Once an Eagle (59 page)

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. I guess that's all, then.”

“Sir, about my men …”

The Colonel gave a little quiver of irritation. “Yes, yes, all right. I'll have a talk with—with the individuals involved. A matter like this is best put out of the way as quickly and quietly as possible …”

Outside, in the compound, there was a quick, dry bark of command; then silence again. Jarreyl was still staring at the ceiling and whistling through his teeth, off-key. Damon got to his feet. “We're wasting time, Jarreyl. I want to see Brand and have a talk with him. In private.”

“I've decided I don't think it's such a good idea. What with one thing and another.”

Sam walked up to the desk and placed both hands on it. “Lieutenant,” he said evenly, “I want to see Brand and I want to see him right away. Now do you want to go down the line on this or do I see him?”

There was a short silence while Jarreyl stared at him—a covert, measuring look. “You'll go around on anything, won't you?” he muttered. “Just anything …”

“No. Only certain things.”

Then the stockade commander relaxed and grinned his sly, ugly grin. “It's your funeral. Don't say I didn't warn you.—Hurley,” he called, “get the crazy Indian and take him down the line.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good-bye and good luck, pal,” Jarreyl said in his high, craking voice.

Damon went outside and paced up and down in the white glare, frowning at the tent rows, the drooping acacia trees outside the compound—heard the dry jingle of steel chain and turned. Brand came toward him with that mincing, arduous shuffle, the leg irons clashing; his eye rolled wildly toward Damon. His face was cut and bruised, blood had matted in his hair and stained his fatigue jacket. Then he had passed on by, the chaser gliding soundlessly behind him. Their shadows were black on the cascao. Damon turned and followed them down the row until they stopped; Brand went to rigid attention. The Captain preceded him into the tent, which was empty except for two wooden chests stacked one above the other and a field cot without a pad. He turned and motioned Brand to the chests and said to the MP, “Wait outside there, will you?” Sitting on the cot he offered a pack of cigarettes. Brand shook his head. Damon shrugged and put the pack back in his pocket.

“My name's Damon,” he said.

Brand made no reply. His hair was black and smooth but he did not have the flat, stolid face of the Plains Indian. Even now, with his lips cut, his nose swollen and one eye nearly closed, it was evident that he was a good-looking boy; his eyes were onyx against the warm bronze of his skin. Damon had played against him in baseball and had watched him competing in the regimental gymkhanas. Now all his whiplike grace was gone. The knuckles of one hand were badly swollen, and from the way he sat, hunched over himself, the Captain knew he had been hurt in the belly or groin.

“José's cousin Luis asked me to stop by and see you,” Damon offered. He paused. “Luis Funzal. He says you're a friend of his.” Still the Indian stared back at him sullenly. “I'm not here in any official capacity. He says you've been given a rough shuffle.”

“—He does,” Brand said in a quick, fierce whisper, his eyes full of scorn.

Damon glanced at him. “Why, yes. He told me you've got—”

“—and you want to play the big officer, come down to do me a favor,” Brand went on savagely, in the same hoarse whisper. “That makes you feel big, makes you feel good, ah?”

“Now look here, Brand—”

“Well, fuck you!—I don't need you! Or anybody else. No favors from
anybody
—you got that? …”

Damon lighted his cigarette, watching the dark, burning eyes. It was hard to tell. There was hatred in the boy's face, and a reckless, headlong fury, but there was also pride and resilience. A rebel, a maverick, the kind that always, sooner or later, got into trouble. He thought, with the sharp ache of memory, of Dev, and Raebyrne, and Clay. The ones with pride and fury … It would take—it would take a special kind of gambit.

Or maybe nothing would work at all.

“I'd have thought you had more pride than this,” he said quietly.

Brand glared at him hotly. “
Pride
—that's all I've got!—I've got enough of that to burn this rock to the water's edge! …”

Damon shook his head. “You're digging yourself a grave six feet deep, and you know it. Next thing it'll be solitary, and after that—” He broke off. “You've got me baffled, Brand. And I don't like to be baffled. I like to think I'm a reasonably intelligent soldier. But I guess I haven't learned very much in twenty years' service if I can't figure out why a sharp little trooper like you has decided to give up. All of a sudden.” The boy's eyes flickered then and he knew he'd scored. “I had you down for a tough cookie, a dogface who wouldn't ever take shit from anyone else … Why am I so wrong, Brand?”

