Whistle (45 page)

What better deal could a man of his years ask for?

Suddenly, a picture of his white-eyed platoons, wherever they were, blossomed in his head. And with it, screamingly, came up the single, silent sentence of his nightmare.
Get them out of there! Damn it! Get them out of there!
Winch bit it back. But on the wheel, his hands were slippery.

The apartment Alexander had found for him had been the biggest single item of expense. He had had to pay a large sum under the counter, in cash, to get it. The monthly rental was high. The next biggest item was the car Alexander had put him on to. And the black-market gas Alexander had made him privy to.

Lately, after her revelation of the expected Christmas visit, Carol had begun asking his advice about various things. This tickled a fatherly perversity in Winch. For the moment, it was the boy’s military status. He had a deferment, until he graduated in the spring. Then, his father had it fixed to keep him out on a bogus local deferment. But the boyfriend wanted to enlist right now. Quit school and enlist. It was going to be the big fight of their Christmas.

Winch had told her to tell him to stay out. Whatever else happened, stay the hell out. And if he did go in, he should get his father to get him some kind of a commission, preferably with a job in Washington attached to it.

Suddenly, under the wipers, a white picture formed on the windshield glass in the rain, as though it had been etched by Steuben or one of those big glassmakers. It interfered with Winch’s vision of the road in the headlight beam. Winch stared at it, engrossed, as it took clearer shape, and recognized it.

It was Jacklin. Pfc Freddie Jacklin? He was one of the men, one of the dead, from the platoons. The forever beleaguered platoons of Winch’s mind. The glass picture of him was an exact replica of the way Winch had seen him last. Winch had been going down the gently sloping forward slope of a knoll. Not much grass. Winch had glanced back once, a scanning look, before going into the jungle that came part way up. Jacklin had been lying there.

He was facing downhill, on his back, his head thrown back, one arm out one arm in, a grimace of intense effort on his face, above the open mouth and eyes, his big chest extended as if still trying vainly to draw air. Winch had not known where he was hit. Had not even known he’d been hit.

Now he was on the windshield, etched in white bevels and lines and grooves, and he was obstructing Winch’s vision. Wherever he moved his head or eyes, the figure moved in front of them. A fucking obstructionist!

By peripheral vision Winch could see the car was edging toward the road edge. He tried to adjust his steering, but could not do it fast enough. The right front wheel, then immediately the right rear, caught in the soft, rain-soaked shoulder.

There was the scream of rubber, and the rending of metal, and then the car was halfway in the roadside ditch, front end down, but turned clear around and there was silence, the motor turning over and ticking in the quiet.

Automatically, Winch turned off the ignition. Then just sat in the stillness for a while. It was the first time any of his nightmares had actually impinged upon his outside physical world and affected it. That would bear some thinking about.

As he sat, he realized slowly that there was nobody at all around, anywhere.

Fortunately, he was able to back out. The metal damage was negligible, mostly a bent headlight, fender and bumper. He could still drive it. Luxor was still five miles off.

Nothing happened the rest of the way. As if satisfied, the figure of Jacklin did not return.

At the apartment, which was the upstairs of a private home downtown not too far from the Peabody, he parked the damaged car and hurried up the outside stairs in the rain to the upper floor.

Inside, Carol put down the book she was reading and stood up. All the lights were on, the way he liked it. She was fully clothed. She hated to undress herself or lie around half-nude, and always waited for him to come and do it. She looked very young. Incredibly young. She held out her arms for him to come and begin undressing her. Winch did so.

“What happened? What’s wrong?” she said when she saw his face.

Winch did not answer and buried his face in her young, un-wounded, hungry shoulder.

“Oh, whatever is going to become of us?” she said, in her emotional child’s voice.

“Nothing,” Winch said. “Hush. For God’s sake, just don’t talk.”

T
HE SUMMONS TO REPORT
to Col Stevens in his office came when Landers had been on ward arrest for over a week.

