Once an Eagle (77 page)

 

He put the pad down again and went to the front of the tent and looked out. The bay, in close, was a deep blue, shading off to metallic cerulean grays out beyond Point Piños, taking its color from the full silver clouds slipping low over the horizon. Nearby, across from his tent, a piñon jay was darting around in an oak, shaking the sharp holly-like leaves. The wind had dropped. Staring at the bay he rubbed his eyes slowly.

He had come back from China to find that everything had changed. Monk Metcalfe had been killed in a plane crash on Cebu, and in his place was a dapper, testy little man who scarcely listened to him and shoved his report into a desk drawer with a finality that was all too apparent. They were not, he was informed, overly concerned about the antics of a crowd of unwashed guerrillas; the focus of interest was the Republic of China and the Japanese drive on Changsha. He had saluted and left.

Everything was in upheaval. Pampanga Province seethed with a farmers' revolt against the big landlords; the trial of Benigno Ramos, with its disclosures of Japanese offers of aid for his projected insurrection, held ominous overtones. Courtney Massengale had sailed for home, assigned to the War College. Colonel Fahrquahrson had been transferred to First Corps Area. And Europe had gone to war again …

The most disquieting change, though, had been in Tommy: she seemed both more despondent and irascible—her moods swung from a dulled preoccupation to quick outbursts of temper, as though all her wry humor and equilibrium of past years had been worn away, leaving the exposed nerve, quivering and inflamed. “It's just habit,” she'd said one evening, apropos what he couldn't recall—some trivial matter. “It's all just a matter of going through the motions. We're in the habit of loving each other so we go on doing that, too; that's all.”

“Don't say that,” he protested. The flat finality in her voice had filled him with a peculiar fright. “It isn't true, honey. It's no habit with me…” He took her in his arms then, but she only smiled sadly up at him.

“Isn't it? Maybe it isn't.”

Or she would flare into sudden, unpredictable rages, accusations, bits of recrimination. “Oh, stop it, Sam! Honestly, you sound like Mahatma Gandhi in a boy scout suit. Nobody
cares
about the Baltic States, nobody
cares
about the people's war in China—Jesus God, don't be such a roaring, crashing, never-ending bore!”

Even getting back to the States, to Beyliss, hadn't made the difference he'd hoped it would. Donny had been accepted for Princeton—but this triumphant realization of her dreams, instead of delighting her, had made her gloomy and apprehensive. Then, a month or so after that, she'd been afflicted with this curious rash on her arms and thighs, that swelled and cracked and suppurated, and burned like fire. Even her father's promotion to brigadier and his own to major hadn't assuaged her. Finally she'd gone east to Erie to stay with Ed and Marilyn Downing for a few weeks, and had come back feeling more her old self. But it was a surface attitude: she had never forgiven him for China, he knew. He had gone because it had struck him as important, and because of the adventure of it—and it had turned out to be one of the most cataclysmic things that had ever happened to him; but in the doing, something equally important had been lost between them. Perhaps that was simply how life was—part of the grim, inexorable equation: you never got anything without paying for it, in kind and in full …

The clouds had drifted majestically off toward Santa Cruz now; the sea was an achingly deep blue, almost unreal. The air was crisp and clear. A country like perpetual early fall, day after day. This is where we ought to live when it's all over, he thought. Right here, somewhere in among these pines, looking east toward old Toro and west to the sea. Sit in the broad gold bands of sunlight, and read, and fool around in the garden, and do a little cabinet making, get a lathe and tool shop and build some things …

They were singing another song, far down the hill, their voices swelling and falling in the puffs of breeze:

 

“The coffee in the service, it's really mighty fine,

It's good for cuts and bruises, and tastes like iodine—

Oh! I don't want any more of this aaaarmy life!

Man, I just want to go home! …”

 

He turned and went back into the tent and sat down on his cot.

11

Damon swung. The
mallet head met the blue-striped wooden ball with a soft, clean
clack,
the ball rolled smoothly ten, fifteen, twenty feet over the fresh green lawn and hit the yellow ball, and MacConnadin said:

“God damn. You Army people are shot with luck.”

