So Little Time (30 page)

“Hey,” Charley said again, “what's this?”

They did not teach spelling or manners to the pupils in progressive schools, but they did teach them to be natural and rude to their elders.

“What's what?” Jeffrey asked.

He endeavored to speak with interest, since one should exhibit no impatience with a child of eight. He did not want to antagonize Charley. He was only conscious that he did not know Charley well. It was different with Jim because he had been obliged at times to take care of Jim himself, but he had been busy ever since Charley was born, and Charley was his mother's boy. His clothes, his features and his voice made it a little like talking to a child who did not belong to him.

“This,” Charley said, “what's this?”

He plumped the thing on Jeffrey's knees, so that it crumpled up the newspaper. Charley was used to expressing himself, and he was not afraid of grownups. He leaned against Jeffrey's knee, wriggling and snuffling.

“Where did you find it?” Jeffrey asked.

It was a flat canvas case with a web strap which looked as though it had been out in the weather. At first Jeffrey could not recall what the article was or whether it had ever belonged to him.

“Upstairs in the trunk room,” Charley said, “hanging on a nail. Does it have guns in it?”

“Guns?” Jeffrey answered. “No, it hasn't.”

Charley still leaned against his knee and shuffled his feet.

“What's it got in it?” Charley asked.

“Nothing,” Jeffrey said, “and you should have left it where it was, and you shouldn't be in the trunk room anyway. Haven't you got the whole place to play in? It's just something I had in the war.”

“What war?” Charley asked.

“What war?” Jeffrey repeated. “When we fought the Germans.”

He supposed that he should have put his hand on the little fellow's head and should have told him all about the war and just what Daddy had done in it. If Madge had been there, Madge would have explained it, but Madge had gone to town.

“Listen, Charley,” Jeffrey said, “suppose you go away and play somewhere. I want to read the paper.”

“There isn't anywhere to play,” Charley said.

“Not anywhere to play?” Jeffrey repeated. “There's the whole place, isn't there?” He searched his mind for something more specific. “There's a swing, isn't there? Why don't you go and swing in it?”

Charley didn't want to swing in it, because he didn't want to swing.

“Listen, Charley,” Jeffrey said, “if you go away and play somewhere, I'll give you twenty-five cents.”

But Charley did not want twenty-five cents.

“Then go into the kitchen and see Hulga, or whatever her name is,” Jeffrey said, “and tell her to give you a cookie or a glass of milk. I want to read the paper.”

But Charley did not want a glass of milk.

“Then don't talk to me,” Jeffrey said. “I want to read the paper.”

He picked up the
New York Times
and turned to the second page, aware of Charley standing beside him silently. Then he heard Charley kicking the gravel and then he heard him throwing stones and when he finally looked up, Charley had disappeared, but the satchel was where Charley had left it, on his lap.

Jeffrey could remember it well enough now. It had been designed by some house which had specialized in uniforms and officers' accessories as a receptacle for holding maps and papers. It was one of the articles on those interminable mimeographed lists which an officer was expected to have in his possession before he went overseas. It went with the collapsible rubber basin and the collapsible camp chair and the collapsible cot, and all those other articles which were usually left behind after a few weeks in France. Jeffrey had finally carried the map case in his bedding roll, not for maps as much as for letters. He had bought it at Abercrombie and Fitch on his one-day leave in New York before he sailed; he had done so in a fine wave of extravagance shortly after he had received his commission and his pilot's wings. He could even remember the map case on display behind the plate-glass window, and he could recall that he had looked at his own reflection in the window more closely than he had looked at the display. He had been wearing a garrison cap, which he never wore again, but from there his memory was a blank. He could not remember ever using the map case, or opening it, since the war was over.

