The Majors Read online

  The reply came before Lowell could stop it.

  “I don’t frankly think much of it, General.”

  “But you will admit it’s colorful? I mean, it has a good deal more class than, for example, ‘you dumb fuck, you!’ Wouldn’t you say?”

  Lowell had to chuckle. “Yes, sir, it does.”

  “General Simmons has always had a flair for the spoken word,” the general said. “He just used that Holy Grail line on me, when I told him that I had turned down chief of staff of the 2nd Armored Division to assume command of the Army Aviation Center.”

  The general was smiling when Lowell looked at him in surprise.

  “If you’re a monsignor, Major, and Bill Roberts is a bishop, I guess that makes me the Pope.” The general made the sign of the cross. “Bless you, my Son,” he said. “Go and sin no more.” He seemed highly pleased with himself.

  After a moment, he asked: “I have two more questions, Major.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “There was a Task Force Lowell in the breakout from the Pusan perimeter. That was you, correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “OK, those blanks are filled in. I’ve heard about you. Next question. As one old tank commander to another, are these things hard to drive?”

  “General, they’re a bitch,” Lowell said.

  “I was afraid you were going to say that,” the general said. “Then your thesis is the younger the man, the easier he will be to train?”

  “Easier to train, in better physical condition with quicker reflexes, and he can be retained on flying duty for a longer period of time, with consequent reduction of training costs.”

  “Final question,” the general said. “When you can find time, I want you to write down this instantaneous discharge of ground troops from helicopters for me. Send it to me at Rucker, it’s in Alabama someplace, I never heard of it. Mark the envelope ‘personal.’”

  “Yes, sir,” Lowell said.

  “My name is Laird,” the buck general said. “My friends call me ‘Scotty.’” He paused. “You can call me ‘General.’”

  Lowell smiled dutifully at General Laird, who was obviously delighted with his wit. Lowell had heard that ‘you can call me General’ line before. And then he remembered where. The first time he had ever seen a general up close, on the polo field at Bad Nauheim. That long ago. Before he had been an officer; before, even, he had met Ilse.

  The general had been Major General Peterson K. “Porky” Waterford, then commanding the U.S. Costabulary, the Army of Occupation police force. He had used the same line on his newly formed polo team, which had consisted of the general, two full bull colonels, and PFC Craig W. Lowell, soon to elevate from draftee to second lieutenant, because “Call Me General” Waterford wanted to beat the French. The French played only fellow officers and gentlemen, and PFC Lowell happened to be a three-goal polo player.

  Lowell spent long hours in the three weeks after he dropped Brigadier General Laird and his staff off at Bad Godesberg, writing and rewriting a draft field manual, Helicopter Placement of the Infantry Platoon.

  It wasn’t something he had just thought up; the idea had occurred to him a long time ago (and not, he readily admitted, to him alone). The difference was that he had done more than think about it. Encouraged by Bill Roberts’s responses to other ideas of his, he had considered the problem as something real and immediate, as if it were going to happen tomorrow. The only imaginary thing in his proposal was the helicopter itself. The army had already begun to take delivery of Sikorsky H-34 helicopters which could, under ideal conditions, indeed lift eight fully armed troops and their combat load.

  The yet-to-be-designed, much less built, helicopter described in Helicopter Placement of the Infantry Platoon was capable of carrying twelve fully armed troops under all reasonable conditions, plus five hundred pounds of supplies, and the machine was designed so that troops would be off-loaded through doors on both sides.

  Lowell played the devil’s advocate, trying as hard as he could to find fault with his own idea and its execution. But finally it was done, and he typed it up himself, with five carbon copies, as neatly, he thought, as any clerk-typist of questionable sexual persuasion could type it, each copy having a cardboard cover and bound together with a paper clip.

  Typing the address gave him the biggest thrill.

  Brig. Gen. Angus C. Laird

  Commanding General

  The U.S. Army Aviation Center

  Camp Rucker, Alabama 36362

  PERSONAL

  Brigadier General “Scotty” Laird had asked for it.

