The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [126]
"The story is still developing, I'm not at liberty to tell you." Reaching into the attaché case at his side, the colonel extracted a file of clippings and dropped it dead-center on Ben's work place at the desk. He smiled just enough. "It might not hurt, though, if you were to do some bedtime reading about the Montaneers."
Beyond floored, this time Ben stared at the colonel in shock. The man might as well have said to him, "Learn the rules of dueling, you're going to Dan Standish's outfit." All else being equal, he could have understood that the regiment that had been unendingly fighting up and down the jungle hellholes of the Pacific and now doubtless was destined for the invasion of the Philippines constituted a legitimate story to be written. All else was not equal, not even close; bedtime reading had already happened any number of times and it was indubitably the Braille of unclad lover to unclad lover while a Montaneer was out there in the jungle stuck with a matching wedding band. Still stunned, Ben grappled with two instant convictions, that coming face-to-face with Cass's husband in the Montaneers' next island assault was by all odds a long shot, and that in the perversity of this war it absolutely would happen.
He stood there stone-still, watched expectantly by the colonel, haunted in every direction he could look. The quantities of death he had seen in the world of war. All the times of sitting to the typewriter to turn teammates' foreshortened lives into handfuls of words. Bruno's eleven, fingered by fate when the coach's ordained list of varsity starters was drawn up at that last practice. Loudon's eleven, damn his gloryhound hide. The Supreme Team betrayed by the law of averages, with something that amounted to a moving wall of oblivion hinged to the war for them; a click at a time, it claimed life after life whatever the odds said. It surpassed understanding, yet the circumference of war plainly was different for these nearly dozen men. Until now Ben had been able to tell himself life went on until proved different, trusting to the unbidden gamble of the flesh that was the greatest and worst venture of his life, the love of another man's wife. Now this.
"Colonel," he finally found his voice, "I've had it. I can't go along with the way you want the war told, anymore. Kick me out for 'nervous in the service' or some goddamn thing, I don't care." His lips were so dry he could barely make them function. He licked them to not much effect. "If it takes a Section Eight, I'm ready."
"You don't want to do that," the colonel said with utmost civility. "A dishonorable discharge follows a person the rest of his life." He inclined his head as if regretting that fact, while spelling out: "In a lot of fields, a person won't stand a chance of latching on after the war if he's labeled as a bobtail soldier."
The veil on that was thin as could be. Anyone with a byline knew what fields were meant in that implied threat. Hollywood. Any influential newspaper. The by-the-book wire services. All of the messengers who tended to fall under question for their messages any time a hole in their patriotism could be found. None of those was going to want a wordsmith, no matter how good, with a military record that could not be held up to public light. A record of a soldier who quit.
Ben did not really have to say anything. The circumstances ahead, after the war, beyond Tepee Weepy but yet not, spoke it all. But he wanted the choiceless words inflicted on both of them in that room.
"Some decks are more stacked than others, aren't they, sir."
As the colonel departed the office, he gave Ben a passing pat on the shoulder, possibly a salute of sorts.
"So what's your secret?" Jake had just banged the hotel room door shut with his foot, one hand busy trying to undo the clumsy horse blanket the military called an overcoat and the other bearing a rattling sack of beer. "How do you get them to ship you overseas easy as falling