Chuck gave a ghastly smile. “That’s the only way I dare be. All my folks are—yonder—in it.”
“Oh.” The other man tapped with a pencil. “Sorry.”
Chuck’s smile was steadier. “It’s okay.”
He merely happened to be coming back from the latrine when he saw the general step out through the door onto the field. It was a peculiar thing for him to do and odd for him to be alone and Chuck stepped out to speak to him. But the general had already walked some distance onto a hardstand and was staring at the fire. He was wearing side arms. Chuck had thought nothing of that.
General Boyce whipped out his forty-five and shot himself through the head so suddenly that Charles couldn’t even shout. And before Charles reached his side, three grease monkeys had arrived and were kneeling.
Toward midnight, Charles was assigned a patrol and ordered into River City to do what he could about panic, looting, whatever might be handled. “Only,” said the tragic-faced colonel who gave the orders, “don’t expose your men to fire unless you have to. Don’t try to obstruct any big groups of human beings. We can only let the madness itself burn out of them—and God help whoever they encounter!”
9
By what back streets and alleyways Nora had come, climbing over what masses of brick, past what unspeakable sights, Alice would never know, didn’t ask, didn’t want to know.
“There’s a child in here,” one of the nurses had said, as Alice moved out of one blood-washed operating room and started toward the other. “She wants to speak to you.”
“Good heavens!” The superintendent’s annoyance was plain.