Chapter 17
WHEN HE LEFT LUXOR for Cincinnati with his two three-day passes in his pocket, Strange was so used to the long crowded bus trip by now, had done it so many times, that he about had it memorized and hardly bothered to look out.
He had hoped to doze but in the moving vehicle full of breathing bodies it was impossible to sleep. The air of the big bus was clogged with exhaled body moisture, and a kind of perpetual murmur. Strange sucked at a pint bottle of whiskey he had bought for the trip, stretched in the cramped seat, and let his mind run over the story and catastrophe of Billy Spencer. His mind had been wanting to do that since the day Billy had first shown up. Strange had known he would have to come to grips with it eventually.
The arrival of Billy at Kilrainey had been as much a torture for Strange as it was for Winch. It was perhaps even worse for Strange, because Strange could not come to terms with it in the way Winch apparently had. Billy Spencer was the first so-called basket case the company had had. And while everybody understood theoretically that such things could happen, nobody really believed it would happen to him. And nobody ever really believed it would happen to anyone in their company. They had all heard of them in other companies.
Winch seemed able to cope with that. But Strange couldn’t. The unparalleled distress Strange felt when he thought about his own having survived relatively untouched, in comparison to Billy, made the skin on his back twitch, and his buttocks tighten with guilt.
Whenever he thought of poor Billy a wild irrational hatred for all civilians who had never been out there and been through it slammed through him and made him want, unreasonably, to smash in the face of any civilian that might present itself to him. It was unreasonable, and Strange knew it was unreasonable.
But even worse than that for Strange was the story Billy had told them about the disintegration of the company. Strange had been willing enough to leave the company, willing in fact even when he knew leaving it and shipping back to the States would mean being assigned to some new outfit and never going back. But that did not mean he wanted it to fade away, be broken up, disappear. It was losing its identity and personality under other officers and new non-coms shipped in from outside. It was becoming another, no longer recognizable unit. That was a calamity.
Somewhere in the back of Strange’s mind there had always been the idea that someday, when the war was over they would all of them all get together again somewhere. Become again the unit it once had been, only grown wiser and more experienced by war service.
Strange had been too embarrassed ever to speak of this to anyone, but he nevertheless had clung to the idea.
The idea had always been a pipe dream, of course. But as long as the company was still out there, with some semblance of its old roster and original organization intact, he could still hold on to and at least play with the idea. Now, with the company no longer there, and filled up and loaded down with strangers, Strange felt uprooted, homeless. He suffered from feeling naked and alone and orphaned with a severity he had never experienced before. Not even when he left home, or when his parents died. The existence of his civilian wife and her civilian family where he was accepted as a member was no help for this feeling at all.
In the wet-aired bus Strange sucked disconsolately at his pint of whiskey. What the hell, it wasn’t something that was going to kill him. He had been in the Army long enough to get used to changing outfits. He had done it a number of times.
But there was something special about this outfit. And he saw clearly enough that it was the war had done it. Death—death, and maiming—had pulled it together in a way the peacetime Army had never done with outfits. Shared deaths, shared woundings, shared terrors had given it a family closeness it wouldn’t be easy to find again.
And Strange did not know if he had the courage to start over from scratch and knowing what he knew now, go through the process a second time.
Outside the bus at the rest stops, when he got down occasionally to relieve himself, there was a chill of October in the fresher air.
When he finally got to the house in Covington it was midafternoon, and almost exactly the same time of day that he had arrived all the other times. Linda’s paternal uncle, 4-F older brother, and maternal cousin were all still sleeping preparatory to going off on the night shift. This time when they all began straggling down they found Strange already in the kitchen, drinking beer. Strange sat with them again in the kitchen while they made their breakfast, and had some bacon and eggs himself. None of them seemed much interested that his hand had been operated on and that he now wore the plaster plate on it, since they had seen him last.
He soon found out that Linda Sue, who should have been working the day shift and therefore should be coming home soon, had in fact been transferred to the swing shift. Instead of coming home she had just gone off to work, and would not be getting off until midnight. Strange hung around the house till some of the other women began coming home from work and from shopping, and then had to get out. The women filled up the kitchen so with their gossip and their preparations for cooking dinner that he couldn’t stand it. The only other place available was Linda’s little chintz-covered bedroom, which was too small for loafing and too small for anything else except sleeping, and maybe f*cking.
