The fear makers, p.26
The Fear Makers, page 26
Today is a special day. This morning the whistles were all blowing and everyone is still excited and it looks as if the thing over in Europe at last is ended. If they bring my old company back this way to send them on toward Japan
I may see some of the guys. I hope so. For another reason, too, this day is special. It’s the last day I have got to be like this, as I am now. Tomorrow morning I go into the operating room and I want to put in a few more words to you this last afternoon, while I’m waiting, the whistles still seeming to echo, the excitement still here.
You know most of the rest after Dr. Nathan died in Megassum’s summer house. As it used to be in those old films Clark and I enjoyed, when the navy steamed in just in time, that Major Bowman and all the police and Norman arrived, although I didn’t remember it, because Dr. Nathan was still like a horse, he was heavy like a horse, and he’d gone down on me, and all I learned later was what the others told me and the little I read in the newspapers…
Probably I should tell you that part about Major Bowman. Half an hour or so after I’d requested Norman to take you home, Major Bowman returned to the hospital room I was in, along with Colonel Rolland and a couple of medicos. Senator Walder didn’t arrive until after this part I’m telling you. Despite the stuff they’d given me, I didn’t feel like sleeping. Even so, Colonel Rolland and the medicos were there to move out that Major as soon as he’d finished what he came for.
He was a tough little guy, that Major, and he was mad.
He was going to finish his job. He gave me the statement I’d dictated, to sign. Before I signed it, I asked if there was any doubt regarding what Loder would get for sending those letters?
Instead of the Major speaking, Colonel Rolland said, “It is all right now, Allen. Don’t worry. Just sign the statement. Loder was originally hired by Bond. Loder and Megassum and Bond will get all that is coming to them, I assure you.”
So, while I read over my statement, coldly the Major told the Colonel, “Well. We nearly lost that one, thanks to your man.”
The Colonel was always for his own men, even when they were wrong. Stiffly he said, “Captain Eaton was not armed. You know that, yourself. And that man Brinther as well as Megassum have admitted neither Captain Eaton nor Dr. Nathan attempted to protect themselves when they were shot at, you understand?”
“Nathan had your Captain’s automatic, though.”
Colonel Rolland said, “With no bullets in it, remember. No bullets.”
I said, “No bullets in it? No—”
Colonel Rolland told me, “We found the clip near the wall, Allen.”
“To be sure. To be sure,” said this Major, still angry. He now stared down at me after I’d finished signing. Again the gray eyes took me apart. “Oh, yes, he’s beautifully clear. Why, damn it, Colonel. If we go too hard on the newspapers about it, they’ll claim we’re restricting news once more. They’ll want to play him up like they did the other time. However—” For a second his mouth shut like a steel trap. “We may be able to prevent it.” He took the statement and headed for the door.
Somehow that Major always had burned me. I said would he mind waiting a minute? I’d like to know. Would he like to admit I might have been right the first time? Or did he want to have it I was still nuts?
The medicos started saying things. The Colonel made protests. I’ll hand it to that Major. He didn’t care whether I was in bed. I think if the Colonel hadn’t been there, he’d have come back and let me have one, he was so mad.
He said, “Colonel, he asked for it.”
I said, “Colonel, just to give me something to think about until I can get out of bed and talk privately to the Major, I’d like to hear what he has on his mind.”
Major Bowman said, “I’ll tell you. We had a line on Lo-der for the past six months. That’s all. Damn it, do you believe just because some of us don’t have the luck and are stuck in Washington during this war that we are entirely amateurs? Damn it,” he said, getting madder, “none of those letters Loder sent ever reached the soldiers, once we were on to him. A few did, agreed. We wouldn’t have known about them, otherwise.”
