Dusk and Other Stories (11 page)

He heard her call his name. He said nothing. He lay there becoming small, smaller, vanishing. The room became a window, a facade, a group of buildings, squares and sections, in the end all of Rome. His ecstasy was beyond knowing. The roofs of the great cathedrals shone in the winter air.

L
OST
S
ONS

All afternoon the cars, many with out-of-state plates, were coming along the road. The long row of lofty brick quarters appeared above. The gray walls began.

In the reception area a welcoming party was going on. There were faces that had hardly changed at all and others like Reemstma’s whose name tag was read more than once. Someone with a camera and flash attachment was running around in a cadet bathrobe. Over in the barracks they were drinking. Doors were open. Voices spilled out.

“Hooknose will be here,” Dunning promised loudly. There was a bottle on the desk near his feet. “He’ll show, don’t worry. I had a letter from him.”

“A letter? Klingbeil never wrote a letter.”

“His secretary wrote it,” Dunning said. He looked like a judge, large and well fed. His glasses lent a dainty touch. “He’s teaching her to write.”

“Where’s he living now?”

“Florida.”

“Remember the time we were sneaking back to Buckner at two in the morning and all of a sudden a car came down the road?”

Dunning was trying to arrange a serious expression.

“We dove in the bushes. It turned out it was a taxi. It slammed on the brakes and backed up. The door opens and there’s Klingbeil in the backseat, drunk as a lord. Get in, boys, he says.”

Dunning roared. His blouse with its rows of colored ribbons was unbuttoned, gluteal power hinted by the width of his lap.

“Remember,” he said, “when we threw Devereaux’s Spanish book with all his notes in it out the window? Into the snow. He never found it. He went bananas. You bastards, I’ll kill you!”

“He’d have been a star man if he hadn’t been living with you.”

“We tried to broaden him,” Dunning explained.

They used to do the sinking of the
Bismarck
while he was studying. Klingbeil was the captain. They would jump up on the desks.
Der Schiff ist kaputt!
they shouted. They were firing the guns. The rudder was jammed, they were turning in circles. Devereaux sat head down with his hands pressed over his ears. Will you bastards shut up! he screamed.

Bush, Buford, Jap Andrus, Doane, and George Hilmo were sitting on the beds and windowsill. An uncertain face looked in the doorway.

“Who’s that?”

It was Reemstma whom no one had seen for years. His hair had turned gray. He smiled awkwardly. “What’s going on?”

They looked at him.

“Come in and have a drink,” someone finally said.

He found himself next to Hilmo, who reached across to shake hands with an iron grip. “How are you?” he said. The others went on talking. “You look great.”

“You, too.”

Hilmo seemed not to hear. “Where are you living?” he said.

“Rosemont. Rosemont, New Jersey. It’s where my wife’s family’s
from,” Reemstma said. He spoke with a strange intensity. He had always been odd. Everyone wondered how he had ever made it through. He did all right in class but the image that lasted was of someone bewildered by close order drill which he seemed to master only after two years and then with the stiffness of a cat trying to swim. He had full lips which were the source of an unflattering nickname. He was also known as To The Rear March because of the disasters he caused at the command.

He was handed a used paper cup. “Whose bottle is this?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Hilmo said. “Here.”

“Are a lot of people coming?”

“Boy, you’re full of questions,” Hilmo said.

Reemstma fell silent. For half an hour they told stories. He sat by the window, sometimes looking in his cup. Outside, the clock with its black numerals began to brighten. West Point lay majestic in the early evening, its dignified foliage still. Below, the river was silent, mysterious islands floating in the dusk. Near the corner of the library a military policeman, his arm moving with precision, directed traffic past a sign for the reunion of 1960, a class on which Vietnam had fallen as stars fell on 1915 and 1931. In the distance was the faint sound of a train.

It was almost time for dinner. There were still occasional cries of greeting from below, people talking, voices. Feet were leisurely descending the stairs.

“Hey,” someone said unexpectedly, “what the hell is that thing you’re wearing?”

Reemstma looked down. It was a necktie of red, flowered cloth. His wife had made it. He changed it before going out.

