When he left in the morning he found a manuscript lying on the top of his visored cap. It was dedicated to his initials:
For you, my love,
Through all the bridegroom spontaneity,
Through all your e’er-retreating suave compassion,
A thrill immutable
Sustains me like a wing of eider.
And I know
That I shall never faint or feel forlorn
As long as you, my love,
Return to me like snow, like spring, like birds.
The seasons’ secret
Turns in me as the earth remembers time,
Remembering and wanting and desiring:
These are the solitary sins of wives,
And I am scarlet with them,
Vermilion with my love for you, my love.
He read this lovely thing through in the chill dead light of the dawn in the streets of Roanoke. He had a vague impulse that he should seek Lucinda out in her bed and smother her with kisses. But then he reconsidered and went to his train.
Captain Motes arrived at the infantry camp in South Carolina. He came with just a smidgin of fanfare. He knew that it was all very well to slip into your place like a late guest. But this was different. He was a captain in the Army of the United States, and he desired to make his position plain, without goading anybody. Consequently he demanded a little more attention than civilians were getting. And he got it on the train because officers’ uniforms were still virtually unknown. His tactical intuition told him that soon America was going to war. Americans must accustom themselves to the idea of the army officer. Consequently he sat haughtily in his parlor car and answered in considerable detail the questions of anxious old ladies. He made dark prophecies of what their grandchildren might have to go through in the next few years.
At the station he was slightly autocratic with the nigra porters. Arriving at five-thirty in the morning, he spent half an hour calling goddam over the telephone wires till he got some action. Rancid from their sleep, a group of drowsy nigras turned up in dungarees. They fumbled around with his baggage, heavy with his impedimenta and Lucinda’s poems.
—Goddam it, get a move on, Captain Motes called. Are you still waiting for John Brown?
—Yassuh, the nigras said in chorus.
At the gate of the camp a sentinel stopped his taxi and saluted. It was the first time he’d been saluted outside of summer camp. He knew that soon, all over America, young men would be saluting him on every street in every town. He’d got in early. Soon he’d be Major Motes, and then Lieutenant Colonel Motes and then. . . .
The dawn in South Carolina is a red and sullen thing. First the trees stand out like corpses with splayed arms. Then the captain saw the rocks resting on the hillsides, the hardness of the sky, and the burnish of the air.
While waiting for headquarters to open, he took his breakfast at the PX. He hadn’t a stomach for coffee, but he did take some tomato juice, several glasses of milk, and a piece of toast.
—Guess it’s not often that you see an officer here, eh? he said cheerily to the waitress.
—No suh, she squeaked. An dey ain’t supposed to come here at all at all. Ah hates officers. Tinks dere rears doesn’t stink like other folkeses’ does. When dese American men gits a piece of brass on dere shoulders, dey tinks dey’s Mussolini. No suh, ah done want no truck widdem, ah don’t.
—Well, there are officers and officers, Captain Motes said, laughing indulgently.
—Dere shouldn’t be any officers at all, the nigra waitress said, furrowing her mouth and mopping the other tables. When you gits an army, you gits to killin fore ya knows it. An killin makes trouble to Americans. Dey ain’t used to it, cept on a small scale like in lynchins. An when you makes some better dan udders, you is askin for a bruise.
—Wishful thinking, Captain Motes answered, leaving her a nickel tip. There have always been wars and there always will be wars. And there will always be officers and enlisted men.
—Dere’s wars, said the nigress, retreating and waving an umber arm, cause a few men wants em. An ah sees yo is one of dose men. . . . Goomawnin to yo, capting.
At post headquarters he went through the formality of saluting the adjutant, even though this officer was only a first lieutenant. Captain Motes enjoyed the games of the army. After his salute he stood alertly at attention in the ideal position of the officer, according to the Officers’ Guide. The adjutant had a Vermont twang and the businesslike air of one whose inner life is at loose ends.
—Captain Motes, we are somewhat embarrassed. . . . You’re a Virginia man. . . . May I ask whether you have all the prejudices and double standards of Virginia men? I have never yet met one who realized he was living after the year 1861, either in respect to the Great Rebellion or in his relations with women.
