The Majors Page 19

  The first three dances were uneventful. The fourth lady, the wife of a newly assigned captain, pressed her breasts and ungirdled belly against him. When this produced an involuntary reaction in his external reproductive anatomy, he made a valiant effort to withdraw from further close physical contact. This proved impossible to accomplish. The lady’s midsection stayed riveted to his, and her fingers played with his ear. When the dance was over, she led him back to her table, hand in hand, her breast pressed against his arm. And then as he thanked her for the dance and politely nodded to her husband and the other captains and their wives, she loosened her hand from his and groped him.

  He was profoundly grateful to Lt. Col. Withers for catching him at the bar after the dance. He was still in possession of ninety-eight percent of his common sense and recognized a dangerous situation when he saw one. He spent the rest of the party drinking plain soda water and listening to Lt. Col. Withers extoll the merits of membership in the Augsburg Military Post Christian Men’s Club.

  For the next week, he took his meals either in the unit messes, where dependents were not authorized, or on the economy, thus avoiding the club and the chance of seeing the captain’s wife.

  He learned that her husband, Captain Suites, was assigned to Special Rotary Wing Missions Branch. Captain Suites was an archtypical army aviator, who saw as his sole raison d’être the piloting of aircraft. He was personally an amiable moron, with a high-pitched giggle. Lowell dismissed him from thought after he’d given him a check ride and reported to the senior flight instructor (another amiable moron, a lieutenant colonel who affected highly polished half-Wellington boots and was seldom seen without his aviator sunglasses) that Captain Suites (pronounced “Soots”) was safe to fly people from hither to yon in his H-13.

  Lowell flew Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of that week: two missions, and four three-hour check rides. The next day, Thursday, he would have to spend at his desk. Lt. Col. Withers had learned of his paper-pushing skill and turned over to Lowell as much of it as he could. Since he would not be flying the next day, he could have a couple of drinks.

  (Aviators were officially forbidden to drink more than one beer the night before flying. Lowell never even took the permitted one. The army’s official opinion of his flying ability was a good deal higher than his own. He had no intention of taking off with alcohol dulling his senses or impairing his coordination, and drank only when he was not scheduled to fly.)

  But he resisted the temptation to take a drink at the club. The lady who had groped him might be there. He went instead to the movies, and the movie turned out to be incredibly bad. He tried but failed to suffer through it and got up after an hour and walked out. Fate, he decided, had pointed him toward the booze. To avoid going to the club, he went downtown in the Jaguar and went to the Cafe Klug, an establishment catering to the wealthier Germans, where the patronage of Americans was discouraged both by the prices and a thoroughly nasty maitre d’hôtel who took great pleasure in making it clear that they would be far more welcome elsewhere.

  He made an exception for Major Lowell, however. The unusual Amerikaner not only never showed up in uniform, but was reliably reported to be closely connected with some very important people indeed, a rumor supported by the fact that the major spoke impeccable high-class German.

  Lowell was given an on-the-spot, maitre d’hôtel’s promotion to Herr Oberst and bowed into the premises. He went to the bar and ordered a triple Johnny Walker black. (A triple in the Cafe Klug, costing the equivalent in deutsche marks of $4.50, contained roughly as much whiskey as a thirty-five-cent single did in the officer’s club.)

  He sat there, half listening to the orchestra, dimly aware of inviting smiles from several women alone at the bar and thinking what he thought of as quasiphilosophical profundities:

  There was a military version of The War Is Over; Soldiers and Dogs Keep Off the Grass! He stated it in his mind, and restated it, until he was satisfied; When the War Is Over, Warriors Interfere with the Smooth Running of the Peacetime Army.

  He thought of others:

  An Ambitious Officer Is Like a Brazen Prostitute; He Makes Ordinary People Uncomfortable.

  If Men Ride Motorcycles Because It Is Symbolic Power Between the Legs, Then the Helicopter Is the Ultimate Motorcycle: Any Moron Can Get It Up.

  Simple Problems May Be Corrected in the Army Provided the Solution Is Complex; Simple Solutions to Complex Problems Are Not Tolerated.

