XXVIII

But Don’t Quote the General Personally

We had both turned to the door that opened onto the hallway, and there was Melville Goodwin. He stood like a picture in a frame, and there was one of those uncertain silences before any of us spoke. His uniform, the ribbons and the insignia gave everything a new complexion.

“Why, Mel,” I heard Dottie say, “you’re early.”

“That’s right,” he said, “a half an hour early. I was hoping to surprise you and turn up here like a plain citizen, but the tailor hasn’t finished with my tuxedo yet. I hope I’m not interrupting a conference. Hello, Sid.”

I think he was surprised because he must have expected Dottie to be alone, but at the same time he was glad to see me.

“Hello, Mel,” I said, “I just dropped in for a minute and I’m leaving now.”

“What’s the idea of your leaving?” Mel Goodwin asked. “Dottie and I were going to see the town. How about taking him along, Dot?”

There was still an element of surprise. There was no reason why General Goodwin should not have appeared, but I had not expected him to be so completely at home. I had not expected his slightly proprietary air, and Dottie was looking at us both proudly, almost maternally.

“Sid just came around for some advice, Mel,” Dottie said. “Career trouble.”

Mel Goodwin smiled and walked across the room and patted me on the shoulder.

“Career trouble?” he repeated. “By God, that sounds like Washington. Well, Sid can tell me all about it while you go in and put on what you call an evening frock.”

There was no doubt that Mel Goodwin was perfectly at home. Somehow we were in the middle of a family scene and I was the old and understanding family friend.

“God damn,” the General went on, “are they knifing you in the back, Sid? It looks as though they’re ganging up on all your boy friends, Dot.”

Dottie shook her head.

“Mel,” she said, “would you mind very much if we all stayed here?”

Somehow this simple question gave the scene an even more domestic note. Mel Goodwin looked at her quickly and the crow’s-feet deepened around his eyes.

“Why,” he said, “what’s the matter, Dot?”

“Oh,” Dottie said, “nothing, Mel, except perhaps I’ve been thoughtless. Darling, I never dreamed that people would begin to talk.”

Mel Goodwin clasped his hands behind him and glanced at me and back at Dottie, and the lines on his face looked deeper.

“Well, well,” he said, “so that’s why Sid’s up here.”

“No, no,” Dottie said, “it isn’t Sid, but I imagine Sid agrees with me. I’ve been awfully thoughtless, Mel.”

I admired that façade of Melville Goodwin’s. It was easy to see how accustomed he was to environments in which anything might happen.

“Let’s get this straight,” he said. “If Sid hasn’t been talking to you, someone else has?”

“Oh, never mind, Mel,” Dottie said. “It really doesn’t matter who.”

“Wait a minute now, let’s get this straight,” Mel Goodwin said. “You didn’t feel this way when I called you up at noon. Someone’s been working on you since then. Come on, who was it, Dot?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter, Mel,” Dottie answered.

Mel Goodwin did not raise his voice. There was only the slightest change in it.

“Come on,” he said, “who was it, Dot?”

It was interesting being an innocent bystander, now that Dottie had finally found a man. I was sure that she did not want to tell and I was just as sure that she was going to.

“It’s about time for me to be going home,” I said.

“No,” Mel Goodwin said, “I want you to stick around, boy. Who’s been so interested in me, Dot?”

“Mel,” Dottie said, “promise me you won’t be mad at him.”

“That depends on who it is,” Mel Goodwin said.

“Oh, hell,” Dottie said, “all right, have it your own way. It was Robert.”

“Well, I’ll be God damned!” the General said. “So Bob was here.”

“He’s awfully fond of you, Mel,” Dottie said.

“Well, I’ll be God damned!” the General said. “So it was Bob, was it? Did you see him, Sid?”

I heard the question, but I could read nothing from his face.

“I saw him first at the office,” I answered. “He’s worried about you, Mel.”

The guileless eyes of Mel Goodwin held me for a second.

“Do you think he’s got a right to be?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” I answered, “he made me think so.”

“What did you think of Bob?” he asked.

“I liked him,” I said.

Mel Goodwin smiled and the watchfulness left his eyes.

