The Eleventh Man (46 page)

Pulling himself away from that train of thought, he looked from Roosevelt and the exclamatory placard to Tom Harry as if giving the matter full consideration and said: "Politics is the art of turning ice into ice cream."

"I think maybe I read that in your paper one time," the bartender snorted. In practically that same gallop of breath, he came out with the essential: "What's the word from Ben?"

Bill touched the week's Threshold Press War Project bundle fresh off the bus. "I hope I'm about to find out."

"Then I suppose I ought to be getting you something to go with that," Tom Harry said as if they were both falling down on that duty. "What'll it be—you still drinking that scotch cough syrup?"

Looking longingly at the row of whiskey bottles with plaid pipers on them, Bill stayed resolute. "I have work to do tonight. Your glorified tap water, please."

"Turning unpredictable on me, are you." Tom Harry shook his head over serving a plain glass of beer, just as if the Medicine Lodge didn't practically run the stuff in its plumbing. Before he could step to the beer tap, a voice accented with Oslo or beyond quavered from the end of the bar:

"Mister 'tender! When you isn't busy, we gunna have some of t'ose jar weiners."

Bill's newspapering instinct of keeping track of things took a moment to put a name to the face of the latest keeper of sheep blowing six months of wages—Andy Gustafson, an old snoose chewer who herded for the Busby brothers on upper English Creek. Perched elbow to elbow with this splurger was another herder recognizable as practically a fixture in here, Canada Dan, sending down the bar an eager freeloading nod and a mostly toothless grin. Bill pursed back a smile. Some things you could count on.

"Catch the faithful, too," he capitulated, trickling more money onto the bar.

"You hear that, Gufferson, or something wrong with your ears?" Tom Harry called out, heavy with hint.

"Yah, t'anks!"

"Here's to lookin' bad and feelin' good, mister!" Canada Dan mistily chimed out.

"I should've been a milkman instead of a bartender," Tom Harry groused as he drew Bill's beer before moving on to the jar of whatever preservative the Vienna sausages swam in. "I'd only have to look at one horse's ass at a time."

Left in peace as Tom Harry marched on the other end of the bar, Bill took out his jackknife and carefully slit the bundle along one side. He turned up his nose as usual at the hefty halves of boilerplate that were the bulk of the parcel. For an honest editor, patriotism that simply bolted onto the printing press was not true news and he never used the ready-made stuff. Reaching into the middle, he slipped out the packet of TPWP handouts and skimmed, head poised at bifocals angle, until he found the words Supreme Team.

He froze at the next word that caught his eye:
Jake.

In a sick trance he began to read Ben's piece. When he was finished, he sat looking past himself in the dark mirroring of the saloon front window. This was Cloyce's canasta night. Jake Eisman had been her favorite of Ben's friends from the team. He would have to tell her when she came home, it would be no mercy for her to read it first when the paper came out tomorrow. He himself had the helpless feeling of time rounding on itself and unleashing the same bad news again. As a punk kid reporter in 1917 and '18, underage for military service, he had written obituary after obituary of the same sort as the so-called war to end all wars drained a generation of lifeblood out of Montana. About like this one.

"Well?" Gruffness serving as apology, Tom Harry disturbed both past and present.

"A deep subject, Tom." Bill resorted to his beer, a very long swallow, to gain time to compose himself somewhat. "What's on your mind now?"

"Well, do you need the goddamn Packard for anything?" The bartender sounded shy and grumpy at the same time. "You look like the dog ate your supper, and so I just wondered if the car and some gas rations would help you out any." Tom Harry bunched his shoulders. "Take the wife Christmas shopping in Great Falls or some damn thing—how do I know what you're supposed to do in maddermoany, I never been in front of any preacher."

Bill Reinking dispensed some more money onto the bar and indicated another round for the hopeful denizens at the far end. "Thanks for the offer, Tom, you're a prince among publicans." Rising to go, he hefted the bundle as if it had grown heavier since he came in. "But I have business to tend to at the word shop."

