Michael thought for a moment. "Miss Margaret Freemantle," he said, "26 West 10th Street, New York City. It's just what she needs for her bed table."
While the Chaplain scratched away in his notebook, Michael thought of Margaret receiving the photograph and the note from the Chaplain in the quiet, pleasant street in New York. Maybe now, he thought, she'll write… Although what she'll have to say to me, and what I might possibly answer, I certainly don't know. Love, from France, a million years later. Signed, Your interchangeable lover, Michael Whitacre, Army Speciality Number 745, from the grave of Pierre Sorel, ne 1921, mort 1940, in the rain. Having a wonderful time, wish you were…
They got into the jeep again and the Chaplain drove carefully along the narrow, high-backed, slippery road with the marks of tank treads and a million heavy army wheels on it.
"Vermont," the Chaplain said pleasantly to Noah, "that's a pretty quiet section of the country for a young feller, isn't it?"
"I'm not going to live there," Noah said, "after the war. I'm going to move to Iowa."
"Why don't you come to Texas?" the Chaplain said hospitably. "Room for a man to breathe there. You got folks in Iowa?"
"You might say that," Noah nodded. "A buddy of mine. Boy by the name of Johnny Burnecker. His mother's found a house we can have for forty dollars a month, and his uncle owns a newspaper and he's going to take me on when I get back. It's all arranged."
"Newspaperman, eh?" the Chaplain nodded sagely. "That's the lively life. Rolling in money, too."
"Not this newspaper, " Noah said. "It comes out once a week. It has a circulation of 8, 200."
"Well, it's a start," said the Chaplain agreeably. "A springboard to bigger things in the city."
"I don't want a springboard," said Noah quietly. "I don't want to live in a city. I haven't any ambition. I just want to sit in a small town in Iowa for the rest of my life, with my wife and my son, and my friend, Johnny Burnecker. When I get the itch to travel, I'll walk down to the post office."
"Oh, you'll get tired of it," the Chaplain said. "Now that you've seen the world, a small town will seem pretty dull."
"No, I won't," said Noah, very firmly, working the manual wiper with a decisive flick of his arm. "I won't ever get tired of it."
"Well, you're different from me, then." The Chaplain laughed. "I come from a small town and I'm tired in advance. Though, to tell you the truth, I don't think I'll have anybody much waiting for me at home." He chuckled sympathetically to himself. "I have no children, and my wife said, when the war began, and I felt I had the call to join up, 'Ashton,' she said, 'you have got to make your choice, it is either the Corps of Chaplains or your wife. I am not going to sit home by myself for five years, thinking of you travelling around the world, loose as a humming-bird, picking up with God knows what kind of women. Ashton,' she said, 'you don't fool me not for a minute.' I told her she was unreasonable, but she's a stubborn woman. The day I come home I bet she starts proceedings for a divorce. I had quite a decision to make, I can tell you that. Oh, well," he sighed philosophically, "it hasn't been so bad. There's a very nice little nurse in the 12th General, and I have managed to assuage my sorrows." He grinned. "Between my nurse and my photography, I find I hardly think of my wife at all. As long as I have a woman to soothe me in my hours of despair, and enough film to take my pictures, I can face whatever comes…"
"Where do you get all that film?" Michael asked, thinking of the thousand pictures for the album, and knowing how difficult it was to get even one roll a month out of any PX.
The Chaplain made a sly face and put his finger along his nose. "I had some trouble for a while, but I have it taped now, as our English friends say. Oh, yes, it's taped now. It's the best film in the world. When the boys come in from their missions, I get the Engineering Officer of the Group to let me clip off the unexposed ends in the gun cameras. You'd be surprised how much film you can accumulate that way. The last Engineering Officer was beginning to get very stuffy about it, and he was on the verge of complaining to the Colonel that I was stealing government property, and I couldn't make him see the light…" The Chaplain smiled reflectively. "But I have no trouble any more," he said.
"How did it work out?" Michael asked.
