A Man Called Milo Morai

by Robert Adams

  "Come, Irunn," he snapped and stalked toward the foyer.

  With Irunn, the priests and their chauffeur gone, Rosaleen fetched in more food and a bowl of punch, to which last old Pat O'Shea promptly added a half-quart of Irish whiskey.

  They all had eaten and imbibed in silence for some time when Fanny Duncan spoke, hesitantly.

  "Mr. Moray, you said that she… that Irunn, that is… wasn't a… a virgin when… when you… when you and she… well, anyway, it all makes me think back to our training days. Irunn and me, we were roommates in training for a couple of years of it, and… and I've always wondered. The way she talked about her brother, Sven, and some things she said sometimes in her sleep and the way the two of them behaved when they thought nobody else could see them one time when she and I went up to the farm in Wisconsin for a week and…"

  Maggie paled and hurriedly signed herself. "Fanny! Hold your tongue, as you love God. Incest? It's a nauseating thought. Only degenerates and idiots do such things."

  "Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to say that, Mrs. O'Shea," remarked Gerald Guiscarde, adding, "Certain events in my own practice, plus confidential conversations I've had with other professionals, incline me toward the belief that incest is not anywhere near as rare a thing as most people, even medical people, seem to think or aver."

  Maggie just shook her head in disbelief, but Milo could and did fully believe it all, for he recalled that on two separate occasions in a transport of passion Irunn had called him Sven and whispered endearments to him in Norwegian.

  After finishing off the trays of foods and most of the strengthened-punch, almost single-handedly, Lieutenant Terence Grady addressed Milo. "Mister, I don't want to take in no friend of Rosaleen O'Farrell's, and besides, you strike me as a good guy, but if that Kraut priest does get a warrant from that squarehead judge in the mornin', it ain't gonna be no like or not like to it, you see. I'm gonna have to bring you in or send some other cop to do it. It might be a good idea if you get out of this precinct—or, better yet, this city—before morning. I'll give you a ride as far's the train depot, but I can't do more'n that for you. I got my wife and kids to think about, see, and my pension, too."

  "You're a very brave man, lieutenant, a good man, too, to offer help in the face of a vindictive and powerful man like Father Rustung," said the doctor. "And I am certain that Mr. Moray recognizes and deeply appreciates your generous offer. But no, it would be just too much needless risk for you to undertake. Leave it to me. I have a motorcar, too, and I am not, thank God, in a position where that most unsaintly man can do me any harm."

  "But I do agree with you that Milo must leave the city or even the state tonight. Technically, he is guilty of a so-called crime that could get him, if convicted, as much as fifteen years in prison. So, if you and the sergeant will leave now, the rest of us will make plans and save you the discomfort of having to arrest a friend of Mrs. O'Farrell's."

  As prearranged, Milo descended from the train in South Bend, Indiana, and found an all-night diner near the depot, where he sat, drinking terrible coffee at a nickel the chipped mug and reading a day-old newspaper until the old wall clock said that it was nine a.m. He then made his way back to the depot, found a telephone and placed a reverse-charges call, person-to-person to Patrick O'Shea, giving him the name they had decided upon, Tom Muldoon.

  "Tommy, lad? Yes, operator, this is Patrick O'Shea. Yes, I'll accept charges for the call. Tommy, I can't talk to you but a minute. The whole bloody house is full of cops. Some feller used to room here, they're after him, two carloads of them just come in and they're after searching this house from cellar to attic. Anyhow, that guy I told you about, he's been told you're coming and he'll be expectin' you and he'll take good care of you and if he don't you let me know lickety-split… A'right, lootenant, a'right, it's just a old buddy from the War is all, and I ain't talked to him in a coon's age. What in hell you expect me to be able to tell you, the man's gone is all. I'm closes' thing to blind from gas, you know, I can't see the damn street from the front stoop, not any kind of clear, so how can I tell you which way he went, huh?… Bye-bye, Tommy, I gotta go."

  By nine-thirty, Milo was aboard a train bound south for Indianapolis. As the engine picked up speed and the car began to sway, he settled down into the seat and closed his eyes and thought back to his last few hours in what had been for not quite a year the first home of which he had any memory.

