Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker leaned out the window.
"Corporal McCoy!" he bellowed.
McCoy looked around for him.
"Hold it right there. Corporal McCoy!"
He sat down again and, as quickly as he could, signed the rest of the forms. Then he stood up and went in the outer office.
"I'm going," he said.
"You going to see the colonel first?" Doan asked.
"I have an appointment with the colonel at oh-eight-thirty the day after tomorrow. Whatever's on his mind will have to wait until then."
"You coming back?" Doan asked.
"No. Have the motor pool fetch the truck," Stecker ordered.
"Is there anything else I can do for you?" Doan asked.
"Not a goddamned thing, Corporal Doan," Stecker snapped. "Not a goddamned thing."
He glowered at him a moment, and then added: "But I'll tell you this, Doan. I told the colonel that it was possible that under all your baby fat, there just might be a Marine, and that he could probably do worse than making you a sergeant. You're on orders as of 1 September. Try, at least, to act like a sergeant, Doan."
Now why the hell did I tell him? It was supposed to be a surprise.
"What do I tell anybody who calls?" Doan asked.
The fat little fucker is so surprised at the promotion that he looks like he might bawl. Hell of a thing for a Marine sergeant to be doing.
"Tell them to take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut," Stecker said and, pleased with himself, marched out of the office."
He walked up to Corporal McCoy, where he was waiting by his LaSalle.
"I have a black Packard Phaeton machine. Corporal McCoy." he said, and pointed to it. "You will get in your machine and follow me."
"Where we going?"
"Wherever the hell I decide to take you," Stecker said.
McCoy followed him six blocks, ending up at the rear of the red-brick single-story building that housed the provost marshal's office. Next to it was an area enclosed by an eight-foot-high cyclone fence, topped with barbed wire. Every ten feet along its length was a red sign reading. MILITARY POLICE IMPOUNDING AREA OFF LIMITS. Inside a fence were a dozen vehicles, mostly civilian, but with several Marine Corps trucks mingled among them.
There was no one near the gate to the fenced-in area, so Stecker blew his horn, a steady ten-second blast, and then another. He saw that he had attracted the attention of the people in the provost marshal's building. His Packard was as well known as his pickup truck.
He motioned for Corporal McCoy to get out of his LaSalle and come to the Packard.
A minute later, the provost sergeant came out of the building and walked quickly over to him.
"What can I do for you, Gunny?" he asked.
"This is Corporal McCoy," Stecker said. "After you register his car and issue him a sticker for it, he will place his vehicle in the Impound Yard. From time to time, he will require access to his vehicle, to run the engine, for example. Therefore, you will put him on the list of people who are authorized access to the Impound Yard. Any questions?"
"Whatever you say, Gunny," the provost sergeant said. "Can he take the car out if wants?"
"It's his car," Stecker said. He turned to McCoy. "I think that's all the business we have, McCoy," he said.
"Thanks, Gunny," McCoy said.
"In the future, McCoy, be very careful when you tell somebody you don't think much of officers or that you have doubts about being one yourself. You just might run into some chickenshit sonofabitch with bars on his collar who will take offense."
"I will," McCoy said. "Thanks again, Gunny."
"It would be a damned shame to have a good-looking machine like your LaSalle fucked up," Stecker said, and got behind the wheel of his Packard and drove home.
(Three)
Elly was home. Her Ford was in the drive. He wondered why she asked him to come home early. Probably because she knew him well enough to worry that otherwise he would head for the NCO Club, establish himself at the bar reserved for senior noncoms, and start drinking hard liquor. She knew him well enough, too, not to call the office and order him home, or call the office and start whining and begging for him to come home. What she'd said was that "if he could come that would be nice."
So he was home. That was nice.
The sign (MASTER GUNNERY SERGEANT J. STECKER, USMC) was still on the lawn, equidistant between the driveway and the walkway, as housing regulations required, a precise four feet off the sidewalk. He wouldn't need that sign anymore; there'd be a new sign on the new quarters. He would have to remember to take this one down first thing in the morning. Or maybe, so that he wouldn't forget it, after dark tonight.
He entered the small brick house (the new quarters would be just a little bigger, now that the boys were gone and they didn't need the room) by the kitchen door, opened the icebox and helped himself to a beer.
"I'm home," he called.
"I'm in the bedroom," Elly called.
He went into the living room and turned on the radio.
Jesus Christ, it's been a long time since I came home and she made that kind of announcement. But all she meant by it, obviously, was that she happened to be in the bedroom. That was all.
She came into the living room.
"Where were you, Jack?" Elly asked.
"What do you mean, 'where was I'?" he asked.
"Doan came by," she said. "He said you walked off without your orders, and he thought you might need them. He said you told him you were going home."
She had the orders in her hand. She extended them to him.
"I've read them," he said. "I know what they say."
She shrugged.
"It was nice of Doan, I thought," Elly said. "He told me you got him sergeant's stripes. That was nice of you, Jack."
"So you called the NCO Club and asked for me, and I wasn't there, right?" he said, unpleasantly.
"You know better than that, Jack," Elly said, and he knew he'd hurt her.
"A kid came into the office," Jack Stecker said. "A China Marine, a corporal."
"Oh?"
"He worked for Ed Banning over there," Stecker went on. "Banning got him sent to the Platoon Leader's Course."
"And he came in to say hello for Ed Banning?"
"He came in because he's got a LaSalle convertible machine, and the kids in the Platoon Leader Program aren't supposed to have cars with them, and the provost marshal wouldn't give him a post sticker for it."
"Oh," she said.
"At first, I thought he reminded me of Jack," Stecker said. "Nice kid. Good-looking. Smart. But then I realized that he reminded me of me."
"Good looking and smart?" she teased.
"Like I was when I was a corporal," he said.
"I remember when you were a corporal," she said.
"He doesn't want to be an officer," Stecker said. "At least not very much."
"Neither did you," she said. "They would have sent you to Annapolis, if you had wanted to go."
"1 wanted to get married," he said.
"You didn't want to be an officer," she said.
"I still don't, Elly," he said.
She started to say something, then changed her mind.
"Could you help him about his car?" she asked.
"I fixed it so he could leave it in the MP impounding area," he said. "That's where I was."
"I knew if you could come home early, you would," Elly said.
"Why did you want me to?" he asked.
"I bought you a present," she said. "I was afraid it wouldn't come in time, but it did, and I wanted to give it to you."
"What kind of a present?" he asked. "You keep this up, there won't be anything left in the retirement fund."
"Come in the bedroom, and I'll give it to you," Elly said.
"You give me a present in the bedroom, and I'll come home early all the time," he said.
Elly ignored him and walked toward the bedroom.
He got up, put his beer bottle down, turned the radio off, and walked into their bedroom.