Once an Eagle (54 page)

He flung Damon to one side and started off down the row. Sam leaped after him and caught him around the waist and they went down, rolling in the dirt road of the back line. He was astonished at Ben's strength; though short, he was agile and in superb condition; and now he was filled with rage.

“Sam—let—me go,” he panted.

“No.”

“Warning you—
son
of a bitch!”

All at once he shook free, kicking and flailing, and leaped to his feet. Damon caught hold of an ankle and brought him down again and they crashed into the wooden platform that held the GI cans. After nearly a minute of clumsy grappling and floundering Sam got a half-nelson on him and held him pinned against the platform. Ben went on struggling furiously. A light flashed on, and Sam heard Marge's voice above them:

“Stop it, Ben, please stop! Please stop, now …”

“—Let me up,” Ben said.

“No.”

“Sam, I'm warning you—”

“Ben, don't be a God damn fool,” he panted. “He's drunk, he didn't know what he was doing …”

“The hell he didn't!”

“—he won't even remember it tomorrow …”

“By Jesus, I will—!” And he began struggling again, got an arm loose and clipped Damon in the face and neck before he subsided.

“All right, you go ahead and beat him up, he's too loaded to defend himself anyway, even if he could, and you'll get a court—
listen
to me! At the very least. You'll ruin your career for good. And for nothing at all … Is that what you want? A general court? Is it?”

“It's true, he's right,” Marge was saying, right above them. The flashlight—she must have snatched it up from the kitchen table where Damon had left it when he'd come in to find Batchelder—kept playing over them and the garbage cans, the dead wisps of grass. “Listen to him, Ben, you've got to listen to him …”

Krisler relaxed again; there was a pause and then he said: “All right. Okay. Let me go, Sam.”

“Promise you won't take off after him?”

“…I promise.”

“No fooling?”

“No fooling.”

Damon released him and both men got to their feet and stood without looking at each other, a little shamefaced, like schoolboys caught in some truant act.

“Please, Ben,” Marge murmured, “come in now, come inside …”

He glowered at her, his face gnomelike and harsh in the fitful light of the torch; his cheek was skinned and bleeding. “How could you let him
do
it?” he groaned.

“Ben, it was nothing, I—”

“What do you mean,
nothing!
”

“Ben, he grabbed me! I was in looking at Susan and the baby and I came back into the living room to get the glasses and there he was, right there—and he grabbed me and started ranting …”

“He had your clothes half
off,
for Christ sake—you didn't have to just stand there and take it!”

“Ben, honey”—she was starting to cry, her hand to her mouth—“I didn't know what to
do
—he's one of your instructors …”

“You think I give a swift shit about that?” he stormed at her. “What I care about is
us,
you and me—they can take their stupid service schools and jam them up their nickel-plated ass, for all I care—”

“Very pretty!”

The three of them turned. It was Tommy, now in bathrobe and slippers, standing on the little back porch they shared. “What do you want—a medal or a cough drop? Well, you listen to me, Ben Krisler: you can take your lunatic heroics and jam them up
your
ass! You hear?”

Startled, Damon gazed up at her. She was furious, her breast rising and falling, her hair whipping around her face; she looked barbaric and embattled and utterly beautiful. He hadn't seen her like this since that afternoon on the parapet at Le Suquet, when he'd fallen in love with her. Ten years ago. He remembered that day all at once with a sad, tender pang. Ten years ago. Now she towered over them, her eyes glittering, incontrovertible in her beauty, her wrath.

“What did you think you were going to do?” she demanded. “Kick him in the groin and put him on report—is that it? Why don't you grow up! Do you think they're going to drum him out of service and make you a brigadier? You idiot!—they'll stick you in a nipa hut on Cebu until your toes rot off … ” Marge was crying softly now, and Tommy came down the steps and put her arm around her. “Come on, honey,” she said tenderly, “come on in and I'll give you something so you'll sleep. Come on in, and let these wounded heroes go and avenge their tarnished bloody honor … ”

They trooped into the Krislers' quarters one by one. Marge sat down at the kitchen table. Tommy gave her a handkerchief and put the coffeepot on the hot plate coil. The two men stood together awkwardly just inside the screen door.

