The Majors Read online

  “Absolutely,” Barbara Bellmon said. “Absolutely.”

  Colonel Bellmon took the flask, shook it, and opened it.

  “Here’s to you, Scotty,” he said, and took a large swallow, and then handed it to his wife. Barbara Bellmon took a large swallow, but said nothing.

  They passed the flask between them, Melody included, until it was empty. Jeannie Laird and Barbara Bellmon took turns holding it to Greer’s mouth.

  “Now that it’s all gone,” Jeannie Laird said, “that probably wasn’t the best thing we could do for Mr. Greer.”

  “I just checked with the flight surgeon,” Colonel Bellmon said. “He’ll be out of those bandages tomorrow except for his hands. He looks worse than he is.”

  “Hell, I was hoping for a thirty-day convalescent leave,” Greer said.

  “You’ve got it,” Colonel Bellmon said.

  “I was only kidding, Colonel,” Greer said.

  “I’m not,” Colonel Bellmon said. “By the power vested in me by God and other senior headquarters, the hospital commander and the flight surgeon concurring, you are, as of midnight, on thirty-days’ convalescent leave.”

  “Thank you,” Greer said.

  “Can I help you get home?” Jeannie Laird asked. She turned to Bellmon. “We can have him flown home, can’t we, Bob?”

  “He can be flown anyplace he wants to go,” Bellmon said.

  There was something about the reply that wasn’t right, and Melody Dutton picked up on it.

  “I’m going to have to get back to my quarters,” Jeannie Laird said. She walked to the bed and shook Greer’s wrist above the bandages. “Thank you again, Mr. Greer.”

  “I’m really sorry, Mrs. Laird,” Greer said.

  “If there’s room for me,” Barbara Bellmon said, “I’ll catch a ride with you. Bob can pick me up over there.”

  In Melody’s Ford, Mrs. Laird said, “A fine young man. He’s just a kid. You expect warrant officers to be bald-headed and middle-aged.”

  “He’s not old enough to vote,” Barbara Bellmon said. “Or drink. You heard about him and MacMillan in Indo-China, didn’t you?”

  Jeannie Laird had not heard. Barbara Bellmon told her. And Melody Dutton was fascinated, awed. And then, because it gave them something else to talk about, besides Scotty Laird, Barbara Bellmon told Jeannie what else she knew about Warrant Officer Junior Grade Edward C. Greer.

  “Bob got the CIC/FBI Complete Background Investigation report on him when he had to have a Top Secret security clearance,” she said. “It reads like a cheap novel. He was raised in a carnival. His father ran a freak show. His mother, who never bothered to marry his father, ran off when he was four months old. He was raised by whatever women his father happened to be playing house with at the moment.”

  “That’s terrible,” Jeannie Laird said.

  “And then by a court reporter in Indiana,” Barbara Bellmon said. “The court reporter felt sorry for him and took him in when his father went to jail. She taught him to use one of those little machines…”

  “Stenotype?”

  “Right. And then he ran off and joined the army. He wound up working for E. Z. Black, and Black sent him to flight school.”

  “Then he doesn’t have a family?” Jeannie Laird asked.

  “Just his father, and he’s still in prison,” Barbara Bellmon said.

  “Then where’s he going on his leave?” Jeannie Laird asked.

  “The BOQ, probably. Oh, we asked him for Christmas. And so did Roxy MacMillan. Mac is alive because of Greer, and Roxy can be very determined when she wants to be. I guess he feels uncomfortable with families.”

  Melody Dutton repeated the story that night at supper, leaving out the details she knew would drive her father and mother up the wall. In her version of the story, WOJG Greer was an orphan who had no place to go for Christmas.

  As Melody thought she would be, her mother was touched by the story of an orphan with no place to go for Christmas dinner. She telephoned WOJG Greer at his BOQ the next day. WOJG Greer politely thanked her but told her that he had a previous engagement.

