The Majors

by W. E. B Griffin

  “He finds that somewhat embarrassing,” Lowell said.

  “Oh, Craig!” Sharon said.

  Felter pushed the curtain on the kitchen door aside to see how the charcoal was coming.

  “You haven’t started the fire,” he accused.

  Lowell snapped his fingers. “I knew there was something I had to do besides stick peppercorns in this.”

  It wasn’t that funny, but Sharon and Craig thought it was.

  It took forty minutes for the charcoal to achieve what Major Craig W. Lowell thought was the proper grayish hue. Time, Felter saw, for two more drinks. Sharon, he thought, is going to get sick to her stomach. Then, aware that he was being petulant, he enjoyed the notion that it would serve her right.

  Lowell insisted on red wine to go with the meal. That was really going to make Sharon sick.

  They had just about finished eating when the door chimes played “Be it ever so humble.”

  Felter drained his wine glass and went to answer it. A stocky, gray-haired man in a business suit, carrying a briefcase, stood before the door. Felter saw a black Chevrolet four-door sedan in the driveway behind Lowell’s Eldorado. There was someone behind the wheel. He opened the door.

  “Good evening, sir,” the gray-haired man said.

  “Come in, please, Colonel,” Felter said, opening the door.

  Felter led him into the dining room.

  “You know Mrs. Felter, of course,” Felter said.

  “Ma’am,” the colonel said.

  “Colonel,” Sharon said.

  “This is Major Lowell,” Felter said.

  “How do you do, sir?” Lowell said. They shook hands, but the colonel did not offer his name, and Felter didn’t use it.

  “Can I offer you a glass of wine, Colonel? Or a drink?” Felter asked.

  “Thank you, sir, no. I have the duty.”

  “You apparently have some answers for me,” Felter said. The colonel looked uncomfortable.

  “I rather doubt that either my wife or Major Lowell will rush to the nearest telephone to inform the Russian Embassy of this conversation,” Felter said.

  “Yes, sir,” the colonel said. “Sir, I wasn’t given much to go on, so I decided it would be best to bring you what I have myself.”

  “I’m sorry you had to drive all the way out here,” Felter said.

  “Sir, there are three Franklins, William, under investigation,” the colonel said. He sat down at the table and opened his briefcase. “Two are routine background investigations. I have their summaries with me. The third, Lieutenant Colonel Franklin, who I would guess is the subject of your interest, has been, we believe, sexually compromised—we’re not quite sure by whom—in Yokohama.”

  He laid three folders on the dining room table.

  “Colonel Franklin’s file, sir, is the thick one,” the colonel said.

  Felter nodded. He looked through the two thinner files, then pushed them toward Lowell. Their eyes met. Lowell selected one of the two thinner files and flipped through it quickly. Felter read the file concerning Lieutenant Colonel Franklin, who had apparently discovered at age thirty-six an interest in young, relatively hair-free male youths.

  “Colonel,” Felter said, “when you have finished this, would you be sure that I get a copy and otherwise be kept up to date?”

  “Yes, sir,” the colonel said. “Of course, sir. Sir, if there are any areas of particular interest to you?”

  “Nothing your people are not presently covering very well, Colonel,” Felter said. “I’m afraid that my concerns here amount to much ado about nothing.”

  “It never hurts to make sure, does it, sir?” the colonel said.

  “It sometimes inconveniences people,” Felter said. “Lowell, have you any questions for the colonel?”

  “No, sir,” Lowell said, straight-faced. “The colonel’s people are obviously on top of the situation.”

  The colonel’s pleasure was evident on his face.

  “I feel rather bad about getting you all the way out here, when it turns out that there is no problem,” Felter said. “Are you sure you won’t have a drink? Or perhaps something to eat?”

  “Thank you just the same, sir,” the colonel said. “I have the duty.”

  The colonel stuffed the files back into his briefcase and Felter walked him to the door.

  “Thank you again, Colonel,” Felter said. “I’m very impressed with your response time.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the colonel said.

