Once an Eagle

by Anton Myrer

  “Red-hot gospel.”

  “You’d like it, sailing. Great sport.” His fine blue eyes measured the Major. “By the by, what are you going to do with yourself when you get demobbed?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  “Poppa’s been at him,” Tommy put in. “Poppa’s been trying to talk him into a career in the blindy-freaking Army.”

  Poindexter rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Oh-my-God. What for, sport? We’ve made the world safe for plutocracy … ”

  “Maybe.”

  “No, but I mean what’ll you play for an encore? You’ve got all the trinkets in the store, now.”

  “Why shouldn’t he stay in? He’s got a great career ahead of him,” Ben challenged. He was gripping his nose between his first two fingers, the way he always did when he was aroused.

  Poindexter waved a hand at him. “I can’t argue with you—you’re already corrupted.” He turned to Sam again. “No, but you can’t go on in this idiot’s paradise, shining your puttees and saluting the flag. Can you? I know I’m being insubordinate and all that hoopla—but it’s no future. They’ll start pulling down the building in a few months and you’ll be back to lance corporal before you can sneeze.”

  “That’s what I keep telling him,” Tommy added.

  “You mark my words, nobody back home is even going to want to hear about the Army. My old gentleman knows some very influential people. Senators and people like that. All they want to do is call the game and box the deck. They think the guard of honor at Arlington is a threat to the peace and stability of the old U S and A.”

  “United States senators?” Sam asked him. “They think that?”

  “Hell, yes—United States senators. Who did you think? Look, we made our mistakes, we came over here and helped fill up the cemeteries and added another glorious page and all that. Now let’s go home and write it off. Only a sucker stays in a game when it’s clear the cards have gone against him. You know that. You write off your losses.”

  “Just write them off.”

  “Why do you want to rot away in some two-bit post out in the Badlands? There aren’t even any Indians to skirmish with, anymore …” Dex’s eyes twinkled gaily. “Come on back and the old gentleman will give you a job down at the shop.”

  Sam grinned. “What would I do?”

  “Do? That’s off the topic, baby. It isn’t what you do, it’s how you do it. Oh, you have a whole slew of telephones and you keep calling people up and telling them to coil with Anaconda and stand fast with Standard Oil. It doesn’t matter, everything is going to go right on up, anyway. What you do really is play polo and tennis and go sailing up and down the Sound. That’s what it’s all for …”

  “Sounds great,” Sam said. “Just wrap it up and forget it and go home.”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  “Until it happens all over again.”

  “What?” Poindexter demanded—and even Elise and Ben looked shocked. “What in hell are you talking about? Jesus, what a prophet of doom. There isn’t going to be another conflagration. We’ve all been to it, remember?”

  “There could be,” Sam replied calmly.

  “What an un-American attitude,” Elise declared, frowning.

  “Your friend is laboring under an idée fixe,” Dex said to Tommy. Ben had engaged Sam in conversation and he listened for a moment, then produced a beautiful little gold cigarette case and offered it to Tommy.

  “I love that case,” she said, taking a cigarette. “It’s so—it’s so extravagant.”

  “Baby, it’s yours.” He placed it in her palm and closed his hand over hers.

  “Oh Dex, no,” she protested. “I can’t accept this …”

  “I don’t see why not. Provided you take the inscription to heart.”

  She turned it over. In lovely spencerian script it said: I could fall big for you. Signed, Icarus. She smiled in spite of herself, then stared at him. The day before he had sent two dozen roses to her room, and the day before that a terrifyingly huge bottle of Arpège perfume in the shape of a heart.

  “Would your old gentleman get me a job down at the shop?” she asked him teasingly; but he didn’t smile.

  “Don’t be stubborn,” he murmured; his head was very near hers, and she could see the little golden lights at the centers of his pupils. He had rowed number seven at New Haven, he was famed for the reckless, headlong brand of polo he played—and here he sat, so near her, very persuasive and very determined. “Why fight against the inevitable? Here I am and here you are. What could be more logical?”

  “I thought you hated army brats,” she faltered.

  “A callow prejudice I’ve just abandoned. You simply don’t know what you’re hesitating over. They’ll love you in Oyster Bay, darling-girl. And you’ll love them.”

