The Eleventh Man

by Ivan Doig

  "Haven't seen you in here in a hell of a while," he was greeted as he stepped into the Medicine Lodge. "I'd about given you up for lost."

  "A man can't be in two places at once, Tom," Bill Reinking replied, slapping snow off his cap and coat. "I'm supposedly running a newspaper." Or as Cloyce would say, it's running me.

  Toweling the dark wood to a trail of gleam as he came, Tom Harry mopped his way down the bar to him. "Liked what you said there in the gizette, back before the election. Franklin D. showed them his rosy red one again, didn't he." Beaming as if in response, Roosevelt presided larger than life on the whiskeyladen breakfront behind the bartender, the campaign poster accurately predicting Four more in '44! Bill Reinking noted with bemusement that right next to it was pasted a faded placard spelling out, in the biggest letters to be found in a printer's jobcase, FORT PECK—DAMN! Momentarily he was taken back to before the war when those unlikely allies of the time, the President and the Senator, blessed into being the huge Fort Peck Dam and put Montana back to work. There was something to ponder there. Was it possible that the depths of the Depression, so daunting at the time, were no kind of a challenge compared to finding an end to this war? He knew the world was more complicated now, but he also knew that every era makes that excuse for tripping over itself.

  Pulling himself away from that train of thought, he looked from Roosevelt and the exclamatory placard to Tom Harry as if giving the matter full consideration and said: "Politics is the art of turning ice into ice cream."

  "I think maybe I read that in your paper one time," the bartender snorted. In practically that same gallop of breath, he came out with the essential: "What's the word from Ben?"

  Bill touched the week's Threshold Press War Project bundle fresh off the bus. "I hope I'm about to find out."

  "Then I suppose I ought to be getting you something to go with that," Tom Harry said as if they were both falling down on that duty. "What'll it be—you still drinking that scotch cough syrup?"

  Looking longingly at the row of whiskey bottles with plaid pipers on them, Bill stayed resolute. "I have work to do tonight. Your glorified tap water, please."

  "Turning unpredictable on me, are you." Tom Harry shook his head over serving a plain glass of beer, just as if the Medicine Lodge didn't practically run the stuff in its plumbing. Before he could step to the beer tap, a voice accented with Oslo or beyond quavered from the end of the bar:

  "Mister 'tender! When you isn't busy, we gunna have some of t'ose jar weiners."

  Bill's newspapering instinct of keeping track of things took a moment to put a name to the face of the latest keeper of sheep blowing six months of wages—Andy Gustafson, an old snoose chewer who herded for the Busby brothers on upper English Creek. Perched elbow to elbow with this splurger was another herder recognizable as practically a fixture in here, Canada Dan, sending down the bar an eager freeloading nod and a mostly toothless grin. Bill pursed back a smile. Some things you could count on.

  "Catch the faithful, too," he capitulated, trickling more money onto the bar.

  "You hear that, Gufferson, or something wrong with your ears?" Tom Harry called out, heavy with hint.

  "Yah, t'anks!"

  "Here's to lookin' bad and feelin' good, mister!" Canada Dan mistily chimed out.

  "I should've been a milkman instead of a bartender," Tom Harry groused as he drew Bill's beer before moving on to the jar of whatever preservative the Vienna sausages swam in. "I'd only have to look at one horse's ass at a time."

  Left in peace as Tom Harry marched on the other end of the bar, Bill took out his jackknife and carefully slit the bundle along one side. He turned up his nose as usual at the hefty halves of boilerplate that were the bulk of the parcel. For an honest editor, patriotism that simply bolted onto the printing press was not true news and he never used the ready-made stuff. Reaching into the middle, he slipped out the packet of TPWP handouts and skimmed, head poised at bifocals angle, until he found the words Supreme Team.

  He froze at the next word that caught his eye: Jake.

  In a sick trance he began to read Ben's piece. When he was finished, he sat looking past himself in the dark mirroring of the saloon front window. This was Cloyce's canasta night. Jake Eisman had been her favorite of Ben's friends from the team. He would have to tell her when she came home, it would be no mercy for her to read it first when the paper came out tomorrow. He himself had the helpless feeling of time rounding on itself and unleashing the same bad news again. As a punk kid reporter in 1917 and '18, underage for military service, he had written obituary after obituary of the same sort as the so-called war to end all wars drained a generation of lifeblood out of Montana. About like this one.

