A single rose lay on the table. When she'd gotten out of her MGB, Jack had thrust a dozen long-stemmed roses at her.
He was now very much afraid that the roses had been a blunder. He was aware that he had an awesome talent to blunder magnificently when something was really important to him.
"You shouldn't have done that," she said. "I hardly know you."
"That's what I'm trying to rectify." She had met his eyes, for just a moment, and then looked away.
"Where would you like to go.?" Jack asked.
"Over there," she said, indicating the brick wall of-the Ozark Cafe.
"That's a dump!" Jack blurted. "I was just in there. Even the coffee is bad."
"Nevertheless," Marjorie said somewhat snappishly, "that's where I want to go." She pulled one rose from the green paper and put the rest on the front seat of her car.
When the waitress offered menus, she said, "No, thanks, I'm not hungry. Just coffee, please."
"I thought we were going to have dinner," Jack said:
"Just coffee, please," Marjorie repeated firmly.
"One coffee," Jack said.
"You don't want coffee?"
"I've been sitting in here for two hours drinking coffee," he said.
She met his eyes and was disturbed by her reaction to." them.
She had hurt him or made him angry, and she realized that she hadn't wanted to do either.
"I wanted to talk before we went somewhere else," she said.
"We are going somewhere else? We are not going to have our night on the town right here in the Ozark Cafe?"
She smiled, then chuckled. "The folklore is that what a lonely soldier, far from home, really wants most is a home-cooked meal. "
"What this lonely soldier had in mind was a dimly lit room with candlelit tables and a violinist wandering through the place playing Hungarian love songs."
"What you're going to get is a home-cooked meal."
"And I'll bet you've got a dog and a little brother, and everything."
"I do," she said, "but I'm not taking you home. I have a girlfriend and she has-she and her husband have-a house here in town-and we're going there."
"I'll bet she's ugly or fat or both," Jack said. "It is sacred writ that every incredibly beautiful girl is attached to a fat and/or ugly one."
"I thank you for the compliment," Marjorie chuckled "And for the roses. And you're wrong. She's really quite pretty."
"And we can play Scrabble or something, right?"
"I wanted to tell you about Geoff, the husband," Marjorie, said, "before we go there."
"Oh "
"He's a really nice guy. I really like him;"
"But?"
"He's an officer for one thing. . ."
"And he's actually willing to socialize with an enlisted man?"
"He was an enlisted man. Don't be a reverse snob."
"OK."
"And he's very rich."
"That's nice, but so whit?"
"SO' nothing," she replied. "I just wanted to' warn you before we went there."
"I have nothing against rich people," Jack said. "I always hope Some of it will rub off on me."
When she smiled, he asked, "Are you rich, too?"
"My father is in the Army."
"'An officer, no' doubt? And how does he feel about you socializing with the enlisted men?"
"He is not thrilled, frankly," Marjorie said after a moment.
"He'll get used to it after we're married." Startled, she met his eyes. There was more in them than a wisecrack.
"My God!" she said Softly and stood up. "Pay for the coffee," she ordered and walked out of the restaurant ahead of him.
They got in the red Jaguar and she directed him to a subdivision and finally to a rather large frame house set on a wide lawn a hundred feet from the street.
"Pull in the driveway," Marjorie ordered.
There were two cars in the carport, an Oldsmobile station wagon and a Volkswagen, both new and wearing Fort Rucker blue officer's registration decals.
Before they could get out of the car, Geoff Craig came from inside the house.
"I knew it, I knew it!" he cried. "Ursula! Come out here and see what you did to me!" Ursula Craig, a dishcloth in her hand, came out. A look of Concern was on her face.
"Look!" Geoff said, Pointing to the Jaguar. "I told you that if I thought it over, Some sonofabitch was going to buy it out from under me." Ursula shook her head and kissed Marjorie.
"How do you do?" she said to Jack, putting out her hand. "I am pleased that you could come to my home you will have to excuse my husband-he sometimes acts as if he is five years old."
"Sind Sie deutsch, gniidige Frau?" Jack asked, picking up on the accent.
"la," Ursula said, smiling, pleased. "Und Sie?"
"Nein, ich bin Amerikaner, aber meine Stiefmutter ist eine Hamburgerin."
"Christ," Geoff said. "On top of everything else, now they can talk behind our backs. " He smiled at Jack and put out his hand. "I'm Geoff Craig," he said. "And I'm really glad to see you, even if you did steal this beauty out from under my nose. You're a vast improvement over what Marjorie usually runs by here."
"How do you know?" Jack asked. He had quickly decided he liked Geoff Craig, even if he was an officer.
