Ira Johnson looked pained. “I didn’t mean to rush you, Ted. ‘Twouldn’t have hurt to take a few days to wind up your affairs; they can’t organize an army overnight. I know, I saw’em try, in ‘Ninety-eight. Mrrph. Perhaps I could make the trip for you? As your agent. Seeing that—Well, doesn’t look like I’m going to be too busy.”
“No, no! A million thanks, sir—but I hadn’t been thinking straight. Thinking ‘peacetime’ instead of ‘wartime’ until you got me back on the rails. I went to Western Union and wrote a night letter to my broker in Frisco, telling him what I wanted him to do; then I wrote a note appointing him my attorney-in-fact and got it notarized and went to the downtown post office and registered it to him. All done, everything taken care of.” Lazarus was enjoying the improvisation so much he almost believed it. “Then I went downstairs and enlisted. But that grip—Do you suppose you could put it in your garret? I won’t be taking a grip to soldier. Just a few toilet articles.”
“I’ll take care of it, Mr. Bronson!” said Brian Junior. “In my room!”
“In our room,” George corrected. “We’ll take care of it.”
“Hold it, boys. Ted? Would it break your heart if you lost that grip?”
“Not at all, Mr. Johnson. Why?”
“Then take it with you. But when you get back to your flat tonight, pack it differently. You put in white shirts and stiff collars, no doubt. You won’t need those. If you’ve got any work shirts, take those. Be sure to take a pair of wellbroken-in high shoes you can march in. Socks—all you own. Underwear. It’s my guess—based on sad experience—that they won’t have enough uniforms right away. Confusion, and lots of it. You may be soldiering for a month or more in what you carry with you.”
“I think,” Mrs. Smith said seriously, “that Father is right, Mr. Bronson. Mr. Smith—Lieutenant Smith, my husband—was saying something like it before he left. He left without waiting for his telegram—it came hours later—because he said he knew that there would be confusion at first.” Her mouth twitched. “Although he said it more forcefully.”
“Daughter, no matter how Brian put it, it wasn’t forceful enough. Ted will be lucky if his beans are on time. Any man who can tell his right foot from his left will be grabbed and made acting corporal; they won’t care how he’s dressed. But you care, Ted—so take along clothes you might wear on a farm. And shoes—comfortable shoes that won’t put blisters on you the first mile. Mmm—Ted, do you know the coldcream trick? To use on your feet when you know you might have your shoes on for a week or more?”
“No, sir,” Lazarus answered. (Gramp, you taught it to me once before—or maybe “after”—and it works, and I’ve never forgotten it.)
“If possible, have your feet clean and dry. Smear your feet all over and especially between your toes with cold cream. Or Vaseline, carbolated is best. Use lots, a thick layer. Then put on socks—clean if possible, dirty if you must, but don’t skip them—and put your boots on. When you first stand up, it feels as if you’d stepped into a barrel of soft soap. But your feet will thank you for it and you won’t get jungle rot between your toes. Or not as much. Take care of your feet, Ted, and keep your bowels open.”
“Father.”
“Daughter, I’m talking to a soldier—telling him things that may save his life. If the children can’t hear such things, send them up to bed.”
“I think it is time,” Maureen answered, “to get the younger ones quieted down, at least.”
“I don’t have to go to bed!”
“Woodie, you do exactly what your mother tells you to and no back talk—or I’ll bend a poker over your bottom. That’s standing orders until your father gets home from the war.”
“I’m going to stay up till Private Bronson leaves! Papa said I could.”
“Mrrph. I’ll discuss the logical impossibility of that with a club; it’s the only way to make you understand it. Maureen, I suggest that we start with the youngest, let ’em say good-bye in turn, and then march straight up to bed. Which winds up in due course with me walking Ted to his streetcar stop.”
“But I was going to drive Uncle Ted home!”
Lazarus judged that it was time to speak up. “Brian, thank you. But let’s not give your mother something extra to worry about tonight. The trolley takes me almost straight home . . and from tomorrow on I won’t even have streetcars; I’ll walk.”
