Once an Eagle

“Isn’t it? Think about it. Isn’t that what you’d like better than anything else? A Gold Star Mama With a Cause. Oh boy.” He pointed to the floor at his feet. “I just offered you—I’m not sure the offer still stands—a positive new life. A real break-out. Maybe it isn’t exactly the life your romantic soul wanted when you were fifteen. But a real life, with dignity and purpose, and respect. No medals or reviews, but respect. There isn’t an awful lot of that these days. And you could be a help to me, too—we could carve out something together. I think you know that.”

  “Bill, if you’d let me—”

  “But no—you can’t wait to get back to that good old rack. The agonies of the Catherine wheel, with an audience of thousands. This Martyred Matron. Else what’s a soldier husband for? Why, it’s better than a twenty-year annuity! Jesus, won’t it be a pity if he gets himself starched in the Honshu invasion—”

  “All right, Bill!…” She was angry herself now, but it was dulled by confusion and a growing alarm. She should be able to laugh at this, it ought to be a source of amusement: what in God’s name was the matter with her? She had a sudden image of Sam back at Hardee, long ago, sitting on the edge of her cot, his eyes tormented and pleading. I’m that man, honey. Don’t you see?

  “We’re talking about identity,” Bill was going on implacably. He was holding an unlighted cigarette between his finger and thumb, like a piece of chalk, and was pointing it at her. “Yours. Now you have a choice: a good clear one. Either you can make your life serve a positive and relatively normal function—or you can turn in on yourself and put on the weeds of the professional griever, the perennial man-punisher, feeding on the stones of bereavement and vengeance. Maybe you’ll enjoy that more than anything else—maybe your sado-masochism synchromeshes perfectly, for all I know.” He pointed the cigarette at her throat. “Now which road do you want to travel down?”

  She shook her head; she was still full of alarm. “It isn’t that simple …”

  “No. Nothing is. But you better think about it: you better find out what’s running you, sweet. What you really want.”

  She finished packing in silence, nervously. What was running her? Her mind appeared to her as a small room crammed with cast-off furniture, outworn garments and appliances. What did she want? Did she want to punish Sam? did she want to forsake him?

  The Cormorants, Poppa had used to call them—perhaps because they held themselves with such stiff pride, their heads suspended on corded necks; or perhaps because they exuded an atmosphere of such blackness. They stood forbiddingly at the ends of reception lines, or sat at tea sets pouring with icy correctness, or leaned forward, conversing with one another in a fierce, taut complicity … Was she on the way to becoming a Cormorant? That was ridiculous—she was madcap Tommy Damon, who had introduced the Lindy Hop to Fort Beyliss, whose imitation of Tallulah Bankhead was famous from Fort Myer to Manila Bay …

  She closed her bag, feeling defeated and apprehensive and angry. A little while ago she had become aware of the prison of the moment, and resolved to flee it. But Sam was her past, and a lien on her future. Donny was the core of that past, Donny was what they had together, they and they alone—promise and memory: to leave Sam was to destroy Donny all over again, more cruelly than the German fighter planes had done …

  “All set?” Bill said from the doorway.

  “All set.”

  As she descended the stairs the rain threw soft, transparent stains down the panes of glass.

  “They did it just to get rid of me,” Vicky Varden declared, and her smooth, lovely face tightened in a scowl. “They can put it any way they want, that’s what it adds up to.”

  “Now sweetie, try to look at it another way,” Al Hambro said.

  “What other way is there to look at it?”

  The press agent opened his hands. “You’re doing yourself a world of good out here. Your publicity has been terrific, I’ve told you that …”

  “Well, I hope it’s scoring points for me in heaven,” she retorted, “because it sure as hell isn’t doing anything for me here on the ground.” Her eyes were snapping. “The chance of a lifetime down the drain and here I sit on my aching fanny, ten thousand miles away from home plate. It’s all T.L.’s fault. That foul-mouthed son of a bitch—”

  “Now, Vee-Vee,” Lew Pfyzer chided her. Like most comedians he was soft-spoken and shy when he wasn’t on stage; he looked like a competent CPA with a stubborn, rather stupid client. “General Massengale has been wonderfully hospitable to us and I don’t think he’s all that interested in a lot of Hollywood shop talk. Do you?”

