“Ethel’s fine,” Snip said. “We’ll have to get you and Muriel over on the first clear night, and we’ll get the Old Man. The Old Man wants to see you.”
“Well, that sounds good,” Mel Goodwin said.
“We’ve got to find a groove for you, Mel,” Snip said. “I wish there were room for you on the team here—but a lot of people are going to be asking for you. If there’s anything you’d like particularly, count on me to put in a word.”
This was all said in a kidding way, of course, and Mel Goodwin laughed because it was the right thing to do and not because he felt like laughing.
“Well,” he said, “if you’ve got a division running around loose, bear me in mind, will you?”
This was said in a kidding way, too, but it was curious to see the blank look on Snip Lewis’s face. You could see that he had always been away from divisions except on paper.
“What in hell do you want a division for?” Snip asked, and Mel Goodwin felt as embarrassed as if he had asked for something off-color.
“Well, I know about them,” he said.
Snip Lewis wrote something on his memo pad.
“Listen, Mel,” he said. “We can cook you up something higher than that. Now you’re safe home we don’t want to send you out to Bragg or Bailey. What would you do with a division, boy?”
It was the damnedest thing he had ever heard and a funny sort of attitude. He wanted to ask Snip Lewis what he thought the army was about, but it was no time to sound off too freely, and besides, Froggy had just re-entered the room.
“General Councillor is outside, sir,” Froggy said, “and the car’s at the Mall entrance.”
“All right,” Snip said, “two more minutes … and take my briefcase,” and they both watched Froggy close the door.
“Froggy has been quite a find,” Snip Lewis said.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Mel Goodwin answered. “I’d be damned if I’d want him.”
After all, he could call a spade a spade with Snip, and Snip laughed.
“I know,” he said, “but right now we need more brains than brawn. Just get it through your head that you’ve got brains, too. Goochy’s here and a lot of your old crowd. We’ll all get together. Take off the pressure, Mel, it’s going to be all right.”
They walked out of the office together, and it was quite a walk from Snip’s desk to the door, but he was not sure even then that everything was going to be all right. There were too many major generals wanting something. He was always running into them along the corridors, all calling on their own Snip Lewises. Maybe there should have been a displaced persons camp. There was nothing more displaced to his way of thinking than a combat general without troops in the Pentagon.
When you came to think of it, Bud Councillor had been holding down a desk in Grosvenor Square until the Third Army was outside Paris and then he had warmed another chair in Paris until he had got himself promoted to the higher echelons in Frankfurt. There had been a time when things had been a little different around the Pentagon. He could remember, for example, when he had flown back just after Salerno as a member of a group of five to give a firsthand picture of certain situations. Everyone was running around in those days to light your cigarette and when you sat around a table there was a universal belief that someone who had heard a gun go off might conceivably contribute something worth while to a discussion.
He had hardly been able to wait until the plane took off again. There had been a little dinner before the take-off in a certain house at Fort Myer and it had flattered the hell out of him to have been in such company. He had been the junior to all of them, but some of them had looked wistful, and sometimes you could forget about the rank. That farewell party and the faces stayed with him in the plane all the way up to Gander, but he would not have wanted any of their jobs. They were in touch with everything and at the same time out of touch. That was always the trouble with high echelons. You had to delegate so much and trust so much to other eyes and ears that you were always locked away in some map room dealing with high logistical problems, surrounded by people like Froggy Jukes. You were more of a professor than a soldier, and he wasn’t any professor.
I had never seen Melville Goodwin quite so completely frank. His face was more mobile than I had ever seen it, and it exhibited traces of uncertainty and worry that I had never observed previously. He was clearly talking to himself as much as to Dottie Peale and me, though at the same time he was conscious of both of us. He wanted us to listen, although there was nothing that either of us could contribute because we were not familiar with the practices of army administration. We could only sympathize inexpertly with his disturbance. Then all at once he looked guilty.
