The Girl With the Jade Green Eyes by John Boyd

The Girl With the Jade Green Eyes by John Boyd

Author:John Boyd [Boyd, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00


Chapter Nine

“If this nation possessed a Samurai class, the Laudermilks would be it. The first Laudermilk to be killed in the service of his country was Corporal Jebediah Ezekiel Laudermilk of the colonial militia, slain at Quebec during the French and Indian Wars. Of eight Americans killed in the defense of Ticonderoga, one was Captain Hannibal Laudermilk. Mrs. Letitia Laudermilk, of Baltimore, inspired the famous Civil War song, ‘She Had Two Sons.’ One of those sons was killed while with Pickett at Gettysburg; he wore a suit of gray. The other died at Allatoona Pass,—he wore a suit of blue. Apropos of music, ‘Taps’ is the family’s theme song and the muffled drum its traditional instrument. Our Champ’s grandfather died at Belleau Wood and his father on the banks of the Oder in World War II. No male Laudermilk lives to be over thirty-five.”

Slade paused for a moment of reverence, not only from the listeners at the table but from the gathered waitresses, and driven by anxiety, Breedlove asked, “Were they champions at dying young?”

With the éclat of a born storyteller, Slade waved the interruption aside and continued: “The Laudermilk clan would have never accepted the slogan, ‘Make love, not war.’ Laudermilks make love and war. Our Champ’s father, Major Robert E. Lee Laudermilk, earned for himself, before that final, fatal skirmish, the title, The Uncrowned Prince of the European Theater of Operations. When he was laid to rest at the American cemetery outside of Liege, Belgium, women mourners gathered from all over Europe, and the flowers they laid on his grave reached the dimensions of a haystack after a wet growing and dry harvest season. Yet his son, Major Graves Paige Laudermilk, claims that his father was only a Lothario, junior grade.”

Slade paused again to let the enormity of the son’s charge sink into listeners augmented now by the diners at adjoining tables, and Breedlove lacked the brashness to interrupt. These pauses were for dramatic effect.

“They’re a fecund tribe, the Laudermilks,—have to be to keep the line alive. When the Champ was a field officer in Vietnam, his company led the Army with a kill ratio of twenty-to-one, but the Champ had to be ordered home. For every Vietcong he killed in the bush, he sired two in the villages. He was a threat to the Army’s genocide policy.”

Another brief pause, and the question was wrenched from Breedlove’s lips, “Is he a champion stud?”

Again ignoring the question, the raconteur set his own pace: “Laudermilk is one of the Army’s top linguists. It is said he can learn a language overnight, which he usually does. He is fluent in the vernacular of twenty-seven languages. Beginning with short words and pungent phrases, he works his way up, following, as he says, the evolutionary patterns of a language from its root sources. His definition of ‘root’ may be open to question, but no one can argue his choice of teachers.”

Then he would be a dilettante of languages, not a champion linguist, Breedlove



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