“Hello, there.”

Walking calmly alone was a white-haired figure with an armband that read 1930.

“What class are you?”

“Nineteen-sixty,” Reemstma said.

“I was just thinking as I walked along, I was wondering what finally happened to everybody. It’s hard to believe but when I was here we had men who simply packed up after a few weeks and went home without a word to anyone. Ever hear of anything like that? Nineteen-sixty, you say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You ever hear of Frank Kissner? I was his chief of staff. He was a tough guy. Regimental commander in Italy. One day Mark Clark drove up and said, Frank, come here a minute, I want to talk to you. Haven’t got time, I’m too busy, Frank said.”

“Really?”

“Mark Clark said, Frank, I want to make you a B.G. I’ve got time, Frank said.”

The mess hall, in which the alumni dinner was being held, loomed before them, its doors open. Its scale had always been heroic. It seemed to have doubled in size and was filled with the white of tablecloths as far as one could see. The bars were crowded, there were lines fifteen and twenty deep of men waiting patiently. Many of the women were in dinner dresses. Above it all was the echoing haze of conversation.

There were those with the definite look of success, like Hilmo who wore a gray summer suit with a metallic sheen and to whom everyone liked to talk although he was given to abrupt silences, and there were also the unfading heroes, those who had been cadet officers, come to life again. Early form had not always held. Among those now of high rank were men who in their schooldays had been relatively undistinguished. Reemstma, who had been out of touch, was somewhat surprised by this. For him the hierarchy had never been altered.

A terrifying face blotched with red suddenly appeared. It was Cramner, who had lived down the hall.

“Hey, Eddie, how’s it going?”

He was holding two drinks. He had just retired a year ago, Cramner said. He was working for a law firm in Reading.

“Are you a lawyer?”

“I run the office,” Cramner said. “You married? Is your wife here?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“She couldn’t come,” Reemstma said.

His wife had met him when he was thirty. Why would she want to go, she had asked? In a way he was glad she hadn’t. She knew no one and given the chance she would often turn the conversation to religion. There would be two weird people instead of one. Of course, he did not really think of himself as weird, it was only in their eyes. Perhaps not even. He was being greeted, talked to. The women, especially, unaware of established judgments, were friendly. He found himself talking to the lively wife of a classmate he vaguely remembered, R. C. Walker, a lean man with a somewhat sardonic smile.

“You’re a what?” she said in astonishment. “A painter? You mean an artist?” She had thick, naturally curly blond hair and a pleasant softness to her cheeks. Her chin had a slight double fold. “I think that’s fabulous!” She called to a friend, “Nita, you have to meet someone. It’s Ed, isn’t it?”

“Ed Reemstma.”

“He’s a painter,” Kit Walker said exuberantly.

Reemstma was dazed by the attention. When they learned that he actually sold things they were even more interested.

“Do you make a living at it?”

“Well, I have a waiting list for paintings.”

“You do!”

He began to describe the color and light—he painted landscapes—of the countryside near the Delaware, the shape of the earth, its furrows, hedges, how things changed slightly from year to year, little things, how hard it was to do the sky. He described the beautiful, glinting green of a hummingbird his wife had brought to him. She had found it in the garage; it was dead, of course.

“Dead?” Nita said.

“The eyes were closed. Except for that, you wouldn’t have known.”

He had an almost wistful smile. Nita nodded warily.

Later there was dancing. Reemstma would have liked to go on talking but people drifted away. Tables broke up after dinner into groups of friends.

“Bye for now,” Kit Walker said.

He saw her talking to Hilmo, who gave him a brief wave. He wandered about for a while. They were playing “Army Blue.” A wave of sadness went through him, memories of parades, the end of dances, Christmas leave. Four years of it, the classes ahead leaving in pride and excitement, unknown faces filling in behind. It was finished, but no one turns his back on it completely. The life he might have led came back to him, almost whole.

