Once an Eagle

  Donny had made no reply to this; Sam remembered the boy’s quick, dark, terribly intense gaze. You never knew what a kid would take to heart. He stole a glance at Tommy but her expression showed only a polite interest.

  “You all know how this boy went over to France and won this nation’s highest decoration, in a deed of heroism unparalleled in the AEF; how he rose from private to the rank of major; how he was wounded leading a charge on enemy positions. And how this same deep sense of sacrifice and duty prompted him to stay on in the Army. I remember once when he was home here on leave he confided to me his fears that Germany had not been rendered a peace-loving nation, that Japan posed a continuous and stealthy threat to our shores. And he told me how he wanted to be ready if ever the need—how remote it all seemed then!—arose. And then like a thunderclap it did arise, and once again he went out to do what he had to do, to save this splendid democracy of ours. Not words but gallant deeds …”

  It was curious hearing about yourself this way, the subject of such headlong, flagrant falsifications and inventions; curious, and not very pleasant. Old Man Harrodsen’s version. What would George Caldwell, bedridden in a room in Rock Creek Park, laboriously translating the memoirs of General Marbot—what would he tell these Nebraskans about their native son, this lovely fall Friday at the end of a war? What would Ben have said about him, or little Brewster, now a senior member of the most venerable of New York law firms? or Reb Raebyrne, farming a strip somewhere in the North Carolina hills? or Dev? He shivered once in the silken sunlight and crossed his arms. A man was only one man, one meager entity, but he was so many divergent things to other men. Watching the back of Harrodsen’s neck, half-listening to the parade of pompous phrases, he felt a slow, subtle anger.

  “And you all know how he rallied a faltering, beaten army, and breathed courage into it, and hope, and led it to victory singlehanded over a savage and arrogant enemy, and won this nation’s second highest award for that. And then personally knocked out a battalion of enemy tanks, and was asked to take over the finest division in the Pacific Theater of War. And how in the Philippines, a major general now, with the line crumbling all around him under the onslaught of the Jap hordes, he must have thought, like another hero of another immortal republic:

  ‘And how can man die better

  Than facing fearful odds,

  For the ashes of his fathers

  And the temples of his gods?’

  “But Sam Damon didn’t die. He was gravely wounded, and for the second time in his life; but the line held. And his division was personally cited by no one less than the President of the United States. And I know all you sons and daughters of Walt Whitman and Buffalo County gathered here today join me in saying: ‘Well done, Sam Damon. We haven’t seen as much of you over the years as we’d like, but we claim you nonetheless: your nation is proud of you, your Army is proud of you—and last and by no means least, your old hometown is proudest of all! … ’”

  There was applause in a rising pattern, and the band began to play “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Damon, shaking hands again with Walter Harrodsen, remembered the swing band at the repple depple at Fort Ord, seated beside the tracks as the replacements shipped out, playing “Somebody Else Is Taking My Place,” and the kids grinning ruefully, giving one another nervous sidelong glances. And the Salamanders on Dizzy Spa, drinking beer and chanting out their lean-and-mean war cry: “Moa!—pora! Man—alive …”

  Emil Clausen had said something inaudible and gestured toward him, and he rose and went forward to the edge of the bandstand. The wood had the clean, spiritous odor of new-cut pine. He thought of the improvised stand at Moapora, at the cemetery, in the still heat. Below him they were clapping and cheering, their faces red and strained, heaving about, and he waved at them. He felt stirred, but not toward tears. It was strange what he felt now—a little numb, and weightless, as though he were falling slowly through space and seeking something to catch hold of—a hook, a plank, the wing of some great bird …

  He had broken down only once, five days ago, when he had turned over the Division to Frenchy Beaupré at Kobe. The last review. Then it had been the faces he hadn’t seen out ahead of him. Now it was the faces he could see—family and friends of his childhood and youth. He waved again, and gave himself a little shake; but the numbness persisted. Time had played him tricks: the past was more vivid than the present—it rose up and swamped this sunlit tumult. There in the center of the Green was the plaque from World War I, the war to end all war, and he had been closer to Dev and Raebyrne and Brewster than to any of these friends of his youth. And beside it, obscured by its cloth canopy, was the bronze-and-marble reason for their convocation, with its list of names for this war—the war to end all peace, Frenchy had wrathfully called it one evening—and there had been no man in his life, nor would there ever be, to compare with Ben.

