“Just saying hello.”
“What time is it?”
“About three, I’d say.”
She came in, snapped on some lights and heat. “You better put on something warm, Jack. We’ve got some talking to do. I’ll make coffee.”
I went back to my bedroom, put on stockings, slippers, sweater, and a flannel dressing gown. When I went in the living room she had the Silex on the table, with cups and some kind of crackers she’d found. “Sugar, Jack? There doesn’t seem to be any cream.”
“Just plain.”
“Think I’ll sweeten mine.”
“At this hour, you could need it.”
“Oh, a very good hour—for our business.”
“I asked you once, what is our business?”
“Goodbye, I think. Of course I’m not sure.”
“Well—take your time.”
“Tell me about Helen.”
“... I know quite a few Helens.”
“The sister. The one you fell for.”
“When did you hear all this?”
“Just now. Tonight.”
“Margaret told you?”
“She mostly. Denny, a little. I dropped in. Sweetest little place they have. A little bungalow on Willow Avenue. One of the new ones, you know with the car port, a long portico, mission tile, and thin pillars. All in yellow and blue. Their living-room furniture was saved out from the hotel and put in storage, after the sale. Does it strike you they got fixed up awful quick? I wonder if she’s been lurking in the background some little time, without our knowing.”
“Hannah.”
“Yes, Jack.”
“I was to marry Margaret. I told you.”
“Yes, with affecting particulars.”
“I broke it off.”
“Yes, but why?”
“I didn’t love her. I woke up to the fact I was a lot more interested in a job at the hotel—or at least it had been decided by certain members of my family that I should be interested— than I was in her.”
“How fascinating!”
“Meaning what?”
“Is that a habit of yours? Being more interested in the job than the girl? It’s one way to get on in the world, and I’ve suspected for some time you know quite a lot about it. But to find out you’ve been through it before, and made your singular decision—that puts a different face on it.”
“Whose face, for instance?”
“Helen’s.”
“I tell you that’s all hokey-pokey.”
“Jack, there’s only one thing wrong with it.”
“Which is?”
“You’re lying.”
Why couldn’t I keep on lying, lying, and lying some more? I don’t know. A lie’s got no legs. Once around the track and it’s done, and all I could do was sit there and blink. She went on: “Jack, if that was all I think, I’d let it go. I’m quite insane about you. For your audacity. For that machinist’s soul you’ve got, that can see the stars reflected in a pool of oil and not smell the oil—or smell it and make incense out of it. For your beauty. You’re a damned blond tower of sin that I love to touch, that I’d give my eye teeth to cuddle right now. But I’ll not play second fiddle to—”
“Second fiddle! This was eight years ago.”
“It was not. It’s now.”
“How could it be? Am I still in college?”
“If it wasn’t now you’d have told me about her.”
“Why would I? That would be nice, wouldn’t it? To—”
“You told me about Margaret.”
“Why sure. She didn’t—”
I broke off and bit it back but the heartbeats pounded on and all she did was sit and sip coffee and stare out to sea. After a long time, she said: “Go on, Jack, I’m listening. ‘She didn’t—?’ I’m hoping and praying it’s some kind of lie I can swallow down, and relax with, so I can come over, and sit in your lap, and pull your foolish-looking ears, that always make me want to cry. She didn’t—WHAT?”
“Oh, to hell with her. Come here!”
“Let me alone! Margaret didn’t mean anything to you, did she? Not a thing in the world. So we can get rid of her. And of Denny, your best friend. Who loves you, and has been stood on his head by the way you’ve acted about everything. We can get rid of them, so that family won’t come out here, and bring Helen, and bust up this mess of duck soup you’ve got, with me, and Seven-Star, and the banquets you speak at, and the pictures of yourself in the paper, and the mahogany office—CAN’T WE?”
“Listen, Hannah, we’re both dog-tired, and—”
“No! Not I!”
“Well, I am, if you don’t mind.”
