"Mr. Secretary," General Black said to the SECDEF, aware that he was lightheaded, "if it is your pleasure, I will submit my application for retirement this afternoon."
"That's your option, E.Z. If I wanted your resignation, I would have asked for it." "And so would I," the CJCS said. Those sonsofi, itches sandbagged me, the SEC ARMY thought.
He said: "No one's asking you to leave, General."
E.Z. Black looked at the Chief of Staff. Their eyes locked for a moment.
"I would consider it a great privilege," General Black said, "to be named CINCPAC."
"You've got it," the SECDEF said.
"Presuming the concurrence of the President, of course," the SEC ARMY said.
"The President told me he would go along with whatever we decided," the SECDEF said.
"You're a little old, and a little too fat for a surfboard, E. Z.," the CJCS said. It was less a dry remark than a question: Why CINCPAC?
NATO's more prestigious.
"Maybe," E.Z. Black said, "I could learn how to ride one anyway, before the balloon goes up over there."
"You think that's where it's going up?" the SECDEF asked, very seriously.
"Yes, sir," General Black said. "I'm very much afraid of Vietnam."
"Most everybody else thinks that situation can be stabilized," the Chief of Staff said, "that Cuba is the immediate problem."
"I'm talking about a non-nuclear war," Black said. "You think Cuba is a nuclear war situation?" the Chief of Staff asked, levelly.
"I think we're going to go eyeball with the Russians over Cuba.
Something like Berlin. And one side or the other will back away, or there will be a nuclear war."
"God forbid!" the SECDEF said, softly, fervently.
"And what's going to happen in Vietnam, in your opinion, General?" the SEC ARMY asked.
"We've already got advisors there," Black said. "We'll keep sending in more and more advisors. And we'll be in a war. We'll have slid into a war... a conventional, more or less, war."
"In other words, you don't agree with the Chief of Staff that it can be contained?" the SECDEF asked.
"That," the Chief of Staff added, "if it got down to it, we couldn't pacify the country with a couple of divisions?" "No, I don't," Black said.
"For Christ's sake," the Chief of Staff said, forgetting the SECDEF did not like anyone taking the Lord's name in vain, "all they've got is people in black pajamas, no match for modern forces. We functioned successfully in Greece, you know."
"Greece was different," Black said. "Vietnam is going to be a lot harder. That's going to be a different ball game."
"I'd like to know where you get your information," the Chief of Staff said. When there was no reply from Black, he asked: "Your friend Felter been telling you things he hasn't told me?" "Unless I was asked, General," Black said. "I would not presume to offer my views to, or seek information from, a Counselor to the President."
The Chief of Staff snorted.
"Then where did you get your background?"
"I got my information from a sergeant," General Black said, his eyes icy, his smile cold. "He told me that an army scared hell out of him that was so well disciplined that they manhandled 105 mm howitzers up mountainsides by hand, and then supplied them two rounds at a time, by people pushing them on a bicycle."
"Is that where you get information on which to base your decisions?
From sergeants?" the Chief of Staff asked. He had intended to be droll. It came out contemptuous.
"Wisdom from the mouth of babes," it says in the Bible," the SECDEF said.
He thought: 1 separated these two just in time. (Two) 227 Melody Lane Ozark, Alabama 1630 Hours, 6 March 19S9
Lowell turned sharply into the driveway. Because there was a two-car carport, there would be room for the Mercedes beside the Cadillac he had sold to Jean-Philippe Jannier. But there was another car in the driveway, a Buick station wagon. The tires squealed. Cynthia Thomas was thrown against Craig Lowell.
"Jesus," she said, in complaint, but she did not move away from him.
He bent his head and kissed her forehead.
"Well," he said, "here we are."
"I'm surprised we made it," she chuckled.
Right after the first time, as she lay with her breasts on his abdomen toying with the hair on his chest, she had announced flatly that she was sorry, but that it was absolutely out of the question for her to come to Alabama with him. She had a job, obligations. She just couldn't drop everything and run halfway across the country with him just because he was the best screw she had ever had in her entire life.
"If you're going to be an officer's lady," he said, "you're going to have to learn not to swear like a tank company first sergeant." "Who said anything about me becoming an officer's lady?" she asked.
"You wouldn't want to disappoint your brother, Would you?" he said.
"Not to mention the other asshole?"
She chuckled and moved her head and nibbled at his nipple until he yelped.
"I'm disappointed," she said. "Folklore has it that soldiers can screw all day and then all night." "I'll make a deal with you," he said. "Once more here, and then once more in Washington. Then you can catch the shuttle back here."
"Where would we do it in Washington?" she asked. "In the Lincoln Memorial?"
"We'll take a motel room," he said.
"That's wicked," she said. "I love it."
When they got to Washington, just before nine, he told her that he wanted her to meet some lady friends of his. One of whom would probably feed them, and then they could get the motel and later she could catch the shuttle.
