Dan Wakefield - Going All the Way - A Novel

“DeeDee isn’t quite ready,” Mrs. Armbrewster said, “and I’m so glad to have a moment to talk with you young men. Veterans , I should say.”

Gunner had introduced Sonny as a friend who had also just got out of the service, which was the biggest kind of buildup you could give to Mrs. Armbrewster. She pinched her glasses onto her nose and asked the young men to step into her study for a moment if they would. As she turned to lead them, Gunner gave Sonny a nudge with his elbow and rolled his eyes up into his head.

The study was a dim, secretive little room with a desk, a large metal office file, a silk American flag on a gold tripod stand, and a Statue of Liberty lamp with a lightbulb in its hand instead of a torch. On the walls were a framed Preamble to the Constitution, a certificate of membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution, an aerial view of Mt. Vernon, a bearded Jesus kneeling under a heavenly spotlight, a photo of General MacArthur smoking his corncob pipe, and a homemade sampler that said “The Price of Liberty Is Eternal Vigilance.” Catherine Millbank Armbrewster had committed herself to that vigilance, clipping items every day from newspapers and magazines on the latest Red activities and maintaining her own private file (though private, it was always at the disposal of the proper authorities, as she had written in a confidential letter to J. Edgar Hoover himself) of state and local communist subversion, ranging all the way from the teaching of the Robin Hood story in public schools (with the help of Mrs. Armbrewster and other patriots, this Marxist text with its message of rob-the-rich-and-give-to-the-poor was successfully banned from the Indiana state school system), to the brazen attempt by the local branch of the pinko American Civil Liberties Union to secure the hallowed halls of the Indianapolis War Memorial for a speech by the left-leaning industrialist Paul Hoffman. With the American Legion leading the way, this plot was also nipped in the bud, rasing howls of protest from what Mrs. Armbrewster thought of as the International-Jew editorial writers of the Eastern Commie Inner Circle rag, The New York Times .

Mrs. Armbrewster pulled out a drawer of her file, and Gunner and Sonny sat down on a little two-seater couch, trying not to look at each other.

“You men have served,” she said. She took Gunner’s hand and said, “You fought. You bled.”

Gunner squirmed. “I caught a little shrapnel,” he admitted, omitting the location of the wound.

“And your friend?” she asked, turning her gaze on Sonny.

“I was stationed in Kansas City,” he said. “Public Information.”

She patted his hand. “ Some one has to do the paper work,” she consoled him.

“Absolutely!” Gunner chimed in.

“And now what?” Mrs. Armbrewster asked. Her eyes glimmered meaningfully behind the spectacles.

Sonny looked to Gunner.

“Now?” asked Gunner.

“It isn’t over,” Mrs. Armbrewster darkly announced. She picked a book off her desk and handed it to Gunner, saying, “You were there. You must read this.”

Gunner gingerly took the book in his hands. It was called From the Danube to the Yalu , by General Mark Clark.

“The Yalu River,” Gunner said, by way of a comment.

“Turn to the opening,” Mrs. Armbrewster instructed.

Gunner flipped a few pages and came to an underlined part that said:

In carrying out the instructions of my government, I gained the unenviable distinction of being the first U.S. Army commander in history to sign an armistice without victory.

But when I signed the armistice, I knew, of course, that it was not over—that the struggle against Communism would not be over in my lifetime. The Korean war was a skirmish, a bloody, costly skirmish, fought on the perimeter of the Free World.

Gunner coughed and said, “Well, it was bloody all right.”

“You go on reading that—you were there, you deserve to know the real meaning of it,” Mrs. Armbrewster said.

“And you”—she nodded to Sonny—“you were in Information here at home. We need more information like this —”

She handed him a copy of the new Saturday Evening Post , folded to the editorial page, which she had marked in red:

All over the country nowadays the Communists are busy in a vast and silent infiltration, moving skillfully into a wide variety of local, regional, and national groups. No pro-Moscow orations bubble from their plausible lips. They appear to be sincere, hard-working liberals, eager for the success of the organizations in which they have become active, including unions, parent-teacher organizations, Democratic clubs, and in a few cases even Republican clubs.

There was no one you could trust, Sonny figured. The editorial went on to say:

And yet this insidious operation is a part of the Communist Party’s effort to re-establish the popular front.…

“Oh, Mother .”

Sonny looked up and saw DeeDee Armbrewster standing at the door of the study. She had her hands in fists on her hips, looking as if she’d caught her mother showing her personal diaries to the guys or baby pictures of her in the nude. DeeDee wasn’t too political, herself.

“Hi, Deeds,” Gunner said, standing up and going toward her.

“Gunner.” She smiled.

He kissed her the way you kiss a girl in front of her mother, and said, “You remember Sonny Burns, don’t you?”

“Oh—of course,” she said, looking at him blankly.

“I must talk with you young men again soon,” Mrs. Armbrewster said as they started edging from the room. “Every day counts.”

“Right!” Gunner affirmed with great gusto, taking DeeDee’s arm.

“Yes, ma’am,” Sonny said.

They all three piled in the front seat of the car, DeeDee in the middle. She had on a sleeveless summer dress and Sonny felt nervous, touching her brown bare arm. She was one of those cool, confident girls who always seemed to be beyond his reach. She wasn’t any great beauty, but she had a firm little body and a fine-boned face with perfect teeth and brown eyes that seemed to look right into you, not afraid of anything, and that rich kind of dark chestnut hair that was thick and clean and caught the sunlight just like the hair of girls in those advertisements for diamonds.

“Were you snowing my mother this time?” she asked Gunner. “Or was she snowing you?”

Gunner laughed and said, “Listen, I’m in like Flynn with your old lady now.”

“I bet. Big War Hero. God, if she only knew.”

“Whatya mean?”

“Nothing,” she said and leaned up and gave Gunner a little nip on the ear.

Buddie was wearing a peasant blouse and a full skirt and those black flat Capezios that always reminded Sonny of boats stuck on the feet. In Buddie’s case, he noted, pretty big boats, at that. She looked very homey, like one of those healthy Dutch girls carrying pails of milk. She reminded him of the sort of girl you’d like to have for a sister.

When they got to Gunner’s place, the girls went right to the bathroom to comb their hair and fix up, although they had presumably been doing just that before the guys picked them up. Gunner took Sonny to the kitchen, where he had made a whole big thermos of seabreezes. He poured one for Sonny to taste, and Sonny gulped about half the glass and pronounced it just right. It tasted almost like straight grapefruit juice; you hardly even noticed the gin. That was the beauty of the seabreeze. You could load a hell of a lot of gin into the grapefruit juice and still barely taste the gin, so a girl would drink it down easily and not feel like she was really boozing it up, and before she knew it she was happy. And friendly. It was a favorite drink for taking on picnics and blanket parties.