"Because most of the guys who know about it are feedin' the fishes."
Driving as if she were in the Indianapolis 500, Martha got to the Advent Church of the Second Coming in San Pedro in twenty minutes. Teresa was waiting for them in the doorway. The window had been replaced, the sign restored. She was wearing a pretty yellow dress and a big white sunhat. "You look ready for the beach," Martha said. "A good thing, because that's where we're going."
Jack asked Teresa how the church was doing.
"Flourishin'," she said. "Pretty soon we'll have every sailor in the fleet converted."
"When you convert Shanghai Red, let me know," Jack said. "I'll join right after him."
Soon they were out of Los Angeles, rolling south along a highway that ran parallel to the ocean. The weather was summery. The air flowing in the car windows felt more like July than mid-September to Flanagan. After about a half hour they pulled off the road and headed for a collection of bungalows. "What's this place?" Peterson asked.
"Laguna Beach Junior," Martha said. "A couple of LAPD went in on it together."
"Your father knows you're with me and he's lettin' you use it? Ten to one it's booby-trapped."
"The old enforcer's changed his mind about sailors since Pearl Harbor. He's gotten patriotic."
"Three cheers for Admiral Yamamoto," Jack said.
Martha unlocked the front door of the bungalow and led them into a plasterboard interior. There were two bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room. Everything was scrupulously clean. Jack opened the icebox and handed them, two beers. "Why don't you two kids take a walk on the beach?" he said. "The old lady and I want to do a little reminiscin'."
"What's that? Something you learned in the Solomons?" Martha said.
"The only thing I learned in the Solomons was how to feel like a crumb. I'm bettin’ on you to change that around."
Jack put his arm around her waist. Martha ran her hand up the back of his neck and tipped his hat over his eyes. "This could be your lucky day, sailor."
Flanagan's face, his hands, his whole body flushed. On the beach, he started to apologize for his friend Jack's morals. Teresa smiled. "It's all right. Martha's in love with him. I could see that the minute we got to the house. It just shines out of her."
Being in love did not make sex all right as far as Flanagan was concerned. He was amazed by Teresa's tolerance — and her lack of embarrassment. He could not imagine any of the Irish-Catholic girls he knew in the Bronx so serenely approving Martha and Jack's reminiscing.
They strolled along the sand for a good mile, passing houses on low grassy bluffs. Teresa said she was glad Flanagan had not gotten hurt in the fight outside the church. "That's the fourth one this month," she said. "In the first a sailor got killed. Men are really stupid, the way they like to fight."
Flanagan agreed with her. They discussed her father's church. It was failing, day by day. She knew it, but she could not bear to tell him to quit. "I could get a job in a factory and support both of us."
"Where's your mother?"
"Momma's in the state hospital."
"What's wrong with her?"
"Daddy says her faith has failed her. Or she failed her faith. I don't know which. Anyway she sees things that aren't there and cries a lot. She cries all day, sometimes. Other times, she thinks she's back in Oklahoma. That's where she was happiest."
Flanagan shook his head. Compared to this girl's spiritual problems, his own were ludicrously insignificant. He started telling her about Father Callow. He left his mother out of it. Somehow he could not badmouth her. But he had no trouble whatsoever badmouthing Father Callow. He lit a cigarette and started imitating his hoarse, anguished voice. "Dear Frank," he said. "Don't you know that the Blessed Mother — and your own wonderful mother —are silently weeping over your refusal to heed God's call? I honestly suspect, dear Frank, that you are hoping to be lured into temptation. You are secretly hoping to succumb to the sins of the flesh so you can then say you are unworthy of a vocation."
Ripples of silken laughter shook Teresa's fragile body. Flanagan found himself wishing he could touch the trembling breasts beneath her yellow dress. He redoubled his burlesque of Father Callow. He threw in imitations of other Jesuits and went on to some of his father's better stories from the precinct, such as the Tyrone defense.
"What were you doing in that store at four A.m.?"
"Ah was jus' helpin' mah cousin Tyrone."
"Where's Tyrone?"
"He gone back to South Carolina."
