McKay knew, instantly. The admiral's words were superfluous. The hard mouth moved in the grave face. "I just got some very bad news, Art. Your son was killed by a sniper this afternoon while they were trying to reorganize one of the forward battalions."
Loneliness, Captain McKay thought as Spruance sat down on the edge of a chair beneath the portrait of the solitary Chinese traveler. The picture seemed to speak to him. Now you will find out what loneliness really means.
Spruance wrung his slim weathered hands. "I know how you feel, Art. I've had my only boy on a sub since this thing started. I've braced myself for this kind of news a hundred times."
What would the admiral say if he cursed and reviled him for killing his son? Would a ten-day bombardment have made any difference? Would hurling the full weight of the fleet at Iwo, instead of a handful of old battleships, have changed anything? Arthur McKay found it impossible to make such a claim. This earnest, silent man was part of a system, a process, that only deserved one name: history. The pain he felt now was history, part of the pain of a million other American fathers in this war and other wars.
The thought did not lessen the pain. But it made it more bearable.
"I'd like to go see him."
"Of course. I'll radio the general to meet you at the beach." Horace Aquino was weeping. "Oh, Captain," he said, "he was such a fine boy."
"Thank you, Horace."
In ten minutes he was in his gig, riding toward the beach. Around him the war went on The big guns boomed on the battleships and cruisers, the shells hurtled in burning arcs over his head. Ashore the star shells drifted down in glowing clusters on the living and the dead. As they drew close to the shore, the hammer of distant machine guns, the bark of rifles could be heard.
The Marine general was waiting on the beach. They had met somewhere. At a War College lecture? He gripped McKay's hand. "I feel like I just lost one of my own kids," he said.
They rode in silence through the landscape of war—past wrecked tanks and artillery pieces, overturned jeeps. At the hospital, a collection of dilapidated tents, the general's senior aide, a husky major named Price, mashed his hand. McKay said goodbye to the general, and Major Price led him through the rows of Marines waiting for medical treatment, many obviously dying, to a room in the rear, where forty or fifty bodies lay wrapped in ponchos.
The major turned on an overhead bulb and led him to a table. Uncovering the poncho, he stared down at Sammy's body. "I only knew him for a couple of months, Captain. But he was ... the best."
"Thanks."
"I'll wait outside."
"You better go back to work. I'm going to stay here for a while."
"Sir, I've got orders. I'll wait."
The bullet had struck Sammy in the heart. His shirt was stained with blood. But his face was unblemished, undistorted. He had had time to compose himself, to face death with a soldier's stoicism. He looked at peace.
Captain McKay thought of the good times. The years in Hawaii, when they had swum and sailed and fished together. The year Sammy had starred at halfback for the high school in Newport. He had been tremendously disappointed to find he was not heavy enough to make the team at Annapolis. But he had turned out to be a good baseball player.
That brought back another memory. Throwing the ball around. Something they did in a casual way, within a day or two of his return from sea duty. What do you say we throw the ball around, Dad? Sammy would ask. They would go out on the lawn or into the backyard and throw a baseball back and forth for a half hour. It was a ritual. They never said much. They just threw the ball. As the years passed, and the ball smacked harder and harder in the center of his glove, Sammy let him know he was becoming a man.
Did he regret the sea duty years, the awful gaps when he came back to face a stranger son? For a reason he did not understand, he no longer felt cut off from Sammy by those inescapable necessities of Navy life, or by the vagrant emotions that floated through a family. They had never had many man-to-man talks, it was true. But he was not sure the young wanted to reveal their souls to the old. He had shunned it when his mother had tried to make herself his confidante.
There was never any doubt they loved each other. That was the only thing that mattered now Arthur McKay did not know how long he sat there in the tent of death while the war exploded relentlessly outside. When he emerged, the major was waiting for him. They rode back to the beach in the star shells' unreal light. The coxswain of his gig was idling offshore, beyond the surf. He gunned the motor and charged through the waves. In five minutes they were on their way back to the Jefferson City.
