Coming into the thronged lobby with Nathaniel Hicks and Captain Duchemin, Lieutenant Turck said to them: “Thanks so much!”

Guard of Honor ■ 543

“Well,” Nathaniel Hicks said, “I see what you mean, Amanda; but—”

“Yes,” she said. “Lippa’s undoubtedly upstairs by now; and so is that Scotch I spoke of. She keeps it in a suitcase in the checkroom here— no liquor in barracks, you see. Why don’t you both come right up and have a drink? I must say, I could use one.”

Captain Duchemin said: “You’re very kind, ma’am; but the fact is our pause to see the captain off to Orlando was just enough to make me the least little bit late for an appointment. I’d better pop in the bar there and see if my Loot has slid under some table waiting.”

“Don’t let us keep you,” Nathaniel Hicks said. “Give me those bags. I’ll see the lady to her quarters.” He took the bags from Captain Duchemin.

Lieutenant Turck said: “We always have the same rooms; but I’d better check. You’ll come up, won’t you, Nat? I’ll give Mary a ring, in case she isn’t decent.” She went over toward the desk.

Nathaniel Hicks said to Captain Duchemin: “If you’re planning to get a bath, which you no doubt need, get up and get it; because I’m going to want one in a minute. Don won’t be in, by the way. They were going to let him stay out at the Hospital tonight.”

“And you,” Captain Duchemin said, “have you got something on?” “No,” Nathaniel Hicks said.

“You wouldn’t, ah—care to join our little fete champetre ? Comfortable furnishings, home-cooked food, charming company! Saturday night, I hear, is the loneliest night in the week.”

“Not while I have a good book,” Nathaniel Hicks said drily. “Go on. Find your Loot; and get that bath.”

“Agreed,” Captain Duchemin said. “But why don’t you have a glass of the lady’s Scotch? That way, you wouldn’t be breathing down my neck while I dress for the ball. I feel I should pay my hostesses the delicate compliment of shaving. Makes me less abrasive, isn’t it? If I knew you were boozing comfortably somewhere—”

“All right,” Nathaniel Hicks said.

Captain Duchemin said: “I feel that your decision will make the lady very happy. Bon amusement ; my captain! Don’t—ah, do anything I wouldn’t do.” He marched over to the bar doors.

Nathaniel Hicks set down the bags next to one of the fancy pillars supporting the lobby vaults, and stood close to it, out of the way There were, Nathaniel Hicks supposed, a hundred and fifty people in the lobby and very few of them were not talking. From the numerous small ambits formed around the seated women separate conversations all going at once joined to make almost a roar. Standing near the pillar, Nathaniel Hicks was well within earshot of two of these conversations.

To his right, a pretty girl who surely could not be over seventeen, sat stiff with inexperience and self-conscious cordiality. She was sunk down deep in a big chair, behind her pretty unstockinged legs. Her left hand wore an enormous diamond and a decorated platinum wedding ring, both obviously brand new. Encircling her stood three pilots, cropped-headed boys who looked no more than a few months her seniors—two second lieutenants, one of whom had the proud, dazed air of owning her; and so must be, brand-new like the rings, her husband; and a captain, in appearance not a day older than the lieutenants; but he had the DFC and the Air Medal and the Asiatic-Pacific ribbon with a few stars; so no doubt he commanded the lieutenants’ squadron.

Amused by the extravagant diamond—the new wife’s naive-faced, fresh-colored young husband had probably never been away from home, nor had regular money of his own, before. A little dizzy, he thought nothing of slapping down half a year’s pay, plus perhaps some heavy winnings at cards or dice—Nathaniel Hicks let himself listen to the boy captain.

Closely attended by both lieutenants, who displayed a nice balance of respect and familiarity, and by the girl, who displayed a breathless interest that seemed to show she was not too young to have a sound instinct for ways to serve her husband, the captain, in a curt manly voice, proved to be talking about what happened at the lake.

Nathaniel Hicks’s indulgent amusement at the oversized diamond, the raw young husband, the high school girlish bride, suffered a check. The ordinary preoccupations—the attention required in looking at and talking to his companions; in driving a car; in seeing Captain Wiley get his clearance, climb into, and while the crewmen held their extinguishers, fire up his old P-40, lift his long arm in farewell, taxi off

to the head of the runway—all worked to keep Nathaniel Hicks thinking of something else for the last hour. He found now that what happened at the lake he had still much in mind, embedded there. With a tremor of nerves, he could clearly hear again the cry of the paratrooper breaking his legs on the runway; he could distinctly see the plummeting into the lake and the gruesome minute or two’s vain commotion in the closing waters; the understandable but useless gesture of the excited black swimmers; and at the end, the generals, respectfully surrounded, standing a little too late on the sunset shore. Not very reasonably he now noted with irritation the callous casualness of people who talk about what they have not seen.

It was undoubtedly the biggest single topic in the whole hum of conversations. Everywhere everyone was describing it as an awful thing; but Nathaniel Hicks must note, and note with revulsion, the high conversational value of anything awful—it was not dull. Those who told so busily what they could not know spoke with the importance of men sure of an audience; those who listened heard avidly, with no feigned interest. Complementing the boy captain to Nathaniel Hicks’s right, a speaker, quite as easily heard, held forth on his left. It was a grayheaded major with the gold Finance Department lozenge. For eager hearers he had a gray-headed lieutenant, also from Finance; two captains past their youth who wore the Adjutant General’s colored shield; and two seated women, plain and middle-aged. The major was telling them that he knew, he had heard someone say, that General Beal had put what he cautiously referred to as “Colonel H.” in arrest.

One of the women said: “But what did he do, Carl?”

The gray-headed major said: “It wasn’t what he did, it was what he didn’t do.” Nathaniel Hicks, disliking the major’s knowledgeable air, reflected sarcastically that now the story was going good. It was true that he had not been able to hear the orders General Beal soon began to give; but he was nonetheless sure, since he had watched Colonel Hildebrand energetically assisting, that Colonel Hildebrand’s arrest wasn’t one of them.

To Nathaniel Hicks’s right, the young squadron commander said:

546 • James Gould Cozzens

“Somebody’ll probably get crucified. What I heard at Operations, it was the usual snafu. This was an exercise, trying out new planes, see? It was scheduled for Monday, see; and was going to be near Tangerine City. Different kind of country right around there. No lake, bodies of water, within ten miles. So they drew everything up for that jump, and didn’t say life vests—they couldn’t need any, see? Then, all of a sudden, they change it. The exercise is run off here, today. But somebody sure as hell forgot—”

The gray-headed major said: “—you’ve got to hit the man whose ultimate responsibility it is. Saying you forgot or you didn’t know, won’t do; not when there’s a war on! If anybody makes a mistake, it’s just too bad for him—”

The young squadron commander said: “What Nauroze was telling me, he’d been talking right to the lake, was the general really went into them about this boat. Said why the f— holy hell didn’t they get a boat from Lake Armstrong; any number of boats there, all kinds. Hire one, borrow one, steal one if they had to! Hoist it on a truck, low-bed trailer or something; cart it over to stand by if the regular crash boat wasn’t working—”

The girl in the chair said: “Oh, how perfectly ghastly, Captain Burns! You mean they could have saved all those men—”

The captain made a deprecatory gesture, snapping his knuckles. He said: “Well, tell you the truth, I think the general was spinning there. I doubt if it could make a least bit of difference. A plane down in the lake might float a few minutes, see. Give you a chance to start up a boat, cast off, get out there. Now, I don’t know where these characters jumped from, how high; but they’re going to be down in ten, fifteen, twenty seconds. At the most. The idea is: get them down fast; see? Operationally, you don’t want them hanging in the air like sitting ducks; see?”

To the gray-headed major, one of the Adjutant General’s officers said: “What I heard, Carl, was the rescue boat had been laid up, engine trouble; and somebody didn’t report it to the Post Engineer, Uline’s office. Of course it wasn’t manned; because it wouldn’t go—”

The young captain said, shrugging easily: “Maybe they unloaded at the wrong point; maybe there was a stronger wind all of a sudden. But

all I mean is, I don’t see how any boat would do any good. Not when they didn’t have vests to make them float. They’re weighted the hell down—”

The lieutenant Nathaniel Hicks had picked as the girl’s husband said: “Yeah; how about that, Hank? They must see where they’re going, wouldn’t they? Why don’t they drop off all that junk, give themselves a chance? You wouldn’t have to be so smart to figure that.”

The young captain shook his head wisely. “You’d have to start early,” he said. “Lots of them have special loads, too; demolition sets; communications stuff. That weighs plenty; and they put that on you to stay, you know—straps; buckles; zippered up. They make sure you don’t lose any of it; when you get down, you could need it bad—”

The gray-headed major said: “No, you couldn’t see anything at all from where we were, all the way across the field. I don’t think anybody there knew anything had happened until they got the trucks out, over by the stands. Well, I wouldn’t have wanted to see it, I can tell you! Those poor fellows coming down—”

The captain said: “And don’t think it’s so easy to be sure where you’re going to land. I had to bail out once; and believe me, it’s tricky as hell. When I got to what I thought would be around five hundred feet, I started to figure where I was going; and I saw it was right smack in this wood lot, big trees. Boy, I worked the head hard, trying to remember those pictures; put your arms over your face, all that. Where I actually hit was this open field. I swear it was more than two hundred yards from those trees—not that I minded! What I mean; by the time I saw the field was it, was sure of it, I didn’t have only three or four seconds left—”

Nathaniel Hicks became abruptly aw^are that Lieutenant Turck was standing in front of him. He said: “I’m doing a little eavesdropping. Everybody here is—” Her expression made him break off.

She said: “Nat, I could die! Really, I can’t bear it. It seems, as w r e all know, I was in Des Moines last weekend; and Lippa decided not to come down alone, so the reservation was canceled. Lippa did it. She must have thought they’d understand it was just last weekend we didn’t

want it. That is not what the dolts understood. They understood we would call and make a new reservation when we were going to want it again. Since no one called—you begin to get it?”

“Definitely,” Nathaniel Hicks said. “Now, let’s see—”

Lieutenant Turck said: “Ever since I got up this morning I’ve kept thinking: Saturday, thank God, Saturday!”

Nathaniel Hicks saw that she had interrupted him out of necessity. She could not wait to let’s-see; she must attack and reduce immediately the ludicrous anguish which shamed her by forcing out, on so trivial an occasion, the wail that she could die, she couldn’t bear it. She said briskly: “Whenever I wasn’t being actively bothered, I’d sit there gloating, seeing myself, when day was done, panting up the corridor to dear old Three-Ten-A, bursting open the door, setting out the Scotch with trembling fingers and slopping some stiff shots into glasses. When we were enough recovered, I would match Lippa—I would win, of course—for who got the bathtub first. I would soak for one half hour. Emerging fresh and dainty—but why go on?”

Why, indeed? Nathaniel Hicks, with real compunction, saw her failure. Her experienced sardonic portrayal of herself was not bringing its usual relief. The steady hand began to shake; the swift mocking strokes fell inaccurately. Instead of disappearing, the ignoble little disappointment grew—because, of course, ignoble or not, it was little only in the grim sense that the nail, want of which lost the shoe, was not a very big nail. Lieutenant Turck looked in despair at the wilderness around her. Essentially hateful in its upset values, its incentives to self-mistrust, its comfortless patchwork of unavailing efforts and disagreeable contacts; essentially frightening—the huge, going machine had no controls you could reach—this way of life made equilibrium precarious, dependent on a fantastic rigging job. The job was usually— it had to be—serviceable, and often most ingenious; but its safety factor, unless you didn’t feel at all, was zero. It could not stand a prop knocked out here or a parted guy there.

Nathaniel Hicks said firmly: “Wait. Now, let’s see—”

“There isn’t anything,” Lieutenant Turck said. “It’s all at least two weeks in advance; so there won’t even be anything next week. The room clerk, though an old friend of ours, was rather snappish. He had

already had it from Lippa. She got in nearly an hour ago. She was, he said, very mad at him; but could he help it? She left word she was in the bar—he says she went in with an officer, almost certainly our ineffable Edsell, since you tell me he wasn’t arrested after all. I can’t face any of that. I won’t face it. I will now take a taxi back to the Area. If I must weep, I will weep in the washroom out there.”

“Come, come!” Nathaniel Hicks said. “Didn’t you tell me something about the usefulness of men? I haven’t even started yet. First of all, we get hold of Duchemin. I saw him go upstairs. He is better than any yak. He will get hold of the manager.”

“Mr. Prouty? What good would it be, Nat? This room clerk we really know very well. If there was anything he could do, I’m sure he would. He says there’s simply nothing at all.”

“He isn’t Mr. Prouty,” Nathaniel Hicks said, “and you’re not Captain Duchemin. That makes a big difference, you’ll find. 1 don’t say he can give you anything right now; but that doesn’t matter. You don’t need anything right now. By the time you do need it, somebody will have checked out and Mr. Prouty will be only too happy to see that any friend of Captain Duchemin is first to move in. I promise you.” “Do you?” Lieutenant Turck said. “Yes; please do! Only, I think I will go out. I mean; I’ll come in later. I must have a bath.”

Nathaniel Hicks said benevolently: “You can have one; and so can Lippa. We have baths upstairs. I don’t think there’s even a ring around the tub, because we also have a shower in a sodden little stall and I never knew anybody to use anything else. The tub is to keep extra ice in. Now, we’ll go up. Duchemin can telephone Mr. Prouty. While he is getting out, we can sit on our balcony and look at Lake Armstrong. I’m afraid there is no Scotch; but there is plenty of bourbon which works the same way. When Duchemin leaves, you can call down and have Lippa paged. Don Andrews is at the Base Hospital. I will withdraw; and you can get yourselves all fresh and dainty. I will then buy you some dinner—”

“No!” Lieutenant Turck said. “Absolutely not! This has to stop somewhere. I don’t know what you were planning to do, but it couldn’t have been that. You will not buy any dinner. If we can just get clean—” she paused. “God knows about Lippa,” she said. “Once that young man

gets to work on her—she will have had a couple of drinks by now; and there’s just no telling. If you have us on your neck, you may find him there, too. No. You see it gets too complicated. We’d better just skip it, Nat.”

Nathaniel Hicks picked the bags up. “Come on,” he said. “I’m running this. I don’t give a damn about Edsell; and in many ways I don’t give a damn about Lippa; but I am not going to have you weeping in the washroom out there—”

“There they are now,” Lieutenant Turck said. “If I am any judge, and I am, I think you will find them inseparable.”

Turning, Nathaniel Hicks saw Lieutenant Lippa, her arm through Lieutenant Edsell’s, coming across the lobby toward them. He saw that it was undoubtedly true about the couple of drinks. Lieutenant Lippa looked flushed, which gave her a warm, somewhat starry-eyed appearance not unbecoming. Taken with her clinging hold on Lieutenant Edsell’s arm the effect of sensual abandonment was so marked that she was getting a good deal of attention. As she and Edsell approached, she brought after her a train of turned eyes, glances that had fallen casually on her and then continued into stares. Nathaniel Hicks could see the young captain who had been talking to the two lieutenants and the schoolgirl bride rest his eye on her accidentally. He stopped talking, leaving his lips parted. His blue eyes flickered, irresistibly fastened. He forgot all about his companions, his mind overmastered by his fancy’s absorbing suggestions.

Lieutenant Lippa, oblivious to all this, said to Lieutenant Turck: “Nice going, chum! We’ll just leave everything to you.”

Lieutenant Turck said: “Why didn’t you say, when you canceled the reservation, that we wanted it again this week? Bert says you never told him—”

“I never told him not,” Lieutenant Lippa said. “But it seems to me you might have checked. You said you’d take care of everything. What are you going to do now?”