  Emil Clausen was waving his hands over his head for quiet and grinning at him apologetically. Well: let them roar their relief, their jubilation. It was over. Again. Over. But—and the slow, deep anger stirred him again—these Americans there below him would never know: that was the one thing that was insupportable in this long, exultant moment. None of them would really know. The papers had ranted and roared for four years, there had been the newsreels—now and then some spare, honest efforts among the combat cameramen and correspondents; and now and then one of the returned veterans seated here behind him might, huddled by the fire or in a darkened bar, seek to tell his wife or girl or parents something of it. But it would be only the feeblest approximation of the truth, deflected by desire, forgetfulness, sorrow, by a thousand thousand stealthy, affectionate censors. And maybe—who could say?—it was better that way …

  But for the dead, in their tens of thousands, there had been no newsreels, no papers, no grand strategy, no jubilation. There had been only that one cataclysmic moment of terror and pain—the shock of realization that for them time had stopped, all things had rushed to a halt in the chill dark. They were the ones he would speak for, then: for all their hopes and dreams, their terrible fragility before that iron moment. Not for them exactly, because it was the living who bore life forward; but in their name. Now, while the wounds were raw, the memories bright and hard, he would speak a few words of truth about the war: a few honest words—as honest as he could make them, anyway—and then he would step off into the wings again.

  They were quiet now, looking up at him; waiting for him to say something. He raised his head and gripped the rough pine railing and began to speak.

  Sitting on the platform beside Emil Clausen and Walter Harrodsen, Tommy Damon watched her husband standing at the edge of the railing. He looked thinner than she’d ever seen him, thinner even than Cannes. He looked old all at once, his lined face shadowed like the faces in Brady’s Civil War photographs. What was he? Forty-seven: two years older than the century. That wasn’t old. The crowd would not be still, and Sam watched them with his calm, mournful gaze. She pressed her skirt forward over her knees and thought, Why did I come? What am I doing here? She was cloaked in confusion, a welter of memories and conjectures.

  Their meeting at the airport at Kearney had been awkward. He had come down the ramp and spotted her instantly—his face underwent a strange little quiver, then flared into a smile of pure joy. Reporters and photographers had closed around him, he had broken through them and swung up to her, his arms outstretched: his embrace was at once familiar and alien. She was trembling; her hat had fallen off.

  “Sam,” she said.

  “Oh, honey. Thank you for coming.”

  “I wanted to come,” she answered. But that wasn’t entirely true: she’d had to come, but it wasn’t just desire. She was not sure what had impelled her. Sam had written her that he’d been asked to speak at the dedication of the new war memorial at Walt Whitman on his way back to Washington, and that he was leaving Kobe on the 17th. She had answered carefully that she would be glad to appear with him there if he wanted her to. His rep
ly had been brief: he wanted her to; and she had flown out here, confused and full of misgivings, the night before and stayed with Sam’s sister Peg and her family.

  There had been no chance to say anything more; only a brief, uncertain colloquy of eyes, and then family and friends swept around them both in a pleasant confusion. Sam’s brother Ty had handed her her hat, and she thanked him. After that the press took over—she was surprised to see a man from the Chicago Tribune—and the photographers moved them around like puppets.

  “General, would you turn toward her more, would you mind looking at each other—like that, yes, that’s fine, that’s fine …”

  She was filled with chagrin—confused, angry, laughing a little. This was not at all what she’d imagined their first meeting in over three years would be like, yet it was perfectly predictable: he was home, he was in the Army, they were on parade again …

  The crowd was quiet now. Sam put his hands on the railing and gazed out at them intently, as if he wanted to memorize them, fix this instant for a long time.

