There was an overpowering silence as the Colonel’s sudden outburst spread over the room burstingly like the shocking bloodsplattering gush of a sudden miscarriage from a shy young preacher’s wife as she passed through the dining car of the 20th Century Limited.
Only General O’Hanlon was not stunned but instead seemed to derive an instantaneous vicarious relief as if now Pearson were speaking for him too. Immediately the General caught himself camouflaging his approval behind a constrained look of unbelief, pulling himself far back and erect so that his jowls spread out resting against his chest like a wide-eyed little Buddha.
“General Stilwell obihushly foolish man,” General Chao said. “Any man so allow loss of face damn fool man to Chinese.”
Colonel Pearson snorted once disgustedly. He remembered a meeting that he had attended with Stilwell and several Chinese generals two years ago. Stilwell had pointed to the map showing the disposition of seven Chinese divisions throughout Burma. The Chinese Staff Generals had insisted that there were only five divisions in the area named. Stilwell had then named the divisions one at a time by their division numeral, naming also their commanding officers. The Chinese Staff General said no, Stillwell was wrong, Kai-shek, said there were only five divisions. The conference had never gotten started because the Chinese refused to admit that there were seven divisions where there were seven divisions because Kai-shek said there were only five divisions. It had been one of Colonel Pearson’s first contacts with Chiang’s officers and he found it difficult to believe that they could so stubbornly deny the obvious facts. The Colonel knowing it would be useless didn’t even bother to comment on young General Chao’s last remark.
“I don’t think that General Stilwell has anything to do with the question at hand,” Mike O’Hanlon said with the polished manner of an elder statesman who found himself the third party at a luncheon between Walter Reuther and Charles Wilson.
“I absolutely don’t see any excuse for the dog-soldier expletives of your Colonel,” Colonel Reed said to General O’Hanlon indignantly. “General Chao has come here as a dignified representative of our good Allies. Myself, as an American, must consider myself counterpart to this outrageous attitude. I look to General Chao with severe loss of face,” Arthur Reed said turning to the twenty-three year old Chinese General with the half-sad half-bewildered expression of a Basset hound to his master after he had just crapped on the livingroom rug.
General Chao’s chest swelled out like a peacock on the make.
“Well, Pearson,” General O’Hanlon said sternly.
Colonel Pearson apologized for his language reluctantly. That he did so reluctantly was irritating to Arthur Reed. Major Alofson nodded his head. He had studied Pearson’s record too. The Colonel’s marked tendency towards nonconformity was in no way exaggerated. There was no doubt about his anti-social attitude, Jake thought. Interesting. Very interesting.
The guests ate their dinner. Colonel Pearson excused himself as the main course was served using his personal review of the evening message as an excuse. General O’Hanlon sipped on a brandy and drank coffee. The General and Colonel Reed discussed mostly tactics and many problems of the Burma Road. It was agreed that Colonel Reed and Major Alofson would see Con first thing in the morning. Arthur Reed and Mike O’Hanlon had without mentioning it agreed on one thing: it would be better at least for the present not to let Con meet General Chao.
CHAPTER XLII
The next morning Colonel Arthur Reed and Major Jake Alofson drove around to Con’s cottage. They knocked and without waiting for a reply entered. Con was sitting on the floor in the middle of the livingroom naked. There was a glass of scotch next to him and the room had a heavy sickening odor. The visitors halted abruptly.
“Have a seat,” Con said without looking up. “I’ll be done in a minute.”
The Major, his thick lips pursed with visible awe, couldn’t take his eyes from the young American, the dark brown of his upper body and the white of his lower body, his finely trimmed goatee, his freshly combed hair, the smooth brown of the freshly shaved sides of his face above his goatee, and the jungle rotten flesh around his armpits. He was peeling the dead skin from his feet. The skin was all over the floor around him;, strips of skin four and five inches long and a quarter of an inch thick, small strips, and tiny strips that were dead moldy rotten, warped from the rubber and canvas of the jungle boots that he had not had off in weeks. Con was working on the heel of his right foot, he got his thumb and forefinger under a piece of the skin and pulled. A strip three inches; long and over a quarter inch thick came off. He studied it for a moment then dropped it on the floor.
