The Adjustment

SIXTEEN



PACIFICATION



THE REPLY TO my telegram came quickly, and I pulled it out of my pocket like a winning lottery ticket:

CONSIDER STRINGS PULLED STOP WELCOME BACK STOP TOLD GALS TO GET READY STOP



Now that my leaving was official, I was amazed that I’d held out this long in Wichita.

I left with no qualms or regrets; I was doing the right thing by my wife and child; as a Master Sergeant stationed outside the U.S. I’d be making nearly two hundred dollars a month base pay. Given whatever Lester and I could scrape together on the black market and on the backs of the Japanese lovelies—who would be serving our country just as much as we were—I could easily send the whole two hundred home to Sally and the child plus something on the side.

The scene Sally made when I told her I was heading for Japan was worse than I’d anticipated. When I’d talked about re-enlisting she’d pictured me stationed somewhere in the U.S., living off base with her and the kid. I’d married a woman with a real backbone, and I felt a kind of pride when she threw a carving knife at me, taking a gash out of the doorframe.

“You son of a bitch, where do you get off walking out on me with a baby on the way? How’m I supposed to take care of the damned thing on my own?”

I’d prepared a cornball lecture on the evils of the commie threat and the need to keep Japan pacified and a whole load of other crap, which I delivered between bouts of screaming and more thrown household goods, including two ashtrays, a rolling pin (shades, again, of Maggie and Jiggs), and a pretty good clock we’d received as a wedding present from a cousin of mine in California. In the end she locked herself in the bedroom and I left the house to let her cool off.





THE DAY BEFORE I left Wichita I drove up to the plant gates with some trepidation. My badge was no longer valid, and I was by no means certain that the guard would let me pass. But I wanted to get my framed photo of the hissing opossum off of my office wall, and there were a couple of people I wanted to say goodbye to. And of course I hadn’t yet bothered returning the company Oldsmobile.

The guard was Jerry something, an old-timer who’d been with Everett Collins since his barnstorming days. Jerry grinned and waved me past like an old friend.

The other fellows in the publicity and marketing department didn’t bother to hide their satisfaction at my fate. Mrs. Caspian gave me a sad look but said nothing except “good luck.” I took one last look at her belly and tossed her a casual, backward wave on my way out the door.

Millie Grau was bravely manning her post at the entry to Everett Collins’s empty office, and she looked as though she’d been awake for a week. Her eyes were dry but there was a deep sadness in her face and voice that I supposed I might be partially responsible for.

“Mr. Ogden. It’s nice to see you,” she said.

“Call me Wayne, I don’t work here any more. What do you hear about the old man?”

“Still in serious condition, don’t know when he’ll be out. Lots of physical therapy, maybe some more surgeries.”

“So Rackey just busted in here and started whaling on him?”

She nodded; clearly this was a hard memory to revisit. “He was screaming about his wife and Mr. Collins being . . . intimate, and it took four men to subdue him. Three of them went to the hospital, too.”

I was proud of Rackey; he’d bested his own casualty record from his arrest by the MPs. “Can I go in there and leave him a little note?”

“Oh, I’ll be at the hospital this afternoon, I can take it to him.”

“I’d rather he found it when he’s feeling a little better, after he’s had some time to think things through. Something to let him know I still admire and respect him.”

“That will mean the world to him, Wayne. You know, I’m pretty sure once he’s feeling better he’ll wish he hadn’t fired you,” she said.

“It’s for the best,” I said, and without waiting for further permission I opened the door to his office. It was dark and eerie, with the same unoccupied smell as an empty hotel room, and I felt the way I did breaking into Huff’s house. I opened up a side drawer and gently placed the dark brown glass pill bottle into it. He was bound to be hurting still when he returned from the hospital, and two hundred hits of Hycodan would be a good way for me to say “No hard feelings, boss.”

Outside I found Millie brewing coffee. “If you have time,” she said, flashing a wan smile at me.


WE WERE SILENT until the coffee was ready, and after she poured it she gave me an even sadder look than she’d worn when I walked in. “I sure was sorry to hear you were joining the army.”

