Whistle

BOOK FIVE





THE END OF IT





CHAPTER 29


BOBBY PRELL HEARD ABOUT it at the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City. Strange called him there long distance to tell him.

Prell was on his first bonds-selling tour, and in fact the call took several hours to reach him because he was out and running around. It was their first day in Kansas City, and the first day was always spent running around. Setting things up. “Working,” was what the people in the tour staff called it. Though Prell found it hard to think of what he was doing as work. He was also doing some real running around on his own, with some of the tour staff, chasing women. Something the tour staff boys apparently always did in every city. When he got back to the hotel after an all-day, eight-hour absence, it was to find six little white call slips waiting for him. That someone from Camp O’Bruyerre had been calling. A Sgt Strange.

All that seemed so far away. Prell had difficulty recalling who the caller was. If the slips had said Kilrainey General and Delia Mae, or Luxor where Delia Mae’s mama had moved in the past month, the call would have meant something was wrong with her damned pregnancy probably. But not Strange, from O’Bruyerre. Strange had only been at O’Bruyerre now for a month. Prell could not imagine why Strange would be calling him.

Prell was supposed to go out with a couple of the “crew” and the “producer” of the “show,” Jerry Kurntz, for drinks and dinner that night. They were meeting some of the women, or “broads,” they had collected like a comet’s tail during the course of the day and the day’s meetings. The tour staff were all Hollywood “types,” and Prell was learning a whole new “show-biz” vocabulary from them. But in the big, old lobby with the six call slips from the desk clerk in his hand, Prell begged off. He would take a rest in his room, and eat there, and find out what this phone call was and maybe he might meet up with them later. He had no idea what could be so important that Strange would telephone him. And no idea how soon the call might come.

“Okay. But listen, kid,” Jerry Kurntz said. “You’re missing a big opportunity. I aint never seen a bunch of broads as ripe as this one. And aint you the star of our show? Without you we won’t any of us stand as good a chance.”

Kurntz was a college graduate who was not only not ashamed of using aint. He was proud of using it, and other bad grammar. Something else that was new to Prell.

“My legs are tired,” Prell said, and made his eyes go flat. All of them knew how he disliked referring to his legs.

“Oh, fine, fine,” Kurntz said quickly. “You go on and rest, then. The legs are more important.” The group broke up quickly, to go to their own rooms.

Prell had learned there were two things they were afraid of. They were afraid because he had killed people, and nearly been killed himself. They thought that somehow made him different. And they were afraid because he came from the West Virginia coal country. And knew how to make his eyes go flat.

Prell ordered some bourbon sent up to his room, and went on up himself. Beside the desk was his wheelchair, and he dropped into it gratefully, and let the bellboy push him to the elevator.

His folding wheelchair was always kept near the desk, out of sight, no matter what the hotel or the city. This was a strategy he and Kurntz had worked out at the start of the tour to satisfy Prell. The wheelchair was never taken along in the cars at the start of the day for the day’s outings and meetings. Not unless there was a speech to be made that night, before they came back to the hotel. They took the little half-crutches, and if Prell had to have help during the day, he used those. But Prell hated the wheelchair, with a rabid dislike. He refused to have it in the cars, or to use it, during the day. But there were times, like right now this evening, when he simply could not stay up on his feet any longer and had to use it.

The room was big, and comfortable. But Prell had to get up onto his feet again, out of the wheelchair, in order to make himself a drink at the little table bar. The bellboy brought in the new bottle, and Prell double-locked the door and put the chain lock on. With his impassive face, nobody was aware of the effort it took for him to get onto his feet from a sitting position. With the door secured, he took off his pants and sprawled down on the bed to ease his legs, while he waited on the phone call.

His legs were worse than tired. They were like two toothaches. Using them was the only way to make them better. But then the pain was always there. It was like one of those toothaches you so learned to live with and got so used to, that when the dentist finally got to you and stopped it you felt there was some part of you missing.

He was so uncomfortable on the bed, turning on his side each time to drink from the glass, that after a couple of tries at it he got up again, and sat in the damned wheelchair until he finished the drink. Then he lay back down again.