“That’s right,” agreed Gramp. “He’ll march. ‘Hay foot, straw foot!—heads up and look proud’ Ted, his father made Brian Sergeant of the Guard until he gets back, charged with internal security of this household.”
“Then he can’t leave his post of duty to chauffeur a mere private, can he?”
“Not in the presence of the Officer of the Guard—me—and of the Officer of the Day, my daughter. Reminds me—While the young ’uns are kissing you good-bye, I want to dig out a couple of my old Army shirts; I think they’ll fit you. If you don’t mind hand-me-downs?”
“Sir, I will be proud and honored to wear them!”
Mrs. Smith stood up. “I have something I must get for Mr.—Private Bronson, too. Nancy, will you bring down Ethel? And Carol, will you fetch Richard?”
“But Private Bronson hasn’t eaten his sandwich!”
Lazarus said, “I’m sorry, Miss Carol. I’ve been too excited to eat. Uh, would you wrap it for me? I’ll eat it the minute I’m back in my apartment—and it will make me sleep soundly.”
“Do that, Carol,” decided her mother. “Brian, will you fetch down Richard?”
After more backing and filling Lazarus told them all good-bye, in reverse order of seniority. He held Ethel for a moment and grinned at her baby smile, then kissed the top of her head and handed her back to Nancy, who took her upstairs and hurried back down. To kiss Richard, Lazarus had to get down on one knee. The child seemed unsure why this was happening but knew that it was a solemn occasion; he hugged Lazarus tightly and smeared his cheek with a kiss.
Woodie then kissed him—for the first and only time, but Lazarus no longer felt bothered by touching “himself” as this little boy was not himself but simply an individual from whom he derived some scattered memories in an odd concatenation. He was no longer tempted to strangle him—or not often.
Woodie used the unaccustomed intimacy to whisper: “Those chessmen are really ivory?”
“Really truly ivory. Ivory and ebony, just like the keys on your Mama’s piano.”
“Gee, that’s keen! Look, when you come back, Uncle Private Bronson, I’ll let you play with them. Anytime.”
“And I’ll beat you, Sport.”
“Says you! Well, so long. Don’t take any wooden nickels.”
Little Marie kissed him with tears in her eyes, then fled from the room. George kissed him on the cheek and muttered, “You be careful, Uncle Ted,” and left also. Brian Junior said, “I’ll take real good care of your automobile—I’ll keep it shined just the way you do,” then hesitated—suddenly kissed his cheek and left, leading Richard.
Carol had his sandwich, neatly wrapped in waxed paper and tied with a ribbon. He thanked her and put it into an outer coat pocket. She placed her hands on his shoulders, stood on tiptoes and whispered, “There’s a note in it for you!”—kissed his cheek and left quickly.
Nancy took her place and said quietly, “The note is from both of us. We’re going to pray for you every night when we pray for Papa.” She glanced at her mother, then put her arms around his shoulders and kissed him on the mouth, a firm peck. “That’s not good-bye but au revoir!” She left even more quickly than her sister, head high and moving like her mother.
Mrs. Smith stood up, said quietly, “Father?”—and waited.
“No.”
“Then turn your back.”
“Mrrph. Yes.” Mr. Johnson studied the pictures on the wall.
With a soft rustle Mrs. Smith came close to Lazarus, looked up at him, held up a little book. “This is for you.”
It was a vest-pocket New Testament; she held it open
ed at the fly leaf. He took it and read the original inscription, somewhat faded:
“To Maureen Johnson, Good Friday 1892, for perfect attendance . Matthew vii 7”
And under this, in fresh and crisp Spencerian script:
To Private Theodore Bronson
Be true to self and country.
Maureen J. Smith
April 6, 1917
Lazarus gulped. “I will treasure it and keep it with me, Mrs. Smith.”
“Not ‘Mrs. Smith,” Theodore—‘Maureen.’ ” She put up her arms.
Lazarus stuffed the little book into his breast pocket, put his arms around her, met her lips.
