Battle Cry (16 page)
Authors: Leon Uris
“Danny…Danny…Danny!”
“Hi punk. You being a good guy?”
“Danny, I got the cap you sent me. I wear it. Get me a Jap sword soon. I told my teacher I’d bring one to class.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Hello, son. That’s all now, Bud, all right…just one word.”
“Danny, good night.”
“Good night, punk. Behave yourself.”
“Hello, son…this is Mother.”
“Hi, Mom.”
“Are they treating you all right, son? I’m chairman of the War Mothers’ chapter. Do they march you in the rain, son? I hear such awful stories about the way they treat our boys.”
“Everything is fine. Don’t worry, they treat me swell.”
“Have you lost weight, Danny?”
“I’ve gained.”
“We all miss you so much, Danny. Be a good boy and write more often.”
“O.K., Mom.”
“Here’s a kiss, son.”
“Good night, Mom.”
“Hello, Danny—Dad again. How is everything going?”
“Fine.”
“Sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any chance of getting a furlough?”
“I won’t know till I’m finished school and in a regular outfit, Dad.”
“Chin up, boy, we’re all behind you, son.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve got a little surprise…” Danny could hear the noise of people moving around. There was a faint click of a door closing.
“Hello…Danny?”
His heart pounded wildly. “Kathy,” he whispered.
“I…I…are you all right?” He closed his eyes and bit his lip. “I haven’t had a letter for so long.”
“Kathy…Kathy, I love you.”
“Oh, Danny, I miss you so much.”
“Look…kitten…I had a little problem…but it’s gone now.”
“It’s still on between us, isn’t it, Danny?”
“Yes, yes! You’ve got to know it now, kitten. I love you with everything I’ve got…you’ve got to understand how I mean it now.”
“I love you too…I love you very much.”
“Your time is up. Please signal when through.”
“Take care of yourself, darling.”
“Don’t worry, honey.”
“Not—not any more. Say it once more, Danny.”
“I love you, Kathy.”
“Good night, my darling.” He touched his cheek as the sound of her kiss came.
“Good night, kitten.”
Ski leaned against the booth and stared in. He watched Danny’s eyes grow soft as he whispered into the phone. The door opened; he stepped out and stood silently. Then he returned to his friend.
“Why don’t you call Susan up?”
“How much will it cost?”
“About three bucks.”
“I’d like to, but I…I better just save it.”
“I’ll lend you the dough.”
“No.”
“Look, Ski. We’re buddies, aren’t we?”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you let me write my dad, like I said before.”
“No.”
“I tell you it would just be a loan. She’ll get work when she gets out here and you can pay it back then.”
“I don’t want it that way. We’ll have time.”
“I hate to see you eating your heart out, Ski. You don’t go to Dago, you just sit around and think about it all the time. It makes your work lousy.”
“You don’t understand, Danny.”
“For Chrisake. You think I like to see you shining shoes for a dime, cleaning rifles and ironing shirts for pennies?”
“Lay off.”
“O.K., it’s your life.”
“Don’t be sore. I just don’t want no charity.”
Danny slapped him across the back. “Let’s get back to the barracks and study.”
They stepped from the PX and took off up the arched arcade again. A wind whistled over the parade ground.
“Getting chilly.”
“I’m thinking,” Ski said as they paced briskly. “Maybe I can get into the paratroopers. There’s fifty per cent more pay.”
“I wish you’d let me write my dad.”
“No.”
Marion ran breathless up to them. “Ski, Ski! The word just came through. Congress has passed the pay bill—retroactive!”
“From the halls of no mazuma, to the shores of triple pay! What did I tell you, Danny—what did I tell you. I’ll have her out here in no time.”
“I got to find L.Q. and tell him,” Marion raced on.
“Christ, fifty-four scooties a month. Man, we’re millionaires!”
They saluted a passing officer.
“Figure out how much I’ve got coming with the retroactive, Danny. Figure it out.”
“Let’s see…”
“Danny…Ski!” They spun about. It was Milton Norton.
“Hey, professor, did you hear about the pay bill passing?”
“Yes, great, isn’t it? I was looking for you fellows all over. I wanted to say good-by. The Pioneers are shipping out.”
“Honest?”
“Yes, just got the word. We’re on twenty-four-hour standby now.”
“Hell,” Danny said, “that might mean a week.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I guess that means no furlough, Nort.”