He had fallen asleep when the phone rang loudly in the room and he made a large scringe in both thighs as he rolled convulsively over onto his belly and put his head down, thinking Mortars. A part of his mind was already saying how ridiculous he was. What was it? eight months? nine months now? It took him a little while to get up off of the bed and the phone rang four or five times before he could get to it.

“Yes?” he said cautiously. “Yes?”

It was Strange, all right. And he didn’t fiddlef*ck around. He came right to the point. Had Prell heard that Landers had been killed?

“What? Killed?” Prell said. “Killed? How?”

Strange went on to tell him. A woman. In a civilian car. But with post plates. Some officer’s wife. Had hit him. Killed him instantly. He had only been discharged just an hour before. Was on his way off the post. The woman was all broken up by it.

“What a dumb way to get it,” Prell said. But why call him up, all this way, to tell him about it? he wondered. His first, natural reaction had been to think it was some drunken fight. In some poolhall or bar. “Sure a dumb way to get it,” he said.

“Yes,” Strange’s voice said. “But there’s even some question about that. The woman claims he stepped right out in front of her. She couldn’t miss him. And he was looking right straight at her.” The voice stopped.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Prell said. But why call me up? he wondered again. He was beginning, as his sleep confusion lifted, to catch a peculiar urgency in Strange’s voice.

“Well, there’s no reason for her to make it up. Nobody’s blaming her. They were already calling it an accident. Not her fault. Why make up a story like that?”

“Wait a minute. Then you mean a suicide?” Prell suddenly felt wide awake. But he wondered still again, So what? Why call him? If old Landers wanted to knock himself off, he had the same right everybody else had. “A suicide, Johnny?”

“Well, nobody’s saying that. And certainly officially it’s going to go down as an accident. Maybe she’s just feeling guilty anyway. Even if she’s not responsible?” Strange said. “We all do that sometimes. Otherwise why would she make up such a story?”

What was coming through to Prell was that Strange had not called him because of him, but because of Strange. Prell had never been a buddy of Landers’. Had hardly known him, really. Landers hadn’t even been Regular Army. But Strange had been a buddy. If Strange needed him, he had to be there.

“Would she?” Strange’s voice said urgently.

“I don’t know,” he said. “She might have. But anyway you can’t solve it all right now, Johnny. Hell, maybe it’s something we’ll never know.

“What does Winch say about it?” he asked cautiously. “How is Winch taking it?”

“Who knows,” Strange said. “With him? He’s pretty upset, I guess. Hell, I’m pretty upset. But I didn’t mean to upset you, by calling you.”

“I didn’t really know him all that well,” Prell said calmly.

“I know. But the four of us were all on that same ship together.”

“Yeah. He came in to see me there in that main lounge a bunch of times, I remember.” As he talked, he was casting around for the right thing to say that would ease Strange.

“Yeah. Well.” He heard Strange swallow. “Well we were working on that discharge for him. Or Winch was. He thought that was what he wanted. He said that was what he wanted. To one of his lieutenants.” Strange’s voice was getting higher, and threatening to crack.

“Yeah, you told me,” Prell said. “I thought it was all fixed up.”

“Well, how would you feel? If you suddenly walked out of the hospital, with a discharge out of the Army?”

“I’d feel terrible,” Prell said. “But I wasn’t him. He wasn’t a Regular Army type”—then he changed that word—“Regular Army guy. I am. That was what he wanted, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. That’s true,” Strange said, sounding unconvinced. “He was no RA soldier.”

“Listen, Johnny. I’ll be back at Kilrainey in a couple weeks. You just hang on to it. Go talk to Winch about it.”

“Winch won’t talk about it.”

Of course he wouldn’t. That f*cker, Prell thought, furiously. “We’ll go over it when I get back. We’ll talk it all out.”

“Sure,” Strange said. “Sure. I’m not flipping out, over it. I just thought you’d want to know.”

