Holding the trousers at arm’s length, he pursed his lips and considered the button. It was not quite in the right place, and it dangled, but he decided it was acceptable; he pushed the needle into the underside of the desk, where it was always kept, and swiveled around in the chair.
“Don’t tell me you’re still feeling bad!”
“Sort of.”
“Go to sick bay, stupid.”
Melvin shook his head. “They’d put me in the sack for a week and I’d miss some flights. It’s just a touch of cat fever, I guess.”
“I don’t know what you’re so worried about being in the sack a week for. You spend half your time in the sack anyway.” He took his feet off the desk and walked briskly across the room to gaze down at Melvin. “You do look peaked, as a matter of fact. By God, you do!” Then, with no great concern, he added, “You look awful.”
This irritated Melvin, who promptly got to his feet, glared straight ahead for a little while, and then slumped to the floor.
Horne picked him up by an arm and a leg and dropped him on the bunk. “I don’t know, baby. I think you ought to log in at sick bay. You’re sweating like a stuck pig.”
“I feel fine,” Melvin whispered. His eyes were glazed so that he could not see, sweat was rolling off his face, and his nose had started to bleed.
“Are you sure? Do you really feel all right?” Horne inquired. “You don’t look very good.”
Melvin rested a few minutes, licking his lips with a thickened tongue and shuddering as the chills swept through him, but finally managed to get up by clinging to the back of a chair. His skin was waxen yellow. His teeth chattered. He retched and dropped to his knees but indignantly waved Horne away and dragged himself up once more. He stood there swaying, trying to balance himself before the next attack of fever.
“Let’s go to Mobile,” he whispered.
Horne thought about it. “Well, I don’t know. I guess we could scare up a couple of crows all right. If you’re sure you feel okay.”
Melvin insisted he had never felt better in his life. He was not able to walk alone, so Horne helped him to the shower and leaned him against the wall and turned on the hot water.
After about half an hour Melvin came lurching through the clouds of steam, feeling his way, as pink as a lobster, and claimed he was ready, so they put on their blue uniforms and went to Mobile.
11
It was raining in Mobile. Gusts of wind-whipped rain and interminable crashing rolls of thunder had followed the bus all the way from Barin Field; now the clouds were silent and the rain fell steadily. Once in a while the town echoed as though there had been an explosion far out in the bay; otherwise the only sounds were the occasional honking of automobile horns and the sucking hiss of tires on the pavement. Horne and Melvin stood just inside the entrance to a drugstore on Bienville Square and moodily considered the street. They had gone to the drugstore as soon as they got off the bus because it was where they always went first of all; it was where the town girls were apt to be, but tonight most of the booths and the soda-fountain stools were unoccupied.
“I guess we got here too late,” Melvin said. He sneezed, rubbed his nose on the back of his hand, and resumed staring out the window.
“Yuh. We should’ve stayed at the field,” Horne agreed. “Look at this rain.”
A few minutes later Melvin said, “Maybe there’d be some stuff at the Rose Room.”
“I doubt it,” Horne answered finally. “Not tonight.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
Horne took off his hat to scratch his head. “I got a couple numbers from Ostrowski. What do you think?”
“We’re not doing any good here,” Melvin said. “Might as well.”
Horne cinched in his belt and strode across to the telephone. Melvin continued staring into the rain. The beneficial effects of the hot shower were beginning to wear away and he did not feel so well.
Horne came back from the telephone. “No answer.”
“Neither one?”
Horne shook his head. “Stupid pigs. Jesus, they must go out all the time.”
Melvin wandered to the tobacco counter and bought a package of cigarettes. Then he stopped a while at the magazine rack. When he returned to the window, Horne was peering intently at a woman in riding breeches and a red jacket who was standing under a store awning across the street.
“What’s she doing?” Melvin asked. “Is she drunk?”
“She’s trying to flag a cab. None of them will stop.”
“I wonder why not. That’s funny. She must be drunk. Let’s go talk to her. Come on!”
“Oh, relax,” Horne said. “Wait’ll the rain lets up.”
They stood side by side and thoughtfully studied the woman across the street. In a little while a taxicab stopped. She got in and the taxi drove away.
“We should have stayed at the base,” said Horne bitterly.
“You know what I’ve been thinking?” Melvin said a few minutes later. “I told you about Monk wearing silk underwear, didn’t I?”
“Yuh. It didn’t surprise me.”
“Well, I was thinking. He’s probably got a whole drawer full of it.”
Horne was not paying attention; he seemed bored.
“You know what?”
“What?” said Horne skeptically, and yawned.
“Well, what we could do is, because he always leaves his door unlocked, we could collect a few of those red ants that bite like hell and we could sprinkle them in the drawer. He wouldn’t notice them if we only put in a few. But he’d notice them after a while, maybe on the parade ground, or some place like that!”
“You go ahead,” Horne said without enthusiasm. “I’d rather get my wings.”
The rain came steadily down.
“Oh, for the love of God!” said Horne with a heavy sigh. “What a night!”
About half an hour later they saw Roska hurrying along the street with his collar turned up and a package under one arm. They buttoned their coats, flung open the door, and ran across the street, calling to him.