“That boy is going to get along,” he said, “if he just learns not to stick his neck out. God damn, it’s nice, his being worried about the old man. You know, I kind of like it. What did he say?”

He was asking me, not Dottie.

“He thinks you have a future, sir,” I said, “if you don’t stick your neck out.”

“You know, that’s sort of pleasant,” Mel Goodwin said, “to know that the kid thinks that. Did you and Bob get along all right, Dot?”

Dottie smiled her warmest smile.

“He loved talking about you, Mel,” she said. “He was so sweet about you.”

“Well, well,” the General said, “maybe I should have taken this all up with Bob myself, but there never seemed to be any opportunity around the house in Alexandria. Maybe Bob’s right about being around publicly. Well, let’s all stay here and have a happy evening. I’m really glad you saw him. I’m pretty proud of Bob. Did I ever tell you about the last time I had to lick him? It was when he swiped my horse at Schofield. He was too much horse and he ran away for about two miles, but Bob stayed with him. He told me later that I made his rear end sorer than the horse did. Say, I sort of wish I knew where to find Bob. I’d like to have him around right now.” Melville Goodwin smiled and sat down on the sofa. “Fetch me a drink, will you, Sid? This is certainly a welcome change from Washington. God, that crowd in the Pentagon! It’s full of people with battle records now, but a lot of the boys look confused.”

As I watched Melville Goodwin, my own affairs assumed a tawdry, humdrum aspect, involving only small minds and little people. Melville Goodwin’s personality had filled the room, embracing and absorbing Dottie Peale and me. Although his weaknesses and failings were very clear, he was living more intensely and more honestly than Dottie Peale or I ever would; he had seen more and he had given more freely of himself and he still had more to give, and anything that might happen to him would have a greater significance in human terms.

I forgot that it was time for me to be starting home. I was in an atmosphere of suspense, as I watched Mel Goodwin and Dottie Peale, and every bit of byplay was portentous. It was fascinating, for instance, to observe that when he sat down on the sofa he unbuttoned two buttons of his blouse. When you thought of the buttons of West Point and of his subconscious preoccupation with appearance, nothing could have been more revealing than that unconsidered action. It told as clearly as words where Dottie and Mel Goodwin stood.

“This is a fine idea,” he said, “sitting around in a home this evening.”

The unbuttoning of his blouse confirmed his words. Obviously he had given all his trust and all his confidence to Dottie Peale freely and rapidly, but then he had grown accustomed to swift decisions. It was only left for me to wonder uncomfortably how far he had gone in his planning.

“How’s Muriel?” Dottie asked. I moved uneasily. Her inquiry was as candid as the unbuttoning of the blouse and so obvious that Dottie must have intended me to see how things stood. At any rate they both had made it clear that there was no need for camouflage.

“Oh,” the General said, “Muriel’s as busy as a bird dog. She’s giving a round of cocktail parties and we had a steak fry last night.”

“Oh dear,” Dottie said, “every time I see you, you seem to have just left some steak fry or other.”

You might have thought that she had said something very profound, judging by the General’s emphatic agreement.

“Ever since I was a shavetail,” Mel Goodwin said, “there have been steak fries, but they’re increasing lately. Women like them and a lot of the big wheels seem to like chewing meat in somebody’s back yard. I guess I’ve had too many alfresco meals to get the point, but Muriel likes me behind a grill with a fork in my hand. Every man in Washington is turning into a God-damned chef.”

“Does General Bradley grill steaks, too?” Dottie asked.

“Oh, hell,” Mel Goodwin said, “Brad’s good at anything.”

“Did you see the President yesterday?” Dottie asked. “You said you were going to.”

“I certainly did,” Mel Goodwin said. “Muriel and I went there to tea and he gave me fifteen minutes in the office. You really should have heard Muriel telling how I won the war.”

“Well,” I told him, “I think I ought to be going now.”

“No, no,” the General said, “sit down, Sid. You know what I mean about Muriel. No one can set things up like Muriel.”

“Don’t go yet, Sid,” Dottie said. “It’s always fun when Mel gets started on Washington.”

I would not have termed it all fun, but I was back again in the orbit of General Goodwin.

