“Hey. Listen. There might be a way we could make some money on this,” Strange said.
“You mean betting it?”
“Sure. If you were to wait? If you were to work hard at the therapy? And not show anybody? Not let anybody see the results. Make it look bad. Why, hell. The odds might go as high as twenty to one. I’d lay a lot on that.”
Prell studied him. “And we could let Landers know.” Again, he was struck by how changed Strange seemed. Winch was the one who would have concocted such a scheme.
“What about the other company guys?” Strange said.
“Fuck ’em,” Prell said in a flat voice. “I’ll tell you something, Johnny Stranger. I don’t feel that close to the others. The ones that got here before we did. They don’t really seem like the old company. Besides, the more people you tell about a thing, the more it’s likely to leak out.”
“That’s true,” Strange said. “And I don’t feel that close to them myself, any more. But what about Winch?”
Prell could feel his face get stiff, and flat. His Indian eyes narrowed. Once again, the mere name put in his visual mind that same picture of Winch, standing over him in the bed that day, with his bright eyes and evil grin. Accusing him of letting his squad get shot up because he was medal-hunting.
“I wouldn’t give that son of a bitch nothing,” he said. “I wouldn’t give him floor space in hell.”
“Aw, now,” Strange said. Coldly, Prell watched him shrug.
“Anyway,” Prell said, “I don’t know if what you’re thinking of would work.” Mentioning bringing Winch into it had changed his whole mood. He felt sullen. He didn’t care now whether they did it or not. “Look. It’s going to be a long time. Three months? Maybe the guys you make the bets with will have left the hospital. How you going to collect?”
“We’ll think of some way to secure the money. Put it in sealed envelopes? Leave them with a nurse, or some doctor?”
“I aint got any money,” Prell said. He felt stubborn. And sullen. He couldn’t help it. “I got here broke. And I aint got my back pay yet.”
“I’ll loan you money,” Strange said. He waved his check, and then put it away. “I’ve got the money. How much do you want? I’ll put up for us both.”
“I could invest a thousand,” Prell said. “I’ll get at least that much back pay.”
“Done! I’ll start laying off some bets.”
“You better wait two weeks,” Prell said. “Till we see how I’m doing.”
“I’m not worried about you,” Strange said. “Listen, how long do you think it’ll be before you can get in town on a pass?”
“But I won’t have Winch involved,” Prell said. He paused a moment, stubbornly, thinking. “Matter of fact, he may just bet the other way. I bet he will. If he does, you cover whatever he puts up with my money. I don’t care how much. I’ll raise it some way.”
“I hate to do that to Winch,” Strange said. “But of course if that’s the way you want it.”
It appeared to Prell that Strange’s eyes had grown suddenly shallow, and thoughtful. “No shenanigans,” Prell said sternly. “If you do that to me, I’ll blow the whole deal on you. I swear it.”
“No, no. No shenanigans. Now, how about that trip to town? When can you?”
“I don’t know. How do I know? I suppose I could go right now, if we could get me a folding wheelchair someplace.”
“I want you there for the opening,” Strange said, and drew himself up and grinned. “I tell you, there’s more pussy around there than you can shake your dick at.”
“I’d like to come,” Prell said. “But I aint going to be much good for any fucking. Casts or no casts.”
“I suppose not,” Strange said. “How you coming along with that little girlfriend of yours?”
“Great. Fine. I’ve got her jerking me off into a handkerchief every day. I’ve got her so she’ll kiss it a little, but I can’t get her to take the whole thing in her mouth yet.” He sat and grinned up at the other, mirthfully.
Strange cackled. “Well, I guess you aint hurting any, then.” He waved his arm once more. “I’ll look into this about the bets. I get that suite arranged for, I’ll be back to see you. You see what you can do about borrowing a folding wheelchair.”
Prell watched him leave, turning the wheels of the wheelchair with his hands so he could look after him. He was getting adept with that damned thing. After a while your mind stopped even thinking about it. And it was always good to see Strange. But something had happened to Strange in Cincinnati this time. Prell would have bet money on it.