Now when he pushed the rusty spring catch it was like examining the property of someone else. It was like prying into the intimate possessions of someone who had not come back, as one had been obliged to do often, in the Squadron. The papers, he saw, were growing a little yellow. Two stubs of pencils fell out and a small card with writing in purple ink in a foreign hand—Marie Bouchet, and the address was the Rue Jacob in Paris. He could not remember anyone named Marie, although he must have asked that unknown Marie for her address. He must have kept it hoping to renew his acquaintance, or the paper would not have been there. She must have been one of the girls you knew on those few promiscuous nights in Paris when you knew that your number was coming up sometime soon, and when you took any chance you could to forget it for a while. They had understood about the war; the French had been kind to the Americans in those days. Then there was one of those battle maps showing the Verdun sector and the German lines as they had existed before the Argonne drive. He could see the peaceful curve of the Meuse River and the high land on the right bank and the triangles and squares of forests. There was also a part of another map showing the railroads and the depots at Conflans and he seemed to be looking down on them again in the glint of the autumn sun while the black puffs from the German archies were exploding in constantly changing compact patterns. Then there were some envelopes and some letter sheets marked “Soldiers' Mail,” which included a half-finished note. Though the writing was his own he found himself reading it furtively like an unsympathetic stranger prying into another's past. It was a very bad letter, stilted, without eloquence, written with a pencil so hard that it had made grooves on the yellowish paper.

Dear Mrs. Rhett:—

I am another of Stan's friends, who writes to say that he shares in his own way your sense of loss. You have been told that he was shot down. I was with him; he was my observer. I tried to get him back. He died after we got in, from loss of blood. I did not know him very well before, but I got to know him on the way back, and I want to say you should be very proud of Stan. Wherever he is now, someone must have said, “Well done!”…

As he examined it, the whole tone was trite and immature; and it could not have satisfied him at the time. It was hard to write such letters, and he must have tried again.

He reached into the map case blindly for another envelope with his name and address and Squadron written on it and he recognized that writing too, although he had not seen it for years. It was a letter from Louella Barnes. When he read it now, it did not seem to be his business any more. It would have been more decent if he had never looked inside that map case.

Dear Jeff:—

When I went down to the post office this morning, looking for you know what, whom should I meet but your father and he had a letter from you “Somewhere in France.” My letter did not come. I hope it comes tomorrow. I know you are very busy, Jeffrey dear, so I don't mind if your letters are short, and I know it is against the rules to tell much. They sound as if you were having a good time. You say you remember me, and I hope you do, but sometimes they sound a little bit as if you didn't, but then, perhaps I'm just a “silly” with you so far away “over there.” You sound as if you are having a good time with all those other aviators. I am glad they are all college men. I don't remember that any whose names you mention were ever at a Smith prom. I keep wondering what that Minot Roberts must look like and Stanley Rhett, who you say is his best friend. They sound as if they were “swells.” Captain Strike sounds very nice, but all of them sound a little “fast.” I don't see how you can keep getting into automobiles and going to Paris and places. I hope they do not make you “fast.” I hope you think of me as often as I think of you, which is nearly all the time.

We have just had a big rally for the Liberty Loan and we have gasless Sundays. Who do you think I saw last week? Your brother, Alf! I almost ran into him when he came out of the barbershop. He is just a doughboy and he asked if I had heard from you lately and I said I had, which wasn't true, because I didn't want him to know I hadn't. Now Jeffrey, it makes me so proud of you “over there.” It is as if I were fighting “over there” too.…

He knew that her last letter must be there too, for suddenly he recalled that some sort of superstition had prevented his destroying it even though he had not wished it to be among his effects if he did not come back. He found it there when he reached in the map case, a short letter, so carefully written that it was plain that Louella must have copied it, and recopied it:—

Dear Jeffrey:—

I know that this is not going to hurt you, it has been so long since you have written. I tried to pretend that I got letters whenever your father said he had heard from you. I tried and tried, so of course I know you've never cared the way I cared. I guess it must have started before you went away. I suppose I made you tired because I am too “homey,” but I cared, I don't want to tell you how much.