Roska was going to a party in a hotel. Melvin and Horne went along and found a suite of rooms crowded with cadets from Barin and Bronson fields, together with some Annapolis cadets who were on a Caribbean cruise and whose ship had put in at the Mobile yard for repairs, two Army pilots, some Mobile girls and several WAC’s. McCampbell was sitting on a radiator beside an open window with the rain sprinkling his wrinkled face and the lace curtains floating eerily over his shoulder. There was a drink in his hand, but he had not touched it. Nobody was speaking to him; he stared into the night as though he were alone in the room.
“Aviation Cadet Isaacs reports for duty,” someone said, and Melvin turned around. Cole was leaning drunkenly against the wall. His face was smeared with lipstick and his shirt was unbuttoned. “Pay your respects to the commanding officer,” he said with a sardonic grin, and held up a bottle.
By eleven o’clock Melvin could no longer tell whether or not he had a fever, nor did he care. With his back to a mohair sofa he rested on the floor and impartially contemplated the carpet, stroking it with his fingertips, oblivious to the party which rocked along some distance overhead. He felt as though he were resting on the floor of the sea.
Horne sat cross-legged on the sofa, taking one cigarette after another and carefully mashing them between his calloused palms until the paper shredded and tobacco showered on the carpet. From time to time without a word he meticulously swept the tobacco out of sight.
He reached down, grasped one of Melvin’s feet, and twisted it, forcing him to roll around on the carpet. “Scared are you?” Horne demanded, twisting vigorously. “So! You think you’re scared? I could tell you a thing or two if I wanted. For instance, do you know who was right in back of him all the way to the Gulf? That was me, baby, me! I chased him down to the water, because I thought if I could dive underneath him I could bring him back up. Isn’t that hilarious?” He twisted Melvin’s foot again. “Laugh
, why don’t you! I had in mind to power-dive right under that J while it was spinning, and pick him up and carry him home like a kid on his father’s back, and if I could have caught up with him I’d have done it, because that’s what I was going to do. You know what would have happened, don’t you? Don’t you? We’d both be under the waves now, getting our bones picked by the fish. When you say you’re scared, all I can do is laugh! Yes, sir,” he went on a few moments later, gazing into space, firmly holding Melvin by the foot, “all of us are. What would we be doing here drunk as boiled owls if we weren’t? Roska, for example, has got himself petrified. He’s smart, old Roska is. He isn’t thinking about Elmer, or about the old Deacon, or anybody at all. He’s at peace, and he’ll be that way till tomorrow. That’ll give him a nice rest. That’s what you and I should be doing. How do you feel?” he asked, almost tenderly.
“I’m all right,” Melvin said.
“Did I hurt your foot?”
“Yes.”
Horne looked as though he had forgotten what they were talking about. He frowned and sighed and after a while he said, “This is one fine town, Mobile. Any time it’s too much, you just fog it over to Mobile and get squared away, except right now these miserable broads are getting on my nerves. Scream all the time and never make any sort of sense. I always knew women had jellybeans for brains. What we ought to do is get another bottle and take it back to the base with us.”
“All right,” Melvin said. “But who’s going to buy it?”
Horne considered him with glassy, stupefied irritation. “You are! Who did you think? Cordell Hull or somebody?”
“I thought I bought the last bottle.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Horne furiously. “If you’re going to argue, forget it! I don’t want to talk about it! Please forget I ever mentioned it!”
Melvin got to his feet, caught hold of a lamp, and gazed about the room. He hiccuped, rubbed his face, brushed some ashes from his sleeve.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Horne. “Now go on out and get the bottle. Stop stalling around.”
“Well, but what about the guard at the gate?” Melvin asked with a vague, apologetic smile. “Isn’t it against regulations to bring whisky in?”
Horne was becoming impatient. He explained that the gate guard never inspected packages; all he did was ask what was inside. You lied to him about the contents and he told you to go on through. Everybody did it.
“But suppose he doesn’t believe me?”
“He always believes you,” said Horne. Then he corrected himself. “He never believes you. He knows perfectly well you’re lying, but he doesn’t care. He just has to ask the question because that’s what the regulations say. All he wants is the answer and after that his job is finished. It isn’t his responsibility if you tell a lie, see?”
Melvin leaned across the sofa, punched Roska in the stomach until he woke up, and asked him if what Horne said was true. Roska admitted thickly that it was. The gate guard never opened a package. All day Sunday, every Sunday, when liberty was ending, the buses from Mobile discharged cadets carrying shoeboxes full of whisky. At the gate the same question was invariably asked, the same answer given. That was the way it had always been and no one had any reason to suppose it would ever change: “What’s in the shoebox?” “Shoes.” “Go on through, Mister.”
That was the formula. There was nothing to it. Roska would be taking his weekly bottle and offered to take another one, but Melvin refused. It had begun to seem like a challenge. He put on his cap and stumbled out into the rain.
After a long time he returned with a shoebox. Horne had disappeared and Roska was asleep. Cole stood in a corner with a dazed expression, drinking and occasionally shaking his head as though in disbelief. They looked at each other. Melvin’s eyes filled with tears, and he stumbled into another room and fell across the bed, where he lay without moving.