Arthur Reed wanted to get out of the room. He couldn’t realize anything smelling that bad. He gagged, holding his hand to his mouth.
Jake Alofson came forward two steps, medical kit in hand. He set the kit on a table. “Here young fellow, “I’ll take care of that,” he said soothingly. “Best you don’t touch it.”
“Thanks anyhow but I’ve been doing this for over a year now,” Con said not looking up, still engrossed in the feet.
“But you might get an infection,” Jake said.
“Not after I soak them in scotch,” Con said. “You want a drink?”
“Scotch,” Arthur Reed said. “They allow you to carry scotch?”
Con peered up: “I didn’t say they allowed anything. But I sure don’t carry rubbing alcohol in my canteens. Would you mind closing the door, Colonel. Flies you know.”
Arthur Reed’s thin precise efficient lips clenched tightly, almost femininely Con thought.
“Don’t you stand up when a senior officer comes into the room?” Colonel Reed said.
“No, not when it means I might get an infection in my feet. Hand me my slippers, Major, and I’ll stand for the Colonel,” Con grinned sarcastically.
“I don’t think that will be necessary now,” Jake Alofson said soothingly, then glanced to Arthur Reed. “Art, you don’t mind if I see Con alone for a while.”
“I think I’ll stay.”
“Then I won’t let the Doctor examine me to see if I’m Section Eight material,” Con said unconcernedly working on his feet again and not looking up. “You know the regulations, Colonel. I’m sure of that. I’m a field grade officer and I’ve the right to a private examination.”
“Who told you you were to be examined?” Colonel Reed snapped sharply, militarily.
Con raised up scratching behind his ear. He smiled broadly. “I didn’t say anyone told me,” he spoke very slowly. “Now did I?”
“Your ass is in a hell of a sling right now, Major, whether you know it or not. You’d be wise to watch yourself,” Arthur Reed said, satisfied that Jake would have no trouble getting a proper report on Con after this initial display of irrationalism.
“You should have my troubles. You really should,” Con said getting up.
He put on his slippers and went into the bedroom and got a pair of clean white shorts Supply had sent over. He went into the kitchen and got a broom and when he came back into the livingroom Colonel Reed was gone. He swept the skin off the grass mat floor covering, carefully, into a neat pile as Jake Alofson watched. He swept it out the front door down the single cottage step glancing fleetingly at Arthur Reed standing beside his jeep in the hot, mid-morning sun. He went into the kitchen and came out with a pan and a bottle of scotch. Concernedly he poured the scotch in the pan, placed the pan in front of a chair, sat down placing his feet in the pan. He drank from the half-full bottle of Dewar’s on the table stand, then reached out the bottle to the medical officer now sitting on the couch near him. “Drink?”
“Not so early in the day,” Jake said good-naturedly, his thick lips spread smiling good-naturedly, his eyes fixed to Con not at all good-naturedly.
Con put the bottle down wiggling his toes in the scotch in the pan.
“I’ve got to examine you,” Jake said reluctantly, soothingly as if he were really very sorry that he was involved in this mess at all.<
br />
“You a real psychiatrist?” Con asked interested.
“I practiced seven years before I went into the service,” Jake said leaning back, settling comfortably on the couch. “But I’m supposed to ask the questions,” he smiled his thick smile.
“Mind if I smoke?” Con asked poker-faced picking up the Chesterfields, wishing that Danny were here. We could have some real fun with this son-of-a-bitch.
“Supposing I said I wished you wouldn’t,” Jake said.
“If you had a reason for me not to smoke I wouldn’t. But if you don’t have a reason, and because you don’t outrank me, then I’ll go ahead and smoke.”
“You give a very specific, logical answer,” Jake complimented.