I don't want to be cross about it, and I hope you won't be. Milt Rolfe wants to marry me, and I guess I'd better, don't you think? I'll wait to hear what you say, if you have anything to say, because we are still engaged, and I have your little ring. If you don't want to write, please don't, and I'll understand. Please don't be angry, please let's be friends. There's so much I can't forget.…

The letter still awakened in Jeffrey a vague feeling of both guilt and freedom. It had been the best way out of it, although the most cowardly, never to have answered. He stared for a while at the map case and the maps and letters, and a sensation came over him that was fierce, insistent, discordant, as he sat there comfortably under the tree. He was aware of his heart beating and of the vividness of the grass and of the brilliance of the sky. Something was telling him that he was alive, but that he did not have much time to be alive. He had never thought that a few unrelated objects in that map case could make him feel that way again. It was the way they all had felt—alive, and that they did not have much time. Fear had nothing to do with it, unless that sensation of living was related to fear. It used to come to him when he landed and climbed out of the plane. He was back again this once and he did not have much time. It was not fear as much as the thought that he would be cheated if he did not use his time. There might be years for some people instead of a question of days or hours or minutes. Although you did not admit it, you knew that some morning you would not come back. The new faces around the mess table would tell you. Once or twice a week the Squadron car would bring the latest replacements in from the railhead and everyone would be quite jolly.

“This is Bert Newell,” Captain Strike would say—or “Bill Jones,” or whatever the stranger's name might be; and everyone would smile and shake hands, and then go on playing bridge, or reading the illustrated magazines. Everyone would be amusing about the flight that morning, and someone would ask if you had seen him get that bastard, and then they all would laugh at small misfortunes. Fliers were apart from all the rest of the show, consecrated for a special purpose. They could hear the gunfire up ahead, but that was not their problem. When they were on leave, they liked to stick together and to hell with the infantry and artillery. The M.P.'s very seldom troubled them no matter what they did. The M.P.'s must have understood, and so did the colonels and the generals, that they did not have much time, and the ground mechanics and the mess orderlies all knew it.

The orders usually came through in the evening when everyone was sitting around the table, smoking and making jokes about how much they had eaten or about someone's physical peculiarities. The orderly would call Bill Strike, and he would go out to the telephone box and then there would be a little silence when he came back. Bill Strike would be wearing a faint anticipatory smile as though he had a secret to tell them, but wanted to tease them first. His eyes would rove over the faces at the table and then he would say, Well, there was going to be another job at four-thirty in the morning sharp, and So-and-so would lead it and So-and-so would go, and So-and-so, and they might as well look over the map. They were going to bomb the railroad yards at So-and-so and the rendezvous with the fighters would be over such and such a point at such and such a time. The Captain's eyes would move from face to face and he would go into a few technical and slangy details and then he would ask if everyone had got it straight. Then he would ask who wanted to play a rubber of bridge and someone would start the phonograph in the corner and someone else would be reminded of a story and everyone would be elaborately careless, particularly if the assignment sounded bad. Then someone would yawn deliberately and say he might as well be turning in if he had to be waked up at four and for God's sake not to wake him sooner, because he wanted to get his beauty sleep. Everyone was cool and ready to laugh, but not boisterously, and all the time throughout the room there was that atmosphere of feeling alive and the intense beauty of living.

If you were used to it, you did not sleep so badly, either. Sometimes you could hear the gunfire, but you hardly noticed. It seemed to Jeffrey that his dreams were always happy, if he dreamed. Then the orderly would shake him and tell him it was four o'clock, sir, and no one made much noise, so as not to disturb those who were not going. Then you would hear the motors warming up on the field. There was hot water to shave with, unless you wanted to put off shaving until later, and there was toast and coffee at the mess table. You could get your real breakfast later, and everyone was a little distrait, perhaps, but very thoughtful of everyone else, and there was talk about the weather and a conscious effort to be very sure that everyone had the sugar and the evaporated milk. If you were casual, you might suggest doing something that afternoon, but you seldom did. If you stopped to think of it, the coffee tasted very good, except that sometimes there was a bitter taste of bile in your mouth as you walked out of the shack across the dusky field. That feeling of not having much time was always gone for the moment. There was no time at all now, since you were face to face with something that was very close to zero. You might wonder why you were there, but there was a great deal else to think about—whether it would be worth while to take a pistol or a cake of chocolate or some chewing gum, whether you should have written a letter last night. Still, it was over quickly. It was all right when the motors were going. When you started moving, you did not give a damn, for there never had been anything like it again—the clouds and the road and the lines and all the world unrolling like a map.