The Generals (26 page)

“While we are discussing the Mouse, sir. Colonel Felter’s compliments, sir,” Lowell said, dryly. “The colonel asked me to inform the general that he would be most appreciative if the general and Mrs. Bellmon could find time in their busy, busy schedule to attend Mrs. Rudolph G. MacMillan’s cocktail soirée tomorrow. Five-thirtyish.”

“Oh, I think Mrs. Bellmon will be able to squeeze it in,” Bellmon said, grinning. His wife and MacMillan’s were old and close friends. And they were both very fond of Sharon and Sandy Felter. It would have taken a war to keep Barbara Bellmon from being with old friends.

Lowell moved to the shooting position and broke all four of his birds.

“There’s a VIP suite, two quarters with the walls knocked out between them in the BOQ on Smokebomb Hill,” General Bellmon said.

“Oh, jolly,” Lowell said. “With the corridors full of drunken platoon leaders and the shrill laughter of their girlfriends. How will I ever get my sleep?”

“Some of the company grade officers are now in skirts, Duke. Consider that.”

“That’s damned near incestuous,” Lowell said. “I do draw a line somewhere, despite my reputation.”

“I’m very glad to hear that,” General Bellmon said. They walked to Station Three.

“How’s Peter?” General Bellmon asked.

As a very young officer, still bandaged from his wounds in Greece, Craig Lowell had married Ilse von Greiffenberg. Peter-Paul Lowell had been born in the Station Hospital, Fort Knox, Kentucky, five months later. Three years after that, his missing and presumed dead grandfather, Colonel Graf Peter-Paul von Greiffenberg, had been released from Soviet captivity in Siberia.

Von Greiffenberg—who had attended the French Cavalry School at Samur with Barbara Bellmon’s father, when both Major General Porky Waterford and (ultimately) Lieutenant General Graf von Greiffenberg were captains—had, as a wounded colonel, commanded the POW camp where Major Bellmon and Technical Sergeant Mac MacMillan were imprisoned.

When Lowell had been ordered to Korea, his wife and child went to live with her father, by then a major general and Chief of Intelligence for the
Bundeswehr
. The day before Task Force Lowell, moving north from Pusan, had linked up with the American forces that had landed at Inchon; the day before Lowell had been awarded a battlefield promotion to major and the Distinguished Service Cross; Ilse von Greiffenberg Lowell, while driving from the Giessen Quartermaster Depot PX to her father’s home, had been struck and instantly killed by a car driven by a drunken major of the Quartermaster Corps.

The boy, who was unharmed, had been thereafter raised by Graf von Greiffenberg and members of his family.

“Very well, I understand,” Lowell said, bitterness showing in his voice. “I take
Stern
. He is one of their brighter reporters.”

“Do you see him often?”

“I don’t see him at all,” Lowell said coldly, matter-of-factly.

There was nothing General Bellmon could think of to reply to that, so he stepped into shooting position and called for his birds.

(Seven)
Fayetteville, North Carolina
10 June 1970

“Colonel Sims’s quarters,” the boy said when he answered the telephone.

It wasn’t Colonel Sims’s quarters. It was a civilian house in Fayetteville, rented by Mrs. Sims while Colonel Sims was in a POW camp in North Vietnam. Dependents are entitled to reside in government quarters only when the sponsor is present for duty. TDY to the Hanoi Hilton doesn’t count. But Colonel Sims’s son and namesake answered the phone by saying “Colonel Sims’s quarters” because that was about the only way he could hang on to his father.

“Tommy, this is Roxy MacMillan. Is your mother there?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Tommy said. “I’ll call her.”

“Hello, Roxy,” Dorothy Sims said.

“I need a favor, Dorothy,” Roxy said.

“Name it.”

“I need an extra lady for a little party,” Roxy said. Dorothy didn’t immediately reply, so Roxy plunged on. “I have two bachelors, one temporary, and the other confirmed.”

“Roxy—” Dorothy Sims started to protest.

“One of them is Tex Williams. I don’t know him, but he’s in this training evaluation project with Mac, and Mac wants to make him feel welcome. And he knows you and Tom.”

“I’m not in a party mood,” Dorothy said.