  Felter closed the door, walked into the kitchen, and made two drinks. He walked into the dining room and set one before Lowell. Then he sat down and stared at him. They stared at each other for a long time, and then they began to chuckle, and then to laugh.

  There was a touch of hysteria in the laughter.

  “Is that a private joke?” Sharon asked, pleased that they were laughing together.

  “The things you get me to do, you bastard,” Felter said.

  “From now on, that poor fruitcake in Yokohama won’t be able to take a leak without three creeps from CIC timing him with stopwatches,” Lowell said.

  “Are you going to tell me or not?” Sharon demanded.

  “I don’t know why the hell I’m laughing,” Felter said. “It really isn’t funny.”

  “There is an element of overkill, isn’t there?” Lowell asked, chuckling.

  “I’m getting mad, Sandy, I mean it,” Sharon said.

  “When Don Juan here was in Algiers,” Felter explained, “he had a Signal Corps photographer sergeant named Franklin, William. The kid did his time, and got out of the army, and went back to Canton, Ohio, where, after a couple of months, he decided that he really didn’t want to spend the rest of his life taking photographs of weddings. So he re-upped and put in for the warrant officer candidate helicopter pilot program. Before they give them their warrants, they give them a complete background investigation. The kid naturally listed Craig here as a reference. The kid figured that a field-grade officer of such an impeccable reputation was a good reference to have.”

  “So?” Sharon said.

  “So MDW sent some sergeant in civilian clothes around to ask Major Lowell if he had, in fact, known Franklin, William B., and to inquire if he would recommend Franklin, William B., for a position of great trust and responsibility.”

  “Well, he could have been in trouble,” Lowell said. “How was I supposed to know?”

  “If he was a friend of yours, you could almost count on his being in trouble,” Felter said.

  “I still don’t understand,” Sharon said.

  “What happened, honey,” Felter said, “was that Don Juan did it to me again. I just put what is laughingly known as the intelligence community in high gear. The deputy chief of Army Counterintelligence rushed out here devoutly believing he was involved in a security matter of the highest priority. If he really knew what it was all about…”

  “Hell, Sandy, you made his whole week. He’ll be waiting for his boss at 0700 to tell him Super Spook himself told him personally he was impressed with his reaction time.”

  “I don’t know why I’m laughing,” Felter said. “Goddamn you, Craig, you’re dangerous.”

  “Hand me the phone, Sharon, honey, will you?” Lowell asked.

  “Don’t you dare!” Felter said. “God knows who he wants to call.”

  “I’m going to call Franklin, that’s who I’m going to call.”

  “No, you’re not,” Felter said.

  “Why not?”

  “For one thing, you’re drunk,” Felter said. “The last thing that kid needs now, two months before he graduates, is a telephone call from a drunken officer.”

  “I’m drunk? You’re the one who could barely pronounce ‘reaction time,’” Lowell said.

  “Don’t call him, Craig,” Felter said. “You’d just make trouble for him.”

  “What Craig wants to do is see if he needs anything,” Sharon said, somewhat thickly, defending him.

  “Right. Wha
t’s wrong with that?” Lowell demanded of Felter.

  “You’re just going to call attention to him,” Felter said. “That’s the last thing he needs right now.”

  “I’ll call Phil Parker,” Lowell said. “He’s down there.”

  “Don’t call anybody,” Felter said. “Quit while you’re ahead.”

  Lowell thumbed his nose at Felter and picked up the telephone.

  Felter was pleased when Lowell could not complete his call to Captain Philip Sheridan Parker IV, and was limited to a brief, maudlin conversation with Dr. Antoinette Parker.

  Antoinette assured him that she would have Phil check to see what, if anything, Warrant Officer Candidate Franklin needed, and then asked to speak to Sharon.

  Lowell moved to an armchair in the living room while the women talked, and fell asleep. That solved another problem, Felter decided. Lowell was obviously too drunk to drive back into Washington. Virginia police were death on drunken driving. The chair was reclining. Felter got Lowell into a nearly horizontal position, loosened his necktie and belt, removed his shoes, and draped a blanket over him.

