Soldiers Pay Part 4

He moved, shading his eyes again. "I dunno: I am good so far, but then you got to have more'n just sense. Say, why don't you come with the general and me?"

"I intend to, Joe." Her voice came from beyond his shielding hand. "I think I intended to all the time."

(She is in love with him.) But he only said: "Good for you. But I knowed you'd do the right thing. All right with your people is it?"

"Yes. But what about money?"

"Money?"

"Well . . . for what he might need. You know. He might get sick anywhere."

"Lord, I cleaned up in a poker game and I ain't had time to spend it. Money's all right. That ain't any question," he said roughly.

"Yes, money's all right. You know I have my husband's insurance. "

He lay silent, shielding his eyes. His khaki legs marring the bed ended in clumsy shoes. She nursed her knees, huddling in her blanket. After a s.p.a.ce she said: "Sleep, Joe?"

"It's a funny world, ain't it?" he asked irrelevantly, not moving.

"Funny?"

"Sure. Soldier dies and leaves you money, and you spend the money helping another soldier die comfortable. Ain't that funny?"

"I suppose so. . . . Everything is funny. Horribly funny."

"Anyway, it's nice to have it all fixed," he said after a while. "He'll be glad you are coming along."

(Dear dead d.i.c.k .) (Mahon under his scar, sleeping.) (d.i.c.k, my dearest one.) She felt the head board against her head, through her hair, felt the bones of her long shanks against her arms clasping them, nursing them, saw the smug, impersonal room like an appointed tomb (in which how many, many discontents, desires, pa.s.sions, had died?) high above a world of joy and sorrow and l.u.s.t for living, high above impervious trees occupied solely with maternity and spring. (d.i.c.k, d.i.c.k. Dead, ugly d.i.c.k. Once you were alive and young and pa.s.sionate and ugly, after a time you were dead, dear d.i.c.k: that flesh, that body, which I loved and did not love; your beautiful, young, ugly body, dear d.i.c.k, become now a seething of worms, like new milk. Dear d.i.c.k.) Gilligan, Joseph, late a private, a democrat by enlistment and numbered like a convict, slept beside her, his boots (given him gratis by democrats of a higher rating among democrats) innocent and awkward upon a white spread of rented cloth, immaculate and impersonal.

She evaded her blanket and reaching her arm swept the room with darkness. She slipped beneath the covers, settling her cheek on her palm. Gilligan undisturbed snored, filling the room with a homely, comforting sound.

(d.i.c.k, dear, ugly dead. . . .) IV.

In the next room Cadet Lowe waked from a chaotic dream, opening his eyes and staring with detachment, impersonal as G.o.d, at tights burning about him. After a time, he recalled his body, remembering where he was and by an effort he turned his head. In the other bed the man slept beneath his terrible face. (I am Julian Lowe, I eat, I digest, evacuate: I have flown. This man . . . this man here, sleeping beneath his scar. . . . Where do we touch? O G.o.d, O G.o.d: knowing his own body, his stomach.) Raising his hand he felt his own undamaged brow. No scar there. Near him upon a chair was his hat severed by a white band, upon the table the other man's cap with its cloth crown sloping backward from a bronze initialed crest.

He tasted his sour mouth, knowing his troubled stomach. To have been him! he moaned. Just to be him. Let him take this sound body of mine! Let him take it. To have got wings on my breast, to have wings; and to have got his scar, too, I would take death tomorrow. Upon a chair Mahon's tunic evinced above the left breast pocket wings breaking from an initialed circle beneath a crown, tipping downward in an arrested embroidered sweep; a symbolized desire.

To be him, to have gotten wings, but to have got his scar, too! Cadet Lowe turned to the wall with pa.s.sionate disappointment like a gnawing fox at his vitals. s...o...b..ring and moaning Cadet Lowe, too, dreamed again, sleeping.

V.

Achilles-What preparation would you make for a cross-country flight, Cadet?

Mercury-Empty your bladder and fill your petrol tank, Sir.

Achilles-Carry on, Cadet.

-Old Play (About 19-?) Cadet Lowe, waking, remarked morning, and Gilligan entering the room, dressed. Gilligan looking at him said: "How you coming, ace?"

Mahon yet slept beneath his scar, upon a chair his tunic. Above the left pocket, wings swept silkenly, breaking downward above a ribbon. White, purple, white.

"Oh, G.o.d!" Lowe groaned.

Gilligan with the a.s.surance of physical well-being stood in brisk arrested motion.

"As you were, fellow. I'm going out and have some breakfast sent up. You stay here until Loot wakes, huh?"

Cadet Lowe tasting his sour mouth groaned again. Gilligan regarded him. "Oh, you'll stay all right, won't you? I'll be back soon."

The door closed after him and Lowe, thinking of water, rose and took his wavering way across the room to a water pitcher. Carafe. Like giraffe or like cafe? he wondered. The water was good, but lowering the vessel he felt immediately sick. After a while he recaptured the bed.

