Once an Eagle (100 page)

 

There was more
but he put the letter down. His boy was dead. The letters were all he had now. With a swift, grief-bound clarity he remembered an evening on Luzon when he'd come in late and found Donny wide awake, sitting up in bed, chewing at the inside of his cheek.

“Dad, I've been thinking and thinking about this—I can't get it out of my mind, I can't figure it out …”

“What's that?”

“Well, here I am—Donald C. Damon, an American, here in the Philippine Islands in 1936, lying here on this bed … but
why,
Dad? Why aren't I a Tagalog farmer, or an Italian stevedore, or a Negro sharecropper—of all the people I could have been, why am I this, here? Why am I
me?
”

Damon had sat down on the edge of the bed, suppressing a smile, amused at the boy's agitation but nonetheless respectful of the depth of the search that had provoked it. He knew his son had a finer, more ruthlessly inquiring mind than he, and there was something both pleasing and saddening in the thought. Donny would be one of those men who suffer more than others, who press for the ultimate truth, and the realization humbled him a little.

“I can't answer that, Don,” he said after moment. “No man can. Life is a mystery, and the most profound philosophers in the world haven't been able to get beyond that.”

“But then what, Dad?—why should anybody care about anything? If it's all just stupid
chance …
”

He leaned forward and put his hand on Donny's foot. Perhaps he'd answered a little too hastily. He'd just returned from an evening at the Massengales', where there had been a lot of epigrammatic wit and a good deal of brandy. But the boy was genuinely troubled.

“The best thing to do is accept it,” he said. “Accept what you are and go on from there. You can't change the circumstances of your birth and condition—it's unprofitable to torture yourself with too much speculation as to why you've been placed in existence at a given point in time …” Then, touched by the need to pass on to his son and heir the doubtful legacy of his own strained and arrant experience, a sense of continuity of effort from father to son—or perhaps it was only the brandy—he'd added: “That's the whole challenge of life—to act with honor and hope and generosity, no matter what you've drawn. You can't help when or what you were born, you may not be able to help how you die; but you can—and you should—try to pass the days between as a good man …”

Now he chafed the stubble on his chin and sighed—a sigh that was half a sob. Words. What mattered, what remained was the iron fact that his only son was a charred mass of matter in a twisted, fire-blackened cage of steel and aluminum somewhere deep in Germany, among the firs, the bristling turnip fields.

“… I can't write her,” he murmured, half-aloud. I can't. I haven't got the guts. He gripped his chin in his hands. She would never forgive him now. Never. Why should she? He had stood all his life for armed force, for Flanders Fields and
pro patria mori
—and this was where it had led: a weary, apprehensive, sonless general who commanded nothing. He had spent half a hundred hours planning this amphibious envelopment, but once the landing craft turned toward the line of departure and the 477th jumped off for Komfane, he was as powerless as any Papuan native watching from a jungle peak a dozen miles away. He was a military broker in emotions—prodding Dickinson's excessive caution, slapping down Frenchy's explosive pugnacity, soothing Haley's wounded ego; exhorting, threatening, mollifying, praising, displaying competences he didn't own, feigning a confidence he could not feel …

He was a fraud. A fraud and a fool.

