And at work, Lute Halvoy had commented, “Macurdy, you better start showing your age, or people will think you’re a draft dodger.”
How long, he wondered, did they have, he and Mary, before they had to go somewhere else? Before people really began to wonder? Mary understood, of course. Sometimes when she looked thoughtfully and a bit wistfully at him, it seemed to him she was thinking about a future when she was old and he was “still young.” Eight years ago it hadn’t seemed fully real. Now it had begun to.
Sometimes he wondered if he’d done her wrong by marrying her. Once he’d even wondered out loud. “If you’ll remember,” she’d answered, “I was the one who proposed. And if you’re still young when I’m old and dried up, it’s you who’s likely to regret.” She’d paused. “I read that in China, a wife who’s gotten old will sometimes select a ripe young girl and bring her home, to help around the house and keep her husband company in bed. I might not want one in the house with me, but if you were seeing a girlfriend now and then, I’d understand. When I’m old.”
He’d closed her lips with a kiss. “Don’t say such things,” he’d whispered.
The love behind her saying it should have touched him, warmed him. Instead, her words had been like a large stone on his chest, and when he remembered them, they still were.
Three days later, Mary miscarried.
Dr. Wesley didn’t show the seven-month fetus to the parents, though he would have if they’d insisted. He told Curtis it would never have been remotely normal; that they, and it, were lucky it was stillborn. “I’m surprised she hadn’t miscarried a lot earlier,” he said. “I suspect it lived as long as it did because your wife was so determined to have a child.”
She’d probably have three or four of them by now, Macurdy thought, if she had a normal husband.
That night, for the first time since he’d returned home to Farside, to the United States of America, he dreamed of Melody. The details were as clear and normal as in his recurring dreams with Varia, but the setting was different. Instead of a gazebo beside a sea, they met in something that reminded him of pictures he’d seen of the Jefferson Monument, though much smaller, and she wore a flowing robe of what seemed to be silk.
Afterward he didn’t remember much she’d said in the dream, but he remembered her last words the rest of his life. “Curtis, your Mary loves you deeply and selflessly. Accept her love as offered, and don’t ever imagine you’re not deserving. She’s much happier for having married you.”
He wished afterward that he’d made love with Melody before he awoke, as he did in his dreams with Varia. Probably, he decided, the souls in heaven didn’t have sex, even in dreams.
In mid-February, Macurdy enlisted. He told himself it wasn’t a matter of wanting to, but of patriotism. But in fact, once he’d signed up, he felt a focus he hadn’t felt since the end of his war with the Ylver.
Three weeks later he was on a train, enroute to infantry training at Camp Joseph T. Robinson, Arkansas.
He knew this would change his life, but he hadn’t a notion how greatly, how powerfully. Or how well he’d prepared for it.
PART TWO
Airborne!
11
Infantry Training
The Camp Robinson military reservation seemed big as a county. Its red-clay hills were covered mostly with scrub oak. The more moderate terrain had mixed woods of larger trees, laced with creeks and interspersed with abandoned fields. Part of the camp itself had new, cream-colored frame buildings, but most of the trainees lived in squad tents boasting wooden floors and a small round sheet metal stove. It was the second week in March, and winter had launched a counteroffensive against encroaching spring. The tent sides were tightly secured to keep out the wind, rain, sleet and snow.
At the end of each row of tents was a coal bin from which they took their fuel. The real problem was lighting it. Even with the draft and damper closed, fire in the little knee-high stove burned out in a few hours and had to be restarted, which was hard to do without wood for kindling. And usually there was no wood. The men did the best they could, using cookie cartons, newspapers, and lighter fluid. A few of the more adventurous foraged in the night, hunting for kindling in the bins of other companies. On the third night, four men from Company B were caught stealing wood from the fuel bin at D Company’s messhall, and the resulting fight sent three of them to the dispensary with minor injuries, notably split lips.