Some Faces in the Crowd (30 page)

“I think you all have a pretty good idea what I’ve called you men together for,” he began. “I’ve picked you out because I thought you were the best officer material Broadway had to offer. Being an officer is a responsibility and a privilege. Your reward may be the highest honors this country has to give. But the price may be high—the highest any man can pay. If any one of you men feel for one reason or another that you aren’t ready to make that sacrifice, this is the time to tell me. There’s no disgrace in pulling out now. I’d rather have you do that than come in with any reservations.”

Duggan looked into all of our faces, one by one. His eyes were hard and yet understanding. The man-of-iron-but-at-bottom-a-human-being type. All of us, Lou, Jack, Tom, exchanged grim and self-conscious glances. A few minutes before, I was wolfing a sturgeon sandwich at Reuben’s, Jack and Tom were laughing over coffee and brandy with their wives at Sardi’s. Now somehow, here in this dressing room, we were already at war, already breathing the heavy air of life-and-death decisions.

The gathering broke up with a soldierly: “Thank you, men. I’ll take your applications for commissions down to Washington tomorrow and walk them through myself. Nothing’s official yet, of course, but off the record you can start picking out your uniforms. If there are any hitches—if they think you’re too much of a pinko, for instance, Ross, I’ll take the matter up with George—er—General Marshall—personally. All right, men, I’ll be in touch with you.” He shook hands all around. I don’t think there was anybody there—even Jack, who’s won the Critics’ Award—who didn’t feel this was the most important thing that ever had happened to him. When Duggan got to me he said, “Don’t go, Cumming. I’ve got a job for you.” It was my first order.

“I want you to work up a little news release, Cumming,” he said when the others had left. “Something about the Duggan Psychological Warfare Unit being organized in my dressing room. Not that I’m looking for any personal publicity, you understand. I’ve seen my name in enough papers to keep my ego happy. But I figured it would be a good thing for the outfit.”

It didn’t take me long to throw something together, and then, since Duggan was still on stage, I wandered out to the stage door to see how Luther was getting along. He was half-dozing over a tabloid; but as I approached, he rose, very formally, almost as if he were going to come to attention.

“Well, how was the meeting, Mr. Cummings? The old man got you all signed up?”

“Yes,” I said. “I just gone and done it.”

Luther took my hand, pumped it seriously, and said: “Congratulations, Mr. Cummings, good luck and God bless you. There’s nothing in this life for a man like answering the call to the colors. And it’s a real honor to serve under a man like Major Duggan.” Then the expression that always anticipated his childlike emotions concentrated in concern. “The—the old man—he didn’t happen to say nothing about me, did he?”

I had to tell him that Duggan hadn’t mentioned him.

His lips pushed out in what was very much like a little boy’s pout. “That’s funny, I thought—I kind of hoped he—Major Duggan—would ask me to the meeting. Said something to me about it over a week ago. But he’s got so much on his mind these days, maybe he forgot. Or maybe this meeting was only for prospective officers. Yes, that must be it.” He sucked on his bottom lip the way he had a habit of doing when he wasn’t too sure of himself. Which was, in Luther’s case, I’m afraid, a great deal of the time. “Say, Mr. Cummings, I realize I don’t really know you good enough to ask a favor, but, well—if you could just put in a word for me with the old man, sort of find out how serious he is about taking me along, I sure would appreciate it a whole lot. I know the major don’t mean to forget me, but thinking about so many things like he is all the time, it’s kind of hard to pin him down sometimes. I sure hope he figures to take me.”

I promised Luther I’d put it up to the old man—he was beginning to get me talking like that, too—but later in the evening, when Duggan and I were going over my copy in his dressing room, I couldn’t get any farther with it than Luther had. “I’m working on Bissell,” was all he’d say. “Nothing definite yet.”

“He’s sure knocking himself out to go,” I said.

“Bissell would be a definite asset,” Duggan said. “I hope I get him through.”

“With his war record, and your pull in Washington,” I said, “I should think it would be a cinch, Josh.”

“By the way, Cumming,” Duggan said, and from his tone I squared myself for a this-is-hurting-me-more-than-it-hurts-you speech, “I know last time you were here I asked you to call me Josh. Well, as far as I’m concerned personally, that still goes. But, well, now that I’m in this monkey suit,” he said, with a smile to take the sting out of it, “I think it would be a better idea if you gave me the Major Duggan. Not that
I
give a damn, you understand. It’s just the respect due the uniform, the rank, not the guy that’s in it. When we’re alone, of course, the Josh is good enough for me.”