He went to a lousy war movie. In it some green young Navy kid, stranded in Bataan, kept letting the spoons fly off of hand grenades and counting to three before he threw them, usually just across a coconut log where evil-looking Japanese were shooting point-blank at him. It was so outrageous that finally about halfway through he had to leave. As he walked up the aisle he looked at the faces of the people bathed in the flickering light from the screen as they chewed handfuls of popcorn and watched the fighting with avid eyes, and for a brief insane moment wished he had two or three grenades with him, to toss in among them. And see how they liked it.
After that, he simply went around from bar to bar drinking. When he finally went back to the house at twelve-thirty, he was three-fourths tight and went to bed in the little chintz room. Two others of the family who were on the swing shift were already home in the kitchen, and he talked to them for a while. Linda did not get home until after three.
Of course, she had not known he was coming. She was terribly apologetic when she found him, just waking up, in the little bedroom. Linda was about half-crocked herself, and explained she had been with a few of the girls for some drinks. When he wanted to make love to her, she was warm and kind and receptive. But she certainly wasn’t what Strange could call hot. When he was humping her, she stroked his head. He would have preferred her to be passionate.
But there was no inkling of anything else. Not that Strange could feel. Why should there be? Their lovemaking was the same as it had always been. Perhaps it was even just a little better than usual. But when, after he had come, he tried to talk to her about what Curran had said concerning the new, second operation and what this could mean to them with the restaurant, she begged off from hearing about it and wanted to go to sleep. When he went on talking anyway, she broke down and began to cry.
“But, Linda, honey, don’t you understand?” he persisted. “You can have your restaurant. All I have to do is say no to this second operation and they’ll discharge me.”
“I don’t want to hear about it now,” she wept. “I’m too fuddled and too tired and too sleepy. Can’t we talk about it tomorrow? Please?”
“Sure, sure. Of course. Don’t cry. Don’t cry, for God’s sake,” Strange said, and stroked her shoulder. After she was asleep, he lay awake a long time with his arms behind his head, thinking. It certainly wasn’t the reaction he had expected.
He suggested that he take her out for a nice high-class lunch somewhere, when she came down at eleven the next morning, because he thought she looked peaked and worn down. Certainly the kitchen, with its ebb and flow of family workers preparing or cooking one meal or another, was no place for a discussion. But Linda instead of being pleased gave him a sharp look, and then after a moment said she couldn’t have lunch with him. Though she did not say why. Instead, she wanted him to pick her up at a bar near her job after she got off at midnight. She gave him the address. Then around two she got dressed and went off. Shopping, she said.
So Strange found himself with another whole day to put in. He was soured on war movies but there did not seem to be anything else playing anywhere. Across the river the whole town of Cincinnati seemed full of nothing but war films. Finally he found a theater that was showing a rerun of The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, and went to see that. He remembered the outfit had seen that on Guadalcanal, and had loved it. But, now, the richness and wealth and high life of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers was so foreign to anything he knew and so out of step with his mood of now that he left that one, too, before it was half over. Hell, even when they were poor they lived rich.
He tried not to drink too much, because he wanted to have his brains sharp. But it was hard not to. It seemed everybody everywhere who wasn’t working was drinking. He decided to take a taxi to the bar because he did not know the town well enough to trust trying the bus system.
He had already arranged where to take her to dinner. Across the river in Cincinnati during his lone drinking hours he had checked around, and found a ritzy hotel which had a place like the Peabody’s Plantation Roof that served good steak dinners till very late. Strange was proud of the sophisticated tastes he had developed during his two-month stay in Luxor, and decided to take her there and show her. Only when they were arriving and getting out of the taxi did it occur to him that such a high-class place might embarrass Linda and make her uncomfortable. She had never gone to ritzy places, even back in Wahoo. But of course, by the time he thought of this, it was already too late and they were at the door.
He needn’t have worried. Linda seemed at least as at home in the place as he was. When he tipped the head waiter three dollars to get them a nice quiet table off to themselves, she noted it with approval. She accepted the big menu with all the French words and ordered her dinner as smoothly and calmly as if she had been doing it right along. Strange ordered drinks for them, and she said she’d take a martini. After he’d ordered the drinks, he sat back and looked around, without really thinking that he had never known Linda Sue to drink a martini before. The big place was jam-packed and they were surrounded by servicemen and their women. The few civilian men in the place appeared drowned in the big sea of khaki and blue.
