by James Jones
It angered him into a fury, that Landers would let himself get into a bind at a time like this. Winch did not know whether he ought to get involved or not.
Even Jack Alexander didn’t want to be involved with it. Not right now.
Any fool should know better. Times like this were the times when everybody’s righteousness came into play. Every cheap, mean prick like that Hogan got all puffed up and went looking for a victim, just to make himself some points. Hell, even honest men couldn’t help doing it.
Maybe, probably, it would be good for Landers. Let Landers serve his three months, or six months, and learn a lesson.
That evening, after work at cocktail time, Winch cornered Col Stevens just the same, and held him captive against the bar at the Camp O’Bruyerre officers club.
Stevens knew about Landers and his special court, right enough. And he didn’t think much of it or of Landers. That came out at once, as soon as Winch brought the subject up. Winch did not bring the subject up until he had bought the old man at least three drinks.
Winch had learned long ago how to handle officers in their own terrain. And being a warrant officer, with club membership privileges and the right to mingle on privileged ground and be an equal, was only carrying the old principle one step further.
Respect was the secret. No matter what you really thought. All any old West Pointer wanted from you was the right to be fatherly. The higher the rank, the greater the father. All you had to do was keep on Sir-ing them, and not be cocky because you had moved up into officer country. Cockiness was something they watched for narrowly.
Respect. Not with obsequiousness, either, but with charm. Fortunately, Winch had not been standing behind the door when the charm was portioned out. He used all of it on Col Stevens. As he had been using it on everybody, since moving up into this rarefied atmosphere.
“He was one of your old outfit, I guess. Wasn’t he? On Guadalcanal?” Col Stevens said dubiously. He leaned against the bar familiarly, at his ease. He liked to come out here from town because of all the old West Point buddies he had in Second Army Command.
Winch was not unwilling to lie. When it was absolutely necessary. In a way, lying might be called the history of his life. “Yes, sir. Guadalcanal,” he lied. “But he was hit on New Georgia.”
Stevens nodded. That had to count. “We have a lot of men out there who’ve been hit on some island or some continent,” he added nevertheless, mildly.
“True, sir. And most of them are a little goofy for a while.”
“But not quite like that. Just what is your point, Mart?” Stevens picked up his glass, and smiled at it. “Do you mind if I call you Mart? I’ve heard a great deal about you, here and there.”
“My pleasure, sir,” Winch said promptly, and smiled his most charming smile. Till his jaws ached. “I’ve heard a good deal about you too, sir, or I wouldn’t have approached you. My point is, I hate to lose his ability and his intelligence. That’s it, in a nutshell.”
“Yes, of course there’s that,” Stevens murmured. “And what you tell me carries a lot of weight. I don’t want to do any good man in.” He shook his head. “But I’ve decided that I don’t intend to interfere. I don’t really think it’s my place.”
“Nor would anybody ask you to, sir. Least of all me,” Winch said. “But we all of us know, all us old Regulars, that the good civilian doctor Maj Hogan is—shall we say—a little overzealous.”
It was funny how you could pump yourself up till you fell into their way of talking; their language. It was just a different way of saying things. Less direct. But you had to be careful then not to overdo it, and let them catch you.
Stevens had smiled, then broken into an unwilling laugh, and now he blushed a little, embarrassedly. Cleared his throat.
“Hogan’s certainly not a Regular,” Winch said. “Nor does he know how to handle Regulars.”
“Your man Landers is not a Regular, either, I think, is he?” Stevens smiled.
“No, sir. He’s not. And as a matter of fact, he’s a three-and-a-half-year college student. That’s another reason I hate to see us lose him. But he acts more like a Regular than a draftee.”
“I don’t know what to make of a man like that,” Col Stevens said, his brows knitted. “He ought to be putting his shoulder to the wheel. Especially at a time like this.” He eyed Winch, narrowly.
“He probably doesn’t even know anything unusual is going on, sir,” Winch said.