“Of course I’d want to know. I’m glad you called me,” Prell lied. “Call me here tomorrow, if you want. The day after tomorrow we’ll be in Lincoln, Nebraska.”

“Sure,” Strange said. “Don’t worry. Don’t worry about me, I mean. I’m fine. I’ll see you as soon as you get back.”

“How’s the new outfit doing?” Prell asked.

“Fine. It’s no great outfit. Signal Corps, I’m in. But at least I’m seeing they get some decent hot meals, for a change.”

“I bet they love it,” Prell said, and found he was grinning frantically, at the phone. Idiotically. As if Strange could see him.

“They do. They do. Okay, so long.” The question that followed was a polite afterthought. “How are you doing, out there?”

“Fine,” Prell said. “I guess I’m a natural-born speechmaker.”

“Good.”

The phone clicked off, dead. Prell realized he had been standing up on his feet all this time, and that his legs had begun to hurt him seriously again. He went back to the bed. Then, after he had sprawled back down, the guilts began to attack him.

Guilt because he had not helped Strange as much as he might have on the phone. Guilt because he had not cared more about Landers. Then, guilt because he had not been a better friend to Landers. Why hadn’t he been?

Then finally, the biggest guilt of them all. What was a man like him doing here? Making speeches for a living. He had become an entertainer. Him, and his Medal of Honor. They were a vaudeville team. It was something he had to wrassle with and defeat every day. And every new day it was back again, stronger and more powerful, to be wrassled with and defeated again.

Usually it hit him at this same time of every afternoon. After a day of loose p-ssyfooting around. He would come back to some hotel, with something great to look forward to, like an evening speech. Or another night of revels with the jolly funsters of Hollywood. All now in US Army uniform. He would lie on his bed, trying to give his legs a couple of hours of rest, and try to battle it

An entertainer. Get people to pay out their money to buy war bonds. Playing on their emotions. A “performer.” With “lighting experts” and “sound experts” and “script writers,” and a “director” and a “producer.” All telling him what to say and how to say it, and how to “act” it. What on earth was he doing here?

Prell had no new answers to the question. The old, simple answer to it was he was here because he wanted to stay in the Army. If he wasn’t here he would be a civilian out on the streets somewhere.

Prell had been over it all before. Long before. He had been over it back when the final decision was made, back in early December. General Stevens, then still only a colonel, had called him in and presented him with the alternatives. There were only the two. Discharge; or sell war bonds. Stevens had kindly been willing to discuss it with him. The two of them had decided it then.

“I know how much you dislike the idea of it,” Stevens said. “But if you want to stay in the Army, I don’t see any other way. There’s just no other way to keep you in. In the shape you’re in.”

The slim, white-haired old West Pointer smiled, and behind his desk pushed back his own chair, looking at Prell in his wheelchair.

“I have to admit I feel a certain personal involvement in this, Bobby. It goes back to when you first came in here, in danger of losing your leg. We discussed the various options then, you and I, if you remember.”

“Yes, sir. I remember,” Prell had said, huskily.

“Back then, you didn’t have any Medal of Honor, and we weren’t even sure you were going to have the leg,” Stevens smiled. “Even then all you could say was that you wanted to be a twenty-year man.”

Prell had nodded, but hadn’t felt up to smiling back.

“I’ve looked into it for you carefully, as much as I can,” Stevens said. “W/O Alexander and I have. I can tell you pretty much what to expect. I’m not sure you’ll like it.”

He was a hospital casual right now, not a member of any outfit. He would be assigned directly to the AGO Washington, his provisional HQ here in Second Army, Luxor. His actual authority would be Stevens himself here at Kilrainey, at first. If he was as successful on the first couple of tours as they had every reason to think he would be, and if physically he was up to it, he would then be reassigned, probably to Los Angeles on the West Coast. And after that perhaps to Washington. Out there and in Washington he would work with these professional theater people who ran this kind of thing for the Army. He would become a member of a unit that traveled all over the country selling war bonds.

“That ought to keep you in business at least until after the war,” Stevens said.

“What about after the war?” Prell said.

