A Matter of Honor

Chapter Twenty-one

Tarbert Weir talked over the items on the list with John Grimes and decided to take care of the first one himself. It was ten minutes to ten in the evening, nearly closing time, when he dialed Log Cabin Liquors, the store that catered to this stretch of privileged countryside, and gave an order for a case of J and B Scotch, four bottles of Bombay Gin, some mixers and half a dozen liters of Martells cognac.

When the owner said the order would be out first thing in the morning, Weir protested; it was imperative that the order be delivered that night. After a pause the man said he would make the delivery in person as soon as he locked up for the night, and then added, “Mr. Weir, sir, you have our condolences, my wife and I, our whole staff, sir.”

The general sat in the study, lights off, until he heard a knock on the back door and a murmur of voices. He listened as the delivery truck left the graveled drive and Grimes’ footsteps sounded on the stairs. Then Weir went up to his own quarters.

There was a pale moon that laid squares of silver light on the carpet and gave the room an ethereal look. The general lay flat on his back, staring at the ceiling, forcing his body into repose long before he could silence the rush of his thoughts and the words he had spoken to Grimes earlier. “... I have no choice but to go on and do what I know how to do best. Not the thing I’m proud of, but the thing I do.”

The next morning Weir jogged longer than usual, the dogs at his heels, then spent the morning in his study checking the contents of his wallet, bringing his pocket phone directory up-to-date, looking over his travel kit and studying the weather charts in the Springfield Journal-Register.

His call to Henrotin Hospital brought the kind of answer he expected. Miss Caidin’s condition was guarded but she had had a moderately restful night. It would be some days before the fracture and swelling in her jaw would allow her to speak. Yes, the nurse would definitely tell her that Tarbert Weir had called.

The phone rang every five minutes or so. Grimes took the calls on the kitchen extension and Weir could hear the tone of his voice but not the words, a low, respectful murmur, courteous but brief.

When Laura Devers called, Weir agreed to speak to her and knew from the broken, throaty quality of her voice that she’d been crying. Mrs. Devers and Mark Weir had never met but she and the general shared an easy intimacy that put Mark well within her sphere of caring. Weir told her that he was all right and, yes, there was something she could do for him. General Weir told her of his plans, at least as much as he wanted her to know.

Around noon the young assistant pastor from St. Durban’s came to call and the general talked with him in the study. Weir was not a Catholic and did not know Father Keene, so he was mildly surprised when the young curate accepted a glass of Jerez sherry and then, in a rush of information, began to tell the older man about himself, his life back in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, and his concerns and misgivings about having accepted an assignment to an American pastorate.

He could not have been much older than Mark, the general thought, but slim and tentative, the morning sunlight haloing his red hair and highlighting the balding spots on his receding hairline.

American customs were not quite within his grasp, he told Weir, but in Ireland, in the case of a death such as his son’s, the neighbors, all of them, would rally round... When he asked General Weir’s permission to dedicate his early Mass tomorrow for the peace and salvation of Mark’s soul, Weir said yes, and when the young priest left, he told Grimes that he would see and talk to no one else for the rest of the day, unless General Stigmuller or DuBois Gordon called.

In his bedroom he tried on several of his uniforms which hung, cleaned and pressed, in pine-scented clothes bags. He selected two and tried them on again, pleased to note that the fit was exactly as he liked it except for a break in the line of the trousers, where the cuff edge touched the top of his Bean’s loafers. He wondered with a flash of irritation if his height had been affected by the shrinkage of age. Then he put on a pair of buffed army boots and saw in the full-length mirror that his uniform was as straight and creaseless as if he were about to stand parade.

John Grimes left a sandwich and coffee on a tray in the study, set the phone to the answer tape, and drove the Mercedes to a local garage for a complete engine check, two new front tires, a fill-up and a lube job. The car was to be delivered to the farm that evening since the general would be using it the next day. To the mechanic who drove him back to the farm, Grimes explained in some detail that the general was taking his son’s death pretty hard, was depressed, had to get away.

Later, Grimes drove to the country club, pulled in front of the pro shop and shouted to the golf pro to locate General Weir’s and Mrs. Dever’s golf clubs and load them in the back of the station wagon, along with four boxes of new balls. They were going away for a couple of weeks, he said; the general wanted a complete change of scene, they were driving down to the Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs.