Well, if Strange didn’t want to talk about it, he didn’t have to. Something had happened to Prell, too. Getting those casts off was no ordinary everyday experience, either. And he was much more ardent about the future of his legs, and walking, in Strange’s presence than he had felt before Strange entered, or than he felt now.
Prell actually had overheard some bitter soul of a double amputee from the Sicilian invasion, offering seven to one that Prell would not be walking by the time the amputee left Kilrainey. That would have to be at least three months away. The amputee had not gotten any takers.
After only two days of therapy, Prell was secretly inclined to agree with the amputee. That he couldn’t do it in three months. And there was that strong possibility looming there that he might never be able to do it. That was why, although he had put a brighter front on it, he had told Strange to wait awhile and see, before committing money.
He had been equally dishonest with Strange about his girlfriend. He hadn’t actually lied. He had been able to get her to toss him off in a handkerchief. And he’d been able to get her to kiss his cock once or twice. But, certainly, she didn’t really like it. And certainly she didn’t do it every day, as he’d told Strange. The truth was, he had not tried that hard to force her. For fear of making her angry. He was afraid of making her so mad at him she would stop coming to visit him.
She would do almost everything else. She would squirm herself against him by the hour. Kiss and neck with him until he was hot as a little red fire wagon. Let him play with her tits. Even let him play with her pussy. As long as her panties remained over it. Play with it till the crotch of her panties was sopping wet. But as far as Prell knew she never came. A couple of times they tried to screw, with her getting on top of him, while he was still in the casts, but it always caused him so much pain in his legs that they had to stop.
Delia Mae Kinkaid. That was her name, and she was seventeen. Her daddy was in some Signal Corps outfit in Australia. And her mama worked, to augment the allotments her daddy sent them. Old Delia Mae had nothing against screwing. She freely admitted she was not a virgin. The only trouble was, Prell couldn’t fuck. And with the casts off now, without their protection, it was even worse.
But everything other than fucking made Delia Mae balk. It was either awful, or evil, or disgraceful, or unsanitary. She would never let him get his hand inside her pussy, for example. Unsanitary. And except for those few times when he had forced her to jack him off, she would let him place her hand on his swollen cock only as long as the cock remained inside the Medical Corps pajamas. If any jacking off was to get done, except for those few times, he had to do it himself. Which he usually did, after one of their sessions. The trouble with a damned hospital ward was there was so damned little privacy.
And when he tried to get his thumb on her clitoris, Delia Mae disallowed that. That, she labeled disgraceful. Usually she only let it happen when they were out on the dayroom porch, and then she would become quite heated. But of course they were always being interrupted. Damned privacy.
That was one good thing about being a Medal of Honor winner, Prell was learning. People would do you favors. The afternoon ward boy let him use one of the two little private rooms at the front end of the ward for Delia Mae’s afternoon “reading” sessions. The ward boy never asked any questions. But Delia Mae would never let him touch her clitoris, in there. Prell would stay in there al
one, with a wad of toilet paper, for a while after Delia Mae left.
Another thing Prell was reluctant to admit to Strange, or anybody, was that he was missing old Delia Mae more and more on the days she did not come on the ward. And waiting more and more hungrily for her on the days that she did. And lately, she had been talking to him more and more about them getting married.
Prell was well aware that his Medal of Honor had a great deal to do with that, too. Old Delia Mae was at least as fascinated by it as everybody else was. It was the Medal of Honor that had drawn her to him in the ward in the first place. And it was the Medal of Honor that had allowed him to get as far with her as he had. Prell was aware of all that.