“I wouldn't call it that,” Damon said, grinning.

“Hell, no. I'll bet you practice secretly.”

“Of course we do, Bert,” General Caldwell said; he cupped his hands over the bowl of his pipe, his face grave and intent. “Didn't you know that? We've just converted all the parade grounds into croquet fields. War Department Order two-two-dash-four-one-three. Every Friday to be known officially as Croquet Day. Why, we've even got company cups, crossed mallets on a wicket sinister. They're of silver—the regimental cups are solid gold, of course.”

“What a charming idea!” Laszlo Perenyi exclaimed. His handsome, roguish face crinkled up with glee. “So much more sensible than poking pins in maps or slapping recruits in the backside with a swagger stick.”

“Yes, isn't it?” Caldwell's eyes twinkled. “Every profession to its perversions.”

Laszlo went into a fit of laughter. “Yes, that's it, that's it exactly! How to live comfortably with one's vices.”

“Look,” MacConnadin said. “Are we playing croquet or aren't we?”

“Right, right!” Laszlo cried: he darted across the lawn in his beautifully pressed flannel slacks. “A vos ordres, Bert. Zu Befehl. I would like to win one of those gold ones,” he said in his charming Hungarian accent; he was on his knees examining the lie of his ball. “Discomfit the military in all their arrogance. Wouldn't you, Bert?”

“Yeah,” MacConnadin growled good-humoredly. He was a big, balding man with a red face and a powerful square jaw that thrust forward when he grinned. “I wouldn't mind getting some of it back—I knew all the taxpayers' money was going
some
God damn place …”

“Bert!” Hélène MacConnadin called from the poolside terrace that overlooked the croquet field.

“What?” he answered.

“That's the fourth.”

“Fourth what?”

“Fourth God damn!”

“Cheer up, baby. The day's young yet.”

“Your men are a bad influence on him,” she said to Tommy. “Every time he's with the Army he thinks he has to swear more.”

“—Oh, he'd swear anyway,” Tommy replied. “He's the swearing kind. Aren't you, Bert?”

“You said it, sister,” MacConnadin said, and grinned at her happily.

They were at the MacConnadins' home high in the hills behind Woodside for the regular Sunday morning croquet game, where George Caldwell, now Deputy Commander, Western Defense Command, based at the Presidio in San Francisco, was a frequent guest. The Damons, who were spending the last half of Sam's thirty-day leave with the General, had been invited, along with Laszlo Perenyi, the portrait painter, for the weekend. The MacConnadins kept a perennial open house, and on almost any occasion the bemused guest could find himself in the company of touring pianists, Zen teachers, biophysicists from Berkeley, actors from little theater groups in North Beach, or a bunch of big-boned, heavily tanned, amiable college kids from Mills College or Stanford, where two of the MacConnadin children were enrolled. “Hélène collects house guests the way Francie collects phonograph records,” MacConnadin was fond of saying, “—or the way I collect board memberships.” And then he would wink his slow, complicit wink and drain his glass.

Laszlo made his wicket with a crow of delight and then looked appealingly at MacConnadin, who said with brusque humor: “Come on, shoot, you frazzle-headed Bulgarian.” It was a rule at Bert MacConnadin's that there could be no consultations between partners on strategy or tactics, and ferocious penalties were exacted for any violations.

“Hungarian, please.” Laszlo held up his hand. “The last of a noble tribe of Magyars.”

Damon took his club in both hands and brought it smoothly up over his head and behind his back, the way he'd used to do with a baseball bat to loosen up his shoulders, and filled his lungs with air. A starkly clear morning, with the moisture on the great oaks glinting like translucent pearls. Far out, the Pacific swept away clear and level, a gray-blue universe of ocean, and to the south half a dozen headlands rode out into it like shaggy green beasts crouching. A strange, vibrant peace, bound in fine Indian summer weather, though it was already December.

