| 2:50a |
@@@@@ And in return he had been told, "Hearn,
@@@@@ And in return he had been told, "Hearn, you're so goddam healthy, you're nothing but a shell
In any case it was not easy to find the shoddy motive in the GeneralHe owned, no doubt, most of the dirty little itches, the lusts for things which were unacceptable to the mores of the weekly slick-paper magazines, but that did not discount himThere was a talent, an added factor, a deeper lust than Hearn had run across before, and, more than that, Hearn was losing his objectivityThe General worked on him even more than he affected the General, and Hearn loathed the very ideaTo lose his inviolate freedom was to become involved again in all the wants and sores that caught up everybody about him
But even so there was a wry isolated attention with which he watched the process unfolding between them
He saw the General about an hour later in his tentCummings was alone for the moment, studying some air operations reportsHearn understood immediatelyAfter the first two or three days of the campaign, when no Japanese air attacks had developed on Anopopei, it had been decided at higher levels to remove the squadron of fighter planes that had been assigned to the campaign and had operated from another island over a hundred miles awayThey had not been of great use but the General had been hoping that when the airfield he had captured was enlarged for the Air Corps, he could use that air support against the Toyaku LineIt had enraged him when the airplanes had been shunted to another campaign, and that had been the time when he had made his remark about enemies
He was studying the theater air operations reports now to find out if any aircraft were being used needlesslyIn another man it would have been absurd, a self-pitying castigation, but with the General it was notHe would absorb every fact in the report, probe the weaknesses, and when the time came and the captured airfield was ready, he would have a strong series of arguments, documented by the reports he studied now
Without turning around, the General said over his shoulder, "You did a damn fool thing today
The General moved his chair about slightly, and looked thoughtfully at Hearn"You were depending on me to bring you out of it He smiled as he said this, and his voice had become artificial, slightly affectedThe General had many different types of speech; when he spoke to enlisted men he swore slightly, made his voice a little less preciseWith his officers he was always dignified and remote, his sentences always rigidly constructedHearn was the only man to whom he spoke directly, and whenever he did not, whenever the down-to-junior-officer-level affectation slipped in, it meant that he was very displeasedHearn had once known a man who stuttered whenever he was telling a lie; this on a more subtle level was as effective a clueThe General was obviously furious that he had had to come to Hearn's support in such a way that headquarters would talk about it for day |