  "First of all," said Gerald Guiscarde," we need to figure out how you're going to live after you leave here, your job and us, your friends. The last thing you want to do is seek a job as a translator. That would be a sure giveaway of just who you are, and if that priest is as dead set to clap you in jail as he gives every indication of being, he'll probably have his Bund people all over the East as well as the Midwest looking for you and ready to have you picked up and extradited back here."

  "Jobs of any kind are damned hard to find anywhere in this country, and if you live anything like well with no evident job you're going to stand out like a sore thumb and attract the Bund. So where to tell you to go, what to tell you to do, Milo? I must confess, I can't just now come up with an answer."

  "Well, I can, by cracky!" said Pat O'Shea.

  "You always have the same thing on your mind," snapped Maggie peevishly. "Maybe Milo doesn't want to join the Army."

  "Well, it's the bestest place for him, the way things is, Maggie. Look, doctor, I's a perfeshnal soldier back before the war. I soldiered for twelve years, made staff sergeant, too, afore my folks all died and I had to come back home to try and run the brewery. And if it's one thing I knows, it's the Army."

  "If Milo enlists—and I can get him enlisted, I still got frinds from the old days is recruiters, two of them—the Army ain't gonna turn him over to no civil police for nothin' he done as a civilian, not unless he'd murdered or raped or kidnapped or robbed banks or somethin' really bad. Them bugtit feather merchants do try to come after him for fornicatin', for the love of mud, Army's gonna perlitely tell them where to go and what to do to theyselfs when they gets there, is all. Just as long's a man don't fu—ahhh, mess up as a soldier, the Army don't give a hill of beans what he done before."

  "And as for them Kraut-lovers, that Bund and all, it's more'n enough old soldiers what fought in France in the War is still around to make short shrift of any them comes sniffin' around after Milo."

  "You know, Mrs. O'Shea, your husband may be right. The Army may well be the answer we so desperately need to keep Milo out of that priest's clutches. I think the minimum enlistment in the armed services is three years, and by that time surely all of this sorry business will be ancient history. But the question now is, how are we going to get him down to the recruiting office and signed up before the police pick him up on that warrant and clap him behind bars?"

  Pat chuckled. "I got the answer to that one, too, doctor. I knows thishere recruiter in Indianapolis, see. Milo can get on a train and get out of Illinois, tonight, see. I can call my old buddy firstest thing he opens up in the morning and tell him enough of what's going on to get him ready for Milo when he gets there, see. Milo'll just have to kill some time somewheres till the right time to go to the recruitin' office is all, but we can work that out in jig time."

  At Pat's suggestion, Milo packed only his razor and a few toiletries, a few days' worth of underwear and socks, a couple of shirts and a few books. As an afterthought, the old soldier suggested adding the fine, strong padlock from off the moneybox chain, saying that such would be useful for the securing of issue lockers in the barracks. Milo threw in a wad of handkerchiefs, then closed and locked the thick briefcase which was the sole piece of luggage of any description he owned.

  It was while he was packing that Rosaleen bore up the stairs to his room a picnic basket packed well-nigh to bursting with food "for your journey, love."

  Reopening the briefcase, he managed to make room for but three of the thick sandwiches. But then Rosaleen took over, emptied the case and repacked it so compete
ntly that she was able to add two more sandwiches, a slab of cheese and a half-dozen hard-boiled eggs, a small jar of pickles and a brace of red apples.

  "Do you have a pocket knife?" inquired Pat. When Milo shook his head, the old man dug deep into his pants pocket and brought out an old, worn, but razor-edged Barlow. "A soldier needs him a good knife, Milo; I don't, I can't even see good enough to whittle no more. Mrs. O'Shea, she'll be damn glad I give it to you, she's plumb sick and tired of fixin' up my cut fingers as it is."

  "I'll pack up the resta your clothes and things, Milo, and put them in a old cedar chest is up in the attic with some mothballs, too. You can send for them whenever you wants them, see."

  "No, Pat, thank you, but no," Milo told him. "Sell them for whatever you can, or give them away. One thing, though. Rosaleen, can you find me a legal-sized envelope and a sheet of blank paper?"

