"Andy Duncan - Fortitude" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Andy)

"South Carolina, eh? You know, I met a soldier the other day from South
Carolina, and he said a Southern boy could shoot even better than he could
screw. Do you agree with that, soldier?"
"I'll let you know, General. I need to do a little more shootin'."
"You do that, soldier. You do that." Laughing with the rest, I turned to
the cot across the aisle.
And there he was.
Different cot, different place in the ward. Otherwise the same.
As before, he wasn't a small man. Not scrawny and weak-looking at all.
Big, hearty fellow. Standing, he'd have been my height. He sat on the edge
of a cot, feet on the floor. His hands clenched his knees. No bandages, no
hospital dress at all. He was in full artilleryman's uniform, from helmet
to boots, every inch regulation. Needed a shave, though. One dark eyebrow
smeared across his forehead. His eyes were screwed shut, and his lower lip
was sucked in. His body was as rigid as if sitting at the trigger,
awaiting an order to fire.
I thought of all I could avoid: the Drew Pearson broadcast, the headlines,
the demands in Congress for a court-martial
to curse and slap and physically attack a man in his hospital bed, my
fellow Senators, is not the act of a general but the act of a coward
the endless chewings-out from Ike
a miserable coward
and I told myself, let it go this time, Georgie, let it go. Just walk past
him. Don't even look at him. That's right, Georgie. Just keep on walking.
The bones in my knees and hips seemed to grind together. I bit my tongue
to keep from crying out.
I stopped. I turned to him. I fought to keep my voice low, controlled,
polite. Polite!
What did you do in the war, granddaddy?
Kissed all the ass in Europe, honey, Yankee ass and Limey ass, brass ass
and khaki ass, just like I was told.
"What's your name, soldier? What's your unit?"
His name was Paul G. Bennett. He was 21 years old. Private, First
Battalion, Seventeenth Field Artillery Regiment. Hadn't my family sent me
all the clippings, for Godsake? But as before, he told me nothing. He just
sat there.
I reached out -- gently! gently! I pictured Beatrice's neck at sixteen,
the day of the Catalina picnic with the Pattons and the Ayers, the first
photograph with both of us in it. That's how gently I reached out. My
fingertips rested, trembling, on Bennett's shoulder; I almost stroked it.
I gave him a push so small it was little more than a mental pulse down my
arm from me to him. "Hello. Soldier? Can you hear me?"
"Yes, sir," he quavered. His bottom lip, before it vanished again, was
bloody.
"That's a bad lip you got there, son. Is that why you're in here? That why
you're in the hospital?"
I just want to hear him admit it, I told myself. I just want to hear him
say he's scared. I want the brave men around him to hear his yellow mouth.
Hell, the papers said he had begged to stay with his unit, that his
battery surgeon was the one who ordered him to pack it in, sent him to the