Memorial Bridge (37 page)

Eason remained where he was, but he adjusted his posture, a subtle coming to attention that indicated his acquiescence.

"Oh, I forgot the Bible," Crocker said and moved toward his desk.

"I have it." Cass opened her shoulder bag and drew out Richard's. "This one is special to us," she said, and when she looked at Crocker, her eyes burned with gratitude.

Crocker touched her hand. "No wonder we all like you."

Without any further elaboration, they observed in its barest version the form of the rite of Sean's military initiation. With his hand firmly enough on his baby's Bible that his wife could feel its weight, repeating after the secretary of the air force, with the chief of staff as solemn witness, Sean Dillon swore to God that he would defend the Constitution of the United States of America as an officer in its air force.

When he had finished, Cass expected the men to shake hands, but instead Crocker extended his hand toward Eason. General Eason efficiently handed over a small black box. A ring box? Was this a wedding? The thought of the self-important Eason as a ring bearer made Cass want to giggle. One incongruity after another. One absurdity ... Was this a dream?

Crocker shocked Cass by giving the box to her. He took the Bible and waited while she opened the lid.

Why did she know so little of these things? A dream? If she awoke now, she would remember none of this.

The box held a pair of silver stars. Now she understood. This was what wives did for their general-husbands. She touched the perfectly faceted five-pointed stars, felt their weight, recognized each one for the wrought sterling piece it was. She looked at Sean, Sean who had never worn jewelry. He was waiting for her.

In the sacraments of the Church, the ritual act itself accomplished the saving ontological change, and now Cass felt that her presenting his stars was what would effect the change in Sean's life. Nothing he had ever asked of her had made her feel like this before, not that she was a part of his remarkable destiny, but that somehow she was actually helping to shape it.

Cass Dillon was famous throughout Canaryville, and even the FBI, as the unawed woman who was never at a loss. But now, as she stood on her tiptoes to pin each silver star on its epaulet, her hands shook. Her full heart overflowed, like both her eyes.

Cass would not have been surprised if, after the ceremony, Sean had told her he had to go to work now, he'd see her later. Indeed, as they walked out of the Pentagon toward the line of taxis on one of the ramps leading up from the river boulevard, she decided yes, he's going to put me in a cab.

But they stopped on the curb, short of the taxis.

Now that he was outdoors, Sean had donned his hat, and the sight of him so completely decked out heightened her former feeling of unreality—that dream!

Soldiers of all ranks hustling toward the Pentagon, the very men who had failed even to see him only an hour before, now snapped brisk salutes.

The further marvel was the way in which Sean returned those salutes, his flat hand hitting his brow with complete naturalness.

"Where did you learn that?"

Sean grinned. "You won't tell?"

"Of course not."

He leaned to her ear. "I've been practicing in front of my mirror for a week."

She started to laugh. "You do it great. You really do." And finally her true amazement at the house of chills and thrills into which he'd dragged her poured out in the form of laughter. She leaned against him.

He held her, laughing too. He ignored the passing military men, who were looking for his eye, to salute. It felt like being kids again, larking on the Oak Street Beach, having pulled one off on the swells from Lake Street.

Cass just knew there was nothing left that could surprise her.

But then the long, blue Lincoln pulled up to the curb and stopped. Above the license plate was another plate that displayed a silver star.

The driver hopped out of the car and rushed around to stand before Sean at brisk attention. There were blue stripes on the sleeve of his tan belted jacket.

Sean pulled himself together, returned the man's salute. "Cass, this is Sergeant Hewitt. Sergeant, I'd like you to meet Mrs. Dillon."

"Pleased to meet you, ma'am." He opened the door for them.

Cass got in, and then Sean did.

In the seconds before Sergeant Hewitt resumed his own seat, Cass whispered, "What is this?"

"It's my car!" Sean blurted out with unfettered amazement of his own. "He's my chauffeur!"

Hewitt got in.

Sean and Cass, holding hands, had to look away from each other to keep from screeching.

