Whistle (52 page)

The need, the desire, was so strong Winch felt his feet tensing in his shoes preparatory to walking off in that direction. Instead, grasping himself and turning his already begun motion sideways, he drank off his glass of wine and set the glass down.

“I got to get out of here,” he growled to Strange. “I can’t stand parties like this.”

“Me neither,” Strange said. “I’ll go with you.”

Outside, in the so-familiar corridor Winch had walked along so many times, Winch could feel sweat standing out on his forehead. He reached for a handkerchief in his pocket to wipe it off. His hand was trembling ever so slightly. It had been a very near thing. And he had not even been expecting it.

“What’s your wife say, about you spending all that money up at the Peabody?” he suddenly said to Strange.

“Nothing. It aint her money. It’s mine.”

“Yeah,” Winch growled.

“She’s making a bundle up there in Cincinnati in her defense plant.”

“Yeah. What’s she say about this new girl of yours? This Frances? Or don’t she know about that, either?”

“I don’t guess she knows about it,” Strange said, slowly and precisely. “But I reckon she suspects it.” Strange did not go on for a long moment. “Anyway, we’ve split up,” he said finally.

“Oh?” Winch said, “you have?”

“She’s got some colonel, some lieutenant colonel, that she’s been running around with up there for quite some time.”

“I see. Another casualty of the war,” Winch said, suddenly remembering Landers.

“Yeah,” Strange said, “yeah. Yeah, I guess you could say that. That’s pretty good.” He paused. “Except I guess this goes a lot farther back than that. Than the war.”

“Sure,” Winch said. “They all do.”

“Whatever happened to that wife of yours?”

“Oh, she’s around,” Winch said. “Somewhere.”

“Yeah? Where?”

“Somewhere,” Winch said. “Not in Luxor.” Suddenly he grinned. They had long since passed out of the closed-in corridor into one of the open walkways, and were now out approaching the front gate, where the cabs were. “You ever get around to eating that pussy you were asking everybody about, awhile back.”

Strange’s face took on the look of a blatant lie, and he cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “no. I meant to. I just never did. I will, though. I will.”

Winch signaled for a cab. “Just remember,” he said as he got in, and grinned, “eating a cunt is the best thing there is for a broken heart.”

“You can say that again,” the cab driver put in.

“See you soon, Johnny Stranger,” Winch said as he rolled up the window against the drizzle.

“See you soon, Mart,” Strange called as he signaled for another cab.

Winch did not look back. He gave the driver the address of the apartment. Strange was all right. There was nothing to worry about over Strange. Strange was as solid as a goddam fucking rock. But Strange was worried about Prell. Winch’s tired mind did not know if that meant ill for Prell or not.

The train of thought brought him back to Landers, and why he had not been at the wedding. That didn’t sound good at all, to Winch. In the cab he fell asleep on the way into town, but woke dreaming the dream of the Japanese sergeant.

“Hey,” he asked the driver. “Did I say anything just now? In my sleep?”

“No,” the driver said, “I don’t think so.” Winch relaxed and slid back. They were almost at the apartment. His mind felt like half-dried mud.

He did not know whether he would be able to cope with Landers, or not.

Unfortunately, it was just one week after the wedding that Harry L Prevor was shipped down, and a captain named Mayhew was sent in over him to command the 3516th Gas Supply Company.

T
HERE WAS NO WAY
not to be involved in it, for Landers.

They had had vague rumors about Mayhew. So they were not unprepared. And the night before, Prevor had talked to the company noncoms. But Landers was both stricken and infuriated by the sick, sad smile on Prevor’s face, the afternoon when Mayhew appeared in the orderly room to take over Prevor’s company.

The reason Landers had not gone to Prell’s wedding was that he was working. Now that he was a s/sgt and section leader on the 3516th’s T.O. he had a section to take care of as well. And all his late afternoons, which was when the wedding was, as well as his evenings, were spent teaching the cadre their jobs, and checking or doing over the paperwork of the day. To keep the 3516th with Prevor, and away from the Mayhews. His emotional commitments were no longer with Bobby Prell, they were with Prevor and the 3516th. Though he often felt Prevor had been unwise in giving him a staff sergeancy, and a section to handle.

