Rank

by Richard Compson Sater

  We didn’t speak. I don’t think either of us intended to be silent, it just worked out that way. After a couple of minutes, we both recognized that conversation was unnecessary, and then neither of us wanted to break the spell. The stereo played contemplative Gregorian chant for Christmas, ancient and beautiful, and we needed no other noise.

  Wordlessly, I picked up the towel and began to dry the dishes as he washed. When we finished, he fixed two mugs of cocoa, and we retired to the living room. He was in his element, and I wanted to let him show off. He poked up the fire. Turned off the lamp so that only the colored Christmas lights blinked in neon semaphore. Sat next to me on the couch with a deep, comfortable sigh, as if he’d finally had a burden lifted from him. A second later, he stood up, sudden, as if he’d forgotten something, and I guess he had. He removed his tie and unbuttoned his shirt for me.

  That I no longer had to ask him amused me. He took it as a matter of course that I would want to revisit his furry belly (could I homestead in the territory, I would do so). We were building habits. He settled down into a corner of the couch, and I curled up next to him like a languid cat. He growled, content.

  I believe the world could have ended that night and we would have been happy.

  As the fire cracked and popped, I fell asleep there, my face pillowed on his chest, his arm wrapped around me. He stayed awake, on guard. When I roused myself a couple hours later, he said, “Hey, Snowshoe. About time you woke up.” His first words since I’d returned to his house.

  “Mmm-hmm,” I said. The fire had died, and the room grown chilly. We stood, and he stretched, carefully. He must have felt a little cramped, but he didn’t say a word. He coaxed the fire back to life, added a couple of logs, turned over the record on the stereo, disappeared from the room for a minute and came back with an old wool blanket, thick and warm. He tossed it to me, and when he sat next to me again, I wrapped it around us and we sank into the couch again to watch the fire dance.

  “You think you might stay awake for a while?” he said, his voice a warm buzz in my ear.

  I considered. “Probably not.” And, regretfully, I meant it.

  “What am I? Just a sleeping bag?” he said, gruff.

  “Sorry, Traveler,” I murmured. He pulled me closer, and I don’t remember much after that. The gray dawn found us there, the fire long dead, the colored lights still blinking on, off, on, off, nestled together under the blanket and stretched as well as two men can across a single couch.

  I awoke first. His arms as usual were wrapped protectively around me, and I kept my eyes closed and listened to his satisfied breathing, feeling the rise and fall of his chest, measured, regular, comfortable. It only took him a few minutes to awaken himself. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was me, and the pleasure in his face made me smile.

  “Hey, Bedspread,” he said. “You kept me warm all night long.” I tried to apologize for wasting the whole night sleeping, but he would have none of it. “You were here,” he said. “That’s enough. I was afraid you wouldn’t come back. I thought maybe you’d run off with Lou.”

  “And leave you here to fend for yourself? How could I?”

  “I admit I was jealous as hell. But you came back to me, and you’re here now, and we have a whole weekend to spend together.”

  And spend it we did, every cent, and borrowed against the days to come.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Christmas was a week and a half away. I had already told my parents I wouldn’t be coming home, and they understood. The general never spent that particular holiday with his family, and we were trying to decide how to maximize our time together, as we would have a four-day weekend to ourselves. I was in favor of a new experience like a ski trip or a train ride to Chicago to check out some blues and jazz clubs. He was open to suggestions.

  Julia came over to my apartment on Friday evening. We’d planned our regular movie-and-dinner, but she surprised me by saying she wanted to cook in. We rummaged in the refrigerator and pantry and put together a respectable meal of spaghetti, garlic toast, and salad. After we finished the dishes, Julia sat me down on the couch and parked herself next to me.

  “Okay, Harris,” she said, no-nonsense and getting right to her point. “Please tell me you and the general aren’t personally involved. Please tell me you’re smarter than that.”

  I couldn’t say a word.

  “Oh, Lord,” Julia groaned.

  “How did you know?”

  “Oh, come on, Harris,” she snapped. “You think I’m blind? All those secret signals between you two at the Christmas party got me thinking. I’ll bet you went right back to his house after dumping me. Everyone else would have been gone by the time you got there, of course. I tried your phone half a dozen times over the weekend, and you never returned my calls. I got worried, so I came by on Sunday. You weren’t here, of course. I don’t even have to snoop around to find the evidence, because it’s in plain sight.”

  She counted on her fingers what she’d discovered just this evening, thanks to her unexpected request to eat in: one of his flight suits in the laundry basket in the bathroom, the postcards on the fridge and the package of tobacco in the fridge, not to mention the faint scent of pipe smoke in the apartment, the opera records, the reading glasses on the coffee table. The most damning exhibit? “I don’t even want to know how you got the general to pose for that picture in bed with the teddy bear.”

  “I can explain everything,” I said, when she concluded her list and fixed me with her triumphant glare of disapproval. But I couldn’t, actually, and she knew it.

  “Well?”

  I finally said, “Since July.”

  “What are you even thinking?” she said.

  “I don’t know.” For a second, I wondered what proof of me might be found at the general’s house. I knew I had left clues.

