The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (45 page)

 

 

Both Trafford and Yale reached her at the same time. The Arab looked at
them menacingly, and then he shrugged and let them pass.

 

 

"We better get out of here," Yale said. "I don't like their reaction."

 

 

"The hell with them, I like it here," Trafford said belligerently. "No wog
is pushing me around." Back at the table, Anne pinned up her hair. "I guess
I shouldn't have done that." She looked at Yale impishly. "Do you think
I was better than the Arab girls?"

 

 

"Oh, you were a knockout," Yale said morosely. "Why didn't you take off
your clothes and do a thorough job?"

 

 

"Pay no attention to him," Kanachos said, patting Anne's shoulder.
"He doesn't appreciate the finer arts."

 

 

"Oh, I think he does," Anne said, teasing him. "I think Lieutenant
Marratt just has a very idealistic idea of women."

 

 

Yale scowled at her, peeved with her flippant manner.

 

 

"And," Anne continued, "since he has such a chivalrous idea about women,
and so that I won't hinder your evening further, I'm going to ask
Lieutenant Marratt if he'll take me back to the hotel."

 

 

Trafford protested. He insisted that she stay with them. It was only eleven.
They could go to a dozen places yet. Yale could see that Kanachos and
Stevens were pleased to get rid of Anne.

 

 

"Thanks, Major," Anne said. "I'm sure you'll understand . . . I'm really
tired. I'd just never last the evening."

 

 

As they walked away from the table they heard Trafford say, "That stupid
bastard wouldn't know what to do with her even if she lay on her back
and spread her legs."

 

 

Yale found a taxi to take them back to the hotel. Trafford had parked
the staff car across the street from the entrance. Yale suggested that
they could sit in the car if she wished.

 

 

"I wish, Yale," she said and sighed happily as she slumped into a corner
of the back seat. "God, it's good to be quiet. I hope they stay away
all night." She looked at Yale. "You're angry with me, aren't you? You
thought it was pretty cheap to do some private bedroom gyrations in
front of all those men."

 

 

"I don't have any right to be angry with you," Yale said, intrigued by
her forthright manner, "but I was. You're so very lovely I guess for a
moment I thought you ought to be dancing like that just for me. Silly,
isn't it? I scarcely know you -- so why should I care?"

 

 

"You still want to know whether it's skin deep, though?" Anne asked
mischievously.

 

 

"Somehow," Yale said, reaching out and taking her hand, "I don't have to
ask. I know it isn't." She came into his arms, and he kissed her gently.
"You frighten me, Yale Marratt," she whispered in his ear. "You won't
believe it. It sounds corny, but you're the first man I have kissed since
my husband was killed. I just haven't wanted to get in the clinches with
anyone else."

 

 

Slowly, they tried to explain themselves to each other. To tell their
emotions, and their fears and their loneliness. It would take days and
months and years and a lifetime, but they each sensed a deep desire to
break through the limitations of human consciousness; for a moment to
become the other. He kissed her slender neck, snuggling his nose into the
hollow behind her ear. "You smell warm and soapy and nice," Yale said.
He sat up suddenly. "How did you manage to wash your neck so recently?"

 

 

She giggled. "In the ladies' room, silly. Before we ate." She curled up in
his arms. Breathing sleepily against him she said, "I'm sorry about the
dance. I did it because I knew it would make you angry . . . I scarcely
know you. Why did I want to make you angry, Yale . . . ?"

 

 

She was sleeping in his arms when Trafford, Kanachos, and Stevens
returned. She heard Trafford's sneering remark, "Well, ain't this
charming," as they piled into the car. The idyll was over. Yale looked
at his watch. It was four-thirty in the morning. It had lasted five
hours. A simple thing . . . a man and a woman . . . and a longing for
communication. But he was a Lieutenant and she was a Red Cross girl
invited to India to run an enlisted men's club, and this was the backwash
of the war. As Trafford drove toward the air terminal, reciting the
events of the evening, both Anne and Yale wondered if they would ever be
together again. The impossibility of it left them silent and constrained.