  “What about Oyster Bay?” Sam broke in on them vigorously.

  “Major”—Dex’s brow knotted in a pained expression—“we’ll go into that later, okay?”

  “No, where is it?” Sam pursued genially. “On Long Island, isn’t it? Between Glen Cove and Huntington, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “What’s it like there? Tell us.”

  Poindexter straightened wearily. “You wouldn’t like it, Damon. You really wouldn’t.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “It’s too sedentary, too raffiné for you. You’re a big, sinewy, rock-ribbed farm boy with a heart of gold. Whereas on Long Island everybody’s got a skin of gold and a sinewy, rock-ribbed heart …”

  Tommy laughed. It was fun sitting here between two handsome men who both wanted her—yet at the same time it brushed her with dread, with the sense of being hunted by harsh, implacable forces. She did not want to become involved, as these two immensely dissimilar men each wanted her to be; her spirit was still raw. At times it seemed to her that everything she had loved had been destroyed. Her mother had vanished in a flurry of medical officers and hushed nocturnal consultations; Aguinaldo had been killed by a snake while she had looked on in terror; she’d had a crush on a boy named Arthur Brell the year she was fourteen—and all that winter he’d been ill with pneumonia, emerging at last from bed a tearful, six-foot wraith who wavered as he walked; and then there was Jim—

  “Shall we dance?” Sam was saying to her now, smiling.

  “I’d love to,” she replied.

  “Oh Damon,” Dex scoffed. “Come off it. You know you can’t dance …”

  “Just watch me.”

  She got to her feet with a shiver of relief, and they moved out into the press on the floor. They had seen a lot of each other during the past week. They had motored up to the eagle’s roost of Gourdon-la-Saracène, high above the tiny white thread of the Loup River, awesome with its turrets and sheer rock walls; they had descended into the pink-and-jade caves of St. Cézaire, they had stood on the spot of beach at Fréjus where Napoleon had landed from Elba for his final, cataclysmic tilt with destiny. They had walked and talked and argued, and kissed lingeringly on the rocks at Golfe Juan, borne on a flood tide of sentiment, watching the sun sink below the flaming winter Riviera sky. She had found him attentive, forceful, a little fearsome. He had done all these audacious and terrible things, had advanced through all the fires of hell while everyone around him had blanched and faltered—and here he stood, simple and unassuming, telling her about the execution of Marshal Ney, asking her about Palamangao and Luzon. He sat up half the night reading, dreaming—there was so much he wanted to know about the world. Half-jealous of her father’s affection for him she tried to dissuade him from staying on in the Army; she painted the blackest pictures she could remember or imagine. He listened, smiling, and kept his own counsel; she had no idea what he was thinking.

  “Sorry,” he murmured now.

  “It’s nothing. You’re doing wonderfully.” He wasn’t a good dancer. He might have been, he had a good sense of rhythm; but with his bad leg it was impossible to tell. He kept lurchin
g off onto his right foot and then checking abruptly to compensate; but she’d learned to follow his lead. The little lights flashed over her head and bathed them all in magic saffron and indigo hues; she saw Ben dancing with the Hanchett girl, their shoulders bouncing up and down as if they were stamping on a bed of stiff wire coils. She could feel the music entering her spirit like thunder, pounding in her blood.

  “I’ve had too much champagne,” she said, “and I don’t care. It’s wonderful …”

  On the bandstand above her Long Tom Jethro was singing, his eyes closed, the trumpet dangling from his fingertips, a silver bauble:

  “Down in Voodooland

  Where the monkey-girls swing

  They do the buck-and-wing

  It’s so ecstatic

  To go acrobatic

  In hop-hazy, palm-lazy, jazz-crazy Voodooland—!”

  And then, his eyes still tightly shut, he raised the trumpet to his lips, and the melody showered around them like silver rain. Someone near shouted, “Hey!” and now the horn’s bell dipped and swayed, blasting its clarion call over the thump and rumble of drums. She was reminded of parades, reviews, of bugles piercing the still dry air of morning.

  “He means it, you know,” she said aloud.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Dex. He does. He’ll get you that job, if you want.”

  He looked down at her—an expression that troubled her subtly. “You’ve got only one tiny little flaw.”

  “And that is?”

  “You pay entirely too much attention to Lieutenant Poindexter.”

