I could see that a part of Melville Goodwin was enjoying the interplay between Gooch and me, even when another part of him was suffering.
“That’s right,” he said, “you call him Sid, and, Sid, you call him Goochy.”
It was a childish directive from a civilian point of view, but it was the army’s hopeful American way of settling any difficulty. “Go on, Sid,” Melville Goodwin said, “call him Goochy.”
I might never see General Gooch again. We were only ships passing in the night, but if we ever did meet again, we would know the countersign. We would be on a first-name basis ever after.
“All right, Goochy,” I said.
“All right, Sid,” General Gooch answered, but his mind was not on me. “Now listen, Mel, don’t you know you never had it so good? What’s the matter with Plans?”
Melville Goodwin made no direct reply. He stood in almost the exact center of the red carpet with his legs farther apart than regulations recommended. He jabbed his hand viciously into the side pocket of his blouse and pulled out his cigarettes and his lighter. Then he jerked a cigarette from the pack and lighted it, with the same sort of one-two motion that an infantryman used on the bolt of his rifle at inspection, and the lighter made an appropriate decisive click. I could have practiced for a year without being able to imitate that gesture. When he had taken off his blouse at Dottie Peale’s, he had still maintained some of his rank, but there was not a sign of it now.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with me, Goochy,” he said, “that I don’t jump at a good thing when it comes my way. Hell, I was in with the Chief half an hour yesterday. Hell, he didn’t say a word about moving me into Plans. I want to know what God-damned soft-bottomed Fancy Dan fouled me up in this. I even wish they’d ordered me out to SCAP. At least it would take me out of here for a while.”
“And just who the hell would be wanting you in SCAP?” Goochy asked. “Why don’t you get the lead out of your pants?”
I did not understand the technical significance of the last question, and Mel Goodwin paid no attention to it. Instead he began pacing back and forth across the office rapidly, as though there were no weight in his pants at all.
“I wonder how the wires got crossed,” he said. “By God … do you know what I think?… I think it’s Muriel!”
General Gooch laughed rudely. “Horsefeathers, always horse-feathers,” he said, but Melville Goodwin paid no attention.
“You know, this is just what Muriel wants,” he said. “She’ll be crazy about this. Jesus—me settled down in the Pentagon with Merriwell to ride me—Jesus!”
“Oh,” Goochy said, “when did you start getting so particular? Just what the hell’s the matter with Lieutenant General Merriwell? He was a damned good corps commander, wasn’t he? I didn’t hear you gripe about Merriwell in Normandy.”
Melville Goodwin stopped his pacing. “He’s a piddling old s.o.b.”
“They all are,” Goochy answered, “but he’s only got another year.”
“I know,” Mel Goodwin said, “and maybe I’ll get another star out of it if I live right, but, Jesus—a year with ‘Fuss’ Merriwell!”
I knew that I was hearing more about the Pentagon than I would ever hear again, but the conversation was too technical and intimate to’ follow, since I knew nothing of the eccentricities of Fuss Merriwell.
“Don’t you know when you have it cushy?” Goochy said. “You and I can’t be buzzing around forever—and we’ve had a lot of fun.”
I had not known that General Gooch could speak so gently. His words seemed to make Mel Goodwin feel his age. I would not have called it fun that he and General Gooch had been having, but they always called active service fun in the army, and perhaps it had been fun for Goodwin and Gooch. They had been lucky, I was thinking, when you recalled what had happened to many of their contemporaries. They both of them were shot with luck to be there in the Pentagon at all.
“God damn it, Goochy,” Melville Goodwin said, “this place is getting you calcified. Pull in your belt. You and I aren’t through just yet.”
“I didn’t say we were,” Goochy answered. “You’ll end up with a corps when you get out of Plans.”
“Hell,” Mel Goodwin said, “I know I don’t make sense, but after paper-passing for two years in Frankfurt, I supposed I could be connected with troops in some way.”
“God almighty,” Goochy said, “can’t you ever get troops off your mind?”
Melville Goodwin moved toward the desk very slowly and ground the end of his cigarette hard into a glass ash tray.