The Medal, with a capital T on the The and a capital M on the noun—as he had taken to thinking of it—The Medal worked wonders with just about everybody. It got him extra services from the ward boys. It got him special meals from the mess hall when he wanted them. It got him special on-post passes from the nurses on the ward when he asked for them. It allowed him to keep a bottle of booze on the ward, with the night man. The only person it did not seem to work with was Maj Hogan. His Medal of Honor only made Hogan hate him more, apparently. As though by putting him in a special category beyond Hogan’s administrative policy, where Hogan could not control or thwart him, it inflamed the major’s soul.
But except for Hogan it worked. The Medal even worked with his irascible, irritable Chief Surgeon Col Baker. Who had by now cheerfully admitted publicly that he had made a mistake in judgment with Prell. The only such of his career, Baker would hasten to add. It was to Col Baker that Prell went with his request for a folding wheelchair.
Prell knew that they had them. He also knew there was no use going to Hogan for one. Shortly before his casts were to come off for the final time, they had used a folding wheelchair on him. A request had come down, via Hogan, from the office of Col Stevens, for Prell to make a personal appearance and a small speech at a war bonds rally being conducted by the Luxor Chamber of Commerce.
It was not a direct order. It was in the form of a request, but the request left little doubt that Prell was expected to comply. Prell did. And found it was one of the easiest things he had ever had to do. It was easy because everybody loved him. An ambulance, and this folding wheelchair, were sent to pick him up. The speech was already written for him, by some writer on Col Stevens’ staff. All he had to do was look it over, and then wheel himself out in front of the officers and officials on the stage of the big auditorium and read it into the microphone. Afterward, there were drinks for everybody at a cocktail party, and people came up to shake his hand.
It all gave Prell a curious feeling there were two Luxors, existing side by side, or perhaps one on top the other. There was the Luxor of his buddies of cunt and cock and booze and parties that never stopped, going nonstop day and night in the hotels and bars. And there was another Luxor of businessmen and families, who went to the office and went home to wives and bought bonds without being aware of the first Luxor, which was not aware of them, either.
Prell was aware of both. Because he had visited the second Luxor, to make a speech, in his folding wheelchair. This was the group that paid for the wheelchairs.
So he knew the hospital had at least one folding wheelchair. He brought it up to Col Baker the next morning at morning rounds.
At first, the short-tempered colonel’s eyes bulged out and a snarl came over his gaunt lined face. “You want a pass? You want a pass? Because the people from your old company are renting a suite at the Peabody?”
“For a celebration. Yes, sir.” Behind Baker, Hogan was beginning to fume and splutter and turn red.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Baker snarled. “And of course you’ll have to have a folding wheelchair. That much is obvious. Right?”
“Yes, sir. Well, they gave me one when they took me down town for that war bond rally.”
“And just what do you expect to do when you get yourself into the elevator and up to this suite at the Peabody? Get drunk, I suppose.”
Prell had planned toward this. His whole idea was that the evil-tempered Baker might somewhere inside him be susceptible to the blunt truth. That might get him, where something else wouldn’t. “Well, sir, I’m hoping to try and get myself laid.”
“You’re what?”
Hogan was now red as a beet with outrage. But Baker was beginning to grin, in a wolfish way.
“I know I’m not in much of any great shape for it. With these casts off only a few days. But I’d like to try. I’ve been laying around an awful long time now without getting any.”
“You’ve got as much chance of fucking some woman as you’ve got of pole-vaulting six and a half feet,” Baker said.
“I don’t need to pole-vault anything. Besides, there are other ways of taking care of it,” Prell said.
Baker was seriously grinning now, if somewhat reluctantly. “By God, I think you deserve the chance. Damn if I don’t. Major Hogan, you see to it, will you,” he said shortly.
Prell was still congratulating himself when Strange came by with Landers in tow that afternoon. Strange had banked his money, and was sporting a new checkbook along with a big wad of cash. But he had not been able to get the Peabody suite. It would be four days before they could let him have one. They were booked that far in advance. Strange had felt badly about it at first. He had wanted it the worst way. Right away. Not only for Prell, but for himself. When you wanted something that bad it was depressing not to get it, he said. But Strange reasoned it would be that much better for Prell, to have four more days of therapy, before trying it. Strange and Landers, of course, would help him with the folding wheelchair and taxi.
