Soldiers Pay (5 page)

She looked at him and he hurried on:

“I mean, you and I know what to do for him, but if you are always letting a gentleman don't do this and a gentleman don't do that interfere, you can't help him. Do you see?”

“But what makes you so sure that she will turn him down?”

“Why, I tell you I seen that letter: all the old bunk about knights of the air and the romance of battle, that even the fat crying ones outgrow soon as the excitement is over and uniforms and being wounded ain't only not stylish no more, but it is troublesome.”

“But aren't you taking a lot for granted, not to have seen her, even?”

“I've seen that photograph: one of them flighty-looking pretty ones with lots of hair. Just the sort would have got herself engaged to him.”

“How do you know it is still on? Perhaps she has forgotten him. And he probably doesn't remember her, you know.”

“That ain't it. If he don't remember her he's all right. But if he will know his folks he will want to believe that something in his world ain't turned upside down.”

They were silent a while, then Gilligan said: “I wish I could have knowed him before. He's the kind of a son I would have liked to have.” He finished his drink.

“Joe, how old are you?”

“Thirty-two, ma'am.”

“How did you ever learn so much about us?” she asked with interest, watching him.

He grinned briefly. “It ain't knowing, it's just saying things. I think I done it through practice. By talking so much,” he replied with sardonic humour. “I talk so much I got to say the right thing sooner or later. You don't talk much yourself.”

“Not much,” she agreed. She moved carelessly and the blanket slipped entirely, exposing her thin nightdress; raising her arms and twisting her body to replace it her long shank was revealed and her turning ankle and her bare foot.

Gilligan without moving said: “Ma'am, let's get married.”

She huddled quickly in the blanket again, already knowing a faint disgust with herself.

“Bless your heart, Joe. Don't you know my name is Mrs.?”

“Sure. And I know, too, you ain't got any husband. I dunno where he is or what you done with him, but you ain't got a husband now.”

“Goodness, I'm beginning to be afraid of you: you know too much. You are right: my husband was killed last year.”

Gilligan looking at her said: “Rotten luck.” And she tasting again a faint, warm sorrow, bowed her head to her arched clasped knees.

“Rotten luck. That's exactly what it was, what everything is. Even sorrow is a fake, now.” She raised her face, her pallid face beneath her black hair, scarred with her mouth. “Joe,

that was the only sincere word of condolence I ever had. Come here.”

Gilligan went to her and she took his hand, holding it against her against her cheek. Then she removed it, shaking back her hair.

“You are a good fellow, Joe. If I felt like marrying anybody now, I'd take you. I'm sorry I played that trick, Joe.”

“Trick?” repeated Gilligan, gazing upon her black hair. Then he said Oh, non-committally.

“But we haven't decided what to do with that poor boy in there,” she said with brisk energy, clasping her blanket. “That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Are you sleepy?”

“Not me,” he answered. “I don't think I ever want to sleep again.”

“Neither do I.” She moved across the bed, propping her back against the head board. “Lie down here and let's decide on something.”

“Sure,” agreed Gilligan. “I better take off my shoes, first. Ruin the hotel's bed.”

“To hell with the hotel's bed,” she told him. “Put your feet on it.”

Gilligan lay down, shielding his eyes with his hand. After a time she said:

“Well, what's to be done?”

“We got to get him home first,” Gilligan said. “I'll wire his folks to-marrow—his old man is a preacher, see. But it's that damn girl bothers me. He sure ought to be let die in peace. But what else to do I don't know. I know about some things,” he explained, “but after all women can guess and be nearer right than whatever I could decide on.”

“I don't think anyone could do much more than you. I'd put my money on you every time.”

He moved, shading his eyes again. “I dunno: I am good so far, but then you got to have more'n just sense. Say, why don't you come with the general and me?”

“I intend to, Joe.” Her voice came from beyond his shielding hand. “I think I intended to all the time.”

(She is in love with him.) But he only said:

“Good for you. But I knowed you'd do the right thing. All right with your people is it?”

“Yes. But what about money?”

“Money?”

“Well . . . for what he might need. You know. He might get sick anywhere.”

“Lord, I cleaned up in a poker game and I ain't had time to spend it. Money's all right. That ain't any question,” he said roughly.

