The Hunt (aka 27)

by William Diehl

  "Just long enough to run him at Belmont and Saratoga," said Keegan. "See how he shows up. I've got a little filly coming along who'll wear him out in another two years. What brings you to Berlin, anyway?"

  "Three guesses," the reporter answered, looking around the room at the swastikas. He leaned forward and spoke directly into Keegan's ear. "My editor in Paris thinks World War Two is going to start here sometime in the next five minutes."

  "Here in this saloon?"

  "In Berlin, schmuck."

  "Incidentally, you ought to get rid of that coat, everybody'll think you're with the Schutzstaffel."

  "That's very funny, Francis. This coat cost me a month's salary."

  "You wuz robbed."

  Rudman looked hurt. "It's the latest fashion," he said.

  "Yeah, if you're in the SS."

  "You can be a real bastard when you want to be."

  "Ah, don't be so thin-skinned." Keegan laughed. "You look beautiful. Did you take the train in?"

  "No, I drove from Paris. I thought about you, kiddo. Went right through the park at Belleau Wood. That hospital where we met is a big cow barn now."

  After fourteen years, Keegan remembered that day very well. The war was over for Keegan but it was the first time he had understood what was going on. It was Bert Rudman who had finally put it all in perspective for him.

  By the spring of 1917, a whipped Woodrow Wilson, reelected as a liberal idealist with a clear vision for the future of the country, had watched his own rigid policies lead the country into archconservatism. He was finally forced to admit the inevitable: They were on the verge of war. After a passionate speech in which he urged the Congress to declare war on Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Turks of the Ottoman Empire to save the world "for Democracy," he returned to his office in the White House with the cheers of the senators and representatives still clamoring in his ears.

  His secretary was shocked by his appearance. He looked worn out, defeated, old and sick.

  "Are you all right?" she asked with alarm.

  He shook his head sadly and dropped heavily into his chair.

  "My message today was a message of death for our young men, " he said. "How strange it seems to applaud that. " Then lowering his head to his desk, he wept.

  His message started a wave of patriotism in the country. Hamburgers became Salisbury steaks; sauerkraut was "liberty cabbage." Germans quietly slipped to the courthouse and changed their names. Conscientious objectors were beaten up and thrown in jail. Either you were for the war or you were a traitor, and thousands of young Americans were inspired to take up the fight. Keegan was one of them. Only eighteen, he joined the Marines and six months later he was in the first Marine battalion to land in France.

  Jocko Nayles, a tough street fighter from Brooklyn, only three years Keegan's senior, took Keegan in tow on the boat ride to France.

  "How old're ye?" he asked.

  "Eighteen, " Keegan answered, trying to sound tough.

  "Eighteen, then! Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Well, ye just stick with me, kid, I'll get you through this. "

  Together they had marched down muddy French roads toward the Marne River where they were baptized in fire, where Keegan had seen his first German and killed his first man. The meaning of these skirmishes was lost in the terror of hand-to-hand combat, of sky bombs showering shards of metal down on him from overhead, of the flashes of shells that temporarily blinded him, and of the mines underfoot. In horror, he saw his buddies struck down in rows like grass before a scythe and finally felt the burning punch in his shoulder, felt his knees give out, and he fell, not knowing how badly he was hit or whether he would live or die.

  To Keegan, the war was five hundred yards long and a hundred yards wide and scattered with helmets and weapons and body parts. He could not relate to anything beyond his field of vision. Whether they were winning or losing, why they were there, were questions that did not even occur to him.

  When the battle was over, Jocko had come back and found him huddled in a shell hole, a dirty handkerchief stuffed in the bullet hole in his shoulder, had picked him up and carried him back to the field hospital, had nursed over him for days until his fever broke and infection passed.

  A month later he was back with his unit, wallowing through the mire on the outskirts of a French town called Château-Thierry, headed for the Marne River only seventy miles from Paris.

