To turn her back on the scene at the edge of the blanket was actually painful. With the soundless alacrity of a dream she moved into the bedroom, up to the bedside table Sam had made from a weapons chest, opened the drawer and took the holstered automatic and unsnapping the catch drew out the weapon and darted back to the porch. The snake was gone. No—it was coiling. It was coiled. The .45 was loaded but Sam never kept a round in the chamber; she knew that. She gripped the receiver with her left hand; it was all she could do to throw it back. It shot forward again with its clashing metallic sound. She went down the steps sideways, conscious of the screen door slamming hard behind her. Rusty had turned toward her now—in the scan of her eye she saw him freeze with alarm, then start to scramble to his feet.
“Stay where you are,” she said. “Rusty. Stay right there. Don’t move.”
The boy remained motionless, his eyes white and round. Donny had seen her too but all her concentration was fixed on the snake, who had finished coiling. Its head drew back with mesmeric deliberation, the tail a vertical blur; the rattle made a dry, whirring sound, like a bad mechanical toy. She pushed the safety catch off by feel and gripped the big pistol in both hands, her left locked over her right, as her father had taught her at Schofield Barracks years ago. The end of the barrel wobbled up and down past the snake’s head. It looked enormous—gross and fearsome, a glittering spring all coiled for death. Donny was talking to her, and she heard Rusty call something, his voice thin with fear.
“That’s a good boy,” she said. Her voice was a reedy croak, an old hag’s false, forbidding tones. The baby moved suddenly then and she gasped, swung the gun to the right. The barrel kept wavering. The buck. That was what she had, she’d heard them say it: somewhere. “Hold—steady,” she said, half-aloud, and gritted her teeth. You idiot. Steady. She brought the nose of the weapon down until it rested just below the lidded agate eye, holding fiercely with her left hand, and squeezed.
There was a stunning roar. Her hands had been flung up in the air and struck her in the forehead; her wrist hurt. The snake was coiled still tighter, writhing and looping. She brought the gun down and fired again, into the scaled tangle. When the smoke cleared the snake was stretched out, its terrible jaws gaping, its head making short, feeble lurches. The thick body was torn in half a dozen places; blood lay bright and slick on the scales.
She darted forward and snatched Donny up on her hip, moved over to Rusty, who started to cry, a high, agonized wail. “It’s all right, Russ.” She put the arm holding the gun around him. “It’s all right, now.” Another screen door bumped and she saw Elaine Kneeland running toward her from two houses up the line.
“What happened?”
“Rattler,” she called back. She felt perfectly calm now; as if all her blood had turned to spring water and jelled. “Be careful, Ellie.”
“You shot it—!”
“Be careful, now. They go around in pairs. Usually.” She remembered Sam’s telling her that. “The other one is probably a little way out in the grass. Take Donny, will you?”
“What? No, wait—”
She felt no fear at all. She advanced into the buffalo grass, moving softly, putting her feet down toe first, curving a little to the right—saw the flickering pattern in the sere yellow stalks. She fired twice more. The second snake doubled up in wild contortions, writhing and flailing, as though trying to divest itself of its skin. She stood calmly watching its death throes while Mae Lee clumped down the back stoop of the Cleghornes’ quarters, gripping the railing, her face pinched with apprehension.
“It’s all right,” she called. “I got them both.” The powder fumes caught in her sinuses and she coughed. She thought of the rifle ranges at Schofield and Benning, and smiled. Her wrist still hurt, but not severely. From across the parade ground she saw two men in fatigues running toward her.
“Seventh Cavalry to the rescue,” she remarked. She walked back and bent over Rusty, who was roaring with surprise and fear. “There, there,” she murmured. “Everything turned out all right, you see?”
“It was right there—that close to the blanket?” Mae Lee breathed. “My God—with the kids that near … You saved them!”
“Nonsense.”
“You did …” She gazed at the pistol. “I couldn’t have done that.”
“Sure you could.” It now seemed like the most commonplace thing in the world. You see a rattler, you shoot it: that’s what you do.
“No, I couldn’t,” Mae Lee insisted. “I’d have died of fright. I’d have died.”
