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Overview
Musso doesn’t ask much in return: one hand washes the other. All Carl has to do is use his charm to seduce the promiscuous Natalie Bixby, locate her thieving boyfriend, and toss him to Musso like raw meat to a shark. Meanwhile, dark undercurrents are also flowing in the prisoner of war camp—Nazi intimidation, torture, escapes, and the murder of a child.
How much evil is Carl willing to ignore in his single-minded quest for stardom? Is he so far gone that he does not care who murdered a boy? Will his attraction to the young and beautiful Italian translator Elizabeth revive the conscience he’s been suppressing? Or is Carl in too deep, so tangled in corruption that he is a dead man no matter what he does?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504012515 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The Permanent Press (ORD) |
| Publication date: | 06/02/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 303 |
| File size: | 633 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
And the Angels Sing
By J. Madison Davis
The Permanent Press
Copyright © 1996 J. Madison DavisAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1251-5
CHAPTER 1
Carl was still haunted by his reflection as they pulled away from the station in Westfield. A few miles back an Amish farmer dressed black as a crow had been perched on the bouncing seat of his cultivator moving parallel to the train, snapping his wrist to keep his massive horse churning the soft earth. A breeze lifted the brim of the old man's flat black hat and flicked his long silver beard over his shoulder. He looked like someone out of a western, wearing that hat and coat in the August sun, and doing what? Mowing? Rolling new potatoes out of the earth? Turning alfalfa back in? The bushes along the tracks blocked Carl's view of the earth itself, and the old man in his death-black clothes seemed to glide over it creating an unearthly vision, a bucolic and false image for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. It was the kind of all-American image that soldiers clung to on the road outside Bône while they hid in the shade of an M-4 Sherman from a sun more merciless than Rommel's panzers. In war you needed a concocted and unchanging vision of the world at peace, an icon whose protection justified any suffering.
But then, as if a movie film had snapped, the antique farmer and his field were gone. The train had passed into a stone tunnel and Carl's face, gaunt and ghostly and very real, stared back from the glass, the sockets of his eyes sharp, his cheeks sunken, the veins of his forehead in high relief. A shiver passed through him. They had plunged into the Underworld and he was staring into the cold eyes of his own shade. Instantly, the reflection exploded in sunlight. He winced. They were passing vineyards. A fat man in a linen suit tipped his panama hat. But Carl's reflection stayed in his mind. The face of war was composed of millions of faces exactly like his own, faces whose dreams had been ravaged.
He told himself that the face in the glass was not Carl Carlson. It was the face of Corporal Carl Maria Walthers, recipient of the Purple Heart. Carl Carlson would have to wait for the army to come to its senses and discharge Corporal Walthers. It was merely a question of picking up where he had left off, of anticipating the kinds of songs people would want to hear after the damned war was over. Being a veteran wouldn't hurt. There ought to be plenty of chances to get his voice back in shape at Camp Anthony Wayne. And there'd be leave. It'd be a cinch to get back in touch with the Greek. Cleveland was only a hundred or so miles away. The Carolina Crooner wasn't dead yet. They'd tried to stop him by having a war, but it wouldn't work. The face in the glass was what might be, he told himself, not what would be.
"Young man?"
A woman in spectacles startled him. Her face was half covered with a net which emerged from under the front of her purple hat.
"Young man, would you mind if I sit?"
"No, sure. Take a load off. I mean you're welcome, ma'am."
"Have you been overseas, young man?"
"Excuse me?"
She clutched her purse closer to her stomach. "Oh, I'm sorry. I know you're not supposed to talk about it. But I am not interested in anything of military significance. My name is Myrtle Kent — Mrs. Roland Kent."
"Pleased to meet you," he said flatly. "I'm Carl Walthers."
"Carl — can I call you Carl? — I was wondering if, on some chance in your travels — wherever they were, I don't need to know — you had met a Robert Euclid Kent. Bobby is my son, you see, and he hasn't written for some time now."
"Kent?"
"Robert Euclid. The last time we heard from him he was training in Texas." She fished a photograph from her purse and leaned forward, eyes hungry.
