Once an Eagle (73 page)

“It's a matter of relative values.”

“Relative values,” Krisler echoed sarcastically.

“Yes. Precisely. Any idiot can figure that out for himself.”

“Well, this idiot—”

“The problem is force: patterns of force. That's what determines the course of events—not hole-and-corner Jacqueries at the bleak ends of the earth. When war comes it's the grand dispositions that matter, not the picturesque little sideshows.”

Ben walked up to the table where most of the others were sitting and put his fists on the edge. “When war comes,” he said tightly, “Sam and I will be on our picturesque little bellies in the boondocks, that's where we'll be—and
you'll
be on the first available Clipper to Alameda …”

There was a sharp, stunned silence. Someone gasped; Tommy heard Marge cry, “Ben!” and then Alec Thompson's voice cutting through everything:

“Lieutenant, that is an entirely offensive remark. Insubordinate and offensive. You will withdraw it instantly.”

“Is that right,” Ben said. “How about—”

“Instantly!” Thompson cried in his parade voice. “You will withdraw that remark and offer apology in full to Major Massengale—or you can reply by endorsement tomorrow at oh-eight-hundred hours! Do you hear?”

Ben came slowly to attention—a fantastic scarecrow figure in the battered opera hat and sawed-off breeches: his eyes glittered in the dulled saffron light. The only sounds were a harsh burst of laughter in the bar, and the treble patter of the piano. Tommy realized she was holding her breath.

“Is that a direct order, sir?”

“Lieutenant, it is!”

“Very good, sir.” Ben was standing at perfect attention now, but his eyes were blazing. “If that is a direct order—” The rest of his words were lost in an ear-splitting crash of thunder that seemed poised directly above their heads, as though the entire island had been detonated. At the same instant Court was on his feet.

“It's all right, Alexander,” he said to Thompson, his voice carrying clearly on the void left by the thunderclap. “My courage has never been called in question, and I don't think it is now.” Taut with dread, Tommy couldn't believe her eyes. Court was smiling!—a smile neither patronizing nor vindictive but simply benign, at ease with things. “These are days of tension. Tempers are bound to run high.” He ran his eyes along the ring of silent, watchful faces. “I think we're all of us in the habit of making too hard and fast a distinction between the staff and the line. It's an outmoded position, and inadvisable. Our finest leaders have served in both capacities. Let's not forget that essentially we are one arm, all of us—and it's the strong right arm of a great nation.” He paused briefly, and the smile broadened a bit more. “We've all made quite an evening of it. Let's more or less forget this, shall we?” Moving up to Ben he gave him a soft clap on the shoulder, and walked off into one of the adjoining rooms.

The group broke up then, in a flurry of release. Marge Krisler had hold of the ragged collar of Ben's GAR tunic and was saying tearfully: “Oh Ben—what's the matter with you? What kind of a thing to say is that?”

“Nothing less than the truth,” he muttered.

“Now you stop! No more for you tonight. You're going home … Why do you have to fight with the whole blasted world?”

He looked at her somberly. “Habit, I guess …”

Out on the verandah the wind whistled shrilly against the screens; the bamboo awnings clashed and clattered like warriors beating their swords against their shields. Tommy leaned into the wind, breathing deeply. Sad Sam Damon. He had bewitched them all: he was a cause of friction and division even when he was two thousand miles away … Before her the bay lay in a deep, black void below the lights on Cavite neck and Sangley Point, which sparkled and danced like pinpoints of fire. There were no stars. Above her the acacias swept their great feathered branches up and down, and the odor of the Islands—dense in the warm, damp air—assailed her senses. She spun around in revulsion. What were they doing here, these members of the strong right arm?