Lieutenant Turck said: “Captain Hicks has kindly suggested that we could get cleaned up in his place as soon as Captain Duchemin, who is dressing, gets out. He thinks Mr. Prouty will be able to find somewhere for us to sleep later. We were just going up. Do you want

to come and get a bath? I think it would be a good idea. I’m sure Lieutenant Edsell will excuse you.”

“Oh, you’re sure, are you?” Lieutenant Lippa said. A dark surge of anger showed itself in her face. “Well, I just happen to be fed up with all the things you’re so sure of, Amanda.”

Lieutenant Turck said: “Are you coming up?”

“No, I’m not. I just stopped to tell you that we’re going out, and I won’t be back tonight.”

“Well, if you’re spending the night somewhere,” Lieutenant Turck said, “You’d better take your bag. You might need a nightgown.” Lieutenant Lippa said: “Oh, you make me sick, Amanda! Will you stop looking so damn refined?” Lieutenant Lippa moistened her trembling lips. She said loudly: “What in God’s name would we want my nightgown for?”

“I don’t know,” Lieutenant Turck said. “Must you ask the whole lobby?”

With an air of pleasure disagreeable to Nathaniel Hicks, Lieutenant Edsell said: “Let’s not have a cat fight, ladies!” He moved his eyes, examining Nathaniel Hicks’s expression, which Nathaniel Hicks supposed was no friendlier than the feelings he had toward Lieutenant Edsell.

Derisively, with a mischievous attention, Lieutenant Edsell considered Nathaniel Hicks. He said then: “You wouldn’t like to let me borrow your car for a while, would you?”

Nathaniel Hicks said: “I may need it myself.”

Lieutenant Edsell laughed. “My pal!” he said. “Ask him any time! Well, don’t feel too bad. We can take a taxi. Lou left me a key to his place when he went off last week. Here; give us the bag.”

Lieutenant Turck said: “If you’re going anywhere where there’s a telephone, you’d better leave the number with me. If Sergeant Levy tries to get you for anything, I’d better know where to tell her to call.” Lieutenant Lippa said: “Oh, shut up!” She walked away toward the door.

Lieutenant Edsell took Lieutenant Lippa’s bag. He said to Nathaniel Hicks: “I hear your friend Beal bought it again. Report on that to me Monday, will you? Good-bye, now.”

552 ■ James Gould Cozzens

Lieutenant Turck looked at Nathaniel Hicks.

“Well; we won’t need to trouble Captain Duchemin to trouble Mr. Prouty,” she said. “Now I will go along out to the Area. One thing. Do you know where this place he was given a key to is? I mean, if I can locate a telephone number for it, I’d like to. There isn’t much chance it would be needed; but if it was—in short, she’s not supposed to go where she can’t be reached.”

“Yes,” Nathaniel Hicks said. “It’s a Captain Adler of our Section. He’s at'Wright Field on some project. He has rooms in a house out Tropical Avenue. We’ll get you the number. I have a list upstairs. And you’re not going to the Area—not right now. I need a drink and so do

n

you.

“Well, yes, thanks,” Lieutenant Turck said. “I believe I still do.”

She looked at the clock over the desk. It was seven. The throng in the lobby was thinning out. “But weren’t you doing anything tonight, Nat?”

“Not me,” Nathaniel Hicks said. “So I think we’ll bring your bag up; and you get that bath and change your clothes; and then we’ll have dinner. Now, don’t say no. It’s an invitation.” Carrying the bag, he led her across to the elevators, and into one.

The elevator boy said: “Three, Captain?”

Lieutenant Turck said: “Thank you very much, sir. That would be most enjoyable.”

“Three,” Nathaniel Hicks said to the elevator boy. “And if you’re sure you don’t want to stay in, I’ll run you out afterward. I’d have to do that. After all, I told Edsell I might need the car.”

“Well, I would not want to make you a liar,” Lieutenant Turck said. “You’re very kind. No. I don’t think I’ll stay in alone. It’s odd, since it’s so utterly detestable out there; but the truth is, I would find it melancholy here. When I woke up and saw that Lippa wasn’t around, I would start brooding about that all over again—”

Leaving the elevator, they walked down the long lighted corridor. Several doors stood open; several had the slatted second doors closed. The sound of radio music came from some, and the sound of talk and laughter from others. “Yes,” Nathaniel Hicks said. “It is a damn funny way to fight a war, isn’t it?”

Guard of Honor • 553

Lieutenant Turck said: “I had, through no choice of mine, breakfast with our friend Edsell this morning, and I said something about that, rather offensive; and he answered very properly that he could not help it if they sent him here. I expect it’s a point to be kept in mind. In fact, I don’t know that one misses any part of the unpleasantness, except perhaps getting killed. Even that seemed quite well taken care of today. Oh, yes, I need that drink.”

“You’ll have it in one minute,” Nathaniel Hicks said. “That’s ours, right down there—”

As he spoke, the door at the end opened abruptly. Captain Duchemin, bright and clean, his bulk encased in a fresh, sharply ironed uniform, came out in a hurry, closing the door behind him. Seeing them, he pulled up. He tilted his cropped head; his broad, new-shaved face began to beam. “My error, my captain!” he said. “Set it right in a jiffy!” He dug a key out of his pocket, turned and unlocked the door, swinging it open and withdrawing the key.

“Did you leave the bathroom in a mess?” Nathaniel Hicks said. “Lieutenant Turck has been done out of her reservation, and I told her she could clean up here.”

“The bathroom is spotless,” Captain Duchemin said with interest. “I left it that way for you, of course. Want me to see if Prouty can do anything, or have you got it fixed?”

“Thanks awfully,” Lieutenant Turck said. “Nat suggested you might be able to arrange something; but we changed our plans, and 1 won’t be staying in tonight. So if I may just make free with your bathroom—”

“We’re honored, ma’am,” Captain Duchemin said. “Make free with all we have!” The humorous, heavy-lidded eyes slid off from her to Nathaniel Hicks. “I wish I could stay and help offer you refreshments; but I must get my Loot out of that bar while he’s still mobile. He was sagging ever so slightly when I came up. So, bless you, my children! We, in thought, will join your throng, ye that pipe and ye that play—”

He went trotting off down the corridor.

XVI

Outside, in the warm starlit night, several staff cars stood near the private door to General Beal’s office. Inside, more lights than usual were on; but it had not been thought necessary to call back many people.

In the reception room between the hall and General Beal’s outer office, Captain Collins waited with the draft of a press release that Colonel Ross had told him to prepare and bring over. In the outer office, Mr. Botwinick had established a little headquarters of his own. He sat at Mrs. Pellerino’s desk to put through telephone calls. He had a couple of messengers waiting in case General Beal wanted anything. Down in Colonel Mowbray’s office there were lights on, too. Colonel Mowbray was still over at Base Headquarters with Colonel Hildebrand, earnestly and no doubt inefficiently, busy with “arrangements”; but Mrs. Spann, whose sense of duty was strong and who liked to be in on things, returned to her post, though not sent for, as soon as she finished supper.

In General Beal’s office the blinds were lowered at all the windows. Colonel Ross waited there with General Beal and General Nichols and Lieutenant Colonel Carricker. Colonel Ross had taken charge of the telephone, so he occupied General Beal’s chair at General Beal’s desk under the fringed and tasseled bright silk of General Beal’s stand of colors.

General Beal and General Nichols sat in the comfortable leather armchairs across the room. General Beal was slouched low, his legs thrust straight before him. The only light came from the bronze lamp on the general’s desk. The quiet reflected glow, easy on the eyes, glinted on the short, clipped wave of the general’s hair. His face was tranquilly shadowed, his chin, because he was stretched out so fully in his chair, near his chest. He looked at his thin, strong hands, one of which was methodically engaged in turning, though without haste or impatience, idly and absently, his Military Academy class ring around and around on his finger. As far as Colonel Ross could see, he rested at ease.

In the other armchair General Nichols sat with his battle jacket unbuttoned. He sat easy, too; but perfectly erect in the chair, his legs crossed neatly. Under the dark mustache his lips were closed with a firmness of habit. The ample intelligent forehead was smooth in a serene stillness. He let his eyes rest on the folded sheet of the TO BEAL FOR NICHOLS FROM ARNOLD message which had been given him when he came in. Colonel Ross guessed that General Nichols had his mind busy with a measured review of some important matters to which he was privy, comprehensively speculating on possible developments during the thirty hours or so he had been away from the Pentagon which might make the Commanding General want him urgently.

Lieutenant Colonel Carricker, who sat in a less comfortable chair, was getting, as nearly as Colonel Ross could judge, some form of what used to be called the absent treatment. It was a measure of discipline; but too capricious in its nature and method to satisfy Colonel Ross— perhaps because Benny accepted it so composedly, as a matter of course.

Benny had been sitting on the steps outside when they arrived. He tossed away a cigarette and got up, standing silent in the last dusk. General Beal, stepping out of the car, said nothing to him; so Benny said to Colonel Ross: “Mrs. Ross says to say they left, Judge. I think they were going home.”

General Beal then said: “What did you do, crack up that job for me?”

Benny said no, it was all right. The generator quit charging. It must have been doing it off and on before; the battery must have been drain-

ing back through it. He hardly had any So the prop kept running away; so he put it on manual and set down on Number Three. He’d take Danny out tomorrow morning.

General Beal said: “I don’t know whether you will. Danny’s doing a job tonight on General Nichols’s plane. He has to sleep sometime.”

“Well, when he can,” Benny said. “It’s not my plane. I don’t want to fool with those prop assemblies.”

General Beal grunted; but he made no objection when Benny came along. He simply paid no more attention to Benny. Benny took the neglect with composure, sitting down across the room and waiting with them.

They were waiting for Lieutenant Colonel Uline to call from the lake and report the progress of Colonel Mowbray’s “arrangements.” Colonel Ross was pleased to see Bus waiting so calmly, resting at ease. It was a lesson for him, Colonel Ross supposed; a demonstration of the avoidable expense of worry and alarm; and, he also supposed, a lesson wasted as usual, as far as he went. His experience fitted him to advise others, rather than himself. He could advise them very strongly to keep their shirts on. Just wait; it would all go. Give Time time; Time would take it away Colonel Ross sat with a sense of spent storm, of ebbed action, of the charitable late coming of that wisdom which never could be expected until the day’s prophecies had duly failed, the tongues ceased, the mistaken knowledge vanished away.

Colonel Ross, though subdued, was hopeful now. At first glance, a glance taken with the help of alarm and worry, what they had here was new bad trouble, more of the same, delivered to General Beal just when he needed no more. In a tizzy, Colonel Ross had his shirt off at once. Bus was barely worked free of yesterday’s troubles—if he was free. Since the dubious job had been mostly his, Colonel Ross had a right to consider it a near thing, all precarious, all at hazard; no plan for it; and no theory better than anyone’s good guess that the Nature of Things abhors a drawn line and loves a hodgepodge, resists consistency and despises drama; that the operation of man is habit, and the habit of habit is inertia. This weight is against every human endeavor; and always the best bet is, not that a man will, but that he won’t.

Not seeing how more could be done, how he could do it again,

Guard of Honor ■ 557

Colonel Ross began to see—later, of course, than he would have seen it if he had just kept his shirt on—that this trouble, though new, though bad, was a good deal better suited to Bus’s tastes and talents. Bus, not any less Bus than Benny, there, was Benny, reacted hard; but with assurance. The high strung gamut ran free from a first simple emotional response to the uncomplicated thought of the brave, the brave who are no more (in quaint, grim truth, all sunk beneath the wave!); through the explosion, simple and emotional, too, of anger rushing into natural patterns—no indecisive repinings about dear, dead days with that comical bastard Woody; no plaguing nonsense put on him by whoever gave their cry-baby prerogatives to a bunch of touchy colored boys, or by the finicking policies some Public Relations nut sold the Air Staff—of a known role to play, orders to give; then, with no real checks or crosses, on into the evening’s wearing-out of anger, a subsiding, still simple, toward a common sense of mere regret, an acceptance (what else could you do with it?) of accomplished fact. The portentous truth appeared by intimation, full of comfort though so melancholy, touched with despair yet supportable, that nothing, not the best you might hope, not the worst you might fear, would ever be very much, would ever be very anything. Seen in this light, all other feelings must weaken, become more temperate—really, more indifferent. Since that was how it was, measures more moderate—really, more disinterested—suggested themselves.

Crumpling a cigarette package, General Beal said: “Benny. Get me a couple from that machine down there, will you.”

General Nichols, stirring, produced the handsome silver case with the Royal Air Force emblem. General Beal reached and took a cigarette from it; but he said: “I need some anyway, thanks. Got change, Benny?”

Benny, getting up, said: “Yeah.”

“Look,” General Beal said. “If you mean that generator wasn’t charging while I had it, and I never noticed, you’re wrong. On those, if the generator quits even a minute, that prop circuit breaker goes, pops out. If your generator comes back, you still have to reset before the

motor gets any current. If I didn’t notice before, when I came in to land, I’d sure as hell find out. Use your head!”

Benny, scratching his nose, went on toward the door. He said: “I never said that, Chief.”

“The hell you didn’t,” General Beal said.

Putting a hand on the door jamb, Benny turned. With an air of patient, technical reasonableness he said: “All I was figuring was how I might have drained the battery. I know one good way. The generator stops charging; but it isn’t cut out. There goes your battery, drained back through it. It could have quit right after I went on cruise. The prop’s fixed, stays set. I move my throttle; ho juice for the motor, so the prop starts running away. I don’t know. Danny might find something crossed, something grounded, something burned out. I could glide into Number Three, so I thought I’d get down. That’s all I said.” He opened the door and went out.

Lieutenant Colonel Carricker was hardly gone when the knock came on the other door.

Guessing it to be Mr. Botwinick, General Beal called, “Come in, come in!”

Mr. Botwinick came in.

Probably Mr. Botwinick did not see well in the shadows. No doubt he had most of his mind on the performance he proposed. He entered, his spare little frame moving formally front and center. At a proper number of paces from General Beal’s desk, he halted and stood at attention. He then saluted Colonel Ross before he realized it was Colonel Ross.

Colonel Ross said simply: “For God’s sake, Botty; what goes on?”

Mr. Botwinick, though discomposed, lost no time in right-facing. He saluted General Beal, stretched out in the chair. He said: “I feel compelled to report myself in arrest, sir.”

What first went through Colonel Ross’s mind was the surprised, but certainly not astonished, conviction that Mr. Botwinick, who was, after all, just the type, had at last cracked up. General Beal, astounded, hitched straighter in his chair. General Nichols’s head turned with an

Guard of Honor ■ 559

alert inquiring look. Nobody said anything for an instant while Colonel Ross thought rapidly ahead—steps to take while they waited for the ambulance and the strait-jacket.

However, Mr. Botwinick, if not perfectly calm, immediately proved himself perfectly lucid and collected. He said to General Beal: “I have now been able to check certain circumstances, sir; and in light of them, I see no alternative to reporting as I now do. I have no excuse, sir; but may I explain the situation?”

General Beal, sitting straighter still, said: “Well, sure! What situation?”

From the sharpness of General Nichols’s continuing attention Colonel Ross could see that General Nichols, not familiar with Mr. Botwinick’s habit of saying things the hard way, was half or more of Colonel Ross’s first opinion. General Nichols managed by a slight turn of the eyes to query Colonel Ross. Colonel Ross was not sure he would be intelligible; but he answered as well as he could by shrugging slightly.

Speaking fast, Mr. Botwinick said that he was in a position to state positively that no copy of the memorandum from Colonel Uline through Colonel Hildebrand’s office on the status of the Lake Lalage rescue boat was to be found in Colonel Mowbray’s files. He had hesitated to reach this conclusion on the basis of his own search, which had been unproductive. Mrs. Spann had now come in; and since she could not find it, he would state categorically that it was not there.

