Rush to Glory

by Robert L Hecker

  Suddenly, the pain vanished. Hal was not fighting Fox anymore. There was something about the fists and the taste of blood in his mouth and the pain in his body that was familiar. Luke! Luke was beating him . . . because of . . . of what? He couldn’t remember. But with Luke, it did not have to be much.

  Now Luke was hitting him in the face and the body with hard, brutal blows. Hal tried to tell him to stop, but he knew Luke would not stop until he had spent his anger. This time, though, there was something different. This time Hal knew he was not a child. He was not a little brother who could not fight back. And he had to stop Luke. This time he had to win.

  He never knew how his hand found the rock. He was only aware that it was in his hand and that Luke’s face was in front of him. He struck out at it, and he saw the blood come, and then Luke’s face was gone.

  They moved aside to let him stagger into the barracks. Somehow, he managed to reach his bunk and collapse, filled with a terrible joy, an exultant knowledge that he had beaten Luke twice. Twice? He was still trying to figure it out when he drifted away.

  When he opened his eyes, he saw Cossel bending over him, a look of concern on his face. “You all right?”

  Hal nodded, and a shaft of pain shot through his neck and up to his skull. He winced and moved an equally sore hand to rub his neck. “I feel like I’m coming apart,” he mumbled.

  Cossel grinned. “Can you sit up?”

  Hal struggled to a sitting position and was faintly surprised when he made it. “What time is it?” he asked.

  “Six-thirty. You’d better take a hot shower. You can’t stay like that.”

  “Yeah.” Hal pushed himself to his feet, hanging onto the bunk to keep from falling. He glanced toward O’Reilly’s bunk. Cossel saw the look and said, “He went with Fox to get his back patched. He had a pretty good cut on his head, too.”

  “His head?”

  “Where you hit him with the rock.”

  “I did that?” Hal tried to remember, but it was all hazy and vague. Luke was mixed up in it somewhere, but he couldn’t quite figure it out.

  “You nearly finished him. Or so they tell me, anyway.”

  “You weren’t there?”

  “No. I was with Schultz.”

  “Oh.” Hal tried to read something from Cossel’s expression, but his face was impassive. “If you’ll hand me that towel, I’ll see if I can make it to the latrine.”

  Cossel took Hal’s towel from its nail and handed it to him. He pushed himself away from the support of the bunk and took a step. A wave of nausea forced him to sit back on the edge of his bunk. Cossel watched him, his face still blank.

  After a moment, Hal said, “You think I’m wrong, too, don’t you?”

  “That depends.” When Hal did not comment, Cossel went on, “If you’re doing this purely on moral grounds . . . because you’d rather go to prison than kill others . . . then I’d say you were right. The hardest thing in the world is to swim against the current. And if that’s your reason, I’m with you. I think a lot of the others would be too.” He paused. “But I don’t think it is. I think it’s because you’re a coward.”

  “You heard about the fight. Would I fight if I was a coward?”

  Cossel shrugged. “Even a rabbit will fight if he’s backed into a corner.”

  “Okay. I do get scared. I don’t want to be killed,” Hal said slowly, trying to analyze his feelings as he talked, “but that isn’t the reason. I’m not so stupid I can’t see that almost everybody is scared, to some degree, anyway. I could drive myself against that . . . or I think I could. But it’s more than that. Do you know what’s happening down there when you let those bombs go? Do you know about the burning and the men with their arms and legs torn off? Have you seen what happens when a bomb hits an apartment building?”

  Cossel nodded. “I’ve seen it. But you can’t stop injustice with words. And you can’t stop it by backing away from it. If everybody felt the way you do, the world would already be in the hands of the Hitlers and the Mussolinis.”

  “We have people just as bad. You know that. You give them half a chance, and they’d be just as bad or worse.”

  “That’s right,” Cossel said. “And I’d fight them the same as I’m fighting the Nazis.”

  “What about Luke? You’re not fighting him.”