The soldiers came running up; they were carrying shovels. The first one, a rangy, redheaded man with a broken nose and bushy eyebrows, called: “What’s the trouble, lady?”
“No trouble,” she said calmly. “Rattler.” She pointed. “Two of them. I got them both.”
They went over and peered at the corpses. “Don’t get up too close to ’em, Dinny,” the redheaded man said. “They can sting you after they’re dead … What a monster!” He gave a long, low whistle. “Nine—frigging—rattles …” He whirled around. “Beg pardon, ma’am!”
“That’s quite all right.”
“Where’d you learn to use a gun like that?”
Tommy looked hard at him; this was lèse majesté, and he knew it. “Several places,” she replied shortly. “I see you’ve got shovels with you. Will you bury them for me, please?”
“Why—sure, ma’am.” He stared at her, awed. “Right away.”
Juliana Bentik had come up from four sets down the row and everyone was clustered around her now, chattering like a flock of magpies. She took Donny back on her hip. He gazed at her a moment—then all at once threw back his head in that doll-like way, and laughed without a sound. With his two stubs of front teeth he looked like a jovial little old man. She heard a short, imperious voice, and turned. Amanda Pownall, the Second-in-Command’s wife, was coming toward them quickly down the back line. She was wearing a plain gray cotton frock and carrying a wicked-looking lever-action cavalry carbine in her right hand, her seamed face composed, intent. She took in the whole situation at one glance. “Thought that’s what it was,” she said. “Good girl.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Tommy felt absurdly pleased at the commendation, and then angry with herself for being pleased.
“She got one of the varmints right though the head, ma’am.” The redheaded soldier raised one of the snakes on the shovel blade.
“So I see.” Mrs. Pownall examined the swollen, drooping body with interest. “Nine rattles. A regular granddaddy. Thank the Lord some of you girls know how to use firearms decently. If there’s anything I can’t abide it’s helpless females.”
There was a little silence. To fill it Tommy said: “I’d better go in and clean this pistol before Sam gets home, or I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“You know how to clean a pistol?” Mae Lee whispered in amazement.
“Course she does,” Amanda Pownall snapped. “Every Army wife should know how to field-strip and clean small arms, at least. What we ought to do is run a short course, evenings. I’ll speak to Harry.” Her lined face cracked into its tough, wintry smile. “My mother shot a redskin right off his pony during the Sioux wars,” she said to Mae Lee with relish, and transferred the carbine to her left hand with almost careless professional competence. “Well, that’s that.” Her eyes glinted warmly at Tommy. “Your papa”—she accented the second syllable—“would be proud of you, Thomas.”
She walked off, her skirts fluttering, the carbine’s curved brass butt plate glinting in the sun. Now, after the flurry of excitement, there was a reaction: everyone was apathetic, no one knew quite what to do. The rattlesnakes were buried without honors, and the soldiers sauntered back to their detail. Elaine went in with Mae Lee to calm her down, and Tommy took Donny inside and put him down in his crib.
“Dango,” he muttered. “Heh dow lub a gan.” He waggled his head, scowling at her crossly, and she realized he disliked the gunpowder smell. “Good,?
?? she said aloud. “Remember it. Hate it all your life.” With a tremulous rush of affection she caught him up and pressed him against her heart. “My baby,” she murmured. “My own baby boy.” And her eyelids stung with tears.
In the bedroom the drawer to the bedside cabinet was still open; the holster lay on her pillow. She had no recollection of dropping it there. She got out the brush and thong and the little bottle of Hoppe’s Number 9 solvent out of the cabinet and sitting on her cot began to clean the barrel. She knew she ought to field-strip the weapon but she’d forgotten how to disengage the receiver. She drew the cleaning pads through the barrel, watched them emerge as greasy black wads.
I did it, she thought, inhaling the pungent banana-oil–and–ether smell of the solvent. I actually did it. I saved my baby. The one time I met a crisis and Sam wasn’t here to see. Of course if he’d been here he’d have done it—better and quicker; and I’d have never known whether I could have met it or not … Now he would never know what she’d felt those—what? minutes? seconds? It now seemed like hours and hours. Nobody would ever know but she. That was how life was, perhaps: you fought your bravest battles unapplauded and alone.