On the bandstand a sixteen-piece orchestra played through both “Little Sir Echo” and “Racing with the Moon” while Strange sipped at his drink and tried to collect his thoughts. He had never been much of a ballroom dancer so it did not occur to him to ask Linda to dance.
Since she would not mention the operation or bring it up, Strange was forced finally to bring it up himself.
“Well, where shall I begin?” he said finally.
Linda only looked at him. “Don’t you want to ask me to dance first?” she said.
“Oh,” Strange said. “Sure.”
On the dance floor, which though big was crowded, he moved her around to the music of “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” feeling upset and disturbed. The song was almost finished before he realized that Linda Sue was dancing beautifully with him, and stopped and moved her away from him to look down at her.
“Didn’t you notice I’ve learned to dance since you’ve been away?” she said.
“Yeah. Yes,” Strange said. “I just now noticed. How did that come about?” Behind him a sailor still in summer whites bumped into him and he started moving again.
“Oh, well. You know. A lot of us girls go out dancing together,” Linda said against his shoulder.
“You dance with each other?” Strange said.
“Chattanooga Choo-Choo” ended and without waiting for applause the band moved into “You’ll Never Know,” the song Alice Faye had made so famous. Strange had heard it on the radio on both the Canal and New Georgia. And Tokyo Rose used to play it.
“Most of the time,” Linda said against his ear. “Sometimes the boys ask us to dance, too.”
In spite of his awkwardness and lack of talent Strange found himself dancing better with her now, because of her new expertise, than he had ever danced before. Instead of making him feel good it made him feel more disquieted.
When the song ended, he took her back to the table and ordered them another drink.
“Can we have some red wine with the steak, too?” Linda said.
“Wine?” Strange said, “wine? Sure. Sure, why the hell not?”
“Just ask the man for the wine list,” she said, and gave him a funny smile.
“Do you want me to wait until after we’ve eaten?” Strange said, after he had ordered a twelve-dollar bottle of French wine. “No,” she said. “No, I guess not.” “Well,” Strange said, “here’s the story.”
But as he laid out for her the options Curran had offered him, doing it with that same patient thoughtfulness he had been so famous for and was so proud of back in the company, he began to feel more and more disquiet, more and more distress. He didn’t know why exactly. She just wasn’t reacting right. She didn’t say anything at all until he finished telling it.
“So you see,” he wound it up, “I can get discharged—” he moved his shoulders, “almost immediately. We can start working on that restaurant. While the war boom is still on. Probably your folks would loan us some money, wouldn’t they?”
“What will happen to your poor hand?” Linda said with a sad smile, and reached across and put her hand over the bound member in its plaster plate.
Strange shrugged. “It’ll stay about the same. I’ll have only partial use of the two middle fingers. But hell, I’ve been living like that for almost a year now. It aint so bad. Probly I’ll get some kind of a pension, I guess.”
“And if you have the operation?”
Strange shrugged again, impatiently, feeling irritable. She knew all that. “He can’t guarantee he can fix it. If he does, I’ll have to stay in. For the duration. If he can’t, it’ll be the same, anyway.”
“Well,” Linda said, sadly, “it’s a beautiful offer.”
“Christ, aint you happy about the restaurant?” Strange couldn’t resist saying,
“Yes, of course. But—” She stopped.
“But, what?”
It was at just that moment, as if deliberately prearranged by some consciously malignant fate, that the waiter arrived with their steaks. Behind Strange the orchestra was playing some dizzy, lilty song called “Elmer’s Tune.”
“Let’s eat, first,” Linda said. “Then I’ll tell you what’s been happening.”
If she was upset or depressed or sad it certainly had no effect on her appetite. She put away the entirety of her big, healthy steak except for a thin strip of fat rind, and with it a whole order of French fries, green beans, and a salad. Working so hard made her hungry, she said. Strange attacked his own big steak as if wreaking vengeance on it for the meal’s having interrupted them when it did. After putting down three hefty glasses of the red wine with her meat, Linda Sue pushed her plate daintily two inches away from her with her knife and fork laid side by side on it, put her elbows on the table, and looked at him with wide, clear, unguarded, sorrowful eyes.
