Whistle (51 page)

Carol was having her own troubles, anyway. They had begun with the Christmas vacation of her boyfriend. He was still hot to go into the Army, and he had come home for Christmas with nothing but that on his mind. He was determined to quit college and enlist. His own family was against it, particularly his mother. And Carol’s family was against it: they were not going to have her marrying some enlisted soldier just off on his way to Europe, no matter how well-bred and well-connected. But only Carol’s opinion carried any real weight with him. She had brought the problem to Winch again.

She had not seen Winch but once all through the Christmas vacation, as she had promised she wouldn’t, so it was not until January that he heard the story.

“Well,” Winch said, with the crispness of command, “Do you want him to go? Or do you want him not to go?”

Carol made an anguished little face, and then sort of wailed. “Well, I don’t want him to go. But I’m not sure I want to marry him. I don’t think I’m in love with him. I’m in love with you.”

“I don’t count in this,” Winch said. “Leave me out of it.”

“How can I?” Carol cried. “But I don’t want him to go. I mean, his whole family doesn’t want him to go. His poor mother. And his old dad. He’s got it all fixed for him to get a business deferment. I have to respect their wishes. I’m just not sure I want to marry him.

“And if he stays, I’ll surely have to marry him. Won’t I?”

It was easy enough to tell what kind of answer she hoped for. Was demanding, in fact. “Not necessarily,” Winch said.

Carol turned to stare at him with her large, dark eyes, for a long moment. The cocked one rolled off a little bit, then came back. “Anyway, he won’t stay just because I ask him not to go. I don’t have all that much influence on him.”

“It’s very simple,” Winch said immediately. “That’s the easiest part. Just tell him you have a lover.”

The dark, cocked eye made her seem extraordinarily sexy.

“Oh!” Carol said. “Do you think that would make him stay? It might work just the opposite. Make him run off and enlist,” she said. “In deep despair.”

Once again Winch suddenly had that feeling he had been getting more and more lately with all sorts of things. Was it real? Was it really real? Did she really mean it? Evidently she did.

Did these men really mean it, when they got together, and got all this explosive together, and killed all these other men? Evidently they did. But were all these men killed? Were they really dead? Or was it all just sort of one big kids’ game?

If you built a house, was it really a house? Or was it just a bunch of wood stacked up together a certain way and nailed, and everybody got together and said it was a house.

The frightening concept, and the bottomless feeling he had, stumped him. She had stopped him. Again.

“I just hate to do something like that,” she said. “Unless I’m absolutely sure.” Then after thinking a moment, she looked up resolutely, the one eye rolling away, and said, “I’ll do it.”

“Maybe I’m wrong,” Winch said lamely. “But it would certainly make me stay around.”

“I’ll do it,” she said again. More resolutely.

But then she hadn’t done it. She told Winch later, the next time she saw Winch, that she had been too afraid to do it. Instead she had agreed to come up to school and visit him for a week, if he would agree to go back. He had agreed. She had promised she would come up to Cleveland near the end of January.

After that she and Winch had had their four or five nights a week together for several weeks. Till she left for Cleveland. She still got up resolutely every night at four in the morning, dressed herself all up carefully, and put on all her evening makeup, to go home and be there by four-thirty. Nobody ever waited up to meet her. Nobody ever got up early to see if she came in. But it was a gamble she did not want to take. And she was always home in bed, when she had to get up at eight-thirty and her mother called her.

Winch, who at four did not have to get up for another three hours, would lie in bed and watch her go through her meticulous ritual. A lot of times he badly wanted to make love to her in the mornings. She was so cute. So adorable, with her unrelieved ritual. But there was never any chance. The ritual must never be broken, or even slowed.

It was when she got back from Cleveland that she told him she had found a new boyfriend. She had stayed away almost three weeks, instead of the one week she had agreed upon, and the new boyfriend was the reason. He was from a small town in Ohio, and the same age as the other one. “He loves it when I go down on him,” she said, without even blushing. “And he loves to go down on me. Gamahouche, he calls it. It’s an old Victorian word. He loves all the sexual things.” They were in the apartment, and it was freezing cold out. She stopped to take off her coat. “Maybe I’ll marry him, instead.” He had even more money than the other one, and more social prestige. And his family was marvelous, very genteel. Especially his mother. “Oh, you’ve taught me so much, Mart!” she cried, and swirled her coat onto the couch and whirled herself off across the room.