As the captain came up the accommodation ladder, he noticed clumps of men along the rails from the stern to the forecastle. On the quarterdeck, George Tombs held out his hand. "Art," he said, "on behalf of the officers and crew, I want to extend my deepest sympathy."
"Thank you."
"I'd like to give you this message. It's a spontaneous thing. Signed by every member of the crew. They stayed up most of the night putting it together."
He handed McKay a thick envelope. In his cabin, he opened it. The message, scrawled in ink by a bold hand, read:
Dear Captain McKay:
The crew of the Jefferson City want you to know how bad they feel about your son's death. We will try to help you bear your sorrow the only way we can — by continuing to try to make this the best ship in the fleet. If there is anything else we can do, just ask us.
Beneath this, the signatures began. Over 1,300 of them in long columns. Homewood, Flanagan, Roth, Mazerowski, Bradford, Bourne. Name after name of men who had faced almost three years of danger and death with him.
Arthur McKay pondered the painting of the lonely traveler. He thought of Win Kemble's poem. He who needs others is forever shackled. He who is needed by others is forever sad. He would accept his shackles. He would accept his sadness.
Even if the way led nowhere but to the Great Void.
Gambles And Gambols
Hands on his hips, Jack Peterson squinted disgustedly down tawdry River Street in Honolulu. With thousands of additional sailors swelling the uniformed population, the place had become impossible. Long lines snaked along the sidewalk outside the government-run whorehouses. The bars were so crowded you had to fight to get a drink.
"This is for the birds, Flan. We got to get ourselves an apartment," Jack said.
"Apartments are going for about three hundred bucks a week. Are you planning to rob a bank?"
"How much dough you got?"
"Fifty bucks."
"I got a hundred. Homewood's good for another hundred, if we get him before he goes on liberty again. So we need maybe another three hundred to have a good time."
Flanagan was unimpressed. To someone getting paid seventy-eight dollars a month, three hundred dollars was as remote as three million. Unless Jack got lucky with the dice—lately his luck had been terrible — they were not likely to get their hands on more money.
"What do you think of my chances of gettin' to see Admiral Nimitz?" Jack said.
"About as good as your chances of getting his job."
"I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of guys would lay ten to one against me gettin' in to see him."
"I'd lay a hundred to one."
"It's a good thing you're a buddy. I'd own you for life."
Back aboard ship the next day, Jack strolled up to Jerome Wilkinson while he supervised a scrubdown of the main deck. "Hey, Wilkie," he said. "Tomorrow I'm goin' over to CINCPAC to pay my respects to Admiral Nimitz. Anything you want me to tell him?"
Wilkinson's ugly face broke into a leer. "What the fuck are you talkin' about?"
"The Navy's always puffin' out this jive about how we're all a band of brothers, and officers and crew are one big team. I thought he might like to hear how the guys in the white hats think he's doin'."
"You've finally popped your cork. I always knew sittin' in that fuckin' range finder with them fuckin' radar waves all around you was goin' to affect you
r fuckin' brain."
"You don't think I can do it? If you're so goddamn sure of that, what kinda odds will you give me?"
"Ten to one. What are you bettin'?"
"I'll lay you twenty bucks. My buddy Flanagan here's holdin' the money."
Wilkinson grabbed his hand. "That's the easiest twenty I ever made," he chortled.
The word swept the ship like a gasoline fire. At dinner a half dozen of Jack's dice-playing foes stopped to place bets at varying odds. By this time several people began to wonder if he had some sort of inside track that he was concealing. But no one, try as he might, could figure out what it was. They were reassured by Boats Homewood, who insisted. Jack had definitely slipped his cable.
After supper, Homewood dragged Jack and Flanagan up to the fantail and threatened them with dismemberment if they did not let him in on the game. "What's the angle?" he asked. "I smell a fuckin' general court-martial in this thing. You plannin' to crawl in a window at CINCPAC and claim you seen the admiral? Then ten Marines drag you off to the base brig and we sail without you?"
"What the fuck do you mean by that?" Jack demanded.
