Whistle (35 page)

Next morning, as if in answer to his question, he was delivered a typed invitation direct from Col Stevens this time, to go downtown and make another speech. This one was to the Luxor Ladies Clubs, Combined. The first had been hugely successful and the Ladies Clubs had asked for him expressly. It was for that afternoon.

Badly hungover though he was, of course he accepted. There wasn’t really a choice. It occurred to Prell that this was to be his future way of life apparently, his future path of duty, if he wanted to stay in the Army. Nobody had said so yet. But Prell could smell it coming, the way an animal can smell snow, or a storm coming.

L
ANDERS WOKE WITH
much less of a hangover than Prell. More used to the heavy drinking luxury than Prell was by now, his body was getting better at assimilating it.

But as he pulled the GI blanket and sheet up to his neck and lay listening to the ward man going down the line waking the guys, he was transfixed by something far worse than a hangover. The big bell at the head of the ward was ringing its short, hard, frightening blasts, but it wasn’t that. He was used to that. His whole system was infused with a sharp pure panic.

Landers knew why. There was no need to think back over the whole big party to remember what it was he had done so wrong. It was right there in the forefront of his mind. He remembered that he drunkenly had told Prell all about Winch going back to duty, on the way pushing him back to the wards. And he had been asked precisely not to do just that.

Jerkily, with nerves made jumpy by both hangover and a deep, hollow, awful guilt, Landers yanked on his pajama pants and slippers to hurry up and get to the bathroom first and shave.

It was Strange who had told Landers about Winch’s impending return to duty. Landers had been sitting with him outdoors loafing in the fall sunshine, while the two of them waited for Prell to get his folding wheelchair. Winch had told Strange he would be leaving within a week. Then, after telling Landers, Strange had expressly asked Landers not to talk about it. Particularly, he did not want Landers to tell Prell.

Landers had asked him why. Strange had shrugged and moved his head, and in that inarticulate way Landers had come to associate with all of Strange’s more complex, profounder ideas, he said he did not think Prell was up to it yet. Prell was still drawn too tight, still too much up in the air. About what might happen with his legs. He wouldn’t be able to digest the idea that Winch finally might be leaving them, leaving the company, moving on.

Landers had simply nodded. He was not so sure he was up to it himself. The idea that Winch might not be there for aid and advice when Landers needed him left a big empty hole in Landers. But he had never believed Prell felt that same way about Winch. Astonishingly, it was as if Strange read his mind. Again, inarticulately, Strange had moved his head and shrugged. That Prell hated Winch did not mean Prell thought Winch was an incompetent, Strange said with no prompting. Just the reverse. Prell would never have hated a man whose professional opinions he had contempt for. No; Prell would miss Winch. Badly. Hate, or no hate.

They should give Prell a week, Strange said, or two weeks. Before they told him. He needed sufficient time for the therapy on his legs to start to work. Besides, in the second place, if it was an accomplished fact, with Winch already gone, there would be a fatality about it that would make it more acceptable to Prell.

Landers had nodded again. And had promised he would not mention Winch’s leaving to Prell. Privately, he remembered how more than once it had struck him how intricate and complicated these relationships were between these Regular Army men, which seemed so simple on the surface. And he marveled again at the really deep understanding of them Strange seemed to have.

College people. College people, like himself, who had a tendency to think of themselves as more sensitive, and called men like these guys ignorant, and uncomplicated, and insensitive, didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about. And had probably never known any. Landers had never known any himself, until this fucking war. But Landers would rather have been like them, than any college people he had ever met. Drunk, happy, he had gone to bed last night after the party thinking these same thoughts over again, a second time.

And had waked up to most unwelcome this.

It appeared that his mind had blanked out, on certain parts of the big, riotously boisterous party. There were whole stretches he had no memory of. But his mind had not blanked out this most awful, most irresponsible thing he’d done. His mind had kept it right there, all ready for him, to stew and seethe and fret and agonize over this morning, with this sense of awful guilt.

How could he possibly have made such a gaffe? How could he possibly have forgotten, ignored his promise?