  "Well?" Gruffness serving as apology, Tom Harry disturbed both past and present.

  "A deep subject, Tom." Bill resorted to his beer, a very long swallow, to gain time to compose himself somewhat. "What's on your mind now?"

  "Well, do you need the goddamn Packard for anything?" The bartender sounded shy and grumpy at the same time. "You look like the dog ate your supper, and so I just wondered if the car and some gas rations would help you out any." Tom Harry bunched his shoulders. "Take the wife Christmas shopping in Great Falls or some damn thing—how do I know what you're supposed to do in maddermoany, I never been in front of any preacher."

  Bill Reinking dispensed some more money onto the bar and indicated another round for the hopeful denizens at the far end. "Thanks for the offer, Tom, you're a prince among publicans." Rising to go, he hefted the bundle as if it had grown heavier since he came in. "But I have business to tend to at the word shop."

  19

  All right, Reinking, think, damn it, think. Since you can't get your hands on the neck of that colonel or whatever other Tepee Weepy creep is screwing us over—Moxie is right about that much—you have to twist this the other direction somehow. Don't pitch a fit, won't do any good—they've got cast-iron butts in Washington, they can sit on our orders home until they're good and ready. Let's just try the old innocent start-the-show approach and see if that reminds them to be human beings.

  "As you see, Ben, the ticker room is quite the odd collection, your lot and ours squidged together rather like strangers on a trolley." In the bunkerful of teletypes and other message apparatus where Maurice was showing him around, the British uniforms of blue hue offsetting the khaki drab of American clerks did resemble a rush-hour swatch of contrasts. "I suppose the miracle is that it works at all," he gestured broadly, "separated as we are by a common language."

  Ordinarily Ben's smile nerves would have twitched at that, but not today. "So how do I send smoke signals to Tepee Weepy, with everyone in here busy running the war?"

  "Right. I've secured you a ticker, where you have utmost priority—that set of orders that follows you around, Ben, is quite magical—"

  Sure, except when Tepee Weepy uses it as black magic and extends Moxie and leaves the pair of us dangling in the buzz-bomb capital of the world.

  "—and I have authority to snaffle a clerk for you as wanted." Maurice meditatively tweaked his ball-shaped nose as if turning the knob for the next idea. "I thought perhaps a glamour-pants WREN, to add scenery to duty? The Women's Royal Naval Service has some lovelies bored with typing weather reports."

  Ben could readily imagine that seersucker was not the only shapely uniform that sopped up carbon paper, and that an eye-batting invitation to join a scrub in the tub was not unheard of here, either. If Moxie and Inez were any indication, life under buzz-bomb siege tended to concentrate minds, downward. But the object of desire he needed to concentrate on was the earliest possible plane out of here. "No go, Maurice, thanks anyway," he committed to. "No WRENs or sparrows or cuckoos or anything else except a wire clerk in an American uniform that I outrank all to hell."

  Maurice felt at his nose again, pondering. "It shall be done. Have yourself a cup of mystery beverage"—the lore was that when the Antwerp commanding officer tasted what was in the hot-pot urn over in
the corner, he sputtered, "If this is coffee, bring me tea. If this is tea, bring me coffee."—"while I sort out a clerk of that mode."

  Claiming a spot at a momentarily vacant desk, Ben took gulps of the stuff, figuring it went with Antwerp hardship duty, while he labored over a message pad. He crumpled several versions before the penciled words had the right nudge to them. When Maurice turned up with a bewildered U.S. Army private first class in tow, Ben barely caught his name before handing him the message to be sent.

  READY AT THIS END. STAMPER WAITING ROYAL TREATMENT. SOONER BETTER, SOONEST BEST—THIS IS HOME FIELD OF BUZZ BOMBS.

  The wire clerk, with prodigious eyeglasses and eyes almost as large behind them, scrutinized the lines. "Sir, I'm supposed to put it into code. Did you want to do this in plain English first, so the other end won't misunderstand what—"

  Ben hung a look on him that answered that. "Right away, sir," said the clerk, his rear end practically scorching the seat as he sat to the wire machine. "The two of you seem as happy together as a box of birds," Maurice said blandly, "so I shall leave you to this."