  Sharon was still talking to Antoinette when he finished.

  He waved at her, and went upstairs and got in bed.

  He heard her come into the room ten minutes later, listened to the sound of her undressing, felt the bed sag as she got in beside him.

  “You awake?” Sharon asked.

  “I am now,” Sandy replied.

  “Antoinette wants us to come down there for New Year’s Eve,” Sharon said.

  Felter didn’t reply.

  “I want to go, Sandy,” Sharon said.

  “It’s a thousand miles down there,” Sandy said. “You really want to go a thousand miles to sit around an officer’s club full of drunks in dress uniforms?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “What did you say?”

  “I want to go,” Sharon repeated. “I want to walk into an officer’s club with you, in uniform. I want to wear my West Point ring, and I want you to wear your West Point ring, and I want you to wear your uniform with all your ribbons and all your medals. I’m just a little sick of pretending the man I’m married to is an economic analyst for the goddamned CIA.”

  She’s really drunk, Sanford Felter realized. Sharon rarely swore.

  The confirmation of that analysis came when he rolled over and put his arms around her and found that she was naked.

  “Surprise, surprise,” she said.

  “Not that I mind, of course, but what brought this on?” Felter asked.

  “I got very horny, Sandy,” Sharon said, solemnly, “when Colonel Whatsisname was here.”

  “Let me have that again?” he asked, amused. Her hand moved to his groin. “Women are turned on by strong and powerful men,” Sharon said. She giggled as he started to grow erect. “Wheee!” she said.

  He put his hand to her breast. It was firm and the nipple erect.

  “You were the strongest man in the room,” she said. “Stronger, Sandy, than that colonel. Stronger than Craig.”

  He was, he realized, deeply flattered. Even if she was drunk.

  In vino veritas, he thought.

  “But I never get a chance to show you off,” she said. “I want to show you off, Sandy. I never get a chance to be an officer’s lady. That’s important to a woman. You’re a man and you don’t understand that.”

  “If you really want to go to Rucker, we’ll go to Rucker,” he said. He was a little ashamed of himself. Going to Rucker was a preposterous idea. What he wanted to do was screw. A stiff prick, he told himself, has no conscience.

  Sharon was a good solid woman. This was the third time since they had been married that he knew for sure she was drunk. She had gotten drunk after they buried Craig’s wife, and she had gotten drunk when her father died. When he thought about that, there was something unnerving about her being drunk now. Was ‘her nerves’ that serious a problem?

  He put that thought from his mind. There was something wicked about her being drunk now and wanting him to screw her. He liked it. In the morning, she would be a little embarrassed about taking too much to drink, about what she was doing now. She would realize then that going to Rucker was really absurd.

  She twisted away from him.

  “What are you doing?” Sandy asked.

  The bedside lamp came on.

  “I want to see,” Sharon said. “I want to watch!”

  “You little vixen, you!” he said, and knelt between her legs. He could feel his excitement in his chest. He thought that it would be four days before the kids came back from Newark. He thought he would bring a bottle home some afternoon.

  “Fuck me, Sandy!” Sharon hissed in his ear. “Fuck me good!”

  He did.

  When Sanford Felter went downstairs in the morning, Sharon was making Craig eat scrambled eggs, despite his protests that all he wanted was a cup of coffee.

  She avoided her husband’s eyes when he sat down at the table. She scrambled some more eggs and put them before him, with toast and grape jelly and grapefruit juice. Then she sat down at the table, and stirred her coffee.

  “Craig,” she said, “if Sandy can get off, will you take us to Fort Rucker for New Year’s Eve? Antoinette asked us.”

  Lowell, surprised, hesitated before replying. Sandy knew that Craig didn’t want to spend New Year’s Eve at the Rucker officer’s open mess any more than he did.

  “Madame,” Lowell said, “Lowell Airlines is at your beck and call.”

  Sharon looked at Sandy, met his eyes.

  “The kids can stay with Mama Felter,” Sharon said.

  XIV

  (One)

  Fort Rucker, Alabama

  11 November 1958

  QUESTION: What is a WOC?

