He said violently, “I don’t blame you!”
She put her arms around him again. “Thank you, darling!”
He was a lousy undeserving bastard. “Thank you, sweetheart! I know how you feel, and I hate it, the whole shooting match, as much as you do. I hate everything about it!” She kissed him on his mouth again. “I hate it! Hate it!” He took her arms away from around his neck.
“What’s the mat—?”
“The matter is I’m married,” he heard himself say in a voice he did not recognize. And at that moment he hated himself more than he had ever hated before in his entire life. Even more than he hated Army life. He felt a guilty aching in his head and a churning in his stomach.
She didn’t utter a sound at first, and he wouldn’t let himself look at her. There were a million easier ways to tell her, but after hemming and hawing and omitting and committing and running away and coming back again, he had finally chosen the most direct route—and maybe the crudest and cruelest or maybe the kindest after all. He was a mean sadistic masochistic sonofabitching bastard. He thought she was crying. He tried to put a consoling arm around her, but she moved quietly away from him. He put his hand into the thick blackness of her hair.
“No,” she said. “That isn’t necessary, Corporal Saunders.”
“Fannie Mae, I’m—”
“And don’t you go feeling sorry and guilty for the poor little country girl,” she said sarcastically. “I saw you, I liked you, I thought you liked me, and I asked for it. You didn’t encourage me one bit.” He heard the bitter anger in her voice. He felt the sting like a driver’s lash. “If anybody’s to blame, it’s me for being too—too—too forward—bolder than a lady’s supposed to be. I was never like that before in my life, I can state you that. When I met you I just thought that all the roads of my life had led to you. It was a stupid sentimental thing. I never believed in fate before, but I remember saying to myself, ‘Solly Saunders is the cause and the reason that you took a job in an Army Post Exchange.’ I told myself that this was it. It looks like I was so wrong—I—I” Her voice broke off.
He shouted softly, “Stop it, Fannie Mae, goddammit!”
“The fact of the matter is, you tried to discourage me, but I thought you were being overly modest, or maybe loyal to Joe Taylor, and I loved you all the more for it. You know how those things are. And all the while I was just a little stupid naïve country girl to you—” Acid pouring fiercely from her. “I should have known that the smooth, suave, handsome gentleman from New York City couldn’t possibly be so modest—” She choked off again. “Why didn’t you tell me, Solly? Tell me—why didn’t you? I can’t understand how somebody as sensitive as you are could be so cruel and heartless. Or maybe I was something less than human to you? After all, I’m not totally naïve. I know how men are. But—but how could I have been so completely wrong about you? I mean, you are different. You are a sensitive person—”
“I wanted to tell you, Fannie Mae. I—”
“Are you in love with your wife, Solly?”
Was he in love with his wife? He didn’t even know the answer to that anymore.
“I am in love with my wife. I’m very much in love with my wife.” Somehow the whole situation was unreal to him. How had he allowed himself to become so involved with another woman? He saw Millie’s lovely face before him now, heard her sweet voice, held her in his arms and read her letters. Three months ago he would have thought it impossible that just a few months after their marriage any other woman could have had any attraction at all for him. When they kissed at Penn Station, he had thought the kiss could last till they were together again, no matter how long, for even a lifetime, because there was love. The morning in Penn Station felt like three hundred years ago to him. And Fannie was real and seated beside him and crying softly and the taste of her soft full mouth was on his lips. But how did it happen? And the strangest thing about it—he couldn’t honestly say he wished the other night with Fannie Mae had never been. He couldn’t wish that Fannie Mae had never happened to him.
“Why, Solly? Why? Was I just another chick to you that you could play around with? Was that it, Solly? Was that all it amounted to?”
Solly didn’t answer. What other explanation was there?
“Was that it, Solly?”
He sounded like a stranger to himself. “You’re a very lovely person, Fannie Mae, a tremendous person—the most wonderful woman I’ve ever known—and I was lonesome for New York and my wife and my mother. Maybe you don’t know what it is to be lonesome. The Army is a lonely place. And you were warm and friendly and beautiful, and there was also an intellectual attraction, a mutuality, and I simply didn’t have the strength to face up to what was happening. And suddenly I found myself relating to you like there was nobody else in all the world.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me you were married?”