“This is all off the record, you know,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ve been giving you a false picture of the Pentagon. Set it down to biliousness, will you?”
He was back with his loyalties again. He had given a false picture of the Pentagon and now he wanted to make it clear that there was the finest crowd of people there that had ever been in any damned army—only there was so much fine material that it was a little crowded together, even in the Pentagon. He knew everybody there, or almost everybody. Why not, after thirty-five years in the service? There had never been such a collection of people with fine battle records or so many good leaders. It was a thrill to be on a first-name basis with nearly all the big wheels in that fine crowd. When he spoke of theoreticians and cream-puff thinking, he was only referring to a very few. They were doing the best they could there in the face of public apathy. They all felt basically as he did about building up a combat force and he had been unduly hard on Froggy Jukes too. Froggy really had a lot to recommend him.
He had been talking out of school about old Snip Lewis, too, who had done everything for him in Washington. Why, Snip had even wangled it somehow with Public Relations so that he could have a car and a driver when he needed it, and God only knew how Snip had managed it. Snip’s office wasn’t really as big as the Cadet Chapel either, and of course he had not been hitting Snip for a job seriously. Snip was not Career Management, but maybe you did just run on about things when you were new around the Pentagon.
“I don’t want to give you any improper picture,” he said, “but Sid here knows you can bellyache about the Pentagon a little, even when it’s full of old classmates.”
He passed his hand over his closely cropped hair and unbuttoned the last button of his blouse.
“Why don’t you take your coat off?” Dottie asked him.
I had never thought that I would be so much Melville Goodwin’s partisan. I hated to think of his being disturbed in Washington. I did not want him to be vulnerable like other people.
“Maybe that’s a very good suggestion,” he said, “but I wish you’d get in the habit of calling it a blouse instead of a coat.”
“Oh, excuse me,” Dottie said. “I don’t know why I always keep forgetting.”
He rose and took off his blouse and hung it neatly on the back of a chair, and that homely action dramatized all that he had been saying. He obviously recognized this himself, because when he sat down again in his olive-drab shirt, I saw him gazing at his blouse.
“Come to think of it,” he said, “it looks like part of my skin, doesn’t it? Now if Sid took off his coat, it wouldn’t look so much like skin.”
He smiled at us expectantly, but neither Dottie nor I spoke.
“Come to think of it, everything’s on it, isn’t it?” he said. “Maybe that’s all that anybody ever sees in me—right over there.”
Dottie smiled, and I was glad that she answered quickly.
“Oh, no,” she said, “you’ve still got some stuffing in your shirt.”
Mel Goodwin looked sharply at Dottie, but he saw the joke.
“Well, there it is,” he said, “and it reads like a book. How would you like it if I left it off for good?”
“You look more comfortable without it,” Dottie said.
“By God,” Mel Goodw
in said, “I do feel more comfortable, as long as you’re around here, Dot.”
He stood up and walked toward the chair where his blouse hung, and walked around it slowly.
“Now when I was a kid at the Point,” he said, “I often dreamed of ribbons. Maybe there comes a time when you get too many. Maybe I’ve reached that period. Maybe it’s a sort of change of life. I’ve got a queer kind of a feeling.”
“What kind of a feeling?” Dottie asked.
“That maybe I might kick and holler if anybody should happen to pin another cluster on me,” Mel Goodwin said. “God damn, maybe I’ve been a kid all my life and now I’m growing up. Maybe Sid sees what I mean.”
He was looking at me in his coolest way, and I could almost believe that he knew what I thought about ribbons.
“Mel,” I said, “you’d better remember just one thing.”
“What one thing?” he asked.
“You’d better remember that you’re too old to grow up.”
For a moment he looked deadly serious and then he smiled his very youngest smile.
“Son,” he said, “that crack of yours shows you know a lot about me and about the service. I don’t believe you know how deep that cuts. I’m too old to grow up but I can still feel myself growing. Now maybe you can tell me where it’s taking me.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said.
