The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [151]
"Hey, we're not hearing any fooling-around report out of you, Ben." Moxie was feeling better and better as the beer and the night went on. "Haven't you hooked up with anybody yet?"
Silence was no longer an option, with the two moony faces turned to him. "I did for a while. She's a," he swallowed hard, "a nurse, too—of a kind."
Nine time zones away, Jones was trying to make a readable press release out of East Base's announcement of another one thousand Lend-Lease aircraft successfully transported into Russian hands. He hummed a snatch of hymn when he was alone and bored, and he was humming now; there were six previous announcements of this sort and even he did not regard this as the freshest of news. He was trying to decide whether it was worth it to change seven thousand to the seventh thousand when he became aware someone had paused at the office doorway.
He glanced around, and for this officer rose nicely to his feet as he had been taught to do at home.
"Help you with something, Captain?"
"If you're feeling full of Christian charity," said Cass with a lump in her throat.
The lights blinked in the Wonder Club bunker. The whole place went momentarily still, then the electricity steadied and the usual Officers' Club din of conversation came back with a rush of relief. One of the music-hall wits at the piano began to belt out, "I'll meet you at the Underground, you'll know it by the rumbly sound, and we will slip away, for a cozy day..."
"It's hard to get used to, the rocket SOBs see to that," Moxie addressed the tight look on Ben's face, his own expression more constrained than before. "That one must have hit near the power plant by the river. The night gunners have a tough time of it," he defended the ack-ack brotherhood, "they have to hope the searchlight crews get a fix on the goddamn buzz bomb before it cuts off." He shook his head and went back to, "It's hard."
"You know what, I'm going to go freshen up while there's light to see by," Inez said with practicality and headed for the toilet.
Moxie watched her wend her way. All at once he was talkative again. "Funny how things turn out. Back in high school, a carload of us would head into Butte to visit a cathouse and we wouldn't get parked before the Butte kids spotted the Dillon license plate and ganged up to beat the crap out of us. 'Come and get it, sheepherders!' they'd yell." He laughed, more bark than amusement in it. "And we would with our dukes up, and more often than not get our butts kicked good."
Ben knew Moxie was from a sheep ranch in the Dillon country, but he had not known he ever came out second in mouthing off. "That's Butte for you," he contributed, thinking back to the boisterous wake.
"And look at now, me and her—" Moxie held Ben in his gaze. "I know what you're thinking, I'm just using her for reconnaissance in the dark. But she keeps me sane, Ben. And she gets something out of it besides a good time in the sack." He leaned in to drive his point home. "Inez is not the greatest looker, unless you like them on the hefty side. But getting herself seen with me, and now you, gives her a lot of brownie points on this base. There are plenty of guys in this room right now you could shake awake in the middle of the night and they'd know how many touchdown passes I threw and how many you caught." He knocked wood. "Like it or don't, we're not nobodies. Even here."
No, that's been the trouble. Ben sat up to pursue that. "Listen, Mox. I found out something about Purcell—"
"Purcell? Haven't thought about him in years," Moxie was shaking his head, "dumb-ass kid." The head shake slowed into solemnity. "All the guys on the team. All the tickets to the marble farm," he said bitterly. "You know the one that really gets me?"
I'm afraid I do. Ben would have bet six months' wages he was about to hear a halo put on Danzer, courtesy of the Stomper-to-Dancer mutual admiration society.
"Jake." Moxie choked up on the name. "It is just a goddamn shame he didn't have the last laugh on the Nazi sonsofbitches."
Too much had welled up in Ben for him