all-night repair work suggested that it was November 1941, and that the Navy was slightly bestirring itself for an emergency.
The loudspeakers bellowed above the chatter on the lawn, and the radio reception tonight was better than in some years. This game still had its old ritual fascination for Pug; he was following it tensely, smoking a cigar. Once his nostalgia had been keen for the tough youthful combat on the grass, the slamming of bodies, the tricky drilled plays, above all for the rare moments of breaking free and sprinting down the field, dodging one man and another with the stands around him a roaring sea of voices. Nothing in his life had since been quite like it. But long ago that nostalgia had departed; those grooves of memory had worn out. To think that lads much younger than his own two sons were out on that chilly field in Philadelphia now, made Victor Henry feel that he had led a very long, multilayered, existence, and was now almost a living mummy.
“Pug! I heard you were here.” A hand lightly touched his shoulder. His classmate Walter Tully, bald as an egg and deeply tanned, smiled down at him; Tully had left the submarine school to take command of the undersea squadron at Manila. He gestured at a crowded table near the display board. “Come and sit with us.”
“Maybe at the half, Red.” It was decidedly an anachronism, but everybody still used the nickname. “It’s more like the old days, sitting on the grass.”
“You’re dead right. Well, I’ll join you.”
“Now you’re talking. Sit you down.”
Tully had played Academy football too, and he listened to the broadcast as intently as Pug. After a while the white football slid all the way for an Army run to a touchdown. Amid yells, cheers, and groans, a young lieutenant unloosed the mule, jumped on its back, and galloped around the lawn.
“Oh, hell,” Pug exclaimed.
Tully shook his head. “We’re going to lose this one, old buddy. They’ve got a fine backfield. We could use Pug Henry in there.”
“Ha! Fifteen-yard penalty for illegal use of wheelchairs. Say, ed, you’re the original Simon Legree, aren’t you?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean sending the
Tully grinned at the heavily ironic tone. “It was Branch Hoban’s idea. They’re going alongside for two weeks starting today — they’re due in at noon — and he wanted to get in some drills. You’ll see plenty of Byron.”
“I’ll only be here till the Clipper leaves.”
“Yes, I hear tell you’ve got the
The game resumed. After some dull skirmishing the white ball-shape shot far across the board; Navy had intercepted a pass and run it deep into Army territory. Pug and Tully got to their feet and joined in the Navy yells of “Beat Army! Goal! Goal!” while an ensign happily paraded the goat around. The half ended right after the touchdown. Cheerily Red Tully ordered drinks from a passing steward. “Let’s stay here on the grass, Pug. Tell me about Rooshia.”
His happy grin changed to a tough sober look as Victor Henry described the tank battle he had observed and the October 16 panic in Moscow. “Jesus, you’ve really been in there! I envy you. And here we sit, fat, dumb, and happy. They told me you flew here via Tokyo.”
“That’s right.”
“What’s the straight dope, Pug? Are those bastards really going to fight? We’re getting some scary alerts here, but at this point we’re kind of numb.”
“Well, our people there are worried. The ambassador talked to me at length about Japanese psychology. They’re a very strange nation, he said, and hara-kiri is a way of life to them. The odds don’t matter much. They’re capable of executing a suicidal plan suddenly, and he fears they will.”
Tully glanced around at the nearby couples on the grass or on folding chairs, and dropped his voice. “That checks out. Admiral Hart received a straight war warning today, Pug. But we’ve been hearing nervous chatter from Washington, on and off, all summer and fall. In July when they landed in Indo-China and Roosevelt shut off their oil, we all thought,
Pug gestured his puzzlement with turned-up palms. “Look, I talked to some businessmen one night at a dinner party in the embassy, Americans, British, and one Jap, a big-time shipbuilder. The Jap said the straight word, right from the Imperial Court, is that war with the USA is unthinkable. Everybody there agreed. So — you pays your money and you takes your choice.”
“Well, all I know is, if they do go, we’re in big trouble. The state of readiness in the Philippines is appalling. The people themselves don’t want to fight the Japs. That’s
“I guess about six months ago. Why?”
“Well, he has more damn brass! He walked into my office the other day and asked for a transfer to the Atlantic command. His own skipper had turned him down and Byron was trying to go over his head. I sure ate him out about that. I told him, Pug — I said this, word for word — that if he weren’t your son I’d have kicked his ass out of my office.”
Victor Henry said with forced calm, “His wife and baby are in Italy. He’s worried about them.”
“We’re all separated from our kinfolk, Pug. It just isn’t in the cards to transfer him. I’m trying to comb submarine officers out of tenders and destroyers. I’d do anything within reason for a son of yours, but—”
“Don’t put it that way. Byron’s just another officer. If you can’t do it, you can’t.”
“Okay. I’m glad you said that.”
“Still, his family problem is serious. If it’s possible, transfer him.”
“There’s this little problem of the Japs, too.”
“No argument.” Victor Henry was taking some pains to keep his tone light and friendly. A crowd roar poured from the loud speakers, and he said with relief, “Okay! Second half.”
When the game ended, many people were stretched out asleep on the grass, under a paling sky streaked with red. White-coated boys were still passing drinks and huddled Navy officers were bawling “Anchors Aweigh,” for their team had won. Pug declined Captain Tully’s invitation to breakfast and went up to his room for a nap.
He had stayed in a room like it — perhaps in this very one — on first reporting to Manila, before Rhoda had arrived with the children to set up housekeeping. High-ceilinged, dingy, dusty, with featureless old club furniture and a big perpetually turning and droning fan, the room hit Pug again with a strong sense of lost time and vanished days. He turned the fan up high, stripped to undershorts, opened the french windows looking out over the bay, and sat smoking cigarette after cigarette, watching the day brighten over the broad blue harbor and the busy traffic of ships. He was not sleepy. He sat so for more than an hour, scarcely moving, while gathering sweat trickled down his naked skin.
Thinking of what?
Seeing pictures generated by his return to Manila. Pictures of himself and Byron under a poinciana tree at the white house on Harrison Boulevard, working on French verbs; the boy’s thin face wrinkling, silent tears falling at his father’s roared exasperation. Of Warren winning a history medal, an English medal, and a baseball award at the high school; of Madeline, fairylike in a gossamer white frock, wearing a gold paper crown at her eighth birthday party.
Pictures of Rhoda crabbing about the heat and the boredom, getting drunk night after night in this club, falling on her face at the Christmas dance; of the quarrel that put an end to her drinking, when he coldly talked divorce. The smell of the club’s lawns and halls, and of the spicy Manila air, gave him the illusion that all this was going on now, instead of belonging to a past more than a dozen years dead.
Pictures of Pamela Tudsbury in Red Square. Of the dreary mud streets of Kuibyshev, the all-night poker games, the visits to farm communes, the stagnant slow passing of time while he waited for train tickets; then the two-week rail ride across Siberia; the beautiful Siberian girls selling fruits, flat circular bread, sausage, and hot chickpeas at tiny wooden stations; the single track of the railroad stretching backward from the last car, a dark straight line through a pink snow desert, pointing straight at a setting sun that flattened like a football as it sank to the horizon; the long stops, the wooden benches in the “hard” coach, the onion breaths and body smells of the local