“Yes, money's all right. You know I have my husband's insurance. “

He lay silent, shielding his eyes. His khaki legs marring the bed ended in clumsy shoes. She nursed her knees, huddling in her blanket. After a space she said:

“Sleep, Joe?”

“It's a funny world, ain't it?” he asked irrelevantly, not moving.

“Funny?”

“Sure. Soldier dies and leaves you money, and you spend the money helping another soldier die comfortable. Ain't that funny?”

“I suppose so. . . . Everything is funny. Horribly funny.”

“Anyway, it's nice to have it all fixed,” he said after a while. “He'll be glad you are coming along.”

(Dear dead Dick .) (Mahon under his scar, sleeping.) (Dick, my dearest one.)

She felt the head board against her head, through her hair, felt the bones of her long shanks against her arms clasping them, nursing them, saw the smug, impersonal room like an appointed tomb (in which how many, many discontents, desires, passions, had died?) high above a world of joy and sorrow and lust for living, high above impervious trees occupied solely with maternity and spring. (Dick, Dick. Dead, ugly Dick. Once you were alive and young and passionate and ugly, after a time you were dead, dear Dick: that flesh, that body, which I loved and did not love; your beautiful, young, ugly body, dear Dick, become now a seething of worms, like new milk. Dear Dick.)

Gilligan, Joseph, late a private, a democrat by enlistment and numbered like a convict, slept beside her, his boots (given him gratis by democrats of a higher rating among democrats) innocent and awkward upon a white spread of rented cloth, immaculate and impersonal.

She evaded her blanket and reaching her arm swept the room with darkness. She slipped beneath the covers, settling her cheek on her palm. Gilligan undisturbed snored, filling the room with a homely, comforting sound.

(Dick, dear, ugly dead. . . .)

IV

In the next room Cadet Lowe waked from a chaotic dream, opening his eyes and staring with detachment, impersonal as God, at tights burning about him. After a time, he recalled his body, remembering where he was and by an effort he turned his head. In the other bed the man slept beneath his terrible face. (I am Julian Lowe, I eat, I digest, evacuate: I have flown. This man . . . this man here, sleeping beneath his scar. . . . Where do we touch? O God, O God: knowing his own body, his stomach.)

Raising his hand he felt his own undamaged brow. No scar there. Near him upon a chair was his hat severed by a white band, upon the table the other man's cap with its cloth crown sloping backward from a bronze initialed crest.

He tasted his sour mouth, knowing his troubled stomach. To have been him! he moaned. Just to be him. Let him take this sound body of mine! Let him take it. To have got wings on my breast, to have wings; and to have got his scar, too, I would take death tomorrow. Upon a chair Mahon's tunic evinced above the left breast pocket wings breaking from an initialed circle beneath a crown, tipping downward in an arrested embroidered sweep; a symbolized desire.

To be him, to have gotten wings, but to have got his scar, too! Cadet Lowe turned to the wall with passionate disappointment like a gnawing fox at his vitals. Slobbering and moaning Cadet Lowe, too, dreamed again, sleeping.

V

Achilles—What preparation would you make for a cross-country flight, Cadet?

Mercury—Empty your bladder and fill your petrol tank, Sir.

Achilles—Carry on, Cadet.

—Old Play (About 19—?)

Cadet Lowe, waking, remarked morning, and Gilligan entering the room, dressed. Gilligan looking at him said:

“How you coming, ace?”

Mahon yet slept beneath his scar, upon a chair his tunic. Above the left pocket, wings swept silkenly, breaking downward above a ribbon. White, purple, white.

“Oh, God!” Lowe groaned.

Gilligan with the assurance of physical well-being stood in brisk arrested motion.

“As you were, fellow. I'm going out and have some breakfast sent up. You stay here until Loot wakes, huh?”

Cadet Lowe tasting his sour mouth groaned again. Gilligan regarded him. “Oh, you'll stay all right, won't you? I'll be back soon.”

The door closed after him and Lowe, thinking of water, rose and took his wavering way across the room to a water pitcher. Carafe. Like giraffe or like cafe? he wondered. The water was good, but lowering the vessel he felt immediately sick. After a while he recaptured the bed.

