The General's Daughter (60 page)

I checked out, paying a modest charge for maid and linen service, but I had to sign an acknowledgment-of-damage slip regarding
my writing on the wall. I’d be billed later. I love the Army. The CQ helped me put the bags in my Blazer. He asked me, “Did
you solve the case?”

“Yes.”

“Who did it?”

“Everybody.” I threw the last bag in the back, closed the hatch, and got in the driver’s seat. The CQ asked me, “Is Ms. Sunhill
checking out?”

“Don’t know.”

“Do you want to leave a forwarding address for mail?”

“Nope. No one knows I’m here. Just visiting.” I put the Blazer in gear and headed out through main post, north to the MP gate,
and out onto Victory Drive.

I drove past Ann Campbell’s town-house complex, then reached the interstate and got on the northbound entrance. I put a Willie
Nelson tape in the deck, sat back, and drove. I would be in Virginia before dawn, and I could catch a morning military flight
out of Andrews Air Force Base. It didn’t matter where the flight was going, as long as it was out of the continental United
States.

My time in the Army had come to an end, and that was okay. I knew that before I’d even gotten to Fort Hadley. I had no regrets,
no hesitation, and no bitterness. We serve to the best of our ability, and if we become incapable of serving, or become redundant,
then we leave, or, if we’re dense, we’re asked to leave. No hard feelings. The mission comes first, and everyone and everything
are subordinate to the mission. Says so in the manual.

I suppose I should have said something to Cynthia before I left, but no one was going to benefit from that. Military life
is transient, people come and go, and relationships of all kinds, no matter how close and intense, are understood to be temporary.
Rather than good-bye, people tend to say, “See you down the road,” or “Catch you later.”

This time, however, I was leaving for good. In a way, I felt that it was appropriate for me to leave now, to put away my sword
and armor, which were getting a little rusty anyway, not to mention heavy. I had entered the service at the height of the
cold war, at a time when the Army was engaged in a massive land war in Asia. I had done my duty, and gone beyond my two years
of required national service, and had seen two tumultuous decades pass. The nation had changed, the world had changed. The
Army was engaged now in a drawdown, which means, “Thanks for everything, good job, we won, please turn out the lights when
you leave.”

Fine. This was what it was all about, anyway. It was not meant to be a war without end, though it seemed so at times. It was
not meant to give employment to men and women who had few career prospects, though it did.

The American flag was being lowered on military installations all over the world, and all over the nation. Combat units were
being dissolved, and their battle flags and streamers were being put into storage. Maybe someday they’d close up NATO Headquarters
in Brussels. Truly, a new era was dawning, and, truly, I was happy to see it, and happier that I didn’t have to deal with
it.

My generation, I think, was shaped and molded by events that are no longer relevant, and perhaps, too, our values and opinions
are no longer relevant. So, even if we do have a lot of fight left in us, we’ve become, as Cynthia sort of suggested to me,
anachronisms, like old horse cavalry. Good job, thanks, half pay, good luck.

But twenty years is a lot of learning, and a lot of good times. On balance, I wouldn’t have done it any differently. It was
kind of interesting.

Willie was singing “Georgia on My Mind,” and I changed the tape to Buddy Holly.

I like driving, especially away from places, though I suppose if you’re driving away from a place, you have to be driving
to a place. But I never see it like that. It’s always away.

A police car appeared in my rearview mirror, and I checked my speed, but I was only doing ten mph over the limit, which in
Georgia means you’re obstructing the flow of traffic.

The jerk put his red flasher on and motioned me over. I pulled over to the shoulder and sat in the Blazer.

The officer got out of the police car and came over to my window, which I lowered. I saw that he was a Midland cop, and I
remarked, “You’re a little far from home, aren’t you?”

“License and registration, sir.”

I showed him both, and he said, “Sir, we’re going to get off at the next exit, come around, and you’re going to follow me
back to Midland.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know. Got it over the radio.”

“From Chief Yardley?”

“His orders, yes, sir.”

“And if I say no?”

“Then I have to take you in cuffs. You pick.”

“Is there a third choice?”

“No, sir.”

“All right.” I pulled back onto the highway. The cop car stayed behind, we went around the cloverleaf, and I found myself
heading south toward Midland.

We got off at an exit near the west edge of town, and I followed him to the town recycling center, which used to be called
the dump.

The car stopped at the incinerator, and I stopped behind him and got out.

Burt Yardley was standing near a big conveyor belt, watching a truck being unloaded onto the moving belt.

I stood and watched, too, as Ann Campbell’s basement bedroom headed into the flames.

Yardley was flipping through a stack of Polaroid photos and barely gave me a glance, but he said, “Hey, look at this, son.
You see that fat ass? That’s me. Now look at that teeny weenie. Who you suppose that is?” He threw a handful of the photos
onto the conveyor, then picked up a stack of videotapes at his feet and also threw them onto the belt. “I thought we had an
appointment. You gonna make me do all this here work myself? Grab some of that shit, son.”

