he said.
“By God, I’ll do just that,” old T.D. said, and cracked his palms together. “You’ll make junior warrant officer out of it within a year. That’s great, boy, that’s great.”
Winch realized suddenly that, although it rankled, he was going to have to thank old T.D. Hoggenbeck for it.
“I’ll tell you something, Mart,” T.D. said. “I’m sitting pretty right now, and I know it. But I won’t be for very long and I know that too, once this war gets over and we go back to anti-Army and the reaction sets in. But I aint going to stay in a full thirty years. Or twenty, if it’s that. When it’s over, I’m getting out. You’ll be smart to do the same. I know what I am, and I know what I’m worth. And I know I’m valuable, for right now, anyway. And if there’s anything I can do for any of my old buddies who’ve been out there and come back through here, I’m sure’n hell gonna do her. You’re the first one to come back that I know of. If there’s anything I can do more for you, don’t you hesitate to pop up here and let me know it.”
He rubbed his hands together. “Say, I’ll tell you something else. Did you know you’re getting the Distinguished Service Medal?”
Winch looked at him unbelievingly. “Who the hell did that?”
“Not me, not me. Don’t look at me,” T.D. said, enjoying his surprise. “There’s some things I can’t do. No. But it’s all on your records. Recommended by your Division commander. With personal recommendations from your battalion commander and your company commander. And, of all people, your old Division surgeon.”
Before Winch left, T.D. hauled out two flat pint bottles of the Seagram’s and thrust them on him. “Stick ’em down inside your pajama belt, and hold them up with your bathrobe pockets. Go on, take ’em. No, don’t thank me, Christ’s sake. You fellows, you’ve been out there. That’s all I need to know.” At the door, he offered one last word of advice. “When you’re set up down there, buy real estate. Buy a bar. You can’t go wrong with a bar.”
A little less than three hours later, not quite five hours after the ship had put her nose against the Embarcadero dock, while the others off her were finishing their warmed-over supper off compartmented tin plates, Winch was standing on the corner of Geary and Market at Lotta’s Fountain with his hands in the pockets of an officer’s tropical worsted with shoulder straps for thirty-six dollars, from a tailor joint on Market Street. He was already half drunk. It felt wonderful.
CHAPTER 7
THE MARK HOPKINS, of course, was the place to go. It was on the top of Nob Hill, and its “Top O’ The Mark” was famous all over the South Pacific as the place to head for, if you ever got back home. Winch hailed a cab and headed there.
If you ever got back home. The very phrase, and all its insinuations, made the pit of Winch’s stomach fall. Well, Winch was back home. Wasn’t he? Fuck the rest of them. Winch sat back and looked out. In his mind was his constant admonition not to drink. Or smoke. He listened to both, constantly. Each time he took a drink or lit a cigarette he listened to them, he thought; and laughed out loud in the cab.
It was pretty hard not to drink around this place. Outside all the ritzy hotels they passed on their way up Nob Hill, parties of girls and sailors or girls and soldiers roared and hooted, or cackled out nighttime laughter, and went off up the streets playing kids’ games. Everybody seemed so rich, with money to spare, and time to spend it. It was unbelievable. Winch thought suddenly of his waterless, gasping, sweating platoons. And his stomach sank down through him to somewhere in the vicinity of the soft, springy cab seat. Unbelievable. Again he had the disturbing feeling that all this had nothing to do with all that, out there. They were not connected. His momentary fine mood was gone.
The “Top O’ The Mark” was a bust. Flyboys, both Naval and Air Force, dominated it. With their medals and decorations and Midway campaign ribbons. Fruit salad. And their crushed-wing officer’s garrison caps. They hopped from table to table, and shouted with gay laughter, and danced jitterbugging dances, and bought bottles and bottles of champagne. And had apparently already usurped all the luxurious-looking