“You ought to be
glad
somebody's willing to make a pass at your wife!” Tommy lashed out at Ben, who gazed back at her guiltily, rubbing dirt and sweat from his neck. “You ought to draw a tour spliced to dear old Muriel, or Nina Swanson, and see how you like that. Yes—some sweet, deadly, willful bitch who'd hound you morning and night, about a set of silver service or your bill at the post tailor's or why in hell you aren't pulling duty at Fort Myer. It's a wonder there's anything left of us to make a pass
at,
truth to tell. You don't know how well off you are, that's half
your
trouble … For God's sake, go over and
say
something to her!” she commanded. “Can't you see how she feels?”

Ben looked penitent and cowed. He went over to Marge and kneeling by her chair put an arm around her. “I'm sorry, baby,” he said in a low voice. “I—jumped to conclusions.”

“It's all right,” Marge said; she caressed his cropped head vaguely. Her little button nose was red and her eyes were swollen. “It doesn't matter.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Honey, I was just trying to … to let it pass over. He's such a sad old dope of a man.”

“He's a dirty sneak.”

“No—he's sad. I can't dislike him—even after that …” All at once she looked at Damon. “Only what are we going to do now?”

That was what they all said at such times. Sergeant Torrey after the hangfire row with Townsend at Hardee; Spofford during that stupid court-martial at Fort Halleck, when it was perfectly obvious the hanky-panky involving post-exchange funds went a good deal higher than Demarest; Corporal Taylor in that ruckus over the Indian girl at Dormer.
What are we going to do now?

“Do?” Tommy said. She swung around, holding the dented tin percolator in her hand. This was presumably a woman's province, the violation of the defenseless wives of subalterns by drunken and irresponsible brass; he could tell she resented Marge's appeal to him. “Do? Why, be just as sweet as apple cider, that's what to do. Honey wouldn't melt in your mouth. And then let him know—just as sweet as apple cider—that if he ever tries anything like that again, you'll remove one slipper and give him a swift crack right across his flabby purple old nose …”

“Oh, I couldn't do that,” Marge responded anxiously.

“Why in hell not?”

“Tommy,” Damon broke in, “he was pie-eyed—he won't remember any of it at all.”

“He drove home, didn't he?”

“That's a reflex action. He won't recall a thing.” He came up to the table. “Look, Marge, he's infatuated with you, he has been for some time and he forgot himself. That's all. It was a momentary—aberration, and now it's over and done with. What's important is the school—”

He stopped: something he'd said had caused her to break down again and he didn't know what it was. “No,” she was saying, “no …”

“Marge, it's true. Let's admit it and set it aside and go on from—”

“No,” she said, weeping disconsolately. “I know I'm not attractive. I know. They're only interested in me for one thing …” All three of them murmured in protest at this but she remained adamant. “No, it's always been that way. Ever since high school. You can't fool yourself about things like that.”

“That's not true, Margie, you mustn't think that. Many men find you attractive, for a lot of reasons,” Damon heard himself saying, astonished at his own vehemence. “You're witty, and intelligent, and—and lots of fun …” He groped his way along, feeling her gaze fastened on him in a kind of hopeless last appeal. He glanced at Ben, who now looked simply confused. Why in hell was he always the one expected to hold the fort? Well he was, he was stuck with it, and that was all there was to it. He went on, elaborating and inventing; and, surprisingly, it worked. The adolescent hobgoblins retreated, Marge's anguish dissolved; she became soothed, sipping at her coffee. And finally she said in a faint voice, “Oh Sam, you're so good to us all. What would we do without you?”