Stevens held up his hand. “Now, after the war,” he said, and cleared his throat. “After the war is something else again.”

After the war, there were going to be an awful lot of men hanging around looking for work as soldiers. And there weren’t going to be that many jobs for all of them. At the same time, there were going to be a lot of bread-and-butter assignments lying around, for men who qualified for them and could get their hands on them.

One of them would be all of those ROTC assignments, at all of the various colleges and universities across the country. Usually they were held back for old-time master sergeants. But they had been known to go to lesser ranks.

“I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t qualify for one of them,” Stevens smiled.

Prell had sat listening, suddenly wanting to weep. A kind of wildly inarticulate love, out of all proportion to anything he was used to feeling for anybody, had seized him for this elegant old soldier. He was such a fine example of the old-time, old-line, gentlemanly school of Army officer who once had existed. Those were the school of men Prell had wanted to serve under, back when he first enlisted, but he hadn’t found too many of them. At the moment, he would have done just about anything the old gentleman might have asked of him.

“I’m not saying you’ll love it. But it’s the best that can be done,” Stevens said. “I’ve asked around and found out what I could, both W/O Alexander and I have, about placing you in one of these posts. And I think you can get one, after the war,” Stevens smiled. “Particularly with that Medal of Honor you have tucked away under your web belt.”

“I only have one question, sir,” Prell said, huskily. “I’m not sure it isn’t degrading the Medal.”

Stevens glared at him piercingly. “Nothing on earth can degrade that Medal. Or what you did to earn it. Don’t you ever forget that.”

“Aye, sir,” Prell said. And then decided to go one step further. “But I’ve always felt I didn’t really deserve the Medal.”

“If you didn’t deserve it, you wouldn’t have gotten it. That’s why the system of recommendations is set up the way it is, to make it difficult. And since you have gotten it, you deserve everything the Army can do to help you.” Slowly, he smiled again; but his eyes were still piercing.

And that was the way they had left it. Back in early December. There were a few little strings attached, to getting Prell one of the coveted ROTC posts, Stevens said. One of them was the problem of rank. If Prell wanted to come out of the war a master/sgt, so that he would be truly qualified for the ROTC post, it meant he would have to make at least 1st/lt. Once the war was over, everybody made during it would be reduced two grades in rank. Stevens was beginning to do what he could about that. “As of right now, today, you’re a staff sergeant.” And at the successful conclusion of his first war bonds tour, he would be moved up to tech/sgt. And then up to master. Once he was with AGO Washington and on the West Coast, he would be given a commission to 2nd/lt, and then promoted to 1st/lt. “There’s a little trick to this rank problem,” the old colonel smiled. “That’s right.” He nodded. “If I want to retire as a colonel, I’ll have to make major general during the war.”

He had pulled his chair back up to the desk. “You understand, there are no absolute guarantees to this. I can’t guarantee you all of this. It’s much too soon, for anything like that. And it would be dishonest to say so. But it is certainly something to work toward, and I think it’s something you should plan toward.”

Prell had simply nodded, too dazzled to make an answer. He was as dazzled by the old gentleman’s honesty and sense of honor, as he was by the prospect of so much swift promotion. And it was these traits, Stevens’ honesty and sense of honor, that sent him back to the old West Pointer for advice when his problem arose with Delia Mae a month or so later.

There wasn’t really anybody else to go to. He did not want to go to Strange with it. Anyway, what could Strange tell him? And in the month since their first talk he had been back three or four times to see Stevens, whose door as Stevens said was always open to a Medal of Honor winner. Prell had come to think of him almost as a father. It was as close to a father, anyway, as a West Virginia orphan boy had ever had. Winch or Strange had never been that to him.

If it had not been precisely as he told it to Strange at the wedding, it had been very close to that. Perhaps he had not knocked her up the very first time his legs had been physically able to get on top of her and seriously f*ck her. But it had been damn close to the first time. It had been in the first five days. All that time his damned legs had been too damned weak, and painful, to pull back out. And they had been going at it like a couple of minks. Then in two or three weeks she had come to him with looks of chagrin and fright darting over her face and told him that she had missed her period. But even then on her face there had been that look, that glow, of triumph, victory and success. It shone out openly and with total shamelessness from under the other looks, a glow saying that she knew she had trapped him.