Teresa enjoyed the comedy so much, she insisted Flanagan repeat some of it for Jack and Martha, when they eventually joined them on the beach. They were in bathing suits. Jack said there were plenty more in the house. Flanagan quickly found a pair of trunks that fit him. Teresa had a little more trouble with the women's suits. She settled for a blue tank suit that was too big for her and gave Flanagan a look at her surprisingly full breasts.
Back on the beach they found Jack Peterson in the water, pretending he was drowning. Martha lounged on the sand with a beer in her hand, paying no attention to him. "Rescue the lug, Frank," she said.
Flanagan had been a lifeguard at Jones Beach the previous summer. He knew all the holds. He swam underwater and surfaced behind Peterson and threw him into a chest carry. "Keep his head under," Martha called.
"Like this?" Flanagan said.
A half-drowned Peterson staggered up on the beach.
"This is my buddy?" he said. "It's a good thing I just got laid, Flanagan. Otherwise they'd find you floatin' off Catalina Island."
Flanagan thought sure Martha would blush or avoid his eyes. But she did not even blink. "Isn't he charming?" she said. "Gentleman Jack, they call him in Seattle. In the drunk tank."
Flanagan was baffled. Martha did not fit into any of the female categories in his Irish-American mind. She slept with sailors like Jack, but she did not seem in the least ashamed of it. Moreover, she seemed to have no illusions about jack's less admirable traits.
Everyone except Teresa drank a lot more beer and they went to dinner at a restaurant down the beach, where they gorged on Puget Sound oysters and Alaska king crab. Jack told marvelous stories about liberties in Pearl Harbor with no money and in Shanghai with too much money. He described life in the brig aboard the USS California. He gave a hilarious description of the time he went to a Baptist revival and found Jesus when he was home on boot leave. Everyone stuffed money in his pocket and the next night he was arrested for starting a riot in a waterfront bar. Although Teresa Brownlow laughed, Frank noticed that her eyes remained sad.
"Speaking of money, who's going to pay for this dinner?" Martha said.
"Your rich Uncle Jack," Peterson said. "I had a great night with the bones down in the after engine room."
"You promised me you were going to start saving your money.
"I'll promise you anything, honey. You know that," Peterson said.
"That's what I'm afraid of," Martha said.
They drove back to the cottage and drank some more beer. Martha got out a phonograph and played some records of Harry James, Benny Goodman and other name bands. She and Jack danced to a couple of songs. Flanagan was fascinated by the bold way Martha moved her body against Jack. Flanagan asked Teresa to dance and she told him her father said it was a sin. Flanagan promised her absolution from Father Callow and they joined the action. She was a very good dancer, which suggested she had been committing a lot of sins.
Finally, Martha asked Jack if he wanted to reminisce some more. They disappeared into one of the bedrooms. Teresa and Frank continued dancing, although Flanagan was pretty drunk Teresa seemed drunk too, although Flanagan did not remember her drinking anything. They did a dopey lindy to Glenn Miller's "Chattanooga Choo Choo," laughing at the way they were goofing it up. "Let's go for a swim," Teresa said.
This time Teresa found a two piece bathing suit that revealed even more of her small trim body. They splashed around in the dark ocean for five or ten minutes and retur
ned to the beach. There was no moon. They sat on the sand and watched the waves rumble toward them. "I like you, Frank. I like you a lot," Teresa said. "You remember that song I sang at the service, about how sweet it was to be with Jesus?"
"Sure."
Teresa took Frank Flanagan's hand and slipped it under the top of her bathing suit. "Jesus is here, Frank. And here. And here."
His hand descended to a place he barely knew existed. "Take off your bathin' suit," Teresa whispered.
He obeyed, while she slipped off her suit. She rolled on top of him and placed her mouth on his lips. In an instant he had the most tremendous erection since Adam encountered Eve in the Garden of Eden. Slowly, carefully, with a skill that amazed him, she lowered herself upon this pulsing rod of flesh, this forbidden part of himself and took it into her body. Into a soft supple darkness where every movement sent astonishing cascades of pleasure into his thighs, his belly, his chest, his soul. The world began to explode. Stars shifted orbits, the night sky was swept by splendor. When her hair fell against his face he was sure it was tipped with fire, like an angel's wing. In that moment of freedom and wonder and ecstatic discovery, Teresa whispered, "Isn't this Jesus, Frank? Isn't this the sweetest love you've ever known?"
