"Give me a minute to clothe my magnificent ebony body," Parker said. "And I will show you how an old soldier does it." When Parker returned, he was in fatigues. They had been tailored to fit his body and were stiffly starched. They were not anywhere near new. His boots were highly polished. His insignia and his bra.s.s buckle gleamed. He looked, Lowell thought, as if he were ready to stand inspection. Then he changed his mind. He looked as if he were accustomed to wearing a uniform. He thought it was likely that Parker (it was hard to tell how old he was) was a former enlisted man, a career sergeant who had gone to OCS. That would explain both the old soldier"s appearance, and his announced intention to be the honor graduate. Lowell thought of Nick.
He was convinced of the accuracy of his a.s.sessment of Lieutenant Parker both by Parker"s car, a gleaming 1941 Cadillac sedan with a Fort Riley auto safety inspection decal on the windshield, and by what happened next. Parker drove them to the Cla.s.s Six, the liquor store, where he bought scotch and gin and vermouth, and two bottles of good bourbon. In the car, he made Lowell pay for one of the bottles of bourbon.
Then they drove to the Post Quartermaster Household Goods Warehouse. Parker found the small office used by the noncom in charge of the warehouse.
"Can I help you, Lieutenant?" the sergeant asked.
"I hope so, Sergeant," Parker said to him, closing the office door and setting the two bottles of bourbon in their brown paper bags on the sergeant"s desk. "I have a small problem."
"What would that be, Lieutenant?" the sergeant asked, pulling the paper bags down to see what kind of liquor they contained.
"My roommate here has an unusual medical condition," Parker said. "Unless he has a cold beer when he wakes up in the morning, he suffers from melancholy all day."
"I"ve heard about that disease," the sergeant said.
"So I thought, in the interests of the health of the junior officers, you might be able to see your way clear to issue him a means to keep his beer cool."
"I think something might be worked out, Lieutenant," the sergeant said. He slid the bottles of bourbon off the desk top and into a drawer. "You got wheels?"
They drove back to the Student Officer Company with a refrigerator precariously balanced in the open trunk of the Cadillac. They carried it upstairs to Parker"s room.
"I don"t think I will be having many visitors," Parker said.
"And that means no one will see this refrigerator. If no one sees it, no one will ask any questions, such as, "How come that lieutenant has got a refrigerator, and I don"t?""
Lowell chuckled. "What were you, Parker, before you were commissioned?"
Parker looked at him, as if surprised by the question.
"If you must know, I was cadet major," he said.
"West Point?" Lowell asked, in surprise.
"Bite your tongue!" Parker said. "Norwich."
"Norwich?"
"You"ve never heard of it," Parker said flatly. "I"m not surprised. But to widen your education, Norwich for a hundred years has provided the army with the bulk of its brighter cavalry, and now armor, officers."
"I"ve never heard of it," Lowell repeated.
"It is not, Lowell, what you"re thinking," Parker said.
"What am I thinking?"
"It is not a Mechanical and Agricultural College for Negroes with an ROTC program," Parker said. "I was the only colored guy in my graduating cla.s.s."
"Where is it?"
"Vermont," Parker said. "And where did you go to school? Yale?"
"Harvard. "
"How come you"re not artillery? I thought Harvard had artillery ROTC."
"I"m not ROTC," Lowell said.
"There is no way a slob like you could have gotten through OCS," Parker said.
"I was directly commissioned," Lowell said.
"What kind of an expert are you?" Parker asked.
"I know how to play polo," Lowell said.
"So why aren"t you playing polo?" Parker asked. He didn"t seem at all surprised at Lowell"s announcement.
"The general I was playing for dropped dead," Lowell said.
"Waterford?" Parker said. "I heard about that. My father and Waterford were pretty good friends."
"Your father was in the army?"
"Mah daddy, and mah gran" daddy, and mah gran" daddy"s daddy," Parker said, in a mock Negro accent. "White boy, you now runnin around with a bona fide member of the army establishment, Afro-American division."
"What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"
"If you don"t know, then I can"t explain it to you."
"Try."
"My antcesters have been slurping around in the army trough since, right after the Civil War, they chased the Indians around the plains. They used to call them the "Buffalo Soldiers,"" Parker said. "My father and my grandfather retired as colonels. My great-grandfather was a master sergeant."
"I"m "awed," Lowell said.
"So after f.u.c.king around with you for a while, wondering what to do with you, they decided to send you to Basic Officer"s Course?"
"Yeah."
"Well, under my expert tutelage, Lieutenant," Parker said, "you may just be able to get through."
There was no overt act of racial discrimination from the first day. The 116 white second lieutenants in Basic Armor Officer"s Course 46-3 simply ignored the five black, two Puerto Rican, six Filipino, and three Argentinian officers. And Lowell, the white one who lived with the big c.o.o.n.
On his part, Parker ignored the four second lieutenants who were black, the Puerto Ricans, and three of the six Filipinos, the three who had gone to West Point. The other three he tolerated. The Argentinians stuck to themselves, eventually moving out of the BOQ entirely to rent an apartment in Elizabethtown, where many of the married second lieutenants also lived.