“I know that,” Roxy said. “But it will do you good to get out of the house. Tom would want you to, you know that.”

“I don’t think so, Roxy. Thank you just the same.”

“The other bachelor is Duke Lowell,” Roxy said. “If you don’t let him catch you in a corner, he’s a lot of fun. And I need you, Dorothy. Your friend Sharon Felter’s coming, too. She’ll be in on the four o’clock Piedmont from Atlanta. They’ll be staying with us until Sandy can get quarters.”

I am being silly, Dorothy Sims suddenly realized. Or a masochist. I would like to get out of the house. I am sick of it, I am sick of other POW wives, Tex Williams is an old friend, and there is absolutely no reason I should not go, unless it is to maintain this facade of patient, suffering, saintly wife.

“Come on, Dorothy. Come on out this afternoon, and we’ll have a couple of belts while I’m getting ready,” Roxy said.

“I’m not sure if a couple of belts is a good idea,” Dorothy said. “I seem to be taking a couple of belts far more often than is good for me.”

“Well, then, do it with friends,” Roxy said, and there was compassion in her voice. “The only man you’ll have to worry about here is Duke Lowell, and I will sit on him.”

“Is he really that bad?”

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Roxy said. “I love the Duke like a brother. And I’ve known him since Christ was a corporal. I have just found it wise to warn people about him. He has a certain something that seems to make women uncross their legs. I’m not sure if it’s his blue eyes and mustache, or his money.”

“That’s a dangerous combination,” Dorothy laughed.

“Forewarned is forearmed,” Roxy said.

“If you’re sure I wouldn’t make everybody uncomfortable.”

“Listen, honey,” Roxy said. “The Bellmons are going to be here. Barbara and I know what you’re going through. Both of ours were in a POW camp, too, you know.”

“All right,” Dorothy Sims said. “When do you want me to come?”

“Get dressed now and come,” Roxy said. “That way you don’t have time to change your mind.”

Dorothy chuckled. “Can I bring anything?”

“Just your body, dear,” Roxy said, and laughed, and hung up.

Dorothy told Tommy what she was going to do, and gave him three dollars to take his bike to the Winn-Dixie to get the superdeluxe pizza for supper.

And then she went upstairs and took a shower. She was not surprised when the telephone rang the moment she was soaking wet. When else would it ring?

“I’m glad I caught you,” Roxy said. “I was just thinking, you know Sharon, and it would save me a trip to town if you could pick her up.”

“Oh, I’d be happy to,” Dorothy said, and looked at the clock on the chest of drawers to see what time it was. Roxy had said something about four o’clock. It was quarter after three. “I’ve got time, I’ll pick her up and bring her out.”

“You’re a darling,” Roxy said.

Dorothy hung up thoughtfully. Somehow, the idea had been formed that she and Sharon were old friends, when actually she hardly knew her. Well, that wasn’t important. It could be straightened out.

She looked at the clock again, and this time she saw her reflection in the mirror. She didn’t normally like to see herself naked. She was thirty-nine. The smooth-bellied nymph of yesterday was gone. But I don’t look bad, she thought. I’m still desirable.

And that’s wasted, too. Oh, you bastard, why did you get shot down! If you had gotten through your tour, you’d have been home eighteen months ago, and we would have been divorced six months later. If you hadn’t got yourself shot down, I would be free of you, and I could flirt with this dangerous Lowell character.

God,
that’s
a dangerous line of thought! Stop that right
now!

Averting her eyes, she walked quickly back into the bathroom and finished her shower.

(One)
Fayetteville, North Carolina
1705 Hours, 10 June 1969

The Fayetteville Airport terminal was circular and glassy, a small-town airport turned busy-busy by the war-generated travel to and from Fort Bragg. The days of troop trains were over. Now the troops traveled by commercial air. But they still looked scared and they made Dorothy sad. Even the Green Berets, who seemed genuinely pleased to be leaving Fort Bragg to exchange make-believe war for the real thing, made her sad. The Fayetteville Airport terminal reminded Dorothy of one of those new, splendiferous funeral homes, patterned on Tara in
Gone with the Wind
.