  “I hope you’ll forgive me if I sound a little confused,” he said. “Five short days ago I was in Japan, walking along the shore of the Inland Sea. It used to take five days to drive from here to Big Spring in a buckboard, when I was a boy … I’ve been away a long time—almost thirty years—and the world has shifted under my feet. Under all our feet. It is not the world we knew in 1916.”

  She remembered—she had not thought of it for a long time—that moment at the Casino, with the sunlight playing over the water in scales of pure gold. “I must apologize for staring,” he’d said. His gaze had been so steady and diffident and trusting, in spite of the web of fine lines around his eyes. “It’s just that you reminded me of—people back home …”

  “You have asked me,” he was saying now, “to assist in the dedication of this memorial; and I am greatly honored. But I know you will understand if I avoid the use of words like gallantry or valor or glory. I will leave them to those who have not had to add up the ledger of violence and misery. My own heart is too full of losses today. We are assembled here to honor the men whose names are inscribed on this tablet. Let us, then, do them the simple honor of honesty. This war”—and his voice was suddenly very harsh—“was a long, lonely, dirty job, as these men seated here behind me can attest. They fought it with courage and fortitude and the hope of better days, and what they did cannot and will not be forgotten. But there is nothing glorious about killing one’s fellow man, or being killed by him, or passing many, many days in hatred and misery and fear. And whoever says it is a matter for glory lies in his teeth …”

  Once in ’42 at Ord they had drawn up at a station in Monterey for gas and the pumps on both sides were blocked because an armored forces corporal had left his car, a battered old black Chevrolet, and was leaning in the window of the other one, talking to a girl. She and Sam had been hiking under the redwoods up in the Corral de Tierra, and Sam was wearing a pullover sweater and no hat. He had turned off the engine and sat there idly, watching. Impulsively she had leaned over and pumped the horn twice. The corporal, a stocky, slope-shouldered man with great bushy black eyebrows, withdrew his head and turned and glared at them and said, “Keep your shirt on, buddy,” then leaned in the window again.

  “Oh honestly, Sam,” she’d protested when he’d made no response, “this is ridiculous. Why doesn’t he take her in the back seat and be done with it?”

  “We’re in no hurry.”

  “He’s doing that simply because he doesn’t know who you are.”

  “Of course he doesn’t.”

  “Well, go on over to him and let him know …”

  He had turned to her then, his eyes very steady and piercing. “Look, Tommy: in not too long a time he’s going to be in some lousy place trying just to save his ass. Let him have his fun. We can wait.”

  She’d subsided, sulking. “You’re hopeless. You just let them walk all over you.”

  “We like to say that war is cruel,” he was saying now. “But no one knows how cruel it is—how deeply, monstrously cruel—unless he has himself walked through the fire and felt it sear him. The men recorded on this tablet have done that. Many of them died horribly, some of them needlessly. Yes, needlessly,” he repeated. It was very quiet down on the Green. “Because what is most hideous about war is its waste: destruction of goods and homes, waste of life and hope and that dream of individual dignity we cherish as the particular achievement of America. A country’s treasure is in its young men, and their loss is terrible beyond measure because it is irreparable. It is as shocking as the loss of innocence, or self-respect. And more often than not it is the good man who goes: the large act, the spendthrift heart. The medic who goes out to bring in the wounded man, the automatic rifleman who covers his patrol’s withdrawal, the officer trying to prevent panic, the gunner who throws himself on the grenade menacing his friends …”

  His face was somber, rather forbidding—as though he wanted to fight them with his fists but knew he wasn’t allowed to. The crowd below was still, but it was, Tommy knew, the apprehensive quiet of an audience that feared what its speaker would say next. The poor, dear, wonderful, impossible man: couldn’t he see they didn’t want to hear any of this? that what they wanted was hymns to glory? He would never change.

