serviceman.
By his cap the man was an officer and a flyer. Wings and some fruit salad were visible above his left pocket. The round white insignia of a lt/col glinted from his shoulders in the street lamp. Both of them looked about three-fourths drunk. Giggling and laughing, they made their way up the short walk to the steps. At the door the man kissed her deeply, before she got out her key and opened the door. In a couple of minutes lights went on in the second floor left, and did not go out. The taxi had driven off.
Under his maple Winch set himself to wait another half hour. The lights did not go off. Nobody came out. He supposed the two brats were asleep in their own room. That was where they used to be. What the hell, they were ten and eleven now. Old enough to take care of themselves when mommy went out for the evening. After the half hour was up and there was no change, he started walking toward where he thought the nearest main thoroughfare ought to be.
It took quite a while. Winch walked slowly, and took his time, and did not get any shortness of breath. He thought he remembered the route the cab had taken but apparently he didn’t. Finally he saw brighter lights down a street to his right, walked toward them to a traffic avenue and hailed a cab.
Back in the riverfront section he walked around to a few bars. He did not drink any alcohol. Finally he went back to the hotel and to bed around four.
For the next three days Winch made his small pilgrimage out to his wife’s western residential section every night. It was the main anchor of his daily routine. He slept or loafed till late afternoon or the evening, before going out for his single big meal and then flagging a cab. Each day he went out for a bottle of wine and drank it sitting at his cheap hotel room desk, before going out to eat. Each night he arrived at her address by about twelve-thirty. Each of the first two nights she came home with the same Air Force lt/col.
But then on the third night she came home with another man. This one was also an officer. But he was shorter and fatter, pudgy, and wore the gold oak leaves of a major on his shoulders. Giggling and laughing, they walked up to the door the same way. At the door they kissed the same way. Again the lights went on. Again nobody left. As if released from some devil’s bargain he had made, Winch turned on his heel and walked over to his traffic artery, caught a cab back to his hotel, packed his satchel, paid, and left. He caught another cab to the Greyhound station. The next bus south to Luxor did not leave for another hour. Winch spent it in a nearby bar, celebrating over a second bottle of wine for the day.
This time he slept most of the way. Only once did he wake with any seriousness, to stare out at the dark of the great brooding river rolling alongside the highway, on his left side now. Staring, he thought about how the company in the midst of its anguish of change was forgetting them. Forgetting him. He could see how it could not be any other way. Consciously he thought it a good thing, and dozed again. Until suddenly something, a dream, woke him up wanting to shout a command, “Get them out! Get them out of there! Fast! Move them left! Can’t you see the mortars got them bracketed!”
With the first word already a shout in his throat, he was able to cut it off so that aloud he only grunted. Winch shook his head. It had been something about the attack on Hill 27 that day on the Canal. Only the terrain had looked different and strange. New. Winch shook his head again. But after that he slept, until dawn and the coming of the Southern sunlight woke him. Really awake now, he stared out at the Arkansas flatlands without depression. He did not feel satisfied, and he didn’t feel free. But he knew now that the disintegration of his company was final and complete, blown away. Ahead the city loomed over him, high up on its bluff, a presentiment. Any future he had at all was around there somewhere. There was no other way