—Goddam it, sir, cried Captain Motes, keeping his hands tight against the seam of his trousers, we’re all together in the service of our country. I was ordered to active duty, sir, not to fight Mr. Lincoln’s war all over again. You think that all we southerners are on the aggressive against you . . .
—You reassure me, captain, the adjutant said, uncramping his Vermont fingers. The fact is, a captain is a difficult rank to fit into an infantry replacement training center. . . . You’re neither a second nor a first lieutenant, with whom we could do something. . . . Thus I must inform you that the verbal orders of the commanding general are for you to command D Company of the 50th Battalion. This is an all-Negro outfit. Report to regimental headquarters for your billet. Good morning, Captain Motes.
For more than a year he was company commander to one hundred and fifty nigras. Since they had a thirteen-week training cycle, he saw the same black faces for three months. He saw the same black mess sergeant who kept thick steaks for him in the ice-box of the mess. Cycle after cycle he saw the same black first sergeant who’d gone to Harvard and wrote sonnets. Cycle after cycle he saw the same black supply sergeant who whisked GI equipment into town and sold it through the nigress with whom he shacked.
—These goddam nigras will drive me mad, Captain Motes said to himself as he played solitaire in the bachelor officers’ quarters.
Gradually therefore he evolved a policy whereby the nigras shouldn’t drive him mad. He knew that the War Department vacillated on the nigra issue. On one hand every privilege was given them, but on the other their segregation was complete. Captain Motes, from under his campaign hat with the oak leaves, standing rigid and tense in his leggins, watched his nigras fire on the range, run the obstacle course, take their shortarm inspections. He shook his head over MP reports on their Saturday nights in town. He cut out all passes. He smelled the musk of their bodies as they forgot to stand at attention before his desk in the orderly room. Their venereal rate was the highest in camp. He tried court-martialing for every case of venereal disease until the commanding general heard of it. Finally he no longer dealt with his men personally. From his orderly room, himself unseen, came a vise of control and discipline. On Sunday afternoons he had his men, wearing full field packs, out washing their barracks windows.
Pearl Harbor came and went. Every month Captain Motes put in for a transfer away from his nigras. He was always refused. His invisible regimentation froze his nigras and their officers. They became machines. Captain Motes said that, now America had declared war, this was the way it should be. He’d sacrificed friends and the good will of his men for results. He was always by himself, playing solitaire or charting graphs of training cycles.
In the Louisiana maneuvers Captain Motes’s nigras were captured to the last man while storming Hill Fifty-eight.
—Captain, a brigadier general said, you have done a beautiful job in killing all combat initiative in your men. I hereby hand you the booby prize as an infantry company officer.
In the summer of 1942 Captain Motes was relieved of his nigras. Summoned by the adjutant, he found the Vermonter, still a first lieutenant, crinkling typewritten onionskin in his hands.
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—Captain, the twang clattered, the War Department wants you. Remember us when you go to Washington. Think of us poor foot soldiers. Yours is the fate of all those too good for the infantry. . . . You’re going into military intelligence. You seem to have some recherché talent that the rest of us lack. Or perhaps you know your congressman too well? . . . At any rate here are your orders, and Godspeed to you. . . . I have a feeling you won’t die in this war, captain.
—Goddam it, sir, Captain Motes said, we can do no more than obey our orders, can we?
—Some orders, said the lieutenant, returning the salute, are easier to take than others.
Captain Motes was sent to Camp Ritchie to learn prisoner-of-war interrogation. On the way up he wondered how he’d ever learn German. But then any Kraut knew German. So for days at Ritchie he fought from dummy house to dummy house. When those playing the part of prisoners allowed themselves to be interrogated, he’d listen to the hiss and sputter of their German, and his face would ease into an understanding smile. At every ja he’d nod his head. Colonels often came to Ritchie from Washington to look at the school, for it was a pet of the War Department. Then Captain Motes would take it upon himself to explain what was going on to these visiting dignitaries. He kept on the lookout to buttonhole inspecting parties. The other student officers were all too busy practicing hiccoughing in German at one another.
