Whistle (39 page)

It was the beginning of the end for Landers and Strange. Trynor stayed on, with a key, in case any of the other old-company men should come in. But Strange and Landers had had enough of partying. Both were ready to go back to the hospital.

But before they did, they stayed on long enough to get good and drunk. Then they drank more in the cab going back. On the main outdoor walkway they parted to go to their respective wards and sleep the night through. It was just suppertime on the wards.

“What’s gotten into you?” Landers asked in the cab. “You could have gotten us all into a lot of trouble.”

“I know,” Strange said. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

On his own ward he slept the whole night through in an unrestful sleep, but without dreams. In the morning, though Col Curran did not appear with the morning rounds group, Strange went to him in his surgery office and turned himself over to him, with the information that he wanted the second operation.

Strange calculated that in a little over four days he had spent just about two thousand dollars of the seven-thousand-dollar total.

But that, of course, was only if you included the $1400 paid to the hotel for the two weeks of the suite.

C
URRAN WASTED LITTLE TIME
. Strange told him what he’d decided. Curran smiled his small smile and said he would take Strange the next day, tomorrow.

He had been meaning to get around to Strange, he said. There was not any question of Curran’s having waited for Strange to make a decision. He hadn’t. He just had been extraordinarily busy. Which was also the reason he had missed making morning rounds. The US 5th Army had been halted by the Germans at the Volturno in October. And had been doing heavy work, was the way Curran phrased it, since then, and in fact had been hung up not far from there since November 1st. And the tougher surgical cases were drifting back, now. He hadn’t had time for Strange.

The mention of the 5th Army in Italy shocked Strange. He had seen two of them come onto his own ward with forearm or hand wounds. Sour, dour, silent men. Who knew nobody, and did not even know each other. Strange knew about the Salerno invasion, of course. But what shocked him was that he had not even paid much attention. And how, though he knew about the taking of Naples, he had not bothered to read up on it at all. He realized suddenly he had not looked at a newspaper in weeks.

Was that how it had happened? To the old-company men off Guadalcanal? Who had been here when he and Winch and Landers and Prell arrived?

He left Curran’s office, already back on the familiar hospital treadmill. His day pass was canceled for that afternoon. That evening he would get a special light supper. At night at bedtime, which was at nine o’clock, they would give him a light sleeping pill. In the morning they would come at six a.m. with the pisser duck and the calmative hypo, and then wheel him to surgery.

And fuck the 5th Army in Italy. That was how he felt. Was that how the others had felt?

In the surgery, while they were prepping his arm and had not yet put their masks on, he asked Curran groggily, grinning a silly grin, if they would please give him some other kind of anesthetic,

Curran shook his head. Sodium pentothal was the best they had. “Why another?”

“Gives me bad dreams,” Strange said woozily.

Curran grinned. “A few bad dreams never hurt anybody.” He went on putting up his gauze mask, becoming some kind of an alien with its tie-strap over his cap. Then he turned to his male assistant for his sterile gloves, popping his hands into the rubber.

The dream when it came, the vision, the hallucination, was all very familiar. It was as though it were taking up right where the other had left off. A certain time period seemed to have passed. And Strange, in his mind, was aware of all that had happened, while he had been away.

There were the same flashing lights, and the same distant shouting. As of crowds. And in fact it followed exactly the same physical projection of the other time. First, the anesthetist was talking him up onto it, softly, gently, exhorting, like a trainer talking up a fighter before going down to the ring. Then he was dripping the stuff into the vein, and Strange was counting backward from ten, till the explosion of noxious fumes came in the roof of his mouth. Then with no time lapse at all he was in the great hall. Waking up. Aware he was waking up. Struggling hard to wake up. But committed to the vision, to its complete unrolling, before he would be allowed out of limbo and back to Strange.

It was not the same public hall as before. This hall was some sort of private official chamber, where the public was not allowed. But the public could be heard shouting, outside the building.

It all seemed very Romanesque, to Strange. The robes, the columns, the windowless window openings, the huge drapes, the statuary. Roman, or maybe Greek.