“Of course, you must marry her!” Stevens exclaimed, without preamble or qualification, as soon as he was told what had happened. “It’s the only honorable thing you can do.”

Prell was ready to accept this. But he needed a little time to digest it. “Well there are other ways to solve it, sir. I mean, as a problem. If we were thinking of it like a mathematics exercise. Several other ways.”

“What ways?”

“Well, I could just not marry her at all. That’s happened a lot more times around this area than you might think, sir. She’d just go on off home and have the baby. And her mom would work and she’d take care of it. Or she’d work and her mom would take care of it. That’s happened a lot. Particularly in cases like this, when I’m about to ship off from here.”

“Good God, son! And that’s what you propose? What about her father? What’s he say? Where is he?”

“He’s overseas, sir, in the Army. In New Guinea, I believe.”

“MacArthur,” Stevens murmured, to himself.

“Some Signal Corps outfit,” Prell said.

“Well at least it isn’t the infantry. What other brilliant ideas have you got?”

“I could take her to an abortionist, sir. There’s one of these sleazy doctors who does them, down on South Main. Down below Beale Street, near the black section. I have lots of friends who have the address. She has the address herself.”

“No, no! Great Scott, boy!” The old West Pointer looked seriously shocked. “You’re destroying a human life.”

“I don’t really think of it as a human life yet,” Prell said. “She’s only a month and a half gone.”

“A human life is precious,” the old soldier said. “Um, how did she get hold of that address?”

“She said a friend gave it to her. In case she ever might need it.”

“I see. Well. Are you sure you’re the father?”

“It would be easy to say I’m not sure. But, honestly. Between us, sir. I’m pretty sure I am.”

“Well then, you’ve got to do the right thing by her,” Stevens said staunchly. “We men. We men like to have our good times. But we don’t like to pay up for it. We are supposed to look after women, and take care of them. Protect them. They need that from us. Our whole civilization is based on that.

“What about her mother? Does she know?”

“Yes,” Prell said. “She knows. She told her mother before she told me.”

Stevens stared at him. “She did? Well. Well, what does the mother say?”

“Oh she’s all in favor of the marriage,” Prell said. “She thinks I can become a movie star.”

“She what?!” Stevens said.

Prell shrugged lamely. “She said since I’m going off on this war bonds tour, I should make all the contacts I can with these Hollywood people. Then I can get started through them. She has this idea of a series of movies where I can be the owner of a ranch in the West somewhere, in a wheelchair. She seems to think I can become another Hopalong Cassidy or John Wayne.”

“Great Scott!” Stevens said.

“Well, she’s a little crackers, sir. The truth is she’s got this boyfriend in town in Luxor, older fellow, who is stationed at Second Army, and she wants to move into town with him. She figures if she marries Delia Mae to me, she’ll be free to do that.”

“Does her husband in New Guinea know?”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“Hasn’t the daughter written him about it?”

“No, sir. I don’t think she has.”

Stevens was staring at him, kind of unbelievingly.

“She’s sort of in the middle,” Prell said.

“Yes,” Stevens said. “Do you see much of this, uh, mother?”

“Only when I can’t avoid it.”

Stevens continued to stare for a minute, then sighed. “You’ve gotten yourself into a bad bind, haven’t you, son?”

“I’m afraid so, sir. Yes.”

Stevens stared down at his desk, frowning at it furiously as if it were responsible for this, before he looked up. “Well, if you’re asking my advice, I think you should marry the girl. In spite of all. I think you owe her that. Besides, you don’t know. She may love you with all her heart.”

“She loves the fact that I’m a Medal of Honor winner,” Prell said.

“I think you must marry her. You want to give your child a name.” He had commenced to doodle on a pad on his desk.

It was somehow what Prell had expected to hear. It was almost as if he had heard it in the air around him, before he had even come in. Perhaps he even had come here hoping to hear just that.

