The Heavenly Table

63

SERGEANT MALONE WAS called to Captain Fisher’s office right after mid-morning drills. On his way in, he passed First Lieutenant Waller coming out with a devious smile on his smoothly shaven face. “So what’s this about Lieutenant Bovard not showing up this morning?” Fisher asked, just before he spat a stream of tobacco juice into a large brass spittoon he kept beside his desk.

“I’m not sure what you mean, sir,” Malone said, still standing at attention.

“Waller just told me you two are thick as thieves.”

“That’s not true, sir. I had a couple of drinks with him once or twice, that’s all.”

Fisher cast a skeptical look Malone’s way, then rang the spittoon again. Due to the country’s backward isolationist policies, most of his military career had been impatiently spent behind a desk, but last winter he’d finally seen some action, having been given the opportunity to serve as the chief interrogations officer with the 7th Calvary in Mexico during Pershing’s search for Pancho Villa. However, though the experience had been revelatory in many ways, and he’d never felt more alive than when he was down there, he was now having problems adjusting to being back stateside. He had begun to doubt even the most casual comment, and something as innocent as “Looks like rain today” might propel him on a weeklong witch hunt. In Mexico, fearful that he’d be sent back home if he failed to get results, he had occasionally gone a bit overboard; and the handle of his service revolver had five neat notches in it to mark the number of suspected sympathizers he had executed after his rather brief questionings failed to turn up any useful information about Villa’s whereabouts. To Fisher’s way of thinking, even if he was lucky, a man would still only experience war two or three times in his sixty or seventy trips around the sun, and he wasn’t about to waste any of the precious minutes allotted to him for combat with prolonged questioning of prisoners, especially those who babbled in a language he couldn’t make heads or tails of. No, when in doubt, the quickest and most efficient way to get at the truth was with a gun, but, as he had to keep reminding himself, the shit he’d pulled down in Chihuahua wouldn’t fly here. “Has he ever said anything about a man named Lucas Charles?” he asked the sergeant, as he opened a leather pouch and squeezed together a quid the size of a golf ball, tucked it in his jaw alongside the one he was already working on. “Some homo that runs one of the theaters in town?”

Malone rubbed at his face while trying to decide how to answer the question. He’d heard the rumors about the lieutenant, but what did playing grab-ass with some funny boy have to do with anything? There probably wasn’t a man on the entire base who wasn’t a sick fucker in some way or another. “Look, sir,” he finally said, “I know he’s my superior, and I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but Lieutenant Waller’s worse than an old woman for spreadin’ gossip.”

Fisher smiled a little then, baring his brown, ground-down teeth. “You mean he’s a liar?”

“Well, I don’t know if I’d go so far—”

“That’s all right, Sergeant,” Fisher said. “I had him pegged as a little deceiver from the get-go. Believe me, that backstabber wouldn’t have lasted five minutes down in Mexico. Someone, and I’m not saying who, mind you, would have put a hole in his head the first time he let his guard down to eat one of those goddamn tacos the old women were always trying to bribe us with.” He leaned back in his chair, stared at his boots for a moment. “But, that being said, I’m going to ask you one more time. Any idea where your buddy might be?”

“No, sir, but I don’t think he’s gone AWOL. I’ve seen a few deserters in my time, and he just don’t strike me as the type.”

“Why’s that?”

Malone looked over at a tapestry hanging on the captain’s wall, burros and adobe huts and a couple of cacti, evidently a memento from the Mexican campaign. He recalled the way the lieutenant had paid attention to him the other night in the Blind Owl when he went into one of his trances and couldn’t stop talking. As if he couldn’t get enough. He was the first man who didn’t seem repulsed by Malone’s descriptions of the carnage at the Front. Hell, from the way his face lit up, you’d have thought he was listening to someone talk about a beautiful woman instead of overripe, headless corpses and rats the size of beagle dogs. “From everything I’ve heard him say, he’s keen as hell to get to France.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Yesterday around dinnertime. Mentioned something about going to the officers’ club. That’s really all I know.”

Fisher bent down with a rag, wiped a speck of dust off the toe of one of his boots. “The general’s already on my ass about this. Though there’s been three other men skip out in the last two weeks, he’s the first officer, and that doesn’t look good. We even talked about draggin’ that goddamn Franks out of that hospital where he’s hiding and putting one through his other eye, just to serve as an example, but there’s too many legal complications in the States. That’s what I liked about Mexico. A man could buy himself out of any kind of trouble down there with a sack of flour and a blanket.”

“I see, sir.”

The captain stopped talking and chewed away like a cow with a cud for a minute or two, then swallowed. “I’m going to give you an assignment, Sergeant Malone.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want you to take a patrol into town every night until we get this cowardly bullshit stopped. You won’t answer to anybody but me. Pick out some men you think you can trust, say, ten or so. Be easy with the citizens, that is, if you can, but any soldiers you catch committing even the slightest infractions, I give you my permission to rough ’em up a little before you haul them to the brig. Understand?”

“I understand, sir.”

“One more thing,” Fisher said. “A little piece of advice I’ve learned along the way you might want to remember.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you happen to kill anybody, make sure they got a gun on ’em before the asshole authorities show up. That’ll save you a lot of headaches in the long run.”