  While the woman was gone, Milo opened his strongbox and emptied it onto the small writing table. He quickly divided the couple hundred dollars in smaller bills between his billfold and several of his pockets, then tucked a couple of fifties from the sale of the gold into each sock. The rest of the stack of bills he divided, and when the old cook returned with the stationery, he placed a thousand dollars into the envelope and dashed off a quick note.

  "Sol, I am leaving town for good. Where I'm bound, I won't need all this cash, so I want you and your family to have it. With this for a nest egg, you might be able to finish law school, and I think you should. No, you can't give it back to me, for not even I know where I'll be when you get it. Milo Moray."

  Adding the folded note to the contents of the envelope, he sealed it and put it in his coat pocket. Handing the rest of the cash, uncounted, to Pat, he said, "Now this, Pat, you can hold until I send for it, whenever. Okay?"

  Then he looked up from the chair at old Rosaleen. "Mrs. O'Farrell, if I give you something, do you promise to take it without a lot of argument?"

  "It's not one red copper I'll be taking from you, Mr. Moray," she declared forcefully in a tone that brooked no nonsense or demur.

  He shook his head. "No, it's not money, Mrs. O'Farrell. Will you promise to take it? Please, I haven't much time left."

  "Well… if it's not money, love," she said uncertainly, "then, yes, I promise to take it."

  "You heard her promise me, Pat?" Milo demanded.

  "That I did," was the old soldier's quick answer. "She promised, indeed she did."

  Picking up the ring box of dark-green velvet from the top of the writing desk, Milo pressed it into the old cook's hand. Opened it that she might see the carat of blue-white emerald-cut diamond in its setting of heavy, solid red gold.

  "Oh, no, no, Mr. Moray, sir, I can't be taking sich a treasure! No, why it must be worth every last penny of… of fifty or sixty dollars."

  Milo just smiled. "Actually, a bit more than that, Mrs. O'Farrell. But remember your promise—I hold you to it."

  Old Rosaleen looked at him, then back at the stunning ring for a moment. Then she buried her wrinkled face in her work-worn hands and ran from the room, sobbing loudly.

  Milo stood up and took from the tabletop the last two bills, a twenty and a five. "Pat, this is the twenty-five dollars that Irunn paid the jeweler, Plotkin, to hold the ring. If she or anyone else comes around demanding its return, you are to give them this. Your wife has the receipts. Understand me?"

  Pat nodded briskly. "You damn tootin' I does, Milo. It's like I's said for a helluva long time—you some kind of a man, you is. You gonna make a damn good soldier, too, I can tell you that right now. You got the kinda style it ain't much seen of no more."

  The leavetaking was an emotional one, to say the least, what with all of the women crying, save only old Rosaleen, who had done with her crying for the occasion and who now wore Milo's gift on a thumb, her other fingers being too small to give it secure lodgement.

  As the old cook reached up to hug Milo's neck, she stated, "It's gettin' this lovely, lovely present of yours sized to my finger, I'll be doin', Milo Moray, and then it's I'll be wearin' it until the day I die and buried with me it'll be. God and His Blessed Mither guard and keep you, now, and it's my prayers you'll be havin' of me that you fare well."

  In the Mercedes-Benz, Milo took the sealed envelope from the pocket of his greatcoat and passed it to Dr. Guiscarde, saying, "The name of the young man this is intended for is on the envelope. Sam Osterreich can put you in touch with him. And make him take it, hear? He's way too bright a boy to waste his life peddling door-to-door."

  "The old sarge, now, he was some kinda sojer, some kinda sojer, I tell you, mister!" stated Master Sergeant Norman Oates between and through mouthfuls of Rosaleen O'Farrell's hearty homebaked bread and butter and roast beef or country ham, sharp cheddar cheese and home-canned mustard pickles. "Won't no reason for him to get gassed like he did, you know. 'Cept of he put his own gas mask on that young lootenant who was layin' there wounded with his own mask shot fulla holes, is all. An' then the one what he took off a corpse won't workin' right, see."

  "Naw, Sarge O'Shea, he was a real, old-time sojer, the kind like you don't hardly see no more in thishere new-fangled Army. You want some more coffee?"

