A Midnight Clear: A Novel (6 page)

Of course, Mother was very reluctant. He wasn’t about to satisfy our puerile salaciousness. To all our entreaties, questions about how often and how much, his only reply was a sly smile and bashful “Oh, it isn’t like that at all,” or “You guys are sex maniacs.”

 

So, it got to be less than three weeks before shipping out. I think it was Morrie who came up with the idea, or maybe it was Shutzer. Four of us managed a weekend pass and headed into town to hunt a nice, complaisant whore who could put us out of our misery, initiate us into the rites of manhood, emancipate us from the lonely compassion of our five-fingered widows.

All together we had fifty dollars. Ten was for a room at the Jefferson Hotel. This was for two but we knew a back way to sneak in the others. It was Gordon, Shutzer, Morrie and I. We figured any more would be some kind of gang bang and we had more romantic aspirations. The rest of our money was to go into the “investment” and a bottle of bourbon. Forty dollars was a lot of money in those days.

There was much speculation and discussion on the kind of woman. I think each of us was scared we’d get involved with a real woman and wouldn’t be able to manage it. We agreed pure chance, not game skills, would decide the “pecker order,” so we matched coins. Morrie won, Shutzer second, me for sloppy thirds and Gordon on the tail end. (Think of that, a quadruple pun!)

We settled into the hotel. Gordon and Shutzer had been nominated for the search, the recon part. We knew better than to hustle girls at the USO. We’d all tried that at one time or another, but the forces of morality were greater than our tactical skills. The B-girls in the bars were generally too much for us. None of us could make the grade with a genuine soldier-town whore, and none of us was willing to get a case of clap or syph. We were well-conditioned by the U.S. Army VD films. These films of festering mouth and cock sores were usually shown just before chow. Thank God they were in black and white. Morrie was convinced they showed them when the quartermasters were running short on chow allotment. Jim Freize insisted it was only
a priori
population control. The war was, by common consent,
ex post facto
birth control.

Probably what we wanted was some girl who would resemble the girl we took, or wished we’d taken, to our highschool prom. Morrie and I knew we could never make any kind of approach under any conditions. I personally had decided to sacrifice my contribution to the cause if it looked impossible. I don’t know what I actually thought could bring together my absurd romantic notions with, what seemed then, my pressing physical demand.

Gordon and Shutzer left the hotel all slicked up. They were wearing fresh underwear, had rubbed in enough Mum to make a smeary mess in their armpit hairs, splashed themselves with after-shave lotion. It was early summer, and muggy hot in Mississippi.

Morrie and I had decided to enjoy the privacy of the room. We each had a book from the post library. We stripped to our skivvies and jumped into the beds. We luxuriated in the quiet; it was accented by the sound of a huge long-bladed wooden fan hung from the ceiling rotating slowly. In turn, and on schedule, we took baths, timing ourselves as the water heater recuperated. It was a fine evening and great contrast to the streets outside roiling with other soldiers, MPs on the prowl and glaring townspeople. The feeling of civilians in Shelby seemed to be “What the hell are you doing here when you should be out there fighting Nazis and Japs?”

 

It’s past midnight when Shutzer and Gordon come back. I’m asleep; I’m sure Morrie is, too. After the baths and the quiet reading, I’m not even nervous anymore. I’m convinced Shutzer and Gordon aren’t going to find anybody, anyway.

But they have; they sneak into the room and a young girl comes in with them. I can’t believe it. I sit up in bed and look over at Morrie. He’s sitting up, too, his OD undershirt dark olive drab against the sheets.

This girl fulfills my wildest dreams. She can’t be much more than twenty and she’s beautiful. Shutzer and Gordon are giggling nervously. It must have been some fun smuggling this girl through town and up these hotel back stairs at this time of night. After the last bus has gone back to camp, the whole area swarms with MPs.

The girl’s standing just inside the door, smiling at us. I know right then I won’t be able to go through with it. I’m glad I’m third down the line.

It doesn’t seem possible it’s happening but it is. It’s about here I realize Shutzer and Gordon have been drinking, probably trying to boost their flagging nerve. Gordon has a bottle in a paper bag; it turns out our bottle of bourbon is almost a third down already. None of us is much at drinking; in fact, we class drinking, along with cussing, as army pseudo heroics, to be avoided.

