Once an Eagle

by Anton Myrer

  Damon brought his teeth together. After Soissons and Malsainterre and Mont Noir and all those months lying on his back at Angers, after all the graves among the newly mown wheat, the ardor and remorse and desolation of spirit—after all that to have to stand here on the edge of a dusty ditch and take this kind of abuse from a criminally irresponsible, vindictive son of a bitch like Townsend was hard to bear. Very hard to bear. Sergeant Torrey had walked twenty feet down the culvert and was standing with his back to the officers. On the road near the bridge young Conte was swinging his rifle idly and digging a hole in the packed dirt with the toe of his shoe.

  “A fraud,” Captain Townsend repeated with soft, implacable tones. “You’re not fooling anybody, Damon. Not a blessed soul. All those medals—and with a mail-order brigadier for a father-in-law. What could be easier?”

  Sam gripped his hands together and gave back a step. He wants that, the thought pierced his rage. He wants you to tell him off, hit him, lay him out—he wants that more than anything else in this world: then he’ll have you where he wants you. Yes, and then he’ll send Torrey—whom he doesn’t like, either—to defuse the charge …

  “Well, Damon. Haven’t you got anything to say? Eh?”

  You son of a bitch: you gutless, pitiful, homicidal son of a bitch. He shifted his feet and looked steadily at Townsend. “Perhaps the Captain is right,” he answered in his most toneless voice.

  It was as if he had released a spring. Townsend reared back and thrashed the swagger stick against his legs. “All right!” he shouted, gesticulating. “You’re in arrest! I’m placing you in arrest for direct disobedience of orders. You are confined to quarters until further notice. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good! Now, take off.” Damon made no move to go. “Did you hear what I said—! I told you to move out …”

  “Very good, sir.” He faced the culvert and called: “Dee-taillll … fall in!”

  Townsend cried, “You have no authority—”

  “I’m taking my men back to camp,” Damon cut him off hotly. “That charge should not be touched for thirty minutes to three hours, and you know it and I know it and so does everybody else …”

  Townsend’s face was white. “Stay where you are, you people!” They paused, then came on up out of the ditch in groups of two and three at Torrey’s urging. “Damon, I’m warning you!” Townsend shouted hoarsely. “If you march these men back from here—if you try to take—”

  The explosion seemed to leap into being from inside Damon’s head, so unprepared was he—an absurdly vast crepitation like the end of all worlds, that echoed and reechoed along the rocky bed of the ravine. Damon had just time to think with astonishing lucidity open-hearth steel tears and may throw fragments in any direction—then he had screamed “Take-cover!”—gripped the man nearest him around the shoulders and dragged him to earth beside him. In the next instant the concussion rolled up in a hot, tight wave and shook them like a great dog, and the earth quivered; and there came the whir and whine of steel fragments pattering down in a ragged shower. He raised his head. Voisselle, the boy he had pulled down, was gazing at him round-eyed.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Voisselle said, a little breathless. “I guess so.”

  Damon jumped to his feet. Half of Wallace’s squad, led by Sergeant Torrey, had dived back into the ditch; they were getting up now in a clumsy tangle, like the survivors of some wild, drunken brawl. “All right?” he called. “Everybody all right?”

  Someone was shouting. He turned. Conte, sitting in the middle of the road like a child, his feet out straight, both hands clamped to his neck. “Ow—ow—ow!” he yelled. Damon ran down the road. As he got near the boy stopped crying and squinted up at him fearfully. He knelt down and said, “Take your hands away.”

  “I can’t,” Conte said.

  “Of course you can. You want them to grow that way? Come on.” He pulled away his fingers: the old sight of torn flesh, milk-white around the lips of the wound, blood oozing down in a rich silky pattern. “Not bad,” he said. “Easy one.”

  “What happened?” Conte said. He was panting as if he’d run a hard hundred yards, and his voice was dry and shrill. “What—happened?”

  “Charge went off. A little behind schedule.” He plucked open the snaps on Conte’s medical pouch—pulled out a pack of cigarettes, two packs of gum, and several gumdrops congealed into a sticky little mass. “For Christ sake, Conte,” he said irritably. “What kind of a soldier are you, anyway?”