“Well, sir. I’m ready to do it,” Prell said. “If you think that’s what I ought to do.”

Stevens made a big circle over his other doodles, and ran it around three times, and then threw his pencil down. “I do. And you’ve given me an excellent idea. I think there is at least a way that we can make a lot of capital out of this for you, just in publicity alone.” And he had commenced to lay out his ideas for the hospital wedding.

Prell himself, in Kansas City, still did not know how much effect the idea of the wedding had had on his final decision to marry. It certainly had had some. Also, as Stevens had said, “If it doesn’t work out, you can always get a divorce. But at least you’ll have given your son your name.” He did say son. Although how he thought he knew, Prell had no idea. Delia Mae was about five months into her pregnancy right now and nobody, including the doctor, had any idea boy or girl. In the big hotel room Prell pulled himself laboriously up onto his feet again and, haltingly, walked across to the table for another bourbon.

He looked at his watch, which said ten-thirty, and realized room service would cut off serving dinners soon. If he didn’t order, there would be nothing but damned white turkey meat sandwiches.

But he wasn’t hungry. He took the straight bourbon back to the bed and sat down on the bed edge to drink it. Then he stretched back out and tried to burrow back into the sleep the ringing phone of Strange’s call had brought him up out of.

The sexual cutoff had begun almost as soon as the wedding itself was over. She was too tired, her back hurt her, or she was nauseous. He tried to point out that she was only two days more pregnant than she had been two days before the wedding, but it had not made the slightest difference. Stevens had arranged for them to spend four days at the Claridge free, paid for by the hotel’s public relations account, as a sort of honeymoon. Prell actually had gotten less sex during that four days than he had had at any time since he had first met Delia Mae on the ward, when he had felt a hell of a lot worse.

It was as if all the hot sexuality in her, which she had hated secretly all this time but had never admitted hating, had run down out of her like mercury out of a broken thermometer, leaving only the glass shell and the etched numbers as sort of ghostly reminders of the heat that had once been measured there.

It was as if now, with her back areas and lines of retreat safely stabilized and covered by a marriage certificate, she was ready to stand and fight for her principles. Whatever the f*ck they were. One of them was clearly that genu-wine high-class ladies wasn’t supposed to like sex.

Prell burrowed his head down deeper into the bed’s pillow.

The sleep came slowly, in little spurts. It came like small snow flurries, sweeping an area with their stillnesses, on the light winds of a steadily thickening snowstorm. Then when the full sleep came, with it came the nightmares. Immediately. Or so it seemed. It seemed only half of him was truly asleep, because it seemed half of him was awake watching the nightmares.

They were all involved with the squad again, and the patrol. They went all through it again, over and over. The half of him that was not asleep was aware that he had not had them in quite a long time, and was a little shocked at seeing them. And this time Landers was with them, in them.

It was as though Prell could never quite spot him. But he was with the dead, and at the same time he was with the wounded. Whenever Prell looked back from his own improvised stretcher to check, the two dead, both Crozier and Sims, would be there; but Landers would be one of them, or sort of with them. Whenever he looked at his wounded and counted them to check, all of them would be there, the count exactly right, but one of their agonized faces would be Landers. When Prell looked at their faces individually, each belonged to its owner. But he would know that there was another one hanging around, hovering somewhere.

He woke sweating. He had not had any of these dreams in quite some time. And never had Landers been in any of them.

His watch said it was after midnight. He knew he would never go back to sleep now. He didn’t want to go back to sleep. Heavily, he got himself back onto his feet and walked teetering over to the phone, and on the strength of a pretty solid hunch called Jerry Kurntz’s central suite. Sure enough, they were all there.

“Shit, kid,” Jerry Kurntz cried at him from the phone. “Didn’t I tell you this bunch was ripe? All you got to do is pour some booze down them, and loosen up their inhibitions. And they all of them got the hots for you. One of them thought she was your date, and got so mad when you didn’t show up, she went into a sulk. But she’s beginning to loosen up now.”

“Well what about the other guys?” Prell said. “Are there enough to go around?”