Here, the judge did not sit on a huge plinth as before. He sat on a long raised dais against one wall, behind a long wooden table, which had many official-looking objects and documents lying on it. Once again the judge was shrouded, in a long white robe, that covered his head and hid his face, so that nothing of him showed except his huge, powerful, white hands.

But this judge was not, Strange knew, the same judge of before. An appeal had been made, Strange knew. And this judge, in the privacy of the official chamber, was a much greater authority than before.

Strange watched the shrouded arm and huge white hand come up as before, pointing. Then in a great powerful voice, a huge basso held down to gentleness, to mildness, so as not to shatter all the listening eardrums and shred the heavy fabric of the great drapes, the faceless figure said, “No, my son. You may not stay.”

Desolate, Strange turned to walk out of the great hall. Outside, as the word was passed, the shoutings of the crowds grew louder.

Then he was back in the hands of the anesthetist and his assistant, both of whose shoutings suddenly grew softer, as Strange opened his eyes.

Curran was stripping off his mask and his gloves. Under the gauze, he was grinning. There was a feeling of great elation all over the surgery. The anesthetist was grinning. All the assistants were grinning.

Curran himself was in the grip of such an expansiveness he seemed hardly able to contain it.

“I think we’ve done you a pretty good job of work,” he said downward.

“Sure have,” the anesthetist grinned.

Strange, who was looking at Curran, managed to lower one eyelid in a slow wink. Then he shut his eyes. As before, he was still so full of the dream that the actual people did not seem real.

What in the hell did it all mean? Where was it he could not stay? What was it he must go back to? It was unbelievable that it could be a continuation like that, like a movie sequel. Where did it all come from? Was it all just lying there waiting for him, every time he had sodium pentothal? What if he never had another operation? Would it just stay there? He would never know the end of the story. And what would happen to it then? He could remember the faces of people he saw in the second hall, whom he had seen in the first hall. It was so real. More real than the operation.

Under him, he could feel them moving him onto the rolling table. His hand was a huge bundled-up package of gauze. He lay still, his eyes still shut, and let them roll him. By the time they moved him from the rolling table onto his own bed in the ward’s private room, he was ready to go sound asleep. He woke only for a moment.

The operation was a huge success, apparently. Or so the surgical team seemed to think. Well, he would wait and see. Reserve judgment. They never really knew, till later. It was his last thought before heavy sleep.

The first time he woke it was evening, just at supper time. By then the real pain had begun. They doped him up for it and he went back to sleep, without eating. The second time he woke was in the middle of the night, around three in the morning, and he was hungry. Ravenous. In spite of the pain. The night man was prepared for that, fed him, and gave him more dope for the pain. By the middle of the next morning they were ready to get him out of bed and on his feet. And to hell with his pain. All told, they kept him laid up with it without any passes for a week. The bad pain receded after four days. But on the second day they let him have visitors.

The first visitor was Landers. The first question Strange asked was about Frances. Then, secondly, he asked about Winch. Still high on the dope, groggy in his head, Strange wondered woozily if his putting Winch after Frances meant he was losing interest in the old-company men, in the same way he was losing interest in the battles and the war. If so, that was terrible.

Landers had news of Winch. Winch’s orders to leave for Camp O’Bruyerre had come in on the same morning Strange was operated on. By some weird, strange stretch of fate, as Landers put it. Winch had left that afternoon, unable to say good-by to Strange, who was still knocked out and sleeping.

That part had been okay. Unavoidable. But Landers felt Winch had acted odd. The 1st/sgt, now warrant officer junior grade, had packed his small bit of gear and then come around to make his expected good-bys to the other old-company men. But instead of going to see each man, he had designated Landers and Corello to collect them, and then met them all together sort of formally, in the snack bar. That meant that Landers had to go see each man separately, since Corello was so notoriously irresponsible.

Winch had not given much of a performance in the snack bar. Afterward, he had called Landers off and said good-by to him alone. That wasn’t much of a performance, either. But he had sent good-bys to Strange, and said to tell him he would be in touch as soon as he got settled. Strange should not hold his breath, though, he said with a snarly grin, because getting settled might take him some time.

