The Eighth Dwarf

by Ross Thomas

  “Milwaukee or Madison?” Jackson asked as he took the mimeographed sheets which were the travel orders out of the envelope and examined them.

  “Milwaukee, I believe, and from what I’m given to understand, a most intelligent young lad.”

  The drinks came, and after the waiter left, Jackson tapped the travel orders. “This is Pentagon stuff, not State.”

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it?”

  Jackson took a swallow of his drink, closed his eyes, and moved his lips silently.

  “Praying?”

  Jackson shook his head. “I was just running over that list of names you mentioned—the ones who’re still left over from the old days. Of all those, the one who was most cozy with the top brass was always Milo Stracey. Mr. Icebox. How is Milo?”

  “He sends his regards.”

  Jackson smiled, but it was a thin smile. “You’re trying to run me, aren’t you, you and Milo?”

  “It should be a very nice trip, Minor. A DC-4, I think, out of New York. Awfully nice ladies, mostly—generals’ and colonels’ wives, I believe, plus a few male civilian junketeers.”

  “I won’t be run.”

  “Of course not We just want your leavings—more or less,”

  “There may not be any.”

  “We’ll take that chance.”

  “I’m not promising anything.”

  “I understand. However, Minor, I feel duty bound to give you one tiny word of advice.”

  “What?”

  “Beware the wicked dwarf, my boy,” Orr said, and smiled, but not enough to conceal the seriousness that lay behind his admonition.

  “I’ll do more than that.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll also shun the bandersnatch,” Jackson said.

  The dwarf and two young women called Dot and Jan were down at Union Station the next day at noon to see Jackson off for New York. Dot and Jan had put on, a rather interesting exhibition for Ploscaru and Jackson the night before in the dwarf’s room at the Willard, and as far as they were concerned, the party hadn’t stopped. Jackson, who had a slight hangover, wished that they hadn’t come and was struggling to be polite.

  The dwarf had presented Jackson with a going-away present—a thin, curved, very expensive silver hip flask that contained a pint of bourbon—bonded, the dwarf had assured him. Jackson thanked Ploscaru graciously and then turned to Dot and Jan.

  “I wonder if you would excuse us for a moment, ladies,” Jackson said, and made himself smile. “Business.”

  “Sure, Minor,” Dot said. She took Jan by the arm and they wandered off, trailing giggles behind them.

  When they were out of hearing, Jackson looked down at Ploscaru and said, “You’ve got Leah Oppenheimer’s address—the one where she’ll be in Frankfurt.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll meet there.”

  Ploscaru nodded.

  “I won’t ask again how you’re going to get there.”

  “No,” Ploscaru said. “Don’t.”

  “But I’ve got a couple of points to make.”

  “I’m anxious to hear them.”

  “I’ll bet. But point one is: don’t lie to me anymore, Nick. Not ever.”

  Ploscaru sighed. “That will be hard. It’s habit, you know. But I’ll try. I really shall.”

  “As I told you last night, they’re going to try to run me—and through me, you.”

  “Yes, I wasn’t at all surprised by that.”

  “So here’s my second point. I don’t really trust you, Nick.”

  The dwarf smiled. “How wise.”

  “So when we get to that time or place, which I’m sure we’ll get to, where you think you can make a few extra bucks simply by fucking me up, well, here’s some advice. Think twice.”

  The dwarf, dusting off his hands, and unaware that he was doing so, stared up at Jackson thoughtfully for several moments. “Why, yes, Minor,” he said slowly, “now that you mention it, I really think that I shall. Think twice, that is.”

  That evening around 5 in New York, Jackson called his father from the New Weston Hotel. After the father had expressed surprise about the son’s being in New York, he had said, “You say you’re leaving tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I suppose we could have dinner tonight.”

  “All right.”

  “The New Weston suitable? The food’s not too bad there.”

  “Fine.”

  “Shall we say seven?”

  “Sure. Seven.”

  The elder Jackson’s name was S. H. P. Jackson III, and he came from a long line of distinguished but generally impoverished New England parsons. The initials stood for Steadfast Honor Preserved, and rather than attend Yale Divinity, as had generations of Jacksons before him, he had gone to Harvard Law, quickly established himself in a dull but lucrative practice, married the first rich woman who would have him, and named his only son Minor after a favorite black-sheep uncle who had sailed out of Boston for Singapore in 1903 and had never been heard from since. Father and son had addressed each other only as “you” for nearly as long as either could remember.

  The elder Jackson, like his son, was tall and spare, but in recent years he had acquired a slight stoop, which, along with his also newly acquired rimless glasses, gave him a somewhat fusty, almost professional air.

  What is he now, Jackson wondered, as he shook hands with the older man: sixty, sixty-two? He was thirty when I was born, so that would make him sixty-two, almost sixty-three.

  After being shown to their table, the elder Jackson retired behind his menu, peering over it occasionally to address either comments or questions to his son.

  “You’re looking well,” the older man told his son. “Nicely tanned, I see. California must have agreed with you.”

