"Cheers?"
"You should be happier than that." He seemed almost angry, and sailed his new cap into the trash.
"Why tell?"
"Because our leaders have decided not to send you to jail."
"Why not?"
"Why not? Well, mainly because I've managed, at great expense, to convince everyone from Lt. Hewitt to the Base Commander to an angry Air Police sergeant that you should be forgiven on the grounds of post-combat reaction or some other bit of jargon.
"We haven't had so many Vietnam casualties that we've gotten casual about them yet, and since one of the ones we had died under rather suspicious circumstances – a drunken doctor and the wrong shot and all that sort of stuff. So everybody has a tinge of a guilty conscience right now which they will surely soon get over quickly…"
"Thanks. Who died?"
"Nobody you know. It's always nobody nobody knows." Gallard paused, his shoulders and chest, usually puffed in a knot of intense energy, seemed to be caving in upon themselves, sucked down in the wake of a sigh like a temple falling into the waves. "He wasn't from your outfit. With the usual attempt at security, they scattered your outfit's wounded like illegitimate children all over the Pacific. There are even, I hear, three guys in a British hospital in Singapore or someplace. Security, yes."
"The bastards notified my old man that I was injured in an aircraft accident."
"The security officer hasn't gotten to you yet to swear you to silence; that's why you have a private room. Less contact with uncleared personnel. Christ. Now everyone in the Far East knows about it." He sighed again. "I had to make a deal, though."
"What? What about?"
"Your court martial. As soon as you are marked fit for duty, as if you ever were, you will…"
"Get shipped back to Vietnam?" I interrupted.
"Don't be silly. Of course not. A medical discharge will be drawn up, I'll sign it; you get out, plus a twenty-five percent disability which you will lose at your first reexamination. So you get away free; like you always will, I suppose."
I laughed.
"What's so funny?" His face brightened for a moment.
"I'll tell you someday."
"Please don't."
I didn't quite know what to say; thank him or curse him. I didn't even know what to think about him. His concern was obvious, even bordering on fascination… What was Marlowe's line? "The fascination of the abomination – you know." I understood it, even welcomed it as far as I understood it. An odd relationship, doctor to patient, savior to warrior, officer to man. But I never said "Sir" to him, not because of the friendship, but because it was unthinkable. His innate kindness, his curiosity, his love gently thrust him outside the officer, the uniform and made him a man, a man to whom I could say, "How about another drink?", a man who would answer, "I'm sorry, I didn't notice that you were empty."
As he poured, I asked. "Why?"
"It's seldom men know why they do things," he said, then reflected a bit. How like him to know what I was asking. "Maybe because I hated to see anyone, even you, railroaded into Leavenworth."
"Not much of a reason."
"No, I guess not." He sat his drink down, then dug into his hair and continued with a nervous chuckle, "And not even the real one either."
I waited. I had time.
"You might say I did it because I used to dream about you when I was a child. Or have nightmares, I guess, would be more accurate." His face drifted through a series of frowns and half-smiles as he leaned back in the chair and clasped his hands behind his neck.
"I suppose I'm obligated to be flattered or something, but I don't really know what the hell you mean."
"Oh, not you really. It's a funny thing, a long story. You see, I've got this thing… ha! got… had this thing for World War I airplanes when I was a kid. I must have built thirty or forty models of them – it took ten tries to get one to fly; but it did finally fly. Perfectly. Nearly a quarter of a mile down the road to a neighbor's place and made this perfect landing. I ran all the way with it. God, I ran. But it landed, as I said, perfectly, but in a hog pen, of course, and the damned hogs trampled it and chewed it and ate it, rubber bands and all." He smiled to himself; he had forgotten about me. "God knows why. Maybe they liked the way the glue smelled or maybe they just didn't care for their pen to be used as a landing strip. Who the hell knows? They ate it though, every bit of it, and all the while I was crying and throwing clods at them, but they just bounced off their fat, complacent rumps. I ran home and cried to my mother that it wasn't fair, but she said that God didn't promise that life would be fair, but that He would have mercy. Well, I said so much for a guy who doesn't play fair, and that was the end of that.
"Where was I? Oh, yes. Anyway, in spite of God in heaven and pigs in the world, I kept building airplanes, tried some design modifications on the plans I got out of Popular Mechanics, even designed a few of my own," he said with pride. "And when I hurt my hand, the worst pain came from not being able to work on the airplanes. And then I became so wrapped up, so obsessed, that I began to dream about them. Every night. Every time I closed my eyes I was in the cold, blue air over France in a Camel. God, I was a gay, rake-hell dog, too. Theatrical smudges of grease here and there, a scuffed leather jacket. But no scarf. I had better taste even then." He laughed, then drank, perhaps dreaming of the thundering wind, the rainbow circling his biplane's shadow as it leaped and ran and leaped again over the hedges.
"I, of course, was an ace at thirteen; but there was always a single dark cloud in my dreaming sky. Perhaps I'd learned something from the hogs. The cloud didn't show up often, but often enough, and always so damned unexpectedly. I called him the Black Baron of Beirut, for reasons I've long since forgotten, but I think his name was Baron von Rumplested or something silly like that. He was always dropping out of the sun just after I had vanquished six Fokkers and wham! down I'd go in one of those awful falling dreams and then wake up in cold, heaving sweats. Not a dogfight, no contest, just wham! and down I'd go. He never bothered with finesse or fancy maneuvers or anything, he just swooped down and shot hell out of me. Once when my guns had jammed, he had the gall to pour sheep-dip all over me, and while I was trying to get it out of my eyes, he dropped the five gallon can on my right wing and broke it off.
"God, how I hated him. How glad I was when I exchanged the airplanes for women and the dreams ended. But I never forgot that face, that beaklike nose and that evil moustache drooping past the corners of his mouth. He was a dark German, an Asiatic German, not at all a warm, sunburnt Nordic German. His face looked like the word 'Hun' sounds, and his eyes always made me think of the Black Forest, even after I learned that it was in West Germany. And later when I was older and had a real war to deal with, when I found out it wasn't anything except stupid and evil and cruel and without honor, his face became all that dark, primitive nature, that dark, throbbing blood, that fogged crossroads where evil meets beauty, and…" He stopped; perhaps at the crossroads he paused once again, then went on because he thought he knew the way.
"Guess I got carried away. But I haven't talked about the dreams since the War, or even thought about them, and was glad to forget… until I saw your crazy, roaring eyes and mad face straining up at me as if I were the enemy, and I thought you were someone I knew. Then I realized you were the Baron's son – no, the Baron himself, and so I… What the hell are you grinning about?" he asked, seeming half-angry. "What's so damned funny?"