“Sold, Major,” I said. “I’m just not used to it, but …”

“I understand,” Duggan said, and he put his arm around me, very chummy, or I suppose now it should be very comradely. “And by the way, don’t let Luther get you all up in the air about his case. As an old army man he ought to know better than to go outside of channels anyway. If he tries to pester you again, just tell him it’s none of your business, Major Duggan is looking after that.”

Duggan and I—Major Duggan, I should say—left together. Luther was still on the door. I could see from the way he opened his mouth and got ready to start talking when he saw Duggan that he had his little speech all prepared. “Major Duggan, I’m sure I don’t want to bother you, but I just wonder whether it would be possible …”

It was too slow a windup, with too many words, and I could see right away that Luther was never going to get the pitch off.

“See you tomorrow, Luther. Good night,” Duggan said, not even slowing his pace, brushing him off so deftly that it could have seemed as if he actually hadn’t heard him at all. “Great character, Luther,” Duggan said when we were out on the street. “The real killer type. Unobtrusive, gentle, with real humility. I love him like my own brother.”

That was just a line from the Duggan script, of course. Aroused to self-defense and abnormal struggle for survival, Luther probably did act very well that day at Château-Thierry. But that was twenty-five years ago, twenty-five anticlimactic and sedentary years, during which time whatever combativeness had heated Luther’s nature had cooled to servility and impotence. Courage in battle, you might say, is compounded partly of fearless initiative, partly of blind obedience, and it was only the selfless, blindly obedient Luther left sitting at the door.

Every time I passed Luther that next week or so, he’d put the arm on me to talk to “the old man” about his joining the outfit. But every time I tried to bring up the subject to Duggan, he’d brush me off”. It was hard to figure. If he had the pull with the War Department he claimed to have—and the way our commissions were coming through that seemed to be on the level—it shouldn’t have been much trouble to push through some sort of rating for an old soldier like Luther, bad eyes and all. And if he knew he could do it, it hardly seemed possible that he would be sadistic enough to keep Luther deliberately on the hook. Yet, I had to admit, that’s the way it seemed. As the day for the closing of the show and Duggan’s departure for Washington drew closer, Luther became too nervous even to take his customary snoozes. Whenever Dugan was off stage, Luther would keep an eye cocked toward the dressing room in hope of catching the major as he came out. But every time he started toward Duggan, stammering and blinking in his overanxiousness to make his plea, Duggan would parry him, sometimes even turning his back and walking off deliberately, leaving Luther standing there in a fog of frustration.

The way Luther looked at me the first time I showed up in uniform made me realize that I was going to have to talk to Duggan once more, no matter how hot he got. As soon as he saw me, Luther jumped up, put away his glasses, and went into his act, only it wasn’t an act with Luther, it was just what happens to a man who dwells too long on past glories. “Good evening, Lieutenant,” Luther said, and his hand rose in a half-salute. “You sure look fine in your uniform, sir. Only, if you’re going in to see the old man, I might suggest, sir, that you square your cap a little bit—that’s more like it.” He stepped back and appraised me carefully. “And you’re a little out of uniform, I’m afraid, sir. That button there on the right-hand pocket.” He buttoned it for me and straightened my blouse a little in the back. “There you are, sir. All ready to present yourself. And by the way, Lieutenant, if you get a chance to …”

“I will, Luther,” I promised. “I’ll try to see what goes.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” he said, and I got that half-salute again.

Duggan was in his dressing room, with his uniform blouse off and his khaki shirt open at the neck. “Look me over, Maj,” I said.

“Come to attention,” Duggan said severely.

It seemed just a little silly, coming to attention in an actor’s dressing room, but there I was.

“All right, carry on,” Duggan said. He offered me a cigarette. “Sit down, Lieutenant.” Then he lapsed into his own self—or rather, since his plastic personality seemed to include so many selves—his previous self. “Don’t let me frighten you with that ‘Attention’ stuff Al. Just because I’ve got these oak leaves on my collar, I know I don’t belong to the WPPA, you know, the West Point Protective Association. But I just want to get you broken in so you’ll know how to act in the presence of field-grade officers.”

