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Hamm dies in Okinawa. Killed in the rush to quiet Peck, to save him. Peck, who would be lost to the war anyway. Now Hamm stares with glassy eyes, his face softer, whiter, younger than any of them ever were, a ribbon of blood falling from his mouth, flowing down to Sledge and Snafu crumpled before him. Snafu’s hands are gripped on Sledge’s shoulder to anchor him, palms pressed hard against bone, his breath hot in Sledge’s ear.
It could have been Sledge sprawled out dead on the coral. It could have been Snafu, his moonlit eyes fixed on Sledge, on nothing, while Sledge sat shivering and still alive. Gone, like Peck, but alive.
Slowly, the night returns to its quiet normal. Peck is ushered away. The men who gathered to the noise like flies to meat melt back into their foxholes, waiting for the next show to start. Sledge shakes himself free from the heat of Snafu’s body, and slides back to his own hole, back to the memory of a night where Peck didn’t crack up, where Hamm wasn’t killed, back to taking first watch and counting hours by cigarettes smoked.
Snafu moves back into their foxhole silently after Sledge, slumps against the muddy wall with arms at his side, his wide eyes lost to the night. Time passes and Sledge’s breath evens out, his eyes refocus and he’s about to tell Snafu to go on and get some shut-eye when Snafu suddenly reaches out, touching hand to knee, eye meeting eye. Sledge is stuck, his breath in his throat, his heart a murmur in his chest, and he hates the look in Snafu’s eyes. It’s the look he had after Ack-Ack’s death. It’s the look that betrays his age, contradicts his senseless violence and war hardened coldness. It’s the look of someone who’s lost. It is foreign on Snafu’s face and far too intimate. Too trusting.
Fatigues rustle in the darkness as Snafu’s hand travels up Sledge’s leg. A searching hand to match a searching look. Bodies shift, breaths are held, blood rushes in ears. Snafu sighs out a word, barely a whisper. Eugene .
Sledge pushes a hand out against the heavy night air and takes Snafu’s wrist. His tongue is leaden in his mouth, his muscles tight, his hand numb where his fingers wrap around Snafu’s bony wrist. He doesn’t look away as he feels his fingers tighten, feels Snafu’s birdlike pulse, feels his own body shaking.
He has to look away when he tells Snafu to get some sleep. He bites out the words– small, bitter, angry words that fit well in alongside the corpses, the mud, the maggots.
Snafu shakes his hand free from Sledge’s grip, flexes it, drops it back to his side, each movement stilted and silent.
It isn’t until Sledge has picked up his rifle and fully turned his body and mind back out to the night that he feels Snafu lay down, hears him pull his poncho over himself, and he looks back to see Snafu curled up, his back to Sledge.
He tightens his grip on his rifle and looks away again, watching for movement over the landscape.
Hamm’s dead and Peck’s lost.
Snafu sleeps. Sledge takes first watch.
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Sledge is christened “Sledgehammer” in Peleliu. He’s been Gene, Eugene, and recently and more commonly Sledge. Boyish pride blooms as he hears his new name, a Marine nickname, given with a laugh by Snafu.
Words flow easily, jokes are passed and smiles are traded at no cost. New identities are constructed from dust and gunfire, from hands pulling the straps of a fallen comrade’s pack on an airfield, moments of unconscious bravery. Sledge shares a look with Snafu over the sound of Leyden’s muttering and grins at the pleased, catlike smile stretching Snafu’s face. Why he’s so pleased, Sledge doesn’t know, but he knows that he’s been given a name and Leyden hasn’t and his smile sticks as he looks away again.
He’s no longer the boy from Mobile with a heart murmur and a pretty white house, he’s Sledgehammer, a Marine. The identity warms him, chases away the thoughts of a landscape built by bodies, limbs and eyes sprouting from the dirt like crops, a knife easing its way into a gold-filled mouth.
They continue their march, feet light against the hard ground, jaunty voices filling the cracks in the coral, Snafu side by side with Sledge, shoulders brushing and elbows jostling, feet stepping in tandem.
That night, while Snafu stands watch, Sledge looks up to the night sky, clear for once and littered with stars. Out loud, he repeats his new name, Sledgehammer, tasting the way it sounds in his mouth, tongue hitting teeth and lips pursed at the ending. He hears Snafu chuckle and echo Sledge’s voice: “Sledgehammer”. The way he says it makes Sledge smile up at the stars. Voice lilting and slurred, drawn out with the “R” dropped: Sledgehammuh.
Snafu sticks to Sledge after that. Sledgehammer and Snafu. The green boot from Alabama who kept his head on the airfield and the strange and spooky looter from Louisiana. Sledge finds himself looking for Snafu first among their company when gunfire sounds, when it’s silent, when it’s loud, when another marine speaks into the emptiness, only to find him always looking back. Eyes meeting eyes. Sledgehammer and Snafu.