“Jack, there’s nothing I’d love better than to put my pride in my pocket, to come over to you, and to marry you, as you’ve asked me to do, and as I want to do. But I know what it would bring me. You’re not that guy that you think you are, who’ll take the cash and let the credit go, who’ll put material things ahead of love. You’re a damned romantic, who kicked the beans into the fire once, and will do it again. You really want love. And you despise me, as you’ve told me often, not because I gave up my husband for you, as you say, but because I’m not that kind of romantic sap. But whatever kind of sap I am, I’ll not play second fiddle. When you didn’t tell me about her, that’s all I wanted to know. When it cost you something to choose me, when we have to fire Denny to be safe, so you can be sure of yourself and not have that ninny around the corner all the time—that’s the tip-off. Oh, Mr. Jack Dillon, I wasn’t quite sure when I came in here. I was hoping. I can be a fool too. But now I know. This is goodbye.”
“And—Seven-Star? Who’s going to run it?”
“Denny.”
She sat there crying a long time. After a while she got up, pulled on the coat she had taken off, then leaned against the wall while a perfect storm of tears came out of her. I tried to take her in my arms, but she shook me off. Then she whispered; “Goodbye, Jack,” and went.
I sat down again, poured myself more coffee. How long I sat I don’t know, if it was a day, a week, or a month.
27
1945 NOV 8 PM 8 19
MAJ. JOHN DILLON,
HOTEL TIMROD,
CHARLESTON, SC
YOUR FATHER’S CONDITION TOOK CRITICAL TURN TODAY IF YOU WISH TO SEE HIM PLEASE WIRE AND WE SHALL USE OUR BEST ENDEAVOR TO WIN HIM OVER AFTER WHICH YOU SHOULD START AT ONCE AS IT IS NOT GIVEN US TO KNOW HOW LONG HE MAY BE SPARED
SHEILA
To which, writing on one side of the paper and getting all words properly spelled, I wired back: WELL ISN’T THAT TOO UTTERLY NICE OF YOU BUT WIRING HIM AND USING BEST ENDEAVORS ON ME MIGHT WORK BETTER. Then I sat around the hotel to sulk. Deep in me, of course, providing they wired me anything that made sense, I knew I was going. But I wanted to think about it, and I meant to take my time, as all and sundry, in that household at least, had certainly taken theirs. For three years, more than three years as a matter of fact, I’d been in the Army, but little they did about it, and they could have. I had got my greetings early in 1942, while I was still sitting around Long Beach. But, in accordance with the military genius of our War Department, which built all the camps in the wrong place and sent all the guys to the wrong camps, I was enrolled in California and ordered to Fort Meade, Maryland, which is south of Baltimore and east of Washington. Naturally, when I bumped into reporters from the Sun, there were pieces about me in the papers, with pictures. It seemed to me, if they were worried about somebody being “spared,” either Sheila or Nancy or both of them might have come down there, maybe with a bag of cookies under one arm, and we could have had a little reunion. But nobody showed, so instead of taking my leaves in Baltimore, I slipped over to Washington, which I knew almost at well, from my student days. And when I went to boot camp and came out a lieutenant, it seemed to me they might have sent me a picture postcard or something, as that was in the papers too. But it drew a blank. And when I was ordered overseas, it seemed to me that might have sti
rred them up, as it had been hinted at in the paper too. But they slumbered on, my little gypsy sweethearts. So when I got to England, I quit worrying about them, my father, or anything that reminded me of Baltimore, the first time I ever really did. I can’t say I was exactly happy in the Army. It was one long fever dream, with mud, fog, and rifle range mixed up with a stupor they call sleep. I got upped to first lieutenant, to captain, to major, and I didn’t notice much difference, except the higher I got, the more hell I caught. Then came June 1944. My division, the 79th, went ashore, most of it, on the fourteenth, but it wasn’t until the nineteenth that we were due to shoot krauts. Along about six o’clock the evening of the eighteenth, I began to worry about four trucks that were supposed to have come up, and that hadn’t. They were bringing nothing but a load of K, just rations for my battalion, but by that time I’d got a little hipped on the subject of grub. In Washington, in the Library of Congress, I had done a little reading on the military thing. And the more I read, whether it was about Grant, and how nuts he was about water transportation, or Napoleon, and what he said about an army fighting on its belly, the more I saw that your outfit was as good as its supply. With K in their pockets, they could keep on going. With nothing in their pockets, they’d poop. So when the trucks didn’t come, I called 313th regimental headquarters to find out why. There was no why. They were on their way. All couriers were at their posts to guide them in, it was all under control, be sure to report any movement of my CP—command post. In the last war it had been PC— post of command. Some bright brass, no doubt, got decorated with palm for figuring that change, but you’ve got to admit it was constructive.
