Once an Eagle (89 page)

“He down in Australia?”

“No. They shipped him back. His heart was affected.”

“Must have been pretty grim, all around.”

“I guess
so.
”

Massengale sipped his drink. What a Godforsaken business. Stuck out there at the farthest end of Poverty Row. The men, the equipment and supplies were going to Africa, to Britain, to Pearl Harbor and Nouméa—they were going everywhere but Kokogela and Milne Bay. It was fantastic—MacArthur, the nearest thing to a military genius the country had, forced to eke it out with leftovers, handouts, the barrel scrapings. Well, it was the old feud: the Chief's hand was against him, and Halsey's. And just plain distance. Nobody wanted to go out there—who in hell would, in his right mind? With a few exceptions the only people being sent out there were the culls, the misfits, the hell-raisers, the clowns.

“—I hope they give them a real good long rest,” Tommy said. “In Australia.” She was watching him warily now, that shadow of entreaty still behind her eyes.

“I'm sure they will.” His face was grave, he knew; grave and compassionate. But the dark interior laughter welled up again. That was the entrancing part about Operations: there was nothing you didn't know—or that you couldn't find out, if you were highly enough placed, or if you went about it correctly. There was so much he knew: that Sicily had won out over Sardinia, that that dull, colorless, plodding Bradley was going to be given a corps, that in June the division in which Damon and Krisler were serving would take part in an assault on Wokai, a tortuous peninsula running northwest from that ugly dragon's head of New Guinea—a vicious place abounding in cliffs and caves and impenetrable rain forest. Nobody at this table knew it, Damon and Krisler certainly didn't know it; but that was what was going to happen. The mills of the gods, grinding slowly and surely …

Listening to Caldwell he sighed, but not from ennui. At certain moments, going to the safe to draw out maps or secret documents, or attending conferences in the still, calm, nicely ordered rooms, he would be visited by a tremor not unlike those fugitive, precarious seconds before the onset of orgasm—but without the ensuing sense of loss, the depletion, the all-consuming chagrin. This endured. Dry-mouthed, exultant, he would draft an action radio and hand it in for dispatch, beholding in his mind's eye the parade of preparations, the signal flashes from a hundred bridges, the tense flurry in the operations rooms five thousand miles away, the issuing of weapons and clothing, the crating and strapping of field desks and rations and tentage, the interrogation of prisoners and refugees, the outpour of general orders, special orders, field orders, memoranda—the whole ponderous uprooting of tens of thousands of men toward some distant, furious rendezvous.

—Yet the originating force was not his. That was what rankled. He could advise, he could suggest, emend, implement—but he was not the
source
of action. He could not conceive and fashion this modern-day epic, like a Renaissance sculptor confronting his colossal block of marble …

“How about you, Massengale? Aren't you hankering for a field command?” Caldwell's eyes, friendly, alert—that astonishingly penetrant gaze. Almost as if he had been reading his thoughts … But that wasn't true, of course; the General had merely picked up the thread of the earlier conversation.

“Yes, General,” he answered, “I am indeed. The Chief says not for a while yet. You know his phrase: ‘When the right day comes.'” He smiled—just the right combination of ruefulness and acquiescence. “And believe me, when the Chief says something, that's it.”

“Yes. I'm sure of that.”