He walked across the room to the window and stood with his back to us, looking out into the back yards of Seventy-second Street.
“All right,” he said, “I wouldn’t either, but something’s got to give somewhere. That’s right, isn’t it, Dot? Something’s got to give.”
“Now, Mel,” Dottie said, “don’t worry about it now.”
She must have been referring to something between them that they had often discussed before, and I could only listen, like an eavesdropper.
“I’m not,” Mel Goodwin said. “I’m used to shoving off whenever I know what’s cooking.”
Then his mood changed, and I was very glad it did. All the lines straightened on his face.
“Why haven’t you stopped me sounding off about myself?” he asked. “You were saying that Sid had something on his mind. Well, all right, what’s your problem, Sid?” It was remarkable how quickly things could rearrange themselves. Melville Goodwin was back again and in control of the situation. I was very glad to unload my own troubles and to get away from his.
When I began telling how Gilbert Frary had discovered me—hearing my voice from the ETO—my story seemed painfully superficial. It was mostly an egocentric striving, punctuated by a few pallid efforts at escape. Once, I suppose, I had wanted to be a great writer or columnist, but the desire had never assumed the proportions of an emotional drive. There was a gap between mediocrity and greatness which I had never crossed. Mine had been the life of anyone in a protected peaceful era within the limits of what might be called free enterprise, but all the time I talked I could feel what it lacked in splendor. I had never been a selfless part of a cause. I had never tossed my life in front of me and followed it. If I had risked it once or twice, this had only been through accident and not because of concerted purpose. The ship ahead of me in a convoy had been torpedoed once, the windows in my hotel in London had been shattered once by the explosion of a bomb, but I had never advanced with a group of men on an enemy position. I had never commanded a lost hope. I had never obeyed a call. I was not a Melville Goodwin. All I could say in my defense was that I could see myself more clearly than Goodwin had ever seen himself.
Dottie Peale had heard my story before. She sat gazing abstractedly at the pointed toe of her slipper, but Melville Goodwin looked straight at me, following every word, and occasionally he frowned.
“You see, it’s what I’ve told you, Mel,” Dottie said. “Sidney is always drifting. He simply never seems to care.”
“I don’t know,” Mel Goodwin said. “Sitting in on this with a purely outside point of view, I can make a few suggestions, but it seems to me Sid’s done pretty well, Dot. He’s getting the facts together and waiting to take action.”
Gilbert Frary and the broadcasting studio had finally reached a military level, and Melville Goodwin’s voice had a ring of complete authority. He had taken over my problem, and curiously enough I actually felt a weight being lifted from me because Melville Goodwin was taking over.
“I’d like your advice,” I began, “but there’s no reason why you should know much about this sort of thing.”
Melville Goodwin nodded. “That’s all right, Sid,” he said. “You’ve given me the information. All anybody ever needs is good straight information.”
“Be quiet,” Dottie said, “don’t interrupt him, Sid.”
“I wasn’t going to interrupt him,” I told her.
“Well, I’m glad you weren’t,” Dottie said. “Now, Mel, make a note that I know a man who wants a news program.”
“I’m not forgetting,” Melville Goodwin said. “Get me a cigarette, will you, Dot?” and Dottie handed him the cigarette box and picked up the lighter as quickly as Colonel Flax.
“There was an officer at the St. George Hotel in African Headquarters in Algiers,” the General said, “named Sturmer, holding a temporary rank of brigadier general like me. He was just like this Frary, flexible and without loyalty. Did I ever tell you about Ed Sturmer, Dot?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Dottie said.
“Dottie always gets me talking,” Mel Goodwin said. “I begin to forget what anecdotes I haven’t told her. Now this Ed Sturmer was just like this Frary. You always find people like him around any headquarters. He wanted to get my spot in ‘Bullpup.’ He was always telling me what a fine guy I was and how he admired me, and then he was always finding little facts about me and getting in to see the old man when I wasn’t there, and giving the little facts an unfavorable slant. Well, I let Ed run along with it until I was all ready for him. Ed and I were just old buddies until I was ready.”