“Everybody knows,” Stevens said. “Even my wife knows.” He bit his lip, then exploded. Politely. But his gray eyes, which matched his hair, flashed. “I’ve only had two courts-martial since I’ve been out there. And both were only summaries.”
“Well, there’s another way you could do it. You could bust him down to private, sir.” Stevens’ glass was on the bar, empty, and Winch signaled the enlisted barman for another. Stevens held up his hand and shook his head, demurring. Winch motioned the barman to bring the whiskey anyway. “If you don’t want it, somebody else will, sir.”
“You’re not drinking, yourself?”
“No, sir,” Winch said cheerily. “I’m not. I can’t. The doctors won’t let me. But don’t let anybody tell you it isn’t missed. I miss it like hell.”
The old man snorted his laughter softly.
The glass delivered, Winch suddenly stood away from the bar and held his arm out toward the room. It was getting more crowded now, more smoke-filled. “I’m not keeping you, am I, sir? I didn’t mean to do that,” Winch lied.
“No, no. No, no,” Stevens said. “Go ahead. I want to hear your point out.”
“Well, it wasn’t much, sir. I just thought that you could bust him to private,” Winch said. “He’s a buck sergeant, you know. I made him myself. He was my company clerk for a while. Before my battalion colonel stole him to make him his communications sergeant.” He smiled again. Winch did not wink, but he did something with his eyes that was almost that. To clinch it, he added, “That was only a few days before he was hit. The battalion colonel didn’t even have time to promote him.”
“I’m afraid busting him is beyond the authority I have,” Stevens said faintly. “These men are all transit casuals, you know. I don’t have unit authority over them. It would have to go all the way to Washington.”
“It would still be better than a court-martial, sir,” Winch said.
The colonel smiled. “I suppose it would at that,” he admitted. “But the point. You haven’t made any point, Mister Winch.”
“I don’t have any point, sir. At least, no point except the one I made, which is to save the man.” Winch studied his half-finished glass of ice cubes and grapefruit juice on the bar. “It did seem a little strange to me though that the first lieutenant who was involved, the other man in the fight, did not think it worthwhile to prefer charges himself.”
Stevens was staring at him, and continued to stare. “That’s true. You’re right. He didn’t, did he?” he said after a moment.
“Did you talk to him at all, sir?”
“No. No, I didn’t. Perhaps I ought to talk to him.”
Winch picked up his lousy grapefruit juice and drained the glass to the ice, staring straight ahead. “It might be worth a shot, sir,” he said as he set the glass down. “Under the circumstances.”
That was the way they left it. Winch knew when to quit. Col Stevens offered a promise that he would talk to the 1st/lt patient who was involved, tomorrow. Then he smiled a slightly crooked smile, before he spoke.
“You know something, Mart? I would be pleased to have had a commanding officer like you. I did have one, for a while once.”
“Why, thank you, sir,” Winch said, and put up all that he could raise of the humility they thought you were supposed to have, into his most loving, most respectful smile. All he could think of at the moment was how quick he could get the fuck out of there.
“Did you ever think of trying for a commission?” Col Stevens asked.
“No, sir. I didn’
t. I’m not sure my health would be up to it,” Winch smiled cheerily. “Anyway, why should I start taking orders from everybody as a second lieutenant, when as a w/o I can give them.”
Stevens smiled. “I suppose you’re right, at that.”
“I think so, sir,” Winch smiled, with the same cheery smile.
Outside, he walked to his little Dodge through the cold winter rain. It was still falling. The Dodge was in the middle of the big new asphalt parking lot for the club. Winch felt as though he had expended as much energy as if he had played the full sixty minutes of a football game, and his knees were shaking. In the car he turned on the windshield wipers and just sat a minute. Grateful he did not have to compose his face into a cheery smile, again. The lights from the club, where he could not stand to be, shone out at him and glinted across the wet asphalt, and prismed through the rain-smeared windshield glass, sardonically promising comfort where he already knew there was none. He could not remember ever having felt so desolate. He would have given everything he had ever owned for a drink, right now.