“Damn you, Dewey,” she muttered, “why didn't you run aground out there in Boca Grande? Why couldn't you have lost the battle of Manila Bay?” Then her father would never have had to meet the Sultan of Palamangao, and she wouldn't be wandering forlornly now along this endless verandah, the unattached female in this Great Big Happy Family; for that matter, she probably wouldn't have been walking along the colonnade at the Casino in Cannes, watching that AEF officer come toward her and say, “Pardon, Madame, mais—”

There was another titanic crash, and the gardens below the verandah leaped into visibility—a shutter-flash, jittering and silvered. The lights in the club went out. There was a murmur of surprise from the salon and then a woman's shriek of laughter. Tommy hurried back into the club, bumped into something, almost fell—she had the sensation, moving in the pitch darkness, of falling forward through space. She laughed soundlessly, her arms extended before her like a child. The lights came on and promptly went out again. The wind raged against the shutters and something fell to the floor in a shivery tinkle of glass. A voice called, and there were several answering shouts. One of the Filipino boys came running from the kitchen carrying a hurricane lamp, its flame flaring red against his white jacket, and shadows darted against the walls like savage dancers. It was really very funny. She paused in the returning rush of darkness, swaying on her feet. She was drunk, there was no doubt about that. She was drunk, it was late and she couldn't find her way back to the others. Or didn't want to. Yes. The murky substance of things; what Court had said. Why was that? She would have difficulty getting home now if she wasn't careful. Or maybe even if she was. Yes: especially if she was. There was no knowing. With this storm. A door swung shut with a crash. The rainy season was coming, with a clap of doom. Good, good! To hell with being careful. Or circumspect. Where did it get you? or anybody? The Japanese were coming ashore at Lingayen Gulf; or they weren't. Somewhere Chink was playing a frantic boogie-woogie tune and she leaped into a frenzied little dance all by herself, humming, staring wide-eyed in the dark.

 

“Head like a 'gator, nose like a yam

But when she wants to boog-it, ooh! ooh! hot damn!

Hey, boogie! Wiggle-waggle all the time …”

 

A door bumped behind her; there was the sound of a step, another. She turned, saw nothing. “Who goes there?” she demanded. “Advance! —and give the boogie-woogie countersign …” There was no answer. She felt the flesh crawl on her shoulders and skull—and then heard herself laughing. So much the better, so much the worse. She went on dancing. She would—she would do something outrageous, something unthinkable: she decided she was going to shock the pants off that odious stuffed shirt Thompson. For talking to dear, crazy, cantankerous old Benjy that way. What would it be? Something fitting and proper for this asinine collection of toy soldiers on pa—

She gasped. A hand had seized her, then another. A huge body pressed against her. There was the sudden stench of sweat and oil and liquor—her hands encountered vast areas of flesh, slithered in an expanse of greasy muscle. Jarreyl. His face pressed against her cheek, her neck, his hands pulled at her gown, yanking and tearing.

“Come on, baby. Let's you me play. Right here, right now.”

“—Oh!” she groaned. “Let me—go!”

“Sure, baby …”

She writhed in a spasm of revulsion. His arms were like iron; he had one hand between her legs now, the fingers pinching and grinding.

“You—beast,” she panted. “Drunken—dirty—beast! I'll
kill
you…”

“Sure you will.” He was grinning, she could tell. She jabbed her fingers into his eyes; he grunted, gripped one of her breasts so hard it hurt. In a paroxysm she drove her knee into his groin, scratching and slashing at his eyes with her nails. A chair went over in a crash: it seemed hundreds of feet away, like something falling in a tunnel. But she was alive now, filled with energy and inventive rage—she was quite ready to die fighting this vicious monster. How I hate him! she thought; how I hate and despise him! It's good to hate, good to fight with hate …

He reached down between her legs again and she raked him twice more across the eyes, broke away and staggered into a table, hurting her hip. He was on her again, had seized her by the hair this time. There was a high, flat tearing of fabric, and she thought with boundless rage: My costume, that I slaved over for five whole days—and hit him across the bridge of the nose with the edge of her hand. Her head snapped back with a crack that felt as though her neck were broken; he had pinned one of her arms against her side and was muttering, “All right, you've had your fun, now let's go—”

“—
Swine!
” she shouted; but it was only a whisper. He had caught her free arm now, was twisting it behind her. She tried to knee him again; her arm was driven out and down with a wrench so violent she gasped with pain—but now her left arm was freed, and she kept raking and scratching at his eyes.