“There’s just one thing,” Strange said. “We’ve got to invite Winch.”
“Yes,” Landers said. “We’ve got to. Everybody else from the company is coming. We simply can’t not invite him.”
It was clear to Prell Strange had enlisted Landers to help him, about Winch. And from the way his heartbeat speeded up in his ears Prell could tell his face had gone white. Strange knew how much Prell admired and respected Landers’ opinions. “Well, just keep him away from me,” was all Prell said. “Keep him at the other end of the room. Or I’ll brain him with a chair leg.”
Strange looked relieved. “He aint going to cause you trouble. Nobody believes that stuff he said.”
“No thanks to him,” Prell said. He felt frustrated. Suddenly he gripped the rubbered hand wheels of the big-wheeled chair, and rolled himself back and forth a foot or so, repeatedly and furiously. Back and forth, back and forth.
It was much more difficult to go in a taxi, rather than in the ambulance. In the ambulance they had had the big back door to slide him in, and a cot for him to lie on. Prell discovered this right away, at the front gate, before he even got out of the folding wheelchair Maj Hogan had so reluctantly and ungraciously provided.
Landers and Strange were able to get him out of the chair well enough, but then one of them had to let go of him to fold up the chair. At this point the cab driver, when he saw what was going on, leaped out and came running around the cab, following his paunch like a train following a cow-catcher, to help.
Together, the three of them got him into the front seat beside the meter and got the folded chair into the back beside Landers and Strange. Back behind his steering wheel, sweating and puffing, the driver shook his head. “Jesus! What you guys won’t go through to get drunk and get laid.”
Beside him, Prell was sweating too. But from pain, rather than exertion. He agreed with the driver wholeheartedly. He had no more business here than he had in a pole-vaulting contest, Baker was right. The four extra days of therapy had helped, especially in loosening up his knee joints, but he was in no shape for this. If it had not been for Landers and Strange witnessing it, he would have given up on the spot and asked to be taken back.
All he could do was keep his teeth clenched, and his lips pressed tight together over them. Mainly it was his knees
, which were bent and compressed in the short space of the seat-well with its meter, but his thighs ached, too. As if he had been an hour with the therapist. He noted the driver giving him uneasy looks from time to time, as the cab rolled along through the Luxor streets Prell had never seen before. In the ambulance, the only other time he’d been out, he had been lying flat.
It was fall now in the Southland of Luxor and the big maples were just beginning to turn. In the huge city park men ambled along the fairways of the golf links swinging their clubs, and young people strolled under the big trees. In the poorer Negro sections and poorer white sections men and women sat quietly on the ramshackle porches, or on the grass of their yards. Every house, even the poorest, had trees. At one spot they passed a high school football field surrounded by trees. On it boys in uniforms scrimmaged and bawled at each other and threw forward passes or punted the ball.
Prell tried to smile with his clenched teeth at the driver. “Hurtin’ you, hunh?” the driver said, and reached down under the seat and brought up a pint bottle of whiskey. “Here.” Prell risked relaxing one of his fists which were pressed down into the seat on both sides of his buttocks for support and took a slug of the raw whiskey that burned his nose and throat and made his eyes water but felt marvelous. He was afraid of the whole thing turning into some kind of nightmare.
He had one more bad moment getting out of the taxi, and another in the elevator. The elevator came the nearest to becoming the nightmare. It was small, and slow, and they had to drop the chair’s leg supports in order to close the door. There was only room for himself and the black elevator man. By the time they reached the eighth floor Prell’s bent knees seemed to have been in the closed space for a century.
But once out of the elevator the painful parts ended. He waited in the hall with the leg rests up again until the others came up behind him. Slowly the pain subsided. A couple of drunk soldiers and their girls wandered along and said hello and offered a drink. When the other two came out of the elevator they all went in together.