FICTION

EXPECT THE
VANDALS
EXPECT THE VANDALS
Two marines, a Pacific island, and Goodyville, U.S.A.
DECEMBER 1, 1958 PHILIP ROTH

A LL AFTERNOON he had been sitting on the beach watching the

tide slowly cover the white coral reef, until at last only two spots poked through the
gliding water. He had stared so long that the coral had imbedded itself back of his
eyes, a white spot in the center of his brain like an Indian caste mark. Only when
the water slid across the jagged top of the coral and all the distance was nothing but
shining ocean did the spot disappear too. He remained seated, naked, his knees to
his chest and his thick arms hugging them. Four thousand miles to the east, in
Puget Sound, say, was it now low tide? Was that how it worked, this new tide
washing to his island across four thousand miles of sea floor, under four thousand
miles of sky? And at the ends of the earth, at the bottom, below the Capes—north,
where icebergs perched on the globe like dunce caps, did the same water curl
around and into the Atlantic, to flow at last to Belmar, New Jersey, where his nine-
year-old daughter might next month be playing at the edge of the beach, poised
tiptoe for the waves to fold and break, and then rushing from them like a sandpiper
when the water streamed up after her small heels? But she would not be nine still,
his Mary—she would be ten, she would be taller, heavier.
The white spot entered his consciousness again, not as the image of coral this time,
but rather as it had every morning, afternoon, and evening since the day of the
landing eleven months before—as a white spot of hope. The landing. Had there
been hope that day? He tried to remember, and all that would come back to him
was the memory of the fear, the frozenness, the not-knowing. Everything was
mysterious: how many Japs there were on the insect-sized atoll, what they did
there, why, in fact, an atoll by-passed months before had to be mopped up now?
Nobody knew; there weren’t even rumors. But Intelligence miscalculated the tides,
and only one landing craft, his, got through. Four others hung on the reefs and
were popped off like ducks in a gallery. The rest didn’t even try for the beach, but
turned back south before they struck the coral, toward the Marshalls, never to
return again.

On the beach it had been slaughter. He lay in the wet sand—it was dusk—playing
dead, listening to the cursing and crying around him, and feeling certain that by the
time he counted five he would be dead. Three hours he lay rigid, counting off fives
and praying that darkness would come. And finally when night and the tide eked in
and water soaked inside his boots, he began to crawl, inch by inch, pulling at sand.
He did not know where he was headed, but pulled along the beach figuring that
moving was better than nothing—gambling in a way, for though he knew he might
run smack into death, there was a fifty-fifty chance he was leaving the bastard
behind.

Near him he heard a soldier groan; he stopped crawling. The groan was full of
strain as though the man were trying to force pain up out of him through his
mouth. From the waist down the soldier was covered with water. Moe lay next to
him a moment, biting the sand and listening to the groan that at close range
seemed to begin in the man’s toes and push up through his whole frame. After a
minute he took the man’s hand and held it in his own and stayed there with him.
Then, after a dozen waves had slapped over him and he was himself half-immersed
in water, he put his arms around the stranger’s back and shoulders and started to
drag him.

He dragged the man and himself across the sand and over the stiff clumps that in
the dark were hardly recognizable as bodies. It was a cloudy night and a million
miles above their moving backs a handful of stars was hurled across the sky,
scattered as the jacks Mary used to toss across the floor years ago. In the beginning
—he freed himself from a tangle of arms and legs—she loved the idea of throwing
the jacks, but it had taken some time for her to see any reason for picking them up.
He thought their names, his wife’s, his child’s, but he did not yearn for them. That
they even lived on this same sandy globe seemed incredible, though not nearly as
incredible as that this was he, Moe, the accountant, straining forward on his belly,
sweating, suffering. Suffering. To attach that word to what was happening to him!
Suffering blasts an Oedipus, an Othello, not Moe Malamud. Suffering is what you
watch, what you feel sorry for. It has an audience—it has to. How can there be
suffering if there is no one around to watch? Where the hell’s the pity then? What’s
the sense?

His monologue spun itself out in wondering whether dragging this bundle around
the island for half the night might be dignified with the word suffering; he didn’t
know and didn’t care. When, four hours later, he flopped flat on a high, dry grassy
spot he was weak, chilled, and achy, and was wondering too if for some time he
might not have been dragging a dead man along with him, yanking a dead man up
hills, disentangling a dead man from bushes, watching not to bang the wounds of a
dead man. He did not stop, however, to check the man’s heartbeat and find out. He
did not want to, perhaps because he was afraid he would discover no life, or
perhaps because he had decided that sometimes it is better to be with a dead man
than with no one at all.

T hrough the boiling days and damp, chilling nights that followed, his

companion howled continually. Pain seemed to burst open inside him every hour;
Moe would shoot up a hand to stifle the groan and then, all his pulses thumping,
would listen to the rustling in the trees outside, wondering if it were birds or
snipers. Finally even the sun seemed a sentry posted by the Japs to sweep the
island, round and round, day after day, hunting down the two who had gotten
away. When late in the day it yellowed the floor of their cave, Moe backed away
from it. He feared light, dreaded it, but one morning at the end of the first week he
had to leave the small comfort of darkness and crawl away from those goddam
howls and groans. He pulled along the ground, sickening at the sight of his wrists,
thin now as his little daughter’s. A few yards from the cave he rested. Then Moyer
screamed and he darted back to darkness. But the next morning he journeyed out
again, and the next he journeyed further, until juicy berries stained his fatigues and
when he raised his head, stopping for breath, he saw he had nosed up to coconuts
and birds’ eggs. The high grass cut his lips, spider webs gave him the shudders
when they crumbled in his eyes and hair, but he wiggled further and further, over
ants, and bugs, and hard-backed beetles that cracked beneath him, and then one
morning he reached a high, bushy ledge which, he discovered, overlooked the Jap
encampment.

Except for the externals—faces, uniforms, flags—it might have been a small
American outpost. There was the same monotonous business of formations, guard
duty, details, inspections, saluting. Day after day, he came to visit and to watch the
familiar rigmarole of army life, and gradually he found himself relaxed, safe from
the groaning and howling which had begun to make him wish that it was he, Moe,
who had been wounded. Through the first days and nights he had sat holding
Moyer’s head in his lap, moistening the cracked lips with canteen water. But the
pain was too ferocious for sickroom niceties. It screamed for drugs and scalpels,
and all the hand-holding in the world wasn’t worth a damn. Finally, to stay in the
cave was to flaunt his own health in the pained face, so he ran to the Japs and the
safety of their regimentation. And when each day he crawled home, his heart would
kick against his chest: perhaps Moyer was dead! But back in the cave he would hear
the groaning and wish to God the son of a bitch were silent, dead.

Then, after nineteen jumpy days and nights, it was the Japs who were dead. He
watched the weird ceremony from the ledge and when the last Jap was lifeless on
the ground, he turned—he could hardly wait to get back—to tell Moyer! His knees
sprayed dirt back beneath him, and it wasn’t till he was nearly within sight of the
cave that he realized what it all meant—he didn’t have to crawl. He stayed crouched
a moment on the ground, then he pushed up. Grass spun green! Sky collapsed
about his head! He wanted to puke, his head whirled, but he shut his eyes and ran,
and when he reached the cave Moyer was still in a heap. But he had to tell
somebody the story, had to hear it himself; so kneeling, he unfolded the miraculous
thing he had seen.

Thirty-nine Japs had lined up, rifles in mouth. At the command, the triggers were
pulled, and the tops of heads sailed into the air like confetti. They fell, a few legs
twitched, and that was all. And then after a minute, someone peered out from
behind the radio shack. He was in uniform and carried a rifle at his side. Whether
he had been on guard duty or was AWOL or had fled the ceremony, Moe didn’t
know. Slowly he walked out to the quiet formation. Moe’s eyes followed every
movement he made, and his lungs followed the man’s breathing, when it
quickened, when it waned. The Jap stepped around the crumpled soldiers. He
walked up the first column, down the second, and stopped where a man lay on his
side, his arms and legs tucked toward his chest and his head roofless like a
Halloween pumpkin. Looking down at the body, the Jap began to cry, his head
jerking back and forth so that his cap slid over his eyes. He knelt at the man’s side
as though to straighten the limbs, but all he did at last was to take the limp hand
and put it to his mouth. Then he stood and raced to the body that five minutes
before had shouted the order to fire and began to kick at its head. He kicked until it
resembled a small animal mutilated by holiday traffic. Finally, his boots covered
with blood, he ran screaming toward the beach.