  To Keegan, the length of the French and German border was one great muddy battlefield, its trees reduced to stumps, its fields coursed with twisted barbed wire and miles of trenches, its villages reduced to rubble. For mile after mile, the disgusting perfume of death hung in the air like a fog. Mud-caked and broken, soldiers, driven to the edge of insanity, hunched in their trenches, cursed the rain and the shells which intermittently poured down on them, dreamt of home, faced chattering machine guns, aerial bombs, mines and an equally insane army of Germans in a crazy leapfrog of battles in which thousands sometimes died in a single day. All to gain a few miles of decimated earth.

  "This is where we stop 'em, lads, " a youthful lieutenant told them as they trudged toward the enemy. "Else they'll be in Paris before Christmas. "

  From Château-Thierry they headed north toward a game preserve called Belleau Wood, singing songs as they marched. One platoon singing one song, the second answering with another.

  K-K-K-Katie, K-K-K-Katie,

  You're the only g-g-g-girl that I adore,

  When the m-m-m-moon shines, over the c-c-c-cowshed,

  I'll be w-w-w-waiting at the k-k-k-kitchen door.

  Answered by: You may forget the gas and shells, parley-voo,

  You may forget the gas and shells, parley-voo,

  You may forget the gas and shells,

  But you'll never forget the mademoiselles,

  Hinky-dinky parley-voo.

  They were singing as they approached the park. The Germans fired the first shot.

  This time, Keegan went down with a shell fragment in the leg. He dragged himself to a battered wall where he found three Marines clustered around a machine gun, dead long enough that bugs had begun to feast on them. Then there was a lull in the battle and he leaned his cheek against the wall, biting his lip to keep back the pain. An uneasy silence fell on the glen where he lay.

  He was surprised by the first of the Germans. They were on horseback, like a ghost posse, suddenly materializing in the swirling smoke of battle. The hooves of their horses were wrapped in gunny cloth and their halters and cinches were greased to cut down the noise. They moved slowly and silently over the battered ground, their guns at the ready. Keegan started firing and he kept firing, his teeth rattling as the heavy machine gun kicked and thundered under hand, firing until the barrel of the gun was glowing red, warped from the heat, and the ammo belts were scattered empty around him.

  When he stopped, the world stopped. There was not a sound. Not a bird singing, nor the wind sighing, nor even the cries of the wounded. There was silence. Before him was a grotesque frieze, as though the horses with their legs stretched up in the air and the men sprawled like sacks around them were posing for a photograph. Only then did the ghastly pain from the hole in his leg fire his brain and he screamed and passed out.

  In the hospital he found Jocko Nayles, his face half covered in a bloody bandage, his bloody eye socket swollen with pus, lying in his mud-caked uniform raving with fever. This time it was Keegan who urged his friend away from death.

  The French gave him the Croix de Guerre and the Americans a Silver Star and his second Purple Heart. He had been in Europe only four months.

  It was at the coffee bar in the hospital that Keegan first met Bert Rudman, a cocky young man starched and clean in a field coat and campaign hat, scratching out a story with a stub of pencil on a grungy sheaf of folded paper.

  "Hi, " Rudman had greeted him holding out his hand, "I'm Bert Rudman, Herald Tribune out of Paris. "

  "Keegan, " was all the youngster had mumbled back.

  "Were
you at Belleau Wood?"

  "I think so. "

  "How bad is it?" Rudman asked, nodding toward his leg.

  "Bad enough to get me home. " He paused for a moment and then asked, "Did we win?"

  Rudman had stared at him for a moment, the significance of his question slowly sinking in. Then he smiled. "You sure did, kiddo. Kicked the Kaiser's ass right back where it came from and then some. "

  "That's good, " Keegan said

  "Hell yes, it's good. Know what they're callin' you Marines? Devil Hounds. Is that a Croix de Guerre on your shirt?"

  "Yeah. Some frog general gave it to me. "

  "What'd you do?"

  "Damned if I know. "

  "Well, you must've done something, trooper, that's hot stuff in the French Army. Say, could I impose on you? I'm writing this piece on the battle, you know, kind of the big picture of what happened. Can I read it to you, you bein' there and all?"