And when the plan bringing Sharon Felter to Fayetteville arrived, she felt even worse. The first items out of the cargo compartment were two flag-draped caskets.

Was Tom going to finally come home that way? Please God, no. Not for the children’s sake. Give them back their father.

She saw that Sharon was not alone. There was a teenaged girl with her. A tall (much taller than Sharon) awkward gangling girl with a mouthful of silver braces, looking sad and sullen.

“Sharon?” Dorothy called.

“Well, hello,” Sharon said, after a moment’s pause while she recalled just whom she was talking to. “How nice to see you again.”

“I’m here to meet you,” Dorothy said.

Sharon Felter looked a little confused.

“Roxy MacMillan asked me to,” Dorothy said.

“You’re a friend of Roxy’s?” Sharon replied. She was pleased.

“Yes, and Roxy has somehow gotten the idea that you and I are dear old friends,” Dorothy said.

“Dear new friends,” Sharon said. “Sarah, this is Mrs. Sims. Dorothy, this is my daughter.”

“Hello, Sarah,” Dorothy said.

Sarah managed a faint smile.

“Sarah is not happy to be in Fort Bragg,” Sharon said. “Could you tell?”

“No!”

“Mother!”

The mothers of daughters exchanged smiles. They walked to the Baggage Claim area.

“I really don’t know what’s going on,” Sharon said as she heaved her suitcase from the carousel, grunting a little. “Sandy was planning to be here only a couple of weeks, and then he called and told me to come prepared to stay for some time.”

Dorothy smiled. She didn’t know what to say. But then she thought of something:

“It looks like a gathering of old friends,” she said.

“Sandy told me Craig Lowell is here,” Sharon said. “We’ve known Craig for a long time. Is that who you mean?”

“Roxy has warned me about him,” Dorothy said.

“Roxy gets carried away,” Sharon said, loyally. “As I’m sure you know.”

They got in the car and drove out to Fort Bragg.

Sharon seemed pleased when Roxy enveloped her in a bear hug. Ruth seemed to resent it.

“Sandy and Duke are off somewhere in Duke’s airplane,” Roxy said. “But they promised to be back at six-thirty.”

(Two)

It was quarter to seven before they appeared in a dust-covered Ford station wagon. Colonel Felter was in a class “A” tropical worsted uniform. Lowell was in a well-worn flight suit, a grayish tan coverall, grease-and sweat-stained.

They disappeared immediately upstairs, and Dorothy could hear the sound of a shower running.

General and Mrs. Bellmon arrived, introducing themselves to Dorothy as Bob and Barbara. The general was in civilian sports clothes and helped himself to the gin and vermouth, wordlessly offering a glass to Dorothy. She accepted with a nod of her head.

It was icy cold and she liked it.

Colonel Felter appeared first, in a cotton knit shirt and wash pants.

“You got that message, Sandy?” Bellmon asked, shaking his hand.

“Lowell and I flew up and got it,” Felter said. He declined a martini and fished a bottle of wine from the beer cooler. He made himself a spritzer, adding ice and soda to the white wine.

Lowell appeared, also in civilian clothes. The metamorphosis was complete. He didn’t look like an officer in civvies. He looked like a model in an advertisement in
Town & Country
for fifty-year-old brandy. He had a cord jacket on and crisply pressed gray slacks, loafers with tassels, and even an ascot knotted around his neck. And the aviator’s wristwatch was gone, replaced by a dime-thin gold watch on an alligator band. No wonder they called him the Duke. She remembered that Roxie had said something about his having money.

Dorothy hadn’t thought anything about it then. “Money” to Roxy, as to most service wives, almost always meant that a parent had died and left an unexpected multi-thousand-dollar windfall—enough to pay off the car, or the house, or to send the kids to college without strain. It wasn’t “money” as Dorothy’s father thought of money, or as she was again letting herself think of money. To her father “money” meant wealth. She was suddenly
sure
that “wealthy” was the word to apply to Colonel Craig Lowell.

“Hello, again, Mrs. Sims,” he said, smiling distantly, impersonally, at her. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“Please call me Dorothy,” she said. “That’s a lovely watch.”

He gave her a strange look.

“It was a Christmas present,” he said.