As they drove across the city, Cass gradually returned to herself. At first, like a schoolgirl salvaging her self-control, she watched the monuments and becolumned buildings for the focus. But then, as if she'd never seen them before, the sights of Washington—Jefferson's temple, Smithson's castle, Mellon's gallery, Grant's equestrian statue—began to thrill her. A schoolgirl's happiness filled her, and she felt free as any tourist. It struck her then, as they cruised along the Mall, that the tourists were pointing at their car. Hot-dog vendors and balloon men waved at her, and policemen touched their hats. The golden city seemed to be
opening itself in ways it never had before, and as Cass sat back in the spacious plush seat, an unprecedented exhilaration buoyed her, as if the official car itself were magic.

Soon they came to Boiling Field, the air base on the Potomac just south of the Anacostia. This was a part of Washington Cass had never visited, and the airfield had registered only vaguely in her mind as the busy second airport across the river from National.

The car slowed as it approached the guardhouse at the gate.

Two soldiers wearing white helmets marked "AP" snapped to attention, saluting, as the car went through. Once more Sean returned the salute with what seemed to Cass an effortless panache.

Now as Cass stared out the window, what she saw was an exotic, unfamiliar realm. Only a hundred yards inside the gate the flight line began where a large formation of silver airplanes sat with their noses pointing at the clouds. They reminded Cass of birds bathing in the flow of wind on the edge of a South Side Chicago roofline.

At a low, round-roofed building marked "Base Ops," the car turned onto a road bordered on one side by glistening steel hangars and on the other by a string of pristine white buildings. These were set amid crisply edged lawns with low fences of gracefully draped white chains. That the driver had so slowed the car gave Cass the feeling she was expected now to inspect what they were passing. She could not identify them as such yet, but the diverse structures were barracks buildings, a commissary, the base exchange, the rehearsal hall of the USAF band and the headquarters of the First District Command. One building, from the side, looked like a hangar, but it had a brick façade and a theater marquee which announced
The Third Man.
Another building's sign read, "USO." Then they came upon a small white church with a steeple, clapboard siding and frosted glass windows. It reminded Cass of churches on calendars, New England churches, Puritan ones, but they were always surrounded by snowy fields and mountains in the distance.

"That's the Protestant church?"

"Everybody's," Sean said.

The unornamented sign read, "Base Chapel. Sunday Services 1100 hours, Catholic Mass 0730 daily, Sunday 0730,0815."

"They have Mass in there?" There was no cross on top of the steeple. Protestants didn't believe in showing Christ's crucified body.

"There are dispensations in the military," Sean said. "Soldiers can eat meat on Fridays."

Cass looked with surprise at him, but he didn't notice. He was pointing out the window on his side, toward a swimming pool in which a throng of children splashed and cavorted. "There's a pool that Rickie will love."

Cass leaned toward him, to see. It reminded her of pools on the South Side which would be crowded in the same way with ecstatic summer children.

Sergeant Hewitt said from his place at the wheel, "Actually, General, that's the NCO pool. Your pool is up by the Officers' Club. There, see it?"

Cass and Sean watched in silence as the Officers' Club came into view, its broad veranda overlooking a landscaped terrace and pool. The swimming pool here, twice as large as the other, had almost no one playing in it. Didn't officers have children? Women were lounging in deck chairs. Waiters could be seen moving among them with trays of drinks. All at once Cass had the feeling that more than one of those ladies behind the dark glasses were turning their languid eyes up from their magazines toward her.

The car stopped at a corner, then turned, passing by the front of the Officers' Club. It was large, three stories, a Georgian manor house made of brick. A sloping curved driveway led to an entrance defined by an overarching dark blue canvas awning. Cass pictured those swimming pool ladies arriving beneath that awning in evening gowns with white gloves to their elbows. Their hands would be linked to the arms of their handsome husbands, who would pass Sean by without seeing him.

