THE CORPS VI - CLOSE COMBAT

by W. E. B Griffin

"Nice people, aren't they?" he said.

  Pick started to agree, but what came out was, "Do you ever see Martha?"

  "I thought you might get around to asking that question. Yes. As a matter of fact, I saw her just before I came over here. And I'm going to have dinner with her tonight."

  Pick grunted.

  "No, I didn't tell her I'd seen you," Carstairs said. "I wasn't sure if you wanted me to; if it would, so to speak, be the thing to do."

  "Tell her, if you like," Pick said. "It doesn't make any difference."

  "You don't plan to call her?"

  "When a woman tells you she doesn't want to marry you, and means it..."

  "I didn't know it had gone that far."

  "How far is far? There doesn't seem much point in calling her, does there?"

  "Is that why you never wrote?"

  "You know about that?"

  "She told me. She was always asking what I'd heard, where you were..."

  "There didn't seem to be much point in writing, either."

  "She won't marry me either, for whatever that's worth," Carstairs said. "But I haven't given up on asking."

  Pick looked at him, and his mouth opened. But he shut it again when Major Frederick Dunn reappeared on the porch, carrying a quart bottle of sour-mash bourbon and three glasses.

  "Let the rector have the fruit juice," Major Dunn announced. "I got us some of Daddy's best sipping whiskey.

  [THREE]

  Jefferson City, Missouri

  1710 Hours 1 November 1942

  Second Lieutenant Robert F. Easterbrook, USMCR, sat at the wheel of a 1936 Chevrolet Two-Door Deluxe, his father's car, and stared out at the Mississippi River. He was parked with the nose of the car against a cable-and-pole barrier; he'd been parked there for three quarters of an hour. In his hand was a bottle of Budweiser beer, now warm and tasting like horse piss. Two empty Bud bottles lay on the floor on the passenger side, and three full bottles, now for sure warm, were in a bag beside it.

  He'd bought a six-pack. Except they didn't come in a box anymore- to conserve paper for the war effort. And to conserve metal, they came in bottles. And to conserve glass, they were deposit-returnable bottles, not the kind you could throw away. And he hadn't been able to purchase the beer on the first try, either. Or the second. There was some kind of a keep-Missouri-clean-and-sober campaign going on. They checked your identity card to see if you were old enough to drink. In the first two places, they seemed overjoyed to learn that he wasn't.

  It's pretty fucking unfair. You 're old enough to get shot at, and you can't buy six lousy bottles of fucking beer. You 're a goddamned commissioned officer, for Christ's sake. People have to salute you, and you still can't buy a beer.

  At the third place he tried, a saloon, the bartender said he was supposed to check IDs, "but what the hell, you're a soldier boy, and what the cops don't see can't hurt me; but don't make a habit of it, huh?" and gave it to him.

  I'm not a "soldier boy"; I'm a Marine. I'm a goddamned officer in The Marine Corps. Not that anybody around here seems to know what that is, or give a good goddamn.

  On the Mississippi, an old-fashioned tug with a paddle wheel was pushing a barge train upriver. Although the paddle wheel on the tug was churning up the water furiously, it was barely making progress against the current.

  Back when he was in high school (something like nine thousand years ago), he waited impatiently for his sixteenth birthday so he could get a job working the boats on the river. You could make a lot of money doing that. And he knew he'd need money after he graduated from high school if he was going to study photojournalism at U of M. But it turned out he didn't get a boat job. They told him he should come back when he got his growth.

  Later, when he was working for the Conner Courier as a flunky with photojournalist dreams, he would have shot pictures of the tired old paddle-wheel tug pushing the barges up the river. In fact, he would have broken his ass then to get pictures of it. And he would have been thrilled to fucking death if Mr. Greene, to be nice to him, found space for one of them on page 11 of the Courier. Now, even though he had Sergeant Lomax's 35mm Leica on the seat beside him, he couldn't imagine taking pictures of the paddle-wheel tug and its barge train if the tug and all the barges were gloriously in flame and about to blow up.

  He'd wondered earlier why he sort of had to keep carrying Lomax's Leica around with him. Christ knew, no one was going to use anything he shot with it, not that there was anything worth shooting.

  But he did get a chance to see the print of the shot he took of Lieutenant Dunn shaking Secretary Knox's hand when Knox gave him the Navy Cross. They'd run that on the front page of The Kansas City Star. He didn't get a credit line for it, though. All it said was OFFICIAL USMC PHOTO. But he knew he took it.

  Even though he told Mr. Greene that, it was pretty clear that Mr. Greene thought he was bullshitting him.

  Still, there was no reason now to be carrying Lomax's Leica around; he wasn't going to use it. So why wasn't he able to just put the fucking thing in his bag? Or maybe see if he could find out where Lomax's wife was, so he could send it to her?

  It's funny, he thought to himself now and again, if Lomax didn't get himself blown away, he wouldn't be able to call me "Easterbunny" anymore; he'd have to call me "Sir. "

  You weren't supposed to talk ill of the dead, but the truth was that on occasion, Lomax could be a sadistic prick.