  He had just ordered his fifth drink and told himself that it was the last when the maitre d’hôtel coughed behind him, and, his tone making it clear he hoped it wasn’t really true, announced that the “lady” at the door said that she was joining the Herr Oberst.

  “I thought,” Mrs. Suites said in a somewhat hurt tone of voice, “that you would call.”

  He didn’t reply, just put a question on his face.

  “You did send Ken on that Remain Over Night, didn’t you?” she asked.

  She swiveled on her barstool, gave him a conspiratorial laugh over her shoulder, and swiveled back again. This time her knee pressed his groin.

  “Aren’t you going to buy me a drink?” she asked.

  Without really thinking what he was doing, he signaled the barman to give her a drink.

  (Three)

  “I have looked the other way, Lowell,” Lt. Col. Edgar R. Withers said, “when your other escapades have been brought to my attention, but this time you’ve gone too far.”

  There is no way I can explain to this man—because he is incapable of understanding—that Phyllis Suites pursued me like a shark, Lowell thought. But it wouldn’t matter if Lt. Col. Withers did understand what really had happened. If he saw Phyllis for what she was, a horny slut, I have still broken Army Commandments XI and XII; THOU SHALT NEVER DIDDLE A BROTHER OFFICER’S WIFE and THOU SHALT NEVER, NEVER, NEVER STICK YOUR DICK TO THE WIFE OF A SUBORDINATE.

  Phyllis was both: the wife of a brother officer and the wife of a subordinate. He said what he was feeling.

  “I am deeply ashamed of myself, Colonel,” he said.

  “And well you should be, Lowell. What in God’s name were you thinking about?”

  There was no response to that. He couldn’t think of a thing to say. He certainly couldn’t tell the colonel, who was president of the Augsburg Military Post Christian Men’s Club, that Phyllis Suites had overcome his nearly valiant efforts to avoid her and had run him to ground in the Cafe Klug. Or that he was half in the bag when she found him, and consequently paying less than usual attention to his ethical obligations as an officer and a gentleman. Or that he was suffering from the symptoms of close to six weeks’ self-imposed celibacy and thus easy prey to the sinful lusts of the flesh. He had not thought of Phyllis Suites as a wife and mother when she grabbed his wang; he had thought that if she was so interested in the object, then it could be reasonably presumed that she would make a marvelous cocksucker. And so she had turned out to be.

  “I was deeply ashamed of myself,” the Colonel said, “when Captain Suites came in here and asked for my help.”

  Oh, Jesus Christ!

  “I’m sorry, very sorry, that you have become involved, Colonel,” Lowell said.

  “I will interpret that to mean that you are sorry I am involved, and not that you’re sorry only because you’ve been caught.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll tell you frankly, Lowell, that my first reaction was to bring you up on charges. If I have ever seen a case of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, this is it. You have betrayed your oath of office, and the entire officer corps.”

  Rather than being offended by having my ass chewed by this self-righteous, self-important little bastard, Lowell thought, I seem to be reveling in it. I deserve it. I really am a shit. I knew what an amiable jackass Suites is, the archtypical husband of the woman who plays around. For that reason I should have stayed completely away from his wife, even if that meant jumping out the goddamned window of the Cafe Klug when she came
in there.

  “Out of consideration for Captain and Mrs. Suites and their children, however—and it is their interests with which I am concerned, not yours—I have decided to keep the resolution of the mess you have generated unofficial.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lowell said.

  “I know that you don’t think much of us who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, Lowell,” the colonel went on. “But it’s come to your defense. ‘Judge not,’ it says in the Bible, ‘lest ye be judged.’ I am aware that you have lost your wife and that your loss probably has made you bitter. What I have tried to do, therefore, is find a Christian solution to this problem.”

  There followed a sixty-second silence during which the colonel looked at Lowell with mixed loathing and compassion.

  “A requirement has been laid upon us to provide a rotary wing aviator to the military attaché at the United States Consulate General in Algiers. The requirement is for company grade, but I have obtained permission to send you. You will be gone six months. You will leave in two days. That doesn’t give you much time, I realize, but you’ll have to make do with what you have. You will not, repeat not, make any attempt to communicate with Mrs. Suites in any way before you leave, and I think it would be a good idea if you took your meals in one of the unit messes.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lowell said. “I’d like to thank you, Colonel.”

