Instead of me ushering Turtle in, it was Turtle and the major carrying an hysterical me back to the fire.
“He’s gone, Turtle! He’s gone! He said he’d always come back and he won’t! He’s not going to come back this time,” I wailed.
“Yessir, Bit, I know,” Turtle’s gravelly voice muttered, roughened by the tears that coursed down his own stubbly cheeks. He looked gray and stricken and every year of his age. The major must have taken off his overcoat because the fruit salad on Turtle’s chest scratched my face as I abandoned myself to grief.
“He’s not coming back! He bought it! He bought it,” I cried.
“Honest, sir, this isn’t like her. She was always the soldier, a regular little bit of a soldier. Even when her mother died.”
Turtle’s huge hands held me with great tenderness. He dabbed at my streaming cheeks with a khaki handkerchief, then blotted his own brimming eyes.
“She’s been rather sick,” the major murmured understandingly.
That made me blubber worse. It was all too true. Maybe that’s why I broke up so completely, seeing Turtle. Dad had been out on summer war games in the wilds of southern Jersey when mother had been killed in a car accident.
We’d been based at Dix. Turtle had been in the O.D.’s office on some errand from the games when the local police had called in to report the accident. It had been Turtle who had called me from a sand fight, I remember that very well, to tell me about my mother. At five, I hadn’t fully understood what he had tried to explain. So naturally I hadn’t cried. Now I did. Perhaps I cried for my mother, too.
“C’mon now, Bit. This ain’t like you,” Turtle growled. “Sick ‘er not.”
“Give her this,” I heard the major say.
“Knock it back the way I taughtcha,” Turtle ordered, handing me the shot glass.
Still boohooing, I looked first at the resolute major and then at an equally determined Turtle. The Scotch did the trick because I had to stop sobbing or choke. Once I could stop crying, I was thoroughly ashamed of myself. But, honestly, it was Turtle who touched it off. Certainly I’d prefer not to blubber in front of the major, my guardian, Regan Laird.
“Oh, Turtle! I’m so liquid. Major, give him a shot, too. He must be frozen. Don’t tell me you slogged it all the way from the station?” I demanded, fussing in my turn over the sergeant. I pushed him into the leather chair by the fire, handed him the drink the major poured, and then started to strip off his combat boots, soaking despite their waterproofing.
“Major don’t have no phone. Only a couple of miles. No great thing,” Turtle grated out in that marvelous-to-hear, indescribable broken voice of his.
A flood of memories, held back because up to now I had carefully avoided associations that would remind me of those times, came charging back. But this time I controlled myself.
“Hey, Bit, y’ain’t waiting on me!” Turtle bellowed, batting halfheartedly at my hands as I unlaced his boots. I know, despite his show of embarrassment, he was pleased. I’d done it before.
“And why not? Your fingers are too cold to do it and if you don’t get these wet things off, you’ll get pee-new-monia.”
“Me!” roared Turtle, indignant at the mere suggestion of such frailty. “Not on your -life.”
“Sergeant!” The major’s voice crackled.
“Leave him be.” I grinned up at Turtle. “The sergeant’s not himself without four-letter words. However, to ease your guardian conscience, the one and only time I mimicked him, he soaped my mouth out with army issue.” I shuddered at the memory of that taste.
“That’s right, Major, begging your pardon,” Turtle put in, mindful that the major’s one word had been tantamount to a direct order.
“At ease,” the major said, mollified.
I bridled at such offhanded assumption of complete authority over my Turtle Bailey. United States Army notwithstanding, my claim on Turtle predated the major’s. Turtle grinned at my bristling defense and laid a soothing hand on my shoulder. Another thought struck me and I stared at Turtle, torn between surprise and irritation.
“Turtle, why in God’s green world didn’t you tell Major Laird that James Carlysle Murdock is a girl?”
“Huh?” Turtle was so astonished I knew he couldn’t be acting. I’d seen him pull incredible performances on visiting generals and colonels’ wives. But he was not shamming now. “Didn’t he know?”
I rocked back on my heels as the second boot suddenly released its watery grip on Turtle’s foot.
“No, he didn’t,” I said with a sideways glance at the major as I propped up the soaking footgear by the fireplace.
“Bailey didn’t know your father had appointed me your guardian either,” Laird put in, absolving Turtle of all guilt. It also left me unable to pass the buck. “I was wounded not long after your father died, you know. Between his death and the push towards Julich, there wasn’t much time for talk.”
It was then I noticed the purple heart bar among the stuff on Turtle’s barrel chest. I stared, grabbing the sergeant’s arm, and pointed to it.
“Turtle, where?” I gasped.
“Huh? Aw, knock it off, Bit,” Turtle growled. “I only took it fer points. I wanted out.”
I shook his arm because I didn’t believe for a moment that was the reason. It was then I began to wonder. What on earth was Turtle doing looking up a major on a stormy day at the elbow of Cape Cod? Furthermore they were both looking awfully ill at ease. Which had nothing to do with a silly girl’s tears. They were hiding something from me. In that moment I began to feel the first tendrils of an honest fear. Merlin picked up my embryonic apprehension and growled softly in his throat. He’s uncanny in his ability to sense mood shifts and not just in me. His soft growl intensified my uneasiness. The dog and I exchanged glances just as the major and Turtle did.
“I didn’t know you’d copped it,” Laird remarked. He proffered cigarettes but Turtle shook his head, reaching into his breast pocket for the ghastly Fatimas he preferred. His battered face broke into a grin as he pointed to his ear. I saw then that the tip of his ear was missing as well as the first joint of his index finger on the left hand, the stump barely healed.
“Goddamnedest fool - piece of luck. We mopped up at Julich after you got hit, Major. Then hooked up with the Hundred and Sixteenth because the krauts had shot the hell out of the unit in those - beetfields. You know some rear echelon fart made Warren a light colonel after you got clobbered?”
The major nodded solemnly, his jaw muscles working.
“Jeeze, Bit, I thought the general had that - pegged for what he was,” Turtle hissed at me through his teeth. “- rear echelon - “
“Knock it off!” the major ordered curtly, his eyes flashing.
Turtle was not going to be intimidated by any rank lower than four stars and he was only polite then.
“Wai,” he continued blandly, “we were knocking the - out of a block in Julich. Snipers on the roof, in the cellar, you know the drill. I was waving the squad up,” he demonstrated, “when some - sniper winged me. Got the BAR man behind me though, right through the eye.”
“You mean, you
” I gasped, utterly unable to believe the indestructible Bailey pulled a blighty for an earlobe and a finger joint.
“- no!” Turtle exploded indignantly. “I didn’t even report it till I got the major’s letter. Then I hunted up the medic and took my points.”