The visit with the Bellmons in Lowell's town house in Georgetown lasted longer than Cynthia thought it *ould. She and Barbara Bellmon liked each other from the moment they met. Then a very nice, very shy Jewish woman appeared, and Cynthia was very touched by her. She was apparently very, very fond and protective of Craig Lowell. Her husband showed up a half hour later, and Cynthia was really surprised when he was introduced as a lieutenant colonel. He was the last man in the world she would have suspected of being an army officer.
The officer barely had time to eat the hash Barbara Bellmon made of leftover roast beef before he was called to the telephone and had to leave. But his wife stayed, and there were several bottles of wine, and then it was midnight, and Barbara said it was silly to go back to New York in the middle of the night.
"The idea of Craig sleeping on a couch in his own house amuses me," Barbara said. "And if you stay, I'll tell you everything you want to know about him and were afraid to ask... and I know everything." "I can't pass that up," Cynthia said.
She was surprised and touched when the Jewish woman, whose name was Sharon, kissed her when she left. Cynthia was not a kisser, and she suspected that Sharon wasn't either. She had been examined, she knew, and been judged satisfactory.
Lowell and Bellmon vanished into the bar. Then she helped Barbara clear the table, and Barbara told her about Lowell's first wife and the circumstances of her death.
In the morning, on the way to the shuttle terminal at Washington National, Cynthia said: "I was awake half the night waiting for you to sneak into my room and steal my virtue." "Don't think I didn't think about it," he said. "Well?"
"I didn't want Barbara to get the right idea about you," he quipped, and then corrected himself. "Barbara is a straight arrow. You don't sleep under her roof with people you're not married to. She wouldn't understand us." Cynthia thought he was wrong, but didn't press the point.
"I would really like to stop somewhere and get a change of underwear," she said.
"Why don't we stop somewhere and get you some underwear," he said. "And then go to the airport? The Atlanta airport?"
"That's crazy," she said. But they both knew that's what would happen, and it did.
They didn't even stop at the airport in Atlanta. It was only a "couple of hours" further down the road to Ozark, and there were some other people he wanted
to her to meet.
"Boy Scout's honor, I'll fly you to Atlanta in the morning," he said.
"It'll only be a couple of hours more."
As they approached Ozark, he told her about Jannier and Melody.
"She's either going to be at the house," he said, "or we'll ask her over. I want you to meet her."
Cynthia was not anxious to meet a woman who had begun an affair with a man less than a month after her husband had been killed, but there didn't seem to be anything she could do about it.
And Melody was at the house. The Buick station wagon had been a gift from her father. "You'll need the room for the baby's things. And you'll be safer in a big car. I read that in Time," he had said.
When she heard the screeching tires of the Mercedes, Melody came to the kitchen door, with her son in her arms. She smiled when she saw Lowell, but then the smile vanished when Cynthia appeared. She was grossly embarrassed, Cynthia saw, and that was because she was a good person.
I don't know how I'm going to do it, Cynthia vowed, but I'm going to make her understand that I understand.
"God, I'm glad you're here, Melody," Craig said after the introductions had been made. "Is there someplace around here where Cynthia can buy some clothing?" "No," Melody said. "I thought you knew, Craig, we all make our own clothes here, from homespun cotton." "Don't be a wise-ass," Lowell said, fondly.
"Move your new toy out of the driveway," Melody said, and then to Cynthia: "What do you need?"
"A sweater and a skirt, some underthings, enough to get back to New York."
Jean-Philippe Jannier came out of the house. He had obviousiy been sleeping, Cynthia saw. She also thought that he was almost as sexy as Craig Lowell. He got in the Mercedes, backed it out of the drive, and with a squeal of tires, raced down the street.
He was back in a minute, obviously having only driven around the block.
Wearing a wide smile, he parked the car on the street.
Melody handed Cynthia the baby and got into the Buick. "If all you want is a sweater and a skirt," she said, "it'll be cheaper in the PX."
"Can Ibuy things in the PX?" Cynthia asked, uncomfortably. "Officers' widows can," Melody said. "I'm an officer's widow." Cynthia didn't reply. "Did Craig tell you?" Melody asked.
"He told me he's very fond of you, too," Cynthia said. "If I'm in this house," Melody said, "with Jean-Philippe, or even if we're at my own house and we're alone, it doesn't seem to matter. It's only when the outside comes in... Do you know what I mean?"
"You mean, I make you uncomfortable?" Cynthia asked. "No. Just the opposite," Melody said. "If Craig brought you here, you must be somebody special."."
"I came without so much as a toothbrush," Cynthia said. "I know what you must be thinking."
"Only that it was important to you that you come," Melody said.
"I thought that handsome bastard was only interested in a quick lay," Cynthia said. "So I took him to my apartment, drank four ounces of brandy, and took all my clothes off. I did everything but grope him... and I almost lost him."
