BooksBarbecue
Back The Fall of Valor
Chapters (51)
  1. Introduction by Michael Bronski
  2. BEGINNING
  3. II
  4. III
  5. IV
  6. V
  7. VI
  8. VII
  9. VIII
  10. IX
  11. X
  12. XI
  13. XII
  14. XIII
  15. MIDDLE
  16. II
  17. III
  18. IV
  19. V
  20. VI
  21. VII
  22. VIII
  23. IX
  24. X
  25. XI
  26. XII
  27. XIII
  28. XIV
  29. XV
  30. XVI
  31. XVII
  32. XVIII
  33. XIX
  34. XX
  35. END
  36. II
  37. III
  38. IV
  39. V
  40. VI
  41. VII
  42. VIII
  43. IX
  44. X
  45. XI
  46. XII
  47. XIII
  48. XIV
  49. XV
  50. XVI
  51. About the Author

“Mighty nice husband you’ve got there,” Sarah Howard said, “in more ways than one. If you know what I mean.”

“Never mind, Sadie.”

“By the way, Captain,” she went on.

He came to polite attention at once. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Your wife has been telling us you’re on the sick list.”

“Yes, ma’am, I am.”

“Well? Come come, tell us about those wounds. I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours,” and she roared with laughter.

“Really, Mama, cut it out.”

Hauman’s embarrassment was painful to see. “I guess there isn’t much to tell, ma’am. I’m not a hero, if that’s what you mean. I was wounded, yes, but—well . . .” And now, as if eager to get it over with at last, he told the shameful story almost in one breath. “I was leading a few of my men through a path in the jungle when we were ambushed. It was my own darn fault. I knew the Japs were there but I made a wrong mistake and took the wrong path. Anyway, those rascals jumped us and I don’t remember anything then till I woke up in a hospital tent and they told me it was sixteen days later. Eight of the other fellows were dead, they told me, but one other guy and myself came out of it all right.”

“All right, yes,” Billie snorted, “with ten broken ribs, all his teeth rammed down his throat, his whole face cut open to his jaw, a fractured skull and concussion of the brain—if you call that all right! He laid there in the jungle for two whole days before they found him, didn’t you, Cliff?”

“That’s what they tell me but I don’t know, honey, I don’t remember.”

“Are those store teeth you’re wearing?” Mrs. Howard asked.

“Yes ma’am,” and he smiled obligingly to show them.

“What about the fractured skull?” Bill Howard said.

“I think it’s all right, sir. I get dizzy once in a while and I don’t have any nerves working in the left side of my face, but that’s something that won’t show up in the examination.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, Cliff thinks he’s going to get back into the service,” Billie said.

“I sure am, and I’m going to pass that examination, too! They can’t tell I don’t feel anything in my face.”

Sarah Howard folded her arms and looked at him ­appraisingly. “I think you’re a fine boy and all that,” she said, “and one of the most beautiful I ever saw. But I also think you’re a damned fool.”