He sipped at his drink, though he knew it would afford no solace: liquor had never dulled his sensibilities. The gale increased again, in thunderous torrents of water that overflowed the foxholes and drainage ditch outside his tent and began to seep across the packed earth under his cot. Off to the left, toward Berabwe, there was the remote, hollow tapping of a machine gun; again, then the dull thud of mortars. His son was dead. And out there, a few hundred yards away, they were fighting: staring at the fitful dark, crouching hip-deep in water, shoulders hunched under their helmets, checking by feel for grenades, flare cartridges, alarm cords, power phones, struggling to hear sounds of human movement against the lashing fury of the rain. The focal point of what Washington was pleased to call The War Effort. The private in his concealed outpost, soaked to the very marrow of his bones, hungry, shaking with malaria, a jungle ulcer suppurating on his neck, his guts griping and burning with dysentery spasms, straining to hear, alone with his fear of the shadow darker-than-dark, the near flurry of movement, the knife, the cataclysmic flash of the grenade: held together by loyalty to his squad mates, pride in his company, grinding hatred of the enemy who had killed and mangled the bodies of his friends, fugitive dreams of that hometown whose inhabitants now worried about B-cards and points for roast beef and shoes and liquor, who cursed the ration boards and cheered and clapped at the newsreels between the feature films … There, in that outpost, on that three-square-feet of ground, was where the real war was being fought, no matter who denied it; and how that private did tonight—whether he had the hardihood and the craft to resist exhaustion and debility and slumber and kill the weary, sick, resourceful enemy who sought his life—would decide who would win this war, and nothing else.

His own son was dead, that boy out there on outpost was his son, they all were. Death was not an individual matter. We liked to think it was, but it was not. The death of one man touched us all, stripped us all. We were all one erring family, and nothing made us more conscious of this unalterable fact than loss. We were all one. On edge, stupid with weariness and grief he nonetheless felt he could reach out and touch them—George Caldwell peering through glasses at some gray stone Castello in Sicily, Jack Cleghorne rotting in the Bataan jungle, Westy training draftees in the red Georgia dust, Ed Mayberry hiding in the Mindanao rain forest, Meadowlark Walters in hospital at Algiers, Lin Tso-han huddled in some rude cave deep in the Wu T'ai Mountains—he felt he could reach out, giant-like, and embrace them all, the living and the dead, hold them to his breast, awestruck before this great wave of courage and sacrifice and hope that sought, however falteringly, however imperfectly, to put an end to a peculiar day of tyranny, the harsh voice that shouted man was no more than the tool of man …

But he could not hold it. Before his gaze the fire ran out in spurting fanlike columns, in scrolls, raced across plains and streams and mountain ranges, and now all he could hear were the screams, rising muffled and animal, soaring into a howl of all man's perdurant inhumanity; the faces around him, white and shaken, turned away, their gaze would not meet his—

He wiped his eyes with his hand, picked up the pencil and clipboard and folded back to a fresh sheet of paper and wrote:

 

Dear Mrs. Phelps:

You have, I know, already had word from your son's battalion commander, Lt. Col. Hoyt. I know, too, how pitifully inadequate any words are at a time of such immeasurable loss as you must feel; but I feel impelled to write a few lines in any event.

Your son was a most courageous soldier, and his actions at Tobaloor Village were in the finest tradition of the United States Army. I have recommended him for the highest honor our country can bestow; and I am proud to have known him. We shall all be the poorer for his loss. When this vast and most cruel of wars is over and we have established a more generous world than this, perhaps we can all of us take some comfort in the thought that he is one of the men who made that world possible.

Sincerely,
Samuel A. Damon, Maj. Gen., USA

 

It meant nothing. Nothing at all. Words. What did his mother care for citations, or medals, or letters of condolence? Her boy was dead.

Well. Sometimes they were all we had—words. They had to serve, flesh out the heart's soft cry …

He turned the page and wrote his wife's name; wiped his sleeve across his eyes. The rain battered against the tent roof and crept in greasy rivulets beneath his feet.

7

Life is a cheat,
and time kills life. Future possibilities. The cheapest cheat. How can we laugh, dream, couple when in the next moment, the next black rush of time—

But there, there are always those who have an answer. Trying to solve it. Lynx-eyed darlings, oh yes. American Century. Put all your eggs in one basket and watch the basket. Four Freedoms, save-salvage-and-survive, do unto others, live in the strength of the Lord, what
filth—!

The glass was short and broad-mouthed, last of a set bought in Cleveland in 1929; the gin swirled richly around the ice, white spirits. The curtains lifted and fell in the hot September breeze. A car passed, its tires a hiss of spun silk on glass. Behind the wall the Millmans' radio gabbled on and on, bursting with news. Devouring life.