  Keegan nodded. "Sure. "

  Rudman had sat there, reading from his tattered papers, stopping occasionally to scratch out a correction or take a sip of coffee as Keegan listened in awe, not because the words were that stunning, although it was clear that Rudman knew how to write, but because for the first time he understood the panorama of the battle he had been part of: the decisions made by the officers, the attacks and counterattacks, the strategy and terrible price that had been paid to drive the Germans back across the Marne and break their march toward Paris.

  He was struck by the realization that what had been a traumatic and monumental moment in his life had been an infinitesimal part of the battle, by the insignificance of his part in the brutal encounter. And as Rudman read on, the story gathered a kind of chilling energy unto itself and Keegan began to feel its power.

  "Belleau Wood is silent now, " Rudman said, wrapping up the lengthy tome. "What was once a beautiful picnic spot has been reduced to tree stubs, great gaping holes in the ground, and mud. It is as if the earth itself at Château-Thierry has been mortally wounded and lies bleeding at the feet of the victors.

  "Perhaps this is the beginning of the end for the Germans who sought this war and have paid so dearly for it. For while our victories are clear, the cause of this war is still clouded and obscure. Perhaps we will learn that from the peace, for until we understand why this war happened we can never be sure it will not happen again. "

  He looked over at Keegan, who sat speechless

  "Well, what you think?"

  "Why, it's great. Just great, " Keegan said softly and took a deep, slow breath. "They really call us Devil Hounds?"

  "You bet. You boys fought like hell out there. And you really think it's good, the story I mean?"

  Keegan nodded emphatically.

  "Okay. O-kay! Say, what'd you say your name was again?"

  "Francis Keegan. "

  Rudman scribbled a phone number and tore it off the bottom of one of the sheets of paper.

  "Look here, Francis, here's my number. You get back to Paris, call me. We'll have dinner together, on the Trib."

  "Can I bring my buddy? He lost an eye in the fight. "

  "An eyel Goddamn those Krauts! Why, sure enough, bring him along, we'll make a night of it. And say, thanks for listening, okay?"

  "Sure. Thanks for letting me hear it. "

  "No kidding," Keegan finally said. "A cow barn, eh. No plaque or anything to commemorate the occasion?"

  "Nothing but a salt lick."

  "I'm insulted," Keegan said. "Are you insulted?"

  "Cut to the quick."

  "So they've got you covering politics now, huh?"

  Rudman nodded. "Hear about Hitler's speech in Munich?"

  "He makes a speech every time his auto stalls."

  "Not like this one. Talk about choreography! They were climbing the walls before he was through. You could hear the mob heiling Hitler in Brooklyn. It was scary. I still get goose pimples thinking about it. He's got something, this guy. He's dangerous, Francis. Did you read my piece on Munich?"

  "I read it," Keegan said.

  "And . . . ?"

  "A little hysterical."

  "Hysterical! Have you seen him? Heard him speak?"

  "Sure. That line about Hitler being a demonic vision of God was lovely. Keep writing stuff like that you'll lose your visa—or end up with a bullet in the back."

  "Now who's being hysterical? They're not going to fool around with the Herald Trib. "

  "Look around you. You think these crazies give two hoots in hell about your credentials? Poor old Sid Lewis got his brains beat out down in Rome for using the wrong adjectives about Mussolini."

  "That's not what happened at all," Rudman said. "Sid was queer. He got in a lover's quarrel with some fascist he picked up in a bar and got his head bashed in."

  "Count on you to know all the dirt. You ought to start your own little monthly newsletter. All the news that's unfit to print."

  "That's very funny, Keegan. And what have you been up to?"

  "I'm the embassy badminton champion. Me and Cissy Devane."

  "My God, that's really impressive," Rudman said sarcastically.

  Keegan waved his arm toward the crowded club.

  "Take my word for it, pal, they're the ones you have to worry about. Hitler's all talk."

  "You sound like the isolationists back home. You should read Mein Kampf, it's all laid out there."