On the beach the Jap looked west, toward his homeland, and his screams cracked
and quieted into sobs. He dropped his rifle to the sand, then he untied his boots
and flung them violently into the sea. He undressed, dropping clothes around him,
and soon he was naked, a short, thin yellow man with sinewy arms and shoulders,
and stocky legs. He sat down on the beach with his legs before him and rested back
on one elbow, fixing his eyes on the horizon. He sat for about fifteen minutes, calm,
contemplative, and then he rose and walked to the water’s edge where with his
hands he poured water over his body, his shiny hair, his arms, his chest, his legs.
He placed both hands between his legs, cupping himself. He stood so poised for a
moment and then cleanly he dove into the Pacific and swam, without splashing, out
toward the coral reef. He swam first on his stomach and then turned on his back
and floated, his body high in the water as though held from above by the sun. As
finally he started in toward the shore he performed a series of surface dives. On the
next to last one he rose a few feet from the boot he had earlier heaved away. He
grabbed it and held it to his chest as, once again, he dove. When his head bobbed
through the surface the boot was gone.

After his swim he rested in the sun for half an hour, on his back, singing a flat-
melodied Japanese song. First he sang in a low voice, then he hummed snatches of
the melody, then he stopped, sat up, brooded; minutes later, like an opera hero, he
sang loudly, with gestures. He was half-singing, half-brooding when he picked up
his rifle, jammed a round into it, placed the muzzle to his chest and pulled the
trigger. There was the bullet crack, the rifle stock smacking the sand, and then only
the tide slurping in.

T he next morning Moe crouched in the knee-high grass outside the

cave. At first he did not know what to expect, yet through the day hope began to
balloon inside him; by night it filled his head like another brain. The hours passed,
it was day again, and still his ears strained for the smack and splash of an LST or
the roar of a low-flying plane. All week they strained, until he left the grass and
went down to the ledge that overlooked the beach and from which he’d seen the
suicide. He lay there on his belly, head jutted up, staring out to the sea. And after
four days on the ledge he climbed down to the beach and sat on the warm sand and
waited there. Two days later he began with the fires. He gathered wood all day and
at night lit the fires and stayed awake to tend them. For ten nights flames winked
and flicked along the north shore of the island, but no one came, and on the
eleventh night, after he set them to blazing, he dropped down near the water, a
burned-out branch in his hand, exhausted. Where were they? If the war was over,
then where the hell were they? And if the war wasn’t over, then why did the Japs
commit hari-kari? He looked up. “Where are you!” he screamed. “Come for us,
goddamit!” And then he slept.
He awoke an hour later in Hell. Behind him orange-white flames danced into the
purple summer sky; long-necked birds, red-eyed owls squawked and screamed, and
over his head, over the water and coral, gulls wheeled and dipped up and down in
the flaring light, their wings whacking their sides. Moe stood; he had set the island
afire, made it hot enough to bring the Pacific to a boil! He felt at once giddy, guilty,
strong—and then suddenly he was running up and down the beach searching for
some corridor in the flames. When he found a gap he cut into it, but halfway
through he realized that now he, too, would die in his fire. He turned back, but the
flames had wiggled up the path he’d taken as though attached to him like a tail. He
could take a chance, though, and try for the beach and the water. But instead he
charged back into the fiery heart of the island. He zigzagged away from flames until
he spotted the incline and the pockmark in its side. His palms were puffed and
black, his lungs lurched inward, but he pulled up on the roots and vines and finally
he was in the cave. Light bounced from wall to floor to ceiling and swept over and
over the body that lay motionless on the floor. Moe grabbed the man’s hands and
dragged him across the floor until the heat of the rear wall was directly behind him.
Then he crouched low, turned his back to the entrance and held Moyer before him,
awkwardly, painfully, in his arms. Outside the island sounded as though it were
splitting, cracking, smashing apart. Hours of noise passed, until with a blast of
heat, as though an oven door had flung open, the fire blazed to the mouth of the
cave and lashed in at his back. It did not touch him, but all night he clutched
Moyer, waiting for the long flame that would broil them alive and watching
shadows whip and tremble on the wall before him.

I n the months that had passed since the fire, Moe had come to imagine

silence as distance. As he walked up the beach and then along the sand road that
rimmed the island he decided that tonight the silence was as big as New Jersey. He
watched the sun take a flashy orange dive into the sea, and was blinded
momentarily into believing ocean and sky one gold mass. He reconsidered silence.
As big as Jersey? No, as Texas, as the United States. Bigger even . . . .

His feet stirred the sand as he shuffled up the road toward home and dinner. To his
right, thick green shrubs, big-faced red flowers, vines, snaky and curling, all hugged
the ground as though afraid to risk height. He passed a coconut tree a head shorter
than himself—branches bulged from its knees, twisted its own neck, shot out of its
head, horny. At night when he carried Ken outside and they sat and looked out at
the Pacific, instead of soft lines and easy curves swaying across the horizon, they
would see these gargoyles. The branches would jerk in the sea breeze and Moe
himself would shiver, feeling as the father of a midget must, mystified, at once
innocent and responsible. The fire of August, 1945, his fire, seemed to have flashed
beneath the earth and burned away the vital centers of the roots.

He turned off the road and then up the stairs which several months before he had
cut into the incline leading up to the central plateau of the island. The island was
shaped like a broad saucer in the middle of which balanced an upside-down teacup.
On the side of the teacup he had found the cave that first night, and on top, about a
month later, he had pieced together a home for him and Ken. Some of the material
he had discovered, while kicking among the ashes, in a storeroom the Japs had dug
beneath the ground; along with the piles of wood were rolls of canvas, cans of oil,
gas, rifles, machine guns, and crates of ammunition.

At the top of the incline Moe paused to catch his breath. He surveyed the island. If
there had been no fire they would have had a stirring picture-postcard view and,
perhaps, a few picture-postcard comforts. Trapped, sure, but at least trapped in a
garden with berries underfoot, fruit hanging overhead, with birds’ eggs to eat as
well as the nice fat bird bodies. If it hadn’t been for that fire he wouldn’t be
returning as he was now to another dinner of fish and soup. Yet had there ever
been any choice about the fire? At the time it was salvation that was primary, and
he knew that even if he could have prophesied that for himself and Ken to be
rescued the island had to burn down, still he would not have hesitated to light the
first match. Nor would he hesitate today. Or would he? After all, it was his island
now. He corrected himself—his prison, and what inmate, he thought, wouldn’t
destroy his Alcatraz?

But suppose the Pacific were his. Just suppose. He looked at it, streaked now with
all colors, like a child’s drawing, like one of Mary’s coloring books. To be free,
would I blow that up? My Pacific? And what about the sun? Blow it up? I would be
free all right, free in a dark world . . . . He sped on to thoughts of earths, planets,
galaxies stamped “M. Malamud, Prop.” until considerations of property rights
loomed colossal and senseless. He walked on toward home, spinning his mind
down to his island and asking again, would he burn it to be free? Why not?

A soft breeze had come up from the ocean and it slapped the canvas window
against the thin wall of the house. Looking at the house, at the board walls which
still had Jap lettering across them, it was hard for him to believe that he had built it
single-handed. Though the roof dropped two feet on the left side, it was for him,
whose hands couldn’t make hammer and nail meet twice in succession, an
architectural wonder. Ken, of course, never would have built a house with a droop
in it; out of sandbags, ammo boxes, gas cans, and radio wire, he probably could
have constructed a palace. Unlike Moe, he possessed all the Boy Scout skills; he
could take apart and put together almost everything but people. The practical
arrangement, certainly, would have been for Moe Malamud to have been the
cripple and Ken Moyer the provider; for Moe to spend his days on his back as Ken
did, whittling, daydreaming, beard-clipping, polishing and breaking down Jap
rifles; and for Ken to suffer Moe’s chores—hustle the food, tend the fires, wash the
clothes, bury the dirt, and, worst of all, pain for his wife, his child, his home, his
books, his life. Goddam him! Moe thought. It’s that bastard Ken who made me
prisoner here!

