It had been years since I’d thought of all that but the memory could still make me wince. Bring on that drink, I thought.
Inside the Officer’s Club some attempt had been made to disguise the raw functionalism of the structure, but to no avail. The curtains on the windows, the artificial potted plants scattered about, the Japanese screens used as room dividers, all managed to make the place look merely like an impoverished touring company of “Teahouse of the August Moon.” A goodly number of officers, most of them young and moustached and looking almost exactly like Max Nolan, sat at the bar or at formica-top tables across the way. A dining room was beyond this area, impossible to see through a labyrinth of Japanese screens.
And now, inside the Officer’s Club, Eddie Troyn all at once blossomed into a completely new man. The silent, rigid, humorless military pastiche I was used to altered into what he had surely been before his fall from grace; a benign authority figure, crisp and assured, almost graceful. It was amazing to watch.
Eddie had been coming to this base no more than a week, but half a dozen of the younger officers at the bar hailed him as an old-time comrade. “It’s Captain Robinson!’’ one of them called out, in respectful delight, and they all made room for him at the bar.
“Afternoon, boys,” Eddie said, reserved but genial. “This is Lieutenant Smith.”
“Call me Harry,” I said, because I knew if I was called Lieutenant Smith I’d never think to answer.
The bartender, a big, heavy man with meaty shoulders, had come over at once to lean toward Eddie and listen respectfully to his order. “My usual, Jack,” Eddie told him. “And the same for Lieutenant Smith.”
“Yessir, Captain.”
One of the officers said, “How’s the count coming, sir?”
“So far,” Eddie answered, with mock sternness, “you boys seem to have lost three tanks and a quonset hut.”
They were delighted. As our drinks were brought-Eddie’s ‘usual’ turned out to be bourbon and water-the officers tried to top one another with suggestions about what had been done with the missing tanks and hut. One said the tanks had been stolen by gypsies, painted different colors, and used as wagons. One said the hut had been sent to New York City where it had become a four-story apartment building. Another said no, it was the tanks that had been sent to New York City and converted into five room apartments, while the hut had been floated across the Atlantic to Africa where it was about to become an independent nation. Another said, “Right. They’re calling it Pattonagonia,” and everybody groaned.
We spent an hour at the bar with the young officers, in a general aura of coltish hilarity. Most of the chatter came from the young men, who in an easygoing way were vying with one another for Eddie’s attention and approval, but Eddie too had his occasional small quips, most of them of a mildly right-wing nature. The young officers hung on his every word, whooping with laughter and clapping one another on the back at his little punch lines, while he stood swirling his drink, the small smile of the accomplished raconteur tugging gently at his lips.
Eddie was so good at this easygoing paternalism, this enjoying of an informal chat with the boys after duty hours, that I could see he was absolutely wasted in prison. I still don’t know what crime he’d been sentenced for, but surely society was losing too much in refusing to permit him to be himself.
As for me, I kept quiet, smiled when everybody else laughed, pulled steadily at my bourbon and water, and kept listening for clues as to just who the hell Eddie and I were supposed to be. The general impression Eddie had apparently given was that he was here on some sort of accounting or inventory mission outside the normal sequence of such events, possibly from the Inspector General’s office, or maybe even from Army Intelligence. The story seemed to be concrete enough to satisfy idle curiosity, vague enough so he couldn’t be pinned down or contradicted on details, and broad enough to justify his turning up almost anywhere he wanted on the base.
My own role was dealt with in a sentence: “Lieutenant Smith is here from DomBac to help finish up,” Eddie said, and of course the natural response to that was for the young men to fasten on the phrase ‘finish up,’ and to ask just how soon their friend Captain Robinson would be leaving, thus ending curiosity about me for good and all.
“Possibly by the end of the week,” Eddie told them, “or, with Lieutenant Smith here, it could be even sooner.”
One of them, grinning, said, “You’ll be giving us a clean bill of health, Captain?”
“Considering the number of WAC uniform skirts that are missing,” Eddie answered, “not to mention female unmentionables, I’m not entirely sure every one of you boys could be considered completely healthy.”
How they laughed over that, punching and poking one another. There’s nothing like a joke about homosexuality to make men rub each other's shoulders.
Promptly at six-thirty Eddie consulted his watch and announced, “I believe it’s mess call, gentlemen. If you’ll excuse me?”
A chorus of of courses followed that, and the bartender promptly presented his bill. With a restrained flourish Eddie wrote across its face 'Captain Robinson/ smacked the pen down on top of it, and pushed it back across the bar. “Thank you, Captain,” the bartender said. “Evening, now.”
“Evening, Jack,” Eddie said.
We zigzagged through the Japanese screens to the dining room, which was less than half full. The management had dealt with the decorating problem in here by turning all the lights off and making do with candles on the tables; it was too dark to see what the place looked like.
We took a table along the side wall, where I discovered that the walls were fronted by dark brown draperies, and Eddie said, “A fine group of young men, that. May they never have to face the guns of the enemy.”
By God, he was Mister Chips!
A waiter brought us menus and we ordered; Eddie had the sole meuniere and I chose the veal parmigiana. In the waiter’s hearing, Eddie said, “Perhaps a half bottle of white, Lieutenant?” When I agreed, he ordered soave. The waiter departed and Eddie, glancing around in proprietary satisfaction, said, “Well, Lieutenant, what do you think of our little club?”
It didn’t seem to me there were any occupied tables close enough for us to be overheard, but if Eddie wanted to maintain tight security that was fine with me. Particularly since, with all the bourbon I’d put away over the last hour and a promise of white wine to come, I was probably going to wind up as tight as the security. So I said, “It’s fine, sir. I particularly enjoyed meeting your young friends.”
“Fine men,” he agreed. “They’ll make their country proud some day. They remind me of a Lieutenant Eberschwartz I once knew. Motor Pool officer. Fine ingenious young man. Someone had been siphoning fuel out of the two-by-sixes at night, and Lieutenant Eberschwartz set himself to catch the fellow. But the thief was clever; he would never come around on a night when Lieutenant Eberschwartz had posted himself there. So finally he came up with a solution. He rigged a camera with a flashbulb inside an office window, and ran wires connecting it to one of the trucks’ gasoline cap. When the cap was turned, the fellow’s picture would be taken.”