With nothing said, I slip from my bed. I’m embarrassed wearing only GI underwear, large unbuttoned slit in front, like the back of a hospital gown. I scurry into the bathroom. Gordon and Shutzer come in after me. Shutzer’s picked up the pillows from one bed on his way in; he locks the door behind him.

“We might’s well make ourselves comfortable; never know how long a guy like Morrie’s going to take.”

Shutzer’s playing big shot but his hands are shaking and he’s sweat through his suntans under the arms and in the small of his back.

Gordon sits on the toilet with the seat down; he slides one pillow under him. I climb into the bathtub and tuck a pillow behind my neck. The tub’s ice cold and hard; I get out and start filling it. Who knows when I’ll have a real bathtub to use again; besides, if I’m going to be awake at one o’clock in the morning, I might’s well be doing something; I’ve finished my book.

Shutzer looks at his watch, pulls out a cigar and tries to light up. Gordon glances at him disgustedly. Shutzer starts undoing the buttons on his shirt.

“You know, she says she’s doing this for nothing; ‘anything for the boys overseas,’ or almost overseas, anyhow.”

He pulls off his sweaty shirt.

“Won’t, you wouldn’t believe it. We went into every bar and joint, up and down every creepy dark street, arguing all the way. When we’d finally agree on one, the price’d be something astronomical like twenty bucks a throw, no cut rate for groups.”

He drops his shirt on the floor and looks into the mirror over the sink. He squeezes a pimple under his ear. He tries to light his cigar again. He doesn’t even know enough about cigars to trim it.

“Ya mind gettin’ off the toilet a minute, Gordon; I gotta take a piss.”

Mel stands with his pillow clutched against his chest. Shutzer lifts the lid, pulls out but can’t do anything. He stands there, looking down, puffing on his uncut cigar trying to keep it lit. We’re quiet; we can hear Morrie and the girl talking in the other room but can’t hear what they’re saying. Shutzer buttons up and looks at his watch again. He undoes his pants and slips them off.

“Might’s well be ready; never know how long ol’ Morrie Margolis is gonna take; might come right off without knowing it. No sense wasting time.”

He sniffs his armpits, then takes some after-shave lotion from his toilet kit and rubs it in. I try the water in my tub; too hot. I turn on some cold.

“We’d just bought the bourbon and had almost given up when we found this girl. We were all the way down by the Greyhound Depot. She was in there sitting on one of the wooden benches. Gordon here goes over and starts talking to her. Before we know it, we’re telling her about what we’ve been doing all night; how we’re looking for a whore to defoliate four overripe virgins. We’re laughing and then, right there, out of the blue she volunteers to come back with us. God, you never know! I thought she was kidding, but she’s serious and it isn’t costing us a dime.”

Gordon sits down on the toilet seat again. The tub’s full to overflow so I turn off the water, ease myself in.

“Stan, I have a rubber and a pro kit you can use if you want.”

“I have my own. Don’t worry me, Won’t; you’re getting bad as Wilkins.”

He searches the pack out of his pants on the floor.

I’m glad I said it. Shutzer starts pacing; that is, if you can really pace in a hotel bathroom with two other people. He’s wearing his shoes, socks and underwear; the cigar’s clenched in his teeth and he’s clutching a packet of three rubbers in one hand. He’s balanced his pro kit on the edge of the sink. He looks at his watch.

“Should’ve known Margolis would take forever.”

“Ever try one of those pros, Stan? I did once just as an experiment. It doesn’t hurt but feels peculiar, like rubber snakes squeezing up the end of your prick. Just relax.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll figure it. What the fuck could they be doing in there?”

“Watch the language, Stan, we have gentlemen in the gents’ room. What would Father Mundy think?”

“Fuck Father Mundy!”

Gordon shakes his head, puts my pillow on his lap along with his own and lowers his head onto it. Shutzer looks at his watch again; he leans against the door to the bedroom.

“Hey, Morrie, how’s it goin’ in there, huh?”

No answer. Shutzer puts his ear against the door.

“Maybe she rolled him and slipped out, knockout drops or a blackjack. Could be anything.”

