The Majors Page 24

  The tall man shook hands with the man with the Medal.

  “What do you say, Mac?” he said.

  “Did I hear you say you bought that?” MacMillan asked.

  “Yeah, you like it?”

  “Who are you going to get to fly it for you?” MacMillan asked, innocently.

  “You must be Greer,” Lowell said, putting out his hand. “Bob Bellmon tells me you’re the final solution for MacMillan.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?” MacMillan asked.

  “A twenty-four-hour-a-day keeper to read road signs and menus for you, that sort of thing,” Lowell said.

  They were smiling, but Hawkins sensed that there was a degree of genuine hostility between them. Or maybe contempt.

  “What’s this all about, Mouse?” Lowell asked. “I appreciate getting an excuse for teacher to get out of school and an excuse to fly my new little bird down here, but I am a little curious.”

  “This is Lieutenant Colonel Hawkins,” Felter said. “He’s going to take your place in Algiers.”

  “Oh,” he said. He put out his hand to Hawkins. “I’m Major Lowell, sir.”

  “How do you do?” Hawkins asked. He decided that he had not heard correctly or else that Major Lowell was joking about just having bought the civilian Aero Commander. Majors simply do not have that kind of money.

  “Mon Général,” Felter said, “may I present Major Lowell?”

  “Mon Général,” Lowell said, almost coming to attention before the general put out his hand to him.

  “I’m happy to finally meet you, Major,” the general said. “Especially under such circumstances.”

  “May the major inquire into the nature of those circumstances, mon Général?” Lowell asked.

  “You have been a hero, again, Craig,” Felter said. “And they are going to give you a medal, again.”

  Hawkins wondered just who the hell the little Jew could be. Probably someone from the State Department. He realized that he had just heard that not only had his application for attaché duty come through, but that he had been told where he was going. To Algiers.

  They rode into downtown New Orleans in a Cadillac limousine with a Corps Diplomatique tag mounted above the license plate. They were taken to a turn-of-the-century mansion on Saint Charles Avenue. A brass plate mounted to the brick fence pillar identified it as Le Consulat Générale de la République Française.

  They were ushered into the office of the consul general. Hawkins saw through French doors leading to another room that there was a buffet laid out, with half a dozen bottles of champagne in coolers.

  “May I suggest, Monsieur le Consul,” the French general said, “that we have our little ceremony? And then we can have, perhaps, something to drink.”

  “Until just now,” Lowell said to Felter, “I thought you were kidding.”

  The consul took a blue-bound folder from his desk.

  Felter pushed the warrant officer and Major Lowell into line before the consul.

  “Dans le nom de la République française!” the consul announced, dramatically. The French general came to attention.

  He read a citation. For valor in action in leading survivors of a shot-down aircraft through enemy lines in the vicinity of Dien Bien Phu, French Indo-China, Major Rudolph G. MacMillan, U.S. Army, was invested with the Legion of Honor, in the grade of Chevalier. General des Fernauds pinned the medal of the Legion of Honor on MacMillan’s tunic and then kissed his cheeks.

  “Dans le nom de la République française!” the consul announced dramatically again. For his gallantry in action in flying a helicopter through intense enemy small arms fire to bring succor to French soldiers wounded in counterinsurgency operations in Algiers on at least twenty occasions, Major Craig W. Lowell was invested with the Legion of Honor in the grade of Chevalier.

  “Dans le nom de la République Française!” the consul general announced, a third and final time. Majors MacMillan and Felter and Warrant Officer Greer were invested with the Croix de guerre for their heroic rescue of a French Foreign legionnaire from the Viet Minh.

  The champagne was served, and General des Fernauds raised his glass.

  “To those we left behind,” he said. Everyone raised his glass, and drank. Then the general dropped his glass to the carpet and ground it with his heel. Lowell and MacMillan, Felter and Greer, one a time, did the same thing. Lt. Colonel Hawkins was about to drop his glass—when in Rome, do as the Romans—when the consul stayed his hand.

  “Only those who were there,” he said, softly.