  "I've read Mein Kampf. "

  Rudman looked surprised and said, "Well, I give him two years, three tops. He'll have the Saar back, Austria, Poland, probably Czechoslovakia. He's already using the Versailles treaty for toilet paper."

  "Rudman, I came here to be entertained, not to listen to lectures on the rise and fall of the German Empire."

  "Okay," said Rudman, and abruptly changed the subject. "Okay. What's this Gold Gate I've been hearing about?"

  "Sex show upstairs."

  "Any good?"

  "If you like naked men and women covered with oil rolling around under bad lights."

  "I do," Rudman said with a leering grin. "Shall we?"

  Keegan shook his head. "I came for the singer."

  "Does she sing covered with oil?"

  Keegan rolled his eyes. "She's coming on next. As soon as they round up that herd and get them off the stage." He nodded toward the chorus line, all of whom were at least ten pounds overweight. As he spoke they lumbered into the wings.

  "I'll be where the action is," Rudman said and headed upstairs. "Dinner tomorrow night?"

  Keegan nodded and waved him away because now the stage lights were lowering. They went out. Keegan could barely discern the tiny woman who came out on the darkened stage carrying her own stool. She put it down in front of the microphone on the corner of the stage and sat down. The piano man started playing trills, warming up. Then the baby spot faded in on her.

  He was immediately taken by her appearance. She was barely five feet tall, thin, rather frail. Her face was narrow to the point of being gaunt and her sharply honed cheekbones seemed etched into her face. The result was an almost haunted look, an impression strengthened by large, saucerlike eyes that gleamed in the tiny light and seemed almost tear-struck. A simple, long black dress accented the aura of vulnerability that surrounded her. He had to strain to hear her name when the emcee introduced her. Jenny Gould.

  She stood without speaking for a few moments, just long enough for Keegan to worry that perhaps something was wrong, that she wasn't going to perform. Then she began to sing.

  The voice startled him at first. It was low, throaty, a torch-song voice that tortured every word of the Cole Porter song she chose to interpret, not as a cynical dirge, but as a metaphor about love gone sour.

  Love for sale,

  Appetizing young love for sale,

  If you want to try my wares,

  Take a chance and climb the stairs,

  Love for sale.

  The crowd was ill mannered and inattentive. Chattering, laughing, clinking glasses, creating a constant babel th
at underscored every word she sang, and Keegan finally moved down the bar closer to the stage to hear better. He was mesmerized by her. When the song was over there was a smattering of applause, except from Keegan who wore out his hands clapping.

  He thought she glanced over at him as he applauded, but couldn't be sure, felt foolish in fact at how pleased he was that she might have noticed him. Then she began her second song and he was, once again, caught in the magical, sensual spell she was weaving.

  In the darkened room, Vanessa suddenly decided it was time to make a break for it. The boys were trapped on the other side of the room. The singer was into her second song and Vanessa snatched up her purse and stood to leave. From the bar there was a smattering of wolf whistles mostly lost in the clamor. She stalked across the room, her dress swaying in sparkling waves as she walked. Deenie struggled to her feet, trotting after the haughty beauty. Then Vanessa stopped so suddenly that Deenie bumped into her.

  "Oh my God," Vanessa said half-aloud.

  "What is it?" Deenie asked.

  "Somebody I know," Vanessa said, her mouth curling into a sly smile.

  "From Boston?" Deenie asked wide-eyed.

  "Oh yes, he's from Boston all right."

  "Oh no!" Deenie cried out and turned her back to the bar.

  "Don't be silly. If there's one person in Boston I'd prefer to be seen by, it's him. C'mon."

  She grabbed Deenie's hand and dragged her through the crowd, ignoring the looks and the comments. She stood ten feet behind Keegan, waiting for the song to end.

  "Which one is he?" Deenie whispered.

  "Shhh."

  The second song was a German tune Keegan was not familiar with. Then she sang "Someone to Watch Over Me" and every syllable was plaintive, every word a plea to be loved, every note a heartbreaker.