A Midnight Clear: A Novel

by William Wharton

  “We might’s well make ourselves comfortable; never know how long a guy like Morrie’s going to take.”

  Shutzer’s playing big shot but his hands are shaking and he’s sweat through his suntans under the arms and in the small of his back.

  Gordon sits on the toilet with the seat down; he slides one pillow under him. I climb into the bathtub and tuck a pillow behind my neck. The tub’s ice cold and hard; I get out and start filling it. Who knows when I’ll have a real bathtub to use again; besides, if I’m going to be awake at one o’clock in the morning, I might’s well be doing something; I’ve finished my book.

  Shutzer looks at his watch, pulls out a cigar and tries to light up. Gordon glances at him disgustedly. Shutzer starts undoing the buttons on his shirt.

  “You know, she says she’s doing this for nothing; ‘anything for the boys overseas,’ or almost overseas, anyhow.”

  He pulls off his sweaty shirt.

  “Won’t, you wouldn’t believe it. We went into every bar and joint, up and down every creepy dark street, arguing all the way. When we’d finally agree on one, the price’d be something astronomical like twenty bucks a throw, no cut rate for groups.”

  He drops his shirt on the floor and looks into the mirror over the sink. He squeezes a pimple under his ear. He tries to light his cigar again. He doesn’t even know enough about cigars to trim it.

  “Ya mind gettin’ off the toilet a minute, Gordon; I gotta take a piss.”

  Mel stands with his pillow clutched against his chest. Shutzer lifts the lid, pulls out but can’t do anything. He stands there, looking down, puffing on his uncut cigar trying to keep it lit. We’re quiet; we can hear Morrie and the girl talking in the other room but can’t hear what they’re saying. Shutzer buttons up and looks at his watch again. He undoes his pants and slips them off.

  “Might’s well be ready; never know how long ol’ Morrie Margolis is gonna take; might come right off without knowing it. No sense wasting time.”

  He sniffs his armpits, then takes some after-shave lotion from his toilet kit and rubs it in. I try the water in my tub; too hot. I turn on some cold.

  “We’d just bought the bourbon and had almost given up when we found this girl. We were all the way down by the Greyhound Depot. She was in there sitting on one of the wooden benches. Gordon here goes over and starts talking to her. Before we know it, we’re telling her about what we’ve been doing all night; how we’re looking for a whore to defoliate four overripe virgins. We’re laughing and then, right there, out of the blue she volunteers to come back with us. God, you never know! I thought she was kidding, but she’s serious and it isn’t costing us a dime.”

  Gordon sits down on the toilet seat again. The tub’s full to overflow so I turn off the water, ease myself in.

  “Stan, I have a rubber and a pro kit you can use if you want.”

  “I have my own. Don’t worry me, Won’t; you’re getting bad as Wilkins.”

  He searches the pack out of his pants on the floor.

  I’m glad I said it. Shutzer starts pacing; that is, if you can really pace in a hotel bathroom with two other people. He’s wearing his shoes, socks and underwear; the cigar’s clenched in his teeth and he’s clutching a packet of three rubbers in one hand. He’s balanced his pro kit on the edge of the sink. He looks at his watch.

  “Should’ve known Margolis would take forever.”

  “Ever try one of those pros, Stan? I did once just as an experiment. It doesn’t hurt but feels peculiar, like rubber snakes squeezing up the end of your prick. Just relax.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll figure it. What the fuck could they be doing in there?”

  “Watch the language, Stan, we have gentlemen in the gents’ room. What would Father Mundy think?”

  “Fuck Father Mundy!”

  Gordon shakes his head, puts my pillow on his lap along with his own and lowers his head onto it. Shutzer looks at his watch again; he leans against the door to the bedroom.

  “Hey, Morrie, how’s it goin’ in there, huh?”

  No answer. Shutzer puts his ear against the door.

  “Maybe she rolled him and slipped out, knockout drops or a blackjack. Could be anything.”

  Shutzer knocks on the door, first soft, then hard.

  “Hey, Margolis, give us other guys a chance, huh? At least say something.”

