struck up the sergeant in his mellow voice.
The front room of the café was full of soldiers. Their khaki hid the worn oak benches and the edges of the square tables and the red tiles of the floor. They clustered round the tables, where glasses and bottles gleamed vaguely through the tobacco smoke. They stood in front of the bar, drinking out of bottles, laughing, scraping their feet on the floor. A stout girl with red cheeks and plump white arms moved contentedly among them, carrying away empty bottles, bringing back full ones, taking the money to a grim old woman with a grey face and eyes like bits of jet, who stared carefully at each coin, fingered it with her grey hands and dropped it reluctantly into the cash drawer. In the corner sat Sergeant Olster with a flush on his face, and the corporal who had been on the Red Sox outfield and another sergeant, a big man with black hair and a black mustache. About them clustered, with approbation and respect in their faces, Fuselli, Bill Grey and Meadville the cowboy, and Earl Williams, the blue-eyed and yellow-haired drug-clerk.
They pounded their bottles on the table in time to the song.
“It’s a good job,” the top sergeant said, suddenly interrupting the song. “You needn’t worry about that, fellers. I saw to it that we got a good job… And about getting to the front, you needn’t worry about that. We’ll all get to the front soon enough Tell me this war is going to last ten years.”
“I guess we’ll all be generals by that time, eh, Sarge?” said Williams. “But, man, I wish I was back slingin’ soda water.”
“It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,” murmured Fuselli automatically.
“But I’m beginnin’ to weaken,” said Williams. “Man, I’m homesick. I don’t care who knows it. I wish I could get to the front and be done with it.”
“Say, have a heart. You need a drink,” said the top sergeant, banging his fist on the table. “Say, mamselle, mame shows, mame shows!”
“I didn’t know you could talk French, Sarge,” said Fuselli.
“French, hell!” said the top sergeant. “Williams is the boy can talk French.”
“Voulay vous couchay aveck moy… That’s all I know.”
Everybody laughed.
“Hey, mamzelle,” cried the top sergeant. “Voulay vous couchay aveck moy? We, We, champagne.” Everybody laughed, unroariously.
The girl slapped his head good-naturedly.
At that moment a man stamped noisily into the café, a tall broad-shouldered man in a loose English tunic, who had a swinging swagger that made the glasses ring on all the tables. He was humming under his breath and there was a grin on his broad red face. He went up to the girl and pretended to kiss her, and she laughed and talked familiarly with him in French.
“There’s wild Dan Cohen,” said the dark-haired sergeant. “Say, Dan, Dan.”
“Here, yer honor.”
“Come over and have a drink. We’re going to have some fizzy.”
“Never known to refuse.”
They made room for him on the bench.
“Well, I’m confined to barracks,” said Dan Cohen. “Look at me!” He laughed and gave his head a curious swift jerk to one side. “Compree?”
“Ain’t ye scared they’ll nab you?” said Fuselli.
“Nab me, hell, they can’t do nothin’ to me. I’ve had three court-martials already and they’re gettin’ a fourth up on me.” Dan Cohen pushed his head to one side and laughed. “I got a friend. My old boss is captain, and he’s goin’ to fix it up. I used to alley around politics chez moy. Compree?”
The champagne came and Dan Cohen popped the cork up to the ceiling with dexterous red fingers.
“I was just wondering who was going to give me a drink,” he said. “Ain’t had any pay since Christ was a corporal. I’ve forgotten what it looks like.”
The champagne fizzed into the beer-glasses.
“This is the life,” said Fuselli.
“Ye’re damn right, buddy, if ye’re don’t let them ride yer,” said Dan.
“What they got yer up for now, Dan?”
“Murder.”
“Murder, hell! How’s that?”
“That is, if that bloke dies.”
“The hell you say!”
“It all started by that goddam convoy down from Nantes… Bill Rees an’ me… They called us the stock troops.-Hy! Marie! Ancore champagne, beaucoup.-I was in the Ambulance service then. God knows what rotten service I’m in now… Our section was on repo and they sent some of us fellers down to Nantes to fetch a convoy of cars back to Sandrecourt. We started out like regular racers, just the chassis, savey? Bill Rees an’ me was the goddam tail of the peerade. An’ the loot was a hell of a blockhead that didn’t know if he was coming or going.”
“Where the hell’s Nantes?” asked the top sergeant, as if it had just slipped his mind.