So I helped him throw furniture, sexual paraphernalia, linens, and such onto the belt. He said, “I’m as good as my word, boy.
Didn’t trust me, did you?”

“Sure I do. You’re a cop.”

“Right. What a fucked-up week. Hey, you know what? I cried all through that funeral.”

“I didn’t notice.”

“Cryin’ on the inside. Lots of fellas there cryin’ on the inside. Hey, did you get rid of that computer stuff?”

“I burned the disk myself.”

“Yeah? None of that shit floatin’ around, is there?”

“No. Everyone is clean again.”

“Until next time.” He laughed and pitched a black leather mask onto the conveyor. “God bless us, we’re all gonna sleep better
now. Includin’ her.”

I didn’t reply.

He said, “Hey, sorry to hear about Bill.”

“Me, too.”

“Maybe them two are talkin’ it out now, up there at the pearly gates.” He looked into the incinerator. “Or someplace.”

“Is that it, Chief?”

He looked around. “Pretty much.” He took a photo out of his pocket and looked at it, then handed it to me. “Souvenir.”

It was a full frontal nude of Ann Campbell standing, or actually jumping, on the bed in the basement room, her hair billowing,
her legs parted, her arms outstretched, and a big smile on her face.

Yardley said, “She was a lot of woman. But I never understood a goddamned thing about her head. You figure her out?”

“No. But I think she told us more about ourselves than we wanted to know.” I threw the photo onto the conveyor belt and headed
back toward my Blazer.

Yardley called out, “You take care, now.”

“You, too, Chief. Regards to your kinfolk.”

I opened the car door and Yardley called out again, “Almost forgot. Your lady friend—she told me you’d be headin’ north on
the interstate.”

I looked at him over the roof of my car.

He said, “She asked me to tell you good-bye. Said she’d see you down the road.”

“Thanks.” I got into the Blazer and drove out of the dump. I turned right and retraced my route to the interstate, along the
road lined with warehouses and light industry, a perfectly squalid area to match my mood.

Down the road, a red Mustang fell in behind me. We got onto the interstate together, and she stayed with me past the exit
that would have taken her west to Fort Benning.

I pulled off onto the shoulder and she did the same. We got out of our vehicles and stood near them, about ten feet apart.
She was wearing blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and running shoes, and it occurred to me that we weren’t in the same generation.
I said to her, “You missed your exit.”

“Better than missing my chance.”

“You lied to me.”

“Well… yes. But what would you have said if I told you I was still living with him, but that I was seriously thinking about
ending it?”

“I’d have told you to call me when you got your act together.”

“See? You’re too passive.”

“I don’t take other people’s wives.”

A big semi rolled by, and I couldn’t hear what she said. “What?”

“You did the same thing in Brussels!”

“Never heard of the place.”

“Capital of Belgium.”

“What about Panama?”

“I told Kiefer to tell you that to get you to
do
something.”

“You lied again.”

“Right. Why do I bother?”

A state trooper pulled over and got out of his car. He touched his hat to Cynthia and asked, “Everything okay, ma’am?”

“No. This man is an idiot.”

He looked at me. “What’s your problem, fella?”

“She’s following me.”

He looked back at Cynthia.

Cynthia said to him, “What do you think of a man who spends three days with a woman and doesn’t even say good-bye?”

“Well… that’s mighty low…”

“I never touched her. We only shared a bathroom.”

“Oh… well…”

“He invited me to his house in Virginia for the weekend and never bothered to give me his phone number or address.”

The state trooper looked at me. “That true?”

I said to him, “I just found out she’s still married.”

The trooper nodded. “Don’t need that kind of trouble.”

Cynthia asked him, “Don’t you think a man should fight for what he wants?”

“Sure do.”

I said, “So does her husband. He tried to kill me.”

“Gotta watch that.”

“
I’m
not afraid of him,” Cynthia said. “I’m going to Benning to tell him it’s over.”

The trooper said to her, “You he careful, now.”

“Make him give me his phone number.”

“Well… I don’t…” He turned to me. “Why don’t you just give her your phone number and we can all get out of the sun, here.”

“Oh, all right. Do you have a pencil?”

He took a pad and pencil out of his pocket, and I told him my phone number and address. He ripped off the page and handed
it to Cynthia. “There you are, ma’am. Now, let’s everybody get in their cars and go off to where they got to be. Okay?”

I walked back to my Blazer, and Cynthia went to her Mustang. She called out to me, “Saturday.”

I waved, got into my Blazer, and headed north. I watched her in my rearview mirror making an illegal U-turn across the center
divide, then heading for the exit that would take her to Fort Benning.

Passive?
Paul Brenner, the tiger of Falls Church, passive? I crossed into the outside lane, cut the wheel hard left, and drove across
the center divide through a line of bushes, then spun the Blazer around into the southbound lanes. “We’ll see who’s passive.”

I caught up with her on the highway to Fort Benning and stayed with her all the way.