2100, no K.
At 2200, or ten o’clock, after three more calls to regimental, I ordered my jeep and started back. At first we just crawled, on account of new stone the engineers had cracked up and put on the road, but I had Hayden, my driver, take the shoulder, and it was a little slippery but we made better time. About a mile from a place called Golleville I picked up the first courier. He said he’d talked to the next man about ten minutes before, and the trucks were stuck, on account of engine trouble. A few hundred yards further on, the next courier said the same thing. In a half hour, maybe, fighting our way back through three lines of trucks, guns, tanks, half tracks, and what had been coming ashore for ten or twelve days, we found my K. All four trucks were jammed in a little side road, where they’d been trying to bull their way into the main parade, but couldn’t as the lead truck was stalled. When I got there the driver had eight GI’s, the whole detail aboard all four trucks, swinging on a crank, trying to get it going by hand. I asked him what the trouble was. “Starter, sir.”
“How do you know?”
“Got to be.”
“Why?”
“... I checked everything else.”
It seemed like a funny answer, but I told the GI’s to rest, raised the hood, and went in there myself—in the dark, of course, as nothing like a flashlight was allowed. I felt at the head of the cylinders, the fuel pump, the carburetor, things like that, and the more I felt the funnier it got. Then I got to the distributor. Right away I found a loose wire. I lifted the top of the box that holds it and a screw was missing, the one that made the connection with the dangling wire. I ran my little finger around, and not only was it gone from the connection, but it wasn’t rolling around in the box. That didn’t make sense. It’s something that never happens, and if it had happened, the screw had to be in the box. I figured on it a minute or two before I said anything. I thought I knew the answer: that screw had been removed. But had it been thrown away? The more I thought the less like it seemed that a driver who had cooked up a trick to duck a trip to the front would leave himself on a limb so he couldn’t take a powder back. And nobody knew, at that time, what was waiting for us. Maybe it was a rear guard, and maybe it was the whole German army. “Driver, where’s that screw?”
“... What screw?”
“From the distributor.”
“Sir, I don’t know nothing about any screw. I—never saw no screw. I—”
It wasn’t a driver that was all crossed up because his truck wouldn’t go. It was a guardhouse cadet at his own court-martial who knew perfectly well what I was talking about, but thought I couldn’t prove it. Then it came to me what had hit me so funny before. It wasn’t cuss-hungry. Think of that, it had to be the starter, the night before a drive, and yet he hadn’t one goddam for it, or a kick, or even spit! I turned to the GI’s. “Men!”
“Yes, sir.”
“This driver has a setscrew in his pocket, a thing no bigger than a potato bug, that I need to make this truck go. Get it, before he throws it away, or swallows it, or—”
I turned my back. What they did to him I don’t know, but from the way he whimpered it wasn’t pretty. “Here it is, sir.”
“O.K. Any of you men drive?”
“I do, sir.”
“Take that wheel. I’ll be in the jeep. Follow me.”
When we got to the first courier, I turned the driver over to him, with orders to take him back and have him held for a court. The next courier, that we reached after another twenty minutes of bulling our way along, said: “Sir, my buddy and I have been out, looking things over in these fields. They’re rough, but they’re solid, with no heavy mud, or walls of any kind. We think they’d be better going, and get you there quicker than the road, with all this traffic.”