  Conte said, “I don’t know,” in a faint yet querulous tone that made him want to laugh. Damon got a compress out of his own packet and tied the tapes around the boy’s neck. Suddenly he felt light-headed, almost frivolous; the savage anger had vanished with the blast.

  “Why didn’t you throw yourself on the ground and cover your head and neck with your arms, the way you’ve been taught?” he asked.

  “I … forgot.”

  “You were lucky.”

  “Lucky—!”

  “Sure you were. Look at that son of a bitch over there.” He pointed to a jagged splinter the size of a table knife lying six or seven feet away. “That one could have got you here”—he pressed the rich black hair at the base of the boy’s skull—“or here.” He touched the shoulder blade just over the lung.

  Conte shivered and said: “I never saw it.”

  “Of course not. You never do.”

  “Jesus …” The boy turned with the slow, fearsome care of an invalid and looked at the bridge, where girders curled back from a void in warped and blackened ribbons. “I didn’t know that would happen,” he protested, pointing at the splinter.

  “What did you think would happen?”

  “Well—I thought it would all just—disappear …”

  “Nothing disappears. Or very little, anyway. Things turn into other things, but they go somewhere, they have to go somewhere …” Damon realized he was talking too much and took a deep breath. “There. This’ll fix you up till we get back.”

  “It—hurts,” Conte said.

  “I imagine so.” The others had come up and were standing around, pleased at this diversion.

  Sergeant Torrey said, “He all right, Lieutenant?”

  “Sure. It’s light. Come on, Conte. Get up.”

  Conte looked at them all doubtfully. “I don’t know as I should.”

  “What? Don’t be stupid,” Torrey said. “Get up, Conte.”

  Everyone was talking at once, milling around.

  “Did you see it blow?” Campbell said nervously. “All that stuff flying every which way—it’s a wonder we weren’t all killed …”

  “What happened?”

  “Hangfire.”

  “Hangfire …”

  “Jesus, Sarge, and you’d have been right up there trying to pull that fuse!” Campbell went on, his thin face a mask of apprehension. “You’d have been straddling that frigging I-beam, right about then …”

  “Miss is as good as a mile,” the Sergeant answered, and shrugged; but he threw Damon a long, enigmatic glance.

  “What about me?” Conte protested. “Where do you think I’d be?”

  “Oh-oh,” Torrey muttered. “Here comes old Hangfire,” and the talk died away.

  Captain Townsend came up to them. His hat had been knocked off his head and he was carrying it in one hand. Something had bumped him in the nose—probably his field glasses, when he fell or threw himself flat—and one nostril was bleeding lightly, the blood soaking into his mustache. “Lieutenant Damon,” he said, and cleared his throat.

  “Yes?”

  “We—the exercise is concluded.” He gazed at the wrecked bridge, dabbing at the nostril with his little finger. “You may march the detail back to barracks.”

  “Whatever you say.” He hadn’t felt such loathing for a man since he’d seen Benoît-Guesclin at the review at Bombon.

  “Damon … you are not to consider yourself in arrest. Y
ou are not confined to quarters.”

  The Lieutenant took a cigarette out of his pocket and lighted it, watching Townsend narrowly. “May I ask why, Captain?”

  “Because I have rescinded that order, that is why.” And the thin, distant smile crept back into the Captain’s face.

  “Many thanks, Captain, but I’d prefer it to ride as it stands.”

  Townsend made no answer; he turned to the group. “Men!” he said sharply. “This has been an exercise, a problem in demolitions like any other, and you will so regard it.” He ran his eyes over the detail; he could see the hatred and contempt in their massed gaze, and perhaps a few minutes ago, shaken by the blast, he would have been vulnerable to it. But he had armed himself again in his supercilious British manner and his animosity, and he was determined to have his way. “You are advised to overlook what you may or may not have overheard here this afternoon. The problem is completed, and the incident is closed. That is all.” He walked away quickly, patting a clean white handkerchief to his nose.