 

 

 

 

On the flight to Karachi, Anne sat in a bucket seat near Yale. They spoke
only occasionally. Sitting across the aisle, Trafford watched them both
with a leer that seemed to be a permanent part of his countenance. He made
caustic remarks about the two love-birds. He suggested that the Army should
see to it that all its officers were more adequately supplied with female
diversion. His painfully spelled-out nastiness froze Anne into silence.

 

 

In the cold light of morning, without the warmth of Scotch releasing
her inhibitions, she regretted that she had been so friendly with
Yale. Nothing could come of it. In Karachi, they would be sent to
different destinations. The brief, casual contact that a war had given
them would vanish as quickly as it had come. She knew that she had
been seeking a moment's refuge from a frightening loneliness, and yet
she knew that huddling in the warmth of a stranger like Yale Marratt
was no solution. Having Yale's arms around her was a false security,
momentarily concealing her deep need to live and share another human's
life. That was the trouble, she thought. Once a woman has lived her life
for a man, she knows that there can be no other way for her. Trafford
would probably state it boldly. A widow was easy; once she'd had "it"
she wanted "it." But what was "it" when you stopped to analyze. A small
response really in much larger picture.

 

 

"It" was the final offering one human could make to another. The only
blending possible to say: "I care for you so much I want to be you." She
grinned to herself. Not for Trafford she guessed. For him "it" was a form
of gymnastics, with laurels for virility. She wondered what "it" was for
Yale. She shivered. She was frightened of her reaction to YaJe. She knew
that for some puzzling reason, given the opportunity, she would seek Yale
with all the strong sexuality she had suppressed for nearly a year.
It was a good thing, she guessed, that it would be impossible. Tonight
they would be in Karachi, separated quickly by impersonal mimeographed
orders into the vastness of the China-Burma-India theater. There was
no surcease for loneliness. Certainly not a few hours in bed with some
man. Hours that might mean infinitely more to you than to him.

 

 

The pilot started to drop altitude. Looking out the narrow windows of the
plane, they could see miles of date palm trees. In the distance, mixed
incongruously on the ancient landscape, were the huge superstructures
of oil wells.

 

 

"That's a part of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company," Trafford said.
"Some Arab is making more money out of this war than you will ever
dream of. Probably has a hundred wives and several Cadillacs. It's all
in knowing how!"

 

 

A staff sergeant, the navigator, told them to fasten their seat belts.
They would be landing at Abadan to refuel with a half hour layover.

 

 

As the place circled for a landing, the sunlight caught in the propeller
shafts and flicked rays of sunlight through the cabin. Anne looked
at Yale and smiled. Suddenly, the starboard engine coughed. . . .
It sputtered . . . conked out . . . then caught again. The plane lurched
sickeningly, rapidly losing altitude. Again the engine misfired and then
lapsed into silence. The quiet in the cabin, the sound of wind rushing
by, was unbearable.

 

 

"He's got to bring her in," Trafford said grimly. "He'll never get it up
again, now."

 

 

They skimmed the tops of date palms. "Hang onto your hats," someone yelled.

 

 

Yale had a momentary glimpse of a concrete runway. They screeched across
it. Hard. Bounced and then bumped hard again . . . again . . . again.

 

 

Anne screamed and clutched at Yale.

 

 

The plane overshot the runway; leaped into the sandy desert beyond,
and flipped up on its nose. The seat belt lashed against Yale's middle
but it held him secure. Anne was flung violently against him.

 

 

For a second there was a horrible silence . . . then screams of pain and
yelling as some of the passengers, who had only been stunned, revived,
and knocked out the emergency exits. Yale found that he had both his
arms around Anne in a bear hug. She looked at him in shocked horror
. . . tears streamed out of her eyes.

 

 

"You're all right, Anne," he muttered. "You're all right." Trafford
staggered across the tipped plane and hacked at their seat belts with
his trench knife. "Get out, quick," he shouted. "The damned thing may
catch on fire."

