The Winston Affair (6 page)

“Who is it?”

A careful yet worldly voice told him that it was Sergeant Candyman from Headquarters.

“Come in, Sergeant. The door is open.”

The sergeant came into the room, cast a thoughtful glance around the place, and then informed Adams that even though he had a message from the general, no answer was expected tonight, and the captain might as well finish shaving.

“Sit down and make yourself comfortable, Candyman,” Adams said. “There are cigarettes on the table.”

“Thank you, sir.” Candyman chose a high-backed chair of teakwood, cane and purple velvet. “This is quite a place. I couldn't sleep in a room like this myself, Captain—not alone.”

“How's that?”

“Well, it's the way you always hoped and dreamed that a first-class cat house would be. I wouldn't be able to close the door behind me without leaving a ten-dollar bill on the table.”

“That's one way to look at it.”

“On the other hand, you'd think they'd put the comfort station in a separate room, wouldn't you?”

“They have their ways and we have ours.”

“I suppose so. It could be damned embarrassing under certain circumstances, but I agree with you. Live and let live, sir.” He helped himself to one of the captain's cigarettes, lit it and blew out the smoke thoughtfully.

“Are you satisfied with Baxter, Captain?” he asked.

“He's a good driver and he knows the city.”

“Yeah, he can drive. But I had some doubts since this morning.”

“Why, Sergeant?” Adams asked curiously.

“Ah! He's a hillbilly hood. He don't know the right time. He could get to bother you.”

“He doesn't bother me,” Adams said through the towel he was rubbing his face with. He put the towel back on the rack, and took the note Candyman handed him.

Briefly and to the point, it read: “Barney, why in hell haven't you seen Winston today? I suppose you know what you're doing. I don't. Just for the record, I had the Provost fill in. The document is enclosed.”

Adams then looked at the enclosure: “I, Charles Allen Winston, do hereby state and declare that freely, of my own will and without any coercion or pressure, I do accept and approve the appointment of Captain Barney Dade Adams as my defense counsel during the general court-martial which will consider evidence in the accusation of murder placed against me.”

This was typewritten on the official stationery of the Provost. After the statement, the name was typewritten again, and then came the signature in tiny half-askew letters. For a reason he was not to understand for some time to come, the short statement had a deep effect on Barney Adams. It depressed him and filled him with melancholy, as he stood there staring at it and reading it over.

“Sir?”

He glanced up at Candyman.

“Do you want to write a reply, Captain?”

Adams shook his head. “No—just tell the general that I'll see Lieutenant Winston some time tomorrow. It won't be before late afternoon, I'm afraid. I'm taking the narrow gauge to Bachree in the morning.”

Thursday 5.30 A.M .

At half-past five in the morning, with the mantle of night just stirring its edges, the Chaterje Station of the narrow gauge was as awake and tumultuous as if night had never been at all. In the smoky flare of pitch torches, bearers staggered along with their bales and bundles, hurrying as best they could to make the incoming train. The train was in sight, casting its long yellow beam of light up the track, hissing and shrieking and whistling.

On the cowcatcher of the strange little locomotive, a brown man in a loincloth and nothing else was precariously perched; he acted as an auxiliary warning, and in between the hysterical clanging of the locomotive bell, he cupped his hands about his mouth and screamed, “Ai-eeee! Ai-eeee! Heads oop!”

For a small man, he had a wonderfully far-reaching voice, a shrill, high-pitched voice that cut like a knife through a thousand other screams and shouts. A station employee, aided by a dozen white-clad native travelers, was pushing a white cow from the tracks, and the native railroad constables, wielding their four-foot-long sticks, were attempting to clear the tracks of hundreds of native men and women, who appeared to feel that the only way of assuring their passage was to remain on the tracks as the train came in. Other constables were struggling to hold back a crowd of at least a thousand more local inhabitants—the crowd already swaying back and forth in a desperate rhythm of urgency to reach the train.

Directly into this crowd plunged a government mail truck, the mail officer in pith helmet and white shorts leaning from the running board and roaring, “Make way for is Majesty's mail! You bloody 'eathens, make way! 'Ere's the mail going through! Look lively there!”

Miraculously, the crowd parted without anyone's being ground under the wheels, and Corporal Baxter, quick to see his advantage, drove his jeep into the wake of the mail truck. The jeep drew up to the station platform just as the train, hissing and clanging, rolled in.

Never had Barney Adams seen such a train. The little locomotive with its tall, skinny stack was dwarfed by two tenders piled high with wood. Behind the tenders, there was a mail car and two first-class carriages that might have come off a back lot in Hollywood. And behind those, the rest of the train—six open passenger cars, like the summer streetcars on the interurban runs that Adams remembered vaguely from when he was a small child. The first two of these cars bore at least a full brigade of Ghurka troops; they sat and lay thick upon the roofs of the cars; they were piled into the seats; they hung shoulder to shoulder from the side posts; and in squatting position, they filled the running boards, braced by the legs of those who hung from the side posts. The next four cars were, if anything, even more concentratedly loaded with native men, women and children; and the moment the train stopped, the entire passenger contingent erupted.