I can't stay here. I can't stay in here any longer.

Tommy Damon rose to her feet, but the sensation was worse—a mountainside filled with great rock slabs falling, splitting off and falling in an interminable soundless crush of rubble and dust, timed now and then to the ebb and puff of the curtains.

“I've got to see Poppa,” she said urgently, and put her hand to her head. But he wasn't here. Any longer. He was—where? He had refused to tell her when he left, the noble stoicism game, and of course she had known better than to ask. The game all must play.

But now it was different. Now she had to know.

She half-ran to the phone, misdialed once, then correctly. “I want to speak with Army Ground Forces.” Her voice sounded curiously thick, as though she had a light cold, or had just wakened. “Colonel Hammerstrom, please.”

“I'm sorry, Colonel Hammerstrom is engaged right now. Could you—”

“No, I can't.” She rode in over the aide's cautious voice. “This is Mrs. Samuel Damon.”

“Oh yes, Mrs. Damon. I'll—”

“Would you tell him it's urgent. Very urgent. I'll hold on.”

“Very good, ma'am.”

There was a long pause in which she heard voices, the halting tap of a typewriter, the rustling of papers—was it?—dreamlike and faraway, like the sway of surf. Then Chink Hammerstrom's voice, hesitant, wary, a touch somber: “Hello, Tommy. How are you?”

He knew then: he knew. They always knew before anybody else. Rage choked her, she nearly dropped the receiver.

“Chink,” she said calmly. “I've always been a good girl. You know? Never asked any favors, never stepped out of line. Right?”

“Of course—”

“But now I've got to know. Where's Poppa?”

“The General? Why, he's in Britain. I thought you—”

“No, I mean really.
Really
where is he—?”

“In England, sweet. With a mission I really can't tell you about. You know I would if I could.”

That shade of reserve, of distance. He knew and he wasn't telling. And this was Chink Hammerstrom, who used to play “The Bontoc Blues” and “Thanks for the Memory” at the parties on Luzon! But there, you see?—the future killed time, and time killed life …

“Then why haven't I had a letter in seventeen days?” she demanded.

“Why, I don't know, honey. The mails are a royal mess, I can tell you that. Look, if there's—”

“If he's in Sicily the Germans certainly know it,” she cried hotly. “They know where he is and what he's doing a damn sight better than you do—don't you think I know
anything?
I was in France, last war—they know all about it when you go to the can …”

“Tommy please, honey, I can assure you he's in no danger whatever—”

“Oh Christ!” She struck her free hand against the telephone table. “Oh, stop it—tell me! Tell me! … Look, Chink,” she said in a hard, flat voice, while the anger held her suspended, “I know. D'you understand? I've just been given the word. About—” But still she could not say the name aloud. “—that …”

“Honey, I'm so sorry, we all are. We didn't know whether word had reached you or not—”

“No—and you wouldn't run the risk of anything, would you? Christ, no …” Oh, this stupid, despicable men's club! Her eyes had filled again, her voice was hoarse; she cleared her throat wildly. “Well, you can make it up to me. Right now. You can tell me where Poppa is!—”

“Tommy, look. This is terrible for you, I know. You mustn't get to brooding about this. Let me call Sue—”

“Oh,
shut up!
”

She slammed the phone at its cradle: it fell off the table and began to swing by its cord, banging against the table legs. Chink's voice was squeaking, “Tommy? You there, honey? Tommy? …” She was crying again, helplessly, wagging her head from side to side. Insufferable brass-and-braid fraternity! The letter was lying open on the bed where she'd first read it, wretched, hateful letter. She snatched it up and tore it into bits and pieces and flung it away from her. Who did they think they were fooling—besides their idiot selves, that was? Oh God, she hated them, hated them with all her soul—if she could wipe them all off the face of the earth by saying one word she would shout it at the top of her lungs …

Then in the next moment she felt remorseful, frightened at the letter's destruction, as though she had willfully cut herself with a sharp instrument. Still crying stormily she got down on her hands and knees and began groping for the pieces, gripping them tightly in her hands.