He knew even as he thought it that it was a judgment rotten and crazy as it was
illogical. The fact was that if anyone should feel prisoner it was Ken himself whose
frame imprisoned him in ways no island ever could. And as for missing people, it
was with a nostalgia more ferocious than Moe’s that Ken yearned for all those
people in Newton, P-A, who years ago had taught him how to be a Boy Scout. Moe
wanted suddenly to race inside, apologize, but Ken’s voice stopped him, and he felt
curiously relieved that the impulse to apology had been checked.

“Is that you, Moe?”

Moe did not answer.

“Is that you?”

“No,” Moe said at last. “It’s General MacArthur. I have—”

“Stop screwing around . . . .”

Moe peered back at the island—trees, beach, ocean, sky—as though to make certain
things were in the right place; it was the look a property owner gives his front lawn
after the evening watering.

He kicked open the front door, which had Jap lettering stenciled across it. Ken’s
red beard flared in his face. He was up on his elbows, naked but for a fatigue shirt.
A rifle lay dismantled around him. Against the wall there were ten more, stocks and
barrels glistening.

“Where were you all day?” Ken said. “I got so lonesome I didn’t know what to do.”

“Did you run out of rifles?”

“Christ, Moe, when I get feeling like that, that stuff isn’t even any fun. It starts
driving me nuts.” He leaned against the back rest; Moe had made it for him out of
two old ammo boxes looped together with heavy vines. There was a fly crawling
across the jungle of his groin, but it didn’t seem to bother Ken. “Where were you all
afternoon?” he asked.

“On the beach.”

“You go fishing?” Ken asked.

“No.”

“You go swimming?”

“No. Just sat.”

“Again.”

“Yea,” Moe shouted, “again!”

“All right, all right. You don’t have to get mad.”

“I’m sorry.” Moe was suddenly full of goose pimples. He took down a pair of
fatigues that hung from a nail driven into the wall and slipped into a shirt which
had no collar and no sleeves. The fly was now parading between Ken’s legs. “Shoo
the goddam thing away,” Moe said.

“What?”

“The fly, shoo it away.”

Ken looked around.

Moe leaned down and swept one hand across Ken’s groin and the fly buzzed away.

“I didn’t feel him,” Ken said. “Thanks.”

Moe pulled on the trousers.

“What are we going to have for dinner?” Ken said. “I’m starved.”

“Steak.”

Ken leaned forward again. “What the hell is eating you?”

“Nothing. I told you you were going to have steak. What’s a matter, you don’t like
steak?”

“I love steak.”
“All right.” Moe turned away and knelt down on the planked floor in front of the
food-storage pit.

“Medium rare,” Ken called to him.

“What?”

“Medium rare . . . .”

Moe turned his head around toward Ken. “That’s terrifically funny.”

“Jesus H. Christ. You started kidding around. I’m just trying to be pleasant.”

“I’m sorry.” Half his body disappeared into the hole.

“No kidding, what are we going to have?”

A voice shot up from the pit. “Pheasant.”

“Everything’s a goddam joke!”

Moe popped up again, holding a half-dozen small brown lumps in his hand.

“Pickaninny Blood,” Ken said.

“Yes.” Moe turned immediately toward the fireplace so Ken would not be
encouraged to repeat that old joke. It was six months already since he had
discovered these little potatoes—or whatever they were—growing beneath the
ground of the island; when boiled they produced a thick, salty, brown liquid that
Moe had labeled Pickaninny Blood. Now, every time he prepared the stuff, Ken
would ask how much Moe thought Campbell’s would pay for the recipe, and Moe
would have to play along, saying that Campbell’s would buy it for half a million, but
that for the sake of decorum they would change the name to “Cream of Pickaninny
Blood.” He was sorry now he had said it even once for, like a child, Ken liked to play
the game over and over.

He plopped the little potatoes into the gas can that served as soup pot, and
suddenly, once again, he felt moved to speak some sort of apology. Why the hell did
he have to deny the guy whatever simple pleasure the Campbell’s routine gave him?
Why was it he could walk to the very door of the shack, full of compassion, and then
the instant his foot touched the floor, become bitchy, inattentive?

He turned his head toward Ken. “What did you do?”

Ken was fitting pieces of the Jap rifle one into the other. “Nothing much. Polished
rifles.” He looked up. “Moe, after a while I got so lonely I couldn’t even do that. I
fell asleep finally and then when I heard you outside, I woke up.” He pushed the
bullet guide into place. “Brother,” he said, shaking his head, “did I dream.”

Moe grabbed a bayonet from the wall and sat down next to Ken. He began to scale
the fish he’d caught earlier in the day. “Which ones?” Moe asked.

“The standards.”

The five or six dreams that had appeared weekly for the last ten months they
considered standards. Sometimes an old dream would flash in again months later—
that was a revival. As for new releases, Ken hadn’t had one for about five months.

“The Emily Dream was a little different.”

“Was it?”

“Want to hear?”

Moe wished Ken wouldn’t repeat it—long ago the Emily Dream had stopped
titillating him, had become worse than titillating.

“. . . and the same, Moe, everything. The room, the bed, the skylight, but it wasn’t
Emily. It was this girl Lucy Wilson.” Ken stopped and put his hand on Moe’s
shoulder, to speak with him in confidence. “Moe, I don’t even know Lucy Wilson.
In high school guys talked about her, but I never even saw her. In the dream she
was tall and good-looking and she had these small hard bazooms. And in color.”

“What?” Moe picked up another fish.

“The dream, it was in color. With Emily it’s usually just black and white . . . . I’m
telling you, I’m getting good at these dreams. I mean I know when I’m dreaming
almost, so I can sort of change them sometimes and make them up as I go along. If
it gets really bad I fix it up—”

Then Ken went on, absorbed with the details of the dream; Moe tried to yank his
own attention away. Lucy Wilson, Big Bob Wilson, Judge Wilson, old Mrs. Wilson.
The townspeople in Ken’s standards seemed as if their names couldn’t be anything
but Wilson. Without benefit of description, Moe knew all their faces: the freckled
kids, the neat grey-haired grandmothers with small secret pain-in-the-ass smiles.
And the houses with the embroidered signs: over the library desk, think; next to the
telephone, smile; and over the toilet, over the marriage bed, God only knew what.
The Wilsons and their houses populated what Moe called The Saturday Evening
Post Dreams.
A s Ken went on describing his session with Lucy Wilson, Moe

found himself remembering that day a few months before when he had come home
from fishing and discovered Ken asleep on the floor. Next to him had been a can of
the Japs’ red paint, and next to that a board with three, red, trembling words
finger-painted across it. Moe stood puzzled for a moment. Home Sweet Home.
Where? Here? There! And suddenly he was crying, and not for his own home
either. That moment, there had just seemed to him no better place to live than in a
house with embroidered signs, with smiling grandmothers . . . . He had watched
Ken asleep, and he had wept, bewildered at this surge of The Saturday Evening
Post in him too.

“And then, poof! Moe, it was over.”

Ken looked astonished; he seemed to have forgotten that the poof had come so
soon. “Any other dreams?” Moe asked.

“The animal one.”

“Which animals?”

“A bear. He ate me right up to the chest. It didn’t hurt, though,” Ken said. Then he
grinned. “I gave the son of a bitch soft teeth.”

“How about the no-hitter?”

“Not today. I haven’t had it for a month.” Ken’s fingers had assembled the rifle and
now he slid the bolt back and forth.

“Do you feel any stronger, Ken?”

He put the rifle aside. “Yea, Moe, I think so. I think maybe I’m strong enough to go
in the water . . . . Would you take me down to the beach with you tomorrow?”

“It won’t be like last time, will it?”

“I feel stronger, Moe. I’m telling you, it wasn’t that I was weak last time, it was just
that—that I got scared. The little goddam waves started to frighten me. And the
gulls. Every time they swooped down I thought I was gonna wet my pants,” Ken
said. “But, Moe, I just have to get away from here or I’ll go nuts. You can’t believe
how I felt this afternoon. In my stomach I felt it . . . .”

“Okay, okay,” Moe said, suddenly impatient. He scooped up the fish he’d stacked
next to him and started for the fire. “We’ll see.”

“Moe, don’t tell me we’ll see!”

Moe turned back. At first he saw only the fly circling Ken’s groin again.

“Moe, I can’t stand it! We gotta start making fires again—we gotta do something!”

“We can’t make fires any more. They don’t help.”

