"What Leica?"
"Lomax had a Leica. When he got killed, I took it. Or Lieutenant Hale took it. And when he got killed, I took it from him. Now I want to give it back."
"I wondered where that camera came from; I didn't think it was issued."
Dunn walked into the sitting room, tucking his shirt into his trousers.
Pickering spoke for Easterbrook, which was fortunate. For at that moment Lieutenant Easterbrook was incapable of speech-having swallowed all at once at least two ounces of scotch: "He found out that the widow of the sergeant who got killed lives here. He's going to return the sergeant's camera to her."
"I don't envy that job," Dunn said.
Easterbrook smiled weakly at him.
The story he'd just related was not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. About the only true part of it was that he had found out that Sergeant Lomax's widow did live in Seattle.
But the real reason he was in Seattle was to tell Major Dillon that he wanted to resign his commission. He shouldn't have been made an officer in the first place.
For Christ's sake. I'm only nineteen years old! And they didn't send me to OCS.... If they did, I probably would have flunked out.... They just pinned a gold bar on me and told me I was an officer.
He had suspected all along that the commission was a big mistake. But the first time he met the combat correspondents at Metro-Magnum Studios, he was goddamn certain it was.
They looked at me and smirked. "Who the fuck is this kid? He's going to be our detachment commander? You've got to be kidding!" I could see it in their faces and the way they talked to me, like I was a goddamned joke. And I am, as an officer.
Pick and Dunn are officers. Maybe it's because they 're older than I am and went to college, or maybe they were just born that way. But they can give people orders: there is something about them that says "officer," and people do what they say. And I bet that when I'm not around, between themselves, they laugh at Second Lieutenant Easterbunny, too. Why not? I'm a fucking joke.
Those combat correspondents The Corps recruited are real journalists: they worked on real newspapers. The New York Times and the Louisville Courier-Journal, papers like those. There's even one from The Kansas City Star. He knows about the Conner Courier, that it's a shitty little weekly.... And what if he writes home and asks about me and finds out that I was nothing more than an after-school kid who helped out for sixty-five cents an hour?
And I don't give a fuck about what The Corps says... that shit about you not having to respect the man, only the bar on his collar. That's bullshit. I've been around enough good officers-not just Dunn and Pickering, but on the 'Canal, where it counted-to know the first thing enlisted men look for in their officers is competence. If they don't think he knows what he's doing, it doesn't matter if he has fucking colonel's eagles on his collar, they won't pay a fucking bit of attention to what he's got to say.
And not one of those combat correspondents at Metro-Magnum is dumb enough to see anything in me but what I am.... They're real reporters, for Christ's sake, trained to separate the bullshit from the real thing... which is a kid with a bar on his shoulder because some asshole like Macklin who doesn't know the first thing about what The Corps is really all about got a wild hair up his ass and pinned a gold bar on him.
And unless I resign my commission, The Corps will send those poor innocent bastards off to combat under me. And they 're going to get killed because they don't teach at Parris Island or San Diego what a combat correspondent has to know to stay alive when you're in deep shit. And they certainly won't pay one fucking bit of attention to me if I try to tell them. I wouldn 't pay attention to me either, if I was one of them.
What they need is somebody like Lomax. If that nasty sonofabitch hadn't got himself killed, they could have pinned a bar on him, and he could have done this. They would have listened to him, not only because he would have kicked the shit out of them, the way he did to me, but because he was a real newspaperman. Right here. On The Seattle Times.
What the hell is his wife going to say to me when I give her his camera? ' 'How come you 're still alive and passing yourself off as an officer, you little shit; and my husband-a grown man, but only a sergeant-is dead?"
What I should do is just keep the fucking Leica. She didn't expect to get it back, anyway. She told me that on the phone. But I don't have the balls to do something like that. I still think like a fucking Boy Scout. And Boy Scouts don't keep things that don't belong to them. And Boy Scouts should not lead men into combat. Me, an officer? Shit. I don't even know how to resign my commission! What do I do? Write somebody?... Who?... A letter, or what?
"Easterbunny," Pickering said. "Go easy on the sauce. That's your third. I don't want you falling on your ass."
"Sorry."
"You don't have to be sorry, Easterbunny," Dunn said. "Just take it easy."
They're tolerating me. Treating me like a kid. They know fucking well I have no right to be an officer.
"Something bothering you, my boy?" Pickering asked. "In the absence of our beloved leader, would you like to pour your heart out to Lieutenant Dunn or myself?"
"Have you perhaps been painfully pricked by Cupid's arrow, Easterbunny?" Dunn asked.
"Go fuck yourself," Easterbrook said. "Both of you."
"That does it," Pickering said, laughing. "Easterbunny, you have just been shut off. You never tell people who are larger than you to go fuck themselves."
"What's the matter, Easterbunny?" Dunn asked. "Maybe we can fix it."
"If Major Dillon's gone, Captain Galloway's in charge, right?"
"Perhaps, technically, Lieutenant," Pickering said. "But in the real world, knowing that Captain Galloway is floating around on the wings of love, and that Macklin is..." ,
"A feather merchant," Dunn supplied.
"Well said. And that I am smarter than Little Billy here, I am running things. So if you have something on your mind, tell me."
"I don't like that 'smarter than' crap," Dunn said. "If you're so smart, how come you got stuck with running this circus?"
"I'm going to see Captain Galloway," Easterbrook announced, then walked somewhat unsteadily toward the door.
"Easterbunny, Galloway will burn you a new asshole if you show up at his door shit-faced," Pickering said.
Easterbrook looked at him. And then he opened the door and walked out into the corridor.
He was almost at the elevator when it occurred to him that he would never see Captain Galloway unless he found out Captain Galloway's room number.
There was a house telephone on a narrow table against the mirrored wall across from the bank of elevators. He picked it up and asked the operator for Captain Galloway's room number.
"I will connect you, Sir."
"I don't want to be connected. I want to know what room he's in."
"I will connect you, Sir," the operator persisted.
In the mirror, Easterbrook saw the elevator door behind him open. Staff Sergeant Thomas M. "Machine Gun" McCoy stepped off. He was wearing his dress blues, and the Medal of Honor was hanging down his chest.
He was closely followed by his gunnery sergeant escorts.
"Well, I'll be goddamned," Sergeant McCoy said. "The ninety-day wonder is back. I thought we'd seen the last of you."