Whistle (55 page)

So there were plenty of women. But Landers began to resent being the out-of-town stud for all the juke joint ladies. Besides, he got tired. Serving as stud to a pregnant lady was not all that easy. After the first couple of times the novelty wore off. Especially if like Loucine she didn’t talk. He discovered it required an enormous amount of physical energy, because you had to be careful to keep yourself up off her stomach. What it amounted to, finally, was a sort of series of unlimited push-ups, until either you came or your arms gave out, whichever happened first. But Landers felt he owed it to Loucine. He certainly owed them something for taking him in. And after his afternoons with Loucine, he was not up to other ladies. He took to spending more and more of the nights just with Charlie, getting drunk and just talking.

They talked about everything, excepting women. There was something about Charlie that seemed to insist on seeing all women as ladies. He was prepared and willing to make excuses for all of them. Most of his Southern confreres, Landers had found—indeed, most Americans—divided women into two distinctive categories: ladies and whores. With no shadings of gray in between. But not Charlie. He had only the one category.

Twice while Landers was with him in the sheriff’s car he drove over across town in the late afternoon to see his wife. Charlie, it turned out, brought her every afternoon the groceries she wanted for that evening and the next day.

Landers was curious to see her, knowing what Annie had told him about her down in Luxor. She was a good-looking woman for her age, about forty-five, and she had not lost what they called bloom. She still had a figure. But for a roundish face such as she had there was a peculiarly elusive ferretlike toughness to some part of it. She had a soft, gentle, delightful Southern smile, which went all the way up to and deep into her eyes, with a kind of ropy, sexy charm of innocence. She almost never relaxed this smile in her eyes, even when her face wasn’t smiling. The few times she did, the very few times Landers caught her at it, Landers thought he saw behind it the eyes of a shrewd, hard-hitting poker player. The kind he would not want to play against, in any serious game.

She took one look at Landers, and decided immediately Landers was sleeping with her second-oldest daughter. Both she and Landers knew what this conclusion she had made was. Both knew there would be no revoking it. While Charlie was unloading the car of its groceries, Landers sat with her in the parlor and talked politely.

Her first name was Blanche. She was, it came out quickly in her talk, a pillar among the local Baptists, and wanted to know if perhaps Landers would come down to the church to some of their meetings. Landers said he would be delighted to. She smiled her thanks. But she carefully did not press him for a specific time.

Apparently Annie in Luxor was the only one who knew she was the mistress of the local Nashville politician, Landers thought. But then he revised that. Charlie knew. Then he revised again: Everybody knew.

The two little girls of nine and eight were abominable. They were both spoiled totally rotten. Worse, even at eight and nine they were both already well aware of being females, knew that this carried special privileges, utilized these shamelessly, and just did not have the finesse yet to hide it. They flirted outrageously, just as if they were already women, and thrust out their little buds of breasts as though the breasts had already grown into what they would someday become.

Outside in the car, when Charlie had delivered all the groceries, Charlie stared off through the windshield again. As if he were about to say something. But he thought better of it, and threw the car violently into gear. Before he released the clutch, he took a deep breath and let out one huge sigh.

Sitting there, watching and saying nothing, not even involved, Landers had the impression he was with a man who in the course of his life had had to learn the hard way to cope with a great many disarrayed and enigmatic things, and had done it; but in the course of doing it, had found a great many other darknesses he would never be able to cope with ever. Not ever. Never.

Landers never had found out when Charlie slept, and never did. It wasn’t in the morning. And it certainly wasn’t in the afternoon, because he was never there. Landers finally decided he must exist by catnapping. Like a combat soldier. Sleeping a half hour at a time, in his big swivel chair at his desk, in the back room of his office at the courthouse.

When they had taken Loucine out to eat and brought her back home, Charlie brightened up. As the two of them set off on his evening rounds. And that night it was Charlie who went off somewhere with one of the lonely juke joint ladies. Leaving Landers behind for an hour or two. Landers could almost hear him sighing. Simplicity, simplicity.