There was a silence in the tent. The Indian thrust his hand across the base of his nose. “I got my own reasons,” he muttered.

“Fair enough. But why let them destroy you, to no purpose? Why not make a good fight out of it, at least?”

“I'm making a fight—”

“Sure. But the wrong people, and the wrong way. What about McClain?”

Another silence. Brand eased his ankles in their dull iron collars and eyed Damon distrustfully. “What's your angle, Captain?”

Damon grinned. “I told you. I don't like to be wrong about a man. And if I am wrong, I want to know why. That's
my
pride … Now, what's your angle, Brand?”

The boy dropped his eyes again, fidgeting. Damon smoked quietly, looking out through the tent flaps. The heat was draining from the day now; the breeze had begun in the tops of the acacias, a gentle, liquid seething, like magic rain. He could feel the sweat drying at the sides of his neck. In the scan of his eye he saw that Brand still looked sullen, but it was the effect of confusion now, not animosity. He decided to wait a while. Maybe I was wrong, he thought; maybe I guessed wrong completely.

He had been in the bedroom three days before, changing his sweat-soaked uniform for a fresh one, when he'd heard the sound of men's voices in a clamor of argument. A year ago he would have hurried through the house to investigate, but now he was familiar with the Filipino's excitability and love of drama, and he went on dressing. He was pinning the double bars to his collar tab when he saw the thin, mobile face of José, their houseboy, reflected in the mirror.

“Capitàn, deve venir para hablar a Luis. Ahora mismo!”

Damon smiled. The affectionate effrontery of the Filipino had been one of the pleasantest surprises of the Islands. Loyal, hard-working, warm-hearted, they nonetheless regarded you as their property from the moment you took them on.

“Who is Luis, and why must I talk to him,” he inquired.

“My cousin. From Camiling.” José pulled into the bedroom a short, stocky boy wearing the uniform of the Philippine Constabulary. “Here is Luis.”

“Sir!” Luis saluted powerfully; Damon returned it. José brusquely ordered: “Tell the Captain your story.”

Both the children of course caught most of the recital, and the topic was vigorously pursued during lunch.

“Sergeant McClain's got a broken wrist and lacerations,” Peggy said. “What are lacerations?”

“Cuts and bruises,” Donny, who was home on vacation from the Bishop Brent School in Baguio, told her knowingly. “Brand must have really klonked him.”

“Klonk,”
Tommy said. “What kind of a word is that?”

“It's just—you know: a slang term.” He had turned into a slender, rather awkward boy with his mother's piercing glance, her rapid shifts in mood. “The fellows use it all the time.”

“But what were they fighting
about?
” Peggy wanted to know.

“God alone knows,” her mother answered, “and He won't tell. Money, or liquor, or some poor little feebleminded Igorot girl.”

“Now, Tommy,” Damon said.

“Well, it's true; isn't it? Cherchez la femme.” She was smiling, but her voice was a bit shrill. She was thinner than she'd been back at Oglethorpe or Beyliss; there were rings under her fine green eyes and she was perspiring through her powder, although it wasn't a particularly hot day. She hated the Islands, he knew. After the grim years at Beyliss, with the country in the black slough of the Depression and the shock of the fifteen percent military pay cut, she had looked forward to the Luzon tour with high anticipation; but it hadn't turned out that way. She tried to bear up under it well enough, she ran the household efficiently and well and involved herself with half a dozen charitable post activities, shopping expeditions to Las Tiendas on Quiapo and an occasional drive to Lake Taal with some other Army wives; but she was only—and quite literally—sweating it out until his tour was over and they could leave this land of thick, damp heat and pelting monsoon rains, where anything leather could grow a three-inch beard of mildew overnight, and the talk at the club revolved increasingly around Japan …

“It's enough to make a pacifist out of anybody,” she was going on. “If they're not swiping a parasol from some Chinatown shop they're tearing one of the Pinpin Street barrooms all apart, beating each other's brains out or pulling some scrawny girl limb from limb. Why don't they just put
up
with it?” she demanded. “The way the rest of us do … ?”