Out in the air the rain had felt good on his face but in the car he was chilled. He was wearing his new $150 tailored trench coat and one of those brimless overseas caps which were required by regulations now (called cunt cap by the troops, because of what the seam across the top made them think of). Ruefully Winch thought about the old campaign hats of before the war, and wished he had had one in the rain. The trench coat had a longer skirt than was usual and was green, the color that was “in,” now. The Dodge was the result of a deal Jack Alexander had engineered for him. In town in Luxor was a cozy apartment Alexander had known about, and Carol Firebaugh should be waiting for him there, soon. He should be saving his money, and not spending it on all this ritzy shit, Alexander had told him, or else how could he buy in on anything? Any of the deals?
After a while, he started the car and the heater and drove home to his quarters. In the tiny room he drank the two remaining glasses of white wine in a bottle he had there, and without taking off any of his clothes except the trim winter blouse, fell on the bed and went sound asleep.
He was awakened by the phone, ringing. He woke confused, thinking it was the sound-power field phone from the battalion command post; Col Becker. He was out in the big open field again. And fuck Col Becker. Col Becker couldn’t help. Col Becker couldn’t even see them, from where Becker was. The mortars were falling on them fore and aft, again. He could see that from where he stood. He was shouting and waving at them frantically and screaming again, “Get them out of there! Get them out of there! Can’t you see what they’re doing? They’re bracketing in on them! Get them out of there!” He bit it back with his teeth, as he sat up and looked at the ordinary, everyday phone as if it were some foreign, alien object on the little bedside stand. Even from this far away, he could see the great white eyes of the platoons, white-white in their muddy faces, looking back at him. For help.
When he picked up the black phone out of its cradle, and cautiously asked who it was, clearing his throat so it would not sound husky, it was Jack Alexander.
He had not cried out. He was sure he hadn’t. As long as he didn’t cry it out loud, the sentence, as long as he didn’t tell anybody about it, or need to tell anybody about it, as long as nobody knew, he would be all right, he was sure he would be.
“Well, what do you want?” he said, more sharply than he had meant to say it.
“Don’t bite my head off,” the thick voice said. “I just called up to congratulate you. I don’t know what you said to the Old Man but you sure sold him.”
“I got him to promise to talk to that lieutenant,” Winch said.
“Yes. No, I don’t mean about Landers. I mean about you. I don’t know what you said, but he came away thinking you’re about the greatest guy that ever lived,” the voice said dryly.
“I didn’t tell him anything about me,” Winch said.
“I of course did not tell him the truth,” the heavy voice said coyly, in a ponderous try at a joke.
Winch tried to get hold of himself. “Yeah. I’m glad you didn’t give me away.”
Alexander didn’t waste breath on any laugh. “I’m to get hold of that lieutenant tomorrow. The Old Man even called me at home. But I’m on call to him all the time, anyway. So we’ll talk to the lieutenant tomorrow. Things are looking a good deal better for your boy Landers.”
“But what we’ve got to do is to get Hogan to withdraw all those charges. That’s the main thing.”
“That asshole,” Alexander said. “He’s so anxious to get in good with Stevens, he’ll squat and strain if Stevens hollers ‘shit.’ Don’t worry about him.”
“Well, then it looks pretty good.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it does. Say, listen, are you coming on into town tonight? Because—”
“I wasn’t planning to,” Winch said cautiously.
“There’s a couple of guys from out of town going to be here,” Alexander said. “Important guys. It would be a good thing for you to meet them.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Winch said. “But I’ll try to get in.”
“Do it if you can. We’ll be at my game at the Claridge. They carry a lot of weight in certain places. Know senators and people.” The voice seemed to know that he wasn’t going to come, anyway, but nevertheless felt required to go on and do its duty just the same. “Okay, I’ll talk to you tomorrow, otherwise.” The voice and the phone went dead.
