reduced two grades in rank. Stevens was beginning to do what he could about that. “As of right now, today, you’re a staff sergeant.” And at the successful conclusion of his first war bonds tour, he would be moved up to tech/sgt. And then up to master. Once he was with AGO Washington and on the West Coast, he would be given a commission to 2nd/lt, and then promoted to 1st/lt. “There’s a little trick to this rank problem,” the old colonel smiled. “That’s right.” He nodded. “If I want to retire as a colonel, I’ll have to make major general during the war.”
He had pulled his chair back up to the desk. “You understand, there are no absolute guarantees to this. I can’t guarantee you all of this. It’s much too soon, for anything like that. And it would be dishonest to say so. But it is certainly something to work toward, and I think it’s something you should plan toward.”
Prell had simply nodded, too dazzled to make an answer. He was as dazzled by the old gentleman’s honesty and sense of honor, as he was by the prospect of so much swift promotion. And it was these traits, Stevens’ honesty and sense of honor, that sent him back to the old West Pointer for advice when his problem arose with Delia Mae a month or so later.
There wasn’t really anybody else to go to. He did not want to go to Strange with it. Anyway, what could Strange tell him? And in the month since their first talk he had been back three or four times to see Stevens, whose door as Stevens said was always open to a Medal of Honor winner. Prell had come to think of him almost as a father. It was as close to a father, anyway, as a West Virginia orphan boy had ever had. Winch or Strange had never been that to him.
If it had not been precisely as he told it to Strange at the wedding, it had been very close to that. Perhaps he had not knocked her up the very first time his legs had been physically able to get on top of her and seriously fuck her. But it had been damn close to the first time. It had been in the first five days. All that time his damned legs had been too damned weak, and painful, to pull back out. And they had been going at it like a couple of minks. Then in two or three weeks she had come to him with looks of chagrin and fright darting over her face and told him that she had missed her period. But even then on her face there had been that look, that glow, of triumph, victory and success. It shone out openly and with total shamelessness from under the other looks, a glow saying that she knew she had trapped him.
“Of course, you must marry her!” Stevens exclaimed, without preamble or qualification, as soon as he was told what had happened. “It’s the only honorable thing you can do.”
Prell was ready to accept this. But he needed a little time to digest it. “Well there are other ways to solve it, sir. I mean, as a problem. If we were thinking of it like a mathematics exercise. Several other ways.”
“What ways?”
“Well, I could just not marry her at all. That’s happened a lot more times around this area than you might think, sir. She’d just go on off home and have the baby. And her mom would work and she’d take care of it. Or she’d work and her mom would take care of it. That’s happened a lot. Particularly in cases like this, when I’m about to ship off from here.”
“Good God, son! And that’s what you propose? What about her father? What’s he say? Where is he?”
“He’s overseas, sir, in the Army. In New Guinea, I believe.”
“MacArthur,” Stevens murmured, to himself.
“Some Signal Corps outfit,” Prell said.
“Well at least it isn’t the infantry. What other brilliant ideas have you got?”
“I could take her to an abortionist, sir. There’s one of these sleazy doctors who does them, down on South Main. Down below Beale Street, near the black section. I have lots of friends who have the address. She has the address herself.”
“No, no! Great Scott, boy!” The old West Pointer looked seriously shocked. “You’re destroying a human life.”
“I don’t really think of it as a human life yet,” Prell said. “She’s only