“Maybe they haven't got your fine, firm fortitude,” he answered.

“Very funny. Well, it's true: they live like animals, most of them, from payday to payday—and then all they can think of is racing off the post and getting themselves a lot of booze and a lot more of you-know-what.”

“What's you-know-what?” Peggy demanded.

“Girls, silly,” Donny rebuked her. “My God.”

“What do you expect them to do?” Damon said to Tommy, “—take up ballet? write odes to the tropic moon? What chance have they got to meet any decent women? They can serve as orderlies in the CO's house, but they can't go out with the CO's daughter …”

“How true,” Tommy answered, and rolled her eyes.

“—I don't believe it,” Peggy said suddenly. She had her lower lip stuck out, her brown eyes snapping—for a second she reminded Damon so forcibly of his sister that he smiled.

“Don't believe what, honey?”

“That he did it. Brand.”

“Of course he did it, stupid,” Donny broke in, “—he admits it, a whole lot of people saw it! He struck a noncommissioned officer with a piece of lead pipe …”

“He drove us over to Cavite once,” Peggy persisted. “He was nice—he was so quiet and neat.”

“They're just the ones,” her mother replied, passing the bread. “The nice, quiet ones. They draw trouble like flies.”

“He shouldn't have picked up the piece of pipe, should he, Dad?” Donny asked.

“No. He shouldn't have. He was probably trying to defend himself. That's what it sounds like, anyway. Anybody would be afraid of a knife.”

“Anybody, Dad?” Donny's face was very solemn. “You wouldn't be, would you?”

“Sure I would.” He smiled at his son's consternation. “There's nothing wrong with being afraid. Every man's afraid at one time or another.”

“Isn't there anyone who isn't afraid of anything?”

Sam glanced at Tommy who was eating industriously, her eyes averted. “I knew one man who wasn't afraid of anything.”

“Who was he?”

“A man named Merrick, a company commander. In France. Your granddad relieved him and sent him to Blois.”

“Why did he do that?”

“Because he was needlessly risking other men's lives along with his own. Your granddad's contention was that any man who had no fear at all was so far removed from the human race that he was a permanent menace to all concerned.”

“The first great myth,” Tommy said to the boy with sudden, still vehemence. “That every soldier is always, eternally brave. Myth Number One, you could call it.—Peggy, don't play with your food, now. You're too big a girl for that.”

“Dad,” Donny said, “if the sergeant tried to stab him with a knife, wasn't he justified in picking up something to defend himself?”

“I'd think so, yes. Of course you'd have to know the circumstances.”

“Well, that's what I don't understand. I'd tell them I wasn't guilty,” Donny declared, and put down his fork. “Why won't he do it?”

“That's just what bothers me, Don,” Damon answered. “That's exactly what I can't figure out, either.”

“Sam.” Tommy was staring at him; that vertical line had appeared in the center of her forehead. “Are you getting yourself involved again?”

“What makes you say that, dear?”

“You've got that moony, loony,
earnest
look on your face, that's what makes me say that. Look—he isn't even in your company. You just
purchase
trouble … Now, why—?”

“Addicted, I guess.” He winked at Peggy, who giggled and squirmed in her chair. Donny was watching him gravely. “With some gentlemen rankers it's cards, with some it's women, with others it's brown-nosing—”

“Sam! Is it absolutely necessary to use phrases like that in front of the children?”

“I'm not a child,” Donny answered, “I'm fourteen and a half.”

“Sycophancy,” Damon amended. He felt a sudden, sourceless hilarity. “Meant to say that. Toadyism. Obsequiousness. Favor currying. My—we have a lot of words for it, don't we? Tufthunting: ever hear that one?”

“Sam, that's obscene!”

“Isn't it? Or lickspittling—”

“That's worse …”

“You can't get around it—the occupation begs the terminology. To each his vice. With me, it's the dogface soljer and his misadventures.”