“Thank you, Doc,” Con said going along with it. “What school do you follow, Doc? Freudian? Sullivan? Adler? I mean I have my own ideas on the matter. And if I was going to consult a psychiatrist of my own free will I’d want to know what school he followed. You wouldn’t blame me for that.”
“That’s a rather surprising statement,” Jake said. “Very. What do you know about Freud or Sullivan or Adler?”
“Not much, Doc. Not at all. My medical man has a few books. Do you know Doc Travis?”
“No.”
“Well he keeps these books in the headquarters book bag. I read a lot at night, Doc. Mainly, you see, because down in the jungle at night there’s not much else to do. I mean when you’re not fighting. It’s really very boring down there at night. I know you people think it’s all very romantic and all that. But in reality, we are here to discuss reality I presume, well in reality it’s very boring at night. Oh, I said that before didn’t I. Well, it is.”
Jack Alofson ran his hand over his partially bald head laughing to himself. “You know I never thought I’d really enjoy this assignment. I really never did,” he said in his Bostonian accent, still laughing. “You know, you almost talk like you enjoyed it down there,” he added suggestively.
“It’s very peaceful down there at times. It’s a job.”
“I suppose killing was a job too,” Jake said still smiling his thick-lipped smile.
“Yes,” Con grinned. “That was a job.”
“You really felt that it was only a job?”
“That’s what I was trained to feel.” “You never felt any guilt?”
“Are you supposed to feel guilty about doing a job?”
“Most men do,” the Doc said. “Most men have a form of guilt if they kill.”
“Now ain’t that interesting,” Con said. “Are you sure you won’t have that drink, Doc.”
“I’m afraid you’re not being very co-operative,” the Doc said still smiling.
“Well, I don’t want to be a damn fool either. After all you’ve come here obviously under instructions to find out if there’s any possible way to establish that I’m mentally incompetent. Really, Doc, I’d be a damn fool to co-operate in such a venture myself, wouldn’t you say?” Con said grinning. He nipped at the scotch then added a little to the pan. He stirred the new scotch around in the pan with his feet.
“You’re really very clever,” the Doc said.
“Not at all,” Con said. “I have a good instinct, but I’m not very clever at all.”
“You believe in your instincts wholeheartedly don’t you?”
“I didn’t say that, Doc. I said I have a good instinct,” Con said thinking that Doc Jake Alofson reminded him of someone.
The conversation continued idly for a few moments and then the Doc began to ask him specific questions about whether he ever had any trouble choosing the clothes he wore, and how much did his mother and father argue, and when he had his first piece of tail, and had he ever gone down on anyone. More and more Jake Alofson reminded Con of someone as with each question the Doc seemed to look a little differently, a little more severe was the expression, Con thought.
And then it struck Con who the Doctor reminded him of. It struck him the instant the Doc asked him if he had ever gone down on a woman and he had replied without a hitch. The Doctor had the very same, the identical evil, reproachfully yet satisfied look that John Danforth had had whenever he was drunk and especially that evening Con and Ringa had walked in on him as he was pervertedly torturing the half-wit with the half-wit’s sister’s naked body. It was an inhuman, savagely lustful expression that Con had never forgotten and that for all the world he had never expected to see again. For a second the sudden recognition startled him, filling him with a queazy horror, then as suddenly it left him.
The Doctor continued the questioning. Con replied but hardly knew what he was saying. He couldn’t help but grope for the parallel that was the parallel between this suave, educated Bostonian Jew and the violent, ignorant, now dead one-third American Indian from the Klamath Reservation.
The Doctor noted the sudden change in Con’s attitude. Jake Alofson was trained to see the sudden change in one’s attitude. But Jake Alofson was not trained to receive a sense of genuine pity from one of his patients. It had never happened before. It was very disconcerting. It somehow gave him a sense of defeat, of inferiority. His smiling urbaneness vanished. He ceased questioning and leaned back. He took out a pipe and pouch. He always smoked a pipe when he was upset, a pipe soothed him. He lit up and as he struck the match his eyes glanced fleetingly at Con. The young American was staring at him pityingly, almost sorrowfully, as if he wasn’t really there, as if he were an illusion of some kind. Of course. An illusion, he thought puffing on the pipe.