  When he pointed out the picture of Dunn to his mother and told her he took it, she smiled vaguely and said, "That's nice." Meaning: "You always wanted to be a photographer; photographers take pictures. What's the big deal?"

  For that matter, he wasn't entirely sure that his mother really believed he was an officer, and that she didn't privately suspect he just bought the goddamned gold bars and pinned them on to impress people. At breakfast this morning, she'd made a point of making a big deal about his cousin Harry, who was four, five years older than he was and a graduate of Northwestern University. Harry had been drafted and was going to Officer Candidate School in some Army post someplace; he'd written home that it was nearly killing him, but he was going to try to stick it out, because if he could, he was going to be an officer in the Ordnance Corps.

  In other words, here was an older guy than you are, with a goddamned college degree, who had to go through OCS, which was nearly killing him.... So how come you're an officer?

  As for his father, he wouldn't even let him use the goddamn car. He claimed it was because of the gas rationing and the tire shortage, and because he didn't know what he'd do without it. But the Easterbunny just happened to notice in The Kansas City Star that ran his picture on page one that servicemen on leave could go to the ration board and get gas coupons. So he'd gone down to City Hall, and it turned out that the guy on the ration board was in the Corps in World War I. And one thing ran into another: The guy asked where he'd been; and when he told him, he asked about the 'Canal. And so the Easterbunny walked out of the ration board with coupons for sixty gallons of gas (you were supposed to get only twenty), and coupons for four new tires (you weren't supposed to get tires at all).

  And even then, before he'd let him borrow the goddamn car, the old man gave him a "don't speed, don't drink, be careful" speech as if he was seventeen and got his license the day before yesterday.

  Once he had the car, he looked up the kids he'd gone around with in high school, of course. But that was a fucking disaster, too.

  It was partly his own fault, he was willing to admit. He should have kept his fucking mouth shut. There was no way they were going to believe he'd just been in Hollywood, staying in a place on the ocean in Malibu... much less that he not only met Veronica Wood there, but that he and she were now friends... and that she took him to Metro-Magnum Studios one morning in a limousine and let him watch them make the movie she was in.

  It was partly, too, that they all seemed to be very young and very stupid. They didn't want to know about the 'Canal. That was so far away that it was nowhere, as fa
r as they knew. They wanted to know shit like Eddie Williams asked him: "Since you're in the Marines," he said, "did they ever let you shoot a tommy gun like Robert Montgomery did in Bataan?" The Easterbunny hadn't seen that movie, but that didn't matter.

  "Yeah," he told him, "they let me shoot a tommy gun; it was great." He didn't tell him about the one he took from Lieutenant Minter when the knee mortar round landed right next to him and blew his legs off. Or that he still had the heavy sonofabitch; it was in the closet of his bedroom at Major Dillon's house on the beach in Malibu. Eddie and the others wouldn't have believed that, either.

  He ran into Katherine Cohan, too, on the street; and she sort of rubbed against him then.... She wasn't nearly as pretty as he remembered her. He knew that if he called her up and asked her to go to the movies, she'd probably go. She'd probably also let him a cop a little feel, maybe even a little bare teat; but that would be all she'd let him do. So he didn't call her up.

  And he certainly couldn't tell anybody about Dawn Morris. Nobody would believe any of that, either how good-looking she was... or that she'd done it with him at least dozen times... or what she'd done to him.

  Though it made him feel guilty as shit, the thing he really wanted to do was get the hell away from here and go back to Los Angeles and be alone with Dawn Morris in his bedroom at Major Dillon's house. He'd even been prepared to lie to his mother and father, to tell them he'd been called back early. That was a really shitty thing to do to your parents, lie to them, when they were so glad to see you. Still, he'd called the airline and asked if he could move his reservation up. But they told him no; the priority he had was for a specific seat on a specific flight; he'd have to get another priority if he wanted to change that.

  Even if he wasn't able to do it, it made him feel shitty that he tried.

  Lieutenant Easterbrook looked at his wristwatch. It was time to go home. His father expected to eat ten minutes after he walked in the door, and he'd expect his son to be there, too. If he wasn't, he'd think he was in jail for drunken driving... after driving the car a hundred miles an hour the wrong way down a one-way street and hitting an ambulance with it.

  Easterbrook drained his warm beer.

  He picked up the other two empties, left the car, and threw all three as far as he could out in the river. Then he got back in the car, lit a cigarette, and started the engine. He was backing away from the railing when he braked to a stop; he had to fish through his pockets for the package of Sen-Sen. He spilled maybe a third of it into his mouth.

  The old man had a nose like a bird dog. If he smelled beer on his breath, there was sure to be a scene about drunken driving when he got home.

  [FOUR]

  "Edgewater"

  Malibu, California

  1815 Hours 1 November 1942

  With surprising grace, Veronica Wood ran through the sand from the water to the stairs, making Jake wonder again how women did that. Whenever he ran on sand, it was all he could do to keep from falling on his ass.