  Melody next saw him at the memorial services for General Laird on Parade Ground No. 2. Mrs. Laird had seen to it that a seat had been reserved for him on the VIP stand, in the section reserved for “friends of the family.”

  Melody saw that someone must have dressed him in his dress uniform, for his hands were still swathed in bandages. She saw that the Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, General E. Z. Black, who had been visibly bored when he was introduced to her father, wrapped his arms around Greer’s shoulders when he saw him.

  And she heard what he said, not able to entirely hide his emotions:

  “Goddamnit, Greer, I’m glad to see you.”

  “Aw, shit, boss,” Greer said, and then Greer and the Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army laughed together.

  And her mother went up to him, and said: “Mr. Greer, we’re having a few people in for a buffet afterward. We’d like you to come. We’ll take you back and forth, of course.”

  While her mother was talking to him, Greer was looking at Melody. That gave her a very strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, and when she saw him nodding his head, she felt her heart beat a little faster.

  When the memorial ceremony was over, they transferred General Laird’s flag-covered casket from the M48 tank on which it had come to the parade ground to the H-34 which would fly it to Ozark Army Airfield. There an air force transport waited to fly it to West Point along with all the generals who had come here for the ceremony. Afterward, Melody’s mother went and led Greer by the arm to their Mercury.

  He rode up in front with her father and didn’t say a word all the way into Ozark. Melody saw that he had a scar on his neck. She wondered if he had gotten the scar as a boy, jumping over a fence or something, or whether he had gotten it as a soldier.

  In the Dutton house, he made himself as inconspicuous as possible. Melody found him in her father’s office, trying without much success to turn the pages of a magazine with his bandaged hands.

  She got him a plate from the buffet and fed him. When their eyes met, she had a weak feeling in the pit of her stomach again.

  “You’re uncomfortable here, aren’t you?” she asked.

  He just looked at her and said nothing.

  “Come on,” Melody said. “I’ll take you out to the post.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  On the way to the post, she asked: “Where are you going to spend New Year’s Eve?”

  “At the club, probably. Not the main club. The annex.”

  “Who’s going to hold your drink for you?” she asked.

  “What do you want from me?” he asked.

  “I was hoping for an invitation,” she said.

  “Why would you want to do that? Don’t tell me you don’t already have a date.”

  “You want to take me or not?”

  “You’re not my kind of people,” he said.

  “We won’t know that until we know each other better, will we?” Melody replied.

  “You wouldn’t want to go to the annex,” he said.

  “I want to go to the main club with you,” Melody said. “I’ll pick you up and take you home. You can’t drive, anyway.”

  “I drove to the parade ground,” he said. “I can drive.”

  She interpreted that as an acceptance. After she dropped him by his car at the parade ground, she went home and called the boy she had had a date with at the Ozark Country Club. She told him she was sorry, but she wouldn’t be in town.

  She tried to call Greer three times between then and New Year’s Eve, but he never answered the telephone. On New Year’s Eve, she got dressed about half past six in an off-the-shoulder evening dress. She tried to call him again. This time his phone gave her a busy signal. When she kept trying, and still got the busy signal, she decided the phone was off the hook, whether by accident or intentionally.

  When he didn’t show up by seven thirt
y, she wondered if she had the courage to go out there. She worried that she was frightening him off. When it was time for her parents to go out to the post, and he still hadn’t showed up, she lied to them. She told them he had called and was delayed, and that they should go out. She would be along later.

  When he didn’t come by half past eight, she went out and got in the Ford convertible, and crying, told herself that she was going to go out to his BOQ and really tell him off. If he didn’t want to take her out, he should have been enough of a gentleman to tell her so, not let her get all dressed up and then not show up.

  When she got to the post, she realized she didn’t know where he lived. She turned around and went back to the MP house at the gate, where an obliging MP, who made it plain he thought she was something special as a woman, looked up GREER, Edw C WOJG (USAACDA) in the post telephone book. He lived in BOQ T-108, he told her, which was down behind the field house.

