They shook hands when Tony came in. Oliver put an excessive amount of force into his grip, as though almost automatically these days, in all situations, he felt that he had to prove that the uniform made him more youthful and potent than he looked. The Army had slimmed him down a bit and the belt of his tunic was flat across his stomach. His dark hair was shot with gray and cut short. From a distance, with his weatherbeaten face and the rough, sturdy hair and the flat-stomached tunic he looked almost like the drawings of senior officers that were filling the advertising sections of the magazines. He was not a senior officer however. He wore major’s leaves (he had had only one promotion since he had been commissioned) and when you came up close to him you saw that there were grayish puffs under his eyes, which were unhealthily yellowed, and which had the nervous searching expression of the man who is too vain to wear glasses, or is afraid to admit to his superiors that his eyes are not as sharp as they should be. His face, too, which at a distance seemed healthily conditioned-down, was, when examined closely, more haggard than muscular, and there was a hidden muddy tone of fatigue under the skin.
He smiled widely as he shook Tony’s hand. “Well,” he said. “It’s good to see you. What’re you drinking?”
Tony would have preferred to decline, since he didn’t like to drink. But he thought, I’m not in uniform, the least I can do is drink for him. He looked at his father’s glass. “What’re you having?” he asked.
“Bourbon. Good old Kentucky Bourbon,” Oliver said. “Stocking up.”
“Bourbon,” Tony said to the bartender.
“The best in the house,” Oliver said. He waved jovially and vaguely to the bartender and Tony wondered how long he had been drinking.
“Yes, sir,” said the bartender.
“You look fine, Son,” Oliver said. “Just fine.”
“I’m all right,” Tony said, wincing a little at the “Son.” Until Oliver had gone into the Army, he had always called him by his name. Tony wondered what obscure military motivation had effected the change.
“A little thin,” Oliver was saying judiciously, “a little pale. You don’t look as though you’re getting any exercise.”
“I feel all right,” Tony said defensively.
“You’d be surprised,” Oliver said, “how many boys are rejected every day. Young boys. You’d think they’d be in A-number-one condition. The widest variety of ailments. City living,” Oliver said. “The soft life. White bread. No manual labor.”
“I could be built like Joe Louis,” Tony said mildly, wanting to get off the subject, “and they’d still reject me.”
“Of course, of course,” Oliver said hastily. “I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking generally. I wasn’t talking about particular cases. The results of accidents. Things like that.” He was embarrassed and Tony was relieved when the bartender put his glass down in front of him on the bar and they could move off the subject. Tony lifted his glass.
“To victory,” Oliver said solemnly.
Tony would have liked it better if his father had picked something else to drink to, but he clinked glasses, feeling a little melodramatic in the softly lit bar, in the civilian suit, with the pretty women in furs and the man at the piano.
“I heard about a steak place,” Oliver said. “On Third Avenue. A little on the black-market side.” He grinned. “But what the hell! Nothing’s too good for the troops. Where I’m going there’ll be damn few steaks.”
“Are you going overseas?” Tony asked.
Oliver looked around slyly. “I wouldn’t say yes and I wouldn’t say no.” He clapped Tony’s shoulder and laughed. “Anyway, I can give you a hint. Take a good long look at your old man. You won’t see him again for a long, long time.”
He wasn’t like this, Tony thought wearily. No matter how young I was, I couldn’t have been that wrong.
“Maybe it’ll be over soon,” Tony said.
“Don’t you kid yourself, Son,” Oliver said. His voice dropped to a whisper and he leaned closer to Tony. His breath had an afternoon’s whisky on it. “This is a long, long job, Son. If you’d seen what I’ve seen. If you’d heard some of the things …” He shook his head portentously with morbid proprietary satisfaction for his inside information about the duration and future miseries of the war. “Bartender,” he said. “Two more.”
“One, please,” Tony said to the bartender. “I’ll string along with this for a while.”
“When I was in college,” Oliver said, “we only refused a drink when we dropped below the level of the bar.”
“I have a lot of work to do tomorrow.”
“Sure. Sure.” Oliver nervously wiped his mouth with his hand, suddenly conscious of his breath. “I was only kidding. I’m glad to see you’re serious. I mean that. It makes me feel that maybe, with all the mistakes, maybe I didn’t do too bad a job with you. Too many boys these days …” He wavered, because Tony had ducked his head and was playing with his glass. “What I mean is, too damned many boys these days … Well, all they think of is drinking and screwing and having a good time and the hell with the future.”
Every single damn time he sees me, Tony thought, he uses that word. If he does it once more, I’m getting out. I don’t care where he’s going.
“Not that I’m against it, you understand,” Oliver said, with the wide, vague, jovial movement of his arm. “Far from it. Does a boy good. In its place. Talk about wild oats.” He laughed and drained his drink as the bartender came up with the new one. “I was one of the leading wild-oat sowers of my time. You can imagine. A young lieutenant in France after the Armistice.” He shook his head and chuckled. Then he suddenly grew serious, as though at the back of his head, beyond the fumes of whisky, past the moment and the recent memory of barracks, a distant light was shining. “But I’ll say one thing for myself. Most men—they sow their wild oats when they’re young and then, by God, they’re in the habit, and they’re pinching the nurse on their deathbed. Not me. I did it. I don’t deny it and I don’t say I’m ashamed of it. And I stopped.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that. Once and for all.”
He peered down at his glass, holding it in both hands, his eyes reflective and serious and no longer clownish, his cheeks drawn and unmilitary.
The pianist had switched songs now. Many a new face will please my eye, he was singing softly, many a new …
“Your mother,” Oliver said, still playing with the glass with his roughened hands. “Have you heard from her?”
“No,” said Tony.
“She’s doing a big job, now, you know …”
“Is she?” Tony said politely, wishing Oliver would stop talking about her.
“In the laboratory at the hospital at Fort Dix,” Oliver said. “All sorts of blood tests and work on tropical fevers and things like that. When we got into the war she decided that it’d be a shame to let her training go to waste, and I agreed with her. She’d forgotten a lot and she had to work like the devil to get back to it, but she didn’t stint herself. She has six assistants working under her now. You’d be proud of her.”
“I’m sure,” Tony said.
“You know,” Oliver said, “we could call her and she could be here in two, three hours …”