"Do you think I should just walk back out of here?" she asked.
"Do you care what anybody thinks?" "I don't know," she said. "You're here," he said. "You can't take that back."
"But I am going to shock some people?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Then I might as well get it over with," she said, and drained her glass. She put it on the bar, and looked up at him. She touched his arm. "Thank you, Major Lowell," she said. He averted his eyes from hers and found himself looking down her dress, shamed the moment he realized that her breasts were unrestrained beneath it, and that a mental picture of her without the dress popped into his mind.
"I'll go with you," he said, offering his arm.
She took it, and together they walked out of the bar and toward the stairs to the balcony. They were almost there when Lowell heard his name being called, and then recognized the voice. He put his hand on Melody's hand, which was holding his arm, and stopped.
It was Jean-Philippe Jannier, in what Lowell thought again was his rather comic-looking French dress uniform.
"I'll be with you in a minute, Jannier," Lowell said. Melody looked at the Frenchman curiously, which Lowell attributed to the uniform.
"May I present," Lowell said, in French, "Madame Greer."
"I have the honor of knowing Madame," Jannier said, teaching for Melody's hand and bowing over it. "May I have the privilege, my dear Madame Greer," he went on, "of offering my most sincere condolences on the loss of your husband?"
There's no two ways about it, Lowell thought. The frogs have it over us, language wise. That would have sounded ridiculous in English.
"Thank you very much," Melody said, in English. Lowell was surprised at first that she understood what Jannier had said, until he remembered that Melody had been in Algeria with Greer. "It was my privilege, Lowell, to have served with the late lieutenant Greer in Algeria. He was a valiant officer and a distinguished gentleman, and I am proud to say that I claimed him as a friend."
Is that the "straight poop, I wonder, Jannier, or have you homed in on the boobs?
"Vous-tes trs gent il M. le Capitaine," Melody said, in not bad French.
"I wasn't aware you spoke French," Lowell said, in French.
"Enough," she said, easily, in French, "to get by saying things like that."
"I stand at your command, my dear Madame Greer," Jannier said. "To render what service you may ask of me in your grief."
"Now that you mention it, Jannier," Lowell said in English, "you've solved a bad problem." Both of them looked at him in surprise. Lowell switched back to French. "What I am going to say, when we go upstairs and face General Bellmon and the others, is that you convinced Melody it was her duty to go through with the plans she and Greer had made to entertain you, their old friend, on New Year's Eve."
"I am at your service, of course," Jannier said. "But I don't quite understand."
"Mrs. Greer did not want to spend the night alone. So she came here.
I am afraid that some people might not understand." "D'accord," Jannier said. "If that is your pleasure, Madame."
"Major Lowell has been too polite to tell me I made an ass of myself," Melody said. "You are incapable, Madame, of doing anything in bad taste," Jannier said.
"You'd better call me, "Melody," "she said. "Since we are such good pals." "I am honored, Melody," Jannier said. "May I ask a question, Lowell?" "Certainly," Lowell said.
"Is that what you intended doing, telling General Bellmop that you were responsible for Melody being here."
"He couldn't do that," Melody answered for him. "Everyone would think he was trying to get in my pants."
Lowell realized for the first time that Melody Greer had gotten the courage to come to the party from a bottle.
"Well," Jannier said, drolly, "no one will think that of me. I am French, and everyone knows that Frenchmen have no interest in beautiful women." "I love the both of you," Melody said, and took both their arms as they started up the stairs to the balcony.
Major General Paul Jiggs sought out and danced with Antoinette Parker, for several reasons. For one, the commanding general should have at least one dance with the wife of a company-grade officer. Somewhat cynically, he also thought dancing with Phil Parker's wife killed two birds with one sedate fox trot, for a commanding general should also be seen dancing with the wife of any officer who happened to be black, Hispanic, American Indian, or a member of some other minority group.
There was a Chinese-American major, he recalled, in the Department of Flight Instruction, and a Korean American in the Right Safety Section.
There were very few people, he thought, who would really believe that he was dancing with Toni for the very simple reason that he was an old friend of her father-in-law. Jiggs wondered if he really qualified as a friend of Colonel Philip Sheridan Parker III. He had been a young shave tail when he had met then Major Parker at the Ground General School at Riley the summer he'd graduated from the Point. Among his other distinctions, General Jiggs was a graduate of the last course in advanced equestrianism ever offered by the U.S. Army, and Major Parker had been the officer-in-charge.
Was that position a distinction? Jiggs had often wondered. Had Parker been given that privilege because he was the son, and grandson, and great-grandson of cavalrymen, or because, with horses and cavalry on their way out of the army, it had been a suitable assignment for a darky who had somehow wound up with a major's gold leaves on his epaulets?