The Doctor got up and went over to his medical kit on the table stand. He told Con he wanted to test his reflexes. He took the rubber hammer from his bag and asked Con to sit on the table.
Con took his feet out of the scotch and dried them with a towel. Then, as Jake Alofson stared in amazement, he poured the scotch from the foot-pan back into the bottle. He spilled a little of the scotch on the floor. He swore at the spilt scotch. He put his thumb over the bottle top and shook the bottle. He sniffed the bottle, then put it down.
The Doctor tested his reflexes. Then gave him a thorough physical.
“You’re in remarkably fine condition,” Jake said when he was finished, putting his equipment in his little black bag.
“Mentally?”
“I wouldn’t venture an opinion on that right now,” Jake said. “I’ll have to study my findings. I rarely give an opinion until I study my findings. I couldn’t say that your conduct was entirely rational though. I really couldn’t say that,” he said not hiding a small sense of satisfaction, as if he were a little boy that had a secret.
“I feel sorry for you, Doc,” Con said. “I really do.” He turned and walked into the bedroom.
And Jake Alofson left.
It wasn’t until Jake Alofson stepped outside of Con’s cottage into the hot tropical noon-sun that he fully discerned the putrid odor he had been enveloped in by Con’s feet inside. The muggy, wet air smelled sweet.
Colonel Reed hadn’t waited. But the jeep was there and drove him immediately over to headquarters. He and Art held a long conference in Art’s bedroom in the Colonel’s house. When they finished they wired their recommendations to Delhi.
They advised that Con be taken to the American Hospital at Delhi for further observation by Major Alofson and consultants on his staff. They recommended that Colonel Pearson apologize to General Chao on behalf of Con and the American Forces that had attacked in China. They recommended that the U.S. Government pay China triple indemnity for the damages incurred by them in China. They recommended that further investigation be held to determine the competence of Colonel Raymond Pearson. They recommended that Colonel Pearson be temporarily placed under the jurisdiction of Colonel Arthur Reed for the purpose of a speedy expedition of said investigation.
Delhi confirmed their recommendations within the hour. Colonel Reed requested a meeting with General Chao, General O’Hanlon, and Colonel Pearson present. They met in the Colonel’s office late that afternoon. Colonel Reed informed them of his n
ew authority and that Con would be flown to Delhi at once.
“I know all about it,” General O’Hanlon said. “I have copies of your wires right here.”
“I presumed you would,” Arthur Reed said.
“Chinese govherment most happy over speedy solution,” General Chao smiled a gold-toothed smile proudly.
“I suggest that for the present you continue normal operational procedure,” Colonel Reed said to Colonel Pearson. “However you must realize that for the time being the function of this organization is my responsibility. Therefore I wish to verify all orders. And at your earliest possible convenience I’d like a written brief on all units under your command; their locations, commanders, and the length of time each commander has to his credit.”
Ray Pearson’s massive hands resting on his desk clenched tightly. “I’ll begin work on it this evening,” he said almost contemptuously.
“Further.…” Arthur Reed started.
“Colonel Reed,” General O’Hanlon interrupted in that soft almost caressing voice. “May I have a word with you? In the outer office, please.”
Arthur Reed hesitated.
“I think it’s important,” Mike O’Hanlon added softly.
They stepped out into the hallway of the main house. General O’Hanlon reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the Chinese warrant that Con had given him. General O’Hanlon explained its contents.
“These documents were ordered destroyed. In any event, what possible bearing can they have on the present status quo? We have our orders,” Arthur Reed said with a slightest edge of wariness in his voice.
“You’re the epitome of the politician soldier,” Mike O’Hanlon said but not softly. “Supposing England had these documents? Or better yet suppose that the American public were to find out about them?”
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