Grimes went into the club lounge and took a stool at the end of the bar. There were male foursomes and a scattering of couples, sitting at tables with sandwiches and coffee, watching a track meet on the TV screen. A man in a sports shirt and plaid golf shorts was sipping gin at the bar. For a moment Grimes wondered if the solitary drinker was staring at him, then decided it was an illusion created by the man’s oddly protruding eyes. Tony, the bartender, brought Grimes an ale and asked with genuine concern how the general was doing. Not too good, Grimes told him. He himself had stopped at the club just to get away from the melancholy of the Weir household. It was unlike the general, as Tony would know, Grimes said, but brave and strong as he was, he’d been doing some pretty heavy drinking...

It was Tarbert Weir who was up and about first on the day of Mark’s funeral. He made coffee and toast, scrambled some eggs, and brought a tray to Grimes’ room, leaving it on a bedside table when he heard the running shower. Ten minutes later he brought around the station wagon and waited beside it, motor running, when Grimes came out the back door.

Grimes’ face was flushed with both emotion and a close, straight-razor shave in the hot shower. His body looked constricted and bulky, encased in a new black suit, and there seemed to be no energy in his movements, no trace of hope in his face. “I’m not sure I can do this, sir,” he said, his voice shaking.

Weir put both arms around the man’s shoulders, embracing him and patting him on the back, as if he were comforting a distraught child.

“You can do it, Grimes,” he said. “We both can.”

At eleven o’clock the general switched on a television set to an upstate channel. The weather in Chicago had cooperated, Weir thought bitterly; it was appropriately dismal for the funeral of his son, swirling snow alternating with sleeting rain that struck the funeral cortége like flails. A motorcycle drill team preceded the two hearses, the first limousine carrying floral tributes and then the coffin limo itself, flanked by an honorary guard of marching policemen. The side curtains of the car were drawn back with black ribbon to reveal the coffin itself, draped with an American flag.

“... definitely a two-tone town... the superintendent believes the city needs a show of unity, a catharsis for its emotions.”

Tears of rage clouded the picture for Weir. He snapped off the TV set abruptly and went to the gun cabinet to take out a pair of .22 target pistols and several boxes of ammunition.

Outside, the weather was dry, but cold and almost windless, with a frozen crackle of breaking brush under every footstep. Weir walked away from the house and into the deep woods, grateful for the cold air that nipped his cheeks and filtered through his cashmere sweater.

He took down a couple of log rails to make an opening in the fencing and walked to the outdoor shooting range he and Grimes had set up years ago. It was a two-lane, thirty-foot clearing in the trees, with a rough wooden counter for resting guns and ammo at the top and a straight, open gallery running twenty-five feet ahead. The end of the range was backed by a ten-foot-high wall of wire-baled haycocks and two black and yellow targets with scarlet bull’s-eyes. Beyond the targets lay several more acres of pristine, fenced-in woodland of the Weir property.

General Weir laid out the pair of .22 target pistols and boxes of ammunition with precision, as if awaiting a signal in the championship meet.

He loaded each pistol and began to fire them alternately, left and right hand, the shots cracking out in the cold air. He reloaded and fired again and again for almost an hour, cleanly, rhythmically, feeling the air cool on his fiery cheeks. When he finally put down the pistols and walked to the end of the firing range to look at the targets, the air was thick with the smell of cordite, the circular targets were tattered, with the red bull’s-eyes shot completely away and the hay bales looking as though they had been clawed by a frenzied animal.

They did not wait for John Grimes to get back from Chicago. At a quarter to three, Tarbert Weir went into his bank and converted ten thousand dollars from his account into travelers checks. He told the cashier, whom he knew well, that he was taking a trip down south and she put her hand out from under the grille and touched his hand as he signed the checks, patting it softly, then made a little pursing movement with her lips, a silent kiss of understanding. Weir nodded and thanked her.

Within twenty minutes the big Mercedes left Springfield and moved out into the traffic of the interstate highway, headed across Indiana lo Ohio and then down to White Sulphur Springs on the eastern border of West Virginia, a town of less than three thousand people, two hundred and fifty miles from Washington, D.C.

General Weir sat slouched down in the front seat, head thrown back against the leather cushion, as if he were exhausted or emotionally drained. Laura Devers was at the wheel.