The Temple of Gold (16 page)

What you remember, long after, aren’t the marches, but who marched next to you; not the barracks, but who lived inside. And so I remember Ulysses S. Kelly, whom I have not seen for a long time now, but I doubt if the day will ever come when I’ll scratch my head and say: “Ulysses S. Kelly? Who’s that?” As he is apt to be with me until Armageddon, and who can know for sure when that will be?

We met on my third day in the Army. I was on KP, the first time, at Camp Scott, a big post down South where I had my basic training. But this was before, and what I was doing mostly was processing and pulling details. Which I didn’t mind, not even KP, for it kept you busy, your mind occupied, so you didn’t have much chance to think about things. Such as Zock’s funeral, which I missed, being in the hospital, but at which Mrs. Crowe went crazy for a while, throwing herself on top of his coffin right in front of everyone, having to be dragged away, crying and screaming, out of control.

I was on garbage detail that third day, and after breakfast when I wandered out, I saw another kid was already there and I walked up behind him.

“ ’Morning,” I said.

“Knock it off,” he answered, not turning. “ ’Cause there’s a lot of shaping up to be done.”

Then he got back to work. I watched him. He was a big kid, and if his mother had been describing him, she’d have said he hadn’t lost his baby fat yet, whereas, actually, he was a slob, with pudgy hands and soft, short fingers. It wasn’t his looks, though, that made me stare, but how he’d talked. As if he’d been in the Army thirty years so far and had just re-enlisted for six. The truth was, I later found, he’d been in five days total, two more than me.

And as I watched him work, I saw he wasn’t doing anything. From a distance it might have seemed he’d die of heat prostration if he kept on sixty seconds longer. But all he was really doing was lifting one garbage-can lid, putting it back, lifting another, switching it with a third, and like that. Busy looking busy.

“The way you’re going,” I said, “things’ll get shaped up the day after never.”

“Can the chatter,” he answered.

“Glad to meet you,” I said, turning him around. “Ray Trevitt.”

“Ulysses S. Kelly,” he said. We shook hands and it was right then I first realized he was scared half to death.

“Take it easy,” I told him. “We got all day.”

“We’ve talked enough,” he answered. “Let’s snap to.”

So we did.

Breakfast that morning had consisted mostly of dehydrated egg, no delicacy, and there was a lot left over. A whole garbage-canful, to be exact, which felt like it must have weighed half a ton. After breakfast a truck came up to haul away the garbage and we were given the job of hoisting that canful of dehydrated egg onto the back of the truck.

We bent down, the two of us, and started lifting that garbage can. The first couple of inches went fine, but then he gave a grunt, pooping out, letting go, and the can dropped with a crash, slopping egg over everything in sight.

Naturally I started to laugh, looking at that layer of yellow mess spreading around. But Kelly didn’t. He was too scared. He just stood there, his eyes darting like bumblebees, this way and that, wondering if anyone had seen.

“Get a mop,” I told him. “Unless you’re hungry.” He didn’t move. “Get a mop,” I said again.

“You did that,” he whispered to me. “It was your fault.”

“Come again?” I said.

“You dropped it,” he went on. “You. Not me.”

“I could have sworn it was the other way around,” I answered, laughing.

“Now get a mop and clean it up,” he whispered. “And don’t make me tell you again.”

I bowed low, not moving.

“Get a mop,” he said, and by this time he was shaking. I stared at him awhile.

“O.K.,” I told him finally. “Maybe I better.”

About fifteen minutes later, when we were finishing up with the egg, a jeep came roaring toward us. I took one look and jabbed Kelly in the ribs. “Watch it,” I whispered. “That’s the Chief of Staff.” Kelly just nodded.

A Colonel jumped out of the jeep and came walking in our direction. I watched him. Maybe forty years old, he looked to be thirty, short, trim. He was carrying a swagger stick and he flicked it constantly against his pressed trouser leg as he came, walking straight as a ramrod, right up to us. We snapped to attention, Kelly and I, saluting while he gave us the once-over.

“How’s it going, men?” he said, biting the words out sharp and clean, those eagles shining on his shoulders.

“Fine, sir,” I said.

He looked at what was left of the egg. “What happened here?”

“Accident, sir,” I said.

“Accident?” I looked at him, then out of the corner of my eye at Kelly, who was really shaking now, gnawing hard at his lower lip.