"But it worked out all right in the end, right? You're here. That makes you special to him." "I hope," Cynthia said, "as the girl prayed waiting to see if the rabbit died." "If he thought you were nothing but... what you suggested... he wouldn't have brought you here."
"I've been shown off all along the East Coast," Cynthia said. "A general and his wife, and then a Jewish colonel and his wife..
"Then he really must like you," Melody said. "Sandy Felter'is his best friend. Sharon told me that Craig wept like a baby, when they thought Sandy had bought the farm in Indochina, and she and the kids wound up comforting him."
"
"Bought the farm'?" Cynthia asked.
"Sandy, another officer named Macmillan, and my husband got themselves shot down going into Dien Bien Phu. For five days, everyone thought they were dead. That was before I met Ed."
"That's an odd phrase," Cynthia said.
"I understand it's an old army saying," Melody said. "Old soldiers used to dream of retiring and buying a farm."
"Are they afraid of saying the words, "getting killed'?"
"Getting killed is what happens to other women's husbands," Melody said. "If you can't convince yourself of that, you'd go crazy."
"That was very thoughtless of me," Cynthia said. "I'm sorry."
"That's the way it is," Melody said.
"And now you have Jean-Philippe. He's also a soldier"
"Until he decides to quit," Melody said.
"You think he will?"
"I tell myself that very soon since he's rich he will realize that there is more to life than the army."
"Is he rich?"
"Almost as rich as Craig," Melody said. Nobody's as rich as Craig."
"I am," Cynthia said. "My brother sees this little romance as a chance for a sound corporate merger."
Melody looked at her.
"And you must be, too," Cynthia said, "or you wouldn't be talking about it."
"My father's well-off," Melody said. "Not in the same league as Jean-Philippe and Craig, but rich. And I'm his only child."
"Is that the attraction? We recognize each other? Sort of a rich people's Masonic organization? With a secret recognition signal?"
"Why do you say that?"
"I was immediately pals with Barbara Bellmon," Cynthia said. "Not with Sharon. Sharon was very suspicious of me. But Barbara and I understood each other from the very first. Now I think I know why."
"I don't understand," Melody confessed.
"There was something about Barbara that I couldn't quite figure out.
Until just now. Have you been to Craig's place in Washington?"
"I've heard about it," Melody said. "Jean-Philippe stayed there when he was in Washington."
"Very elegant. With a staff," Cynthia said. "I don't know what they pay generals, but I do know it's not enough to afford a place like that. After we ate, Barbara cleaned off the table and carried the dishes into the sink. I thought it was odd. Then I thought it was because she was a middle-class housewife and not used to servants. But now I understand it. If she was a middle-class housewife, enjoying somebody else's help, she would have left it there for them to clean up. But that isn't it at all. She was perfectly at home in Craig's house; that means she's used- to money." "Ed told me they have a big place, several hundred acres, in Virginia," Melody said. "I think they've got some money. They don't show it the way Craig does, with his airplane and his cars; but they've got it. Not like his, more like mine."
"Then what the hell are they doing in the army?" Cynthia asked.
"I don't know," Melody said. "The men want to do it, and I guess the women want to do whatever the men want."
"
"Whither thou go est Even to the dark recesses of Alabama?" She realized what she had said.
"That was rude of me."
"We were in Texas," Melody said. "Ed and me, I mean. That was really awful. I know what you mean."
"You're quite a woman," Cynthia said. "I know why Craig likes you."
"And I can see what he sees in you," Cynthia said.
They went to the PX, where Cynthia picked out a skirt and a sweater, underwear and hose, and then, on impulse, an orange nylon zipper bag with
"The Army Aviation Center, Fort Rucker, Ala." painted on it. Then they drove back to Ozark.
There was another car in the driveway at 227 Melody Lane, a Cadillac Coupe de Ville.
"Another rich one?" Cynthia asked. "Aren't you afraid the lower classes will rebel?"
The door of the Cadillac opened as they turned into the driveway.
"Wrong," Cynthia said. "She's colored."
"Right," Melody said.
"That's Antoinette. You're really being shown off."
The colored woman waited for them to get out of the car. "Dr. Parker," Melody said, "Miss. Thomas."
"Well, I can see what he sees in you," Antoinette Parker said, offering her hand. "The question is, what do y
ou see in him?"
"Hello," Cynthia said. - "You seem like an intelligent young woman," Antoinette said. "Why are you considering joining us camp followers?"
"What's the matter with you?" Melody asked. "You mean you haven't heard?" Antoinette said. "Heard what?"
"Wait till we get in the house," Antoinette said. "Then I won't have to tell the story twice."
The men were in the kitchen doing something with a large piece of meat.
W E B Griffin - BoW 04 - The Colonels Page 35