On the terrace Tommy and Hélène were sprawled in deck chairs, sipping at their coffee and talking in low voices, idly. Beyond them Peggy, standing at the base of the diving board, made a face at a young boy with bright red hair who was bouncing a slick blue-and-yellow beach ball at his feet. The boy laughed and shied the ball at her twice, then threw it. She put out her arm and the ball caromed off her little fist and bounced away across the lawn. Catching Damon's eye now she waved at him. He waved back, watching his daughter advance in that proud, decisive stride, one, two, three, arms pumping, and stamp and lift off the board in a lovely, soaring arch, curving down through the still California sky like a slim, beautiful naiad in her powder blue swimsuit and cap.
Schloop.
She was gone: his daughter. She had been there, stamped against the sky like the quintessence and culmination of all female grace, half-child, half-woman—and then she had vanished. It all seemed part of the faintly baffling stillness of the day; a glorious, fragile instant that caught at his heart. Peggy had climbed out of the pool now and was walking toward the boy, her cap in her hand, shaking out her hair with proud little darts of her head.
“Beautiful!”
he wanted to call out to her—checked the impulse. She would think he was an old square. His daughter. Seventeen, nearly. What did she think of all this carefree opulence and splendor around her—swimming pool and stables and immaculate bent-grass lawns and terraces and servants? Was she resentful, adulatory, amazed—or did she simply take all this dazzle for granted? Was this a way of life she would want to make her own? His daughter.

Laszlo had just overshot his wicket and MacConnadin cried, “For Christ sake, Perenyi! A five-year-old kid could do better than that.”

“But I am not a five-year-old kid,” Laszlo answered drolly. “I am a weary, tortured, tormented, sensitive genius with only the
soul
of a five-year-old kid …”

“That cost us two shots.”

“The Army won't catch us, Bert. Never fear. They are too wrapped up in plans to defend this hemisphere, plans to crush all our potential enemies: Slavonia, Paragonia, Dementia. That's why they are two wickets behind. You can bet the German General Staff is not playing croquet this fine, glorious morning,” he went on, needling Caldwell, who was studying his lie. “They are coming to grips with the important things. They are issuing orders, drinking vodka, shooting prisoners, raping women …”

“They're going to be drinking Uncle Joe's private stock in the Kremlin by Christmas,” MacConnadin said.

The General made his shot cleanly, and straightened. “I think not,” he said.

“Oh, come on, George. They're in the suburbs now. They're riding the streetcars, for Christ sake.”

Caldwell smiled. “They may surround the city; they may even get into it. But they won't be in the Kremlin.”

MacConnadin scratched at his belly and his eyes began to gleam. “How'd you like to make a little wager on that?”

“All right.”

“George, I got five hundred says the Germans will dictate peace terms from inside the Kremlin on Christmas Day.”

Caldwell smiled again, a different smile. “That's a little steep for me. Let's make it twenty-five dollars.”

“You're on.” MacConnadin laughed, wiping his mouth with his hand. “And I gave you Army boys credit for being sharp. Why hell, George, the Germans are unbeatable.”

“No military organization is unbeatable.”

“He's counting on the snow,” Laszlo interpolated. “The cold. Am I right, General?”

Caldwell shook his head. “Not entirely. It's something else.” He looked at the balls near his feet and Damon could see his eyes moving in quick, darting passages, the way they did whenever he was studying a problem. “They lack something,” he said after a moment.

“They do?” Bert retorted. “Well, I'm damned if I know what it is.”

“They lack the ultimate audacity.” Caldwell nodded, frowning. “They possess a certain inventiveness, they plan superbly, they execute with ferocity and care. But then there comes that moment.” He glanced at his son-in-law with a quick, fond smile. “That terribly lonely moment when you must make a further decision—a huge one. One that has nothing to do with everything you've anticipated. With the whole future in doubt, with hopelessly inadequate information and exhausted from the strain of the battles already fought, you have to summon up all your energies and decide, quickly and clearly; and act.” He took his pipe from his mouth. “That's where they break down.”

MacConnadin chuckled heavily. “They don't look very broken down to me.”

