All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By (2 page)

"Okeydoke then, look to be takin' off at about 0730."

Col. Cotsworth's estimated time of departure was on target. Minutes after seven-thirty we rose skyward to meet the rays of the sun above a low-hanging cloud bank. Soon we were winging north in a sky of purest cerulean. The aircraft was a new four-engine Boeing Stratoliner, so recently requisitioned from Pan American Airlines it had not yet been repainted. A hearty breakfast was served by stewards. Our guests from Great Britain, all of eminent rank, were flatteringly courteous to a junior officer. Many of them were scholars as well as soldiers, and even Field Marshal Sir John Dill appeared to be well acquainted with Boss's six-volume history of the Civil War. Following a stimulating discussion of Longstreet's tragic flaw, I withdrew to nap for almost two hours, until we touched down at Camp Pickett.

Another pleasant surprise awaited me at the field. As I stepped from the plane, a staff car flying the insignia of the camp's commanding officer drove up.

"Sir," the driver said, throwing open the door for me, "General Blaisdell's compliments, and he hopes you enjoy your stay in Virginia."

I looked up just as the starboard engines of the. Stratoliner restarted and saw Col. Cotsworth signaling thumbs-up from the cockpit. I smiled my thanks and saluted as he taxied down the landing strip. All of the frustration I had earlier suffered was now forgotten. Relaxed after my rapid journey to the Old Dominion, I eagerly anticipated my reunion with those whom I love most dearly on this earth.

My driver, Sgt. Lew Chittum of Roanoke, made excellent time despite the fires burning along the Blue Ridge.

A pall of smoke and ash across the southern approach to Gaston brought us to a standstill at times, but I reached the institute shortly before two o'clock.

It was my first visit since my own graduation in 1937; even so I wasn't prepared for the pleasant wave of nostalgia that rose in my breast, lifting my heart well into my throat. If there is a more beautiful campus in the world, I have yet to be informed of it. Designed by Thomas Jefferson, the famous Hilltop Parade is lined with notable examples of classic revival architecture. There are six temple-form structures of dark red brick with extensive porticos and whitewashed columns thirty feet in height. The fourteen-acre Parade is surrounded by towering ash and elm frees. To the right as one enters upon the Parade are the cadet barracks. Against a panorama of the mountains, the cadet chapel rises in isolated splendor across the field, overlooking the campus. Today, however, as we drove along the Parade the mountains were not visible and the sky was queerly burnished by an indistinct sun. The air was unusually sultry for spring.

As the car approached the chapel I heard what sounded like the 50-voice boys' choir from nearby McKinley School. Horse-drawn carriages waited on the wedding party. The line of limousines along the chapel drive could not have been less than a hundred yards long. Undoubtedly half of official Washington had driven down for the wedding of Secretary Lawton's granddaughter, and Boss's own party had required the use of a ten-car private train. There would be few seats remaining in the chapel.

Two of Clipper's classmates, wearing full-dress uniforms, saluted as I went double-time up the steps to the ivy-framed doors. One of them recognized me.

"Sir, didn't think you were going to get here."

"It seems like a miracle to me," I replied, and went in. The choir had concluded their prenuptial anthem and already bridesmaids were starting down the right-side aisle. Six of the girls, all dressed in pale orange chiffon, fidgeted next to sashed and sabered ushers as they awaited their turns.

Corrie Billings turned slowly on her father's arm and stared nearsightedly at me through the fine net of her veil. I pay scant attention to what women wear to be married in, but her gown struck me as being something very special—I'm sure it was an heirloom. The gown was cream satin embroidered with tiny pearls; it had a full skirt and a long train. Instead of a bouquet, Corrie held a small prayer book in her gloved hands. All around her, the children: spit-combed or meticulously braided, pale with the excitement and prestige of the moment, in their velvet and ruffles richly overdressed, like scaled-down royalty. Two boys to carry the train, two girls with baskets of tiny wild-flowers.

With her charming quirk of a smile, Corrie pulled her veil aside, showing not a trace of nerves.