He dozed, forgetting his stomach, and remembering it he dreamed and waked. He could feel his head like a dull inflation, then he could distinguish the foot of his bed and thinking again of water he turned on a pillow and saw another identical bed and the suave indication of a dressing-gown motionless beside it. Leaning over Mahon's scarred supineness, she said: "Don't get up."

Lowe said, I won't, closing his eyes, tasting his mouth, seeing her long slim body against his red eyelids, opening his eyes to light and her thigh shaped and falling away into an impersonal fabric. With an effort he might have seen her ankles. Her feet will be there, he. thought, unable to accomplish the effort and behind his closed eyes be thought of saying something which would leave his mouth on hers. Oh, G.o.d, he thought, feeling that no one had been so sick, imagining that she would say I love you, too. If I had wings, and a scar. . . . To h.e.l.l with officers, he thought, sleeping again: To h.e.l.l with kee-wees, anyway. I wouldn't be a G.o.ddam kee-wee. Rather be a sergeant. Rather be a mechanic. Crack up, Cadet. h.e.l.l, yes, Why not? War's over. Glad. Glad. Oh, G.o.d. His scar: his wings. Last time.

He was briefly in a Jenny again, conscious of lubricating oil and a slow gracious restraint of braced plane surfaces, feeling an air blast and feeling the stick in his hand, watching bobbing rocker arms on the horizon, laying her nose on the horizon like a sighted rifle. Christ, what do I care? seeing her nose rise until the horizon was hidden, seeing the arc of a descending wing expose it again, seeing her become abruptly stationary while a mad world spinning vortexed about his seat. "Sure, what do you care?" asked a voice, and waking he saw Gilligan beside him with a gla.s.s of whisky, "Drink her down, General," said Gilligan, holding the gla.s.s under his nose.

"Oh, G.o.d, move it, move it!"

"Come on, now; drink her down: you'll feel better. The Loot is up and at 'em, and Mrs. Powers. Whatcher get so drunk for, ace?"

"Oh, G.o.d, I don't know," answered Cadet Lowe, rolling his head in anguish. "Lemme alone."

Gilligan said: "Come on, drink her, now," Cadet Lowe said Go away, pa.s.sionately.

"Lemme alone: I'll be all right."

"Sure you will. Soon as you drink this."

"I can't. Go away."

"You got to. You want I should break your neck?" asked Gilligan kindly, bringing his face up, kind and ruthless. Lowe eluded him and Gilligan reaching under his body, raised him.

"Lemme lie down," Lowe implored.

"And stay here forever? We got to go somewheres. We can't stay here."

"But I can't drink." Cadet Lowe's interior coiled pa.s.sionately: an ecstasy. "For G.o.d's sake, let me alone!"

"Ace," said Gilligan, holding his head up, "you got to. You might just as well drink this yourself. If you don't, I'll put it down your throat, gla.s.s and all. Here, now."

The gla.s.s was between his lips, so he drank, gulping, expecting to gag. But gulping, the stuff became immediately pleasant. It was like new life in him. He felt a kind sweat and Gilligan removed the empty gla.s.s. Mahon, dressed except for his belt, sat beside a table. Gilligan vanished through a door and he rose, feeling shaky but quite fit. He took another drink. Water thundered in the bathroom and Gilligan returning said briskly: "Atta boy."

He pushed Lowe into the bathroom. "In you go, ace," he added.

Feeling the sweet bright needles of water burning his shoulders, watching his body slipping an endless silver sheath of water, smelling soap: beyond that wall was her room, where she was, tall and red and white and black, beautiful. I'll tell her at once, he decided, sawing his hard young body with a rough towel. Glowing, he brushed his teeth and hair, then he had another drink under Mahon's quiet inverted stare and Gilligan's quizzical one. He dressed, hearing her moving in her room. Maybe she's thinking of me, he told himself, swiftly donning his khaki.

He caught the officer's kind, puzzled gaze and the man said: "How are you?"

"Never felt better after my solo," he answered, wanting to sing. "Say, I left my hat in her room last night," he told Gilligan. "Guess I better get it."

"Here's your hat," Gilligan informed him unkindly, producing it.

"Well, then, I want to talk to her. Whatcher going to say about that?" asked Cadet Lowe, swept and garnished and belligerent.

"Why, sure, General," Gilligan agreed readily. "She can't refuse one of the saviours of her country." He knocked on her door. "Mrs. Powers?"

"Yes?" Her voice was m.u.f.fled.

"General Pershing here wants to talk to you. . . . Sure. . . . All right." He turned about, opening the door. "In you go, ace."

Lowe, hating him, ignored his wink, entering. She sat in bed with a breakfast tray upon her knees. She was not dressed and Lowe looked delicately away. But she said blandly: "Cheerio, Cadet! How looks the air today?"

She indicated a chair and he drew it up to the bed, being so careful not to seem to stare that his carriage became noticeable. She looked at him quickly and kindly and offered him coffee. Courageous with whisky on an empty stomach he knew hunger suddenly. He took the cup.

