The Eleventh Man

  "The genuine exploits of our fighting men and women deserve to be told, in our view," the colonel skirted that as wide as he could. "I would submit, Senator, that your constituents are as eager as any others for such news."

  "In Montana we're a little leery of bragging people up too much ever since General Custer," the Senator stated, drawing laughter in the hearing room. He studied the colonel as if marking his place in a chapter, then sat back saying: "No further questions for now, Mister Chairman."

  "Let's have a chin-chin about what's wanted of you, Captain Reinking," the colonel came out with now, still occupying a corner of the desktop in all apparent ease. He paused to tap one of the little Cuban stinkers out of a cigarillo pack and fire it up with a flick of his lighter. Considerately he blew the smoke away from Ben and at the same time fixed total attention on him. "You seem a bit bothered by the recent course of events in your war coverage. I sympathize, over Angelides and Prokosch—'the dear love of comrades,' as I believe a poet put it. But the war did not end with them. There are still your other teammates—"

  "That's what's on my mind, sir," Ben could not stop himself. "The way it's turned out, some of the guys barely stood a chance of making it through while others—" He halted, not sure where the next words would take him.

  "Share it out bold, Captain. It's just the two of us here."

  Ben mustered it for all he was worth.

  "How much has Tepee—TPWP had to do with where the ten besides me have ended up in the war?"

  The colonel managed to look surprised. "Why think the fate of your teammates is any of our doing? I grant you, some have had the worst possible luck. Need I point out that war does not necessarily deal the cards fair?"

  "Does that mean the deck has to be stacked? Sir?"

  "The 'deck,' to call it that, is too much for any of us to get our fingers around," the colonel maintained.

  "Maybe so," Ben said, unsatisfied. "But sir, whatever accounts for it, this whole thing with the Supreme Team has turned out way to hell and gone different from what you projected, hasn't it. I mean, why keep on with the series? Shouldn't we just scrap it now? Six men gone—I've tried, but for the life of me I can't see what's to be gained by serving up my buddies in obituary after obituary." He stared squarely at the colonel. "Dead heroes serve a purpose, do they?"

  "We are not dealing"—the colonel stopped—"not trafficking in that sort of thing, Captain, what kind of cynics do you think we are?" Reaching down to a wastebasket, he mashed out the stub of his cigarillo, and treated himself to another. "Thanks to your talents," he resumed levelly, "the story of the eleven of you, whatever misfortunes have been along the way, is one of the epics of this war. So we are not, repeat not, going to scrap the series." The tone softened. "Modify it a bit, perhaps." He waved away a slight cirrus of smoke. "Let's proceed to the reason I'm here. I wanted to brief you personally on the war outlook as we at TPWP see it, to provide some needed perspective"—needed by you to the point where you now shut up and listen or else, his tone implied—"about your assignments from here on."

  Ben did listen, with every pore. The colonel's briefing came down to saying he did not have to see himself as a war correspondent into perpetuity; there was optimism at knowledgeable levels in Washington that the war could be over within a year. From their lips to God's ear, as Jake would say. The colonel sprinkled in some pep talk about once-in-a-lifetime coverage chances as Germany and Japan, in whichever order, were ground down into surrender. Depends on the lifetime, doesn't it. By the time the TPWP view of things had been fully impressed upon him, not a word had been uttered about how he was supposed to handle the due pieces on Dex and Moxie, leaving him as baffled as ever. If that didn't amount to scrapping the Supreme Team, what did? What was "modify" supposed to mean?

  "Now as to your next orders, Captain," the colonel had arrived at. "It may not surprise you that you'll be going overseas—"

  Well, here it is, and with something strangely like the spin of a compass in himself Ben began trying to set his mind to it, that ticket to Somewhere in Europe. Moxie, you win the sterling pencil-pusher for a change.

  "—you'll need to tidy up with your clerk, finish up any pieces you're working on, you may be gone a good while—"

  Or a bad one, Colonel, given the history of this.

  "—and when the time is nearer, we'll let you know your departure date—"

  Oh, swell, let's add waiting to the game.

  "—for your old stomping grounds, the Pacific."