  “I spent a lot of time on the beach and bought a convertible.”

  Over the top of the menu Jackson could see his father’s forehead wrinkle into a disapproving frown, but all he said was “Never been there, California. Is it as strange as they say?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Knew someone from Santa Barbara once. Name was Scullard. Pleasant type, but not too sound. Shall we have a drink?”

  “Sure.”

  “They say that in the Army?”

  “What?”

  “Sure instead of surely. Imprecise way to speak, I should think.”

  “The Army can make you a little careless.”

  The waiter came and left, then came again with their drinks. Minor Jackson’s was bourbon; his father’s, sherry. After taking a sip of his sherry, the elder Jackson said, “Have you heard from her?” Her, of course, was the former Mrs. Jackson, Minor’s mother, who would always be simply her or she to the man to whom she had once been married.

  “I heard from her once. She was in Rio.”

  “Married again, you know.”

  “Yes, so she said.”

  “I gave her your address.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Have you written her?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “You should, you know.”

  “Yes.”

  “A postcard would do.”

  “Yes.”

  “In that letter you got from her,” the older man said, looking away. “Did she mention me?”

  “I don’t think she did,” Jackson said, and wished that he had lied.

  “No, I don’t suppose she would’ ve.” He sipped his sherry again, put down the menu, and said, “Well, what’s all this about your going to Europe? Something for the Government, I take it.”

  “No, not really.”

  “I was assuming that you might have found something permanent.”

  “Not yet.”

  After that there was a silence until they ordered, and then the elder Jackson talked about the weather and his law practice until the food was served. As he was cutting into his steak, the father, not looking at his son, said, “Have you thought much about settling down, raising a
family?”

  “Not much.”

  “What are you now—thirty-two, thirty-three?”

  “Almost thirty-three.”

  “What about diplomacy? You might be cut out for that. You have your languages. If you’re interested, I know some people in Washington who might be helpful.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “May I ask why?”

  Jackson shrugged. “It’s dull”

  “Dull?”

  “Yes.”

  The father lowered his knife and fork and stared at his son. “Everything’s dull. It has to be.”

  “The war wasn’t. It might have been boring at times, but not dull. There’s a difference.”

  “I fail to distinguish it.”

  “Many people couldn’t”

  The elder Jackson took a bite of his creamed spinach, chewed it carefully, as though worried about his digestion, and said, “That work you did for Bill Donovan’s organization; was that useful?”

  “Some of it.”

  “Interesting?”

  “At times.”

  “Perhaps you should have stayed in the Army—made a career of it.”

  “I stayed in six years and came out a captain. I think that demonstrates a certain lack of ambition or political acumen on my part—probably both.”

  “Well, I know it’s a bit late for me to be playing the role of the wise father, but you’re really going to have to decide on something sensible soon.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Yes,” Jackson said. “Why?”

  The father leaned forward and spoke very carefully and slowly to make sure that he was understood. “Because for a man of your background there is really no alternative.”

  “There’s one.”

  “Yes? What?”

  “I could marry money,” Jackson said, but when he saw the flush spread up his father’s bony cheeks, he wished that he hadn’t.

  12

  The General’s wife didn’t like her seat in the DC-4, and so she ordered the steward, a harried Air Corps buck sergeant, to change it for her. A squabble resulted, because the Lieutenant Colonel’s wife didn’t Want to be moved and protested bitterly until the General’s wife pulled rank, using a harsh whiskey baritone to pull it with. The Lieutenant Colonel’s wife, the lowest-ranking officer’s wife aboard the packed plane, turned white at some of the words that the General’s wife used, but said nothing and meekly settled into her new seat.

  When the squabble started, the plane was nearly an hour out of New York, heading for its first stop at Gander, Newfoundland. The whiskey baritone had awakened the man sleeping in the seat next to Jackson. He was a stocky, red-faced civilian of about forty who had been asleep when Jackson came on board and had even slept through the takeoff. Now he was awake, irritably so, and smacking his lips as though something tasted bad.

  “Bitches,” he said and looked at Jackson. “I had it all measured out, you know.”

  “What?”

  “The booze. I drank just enough so that I could make it to the plane, sack out, and then not wake up till Gander. Now I got a head and mouthful of wet sand. You Government?”

  “No.”

  “Good. I’m Bill Swanton, INS. One of Willie Hearst’s drudges.” Swanton held out his hand, and Jackson shook it.

  “Minor Jackson. I’ve seen your by-line.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  “I didn’t think you were Government. With that tan, maybe an actor or a comic that the USO was sending over; but you’re not an actor either, are you?”

  “I’m sort of a glorified tourist, really,” Jackson said, deciding to get the labeling out of the way. “A publisher in New York thought I might write him a book about post-war Germany. I don’t know if I can or not. I’ve never written a book. But he was willing to pay me a little money to find out.”

  That satisfied Swanton. “There’s a hell of a book to be written about it,” he said. “You speak German?”

  “Yes, I speak it.”

  “Then you got it made. Ninety-nine percent of the dopes they send over here don’t speak a word.”