  TPWP's reply clattered out in a surprisingly short time.

  TIME-OUT NOT OVER YET IN HOMECOMING GAME. WORTH THE WAIT.

  Two quick darts of Ben's pencil and he held the message pad over the keyboard. The clerk started to ask where the rest of it was, encountered the just-send-it look again, and fired off:

  Y?

  This time the response from across the ocean came in a long salvo of clacking keys.

  YOU SOUND ITCHY TO BREAK HUDDLE, SO HERE IS GAME PLAN. STAMPER BLAZE OF GLORY SCHEDULED FOR USO HOLIDAY SHOW DURING TEN DAYS OF CHRISTMAS TOUR, LONDON, PARIS, ETC. ANTWERP SHOW FIRST IN LINE. FULL CHEERING SECTION FOR END OF SUPREME TEAM SAGA—NATIONWIDE BROADCAST STATESIDE, "YOUR USO ON THE GO" NEWSREEL, TED LOUDON IN PERSON TO DEVOTE ENTIRE "SPORTS REPORT" TO STAMPER AND—

  It sunk in to Ben like a stab that kept on penetrating. Tepee Weepy and Loudon. The unholy pair that manufactured the Supreme Team in the first place. Now an entire week of hanging around with the buzz bombs, just so Loudon could mouth off nationally, hell, internationally about—

  "Break in, quick," he instructed the wire operator while frantically scrawling. The young soldier apprehensively but bravely looked up from the message. "'Loudmouth,' sir?"

  "Sorry, that got away from me." Ben grabbed back the paper, cursing and fixing the name at the same time. Off the message went.

  CAN'T WE DO THAT STATESIDE, AT TSU STADIUM FOR INSTANCE, SITE OF INITIAL GLORY, ETC.? LOUDON NOT A HABITUE OF EUROPE NORMALLY.

  There was a pause, giving Ben some faint hope that logic might register on TPWP. Then:

  NEGATIVE. LOUDON TO USE ANTWERP OCCASION TO ANNOUNCE THAT THE TREASURE STATE GOLDEN EAGLES OF 1941—'ELEVEN MEN AS BRAVE ON THE ULTIMATE FIELD OF BATTLE AS ON THE GRIDIRON'—ARE HIS ALL-AMERICAN TEAM FOR 1944, IN MEMORIAM. YOU AND STAMPER WILL BE HIGHLIGHTED AS THE SURVIVING TEAMMATES, THUS PRESENCE IN ANTWERP MANDATORY UNTIL AFTER USO SHOW.

  Ben could not take his eyes off the words. You goddamn grandstander, Loudmouth. You never miss a chance to pluck the patriotic harp, do you. All-dead is closer to the truth. Maximum urges contended in him, to sink into a corner laughing insanely or take a kicking fit against the TPWP wire machine. The owl-eyed clerk watched him skittishly.

  Pulling himself together, more or less, he gripped the pencil and pad, and with concentration as slow and forced as a gradeschooler's put into block letters the next message.

  STAMPER COMING DOWN WITH NERVOUS IN THE SERVICE. SUGGEST IMMEDIATE LEAVE TO TIDE HIM OVER UNTIL USO SHOW. IF HE CRACKS UP, LORD HAW-HAW WILL HAVE PLENTY TO HEE-HEE ABOUT.

  Parsing it to himself, he added, sardonically wondering if he had better get a rubber stamp of it made: SOONEST BEST.

  Tepee Weepy got the message in more ways than one.

  SOON IS BEST THAT CAN BE DONE THROUGH ANTWERP HQ CHANNELS, BUT WILL HAVE STAMPER PULLED FROM ACK-ACK DUTY, DON'T WORRY.

  The teletype machine fell silent for all of ten seconds or so, then burped back into action.

  NOW TO BUSINESS AS USUAL: EXPECTING THOUSAND-WORD PIECE, CLASSIC REINKING STYLE OF SHINE AND SHADOW, ON LIFE IN COMBAT ZONE 'SOMEWHERE IN EUROPE.'

  "Have you gone out of your gourd, Ben? They're supposed to give me leave here in a combat zone?" That evening in the Wonder Bar, Moxie was so incredulous he was neglecting his beer. "I'll believe that the day after it happens."