This was the second time, Mel Goodwin was saying, that he had come home from a war. He had been very junior on the other occasion and that was easy to handle, but it was no joke coming home as a general, with a lot of missiles being thrown at you, including custard pies and bricks. If you put up your head a single inch out of a slit trench in Washington, you were apt to connect with something. It seemed, down in Washington, even in branches of the Department, that everyone was forgetting there had been a war and Washington was sick to death of officers and their records. There was all the Pacific island-hopping crowd trying to muscle in ahead of the Africa and ETO crowd. The truth was, combat officers were selling for about a dime a dozen, and you couldn’t see the desks for the battle ribbons. There were a lot of people in Washington who were anxious to cut major generals down to size, now that we were winning the peace. All the branches of the service were still jockeying for position down in Washington. The Air Force boys, for instance, all knew they could win without Ground Forces now, and the navy seemed to have an idea that they could win without the Air Forces. It made you dizzy to hear the talk in Washington. He would wake up sometimes in the middle of the night wishing that he were a shavetail again out somewhere with troops.

The chain of command was something which anyone must respect because it was the backbone, sinews and nerve force of the service. He was willing to grant that you should obey it automatically, and he always had, and you learned also to put up with any personality above you. Frankly, he had served under many mediocre superiors, but there was something new in the peacetime setup that made him gripe. There was a cream-puff quality about a lot of thinking down in Washington. He once had the idea that the army was primarily designed to produce efficient combat units, but this was old hat now in some quarters. Instead, coming to it cold, you sometimes got the impression down there that the army was a sort of social service institution designed to provide financial security, healthy outdoor sports and desirable civic works. The army seemed to have its finger in everything—recreation centers, adult education, scientific research. A lot of people who should have known better were fiddling around down there in such a mental fog that they were getting fouled up over basic training and manpower. You might think—you really might—that the principal activities of the Department would be concentrated on the equipment and development of a few first-rate mobile divisions that could be used as an expansion nucleus in future emergency. Granted the best minds were developing insomnia over how to accomplish this in the face of dwindling appropriations, yet bringing up such a subject was not well received in some groups. You would even get yourself lectured sometimes in a nice way about new tactics and new weapons by a lot of theoretical so-and-sos, although he admitted there were a lot of good boys around who had learned a few basic facts of life from coming in contact with the enemy.

On his first day in Washington he had dropped in on the spur of the moment to see “Snip” Lewis, just for a friendly chat and some informal orientation, on the off-chance that old Snip might not be too busy. Maybe he should have telephoned. Snip had been in a key position since the war and as far as Mel Goodwin was concerned, he deserved everything he had, including the Legion of Merit and the DSO and his complimentary French and British decorations. He had nothing at all against anyone like Snip, who had been three years behind him at the Point. Snip was an old Grimshaw man, and they had worked together in Washington before “Torch.” It was not Snip’s fault that he had stayed on in Washington—somebody had to stay—and Snip had been a fine exec for Grimshaw. Personally, Mel Goodwin was glad that Snip had worked his way to something. Nevertheless he was surprised when he dropped into that Pentagon office. Snip’s office had a lot of mahogany in it and was about as big as the Chapel at the Point, with map racks and conference tables and his general’s flag, but the thing that struck him right in the eye was Snip’s exec in the outer office. It was old “Froggy” Jukes, sitting right out there pushing all the buttons. It was hard to tell what would come up next when you saw a man like Froggy Jukes in a key position.

He wanted to make it clear that he had nothing against Froggy. It wasn’t any man’s fault if he suffered from emotional instability and did not make the grade in a front area, because this might happen to the very best. Nevertheless when Froggy Jukes was in “Bull-pup” in North Africa, he had been indecisive at a moment when you could not wait for second chances, and old Heinzy had not taken him over to Italy, after that little mix-up. Yet here he was, a brigadier, in the Pentagon with three secretaries and secret filing cabinets and four telephones. He had nothing whatsoever against Froggy and and he had not been mixed up with Froggy’s problems, but they had both been in “Bullpup” and he knew the score.

“Well, well,” Froggy said, “I’ve been wondering when you’d come here.”