Frowning, General Beal said: “Well, there was a memo, all right. Colonel Hildebrand showed us copies of it. It was sent over this morning.”

“Yes, sir,” Mr. Botwinick said. “Colonel Mowbray informed me that he had seen such a copy. He wished to know why it had not been shown to him.” He paused as though in pain. “I presumed, and I told him when he called, that we could not have received it. That was incorrect. I have now examined with Mrs. Spann our correspondence sheet. It shows that we received something—it is noted by office of origin but, as is customary, with no subject, since a file number and a suspense reference number were affixed. I have no doubt that the notation refers to the missing paper.”

560 ■ James Gould Cozzens

“Then you think you did get it, you had it?” General Beal said.

“I must conclude so,” Mr. Botwinick said laboriously. In spite of the artificial coolness of the room, sweat, Colonel Ross could see, was beading on Mr. Botwinick’s forehead. Mr. Botwinick stiffened his slight frame and drew a breath. He said: “Having ascertained this, sir, I consulted further with Mrs. Spann. Though she is not prepared to swear to it, she is now decidedly of the opinion that she remembers in the mail today something, a heading, some subject, with reference to the rescue boat. She believes she must have seen it when she went over part of the mail after Miss Jelliffe entered it. She has called Miss Jel-liffe, and Miss Jelliffe does remember entering such a memorandum.” General Beal looked at Colonel Ross; and Colonel Ross said: “You’ve covered that, Botty. The entry proved it was received, whether she actually remembered entering it or not.”

Without taking his eyes from General Beal, Mr. Botwinick answered: “That is true, sir. What I wished to check was whether Miss Jelliffe remembered the subject. She is not perfectly sure. Entering the mail, she does not take time to read it; it is not part of her duties. Mrs. Spann, however, ordinarily does read it. As I related, Mrs. Spann went over part of the mail this morning; but not so thoroughly as usual.” General Beal said: “All right, all right. Now, what are you getting at?”

“I will be as brief as I can, sir,” Mr. Botwinick said. “Colonel Mowbray was very much engaged this morning. He sent for the mail almost as soon as it came in with the intention of getting it out of the way, in case he did not have time for it later. Mrs. Spann had only started to look at it, therefore, when Colonel Mowbray buzzed me and said to bring it in—”

“I understand that!” General Beal said. “What I don’t understand is why Pop didn’t see it. Is that what you’re going to explain?”

“Yes, sir,” Mr. Botwinick said. “I can account for that.”

“Well, account for it.”

Mr. Botwinick said: “I destroyed it, sir.”

“You what?” said General Beal.

“I destroyed it, sir,” Mr. Botwinick said stoically. “I will explain, if I may. Colonel Mowbray had asked for the mail. I took it from Mrs.

Spann, who had just received it from Miss Jelliffe, who had entered it. At approximately that moment, General Nichols”—Mr. Botwinick glanced tensely toward General Nichols—“and General Baxter, who had, I believe, been over at the Base inspecting a plane, arrived, sir. Colonel Mowbray had been talking, I think, to Colonel Ross, on the box. Mrs. Spann told Colonel Mowbray that General Nichols and General Baxter were there, so he came out and brought them into his office. I felt that Colonel Mowbray would not want me to follow immediately with the mail; so I retained it until he should see fit to send for it. He did send for it presently.” Mr. Botwinick looked at General Nichols. “Perhaps you recall that, sir?”

General Nichols said: “Yes, I do. We asked Colonel Mowbray to go on with his work. He sent for the mail. I remember your bringing it in.”

“Yes, sir,” Mr. Botwinick said. By his distracted solemnity he made it plain that he was about to immolate himself, and the moment was a great one—though the cost was high, ruinous, the drama was at any rate considerable. Now that Colonel Ross thought of it, Botty from time to time showed a guarded sense of drama in or under his monotonous industry. General Beal was frowning with bewilderment; and Colonel Ross began to frown thoughtfully himself.

Mr. Botwinick said: “Unfortunately, on my desk at the time, I had placed some classified material, certain documents and papers no longer required which I had taken from the files to burn. What happened is, I am afraid, obvious, sir. In picking up Colonel Mowbray’s mail, it would have been possible for me to overlook a paper, Colonel Uline’s memorandum. When I returned, I assembled all the material on my desk without further examination and myself took it to the disposal incinerator and saw it burned. I have no excuse, sir.”

Since General Beal, staring, said nothing, Colonel Ross, assuming a professional forensic tone, said, “Let’s go into this a little further, Botty. First, you don’t actually know that’s what happened; you just think it might have happened?”

Mr. Botwinick without turning his back on General Beal moved enough to look quickly at Colonel Ross. He said: “Mrs. Spann and I are certain, sir, that the memorandum is now nowhere in our files, in our office. If it had not been destroyed—”

“Yes,” Colonel Ross said, “I see your reasons for believing it must have been destroyed; but I would like to go over your reasons for feeling that you destroyed it. Let’s do it step by step. Let’s begin with your receiving Colonel Mowbray’s mail from Mrs. Spann. It has already been entered by Miss Jelliffe, and we know from her record that a memorandum, almost certainly the memorandum on the rescue boat, was in the mail. Mrs. Spann herself, while not able to swear to it, thinks she saw it; and you and she conclude that she must have seen it then. While we have not proved that the memorandum was in the mass of mail you received from Mrs. Spann we can say that in the ordinary course of things it would have been, and so that it probably was. You agree?”

Mr. Botwinick hesitated a moment, his expression cautious and intent. He said: “Yes, sir.”

“Very well. You have, you are carrying, a pile of papers, mail for Colonel Mowbray. You are prevented from bringing it right in, so you take it with you to your desk. On your desk is another pile of papers, old classified material to be destroyed. Where is this pile; where, on the desk?”

Mr. Botwinick said carefully: “It was approximately in the center, sir. On my blotting pad. I had been about to take the material out when I was interrupted by Colonel Mowbray’s request. I make a practice of personally destroying such material.”

“A very prudent practice,” Colonel Ross said. “So you entered your office carrying the mail, and came up to your desk on which in the center lay this pile of papers to be burned. You put down the mail, a new pile of papers, for a moment. Where? On top of the old pile?”

“I am afraid, sir, that I did,” Mr. Botwinick said.

“You surprise me,” Colonel Ross said. “I would expect you to put them by themselves. When you saw the papers already on the desk, it would seem natural for you to recall what they were, why they were there. If you recalled that, it would seem natural for you to take at least ordinary care not to confuse the two piles.”

Mr. Botwinick moistened his lips. He said: “I agree, Colonel. I must conclude that I did not recall. I acted with a carelessness for which I have—”

“Let’s follow this farther,” Colonel Ross said. “You are informed, after a few minutes, that Colonel Mowbray now wants his mail. What had you been doing meanwhile, if you remember?”

Mr. Botwinick hesitated again. With a worried look he said: “It is my impression that I was talking on the telephone, sir. Yes. I had just completed a call when Colonel Mowbray spoke to me on the box.”

“You had just completed a call,” Colonel Ross said. “Let’s visualize this. You put the telephone down. Colonel Mowbray spoke through on your box. You picked up the mail to take it in to him. The mail formed the top part of a pile of papers in the center of your desk. Would it have been possible for you, by accident, to pick up the whole pile, and not noticing what you had done, bring, as well as the mail, all the old papers in to Colonel Mowbray?”

Mr. Botwinick said slowly: “I think I would have noticed, sir. There was quite a considerable accumulation—”

Colonel Ross said: “Then you separated what you thought was the mail from what you knew were old papers. You wanted only the top part of the pile; yet it did not occur to you to stop and see whether you were taking any papers that were not part of the mail, or leaving any that were part of it?”

A tinge of deep red had risen in Mr. Botwinick’s face; but he said firmly: “I took them up in some haste, Colonel. I ought not to have done it. I should have paid closer attention.”

“I see,” Colonel Ross said. “You wish General Beal to understand that through successive pieces of carelessness, the last of them caused by haste, you were personally responsible for the fact that Colonel Mowbray did not see, and so, that nothing was done about, Colonel Uline’s memorandum?”

“I must accept that responsibility, sir.”

Colonel Ross said to General Beal: “I don’t think any action ought to be taken on this, General, until Colonel Mowbray has been informed. I suggest that, meanwhile, Mr. Botwinick return to his duties.” “Yes,” General Beal said. “We’ll have to talk to Pop. Let’s do one thing at a time.”

Mr. Botwinick said: “I regret this interruption, sir; but as soon as I knew what I had done, I felt I should inform you. I will be outside, sir,

then.” He turned and walked to the door, which he closed carefully after him.

General Beal stood up. He went over to a fancy little cellarette under the window. He found a key in his pocket and unlocked the cellarette, opening the top and front. A cluster of bottles stood surrounded by racks of glasses. He said: “Let’s have a drink.”

“A timely suggestion,” General Nichols said. He looked curiously at Colonel Ross. “Interesting character, that man, Judge.”

General Beal said, holding up a bottle: “This and branch water do you, Judge? Want some ice? I could send for some.”

Colonel Ross said: “It will do very well without ice.” Looking at General Nichols, he said: “Yes. Mr. Botwinick is an interesting character, General. In some important ways he might be said to run the Operations and Requirements Analysis Division. His carelessness surprised me. He’s not given to making mistakes or overlooking things. I have trouble thinking of him doing anything by accident. However, accidents happen. The best of us make mistakes.”

Smiling, General Nichols said, “I see that.”

♦

Those qualities, the ones she ascribed to Lieutenant Lippa when she was talking under the fly-top at the lumber pile were, of course, her own, Nathaniel Hicks realized as he sat on the balcony with Lieutenant Turck. To her great advantage, she also added, he thought, a niceness of mind that seemed likely to secure her, as Lieutenant Lippa was not secured, against unbecoming acts or even thoughts.

Admiring, Nathaniel Hicks could not help feeling a curiosity, not, he felt, impertinent, about that man to whom she was formerly married—this doctor, hadn’t she said? What was it but a compliment if he did not very well imagine how she ever gave anyone good reason to want to divorce her? Could she mind if he felt she had a taste and a judgment that would be bound to keep her from marrying someone impossible, someone she would have to divorce? In the moment’s easiness of liking, in a cordiality of discovered common attitudes and an

esteem of opinions held in common, he had come near asking her directly. Given another moment, or, perhaps, another drink, there could have been no reason why he should not say, grave and sympathetic: “Tell me about this marriage of yours, Amanda.”

As it happened, that was the moment she used to say: “Heavens! It’s eight o’clock; and I think I’m the least little bit tight—how nice! But I’m not getting a bath myself; and I’m keeping you from getting one. And I’m keeping you from getting anything to eat. We won’t get anything at all if we’re not down by half-past eight, will we?”

Though he felt, in relaxed cheerfulness, no immediate need either of a bath or of dinner, Nathaniel Hicks got up obediently. “I’ll fix that,” he said. “I know the ropes here.” Perhaps he was again making a favorable impression on himself—the dextrous manager; the man with a way with him. He said: “You won’t have to hurry. Curiously enough, room service can be had after eight o’clock, and even until nine. They close the dining room at eight-thirty so that leaves some people free. They won’t do anything fancy; but they usually have steak sandwiches. If you wouldn’t mind taking what they feel like sending, I’ll call down.” “No!” Lieutenant Turck said; but she was expressing only surprise. “How incredibly luxurious! I never dreamed of such a thing. Lippa and I sometimes bring things to fix in these nasty little kitchenettes, so we won’t have to get back into uniform to go downstairs—”

“It’s Duchemin again,” Nathaniel Hicks said. “He has his uses. I now know plenty about hotels and how to make the best use of them. Sit still. I’ll put your bag in Don Andrews’s room. Then I’ll trot down and see what Nick can send up. When I go out, snap the lock on the hall door. People wander in sometimes.”

He went through the living room and briskly took up her bag, left by the door. In Captain Andrews’s room he switched the light on. Laid over the back of a chair was the shabby dark blue coat and the thin print frock, wrinkled from hours of wearing, that Katherine Andrews had on when he was introduced to her in the lobby early this morning. Looking further, he found a faded pink slip; one stocking; and the old, much-washed girdle, limp and empty yet still stretched to the shape of her body, which, Nathaniel Hicks remembered, Don said she had not been strong enough to take off by herself. These used garments lay

dropped on the floor beyond the bed. That they should have remained there, unnoticed, was affecting evidence of Don’s state of mind when he came at noon to get Katherine’s things.

Nathaniel Hicks collected the slip, and the limp girdle, and the stocking; and then the other stocking, which he found just under the edge of the bed. He opened a drawer in the bureau and at random laid these things with Don’s shirts. He was lifting up the old coat and the cheap frock to put them on hangars in the closet when he saw Lieutenant Turck at the door.

He said: “You might well wonder. They’re Don’s wife’s things. Don was in no mood to pick up, I guess. It was really a very tough break for them.”

Lieutenant Turck said: “Is she all right?”

“They pulled her out of it.” He spoke gravely, feeling again the compunction, the not-unpleasantly painful stir of mind he felt sitting with Don out by the nurse’s office. “She was in a coma when they took her to the Hospital; so I guess now she’s better. I gather it was a sudden attack of diabetes, which I don’t think ever does you any good. Don was horribly upset. He is nice, and she is nice; and he is greatly attached to her.”

Looking at the photograph on the bureau, Lieutenant Turck said: “Is that she?”

“It isn’t a good photograph,” Nathaniel Hicks said. “There. I guess that’s as much in order as we can get it. The bathroom’s right across— with the light on. I’ll give you that full half hour.”

She looked at him and colored faintly. She said: “What I came after you to say was—well, there’s no earthly reason for you to vacate your premises just because you’re kind enough to let me use your bathtub. I mean, I feel that every requirement of propriety would be satisfied if you’d just repose yourself on the balcony and enjoy another drink. You could call them downstairs. That’s what you said you were going to do, first.”

Respecting the delicacy of her balance between composure and embarrassment, Nathaniel Hicks said: “I guess I was being a little pompous about it.”

“Oh, no, you weren’t,” she said. “Nothing could exceed the refinement, the graceful consideration shown and implied. It’s just me.

Thinking it over, I got to feeling like something in a book by Maurice Hewlett. Or one of those motion picture moments when the virgin heroine, keeping most of her clothes on, tucks herself into the one bed in the lonely cabin; and the camera takes tremendous care to show the hero with his collar turned up sitting on the steps outside all night. I don’t need to be more of a damn nuisance than necessary. I’d feel much better this way, if you don’t mind.”

After he telephoned the dining room Nathaniel Hicks went back to the balcony. He had poured himself a drink, and he took it to the wicker chair in the corner. He settled down there sagely, looking out over the lake.

Now it was deep night; and, recognizably, the night was Saturday’s. A majority of the Oleander Towers’ military guests did not have to get up so early tomorrow. A period was put to the long week; and the new one could not start until Monday. Hotel noises, ordinary evening sounds, were subtly changed—a slight swell in volume, a minor definite difference in timbre. By his stomach’s calm steady glow, relaxing the nerves, yet increasing or seeming to increase, sensibility, Nathaniel Hicks saw how amusing it was. Saturday night might actually be present in the dim voices sounding off other balconies along the lake front, in the relaxed laughter coming out of other rooms, upstairs and down. But he himself, having his own Saturday night, must be contributing differences he could not doubt he heard in the several turned-on radios. A singing female complained, but softly, languid in what sounded like the same blessed reflection about sleeping late, lying late, in the morning, that you made her love you, she didn’t want to do it. A man’s incisive inflections were summarizing the news in a hurry, as though intent on getting it over and going out for the evening.