“I think it was also because you reminded me so much of her.”
He was caught completely by surprise when suddenly her hand went out and slapped him sharply up against his head and face and the sound of it breaking the awful stillness of the moonlit Thanksgiving night, and then sudden pain and the ringing in his head and the ache in his ears, and he sat there trying to make himself angry and self-righteous with her, but it didn’t come off, and before he could get himself together she slapped him again and he thought he had lost his hearing completely.
And then she took his head in her hands. “I love you, Solly. I don’t care. I love you! I love you! I can’t help it! You’re a dirty dog, but I love you! You’re deceitful and you’re no good and I hate you but I love you!” And she kissed his lips and his nose and his eyes and his cheek and his mouth again, her arms around his neck now, and his around her waist that was made for arms like his but never never for his arms. And he kissed her sweet and salty tears and he loved her he loved her he didn’t give a damn he loved her! And he loved the ringing in his aching ears that would never ever stop. And then she moved away from him.
“All right then,” she said. “It’s all over, my darling. My handsome Lothario. But then I reckon it never really began—for you—did it? You just took advantage of the situation.” She stood up and he stood up, and the full moon bathing the porch with golden yellow moonlight and crickets everywhere having a ball and a cool breeze blowing a sweet cool breeze over his damp face which was a mask of guilt and anguish. She spat the words at him. “I despise you! I hate the day I ever met you I You’re nothing to me at all—nothing! Nothing! You’re a phony! I see it all now.”
In a way, he was glad she’d slapped him. He was actually relieved she’d slapped him, not once, not only in the heat of passion, but twice and hard and vicious and deliberately. And to hear her say she hated him gave him a perverse kind of satisfaction. He thought, you never really loved me. You just wanted to possess me for your own pleasure and self-aggrandizement, like a piece of property, and when you find you cannot possess me, you’re ready to beat me up, destroy me. This is love? He started to say, It takes a phony to find another phony.
He said, “Go ahead—slap me again. You can’t hurt me. Have a picnic.” He was hurting her more and more, and he knew it, and he didn’t want to hurt her but he couldn’t help himself. He had taken her love and used it and abused it.
“I hate the sound of your voice,” she shouted softly. “I hope I never hear your name again.” Her black eyes wet and glistening in the soft cool autumn moonlight.
“Good night, Fannie Mae.” He felt like crying, but he had to hold up the firm tradition of menfolks. He held out his hand to her, but she turned and walked into the house and closed the door in his face.
CHAPTER 14
Almost every day he got letters from Millie, but he couldn’t get Fannie Mae off his mind, out of his guts. He’d be sitting on his cot reading a letter from Millie about the Red Cross work and the Stage Door Canteen or the progress of her pregnancy and he would find himself thinking of Fannie Mae, as if Fannie Mae were Millie or th
e other way around. And the days passed into weeks but time healed nothing. The PX lady lived in every corner of his consciousness. He would think of her and feel himself grow warm all over. And large sometimes. And guilty. And he remembered little things about her that he had not even noticed before. The way her face became alive when she talked, her full mouth curving and curling on one side more than the other, her eyes glowing dark brown to deep deep black. The way her heavy eyebrows raised when she was angry or concerned. The way she walked as if she always had important business to attend to. And sometimes he could hear her silken Southern voice and conjure up their conversation. And he remembered her NAACP and her Double-V for Victory. The only positive thing about the war to him was it had brought her and him together for the briefest sweetest moment. But most of all the thing he felt when he thought of her was the fire that burned inside of her and glimmered on the outside. Fannie Mae would never sit still and watch the world go by. And anything she touched would never be the same. You are my alter ego, Fannie Mae. You are the I that I aspire to be, but never have been yet. Never will be. My higher-level second self. Please do not despise me. He told himself he didn’t care.