The car kept on, and all at once the very air around them changed, becoming cooler, as they drove into a distinctly set-off enclave. The street was a tunnel of graceful old elm trees the leaves of which stirred shadows in a breeze that until now Cass had not noticed. A sign with the same utilitarian stencil lettering as the one outside the chapel proclaimed, "Off Limits To Unauthorized Personnel." Beyond it Cass saw on one side a line of large brick houses in the Georgian style of the club. Each house was set apart from its neighbors by a broad apron of grass clipped as smooth as a putting green. Not houses, Cass thought, but mansions.

Across from each house, folded into a wooded hillside, was a garage with spaces for three automobiles. In front of each residence were tidy, more formally lettered signs.

"This is Generals' Row, Mrs. Dillon," the driver said.

"Maj. Gen. Cabot," she read, "Lt. Gen. White, Lt. Gen. Davis, Maj. Gen. Ford."

One house was even larger than the others and had an entrance awning like the Officers' Club. Sean poked her as they passed it. "Gen. Eason," she read. A curtain moved inside a window, and Cass saw a woman staring out at them. It seemed to Cass that their eyes met. The curtain fell. Cass shivered to think that here was a female version of General Eason's coldness.

Several houses farther along the car slowed and pulled to the curb.

Mother of God, she thought.

A sign right there, where the car stopped: "Brig. Gen. Dillon." She read it again, pressing Sean's hand. His soaking hand.

"Brig.?" she asked. "What's 'Brig.'?" But she answered at once herself: a military word for jail.

"Brigadier," he said quietly. His lightheartedness was gone. "This is it."

Cass couldn't move.

Sergeant Hewitt had come around to Cass's door and now opened it. Still she did not move.

She looked at Sean. "This is what?"

He shrugged.

"When were you going to discuss this with me?"

Sean glanced awkwardly toward the driver. A screen door clapped shut, and when Cass looked toward the house, two men in white waiters' jackets were coming toward them. Both were smiling. One was colored.

Not waiters' coats, she saw then, for on each man's sleeve were sergeant's stripes, like the driver's.

"Who are they?"

"Our aides, Sergeant Jones and Sergeant Austin."

"Welcome, General," the colored sergeant, Austin, said. He seemed to be in charge. "Welcome, Mrs. Dillon."

And when they both saluted, she realized to her horror—she could never do this!—they were also saluting her.

By November of 1948 the Berlin airlift was in its sixth month. More than a hundred thousand flights had been logged in and out of the blockaded city, and more than a million tons of fuel and food had been brought in. Air force fliers, the very men who had savaged German cities only three years before, were now referred to by the children of Berlin as the "bubblegum bombers." The air crews had taken to tying little sacks of gum and candy to tiny parachutes and dropping them by the hundreds out the bays of their C-47s and C-54s each time they swooped in for landings at Tempelhof, Gatow and Tegel. The laden planes landed every few minutes around the clock, to be off-loaded by squads from among more than twenty thousand German volunteers. Still, it would be another six months and another hundred thousand flights before the Russians would lift the blockade. When that finally happened—and it would happen within a few days of the suicide of James Forrestal—Winston Churchill would say, "America has saved the world."

But in dank November no one could foresee that triumph. To the air force brass who were managing it from Washington, the airlift had begun to seem futile. The Russian impunity in continuing to shut off access to Berlin seemed to prove the point they were so desperately trying to make to the beleaguered Forrestal, and to the House Armed Services Committee—that the American monopoly of the A-bomb was
no threat to Stalin without a new long-range bomber with which to deliver the thing to Russia itself. But Forrestal had come fully over to the navy position, whence he'd started, and the committee, long divided, had lately seemed to be leaning that way too: the atomic bomb should be based on a massive new carrier fleet, with a new navy airplane to match, which would not depend on a permanent, far-flung network of air bases on foreign soil. Forrestal was pressing the committee for a decision, one way or the other, before the December recess. Almost surely it was going to be a decision not only against the B-36 but against, really, the future combat role of the air force.

The generals of the Air Staff, Dillon's neighbors, were thus a dispirited group by that November. Early one morning, as they enacted the ritual of their departure for work, it seemed to Dillon more absurd than usual, even as he participated in it. Without ever acknowledging the irony, given their death struggle with the navy, the air force brass traveled every day from Boiling to the Pentagon by boat.