From the balcony underneath rang a joyful burst of laughter. Someone recovering from mirth, said: “Tell them that other one.”

The answering voice, naturally nothing loth, began: “An unsatisfied damsel named Alice—”

More laughter pealed up at the end; and someone else said: “Come on, you guys! Let’s go. Let’s get started, if we’re going to.”

Gently the warm wind came off the dark lake. Nathaniel Hicks,

hearing the men below leave, lifted his moist glass. Delightfully bemused, he drank. A quality in that last voice; scornful assertiveness, chiding impatience, reminded him of Lieutenant Edsell. At once, yet at leisure, he was in a speculation, necessarily loose, about the night of love in Edsell’s borrowed apartment. He saw Lieutenant Lippa dropping her skirt, out of her shirt, finally in a state of nature—what would she want her nightgown for?—laying herself down to an unhalted running relation: sarcastic cracks about the military service; jeering comment on the follies, ineptitude, and false principles of General Beal, Colonel Mowbray, Colonel Ross, Major Whitney, and anyone else Edsell happened to be ranked by. Between kisses, poor Lippa could hear the arguments in favor of equal rights for Negroes. A denunciation of the whole system of private profit might prepare her at length for the dispatchful embrace. In short order, all incidental passion got over, spent, she could no doubt drowse off to a fuller account of her lover’s triumphs today; of people rocked back, people demolished with a word, people deservedly made fools of.

Nathaniel Hicks contemplated with entertainment a little spiteful this grotesque picture. Not that he thought it was a true one; the Edsell he knew so well was not necessarily the only Edsell there was. In fact, that afternoon, the hard front seemed to be slipping when they were in Colonel Ross’s office with Colonel Coulthard. Glimpsed there was a different, less annoying and amusing Edsell, standing not very resolute, hurt and downhearted, just behind his bluster. That miserable Edsell, Nathaniel Hicks could see, would be the one Lieutenant Lippa took in her arms and tenderly set about comforting.

Interrupting the thought, Nathaniel Hicks attended, listening. What was undoubtedly the hall door had opened; and now he heard it close. He jumped up in annoyance. He realized he had not set the latch on that door; and so anyone, probably someone with the idea of playing poker, could walk in.

Stepping through the French doors into the lighted living room, he saw astonished, that it was Captain Andrews. “Hey!” Nathaniel Hicks said.

Guard of Honor ■ 569

Captain Andrews turned. “Oh; hello, Nat,” he said. “I thought everybody must be out. I forgot some things. My things, I mean. I wanted to get a razor.”

Nathaniel Hicks said: “How’s Katherine?”

“Not too good, I’m afraid,” Captain Andrews said. “They keep saying she’s all right; but she looked awfully sick to me when I saw her. You know that nurse this morning—she’s really been wonderful. I wish I could do something for her. She hasn’t gone off duty yet, though she was supposed to. She’s sitting with Katherine right now. Of course, I can’t go in there”—he took his glasses off and squeezed his eyes closed wearily.

“Look, Don,” Nathaniel Hicks said. “Come out here and have a drink. I think you need one.”

Captain Andrews put on his glasses again. “I’d better not, Nat,” he said. “I mean, this nurse, Lieutenant Shakespeare, is staying on until I come out again. She ought to have been off more than an hour ago. She was going to tell me how Katherine was—of course I can’t go in the ward now. She was going to see the night duty nurse knew where I was. They’re letting me use a cot in one of the empty wings. I’d better just pick up my shaving things.” He looked at the bathroom door. “Clarence in there?”

“No,” said Nathaniel Hicks. “As a matter of fact, we have at the moment a guest from the Women’s Army Corps. It’s Lieutenant Turck. You know her. She’s taking a bath.”

From Captain Andrews’s incredulous, really jolted, glance, Nathaniel Hicks must see, with a sort of dumb start of his own, the interpretation Captain Andrews put on this news; an interpretation which Nathaniel Hicks had somehow—a little slow, being a little high, benignly elevated—actually forgotten about. Lieutenant Turck, in saying that every requirement of propriety would be met, overlooked this one, the unexpected visitor.

That Nathaniel Hicks had overlooked it, too; that when he told Captain Andrews who was in there and why, he spoke with never a thought of any implications, established, of course, his complete innocence; but unfortunately it established it only for him. He must realize that he now stood in a classic humorous fix—the innocent man

surprised with every circumstance of guilt on a stage all set for a long comic misunderstanding. He alone could clear it up, because he alone knew how it came about; yet who on earth would, in the circumstances, believe him ?

Captain Andrews plainly did not know what to say He said: “Oh.” He looked away from Nathaniel Hicks in great embarrassment. While all this was, of course, fanny, preposterous, Nathaniel Hicks was annoyed to find himself coloring. He said: “She had a reservation for the weekend, and it got crossed up—”

The complications of the explanation, the need to detail so many involved factors all bearing on each other and all necessary to an explanation that would make sense, halted Nathaniel Hicks. The comedy had got going. Whatever he said would be just his story Actions spoke louder than words; the thing itself spoke. The world, and anyone in it who wasn’t born yesterday (even Captain Andrews, without guile if ever anyone was) had heard that one before. When a man and a woman withdrew themselves like this, put themselves alone together in privacy, they could have only one likely purpose; and the likelihood that they did have this purpose was not decreased any when it developed that the woman (never mind the man’s offer to explain it all) was in the bathroom with no clothes on.

xWserting his composure, Nathaniel Hicks said: “I’m afraid her stuffs in your room. I thought you’d be out—I thought we could at least let her get a bath and change her clothes. I’m having something to eat sent up here; and I’ll take her out to the Area afterwards.”

But this, he saw at once, was not calculated to get him anywhere. Sure; he thought Captain Andrews would be out! Sure; she was taking a bath, and they were going to have dinner sent up; and then he was going to take her out to the Area! The hell you say! Nathaniel Hicks could not help laughing.

“Don,” he said. “Don’t worry; you haven’t walked in on anything. I have no designs on Lieutenant Turck; and she hasn’t the faintest intention of spending the night with me. She’s taking a bath because they don’t have bathtubs out there. She and a friend have a reservation here every weekend, with the principal idea of getting a bathtub. I happened to see her waiting for a bus and gave her a lift—”

That certainly left out a good deal; but it was a moment to be short

and simple. He went on. “Through a misunderstanding, the reservation wasn’t held for them this week. When she told me, I thought the least I could do was offer her our bathtub. She is now in it. And speaking of that, you’d better come and have that drink. She may be through in a minute. Since she thinks I’m out on the balcony and she has the apartment to herself, it might be awkward for her if she finds us both standing right here.”

Nathaniel Hicks could see that Captain Andrews, by a stanch honest effort, was compelling himself to swallow the after all reasonably straightforward story. He wanted to; and he would! Captain Andrews said uncomfortably: “Gosh, Nat, I suppose I seemed pretty nosey! You mustn’t think I thought—” but he couldn’t quite complete the direct lie. He said instead, “What business would it have been of mine, anyway? I’d certainly have a nerve expecting you to explain to me; I mean, even supposing—well, yes; I guess we shouldn’t stand here. But, Nat, I think I’d better not wait. I don’t really need—I had to come down anyway; I wanted to send some telegrams—”

Nathaniel Hicks raised his hand. “I think she heard us,” he said. He took a step up the passage. Lieutenant Turck’s voice, distinct, speaking in query from behind the bathroom door, repeated: “Nat?”

“It’s O.K.,” he called. “Don Andrews came by to get some things. It’ll be clear in a minute. We’re going out on the balcony.”

“Well, Nat, no,” Captain Andrews said again. “As a matter of fact, I have another razor. There’s another kit in my top drawer. Think it would be all right for me to go in my room and get it—I mean, now she knows we’re here? I’ll only be a minute—” he went and pushed back the door of his room.

Nathaniel Hicks could see Lieutenant Turck’s open suitcase on the chair. Clean underclothes and a clean uniform shirt and skirt were laid out on the bed. Modestly averting his eyes from them, Captain Andrews went to the bureau. “Got it!” he said. “I don’t really need anything else. I’m sorry, Nat, barging in this way.” He paused. “Will you tell Lieutenant Turck why I couldn’t wait? I hope I haven’t embarrassed her.”

“She’s a very sensible young woman. If you’ll try not to consider her abandoned because she wanted a bath, I think she’ll settle for that.” “Gosh, Nat,” Captain Andrews said, opening the door. “I don’t see

a thing—any reason. I mean, after all, I do know you’re not Clarence. You know I know that—well, so long!”

“I hope Katherine has a good night,” Nathaniel Hicks said.

In the roomy old-fashioned bathroom a big jar of bath salts whose odor of lavender pervaded the air stood on the clothes hamper. Lieutenant Turck must have overlooked it; but Nathaniel Hicks could see that she was a tidy young woman, for she left no other evidence of her bathing.

He hoped Katherine would have a good night. Standing listless under the shower, Nathaniel Hicks imagined for himself the unhappy joint vigil—Don stirring restless, lying with his shoes off on the mattress of a cot in the empty, not-at-the-moment used Hospital wing; and Don’s thin, sick wife, half doped, half dreaming, her distracted head shifting about on the pillows while she wished herself away from the qualmish nightmare of whatever her complaint’s discomforts were—there were sure to be plenty; no complaint ever lacked plenty.

Nathaniel Hicks was put in mind of recollected hospital experiences of his own—which, however, were Don’t rather than Katherine’s. From some years back he recovered the times of uneasy waiting when Emily was having the children. Absorbed in his own apprehensions, he was sure he portrayed very well, with no significant differences or variations, the conventional figure of fun. To some degree disheveled in appearance, more or less hang-dog in manner, the anxious father teased the busy staff with futile inquiries; and, though God knew they were hardened to it, in the end even exasperated them by his plainly shown notion that this was the world’s first childbirth, and that he suspected them of being lax, slow, and probably stupid in meeting the unparalleled emergency

Of course the doctors with their dayful of patients, the pestered nurses, were right about him, about that handful of funny men found hanging expectant around every hospital at all hours. Women had been having babies for a long time, and if they were moved to yell, that was just the way it was, nothing to get excited about. This was the job little girls were made for, so most of them would, however dolorously,

get through it all right; and, moreover, would so far forget their groans that they were as likely as not to be soon back with a new big belly; not less self-important, though again plaintive and woebegone, and really no more frightened than last time. You would, in short, be wise, man or woman, to take what came with a minimum of fuss, because you were going to take it, fuss or no fuss. Unless you died and got over it that way, you would live and put it behind you the other way, by growing older.

Nathaniel Hicks turned the shower off and stepped out on the mat. Viewing his bare wet figure in the mirror, he could see one working of that other way. Weighed by the pound, he had not acquired much fat in getting from eighteen to thirty-eight; but his body had a grosser look, a thickening in minor rearrangements of the older tissue on the older frame. Along the onetime youthful line of his jaw he could see those first hints of lumping and sagging where the folds of the old face would be. Emily, on the other hand—the relevance of the thought was plain—showed despite the violence done her body by two tight-stretched, distorting engorgement in pregnancy and two merciless rackings, tearing, joint-starting, in parturition, no sign he could see of being physically less young than she was.

But it would be inexpedient to dwell longer on this accidentally evoked image of Emily in her underthings at her dressing table, or lifting off her nightgown, or lying dim and bare on her bed.

Taking a towel to dry himself, Nathaniel Hicks turned his mind away. He got it only as far as a not-unrelated, though, in its effects on him, sufficiently different, thought—or, better, sentiment, since no real thought took form. It was just the still-incredulous amazement that this should be here and that this should be he. Pinching himself would do no good. It was not necessary; he felt already his cold, unconfused wide-awakeness, hopeless and helpless in its sense of time’s great length; of all yesterdays gone; of life like this, and this war, lasting on and on; of the intolerable permanence of a situation which had been his, it seemed, not eighteen months but all of eighteen years, and from which he would be delivered, at this rate, never.

Putting on his bathrobe, Nathaniel Hicks remembered Captain Wiley speaking seriously in answer to a remark of Nathaniel Hicks’s

that had been only partly serious—that, with Fighter Analysis, with that jerk Folsom, holding out, the war must be over before the Training Aids Division even got the manual to write, let alone before the War Department published it, and any of the people it was meant for had a chance to read it.

Captain Wiley agreed about Colonel Folsom. He said what Colonel Folsom could do or have done to him; but he immediately added: “I wouldn’t worry much about the war getting over too soon, Nat.”

In all seriousness Captain Wiley seemed to assume that Nathaniel Hicks was worried, was able to share the quite real little worry that Captain Wiley might sometimes feel about the war ending too soon. Not that Captain Wiley lost any sleep over it, yet; but while he was doing his combat flying with a piece of chalk on an Orlando blackboard, he could be missing something. Captain Wiley had no flying cadet’s illusions about combat. He came home with a bellyful—out there it was tough, it was dangerous; you could sure as hell get killed— the last damn thing he wanted! But though he knew all the cons, for him there were also important pros.

Out there, rid of this crap, they were fighting.

Swearing casually, rocking from heel to toe, Captain Wiley, somewhat limited in language, told the rowed young faces of a School of Applied Tactics cadre, picked squadron and group commanders, a little about fighting. When attacking bombers, for instance, they better sock it to the bastards if they wanted to live; get the hell in there, kill that gunner, before they broke away and gave him a flank shot at them for free.

While he talked, Captain Wiley, more and more restive, perhaps saw the fighter swarm, his preferred familiars, old squadronmates of his, coming off the runways at a hundred miles an hour; in thunder, airborne. The earth fell down under them; the winds aloft gave way Not long after, the watchful far-off foe would note some specks on the sky Stout he might be, skilled, sure of himself; but the man was not born yet who, seeing that sight, kept at that moment spit enough to swallow. He hadn’t long to wait. On the heart’s diastole, those coming fighters might look a mile off; and on the systole following, here they were.

The coming fighters had no waiting around to do, either. For God

and country, for flying pay, for heart-in-mouth fun with death, for the hell of it, and in the excited hope to kill, they gave the incomparable two-thousand horsepower engines a good, swift, water-injection kick in the pants. To the expeditious brain, the expert eye said: now\ A finger touch, light as the destroying angel’s, broke simultaneous flame out all their guns. Behind this storm of lead, hand in experienced hand, they bored in—once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!

Wisely smiling, Captain Wiley said: “Never think those Krauts won’t need a whole lot of licking, Nat.” Dispassionate, reflective, he said: “You ask me, we haven’t really started. Up to now, we only kept them from licking us. Another thing; don’t forget. They get the hang of their jets, and we could stop even doing that.”

Nathaniel Hicks opened the bathroom door circumspectly and went down to his bedroom. Captain Wiley had reasons for his opinion; and, in light of them as Captain Wiley laid them down for his consideration, Nathaniel Hicks saw with inner dismay that Captain Wiley regarded his own discouraging summary of their progress as the brightest possible view of the bad situation. He said: “You see, we’re a little bit bomber-happy, Nat. That’s our biggest trouble. They got a lot of crap at Orlando about the strategic use of air power. It says there: we’re destroying German war potential.” He moved his head dubiously. “Know what I think? I think our big friends haven’t done them any real harm to speak of. They don’t mind getting destroyed at Orlando and in the newspapers. I think our pinpoint bombing is a lot of bushwah; and that’s the reason we get to do it. We waste bombs, we waste plane production, we waste manpower, and what more do they want? First time it gets to be a real nuisance, if it ever does, they’ll probably pull a couple of fighter wings out of Russia and give the Eighth Bomber Command the works.”