One night he was writing a letter to Millie when his Great White Brother came into the orderly room. They had seen very little of each other except strictly in the line of duty since the incident in town. They sat there for a few minutes, talking about this and that and mostly nothing, embarrassed by each other’s company. Solly was more bored than embarrassed. He wanted to get on with his letter. There was nothing for them to talk about. They knew each other. They lived with no illusions.
“The war news today is terrific, Saunders. We got the enemy high-tailing on every front.”
“Great” was all that Solly said.
Samuels said, “I can’t wait to get over there. Those goddamn Nazi bastards!”
Solly said, “Me too.”
The men were straggling back from the PX now. Baker came up the steps and when he reached the top he yelled, “Corporal Solly, you old-fashioned fist-fucker, why don’t you come out of that orderly room and get some air in your ass sometimes?” He stuck his big head in the office doorway and said, “Ooops, excuse me, Lieutenant.”
The lieutenant laughed. “That’s all right, Baker. I fully agree with your sentiments.”
Baker said, “Yes, sir,” and kept going.
The lieutenant chuckled and somehow it angered Solly.
“You should get way from these barracks sometimes,” Samuels said.
“Yeah,” Solly said. “Take a furlough over in Ebbensville.” And suddenly he was in the police station again and his thighs began to throb with pain, real pain, and he felt like screaming, his loins were alive and jumping, and only vaguely did he hear the captain’s long legs coming up the steps and striding into the orderly room.
But he heard the captain’s cultured-Southern tenor-soprano. “So we’re having a little tea party, are we? Any outsiders invited to sit for a while? You-all New Yorkers sure do stick together, and a country boy like me wouldn’t want to intrude. I expect you all speak the same language all right.”
The lieutenant and Saunders got to their feet. The lieutenant said, “Come right in, Captain.” His face was burning. The captain’s entire face was smiling.
The captain said, “Thank you very much.” And then he turned to Saunders. “You know how to spell my name, Saunders?”
“Yes, sir. I think so, sir.”
The captain reached into the inside pocket of his coat and brought out some papers. “Why don’t you do so then once in a while? The name is Rutherford R-U-T-H-E-R-F-O-R-D. Not Ruterford, the way you have it spelled on these orders.” He threw the papers onto the desk.
“I’m sorry, sir. I had so many deadlines to make today. I had to get out the payroll.”
“You’re sorry?” The captain’s voice was trembling now. He seemed to be deliberately working himself into a rage. “You’re sorry? All I hear is a whole lot of excuses in this outfit. The question is, can you do the work or can’t you? Maybe it’s too much for you. Or maybe if you concentrated on your work more and spent less time spreading dissatisfaction amongst the men—and going over into town and making trouble.”
“You have the wrong man, Captain. I haven’t—”
There wasn’t much space in the office but the long-legged Rutherford strode from one side of the room to the other and back to the center and he hitched up his trousers and glanced at the shining stuff on his shoulders. “I don’t think I have you wrong, Saunders. I don’t think so at all. I’ve had my eyes on you ever since you came into the company. You’ve been doing sloppy work and making trouble. That’s the story of your Army life. I gave you a million chances to prove yourself, but you just keep on messing up. I talked to you like a father to his son, and now I’m going to take some disciplinary measures. I want you to go to your bunk and get ready for a hike with a full field pack on your back. I want you to be ready in five minutes for a five-mile hike. I don’t mean tomorrow—I mean now, tonight. And just to make you honest I want the lieutenant to ride alongside of you in his jeep to check the mileage. I want you to take him out the Miller Field Road, Lieutenant Samuels. I want you to check the mileage on the jeep when he starts, and when it registers five more miles, I want you to turn around and start back. And when you get back, Saunders, I want you to write my full name correctly five hundred times and turn it in to the lieutenant and he’ll turn it in to me.”
The lieutenant’s tan face was red like ripened pomegranate. Solly felt the heat move around in his own face like something alive and on the move. But he must control himself. He must keep his mouth shut or else he would lose complete control, which is exactly what Rutherford wanted him to do. He must use his head. He must not lose his temper now. The captain was just itching to make out court-martial papers for one Corporal Solomon Saunders, Junior, and charge him with insubordination. He stared the captain full in the face and for a moment they stood looking at each other eye to eye, till the captain shifted his eyes to Samuels and back to Solly again.