There was a click above her head, then the hard whine of the dial tone. She put the phone back on its hook, thinking of Edgar, now with WPB. But he wouldn't know. All he knew was what had to do with him. The plant was making boxes for rations, waterproofed liners for crates, containers for survival kits. Survival kits. Marilyn had bought a place out in Rock Creek Park, a crazy Norman manor house with zigzag open beams and everything inside smoky and dim and a turret on the right-hand corner. It had formerly belonged to Tremayne, the steel man.

The sententious radio voice behind the wall had concluded. A band was playing now, a girl was singing in full, syrupy tones:

 

“Never knew the night could creep so lonely and long,

Never thought the blues would be my favorite song—”

 

She found a handkerchief and wiped her eyes and took another sip from the glass. He liked to sing, that time she took them both to see
The Mikado
in Tacoma he'd been enraptured, for months afterward he would wrap that ragged old patchwork quilt around him, one arm held gracefully in the air the way the actor had done. “A wandering minstrel I, a thing of shreds and patches, of tattered songs and snatches, and dree-eamy lu-ullaby …”

The phone was ringing: she sat looking at it stonily, glad of its insistent clamor. Once she reached out, dropped her hand again. No. Nobody. Let it ring. She counted for a time, forgot, lost count, tried to think of nothing at all: could not.

Finally it stopped.

Court would know. Court was cold and hard and selfish, Court saw through this sentimental noble-sacrifice-club game better than anyone, he laughed at it. He would tell her and put that part of her mind at rest. At least that. He knew it was all the king of frauds, he knew all along—why hadn't
she
ever seen it?—there was neither past nor future, there was only the sweating bubble of
now
that encased the feeble flesh. Without thought she phoned OPD and got his aide, a pleasant, extremely self-possessed boy who courteously told her the General had left the office but that he could be reached at his home at four.

But she could not stay in here any longer.

With numb tenacity she washed her face and combed her hair, found her purse and crammed the shreds of letter into it. She'd had too much to drink. Well. Then she had. She let herself out quietly. The foyer was deserted. Mr. Canaday smiled from behind his desk, that sly, fondly forbidding appraisal, his bifocals flashing once.

“Afternoon, Mrs. Damon. Lovely weather, isn't it? But warm.”

“Yes. Very.”

To him, to everyone she was the same woman they had seen yesterday, and the days before. But that wasn't true. She thought all at once of the day she'd first begun to menstruate, down at Fort Sam: the pain, deep and alien and burdensome, the faint, lonely fear—and after that a kind of timorous pride. Walking around in the post exchange later she had smiled at the service wives, thinking, No one knows about me, but I am a different person from yesterday, from what they know of me: I am a woman now, but none of them knows it … Now again she was altered, but in a different way.

The streets were very neat. Curious. Curious how wartime made people neater. Like children who have been promised a movie, a camping trip. If they're good. They all kept their yards tidied nicely, the sidewalks were clean, their victory gardens were contained in careful little plots. Rubber and tin foil and aluminum and old newspapers—so many drives. Of course the government didn't use any of it—Edgar had told her himself all that tin foil was useless, and the aircraft firms couldn't use old aluminum anyway. But it kept everybody happy, collecting things.

