Soldiers Pay (3 page)

“Why, sure,” Private Gilligan agreed readily. “Sometimes a man does wanta see his family—especially if he don't hafta live with 'em. I ain't criticizing you. I admire you for it, buddy. But say, you can go home any time. What I say is, let's have a look at this glorious nation which we have fought for.”

“Hell, I can't. My mother has wired me every day since the armistice to fly low and be careful and come home as soon as I am demobilized. I bet she wired the President to have me excused as soon as possible.”

“Why sure. Of course she did. What can equal a mother's love? Except a good drink of whisky. Where's that bottle? You ain't betrayed a virgin, have you?”

“Here she is.” Cadet Lowe produced it and Gilligan pressed the bell.

“Claude,” he told a superior porter, “bring us two glasses and a bottle of sassperiller or something. We are among gentlemen today and we aim to act like gentlemen.”

“Watcher want glasses for?” asked Lowe. “Bottle was all right yesterday.”

“You got to remember we are getting among strangers now. We don't want to offend no savage customs. Wait until you get to be an experienced traveller and you'll remember these things. Two glasses, Othello.”

The porter in his starched jacket became a symbol of self-sufficiency. “You can't drink in this car. Go to the buffet car.”

“Ah, come on, Claude. Have a heart.”

“We don't have no drinking in this car. Go to the buffet car if you want.” He swung himself from seat to seat down the lurching car.

Private Gilligan turned to his companion. “Well! What do you know about that? Ain't that one hell of a way to treat soldiers? I tell you, General, this is the worst run war I ever seen.”

“Hell, let's drink out of the bottle.”

“No, no! This thing has got to be a point of honour, now. Remember, we got to protect our uniform from insult. You wait here and I'll see the conductor. We bought tickets, hey, buddy?”

With officers gone and officers' wives

Having the grand old time of their lives——

an overcast sky, and earth dissolving monotonously into a grey mist, greyly. Occasional trees and houses marching through it; and towns like bubbles of ghostly sound beaded on a steel wire——

Who's in the guard-room chewing the bars,

Saying to hell with the government wars?

Cadet!

And here was Gilligan returned, saying: “Charles, at ease.”

I might have known he would have gotten another one, thought Cadet Lowe, looking up. He saw a belt and wings, he rose and met a young face with a dreadful scar across his brow. My God he thought, turning sick. He saluted and the other peered at him with strained distraction. Gilligan, holding his arm, helped him into the seat. The man turned his puzzled gaze to Gilligan and murmured, “ Thanks.”

“Lootenant,” said Gilligan, “you see here the pride of the nation. General, ring the bell for ice water. The lootenant here is sick.”

Cadet Lowe pressed the bell, regarding with a rebirth of that old feud between American enlisted men and officers of all nations the man's insignia and wings and brass, not even wondering what a British officer in his condition could be doing travelling in America. Had I been old enough or lucky enough, this might have been me, he thought jealously.

The porter reappeared.

“No drinking in this car, I told you,” he said. Gilligan produced a bill. “No, sir. Not in this car.” Then he saw the third man. He leaned down to him quickly, then glanced suspiciously from Gilligan to Lowe.

“What you all doing with him?” he asked.

“Oh, he's just a lost foreigner I found back yonder. Now, Ernest——”

“Lost? He ain't lost. He's from Gawgia. I'm looking after him. Cap'm”—to the officer—“is these folks all right?”

Gilligan and Lowe looked at each other. “Christ, I thought he was a foreigner,” Gilligan whispered.

The man raised his eyes to the porter's anxious face. “Yes,” he said slowly, “they're all right.”

“Does you want to stay here with them, or don't you want me to fix you up in your place?”

“Let him stay here,” Gilligan said. “He wants a drink.”

“But he ain't got no business drinking. He's sick.”

“Loot,” Gilligan said, “do you want a drink?”

“Yes, I want a drink. Yes.”

“But he oughtn't to have no whisky, sir.”

“I won't let him have too much. I am going to look after him. Come on, now, let's have some glasses, can't we?”

The porter began again. “But he oughtn't——”

“Say, Loot,” Gilligan interrupted, “can't you make your friend here get us some glasses to drink from?”