  “After you read your efficiency report, Major, you won’t want to thank me for anything. Just be grateful that you weren’t court-martialed. There is simply no excuse for your conduct.”

  (Four)

  Ozark, Alabama

  22 December 1955

  Melody Dutton came by her father’s office during her lunch period to pick up the 1953 Ford so that she could run up the highway to Brundidge to get something for her mother’s birthday. “Daddy, if I had my own car,” she said, “I wouldn’t have to take yours and leave you walking.”

  “Honey,” Howard Dutton replied, “you’re still a little girl, and still in school.”

  “Oh, Daddy!” she said, in exasperation, but she smiled at him.

  She was not a little girl. She was a freshman at the university. She was eighteen, soon to be nineteen. She was wearing a tight skirt and a loose sweater, the current fashion, and you could see, anybody could see, that she had a young woman’s body. The young men were already sniffing around her.

  He didn’t know how he was going to handle that, when she got a young man, when she fell in love with a young man, when she left him for a young man. Howard Dutton had loved his Melody from the time she was in her crib, all pink and smelling good. Not that he didn’t love Howard, Jr. (who was sixteen) or Marcia (who was fourteen). They were wonderful children, too, but not like Melody. He had to try very hard to be fair and decent and not to let it show how much more he loved her than the other two.

  Melody was tall, lithe, blond-haired and blue-eyed, and gentle, shy, and loving. There was nothing that made him happier than to sit in the living room and hear her play something good, like Chopin, on the piano. Prissy had told him he was out of his mind when he bought her the Steinway. Melody wasn’t a musical genius or a prodigy, or whatever, she was just a thirteen-year-old girl who’d had three years of piano lessons, and she didn’t need a piano like that.

  About the only thing he could do for Melody now, aside from what he was going to do today, was see her through college and set her up for marriage. The trouble with that was every time he really started to think about that, he was reminded that he was going to lose her.

  It was God’s way, Howard reasoned. God made teen-aged girls beautiful so they would attract the men and have babies and start the whole cycle all over again. Howard had once thought he would give away half of everything he owned, or would ever own, if he could have just one more year of things the way they were, without them changing. That was when Melody was thirteen, and they’d gotten the braces off her teeth, and she was just turning into a young woman, though young enough still to sit on his lap and snuggle up and let him kiss her on the top of her head.

  That was five years ago. Five years from now, Melody would possibly be holding her own baby on her lap. He would be a grandfather and she would be a mother, and it made a nice picture, but he didn’t like to think about it.

  “I don’t think he’s busy, Tommy,” he heard Prissy say. “Why don’t you stick your head in and see?”

  The way she should have done that was to push the button on the intercom and ask him if he was free. And she should have said, “Mr. Waters is here,” and not called Tommy “Tommy.” But she wasn’t really his secretary, she was his wife, and she did things the way she wanted to do them, and not the way a secretary was supposed to.

  “Come on in, Tom,” Howard Dutton called. Tom Z. Waters was wearing an open-collared plaid sport shirt, a zipper wind-breaker, white Levis, and oil-tanned, brass-eyeleted boots, not hunting boots, but the kind engineers and surveyors wear. He looked like an apprentice surveyor, Howard thought. The only way you stopped thinking about Tom Z. Waters as a nice young man—the kind you want to give a boost up the ladder—was after you had a look at his balance sheet, his 1040, and the contents of the safe in the office upstairs over Zoghby’s Emporium.

  “You about ready, Howard?” Tommy asked.

  Howard nodded, and walked around his desk to the door.

  “Tommy and I are going out to Woody Dells,” Howard said to his wife.

  “You’re going to be out there all the rest of the afternoon?” Prissy asked.

  “We’ve got a lot to look at,” Howard replied. Goddamn, when he got his own private secretary, after they moved into the new bank, she damned well had better not ask him questions like that. All his private, personal secretary had better say was, “Yes, sir, Mr. Dutton,” not ask him if he was going to be out all afternoon.

