• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 9249 0

tent, another collision occurred. Hearn halted at the tent flaps to allow the General to precede him, and Cummings in turn put his hand on Hearn's back to indicate that he was to go first. They both started at once, and Hearn sideswiped the General, felt him recoil a foot or two from the weight of Hearn's big body. "Sorry." There was no answer for a moment, and in a little spasm of anger Hearn separated the flaps and walked in ahead. When Cummings followed, his face was extremely pale and his lower lip showed the indentation of two teeth. Either the collision had hurt him more than Hearn had thought or he was disturbed enough to pinch his lip. But why? It would be more characteristic for Cummings to find amusement in the situation.

Still defiant, Hearn sat down without permission. The General seemed about to say something and then was silent. He took the other chair, which faced his desk, shifted it slightly to face Hearn, and stared at him impassively for almost a minute. He had an entirely new expression on his face, one Hearn had never seen before. The bald gray eyes with their immense and startling white pupils seemed dulled. Hearn had the impression that he could touch the surface of Cummings's eyeballs, and the eyes would not blink. In the slight pinch of his mouth, the constriction of the muscles at all the vertices of his face, there seemed a curious pain.

With a little shock, Hearn wondered at the tensions that had made the General seek him out. It must have been humiliating. Even more, there was no artifice about it now, no suggestion of work for him on the General's clean furled desk. Hearn stared at the map of Anopopei that lay tacked to a large drawing board. The ocarina on which the General played his little tune.

Once again Hearn realized how barren was the General's tent. Wherever he was, on Motome, in his ship's cabin, or here, he never seemed to live in a place. The tent was so austere. The cot looked un-slept in, the desk was bare again, and the third and unoccupied chair rested at perfect right angles to the larger of the two foot lockers. The tent floor was bare and clean, unmarred by mud. The light of the Coleman lantern threw long diagonals of light and shadow across all the rectangular objects of the tent, so that it looked like an abstract painting.

And Cummings still stared at him with that inexplicable gaze as if he did not know him at all. Like the pulse of their blood, some artillery sounded again in the distance. "I was wondering, Robert," the General said at last.

"Yes, sir?"

"You know, I don't know a damn thing about you really." The voice was flat and colorless.

"What's the matter, have I been stealing your whisky?"

"Perhaps you have. . . figuratively." What the hell did that mean? The General leaned back in his chair, the next question a little too casual. "How's the recreation tent going?"

"Fine."

"The Army still hasn't figured out a way to change the air in a blackout tent."

"Oh, it stinks over there all right." So the General had been lonesome for him. Poor little rich boy. "I can't complain, though, I've cleared a hundred bucks out of the poker games."

"In two nights?"

"No, three."

The General smiled thinly. "That's right, it was three nights."

"As if you didn't know."

The General lit a cigarette and extinguished the match with a slow wave of his hand. "I assure you, Robert, there are a few other concerns in my mind."

"I didn't say there weren't."

The General glared at him with a deliberate, self-conscious unveiling of his eyes. "You've got so damn much cheek you're going to die before a firing squad someday." The voice had been a suppressed bellow, and with acute surprise Hearn saw that the General's fingers were trembling. The suspicion of an idea almost defined itself in his head and then was lost like a piece of thread that misses the eye of a needle and wavers fragilely before collapsing.

"Sorry."

And this too seemed the wrong thing to say. The General's mouth was white again. Cummings leaned back in his folding chair, took a long puff of smoke, and then abruptly