  Lowell sent a copy to Phil Parker in Alaska. A Xerox copy; he had forgotten about Phil until he was halfway through typing it up. Six weeks later, he got a Xerox of Emplacement of the Infantry (Ski) Platoon in Arctic Conditions by Ski-Equipped UIA “Otter” Aircraft.

  Phil had adopted his idea to arctic conditions and had used as his imaginary aircraft a sort of super Beaver, a fourteen-passenger DeHavilland single-engine Bush aircraft not yet in the army inventory.

  It was the only response Lowell ever got to his proposal. Colonel Bill Roberts acknowledged receiving it, but made no comment. General Laird never even acknowledged receiving it. After several months, Lowell concluded that Laird had just been playing with him, laying some charm on a young officer, getting him to write up an idea that he never intended to seriously consider. He was bitterly disappointed.

  And he wasn’t doing a goddamned thing of importance now. He was still with the Seventh Army Flight Detachment. He had picked up a bullshit title, “Deputy to the Chief, Special Rotary Wing Missions Branch,” but he was painfully aware that he was still playing commissioned jeep driver, ferrying people from one place to another in a flying jeep.

  (Two)

  Dothan, Alabama

  10 July 1955

  Rhonda Wilson Hyde examined herself with pleasure in the mirror of the dressing cubicle in Martinette’s Finer Ladies Wear in Dothan. She was wearing a matching set, bra, panties, and half-slip, all black. The half-slip was lace from the hem nearly halfway to the waist. The panties were nearly all lace, except where a strip of solid material was necessary here and there to hold them together, absolutely as fragile and delicate and transparent as it was possible to make them. The bra, while it looked as fragile as the panties, was really quite strong. It had to be to hold her breasts up the way it was, and yet it was surprisingly comfortable. It was also surprisingly expensive, even for Martinette’s Finer Ladies Wear.

  When she had taken the undies out of the sealed cellophane package—which meant that she would have to buy them—she would have bet the thin straps would cut painfully into her shoulders. And she thought the plastic, or whatever it was, that pushed up the half-cups (the tops were open; anyone looking down her dress could see her nipples) was going to dig into the bottom of her breasts and probably jab painfully into the flesh below. But that didn’t happen. The bra was as comfortable as any she had ever worn. And sexy!

  But God, if Tommy didn’t show up, how was she going to pay for it? Doc would blow his cork if he got a bill from Martinette’s for $79.95 plus tax. Dentistry wasn’t a printing press for money, he would say. Again.

  She turned around, looking over her shoulder into the mirror. There was something sexy about the black strap against her white back.

  There was a knock at the cubicle door, and someone pushed on it. But it was latched.

  “Telephone, Mrs. Hyde,” the saleswoman said. “Your husband, I think.”

  Good God, it better not be Doc. She was supposed to be with her mother, and her mother was supposed to be having trouble with her back. She unhooked the latch and an arm holding a telephone appeared in the crack of the door.

  “Hello?” Rhonda Wilson Hyde said, when she had the phone to her ear, her free hand pushing the door closed.

  “Can you talk?” Tommy Z. Waters asked.

  “Hello, darling,” she said. “I’m nearly through. I should be home in about an hou
r.”

  “I’m up the street,” Tommy Z. Waters said.

  “How interesting!” Rhonda said. “I’ll hurry.”

  Tommy Z. Waters hung up without saying anything else.

  “Good-bye, darling,” Rhonda Wilson Hyde said to the dead telephone. Then she opened the door wide enough to put her hand, and the telephone, through.

  When the saleswoman took it from her hand, Rhonda latched the door so she couldn’t “accidentally” come in. Rhonda wanted to wear the black underwear, and she didn’t want the saleswoman to know. She put her own bra and panties in her purse, and paid for her purchase in cash.

  The Downtowner Motel up the street was owned by the Downtowner Corporation, whose stock was split among three doctors, a lawyer (Howard Dutton), and a businessman, Tommy Z. Waters.

  Five minutes from the moment he had hung up on Rhonda Wilson Hyde, she came through the door of the motel room and pushed it quickly closed behind her.