“Well, well,” Mel Goodwin said, “it’s nice to see you, Froggy. How have things been going?”

You could see that things had been going pretty well. Froggy had his North African ribbon, the Legion of Merit and the DSO and a Caribbean ribbon.

“I’m just the Chief’s errand boy,” Froggy said, “but I’m busy as a bird dog, what with all this unification. Let’s see, you were in ‘Bull-pup,’ weren’t you, Mel?”

Froggy knew damned well that he was in “Bullpup,” if he had not lost his wits.

“Heinzy never understood me out there,” Froggy said.

All you could do was to be nice about it, and say that a lot of others hadn’t hit it off with Heinzy either, but it was peculiar to hear someone like Froggy treating “Bullpup” as a joke and you could see that he still had it in for the “Bullpup” crowd on general principles.

“I suppose you want to hit the Chief for something,” Froggy said.

Of course he was saying it in a kidding way, but it was not a nice way of putting it, considering who had the rank and record, and it was time to put Froggy in his place.

“If General Lewis has about three minutes,” Mel Goodwin said, “I’d like to pay him my respects.”

“The Chief is pretty busy now,” Froggy said. “It’s a crowded morning but I think he can give you five minutes.”

“All right, ask him,” Mel Goodwin said. “I’m pretty busy myself, Froggy.”

Froggy opened the door to the inner office and slid through and closed it softly behind him. There was nothing about any of it that Melville Goodwin liked, particularly the implication that someone like Jukes could do him a favor. People like Froggy Jukes always got on well on staffs and Froggy probably did have the knife out for anyone who had been in “Bullpup,” but of course Snip Lewis had time to see him.

“Sit down, Mel,” Snip said. “I wish I didn’t have to get out of here in five minutes.”

“It’s damn nice to see you, Snip,” Mel Goodwin said. “How’s Ethel?”

“Ethel’s fine,” Snip said. “We’ll have to get you and Muriel over on the first clear night, and we’ll get the Old Man. The Old Man wants to see you.”

“Well, that sounds good,” Mel Goodwin said.

“We’ve got to find a groove for you, Mel,” Snip said. “I wish there were room for you on the team here—but a lot of people are going to be asking for you. If there’s anything you’d like particularly, count on me to put in a word.”

This was all said in a kidding way, of course, and Mel Goodwin laughed because it was the right thing to do and not because he felt like laughing.

“Well,” he said, “if you’ve got a division running around loose, bear me in mind, will you?”

This was said in a kidding way, too, but it was curious to see the blank look on Snip Lewis’s face. You could see that he had always been away from divisions except on paper.

“What in hell do you want a division for?” Snip asked, and Mel Goodwin felt as embarrassed as if he had asked for something off-color.

“Well, I know about them,” he said.

Snip Lewis wrote something on his memo pad.

“Listen, Mel,” he said. “We can cook you up something higher than that. Now you’re safe home we don’t want to send you out to Bragg or Bailey. What would you do with a division, boy?”

It was the damnedest thing he had ever heard and a funny sort of attitude. He wanted to ask Snip Lewis what he thought the army was about, but it was no time to sound off too freely, and besides, Froggy had just re-entered the room.

“General Councillor is outside, sir,” Froggy said, “and the car’s at the Mall entrance.”

“All right,” Snip said, “two more minutes … and take my briefcase,” and they both watched Froggy close the door.

“Froggy has been quite a find,” Snip Lewis said.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Mel Goodwin answered. “I’d be damned if I’d want him.”

After all, he could call a spade a spade with Snip, and Snip laughed.

“I know,” he said, “but right now we need more brains than brawn. Just get it through your head that you’ve got brains, too. Goochy’s here and a lot of your old crowd. We’ll all get together. Take off the pressure, Mel, it’s going to be all right.”

They walked out of the office together, and it was quite a walk from Snip’s desk to the door, but he was not sure even then that everything was going to be all right. There were too many major generals wanting something. He was always running into them along the corridors, all calling on their own Snip Lewises. Maybe there should have been a displaced persons camp. There was nothing more displaced to his way of thinking than a combat general without troops in the Pentagon.