Nathaniel Hicks took insignia from his bureau top and attached them dejectedly to the collar tabs of a fresh shirt. Grim, though easy enough and undismayed, Captain Wiley said: “Wait and see! Some morning we’ll throw them this nice thousand-bomber mission, and get back five hundred, four hundred, maybe less. That might wake even the bomber boys up; and we can start doing what we should have done first. Get us enough fighters to come down on every German field

within range of a mission and stop anything that tries to take off. No, I wouldn’t plan on going home for a while yet, Nat. Even after that, don’t forget, we’ll have to go rescue the Navy from the Japs.”

Nathaniel Hicks did not forget. Tightening his belt and centering the buckle, he snapped out the light in his room and went on up the little passage.

In the far corner of the living room Lieutenant Turck sat looking at a magazine. He noticed now that she had, when she dressed, done her hair a little differently, a tousled effect of curls, but more carefully arranged. She sat with grace, her neat slender legs lightly crossed under the edge of the neat, fresh tropical-worsted skirt. Putting aside the magazine, she smiled and said: “Isn’t this nice? I feel so lovely and clean.”

“And hungry, I expect,” Nathaniel Hicks said. “The truth is, I don’t dare call them again. They will get here; but not before they’re ready.” Though lovely and clean himself, he suffered a wave of intolerable loneliness and disconsolation—the pointless words, the pointless waiting.

Almost compassionately Lieutenant Turck said: “Poor man! I am quite a nuisance, aren’t I?”

“Never think that,” Nathaniel Hicks said. “I was reviewing the war. If you weren’t here, I’d probably shoot myself. Anyway, let’s have another drink.”

“Yes. Let’s,” Lieutenant Turck said.

XVII

Still sitting at General Beal’s desk, Colonel Ross reached out and drew toward him across the empty wide gleaming surface the jeweler’s box, tossed there carelessly, in which lay General Beal’s Distinguished Service Medal. Colonel Ross regarded the ribbon’s wide white stripe, blue lines, and red edges. He looked at the bronze coat of arms set in its gold-lettered, dark-blue, enamel ring. Idly he lifted the medal out and turned it over, examining the reverse; the scroll, the trophy of weapons and flags.

General Beal said: “Anyway, let’s have another drink.”

General Nichols said: “That’s real Scotch.”

General Beal said: “It ought to be. Considering who gave it to me. But he wasn’t supposed to get it, not by the case—austerity, they have. So it all comes under the Official Secrets Act. I took one of the cases up to Woody, poor guy. I don’t believe even he could have got through a whole case after we left Thursday. I wonder who inherits that?”

“It’s a point,” General Nichols said gravely. “I guess it would be called personal effects. Maybe Ollie can make something out of it. You know; leaving several bottles with liquor still in them might be strong evidence that he wasn’t himself at the time.”

General Beal had arisen and gone to the cellarette with his glass

and General Nichols’s. “You’re one cold-blooded bastard,” he said, pouring the whisky. “You never knew Woody.”

General Nichols said: “Bus, you can’t sell me that guy, dead or alive. Let’s just say he considerably outlived his usefulness, if he once had some. Let’s just ship him to Arlington, give him a guard of honor, and put him in the ground.”

“I don’t know what good a guard of honor does him when he’s dead,” General Beal said. “Some more goddamn ceremony! How about you, Judge?”

Colonel Ross, not without grandiloquence, said: “It does us good. Ceremony is for us. The guard, or as I think we now prefer to call it, escort of honor is a suitable mark of our regret for mortality and our respect for service—we hope, good; but if bad or indifferent, at least, long. When you are as old as I am you will realize that it ought to get a man something. For our sake, not his. Not much; but something. Something people can see.”

Laughing, General Beal said: “That’s telling them, Judge! Only, what I meant was: how about another drink?”

“This one will do me,” Colonel Ross said.

General Beal had turned around. Seeing Colonel Ross holding the medal, he said: “Don’t get that dirty. They may want it back.”

General Nichols said: “Those are for keeps, I think. As the judge says, we encourage the spectators. Or do you mean you want the citation read, you want it pinned on you, so you’ll know you’ve got it? I’m sorry about that. Pop was going to have quite a thing at the Club.”

“Nuts!” General Beal said amiably.

On the desk beside Colonel Ross a light lit up. He put down the medal and taking the telephone said: “General Beal’s office. Colonel Ross.”

There was a knock on the hall door, which then opened and Lieutenant Colonel Carricker came in. He crossed over to General Beal and dropped two packages of cigarettes on the table. “You get lost?” General Beal said.

Benny said: “There weren’t any in that first machine.” He turned away, went over and sat down on the chair against the far wall. Looking across to him, General Beal said: “Want a drink?”

Benny said, “No. Not me.”

Looking at him closely, General Beal said: “What’s the matter, Benny? Do it all yesterday?”

Benny noticed a fly circling near his knee. Watching it, he poised his left hand and with a neat sudden motion closed it on the fly. Opening his hand, he flicked the crushed fly to the floor. “Could be, Chief,” he said.

General Beal smiled faintly. He said: “Want to do something else?” Benny said: “Sure.”

General Beal looked over to Colonel Ross, who had tilted back listening to the telephone. General Beal said: “Could he use your car, Judge?” Colonel Ross waved his hand and General Beal said: “Take Colonel Ross’s car and go over to Hangar Two and see how Danny’s getting on, what General Nichols’s pilot thinks about when they can get off. And tell the Weather Office we want to know if they hear any change north. When do you want to leave, Jo-Jo?”

“Sometime before midnight, if we can,” General Nichols said. “They seem to want us in early. I see by the papers Mr. Churchill is at the White House. They may want the Old Man over tomorrow.” General Beal said: “He working Sundays?”

“That’s when we really work.”

“Ought he to be doing that?”

“They make him take care of himself—some. If we can get off earlier I’d just as soon. I’d like to fly a little myself. I don’t get any instrument time; but I could tonight if we get started before I go to sleep.” Colonel Ross said to the telephone: “All right. I’ll call you back.” General Beal said: “Who was that, Judge?”

“Uline.”

“They get those AA searchlights?”

“Yes.”

“How are they coming?”

Colonel Ross shrugged. “They found bottom,” he said. “About two hundred feet.”

General Beal nodded. He said to Lieutenant Colonel Carricker: “Go on home after that, Benny. There’s nothing to do here. You need some sleep.” He bent on him a somber critical look, his face setting and

stiffening. “Tomorrow, be out at eleven. I’ll have the lieutenant in; and you can speak your piece.”

Lieutenant Colonel Carricker nodded.

With sternness, General Beal said: “Now, get this. You better think it over before you hit anybody else. You busted the hell out of his nose.” His indignation increased. “And, for God’s sake, why couldn’t you hit somebody who was white? You got us all in a jam. You made me trouble from here to Washington. You could have started a riot. You’ve had the judge splitting a gut for two days trying to fix up after you! Next time, you get the book. That clear?”

Lieutenant Colonel Carricker said: “All right.”

“You bet it’s all right!” General Beal said. “I haven’t even heard you say you’re sorry. I don’t mean about his nose; you can say that to him tomorrow. What about yesterday? Colonel Mowbray sent for you twice. You better make a quick check; figure out where you are. If that, or anything like it, ever happens again, you’re all set for a reaming to remember. And here’s something else. There seems to be a whole hell of a lot going on down at that apartment. You’d better start right now straightening out a few things.”

Lieutenant Colonel Carricker said: “I’m sorry I made the judge trouble. I didn’t mean to hit the dinge. I was sore.” He turned his moody face down. “I got drunk yesterday. We have a little mix-up down there. I’m getting it straight, Chief.” He swung his hand in a short gesture, as though snapping his fingers; but they made no sound. “Can I go now?”

“All right, Benny. Good night.”

When the door was closed, General Beal said: “Think that will hold him, Judge?”

Colonel Ross shrugged. “It’s better than nothing,” he said.

“Well, it’s all I’m going to do,” General Beal said mildly. “I think it’s enough. This time. If he does anything more, we’ll see.” He said to General Nichols, “He has woman trouble. She’s probably chasing him; but he’ll have to quiet it down. Even Sal knows about it.” He turned back to Colonel Ross. “I know it’s deep,” he said. “I don’t care how deep it is. I don’t care how long it takes. They are to recover those bodies. What are you going to call him back about?”

Guard of Honor • 581

“About that,” Colonel Ross said.

General Beal said: “Call him now. Tell him to keep at it until they get them.”

Colonel Ross said: “If they haven’t got them by the end of the week, are they to keep at it? If they haven’t got them by the end of the month—Uline doesn’t think they’ll have any luck at two hundred feet.”

“Two hundred feet?” General Beal said. “They grapple submarine cables at thousands of feet. How do they do it?”

“I don’t know,” Colonel Ross said. “I suppose they use a steamer with special equipment. Shall we get one? I suppose the Navy might have something. I suppose we could bring it in by digging or dredging a canal to the Gulf coast. About forty-five miles, isn’t it? Or we might set up a yard on the lake and build a ship here.”

General Nichols made an amused sound.

General Beal smiled calmly. “Oh, no,” he said, “we won’t do either of those yet, Judge. They’ve got their lights; they’ve got their boats. They can drag all night. Tell Uline that. We’ll go on trying this way.”

“This way isn’t going to work,” Colonel Ross said. “But you’re the general.”

“You’re damn right I am,” General Beal said. “They have to prove to me they can’t do it, not just say so. Wait. How about the press release on this?”

Colonel Ross said: “I had Captain Collins draft one. I think he’s outside.”

“Have him bring it in. We’d better write up something before our friend Art Bullen does it for us. Fine publicity! And speaking of that; tell Jo-Jo about the thing with Hal’s man, Hicks. That project. Let’s see what Jo-Jo thinks about it.”

♦

“The real woman,” Lieutenant Turck said somewhat owlishly, “the creature not too bright and good for human nature’s daily food, has that advantage over men. Of course it would be Eve who ate the apple. She had no ethical sense. Anything women deeply and seriously want, or want to do, they know is right. It doesn’t matter to them whether

from the ethical standpoint it is good, bad, or indifferent. They know it isn’t really wrong because it couldn’t be when they want to do it so much. It is a sore point with me. Since I have the disadvantages of my sex, I want the advantages, such as they are. I don’t get them. Not that I stop, not that it keeps me from doing it; but in the middle, when any real woman is nothing but eager and serene, it will as often as not be spoiled for me by the horrid, unwomanly suspicion that what I’m doing is contemptible. I have my memories—blast them!”

Smiling, Nathaniel Hicks scrutinized her amiably. That different arrangement of her hair, the tumble of short curls on top, somehow reduced at the sides of the head to flat well-dressed swirls, higher on the left than on the right, suited her features. Her lips, cleanly and lightly painted, parted enough to show her even upper teeth. Her candid eyes had her frequent rueful expression—as though, while she talked and with a glib ease, she worried over something else.

She said: “I can’t be quite sober. How on earth did I get onto that? You were telling me about Mortimer McIntyre, Junior, and the, I must say, touching gesture of the fried chicken—”

“And now I wish I’d kept it,” Nathaniel Hicks said looking at the array of used dishes before them. “It might have been quite good. Their steak sandwiches are hardly ever as bad as these. I’m afraid I didn’t do well by you. You’ll just have to piece it out with bourbon, which is also a food.”

“I am doing all right with that,” Lieutenant Turck said. “And now I’d better stop. Though I don’t quite forget my many cares, I feel as disinterested about them as I ever will. Good; but the next step is, I get untidy. Or could I be already? Am I?”

“No,” Nathaniel Hicks said. “I was thinking how wonderfully neat you looked.” Though neat did describe her, he saw that some word he couldn’t think of would probably be better. The thin wool cloth of the uniform shirt pressed in clean severe creases gave her a sort of austere beauty of order, an ascetic eschewal of female luxury, which was effectively continued and pointed up by what took the place of any jewelry—the bare, gold-colored second lieutenant’s bar, the severe little classic profile and helmeted head of Pallas Athenae molded in nonprecious metal.

“I am glad to hear it,” she said. “I must stay that way. My mother once told me that it was far better to be very clean than very pretty. As a general proposition; I don’t know. But I daresay every child should be encouraged to cut her coat to fit her cloth.”

The wry phrasing, which would be in many mouths a standardized, not blamable yet tiresome, fishing for compliments, self-condemnation with a purpose, was in her mouth so clearly nothing of the sort that Nathaniel Hicks with a welling-up of good will toward her, would have been pleased to pay her compliments; but those most earned, and though not asked for, sure to be most wanted, resisted any simple statement.

She was now, she had with care remained, fresh from her bath; but like the austere order with which it consorted, this beautiful cleanliness was plainly inherent—not something that could be got just by washing the skin well. To Nathaniel Hicks it seemed more a work, incidentally involving lots of washing, of the constant wish and the sustained will; and so she kept it even in unlikely circumstances, whether she knew it or not. He remembered her in the terrible heat of yesterday’s high afternoon pronouncing a little stiltedly: “The Lybian air adust—” it was defensive, he could see now. It intended the irony, for what that was worth, both ways. Though she reeked, she thought, of sweat, she quoted Milton; and though she quoted Milton, she reeked, she thought, of sweat. She also kept it after she had thrown up in Sergeant Pellerino’s kindly offered paper bag, and stood ashamed, her knees weak, on the ramp.

Nathaniel Hicks said: “I think your mother would be pleased with you.”

“Do you? That is kindly put,” Lieutenant Turck said. “There are other things she told me that I might try remembering, too. One was that the best way to bore everybody was to tell them things about myself. It was a needed warning. I’ve always shown really extraordinary ingenuity in making occasions to bring the subject up. You might think I dearly loved the history of my life. I am getting back my fuddled wits. What you were talking about, of course, was General Beal and the magazine project.”

“Oh, no; no, I wasn’t,” Nathaniel Hicks said. “Let me put it your way.

That was just an example of my ingenuity. I was showing you that I was an admirable fellow with admirable principles. It was the sour grapes technique. I had been as eager as possible, all set, to fake, bluff, and lie my way through it. It was suddenly taken out of my reach; but I kept on jumping for quite a while. I wasn’t at all ready to give up the chance to go north and waste the Army’s time and money for as long as I could possibly drag it out. But after moping all afternoon I had to see it was off. That was when I called on you to admire my finer-than-ordinary feelings, my nice sense of right and wrong. It seems I was relieved, really relieved—”

“But I think you were,” Lieutenant Turck said.

“Yes, I was. I am,” Nathaniel Hicks said. “But it took a lot to get me there; and I don’t need to give myself a medal for that. I realize now that Colonel Ross saw right through me. He is quite a smart old boy. While I gave him this disgraceful sales talk, he just sat looking at me. Of course, he never had the faintest intention of speaking to General Beal about it again. Of course, I’m really relieved it’s off. I don’t want to be like that; at least not when someone like Colonel Ross sees me.”

Lieutenant Turck said: “I have a knack for forcing people into these awkward situations. Oh, I say, but I am an unworthy worm; and give a few examples. My reluctant vis-a-vis is obliged, it’s like Oriental etiquette, to say that as worms go, I am not a patch on him; and he hastily invents some examples. This need never stop: versicle and response: You are not more unworthy. I am so more unworthy. But I will stop. I will stop drinking your valuable whisky, clean up these things, and with heartfelt thanks for your kindness and your cash outlay, make myself, as we said when I was young, scarce.”

“No, don’t do that,” Nathaniel Hicks said. “These are the Oleander Towers’s things, not ours, and we don’t clean them up, we just put them in the kitchenette for the cockroaches. It isn’t nearly time for you to go home. Go out on the balcony, make yourself comfortable, and I’ll bring you another drink.”