  Still nothing. Shutzer slowly, quietly, unlocks, then opens the door, peeks, goes in. He closes the door behind him.

  I stand up in the tub and dry myself off. Shutzer doesn’t come back. Gordon and I look at each other. I slip on my skivvies and we go in after Shutzer.

  The three of them are sitting cross-legged on the bed. Shutzer and Morrie are still dressed, that is, if army OD underwear can be classified as dressed. The girl’s in a slip and crying. Gordon and I stand at the edge of the bed and listen. I’ll give a quick version of the story. It’s not what this book’s about anyway, or maybe it is.

  Her name is Janice. She was engaged to a boy named Matt. Matt was killed in the Sicilian invasion. Janice only heard a week ago. She came down to see all the last places Matt had been in his short military life. She’s a junior at Penn State but isn’t going back to school. She’s twenty. She came down here to kill herself but didn’t have enough nerve; all she has now is a ticket back on the bus.

  So what do you believe?

  She and Morrie got to talking because they were embarrassed. They began kissing; then she was crying and that’s how it came out.

  We wind up pushing the beds together into one big bed and start drinking the rest of our bourbon in the paper bag. Five people on two-thirds of a fifth. There might be some mathematical sense there, but it would be the only logical part of that night. It was like an X-rated version of a classic unmade war film starring Shirley Temple with Audie Murphy.

  Janice has only made love with one person, Matt, just before he left. Now she’s volunteering herself to all of us. She’s insisting it’s what she wants to do.

  Of course, this brings out the contemplative, cantankerous, contentious ASTPR in each of us. We’re also guilty, scared. This idea, this simple, lovely idea, must be subjected to every kind of spurious rationale. We wind down before dawn and sleep; tired, medium drunk, intimately wedded in our double-double bed. As the springing light of the new day grays the room, Janice comes, quietly, privately, half in our dreams, to each of us: Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny. We cry and giggle, passing through the mythical barrier between boys and men, men and death.

  Janice takes us with her.

  At ten o’clock, after a luxurious mass breakfast in bed, Mel escorts Janice to the bus station. We don’t talk about what happened. I don’t think any of us can put it together with anything we’ve known.

  I personally have always had an eerie feeling about my first sexual experience, masquerading as a dead boy named Matt. And I still, to this day, have the lingering sensation that any woman with whom I make love has some other ideal person in her heart and mind.

  Once more we’re up against my weakness for the true but unbelievable. Mel and Janice correspond through the war. Mel goes back home and they marry. They have three children and are divorced after fifteen years. Perhaps because it was a mixed marriage, or maybe only an ordinary marriage, subject to the pressures of our times. Perhaps Matt could always have been there.

  Shutzer and Gordon finish dancing. We haul in the rest of our supplies. I have Miller back our jeep with the fifty caliber up against one side of the château so its barrel can traverse the entire road along with the bridge. Our other jeep we bring around behind the château. I drag in the snowsuits, the whitening, a box of grenades and the 506 radio. Mother helps me with all the schlepping. I also break out the field telephones. Miller begins untangling them. I struggle out our two big reels of wire for the phones. They’re still caked with mud from when we pulled them up in the Saar.

  When I’m finished, I stop to get my breath and look over the situation. From in front o
f the château, we look down across a series of terraced fountains almost to the stream. This is the stream under the bridge we drove over up to the château. There are statues of dolphins and different fish in the fountains, with verdigrised copper piping coming from fish mouths for spurting water. The statues look like cast cement: spotted black, green and yellow with clots of hardened moss. The basins of the fountains are filled with frozen leaves.

  I decide I’ll set up two guard posts; one downhill on the other side of the fountains, behind a retainer wall to the right of the bridge; the other up on the side of the hill behind the chateau, just higher than the roofline. I scramble uphill to locate a spot where we’ll have a good overall view of the road, both directions, and still cover the lower guard post.

  I can’t think of any way to protect this higher post from infiltration behind. Still, someone climbing on this steep slope in frozen leaves and dead branches isn’t going to have much luck sneaking up on anybody. It’d have to be a good-sized attack patrol charging in, and if anything like that happens we’re goners anyway.

