They gave him a standing ovation.
As for the raiders, early the next morning they were informed that Mr. Becker had decided the best thing for them to do would be to go on vacation for a bit. All their weapons were to be secured and they were to drive back to their training headquarters at the Red River Army Depot, and from there commence a week off.
But of course there were two private chats to be gotten out of the way. One took place between Earl and Frenchy and, surprisingly enough, was initiated by Frenchy, in the ramshackle room that served as Earl's operations center in the pumping building.
"I wanted to apologize," he said early. "I fucked up."
"How's that?" said Earl.
"With those two Negro women. I fired those shots. I was racing up the steps, I tripped on a shell, I'd just loaded the BAR. I felt it firing. I―"
"You was in a battle zone, why wouldn't you have had your finger on the trigger? At any time a Grumley might have jumped out at you with a gun."
"I'm still sorry. If only―"
"Don't waste no time on ifonlys. You can run it through your head a thousand times and if this thing or that thing is different, it all turns out different. But maybe it turns out worse, not better, don't forget that possibility."
"Yes sir," said Frenchy.
"Good," said Earl.
"Thank God," said Frenchy, "that they were only Negroes."
Earl said nothing. But then he thought a second, as Frenchy returned to the bunk area, and said, "Just hold on."
"Yes sir."
"I wish you hadn't said that."
"Mr. Earl? I guess I meant, think of the problems we'd have if they'd have been white. That's what I meant."
"No, that ain't what you meant. I know what you meant. You meant, hey, they was only niggers."
Frenchy said nothing, but he seemed to squirm with discomfort. Then he replied, "They were only Negroes. I would never say nigger because my parents told me it was uncouth, but still, they were only Negroes. And the truth is, some of the boys are wondering why we went to so much trouble and risked so much to save some black prostitutes."
"Okay, you listen here, Short, and you listen good. Third day on Tarawa, third day after that long walk in through the cold water, I got plugged by a Jap sniper. I like to bled out but two boys from the Ammunition Company that we used as litter bearers, they crawled out and got me. Lots of fire going on. Japs everygoddamnwhere, you hear me? They drug me in, they dumped me on their litter and they carried my bleeding ass back to the aid station. Didn't say a word. Negro boys. I'm dead but for them two, and a few hours later one of 'em hisself was drug in, and they laid him next to me, and he died. I watched him die. Damned if his blood weren't the same goddamned color as mine. Bright red, when it come out, then turning sort of blackish. So don't you tell me they're any goddamned different."
He didn't realize by the end he was screaming, but as Frenchy shrank back further and further it became clearer and clearer and he looked up to see everybody else around him staring, all the guys.
"So any other bird got a complaint?"
There was silence.
"You are good, brave boys. You are as good as any Marines. But underneath, your blood is the same color as any Negro's, so when a Negro dies it's a real hard death. Anybody have any goddamned problem with that?"
"No sir," came a comment.
"Then get your asses back to packing up. We have to move back to Texas before we can take some time off."
If Earl seemed to have a particularly brutal edge to his voice, they were all unaware of a reason. But perhaps it had to do with a previous discussion Earl had just concluded with D. A., which developed along different lines.
"Earl," D. A. said, "this smells of so many kinds of bad I don't know where to start."
"Start at the top, finish at the bottom," said Earl.
"The kid who killed them two gals? Becker wants him dumped. He wants his ass gone. He says it's the smart move. It'll quieten the Negroes, it'll show we're responsive to community pressures and that we've got hearts and consciences."
"If that boy goes, I go," said Earl intractably.
"Earl, I―"
"If that boy goes, I go. No other way."
"Earl, Becker and some of his people are beginning to think we are out of control."
"I can't fight no other way, Mr. Parker. Fighting's too goddamned tough as it is to do it while being second-guessed by folks who've never done a lick of it and don't have no stomach for it nohow."
"Earl, in truth, you made some faulty decisions."