Then Hillbilly dies. Ack-Ack dies shortly after. The two pillars of their weakening company fall and the rest of them feel themselves crumbling alongside them. Sledge looks for Snafu. It’s the first time he sees Snafu look shaken. His normally tense body lax, his wide and empty eyes stuck blankly to the spot where Ack-Ack’s stretcher passed.
They're given little time for mourning before it’s time for them all to move on, back to fighting, back to waiting, and Sledge smudges his tears with the dirt on his face, scrubbing away the look on Snafu’s face, scrubbing away the death of their skipper.
You can’t dwell on it, you can’t dwell on any of it , Ack-Ack’s ghost reminds him.
It’s not until they’ve settled in for the night that Sledge looks for Snafu again. He’s close by, as he always is, but his eyes are distant. Sledge reaches out, hand to shoulder. A small touch, a small comfort. Snafu’s shoulder sags under Sledge’s hand and his eyes travel to the sky, mouth tightly pursed.
Silence stretches as Snafu’s gaze remains fixed heavenward. Sledge drops his hand from Snafu’s shoulder and waits for him to look back. Sledge counts the seconds that tick past like the Marine who counted invisible Japs after they took the airfield. He thinks of Ack-Ack, his soft-spoken gentility, of Hillbilly and his sturdy bravery, and waits for Snafu, his eyes getting hot and his throat tight. Neither of them are keeping watch, but neither of them care.
When Snafu finally speaks, it’s a quiet drawl. Private, meant only for Sledge. “Merriell,” he says. When Sledge doesn’t respond, just keeps looking, Snafu speaks again, “‘S my name. Thought y’oughta know.” Snafu flicks his gaze to Sledge before crossing his arms over his chest and looking up again.
Eugene echoes Snafu’s voice: “Merriell.”
Snafu hums, in acknowledgment or agreement. Sledge smirks and repeats in a whisper, “Merriell. What the hell kind of name is Merriell?”
“Fuck you, Gene ,” Snafu responds, but his eyes soften and crinkle with a smile, finally dropping from the sky, and his body relaxes against the rock they’re pressed up together. Sledge mirrors him and lets his body loosen. They’re fit closely in among the coral, arm pressed to arm, shoulder to shoulder, smile matching smile.
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After Peleliu there’s Pavuvu.
It welcomes back this horde of broken and dirtied boys with open arms. Women with dresses brighter than the sun and lips painted with blood offer up ice-cold lemonade, a reward for a game well-played. Artifacts from a forgotten past, scrubbed clean of personhood, excavated from a foreign America. Sledge stares, with Snafu at his back, and wonders at the pit dug inside of himself, the lack of feeling, of recognition. He chokes down the drink, sugary sweet lemonade coating his mouth and throat before it falls into that pit, a drop in a well. After his drink, he moves on with the rest of the Marines, forgetting and forgotten.
He shares a tent with Snafu, their cots opposite one another. In the relative civilization of Pavuvu, with its tents and mess hall and trucks and never ending supply of new boots and old veterans, his shadow, Snafu, darkens. Their closeness is pronounced amongst the new ranks. Their private looks, their silent language. It’s a connection forged from the battlefield, and it’s out of place here.
Marines flock to the beach, divesting themselves from their stiff dungarees and diving into clear waters, playing like children in the surf. Sledge joins them, the water a baptism from the horrors of Peleliu. Bodies crash against one another, a cacophony of naked flesh and joyous voices. Their beach vacation is an allowance from the Marines: for one vicious battle, you get one day of free, frenzied swimming. But still, it’s freedom, and the men take to it with a passion, embracing, wrestling, shouting.
Snafu swims too. He stays near Sledge, always close, but they only swim, basking in the cool cleanliness of the ocean, reaching out to each other through laughs and looks. Sledge touches him once, his foot against Snafu’s shin, and Snafu smiles at him, his eyes narrowed and sly, before kicking back against the surf to float among the waves.
Sledge knows of what some men will turn to during war. He’s heard the jokes, the jeering voices, the rumors. He can’t begrudge the need, he can understand why. Comfort is in small supply here, women less so. Bodies crash together in water, men press up against each other in foxholes, touches are traded in darkness. He doesn’t know if Snafu is one of those men. Sledge doesn’t dwell on it.
You can’t dwell on it, you can’t dwell on any of it .
In their tent, Sledge and Snafu lay on their respective cots, shirtless and slicked with sweat from the humid tropical climate. Sledge doesn’t speak unless spoken to. He doesn’t look at Snafu, his skinny body stretched out over his canvas bed. He closes his eyes and thinks about lemonade in a paper cup, a white house behind an endless stretch of soft green lawn, his dog Deacon running alongside him, bike wheels whirring over a gravel driveway.