  Melody found T-108, one of three identical two-story buildings in a row, without any trouble. And Greer’s car was in the parking lot, the only one there.

  His name was on a small cardboard sign stapled to a door on the second floor.

  She knocked on the door.

  “Go the fuck away!” he called out.

  Melody flushed and started to turn to leave. But then she realized that he didn’t know, couldn’t know, that it was her.

  She went to the door, and raised her hand to knock again. Then she changed her mind and pushed it open.

  He was sitting in an upholstered chair, a magazine in his lap, a bottle of whiskey and a glass on a table beside him. A television set was playing.

  When he saw her, he looked away. Then he got up and looked out the window. She saw that he was wearing a purple bathrobe and white pajama bottoms. A pair of white hospital slippers was in front of the chair. He had stolen them, she realized. Then she thought, if I knew he didn’t have a bathrobe or pajamas, I would have bought them for him for Christmas.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” he asked, his back to her. “Coming to a BOQ?”

  “I thought we had a date,” she said.

  “You thought that,” he accused. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “I broke my date to go with you,” she said.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” he said.

  She started to cry.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Greer said. “What the hell is the matter with you anyway?”

  “Why didn’t you call me?” she asked. “You could have at least called me.”

  “I thought you’d get the message,” he said. “Jesus, what do you want from me, anyway?”

  “This is how you’re going to spend New Year’s Eve? All alone? Getting drunk by yourself? What’s wrong with you, anyhow?”

  “Look, Melody, or whatever your name is…”

  “You know damned well what my name is!”

  “Look, honey,” he said, “you don’t want to get involved with somebody like me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m a fucking soldier, that’s why,” he said. “There’s more,” he added darkly.

  “Your father’s in jail, is that what you mean?”

  “Who the hell told you that?” he asked, genuinely surprised that she knew. “Yeah, that’s what I mean. Among other things.”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” Melody said. “And I don’t care about your father.”

  “Yeah, but just wait until His Honor the Mayor hears about it.”

  “Is that all that’s bothering you?” Melody asked.

  “That’s just for openers,” Greer said.

  “Where’s your uniform?” Melody asked. “I told my father and mother we’d meet them at the club, and we’re going to meet them.”

  “What happens to me when he finds out?” Greer said. “About my father, I mean? And you can’t tell me he’s pleased with the notion of you going out with a soldier in the first place.”

  “Where’s your uniform?” Melody asked, and when he didn’t answer her (at least he hadn’t told her to get out), she went looking for it. She found the BOQ consisted of two rooms, the room she was in, sort of a living room, and a bedroom. In the bedroom there was a doorless closet, which was covered with a cotton curtain. She pushed the curtain aside and saw that it was jammed full of uniforms.

  “Which one of these?” she asked. She looked over her shoulder. He was standing in the doorway.

  “What do you plan to do, dress me?” he asked.

  She met his eyes. “Yes,” she said. “You can’t dress yourself.”

  “The blue one,” he said. She turned and took a blue tunic and trousers from the closet.

  “Jesus!” he said. “Just put it on the bed.”

  She laid the tunic on the bed.

  “And get me a white shirt from the dresser drawers,” he said. When she was sliding drawers open, he said: “Christ, you’re even going to have to put my socks on.”

  “Sit down and I’ll put them on,” Melody said.

  He sat down on the bed. She found socks in the chest of drawers and then remembered underwear. She found jockey shorts and a T-shirt in another drawer, and then thought about a necktie. She didn’t know how to tie a man’s necktie. What was she going to do about that?

  She went to where he was sitting on the bed. He avoided looking at her. She squatted and forced a laugh, and said, “I don’t have much experience doing this.”

  She tugged his sock on. She looked up at him, pleasure in her eyes.

  “There!” she said. “One down and one to go!”

  “Shit!” he said, and it was a cry of anguish. He twisted on the bed to get around her, to get up. When he did, she saw his thing, hard, erect, poking out of the fly of his pajamas.