He clenched his fists. “We were on to Loder when you came into it and confused us. We nearly had the evidence on the crowd he was working with. That dumb bastard Megassum was the only one who puzzled us. We didn’t see how he came into it and we didn’t place him as merely front man and cover for Bond,” he said, and never did I see a man quite so angry. “We’d taken the Vivian Eschlauer girl, when she ran out on Loder three days ago. We caught her in New York. She was ready to talk. Even if we didn’t suspect Loder was hiding at Megassum’s, we’d have found him in a day or so and Goodspeed and his woman, too.”
He turned to the Colonel. “If Norman Werner hadn’t had the good sense to raise heaven and earth reaching me when Eaton, here, rushed out to Megassum’s tonight, we might have failed entirely. All of them could have escaped. Brinther will testify to save his skin. As soon as George Goodspeed and Cookie Taylor recover from being jammed in that rotten cellar, subjected to all of Bond’s arsenal of psychological insinuations to condition them against going to the police with their experiences—Almighty Lord, they’ll testify.”
Again he faced me. He said, “Possibly you still can’t understand? I’m saying only by the grace of God and a very great gentleman who went with you and died keeping to his convictions, only because of that you didn’t bungle the whole thing and have yourself killed off in the bargain!”
He took a long breath and everyone was still in the room and once more, it was as though I had the weight of Dr. Nathan slowly crumpling down upon me, and I could hear that mighty cry of voice and it would be there with me as long as I ever lived.
Furiously, the Major had been telling me something.
I heard him declaring,…all I’m saying is I wish you line officers could remember the reason we have staff officers in the army is to work out strategy and not have it ruined by precipitate action such as yours tonight!”
I think, now, that anger of his was good for me.
It gave me something to hang on to, something to take away a little of that crumpled dead weight. I lifted from the pillow and I remember saying, “Major, the trouble with some staff officers is they don’t condescend to come down to the operational level now and then, enough to trust a line officer. You might have told me,” and I had anger against that Major because if he had come down to the operational level everything might have been a little different. I like to think it would have been, at least.
As I say, without the anger and the Major there wouldn’t have been anything to take away the dead weight…
He asked, “So the staff officer should have told you?”
He went straight to the door. He stopped; and, he stated, “For your information, Captain, three generations of my family graduated from West Point and three generations fought in our wars. I’m the fourth generation to graduate from West Point and I’m a staff officer and I’m placed in Washington and you spend all your life except the last few years as a civilian and you get to go overseas and you come back and now—”
He informed the Colonel, “Good God, I wanted to tag those men, myself. I’ve earned that much at least.”
Halfway through the door, once. more he halted, and revolved. He said, “Captain, any time. You got everything and now you’ve got it again. Any time you’re ready. Just let me know. Forget about the rank. Just ask for it. I don’t care whether you have two legs or none. It doesn’t make any difference. As soon as you want it, let me know and I’ll gladly kick hell out of you or any other line officer. Good night, gentlemen.” He slammed the door.
Mildly, Colonel Rolland remarked, “He does seem rather to resent being assigned to Washington, doesn’t he?” Out of the one eye, he contemplated the door. “I told you he was a capable officer, Allen. If I were you, I don’t believe I’d accept his offer.”
I could guess how it was with him. One returns and one says things about Washington, D. C., and sometimes one forgets how it is with those who are fighting this war from Washington, D. C. Suddenly, I felt very tired. I told Colonel Rolland as far as I was concerned this was still Major Bowman’s show. From the beginning, Washington, D. G., had been only a way-stop for me.
Then Senator Walder busted in and he’d heard some of it from you over the telephone and the medicos closed in on me and said this was time I found some sleep, and they’d explain to Senator Walder. And Senator Walder said, “You’re not hurt? You’re not hurt, boy?”
And I said I didn’t know, yet; because, it was difficult to tell him I was fine and a rest would fix everything and with a little time I’d be all right. I didn’t know. I guess I was like George Goodspeed; I’d have to wait to see if I could write the music I couldn’t play any more.