  Ben was floored. What, again? Capital Y why? Danzer had been written about not all that long ago, there was nothing sane to be said further about his cushy boat ride through the war. It just did not make a lick of journalistic sense that he could see, returning to—Wait a minute: return. Oh goddamn, no.

  "Sir, begging your pardon, I don't want to seem out of line or anything, but damn it," everything in him blew, "are you sending me out there again just so Tepee Weepy will have an eyewitness when MacArthur wades ashore at Manila or Zamboanga or Leyte or wherever the hell he's going to do it? When that happens there'll be correspondents and photographers up the gigi, the general will have to wade through the cameras and reporters as much as the surf, and I don't see why I—"

  "Calm down, Captain. Watching Douglas MacArthur walk on water is not going to be your primary mission."

  "Then what is?" he asked dubiously, still suspicious that somewhere in MacArthur's entourage as the great man returned to the Philippines would be Danzer flourishing a white tablecloth and a feast of pork.

  "The story is still developing, I'm not at liberty to tell you." Reaching into the attaché case at his side, the colonel extracted a file of clippings and dropped it dead-center on Ben's work place at the desk. He smiled just enough. "It might not hurt, though, if you were to do some bedtime reading about the Montaneers."

  Beyond floored, this time Ben stared at the colonel in shock. The man might as well have said to him, "Learn the rules of dueling, you're going to Dan Standish's outfit." All else being equal, he could have understood that the regiment that had been unendingly fighting up and down the jungle hellholes of the Pacific and now doubtless was destined for the invasion of the Philippines constituted a legitimate story to be written. All else was not equal, not even close; bedtime reading had already happened any number of times and it was indubitably the Braille of unclad lover to unclad lover while a Montaneer was out there in the jungle stuck with a matching wedding band. Still stunned, Ben grappled with two instant convictions, that coming face-to-face with Cass's husband in the Montaneers' next island assault was by all odds a long shot, and that in the perversity of this war it absolutely would happen.

  He stood there stone-still, watched expectantly by the colonel, haunted in every direction he could look. The quantities of death he had seen in the world of war. All the times of sitting to the typewriter to turn teammates' foreshortened lives into handfuls of words. Bruno's eleven, fingered by fate when the coach's ordained list of varsity starters was drawn up at that last practice. Loudon's eleven, damn his gloryhound hide. The Supreme Team betrayed by the law of averages, with something that amounted to a moving wall of oblivion hinged to the war for them; a click at a time, it claimed life after life whatever the odds said. It surpassed understanding, yet the circumference of war plainly was different for these nearly dozen men. Until now Ben had been able to tell himself life went on until proved different, trusting to the unbidden gamble of the flesh that was the greatest and worst venture of his life, the love of another man's wife. Now this.

  "Colonel," he finally found his voice, "I've had it. I can't go along with the way you want the war told, anymore. Kick me out for 'nervous in the service' or some goddamn thing, I don't care." His lips were so dry he could barely make them function. He licked them to not much effect. "If it takes a Section Eight, I'm ready."

  "You don't want to do that," the colonel said with utmost civility. "A dishonorable discharge follows a person the rest of his life."
He inclined his head as if regretting that fact, while spelling out: "In a lot of fields, a person won't stand a chance of latching on after the war if he's labeled as a bobtail soldier."

  The veil on that was thin as could be. Anyone with a byline knew what fields were meant in that implied threat. Hollywood. Any influential newspaper. The by-the-book wire services. All of the messengers who tended to fall under question for their messages any time a hole in their patriotism could be found. None of those was going to want a wordsmith, no matter how good, with a military record that could not be held up to public light. A record of a soldier who quit.

  Ben did not really have to say anything. The circumstances ahead, after the war, beyond Tepee Weepy but yet not, spoke it all. But he wanted the choiceless words inflicted on both of them in that room.

  "Some decks are more stacked than others, aren't they, sir."

  As the colonel departed the office, he gave Ben a passing pat on the shoulder, possibly a salute of sorts.

