Rally Round the Flag, Boys!

by Max Shulman

  “I ain’t got a house,” said Harry, choking back a sob.

  Walker patted him clumsily on the back. “That’s all right, pal. We’ll go to my place. It’s nice and cozy.”

  Linking arms, the four troubled souls went off to Walker’s nice, cozy room in the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters on the Nike base.

  On Colonel Thorwald’s plate there were six clams, a two-and-a-half pound lobster, a filet of flounder, a baked potato, and two ears of sweet corn, all done to a turn by the Men’s Auxiliary of the Women’s Club for the traditional Putnam’s Landing Independence Day clambake. But the Colonel had no appetite. Ever since he had arrived at Ram’s Head Beach and stopped the rumble and handed down his terrible, swift judgments on Guido, Walker, and Opie, he had been besieged by irate townsmen who came around to register complaints against the United States Army. To all of them the Colonel had replied with soft answers and promises of reform, but they had not been noticeably mollified.

  Now the Colonel stood with his hands full of seafood and tried to patch things up with the real powers of Putnam’s Landing—Manning Thaw, Isaac Goodpasture, George Melvin, and their coterie. “Gentlemen,” he said, smiling strenuously, “naturally there are bound to be little frictions in a situation of this kind, but don’t you worry, we’ll work them out. The important thing, as you know, is that we’ve established a combat-ready base here—a vital link in our chain of national defenses.”

  “How would we know that?” asked Isaac Goodpasture. “We’ve never been allowed to set foot on your Nike base.”

  “Why, that’s terrible!” cried the Colonel. “Would you like to see the base?”

  “We got a right to, ain’t we?” said Manning Thaw. “It’s part of our town, ain’t it?”

  “It most certainly is!” declared the Colonel. “That’s exactly the way I want you to feel: the Nike base is a part of your town.”

  “Let’s go see it then,” said Isaac.

  “Now?” said the Colonel.

  “Why not?” said George Melvin.

  “But aren’t the fireworks starting soon?” said the Colonel.

  “We seen fireworks,” said Manning Thaw. “What we ain’t seen is the Nike base.”

  “Very well, gentlemen,” said the Colonel, setting down his plate. “Let’s go!”

  Walker Hoxie’s lodging at the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters were furnished with Spartan simplicity—just an army cot, a wooden chair, and a pine chest—but there was plenty of room on the floor, and that is where the four unfortunates now lay.

  They were conducting a species of musicale, antiphonal and loud. Harry was singing Small Hotel, Walker was singing The Caissons Go Rolling Along, Guido was singing Baby, It’s Cold Outside, and Opie was singing his own composition The Floyd Collins Polka and at the same time accompanying himself and all the others on his guitar.

  There was a knocking on the door. It continued for several minutes, but nobody heard. At length the door opened and Private Roger Litwhiler, wearing a helmet liner and carrying a carbine, stepped inside. “Sirs,” he said nervously. “Sirs! Sirs! Oh, sirs!”

  “Howdy, hoss,” said Opie genially. “Have a snort.” He extended a bottle of whisky to Private Roger Litwhiler.

  Private Roger Litwhiler drew back in horror. “Oh, no!” he said. “I’m pulling guard. I’m supposed to be at the gate right now. Please listen to me, everybody. I’ve got to get back to my post. Please listen!”

  “Gimme your gun,” said Harry, snatching the carbine. “There’s somebody I wanna kill.”

  Private Roger Litwhiler retrieved his weapon. “Please!” he shouted desperately. “Listen to me! Colonel Thorwald just drove in with a bunch of people. He’s over in the IFC Area now, showing ’em around. Then he’s coming back here to the Launching Area. You guys better get out before he gets here!”

  “Is that the way to report to an officer?” said Walker, flat on his back. “Take off your hat and salute.”

  “Or take off your salute and hat,” said Guido, giggling.

  They all found this a delicious piece of badinage and laughed for upwards of sixty seconds, rolling over and over on the floor.

  “Look, I can’t stay away from my post any longer!” said Private Roger Litwhiler frantically. “Opie, for God’s sake, get these guys out of here before you all end up in Leavenworth—and me too!”

  He pulled Opie to his feet and slapped his face a dozen times, Opie grinning immensely through all of it. “Okay, okay, hoss, Ah’ll git ’em out,” said Opie amiably.