Before they shoved out, Colonel Rolland bent over and said it’d be best if Major Bowman was responsible for the show; it would save Norman and you and the Weils, for one thing, from being in the newspapers. He planned to see Rodney Hillyer tonight and ask him to help.
I said Rodney Hillyer was fine. He’d know what to do.
And next he said for me to try to get to sleep and all of them went away and the light was turned off and I didn’t get much sleep, at least for a few hours, thinking about Dr. Nathan, remembering him, knowing now he’d taken it upon himself to find the truth, to discover the rumors, to stand up and tell what he knew without fear or without violence.
It kept coming to me, all during that night, the nights after, too, about him. He was the good man.
About Barney Bond, I never decided. He was the man who might have been a good man and something happened and in this world, no one can say, as long as we have this kind of a world, I guess. He wanted a girl, too, of an evening with the honeysuckles, and he had it harder than all the others and I hope where they put him, they’ll allow him to finish his thinking machine.
Probably, you should know about Norman, too.
He must have discussed it with Senator Walder or Colonel Rolland. Or maybe he sensed it. He understood. Without him, I don’t believe I’d ever been able to let you know it was best for you to remain in Washington, D. C., instead of giving up your job as a government classified economist and going to Boston with me.
I suppose he talked to you. I can say it here, Elizabeth: I wanted you some place where I could think of returning to you, of finishing this fast in order to be with you. Perhaps it doesn’t make sense. I don’t know that, either. So many things are so hard to know, like that next to the last day when George Goodspeed came to visit me and neither of us knew what to say to the other and he ended by saying, “Maybe we all got to learn now not to want to git home, Cap’n,” and walked out…
One thing, Norman arrived early that day I was leaving. He arrived about fifteen minutes before you did. He won’t object if I tell you this. We did some talking. I remembered those traditions and I said if it made that much difference to him, and if he had to act as if you weren’t around any more once we were married, that I’d—
And he interrupted. You know his cock-eyed way of looking at a person. “I’m rather afraid that wouldn’t quite work. Another of our traditions is that the woman goes where her man goes. Ruth, and all that, you know. Old Testament.” He stood, looking at his watch. “Besides, I have a feeling Elizabeth will be quite a live corpse even though I try to maintain my own beliefs. Undoubtedly, it will be most difficult but one must recognize the facts. In my estimation,” he said, and his face took on that wry, amused, detached expression of his, “Elizabeth will continue to be a very basic fact in both of our lives.”
So there you are; and, I was packed off to Boston.
I didn’t see Colonel Rolland again for nearly four weeks. I hadn’t expected to see him. I’d written to Senator Walder explaining this was something I had to work out alone, but I hadn’t written to the Colonel. I knew he’d been given another assignment; and, as I say, I never expected he’d be near Boston.
When he entered the room they’d given me, some more of that clover, he said, “I’ve been down in Texas a time. Now, they’ve transferred me to the training assignment in Florida. I thought I’d stop on the way and see you.”
I asked if Boston wasn’t quite a piece out of the way between Texas and Florida, just to see a body?
He said he’d had a few days’ leave. He’d passed through Washington, D. C.; he’d had lunch with you and Norman and Senator Walder. He gave me the news. Miss Nelson had accepted the government job. Aunt Petroushka and the sisters were going to try to mail me more pies.
I asked if he knew whether George Goodspeed had been able to write any music for the dance bands.
He said, “He was trying to write music?”
I said, yes; didn’t the Colonel know?
He said, “I didn’t ask. I never thought to ask.” He stared at the blank wall with the one eye and said, “Why is it?”
I said I didn’t know.
He said, “I can’t answer it. I didn’t ask. I just didn’t think to ask or to try to see him. I don’t know, either.”
I said perhaps George Goodspeed wouldn’t want to be asked, remembering that last time he’d come in. Why is it?
After that, Colonel Rolland didn’t appear to have much more to say. He walked to the foot of the bed and returned, putting his left palm over the black patch, feeling at it, testing it, as if it were still something new and he couldn’t quite understand why it was there. He explained primarily he’d flown to Boston because he wanted to see the doctors and be certain everything was all right.