“Say,” he said, “no matter what they shower on me, I know what I’m meant for and what I’m made for.”
“Horsefeathers,” Goochy said. “You’ll go where they send you, Mel.”
Melville Goodwin smiled his most mechanical smile, but for once it concealed nothing. For once I had seen the whole of Melville A. Goodwin, and I had to hand it to him. At least he did not want it soft.
“Will I?” he said. “Maybe.… But I could retire.”
There was a dead, queer silence, and he seemed to hold and control all that silence.
“Say, Mel,” General Gooch said very slowly, “has that little skirt in New York been getting to you again?”
It came so suddenly that I caught my breath.
“Never mind that now, Goochy,” he said, and that peculiar silence was back with us.
“And at your age,” General Gooch said. “God almighty!”
“I wish you’d stop referring to my age,” Mel Goodwin said. “I’m not in a wheel chair yet.”
Then the telephone rang with a discreet, muted sound, and the spell or whatever it was that had held us was broken. Before the ring was over, General Gooch was at the desk.
“General Gooch speaking,” he was saying. Then he closed his wiry hand over the mouthpiece and nodded. “For you, Mel,” he said. “The Chief’s office calling.”
Melville Goodwin snatched the telephone out of his hand.
“General Goodwin speaking,” he was saying.
The rank was back. The world was moving again by the numbers. There was a sharp decisive click as General Gooch unlocked the office door.
“Yes, sir,” General Goodwin was saying. “I’ll be there directly, sir.” The telephone gave a little thump as he set it down.
“That makes it official,” he said. “I’d better say so long, Sid. I’ll see you tonight, and bring your baggage; someone will get you on board that plane. Wait for me, will you, Goochy?”
“Thanks for the lunch and good luck, sir,” I told him.
General Gooch smiled his sourest smile.
“Congratulations, Mel,” he said, “… on everything!”
The sound of the wish was as acid as the smile that had gone before it, but Melville Goodwin was already out of hearing.
“That old bastard,” General Gooch said, “off the beam for a floosie … and when he starts he always goes. By God, he always goes!”
XXXI
It Was Almost a Celebration
I was not without my own private sources of information in the broadcasting business, and these all indicated that Gilbert Frary was definitely planning to throw me over. He was only being true to his reputation, and if one lived in such uncertain surroundings, one had to be ready for anything. Knowing that I possessed a certain commercial value, I realized that I could continue without Gilbert if I handled matters in the right way, and I felt obliged to do something after my last talk with Helen. It was time to plan very carefully what I would say about the program to George Burtheimer in Chicago, and what I would say to Gilbert Frary either in New York or Chicago, for it was certain that Gilbert would fly east promptly. Yet somehow I could not do any of this after I had left the Pentagon.
Again, the intrigues in which I was engaged seemed petty and insignificant. The dilemma of Melville Goodwin was larger and more tragic. I could see myself worrying along in some way, but it would be different with Melville Goodwin. I did
not possess his intensity, or his liking for personal risk, or the belief in myself that would allow me to throw over a comfortable future for something indefinable.
Instead of keeping my mind on myself, I thought all afternoon of his infatuation for Dottie Peale. His personality was like a cloud that obscured everything I did, and I did not want to see him end in nothing. I did not want to see small things ruin him. Perhaps I had read too much about the “Old Glory Boys” when I was young. Perhaps I had always loved the uniform and the brass without knowing it.
All that afternoon and evening, I went through the motions of my own living, but I did not recall a single detail of the broadcast ceremony or what there was in the script or how I read it. I only remember that I wanted to know what was happening in Alexandria.
People in the service seldom displayed much imagination about their home surroundings, perhaps because they could not afford imagination. When my taxi stopped in front of the house in Alexandria, I could not escape the idea that I had seen the whole picture many times before. It was about eight in the evening and rather cool for a steak fry, but in the small back yard a good many people were clustered around the outdoor grill, and there were more on the sun porch and in the living room, all eating slabs of steak—commissary steak—from plates spilling from their knees. Everyone was talking loudly and having a wonderful and half-off-the-record time. It was a military party, but like many others of its sort it had, to an outsider, the quality of fancy dress, if only because so many of the male guests were out of uniform. Released from duty, they were pretending to be civilians, just as civilians often pretended to be pirates or monks or Spanish grandees. They would have all been highly indignant had their attention been drawn to this parallel, but still, the parallel existed.