“Fine, thanks.”
I led the way into the field, and it was pretty bumpy, but we could move, with the four trucks jamming along behind. Each courier picked us up and passed us on to the next guy, and it wasn’t long before we came to a side road, and the last courier stood at attention. “Straight into your CP, sir, a little more than one kilometer.”
“O.K.—good work.”
We bore left, and in about two minutes, when I figured we’d gone about a kilometer, I stopped Hayden and got out. The sentry’s orders were to have all challenges answered on foot, and by one person only, so it looked like it would save time if I reached him that way. I walked about a hundred yards. Then I went maybe fifty more. Then it came to me it ought not to be that far. I stopped and tried to see. It was so still I could hear my heartbeat. That’s something they don’t tell you about in the books, though sometimes they get it in a song: the death hush of a battlefield, around two o’clock in the morning. I couldn’t hear a thing. I was about to start up again when I happened to look down, and my guts dropped through the seat of my pants. We had trouble coming out, as I’ve said, from loose stone. There was no loose stone here, nothing but Normandy mud. It flashed through my mind what had happened; the couriers, trying to help me out, in the dark picked the wrong road. Then, even while I was thinking, came something like an awful whisper from hell: “... Nocht nicht ... noch nicht...”
I did a belly slide into the ditch, behind some kind of a hay wagon that had been overturned there, and looked through a crack. I could see a little stone house, maybe to cool cream in, that had been built over a little stream that crossed the road, in a culvert, a few steps further on. In a second I saw something above it that was round and dark like a kraut helmet. I kept staring and it went down. Then here it came back up. Then beside it was another, and then another. But how many more there were, whether this was just some outpost or a battalion, I couldn’t tell.
I had two grenades with me, and unhooked them and laid them on the bank. Then I slid down into the ditch. Then I let the first one go on a high lob, then heaved the other. In a second or two I heard them hit the mud. Then a kraut wailed: “Jesus Christus—zurück!”
But before they could hop zurück the grenades went off and Irish confetti began falling all around. I came out shooting and they did. Something hit my leg. Then I heard shots from behind me. Then came a yell, “Kamerad,” and then my ration detail was backing six krauts onto the road. One of them didn’t back fast enough and a GI snapped up his gun butt against his chin. He went down almost on top of me and his eyeballs rolled on
the road. They helped me up, anyway to stand on one leg, and through a GI that could speak a little German I found it was an outfit that had been sent out to booby-trap sheep, and had been cut off. I sent them back to headquarters under guard of two GI’s, and counted up. There were three krauts lying there, besides the one with his face bashed in, and the boys said I had got them. There were two of my own men. That left me four. I had Hayden put me in the jeep and led on. We picked up the right road, a little way across country, but by the time we got to my CP, I knew I wasn’t leading any advance that day. My leg was soaked in blood, and when one of my captains had me carried in a stable, and cut my pants away, he took command and ordered me back. It was a bad ride, and not only on account of the truck bumping me. My two GI’s lay heavy on my heart. They kept on setting heavy, through the grand tour I made of the hospitals in France, England, and all over, and even after I hit Stark Hospital in Charleston. I think they would have stayed with me, if it hadn’t been for Captain Barnham, one of the doctors there. He took a shine to me and headed off my transfer, so he could talk to me and put a little common sense, as he called it, to work. Pretty soon he had me buy a little car and take trips around, to Savannah and Atlanta and Miami and around, to get my mind off myself. Savannah I liked. It had been built right, by old Oglethorpe nearly two hundred years ago, so the parking problem was all taken care of, by “neutral ground,” as they called it then and call it now, and the traffic problem, by a lot of little two-block parks, that scatter the bottlenecks, and the street-name problem by vertical posts, that you can see in your headlights, so you never have to stop and stare and wonder like you do in other places. The hotels had real food and real drinks and real service, and pretty soon I was slipping over there a lot.