William Diehl: Eureka

“Twelve cylinders. Speedometer top: one-sixty.”

“Close. One-eighty,” Bannon said.

“British leather and I’ll bet she’s got a Sternberg radio in the dash.”

“Muellenberg.”

He whistled low with great appreciation.

“You think you could find a place to park this baby so she don’t get dinged up or get a door scratched?” Bannon said as he struggled out of the driver’s seat. The kid walked over to help him and he handed the youngster his cane.

“I can handle it,” Zeke said. “Hold on to this for me.” He got out and took the cane, then the kid ran around to the other side of the car and opened the door for Millie. She was stunning as always, dressed in pastel colors: a pale blue skirt and a pink blouse, and she was wearing a yellow straw hat, its brim flopping down around her ears, with her silken hair sweeping over her shoulders. The kid was dazzled. He forgot the car for a minute as he helped her down to the running board and onto the walk. Then he bowed from the waist.

“Thank you,” she said, and flashed him a million-dollar smile. Bannon handed him a five-dollar bill but the kid shook his head.

“No, sir,” he said, looking at the two rows of ribbons on Bannon’s khaki shirt. “I ought to be paying you for the privilege of driving it across the street.”

Then he ran around the front of the car, climbed aboard, and ran his hands lovingly around the oak steering wheel.

They entered the lobby, where Brett Merrill was sitting across the way. He stood up, loped across the room, and shook Bannon’s hand hard enough to loosen a tooth.

“Good to see you, Zeke,” he said with a smile that lit up the soft light of the lobby. “How’s the leg?”

“It’s fine,” Bannon said. “I carry the cane to keep my balance. Millicent, this is Brett Merrill.”

“How do you do, Mrs. Bannon,” he said with courtly grace, and brushed the back of her hand with his lips. “What a delight to meet you.”

As always, a Southern gentleman to the core.

“Let’s have a drink,” Merrill said.

They sat down in the barroom, which was an elegant recessed alcove off the main lobby. Nothing seemed to have changed in the hotel since Bannon had last seen it.

Merrill said to the waiter, “I know what the gentleman will have, unless his taste has changed. Irish Mist, neat, with one cube of ice.” And to Millicent, “What will you have, my dear?”

“Amaretto on the rocks,” she answered, her voice a startling blend of softness and strength. She reached over and held Bannon’s hand. It was a gentle move, one that subtly proclaimed her affection for him. Her eyes said the rest.

When the army had sent Bannon to the hospital in San Diego, Millicent had insisted on coming to see him. He had resisted at first. He wanted to get through rehab, get himself back to together, be whole again. Get rid of the demons that follow all men home from the battlefield: guilt because he had survived when others around him had died; fear that is so real it tastes like acid in the throat.

But she had come anyway, driving down to the hospital every weekend, nursing him back with love and caring, cheering him up when he got the blues, chasing away the nightmares. The war had added a few years to Bannon’s handsome features, but he seemed fit and looked well.

“The place hasn’t changed,” he said, making conversation as he looked around the lobby.

“No,” Merrill answered. “It’s reached that traditional stage. I have a feeling it will change, though. Times have changed. The old place will have to catch up.”

“That’s too bad,” Millicent said. “There’s something to be said for tradition, don’t you think?”

“I do indeed,” Merrill answered.

“Sorry it took so long for us to get up here,” Bannon said. “That last card from Brodie was in a stack of mail that was forwarded to me from the hospital. I guess it had been bouncing around APOs for a month or two. Hope he wasn’t pissed that I didn’t answer sooner.”

“Brodie? Never,” Merrill said.

“How’s it going with him?”

“Still alive,” Merrill said with a smile. “You know Brodie. He defies the odds.” There was a catch in his voice when he said it.

“Hell, I didn’t really know him at all,” said Bannon.

“Yes, you did. In some ways, maybe more than any of us. You got in his skin, and you know a lot about a person when that happens. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

He swallowed a couple of times and went on. “He had a heart attack last November. Actually, the day after Thanksgiving. We had breakfast together at Wendy’s and we were walking up the courthouse steps. He was glad-handing everybody, as usual. All of a sudden he stopped and sat down on the steps and said, ‘I think I’m having a heart attack. I feel like my chest is gonna explode.’ He was right. Massive coronary. He almost didn’t come back from that one. Doc Fleming gave him a week. Then two weeks, then two months. Two months later, he gave him six more weeks, and two months after that Brodie was holding court every day out in the garden. Smoking, having a couple of drinks, everything he wasn’t supposed to do. But he was going downhill fast. You could see a change every day. Yesterday, when I asked how it was going, Fleming said, ‘He’s sicker than most dead people I know.’ ”

Neither of them said much for a minute or two.

“You’re right about Brodie, Brett,” Bannon said. “I knew him for what? Two weeks? But he stayed with me. I thought a lot about him through the years.”

“That’s the way it is with the Captain.”

“It’s that damned army mail system,” Bannon said angrily. “The card should’ve been here weeks ago.”

“He understands that. When he read Pennington’s story about you getting the DSC and the Purple Heart, he did an Irish jig around the apartment. ‘And shot in the leg, just like me, wouldn’t you know it!’ he said. He was very proud of you. It doesn’t take two weeks to measure the strength of a man.”

“How true,” Millicent Bannon said, and looked at Bannon adoringly.

A lucky man, Merrill thought. And aloud, “Had a rough time of it, didn’t you?”

“Not really,” he answered. “Most of the time I was a glorified traffic cop, moving tanks, jeeps, half-tracks, quarter-tons through bottlenecks, getting them up to the front. We were near the German border and a German Tiger tank broke through the lines. We were caught in the middle of a firefight. I drove over a mine. Next thing I remember, I was under the damn jeep, with a fifty-caliber shooting at everything that moved. We slowed the bastard down just long enough for our artillery to get its range. It didn’t help win the war. Just another hour in the life of World War Two.”

“That isn’t exactly the way I heard it,” said Merrill.

“That’s exactly the way it happened,” Bannon said.

Merrill looked past him, smiled, and stood up.

“Here’s Del,” he said.

Delilah hadn’t changed a bit. Not a wrinkle, not a smile line, not a gray hair. Maybe Grand View was sitting on top of the fountain of youth, thought Bannon.

“Hi, hero,” she said, giving him a peck on the cheek and immediately turning her attention to his wife.

“You must be Millicent,” she said, offering her hand. Bannon watched her quick appraisal, saw the glint in her eye. All class, that’s what she’s thinking.

“How are things at Grand View?” Bannon asked.

“Nothing’s changed,” her dusky voice answered. “Things seemed to freeze in time during the war. You’re looking fit as a fiddle, Zeke.” She looked back at Millicent with a smile. “Must be the company you keep. Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Millicent answered. She was a bit ill at ease, like meeting in-laws for the first time, and Delilah sensed it. Then Millicent said, “I feel as if I know you all. Zee has told me a lot about you. Actually, I met him the day before he came to San Pietro for the first time.”