Melville Goodwin rubbed his hands together.
“I just waited until the Old Man had Ed and me alone with him there in the St. George,” he said, “going over a map; I remember Ed was holding a pointer and arguing about some little track behind the mountains. I interrupted him right in the middle and spoke to the Old Man.
“‘Sir,’ I said, ‘may I make a remark before General Sturmer finishes?’
“‘Yes, what is it, Mel?’ the Old Man said.
“‘Heinzy,’ I said, ‘Ed is going to ask you, if he hasn’t asked you already, whether he can’t have my spot in “Bullpup.” If you want him and not me, I’d suggest you make the decision, instead of letting us both horse around like kids at a cocktail party.’”
Melville Goodwin fixed his eyes upon me as though I were Ed Sturmer, and I could feel indirectly the impact of his words.
“There are times when you’ve got to stick your neck out,” Mel Goodwin said. “I was taking one hell of a gamble. Sturmer jumped so, he damn near dropped the pointer, but old Heinzy didn’t say anything for a quarter of a minute. I had thrown the ball right at him.
“‘You’re damned impertinent, don’t you think, Mel?’ the Old Man said.
“‘Yes, sir, I think so,’ I told him.
“‘Well,’ he said, ‘there’s no need for such shocking manners, Mel. Go on and consider there has been no interruption, Ed.’”
Melville Goodwin paused as though he had reached the end of the story, and he grew impatient when he saw we were waiting for more.
“That was all there was to it,” he said.
“But what happened?” Dottie asked.
“God damn it, Dot,” Melville Goodwin said, “nothing further happened. I was in ‘Bullpup’ until I got a piece of hardware in my shoulder, wasn’t I?”
It seemed to me that it was one of Melville Goodwin’s better anecdotes, because it ended in suspense, even if Melville Goodwin thought it ended perfectly.
“Is Ed Sturmer around the Pentagon now?” I asked.
“Hell, yes,” Melville Goodwin said. “Ed’s right there in the Pentagon, but that isn’t the point.”
“Then what’s the point?” I asked.
“Either you or I must be pretty dumb tonight, son,” the General said. “The point is, you’ve got to stick your neck out sometimes. You get another job lined up and then go and see this Frary.”
“Did you have another job lined up in Algiers?” I asked.
“Listen, son,” the General said, “I’m talking about you, not me. Three other people were asking for me, and Heinzy knew it. Maybe I’m not as dumb as you think I am. Dottie will go around and see that man for you, and now you’d better get back to Connecticut or Helen will pin your ears back. You have nothing further to worry about. Dot and I personally will handle your situation.”
“Suppose I don’t want you to handle my situation?” I asked.
Melville Goodwin smiled.
“I used to think you knew something about women, son,” he said. “Don’t you know that Dottie will do it anyway?”
Dottie was smiling at him affectionately, and I knew that Melville Goodwin was right. It was time for me to be getting home to Connecticut. They wanted me to go, but I still delayed for a minute, because of an incongruous piece in the General’s thinking that aroused my curiosity.
“There’s just one element that I’d like you to consider, sir,” I said, “a rather personal element.”
It was a suitable moment to call him “sir,” and that mystic monosyllable was a warning signal, showing that what would follow had a formal and serious note. His eyes narrowed in alert interrogation.
“Suppose I’m sick to death of this broadcasting and that I’d welcome any opportunity to get out of it.”
Dottie shrugged her shoulders impatiently.
“Sid’s always sick of anything he’s doing,” she said, “and he always has been.”
“Well,” I said, “the same is true with you, Dottie. I’ve never thought of you as a contented type.”
“Oh, nuts,” Dottie said, “I always stick to what I’m doing and at least I know what I want.” She always would believe she knew—simply by affirmation.
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