"I know I did. But it ain't on the boys, it's on me. If mistakes were made, I made 'em. You'd best fire me, Mr. Parker, and leave them boys alone."
The old man just shook his head.
"Damn," he said, "you are a stubborn man. You don't have some kind of craziness in your head that makes you want to die, to be with your pals in the Pacific? They say that's common. Is that what's going on with you? Is that why you didn't wear the vest?"
"I didn't wear the vest because I had to move fast. The vests ain't no good when you move fast. They're heavy, they're cumbersome, they eat up your energy real fast, and they only stop shotgun and pistol. They wouldn't have stopped that big German machine gun a lick."
"But you keep jumping into the guns."
"It's the only way I know."
"You are a hard piece of work, Earl. But I keep having to say the same goddamned things. You have to wear the damned vest. That's how I want it done. You were to command from outside, not inside. This isn't the Marine Corps. You are a law officer, sworn true, and your job is to follow the instructions of your superior, which is me. Earl, I will not steer you wrong. Don't you trust me?"
"I do trust you. You are a fair and decent man. I have not a doubt about that one."
"But you don't trust Becker."
"Not a goddamned bit."
"He wanted me to fire you too, Earl. I told him if you went, I went. Now you tell me if that Short goes, you go. This don't sound like it's working."
"It's the only way I know, Mr. Parker."
"Call me D. A., goddammit, Earl. Okay, Short gets one more chance, you get one more chance."
And what he didn't say was that he had only one more chance.
"Now I want you to go home. The boys go home for a week, you go home for a week. And get those goddamned pellets plucked out of your hide, so you won't be so disagreeable, do you understand? And see your wife. The poor woman is probably very upset with you."
Chapter 25
They got back to the Red River Army Depot, were paid in cash the money owed them, and left early the next morning for Texarkana and from there to all points for a week of pleasure. Some went home, some, whose homes were too far, headed down to the Texas beaches, but a day away by train, some headed for that lush and Frenchy town, New Orleans.
All, that is, but two of them.
Carlo Henderson was tapped by D. A. late that morning, as most of the others had left. He was in no hurry because he was going to catch a late bus out of Texarkana for Tulsa, where he planned to visit his widowed mother. But that was not to be.
"Yes sir?"
"Henderson, Mr. Earl tells me you're doing very well. You've got a lot to be proud of."
Carlo lit up with a smile. Earl, of course, was a God to him, brave and fair but not a man given to much eloquence in his praise.
"I am just trying to do my duty," he allowed.
"That's important, isn't it?"
"Important?"
"Duty, son."
"Yes sir," said the boy. "Yes sir, it is."
"Good, I thought you'd say that," said the old FBI agent. "Now let me ask you this: what do you think of Mr. Earl?"
Carlo was taken aback. He felt his jaw flop open, big enough for flies to fill, and then he swallowed, gulped and blurted out, "He's a hero."
"That he is," agreed the old man. "That he is. You've heard these rumors that Earl won a medal, a big medal, in the Pacific? Wel
l, they're true. Earl was a great Marine out there. Earl killed a lot of the Yamoto race. So any young man who gits to study and learn and benefit from Earl's bravery and leadership ability, he's a lucky young man indeed, wouldn't you say?"
"Yes sir," said Carlo, for he felt that way exactly.
"But you should know something, Henderson," D. A. continued. "Earl's was the very toughest of wars. Five invasions. Wounds. Lots of men lost on hell's far and barren beaches. You get my drift?"
Carlo did not.
"It takes something from a man, all that. You can't go through it and come out the same. It wears a man down and exhausts him. It blunts him. Now, son," continued the old man, "I am a mite worried about something. See if you follow me. You ever hear of this thing called combat fatigue?"
"Yes sir," said Carlo. "Section 8. Cuckoo. You can't do your job no more, even though you ain't been hit. So off you go to the nuthouse."
"Them jitters, they don't always make it so you want to go to hospital. Sometimes they make it so you just want to die and git it over with. It's part of combat fatigue. It's called a death wish. You hear me? Death wish."