  “Luke?” Cossel looked sharply at Hal. “Yes, you find the Lukes and the Foxes on our side, too. But at this moment, at this time in history, we need them. You take our Lukes away from us and leave them theirs, and what do we have to fight with? Men like you and me? We’re no good at it. We have compassion, and you can’t have too much of that and win a war. So, you use them. And when it’s over, you hope to hell you can find a place for them where they can do no harm.”

  Hal shook his head. “You think we’ve got to sink to their level to stop them. I don’t believe that.”

  Cossel sighed wearily. “I’ve got to believe it,” he said. “If I didn’t, I’ll be just like you.” He turned and walked out the door.

  Hal watched him go, wondering about what Cossel had said. He needed time to think. Did Cossel and the others know him better than he knew himself? Were they right? Was the real reason he was refusing to fly because he was a coward?

  He couldn’t stay on the base. They had made him doubt the truth of his convictions, and without the protection of truth, he could not face anyone.

  Fighting back a new wave of nausea, he pushed to his feet and, taking his towel, made his way outside and to the latrine where he soaked under the hot shower as though the cleansing water could wash away both the pain and the reasons for the pain.

  After dressing, he walked to the main gate and hitchhiked into Northampton. He went first to the hospital, where he asked for Crystal Buehler. The nurse on duty looked at his bruised face curiously before she told him that Crystal had already gone off duty.

  On the main thoroughfare, he found a cab and gave the driver Crystal’s address. At the foot of the darkened stairs, he paused, wondering if he should ring. He decided against it and mounted through the darkness, taking each step with care.

  He knocked on the door and soon heard the whispered steps of bare feet.

  “Yes?”

  “Crystal. May I come in?”

  There was a brief pause. “Not right now, darling. You should have called me.”

  She must think he was Luke. Well, let her think it, just so she let him in. “Either you open the door, or I’ll break it down,” he said harshly, and he heard her quick intake of breath.

  “All right. But you can’t stay. I’ve got to go back on duty.” The key sounded in the lock, and the door opened.

  “Luke, you really can’t stay . . .” she was saying when he entered. She had been dressing because she was wearing a robe, and her hair hung loosely like strands of spun gold. Again, Hal was struck by her beauty. Then she realized he wasn’t Luke, and her face changed into a beautiful etching of suppressed violence.

  “Get out,” she hissed. She let go of her robe to shove him roughly toward the open doorway, and the cloth gaped to reveal her white, perfect body. She did not attempt to pull the robe closed as she twisted him to face the door. “Get out!”

  “Please, Crystal. I just want to talk to you. You’ve got to help. . . .”

  She would not let him finish. “I know all about you,” she said, and her voice was a sneer. “You chickened out, just like you did with me. You’re not even man enough to die.”

  “I know that. That’s why I’ve got to see you. Please, Crys. If we can only talk . . .”

  “Talk, talk, talk, that’s all you’re good for. Well, I haven’t any talk or anything else for gutless wonders.”

  She pushed him again, but he pleaded, “Crys, if you could. . . .”

  “Get out!” She almost hurl
ed herself at him, shoving violently. “Get out, you damn pansy! Get yourself some balls.”

  Then the bedroom door opened, and a man stepped out. He wore only a pair of shorts, and he looked lean and hard. “What the hell’s going on?” he said, and for one awful moment, Hal thought it was Luke.

  But it wasn’t Luke. The man walked toward them and put a hand on Crystal’s shoulder. “You want him out?” he asked.

  “Yes!” she said, her voice harsh with anger. “Yes. Kill the son-of-a-bitch!”

  The man spun Hal’s unresisting form toward the open door and shoved. Hal stumbled across the narrow hallway and crashed against the opposite wall. Crystal’s door slammed shut, and the hallway was dark again. Hal turned and slowly made his way down the stairs into the street. He felt empty, drained. The loss of the ideal was worse than Fox’s beating. He had hoped that Crystal’s feelings toward him was love of a sort, that she would understand what he was going through and help him. But she had rejected him even more harshly than had his brother and all the others.

  Suddenly Hal longed for a crowd. He longed to be surrounded by people, happy people . . . laughing, shouting people. He looked up the desolate street blindly. Where was it he had found people before? Somewhere he had been with Luke and Crystal. The pub. That was it.

