Once an Eagle

by Anton Myrer

  “How about you, Massengale? Aren’t you hankering for a field command?” Caldwell’s eyes, friendly, alert—that astonishingly penetrant gaze. Almost as if he had been reading his thoughts … But that wasn’t true, of course; the General had merely picked up the thread of the earlier conversation.

  “Yes, General,” he answered, “I am indeed. The Chief says not for a while yet. You know his phrase: ‘When the right day comes.’” He smiled—just the right combination of ruefulness and acquiescence. “And believe me, when the Chief says something, that’s it.”

  “Yes. I’m sure of that.”

  All of which was not quite true, but old Caldwell didn’t know it. Rearden had asked for him as ADC during the early planning for Torch, and before that there’d been an opening as Chief of Staff for the 19th, training down at Bragg. He had decided against both moves. Of course he would need a field command to properly round out his career, equip him with the credentials to reach his goal. But it was better to wait: it was going to be a long war, this one. There would be Italy, and then the big cross-channel invasion—the British at their very suavest wouldn’t be able to talk the Chief out of that—there might even be an Adriatic offensive, Churchill was very keen on it. And then there were the Philippines, Formosa, the China Coast—all before Honshu and the Grand Assault across the great Kwanto Plain. There was time. He’d get his second star soon, but he didn’t want a division: he wanted a corps. It was the highest tactical post, an opportunity to give real scope to his talents, realize that high, hard dream of the perfect battle, the grand envelopment and annihilation that bespoke the pure science of command. A chance would come. There would be mighty battles in Flanders, the Po, the valley of the Loire, but he was not sure he wanted that. Eisenhower had disliked him ever since that row over the Philippine Army budget in Manila, and he’d crossed swords with Bradley when they were both assistant secretaries at the War Department. Clark was difficult to get along with, and Patton was impossible. Allen and Hodges were boy scouts, and so was Truscott—none of them would ever amount to anything. The Pacific war contained the ingredients he needed. An opportunity would present itself, an independent operation, perhaps an island where a corps commander would have a relatively free hand in the forging of a twentieth-century Cannae. Meanwhile he could wait, here at the taut, vibrant center of things, where the first words were spoken in thunder, and the earth trembled. Uncle Schuyler, now a senator, and on the Armed Services Committee, was the most powerful ally a general officer in his position could hope to have. Patience, and a watchful eye …

  Caldwell’s senior aide, a quiet, rather colorless man named Palmer, came up to the table and engaged the General in a whispered conversation; Caldwell excused himself and left with him. The women and Donny were talking about Styles and Mayberry and Finch and some of the others who had been caught on Bataan. Poor devils. Hanging on, praying for help that could never reach them, unaware they’d been written off with grim finality months before. The fortunes of war. He expressed a suitable concern, and turned to the girl, who was gazing off across the room.

  “I suppose you’re planning a wedding?”

  She glanced at him quickly. “Oh no—no, we’re not.”

  “No nuptials?”

  “Don doesn’t want to get married. He feels it isn’t the right thing to do.”

  “Why’s that? Afraid of the noose?”

  She smiled—a slow, even smile. “Oh no. He just feels with his—with things the way they are, we ought to wait for a while.”

  “And you agree?”

  “No, sir—I’d like to get married right away. But I’m willing to do what he wants.”

  A contained, placid girl. None of Jinny’s nervous, volatile fire. He thought of his daughter with a slow, heavy throb of anxiety. She was so beautiful, so mercurial and willful—and he could not reach her. Whenever he thought of her he always saw her standing in a patch of brilliant sunlight, in the middle of the Tabriz carpet, her long, dark hair whirling about her head, her eyes filled with that merry, malicious glare—on the verge of some new piece of devilry. He had scolded her, he had spanked her—once he had completely lost his temper and whipped her with a fair leather belt—and still she defied him, mocked him, baffled him. She had come down from college for the Christmas holidays—and then after three days told them she was leaving, with some airy reference to staying with a classmate in Connecticut.