"The Engineering Officer went on a mission. He was a good flier, oh, he was a crackerjack flier," the Chaplain said enthusiastically, "and he shot down a Messerschmitt, and when he came back to the field he buzzed the radio tower to celebrate. Well, the poor boy miscalculated by two feet, and we had to sweep him together from all four quarters of the field. I tell you, I gave that boy one of the best funerals anybody has ever had from the Corps of Chaplains in the Army of the United States. A real, full-sized, eloquent funeral…" The Chaplain grinned slyly. "Now I get all the film I want," he said.
Michael blinked, wondering if the Chaplain had been drinking, but he drove the jeep with easy competence, as sober as a judge. The Army, Michael thought dazedly, everybody makes his own arrangements with it…
A figure stepped out from under the protection of a tree and waved to them, and the Chaplain slowed to a halt. An Air Force Lieutenant was standing there, wet, dressed in a Navy jacket, carrying one of those machine-pistols with a collapsible stock.
"Going to Rheims?" the Lieutenant asked.
"Hop in, Boy," said the Chaplain heartily, "get right on in there at the back. The Chaplain's jeep stops for everybody on all roads."
The Lieutenant climbed in beside Michael and the jeep rolled on through the thick rain. Michael looked sidelong at the Lieutenant. He was very young, and he moved slowly and wearily, and his clothes didn't fit him. The Lieutenant noticed that Michael was staring at him.
"I bet you wonder what I'm doing here," the Lieutenant said.
"Oh, no," said Michael hastily, not wishing to get into that conversational department. "Not at all."
"I'm having a hell of a time," the Lieutenant said, "trying to locate my glider group."
Michael wondered how you could lose a whole group of gliders, especially on the ground, but he didn't inquire further.
"I was on the Arnhem thing," the Lieutenant said, "and I was shot down inside the German lines in Holland."
"What happened?" Michael asked. Somehow it was hard to imagine this pale, gentle-faced boy being shot down out of a glider behind the enemy lines.
"It's the third mission I've been on," the Lieutenant said.
"The Sicily drop, the Normandy drop and this one. They promised us it would be our last one." He grinned weakly. "As far as I'm concerned, they were damn near right." He shrugged.
"Though I don't believe them. They'll have us dropping into Japan before it's over." He shivered in his wet, outsize clothes.
"I'm not eager," he said, "I'm far from eager. I used to think I was one hell of a brave, hundred-mission pilot, but I'm not. The first time I saw flak off my wing, I couldn't bear to watch. I turned my head away and flew by touch, and I told myself, "Francis O'Brien, you are not a fighting man."
They drove in silence for a long time between the vineyards and the signs of old wars in the grey rain.
"Lieutenant O'Brien," Michael said, fascinated by the pale, gentle boy, "you don't have to tell me if you don't want, but how did you get out of Holland?"
"I don't mind telling," said O'Brien. "The right wing was tearing away and I signalled the tow plane I was breaking off. I came down in a field, pretty hard, and by the time I got out of the glider all the men I was carrying had scattered, because there was machine-gun fire coming in at us from a bunch of farmhouses about a thousand yards away. I ran as far as I could and I took off my wings and threw them away, because people're liable to get very mad at the Air Force when they catch them. You know, all the bombing, all the mistakes, all the civilians that get killed by accident, it doesn't do any good to be caught with wings. I laid in a ditch for three days, and then a farmer came up and gave me something to eat. That night he led me through the lines to a British reconnaissance outfit. They sent me back and I got a ride on an American destroyer. That's where I got this jacket. The destroyer mooched around all over the Channel for two weeks. Lord, I've never been so sick in my life. Finally they landed me at Southampton, and I hitched a ride to where I'd left my Group. But they'd pulled out a week before, they'd come to France. They'd reported me missing, and God knows what my mother was going through, and all my things'd been sent back to the States. Nobody was much interested in giving me orders. A glider pilot seems to be a big nuisance to everybody when there's no drop scheduled, and nobody seemed to have the authority to pay me or issue me orders or anything, and nobody gave a damn." O'Brien chuckled softly, without malice. "I heard the Group was over here, near Rheims, so I hitched a ride back to Cherbourg in a Liberty ship that was carrying ammunition and ten-in-one rations. I took two days off in Paris, on my own, except that a Second Lieutenant who hasn't been paid for a couple of months might as well be dead as be in Paris, and here I am…"