  "Fine," Ben said tiredly. "You can test your faith when the general calls you in, first thing tomorrow. Maurice set it up." He started his bottle to his lips, then thought to check on Moxie's facial tic. It was active. Good, that'll help. "By the way, I had to make you out to be the next thing to a nutcase. So if people look at you a certain way, that's why."

  Moxie laughed, short and sharp. "Rhine King, you never did think I threw you the ball enough."

  ***

  They had to kill seven days waiting for the USO show, every one of those a blank-walled twenty-four hours of tedium with a concrete lid on it. It did not help that they both thought their underground quarters smelled like Montana earthen cellars where potatoes and rutabagas were stored. Moxie, restless as a sidewinder even in the best of times, had a particularly hard time with enforced leisure. "If I wanted to be caged up, I'd have been born a goddamn canary." Growly and still ticcing, he devoted himself to reading Philo Vance mysteries during the day and romancing Inez in the Wonder Bar at night.

  For his part, Ben prowled the bunker maze of the base with a simmering case of deadline fever, searching for some way to write about Antwerp's deluges of death from the sky without ever mentioning buzz bombs. "What if," he tried out on Maurice Overby, "I just say it's a mystery weapon the Germans call a Vergeltungswaffe?"

  "Rather a nice try, Ben, but I'm afraid not," came the prim response. "There are without doubt some among your American readership familiar enough with the German language to connect 'waffe' to 'Luftwaffe' and draw the pertinent conclusion, wouldn't you say? No, I realize it's a hard go, but HQ requires that you keep whatever you write about Antwerp"—the squarely-planted censor gestured off generally—general."

  Great, Maurice. I can just say Antwerp has an unusual share of funerals, can I? You should work for Tepee Weepy.

  When he grew tired of beating his head against a story he was not allowed to tell, he holed up in the windowless concrete room with the scent of root cellar and made tiny editing changes in the Ghost Runner screenplay, aware all the while how geographically ridiculous it was to be conjuring the Letter Hill in waffle-flat Belgium. All in all, distance maybe lent something, but it did not smell like enchantment. And when he ran out of things to fuss at in the script, he emulated Moxie and read, napped, brooded some more about the piece that couldn't say anything. All the while, the clock slowed to eternal Old World time. Another day in the war. What was the count up to by now?

  He was marking the fourth day of the wait by reading a much-passed-around news magazine that grandly speculated the war could be over by Christmas—Yeah, right, has anybody told the Germans?—when Maurice rapped on the doorway in a grand announcing fashion. "A communiqué for you, in the priority packet." He held up the envelope by the tip of one corner. "Inasmuch as it's addressed in a feminine hand, I thought it wise to deliver it forthwith."

  Eyes widening, Ben reached out for the letter. Maurice coughed discreetly. "I shall leave you to it. See you in the dining hall."

  Dear Ben, wherever you are, Scar—

  Already Cass's words had him aching for her. Quickly he turned the letter to take in a line written sideways along the margin near the top:

  Your Holy Joe corporal looked like I was about to set his Bible on fire, but he took pity and said he could sneak this to you somehow.

  Bedazzled as a kid with a kaleidoscope, he spun the full page of inked lines back into reading position.

  This set of scribbles may surprise you as much as it does me. But I can't hold back—I've been writing this in my head for days on
end and the only cure is to put it on paper. So here goes. Remember we used to talk about the milliondollar wound?

  He remembered in all ways. The heart never forgets anything; the flesh remembers indiscriminately.

  There were all those times I caught myself wishing you'd get a tiny one—just another scar—and be out of the war for good. But if Dan's is any indication, the price is awful damn high. I take him over to Fort Hairy once a week for the bone doc to test how his leg is coming along, and he hates that routine. He's on crutches in between—he hates that, too. Sometime after the first of the year, they'll ship him to the specialist who'll patch that tendon in and then all the time in rehab, as they call it.

  We go around and around about whether I stay with him in California for all that. I say of course I will. He says like hell I will, he can be a cripple just the same without me around, go do something useful with myself. In some odd way I think he wants to be with other Montaneer guys—you know what a bloody mess Leyte has turned out to be, bunches of the worst wounded from his regiment are ending up there in San Diego—more than with me. I'm not crying on your shoulder, Ben, I just needed to tell somebody who knows up from down when it comes to a man and a woman.