In time Tommy gave her a bromide and put her to bed while Sam talked with Ben, minimizing the whole incident, calming him down, and still later they went back into their half of the quarters and checked the children. Donny was sleeping restlessly, as he always did—convulsed like a climber clinging to a rock face, his forehead sweaty, his eyelids twitching, the bedclothes wound around his wiry body; but Peggy lay as placid as a fairy princess, her cheek in a lovely little curve, her braids pressed against her throat. When Damon kissed her forehead she did not even murmur to herself. How different we all were: how bewilderingly different! The rebels, the acquiescent, the driven and the serene—and everyone toiling along with his full marching order of dreams and fears; some straggling, some falling by the wayside, a few turning off into the jungle or even firing into the column with the savagery of the desperate and lost. But for all that, the procession still wound its laborious, errant way …

Tommy was brushing her hair at the little vanity when he came into the bedroom. Yawning he sat down on his cot and said: “Well, it's nice old Butch doesn't go for your type.”

“Isn't it?” she said. “Isn't it just?” She gazed at her own image severely, her neck arched. “Well,” she said, “you patched things together again. Old Mr. Bromide. But it's no solution.”

“What do you mean, honey?”

“All that.” She tossed her head toward the partition. “Nothing's solved, you know.”

“Honey, nothing's ever solved for good.”

“Some other rummy or self-appointed post stallion will start climbing Marge, and Ben'll blow his stack and lay him out and then the fat will be in the fire.”

“Maybe so,” he answered.

“Maybe? Inevitably. You've only bought him some time, that's all.”

He watched her a moment. It was almost 3
A.M.
, his eyes were burning and his shoulder ached where he'd piled into the wooden frame; but she seemed to want to talk this out, and he was willing to indulge her. “That's what it's all about, isn't it?” he asked. “Buying time? It's like the kids, and mumps and measles: you get over one crisis, and move on to the next.”

“But this is totally different—the precipitating factors are different, don't you see?” She set down her brush and turned to face him. “Why do you do it, Sam?”

“Do what?”

“All that—bucking her up, bailing him out … Why go to so much time and effort with him?”

He lighted a cigarette, and said: “There are times when nothing is as important as loyalty.”

“But if he's only going to get in trouble sooner or later—”

“He's a good officer, Tommy. And a good man. He's terrific with troops—you've never seen him. He'll make a fine commander.”

“If he ever gets the chance.” She looked down at her hands. “You take too much on yourself, darling. You really do. You can't keep people from being what they are.”

“I'm not trying to do that.”

“Haven't you ever wondered
why
he's running along the edge of insubordination all the time?”

Probably for the same reason I have to be always helping everybody out and you break out in tantrums, he wanted to say—because of something that happened to us when we were seven, or twelve; and what the hell would
that
prove? But he stilled the impulse. “That's just the way he is, I suppose,” he said aloud.

“It's because he hates the Army,” she declared. “That's why.”

“What makes you say that?”

“He hates the whole system, from muzzle to butt plate—and yet he's stuck with it. He can't stand it, and he can't leave it. And maybe he's not so far off base, either.” She looked at him from under her brows, her eyes very deep and intense. “Sam, has it occurred to you that the wrong things are on trial here? that it's not a question of Margie's sexy body or Ben's violent temper, but the whole impossible, myopic lunacy of the Army? Has it?”

Watching her without expression he nodded. “Yes. It's occurred to me.”

“I've been giving it a lot of thought. Between letting Bubbles De Grace Charleston all over my toes and smiling winningly at Peavey and passing the canapés around like a good dutiful junior officer's wife, that is.” She got up and stood straight as a sentry on post, hands at her sides. “You know something, Sam? It's all a pretty little fraud. This whole band-playing, spit-and-polish system you're wound up in. It is simply insane. The
system
says you're all noble knights in modern armor, holding the wall against the shaggy barbarian invaders. The
fact
of the matter is that there aren't any invaders anywhere around—and if there
were
the American public wouldn't give a hoot in a gale. The
system
says Batchelder is a fine, upstanding old soldier and Peavey is a brilliant tactician and Votaw is a wizard with weapons, and that they're all officers and consummate gentlemen. The
fact
—the
truth
which nobody can mention inside this myth-laden booby hatch—is that Votaw is a pompous ass and Peavey is a power-drunk sadist, and dear old Batchelder is a miserable, wretched, skirt-chasing rummy! …”