  I find just the right position and clear a space with my foot. I break off a branch from a tree and jam it in the cleared space. My innards seem to be behaving themselves, even after the climb uphill. Maybe just getting away from Ware, Love and all the chickenshit will help.

  I slide downhill to the chateau and pick up one of the wire reels. I unhook the tie and knock off more mud.

  The guard’s going to be a drag. Days, it’ll be one in a hole; that’s two on and four off. Nights will be tough. We’ll need two in each hole so that’ll be four on and only two off. We’ll have to do our sleeping daytimes. But I don’t see any other way. I could try it with only one guard post, up on the hill; it could cover everything. Maybe after the first few days, if nothing happens, that’s what we’ll do. Or maybe just one post down by the bridge. We’ll figure something; the squad will have ideas.

  Mel comes out and helps me carry the reel of wire downhill to the bridge. I explain my idea for posts and he agrees. We find a perfect place about twenty yards right of the bridge. The retainer wall is shoulder high and makes an ideal firing parapet. With cover from the other post, it should be safe. That is, if anything is safe in a wood, in a war, with other people trying to kill you.

  I tie the wire to a ring set in the wall and begin backing uphill to the chateau. Gordon says he’ll take the first guard and stays down there.

  I struggle uphill, laying wire alongside the road and looking out at the hills around. I could be under observation by somebody out there. Some guy in field green could be sitting with a gun and a scope watching me.

  I turn my head to see how much farther there’s still to go and start hurrying the wire, dropping it off in loops. I’m already shaking; laying wire isn’t all that hard; my nerves are just shot. When I get to the château, I run the wire through a window to the fireplace.

  Mother is arranging rations and equipment. He’s started his homemaking routine already and this is some home he’s got to play with. I’m sure we’re all going to get lectures on the statues, the architecture, the wood walls, the fireplace; the whole thing. Wilkins can’t help but turn any place into a nest, and here he’s got a palace. He seems to be making it fine; just a little too tense, too conscientious.

  Once, on a sixty-hour nonstop convoy from Rouen to Metz, Mother rigged a sleeping hammock in the back of his jeep. That was the jeep he and Jim Freize shared. It was named Linda, of course. I painted the name on it with a picture of a rabbit. Mother calls Linda Bunny sometimes. Nothing seems to embarrass Mother; it’s as if he’s immune to all the things he should be embarrassed about.

  Mother also had a sort of altar along the front of that jeep next to the instrument panel. There was a picture of Linda and cutout phrases from some of her letters glued around it. Sometimes I used to think Jim was as in love with Linda as Mother was. He’d better have been, because with Mother that’s all you get to talk about.

  When Hunt saw this whole affair, he blew his top and made them rip everything out. Hunt got “it” near Ohmsdorf, under a cross by the side of the road. It was just into Germany; we had the distinction of being the first American troops to penetrate into what the Germans called German territory at that time. This lasted all of three days and we were pushed back. I tried smuggling a message home to tell where we were. I asked Joan, my sister, to give my love to Gertrude, Moe and Jack. I knew she’d figure it out and she did. I also knew Glendon, the assistant S2 who censored our mail, wouldn’t catch it, and he didn’t!

  Hunt picked that cross for the platoon CP. Hunt was a noncom from the original Umpty-eleventh Regiment, and not very bright. Gordon insists guys like Hunt, Ware and Love are the real enemy; that is, if there is an enemy.

  Inside the château I check how Miller’s doing with the phones. He has them untangled and we tie in the wire I’ve pulled through the window.

  “Would you check out the 506, too, Bud? I’ll roll wire up to the other post. Gordon’s taking first guard by the bridge.”

  Shutzer and Mundy meander over.

  “Stan, would you take one of these phones down to Gordon and tell him to hook it in? Then bring this other phone up to me at the post behind the château? You’ll have the first two hours on, so bring your rifle and a couple grenades.”

  “OK, Sarge.”

