But of course Landers was already on his way out then, his final decision made. Or so they had thought.
His last, his only visit with Landers in the prison ward had been just a day or two after his conference with Curran. And Strange hadn’t moved to O’Bruyerre yet. As usual in the Army, everything was a week later than calculated. Even then Landers had looked so peaked, and pale, with such huge circles under his eyes that Strange should have known something wasn’t right.
Then his own move to O’Bruyerre had gone through and he had been so busy getting himself oriented and settled in that he hadn’t had time to go back up to see Landers and talk to him.
Strange, of course, in his move to O’Bruyerre had passed through Winch’s office too, like everybody else. And Winch had come out to meet him, also.
Landers had told him about the hidden whiskey bottle. Now he got the chance to see it for himself. He accepted the drink Winch offered, with alacrity.
“Well, what kind of an assignment do you want, Johnny Stranger?” Winch said expansively. “I’m in a position to give you just about anything you want.”
Strange had grinned. “Well it don’t really make much of a difference, old First Sarn’t.”
“It’s likely to,” Winch said thinly, “in a very short time. Now, listen.
“If you’re willing to take a bust from staff to buck sergeant, I’ve got a place I can put you here, in my outfit. As a first cook. But I can’t very well take you on as my mess sergeant. I’ve already got one. That will take two or three months. Will you take the bust?”
Strange hadn’t even had to think. “No, I don’t think so, First Sarn’t.” He grinned again.
“Then you mean to follow it right on through.” Winch’s eyes narrowed, and got a mad green glint in them. “All the way.”
“I aint got nothing much else to do,” Strange heard himself say. “And I aint never seen Europe.”
Winch said no more, didn’t argue. He sat down in his big chair and punched a button on his intercom phone. He asked into it for all the reassignment request forms for a mess/sgt in full grade of staff/sgt. There were only four of them, when the clerk brought them in. Together, the two of them went over all four. The communications unit was one of them.
“That’s not a bad outfit,” Winch said when Strange held the paper up. “At least it’s not a rotten one.”
“Then that ought to be just fine,” Strange said.
Winch called outside for another file and, when the clerk brought it, leafed through the sheets in the folder. “They’re due to go out on some field maneuvers some time soon. Then, not too long after that, they’ll be shipping out. For England.”
“That sounds perfect.”
“Then I guess that’s your slot. Is all your gear here?”
“Two barracks bags. They’re out there in that big barn you call a clerks’ office.”
“Well I guess they’re safe there,” Winch said dubiously. He looked outside through the curtained window. “Just sit down there for a minute and have yourself another drink. I’ll call the outfit for you. They can send a jeep up. For a man of your stature.”
“Why, thank you, First Sarn’t.”
They talked about Landers a little. Winch seemed to feel Landers was getting exactly what he wanted. And needed. “He’s come all apart at the seams,” Winch said. “A discharge is the only thing will help him. Otherwise. If he stayed in. Hell, he’d be no good to nobody.
“Besides,” Winch added, “a discharge is what he’s asked for. That was the way he told his company officers to slant their reports.
“How did you find that out?”
“From the officer. Who went up to talk to him.”
“Then I guess you got everything pretty well lined out for him.”
“I tried to. I hope so. Now, what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Have you told your wife? Have you told Linda Sue about what you’re doing?”
“No,” Strange said. “I haven’t.”
“Well, don’t you think you ought to?”
“No. Not especially.”
“Has she still got your GI insurance?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Are you still married?”
“Yes. Still married. Legally. Officially.”
“You’re not divorced yet. Then it would seem to me that you owe it to her to tell her what you’re doing, what to expect.”
“I’ll decide that,” Strange said. Then, because he felt that sounded too harsh, he added, “Maybe I’ll drop her a little note. Before I pull out.”
“I think you at least owe it to her to tell her face to face. Or at least over the telephone.”
“I don’t owe her a fucking thing,” Strange said.
“I think—” Winch began, but was stopped by the buzzing of his desk phone. He picked it up and listened for half a minute. Then when he put it down, he spread his arms. “Your jeep’s there.” He stood up, his arms still spread. “I don’t know what I think. That’s the fucking truth.”
“Me neither,” Strange said. “Join the club.”
“Come on down to the main PX some night. I’m there almost every night. Five-thirty or six,” Winch said.
As with Curran, there was the finalizing handshake. Both of them seemed to know it was the end of some era or other. As he and Curran had known.
But as he picked up his two bags and followed the jeep driver down the stairs, Strange remained surprised at how much Winch knew about his personal affairs. Winch hadn’t seen or talked to Linda since back in Wahoo before the sneak attack. Yet here he was, seeming to know it all.
Strange had already made his good-bys to Frances. That had happened in town in Luxor, the day after his final conference with Curran. But it was something that had seemed to be coming on for a long time, too.
Partly that was due to his having run through his $7000 savings and allotment money, and having had to give up the suite at the Peabody. Maybe. Maybe it was partly that. Or maybe it wasn’t?