All right, Reinking, think, damn it, think. Since you can't get your hands on the neck of that colonel or whatever other Tepee Weepy creep is screwing us over—Moxie is right about that much—you have to twist this the other direction somehow. Don't pitch a fit, won't do any good—they've got cast-iron butts in Washington, they can sit on our orders home until they're good and ready. Let's just try the old innocent start-the-show approach and see if that reminds them to be human beings.

"As you see, Ben, the ticker room is quite the odd collection, your lot and ours squidged together rather like strangers on a trolley." In the bunkerful of teletypes and other message apparatus where Maurice was showing him around, the British uniforms of blue hue offsetting the khaki drab of American clerks did resemble a rush-hour swatch of contrasts. "I suppose the miracle is that it works at all," he gestured broadly, "separated as we are by a common language."

Ordinarily Ben's smile nerves would have twitched at that, but not today. "So how do I send smoke signals to Tepee Weepy, with everyone in here busy running the war?"

"Right. I've secured you a ticker, where you have utmost priority—that set of orders that follows you around, Ben, is quite magical—"

Sure, except when Tepee Weepy uses it as black magic and extends Moxie and leaves the pair of us dangling in the buzz-bomb capital of the world.

"—and I have authority to snaffle a clerk for you as wanted." Maurice meditatively tweaked his ball-shaped nose as if turning the knob for the next idea. "I thought perhaps a glamour-pants WREN, to add scenery to duty? The Women's Royal Naval Service has some lovelies bored with typing weather reports."

Ben could readily imagine that seersucker was not the only shapely uniform that sopped up carbon paper, and that an eye-batting invitation to join a scrub in the tub was not unheard of here, either. If Moxie and Inez were any indication, life under buzz-bomb siege tended to concentrate minds, downward. But the object of desire he needed to concentrate on was the earliest possible plane out of here. "No go, Maurice, thanks anyway," he committed to. "No WRENs or sparrows or cuckoos or anything else except a wire clerk in an American uniform that I outrank all to hell."

Maurice felt at his nose again, pondering. "It shall be done. Have yourself a cup of mystery beverage"—the lore was that when the Antwerp commanding officer tasted what was in the hot-pot urn over in the corner, he sputtered, "If this is coffee, bring me tea. If this is tea, bring me coffee."—"while I sort out a clerk of that mode."

Claiming a spot at a momentarily vacant desk, Ben took gulps of the stuff, figuring it went with Antwerp hardship duty, while he labored over a message pad. He crumpled several versions before the penciled words had the right nudge to them. When Maurice turned up with a bewildered U.S. Army private first class in tow, Ben barely caught his name before handing him the message to be sent.

R
EADY AT THIS END
. S
TAMPER WAITING ROYAL TREATMENT
. S
OONER BETTER, SOONEST BEST—THIS IS HOME FIELD OF BUZZ BOMBS.

The wire clerk, with prodigious eyeglasses and eyes almost as large behind them, scrutinized the lines. "Sir, I'm supposed to put it into code. Did you want to do this in plain English first, so the other end won't misunderstand what—"

Ben hung a look on him that answered that. "Right away, sir," said the clerk, his rear end practically scorching the seat as he sat to the wire machine. "The two of you seem as happy together as a box of birds," Maurice said blandly, "so I shall leave you to this."

TPWP's reply clattered out in a surprisingly short time.

T
IME-OUT NOT OVER YET IN
H
OMECOMING GAME.
W
ORTH THE WAIT.

Two quick darts of Ben's pencil and he held the message pad over the keyboard. The clerk started to ask where the rest of it was, encountered the just-send-it look again, and fired off:

Y?

This time the response from across the ocean came in a long salvo of clacking keys.