"Yes, yes," he said, his hands finding her breasts. He drew her down for a kiss that blended them into one being. He crushed her against his chest with his muscular arms, wondering if she would cry out, if he was hurting her. But she only locked her arms around him and returned the kiss, sliding her tongue deep into his mouth. Soul kissing, they called it in New York in 1942. Flanagan had managed it with a few girls. How trivial the phrase seemed now, compared to this reality.
He began to come — great spurts of pleasure that sent shudders through her body. "I love you," he said. "I love you." He was in love with love, with Jesus, with this woman who had suffered America's woes and still responded with tenderness and hope and faith, who somehow abolished sin.
Teresa gave a final shuddering sigh. For a long time she lay still, her lips on Flanagan's mouth. Then she said, "I think I'd like to love you too, for a while."
"Not for a while. For as long as we live. I want to marry you.”
"We'd better get dressed. You've got to get back to your ship."
"The hell with the ship. Let's stay here — for our honeymoon."
Jack Peterson's voice came out of the darkness. "What the hell's he talkin' about?"
Flanagan pulled on his trunks and stumbled up the beach. "Jack, I love her. I'm not going back to that goddamn ship. I'm going to stay here until we find a priest so I can marry her."
"Like hell you're stayin' here," Peterson said. "You're already on report for drunk and disorderly. You'll get brig time."
"So what?" Flanagan said. He was drunk on love and liquor. He wanted to fondle those lovely breasts for the rest of his life. He was appalled at the thought of returning to the USS Jefferson City's world of metal and regimentation.
"I'll see you again, Frank," Teresa said.
In the car she turned his head toward her and kissed him gently on the lips. Flanagan fumbled for her breasts. She pushed his hand away. "Not now," she said. He realized he was making a fool of himself, but she did not seem to mind. "I love you, I really do," he said.
At the Terminal Island gate, Martha kissed Jack Peterson passionately. "I'll see you in two days," he said.
Peterson dragged Flanagan out of the back of the car. With an iron grip on his upper arm, he steered him to the Jefferson City's dry dock. "Now take two deep breaths," he said. "And listen to what you're gonna do. You're goin' up that gangplank without missin' a step. You're gonna salute the flag and salute the OOD perfectly."
"Aye, aye, sir."
Below decks, Peterson leaned Flanagan against a bulkhead. "Did you put a boot on it, kid?"
"What the fuck are you talking about? I'm a Catholic. I want to marry her."
"Shhh." Peterson put his hand over his mouth. "You're not exactly the first guy Teresa led to Jesus. She's kinda famous, kid. I don't know whether she's got anything but you can't afford to take a chance. Let's go down to sick bay now. There's probably a pharmacist's mate on duty handing out pro kits."
"Go fuck yourself," Flanagan said. "If I wasn't so drunk I'd punch your goddamn head off for saying that about her."
"Jesus. You are Irish."
He boosted Flanagan into his top bunk. "Go on sick call and get a pro tomorrow. If you get one inside twelve hours they usually work.”
"Fuck you," Flanagan said. He refused to believe it. He refused to believe Teresa Brownlow had ever performed that beautiful exalting act with another man.
Peterson gave his shoulder an affectionate shake. "You're halfway to being a sailor, kid."
What Do Women Really Want
"To the men of the Asiatic Fleet, above all, Al Rooks."
Win Kemble raised his wineglass. Arthur McKay picked up his glass of California cabernet and studied the expression on his wife's face. He could see what Rita was thinking: What's the point in drinking to a corpse? That was Rita, full of warmth and compassion, as usual.
For the previous two weeks, Arthur McKay had stayed aboard the Jefferson City, claiming a need to supervise the day and night overhaul of the ship. Rita had been less than happy about this celibate existence. He could not explain to her that he was avoiding another encounter with Win. McKay had expected Win and Lucy to depart for Washington, D.C., early in the first week. But Win had asked for — and received — a thirty day leave. It was a strange thing to do in the middle of a war.