Strange hadn’t been staying there much for quite a long time, and had taken to renting a double room at the Claridge for himself and Frances, which Jack Alexander, Winch’s old buddy, had got for him. The only two old-company men who still frequented the suite were Corello with that ruined shoulder of his and Trynor who had come into Kilrainey a few days after Strange himself. The rest of the time now, when there was a party there, all of the other people who were there were strangers and outsiders. Strange no longer really wanted to go to the parties. He much preferred being off alone with Frances.
But Strange was not about to let go of the suite till he had spent on it every nickel of the $7000. He didn’t care who came to the parties every night. He didn’t care if he himself didn’t go to them. Not one dime of that $7000 restaurant money was going to walk away from the Peabody in Strange’s pocket. And not one dime of it did.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, for Strange the money ran out swiftly after Landers went over the hill, and then came back and turned himself in and went into the prison ward. It was really only then that Strange began to realize how much money Landers himself had been pouring into the Peabody suite. Without Landers and his money, the funds in the bank account he had opened with the $7000 began to dwindle with a wild speed.
Strange hadn’t wanted money from Landers. He and Landers had talked about it that one time he had visited Landers, and Landers had laughed and told him he had spent almost $4500 himself. All of his own allotments, all of his other savings. Until he was broke himself, or just about Landers certainly hadn’t seemed upset by it. No more than Strange.
In any case, it was when he closed out the suite at the Peabody, and the bank account he had created for it, that Strange learned how much Frances Highsmith had been depending on that money.
“Does that mean you’re broke?” she asked him, cautiously, “if you have to give up the suite?”
“Not exactly broke. Badly bent. I still got my sa
lary as a staff sergeant. And a little bit of gambling money.”
“But that’s all? I thought you were a friend of Warrant Officer Alexander.”
“A friend. But not a business associate. Why? You want me to introduce you to Alexander?”
“That great big hulk? Are you kidding? Who would want to fuck him? He’s the least attractive man I ever saw. But he’s certainly making a lot of money around Luxor.”
“He is. But I’m not one of his partners.”
“He looks like some kind of huge turtle.”
“You better believe it. If he ever gets hold of you and clamps down, you’ll think he’s a turtle.”
Frances tossed her head, irritably. “Then all those expensive lunches? And all those big dinners and shows at the ritzy places around town?”
“Yep. All gone,” Strange grinned. “Of course, I can probably still afford a night a week. Or two.”
“Listen, I’ve got a little bit of money of my own,” Frances said, cautiously. She smiled. “But all I’ve really got is my job and my little apartment. And the job doesn’t bring in all that much.” She smiled again. “Of course you’re welcome to whatever I’ve got.”
“I wouldn’t think of taking it,” Strange said. He had learned enough about her in the past three months to at least know what her job was. She was the buyer and assistant manager for a women’s store on Main Street called Three Wives, part of a chain through the South and Middlewest. Her apartment she shared with another Luxor girl whose husband was overseas and who didn’t run around, not very much.
“On the other hand,” Frances said, “I don’t want to just sit home every night and listen to the radio. Or go out to dumb movies.” She looked at him shyly.
“Of course not. You’ll just have to find yourself some other dates.”
“No, no. I’d never do that. But on the other hand, how long do you think this war is going to last?”
“Oh, two years?” Strange said lightly. “At least two years.”
“Exactly. Then everybody will have to go back to ordinary living again. To being—” She stopped.
“Sure. Cinderella. Like in the fairy tale. And the coach turns back into a pumpkin, and the horses turn back into mice.” Strange grinned at her. “I understand that.”
“It is a little bit like that,” Frances said. And that was how they had left it.
So there wasn’t much doubt in Strange’s mind what would happen when he took her the news of his move to O’Bruyerre.
“I don’t much see you wanting to move out to that village that’s near the camp,” he said.
“Oh, that little town?” She was trying hard not to say a down-right No, immediately. “I’d have to give up my job. And my apartment? I’ll bet the living arrangements there are horrible. I don’t see how I could give up my job.”
Strange didn’t say anything. The back of his throat hurt, a little.
“And you’ve never said anything about marrying me,” she said, cautiously.
“No,” Strange said. “I haven’t.”
He thought she looked relieved. “I don’t see how,” Frances said, “I can give up everything I have here, and have worked to build, to move out there.”
“No,” Strange said. “I don’t think it would be fair to ask you.”
“Sexually, I’m not so full of discipline I could sit on it and wait and wait. How often will you get off out there, to come in? Weekends?”
“Every other week. For one night.”
“You see?”
He nodded.
“But you could call me,” Frances offered. “Ahead of time. Any time. So we could make a date.”
“Sure. Sure, that’s it,” Strange said. “That’s what I’ll do.”
But he had no intention of ever doing any such thing. That night they had one of the most rousing sexual performances they had ever done. After it, Frances cried. Strange almost cried. She did not see how she could change her mind, though.
One of the odd things was that Winch had never mentioned her, Strange thought as he left Winch’s office behind the jeep driver. Winch had only talked about Linda. His wife.
It was as though he was looking into Strange’s mind.