"I mean I think I smell shit runnin' down your legs," Homewood said. "That bull you've been throwin' about never seem' home again. As if you had any fuckin' use for home or mother. Are you just tryin' to get off this ship before we sail again?"
"Jesus Christ," Jack said. "If you weren't an old man, I'd kick you in the nuts and never speak to you again. Who the fuck are you to tell me what I should feel? If you wanta know the fuckin' truth, I don't have a clue to how I'm gonna get in to see Nimitz. What I'm tryin' to find out is just how good my luck still is. So I dreamt this up to put it to the test."
"You gonna take this kid with you? If you wanta act like a goddamn screwball, that's your business. But don't mess this kid up too."
"He's holdin' the money, that's all," Jack said.
"Okay, go ahead. I never could figure out what the fuck went on in your head."
"I never asked you to figure it out! If you'd stop screamin' for ten seconds, you might see I got a better chance than you think. When Nimitz hears I'm from the Jefferson City, he might want to ask me a few questions about what the hell's been happenin' aboard this tub."
Homewood seized Jack by the throat. "You mean you're gonna talk down the captain?"
"Hell no. I'll tell him everything's great. I just want to win the fuckin' bet. Can't you get that much straight?"
"You're the one who'd better be straight on this thing," Homewood said. "If you ain't on this ship when we sail for the next operation, I'll find you when we come back and beat the shit out of you, if I got to bribe twenty-two Marines to let me into your cell to do it!"
"Come on," Jack said the minute they set foot on the Ten Ten Dock.
"Come on where?" Flanagan asked.
"You're comin' with me."
"You told Boats —"
"Forget what I told that gasbag. I just been thinkin'. One guy shows up, he could be a nut. They'll be more inclined to throw him out. Two guys are less likely to be crazy."
They walked through the base to CINCPAC's low-slung headquarters building. Two tough-looking Marines with white helmets and white holsters for their .45 revolvers glared at them. "Whatta you swabbies want?" one of them growled.
"We're from the Jefferson City. We'd like to pay our respects to Admiral Nimitz," Jack said.
"Your what?" the Marine said.
"Our respects. We been fightin' under his command from Guadalcanal to Tarawa. We'd like to tell him how much we enjoyed it."
The Marines looked at each other, trying to decide what to do. Arrest these nuts? Tell them to shove off? Inform the admiral?
"Flanagan here's from New York. I'm from Seattle. Different ends of the continent, you know. But in the same Navy."
"Is this for some sort of news story?"
"No. This is our idea."
One Marine disappeared into the building. He came back in five minutes looking bewildered. "Lieutenant Lamar says to send them in."
They sat in an outer office for about fifteen minutes while Lamar, Nimitz's aide, looked them over. His questions were similar to the Marines' and so were Jack's answers. At any moment, Flanagan was sure ten Marines were going to arrive and take them away. They had to be breaching some supreme article of the Navy's regulations.
The phone on Lamar's desk buzzed. "Yes, Admiral," he said, "they're still here."
He gestured toward a set of double doors and in ten seconds they were shaking hands with Admiral Chester Nimitz, Cincpac himself. Flanagan was barely able to talk, but Jack retained his composure. "Admiral," he said, "we really did want to pay our respects. But to tell you the whole truth, we also got about a thousand dollars in bets ridin' on this thing."
"I figured it was something like that," the admiral said. "You're a couple of lucky sailors. You got me on the one morning when Lamar here decided I needed some comic relief. How are you going to prove you got in to see me?"
"I don't know, Admiral," Jack said, momentarily panicked.
"Lamar, get the staff photographer in here."
The photographer arrived on the double and took several shots of the admiral standing between them, smiling broadly. "How are things aboard the Jefferson City these days?" Nimitz asked.
"Couldn't be better, Admiral. It's a happy ship," Peterson said. "We think we got the best captain in the fleet."
"I'm glad to hear that," Nimitz said.
That night Flanagan sat in the mess compartment, the photographs on the table, and collected their money. Boats Homewood watched, an uncertain expression on his face. He could not decide whether to be proud of Jack or angry with him. He had pulled off a stunt Homewood would never have dreamt of trying. Jack fondled the cash — which came to 431,980 — and announced they were going to have the revolving party to end them all in their rented apartment.