All of which was not quite true, but old Caldwell didn't know it. Rearden had asked for him as ADC during the early planning for Torch, and before that there'd been an opening as Chief of Staff for the 19th, training down at Bragg. He had decided against both moves. Of course he would need a field command to properly round out his career, equip him with the credentials to reach his goal. But it was better to wait: it was going to be a long war, this one. There would be Italy, and then the big cross-channel invasion—the British at their very suavest wouldn't be able to talk the Chief out of that—there might even be an Adriatic offensive, Churchill was very keen on it. And then there were the Philippines, Formosa, the China Coast—all before Honshu and the Grand Assault across the great Kwanto Plain. There was time. He'd get his second star soon, but he didn't want a division: he wanted a corps. It was the highest tactical post, an opportunity to give real scope to his talents, realize that high, hard dream of the perfect battle, the grand envelopment and annihilation that bespoke the pure science of command. A chance would come. There would be mighty battles in Flanders, the Po, the valley of the Loire, but he was not sure he wanted that. Eisenhower had disliked him ever since that row over the Philippine Army budget in Manila, and he'd crossed swords with Bradley when they were both assistant secretaries at the War Department. Clark was difficult to get along with, and Patton was impossible. Allen and Hodges were boy scouts, and so was Truscott—none of them would ever amount to anything. The Pacific war contained the ingredients he needed. An opportunity would present itself, an independent operation, perhaps an island where a corps commander would have a relatively free hand in the forging of a twentieth-century Cannae. Meanwhile he could wait, here at the taut, vibrant center of things, where the first words were spoken in thunder, and the earth trembled. Uncle Schuyler, now a senator, and on the Armed Services Committee, was the most powerful ally a general officer in his position could hope to have. Patience, and a watchful eye …

Caldwell's senior aide, a quiet, rather colorless man named Palmer, came up to the table and engaged the General in a whispered conversation; Caldwell excused himself and left with him. The women and Donny were talking about Styles and Mayberry and Finch and some of the others who had been caught on Bataan. Poor devils. Hanging on, praying for help that could never reach them, unaware they'd been written off with grim finality months before. The fortunes of war. He expressed a suitable concern, and turned to the girl, who was gazing off across the room.

“I suppose you're planning a wedding?”

She glanced at him quickly. “Oh no—no, we're not.”

“No nuptials?”

“Don doesn't want to get married. He feels it isn't the right thing to do.”

“Why's that? Afraid of the noose?”

She smiled—a slow, even smile. “Oh no. He just feels with his—with things the way they are, we ought to wait for a while.”

“And you agree?”

“No, sir—I'd like to get married right away. But I'm willing to do what he wants.”

A contained, placid girl. None of Jinny's nervous, volatile fire. He thought of his daughter with a slow, heavy throb of anxiety. She was so beautiful, so mercurial and willful—and he could not reach her. Whenever he thought of her he always saw her standing in a patch of brilliant sunlight, in the middle of the Tabriz carpet, her long, dark hair whirling about her head, her eyes filled with that merry, malicious glare—on the verge of some new piece of devilry. He had scolded her, he had spanked her—once he had completely lost his temper and whipped her with a fair leather belt—and still she defied him, mocked him, baffled him. She had come down from college for the Christmas holidays—and then after three days told them she was leaving, with some airy reference to staying with a classmate in Connecticut.

“—But you just got here, Virginia,” he'd protested. “We've planned a party for Thursday …”

“Can't be helped!” She'd shrugged her thin shoulders and made a face at him. “That's what you get for having such an overwhelmingly popular, sought-after daughter.”

“You should have let Mother and me know, if you had contracted for an obligation of this sort …”

“Oh, it's not an
obligation
—goodness! you turn everything into a formal guard mount—Nanny Darlington just asked me if I'd like to spend a few days up there with her and I said yes. Why under heaven do you make so much
out
of everything …?”

Watching her he had felt the old anger, the old despair, stir him. “I don't think you should go,” he heard himself say flatly, though he knew it was wrong. “You had better stay here at home.”

Her eyes dilated with rage. “Why, that's ridiculous,” she cried, “I've got to go—you've just told me yourself it's a social obligation!”

“Then you may phone them and tell them you cannot get away.”

She tossed her hair back wildly. “I'm
not staying here …
”

“You will if I say so.”

“Oh, let her go, Courtney,” Emily had protested wearily, “—if she wants to go, let her. What good will be served keeping her here against her will?”

“Families gather together for the holidays,” he declared.

Jinny laughed. “So you can parade me around as the sweet and dutiful daughter? the crowning achievement in a—”

“Will you be silent!” He lowered his voice. “It's little enough …”

“
Little—!
It's a lot too much!”