"I don't know, ma'am. I met a lot of guys." He scanned the picture. A boy standing stiffly in a baggy suit. "Did he go by Bob, maybe?" He wasn't sure why he asked. He told himself he was stalling to remember if he had run into him.
A glow came over her. She talked about Bobby's big ears and his way with dogs. She said his favorite books were those awful Fu Manchu stories and that he loved to eat his grandmother's cinnamon apple dumplings. The more she spoke the more her lip quivered.
Carl interrupted before she lost it. "Big ears, did you say? Like Bing Crosby."
She nodded and leaned closer.
He tapped the photo with his index finger. "I think I met a guy named Kent. Yeah. He was playing with this mongrel that had wandered up."
"That's just like him!"
"It came to me because he said something about army chow and how he missed his grandmother's dumplings."
She raised her hand to her mouth. "How was he?" she asked desperately. "Did he look well?"
Carl shrugged. "He struck me as a real man's man, if you know what I mean. I had the impression the guys respected him. You'd be proud of him."
Her eyes filled with water. He lowered his head and picked at an imaginary piece of lint on his trouser leg.
She took a deep breath, pressed her hand against her bosom, and bit her lower lip. She stared right through Carl, seeing what? Her son as a baby? Her son reciting the Twenty-third Psalm? Her son swimming naked in the local pond?
"I didn't talk to him long, ma'am, but I think that must have been him. He's a fine man."
Mrs. Kent turned towards the window and watched the trees rushing past. The train creaked as it slowed. She shifted, straightening her backbone. "You're a kind boy," she said. "But you shouldn't lie."
Carl glanced at the window as if she had seen something. For an uneasy moment he expected the ghostly reflection to be staring back. "Lie?" he said angrily. "Why should I lie? Kent! Big ears! He was playing with a dog!" The loudness of his voice had drawn the attention of a priest across the car. Carl reached for his duffel bag. "What are you looking at?" he said to the priest. "Believe what you want. Why would I lie?"
The woman continued staring through the window as they entered the town. Carl paused near the doorway and peered back at her. Why had he had gotten so angry? Anger had screwed him up with the Army and it didn't make any sense here. Was he so transparent? What kind of singer would that make him? He was showing Carl Walthers when he had needed the silky Carl Carlson. "Your boy is fine," he said fiercely. "He'll be all right."
The woman did not move. The priest continued to stare at Carl, who was banged against the door frame when the car lurched to a stop. "Why don't you do your job?" he snarled at the priest. When the conductor reached to help him with his duffel bag he jerked it away.
The station at North East sat at right angles to a large brick hotel. A boy was hawking the Erie Daily Times. A policeman sat on the hood of his car eating what looked like a chunk of wedding cake, and a veiled woman in widow's weeds was embraced by a farmer and his big-boned wife. Carl spotted an olive Chevy with a white star on the side. The driver hopped out, slipped on his cap, and hurried towards the platform.
Carl hopped down to street level. "Corporal Carl Walthers." He stuck out his hand. "You meeting me?"
The boy's fingers were wiry, but he had a strong grip. He smelled like Black Jack gum and a nasty pimple was poking through his eyebrow. "Yes, sir. Private Ansel Dahl."
"I thought I'd have to get a cab."
"You never know if they got gas. We're talking Hicksville."
"Bad town?"
"It ain't St. Louis." He reached for the duffel bag and Carl let him have it. He felt a little guilty for yanking it back from the conductor.
"Looks like America. Andy Hardy lives here, right?"
"You got that right. Pittsburgh's south, Buffalo's east, and Cleveland's west. Erie's about twenty miles west, but none of them is St. Louis, either."
"So you're from St. Louis, I take it?"
"You bet. Be there in Sportsman's Park rooting for the Browns if it wasn't for Judge Willard. They were in third place last year and should be doing better. Next to last this year."
"The Yankees are running away with it, even with the draft."
"The Browns out-hit the Yankees the other day. Pounded Spud Chandler for nine hits. Did they get a run? No. Lost four to zip. Go figure!"