Unfortunately, they were in Hawaii, not Australia, and the only women Jack or any other sailor ever met in Honolulu were the whores along River Street.
They paid three hundred dollars to a Chinese landlord who looked like Charlie Chan's twin's brother and lugged a case of booze and mixers up the narrow smelly stairs to the four tiny rooms. Jack went off to negotiate with a couple of madams and returned with three girls, one of them his old friend Sally. Camutti, Homewood, Jablonsky and other members of their F Division circle were invited to drop in, and Jack said other girls would be along for the free booze.
"The word's out that Gentleman Jack's in town with a pocket full of dough," Sally said, throwing her arms around him. "What the hell did you do? Hit the ship's safe?"
Jack handed her a bourbon and soda and gave a splendid rendition of their Nimitz gambit. This catapulted the girls' admiration of Jack — and by association, Flanagan — to stratospheric heights. The other two girls were named Terry and Genevieve. Terry was from Brooklyn. She was short and dark, with thick wiry hair and olive skin. Her nose was wide and her jaw was heavy. Put a helmet on her and blow her up to twice her size and she would have looked like one of the seven blocks of granite who played in Fordham's line. Genevieve was from Chicago. She was lanky, lean, with a face that reminded Flanagan of Olive Oyl, except that the cartoon was somehow smudged.
Sally was from Seattle, which turned out to be one of the reasons why she and Jack were friends. After a drink or two, Jack grew less friendly. "Jesus Christ, Sal, your ass is gettin' as wide as a battleship," he said. "You shoulda seen her when she first come out here. If she turned sideways she disappeared."
Sally looked hurt. Terry defended her. "You don't get no exercise in this business," she said. "I mean, you woik all night and you sleep all day. So y'gain weight."
"I eat like a fuckin' truck horse," Genevieve said. "I never gain nothin'. Not an ounce."
"Hey, I remember you in them days, Jack. You looked like you was a candidate for TB," Sally said. "You're puffin' it on too. In a coupla years your neck'll be as thick as Boats's here."
"Bullshit," Jack said. "I'm gonna get out of the fuckin' Navy the minute the war ends. I'm gonna go into pictures. Act, you know?"
"Come on. The only fuckin' actin' you ever done is at Captain's Mast," Homewood said.
"Hey, Flan's seen me perform. You think I can make it in pictures, Flan?"
"Sure," Flanagan said. He was ready to believe Jack could do anything, at this point.
"See?" Jack said. "This kid's got a brain. He's gonna be a hell of a writer some day. Maybe he'll write a story with a part in it for me. They'll buy it for the movies and I'll act in it."
"What the fuck kind of a story would that be?" Homewood asked. "From the drunk tank to the brig and back?"
"Hey, I don't mean the story of my crummy life. Somethin' that comes out of his head. That's how stories get written. Right, Flan? A guy dreams them up. A guy with the gift of gorgeous bullshit. I got it, but I don't know how to write it down."
Jack started telling the whores about the letters Flanagan had written to Martha Johnson. To his surprise, they were outraged.
"If I ever found out a guy did that to me, I'd kill him," Terry said.
"Me too," Sally said, glaring at Jack and Flanagan.
"Christ almighty, you never know what the fuck a dame's gonna think about anything," Jack said.
A furious argument erupted over the letters. Boats sided with the whores, which further enraged Jack. The quarrel made Flanagan feel guilty. He remembered the joy in Martha Johnson's voice that night on her porch in Seattle as she talked to him about the letters. Now here was Jack, up to his eyeballs in whores in Honolulu and Flanagan beside him.
While his father was grieving for his ruined career in New York.
Jesus, where had that thought come from? He had managed not to think about his father for the past twenty-four hours. Why wasn't he in church praying for him?
Because he did not believe in it any more.
Maybe he ought to pray anyway, instead of acting like a lousy drunken sailor.
But he wasn't acting. He was a lousy drunken sailor!
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