“It was my fault,” I said. “I dropped a garbage can.”

He smiled quickly, flicked us both on the shoulder with his swagger stick, jumped back into his jeep, muttered something to his driver, and sped away.

“Smoking-lamp is lit,” I said, pulling out a cigarette, slapping at the flies feasting on my fatigues. Kelly was still shaking. “It’s O.K.,” I told him. “Relax. He’s gone.”

“That’s my father,” Kelly muttered. “He was a war hero. He won the Silver Star on D-Day.”

* * *

At that time, there were 25,000 men taking basic training at Camp Scott, a subject I will not linger on, for if you haven’t been through it, nothing could be duller, and if you have, you don’t want to hear about it again. All I will say is that there couldn’t have been many better than me. I was as Gung Ho as you can get, working every second, volunteering for jobs, keeping busy, always being the first one up in the morning, always having the shiniest boots in the company, the neatest uniform, etc., etc. And because of that—my attitude, plus the fact that I had enlisted whereas practically everyone else had been dragged in by the draft—I was supposed to be made platoon leader. All the others thought so, and Master Sergeant Muldoon, the first sergeant of the company, even called me into the orderly room the morning before training began to talk it over.

But I never got it.

Kelly did. Because that afternoon the Colonel appeared, straight and shiny from out of nowhere, and the next morning, when the platoon had reveille, Ulysses S. was put in charge.

And from then on, our platoon was always last. Mainly because Kelly was undoubtedly the worst platoon leader since the freeze at Valley Forge. Everything he did was wrong. When he was supposed to call right face, he called left; when he was supposed to call left face, he called right; when instructions were given, he never understood; when questions were asked, he couldn’t answer.

But rather than admit his mistakes, he gave excuses. He had more excuses than Carter had pills. When things went wrong, it wasn’t his fault.

It was mine.

I was his whipping boy and he yelled at me all the time, reveille to taps, sunrise to sunset. Which didn’t bother me particularly, seeing as I figured I knew why he was doing it, so I just let him go.

And the days went by, one pretty much like the one before, until late Wednesday afternoon in the third week of training. As we broke formation to get cleaned up, the first sergeant called my name.

“What is it, Sergeant Muldoon?” I said, going up to him.

“Someone’s in the orderly room to see you,” he answered.

“Who?”

“Can’t rightly say, Trevitt,” he shrugged. “He just asked for you.”

I hurried to the orderly room and went in. Someone was waiting for me all right. Zock’s father. Standing there by himself, five hundred miles from home. It was still bright in the orderly room but I had to take a couple steps forward, close, before I was sure. He’d changed that much. He looked older, but that wasn’t it. Not all.

“Hello, Mr. Crowe,” I said.

“Hello, Ray,” he said. Then we were both quiet for a while. It was the first time I’d seen him since the night on Half Day Bridge. Five and a half weeks was all it had been. Thirty-nine days.

“How are you, Mr. Crowe?” I said finally.

He put his arm around my shoulder, gently. “Fine, Ray,” he answered. “I’ve been fine.”

“You look it,” I said.

He nodded.

“How’s the clothing store, Mr. Crowe? You still swindling those college kids?”

“Store?” he said. Then he tried smiling. “I sold it. I thought maybe you’d heard. I still work there, of course. But it got to be too much responsibility.”

“I guess so,” I said.

“Too much responsibility,” he went on. “Too much work. When a man gets to be my age, he wants time to rest. So now the other fellow has the headaches while I have the fun.” We moved toward the door, slowly, him with his arm still around me. “Say,” he said. “I talked to your sergeant. It’s O.K. with him if we go into town. Maybe have a good meal. Something like that. How’s it sound?”

“What did you come for, Mr. Crowe?”

“I was just driving by,” he said. “I thought I might stop in and take you for a good meal. The two of us.”

“What did you come for?” I said again. “Why did you come to see me?”

“I guess I don’t know,” he answered, very soft.

“I’m not hungry,” I said. “I don’t want a meal.”

He nodded. “I’m not hungry either.”

“Why don’t we go for a walk then? Walk and talk. That suit you, Mr. Crowe?”

He nodded again. “I guess that’s what I came for anyway,” he said. “To talk.”