When you came to think of it, Bud Councillor had been holding down a desk in Grosvenor Square until the Third Army was outside Paris and then he had warmed another chair in Paris until he had got himself promoted to the higher echelons in Frankfurt. There had been a time when things had been a little different around the Pentagon. He could remember, for example, when he had flown back just after Salerno as a member of a group of five to give a firsthand picture of certain situations. Everyone was running around in those days to light your cigarette and when you sat around a table there was a universal belief that someone who had heard a gun go off might conceivably contribute something worth while to a discussion.

He had hardly been able to wait until the plane took off again. There had been a little dinner before the take-off in a certain house at Fort Myer and it had flattered the hell out of him to have been in such company. He had been the junior to all of them, but some of them had looked wistful, and sometimes you could forget about the rank. That farewell party and the faces stayed with him in the plane all the way up to Gander, but he would not have wanted any of their jobs. They were in touch with everything and at the same time out of touch. That was always the trouble with high echelons. You had to delegate so much and trust so much to other eyes and ears that you were always locked away in some map room dealing with high logistical problems, surrounded by people like Froggy Jukes. You were more of a professor than a soldier, and he wasn’t any professor.

I had never seen Melville Goodwin quite so completely frank. His face was more mobile than I had ever seen it, and it exhibited traces of uncertainty and worry that I had never observed previously. He was clearly talking to himself as much as to Dottie Peale and me, though at the same time he was conscious of both of us. He wanted us to listen, although there was nothing that either of us could contribute because we were not familiar with the practices of army administration. We could only sympathize inexpertly with his disturbance. Then all at once he looked guilty.

“This is all off the record, you know,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ve been giving you a false picture of the Pentagon. Set it down to biliousness, will you?”

He was back with his loyalties again. He had given a false picture of the Pentagon and now he wanted to make it clear that there was the finest crowd of people there that had ever been in any damned army—only there was so much fine material that it was a little crowded together, even in the Pentagon. He knew everybody there, or almost everybody. Why not, after thirty-five years in the service? There had never been such a collection of people with fine battle records or so many good leaders. It was a thrill to be on a first-name basis with nearly all the big wheels in that fine crowd. When he spoke of theoreticians and cream-puff thinking, he was only referring to a very few. They were doing the best they could there in the face of public apathy. They all felt basically as he did about building up a combat force and he had been unduly hard on Froggy Jukes too. Froggy really had a lot to recommend him.

He had been talking out of school about old Snip Lewis, too, who had done everything for him in Washington. Why, Snip had even wangled it somehow with Public Relations so that he could have a car and a driver when he needed it, and God only knew how Snip had managed it. Snip’s office wasn’t really as big as the Cadet Chapel either, and of course he had not been hitting Snip for a job seriously. Snip was not Career Management, but maybe you did just run on about things when you were new around the Pentagon.

“I don’t want to give you any improper picture,” he said, “but Sid here knows you can bellyache about the Pentagon a little, even when it’s full of old classmates.”

He passed his hand over his closely cropped hair and unbuttoned the last button of his blouse.

“Why don’t you take your coat off?” Dottie asked him.

I had never thought that I would be so much Melville Goodwin’s partisan. I hated to think of his being disturbed in Washington. I did not want him to be vulnerable like other people.

“Maybe that’s a very good suggestion,” he said, “but I wish you’d get in the habit of calling it a blouse instead of a coat.”

“Oh, excuse me,” Dottie said. “I don’t know why I always keep forgetting.”

He rose and took off his blouse and hung it neatly on the back of a chair, and that homely action dramatized all that he had been saying. He obviously recognized this himself, because when he sat down again in his olive-drab shirt, I saw him gazing at his blouse.

“Come to think of it,” he said, “it looks like part of my skin, doesn’t it? Now if Sid took off his coat, it wouldn’t look so much like skin.”

He smiled at us expectantly, but neither Dottie nor I spoke.

“Come to think of it, everything’s on it, isn’t it?” he said. “Maybe that’s all that anybody ever sees in me—right over there.”

Dottie smiled, and I was glad that she answered quickly.

“Oh, no,” she said, “you’ve still got some stuffing in your shirt.”

Mel Goodwin looked sharply at Dottie, but he saw the joke.