She stepped out smartly, feeling the heat now, the smoky, oppressive September air. The embassies stood sedate and proud behind their wrought-iron grillwork, their neat brass placards. Men in fine silk suits got out of shiny black limousines and hurried into offices, their faces tight with the exercise of power; at the corner the newspapers blared. PATTON AT MESSINA. SEVENTH ARMY ENTERS MESSINA. SICILY IS OURS. Georgie Patton with his yacht and his polo ponies and his high, squeaky voice and prissy cruel mouth and his pistols and his avatars. The war was being won—with dash and fury. Victory. Factories were pouring out the tanks and planes and bullets, the armies swelled and swelled, Presidential advisers flew off to Cairo, London, Moscow; destiny, history, glory, victory, those words that rang in men's hearts, unfolded everywhere above them like a panoply of banners—of course it was of no consequence at all that one B-17 whirled to earth a flaming, cart-wheeling wreck, one solitary figure slumped against the shattered glass of the blister, groping feebly as the flames, sucked backward roaring, reached him and the electrically wired, sheepskin-lined suit began to—

She was panting in the heat, half-running. She must be calm. Calm, if nothing else. She counted the squares of concrete that rolled up toward her, chipped at the corners. It didn't matter. Figures glanced at her, figures on sticks of legs with plates for faces. Mechanical toys, they drew near and vanished behind her. There was no plan. Nothing mattered anymore but cruelty: cruelty and ambition, those were the fuels the world ran on, there were no others. The stronger ate the weaker, and increased. Why didn't everyone see it? It was
there,
for all to see—

A woman in a floppy flowered hat glanced at her sharply; she threw her a look of unutterable hatred and hurried on, reached Dupont Circle. Pigeons swirled in a tight, flickering pattern, rising, their wings a taut, dry whistling in the slant sunlight. At Benning he'd kept pigeons in a loft Sam had made by screening in part of the attic floor of the set, and the low, liquid crooning had driven them all half-crazy nights. He had cared for them religiously, feeding them, changing their water, scraping out the droppings and keeping entries on the broods. He'd known them all by name. On the title page of the notebook was the phrase:
All About Pigeons.
One morning he'd told her, “I dreamed I was flying, Mom. Really flying! Out over the roofs and pine trees, just soaring and soaring on and on. It was like being in heaven …”

A bar, on her left: blue grotto gloom with the icy, festal glint of glasses. The air was cool and raw. She shivered, slid on to a stool near the door and said: “Gin, please. Over ice.”

The bartender's eyes slid up to hers mildly. “Just ice?”

“That's right.”

She reached into her purse for money, saw the torn pieces of the letter and closed the purse again, looked around her blankly. When he was eleven he'd torn up a drawing he'd made of musketeers fencing on a parapet; he'd torn it up by mistake and had been inconsolable. While he'd been at school she had gone through the trash barrel on the back stoop until she'd found the drawing, smoothed it out and pasted it together for him. His eyes had gone wide with joy. “Oh Mom, that's wonderful—oh, that changes
everything!
” He'd flung his arms around her; his cheek had been warm against hers. So smooth and warm—

Count the bottles, read the labels. Teacher's Highland Cream, Four Roses, Old Grand-Dad. The officious, admonitory radio voice had returned—the bartender was tuned to the same station the Millmans had been. He brought her drink and she listened numbly. The Russians had recaptured Karkov. Allied planes had bombed rail centers and airfields at Naples, Foggia and Rome; Army ground forces were encountering fierce Japanese resistance on Lolobiti, but had secured Sibolán on New Lorraine.

Odd. How odd to be sitting here in this chilly air-cooled bar thinking of Sam out there on Lolobiti. She could see him—conferring, giving orders, moving around, watching everything with that steady, stolid, maddeningly resolute gaze, kicking some and kissing others, getting on with it. Yes. Getting on with it. He was a major general now, two stars, he had his own division. It was monstrous. One of the solvers, he couldn't help it. Solutions and systems. And of course this was his chance—his chance to prove his worth, serve his country, put all the years of maneuvers and range work and nocturnal study to use, he was finally given rank and responsibility commensurate with his abilities—and it was all dependent on battle, the killing of fathers and husbands and lovers and sons—

The gin burned coldly, like medicine, like varnish, like new-cut pine branches. He'd hated to take medicine, he would close his eyes and wrinkle up his forehead, once he pretended he was well to get out of taking any. That other time at Benning when he had a fever and said his neck and the back of his head hurt and they'd been afraid it was polio—