Winch put the phone down and sat and looked at it. The nightmare, so familiar now in all its details, was as strong in his mind as the real conversation. He had no desire to be with Alexander tonight, and no intention of going to the Claridge. Desolation ran all through him and was like the taste of biting on some old copper coin, in his mouth. In this mood he wanted only to be with Carol.
His uniform was wrinkled from being slept in. He put the new winter blouse on over it anyway, without changing. Outside, it was still raining.
It was about thirty-five miles in to Luxor. In the rain, peering out through the slow fan of the wipers, it would take him fifty-five minutes, driving on the old-fashioned, white-concrete highway. Alongside the concrete ran the two-lane blacktop road the government was building. Together they would make a four-lane highway for the convoys into the city’s railroad station from O’Bruyerre. Winch settled into the driving, not wanting to think, wanting not to think. About Carol. Or about Alexander.
Alexander was right, of course, with his advice. There was nothing very tricky, or even very dishonest, about the way they were all making money. They did not do anything that your average businessman, after a government contract, didn’t do. Mostly it was just knowing the right people. Knowing the right people, and passing along or picking up the right piece of information at the right moment. Occasionally, very occasionally, it might mean slipping a small chunk of money along, too, at the same time.
But mostly it was just knowing the right thing to buy. And to buy at the right time you had to have money, cash. Somebody had to own the Coca-Cola and Budweiser delivery systems that carried all the Coke and beer to all the PXs in the area. Somebody had to own the beer and soft drinks distributorships that supplied them.
T.D. Hoggenbeck had explained it all quite clearly. Buy a bar, he had said. People will always drink. Come hell or high water, depression or boom. People will drink. But before you could buy a bar you had to have that kind of money. And Jack Alexander had the means of acquiring that kind of money. That was why T.D. had sent him to Jack. Jack had the contacts, he knew the people involved. Jack was also, Winch knew, dead right about his advice.
His advice, mainly, was to put by every nickel you could get your hands on. Then when the chance came to buy into some item, you would have the cash. Parts of enough such items, and you would begin to have the kind of money that could buy a bar, or two bars, or three, and pay off the politicians under the counter to get your package-store licenses, and pay for the high-priced licenses themselves. That was all there was to it.
It was easy. And, all that was just exactly what Winch was not doing.
Alexander apparently knew there was some woman involved. But he did not know who Carol was. And he wasn’t interested in finding out. He wouldn’t even ask Winch about it. As far as Alexander was concerned, it had to be some woman. What else would make Winch spend all his cash like some drunken dockside sailor. Who she was did not matter.
“You’re going to regret it,” he would say mildly, with his scarred larynx. “Now is the time to buy in. These deals will all be gone, before long.”
Winch would always shrug, and promise that the next time he would have the money. Faithfully, Alexander would come and tell him when the next deal opened. Faithfully, Winch would say he didn’t have the cash again.
“A cunt aint worth it,” Alexander said phlegmatically.
Tacitly Winch agreed. A woman wasn’t. None of them was.
“If it wasn’t for old T.D., I’d write you off,” Alexander said mirthlessly. “And let you go to hell.”
Winch could not disagree with that, either. If it were not that he felt he owed T.D. some favors, Alexander would probably do it, too. But it was T.D. who had helped him put it all together.
It was not that Winch was buying Carol fur coats and jewelry. It was not even that he cared that much for Carol, or was madly in love with her. Winch knew, now, already, how all that was going to end.
Winch did not know where all the money went. He knew he spent it. Mainly it was spent in maintaining a certain life-style. A life-style which made his affair with Carol comfortable, and easy, for both of them. A life-style which made their affair, in a word not usual to Winch because he didn’t think that way, un-dirty. Un-grubby.
And underneath that truth was another truth, which was that Winch did not really give a damn. Down deep, half of him was glad whenever he could tell Alexander truthfully that he did not have the money for some deal. Half of him was pleased he did not have it. So why not dispense it all on and around Carol? What difference did it make? It was not that he expected some return from it.