For a long moment her kiss was firm and warm but chaste. Then she moaned almost inaudibly, her body softened and came strongly against him, her lips opened, and she kissed him in a fashion that Lazarus could barely believe even as he answered it in kind—a kiss that promised everything she could give.
After some uncountable eternity she whispered against his lips: “Theodore . . take care of yourself. Come back to us.”
VI
Camp Funston, Kansas
Dear Twins and Family,
Surprise! Meet Corporal Ted Bronson, acting sergeant and the meanest drillmaster in the whole National Army of the United States. No, I have not scrambled my circuits. I temporarily lost track of a basic principle of evasive action, i.e., the best place to hide a needle is in a stack of needles . . and the best place to avoid the horrors of war is in an army. Since none of you has ever seen a war, or even an army, I must explain.
I had (foolishly) planned to avoid this war by running away to South America. But South America is a place where I could not possibly pass for a native, no matter how well I spoke the language—and it is loaded with German agents who would suspect me of being an American agent and might arrange some nasty accident for Ol’ Buddy Boy, bless his innocent heart. And the girls there have beautiful flashing eyes, suspicious duennas, and fathers who love to shoot gringos up to no good. Unhealthy.
But if I stayed in the United States and tried to stay out of the Army—one slip and I wind up behind cold stone walls, eating miserable food, and making little rocks out of big ones. Unappealing.
But in wartime the Army gets the best of everything—aside from a mild hazard of getting shot at. The latter can be avoided.
How? This is not yet the era of total war, and an army offers innumerable bolt holes for a coward (me) to avoid unpleasant dangers from strangers. In this era only a small part of an army gets shot at. (An even smaller part gets hit, but I don’t plan to take that risk.) At this here&-now land warfare is fought in certain locations, and there are endless army jobs not in those places, where (despite a military uniform) an army man is really just a privileged civilian.
I am in such a job and probably won’t move until the war is over. Someone has to take these brave, young, innocent lads, fresh off the farm, and turn them into something resembling soldiers. A man who can do this is so valuable that officers are reluctant to let him go.
So I’m full of that old fighting spirit and won’t have to fight. I teach, instead—close-order drill, extended drill, markmanship and care of the rifle, bayonet, barehanded combat, field hygiene, anything. My “amazing” aptitude in military matters caused surprise, me being a recruit with “no military experience.” (How could I admit that Gramp taught me to shoot five years after the end of this war and that I first handled these same weapons as a high school cadet ten years from now and that my military experience is scattered over the next hundred years plus a little now and then for centuries more?)
But a rumor hints that I was once a soldat in the French Foreign Legion, a corps of one of our Allies, made up of cut-throats, thieves, and escaped convicts, and famous for their go-to-hell way of fighting—possibly a deserter from it and almost certainly under another name. I discourage this canard by becoming surly if anyone gets inquisitive and only occasionally make the mistake of saluting French style (palm forward) and correct it at once—but everybody knows that I “polly-voo” because my knowledge of the French language had a lot to do with my change from “acting corporal” to real corporal assigned to instruction, and now greasing for sergeant. There are French and British officers and sergeants here to teach us trench warfare. All the French here are supposed to speak English—but the English they speak these Kansas and Missouri plow jockeys can’t understand. So in slips lazy Lazarus as liaison. Me and one French sergeant almost add up to one good instructor.
Without that French sergeant I am a good instructor . . when I am allowed to teach what I know. But only in unarmed combat am I allowed to, because unarmed handto-hand fighting does not change through the ages; only the name changes, and it has only one rule: Do it first, do it fast, do it dirtiest.
But take bayonet fighting—A bayonet is a knife on the end of a gun, and the two parts add up to the Roman pilum, used two thousand years earlier and not new even then. One would expect the art of bayonet fighting, in 1917, to be perfect.