“Then you probably would hear the history of my life,” she said. “You don’t want to. I gave you some excerpts from it on the plane Thursday, remember? It gets more and more plaintive and less and less interesting as it goes on. You might think it couldn’t; but it can. It

would be a poor return for your kindness. So I’ll just go home, if home it can be called—”

“No; don’t do that,” Nathaniel Hicks said again.

Looking at her, he saw that her face showed traces of strain or anxiety; her faint smile was pained, her eyes dissatisfied or unhappy, as though she stood in the distress of facing a choice; and, moreover, the choice was a choice of distresses. “You know,” Nathaniel Hicks said, “I think this might be a fine time for you to get a few things off your chest. I think you have a lot of notions you don’t need. Now, suppose we just sit down and have this history.” He looked at her gravely. “How about this marriage of yours, Amanda? Do you keep all that to yourself a little too much?”

Though her direct gaze did not move, held firmly to meet his, he could see an instant’s darkening flicker of the sad eyes, and she colored. “Now, none of that!” Nathaniel Hicks said. “I may not be old enough to be your father; but I am a lot older than you are—” in fact, he could not help reflecting, he felt quite old enough to be her father. He put out his hand and gave her shoulder a sharp fatherly tap. “Don’t blush,” he said. “That’s the trouble. There’s no sense in it. I already know much more about you than you think. Whatever it was, you wouldn’t have done it if it were really anything to blush about.”

Lieutenant Turck said: “Another thing. Speaking kind words to me is risky. I suppose I have such a yearning for them I take them at once to heart, where they inordinately move me. You see?” She had grown dusky red and her eyes, though still direct, showed an abrupt glisten, a collecting of tears.

“Yes, I see,” Nathaniel Hicks said. Touched to a depth that surprised him by a grace in awkwardness, a pride in shame, he said, “And it’s all right.”

Lieutenant Turck said: “I am repulsive. You should believe Lippa. She knows me better than anyone else.” She moistened her lips and said: “There used to be a jeune-fille gambit—and must be still, since it suits an adolescent female—that is, one not yet hardened to the way she is. It’s a green-sickly quibble about the Girl You Think I Am, and the Girl I Know I Am. I will skip it. Yes; I’m going out on the balcony. But before I do, if I may, I will visit the bathroom.” She paused. She

said: “I manage to sound as though I wished I never needed to, don’t I? I suppose that is the truth; and it’s not a good sign.”

In the kitchenette Nathaniel Hicks scraped the few plates, put the remnants of food in a paper bag which he dropped down the rubbish chute, and piled things in the sink. He took a little longer than necessary, waiting until he heard Lieutenant Turck leave the bathroom. If she wished she never had to go, she would doubtless just as soon not be met leaving. It occurred to Nathaniel Hicks, for he felt wonderfully better, far removed from the lonely disconsolation with which he came out of the shower, that there was nothing like getting your mind off yourself.

“I know now you can almost always tell by the eyes,” Lieutenant Turck said. “They’re usually somewhat large and a little—patulous is the word, I think. They have this curious, quite distinctive soft look, if you know what I mean. Humble, you might say, but hungry. I knew less then. Anyway, you must understand the whole thing was entirely my own fault.”

A fitful waft of air came up, almost cool, from the lake. She shifted in her chair, lifted her glass in the reflected dim glow from the living room and drank. “You can see how long it is,” she said. “Do you really want to hear any more? You can see it’s basically one of those tiresome errors in judgment. A person, being stupid about it, makes his bed; and then he has to lie in it, and he complains and complains. The only pertinent comment or answer is always—you should have had better sense.”

Nathaniel Hicks snubbed out a cigarette in the ash tray on the arm of his chair. He said: “I don’t see any way in which it was your fault, Amanda.”

“Let me help you,” Lieutenant Turck said. “Malcolm really didn’t want to marry me. I wanted to marry him. It was extremely complicated—everything. My feelings, his feelings; my situation, his situation. First of all, there was my situation. What I was trying to do—get a medical degree on the side—was impossible. Certainly for me; I think, for anyone. You see, being assistant librarian, I was on duty in

the Medical School Library from two in the afternoon until ten at night. I could get through my lecture schedule in the mornings; and I wasn’t so busy while I was on duty that I couldn’t, most of the time, be doing my own work—but anyhow the whole thing was impractical. You have trouble enough in any Class A school when you have nothing else to do; and when you have a real aptitude.”

“I can believe that,” Nathaniel Hicks said.

“Yes. And I had something else to do, so I could eat; and I hadn’t any real aptitude. It was just a notion I developed after I took the library job there. Once I got the notion, I was very determined, frenziedly determined—not because medicine fascinated me or anything like that. All that fascinated me was the idea of being a doctor, alleviating the ills of suffering humanity in exchange for a good deal of reverent awe and astonished respect.”

She laughed. “I think it took about this form. A harried, frightened voice would call out: ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’ No answer. Then, unhurried, I would rise to my feet and say: ‘I am a physician.’ Obviously this is taking place in a theater; and I’m not sure an alert electrician wouldn’t throw a spotlight on me. There would be an amazed murmur, a voice saying: ‘Why, it’s a girl!’ That might perhaps be the real high point; but a few obvious good moments follow before I come to say, worn but calm: ‘He will recover.’ ”

Nathaniel Hicks said: “Amanda, do you ever make fun of anyone but yourself?”

“A point,” Lieutenant Turck said. “Am I afraid to? It’s plain, about myself. I want to be sure I say it first. I seem to be dragging this out. Do I evade the subject? Well, I just couldn’t do it—frenzies or none, daydreams or none. It was too exhausting. Of course, the dean was insane ever to let me try. I suppose I was about half through anatomy—most people’s easiest subject—when I saw I wasn’t going to make it. I don’t think I was rational enough to really plan; but I had to have an out. That’s where Malcolm came in, though he didn’t know it; and perhaps, consciously, I didn’t. I fooled him.”

Nathaniel Hicks said: “I don’t think you fooled anyone.” The situation seen, not as she disparagingly described it, but straight, as those around her must have seen it, was probably appealing. The determi-

nation, the exhaustion, would move more people than she then or now thought. The insane dean, for instance, while considering the plan impossible, might quite wisely reason that remarkable individuals are always turning up. Given any chance at all, they can and will do the impossible. This thin, fanatical young woman might be one of them. Why not allow her to matriculate and see?

“Well, I did fool Mai,” Lieutenant Turck said bitterly. She sat brooding a moment in the dark. “You see, he thought he knew me very well. He was a third-year man and he worked in the library a good deal—in a way, I knew about that; I mean, about working because you don’t seem to have anything else to do. I don’t think he had any friends, because he wasn’t liked. A good many of the other men had got to calling him—that forced institutional humor you’ll recognize; very un-witty—the Terrible Turck. There was the colloquial sense—they meant he was just terrible, a mess; and also, though I never thought of it then, it was a meaningful oblique reference to a smoking room story about the irregular love life of the Ottoman Turks. This must be all very dull.”

“Now, stop saying that,” Nathaniel Hicks said kindly.

“Yes. I will. It’s too late, anyway; isn’t it?” Lieutenant Turck said. “I knew how unpopular Mai was. I was on pretty familiar terms with a good many of the men—they used to stop at the library desk and kid me; they were really very nice to me. Women medical students often have a tough time; but they more or less adopted me; and several of them did what amounted to taking turns tutoring me. That was the only way I got even as far as I did. But I thought I knew why they didn’t like Malcolm. I thought it was because he was so gentlemanly, and liked books and music. Hardly anyone else in school had any manners.”

She sat back in her chair. She said: “Did you ever notice that? You can think, right away, of one or two outstanding exceptions, I don’t doubt; but, by and large, it’s very rare to find a doctor who has any manners. Or who has any taste. It may be because they’re worked so hard in medical they literally have to forget everything else, most of them. They haven’t time or energy for anything else.”

“I never thought about it,” Nathaniel Hicks said. “But, yes. Could you be evading your subject again?”

“I suppose so,” she said. “Well, I really liked Mai a great deal; and I think he really liked me a great deal. And we should have let it go at that; but I wouldn’t. I didn’t have an easy time, either.” She drew a breath. “It’s funny how you can know a thing instinctively, and also, theoretically by instruction, and still not admit it—refuse to really know it. When the other men found out their Miss Smith might be going to marry, for God’s sake, the Terrible Turck, I think they elected one of them to tell me why I shouldn’t. He made it as clear as he felt he could—it was none of his business, but; and so on. He was quite an honest man, and he had trouble because I suppose he didn’t actually have much to go on, any real proof. Of course I understood what he meant. Being a great reader, I’d naturally read all about it. A problem in modern ethics. I could discuss the matter very learnedly, with clinical details from case histories. Anyway, this man took me to dinner and gave me a long brotherly talk—I inspire lots of those. But I just wasn’t having any. He was a nice fellow; I liked him; but he was also pretty much of a roughneck; and that explained everything I wanted to have explained.”

Thoughtful, Nathaniel Hicks finished his drink. He said sagaciously: “Now, wait, Amanda. Isn’t there a little hindsight here? You say yourself these men didn’t have much to go on, any real proof. You could see other perfectly adequate reasons why they’d have no use for him—”

“Ah!” Lieutenant Turck said. “But I know I knew. You see, I absolutely had to know, or I never could have got him. He didn’t want women. It was a real revulsion. So, of course, I gave him quite skillfully to understand that he needn’t worry about that with me, I wasn’t really a woman. I don’t mean 1 faked it entirely. By normal standards, I’m sure I was well and truly undersexed—that was what attracted him, why he could like me so much. And he saw the advantages, for him, of being formally, officially married; and he wouldn’t mind having those.”

In the dark she changed the crossing of her legs and adjusted her skirt with a jerk. She said: “I’m putting this too cold-bloodedly. Yes; I wanted to get married so I could bow out, quit killing myself trying to be a doctor. Yes; he wanted to get married as a kind of protective coloration. He thought he wouldn’t stand out so if he was known to be regularly living with what passed for a woman. But—” she paused.

“I’m afraid this verges on bathos, only there seem to be no other terms—I also wanted to be loved; and Mai also wanted to be loved, poor wretch. By the word, I think he knew what he meant better than I knew what I meant.” She turned her head sharp, looking out toward the dim lake below. “Would I be going on like this if I weren’t tight? Isn’t it enough?”

Moved to a pleasant tingling solemnity, Nathaniel Hicks said: “I’d like to hear the rest; but I don’t have to.”

“My!” Lieutenant Turck said. She swallowed the rest of her drink. “I am laying it on! It’s a habit I have. I will try to be less emotional about myself. Love is a composite female idea. What they mean is a feeling peculiar to women. This leads to misunderstandings. Really, I know a lot for my years, many as they are. Yet, correct me, if I’m wrong. I believe a man disjoins the several relevant feelings; they don’t all blur together for him at the same time. Do they?”

“I don’t quite know,” Nathaniel Hicks said. “I wouldn’t think a man’s feeling was ever any simpler than a woman’s.”

“When you take all its aspects, I daresay not,” Lieutenant Turck said. “But I get the impression that their regular practice is: one thing at a time. You know. He loves his love in the morning by feeling the friendliest affection for her; and perhaps he loves his love in the middle of the afternoon by feeling—she being absent at the moment; I’d think—a reverent regard for her beauties of character; and he loves his love at night by feeling an ungovernable urgency to have carnal connection with her. These are all O.K. with her; and she soon finds she’d better take them as they come. It’s a matter of running up against the way people are. Since that you won’t change, there’s nothing to do, except the best you can. She may do it pretty well; but even in the happiest circumstances I doubt if she’s quite contented. It shakes her sense of security. It would be blissful if she could see all his feelings involved in her all the time, all at once.”

Nathaniel Hicks said judicially: “If that’s how it looks to her, for practical purposes it’ll have to be called how it is. I’ll say this. I think the average man in the mentioned urgency hasn’t for a moment stopped feeling that affection or that regard. He will often be a little

preoccupied with his immediate object; but, rightly understood, that should be an acceptable compliment, shouldn’t it?”

“Oh, yes,” Lieutenant Turck said. “Rightly understood! I knew better than to consider it gross or coarse. A human being’s means, his facilities, for expressing his feelings are limited. I was only a little nervous; quite prepared.” She raised her hand and ran her thumbnail across her upper teeth. Taking it away, she said: “As a tribute to physical attraction, it can’t be regarded too seriously, can it? I mean, I understand that the response is more or less automatic, routine. As a compliment, I suppose one ought to be able to take it, or leave it alone. Shouldn’t one?”

Perturbed, Nathaniel Hicks said: “You must not feel that way. Do you see what you’re doing—”

She said: “And you see, nothing, nothing, can fix it. Everything makes it worse. The mortifications are indescribable. Believe me. You could crawl away and die of resolute intentions, manful endeavor, dogged persistence, even occasional measures of success—” she began, not quite silently, to weep.

“Amanda!” he said.

“Yes! I will please omit the clinical details, the case history. I was the last person in the world to have it happen to; but how about him, poor wretch, poor wretch. All my ethereal airs! All my unspoken engagements and delicate gabble, gabble, gabble.” In a strangled voice she said: “For oaths are straws, men’s faiths are wafer-cakes, and hold-fast is the only dog, my duck! A quotation wantonly misapplied if ever I heard one!” She stood up with a quick effort. “It is absolutely essential that I go home,” she said.

In a spasm of agitation, Nathaniel Hicks said: “Absolutely not! Sit down. I’ll get you another drink. I was a damn fool. I had no right to—”

“You did nothing,” Lieutenant Turck said. Standing, she continued to weep while she talked. “Can you think you made me talk to you? Can you think I didn’t want to, more than anything? I couldn’t help it. I can’t help this. But I can go home.”

Nathaniel Hicks had arisen, too. Facing her, he saw her shaking so hard that he at once put out an arm to steady her on her feet. Though he had moved with no clear conscious intention, the touch electrified

him. The trembling of her shoulders under his hand seemed to transmit or communicate to him a trembling of his own, a surge of sensation, sharp-set, that instantly and unmistakably identified itself. He said: “Amanda. Look at me.”

She said: “I am not responsible. Nat, let me go. You must—at once, I tell you!”

“I don’t think so,” Nathaniel Hicks said. He put his other arm around her, and she swayed a little, took a step, necessarily toward him, that brought her straight shaking legs hard against his. “I don’t think so,” he said again. There seemed to be an impediment in his speech connected with his now hammering heartbeat. Getting his voice clear, he said: “You can’t imagine I’m just being sorry for you?”

“I don’t know,” she said through her teeth. “No, I do know. I am a damn liar. And also I know it has no conscience—has it? You see all I know?”

Drawing her tighter, Nathaniel Hicks said: “Could you stop thinking about all you know? Would you just—”

Lieutenant Turck’s hands, until now resting nerveless, dropped limply at her sides, came up and pressed his back. She uttered a groaning sound, bumping her forehead with a movement of despair against his shoulder. “I can’t help it,” she said.

“Why help it?” Nathaniel Hicks said.

“I know one hundred reasons,” she said. “One thousand.” She brought her tear-wet lips hastily around and up. “Ah!” she said.

“Come in here,” Nathaniel Hicks said. She was now, he realized, shaking no more than he was.

She made a slight resistance. She said: “Yes. I will. I’m going to. But could you put that light out first?”

♦

General Beal said: “Put that light on if you like, Collins. Right by the door.”

Captain Collins said: “Thank you, sir.”

In the ceiling fixtures the fluorescent tubes glowed white, flooding the room. Blinking through his glasses a moment, Captain Collins raised the typed sheet and read aloud: “Ocanara, Florida; September Fourth, Nineteen Forty-three. It was announced today by Headquar-

ters of the Army Air Forces Operations and Requirements Analysis Division that a large scale experimental parachute drop staged here under simulated combat conditions this afternoon resulted in the death of seven members of an airborne unit.”

