Dusk and Other Stories

LOST SONS

All afternoon the cars, many with out-of-state plates, were coming along the road. The long row of lofty brick quarters appeared above. The gray walls began.

In the reception area a welcoming party was going on. There were faces that had hardly changed at all and others like Reemstma’s whose name tag was read more than once. Someone with a camera and flash attachment was running around in a cadet bathrobe. Over in the barracks they were drinking. Doors were open. Voices spilled out.

“Hooknose will be here,” Dunning promised loudly. There was a bottle on the desk near his feet. “He’ll show, don’t worry. I had a letter from him.”

“A letter? Klingbeil never wrote a letter.”

“His secretary wrote it,” Dunning said. He looked like a judge, large and well fed. His glasses lent a dainty touch. “He’s teaching her to write.”

“Where’s he living now?”

“Florida.”

“Remember the time we were sneaking back to Buckner at two in the morning and all of a sudden a car came down the road?”

Dunning was trying to arrange a serious expression.

“We dove in the bushes. It turned out it was a taxi. It slammed on the brakes and backed up. The door opens and there’s Klingbeil in the backseat, drunk as a lord. Get in, boys, he says.”

Dunning roared. His blouse with its rows of colored ribbons was unbuttoned, gluteal power hinted by the width of his lap.

“Remember,” he said, “when we threw Devereaux’s Spanish book with all his notes in it out the window? Into the snow. He never found it. He went bananas. You bastards, I’ll kill you!”

“He’d have been a star man if he hadn’t been living with you.”

“We tried to broaden him,” Dunning explained.

They used to do the sinking of the Bismarck while he was studying. Klingbeil was the captain. They would jump up on the desks. Der Schiff ist kaputt! they shouted. They were firing the guns. The rudder was jammed, they were turning in circles. Devereaux sat head down with his hands pressed over his ears. Will you bastards shut up! he screamed.

Bush, Buford, Jap Andrus, Doane, and George Hilmo were sitting on the beds and windowsill. An uncertain face looked in the doorway.

“Who’s that?”

It was Reemstma whom no one had seen for years. His hair had turned gray. He smiled awkwardly. “What’s going on?”

They looked at him.

“Come in and have a drink,” someone finally said.

He found himself next to Hilmo, who reached across to shake hands with an iron grip. “How are you?” he said. The others went on talking. “You look great.”

“You, too.”

Hilmo seemed not to hear. “Where are you living?” he said.

“Rosemont. Rosemont, New Jersey. It’s where my wife’s family’s from,” Reemstma said. He spoke with a strange intensity. He had always been odd. Everyone wondered how he had ever made it through. He did all right in class but the image that lasted was of someone bewildered by close order drill which he seemed to master only after two years and then with the stiffness of a cat trying to swim. He had full lips which were the source of an unflattering nickname. He was also known as To The Rear March because of the disasters he caused at the command.

He was handed a used paper cup. “Whose bottle is this?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Hilmo said. “Here.”

“Are a lot of people coming?”

“Boy, you’re full of questions,” Hilmo said.

Reemstma fell silent. For half an hour they told stories. He sat by the window, sometimes looking in his cup. Outside, the clock with its black numerals began to brighten. West Point lay majestic in the early evening, its dignified foliage still. Below, the river was silent, mysterious islands floating in the dusk. Near the corner of the library a military policeman, his arm moving with precision, directed traffic past a sign for the reunion of 1960, a class on which Vietnam had fallen as stars fell on 1915 and 1931. In the distance was the faint sound of a train.

It was almost time for dinner. There were still occasional cries of greeting from below, people talking, voices. Feet were leisurely descending the stairs.

“Hey,” someone said unexpectedly, “what the hell is that thing you’re wearing?”

Reemstma looked down. It was a necktie of red, flowered cloth. His wife had made it. He changed it before going out.

“Hello, there.”

Walking calmly alone was a white-haired figure with an armband that read 1930.

“What class are you?”

“Nineteen-sixty,” Reemstma said.

“I was just thinking as I walked along, I was wondering what finally happened to everybody. It’s hard to believe but when I was here we had men who simply packed up after a few weeks and went home without a word to anyone. Ever hear of anything like that? Nineteen-sixty, you say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You ever hear of Frank Kissner? I was his chief of staff. He was a tough guy. Regimental commander in Italy. One day Mark Clark drove up and said, Frank, come here a minute, I want to talk to you. Haven’t got time, I’m too busy, Frank said.”

“Really?”

“Mark Clark said, Frank, I want to make you a B.G. I’ve got time, Frank said.”

The mess hall, in which the alumni dinner was being held, loomed before them, its doors open. Its scale had always been heroic. It seemed to have doubled in size and was filled with the white of tablecloths as far as one could see. The bars were crowded, there were lines fifteen and twenty deep of men waiting patiently. Many of the women were in dinner dresses. Above it all was the echoing haze of conversation.

There were those with the definite look of success, like Hilmo who wore a gray summer suit with a metallic sheen and to whom everyone liked to talk although he was given to abrupt silences, and there were also the unfading heroes, those who had been cadet officers, come to life again. Early form had not always held. Among those now of high rank were men who in their schooldays had been relatively undistinguished. Reemstma, who had been out of touch, was somewhat surprised by this. For him the hierarchy had never been altered.

A terrifying face blotched with red suddenly appeared. It was Cramner, who had lived down the hall.

“Hey, Eddie, how’s it going?”

He was holding two drinks. He had just retired a year ago, Cramner said. He was working for a law firm in Reading.

“Are you a lawyer?”

“I run the office,” Cramner said. “You married? Is your wife here?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“She couldn’t come,” Reemstma said.

His wife had met him when he was thirty. Why would she want to go, she had asked? In a way he was glad she hadn’t. She knew no one and given the chance she would often turn the conversation to religion. There would be two weird people instead of one. Of course, he did not really think of himself as weird, it was only in their eyes.