“Let her go, Courtney—”

He'd left the room, unable to contain himself any longer; had gone to his study and read for an hour or so, until calm had returned, until he had things well in hand again. He had let her go up to Connecticut: there had really been no choice. He could have held her, but she would have retaliated with some barbaric, unforeseen, ruinous stunt that would have been infinitely worse than explaining her absence from home Christmas week to Stegner and Blaine; infinitely worse than being deprived of her presence, wondering at odd moments what she was doing. At Shafter she had scalded their maid's little boy with water from a tea kettle; in Paris she had built a fire in the middle of her room and nearly precipitated an international crisis; at Leavenworth he had drawn a reprimand from old Embree when it had been discovered that she'd been phoning various officers' homes and impersonating the wife of the Commandant. Of all her capricious, destructive pranks that one had frightened him so badly he had merely sat on the couch gazing at her.

“Why did you do it, Virginia? When you know how important the school here is to me—when I've told you, Mother's told you, time and time again …
Why?
”

For the briefest moment her gamine's face had glowed—as if she couldn't resist telling him: and yet she
would
resist it, for to disclose the motive would have immensely diminished this perverse and beguiling pleasure.

“I don't know …” She shrugged, looking away—fully aware of the admissions implicit in this evasion, and aware that he, too, knew. “It just—struck me as such fun at the time! …”

Punishment had never cured it: she seemed to welcome punishment in the same way the dutiful child approaches the reward for good conduct. He could not touch her. Charming, malignant, devious, she had danced through life—fighting him, tormenting him, eluding him. He could never know what she was thinking …

“What does your father do?” he asked the Shifkin girl abruptly.

“My father?” Her eyes dropped, came up to his again. “He's a correspondent, a foreign correspondent. He's in Tunisia now.”

Yes. New York City Jews. The pattern was clear now. How had young Damon run into her? “And you're in school, I suppose.”

“Yes, I'm a sophomore at Barnard.”

That followed. “My daughter is at Bryn Mawr.”

“Yes I know—Don's talked about her.”

“Of course. They've known each other since they were children.” This reminded him of still another unpleasant episode involving a war memorial at Beyliss, and he frowned and said: “How do you feel about his going overseas?”

She paused, her eyes on his stars, his ribbons. “I don't think I should say.”

“Why's that?”

“Well …”

“Are you afraid of hurting my feelings?”

She gave a shy smile. “It isn't that. It's only that I think the whole war is wrong.”

“Really?” He expressed surprise. “I should think the Nazi racial theories in particular would afford a certain justification.”

“Yes.” She nodded soberly. “We haven't any choice, I suppose. But with war—things are lost.”

“Things like what?”

“Well”—she was ill at ease now, a bit troubled—“certain rights, certain liberties. And then they're never recovered again. When war comes people get into a habit of mind, accept things they wouldn't otherwise.”

“War impels people toward Fascist doctrines, then.”

She shook her head, watching him curiously. She was quick; very quick. They always were. “I didn't mean anything as
final
as that. It seems to me more a kind of reliance on a whole series of attitudes—everybody comes to feel that they're solutions: things like violence and power, and making sacrifices …”

“You don't approve of the individual making sacrifices?”

“Oh, yes.” Her large, oval eyes were very serious now. “Only it all depends on what the sacrifices are for …”

“Fine. What should they be for?”

“A world without prejudice, for one thing,” young Damon said; he had been listening to the exchange for a few moments, and he entered it now with a kind of soft passion. “A world without color lines, without one-tenth of its people living like kings and the other nine-tenths like desperate animals … If we simply sink back into the same tired old world of spheres of influence and power politics and gunboat diplomacy, there isn't an awful lot of sense in it.”

Massengale smiled at them tolerantly. “I don't think you need to worry about that this time. The world that emerges from this struggle is going to be a very, very different world indeed.”