  “I’m always afraid that someone will see me come in here,” she said, leaning against the door.

  He didn’t reply. Cutting through the Downtowner Motel parking lot was a shortcut to the municipal parking lot on the street behind it. If someone you didn’t want to see happened to be in the motel parking lot, or walking through it, you just kept walking to the municipal parking lot (where you had parked your car) or onto South Main Street, where the shops were.

  Rhonda pushed herself away from the door and went to the refrigerator, where she opened the freezer compartment and took out a small, ice-crusted glass. She put two ice cubes in it, and then walked to where five bottles of liquor stood on a chest of drawers. She filled the glass with gin, added an olive from a jar, and stirred it with her finger.

  “Oh, I need this,” she said. “You don’t want one?”

  He shook his head, “No.”

  “Oh, Tommy, darling, do you have any money with you? I went out without bringing any.”

  That hadn’t stopped her from shopping, he thought. She had three bags.

  He took a folded wad of bills from his pocket, spread them out, and extended them to her. There was three, maybe four hundred dollars in the fan he extended to her. Fifties and twenties and tens. Resisting the temptation to take it all, Rhonda pulled two fifties from the fan.

  The bra and the panties and the half-slip had cost almost that much. It was only fair that Tommy pay for them. She was wearing them for him. Doc would never see her in them. Well, maybe the half-slip, but never the bra and the panties. They would give Doc a fit. She was a respectible married woman, and respectable married women didn’t wear open-cupped brassieres and transparent panties with everything showing.

  She said thank you, and then tucked the two fifties in her purse, and then she said, “I’ve got to tinkle.”

  When she came out of the toilet, she was wearing just the brassiere and the panties. Tommy was already in the bed, naked, with his hands laced behind his head.

  “Like it?” she said. “I just bought it.”

  “Jesus!” he said. “Jesus Christ!”

  She was pleased at what he said, and what happened. His cock got stiff. God, he had a marvelous cock! She went and sat on the bed and lowered herself over him, so that he could get his tongue on her nipple.

  Afterward, as always, she went to the john first, but this time when she came out, she was dressed.

  “What’s the hurry?” Tommy asked. That’s what he was asking out loud, Rhonda thought. What he was really asking was, “Only once?”

  Until recently, Rhonda was in no greater hurry to leave than Tommy was, unless she was late or something. Tommy, in fact, often disappointed her when he just jumped out of bed, Wham, Bam, Thank you, Ma’am. Just like Doc.

  “I’m going out to the post,” Rhonda said, examining her lipstick one last time in the mirror. “To see about a job.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “I took nutrition at the university,” she said. “There’s an opening.”

  “What’s Doc think about that?” Tommy Z. Waters asked.

  “I haven’t told him yet,” she said.

  She sat on the bed and kissed Tommy, just her tongue, so she wouldn’t muss her lipstick, and she gave his thing a little pump, just for the fun of it, and then she walked out of the motel room, looking around to see if anybody had seen her, and then got in her car.

  If she got a job at the post, she decided, that would be the end of the motel room. She was tired of it anyway. Doing it with Tommy was getting to be just about as boring as doing it with Doc.

  When Rhonda got the telephone call from the civilian personnel office out at the post, asking if she could come out there for an interview that afternoon, she thought that she was actually going to get the job.

  She’d heard about the job at the New Year’s Eve party at the officer’s club. The military medical and dental people had gone out of their way to be nice to their civilian counterparts. Inviting people who lived in a dry county to a New Year’s Eve where Kentucky sour mash bourbon sold for forty-five cents a drink was about as nice as they could be. One of the officers at their table had been a Medical Service Corps officer who had had a hard time keeping his eyes off her boobies. She’d taken a couple of drinks in the afternoon, and that had given her the courage to wear her other open-cupped bra.

  Either Doc was so dumb he didn’t notice, or he just didn’t care, because, despite the way she’d worried about it, he hadn’t said a word about it to her. Anyway, the major from the Medical Service Corps had told her, sometime during the evening, that the hospital was looking for dieticians, Grade GS-5. Rhonda had picked right up on that. She had her degree in home economics from the University of Alabama, and she’d had a lot of courses in diet and nutrition, and things like that.

