Twilight Years

As he lifted a cigarette to his mouth a nearby voice said, “Ready, Mr. Serling? First one of the last season. Gonna be a whammy.”

Rod threw a half-smile as the cameras started rolling. His eyes lifted unblinkingly, and Joe the director gave him the thumbs-up. He lowered the cigarette and said, “Submitted for your approval, one Max Phillips, a slightly-the-worse-for wear maker of books, whose life has been as drab and undistinguished as a bundle of dirty clothes. And, though it's very late in his day, he has an errant wish that the rest of his life might be sent out to a laundry to come back shiny and clean, this to be a gift of love to a son named Pip.” His mouth cocked in a slight smile. “Mr. Max Phillips, Homo sapiens, who is soon to discover that man is not as wise as he thinks—said lesson to be learned in the Twilight Zone.”

Leyte, Philippine Islands

1944

He entered the barrack with eyes downcast, hat throwing a shadow over his narrow, angular face. He carried his bag over one shoulder and wore his uniform neatly, but there was something reckless in his eyes. The guy on the bunk across from his sat up, a rosy young man with trim blonde hair. Rod tossed his bag on his bed as the guy leaned down and said, “Welcome to the Death Squad.”

Rod looked up at him and blinked once, a grin spreading slowly on his face. “You sound like you don’t know what they think about the old five-eleventh.”

The guy’s smile only faltered briefly. “Well sure I know. Who the hell doesn’t? I know why they call it that.”

“So you just think you’ll be one of the lucky ones.”

“Who do you think you are?”

“Rod Serling,” he said, turning fully and standing. He held out his hand, smiling easily. The guy took it after a moment of consideration and squeezed it once.

“Harry Nelson.”

“Where you from, Harry?” He sat down on his bed and looked up at the rosy youth calmly, striking a match as a cigarette jutted from his lips.

“Chicago. You?”

“Syracuse, I suppose.”

“Where were you before here?”

“New Guinea. Before that, California. Before that, Georgia.”

“Camp Toccoa?”

“That’s right. You know it?”

“My brother was there. I was in Florida though.”

Rod had nothing to say to this, so he only nodded and inhaled some smoke. The guy in the bunk above snored.

“You been out in the shit yet?”

Rod frowned. “Not really. Sat around with our thumbs up our asses in New Guinea, then went and cleaned up after some guys on Leyte. There was some shit there, but not much. Then they sent me here. What about you?”

Harry shook his head, but he didn’t seem disappointed. His eyes were very wide. “No, nothing yet. Just a lotta sitting around, too. Gets to kind of driving you crazy, doesn’t it?”

“I guess it does.”

“Lotta the guys here play soccer to get it outta their system, you know? I’m not too good at it.”

“We did a lot of boxing for that kind of thing in Georgia.”

Harry’s eyebrows lifted. “You did? You don’t look much the type. You don’t look like much of a soldier, actually.”

“I did plenty all right for myself,” Rod said darkly.

“Break anything?”

“A few things,” he muttered, rubbing his nose. “Doesn’t matter. I did well enough. Point is, it helped you get the piss out a little.”

Harry was quiet for a moment. The scant yellow light coming through the window drew a slim bright line down the side of his face. “Kinda weird that guys’ll pass the time beating on each other, just for some Japs to wind up doing it for em.”

“Where’s your sense of patriotism? Better than pretending half of em won’t get their heads blown off anyway, before this whole thing is done.” Rod rubbed his cigarette on the bottom of his boot. “Better than sidelinin’ a game of girls’ football, anyway.”

Harry laid back in his bed and stared at the ceiling for a while. Rod removed a book from his bag and began reading. After a while Harry said, “You get on people’s nerves a lot?”

Without looking up, Rod said, “Mm-hm.”

November 1944

Weeks later and high over the central islands of Leyte, they pushed through swirling waves of rain as the plane rocked in the violent winds. The men sat ready, parachutes hulking on their backs, jaws clenched and eyes staring directly ahead. Dusk had fallen half an hour ago, and now the forest was barely lit by dark gray, and the storm clouds were no help. They’d taken flight hours ago, and the storm had already caused major delays.

Rod sat at the rear of the first line. Harry was beside him, muttering softly to himself, eyes shut. Rod ground his teeth as the Major General relayed their orders again. Momentarily they were rising and the line was disappearing one by one through the open door, plunging into the raging night and swept away upon the wind. Rod arrived at the door and saw only clouds and rain beyond the toes of his boots. He clenched the straps of the parachute with wide, dark eyes.