Winch felt he had heard the final accolade.

Then she stopped. “But I don’t love him!” she cried, in another tone, a wail. “I love you!” She came across the room and put her arms around Winch and rubbed both her breasts against his chest. In high heels she was nearly as tall as he was.

“Whoa. I’m not a competitor in this competition,” Winch said. “Remember? I told you that from the beginning.”

He put his palms, flat, on the round of her back under the arms, in the sweater she wore, then moved them down her to the flat on her hips, his finger paps pressing themselves alternately into the round of her bottom. Storing up sensory impressions. To be remembered some time later.

“Oh, what’s going to become of us?” she said, rubbing the side of her head against his ear. “What are we going to do?”

“Let’s try going to bed. How about that?” Winch said.

For quite a long time after he had begun fucking Carol, he had had this feeling of extraordinary breathlessness, panting, afterward. A result of that heart condition. Then for quite a while it had gotten better, almost gone away. Lately it had come back, almost as strong as at first. Winch did not know why. But this time it was there, exceptionally strongly. He had to get up and walk around the room, to hide the fact that he was panting.

It was while Carol was away that three weeks in Cleveland that Bobby Prell’s marriage took place.

Winch had known it was coming. But he hadn’t expected to get an invitation. He had kept in touch with Strange by telephone, and even once, during the Christmas school holiday, had spent an evening with Strange at his Peabody suite. Strange had kept him filled in on Prell.

When the invitation came, he was nevertheless surprised. The engraved invitation form could not have been filled in by Prell’s crabbed handwriting. The rolling, back-slanted, schoolgirl hand could only have been that of little Delia Mae. Delia Mae—? Kinkaid? And there was no reason she would send him one. Winch at once suspected Strange was behind it, and got on the phone to him.

No, Strange had not told her to invite Winch. Nor had he told Prell, either. But she had come to Strange when he was visiting, and taken him off to one side, and asked him whom she ought to invite. Strange had mentioned Winch, but told her Prell might not like it. “You leave that to me,” she had told Strange. Landers was invited, too, Strange said. And Corello, and Trynor. And the rest of the old-company members. Though there weren’t that many left, any more.

“So then he didn’t stop her,” Winch said. No, Strange guessed not. “Well, I guess I’ll come,” Winch said. “Why the fuck not?” He cleared his throat. Some strange powerful emotion in him had risen up suddenly, unclaimed, and unanticipated, and shook him violently, like a large dog shaking a rat. “What the fuck is he getting married for, anyway?” he demanded. “A guy as crippled up as he is? How’s he going to support a wife, when he’s outside? It sounds crazy, to me.”

There was an almost Mephistophelian, low chuckle over the phone, from Strange. “Didn’t you know? Didn’t I tell you? She’s knocked up.” Winch exclaimed. “Yes. Higher than a kite,” Strange said. “He aint got a whole hell of a lot of choice.” Another near Mephistophelian note crept faintly into Strange’s voice. There were going to be quite a lot of people there. People Prell knew. It was going to be quite a big shebang. And Winch might not have to worry, about what Prell would do on the outside to support little Delia Mae. He might be staying in. There was even talk of their making him a lieutenant, Strange said. A first lieutenant.

Winch snorted sourly, said good-by, and hung up and forgot about it. Had he been thinking, as he ought to have been, had he been the Mart Winch of old, he would immediately have called Jack Alexander. But he didn’t.

So he was surprised again, when he arrived at the wedding. Which was being held at the hospital chapel. But it did not take him long to catch on. The Army, Col Stevens officiating, was giving the wedding. And picking up the tab for it. If Winch had hung out a little more at the officers’ club, as he should have done, he would already have known about it.

The other people Strange had referred to were all civilians. The reception after the ceremony was in the rec hall, which had been taken over for it, and milling around with drinks or champagne glasses were members of the Chamber of Commerce, the Lions Club, Rotary, Kiwanis, the Elks, and their wives, and even a contingent from the Luxor Combined Ladies Clubs. They were all people from the organizations Prell had given official war bonds speeches to.

They were all having a good time at the party, liked and admired Prell, and were all obviously happy to be where there were so many newspaper and magazine photographers, and reporters, all around. When Prell and Delia Mae cut the huge wedding cake with a black, GI bayonet, there were a lot of flashbulb pictures taken and the civilian guests loyally made a hearty round of applause.