“It’s lovely,” she repeated and put out her hand. It
was
a Patek Philippe. Three thousand dollars.

“She must be a very good friend,” she said.

He gave her a strange look.

“My mother’s husband gave it to me,” he said.

She wondered why that bit of information pleased her so much. Because meeting someone else who was wealthy in these surroundings was like meeting another American in Vladivostok?

She smiled at him. Colonel Lowell looked at her strangely, with what could have been contempt in his eyes.

What do I do now, say, “It’s OK, Colonel, my father is the Carolina Tobacco Company”?

When he disappeared and came back with a bottle of Ambassador Twelve-Year-Old Scotch whiskey she knew was his own bottle, she was a little jealous. He didn’t care if his friends knew he was rich, while she had spent her married life pretending that her own wealth didn’t exist. His way obviously worked better than hers did.

“I had to write Mother twice this week, Craig,” Barbara Bellmon said, smiling with clearly genuine warmth. “Once to tell her that no, I hadn’t the faintest idea what had happened to you, and then to tell her that you now have dropped out of the sky looking as dapper as ever.”

“Please give her my fondest regards,” Lowell said, and Dorothy sensed that his words weren’t just ritual courtesy. Lowell clearly genuinely liked Barbara Bellmon’s mother. “She’s still in Carmel?”

“Playing golf and raising roses,” Barbara said.

“I was just thinking,” Lowell said, “looking at Mac’s stove…” He inclined his head toward the cut-in-half fifty-five-gallon drum set up in the rear of Mac’s quarters, “that that is probably the very same stove on which General Waterford burned perfectly good meat into carbon for Mrs. Waterford and me at Mac and Roxy’s place in Bad Nauheim.”

“No, it’s not, Duke,” Roxy said. “It’s the same kind of barbecue, but it’s a new one. I just can’t talk him into getting something decent.”

“You should never have married a paratrooper,” Lowell said. “They don’t know decent.”

“Oh, go to hell, Duke,” Roxy said, fondly.

“I gather you served with Mrs. Bellmon’s father, Colonel?” Dorothy asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and smiled at her. His “ma’am” sounded quite as phony to her ears as her own “I gather, Colonel.” Was he mocking her?

“I began as Mrs. Waterford’s golf pro,” he went on. “And then, after I had done so splendidly at that, I was promoted to Master of the Royal Horse.”

Barbara Bellmon laughed.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Dorothy said.

“The Duke,” Roxy said, “was a PFC, the golf pro at the Constabulary golf course.” Dorothy wasn’t sure she was hearing correctly. It was difficult to imagine this tall—what?
—aristocrat
as an enlisted man.

“I was perfectly happy,” Colonel Lowell said, “teaching the ladies how to swat the ball. And then MacMillan, who was then—believe it or not—a lean, lithe, flat-bellied paratrooper captain, put his two cents in.”

“Mac was Daddy’s aide, Dorothy,” Barbara Bellmon explained, “after he and Bob came home from the POW camp.” Dorothy understood that comment had been injected in the story for her benefit. “And Daddy was a polo player.”

“And he told me to round up the best polo players in the Constabulary,” MacMillan said.

“One of whom was PFC Lowell?” Dorothy asked.

“Uh-huh,” MacMillan said. “What the general did not say was that he wanted commissioned polo players. Not lousy PFCs.”

“I was perfectly happy as a PFC,” Lowell said.

“But you were a polo player?” Dorothy asked.

“Madame,” he said. “I must object to the past tense.”

“You still play?”

“When I can find the time,” he said. “And some generous soul with a large string.”

“My brother plays a little,” Dorothy said. “Ted Persons?”

“Sure,” he said, immediately. “I played with him several times last year in”—there was the slightest hesitation—“…California.”

He did not want to say, she realized, “Palm Springs.”

He was now looking at her with the first interest he had shown.

“And then we found out that the Frogs don’t let their enlisted men play polo,” Mac went on, impatient at their exchange. “At least not with their officers.”

“So what did they do,” Dorothy asked. “Send you to OCS?”

“The Duke wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes in OCS,” Mac said. “And I knew it. Besides, there wasn’t time.”

“So what happened?” Dorothy asked.