  “Where’re you assigned now?” Jackson said. “Berlin?”

  “Yeah, that’s where the news is, because that’s where they run it from, although God knows why. Berlin’s a mess. But so’s the whole fucking country.”

  “So I hear.”

  Swanton produced a cigarette and then made a face after he had lit it. “Jesus, that tastes awful. I’d give my left you-know-what for a drink.”

  The last thing that Jackson had done in New York was to buy a topcoat at Tripler’s. It was a warm, fleecy lamb’s-wool coat with small houndstooth checks and raglan sleeves and big, deep pockets. Because the plane was chilly, he was still wearing it. He reached into one of its pockets and brought out the flask that Ploscaru had given him.

  “Here,” he said. “Try this.”

  The smile that appeared on Swanton’s face was one of pure gratitude. “By God, Brother Jackson,” he said, accepting the flask, “they’ll canonize you for this.”

  Swanton took a long drink and sighed. “That’s better,” he said after a moment. “Much better.”

  “Have another.”

  “No, that’s enough for now.”

  “We’ll keep it handy, then,” Jackson said, took a small swallow, and placed the flask in the space between them.

  Swanton settled back in his seat, took a musing pull on his cigarette, blew the smoke out, and in a philosophical tone that seemed much practiced said, “You know what one of the real problems is?”

  “With Germany?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What?”

  “Them,” Swanton said, and made a gesture with his cigarette that took in the entire planeload of women. “The bitches. Or rather, their husbands. You know who their husbands are?”

  “Officers, it would seem.”

  “Yeah, well, you know which officers they are?”

  “No.”

  “They’re the contemporaries of Eisenhower, Bradley, and Mark Clark, guys like that. Except when the war came along they didn’t get jumped from lieutenant colonel to four-star general. No, these were guys who’d sat around for ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty years as first lieutenants and captains. But when the war started we had to have officers, so these guys got jumped up to light colonel, or colonel, or maybe even buck general. But they weren’t given a line outfit. Instead they got shipped out to Wyoming to run Camp Despair, or whatever it was called. Or maybe they rode a desk in Washington. A lot of them were Cavalry types.”

  Swanton took another deep pull on his cigarette, blew out the smoke, and continued. “So when the war ended, these guys had a choice. They could either go back to their permanent ranks of captain or major or whatever, or they could keep on being colonels and generals, provided they got themselves sent to Germany to take over the occupation. Well, shit, you never saw such wire-pulling. Some of them even resorted to blackmail, except I can’t prove that. And so that’s who you’ve got running the occupation—a lot of it, anyway—guys who can’t see how running a destroyed town of 10,000 or so with no heat, no lights, no water, and people starving to death can be much different from running a Cavalry remount post in West Kansas, which was probably their last job.”

  Swanton lapsed into a brooding silence for a moment, but brightened when Jackson offered him the flask again. After a drink, Swanton lit another cigarette and said, “Remember nonfraternization?”

  Jackson nodded. “It didn’t work out too well.”

  “It didn’t work because the GI’s wouldn’t stand for it. So Ike, the great compromiser, decided that it was okay for GI’s to fraternize with children—little kids. Real little ones. But that rule didn’t last long either, so now the GI’s can screw anyone they want to, although there’re still some kind of dumb rules about not having Germans into your home.”

  Swanton was silent for a moment and then
asked, “You know what the burning issues are now?”

  “What?”

  “Denazification and Democratization.” He shook his head over the awkwardness of the words. “I’m no Nazi sympathizer, but the fucking country’s half starving and it’s going to be another cold winter and there’s not going to be any coal again and a lot of ’em haven’t got any place to live, so I’ve decided that maybe the Russians are right.”

  “How?”

  “Well, everybody in the American Zone had to fill out the Fragebogen.” He looked sharply at Jackson to see if he understood the German word.

  “Questionnaire.”

  “Yeah, questionnaire. It’s a six-page job with a hundred and thirty-one questions to determine if you are now or ever were a big, medium, or little Nazi or none of the above. Some Scheisskopf has even decided that if you joined the Nazis after ’37 or so, it’s not as bad as if you joined back in ’33. Well, shit that doesn’t make any sense, if you think about it for half a minute. Back in ’33 there was a hell of a depression in Germany. You might have joined then out of desperation more than conviction. But by ’37 it wasn’t so easy to join, and by then, by God, you had a pretty good idea of what being a Nazi meant. But the Russians, well, they don’t give much of a shit whether anybody was a Nazi or not. What they did was, they shot a lot of them, if their records were real bad, and put the rest to work. They’d say ‘You guys used to be Nazi engineers, right? Well, you’re not Nazi engineers anymore, you’re Commie engineers, understand?’ And, like always the Germans would say, ‘Führer befehl—wir folgen’ and go out and fix the steam plant.”

  Swanton shook his head again. “So that’s how it stands. We’re denazifying them, whatever that means, and the Russians have got ’em out fixing the gas works. As for how we’re gonna make small-d democrats out of ’em, I don’t know.”

  “You like them, don’t you?” Jackson said.