He said, “Captain—” He sat down. He said, “I wanted to stay and see you through tomorrow, but a lot of stuffy sons of bitches say I can’t be of any help here and I’m not needed here and it seems they still think I am of some use training in Florida.”
There was a silence.
I asked him about Dr. Nathan’s funeral. He laid a hand on his knee. “I was in Texas. I’m sorry.” He opened his hand and closed it. “It might surprise you. Along with the others, Major Bowman attended.”
Maybe I shut my eyes. I don’t know. That night I thought Dr. Nathan was drunk, but now I don’t think so any more. I’ve had the time to think about it. It hurts when I think about it and sometimes there are blanks and it doesn’t seem as if it ever happened. Dr. Nathan was right and I wish I could believe all that occurred meant something, that what Dr. Nathan did to prove his way was right will carry on for a little time at least and endure more than those few days in the daily newspapers.
I wish I knew. I said I wish I knew.
Colonel Rolland said, “Perhaps everything didn’t quite go wrong that night, Allen. A lot of people will read about Dr. Nathan. Senator Walder is fighting mad and he’s going to the people, to arouse them against the hobgoblin technics. Young Hillyer has written quite a story about Dr. Nathan and is working with the Senator.” He bent forward stiffly, that long face of his wrinkling around the mouth and nose. He glanced at his watch. He continued, “At least, Allen, I wanted to see you through it this time. It was my fault, you understand, that other time, that business on the beach last summer.” He added, “I’ve often thought about it. I could have done the mission alone that time.”
I reminded him he couldn’t have carried the equipment alone, not that night. Besides, because of his rank, if anyone should have gone alone, I should have. A colonel shouldn’t ever have gone.
Again he put his right hand to the patch. He said, “Anyway, I wanted you to know. I wanted to see you through this last time but the sons of bitches wouldn’t let me.”
He got up. Once more he looked at his watch. He said, “Hell. Oh, hell.” He asked, “There isn’t anything you want? There isn’t anything I can do? They are treating you all right?”
I said although I was being treated fine, there was one thing he could do.
He asked, “What is it, Allen?”
I said while he might stretch a few details about what his men had done when he was writing a recommendation to a General, I was certain he hadn’t ever lied to any of his men.
I said I’d like the truth now.
I said I didn’t trust what the doctors might say. That worried me.
He’d talked to the doctors. He knew what they actually believed.
I said if this was going to be my last operation then it would be good to know when this was done I’d come out into a world where there wouldn’t ever be any fear of the half shadows and the quick, sudden pain. That would be worth going through an operation to find. There’d be people waiting in that-kind of a world I needed to find.
But, I said, if the doctors were lying, if this wasn’t the last operation, if coming out of this one simply meant drifting a month or a year and going into another operation and another, with the pain there all the time, the fear of the shadows never completely away, with people whom I loved possibly becoming indistinct, vanishing even, if the shadows became too heavy—
I said, “What is it? Is this the last operation? I’d like to know, please. Have they told you?”
He replied, “They’ve told me.”
I asked, “If you were me, how would you like looking forward to something like this every few years, knowing the hurt wouldn’t ever be completely cut away? How would you like thinking of that kind of future, just before they put the ether mask over your face? Would you particularly care whether you woke up afterwards or not?”
He said, “I’ve never lied to you, Allen. You may not remember, but I never have.”
I said, “You never have.”
He said, “This will be your last operation. Everything will be all right for you again, if—if—” He stopped there.
I helped him on that one.
He replied, “That’s it, Allen.” For the third time he looked at his watch and leaned over and clamped his hand hard around my wrist and shook it and said, “God damn you, Allen, if you don’t come through for all the people waiting for you,” and he let go and went straight to the door and opened it and walked out and shut it and was gone.