“Glasses?”

“Yeh! He don't want to bring us none.”

“Does you want glasses, Cap'm?”

“Yes, bring us some glasses, will you?”

“All right, Cap'm.” He stopped again. “You going to take care of him, ain't you?” he asked Gilligan.

“Sure, sure!”

The porter gone, Gilligan regarded his guest with envy. “You sure got to be from Georgia to get service on this train. I showed him money but it never even shook him. Say, General,” to Lowe, “we better keep the lootenant with us, huh? Might come in useful.”

“Sure,” agreed Lowe. “Say, sir, what kind of ships did you use?”

“Oh, for Christ's sake,” interrupted Gilligan, “let him be. He's been devastating France, now he needs rest, Hey. Loot?”

Beneath his scarred and tortured brow the man's gaze was puzzled but kindly and the porter reappeared with glasses and a bottle of ginger ale. He produced a pillow which he placed carefully behind the officer's head, then he got two more pillows for the others, forcing them with ruthless kindness to relax. He was deftly officious, including them impartially in his activities, like Fate. Private Gilligan, unused to this, became restive.

“Hey, ease up, George; lemme do my own pawing a while. I aim to paw this bottle if you'll gimme room.”

He desisted saying, “Is this all right, Cap'm?”

“Yes, all right, thanks,” the officer answered. Then: “Bring your glass and get a drink.”

Gilligan solved the bottle and filled the glasses. Ginger ale hissed sweetly and pungently. “Up and at 'em, men.”

The officer took his glass in his left hand and then Lowe noticed his right hand was drawn and withered.

“Cheer-o,” he said.

“Nose down,” murmured Lowe. The man looked at him with poised glass. He looked at the hat on Lowe's knee and that groping puzzled thing behind his eyes became clear and sharp as with a mental process, and Lowe thought that his lips had asked a question.

“Yes, sir, Cadet,” he replied, feeling warmly grateful, feeling again a youthful clean pride in his corps.

But the effort had been too much and again the officer's gaze was puzzled and distracted.

Gilligan raised his glass, squinting at it. “Here's to peace,” he said. “The first hundred years is the hardest.”

Here was the porter again, with his own glass. “'Nother nose in the trough,” Gilligan complained, helping him.

The negro patted and rearranged the pillow beneath the officer's head. “Excuse me, Cap'm, but can't I get you something for your head?”

“No, no, thanks. It's all right.”

“But you're sick, sir. Don't you drink too much.”

“I'll be careful. “

“Sure,” Gilligan amended, “we'll watch him.”

“Lemme pull the shade down. Keep the light out of your eyes?”

“No, I don't mind the light. You run along. I'll call if I want anything.”

With the instinct of his race the negro knew that his kindness was becoming untactful, yet he ventured again.

“I bet you haven't wired your folks to meet you. Whyn't you lemme wire 'em for you? I can look after you far as I go, but who's going to look after you, then?”

“No, I'm all right, I tell you. You look after me as far as you go. I'll get along.”

“All right. But I am going to tell your paw how you are acting someday. You ought to know better than that, Cap'm.” He said to Gilligan and Lowe: “You gentlemen call me if he gets sick.”

“Yes, go on now, damn you. I'll call if I don't feel well.” Gilligan looked from his retreating back to the officer in admiration. “Loot, how do you do it?”

But the man only turned on them his puzzled gaze. He finished his drink and while Gilligan renewed them Cadet Lowe, like a trailing hound, repeated:

“Say, sir, what kind of ships did you use?”

The man looked at Lowe kindly, not replying, and Gilligan said:

“Hush. Let him alone. Don't you see he don't remember himself? Do you reckon you would, with that scar? Let the war be. Hey, Lootenant?”

“I don't know. Another drink is better.”

“Sure it is. Buck up, General. He don't mean no harm. He's just got to let her ride as she lays for a while. We all got horrible memories of the war. I lose eighty-nine dollars in a crap game once, besides losing, as that wop writer says, that an' which thou knowest at Chatter Teary. So how about a little whisky, men?”

“Cheer-o,” said the officer again.