He dozed, forgetting his stomach, and remembering it he dreamed and waked. He could feel his head like a dull inflation, then he could distinguish the foot of his bed and thinking again of water he turned on a pillow and saw another identical bed and the suave indication of a dressing-gown motionless beside it. Leaning over Mahon's scarred supineness, she said: “Don't get up.”

Lowe said, I won't, closing his eyes, tasting his mouth, seeing her long slim body against his red eyelids, opening his eyes to light and her thigh shaped and falling away into an impersonal fabric. With an effort he might have seen her ankles. Her feet will be there, he. thought, unable to accomplish the effort and behind his closed eyes be thought of saying something which would leave his mouth on hers. Oh, God, he thought, feeling that no one had been so sick, imagining that she would say I love you, too. If I had wings, and a scar. . . . To hell with officers, he thought, sleeping again:

To hell with kee-wees, anyway. I wouldn't be a goddam kee-wee. Rather be a sergeant. Rather be a mechanic. Crack up, Cadet. Hell, yes, Why not? War's over. Glad. Glad. Oh, God. His scar: his wings. Last time.

He was briefly in a Jenny again, conscious of lubricating oil and a slow gracious restraint of braced plane surfaces, feeling an air blast and feeling the stick in his hand, watching bobbing rocker arms on the horizon, laying her nose on the horizon like a sighted rifle. Christ, what do I care? seeing her nose rise until the horizon was hidden, seeing the arc of a descending wing expose it again, seeing her become abruptly stationary while a mad world spinning vortexed about his seat. “Sure, what do you care?” asked a voice, and waking he saw Gilligan beside him with a glass of whisky,

“Drink her down, General,” said Gilligan, holding the glass under his nose.

“Oh, God, move it, move it!”

“Come on, now; drink her down: you'll feel better. The Loot is up and at 'em, and Mrs. Powers. Whatcher get so drunk for, ace?”

“Oh, God, I don't know,” answered Cadet Lowe, rolling his head in anguish. “Lemme alone.”

Gilligan said: “Come on, drink her, now,” Cadet Lowe said Go away, passionately.

“Lemme alone: I'll be all right.”

“Sure you will. Soon as you drink this.”

“I can't. Go away.”

“You got to. You want I should break your neck?” asked Gilligan kindly, bringing his face up, kind and ruthless. Lowe eluded him and Gilligan reaching under his body, raised him.

“Lemme lie down,” Lowe implored.

“And stay here forever? We got to go somewheres. We can't stay here.”

“But I can't drink.” Cadet Lowe's interior coiled passionately: an ecstasy. “For God's sake, let me alone!”

“Ace,” said Gilligan, holding his head up, “you got to. You might just as well drink this yourself. If you don't, I'll put it down your throat, glass and all. Here, now.”

The glass was between his lips, so he drank, gulping, expecting to gag. But gulping, the stuff became immediately pleasant. It was like new life in him. He felt a kind sweat and Gilligan removed the empty glass. Mahon, dressed except for his belt, sat beside a table. Gilligan vanished through a door and he rose, feeling shaky but quite fit. He took another drink. Water thundered in the bathroom and Gilligan returning said briskly: “Atta boy.”

He pushed Lowe into the bathroom. “In you go, ace,” he added.

Feeling the sweet bright needles of water burning his shoulders, watching his body slipping an endless silver sheath of water, smelling soap: beyond that wall was her room, where she was, tall and red and white and black, beautiful. I'll tell her at once, he decided, sawing his hard young body with a rough towel. Glowing, he brushed his teeth and hair, then he had another drink under Mahon's quiet inverted stare and Gilligan's quizzical one. He dressed, hearing her moving in her room. Maybe she's thinking of me, he told himself, swiftly donning his khaki.

He caught the officer's kind, puzzled gaze and the man said:

“How are you?”

“Never felt better after my solo,” he answered, wanting to sing. “Say, I left my hat in her room last night,” he told Gilligan. “Guess I better get it.”

“Here's your hat,” Gilligan informed him unkindly, producing it.

“Well, then, I want to talk to her. Whatcher going to say about that?” asked Cadet Lowe, swept and garnished and belligerent.

“Why, sure, General,” Gilligan agreed readily. “She can't refuse one of the saviours of her country.” He knocked on her door. “Mrs. Powers?”