The Medal of Honor was much in evidence. With its neck ribbon. When the official wedding picture was taken, Prell was asked to put it on. He was asked to put it on when he and Delia Mae cut the cake. When news photos of him and Delia Mae and of him and Col Stevens were taken, he was asked to put it on. After each time, he folded it and put it carefully away in its box.

“Well, what do you think of it, Mart?” Col Stevens said from beside Winch’s elbow.

“It’s all right, sir,” Winch said, and grinned. “Are you getting lots of war bonds sales?”

Stevens made his embarrassed, unwilling chuckle. “No. Not today, of course. But we will.”

Winch was glad he had worn his tailored dress uniform, and his ribbons. He talked to some of the civilians. Without any exception they were great admirers of Prell, and all said the same thing when they found out who Winch was. Wasn’t he proud to have been his first sergeant? Winch said he was. Johnny Strange worked his way over to him and the two of them stood together in a protected corner off to one end of one of the bars.

“You didn’t bring your girl?” Winch asked.

“Naw. She don’t go in for things like this,” Strange said. “Didn’t you bring yours?”

“She’s away,” Winch said. “But I don’t think it would have been a good thing for me to bring her. Not out here where she works.”

Strange told him that Prell had become an enormous success as a war bonds speaker. People loved his simplicity. So much so that Col Stevens had recommended to Washington they should pull him out of Kilrainey and Luxor and send him on a tour. It would not be for a little while, until he got a little better on his legs, and stronger. But then they were going to send him out. Strange said the rumor was, to Hollywood. And the Hollywood Canteen. And all that. That was the how and the why of the deal, Strange said, that was going to keep him in the Army. At least until after the war was over.

“Then I guess he’s all fixed up in pretty good shape,” Winch said, feeling heavily relieved. It was hell, not being able to drink, at these parties. Winch stepped over to the bartender to see if he had any white wine. He did have.

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Strange said. He shook his head. Because Prell wasn’t too happy about it. He wanted to stay in the Army. But he wanted to go back to regular duty. “We all want to go back to regular duty,” Winch said sourly. Strange nodded. But it wasn’t the same with Prell. Prell really meant it, and believed it. Every day he was down there in the therapy rooms with the whirlpool bath and the exercises, pushing himself and his legs to the absolute limit. That was why he had made such incredible progress.

“But he’s never going to have normal legs,” Winch said, “an infantryman’s legs, again. He’s crippled. That’s crazy.”

“I know,” Strange said.

Winch looked off to where Prell was, still with little Delia Mae. He was back in his wheelchair again. He had been up on his feet for the ceremony, and for the pictures and cake cutting, and had walked a little bit. But even that little bit was obviously too much for the legs.

When he had first come in, Winch had gone straight up to him and shaken hands and congratulated him, and kissed little Delia Mae on the cheek. The look of innocence on Delia Mae’s face had not changed a bit. Prell had reacted properly. He had shaken the hand and said, “Thank you.” But he hadn’t smiled.

A couple of times later Winch had caught him looking over at him across parts of the room, unsmiling, expressionless. The second time Winch had winked at him. Prell had simply stared back without expression, then had looked somewhere else. Winch could not even be sure he had seen the wink.

“The last time I saw him,” Strange growled, following his gaze, “when we were alone, he told me that the first time he was physically able to put it in her, he knocked her up. He wasn’t able either physically or mentally to pull it back out.”

Winch snorted. “Yeah.” He moved his gaze elsewhere. He suddenly realized Landers was not here. He hadn’t seen him anywhere. His gaze fell suddenly upon the not-badlooking Gray Lady who taught the cripples their basket-weaving course in a corner of this very same rec hall all week long. She was clearly one of the Combined Ladies Clubs delegation, and she didn’t have on her Gray Lady’s uniform. She had on a very expensive dress, was obviously wealthy, and her middle-aged shortish blonde hair had just been marcelled into a very sexy, seductive hair-do. There was no Gray Lady’s cap on it. She was a little dumpy, but she didn’t have a bad ass at all, and had very nice tits. And Winch was suddenly afflicted with an immediate and totally uncontrollable need to go over to her and seize one of her tits gently, and pour all of his new, second glass of white wine onto her brand-new hair-do.