The Lieutenant: A Novel by Andre Dubus

Author:Andre Dubus [Dubus, Andre]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction, General, Historical, Literary, War & Military, Homosexuality
ISBN: 9780961428525
Google: fhORPwAACAAJ
Amazon: 096142852X
Publisher: Green Street Press
Published: 1986-01-01T13:00:00+00:00

5

HE GOT OUT of his bunk and turned out the lights at the desk and lavatory, then got into the bunk again, his stateroom lighted now by only the small reading lamp above his head. He set his alarm clock for six-thirty. It was now eleven-ten.

At eleven-thirty he considered calling Tolleson to his room, but did not for he knew exactly how it would be: Tolleson, as ignorant of homosexuality as he was, cursing Freeman, Butler, and the entire Navy. Just before midnight he half rose, pushing the covers back; then he lay down again. There was no use seeing Alex either. Alex could only give him legal advice, and he already knew about that: if he held on, refused to be scared or bluffed, and if the troops kept quiet, he could win. He rather doubted the troops could get through an interrogation by a man from the Office of Naval Intelligence; he had never been involved with them, but he had heard that they rarely failed to break a case. Usually they got confessions as well. But that did not overly disturb him. For one thing, even if the troops broke—which he thought they would whenever he allowed himself to think about it—he felt that an ONI investigator would agree with him: it was all a matter of grab-ass caused by the restlessness of young men at sea. Most of all, though, he did not worry about the troops’ ability to survive an investigation, because this was not the important thing—what mattered was whether or not he would fight.

With fatigued but nervous post-midnight clarity, he knew he was not afraid of them. He could stand before Captain Howard like a commissioned Hahn, could refuse to answer, could plead Article Thirty-one for the troops and himself as well. If the troops—Freeman, for instance—confessed, then he would be in trouble. But at three in the morning he knew, as certainly as he knew anything, that it was not his career or his life that mattered: it was today. He could take anything they did to him: getting through this day and the ones to follow, without cowardice, without disloyalty to the troops, the Detachment, and the Corps, would be worth the price.

He was hesitant, though, for another reason. Knowing it took as much guts to admit you were wrong as it did to fight, he lay in his bunk, opening a pack of cigarettes, and tried to recall anything from his own experience like what had been done to McKittrick—and, worse, apparently with McKittrick’s cooperation. He could not. There had been things on night bus trips in high school, when the baseball team was returning from a game. But all these things had one common factor: no one touched anybody else. Toward four o’clock he was trying to imagine himself as a nineteen-year-old boy, full of sap and dirty-minded anyway; but he could not see himself doing that to McKittrick or having it done to him.

He thought of Burns going

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