“Then we gotta do something. I don’t know what. I miss everybody, everything,

even the people I hated. Moe, I want to go home. One lousy life and I gotta spend it
here. I tell you, Moe, I want to go home!”

“Crying won’t help.”

“What will? Eleven months. I’ve been here eleven goddam months.”

“It’s eleven for me too.”

“Not like mine. Mine’s like a hundred. Like a million!”

Moe didn’t answer.

Ken rolled onto his side, so violently that he knocked his back-stand over. It tipped
a rifle leaning against the wall, and all the shiny weapons clattered to the floor. The
suddenness of the noise sent Moe leaping back; then Ken was screaming at him
again, from the floor. “Like a million years! You don’t know what it’s like!”

“I do.”

“You don’t” Ken screamed. He pushed the top half of his body from the floor; his
palm clutched a rifle stock. “How the hell would you know? I’m the one who
suffers. For you it’s okay—it wouldn’t be any different for you. How about me?”

Moe raised his arms and threw the fish to the floor. “You!” he shouted. “You and
not me, huh? I got myself a real deal here. What, are you crazy!” He waved the
bayonet in the air. “Look, I’m your goddam nursemaid. Who the hell would take
care of you like me? For God’s sake, shut up! I treat you like King Tut and you don’t
even know it. Live with it, will ya? You’re here and I’m here and I take care of you.
You might be here alone.”

“Half the time I am alone!”

“Goddamit, you want me to sit and hold your hand—”

Ken’s face looked suddenly as though he’d forgotten how to breathe; his voice
dropped. “No,” he said. “No, Moe, I don’t—”

It was painful to watch. If Ken were standing, facing him, with fists that could
swing and an eye-level stare, he would kick his teeth in—but it was too tough
watching shame sweep over this muscle-dead, frozen-legged shell of a man. Moe
turned and walked outside, leaving the door ajar behind him. It was dark, almost
evening.

The idiotic trees, silhouetted, resembled soldiers with packs on their backs and the
paraphernalia of war suspended from their waists. Moe reared back and with all his
strength heaved the bayonet toward the farthest tree he could see. It clinked
somewhere in the distance.

Ken shouted out to him: “You might be alone yourself.”

“I might,” Moe shouted back. “I might be a lot better off.”

“Then kill me, why don’t you? Slit me open like one of your goddam fish. Kill me,
go live alone, you yellow bastard. Go ahead.”

“I ought to let you starve for a crack like that.”

“Sure, I’ve been waiting for you to do it. This afternoon I said, He’s not coming
back. He’s building a boat or some goddam thing and he’s not coming back. I’ll
starve. I wouldn’t put it past you!”

Moe turned—inside the house it was grey, and the firelight showed only the
winking sights of the rifles and two cracks of light in Ken’s head. “I ought to let you
rot here,” Moe said. “I ought to move to the other side of the island and leave you
here to rot.”

“You would, Malamud,” Ken screamed. “You would, you heathen bastard!”
Moe rushed back to the doorway, boiling. And then all of a sudden he wanted to
laugh. Who the hell was the heathen here? Who the hell was an anything? He
looked in at Ken. “That’s really intelligent,” he said finally. The house creaked as he
leaned one arm against the doorway. “That takes the cake. Where did you pick that
up, back home, in Goodyville, P-A, with all those good folk?” Flatfooted, he shuffled
into the house. “You know what I hope? I hope some miracle happens and that the
two of us get whisked away from here. I’m going to start praying for you, that
before you die you go back to Goodyville. Oh, you’re going to be a big hit. Old Lucy
Wilson’s going to drop her pants the minute she sees you, and so is old Emily.
They’re going to fight for it. And what are you going to give them? Nothing.
Because that’s what you got now, nothing. You’re crazy, you know that? You’ve got
nothing, but you think somehow you’re going to go some place new and have
everything. But believe me, if you’ve got nothing here you’re going to have nothing
there. ‘If I weren’t a cripple I’d have the world’—is that what you think? Well, don’t
kid yourself, buddy. They’re not giving things away back in Goodyville. And they
don’t have any magic cure.”

“I’m sorry, Moe, I didn’t mean—”

“Who cares if you’re sorry! I feed you, I wash you, I talk to you, I wipe your ass for
you, like a kid. I treat you like my own kid. But that’s not enough for you. When I’m
through you want a little kiss too. But that’s not the way two people do it,” Moe
said. “Don’t ask me how they do. I’m no Jesus. You just go at each day, that’s all.”

“I know, Moe, and I’m sorry.”

“Sure, now you think I’ll really run out on you. Well I wouldn’t, you stupid bastard.
I couldn’t. I can’t. And you don’t even know why, do you? Do you?”

“I’m sorry—”

“Shut up!” He walked outside the house again. The distant sky was a smoky red as
though they were burning the world’s garbage at the horizon.

“Moe!” Ken called. “Moe, I’m really sorry—”

Moe covered his ears. “Shut up!” And he ran away from the house.

He ran until he was far enough not to hear Ken if he called “I’m sorry” again. He
did not want to hear it. I’m sorry, I’m not sorry, I love you, I hate you. What good
did it do, any of it! He was so sorry his insides hurt. He had stood there taunting
the poor bastard, but if he opened his mouth just to shape the words “I’m sorry” he
felt it wouldn’t even be true anymore . . . .
He stopped and leaned his head against the bark of one of the dwarfed trees. King
Midas, he told himself—everything he touched turned to crap. The fires, the trees,
Ken. He looked up to the white, round moon. What the hell was he supposed to do,
not build fires, not talk to him, live alone?

All right, if he had to he would live alone. He’d move to the other side of the island
and bring Ken his food at night, while he was sleeping. He’d live by himself. Hadn’t
he been doing that really for almost eleven months?

Eleven months. Once it had been eleven days. Next eleven years. In eleven years he
would be forty-five—no, forty-six—for suddenly he remembered that last month, in
May, he would have had a birthday. “I would have been thirty-five.” He spoke
aloud, and his voice gave the night a new hugeness, the world another kind of
emptiness. What a difference between Moe Malamud, and Moe Malamud, 35! With
a number next to his name he was another self—a self with a bed, sheets, pillows,
pillowcases, chairs, tables, suits, hats, rugs, silverware, dishes, a car. Possessions!
Things to measure time by!

He would still live with his wife and his little girl on the top floor of the two-family
house opposite the park, would still work for his father-in-law’s realty firm, would
try to get some money in the bank, would tighten what the Depression had
loosened, nearly broken . . . .

Would-be’s. It was even less happy thinking about them than it was the could-be’s
and the will-be’s. Well then, what could he think about?

As though it were an answer, a rifle shot suddenly cracked across the island. He
froze, listened, but the cackle of machine-gun fire did not follow. No sound
followed, and in a moment the crack itself had dwindled out on the water. The next
thing he knew, sand whipped his ankles and he was racing back to the house, his
house, screaming, running, hurling Ken’s name out into the emptiness,

T he door was open, just as Moe had left it. Inside, firelight blazed off

the rifles scattered about the floor.

“I missed, I missed.” The words came from a red spot in the middle of the rifles.
Moe ran to the voice; below the one red spot, Ken’s beard, was another, smaller.
Moe ripped open the shirt and found the skin on Ken’s left shoulder popped wide
open like an overdone hot dog. If he had intended the bullet for his heart, he had
missed by a wide margin. Moe slipped off his own shirt and packed a pillow of it
under Ken’s head. The burnt flesh smelled like rubber. “How do you feel? Does it
hurt?”

“I want to die!”

“You’re not going to.”

“Let me!” With a grunt of pain he tried to sit up, as though a change of position
would hasten death; but Moe pressed against his chest and pinned him back to the
floor. “Let me . . . let me . . . .”

Moe did not release his grip until he felt the hammer of Ken’s heart skip slower
beneath his hand; then he went to the fire. Soup slurped and sizzled on to the
flames as he wrapped a piece of canvas around the handle and took the kettle from
the fire; he replaced it with a gallon can of water. He began to rip canvas bandages,
listening for the water to bubble up behind him. He heard instead Ken’s jabbering
—“We don’t get any mail even no mail I used to at least get mail every day at home.
I hate holidays account of no mail . . . .” Ken muttered, syllable by syllable, without
stopping, and he did not even wince when the steaming cloth touched his wound.
“Do you look out the window when it snows the people they’re all black and white
and they don’t even know how to talk they look so nice you don’t think they know
how they just walk in the snow . . . .” A vein stiffened across his forehead; he tried
to force himself up. “Let me die!” But he crumpled to the floor without Moe’s
touching him. “I gotta contract with the Boston Braves . . . .”

