by James Salter
No sound except for the clock. Beyond the windows the night is fading, smooth from the passage of hours. Exhausted from the same dream over and over, Isbell wakes. His eyes see nothing. It’s silent and cold. He lies in bed aching, too ancient to move. Out there somewhere, more silent still, in the matted grass the wreckages lie, blown apart in the darkness, wet as the ground. They are miles from each other yet they are one. The earth is soft from the rain. The marks of tires in it are blurring, the print of feet. The photographers have yet to come. A mournful stillness covers it all.
He looks toward the windows. It’s close to daybreak. The paleness of dawn. He is writing his statement again, sitting at a desk in base operations, the one survivor, strong but shaken, putting it down while it’s fresh. The pen feels like a stick in his fingers. He writes automatically, as if copying something. What he is writing he doesn’t know. They are walking in and out almost aimlessly, back from the scene. Their shoes are muddy. He can hear the talking plainly. Occasionally he is asked a question. The flight surgeon has gone off to get some sleeping pills though Isbell has said he doesn’t need any. “You might.” Isbell is too tired to argue.
Dunning’s hand is there on his shoulder. The hand is consoling, but it’s impossible to write with it there. After a while Dunning walks away and Isbell resumes, adding one sentence to another. It seems endless. It requires so much time. He is listening, writing, and thinking all at once. The overheard words beat in on him strangely. He’s far off, thinking of different things entirely, drawn into a kind of dream of what it was like six hours, a day, a month before. A time of innocence. He longs for it like a murderer. He yearns for the past. Around him they are discussing it in lowered voices. He knows how long it will go on, turning into testimony, transcripts, findings. The board will meet, the attached documents mount up. That there should begin the long, careful process of determining exactly what caused the accident is right, but it will only reveal the facts. He could almost save them the trouble. He could put it all in a single phrase, but it would be too incomprehensible, too derelict. Somewhere within him there was, there could still be, a flaw. It could never have occurred otherwise.
He sits on the edge of the bed, then stands by the window. The low clouds are still there. He can make them out, smooth as a river. The sky is close to the earth, just beginning to appear. Beneath his naked feet the floor is cold. He stands shivering, alone. The reaction is always delayed, the shaking. His knee hurts. He had somehow twisted it, it feels stiff and unbending.
“What’s wrong?”
Marian’s voice is husky. She is up on one elbow. In the half-light her face is soft and wondering, like a child’s. The dark hair around it is pressed by sleep.
“What are you doing? Are you all right?”
“Nothing. I’m just thinking.”
She takes a deep, sympathetic breath. “Can’t you sleep?”
He wants to embrace her instead of answering, the look of her, the loyalty. At that moment she seems everything in life.
In Puerto Rico, sighing at midnight, they are aware of nothing. Cassada’s mother is sleeping, his cousins and friends. He still exists there, this last night. He shines in their sleep like an exploded star, the son who was killed in Germany in a flying accident, the only son.
“Try and sleep,” Marian murmurs and falls back to the bed, rolling onto her side and hitting at the pillow once or twice to make it right. In a minute she is gone.
He is left thinking. The events of the evening before, as distinct as when they were happening, loom up like a wall and repeat themselves over and over. He tries to change them but they are unalterable. He tries to think of something else. We parted without a word. There were many things he’d intended to say, that he might have said, given time. Now that it is too late he is certain that Cassada bore something unique, something they had missed, the sum of their destinies. It was true Isbell had sometimes opposed him. It had been essential to. It was part of the unfolding.
The clouds are heavy in the dawn. Beneath, the world is in shadow. Above, there is sunlight, unseen. Beyond, the invisible stars. Cassada, too, had been unable to say certain things. He hadn’t the power to. All that was to come.
To die is to sink from the sight of this world,” the chaplain intones, voice filling the quiet. “It is to sink from the sight of this world and to rise again in God.”
The air is stuffy, as if the windows have not been opened in a long time. Isbell and his wife are in the first row, along with the Dunnings. Wickenden sits two rows behind and Harlan a row behind that, next to the aisle, worrying something out of his back teeth with his tongue.
“It is to attain Christ,” the chaplain says, “to be reborn to life, to enter into pure light. We think of this young officer and involuntarily we exclaim: how short, how brief a life. In the midst, in the very fullness of it, he is gone.”
Someone, a woman, gives a short, quavering sigh.
“And still,” says the chaplain, “what an example he affords. To give one’s life in the service of your country. To die a hero’s death. It’s a story we cannot hear without wonder and admiration. A short life, yes, but the number of years in itself is nothing, nor is it given to us to know when God will call us or what circumstances He will elect.”
The order was, everyone in a blouse. With ribbons. Wickenden had decided to wear only the Victory Medal but changed his mind at the last minute and was wearing nothing but the Purple Heart.
“That the only one you have?” Dunning asked.
“It’s the only one I value, Major,” Wickenden said.