“I guess so.”
“That’s the way the bail bounces, Danny,” Norton said, shrugging his shoulders.
“Well, good luck, professor—give them hell.” Ski extended his hand.
“Ski.”
“Yeah.”
“That offer I made. About having Susan stay with my wife. It still goes.”
“Thanks, anyhow. I figure just a couple of months now and I’ll have enough saved to send for her.”
“Any idea where you’re going?”
“No use trying to second guess the Corps. They probably don’t know themselves. I’ve got a hunch we may try a strike to stem any further advance toward Australia. Scuttlebutt says the First Division is on the move already.”
“An invasion…”
“Well, we won’t worry about it now.”
“Come on, Nort. I’ll buy you a soda.”
“I’ll sail for that.”
“Count me out,” Ski said. “I’d better hit those books before taps. Good luck again, professor.” They shook hands warmly and Ski marched off down the long arcade.
Danny and Nort found an empty booth. “How do you feel, excited?” Danny asked.
“Sort of.”
“I…I was kind of hoping the Pioneers would stick around long enough for me to get out of school. I thought maybe I could get in.”
“I thought you wanted the Sixth Marines? Now that they are back from Iceland.”
“Well, it would have been nice with us shipping out in the same outfit, Nort.” He drew on his straw. “If we get split up on addresses, you can always get mine from Baltimore. I want to stay in touch.”
“That’s a deal.”
Danny emptied the bottom of his glass and dug his spoon into the ice cream and chewed on it, disinterestedly.
“Anything wrong, Danny?”
“Hell, you’ve got enough on your mind without hearing my T.S. story.”
“What is it, kid?”
“Nort,” he sputtered, “I talked to Kathy tonight. With the way things have been going the past couple of weeks, I was glad. I was beginning to feel that I was throwing her off. I didn’t like getting like I did that Sunday I borrowed your I.D. card. But I heard her voice, and it hit me. I’m just kidding myself, Nort. I love her too much to ever stop loving her.” He lowered his eyes and flipped the spoon on the table.
“I see,” Norton whispered.
“I just can’t fight it any more, Nort.”
“I’m glad, Danny.”
“But this Elaine’s got me twisted up.”
“Why?”
“I could understand it if she was a tramp. But dammit, Nort, any guy would be proud to have a wife like her. She came up from scratch, poor family, houseful of girls, she married money. Sure, she’s pretty cold and calculating…but she’s got a head on her shoulders. Besides everything in the world a woman could ask for—money, looks, ambition, position.”
“And what has that to do with it?”
“Everything. She might be Kathy or…”
“Or my wife?”
“Yes.”
Norton drew on his cigarette. “Yes, she may well be.”
“Nort, did you ever think of another guy in bed with your wife?”
“A man doesn’t like to think about that, but he can’t keep it from flashing through his mind sometimes, I suppose.”
“When I’m with her, I think to myself, suppose it was Kathy? If it could be Elaine, it could be Kathy. The thought of another guy…I tell you, it can drive you crazy.”
“Danny, wait. Do you really believe it of Kathy? Do you?”
“No,” he said. “No.”
“Can’t you see Elaine?”
“Maybe I can’t.”
“It doesn’t make any difference how much money her husband made or where she went to school or who her friends are. Why, the whorehouses are filled with college girls. Elaine Yarborough is like a million wives. She’s lived in a ghetto, in a circle of boredom. Subconscious or conscious, she wants to escape. Some women do it through cheap love stories in women’s magazines, some live in a world of fantasy, some join women’s clubs, some drive their husbands beyond their capabilities. Just an age-old frustration, Danny. They look at their stagnant lives and the compromise they call a husband. And they look at the years they have ahead, going on existing when all the promise life held has gone…and a war comes, Danny. A woman like Elaine Yarborough runs away from the vicious cycle and comes to a city full of chaos and hysteria. For a moment she finds herself free—and in comes the fairy prince.”
“Damned if I feel like a fairy prince.”
“Oh, very funny. A young handsome lover, then. And all the frustration years burst out. For a flash, a wild moment, she forgets her years of falseness and she is herself…. Hell, kid, it’s an old pattern. She’ll go back to Vernon Yarborough. She’s used to comfort.”
“So I’m just a pawn in a frustration complex. Or as Andy says, some other guy would be in her pants if it wasn’t me.”