Landers had no way of knowing Winch had gotten involved in his case. And if he had known, he would not have been elated. Landers had decided lately he no longer liked Winch so much. He wanted no help from Winch. He did not know Winch had called Strange about him that same morning, on Strange’s ward, and that in fact Strange was supposed to get him a message about the developments. So he went up to the lion’s den with a daredevil’s, I’ve-got-nothing-to-lose attitude that was not really in keeping with all that had transpired.

Strange would kick himself in the tail, later in the day, for not having gotten to him before he went. But then later still, Strange wondered whether it could have helped.

Being on ward arrest was not actually all that bad. Even Landers had to admit that. There were no chains or handcuffs to wear. The ward door was not locked. It was more like some sort of school honor system. But if you stepped outside the door, or went off walking away somewhere, you immediately became officially a fugitive. In practice, it did not work out that way and Landers was often outside the door, talking to somebody or other, and when he was sent to his medical appointments outside in the hospital he went alone, not under guard. If he stopped off a few minutes to see somebody, nobody checked up on him. He was required to eat all his meals on the ward, and not allowed to go and stand in the long line at the big messhall, but this was a gain, a great boon, as far as he was concerned. He had total freedom of the ward itself. And he was allowed to have visitors.

On the other hand, he was not for some reason allowed to make or receive phone calls. He had never made or taken phone calls on the ward, nor wanted to. So the restriction didn’t hurt him. But it irritated him because of its unreasonable, Army nonsensicality.

Another thing that irritated Landers was that his uniforms were locked up, in the lockup closet with the uniforms of the medically restricted patients. If he did walk off the ward without permission, where the hell was he going to go? In pajamas and bathrobe and slippers?

But mainly it was that he had no more all-day, all-night passes which got to Landers the most. He had grown accustomed to getting fucked every night, at least once. And the absence of human females afflicted him sorely. He had become used to these exceptional, wounded-patient hospital passes, they seemed one of his natural rights. Now it struck him, forcibly, that when he did go back to duty with the ordinary, everyday Army, even on limited duty, he would no longer have them.

He did not like the attitude the others on the ward had developed toward his incarceration. His restriction had become a joke to them, instead of the basic, mean tragedy that it was. “Hey, Landers,” one would call, “I’ll think of you tonight, when I’m deep-humping my big juicy wet slippery pussy.” Or, “Hey, Landers. I’ll dip a finger for you tonight. Bring it back and let you sniff it. A dollar a sniff.”

Then they would finish dressing, and all troop out into the noon day in uniform and Landers would stay behind in the empty-seeming ward with the medically restricted, who could not go out, and who were continually coming in with new batches of lower-leg wounds from some battle front or other, but who were certainly not much sport, no great shakes, to talk to.

The winter weather change affected him strongly, in his locked-up state. Affected him very adversely. Free, or relatively so, with the hospital day passes, he had moved into town and around the city, watching the lingering Southern fall change to the rains of winter, with a melancholy that matched the drooping leaves, and whispered to him privately that this was the last autumn he would be seeing. There was no question now that he would go back to duty. And no question in Landers’ mind that he would do so just in time to be killed, murdered, in the big European push that had to be coming. Mournfully he accepted it. But Strange’s suite at the Peabody, with its kaleidoscopic changing of women, was a great, if temporary, antidote for this.

Now that was gone and lights were being left burning longer and longer in the mornings, and being turned on earlier and earlier in the late afternoon, And Landers would sit around on the little, glass-enclosed dayroom porch, playing solitaire or trying to read, and watch the lights being switched on in the other porches down the way, on his own side, and across the way, in the other bay.

Midmornings his archenemy Hogan came in, with the other doctors, for morning rounds. Landers sat his chair at attention like a good soldier. But he stared his dislike and hatred across silently at Hogan, and Hogan glared his own dislike and hatred back at him. Neither ever spoke.

It was little wonder to Landers that he felt mean and gross and flamboyant, as he walked up to Col Stevens’ office. In full uniform, and under guard.

Make an example of him. What did he have to lose? Might as well be shot for a mean wolf as for a shitty sheep dog.