  “—But you just got here, Virginia,” he’d protested. “We’ve planned a party for Thursday …”

  “Can’t be helped!” She’d shrugged her thin shoulders and made a face at him. “That’s what you get for having such an overwhelmingly popular, sought-after daughter.”

  “You should have let Mother and me know, if you had contracted for an obligation of this sort …”

  “Oh, it’s not an obligation—goodness! you turn everything into a formal guard mount—Nanny Darlington just asked me if I’d like to spend a few days up there with her and I said yes. Why under heaven do you make so much out of everything …?”

  Watching her he had felt the old anger, the old despair, stir him. “I don’t think you should go,” he heard himself say flatly, though he knew it was wrong. “You had better stay here at home.”

  Her eyes dilated with rage. “Why, that’s ridiculous,” she cried, “I’ve got to go—you’ve just told me yourself it’s a social obligation!”

  “Then you may phone them and tell them you cannot get away.”

  She tossed her hair back wildly. “I’m not staying here … ”

  “You will if I say so.”

  “Oh, let her go, Courtney,” Emily had protested wearily, “—if she wants to go, let her. What good will be served keeping her here against her will?”

  “Families gather together for the holidays,” he declared.

  Jinny laughed. “So you can parade me around as the sweet and dutiful daughter? the crowning achievement in a—”

  “Will you be silent!” He lowered his voice. “It’s little enough …”

  “Little—! It’s a lot too much!”

  “Let her go, Courtney—”

  He’d left the room, unable to contain himself any longer; had gone to his study and read for an hour or so, until calm had returned, until he had things well in hand again. He had let her go up to Connecticut: there had really been no choice. He could have held her, but she would have retaliated with some barbaric, unforeseen, ruinous stunt that would have been infinitely worse than explaining her absence from home Christmas week to Stegner and Blaine; infinitely worse than being deprived of her presence, wondering at odd moments what she was doing. At Shafter she had scalded their maid’s little boy with water from a tea kettle; in Paris she had built a fire in the middle of her room and nearly precipitated an international crisis; at Leavenworth he had drawn a reprimand from old Embree when it had been discovered that she’d been phoning various officers’ homes and impersonating the wife of the Commandant. Of all her capricious, destructive pranks that one had frightened him so badly he had merely sat on the couch gazing at her.

  “Why did you do it, Virginia? When you know how important the school here is to me—when I’ve told you, Mother’s told you, time and time again … Why?”

  For the briefest moment her gamine’s face had glowed—as if she couldn’t resist telling him: and yet she would resist it, for to disclose the motive would have immensely diminished this perverse and beguiling pleasure.

  “I don’t know …” She shrugged, looking away—fully aware of the admissions implicit in this evasion, and aware that he, too, knew. “It just—struck me as such fun at the time! …”

  Punishment had never cured it: she seemed to welcome punishment in the same way the dutiful child approaches the reward for good conduct. He could not touch her. Charming, malignant, devious, she had danced through life—fighting him, tormenting him, eluding him. He could never know what she was thinking …

  “What does your father do?” he asked the Shi
fkin girl abruptly.

  “My father?” Her eyes dropped, came up to his again. “He’s a correspondent, a foreign correspondent. He’s in Tunisia now.”

  Yes. New York City Jews. The pattern was clear now. How had young Damon run into her? “And you’re in school, I suppose.”

  “Yes, I’m a sophomore at Barnard.”

  That followed. “My daughter is at Bryn Mawr.”

  “Yes I know—Don’s talked about her.”

  “Of course. They’ve known each other since they were children.” This reminded him of still another unpleasant episode involving a war memorial at Beyliss, and he frowned and said: “How do you feel about his going overseas?”

  She paused, her eyes on his stars, his ribbons. “I don’t think I should say.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well …”

  “Are you afraid of hurting my feelings?”

  She gave a shy smile. “It isn’t that. It’s only that I think the whole war is wrong.”

  “Really?” He expressed surprise. “I should think the Nazi racial theories in particular would afford a certain justification.”

  “Yes.” She nodded soberly. “We haven’t any choice, I suppose. But with war—things are lost.”

