Once an Eagle (6 page)

It was very hot, and he didn't know where to go. The streets all looked alike, and cars and wagons kept tearing by in a steady stream. He came to a big plate-glass window and wandered up to it, pretending to look at the chairs and chests of drawers inside but actually studying his own reflection. He didn't look very prepossessing, and it bothered him. He was wearing his father's blue serge suit. Carl Damon had been heavier and a good two inches shorter than his son, and his mother had lengthened the sleeves and cuffs and taken in the trousers; but the outfit looked bulky and loose on him, and it was no day to be wearing anything this heavy, with the temperature up in the nineties. The shirt with its detachable collar had been his father's too, but the tie, a navy blue with maroon and scarlet stripes, was his own: Peg had given it to him that past Christmas. He pulled down on the coat at the back so the collar wouldn't ride up so far on his neck—then bending over ran thumb and forefinger down his trousers, pinching hard at the knee to reinforce the crease. None of the passersby seemed to have noticed.

His father's gold watch said 2:14. Time was sliding along, slipping away, and he hadn't done anything yet. He stood at a street corner, befuddled by the crush of traffic. Then on the other side he saw a policeman talking to a fat man in a straw boater. He timed the gap between a Pierce Arrow touring car and a produce wagon and sprinted across. The two men turned to him as he came up.

“Well, young fellow,” the policeman said. “Where'd you learn to run like that?”

“Just picked it up, I guess.”

“You want to watch out, with all this heavy traffic here.” The policeman's eyes under the visor were the palest gray. “Where do you hail from?”

“Walt Whitman, sir.”

“And where is that?”

“Well, it's about fifteen miles from—” He saw they were having fun with him then, and broke off, grinning. “It's the first time I've ever been to Lincoln.”

“I'd never have guessed it.”

“Can you tell me where Congressman Bullen's office is?”

“Sure.” The officer pointed past his shoulder. “Back where you came from. See that building there? with the bright yellow border?”

“Yes.”

“That's his office. Second floor. You'll see the shingle.” The policeman's gray eyes sparkled again. “Thinking of going into politics, are you?”

“Oh no, sir. I'm going to get me an appointment to West Point.”

“I see.” Both men laughed, and the policeman waved him along with a little flourish and called: “All right. Good luck to you.”

He found the place easily. There was a sign in shiny black stone with gold letters that said
MATTHEW T. BULLEN, Attorney at Law.
He climbed the stairs and encountered the legend again on the frosted panel of the door. He paused a few seconds in indecision; he could hear a typewriter clacking along, then the clear high ting of the bell and the muffled slam of the carriage. Mr. Thornton said you should never barge in anywhere. If in doubt, knock, then enter. Mr. Bullen was a busy man. He waited another moment, then gave a tug to his coattail, knocked twice lightly and opened the door and went in.

It was an office all right, but Congressman Bullen wasn't there. There was only a desk where a girl was typing and two oak filing cabinets and a long bench where a farmer was patiently sitting, his hat in his lap and a hand on each knee. The farmer gazed at him vacantly. The girl hadn't even looked up when he'd entered. Confused, a little irritated, he walked up to the desk and stood there. After a few seconds she gave a muttered exclamation and flipped up the paper-lock bar. She glanced up at him; she had a narrow face and bulging brown eyes.

“Yes?” she said crossly.

“I'd like to see Congressman Bullen.”

“On what business?”

“It's about West Point.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

An appointment. That stopped him. He paused, said, “No—I don't. I'm from near Kearney” (he would not make
that
mistake again). “I just got here a few minutes ago. On the train.”

She threw him a glance of unbridled scorn and began to make the erasure. “Well. You'll have to take a seat. Over there.”

He frowned. He wanted to tell her he had to get the 3:47 back, that it was important he see Mr. Bullen as soon as possible; but he couldn't think of any way to put it without making her really angry with him. Personal secretaries wielded a lot of power: you had to handle them with kid gloves. He'd heard drummers and businessmen at the hotel discussing the matter.

