Better Times Than These (7 page)

He opened each envelope with a letter opener, carefully—a habit he’d acquired years before. One was addressed to him personally, by hand, and he couldn’t imagine whom it was from.

“DEATH,” the letter said in large bold type, “IS A SUBJECT WE AVOID DISCUSSING.” He read on.

Sometimes, we feel if it is not mentioned, it will be less of a reality. This, unfortunately, is just not true.

We have long been indoctrinated to prepare for certain possibilities: accidents, extended illness, buying a home, providing an education for our children.

Yet the inevitability of death is often overlooked in our preparation.

He read on.

You may have drawn a will. You may have life insurance. You may have spiritual coverage to face death.

But have you selected a burial place?

“Darling, you must come dress,” she said. “Please don’t have another drink.”

“Yes, yes, I’m coming,” he said.

As difficult as it may be to think of death, foresight in the selection of cemetery space can save your family a great deal of anguish later. Not only is the family relieved of a major decision at a time when emotional pressures are already excessive, but foresight is also helpful financially.

“Richard,
please.
Don’t just sit there. We must be at the club,” she called.

He had a vision of her that night at the club—such easy prey for colonels and captains. She had danced and danced, leaving him to deal with the dowdy, sour wife of Major Jacobs. But she was having such fun, it made him feel good just to watch her. Then, when she hadn’t returned, he had slipped into moroseness, and when Major Jacobs’ wife asked if anything was wrong, he had begun telling her about Mannheim. By the time Maria got back to the table, he was too far gone to stop.

Maria came into the room again. “We must leave by four-thirty,” she said. “You can’t just sit there and read.”

“Future care of the space and grounds of the cemetery which you select is of special importance,” the letter said.

He started at the top again. “DEATH IS A SUBJECT WE AVOID DISCUSSING.” He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. It felt numb.

Maybe, he thought, they’re right. He had never really thought much about his own funeral before. It had not concerned him because the Army promised to take care of it for him, so long as he remained in the Army. They would plant him with honors in a nice casket with a flag draped on top in a quiet military burial ground, cared for as long as there was an Army of the United States. But within a year, he wasn’t going to be in the Army and he would have to attend to his own burial, or at least, make sure it would come off without hitches.

That would be a wry irony—no hitches at his own funeral.

All his life he had tried to bring things off without hitches, but somehow it had never worked out that way. The ideas were good, but in the end he usually bungled them—or let them be bungled for him. Just last week the Supply people had screwed up his requisition forms, and his ass had been chewed royally by the colonel when they’d run out of fresh radio batteries on a field exercise . . . And then there had been Mannheim . . .

“DEATH IS A SUBJECT WE AVOID DISCUSSING.” He had never contemplated his own death before except in the most abstract ways. But now, for the first time in years, there was a possibility he would die—a very slight possibility, but a possibility nevertheless. In two weeks, the Infantry brigade he was assigned to would be leaving. In the Infantry a certain amount of death was inevitable.

“Richard, if you don’t begin to get ready now I am going on to the club without you,” Maria said sharply. “We cannot keep everyone waiting.”

“Come in here for a minute,” he said.

He handed her the letter.

“I want you to know that I am going to buy a plot from these people.”

“What?” she said. “What people?”

“They’re selling plots at a cemetery.”

“Yes, I can see that, but . . . Oh, Richard, please come and dress.”

“I will, damn it, but I want you to know so that if something happens to me I want to be buried there.”

“Oh, darling, nothing is going to happen. Are you thinking something is going to happen to you?” She ran her fingers through his gray hair.

“Just in case it does,” he said. “I want to be buried there—in this cemetery. I
don’t
want to be buried in an Army cemetery—will you remember that?”

“But Richard, what are you saying? Nothing is going to happen to you. I know it.”

“Goddamn it, Maria, it might—don’t you understand that? Don’t you understand Mostellar probably wants to kill me off—that he’s going to give me every shit detail in the book? That’s a real live war over there now, you know,” he said harshly, shaking her hand from his head.

“Oh, darling, why do you think these things? You are only torturing yourself.”

“Because it’s true, that’s why,”

“How do you think that?” she asked.

“Because he knows—about Mannheim. Don’t you understand I know what he thinks?” He put his head in his hands.

“Darling, you’ve been drinking. None of this is true. Colonel Mostellar likes you. He told me that himself.”

“No, it’s you he likes,” Dunn said.

“That is ridiculous,” she said impatiently.

“Like hell.”

She knelt in front of him, but he would not look straight into her face.

“Richard,” she said softly, “you must stop talking about it. Mannheim was long ago, in the past. You have got to stop telling everyone about it. Nobody cares about it. You’re only making it worse.”

“It can’t be any worse than it is,” he said.

Far below, Dunn could hear the prow growling through the seas and see the V-shaped spray of white foam across the darkening waters. The rushing sound, the boiling foam brought it back again. Eight years, but not a week went by . . . Mannheim . . .

They had been fording the Neckar during a field exercise in a cold, blue-white German winter.

He had been in charge of a Signal section assigned to lay wire across the river. They had given him a pontoon boat, but the river was running high and the boat, even with an outboard motor, had been pulled downstream into snags. He turned back to shore and ordered half the men out of the boat to lighten it, then sent it back across again. He himself had walked back to an outpost to radio Battalion about conditions on the river. When he returned, the men on shore were frantic. The boat had capsized and those in it carried down toward the snags.

All but two of them had drowned.

There had been an inquiry, and the two who didn’t drown testified that they had told Dunn they didn’t think the boat could make it. There had been some talk of a court-martial, but the incident got no further than the inquiry, and Dunn was let off with a reprimand in his file, which had been read and discussed by promotion boards for eight years, effectively ending his career.

