I pushed the door open just far enough and stepped into the colonel’s office. The room was small and plain and lined with filing cabinets. The colonel’s desk was dead center, with the overhead light shining down onto a small stack of papers between the colonel’s hands. His garrison cap, its silver oak leaf shining, was flattened neatly beside the papers. The colonel’s face was mostly shadowed, with just the tip of his nose glowing in the light.
I stepped smartly to within a foot of the desk, front and center, then saluted and stood at attention. It was the same thing I had done every time I had ever been summoned here.
“Thank you for coming, Private,” the colonel said.
I almost laughed. He had never thanked me for coming before. But now he had thanked me as if we were equals and I had done him a favor. He had thanked me as if I weren’t there because of a direct order that had been wrapped around a threat.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “My pleasure, sir.” I kept my eyes focused on an invisible point just over his head. But I could still see everything he did.
The colonel touched the top of the small stack of papers with his fingertips and pushed the top sheet across the desk toward me.
“I won’t waste your time or mine, soldier,” the colonel said. “This is a statement to the effect that this morning, 5 July 1944, you assisted your friend the corporal in a drunken escapade in which you killed an American bald eagle and then recklessly contributed to the accidental death of a Navy seaman. You are to sign at the bottom. I personally guarantee that you yourself will serve no more than one year in a stateside stockade, after which you’ll receive a dishonorable discharge.”
He placed a fountain pen atop the piece of paper.
I didn’t even try to think. I just stayed at attention with my arms stiff at my sides and my eyes staring at that invisible spot above his head.
“Sir,” I heard myself saying. “I decline to sign that statement on the grounds that signing it may tend to incriminate me.”
I had heard words similar to those just a few hours before. But they wouldn’t be spoken for a few years yet.
The colonel gave a growl. He picked up the pen, pushed across the next piece of paper, and put the pen down on top of it.
“Very well,” he said. “This next statement is to the effect that you weren’t intoxicated at all, but had an altercation with the sailor and committed manslaughter. And the corporal witnessed it.”
“Sir,” I heard myself saying again. “I decline to sign on the grounds that signing may tend to incriminate me.”
The colonel stood, put his hands on the desk, and leaned forward into the light like a Nebraska judge. Now my eyes were focused on the top of his head. He had the same greasy, wormlike hair as the man at the high, long podium in my vision.
“Son, you’d best listen up and listen good,” the colonel snarled. He pushed the remaining three pages onto the first two. “I have five confessions here, each with a slightly different version of what you and the corporal have done. You can sign any one of them. The consequences vary depending upon which one you choose. But if you don’t choose one, then I’ll choose one for you. And you won’t like that. Nor will you like the way things go for you when both my aide and I swear that we witnessed the aftermath of your crimes as well as your signature.”
I heard every word he said, and I knew what each one meant.
But what I said in reply was, “Sir, I decline to sign on the grounds—”
Then I heard the telltale sound of a hammer clicking back, and my eyes broke focus from the top of the colonel’s head. I looked down and saw his .45 service automatic in his hand. It was pointing at my gut.
“Let me put this another way, Private,” he said. His Texas accent slid into a self-satisfied drawl. “You can sign one of these pieces of paper, or I can tell the judge advocate that you went berserk when I confronted you with the evidence. I can tell him that you attacked a much superior officer, namely myself, and that the officer was therefore compelled to defend himself.”
I stared at the muzzle of the .45 for what seemed like a long, long moment. Then I snapped my eyes back up to a point above and behind the colonel’s head.
Maybe I hadn’t seen the future after all. Maybe this was the future, right here. And maybe that was fair.
Maybe this would make me even again.
“Sir,” I said. “I decline to sign. You already know why.”
The colonel gave a disgusted groan. “That’s a damn poor choice, son. But if that’s the way you want it . . . ”
Another hammer clicked.
This one was behind me. It was followed by a thick, hacking, tubercular cough. But that only lasted a second.
Then I heard that smooth, sophisticated voice.
“Speaking of damn poor choices,” Pop said.
I looked down at the colonel again. His eyes were wide, and his face was twitching with mingled fury and fear.
But the fear won. He put his left thumb in front of the .45’s hammer, let it down slowly, and then set the pistol on the stack of confessions.
“Lovely,” Pop said, coming up on my right. He held up a fifth of Johnnie Walker Red with his free hand. God knows where he’d gotten it. “Now, let’s have a drink.”
Pop didn’t even glance at me. He kept his eyes on the colonel, giving him the same thin smile I had been seeing all day. He had a .38 revolver in his right hand and the fifth of Johnnie Walker in his left.
“You can sit back down,” he told the colonel. “But we’ll stand.”
The colonel sat down. He looked up at Pop with a mockery of Pop’s thin smile. It was a repellent sneer.
“A Communist corporal holding a pistol on a lieutenant colonel,” he said. “This is not going to end well for you.”
Pop set the bottle of whiskey beside the stack of confessions. “Nothing ends well for anyone,” he said. He picked up the .45 and dropped it into a small metal wastebasket on the floor beside the desk. “Do you have any glasses? I’d rather not pass the bottle.”
The colonel nodded past my shoulder. “In the bottom drawer of the file cabinet beside the door. But don’t touch my brandy.”
Pop’s eyes didn’t move from him. “Private, would you mind?”
I took a few steps backward, bumped into the filing cabinet, and squatted down to open the drawer. There were two short glasses and a cut-glass bottle of liquor. I took out the glasses, closed the drawer, and brought the glasses to the desk.
“We need three,” Pop said.
I set the glasses down beside the confessions. “I decline to drink,” I said. My mother had asked me to avoid alcohol, too.
Pop still didn’t take his eyes off the colonel, but he grinned. His false teeth didn’t look so bad all of a sudden.
“You’re an amusing young man, Private,” he said.
The colonel crossed his arms. “Neither of you will be very amusing once my aide returns. You’ll both be damned.”
Pop shrugged. “We’re damned anyway. Besides, I happen to know that your aide is at the movies with a nurse of my acquaintance. He’ll be there at least another hour. I believe tonight’s film is They Died with Their Boots On. Which isn’t too surprising, since Olivia de Havilland has been popular here lately. Although the story of Custer’s Last Stand might not be the most tasteful selection for an audience of GI’s.”
The colonel glowered. “If you shoot me, it’ll be heard. There’ll be dozens of men converging on this building before you’re out the door.”
Pop finally looked at me. His eyes were bright, and he laughed out loud.
“Can you believe this joker?” he asked. “Now he’s worried about a shot being heard.”