  “—How can I help it?” she cried. The nervousness swept back—an alien trembling somehow lodged in the marrow of her bones. “He’s so attractive. You’re all attractive, of course, but Dex is most of all.”

  “That isn’t everything—”

  “He wants me to share his fortunes. Fortune is correct, I suppose. How do you think I’d look as an Oyster Bay matron? Riding to hounds and our own sloop out in the Sound, and lovely, lush, lawn parties under the elms? It sounds so grand …”

  “It wouldn’t last,” he said.

  “Oh, really? And why wouldn’t it?”

  “He’d tire of you.” She stared at him in angry amazement. “He would,” he continued. “That kind of man is never content with one woman—you’ll be barely settled in and he’ll start looking around—”

  “Well, I like that!” she exclaimed. She was furious; she was so mad she stopped dancing. Someone stepped on her foot and she cried, “Ouch!” and swore. “Of all the nerve—who do you think you are, telling me I can’t hold a husband? You’re insufferable!—and smug—just because you’ve been ordering troops around you think you can say anything you want. Now you can take that back, Sam Damon!”

  “Wait, I didn’t mean—”

  “I know just what you meant! And you can take it back—right now …”

  Up on the stand the Negro bandleader chanted:

  “It’s so entrancing

  To keep on dancing

  In toe-tappy, skip-scrappy, jazz-happy Voodooland—!”

  “I meant you—you’d be unhappy …”

  They swung past the stand, the drummer caught her eye and winked, rapped out a thumping, shattering rat-a-pa-kan, pa-kan! and she laughed, dancing again; all the fury had gone out of her.

  “Don’t be mad,” Sam was saying in her ear. “I take it all back. The whole thing. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Oh, I can’t stay angry at anybody for five minutes,” she cried. “It’s my Huguenot blood.” She saw his face change, stiffen into a much older man’s; remote and very hard. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” His eyes were so sad! She had never seen such sadness in a person’s eyes. “An—old friend of mine once said that. That same thing.”

  “… I’m sorry.” She looked off over his shoulder—at the drummer, at Ben, his beaked, bony face cracked open in its huge grin; at the red giant on the great blue wall. That was how life was—a tipsy juggler who caught some of the glittering objects and dropped others …

  He had lurched against her badly; his face was taut and strained.

  “You’re ill,” she said.

  “No.”

  “It’s your leg—it’s hurting you.” He nodded. “But this is absurd, Sam! You’re such a bingo-bongo old masochist. Why on earth didn’t you say so?”

  He looked rueful. “Because then we’d have to go back to the table and listen to Poindexter.”

  “Dex is all right.”

  “Sure he is. But I want you all to myself.”

  “You can’t always have everything you want. Even if you are one of the three most decorated men in the AEF.—This is silly,” she said, after another minute. “Come on, let’s go back to the table. Dex is such fun! I want to hear more about his—”

  “—Don’t marry him, Tommy,” he said; the words seemed to burst out of him, as if he had been holding his breath for hours. “Don’t marry him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Marry me instead.”

  “You!” she cried mischievously over the band. “Why on earth you?”

  “Because I love you, Tommy.” They had stopped dancing again; he was holding her so hard it hurt. “A good heart, Tommy: a good heart is the sun and the moon … I want you to be my wife. Please say you’ll marry me.”

  She made a swift little sound of distress—part gasp, part groan—and tossed her head. “Oh, damn!” she said.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I didn’t want this to happen. I didn’t, I didn’t—”

  “Why?”

  “This shouldn’t have happened—it’s just cheap sympathy … ”

  His eyes were filled with alarm. He said, so quietly she could hardly hear him, “It can’t be just that … you feel something for me, don’t you? Don’t you feel something?”

  “—No,” she stammered, “—for me! I meant for me!” She was in a turmoil; she realized she’d misunderstood him, that he’d meant himself, because of his wound—she could sense his relief in the changed pressure of his hand. At that instant she didn’t know what she felt, beyond the weight of his insistence. He was so compelling! She was aware of nothing but his nearness, the pressure of his arm around her, the steady, importunate force behind him. She could feel herself sway toward him, body and soul, like some marine plant in a mighty tide …

  “You’re very sweet,” she murmured, her eyes held to his. “A sweet, good man … A girl could fall in love with you, Sam.”