Then he said smilingly to Samuels, “By the way, Lieutenant, like I said last week, I know that MP colonel in town. We play golf together. Any time you want to meet him, I’d be tickled to give you an introduction.”
The room was deafening with silence for a moment. Then Rutherford said, “Do you all have any questions about this moonlight hike?”
“No, sir,” Solly said.
And Lieutenant Samuels said, “None at all, sir.”
“Goddammit, you all can have a real exclusive time out there in the woods. You all are such good buddies. Just talking to each other to your hearts’ content. Mutinizing one another. But I want you back here and my name written five hundred times before twelve o’clock. Is that clear?”
“Very clear, sir,” Solly said.
He heard Bookworm’s fat feet coming up the steps and he was singing as loud as he could:
“Solomon Saunders,
Solomon Saunders,
Whatcha gon do when the world’s on fire?
Run like hell and holler fire—
Run like hell and holler fire . . .”
He stopped at the top of the stairs and shouted: “Come out of that orderly room, Solomon Saunders. You work too damn hard on Rutherford’s plantation. Goddammit, this ain’t slavery time—”
Suddenly you could hear the great quiet that settled over the second-floor barracks. Everybody heard it except Bookworm Taylor.
Bookworm had almost reached the doorway of the orderly room. “Goddammit, Solly, even slaves didn’t work that hard when Cap’n Charlie wasn’t looking at ‘em. Besides, the PX lady is always asking about how you getting along. She—”
He didn’t get any further. Rutherford’s voice interrupted him. “Come on in, Taylor, and tell us all about the old plantation.”
Bookworm stopped in the doorway, looking the situation over. His mouth was open but the words got caught in a traffic jam.
/> Rutherford was the only one in the office with a sense of humor, with a big smile on his skinny face. “Come on in, Taylor, and tell us all about it.”
The words finally tumbled out of Bookworm’s mouth. “No, sir, I’m kinda—you know what I mean—I’m in a little bit of a hurry right long in here. What I mean, I got to get to my bunk and catch up on a little—”
“You hear me talking to you, don’t you, soldier? I gave you an order. Come on in and tell us about the old plantation.”
Bookworm’s face assumed an angelic blandness. He came through the doorway. “All right, sir. If you insist. On the plantation where my great-grandfather lived, the slaves loved old master so much he was scared to be caught down amongst the slave cabins after dark by himself. Scared one of them happy slaves would grab hold of him and hug the natural breath out of him.”
Ten minutes later the men straggling into H-Company barracks stopped to stare at the peculiar sight of two angry soldiers with full field equipment on their backs standing in front of the company barracks and a white-faced lieutenant in his jeep giving them the order of “forward march.” And they moved away from the company area.
“Goddamn Old Rose! Wonder what Solly and Worm been up to? They musta really torn their ass.” Lanky Lincoln watched them till they turned the corner and went out of sight.
“When my namesake freed the slaves, he didn’t know about Rutherford’s plantation, I bet a great big fat man.”
CHAPTER 15
He sat wearily on his cot after mail call and just before the call for supper. He read a letter from Millie describing in detail a great show at the Stage Door Canteen. Phil Silvers was there and Mrs. Roosevelt and Paul Robeson and Bette Davis and Lena Horne, and Ella Logan sang “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean,” and Hedy Lamarr cut a giant birthday cake and kissed six GIs whose birthday it was, including a light-skin colored soldier! Millie asked Solly when he was going to Officer Candidate School. Most of the letter was about the baby and the planning for his future. Solly smiled ironically. She always spoke of him as “he,” and Solly hoped sarcastically and perversely it would turn out to be a girl. “We have to start now shaping his success. He will be handsome and we must prepare now to see that he gets every opportunity and teach him to take advantage of—” The heat stood in his angry eyes. “Education—doctor—lawyer—get ahead of the other fellow—” He got to his feet and looked around him. Sweat crept over his body like soldiers on reconnaissance. He knew a choking sensation that almost took his breath away. Goddammit, let him be born first, before you start strangling the life out of him!
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 21