So he was home. That was nice.
The sign (MASTER GUNNERY SERGEANT J. STECKER, USMC) was still on the lawn, equidistant between the driveway and the walkway, as housing regulations required, a precise four feet off the sidewalk. He wouldn't need that sign anymore; there'd be a new sign on the new quarters. He would have to remember to take this one down first thing in the morning. Or maybe, so that he wouldn't forget it, after dark tonight.
He entered the small brick house (the new quarters would be just a little bigger, now that the boys were gone and they didn't need the room) by the kitchen door, opened the icebox and helped himself to a beer.
"I'm home," he called.
"I'm in the bedroom," Elly called.
He went into the living room and turned on the radio.
Jesus Christ, it's been a long time since I came home and she made that kind of announcement. But all she meant by it, obviously, was that she happened to be in the bedroom. That was all.
She came into the living room.
"Where were you, Jack?" Elly asked.
"What do you mean, 'where was I'?" he asked.
"Doan came by," she said. "He said you walked off without your orders, and he thought you might need them. He said you told him you were going home."
She had the orders in her hand. She extended them to him.
"I've read them," he said. "I know what they say."
She shrugged.
"It was nice of Doan, I thought," Elly said. "He told me you got him sergeant's stripes. That was nice of you, Jack."
"So you called the NCO Club and asked for me, and I wasn't there, right?" he said, unpleasantly.
"You know better than that, Jack," Elly said, and he knew he'd hurt her.
"A kid came into the office," Jack Stecker said. "A China Marine, a corporal."
"Oh?"
"He worked for Ed Banning over there," Stecker went on. "Banning got him sent to the Platoon Leader's Course."
"And he came in to say hello for Ed Banning?"
"He came in because he's got a LaSalle convertible machine, and the kids in the Platoon Leader Program aren't supposed to have cars with them, and the provost marshal wouldn't give him a post sticker for it."
"Oh," she said.
"At first, I thought he reminded me of Jack," Stecker said. "Nice kid. Good-looking. Smart. But then I realized that he reminded me of me."
"Good looking and smart?" she teased.
"Like I was when I was a corporal," he said.
"I remember when you were a corporal," she said.
"He doesn't want to be an officer," Stecker said. "At least not very much."
"Neither did you," she said. "They would have sent you to Annapolis, if you had wanted to go."
"1 wanted to get married," he said.
"You didn't want to be an officer," she said.
"I still don't, Elly," he said.
She started to say something, then changed her mind.
"Could you help him about his car?" she asked.
"I fixed it so he could leave it in the MP impounding area," he said. "That's where I was."
"I knew if you could come home early, you would," Elly said.
"Why did you want me to?" he asked.
"I bought you a present," she said. "I was afraid it wouldn't come in time, but it did, and I wanted to give it to you."
"What kind of a present?" he asked. "You keep this up, there won't be anything left in the retirement fund."
"Come in the bedroom, and I'll give it to you," Elly said.
"You give me a present in the bedroom, and I'll come home early all the time," he said.
Elly ignored him and walked toward the bedroom.
He got up, put his beer bottle down, turned the radio off, and walked into their bedroom.
There was a complete uniform on the bed.
"What the hell is this?" he said. "What did you do, go by the clothing store?"
"This comes from Brooks Brothers in New York City," she said. "I asked Doris Means where I should buy them, and that's where Doris said to go."
"You're now calling the colonel's wife by her first name?"
"I've known her for twenty years, Jack," Elly said. "She said I was to call her by her first name."
He looked down at the uniform. Good-looking uniform, he thought. First-class material. It had certainly cost an arm and a leg.
"Well?" she said. "Nothing to say?"
"Looks a little bare," he said. "No chevrons, no hash marks."
"Attention to orders," Elly said. Stecker looked at her in surprise. She had the orders in her hand, and was reading from them:
"Headquarters, United States Marine Corps, Washington, D.C., General Orders Number 145, dated 15 August 1941. Paragraph 6. Master Gunnery Sergeant Jack NMI Stecker 38883, Hq Company, USMC Schools, Quantico, Virginia, is Honorably Discharged from the Naval Service for the convenience of the government effective 31 August 1941. Paragraph 7. Captain Jack NMI Stecker, 44003 USMC Reserve is ordered to active duty for a period of not less than three years with duty station USMC Schools, Quantico, Virginia, effective 1 September 1941. General Officer commanding Quantico is directed to insure compliance with applicable regulations involved with the discharge of an enlisted man for the purpose of accepting a commission as an officer. For the Commandant, USMC, James B. McAme, Brigadier General, USMC."
"Well," Stecker said, "now that you've read it out loud, I suppose that makes it official?"
"Aren't you going to try it on?" Elly asked, ignoring him.
"I'm not sure I'm supposed to," he said. "I'm not an officer yet."
"Put it on, Jack," Elly said. "You can't put it off any longer."
He reached for the blouse and started to put his arm in a sleeve.
"No!" Elly stopped him. "Do it right. Jack."
He stripped to his underwear, then put on the shirt and the trousers, and then tied the necktie. Then he put on the tunic, and the Sam Browne belt, and the sword, and even the hat.
"You look just fine, Jack," Elly said. She sounded funny, and when he looked at her, she was dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.
"What the hell are you crying about?" Stecker asked.
She shrugged and blew her nose, loudly.
He examined his reflection in the mirror. He looked very strange, he thought. Very strange indeed. He saw for the first time that there was something new in his array of medal and campaign ribbons, an inch-long blue one dotted with silver stars, the one he never wore, the ribbon representing the Medal of Honor.
"What did you do that for?" he challenged.
"Colonel Means said to," she said. "And he said when you asked about it, I should tell you that he said that he expects his officers to wear all of their decorations, and that includes you, too."
"You really like this, don't you? Me being an officer?"
"All these years, Jack," Elly said, "I wondered if I did right, marrying you."
"Thanks a lot," he said, purposefully misunderstanding her.
"Otherwise, you would have gone to Annapolis," she went on. "And you would have been a major, maybe a lieutenant colonel, by now."
"Or I would have bilged out of Annapolis and taken up with a bar girl in Diego," he said. "I don't have any regrets, Elly."
"I don't have any regrets, either," she said. "But you deserve those bars, Jack. You should have been an officer a long time ago."
He turned to look at his _reflection again.
"Maybe," Elly said, "you should take it off now, so it'll be fresh when you get sworn in."
He looked at her again. She was unbuttoning her dress.
"Don't look so surprised," she said softly. "I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I've always wanted to go to bed with a Marine officer."
"I'm not a Marine officer yet," he said. "Not until oh-eight-thirty day after tomorrow."
"Then I guess you want to wait till then?" she asked.
"No, what the hell," Captain-designate Jack NMI Stecker, USMC, Reserve, said. "Take what you can whenever you can get it, I always say."