“He seemed so distant,” Landers said. “He didn’t seem like he cared much of a shit, one way or the other.”

“You don’t understand him,” Strange said woozily, from where he lay propped up on bed pillows in the tiny room. “It hurt him too much, to say good-by. It hurt him so much he sluffed it off.”

“Maybe,” Landers said, obviously not agreeing.

“He’s at his best when somebody needs him,” Strange insisted. “I know him. Then he’s great. But now nobody needs him, and there’s nothing to do.”

“He didn’t send any good-bys to Prell.”

“Naturally,” Strange grinned.

Landers obviously disagreed but he let it drop. And went on to Frances.

In his woozy head, Strange noted that Landers had given the news of Winch first, although the first question had been about Frances. He knows what’s important, Strange thought to himself, even if I don’t.

The news Landers had to give about Frances was that there had been no news of Frances at all. She had disappeared from both Strange’s suite and the suite of the Navy flyers. In the two days there had been no sign of her anywhere. She had not been in the bar downstairs, or anywhere visible in the Claridge. At least not to the knowledge of anyone of either group who knew her. On the other hand, there had been no police coming around, or MPs. That was all the news of her Landers had to give.

Strange felt his heart sink in him, but did not let Landers realize this. Well, maybe she was just resting up, he rejoined. Letting the swelling go down. After all, it was the weekend now. She would have until Monday before she had to go back to work. The swelling might be almost normal by then, mightn’t it?

Landers raised an eyebrow wryly, and didn’t answer.

“Well, mightn’t it?” Strange said.

Landers did not answer. Landers had not mentioned the nose-breaking to anybody, and had cautioned Trynor not to either. In the two days since Strange’s absence Landers had by a kind of consensus become the administrative head of Peabody Suite 804. Or Strange’s Suite, as it had come to be called by all of them. Fortunately Landers’ own money had come in, and he was able to lay out what sums were necessary.

“No, no. No, no,” Strange said with great upset, rearing up in the bed and then falling back as his right arm twinged. “I mean, you can’t do that. This is my thing.”

“Shit on it,” Landers smiled. “Fuck it.” He passed across a sour, hard, unreadable look. “I guess if I want to get rid of my money too, I can.”

Landers had been forced to forbid the other old-company men from inviting just any soldier up to the suite. They none of them seemed to have any real judgment of people, and they wanted to show off. He had been forced to lay down the law after last night that any stranger who was invited up to the parties must first be screened by Landers himself.

“Last night we had a couple of meanies, mean drunks,” he said. He had had to punch them and throw them out bodily.

Strange looked at him tiredly from the pillows. “You’ve become a leader,” he said.

Landers gave him the bitter look again. “Yeah.” He didn’t smile. “It’s funny, aint it? Right after I’ve chucked the whole thing. Now the Army’ll never be able to use it,”

“Maybe they will,” Strange said.

“No. The Army doesn’t want my kind of leadership. The Army doesn’t want imagination. They don’t even like a limited imagination.”

“Don’t be too sure of that.”

“I’m pretty sure,” Landers said equably.

To Strange’s woozy head it seemed pretty clear Landers had made some decision about something, had moved from one plateau of thinking to some other.

“What do you mean, chucked it?” Strange said.

“I’ve chucked it,” Landers said. “Given up on it. From now on I’m only going to do exactly what I’m told to do. No more and no less. And as little of that as I can get by with safely.”

“Then you’re officer material,” Strange grinned. “You should put in for OCS.”

“Not me,” Landers said briskly. “I’m not going to tell some poor son of a bitch under me to go get killed.”

Strange only laughed. But the whole thing set him to thinking, and to fretting, about Landers. And about the change in Landers. Whatever it was, and Landers did not say what, it had changed Landers in some very basic way. He had a lot more authority. And a lot less dedication and commitment, to go with it. In town, he went on spending his own money, over Strange’s protests. And he also went on administering the minor problems of Strange’s Suite 804. He also became Strange’s eyes and ears in town, for the week that Strange was laid up.