We left the orderly room and walked on down the noisy company street, the dust rising in clouds around our shoes. Then we turned, neither of us saying anything, and headed out toward the fields and the ranges beyond. After a while, he put his arm around my shoulder again, keeping it there as we scuffed our way, kicking up dust with every step, the sun going down in front of us as we walked West, still silent. After a long time, with the sun almost gone, the heat of the day going, he stopped. I stopped too. He turned to me.

“Why did it happen, Ray?” he said then.

“I don’t know why, Mr. Crowe,” I said. “But it was my fault. I know that much.”

He sat down on the edge of the dusty road, me alongside him, our arms around our knees. “I don’t care about the fault, Ray. I just want to know why it happened. I’ve thought and I’ve thought and I’ve thought and I can’t understand it. Why did it happen? Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I brought him up wrong.”

“No,” I said. “That isn’t true.”

“My wife thinks it was.”

“How is she, Mr. Crowe?”

“She’s fine,” he said. “Fine.”

“How is she?” I asked again.

He looked away, staring off at the rim of the setting sun. “You heard about the funeral? What happened?”

“Yes,” I said. “I heard.”

“She took it hard,” he muttered. “Very hard.”

“Is she all right, Mr. Crowe? Better?”

“She’ll be fine,” he answered.

“What do you mean, Mr. Crowe? Will be?”

“They sent her off,” he whispered. “The doctors. She’ll be back in a little while. I still have the house. In Athens. And then, when she gets back, I thought we might head for California, Mrs. Crowe and I. It’s supposed to be wonderful in California. Warm. Lots of sunshine. She’ll like it. I think maybe I’ll open a new store. There’s opportunity in California. New people moving in all the time. New people need new clothes.”

“Sure they do, Mr. Crowe.”

“And I can sell clothes. I can sell clothes with the best of them.”

“I know,” I said.

And then all of a sudden he was crying, the sobs deep in his throat, trying not to, trying to force them back, only making it worse. They came out like screams.

“Don’t,” I said. “Come on, Mr. Crowe. That’s not going to help anything.”

“It’s thirty-nine days since he died, Ray. Just thirty-nine days.”

“Is that right?” I said.

He nodded, his head pressed down on his knees, his tears dropping in the dust.

“I got to get back, Mr. Crowe,” I said, and I started pulling him to his feet. He was limp, like Zock after the crash, but I pulled him up, holding him as steady as I could.

“Come on, Mr. Crowe,” I said again. “I got to get back.”

We started along the road, walking slow, my arm around his shoulder now.

“Zock loved you, Mr. Crowe. I swear to Jesus he did. He loved you. It wasn’t your fault.”

“He knew you best,” Mr. Crowe answered. “I thought you might know why. He knew you better than me. Best of all.”

“You don’t believe that, Mr. Crowe. You know you don’t believe that. He loved you. You were his father. He loved you best in all the world. Right before he died he told me. That he loved you. Me. I was just his friend. But you. You were his father. He loved you best in all the world,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault, Mr. Crowe. It wasn’t your fault. He loved you best in all the world. He loved you best in all the world, in all the world,” and I chanted it to him, saying it over and over and over as I carried him along, until he was able to walk by himself, until he’d stopped crying.

Finally, we got to his car. He looked worse than ever now, his face streaked with dust and tears. But at least he was smiling. Or trying to.

“So long, Mr. Crowe,” I said. “Good luck in California.”

We shook hands. “Good-by, Ray,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see you back in Athens.”

“Swell,” I said.

“What was it that Zachary called you?” he asked. “Euripides?”

“Right the first time,” I said.

He got in the car. “I’m glad I came down to see you then, Euripides. And I’m sorry for what happened out there.” He pointed toward the ranges.

“Forget it, Mr. Crowe. And I’m glad you came down too.”

“Maybe I’ll buy you a meal some other time.” He turned on the ignition, started the motor.

“Like I said, Mr. Crowe, great seeing you.”

Then, finally, he drove away.

I didn’t sleep much that night, but just lay there, wishing to God he’d never come. I thought about him, broken; his wife, cracked up; Zock, dead.

All because of me.

I thought about it that night and the next morning and the next afternoon and I suppose it was around dusk when I first thought of committing suicide. Which always sounds heroic or stupid, never correct, never the right thing to do. But suicide’s no different from murder, only more personal. And then a line in Shakespeare kept coming back to me, a good line, Zock liked it. Where Othello says he’s going to knock off his wife before she destroys anyone else. Destroying is worse than killing. Mr. Crowe; he was destroyed.