  Hawkins was touched by the ceremony but wondered again why he had been brought all the way down here to witness it. And then he had the insight: somebody wanted him to know what was expected of him when he got to Algiers, and what was expected of him in Algiers was not taught at the Infantry School or at the Command and General Staff College. And then he had a second insight: the one who wanted him to know, the one who had arranged for him to come down here, was the little Jew.

  XI

  (One)

  Fort Rucker, Alabama

  25 January 1957

  Rhonda Wilson Hyde had “requested” Darlene Heatter to come in on Saturday to answer the telephones until noon, and there wasn’t anything that Darlene could do about it.

  It wasn’t that she minded working; she got paid time and a half for overtime. It was just that she didn’t like the way Rhonda Wilson Hyde was always ordering her around. But there wasn’t anything she could do about it except act as if she didn’t mind. Rhonda was the administrative officer and her immediate boss. The only person she could complain to was Colonel Bellmon. Though Darlene knew that she generally could get what she wanted from Colonel Bellmon, there was such a thing as wearing out your welcome.

  Darlene was sure that things were going to catch up with Rhonda, anyway. It said in the Bible, “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” and Darlene tried not to judge anyone, but there was no getting away from the fact that Rhonda Wilson Hyde was carrying on like a you-know-what.

  About the only good thing you could say about her was that she wasn’t fooling around with the married officers, just the bachelors, or else the married officers who were visiting USAACDA for a week or ten days without, of course, their wives.

  At first, Darlene had thought that Rhonda was nothing more than a flirt, but she couldn’t keep thinking that in the face of all the evidence. Rhonda was going to bed with them, and there was no denying a fact when it stared you in the face.

  Darlene couldn’t understand how a married woman could do that, go to bed with a man who wasn’t her husband. Just going to bed for lust. The sinful lusts of the flesh. She had come across that phrase in a book of prayer from the Episcopal Church in the pastor’s office when she had been learning how to type.

  It was the work of the Devil, too. Sort of contagious, like a disease. Charlene had caught herself wondering what it would be like to do it with somebody other than John. Before she realized what she was doing, caught herself, and stopped, she had wondered what it would be like with Mac MacMillan, of all people.

  She knew what had set that off: MacMillan and one of the other officers had been going into and out of the men’s room at the same time. One going in while the other was coming out. MacMillan had put his hand right through one of the panels on the door, and they’d had to cut him out of it, to keep him from cutting his wrist any more than he had already cut it.

  And Mr. Greer had laughed when he heard about it, and said, “What do you expect? Mac’s built like a fucking tank.”

  The way they swore so much, the words were even usually used incorrectly. He didn’t mean that a tank actually you know what. But that had started her thinking. Mac MacMillan was built like a tank. Large and powerful. Not that John wasn’t all man or anything like that. But one of MacMillan’s arms was about as big as one of John’s legs, and his neck was about twice the size of John’s and it was a perfectly natural thing for her to wonder if he was twice as big as John, all over.
And what it would be like.

  She was ashamed of herself when she realized what she was thinking, and she stopped herself right then. And every other time she had thoughts like that. She was a Christian wife and mother, and what she was thinking was sinful and indecent.

  The temptation of Satan was awful. She had even thought of that when she was doing it with John. When she thought about it, sort of pretended that it was Mac on top of her, it made doing it with John better. It made her, you know, convulse. Or whatever it was called.

  Maybe, she thought, it was the uniform. Uniforms were supposed to be appealing to women, and maybe that was it. They really had looked nice, the whole unit, when they’d been at USAACDA this morning.

  They were giving Mr. Greer a commission as an officer, a promotion from the lowest grade of warrant officer to first lieutenant. Darlene thought it had something to do with the medals he and Mac had won in Indo-China.

  When Colonel Bellmon had been up at Fort Benning, and Major MacMillan was acting as commanding officer, there had been a telephone call from the DCSOPS in the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., which was the boss of USAACDA, telling Major MacMillan that a plane would land at Laird Field, and take them someplace for a day or two.

