by John Dalmas
And that, Macurdy thought, was the end of that, because he seldom went to church. But seeing him in his '35 Chevy one day, getting gas at the Sinclair station, she asked him for a lift home-she'd just left her car for a major tuneup-and he said sure. Before he got her home, she was groping him. She wanted to repay him for saving her life, she told him, and her husband was out of town.
What really shook him was how tempted he'd been. He told himself he wouldn't go to church again till after Pastor Huseby was transferred to another parish. Something else would happen first, however, that made his resolution irrelevant.
10
War!
Macurdy awoke one Friday-September 1, 1939-to a kid shouting in the street: "Extra! Extra Paper!" The only time he coup recall the Oregonian distributing an extra edition in Nehtaka was when Bruno Richard Hauptman was executed for the Lindbergh kidnaping. Pulling on his pants, he hurried outside, called to the boy, and bought a paper.
The Germans had bombed Warsaw and invaded Poland. There was war in Europe! Not civil war in Spain, or Italians fighting somewhere in Africa, but an invasion of one European country by another, with France and England almost sure to get involved. It was the war people had feared might happen and spread, maybe even to involve the United States.
That noon he read it to Klara, translating into German. Her thin old lips were a grim slit. Like Hansi Sweiger's dad, she'd disapproved early and emphatically of Hitler and his policies. Two of her four brothers had been killed fighting for Germany in World War One. A quarter of the village's men of military age had died, and others had been maimed. All because of war, she said, war and crazy rulers!
At first the war in Europe didn't affect life in Nehtaka. The depression had already eased a lot; local men had left to work on dam construction in Washington state and Montana, and projects of other sorts. Now shipbuilding boomed all along the coast, and logging increased. Jobs were easy to find. People listened more to the news on radio, read the papers with greater interest, and talked about the war. In the logging country there was particular interest in the Nazi invasion of Norway and the Soviet invasion of Finland.
But the changes were neither deep nor difficult, let alone painful. America was at peace.
The war became more troubling when the Nazi Wehrmacht ground its way through the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and the Balkan peninsula. The British army, badly mauled in the defense of northern France, was driven from the continent at Dunkirk, leaving behind its armor and heavy weapons. Afterward came night after night of German bombing attacks on English cities. And Britain, an island nation dependent on shipping for many of its needs, had more than three million tons of merchant vessels sunk by German submarines in 1940 alone.
But though some people believed that America would be in the war before it was over, so far it was foreign, and not fully real.
In September 1940 that reality level jumped. With passage of the Selective Service Act America's first ever peacetime conscription law-millions of American men registered for potential military service. Curtis wrote to Indiana and got a birth certificate. His birth year was given as 1904, which startled Fritzi but not Mary. Curtis had written 1914 on the employment form, by accident, he said. He still looked 25, give or take a couple.
Now great military training camps had to be built, and the demand for lumber really boomed. Within weeks, the first drafts of young men were loaded onto trains and hauled away. But at age 36, and as Nehtaka County's undersheriff (Earl had left to be police chief in Manders, California), Macurdy was marginal as far as the draft was concerned.
Meanwhile times got better as the defense industries grew. In Nehtaka, the Saari Brothers greatly expanded their machine shop, retooling it to build bomber parts for the Army Air Corps. There were so many jobs, they had to hire women!
And in the summer of 1941, Mary, now 25 years old, was visited again by morning sickness.
By then the Germans had invaded the Soviet Union, and advanced so rapidly, it seemed they'd defeat the Russians before winter. Meanwhile there were major diplomatic differences with the Japanese, but most Americans paid much less attention to those. Asia was farther off than Europe, geographically and culturally, and anyway, diplomatic problems seemed a long way from warfare.
Of more immediate importance was the basketball game between Nehtaka and Saint Helens high schools, on Friday evening, December 5. Nehtaka won in overtime, 36 to 34.
Two days later, at about 10:30 AM, Curtis was in the kitchen drinking coffee, reading the funnies, and listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on the radio. The music was interrupted by an announcement: Japanese bombers had just attacked Pearl Harbor.