The Major General shouted and Rod was shoved. He plummeted. He was weightless and the rain sped past his eyes like stars blurring into dazzling lines. And though he shouldn’t have, he closed his eyes. The world disappeared and he was in the deepest realms of outer space. Planets whizzed past fluorescent orange and blue and green, swirling moons tracing circles round their cores. The stars illuminated his face, and ahead, a black hole distorted the stars into an enormous sphere, opening to catch him.

His eyes flashed open. He fell through the mist and saw the approaching earth, rushing to meet him, to catch him. His hand lifted and pulled the cord, and a great force surged upward, tugged him and snatched him from the surface. His legs lifted and he was floating, and below the others were moving before him into landing formation. He directed himself and took his first breath since he’d fallen.

Immediately upon landing, shots rang through the thunder. He detached the parachute and pushed through the heavy growth at the base of the mountain. Other infantrymen hurried around and ahead of him, and the jungle seemed to rise and swell and consume them as they began their journey west. They would move over the mountain, undoubtedly encountering Japanese paratroops. Major General Swing had informed them of this outright. They were the Death Squad, after all—the general idea had been accepted long ago that few of them were likely to make it out alive. At first Rod had resented this, but as more shots sounded in the jungle, he understood.

The Japanese came into sight up ahead, but they weren’t paratroopers. They were foot troops stationed to meet them—that was how it always was, it seemed. He watched a man at the far front of his line fall, a spurt of black shooting from his temple. Lightning illuminated him ghostly, and when it flashed again, he was gone, as if transported elsewhere.

The rain came thicker and thicker. Rod and his fellow infantrymen scrambled off the path and took defensive positions in the jungle as the foot troops approached, stepping over the felled Americans and glaring into the trees and at the path. The Japanese were outnumbered, but they already knew that. It was no concern of theirs.

“Stories don’t lie,” he mumbled.

A hard elbow nudged him. Harry growled, “Jesus, shithead, load some extra magazines. You trying to let them get the best of you?”

Rod’s eyebrows knitted as he loaded the magazines.

“Christ,” Harry hissed. “I dunno where your head’s at sometimes.”

The next day, it was as if it had never rained. The morning was heavily shrouded in mist and the jungle smelled wet and lively, and birds built a cacophony as the sun rose. But by eight the jungle was hot and dry and the men trudged westward over the mountain in a long line. Their destination was Japanese-occupied Burauen, but Swing had estimated at least a week’s travel time by foot.

By noon the day was unbearably hot, and their backs and shoulders were scorched red. They wore shirts and hats pulled low over their heads for shade. Rod trudged along beside Harry and Melvin Levy, one of the only other Jews in the platoon. Rod and Melvin had been informed of this by Harry more than once. Melvin was a straight-shooter, Rod thought. A funny, likable guy. They shared interests, too.

“Would love to do some kinda movie thing one day,” Melvin was saying. “You know, like a comedy deal.”

“There are plenty good ones already,” Rod said. “How’d yours be any better?”

“It’d just be you blabbing to a dead audience for sixty minutes,” said Harry, “then credits roll. Here’s your Academy Award, Humphrey.”

“Eat shit, Harry,” Melvin said lightly. “It’d be a war flick. It’d show what it’s really like to be a soldier during wartime, out in the shit.”

“But it’d be a comedy?”

“Yes, Harry. Life is funny. It’s the only way to do it.”

“Life ain’t that funny out here, Melv. You hear this, Rod? You think our thing is funny enough for his flick?”

“I think if he talked about bastards like you it would be,” Rod said immediately. “And there’s something to be said for the perplexity of it all. People drop like flies around here. One second there’s a living, breathing human being before you. A universe inside a mind. The next second that’s extinguished by a little piece of lead. I’d say it’s pretty perplexing.”

“Not funny though,” Harry said.

“It is.”

“How’s that?”

“‘Cause there’s no way in hell you’ll ever figure any of it out,” Rod said, reaching in his pocket. He found a cigarette and pointed it at Harry’s round nose. “And one day, just like everyone else, we’ll get ours—out of nowhere. For no goddamn reason at all.”

The three were silent a moment. Ahead other infantrymen laughed at someone’s joke. Melvin grinned and said, “That was Rod Serling’s evening monologue, ladies and gentlemen. Next up, some Tales of the Strange.”

Late the next day the sun was just as hot, and in continuing their travels they were eventually permitted to rest among a cluster of palm trees on a bare patch of the mountain’s slope. Major General Swing and his Sergeants moved off to the trucks to discuss plans while most of the infantrymen lounged in the shade, drank water, and smoked cigarettes.