Such and other things he told Lucinda. Occasionally he could get up to see her in Roanoke. Spreading his hands on the oilcloth in their antique kitchen, he’d hint of task forces, of combat teams. His strategic sense told him that there must be an invasion of North Africa to start taking the Mediterranean away from the Axis. Ripples of horror spread over Lucinda’s face. It was the first time he’d ever really been eloquent with her. He bought an illuminated globe for their library and a supply of colored ribbons and thumbtacks so that she could plot every phase of the coming American struggle in Europe. She began reading War and Peace and wrote a poem beginning:
Men who run forth to die
From the Mississippi, from Iowa, from Nohwata Oklahoma . . .
It was published in a Roanoke evening newspaper. The ladies’ clubs said that she would be the Winifred M. Letts of this war.
—If I should die someplace in Europe, Captain Motes said. Lucinda covered her temples with her hands.
—Goddam it, darling, he resumed, how strange life is . . . all my life I’ve had something unsatisfied in the back of my brain.
—Don’t, she breathed, looking at him through her fingers, don’t, lovey. We play with greatness to our own peril. It’s such a perilous thing. We mature so slowly, keeping within ourselves the kernel of our own time sense. And suddenly it bursts on the world. . . .
Her fecundity in these days was such that she wrote and wrote, standing at her black walnut antique writing desk. She would have fainted if Hattie the nigress hadn’t occasionally brought her a tray with sandwiches and fruit juice.
In October, 1942, Captain Motes was alerted for overseas movement. Washington was whirling softly and pregnantly. People ducked in and out of the Mayflower and the Willard. Briefcases tossed through the streets like flat somber Japanese lanterns.
And Captain Motes got a company of one hundred men. Daily he went with them on the range, insisting on their firing all the weapons in the training manuals. There kept recurring in his vocabulary phrases such as D-Day and Cut to Pieces. He scurried around tight-lipped and absent, forgetting to speak to old acquaintances.
One night, though they were alerted for staging, he slipped under the barbed wire and met Lucinda at Hampton Roads. It was forbidden to hold any communication from the port of embarkation, but Captain Motes knew that as an intelligence officer he could trust himself. Lucinda wept when he told her they were sailing the following morning. He told too the number of ships in the convoy. He guessed also that they’d land on the northwest coast of Africa.
—We must rig up a code, lovey, she said panting, so I’ll always know just where you are. And all the other pieces of information a wifey needs for her peace of mind.
—Not necessary, he answered smiling and patting her hand.
He looked around the restaurant with a hideous penetration, then took something with a wooden handle on it out of his pocket.
—Mercy, lovey! What’s that, a grenade?
—A base censor stamp. With this on the envelope I can write you every goddam thing that happens. . . . And . . . if I shouldn’t come back, remember me as I am tonight . . . and if I have ever hurt you . . .
She laid her head on the tablecloth and streaked it with the rivers from her eyes. Captain Motes kissed her on the hair and raced out into the night. That was the way he desired to remember Lucinda in the pelting of bullets and the screaming and battle fury of maddened and dying men.
On 7 November 1942, the great armada bobbed uncertainly. Word passed that they were off the coast of Africa.
—This is it, kids, was the word that flicked from mouth to mouth like a tight bit.
Captain Motes spent all his time with his men, though it was difficult to brake himself down to their tempo, which seemed maddeningly inert. They chewed gum and shot craps. He encouraged them and cracked jokes at them. He called up his store of warlike stories, even going back to Julius Caesar.
—One of the great moments in the history of the world! Goddam it, men, look at me!
Whereas the other officers on his ship seemed idiotically calm, like men playing in the shadow of doom. This was the way it had been at Pearl Harbor, Captain Motes told himself, pitying them their complacency.
—Captain, one officer drawled, you’re purple. How’s your blood pressure?
—Fine, fine, goddam it to hell! he screamed and raced about the deck with his field glasses.