  ANSWER: Sir, a WOC is

  something one fwows

  at a wabbit.

  It had been rumored among both the staff of Warrant Officer Candidate Battalion, the U.S. Army Aviation School, and among the WOCs themselves that an amnesty would be granted by the commanding general to mark the Thanksgiving holiday. Major General Paul T. Jiggs, the post commander, who had otherwise earned a reputation as a starchy bastard, seemed to take some kind of a perverse pleasure in freeing WOCs from restrictions imposed by the WOC staff on whatever slim excuse he could find. Thanksgiving, to both the restricted and the restrictors, seemed to be just the sort of excuse the general would be pleased to have available.

  Of the 254 WOCs in Companies A through D, thirty-two WOCs were under restriction of varying degree. Those WOCs whose academic grades were below acceptable standards, and who were guilty of no other offense against the rules and regulations, were restricted to the WOC area, but permitted to sign themselves out at the orderly room and visit the post exchange and the post theater. This authority specifically excluded visiting the post exchange cafeteria.

  WOCs guilty of other violations were under progressively more restrictive restraints, in proportion to their offenses against the regulations. The most severe restriction imposed (beyond which punishment was expulsion from the WOC program) required that the WOCs, between the 0600 and 2200 hours, confine themselves to their rooms. During this period, dressed in a Class “A” uniform, they had the option of standing or sitting at their study desk. They were not permitted to smoke. Aside from a thirty-minute period during which they were permitted to read the daily newspaper, their reading material was limited to official textbooks and army manuals. The operation of radios, televisions, or other electronic amusement devices was proscribed.

  The most common violation with which the WOCs on restriction were charged was “conduct unbecoming a warrant officer candidate and a gentleman.” The specific charge was most often “use of vulgar and/or obscene and/or blasphemous language.”

  Ninety percent of the WOC class of which WOC William B. Franklin was a member consisted of regular army noncommissioned officers between the ages of twenty years and six months and twenty-six years and six months,
and in the grades of E-5 through E-7, that is to say staff sergeants, sergeants first class, and master sergeants, or their technical counterparts, specialists five, six, and seven. There were tank commanders and cartographers, first sergeants and budget analysts, infantry platoon sergeants and medical corps x-ray technicians. There were aircraft mechanics and avionic technicians, photographers, small arms artificers, and even one farrier, who had come to flight school from Fort Meyers, Virginia, where he had been in charge of the horses used in the military funerals held half a dozen times a day at Arlington National Cemetery.

  What they had in common, in addition to generally splendid physical condition, an average of 6.7 years of enlisted service, and Army General Classification Test (AGCT) scores averaging 123.6 (an AGCT score of 110 is required of officer candidates), was the desire to become both helicopter pilots and warrant officers.

  They were old soldiers; they had been around. They knew that the pay scale for warrant officers was precisely that of officers in the ranks of second lieutenant through major. They would put up with whatever bullshit the army threw at them for six months, or however long it took, and they’d come out of it with a warrant, and it would be sayonara and auf Wiedersehen to the bullshit that went with being a goddamned EM. If they liked the life of an officer, they could wangle a commission and go for thirty, and if it turned out to be a pain in the ass, they’d just put in their twenty (drawing flight pay meanwhile) and retire at fifty percent of their base pay.

  Getting through the bullshit was going to pose no problem at all. They weren’t a bunch of fucking recruits, for Christ’s sake. They knew the army game, and they knew how to play it. Cover your ass, keep your shoes shined, your pants pressed, your hair cut, and your mouth shut.

  The army, for Christ’s sake, was not going to fuck around with a bunch of old soldiers.

  The orders which assigned them to the U.S. Army Aviation Center, Fort Rucker, Alabama, specifically forbade travel by private automobile and clearly stated that since the warrant officer candidates would be restricted to the barracks for the first six weeks of their training, “dependents are discouraged from accompanying sponsors.”

  Well, bullshit! Let the Old Lady drive the car, get a motel or a room someplace, and then it would simply be a matter of going over the fence at night to share the nuptial couch.