  She shook her head and sighed. “You hid it pretty well if it took me this long to catch on. But I’m the public affairs officer. Remember? If this thing blows up, I have to deal with the fallout. It could be almost as bad as a plane crash in terms of the negative publicity. It’ll make a big noise and a big mess and get you both into a world of trouble,” she said. “The potential for catastrophe boggles the mind.”

  She reiterated what I’d already gone over in my head a hundred times. We’d both be humiliated, he’d retire in shame and probably be demoted in the bargain, and my officer career would be over before it had barely begun.

  I knew. “What do you suggest?”

  “Dump him,” she said promptly.

  I shook my head. “Can’t.”

  “Then resign your commission. Immediately. And General O’Neill can retire immediately. And go have your fairy-tale ending far away from Sixth Air Force.”

  I was willing. Since the beginning, I’d known we would reach a crisis point that would require some action if we were truly sincere about a happily-ever-after for our story. Julia persisted. I wasn’t sure if she was upset because of the impropriety of a lieutenant and a general being involved, particularly since both parties were male, or simply because such folly was happening on her watch, and she’d have to deal with the backlash if the story ever broke. I suspected it was the latter, complicated by the fact that we were such close friends.

  “Look, Harris. You’re a great catch,” she said. “You’re young and good-looking and fun and interesting, and you’ve got a great future ahead of you. Why throw yourself away on an old guy like General O’Neill?”

  I protested. “He’s a great catch, too.”

  “Whatever,” she said, tart. “I don’t imagine you have much competition.” She shook her head and groaned. “Harris, what am I going to do with you? I can’t say I’m surprised to find out that the general is gay, and it doesn’t change my opinion of him one bit. I’m glad to hear he actually has a personal life, but what are you two even thinking? I have half a mind to ask him the same thing.”

  “Don’t you dare!” I said. “Can’t you jus
t pretend you don’t know?”

  She shook her head. “That’s impossible. I’m glad I figured it out. At least I can be prepared. But you’ve got to promise me you’ll be extra careful, even if you think you’re being as secretive as you can possibly be. Double your effort. I mean it. I don’t want this to erupt. I don’t think I could bear it. You mean too much to me. Both of you.”

  We embraced, and I whispered my thanks.

  “Will you at least think about breaking it off?” she said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too late.”

  She sighed again. “I know he’s your type. How do you know it’s not just a physical thing?”

  “Well, there isn’t a checklist in any Air Force regulation,” I said.

  “Ha ha,” she said, flat. “Real funny.”

  How did I know? A very good question. I found myself trying to pin him down, relieved at the opportunity to say his name aloud to someone else who knew him, to brag about him a little, how suggestive his deep voice could be when he’d tell me a secret. How just one look into his chocolate-colored eyes could tell me he was all lit up from the inside.

  How he hardly ever called me by name, but whatever he called me was exactly right. How particular he was about his coffee and toast. How he used just the proper amount of aftershave, so it didn’t overpower. Just a hint, so that when he gave me a bear hug, I’d catch a whiff of it on my shirt afterward. The welcome mat on his belly. His pushbroom mustache and how he rubbed his beard against the back of my neck in the morning before shaving. About his getting lost in a fifty-year-old opera record, just humming along, in tears when the heroine died at the end. The tick of his pocket watch. The postcards he sent me whenever he left town alone. That he hated Moby Dick. How he knew the difference between the samba and the mambo just by listening to the beat. And could dance both. How he slept with my bear when we were apart, and more importantly, how we slept together, like the rhythm and surety of breathing. His pipe and peppermints, and his mouth tasting like the perfect blend of the two.

  Any one of these details might sound insignificant by itself. Together, they seemed contradictory, improbable, absurd if not impossible. How could one explain the intangibility of the beloved?

  “Harris?”

  “He’s not perfect,” I said. “He’s certainly got a temper, and a streak of mischief running through him that would get anyone else into trouble but not him, because he’s a general. He’s going to be a cantankerous old man if I don’t keep him in line. And he’s insecure about being over fifty because he’s as vain as a prima donna, though he’ll deny it to the death. His heart is always showing.”

  “Harris.”

  “How he’s scared he’s going to lose me, and how he hasn’t figured out that it will never happen. How naïve he is about so many things. Practical things, like life outside the military. Like being gay. I want him to think he’s the one taking care of me, but it’s really the other way around, and I want it to stay that way. I never want him to know.”

  “Harris!”

  “What?”

  “Enough, already. You’ve convinced me,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “Have you been listening to yourself? All I asked was a simple question, and you’ve been yakking for ten minutes. And not one word about how handsome he is. Saying you like a guy for his personality sounds like you’re going on the defensive because he’s fat or bald or ugly.”

  I admit that physical characteristics hadn’t even crossed my mind when Julia asked her simple question. All these months later, I knew there was so much more to him than that. We shared an intellectual and maybe even some kind of spiritual bond that transcended the merely physical.

  “I don’t need to point out the obvious,” I said.

  Improbably, Julia giggled. “Remember when I told you last year that he was your type? Of course, I never realized you’d seduce him.”