It was near the end of the third week he had been there that Landers told him he couldn’t stay. It would not have been true to say that his final decision was due to their two visits to Blanche and the little girls. But it was possible meeting them caused him to make the decision earlier.

He tried to explain to Charlie how there was just too much going on, too many things that had not been resolved; too much, too, he hadn’t solved for himself. Charlie apparently had already anticipated this. He had a sad, rueful smile and said he suspected as much, but he must add that he thought it was a mistake.

“You know, this war’s not going to last forever. May seem like it to you, but it aint. We’ve won it, now.”

“A lot of good men are going to die before the Germans and Japs believe that,” Landers said somberly.

“I know, and that’s sad, but what I say’s the truth, just the same. Soon’s this invasion of France gets under way, sometime this spring, it’s not going to be too long in Europe. And the goddam Japs’re already whipped. Just going to take a little power.”

Landers thought this was an awfully large and conclusive statement to swallow, without water. Especially coming from a Tennessee country sheriff. What he felt must have shown on his face.

“Believe me. Just believe me,” Charlie said. “A year in Europe. Another six months for the Japs. I’ve got friends in Washington. They know. They’re already planning.

“Anyway, I think it would be pretty silly for you to get killed in this war, now. You’ve already done your share.

“So you just think it over a couple days. And in the meantime, let me make you a proposition.”

“What kind of a proposition?”

“You just stay here with us. Forget about going back to the Army. That’s the proposition.”

Landers was staring at him, and didn’t answer.

“Just think about it,” Charlie urged. “That’s all I ask. In a month you can start putting on civilian clothes. I can even get you a job, if you want. But you don’t need it.

“Nobody’s going to say a word to you. Nobody’ll pick you up. Not in my county.”

For Landers it was a little breathtaking, that the law could be so grandly circumvented so totally, and with such confidence.

“You think about it,” Charlie said.

“What about my citizenship?” Landers asked. “I’ll get a dishonorable discharge out of it, finally, in the end. As a deserter. Lose my citizenship. Lose my right to vote.” He wrinkled up his face. “Not that I give a shit about voting.”

“I’m telling you, that can all be taken care of. Maybe not right now. But certainly after the war,” Charlie said. “And maybe right away. I told you, I got friends in Washington.”

“Well!” Landers said. “It’s some proposition. Why?”

Charlie made a squeezed, painful shrug. “Well, we like you. I certainly do. And Loucine has gotten to like you a lot. I even suspect that she’s in love with you.”

“In love with me!”

Charlie held up a big hand. “Young women her age fall in love, Marion. If you happen to be standing close to them, and are in focus at the right moment, they fall in love with you. You move away a few feet, they fall in love with another one, that happens to be closer. That’s just the way it is.”

Landers did not trust himself to answer. No mention had been made of his sleeping with her.

“You could do a lot worse than Loucine,” Charlie said. “You wouldn’t have to marry her, of course. Unless you decided you truly wanted to. And that kid’s my property. The one she’s carrying. I’ll take care of him, and I’ll raise him. You wouldn’t have to take on that responsibility unless you truly wanted to.

“Have you ever thought about how you’d be as a deputy sheriff? I think you’d be pretty good. You’ve got natural authority, and you stand right.” Suddenly he grinned, impishly. “Anyway, all you have to do is walk around and look important, look like you know things. And have a piece of a bunch of the right kind of investments.”

Landers still did not answer.

“You could grow up to be a good sheriff yourself. In a very few years. And Loucine is going to make somebody a fine wife.”

“Charlie, she’s hardly said ten words to me since I’ve been here,” Landers said.

“That’s why she’ll make a good wife,” Charlie said solemnly.

Landers thought briefly that vaguely, like some transparent apparition, he could see the fine faint hand of Blanche in this somewhere. But then he thought he couldn’t.

“Well, Jesus, Charlie. I don’t know,” he said finally.

“You think about it,” Charlie smiled. “Let me tell you something. I know you’re a friend of Annie’s. But that won’t matter. Annie’s a rover. Always been. She’s always going to be on the run. Loucine’s not. Loucine’s a regular homebody. You give Loucine a home and she’ll never stir. She just aint got any home, yet.

