Sloan Wilson - Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

Can’t think of anything more to say now, except I miss you like anything. If I sent all the kisses I’d like to give you, this letter would have to go parcel post!

I love you forever and forever and forever and forever!

BETSY

Her other letters had been much the same. They had contained descriptions of movies she had seen, and dreams of the future, when he would have a job with J. H. Nottingsby, Incorporated, or some firm with a name which would have to sound like that. Along with the easy optimism, the cheerfulness, and long, involved jokes, Betsy had sent him pictures of herself, snapshots of a slender, fresh-faced girl, hearty, healthy, and smiling, a girl he had seen someplace sometime, long ago, a real beauty.

Perhaps I shall go back to Italy, if I go anywhere at all, he had thought. If I go back to Italy I shall betray one person, but if I go home to Betsy, perhaps I shall betray two. It had been strange to lie on the narrow canvas cot in New Guinea and think of a son, perhaps, the grandson of “The Major,” his own son, the great-grandson of “The Senator,” the likeness of himself, dancing for pennies in the streets of Rome. If he did not go back to Rome, what would happen to such a son? He would go wandering barefoot, begging for chew-chew gum, a child without a father, the son of a harlot grown ugly and bitter. That’s my boy, he had thought while lying on the hard canvas cot in New Guinea; that’s my boy. If I get it on Karkow, that will be the only part of me I’ll leave behind.

He had decided that if he survived the war he would go back to Italy, at least to see how Maria was making out, and he envied Caesar Gardella, who got long letters in Italian from his girl in Rome, and who considered himself formally engaged and talked constantly about getting married after the war. Maria had never written Tom at all. It had been her kind of faithfulness not to write, to allow herself to be forgotten. But apparently Gina had written something to Caesar about her, for Caesar’s attitude toward Tom had changed — he had become reserved and disapproving, and with an edge to his voice, he had for the first time begun to call Tom “Sir.”

Now in his office at the Schanenhauser Foundation, Tom got up and stared out the window at the city below. He had not thought of Karkow for years. If Karkow had not cauterized his mind, he might not have forgotten Maria so easily, and things might have been different between him and Caesar. How had it started? He had first heard the name Karkow as a rumor, while flying from Europe. After he had lain for weeks in a transient officers’ camp in New Guinea, the rumor had grown until it was substantiated by a colonel who had called Tom and Mahoney and many other officers into his matter-of-fact office, with a matter-of-fact map on the wall, to brief them.

Karkow was a small, jagged island, with steep rocky cliffs on all but one side. The Japs, like the British before them, had had many guns trained on the gravel beach on that one side, waiting for an invasion, and they had honeycombed the island with tunnels and caves. The island lay in the mouth of a large bay, and it had to be taken — no one had doubted that. The plan for taking it was simple, the colonel had explained in his matter-of-fact way: three thousand paratroopers would be dropped on it.

“Damn it to hell!” Mahoney had said that night after the colonel had explained the plan. “Don’t they know anything about how paratroopers work? You don’t jump on top of the god-damn enemy! You don’t throw three thousand men right down on top of nests of antiaircraft artillery and machine guns and thousands of armed men, ready and waiting!”

“Well, this time I guess they do,” Caesar had said bitterly. “The colonel’s sure the Navy will have blasted every gun off the island before we get there. Didn’t you hear him?”

“I wonder,” Tom had said, “how many of us will even hit the goddamn island? It’s pretty small. I bet they dump half of us in the water.”

The idea had been to take off for the jump at four o’clock in the morning and to start landing troops on the island with the first light of dawn. The plan had been for the Navy to start shelling the place two days beforehand and to have landing craft approach to make the Japs think the invasion was coming from the sea.

I will be sensible, Tom had thought late on the afternoon before the invasion. I will be sensible and go to bed early, and get a good rest. He had lain down on his cot and tried hard to think of nothing, to make his mind a complete blank. He had not wanted to think of the small island, Karkow, lying now under shellfire from the Navy, with the Japs in their caves. He had not wanted to think of Betsy, and he had not wanted to think of Maria. How painful had been the memory of a kiss or of anything good he would never have again! He had lain still, pretending to be asleep when Mahoney came in and stretched out on the cot near him.

“Tom?” Mahoney had asked after a few minutes.

“Yes.”

“It’s funny,” Mahoney had said. “I was just thinking, we got nothing to worry about. I mean, we either don’t get it tomorrow, and we got nothing to worry about, or we do get it tomorrow, and we got nothing to worry about.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“No, I mean it. I been worrying a lot about what kind of job I’ll get after the war. Now I’m not worrying about it.”

“No worries,” Tom had said.

They had both lain there on the canvas cots, unable to sleep, and a curious lightheaded mood had taken possession of them, almost gaiety. At about one o’clock they had given up trying to sleep and had gone to a near-by dispensary, where some doctors were playing poker. They had joined the game and had accepted a few drinks of medicinal alcohol from the doctors, but they had not got drunk; they would have been crazy to do that. It had not really been necessary to get drunk. The jokes had all seemed astonishingly funny, in fact everything had seemed funny. The doctors had not known that he and Mahoney were supposed to take off in a few hours for Karkow. One of them had complained bitterly about having to be on duty all night, and about what a great financial sacrifice a doctor in the Army makes, because he could be making ten times more money at home. Mahoney had sympathized with the doctor, his great face morose and understanding, without a hint of irony, and Tom had laughed inside until his stomach hurt.

At about three o’clock Mahoney had said, “Well, I guess we got to be going. How about it, Tom?”

“I guess so,” Tom had said.

“Hey, you can’t quit while you’re ahead,” one of the doctors had objected.

“Sorry,” Mahoney had said. He and Tom had left the doctors without saying where they were going, not so much because they weren’t supposed to tell as because it was more bitter and more funny to hear the doctors complain about breaking up the game too early.

Tom and Mahoney had gone from the card game to the mess hall and had had a big breakfast. They had sat together, looking at the young boys, the members of their companies, fresh recruits, most of them, filing into the mess hall, the sleep still in their eyes. More than half of them had never been in a combat jump, and they had looked incredibly young, almost like schoolboys as they filed into the mess hall to get a good breakfast before taking off.

“We’ve got five or six years on most of them,” Mahoney had said, and Tom had understood that he said it in sorrow for the young boys, for at times like that, each year of age, each year behind you, seemed like a million dollars in the bank that could never be taken away, and the old were to be envied more than anyone on earth, for they had lived their lives, but the young were vulnerable — their lives could be stolen from them.