  I look quick to see if he’s kidding, rubbing it in; but it came naturally. I’ll never get used to it.

  I tie wire to the handle of the window-door with enough slack to reach the central phone, then start rolling it up the hill. The smart way would be to unroll wire from the top down but I’m not thinking well. I struggle up the slippery hill with the wire reel, holding on to trees to keep from sliding on down into the back of the chateau. I finally work myself to where I’ve marked the spot, and stop for breath.

  Below Stan and Mel are hooking up the other phone. While I’m watching, Mel cranks the handle and puts the receiver to his ear; it must be OK because Stan starts climbing uphill toward me without heading to the château.

  I tie my wire to a tree; sit down and wait for him. I pull the twenty-power scope from my field jacket pocket and scan the hills around for a quick look. I don’t see anything particularly suspicious: no smoke, no sign of movement or glints on metal. Stan comes puffing up beside me.

  “Phone’s working fine down there. Miller says he’s got the radio tuned in and warming up, too.”

  We hunt for a good place to dig the hole. We want a spot showing the fewest roots. But with pines all around like this, there’ll be roots, no matter what. Stan isn’t enthusiastic about digging but I stick it out. I’m not thinking so much about protection from bullets or shrapnel as from wind and cold. At night, two guys can keep warmer in a hole. One can sit down in while the other watches. Nights here are ungodly long this time of year.

  I leave the scope with Shutzer and tell him to take a look around every fifteen minutes or so; give him a rest from digging. I scramble on down the hill.

  Miller’s started hooking the wire to the other phone while I begin the crappy army call business on the radio. “Able one to Able four, over.” I get Leary, one of the few radio people at regiment who’re even half human. I forgot communications when I listed the nothings in regimental headquarters company. They’re so nothing they’re easy to forget.

  Leary says he’ll get our message to Ware. I say we’ve occupied the chateau and are digging in posts. That sounds military enough. I also schedule a call back at twenty-two-hundred; that’s ten in the evening, army talk.

  Mother says he’s ready to cook lunch if we’ll go hunt wood. He wants to light the fireplace, warm up the room and cook over it. We have two primus stoves with us but Mother is wound up to make a real cooking scene. There’s a kitchen opening onto the back wall along with a pantry, but it’s cold and there are no pots or pans. Wilkins says it’ll be better cooking out here in front where we’ll sleep.

  I don’t know what to say. If we have a f
ire with smoke coming out the high chimney over the chateau, it’ll be no secret we’re here. At that point we’re distinctly not a recon patrol; we’re some kind of occupying force. Then again, we’ll freeze our asses off at night if we don’t have heat.

  Father Mundy and I go around in back of the chateau. In the space between the chateau walls and the hill there’s a woodshed and a stable for two or three horses. We break open the door to the woodshed but there’s no wood. We go into the stable. There are some armfuls of dry hay still in the loft and we pry loose a few good-sized, worn boards from the stalls. If we do run a fire, wood’s going to be a problem. The trees and everything on the ground around here are wet and impossible to burn. Even if we could burn it, there’d be regular clouds of smoke. The Germans will think we’ve got Indians out here making signals.

  When we get back, Mother has a little flame going from D ration boxes. We add the hay and some smaller pieces of wood. But the fireplace isn’t drawing; the smoke’s pouring into the room and drifting to the ceiling. Miller looks up the flue and finds it’s been plastered closed. He uses the butt of his rifle and knocks out some plaster; a few bricks fall, then the smoke starts going up fine. I go outside to see how much comes out. There’s a twisting snake of pale blue. It’s bad but not bad as I expected. It’s a chance we’ll take.

  D rations have assorted goodies such as number ten cans of jam or fruit cocktail, so Mother whips up a tasty lunch. We finish off with coffee and I’m praying my stomach will handle it. For some reason, I’m not scared as I should be; maybe having a fire burning and being inside help.

  Mundy finds a hand-pumped well beside the chateau; he and Miller prime it. They bring water back in worn wooden buckets and it looks clear. We might even be able to keep our mess kits clean for a change. This could help my insides stay where they belong.