Even as they flooded off the train, Ghurkas and peasants and children and naked hill people, the waiting crowd surged forward, sweeping the constables aside, and the entire station platform became a hopeless, senseless swirling mass of shouting, pushing, wailing people.

Adams looked anxiously at Corporal Baxter, but he was undisturbed, lighting a cigarette as he said, “God damn crazy waugs—it's always this way.”

Two boys of about eleven years scrambled onto the hood of the jeep.

“Now you get to hell down off there!” Baxter yelled.

Their father located them, threw a series of poorly-aimed blows at them and a stream of recrimination. They leaped into the jeep and out of it. The father, a thin, careworn peasant, tried to apologize, shouting to make himself heard.

“You'll miss the train, Captain,” Baxter yelled.

Barney Adams awoke from his dream, slung his musette bag over his shoulder and followed Baxter, who, cursing, shouting and flailing with his arms, beat a path across the platform to the first-class cars. As he got into his compartment, Adams told Baxter, “The train is due back down at four o'clock. Meet me here, Corporal!”

“I'll do that, Captain.”

The train whistle screamed and shrilled. The bell clanged.

“Take it easy, Captain—” the note of warmth in Baxter's voice was new. He closed the compartment door as Adams sat down. It was the first time Adams had ever traveled in this type of compartment: a long, upholstered bench the width of the car, a door on either side; approachable only along the running boards. Two men were already in the compartment, both of them British officers, one older man a colonel in plaid and kilt, asleep and snoring softly, and the other a bright-cheeked subaltern of twenty-one or so in shorts and short-sleeved shirt.

Coughing and jolting, the train started. Adams looked out of the window down the train, and now, if such a thing were possible, it was even heavier with humanity than before.

“They don't turn over, do they?” he asked the subaltern.

“Never knew them to, Captain.”

“Seems top-heavy.”

“I know. Don't know why, but they just never seem to turn over.”

The train was now puffing and hissing its way through a wretched suburb of the city. In the mud and wooden huts, tiny flames were being blown to life in cooking pans. The lights winked and flickered in the gray dawn.

“New out here?” the subaltern asked.

“Third day.”

“I thought I didn't recognize your patch, Captain. Lieutenant Frank Stephans.”

“My name's Adams—Barney Adams.”

“Going far?”

“Bachree.”

“I don't envy you. It's a pest hole. Its only claim to fame is a tawdry murder that happened there last month. I do hope you're not to be stationed there, Captain.”

“I expect to be back by four o'clock today.”

“That's a relief. I was prepared to be terribly sorry for you.”

They fell silent and stared through the window, and then Barney Adams dozed off. His dream through his light sleep was of going by train to West Point the very first time, and his pity for the boy he was then filled him with a plaintive sadness and awakened him.

The train had stopped at a little station. The country was of rolling hills, terraced with tea gardens. The sun was rising and the air was clean and sweet. Barney Adams found himself smiling with pleasure.

Thursday 9.23 A.M .

Bachree was something else entirely. Swinging and swaying, twisting and turning and dinging to the tracks through some unexplainable principle of balance, the train found its way into a noxious jungle bottom. When it stopped at the station platform which a faded piece of wood designated as Bachree, the rain had begun. It had not occurred to Barney Adams that he might encounter rain, and the heat had been so oppressive the day before that he had not even brought a coat with him.

Nor was this ordinary rain. It was, so far as he could see, a structure of water, serious, implacable and earnest. It poured down with the unchanging force of a mighty waterfall, as if its source were absolutely limitless.

There were only four steps between the compartment and the station shed, but in these four steps he was soaked. Under the shed, it was not dry, merely less wet, not only because the roof leaked and the rain splashed, but because the air itself was sodden. With him in the open-front shed were two British enlisted men and a British sergeant. Naked bearers brought mailbags and bales and barrels from the train. The enlisted men piled them in as dry a spot as they could find, and the sergeant checked off the goods. As he worked, he nodded at Adams and said, “Welcome to our watering place, Captain.”

“Does it always rain like this?”

“When it rains, it rains like this. And it rains most of the time.”

While he waited for them to finish, Adams attempted to light a cigarette. His matches spluttered and would not light. The train whistled, clanged and chugged away. The sergeant lit Adams' cigarette with a lighter.

“Thank you.”

A truck had pulled up to the outside of the shed, and now the enlisted men were loading the bales under its canvas.

“It doesn't go far,” the sergeant explained, pointing to the shadowy bulk of a warehouse about a hundred yards away, “but one can't trundle it through this rain. Are you looking for anyone, Captain?”

“Your CO. I'm afraid I don't know his name.”

“No CO here, Captain. I'm in command at the station, for the time being. We only have eleven personnel here now. The only commissioned officer is Major Kensington, but he's not attached. He's medical officer for eight stations on the narrow gauge and for the airstrip as well. It just happens that he's here today because Thursday's our day for clinic.”

“Where can I find him, Sergeant?”

“He's at the medic shack. Why don't you hop into the back of the lorry, Captain, and I'll drop you there. I'd ask you to ride in the cab, but that means at least ten steps through this rain.”