"Good morning," he said with belated courtesy, trying to be more than nineteen. (Why is nineteen ashamed of its age?) She treats me like a child, he thought, fretted and gaining courage, watching with increasing boldness her indicated shoulders and wondering with interest if she had stockings on.

Why didn't I say something as I came in? Something easy and intimate? Listen, when I first saw you my love for you was like-my love was like-my love for you-G.o.d, if I only hadn't drunk so much last night I could say it my love for you my love is love is like . . . and found himself watching her arms as she moved and her loose sleeves fell away from them, saying, yes, he was glad the war was over and telling her that he had forty-seven hours' flying time and would have got wings in two weeks more, and that his mother in San Francisco was expecting him.

She treats me like a child, he thought with exasperation, seeing the slope of her shoulders and the place where her breast was.

"How black your hair is," he said, and she said: "Lowe, when are you going home?"

"I don't know. Why should I go home? I think I'll have to look at the country first."

"But your mother!" She glanced at him.

"Oh, well," he said largely, "you know what women are-always worrying you."

"Lowe! How do you know so much about things? Women? You-aren't married, are you?"

"Me married?" repeated Lowe with ungrammatical zest, "me married? Not so's you know it. I have lots of girls, but married?" he brayed with brief unnecessary vigour. What made you think so?" he asked with interest.

"Oh, I don't know. You look so-so mature, you see."

"Ah, that's flying does that. Look at him in there."

"Is that it? I had noticed something about you. . . .You would have been an ace, too, if you'd seen any Germans, wouldn't you?"

He glanced at her quickly, like a struck dog. Here was his old dull despair again.

"I'm so sorry," she said with quick sincerity. "I didn't think: of course you would. Anyway, it wasn't your fault. You did your best, I know."

"Oh, for Christ's sake," he said, hurt, "what do you women want, anyway? I am as good a flyer as any ever was at the front-flying or any other way." He sat morose under her eyes. He rose suddenly. "Say, what's your name, anyway?"

"Margaret," she told him. He approached the bed where she sat and she said: "More coffee?" stopping him dead. "You've forgotten your cup. There it is, on the table."

Before he thought he had returned and fetched his cup, received coffee he did not want. He felt like a fool and being young he resented it. All right for you, he promised her and sat again in a dull rage. To h.e.l.l with them all.

"I have offended you, haven't I?" she asked. "But, Lowe, I feel so bad, and you were about to make love to me."

"Why do you think that?" he asked, hurt and dull.

"Oh, I don't know. But women can tell. And I don't want to be made love to. Gilligan has already done that."

"Gilligan? Why, I'll kill him if he has annoyed you."

"No, no: he didn't offend me, any more than you did. It was flattering. But why were you going to make love to me? You thought of it before you came in, didn't you?"

Lowe told her youngly: "I thought of it on the train when I first saw you. When I saw you I knew you were the woman for me. Tell me, you don't like him better than me because he has wings and a scar, do you?"

"Why, of course not." She looked at him a moment, calculating. Then she said: "Mr. Gilligan says he is dying."

"Dying?" he repeated, and "Dying?" How the man managed to circ.u.mvent him at every turn! As if it were not enough to have wings and a scar. But to die.

"Margaret," he said with such despair that she gazed at I him in swift pity. (He was so young.) "Margaret, are you in love with him?" (Knowing that if he were a woman, he would be.) "No, certainly not. I am not in love with anybody. My husband was killed on the Aisne, you see," she told him gently.

"Oh, Margaret," he said with bitter sincerity, "I would have been killed there if I could, or wounded like him, don't you know it?"

"Of course, darling." She put the tray aside. "Come here."

Cadet Lowe rose again and went to her. "I would have been, if I'd had a chance," he repeated.

She drew him down beside her, and he knew he was acting the child she supposed him to be, but he couldn't help it. His disappointment and despair were more than everything now. Here were her knees sweetly under his face, and he put his arms around her legs.

"I wanted to be," he confessed more than he had ever believed, "I would take his scar and all."

"And be dead, like he is going to be?"

But what was death to Cadet Lowe, except something true and grand and sad? He saw a tomb, open, and himself in boots and belt, and pilot's wings on his breast, a wound stripe. . . What more could one ask of Fate?

"Yes, yes," he answered.

"Why, you have flown, too," she told him, holding his face against her knees, "you might have been him, but you were lucky. Perhaps you would have flown too well to have been shot down as he was. Had you thought of that?"

"I don't know. I guess I would let them catch me, if I could have been him. You are in love with him."

"I swear I am not." She raised his head to see his face. "I would tell you if I were. Don't you believe me?" her eyes were compelling: he believed her.

"Then, if you aren't, can't you promise to wait for me? I will be older soon and I'll work like h.e.l.l and make money."

"What will your mother say?"

"h.e.l.l, I don't have to mind her like a kid forever. I am nineteen, as old as you are, and if she don't like it, she can go to h.e.l.l."

"Lowe!" she reproved him, not telling him she was twenty-four, "the idea! You go home and tell your mother-I will give you a note to her-and you can write what she says."

"But I had rather go with you."