The Winston Affair (3 page)

“I've seen something of it in Africa and Italy. But it works itself out in combat, I think.”

“Exactly. But in a situation like this, it does not work out. It festers and becomes worse and worse. Myself, I like the British. That's not a politic statement. I like them; I enjoy their company, and there are many things about them that I admire. But mine is a minority position. Too many enlisted men do not like them, and the feeling is returned—and that is no damned good. This theater is like a pivot, the Jap war on one side of us, the European war on the other. We have two large armies in a strange colonial land, and neither is looked upon with any affection by the native population.

“Yes, I worry about' my career, Barney, and I don't want this thing to blow up in my face and blow me with it, but more than that, I'm an army man with a job to do and my country at war. We won't win the war here, but we could take a long step toward losing or prolonging it.”

When the general lit his cigar now, his hand was too obviously steady, and Barney Adams felt a sudden rush of sympathy for the big man. It saddens most sensitive people to come to maturity and discover that so many of their contemporaries are soaked with doubt and fear; and to have that reaction toward highly-placed men in uniform affected Barney Adams a good deal.

“I hope I can help, sir,” he said.

“Of course you can.”

“Still, the British know that murders happen. They happen in their forces as well.”

“Yes, Barney, they do—but everything was primed for this. The unarmed man, the brutal use of four shots, the revolver, the violence myth—well, it could have exploded everything. The news ran through the British Armed Forces like wildfire, and lost nothing in the telling. I hate to think of what might have happened. I canceled all leaves and imposed a curfew immediately. The British command was as understanding as they could be, but they demanded the right to try Winston in their own court-martial. I couldn't permit that, and finally I convinced them that we must try him ourselves. There is one point of agreement—that for the sake of this theater, the alliance and the war, Winston must be sentenced to death and the sentence must be carried out promptly.”

Captain Adams made no response. He sat in difficult and uneasy silence, watching the general and seeking for the proper words to say what should not have to be said.

The general knew, and prodded him, “Well?”

“I wish you had not said that, sir,” Adams replied uncomfortably.

“Damn it, Barney, don't you think I appreciate your position? But I had to say it—and a lot of others are going to say the same thing to you.”

“Nevertheless,” Adams said, slowly and without pleasure, “you cannot ask me to accept a prejudgment of a man I am going to defend. How can I defend him, then, sir?”

“Prejudgment hell! I am talking about the facts, Barney—the trial is up to the Judge Advocate, and I have no intentions of interfering. You yourself admitted that the case is open and shut.”

“And—” Adams began, and then swallowed his words.

“Go on.”

“No—it's all right.”

The general went over to Adams, and squeezed the younger man's shoulder, and said, “Barney, Barney—I busted into this thing like a fool. Say what you were going to say.”

“I want to help you, sir. Believe me, I do—and I will, as well as I can.”

“I never doubted that. But that isn't what you were going to say before.”

“I was going to say, sir—why did you bring me here a week before I was due to report, if the case is open and shut? You certainly have any number of men who can act for Winston's defense.”

“Are you asking me fair and square?”

“I am, sir.”

“All right. First of all, I want you to have this. I want to give you your majority on it. We don't talk about such things, but I'm laying it on the table. This was a job, and I thought you could do it better than anyone here. Secondly, the facts are open and shut but lousy with inference. Winston is fifty-two years old.”

“What? You said he was a second lieutenant, sir.”

“So he is—a poor, stupid slob of a second lieutenant and fifty-two years old. Such things happen. This is a large war. Winston was a warehouse boss or manager in Chicago. He has three grown sons who went into the Air Force, so he couldn't live without being in this war. He got the commission through his brother-in-law, who is a congressman—second lieutenant in the Quartermaster Corps. He put on the heat to go overseas, and they sent him here, and since he is evidently not a likable man, they shipped him on to Bachree, which is a stink-hole. When he killed Quinn, a British medico up there kept him from being lynched and sent him to the General Hospital here as a mental case. The psycho officer in the hospital jumped out of his boredom and decided that Winston was insane. First court-martial postponed, and the righteously indignant British chums breathing fire down my neck. Then a wire from Washington—was I taking it on myself to imperil the whole Grand Alliance by harboring a murderer? By what authority or circumstances had I postponed a court-martial? Well, I called a lunacy commission, and they found Winston as sane as you or me—which may not be a great deal but enough to stand trial for murder. I called the second court-martial, and I got a wire from Winston's brother-in-law in Congress. Well, Barney, I am not a hero—maybe adequate with bullets and shells, but that doesn't count I knew that the army would stand behind a conviction—right down the line—but it had to be a conviction without loopholes. There wasn't a trial counsel in our department here who would put up any better than a sham defense for Winston; there isn't one of them that has the guts to. They are civilian lawyers and they enjoy their commissions and they are not going to buck city hall. There it is. I postponed again and got you here a week early. But I cannot postpone a third time.”

“Yet you have decided that Winston must be convicted. What difference—”

“Damn it, Barney, I have decided nothing. I know that the court will convict him, because he is guilty as hell. But I want an honest defense on the record, and to put it bluntly and unpleasantly, I want an army man, a man with a combat record, to conduct that defense. If you feel that I am using you, say it! I am using you.”