But his heart went out to Prevor with a violent lurch, when Mayhew arrived.

At the same time a little thrill of recognition slid through Landers, exciting him. Here was something really happening. To somebody else. This wasn’t the heated imaginings of some psycho-neurotic. Here was a case of Hitler’s Germany, and the world of the Japanese, alive and kicking, breathing and well, in the good old US of A. Here was something that could be acted against. Landers’ excitement was almost greater than his sorrow for Prevor.

And next morning, when the company tumbled outside into the cold dark for reveille, the same sick, sad smile was on Prevor’s Mongolian face, when he was forced to stand as executive officer, five paces behind the new captain as the captain took the reports. By then Landers was in an outrage of righteous fury.

The night before the takeover Prevor had called his little clerk force and his mess sergeant and supply sergeant together in the orderly room (his cadre plus Landers, in effect), and given them a lecture and a little speech. Then he called the company noncoms together with them, and gave them another, slightly watered-down version.

He told them, in essence, that he did not want them to make any trouble. “I don’t know how much of your personal loyalty is to me. I’ve never asked. But I don’t want any of you to let personal loyalty to me get in the way of your loyalty to the company. That’s what’s important. We’ve taken a bunch of unattached, uncommitted fellows . . . not all of them too happy with what was happening to them”—he smiled his wry smile—“and we’ve made a dependable outfit with pride in itself and each other. Men who can depend on each other. That’s the best anybody can do, and we’ve done that. I don’t want to see us, the outfit, lose it. We’re getting a change of command, and a change of command means a change of style. That’s natural. But a change of style is only modal. It doesn’t affect the essentials, and we’ve got those. Let’s not lose that.”

Landers thought it was a nearly perfect speech. Prevor may have used a few big, intellectual’s words like
modal
that the rank and file would not know, but the quality was there, and the heart of it was the truth. Landers couldn’t fault him. He himself would certainly not have been so generous.

Prevor was a little less circumspect with the cadre. “I know you guys can cause him a lot of trouble, if you want to. I’m asking you personally, as a personal favor to me, not to do it. I don’t know what he’s like, any more than you do. But he can’t be all that different and bad.”

Landers found out, almost immediately, that this was wrong. What Mayhew was like was about as bad as you could get.

He was one of those tough-guy officers. The ones who would not ask their men to do anything they wouldn’t do. The trouble was Mayhew would do anything. And he had a company of men who could do very little, and wanted to do even less. He apparently never understood this. His arrogance was insufferable.

He, too, made a little speech. It alienated the company immediately. His central theme was: “We have played around enough. We are going to shape up around here.” In the first place, they hadn’t been playing around. In the second, they knew there was nothing much to shape up. He was not talking to a bunch of green men. He was talking to men who had been through the mill, over and over and back again. Nevertheless Mayhew expanded on this at some length to the company standing at attention on the freezing parade ground. Mayhew did not stand at attention but moved around, and a couple of times even slapped himself with his arms against the chill. When he did stand at attention, for a little while, nobody gave a damn.

Mayhew had come up from the ranks, he told them. So he knew how enlisted men thought. So nobody need expect to get by with anything. Landers, standing at attention and listening, had a vivid mental picture of the crowds of heads Mayhew must have stepped on, crushing a number, during his climb.

He must have been on the defensive. Coming into an outfit with a relatively well-liked commander and taking over, as he was. But it did not matter. Certainly not to Landers. And not to much of anyone else. The result was only to make Prevor, who had not been all that well-loved really, seem like a saint.

One of the things that distressed the whole company more than anything else was the leaving of Prevor in it as its executive officer. There was no need to have done that. There was no way the former commander could avoid losing face, in such a position. Simply being there, with nothing to do, was a loss of face. That Mayhew was a captain, and therefore able technically to come in over Prevor, meant nothing to the company. Whatever it meant to Second Army. The company had to look at Prevor’s face. And it made them angry. The whole deal offended them, and offended their sense of fair play. Even Second Army should have known better than to do that. That was not the kind of reward a man should receive.