Snafu is jittery amidst the calm, his bright eyes restless, set deep into a newly cleaned face, his thin body in constant movement. He bothers Sledge, asks him to look into his eyes, asks him to diagnose his sickness, reminds Sledge of his doctor father like that makes him responsible for something. Sledge pushes past him, shoves away from him, their closeness suffocating on this island. When Snafu touches him, fingertips against arm, in front of the flap of their tent, behind the flap of their tent, it burns. An iron brand on Sledge’s bare skin. Sledge’s eyes meet Snafu’s.
De L'eau interrupts and Snafu’s hand falls. He tells them he’s being moved to intelligence. De L'eau, Haney, Hillbilly, Ack-Ack. All gone.
Sledge moves past both Snafu and De L'eau, out into the heat of the sun, the heat from its rays matching the heat on his arm from Snafu’s fingers. He closes his eyes against the light.
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Hamm dies in Okinawa.
All is death and blood and dirt. Red and brown smear themselves across faded green fatigues, across lined and sunburnt faces. Civilians are shot. A woman and her child are blown apart by the bomb strapped to her chest. Sledge orders a mortar hit on an old hut. He shoots at an unarmed soldier. One, two, three shots, before the man falls. He holds the woman his mortar doomed to death in his arms.
Each day, another piece is carved, cut away from their souls. Eyes glaze over and eyebrows furrow. Men fall with shells, with bullets, with broken minds. Boots collect kills and cheer for each other's cruelty.
Snafu stays close. He stays close when Sledge learns his dog has died. He stays close when Sledge enters the hut he helped to bomb, he stays close when Sledge foolishly goes after Leyden, injured by a mortar blast. He stays close as he keeps Sledge down, keeps him from being shot.
Snafu stays far from the new men, coarse and uncaring. He snaps at them, refuses to know their names, refers to them as dead men. They’re only worthy of brief amusement, with their fresh faces and fresh stories.
When that changes, when Snafu asks Hamm where he’s from, Sledge hates him. Hates him for his fleeting humanity, his attention to Hamm, his voice laced thick with irony, his touches. They yell at each other, hate and intimacy boiling over into curses and vitriol. Shelton and Eugene shouted out into the night, given names given to hurt, their eyes tight on one another's faces.
Hamm dies that night, saving Peck.
Snafu stays close to Sledge, close as he keeps Sledge down, keeps him from being shot, again. His hands grip Sledge’s shoulder.
Later, there is a rejected touch. A rejected comfort.
Later, Snafu is careful in his movements.
Later, as they sit on the beach, they hear about a bomb, a new kind of bomb, that was dropped on Japan. A bomb that wiped a whole city from the map.
What do we do now?
Snafu scoffs, blowing smoke up into the sky, towards the stars that make up Snafu's pecker. Sledge traces the trail of smoke with his eyes to the sky and wonders if the war is over. He wonders if they're going home.
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Months pass before they do go home, on a train setting out from San Diego to trace the southern border of the United States. The Marines that fill the train are all cleaned up, their faces scrubbed and hair brushed, brown uniforms stiff and tucked in against hollow stomachs. A sea of men cleansed from their time in the Pacific Theater trickling out into the cities and suburbs of America.
Sledge and Snafu and Burgie share a table, they share laughs, they share who will be picking them up from the station. Snafu is quiet on that front, either reticent to share or perhaps having nothing to share.
Time passes quickly, fading away with the rushing landscapes outside their window. Snafu, or Shelton now that they're back stateside, watches the landscape, watches Sledge, his body stiff and careful in this polished environment. Stiff and careful since Hamm's death.
Burgie gets off in Texas, welcomed home by his family. Sledge and Shelton watch as Burgie the corporal fades away into Burgin, the son and brother.
That night, Sledge and Shelton sit opposite and alone, Shelton fiddling with his lighter on the table, fingers flicking the flint wheel, on and off. On and off. Sledge watches the flame light and extinguish, light and extinguish, illuminating Shelton's hands, his mouth, his nose, his eyes.
Sledge shifts forward suddenly to the edge of his seat, pressing his leg into the space under the table, the space between Shelton's legs, and presses his foot against Shelton's. Their legs knock together, calf to calf, knee to knee.
Shelton stills, his hands cocooning around his lighter. He keeps his leg pressed to Sledge's, but his face is blank.
"Merriell," Sledge whispers, like a plea. Like an apology.
Shelton taps his toes once, twice, against Sledge's and meets his eyes.
Alone together on a dark train, surrounded by Marines about to become men again, they look at each other. Expressing their losses, their hatred, their intimacy, their hopes and regrets. Everything they can't say, not here in the civilization of their home country, among the polished wood, the upholstered seats.
Shelton lets his leg fall away but keeps his foot pressed firmly to Sledge's. He looks away when he tells Sledge to get some sleep. They'll be home soon.
Sledge sleeps. Shelton takes first watch.