For a man who didn’t give a damn about that sort of thing, it seemed to me Duggan was putting us through an awful lot of military hoops.

“Well, we’re just about ready to report in Washington,” Duggan said. “But before we do, I think it might be a good idea to have a couple of drill periods—just to brush up on our protocol a little bit, so we won’t look so wet behind the ears when we report to Colonel Partridge. He’s in charge of the whole PW Division, regular army, so we don’t want to walk in like a bunch of Broadway wiseguys. So next week, every other night, I thought I’d have Luther put you boys through a little close-order drill.”

“Luther,” I said. “Did you get Luther through?”

“Well, I couldn’t get him that warrant because his eyes were too bad,” Duggan said. “But I guess the staff-sergeant rating will come through all right.”

The way he said it I had the distinct feeling that he knew he could have got this all the time.

“But why don’t you tell Luther?” I said. “This is the most important thing that’s happened to him since he stormed that machine-gun nest.”

“That’s why I didn’t want to break it to him until I was absolutely sure,” Duggan said. “I felt it would be a little cruel to break it to him prematurely, just in case the thing fell through. Why, I wouldn’t hurt Luther for anything in the world.”

“Then if I may say so, Major,” I said—I called him nothing but “Major” now, with a kind of perverse glee—“why don’t you take him off the hook?”

“I’ll notify him just as soon as I have word from Washington,” Duggan said. “That will be all, Lieutenant.”

Duggan’s military conduct tended toward the complex, but, in relation to myself at least, I was beginning to recognize a pattern. When he liked me he called me Al. When he liked me but felt like playing soldier he called me Lieutenant. When he didn’t like me and felt like playing soldier he called me Cumming. And when he just plain didn’t like me he called me whatever came into his head, which was considerable.

Next afternoon, when I had to check with Duggan on the chart of chain of command I had to draw up for him, I found myself brushing by Luther myself. It was too hard to look at him. Duggan went over my chart punctiliously, as if it were the table of command of the entire American army, and then, when he had made the last small change, he said, “Oh, by the way, Lieutenant, tell Bissell the old man says front and center.”

I did just as I was told. I said, “The old man says front and center.” I wish you could have seen Luther come to life. He followed me in, as correct and on his toes as a Prussian corporal, and when he saw Duggan, even though he wasn’t in uniform, he came to stiff attention, with his tail out and his nose up in the air like a bird dog.

“As you were,” Duggan said.

Luther relaxed a little, but even at ease he looked more attentive than the rest of us did at attention. Then began the little pageant that Duggan must have been building up to all this time.

“Staff Sergeant Bissell,” Duggan began, in a deep, March of Time intonation, “I have the honor to welcome you back into the Army of the United States.”

Luther stepped forward like a West Point senior receiving his diploma. “Thank you, Major,” he said, shook hands, stepped back and saluted.

“Sergeant Bissell,” Duggan went on, “as your commanding officer I am proud to reactivate such an illustrious soldier. And as your friend of long standing, I want to express my personal pleasure at seeing you back in the ranks as my comrade in arms.”

There was even more to it than that, I think, but that will give you a rough idea. If I had been out front, at least I could have applauded when the scene was over, or walked out or something, but there I was, trapped in my uniform, having to stand by and watch.

If ever there were two hams cut out to play straight for each other, I thought, here they were. The only trouble was that Luther was too much on the level. There were tears in his eyes when he left the room. I can’t say what was in Duggan’s eyes, because I couldn’t look.

A few nights later Major Duggan’s Psychological Warfare Unit assembled for the first time in all its military glory, on the empty stage of Duggan’s theatre. None of us fooled anybody in our uniforms. Somehow I couldn’t seem to get mine to look like a uniform. Tom’s had been made specially for him by his tailor. He even had pleats in his trousers. Lou’s was at least two sizes too large. In fact, there was only one man in the hall who really looked like a soldier, and that was Sergeant Bissell. There was something about the way Luther fitted into that uniform that made you take him almost as seriously as he took himself. Buried somewhere in that uniform, with combat ribbons covering his breast and the service stripes running up his arm, was the pink-cheeked doorman with the soft body and the sleepy face. Even with his specs, the peaches-and-cream complexion, and the gentle expression, Luther managed to create the illusion of a martial figure. It was almost as if his uniform and cap sternly squared away were like a coat of mail behind which the most insignificant and timid of men could present a formidable front.