Finally he fell asleep.

Fidgety and bored, like a hospital visitor, Moe watched the man sleep. Once he
leaned over to take his pulse. He curled his fingers over the cold wrist, felt the
thump beneath, and realized that he had no idea what the 1-2-3 1-2-3 was supposed
to mean. But at least it was there. He picked up the rifle that lay nearest Ken; a few
feet away was Ken’s cleaning rod—an oil-soaked rag attached to the end of a thin
coconut branch. He reached over for it and then jammed it down the barrel of the
rifle. When he pulled it out there was a black smudge at the end of the rag. He
rammed the branch in and out until the rag came out clean. Then, near the
sputtering fire, he lay back and held the rifle at arm’s length; he placed the muzzle
to his left nipple and pulled the trigger. The click sounded loud in the silence.

How the hell could Ken have missed? Ken, who’d been brought up on air rifles, who
had shot deer in the Pennsylvania woods when Moe was still on pick-up sticks. No,
he hadn’t missed, he just couldn’t pull it off. The Japs, Moe remembered, they were
pros at suicide. The last Jap seemed as though he’d done it a hundred times before.
But not Ken; he couldn’t do it.

He got up and walked over to Ken and checked to see if the pulse was still
thumping. The canvas bandage was stained a deep red in the center, but the
bleeding seemed to have stopped. Now the danger would be infection. He would
have to watch Ken carefully, take care of the wound. But Ken wouldn’t mind that. It
was all he’d wanted—to win back Moe as full-time nurse. He hadn’t wanted to kill
himself, the bastard—he’d aimed at his shoulder!

What did Ken expect of him? His blood? And he himself, what did he want?
Miracles? To be lifted from this prison and plunked down in Jaclyn’s bed? To wait,
like Ken, for a surprise in the mail, a Messiah with an airplane ticket? Well,
miracles don’t happen! Messiahs don’t come!

He walked outside the house where everything was silent—sky, stars, trees, sea—
silent as though they had agreed to take in their breath and hold it till morning.
This, he thought, looking around at the night, this is the only kind of magic. To wait
for miracles was crazy. No, the craziness wasn’t waiting—it was expecting. Better to
act like a man who builds a house but knows that each night his day’s work will be
destroyed by vandals. He doesn’t even pray that the vandals will stay away. He
expects them but pours cement anyway . . . . A few stars and a little trouble, thought
Moe, and even an accountant becomes a philosopher.

He started down toward the beach, telling himself once again, What happens,
happens.What is, is. Live it! He walked around the island preaching this sermon to
himself.

An hour later when he returned home, Ken was sleeping silently on his bed. He put
his palm to Ken’s forehead and felt that it was cool. As soon as he turned to his own
bed, he heard a stirring behind him.

“Ken?”

“Yes.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yea, Moe, I think so,” he said. “Moe, I don’t want to die. Not even here.”

“You’re not going to. Not this week anyway.”

“Moe, I didn’t want to die then—”

“Okay, okay.” He was at Ken’s side again and his hand darted up to cover his
mouth. If there was a confession coming, an admission from Ken that he had
deliberately wounded himself, Moe did not want to hear it. A confession begged for
absolution or punishment and all at once he did not feel priest enough to
administer either. Maybe it was time to stop taking the priest’s long view—to stop
checking the past, stretching his neck into the future, craning, hoping. He did not
want to hear the why of Ken’s bloody shoulder.

He took his hand from Ken’s mouth. “Go to sleep. Save your breath.”

“Moe, will you take me with you to the beach tomorrow?”

“If you feel all right.”

“Look,” Ken said, “I don’t want you to—to hold my hand. That isn’t what I want.”

“That’s forgotten.”

“I mean you go away as much as you want,” Ken said. “Even a couple of days at a
time, if you want—”

“Okay, for Fourth of July, I’ll get reservations on the other side of the island. Now
go to sleep.” And, after standing above him a moment longer, he ducked his head
down and kissed Ken on the forehead.

“Moe, I had a temperature?”

Moe turned away, his breath jammed up suddenly in his chest. He was crying.
“No.” He started back to his bed; over his shoulder he said, “Try not to dream.”

T hey slept late. Upon waking Moe went to the entrance of the house,

stretched, and looked out across the island to the sea. In the distance gulls plunged
down, down, and then spiraled upward, flapping, toward the sun.

“How is it?” Ken called.

“Clear as a bell. You can see San Francisco.”

“What?” Ken said.

“It’s clear,” was all Moe answered. To hell with San Francisco! There is no San
Francisco. Only me, Ken, and the island.

He came back inside the house. “How’s the shoulder?”

Ken pushed up on his right arm and moved the wounded shoulder up and down in
a half-shrug. “Feels all right. It’s better,” he grinned. “It’s my pitching arm.”

“Your ex-pitching arm,” Moe said. Live it! “Let’s take a look.” He bent over the
wound, which looked like raw meat, though it was neither black nor pus-covered.
“You want to go to the beach with me this morning?”

“Yes,” Ken said. “You promised.”

Moe removed the old bandage and went to get a new one. “Okay,” he said. “You’ll
have to keep the shoulder dry. It’s liable to get infected. You can wet your feet, but
that’s all.”

“I’ll watch it.”

For breakfast they ate the Pickaninny Blood and fish they’d not had a chance to eat
the night before. They each had three bowls of soup. “I’m telling you, Moe, that
stuff’s better cold than hot. On the cans it’ll have to say Serve Hot or Cold.” Moe
nodded and smiled.

By the time they were ready to leave for the beach, Ken was talking continuously,
about Campbell’s, about baseball, about guns, about everything. He talked while
Moe wrapped the two pairs of fatigues in a small bundle; he talked while Moe
hoisted him on his back, and he kept on talking while Moe carried him piggy-back
across the plain and down the back-door incline of the island. Moe stopped
listening after a while and looked out at the flat ocean, so smooth and hardsurfaced
it seemed you could walk upon it—from there to Honolulu, say, in a month. The
hell with Honolulu! He concentrated upon the weight he carried—the thin arms
tight around his neck, the legs hanging limp. When he had slipped and stepped
down the incline, he shifted Ken up higher on his shoulders and then, for the
helluvit, jogged across the path and down the sand to the beach. Ken shouted in his
ear, “Hey, you’ll rupture yourself, you bastard,” and when Moe finally lowered him
onto the sand, the cripple was laughing.

“Go ahead, Moe, take a swim. I’ll get some sun for a while.”
“Okay.”

“Go ahead.” This time it sounded to Moe like a command; he looked into Ken’s eyes
for the first time in months: Ken was forcing himself to seem a guy who thrived on
being alone. “Go ahead,” he said again.

Moe ran straight down the beach, charged into the water, his ankles, his knees
tingling, and then dove, smacking his belly flat against the water. Conscious only of
his arms cutting forward and down, his feet fluttering beneath the surface, he swam
easily for a while, and then, one, two, three, dove down. He forced himself lower
and lower until his fingertips brushed the white sea floor; he held himself beneath
the water and when his lungs tightened inside him, ached, he pumped up into
daylight, breaking through like a porpoise. He rolled onto his back and waved to
Ken, the spot on the beach. Ken saw him, shot an arm up into the air, and then
leaned back in the sun.

Moe wondered if he could have dozed for a while, floating on his back, for when he
rolled over again the sun seemed a notch higher in the sky. He decided to take the
long swim over to the south side of the island—he hadn’t been there for weeks, or
was it months? He moved slowly along the top of the surf, thinking where else,
where else could he have a delicious morning swim. Shut up! Stop thinking about
would-be’s and where-else’s. Just swim. Swim as if the ocean will dry up tonight.
Maybe it will. With a noisy burst, he kicked faster and dug the water out in front of
him. For a full five minutes he swam as in a race, head down, the island slipping
invisibly by to his right.

He reached the south shore exhausted. Carefully he made his way around the huge
rose-colored hunks of coral that jutted out of the water and ringed the shore. For an
instant he regretted having come so far. The heavy rings of coral made swimming
dangerous. But he was there, so he’d take a look. He moved around a razor-backed
coral boulder and examined the tiny pieces of bubbled rock fitted together like a
stained glass window. Then he paddled around to the seaside of the coral and
glanced out toward the horizon. At first he thought the blinding sun had tricked
him into seeing spots on the horizon. He blinked and looked again. Most of the
spots disappeared, but there were still one, two, three, four—four dark-grey objects
sitting on the edge of the sea. They were ships!