  He walked rapidly down the street, almost running. Three blocks away, he found it, and he almost stumbled in his rush down the steps and inside.

  He felt the warmth immediately. People were there, laughing and talking, forgetting the war and themselves. They turned when Hal entered, and he pulled up abruptly and smiled at them. They looked back and smiled and went back to their drinking and talking.

  “Looks like you’ve ‘ad a rough night, Yank!” The plump woman behind the bar smiled at him through blackened teeth. “Would you like a pint now?”

  Hal moved to the bar. “Yes,” he said. “Only . . . the last time I was here somebody gave me some Scotch. Have you got any left?”

  The woman rubbed a finger under her nose and looked at him through crinkled eyes. “Scotch? Whiskey?” Hal nodded, and she gave him a wink. “We’ve got no Scotch. But . . .” her voice dropped to a whisper, “. . . I’ve a bit of bourbon.”

  “That’ll do.”

  “If it’s all the same with you, I’ll put it in the ale so’s the others won’t be askin’. Not that I wouldn’t be givin’ it to them if I could, but . . . you know ‘ow it is.”

  The mixture tasted awful, but Hal drank as much as he could before he gagged and had to stop. But he finished it and had another and yet another. The plump woman who filled his glass each time and took his money began to study him with a worried frown when she thought he wasn’t watching.

  The others paid no attention. They were engrossed in their escapes. For some reason he could not fathom, Hal’s thoughts kept drifting away from the sounds and the smells of the pub to visions of Crystal Buehler with that man, and he was overwhelmed by a terrible sadness. But each time he was saved from making a fool of himself when his reverie was interrupted by a shrill burst of laughter or a clinking glass.

  He felt slow anger begin to form as he remembered Bucky Adel and the waiter with the gold tooth, and the pretty waitress, and then there was Schultz. They were all dead or shot to hell. For what? For these people, who were sitting in this warm, safe pub, laughing, having a good time. Worse, they were acting like they didn’t give a damn if their people were even now dying in some strange land.

  Then he felt a hand on his arm, and he found himself staring into the concerned face of the woman behind the bar.

  “You all right, dearie?” she was saying. “You all right?”

  He brushed her hand away in sudden revulsion and pulled himself erect. “Sure, I’m all right,” he said, and his voice sounded misty. He noticed that the other people had suspended their activities to stare at him, and he waved a hand to include them in his diatribe.

  “You disgust me,” he said. “Ghouls! That’s what you are, sitting here drinking and laughing. Don’t you know what’s happening out there? They’re dying—everybody’s dyin’. Over there in the mud and filth, they’re dying. Germans, English, French, Americans . . . everybody. Russians. Japs, too . . . and Chinese. Everybody dyin’. An’ what are you doin’ ‘bout it? Not a damn thing. Jus’ like me. Laughin’. Yeah. Okay! Who in the hell cares anyway?”

  Hal moved in an uncertain line toward the stairs, and the people stood aside to let him pass. They said nothing. Hal knew from their faces that they had seen this before . . . a soldier who thought too much about the war. Bad business, that. A soldier mustn’t ever think.

  Out in the street, he stumbled and fell to the rough wet stones. There was a street like this in Fairview. An old street paved with small round stones, and it led down a gentle slope from the golden foothills. If you turned on it at the gas station and went along Partridge Street to the house with the iron fence, that was where Susan lived. Susan. Pretty, golden Susan. So clean and sweet. She had cool, cool hands. “Susan,” he murmured. “Got to find Susan.”

  But he was not in California. How could he find Susan if he wasn’t in California? A train. That was it. He had to take a train to get to Susan . . . all the way to London; he knew that much.

  It took a long time before the train stopped, and he scrambled off into a pushing, shoving horde of people all going in the same direction. He let them press him and push him until he left the large domed building, and the rain was in his face, and a little man in a ragged coat was asking him if he wanted a cab.

  “Yes,” he answered. “Cab. Take me to Susan’s house.”