It was some wonder to Col Stevens, though. The arrogance, the cockiness, of the young man was a palpable force in the room of the office. Stevens thought all that already had been taken care of, by Winch.

The boy was even wearing all his ribbons, including his Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. Stevens felt guilty enough about his age and where he was, without being reminded. The whole of it irked him exceedingly.

Stevens had meant to say how he had found extenuating circumstances in Landers’ case, and that he had been given a highly laudatory recommendation of Landers. It had been his intention, up to now, to let Landers off without even breaking him, because of Winch. Now, instead, he spoke shortly, and much more sharply than he’d intended.

“Well, what have you got to say for yourself?”

In fact, Landers’ arrogance had been shrunk a great deal from what it was originally, only a moment before. That was the moment when he opened the outer door, and came into the presence of the statue-like, giant figure of Chief W/O Jack Alexander.

The w/o had looked huge, just sitting behind the desk. Then he had stood up. Landers thought he was the biggest man he had ever seen. The icy blue of his pale blue eyes bored into Landers’ soul. The bone edges of his hard mouth looked ready to physically take bites out of Landers. On the square bald head the giant face was as without expression as the eyes or mouth, as without expression as expressionless could get, neither contempt, nor pity, nor liking there. Combat service meant nothing to this soldier, his whole life had been one long war. It was the natural state of things.

The message seemed to be, if Landers was getting it, something like: Whatever the fuck it is you’re doing, you dumb punk kid, for God’s sake try to do it like a soldier.

But he hardly said ten actual words. Landers had seen him around the hospital compound at a distance, and at the medals awards ceremony, but he had never thought of him as so big, or so formidable.

It took every ounce of power Landers possessed to pull back any arrogance at all, in the short time he had, between Alexander and the opening inner door. And he did not lose hold of the message the huge, room-filling ex-heavyweight, ex-1st/sgt seemed to be communicating.

Certainly it affected his first answer. Probably it affected all the others.

“Nothing, sir,” he said staunchly. “I don’t have anything to say for myself.” He continued to stand at attention, since Stevens had not ordered him to stand at ease.

“At ease,” Stevens said. “I expect you know,” he said thinly, but much more mildly, “that Major Hogan has preferred four counts of charges against you.” “Yes, sir,” Landers said.

“And from what I can gather in investigating, Major Hogan is well within his rights. More than.”

“Yes, sir,” Landers said, ungivingly. But he was glad Jack Alexander was not in the room. Alexander would have made it harder. “You attacked and struck an officer, then engaged in a
fight
with him, in the recreation hall in front of twenty witnesses, and when Major Hogan remonstrated with you in the hall outside, you cursed him, insulted him, and physically threatened him. Then you disappeared, and went AWOL, for five days, before returning.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you have nothing to say to any of this?”

“No, sir.”

“You have no defense to make, at all?”

“No, sir,” Landers said, unbendingly. This would have been the moment for abject apology. He let it pass. He didn’t feel like an apology. He was boiling mad. At the unfairness of all of it, and he did not care now whether Alexander was in the room or not.

“If I sit back, and let this thing go through,” Stevens said, “you’ll come before a special court-martial. And that you’ll be convicted, with a sentence of three months or six months, with loss of grade and forfeiture of pay and allowances, there’s not much doubt.”

“No, sir,” Landers said, unwavering. But he hadn’t thought it would be quite that bad.

“Major Hogan has indicated he might be willing to withdraw the charges,” Stevens said, and waited. Landers did not answer.

“I think I might be able to talk him into doing that,” Stevens said, and waited again.

“May I speak frankly, sir?” Landers said. “Frankly, sir, I don’t give much of a damn one way or the other.” There, so it was out. He wondered if Alexander would have approved the manner. Or Winch. Probably not.

Stevens sat back in his chair, and moved some papers, noting abstractedly that his hands were shaking. With anger. He was trying so hard to be completely fair. To this dumb punk kid.

“Have you ever been in an Army stockade, Landers?”

“No, sir.”