As though the blood had been sucked out of his arms and legs, his body went limp.
He looked again. They were clearer now, spaced evenly along the horizon, long and
flat like aircraft carriers. They weren’t moving.

And then above and farther back, on the far side of the horizon, pinpoints of light
flashed in the sky. The sun-glaze blinded him again and he saw a million spots.
Then he had them once more—silver spots. Airplanes. Sun bouncing off their
wings, squirting through their propellers!
Now the blood that had been sucked out pumped in again. His entire body became
a throbbing heart. He did not know what to do, to scream or laugh or beat his chest.
There was the Messiah after all, out on the horizon! Oh, he could reach up and kiss
the sun, drink the sea! Salvation!

Suddenly he slipped down beneath the surface of the water—he had forgotten to
tread, and he panicked for an instant. But he bobbed up and calmed himself, let the
blood boil down and the strength return again to the muscles of his body. Then he
glided around the coral, careful to keep yards of water between himself and the
jagged coral. He did not want to be scratched now—a scratch, an infection, a fever,
then death. Oh, no, not now to die, not before they come. At last he was safely
beyond the coral; he began to swim north, moving a few strokes and then turning
back to check the southern horizon, swimming a little distance, then turning again.
At the north shore he looked back one final time. The blazing spots were gone, but
the ships still sat on the horizon. American ships.

Or Jap ships!

He was stunned. His first notion had been that they were friendly. Why not? If the
war was over, the Americans victorious, then probably they had annexed the
Marshalls and Solomons or at least patrolled the South Pacific as their protectors.
Suppose, though, the Americans hadn’t won. But then how do you explain the Jap
suicide? No, those ships couldn’t be manned by Jap sailors, carry Jap food and
supplies. They couldn’t!

He swam parallel to the shore. On the beach he could see Ken, who was sitting up
now. He would have to tell him. But what if the ships’ supplies were carried in
boxes with Jap lettering across? What if he did tell Ken and he started lighting fires
and waiting? Oh, that waiting. And suppose it was the Japs who saw the fires—or
suppose no one saw them. God, if they waited and no one came, Ken would use that
rifle again, and this time straighten out his aim. Maybe he would use it himself.

A wave was rising fifty feet out. He waited for it and then when its force was against
his back, he lay flat and closed his eyes and was swept forward until he felt his belly
brushing against shells and sand and he slid up to the edge of the beach. He rolled
over on his back and rested in the wading-high water. Suddenly he wanted
someone to tell him what to do. If a voice, any voice from anywhere, would just
say Tell Ken or Don’t tell Ken or Light the fires. Why must everything be left up to
him! He wished the damn ships hadn’t been there—or that they had come
yesterday afternoon. Then, he thought, then he would have had no doubts. He
would have set the island, the sea, the sun on fire. But yesterday had been a long
day.

“Moe, hey, Moe!” Ken was leaning up on one arm and waving the other. “How’s the
water?”
Moe stood up and blew his nose. “Fine.” He cupped some water and tossed it over
his hair and face. Then he jogged up the beach to where Ken rested. “You better not
stay in the sun too long. It’s been a long time.”

“I must have fallen asleep. You were gone so long. How’s the water?”

“Good. Like toast.” He sat down on the beach. The warm grains of sand stuck to his
wet buttocks and thighs. “I swam over to the south side.”

“How come?” The sun shone in Ken’s eyes and he threw one hand up before his
face. “How come?”

“For a change. For the swim.”

Ken didn’t answer for a moment. Does he know? He could have seen the planes too,
Moe thought. Sure, but he wants to be told—wants to see if he’ll get the truth.

“What’s over there?” Ken said.

“Ocean.”

“So is there ocean over here.”

“So?”

Ken took his hand from his eyes. All the muscles of his face seemed bunched
around his eyes, narrowing them. “What else?”

Moe stood, his back to Ken, and brushed the sand from his behind. Ken was testing
him; yesterday he had finally been convinced that Moe was his friend, but now Moe
was sure Ken was suspicious of him again. And, Christ, didn’t he have reason to
wonder why it was Moe wouldn’t tell him about the planes? Mightn’t he still be
scared enough to think Moe had worked out a deal where the Americans would
swoop down one night and rescue only him?

“Why are you turning your back, Moe? What’s over there?”

“Airplanes. Airplanes and ships.” He waited, his back to Ken; waited for the cry of
celebration, the scream, the deep at-long-last sigh. But there was no sound. He
closed his eyes—he was exhausted with thinking about how to be tactful, when to
be honest, tired of the responsibilities of sparing Ken, and sparing himself. He
closed his eyes, hoping for a moment to shut out the world.

Ken spoke at last. “I’m sorry.”

Moe didn’t move.

“I don’t know when I got it good. I’m sorry, Moe. I don’t know what the hell I think
you got over there. What kind of boat you could build. I mean you’re not even the
kind of guy who could build a boat. I mean even the house slants. But it’s just that
when you go away like that, for a long time, I think there’s something over there.”

“Well,” Moe said, “there’s nothing but airplanes and ships.”

“Okay, Moe,” Ken said. “Okay . . . would you take me down near the water?”

Moe knelt down between Ken’s legs, while Ken slipped his arms around his neck.
Then, pushing up with his knees, he stood and carried Ken down to the water’s
edge, where he stood by and watched the water sweep in over the thin legs and
lifeless groin. Ken looked up at him, shook his head and smiled. “What a jerk I’ve
been,” the smile said. He’s beginning to live it, Moe told himself; that there could
even be airplanes was a joke to him. Hope was dead for Ken, and suspicion was
dying with it. And last night, for one happy moment, he had killed hope too. Until
those ships. He knew he should forget them.

T hat night while Ken slept, Moe rose from his bed, tiptoed out of the

house, and made his way to the south shore. He had worn his fatigues to bed so he
would not have to dress when he stole away. He carried an entrenching tool with
him and when he got to the south shore he dug a large hole in the sand. He packed
a high sand wall around it, and then filled the hole with wood and shrubbery which
he had gathered together late in the afternoon and deposited on the south beach
after dinner. “Go ahead, take an after-dinner walk,” Ken had said, and Moe had.
Now he lit the fire, waited for it to flare up, and left. Ten minutes later he was in
bed.

He was sure that one fire in a deep hole wouldn’t get out of hand. Before the night
was over it would burn itself out. One little fire, he told himself, meant nothing to
him. Whatever happens, happens . . . . But as often as he told himself he cared
nothing about the fire, that it was only a ceremony to go through, a ritual to ease
his conscience, he could not fall asleep for many hours. Only at dawn when the fire
must have been out and no plane had zoomed overhead did he lapse into a tossing,
squirming sleep.

The next night he spotted a winking red light above the southern horizon. He sat by
the fire for several hours, the only lights in the night the red blinker of the plane,
his fire, and the sliver of moon. They formed a vast triangle in space and he sat
patiently—but not caring, not caring—waiting for two of the angles to come
together. Finally, waiting for the plane to fly to his side seemed as absurd as waiting
for the moon to drop down and touch the fire. At last he walked home, babbling to
himself all the while.

During the next two weeks he did not see the red light again nor did he wait for it.
He slipped out, lit the fire, and returned home. Usually the trip took about twenty
minutes. On the fourteenth night, while he watched the shrubs and vines flare up,
big drops splashed into his face, at first cool, then drenching. He turned back
toward the house as the fire fizzled out. It was not his fault, he thought, the water
dripping down his neck, his chest. He didn’t make the rain.

Ken had constructed a checkerboard. During the week of rain Moe spent all his
waking time playing checkers at Ken’s invitation, moving the cartridges that served
as checkers, not thinking, losing. As often as he could, he slept; not that he was
tired—rather he would avoid Ken’s eyes. And soon, after three or four days of
checkers and sleep, he began to feel strange about himself, or inside himself. In the
months before, his head had felt stuffed with memories, hopes, words, pictures—
like a small suitcase so full of clothes it couldn’t be shut without something sticking
out the sides. He was always packing his head to depart. Now, however, he felt
drained, sucked dry. No, it was worse—inside his head it was like expecting to find
an object heavy and picking it up to find it light. It was that strange double feeling.
And his body too was no longer knotted, but loose and flimsy, as though the taut
cords had been cut. This new flimsiness of body, heavv-emptiness of mind, wasn’t
that the beginning of disintegration? Or was he looking at the world upside-down?
Perhaps the other had been insanity and this sanity. Regardless, he played checkers
and he slept.