Kahn was still standing at the rail, but his ruminations on the Dismal Deeps had been interrupted by the appearance of Sergeant Jelkes, the gaunt, watery-eyed Third Battalion Mess Sergeant for whose daughter Kahn had manifested a serious case of the hots back at Fort Bragg.

It had surprised no one more than Kahn when she agreed to go out with him. Half the Division had tried to date her, and although the word was out that she fucked like a crazed weasel, she remained inviolate behind her checkout counter at the PX. While they watched painfully, she occasionally brushed her long, auburn hair and sometimes even flicked a piece of lint off her big, tight-sweatered breasts.

One day when Kahn was paying his check, almost without thinking he asked if she wanted to go to a movie with him. She didn’t even look up. She simply said yes, and gave him her address, throwing him into a reverie of dreams and schemes for the rest of the day.

He was dressing for the date when a First Platoon man arrived at his BOQ with a package from Lieutenants Sharkey and Donovan. Inside he found a white carnation, a jar of Vaseline, a package of chewing gum and a copy of
The Rubdiyat of Omar Khayydm.
He left the package on the bed and finished putting on his Class A greens with the shiny first lieutenant’s bars on the shoulders.

When he arrived to pick her up, Kahn was met at the door by Sergeant Jelkes, still wearing soiled work fatigues, and ushered into the tiny living room, where he was introduced to a plumpish Mrs. Jelkes, who had been preparing supper for the rest of her family. The sergeant was polite and solicitous but seemed uncomfortable and nervous, so Kahn tried to make small talk while they waited for his daughter to come out of her room. When she appeared, Kahn felt as though someone had punched him in the stomach with a broomstick. She wore a miniskirt that would have revealed all in a mild breeze. Her tits poked through a tight yellow sweater like Coke bottles. Sally Jelkes was the vision every man dreams of at least once in his life.

Kahn felt his cheeks burning and turned quickly to say something to the sergeant. It was then that he saw the embarrassment in Jelkes’s watery eyes.

Instantly, he realized that Jelkes knew exactly why he was there.

Because evidently, Sergeant Jelkes had been through this many times before. Jelkes knew he had not come to take his daughter on a proper date—to the officers’ club, or to a restaurant. Jelkes knew that what Kahn had in mind was a grab-ass session in his car or in his BOQ room—these things were clear in the sergeant’s eyes. Furthermore, Kahn suspected that Jelkes knew Kahn realized this, which made it all the more embarrassing.

When Jelkes had approached him just now at the rail, in his nervous, solicitous way, Kahn was polite and inquired about how he was doing, but did not spend much time talking and was glad to see him go. He did not like to be reminded about that night with Sally Jelkes, and was glad, too, that the sergeant hadn’t brought it up.

Afterward, Kahn moved off the rail, feeling a little steadier on his feet. He had been watching for signs of seasickness, but he still felt fine. Nearing the bow, he saw Major Dunn, the Brigade Signal Liaison Officer, bent over his radio, his ear close to the speaker.

Kahn liked the major because he was one of the few field-grade officers he felt comfortable around. He didn’t know him well, but had spoken to him a few times in the mess, and he’d seemed pleasant and eager to talk. And yet he had the reputation of a loner who preferred to eat by himself rather than with the other officers of his grade. There had been speculation among some of the lieutenants and captains that because Dunn was still a major at his age, somewhere along the line he must have committed a terrible sin.

“Hello, Major,” Kahn said.

Dunn looked up from the radio. “Oh, hi, Kahn. How’s it going—you all squared away?”

“I suppose so. The CO’s down sick, so I’m stuck with the duty.”

“Seasick?”

Kahn nodded.

“How about you?”

“Not yet.”

“Ever been on a boat before?”

“Nope.”

“You’ll be all right,” Dunn said cheerfully. “This is my third trip over. Got seasick as hell the first time.”

“Was that the Big War?” Kahn asked.

“Yep. Left right out of that same dock.”

“No kidding! You a second looey then?”

“Nope—corporal. I got a third stripe on New Georgia, and a month later they gave me a field commission. Guess they ran out of people to give them to. How about you—you Regular Army?”

“Oh, no,” Kahn said, “ROTC. Just doing my time. I was working on a Ph.D. in Geology when they canceled my extension.”

“Geology, huh? How come you’re not in Engineers?”

“Beats me. I was in the damned Finance Corps until the red flag went up. Then they changed me—changed all of us—to combat branches before we went active.”

“Yep,” Dunn said understanding, “they have a way of doing that.”

“What really pisses me off,” Kahn continued, “is I could have been in Germany right now if I hadn’t asked to be deferred for a year.”

“Germany?” Dunn said. He squinted out over the water.

“You bet. There was a slot open for a Brigade Finance Officer at Mannheim. Can you imagine what that would have been like?”

“I think so,” Dunn said. The wind was whipping in his gray hair. Here in the bow, softly dipping and rising in giant swells, they were as alone as two men crossing the ocean in a balloon.

“Were you ever there?” Kahn asked.

“Yes,” the major said, “I was.”

“I bet it was nice, wasn’t it?”

The old major still gazed toward the faint light in the west, all that remained this day of the orange Pacific sun.

“Yes, it was very lovely,” he said. “It was the prettiest place I’ve ever been.”

8

I
t was just past 10
P.M.
, and the transport knifed relentlessly through the blackness, occasionally wallowing in a trough. Her big engines hummed. After trying the knob once, Lieutenant Brill let himself into Sergeant Trunk’s cabin without knocking or announcing himself, and the six men crouched forward over the gray-painted metal floor looked up at once. Beneath one of the bunks was a half-empty bottle of vodka only partly concealed by the legs of Buck Sergeant Groutman, a squad leader in Brill’s own platoon. Beside each of the men was a pile of dollar bills.