“Don't talk about it. You and me both, we'll lean all over each other,” I told her.
We slept for a while and once I remember telling her about my being a physical instructor in World War II, volunteering for Korea because I wanted to see action... told her about the Korea I knew, before the Chinese came in, before the great battles and retreats. Somehow, it was good to get it all off my chest, tell her about the leveled villages—villages which hadn't been much to start with—the burned and frozen bodies, about the almost naked people facing the fierce winter, living in caves like animals. How you saw an entire area burned black by a jelly-gasoline bomb, and American boys splattered over a rice paddy.
I tried to explain what it felt like to be surrounded on all sides by people hating you—the very people we were fighting for—without them ever asking us in. Like in all wars, it was the civilians who got the worst deal. I managed to even tell her about the time I was on the side of... of... that hill, the rice paddies below us laid out so neat, like a draftsman had cut up the ground. And then these people came struggling along the road toward us, blurry figures in white.
I was scared stiff they were infiltrating guerillas... we'd been told again and again not to take any chances.... I yelled at them.... Maybe I didn't yell loud enough, maybe they didn't hear me... and in any case they couldn't understand me. Finally I opened up with the sub-machine gun. Later, when we advanced, I passed them... two old women, a very old man with a feathery white beard and a crazy square black formal hat, and a couple of kids, a boy and a girl not over ten or eleven. I stared at their dead bullet-torn bodies and my insides turned over.
I kept thinking: I've shot down women and kids! Maybe the air boys never saw what their bombs did, but this was what I'd done. I kept brooding about it, told myself it was all an accident... but I kept seeing those dead bodies. Fighting was one thing, but kids and women.... Afterwards, when we dug in, I blacked out and three days later I came to in a Tokyo hospital, started to run the fever that puzzled the hell out of the docs—till finally the bug showed up in my sputum.
I told Mady about the doc telling me we all have the germ in us, I'd probably picked it up before the army, but under the strain of combat, the bug had eaten into my lung. She wept as I talked and I didn't tell her what the psychiatrist said at the VA hospital in the States... that I'd willed the sickness—any sickness—on myself to get out of battle. Battle was a story-book word to him, an army-manual expression—he didn't know it meant killing women and kids. I didn't tell Mady about this because I wasn't sure I really believed it myself.
It was nearly three when we got up, drank a lot of milk and ate cookies, took a shower together, like kids, and I said, “Mady, you're so tall and beautiful.”
“I'm tall, but not really pretty.”
“You are to me.”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly, you're the most beautiful girl in the world to me,” I told her and we kissed under the stream of water, and then as we were drying each other with rough towels she turned my head and I saw the two of us in the bathroom mirror and she laughed, “Matt, did you ever see a homelier couple!”
“Never! That's why we each think the other is so good-looking.”
“Matt, you are... well, beautiful.” .
I burst out laughing and she said, “I mean it, you're a lot of man. Where did you get that build... those wonderful impossible shoulders?”
“I'm soft now. Should have seen me before.”
“You're lean and hard and big... like a fighter. When I was a kid I stole a picture of Max Baer from my brother Pete... was mad about his muscles.”
“I used to be a pug. Pops stopped all that. Tell you about him some day.”
“Your father?”
“Naw. I don't remember my folks. Pops was a funny old bum. Let's skip the talk... the crackers and milk didn't do a thing for me. I'm hungry enough to eat this towel.”
“But I do love your body. I'd like to take a picture of you in the nude—just as you are now.”
I laughed and kissed her. She was a wonderful kid. I said, “That's a very womanly idea,” and she laughed till she cried.... Happy warm laughter and the warmth went deep inside me. For the first time in a year I felt at ease... happy.
Mady cooked a light snack as I dressed. I took one of my pills—and my pulse and heartbeat were steady and normal, despite all the excitement I'd been through with Mady. After we ate I told her I was going into town and she asked, “Why?”
“I'm getting curious about... things. That's a good sign for me. I used to make big dough as a private dick, maybe I'll make it again. We need money.”
“I have to find a job. I'll look this afternoon while...”
“Forget that.”
“Why?” Mady asked, her eyes two warning signals.
I kissed her. “Okay, honey, you go out and be womanly and work yourself, to the bone, if you wish.” I glanced at my watch. “I'll be back about five.”
“If I'm not home, you'll know I'm out job-hunting. What do you want for supper?”
“Steak.” I put ten bucks on the table. “A big thick juicy steak... if ten bucks will buy one these days.”
We kissed again and I left and there was a bus nearing the corner and without thinking I sprinted toward it... and scared hell out of myself. But after I stopped puffing and huffing, I seemed okay.
I dropped in to see Max. He looked worried, had for—gotten to shave half his chin. I asked, “What's cooking? You look bad—developing a conscience?”
“A what? Where'd you get the shiner?”
“Forget that. Wilson murders troubling you?”
He picked at his teeth with a fingernail, said over his fingers, “That's history. My kids have a cold, kept me up all night with their coughing. Why, the Wilson case worrying you?”
“Not exactly, but Saxton gets in my hair lately. I'm living with his girl.”
Max stared at me for a thoughtful moment, laughed, slapped me that double pat on the back. “I knew you'd snap back. Now you're talking like the old Matt. Saw this Madeline when we questioned her, looks like...”
“Never mind what she looks like, this is serious with me.”
Max raised his heavy eyebrows. “Quick work, love at...”
“Forget my romance. What about Saxton?”
“Look, Matt, you've been a cop long enough to know we don't go looking for extra work. There's things about the Wilson job that might be re-examined—what case doesn't have bugs? But then it was a clean case, solved fast, looks good in the papers, on my record. And nobody hurt. That's the picture.”
“You're getting old, Max.”
He fidgeted around in his chair. “I'm not in love with Saxton's girl.”
“That's it?”
Max sighed. “Hell, Matt, I've no reason to go off on a goose chase.”
“You know that suicide in the cabin was phony. Wilson hadn't lived there—the water was off.”