“Hell, baby, nobody cares,” Kurntz roared into the phone. “You come on over and you can take your pick.”

Prell’s pick was the one who had sulked over his absence. She was a good-looking blonde lady, who by the time he arrived had had more than enough to drink, but was still a lady. None of these ladies was the kind of bimbo you would find down around 4th Street in Luxor. And, usually, almost always they were married. “Married and harried,” Kurntz liked to say, laughing. Kurntz always liked to point out that it was because the tour people were out-of-towners, only there for a night or two, that they made out so well. They represented no strings, no embarrassing reappearances.

Kurntz’s suite was laid out more or less on the same principles as Strange’s suite at the Peabody. Except that there was only one bedroom, and there was no “preparation station” bed in the living room. These ladies would never have gone for, would have been shocked by, something as open as that. But since the tour guys had their own rooms in the hotel to take the “Damsels of their choice,” as Kurntz called them, there was no problem.

Prell had ridden over in his wheelchair, and had the bellboy push him. He had found the wheelchair worked wonders of sympathetic limpness on the ladies, once the ladies realized he was no paraplegic and not paralyzed from the waist down.

The Kansas City lady’s name was Joyce. “Joyce, would you mind pushing me back to my own room in this thing?” he asked after they had talked awhile in Kurntz’s loud, crowded living room.

They always loved pushing him in the wheelchair. And they loved talking to him about the Medal of Honor, and how he had gotten it. Prell didn’t mind telling them. He simply soft-pedaled his own feelings of inadequacy about the whole thing. A feeling of inadequacy was not what they were after, at a time like that. Sometimes when he was telling them about it, it seemed that was the way it really was, had really happened.

Most of them liked undressing him, too. Prell always let them. He wasn’t ashamed of the scars, and if they wanted to inspect them and ask questions about them, well, the scars were very close to where he wanted to get their faces. And that almost always worked, too. If only with passionate kissing.

“What kind of outfit’s your husband in? Where is he?” he asked Joyce.

“He’s in England,” Joyce said drunkenly. “He’s in the Air Force. He’s an air-crew ground mechanic. He doesn’t fly. But he’s written me,” she said, running her fingertips over Prell’s thigh scars, “about some of the boys who’ve been flown back to base all terribly torn up. They’ve had two Medals of Honor in his squadron, he wrote me.”

They went to sleep with their arms around each other, Joyce performing a sort of contortionist feat, by keeping her breasts pressed against him up above, while lying away from him down below so as not to hurt his legs. There were no nightmares.

She woke up around five, cold sober. Prell had gotten pretty used to this, too. Her eyes were full of panic.

“My God. What on earth am I doing here?” she demanded, and pulled the sheet up over her breasts.

The lines were almost always the same. So was the action with the sheet.

“What ever will you think of me?”

That line was usually the same, too. Prell had learned how to handle them by talking gently and affectionately and sensibly. He wasn’t even sure they heard the words he said, only the tones. He wasn’t even sure they saw him.

The next little scene was to leap from the bed stark naked, while enjoining him not to look, which he always did, with pleasure and regret; and then rush for the bathroom to wash themselves, put on makeup, and dress. Usually with their clothes in arm. Or at least panties and bra.

Prell had the perfect excuse not to get up. A cripple didn’t have to get dressed, and see them home. But he would always offer to call down for the night bell captain to have a cab waiting. They always accepted that.

Then all he had to do was roll over, go back to sleep, and sleep until Jerry Kurntz would call him at nine and ask how he made out. To which Prell would always answer that he had not made out at all. To which Kurntz would laugh.

This time however, after Joyce blew him an affectionate kiss from the door (they always seemed to be in better control, once they got their clothes and makeup back on) he did not want to go back to sleep because of the nightmares. He got up and, smelling the delicious scent of sex all over him, sat in the wheelchair in his robe with the bourbon bottle. He was careful not to drink enough to incapacitate himself for tomorrow, just enough to relax. He must certainly have dozed some in the chair, whose wheels he had locked, but it was not enough to let the nightmares back in.