All at once he was gone—flung away violently: no hands were hurting her. She realized her eyes had been tightly shut. She opened them. The club lights were flickering dully, a burned orange. She saw Jarreyl go stumbling backward in a staggering fall across the room, his slick yellow body tumbling through the tables and chairs. Courtney Massengale was standing in front of her saying:

“All right now, that's enough!”

The lights dimmed still more, rose again, flickering. Jarreyl came up through the collapsed bridge tables and chairs, his hands slapping against the wood, got to his feet and started toward them in a crouching rush. She heard a click—a neat, metallic sound over the roar of wind and rain; Jarreyl stopped, blinking. Court had a long, thin knife in his hand; he was holding it easily, at the level of his belt, his palm up, the point toward Jarreyl.

“All right,” he repeated. “Now get out of here.”

For a second she thought the stockade officer was going to fight. Then he straightened, swaying slightly, wiping his face with the back of one hand. Blood was streaking his nose and cheeks where she'd scratched him. I gave him a bloody nose, she thought. Good. If I could only have put out an eye—just
one
of his eyes—

“Maybe you'd like to put that knife away, Massengale,” Jarreyl was saying thickly.

Court smiled. “For a fair fight?” His voice was full of sarcasm. “Don't be a God damn fool.”

Jarreyl looked around him quickly in the gloom. “All right,” he snarled, “assault with a deadly weapon—mandatory paragraph for courts-martial—”

“That's right.” Court laughed softly. “And drunk and disorderly, felonious assault on the wife of a superior officer? What paragraph do you think
that
is?”

Jarreyl watched him sullenly, dabbing at his bleeding nose and eyelid.

“Maybe I should have worn that bolo after all.”

“Maybe you should.” All at once Court said with cold savagery: “Now get out of here, you filthy rummy!”

The rain was lashing the verandah behind them with a high roar. Jarreyl paused a moment longer, uncertainly; pointed to the knife. “I'll remember that,” he muttered.

“So will I. Now make yourself scarce.”

Jarreyl moved out of the room, padding on his bare feet, his shoulders rolling.

“Thomas?” Court was saying. “Are you all right?”

She had sunk back against a table. Her gown was torn open nearly to her knees; her neck hurt, and her arm. The lights flared up, and then went out again, but now from various rooms there was a soft yellow glow from the lamps.

“Thanks, Court,” she breathed. “Oh, thank you. He crept up on me—”

“He's an animal. He ought to be put in a cage and sent to Zamboanga to scare the natives. Are you really all right?”

“Yes. No. I don't know—I'm all undone …”

His arm was around her, steadying her, holding her erect. “Come on. Let's get out of this. Do you have a wrap?”

“A what? No. No, I don't.”

“All right.” He unsnapped the catch around his throat and handed her the hussar's jacket. “Here. Put this over your head.”

“My head?”

“Yes. It's raining guns.”

She went out on the verandah and down the steps in a turmoil. She felt headless and stunned; her body was like a riptide in a channel, rushing back and forth, seeking outlet. She was conscious of shockingly cold air, of rain beating on her face and arms in stinging needle waves, and the plunging branches of the acacias. Then they were in his car, with the gale thundering on the roof, and sliding through the teeming spikes of rain, the wipers were going, and across the boulevard lightning flashes revealed the bay as a slate platter now, scored with a thousand silver scrolls. She realized that he was breathing heavily; his face looked harsh and agitated. Catching her eye he said sharply, “There's blood over your left eyebrow.”

Numbly she wet her handkerchief with her tongue and rubbed at it, felt the faint sting of the cut. “Court?”

“Yes.”

“Where's—your wife?”

“She went home,” he said in a suddenly shaking voice. “You know perfectly well she went home a light-year ago …”

“Yes.”

Then he was looking at her directly, his face white and magisterial and wild in the flashes. “My wife is no wife at all. To me.
As
you know.”

She stared at him. “—I didn't,” she stammered.

“What?”

“That is, I suspected—”

“Of course you did—why
shouldn't
you—!” he almost shouted.

“Look out,” she warned, “—you're driving too fast …”