“What do you mean, Chateau Thierry?” said Lowe, boyish in disappointment, feeling that he had been deliberately ignored by one to whom Fate had been kinder than to himself.

“You talking about Chatter Teary?”

“I'm talking about a place you were not at, anyway.”

“I was there in spirit, sweetheart. That's what counts.”

“You couldn't have been there any other way. There ain't any such place.”

“Hell there ain't! Ask the Loot here if I ain't right. How about it, Loot?”

But he was asleep. They looked at his face, young, yet old as the world, beneath the dreadful scar. Even Gilligan's levity left him. “My God, it makes you sick at the stomach, don't it? I wonder if he knows how he looks? What do you reckon his folks will say when they see him? or his girl—if he has got one. And I'll bet he has.”

New York flew away: it became noon within, by clock, but the grey imminent horizon had not changed. Gilligan said: “If he has got a girl, know what she'll say?”

Cadet Lowe, knowing all the despair of abortive endeavour, asked, “What?”

New York passed on and Mahon beneath his martial harness slept. (Would I sleep? thought Lowe; had I wings, boots, would I sleep?) His wings indicated by a graceful sweep pointed sharply down above a ribbon. White, purple, white, over his pocket, over his heart (supposedly), Lowe descried between the pinions of a superimposed crown and three letters, then his gaze mounted to the sleeping scarred face. “What?” he repeated.

“She'll give him the air, buddy.”

“Ah, come in. Of course she won't.”

“Yes, she will. You don't know women. Once the new has wore off it'll be some bird that stayed at home and made money, or some lad that wore shiny leggings and never got nowheres so he could get hurt, like you and me.”

The porter came to hover over the sleeping man.

“He ain't got sick, has he?” he whispered.

They told him no; and the negro eased the position of the sleeping man's head. “You gentlemen look after him and be sure to call me if he wants anything. He's a sick man.”

Gilligan and Lowe, looking at the officer, agreed, and the porter lowered the shade. “You want some more ginger ale?”

“Yes,” said Gilligan, assuming the porter's hushed tone, and the negro withdrew. The two of them sat in silent comradeship, the comradeship of those whose lives had become pointless through the sheer equivocation of events, of the sorry jade, Circumstance. The porter brought ginger ale and they sat drinking while New York became Ohio.

Gilligan, that talkative unserious one, entered some dream within himself and Cadet Lowe, young and dreadfully disappointed, knew all the old sorrows of the Jasons of the world who see their vessels sink ere the harbour is left behind. . . . Beneath his scar the officer slept in all the travesty of his wings and leather and brass, and a terrible old woman paused, saying:

“Was he wounded?”

Gilligan waked from his dream. “Look at his face,” he said fretfully: “he fell off of a chair on to an old woman he was talking to and done that.”

“What insolence,” said the woman, glaring at Gilligan. “But can't something be done for him? He looks sick to me.”

“Yes, ma'am. Something can be done for him. What we are doing now—letting him alone.”

She and Gilligan stared at each other, then she looked at Cadet Lowe, young and belligerent and disappointed. She looked back to Gilligan. She said from the ruthless humanity of money:

“I shall report you to the conductor. That man is sick and needs attention.”

“All right, ma'am. But you tell the conductor that if he bothers him now, I'll knock his goddam head off.”

The old woman glared at Gilligan from beneath a quiet, modish black hat and a girl's voice said:

“Let them alone, Mrs. Henderson. They'll take care of him all right.”

She was dark. Had Gilligan and Lowe ever seen an Aubrey Beardsley, they would have known that Beardsley would have sickened for her: he had drawn her so often dressed in peacock hues, white and slim and depraved among meretricious trees and impossible marble fountains. Gilligan rose.

“That's right, miss. He is all right sleeping here with us. The porter is looking after him—” wondering why he should have to explain to her—“and we are taking him home. Just leave him be. And thank you for your interest.”

“But something ought to be done about it,” the old woman repeated futilely. The girl led her away and the train ran swaying in afternoon. (Sure, it was afternoon. Cadet Lowe's wrist watch said so. It might be any state under the sun, but it was afternoon. Afternoon or evening or morning or night, far as the officer was concerned. He slept.)