"Champ, come here," she said softly, but with a sense of command few officers of my acquaintance could equal, "We sure are happy you could make it."

I lightly kissed her cheek and shook hands with her father, who stood half a head shorter than Corrie and smelled of bay rum and sharp sweat. It was stuffy in the small vestibule, but Corrie was oblivious.

"You look wonderful," I told her.

"Thank you, sir. I let mama and all the cousins and aunts do the worryin' for me. It's the only way to get married. Well, now everybody's here, almost. Nhora's back at the train with her navel packed in ice, poor thing. Might be appendicitis, the doctor says. Or maybe it's something she ate didn't agree with her."

"Damn shame. Nancy?"

"Sittin' down front beside Boss. She's been all smiles these last couple of days, havin' herself a
good
time. Guess you're glad to hear that. Sure sorry about the baby, Champ. Don't you go givin' up, hear? There's gotta be a Champ junior in the family."

"There will be. And how's Clipper?"

"He's been just a little strange lately—that's normal I guess. I peeked around the corner at him just a minute ago. Oh, Lord, he looks s'handsome in that uniform! I know I'll do somethin'
dumb
at the last minute. Cry. Reckon nobody will see me blubber because of this veil. Isn't it lovely though? Belonged to my great-grandmother, Sally Armitage Billings—What's the matter with you, honeybuss, you got to go pee?"

One of the trainbearers nodded woefully.

"Can you hold on a couple extra minutes? Then when you get up there on the altar—like at rehearsal, remember?—just ease on out the chancel door to your left, there's a toilet there you can use."

The organist was already well into "Here Comes the Bride." "Corrie," her father said hoarsely, "for God's sake, you're gettin'
married
."

"Reckon I better go before Clipper thinks I changed m'mind," Corrie said. She readjusted her veil. "Big brother. Champ, be seein' you."

"Save the next to the last dance for me, Corrie."

"I surely will." And off she went with her father, and into the chapel; I could hear a wave of rustlings and the murmur of voices as heads turned to the tardy bride.

I went upstairs to the gallery, and was not pleased to note that the steps sagged and the cracks in the stucco walls had widened since my days as a "midge"—a lowly Fourth Classman. The chapel was built in 1834. During the Civil War it was shelled and severely damaged in the battle of Rickett's Mill, fought in the nearby woods. Rebuilt after the war, the chapel now stood sadly in need of restoration. I resolved to bring this to Boss's attention; as the senior member of the board of regents, he was in a position to get something done.

I passed the ranks of the boys' choir and moved toward a vacant spot in the front-row pew at the end of the gallery, which overlooked the altar below.

There were roses, stephanotis and gardenias everywhere—in hanging baskets, woven into the white latticework that transformed the altar into a pleasing bower. Droplets from an alabaster fountain were ignited by the light focused through an octagonal window in the back wall of the chapel. I saw a mild rainbow, and unexpected halos appeared in the greenery. The air in the chapel was sweet, very nearly oppressive. Handheld paper fans waved everywhere, to little effect. It might have been my imagination, so recently had I come from the burning hills to the east, but I was certain that I smelled woodsmoke even here. Corrie was now approaching the altar with her father.

There may have been tears behind the veil. From a distance I couldn't tell, but as she moved regally those last few yards to join her betrothed she acknowledged a nonagenarian auntie seated in a position of honor on the aisle. She paused ever so briefly, spoke, and fetched a smile from the frail old lady. Yes, Corrie was totally self-possessed even during these tense moments. Which was more than could be said for Clipper, who stood far more rigidly than military demeanor required, very nearly transfixed, his china-blue eyes wide as he stared at Corrie.

I sighed for him, recalling my own unreasonable terror just before I was married to Nancy. I had walked out on the altar with my attendants in a mood of quiet anticipation, perhaps just a trifle impatient to have it over with. But my first glimpse of Nancy in her wedding gown did me in; my throat filled, my heart pathetically, I was afraid of fainting. I cannot imagine that even my first experience in combat will so completely separate me from my wits. I married Nancy two years ago, and even now I have only the dimmest memory of our exchange of vows. Nancy has said that when I placed the wedding band on her finger I was so cold to the touch she almost cried out. Boss raised us, trained us, to be afraid of nothing, but somewhere along the line he forgot to mention what an ordeal it could be to stand with someone you love desperately and say a few simple words before a minister. Boss has married three times himself, the last time to a woman a year younger than I, so I suppose the idea of marriage has never fazed him. But my father is an unusual man in every respect.