He'd learned a hell of a lot more than how to ride a horse from Major Parker, although he'd learned that well enough to qualify for the Olympic equestrian team. While Parker was probably not a dark-skinned Von Clausewitz, he came damned close. He had given Jiggs an understanding of the role of cavalry in warfare that few other people in the army had.
The tall, stiff-backed, curt-mannered Parker had been the first to see in Second Lieutenant Jiggs the seed of whatever it was that separated those who were destined to run the army, to control its direction, from those who would spend their careers doing what they were told to do to the best of their ability.
Jiggs could still quote from memory from his first efficiency report as an officer. He had been friendly with Parker, but he knew that would have nothing to do with what Parker would have to say about him as an officer. He had been stunned by what Parker had written:
Second Lieutenant Jiggs is a trim officer of average height. He demonstrates the personal characteristics required of an officer. He is possessed of an unusual intelligence which permits him to evaluate circumstances and form from them a well thought-out plan of action far more quickly than can be reasonably expected from someone of his age and experience. Coupled with his natural ability as a leader, this combines to suggest that he is an officer of unusual potential. The undersigned considers him without qualification capable of assuming the responsibilities of a captain in combat. The undersigned recommends that future assignments and professional education of this officer be made taking into consideration his value to the military service when he is a senior officer rather more than the immediate needs of the service.
P.S. Parkerlll Major, Cavalry Commandant
"What do they call these, General?" Toni Parker said in his ear. "Duty dances?"
It was not the sort of thing a captain's wife is supposed to say to the General. But then, Toni was not a typical captain's wife, and it also occurred to Jiggs that Toni had probably had a drink too many.
"New Year's Eve," Paul Jiggs replied, "gives me the bad mouth, too, Toni." "Sorry," she said.
"Is it anything in particular?" he asked.
"Between us?"
"Between us," he said.
"I wish I was at the staff party at Mass General tonight, rather than dancing with an army general here. No offense," she said.
It took Jiggs a moment to translate that. When Toni had married Phil, she had been an associate professor of pathology at the Harvard Medical School and on the staff of Massachusetts General Hospital.
<
br /> Jiggs chuckled, and then asked: "The hospital giving you trouble?"
"No. They're glad to have me. I am a very big fish in a little pond.
I meant that I'd rather have it the other way."
"Whither thou go est I will go," he said. "I guess that's tougher on someone like you than on somebody else."
"I've got the sorries for Phil," she said.
"Anything in particular?"
"Craig wanted him to go out to the Board and work with him," Toni said. "Roberts said no."
"He say why?" "He said something about cronyism, according to Craig, but Craig thinks he was simply putting him in his place. He and Roberts have never gotten along."
"How do you know that?" "I was there," Toni said, "the first time they met. At Riley." She laughed deep in her throat. "That was the night I accepted Phil's proposal of marriage."
"And Bill Roberts was there?" Jiggs asked, surprised. "Phil and Craig were on, forgive the expression, the shit list Toni said. "In nothing assignments at Riley. They were living in a house Craig had bought in one of those picture window developments..1 was commuting out there every other weekend, and I'd almost had Phil convinced to resign."
Jiggs knew the story, but he let her go on. "Craig had hooked up," Toni went on, "with a redheaded banker. We were having Sunday afternoon dinner. Large steaks and lots of martinis, and then the phone rang, and it was Roberts, and he invited himself and his wife over."
"Why did he do that?" Jiggs asked, feeling dishonest. "Because not everybody in the Armor Establishment, and I think that included you, General, thought they should be drawn and quartered."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning that somebody had told Roberts to recruit them for aviation, somebody he didn't dare tell "no."
"Would you believe, Toni," Jiggs said, "that the decision to recruit Lowell and Phil for aviation was for the good of the army?"
"Is that an admission you were responsible?"
"I was one of those responsible," Jiggs said. "I think they both know that."
"Roberts didn't like having to do it," she said. "Colonel Roberts sometimes thinks he owns army aviation," iiggs said. "I don't think he resents Lowell or Phil, any more than he resents me or Bob Bellmon.
We're all Johnnycome-latches."
"He can't get at you or Beilmon," she said. "But he can tell Lowell he can't have Phil transferred."
"What Phil needs at this point in his career is a routine assignment like that," Jiggs said, telling her what he had concluded before sending Parker to the school to teach the final phase in the Cargo Helicopter Course. "He'll show up against the mediocrities." "So he tells me," she said. "But do you know what it's doing to him?" "No," he said.
"He got drunk after Lowell told him that Roberts had refused to have him transferred. Very drunk. The picturesque phrase he used to describe his opinion of his usefulness made reference to teats on a boar hog.
"Somebody has to be an instructor pilot," Jiggs said.
"I notice Craig isn't doing it," she said. "What does Phil have to do, steal a helicopter?" He decided to be brutal.
"What Phil doesn't need is anyone thinking he's somebody's pet nigger." "Now you sound like the Colonel," she said. There was no question that she meant Colonel Philip Sheridan Parker Ill. "I hope so," Jiggs said.