She had poured some oil on a rag and was cleaning the chamber when her bowels clutched in a spasm that made her gasp; she jumped to her feet and half-ran to the toilet. Sitting there, streaming, she began to laugh. “What every Army wife should know,” she breathed. Shivering, gripping her knees, she began to sob tightly. Laughing and sobbing she pressed her head against the cool, rough adobe wall.
The couples moved up the steps; the uniforms were somber against the bright splashes of the women’s gowns, pasteled now in the dark. All the lights were covered with Japanese paper lanterns, a burnt orange hue; the club looked curiously spacious and festive, freed of the usual overhead glare. On the stand, draped with black and gold, the band was playing a waltz. Tommy, talking with Elaine Kneeland, recognized Sergeant Kinch playing inaudibily in a mute, his thick fingers fluttering over the valves, and the drummer, little Private Ostrowsky, hunched over, his head cocked, listening to the dry patter of the snare. The walls were filled with placards and banners. One was a replica of a battle streamer, but larger, and said: CAMBRAI—ST. MIHIEL—MEUSE-ARGONNE and another, the largest of all, centered above the bandstand, proclaimed: WELCOME GENERAL PERSHING.
“To think he’s actually here!” Elaine Kneeland exclaimed; she was a plain, heavy woman with fair hair and a placid smile. She plucked nervously at the front of her gown, like a staff sergeant getting ready to stand inspection. “That he came all the way down here, I mean …”
“Yes,” Tommy answered dryly. “Just think of it.”
Then Colonel Howden’s aide, Lieutenant Geyger, was standing in front of them, his body faintly inclined, giving them that distant, official smile. Sam murmured, “Lieutenant and Mrs. Samuel A. Damon,” for all the world as though they hadn’t seen each other three hours before, and Lieutenant Geyger repeated their names to Captain Tyson, the post adjutant, who relayed this precious information to Lieutenant Colonel Pownall, the Second-in-Command, who passed it on to the CO. “For that is the way it is done in the Army,” Tommy murmured to herself, smiling, moving along the reception line. But tonight was different, for tonight Colonel Howden, instead of being his frosty, paternal self, was looking fiercely alert, almost pugnacious; he turned to his right, murmuring their names still again—and there was General Pershing, looking exactly as he had in France, tall and stern and with a twinkle in his eye, iron and old leather, everybody’s dream of a grandfather-hero. His face broke into its quick, martial smile, deep lines outside the mustache, and he was saying, “George Caldwell’s girl, of course, of course, how are you, my dear?” and to Sam: “Yes, the Night Clerk—Brigny, wasn’t it? What a pleasure to see you again, my boy, a distinct pleasure!” He had taken Sam’s hand in that grip that could make a man wince, his eyes sparkling, and she was glad she’d insisted on Sam’s wearing his ribbons that one evening, even though it had brought them very close to a quarrel. “Howden,” General Pershing was saying, “you didn’t tell me you had young Damon down here with you!”
“Why—I didn’t think of it, General,” the Colonel said, glancing fearfully at them all. “I didn’t realize you knew him … ”
“Know him!” The Iron Commander’s eyes glinted with displeasure. “I pinned that Medal of Honor on him myself. He’s one of nine names in my own private Pantheon of heroes, Howden. One of nine.”
“Yes, sir,” Colonel Howden said, and gave Sam a startled look.
There were other officers who had come to Fort Dormer with the General of the Armies; they were standing to one side in a little group, as though not to dull the luster of the General’s presence. They had the urbane, casual assurance of all staff officers, and she began greeting them perfunctorily—all at once she stopped. A tall captain with a long, straight nose and high cheekbones and cool amber eyes was bowing toward her and saying, “I had the honor of serving with your father briefly, Mrs. Damon.” She smiled in confusion. What was his name? Her heart still dancing from the encounter with Pershing, the sheer force in the man, the avalanche of memories he had released in her, she’d missed it.