The war was no longer someone else's.
A lot of Nehtaka County's young men enlisted. The Severtson Brothers lost quite a few of their loggers, and advertised for men. On the Monday after New Year's Day, 1942, two of Fritzi's deputies enlisted, one in the Marines, one in the Maritime Service. That evening after supper, Fritzi commented (in German, of course) that he was glad Curtis was 37 years old. "Otherwise the draft would be after you for sure."
Curtis looked thoughtfully at him. "I've been talking with Mary about whether I should enlist."
Fritzi, alarmed, looked at Mary. "What did you tell him?" She met her father's gaze. "That it's up to him."
"What about the little one?"
"It will be all right. And so will Curtis."
Her father grunted. "Bullets and shells do not select their victims. If someone is in their way, the person is dead." He turned to Klara. "Talk sense to them, Mama!"
The old woman's jaw clenched. She too met her son's gaze. "If Curtis wants to go, he should. If Hitler and those Japaner win the war, we will learn how bad things can be, even here."
Snorting, Fritzi put down his knife and fork. "They can never win. We are too much for them here."
Klara sat taller, straighter, more stem. "They will win if we do not do what we can. And if Mary wants to go to work at Saari's, making-whatever it is they make there, I can cook. I can even keep house; a little dust never hurt anything." Curtis grinned in spite of himself. For years Klara had made war on dust, even when she had to wage it by proxy. So much for the unchangeable."
Fritzi subsided. It hadn't occurred to him that his mother would side against him. Now it seemed to him that if Curtis hadn't already made up his mind, Klara's declaration might well make the difference.
That night Curtis and Mary lay in bed listening to a cold winter rain beat on the porch roof beneath their window They'd just agreed-Curtis would go. Not in the Maritime Service or Navy-he'd said that in battle he'd feel trapped on a ship at sea-but in the Army. Now she reached, took his hand in her's.
"But you'll wait till the baby's born? It will only be a couple of months."
He raised himself on an elbow and kissed her. "Of course I will. Unless the draft takes me."
"And long enough afterward that you can make love to me again. I know it's selfish of me, but I'm going to miss you terribly, especially lying here alone when you're far away."
He kissed her again, then they both lay staring at the ceiling, each with their own thoughts. The last time he'd seen Axel Severtson, the logger had reminisced on their first meeting, then added, "You know, you ain't changed any at all. Vhen you first come here, you looked like a big kid, a big strong kid vhat had got his nose broke somevhere, and vhen I stop to really look, you look yust as young now." He'd laughed. "Maybe you been drinking from that fountain of youth. Vhat vill you charge to get me a bottle?"
And at work, Lute Halvoy had commented, "Macurdy, you better start showing your age, or people will think you're a draft dodger."
How long, he wondered, did they have, he and Mary, before they had to go somewhere else? Before people really began to wonder? Mary understood, of course. Sometimes when she looked thoughtfully and a bit wistfully at him, it seemed to him she was thinking about a future when she was old and he was "still young." Eight years ago it hadn't seemed f
ully real. Now it had begun to.
Sometimes he wondered if he'd done her wrong by marrying her. Once he'd even wondered out loud. "If you'll remember," she'd answered, "I was the one who proposed. And if you're still young when I'm old and dried up, it's you who's likely to regret." She'd paused. "I read that in China, a wife who's gotten old will sometimes select a ripe young girl and bring her home, to help around the house and keep her husband company in bed. I might not want one in the house with me, but if you were seeing a girlfriend now and then, I'd understand. When I'm old."
He'd closed her lips with a kiss. "Don't say such things," he'd whispered.
The love behind her saying it should have touched him, warmed him. Instead, her words had been like a large stone on his chest, and when he remembered them, they still were.
Three days later, Mary miscarried.
Dr. Wesley didn't show the seven-month fetus to the parents, though he would have if they'd insisted. He told Curtis it would never have been remotely normal; that they, and it, were lucky it was stillborn. "I'm surprised she hadn't miscarried a lot earlier," he said. "I suspect it lived as long as it did because your wife was so determined to have a child."