  “Susan?” the little man said. “’oo’s she?”

  “Find the street with the stones. Susan McInnis.”

  “Sorry, Gov’ner. Don’t know no McInnis. You better try the Rainbow Club.”

  Hal put his hands to his face and leaned against the front fender of the cab. He looked up and around at the darkened buildings and tried to collect his thoughts. Where was Susan? He had seen her recently. Then he remembered he had written down her address, and he fumbled the paper from his wallet and gave it to the man. “Here. Take me here.”

  The cabbie looked at the paper and grinned. “Owww, that’s more like it. ‘op in, Gov’ner.”

  Hal climbed into the cab and eased back against the cushions. He started to put the window down to let the cool air blow on his face, but the rush of buildings made him weak and dizzy, and he had to close his eyes.

  At last, the cab stopped, and the little man helped him down some steep, narrow steps and then knocked on an unpainted door that Hal did not recognize. He leaned against the rough wall until the door opened, and Susan’s voice said, “Yes?”

  “’ere, dearie,” said the cabbie, “’e’s all yours.”

  There was a pause. “Hal?”

  Hal raised his head and tried to smile. “Hello, Susan. I think I’m a little bit drunk.”

  “How much?” Susan said.

  “Twelve and eight,” the man’s voice answered, and Hal felt Susan’s hand take money from his pockets, and then the little man was gone.

  Inside, she helped him take off his coat and led him to the couch, and he sank into it gratefully. His mind seemed to be full of English fog, but then Susan’s hands were cool on his forehead, and it was all right again. He stood up and pulled her close so that her hair brushed his cheek in a soft caress. “Susan,” he whispered. “Oh, God, I love you. I’ve been lookin’ all over for you. Where’ve you been?”

  “Here,” she said, and for a moment it seemed to him that her hair was not golden but red. But she whispered, “I’ve been waiting for you, my darling,” and it was all right again.

  He kissed her hungrily then and again experienced the exhilarating joy of knowing she was responding to his kiss. Her lips, her body, her soul, were his, and he would never
let her go. He would never lose her again. But he had lost her . . . once. When was that? Then he remembered, and, remembering, thrust her violently from him. “You bitch! You damn two-timing bitch!”

  He hit her across the mouth with the back of his hand, and she reeled against the wall. “Thought I wouldn’t find out about it, didn’t you? You should know that Luke never could keep his filthy mouth shut. An’ all the time, I thought you were so damn pure. An’ you were still goin’ to marry me. Weren’t you? My God! Even after he told me!”

  Her face was a blur. So, he moved to her and touched her cheek. “I had to do it then. You can see that, can’t you? After I found out about you and Luke, I had to know. You can see that. I had to know if it was him or me. I had to do what he did. I had to find out the way he did, the same way.”

  It was strange the way his mind clung to that memory. Why had she been crying? When he had told her that she had to give herself to him the same way she had given herself to Luke, he remembered that she had cried and looked at him with deep anguish in her eyes. But she had not protested.

  They were alone in his car, parked in the moonlit shadows on the old Cumberland logging road, and the smell of summer hay was in the air. She had not protested when he roughly pulled her pleated skirt up around her waist and had jerked her thin panties off over her long sun-bronzed legs. She had leaned back in the corner of the seat, silently, with her hands limp at her sides and her head bent so that her long blonde hair hid her face, but he could see the tears falling onto her blouse.

  He quickly stripped off his pants and shorts and pulled his shirt up. He didn’t kiss her. They had gone together since they were in junior high school, and there had been long evenings when they had clung together and talked of the future and gently tasted of each other’s lips. Now he couldn’t bring himself to kiss her. Instead, he yanked her unresisting legs apart and flung himself on top of her and waited for his fury to turn to lust. But for once, the touch of her smooth, cool skin did not stir him. His brain refused to shift from the thought that only two nights before Luke had lain between these same smooth thighs, and Susan’s lips that she had promised only to him had been locked on Luke’s mouth while he had bulled himself into her. She had not been crying then. She had been smiling, maybe even laughing . . . laughing at him!