“You probably don’t remember me,” he was saying to Sam. “We met in France—”
“I remember it perfectly, Captain Massengale. A courtyard near St. Durance.”
“Ah, you do remember!” Massengale laughed easily, and she saw he was quite handsome; his face looked younger and less cold when he laughed. “I was afraid our meeting might have been swallowed up in the pressure of circumstances.”
“‘Days of tumult and tension,’ you called them,” Sam answered; he was smiling, but there was a trace of iron in his voice Tommy had learned to recognize.
Captain Massengale watched him with faint amusement. “Did I, Damon?”
“Your very words, sir.”
“How remarkable you remembered them! Perhaps it was the alliteration.” He smiled, his lips curving broadly without affecting the expression in his eyes. “Well, they’re over and gone now. When the hurly-burly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won—”
“That will be ere the set of sun,” Sam went on quietly.
Massengale’s eyebrows rose. “How apt! No one thinks of that line. Danielsson here tells me you’ve become quite a military history buff. Is that true?”
Tommy watched the two men, not concentrating on what they were saying, listening only to the intonations of their voices, their changes in expression—a habit she had fallen into as a girl at post functions; you could learn more about people that way than by following the words. She was conscious of a current between the two men; they were cordial enough, they exchanged views and welcomed each other’s opinions … but there was something—the merest shade of punctiliousness on Massengale’s part, the faintest suggestion of overcorrectness on Sam’s. They’ve had a quarrel, she decided abruptly, and the thought gave her a strange thrill of excitement. That time in France.
They were calling for the grand march now. General Pershing had taken the hand of Mrs. Howden, rank followed rank, and the column, smoothly assembled, wound back and forth through the long room to the strains of “Sabers and Spurs.” Tommy moved along with Sam near the end of the procession, disliking its formalized severity but constrained nevertheless to admire the mesmeric flow of polished leather, glinting buttons and insignia in the soft orange-gold light.
Then the band broke into “Rose of the Rio Grande” in honor of Colonel Howden, who was a native Texan, and the slow, glittering serpent broke up into couples. Tommy danced with a bachelor officer named Breslyn, and then Jack Cleghorne cut in, looking moody and roguish.
“Jack, you’re a born fool,” she said, laughing. “You know you ought to be performing your duty dances.”
He shrugged. “Time enough for that. I want to talk to you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“That’s right. I don’t. I want to bask in your reflected glor
y.”
“You’ll pay for it, Mr. Madcap.”
“Everybody pays for everything.”
Everyone was dancing now; she saw General Pershing go by with Mrs. Howden, forcing her robust bulk along manfully, his face set in a hard, glassy smile. Sam was dancing with Major Kostmyer’s wife; he winked at her once—the flick of one eyelid, his face grave—swung away again. The band was playing “Avalon,” a tune she loved, Jack was watching Irene Keller over her head and talking about nothing in particular, and then he stiffened and stopped, and looking up she saw it was Captain Massengale. Jack gave her an arch, significant glance from under his brows, and bowed out. Massengale swept her off and away with astonishing ease; he was a superb dancer.
“—You can’t be a Pointer,” she protested.
He laughed. “Why not—has it gone out of fashion?”
“You don’t dance like an Academy product. There’s a marked absence of by-the-numbers marching and countermarching.”
“Oh, we’re not as bad as all that, are we? … Of course”—he threw her the quick, utterly charming smile—“I forgot—you’re a renegade. A very engaging one, however.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“No, I learned at a dancing class in Albany called Monsieur Charbet’s. He was a very correct Frenchman with black satin pumps and a pince-nez with a lovely long blue ribbon. He used to call in a flat, despotic voice he never had to raise: ‘Gardez les bienféances, mes jeunes gens! Bienféances et élégance. You do not pump, you do not prance, you are neither British guardsmen nor Apache tribesmen—grace and decorum!”’ He laughed pleasantly. “I dislike acquired skills. What I value are the natural ones, the miraculous endowments—those attributes the Greek gods and goddesses sprayed their favorites with, like perfume. Those are the delightful talents. Don’t you agree?”