“Well, there it is,” he said, “and it reads like a book. How would you like it if I left it off for good?”

“You look more comfortable without it,” Dottie said.

“By God,” Mel Goodwin said, “I do feel more comfortable, as long as you’re around here, Dot.”

He stood up and walked toward the chair where his blouse hung, and walked around it slowly.

“Now when I was a kid at the Point,” he said, “I often dreamed of ribbons. Maybe there comes a time when you get too many. Maybe I’ve reached that period. Maybe it’s a sort of change of life. I’ve got a queer kind of a feeling.”

“What kind of a feeling?” Dottie asked.

“That maybe I might kick and holler if anybody should happen to pin another cluster on me,” Mel Goodwin said. “God damn, maybe I’ve been a kid all my life and now I’m growing up. Maybe Sid sees what I mean.”

He was looking at me in his coolest way, and I could almost believe that he knew what I thought about ribbons.

“Mel,” I said, “you’d better remember just one thing.”

“What one thing?” he asked.

“You’d better remember that you’re too old to grow up.”

For a moment he looked deadly serious and then he smiled his very youngest smile.

“Son,” he said, “that crack of yours shows you know a lot about me and about the service. I don’t believe you know how deep that cuts. I’m too old to grow up but I can still feel myself growing. Now maybe you can tell me where it’s taking me.”

“I wouldn’t know,” I said.

He walked across the room to the window and stood with his back to us, looking out into the back yards of Seventy-second Street.

“All right,” he said, “I wouldn’t either, but something’s got to give somewhere. That’s right, isn’t it, Dot? Something’s got to give.”

“Now, Mel,” Dottie said, “don’t worry about it now.”

She must have been referring to something between them that they had often discussed before, and I could only listen, like an eavesdropper.

“I’m not,” Mel Goodwin said. “I’m used to shoving off whenever I know what’s cooking.”

Then his mood changed, and I was very glad it did. All the lines straightened on his face.

“Why haven’t you stopped me sounding off about myself?” he asked. “You were saying that Sid had something on his mind. Well, all right, what’s your problem, Sid?” It was remarkable how quickly things could rearrange themselves. Melville Goodwin was back again and in control of the situation. I was very glad to unload my own troubles and to get away from his.

When I began telling how Gilbert Frary had discovered me—hearing my voice from the ETO—my story seemed painfully superficial. It was mostly an egocentric striving, punctuated by a few pallid efforts at escape. Once, I suppose, I had wanted to be a great writer or columnist, but the desire had never assumed the proportions of an emotional drive. There was a gap between mediocrity and greatness which I had never crossed. Mine had been the life of anyone in a protected peaceful era within the limits of what might be called free enterprise, but all the time I talked I could feel what it lacked in splendor. I had never been a selfless part of a cause. I had never tossed my life in front of me and followed it. If I had risked it once or twice, this had only been through accident and not because of concerted purpose. The ship ahead of me in a convoy had been torpedoed once, the windows in my hotel in London had been shattered once by the explosion of a bomb, but I had never advanced with a group of men on an enemy position. I had never commanded a lost hope. I had never obeyed a call. I was not a Melville Goodwin. All I could say in my defense was that I could see myself more clearly than Goodwin had ever seen himself.

Dottie Peale had heard my story before. She sat gazing abstractedly at the pointed toe of her slipper, but Melville Goodwin looked straight at me, following every word, and occasionally he frowned.

“You see, it’s what I’ve told you, Mel,” Dottie said. “Sidney is always drifting. He simply never seems to care.”

“I don’t know,” Mel Goodwin said. “Sitting in on this with a purely outside point of view, I can make a few suggestions, but it seems to me Sid’s done pretty well, Dot. He’s getting the facts together and waiting to take action.”

Gilbert Frary and the broadcasting studio had finally reached a military level, and Melville Goodwin’s voice had a ring of complete authority. He had taken over my problem, and curiously enough I actually felt a weight being lifted from me because Melville Goodwin was taking over.

“I’d like your advice,” I began, “but there’s no reason why you should know much about this sort of thing.”

Melville Goodwin nodded. “That’s all right, Sid,” he said. “You’ve given me the information. All anybody ever needs is good straight information.”