"He's one of the brighter men I know." "I shouldn't drink," she said.
"It causes my mouth to run neth over." "It's New Year's Eve," he said. "Originally a pagan rite where everybody got drunk and danced naked to take their. minds off the threat posed by the saber-toothed tiger."
She laughed. "I'm sorry, General," she said.
"Unless you want me to start calling you "doctor," you'd better start calling me
"Paul," "he said. "At least while we're dancing and exchanging confidences."
"I've got a confidence for you," she said.
"You've always reminded me of someone, and I never could figure out who. Now I know." "I can hardly wait," he said.
"My father," she said. "He has the same extraordinary ability to make people bawl themselves out when they're making asses of themselves."
"You don't think I think you're making an ass of yourself, do you?" "You see, you see?" Toni said.
VI
(One) Balcony "B" The Officers' Open Mess Fort Rucker, Alabama 2250 Hours, 31 December 1958
The head table of the Aviation Combat Developments group was presided over by Brigadier General and Mrs. Belimon. At the head of the table, beside Barbara Beilmon, was Colonel Tim F. Brandon. Roxy Macmillan, in a tight, pinkish gown with waves of lace framing her ample, freckled bosom, sat beside Bellmon. Major Sanford T. Felter, wearing all the decorations to which he was entitled, plus the heavy gold rope of an aide-dc-camp to the President of the United States, sat beside her.
Sharon sat beside Brandon, and on her other side, Macmillan.
General Bellmon, Lieutenant Colonel Macmillan, and Major Felter wore the blue mess uniform. Colonel Tim F. Brandon was in blues, with a white shirt and bow tie. He wore his
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ribbons. The highest of these, Lowell saw as he approached the table, was the Legion of Merit, which he regarded as a decoralion customarily awarded to senior officers who had spent six months on foreign shores without once contracting a social disease.
Barbara Bellmon, as Lowell had known she would, responded with exquisite grace, tact, and understanding to the appearance of Melody Greer at the New Year's Eve party.
"Oh, Melody," she said, "I'm so glad you decided to come. I was afraid you wouldn't."
And, as he had also expected, Brigadier General Robert F. Bellmon obviously wished the widow hadn't come.
Lowell kissed Barbara. Neither he nor Barbara were kissing types, but they had learned long before that it annoyed Bob when they exchanged noisy smacks, and they did so now with relish.
That set off a line of kisses. Having kissed Barbara, he had to kiss Sharon and Roxy as well. It occurred to him that it was an extraordinary coincidence that the only three women in the world he didn't mind kissing were at the same table. He then congratulated Macmillan on his promotion, sincerely, for in many ways he liked and admired the simple Scot and was happy for him and Roxy.
Lowell realized that there were more medals for valor on display hefe than at any other table in the club. The army didn't pass out that many Distinguished Service Crosses, and the one on his own lapel was duplicated on the lapels of Felter and Macmillan. And that didn't count Mac's Medal of Honor, the only one on the post. Nor the Medaille Militaire and Legion d'Honneur on Jean-Philippe Jannier's blouse. Nor the Silver Stars and Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts on just about every other Combat Developments officer. There was an exception, of course.
To judge by the ribbons adorning the breast of Colonel Tim F. Brandon, the Pentagon Press agent, the man had somehow managed to rise to colonel without ever having heard a shot fired in anger.
He made the effort and smiled at Colonel Brandon. Except for Brandon, he liked everybody here, and he decided to stay.
If Bill Roberts didn't like it, fuck him. War between them had already been declared.
Peace in our time, he thought, is just not possible.
"Madame le General," Lowell said, "would you do me the honor of dancing with me?"
"Only if you promise to do something that will make people gasp," Barbara Bellmon said, giving her husband a broad smile as she got to her feet.
Major Craig Lowell and Madame le General danced very close with Barbara's lips next to his ear like teenagers in love because they knew that annoyed Bob Beilmon.
Barbara told him she didn't know what to think about Melody showing up, and hoped that it would simply be passed over.
"But don't believe for a minute that I swallow that tale about her being here because of Jannier," she said. "And it wasn't at all nice of you to set him up like that." "If I had said I had asked her, you know what people would have thought."
"I wouldn't h
ave," Barbara said.
"You would have stood alone," Lowell said.
"Probably," she agreed, and chuckled.
Once he had danced with Barbara, he had to dance with Sharon Felter and Roxy Macmillan. Sharon Felter told him that she was happy "the way things have turned out for you" and that she wanted to thank Craig for making Sandy come to Rucker.
Roxy Macmillan had had enough to drink to put her in a jovial mood.
She told him, as they danced, that the first time she'd seen a blue mess uniform was the one he had worn at Knox.
"Mac looks good in his," he said. "He even looks dignified."
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