I had been to the Joyces’ house in my imagination many times, and there it was, illuminated by the street lights, and with lights blazing in the windows. It was in a uniform real-estate development, one of those contractor-designed dwellings that had sprouted like mushrooms around Washington during the war and postwar years. The evergreen shrubbery around the brick front steps was all according to planned convention, as were the self-consciously broad clapboards, and the solid green shutters with their cut-out crescent moons and imitation wrought-iron fasteners. Equally conventional was the sign at the edge of the minute brick walk that read “Col. Joyce” in letters that glowed when headlights were cast upon them, and the lantern above the green front door, a grotesquely modernized version of one of those illuminating fixtures that had been hoisted in the tower of the Old North Church at the time of Paul Revere.
When no one answered the doorbell—because everybody was having too good a time to hear it—I opened the door myself and entered the living room, followed by the taxi driver carrying my suitcase. The living room completely confirmed my educated guess. The fireplace was correctly centered, with knotty pine paneling and a mantel with a Chinese god of happiness in its center. Two fanback chairs, and the sofa, which I was sure could turn itself into a bed if some friends dropped in from somewhere suddenly, were crowded close to the wall. The rather flashy Chinese rugs had been rolled back, presumably for dancing, but I could rearrange everything mentally. The card table with the picture puzzle was intact, I was glad to see, and three middle-aged men were around it, grimly fitting pieces. The piano, too, was in the orthodox corner with framed signed photographs upon it, and a wall-hanging behind it of dark blue silk embroidered with gold dragons. Someone would start playing on the piano in a minute—someone who would never get far in the service—and a group would gather around singing a few good songs. There was a glassed-in sun porch and there were glass doors to the small dining room, and beside the staircase leading to the upper floor was a carved teakwood chest aromatic from its camphor-wood lining. The house of Bud and Enid Joyce was an authentic army home and it would be the smaller counterpart of a future residence of General and Mrs. Goodwin.
“That’s all right,” I said to the driver, “just put down the suitcase,” and he was gone in an instant.
No one noticed me immediately, because everyone was having a wonderful time. I was about to move out to the sun porch to look for my host and hostess, when fortunately my eye lighted on Captain Rattisbone, who was sitting in a corner beside a frightened brown-eyed pregnant girl, who must have been Mrs. Rattisbone. When he saw me, he sprang up instantly.
“General and Mrs. Goodwin asked me to keep an eye out for you, sir,” he said. “I’ll tell the General, if you’ll wait here. May I present you to Mrs. Rattisbone?”
Mrs. Rattisbone’s hand was cold and damp. She smiled at me in a hasty stricken way, as though she were frightened at being left alone with me without a suitable topic for conversation, and I did not blame her. She was conscious of her condition and besides, she was very, very junior.
“Roy said he was sent to get you this morning,” Mrs. Rattisbone said.
“That’s right,” I said, “Roy got me.”
“It’s a treat for Roy and me to be here,” she said. “Isn’t it a lovely party?”
It was not necessary to go any further, because Captain Rattisbone always could find anyone, and he had returned with Melville Goodwin. It took a second for me to adjust myself to the General’s appearance. He was out of uniform and he fitted into no preconceived pattern, because I had never seen him that way before and I had not prepared myself to face the unknown.
I was accustomed to thinking of him as endowed with an indestructible compactness. There had been a tenaciousness in the set of his head and shoulders and a repressed calmness in his whole posture that had indicated complete co-ordination. I had never known him to assume an awkward pose, and now mediocrity had suddenly overtaken him. He looked like a plump and middle-aged nonentity, whom you might meet at a golf club and immediately forget, and whose face you could not place.
