6

MacQueen entered into the bare lights and familiar vanilla and chocolate smells of the soda fountain. He bought a package of Sweet Caps from a youth wearing a white apron behind the marble counter. Round leatherette stools stood in front of the counter, and a couple of fellow soldiers were drinking Cokes. MacQueen glanced over the array of knob-topped shiny nozzles and caught his own reflection in the giant mirror against the back wall. His cap had a slight angle and shaded his face. He looked just as dapper as he’d hoped he did. Two girls were standing at the jukebox. They whispered to each other and giggled. The machine was playing “Moon Over Miami”. He unwrapped the cellophane and opened the white box, slicing the stamp with his thumbnail. Twenty-five tailor-made cigarettes. The two girls started to dance together, each looking at him in turn as they rotated together. He lit a cigarette and walked through the archway, farther into the restaurant.

The sergeant was sitting in one of the booths that lined the wall, reading a magazine and nervously tapping a cigarette in a glass ashtray. A big pendulum clock high on the wall registered eleven-fifteen. MacQueen removed his cap and walked to the sergeant’s booth. He was sitting with his legs crossed and squinting abstractedly at the magazine. He looked up and his face creased into that startlingly wide grin. “Sit down,” he said and waved his cigarette at the opposite bench. His field service cap, bearing a shiny West Nova Scotia Regiment badge, lay on the table.

MacQueen took off his greatcoat and placed it on a coat hook with his forage cap on top. He placed the crested riding crop on the bench and sat down. “Have a drink?” asked the sergeant. A flask of Gilbey’s Gin was on the bench beside him. “It goes well with stone ginger beer.” MacQueen readily agreed.

“There isn’t one goddamn place to get a drink in this town,” complained the sergeant. He ordered two stone ginger beers and measured the drinks. His eyes were dark blue and his hair black, with a pronounced peak on his forehead. His jawbones were wide and his lips narrow. He leaned back against the booth with a devil-may-care air about him. MacQueen felt rather intimidated. The sergeant raised his glass. “To the only important thing,” he said. “A comrade.”

The combination of gin and ginger hit MacQueen in the back of his throat. He coughed, and tears welled in his eyes.

The sergeant sputtered then laughed. “I should have warned you,” he said.

The jukebox had stopped and everyone looked at MacQueen. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his nose. The silence blessedly ended, and “Chattanooga Choo Choo” started up on the jukebox. The military policemen entered from outside and surveyed the room. The sergeant gave them a brief wave. They both nodded sternly and went out.

“I heard your name in the sergeants’ mess,” said Sergeant Cyples. This startled MacQueen. “You want to be an officer? Well so do I.”

MacQueen smiled nervously. He didn’t know much about the procedure but he thought his chances slim if he had to compete with a man like this. “Are you from Nova Scotia, Sergeant?” he asked. The sergeant laughed again, and when he did, it seemed to be with his entire body. He seemed to mock himself.

“I was born in the old country,” he replied. “There were a lot of us in the family. We moved to the west when I was four, near Winnipeg. I spent the Depression drifting around out there then joined the navy.”

“The navy!” MacQueen said. He had been born in Alberta, and his family had left during the Depression to go to Bermuda. He could remember the hobo camps outside Drumheller, and the endless freight trains covered with men like flies. Could the sergeant have been one of them?

“The navy,” confirmed the sergeant. “And call me Bill when we are alone, for God’s sake.” He lit a cigarette with a nervous sort of impatience and inhaled deeply. “I got drunk one night in Nicaragua and they left me on the beach. I got tired of their tin-pot wars down there. I hope we’ve got a real one at last, if those politicians don’t fuck it up and pull out.”

MacQueen hadn’t heard sentiments like that from anyone in the army. Here was one man that wasn’t looking for a soft job.

“The sergeants’ mess here is full of nothing but a bunch of shits,” continued Sergeant Cyples, bouncing his cigarette up and down on the rim of the ashtray. He seemed to want to be nonchalant, but wasn’t very good at it. “There’s one old guy who was a major in the last war. He’s okay but he won’t last the course. He dyes his hair every morning.”

MacQueen digested this outburst of subversive talk. He shifted uneasily and tried another sip of gin and ginger. It certainly warmed his stomach and began to course a little through his veins. His muscles relaxed minutely, and he felt better—more drawn to this outspoken sergeant. “Why do you want to be an officer?” he asked. He glanced at the sergeant’s eyes. They were looking straight into his.

“Have you seen any of that new bunch?” asked the sergeant. “I know more about soldiering than all that crowd put together, yet I have to salute them. Well, I’ve saluted worse in my day, but we are fools to get into a war if we don’t intend to win it. Winning wars is a man’s game, and that bunch has a lot to learn. I could show them, but they’ve got me training the awkward squad!”

“The what?” asked MacQueen.

“The awkward squad,” repeated the sergeant. “Every bastard who can’t tell his right foot from his left!” He signalled for his companion to drink up. He poured another round and emptied the flask. He replaced this into a paper bag and placed it under the table.

“I will soon be on the parade square,” said MacQueen.

“I know,” replied the sergeant. “You go to Number One Platoon of A Company. That son-of-a-bitch Browne is going to be your sergeant. You will never end up with me—I am Platoon Number Five. Mine all have webbed feet.” He snorted and took a drink. “I’ll call the taxi. Don’t worry if we’re a little late. As long as one of those new second lieutenants isn’t there, I’ll get us in.” He rose and walked to the counter. The youth in the apron called for the taxi. The sergeant gave him a cigarette and left a quarter on the table—enough for a whole package of tailor-mades.

The sergeant carried his bitterness with astonishing outbursts of good humour. He had shown his hand to MacQueen because he was lonely and hoped that he could buck the system and make him a friend. The boy will certainly need some protection when he gets into the hands of Sergeant Silas Browne, thought the sergeant grimly. The remarks in the sergeants’ mess had concerned MacQueen’s relationship with the departed colonel. Browne had said that everything was too easy for Signalman MacQueen, and that he would make him or break him, and that the idea that MacQueen might be headed for an officer’s commission infuriated him. He had been in the militia for ten years and was still saluting officers. MacQueen’s fine new uniform had arrived at an inconvenient time. The sergeant knew the sight of it would send Browne into a frenzy.

Back at the camp, the sergeant argued with the corporal of the guard, who finally relented and roused a sleeping sentry to escort the taxi into the camp. Favours are debts in the army, and the sergeant knew it well. MacQueen got out of the taxi with him at the sergeants’ mess; he wouldn’t dare arrive at the headquarters hut in a taxi. The sergeant paid the taxi, gave the sentry a cigarette, and thrust his hand at MacQueen.

“Thanks for joining me,” he said. MacQueen hesitantly offered him the riding crop. His previous plan to give it to Barbara had not even occurred to him. “It’s against regulation now,” he said. “Take it for a souvenir.”

The sergeant’s face was a pale disc. The lights were out in the camp, and tattered drifts of dirty snow were still piled under the buildings. The sergeant accepted the riding crop. They shook hands. Without another word, they parted.

In the hut, the sleepy telephone operators were getting dressed to go on duty. MacQueen urinated into the bucket outside the door. He gave his buddies some cigarettes and they left to get some hot tea and something to eat. Twenty-five men were sleeping in their bunks. The coal carrier came noisily in to fill the stoves. No one woke. The gin had smoothed MacQueen’s mind, and he went to bed feeling more content than he had in some time.