Reluctantly he went over and sat down near the old farmer, who nodded and went on staring into space. The girl took no further notice of him. There was a door beyond her to the right, and he knew without having to think it out that Congressman Bullen was in there. Once he heard a low burst of laughter, several men together, and then a single voice, slow and declamatory, the words drowned out by the crashing of the typewriter.

He opened his coat and lifted his arms to let some air in, and surreptitiously pulled the cloth away from his skin. There was an electric fan on a window ledge, a bright copper hoop with lots of scroll work, that turned slowly, whirring in a bass
thrum,
playing over the secretary's head and ruffling her hair, and he studied it with interest; he'd never seen an electric fan before. But none of its cooling breezes reached the bench. Perspiration began to run down his forehead and neck; he forced himself to wait a full five minutes before he took out his handkerchief. Time crawled along and he sat there, miserable and impatient, a slave to its whims; it was the feeling he hated more than all others. As he was mopping his face the girl suddenly pulled the letter out of the carriage and went into the other room; Sam caught a quick little glimpse of two men's heads bent over a square of light, and that was all. He could hear nothing that was said. In a few seconds the girl came out again, picked up some official-looking papers from her desk and left the office.

More minutes passed. Minutes of gold, of ivory, of steel. He was at the edge of the world—that fierce and glittering realm where men traveled for days in Pullman cars or rode up grand avenues in carriages or sat in oak-paneled board rooms and decided, in crisp, concise strokes, the world's affairs. This was that world—an edge of it, anyway—and here he sat, on the edge of this edge, waiting, sticky with sweat, his hands in his lap; ineffectual. The thought lent a furious heat to his blood. When he looked at his watch again he was horrified to find it was nearly three; he'd never make it to the train. As he put the thin gold case back in his pocket the old farmer heaved himself to his feet with a grunt and lumbered by him, his heavy boots creaking on the worn floor, and went out.

Sam waited until it was exactly three o'clock. Then he rose, and pulling down his coat again walked over to the private door, knocked smartly once and entered.

Three men were sitting around a big mahogany desk, a much grander desk than Mr. Thornton's, with legs like a lion's claws sitting in glass gliders. There were two shiny brass cuspidors, one at each end of the desk. Two men were sitting in chairs at each side, the third was standing behind the desk and tapping with a pencil a huge map scored with intersecting roads and dotted with bright blue and yellow patches. All three men were in their shirt sleeves with the cuffs rolled back and they were all smoking Pittsburgh stogies. The windows were open but cigar smoke hung in the room in fragrant blue clouds.

The man standing behind the desk was big and broad-shouldered, with a tough, craglike face as if poorly cut from some coarse-grained stone, and black wiry brows. Sam Damon recognized him at once. There had been posters up in Walt Whitman the year before, and Representative Bullen had stopped over once at the Grand Western. Sam had given him Number Fourteen, the best of the singles.

“Congressman Bullen?” he said.

The harsh face stared at him, irritated and expectant. “What is it, son?”

“I'd like to see you about an appointment to West Point.”

“Look, I'm pretty busy right now. You go talk to Miss Millner.”

“I did, sir. But she's been out of the office for some time, and I've got to catch the three forty-seven back to Walt Whitman or I'll be late for work this evening.”

Matt Bullen glanced at the other two men, then thrust out his lower lip and tossed the pencil on to the map in front of him. Sam couldn't read his expression at all. “What's your name, son?”

“Samuel A. Damon.”

“And you want to go to West Point, do you?”

“That's right, sir.”

“You one of Albert Damon's boys?”

“No, sir. He's my uncle, he lives over in Sheridan Forks. Carl Damon was my father. He died some years ago.”

“Oh, yes. I remember.”

“They never got along very well, my father and my uncle.” Sam felt all at once embarrassed at having said this, and added: “I didn't know you knew my Uncle Albert.”

“I know a lot of things folks don't think I do,” Matt Bullen said, and one of the other men laughed. “That's part of my business. Albert Damon votes the Democratic ticket, don't he?”

Sam paused. The room all at once seemed quieter. The other two men had turned in their chairs to watch him.

“Yes, sir,” he answered. “My father did, too.”