 

 

Yale pushed Anne through the exit. An emergency crew grabbed her and
lifted her out. Yale could see Trafford working his way forward. The
son-of-a-bitch has no fear, Yale thought. He tried to follow him but
Kanachos pushed him into the exit. "Come on, stupid, get the hell out,
and be glad you can walk! There's a few in front who are pretty smashed up."

 

 

The plane didn't catch on fire. It simply stood in the air, like a huge
dead bug with a smashed proboscis. The pilot, the navigator and two
passengers were killed.

 

 

Standing in the tiny terminal building, Anne held Yale's hand tightly.
"We were lucky," she whispered. An open truck passed in front of the
terminal, carrying bodies covered with blankets.

 

 

"There goes four more telegrams," Trafford said brutally. "We regret to
inform you . . . shit, I need a drink! It looks as if our maker wants
us to see the year nineteen forty-five." He looked around at the bleak
airstrip and the bamboo terminal building. "Only for my money, this is
a hell of a place to spend New Year's Eve."

 

 

"Wasn't that a pisser? I guess we're lucky to be standing here," Al said,
slamming the door as he walked into the terminal.

 

 

Stevens looked as if he were going to be sick. Trafford slapped him on
the back. "Jesus, man, get into shape! They'll never get us out of here
tonight. It'll give us a chance to see Abadan."

 

 

"I'm game, Major." Stevens grinned weakly and looked at his watch.
"It's only two o'clock. We've got plenty of time. If you don't mind I
need to crap out for awhile, and I don't care where . . . right here on
the floor will do." He slumped on the floor, curled his arm under his
head and started to snore.

 

 

A grey-haired Lieutenant Colonel walked into the terminal. He smiled
grimly at them. "There were twenty-six on board. Four were killed. God
knows why, I don't." He shook his head; took a second to ponder their
fate, and then dismissed the dead. "As the saying goes . . . there but
for the grace of God. . . . Well, we don't have tremendous facilities
here. This is a refuel stop mostly. Exotic Persia . . . you can see
around you. We have a medic and I want you all to report to him."
He looked at Anne. "Ah, I see we have an American girl. Only stateside
girl aboard, as the saying goes. You can have the female transient
quarters to yourself. We are in touch with Karachi. I'll let you know
later when we can move you out." He started to leave. "Oh, yes, there is
a Polish refugee camp next to us. Both the enlisted men and officers'
club are having a little party tonight. They have an excess of females
in the D. P. camp so we are inviting quite a few. You are all invited
to join us."

 

 

After the doctor, a Captain, had checked him and dressed his leg wound,
Yale went to his transient billets and located a cot. The officers'
quarters was a low cement building. Trafford, lying on a bunk across
from him, watched Yale undress.

 

 

"So you really did get knifed?" he said, noticing the bandages on Yale's
leg and stomach. "What happened between you and that Red Cross tomato
last night? Did you screw her?"

 

 

Yale didn't answer.

 

 

Trafford yawned. "Oh, I remember you're the pure one. Never mind. Tonight,
I'll show you how to plug her little thatch!"

 

 

Yale heard Stevens choke with laughter. Almost shuddering with his anger
Yale stood beside Trafford's bed and stared down at him. "Major," he said,
pronouncing the words very deliberately, "stay with your own kind. Leave
that girl alone, or I'll slit you from crotch to Adam's apple."

 

 

"You bastard," Trafford said, sitting up and glaring at him. "I could
have you court-martialed."

 

 

"You just try it, Major."

 

 

Yale walked toward the showers. He heard Trafford muttering to Stevens
that he wasn't taking that shit from any Second Lieutenant.

 

 

Yale and Anne ate supper together in the mess hall and then walked to
the officers' club. Although it was only six o'clock a cold wind was
blowing off the desert. Anne shivered. She leaned against Yale. She was
thinking about the plane crash. The transition from Miami to this remote
desert in Iran had been too sudden. She felt an overwhelming desire to
just lie down and cry and not stop until all her tears were gone.

 

 

The club was deserted. An enlisted man bartender sold them a bottle
of Indian whiskey and then made them drinks. Yale took the bottle to a
small bamboo table in a corner of the club. They sat and looked at each
other in silence.