  “The son of a bitch,” Sergeant Torrey muttered. “The sneaky, underhanded, chicken-shit son of a bitch.”

  “Don’t let me hear you using language like that about a commissioned officer,” Damon said; he smiled. “I can’t hear you.”

  “The bastard didn’t even apologize …”

  “Why should he? No future in that.”

  He ordered the detail to fall in and they started back to the South Gate. Torrey gave them route step and dropped back to Damon.

  “What the hell, Lieutenant,” he muttered. “Maybe it’s all for the best.”

  “Maybe.” He smiled wearily, following the Sergeant’s thought. “But what about Conte? Why should I take the rap for not having my men properly under cover?—especially when it isn’t even true? Should a murdering son of a bitch like Hangfire”—he knew Torrey’s sobriquet would stick now, no matter what came of it—“feel free to pull something like this any afternoon he feels the urge?”

  “Sure, Lieutenant—but if you insist on standing charges and demand a court there’ll be a stink that’ll blow all the way to the AG’s office in DC. And where’ll it get you? They’ll back each other up and all you’ll have is a lot of trouble in your 201 file.” He was silent for a moment. “I hope I’m not sticking my neck out too far, sir.”

  Damon shook his head. “No, that’s the way my mind was running.” He felt sore and defeated; the garrulous release following the blast had receded, leaving him beached on the shoals of despondency. Torrey was right: after the hangfire Townsend had realized that his plan to provoke him had failed; now he wanted it all dropped and forgotten. If he, Damon, were to force it to a court-martial it would set the post in an uproar—and it wouldn’t stop there, either. And the rank would probably look out for their own, and he would pick himself up a fistful of trouble; he’d be known as a trouble maker, an agitator …

  But did you let something like this roll on by? What about the next officer Townsend took a savage dislike to, and the next? In France he would have laid the son of a bitch out, and welcomed the consequences; had his wound, the reduction in rank, the months here at Hardee sapped his capacity for acting clearly and vigorously, doing what he thought was right? or was acquiescence the wiser course? Of course, nothing much had happened, Conte’s injury was slight—maybe Townsend’s hatred for him was a unique and isolated thing … He sighed, and watched the detail stomping along in the dust.

  “Lieutenant,” Torrey said.

  “Yes?”

  “Whatever you decide to do, I want you to know I’ll go right down the line for you. All the way. And so will every man here.”

  He glanced at the Sergeant gratefully. “Thanks, Torrey,” he said. “I’ll remember that.” He sighed again, kicking at a clod of earth. “Maybe it’s just as well to let the whole lousy business blow over.”

  Torrey grinned his slow, contained grin. “For the good of the service.”

  “Yeah. For the good of the service.”

  The dust blew away from their feet in a sun-drenched ocher cloud.

  2

  She heard his steps on the back stoop, the thump of the screen door, then silence. Another day, another dollar. She lay motionless, unsmiling, on the narrow issue cot; her body felt thick and alien and vaguely repellent. The heat pressed against her like a hand; the army blankets she’d hung up sopping wet in the windows at noon were already dry, their corners flicking idly.

  Usually he would call out something jocular, like “Hello, countess!” or “View halloo, sugar-doll!” and then the door of the icebox would bump somberly as he got himself a bottle of root beer, which he loved. But today she heard none of these sounds, and it disturbed her: it mingled with the peeling paint, the gaunt, bleak absurdity of the ammunition boxes and crates and issue chairs. They had moved down the row, to a dwelling as dilapidated as the first: this one had been policed and the floors were better, but the plumbing was worse and there was something wrong with the wiring—the naked overhead bulbs would flicker, or go out abruptly and come on again with a sickly apricot glow. Sam fiddled endlessly with the wall switches, without success; it was somewhere in the walls, a faulty connection or crossed wire, maybe; something was wrong. This time there was no wild dismay, but neither was there the angry determination that had carried her through the weeks of scraping and mending. They moved in the curtains and furniture they had made, and for a while she tried fitfully to repair and restore; but the fire had gone out of her. Where was the incentive, when any moment that crocodile of a post adjutant could say three words and they’d be ranked out again? Sam assured her it wouldn’t happen, but she was never certain. The weeks crawled their dreary way into months, the winter slipped bleakly by, and in the spring she’d become pregnant.