But it isn’t. The “Book” teaches parries but not counters—yet a counter is as fast as a parry, far more deceptive, and fatally confusing to a man who has never heard of one. And there are other things—There was (will be) a war in the twenty-sixth century Greg. in which the use of the bayonet became a high art and I was an unwilling participant until I managed to duck out. So one morning here, on a bet, I demonstrated that I could take on and never be touched by a U.S. Army regular sergeant-instructor—then a British one—and then a French one.
Was I allowed to teach what I had demonstrated? No. I mean “Hell, No!” I wasn’t doing it “by the Book,” and my “smart-alec” attempt almost lost me my cushy job. So I went back to doing it by the sacred “Book.”
But this book (used at Plattsburg where my father—and yours—trained) is not bad. In bayonet fighting its emphasis is on aggressiveness, which is okay within its limits; the bayonet is a horror weapon in the hands of a man eager to close and kill—and that may be all these kids have time to learn. But I would hate to see these pink-cheeked, brave lads go up against some old, tired, pessimistic twenty-sixth-century mercenaries whose sole purpose is to stay alive while their opponents die.
These kids can win a war, they will win this war, they did win it from when you are. But an unnecessary number are going to die.
I love these kids. They are young and eager and gallant and terribly anxious to get “Over There” and prove that one American can lick any six Germans. (Not true. The ratio isn’t even one to one. The Germans are veterans and don’t suffer from “sportsmanship” or any other illusions. But these green kids will keep on fighting and dying until the Germans give up.)
But they are so young! Laz and Lor, most of them are younger than you two, some much younger. I don’t know how many lied about their ages—but lots of them don’t have to shave. Sometimes at night I’ll hear one crying in his cot, homesick for his mammy. But next day he’ll be trying, hard as ever. We don’t have enough desertions to matter; these boys want to fight.
I try not to think about how useless this war is.
It’s a matter of perspective. Minerva proved to me one night (when she was still following the profession of computer) that all here-&-nows are equal and “the present” is simply whatever here-&-now one is using. By my “proper” here-&-now (where I would be if I hadn’t hearkened to the wild geese—home on Tertius)—by that here-&-now these eager, puppylike boys are long dead and the worms have eaten them; this war and its terrible aftermath are ancient history, no worry of mine.
But I’m here, and it’s happening now, and I feel it.
These letters become more difficult to write and to send. Justin, you want detailed accounts, written on the spot, of all that I do, to add to that pack of lies you edited. Photoreduction and etching are now impossible. I am sometimes allowed to leave camp for a day, which is just long enough to get to the nearest large town, Topeka (circa 160 kms. round trip), but always on a Sunday when busine
sses are closed, so I have not had a chance to work up a connection to use a laboratory in Topeka—assuming that there is one with the equipment I need, a doubtful point. I would let letters pile up in a lockbox (since it does not matter when I Delay Mail them)—but banks are never open on Sundays. So a handwritten letter, not too long and bulky, is the most I can manage—whenever I can lay hands on nesting envelopes (also difficult now)—and hope that paper and ink won’t oxidize too much over the centuries.
I’ve started a diary, one which makes no mention of Tertius and such (this letter would get me locked up as crazy!) but is simply a daily recital of events. I can mail it, when it is full, to Gramp Ira Johnson to hold for me; then after the war is over and I have time and privacy, I can use it to write the sort of commentary you want, and take time to miniaturize and stabilize a long message. The problems of a time-tripping historiographer are odd and awkward. One Welton fine-grain memory cube would record all I could say over the next ten years—except that I would have no use for one even if I had it; the technology to use it is lacking.
By the way—Ishtar, did you plant a recorder in my belly? You are a darling, dear, but sometimes a devious darting—and there is something there. It doesn’t bother me, and I might never have noticed it had not a physician noticed it the day I joined this Army. He brushed the matter off—but later I conducted my own examination by touch. There is an implant there—and not what Ira says I’m full of. It might be one of those artificial organs you rejuvenators are reluctant to discuss with your “children.” But I suspect that it is a Welton cube with an ear hooked to it and a ten-year power supply; it’s about the right size.
Time Enough for Love Page 63