Before dawn on 8 November 1942, a fearful roaring set up. The convoy began to move in toward the murky outlines of Africa. The sky vibrated with lights and tracers. The navy opened up on Casablanca and Fedhala. Captain Motes, sleeping clothed and in his leggins, rushed to hearten and exhort his troops. Poor lads, this was the last of life for many of them.
But nothing happened. Captain Motes raced over the decks shouting that someone had blundered, that they should all be on shore by this time. Then through the hell of firing and smoke a voice roared through the speakers on the bridge:
—Put on ya helmet or go below. We ain’t landin for a week yet. What the hell do ya think ya are, assault troops?
One week after the Casablanca landings, after lying offshore several miles, Captain Motes’s ship entered the harbor and leisurely unloaded. But that week he spent tossing in the slow swells of the gray Atlantic and listening to the firing ashore was the most tantalizing the captain had spent in his life. He began to accuse his company of malingering and cowardice when he detected signs of relief that they hadn’t been in on the landing operations. He heard news from the shore that casualties had been heavier than expected because the French and the French Navy hadn’t been quite so co-operative as everyone had counted on. He heard of legs floating off Oran. He heard of American dead at Fedhala, of French sniping from the windows in the Place de France in Casa. He heard how Ayrabs went from side to side selling information and perpetrating ghoulish atrocities on dead American engineers. He heard of General Patton making his bed in the Villa Miramar after the German armistice delegation had fled into the torchy night with their mistresses and their nightshirts. He heard how the entire 3rd Division was bivouacked on the Fedhala golf course. Captain Motes scrambled fretfully about the vessel, shuttling between the navy gun crews and American officers waiting to go ashore:
—Fine scrap, fine scrap . . . and we would have to miss it. I was itching for the real thing. . . . Well, they goddam won’t do me out of it a second time.
On 16 November 1942, he entered Casa with his company. They marched tranquilly off the ship. There was little to show that only eight days ago Americans had been killed here—a little wreckage in the harbor. The A
yrabs were already well versed in the Americanese of cigarettes, bonbons, and chewing gum. The French on the streets were lean and leering, just as he’d expected them to be from books. Captain Motes knew at sight that he’d never trust the French. And as for learning their language, that would be like apprenticing himself as a quisling to the Vichy government. His eyes narrowed under his helmet as he marched along, tearing at the strap of his carbine. Under his armpit a tiny revolver nestled. He was ready for anything. The privilege of entering Casa on D-Day had been denied him. But he’d make up for it.
The Atlantic Base Section was already in operation. Its function was supply. Choice hotels and villas had been requisitioned from Casablanca to Fez. There were already messes and clubs throughout French Morocco. Some officers of the base section had already chosen their mistresses and had settled down to the luxurious drudgery of rear area life, where they expected to vegetate for years.
Captain Motes got a room at the Hôtel Majestique. It had a floor of Moroccan tile with cabalistic symbols, a chamber pot, and a closet. The bed smelled like the Ayrabs. To clean his room he’d a Fatima with blue stars on her cheeks. She giggled and filliped her small breasts. She wore an American mattress cover and clinking jewelry. He gave her cigarettes to stay out of his room while he was in it, for she stank like goat’s milk. After he’d unpacked his bedding roll and hung up his carbine and helmet in a military and sinister manner, he sat down to write a letter to Lucinda.
Somewhere in North Africa
9 November 1942
My darling,
The headlines will have told you exactly where I am. I’m lying under my shelterhalf as I write this. In the distance I can still hear the firing. It sounds like fat popping in a frying pan. Darling, I’ve been through an indescribable twenty-four hours. With your lovely poet’s mind you can intuit the horror of it all. I’ll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that they gave us hell.
I haven’t suffered so much myself. I’m still in one piece. What got me was to see those lovely fellows in my company fall bubbling into the ocean or drop soundlessly in their tracks as I led them up the beach. I’m writing to you first, my darling. After that I have a long string of letters to get off to the families of my poor devils.
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