“Yes,” Strange said. “Well, what?”
“Well,” she said, and stopped. “It’s that—It’s because—Well, I’ve got a, uh, boyfriend.”
“You’ve got a what?” Strange said.
She blushed crimson. “Well. An, uh, lover. I’ve got a lover.”
“You’ve got a lover,” Strange said. He would remember later that the sixteen-piece orchestra was playing the ballad called “I’ll Be Seeing You,” a song recorded and made popular by Vera Lynn and probably the most well-liked song of the whole damned war, so far.
“Yes,” Linda Sue said, over the music. “And I’m not going to give him up.”
But, of course, Strange’s mind was saying to him. So many things fell into place so suddenly that it was all there in front of him, all of a piece, a consistent pattern, only he had all along just not interpreted it right, was all. How she had been so confused and almost lukewarm, when he had telephoned her from Frisco. How she had decided not to come down to Luxor, because of her job. How she had seemed so distant when he came up to Cincinnati, because she was tired from overwork. How she had slept with him so indifferently, all those times. How she had not cared if he slept with her or not, all those times he had not slept with her. You should have figured that out, dumbhead, his mind was saying to him.
“You’ve got a lover,” Strange said. “And you’re not going to give him up. Good. Fine. Well, who is this guy?” Don’t talk about it, his mind warned him. If you let her start talking about it, you have lost.
“He’s a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force,” Linda said promptly, as if she had worked her speech all out, “and he’s a wonderful person. He’s a Princeton graduate, and he comes from someplace on Long Island called Southampton.” That would account for all the new sophistication, wouldn’t it?
“And I suppose you want to marry him?” Strange said. He felt tired suddenly, and he wished they would stop playing that damned song. That f*cking “I’ll Be Seeing You.”
She did not answer him but went straight on. “He does a lot of design work on airplanes,” she said, instead. As if from her prepared speech. “And he does a lot of work up at Patterson Field. But his main office is here. And anyway, he flies up there and back whenever he wants to or feels like it. He has a plane, at his beck and call. I met him at our plant when he was there looking at some parts that he thought he might use in some design. And so now, he spends more time here than he does up there, because of me. At least, the evenings. The nights.”
“Sure. The evenings,” Strange said. “The nights. But do you want to marry him?”
“He’s six foot two,” Linda went on. “With wide shoulders and a small head, blue eyes, and a long neck. And he’s the greatest gentleman I ever met. And he’s crazy in love with me.”
“Are you going to marry him, God damn it?” Strange shouted, but in a low voice. “You want a divorce. Is that it?”
Linda dropped her eyes demurely, and blushed again. “He can’t marry me,” she said simply. “He would love to. But he’s got a wife and four small children back there in Long Island. And he can’t leave them.”
“Because they got the money,” Strange said grimly.
“Perhaps,” Linda said. “Maybe. But he can’t leave them. And I don’t care. And I’m not going to give him up.”
“But, why?”
“Because he makes me feel things. He makes me feel things I’ve never felt before.”
“What kind of things?”
“Sex things.” She blushed a third time, completely crimson.
“Like what?”
“Lovemaking things,” Linda said, still blushing, still looking away.
“I think I’ll order us another drink,” Strange said tiredly.
“Yes. Please do. I wish you would,” she said. “I don’t like this any better than you do.”
“You must like it some better,” Strange said grimly, “since it’s not you who’s losing anything. Would you mind telling me what kind of lovemaking things?”
She waited till he had signaled the waiter and ordered the new drinks, still blushing furiously, still unwilling to look at him. Only when the waiter went away, was out of hearing range, did she speak.
“He kisses me, down there,” she said, her face bright red. “He makes me come. He’s taught me how to come. To have orgasms. Do you realize I’ve never had an orgasm in my life till I met him?”
“Good God,” Strange said. “Never?”
“Never once. And you’re the first man I ever, uh, went to bed with.”
“Not even once?” Strange said. “I always thought—I guess I never thought about it.”
“I’m not blaming you. But you can see why I’m never going to give him up. I’m going to stay with him. At least until the war’s over.”
“Or they move him someplace else,” Strange said.
“Yes,” she said. “There’s that. Have you ever gone out with any other women than me? I mean since we’re married?”