  “There they are, arrayed on the face of the stone. All that is left of their eager faces, their dreams, their inviolable souls. They are dead now. They were singularly trusting. They asked no collateral on the prompt surrender of their lives, they demanded no social privileges, no distinctions, no seats of power or influence as they walked steadily into the valley. They demanded nothing. What about us, the beneficiaries of such profligate bounty? Will we be so callous as to scheme and despoil for these things again—and mock their death, their slow, immeasurable agony?

  “Power,” he was saying, nodding at them grimly. “We have it now. In our two hands. A new world, a clean slate. These young men have made the down payment on it—and it was a bitter payment, I can assure you. Bitter as gall. And they did not make that payment for a world of rockets and bombs and barbed wire, or for a world of overseas markets and a favorable gold balance and the wolfish gutting of what we are pleased to call the underdeveloped nations. Old friends, we can build a new Jerusalem—but we will reach only what we seek …”

  She found she was gripping her hands together tightly. It was true. Man was a beast, as Court had said, as Bill Bowdoin had said: he was weak, he pursued false gods, he had a positive genius for creeping out of one self-inflicted calamity only to fall headlong into one still worse; he was selfish and faithless and cruel … But one still had to hope. Hope for peace, for love, for generosity, for the sunlit riverbank where old men could sit and dream and children play without fear. Even in defeat, in the most chill despair, in the most boundless of cynicism, there had to be hope …

  Tears stung her eyelids; she blinked, staring at the thin, worn figure. He was wearing his A uniform, and it was nicely pressed, though well worn at the elbows and shoulders. He was even wearing his ribbons, except for the Distinguished Unit bar. Beside her Mayor Clausen was listening with an almost fierce intensity; the man named Harrodsen and a companion of his who looked like a real estate broker were scowling down at their feet, their arms crossed. Dear Sam. If they wanted to hate him for saying these things, let them. Somebody ought to say them.

  “Let us remember, then. They would want us to remember—if only because it may cause us to strengthen our resolve not to sow the dragon’s teeth again. The naked sword we hold so proudly is two-edged: it is as dangerous for the wielder as for the recipient.

  “We stand at an immense fork in the road. One way is the path of generosity, dignity and a respect for other races and customs; the other leads most certainly to greed, suspicion, hatred and the old, bloody course of violence and waste—and now, God help us, to the very destruction of all the struggles and triumphs of the human race on this earth. My old friends and fellow tow
nsmen: which will it be?”

  For a moment he was silent, measuring them; then he put his hand to his forehead. “Forgive me, if you can, for so somber an address on this beautiful September day, when the whole land echoes with cries of triumph; but I am weighed down with losses—I am constrained to cry, like another soldier sick of slaughter and folly: The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say … ”

  He had stopped speaking and turned from the bunting-wrapped railing, looking sad and stern and defeated. All around her there was a brief, astonished, fearful silence—then an uncertain clatter of applause. Mayor Clausen was dabbing at his eyes with the back of one big red hand; Walter Harrodsen was watching Sam with a tight, exasperated grin. Sam took no notice of him and sat down beside her.

  There was the unveiling then, the stone memorial looking absurdly commonplace and small; the Reverend Eckert led them in prayer, and then the veteran from the 32nd Division stepped forward with a bugle and blew taps, the notes falling in light, clean globes of sound through the still air. And then it was over, everyone was on his feet, several of the GIs had surrounded Sam and were shaking his hand, talking to him. And still she didn’t know what she felt, why she had come or what she ought to do or say.

  On the grass beside the stand people milled around endlessly; no one seemed to know what to do—there was the facetious relief of children let out of some burdensome duty, and it angered her suddenly. Sam’s brother Ty was calling to them all to get in the cars, it was time to go home for a drink and dinner.

  “We’re going to have your favorite,” his mother was saying to Sam. “Broiler chicken.”