"Maybe you should root for the Cardinals. Who's Judge Willard?"
"Nobody you ever want to meet, brother." He opened the back door.
"I'll ride up front. Just toss the gear on the back seat."
"The camp's not far. We only have about five hundred prisoners so far, but they're expecting to get more on Tuesday and more on Thursday. They're figuring about fifteen hundred total by early forty-four."
"And I get to have tea with every one of them," said Carl drily. "Could we stop for some smokes?"
"Sure. We'll stop on Main. You get a look-see that way."
The center of North East was only a block or two away, and the crack about Andy Hardy movies was even more fitting when they got there. A dime store, a church, a hotel called the Haynes House, the Bank of North East, a barber, and a park with a monument to those who died in the Great War. Two priests sat on a bench in the park talking excitedly. There were posters in the windows urging citizens to buy bonds and Firch's Ma-Made bread. A town workman was pounding a loose cobblestone back into place, and Carl wondered how the bastard ducked the draft. Three teenaged girls passed, whispering and sneaking peeks out of the corner of their eyes. They didn't see too many men Carl's age. He winked and they scurried away giggling, faces flushed. He could smell hamburgers cooking.
Hicksville, the private had said. Carl had never lived in a place like this. Where had he lived, really? A cheap apartment in New York, the sleepy town of Williamsburg, Pullman cars, Greyhound "SuperCoaches," chintzy hotels, barracks and tents and more barracks. He remembered the model of Henry Aldrich's home town he had seen in Life. The radio writers had created it so that they wouldn't get confused. Andy Hardy, Henry Aldrich, the town with a nice, anonymous geographical name: Centerville, Midwest City, North East. The town that meant America. The town worth dying for. Shucks oh golly, he thought, I could sing in the church choir. Carl Carlson, Carolina Choirboy.
As they headed south, he drew deep on his Philip Morris and gave three of them to the private, who said he'd save them for later. They were soon passing rows of grapevines and climbing an incline. A wooden guard tower was silhouetted against a fluffy white cloud. When the barbed wire fences, about eight feet high, came into view, they turned onto a gravel lane leading to a double gate.
Dahl waved and the guards opened it without a word. Inside a second fence ahead of them were two neat lines of tar-paper barracks with corrugated tin roofs. There were twenty pairs until they dropped down the roll of the hill and out of sight. Similar rows stretched to the right where several prisoners, stripped to the waist, raised the frame of a wall. "Welcome to Camp Mad Anthony," said Dahl, "the place where the elite Heinies meet."
The staff buildings were no more elegant than the prisoners', though the HQ had been covered with pine planks and painted olive drab. Their boots echoed under the wooden floor as they climbed the stoop. Inside, the staff sergeant was not at his desk, so Dahl tapped on the major's door.
"Come in," growled someone.
"Private Dahl reporting." He saluted sharply. "Corporal Walthers is here."
The major's shirt was sweaty in the armpits, his tie seemed as tight as if someone had been trying to strangle him. Beads of sweat on his mottled bald head trickled into the creases of his brow and disappeared. Behind him, flypaper dangled on each side of a framed photograph of FDR as if intended for political bunting. The major held a flyswatter. "Therewego, therewego, therewego," he mumbled to himself. With a sniff he brought down the swatter so hard that he bounced off his chair.
"Damn things," he said. "Loaded with germs." He looked up as if he hadn't noticed them enter. "You're Walthers? Don't you know to salute your superior officer?"
Oh great, thought Carl. Another lead-assed Napoleon. "We did, sir. When we entered, sir."
"Well, do it again."
"If you say so, sir." They snapped to.
"That was pretty poor, corporal."
"I apologize, sir. I have trouble lifting my elbow properly."
"That so?" His voice had a mocking tone.
"My shoulder, sir." In for an inch, in for a mile, Carl thought. "And anyway you're not covered. Sir."
The major laughed wetly. He turned toward Dahl. "See that? The draftee knows his regs." He rolled his bloodshot eyes toward Carl. "Don't quote the regs to me. You're reporting to me. Private Dahl, take the man's gear over to the noncom's hut."