“It’s a good deal they give returning NCOs.”

“I mean I was sure hoping you’d come back to work. Things have been pretty rotten here lately.”

“You’ll be getting married in a few months.”

She shook her head and looked at the ceiling. “Donald had some trouble with the church and lost his job, and between you and me . . . ” She looked away from me, not quite able to give me the sad news about Donald’s twisted hobbies.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“Anyway I won’t be marrying him.”

I looked at her and wished I could tell her what I’d done, but in these cases women weren’t necessarily rational, and you never knew if she’d be grateful or angry. Once again I was seized with admiration and desire for her, and a crazy thought came into my head. I decided to act on it, knowing that I’d always regret not trying.

“Millie, have you ever thought about leaving here?”

“Lately? You bet. Where would I go, though? I can’t go back to Wisconsin. I don’t know anyone anywhere else.”

“Sure you do. The army has civilian employees, and you’re a crackerjack secretary. I’m going back into the Quartermaster Corps, in occupied Japan, and I have a friend who could fix it for you. I could get you assigned to my unit, probably.”

She stared at me for a moment as though seriously considering it, and then another look crossed her face, one that suggested she understood to some degree the nature of my proposition, was maybe even beginning to understand that I was the one who’d saved her from Donald. Whatever was going on in that pretty blonde head, she looked a little bit nauseous.

“Mr. Ogden . . . ”

“Wayne,” I said, smiling my most charming smile.

“Wayne, I’m very dedicated to my job here with Mr. Collins, and I don’t think I care to change anything.”

“Understood,” I said. “Just something that popped into my head.”

“I have a lot of work to do now.” She was smiling, too, tense and insincere. “It’s been nice catching up.”

I stared her down until she looked away and started digging into a drawer as an excuse to ignore me, then I wished her luck and walked out the door. Too bad she was too scared to jump when the jumping was good; I was still glad I’d helped her out, but from here on out she was on her own. I was done playing Good Samaritan for people who didn’t give a damn one way or the other about it.

Miss Grau no longer bore contemplation, anyway; she belonged to Wichita, part of a past that as of tomorrow I would no longer acknowledge as my own. Along with my father’s armchair, Norman’s blind pig, and my various heirs in utero, I would abandon her permanently, to be remembered in tranquility and without undue nostalgia.


I DROVE OFF the plant grounds in the company Olds with the thought that this was my last night in Wichita—maybe ever—elating me to the point of dizziness, despite a sneaking fondness for certain of the town’s darker corners.

On East Douglas I passed the spot just west of the Uptown Theater where I’d once burned a car right down to its frame, an image I’d almost forgotten and one that brought an unabashed smile. On a whim I turned right onto Hillside and right again onto First, past a stately columned home where I’d gotten a plump, pretty housewife half-naked before her husband came home and chased me out the back door waving a knife. I was seventeen then, and until today it had never occurred to me to wonder what effect that episode had had on their lives. In another house on the same street my friend Don Milligan used to live with his folks until he crashed his Willys into a milk truck, killing himself and the milkman, having just let me off at my house after a night of drinking. Most of these blocks had some story attached to them in my memory, and though it was unlikely I’d ever be back to see them again I felt no sense of loss. The stories would stick with me.

I’d have dinner with Sally tonight, of course, and for decency’s sake swing by my mother’s to say goodbye. Later I might head downtown to the Eaton for one last party with Irma, maybe take her over to Norman’s afterward and make him a gift of her company for the rest of the night; he’d certainly poured me enough free drinks over the years.





A YEAR WASTED on civilian life had brought me nothing but boredom relieved occasionally by frenzy and mayhem as I clung tight to the miserable delusion that life as a husband, father, and citizen was my inevitable fate. Now the scales had fallen from my eyes to reveal a destiny worthy of my talents. Japan and Mother Army beckoned like a pair of madams at the door of the world’s biggest, best cathouse, and I was on my way there to play piano in the parlor.