Bored, Wickenden glances at the windows, high up in the wall. Only the bottoms of them are stained; the tops are clear glass. Through them bright sky can be seen, sunlight coming down between the clouds in dazzling, thick columns. A perfect day for flying. And here we sit, he thinks.
“I remember the very day,” the chaplain is saying, “as I am sure you do. I remember how grey and dreary it was, ending in rain, and as I do, I think of him trying to come home through it, to return safe to port, as it were, after a hazardous voyage. I think of him as he strove through darkness seeking to fulfill his mission, to land his airplane while heroically guiding another pilot, his leader, who would have been lost without him.”
Wickenden feels scorn. His wife is looking down at her shoes. He was right, he was right all along. That can be a bad thing, but at the moment it doesn’t matter. He feels only the satisfaction of it, of having been redeemed. Phil, his wife, turns her head a little and for a moment they look into each other’s eyes. Then she withdraws. She is not that unpitying or cold. She lifts her head and watches the chaplain.
He’s pouring it on, Wickenden thinks in disgust. I always thought the Catholics didn’t have any sermons. Don’t know what gave me that idea. They have them, all right. They can hold their own with any of them.
“That he failed to save himself,” says the chaplain, “seems to me a measure of the man. That he sought to save another, there is the answer and the mark of his worthiness. He rose to the challenge. Is there greater praise? It may not be given to many of us to be tested as Lieutenant Cassada was—the Lord decides—but it is given to us to strive, as he did, through the darkness and to seek salvation.
“What he did succeed in doing was to give us an example of courage and duty we will never forget. I ask you now to pray for him with me. He may not be beyond the help of prayer.”
Isbell, subdued though not by anything he is hearing, is thinking of what he would give to have it not have happened. He is almost sickened by it, the guilt. Cassada himself stands before him, fair-haired, his small mouth and teeth, young, unbeholden. There was an elegance about him, a superiority. You did not find it often.
Behind him someone is sobbing. Someone blows their nose. Striving through darkness—among the few words he will remember. That much at least is true.
It was his beauty, of course, a beauty that no one saw—they were blind to such a thing—except per
haps for Ferguson who was an outsider himself, but even Mayann Dunning with her acute sensitivity to the masculine missed it. By beauty, nothing obvious is meant. It was an aspect of the unquenchable, of the martyr, but this quality had its physical accompaniment. His shoulders were luminous, his body male but not hard, his hair disobedient. Few of them had seen him naked, not that he concealed himself or was modest but like some animal come to drink he was solitary and unboisterous. He was intelligent but not cerebral and could be worshipful, as in the case of airplanes. He would be remembered not as the chaplain described him but in certain recollections, someone seen and not forgotten like the god who raised his hand at the farmboys, filling their meager hearts.
At length it was over. Everyone stood. Isbell saw it was Jackie Grace behind them. She sat, tears running down her cheeks, people pretending not to look at her. Up the aisle they walk, heads bowed. Among the women tears could begin by just one of them starting to cry. In the vestibule Grace is waiting for his wife. He shrugs a little, helplessly, as Godchaux passes.
On the sidewalk outside they stand gathered, the women holding their hats on in the wind. As the last people come through the doors there is the sound of planes and they look up. Two flights of four in trail. Only seven ships however. The number three position in the first flight is empty. Directly overhead they come across the chapel, covering it with noise. The chaplain hurries out to look, but too late. They’re gone. The deep noise is borne off by the wind. Good-bye, Isbell thinks. Something pulls at his heart. The chaplain is looking around as if the planes might come back, as if he has merely missed the opening act.
Wickenden’s wife is digging in her pocketbook for a handkerchief. “I can’t help it,” she says, touching her eyes. “It’s that missing one. It always makes me sad.”
“One of the few real things left,” Wickenden says.
“Every time I see it. I can’t help it.”
“At least they were right on time,” he says. “They looked pretty good.”
“I still think you should do it, his own squadron.”
“Who’d go to the services then? The 72nd?”
“I guess it can’t be that way,” she says, bowing again to his logic.
“It’s a good idea, but I don’t think they’d buy it.”
Eyes red, trying to smile, Jackie Grace wanders about. Every time another woman takes her hand she breaks into tears.
“Poor Jackie,” Wickenden’s wife says.
“Hard to understand.”
“What do you mean?”
“Imagine what she’d be like if it was Grace we were burying.”
“Oh, you are a hard man.”
As they are getting ready to drive off, Dumfries comes up and taps on the window. Wickenden rolls it down.
“Captain, are we supposed to go back to the squadron this afternoon?”
“I haven’t heard any different. Have you?”
“No, sir. I thought I’d better ask.”
“What do you want to do, go play with Laurie?”
“Sir?”
“Forget it. What I meant to say was, regardless of what the chaplain said I don’t think they’ve made this a national holiday yet.”
“We have to go back, then?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. That’s what I thought.”
A moment later he returns.
“I’ll be out of your way in just a minute,” he says, pointing to his car which is wedged in close to theirs.
“Good.”
He smiles and waves a little as he trots off. His wife, looking demure as a bridesmaid, is waiting for him to unlock the door for her. She turns towards the Wickendens’ car and smiles, too.