The concept sounded somehow familiar to Carlo, but he wasn't sure from where. And he wondered where in hell this was going.
"See, here's what can happen," D. A. explained. "A fellow can be so tired he don't want to go on. But he's got too much guts―they call it internal structure, the doctors do, I have looked it up―to quit. So he decides to kill himself doing his duty. He takes wild chances. He behaves with incredible bravado. But he's really just trying to git hisself killed. Strange it is, but they say it happens."
"Is that what's going on with Mr. Earl?" Carlo asked.
"I don't know, son. What do you think?"
"I don't know neither, sir. He seems all right, I guess."
"Yes, he does. But dammit, I have told him three times on raids to wear the damned vest and he will not do it. I have told him his job is to stay outside and coordinate, over the walkie-talkies. But again, he's got to be right up front where the guns are. And that last stunt. Why, he walked down that hallway in plain sight, daring them boys to shoot him. What a fool thing to do. He could have laid back and with that BAR just opened fire and finished their hash off."
"He was afraid of hurting them colored girls."
"Never heard of such a thing in all my days."
"Yes sir."
Now that he thought about it, Carlo had to admit it did seem peculiar.
"So anyway," said D. A., "I am mighty worried about Earl. I do not want to be a party to his self-destruction. I picked him, I offered him this job in good faith and I expected him to do it in good faith, and not try and get himself killed. Do you understand?"
"I think so, sir."
"Now, there's one other thing as well."
The boy just stared his way.
"You know I respect and appreciate Earl as much as any man on the team?"
"Yes sir."
"And you know I think he's a true American hero, of the type there ain't many like anymore. Mr. Purvis, he was one. Audie Murphy, now there's another. William O. Darby, he was another. But Earl's quite a man, that's what I think."
"I do too, sir," said the boy.
"So I ask myself a question so hard I can hardly put it in words. Which is: Why did he lie?"
"Sir?"
"Why did he lie? Earl told a lie. A flat, cold, indisputable lie and it's got me all bothered, bothered as much as his crazy need to get hisself kilt. I tried to dismiss it but I couldn't. There seemed no point to it, none at all, not even a little one."
"He lied?"
"He did."
"It don't sound like him."
"Not a bit. But he did."
"On what topic?"
"The topic was Hot Springs."
"Hot Springs?"
"I asked him dead-on. Earl, have you ever been in Hot Springs? No sir, he said. 'My Baptist daddy said Hot Springs was fire and damnation. He'd beat our hides off if ever we went to Hot Springs.'That's what he said."
"But you think he has?"
"Shoot, son, it's a pitcherfiil more than that! At least three times I have planned a certain way, based on my reconnoitering and my experience. And in each damn case, he has at the last second said, Now wait a minute, wouldn't it be better if… And each goddamn time his way was better. Better by far."
"Well, I―"
"Better because he knew the terrain or the site of the buildings. The last time was the best. He's in the alley watching the rear-entry team, holding it all together on the radio. But suddenly he gets this feeling the team will be ambushed from behind. So he's looking down the alley when they move a truck with gunmen in it down toward Malvern, with an enfilade on the rear to Mary Jane's, How's he know to look there? It's dark as sin, but he knows where to look? How?"
"Ah. Well, I guess―"
"Guess nothing! I asked him straight up and he told me he was just lucky he was looking in the right direction. Bullshit! I swear to you, he goddamned knew there was just the slightest incline down that little street, called Guilford, toward Malvern. He knew a truck could roll down, no engine involved, just by releasing the emergency brake, and git into shooting position. So that's exactly where he looked and by God when he saw them boys sliding into position he was ready. He emptied two BAR mags into that truck and up she went like the Fourth of July and three more of Pap Grumley's cousins went to hell. He knew."
The old man seemed astounded, turning this bit of information over and over in his mind. It fascinated him.
