Dark Full of Enemies(39)
Stallings looked up and saw McKay watching him. He looked as if he had been caught stealing. McKay said nothing.
Stallings managed a grin and held up his box of pistol ammo.
“First time since I’ve been in the Army I’ve got to open presents on Christmas.”
McKay laughed despite himself. Graves snickered. “Bloody right.”
Ollila looked at Stallings, at McKay, and then returned to his work. He looked doubtful. McKay would have to talk to Ollila, soon.
“Don’t guess we can get some eggnog or something here?” Stallings said.
“You can drink when we get back to England,” McKay said.
“Toss that stuff,” Graves said. “Give me a tot of rum, or whiskey. Don’t see the point in hiding your alcohol.”
Stallings grinned and looked at McKay. “That’s always been my philosophy,” he said.
McKay laughed.
It had been nearly Christmas and time for a trip home when Stallings had finally gotten kicked out of Clemson.
It was that car of his. Stallings drove an old Ford. He had put his skills—his talents—to use in modifying the engine. Their trips between Clemson and Rabun County, Stallings’s home in North Carolina, or any other mountainous place on the winding and dangerous highways, had frightened Keener more than their mountain climbing, and had probably been more dangerous.
McKay had had inklings of what Stallings got up to on his weekends, those rare weekends when he and Keener did not plan something or when Stallings was determined to cause trouble. He would disappear at the first opportunity after classes and drill on Friday and reappear, disheveled and hungover if not still drunk, in the early hours of Monday morning. His car would have new dents at the corners, some new knock or rattle in the engine, and mud up to the windows. McKay and their friends, with varying degrees of patience, would get him sobered up. It was easier in winter—they would make a trip down the hill to the Seneca River and throw him in. Sobered and dressed in time for drill, Stallings would survive another week, rebuild the engine when he should have been studying, and disappear again. Repeat.
McKay always resisted losing his patience and his temper and always failed. Once upon finding Stallings leaning halfway into the engine of the Ford after missing class, he had shouted, sworn, and said, “Grove, if you put half the ingenuity into class as you did into that damn car, you’d be captain of cadets.”
Stallings just raised himself out of the car, grinned, and tipped his cap.
They had a week left of the fall semester, senior year, when the real captain of the corps of cadets came for them. Specifically, for McKay. He had just returned from dinner in town with Sally and lay down to read in his barracks room. He left the book—Robinson Crusoe—open on his bunk. It was weeks, after Christmas and into the new year, before he resumed the story.
The captain led him to President Sikes’s office and let him in, but did not follow.
Stallings stood at parade rest in the far corner of the president’s office. McKay noted him without looking. The President sat behind his desk, regarding Stallings. When the door clicked shut behind McKay, the President turned his head, barely.
“Lieutenant McKay.”
McKay came to attention before President Sikes. Kindly-faced, bald, bespectacled, the picture of a college president, he sat rigid behind his desk as if carved of adamant—he looked furious. His anger filled the room, the stillness was all that contained it. McKay waited.
President Sikes removed his glasses. “Mister McKay, Mister Stallings, with whom I believe you are acquainted, has been caught secreting spirits on this campus in direct contravention of its laws.” McKay’s throat had thickened. He fought to swallow without betraying the movement. “Furthermore, it has come to light that Mister Stallings has been undertaking to sell such spirits—illegally—throughout this vicinity, in a criminal enterprise that has furnished spirits to a great number of… places of low standing. Now, Lieutenant—” the return to formality was McKay’s cue, the notice that questioning would now begin, “I ask you whether you knew of this enterprise, and whether we are just in expelling Mister Stallings from the Corps of Cadets and this institution.”
“No, sir.”
“No, we are acting unjustly?”
McKay’s face died and chilled. “No, sir—I meant—no, I did not know of Grove’s—that is, Cadet Stallings’s undertakings.”
“At ease, Lieutenant,” Sikes said, and McKay made himself relax. “Mister McKay, your reputation is well known on this campus. We have already interviewed Cadets Keener, Smith, Skardon, and Crunkleton, and they have avowed that neither they nor you had any knowledge of Mister Stallings’s misdeeds. I take you at your word. But I ask again whether it is just to expel such a man from this college after such an offense.”
McKay regained his bearings. He had wondered about Stallings’s weekends away, the heavy use of the big, spacious car, the wear and tear on the engine—and Stallings’s ability to repair it. Where did Grove get his money? had been an occasional joke on campus, always with farcical answers—he had a long-lost industrialist uncle, he was the bastard of a Duke, he was a far-flung underling of the Chicago mob. This last had struck them all as most hilarious. McKay felt sick to realize—even without the mob connection—the liquor running was true. Stallings was done for.