Mitla Pass by Leon Uris Read Free Book Online Page A

nose and jumped ship to South America.
    Mother usually came down on Father’s side, so I spent my childhood learning the art of compromise and not rocking the boat. From the beginning, I was good in art—damned good, actually. My dreams of studying in Paris had to be set aside by the war. Besides, Mother and I hadn’t totally convinced the Admiral. I was good enough for Paris, mind you, but not quite ready. The really fine art schools in L.A. and New York were also just out of reach. I decided to spend the war getting ready for Paris.
    Mills College, a sort of West Coast Vassar with a fairly snooty all-girl campus near San Francisco, seemed to be a good compromise. Pleased the hell out of the Admiral and kept peace in the home.
    Home, incidentally, was Coronado Island, a ferry-boat hop over the bay from San Diego. Ships here, ships there, ships everywhere. All Navy, a yard wide. A retirement community, where old salts got rigor mortis before the final sail to the great beyond. Six commanders and five captains per square block. Flag officers on Ocean Boulevard. That’s where we lived, in a big old airy place with shiplap siding and the Fourth of July all year round.
    At Mills I gloried in my first real taste of freedom. I studied art history (yawn), and studio art, and mostly boned up on my French so I could crack the Sorbonne after the war.
    That’s when I met him. Gideon Zadok, Private First Class, USMC and well-known entrepreneur.
    Gideon was a patient at the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, just a skip and a holler down the road from the Mills College campus. So many poor wounded Marines and sailors so far from home needing a lot of tender loving care, and several hundred girls just coming into heat ... it was a lovely mutual arrangement. In those days old-fashioned chivalry still prevailed ... a few fierce French kisses, maybe a little squeeze of the tits, but nothing we couldn’t talk to Mother about. We just didn’t sack out unless the situation had reached a very serious stage. Christ, the world was demure then. It was nice.
    Gideon didn’t talk much about his overseas duty. Over a period of time I got to know that he had had seven recurrences of malaria from Guadalcanal and had apparently taken some shrapnel in the shoulder. It wasn’t a bad wound, but a buddy of his at the hospital told me he kept it secret for two or three days until it became infected by the jungle atmosphere and was considered serious enough to earn him a Purple Heart. Later, on Tarawa, he caught dengue fever, a terribly painful disease in which all the joints in the body—knuckles, knees, toes, backbone—swell up.
    Then there was something about his asthma. All told, he was just a plain worn-out warrior in need of a long healing period.
    I arranged a party of girlfriends to go to the Oak Knoll Hospital to see his play. To my surprise, it was a terribly funny show, acted with skill and abandon. Loved the plot. A Marine detachment was shot into outer space, where they formed a colony on a distant planet. After several centuries the colony lost contact and they were eventually forgotten. Life was eternal out there. Every day for hundreds of years, the Marines woke up to reveille, did close-order drill, were spit and polish, and held inspections. They were rediscovered and returned to Earth. The last act, in which they discover sex with women, was hilarious. But after looking over the world, they opted to be returned to outer space and do close-order drill forever.
    I don’t know why I kept dating this guy. He was a bit of a blowhard. Most Marines have a problem with modesty. I think I was also enchanted with being able to go out with enlisted men and finding out they weren’t all hairy apes. After I saw Gideon’s play, I began to wonder. What is it drawing me to him?
I’ll be seeing you
In all the old familiar places,
That this heart of mine embraces,
All day through ...
    I hope there is still slow dancing when Roxanne and Penelope start