A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [13]
Meanwhile, Dr. Leary got access to Dan’s Marine Corps medical records. He had had the usual Marine ailments, cat fever in boot camp, jaundice and malaria after Guadalcanal, dengue fever at Tarawa, and a blown hip at Saipan. Dan was shocked when Dr. Leary asked him for a specimen of his semen.
“It couldn’t possibly be! I mean, I, the cause?”
“This is routine, Mr. O’Connell.”
Dan grunted in displeasure but did as he was told.
A time later, he was called by Dr. Leary and asked to come to Denver alone.
“I’ve some difficult news,” Dr. Leary said. “It’s taken this long because I had to be certain.”
“She can’t bear children,” Dan moaned.
“Your wife is healthy as a heifer.”
“Then…”
“I want to check something here in your medical record. Camp Matthews, January of 1942,” the doctor said.
“Camp Matthews was the rifle range, a long drive from the base. We stayed there several weeks on weapons training.”
“Did you get sent to a quarantine tent?”
“A bunch of us got sick, and there was no regular doctor at Matthews. Yeah, I sure remember now. I had to finish boot camp with a new platoon.”
“All that jibes with what we feel was an outbreak of mumps.”
“My face was swollen, funny-like, and I had a lot of pain around my, you know, private parts. Yeah, it was hard to walk.”
“Did anyone diagnose it as mumps?”
“We’d had all this cat fever and dysentery; we may have joked about mumps, but you know, it’s a kid’s disease. I thought I had already had it as a baby.”
“The record here says, ‘Possibly mumps.’”
“Isn’t that a kid’s disease?”
“It usually is, with no after effects. With an adult there can be. Your semen is sterile.”
When was it ever more terrible than the day he learned he’d never sire children? No jungle, no lagoon at Tarawa with the Japs shooting at you and you in chest-high water holding your rifle over your head, not Red Beach on Saipan watching your battalion blown to shreds, not even Justin Quinn dying…
It would be a double slam against Siobhan, for Consuelo had had another perfect baby boy. Carlos was the beauty of the Martinez family.
God! What of poor, dear Siobhan! How crude I’ve been not realizing that she has suffered even greater than I.
He talked it over with a priest in Denver before returning to Troublesome Mesa.
“Forget about God for the moment,” the priest said. “What did they do during your worst moments in the Corps?”
“I always told my lads, when you’re scared shitless, you’re in such pain that death would be a pleasure, or no matter the catastrophe, the only thing you can do is ‘Be a Marine.’”
“Then be a Marine for that woman of yours.”
Dan found Siobhan at the Martinez house. She was in the rocking chair, yakking with Consuelo, who was putting up a dinner for the O’Connells as well as her own family.
He looked in, but they did not see him. “Be a Marine,” he told himself.
Siobhan sat in the chair Consuelo used for nursing. She had handed little Carlos to Siobhan to hold while she filled the oven. Siobhan put the child’s head on her breast with a longing not to be realized. Then she saw Dan.
Dan’s hand was never so firm, so filled with meaning, as it grasped her shoulder. “It will be all right, darling,” he said.
Chapter 4
WASHINGTON, D.C., 2008
Yes, it’s your president, Thornton Tomtree. A year ago I was considered unbeatable for a second term, but as George Bush and James Earl Carter learned, there is a fickle bent to our voters.
At this moment we stand a week before the 2008 election. A bizarre series of events has damaged my candidacy. Lord, is there a man more dismissed than a one-term president?
Anyone can pinpoint the time and place when the tide turned against me. It was the Six Shooter Canyon Massacre.
Immediately following the disaster, my rating bottomed out, then climbed back up as I traveled the country ceaselessly and was able to placate some of the national trauma. I was successful in divorcing myself from direct responsibility for the massacre,