Rain still beat against the windowpanes when he awoke. Beside him on the bed slept a cadet he had never seen before and a WAC who was wearing an Army officer’s overcoat. He got up and wandered through the suite and came across Horne face down on the carpet with his arms outflung and fists half-clenched. In another room Roska was reading a newspaper and sipping orange juice.
A little before noon Roska and Melvin started back to Barin Field. Horne, who was taking a shower when they left, had decided to remain in town that afternoon to see a movie about Navy flyers.
On the bus Roska fell asleep and Melvin, holding both shoeboxes in his lap, rode along with a vacant expression. His eyes were bloodshot and during the night somebody had burned a hole in his necktie. His white collar was limp, the blue uniform was wrinkled; he was generally damp and stained and smelled of liquor and perfume.
When they arrived at the gate the sky was lowering and the cold rain, which had stopped, was recommencing. The road was thick with muck. The cadets jumped out of the bus one after the other like sheep over a fence and hurried past the guard, who questioned everyone with a package. The guard stood under a shelter to keep out of the rain.
Roska, when his turn came, muttered, “Shoes,” before the question had been asked. The guard waved him through, and Melvin, who had closely observed this scene, was astonished because it was obvious the guard knew Roska was lying. Now his own turn had come; he hesitated, then stepped aside. Other cadets went through the gate. At last he was the only one who had not been admitted. The guard waited for him to approach. Melvin squinted at the sky as though looking for something, and the rain streamed down his face. He decided to walk through the gate without paying any attention to the guard, but when he tried to do so the guard lifted one arm and asked what he was carrying.
Melvin grinned and blushed.
The guard pushed him back outside the fence and repeated the question.
Melvin studied the package as though he could not think how it happened to be in his hands. The bottle rolled to one side and the package tilted so that he nearly dropped it.
“That a shoebox you got there, Mister?”
Melvin agreed that it was a shoebox.
“Then I reckon you got a pair of shoes you bought in Mobile.”
Melvin looked through the fence, hoping Roska had realized what was happening and was coming back to rescue him, but Roska, like the rest of the cadets, was far up the road to the barracks.
“You sound like a Southerner,” Melvin said. If they could become friends the guard might let him through.
“Monroe, Louisiana,” the guard replied, blinking. He was under shelter so he did not care how long the cadet wanted to stand in the rain.
Melvin tried to seem enthusiastic. “Monroe? I’ve never been there. What’s it like?”
“Mighty nice,” the guard said. “I live on Pecan Street.” He unwrapped a plug of tobacco, gripped it in his teeth, worked a bite loose, and leaned against his post, chewing, observing Melvin solemnly and shrewdly.
“Looks good, that tobacco. Is it?”
Courteously the guard reached into his pocket.
“No thanks!” Melvin said. “We had a party in Mobile and my stomach feels like an antique shop.” He lifted one foot and tried to kick the mud loose. “My name’s Isaacs,” he said wretchedly.
“Gorman,” the guard replied.
“Glad to meet you.”
“How do.”
They shook hands.
“It’s probably snowing where I come from,” Melvin said.
Gorman eyed him suspiciously. “You from up North, hey?”
“Not quite. I’m a Missourian.”
Gorman shifted the plug to the other cheek. “Never been up thataway. Buddy, how come you don’t wear no overcoat in this here old storm? That’s foolish.”
Melvin shrugged. He was too discouraged to speak. He did not know what had happened to the overcoat. His shoes were filled with water. His head was throbbing, his stomach tense and unsettled, and he had begun to tremble. A chill swept over him; he shuddered and
sneezed. He wanted more than anything else to take another of those marvelous, steaming showers and go to bed.
“Don’t none of your buddies tote home these here packets?”
“All the time.”
“What you reckon they got inside?”
Melvin suspected a trap. “They never say, so I couldn’t be certain. It might be anything.”
“Most generally,” said Gorman, peering out his window to make sure no officers were in sight, “it might be liquor.”
They looked at each other deeply.
“Now,” said the guard, “how you figure they get that there liquor inside this here station?”
Melvin said he didn’t know.
The guard considered him with scorn, but made one more attempt. “Looky here, Mr. Isaacs, I got me a job. The man say to me, ‘Gorman, you got your instructions?’ And I say, ‘Yes, sir!’ Do I let you through this gate without no question they might catch me, and buddy I ain’t wild for no brig. Now what you totin’ in that shoebox?”
“You want to look at it?”
“I’m willing to take your word. Just you tell me out loud what you got inside that box everybody puts shoes in.”
“Well, I can tell you truthfully it’s nothing very important.”
“I know that, only you got to tell me. Just you mention me something, most anything at all. Nothing like no elephant, understand, only just something reasonable.”
“How do you know the box isn’t empty?”
“That there’s the statement you wish to make. Is that it?”
Melvin shook his head.
Gorman was losing patience. “You want I should call up the OD and you explain this here foolishness to him? Then, buddy, make you a statement!”
The Patriot Page 16