V
“. . . Sure! All the medals go to the Navy for shooting down a handful of Zeros now and then. But heck, there wouldn’t be any medals if it wasn’t for the Marines! There wouldn’t be any landing fields in the whole Pacific area if the Marines hadn’t gone in first and cleaned out the joints! There isn’t a single island—”
“I’m not arguing with you, Cliff,” Bill Howard said; “I’m just asking.”
Billie caught Grandin’s eye and smiled wanly. It was an expression of impatience not because Cliff was boasting about the Marines but only because the war was again under discussion. She got up pointedly.
“Look, everybody, why don’t we take pictures? I see you brought your camera along, Mr. Howard.”
“Why not?” Bill Howard pulled the camera from its case.
“I’d love to have a good snap of the whole group,” Billie said, “as a souvenir, sort of.”
“My god,” Sarah Howard said, “you don’t keep a memory book?”
“Of course I do,” Billie answered with spirit.
“Since Ethel isn’t here, count me out,” Grandin said. “I’ll do the picture-taking.”
Billie became surprisingly alive. With an almost professional authority she supervised the grouping in the sand, then settled herself in the foreground in an attitude of charming smiling indolence. At her side, Cliff posed on one knee, his chest drawn up and his stomach pulled in, looking eagerly at Grandin and the camera. The Howards stood self-consciously behind the Haumans; and just as he snapped the shutter, Sarah Howard made a face.
Then Bill Howard took over and the Haumans posed for a series of pictures separately and together. John Grandin sat in the sand and watched the performance—watched Cliff with a melancholy fascination.
Simple and transparent though he was, he knew again he would never know Cliff, never get at him, in the way he had always been able to get at or communicate with those he liked. Cliff gave everything of himself; but what was there, really, to give?—beyond an abundance of good will which in the end proved pointless, all but inane. His flattering attention sprang from nothing more meaningful than a childish desire to please and to be liked, and so make life easier and pleasanter for them all; it seemed to have little to do with the one to whom it was addressed. But to argue the matter was as pointless as Cliff’s flattery. He was the child of nature—rare indeed, though so often alluded to—who found life good all around him, who liked any and everybody provided they liked him, and whose simple-minded but truehearted affection (oh, there could be little doubt that it was truehearted) might very well last forever, the more so the less it was tried.
It was hard to think of this big kid as a captain, someone who had been chosen because of his ability to lead other men. In the Marine Corps, Cliff was doubtless a different fellow altogether: stern, reserved, valuable, perhaps even distinguished. He was one of many thousands of young men who had come out of mediocrity to find sudden important niches for themselves in a world of violence, boys for whom the intensity of life had gathered into one consuming purpose all at once. The meaning of many years of living was being crammed into a few months—often into a few hours—and the climaxes of existence, which most people waited all their lives for, these boys were discovering daily. Small wonder that Cliff’s honeymoon was proving far less of a relief from strain than an interruption to his one wholehearted interest. His restlessness now was a hint of the eventless future which awaited him when the war should be over—if he survived. To John Grandin there seemed little chance that he would survive; that passion of Cliff’s almost certainly marked him for death.
Yet now, for some reason, his belief that Cliff would die seemed like emotionalism of the most irresponsible kind. There was no earthly reason why he should be so sure that Cliff was headed for death. In spite of his confidence that he would get through his physical examination in Brooklyn, it was by no means certain that he would pass. He might very well be rejected, sent back to Billie as a husband, and the two of them would wind up in some little three-room flat in Bridgeport or Stamford, with Cliff settling down to an ordinary job (reluctant at first, but eventually happy) and becoming very rapidly the kind of young man who could not have held John Grandin’s interest for five minutes, the aura of the uniform gone, the glamour of the Marine Corps a thing of the past. Or if his hunch was right and Cliff did get back where he wanted to be, never to return again, what could one do about it? Many thousands of young men were dying these days on foreign fields and beachheads. It was the pattern of the times—and who knew but what it might be Cliff’s very fulfillment, his end and purpose in life, to be added to that growing number?
Billie had borrowed the camera and was now taking pictures of Cliff. Grandin watched the pantomime. Cliff stood at full length, his feet apart and his hands on his waist. The expression on his face was self-conscious and a little strained. But there was such a sincere desire on his part for the picture to be a good one that he submitted more than willingly to each of Billie’s suggestions. He didn’t smile outright, it was too serious a moment for that; but he did do his best to look pleasant. In this he succeeded so well that John Grandin found himself looking forward to receiving one of the developed prints. At the same time, he had a sudden odd little prevision of one of those snapshots, curling and yellowed, stuck in the mirror of his bureau, long after he should have heard the last of Cliff Hauman.