Shaved, he bolted down his breakfast so fast and nervously, he gave himself a bad bellyache. Then he sat, nursing the bellyache, tapping his feet in their slippers on the polished floor, waiting for morning rounds. As soon as that was over and he was free, he took off across the half-mile width of the hospital to Strange’s ward, as fast as his bad leg would carry him, to see Strange and confess what he had done. Maybe there was some way Strange could fix it.

Luckily he hurried. Strange was already in uniform, preparing to take off for town and his new suite. He had already given a key to one of the guys from the company, who had a morning pass and had gone in ahead to round up some women.

“Come on along,” the mess/sgt said. “The more the merrier. I’ll wait on you while you change.”

Landers stopped him with a raised hand. “I’ve got to tell you what I did,” Landers said, and bubbled it all out breathlessly. “It was a terrible thing. A terrible thing. I was drunk. But that’s no excuse. It was on the way back to the wards.”

Strange took it better than Landers thought he would. All he did was smile a sad little half-smile with the corner of his mouth, and make his shrug. To Landers the rebuke seemed greater because of that. He would have preferred a storm of abuse.

“I guess he’ll just have to live with it,” Strange said. “A little sooner, is all. We all got things we have to live with a little sooner than we’re ready for, I reckon.”

“I suppose. I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” Landers added in a low voice. Nothing he could find to say seemed to loosen that awful guilt.

“I reckon he’ll survive it,” Strange said, sadly, and laid his good hand on Landers’ shoulder with a light slap, “People do all sorts of things when they’re drunk they wouldn’t do sober. No avoiding that. It aint that bad.”

He flexed the fingers of the bad hand, that still wore the plaster brace. “Now you go and dress and get in uniform. I’ll wait for you outside at the taxi stand, in the sunshine. We aint going to have all that much more of it, I don’t think. Even here in the good old Southland.”

It was in the taxi going in that he told Landers about the checking account he’d opened, and the $7000 in cash. He told Landers he intended to blow every nickel of it while he and the remaining guys from the company were still here.

Landers still wasn’t over the other thing, but Strange seemed to have forgotten Prell. “That’s an awful lot of money to blow, and just burn up,” Landers said cautiously. “You can do a lot with seven thousand bucks.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what you want. You could start buying a restaurant. You’re a cook, and restaurateur, aren’t you?”

“Don’t want anything like that,” Strange said. “Anyway, that amount of money aint going to last long, here. At a hundred bucks a day? For that suite? That’s only seventy days of suite, right there.”

“Did you ever ask them about paying monthly rates?” Landers said.

“No,” Strange said. “I haven’t.”

“Say,” Landers said, “listen. I’ve got something like two thousand bucks at home myself. What about me throwing mine in with yours?” Suddenly he felt elated, and excited. “That would give us twenty more days of suite, if we needed it.”

“All right,” Strange said. But then he raised one admonitory horny finger of his good hand. “Make certain you won’t be sorry.”

“Hell,” Landers said.

“Say, I’ll tell you what!” Strange said, excitedly. He had been looking out the window, at the big city park, Overton Park, that the taxis passed on their way into and out of town from the hospital. “Why don’t we have us a goddam picnic?”

Landers felt astonished. Apparently, Strange had put the matter of Prell totally out of his mind.

“Okay, why not?” Landers said.

“We’ll get the booze and the women and whatever guys are there, and buy some food, rent a taxi for the day, and come out to this damned park for the day,” Strange said. “How about that?” He too seemed elated, suddenly. “We’ll have ourselves a hell of a damned picnic day, by God.”

It was not till they had had three drinks, from the illegal pint Strange bought from the driver, that Strange brought up the other thing that apparently was on his mind.

He glanced nervously at the back of the driver’s head, as they moved through the streets of downtown. Then he leaned over to Landers with a conspiratorial air.

“Did you ever eat a girl’s pussy?” he whispered.

At first Landers thought he was going to some elaborate extreme as means for a joke. He began to frame in his mind some sort of joke answer. Then he saw, or sort of sensed, that Strange wasn’t joking. Strange was asking in deadly seriousness.

“Why do you want to know?” Landers asked in a normal tone, to buy time.

Strange made a violent braking motion with the open palm of his good hand, for softness of voice. “Don’t be embarrassed, God damn it,” he whispered. “I’m serious.”

“Well, if you put it that way. Well yes. I have,” Landers whispered.

“Did you like it?” Strange whispered.

