This Scorching Earth (11 page)

The first MP turned to the other. "My, these recruits aren't what they used to be. Remember a year ago? Things are much too soft for them now. Can't even get a rise calling them recruit any more."

"Oh, well," said the other, "things are soft all over." He nodded down the corridor to where the private had stopped and was talking with a rather tall girl in a long fur coat.

"Darling boy," she was saying, "where on earth have you been?" She shook her finger at him. "The Major has been simply furious. And the only reason I came to work on this festive morning—imagine, working on Saturday—only peasants work on Saturday—the only reason was to see you. And then you weren't even here. Where
do
you spend your nights anyway?"

He turned toward the two MP's who were listening.

She waved her hand airily. "Michael, dear, don't you know they don't do anything but stand there—they're supposed to be guardians of the peace, and goodness knows we're peaceful enough. Or, at least,
I
am. Anyway, no soldier of this great Occupation could conceivably return to his quarters to sleep. It would be like admitting defeat. So, now, tell me All. What—or, more likely, whom—have you been doing."

"If I told you, I probably couldn't go there again. You'd edge me out," said Michael. Here was another kidding relationship.

"You don't trust me! And that's the thanks I get for coming down here of a morning when I could have been sleeping."

She screamed slightly: "But you're so
dirty!"
She walked slowly around him and shook her head. "My, is this a neat soldier?"

"No, Miss Wilson."

"Oh, call me Gloria. We know each other's faults
so
well by now. Being named Gloria is one of mine. I hate it. Makes me think of sunrises and other revolting things."

She continued walking around him. Gloria now had her face—and her personality—on.

She suddenly stopped and clasped her brow. "Now I've gone and gotten quite dizzy. Look, why don't you go to bed or something? You look as if you didn't go to bed at all, or at least didn't sleep, or at least didn't take your clothes off."

"We're both supposed to be at our desks now. Why are you marching around here in furs?"

"Ladies' room, dear. And it's simply icy this morning."

A major came out of a doorway, stood looking at them for a second, and then disappeared.

"There he is, spying on us again," said Gloria. 'An investigation is doubtless coming up. For all he knows I have half the Communist Party hidden under here."

"He'll keep," said Michael, who was feeling sleepy, hungry, and very tired of Miss Wilson.

"You
think
so
? I have
my
doubts. But
you're
lucky. At noon you get shet of him, as you say out Indiana way. With me it's just beginning. Yes, I have what they call a date. But just one of these over—and under—the desk romances. Nothing like yours and mine. Still, I'll be happy, if only for the liquor I'll get out of it. I could stand a drink, and thank god he does."

"Does he?"

"Oh, heavens, yes. That's my only stipulation—that they drink. But, then, you don't, do you?"

"Not to excess."

"Oh, but you should sometime. With me. Just lots and lots of excess."

Michael looked down the hall and tried to stifle a yawn. "Aren't you hot in that fur coat?"

"Smothering, but one must have the proper effect upon majors. I couldn't run out in a sunsuit, particularly since I don't know where we're going for lunch. There're really only a couple of places, and I hope it's the American Club. You can get more liquor there somehow. . . . But, darling, you're fidgeting, and I know that's a bad sign. So come on, back to the mines and another glorious three hours for the greater glory of Mac, our Lord and Saviour."

The major stepped out of the doorway again and looked at them.

"There's Simon Legree Calloway, darling," said Gloria. "Come, let's cross the ice together."

Major Calloway had a mistress. He was also in love—though not with the mistress. The position in which he now found himself was a usual one for the Major. Not content with what he had—the mistress—he wanted something he strongly suspected he couldn't have—Gloria. He always wanted more than he had. Consequently he was very ambitious. He wanted to be a lieutenant colonel, he wanted to run the office, and he wanted Gloria.

The first two wishes he felt relatively certain of being able to realize in time. Gloria was another matter. He had suspected for some time that she might be willing to sleep with him, and this cheered him up. He'd reached this conclusion after hearing an unusual amount of talk about her and after noticing that whenever she was with him she looked rather attentively at other men. This did not make him jealous. It merely pointed out to him her probable availability. This, however, was not at all what he wanted. He wanted her to love him as he loved her. He loved her for her soul.

He never said this and but rarely thought it, for he was from Texas and consequently believed that any talk of the soul was either unhealthy and fanatical or, worse, effeminate. A soul was something like a truss—doubtless useful if you were so unfortunate as to need one, but the least you could do was to keep it decently out of sight. He had never once entertained the idea of harboring one—a soul, not a truss—until he met Gloria.

But Gloria had not wrought this miracle all by herself. Japan had helped. Until the Major left America he never felt a soul to be particularly necessary—Dallas was substitute enough. There were girls to date and friends to meet and big deals to put over. Here everything was different. Few girls, no friends, and making money the way he made it back home was illegal. So he was lonely, and with loneliness had come self-scrutiny.

After giving himself a long steady look, he decided that he must affiliate himself with some successful organization, some growing venture, if he were to get the things he wanted. After looking around, he decided that the most successful organization he could find, and one of which he already happened to be a member, was the Occupation. So he ceased thinking of his daily work as merely a job and began to think of it as a mission. He began saying that his duty was toward America. Therefore his real duty in Japan was not so much making Special Services bigger and better as it was explaining America and Democracy to the Japanese.

