Dusk and Other Stories - James Salter [35]
There were those with the definite look of success, like Hilmo who wore a gray summer suit with a metallic sheen and to whom everyone liked to talk although he was given to abrupt silences, and there were also the unfading heroes, those who had been cadet officers, come to life again. Early form had not always held. Among those now of high rank were men who in their schooldays had been relatively undistinguished. Reemstma, who had been out of touch, was somewhat surprised by this. For him the hierarchy had never been altered.
A terrifying face blotched with red suddenly appeared. It was Cramner, who had lived down the hall.
“Hey, Eddie, how’s it going?”
He was holding two drinks. He had just retired a year ago, Cramner said. He was working for a law firm in Reading.
“Are you a lawyer?”
“I run the office,” Cramner said. “You married? Is your wife here?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“She couldn’t come,” Reemstma said.
His wife had met him when he was thirty. Why would she want to go, she had asked? In a way he was glad she hadn’t. She knew no one and given the chance she would often turn the conversation to religion. There would be two weird people instead of one. Of course, he did not really think of himself as weird, it was only in their eyes. Perhaps not even. He was being greeted, talked to. The women, especially, unaware of established judgments, were friendly. He found himself talking to the lively wife of a classmate he vaguely remembered, R. C. Walker, a lean man with a somewhat sardonic smile.
“You’re a what?” she said in astonishment. “A painter? You mean an artist?” She had thick, naturally curly blond hair and a pleasant softness to her cheeks. Her chin had a slight double fold. “I think that’s fabulous!” She called to a friend, “Nita, you have to meet someone. It’s Ed, isn’t it?”
“Ed Reemstma.”
“He’s a painter,” Kit Walker said exuberantly.
Reemstma was dazed by the attention. When they learned that he actually sold things they were even more interested.
“Do you make a living at it?”
“Well, I have a waiting list for paintings.”
“You do!”
He began to describe the color and light—he painted landscapes—of the countryside near the Delaware, the shape of the earth, its furrows, hedges, how things changed slightly from year to year, little things, how hard it was to do the sky. He described the beautiful, glinting green of a hummingbird his wife had brought to him. She had found it in the garage; it was dead, of course.
“Dead?” Nita said.
“The eyes were closed. Except for that, you wouldn’t have known.”
He had an almost wistful smile. Nita nodded warily.
Later there was dancing. Reemstma would have liked to go on talking but people drifted away. Tables broke up after dinner into groups of friends.
“Bye for now,” Kit Walker said.
He saw her talking to Hilmo, who gave him a brief wave. He wandered about for a while. They were playing “Army Blue.” A wave of sadness went through him, memories of parades, the end of dances, Christmas leave. Four years of it, the classes ahead leaving in pride and excitement, unknown faces filling in behind. It was finished, but no one turns his back on it completely. The life he might have led came back to him, almost whole.
Outside barracks, late at night, five or six figures were sitting on the steps, drinking and talking. Reemstma sat near them, not speaking, not wanting to break the spell. He was one of them again, as he had been on frantic evenings when they cleaned rifles and polished their shoes to a mirrorlike gleam. The haze of June lay over the great expanse that separated him from those endless tasks of years before. How deeply he had immersed himself in them. How ardently he had believed in the image of a soldier. He had known it as a faith, he had clung to it dumbly, as a cripple clings to God.
In the morning Hilmo trotted down the stairs, tennis shorts tight over his muscled legs, and disappeared through one of the