  "So what's your secret?" Jake had just banged the hotel room door shut with his foot, one hand busy trying to undo the clumsy horse blanket the military called an overcoat and the other bearing a rattling sack of beer. "How do you get them to ship you overseas easy as falling off a log, while they confine me to the North American continent?" His big coat went on the bed, the beer onto the dresser, and he faced around to Ben rubbing his hands briskly. "Brr. Getting chilly out there. 'Frost on the pupkins, the poor curs.' What's that from anyway?"

  "'Stars Fell on Alamogordo.' Tallulah." Ben put aside the week-old news magazine—news magazines were always a week old—he had been flipping through. "To what do I owe the unexpected pleasure of your company, Ice?"

  "I thought it was sticking out all over me. Au revoir and all that."

  Ben shifted in his chair as if caught. "They're keeping me in the dark about when I leave. I was going to look you up when I find out, honest."

  "Yeah, with your seabag over your shoulder and ten minutes before you'd have to catch a gooney bird out of here—I'm onto you. Besides, I'm kissing East Base good-bye a while myself. A month on the Fairbanks-to-Nome run. The Russkies are getting short of pilots, so some of us are detailed to fill in on that last leg. Some detail, huh? You can about see Siberia from there. Anyway, I brought a proper farewell. Got a church key?"

  "Bottom drawer."

  Jake pawed out the opener, did the honors on the bottles of beer, and handed Ben one before settling onto the groaning springs of the bed. "This place makes me feel better about the barracks. How come they stick you here?"

  "Where commanding officers are concerned, I'm a marked man."

  Jake snorted. "Aren't we all, one way or another." They drank a couple of pulls of beer, looking at one another with the awkward affection of men who have become oldest friends in not that long a time.

  "Ben? Where they sending you this time?"

  "I'm not allowed to tell you, or I would suffer the death of a thousand paper cuts from a manila folder."

  "Backtrack Mac country, no crap?" It drew a whistle from Jake. "He's going to take back everything Filipino from the Japs or know the reason why, ain't he." The big man drank deep, then pointed his bottle toward Ben. "I don't want you getting the shit shot out of you out there, hear?"

  Ben took a sip of his own before finding the voice to parry. "Look who's talking—the guy who wants to deliver bombs to Hitler on his chamber pot."

  "Notice I want to do it from several miles away, up above the flak," Jake said as if setting him straight on the rules of the game. "I think that's the way the Nazi pricks ought to get what's coming to them," he mused. "Just blam, something comes out of the sky and wipes them out of the human race."

  "That'd be convenient," Ben found to say.

  Jake leaned forward, adding gravity in all senses of the word. "Serious, Ben. Don't get fancy out in those islands. Things tend to happen around where you are. The time the Japs jumped you and Carlo," he took to reciting. "Then Animal getting it, damn near in your lap." Listening, Ben had to hear over the pounding of blood in the confines of his head. "That walk in the northern woods you took with me." Jake stopped, then said the rest as though it was the most natural of advice. "Bravery is just another way to die, my friend. Keep in the rear echelon for a change—who knows, it might be kind of nice there. The team is getting thin enough on the ground, without you crossed out."

  "Ice, I intend to do everything I know how to stay on the living list."

  "Good. We'll drink to that." Heaving himself off the bed, Jake fetched another pair of beers. In passing, he noticed the page of script in the typewriter. "You still tinkering with that? I thought you said it was done after you got the goods about Purcell."

  "It is. I'm getting going on another one, I seem to be in the habit." Ben gazed at the waiting paper. "Vic and his grandfather, this is. You never met Toussaint. He's one they don't make anymore."

  "Busy hands keep a guy out of trouble," Jake proclaimed piously. "Sometimes." They clinked bottles. "That's one more reason you've got to keep yourself in one piece, you know—I've got a date with that movie of yours." The big man grinned crookedly. "I want to see you fry Bruno's nuts for him."

  The autumn that everyone at East Base hoped would be the last one of the war kept confusing itself with winter—a snow squall for the first day of fall, then clouds that looked like they were lined with lead chronically hanging low over October's advance across the calendar. He was late arriving to the roadhouse, due mainly to weather delays of incoming flights with Very Important Persons aboard, Jones and his camera having needed a final tutorial in brazening it out when generals and admirals scowled at the presence of the lens.