  Private Roger Litwhiler ran back to his post, and Opie raised up his three comrades and propped them against the wall. “Frinds,” he said, “we got to hide.”

  “Not it!” said Harry.

  “Now come along,” said Opie. “Y’all get a holt of me.”

  He fastened their limp hands to his shirt and led them, stumbling and lurching, out of the BOQ. Once outside he looked around for a hiding place. To go off the post was clearly impossible; the gate was almost a hundred yards away. It would have to be someplace closer. Opie swivelled his head around, trying to get the landscape to stop waving. His companions, meanwhile, sang a medley of Oh, Susannah, the Hut-Sut Song, and A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.

  Then Opie saw the launching pits where the Nikes were stored. “Perfeck!” said he enthusiastically. “Dork and deep and quiet. Frinds, into the pits!”

  He pushed, rolled, and hefted them over to a steep metal staircase that descended thirty feet to the bottom of the pit. Once he got them to the head of the stairs, the rest was easy; he simply released them and listened to them bounce softly down. Then he went down himself, giggling happily as he thumped along the stairs.

  The pit was a huge concrete box. Overhead were massive steel doors, now closed. On the floor directly beneath each set of doors was a steel platform that could be raised hydraulically to the surface. On each platform was a rocket launcher. On each launcher, lying flat, was a slim, white Nike, gleaming eerily in a shaft of moonlight coming down the staircase.

  “What’s those ugly things?” asked Harry, pointing at the Nikes.

  “Ugly!” cried Walker, outraged. “They’re beautiful! Most beautiful damn things I ever saw in my life,” he said tenderly and went and put his arms around a Nike and laid his cheek on the cold white skin.

  “Yeah?” said Harry and went and put his arms around a Nike and laid his cheek on the cold white skin.

  “Beautiful!” repeated Walker. “Ain’t it beautiful?”

  “I don’t think it’s so beautiful,” said Harry.

  “You’re drunk!” Walker said and turned away from Harry in disgust. “Anybody bring a bottle?” he asked.

  “I got one,” said Guido.

  “Where are you? It’s dark in here,” said Walker.

  “Over here,” said Guido, and Walker went stumbling over to him.

  “Not beautiful,” muttered Harry, looking over his Nike. “Ugly … And dirty too,” he added, flicking a greasy red tag on the Nike’s nose. There were three other such tags along the length of the Nike. “Tell you what I’ll do,” said Harry to the Nike. “I’ll clean you up a little and see how you look.” He removed the four red tags and examined the Nike again. “Still ugly,” he pronounced.

  “Gimme a drink, Guido,” said Walker to Guido.

  “I’m Opie,” said Opie to Walker.

  “Where’s Guido?” said Walker to Opie.

  “Over here,” said Guido to Walker.

  Walker found him in the darkness. “Gimme a drink,” he said.

  “First tell me what you are,” said Guido.

  “I forget,” said Walker.

  “Think,” said Guido.

  Walker thought. “Oh, now I remember … I am a resurgence of the brute mind.”

  “Good boy!” said Guido and handed Walker a bottle.

  Walker tilted it back.

  “Hey, Walker,” called Harry, still clutching the Nike. “You wanna know something? Nike’s ugly! Ugly, d’you hear? Ugl
y!”

  “Oh, for Chrisake!” exclaimed Walker. “I leave it to you guys. Is Nike beautiful?”

  “Purty as a colt,” said Opie.

  “Gorgeous,” said Guido.

  “I don’t see it,” said Harry.

  “Of course you don’t see it!” said Walker. “Too goddam dark down here. Let’s get it up where you can get a look at it.”

  He lurched to a control board behind a bunker and pressed the button that operated the hydraulic lift. The steel doors at the top of the pit yawned open. The platform, carrying Harry and the missile, moved slowly upward to the surface. As the platform rose—and Harry watched goggled-eyed—the launcher automatically elevated itself. By the time the platform reached the top, the Nike stood in its almost vertical takeoff position. “I’ll be damned!” muttered Harry admiringly.

  “Hey!” came Walker’s faint voice, calling up the staircase. “What do you think now?”

  Harry cocked his head, closed one eye, and made a careful study of the Nike, standing tall and slender and white against the starry sky.