Shutzer knocks on the door, first soft, then hard.

“Hey, Margolis, give us other guys a chance, huh? At least say something.”

Still nothing. Shutzer slowly, quietly, unlocks, then opens the door, peeks, goes in. He closes the door behind him.

I stand up in the tub and dry myself off. Shutzer doesn’t come back. Gordon and I look at each other. I slip on my skivvies and we go in after Shutzer.

 

The three of them are sitting cross-legged on the bed. Shutzer and Morrie are still dressed, that is, if army OD underwear can be classified as dressed. The girl’s in a slip and crying. Gordon and I stand at the edge of the bed and listen. I’ll give a quick version of the story. It’s not what this book’s about anyway, or maybe it is.

Her name is Janice. She was engaged to a boy named Matt. Matt was killed in the Sicilian invasion. Janice only heard a week ago. She came down to see all the last places Matt had been in his short military life. She’s a junior at Penn State but isn’t going back to school. She’s twenty. She came down here to kill herself but didn’t have enough nerve; all she has now is a ticket back on the bus.

So what do you believe?

She and Morrie got to talking because they were embarrassed. They began kissing; then she was crying and that’s how it came out.

 

We wind up pushing the beds together into one big bed and start drinking the rest of our bourbon in the paper bag. Five people on two-thirds of a fifth. There might be some mathematical sense there, but it would be the only logical part of that night. It was like an X-rated version of a classic unmade war film starring Shirley Temple with Audie Murphy.

Janice has only made love with one person, Matt, just before he left. Now she’s volunteering herself to all of us. She’s insisting it’s what she wants to do.

Of course, this brings out the contemplative, cantankerous, contentious ASTPR in each of us. We’re also guilty, scared. This idea, this simple, lovely idea, must be subjected to every kind of spurious rationale. We wind down before dawn and sleep; tired, medium drunk, intimately wedded in our double-double bed. As the springing light of the new day grays the room, Janice comes, quietly, privately, half in our dreams, to each of us: Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny. We cry and giggle, passing through the mythical barrier between boys and men, men and death.

Janice takes us with her.

 

At ten o’clock, after a luxurious mass breakfast in bed, Mel escorts Janice to the bus station. We don’t talk about what happened. I don’t think any of us can put it together with anything we’ve known.

I personally have always had an eerie feeling about my first sexual experience, masquerading as a dead boy named Matt. And I still, to this day, have the lingering sensation that any woman with whom I make love has some other ideal person in her heart and mind.

Once more we’re up against my weakness for the true but unbelievable. Mel and Janice correspond through the war. Mel goes back home and they marry. They have three children and are divorced after fifteen years. Perhaps because it was a mixed marriage, or maybe only an ordinary marriage, subject to the pressures of our times. Perhaps Matt could always have been there.

 

Shutzer and Gordon finish dancing. We haul in the rest of our supplies. I have Miller back our jeep with the fifty caliber up against one side of the château so its barrel can traverse the entire road along with the bridge. Our other jeep we bring around behind the château. I drag in the snowsuits, the whitening, a box of grenades and the 506 radio. Mother helps me with all the schlepping. I also break out the field telephones. Miller begins untangling them. I struggle out our two big reels of wire for the phones. They’re still caked with mud from when we pulled them up in the Saar.

When I’m finished, I stop to get my breath and look over the situation. From in front of the château, we look down across a series of terraced fountains almost to the stream. This is the stream under the bridge we drove over up to the château. There are statues of dolphins and different fish in the fountains, with verdigrised copper piping coming from fish mouths for spurting water. The statues look like cast cement: spotted black, green and yellow with clots of hardened moss. The basins of the fountains are filled with frozen leaves.

I decide I’ll set up two guard posts; one downhill on the other side of the fountains, behind a retainer wall to the right of the bridge; the other up on the side of the hill behind the chateau, just higher than the roofline. I scramble uphill to locate a spot where we’ll have a good overall view of the road, both directions, and still cover the lower guard post.

I can’t think of any way to protect this higher post from infiltration behind. Still, someone climbing on this steep slope in frozen leaves and dead branches isn’t going to have much luck sneaking up on anybody. It’d have to be a good-sized attack patrol charging in, and if anything like that happens we’re goners anyway.