Free The Pistol by James Jones

Mast jeered. “Where could you buy a pistol locked up on this beach position?”
    “I bought it today off one of them engineer guys across the road.”
    “How could you buy it today when I saw it on you bright and early this morning?”
    “I bought it yesterday,” Winstock said unflinchingly.
    Mast paused. He knew he was right, it was his pistol, he knew it, but from somewhere an element of doubt, a thought that Winstock might be telling the truth, might actually have turned Mast’s pistol in and bought this other one from an engineer, had seeped into his mind. Winstock looked so truthful. It emasculated Mast’s righteousness. And the element of doubt increased his already precipitate desperation.
    “I could punch you in the head, Winstock,” he said recklessly, “and take it away from you and see the serial number for myself.”
    “That’s a court-martial offense,” Winstock said immediately. “You’d be a fool to do it.” He looked around through the swiftly falling night and nodded. “All these guys around to see it.”
    “I can wait till I get you by yourself.”
    “Ha!” Winstock laughed, throwing back his head. “How you gonna ever get anybody by themself on this damn beach position? There’s only four hundred yards of it.”
    Salvation! Salvation! Be saved! To be saved! The hope of survival! These words were running themselves over and over through Mast’s mind, a sort of documentary commentary in a professional announcer’s voice to his private movie of the Jap officer severing his body, as he stared at the man who had taken this salvation from him. For a desperate moment he thought of telling him the truth about how he had come into possession of the pistol, that there was a record of it after all. Then he thought of Musso’s endorsing visit, which proved the pistol his, and once again the face of the man from the 8th Field, from whom he had not bought it, rose up in his mind’s eye to confirm. He couldn’t tell him. To do that would be to lose the pistol forever.
    “Look, Winstock,” he said flippantly. “I want to ask you something. Just for the record. Between us two. How can you equate—”
    “Equate?” Winstock asked.
    “Equalize. How can you equalize to yourself, in your own mind, the fact that you took my pistol away from me because I had bought it off a guy, and went and turned it in; and then turned right around and went and bought one yourself? How can you explain that? I’d just like to know.”
    “Well,” Winstock said calmly, “it’s easy. I just changed my mind, that’s all. After I took yours. I’m just sorry that I went and turned yours in before I changed my mind. It’s, tough on you.”
    “Yeah,” Mast said. “Sure is. A good answer,” he said bitterly; “a fine answer.”
    “Look, Mast,” Winstock said reasonably, and rested the heel of his palm possessively upon the object in question at his hip. “I want to explain somethin’ to you. It’s simple, and you should of saw it. With your education. But since you didn’t, I’ll explain it to you.
    “How can you have a pistol? There ain’t no record of you ever havin’ no pistol. So how can you have one? You just never had a pistol. Don’t you see?
    “Now this pistol here,” he wiggled his fingers without moving his palm from it, “is mine. I bought it, and it don’t have nothin’ to do with you at all. Besides, I need a pistol worse than you do. Or almost anybody. I’m a noncom. I’m second in command of a squad. I got people I got to look after. And who I got responsibilities to. That’s why I need a pistol. What would happen to all those other people if somethin’ happened to me? If the government knew what it was doin’ it would of issued me a pistol. Hell, we get in combat, the squad leader’ll probly be gone most of the time, if he ain’t killed already, and then I’ll have the whole squad to look after. Right?
    “And you know what that is, Mast. When you’re in command of a