“Be quiet,” Dottie said, “don’t interrupt him, Sid.”

“I wasn’t going to interrupt him,” I told her.

“Well, I’m glad you weren’t,” Dottie said. “Now, Mel, make a note that I know a man who wants a news program.”

“I’m not forgetting,” Melville Goodwin said. “Get me a cigarette, will you, Dot?” and Dottie handed him the cigarette box and picked up the lighter as quickly as Colonel Flax.

“There was an officer at the St. George Hotel in African Headquarters in Algiers,” the General said, “named Sturmer, holding a temporary rank of brigadier general like me. He was just like this Frary, flexible and without loyalty. Did I ever tell you about Ed Sturmer, Dot?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Dottie said.

“Dottie always gets me talking,” Mel Goodwin said. “I begin to forget what anecdotes I haven’t told her. Now this Ed Sturmer was just like this Frary. You always find people like him around any headquarters. He wanted to get my spot in ‘Bullpup.’ He was always telling me what a fine guy I was and how he admired me, and then he was always finding little facts about me and getting in to see the old man when I wasn’t there, and giving the little facts an unfavorable slant. Well, I let Ed run along with it until I was all ready for him. Ed and I were just old buddies until I was ready.”

Melville Goodwin rubbed his hands together.

“I just waited until the Old Man had Ed and me alone with him there in the St. George,” he said, “going over a map; I remember Ed was holding a pointer and arguing about some little track behind the mountains. I interrupted him right in the middle and spoke to the Old Man.

“‘Sir,’ I said, ‘may I make a remark before General Sturmer finishes?’

“‘Yes, what is it, Mel?’ the Old Man said.

“‘Heinzy,’ I said, ‘Ed is going to ask you, if he hasn’t asked you already, whether he can’t have my spot in “Bullpup.” If you want him and not me, I’d suggest you make the decision, instead of letting us both horse around like kids at a cocktail party.’”

Melville Goodwin fixed his eyes upon me as though I were Ed Sturmer, and I could feel indirectly the impact of his words.

“There are times when you’ve got to stick your neck out,” Mel Goodwin said. “I was taking one hell of a gamble. Sturmer jumped so, he damn near dropped the pointer, but old Heinzy didn’t say anything for a quarter of a minute. I had thrown the ball right at him.

“‘You’re damned impertinent, don’t you think, Mel?’ the Old Man said.

“‘Yes, sir, I think so,’ I told him.

“‘Well,’ he said, ‘there’s no need for such shocking manners, Mel. Go on and consider there has been no interruption, Ed.’”

Melville Goodwin paused as though he had reached the end of the story, and he grew impatient when he saw we were waiting for more.

“That was all there was to it,” he said.

“But what happened?” Dottie asked.

“God damn it, Dot,” Melville Goodwin said, “nothing further happened. I was in ‘Bullpup’ until I got a piece of hardware in my shoulder, wasn’t I?”

It seemed to me that it was one of Melville Goodwin’s better anecdotes, because it ended in suspense, even if Melville Goodwin thought it ended perfectly.

“Is Ed Sturmer around the Pentagon now?” I asked.

“Hell, yes,” Melville Goodwin said. “Ed’s right there in the Pentagon, but that isn’t the point.”

“Then what’s the point?” I asked.

“Either you or I must be pretty dumb tonight, son,” the General said. “The point is, you’ve got to stick your neck out sometimes. You get another job lined up and then go and see this Frary.”

“Did you have another job lined up in Algiers?” I asked.

“Listen, son,” the General said, “I’m talking about you, not me. Three other people were asking for me, and Heinzy knew it. Maybe I’m not as dumb as you think I am. Dottie will go around and see that man for you, and now you’d better get back to Connecticut or Helen will pin your ears back. You have nothing further to worry about. Dot and I personally will handle your situation.”

“Suppose I don’t want you to handle my situation?” I asked.

Melville Goodwin smiled.

“I used to think you knew something about women, son,” he said. “Don’t you know that Dottie will do it anyway?”

Dottie was smiling at him affectionately, and I knew that Melville Goodwin was right. It was time for me to be getting home to Connecticut. They wanted me to go, but I still delayed for a minute, because of an incongruous piece in the General’s thinking that aroused my curiosity.