It was a week before Phil Parker saw Lowell without his T-shirt, and thus the scars, which resembled angry red zippers running up his chest and over his shoulder.
"What the h.e.l.l happened to you?"
"I walked into a fan," Lowell replied.
"The h.e.l.l you say," Parker replied.
(Two) The day after Parker saw Lowell"s fascinating and unexplained scars, Parker learned that Lowell was married, and to a German girl, and shocking him far more, that Lowell"s Chevrolet was the Hertz rent-a-car he had picked up at the airport on his way to Fort Knox and simply kept.
It was a Sat.u.r.day morning, and when Parker went into Lowell"s room to wake him for breakfast, Lowell wasn"t there.
On the way to the mess hall, Parker saw the Chevrolet parked outside a building housing a dozen pay booths for the use of enlisted men undergoing basic training.
When he looked in the car, to make sure it was Lowell"s (there was no question about that; Lowell"s helmet liner and several of his books were on the back seat), he came across the rental doc.u.ments from Hertz.
He went in the telephone building and found Lowell sitting on a couch, waiting for something.
"I"m calling my wife," Lowell volunteered when Parker crashed into the seat beside him.
"Why don"t you call her collect from the phone in the BOQ?"
"She"s in Germany," Lowell said, and while they waited for the international call to be completed, Lowell told him about llse.
"Hey, if there"s anything I can do," Parker said, "like a little money for a plane ticket, or something. Just speak up.
Unscrew your left arm at the elbow and the Friendly Phil Parker Small Loan Company will leap to aid you."
"Money"s not the problem," Lowell said. "It"s the f.u.c.king Immigration Service. They"re waiting for the CIC to clear her.
They have to be sure she wasn"t a n.a.z.i. For Christ"s sake, she was sixteen when the war was over." He looked up at Parker.
"But thanks, Phil. I appreciate that." There was such grat.i.tude in Lowell"s voice, in the look in his eyes, that Parker was embarra.s.sed. He changed the subject.
(Three) Craig Lowell was sitting. on his bed dressed in his shorts with his back up against the headboard. He had a gla.s.s of scotch whiskey in his hand, a large black cigar in his mouth, and a copy of The Infantry Company in the Defense in his lap.
He was no longer as awed by the manual as he had once been, and he had just concluded that if some unsuspecting neophyte placed his air-cooled .30s where the book said they should be placed "for optimum efficiency," he was going to get his a.s.s rolled over the first time he faced an enemy equipped with grenade launchers. At that moment there was a knock at the door.
"Come!" he called.
"Are you decent?" a female voice called.
"I am neither decent nor clothed," he called back. "There is a difference. Wait a minute." He got out of bed and went to the closet and wrapped himself in a silk dressing gown. Like the luggage, it had belonged to his father, and he had helped himself to it when he returned from Germany and spent his last two days of leave at Broadlawns. He had heard the female outside giggle at his remark, and that pleased him.
He had wondered what King Kong was doing about his s.e.x life, and now he was about to find out.
When he pulled the door open, he was facing an attractive woman in her late twenties or early thirties. She was white, and that surprised him.
"Yes, ma"am?" he said.
"I"m Barbara Bellmon," she said. "I"m looking for Phil Parker." She was wearing a wedding ring. What was a respectable looking, even wholesome looking, married white woman knocking on King Kong"s door for? Whatever it was, it was none of his business.
"I"m sorry," he said. "Phil went over to the library. He should be back in an hour, or maybe longer."
"Oh, d.a.m.n," she said. "Look, I"m an old friend of his.
Could you give him a message for me?"
"Certainly."
"Message is simple and cla.s.sified Top Secret," she said.
"Message follows. Bob gets his silver leaf back effective Sat.u.r.day. Party at the house at 1830. Appearance mandatory."
"Got it," Lowell said. "I"ll tell him as soon as he gets back."
"Translated, that means my husband got promoted and I found out before he did," she said.
"How would one offer congratulations under those circ.u.mstances?"
"Very simply," she said. "Come to the party with Phil."
"You say you"re an old friend of Phil"s?"
"I used to baby-sit for him when he was in diapers," she said. "And his father and my husband are very close."
"That would be Colonel Parker," Lowell said, trying to put it all together.
"Colonel Parker and, as of Sat.u.r.day, Lt. Col. Bellmon," she said. "We"re all old friends."
"How nice for you," Lowell said.
"I didn"t get your name," she said.
"Lowell," he said. "Craig Lowell."
"Well, Craig Lowell, you just tag along with Phil on Sat.u.r.day night. All you can eat, and more important, all you can drink."
"That"s very kind, but I"ll be out of town," he said.
"Some other time, then," she said.
At the prescribed hour, Second Lieutenant Philip Sheridan Parker IV presented himself at the quarters of Bob and Barbara Bellmon, a small frame house near the main post, above which a large sign read: "Second-Chance Bellmon s Party." Barbara Bellmon saw him first, and kissed him on the cheek.
"My, how you"ve grown, Little Philip," she said.
"And you"re a colonel"s lady now, again, and not supposed to go around kissing second johns before G.o.d and the world," he said.
"Where"s John Barrymore?" she asked.
"Who?"
"Your roommate, the one with the silk dressing gown, Harvard accent, and stinking cigar."