  Parked at right angles to the curb was Tommy’s GM carryall. They weren’t going to be at Woody Dells all that long, and they wouldn’t be going off the pavement, so they didn’t really need the carryall. Another man would have come and picked him up in a car. But if he had come in a car, Prissy might have asked questions.

  They drove out North Broad Street, out of town, crossed the highway, and drove two miles farther. They turned left and started down a steep hill. There was a sign, a regular-sized billboard. “WOODY DELLS,” it said. “A Fine Place to Live. Homes from $19,550. FHA, VA, and Conventional Mortgages. Miller County Construction Company, Inc.”

  It had been a tree farm, loblolly pine planted in what the Rural Reclamation Administration had determined to be submarginal farmland—worked-out cotton fields.

  There were two finished sample houses near the entrance (brick pillars, with split pine fencing running fifty yards the other side of the entrance). Each had a sign on the lawn saying, “FURNISHED SAMPLE. Sales Representatives on Duty.” Another nearby had just the framing up. That would be another sample when it was finished.

  Beyond the sample houses was a three-lane macadam road with concrete curbs and street signs reading Broad Vista Avenue. Two-lane macadam streets branched off it. There were signs of construction, bulldozers pulling out pine stumps and leveling lots, more bulldozers cutting more streets, pulpwood trucks hauling the pine off for the paper mills in Mobile, teams of men pouring concrete slabs, teams of rough carpenters putting up the frames.

  “Is there anything out here you want to show me?” Tommy asked.

  “No,” Howard said, “I just needed a place I could say I was going.”

  “Thought so,” Tommy said. He came to the end of the pavement, slowed almost to a stop, then drove over the edge. Engine groaning in low gear, he continued over a graded dirt road, ready for macadam, and then off that onto raw land, following the guttered tracks of pulpwood trucks.

  “Where the hell are you taking me?” Howard asked.

  “I used to shoot quail out here,” Tommy said. “You’d be surprised how close we are to the highway.”

  He had no sooner sai
d it that Howard saw the highway. He would have sworn it was at least a mile further on, and he’d walked these hills all his life. Tommy drove roughly parallel to the highway for a quarter mile, until he found a place where he could ease the carryall up the steep shoulder and onto the pavement.

  Thirty minutes later, Tommy drove the carryall right into the garage of Dothan Ford and Mercury, and parked it in a service stall. Then they walked into the showroom.

  There it was, right in front, where people driving by could see it. Flaming fire-engine red with highly polished chrome. The roof was down, and that canvas thing—whatever they called it—was snapped in place over the folded-down top. White sidewall tires and white vinyl seats. The entire works.

  “Well, Mayor Dutton, what do you think of it?” the owner of Dothan Ford and Mercury said, shaking his hand. “You need a car like this, Tommy,” he added to Tommy Z. Waters.

  “Wish I could afford a car like that,” Tommy Z. Waters said.

  “If you’ll give me the papers,” Howard Dutton said, “I’ll give you the check. Tommy’s going to drive it home for me.”

  Potted plants and chrome-and-plastic couches were moved out of the way, and the double glass doors in the front opened. Tommy very carefully maneuvered the convertible out of the showroom. The tires squealed on the polished linoleum whenever he turned the wheel, and the exhaust sounded like a motorboat.

  “Mayor,” Tommy said. Tommy always called him “Mayor” when they were in situations like this, sort of a token of respect. “If it’s all right with you, I’ll just go along now.”

  “Be careful with it,” Howard Dutton said.

  “I’ll be there with it at seven thirty sharp,” Tommy said.

  “You better be,” Howard said.

  He didn’t give a damn, he really didn’t give a damn what Prissy was going to say, and when Tommy showed up at seven thirty sharp, she was going to have plenty to say. What really mattered was that so long as she lived, Melody would remember that when she was eighteen, her daddy had given her a flaming red Ford convertible with white seats and every option that Ford made, including air conditioning and power seats. That’s what she would remember, being daddy’s girl, getting a fantastic Christmas present from her daddy.