She'd probably have three or four of them by now, Macurdy thought, if she had a normal husband.
That night, for the first time since he'd returned home to Farside, to the United States of America, he dreamed of Melody. The details were as clear and normal as in his recurring dreams with Varia, but the setting was different. Instead of a gazebo beside a sea, they met in something that reminded him of pictures he'd seen of the Jefferson Monument, though much smaller, and she wore a flowing robe of what seemed to be silk.
Afterward he didn't remember much she'd said in the dream, but he remembered her last words the rest of his life. "Curtis, your Mary loves you deeply and selflessly. Accept her love as offered, and don't ever imagine you're not deserving. She's much happier for having married you."
He wished afterward that he'd made love with Melody before he awoke, as he did in his dreams with Varia. Probably, he decided, the souls in heaven didn't have sex, even in dreams.
In mid-February, Macurdy enlisted. He told himself it wasn't a matter of wanting to, but of patriotism. But in fact, once he'd signed up, he felt a focus he hadn't felt since the end of his war with the Ylver.
Three weeks later he was on a train, enroute to infantry training at Camp Joseph T. Robinson, Arkansas.
He knew this would change his life, but he hadn't a notion how greatly, how powerfully. Or how well he'd prepared for it.
PART TWO
Airborne!
11
Infantry Training
The Camp Robinson military reservation seemed big as a county. Its red-clay hills were covered mostly with scrub oak. The more moderate terrain had mixed woods of larger trees, laced with creeks and interspersed with abandoned fields. Part of the camp itself had new, cream-colored frame buildings, but most of the trainees lived in squad tents boasting wooden floors and a small round sheet metal stove. It was the second week in March, and winter had launched a counteroffensive against encroaching spring. The tent sides were tightly secured to keep out the wind, rain, sleet and snow.
At the end of each row of tents was a coal bin from which they took their fuel. The real problem was lighting it. Even with the draft and damper closed, fire in the little knee-high stove burned out in a few hours and had to be restarted, which was hard to do without wood for kindling. And usually there was no wood. The men did the best they could, using cookie cartons, newspapers, and lighter fluid. A few of the more adventurous foraged in the night, hunting for kindling in the bins of other companies. On the third night, four men from Company B were caught stealing wood from the fuel bin at D Company's messhall, and the resulting fight sent three of them to the dispensary with minor injuries, notably split lips.
In the nine years since returning from Yuulith, Macurdy had mostly avoided showing his powers. Except for that night in the jungle outside Miles City, he'd let no one but Mary see him use magic to light a fire. On Macurdy's fourth morning in 2nd Squad, 2nd Platoon of Company B, and with the grass crisp and white with frost, the stove was out as usual. While several other trainees looked on, he knelt before it. Poking a finger through the opened draft, he drew on the Web of the World and directed a thin stream of white hot plasma into the coal. None of them could see what he did, but within seconds they could hear the fire, and stood variously gawping or frowning. Then one asked, "How the hell did you do that?"
Macurdy had learned in Yuulith that a poor explanation often works better than a good one. "It's something my Aunt Varia taught me years ago," he said.
Actually it was Arbel, not Varia, who'd taught him to start fires, but "Aunt Varia" sounded more innocuous and required no elaboration. Besides, Arbel had done it differently; Arbel's technique, though fine for wood, seemed to Macurdy not intense enough to ignite coal. Later, also in Yuulith, Macurdy had learned by sheer chance to create and cast small balls of plasma, but he'd wanted to provide more intense and prolonged heat. So improvising, he'd created a plasma jet.
Of course it got talked about, and that evening, Men from other squads were asking him, hopefully but skeptically, to show them how to start fires. His solution was to start a small coal fire on the ground behind the company shower room, from which they could take coals with a shovel; the latrine orderly could keep it burning. The company officers were soon aware of the fire and= idea it had been, but assumed he'd started it from the firebox in the big water heater. They credited him with resourcefulness, rather than magic, a resourcefulness that went into his personnel record.