“On the coast,” answered Fuselli. “I seen it on the map.”
“Nantes’s way off to hell and gone anyway,” said wild Dan Cohen, taking a gulp of champagne that he held in his mouth a moment, making his mouth move like a cow ruminating.
“An’ as Bill Rees an’ me was the tail of the peerade an’ there was lots of cafés and little gin-mills, Bill Rees an’ me’ld stop off every now and then to have a little drink an’ say ‘Bonjour’ to the girls an’ talk to the people, an’ then we’d go like a bat out of hell to catch up. Well, I don’t know if we went too fast for ’em or if they lost the road or what, but we never saw that goddam convoy from the time we went out of Nantes. Then we thought we might as well see a bit of the country, compree?… An’ we did, goddam it… We landed up in Orleans, soused to the gills and without any gas an’ with an M. P. climbing up on the dashboard.”
“Did they nab you, then?”
“Not a bit of it,” said wild Dan Cohen, jerking his head to one side. “They gave us gas and commutation of rations an’ told us to go on in the mornin’. You see we put up a good line of talk, compree?… Well, we went to the swankiest restaurant… You see we had on those bloody British uniforms they gave us when the O. D. gave out, an’ the M. P.’s didn’t know just what sort o’ birds we were. So we went and ordered up a regular meal an’ lots o’ vin rouge an’ vin blank an’ drank a few cognacs an’ before we knew it we were eating dinner with two captains and a sergeant. One o’ the captains was the drunkest man I ever did see… Good kid! We all had dinner and Bill Rees says, ‘Let’s go for a joy-ride.’ An’ the captains says, ‘Fine,’ and the sergeant would have said, ‘Fine,’ but he was so goggle-eyed drunk he couldn’t. An’ we started off!… Say, fellers, I’m dry as hell. Let’s order up another bottle.”
“Sure,” said everyone.
“Encore champagne, Marie, gentille!”
“Well,” he went on, “we went like a bat out of hell along a good state road, and it was all fine until one of the captains thought we ought to have a race. We did… Compree? The flivvers flivved all right, but the hell of it was we got so excited about the race we forgot about the sergeant an’ he fell off an’ nobody missed him. An’ at last we all pull up before a gin-mill an’ one captain says, ‘Where’s the sergeant?’ an’ the other captain says there hadn’t been no sergeant. An’ we all had a drink on that. An’ one captain kept sayin’, ‘It’s all imagination. Never was a sergeant. I wouldn’t associate with a sergeant, would I, lootenant?’ He kept on calling me lootenant… Well that was how they got this new charge against me. Somebody picked up the sergeant an’ he got concussion o’ the brain an’ there’s hell to pay, an’ if the poor beggar croaks, I’m it… Compree? About that time the captains start wantin’ to go to Paris, an’ we said we’d take ’em, an’ so we put all the gas in my car an’ the four of us climbed on that goddam chassis an’ off we went like a bat out of hell! It’ld all have been fine if I wasn’t lookin’ cross-eyed. We piled up in about two minutes on one of those nice little stone piles an’ there we were. We all got up an’ one o’ the captains had his arm broke, an’ there was hell to pay, worse than losing the sergeant. So we walked on down the road. I don’t know how it got to be daylight. But we got to some hell of a town or other an’ there was two M. P.’s all ready to meet us, Compree?… Well, we didn’t mess around with them captains. We just lit off down a side street an’ got into a little café an’ went in back an’ had a hell of a lot o’ café o’ lay. That made us feel sort o’ good an’ I says to Bill, ‘Bill, we’ve got to get to headquarters an’ tell ’em that we accidentally smashed up our car, before the M. P.’s get busy.’ An’ he says, ‘You’re goddamed right,’ an’ at that minute I sees an M. P. through a crack in the door comin’ into the café. We lit out into the garden and made for the wall. We got over that, although we left a good piece of my pants in the broken glass. But the hell of it was the M. P.’s got over too an’ they had their pop-guns out. An’ the last I saw of Bill Rees was-there was a big fat woman in a pink dress washing clothes in a big tub, an’ poor ole Bill Rees runs head on into her an’ over they both goes into the washtub. The M. P.’s got him all right. That’s how I got away. An’ the last I saw of Bill Rees he was squirming about on top of the washtub like he was swimmin’, an’ the fat woman was sittin’ on the ground shaking her fist at him. Bill Rees was the best buddy I ever had.”