“Let me tell you something else. About being a father. A father is the garbage pail of a family. Everything that’s getting a little old, or getting to smell a little, or is going bad, or is upsetting, is dumped on him. Just like a garbage pail. That’s what he’s for.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready to be a father.”

“Well, nobody is,” Charlie said.

It was a munificent offer, in its way. Almost unbelievable. Charlie didn’t even ask that he marry Loucine and give the kid his name. Of course, Charlie probably figured that he would, if he simply stayed around long enough. Landers promised that he would think it over for two days. But even before he promised, even from the very beginning of it, he had known he was not going to accept. He did think it over for the two days. But nothing he thought changed.

“Charlie, I just can’t,” he said when the two days were up. “Too many things aren’t finished. I’ve got to run out the string, you know?”

“You’re going back?” They were in one of the four or five joints Charlie had first introduced him to. It was late in the night. The Tex Beneke Band was singing “Chattanooga Choo-Choo.”

“I have to, Charlie,” Landers said.

“Well, the offer still holds. I don’t know how long it’ll be open. Like I said, you move away a few feet, and they focus on somebody else.”

“Sure. I know. And if it had all happened a month from now, well maybe.” But he didn’t really believe that. “I’ll leave on the bus tomorrow.”

When he said good-by to Loucine, she put her arms around his neck, and began to cry. “Oh, I’m going to miss you so, Marion.” Landers was startled.

Charlie delivered him to the one o’clock bus. As the big door closed, and the bus’s air hissed, Charlie called one last thing to him.

“Remember!” he yelled.

T
HERE WAS AN AWFUL,
frightening depth to the depression that hit Landers when the taxi from Luxor carried him back inside O’Bruyerre. The sprawling, grimy, coal-smoke-smeared, mud-greased areas of the huge camp stretched for miles. From miles away, the pall of coal smoke that hung above it was visible like a flat, gray umbrella. The place seemed to have grown in even the weeks Landers had been away.

To come back into it as an unidentifiable nonentity among tens of thousands of other nonentities was unbearable.

And yet, under the depression was the orange-colored pick of excitement in his chest, as his frantic adrenal glands poured into him the juices for his coming combat. He wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

Landers hated himself for coming back to it when he could have stayed away. But he could no more have stayed away than he could have changed himself into a genuine deserter.

There had been no trouble getting in, at the main gate. On the ride out from town he had thrown away the precious block of blank pass forms, in case he should be searched, and kept only the current one, filled out for the past three days. But the MPs at the gate paid no attention to him, and he hadn’t even needed it.

Once back inside under his own steam he was no longer a deserter. He was only an AWOL.

Once inside, he told the driver to drive him right on down to the 3516th’s barracks. After the expense of the ride out from town, it didn’t cost that much more. In Luxor, he had not even gone around to the Peabody to see Strange, partly out of shame for having lied to him, but partly because he did not want Strange to get on the phone to Winch, and have Winch involved with planning his return. But now some instinct of self-preservation, once he was back inside on his own, made him change his mind about Winch.

He told the driver to take him up to the Second Army Command building, instead. The numbers of men and vehicles and amounts of matériel that were on the move in the camp were overwhelming. When they passed the section of camp where the old Division had been which had left for England, he saw that a totally new Division with a different patch had moved in.

On the third floor of the Command building, Winch came out to get him. He led him past the acre and a half of clerks outside his private office, then shut the door and looked at him with a somber grin.

“So you’re back.” His voice sounded strangely faint.

“Back,” Landers said. “Yeah. I’m back.”

“At least you got back on your own hook. That will help some.” Winch hauled the bottle of Seagram’s up out of its desk drawer. “Make yourself a drink.”

Landers had intended to refuse a drink. But now it was in front of him, he accepted. “Thanks,” he said stiffly. It was so hard to know at any given time exactly what Winch was really thinking. It always had been. “Just how much do you know about all this?” he asked.