“Just an interlude. Families, once stable and solid, are undergoing an upheaval and women like Elaine are bound to act crazily.”
“And your wife, and Kathy?”
“The strong find courage. I pray, and you do too, that we have a little more to offer. That we can build on mutual interest and something deeper than money or sex. In plain English, loving her every minute of every day and telling her so and letting her know that she is the most important one in your life. Never take your love for granted, kid. Work at it. Oh sure, I say it couldn’t happen to me. But I suppose it could. Frankly, I think Gib and I are too much a part of each other to let a little thing like a war hurt our marriage.”
“She’d have to be off her rocker to hurt a guy like you, Nort. So to hell with the Vernon Yarboroughs and three cheers for you and me.”
Danny smiled and they arose from the booth. He put his arm about Nort’s thin shoulder as they walked slowly over the parade ground toward the Pioneer tents.
“What’s the payoff, Nort?”
“What am I fighting for, Danny? That’s easy—peace of mind.”
“Peace of mind,” Danny whispered. “Peace of mind. You make everything sound so damned simple. That’s what I like about you.”
“It sounds simple, but sometimes it isn’t so simple to get.”
“Nort?”
“Yes.”
“Do they have an engineering course at Penn?”
“I suppose so, why?”
“Oh, sounds kind of a long way off, but I was thinking that I’d like to sit in a classroom and listen to your brand of bullcrap by the hour after the war.”
“What do you mean, bullcrap? I’ll have you know I teach only by the latest, approved methods.”
Danny spun his glass so the ice cubes tinkled against its sides. He gazed out of the window, down on San Diego from the Skyroom Cocktail Lounge. It was quiet, plushy, and nestled on the top floor of a tall hotel.
“I should be angry, Danny,” Elaine said. “I waited for over an hour at the gate.”
“I phoned, but you had already left. It was impossible for me to get liberty last night.” He drew a leg up on the leather seat and continued gazing below.
“Is anything wrong?”
He didn’t answer. She reached nervously for a cigarette and studied him for a long spell.
“Why didn’t you come last night?”
“I had to study…besides, I was broke.”
“You know that doesn’t make any difference.”
“It does to me.”
“Danny?”
“Yes.”
“We’re washed up, aren’t we?” she asked softly. He turned, looked into her anxious eyes and nodded. She crushed out her cigarette and bit her lip. “It sort of completes the circle. Danny Forrester, All-American boy. I knew you’d catch up with yourself sooner or later.” He emptied the glass and set it down on the table slowly and fiddled with it. “The little girl…Kathy?”
“Yes.”
“What would you say if I told you I was going to have a baby?”
“You’re too smart for that, Elaine. We both knew it was going to kiss off sooner or later. You’re not going to make it rough, are you?”
“Of course not, darling,” she answered stiffly.
“I don’t guess there’s much of anything to say?”
“You think I’m a tramp, don’t you, Danny?”
“No.”
“Don’t be nice.”
“Any guy in the world would be lucky to have you for a wife. I guess it’s just one of those things that happened that wouldn’t have happened if the world was in its right senses.”
“Do you know what I was going to do when you told me this? I was going to make a fight, Danny. I was going to make it rough for you. For a while nothing mattered, Vernon, Arlington Heights—nothing. I wanted to be the girl in the Andes cabin. I suppose all women want that type of thing….”
“Elaine, please don’t.”
“Could you see me in a snowbound shack in the mountains? No, I don’t suppose either of us can…I…want to go home now and wait. Get away from this rotten town.”
“Want another drink? The waiter is looking at us.”
“No.”
He drummed his fingers on the table restlessly.
“Danny, tonight—farewell?”
He shook his head. She turned away, reached into her purse for a handkerchief and hid her eyes. “Maybe I should go out and get drunk. Maybe some other Marine will take pity on me.”
She felt his strong young hand on her shoulder. He squeezed it, and in spite of herself it sent a thrill through her body. She dabbed her eyes and looked up. He was gone.
MAJOR HUXLEY
called us into his office after a few weeks—all the old-timers. It was none too soon.
Burnside, Keats and I had been a bit more hopeful about the communicators at first. We felt we would at least get the cream of the crop, if there was any cream. We stood by anxiously as the word passed down that Class 34 was graduating from Radio School at the base, and that part of it was being sent to us. The only other radioman we had on hand was Spanish Joe Gomez. We had him tabbed as a troublemaker.