A group of troops slowly gathered near a lone palm tree to grin and listen to a scrawny private, Andrew Smith, read from his Bible. Most of the troops were religious, but Andrew was infamous for his biblical fanaticism. He constantly read scripture to the troops during downtime and sometimes in the shit. More than one Captain had told him to put the goddamn Bible down and focus. The troops were tolerant enough to listen, but his sniffy demeanor cracked them up.

Rod, Harry, and Melvin stood among the group listening, arms folded, staring ahead. Rod’s eyes squinted in the harsh sunlight, his sharp face burned red and peeling. His third cigarette in an hour jutted from his hand. Most of the other men smoked too, except Melvin, who observed Andrew Smith with his hands folded before his face.

“We gotta break this up,” he said. “He’s getting depressing. All this stuff about wrath. If you’re gonna read that stuff, find the inspiring lines. Not the Old Testament.”

“What do you care?” said Harry.

“The guys need comedy,” Melvin said. “Not Noah’s Ark.”

“Go ahead then,” said Harry.

Melvin glared at him. “I was already going to, kid.” He flicked Harry’s forehead and grinned at Rod. Momentarily Andrew paused to take a breath at the end of a sentence, and Melvin pushed forward. “All right, Andrew, fantastic! Thank you so much.” He brushed the scrawny troop aside lightly and beamed at the little group of troops. “How’re y’all doing? Not too burned from the heat, I hope. Everybody here like comedy?”

“Well yeah,” a few guys said.

“Anyone like Shakespeare?” No one spoke, so he pushed forward. “Humor me a sec. Get it? All right, Much Ado About Nothing. I did this in school. It’s Benedick. Hold it.” He closed his eyes and planted his feet, lowering his head. Then he looked up and said with a bewildered look, “‘This can be no trick. The conference was sadly borne; they have the truth of this from Hero; they seem to pity the lady.’” He thought a moment, eyebrows raised, then continued: “‘It seems her affections have their full bent. Love me? Why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censured. They say I will bear myself proudly if I perceive the love come from her. They say too that she will rather die than give any sign of affection. I did never think to marry. I must not seem proud.’”

Among the men, Rod glanced about. They spectated with expressions of confusion and awe mixed together. Harry’s jaw hung open. Men had performed acts plenty for each other, and Melvin was no exception…but he’d never mentioned he knew Shakespeare. Rod felt an odd swelling pride.

“‘Happy are they that hear their detractions,’” Melvin went on, “‘and can put them to mending. They say the lady is fair—’tis a truth, I can bear them witness; and virtuous—’tis so, I cannot reprove it; and wise, but for loving me—by my troth, it is no addition to her wit, nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her.’” He looked out past the men for a moment, as if witnessing an image of his subject. Dreamily, he said, “‘I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me because I have railed so long against marriage. But doth not the appetite alter?’”

A sudden screaming echoed overhead. Heads lifted, but for some reason, Melvin didn’t notice at first. A shadow fell over the palm trees and the resting men, and then an object was plummeting from the sky.

Melvin said, “‘A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age. Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humor? No, the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married. Here—’”

It was a dark blur and a flat, hard BANG! His body was wrenched down and to the left as the food crate landed. Several men screamed and one immediately vomited as blood sprayed the earth. Melvin’s head had disappeared beneath the massive crate, but some of the remnants dotted the healthy soil. Rod stood stock still as the men before him ducked out of sight. He could not, would not move. He watched Melvin’s fingers twitch a few times, then become still. The Major General and the Sergeants were appearing and the supply plane was already gone, and the crashing waves of voices filled the hot thick air as Harry pulled Rod away. But beyond the shocked, terrified infantrymen, the jungle had fallen briefly silent—as if that patch of palm trees had become lost all at once.

Manila, Phillippines

March 1945

Since early February they’d been fighting the Japanese for control of Manila. Thousands of Japanese troops had been sent into the city, but that night, Rod and the Death Squad attended a thanks banquet put on by the locales. The little restaurant was aglow with strings of red lights, and a massive table of food was served to the infantrymen. They’d successfully taken back several portions of the city in the past month, but as Rod sat along a bar alone with his food, a dull twinge of pain rose in one of his knees, all too familiar. It reminded him of Leyte, and Melvin.

He looked out the front window, where a colorfully dressed singer was performing on a makeshift stage. A small crowd of American troops and Manila girls were gathered there, listening and subtly dancing, arm in arm. A group of dancers came out from the backdrop behind the little stage and struck up a number directly before the audience, heels clopping on the old stone street. As the audience took up clapping in rhythm, Rod looked away.