  The major said it wasn’t up to him to decide—if it was, the job was hers—but that the civilian personnel office made the decision. They went over applications from people and saw whether or not they met the requirements. So Rhonda had filled out the application (my God, the thing was six pages long, and even wanted to know if you had ever been arrested, or been a member of any political organization advocating the violent, or revolutionary, overthrow of the United States government) and mailed it off. And five weeks later, she got the call.

  The civilian personnel officer turned out to be a woman, a skinny woman, a 30-AAA cup, training-bra type woman, not an officer, which had sort of disappointed Rhonda. Women aren’t interested in well-dressed women; they just get jealous. What the civilian personnel officer, Mrs. Cawthorn, told her was that the dietician, GS-5, job was already filled and that she wasn’t qualified anyway. Rhonda was just about to tell her she could have told her that on the telephone and saved her a trip all the way out here, when Mrs. Cawthorn said there was something else.

  Something called the Aviation Combat Development Agency had an opening for an administrative officer, Grade GS-7. Rhonda wasn’t qualified for that, either, but since she had a college degree, that made her eligible for what they called the intern program, which was how the government trained people straight from college with no experience. She could start as a GS-5, and if after a year’s probation she learned to do the job, they would make her a GS-7. Mrs. Cawthorn said she wasn’t offering her the job. All she could do was set up an interview for her with the executive officer, a Major MacMillan, and see if he was willing to take a chance on her.

  Mrs. Cawthorn got on the telephone right then and called Major MacMillan. The major said he could see her if she would get to his office within fifteen minutes.

  She had a little trouble finding the place, a converted barracks, and when she went inside, there was a secretary, a Mrs. Heatter, who treated her as if she was collecting money for Russian Relief or something.

  “Do you have an appointment?” Mrs. Heatter asked.

  “He expects me,” Rhonda said. “Civilian personnel sent me over about the administrative officer’s job.”

  Rhonda would have had to be blind n
ot to see that Mrs. Heatter was something less than thrilled to hear that.

  “Why don’t you tell him I’m here?” Rhonda said, flashing a big smile at her.

  Mrs. Heatter picked up her telephone (a funny looking telephone; Rhonda had never seen one like that before) and dialed just one number.

  “Major, there is a Mrs. Hyde here, who says you expect her.” Mrs. Heatter then rose and showed Rhonda into another office. “Mrs. Hyde, Major MacMillan.”

  After all that formal business, Rhonda expected an officer in full dress uniform, at least. The man who said, “Come in, please, Mrs. Hyde,” was wearing what looked like a junior league baseball jacket. It was a violent shade of orange and had a snake embroidered on the front with the word MOCCASIN sewn above it.

  He shook Rhonda’s hand, took her application from her, and offered her a seat. Rhonda regretted all the emphasis she’d given on the application to her nutritional and food preparation experience. It made her sound like a short order cook.

  “What the application doesn’t show, Major,” Rhonda said, flashing him a big smile, and leaning over so that if he wanted to, he could look down her dress, “is that I’ve been running my husband’s office since we were married. All the administration, so to speak.”

  “Do you type, by the way?”

  “No,” she said, “not very well.” She figured she could get away with that; he had looked down her dress. He was all man, she could tell that.

  “That must make things tough in your husband’s office,” he said, and there was a sarcastic tone in his voice, but he left it there and went on: “Here’s a copy of the job description. Why don’t you take a look at it and see if you think you’d be able to do it?”

  Rhonda sat back and read the job description with what she hoped looked like intelligent interest. When she felt Major MacMillan’s eyes on her boobies again, she sat up and leaned over, her eyes still on the job description, to give him a better look. It was either the boobies or nothing; she didn’t understand a word of the job description. She told herself that an office was an office, and once she got the job she could figure out what she was supposed to do. She really wanted the job. Major MacMillan was very interesting, indeed, and there would probably be other interesting men, as well.