That night was his main talk from the stage of the big downtown auditorium. There was quite a large crowd and Joyce, who was one of the ladies helping with the invitation list, was there. When they had a moment alone, she wanted to know if they were going to see each other again that night. Politely Prell begged off and told her no. Women and sex were the furthest things from his mind right then. He had brooded about Strange all day. Strange, and Landers. But Strange had not called at all. Prell was still hoping to get a call from him.

Prell had had another, smaller talk to give in the afternoon, but that night in the auditorium his rehearsed speech got away from him and he suddenly found himself telling them the story of Landers. In the middle of talking, he found himself changing the story all around, to fit the circumstances, to fit the audience, so that Landers’ wound came out in his version as much worse, a leg amputation, and he told them that Landers had died as the result of an additional amputation operation. His points for the story, he told his audience, were two. One, that Landers had received no medals for his sacrifice, nor had wanted or expected any. And that two, Landers had not become famous for it and there were going to be a lot more like him. Who, if they survived at all, were going to take a lot of work, here at home.

Prell had no idea at all why he had done it, and thought he might be losing his mind. It was, he supposed, his own personal tribute to Landers, and had just popped out of him.

Kurntz told him later it was a huge success and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house when he finished. The pledges and subscriptions which Joyce and the other ladies were taking in the lobby were the biggest of the tour to date.

“Jesus, fella,” the producer said earnestly, “it was a very moving little routine. You even had me shedding a tear. But you got to tell us about these little ideas when you get them. Before you try them out. We got to write them in, and prepare for them.”

“Well it just came to me while I was up there,” Prell said, “I didn’t know I was going to do it.”

Kurntz nodded sympathetically. “Luckily, the lighting man up in the back was listening to you, and was able to follow your mood.” Kurntz coughed. “Listen. Was, uh, was that what that phone call was all about last night? That had you so upset for a while?”

“In a way, yeah,” Prell said. “Yes. It was.”

Kurntz patted his back lugubriously. “I thought maybe so. Well, we’ll just work it in. Into one of the speech variations. I’ll get Frank on it tomorrow.”

Prell was not sure whether he wanted his “Thing” on Landers incorporated into his speech or not. But he did not feel much like discussing it right then.

The worst fight he and Kurntz had had on the entire tour had been over the wheelchair, whether they should use it to wheel Prell onto the big auditorium stages. Jerry wanted to use it and have Prell get up out of it himself, and then walk three or four halting steps to the reading lectern. Prell was furiously against it.

But Kurntz had made a strong case for his idea. “Look, kid. I know how you feel about the wheelchair. And I know you think it’s phony to use it. But those people don’t have any way of knowing that you have to use a wheelchair. I know it. But they don’t. Don’t forget we’re here to move these people, to entertain ’em. And instruct ’em. When you get up out of that wheelchair and walk bravely to the lectern, there’s not a person in the crowd who’s not going to love you. And that’s what we’re here for. If we make them love you, they’ll buy more bonds. That’s why we’re here. That’s our assignment.”

There was no arguing with the logic. It was easy to see why Kurntz was a major. And Prell finally had agreed. And once he began doing it, there was no question that it worked.

Now the same thing was going to happen with his little Landers story. He was going to have to go on telling it. The oftener he told it the less it would be his. The less it would really mean, to him.

Even so, Prell didn’t feel like fighting about it right now. All he really wanted was to get back to the hotel and find out if Strange had called.

But there was no call. Strange had not called while they were away at the auditorium, and he did not call after they got back.

So instead of another affectionate night with Joyce and no nightmares, Prell spent the night with the nightmares.

The newly reactivated dreams woke him three times, sweating and fearful, during the course of the night. In the morning they, the whole tour group, flew off in the big Army plane to Lincoln. Two days later they flew on to Denver for their engagement there, last stop on the outward leg of the tour.

Lincoln was a pretty small town, so there hadn’t been much hanky-panky there. But Jerry Kurntz was promising a rousing debacle for Denver.

By Denver the nightmares had begun to dim.