  “Things like what?”

  “Well”—she was ill at ease now, a bit troubled—“certain rights, certain liberties. And then they’re never recovered again. When war comes people get into a habit of mind, accept things they wouldn’t otherwise.”

  “War impels people toward Fascist doctrines, then.”

  She shook her head, watching him curiously. She was quick; very quick. They always were. “I didn’t mean anything as final as that. It seems to me more a kind of reliance on a whole series of attitudes—everybody comes to feel that they’re solutions: things like violence and power, and making sacrifices …”

  “You don’t approve of the individual making sacrifices?”

  “Oh, yes.” Her large, oval eyes were very serious now. “Only it all depends on what the sacrifices are for …”

  “Fine. What should they be for?”

  “A world without prejudice, for one thing,” young Damon said; he had been listening to the exchange for a few moments, and he entered it now with a kind of soft passion. “A world without color lines, without one-tenth of its people living like kings and the other nine-tenths like desperate animals … If we simply sink back into the same tired old world of spheres of influence and power politics and gunboat diplomacy, there isn’t an awful lot of sense in it.”

  Massengale smiled at them tolerantly. “I don’t think you need to worry about that this time. The world that emerges from this struggle is going to be a very, very different world indeed.”

  “I hope so,” the boy said. “I hope so with all my heart.”

  “A new heaven and a new earth,” he answered, and laughed; but they only watched him steadily, distantly. They were not charmed by him, they never would be. Poor little babes in jungleland. All those hifalutin history and government and economics courses and they understood nothing of what made the world hum: their tremulous youth refused to see that there would always be the avenues to power, and that men—being men—would always snatch at them; for no other facet of human endeavor could bestow such magical, seductive guerdons …

  “Margie—bless my soul, it’s old home week!” It was Meadowlark Walters, looking more puffy and soulful than ever with his basset hound’s eyes and mashed-in, pulpy nose; a light colonel now—terrifyingly—over in Somervell’s section. Perhaps they could still lose the war after all. There was some rather boisterous badinage and then Walters asked Marge over to his table to meet Iris and her sister. The men rose, and at the same time the Damon boy looked at his watch and said, “We ought to be moving along, sweet.”

  “Moving along where?” Tommy said quickly.

  “I promised two of the guys we’d meet them at this place we know.”

  “Can’t they come here?”

  The boy smiled at her fondly. “Well, I think they’d feel more at home there—it’s not quite so high-powered as this.”

  The Shifkin girl rose, then. Donny bent over to kiss his mother, who took his hand in both of hers. “Will I see you tomorrow, dear? Poppa thought we might—”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Why don’t we have breakfast together? If you don’t mind getting up.”

  “Fine.” He laughed once, softly. He was wearing his hair as long as was consistent with regulations, and he looked suddenly very young and carefree. “I’ve changed my hours,” he answered. “I get up early now.”

  They said good-bye to Massengale quickly and firmly, moved off through the forest of braid and brass, the Shifkin girl rather diffident, young Damon tall and assured and a bit defiant. Tommy’s eyes were following her son as though he were about to enter a burning building. Then the couple passed out of sight and she turned back to the table; her face did a funny little quiver, and her eyes filled with tears.

  “Well,” she said, and clasped her hands demurely at the table’s edge. Her face was faintly flushed. She was dressed in a Paris blue suit that set off her deep copper hair and green eyes; a lemon silk scarf floated at her throat. She looked proud and lovely and utterly defenseless; and Massengale knew now why he had sat down and stayed on through the inconsequential talk, the arrivals and departures.

  “Well,” Tommy repeated. “I’m getting maudlin, it seems. A silly, maudlin old woman.”

  “That’s the last thing you are,” he murmured. “The very last.”

  “Oh, I don’t care if I am. This damned, dirty war.” Her eyes flashed around the room with a savagery that surprised him. “Look at them. With a little objectivity, I mean. Gulping down Scotch and bourbon like toads, grinning like toads …”

  “It’s their day in the sun,” he answered.

