"Er-yes, sir." Pete's ears heated. He'd wished he might have been Vera's first, but he hadn't been able to imagine he really was. He mumbled, "She never tried to pretend anything different."
"One for her, then," the captain said. "You've got it bad, but you could have it worse."
"All I want to do is make it legal. She does, too."
"I'm sure she does." Longstreet's voice was dry as dust. "The advantages for her are obvious. I'm sure the advantages for you are obvious, too, but they aren't the kind that's got anything to do with what's legal and what isn't."
Pete's ears caught fire again. "Well, sir, what the… dickens am I gonna do?"
"It's not a simple question. First, there's the issue of whether you ought to marry the, mm, the young lady." Captain Longstreet raised a hand. "I know you think so now, but whether you will a year from now may be a different story. Like I said, you aren't the first Marine I've seen in this boat."
"Yes, sir," Pete muttered. As far as he was concerned, whatever Longstreet knew about love he'd got out of books. You could read about bar brawls, too, but reading about them wouldn't tell you what getting into one was like.
"And I hate to have to remind you of it, but you are a Marine on active duty," Longstreet added. "You can't just go marrying somebody, the way you could if you were a couple of civilians back in the States."
"I understand that, sir. That's how come I came to see you."
"Okay. Now we get down to the really hard part. It's not easy for a Marine on active duty to get married. He's supposed to be a Marine first, not a husband first. The country does expect that of him." Longstreet sighed. "And if you reckon it's hard for a Marine to get hitched in a regular way, it's at least five times as hard for him to tie the knot with a stateless person. At least." He spoke with a certain somber satisfaction.
"Tell me what I've got to do. Whatever it is, I'll do it," Pete declared.
To his surprise, the captain smiled. It was a wintry smile, but it was a smile even so. "You sound like a Marine, all right," Longstreet said.
"Sir, I am a Marine, sir!" Pete sprang to his feet and came to rigor mortis-like attention.
"At ease, son," Longstreet told him. "At ease. Sit down. Relax. Take an even strain. This may happen. I won't tell you it's impossible. But it won't be easy, and it won't be quick. If you think it will, you'll burn out your bearings and you won't get anything for it but heartache."
"Tell me what to do," Pete repeated.
"You've done the first thing you needed to do: you've brought it to my attention. Now I'm going to have to talk to the judge advocate. He'll tell me where the mines are, and how you can go about sweeping them." Longstreet must have had a lot of sea duty, to think of mines in the water instead of mines buried under the ground. Well, he wasn't old enough to have gone Over There in 1918.
"When will you talk with him, sir? When will he figure out what needs doing?" Pete was all eagerness.
It was his life, of course. It was only Ralph Longstreet's job, and a small, annoying part of his job at that. "I see Herb every day, of course," he answered. "I'll fill him in on what's troubling you, and after that it's in his hands. He may have to talk with some other people, too."
Pete had thought-had hoped-this might be a matter of days. Now he saw all too plainly that it would be weeks or months if not the threatened year. His shoulders lost the iron brace they'd kept even while he sat in the hard wooden chair in front of Longstreet's desk. "Well, thanks for starting things, anyway, sir."
"You did that," the officer said. "And if you're still as ready to go through with it by the time we're all done as you are now, I'd say your chances with this girl will be a lot better than they are today." He picked up the fountain pen. "Anything else on your mind as long as you're here?"
"Uh, no, sir."
"Okay. Dismissed." Longstreet went back to work. Pete stood up, saluted, and left the captain's office. He wondered if he'd done himself and Vera more harm than good. WILLI DERNEN DIDN'T KNOW where the hell he was. Somewhere in France-somewhere between where he had been and the border with the Low Countries. He couldn't smell Paris, couldn't taste victory, any more. All he smelled was trouble.
He shivered under his summer-weight tunic. It was cold as a witch's tit. If the winter was as bad as it gave signs of being, it'd freeze his balls off. His breath smoked. That was bad. An alert enemy soldier could spot the fog puffs rising into the chilly air and lie in wait to pot the poor bastard who was making them. But he didn't know what he could do about it. Stop breathing? No, thanks!
A gray-haired French peasant watching sheep in a meadow stared at him with no expression at all. Chances were the fellow'd gone through the mill in the last war. Would he sneak off to tell the poilus where the Germans were? He might.
The froggies had been polite, even friendly, while the Wehrmacht had the bit between its teeth. And why not? They'd figured they would stay German a long time, the way they had after 1914. Now they were wondering. That would mean more trouble down the line, sure as hell it would.
Something else moved. Willi's scope-sighted rifle swung that way as if it had a life of its own. But it wasn't a poilu. It was Corporal Baatz coming out of the bushes. Reluctantly, Willi lowered the rifle's muzzle. Tempting as it was, he couldn't go and plug Awful Arno. He didn't suppose he could, anyhow. The unloved corporal was his lord and master again. He'd been reattached to his old unit within hours after Oberfeldwebel Puttkamer got his head blown off. He was still surprised they hadn't made him turn in the fancy Mauser. Somebody'd slipped up there.
Baatz saw him, too, and waved. He didn't raise his hand too high. You never could tell what would draw a sniper's eye. Willi wondered what had happened to the goddamn Czech with the antipanzer rifle. He was probably still busy nailing Germans. Puttkamer wasn't around to quarrel with him any more, that was for sure.
"Wie geht's?" Awful Arno asked.
Willi shrugged. "I'm still here. If I get hungry, I'll shoot me a sheep." He paused, considering. Hell with it, he thought, and went on, "War's pretty goddamn fucked up, though, isn't it?"
He might have known Baatz wouldn't admit what was as plain as the nose on his piggy face. "You can't talk like that," the noncom insisted.
"Why the hell not?" Willi said. "It's true, isn't it?"
"It's disloyal, that's what it is," Baatz answered. "I knew the Gestapo guys knew what they were doing when they started sniffing around you and your asshole buddy Storch."
And they had, too. All the same, Willi said, "Oh, fuck off, man. If you can't tell we screwed the pooch, you're too dumb to go on living."
Awful Arno turned red. "Watch your big mouth, before you open it so wide you fall in and disappear. You keep going on like that, I'll report you-so help me God I will."
"Go ahead," Willi said wearily. "Maybe you'll get me yanked out of the line. If you do, I'll be better off than you are."
That only made Baatz madder. "You don't know what the devil you're talking about. Wait till they chuck you into Dachau. You'll wish you only had machine guns to worry about."
The blackshirts had said the same thing. Willi wasn't about to take it from Awful Arno. "Give me a break. If telling the truth is disloyal, then I guess I am. Jesus Christ, the war is screwed up. Even a blind man can see it. Even you should be able to."
"You're not just talking about the war," Baatz said. "You're talking about how we're fighting it. And if you say that's gone wrong, you're saying the Fuhrer's leadership isn't everything it ought to be."
"Yeah? And so? He's the Fuhrer. He's not God, for crying out loud. When he takes a crap, angels don't fall out of his asshole," Willi said.
Awful Arno's eyes widened. He looked like an uncommonly sheltered child hearing about the facts of life for the first time. "He's the Fuhrer," he said, on a note as different from Willi as could be.