  It's all yours now, Corporal old kid, Tepee Weepy be thy guardian angel. As for himself, he kept trying to think only of these last hours with Cass before he climbed on the plane in the morning. Kept trying and failing. These few weeks since she came back from training her squadron to the new fighter planes had been time after time of glimpsed and gone, the P-63s flying north with the red star on their sides whenever he looked up, the stolen bits of lovemaking with her here at the eternal roadhouse or in his dumpy hotel bed too desperate and brief. All he had told her, all he could stand to tell her, was that he was being shipped out to the Pacific on assignments he would be filled in on when he got there. He meant it as a mercy, in not saying anything about being tossed in with the Montaneers in whatever bloody pocket of the Philippines invasion. Whether or not it was the right thing for Cass, it cost him plenty of sleep. You're quite the specimen, Reinking. What are you going to do if you come face-to-face with Dan Standish out there, stick out your mitt and say "Hi, I came to cut the cards with you to see which of us gets Cass"? He still was trying to shoo away these thoughts as he dodged in out of the blustery weather to the permanent blue dusk of the roadhouse.

  No sooner was he in the place than the bald bartender leaned across and muttered, "You're in for a ripsnorting time. She's belting drinks down about as fast as I can pour them."

  Ben approached the table at the back as if testing thin ice. Cass watched him mutely. She looked half-swacked. And the other affected half attributable to something other than alcohol.

  "Cass, what in hell—"

  "I lost one, Ben. First time."

  He sank into a chair and reached across to cover her hand in his, which had the added effect of keeping her from hoisting another glass of scotch. That blonde number in her squadron, the one who always looked ready to climb a guy's leg—"Cass, don't be blaming yourself, if that's what you're doing. You said last time she's an ingrown tailender and the new planes weren't helping any. It probably was just a matter of time before—"

  The wobbly sway of her head stopped him.

  "Not her." Cass slipped her hand out from under his and clamped onto the glass, taking a gulp before he could react.

  "Beryl," she said amid the swallow, choking on the name. "My oldest, best pilot. The landing gear folded on her and Beryl bellied hal
fway across Edmonton." Cass's head went back and forth again, her voice thickening. "She didn't stand a chance with that damn engine down her neck. Damn it all to hell, Bear logged hundreds of hours in that flying piece of crap, the P-39, and we get the hot new planes and right away I lose her." She clutched at the table to stop swaying. "Isn't that a pisser? We get the 'new and improved' goddamn planes and right away—"

  "Cass, look at me." She made the effort, her gaze only approximate by now. "Listen up, you've got to. When are you on duty?"

  She concentrated. "Tonight?"

  "No damn way in this world are you flying tonight, I'll call the ops section and tell them you've caught the twenty-four-hour crud. I know it raises hell with the squadron, but you can't—"

  "Who said anything about flying?" she said belligerently, all the drinks talking. "USO. Liaison officer to the cookie pushers, that's me. Can't lead a squadron worth a pork-and-beans' fart, so might as well herd bashful—"

  "Just sit here until I come back, okay? Just sit, don't try to get up." There still was a modicum of scotch in her glass, and he downed it so she wouldn't. Swiftly he was onto his feet and headed to the front of the bar.

  "Lit up like a church, whatever's got into her," the roadhouse bartender diagnosed as if a second opinion was needed.

  Busy digging for silver, Ben specified: "That cabin with the whorehouse tub."

  "No can do," the man behind the bar replied with a minimum shrug. "Don't get enough call for that one this time of year, so I shut down the water heater. Freeze your tails off if you was to get to piddling around in—"

  "We're trying out to be Eskimos." Ben unloaded round dollars onto the bar until the bartender pushed them back, then returned to the matter of Cass.

  She alternately tended toward limp and squirmy as he maneuvered her to the cabin. The massive claw-footed tub stood suggestively not that far from the bed, and he was able to prop her there on the mattress and keep an eye on her while he resorted to the cold water tap. He shed his clothes first, then advanced to where she sat wavering on the bed. "Ben, sugar," she greeted him glassily, "I don't feel so hot. I know you're always ready for a go, and so'm I, but—"