  “I changed my mind,” yelled Harry. “It’s beautiful!”

  “You goddam right!” called Walker up the staircase.

  “This, gentlemen,” said Colonel Thorwald, conducting the Yankees on a tour of the IFC Area, “is called the BC van—the Battery Control van. Here is where the Nike is actually fired. It takes off from the other area, a mile away, but the trigger, so to speak, is right here—this little switch.”

  He pointed at an ordinary toggle switch on the control board.

  “Hey, careful!” cried George Melvin nervously. “You almost touched that thing.”

  The Colonel chuckled. “It wouldn’t matter if I did,” he said. “Nike has one of the most foolproof safety systems ever devised. First of all, in order to launch a missile, the battery must be on what is called ‘Red Alert’—and we are never on ‘Red Alert’ unless enemy planes have actually been identified in the vicinity … However, I want to show you just how safe Nike is. For a few seconds, I’m going to put the battery on ‘Red Alert.’” The Colonel punched the RED button on the control board. Instantly sirens screamed, lights flashed, and the radarscopes sprang into life.

  The Yankees huddled together, looking extremely perturbed.

  “It’s all right, gentlemen,” said the Colonel soothingly, “I just want to prove to you that you have nothing to fear from Nike … We are now on ‘Red Alert.’ But still a missile cannot be launched. Why? Because nobody over in the Launching Area has raised a missile to the surface … But let us say that somebody, through some incredible error, had raised a Nike to launching position. It still would not take off. Do you know why?”

  “Why?” said Isaac Goodpasture.

  “Because,” said the Colonel, “as a final, foolproof, last-minute precaution, there are four red tags on each Nike that have to be removed by hand before the Nike can take off!”

  “Sounds pretty safe,” said Manning Thaw.

  “Foolproof!” said the Colonel firmly. “Go ahead, Mr. Thaw. Push the button yourself.”

  “Oh, I don’t really care to,” said Manning, drawing back.

  “Go ahead,” insisted the Colonel. “I want you to reassure yourself.”

  “Well—” said Manning.

  “Go ahead,” said the Colonel.

  “Oh, all right,” said Manning and flipped the switch.

  And in the bleachers on Ram’s Head Beach the folks were sitting and watching the traditional Fourth of July fireworks display sponsored by Volunteer Hose Company No. 4.

  First there were the set pieces—flaming flags and Washington crossing the Delaware and other patriotic scenes. Then came the pinwheels and fountains. And then, best of all, came the skyrockets.

  The first rocket was a bombshell of blue and yellow and white.

  “Ah!” said the crowd.

  Next came a starburst of red, green, and orange, followed by a second burst of dazzling white.

  “Aaah!” said the crowd.

  Next came a double shower of green, pink and gold on the one side and lavender, yellow and white on the other.

  “Aaaaaaah!” said the crowd.

  Next came a spreader star that threw out every color of the rainbow in a series of multiplying bursts.

  “Aaaaaaaaaah!” said the crowd.

  And then came something never seen in the memory of the oldest inhabitant. It started from the ground, throwing out a huge, wide flare-path of white with red and blue edges, and it went up, up, up, never dimming, never diminishing, and it climbed higher and higher and higher, still glowing, and up and up it went, up, up, up, blazing all the way, up, up, up, still burning, and up some more, higher than any sky-rocket had ever gone, higher than any airplane, igniting the summer sky, flaming like a comet, rising higher and higher and still higher and still higher, blazing, blasting, burning bright, and climbing up and up and up and up and out of sight.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” said the crowd.

  EPILOGUE

  And so, with the night sky blazing, our drama crunches to a close.

  And what of the souls roiled and tumbled in the maelstrom? Eh? What of them?

  Well, sir, here is what happened:

  Three days after the Fourth of July, Maggie Larkin, carrying a suitcase, was on the way to the railroad station to catch a train home to her mother and father when she came upon young Daniel Bannerman skipping down the street.

  “Hello, Daniel,” said she.

  “Hi, Miss Larkin,” said he.

  “How are you?” said she.

  “Oh, I am so happy!” he cried, his earnest young eyes aglow. “We’re in first place, you know!”