  “Hey! I can’t take credit for that,” I said. “I didn’t have any idea how to proceed, even if I wanted to. He made the first move.”

  “Probably because he’s a general,” she said. “They always know what to do.”

  “No doubt,” I said. At least her sense of humor had returned, a good thing. She wrapped her arms around me in a comforting hug.

  “If you’ve come this far, maybe you really can make it the rest of the way,” she said. And neither of us could think of anything more to say.

  *

  The sudden snowstorm just before the holidays caught everyone off guard. Monday was overcast and damp, with temperatures in the upper thirties. A slow, monotonous drizzle started in the afternoon, but then the temperature began dropping a couple of degrees at a time. By early afternoon, the thermometer read twenty-six degrees, and the rain had turned to snow.

  The rain froze, icing the roads and making driving difficult. Before dark, the snow began falling with purpose. By next morning, we had nearly a foot, though the roads were passable after the attention of the plows on base and off. The general put the NAF on a two-hour delay. Most of the civilians called in and took the day off.

  The chore of extracting the staff car from the snow and ice fell to me, of course, and I told the general I’d be outside for half the day, probably, digging it out of the drifts and scraping the windows clear in case we needed the transportation. Actually, it was even more work than I’d anticipated. The shoveling was the least of it, as I separated the vehicle from the banked snow and cleared a path so it could be backed out of the parking lot. The car had a glaze of ice on it nearly half an inch thick. I fired up the engine and turned on the defrosters full blast, but the going was slow nonetheless.

  As I hammered away, impatient at the monotony of it, I came to life instantly when a snowball clipped me neatly on the back of my neck, a soft explosion of crystal cold. It didn’t hurt, but it was unexpected. As soon as it hit, it started to melt and slide down my collar. I yelled “Son of a bitch!” and dropped the scraper. I scooped up a handful of snow myself and turned to face my assailant, who was the general, of course, laughing out loud.

  My first missile landed wide of its target, but I took proper aim with my second, cocked my arm, pitched, and connected with his mustache, much to his surprise and mine as well.

  Then came the war. We were all over the parking lot, ducking and weaving behind the cars and squealing like two sets of bad brakes. I knocked off his blue flight cover several times, but no snowball could remove my wool watch cap.

  By the time we quit some twenty minutes later, we were both gasping for breath, gulping in the sharp, ice-blue air and howling so hard we couldn’t stop. His mustache looked like a frosted shredded-wheat biscuit, and his flight suit looked as if he’d been caught under a waterfall. My combat-fatigue pants and field jacket were just as soggy but offered more protection. Still, both of us shivered.

  “You got a couple of good shots in, Snowman,” he said. “I’ll grant you a truce, maybe, but no surrender.”

  “I didn’t earn my Small Arms Expert Marksmanship ribbon for nothing, sir.”

  The car completed the job by itself. I hadn’t turned off the defroster when our battle commenced, and in the meantime, the warmth of the engine running had melted most of the ice.

  “That’s good enough,” the general said. “I’m not driving today if I can help it. Let’s go inside and thaw out. I reckon that coffee will taste pretty good.”

  “My shorts are going to be wet all day,” I said. I examined his wet flight suit. “I see you solved that little problem by not wearing any yourself.”

  He grinned, wicked. “Commando-style. Just for you.”

  I certainly didn’t need that kind of distraction. “People will notice every time you bend over.”

  He grinned. “They won’t. Who’s going to be staring at a fifty-one-year-old man’s ass? Apart from you, I mean.”

  He had me there. I felt damp and chilled for most of the day, in fact, but the
general claimed the spare flight suit from the armoire in my office and thus passed the day warm and pleased with himself. And naked underneath, which would now cross my mind inconveniently every time I saw him in the olive-green “bag.”

  *

  Traveler, not the general, passed a quiet, lazy Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with me in my apartment. I prepared a traditional meal of turkey and dressing, potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, and candied yams. We spent most of the day working a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle on the living room floor, sipping hot cocoa and humming along to the old Christmas records I’d purchased at the Goodwill store. He presented me with a spring-wound pocket watch of my own, not quite as stately as his grandfather’s but beautiful nonetheless, with its own unique tick. In return, I gave him a black cowboy hat, in part to satisfy my own curiosity, and he wore it as naturally as any gaucho.

  We’d even attended midnight Mass together, at his suggestion. He would only admit that he enjoyed hearing traditional Yuletide carols sung by a choir, though I wonder if my mother had extracted a promise from him that we would go. Regardless, the service had been celebratory, full of joy-to-the-worldliness, candlelight, and the exotic mystery of incense. The general squirmed like any impatient five-year-old during the lengthy sermon. I firmly declined his whispered invitation to join him in the restroom at the back of the church so he could give me my Christmas present early.

  But I confess I was tempted.

  If we found ourselves under the same roof one day, I knew in some way I would always be the dad, even if he was the one wrapping himself around me in bed in the dark. I would be the practical one, paying bills on time and making sure we ate enough fruit and vegetables. Him? He’d be the one whispering in my ear at church that we should duck into the restroom for a service call before Communion. And I knew, sometimes, I would allow myself to be persuaded, like an indulgent parent humoring a favorite child.