"Anybody with the taste to buy something like that:" Geoff said, Pointing to the Jaguar, "for one thing. And for another, I don't think You're going to spend all night talking about the goddamned Army or the Good Old Days at Hudson High."
"Hudson High?" Jack asked.
"Wonderful!" Geoff said. "He doesn't even know what it is. Hudson High is what those of us with the wrong attitude call West Point."
He put his arm around Jack's shoulder and led him, into the house.
"I am going to ply you with strong drink," he said. "And then try to talk you out of the car."
"I like the car," Jack .said.
"I was afraid You'd say that."
The house was expensively furnished but looked comfortable; there was a sense of pleasant disarray. Books and magazines on the floor beside what was obviously Geoff Craig's chair, instead of neatly arranged on tables or a shelf. And there was a well-stocked bar.
"What Would you like?" Geoff asked. "I'm about to have a straight malt scotch. to set the tone of the evening. After which, tongue anaesthetized, I will switch to the cheap stuff."
"We have some Rhine wine," Ursula said.
"Scotch sounds fine," Jack said.
Over the fireplace was an ornately framed oil painting of Geoff Craig in uniform. Hut the uniform was fatigues, on which was sewn the single stripe of a PFC. And it looked as if he had been wearing the fatigues and gone without a shave for a week.
"I love the portrait," Jack said.
"So do I," Geoff said, handing him a drink. "But it thrills neither of the ladies."
"I think it's awful," Ursula said. She went to the bar, pulled the cork from a bottle of wine, and poured glasses for herself and Marjorie.
"It's our very first military heirloom," Geoff said. "Something I shall treasure for the rest of my life. It was painted from a photo Ursula took of me at Fort Bragg-by one of the very finest artists plying his trade on the sidewalk before the cathedral- in Jackson Square in New Orleans."
"I thought I recognized the technique," Jack said. "The subtle brushstrokes, the je ne sais-quois of the gentle pastels."
Geoff laughed and Jack saw Marjorie smile.
"It's awful," Ursula repeated, but she was smiling.
Ursula is always saying-she and her brother, who is in the Army because he wants to be-that I should try to act more like an officer, to adhere to the customs of the service."
"You don't want to be in the Army?"
"I didn't," Geoff said. "I seriously considered protesting American foreign policy from Stockholm when I got my draft notice. But now it seems to; be growing on me. At the moment I'm here because I was foolish enough to take a commission and now I can't resign. Watch your
self, Jack Portet, or you'll start hearing their goddamned trumpets." Their eyes met for a moment and Jack, realized that despite the joking tone of voice, Geoff Craig had just confided in him. "I was talking about the customs of the service," Geoff went on. "Over the Bellmon mantel there hangs a similar portrait. The General as a second lieutenant. So I figured, what the hell, if it's good enough for the Generul, it's good enough for me. And I had it painted."
"Oh, Geoff!" Marjorie said.
Geoff looked between them.
"I can see by the pissed-off look on her face, and the confusion on yours," he said, "that until just now you didn't know her daddy was a general-the General-did you?" Jack looked at Marjorie and shook his head no.
"Scare you off?" Geoff said. "That really wasn't my intention. "
"No," Jack said. "That doesn't scare me off. I don't think anything's going to be able to scare me off."
"Wow!" Geoff said. "I feel that I am in the Garden of Eden, and Jack has just pulled the apple off the tree. And the way Marjorie's looking at him, a little piece of fruit seems to bee just what the doctor ordered. "
"Goddamn you, Geoff!" Marjorie said.
"She's blushing," Geoff said undaunted. "There's not many girls can do that these days."
"No," Jack Portet said thoughtfully. "That's true."
"Marjorie told me that you were an airline pilot," Ursula said quickly."
"She said," Geoff said, "quickly changing the subject."
"Before Marjorie throws something at you or slaps your face," Ursula said.
"I was, but it was a six-airplane airline. The pride of our-fleet are Curtiss C-46s older than I am."
"But you have an ATR?" Geoff asked. When Jack nodded, he went on: "Then I suppose you're qualified to help somebody prepare for an instrument ticket exam in a light twin? Specifically, in a Beech Twin-Bonanza?"
"I suppose so," Jack said. "But the Army just made me a crew chief on a Gooney-Bird. They've made it pretty plain they don't want me flying their airplanes."
"I'm in advanced chopper school," Geoff said. "I'm also learning to fly twin-engine fixed wings-on my own, I mean."
"They let you do that?"
"Well, I'm going to present them with an FAA certificate and see what happens," Geoff said.
"I've got FAA certificates," Jack said. "They don't seem to be worth much to the Army."
"That's because you're an ignorant, uncouth enlisted man."
"Geoff!" Ursula flared.