Dumfries pulls out with Wickenden right behind him. The speed limit is fifteen miles an hour which he dutifully observes. The road curves around the commissary and up a small hill. At the top the rolling landscape and valleys are visible. The chapel below is in sunlight, a few people still standing outside the door.
“Well, they should have listened to you.”
“Sometimes you wonder why you even bother,” Wickenden says. “You can’t reason with people. It’s a waste of time.”
“They should have listened to you.”
“They know everything already.”
“But who was really in a better position to know?”
“They think I’m pigheaded.”
“Maybe after this they’ll listen.”
“Because it turned out I was right?”
“Yes.”
“I doubt it. Usually it works out just the opposite.”
“It’s really a shame.”
“The accident?”
“That you’re not in charge.”
“I know.”
A glass in one hand, Mayann regards herself in the mirror, turns slightly one way, then the other, puts the glass down on the night table, and somewhat too deliberately smooths her dress around the hips where it looked a little tight. She looks for the cigarette she had a minute ago, but it isn’t there. It’s in the bathroom or living room or both. She has a sip of the drink and closer to the mirror examines her eyes. Still young. Young enough. She takes a deep, nostalgic breath. For some reason she thinks of driving, being driven, leaning back in the seat, the road pouring by. The night wind, the radio on. A little cool jazz. All those times, she thinks. There is the sound of a key in the lock and the door closing.
“Bud?”
“Damn cold out,” Dunning says, coming down the hallway. “It’s winter again.”
He stands in the doorway. Mayann nods at her glass.
“Want to join me?”
“What have you been doing, having a little party?”
“Having a drink.”
“A drink.”
“I may have another.”
“That’s a surprise.”
“You’ve never had a drink?”
He looks at her and looks away.
“Well, how’d it go?” she says. “Kill anyone else today?”
“What in the hell’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Forget what I said.”
“I don’t consider that funny. Neither should you. I see you didn’t bother to change your dress.”
“So? You didn’t change your uniform.”
“I work in my uniform.”
“You work wearing all your medals?”
“You wear them sometimes. What are you getting at? I gave the order to wear them. Wickenden didn’t bother to obey it.”
“Seems like you have more of them than you used to. Can that be? You don’t have any duplicates in there, do you?”
“Just what’s bothering you?”
“What’s that one again?” she says, pointing.
“What’s what one?”
“Purple Heart, right?”
“Stop it.”
“Don’t get angry. I just forget what they all are. God, there’s enough of them. Little bronze doodads. You must have more than anybody. You earned them, I know.”
“Each and every one of them.”
“I’m just happy to see you haven’t lost any, misplaced them somewhere. I mean, they’re very small. Compared to other things.”
“Now what does that mean?”
“That’s for me to know, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know if you really know anything. You don’t act like it. Is there any beer in the refrigerator?”
“Search me.”
“Thanks.”
“You don’t have to thank me. Search me, that’s all. I don’t know.”
Dunning goes to find a beer, opens it, and comes out of the kitchen cleaning the lip of the bottle with his palm. He sits down with the newspaper. For a minute or so he reads in silence.
“Didn’t that sicken you a little today?” Mayann asks.
There is a soft sound as Dunning, not answering, turns the page.
“What?” he fi
nally says.
“Didn’t that make you a little sick today?”
“Didn’t what make me sick?”
“That sermon. All that stuff. Doesn’t anybody tell these chaplains what’s really going on?”
Dunning takes a swallow of beer and sets the bottle down again. He turns another page and unbuttons his blouse. His shirt is tight over his belly. From across the room his wife looks at him, big legs stretched out in front of him.
“Why doesn’t somebody clue them in?” she says.
“Fine. Why don’t you?”
“I’m hardly the one to do that.”
“You can say that again,” Dunning says.
“You bastard.”
“Watch yourself. Enough’s enough, you know what I mean?”
“It was so phony. That wasn’t the way it happened.”
“It was something like that,” Dunning said wearily.
“It wasn’t right,” she insisted. “It was just words.”
“Maybe you’d like to be the chaplain.”
“No, I want you to answer me.”
“Answer you what?”
“You know what I mean. Don’t you feel it?”
“I’ve got a lot more to worry about than the chaplain.” He lowers the newspaper. “In case you don’t know it, I might get relieved. I might lose the squadron.”
Mayann is silent but feels a chill. Although she doesn’t care about the Officers’ Wives Club, she knows she is in a position not to care. They have to respect her, but not if she weren’t a squadron commander’s wife, if her husband was only another major.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Tell ’em that.”
“It wouldn’t be fair.”
He raises the paper again and mutters a single word,
“Shit.”
After a few moments she says, “Where was Billy today? I didn’t see him.”
Dunning lowers the paper again, looking at her in a way that makes her feel a chill. “What’d you say?” he asks.
“I said where was Billy. I missed seeing him.”
“Billy.”
Her heart jumps. She is certain he is about to say something else, something unthinkable.