  “—Oh, I’m sorry, General!” Vicky Varden turned toward the Corps Commander. Every trace of displeasure was gone; her face was alive with the winsome, eager smile that had gleamed from screens and billboards and GI footlocker covers for three years. “I’m sorry, I really am. This is honestly the sweetest reception I’ve been given since General Ike’s place outside of Paris, at—what was the name of it, Lew?”

  “Marnesse la Coquette.”

  “Oh, yes. How did I ever forget that?”

  “I can’t imagine, lover.”

  The star shivered her shoulders pleasurably. “I love palaces: they always make me want to do crazy, impossible things—have affairs with sultans and torture people in dungeons and throw myself around …”

  “You don’t need a palace for all that, sweetie,” Pfyzer told her.

  “Lew, you’re a crummy sadist.” She ran her fine hazel eyes around the ceiling filigree. “A castle like this tells you all the things you want to be. Do you know?”

  Sitting at the head of the long table Courtney Massengale nodded gravely. Well, it did something like that, and a little more; he was pleased with the effect. The private dining room with its own balcony, where the USO troupe and his senior staff officers were now eating and drinking, was separate from the officers’ club proper but connected by a narrow passageway, so that the music and laughter from the main room lent a distant air of frivolity to the smaller party. Yet it was understood that aside from barboys and messmen no one was to enter here, except for the most exceptional reasons. His guests as they came through Reina Blanca—correspondents, congressmen, entertainers—always sensed this; it never failed to make them a touch more respectful and subdued. All except Miss Varden, whom apparently nothing ever subdued.

  “Forgive me for being in such a brutal mood, General,” she pleaded; her face broke into a winsome little pout. “I’m standing right in the middle of the crisis of my life, I really am. And I need your help.”

  He smiled his most charming smile. “Anything within my humble powers, Miss Varden.”

  Her face brightened like a little girl’s; there were actually tiny stars at the centers of her pupils. “Please call me Vicky.”

  “I’m afraid I couldn’t do that,” he answered. “I never address people by their nicknames, you know.”

  “But why not? I said you could …”

  “In my opinion it’s both vulgar and unnecessary.”

  “Oh.”

  There was a funny pause. Both Pfyzer and Hambro were staring at him blankly. Pleased with the effect he smiled again and said: “But I’ll call you Victoria, if I may.”

  She straightened in her chair, fluttering a little. “Oh, I love that,” she cried. Abruptly she aimed a bright vermilion fingernail across the table at Pfyzer’s throat. “You see, Lew? There’s gallantry. Something you’ll never know … Jesus H, why can’t men hang on to their gallantry anymore?”

  “We’ve lost it all escorting you around the fighting fronts, darling,” the comedian answered.

  Vicky Varden ignored him; all her attention was focused on Massengale again. “It’s just that I’m in danger of losing the role of my career. Absolutely. They’re casting right now. Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” She put her teeth neatly on her ripe little lower lip. “It’s a novel by Thomas Harding.”

  Massengale nodded again. “Oh. Of course. Do they hang her at the end?”

/>   “I don’t know—I haven’t read the script. It’s just the chance of a lifetime and the studio roped me into this mucking tour, every damn palm tree in the Pacific Ocean—and now I’m supposed to find Chet and be reconciled with him. Of all the God damn loony ideas!”

  “Now, Vee-Vee,” Hambro murmured.

  “Well, it is. It’s fantastic. In this heat … Of course you expect it to be hot anywhere in August,” she said to Massengale. “Except L.A., I mean.—Can I call you Court?” she asked him. “It sounds so—I don’t know: so strong and savage. Ruthless, sort of. General Court …” Her face went suddenly blank. “Oh: I guess I better not say it that way, should I?”

  “Ah, but imagine if my last name had been Marshall.”

  Captain Graulet of the G-2 Section had entered from the corridor that connected the private dining room with the Corps offices and now was leaning over Fowler, speaking rapidly and urgently. Fowler had turned in his seat and was staring up at Graulet with a quizzical, irritated expression on his sober, scholarly face. Massengale watched them for a moment, and then Bucky Warren, holding forth for the dancer Diana Speers, who was shrieking happily, a hand at her throat. Ryetower and Burckhardt were both convulsed with mirth. Lowering his eyes Massengale sipped at his wine and felt the old interior laughter. These USO tours in particular amused him: the parade of stars and comedians and dancers with their little packs of attendants and advisers, their false, breezy camaraderie, their rituals of presentation and self-pretense, their demands, the lamentable vulgarity that sheathed them like chain mail. But the Varden girl intrigued him. Watching her from his screened booth at the rear of the audience the evening before, standing so straight and demure in the clinging blue gown, holding the microphone, her head inclined prettily to one side, he’d been conscious of a quick, electric brightness reminiscent of Tommy Damon: that mirror flash of eyes, and a vibrant, faintly husky voice that promised intimacy, dalliance, a triumphant surrender.

