Bob’s creed had been to sell yourself as dearly as possible. Not just the professional soldiers. Everybody. To be tough in your beliefs, and unswerving in your devotion to them.
And yet... he had appealed to her to help him. Had the letter been dictated? Had he been forced to write it? In a sense, even though the onionskin copy of Tom’s report was concealed on her person, the moment of action did not occur until the copy was handed to the Jacksons. And, remembering that engagement night, each step she took seemed to increase her reluctance to go through with it.
Francie squared her shoulders and walked out of the lavatory. She took her red short-coat from the coat tree.
Clint Reese sat on the corner of a desk, one long leg swinging. He said, “Remind me to put all my black-haired women in red coats.”
She found that she was glad to see him. His lighthearted manner made the lab work seem less important, made her own impending betrayal a more minor affair. And she sensed that during the past month Clint had grown more aware of her. A subtle game of awareness and flirtation would make her forget what she was about to do — or almost forget.
She said, “If you want to see a woman eat like a wolf, come on and join me.”
He put on his plaid wool jacket. “I’ll take care of all the wolflike characteristics around here, lady.”
They walked to the small mess hall. Wind whined around the corner of the building and they leaned into it.
“And after the dogs are gone, we can always boil up the harness,” he said.
She heard the false note in her own laughter. They shut the mess-hall door against the wind, hung up their jackets. They filled their trays, carried them back from the service counter to a table for two by the wall. Clint sat down and shut his eyes for a moment. She saw a weariness in his face that she had not noticed before. He smiled at her. “Now make like a wolf,” he said.
She had thought she was hungry, but found that she couldn’t eat.
“Okay, Francie,” he said. “Let’s have it.”
She gave him a startled look. For once there was no banter in his voice, no humor in his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“As official nursemaid to all personnel, I keep my eyes open. Something has been worrying you all day.”
“Then make some jokes and cheer me up, why don’t you?”
He was grave. “Sometimes I get tired of jokes. Don’t you?”
“Aren’t you a little out of character, Mr. Reese? I thought you were the meringue on the local pie.”
He looked through her and beyond her. “Perhaps I am. Tonight, my girl, I am lonesome and in a hair-taking-down mood. Want to see my tresses fall?”
“Sure,” she said.
He took a sip of his coffee, set his cup down. “Underneath this tattered shirt beats the heart of a missionary.”
“No!”
“And perhaps a fool. I own a tidy little construction business. I was making myself useful, and discovering that I had a certain junior-executive type flair for the commercial world, when the Army put its sticky finger in the back of my collar and yanked me off to the wars. I was flexing my obstacle-course muscles on Okinawa when they dropped those big boomers on the Nipponese. Now get the picture. There I was, as intrigued by those big boomers as a kid at the country club on the night of the Fourth. Siss, boom, ah! A big child at heart. Still thinking I was living in a nice, cozy little world. I was in one of the first units to go to Japan. I wangled a pass and went to Hiroshima. It was unpretty. Very.”
In the depths of his eyes she saw the ghosts that he had seen.
“Francie, you can’t tell another person how it is to grow up in one day. I wandered around in a big daze, and at the end of the day I had made up my mind that this was a desperate world to live in, a frightening world. And it took me another month to decide that the only way I could live with myself was to try to do something about it.
“When they gave me a discharge I turned the management of the company over to my brother and went to school to learn something about nuclear physics. I learned that if I studied hard I’d know something about it by the time I was seventy-three. So I quit. What resource did I have? Just that little flair for administration, the knack of getting along with people and keeping them happy and getting work done. So I decided to be a dog-robber for the professional boys who really know what the score is. By being here I make Cudahy more effective. Cudahy, in turn, makes the teams more effective.
“And now, I understand, we’re beginning to get someplace. Maybe because I’m here we get our solution a month sooner than otherwise. But if it were only twenty minutes sooner, I could say that I have made a contribution to something I believe in.”
Francie felt a stinging in her eyes. She looked away from him, said huskily, “I’m just a little stupid, I guess. You seemed so — casual, sort of.”
He grinned. “With everybody going around grinding their teeth, you’ve got to have some relief. If I landed in a spot full of clowns I’d turn into the grimmest martinet you ever saw. Any administrative guy in a lab setup is a catalyst. So let’s get back to the original question, now that you’ve made me prove my right to ask it. What’s bothering you, Francie?”
She stood up so abruptly that her chair tilted and nearly fell over. She went through the door with her coat in her hand, put it on outside, walked into the night with long strides.
There was a small clump of pines within the compound. She headed blindly toward them. He caught her arm just as she reached them. He turned her around gently.
“Look; I didn’t want to say the wrong thing. If this is just one of those days when you... remember too much, please forgive me, Francie. I’d never do anything to hurt you.”
She held onto his wrist with both hands. “Clint, I’m so... so terribly mixed up. I don’t know what to do.”
“Let me help if I can.”
“Clint, what is the most important thing in the world to any individual? It’s their own happiness, isn’t it? Tell me it is.”
“Of course it is, but you don’t need a definition of terms. Isn’t happiness sort of a compound?”
“How do you mean?”
“Don’t too many people confuse happiness with self-gratification? You can be happy if you have self-respect and also what an old-fashioned uncle of mine used to call the love of God.”
She was crying, soundlessly. “Honor, maybe?”
“That’s a word too. Little dog-eared through misuse, but still respectable.”
“Suppose, Clint, that somebody saved your life and the only way they could do it was by violating all the things that you believe in. Would you be grateful?”
“If someone saved me that way I think I’d begin to hate them, and hate myself, too, Francie. But don’t think I’m a typical case. I’m a little top-heavy in the ethics department, they tell me.”
“I married that sort of man, Clint. I understand.”
“You still haven’t told me how I can help you.”
She turned half away from him, knowing that unless she did it quickly, she would be unable to do it at all. She unbuttoned the red coat, the jacket under it, the blouse under that. She found the folded packet of onionskin sheets and held it out where he could see it.
“You can help me by taking that, Clint. Before I change my mind.”
He took it. “What is it?” he asked.
“A copy of what Tom dictated today,” she said tonelessly.
“Why on earth are you carrying it around?” he demanded sharply.
“To give it to someone. On the outside.”