Strange raised his eyes to stare at her. But she was still looking down, at the table. “No,” he lied.
“Then I’m sorry,” Linda said. “I’m truly sorry for you. But that doesn’t change anything.”
“No.”
“I guess you won’t want to stay married to me. Under the circumstances.”
“No. I guess not.”
Strange was thinking that it would be easy enough to put it all down to some form of retribution. That was what he was feeling. But was that really the truth? After all, he had not gone to bed with that girl Frances at the Peabody until long after Linda had her Air Force lt/col. Of course, he had gone down to the whorehouses that one time in Wahoo with the boys, after she left. And a couple of other times, after he’d brought her out and married her, he’d gone down to the whores on a toot with a bunch of the guys. And sweated blood for two weeks after, afraid he might have picked up a dose of something. But in spite of all of that it wasn’t really retribution. It was just the war.
“Do you kiss him down there, too?” he asked.
“Yes.” She was blushing furiously again. “I’m going to give you all of the money in the account,” she said. “It’s yours. There’s a little over seven thousand now.”
“I don’t want it,” Strange said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Linda said. “Because I’m not going to keep it. If you don’t take it, I’ll give it to daddy. So you better take it.”
“Okay, I’ll take it,” Strange said.
He had suddenly become aware of that damned band again. Now they were playing “How High the Moon,” another song he had heard on the radio in the tropical islands of the Far East. Tokyo Rose had played that one, too.
“You can see why I can’t take it,” Linda said.
Strange had hardly heard her. “Well, anyway, you’ve answered my question for me. You’ve solved my problem for me,” he said, looking up.
“What are you going to do?”
“Why, have that damned second operation. That’s what.”
Linda did not say anything, did not answer him.
“It’s getting really late,” he said. “I suppose we ought to be going.”
“Don’t you want to dance with me? One more time? I’ve learned to really love to dance,” Linda said.
“No, I don’t,” Strange said. “I really don’t.”
From the other side of the table, she reached over her hand and put it over his claw, bound down on its plaster plate. Agitatedly, he pulled his away.
But there was no fight. Back at the house in Covington, up in her little chintzy bedroom, at five a.m. with the dawn just coming up, they more or less amicably went through the various details that had to be arranged, a great deal like two old friendly business partners who for various reasons are splitting up their firm. She arranged for and wrote out a check for him to cash, closing out their mutual bank account. She would start a new one, she said. Then Linda got ready for bed. And Strange started downstairs, to drink some beers with any members of the family who might be just getting up or getting ready to go to bed.
But when he got to the head of the stairs, she called him back. “I’ll sleep with you tonight, anyway,” she said. “If you want.”
“Jesus, no,” Strange said. And then she started to cry.
“Christ, don’t cry,” Strange said. “For God’s sake, don’t cry.”
She didn’t answer.
“Will you tell me one thing,” Strange said. “Did you really like it? When he kissed you, down there?”
She looked up from her crying and, incredibly, went right into a deep crimson blush, as red as a beet. “I loved it. I—I adored it,” she said. “I’ve never had anything feel like that in my life.”
“Well then don’t cry,” Strange said harshly, and pulled the door to, gently. Then he pushed it back open. “Do you realize that all that time, since I’ve been back, when you were sleeping with him, you were screwing me, too?”
“I was your wife,” she said.
Downstairs in the kitchen her older paternal cousin, who had just got up to get ready to go on the day shift, was sitting with Linda’s maternal cousin’s wife, who had only just come home herself after getting off the swing shift. Since they were drinking beer, both of them, Strange joined them. He did not tell them he was leaving. Probably, they would not have cared. Strange wondered briefly why the maternal cousin’s wife was so late getting home from the swing shift, herself.
He was waiting at the bank when they opened the doors, with Linda’s check to cash. He got a certified cashier’s check for $7,140, and put it away in his wallet. Near the bus station he bought another pint of whiskey for the bus trip back, but he was pretty sure he’d have to get another somewhere around Nashville, the way he felt. He sure didn’t have much of a batting average for completing his leaves and passes, he thought as he climbed on the daytime Greyhound.
The certified check in his wallet did not seem to make it feel any heavier, or make him feel any lighter, not the way he felt.
But he knew just what he was going to do with the money when he got back to Luxor.