“There’s just one element that I’d like you to consider, sir,” I said, “a rather personal element.”

It was a suitable moment to call him “sir,” and that mystic monosyllable was a warning signal, showing that what would follow had a formal and serious note. His eyes narrowed in alert interrogation.

“Suppose I’m sick to death of this broadcasting and that I’d welcome any opportunity to get out of it.”

Dottie shrugged her shoulders impatiently.

“Sid’s always sick of anything he’s doing,” she said, “and he always has been.”

“Well,” I said, “the same is true with you, Dottie. I’ve never thought of you as a contented type.”

“Oh, nuts,” Dottie said, “I always stick to what I’m doing and at least I know what I want.” She always would believe she knew—simply by affirmation.

Melville Goodwin looked as though I had uttered a heresy and he stood up. I noticed that he did not have to use his hands to propel himself upward from the cushions of the sofa.

“Now, Sid,” he said, “now, Sid.” He spoke in the gentle and fatherly voice that he probably used on subordinates whom he really liked. “You’re bothered and tired, son, or you’d never have said a damn-fool thing like that.” Then his voice changed. There was a ring in it of absolute and beautiful certainty. “Just take it easy, son. Of course you’re not sick of what you’re doing, because basically you have guts. You’ve got a fine position and look at that lovely home of yours in Connecticut. When I think of you running around loose in the ETO, only a Public Relations major, and I see you now, it’s a real inspiration. Now listen to me.”

In spite of myself, his voice instilled in me a sense of guilt. I felt like a college football player being addressed by the coach in the locker room at the end of a ragged half.

“I’m going to tell you something, son,” he went on. “Do you remember when that mortar shell rolled you and me into the ditch in Normandy? When we got up and exchanged a few words afterwards, I knew I was talking to a man, even if you were only a ninety-day wonder from the Special Services. I’d have known it if you’d been an entertainer in the USO, and do you know what I said to Goochy afterwards? I don’t think I ever told you what I said to Goochy about Sid, did I, Dot?”

Dottie shook her head; the echo of Mel Goodwin’s voice held her silent.

“I said, ‘Goochy, make a note of that officer’s name and find out about him when we get the time. A lad like that ought to be in the line. It’s too damn bad to think of his crapping around somewhere in back.’”

Melville Goodwin waited, and I cleared my throat.

“It’s kind of you to tell me that, sir,” I said. “It means a lot, coming from you.”

And somehow it did mean a lot.

“The war’s over. Forget it, son,” he said. “You’ve got guts and you’ve got your directive too. Never neglect a directive. You’ve a lovely wife and a beautiful little girl, and you’re not going to let them down. Now go on home and leave this to Dot and me. Good night, son.”

The speech was ended, and Melville Goodwin strode over to the table and the bottles.

“Good night, dear,” Dottie said.

But I said one thing more to Mel Goodwin before I left.

“I thought you sounded rather discontented yourself tonight, sir.”

I should have been taking a general stock of myself, recalling the amount of money I had saved, and striving to remember Clause 28 in my contract instead of feeling a deep concern for Melville Goodwin. A part of that concern was undoubtedly a hang-over from the war. You had to be loyal in the army, and whether I liked it or not, I was loyal to Melville Goodwin, though perhaps I was not as loyal to him as to the idea he represented. Roughly speaking, I suppose I owed a debt to all the Melville Goodwins. They had been useful a short while ago and they might be needed again in an uncertain world. He was both an individual and a symbol and he had to do what I expected of him. He must not be a failure. I was one of the Goodwin crowd and right behind Melville A. Goodwin. I was sure that Mel Goodwin and Dottie Peale could not have anything in common that would last for any length of time. As long as there was some sort of sensible discretion and as long as he did not continue to quote Tennyson’s “Ulysses” and as long as he did not row into the sunset with Dottie Peale, he would get it out of his system. Yet there had been some other sort of understanding between them. I remembered Dottie’s telling him not to speak about it now and his saying that something had to give somewhere.… “That’s right, isn’t it, Dot?… Something’s got to give.…”