“I dunno.”
He lit me up off his. “No kidding? Amnesia, huh?”
“If that’s what they call it.”
“That’s what they call it. You had the malaria, didn’t you, Pops?”
Pops? Did I look that old? Of course Dixon here was probably only twenty or twenty-one, but somebody who hadn’t been in the service might peg him for thirty.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I still got it.”
“I hear it’s the ever-lovin’ pits. Fever, shakes. What the hell, you got any other injuries?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What about that noggin of yours?”
He meant my bandaged head.
“I did that to myself. In some hospital in Hawaii.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Didn’t like what I saw in the mirror.”
“Know the feelin’,” he said. Yawned. “That’s most likely why you’re on MR Four.”
“What’s that?”
“Men’s Receiving, fourth floor. Anybody remotely suicidal gets stuck here.”
“I’m not suicidal,” I said, sucking on my cigarette.
“Don’t sweat it, then. There’s six floors in this joint. Worse off you are, higher your floor. As you get better, you get promoted downwards a floor or two. Hit MR One and you’re as good as home, wherever that is for ya.”
“Wherever that is,” I agreed.
“Oh. Sorry. I forgot.”
“Me too.”
He grinned, laughed. “You’re Asiatic, all right.”
I understood the term; didn’t know why I did, but I understood it. It described any man who’d served long enough in the Far East to turn bughouse. Subtly bughouse, as in talking to yourself and seeing the world sideways.
“You’re a Marine, too,” I said.
“Yeah. That much about yourself you remember, huh, mac? Not surprising. No Marine alive’d forget he’s a Marine. Dead ones wouldn’t, neither. You can forget your name, that ain’t no big deal. You can’t never forget you’re a Marine.”
“Even if you want to,” I said.
“Right! Here comes one of those fuckin’ gobs.”
A medical corpsman in his work blues strolled over; he seemed cheerful. Who wouldn’t be, pulling duty on a land-locked, home-front ship like St. E’s?
“Private Heller,” he said, standing before me, swaying a bit. Something about bell-bottoms makes a Marine want to kill. If there was a reason for that, I’d forgotten it.
“That’s the name they’re giving me,” I said. “But there’s been a fuck-up. I’m no Nathan Who’s-It.”
“Whoever you are, the doctor would like to see you.”
“I’d like to see him, too.”
“Report to the nurse’s station in five minutes.”
“Aye-aye.”
He flapped off.
“Don’t he know there’s a war on?” Dixon growled.
“I don’t wish combat on any man,” I said.
“Yeah. Hell. Me, neither.”
“Is there a head in this joint?”
“Sure.” He dropped his cigarette to the floor and ground it out with his toe. “Follow me.”
He rose-he was shorter than I’d thought, but had the solid build that comes from boot camp and a tour or two of duty-and led me out into the hall, into the head, where finally I saw a mirror. I looked in it.
The face, with its white-bandaged forehead, was yellow-tinged, but it was American. I was not a Jap. That was something, anyway. But I could see why Dixon called me Pops. My hair was reddish brown on top, but had gone largely white on the sides. My skin was leathery, wrinkles spreading like cracks through dried earth.
“Do I look Jewish to you?” I asked Dixon.
Dixon was standing at the sink next to me, staring at himself intently in the mirror; he tore himself away to take a look at my reflection and said, “Irish. You’re a Mick if ever I saw one.”
“Micks don’t use words like ‘schmuck,’ do they?”
“If they’re from the big city they do. New York, say.”
“That where you’re from?”
“No. Detroit. But I had a layover there once. I put the lay in the word, lemme tell ya. Now, there. Look. Will ya look at that. That proves it. Once and for all.”
He was covering one side of his face with his hand. Looking at himself with one eye.