Yesterday, the USS Jefferson City had floated out of her dry dock, and chuffing Navy tugs had pushed and prodded her to a buoy in the harbor. Captain McKay already had orders to report without delay to CINCPAC in Hawaii, where, he had no doubt, another set of orders would dispatch the ship to the Solomon Islands within twenty-four hours. He had been tempted to use this rush to battle as an excuse to avoid this dinner. But he found it hard to resist the wish, yes even the need, to see if the breach between him and Win was as serious as it seemed to be the day McKay relieved him.
The arrival of Win's mother made it impossible to resist Lucy's invitation. The formalities of friendship had to be maintained at this farewell dinner for Mrs. Kemble's sake. And for Lucy's sake. Her final plea had demolished all thoughts of evasion. "Oh, Art," she had sighed. "Now if ever Win and I need true friends around us."
As they put down their glasses, McKay glanced across the table at Lucy. After two weeks with Win, there were shadows of grief in her eyes, a tremor of sadness on her delicate mouth. Every time Arthur McKay looked at her, he felt the same tremor deep in his body. He yearned to comfort her, to tell her that all was well. But it was impossible. What he had seen in his two weeks as captain of the Jefferson City only redoubled his concern for Win Kemble.
To McKay's immense relief, Win showed every sign of wanting to put aside that ugly scene in the captain's cabin. He had greeted him with a smile and a joke about being surprised they let the "fighting Navy" mingle with civilians. He had tried to laugh at Rita's stories of high life and low intrigue in wartime Washington.
When they sat down to dinner, Win found it harder to conceal his bitterness. He began talking, not about Savo Island, but another debacle that had preceded it — the destruction of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet. It was a sad story. As a COMINCH staff officer, McKay knew most of it, of course. But the details still made him wince. When the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, the surface ships of the Asiatic Fleet had consisted of the heavy cruiser Houston, the light cruiser Marblehead, which was "old enough to vote," and thirteen equally ancient destroyers. Against them the Japanese had sent ten battleships, ten aircraft carriers, eighteen heavy cruisers, eighteen light cruisers, and a hundred and thirteen destroyers.
The Jefferson City had just escorted an Army convoy to Manila and was told to join the Asiatic Fleet's pathetic ranks. The orders they received from COMINCH were as simple as they were brutal: stand and die. There is not mu
ch doubt that the Jefferson City would have followed the rest of the fleet to the bottom of the Java Sea, but for a quirk of fate. She had hit an uncharted reef off Balikpapan, Borneo, and had been forced to limp to Bombay for repairs. Within weeks, the rest of the Asiatic Fleet was annihilated. The last to go down was the flagship Houston, captained by one of the stars of the class of 1910, handsome, brilliant Albert Rooks.
In a voice clotted with rage, Win annotated the debacle. Only one in ten of the five-inch anti-aircraft shells in the Houston's magazines exploded when fired at enemy planes. Only one in five of the torpedoes carried by the destroyers functioned when they were launched. It was a paradigm of the Navy's unreadiness to fight a fleet as formidable as Japan's.
Win read them selective passages from a 103-page report sent to Washington by Captain Rooks on November 18, 1941, less than a month before Pearl Harbor. It was entitled "Estimate of the Situation, Far East Area." McKay had glanced at a copy when he reported to COMINCH from his teaching job at the Naval War College. It was an assessment of the relative strength of the Japanese, Dutch, British and American navies in the Far East, which predicted precisely what had happened when the war started. A total disaster for the Allies.
"That report alone should have made Roosevelt think twice about the way he was baiting the Japanese to attack us," Win said.
"He used the Navy — he risked it — to get us into the war with Germany. There was no need whatsoever for us to provoke Japan," Mrs. Kemble said.
She was voicing an opinion that Arthur McKay had heard at the Naval War College in Newport and on the third deck of the Navy Building in Washington, D.C. Arthur McKay was inclined to dismiss it as irrelevant. The war was a fact. But he found it hard to resist the jeremiad Win preached on the final days of the Houston.
The Dutch admiral in command of the squadron had been an idiot who sent his little fleet into battle violating every rule in the book of naval strategy. "He put his destroyers behind the cruisers," Win said. "He didn't even try to find out from the Dutch Army, which knew exactly what was happening, that the Japanese were landing a huge army on Java's south coast, with a major fleet protecting it. They sailed right into it and were blown out of the water."
Time and Tide Page 14