  He got that because he was looking down my dress at my breasts, she thought.

  “Goddamnit, why don’t you just get out of here?” he said, when he had gained his feet.

  “Obviously,” Melody heard herself say, “because I don’t want to.”

  “Don’t tease me,” he said. “Goddamnit, don’t you tease me.”

  “I’m not going to tease you,” she said.

  “You know what’s going to happen to your little schoolgirl’s ass if you don’t get it out that door, don’t you?” he said.

  Melody Dutton, as if she was in a dream, stood up, contorted her body, and reached behind for the zipper on her evening gown. The gown had a built-in bra, and when she stepped out of the gown, she was naked except for a brief pair of panties. Meeting his eyes, she slid them down off her hips. She went to him and untied the cord of his pajama pants. Then she lay on the bed.

  “You dumb little shit,” Ed Greer said to her no more than two minutes later. “What did you do that for?”

  “I wanted to,” she said.

  “I never copped a cherry before,” Greer said.

  “How did it feel?” she asked, nastily, aware that she was close to tears.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ!” he said, and hugged her to him, and it was all right.

  “Did you hurt your hands?” Melody asked and sat up and held them gently in her own.

  “Who cares?” he asked. She smiled down at him.

  “It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would,” she said. “In case you’re wondering.”

  “But it did hurt?” he said.

  “Not after a while,” she said.

  “You’re sure?” he asked. “I mean, I didn’t break anything, did I?”

  Melody leaned over and kissed him.

  “Happy New Year,” she said.

  “Jesus, your parents,” he said. “They’re at the club.”

  Howard Dutton knew the moment he saw Melody and the soldier with the burned hands walking across the floor to their table. There was a look in Melody’s eyes (not guilt) that had never been there before. And there was proof later, the way they looked at each other, the way that Melody blushed a little.

  Prissy didn’t suspect a thing. That was to b
e expected. Prissy didn’t have the brains she was born with. All Prissy saw in this boy was the orphan needing a family.

  But Howard Dutton knew. While the boy went to the men’s room, he’d told Melody he thought Greer was an unusual young man, and when Melody had said, “I’m going to marry him, Daddy,” he wasn’t all surprised.

  Howard Dutton said—calmly—because he knew there was nothing else he could say, “We’ll talk about it, honey.”

  And he decided that first off, they would have to get the boy out of the army. He didn’t want Melody running off to the four corners of the world like a camp follower. He wanted her right here in Ozark. There was plenty of room for the boy. If not in the bank, then in one of the companies.

  X

  (One)

  The Consulate General of the United States

  Alger, Département d’Algéier, République Française

  22 June 1956

  Major Craig W. Lowell, with Sergeant William H. Franklin beside him, flew the Hiller H-23 over the desert due north from the foothills of the Atlas Mountains until he reached the Mediterannean. Then he turned right, several hundred yards out to sea, and flew along the beach and the coastal highway very low until he reached Algiers. He picked it up to a thousand feet then and flew directly across the city itself to the airport.

  The crew chief came out while they were still shutting the bird down to deliver the message that the military attaché, a starchy infantry full bull colonel wanted to see Major Lowell right away. Then he said, in awe: “Holy Christ! Did you see that?” He pointed to the tail structure of the Hiller, where half a dozen bullet holes stitched the covering.

  “Yeah,” Sergeant Franklin said, dryly sarcastic. He was a tall, pleasant-faced, twenty-one-year-old black man. “I happened to be there when it happened.”

  “You better get a picture of that, too, Bill,” Major Lowell said. “First a shot of the holes, and then rip the covering away and see what damage it did inside.”

  “Jesus Christ, Major,” Sergeant Franklin said, examining the damage closely. In his dusty khaki shirt and shorts, he looked very much like the Norman Rockwell painting of an Eagle scout. “They came a hell of a lot closer than I thought they did.”