Speaking slowly and distinctly, he continued: “The paratroopers were attached to one of the Division’s satellite fields where development and demonstration of new tactics is carried on. Preliminary investigation indicated that the accident occurred when a mechanical failure caused one of the carrier planes to release part of its drop outside the designated drop zone. Names of casualties were withheld, pending notification of next of kin.”

“That all?” said General Beal.

“Yes, sir,” Captain Collins said.

“One thing,” General Beal said. “Call Botty on the box, there, will you, Judge. Or wait. You’d better draft it. I want orders, I want them out tonight, within an hour. All AFORAD personnel at all AFORAD installations will wear life vests whenever engaged in any project that involves flying. Whether it’s supposed to be over water or not makes no difference. You got copies of that thing?” he said to Captain Collins.

“There are five, sir.”

“Give us each one. You read it, Judge. You read it, Jo-Jo. It sounds like hell to me.”

Colonel Ross said, “I disagree. I think it fills the bill exactly. Captain Collins is an experienced newspaper man, General. I think we can leave it to him. There’s enough information so we don’t seem to be making a mystery out of it, but he hasn’t said a word he didn’t need to. That’s for the press services. Mr. Bullen, the Sun, will have to have a somewhat fuller story. After all, several thousand of his readers were right there. Captain Collins talked to him.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” General Beal said. “I meant it’s certainly a hell of a story any way you read it. What business have we got to kill seven men like that?” He looked at Captain Collins. “What did Bullen say? Had he been hearing anything?”

Captain Collins said, “Well, General, he told me he’d heard the men had no life vests on; and that something was wrong with the rescue boat.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him I believed that was the case, sir.”

General Beal jerked his chin up. “You had no authority to tell him anything! Do you think we want that in the paper? What did you do that for?”

Colonel Ross said, “Captain Collins had this authority, General. 1 told him: Fix it with Bullen if you think you can. Personally, IVe found it doesn’t pay to tell a newspaper that facts are wrong when you know they’re right. They don’t consider it friendly. I think Captain Collins feels that, if you happen to want the newspaper to do something for you, you mustn’t even tell them you don’t know.”

“What’s Bullen going to do for us? Climb all over us?”

Captain Collins said, “I don’t think so, General. He concluded by saying he hoped I’d convey to you the sincere sympathy, felt, he said, by him and by all Ocanara, city and county; and their regret that a tragic incident should have marred a most enjoyable occasion. He told me, sir, that he would be writing the Sun s story himself on the basis of whatever we decided ought to be released. I don’t think there’ll be anything in it we haven’t released. 1 mean; since it’s his paper, he says what goes into it. So I think we can rely on that, sir.”

“Well, that’s something,” General Beal said. “Well, tell him we appreciate that.”

“Yes; do,” Colonel Ross said. “You must have worked hard enough for it.”

General Beal said, “Somebody should have had sense enough to see they wore life vests. They have maps. They can see the drop area is right next to a lake a mile wide. How hard do you have to think to figure that one out? We need people with more sense around here. And that crash boat. What was wrong with those engines? Why should they have to replace them? I don’t know how many hours they ought to be good for; but with the amount of use they got here, they ought to last forever—unless the people in charge of them never ran them up, let them corrode, or something. Uline better explain that to me.”

General Nichols said: “It occurs to me, Bus, that a boat like that wouldn’t be much use in a thing like this unless it was right out there at the time.”

“And that’s where it should have been,” General Beal said. “Why the

hell does nobody think of anything? Uline should have had it out. It should have been holding off there during the drop. Let’s have another order, Judge. The Lake Lalage rescue boat will be manned at all times when the field is open. It will be taken out every day on a short test run. If it has to be laid up for any reason, even for half an hour, there’s to be another boat of comparable performance standing by. Got that?”

“Yes,” said Colonel Ross.

He opened the desk drawer and found a pad of memorandum sheets headed: AFORAD. Office of the Commanding General. Pulling a pencil from his shirt pocket, he began to write.

“By God,” said General Beal, “I think I’ll shake this place up! I want Lester in from Tangerine City tomorrow. Let him explain why his people came over with no life vests. Out he goes, it looks to me. If he didn’t think of it, he should have.”

“Colonel Lester is a pretty good man,” Colonel Ross said.

General Beal said, “You think Uline’s a pretty good man, too, don’t you? So do I; in a way. I don’t think either of them is going to be good enough from here on in. We’re going to get rid of some dead wood—”

The buzzer on the box sounded.

Striking the key down, Colonel Ross said, “Yes?”

A voice Colonel Ross did not recognize, probably one of Mr. Botwinick’s “aides,” said hollowly: “Colonel Mowbray to see the general, sir.”

General Beal nodded at him; and Colonel Ross said, “He’s to come right in.” He looked at Captain Collins and said, “Think it might be a good idea to take that down to Bullen yourself?”

“I think it might, sir,” Captain Collins said.

“I doubt if my car’s back. Take one of the others. Have you had anything to eat tonight?”

“That’s all right, sir,” Captain Collins said.

“Yes. I suppose you might as well get used to it,” Colonel Ross said. “I forgot to tell you, Collins. In our office, we hardly ever eat.”

Perched jauntily on his grizzled head, Colonel Mowbray wore a faded, rumpled overseas cap to which his eagle was pinned not quite straight.

His shirt sleeves were rolled up on his thin hairy old man’s arms. On his chest, hung from the strap about his neck, was a new pair of field glasses. Around his waist, sagging at his thin hip, was a regulation broad belt of OD webbing supporting a forty-five automatic in its holster.

Though Colonel Mowbray’s motions in opening, passing around, and closing the door were a little fussy and pottering, he turned from it with a certain brisk swagger. He peered at General Beal, his eyes bright in his grave gnome-like face. He said: “Just stopped by a minute, Bus. I’m on my way to the lake. I think we have everything there—or will have, by the time I get over.”

“I’ll say!” General Beal said, smiling. “What’s the shooting iron for, Pop?”

Colonel Mowbray’s thin gray cheeks took a tinge of rose; but he said: “Well, you never know, Bus.” Only a little at loss, he added energetically: “This is a serious thing. I just feel better with a side arm. It makes people understand it’s serious.” He advanced another step; and Colonel Ross could see that Colonel Mowbray had put on heavy GI shoes and a pair of leggings.

“Sit down,” General Beal said. “Have a drink.”

Colonel Mowbray said: “No, I don’t have time, Bus. I want to get right over. Now; I guess Uline reported to you. Hildebrand and I got the boats, got the tackle. That AA search-light battery ought to be there and set up now—give us plenty of light. Working parties are detailed. There’s one platoon on now; and we’ll relieve that at midnight and go on with a new one if we’re not through. I had a restricted area laid off and posted guards. We got ambulances for the bodies. Oh! And Ehret says the telegrams to next of kin are ready; but I told him to wait, so they won’t be received anywhere in the middle of the night. Oh; coffins are at the Hospital. I checked. The best thing, I thought, we’d send the bodies there—”

“If you get the bodies,” General Beal said.

“Don’t you worry, we’ll get them,” Colonel Mowbray said. “You needn’t worry about a thing, Bus. Everything’s taken care of. Why do you think we wouldn’t get the bodies? We know within a hundred yards, less, where they have to be.”

General Beal said: “Uline called and told the judge it was too deep.” In Colonel Mowbray’s cheeks the tinge of rose returned, much stronger. He said: “What’s he mean? He had no business—if he thought that, why didn’t he call me or Hildebrand? We’ll make any decisions. It isn’t up to him.” Colonel Mowbray frowned. “Tell you the truth, Bus,” he said, “I’m a little disappointed in Gordon. Of course, I understand he feels a primary responsibility for the thing being crossed up, about the boat and so on. That’s right; he ought to; and I see how that could upset him. It’d upset me. But a field officer, a man commanding troops—he’s got to keep a cool head. Meet the emergency. Now, I don’t think Gordon’s measuring up too well. I wish I didn’t have to say it. I’ll see if I can snap him out of it. I’d better get right over there. Oh. About funeral plans, Bus. What about that?” “What about it?” General Beal said.

Brightening again, Colonel Mowbray said: “Well, don’t you think we ought to do a little more than just nail them up and ship them off by express—I mean, supposing their people want a home burial. Would you like me to work out some kind of little ceremony, service, out by the lake? Tomorrow’s Sunday; we could have something religious. Just a short thing. Parade a couple of squadrons—maybe use Johnny Sears’s men, so they’d look good. Have a firing party; sound Taps. We could have the chaplains—I suggest Captain Appleton and Captain Doyle each read something appropriate. Better have Lieutenant Meyer, too; in case one of them was Jewish. I could check on that, of course. But anyway, it makes it more non-denominational. Might bring a plane over at the same time and drop a wreath on the water—”

General Beal said: “I don’t think so, Pop. We have a press release here; and I don’t think we need to do anything else to call attention to it. Our publicity hasn’t been too good this week.”

“Well, yes,” Colonel Mowbray said. “I didn’t think of that. Yes; I believe you’re right, Bus. I was just thinking because there were so many of them, perhaps we ought to do a little something extra—Bus, I nearly forgot. I think this is important. That memorandum we never got. There’s no doubt at all that Hildy’s office received a report, all pertinent information; and that a memo was prepared and sent out. Now,

that’s a pretty serious thing. I think we’d better find out tomorrow, Monday at latest, how it could be possible. We’d better go over the whole system—Base Communications Center; our Communications Center; the courier service; everything. Take a fine-tooth comb to it. That’s what I think. Don’t you?”

General Beal said: “You didn’t see Botty?”

“Not right now, Bus. He had a man on the desk outside. I think he said Botty went around to the mess kitchen.”

“Yes,” said General Beal. “He’d arranged to get us something to eat.” “Well, I don’t need to see Botty. Not about that. I talked to him on the phone, right away when I saw the Base Headquarters copy of the memo. That paper, I know, wasn’t in our mail this morning, which was when it should have been. We couldn’t have overlooked it—Botty and Mrs. Spann between them; we don’t lose things, Bus. The place to begin looking is the Communications Center and start tracing back.” General Beal said: “Tell him, Judge.”

Glancing over his glasses at General Beal, Colonel Ross said: “All right. Well, we know what happened to that paper, Pop. Botty came in here half an hour ago and told the general he destroyed it. He had it. It was in the mail. It was noted in your memorandum record. He burned it, mixed up, he says, with some other papers.”

Colonel Mowbray opened and closed his mouth. Colonel Ross could see the rise and fall of his prominent thyroid cartilage as he swallowed. Colonel Mowbray said: “We lost it? We had it and we lost it?”

Colonel Ross said: “Mr. Botwinick feels he must bear the responsibility. If the circumstances were as he described them, and he burned it, I suppose he must. I think there’s no reason to doubt that he did burn it.”

Colonel Mowbray said: “You absolutely sure, Norm? He’s sure?” Colonel Ross said: “He seemed sure enough to feel he had to report himself in arrest for dereliction of duty. That’s what he came in here and did. The general told him to carry on; he’d talk to you.”

Colonel Mowbray’s mouth worked a moment. He said then: “Bus, that’s a terrible thing! Hard to believe, I mean. Botty never lost a paper in his life, I know of.” He paused and licked his lips. Feebly, not quite

coherent, he said: “We want to remember that, don’t we? Of course, I see why he’d feel he had to report—I mean; because the terrible mistake. I mean, because those seven men—that’s a terrible thing to have to know you did! I’m not excusing him—”

General Nichols said: “Isn’t that a little strong, Pop?” He spoke kindly. “I don’t think anyone here has to know that. From what I heard, the real reason those men were killed was that something happened to the hitch-ons. Before they got the lines running again, they were carried ahead for a minute or two. In this war, we’re all just learning, Pop.” Colonel Mowbray made what sounded like a croak. He started to say: “That didn’t have anything to do with—”

General Nichols proceeded firmly: “That jump master couldn’t have had too much experience; and I daresay the men who jumped didn’t, either. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered; but I think experts, men who’ve made a lot of jumps, can do a little more than these seem to have done about controlling their descent. I don’t really know. But anyway, we see where the big mistake was. The jump master, instead of holding them, sends them out after the delay. That was a serious error. I agree; any unit commander ought to have a man’s stripes for that. But when the man went on and jumped himself, you might say necessary corrective action was taken. You’re protected from further errors in judgment on that man’s part, at least. It was that error in judgment that caused the accident. Could you say your man Botwinick had anything to do with it?”

“No, sir!” Colonel Mowbray said. He swung his head in a series of distressed little wags. “That won’t go down, Jo-Jo. That’s what we’re for, to provide for—when somebody makes mistakes. We can’t stop that—that’s the thing. We know somebody’s always going to make mistakes. That’s when we have to be ready, not go making one ourselves, too. What you say is no excuse—”

Colonel Mowbray stopped and swallowed; perhaps resting an instant from the hard mental labor that the involved statement cost him; perhaps casting about for thoughts that would carry it further or make it clearer; but he must then have recollected himself, remembered where he stood. He said: “Bus, I don’t know what to say. I just don’t know what to—”

Colonel Ross looked at him. Colonel Mowbray stood stricken in the middle of the room, aimless, all swagger gone. His thin frame stayed upright, propped by the stiff old backbone’s years of habit in the position of the soldier; but Colonel Mowbray seemed to shrink or shrivel inside his clothes. He looked small for his boots and leggings. On his withered little buttock the heavy automatic pistol was too big for him, outsized, a man’s furnishings weighing down a child. The eagle inaccurately pinned to his limp overseas cap hung from its bent fastening pin, awry and loose. With a sad disturbance of mind Colonel Ross saw, starting in Colonel Mowbray’s eye, what was indubitably a senile tear.

Brought so soon to his second pause, Colonel Mowbray twitched his head again, turning his face back from General Beal to General Nichols. He made a distracted explanatory gesture. He said: “Reason I say I don’t know, Jo-Jo—of course what Botty did’s inexcusable, unforgivable. But the other thing is: a man’s usefulness. We want to try to see the overall picture. The good of the service. Not act against the best interests of all concerned. I don’t mean, not take appropriate action; only not let ourselves go off half—”

General Beal stood up. He said: “Let it ride for tonight, Pop. We don’t have to take any action right this minute.” Approaching with purpose, he put a hand on Colonel Mowbray’s thin shoulder. “You go along,” he said. “I want you over at the lake.”

Keeping his hand on Colonel Mowbray’s shoulder, General Beal moved him toward the hall door, and moved with him. Opening the door, gently pressing Colonel Mowbray, General Beal went on out into the hall with him.

Alone with Colonel Ross, General Nichols put together the tips of his precise, shapely fingers. He studied them with gravity for an instant. He said: “Well, Judge?”

Sitting back in General Beal’s chair, Colonel Ross found himself saying, in much the same tone: “Well, General?”

A rare, reflective smile touched General Nichols’s mouth. His formal face, the not-quite-young but little marked mask he wore over that other face of his—the face of patience and watchfulness, of en-

durance and resolve—lit impassively with the mind’s temporary pleasure, its enjoyment of the moment’s agreeable interlude.

Colonel Ross waited, no less pleased than General Nichols to be party to this neat meeting of minds. He was pleased with so equal a display of the intellectual art that discerned, that asked, that answered, that perfectly agreed; but never once stooped to the low means of a spoken word. He was pleased with the top quality of those distinguished considerations of theirs, of the traded compliments on their seeing, both of them, a little more than some people saw, and on their saying, even now, nothing.

General Nichols said soberly: “Ought we to get on with the war, Judge? What about this project, this publicity thing, Bus wanted me to hear about?”