  There were still none of the familiar sounds. He was probably sitting in the living room on a serape-draped ammo box, hunched over, elbows on his knees: a pose she’d once told him was distressingly proletarian. He’d grinned at her and adopted a simpering, effeminate attitude, one knee over the other, elbow in palm, fingers curled delicately—“This more what you had in mind? Oscar Wilde?”—but he hadn’t changed his way of sitting, except when they were paying or receiving calls … He was sitting there, his brow creased, now and then rubbing his jaw with his knuckles. Something had gone wrong: the thought sank into her soul like a bar of iron descending through water, fathoms on fathoms down. I must be a good wife to him, a dutiful wife, she told herself with virtuous rigor; give him the affection and support he needs … But the thought lay on the surface of her mind, oil on glass. Now, in this second sweltering summer at Fort Hardee, she could only put her hands on her swelling belly and knead it gently, this sack that had been grafted on her by some malicious sorcery; lie there sweating in her slip, feeling gross and unattractive and slightly sick, bereft of energy …

  She closed her eyes, in derelict fancy dreamed of soft green riverbanks, of sheltered coves bordered with stands of cedar, of a large white house, gabled and porticoed, that gave on smooth flagstone terraces under the shaded rustle of the maple trees, and sweeping green lawns, and the carefree laughter of old friends. She was swimming in the cove, she was rolling indolently in the damp, furry grass, she was talking animatedly to three handsome men in blazers and white flannels who had just returned from Taormina, Damascus and Algiers (she was going there herself in a few months or so), they were all of them sipping at Tom Collinses, tart and ice cold under the shimmering celadon canopy of the leaves; and later there would be—

  Sam came into the bedroom: that quick, lively stride, without even the trace of a limp now. He had overcome it completely, performing the exercises Doc Terwilliger had given him, doubling and redoubling them with a conscientious rigor she’d found she resented almost as much as she admired. Of all the wounded men he was the Tweaker’s star pupil, a glowing object lesson to the wayward and dilatory saddled with adhesions and cramps and poor articulation … the way I’d have been, she thought, if I’d been
wounded: lazy—full of self-pity.

  “Hello,” she murmured, to let him know she was awake.

  “Hello, sugar.”

  She raised her head and opened her eyes and smiled at him, thinking, I wish we hadn’t quarreled last night, that was silly, it was my fault as much as his—probably more. But his back was turned toward her now; he was taking off his shirt, which looked black with sweat in the olive gloom cast by the blankets. The tan line ran along his collar cleanly; then there was another one, even sharper, a meniscus above his shoulder blades made by his undershirt. He hung his belt up on one of the hooks on the side of the closet. You could read his life from the clothes and equipment on the hooks and pegs: the inspections, the close-order drill, the field problems and OD duty, the practice with the company ball team after hours, the infrequent post hops. And yet it was hard to imagine, too—that curious, blunt, inarticulated language of men.

  Guiltily, a little defiantly, she watched him remove his leather puttees. He absolutely refused to wear riding boots, and once when she’d remarked on it she’d been surprised at the vehemence of his answer.

  “Because it’s a rotten symbol of caste, that’s why. Like this damn Sam Browne belt. They’re as obsolete and silly as a halberd. Their only function is to set the officers and enlisted men still farther apart.”

  She’d grinned mischievously. “Poppa wears them.”

  But he refused to joke about it. “He didn’t in the line, I can tell you that. Besides, your father’s an inveterate rider. He’s seen cavalry duty, and he was brought up in the old school.”

  “Oh, you’re so stubborn, Sam,” she’d protested. “Can’t you see?—boots look so much more—so much more comme il faut.”

  “Dashing, you mean.”

  “All right then, dashing! What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with trying to enliven the old penal colony a bit? Should I wear a blanky-fluking Mother Hubbard because poor Mrs. Schooner wears one over on Soapsuds Row?”