“No, they're in excellent shape—right now. But they've already missed their great chances.”

“You mean the invasion of Britain?”

“Before that. When they failed to take Gibraltar. Their armor was in the Pyrenees and on the loose. They could have run across Spain and seized the Rock and sealed off the Mediterranean for good.”

Laszlo said: “But Spain is already part of the Axis, George.”

“Not entirely. Spain is benevolent to their cause, but she is a neutral; and she is worn out from her civil war. Spain will blow with the wind.”

“You're crazy, George,” MacConnadin broke in. “It's as clear as a bell. The Germans are going to take over all of Europe.”

The General shook his slim, white head. “They will fail to make the last, most dangerous move. They will guess wrong. And they'll be beaten again.”

“And who's going to do that?”

Caldwell looked at him calmly. “We and the British.”

“Oh, go on!” MacConnadin shouted. “There you go again—when are you soldier boys going to wise up to the facts of life? This country doesn't want war—you're the only ones who're always talking about it. You can't get it out of your systems…” He slapped his mallet against his trousers. “Look, you can do business with Hitler, I don't care what you say. It's just a question of going about it right. Look at the Swedes, they're making a hatful of dough with those weapons contracts. Coal, steel … Hell, I was talking to Joe Kennedy only a couple months ago—”

“Mr. Kennedy,” the General said crisply, “has a rather meager historical sense.”

“He was ambassador over there, wasn't he?—until that stupid bastard Roosevelt kicked him out …”

“Bert!” Hélène's voice carried down from the terrace. “For heaven's sake!—”

“All right, all right … Look,” MacConnadin went on, “I'll tell you what's going to happen. The Germans are going to conquer Russia, and then the Limeys will get wise to how things are. And then Germany will be the center of Europe. Isn't that what Napoleon did?”

Laszlo stuck his hand in the front of his sport shirt. “Uh, yes—with a few insignificant differences.”

“Well, I mean for a while, there … Let's face it, the Germans speak our language. The industrial complex, a higher standard of living. If you look at it at all objectively, the Germans
deserve
Europe. Look at the way France fell apart, there. The Germans are smart, they're aggressive. They're out after markets, they want to expand, that's all. They're going to overhaul the whole structure over there—more power to 'em …” He shied a hand at the General, who was looking at him quizzically. “You people act as if Goering's going to drop a bomb on Washington any day.”

For the first time in some minutes Damon spoke, pointing seaward. “Our trouble, when it comes, is going to come from out there.”

“Who?” MacConnadin stared at him. “Japan? They've got their hands full in China.”

Damon looked down. All at once the curious serenity of the day, the laughter and horseplay of the young people around the pool, MacConnadin's brash and breezy assertions, angered him. I wish I was out there, he thought, looking seaward; on Luzon, or on Wu T'ai mountain, on the ridge. I certainly don't belong here.

The General was saying, “Sam spent the better part of two years in China, Bert.”

MacConnadin, however, bent over and made his shot, a good one. “Hell, they're smart businessmen, too. The Japs. Don't think they aren't. What do they want war with us for? They know what they're doing. They know what they want and they're willing to pay for it, too.”

“Yes, I know,” Caldwell answered dryly. “I've sat there on the hill and watched freighter after freighter steam out through the Golden Gate, loaded to their Plimsoll marks with scrap iron. For the Rising Sun to go on rising with.”

For a moment the two men stared at each other. Then MacConnadin scratched at his shirtfront and said: “All right. Why in hell not? They pay for it, George. Cash on the barrelhead. Is their money any worse than anybody else's?”

“No—I'm sure it's every bit as good. The only thing is it's quite possible it's all going to come back to us in a very pointed form—with all the points heading our way.”

“Stuff and nonsense.” Bert MacConnadin swung his mallet back and forth between his legs. “You know what? You fellows have a—you've got a war psychosis mentality.”

Laszlo drew himself up proudly, all five feet six inches of him, and cried: “La Garde meurt—mais ne se rend pas!”

“What the hell does
that
mean?” Bert demanded.