  “…We’ll ride a silver balloon

  To the Taj Mahal and Cathay …

  Darling, it can’t be too soon

  Till we’ve found that heavenly, golden day …”

  And there they sat below him in their dreary, starved, unwashed thousands, their faces following her every gesture with the blind, degrading hunger that never failed to fill their eyes every time they glimpsed a woman from home. The poor, pitiful clods—chained to a myth that would never cease to mock them—

  “You’re lonely, aren’t you, Court?”

  The impertinence of these people was something marvelous. He knew his face showed nothing. He turned to her, aware of a sudden, sharp constraint among the others. They are afraid of her, he thought with stealthy pleasure—and still more afraid of me: they are caught between fears.

  “Command is lonely,” he answered.

  Smiling she shook her head. “Not what I meant. Never mind.” She emptied her glass—she had scarcely touched her food, although most of the others had exclaimed over the cuisine—and leaned toward him, her eyes wide and challenging. “Timing—is—everything,” she pronounced, and tapped the table with her nails. “Everything…”

  “I know,” he said.

  “I know you do. That’s why I admire you: you’ve never made a mistake.” She nodded, watching him steadily from under her brows. “That’s why I need your help. Will you come to the aid of a damsel in distress?”

  He gave his slow, deprecatory nod—part of the Massengale Manner. All the old terms had been reversed. This star sitting here beside him was a law unto herself—her scowl could send panic through her entire retinue, her moods were the stuff of national press releases; but now, here, one word from him and she would be banished from his command like any courtier fallen out of favor in a Tudor realm. There was a curious sort of gratification in the thought. Gazing at the soft, eager face, those lightly parted lips, he thought again of Tommy and felt the germ of an old fantasy rise, tremulous and sly …

  Then he suppressed it. This was his world: and it would increase. The Cagayan Valley campaign would be wound up by the end of the month; Damon’s division had taken Lagum on the third. By September Swanson’s people could start training for the Honshu landings. CORONET. The likeness of a kingly crown. He would have it then—Twelfth Army and his fourth star, and the broad Kwanto Plain on which to deploy his legions. Japan would fall, slowly, fanatically, and then would come the delights of occupation. There might even be—who knew?—mighty annexations, his old dream of an America-dominated East Asian Periphery; there would be a need for proconsuls who could rule with force and ingenuity. But not long: a year at most. Then back to Washington, and Plans. And then—

  Fowler had left the table and gone quickly into the offices wing, followed by an anxious Graulet. Massengale wondered idly what it might be. Could Yamashita possibly have sent a surrender overture? Had Kurita made some final suicide sortie out of Brunei Bay? Both were unlikely—more probable was some enemy transfer of troops from China to the home islands.

  “The whole thing is perfectly ridiculous,” Vicky Varden was telling him. “The studio got this bug about me going out and looking up Chet, and you know, building it up a little. That it would help both our Hoopers. Where in hell is Lubagang?”

  “Luabagán,” Massengale corrected her automatically. “It’s a well-demolished town on the west bank of the Chico River, up in the northern end of Luzon.”

  “God. Last time I went near the front lines I got sick as a dog. Galloping case of the trots. Damn it all, I can’t go up there again,” she wailed. “Eating hash out of an old tin dish, dragging my fanny through the mud and trying to find a—”

  “Vee-Vee, honey, this is a battle zone,” Hambro protested. “You know they said—”

  “Oh dry up, Al … If only it weren’t for the bugs!” she exclaimed in sudden exasperation. “And all the crazy diseases …”

  “Who is Chet?” Massengale asked her.

  “Chet Belgrade. He’s my husband—my ex-husband, actually. He got filled full of patriotism as a Christmas turkey right after Pearl Harbor and joined up, there wasn’t the slightest need for it, and he’s been out here for years and years.” She gave a sharp little cluck of distress. “I didn’t know he was out in the jungle, for Pete sake. Fighting … I got Bert Lawson to see if they couldn’t send him here, or to Manila. But nothing doing. They told Bert he’s too essential. It’s the first time anybody’s ever called him that in twenty-six years. What’s his rank, Al?”