  His face became animate with joy. “Marry me, Tommy,” he repeated. “Say you will. Marry me.”

  “Sam, I—”

  There was a burst of applause behind them, doubled, redoubled—a pattering wave of handclapping. With a violent start she saw they were alone on the floor, the bandstand was empty, everyone was watching them …

  “Come on back, children, all is forgiven,” Poindexter called out.

  “Sam,” she whispered, “they’re looking—”

  He held her tightly. “Will you?” he breathed tensely, triumphantly. “Will you?”

  “Oh God, you’re trying to ruin my life,” she wailed.

  “What? No—”

  “You’ll stay on in the Army and become a fat, pompous idiot gushing regulations and pawing the lieutenants’ wives at the Saturday night hops. I can just see you … oh, damn!”

  They were suddenly bathed in amber light—it hurt her eyes. She tried to break away, and at the same moment a slight man in tails with a leathery face and pale golden eyes had tapped them both on the shoulder, was saying in French, a confidential stage whisper that carried into the far reaches of the room: “If I could just borrow a bit of the floor for a moment or two—you don’t mind … ?” Laughter rang out, the piano was playing a strident little cabaret tune; all at once Tommy remembered the affiches on La Croisette and near the station. It was Claude Guétary. He still hadn’t smiled.

  “I’m sorry,” Sam was saying in s
ome confusion, “I didn’t realize the—”

  “Not at all. I know they’d far rather watch you. Don’t go. Here—” he produced from nowhere at all a high, four-legged stool and perched on it, his legs crossed in rapt attention. “Go on with the scene and I’ll coach. Fine. Go on. He’s imploring you, begging you to give him one, just one more chance. Isn’t he? But you’ve had enough, of course you have, life is too short to go on putting up with his infidelities and amours. Still, there he stands, looking so trusting, so noble, eh?—and you can’t help but wonder, ‘What is he made of, this fine, upstanding Yank officer? What are his dreams, what is his private life—what is he really like?”’ Claude Guétary made her a deep bow. “And that is precisely why I am here, Mademoiselle—to show you what your man is made of. Alors, on verra, hein?”

  And now he was moving around the bemused Sam, his hands darting, flowing, fluttering with a deceptive casualness, his dead-pan voice commenting on each discovery. From Sam’s tunic pocket he drew a pair of black silk lace panties (“Now we’re approaching the truth of the matter”), from an ear a dirty, battered piece of what looked like a military map of Africa, across whose face was scrawled in black crayon the single word MERDE (“No wonder it took you four years!”), from his blouse a blacksnake whip (“So that’s how you treat your men, eh?—or is it your women?”), from his mouth a rubber hand grenade which he tossed to a nearby table amid shrieks and howls, from the other ear a marshal’s baton festooned like a party favor with pink and blue ribbons (“You can dream, can’t you?”). The club was in an uproar. Laughing, blinking in the yellow spotlight glare, Tommy could see Sam had adopted the role of straight man: he grinned, shrugged, gaped in amazement—and finally threw out his hands in a fleeting Charlie Chaplin plea … At that moment she knew she loved him. While the audience roared and squealed and Guétary produced in bewildering succession a brassière, a pistol, a baby chicken and a half-empty flask of Cognac, she reached up on tiptoe and kissed Sam on the cheek.

  “I will,” she said. “I’ll marry you.”

  He gazed at her enraptured; he seemed scarcely aware of the litter of objects at his feet, the howling audience around him. “You will?” he said. “You will? You mean it?” She nodded. Sam bent over and whispered in Guétary’s ear—a pantomimed message behind his hand. The magician’s eyes glinted, he laughed soundlessly, reached deep into Sam’s breeches pocket, twisting and squirming, while Sam twisted and squirmed back; drew forth a large ring on a white silk ribbon, slipped the ring through Sam’s nose and handed the ribbon to Tommy, made some indecipherable signal to the pianist—and to the thunderous strains of a jazzed-up wedding march of Mendelssohn Claude Guétary bowed and handed the baton to Sam. “A consolation prize.” And then to the crowd: “Ladies and gentlemen, an American hero and a good sport, Commandant Dai-mone—and his bride to be!”