This was the first conscious thought completely unconnected with tangibles that he had ever had. He was proud of himself. Abstract thoughts were difficult, and he'd managed to have one. He now thought of himself as something of an educator, a mature if stern taskmaster who, in complete possession of all the necessary know-how, was going to make the world, or at least this part of it, a better place. He said as much in his letters back home, and his paragraphs were filled with talk of higher purposes and further meanings. His friends were very surprised, perhaps even a bit embarrassed.

The Major, at thirty-five, considered himself a man. Japan had matured him. But a man cannot succeed all at once, no matter how great his ambition, and so the Major viewed his own retreats and failures with kindly indulgence. This was where Gloria came in. She was comforting; the very personification of home and family; worldly enough to smile at his misgivings and fallings from grace, yet doubtless innocent enough to believe, with him, that the world—particularly his own private one—could become ever so much nicer than it was now.

To be sure, he was aware that Gloria had never done anything but laugh at him. Still, this was better than nothing. It proved that she had a sense of humor, and he had long believed that this quality was very precious and very American—almost exclusively so. In fact, having one was practically a patriotic duty. He was rather proud of his own.

Gloria also had for him another and a higher meaning. He had selected her to help him achieve his ambitions. Together they would rise or together they would fall, though he never for a second believed that anything but success would crown his patriotic endeavors.

Already he was insuring success by making a bit of money on the side, for how could one be truly succesful without money? It couldn't be done. Therefore, for the sake of his soul and Gloria, for the good of Japan and America, for a more complete identification of himself with the glorious ideals of the Occupation, the Major was neck-deep in the black market—and this was the reason he was staring at Michael and Gloria. He was merely waiting for her to leave before bringing up a little business matter with Private Richardson.

No sooner had they squeezed past him into the office than he barked out: "Private Richardson, I want to see you."

Gloria, already at her desk, raised her eyes, grimaced a smile of commiseration at the Private, and began the day's typing.

In the hall Michael found the Major striding up and down.

"Private Richardson," he said, "you didn't come in last night."

"No, sir, I didn't."

"Private, you're given quarters in these here offices as a convenience to the Army. If you're not here at nights, then there's no use you living here at all. Next time this happens I'm gonna personally send you back to barracks. Just like anyone else. Understand?"

"Yes, sir," said Michael. He purposely refused to stand at attention. Resting one foot behind him, he folded his arms across his chest.

"You think I won't, buddy, but I would. Just like that! You wouldn't want that, would you?"

"No," said Michael, "but, then, you wouldn't either, would you? Who'd run your errands then?"

Major Calloway turned slightly pale, his freckles bleaching to a light orange. He glanced up and down the hall and then said: "No, naturally I wouldn't." He grew slightly red and added: "But you don't need to think you can walk all over me, Private. Sure, we're both in this, but you're gettin' yours. So don't think you can get snotty."

Michael shrugged his shoulders and waited.

This, as was intended, irritated the Major: "And I got news for you, Private. After tonight we part company."

The soldier looked mildly interested. "That so, sir?"

"And I wish it was tomorrow already," said the Major.

"So do I, sir," said Michael.

Here, thought Michael, is the kind that could be very dangerous. The kind that doesn't feel he's doing wrong, the kind that can talk himself into being self-righteous about breaking the law. Around the office he was the clown, the regular cutup, half-purposely, half-unintentionally. But all of his practical jokes, his cute sayings, his sunny smiles were false. He could be vicious.

The Major's mouth relaxed and he smiled. Their enmity was becoming too apparent. 'After all," he said, "this is the last time. I'd think you'd be glad to get rid of the responsibility and all."

"It's as much yours as it is mine, sir," Michael reminded him.

"Aw, look at you," said the Major, laughing. "Here you act as though you think we're sinners or something. It's just a fast buck—no harm in that. And I bet you can use it too. What we acting so doggone guilty about?" He rolled his eyes, licked his lips, and his accent became broader and broader.

Michael watched, slightly ill. He was always surprised at how phony the Major could be.

Michael was acting guilty because he, unlike the Major, felt guilty. He had ever since he first started running those innocent-looking errands for the Major, delivering packages to Japanese office buildings or rich homes, drinking tea in damp waiting rooms, being bowed out of invariably overcrowded
Western
-style parlors, each complete with plum-colored easy-chairs and an upright piano. At first he'd thought the errands a part of his duties, but it was soon made clear that the Colonel was to know nothing of them. When he confronted the Major and refused to run any more errands, the latter grew red and threatened a great deal, but ended by giving him a percentage of the profits.

The Major was a big-time operator and consequently dealt only in money changing—dollars to yen or yen to dollars, but always at an enormous profit, and if occasionally he had to use his official position to put the screws on, well, that's why he kept those golden oak leaves so brightly polished. Michael didn't mind the illegality of the transactions so much as he hated being involved with the Major. He felt guilty because, hating the Major as he did, he still worked for him, still shared the ever-present danger of discovery.