  When Colonel Bellmon came back from Fort Benning and found the both of them gone, he got sore and called the DCSOPS to find out what was going on. Because she just happened not to hang up after she’d placed the call for him, she heard a general tell him that it was combined politics and intelligence. The French were going to give them medals and a certain “unnamed Jewish major friend of yours” was involved. They would be gone no more than forty-eight hours.

  Whatever it was, there had been a big party at the Pontchartrain Hotel that night, and they hadn’t come back until late the next afternoon. And then in a private airplane. She’d overheard that conversation, too, when the control tower called and asked Colonel Bellmon if he expected a civilian Aero Commander to land. He’d said, no, he didn’t, and then a couple of minutes later, the tower had called back and said that the pilot of the airplane was a Major Lowell and that he had Major MacMillan and Warrant Officer Greer aboard, so Colonel Bellmon had said it was all right for them to land and told the tower to pass the word to Major MacMillan that he wanted him to come directly from the field to his office.

  Both Major MacMillan and Mr. Greer were a little drunk, or at least a little sick from being drunk. They said that Lowell had dropped them off at Rucker on his way back to Leavenworth and that Felter had taken some colonel she had never heard of back to Washington with him after the party in the hotel.

  “Where did Lowell get the Aero Commander?” Bellmon asked.

  “He bought it,” MacMillan replied, laughing. “Where else?”

  “And he’s flying it, as drunk as you two are?”

  “No, he stopped at midnight,” MacMillan said. “He’s not that kind of a fool.”

  The TWX about Mr. Greer getting promoted came in that night.

  HQ DEPT OF THE ARMY WASH DC 0950 22 JAN 56

  DIRECTOR, USAACDA CP RUCKER ALA

  THIS TWX CONSTITUTES AUTH TO HON DISCH FR THE MIL SERVICE WOJG GREER, EDWARD C W727110 FOR THE PURP OF ACCEPTING A DIRECT COMMISSION AS 1ST LIEUTENANT ARMOR AUS AND CONCURRENT CALL TO ACTIVE DUTY. OFF WILL REMAIN ASGD USAACDA. OFF IS ALERTED FOR OVERSEAS SHIPMENT 26 JAN 1957. DA GENERAL ORDER 20 1956 IN PREPARATION WILL BE FURNISHED WHEN AVAILABLE.

  BY ORDER OF THE DCS PERSONNEL:

  EDMUND T. DALEBY

  COLONEL. AGC

  Normally, USAACDA didn’t march in the regular Saturday morning parade on Parade Ground No. 2, but Colonel Bellmon had made them march this time. They would swear in Mr. Greer as an officer during the parade, and the colonel thought the unit should participate. Afterward, there was going to be a company party at Lake Tholocco, to say good-bye to Lieutenant Greer.

  Everybody in the unit, civilians included, was invited, but Darlene didn’t think that she would go, even when duty hours were over at noon, and she would be free too. There would be a lot of drinking, she knew. There was a whole jeep trailer filled to the top with iced beer, and that meant that there would be a lot of drunken people. Since she believed that the body was the temple of the Holy Spirit and that drinking was soiling that temple, Darlene didn’t think she ought to go.

  But Colonel Bellmon and Major MacMillan and a couple of the other officers came in after the parade. Colonel Bellmon seemed surprised that Rhonda Wilson Hyde had made Darlene come to work.

  “We should have just had the switchboard refer calls to the staff duty officer,” he said, and Darlene was glad that Rhonda Wilson had been caught doing what she had done.

  “If you want to leave your car here, Darlene,” Colonel Bellmon said, “you can ride out to the lake with us.”

  Since he expected her to go, there was nothing she could do about it, Darlene decided, and she sort of liked the idea of Rhonda Wilson Hyde seeing her show up out there with the colonel. She didn’t have to drink any alcohol, she decided. There would surely be Coke and things like that out there. Maybe even some punch.

  When she got there, she saw that it wasn’t (except for the jeep trailer full of beer) very much different from a church picnic. A little more elaborate, maybe. Church picnics were generally covered dish. USAACDA was serving individual steaks cooked on charcoal with baked potatoes and baked beans. Mrs. Bellmon and the other officers’ ladies had “arranged for” the food and drinks (in other words, paid for it), and the enlisted wives would help prepare and serve it.