  He then proceeded to tell her how the scrubs had persuaded Guido not to send them into the ball game on the Fourth of July, and Maggie, learning the truth for the first time, was filled with shame and pity. She thought how unfair, how cruel, she had been to Guido. She had refused to open the door for him when he came around to explain, refused to answer the phone. She had sent the poor wretch off to the tundras of Alaska without so much as a goodbye.

  So heavy was Maggie’s heart when she arrived at the railroad station, so laden with contrition, that she did not take a train to the home of her family, but went instead to New York City and boarded an airliner for Alaska that very same day and fell into Guido’s arms and tearfully begged his forgiveness.

  It was, of course, forthcoming. Three days later they were married and today they live in a quonset hut and are without doubt one of the most devoted couples north of Moose Jaw.

  On August 8, Harry Bannerman, aching with loneliness after five weeks’ separation from Grace, was sitting in his dreary hotel room in Manhattan when the telephone rang. He reached for it reluctantly. Angela Hoffa had been calling him every evening without fail; also without success. But this time it was not Angela phoning. It was Grace.

  “Grace, honey, baby!” he shouted joyfully.

  “I would like you to come home, please,” she said in a quiet, expressionless voice. “Bring your things.”

  “Oh, wonderful!” he cried, scarcely able to contain himself. “Wonderful!”

  But the minute he came bursting into his house in Putnam’s Landing, Grace put a damper on his enthusiasm. “Let’s get one thing one thing straight immediately,” she said, holding him at arm’s length. “I haven’t asked you home to forgive and forget. I still feel exactly the way I felt when I sent you away. That hasn’t changed one bit … However, something new has come up, and I’d like you to move back into the house—temporarily, I mean.”

  “What’s come up?” asked Harry.

  “I found out this morning that I’m pregnant,” said Grace.

  “Oh,” said Harry.

  “After the baby is born,” she continued, “we can work out a permanent separation, but until then, I’m afraid I’m going to need your help around here—if you’re willing, that is.”

 
“Of course,” said Harry.

  “You understand that this is no way a reconciliation?”

  “You mean I’m to stay out of your bed.”

  “I do.”

  “All right, Grace. Any way you want it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  So for the next six months Harry, true to his word, lived with Grace as her nominal husband. To the world, to their children, they presented a front of solid connubiality; in private they kept their distance. At first Harry attempted an occasional tender overture—a sigh, a sidelong glance, a batting of the lashes—but Grace always replied with such a frost that he finally gave it up.

  But all the time Grace’s resolution was weakening. Externally she was adamant; on the inside there was galloping erosion. More and more she doubted her own doubts. Was it really possible that Harry did not love her? In spite of all his transgressions, could that light in his eyes be anything but true, deep, abiding devotion?

  On January 19 she went to the Putnam’s Landing Hospital and gave birth to the baby—their first daughter, for whom the name Martha had long been waiting—and when Grace was brought down from the delivery room and found Harry leaning over her, kissing her hands, weeping with joy and relief, she was once and for all, convinced: This man loved her; this foolish, antic, mercurial, man-type man loved her beyond the doubting of it.

  Grace did a heap of thinking in the hospital, and she came home with a very intelligent plan. “Harry,” she said, “you and I are going to have a little holiday, just the two of us.”

  “Oh, wonderful!” cried Harry jubilantly. “Let’s go to the Concord and have a good rest and swim in the indoor pool and eat some of that wonderful food.”

  “Yes,” said Grace, “the Concord is very nice and the food is divine, but I had something a bit more ambitious in mind.”

  “Yes?” said Harry.

  “As you know,” she continued, “my mother sent me a nice check when the baby was born, and I think, as an investment in our future, we ought to spend it on a real vacation.”

  Harry’s eyes widened. “Where will we go?” he asked.

  She produced the travel section of the Sunday Times. “I studied this very carefully in the hospital,” she said, “and here’s something that sounds just perfect: In Cuba there’s a place called Veradero Beach—fifteen miles of soft, clean, white sand—and right on Veradero Beach there’s a beautiful new resort called the Oasis. It’s got the sea on one side and a salt water pool on the other, big air-conditioned rooms, superb cuisine, water skiing, fishing, palm trees, trade winds, tropical sun, tropical moon, tropical stars, mambo and cha-cha, planter’s punch, and siesta every afternoon!”