'Why… uh… yes,' Lewis said, flustered by the unexpected question. Hope laughed sharply. 'Aren't you ashamed of yourself today?' she asked.
'Please,' Lewis said stiffly. 'Please. I have a job to do and I do it the best way I know how.'
Hope stood up. She stood up heavily, carrying the child within her a little awkwardly. Her dress was too small for her and hung grotesquely in front. Lewis had a sudden vision of Hope desperately trying to alter her clothes because she could not afford to buy maternity dresses.
'All right,' she said, 'I'll do it.'
'Good,' Lewis beamed at her. After all, he told himself, this was the best possible way for everybody, and the boy would not suffer too badly. He almost believed it, too, as he picked up the phone to call Captain Mason in the Provost Marshal's office and tell him to get Ackerman ready for a visitor.
He asked for Mason's extension and listened to the ringing in the receiver. 'By the way,' he said to Hope, 'does your husband know about… the child?' Delicately he avoided looking at the girl.
'No,' Hope said. 'He hasn't any idea.'
'You might… uh… use that as an argument,' Lewis said, holding the buzzing phone to his ear. 'In case he won't change his mind. For the child's sake… a father in prison, disgraced…'
'It must be wonderful,' Hope said, 'to be a psychiatrist. It makes you so practical.'
Lewis could feel his jaw growing rigid with embarrassment.
'I didn't mean to suggest anything that…' he began.
'Please, Captain,' Hope said, 'keep your silly mouth closed.'
Oh, God, Lewis mourned within him, the Army, it makes idiots of every man in it. I would never have behaved so badly in a grey suit. 'Captain Mason,' a voice said in the receiver.
'Hello, Mason,' Lewis said gratefully. 'I have Mrs Ackerman here. Will you get Private Ackerman down to the visitors' room right away?'
'You have five minutes,' the MP said. He stood at the door of the bare room, which had bars on the windows and two small wooden chairs in the middle of the floor.
The main problem was not to cry. He looked so small. The other things, the queer, smashed shape of his nose, the grotesque broken ear, the split, torn eyebrow were bad, but what was hard to conquer was that he looked so small. The stiff blue fatigues were much too large for him and he seemed lost and tiny in them. And they made him seem heartbreakingly humble. Everything about him was humble. Everything but his eyes. The soft way he came into the room. The mild, hesitant little smiles as he saw her. The embarrassed, hasty kiss, with the MP watching. His low, mild voice, when he said, 'Hello.' It was dreadful to think of the long, cruel process which had produced such humility in her husband. But his eyes flared wildly and steadily.
They sat almost knee to knee on the two stiff chairs, like two old ladies having tea in the afternoon.
'Well, now,' Noah said softly. 'Well, now.' He grinned at her gently. There were the sorrowful gaps, between the healed gums, where the teeth had been knocked out, and they gave a horrible air of stupidity and rudimentary cunning to the wrecked face. But Whitacre had prepared her for the missing teeth, and her expression didn't change at all. 'Do you know what I think about all the time in here?'
'What?' Hope asked. 'What do you think about?'
'Something you once said.'
'What was that?'
''You see, it wasn't too hot, not too hot at all.'' He grinned at her, and not crying became a big problem again. 'I remember just how you said it.'
'What a thing,' Hope said, trying to smile, too. 'What a thing to remember.'
They stared at each other in silence, as though they had exhausted all conversation.
'Your aunt and uncle,' Noah said. 'They still live in Brooklyn? The same garden…'
'Yes,' Hope said. The MP moved a little at the door, scratching his back against the wood. The rough cloth made a sliding sound on the wood. 'Listen,' Hope said, 'I've been talking to Captain Lewis. You know what he wants me to do…'
'Yes,' Noah said. 'I know.'
'I'm not going to try to tell you one way or another,'.' Hope said. 'You do what you have to do.'
Then she saw Noah staring at her, his eyes slowly dropping to her stomach, tight against the belt of the old dress. 'I wouldn't promise him anything,' she went on, 'not a thing…'
'Hope,' Noah said, staring fixedly at the swelling belt. 'Tell me the truth.'
Hope sighed. 'All right,' she said. 'Five more months. I don't know why I didn't write you when I could. I have to stay in bed most of the time. I have to give up my job. The doctor says I'll probably have a miscarriage if I keep on working. That's probably why I didn't let you know. I wanted to be sure it was going to be all right.'
Noah looked at her gravely. 'Are you glad?' he asked.
'I don't know,' Hope said, wishing the MP would fall to the floor in a dead faint, 'I don't know anything. Don't let this influence you one way or another.'
Noah sighed. Then he leaned over and kissed her forehead.
'It's wonderful,' he said. 'Absolutely wonderful.' Hope glared at the MP, the bare room, the barred window.
'What a place,' she said, 'what a place to learn something like this.'
The MP stolidly scratched his back along the frame of the door. 'One more minute,' he said.
'Don't worry about me,' Hope said, swiftly, her words tumbling over each other. 'I'll be all right. I'm going to my parents. They'll take care of me. Don't you worry at all.'
Noah stood up. 'I'm not worried,' he said. 'A child…' He waved vaguely, in a stiff, boyish gesture, and even now, in this grim room, Hope had to chuckle at the dear, familiar movement. 'Well, now…' Noah said. 'Well, what do you know?' He walked over to the window, and looked out through the bars at the enclosed courtyard. When he turned back to her his eyes seemed blank and lustreless. 'Please,' he said, 'please go to Captain Lewis and tell him I'll go anywhere they send me.'
'Noah…' Hope stood up, half in protest, half in relief.
'All right,' the MP said. 'Time's up.' He opened the door.
Noah came over to her and they kissed. She took his hand and held it for a moment against her cheek. But the MP said, 'All right, Lady,' and she went through the door. She turned before the MP could close it again and saw Noah standing there, thoughtfully watching her. He tried to smile, but it didn't come out a smile. Then the MP closed the door, and she didn't see him again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
'I'M going to tell you the truth,' Colclough was saying. 'I'm sorry to see you back. You're a disgrace to this Company and I don't think we can make a soldier out of you in a hundred years. But by God, I'm going to try, if I have to break you in half doing it.'
Noah stared at the twitching pale spot gleaming at the end of the Captain's nose. It was all the same, the same glaring light in the orderly room, the same stale joke pinned on the wall over the Top Sergeant's desk, 'The Chaplain's number is 145. Get your TS cards punched there.' Colclough had the same voice and he seemed to be saying the same thing, and even the smell, of badly seasoned wood, dusty papers, sweaty uniforms, gun-oil and beer, hung in the orderly room. It was hard to realize that he had ever been away or that anything had happened or anything unchanged.
'Naturally, you have no privileges.' Colclough was speaking slowly, with solemn enjoyment. 'You will get no passes and no furloughs. You will be on KP every day for the next two weeks, and after that you will have Saturday and Sunday from then on. Is that clear?'
'Yes, Sir,' Noah said.
'You have the same bunk you had before. I warn you, Ackerman, you will have to be five times more soldier than anybody in this outfit, just to keep alive. Is that clear?'
'Yes, Sir,' Noah said.
'Now get out of here. I don't want to see you in this orderly room again. That's all.'
