The Pledge by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online

weeping business,” Bruce said. “I want to get at the truth and print it.”
    â€œListen, kid,” Greenberg said, not unkindly, “you know who made this famine and I know who made this famine, and every shmuck correspondent who’s quartered in this stinking palace knows who made the famine, and nobody is ever going to print it except maybe that commie sheet they call Prasas or something of the sort.” He laid his cigar down in the ashtray. “Never press out a cigar. You allow it to die, nobly.” And with that bit of sage advice, he said his good night and lumbered upstairs to his quarters.
    Alone in the lounge, Bruce remembered that there were other unwritten letters, letters to his father and mother, letters to friends. But not tonight. He was bone tired, and his bike muscles hurt like the very devil. He went to his room, took three aspirins, and crawled naked under the mosquito netting. But sleep came hard. He was back on the misbegotten British bike, his sore ass growing raw on the wire that poked through the leather seat, the coconut palms leaning over the dusty road, and on one side, stretching away forever, the waving fields of yellow mustard, a golden, glowing ornament to this hellish place. Why did sorrow and beauty go so well together?
    Very early in the morning of the third day after this, a GI brought a note from Public Relations at army headquarters. The note requested him to report to Lieutenant Colonel Frank Scott, Public Relations, if possible on this same day. The GI who brought the note drove a jeep, and he said he was told to wait if Captain Bacon would return with him.
    â€œI’m no captain,” Bruce said. “It’s a warrant commission. I’m a correspondent.”
    â€œIt never hurts to be sure,” the GI said, and Bruce said that he was ready to go now, but since it was no great distance, he could just as well walk.
    â€œI was told to get you, sir, so I might just as well get you.”
    â€œAll right, you got me,” Bruce agreed. He had been thinking about Prudence Carter Bacon since the night before, when he had a long, absurd dream about her, in which he seduced her mother. The Carters were an old Boston family, with excellent small features, who aged well, although since Pru’s mother was only in her late forties, one could hardly speak of her as aged. She was very good-looking, as was her daughter, and Pru’s father was president of the First Eastern Bank of Massachusetts, which had been organized in 1811, and all of it added up to a very fortunate marriage — although Bruce never regarded it as such. His parents did. The Carters were an old, cultured, and impeccably well-mannered family. Mr. Carter had gone to Harvard, and Mrs. Carter to Wellesley, as had Prudence. Bruce’s mother — Chicago-born, as was his father — had helped put William Bacon through medical school by working nights as a waitress while she was getting her master’s at Hunter College. They had come a distance since then, and since they were Congregational Church members at that time and engaged in what the Carters regarded as suitable professions, the Bacon son was approved as a match for Prudence. Bruce had met her in the home department of the Tribune , where she was gainfully employed creating recipes for rationed foods. There was a whirlwind courtship, a proper marriage, and then Bruce was off overseas.
    During the short ride to headquarters, Bruce tried to shake loose from both Carter women and decide whether to seek for at least a modest romance among the many nurses and Red Cross ladies who worked in the hospital across the road from the palace. His growing guilts impeded him, not guilt because of what he had done to Prudence — for he had done very little in that direction — but guilts concerning the character of a man like himself, who could let go of one so lovely and certainly decent as Prudence, without a tear. No