Matt Bullen leaned forward on his hands and bit into his cigar. “Son, how old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“You still got to learn what the world runs on.” He picked up the pencil again and tapped the stiff paper of the map. “Now you give me three good reasons why I ought to recommend the nephew of a man who's always voted against me, for an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point on the Hudson River.”

Sam placed his hands behind his back and clasped them tightly. All three men were looking at him now; the Congressman's face was particularly forbidding. He said in a quiet voice: “Mr. Bullen, when I serve my country as a soldier I'm not going to serve her as a Democrat or as a Republican, I'm going to serve her as an American. To my last breath.”

Matt Bullen's expression remained unchanged. “All right. Two.”

“Two,” Sam echoed. “I'm my own man and not my father's or my uncle's. It's true I can't vote just yet, but when I do I intend to vote for the best man, regardless of his party. I can promise you that.”

The Congressman's eyelid flickered. “Fair enough. Three.”

“Three,” Sam Damon said. He had no idea what he was going to say until he'd said it. “Because I'm the best man you'll get for the job.”

Matt Bullen started at that; he threw the pencil on the map again. “That's a pretty broad statement. You prepared to back it up?”

“Yes.”

“Just what makes you think so?”

“Try me out, sir. I'll outhike, outfight, outshoot, outthink any man you can put up. And I know my military history into the bargain.”

Matt Bullen stared hard at him. “You're pretty salty for a young fella.”

The man who had chuckled earlier, a sandy-haired man with a big red nose, said, “You better treat him gently, Matt. He's the kid that knocked out Big Tim Riley with one punch and never skinned his knuckles.”

Bullen took the cigar out of his mouth. “He did? Who told you?”

“George Malden,” the red-nosed man said affably. “Said it was all over the county. Said Riley swore he wouldn't touch another drop of red-eye for a month of Sundays if the kid wouldn't hit him again.” He said to Sam, “Aren't you the Damon?”

Sam hesitated. “Well. I didn't knock him
out
…”

“By thunder, you look as if you could do it, too,” Matt Bullen said as though he hadn't heard him; he started pacing up and down behind the desk. The red-nosed man looked at Sam and winked solemnly. So it had got here. All the way to Lincoln. That was the way the world was: whatever you did was magnified—if you did something bold you were a hero of Homeric proportions; if you did something cowardly …

“That's a mighty tough course of sprouts at the Point,” Bullen was saying. “You know about that?”

“I know it is, sir. But when I put my mind to something I usually finish it.”

“What makes you think you can pass the entrance examinations?”

“I graduated from Walt Whitman High with the highest grades in six years. And I've been studying on my own since then.”

Matt Bullen stopped pacing and looked at him again, his hands in his pockets. The red-nosed man said, “Oh, give him a shot at it, Matt. He's convinced me, even if
you're
too damned stubborn.”

“You keep out of this, Harry,” Bullen retorted genially. He was studying the applicant shrewdly. “Maybe you can, son. Maybe you can at that. Now, who can you give me for personal recommendations? Character testimonials, that kind of thing.”

“Well, there's Mr. Thornton, Mr. Herbert Thornton, who's manager of the Grand Western Hotel. He's my boss, I'm night clerk there. And Walter Harrodsen—he runs the Platte and Midland Bank in town …”

“Walt Harrodsen, yes. I mean someone who pulls weight. Someone with influence.”

Sam stopped. He couldn't think of anyone. Then the inner monitor, the swift and irresistible voice, spoke and he looked up again and said: “To tell you the truth, I thought maybe you would, Mr. Bullen.”

Matt Bullen gaped at him. “I would?…”

“That's right, sir.”

“—But I don't know you from Adam's off ox, boy …”

“Well, I'm standing right here in front of you,” Sam said simply.

“…You mean you want
me
to—to give a character reference …” For another moment the Congressman stared at Damon, his deep blue eyes round with amazement; then all at once threw back his big craggy head and roared with laughter, in which the other two men joined. “Well, if that don't beat everything I ever heard in all my life. Everything!” He kept wagging his head, laughing, tears hanging in his eyes. “You want
me
to give you a character reference so that I can recommend you on the basis of that reference for an appointment to West Point … you want
me
to—” And he and the others dissolved again in mirth.