  Darlene helped the enlisted wives serve the food on the serving line, and then, because it was like a church picnic, she walked over to where the enlisted men, the privates and the technicians, had gone off by themselves, feeling a little out of place with the wives and children.

  She knew how to make people feel comfortable, how to join in the fellowship with the others.

  They had one of those enormous stainless steel kitchen pots, and it was full of fruit punch. She was glad to see that not everybody was drinking. The enlisted men smiled at her when she asked if she could have some of the fruit punch. When she sipped at it, she realized for the first time how thirsty she was and how good the punch was. She drank everything in the paper cup and held it out to be refilled.

  “I’m absolutely dry!” she said.

  (Two)

  Melody Dutton was absolutely furious with Ed Greer. She and her mother were trying to involve him as much as they could in the preparations for the wedding, and he just didn’t seem to give a damn.

  She had told him that the caterer from Dothan would be at the house from nine thirty Saturday morning and that she wanted him to help with the selection of the menu.

  She knew that the whole idea of a big wedding made him uncomfortable, but they had talked that through. It was going to be more than just her reception, it was going to be a chance for people from all over the state to meet him, and that was going to be very important to him when he got out of the army and went to work as vice president of Dale County Builders, Inc.

  He didn’t know half the people he would have to know once he started to work, and the reception was as important to his future as anything Melody could think of.

  Not only didn’t he show up after that stupid parade as he had promised, but he didn’t even call up and say he was tied up or something. There was no question in Melody’s mind where he was. He was sitting drinking beer, in that stupid little bar, Annex 1 next to the BOQ, that’s where he was.

  When he finally showed up, she was really going to give him a piece of her mind.

  The caterer waited as long as she could, and then she left. By then it was half past two in the afternoon. Just wait till he showed up!

  Melody went to her room, took off her dress, and put on shorts and a T-shirt. Her mother had made her change into the dress before Mrs. Angie Gell, the caterer, had come. Mrs. Gell, who was from a fine old family, had her standards, and Melody should, in deference to them, put on a dress a
nd look like a young woman about to be married, not like a tomboy.

  Melody called the post number. When the operator came on the line, she asked for Annex 1.

  “May I speak with Mr. Greer, please?” she asked, when one of his drunken cronies answered the phone.

  “Not here, honey,” the drunk said. “Would you settle for a lonely first lieutenant?”

  Melody slammed the phone down in its cradle.

  She wasn’t going to have this out with him when he finally, in his own sweet damned time, elected to show up; she was going to have it out with him now.

  She made the tires squeal as she backed the convertible out of the driveway (one of their wedding presents was going to be a new car; she had heard her father talking about that on the telephone). They were getting a house in Sunny Dale Acres and all the furniture, as well. She reminded herself angrily that Ed hadn’t been very enthusiastic about that, either. She had had to pick out all the furniture herself. Ed said that he didn’t know or care much about furniture. As long as it had four legs and a soft cushion, that was all he cared about.

  She drove well above the speed limit (no Dale County deputy sheriff in his right mind would ticket Howard Dutton’s daughter for speeding) until she reached the post. There she had to slow to thirty-five, because the MPs would give out speeding tickets, and they were a lot of trouble when you got one; you had to go to the federal courthouse in Dothan and pay it to a U.S. magistrate.

  She jumped out of the car when she got to Annex 1 and went inside. The place was jammed with young officers and a bunch of girls she would just as soon not have had to say “hello” to, but Ed Greer wasn’t there.

  “Hey, Schatzie,” one of them called to her as she was leaving. She hated to be called “Schatzie.” Ed had told her that was what the soldiers called their German girl friends. Their frauleins. Ed had also told her that they called the frauleins “fur-lines,” which Melody thought was really gross.

  She turned to glower at whoever had called her name.

  “I just remembered,” a young warrant officer said, “that USAACDA is having a beer bust out at the lake. That’s probably where he is.”