Graves Registration Company split into two sections of two platoons each, and the section headed for Ledo in Assam, with Redmond in command, left Ceylon at twilight and moved out into the Bay of Bengal. This side of Africa they had buried their first dead, one of their own, Corporal Eddie Akins, who had followed a girl away from the compound on the fourth day. The next day his body was discovered by a patrol, stripped, slashed, and impaled on a crude bamboo rack tied to a tree. Thousands of burials, and many of them much dirtier than Akins’, lay ahead of them, they knew to a man. Redmond struck Akins’ name from the company roster.

At dark the bright constant stars shone as fragmentary neon in the sky and occasionally a piece of that same substance shot across that black overhead in the slightest of arcs. Water slapped quietly at the craft, the tide rolled easily under them, and the whole night took on the pallor of mystery and injustice. Twohig thought about his big blackjack game, Biggs shivered in the heat as he remembered Akins hung up on the bamboo rack, and Redmond entertained pictures of Twohig’s wife alone in her bed, thinking of her not wasting any more time. The rest, Tozzi and Milano included, tried to envision a quiet retreat high in the mountains near Ledo where nobody died and nobody cared.

Diamond Harbor revealed little of eastern romance and Redmond thought it particularly dirty and mismanaged. Every conceivable size, shape and description of sea-going vessel was clustered in and around the harbor in immense confusion. Commercial and enterprising Calcutta was full of hunger and he had no idea how human bones with no flesh on them were able to stand together. The one night his command spent in Calcutta , and the one night Redmond dared not approach a woman for fear of disease, he stood under the arches of Chowringee. The abominable pageant before his eyes turned his stomach. Starvation was all around him; destitution, ulcerous and malodorous, was everywhere in every eye he saw. It was a slice from an unbelievable movie come for the taking. The war, somehow, seemed cleaner and more just, and he found himself anxious to get to it, to its fragmentation and incendiaries, to its riotously free blood and its depths of concussion, to its burial plots and impermanent markers.

The long trip from Newport News to North Africa, across the Mediterranean, down the Canal, across the Red Sea (bypassing Bombay where originally they were to have debarked but which had been changed by some big shot sitting at a desk) to Ceylon, up the Bay of Bengal and into Calcutta, had taken two months. For a long time it had seemed as if he did not have a command. Anxiety to get to Ledo and set up his post worked on him and he was excited and grateful when they left Calcutta after such a brief stay.

By wide gauge and narrow gauge railway they traveled inland. The country was rugged, and moving out of Bengal and into Assam it became more rugged as were the people of Khasi, Naga and Lushai Hills, looking as if they could wage a war on their own. At any minute, the dark eyes, the dark faces, the ready scabbards!

Box-boarded and nearly vacuumed of breathable air the rickety trains moved on, perhaps to stay a day and a half in one place while repairs were being made, or stocking