Outside barracks, late at night, five or six figures were sitting on the steps, drinking and talking. Reemstma sat near them, not speaking, not wanting to break the spell. He was one of them again, as he had been on frantic evenings when they cleaned rifles and polished their shoes to a mirrorlike gleam. The haze of June lay over the great expanse that separated him from those endless tasks of years before. How deeply he had immersed himself in them. How ardently he had believed in the image of a soldier. He had known it as a faith, he had clung to it dumbly, as a cripple clings to God.

In the morning Hilmo trotted down the stairs, tennis shorts tight over his muscled legs, and disappeared through one of the sally ports for an early match. His insouciance was unchanged. They said that before the Penn State game when he had been first string the coach had pumped them up telling them they were not only going to beat Penn State, they were going to beat them by two touchdowns, then turning to Hilmo, “And who’s going to be the greatest back in the East?”

“I don’t know. Who?” Hilmo said.

Empty morning. As usual, except for sports there was little to do. Shortly after ten they formed up to march to a memorial ceremony at the corner of the Plain. Before a statue of Sylvanus Thayer they stood at attention, one tall maverick head in a cowboy hat, while the choir sang “The Corps.” The thrilling voices, the solemn, staggered parts rose through the air. Behind Reemstma someone said quietly, “You know, the best friends I ever had or ever will have are the ones I had here.”

Afterward they walked out to take their places on the parade ground. The superintendent, a trim lieutenant general, stood not far off with his staff and the oldest living graduate, who was in a wheelchair.

“Look at him,” Dunning said. He was referring to the superintendent. “That’s what’s wrong with this place. That’s what’s wrong with the whole army.”

Faint waves of band music beat toward them. It was warm. There were bees in the grass. The first miniature formations of cadets, bayonets glinting, began to move into view. Above, against the sky, a lone distinguished building, and that a replica, stood. The chapel. Many Sundays with their manly sermons on virtue and the glittering choir marching toward the door with graceful, halting tread, gold stripes shining on the sleeves of the leaders. Down below, partly hidden, the gymnasium, the ominous dark patina on everything within, the floor, the walls, the heavy boxing gloves. There were champions enshrined there who would never be unseated, maxims that would never be erased.

At the picnic it was announced that of the 550 original members, 529 were living and 176 present so far.

“Not counting Klingbeil!”

“Okay, one seventy-six plus a possible Klingbeil.”

“An
im
possible Klingbeil,” someone called out.

There was a brief cheer.

The tables were in a large, screened pavilion on the edge of the lake. Reemstma looked for Kit Walker. He’d caught sight of her earlier, in the food line, but now he could not find her. She seemed to have gone. The class president was speaking.

“We got a card from Joe Waltsak. Joe retired this year. He wanted to come but his daughter’s graduating from high school. I don’t know if you know this story. Joe lives in Palo Alto and there was a bill before the California legislature to change the name of any street an All-American lived on and name it after him. Joe lives on Parkwood Drive. They were going to call it Waltsak Drive, but the bill didn’t pass, so instead they’re calling him Joe Parkwood.”

The elections were next. The class treasurer and the vice president were not running again. There would have to be nominations for these.

“Let’s have somebody different for a change,” someone commented in a low voice.

“Somebody we know,” Dunning said.

“You want to run, Mike?”

“Yeah, sure, that would be great,” Dunning muttered.

“How about Reemstma?” It was Cramner, the blossoms of alcoholism ablaze in his face. The edges of his teeth were uneven as he smiled, as if eaten away.

“Good idea.”

“Who, me?” Reemstma said. He was flustered. He looked around in surprise.

“How about it, Eddie?”

He could not tell if they were serious. It was all offhanded—the way Grant had been picked from obscurity one evening when he was sitting on a bench in St. Louis. He murmured something in protest. His face had become red.

Other names were being proposed. Reemstma felt his heart pounding. He had stopped saying, no, no, and sat there, mouth open a bit in bewilderment. He dared not look around him. He shook his
head slightly, no. A hand went up, “I move that the nominations be closed.”

Reemstma felt foolish. They had tricked him again. He felt as if he had been betrayed. No one was paying any attention to him. They were counting raised hands.

“Come on, you can’t vote,” someone said to his wife.

“I can’t?” she said.