Y
OU SOUND ITCHY TO BREAK HUDDLE, SO HERE IS GAME PLAN
. S
TAMPER BLAZE OF GLORY SCHEDULED FOR
USO
HOLIDAY SHOW DURING TEN DAYS OF
C
HRISTMAS TOUR
, L
ONDON
, P
ARIS, ETC.
A
NTWERP SHOW FIRST IN LINE.
F
ULL CHEERING SECTION FOR END OF
S
UPREME
T
EAM SAGA—NATIONWIDE BROADCAST STATESIDE
, "Y
OUR
USO
ON THE
G
O" NEWSREEL
, T
ED
L
OUDON IN PERSON TO DEVOTE ENTIRE
"S
PORTS
R
EPORT" TO
S
TAMPER AND
—

It sunk in to Ben like a stab that kept on penetrating. Tepee Weepy and Loudon. The unholy pair that manufactured the Supreme Team in the first place. Now an entire week of hanging around with the buzz bombs, just so Loudon could mouth off nationally, hell, internationally about—

"Break in, quick," he instructed the wire operator while frantically scrawling. The young soldier apprehensively but bravely looked up from the message. "'Loudmouth,' sir?"

"Sorry, that got away from me." Ben grabbed back the paper, cursing and fixing the name at the same time. Off the message went.

C
AN'T WE DO THAT STATESIDE, AT
TSU
STADIUM FOR INSTANCE, SITE OF INITIAL GLORY, ETC
.? L
OUDON NOT A HABITUE OF
E
UROPE NORMALLY
.

There was a pause, giving Ben some faint hope that logic might register on TPWP. Then:

N
EGATIVE
. L
OUDON TO USE
A
NTWERP OCCASION TO ANNOUNCE THAT THE
T
REASURE
S
TATE
G
OLDEN
E
AGLES OF
1941—'
ELEVEN MEN AS BRAVE ON THE ULTIMATE FIELD OF BATTLE AS ON THE GRIDIRON'—ARE HIS
A
LL
-A
MERICAN TEAM FOR 1944, IN MEMORIAM
. Y
OU AND
S
TAMPER WILL BE HIGHLIGHTED AS THE SURVIVING TEAMMATES, THUS PRESENCE IN
A
NTWERP MANDATORY UNTIL AFTER
USO
SHOW.

Ben could not take his eyes off the words.
You goddamn grandstander, Loudmouth. You never miss a chance to pluck the patriotic harp, do you. All-dead is closer to the truth.
Maximum urges contended in him, to sink into a corner laughing insanely or take a kicking fit against the TPWP wire machine. The owl-eyed clerk watched him skittishly.

Pulling himself together, more or less, he gripped the pencil and pad, and with concentration as slow and forced as a gradeschooler's put into block letters the next message.

S
TAMPER COMING DOWN WITH NERVOUS IN THE SERVICE
. S
UGGEST IMMEDIATE LEAVE TO TIDE HIM OVER UNTIL
USO
SHOW
. I
F HE CRACKS UP
, L
ORD
H
AW
-H
AW WILL HAVE PLENTY TO HEE-HEE ABOUT.

Parsing it to himself, he added, sardonically wondering if he had better get a rubber stamp of it made: S
OONEST BEST.

Tepee Weepy got the message in more ways than one.

S
OON IS BEST THAT CAN BE DONE THROUGH
A
NTWERP
HQ
CHANNELS, BUT WILL HAVE
S
TAMPER PULLED FROM ACK-ACK DUTY, DON'T WORRY.

The teletype machine fell silent for all of ten seconds or so, then burped back into action.

N
OW TO BUSINESS AS USUAL: EXPECTING THOUSAND-WORD PIECE, CLASSIC
R
EINKING STYLE OF SHINE AND SHADOW, ON LIFE IN COMBAT ZONE
'S
OMEWHERE IN
E
UROPE.'

"Have you gone out of your gourd, Ben? They're supposed to give me leave here in a combat zone?" That evening in the Wonder Bar, Moxie was so incredulous he was neglecting his beer. "I'll believe that the day after it happens."