"On the other hand, I am a high-class commissioned officer and gentleman, and a rated rotary-wing aviator," Geoff went on. "The guardhouse lawyer in me tells me that I can get away with it. All I need is to get past the exam."
"You're talking-presuming you can fly-eight, ten, maybe twenty hours in the air. Plus ground school. The examination's a bitch."
"I know," Geoff said. "I had a guy teaching me, a captain, but they're running him through some kind of a special course and he's not available. And it's forbidden for officers to teach people how to fly, or crop dust, etcetera, etcetera."
"Where would you get an airplane? Can you charter something around here?"
"No," Geoff said. "But Beech was more obliging. I've got a Twin-Bonanza on a six month's dry charter sitting at the Ozark airport." Jack's eyebrows rose in surprise but he said nothing.
"I'll pay you the going rate," Geoff said. "And throw in some unusual employee benefits-such as my wife's cooking and introductions to other hopeful maidens around town."
"If you're serious, sure. I'd be happy to."
"What got to you, the cooking or the introductions to the available maidens?"
"The going rate," Jack said.
"Starting tomorrow morning?"
"Why not? That'll be the end of our Scotch drinking, though."
"OK," Geoff said. He put out his hand. "We have a deal?"
"Deal. "
"Now I will cook our supper," Geoff said. "I am one of the world's great beefsteak broilers. And afterward, if she's a good girl, I will get Marjorie an apple."
Barbara Bellmon was watching Johnny Carson when she heard Marjorie's MGB putter up the driveway.
She didn't want to give the impression that she had been waiting up for her daughter, and she started to get up to go upstairs.
But then she figured the hell with it, she wasn't waiting up for her, and let herself fall backward onto the couch.
"Hi," Marjorie said when she came in the house.
"How did it go?"
"He and Geoff got along like thieves," Marjorie said. "They have the same sense of humor. It was mutual-appreciation night.
And he speaks German, so Ursula thought he was just fine."
"But I gather you're not quite so enthusiastic?"
"Geoff made-somewhere among his many other wiseass remarks-the crack that the way Jack was looking at me made him think we were in the Garden of Eden and I was hungrily eyeing the apple." Barbara Bellmon had to laugh.
"That's awful," she said.
"What's worse," Marjorie said, "so did I."
"Oh, my!" Barbara Bellmon said.
IX
....
(One)
Fort Rucker, Alabama 18 April 1964
"General," Captain John C. Oliver said as he stood in Bellmon's office doorway, "they say they have no Colonel Felter."
"Are they still on the line?"
"No, Sir," Oliver said.
"Get the number again," Bellmon said and picked up his telephone. He listened as his secretary gave the Fort Rucker operator the number he wanted in Washington, D.C. The called party answered on the third ring.
"The White House. Good afternoon."
"I have a person-to-person call for Colonel Sanford T. Felter," the Fort Rucker operator said.
"One moment, please," the White House operator said, and then came back on the line a moment later. "I'm sorry, Operator. We have no one here by that name."
"This is Major General Robert F. Bellmon, United States Army," Bellmon said. "Please put me through to Colonel Felter."
"I'm sorry, Sir," the operator said. "There is no one here by that name."
"Put the duty officer on the line," Bellmon ordered.
"I beg your pardon, Sir?"
"I happen to know that the White House switchboard is operated by the Signal Corps and that a duty officer is always on duty.
I wish to speak to him."
"One moment, please, Sir." It was a good thirty seconds, which seemed to Bellmon con-
x
(One)
227 Melody Lane Ozark, Alabama 1725 hours 22 April 1964
Ursula Craig kissed her husband when he and Jack Portet walked through the sliding plate-glass door into the kitchen, cans of beer in their hands.
Ursula had her hair in braids, was without makeup, and looked, Jack thought, wholesome and radiant, like a cover for Mother to Be magazine.
"I wonder how we could make that contagious," Jack Portet said to Marjorie Bellmon, who was at the kitchen counter spreading cheese on crackers.
Oh, shit! I didn't mean that the way she's going to think. I meant the kiss!
Marjorie looked at him in surprise, then noticed the horrified look on his face and took pity on him.
"If the cops had seen you riding around with that beer in your hand," Marjorie said, "I'd be passing these to you through the bars of the Dale County jail." She went to him and started to push a cracker into his mouth.
He caught her hand and they looked at each other.
"The kiss we can arrange," Marjorie said quietly, and kissed him, quickly and almost chastely, but still intimately. "I'll have to give a lot of thought to the other suggestion." Jack brightened immediately. "Every journey," he intoned solemnly, "begins with a first, small step."
"If I didn't know better," Geoff Craig said, "I would think he really meant that he would like to spread a little pollen on her."
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