Of course it was the cut of the clothes. A good tailor might have set off his figure stylishly, but even so, Mel Goodwin would not have known how to manage a civilian coat; and at any rate, a service budget demanded ready-made clothing, hastily and perfunctorily altered. The General wore the Harris tweed coat and gray slacks, because after all it was a steak fry, and I recalled how wistfully he had often eyed mine. I wished that I might have gone with him when he had bought his outfit, but then he would not have settled for quiet colors. After years of olive drab, he would have revolted against monotones. The coat he had selected was a viciously heavy and unkempt garment. I could think of him picking it off the rack because of its unusualness. Its main color was russet brown, approaching the hue of an autumn oak, but a grid of violent green had been woven into the brown texture. Its lapels rose in points like the clipped ears of a bull terrier. It was belted in the back and full of pleats, and it had round buttons of green leather that looked like misplaced olives. Even the pockets had olive buttons, but this was not all. His ready-made gray slacks were a hideous imitation of an English motif, with accordion pleats around the beltless waist—and then there were his shoes. These were of a heavy brogan type of darkish cordovan colored grained leather, with an infinite number of curlicues and decorations and with jumbo-sized soles of light yellow crepe. His soft shirt was a rich blue. His tie was red with green diagonal stripes.
Where was the Goodwin gone, I was thinking, who had stood there in the Pentagon prepared to resign if he could not serve with troops? Where was Goodwin of North Africa and Goodwin of Saint-Lô and Goodwin of the Bulge? I might have been seeing his brother now, a prosperous small-town merchant at a lodge outing, who had never shared the advantages of Major General Melville A. Goodwin. He may have read some of my thoughts, because he often had an unexpectedly sensitive insight.
“So you got here, did you, Sid?” he said. “How do you think I’m looking?”
“Like something off a Scottish moor,” I told him.
“That’s right,” he said, and he appeared delighted. “It’s Harris tweed, and you can smell it and it says so on the label. Once when
I was around Prestwick I bought some tweed almost like this, but the plane took off a half hour early and I forgot it.” He stroked the coat affectionately. “This really keeps you warm outdoors. I’ve got a quieter suit, a double-breasted pin-stripe blue that reminds me a little of yours, but I didn’t want to wear it frying steaks. I might have got grease on it.”
“You haven’t any grease on this one,” I said.
“Muriel took that angle over,” he said. “She made me wear an apron—you know, army cook issue—but I’ve got a cook out there doing all the real work. Goochy found him. Wait till you get in the chow line and see him juggling steaks.”
“I can hardly wait,” I told him.
“Well, we’ll take that suitcase of yours upstairs,” he said, “before someone falls over it, and then you can meet the crowd.… Here, give it to me. I’m not in a wheel chair yet.”
The Goodwins and the Joyces must have been completely congenial to have lived together in that small house, which was clearly designed for a single family. Upstairs there would be, I was sure, the so-called master bedroom—a resounding term indissolubly connected with the modern American home—the smaller double children’s room, a communal bathroom, and finally a hall-bedroom, which at one time would have been called a sewing room.
“Here,” Melville Goodwin said, pointing to the hall bedroom, “we can stick the suitcase in my dressing room.”
I wondered how they had arranged who should have the dressing room—General Goodwin or Colonel Joyce—whether they had tossed coins for it or whether its assignment had been a question of rank. It must have been Charley’s bedroom during the years before he had left for the Point, and a part of Charley was still left in it—a baseball bat and a fielder’s glove in a corner, a photograph of a juvenile football team, and a Luger automatic hanging on a nail, proof that Melville Goodwin, when he was overseas, had remembered his younger son. He had referred to it as his dressing room, and it doubtless was, for the time being, but it was really a spillover room, with a denim-covered studio couch available at any moment for any unexpected guest, and Melville Goodwin’s possessions there could have been moved out in five minutes. His briefcase and a few papers and his garrison cap and three volumes of Clausewitz and a Bible lay on a battered little table. His clothes, perhaps including that double-breasted suit, were in the narrow wardrobe concealed by a blue denim curtain. Melville Goodwin was only stopping there on his way to somewhere else.
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