Ken’s new agreeableness only made him feel stranger. The only reminders of the
suicide attempt were the purple scar on Ken’s shoulder and his laissez-
faire disposition. Several times a day he would say, “Moe, when it stops raining you
go on and take a swim over on the south side. Take a spin in your old airplane . . . .”
Then, all business, he would return to the game. “Take your cartridge for not
jumping.” The last rainy day Moe lost twelve games in a row, until Moe saw Ken
begin to look at him, for the first time in weeks, narrow-eyed, as though he
suspected his friend of losing on purpose.

The night of the twelve losses Moe was awakened from his sleep by a scream. He
sat up in bed. “What is it?”
“Noises!” Ken cried. “Moe, I’m hearing noises!”

“It’s just a nightmare. Go back to sleep.”

“But I wasn’t sleeping. I was awake, thinking, and I heard noises. I’m hearing
things!”

“It’s the wind. It’s the rain. Go back to sleep.”

“It stopped raining.”

“That’s good. Go to sleep.” He knew he should be more comforting, but comfort

seemed beyond him now. He gave directions. “Go to sleep.”

Ken spoke from his bed. “It’s just that everything was going okay, Moe. I was trying
to forget, trying to make the best of it like you said. And now I’m hearing noises.
Oh, Christ, Moe, is it going to start all over again?”

There was a banging on the door.

“I’m hearing it again—Moe!”

“So did I.” Moe hopped out of bed and grabbed an oily rifle from the wall. He
jammed a clip in the rifle and slowly padded to the door and kicked it open. It
swung back and he pointed his rifle into the night. The rain had stopped and above
the island clouds sped across the sky bellied full of wind. In front of Moe, with
shining eyes, stood a goat. For a moment they looked at each other. Then the goat
turned and aimed his horns at the darkness. Moe ran a step, but the animal had
disappeared. There were no hoof sounds.

“Moe?” Ken called.

“Shhh. . . .” Moe listened for some sound, he did not know what. Another goat? A
goatherd?

“Moe,” Ken called. “What is it?”

Moe turned and entered the house, dragging the rifle. Ken sat up and pulled the
blankets from about his head. “What was it?”

“A goat.”

“A goat?”
“A goat.”

“Look, Moe, the airplane bullshit—”

“Goddamit,” Moe bellowed, “a goat!”

The sheer volume of Moe’s voice shattered Ken’s skepticism. “Moe,” he said weakly,
“how the hell—I mean how did a goat—”

“How the hell do I know!” Moe roared now, all lungs, breath, and lips. “For Christ
sake, you don’t think I’ve been hiding a goat?”

“No, Moe.”

“The way you look at me you think I have a goddam zoo on the other side of the
island. I used to, you see, but when the planes landed the propellers chopped hell
out of the peacocks. I had to sell them—”

“What are you shouting for? I didn’t say you brought the goat.”

“The way you look at me. You’ve been looking at me that way for a year. I got a girl
over there too, if you want to know. She’s got ’em, small and hard like Emily Wilson
or Lucy Wilson or whatever the hell her name is—”

“All right!” Ken had to shout to be heard. “All right! But where did the goat come
from?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know!”

“Who put him here?”

Moe didn’t answer but waved the rifle above his head; Ken waved his arms too but,
unsupported, flopped back on to the bed. “Who put him here!”

“God. God put him here!” Moe began to laugh. “This goat is the saviour. God’s
manifested himself in a goat! He figures maybe it’ll work this way!”

“From where though!” They were shouting at the same time now, waving their
arms, making the room a two-man crazy house.

“Heaven, you stupid bastard!” He stood above Ken’s bed. “Where the hell do you
think God is!”
“But Moe,” Ken dropped his voice suddenly, “a goat? I mean, God, a goat?”

T he quiet that fell on the room was sudden and oppressing; there

were suddenly all questions and no answers. Without speaking Moe dressed Ken
and himself. He took a bayonet from the wall and gathered four clips of
ammunition; he put one clip in the rifle. Then he adjusted the rifle sling so that he
could wear the weapon over his right shoulder. He hung the bayonet from his waist,
hoisted Ken to his shoulders, and started out across the island to look for the goat.

The clouds had blown away now and the night was cool and black, a few stars
scattered in the sky. It was curiously like the night months before when he had
dragged Ken up the beach and around the island. The difference was that this time
Moe knew the road and the man he carried, though once again he did not know
what was hidden at the other end.

Ken tightened his arms around Moe’s neck. “I think I hear him,” he whispered.

Moe stopped. All he heard was Ken’s breathing, his own heartbeat, and the waves
buckling on the black ocean. “That’s the water,” he said, and he began to walk
again, the wet grass smacking his pant legs. He did not sag or strain from the
weight on his back—he’d become accustomed to it. Around and around the central
plateau of the island he wove, stopping now and then, his head forward, listening,
sniffing. The bark of the dwarfed trees was damp and sweet-smelling. Finally he
reached the ledge. Below them was the site of the Jap encampment. Nothing moved
there. A hundred feet in front, on the beach, nothing moved either; but then a black
object darted into sight, and then another. And another. And a dozen more,
bearded chins down, thin legs pumping. There must have been twenty of them.

“Moe,” Ken mumbled. “Moe . . . .” And then Ken let out a loud yell. “Yaaaa-
hooooo!” It splintered the black—it was the history of eleven months. He yelled it
again, and then below him, Moe cried out, like an echo. “Yaaa-hoooo!”

The goats stampeded, running crazily in every direction. Two of them turned and
charged into the sea; a small wave smacked them head on and one whinnied, high
and piercing, like an emasculated horse. When Moe and Ken saw the goats scatter
they stopped screaming; their thoughts at that instant were one: they did not want
to scare the animals away, though neither of them could think where away was.
The whole thing had the air of the miraculous about it. Air? It was miraculous. And
what had appeared miraculously might just as miraculously disappear. Some secret
word like Rumpelstiltskin or yaa-hoo might turn the animals to vapor, if they were
not that anyway.

Gently Moe lowered Ken to the ground. They lay beside each other on the ground
and watched as the frightened goats, calm now, reappeared. The goats walked
slowly, nudging the sand with their noses, bumping into each other’s behinds.
“From where?” Ken whispered. “From where, Moe?” Moe shrugged his shoulders.
Ken turned back to the goats, the shrug, it seemed, answer enough for him, as
though he did not so much want to know where the goats were from as to be certain
that Moe did not know either, as though he could not live in peace with a mate who
knew so great a secret.

The shrug did not satisfy Moe. At long last the question phrased itself in his own
mind. “From where?” He had forgotten the rhythms of inquiry and he groped and
whirled for an answer. One finally shaped itself, but it was clearly the answer of a
mind that had felt weightless for a while and of a man who had felt a weird
flimsiness in his limbs. The language of his thought was the language of a fable,
simple, fantastic, timeless:

There was a great bloody war among all the countries of the world, and when the
bombing was finished, the cities ruined, the generals buried, the few people who
lived decided to turn the world over to the children. The children met on a snowy
mountain in Switzerland, near Geneva. First they played games, then they voted to
abolish war. Then a six-year-old suggested that the world be turned into a circus
and it passed unanimously. The Pacific was to be a zoo . . . this island for goats . . . .

It was not the answer of a sane thirty-five-year-old man. It was no answer at all, for
still he didn’t know precisely where the goats were from. But he knew why they had
come and that was enough now. He felt giddy suddenly. In a circus there are clowns
but not vandals. There are no vandals to expect. The vandals are dead.

“The vandals are dead,” he said.

“Shhh . . . .” Ken said. He lay on his belly, his head resting on his hands, watching
the goats as Moe had watched the Jap suicide.

“The vandals are dead,” Moe said and, for the first time since the night of the
suicide, he was sobbing.

