When the door closed again the man beside Fuselli, who was tall and broad shouldered with heavy black eyebrows, burst out, as if he were saying something he'd been trying to keep from saying for a long while:
“It won't be right if that sickness gets me; indeed it won't.... I've got a girl waitin' for me at home. It's two years since I ain't touched a woman all on account of her. It ain't natural for a fellow to go so long as that.
“Why didn't you marry her before you left?” somebody asked mockingly.
“Said she didn't want to be no war bride, that she could wait for me better if I didn't.”
Several men laughed.
“It wouldn't be right if I took sick an' died of this sickness, after keepin' myself clean on account of that girl.... It wouldn't be right,” the man muttered again to Fuselli.
Fuselli was picturing himself lying in his bunk with a swollen neck, while his arms and legs stiffened, stiffened.
A red-faced man half way up the passage started speaking:
“When I thinks to myself how much the folks need me home, it makes me feel sort o' confident-like, I dunno why. I juss can't cash in my checks, that's all.” He laughed jovially.
No one joined in the laugh.
“Is it awfully catchin'?” asked Fuselli of the man next him.
“Most catchin' thing there is,” he answered solemnly. “The worst of it is,” another man was muttering in a shrill hysterical voice, “bein' thrown over to the sharks. Gee, they ain't got a right to do that, even if it is war time, they ain't got a right to treat a Christian like he was a dead dawg.”
“They got a right to do anythin' they goddam please, buddy. Who's goin' to stop 'em I'd like to know,” cried the red-faced man.
“If he was an awficer, they wouldn't throw him over like that,” came the shrill hysterical voice again.
“Cut that,” said someone else, “no use gettin' in wrong juss for the sake of talkin'.”
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