Because if there were any love leftovers in Strange’s thinking, the residues were of Linda Sue. Not of Frances. If he was still in love with anybody at all, a proposition Strange devoutly wished he could respond to with an unqualified negative, it was with Linda. Strange didn’t know why he was. But Winch seemed to know that he was.
If he had any sexual fantasies about anyone, after he was installed at O’Bruyerre, they were about Linda. Not about Frances. If any angers and rages struck him and shook him, and some did, they were over Linda. Not Frances. If any fits of jealousy and highly graphic fantasy of one of them sleeping with somebody took him over, they were always of Linda and her goddamned Air Force colonel, not of Frances and some guy.
Anyway, sex took up very little of his time and thought at O’Bruyerre. Strange was too busy organizing his new kitchen and new kitchen force and getting them to work together. As Winch had said while they were looking for a unit for him up in Winch’s office, no outfit that requested a new mess/sgt to come in in grade could have a top-rated kitchen; otherwise they would have promoted one of their own first cooks and picked an apprentice second cook out of the ranks. This was almost exactly the case. The other mess/sgt had been badly burned by a pot of cooking grease, something that should never happen in a well-run kitchen anyway; and he left behind him a shambles that could not have been much better when he was there. One of the first cooks was fat and one was thin, but they were equally ineffectual, equally bad. It took a great deal of cajolery, flattery and complimenting, as well as a lot of order-giving and meanness that almost came to fistfights a couple of times, to get them into some kind of shape. But by the time orders came for their ten-day maneuver out in the field Strange had whipped them down and had them working as a team.
It was just three days before they were to move out that Winch called him about Landers.
It was one of the most emotional moments Strange had had since seeing the Golden Gate. It was just ten o’clock in the morning. Landers had been killed at about eight-thirty. They had taken him back up to the hospital, not knowing where else to take him. Then they had called Winch and Winch had gone up there. That was why he was so late in calling. “Can you meet me at the main PX?” Winch asked hoarsely. “In the senior NCOs section? Have you got a ticket to let you in the PX this early in the day? Never mind. I’ll make one out for you, and forge it.” When Strange turned away from the phone, his new 1st/sgt was looking at him with a distressed face.
“What happened? You look like you seen a ghost.”
“What? Oh. Yeah. Almost. Old buddy of mine from the Pacific just got killed here at O’Bruyerre.”
The 1st/sgt’s face got jumpy. “What was it? Artillery? MG ranges? Hand grenades?”
“No. No. He just got hit by a car.”
“You old guys.” The 1st/sgt shook his head. “Your old combat buddies are closer than family.”
“Here, sign this, will you? I got to meet my old first sarn’t,” Strange said, getting from the clerk’s desk a ticket that said he could be allowed in the PX bar before noon. The 1st/sgt looked perplexed, as if about to say an officer must sign the ticket, which Strange already knew; but then he signed it, with an illegible, scrawled flourish.
“I’ll be back in a while,” Strange said. “Anyway, everything is in shape in the kitchen and they’ve all got something to keep them busy.”
But he might as well not have bothered with the PX pass. No one stopped him, or asked to see it. This PX pass ticket was a new thing, put into effect since the training had gone up into high gear for the European D-Day. Finding Winch was easy, as uncrowded as the place was now. It was only the second time Strange had been in the big main PX.
Winch was alone. Strange sat down beside him at the big round table.
“Well,
” Strange said. “Tell me.”
Winch did. Strange listened as he ran through all that the woman had told the authorities, and what she had said about it looking like a deliberate suicide. They talked about the possible suicide awhile. Winch did not think it was possible. But Strange was not so sure.
“What the hell?” Winch said harshly. “He was getting exactly what he wanted. That’s what he told that company officer of his he wanted. That’s not a suicide position.”
“I don’t think he knew what he wanted,” Strange said suddenly. It was as if he had seen it and read it, written on the pressed paper Budweiser coaster under his beer mug, and was reading it off the circular paper mat, “I think he wanted both equally. Exactly equal. That’s an unsolvable position.” He looked up from his coaster.
Winch looked at him, his eyes wondering. “Then there wasn’t anything anybody could do for him.”
“No,” Strange said. “Nothing.”
“So it was all of it. . . And I was just wasting my time,” Winch said, to himself.
Some man in the big empty hall got up and put some money in the tall, bubbling, whirling, lighted Wurlitzer machine. “Ciribiribin” by the Andrews Sisters began to play in the huge hall.
“By God, I hate those fucking Wurlitzers,” Winch said viciously.
“Did you see him?” Strange said.
Winch drank down the glass of white wine that was sitting in front of him. Then he signaled the barman over behind the mahogany-colored bar for another. He drank two more in quick succession, Then he began to hem and haw around about how, and whether or not, he had seen Landers’ body. They wanted another identification signature, besides just the hospital people. They didn’t want to call his old outfit. Anyway, he didn’t have an old outfit any more. Somebody knew Winch had known him.
“Did you see him?” Strange said again.
“Yeah, yeah, I saw him. Or at least his face. Was no great thing. Just another dead guy. He had that pale, greenish color they get. Face wasn’t smashed up. Just one big bruise on the right cheekbone.”
“What are they going to do with the body?”