"All right," he said, "here's what I want. You take this week and you turn all your detective skill loose on Earl. Earl's background. Earl's past. Who is Earl? Why's he working the way he is? What's going on in his head? What do his ex-Marine pals say? What's his folks say? What's his family doctor say? How was he in Hot Springs? When was he in Hot Springs? Why was he in Hot Springs? What's going on? And you report to me. So I can decide."
"Decide?"
"Decide whether or not to fire Earl. I will not be party to his suicide. It's more than I care to carry around on my shoulders. I will not have him using me to git hisself kilt. Do you understand?"
"I am not a psychologist, sir. I can't make that call."
"Well, dammit, I can't make it neither, not without some help. If I fire Earl, the whole goddamned shebang falls apart, that I know. And I got that bastard Becker to answer to. But if I send him ahead and he gets killed, I got my own self to answer to. Both of them are stern taskmasters."
"Yes sir."
"This is a hard job. Maybe the hardest of all. Harder than walking down that hallway in all that dust and smoke with Grumleys with tommy guns at the other end."
The boy's face knitted in confusion, but then he saw that the old man had all but made up his mind that he would fire Earl. That is, unless he could be talked out of it, on the strength of something that he, Carl Donald Henderson, could dig out. And that was what he was good at, digging, ferreting, going through files, making calls, taking notes, comparing fingerprints, alibis, accounts and stories. So in that sense he could help Earl, he and he alone, and the heaviness of the task that had just been offered him filled him with solemnity.
"I will look into it, sir."
"Good. Here's a file on what I have. It'll git you started. There's people to talk to."
"Yes sir. Where am I going, sir?"
"You'd start in his hometown. It's called Blue Eye, out in Polk County."
At the bus station, Carlo used up all his change calling his mother long distance and telling her he would not be coming in after all, he had another assignment.
Then he went to the Greyhound window, and bought a ticket for Blue Eye, on the 4:30 bus that drove up Route 71 through Fort Smith to Fayetteville, and then he bought some popcorn and a root beer and sat for the longest time, watching the slow crawl of the clock hands, reading a John P. Marquand novel that he couldn't keep track of, and trying not to think about the mysteries of Earl Swagg
er. The file sat unopened on his lap. He could not bring himself to look at it somehow, any more than he could bring himself to take off his Colt.45, secreted in the fast-draw holster behind his right hip. He was just too used to it.
They called the bus at 4:15 and, ever obedient and respectful of the rules, he was one of the first to board. He sat halfway back, on the right, for it was said that the ride was smoothest there.
And then he saw Frenchy Short.
Yes, it was Frenchy all right, though not in his usual blue serge suit, but dressed far more casually, in denim jeans, a khaki shirt and a straw cowboy's hat, with a carpetbag full of clothes under tow. Was it Frenchy? Yes, it was Frenchy! He almost left his seat to yell a greeting, but then he looked at Frenchy and saw that he too was in line to board a bus.
Then his bus pulled out and Frenchy was gone.
But later, that night, when he got to Blue Eye, he had to ask the driver, "You know that bus that was in the dock next to us at Texarkana?"
The driver just looked at him.
"You know that one? I didn't get a look at it, but where was it headed?"
"That'd be the little Rock bus," the driver said.
"Oh, the Little Rock bus."
"Yes sir," said the driver. "It heads straight on up 30 through Hope, on up to little Rock."
"It just goes to little Rock?" asked Carlo.
"Yep. Well, that's where she finishes. She stops at Hope and Malvern and all them towns. Then she veers over 270 and toward Hot Springs. That's the Hot Springs bus. Most folks take it to Hot Springs, for the track and the gambling. Hot Springs, that's a damned old hot town, you'd best believe it, son."
Chapter 26
The aspirin worked well enough on through De Queen but the throbbing began just beyond. He took some more but it didn't seem to help. Particularly, there was a pellet lodged between the layers of muscle on the inside of his left biceps and when it rubbed a certain way it sent a jack of pain through the whole left side of his body, once so bad he had to pull off Route 71 and let it pass. It made him thirsty for a powerful drink of bourbon.
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