  She came to him and bent over and kissed him. Then she pointed at his scotch. "Get me one of those, will you?" she said.

  While he took care of that, she went to the shower on the porch, closed the curtain, and turned the water on. He pushed the button for Alejandro; and when he came, he told him to bring the bottle and some glasses and ice and the siphon bottle.

  "No siphon," Alejandro said.

  "You broke it?"

  "The things, they are no more," Alejandro said, holding his thumb and index fingers three inches apart, to mime a CO2 cartridge. "What you call them, 'cartridges'?"

  Do you? Cartridges? Cartridges are something you load in a weapon. I guess you do.

  "Don't we have any bottles of soda?"

  "Is same thing?"

  "Just about," Jake said.

  "I get," Alejandro said.

  Veronica Wood's bathing suit came flying over the top of the shower curtain. Jake imagined an entirely pleasant picture of what was behind the curtain.

  Jake found a cigar in his blouse and lit it.

  Veronica pushed the shower curtain aside, wrapped herself in her towel, and walked over and sat on his lap. Once she'd made herself comfortable, she kissed him wetly on the mouth.

  "Goddamn, now I'll have to have my pants pressed. You're soaking!"

  "I'm not worth it to you to have your goddamned pants pressed? Go to hell!"

  "I don't know if you know this or not, but when you sit down wearing a towel, people can see everything you've got-Alejandro, for example."

  "Why do I think Poppa has had a bad day?" Veronica asked.

  "Because it was a bitch," he said. "I now know what the Marine Corps does when they get stuck with idiot officers; they put them in public relations."

  "You're in public relations, Poppa. What does that make you?"

  "An idiot," he said, and laughed. "How was your day?"

  "We looped, all goddamn day," she said. "Jean Jansen can't remember her lines when she's reading them from a script. And Janos, of course, had to be there.... It was the first time I ever looped anything, of course, and he had to tell me how to do it."

  "You're almost finished, aren't you?"

  "We were supposed to be finished today. I told that pansy sonofabitch to get one of his boyfriends to dub it for me, if he can't finish it by noon tomorrow."

  "You didn't really?"

  "No. I wanted to. But I knew that if I did, he'd throw a hysterical fit, and we'd be in there for the rest of the week. I did tell him I don't give a good goddamn how inconvenient it is, or who else he has to reschedule, if he can't finish my part by tomorrow, I'm going to get sick."

  Alejandro opened the balcony door, and Veronica quickly slid out of Jake's lap.

  "I wish you hadn't said what you did about the towel," she said. "Not that he hasn't seen something like that before."

  "Something similar, maybe," Jake said, "but not something like that."

  "Aren't you sweet!"

  "Alejandro, I don't care if the Pope calls, I'm not here," Jake said.

  "Si, Se¤or Jake. You eat here?"

  "What have we got to eat?"

  "We got fish for broil, and a piece pork. Can either roast or make chops?"

  "Honey?" Jake asked.

  "What did you call me?"

  "Slip of the tongue," Jake said.

  "Your tongue never slips, Jake, my darling," she said, and turned to Alejandro. "Whichever is easiest, Alejandro."

  "Si, se¤ora."

  He left.

  "What did he call me? 'Senora'?"

  "Si, Se¤ora."

  "What does that mean in Spanish?"

  "Lady Who Goes Around In Towel Showing Everything."

  "It means 'Missus,' not 'Miss,' you bastard."

  "Slip of the tongue."

  "I like that: 'Se¤ora Dillon.' How does that sound to you?"

  "Don't start that kind of thing now," Dillon said.

  "Why not? You've got a wife or something I don't know about?"

  "Just to keep the record clear. No wife. Ex or otherwise."

  "Then why not?"

  "Come on, Veronica."

  "If it's supposed to be so goddamned self-evident, how come I don't understand?"

  The telephone rang.

  Now I'm sorry I told him to say I'm not here. What I need right now is an interruption.

  "Jake?"

  Alejandro appeared, carrying a telephone with a very long cord.

  "Is four eleven, Senor Jake," he said, handing him the handset and setting the base down on the table beside him.

  "I thought you told him no calls."

  "This is my private line," he said, and then, "Hello?"

  "Jake, I hope I'm not interrupting anything," said James Allwood Maxwell, Chairman of the Board of Metro-Magnum Studios, Inc.

  "How are you, Jim? Of course not."

  "Who is that?" Veronica asked, and tried to put her ear to the handset.

  "Jake, there were those on the board who though
t I was carrying corporate loyalty a step too far when I announced we would continue you on full salary when you went in uniform...."

  What the hell is this? What comes next? "We've had a bad year, and there's nothing I can do about it. I tried. But New York, those bastards say there is no way we can justify that nonproducing expense any longer"? Shit, that's all I need. What The Corps is paying me won't pay the taxes on this place. I'll have to let Alejandro and Maria go. What the hell will they do? Shit!

  "... but my position then, my position now, and what I told them, was that I never-Metro-Magnum never-paid Jake Dillon a dime that didn't come back like the bread Christ threw on the water."