Ken tugged himself to Moe as best a cripple could. “Hey, what’s a matter?” He
whispered so the goats could not hear. “What’s the trouble?”
Spittle slid down Moe’s chin and his vision doubled and tripled from the tears in
his eyes. Inside his head he felt as though his brain was cracking apart. “They’re
only goats,” Ken said. “They can’t hurt us.” Moe felt Ken’s hand on the back of his
neck, and with a great physical effort he molded his mind into one piece again. He
could not stop crying for a while.

When he finally looked out at the beach almost all of the goats were resting on the
sand. Only at the water’s edge two goats stood next to each other. Moe watched as
they butted one another with their heads; one finally tipped the other over onto the
sand by knocking against his mate’s front legs. Then there was some ninnying,
whinnying, and the back of one faced Moe and Ken, and the head of the other
looked out into the Pacific. It must have been the most beautiful thing Ken had ever
seen, for he clutched Moe’s hand. They watched until the goats stopped rocking and
then, hand in hand, they fell asleep.

T he next morning (which they later learned was the morning of June

30, 1946) the men who had brought the goats returned with more animals. Neither
Moe nor Ken might have awakened from the deep sleep into which they had
crawled the previous night were it not for the unruliness with which the pigs were
transported to the beach from the squat olive-drab landing craft that waddled up
and down thirty feet off shore.

A chain of ten G.I.’s stretched from the craft to the beach. Closest to the boat a Pfc
with a field cap set back on his head stood in water up to his knees, cursing. Closest
to the beach, the last link between pigs and land, a small Puerto Rican sergeant
shouted instructions to the others. Soft little waves licked up about the ankles of his
zippered combat boots. The squirming pigs were passed from one soldier to
another until they reached the sergeant, who heaved them the last six feet onto dry
land. There the pigs screamed, rolled to their feet, and high-heeled it away.

On the shore, some twenty feet from the sergeant, three officers in starched
fatigues stood silently watching the operation. The officer in the center had a silver
leaf on his helmet-liner; he wore a pancho as though he had expected another day
of rain.
“What do you think this is—a circus?” the sergeant yelled; he had a heavy Spanish
accent. “Move the bastards!”

There was a loud splash.

“Get him!” the sergeant screamed. He pointed out toward the landing craft with an
arm that appeared to be loaded. “Get the little bastard before he drowns!”

The Pfc nearest the boat stared into the water around him. “I can’t find him,” he
called.

“Put your goddam hands in the water!”

“What?”

“Your goddam hands, in the water. In! In!”

The Pfc darted both hands into the sea; in a minute he came up with a fat pink pig
snorting water from his snout. The sergeant shot a quick glance toward the three
men on the beach; in deference to officers and pigs he shouted, “Be careful with
them, the sons of bitches!” He went back to heaving pigs onto the shore, trying, it
seemed, to make them land on their feet.

Moe awakened first; “Move the bastards!” were the first words he’d heard anyone
but himself and Ken utter for almost a year. He peered over the ledge and listened,
not thinking to wake Ken or to shout to the soldiers, but only to stare, entranced, as
the new guests were unloaded onto the beach. Way over on the left the goats
huddled together; their horns and stringy sand-matted beards gave them the
appearance of four-legged devils. The pigs continued to hit the beach and then
prance away, running sideways.

Out in the water the G.I.’s did not so much pass them on as squirt them forward
like the Marx Brothers on a mad assembly line—as though each soldier forced some
painful new piece into the animal before shipping him further on toward shore. The
lieutenant colonel watched and dug a small hole in the sand with the tip of his boot.
The major who stood beside him looked continually at his watch as though he had a
train to make. And the sergeant continued to shout instructions and to concentrate
upon shooting the pigs forward right side up. Suddenly the sergeant’s throwing the
pigs onto the land seemed to Moe as terrifying as death itself.

Perhaps it was the strangeness of the scene below that kept him from shouting;
perhaps it was merely the fantastic newness of the faces, the voices, that froze his
tongue; or perhaps it was that his icy mind seemed once again to have some
tropical sun beating upon it. Whatever it was, he wanted only to watch, hypnotized,
like an idiot following a bouncing ball. In fact, if Ken had not awakened and begun
to scream over and over, “They’re here! They’ve come! I’m saved!” Moe might not
have spent the next day watching the explosion from an observer ship anchored
fifteen miles away, but would have remained with the goats and the pigs, his body,
like theirs, charring instantaneously from heat a million times stronger than the
heat of the flames which eleven months earlier had turned the green island black.

O n July 1, 1946, forty-two thousand people were gathered in an

area of the Pacific Ocean the size of Rhode Island. Before noon every one of them
had heard of the two Americans discovered on Barnyard, the island chosen at the
last minute as a third site for testing blast effects on animals. Not everyone of the
forty-two thousand heard the same story. Some heard about the two G.I.’s who had
gone over the hill in the Marshalls, built a raft, and floated to Barnyard; there was a
wild story about Jap collaborators and still another about two Russian spies. Some
few heard the truth and felt sorry. Another time one might have checked the
authenticity of the tale, mulled it over, stowed it away for grandchildren, but
engaging as it was—the old Robinson Crusoe story—it could not pull one’s mind
away from the day’s colossal event.

By noon the buzzing about the two G.I.’s had buzzed itself out and all attention was
directed toward the sky. From the deck of the observer ship U.S.S. Platte, Moe and
Ken looked at the sky too. It was pale and smooth as porcelain; the sun shone and
all that moved was a four-engine bomber overhead. Ken nudged Moe with his
elbow; he spoke without taking his eyes from the plane: “Beautiful.”

Moe thought, What’s beautiful?—the plane, the day, being free, what’s going to
happen? But he only mumbled, “Yes,” for he had neither the strength nor the
inclination to ask a question of anyone. It was Ken, in fact, who had told their story
to the admiral, the general, the psychiatrist—who had repeated it for the doctor, the
nurse, the ward-boy, and finally for the Senator from Pennsylvania who was aboard
the ship and had his picture taken shaking Ken’s hand. Moe had followed behind,
pushing Ken’s wheel chair, nodding yes, shaking no, and grateful that he could rely
on Ken’s bubbling talk. “Me and my buddy Moe.” How many times had he heard
Ken speak those words in the last twenty-four hours! And each time Moe had
nodded yes. Now, clean and beardless, Ken sat in the shiny wheel chair, looking at
the sky. Tomorrow they were both to be flown back to the States, Ken directly to the
Walter Reed Army Medical Center to see about an operation that might enable him
to walk again. Perhaps it was beautiful.
The plane faded into a silver point and then it was gone. Moe stared into the sky as
he had so often stared into the empty sea. Then he looked around the deck of the
ship at the thousands of people—sailors, soldiers, civilians, men in shirt sleeves,
men in T-shirts, men with tattoos, bald men, Negroes, thin men, fat men—and
slowly he felt as though someone were breathing into him . . . the month-old
emptiness was receding like a tide. It was a strange sensation, as though the ghost
were returning to his body.

“One minute.”

The ship’s squawk-box gave the signal for all spectators to turn their backs to the
plane and fold their arms across their faces. When it was safe to look north again—
after the initial flash—the squawk-box would call “Turn.”

Moe turned Ken’s wheel chair around and both covered their eyes.

“Forty seconds.”

Ken whispered, “I don’t know, Moe—I feel a little funny—”

“Thirty.”

Moe wondered if Ken felt his body inflating too, if that was what felt funny—if he
too found old memories and pictures taking their place back of his arms, behind his
eyes: visions of birds wheeling, flames rising, headless Japs, the spot of coral. No,
Ken would have his own set of memories: the days of pain, the boredom, the
suicide, the numb limbs, the dreams . . . .

Once again Moe felt a new invasion, this time a rush from the past that had nothing
to do with Ken or with the island—it was as though he were absorbing from the
thousands of people around him pieces of his prewar self. Memory followed
memory, and soon he was spinning back in time, gathering recollections from
fifteen years ago, ten years, five, four, three, two, one, zero, TURN!

“Moe, turn the chair—turn the chair!”

Moe flung his arms from his face and spun Ken’s wheel chair.

“Moe!” Ken was pointing out to the billowing fireball. He turned his head up,
squinting. “Those goats . . . Moe. . . .” His hands were before him, the tips of the
fingers touching, prayerful; beardless he looked to Moe like a stranger. “Moe, we’re
so goddam lucky, Moe, I still don’t believe it.”
Moe Malamud, 35, did not know how to answer, so he looked out to the fireball
again. It rose on its stem as though it would not stop until it had obliterated the
sun.