“All of a sudden,” Colonel Lowell said, “my talents, which had previously been hidden—literally—in the manure pile in the stable, were suddenly recognized. I became an instant officer and gentleman.”

“How?” Dorothy asked.

“Yon bald, fat man,” Lowell said, pointing with his cigar at MacMillan, “had me directly commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Finance Corps.”

“Just like that?” Dorothy asked.

“General Waterford told me he wanted a commissioned polo player,” MacMillan said. “I got him a commissioned polo player.”

“And then,” Dorothy said, looking first at Lowell, then averting her eyes, “you liked it, and stayed?”

“Oh, no,” Lowell said. “Shortly after I was commissioned, they sent me to Greece, where people shot at me. That really wasn’t what I had in mind to do with the rest of my life.”

“That’s where I met him,” Colonel Felter entered the story. “I had just nearly killed myself getting through the Ranger School here. If you were the honor graduate, you could pick your assignment. I wasn’t the honor graduate, and I picked Greece. And I met the Duke on the plane from Frankfurt.”

“And the first thing I asked him,” Lowell said, “was ‘What have you done wrong, to get yourself shanghaied to Greece?’”

“What happened to the polo?” Dorothy asked.

“When Daddy finally got to play the French,” Barbara Bellmon said, her voice sounding just a little strange, “he had a heart attack on the field. He died on his pony.”

“Which left the Army,” Lowell said quickly, “faced with the problem of what to do with an absolutely unqualified-to-do-anything second john. So they sent me to Greece, in the prayerful hope I would get blown away.”

“Greece?” Dorothy asked. “What was going on in Greece?”

“Believe it or not,” General Bellmon said, “these two worked for Paul Hanrahan.” He indicated Lowell and Felter. “The way Paul tells the story, he asked for experienced combat officers of the highest possible quality, and they sent him a midget and a moron.”

“Bob!” Barbara Bellmon snapped. “Jesus Christ!”

“No offense, Mouse,” General Bellmon said. “I hasten to add that they both came back bona fide heros. The Duke did a John Wayne scene on a mountaintop, and the Mouse pulled the Duke’s feet out of the fire.”

“You’ll notice, Mrs. Sims,” Colonel Lowell said, “that the general has offered no apology to me for describing me as a midget.”

“Well, since we’re telling stories,” Barbara Bellmon said, “why don’t you tell Dorothy how you met the Duke?”

“I’m sure we’re boring Dorothy,” General Bellmon said.

“Not at all,” Dorothy said.

“It would embarrass the Duke,” the general said.

“It will embarrass you,” Barbara Bellmon said. “Tell it!”

“How could I possibly be more embarrassed, after what the general has been calling me?” Lowell asked, innocently.

“We were at Knox,” Barbara Bellmon said. “Bob was on the staff. One of the personnel problems was a lieutenant in the student officer company. He had everybody on the post above the grade of major sore at him.”

“What did you do to the post commander, Colonel?” Dorothy asked Lowell.

“How do you know she’s talking about me?” Lowell asked.

“The general was very proud of his Packard convertible,” Barbara Bellmon went on. “And he was also sort of a bigot.”

“That’s not fair, Babs,” General Bellmon said.

“It’s the truth,” Barbara insisted. “And you know it is. So what happened is that one day, the general saw a Packard convertible, like his, same color and everything, except that this one was a sedan, and a larger model—”

“It was a 280,” Lowell corrected her. “Not a sedan. But it was the classier one. It’s still in a garage on the island, by the way. I gave it to my mother’s husband.”

“…classier,” Barbara Bellmon picked up the story, “than the general’s pride and joy. Two second lieutenants were in it. One of them was white. He was driving. The other one was black. He was in the back seat, grandly returning all the crisp salutes from people who thought that there was only one bright yellow Packard convertible on the post, the post commander’s.”

“It looked as if they were mocking him,” Bellmon said.

“So the general found out who owned the car,” Barbara Bellmon continued, “and asked around about him. When he found out that the source of his commission was questionable, he put the wheels in motion to have him kicked out of the Army. The wheel he set in motion was Bob. He was then a lieutenant colonel.”

“Do you have to go on with this?” General Bellmon asked.