  Milo accepted, holding out his white china mug for a refill, for it was the best coffee he could recall ever having tasted, its flavor being the equal of its aroma.

  Taking another hard-boiled egg in his thick fingers, the stout, balding, jowly soldier cracked it with the flick of a thumbnail, then expertly peeled off the shell, showered it with salt and pepper and bit off the top half before continuing.

  "Yeah, I tell you, mister, it was plumb good to hear old Sergeant Pat's voice again, this mornin'. Way he tells it, you kinda on the run, like, right?" He chuckled, then added, along with the rest of the egg, "Didn' need to tell me that, even, none of it, 'cause I'd've knowed. If it won't important like for you to make tracks, he'd've got ole Castle in Chicago to 'list you up 'stead of me. So you tell me, what's the law want you for? Better level with me, Moray, 'cause I got me ways of findin' out and I don't cotton to being lied to."

  When Milo had related an encapsulated version of the story, the sergeant pushed back from his desk, threw back his head and laughed and laughed and laughed, his huge beer belly jiggling and bouncing to his mirth. His already florid face became an alarming dark red, his eyes streamed tears, and he finally had to hold his sides and breathe in wheezes. At last, he was able to exert enough self-control to straighten up, pull himself back to the desk and wipe at his eyes and face with a wadded handkerchief, following which, he used the same cloth to loudly and thoroughly blow his nose, before jamming it back into a pocket.

  Still grinning, he said, "Christ on a crutch, Moray, it's high time they took shit like that out'n the friggin' law-books. Goddam, man, fuckin's the most natcherl thing in the world. I don't go 'long with rape, see, but if the woman's willin', hell, the goddam cops shouldn't have no place in it a-tall. As for the damn preachers and priests and all, bugger the sour-faced lot of 'em, folks has got the right to some pleasure, no matter what they say or claim the Bible says. You ever read the Bible, Moray—I mean, really read it? Well, you should—it's chock-full of more begats than you ever saw in your life, and the onliest way to begat a kid is to fuck a woman."

  "As for your trouble, don't you worry none about it no more, hear me? That shit back in Chicago, that is the damnedest bum rap I ever heard tell of."

  Chapter V

  Among the first things Milo had to do upon his enlistment in the Army of the United States of America in November 1938 was to quickly learn to understand and to speak— though not, ever, to write—a whole new dialect of English. No one of the many dictionaries, thesauruses and etymological works he had read through during his months of work in the confines of the public library had given him more than a hint of the slang, the depthless crudities, the euphemisms, the scatological references, the slurs, the obscenities and blasphemies that all went a long way toward making up the everyday lang
uage of the common soldier.

  The standardized, non-obscene Army terms and abbreviations were very easy to assimilate, especially for those men who had no difficulty in reading basic English, not that every one of the recruits could do so. A few were just too stupid, more were simply ill-educated. With most of the rest, the problem was that English was not their native language, and it was in helping these latter that Milo soon proved his worth to the commissioned and noncommissioned cadre of his training company.

  Not that his skill at languages spared him any of the training, details, fatigue duties, drilling, classes, weary route marches and endless round of bullying and general harassment suffered by the rest of his company and battalion. Early on, he was given an armband to wear, told that he was henceforth an "acting squadleader" and given responsibility for six European immigrants, a pair of Mexicans, a Turk, and a Lebanese who spoke Arabic,

  Turkish and French fluently but had only a few words and so very few phrases of English that Milo privately wondered how he had gotten accepted for the Army at all.

  His abilities to get through to the members of his squad earned him a measure of grudging respect from his superiors, but what really impressed them was his unerring marksmanship and other proven combat qualifications.

  When once he had mastered the mechanical functions of the U.S. Rifle, Caliber .30, Model 1903, and the Pistol, Caliber .45, Model 1911Al, he consistently racked up range scores in the high-expert classification, and no one afterward believed his quite truthful answers to the questions that he could not recall ever having handled or fired either pistols or rifles before. But their understandable disbelief was not confined to his statements only, for in the Army of that time, there was full many a man with a past to hide.