  “I know all about their day in the sun. They don’t have to go overseas, face the bullets and shrapnel—oh no: they’re all taken care of …”

  “Some do. And some do not.”

  She nodded stubbornly, implacably. “Yes. Well, most of them don’t.” She took a sip from her glass, set it down again and looked at him—a direct, wanton gaze that unsettled him. What was she going to say now?

  “I don’t suppose you would, would you,” she observed.

  “I might. What?”

  “See to it he doesn’t get sent to England. To the Eighth.” His brows rose. “Sweet, we go where we’re sent …”

  “Some of you do,” she echoed him. “And some do not. Most of you wangle the cushy jobs, the nice fat berths along the Potomac. So dignified …” The orchestra had begun to play “Poor Butterfly,” in a much more dreamy, saccharine way than he remembered it, and she exclaimed: “That song!” Her expression changed all at once, her mouth quivered again. “Please, Court. Please. For old-times’ sake. For any reason, or no reason at all. Will you twitch wires, pull strings, cut orders, whatever they do—Jesus God, will you do something?… ”

  She’s going to weep now, he told himself; wild little tough little Tommy Damon is going to break down completely and we’ll initiate a scene, right in the center of the Statler Lounge … But she didn’t break down. Her voice remained steady, she controlled the trembling of her lips. “He’s all I’ve got, Court. Really all. In my life. I swear to you, nothing else matters but that boy …

  “I can’t help it. I used to have such contempt for craven or scheming women. Irene Keller, Kay Harting, the Rutherford bitch. Remember them? The vamps, the menaces, the pleaders and connivers … Now I know—I’m just like them. I am. I’d do anything, commit any crime on earth—any!—to keep him stateside … You don’t believe me?” she demanded softly, with a faint smile. “Just try me, then. Ask me anything. I’ll do it without the slightest qualm. Do you see?

  “…I know,” she went on after a little pause. “I’m a disgrace to the service. Conduct unbecoming a camp follower. I know.”

  “I won’t put you
on report,” he said. “Please, Court,” she whispered. “Keep him here, at home …”

  The importunate anguish in her voice, the naked pain that shadowed her eyes seemed actually to trouble the smoke-laden air between them. For an instant his mind rioted with images of the two of them at sea, in a hotel room overlooking some bay, moving through full-dress Washington receptions—then the extravagant congeries of vision subsided. Nothing could come of it. Nothing. Too many obstacles lay in their path, not the least of which was—

  “… But there’s Samuel,” he replied, not sure of exactly what he meant by that.

  She made a frantic little gesture with one hand. “He’s saving the world from the Yellow Peril. Or maybe it’s only the Black Knights. Sir Modred or something. And now he’s a general. Only Sears Roebuck rank but he made it, he always knew he was going to be one, and now he is. Oh Jesus …” She put a hand to her chin, and now her face, drained of irony and anger, looked simply defeated and sad. “I did what he wanted—and he wanted me. I can see that now. It’s always the way. He gets everybody to do what he wants.”

  Not everybody, Massengale thought; oh, not everybody. He said nothing.

  “That’s what he did at Moapora. I know. He got them all to do what he wanted—no matter what they wanted to do. He probably told the nasty little Japanese to go and jump in the ocean and they all did. After all, he’s only got their bandy-fluking emperor to compete with, there. Command presence. I’m sick of it, sick to holy death of it …” She raised her head again, her eyes glistening and savage. “I swear to God, if anything happens to that boy I—”

  She broke off and looked away feverishly, and he inserted a cigarette in his long jade holder and then offered her one. He felt none of the dread that was consuming her. Watching her eyelids droop before the flame, he thought: my son. It could have been my son, our son, and we would not be sitting here like this. We would have a set out at Myer, and the boy would be at the Point or perhaps VMI; and she would know how to charm the Chief and Handy and McNair—she would even know how to handle Jinny, they’re very much alike in certain ways … He gave way to the old, dry interior laughter. Her impact on him was so compelling she could, momentarily, make a romantic even out of him.