“Well yes. I liked it. In fact, I loved it,” Landers whispered back.

Strange was nodding to himself. Thoughtfully. “Are you good at it?”

Everything was still in whispers, kept low by Strange’s constant admonition.

“Well. Well, I don’t know that there’s so much to being good at it. There’s this girl, Martha Prentiss? Who’s around the Peabody? That loves to suck cock.”

“I’ve had her pointed out to me, but I don’t know her. Never met her.” Whisper.

“I picked her up. She gave me a few pointers. But, hell. All it takes is a lot of gentleness, and a very wet tongue.” Whisper.

Strange nodded, but didn’t answer.

“I guess you know what a clitoris is, I guess?” Landers whispered.

“Yes, damn it. I know,” Strange whispered.

“Well,” Landers shrugged lamely.

“Does it smell?”

“Sure. It smells. It smells good.”

“Doesn’t it smell fishy?”

“It smells fishy. But it’s not really fishy. It smells— Do you know the word fecund?”

Strange shook his head.

“Fecund means rich. Like rich earth. Rich for growing. Rich for growing all the rich things of summer. Ripe,” Landers whispered. He began to be afraid he was sounding too poetic, and stopped.

“Ripe,” Strange whispered sourly. “I’ll bet it smells ripe.”

Their faces were hardly a foot apart, and Strange stared into Landers’ eyes intensely.

“Doesn’t it smell pissy?”

“Well yeah. A little bit. But you don’t mind that. At least, I don’t. But that’s only at first. After a little, it doesn’t smell pissy.”

“Doesn’t it taste?”

“No. Doesn’t taste at all. Has no taste whatever. Tastes like whatever you’ve had in your mouth before. A cigarette. Whiskey. A steak.”

Strange nodded in silence, his intent eyes not budging from Landers’.

“Say, what is all this?” Landers whispered.

“Oh, there’s this girl,” Strange whispered with elaborate indifference. “Wants me to blow her. Keeps telling me I’ll like it. Says everybody does it.”

Landers grinned. “‘Show me the man who doesn’t eat cunt, and I’ll show you the man whose wife I can steal,’ ” he grinned, quoting in a whisper the ancient joke. Strange did not laugh. Strange just stared at him.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Landers whispered. “Too damn many of them taste like soap.”

“Taste like what?”

“Soap. So many girls are so ashamed of them, and so afraid they’ll smell, that they’re constantly scrubbing the hell out of them. And they taste like soap.”

“Aw, shit,” Strange whispered, “you’re a damned expert.”

“No, no. I learned it all right here. Or almost all.”

They were so close together, and Strange was staring so intently, that Strange’s eyes were like two bright blue searchlights, flooding Landers’ face. In that light, just about nothing could be hidden. In front of them, the back of the driver’s head was not cocked. By the back of his head, he was going right on driving, totally unconcerned. After a long moment Strange relaxed back into the seat, staring straight ahead. “Times are changing everywhere,” he said, to no one in particular. Though said in a normally loud tone of voice, it came out muffled.

The cab was already onto Union Street, still heading in, moving uphill toward Main Street and the big river, invisible beyond it. As the driver swung wide to make the U turn to stop in front of the Peabody, Strange grinned and said, without expression, in a normal tone, the one word, “Thanks.”

Strange had not forgotten about the picnic. The picnic, in fact, turned out almost exactly as Strange had imagined it. Except it was even more pleasant, more fun. There were four men from the old company waiting in the suite and they had picked up some girls in pairs and singles, both at the Peabody bar and at the bar of the Claridge up on Main Street. Landers noted that without exception the four were guys who had been at Kilrainey longer, and had run out of money. Strange was obviously concentrating his largesse and his giant spending on guys who no longer had money.

That part was okay with Landers. He was willing to do exactly the same with his smaller sum, as soon as he got it down here. And by that time, he thought, Prell would be further along with his therapy. He badly wanted to do something for Prell. Landers had tried to do what Strange apparently had done so easily with the faux pas of last night, and put it entirely out of his mind. But Landers couldn’t do it as well and Prell kept coming back to his mind in some comparative fashion almost all the time. And each time, Landers had the same awful feeling he had had that morning. Even to him, it seemed out of all proportion.