Perhaps it was the depressing heat, or it may be that the tension of the unexpectedly long journey, filled with detours and delays, caught up to me just then. Thinking of my own wedding while watching another cast me into a mood of rueful lethargy. Suspended in a vale of fascination between past and present, I felt overwhelmed by shadows, an apprehension of events within events I couldn't hope to articulate.

While the wedding proceeded as pageantry, at a cadence peculiar to dreams, my inner vision was sharpest for oddities, fragments, notions: the slight indentation of Corrie's slippers in the plush blue carpeting of the altar steps; the sibilance of water in the fountain, drops indelible in light and air like Lachiyma Christi; the vaulted, soaring organ; a nod, a smile, a yawn—all seemed too vivid, unbearable as reality. I looked at my Nancy, but was shut out by the floppy brim of the hat she wore, denied even the fleeting comfort of imagining that she would turn and find me (her long look, her astonished, blissful smile), for she sat next to my father, that powerful, coarse and goaty gentleman with one galled eye and a Viking's bent for ravishment.

My qualms—childlike, rankly sexual—were of dispossession, though of course he had a young wife of his own, bolder and gayer than Nancy, and he would not be a predator within the limits of his own family. Nancy spoke to him. He dipped his head below the brim of her hat to listen. His hair was longer than ever, inches below his collar, coarse white and peppery gray and yellow-streaked, the precise yellow of nicotined fingers. He squeezed her slim hand with his own. The organ ceased, the silence thundered, I was sexually aroused as I often am in church, I looked elsewhere.

On the altar Corrie's father had stepped back; the beads of sweat on the back of his balding head caught the light and glistered. The trainbearer with the overburdened bladder did his vanishing act; two photographers tried to be inconspicuous as they snapped pictures. And Clipper had moved stiffly to Corrie's side. I noted the single gold star on the collar of his tunic, an honor for which only a handful of graduates of Blue Ridge have qualified: For four consecutive years Clipper had stood first in his class.

I expected him to be wearing the sword presented by the company to their First Captain on graduation day, the usual ornate affair, gold-encrusted, perhaps capped by an eagle about to take wing. I have such a sword, and I am always thrilled by the sight of it. But Clipper had chosen to wear another saber, straight instead of curved, a practical fighting man's weapon which I recognized. The blade was thirty-seven inches long, one and one-eighth inches wide at the hilt. It had been given to Boss in 1911 by the famed "Monsieur l'Adjutant," Cléry, master of arms and instructor of fencing at the French Cavalry School in Saumur—a rare appreciation of an outstanding pupil by the professional champion of Europe in the foil, dueling sword and saber. Now the saber belonged to Clipper, and it was no surprise that he had chosen to wear it in preference to the First Captain's saber. Honors do not come easily at Blue Ridge, but Boss bestows his blessings even more sparingly.

It was a moment of conflicting emotion for me: There is no doubt that I was envious, yet a lump came to my throat that resisted swallowing. I was so proud of Clipper I wanted to shout—perhaps also I wanted to break the languorous, melancholy spell that had enfolded me, to give Clipper respite, bring a smile to his strained face.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God . . ."

The pastor, wearing the scarlet hood of his Oxford University degree over a black academic gown, had begun the ceremony. In a few minutes then, with a burst of Mendelssohn and the traditional arch of sabers, it would be over. My mind wandered. The reception, I recalled, was to be at the historic Stonewall Jackson residence situated just off campus, a landmark now administered by the state of Virginia. It had been secured for the reception through much arm-twisting, I was sure, plus a heavy outlay of cash, but the usual site of cadet wedding receptions, the Officer's Club, would not have been large enough or grand enough for this affair.