“We all use people,” Captain Adams answered slowly. “I'm not troubled by that—”

“Very well, then. It will do us no good to discuss this any further, Barney. I've placed a jeep and a driver at your disposal—and you have an appointment at two o'clock with Colonel Thompson, our Judge Advocate. Between now and the convening of the court-martial, any reasonable request will be granted. If you should want to see me, I am at your disposal.”

They shook hands.

“Good luck, Barney,” the general said.

Wednesday 11.30 A.M .

The driver of the jeep, Corporal Wayne Baxter, did not suffer from reticence. He was a tall, lean man with sandy hair that needed cutting, and small, deep-set blue eyes. In no time at all, he let Barney Adams know that he was from Nashville, Tennessee, that he was twenty-three years old and ‘had been married for the last five of them, that he had worked at Willie Krause's filling station at the corner of Elm Street, and that he enjoyed the war.

“What do you enjoy about it, Corporal?” Adams asked him.

“Being twelve thousand miles away from the tomato I married, for one thing,” Corporal Baxter said, “because anyway that saves me from a murder rap for what I'd do to that bitch for shacking up with any wayfarer comes whistling down the street.”

“Oh?”

“I live good, Captain, I eat good. I don't worry.”

“Good or bad, I haven't eaten at all today. Where do I find some lunch, Corporal?”

“Well, you got plenty of choice.” They were driving down a broad avenue. Streetcar tracks divided the road, and both sides of the road were lined with single-story stucco houses, old and unrepaired, the stucco cracked and flaking away. Skinny brown children played listlessly in the mud in front of these houses. White cattle wandered as listlessly about the avenue, stopping to munch at the clumps of stringy grass that grew on either side of the streetcar tracks. At the street intersections beggars squatted, their begging bowls gripped by their bony knees, their rags drawn over them, as if some chill reached them even in this intense heat. Bearers, their burdens balanced on their heads, stumbled along the broken sidewalks, and rickshaw boys trotted along pulling British soldiers, American soldiers, fat merchants, baldpated priests, well-dressed ladies, self-important bureaucrats, clerks, civil servants, and any others who could afford the price of a rickshaw. Old taxicabs, driven by turbaned Sikhs, chugged back and forth, and from the distance, like a five-inch shell in passage, came the whining scream of a streetcar.

Every now and then, in the space between the car tracks, a body was sprawled. At first, Adams had thought that these were sleeping people; he realized presently that they were dead.

“If you want to eat outside the army,” Baxter went on, “there are the Chinese restaurants, maybe a half a dozen good ones, and you don't need to worry about the runs there. There are some others too, the Hotel Grande and the Hotel Britannia and the limey Senior Officer's Club and the Yellow Sea Bar. If you stick to regular issue, you got your Senior Officer's Mess at the big barracks on Kitchener Boulevard. They also cook a nice spread at the Makra Palace, just for the population of the place, but then you got to sign for lunch or dinner in the morning, because they only buy enough chow each day for what they got to feed.”

“We'll make it the Senior Officer's Mess,” Adams said, and then as they turned off the street, he asked Corporal Baxter about the bodies between the streetcar tracks.

“Dead waugs,” replied Corporal Baxter.

“What?”

“I forgot that you come from where the war is, Captain. A waug is a nigger, local variety.”

Baxter glanced at Adams and saw his mouth tighten. He shrugged, and they rode on in silence for a while until Adams, unable to restrain his curiosity, asked, “What do they die from?”

“The way these waugs are, skin and bones and rotten with malaria and dysentery and God knows what else, you got to ask what do they live from. Now they say that there is a famine out in the hills, and the waugs come into town and die here.”

“You mean bodies ate there every morning?”

“There, other places, all over the city. They find a place to sleep and they don't get up in the morning.”

“Aren't the bodies taken away?”

“By and by. They start loading the trucks at one end of the city, Captain, but it's like everything else. The limeys don't do nothing like we would do it. The limeys don't do nothing so that it makes sense. I seen the stiffs lay around two-three days in this heat before they got to them.”

Wednesday 2.00 P.M .

The Judge Advocate, Colonel Herbert Thompson, was a round-eyed, round-faced, bald little man in his middle fifties. He was pink-cheeked, neat, prim, and the shining surface of his mahogany desk was as virgin and nakedly aggressive as if the desk still stood in the furniture shop that had sold it. On the desk was a silver inkstand of native manufacture and two American desk fountain pens. Nothing else. It was as if Colonel Thompson was simply passing through.

Not for a moment was he unconscious of the desk, and he had hardly more than passed the amenities with Barney Adams when he made reference to it, specifying that he did not live or think haphazardly. What should be done, should be done; if it is there to do, do it, and didn't Captain Adams agree with him?

“I admire the attitude,” Captain Adams said.

“Thank you, sir. May I say that you come highly recommended. May I say that the honors on your breast recommend you beyond words, sir.”

“Thank you. You're very kind,” Adams mumbled, ill at ease and wondering just what attitude he should take to disguise his distaste for the Judge Advocate. But understanding that, above all, he must cultivate no ill will here.