A burst of shots rang out in the street. Women screamed inside and out. Rod was already leaping from the stool and drawing his gun when another burst of artillery fire echoed, and he watched four soldiers and five girls drop to the ground outside. The others scattered, the colorful dancers among them. One was shot in the chest and crumpled beside the stage as the performer tried to step down. Rod’s fellow infantrymen were rushing to defensive positions and taking aim, but he watched the performer trip on the stage and sprawl across it. Before he could think, he was running through the restaurant and leaping through the shattered window, pushing past the flock of dancers. He jumped onto the stage, lifted the performer by her armpits, and guided her off the stage and into the restaurant as bullets whizzed over their heads. He heard wood splintering and glass shattering in every direction, and cold fear sent rushes through his body. Bullets rang endlessly in his ears as he half-shoved, half-dragged the performer into the restaurant and under cover.

He ducked beside her, where Sergeant Lewis was already crouching with his gun ready. He looked at Rod with wide, unbelieving eyes. “Jesus Christ, Serling.”

Rod glared past him as he clutched his side, where a red spot of blood was blooming in his uniform. “Thought she had a nice voice, Sergeant.”

New Guinea

March 1945

Rod sat upright in his bed after a few days of rest. One warm morning when the nurses opened the windows and a refreshing breeze filtered through the rehabilitation center, Harry came to visit Rod in his ward. It wasn’t completely filled, but many of the beds had occupants, all wounded from battling the Japanese occupations in the Philippines. Harry appeared with a bandage around his head, weaving through the aisles of beds with a grin.

He came to Rod’s bed and grasped his hand solidly. “How’re ya, Rod?”

“Just fine, Harry. How are you?”

“All right. Took a little shrapnel to the head, but it was shallow. Thank God for those helmets. How’s your side?”

“It’ll be better soon enough.” Rod sighed. “It just hurts to move too much. And they’re not letting me smoke.”

“Here,” Harry said, procuring cigarettes from his gown.

“Where the hell’d you keep those?”

“Don’t worry about it. Take one.”

Rod did, and lit it with a match Harry offered. When he was smoking, he squinted through the cloud at Harry and said, “Nurses wouldn’t tell me. How many’d we lose at that Manila shit show?”

Harry’s faced darkened. “The Death Squad,” he said, and snorted. “Almost four hundred, they think. By the time they reach Iwabuchi it’ll be plenty more.”

Rod’s lips worked over the cigarette. “I’m going back, Harry. To Manila. Quite soon. They said I’d be fine to leave in a couple days.”

“You’re serious?” He worked this over a moment, then scowled. “They’re making me stay awhile for tests. Head injuries, you know. But you be careful, yeah? You’re not exactly the best soldier.”

“Still got my head on right, bub.”

Harry tried to laugh, but his eyes trailed away. “I was thinkin’ about that guy Melvin. You know, when I got my injury. When I felt the shrapnel, I remembered seeing that slop crate just… Well, I thought I was done too. Just like him.”

Rod said nothing, but a stream of smoke lifted from his still lips.

“I was a bit of a rat with him,” Harry mused. “Always felt bad about that. You don’t think about it, though, till after. You know? But I guess realizing late is better than not at all.”

“I guess,” said Rod.

“You remember what you said that day? About it being a joke, the whole thing? That we just die out of nowhere and there’s nothing we can do?”

Rod was still a moment. Then he shook his head. Harry didn’t seem to notice.

“I guess it must be a joke,” he said. “But I don’t think I wanna understand it. See ya later, Rod.” He moved away as if following a new thought, and when he was gone, Rod stubbed his cigarette out half-smoked.

Santa Monica, California

1963

“Okay, Rod, we’ll get this done with in a snap and send us all home, yeah?”

He nodded to Joe, revery breaking, one eye slightly cocked. “I’m as ready as you are, Joe. We got plenty more to do tomorrow. But you know…I think we’re already capturing some of that old Season One magic, don’t you?”

Joe mirrored Rod’s nod with equal enthusiasm. “I certainly do. They don't know it yet, but this season’s an act to go out on.”

Rod went back to the set, lighting a cigarette, and assumed the same position from the opening monologue. As the lights went up and the camera began its slow panning approach, Joe gave Rod the thumbs-up again. Rod remembered in a flash the old days of twenty years ago, in a hot and rainy jungle, surrounded by sweaty, fearful young men wielding weapons.

He blinked, inhaled his cigarette, and said, “Very little comment here, save for this small aside: that the ties of flesh are deep and strong, that the capacity to love is a vital, rich and all-consuming function of the human animal, and that you can find nobility and sacrifice, and love…” For a moment, he thought he heard a shot ring out faraway, and he blinked. But he knew it wasn’t real. “…wherever you may seek it out. Down the block, in the heart…or in…the Twilight Zone.”