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Back The Fall of Valor Save as PDF
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

The noisy bus from Nantucket joggled in; it came to a gasping stop at the curb. The wide door next to the driver’s seat swung open.

“Ethel,” he said under his breath, “look who’s here.”

V

V

“. . . You did say that if we came out we might use your room. Anyway, we took you at your word,” Billie went on. “Cliff has our bathing suits, see?” and she pointed to the fat roll of towel under her husband’s arm. The Captain beamed on them both, as if they were the only two people in the world he wanted to see at that moment—and doubtless they were.

“We’re glad you did,” Ethel said. “John and I don’t know anyone here and it’s nice to have someone.”

“Yes, that’s what we thought. For us too, I mean. Why, you can’t imagine how lonesome we’ve been in Nantucket . . .”

As they started up the bluff road, Hauman swung an impulsive arm around Grandin’s shoulder and gave him a kind of hug. “How are you, John?”

This familiarity took him so completely by surprise Grandin could only laugh, nonplused. The Captain’s boundless delight at seeing them again was puzzling. Standing in the door of the bus, looking incredibly handsome, healthy, clean and young, his face had lighted up with pleasure even before he caught sight of them; when he did so, he gave the impression that he and Billie had expected to be met all along. His hearty handshake and beaming smile all but said, Have you been waiting long?

Billie wore a shiny white silk dress. Hauman was dressed as before in khaki shirt, trousers, and GI boots, his service cap stuck in his canvas belt. His spirits were irresistible; it would have been stuffy to hold oneself aloof from such good-­natured if unreasonable affection. He was apparently the kind of young man to whom a second meeting was the equivalent of a long friendship. All his diffidence of yesterday was gone. His politeness and his almost archaic niceness of speech persisted—there were the words rascal, heck, darn and so on—but the new confidence he had seemed to find in himself on seeing the Grandins again told them that from now on the party was in his hands.

He took Grandin’s arm and led him ahead as if he had something intimate to confide. But the move turned out to have sprung from nothing more than his native assumption (which Grandin was to notice increasingly) that men should be with men, women with women. Ethel and Billie followed along behind.