  “First Lieutenant.”

  “First Lieutenant. And I wondered, Court—they’d listen to you, wouldn’t they? I mean, if you phoned them up? If he couldn’t be detached or separated or whatever they do, and I could meet him here in Reina Blanca. Or up in Manila.” Her eyes fastened on him, moist and beseeching, filled with stars. “Couldn’t you, Court? Have them fly him down?”

  Damon’s division. All his troubles seemed to begin and end with the Night Clerk—even something perfectly frivolous such as this. Maybe he’d made a mistake in going so far with him. Bradley had sacked Terry Allen in Sicily for arrogance and insubordination, and it hadn’t caused him any trouble. Well, he’d see how things went during the Honshu operation, hold a tight rein on him. Yet in all truth there was an undeniable satisfaction in keeping Damon on …

  “Do you realize what you’re asking, Victoria?” He let his gaze rest on her with the expression of tolerant rebuke he knew was particularly disconcerting. “Since you’re not his wife the Army can hardly be expected to recognize any priority here. And furthermore—”

  “General …”

  He turned. Fowler was standing beside him, looking very odd. A faint sense of foreboding stole upon him. “Yes, Sherwin?”

  “Could I see you a moment, sir?”

  Fowler would never break in on him at a time like this if it wasn’t important; the staff man’s agitation was palpable. Suppressing his annoyance Massengale smiled lightly at the others and said: “Duty calls, it seems. I’ll be with you p
resently.” He led the way down the cool dim hallway to the war room, turned left and entered the G-2 Section. “What is it?” He held his voice perfectly calm, but the irritant tremor was still there.

  “Graulet’s just called me out about this, General. We thought it was necessary to let you know immediately. We’ve dropped a bomb on Japan.”

  Massengale’s first thought was that Fowler, who was not the type at all, had gone dotty. He felt a spasm of anger: all Intelligence people were unstable, given to wild flights of fancy at unpredictable times. He said: “Is that news, Sherwin?”

  “This is a fantastic bomb, sir. Graulet just got the TWX from Manila. It is in excess of twenty thousand tons of TNT.”

  He stared at them. “One bomb?”

  “Yes, General. An atomic bomb, it says—a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. Here’s the dispatch.”

  He read it with numb fingers; handed it back and went over to the window, his back to the others.

  One bomb.

  It was over. Clearly it was over. The Japanese would surrender now. Banzai, kamikazi, bushido, yamato damashi—nothing would keep them going. There would be no invasion of the home islands. He would not command an army. He was flooded with a sense of boundless loss—then with a rage that nearly choked him.

  “There’s another dispatch, sir—an Intelligence report that the Soviet Union is deploying forces along the Siberian border,” Graulet said. And then Fowler, bright with elation: “This means they’ll throw in the towel, doesn’t it, sir?”

  “Quite definitely.” His voice was perfectly steady; his voice had never failed him. “Of course they may need to drop a dozen or so.”

  “A dozen more—!” Graulet exclaimed.

  “Certainly.” He turned. “Why not? I’d say we can expect overtures in a matter of days, two weeks at most.”

  “… It seems fantastic, doesn’t it, General?” Fowler said. “Yes, it does.”

  “A whole city in a single bomb …”

  Abortive, the thought reached out to him. The traditional forms of victory had been destroyed in a thunderclap. Abortive. He felt actually weak with rage and frustration. Why hadn’t Schuyler told him about this, prepared him for it? They must have known back there—somebody in an influential position must have known … If he’d even been up in Manila! The world was altered: all the counters, the flat, familiar counters one passed one’s days learning to manipulate, were gone. He had the sensation of a gambler who is condemned to see everything—fortune and home and family and future—all swept away in the relentless glide of the croupier’s little wooden rake. It was unendurable, it was unthinkable. Filthy, vicious scientists! If they had been here in this room, any or all of their company, he could have shot them with the greatest pleasure. The taut jubilation on Graulet’s tanned hatchet face filled him with loathing. He raised his eyes to the great map of Japan, the tortuous chain of islands like the bleached bones of some archaeological find: flat-capped Hokkaido, and Honshu slung hammock-like southwest, little Shikoku fitted against the Inland Sea like a metacarpal, and below it the thick Kyushu pendant. CORONET. The Choshi and Katsuta coastal areas he had studied for a hundred hours. All for nothing, now. For nothing.