He had known what would happen to her, and surely she did. In all likelihood she no longer cared. You get so old, you grow so hungry — and finally you seek a way out. The bridge was always a way out. Or downstream where the bridges had been dynamited, a rowboat. The troops were continuously on the prowl and the river watch never ended.
Gary knew there were many thousands of them, a large portion of what remained of the United States Army, stationed all along the western bank of the Mississippi, all the way from the delta northward to Lake Winnibigoshish in Minnesota, and from that point still northward overland to Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba. Still north of that body of water, the Mounted Patrol or the terrain stopped you.
He could have been among those lucky troops on the other side of the river, the safe side. If he hadn't gotten blind drunk a year ago. Hadn't waked up in that hotel.
Corporal Russell Gary, with a Fifth Army patch on his shoulder and nothing more strenuous than recruiting duty in downstate Illinois. Veteran of the Salerno campaign — he lasted five days on the beach before shrapnel pushed him off; veteran of the French and German thrusts — he was promoted to a tech-sergeancy in the early days of the Normandy invasion and busted again before he reached the Rhine. Experienced and unscrupulous black-marketeer, junior grade; turned a tidy sum dealing in military gasoline, rations, soap, foodstuffs. He elected to stay in the army after the war because he had no home to speak of, and on his thirtieth birthday he was celebrating ten years of khaki with a monumental binge.
He figured the army owed him a year's pay.
When he woke up he was on the wrong side of the river, the bombed and contaminated side…
2
CORPORAL GARY sneezed and opened his eyes.
The dirty wallpaper only half clinging to the ceiling seemed ready to come loose and drop on him at any moment. He sneezed again and rolled his eyes to see the equally sad paper peeling from the side walls. The layer peeling off wore faded pink roses and below that was another of dirty blue feathers. A battered old telephone hung on the wall near the door, screwed to the cracking plaster. His rumpled trousers were on the floor beside the bed.
“Mother of Moses!” the corporal complained, “another stinking firetrap.”