Snowberry quickened his step, and the boys accelerated in little bursts to keep up.
“It’s quite busy this evening, isn’t it, Sergeant?” Colin said.
“Yes it is,” Bryant answered. Ahead of him Snowberry was pulling away and he tried to modulate his speed to keep the group together.
“We understand you need to keep secret about it,” the boy said.
“I guess we do,” Bryant said. “How have you been?”
“Quite well, thank you. Do you remember Keir?”
“Never forget a face. Or a rider.”
The boys were quiet, Keir embarrassed or shy. “Are you off on a walk?” Colin finally asked.
Snowberry came to a stop and turned on them, so that Bryant almost fell over him. “Look, kid,” he said. “We’re on a secret mission. We got a big day tomorrow. We’re not running tours. We’re not giving interviews. Comprendo?”
“Gordon,” Bryant said.
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Snowberry said. “I’ll meet you there.” He left.
Colin stood as if struck. Keir edged away, flushed, unable to look up.
“Colin, Sergeant Snowberry’s got a lot on his mind,” Bryant said. He crouched and rubbed his hand in the dirt. It was just his luck that this would have to happen now.
Colin said, “I understand.”
Bryant patted his pockets, but there was no chocolate or gum.
“We don’t want anything, Sergeant,” Colin said. “We don’t want anything.” Keir had already turned and was attempting to drift away.
“Well, what is it?” Bryant found himself asking with some exasperation. “What is it you want from us?”
Colin pulled further away. “We don’t want anything,” he repeated.
Bryant stood, angry with his dirty hands, angry that he was alone and Colin was alone on this lane. “I don’t know what you want from me, you know?” he said. “I’m not your father. I’m not a war hero. I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”
Colin backed toward Keir, who had already started for home in mortification.
“We don’t want anything, Sergeant,” he said. It sounded like a rebuke. “We wanted to wish you luck. We wanted to see you.”
Bryant turned from them and started walking. He turned back. Colin had taken Keir’s hand and was looking back at him. “Why are you out at this time of night?” Bryant shouted. “Isn’t your mother worried? Why isn’t anyone taking care of you?”
The boys remained where they were, holding hands, gazing at him, and were still there when he glanced back once more before the curve of the lane pulled them out of sight behind a hedgerow.
He sat fidgety and uncomfortable at a table near a window in The Hoops while Snowberry drummed tunelessly with his little finger and thumb on the table top. Snowberry had reached Jean, and whatever he had told her, she had agreed to come. Robin was coming as well. Bryant wondered irritably how melodramatic Snowberry had been. Snowberry wasn’t smiling or crooning. He was all business. He’d opened one of his condom packages and was snapping it back and forth between his fingers like a rubber band. He’d gotten them each a beer and they were either too nervous to drink or were waiting for the girls.
Snowberry stopped drumming. He rubbed his eyes with his balled fists and Bryant felt as if he was keeping a younger brother up. Snowberry widened his eyes comically to regain focus and said, “Are you thinking of proposing to Robin?”
Bryant stared at him, and shook his head. “This was your idea.”
Snowberry shrugged. “I just figured,” he said.
The girls arrived forty-five minutes later. The beers remained untouched. Bryant had spent his time musing on the convexity of the surface of the beer in the glass. Snowberry had gazed off toward the bar. Their spirits had deteriorated further.
“How long have you been waiting?” Robin said after they’d crossed to the table. “We were able to get a lift in an officer’s car. Very nice young man, who claimed to be a war correspondent.” She offered her hand and he squeezed it. Jean gave Snowberry a kiss on the cheek and he looked at her morosely.
“Are you keeping up with your drawing?” Robin asked him.
“No,” Snowberry said. To mitigate the rudeness he added, “Are you?”
Robin shook her head. It occurred to Bryant that the girls didn’t have beers, but he was unable for the moment to generate the sociability necessary to volunteer to get more. The two beers sat between them like curios they were jointly examining.
“Is it going to be so very bad tomorrow?” Jean asked.
“No,” Snowberry said. “There’s a lot of big talk, though. Bryant here is excitable. Me, I’ve got no worries.”
Jean appropriated Snowberry’s untouched beer and took a sip.
Robin said, “Is anyone going to offer to buy us drinks?” and Snowberry seemed to come to himself, but instead of rising moved Bryant’s glass in front of her.
“Well,” Robin said quietly, looking between them, and placed her hands on the table.
“What I miss is reading,” Snowberry said. “I used to read a lot.”
Jean agreed. “A number of us have been exchanging books,” she said. “People are reading everything and anything.”
Bryant nodded and no one carried the conversation forward.
“I saw a wonderful bit scratched on the wall of the loo here,” Jean said. “Did I tell you? It said, ‘Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go everywhere.’”
When the boys didn’t laugh, Robin said “Well” again and shifted in her chair, and Bryant understood that what had been anxiety and sympathy was turning into frustration and resentment. He sat up, smiled ruefully for them both. “Well, heck,” he said. “If it is a big deal, we’ll probably all come back officers. That’s the Air Corps. Everyone moves up.”
“That’s right,” Jean said. “I expect you two will be running things before too long. Especially our young Gordon. In two years he has a chance to be quite an officer, that’s my guess.”
Gordon said, “In two years I have a chance to be nineteen.”
They were silent. He rarely mentioned his age; never around the girls.
He added: “Like Billy Conn used to say — I got my whole past ahead of me.”
“Billy Conn,” Bryant explained, “is a boxer Harold Bean’s always talking about.”
“Well,” Robin repeated, this time cheerfully, “I suggest we either all go for a walk, or call it a night. What do you say?”
Bryant was grateful for the idea. He was finding Snowberry oppressive, though he was behaving the same way. And he did feel that this was an opportunity to transmit something of how he felt to Robin.
They walked hand in hand. A few steps ahead Jean stopped to kiss Snowberry, and they passed them.
They sat beside a low stone wall. On the opposite side of the lane a cow gazed at them, scratching its chin in slow strokes on a wire gate. They heard a convoy of fuel bowsers coming from a long way off, and didn’t speak until they had passed. No one driving the trucks understood gear shifting and one by one they rounded the corner and ground noisily up the slight hill.
“What a nice image for things right now,” Robin said. “These cows with their mild eyes watching all this Yank bustle.”
Bryant suggested quietly that she might draw it.
She leaned his head closer with her hand. Her hair smelled of fir needles. “Oh, I’m not much use with lorries and big machines,” she said. “A lot of clank and precious few beautiful lines.”
He imagined her rushing to get dressed, hurrying into the night with almost no notice. “I’m sorry I’ve been jerky,” he said. “Thanks for coming out like this. I guess I’m just scared I’ll let everyone down. Scared I really don’t belong here, that nobody realizes that.”