“What about Smythe?” Bellmon asked. “We just gave him command of the Mohawk platoon we’re sending to Vietnam.”
“He was at Norwich—and in Vietnam—with Johnny Oliver, sir,” Jack said. “Major Lunsford had already decided we were going to take him before we got here.”
“Six senior officers spend God knows how many hours picking the right man for an important assignment, and one major comes along and steals him,” Bellmon said, bitterly. “Goddamn it!”
Jack didn’t reply.
“I know it’s not you, Jack,” Bellmon said. “Please excuse the temper flare.” He turned to Bobby. “If memory serves, Bobby, my words were ‘right away, tonight.’ ”
“Yes, sir,” Bobby said. “Dad, I—I’m sorry.”
“I know,” Bellmon said. “But you’ve just got to learn that ‘sorry’ doesn’t put things back the way they were.”
“You going to be here later, Jack?” Bobby asked.
“Marjorie wants to go into Ozark to see Liza Wood,” Jack said. “After that—”
“Right away, goddamn it, Bobby,” General Bellmon flared.
Bobby fled.
He had almost made it to the corner of the house when Bellmon called after him.
“Your schedule permitting, come for breakfast, Bobby. You can talk to Jack and Marjorie then.”
[ SIX ]
“What did you tell Liza on the phone?” Jack asked.
Lieutenant and Mrs. Portet were in Barbara Bellmon’s Oldsmobile, approaching Ozark on the Fort Rucker/Ozark Highway. Marjorie was driving.
“Nothing. Just they we were here and wanted to see her.”
“At the risk of destroying this marriage-made-in-heaven, my darling, in my studied judgment, this is a dumb fucking idea,” Jack said.
“Why?”
“For one thing, it’s none of our business, and for another, you can talk yourself blue in the face all night and not change her mind.”
“I was thinking maybe I could make her ashamed of herself for what she’s doing to Johnny.”
“Right now, your sainted Captain Oliver is not one of my favorite people,” Jack said.
“Really?”
“If he wasn’t behaving like a lovesick calf, I would at this moment be chasing you around our apartment, while you pretended to want to get away.”
“Oh, really?”
“Instead, because he got sauced last night, I get jerked out of my nuptial couch in the early hours of morning, have to fly down here, and now face the prospect of having to chase you around your girlhood bedroom with Mommy and Daddy listening.”
“You are, in other words, in what could be described as a self-pitying, lustful, frame of mind?”
“In words of multiple syllables, Madame, you bet your sweet fucking ass I am.”
“Is that how you think of it?” Marjorie asked.
“Do what you want to do, baby,” Jack said. “On the way just now, I realized I’m already henpecked.”
“I thought you tough Green Beret masculine types called that ‘pussy-whipped’.”
Jack didn’t reply.
“How about this for an alternate plan?” Marjorie said. “We go to see Liza. We have one drink, no more than two. We play with Allan. We don’t mention the name of Captain John S. Oliver, Jr., and if she does, we say ‘Who?’ Then we leave, we drive to Highway 231, we take a motel room. I will let you catch me before you get too tired, and later, much later, we will go to sleep in my girlhood bed.”
“God, if you could cook, I think I’d marry you,” Jack said.
XIV
[ ONE ]
Foster Garden Apartments
Fayetteville, North Carolina
1400 25 January 1965
When Major George Washington Lunsford let himself into the apartment he shared with Captain John S. Oliver, Jr., he found Oliver sprawled on the couch in fatigues. The television was on, but unless Oliver had suddenly developed an interest in As the World Turns, he wasn’t paying a hell of a lot of attention to it.
“Hey,” Father said.
“Hey,” Oliver replied.
“I need a beer. You want one?”
“No, thanks,” Oliver said.
Lunsford walked into the kitchen and returned a minute later holding two bottles of Heineken beer. He handed one to Oliver, then slumped into an armchair facing the couch.
Oliver held the beer bottle up.
“I really think I’ve had enough of this for a while,” he said.
“Moderation in all things, as it says in the Good Book,” Lunsford said. “And I happen to agree with the patron saint of the Green Beanies, John Wayne, who said he never trusted a man who turned down a drink.”
“I don’t think John Wayne said that,” Oliver said.
“If he didn’t, he should have.”
“Is Jack in his apartment? I want to apologize face-to-face.”
“Jack’s still at Rucker,” Lunsford said. “Jeremiah flew me up.
I had things to do here. Jack’s stripping the markings from an L-19, and getting SCATSA to check the radios. Jeremiah went back. Jack will bring the plane up here,