“Why, General,” Colonel Ross said, “I think it’s a matter of some interest. Bus is right about our publicity being bad this week, I guess you’ll agree. Some of another kind might be opportune.”

“Very,” General Nichols said.

Colonel Ross said: “We’re fortunate enough to have this young captain in the Directorate of Special Projects—as a matter of fact, he was the one at the Hospital this morning, the one I brought in with the colored boy’s father.”

“Oh, yes,” General Nichols said.

“Now, in civilian life,” Colonel Ross said, “he’s a very important magazine editor or executive, or both. He really knows the business, and I think he has a lot of influential publishing connections. This man’s name is Hicks—”

♦

The voices, there seemed to be only two—two advance members of some party somewhere downstairs which had not as a whole reached the singing stage—floated up the night to Nathaniel Hicks.

Because it was still early, because everyone else would need a few more drinks before he felt like joining in, the singers excused themselves by taking care, in mock expressiveness and kidding coloratura emphasis, to show that they were just being funny. They sang: “I wouldn’t give a cent for the whole state of Florida—”

In the darkness Lieutenant Turck lay as though dead; but Nathaniel Hicks could hear her breathe. Her breathing had slowed; yet still it was quicker than normal, and a little rough—as though with a residue of her varied breath-taxing exertions in the last half hour. There had been those earlier labored tears begun on the balcony that dried in action; and the seizures of moaning that came on as the toils engaged her deeper. Some whimpered, not-to-be-contained cries were wrung out of her. Last came, exhausted and easier but copious, some final tears. These might acknowledge at first only the searchings of pleasure. Continuing, it was plain that they deplored more and more, helpless and too late, every circumstance that brought her here to be uncovered and looked at; to have the demented convulsions of her body noted and her mouth’s hateful sounds heard.

Seeing tears to be idle, she had stopped them after a while, and made a slight eloquent movement, a sad pleading to be free.

Hearing her breathe, and hearing them sing downstairs, Nathaniel Hicks thought of things to say; but none of them seemed very good. Not sure what to do, he had put a hand out, found and touched her damp cheek. He moved the hand to her hair, which was damp, too. With a vague compassionate feeling he began to stroke it; but he had no more than begun when, on the shadowed obscurity of the bedside table, the telephone bell struck out its clear shocking zing.

Lieutenant Turck’s start was violent.

She said: “Oh!”

Though he had started just as much himself, Nathaniel Hicks gave her bare shoulder a quiet tap. He turned, reached groping, and took the telephone. “Captain Hicks,” he said.

The voice on the telephone was loud. It said: “Colonel Ross, Captain.”

Nathaniel Hicks said: “Yes, Colonel.”

“Wasn’t sure I’d get you, Hicks—that you’d be in. Well, that saves us trouble. Not in bed, are you?”

“No, sir.”

Colonel Ross cleared his throat.

“Good,” he said. “You won’t be going to bed. I believe you’ll be pleased to hear that General Beal is sending you north on that project.

Right now. General Nichols will give you a lift as far as Washington. You have half an hour. A staff car’s coming down for you.”

“Yes, sir,” Nathaniel Hicks said. “Will I need orders—I mean—” “Don’t worry about that. We’ll cover you. I’ll see you at the plane. General Beal has a few instructions you’re to follow; but we’re going to leave you pretty much your own boss. You’d better fix us something good.”

“Yes, sir,” Nathaniel Hicks said.

“All right. Hop to it. Get your stuff together. We’re giving you two weeks. You can have more if you need it. Better be downstairs when the car comes.”

“Yes, sir,” Nathaniel Hicks said.

He put back the telephone and said, shaken: “Well, I’ll be damned! That was Colonel Ross. He says—”

“I could hear him,” Lieutenant Turck said.

She sat up in the darkness. “I suppose I’ll have to have a light,” she said. “I’ll have to find my clothes.”

XVIII

At night the glass box of the Control Tower was filled with a dim bluish light. This was intended to be light enough for eyes used to it to work efficiently in the tower; yet not so much light that an operator looking over the dark spread of the airfield would be totally blind.

At the moment, the bluish glow was modified weirdly by a strong radiance cast up against the glass from outside. The ramp floodlights were on. Under their focused, concerted beams the pavement before the Operations Building was lit like day. The universal warm darkness of the night seemed set back, arching above an open insubstantial cave of light. From the tower, T/3 Anderson and T/5 Murphy looked down into it like spectators from a balcony above a bright stage.

At the edge of the light flood, silent and shining, waited a midwing monoplane with a twin rudder empanage and a long pointed nose thrust ahead of its twin engine nacelles. Waiting around the plane were several line crew members in twill coveralls and cloth caps with brims tipped rakishly up off their faces. They had brought up the tanks and funneled hoses of carbon dioxide fire extinguishers. A portable generator had been wheeled under the plane. Crouched on their heels, examining some part of it with attention, were a couple of sergeants—

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the chief of the line crew; and Sergeant Pellerino, General Beal’s crew chief.

Fifty feet from the plane, full in the flood of light, stood two cars. One of them was General Beal’s staff car with the little flag on its bumper. The other was a convertible coupe with its top down. Beside it were General Beal, General Nichols, Colonel Ross, and Mrs. Beal. Still seated in the coupe was a woman T/3 Anderson thought was Mrs. Ross.

“But never mind them, hon,” she said. Her tone was the preceptor’s, kindly chiding, correcting yet encouraging a teachable pupil. “Just you look at the plane. You want to know all the planes, don’t you? The C-Sixty, see? It’s practically the same as the C-Fifty-six. A lot of the model designations only mean different equipment and things.”

With an effort, T/5 Murphy transferred her attention. T/3 Anderson said: “Now, those wings, see? They’re what they call swept-back, tapered, elliptical—the ends aren’t round or square, that means—”

In the enclosed cool air around them the ceaseless hummings and twangings sounded. Remote disembodied voices rose and fell, came and went. A voice with extra sharpness said suddenly: “Hello Hiram twelve this is Lazarus. Vector two-six-zero. Orbit Honeybee Green. Angels ten and one half. Over.”

T/5 Murphy turned in the gloom, gaping at this rigamarole; but T/3 Anderson said: “Now, that’s got nothing to do with us. I just tuned that other speaker in on it. I wanted you to hear it, in case they were up tonight; so you’d know what it was like. That’s the Orlando fighter control frequency. It’s Air Defense. They have planes out; and that’s the Intercept Officer telling them where to go—”

T/5 Murphy said: “Oh, my; all you have to know. I don’t think I’ll ever—”

Not displeased, T/3 Anderson said: “Yes, you will, hon. I’ll show you everything. This is your first time on at night; so you get some different things, that confuse you—”

Out of a crackling sound another voice said: “Zero-five to Tower, please. For a check line. Go ahead, please—” it went out in more crackling.

“Now, that’s yours,” T/3 Anderson said. “It’s the pilot down there

606 ■ James Gould Cozzens

in the C-Sixty. He’s seeing if his radio works all right. It does; only he’s being intermittently blocked out by something—hear? When it’s like that, ask him to say again. It could be something in his own equipment. Go on; go ahead.”

T/5 Murphy brought her microphone to her mouth and said with little certainty: “Zero-five; this is Ocanara Tower. Will you say again to test—”

Another voice called out casually: “Tower! Exercise leader; Tactical Exercise Orion, White and Blue Flights. We have concluded. We are approaching the field south at three thousand. Will you clear us in?”

The first voice proceeded patiently: “—seven, eight, nine, ten, nine, eight, seven—”

T/3 Anderson said: “Tell Zero-five he’s all right; and, out. Now, you know what Exercise Orion is. They’re the P-Seventies, really the A-Twenties —our night fighter flights. You’ll get to know them. They’re up almost every night. Only, this is a new man, this leader—”

To her microphone T/3 Anderson said: “Orion Leader, this is Ocanara Tower. Wait. I will try to get you in first if I can. We have a plane that may be ready to go out.” She lowered the microphone and said: “Hon, ask Zero-five if he thinks the general will want to take off very soon. Tactical flights have regular priority, remember; but when you can help it, never keep anyone like a general waiting for the runway They don’t like it.”

T/5 Murphy spoke agitatedly to her microphone.

“You tell me!” the answering voice boomed. “They’re all outside still. I don’t know how long. They got another passenger to come.”

T/3 Anderson put her microphone to her mouth. “Orion Leader; I am clearing you to come right in; two flights, six planes. Please make a three-sixty overhead approach on runway seven so I will know where you are. You will see the markers. Number one to land please call on his base leg. The glide beam is on; I say again, on. Wind is light, oboe at zebra. Acknowledge.”

There was a silence.

“Damn!” T/3 Anderson said. “I’ll bet he didn’t listen. Orion Leader, this is Ocanara Tower—”

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T/5 Murphy had taken field glasses again and turned them on the ramp.

Observing her, T/3 Anderson said: “Now, you just pay attention. You’ll have to do this yourself sometime!”

T/5 Murphy gave a sudden sharp giggle. “Oh, you should have seen that!” she said, delighted.

“What?” T/3 Anderson said grudgingly.

“General Beal, you know what he did? He just suddenly reached out and pulled Mrs. Beal’s hair; and she slapped him; and he twisted her arm around!”

Incredulous, T/3 Anderson said: “Were they sore?”

T/5 Murphy shook her head. “Uh-uh!” she said. She smiled in pleased reflection. “They were just horsing around.”

“Well, now keep still, hon.” To her microphone she said: “Orion Leader; will you kindly guard the frequency? I am trying to clear you in—”

From the void, the voice said: “Yeah, I heard you, sister. We’re having a little—Leader to Blue One! Get on the hell down, will you—” the voice clicked out.

T/3 Anderson said: “I don’t like him\ I can tell by his voice. The other one was nice. I felt terrible about that.”

“About what?” T/5 Murphy said.

“He and his radio operator were killed, hon. Monday night, I think it was. They crashed somewhere. They only just found them, someone said.” She turned and stared into the darkness of the field. Low down by Lake Lalage the great searchlights turned on the water and the working parties made a glow. At this additional evidence of the perils and dangers of aerial action, T/3 Anderson said broodingly: “It’s taking an awful long time over there. That must be an awful thing to have to do! I wouldn’t want to be doing that, I can tell you—”

“Ugh!” agreed T/5 Murphy abstractedly. “Here comes a car,” she said. “Could that be what they’re waiting for?”

Turning back, T/3 Anderson took up her glasses.

Through the gate in the fence between Operations and Hangar Number One passed a staff car driven fast. It ran straight across the

ramp to halt near the other cars. The driver jumped out and lifted a flight bag from the front seat. The rear door opened.

“My goodness,” T/3 Anderson said, “it’s just a captain!”

♦

Except for him, in spite of him, they made a merry party on the ramp. Colonel Ross felt tired. He also looked tired—old and glum—he could be sure. Cora, sitting in the car, showed him how he looked by occasional glances at once critical and sympathetically concerned. She would recognize that he was tired and that he was, for that and other reasons, testy. She might even, he must admit, have a fairly good idea of what the other reasons were; and no doubt she considered it a pity that small things could so affect him. He was not being a credit to her.

General Nichols, debonaire in manner, was engaged in relating an anecdote. Not having attended to its start, Colonel Ross did not know what it was about, or apropos of; but it clearly concerned Air Force people well known to Bus. General Nichols said: “So Tooey gave them one of his looks; and that made them all shut up, except Pete. ‘Sure, sure,’ Pete said. ‘It’s like when you just put this regular small sum of money in the bank each week; and keep doing it fifteen, twenty years. And you know, I swear to God, when you finally get to draw it out, you’ll be surprised how little it comes to.’ ”

“He’s got something there,” General Beal said, grinning.

“Oh, you!” Mrs. Beal said. “How would you know? You never saved a nickel in your life. You just talk about it; and tell me I can’t buy things. I’d like to know what cost Bus so much money overseas. If it wasn’t poker, I’ll bet he kept a harem. Did he, Jo-Jo?”

“Why, they don’t cost so much,” General Nichols said gravely. “I could name you someone in CBI who, we hear, has all these little yellow girls he even brings to the movies with him; but I think they get in half price—”

General Nichols could dismiss his concerns, it seemed. He could put it out of mind that he often sat in, or almost in, the councils of the mighty; that, if he did not yet say the word there, he assisted stern and vigilant at its saying. Somewhere along the line he also shed, it seemed, his pause-giving menace of resolve, his pitiless austerity of purpose,

his stark speculations on the employment of air power and his wordless perfect perspicacity. Had Colonel Ross, this morning, let himself be taken in just a little? Had he, this evening, credited General Nichols with more subtlety of mind than General Nichols had?

As for Mrs. Beal, did Sal remember that this morning she had been filled with frenzy, and that as late as noon she had been filled with despair? Had she forgotten that General Nichols was the Chief of Air Staffs Deputy in charge of assassinations, that he would shoot his own mother, that he could only be here to do Bus dirt?

Mrs. Beal said: “Come on, Jo-Jo! Give. I want the low-down on that lug-”

General Beal continued to grin. With his grin, Bus wrote off, it seemed, all that formidable tale of worries so heavy on everyone over the last couple of days. General Beal had been, it seemed, in no special danger of sinking under them; so those who fell over themselves trying to lift the load could have their trouble for their pains. The not-unmoving picture of the simple soldier, fatefully set-on in his still unfamiliar high place by a host of mischances; dogged by disaster not his fault; threatened with ruin by staggering irrelevancies—by Colonel Woodman, his bottle, his pistol in his mouth; by Benny persisting as Benny, the unreconstructable two-fisted fighting man; by the unrelated intrusion of a little history and sociology in the sullen contention of some colored boys that they were as good as anybody else; by a flustered jump master in a C-46 who hadn’t sense enough to stop a drop and so got them in the papers again—well, it seemed, that picture was overdrawn. The only people who ever took the danger seriously were Colonel Mowbray, a simple dotard, and Colonel Ross—well, what was he?

Grinning still, General Beal with a sudden deft movement, ran his fingers into Mrs. Beal’s hanging yellow hair and gave it a mischievous tug.

“Ow!” cried Mrs. Beal. Ducking her head to get free, agile on her small feet, she turned and neatly slapped his face.

“Ow,” General Beal said, laughing. Quick as she was, he had been able to catch her wrist. “Now, just for that—” the strong fingers turned her wrist over, twisting it, doubling her up.

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“No, no,” Mrs. Beal squealed. She tried in vain to hit him with her other hand. “No! Fins! I quit. Jo-Jo, make him stop! Ira! Everybody’s looking at us! I’ll kick your shins—”

Indeed, she jabbed her heel at him; and so got her hand away. She snatched the car door open and got in with Mrs. Ross. “Now, you quit!” she said, giggling. “You started it. You tell him to stop, Norm. He only got what he asked for—”

“He is my commanding officer,” Colonel Ross said. “I don’t tell him. He tells me.”

General Beal was not looking at him. Out of the night, down from the warm darkness came a heavy growing mutter of invisible planes. General Beal and General Nichols automatically lifted their eyes, listening arrested. Though no expert, Colonel Ross could tell, or thought he could, by the fairly deep pitch, the steady tone and rhythm of sound, that a number of light bombers, the night fighters, were coming over the field.

General Nichols said: “How are they doing?”

General Beal said: “That armament is lousy. These are the ones with a belly-mounting of four twenty-mm cannon. It ought to be machine guns. There’s no sense throwing cannon shells at anything you don’t actually see. Figure it this way. We get the contacts all right; but any least little deviation, and how are you going to determine that, in the angle of approach; and all your guns miss. It ought to be possible to put six fifties in the nose, bore-sighted to fire a good wide pattern. That’s what they’ll need.”