The company began to disintegrate immediately. Performance levels dropped in the training exercises. Formations became sluggish. Bickering and insubordination with noncoms grew. And the noncoms did nothing about it. There were always plenty of ways to drop a monkey wrench in the machinery and not get caught, and everybody now had the same common enemy. When Prevor had made them do stupid things, like the basic training, they had had Second Army to hate. Now they blamed Mayhew. Guilty or not. And were swiftly on their way back to being an unorganized gang of malcontents.

Landers sat back and watched and kept his mouth shut. He still had in front of him his tacit promise to Prevor not to make trouble. But he felt ready to make trouble.

The second or third day after his takeover Mayhew had called him into the commander’s office for a private talk. “We have some things we have to straighten out,” was the way he began.

The commander’s office had changed. Under Prevor it had been a place where the noncoms dropped in for a cup of hot coffee and a discussion. Now noncoms were not welcome, and the coffee was reserved for officers. Unfortunately, the only telephone was in there and Landers or the 1st/sgt had to go in there to use it. But the coffee was not free even to the clerk force.

“I know what a key man you are around here, Sergeant,” Mayhew said from behind his desk, “You have not,” and he smiled, “escaped even the eyes of Second Army.

“But I am not happy with that rating you wear. The rating for an assistant clerk on the T.O. is a corporal. You’re on the T.O. as a section sergeant. But you’re not really handling the section you’re assigned to. You’re mostly in here, doing clerical work. We’re going to have to do something about that. Lt Prevor was inclined to be sloppy with his designations.” He smiled again.

Landers did not trust himself to answer for a moment. Rage was charging through him. “Yes, sir,” he said evenly, after a few seconds. “I suggest you bust me back down right away, then. I didn’t ask for the rating I’m wearing. And in fact, didn’t want it. You can bust me to corporal, and I’ll function as your assistant clerk. Or you can bust me down to private and I’ll go back to straight duty.

“Matter of fact, I’d just as soon be a private doing straight duty, in your outfit, sir.”

Mayhew’s face could not help registering surprise. Then it stiffened sharply. “No. That’s not what I want. You will continue as you are. We’ll see about all the rest, later. Do you think the first sergeant and clerk are capable of handling their jobs yet?”

“No, sir,” Landers said. “They’re certainly not. Nor are the mess sergeant and supply sergeant, without help.”

“Then I want you to keep on what you’re doing. Forget about your section and spend your time teaching the cadre. That’s all, Sergeant. You’re dismissed.”

“Yes, sir,” Landers said. Then he decided to be sarcastic. “Thank you, sir.” But it appeared lost on Mayhew.

Landers had to go somewhere by himself and sit down to cool off. Was the man stupid? Was he some important person’s nephew? He clearly knew, from Second Army if from no other, how much Landers had done and was doing to keep the 3516th running. Then why go out of his way to antagonize a man he needed?

From that moment on there was a sort of generic hatred between them, hidden and covered up by Landers, but open and openly expressed by Mayhew. Landers began to slack off in his evening work, and evening teaching. There was no way in the world Mayhew or anybody could order him to do office work after supper, not without risking an investigation. Anyway, the 1st/sgt and clerk did not relish working evenings, unless pressed to it by Landers. Besides, Mayhew kept the commander’s office locked by key, and that was where most of the work material was. Landers began going to movies in the evenings, or getting drunk on beer at the small sectional local PX, or just sitting around thinking about women. The lack of women was beginning to get to him now, after all these weeks.

One time he was able to talk to Lt Prevor about it, out in the freezing cold company area, just at dusk one freezing cold evening. Landers wanted to be released from his tacit promise not to make trouble. Prevor reluctantly released him, but at first refused to.

“What do you mean, make trouble? What more trouble can you make, if you’ve stopped teaching the cadre? Anything more would have to be open sabotage of the office work. You can’t do that.”

“I can quit. Go back to straight duty as a private,” Landers said. “That would make plenty of trouble.”

“But you’d be cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”