The became aware of Macurdy in other respects, as well, for in his new circumstances, he showed leadership qualities he'd mostly subdued after leaving Yuulith. After the first week, he was made trainee leader of 2nd Platoon. He excelled at everything-the obstacle course, the rifle range, boxing matches… even foot races! The company clerk noticed his birth date, and certain it was a typo, called him in. "Macurdy," he said, "your birth date is listed as 1904, but you're obviously not 38 years old. Assuming that only one digit was typed in wrong, it's got to be 1914, right?"
Here, it seemed to Macurdy, was a chance to bring his official age more in line with his appearance. "Right," he answered, "1914."
There was one minor awkward incident. In the showers, his virtual lack of body hair, even pubic hair, impelled someone to say, "Jesus Christ, Macurdy! Whataya do? Shave your body?"
"Nobody in my family's got enough body hair to notice," he answered mildly. "I don't even stave my face. Probably never will." Then his gaze and voice turned cold. "Is there anything about it you don't like?" And that was the end of that.
Training had started mildly but built rapidly. At the end of the first two weeks, an ordinary training day might start with an hour in the exercise pits and on the obstacle course, followed by hiking four or five miles with full field pack (usually routed over Drag-Ass Hill) to some field training area, for a lecture followed by hands-on training of some sort, capped by a four or five-me march back. And it continued to get tougher. Commonly, lunch was served from a truck, about as close to a vehicle as the trainees ever got. More often than not they trained in the evening, too, perhaps with an hour's speed march-,again with full field pack-or a night combat problem. Captain Reid was especially strong on filling open hours with speed marches and bayonet drill.
Normally, after an indeterminate number of weeks at infantry camp-as few as seven to as many as seventeen-the trainees were shipped off to one or another of the new divisions constantly being formed. After six weeks, Macurdy was ordered to report to the company's executive officer after breakfast. The XO, a 1st lieutenant, smiled genially.
"Macurdy," he said, "I've heard good things about you from Lieutenant Bosler and Sergeant Hogan-among other things that you're an outstanding soldier, and someone the men in your platoon look up to. So I looked over your personnel papers. No high school, but you
r alpha score is hi; And you have experience in law enforcement; obviously you're accustomed to exercising authority. In other words-" He paused, looking meaningfully at Macurdy. "You'd make a fine officer, the kind the army's looking for. I want to recommend you go to Officer Candidate School when you've finished here."
Macurdy's response lag was about one second. "No disrespect, sir," he said, "but I'm not at all sure I want to be an officer."
The XO's eyebrows rose. "Well, you don't need to decide now. But being an officer is a lot more agreeable than being an enlisted man. Think about it. If you change your mind, let me know. But don't take too long. Training here can be cut short any time, and you could be shipped off to a new division somewhere. At which point it may be too late."
"Incidentally, you might like to know that Sergeant Samuels caught an error in your birth date-someone had typed in 1904! The correction's been passed up lines."
He dismissed Macurdy then, and the once self-made warlord oЈ Yuulith's Rude Lands, now a buck private, left wondering why he'd declined to volunteer for OCS.
But over the next several weeks, he wasn't even tempted to change his mind. He'd learned long ago to trust his intuitions. Someday they might lead him into something he'd regret, but so far… He paused to review a few of them: marrying Varia, following the old conjure woman up Injun Knob, beating up Zassfel and his bullies in the House of Heroes, invading the Ylvin marches… He'd felt regret a few times-a time or two almost more than he could handle-but things had worked out. He wasn't going to change the way he operated now.
In their tenth week, at the end of a training day, an unfamiliar officer addressed the company before they were dismissed. On his blouse he wore a stylized silver parachute with wings, and on his overseas cap, a large patch with a parachute symbol. Instead of an officers neat oxford shoes, or rough G.I. clodhoppers and lace-up canvas leggings, he wore boots that gleamed like polished teak.