"Yes, sir," said Dahl, "but, sir, the corporal is —" he hesitated "— a corporal."
"Not any more. Just got the papers." He held his flyswatter like a rich Virginian testing the spring in his riding crop. "Congratulations, Sergeant Walthers. I guess it doesn't hurt to get wounded."
"Painless, like getting decked by Joe Louis."
"I mean it doesn't hurt the career."
"This isn't my career. They can keep their stripes. Sir."
"I heard you were a smartass, but you got promoted anyway. Typical Army fuckup." He waved the flyswatter at Dahl. "Go on, didn't I tell you?"
"Yes, sir."
"And close the door," he yelled after him.
The major pulled a file toward him, uncovering a polished block of wood with black letters. "Maj. Joe 'Tex' Murnow" it said.
"I never got wounded," he said. "All I ever killed was bugs. I sat on my ass in the Philippines for two years in the twenties. All I did was swat mosquitoes and stomp waterbugs bigger than the Moros. You think I got anywhere near any shooting? Not even in the jack-off wars. My unit went to Vladivostok, I was reassigned. There's action in Nicaragua, I get Scofield and Manila. Now I come out of the reserves to play nursemaid to a bunch of whipped Nazis." He scanned the ceiling like a gunner searching for Messerschmidts. "They've gone to roost, damn things."
"You ought to transfer if you want combat, major."
He put down his swatter and opened a low drawer. He tipped back a bottle of whisky and took a large mouthful. He swished it around and swallowed, holding himself absolutely still until it hit bottom, when he exhaled a long ahhhhhhh. He raised the bottle towards the picture of Roosevelt. "Thank you, Mr. President, for the Twenty-first Amendment, though I think sometimes the scotch tasted better during Prohibition. You probably don't remember, eh sergeant?"
"I tasted a bit of moonshine when I was young."
"Want some?"
Murnow watched him sip it, as if afraid he'd drink too much. Carl wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Not bad."
"Got it in Canada. There's a ferry goes across from Erie." The major took another large swig. Sweat rolled down his bald head. A droplet hit the file as he opened it. "So you sprechen the Dutch, do you?"
"Ja wohl."
"Don't waste it on me. Down at Washington they got some idea we might sort out the hardboiled Nazis from the ordinary Nazis. And we'll be renting the enlisted men out to relieve the farmworker shortage. There's also talk about democracy classes. If that comes up, I guess you might end up being the professor. Anyhow, for the moment, you're just supposed to talk to them, see if you can set up any squealers. Keep them happy. If not happy, quiet."
"That's what I understood."
Murnow took another belt. "So, what's it like? Not much room to hide in the desert, I'll bet." He put his whisky down without offering Carl any more.
"I didn't see action. Heard some. Could see the flashes at night. The day before I was to go forward, a sniper got me."
"Sniper?"
"One shot."
"Is that it?"
"What do you want? Sergeant York?"
Murnow moved the top sheet of paper in the file. "So you look okay to me."
"I can't move my right arm well. The wrong way and my shoulder pops out."
"So if it's so bad why didn't they discharge you?" He moved another sheet.
"'Ours is not to reason why,' is that right?"
Murnow chuckled. "Reason has nothing to do with the Army, bud. You're a bitcher. Didn't anyone tell you draftees got no right to bitch? Bitch and they grind you up."
"I learned it."
"You tried to get out of the draft. You wrote letters. Didn't anyone tell you there's a war on?"
"I didn't start it."
Murnow's eyes widened. He laced his fingers and leaned forward. "Look, bud, when St. Crispian's Day comes, you've got to grab it, no second chances. You're pissing along in life and the moment comes. You can fight and maybe die, or you can leave and go on pissing your life away. If you live, you did a good thing. You had a destiny and fulfilled it. You'll show your grandkids your scars. If you die, hey, you'll have died well. That's better than most men get. Much better."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from And the Angels Sing by J. Madison Davis. Copyright © 1996 J. Madison Davis. Excerpted by permission of The Permanent Press.
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